>From the murks of warped time-space:

		Hi-ho!  It's me, Switch, providing yet another
	blurb for my good bud (Don Juan)'s latest installment
	of the DBZ fanfic The Three-Fold God's Path.
		In fact, it's the fifth episode, the longest
	he's written so far.  He actually apologizes for the
	length.  With the projected length he has for this,
	I'm just glad he's doing such a nice pace.

		Without the red tape, here it is.  Ciao!
	(or is it a year late?)

**********
NFT productions presents


The Three-fold God's Path

a DragonBall fanfic

by Nikholas "Don Juan" F. Toledo


who should thank his pre-readers:  Jenny C. and Ryan R., who put up with 
quite a bit of the author's less than pristine, raw output.


episode 5:  Machine Death


	Trunks was bored.  That was the only word to describe it.  Bored.  
He'd just finished with his morning classes, and he only had half an hour 
to the next class, but he was bored.  There was nothing to do.  A half 
hour break was the worst sort.  Long enough so that waiting was nearly 
unbearable, but too short to make going back to his home worth-while.  
For someone accustomed to nearly constant action, sitting still and 
waiting was...  well, unnatural.  It must be the Saiyajin in me, he 
thought.  He'd never been very patient, and as the years had gone by, 
he'd only gotten marginally better at waiting.  

	He sighed, opening his backpack and withdrawing a well-worn Physics 
text.  "I might as well try to get something done..."  He hated homework, 
but at the moment, he had nothing else to do.  

	The breeze abruptly tangled his hair, and as he irritatedly ran his 
fingers through it in an attempt to fix it, his acute, inhuman hearing 
caught her voice, far below him.  He peered over the edge of the roof to 
confirm it.  Ami.  

	
	
	She was annoyed.  He just wouldn't leave her alone.  She'd tried to 
be understanding and everything, but she just didn't like him.  He was 
loud, arrogant, obsessive, and...  well, arrogant.  She sighed, a breath 
of irritation released just so, calculated to raise her bangs a little.  
It was a habit she'd developed from whenever her hair started to get into 
her eyes.  Why couldn't he get it?

	"A rose for the beautiful lady?"  The tall, hulking figure with the 
carefully sculpted hair and the weight-lifter's build more or less thrust 
it at her face.  

	Ami resisted the urge to slap it out of his hands.  "I hate roses, 
Yuu," she spoke in a voice threatening to slip out of the calm, collected 
tones she normally kept it in.  Her irritation just amused him, and she 
was tired of being the target and subject of his amusement.  

	"No problem," he said smoothly as he threw it to one side, 
vaporizing it in a loud, flashy display of power.  "So you're going with 
me to the dance, right, Ami?"  

	"Yuu!"  Ami was unimpressed as she'd seen that sort of stuff before 
from a few of the martial artists in the various clubs.  She was getting 
exasperated, and it was starting to show.  "How many times do I have to 
tell you, I don't dance, and I hate parties, and even if I didn't, I 
wouldn't go with you!"  

	"Aaah, so modest a lady, but I wouldn't wish to deprive you of my 
presence during the party, so I will escort you there as is only proper, 
yes?"  

	Of the many students who practiced some form of martial art or 
another, Yuu was one of the best, equaled only perhaps by Nik from the 
kendo club.  He'd won several recent tournaments and been featured many 
times in the university paper.  He was also the most over-bearing and 
proud of them too.  And that pride wouldn't let him accept a no.

	Ami had to admit that he had a certain...  magnetic intensity to 
his personality.  And he certainly wasn't bad-looking.  But, she also 
knew that he acted like an arrogant jerk.  

	His right hand grasped her wrist, dragging her close with 
irresistible force.  "Yes, Ami?"  He spoke softly, something unthinking 
and primal in his eyes.  

	She tried to jerk free, but he was much, much too strong.  "Let go 
of me, Yuu," she tried to speak firmly, calmly.  His grip was tightening 
painfully, and she couldn't keep the pain from her expression for much 
longer. 

	She thought to herself, I should never have helped him with that 
assignment.  He was so used to the standard adoration he got from most of 
his "fan club" that he associated that adoration with any kind of female 
attention he got.  Even if she had only been concerned that he was 
flunking Physics...  

	"Yuu!"  Her voice was sharp.

	"You're beauty shines forth even more when you are angry," he spoke 
in that even, deep voice of his that she was coming to loathe.  

	"She said to let her go," a third, quiet voice announced.  

	Trunks had chosen that moment to step off the roof of the 
architecture building, disappearing in a blur of speed to reappear beside 
Ami.  

	"Shorty, leave the lady and me alone, okay?  Or else I'll have to 
get dangerous on you."  

	Ami looked at him concernedly.  "Trunks, let me handle this...  Yuu 
could hurt you..."

	Trunks smiled, radiating an aura dripping with the royal arrogance 
his father had taken pains to gift him with.  There were times when the 
obscurity that all of the Z-Soldiers had adopted could be a source of 
extraordinary amusement to Trunks.  It was easy for those who didn't know 
of him to dismiss him.  He was short - only a little taller than his 
father, and the loose clothes he liked to wear masked his frame well.  

