Facing The Dark (Dragon Ball Z / Goddess of Victory NIKKE)

[Stimpak Medic]

Prologue: Darkest Day

There's now only a memory where a world used to be. My world. My home. Gone. My mother, My Wife, My family. Everyone just gone. All because of a God that hated mortals who called himself Goku Black.

I never saw it coming. I thought everything was finally over after killing Dabura and Babidi. Oh how wrong I was.

He came in like a storm, destroying city after city. It was worse than even the Androids. All of Humanity was wiped out in little less than a week. And he burned out just as fast.

He came here through the help of a powerful ring known as the Time Ring. Something every Supreme Kai has. I didn't even know he was a Kai until he told me he stole Goku's body. Then it all clicked. Something within me just understood what I had to do.

I had fought with all my power up until then and he returned it blow for blow, growing stronger at a terrifying rate. For every wound I dealt, he dealt me two, and he could heal himself far better than I could heal myself. The brief training I had under our Supreme Kai had left my healing abilities lacking compared to his. Soon he would be far too strong. However, I managed to catch him unaware. It was shameful and dishonorable, attacking from an ambush, but fairness and honor goes out the window when you attack my home, kill my family, and steal the body of the greatest hero of our time.

I hid my power and snuck up on him while he was sleeping. I walked up to his bed in the dead of night. He was sleeping soundly, as if he never even considered that I would do this. He thought I would be too broken to even do anything after he killed everyone on the planet, leaving just us two. He thought i would hide somewhere and engage him fairly.

Fair wasn't even in my mind. Only the rage and pain of losing everyone. Everyone I fought to protect from the Androids, Dabura, Babadi, and every other threat. No. I didn't want to fight him. I wanted to kill him.

Then I stabbed down into his chest with all my might, my power surging up around me. I heard the crunching of his chest shattering, and the squelching of flesh as I drove the blade into his chest over and over.

His scream of terror brought joy to my ears as it silenced to a gurgling wheeze. This damned bastard was hard to kill, and even almost completely dead from repeated impalements, he had the strength to retaliate in the only way he could.

He used the Time Ring in a way I didn't even know was possible.

"If...I..Die...So do you!" He looked up at me, bleeding from his mouth and nose with eyes of insane wrath. Seeing such an insane smile and eyes full of venom from Goku of all people still haunts my dreams to this day.

I didn't have much time before I heard the screeching of something tearing like metal. Then I saw a bright light flashing from his ring. He was using it like a suicide bomb. He died before I could get him to stop it.

"Damnit!" I shouted, tearing the ring from his finger and flying through the roof in an attempt to throw it out into space, but it exploded before I could do anything. The very reality and spacetime around me was shredded and torn apart like paper. I don't know what happened afterwards, but I remember immense pain as if I was being torn apart atom by atom.

When I came to, I was rocketing across the sky, my wounds fresh and still stinging.

However, I felt nothing. Nothing other than the emptiness that came from a pyrrhic victory. I had killed him, but he had taken everyone and everything from me. As the wind whistled around me, I saw myself approaching the snow covered treetops of a small forest next to a large frozen lake.

I closed my eyes.

'I don't care' I thought, my mind more than willing to accept my end.

Branches whipped across my face as I broke through the canopy down into a thick snowy patch of Earth, where I tore up the snowy ground for a hundred meters, smashing through trees snow, ice, and dirt alike.

I had tumbled, rolled, tossed and bounced across the land before coming to a stop against a large boulder in the middle of a clearing.

My head is ringing, and my eyes see nothing but flashing swirling colors. It's hard to breathe, and my rib that had been fractured by Goku Black burns with every breath. Even then I'm still alive.

I let out a deep breath, and it hurts, causing me to roll over in pain. It's cold, and my wounds sting more because of it.

I can vaguely sense energy signatures approaching quickly. They're hostile and primal in a way only a vicious animal can be. I try to get up, and I look down. My shirt is completely ripped to shreds, showing deep lacerations all over my body. I taste something salty and metallic in my mouth.

It's blood that's starting to congeal. I spit it out. The red hot blood hisses as it hits the deep snow.

Something hot and sharp strikes my chest, then another, and another.

I wince and cry out in pain as I'm repeatedly struck by these attacks. Thankfully, I'm tough enough to take these attacks, and I flare my energy into a barrier around me. Immediately the energy attacks and shells stop striking me.

It's hard to open my eyes, but I manage to. I can see many flying machines floating in the sky, their cannons blazing. A dozen or more scutter like crabs through the clearing firing upon me as well.

"Nggghh" I grunt as I stand up, doubling over on to my knee.

I spit out another glob of blood. I'm dizzy, hurting, and losing blood fast. Still, I'm mostly full on energy.

Raising my right hand to my chest, I begin the process of healing that I was taught by my Supreme Kai. My wounds slowly close, and the pain begins to recede as well.

I let out a deep breath of relief as the last of my wounds close.

Only now can I spare the time to look at my attackers.

Their attacks violently collide with my barrier, but they are nothing compared to the strikes of the mad God Goku Black. I flare my energy more, warming myself up more, and as my power expands and shines in a golden aura around me akin to a raging fire, my mind begins to clear and calm.

These machine like creatures have Ki signatures, but they are just like those of animals. A thought passes through my mind. Where these things animals that had been altered somehow, like how Dr. Gero made his androids? I push the thought away. No, this can't be. I can't accept that.

Regardless of what they are, they are trying to kill me. I will do what I must.

Raising my right arm up, palm open forward, I begin blasting each of the things with simple Ki blasts. Each one is instantly vaporized with nothing remaining. These aren't androids like 17 and 18. That's good. If they were as strong as those two, I might have been in for a fight of my life.

When the clearing is now empty besides me, I begin to send my senses out.

Deep within the planet there are the signatures of many humans, and there are some on the surface. What is most frightening, is that the surface of the planet is infested with these animal like signatures of these machine beings.

My eyes rise to the sky and out into space. There are some signatures high up in the sky in what may be a place similar to Kami's lookout. Still, from the Ki signatures I sense, it's probably not somewhere I want to hang around in.

As I think, more of these creature machine hybrids approach from the trees.

"I'm not in the mood for this" I grumble, my anger beginning to rise.

Shells, blasts, and lasers connect with my barrier, harmlessly bouncing off. I send out a Kiai that blasts them apart before putting two fingers to my forehead using a technique taught by the Kais.

Instantly, I find myself in the middle of an underground paved road with large buildings to either side, and people walking down the roads. It's so overwhelming. I had spent a month playing cat and mouse with Goku Black after he killed everyone. And now I see humans again.

It was amazing and deeply painful all at once.

I thought I would never have seen a human being again, yet here they were. This confirmed something. Whatever the Time Ring did, it sent me here instead of killing me, and I would do my best to save this world. I couldn't let Humanity die out twice. Not if I could stop it.

And stop it I would. Even if it killed me.