Defending The Earth From A New Enemy
Chapter One: Wind In The Sky, Stars In The Heavens
Trunks
Mainly because Mom wanted a representative from Capsule Corp to be present at the Red Data Animal exhibit (Capsule Corp was one of its sponsors) I got two tickets. Since Mom was torturing me by making me go, it'd be fun torturing Goten by making him go.
"Red Data Animal exhibit?" He asked when I showed him the flier. "Would you happen to be asking me to go because your mom is making you go?"
I beamed. "You guessed it."
Goten shook his head and grimaced. "Not my idea of fun, but Mom wants me to go too. I got Variation Twenty of the 'You Will Not Be A Jobless Street Punk' lecture earlier when I tried to decline, so I'll come, if only so that we can come up with some way to pay our parents back."
Chichi had at least twenty five different Variations of her 'You Will Not Be A Jobless Street Punk' lecture which she was only too happy to repeat whenever Gohan or Goten showed more of an interest in training and fighting than in studying like she wanted.
For the hell of it, Goten memorized them and could regurgitate them at will, and often did for our amusement. While the lectures themselves really weren't that funny, Goten's high pitched, off key, uncanny imitation of his mother was.
"Remind me," I began. "How does that one go?"
"'You will not be a jobless street punk who lives only to fight! You will make something of yourself, or else I'll be forced to take away all of your training time. No son of mine will ever allow himself to stoop to the level of a common punk who fights to live and lives to fight! So help me, you'd better make something of yourself, or I'll not only take away your training time, but I'll forbid you from training and seeing Vageta ever again! It's bad enough that he lets Trunks fight whenever she wants! It's improper for a young lady to fight. Is that clear?!'"
"And then, she usually starts wailing, where did she go wrong?!" I finished.
"You know, it's amazing how much you sound like her when you say that." Goten told me, shaking his head. "Seriously. And you're not even related!"
I shrugged. "She's something like a fifth or sixth cousin through marriage— or something. I'm not sure of the exact details. My four times great grandfather and yours were brothers."
"Huh. Small world. How'd you know?"
I smirked. "I may or may not admit to meeting with your dad's dad in my dreams." And with that, I spun on my heel and left a flabbergasted Goten in my wake. "See you tomorrow!"
Goten and I met at the exhibit just before it opened (I had to be there when it opened as a representative of Capsule Corp). After it opened, I walked around a bit and looked at all the animals on the Red Data, or Endangered Species list (including tigers, rhinos, wolves, gorillas, snow leopards, cheetahs, and a whole lot more) before my stomach decided to make its very vocal demands for lunch known. Lunch time then. Thankfully, there were several restaurants nearby, and one of them happened to be my go-to whenever I was in the area and hungry.
I headed to a nearby restaurant that served a wide variety of different stuff to eat and thankfully wouldn't blink if a fourteen year old devoured several plates of food in one sitting.
Goten met me there. Originally, he was just there for the same reason I was, but when he saw me, he came over and decided to confront me about yesterday. "Hey. You know you never did explain about how you've been meeting Dad's dad— what's his name again?"
"Bardock." I supplied.
"Yeah. Well you never did tell me how you've been doing it." He reminded.
I shrugged. "Not that hard, actually. He set up an empathy link with the both of us and Gohan, but I guess somehow I unconsciously accepted the link while you and Gohan haven't yet. Once you accept the link, when you go to sleep at night, just think about Bardock. That's what he told me to do after the first time I met him in my dreams. That's how I've been getting stronger so quickly; he's been training me. Not just how to fight either. He's taught me all sorts of stuff."
"Like what?" Goten demanded.
I grinned. "Let's see, Saiyan language, politics, finance, poker, emotional concealment, drawing, painting, tracking, wilderness survival," I blushed. "And he was the one to give me the talk when Mom and Dad were fighting over who had to give it to me. He mentioned something related to the topic, I don't remember what, and I was confused, so he gave me the talk."
Goten burst out laughing. "Now that I would have paid to see."
I sighed. "Oh, button it and zip it." I grumbled. "Who was it that gave you the talk? Was it your mom, or was it Gohan, or someone else?"
