Part 5

She had thought that when she confronted the man or woman who had been doing these things to her, she would feel only rage and use that fury to spew her venom at the killer. Now, as she was looking into his evil grinning eyes, she found she could say nothing but one word.

"Why?"

David smirked again, his terrible grin, full of malice and joyful glee, full of evil itself.

"Why?" he repeated. "That is a question that I have asked so many times in my life, Bulma. And I have found that it has no answer but the one you chose it will have. Indeed, I asked it so many times that it nearly consumed my mind, and that is the only truth I have learned from it. So tell me Bulma, why do you think?"

Bulma was silent, as her mouth opened and closed in an attempt to answer. But she could find none.

"I thought you were my friend…why…how…?"

David chuckled.

"Ah, the whine of the self-important, the false gods. How many times your kind emit that disgusting sound! If you seek to tear everything down, you should at least possess the strength to withstand it when you yourself are assaulted! But no. When destiny has come calling, I have seen nothing but self-pity and confusion, you who seek godhood! You disgust me, that is why!" David snorted, tossing his knife back and forth between his hands.

"David…what are you…talking about? Godhood…?"

David looked at Bulma again, contempt brewing in his eyes.

"Oh, as if your kind doesn't know! But if you wish to continue to profess your ignorance, I will explain it." He hissed. "Your kind is full of every flaw that every human being possesses. But you can't accept it. You must feel important, like perfect beings, like gods! But you can't find the strength or the ability within yourself to raise yourself to such a high level. So you leech it off others, others that you feel are below you! It takes many names. Prejudice, sexism, racism, call it what you will, but your kind need it, no matter what the name! You must leech the self-respect, the confidence, the very ability to feel happiness! In their pain, in their suffering, you steal the delusion that you are the perfection you desire. To feel like gods, you must make others feel less then human! But you are not gods, you are thieves! You are the worst kind of thieves! You don't take material possessions, you take the very building blocks of having a happy and contented life! You destroy people, and then as you grow up you forget about it, like they are pieces of garbage, like the excrement of your precious feelings! You go on, with the fruits you stole, and leave the people you ruined, shattered beyond repair, behind. You are the most disgusting beings on this planet, you and your kind!" David spat in Bulma's face.

Bulma stared into David's face, looking into the burning hatred tinged with terrible intentions. And she began to understand.

"You killed all those children."

"You're a smart woman, Bulma. After waiting so long, I have become the thief, I have become the shatterer. I always did admire your intelligence, Bulma. It's what attracted me to you in the first place."

"Oh kami…" Bulma whispered. The connection that she had sensed when she had been looking at photos of the victims of David's murderous rampage finally came to her. They had all gone to her school.

"But David…why? I don't know you…I can't recall you at all. And I was never among those groups which rejected people for who they were. I never made fun of anyone! Why do you hate me so?"

David's lips pulled away from his teeth as Bulma finished, and then suddenly she found the ice-cold metal of his knife at her throat.

"You are a liar." He hissed. "But in a sense, I don't blame you. You don't know me? I don't blame you for being unable to recall the name of David Solomus. Try this one Bulma. Kyle Diondexter."

Bulma's eyes went wide with the name as recognition slashed through her mind.

"Oh my god…I remember you. You were that kid that had that terrible car accident in my last year of high school. I remember because it…"

"It scarred my face, terribly. It left me barely looking like a human. In a sense I think it was fate changing me into what I felt about myself: inhuman, a freak that was to be rejected and reviled for being who I was. Because that's what your kind did to me Bulma."

"What…my kind…?"

"I never fit in Bulma. I didn't like what the majority liked. I was never "hip" or "in-the-know". That should not have been a sin, Bulma. It should have made me different, but not evil. But in those walls, it was. And your kind used it to crucify me. Year after year, I was tormented. I wore glasses once Bulma. I had to replace them six times in two months because your kind kept shattering them while they gang-attacked me, holding my arms so I couldn't fight back. That was bad, but the females were even worse, with their accursed tongues and their bitter, hate-filled words. I had never done anything to them, nothing! Yet they treated me like Satan Incarnate. I didn't understand why, but I know now. They needed godhood. They couldn't accept their own flaws, their own faults, so they placed themselves on pillars to help them ignore it. Pillars they built on my back."

Bulma was silent.

"But I had one saving grace in all of this, Bulma. No, it wasn't my parents. My dad left my mother and I when I was four, and she turned to alcohol to cope with this loss and eventually used it to commit suicide over a long period of drunken years. The teachers and principal were too busy to help an individual student with his problems. No, my saving grace, my rock to cling to, was the most popular and liked girl in the school. Bulma Briefs."

Bulma didn't think that her sense of horror could grown any greater, but when her name came up in David, or Kyle's flashback of his past, it proved that the depth it could go to was endless.

"Oh, I knew that on the school system we were as far apart as could be. You were the queen, I was the guy who cleaned the stables, trying to keep myself from drowning in the shit of other people, shit they showered on me for their godhood. But I could dream, Bulma. I believed in destiny, and I believed that someday it would reward me for my pain, my suffering, and I would be granted your hand. And so I watched you as I was tormented day in and day out. When it came time that you would be leaving the school, I wondered how I would cope. But fate answered that question for me."

"The car accident."

