He's a beast, he's a dog, he's a motherfuckin' problem.

"Out, now." Trunks ordered as he threw the hatch open. Sarah and Steven leapt lightly to the steel floor, and Trunks hit the capsulation button before his feet even touched the ground. "Follow Vegeta." Trunks scooped the tiny capsule off of the barren expanse of steel and stalked after Zarbon and Dodoria. Vegeta's blood left splatters on the floor, and the androids were giving him a wide berth. He didn't realize his lips had peeled back from his teeth in a feral snarl, that he was growling low in his throat, or that his aura was starting to snap around him.

The trail of blood led to the center of the ship, right up to a door that didn't hiss open automatically when Trunks stopped and glared at it.

"Open this door before I blast a hole in it." Trunks ordered, and Sarah poked tentatively at the control panel next to the door. The panel beeped at her for several minutes as she pressed buttons frantically, shooting Trunks nervous glances. He ignored her efforts, continuing to glare at the door, breathing deeply.

"Trunks, I don't know how to get it to open, I'm sorry," she cringed, but all he did was place his hands on the door and lean. The metal dented, buckled, and started to curl into the room beyond. Trunks took a step forward, and the metal bent against its will. Trunks pushed it open like a set of double doors, and stepped through the gap into the next room.

Steven and Sarah couldn't see past him, but the visceral snarl made them jump back. Trunks stalked slowly towards the center of the room, and the twins crowded in through the wrecked door; Trunks reached over his father's prone body, grabbed Freeza by the horns, and wrenched the lizards head off. The rest of the reptilian body slumped down onto the Sayajin Prince; Trunks toed it away hard enough to send it flying into the wall. There was a mewling sound from the bed at the far end of the room, and Trunks' gasp was audible in the ringing silence.

Bulma sat up on the bed, one side of her face swollen and purple, blood and bruises covering her naked body; she wobbled onto her feet, and the blood trickling down her thighs was visible before she crumpled.

"Steven, wrap her up in a sheet and carry her. Sarah, take Vegeta. And you two," Trunks whirled on Zarbon and Dodoria, already cowering against the wall. Trunks shot a ki blast that took out Dodoria and the chunk of wall behind him, and then pinned Zarbon to the wall with one hand against his throat. "You've got thirty seconds to get us off this ship and away from here, or you're going to die by inches."

Trunks let him go, and stalked after the green-haired man as Zarbon ran for a control panel in the wall by the bed. A chunk of the wall slid open, and Zarbon darted through it, still choking and gasping. Trunks followed just a step behind as they went down a long, dark, narrow corridor, into a private docking bay. Zarbon keyed in the commands to the small ship sitting alone in the bay, and stood back for Trunks to board. He shoved Zarbon ahead of him, twisting the man's arm behind his back as they marched into the ship.

"Close it up, get it out of this shit hole, and get them into regeneration tanks." Trunks dogged every step Zarbon took, and the man scrambled to comply, shaking badly. When they finally stood back from the tanks, full of green slime and floating bodies, Trunks crouched down and covered his mouth with his hand. Sarah reached out and brushed his hair out of his eyes, and he caught her hand and held it. Steven came close, resting one hand on his shoulder; Trunks took a few shaky breaths, then turned back to Zarbon.

"Explain."

"Um…you came through the door, and, um…"

Trunks rushed him, slammed him against the wall, pinning him with one hand around his throat.

"What happened to them." Zarbon gagged, and started turning yellow. Trunks let him go, and Zarbon slid to the floor, coughing and gasping. "You're pretty high on my shit list, green bean. In fact, you're right under Freeza, but I cant kill that rapist motherfucker twice, now can I?"

"Actually," Sarah started.

"Not now. But I can break every single bone in your body, slowly, or you can tell me what Freeza wanted with these two." Zarbon focused large yellow eyes on him, scared and swallowing hard.

