"Adrift in Darkness."
—A "Chaotic Future" One-Shot—
Trunks knelt.
A cool breeze ruffled his lavender hair, a bit colder than one would expect for early summer. He looked up, sighing as he watched the dark clouds approaching from a distance, bringing with them—no doubt—a late-coming spring storm.
More rain, he thought with a sigh, remembering all too well the recent flooding that had resulted from the abnormally wet spring. The half-Saiyan himself had been called upon to rescue several unfortunates who had been caught in a surge of flood water, when the authorities had proved helpless to do so. Trunks had saved seven people that day.
Nine had been caught in the flood.
"You can't save everyone," Trunks said softly, quoting the words his mother had spoken only days ago, to assuage her son's feelings of guilt. He returned his gaze to the small memorial before him, set up in memory of another person that he'd been unable to save. It was a simple stone cross that stood roughly two feet high, featureless but for a name and a short epitaph:
Rika
Your memory will be with
us always, no matter what
lies between us—be it time, or
space, or Death himself
Trunks sighed, shivering slightly as the first of many icy cold raindrops fell from high above to splash against his bare shoulder. He cursed himself for leaving his jacket back at home, the great dome of Capsule Corporation, and he rolled his eyes as he thought of the chiding he was likely to receive from his mother.
She still thinks of me as nothing but a child, Trunks thought, an edge of bitterness coloring these words. Still… I am her only son, and after everything that's happened, who can blame her for being a little over-protective anyway?
Shaking his head to clear it of these distracting thoughts, the Saiyan-blooded warrior looked down at the single red rose that he held in his hand, its petals slowly drooping and threatening to fall as the rain picked up its pace. Closing his eyes momentarily, Trunks set the rose down gently, reverently, before the stone cross, Gabriel's words of three years ago running through his mind.
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Three years earlier…
The ship's engine hummed.
Dorian stood at the end of the Capsule ship's boarding ramp, dressed immaculately as always in a crisp set of white and blue Galdrian-style robes, which had been produced and provided by Bulma herself. His long silver hair spilled down his back and over his shoulders, and his eyes—still a piercing, almost neon blue despite his tremendous age—were narrowed ever so slightly against the bright, early morning sun.
His son Gabriel, Crown Prince of Galdria and Heir Apparent of the Galdrian Empire, stood several feet away, facing Trunks and Bulma with an expression of nervous doubt etched into his young features. The two Galdrians were preparing to return home with the bodies of their comrades, Lady Zellis Ariyadi and Princess Elysia de Galdri—Dorian's own sister. Both valiant warriors had fallen in the battle against the renegade Genjins Kirien and Kalen that had nearly destroyed the Earth barely a month before, and now it was time to return their remains to their far-distant home world.
"Trunks," Gabriel began, his hands lost somewhere within the folds of his own Galdrian robes, the same shades of blue and white as his father's, but with the patterns reversed. His voice was quiet, and it carried an echo of the sorrow that both Trunks and his mother knew the young warrior still felt concerning the death of his dear friend, Rika.
Sensing the half-Galdrian's hesitation, Bulma spoke. "What is it, Gabriel?" she asked, casting a quick, questioning glance out of the corner of her eye toward her son. Trunks, noticing his mother's inquisitive look, merely shrugged imperceptibly.
The dark-haired young man hesitated briefly, then spoke. "May 9th."
"May 9th?" Trunks repeated, more than a little confused. "What about it?"
A wave of grief crossed Gabriel's pale face, but only for a moment. His mask of placidity returned, though his iridescent blue eyes still held a faint shadow of sorrow. "It's… It was her birthday."
Neither Trunks nor his mother had to ask who the "her" that Gabriel had referred to was.
Rika…
"I've made a… a kind of memorial for her," the young Galdrian went on, somewhat rushed, as if afraid that Trunks may interrupt him. "It isn't much, just a piece of the Lookout that I carved into a cross with my saber." He went silent, and Trunks could see him struggling to swallow the lump in his throat. Finally, he continued, a sheen of tears glistening in his blue eyes. "I've left it there, in the field where the Lookout fell, right where I found it… If you could just—"
"I understand," Trunks cut in, stepping forward and resting a hand on Gabriel's quavering shoulder. "I'll take care of it."
Gabriel nodded, a look of relief passing over his features. "Thank you. I just don't want her to be, you know… forgotten." He nearly choked on the last word.
"We should go," Dorian prompted from his position near the ship, his arms folded patiently over his chest. "The people of Galdria have been without an Emperor for quite long enough, my son."
Gabriel simply nodded and, without another word, turned his back to Bulma and Trunks. As he walked away, moving past his father and entering the ship, it seemed to Trunks that, perhaps, the half-Galdrian's shoulders were just a little less bowed by grief than before…
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Footsteps from behind brought Trunks out of his reverie.