"Oh, it was no accident, Bulma. The brakes of my mother's car were cut right in half! And I know this. While my mother tried to pull herself through the door of the police station, I was inside reading their reports while the cops tried to prevent her from pissing on their floors. Ah, my intelligence. It should have been such a blessing that I could easily understand such a complex document at the age of eleven. But it became my curse. Someone in a school who is smarter is someone to be feared and hated, and it added just another reason to torment me. Perhaps it was the reason that my brakes were cut. Or maybe it was a drunken dare. Or maybe it was something my mother had done, but I doubt that. My mother was too lost in her world of alcohol to do anything except eat, sleep, and shit, and if it hadn't been for me she would have ceased to do the first one as well. All I knew is someone cut those brakes. And that the crash had scarred my face so that I looked like a monster."

Bulma's mind began to make more connections.

"But your face…David…Kyle…it's not scarred at all."

"Ah yes, amazing what the doctors of today can do, huh? But it doesn't matter that the damage was fixed. It should have never happened Bulma. But it did. I thought it would cause me to be reviled even more. But to my surprise, the torment stopped outright. At first I thought it was because they were so disgusted with me now that they decided not to even waste the time on me, but when I began to be treated more friendly, I thought that destiny had finally rewarded me. Finally I would be accepted, perhaps even have friends, a privilage I had never had in my life. When I was invited to an end of year party, I spend long hours to make myself look as good as possible. Those hours should have been spent complentating, and coming to the realization that I was being set up for a fall."

Bulma's mouth dropped.

"No…they wouldn't…they didn't…not after what had happened…"

"Oh yes Bulma, they did. As I said, someone had cut those brakes. It could have been someone in my school, but I didn't know. But when I arrived at that party…I knew once and for all."

"What did they do?"

"They drew me in…and then dragged me from the building they were in and threw me down a bank into a river."

Bulma's mouth, again closing, dropped open again.

"No…"

"They did, and they laughed. But I will never forget the last words that one of them said to me before they tossed me down."

David paused.

"He said "What we're doing now, we can do anytime, loser. So keep your mouth shut, or we'll make sure you never open it again. Now get lost like the bitch you are!"" David said, his teething grinding around every words before he spat them out. "And they could. Nearly all my tormentors had money, more money then I ever did, and many had power. I had nothing, and they knew it, and to assure that their crimes would never be told, they tried to silence me with an attempt to take my life."

David stopped, his teeth grinding, his eyes burning with hate.

"The man who said those words to me was Edmund Kiester. And then he laughed and threw me down the banks to my possible death. Well, Edmund and all of them have found that what goes around comes around, and that payback is a bitch."

Bulma gaped.

"All those children you killed…they were…?"

"Indeed. As I said, the tormentors went on, leaving me shattered in their wake. And so they have paid the price. The tormentors grew up, and aquired things they found more precious then anything else. So I took them. The lesser ones I just tied to the same wall you are chained to, Bulma, and I took their lives. But the ringleaders, the ones who organized it all…I took their children. As they shattered me, I have shattered them, left them to drown in misery, grief, and hopeless despair. It is the fate they earned, and I relish it every time I see it in print, on TV, or anything else. Whoever said justice is blind must have been a fool."

"But David…or Kyle…don't you see? By destroying their lives, you have become as bad as they we-"

"SILENCE!" David screamed, and pressed the knife he had been holding against Bulma's throat this whole time harder against her skin. Bulma gasped as she felt the heat of her blood begin to trickle down the blade and drip onto her lower neck as the knife bit into her skin. "You have no right to say those words to me! You were the worst! I thought you were my angel, my salvation, the reward I deserved, and you turned out to be one of them, the worst one of all."

"But David…I don't…I never made fun of you. Never. I never made fun of anyone."

David snorted.

"Oh no, Bulma? Then I want you to think back. I want you to think really hard. Think of the night of June 12^th, the year you graduated. Because that was the night that they threw me into the river. And that was the night when you revealed your true self and finally foretold my destiny!"

Bulma thought, and with a knife at her throat, she was able to recall far deeper memories then if it had been a normal instance.

And she remembered something she had long forgotten, and her horror grew even larger as she did.

"And then he said, that was no lady, that was my wife!" Raymond howled as he finished off his joke. Bulma burst out laughing with her girlfriend, and even the males got a chuckle out of it.

"Oh Raymond, you're so funny." Bulma said, as she walked along the bridge. She would be graduating soon, all her exams passed, and she was in the mood to celebrate. And that was what she had been doing, as she walked along with her closest friends of the, having a night on the town and loving it. Raymond aspired to be a stand-up comedian, and he used every oppourtunity to test his material. He'd had a steady stream of good jokes tonight, with the consequence that Bulma had found herself with weak knees more then once that night.

"Alright alright, I got another one." Raymond said, as they came to the end of the bridge. Bulma stopped and waited.

"A man walked into a bar." Raymond said in a deadpan voice.

Bulma waited.

"Ouch." Raymond concluded.

It took a few seconds for the meaning to hit Bulma, for this was the first time she had ever heard the joke. But when she got, she found it utterly hilarious and began to scream with laughter. She laughed so hard that she had to take a short walk away from her friends, trying to get air, but she just couldn't stop.

Until she looked up.

And saw a little boy, a boy with a face laced with hideous cuts, a boy who was wearing a torn, filthy, and soaking wet suit.

A boy who was staring at her with eyes of utter, complete, blazing hatred.

But before Bulma could say anything, the boy and turned and ran, and was swiftly swallowed by the shadows.

