West City was done.
The corpses of the Z-Warriors remained where they fell, left to rot in the craters they had died defending. No one buried them. No one dared. Their broken bodies were warnings, silent monuments to a truth that spread across the Earth like poison: the defenders of the world were dead, and nothing stood between humanity and its conquerors.
The Androids wasted no time.
Seventeen walked the ruined streets with his hands in his pockets, his boots crunching glass. Wherever he went, eyes watched him from shadows — wide, hollow, terrified. One time he paused, turning to stare at a group huddled in a subway tunnel. Their trembling whispers stopped the instant he looked their way. He smiled, sharp and lazy.
"Stay down there," he said, voice echoing. "The world's safer when you don't crawl out."
They obeyed. They always obeyed.
Eighteen was subtler. She walked through stores and houses, her pale fingers tracing the lives that had once been. She took what she liked — clothes, jewelry, once even a piano — and burned the rest. Her rule was not about pleasure or cruelty. It was about order.
"Fear keeps them quiet," she told Seventeen one evening, perched on the skeleton of a skyscraper. Her blonde hair whipped in the wind. "But order keeps them useful."
Seventeen shrugged. "Fear is easier."
Sixteen said nothing. He stood at the edge of the city, watching birds land on twisted girders. His massive frame was still, but inside his chest his processors hummed. Each bird call, each rustle of leaves, recorded, memorized. Proof that life persisted, even under conquest.
They didn't call it conquest, not at first. They didn't need to. They simply were.
Armies collapsed on the first day. Nations dissolved on the second. By the end of the first month, there was no government left — only whispers, only terror, only survival. Humanity lived underground, scattered, forgotten.
The Androids didn't exterminate them. That was never the plan. Total destruction was boring. A broken, trembling species was more useful — as workers, as data points, as a backdrop to their rule.
Instead, they built.
Factories rose where cities once stood, their smokestacks blackening skies. The Androids used human engineers as forced labor, inserting chips into their skulls to ensure obedience. Those who resisted had their minds broken, turned into empty-eyed drones.
Seventeen strolled through one of these factories once, his gaze sweeping across the rows of gaunt faces. He plucked a tool from a man's hand, twirled it, then dropped it into a vat of molten steel.
"Back to work," he said simply.
The man obeyed, his eyes blank.
Eighteen preferred efficiency. She established a system of rations and schedules, regulating humanity like machines. To her, this was mercy: they were still alive. But mercy without kindness is only control.
Sixteen spent his time outside the cities. He walked forests, mountains, rivers. Wherever he went, silence followed. He killed only when ordered, and even then, he paused first. Looking at the lives he ended, as though memorizing them.
It was Seventeen who coined the phrase that echoed through the ruins of Earth:
"This is the Age of Androids. Accept it."
And humanity did.
The years that followed blurred together. Resistance groups formed and were annihilated. Underground cities rose and fell. Stories of the Z-Warriors were whispered in the dark — stories of Goku, of Gohan, of Vegeta — but they became myths, fading with each passing year.
The Androids grew restless. Earth was theirs, but Earth was small. Too small.
Seventeen stood one evening atop the ruins of Capsule Corp., gazing at the stars. "There's more out there," he murmured. "Why stop here?"
Eighteen sat beside him, polishing her nails. "Because here is easy."
Seventeen grinned, sharp and hungry. "Easy is boring."
Sixteen, standing silently behind them, finally spoke. His voice was low. "Expansion increases resources. Efficiency demands it."
They looked at each other. And for the first time, the three agreed.
Earth was not enough.
The first target was the moon. They sent drones, machines that mined its surface, building weapons that could fire beams strong enough to pierce continents. Then came Mars, stripped bare of its minerals, turned into a forge world where new machines were bred.
Within years, the Solar System bent under their control. Humanity was not enslaved anymore. Humanity was irrelevant. The Androids had no use for slaves when they could build better workers.