	"You pathetic excuse for a fighter, the lady said to let her go."  
his tones, the lazy, confident intonation in his speech, his posture - he 
was his father's son for sure.  

	"Cretin," the bigger man retaliated as his fist released Ami's 
wrist, muscles visibly bunching under his t-shirt as he concentrated his 
power into a glowing fist that could shatter rock, throwing an 
intimidating glare at Trunks.

	Trunks decided that he wished to amuse himself, if only to 
alleviate the boredom.  "Go ahead.  I won't stop you.  I won't dignify 
what you choose to call martial arts by defending against it."

	Gears audibly squeaked as they turned in Yuu's head, eventually 
processing that as an insult.  "Fool!"  Yuu's fist rushed towards Trunks 
face, the full force of his body behind it.  
	Not being in China, the air wasn't quite hard enough for you to 
hear his clenched hand whooshing through the air, but it was close.  

	The moment froze in Ami's eyes, her fear for Trunks making the 
blood thunder in her ears.  She'd seen Yuu practice breaking techniques 
before (he'd been trying to impress her), and that glowing punch could 
pulverize a half foot of solid rock.  "He'll kill him..."

	To Trunks, the blow was pathetic, so slow that he had to restrain 
the urge to yawn.  He decided to let it hit him, if only for dramatic 
effect.  The force of the impact on his jaw forced him to turn his face a 
little, but not much.  He turned his father's scowl on Yuu, looking into 
the bigger man's eyes.  "Was that all?" he whispered.  

	Yuu's brain cells struggled to process the information in a valiant 
attempt, but failed.  He could not comprehend how one of his strongest 
attacks could fail to even mark Trunks' face.  He unleashed two dozen 
glowing attacks in the next ten seconds, knife-hands, back-fists, 
roundhouse kicks, turning-side kicks, turning-long kicks, crescent kicks, 
axe kicks, all aimed at Trunks' face.  All of them hit, and the result 
was the same.  Nothing.  Except for the pain coming from his hands and 
feet, there was nothing to indicate that he'd hit.  

	He snarled, "What are you made of anyway?  It doesn't matter, I'll 
wipe your face right off of your head!"

	He wanted desperately to erase that arrogant smile off of the 
smaller figure's face, and so he concentrated, a small sphere of pure chi 
growing between his palms.  This technique would exhaust him, but it was 
his most devastating attack, and he'd destroyed dozens of cars with it in 
the junkyard where he practiced, so he was confident that if anything, 
this attack would hurt, maybe even kill the other student in front of 
him.  It took all of his concentration to put all of his energy into the 
ball of destruction he launched at Trunks.  He was pleased to note the 
look of surprise on the little punk's face just before the sphere struck 
him and detonated in a flash of energy.  

	Yuu was gasping for breath when it was over, the energy that attack 
took nearly brought him to his knees.

	"I'm impressed.  That hurt a little.  I didn't think you were good 
enough in your style to have progressed to an attack like that."  A 
small, angry bruise marked the side of Trunks' jaw now.  He looked down 
at his torn and singed shirt.  "You know," he drawled lazily.  "I liked 
this shirt."

	Yuu's expression was comic.  Dazed and uncomprehending.  Trunks 
decided that that look had made his ruined shirt worth it.  Still, if he 
wanted to get another shirt from his house and be back in time for his 
next class, he'd have to end this, oh...  now.  

	"You make sure you leave the lady alone now, you hear?"  Trunks 
voice was still held in that quiet, dangerous tone he'd learned, as he 
lazily, almost gently hit Yuu in the chest with an open palm, and a 
fraction of the force of his will.  

	Yuu lost his breath, and his last conscious thought was, "Hmm...  
Flying is nice...  I should thank that little guy..."  



	"Are you all right?"  Trunks took Ami's hand and pulled her to her 
feet (she'd been thrown to the ground by the pressure wave of Yuu's chi-
blast).  

	Ami dazedly pushed her bangs out of her eyes and replied, somewhat 
shakily, "S... Sure...  I mean, I'm fine, but are you okay?  And what was 
THAT?"

	Trunks smirked.  "It's just a little bruise - it's nothing.  Yes, 
I'm okay.  That was a lower level chi-attack, if you were asking about 
the flash of light, and if you were asking about what I did, I slapped 
him in the chest, that's all."

	Eyes wide, Ami delicately traced her fingers along the edge of 
Trunks' jaw.  "Doesn't it hurt?"  

	Trunks' reddened.  "Uhmm...  Ehhh..."   Her touch had rather 
abruptly de-railed Trunks' train of thought, forcing him to struggle with 
the suddenly difficult task of speaking.  "Aaaah...  No, not with the 
little amount of pressure that you're applying now.  I'm...  fine."  

	A third voice joined in.  "Well, if you two lovebirds are done, I 
was going to ask if you were coming with use on the camping trip."

	Trunks sighed, whether in irritation or relief, he wasn't sure.  It 
was Goten.  He'd been pestering the two of them, and a couple of Ami's 
friends to go on that camping trip for a week now.  
	Ami blushed, withdrawing her fingers from Trunks' face and hiding 
the guilty hand behind her to hide the trembling.  "I...  I think, I'll 
be able to make it.  My parents will allow me if Mari comes along too, 
and she says she's pretty sure that she'll be able to."