Bulma stared after him for a few seconds, before her friends, who had been laughing amongst themselves and had not seen the young form of Kyle emerge from the bank underneath the river and flee down the street, enveloped her again. And she again found herself laughing. Graduation was coming up, and Bulma soon found the incident lost in the back shutters of her teenaged mind, lost and forgotten.

Until now.

"Oh my god…" Bulma said, both in rememberance and in realization, of the incredible and cruel coincidences that had caused Kyle/David to come up from the river, from the terrible thing the people had done to him to ensure his silence in their role of the cause of his terrible injury, only to find the woman of his dreams laughing, seemingly at no one but him. A laugh that could be interpeted as mockery or scorn, of someone laughing at a lesser.

Like a god laughing at a sub-human.

"Oh David…"

"So, you do remember. So you must have some understanding of how I felt when I emerged from that lake after nearly drowning, after I learned for sure that those people had destroyed me and said there was nothing I could do about it, only to find the woman of my dreams, the woman that gave me my only reason for living, laughing at me. Laughing at my pain, laughing at me, showing her true colours! You were even worse then them! They kicked me until I fell down and couldn't get up, but you kicked me when I was down! You were the cruelest of them all, and that night I realized that the woman I loved despised me just like all the others."

"No, David no, I was out with my friends, one of them was telling jokes, I was laughing at that, I swear, I wasn't laughing at you…"

"LIAR!" David screamed, as he drew the knife away and belted Bulma across the face. "You ruined me, and you dare LIE about it? You bitch!" David screamed, and spat in Bulma's face. Bulma felt the saliva like it was coated and burning with the intense hatred that David now held for her.

David's moment of rage had passed, and he suddenly chuckled as he looked at Bulma, chained and terrified, tears beginning to run down her face.

"You don't think that I broke the second you laughed at me? Oh no. It was a long and gradual process. But when I was young I resisted it, I tried so hard. I was scared of the darkness that my tormentors stirred in me, the darkness that made me think incredibly violent thoughts and dreams of revenge and justice. I resisted, tried to keep it away by clinging to you, my true love, my only love. You were the only thing that held the darkness at bay, even as the years went on, the torment grew, and their torment gave the darkness strength and caused it to grow larger and larger, whispering that I should let it in, let the ones who tormented me suffer in turn. I knew it was wrong, and resisted. For so long I did. But when you laughed at me, when you showed your true side, when you showed me that you were a false god, just like them…I no longer had the strength or the will to resist the darkness. And I didn't want to. Not anymore."

David drew away, and walked over to a spot where he stood, obscured with shadows, the same shadows that had consumed his heart and mind so long ago. Moonlight glinted off his knife, now red with Bulma's blood.

"I saved you for last, Bulma. It was a long process, but I watched you at every step even as I tracked down everyone else who had hurt me and shattered them. It took me forever to get the scientific credentials to get a job at the Capsole Corp. To hack your home security system, to study you and your family's habits, to steal the equipment necessary to do some of my acts, to wait until it was just set up right. And those constant superhumans who threatened to destroy the earth haven't help either! My rage when I died at the hands of Buu was incredible, but it abated when I was wished back soon after. I have your friend Son Goku to thank for that." David/Kyle chuckled. "I was fortunate that that Agony woman missed me in her genocide as well."

Bulma stared, eyes wide.

"Oh yes, Bulma, I know the truth. That massacre last year wasn't some damn worldwide hallocination caused by some gas from a worldwide terrorist attack! I haven't watched you for over 30 years without learning a few things, Bulma. Which brings me to my next question. Why, Bulma?"

Bulma shuddered.

"Why what?"

"Why did you keep betraying me? Your laughing, that jammed the final knife into me, but you had to insist on twisting it. Yamcha was a fool, but he was a convient fool, for he provided a perfect person to frame. After he went into my fridge and managed to select the drink I had specially prepared for your husband, and after he said that little speech on how he wished Bra could have been his daughter, the setup was too perfect. All I had to do was plant a few ideas in your heads, and your minds and inner worries did the rest. Everyone was so concentrated on Yamcha they didn't bother looking elsewhere, the fools. Your husband calls Son Goku stupid, but he fell for my Yamcha ploy hardest of all. It didn't occur to him that the reason the room he was touring with you and the hallway to my old laboratory got so goddamn hot was that someone had purposely turned the heat up to ensure that Vegeta would be looking for a drink when he got into the room, a drink I would have conviently left out. Ah, Yamcha provided the perfect distraction when he accidentaly took the drink out and left a fingerprint, something I didn't leave because I was careful to wear gloves. But if Vegeta was as smart as he said, he would have realized that the heat and the drink were linked. And who knew how to turn up the heat in the building? Only someone who had worked there would known exactly how. And when Vegeta showed up, the only ones in the room were Yamcha and I. If he wasn't as stupid and paranoid as he was, he might have realized that, the poor idiotic fool." David laughed. "Which brings me to my next point. I didn't think you could do any worse then Yamcha, Bulma, but then you had to go and fall in love with an alien."

Bulma's eyes widened.

"Oh yes Bulma, I know Vegeta is an alien! As is your friend, Son Goku. And I ask you, how could you marry an alien, have his children? I was to be with you forever, my blood was to flow through the veins of your children, and you betray me with Vegeta? A man who is not only an alien, but tried to destroy the whole earth? You haven't just betrayed me, you've betrayed your whole damn species!"

Then Bulma finally spoke.

"Shut up."