The tables turned and Goten blushed. "Well . . ." He poked his fingers together. "No one did, actually. I mainly learned everything I know about the topic from a few books."
I smirked. "Well then maybe he could give it to you." Goten merely raised a certain finger.
We paid for our lunch and then headed back to the exhibit and looked around for a while longer before deciding that we'd been here long enough and had compiled enough information to write an accurate report on the event for our mothers, so we decided to head to the park.
However, once we actually got to the park, we were hit by a sudden earthquake.
I saw a bright light flash, and then something that was very strange indeed happened.
I appeared, naked, in an unfamiliar place. There also didn't seem to be anyone else around.
I saw the unmistakable orange and black form of a tiger, which charged at me suddenly.
I instinctively raised my arms to block, but it just disappeared— inside of me, somehow.
Blinking and groaning, I sat up and looked around. "Hey, Goten," I began. "What the heck happened? I remember a bright light, and then . . . nothing."
Goten shrugged. "Not a clue." He looked at me, raising an eyebrow in interest. "Did you know that your hair suddenly has pink streaks in it?"
I grabbed my backpack, which I had brought with me because it had a few things I deemed essential, namely a few books I was reading and a mirror I used to entertain myself with light shows (yet another thing Bardock-jii-chan taught me), and grabbed the mirror out.
I held the mirror up to my face and sure enough noticed that there were now pink streaks in my hair. When and how the hell did those get there?
"Okay, weird. I don't know why that might be."
The next day, I had a Multi-form do my chores, and homework, and sparring, and everything else Mom and Dad wanted done, while I mediated and met with Bardock. This time, however, our session was a little different as we had Goten joining us. Gohan, apparently had decided that he didn't want to partake in the lessons, even though Goten told him about the empathy link. Well, whatever. The stick in the mud's loss was mine and Goten's gain. Some Saiyan he was. Sad as it was, even Bardock agreed that Gohan acted more like a human than a Saiyan.
Anyway, first Bardock had us spar to see where we were at. As predicted, because of his training, I was a little ahead of Goten in that area.
Then he did something new: he transported both of our physical bodies to a place on Earth he had reserved for the purpose of training. He set it all up with the Kais, apparently.
Once there, Bardock decided that he was going to address the issue of the pink streaks in my hair. "Trunks, I see you decided to do something different with your hair today. It didn't take any time away from your training, did it?"
I scoffed. "Of course not!" I huffed. "I didn't even do them and I don't know how they got there either. They just appeared yesterday after I blacked out when we got hit with a weird sudden mini-earthquake." I happened to glance up at the sky. "It's going to rain later."
Bardock and Goten both looked at me. "What?"
After training, Bardock produced a pair of lunch boxes and offered them to us. One smelled like fish, so I immediately grabbed that one and devoured the fish. "Now that was good."
My surrogate grandfather and my best friend exchanged glances.
Finally, Bardock spoke. "I think you should take me to the place where this happened yesterday. Maybe then we'll find out what's going on."
So I led them there. I remembered in detail what happened until the earthquake. Then I remembered the tiger that jumped into me and told them.
All the sudden, I sensed something and ran towards it to figure out what it was. Before I knew what was going on, I saw a huge monster that somewhat resembled a rat. It grabbed me in its claw. Goten and Bardock immediately shot it with a pair of twin Special Beam Cannons.
The rat-thing dropped me, but a blond stranger grabbed me and carried me into a nearby tree. He asked me if I was alright and referred to me by name.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"Let's leave introductions for later." The blond man said. "First, defeat that." He pointed to the rat-thing whatever it was that Goten and Bardock were still fighting.
I raised an eyebrow. "One question: how?"
The man pushed me off the tree, and somehow, I managed to land on my feet. Then he threw something at me. I automatically caught it, seeing it glow between my hands. "Just call out the first thing that comes to mind." He instructed. "You're special. Only you can defeat the rat."
I closed my eyes for a minute, the whatever he hell it was between my hands, and then they shot open a minute later as I called out "Wind in the sky. Stars in the heavens. An indomitable spirit in my heart. Grant you magic unto my hands. Strawberry Mew— set up!"
