I can't remember if I sent this one before, so I'm sending it now...

Dragonball belongs to Akira Toriyama and a whole lot of other people who
aren't me.  I'm just borrowing some characters temporarily...

Sweet Sixteen
By Rhionae

I have always found it strange that people can place so little value in
the life that surrounds them.  The chirping of the birds, the gentle
rustle of new leaves as the wind sighs amidst the branches.  Each so
precious and delicate.

Each so easy to destroy.

And that is what many humans have done: annihilating forests for
'natural resources', taking away the homes of the forest creatures,
declaring them to be inferior species.  They are incapable of expressing
themselves in a manner acceptable to the humans' own convoluted logic.
They cannot speak as the humans do, and so are looked down upon, because
they cannot match the humans on human terms.

Sometimes, I think, not even the humans themselves can.

I have been aware for so little time in this wonderful world - yet it
has been long enough for me to pity these humans who created me.  They
created me to be a weapon of destruction, to destroy the beauty of life
I found to be all around me.

The twins, too, had been designed for such a purpose.  But where I am
completely mechanical in nature, they are partly human.  They turned on
our own creator in hatred - and an empty pleasure it brought them.  For
what had been done to them could not be undone.  Following their human
instincts, their *need* to have direction in life, they followed their
main directive: to kill Son Goku, the warrior willing to fight for
peace.  They destroyed for the joy of destruction, never noticing the
joy of living.  Perhaps they will see it one day, if anyone can touch
the lighter side of their nature, which our creator did such a good job
of trying to obliterate.

He certainly seemed to succeed with Cell.

Cell was truly our creator's masterpiece.  Assembled from the living
cells of his enemies, he had assumed the worst of all of them.  Here at
last was someone who could look down upon the fragile humans, and
determine whether they were to live or die.  Here was yet another
demonstration of the human ability to warp what is good, and twist it to
such petty aims.  It also proved to me that sometimes one must indeed
fight to protect the lives of those who cannot protect themselves.
Before its too late, and they are lost forever.

The humans are so much weaker than Cell, just as the forest creatures
are indeed weaker than the humans.  But not all humans destroy.  I have
finally seen that some are willing to protect - indeed, to *fight* to
protect, and make whatever sacrifice is necessary - as I should have
done, before Cell became too powerful for me to eliminate.

For now we must look to a child to protect us all, to save us from the
cruelty which allowed such a horrible being to exist.  And Son Gohan is
a gentle child.  Unlike his father, he is not so eager to fight.  He
will protect those he cares for, but he is limited by his unwillingness
to hurt another, no matter who they are, or what they have done.  Just
as I was.

So now I must teach him that sometimes it is necessary to fight, without
regard for the life of the one being fought.  Or rather, with the weight
of all the lives depending on you to save them pressing you past
gentleness, to do what must be done.  I must convince him of this,
before it is too late for him as well.

For it is too late now for me.

*************

Rhionae
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/3226/fanfics.htm