The Saiyan turned his head slightly and, through locks of dripping wet, water-darkened purple hair, saw his mother, standing silently with an umbrella shielding her from the torrent. In the dimming light of the stormy afternoon, Trunks' teal eyes seemed to reflect the darkening sky.
"Hey," Bulma said, a look of concern marring her still-beautiful features. "Are you okay, dear?" she asked, stepping forward to kneel beside her son. She looked past him, her eyes taking in Rika's epitaph.
"Yeah Mom, I'm fine," Trunks replied with a forced smile, standing to his feet, ignoring the tumultuous downpour. He shrugged. "It's just… It's nothing."
Bulma nodded, keeping an outward appearance of indifference though, inside, she was terribly worried about her son. He's just been through so much… She reached forward, her fingertips brushing lightly against the words on the carved stone. "…or Death himself," the blue haired woman read silently, tears welling up in her eyes. Oh Vegeta… Vegeta, I miss you.
"Mom?"
Bulma quickly wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, turning to face her son with a smile. She stood and cast a backward glance at Rika's memorial. "At least she's at peace," Bulma said softly, an image of the young woman who had once worked for her at Capsule Corporation flitting through her mind.
Her wistful comment elicited a snort from Trunks.
"What?" Bulma asked sharply.
"Take it from someone who's been there, Mom," Trunks said, a bitter edge to his voice. "There's no peace in death… At least there wasn't for me."
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Years ago, in a different time…
Trunks silently screamed.
Pain erupted as Cell's death beam tore through his chest, knocking him to the ground as his life pooled around him. He laid motionless, coughing up thick, viscous blood and gasping for a final breath that never came. Through a dark haze, the half-Saiyan could see his friends around him, could see the looks of terror and disbelief on their faces. Through their expressions, it was almost as if Trunks could read their very thoughts.
How can this be? Cell should be dead! Goku killed him, didn't he? No, Trunks! We can't win! How can we be expected to stop a monster like Cell?
Trunks' rapidly fading vision turned to his father, who—like the others—stared down at him with undisguised horror. In that expression, Trunks saw something break in Vegeta, and for a brief moment he thought he heard the Saiyan Prince's voice somewhere within his mind.
No… Not him, not my son…
As Trunks heard his father let loose with a cry of desperate rage, everything went black.
Time seemed to pass, though how much and how quickly Trunks couldn't say. He drifted along in a sea of darkness, surrounded above and below by nothing but hopeless shadow. He tried to move, but couldn't; tried to cry out, but no sound was made. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear them of the darkness that had invaded, but to no avail.
The heavy weight of total despair overwhelmed him, and he wept…
What's happening to me? he thought, feeling slightly relieved that at least his thoughts still remained in his control. This isn't right, damn it! This… This isn't what death is supposed to be like!
Stories that he'd heard in the past, from his friends in this timeline and from his own mother ran through his head. He'd heard all about Goku's first death, and his meeting with King Yemma, who was in charge of the Earth's check-in station to Otherworld. He'd listened with rapt attention to the stories about King Kai, and about Snakeway, even about Goz and Mez, and Goku's adventures in Hell.
Where is all that? Was Goku just lying about all those things? Trunks wondered, trying to turn his head, to look around for any point of light in this endless darkness. But there was nothing, and he drifted on.
Again, time passed. Days, weeks, months, it didn't matter to Trunks. Here, in this godforsaken place it was all the same. He felt hunger like he'd never experienced, but couldn't eat, and a thirst that threatened to drive him made also went unsatisfied. It was as if he could feel every little ache and pain in his body, constantly, and small though they were, they were incessant and unending. Heat washed over him, burning his flesh and scorching his soul with flames both mundane and mystical. These bursts of heat would as often as not turn to frigid cold, which was little better, if at all.
And through it all, he drifted.
Suddenly, with no warning and no explanation, Trunks simply sat up. A light as bright as the sun threatened to blind him, and with a start he realized that it wasn't the sun, but the light generated by a massive green serpentine dragon that seemed to fill the sky. Startled, the half-Saiyan looked around in stunned silence, seeing Gohan standing over him. He stood and looked over, seeing the others nearby, though his father was conspicuously absent.
"What… What happened?" he asked softly, almost to himself.
"You were dead, but we wished you back to life with the Dragon Balls," Gohan said excitedly. "Now come on, we're gonna wish back my dad!" The younger half-Saiyan turned to run back toward the group that stood at the base of the massive dragon, but Trunks called out to him.
"Wait, Gohan," he said. "How long was I out anyway?"