	When he'd seen Ami's gentle touch applied to Trunks' face, Goten 
had felt a strange tightness in his chest, or maybe he'd imagined it but 
it was overpowering him anyway, and his throat had almost closed up on 
itself.  He'd forced himself back into control, and while he couldn't 
bring himself to smile, he at least kept himself from frowning.  

	"I'm glad.  You, Trunks?"  There was something unreadable in 
Trunks' eyes, but Goten tried not to let it bother him.

	"Of course I'm going with you.  Who'd keep you out of trouble 
otherwise?"  He chuckled a little, grinning in a sly, irreverent manner 
that Goten hadn't seen since before Trunks had gone on that training trip 
with his father.  It revealed that part of him that Goten remembered his 
friend for.  It was a smile that seemed to say, "Okay, you caught me red-
handed, I'd be sorry but I'm in much too good a mood."

	"Hey, seems to me that you were the one getting into trouble all 
the time back then!"  Goten smiled a little, though his conflicting 
feelings seemed to wash back and forth like a confused tide in his head. 
 He was displeased that Ami seemed so close to Trunks, but if she could 
make him relax the way he used to, if she could bring back the person 
that had been Goten's closest friend before, then perhaps...  Perhaps it 
wouldn't be so very bad to lose this fight with Trunks.  He promised 
himself that one way or the other, they'd resolve that particular quarrel 
during this vacation. 
	"Say, Trunks," Goten glanced at his watch.  "Don't you have a class 
starting now?"  

	Trunks quickly glanced at his own watch, let loose an exasperated 
sigh, and blurred into extremely high speed flight.  To the eyes of any 
normal person watching, he just disappeared.  
	
	"Bye!  Igottagochangemyshirtfirstseeyouinawhile!"	

	"Ami, can I talk to you a bit?"  

	Ami's face was still a little red - she still couldn't quite bring 
herself to look into Goten's eyes and retain her composure.  
	

	Arien checked his watch, one more time.  It was difficult keeping 
track of time without sunlight, a fact he hadn't appreciated until he'd 
spent his first week in the caves without a watch.  It was three in the 
morning.  He hoped that the darkness would help hide his task tonight.  

	He stretched out his legs, slowly dropped out of his levitating, 
cross-legged position down to the cavern floor with his will, and 
commenced putting on his combat uniform.  It was something he'd made 
while he was at the Facility.  The torso piece consisted of two hexagonal 
center plates that interlocked flexibly with a set of trapezoids over and 
under his shoulders.  Shoulder guards locked onto the torso piece, 
gauntlets were connected to the shoulder guards by a sort of brace.  The 
leg armor consisted of several plates more or less woven into a set of 
trousers that locked onto the boots.

	It was a fairly simple set of light combat armor made of a strange 
mineral that had been discovered to react to chi, absorbing it to a 
slight extent and becoming more durable as it absorbed more.  He'd 
actually found the strange material in one of the tournaments he'd gone 
to that was held in a temple made of the stuff.  Too much of it in one 
place dampened chi-energy very effectively, and in the temple, it had 
weakened nearly all of the fighters except him.  At that time he'd been 
skilled enough to notice the drain, and had come up with a method of 
shielding himself from the draining effect.  After the tournament was 
over (he'd won of course), he'd taken a sample of the material for his 
own studies.  He was wondering what else it could be used for when the 
Spectacled Man at the Facility had suggested using it as body armor.

	He gave it a try, basing the design on a picture he'd seen on the 
Scroll, and was surprised at how well it worked.
	
	It didn't restrict movement and it provided a fair amount of 
protection from minor attacks all the way up to an anti-tank rocket.  To 
Arien, the idea of body armor seemed mostly useless since the class of 
combat he was usually involved in could easily destroy the armor plating 
on tanks and battleships.  However, he'd gotten used to it, if only 
because it was the only type of clothing he'd found that wasn't 
completely destroyed (in an often embarrassing manner) during combat.   

	As he finished the last connections on the suit, he powered up 
slightly, allowing the armor to absorb a fraction of his chi, increasing 
its overall strength by about a factor of five.  The suit lightened in 
color somewhat as it was charged up, the intense black of it changing to 
a murky dark grey.  

	Idly, Arien wondered what color the armor would be if he was 
powerful enough to charge up the material to its limit.  He closed his 
eyes, and went through his concentration techniques, preparing himself 
for combat and slowly amplifying his chi.  Tonight, he was going to be 
depending on stealth, but it never hurt to be ready.  

	He took off his glasses, and asked himself for perhaps the 
hundredth time why he still bothered to wear them.  They were a liability 
in combat, and he'd corrected his own vision with his techniques for 
altering and healing his physiology since the year before, when he'd 
learned how to heal and manipulate his body tissues from the Scroll.  

	He decided that he was just used to the things.  Even now that he 
didn't need them anymore, he just didn't feel right without them.  Of 
course, another reason he'd needed to wear them still was that he didn't 
want to alert the people at the Facility to the fact that he'd learned 
ways of manipulating his fundamental structure at a cellular level.  He'd 
have had a Hell of a time trying to explain that little trick to Henry.  