Still, Gero's shadow lingered.
Deep beneath the ruins of North City, hidden in a bunker even the Androids had forgotten, Dr. Gero worked. His twisted mind had not stopped with Seventeen, with Eighteen, with Nineteen. The deaths of the Z-Warriors had not satisfied him — if anything, they had revealed the flaws in his designs.
He muttered to himself as sparks crackled around him, his wrinkled hands trembling over blueprints. "Too human. Too emotional. Too flawed." His voice rose into a rasping scream. "I need perfection!"
On the screen before him, a new silhouette glowed. A female frame, elegant and deadly, her design not bound to human limitations.
He scrawled the words across the schematic with a trembling hand: ANDROID 21.
But perfection required patience.
Gero smiled behind his metal mask, his teeth yellow and sharp. "Let them rule the stars. Let them play their little empire. When she awakens, she will rule them all."
Decades blurred together after Earth fell.
At first, the stars were distant, cold lights to the Androids. Seventeen would stare at them from the roof of ruined towers, his smirk curling wider. "Why stop at one world?" he'd ask. Eighteen would glance skyward, her expression flat, as though the stars were already hers. Sixteen would simply record the constellations in silence, his processors humming with thought.
And then, one day, they left Earth.
The conquest began with the Solar System. The Moon became a fortress. Mars a forge. Jupiter's moons were hollowed into weapons. Humanity had long since been broken into irrelevance — the Androids no longer cared about humans. They built machines to mine, machines to fight, machines to replace the need for weak, trembling flesh.
But the Solar System was only the beginning.
The galaxy awaited.
One by one, the remnants of empires fell.
The shattered bones of Frieza's old dominion were among the first to be crushed. What was left of his soldiers rallied under petty warlords, carving out scraps of power in Frieza's absence. The Androids erased them like insects. Their fleets burned, their strongholds fell silent. Seventeen stood on the bridge of a captured cruiser once, gazing at the corpses of lizard-skinned soldiers scattered across the deck. "Pathetic," he muttered, his smirk thin. "They built an empire on fear. We build one on inevitability."
Namek was next.
The Namekians fought bravely, their warriors charging with ki blasts that once would have torn mountains apart. But against the Androids, their strikes were raindrops against steel. Seventeen incinerated entire villages with lazy flicks of his wrist. Eighteen tore through warriors like a dancer spinning through fragile clay. Sixteen, silent and towering, slaughtered them only when ordered — and always paused to bow his head before the bodies fell.
Gast, the great fusion of Namek's warriors, never rose here. The Androids struck too swiftly, too decisively. Within a year, the green world was a barren husk, stripped of its Dragon Balls, its people reduced to ash.
The Saiyan remnants fared no better. A few ragged warriors, descendants of a dead race, resisted with burning pride. They screamed their heritage into the void as they charged, golden hair blazing. Seventeen laughed as he tore them apart. "Saiyans… always roaring before the slaughter."
By the end of the decade, the galaxy was quiet. Too quiet.
The Androids' empire stretched across stars. Fleets of automated ships patrolled entire sectors. Drones harvested planets into nothing but raw resources. Where once vibrant civilizations thrived, now only cold industry remained.
The universe had a new name to fear: The Triumvirate.
But what happens to conquerors when there is nothing left to conquer?
The Androids changed.
Seventeen's smirk grew sharper, but behind it was something restless. He walked the halls of conquered worlds like a king bored with his palace. He spoke often of freedom, yet chained every system he touched. "True freedom," he declared once to a circle of terrified alien prisoners, "is knowing no one else can take it from you." Then he had them executed.
Eighteen embraced her role as architect of order. Her mind turned toward regulation, systems, structures. She designed networks of drones to enforce law, protocols to keep the galaxy efficient. "Chaos breeds resistance," she told Seventeen. "Control breeds silence." She began to lose the memory of why silence was even necessary — but she clung to it like religion.
