Burp here. Had this on the computer for a while. Wanted it to be a oneshot. Decided to just post what I have, maybe have a chapter 2. Let me know what you think. Bra's not a weeny in this story. As in she fights and junk. Well, not in this story, but it's implied that she does when she's not in this story. And the age gap is magically eight years or thereabout.
Chapter One
Boots of Doom
"Come on, Trunks! Quick, let's hide in here!" Goten frantically whispered as loudly as he dared to his lifelong best friend, having pressed the peculiar green button that luckily accessed the sliding door. He jumped in, and Trunks, against his better judgment, followed him, pressing the matching button on the other side of the doorway after he'd launched himself through it. The two were completely silent, trying to control their heavy breathing, hoping that they had escaped undetected. Trunks, from his inert position on the tiled floor, fancied his extra-sensory perception was so heightened by his insurmountable dread, that he could sense the silent, deadly tread of those white boots, that every step left a physical imprint upon his currently hyper-active psyche. The terror of the room increased exponentially as the power they had long ago learned accompanied those boots, drew near. No more was the presence merely imagined. The two half-saiyans felt the sweat of dread trickle down their clammy brows, their eyes dilating and their muscles clenching until the crisis passed. They remained wide-eyed and silent during the long minutes following, until they felt secure enough to respire properly and whisper in low voices.
"Man, Trunks", Goten whispered, "I don't think I've ever been so afraid in my life." Trunks nodded in fuzzy agreement. Goten reached up and gripped a convenient ledge to lever himself into a standing position. His fingers encountered some small give . . . like buttons . . . Suddenly, there were noises, and lights beginning to flash in seemingly erratic patterns within the chamber. Trunks remembered why following Goten's lead was a bad idea. Especially around here.
"Goten, what did you do?!" he asked frantically. "I don't even know what kind of machine this is!!"
His eyes lit upon an illuminated dial, which bore numbers looking suspiciously like a date. A date about five years into the future.
"This isn't . . . Oh no!" Trunks said.
There was a loud rumbling sound, and then what felt like a gap space of windy turbulence, and then a vibrating, popping sound, and all was still. The saiyans looked to each other alarmedly. Trunks turned back to the console, hoping to discover some useful information.
"Goten, I think this is a time machine. It looks like the date was preset to five years in the future." He turned to Goten, looking a bit lost. "The default location is about fifty miles north of West City."
Trunks ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.
"The controls look pretty straightforward, but there's some pretty heavy encryption on it. I don't know how you managed to launch this thing on accident, Goten." Goten shrugged. "Well", Trunks continued, "I figure either we sit here for a few days while I figure it out, or we go get the key from Future Mom." He regarded his friend questioningly.
"A time machine?" said Goten, "So, we're five years in the future right now? How can we be in the future when its now? That doesn't make any sense, Trunks." Trunks shook his head in despair of his friend's reasoning. "And I don't wanna wait for a few days, I'm hungry now." Goten complained.
Trunks rolled his eyes and operated the door button. "Come on, then", he said.
Once they were outside what they could now see to be a curious, pod-like little ship, Trunks spied a cloaking button, which he activated.
"Well, which way's Capsule Corp, Trunks?"
Trunks sighed and pointed. "That way, idiot."
"Oh, " said Goten, "okay."
As the two prepared to take off, Goten's attention was diverted to a ki that, after he had pondered its peculiar familiarity, he took to be his own.
"Wow, that's weird", he said. Trunks shrugged.
"Wonder what you're doing out here."
"Let's go talk to me!" Goten cried excitedly. Trunks sighed.
"Goten, we-" Goten took off. Trunks scowled.
Trunks and Goten touched down outside a small capsule house surrounded by somewhat extensive gardens.
"Huh. Where am I?" Goten asked, looking behind a shady tree.
Suddenly, the door to the house burst outward violently, and Bra appeared?
"Goten!!!" she yelled loudly as she exited the house. "Goten, where are you!!" she grumbled to herself, stepping undaintily over some tulips.