"The Ginyu Force brought her back from one of the planets they purged. It was supposed to be a joke, since she'd looked so ugly. Just Ginyu trying to get back at Vegeta for something stupid or other, they've been feuding since the Monkey was five years old, but he um, he cleaned her up, and no one said anything for a while because it's no big deal for a soldier to keep a pet, you know? Except Vegeta turned Freeza down for her, and well…Freeza wasn't a good person to say no to. So Freeza sent Vegeta off to his brother Kooler, about a month ago, and he'd just gotten back, and Dodoria and I had orders to take Vegeta straight to Freeza the moment he got back. Freeza's been toying with her when he remembers. I guess Kooler must have sent word that he was sending back the Monkey, or else Freeza might have forgotten about her. I swear, I don't know anything more, I just put her in the regen tanks when she was close to croaking." Zarbon tried to huddle into the steel wall behind him, cowering back as Trunks crouched down in front of him. His blue eyes burned.

"You know what I think, green bean?" Trunks grinned, and if it had been another time and place, Zarbon would have known to compare the son to the father. "I think you're a little bitch, too scared to lie and too good at kissing ass to try. Make whatever passes for dinner out here on this hunk of junk, and have it done by the time they get out," Trunks jerked a thumb at the regen tanks, then stood and backed away. "You two, come with me. Lets find a place to lie down for a while." Trunks left the medical dock, and wandered down the corridors, opening doors until he found a bed that could hold three in a pinch.

He flopped down on his back, and Sarah curled up between him and the wall; Steven keyed the door closed, but as he stepped closer to the bed, his face suddenly went blank. Trunks snapped his attention to the android as the smaller man simply stared, expressionless, at the bed and its occupants.

"Steven. Come to bed." Trunks ordered, watching the delicate face contort slowly into a pained look. Steven crumpled, clutching at his long dark hair, and started to scream. Trunks was off the bed and wrapping his arms around the android before Sarah even had a chance to react. He held on until the screaming became sobbing, until the sobbing became mere hiccups.

"I remember," Seventeen whispered into the denim of Trunks' jacket, clutching at the material desperately. "I remember everything, Trunks, I'm sorry, so sorry," and the sobbing started up again. Trunks held the smaller body tighter, stroked the dark hair; when the android pulled back and looked him in the eye, Trunks kissed the miserable line of his mouth for a long, hard moment. Of all the foolish things he'd done in his life, Trunks decided that he regretted this one the least.

Trunks pulled him onto the bed, and lay so that the android was wedged between his sister and Trunks. They'd just barely fallen asleep when there was a soft knocking at the door; Trunks slipped out of the bed as gently as he could, and stepped outside the room to speak to Zarbon.

The green man was calmer now, and bowed low as Trunks folded his arms across his chest.

"You don't have to do that," Trunks felt the guilt well up; Zarbon wasn't directly responsible for any of his problems right now, and taking his anger out on him had been vaguely wrong. "I don't think I actually know your name."

"Zarbon, my lord. Dinner is ready to be served in the long galley, and Vegeta is about to come out of the regen tank. The girl will be in there for another three hours."

"Thanks, Zarbon." Trunks nodded and headed to the medical bay, ignoring the shocked look on the green man's face.

Trunks made it just in time to hand his father a towel as he stepped out of the tank; now that his vision wasn't clouded by a red haze, he could see that Vegeta was barely seventeen. Bulma's face still looked too swollen to tell, but she was still pretty young.

"You one of Freeza's new lackies?" Vegeta took the towel and started wiping at his face first.

"No. Freeza's dead."

Vegeta looked up, eyes wide. "I thought it was just a dream." The black eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You think they cant track this ship, idiot? Its Freeza's personal cruise ship,"

"It'll get the job done for now. Zarbon made dinner. Lets go." Trunks walked away; Vegeta would find his way eventually.

Zarbon had followed him to the medical bay, and led the way now to the long galley. The room turned out to contain only a long table and chairs, with purple fabric draped all over the place. One end was set for four, with a huge beast of some kind as the main course. Trunks sat in one of the normal chairs, instead of the high-backed monstrosity that Freeza obviously favored.

"Sit down and eat, Zarbon," Trunks waved the green-haired man closer, and waited until Vegeta had come in wearing just a body suit to serve himself.