David spun towards her.

"What?"

"I said SHUT UP! I love Vegeta! I love my son and daughter! That you dare curse his name, that you dare revile my children because they are not your own, I should…"

Bulma didn't get to say anything else as David suddenly had his right hand around her throat. Her air was cut off as she suddenly found the knife David held pointing right at her eye.

"Shut up, you bitch, or I'll slice your cunt open and ram your accursed ovaries down your throat!" David hissed. Bulma, her moment of bravery dissolving, slumped down as she tried to breathe. Thankfully, David let go.

"Oh David…I saw you…saw your work…if you cared so much about those monkeys…then how can you be so cruel…?"

Bulma felt her chin being seized and she was yanked up to stare again into David's hateful eyes.

"How can I be so cruel? How come humanity can be so cruel? How come mankind can commit such evil, such inhuman acts for no reasons other then their own personel pathetic ones? Those monkeys, they should be called Homo sapiens. They deserve the title far more then we do. They never do anything except out of instinct, the purest and most natural force for making choices that ever existed, the force we humans have corrupted with our minds, our morals, and our greeds and flaws. They should be called the humans, for we are far more like animals then they will ever be!"

Bulma gulped.

"But David…if you feel this way…why didn't you do something about it…something right…instead of emulating all these hateful qualities. With your mind…you could have been something!"

David smirked.

"Oh, I am something Bulma. I am Ramtos Ge Ramos, the Slaughter of Lambs. I am the one who will shatter all those who made me suffer. Everyone else is dead, broken. You're the last one, Bulma. And you are my masterpiece."

And as Bulma again stared into David's eyes, she began to grasp the true depths of his insanity. As society had rejected him, David had in turn rejected society. Its rules and ways no longer bound him like they bound everyone else. He had thrown away its moral code and developed his own as the society of one that he felt that he always was.

A code of morals, developed solely around the death and destruction of others.

How deep the shadows that had consumed Kyle Diondexter must have been.

"You won't…get away with this…my loved ones…will find you…"

David smirked again.

"Oh, you mean Vegeta and the Gang of Idiots? You think they will come and save you? Then how come they haven't already? You've been here a few hours, surely they would have noticed you were missing…" David chuckled, and Bulma's heart filled with ice.

"Bulma, you think I'm stupid to leave witnesses, especially people close to you? Oh no. When I served you drinks, I just laced yours and Bra's with a heavy dosage of tranquilizers. I laced every drink I gave Vegeta and co with fifty times the lethal dosage of thallium."

Bulma's eyes went wide again, and she began to cry.

"No…" she sobbed faintly.

"Oh yes. Why do you think I worked so hard to prepare that bean that healed your son's injuries? It was too risky for me to go after him in the hospital, and too risky to see if he lived or died. I had to draw him back to a situation where I could finish the job, and finish the last part of my revenge. Thallium is so useful, odorless, tasteless, practically untraceable, and so lethal that only a gram could kill a fully sized man. I didn't know how much Vegeta and Goku could take with their superhuman alien bodies, nor their sons with their hybrid bodies, so I made sure by putting ten grams of thallium in each bottle. Your son complained to me that I took so long to get the drinks to them after promising them. Too bad he noticed the time, but didn't notice that each juice bottle had already been opened. Stupidity must run in the family."

"But…why…they did nothing…they even saved your life…!"

"The children I took did nothing to me. But that did not save them. The sins of their parents, the evil their parents committed for their precious godhood, doomed them. The sins of the fathers shall be visited apon the sons. It took a long time Bulma, a long time to make the plans to take you. You are the last, and will be the best. I've left your friends to die in a burning agony with your husband and son. That is the price you will pay for betraying me."

"No…David…I didn't...I never…"

David ignored Bulma's pleas, his smirk back on his face.

"Oh yes…it has been fun. You received more warning and effort then the others ever did. I just took them. You, I told you I was coming. And I have come. I have taken almost everything from you. Now it is time for the last joy. It is time for the sins of the mother to be visited apon the daughter."

Bulma's mind flooded with shock. Her fear and horror over David's poisoning of her husband, son, and best friends had made her momentarily forget that he had mentioned Bra's name.

And that Bra had been his main goal from day one.

"NOOOOO!!!!!" Bulma screamed, as she started to thrash against the chains. David just laughed and reached overhead to turn on a lone light bulb.

And then Bra was revealed, still fast asleep, chained by her arms and legs apon a table. The shadows had hidden her, but they hid her no longer, as if David had banished them, as if the shadows that had consumed him now gave him mastery of the ones that could be seen with human eyes. Seeing this, Bulma began to scream again. David just smirked and tossed his knife in the air in a long, lazy arc.

"She will be my masterpiece, my ode to death, justice, and destiny. And you are going to watch, Bulma. You are going to be choked by the same cruel hand of fate that you and your kind used to choke me. And after I am done, after I have completed my last and greatest work, I am going to leave you here, Bulma, to whatever fate has in store for you. Maybe you will be lucky and die of starvation first, but I doubt that, for as soon as I leave the police are going to get a call in 24 hours where you are. I've been doing more then hacking your computers to figure out how to get in and out of your house as quickly as possible, I've been slowly stealing money from your company. I have enough to disappear, start over. And that is what I am going to do. Tonight, both Kyle Doindexter and David Solomus die with Bra Briefs, and I will vanish like the wind. You won't find me Bulma, I've made long preperations to be sure of it that by the time anything thinks to track me I will be long-gone, vanished without a trace. And all you'll be left with is your grief, your losses. The losses you have earned for your need of godhood! And after that…who knows what I will do? All I know is that there are thousands of false gods out there, thousands who deserve to be shattered just as you are about to be, Bulma!"