	He'd been so used to being one of the weakest fighters at the 
Facility that initially, it had just felt strange when he'd suddenly 
become the most powerful.  It felt odd.  He'd always gotten by on skill 
alone before, and then he'd suddenly become capable of beating down 
everyone else with just raw power.  Henry had become suspicious 
immediately with that first boost of power, and since then, Arien had 
made sure to hide his progress well.

	Henry.  As Arien put away his glasses, he wondered again about the 
strange, secretive man with the mechanical eyes who ran the facility.

	Was Henry the traitor?  That couldn't be.  Henry was the one who 
started the whole Program - it was his brainchild.  When he'd approached 
Arien to ask him to be the coordinator for it, he'd done everything 
possible to show off the possibilities of this project.  He wouldn't have 
betrayed it.  
	
	Finished with his preparations, Arien switched off the generator 
that provided power to the arc-lights he'd installed into the cavern 
ceiling.  In the darkness, he was about to raise his chi enough to light 
his way, but a soft, white light began to emanate from somewhere behind 
him as a presence began to manifest itself.  
	His heart raced.

	"I wondered when we'd meet next..."  he whispered.

	"I wasn't supposed to meet you yet, but Arien...  Stay here for a 
while longer.  You aren't ready yet.  There is one more technique on the 
Scroll you should master..."  

	"Which one?  There have been so many..."

	"It translates to 'Way of Focused Heart-Fire' -  or the "Way of 
Burning Tears" - it's something you need to learn."

	Arien sighed.  "Translating the rest of that section by myself 
could take months!  I've been going crazy with the isolation.  Don't 
worry so much...  I'm not going to fight, I'm just going to get some 
information.  And stop for supplies on the way back.  No problem."  

	The voice murmured, "Sometimes, I forget how quickly time passes 
for you...  Very well.  If you're not going to fight...  I suppose it 
will be fine.  But, before you're next battle, promise me that you will 
learn that technique.  Please."

	"Of course..."  Arien jerked as he felt the presence disappearing. 
 "Wait!  Don't go yet.  I just wanted to find out your name..."  As he 
turned, he caught the faint outline of a figure in heavy robes before the 
last of the light faded away, and he was in the darkness once more.  

	Sighing again, he charged his eyes with chi and let them light his 
way.  He took a quick look at the part of the Scroll the voice had 
mentioned.  He'd finished about a quarter of that part.  It described a 
technique for breaking through to all of one's inner chi energy, allowing 
one to reach his or her ultimate potential as a human, power-wise.  Sure, 
that would be nice...  But he didn't have the time.  Arien couldn't 
explain it, but he felt driven by a strange sense of urgency, as though 
time were running out.  Besides, he was pretty sure that he was already 
tapping close to his full potential anyway.  Surely one more technique 
wouldn't make that much of a difference. 

	The Scroll glowed faintly in response to his chi, and he reminded 
himself to bring down his chi as soon as he got out of the cavern.  The 
cavern itself was shielded by the natural chi of the earth, so long as he 
didn't power up enough to disturb the normal flows, but he'd have to be 
more careful as he neared the surface. 

	He flew through the exit tunnel he knew was in the ceiling at high 
speed, letting his boosted reflexes and responses help him avoid the 
various rock formations and make all the correct turns to get out.  As he 
neared the surface, he let his chi drop so that it was masked completely 
by the armor.  With that much chi, he could still fly at a respectable 
speed, but flight took up so much of it that he couldn't spare any for 
light.  So he relied on his instincts and memory to guide him the rest of 
the way up. 



	"Say, Trunks, do you hear something?"  Goten twisted his head 
around the box of camping gear beside him to look somewhere below him on 
the mountain-side.

	"Just the wind, baka.  Why, are you scared of the dark?"  Trunks 
smiled in a sinister way as he used his aura to light his features in an 
eerie, ghostly manner.

	"Ha ha.  Oh, excuse me, I mean, oh dear.  How terrifying."

	Trunks shrugged.  "It used to work."  He turned his back to Goten, 
curling up even deeper into his sleeping bag.  "Now shut up and go to 
sleep, OK?  We're supposed to be going fishing early."

	For a moment, Goten hesitated - he'd felt the slightest surge of 
energy.  Someone very experienced at hiding chi.  He listened for a few 
minutes, tensing at the possibility of attack.  After a while, he was 
able to relax, to an extent.  Trunks hadn't sensed anything, and he was 
more skilled, right?

	"Trunks..." Goten whispered.

	"What?"

	"You like Ami a lot, I guess."  Goten kept his tone as neutral as 
he could.  

	"Yes."  Trunks did the same with his own voice.  

	"Are you friends?"

	"Yes."

	"Good..."

	With that, Goten turned on his side, and did his best to fall 
asleep.  After a long, long time, he slipped into a tired, dreamless 
rest.  
	


	Seconds before bursting from the cavern entrance, Arien forced his 
chi down even further, becoming even harder to detect.  This caused him 
to slow down to a couple of hundred miles an hour - about the speed of a 
small propeller plane.  He flew low and close to the ground, a dark blur 
through the night sky.  It would take him about a half an hour of flying 
at that rate to get to the city, and then about fifteen minutes to get 
out of the city to the Facility, which was located underneath a hardened 
military base nearby.  