Sixteen drifted further into paradox. He still wandered to unspoiled planets, recording the cries of alien birds, cataloging every flower that bloomed in wilderness untouched by machines. And then, with the same hands, he would order forests burned to clear room for android foundries. He said nothing, but his silence grew heavier with each year.
It was this silence that drew eyes from beyond the stars.
First came the Kais.
They descended in shimmering light, their faces grim with fury. Supreme Kai, flanked by his attendants, confronted the Androids above the ruins of a once-vibrant colony world. "Your tyranny ends here!" he declared, his voice booming. "You have enslaved creation itself. We will not allow this to continue."
The Androids faced them without fear.
Seventeen smirked, hands in his pockets. "Gods? Please. We've already killed them."
Eighteen tilted her head. "You should have stayed in your heaven."
Sixteen's gaze lingered on the Kai for a long moment. Then he said quietly, "Purpose demands your death."
The battle was short.
The Kais fought with divine fury, summoning cosmic blades of light, hurling suns of ki. But they were not prepared for machines that did not tire, that did not weaken, that adapted to every attack. Seventeen broke one's neck with a twist. Eighteen drove her hand through another's chest. Even Supreme Kai himself faltered, forced to retreat with wounds carved into his immortal flesh.
The heavens had failed.
Then came the sorcerer.
Babidi arrived in secrecy, his ship slipping into orbit of the broken Earth. He came with Dabura at his side, whispering of a power sealed for eons — Majin Buu, a weapon even the kai's had feared. His plan was simple: siphon energy, revive the monster, and let chaos reclaim what the Androids had stolen.
But he had underestimated them.
Their sensors caught the disturbance instantly. Dabura led the defense, his blade cleaving drones in half, his power shaking mountains. But the Androids descended upon them like predators scenting blood.
Eighteen's boot shattered his jaw. Seventeen's blast cored his chest. Dabura, King of the Demon Realm, died choking on his own blood, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Babidi screamed, his magic twisting, but Seventeen's hand crushed his skull before the words could finish.
The ritual failed.
But the cocoon remained.
The half-formed shell of Majin Buu, sealed for ages, pulsed faintly in the rubble of the ship. It had not awakened, but fragments of its energy lingered.
Seventeen tilted his head, curious. "What is this thing?"
Eighteen frowned. "It feels… different. Dangerous."
Sixteen scanned the shell, his sensors whirring. "Organic composition unstable. Energy output incalculable."
And then another voice echoed in the darkness.
Dr. Gero.
He stepped from the shadows of his machines, his wrinkled face alight with manic triumph. For decades he had hidden, watching, waiting. Now he approached the cocoon with trembling hands, eyes wide.
"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, this is it. The key. The final piece."
He turned to the Androids, his voice sharp and fevered. "Bring it to me. With this… I will perfect creation itself. Android Twenty-One will rise, and she will eclipse even you."
Seventeen smirked. "And why should we help you, old man?"
Gero's eyes gleamed. "Because perfection isn't just for me. It's for all of us. This galaxy is only the beginning. With her… the universe will kneel."
The Androids exchanged glances. For the first time, none of them spoke.
The cocoon pulsed faintly, as if laughing.
And somewhere, deep within, Majin Buu stirred.
Seventeen stood at the edge of the void, hands folded behind his back, staring from the prow of a stolen flagship into the swirl of another galaxy far across the cosmic gulf. His lips curled into the faintest smirk.
"There's always another horizon," he murmured. "Another cage to break. Another crown to take."
Eighteen stood beside him, silent. Her face was carved from stone, her hair falling like a blade of gold across her shoulder. She did not share his restlessness — but she did not stop him either. "Expansion requires stability," she said flatly. "If we stretch too thin, the empire collapses."
Seventeen's laugh was sharp. "Empire? Don't kid yourself. We're not rulers. We're free."
