A Place in Time
Chapter Three: Revelations
Caelestis Kibeth
[Bra] flipped the phone off and gave Trunks a wordless message in her look. He nodded, and turned to Goten and Pan. "You guys don't mind flying home, do you? It sounds like it's urgent."
"No problem," Goten replied as Trunks reached into his pocket to dig out his car keys. "It was nice to go out with you again."
"See you tomorrow?" Pan asked Bra, who nodded distractedly. She gave her friend a single, quick hug before following Trunks quickly towards the parking lot.
Still feeling perplexed and anxious, both of the Briefs children slid into the car, neither prepared for what awaited them at home.
Capsule Corporation
( present timeline )
"Who are they?"
"You sure got me."
"No idea. I leave the lab for a split second, and then walk back in to find three toddlers and a time machine crashed in the middle of my workspace. I mean, I'm pretty taken aback myself here."
"That's been established sufficiently already. Must you really reiterate your confusion?"
"Must you really be such a sarcastic ass, Vegeta?"
"Hn."
"Well, we'll just have to wait for them to wake up, then."
"I'll wake them up-"
"Papa, stop—oh, hey, speak of the devil-"
The rest of the family turned towards the bed upon which they had laid the three mysterious subjects of their conversation just in time to catch one pair of cerulean eyes flutter open groggily-it was the smallest of the trio, a twin tailed, raven-haired girl. A tiny hand went up to rub her forehead and she groaned, sitting up slowly. Her movement seemed to stir the two boys, who were soon mimicking their female companion's motions.
"Where are we?" the little girl asked, innocent voice full of wonder. She only regarded the other two toddlers, not yet noticing the other presences in the room. "What happened to the bad guy?"
Bra had opened her mouth to respond to her question when she was interrupted in her efforts by one of the boy's voices; the one with the haircut that looked strangely similar to those of Goku and Goten, when the former had been alive and the latter had been in his youth.
"I dunno, Musu," he said, moving over so that he was in front of both her and the other boy. "Maybe we got him?"
"No way," the other second boy said, dashing the look of hope which had flashed across his sister's face. "If Mama and Papa couldn't beat it in all those times, we definitely didn't beat it…"
"But we might—"
Finally getting sick of all the-to him-nonsensical blabbering, Vegeta exploded. "What in Kami's name are you brats talking about!?" he hollered suddenly. Bulma's head spun around to shoot her husband a scalding glare.
"Vegeta, be nice! You'll scare them!"
It was not the man's scream that finally alerted the children to the presence of others in the room, but Bulma's reprimand. The Goku-esque boy looked particularly alarmed, a baffled expression overtaking his features. "I didn't do it!" he rushed to proclaim.
Bulma narrowed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head and waved her hand at the air. "Oh, honey, I know. I was talking to Vegeta."
The tiny boy shot her a look that clearly read of what he thought of her level of intelligence. "Right," he spoke slowly, as if to aid her in understanding. Bulma looked somewhat taken aback at his tone—how old was this kid again? And he was talking to her like she was the preschooler? "I am Vegeta."
"No, I was talking to-wait, what?"
The scientist, who had been halfway turned around to motion in the direction of her mate, had to turn back to do a double-take of the little boy. Bulma's brow furrowed in bewilderment. Slowly this time, she twisted her gaze towards her husband, then back to the boy, then once again towards both. "You're Vegeta?"
"Well duh! I only said it like, twice already!"
As Bulma continued to process this idea of two Vegetas in her head, the elder appeared to be more agitated than fazed. "Stop this foolishness, brat!" he snapped, stalking forward to lean into the other's face with a scrutinizing glare. Bra, who had been up and ready to stop her father before he actually hurt the poor boy, stopped in her tracks—somehow, the toddler hadn't so much as flinched. "Vegeta is the royal name of the Saiya-jin prince, not a name to be given to some low-class human weakling!"
Musume, stepping to her brother's defense, rose to her feet on the bed—a gesture which brought her up to Vegeta's height—and crossed her arms over her chest. "Hey, you shouldn't be so full of yourself!" she said with a glare that nearly matched the older man's. "Our daddy is the Saiya-jin prince and he gave Vegeta that name!"
Her eyes turned equally as scrutinizing as his had been just moments earlier. Vegeta narrowed his own eyes back at her, fighting the sudden and uncharacteristic urge to recoil slightly as she stabbed a finger in his face. "I don't know who you are, but you're not the prince, you imposter!"