"How long?" Gohan repeated. "Well, only a few hours really. Dende had these new Dragon Balls all ready for us up here, isn't that great?"
With that the child led him toward the others, who all looked up at the dragon with rapt expressions upon their upturned faces. Trunks paused for a moment and shuddered, wondering if his experience had all been just an awful dream.
But deep inside, he knew the truth…
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Rain continued to fall.
Bulma remained silent, unsure of what to say to her son. She knew that what he had experienced wasn't really what death was supposed to be like. But what had happened to him was a mystery to her, along with why it had happened in the first place.
"Trunks, I—"
"Don't worry about it, Mother," Trunks said softly, smiling at the blue-haired woman as he turned to leave the site of Rika's memorial behind. "It's over now, and that's all that matters. And maybe you're right," he went on, casting a backward glance at the small stone cross, "maybe she is at peace now, in a better place."
Without another word, Trunks gently took his mother by the arm and led her back to the Aircar in which she'd arrived. Though this experience was over for now, Trunks knew that, in another year's time, he'd be back to keep his promise.
He'd be back to ponder what exactly had happened to him after his death.
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Somewhere in Otherworld…
A stern, proud figured opened his eyes.
"Well, have you seen enough?" an odd sounding voice asked. The originator of this voice, a creature who looked like nothing so much as an oversized blue insect wearing black robes, stepped forward, leaving the other figure standing with his arm outstretched. "Satisfied, Vegeta?" He looked back at the Saiyan Prince, who stared into his own reflection in the shorter creature's black sunglasses.
"Tell me, Kai," Vegeta said gruffly, crossing his arms over his Saiyan-armored chest. "You're supposed to know everything, right?"
"Hardly," another person said, stepping forward. Piccolo moved to stand beside Vegeta, who cast an irritated sidelong glance at the Namekian. "He only likes people to think that."
"Silence, Namek," Vegeta responded before returning his attention to King Kai. "Tell me this, then: what really happened to him when that Cell creature killed him. Why didn't he end up here, with the rest of us?"
"Yeah King Kai," Goku added, stepping forward to join the other two warriors, leaving his other companions still sparring behind him. "Or at least why didn't he go to the Otherworld in that timeline?"
King Kai was silent for a moment as he strode toward his small, dome-shaped house, moving past Tien, Yamcha, Chiaotzu, and Krillin, who were oblivious to him as they continued their frenzied four-way battle. The old martial arts master sighed and shook his head as he watched them before returning his attention to Goku, Piccolo, and Vegeta.
"It's simply getting too crowded up here," he said, as if he hadn't heard Goku or Vegeta's questions. He nodded, having made some inner decision. "Yes, I think it's high time we all took a little trip, don't you?"
Vegeta stepped forward, raising a clenched fist before him. "Answer me, damn it! What happened to him?"
Goku and Piccolo both stepped forward, fearing that the enraged Saiyan may actually try to harm King Kai and prepared to jump in if it came to that. Luckily, though, the short, round creature simply sighed and shook his head.
"I don't really know Vegeta, for nothing like that has ever happened as far as I've heard." He stopped and turned his back on the fighters; even Krillin and the others had stopped their training and were listening intently now. "If I were to guess, though, I'd have to say that he was somehow missed."
"Missed?" Tien asked, wiping sweat from his bald pate with a towel offered him by Yamcha. "Missed by what?"
"Or who?" Krillin added.
"Missed," King Kai went on, "by fate itself. You have to remember, when he died in that timeline, he didn't belong there. He was far from home, and very out of place. It makes sense to me that, somehow, fate simply missed him."
Yamcha stepped forward, a perplexed expression on his scarred face. "Wait, you mean it's like he just sort of fell through the cracks, is that it?"
King Kai looked genuinely astonished by Yamcha's comment. "I can't believe that out of all of the fighters assembled here, you are the one to actually grasp what I was talking about." He was overtaken then by a bout of laughter, which he tried unsuccessfully to contain. "You guys should really be ashamed that he got it and none of you did." He stopped, looking from one fighter to the next and studying the halos that hovered just above their heads. "Then again," he continued, barely holding back his laughter, "it looks to me like you all got it, if you know what I mean!" He fell to the ground, rolling at his own joke while the others simply looked on in silent amazement.
"What a fool," Vegeta snarled, walking away from the others to find what solitude he could on this impossibly small planet.
And, at that moment, he found himself missing his family more than ever.
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That's it for my first "Chaotic Future" One-Shot, hope you liked it! Expect some more One-Shots to come, as well as a couple more Side Stories before the actual sequel is written. Thanks for reading, and stay on the lookout for more "Chaotic Future" projects coming soon!
AMdG