	The wind whipped Arien's rather lengthy hair back as he flew, since 
having his chi suppressed to this degree precluded the use of a barrier 
field.  Once again, he pushed the stray strands out of his eyes as he 
cursed, having forgotten about how long his hair had gotten during his 
isolation in the caves.  He decided that he would get it cut as soon as 
it was at all convenient.  

	He murmured, "The sky is beautiful tonight..."  It seemed like he'd 
almost forgotten what the sky looked like.  As he approached the city, 
its thousand, thousand lights painted a glorious spray of light across 
the horizon.



	Andrea tossed and turned in her bed, trying desperately to get into 
a more comfortable position.  She couldn't sleep.  For some reason, an 
awful sense of foreboding seemed to permeate the air tonight.  

	"Damn you, Arien," she muttered.  "Where are you?"  She hadn't 
received word from him ever since that day he'd disappeared.  Something 
felt wrong.  

	Ever since he'd disappeared, she'd realized how many strange things 
there were about Arien that suggested how he wasn't just another ordinary 
Physics professor.  His social life consisted of his late night 
translation sessions with her, and that was all.  He had no friends other 
than her, no concerns other than the scroll and teaching his students.  
His breadth of knowledge went far beyond that of the closed, highly 
specialized know-how of most of the other hard science types she knew.  
And his hands.  She remembered how strange it seemed that someone who 
professed to have no knowledge of martial arts or sports had such heavily 
calloused hands.  When he thought no one was looking, he moved with a 
feline, unnatural grace...  just like...  Just like that new English 
professor - what was his name?  Son Gohan.  

	Where had she heard that name before...  It struck her then.  When 
she'd been a teenager, she'd gotten very deeply interested in martial 
arts because of that time she'd first watched a certain televised 
tournament.  That first tournament she'd seen had been won by a certain 
rising star in the martial arts - a young, powerful man named Son Goku.  
Before that, the Art didn't appeal to her much, because it seemed that no 
matter how skilled you were, if you fought someone much bigger or 
stronger, or someone with a gun, you'd lose anyway.  Watching Son Goku 
had been the most incredible experience of her life - he'd been truly 
something to watch, performing at a level of skill that took her breath 
away.  He was the first person she'd seen to make seemingly legendary, 
mythical techniques real - concentrating his spirit to the point where he 
could make blasts of pure chi energy.

	Were they related?  

	Her grandparents had been nagging her to take up her family's 
school of martial arts for years - and she'd finally gotten interested 
enough to try.  It took a very, very long, hard time.  It had been so 
frustrating to realize that it would take her so very long, so very much 
effort to even approach such skill.  Goku had made everything seem so 
easy - and when she'd tried her hand at it, it took the longest time 
before she could even sense chi on the shallowest level.  Still, through 
a combination of her grandparents' nagging, persistence, encouragement 
and patience, they'd managed to bring her to a swordmaster's level of 
proficiency in their special school of sword-fighting after only ten 
years.  

	They had been very frustrated with her that day when she'd 
discovered the true passion of her life to be archaeology.  She'd thrown 
herself whole-heartedly into her studies, and didn't spend nearly as much 
time training.  Still, her family had understood, in the end.  

	Now, she wondered whether or not she'd truly achieved any mastery 
in the Art at all.  This Son Gohan...  he'd beaten all her students in 
seconds - students she'd taught to be very nearly as skilled as she was. 
 That grace...  Had Arien been a master too?  If so, she had twice the 
reason to be irritated with him.  Not only had he taken the Scroll with 
him, he'd concealed his knowledge of the Art from her - knowledge that 
she would have loved to learn.  

	The notebook Arien had given her about the temple had gone a long 
ways toward soothing her irritation over the loss of the Scroll, but she 
still wished that he'd stayed.  She'd had a devil of a time explaining to 
her colleagues why the site of her dig had already been carefully 
excavated when they'd gotten there.  If only she'd had the Scroll to show 
them...  Things would be so much easier if he were still around.  Still, 
that expedition had improved her position with the faculty significantly 
since she'd finally gained some proof to show them that her theories were 
right.  There had been an ancient civilization that predated all the 
others and that had been incredibly advanced.  The evidence she'd 
gathered was still scarce, but it was enough to at least gain her some 
acceptance in the department of her university.    

	She sighed as she got out of bed.  She'd gotten keyed up over 
Arien's disappearance again, and if she followed the pattern she'd 
established over the past few weeks, that meant that she wouldn't be 
getting any sleep at all tonight.  She might as well try to do something 
constructive.  

	She went to her desk, and brought out Arien's notes on the temple. 
 It still amazed her that he'd been so knowledgeable about languages, and 
his inferences about the temple had been very helpful.  He'd done his 
share of the translation work too, which had surprised her even more.  
When she'd pressed him about how he'd learned to do all this, he'd just 
shrugged and said that it was just something he'd picked up.  

	She opened the book, and decided that tonight, she would read the 
rest of it.  The parts she'd avoided before - the parts that had sounded 
too much like a diary for her to be comfortable reading.  She wanted very 
much to dig into the mind and personality of the enigma that Arien had 
become, and find out just what he was. 
	So she turned to the part she'd always avoided:  the beginning.  
	 