Vegeta's face began to paint a heavy crimson and Bulma knew only too well what that meant. "Wait, wait, wait!" she exclaimed hurriedly, forcing herself back into the conversation. She stepped forward and put a hand to Vegeta's chest to stop him from lunging at 'Musu,' the cogs of her mind working to form a hypothesis even as she took action.
She turned towards the raven-haired girl, maneuvering her body in between her and her husband. "How do you kids know about the Saiya-jin?" she asked. Bulma attempted to show the girl as calm a smile as she possibly could, given the situation at hand.
Musume stuck her tongue out at Vegeta from over Bulma's shoulder for a full five seconds before looking back at the woman to give her an answer. This woman seemed much nicer than the fake Vegeta, and her level of comfort shone through in her suddenly patient tone. "Because we are Saiya-jin, of course!" she answered freely.
Seemingly oblivious to the wide-eyed stares that each occupant of the room had just very suddenly given the three children, Musume began to ramble away. "Our papa is the prince, and he told us that even though we're all part human that we should be proud of being from the royal line because our grandpa would have wanted us to uphold the honor of the family-our grandpa died a long time ago and stuff, but Grandma always taught Daddy when he was younger that he should be proud like that-Grandma died a long time ago too, and we didn't know her, and actually we were just at her old house before we ended up here because we were being chased by the bad guys; it's a really scary story actually and-"
"Will you SHUT UP!" The roar came from Vegeta, who was the first to recover from the shock of the little girl's first statement enough to halt her continuous talking spree. Musume shut her mouth instantly, but glared at him and gave a huff of indignation.
"Well, you asked!"
Trunks shook his head from where he stood, tiredly leaning against the wall and still trying to process the onslaught of information Musume had just thrown at them. "Where do you guys come from?" he asked incredulously. "Some—alternate universe or something?"
He straightened up for the first time and lifted himself out of the far corner of the room. As his face was released from the cover of shadow, a loud-pitched squeal that no one had been expecting suddenly filled the air.
"PAPA!"
Before Trunks knew what was happening, the girl that had just a split second ago been on the bed was now clamped onto his leg. He blinked down at her, completely unsure of what had just occured and looking slightly frantic-had she just called him Papa?
"Hey—hey, sorry, kid, but you've got me mistaken," he stuttered out quickly. Trunks put a hand on her arm to try and pry her off of him, but the girl's hold was solid—maybe she was telling the truth about being part Saiya-jin after all. "I don't even have a steady girlfriend, much less any kids! You can't be my daughter, I've never even seen you before!"
Instantly, Trunks felt the blood circulation return to his leg as Musume's hold slackened, and he glanced down only to be greeted by a look of hurt and confusion etched in her bright blue eyes.
Cerulean eyes. Eyes like mine, came the heart-stopping thought.
Thankfully, however, his mind couldn't linger on that disturbing idea for long. Bra, who had like him been standing on the sidelines for much of the scene, stepped forward and took the eerily him-like little girl by the hand. She shot her older brother a glare.
"Honestly, Trunks, what a thing to say. Look, now you've upset her!"
"But it's true!" he answered with an exasperated yell.
Bra shook her head. "So? She's a little kid!" Musume now hugged onto Bra's leg instead, still looking at Trunks as if he'd uttered a horrible curse at her. "Obviously they're scared and confused and in a strange place. She thought you were someone familiar, you could have given her at least a few seconds to think it!"
"Bra!" Trunks exclaimed, eyes wide at his sister's mind-boggling logic. "I'm not their father! I can't just let them think that when it's not true!"
Bra was about to open her mouth to argue, but one of the boys on the bed beat her to it—the one whose resemblance to Goku was still hanging heavily in the air, unspoken. "But you are our dad!"
"We're not crazy!" the other boy piped up.
Trunks once again froze up as he noticed that this second one had a hairstyle that looked alarmingly like his own, and for a second he wondered if they weren't telling the truth. But—that was impossible, he reminded himself. He had been with a lot of different women, as many as you'd expect from a man who was both in his early thirties and the world's most eligible bachelor—but he would have known if he'd fathered any children.
…right?
The boy continued on, seemingly oblivious to his blank, numb stare. "My name is Gohan and this is my twin Vegeta and that's my older sister Musume and I know that you're our dad!"
"-Gohan? Did you say Gohan?"
Bulma blinked a few times in rapid succession, and Gohan turned to her with an arched brow. "Um, yeah?" he answered, and silently hoped that the angry man that the nice-but-empty-headed lady called Vegeta—a fact still up for debate—wasn't going to rush over and get in his face about his name too.