Bulma continued to scream, a cataphomy of refusal and terror, as David turned and began to walk over to where Bra was chained.

Puar slowly floated along the hallway, trying not to retch on the chemical smell. She had stood by for too long. Yamcha had promised to be out a long time ago, even if it was in handcuffs. But he had seemingly disappeared, and finally Puar had braved the building, and the horrid smell, to try and find her master and best friend.

"Yamcha?" she called, before coughing on the chemical smell. "Yamcha? Where are you?"

Then she saw the body.

"OH MY GOD!" she squeeled, and almost turned away and ran. But then two things struck her, one, that wasn't the right thing to do, and two, the figure had black hair. It could be Yamcha!

"Yamcha!" Puar yelled, floating over to the corpse. But it wasn't Yamcha, it was a man she had never seen before. Puar looked briefly into Steve's eyes, glazed with death, and then flew on as fast as she could, her locating a corpse making her realize that something was terribly wrong.

She found the security room in seconds.

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!" she again squeeled as she flew in and found the Z Fighters writhing on the floor as the poison devoured their bodies from the inside. "YAMCHA!" she again squeeled as she saw him and flew over, but Yamcha had already slipped into a coma, as blood bubbled from his nostrils and mouth.

"Yamcha! Oh no! What happened here?" Puar said as she flew up and looked around, her mind going a mile a minute as she tried to figure out what to do.

Then a voice, faint and full of pain.

"Puar…!"

Puar looked around for the source of the voice, finding it almost immediately.

"Goku!" Puar said as she flew over to the saiya-jin, who lay on his back, unable to move except for brief spasms.

"Oh Goku, what happened?"

"Poi-son…" Goku whispered as blood bubbled from between his lips as the thallium within him wrecked havoc on his vein and nervous systems. "Pu-uar…get sen-zu...quick! Hurry!"

"Senzu? Senzu beans? Where?"

"An-y-where, ju-st HU-RRY!" Goku gasped. Puar stared, and then flew up, her mind now going at two miles a minute.

With that, Puar utalized her transformation talent and transformed into a rocket and blasted right through the walls, heading for Bulma and Vegeta's house.

"NOOOOO!" Bulma again screamed, as David reached down and slowly rubbed his fingers down Bra's cheek.

"So beautiful…so young…so innocent. I can imagine what she could have turned out as if she had been ours, Bulma. But fate, as you have learned, is cruel." David smirked again, holding up his knife. "This is a vibro-blade, Bulma. We adapted it from some silly sci-fi movie. It vibrates, ever slightly, but intensely. And that vibration will allow it to cut through anything. So it should have no problem cutting through the skin of a hybrid child."

Puar exploded into Bulma's house and turned back into herself. Her head darted nervously back and forth. Where could the beans be? This house is so big I could be searching for hours, hours I don't have! I need to find them, now!

Puar forced herself to be calm. She had been in the top bracket of her transformation class, and her talent was only limited by her imagination. She had to use that talent to save her friends.

She concentrated.

And turned into a Senzu Bean Detector.

Bulma was in an agony of terror and fear, and as her sweat poured down her body, her mind was afire as she watched David laugh at her. He was utterly insane, crushed by the cruelties of life, but that was not going to stop his delusion that Bulma was the one who was ultimately responsible for all his pain.

Then she saw him draw the knife up as he prepared to "make a masterpiece" out of her daughter.

"Where should I start first?" he chuckled.

And then, in another combination that only fate could have done, Bra, who had slowly been coming to, finally threw the last of the cobwebs off and opened her eyes to see David bearing down on her with a knife.

"MOMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she screamed.

And with that, Bulma's rage exploded.

"YOU'RE NOT HURTING HER!"

Focussing all her anger and maternal protection into her body, Bulma yanked on the chains that bound her wrists as hard as she could, even as the tight metal cut into them and the pain screamed through her body.

And the walls behind her, made of soft plaster and wood that had been rotting for years, finally picked that time to give up the ghost as Bulma tore the chains right out of the wall.

David looked up at the loud noise.

"What the…?"

Then Bulma's fist slammed into his face, sending him reeling backwards. But he held onto the knife, and he quickly recovered to stare at her with hateful eyes.

"YOU BITCH!"

Bulma never knew where she found the ability to duck and dodge out of the way of the next few knife swipes and stabs, nor where she got the idea to grab her chains still bound around her wrists and whip it at David, bringing the heavy length of metal right down on his wrist.

David yelled as the chain slammed down on him. His fingers spasmed and dropped the knife, but he couldn't do anything as Bulma slammed the other chain right across his chest, causing the air to go out of him in a long wheezing gasp. Bulma decked him again and he went down in a stumbling heap.

"MOMMY!" Bra screamed again as David began to get to his feet again. Bulma reached down and picked up the knife with clumsy fingers.

"I'll kill you!" he screamed, and charged.

Bulma barely had time to get the knife in front of her as David ran at her. With a scream, she closed her eyes and thrust forward, and felt the knife sink into something soft, like sand.

Bulma opened her eyes. She had impaled David in his right side, and he was looking at the knife dumbly.

"No…" he finally whispered.