The meal was quiet, Zarbon and Vegeta watchful, and Trunks just trying to not think about anything other than fulfilling one of his body's basic requirements. They all turned as Sarah came into the room, looking bleary-eyed and still half-asleep.

"You okay, honey?" Trunks wiped the grease off of his mouth as he stood up, watching the blonde carefully.

"Yeah. I just wondered where you'd gone." She yawned hard, then blinked owlishly. "He's still sleeping. Is that roast any good?"

"Yeah, Zarbon made it. Come eat, I'll go check on him." Trunks kissed the crown of her hairline as he walked past her, and brushed a thumb across her cheek as she looked up at him with wide china-blue eyes. "Check on Bulma when you're done, okay?" she nodded, and he went past her, back to the room he'd left Seventeen in.

The android snapped awake as the doors hissed open, bolting upright on the bed. Bleary and disoriented, he watched as Trunks came toward him slowly, and let the purple-haired man pin him to the bed with the length of his body.

"How you doing, scrap heap?" Trunks hadn't realized that in the span of six short months, the term 'scrap heap' had gone from an attempt at derogatory, to affectionate. Somehow, Seventeen had. He kissed the miserable little mouth again, this time until a questing tongue prodded and hips rocked.

Trunks had slept with few women and never another male before; there was still the same thrill of a pale body arching under his, and the little sounds the individual made, that made him want to push harder and deeper. The new thrill was in the fact that he could; as hard as he wanted to, as deep as he needed to. Just the feel of another body stiffening in his arms with orgasm was enough to bring Trunks off. The fact that he might actually be in love with the person he was fucking was an entirely new sensation.

Trunks, even when he'd been young and yearning for his father's acceptance, hated to cuddle or linger; this time, he did, and enjoyed it. It paid off as Seventeen continued to arch and squirm, despite being spent. There was no gratification other than the need for familiar, comforting company, and as the pale body continued to writhe, Trunks wondered what he'd been missing out on his entire life. Since it had come in two's though, he didn't think too hard about it. Fate was a sick fuck, to force him to hate, and then to love, the two people who'd affected his life the most.

He pushed Seventeen into the shower ahead of him, and discovered the lazy satisfaction that comes from bathing a partner already well-fucked. Hands and soap and long expanses of smooth skin aside, Trunks stepped out of the shower first and dried off. As he stepped back into the bedroom to collect his scattered clothes, Sarah stepped in.

She looked like she knew. Just the way she moved toward him, innocently predatorial; all of it in the sway of her hips and the slow, steady walk. She got close, holding eye contact, and Trunks pulled her in for a rough kiss.

Loving both of them would be one thing; acting on it was another. It was incredibly Sayajin of him to take the things he wanted most and the consequences be damned. Even as he had her pulled tight against him, one hand on her ass and holding her fast to his groin while the other cradled her neck as he kissed her as hard as he felt like, Seventeen walked casually out of the bathroom and donned his clothes as if nothing in the world were wrong.

That should have been the first hint that things were going to be off for the foreseeable future.

Seventeen left, the door hissing shut behind him as he pulled his shirt over his head.

Trunks steered and tilted until he had the blonde android pinned underneath him; making love to her was more intimate, face to face, and harder in that he couldn't know for sure if she'd already come. She squirmed and panted prettily, though, and wedged a hand down between them just before she arched, stiffened, and screamed.

His hair was still wet, and tangled beyond belief, but he steered them into the shower again. The same wonderful feeling of explorations slicked with soap, and the lazy satisfaction of a job well done; the same tugging at his heart strings.

He knew, as he watched her put her clothes back on, that he'd never be able to let either of them go.

He steeled himself, though, and went with Sarah to pull his mother out of the regen tank.

Trunks had already been feeling more emotional than usual; the sight of his sixteen-year-old mother stepping out of the regen tank, and rushing into his father's arms, was the icing on the cake. A year in a day with his father had taught him to be stoic; the teenage Vegeta hadn't yet learned to conceal his feelings. Bulma kissed and hugged him, and the Sayajin Prince wrapped arms and tail around her as if he had every intention of never letting her go.