"Alright." Bulma smiled suddenly clapped her hands together once, definitively. Everyone turned simultaneously to watch this change in pace unfold. They certainly could use a break from all the confusion.
The blue-haired scientist nodded, and the self-satisfied look on her face said that she was beginning to piece together the puzzle. She stepped towards the bed and sat down on the edge next to the twins, shooting them a reassuring smile before twisting her head back to her expectant family. "Call me crazy, but I think they might be telling the truth."
"WHAT!?"
The unison reaction was powerful, and even the kids were in on it this time. Someone finally believed them? Maybe this woman wasn't so dense after all.
"But Mom, I—I swear I don't—"
"Oh my god, do you know something about Trunks that we—"
"Woman, explain this!"
"Hold your horses, geez!" Bulma rushed to butt in, waving her hands to quiet all the separate strings of yells bombarding her. To her surprise, they all—even Vegeta—quieted down instantly, each too driven by their interest in finding out what in the world was going on to protest giving her the floor.
Bulma took a deep breath and regarded her family seriously. "Think about it for a second and you'll figure it out too… We found the three of them in a time machine, didn't we?"
As soon as she brought up that quickly forgotten piece of information, a tense silence fell over the group. None of them seemed certain how to react—even Bra, who seemed to have a never-ending well of words to draw from, was absolutely frozen in surprise. It was Vegeta the Younger, in the end, who was the first to speak up.
"Wait… you found us in the time machine?"
Bulma turned to him and laughed lightly. "Found you? You three crashed in the middle of my lab!"
The siblings exchanged a look, one which didn't go unnoticed by the others in the room. They were all completely focused on the set of kids before them—kids who were their family, their family in another timeline. This was beyond surreal, and for one in particular even more than the others.
Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume exchanged nods of understanding, and Gohan looked back to Bulma. "Well—what year are we in, then?"
"893," Bulma supplied with a smile—one which quickly vanished from her face as Musume suddenly yelped, at the same time her brothers' eyes widened in something akin to horror.
"Oh no," the raven-haired girl fretted, shaking her head. "Oh no oh no-Papa and Mama are going to kill us!"
Papa.
That little, two-syllable word resonated in Trunks' head and he suddenly felt very dizzy. Daddy was him. Kami save him, if he could have fallen over and died right there, he would have. But no, that fate was apparently too kind for him, for just then something else that Musume had said stopped his train of thought and he couldn't stop himself from opening his suddenly very dry mouth to ask.
"Mama?"
Gohan was the one to look at him—Musume seemed to still be too annoyed over what he had said to her—and give him a look similar to the condescending one which he'd delivered Bulma earlier. "Yeah, like our mom?"
Trunks shook his head. "I mean—who? Who—is she? What's her name?"
"Mama?" Vegeta arched an eyebrow at him. "Mama's name is Pan."
Okay, so that was all he needed. Kami was done fucking with him, Trunks was sure, because now—now—there was no way he could be still standing. Not after that. Not after—shit, Pan? Of all the names that could have come out of that little boy's mouth, that was the last one he had been expecting. Pan was—that was impossible! Pan was one of his best friends, and it was wrong, he still thought of her like a kid sister anyway, like—it was like having children with Bra, lord save him, and—well, his father and Gohan were both dead, he supposed that wasn't a factor for his future self, but—
Pan?
Trunks' head was pounding, his heart pumping ten times too fast, but on the outside he was completely numb. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that his dad was holding him by his collar up against the bedroom wall and screaming something in his face, but that information was secondary to all of the other panic-driven thoughts racing through his head at the moment.
Pan?
Trunks was lucky that someone was paying attention to what was going on. Before Vegeta could slam his son's back into the wall again, Bulma intervened, horrified. "Vegeta!" she exclaimed. "Cut it out, this isn't the same Trunks we're talking about!"
"It doesn't make a damn bit of difference!" Vegeta responded loudly. The name Pan had apparently struck a chord within the Saiya-jin prince as well—a very sensitive one. With a look of disgust at Trunks, he let go of his shirt and allowed the dazed man to sink to the floor. "He's still my son and she's still Kakkarot's third class grand-spawn and I won't have it!"
Bra shook her head and stepped forward, putting a hand on her father's arm. A smile had begun to grow wider and wider on her face, ever since that little boy had uttered the name 'Pan.'