	As she turned the pages, she saw a few brown stains here and there. 
 Dried blood.  When she accidentally touched some of the stains, she 
almost dropped the notebook - her fingers tingled, and she felt a strong 
chi-residue.  It was years old but she could still feel some of his life-
force there.  He was strong.  For his chi to leave traces like this years 
after, he must have been at least several times more powerful in spirit-
energy than she was.  

	So she read.  After the first two dozen pages, she had difficulty 
believing that Arien was real.  It narrated several of the battles he'd 
undergone, as well as types of training, and some of the techniques he'd 
learned.  It was an impressive store of knowledge, and though she only 
recognized a few of the techniques written down, she thought that she 
could probably learn them with time.  What was hard to believe was how 
powerful some of his opponents had been.  If the stories she was reading 
were true, he'd fought beings that could destroy mountains with the sheer 
force of their will, often winning against them, and sometimes suffering 
what should have been horrific injuries in the process.  He should have 
been a cripple, if not a corpse, several times over.  

	"How did he hide his power from me for so long?"  She wondered out 
loud.  If he were that strong, he should have radiated so much chi that 
even the average, unskilled human would have felt it.  He should have 
glowed with an incredible, awe-inspiring presence...  

	She smacked herself on the head as soon as she asked.  It should 
have been obvious.  He'd been so skilled at hiding everything about 
himself, of course he must have found ways of controlling and hiding his 
strength.  

	"So what else about yourself have you been hiding, dear friend..." 
 



	Getting through the external security of the military base hadn't 
been easy, but Arien had planned for this contingency long before - 
mapping out escape and entrance routes, the locations of the various 
security devices, and noting the short windows of time between shifts 
when the number of guards patrolling the area would be particularly 
small.  

	Of course, the human guards were the simple part - he'd learned 
many, many skills and techniques with chi, not just for combat.  By 
projecting his will in a certain way onto the mind of another, he could 
fog the thoughts of his target, making himself not invisible, but 
extraordinarily dim - like a shadow.  Guards would look directly at him, 
and confused, shake their heads, forgetting they'd seen anything at all. 
 And knowing the exact locations of the security cameras, Arien knew 
exactly where and when to walk in order to avoid their visual arcs.  

	After a few minutes of walking, Arien swept by the last set of 
guards just outside the elevator that would bring him down to the lowest 
levels of the Base - the Facility.  Arien punched in the appropriate 
code.  As the elevator began to drop, Arien prepared himself for getting 
through the last level of security.

	The difficult part was penetrating the electronic defenses of the 
Facility itself.  It was an extraordinarily elaborate system, involving 
several types of electromagnetic imaging devices.  Some of these - the 
most dangerous ones - were experimental devices that could actually 
detect and measure chi.  Not as accurate or sensitive as the security 
systems available on the market from Capsule Corp., but then, they were 
very nearly as good, and far less expensive.  Those sensors were arranged 
specifically to defeat a break-in by anyone with any proficiency in the 
Power.  The system could detect and identify any living being inside the 
Facility with incredible accuracy.  It was excellent, and very nearly 
impregnable.  

	Of course, Arien had been on the design team that had made it that 
way.  He'd come up with most of the breakthroughs regarding the study of 
the electromagnetic nature of chi, after all.  

	He knew that there were still flaws in it.  The weakest level of 
chi it could detect was that of a small, weakly child.  Any chi weaker 
than that would not register because the system had to be de-sensitized 
enough so that the other fighters being studied by the Facility could 
practice at full strength without destroying the system. 

	Normally, Arien would have to weaken himself to the point of near-
death in order to fool the system, but with the armor's dampening, he 
didn't have to go quite as far.  

	Still, a wave of weakness swept through Arien's form as he pushed 
the Power further and further away.  It was suddenly a struggle to stand, 
a struggle to even move with the armor.  Arien concentrated, and 
compensated as best as he could.  He didn't need to get far, he just 
needed to get to a terminal that accessed the central computer core.  

	

	Deep inside the Facility, metal eyes whirred as they focused on a 
warning light that had just lit up.  

	Someone was calling up all the files relevant to the Program 
studying the Saiyajin.  Someone with a very high level of clearance.  

	And that someone was doing it from one of the external terminals 
near the periphery of the Facility.  Not in one of the secure offices.  

	Whoever it was quickly finished copying down the information.  
Whoever it was did not register on the chi-sensing security system.  That 
meant there were two possibilities, but the second one had been 
eliminated by the Saiyajin years before. 
 
	Henry pulled a keyboard out of his desk, and activated the high-
speed typing mode of his hands.  His fingers extended to twice their 
normal length, and special software designed to interpret Henry's 
thoughts into specific key-stroke combinations activated.  In the 
darkness of his office, the sound of inhumanly rapid typing could be 
heard.  

	In the heart of the Facility, five sets of eyes opened as 
information was relayed onto them.  Security procedures were cleared, and 
with a hiss, five silver coffins lined with intricate wiring and golden 
circuitry opened.  

	"Arien, the hunt is on again."  



