Disclaimers: Dragonball Z does not belong to me, but to Akira Toriyama. This fic is created for entertainment purposes only and is not associated with DBZ's copyright holders. Jealousy much?
The sky was spattered with countless stars. Each brilliant pinpoint of white light shone as if the sky had been covered with a sheaf of black paper punched with needle-thin holes, and the sun was simply hiding behind the paper, shooting its rays through the filter.
She lay on her back in the grass, one hand stuck up in the air, lazily tracing constellations with one finger. She had never seen so many stars at once before. Her cousin had been right: the quiet, forested hills were far preferable to the city in more ways than one.
A twig snapped in the trees behind her. She shot upright and whipped her head around, eyes bulging. She saw nothing, not so much as a moving shadow. All was silent. Her eyes bulged as if she were trying to take more light into them in order to pierce the blackness under the forest's eaves.
Lemony let out a sigh and flopped back onto the grass. "Stop being so paranoid," she muttered to herself. But then again, ever since Cell had nearly destroyed her city, she could never stop looking over her shoulder. Granted, it had been six years since the Cell Games, but even so, she could never shake the perpetual, unnamed fear lurking in the back of her mind.
Another twig snapped.
This time, Lemony sprang to her feet before she whirled. Her eyes bulged again. She clenched her fists in front of her. "Who's...who's there?" she called to the darkness.
The darkness gave no answer.
"Hey...stop lurking like that! Don't you know it's not polite to loom over a young lady in the middle of the night?"
Still no answer.
"Hey! Show yourself! I'm...I'm warning you...I know martial arts..." The teenager slid into a clumsy defensive stance.
The night was still. No more sound came from the trees.
Several minutes passed in silence. Lemony stood stock-still on the edge of the meadow, staring at the line of trees as if the whole forest were suddenly about to explode into life and attack her.
She let out a heavy sigh and lowered her hands. The teenager turned away from the forest and began walking across the meadow, back towards the campsite she was sharing with her older brother.
The forest exploded into life behind her. She whirled just in time to see a cloud of birds rise squawking from the trees, fleeing from a black shape that shot up like a rocket.
It was the silhouette of a person...a person who could fly.
Cell...it's Cell...he's back! He's back! Terror so overwhelmed Lemony that her knees gave out on her. Gravity dragged her to the ground where she remained frozen, shaking hands gripping the grass around her in a desperate attempt to cling to some measure of the real and sane.
But as the figure flew above the cloud of frightened birds, Lemony got a better look at it. It wasn't a green monster with an insect's wings and eyes like a demon--no. It was a boy.
He couldn't have been much older than herself; he looked to be sixteen or seventeen. He was close enough that she could see his face. His expression was effortlessly joyful, so carefree that even though he was smiling ear to ear, he somehow looked serene. His eyes were like flawed emeralds, solid and opaque, yet their hue was of the purest green. And his hair...his hair, sticking up in unruly spikes, was a bright blond shade. It caught the starlight as he flew from the trees, and for a brief moment looked as if it were spun from gold.
Lemony's dark eyes bulged. She knew that face. She had seen it before, on the broadcast of the Cell Games. The boy was older, but those eyes, that hair...it was him. It had to be him.
Him...he was the one...the one who...
He shot into the sky, zooming out of sight. He hadn't seen her.
"Lemony?" She spun as she heard her older brother trot up behind her, boots pounding heavily in the grass. "Are you alright? I thought I heard voices."
The girl blinked. "Um...yeah...I was just...talking to myself is all..." She turned back towards the woods, gazing at the patch of sky where the boy had been. The stars winked back at her, twinkling merrily as if sharing some great secret.
Her brother raised an eyebrow. "Um...hello? Earth to Lemony. What's wrong? You like you just saw a ghost or something."
"No." Her whisper was too low to hear, but as she spoke, a rare smile blossomed on her lips. "It was an angel."
Author's Notes: My first-ever attempt at a DBZ fic. This is what happens when you stay up till 2:30 in the morning watching eps of Dragonball Z you haven't seen since in 7 years, and then putting Rocket in the Sky by Dhany and the Benassi Bros. on replay. XD It's not my best work, but...let me reiterate the 2:30 in the morning part. XD
Oh, and Lemony? Cousin to a very minor canon character from the Cell saga (she appears in all of one episode). Take a wild guess as to whom. XD