"Oh… I like your shirt," Trunks answered after his father called him out for staring at him.
"Well if you like it so much you can have it!" Vegeta barked back.
"That's all right. No thank you," he looked away… for a little less than five minutes.
Vegeta growled as he stood up. "What is with your obsessive compulsion to look at me?!" he roared stomping forward.
Trunks stood and began walking backwards with his hands raised. "Wait! Sir! Your Majesty! I…" He tripped on a rock but instead of falling he put his right hand down and spun back to his feet.
Vegeta looked suspiciously at Trunk's left hand babying a spot on his jacket as he got back to his feet, and Trunks realized he just gave away where Goku's medicine was to a man liable to strike at that location out of spite.
Vegeta closed his eyes and smirked. "Well, well. Turnabout is fair play."
"My Lord, it's…"
"Let me see your sword," Vegeta said holding out his hand.
Trunks blinked, "Wha…?"
"I said let me see your sword! Are you hard of hearing, brat."
Trunks slowly drew his sword and extended it to him, ready to defend his jacket from a strike.
Vegeta held the sword vertically, running his index and middle finger on either side of the center ridge. Then Vegeta's eyebrows crunched together and ran his fingers over the same spot again before flipping the sword and feeling the other side. He then held the sword horizontally and twisted it back and forth looking at the light's reflection on the metal.
By now everyone was watching him curiously, especially Trunks. When he was 10, he found that sword buried in the attic and no one knew why it was there. His mother and grandparents said his father never had a sword, so did Gohan, but what if they were wrong? What if it was one of the secrets he took to his grave?
Vegeta lit his hand with ki and funneled it into the blade. Trunks' face fell as a previously hidden pattern glowed blue across the sword.
Vegeta's mouth moved like he was sounding out words before he flipped the sword and did the same with the other side. Everyone took a step back as Vegeta's eye twitched.
"I'll be generous with you, boy…" he growled, "And assume you didn't know this was a sacred blood blade. But don't you dare use this sword in battle again."
"Wha… Wha… What's a blood blade?" Trunks stuttered.
"A Saiyan birth certificate," he said. "One side is the name, the other a prayer or line from scripture with what the parents want for the child. The glowing metal is forged with the blood from the placenta before being inlaid. Supposedly it's what makes it glow, but it's really a combination of several powders, the blood just a mixing medium."
"You know how to make one?" Bulma asked.
"I'm no low-class smith!" Vegeta snapped. "The recipe is in scripture. Outside of that, it's common sense to realize blood is not strictly needed to craft Ki Iron. Any similar chemical mix will give the same result."
"Whose sword was it?" Gohan asked.
Vegeta looked at the blade, "I don't know. It contains a two-sided phrase. But I assume it was made for a mix-blood. Minus the emotional gibberish," he shivered in disgust, "It translates as 'Turn your back on the Full Moon Goddess and proudly embrace your shadow'. So, the Saiyan parent wanted this child to forget its warrior blood and live as a whatever-the-other-parent's-race-was."
"Then this sword was a good-bye?" Trunks squeaked.
Everyone looked at the stranger in their midst, trembling and fighting back tears.
Vegeta turned the sword around and presented the hilt to Trunks. "If this is your sword, argue with your other parent. If your Saiyan parent was going to leave then he or she would have told someone how it worked and some way to translate it. A Blood Blade is given to children at their coming of age their 10th year, exchanged with their mate at a bonding ceremony and serves as a substitution at a funeral if the body is not recovered. And swords are never made for half-asses. Your parent went well out of their way with either bribery or finding an unclean foreign smith and revealing the sacred recipe for this to exist."
Trunks took his sword and hugged it tight against his heart. "Thank you, Prince Vegeta… I'll cherish this the rest of my life." A tear finally dropped. "Excuse me for a moment." He quickly flew off.
"Tsk." Vegeta scowled, crosses his arms and walked back to his rock.
"That was really nice of you to do that," Bulma said.
"What? Make a weakling cry? That a baby like that killed Frieza makes me sick."
"Explaining that to him," Bulma said strongly putting her hands on her hips, "If that sword is unclean like you said and not supposed to exist, you didn't need to say any of that. You could have even tried to break it. Instead you respected it and explained what it meant to that kid."
Vegeta's eye twitched. "Whatever…" he said sitting down on his rock with his back to Bulma. "Ter Unk Zee…" he thought pinching his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, "Out of all the Goddess damn ways to say 'I love you' why did that brat's parents write it the same way Papa always said it to me…"