"No, Daddy, think about it!" she said, unable to mask the excitement in her voice. "If Trunks or I had kids with a human, they'd only be quarter-bloods, but these kids are just under half!" As his sister spoke, Trunks glared intently at the ground, unable to hide the light pink color tinting his cheeks. Even if this was a good point, possibly a point that could save his life where his father was concerned, he didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear any more about having kids.
A tense silence blanketed the room as Vegeta seemed to be contemplating his daughter's words, and Bulma arched an eyebrow in his direction. Somehow she thought that if it had been any of the rest of them saying this, he wouldn't have been half as apt to listen. But as Bra gave her father's arm an extra squeeze and innocent smile, Vegeta scoffed quietly under his breath and the whole room let out a sigh of relief.
"Whatever," he replied, and a second later the Saiya-jin prince was out the bedroom door.
Bra's triumphant smile told the tale, causing the uncertain faces of the kids to relax. "You so owe me," she said, pointing a finger at Trunks.
Trunks just groaned loudly and put his face in his hands. Bulma frowned worriedly in her son's direction, but a small voice distracted her.
"Is Papa okay?" Gohan asked, eliciting an even louder groan from the lavender-haired Saiya-jin. The kids flinched in unison and Bulma forced a smile as she turned her attention towards them, knowing a distraction was needed. Having them and Trunks in the same room was bound to end in disaster sooner or later.
"He'll be fine, don't worry about him!" she chirped, moving her body to block him from the children's view. "Now, let's figure out what to do about you three. It'll take me a while to fix the time machine, so while I'm working on that, let's make you comfortable here."
"What!?"
Trunks shot back into view as he stood up suddenly, regarding his mother's back with a mix of horror and incredulity. "You've got to be kidding me, they can't stay here!"
Bra narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, answering before Bulma could. "Then where do you propose they stay, genius?" she asked. "They're toddlers, for Kami's sake, and they're family. You should be the last one of us ready to put them out of the house."
Bulma bit her lip in order to halt a joking question regarding what kind of a father Trunks thought he was, and with good reason. She had a feeling that her son could take little more of this before he was driven insane. Instead, she adopted a placating tone and regarded him seriously. "Trunks, it's just until I fix the machine," she told him. "I'm sure they'll stay out of your way. We do own the largest home in the city, after all."
"I can take care of them!" Bra chimed in. "We can go shopping tomorrow, the four of us. I've got to drop by the rest of the stores I missed out on today anyway, and they can help me plan Pan's birthday party! I guess since they're her kids they probably know a lot about her."
Musume, who had been relatively silent since the incident with Trunks, suddenly perked up. "I wanna go, I wanna go!" she chirped enthusiastically. Gohan and Vegeta, sitting behind their sister, looked a great deal less enthusiastic about the idea, but said nothing. If it was a choice between shopping and having to stay there with this angry and harsh version of their father, going to the mall with a couple girls didn't sound so bad after all.
"Oh, darn it all!" Bulma suddenly cursed, drawing Bra and Musume's starry-eyed attention away from one another. "What are we going to do about Pan?"
Bra threw her hands up in front of her chest instantly. "Not it!"
Trunks narrowed his eyes at his sister. "What are you talking about?"
"Not it," she repeated. "I mean that if someone's going to tell her, there's no way you're getting me to do it."
"What, you think I'm doing it?" Trunks replied incredulously, realizing what Bra was getting at. Pan had to be told about this, before she found out in a worse way than he had—but to actually tell her... No, that wasn't something he was ready to think about, no matter who was doing the telling. Something like this could ruin their friendship, this would make things forever awkward between the two of them, even if neither of them would ever think of one another that way. It was a disaster waiting to happen. "Oh no, if you think I'm going to be the one to tell her about this, you've got another thing coming, Bra."
Bra's arms crossed stubbornly over her chest in that manner she'd inherited from their father and she arched an eyebrow at her older brother. "And what excuse do you have for that? They're your kids."
"For the last time, they're not my—" Trunks began, but with one glance at the three sitting on the bed, he stopped himself. He may not have wanted to claim them, but it would be a lie to say that Musume's hurt look from earlier hadn't gotten to him. He wasn't heartless. "—Whatever, it's just—well, why shouldn't you tell her? You're her best friend!"
"It's not my place!" Bra argued. "This is between the two of you, and I think she'd be hurt if you didn't care enough to tell her yourself!"
