Chapter 1 - Begins with a Bang

The lead article of the „West City courier" that morning was a marvel of investigative journalism. Meticulously researched, written in a clear and concise language and full of information that would turn out to be fateful not only to the citizens of that town, but by extension the whole world. It was an article truly worthy of receiving the grandest of prizes. Had the author only been alive 24 hours later.

The thing about newspapers, though. In order to be beneficial, they actually need to be read. And no one who came into the kitchen of the Capsule corporation living quarters that morning took the time to do that.

When 12 year old Trunks came in, skipping happily and awake at a much earlier hour than he usually would have even considered leaving his bed during summer break, he didn't even notice the newspaper on the counter, let alone glance at the headlines.

Today was the first day, after all, that he was allowed to fly to Goten's place on his own. For years he had been trying to convince his mother that he was perfectly capable of flying long distances without supervision, and finally she had conceded to let him fly to Goten's place this morning.

He knew it was a little silly to be this exited about that, since going to see Goten in and of itself was nothing special, but he had barely been able to sleep, eager to live out his new found freedom.

So he quickly grabbed a snack out of the fridge, and went outside. Goten was a morning person and sure to be up already, so Trunks decided not to waste any more time, and left for Mount Pazou. After all, if he got there early enough there was a good chance that he was going to be invited to have breakfast with the Son family. And that was really preferable to sticking around and watching his mother trying to cook.

Said mother came into the kitchen about half an hour later, and was actually glad to find that Trunks had already left. She really didn't want to have to cook for him today.

Bulma had found out only a few days ago that she was pregnant again, and even though that revelation alone had left her ecstatic, the morning sickness that came with it was slightly dimming her excitement this morning. She didn't think she'd be able to stand the smell of food today.

Just the thought made her feel nauseous. She looked around quickly, to see if anyone was watching her, and then puked into the sink.

As she left the kitchen she didn't even notice there was a newspaper there.

Vegeta, who came into the room about twenty minutes after Bulma had left was the only one who actually acknowledged the presence of the newspaper on the counter. He specifically chose not to read it, because the few times he had done so in the past had taught him that most things that humans where concerned about were so frustratingly trivial that he had always felt angry about wasting his time once he was done reading.

So instead he picked something to eat out of the fridge and went back into the gravity room where he'd already spent most of the morning.

Thus the newspaper was never even opened and the marvelous article within it not appreciated by anyone in the house. Even though it would probably would have been good for them to read it. Especially the prediction in the last paragraph that would all too soon turn out to be true.

„What are you doing here? Is the gravity room broken again?", Bulma asked with a groan, when she saw her husband stalk into her office clad only in tight spandex shorts. The sweat was glistening on his abs, and she felt a familiar feeling creep up her spine. But then she remembered that acting on that impulse was exactly the reason she had puked in her trash can not so long ago and decided not to do that right now.

„What? Not happy to see me?", he said with mock hurt in his voice.

„I'm always happy to see you with barely any clothes, you know that", she purred. She hadn't been able to keep the seductive tone out of her voice. Maybe acting on that impulse was still on the agenda.

„Well I appreciate…" he paused and sniffed the air. „Something smells weird in here…"

All to aware that it was her trash can, she quickly changed the topic. „So what's wrong with the gravity room?"

„I think it has confidence issues", he said, but kept sniffing for the source of that weird smell.

„Confidence issues?"

„Well the computer voice keeps telling me that for some reason it can only go to 300 times gravity, but it goes above that, easily."

„What, so the machine is fine, but the announcement system is broken?"

„Yes"

„And that's such an emergency that you come running?", she asked.

„No, but it's annoying. The damn thing keeps telling me that every five minutes" When she only rolled her eyes at him, he added in a more commanding tone, „Go fix it"

While he'd been saying that, he'd went around her office and found the source of the smell. „Uhm… you do know there's vomit in your trash can, right?", he asked a little bewildered.

„Yes, I made it myself", she said.

He seemed to be about to comment, but then he cocked his head to one side, as if he was listening to something, and just as suddenly flared into his super saiyan form. Before she could say anything, he grabbed her and let a protective shield flare up around them.

„Vegeta, what…"

The rest of her question was drowned out by the huge explosion that made the house around them vanish.

Even Vegeta hadn't been quite as aware of how good saiyan reflexes and instincs really were. Before the fact that he even had heard a sound had fully registered in his mind he was already reacting to it.