And then his knee gave out and he fell, taking the knife with him as he collasped to the ground.

Bulma sighed and gulped.

"Mommy!" Bra again said, and then only did Bulma look over to her daughter, still chained to the platform. Looking down at David, she noticed a small ring of keys on his belt and snatched it off, and then headed over to her daughter and enveloped her in a hug, sobbing in relief.

"Mommy! Oh mommy, I was so scared." Bra herself cried as she hugged her mother back.

"It's ok sweetie. It's over now. It's over." Bulma said, but she held Bra a while longer before finally disengaging herself from her daughter and going to work on the chains. She quickly had Bra free, and almost as an afterthought, she removed the chains that were still hanging from her wrists.

"Mommy." Bra said in relief, and hugged her mother again.

"Oh, it's ok sweetie...it's ok. We're ok now, now we have to go help Daddy and…"

Then she felt her daughter stiffen in her arms.

"MOMMY!" Bra said in sudden terror, and Bulma whirled around.

David was standing her, a tad unsteady but stable enough, pointing a gun at the two of them. Bulma gasped. She hadn't seen a gun, and then she realized he must have hidden it under his pant leg.

"Nice try Bulma." David said as he wiped blood from his nose. "You're pretty good, for an amateur."

David chuckled as he tossed the knife up and caught it again, blood leaking from his chest in a slow but steady stream.

"But you glanced off a rib." He whispered, suddenly serious and full of hate again.

"Mommy…" Bra whispered in terror. Bulma put herself in front of Bra, trying to protect her from the lunaic who stood in front of them.

David sighed and then again snickered.

"Sorry Bulma." He said, cocking the hammer back. "But destiny is not so easily stopped."

Then there was a tremendous bang, and Bulma screamed as the bullet tore through her.

Puar flew back into the Capsole Corp building as fast as she could, clutching the bag of senzu beans to her body as tightly as she could. She flew to the security room and landed next to Yamcha, praying that he was still alive

"Yamcha! I brought senzu!" Puar said, for her best friend seemed the farthest along. She pulled a bean out of the bag, opened Yamcha's mouth, and used her hands to shove it down his throat, hoping his muscles would do the rest naturally.

Puar waited.

Nothing happened.

Despair began to claw at Puar. What if the senzu couldn't stop the effects of the poison?

Then Yamcha shuddered and his eyes popped open.

"What happened…Puar?"

"Yamcha!" she cried, hugging her friend. "You're ok! You were poisoned! So was Goku and his friends! We have to give them senzus!"

"What?" Yamcha said, flipping to his feet. "Why didn't you say so?"

Yamcha snatched the bag and hurridly administered senzus to the three other men in the room, who got to their feet as soon as their strength began to return.

"Oh thank god you were here Puar…but we have to find David! Before he can carry out his plans!" Gohan yelled.

"Where's Vegeta?" Goku asked, looking around.

"He crawled out the door, he must have tried to go check on Mom and Sis! Oh god, he drank more then any of us, I hope he's still alive!" Trunks said as he ran for the door and headed down the hallway.

Bulma's scream abruptly cut off, but the air was immediately shattered again as Bra began to scream as her mother fell back, blood spraying from her wound. Bulma fell off the other edge of the platform Bra had been chained to, and rolled a bit, clutching her wound and trying to stop the bleeding.

As blood continued to seep through her fingers, Bra was suddenly at her side.

"Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!" she screamed, as David began to step around the platform, his cruel smirk on his face.

"Toussan!" Trunks said as he found his father lying in the doorway where Bra and Trunks had gone. He turned his father over and felt for a pulse.

"He's alive!" trunks said as Gohan, Goku, Yamcha, and Puar brought up the rear.

"Give him this!" Yamcha said, throwing a senzu bean at Yamcha. Trunks grabbed it and promptly shoved it down his father's throat.

A few seconds passed, and then Vegeta's eyes snapped open even as he yelled and leapt up. He looked at the three.

"Thank you you stupid baka!" he snapped at Yamcha.

"Vegeta! The killer is David! He poisoned us with those drinks! He has Bulma and Bra!" Goku yelled.

"I know you idiot. I also know Bra's ki as well as I know my own." Vegeta said as he looked around, searching with his mind.

In a second he had it.

"DAVID!" he screamed, and slammed right through the wall, heading for his daughter.

"Mommy…" Bra said as David stood over the two women. Bulma looked at the man in horror as he again chuckled and raised the gun.

"Why did you have to free her, Bulma?" David asked.

Then he swung the gun over to Bra.

"Now I'll have to cripple her." He snarled, and cocked the hammer back.

"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Bulma screamed.

And then suddenly the wall where the shrine to Bulma in pictures lay suddenly exploded in a dust storm of rotten material, as if the pictures of Bulma had somehow aquired their own life and rage.

Then Vegeta flew through the hole, his hair ablaze with gold and his body crackling with energy, and slammed into David as hard as he could. David screamed as he was slammed backwards, the gun spinning from his fingers and flying off into the shadows as Vegeta slammed him against the wall with a sickening crack.

David began to slump but Vegeta didn't give him the chance as he grabbed David by the throat and prepared to squeeze.

"How dare you come after the things I cherish, you motherfucker!" Vegeta snarled in David's face.

But David showed no fear at all, only a rage and hatred that rivalled Vegeta as he brought his hand up. Only Bra could see that even with the suddenness of the attack and the injury inflicted apon him by it, David had still managed to hold onto his knife.