Trunks took one look at the shocked, bitter jealousy on Zarbon's face, and wondered if leaving his teenage parents alone was worth the risk. Zarbon was afraid of the Trunks, not the Sayajin Prince, and certainly not the weak human female he'd mated with.

That night, he could hear his parents going at it; pinned as he was underneath two other bodies, though, he didn't lose too much sleep over it.

Zarbon had retired to a separate room, on the other side of the ship as Bulma, Vegeta, Trunks, and the androids. It was just off of the kitchen, and little more than a bunk and sink, but he seemed like he knew how to do little else other than withdraw and hide.

Trunks made a point to corner him in the kitchen the next morning.

"So what's the deal, Zarbon?" Trunks bit into a crunchy piece of blue fruit about the size of an apple. "You look like you don't know how to do anything other than cater to someone else's needs. Look at you, already up and making breakfast. Trying to make sure I wont change my mind and kill you?"

Zarbon turned and looked at him for a long moment, the weighing of options and answers in his head obvious in his yellow eyes. Blunt honesty won out, only because it was the tactic Trunks had chosen to attack with.

"Basically. You haven't shown me any favor, you'll probably kill me as soon as you don't need me, and you sure as hell don't want to fuck me. So what else is there to do in order to be considered valuable?" Zarbon waved the skillet expansively. "I know what kind of food is already stocked and how to cook it. How else to do you expect me to stay alive?"

Trunks chewed thoughtfully for a long moment, taking Zarbon in.

"I owe you an apology. You had nothing to do with, or at least no way to prevent, the way Vegeta and Bulma were treated. I was angry the other day, and I had no right to take it out on you."

The pan Zarbon had been holding clattered noisily to the floor. The yellow eyes were wide, and the generous mouth lax. The braided man stared for a long moment, transfixed.

"That's got to be the first time anyone has ever apologized to me," Zarbon looked like he was about to cry; Trunks panicked and took the three steps necessary to close the distance between them and envelope the green-haired man in a one-armed hug.

Zarbon crumbled into him and cried for so long that Vegeta and Bulma came to the kitchen doorway and paused awkwardly. Trunks pulled away, and Zarbon caught sight of them; he turned and fled through the other door leading into the kitchen, one hand held up to shield his face.

"What the hell?" Vegeta looked at Trunks, eyes wide with the question.

"It doesn't concern you. Just help me find some eggs, I don't know how to cook anything else." Trunks scooped up the pan from the floor, and looked carefully at the ingredients Zarbon had pulled out and left on the counter. "I don't even know what this stuff is."

"Morning everyone!" Sarah chirruped as she came into the room. "Sounded like you had a good night, Bulma!" she winked suggestively, bumped hips with the girl playfully. Bulma blushed and darted behind Vegeta, blue eyes wide and scared.

"Sarah, can you make breakfast?" The pleading note in Trunks' voice was minimal, but the blonde still laughed at him.

"I can try. Where's Zarbon? He seemed pretty nice at dinner last night. Did you say sorry for being mean the other day?" Sarah prattled on, not really expecting an answer, as she rummaged through the kitchen and assembled ingredients on the counters. "You know, its really weird that Vegeta is so young in this dimension, I mean, when you time travel aren't you supposed to go back to when your parents were the same age as you? Hand me that pan, please. Are you nice in this timeline, Vegeta? You were pretty mean in the last one, but you were nice in that first one we landed in. It was kind of cool, the way all the Sayajins and humans got along. Hey, bro!"

Seventeen slid into the kitchen, and made a straight line to Trunks. He leaned against the counter without touching Trunks, eyes downcast and arms folded. Trunks eyed him thoughtfully as Sarah continued to putter around the kitchen.

"I'm really glad you're okay, Bulma, you looked pretty bad yesterday. I think this machine makes coffee, what do you think?" Sarah held the machine in question out, and Bulma finally stepped forward and examined it.

"If it doesn't, I can fix that. Let me see." Bulma took the machine and tinkered with it for several minutes as Sarah started frying meat in the pan she'd set on the stove.