The blinding flash of light that followed, along with the explosion, was nowhere near where he had been looking, but it seemed to imprint itself on his retinas nonetheless. Between the ringing in his ears and the fact that he couldn't really see anything for a moment, he only had his senses that usually gave him the ability to home in on ki signatures to tell him where the explosion was and which direction he needed to fly in order to get away from it.

He flew as fast as he could away from there, his mate held securely in his grasp. He had no idea what was going on, but now wasn't the time to overanalyze their situation. He felt some of the heat of the explosion on his back and routed even more of his ki into maintaining and strengthening the shield that kept both him and his mate seperated from the madness that seemed to be going on outside.

His eyes were slowly readjusting and he could make out the shapes of buildings in front of him again. But before he could recognize any of them, a shockwave went through them and sent most of them shattering to the ground. The force of the shockwave was so intense that even he was having trouble maintaining his heading. The radius of that shockwave was much larger than he would've thought, and it took him several minutes to clear it.

In his arms Bulma was writhing and yelling something, but there was just too much noise around them for anything to be intelligible, so he just held onto her tightly, while scanning the area for a place to land.

As soon as he set down on a nearby mountain plateau Vegeta turned around to look at the city.

A huge cloud was looming over the town, and black stuff seemed to be raining down from it. Fallout.

„There's nuclear weapons on your planet? How come no ever mentioned that to me?", he asked and turned to look at his mate, whose eyes were transfixed on the mushroom-shaped cloud in front of them.

„Huh?", she said with a confused look. „Didn't we…? Guess it just didn't…" Her brain didn't seem to be working at its normal speed, and she was trembling.

He knew he wouldn't get anything coherent out of her, at this moment, but still, it seemed like a serious thing to omit. He really hated nuclear weapons. When he had still been working for Frieza he'd been sent to purge a planet, only to find that the inhabitants of that planet had already taken care of that themselves. There was nothing left beside some dead trees, and a chock full of radiation which had made most of the hair on Nappa's tail fall out. All three of them had needed to spend a week in a rejuvenation tank to get that crap out of their system, and that was a really long time, considering there hadn't been any combat on their assignment.

But he hadn't really thought the Earthlings would be ones to ruin their own planet like that. Apparently they weren't quite as nice and peace loving as most of his associates tried to make them out.

„This is…" Bulma was babbling something incoherent, and only slowly beginning to make sense again.

Suddenly her head snapped up. „Trunks!", she yelled. „Where's Trunks?"

„At Kakkarot's", he said.

„You sure?"

„Yes" When his son had left that morning he had actually been keeping a close watch on his ki signature, to see if he really went where he was supposed to. While he supported the notion of his son being allowed to fly on his own (mainly because he was annoyed at having to take him places he was perfectly capable of reaching on his own), Vegeta had had the sneaking suspicion that his son might be tempted to abuse this newfound freedom.

„Thank God", Bulma said with a sigh. Then she stared back into the city, and slowly the severity of the situation began to register on her mind. „But… mom… dad… and everyone else… so many…" she sank to her knees shaking her head slowly from side to side as if she refused to believe what her eyes were telling her.

Vegeta would've been lying if he claimed to be too bothered by how many people had died, because he'd seen too many more die, most of them by his own hand, for the demise of a large number of people to really register with him. But there was one thing that made the inhabitants of West City different to him than most. He knew some of them. Most humans he had contact with outside of their strange band of allies had been living in the city.

Most people he knew killed suddenly by a large explosion… the thought was just a little too familiar to him.

And another thing had just occured to him. He sent even more of his energy into the shield surrounding the two of them, but he had no idea if that would do any good. Because he really didn't have the experience to tell him whether a shield made of ki would let gamma-waves through, or not.

„Vegeta", Bulma said, looking up at him. „You're hurt."

He looked at her confused for a moment, but then saw that she was looking at his back, and sure enough, it was covered in burns. He'd been so concentrated that it hadn't even hurt. Up until now, of course. Now he quickly became all too aware of it.

„We should leave", he announced, and Bulma nodded numbly. He knew that usually she would have made much more of a fuss about this, but in her current state of mind she didn't seem to have the energy.

He picked her up again and set off away from the burning ruins of the city that had become his home over the last few years.

But he didn't think about that. If he had been able to receive burns like that, then what could've happened to Bulma.

And their unborn child?

A/N: Sorry it was so short, but this just seemed like the appropriate spot for this chapter to end. I think the next one will be longer.

Tell me what you think!