[O] Seventeen's Squad travelling alone (Day 2 and after)

[Belle Hibiki]

Chance whirls around us, a constantly churning chaotic storm of shifting probabilities, of alternate paths, of 'for better or for worse' futures that we continually pass up. Obscured by experience's blinkers, we make our tired march through a life that seems at times as if it has no branches at all; a straight line, an unmoving path. Undelineated. We feel as though we slog through it all only for some dimly burning point of light; a small satisfaction, something different than the norm, something fantastic. Perhaps death. Most people never see their other paths, but sometimes - very occasionally, to the most hapless and (un)fortunate of people - Chance makes itself known.

It was Chance that allowed a maniacal wizard to find the planet Puttalin, mere Chance that his rivals would make their way to Earth and cause an almighty uproar, and an even more terrific effort of Chance that brought a father and son, brother and brother, rival and rival together on the battlefield. Chance had done all of these things for Kid Buu, had smiled on him with its dubious graces. It had plucked him, as it were, from its exotic flowerbed, and marveled at his pink color. With a twinkle in his starry-eyes-of-all-colors, Chance had decided to make something out of him.

Frankly, Buu thought Chance was a giant douche.

But regardless of what he thought, Chance brought Buu to the foot of the tower and let him hear, as if from a great ascended distance, the unmistakable sound of Paige's angelic voice above the usual humdrum of activity. It trickled down through the air, through stones, through his brain, sliding gently through from ear to ear. Words like pebbles lodged in the muddy bank of his consciousness, glimmering like pearls out of the deep.

Men built you.

The majin glanced up, his traditional scowl firmly settled on the simplistic (deceptive) features of his rubbery face. To the casual observer he might have appeared to be a petulant child, alone, one whom had built a giant tower out of toys and spare parts and found, at the end of it all, that he could not break it down. He could not take it back. But they would be wrong.

For it wasn't that the child's tower was too sturdy, or that his fortress was too secure. It was precisely the opposite, in fact; it wasn't secure enough. Words like water flitted through his erected defenses as effortlessly as a dove soars through the air. They soaked into his foundations; stirred from bedrock a hidden virus - one he had freshly buried only scant months before. One he had tried to keep down because it rattled, rattled the walls of his carefully constructed castle, his bastion of defense against a universe that he hated because it hated him.

Men built you.

He listened, head cocked as another voice joined the first: his 'commander', their 'leader': the ever-collected and overly patronizing Seventeen. A man built, just as Paige said; like Sixteen, Super Buu, and even himself. They were alike, at least, in that respect. The majin waited, pairs of arms folded as the voices faded away into nothing, replaced by the dull echo of footsteps as someone, probably the android, made their way down the spiraling staircase.

As the men-built-man stepped out into the sunlight, eyes wincing away from the sudden change, he caught sight of Kid Buu. The child seemed to be waiting for him, all twenty fingers tapping, his dark eyes with glowing red hoops fixed on him expectantly, as if the child expected some sort of explanation for the unwarranted feeling of connection that had suddenly sprung up. But Seventeen, blessed as he was with a cybernetic sub, co, and superprocessor that were together capable of rendering the Earth down to the finest blade of grass, could not at that moment calculate what lay behind the child's enigmatic armor.

"Hello there. Men doing well?" Seventeen asked, offering a small smile. Buu shrugged, still staring. "Well, let's go down and celebrate, yes? I think we've all earned it."

Buu watched as Seventeen turned and made his way down the hill, away from Aran Tower. Somewhere, Chance was smiling as the majin reluctantly levered himself off the stone, leaving the cold roughness behind as he followed, trotting after Seventeen and towards the camp.