Trunks threw his hands up in the air. "It's not a question of not caring, Bra! This isn't exactly the easiest thing to bring up with someone who's—" He cut off suddenly and with a scoff, seemingly too worked up now to continue his train of thought. "—whatever, you know what—I'm out of here, I'm not going to deal with this—"
In just as much of a huff as Vegeta had left in earlier, Trunks now exited the room. Bulma, Bra, Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume all watched him leave and sat in silence as his footsteps could be heard storming down the hall. A door slammed against its hinges, causing the building to shake slightly, and Bulma winced.
Well, that had gone well.
The blue-haired scientist looked over at the three children, still sitting and watching the door through which Trunks had just disappeared. The disappointment on their faces couldn't be hidden, and Bulma felt her heart go out to them. It wasn't Trunks's fault that he was acting like he was—this was a lot to handle at once-but that certainly wasn't anything that these kids should have seen. Imagining her son of the future as opposed to her son now, the two pictures were a rather stark contrast. Mirai Trunks was probably a very doting and loving father—which meant that Trunks had it in him to be one too, but what he said was right. These were not his children, not in the traditional sense, and at this point he was neither prepared nor knew how to be that father that they had expected to be greeted by.
That didn't mean, however, that she couldn't be the grandma they'd never had. Her son may not have been ready to be a father, but Bulma had been ready for years to be the doting grandmother to his children, whenever he decided to finally settle down and have them.
Reaching out in a maternal manner, she touched Musume's shoulder. The little girl and her brothers turned around to see her, and Bra, seeing what she was doing, went to her mother's side with an equally comforting smile on her face.
"Come on, you three must be tired," she told them. "Let's find you something to sleep in and get you settled in for the night."
The siblings exchanged looks, then nodded. Well, at least someone here seemed to be on their side.
Capsule Corporation
( future timeline )
"I don't understand it; that old machine was in complete disrepair from what I could tell."
"It was supposed to have been," Trunks picked up, throwing a tired arm over his wife's shoulders.
The past twenty-four hours had taken a lot of energy out of both of the parents. It had been a battle for Pan to convince her spouse to help her to continue to look for their missing children and not completely give up hope after they had scoured Capsule Corp. top to bottom. Trunks had been difficult and extremely emotional the rest of the day following the android attack, and Pan wasn't sure how she'd been able to keep up her optimism and patience through it all apart from knowing that he needed her to. After all, Pan had been battling to keep her own emotions under control as well—and more than once she had almost lost her temper with him. Every time, she had to tell herself that she understood his pain and that getting frustrated would only make things worse.
It was so unbelievably hard, though. After losing Kae like they had, to think that they might have lost the rest of their children too…
Finally, after flying around the city until nightfall, they had resigned themselves that there was no more that they could do until morning. They had searched everywhere in the compound, everywhere around the city and in the surrounding woods, and still there was no sign of the youths. Not even a single weak ki signature to work off of.
Trunks's stormy mood had worsened enormously and Pan's flimsy optimism was being sullied by the second with discouragement. Knowing that they couldn't search forever, they had made their way wearily back to the lab… to find nothing there.
Pan hadn't yet decided if that was a good kind of nothing or a bad kind of nothing; all she knew was that the old time machine was gone. Completely and utterly vanished.
She was caught in a confusing limbo between relief and panic. On one hand, they knew that Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume were alive and to some extent what had happened to them. But in truth, they had no idea what had happened to them. The kids didn't know how to operate the machine, so they could be in absolutely any timeline. That was a lot of timelines. Just the thought of it was dizzying, and Pan found herself burying her head into Trunks's muscular chest with a groan at the reminder.
He tightened his arm around her shoulders in a reassuring squeeze. "I suppose the engines were still intact, even after so long," Trunks continued to muse. Neither of them wanted to imagine what a fight it was going to be to find their children again, but they had to start looking if they ever hoped to have a shot in hell at it. "That's probably the only thing, though."
Suddenly, Trunks felt his wife's muscles tense underneath his touch. He glanced curiously down at Pan, who had raised her head, looking as if a light bulb had just gone off somewhere.
"No," she said, slowly at first, and then, "No, it wasn't!" she exclaimed, quickly abandoning her place at his side. "That's right! The radio is still working!"
It took a moment for Pan's words to register in his head, but when they did, a disbelieving smile overtook Trunks' face. "Wait, are you serious? No, I—yes, I remember-I mean-Do you know what this means?"
He grabbed the raven-haired woman by the shoulders, his euphoria at this discovery taking hold of him. If Pan weren't a quarter-Saiya-jin, she might not have been able to stand the unbridled strength of his grip, care abandoned in the midst of his excitement. Ignoring his rhetorical question, however, Pan flashed him a tiny smile and pressed a finger to his lips before slipping out of his grasp.
