Year 770

Present

Mother

Bulma swallowed hard and ended the call. Seargent Grey had ordered new armored tanks and jets. He was already sending his forces to Bento. She tried to convince him to stop. To stop him from sending out his soldiers into a battle they would never return from. But he didn't listen.
Because he knew it already.

And his soldiers knew it too.

They threw away their lifes in hope to pave the way to the future for innocent people. All she could do to help ... was to create artillery to aid them.
Although she knew that her efforts would be futile in the end.

The times where she built the dragon radar and cute pink hover crafts where over. The adventures she had in her youth, they seemed to be from a different life.

Now she was creating tools of death. To kill something that couldn't even be killed by man. Bulma sighed and stared out of the window, watching the bright sun. Everything seemed so peaceful. There was nothing indicating the slaughter happening in Bento.

No. Mother nature smiled at her brightly.
It felt like a sharp slap in the face.

Suddenly, out of nowhere a swarm of crows flew by and covered the sun for a moment.

Completely.
To Bulma it felt like a bad sign.


Son

He concentrated. Focused on his power and slowly started to take off.
Just like uncle Gohan taught him last week as he visited Capsule Corp.

Trunks adored Gohan. Gohan may have been a kid at that time, but he was much stronger than any adult! And he could fly!

Of course he wanted to learn from his idol. At all costs.
So the little boy begged the older kid to teach him the art of flight. At first of course Gohan didn't want to. He said that Trunks was too young and that it'd be too risky for his little body to fall from great heights.
So ... Trunks decided to 'convince' him.

It took the child four hours of annoying leg poking and wailing to get Gohan finally to oblige.

What a sweet victory!
At that moment however the older boy said something that startled the small boy and brought his mother to tears:

He said that Trunks was just as stubborn and fierce ... as his dad.

Trunks didn't know anything about his father. His eyes grew wide at the words of his friend, who never spoke a word about his dad before. Gohan too seemed shocked. Wasn't he allowed to talk about this topic?

Why?

Trunks heard a sob.
His eyes fell on the shocked expression on the face of his mother as she suddenly left the room without a word.

Gohan made a very sad face and began telling the boy where his daddy went to.

It was just a short explanation before he finally taught Trunks the first basics of flight.

So there he was. Hovering a few feet over his soft bedsheets, to make sure he wouldn't hurt himself falling down, he finally saw his small world from above. And he loved his new abillity.
It was his secret. His alone. Not even his mommy knew about this!

Grinning he rose higher and higher without him noticing untill his head hit a hard surface.

"Ouch!", he gasped and rubbed his head. "That hurt! Stupid ceiling!"
He froze in motion.

He never managed to fly this high! "Oh my gosh!"
Trunks grinned from ear to ear as he was finally able to see the stuff on his tall closet! The boy knew something precious had to be there. After all, every evening, after tucking him in his blanket ... his mother looked up there with a sad smile on her face.

He finally had the chance of finding out what it was that made her cry at night.

Swinging his chubby arms and legs to move forward he managed to climb on top of his closet and crawled through old belongings of his baby life.
Of course though most of the things around there was boring to him.
And traumatic.
A pink plush elephant, a pink pacifier held by a pink monkey ... why was all of his old stuff in that disgusting color?! Trunks shook his head in terror. He was already loosing his interest. But then he spotted something hidden behind a huge teddy bear:
There was a big package, wrapped in fluffy red fabric someone had written on:

'Too shortly known but never forgotten'.
A pretty heart was drawn underneath it. This mysterious thing seemed to be of great importance and he was unsure if his mother would be okay with him touching it. After all it was put out of his reach.

It WAS.

A quick look wouldn't hurt, he decided and wrapped his small arms around it. Mistaking its size with a big weight he pulled with all his might. But surprisingly it weighted almost nothing. With a shocked cry he fell down and the package dropped to the floor with a soft bounce.

"Crap!", he cursed. Rubbing his hurting butt. Not even realizing that a boy his age normally would be badly hurt due to such a fall. The package rolled by, startling him.
Trunks was afraid he broke it.
Gnawing on his thumb he had no idea what to do. His mother could be really scary when she was angry. The last time he broke something from her, it was some type of big, green clock, she took his TV away for a month and grounded him.
No way he would survive such an evil punishment again!

He decided to just throw it back on the shelf and pretend all of this never happened. But the moment he grabbed the fabric with his chubby arms its knot suddenly loosened. The thing inside fell out of it and Trunks examined it with shock and interest.
Where did he see this before?
Suddenly his eyes widened in realization. He grabbed the familiar object with shaky hands and decided to speak to his mother about it.

He just had to know.