	Arien was halfway back to the city when he felt the multiple energy 
surges of some rather powerful attacks rapidly heading towards him.  
	
	Apparently, I wasn't stealthy enough, he thought to himself as he 
snapped his defenses and chi up.  It's a good thing I already hid the 
disk with the information.  It would have probably been destroyed in the 
coming battle.

	He twisted, threw a minor energy ball to intercept the attacks, and 
teleported out of the immediate blast range of the detonating mass of 
energy - a short-lived sun intruding on the dark curtain of the sky.  He 
wondered if anyone in the city was watching, off to the west.  

	At maximum combat efficiency, the only indicators that Arien was 
near his peak chi output was the slight glow emanating from his eyes.  He 
prided himself on wasting as little energy as possible.  He could feel 
them approaching.  Five human auras, not quite as powerful as him, but 
almost certainly augmented by cyber-enhancements, to what degree, he 
couldn't say.  It was impossible to tell how they compared with Dr. 
Gero's work.  

	They were from the Facility.  

	"Henry, you son of a bitch!  I told you that technology was off-
limits!  You sold out to the military..."  

	They were coming in fast, each surrounded by a comet-like halo of 
many blazing colors, lightning crackling about their charged-up, armored 
forms.  

	How wasteful, thought Arien.  They aren't trained to fight as a 
team either...  Then again, perhaps they don't need to.

	They'd gotten spread out in a line, the fastest ones in the lead 
and the others straining to follow.  

	Arien stopped, crouching with arms outstretched, making as if to 
fire off a large blast from each hand.  The closest attacker suddenly 
veered off course, sensing the power growing in Arien's hands.  

	Arien smiled.  The glowing blue-white spheres he held in each hand 
suddenly collapsed into two, tiny points of light, one in each closed 
fist - surrounding his hands with a controlled, steady release of 
destructive force.  

	Far more efficient than a fireball.  

	He disappeared in a burst of speed, suddenly appearing behind the 
first fighter.  Sensing him, the other was in the process of turning when 
Arien threw a battering ram - like punch into the enemy's ribs.  Arien 
heard the satisfying crunch of the Facility fighter's armor cracking just 
as a small explosion of force burst outward from the point of impact with 
his hand, smashing the opponent hard into the ground a hundred feet 
below.   

	The second fighter was almost upon him, coming in with a lightning 
fast, flaming kick from behind.  Arien made a short distance teleport, 
shifting his body out of the line of the kick, allowing himself to spin, 
slamming his armored right elbow into the second one's guts.

	His enemy was thrown hard by the impact, temporarily blacking out 
as she spun out of control through the cold air.  

	High above the grassy plains, Arien evaluated the situation as a 
faint light stained the horizon.  Two enemy opponents down in as many 
seconds in a fast, confused blur in the dark sky, and he was untouched.  
They don't seem to have improved much since the last time they were 
tested, he thought.  Still, Arien could feel the taint of the machine in 
their forms - a certain electric tingle that meant that they'd been 
artificially enhanced since then.  It didn't add up.  This was too easy. 
 There were still three more, approaching from the East, coming down 
through the thin layer of clouds.

	By now, the familiar burning pain was soaking through Arien's 
joints, his body rebelling at the stresses it wasn't designed for.  He 
grimaced as he compensated, sending a steady stream of healing energy 
into his joints to repair them continuously as he damaged them in his 
high-speed mode of combat.  Without the constant upkeep, his joints would 
disintegrate after only a few seconds of fighting at this speed, which 
made his former top speed, the one he'd used to take out the hit squads 
sent after him that fateful day, pale in insignificance.    

	"Dammit!  He's so fast!" A young, female voice called out over the 
thundering noises of faster than sound movement.  

	"So are we!  We just have to coordinate more..."  

	Arien cut off the gravelly-voiced speaker with the military 
decorations on his armor by suddenly closing the quarter-mile between 
them in a relatively long-distance teleport and sending a right 
roundhouse kick hard against the big man's jaw.  The large fighter 
grunted with the effort of blocking Arien's kick with his left forearm, 
the impact sounding rather like a sonic boom, up close.  As a matter of 
fact, Arien thought abstractly, it almost certainly caused a sonic boom, 
so of course that's what it would sound like.  

	The military man sent a fast knife-thrust, kick combination at 
Arien, which he side-stepped easily.  

	Arien backed off, his vibrating, blurred outline slowing down and 
resolving to that of his tall, wiry form as he spoke.  "I recognize you. 
 You're all the first batch of fighters we selected for the program.  I 
suppose Henry...  I mean, the Spectacled Man, told you that I betrayed 
the Facility in some way?"

	"He's told us enough.  You're coming back with us to the Facility," 
called out the young red-haired female floating about thirty feet away.  

	"I'm not going to let the Spectacled Man convert me into a half-
machine monster like you..."  Arien answered.  

	"What are you talking about!" grated the short, stocky Facility 
fighter to appear last.  

	At that moment, the first fighter who encountered Arien peeled his 
lanky form from the bottom of the crater he'd made from hitting the 
ground, and saw Arien making a perfect, stationary target.  The untouched 
grass about the crater waved from the breeze he created as he drew in his 
power.    