"Not so fast," she told him as she made her way back to the wrap-around desk. "We've still got to take into account a number of things that could go wrong." Her fingers danced across the inlaid keyboard at a blinding speed as she spoke, her brow furrowed in concentration. "First of all, that thing is ancient. I've got no doubt that your mother's machines still have the ability to connect with it, but it might not be able to receive the transmission."
"I don't think that will be much of a problem," Trunks hurried to answer. "Even if video doesn't work, audio should work fine." Her went to his wife's side and braced his hand on the desk to lean over her, despite knowing how much she hated it when people hovered over her work. This was a special situation, though—he couldn't just stand back while she was potentially getting in touch with their lost children.
"That brings me to my second point," Pan replied distractedly. She gritted her teeth slightly, fighting the urge to push him away from her. He was just worried about them, she told herself, and tried to focus on what she was doing. "Depending upon how far back they've gone, it could be extremely difficult to reach them."
The Saiya-jin made a few final presses on the keyboard and then stopped, seeming to process something through her head. "If I'm calculating this right," Pan said after a moment, "with time and quality deterioration of the device, they have to have traveled back less time them you did." She was almost speaking to herself more than Trunks. "The furthest they could have traveled without losing radio contact is… about five years back into the old timeline."
Trunks nodded, and now he was doing the math in his head as well. "That's about right," he said, thoughtfully. "That would be around thirty-three years after I left. That means they can't have gone far—we should still be able to get a hold of them, shouldn't we?"
"That's just what I was testing," Pan replied with an affectionate grin. "If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that I already set the frequencies." Now she didn't hold back in pushing him out of her way. He could still hear just as well a couple of feet to the side. "What's the point of letting you hover if you don't even pay attention to what I'm doing?"
He smirked and apologized sheepishly. Pan laughed and turned back around in her chair and began to fiddle with several of the buttons and switches on the desk. Trunks couldn't tell from his wife's cool demeanor if she was feeling the same things, but his own anticipation grew with each click. If this didn't work, they were back to square one. If this didn't work, he didn't know what they were going to do.
A flash of white noise emanated from a speaker next to the keyboard, and both Saiya-jin visibly took a deep breath.
"Well, here goes nothing."
Capsule Corporation
( present timeline )
It was early in the morning when the chime of a doorbell rang off the walls inside the Briefs residence. Bulma, who had been working in the kitchen on the army-sized breakfast that was due a household of three Saiya-jin, wiped her hands on a dishcloth as she made her way though the living room, a confused expression on her face. Who in the world came to call at seven in the morning?
When she unlatched and swung open the door, she was greeted by the last face she had expected to see.
"Oh, Pan!" she chirped, attempting to not sound awkward but failing miserably. Bulma smiled nervously and quickly began searching her mind for possible excuses she could make that would deter the Son girl from whatever she was there for. However, before she could open her mouth to speak again, Pan let herself into the house with an offhanded greeting. That was what happened, she supposed, when you were as close as family, but—
-oh, ironic word choice now, wasn't that?
Shaking her head, Bulma quickly closed the door and chased after the quarter Saiya-jin at a brisk walk as she made her way towards the dining room. "Pan!" she called after her, causing the girl to stop and turn to look. "I didn't expect you here today, did Bra call you?"
"Oh, no, Trunks did," she answered, and Bulma felt her heart soar at the words. Did that mean that Trunks was actually taking this better than he had put on? Was he going to tell her already and get it over with?
"That's good!" the scientist exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
Pan shot Bulma a reproachful look, but seemed to shake it off quickly. "Yeah, we've been planning to spar since last week." Pan had been smiling as she spoke, but it turned to a confused frown quickly. "Uh, are you okay? Bulma?"
She was referring to Bulma's expression, which had just dropped into something akin to dread. The scientist stared blankly at the young woman in front of her, even as Pan waved a hand in front of the older woman's face. After a few moments, she shrugged and continued her journey into the dining room. "Alright, well, tell me when he's—Oh, Trunks, hey!"
Bulma seemed to snap out of her thoughts—all along the lines of 'terrible, terrible' and 'impending disaster'-and rushed after the Saiya-jin's quickly retreating form. She was too late. Hearing Pan's greeting to Trunks, Bulma smacked a hand to her forehead and cringed, and suddenly her walk into the dining room seemed much less frantic.