"DADDY, LOOK OUT!"

But Vegeta, consumed by rage and the desire for revenge, the same emotions that had driven David for decades, didn't hear his daughter until it was too late.

"How dare you try and interupt my destiny!" David snarled as he jammed the knife right into Vegeta's neck. Vegeta yelled in pain as a fountain of blood erupted from his shoulder as the knife sliced clear through Vegeta's caratoid artery and pierced his windpipe and esaphogus. The wound was terrible, and even Vegeta was immediately effected as his brain was cut off from a good amount of it's precious blood that continued to spray out of his neck at high pressure. David shoved off the weakening grip of the saiya-jin as Vegeta fell to his knees, the pain and weakness from the terrible wound clouding his mind long enough for David to slip free.

"Daddy!" Bra screamed, running to her father's side, but she gasped and swung back as David tried to grab her, even as blood began to pour from his mouth. Vegeta's attack had shattered his whole rib cage and punctured both his lungs, but David went on, driven by rage, hatred, and an undying obesession to complete his destiny.

Bra tried to back away, but tripped in the process and fell down. David lunged for her, only to have Vegeta grab his boot. Vegeta lifted up his hand as he tried to charge a ki blast, but David kicked him in the face first. The kick wouldn't have even fazed Vegeta beforehand, but in this case it caused his wound to open even more. The ki blast faded as Vegeta collasped, trying to breath through his heavily damaged throat even as his life liquid continued to pour from his neck.

"Daddy! Help!" Bra screamed as she crabwalked away from David, who half-stumbled, half crawled after her, blood pouring from his mouth.

And then he suddenly lunged forward and grabbed her ankle. Bra scramed and tried to get away, but while she was was stronger then a normal little girl, even her strength could not compare to the unholy power David's madness infused with him. His hand slick with blood, David pinned Bra to the ground and lifted up his bloody knife. It was time to end it.

"I may not be able to make you a masterpiece, and I may not be able to shatter others, but I will not be denied my destiny of destroying you!" David screamed, and raised his knife.

CLICK.

David looked up from Bra to see Bulma standing before him, his gun in her hands.

"Destiny can go fuck itself." She snarled, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet took David right though his forehead, blasting his brains to jelly that exploded out the back of his head. The force of the bullet caused David to reel back, and Bra pulled herself from underneath him and ran to her mother.

Then David suddenly leaned forward again. The life was fading from his eyes, but Bulma could see two predominant things. One was confusion.

And the other was a question.

WHY?

Bulma swallowed hard.

And then with a scream of pure rage, she emptied the gun into David. He jerked amongst the bullets and then fell, slowly, onto his side.

And with that, the Slaughterer of Lambs was gone, his terrible quest uncompleted.

"Bulma!" came a voice from behind her, and then Gohan was by her side, holding her, supporting her. She saw Goku rush by him, a senzu bean held out and being given to Vegeta. She could feel her daughter holding onto her, and then Trunks was there too, asking if she was all right, asking if Bra was all right, trying to take a look at her shoulder wound even as Gohan was trying to do the same thing, holding onto her children as Gohan removed himself and went to check on David. He felt for a pulse and shook his head.

"Poor twisted soul…I never knew…" Gohan said quietly. Bulma watched, and then suddenly Vegeta was there, the terrible wound in his neck healed. He was smiling.

"That's why I love you." He said, as he looked at David's body, and smirked with one corner of his mouth. "Go to hell, you son of a bitch."

Bulma felt none of the joy Vegeta did. She was remembering the tale that David had told her, a tale of love and good intentions, twisted and mutating into a undying hate by the hatred of others.

It shouldn't have been this way.

But like how David's face had been scarred, it had been.

And as police sirens sounded in the distance, something began to happen. While the wall had been disentigrated by Vegeta's raging entrance, somehow the pictures that had been placed on that wall had escaped destruction. The way Vegeta had blasted in had also created a great gust of wind, which had been long in fading and strong enough to keep the photos dancing in the air.

But now the wind was gone, and the photos began to drift down. Slowly, they landed on the man who had one been Kyle Doindexter, and who had called himself David Solomus, but in reality had been something else.

A dark ruined soul with an overpowering bloodthirst.

As the group watched, as Bulma held her family, as the sirens drew closer, she watched as the photos drifted down onto David's body, and then for whatever reason she had, she began to cry.

And as the last of the photos drifted onto David in a makeshift wake, the last photo, the sole one of Bra Briefs, drifted down and covered David's face, shutting away his eternal gaze that asked the question of why the woman he had loved had killed him.

And at long last, it was over.

"And that was it. We offered Bulma a senzu, but she refused, said it would look strange if the police came and found she had struggled with a killer and didn't have a scratch on her. Then the police were there, and we spoke with them, told them what we knew and what we had guessed, although we left out the part that we had been poisoned. Bulma was taken off to the hospital with Bra, we went with the police to give some more info, and eventually they released us. Bulma had several witnesses backing her up that she had shot David in self-defense, so they didn't even bother disputing the claim. All those newspaper pictures of Bulma and that shrine to all the children David had killed in another part of that warehouse David had killed his victims in allowed the case to be sealed quickly. And so our lives have settled down to some form of normalcy once again." Gohan concluded to Goten and Marron, whom he had told the whole story to when they had gotten back from their honeymoon and wanted to know what was going on from the bits of news they had managed to hear in Jamaica.