"Zarbon said Earth was purged by the Ginyu Force. What does that mean?" Sarah asked the question innocently, and because she was standing at the stove, she didn't see Bulma freeze.

"It means Captain Ginyu and his team of idiots went down to Earth and killed or captured every living sentient being on the surface of the planet, so that Freeza could sell it to the highest bidder." Vegeta drawled, picking up a piece of fruit. "I'm not buying that shit about Sayajins and humans getting along. Sayajin don't get along with anyone, not even each other."

"We get along," Bulma didn't look up from the machine she was tinkering with.

"Freeza created extenuating circumstances." Vegeta bit into the fruit, avoiding looking at Bulma as well.

"Its pretty simple, actually," Trunks was still watching the dark-haired android, but turned to look at his father as he spoke. "There are thousands of timelines, thousands of different dimensions, so that everything that could happen, has a place to happen in. The fact that we're here at all is going to severely alter this timeline, but there's a timeline that will be exactly like this in every way, up until the point when we came here, and things will happen there the way they should have happened. The thing, though," Trunks glanced at Bulma, still tinkering with the machine, "Is that we've been to some dimensions where people made different choices, and became different people because of those choices and the consequences they had to deal with. There's a world where your father packed you up and ran, rather than let Freeza have you. He watched Vegetasie be destroyed, and when he landed on Earth, he made the choice to let you be who you wanted to be, rather than build up a new empire for you to rule. Because of those two choices, he's a vastly different person than he ever could be in any other dimension."

"Did we meet there? In that dimension?" Bulma asked, finally looking up from the machine.

"Yeah. Married with kids, the whole shebang." Trunks smiled at her, gently, but it didn't help; she rushed out of the room in tears.

"You shouldn't have told her that," Vegeta tossed the core of the fruit away, "I don't think either of us needed to know that this is the dimension where everything went wrong."

"Things can still turn out okay. Fate's a sick fuck that way. Just look at these two." Trunks gestured to the androids. "They were turned into ruthless killing machines and razed Earth for nearly twenty years before I was strong enough to kill them, and now that they've regenerated without their programming, they're just regular human beings again."

"You were still pretty mean the first couple of weeks," Sarah dumped the cooked meat onto a serving platter, then started cracking large blue eggs into the pan. "I mean, it was pretty hard, waking up and finding out we were worse than Hitler, and you just dragged us all over the place, making us look at all the things we'd done, and leaving flowers on the graves of people we'd killed. It was like we were making up for sins we hadn't even committed, except that it kind of made sense. Even if we didn't remember destroying all those cities, they still needed to be rebuilt, and someone has to do all that work. So why not us, right? We'd done the damage, so we might as well try to fix what we can. Its not like we can just go around saying sorry; there's no apology in the world big enough or heartfelt enough to be genuine." Sarah poked at the eggs in the pan with a spatula, smiling down at the food.

"It got a lot easier once you started being nicer." Seventeen finally joined the conversation, still looking down at the ground. "You're rough around the edges, and you're not very good at dealing with your feelings, but you go above and beyond to help people."

"Breakfast is ready!" Sarah chirruped.

"I'll go get Bulma," Trunks turned away from the fact that Seventeen, all memories in tact and fully functional, had basically said the three little words.

He disappeared down the steel corridor, following Bulma's ki more than anything else. He paused at the right door long enough for it to slide open, stepping into the gloom.

"Oh!" She started swiping at her face, futilely. "I didn't think that…well…" she tried to smile.

"You aren't fooling anyone," Trunks didn't know if he was supposed to feel bad because she was his mother, or because she was a sixteen year old girl who'd been through repeated rape and torture.

"Yeah, well, fuck off, then!" the venom in her voice was deep enough and dark enough to cut. "Does it look like I'm trying to throw a pity party here?"

Trunks sighed and went for broke.