When she finally made it inside, she met the sight of Vegeta sitting impatiently at the table, Bra watching Pan with a sympathetic look, and Pan watching the stairs in utter confusion. It was no wild guess to assume where her cowardly son had gone.
Bulma sighed, and opened her mouth to make up some excuse, but Vegeta spoke up first.
"What are you standing there staring at the girl for, woman? Hurry up with the food already!" he demanded. "You humans are excruciatingly slow when you wish to be!"
The scientist shot a glare at her husband, but truthfully was happy for any excuse to dismiss Trunks' behavior. "Coming right up, Your Highness," she answered as she returned to the kitchen, sarcasm dripping from her speech.
The raven-haired Saiya-jin spun around towards Bra with a glare etched on her features. "What the hell did I do?" she asked.
Bra did her best to shrug noncommittally. "Who knows? He's probably just being moody."
Pan took one last look at the stairs and sighed before sliding into the seat Trunks had vacated. "Well, looks like I won't be getting any exercise today, then," she said. "But if he's going to be like that, then I'm not leaving before I eat his breakfast."
Capsule Corporation – Bulma's Lab
( present timeline )
Musume bit her lip nervously, staying as far away as she could from the two monkeys she called her brothers. They shouldn't have been in there, and all three of them knew it. Their new grandma had said they shouldn't mess around in her lab, and Musume just knew she was going to catch them. As she observed Vegeta and Gohan's fiddling with the robots and gadgets that filled the room, the eldest Briefs child was thinking up excuses she could give Grandma Bulma when that inevitable time came.
The lab, however, had an undeniable allure to it. Their mother hadn't allowed them to fool around in the one in the future either, and there just seemed to be so much cool stuff laying around. A lot of it, they had noticed, was similar if not identical to what was here—previous models, probably, but it didn't take the latest technological advancement to entertain three kids who had spent all of their short lives in the countryside.
"This is great, look at this!" Gohan exclaimed. With his small hand, he held up a round, silver device with a plate of green glass on the front. Recognizing it immediately, Vegeta dropped the capsules he had been sorting through and rushed over to see it. Even Musume's worries were, for the moment, suppressed by her curiosity.
"That's that dragonball thing Mama and Papa keep at the house, isn't it?" Musume observed, moving closer.
Vegeta grabbed it from his brother and tapped the glass with his index finger. "It's gotta be really old if it's here in this time!" With his free hand, the toddler began to count on his fingers, but quickly lost track and gave up the effort. "Um.. how far did we come back again?"
"I dunno," Gohan replied with a shrug, taking the radar back and placing it back on the desk. "I just know that we're not supposed to be here."
All three of them fell silent for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. What if they had messed something up by coming back here? What if their parents couldn't find out where they were and they never got back? Were they ever going to see them again, or were they stuck in this timeline forever? What did they do if they were? What if their daddy in this timeline decided he didn't want anything to do with them and-
Suddenly, Musume's head shot up and towards the worn time machine across the lab. This sudden movement shook Vegeta and Gohan out of their thoughts, and Gohan frowned at his sister.
"You alright, Musu?"
"Ssh!" she hushed them, putting a finger to her lips. "I think there's someone in here with us!"
In an instant, the two boys were on their guard, reaching out with their senses to find the ki of an intruder, just like their father had taught them. However, it wasn't an energy signature that they detected—rather, a sound. After a moment, Vegeta's brow furrowed in confusion.
"I don't think it's a someone," he said slowly, muscles relaxing slightly. Curiosity piqued, the three walked in separate directions to search for the source of the sound. It was sibilant and soft, like the white noise on a television. With the aid of sensitive Saiya-jin ears, they could also pick up something else mixed in with it—a distinctly female voice, struggling to break through the storm of static.
"Guys, it's coming from the time machine, I think!" Gohan exclaimed after a second, and the three gathered quickly over by the dingy contraption. Cautiously, they began to pile themselves into the one tiny seat; despite being small, it was a fight to fit into such a tight space. When they weren't running for their lives from an android, the room seemed a great deal more limited.
"Move over, Sis! Your foot is jabbing my leg!"
"It's not my fault that you decided that you had to climb in with us!"
"This should be a no-girls-allowed zone. You're too whiny!"
"Me, whiny? I'm not the one crying about my leg, am I, Vege—"
"Shush already!" Gohan scolded, waving a hand to quiet the two. "I'm starting to hear the voice better!"