"Wow. That's one hell of a story." Goten said, holding his new wife's hand.

"I know. It's even harder to believe it only took a week to play out, or that it only happened two weeks ago." Gohan said, adjusting his glasses. Capsole Corp was still in shock over the deathes of Steve and David/Kyle, and everywhere Gohan went, the sentiment was the same.

No one could believe that David, after all the time they had known him, had really been a psychopathic killer.

Gohan, in some ways, still couldn't believe it himself. David had been perfectly camoflaged, accepted and unsuspected. But as Bulma had told the police, David Solomus had just been a shell, a tool for the totally amoral killer that lurked beneath it.

And yet…

"Did you hear what the police found when they searched the house David lived in?" Gohan asked his younger brother. Goten shook his head. "They actually found a small chamber that contained a fully written and signed confession on all the people David had killed in total, not just the ones under his Ramtos Ge Ramos penname. David appeared to have taken over forty lives, over a period of thirty years. The confession gave detail descriptions of the times he took them and how he killed them, giving many details that only the police knew. They also found several other weapons suspected in being used in other murders in the chamber as well."

Goten gaped.

"But why would David do that?"

Gohan was silent.

"The police were wondering too…until they came to the end of the confession. They sent me a copy. This is what it said." Gohan said as he removed a folded piece of paper and handed it to Goten. Goten unfolded it and read carefully.

"Shit." Goten said softly. "That's almost noble, in some twisted sense."

"That's what I thought…and that's why I wonder if David was as bad as Bulma said. In her statement after the whole incident she made him out to be the devil incarnate, but after what she went through, I don't blame her. But I have to wonder if there wasn't some kind of split that lurked within David, the overpowering side that made him commit all these acts under his delusion of destiny and false gods…and another side, the side of whom he might have been if fate hadn't brought about the events that warped his mind. The side that cared enough to help those animals, the side that was present when David wrote that. But I don't know, Goten. Only David did. And dead men tell no tales."

Bulma watched the setting sun, her arm still in a sling from the bullet wound. And she was deep in thought.

She had told the police the bare minimum about David, making him out to be a rotten apple who had been obesessed with her when he was young and been unable to let go of that obesession, even as his twisted mind turned it into a desire to destroy her.

She hadn't told anyone about David's tale of his fall, of the cruel circumstances that had turned her love for her into furious hate, of how a man abused by fate turned around and tried to wield fate as a weapon against those his rage desired to destroy, in which he had almost succeeded, only falling short at the last minute.

She thought of dreams, and of nightmares, and how like love and hate, they two were the flip sides of the same coin, and how in today's world, both could flip to the other side with terrifying ease but could not make the fatal turn back so easily.

And most of all, she thought of the cruelty of the human race. How pointless and disgusting it was, and yet how much it seemed to be needed by so many people, people who would crack and collaspe without it. The same people who had tormented a young child named Kyle Doindexter.

She knew Kyle was not the only one. He was joined by many others, all who suffered for the sake of another's sick pleasure, in places where everyone should have treated them as equals. Sexism and racism, and all other forms of prejudice may have been hard to kill, but to think that such systems of "elites" should spring up in a school of all places was a terrible thought, one that made Bulma shudder.

But it happened.

It happened far too much.

And people had to endure it and go on.

Some managed to find the strength, within themselves, or from others, to reach down and let go of the hurt and the anger that others planted and grew within them with their physical and emotional abuse, and go on to accomplish what they want to accomplish.

Others didn't find the strength to let go fully. Sometimes this let to tragedy, sometimes to the opposite, and sometimes to nothing all.

And then there were the ones who couldn't let go, and were drowned by the misery and hurt they felt, even their potent rage being snuffed out by that overwhelming tide of sadness. They turned to drugs, alcohol, food, anything they could to chase away the pain, knowing that it was ultimately futile. Others took their own lives, seemingly unable to find anything that would make life different.

And then…there were the ones like David. The ones who used the hurt and misery they felt to augment their anger, their fury at feeling such pain, and let it fester and grow inside them until it had consumed their whole mind and blighted their soul, until it had twisted and warped them, until they lived only for the sole thing their fevered and hating minds desired for redemption and an end to the pain that had consumed them: the destruction of those who had done this to them.

The rage.

The hatred.

The bloodthirst.

"Mommy."

Bulma looked down from her thoughts to find Bra at her side. Smiling, she reached down and ruffled her daughter's hair. Children had a knack from rebounding from adversity, and Bra had swiftly recovered from the terrible trauma that had entered her life just two short weeks ago. The events would leave no scars on her daughter. But on herself…Bulma wasn't so sure.

"Oh, pretty." Bra said, looking at the sunset. Bulma was silent, as you looked apon the setting star.

Fate IS cruel. Bulma thought. But while it is, the sun will set and rise on a new day, full of new possibilities. Anything can happen…I hope. But the past is the past, and what happens happens. All we can do is look on to the next day.

Bulma looked on. She would never tell anyone the truth about David. She did not think that they could realize or accept the monster David had become had once been human.

But had others made this monster?

Or had David done it to himself?

"Ramtos Ge Ramos." Bulma whispered. "Slaughterer of Lambs in one ancient language, but something else in another one. The beginning and end of all things. And thus it is for David. It began long ago, and it has ended now."

Bra did not say anything, but nodded in silent understanding.

And thus the sun set on the Briefs family. And everything in the world was again calm and peaceful.

For now.