	His vision was blurry, tinged with red from the pain of his 
fractured ribs.  If not for the armor, pieces of which were falling off 
him, he'd have been finished.  

	The target was far more dangerous than we'd been told, thought the 
battered Facility man as he noticed how close the target was to the girl, 
high above in the early morning sky.  

	"Elysse!" he screamed as he threw up both hands, unthinkingly 
projecting all his life-energy into a beam of power so intense that it 
could have cut the moon in half.  As he was performing the attack, he 
realized too late that the energy this would take from him would also 
kill him.  Still, that didn't matter.  There was only the beauty of this 
one, perfect moment - there was only the power now.  The raw energy, 
rainbow tendrils of light that made up the totality of his soul, all went 
into the technique, leaving him an empty husk.

	Arien sensed the attack too late to avoid it.  This close, there 
was no time to evade it.  He spun and brought his hands up before him, 
and prayed as he put as much power as he dared into a field of energy 
around him.  

	Then the multi-hued ray of light was upon him, and everything 
around him disappeared in a white blaze of power.  His shield shuddered 
under the onslaught, and shattered.  A tremendous pressure seemed to 
smash against Arien's body like a gigantic hand.

	That brief burning sensation was enough to bring back the memory of 
a dream of flames, back to one of the times when the voice was testing 
him.  Somehow the memory augmented him just a little, enough to hint at a 
huge untapped well inside him that he'd never thought was there.  

	Arien screamed, focussing his new-found energy into another shield 
about him.  It seemed an eternity before the attack finally ended, and 
the destructive light surrounding him finally faded away at last.  

	His armor had just barely absorbed the rest of the energy that had 
gotten through his protective field, its structure now compromised by 
hundreds of micro-fractures running through it.  At least, Arien thought, 
he was still in one piece - even if a slightly toasted one.  

	As the hot gases from the explosion diffused quickly in the cool 
morning air, Arien breathed deeply of the fresh, unscorched air.

	The others near him hadn't fared so well.  Their smoking, charred 
bodies were falling to the ground below, and Arien could sense no life in 
any of them.  

	He turned to leave, when a shouted, "Nooo!" accompanied by a 
frenzied hail of energy blasts approached him from the west.  

	It was the second fighter he'd knocked out in the first seconds of 
the encounter.  She'd just recovered from his strike.

	If he hadn't just found a new reserve of strength within him, he 
might conceivably have had problems with this one, after having expended 
so much energy with the shield.  Even then, he was fairly certain he'd 
still have won - he'd beaten this one the first time with ease.  Still, 
he remembered caution - he hadn't expected the first one to perform a 
suicidal strike of such immense power either.  And that one had nearly 
killed him...  If not for that dream...

	He disappeared, speed so great that the friction with his shielded 
form super-heated the air about him, turning to ionized plasma - 
apparently surrounding his body with lightning.

	I didn't want to kill them!  They must not realize what Henry's 
done!  I need allies, not more dead bodies!

	With a shriek of artificial thunder, he wove his way between the 
blasts, appearing just behind the last of the Facility's combatants, and 
catching her arms in a powerful, vice-like lock.  Arien absently noted 
that the last of the film of super-heated air about him had melted the 
opponent's armor where he'd touched her - a potential technique, though 
one that was almost certain to fail against the Saiyajin.  He'd seen the 
records - the Saiyajin moved far past this speed already.  They probably 
had some way of displacing the air about them such that there was no 
friction - else they'd have this lightning effect constantly.  

	"Let me go, you bastard!"  She cried out, voice hoarse and sharp 
with loss.

	The Facility fighter, a slight girl with short, dark red hair, 
struggled, attempting to break the lock with several textbook techniques, 
all of which failed.  

	He hissed into her ear, "Stop it!  I didn't kill them!  Your other 
friend who didn't realize the power he was playing with did that!  Calm 
down.  I didn't want anyone to die tonight - if Henry's shown you any of 
my profile at all, even as a target, you must realize that!  I just 
wanted some answers!"  

	The girl drew in a ragged breath, sobbing as she did so.  She spoke 
haltingly, throat raw, "My...  sister..."  

	Arien loosened his grip a little as he spoke, trying to make his 
voice gentle.  "Listen to me, whatever the Spectacled Man told you, he 
lied.  He had detailed specifics about my combat abilities a few months 
ago, if he'd shown any of them to you, they'd have shown just how 
unprepared the five of you were for this.  He knew how advanced I'd 
become - if he sent the five of you against me as you were, then he sent 
the five of you here to die."

	"I can...  I can see that.  Now.  I don't understand!" 

	"At the moment, neither do I...  His sending you this way was 
senseless...  unless.  Unless...  he wanted the five of you...  to die... 
 SHIT!"  Arien released her, and shoved her with all the force at his 
disposal.  He threw himself backwards, teleporting as he did so.  

	A dark blur shifted through the space were they were, a trail of 
lightning in its super-fast wake.  It had come from behind.

	There was no chi in it to detect - it was all machine.  He'd sensed 
the advancing heat of it just moments before it would have impacted.

	"Jinzouningen..."  Arien whispered, just before he was struck from 
behind by a hundred, machine-precise blows. 


---- end episode 5