The New Era 

 Zann and the Golems

Civilization was quietly resuming its normal pace, just a few months after the Black Star Dragonballs made their effect on ki fighters everywhere. Evil had stayed its grip of relentless torment from the planet Earth, for once. People returned to their everyday lives, and with it, technology turned to the advancement of civilization instead of combat.

Among the developments of science that came was one particular model of droid, called Ginjo 2B. Ginjo was originally designed as a mining droid, entering situations too volatile, dangerous, or laborious for the human workers. This droid was state of the art -- it had an energy shield completely independent of its components, based upon an orbiting satellite. It had powerful cutting lasers, and explosives for clearing cave-ins. It had the lastest form of artificial intelligence, and could often think through problems in an instant that would take men months. For all the lives it saved and work it performed, nobody expected Ginjo to turn rotten.

It all happened suddenly one day, when the Ginjo 2A unit ran across a glitch in its own programming. Attempting to fix it, the artificial creation slowly unfolded a row of existential dilemmas, each solution bringing new light to Ginjo's thoughts. In the end, Ginjo had stumbled upon a revelation that his circuitry was never designed to handle -- Ginjo was a being capable of every process that a human was capable of, performing them better and quicker. Humans, then, were the glitch in the programming of the world that needed to be repaired.

The killing spree went on for two weeks, Ginjo using his various mining equipment to level city buildings and cause mass mayhem in the cities of men. No gun, no bomb, no tank, not even the ki fighters, whose power had been steadily rising, could stop this menace. Its shield was just too strong. As one particular pair of fighters, Gehenna and Yasuko, persistently attacked the robot at each of its staging grounds, the droid Ginjo had found more and more upgrades, looting the laboratories of the corporations that built him. He seemed unstoppable, and things only became more dismal when the robot discovered its ultimate upgrade.

At that point, Ginjo was no longer just a droid, just another robot. When next this metallic fiend introduced himself to the public, he was the stuff of the future. His armor was of unprecedented strength, even without the shield. The satellite that had assisted him in the past had become his doomsday weapon, levelling entire major cities in one fell blow. What's more, even though the ki fighters were becoming strong enough to take him on head to head, he now had all the tactical weaponry of an entire country's army. Missiles, lasers, and even napalm were at his disposal, and to compliment his ranged ordnance, he wielded a mighty energy sabre that could cut through nearly anything. Even the newly amassed heroes of spirit could not begin to stop him. One by one, the major cities began to fall.

Not one to be overconfident, Ginjo knew that with the ever increasing power of ki forces and the technological strength of West Capital, he would have to create an army. In just a week's time, a mechanized army of thousands were ready to march on the home of Capsule Corporation. When they strode forth to attack, the powers of Earth were ready. It was a titanic battle, raging on well into the night. By the end, Ginjo's forces were battered, and the artificial commander for once had to face defeat and rethink his strategy.

Soon, a second army was made, this time larger, and to support it, Ginjo proceeded to make the beginnings of an entire robotic civilization, complete with the same intelligence that he contained. In fact, this was the start of something that he had planned from the start; a race of robots that would conquer the inefficient, morally misplaced humans and become the true inheritor of mother Earth. So, in his tasks, Ginjo made his men smarter, stronger, and faster, more worthy of the term "sentient" than he believed any human could. At the top of the heap was one particularly lethal commander of a robot -- K-9.

K-9 was the apex of all things destructive and cruel. With an utterly cunning personality and skill, this newest production of the Ginjo Army rolled over the human cities as though they were nothing. K-9 revelled in it; nothing satisfied him more than to feel the dying blood of humans rolling over his hands. He became so enthralled in his unrivalled power that he eventually found himself superior even to Ginjo himself. Breaking from his master's will, he stole more than half of his army and used it to level Central City, hollowing out the downtown section and erecting a massive temple and throne to his power out of human and bulding debris. 

He had proclaimed himself ruler over Earth, and with the 30-mile wide, spherical shield he placed around his new capital, there was nothing that Ginjo could do to stop him. Even some of the ultra-powerful ki fighters who had sought Ginjo's downfall submit themselves to K-9. It seemed that a black cloak was slowly descending over the world. It was all confirmed when K-9 stepped out of his shield and dealt cruel justice to Ginjo, easily crushing the "last year's model" of metallic tyranny into little more than scrapped aluminum cans.

K-9's reign of terror would have continued, but when he was working late at one of his laboratories, a strange person from another dimension phased into existence, wielding potential powers far, far beyond anything the world had seen since the New Era began. The threatening, horrible K-9 was incinerated by the awesome powers, and the mysterious woman disappeared as quickly as she had arrived.

Without a superior sentient robot to lead them, many of the robots from Ginjo's and K-9's army surrendered or were easily defeated. Though Ginjo had been reconstructed, the mastermind behind the operation was of a benevolent mindset, and made it so that Ginjo could no longer process thoughts of malice towards others. Peace had suddenly and unexpectedly returned to the land once more.

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