"Hey Bra!" Goten started cheerfully, before noticing the peculiarity of her shape.
"Oh, hey, you're pregnant!!!" He said, before alarm and other unidentifiable emotions made themselves known. Trunks' eyes bulged and his mouth developed an unpleasant taste.
"Bra?" he nearly whimpered.
Bra stopped suddenly in her progress across the lawn and noticed the two of them. She turned back toward the forest that lined her property and cupped her hands over her mouth, if possible , shrieking even louder.
"Goten!!! I've gone crazy!! I'm seeing apparitions!!!" A horrible thought occurred to her. "Oh no! What if I'm not even here! What if I'm already entrenched in an asylum and I'm really just experiencing an entirely delusional, altered stream of consciousness! What if my name is really Olga?!! GOTEN!!!!" She shrieked the last part in a tone approaching hysterics.
"Bra, cut it out, you're not crazy", Trunks told her, having recovered his abused faculties sufficiently well enough to utilize his vocal chords. "We were running away from Dad", he continued, "and Goten the genius", here Trunks jerked his thumb at the alarmingly non-responsive Goten, "decided to hide in a time machine and accidentally launched us five years into the future." Bra looked at them calmly.
"Oh, I see." She said.
"Okay, now on to more important matters. Who's the jerk who knocked you up?" Trunks cracked his knuckles menacingly.
Bra looked at her brother, wide-eyed. "Huh?" she asked, nonplussed. She shook her head. "Look, why don't you come in and have some tea, boys", she told them, leading the way into her kitchen. "It's supposed to be very calming. At least that's what it says in What to Expect When You're Expecting." She settled the boys (One of them a still dazed Goten) at the kitchen table, and put the kettle on.
The front door opened and closed, and Future Goten strode in with substantial groceries, and, making his way over to Bra, greeted her happily and kissed her full on the mouth, as though it was a privilege he was well-acquainted with, and then set down his groceries before noticing Bra's company. During the duration of that kiss, which was admittedly long and slow, Trunks had been struck dumb, and, the longer the kiss had lasted, the redder Past Goten's face turned. He was feeling decidedly peculiar.
Future Goten blinked at them for a moment, before smiling widely.
"Oh, hi guys! Wow, I sort of forgot about this!" Trunks regained his tongue.
"Y-you!" he managed. He turned to Past-Goten, his face dark with anger. "Goten! You knocked my sister up!!" Goten became alarmed and began waving his hands in front of his face.
"No, I didn't!!" he cried frantically. "Not yet, at least", he conceded.
"Goten", Trunks growled menacingly. Future Goten continued talking, ignoring the two younger men.
"Yeah, that was a pretty good time", he was saying, "That was when Trunks admitted he was in love with Pan . . ." he trailed off.
Trunks froze with his hands around his best friend's throat and turned deathly pale. Goten pointed a finger in his face.
"You're in love with my niece?" he asked incredulously. He snickered. "Man, Gohan's gonna kill you!"
"And it was the first time I admitted I was in love with Bra . . ." Future Goten proceeded. Past-Goten blushed bright red.
"I-I what?! I never said, I mean, uh", Goten lapsed into an incriminating silence. "She's only sixteen, I can't, I mean-"
"I wouldn't worry about that," Future Goten told him. "Eight years isn't a big difference, and saiyans don't age like humans, so it's even less of a big deal for us. That goes for you, too, Trunks", he said.
Bra settled a spread of food on the kitchen table, mostly made up of the groceries that Goten had produced, and pulled a chair up for herself.
"Hm", she said, "I hadn't realized you were in love with me this early on, Goten. I'm flattered." Past Goten blushed deeply and regarded his plate.
"Hey," Trunks had an epiphany and turned accusingly to Future Goten, "Where have you been? We only came here because we felt your ki. You couldn't have been out when we arrived." Future Goten looked surprised.
"I was here. I got back with the groceries half an hour ago, but then I saw that we were running low on firewood, so I got some more."