"I don't know what you're looking for, Mom, and considering the fact that you're in love with my father, and have been in every dimension I've ever been to, I don't think I'll ever understand that decision." Trunks hooked his thumbs in his jeans and leaned on the doorframe. "I know why I love him, as a son. But you? Dad is the one thing I don't get about you. Why him; why Vegeta?"

"I thought that if I gave my virginity to him, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as if someone took if from me, later. He was the first person I met, after the Ginyu Force purged Earth." Bulma hiccupped, and Trunks couldn't help moving to the edge of the bed. "If having a man inside of you isn't love, the first time, I don't know what is. Really, because besides Freeza, Vegeta is the only person who's been inside of me." She waivered for a moment, and Trunks reached out an arm to her that she curled into. "I must have been so naive, hoping he'd come rescue me. I know he'd do anything in his power for me, but lets face it; there's no way he could have stood up to Freeza. And that slimy bastard would do anything he could to hurt Vegeta. Absolutely anything." She hiccupped again, and this time Trunks held onto her as tightly as he dared. "Its like loving him is my destiny. Like I'm the only person in the universe who really gets him, deep down where it really matters."

"Maybe. I sure as hell don't know shit about him." Trunks thought about this while his mother sniffled. "Well, I know how to tell him I respect him. But telling him I love him…I might have been able to do that, three years ago. But now that I've had a chance to get to know at least one version of him, I don't know. Vegeta is the one thing in both our lives that doesn't make a damn bit of sense."

Bulma laughed bitterly.

"Breakfast is ready, by the way. I gotta go get Zarbon. You'll be okay?" Trunks released his mother and walked to the door, watching her over his shoulder.

"Yeah, I'll be okay."

He smirked, and took the back corridors across the ship to the room Zarbon had holed up in.

He knocked on the door, before it had a chance to hiss open. Zarbon was combing his wet green hair out in front of a dingy mirror, and nearly plastered himself against the wall as Trunks came through into the room.

"Hey. Breakfast is ready, if you want any." Trunks stared at the green-haired man for a long time, carefully cataloguing the reaction against all the others. "You know, I forgot to ask where we're headed. You just typed in a destination, and even if I looked at it right now, I wouldn't know where we're going." Trunks waited, and stared, until Zarbon finally cracked.

"We're going to a little back water planet, out in the Nebula system. Its pretty similar to my homeworld, actually-"

"Liar." Trunks cocked his head. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want the truth."

Zarbon swallowed hard.

"I set the course to directly intersect Kooler's army."

"Ah." Trunks nodded. "You might want to go change that after you eat. I'm leaving in a few hours, and somehow, I doubt you'll want to present yourself to Kooler with only the news of his brother's death."

Trunks didn't even wait for the green-haired man to respond. He just backed out of the room and went back to the kitchen, where he sat between his androids and ate breakfast. He watched the surreptitious way his teenage parents eyed each other, and wondered if his real parents, from his own timeline, had watched each other like ravenous wolves.

When he'd eaten, he pushed the huge wooden table out of the way in the long galley, decapsulated the time machine, and climbed in with the two androids. He let them wave before he set the dials, and had them cease all movement before he pushed the button.

As his hand hovered over the button, Sarah gave a pained moan and clutched her head, fingeres tightening in her hair as if she were trying to pull it out. Trunks wrapped both arms around her and pulled her firmly against his chest; her legs drew up as she started to scream, knocking first into dials and then into Seventeen, who's elbow hit the button as he jerked in the confined space.

The blue glow shot up around them, and Trunks cursed silently as Eighteen screamed at the top of her lungs. Trunks didn't even glance around at the world he'd been dropped into; just popped the hatch and leapt out, trying to keep the android pinned to his chest as she continued to scream and writhe.

When the screaming had died down to mere sobbing, Trunks looked up; he stared down the wrong end of his own sword, past the familiar denim jacket, and into his own face.


A/N; Sorry this took longer than usual, but this was the chapter that just wouldn't end. I'm also trying to get a job and change my major, so its not like I've had a lot of time on my hands this week. Hopefully some holes in previous chapters explained, and much love to Lil Wayne for the lyrics. We'll see where this next chapter goes, I haven't even outlined it yet.