Sure enough, the voice from before was beginning to come through, bits and pieces of words emanating from the holed box in front of them. For a second, too, the voice almost sounded a bit like…
"Mama!" Musume shouted out, and all of them, wide-eyed, gaped at the box from which Pan was speaking. In just a few seconds more, they could hear her perfectly, save for the occasional interference, and grins broke out onto all of their faces.
"Oh, Kami—I'm so glad to hear your voice, Musume!" Pan exclaimed, taking little effort to hide the pure relief she was feeling.
Suddenly, Vegeta lurched himself forward and grabbed at the box with his two small hands, eyes stinging at the sides. "Mama! Where are you? The box monster ate you! Gohan," he turned to his brother and tearfully wailed, "I think…I think maybe, I think the time machine ate Mama! Do something!"
He grabbed Gohan by the shoulders, who only rolled his eyes and pried his twin off of him. "And maybe you're an idiot," he said. "Calm down already, Vegeta. It's just a radio transmission, stupid. She's talking to us from our time."
With a sigh of relief, Vegeta took a deep breath to calm himself. However, it was only a split second before all three of the children were shaken as another voice resonated throughout the lab. They spun around in their seat—as well as they could, given the lack of space—, hearts racing at the sight of the person standing in the doorway.
"What are you kids doing in here?"
It was Bulma, looking like she was caught between whether to be angry or confused. Oh, the woes of being a grandparent. "I thought that I told you three—"
"Gramma, quick, come here!" Gohan cut her off, being the first to recover. He jumped from the machine and grabbed a surprised Bulma by the hand, dragging her behind him towards his siblings. "Gramma, it's Mama and Daddy; they're talking to us through the time machine!"
Bulma blinked, allowing herself to be pulled along towards the machine, even lifted up into the air and onto its edge by the tiny boy. "What are you going on ab-" she began to ask before being cut short once again, this time by a rustling sound from a speaker on the control panel. A few short seconds later, she heard a voice that she thought she had heard the last of nearly thirty four years ago.
"Hey, Mom."
A/N: Wow, it's been a long time, hasn't it, guys? :) Well, I'm still here! I didn't mean to take nearly a year to update this and I'm so sorry it did take this long. I was working on rewriting this chapter last summer, actually, and I got halfway through and then lost the file. :( So I got pretty discouraged and stopped writing, but recently I've found the willpower to come back to this. I do want to finish this story, because finishing a multi-chapter fanfic like this is a goal of mine, so I hope you will all keep supporting me! Part of the reason I came back to this chapter is because I've gotten so many reviews since stopping, so keep it up! Reviews really do make me want to write more!
REVIEWER RESPONSES:
Panpita; Thank you so much! Well, I didn't update 'soon', but I did update. That's something, isn't it? Haha.
KAI/THE/RAG/DOLL; As you'll see in later chapters (and a little in this one), I'm trying to keep away from portraying Trunks as a player. I do believe that with his position and wealth he's had his fair share of women, but I don't see him as a playboy who runs around with different girls every night. Thank you for continuing to review!
Lady Blue Knight; Omg what a nice review! Thank you so much! Your review did compel me a lot, please keep reviewing! :)
Graelyn-chan; Haha! I find myself having to wipe my mind of the old RPG when I'm writing this, as well. Things changed between the RPG, the first version of this, and this version x_x I hope it makes it all work better, though! Thanks for the review :)
Pan-chan34; Thanks so much, keep reading and reviewing!
Apri-chan; Haha what a coincidence! April babies for the win! :D I'm glad you like the story, hopefully I won't disappoint you in the coming chapters!
AnimeFreak-TrunksPan-Lover4evr; Phew, what a long name! ;) In a way you are correct. Kaeida was the infant in the first version, and she had a twin sister who was the baby that died at the hands of the androids. Kaeida was completely unnecessary as a character, so I decided to nix her twin entirely and make Kaeida the dead baby. That way, there's still the motivation to have Trunks and Pan going back in time, and I don't have an extra character that serves no purpose to the story. Streamlining, ahoy! :D
McChubbin; OMG that's so cool! I can't believe someone remembered something I wrote ^/^ I'm so glad you found this one, because this is about 98237492384729348 times better than the old version you read so long ago.
Piccolo is green; Look, I'm updating! :D Thanks for the review, it's reviews like yours that are written a long time after the last update that remind me that this story is still here and people want to see it finished (as do I, but I've got a busy life and sometimes forget :( ) Keep reviewing!
Akerenit; I really appreciate that you are reading my story even though English is not your first language. It must be so hard! o_o Thank you for the review, keep reading! :)