Trunks's accusatory digit bent in defeat. "Oh." He said, standing up. "Well, this has been . . . illuminating", he said with a sour glance in Goten's direction, "But we've got to go see Mom and be on our way, so-"
"You're going to Capsule?" Bra asked. "Mind if I tag along? I've got some work I could-"
"Bra," Future Goten said with a little frown, "You're supposed to be taking it easy." Bra raised her diminutive nose high in the air.
"It's bad enough I'm not allowed to spar, Goten, the least you can do is let me occupy my mind a little." Goten sighed, defeated.
"Okay", he said. A thought occurred to him. "I wonder if Trunks is working?" Bra smiled.
"Would you feel better if you escorted me yourself?" she asked playfully.
Q
The group of demi-saiyans headed toward the most well-known and respected business corporation on earth. Bra had resigned herself to being baggage, as Goten desired that she wouldn't strain herself by flying. She mentally shrugged. Such things had their benefits, she had long-since discovered. Being flown by Goten was at the least a close second to actually flying herself.
Q
Having located his mother's ki, Trunks touched down in the pool area, closely followed by his comrades. He stopped short, being struck by the extreme oddness of being confronted with himself. He shook his head curtly, attempting to dispel the murky quality of his mind upon meeting himself. He strode up to his mother's lawn chair, ignoring his other self entirely (who was snoring volubly on his lawn chair with a copy of Business Weekly draped over his chest), and said,
"Mom, me and Goten accidentally got ourselves stuck here, five years into the future, and now we need the code key to the time machine to get back."
Bulma lifted her sunglasses and regarded her younger-than-she-was-accustomed-to son quizzically. Future Goten kicked Future Trunks' lawn chair (which contained Future Trunks) into the pool. Bulma sighed long-sufferingly and got up, walking purposefully into her building, trailing the demi-saiyans, minus Future Goten and Future Trunks.
"See you later boys", Bra told the younger duo, chuckling to herself as she took off down an intersecting hallway. "Mom, I'll be in the applied sciences department, if you want me", she called after Bulma.
"Alright, Dear", Bulma called, waving her hand behind her, determined eyes never leaving the hallway before her. "In here", she told the boys, striding purposefully through the doorway of what appeared to be Bulma's filing room, only it was apparent that Bulma did not file. The masses of paper product appeared at first glance to uniformly float three feet above the austere carpet. Upon closer inspection, one realized that there were in fact desks and tables beneath the paper. The paper did not have its own peculiar method of lift, or an aversion to gravity. Trunks goggled in horror.
"Mom, what on earth is this?!" he asked with an edge of hysteria. Bulma looked up from her search, a sheaf of paper in each hand.
"Don't be such a baby, Trunks", she said, returning to her study, "We'll find it eventually." Bulma shuffled through some bent, slightly yellowed papers and gave forth her version of the primeval yawp of victory.
"Voila!" she flourished the lucky piece of paper bearing the correct set of neatly typed data. "I really am a genius", she told them, her manner indicative of someone who had never really doubted the validity of her statement. Trunks grasped at the sheet with the desperation of a man who has seen too much and wishes to return to that set of elements that constitutes his sense of normalcy.
"Alright!" he exulted, being caught headily in the throes of relief. "Thanks, Mom!" he cried, bolting through the house and out the back door. Goten frowned.
"Hey, wait for me, Trunks!"
Bulma blinked. She shrugged eloquently and strode off toward the planning department of the corporation.
Q
Trunks, lower limbs tensed for lift off, nearly fainted as he perceived the lovely future Pan arise from the Briefs family pool like Aphrodite from the foam of the sea. A heavy blush spread over his nose. He was effectively frozen in place. Future Trunks and Future Goten's tussle had escalated to a level unacceptable in the pool area, so they had moved it upwards some fifty feet.
"Hey Trunks, look! Little Trunks is blushing!" Future Goten exclaimed loudly from above.
"Ha ha! Hey wait-" Trunks stopped, confused. "That's me!" Trunks punched his friend in retaliation.
"Ow!! Man, Trunks, that was really mean!!"
Well, I had a laugh, anyway.
Regards,
Burp.