Reprogrammed

The Wish

Trunks was already several miles away when he heard it. The deafening boom of the bomb going off. He turned around to see an enormous mushroom shaped cloud. Fire consumed everything, covering over miles and miles of land. From space, one would think that the Tree of Might had once again taken root on the planet.

"18!" Trunks cried, but his scream was completely drowned out by the explosion

The shockwave hit him, sending him flying. Trees and rock formations were blown over by its intensity. Trunks came crashing to the ground, slamming into other objects that also came down from being blown away.

Pushing rocks and other things aside, Trunks sought out fresh air. He reached the surface, breathing heavily, his whole body aching terribly, with an annoying ringing in his ears that blocked out all other sounds.

"18!" he called, unable to hear his own voice over his ringing ears.

She was gone, and so was Super 17. Everything that had been caught up in that explosion had been totally obliterated. Only the still rising mushroom cloud remained.

"18, no…"

He slammed his fist into the ground, creating a large crater, though it was nothing compared to the one 18 left behind when she exploded.

"Why? Damn it, why? Why'd you have to go and do something like that?"

It was a rhetorical question. He knew why she had done it, knew that it had indeed been their only chance. But why, why did things have to be this way? It just wasn't fair.

"You said you loved me." he whispered, tears running down his cheeks. "How dare you die now before I got the chance to say it back. How dare you!"

A shockwave burst from his body, very weak compared to what he could do at full power. But his low power didn't even register to him. He felt lost, abandoned, betrayed.

That's when he suddenly remembered the other thing she had told him. "You remember. But how? That shouldn't be possible. It couldn't be true. The original 18 would never have been so noble. And what of the past two months?"

I love you.

Was that why, because she loved him?

Loved him, ha! That was a laugh. The evil android 18 wasn't capable of love. She was capable of only death and destruction.

'Oh my god, I've been fucking the evil android 18.'

But she hadn't done anything to harm anyone, not even after regaining her memories. Had her time of memory loss changed her somehow? Had friendship and acts of kindness affected her the same way it had with Piccolo and his father? He didn't see how it was possible. She had been too heartless.

But heartless people didn't sacrifice themselves for everyone. Not only did she save everyone at the cost of her own life, it had been her own brother she had taken down, the only person she ever cared about in her darker days.

This was all very confusing. He had believed that the old 18 was gone forever, and that this new one had taken her place. Actually, now that he thought about it, the two weren't all that different. The only real difference between the two had been that one was a killer and the other wasn't. Other than that, they had thought and acted exactly the same.

Had it been the programming his mother had installed? Was that what prevented her from going back to her wicked ways? No, probably not. After all, she had told him that her programming didn't matter to her. She had killed merely because she wanted to. She could defy her programming if she chose to.