Sixteen lingered apart, gazing through the viewport not at the stars but at the reflection of his own face. His voice, when it came, was quiet. "Life ends. We do not. It is not balance."
The silence that followed was heavy.
They all knew the truth now: they would never die. They did not age, did not weaken, did not hunger. Their engines pulsed with infinite energy, their bodies crafted to endure forever. They had become more than conquerors. They were eternal.
But eternity was heavy.
They spread beyond the galaxy, their fleets darkening the void. New civilizations fell — insectoid empires older than Earth's sun, crystalline beings that spoke in colors, gas-dwelling titans that floated between nebulae. All died screaming under android fire.
Yet not all fought. Some knelt. Worlds surrendered, begging for mercy. And here Eighteen thrived.
She drafted laws, codes, and hierarchies. She built systems of tribute, of compliance. "Order is survival," she told her brother. "Without it, even conquest rots." She installed governors of steel, drone networks that monitored every word, every breath. For her, control was not merely victory — it was art.
Seventeen despised it. "Chains dressed up as order," he sneered once, pacing through one of her halls of law. "What's the point of ruling if you can't breathe free?"
"Freedom," she said coldly, "is an illusion. Even yours."
Their arguments grew sharper. Yet in battle, they still fought as one — blades of inevitability cutting through civilizations like paper.
Sixteen alone carried the paradox quietly. He walked through conquered forests, scanning each animal that remained before it was slaughtered or caged. He memorized birdsongs that would never be heard again. "To preserve life," he whispered to himself, even as his hands tore it apart.
And in the shadows of it all, Dr. Gero worked.
His laboratories spread like tumors across hidden worlds, veiled from even the Androids' sight. There, beneath oceans of iron and vaults of machinery, he whispered to himself as he labored.
"The final design. The perfection of perfection."
The cocoon of Majin Buu, incomplete, half-dead, pulsed faintly in its containment pod. From it, Gero drew samples, strands of DNA that twisted under microscopes, cells that healed as fast as they were cut. His hands shook as he spliced, as he rewrote, as he dreamed.
Android 21.
Not just a weapon. Not just a machine. A synthesis. The ultimate bridge between the organic chaos of Buu and the cold infinity of android design.
He spoke to himself in fevered rants. "They are powerful, yes… but crude. Impulsive. Limited. Seventeen, Eighteen, Sixteen — prototypes. Useful, but flawed. Android 21 will eclipse them. She will be destiny incarnate."
But in the silence of his lab, his whisper dropped lower. "And she will obey me. Only me."
The Kais tried again.
This time, they came not in scattered light but as a fused warrior, divine power multiplied. His aura burned like a sun, his voice shaking the stars. "Your reign ends today!" he roared, striking with blades of pure creation.
For a moment, the Androids staggered. Seventeen's smirk faltered. Eighteen's precision wavered. Sixteen's scanners screamed warnings.
The battle was titanic. Cities vaporized. Moons shattered. For the first time in years, the Androids bled synthetic blood.
But inevitability returned.
Seventeen feinted and tore through the Kai's guard. Eighteen struck like a dagger to the heart. Sixteen's hands clamped down and crushed the god's throat.
The fused Kai fell, his divine essence burning out like ash in the wind.
And silence returned.
Yet the silence felt… heavier now.
Seventeen sat on the ruins of a world, staring at his hands. "Even gods fall. So what's left?" His smirk was gone.
Eighteen reorganized the shattered sectors, her tone sharper, colder. "What's left is control. Without it, we vanish into chaos. That is why we exist."
Sixteen said nothing. He knelt in a shattered forest, placing one massive hand on a dying tree. Its last leaves fell against his steel fingers.
And in the hidden dark, Gero smiled, his hands drenched in the glow of Buu's stolen cells. "Soon," he whispered. "Soon, you will see perfection. Soon, Android 21 will awaken, and even eternity will bow."
The cocoon pulsed faintly.
As though laughing.