A Place in Time
Prologue; Warrior's Rumination
Caelestis Kibeth
When she found me, I had resigned myself to the realization that my life was over already. I had never expected that things could come crashing down around me as quickly as they had, and was certain—as certain as I was that I simply shouldn't be living any longer—that there was nothing I, nor anyone else, could do to pick up the pieces.
To help you understand this, maybe I should take you back to the beginning, the source of my problem; the android. Unsurprising, as androids have always seemed to be the source of all problems in my life... but to equate this android to the terrors of 16, 17, or 18 would be foolish.
I was a foolish person, back then.
It was a lost model, which during the Cell Games had managed to be overlooked—another testament to my foolishness—and, unlike the others, was truly far more machine than man. It could not be reasoned with, it could not be talked to, and when it resurfaced, it became painfully clear, painfully quickly that I was up against a force far more than I was prepared to reckon with.
Town by town, city by city, the android set out to finish the work of it's predecessors. The destruction was unprecedented, and was devastating to a world that had barely begun to heal from the last.
At the time that It finally came to see me, I still didn't understand the magnitude of what I was going up against. Could you really blame me? It was only five years prior that I'd returned from the past and taken out it's brothers and sister for good. I was Trunks Briefs, Super Saiya-jin, most powerful man on earth. I was cocky. I was stupid. I was ready.
I was not ready.
That was the first lesson it taught me.
The cloudless September sky seemed to shudder around us as blow after crushing blow, ki blast after searing ki blast were exchanged. We went on for hours in tireless fashion. Whilst I managed-very barely-to claim victory in the end, I could not help but feel as if the prize was not worth the price. Skyscrapers and shops, homes and cars, streets and sidewalks—below in the city the destruction was widespread. The West Sector suffered most abundantly, right below where we had battled most heavily and violently.
A wave of horrible nostalgia overcame me as I peered down upon my leveled hometown. I had set out trying to protect this city, had vowed to myself that I would never have to bear witness to this scene again... and look what had now become of it.
That was the second thing It taught me.
I was careless.
And I was about to find out just how careless I had been.
Heavily wounded and burdened with a stronger fatigue than I had ever experienced, I halfheartedly hovered back towards Capsule Corp. However, I was not about to find the warm bed and happy arms of my mother that I expected to return to—and if I hadn't been prepared for the android, I was even less prepared for the sight that awaited me.
I touched down on the scorched yard as gently as if I were landing on egg shells, terror coursing through my veins as I laid eyes on an image that is forever engraved in my mind as the worst I have ever-will ever-see.
My home had always been one of the largest in the city, but you wouldn't have been able to tell by what remained then. Half of the right side blown off—my mother's workroom, our bedrooms and kitchen and living room, oh Kami—and the left nearly caved in upon itself, it was hard to imagine that this building could have ever housed living beings.
Feeling a familiar stinging in my eyes, I ran with all my might towards the remaining pieces of the building, screaming out at the top of my lungs for my mother, head whipping around frantically for any sign of her. Even with my wearied body, I didn't let up in my search for hours upon end. But it wasn't before long that my voice grew hoarse and I could no longer yell for her, and only then did I finally fall to my knees and allow the tears to flow freely.
I knew already that the weapon which had taken my home was a stray ki blast, the very same fate that had befallen most of the city. I knew that my mother had been, by me, instructed to hide in her bedroom.
I also knew that her bedroom was one of the many rooms collapsed in rubble.
What I didn't realize, until I managed to drag myself up from the pitiful ball I'd curled up into, was something much worse than all of that. What I didn't realize was that the ki blast that had done the damage, that had disintegrated my only remaining parent's body to nothing but ash, hadn't come from an android. I didn't realize it until I began to walk, lost and alone among the remains, that the signature was unavoidably, unmistakably my own.
That day was what I for a long time considered the beginning of the end of my life.
I couldn't stay in the city any longer. The remaining denizens had grand plans to rebuild Capsule Corp. in their thanks to me, but that was impossible. There was no way I could bring myself to stay there with all the haunting, horrible memories any longer. I fled the city, attempted to run away from my old life and all of my problems. I ran to a place where they would never find me, to a countryside miles and miles away from my old home. I'm sure that Vegeta would have scorned me for taking the coward's way out and running like I had, but I had given up so very long ago trying to be strong like my father was. I just wasn't fit out to be the perfect warrior son that he would have wanted.
I wanted to start my life anew. I wanted to forget everything that had happened before. I wanted to forget my mother, forget my home, and forget my whole life. I would no longer be Trunks Briefs. From then on, I would simply be Trunks. No last name and no heritage. Without heritage, I couldn't have killed my mother. Without heritage, I couldn't be a Saiya-jin prince. I couldn't have experienced such pain in my childhood because of my blood. I couldn't have known that my father had died before I knew him because I had never had one. Without heritage, I had convinced myself that I would be at peace.
I found out very soon that I was foolish—always, always foolish-in thinking that I could simply forget who I was. I was infuriated with myself for even for a second imagining that I could forget my mother, my father, my blood. I realized what a great disrespect I was doing them by running away.
This frustrated me to no end. I could not bear to forget my heritage, but neither could I handle the guilt that was suffocating me at being the cause of my mother's death. I was slowly driving myself insane, and there came a point when I simply couldn't take it any longer.
After years of telling myself that my life was over, I was finally going to make it a reality.
It was October then, the brisk evening finding me in my usual spot on the cliffs just outside my forest home. The cliffs at night were the one small fragment of peace in my life, as they allowed me to gaze up into an unclouded sky of pearly-white stars. I would tell myself that my parents were up there, looking down on me. I liked to talk to them. It always made me feel as if, for a single moment, none of this were real. I apologized to them for all the horrible things I'd done and they just looked back at me and nodded in understanding; they were there, they forgave me, and everything was alright.
As I stared up into the heavens that night, my hand tightened around the hilt of the sword at my side. I was unusually calm, given what I knew I was about to do. Even as I felt the sharp edge of cold steel nudge insistently at the skin of my bare chest, my heart skipped no extra beats. This time, I was ready.
A thud resounded throughout the trees, and a searing pain permeated my body. My vision wavered, my eyes watered, my hands clenched around the hilt of the sword… and then, slowly, it all ebbed away.
The last thing I saw was her frightened face hovering over me... and my last thought, with sudden clarity, was that I was not ready.
I was not ready yet.