DEATH IS SOFTER THAN LIFE

Prolog - Then The Fire Came

Thereafter, Trunks remembered that day as the day which marked the beginning of the horror.

However, the day had started normally: His mother Bulma was - as usual - committing herself body and soul in a high scale scientist project, and the laboratory she had transformed for the tests was swarming with technicians. A usual day at the Capsule Corporation...

"I think I have the solution", Bulma had said. "If we can't use the dragon balls any longer because they are deactivated, why not reaching another dimension and bring back their guardian and their dragon balls to reactivate ours by a wish?"

The idea had seemed great. Some of the group had grumbled that we couldn't know what was on the other side, on other worlds, that it wouldn't be perhaps as simple as that to get the dragon balls in another dimension, but... Did they have another choice? After the wish to resurrect the whole planet at the time of Majin-Buu, the dragon balls had been damaged and a few years later, their activity had vanished, reducing them to simple stones that even Dende couldn't repair.

Without the dragon balls, they were feeling as vulnerable as kids; they had grown up too used to their presence as a safe-boat.

*****

Trunks entered, holding Bra's little hand, in the laboratory where his mother was spending almost all her time now.

They were standing on a metallic platform. Downwards, they could see all the technicians working like ants around computers, cables and other strange devices. In the middle of the room, a giant metallic ring was standing. Bulma was calling it the Dimensional Transmission Matrix Gate, or DiTMaGa for short. The Ditmaga was almost 5 meters diameter, its polished surface was shining under the artificial lights of the laboratory.

Trunks observed his mother, going from one computer to the other, taking electrical measurements on the Ditmaga. It was always when she was meeting a challenge that she was showing her true potential. She was a genius, and she wouldn't give up until she would come with the whole process working.

Bra waved to her and called her with her high-pitched voice. Bulma waved back and moved towards them, allowing herself a little break. She walked the metallic stairs to reach them and took a towel to wipe out some sweat from her forehead. She removed for awhile the red hat with the Capsule Corporation label, which she was usually wearing when she wanted her hair to be kept in place and not falling in her eyes. She passed a hand in her hair and turned to the Ditmaga downwards and started commenting.

"Everything is going into place. Until this morning, I wouldn't have sworn it would work, but now, I can assure at 95% that we'll be able to reach another world before the end of the month...

Trunks didn't want to interrupt her. In times like these she really looked alive. She was in her element. If she wanted to explain, he would listen. If she was becoming way too scientific for him, he would simply nod with a gentle smile without disturbing her.

"But first", she went on, "I'll need to make some tests, sending a robot to collect data... just in case there would be some mistakes about the location and that the door wouldn't have opened on Earth..."

A worried look appeared briefly as she was representing the situation of opening the Ditmaga in the void of space. That gave her another idea.

"I'll have to place a closed shield around the Ditmaga if something like this happens", she was talking more to herself, here... "The doors here are hermetic", thinking about the door at the entrance of the lab, built to resist explosions, and that one could only open by typing a code on the numpad, "but they wouldn't resist a de-pressurization as the Space-void..."

She came back to here-and-now, realizing she was flying again in her technical speech, probably out of reach of her children. She turned to them with a warm smile.
"Oh, I'm sorry if I seems to forget you sometimes... I'm so caught by this... I'm sorry", she apologized.

Trunks blushed, "No problemo, Mum... We know how important it is for you, we're certainly not going to be mad at you because you are motivated to save all of us", he replied to her with a smile.

Bulma smiled, hearing that. She crouched near Trunks and Bra and hugged them "you are my little babies..."

Bra giggled with delight while Trunks straightened, and tried to get free of the hug, wanting to show that at 14, he was too old for these kind of affection, even if, inside of him, he really seeks for it. Bulma smiled to him, amused, and brushed her hand through his hair.

"Mum, please...", Trunks mumbled, playing the proud bad-boy again, "I'm not a baby any longer..."

Bulma stood up, giving them a last smile. "Oh I know, you are my big boy". She put the towel on aside. "I have to go back to work now... I'll see you both at dinner". She smoothed her hair and put back the red hat.

"Good luck!", Trunks shouted while she was going down the stairs; she smiled back to him.

"Are we really going to travel to another world?", Bra asked with her high-pitched, childish voice.

Trunks looked at her, and started walking away to the exit of the lab with a little smile on his lips. "Oh, I don't know if ALL of us are going to travel... Methinks you are a little bit too young perhaps to travel"

Bra's reaction was immediate and predictable: She started punching Trunks' leg with her little fists. "No, I AINT YOUNG!!! I WANT TO GO TOO!!!".

"Yes you are!", Trunks teased her, running outside the door, pursued by Bra who wanted to make him to shut up.

"You are bad to meee", she was screaming while the hermetic door shut with a soft "thudhh" that mostly isolate them from the noise in the lab.

Three seconds later, anyway, Trunks heard faint shouts though the hermetic door. *it's not normal*, he thought, *why are they screaming so loud...*. While he was formulating the thought, he realized the panic contained in the shouts. He turned to the door, and started running to it.

The building shook violently, throwing Trunks and Bra on the floor. Trunks stood up very fast and went to the door. The glimpse he got of the laboratory while he was trying to open the door was that the Ditmaga had fallen almost totally on the ground, and was only maintained in the air by a few cables, making the metallic ring tangling dangerously. Most of the laboratory was on fire, and the door was not responding because of the surge of electricity that had resulted from the power released by the Ditmaga. Trunks saw that his mother had been hurt at the leg and was crawling away from the Ditmaga, helped by two assistants.

Trunks looked at the Ditmaga and saw that the cables were now breaking one by one. He started hitting the door to force it open, but his mother had thought of the eventuality to see Saiyans or even more powerful creatures coming out of the Ditmaga during a test. She had built the laboratory and the door, using the Saiyan technology; all the effort Trunks as making could only break the door; little by little the glass was shattering under the shocks Trunks was making by
throwing his own body against the door. On the other side, he could see the techs running for their life in the stairs to reach for the blocked door, panicked. Trunks, screaming his mother's name, managed to make a hole in the glass that would allow him to pass his bleeding arm, the structure of the glass was altered enough now to allow another blast to break the door totally.

As he was leaping for another final hit on the door, Trunks saw the ring falling and hitting the floor while his mother was reaching the stairs. There was first a big, blinding, bluish light; Trunks stared at the light during a painful second before raising his arm before his face to protect his eyes; he didn't see what happened next but heard everything.

The screams of the prisoners of the lab were covered by the sound of the explosion which caught the lab, releasing at once all the energy loaded for the test. Then the fire came.

The burning and orange wave reached the door and ended what Trunks had started. The glass, cracked badly by Trunks' efforts didn't resist and exploded towards the outside of the lab. Towards Trunks. The teenager got projected backwards in a fury of fire and sharp, cutting pieces of glass, absorbing most of the shock and thus, saving his sister's life.

He hit the floor violently among the broken glass, burned and bleeding from his many cuts. He felt his mind slipping into a darkness where the pain was disappearing. He heard his sister screaming his name from a long distance.

And then he was gone...

[to be continued ;) ]

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And here's another fic where Trunks will have a damn hard time :p
I'll post chapter one quite soon, don't worry ;P

Trunks: - oh yes! I DO worry, that's the problem! OO;

Roselyne: - Arf! :D