It's not fair.
A certain four year old Saiyan princess, thought. Eyes trained to the sky and on the preteens soaring above. Her brother and Goten could have left ages ago but decidedly stayed only just enough out of reach, teasing with the flaunted fact she could not follow and a feigned obliviousness to her presence below.
So there she sat wondering if she would receive the same treatment, if she were born a boy? She couldn't even bring herself to act like it, not genuinely much like Pan attempted to, she just wasn't wired that way. On a good day she could easily manipulate Goten into taking pity on her but Trunks had been able to convince the younger of the two, he was much too cool to let her tag along that day.
The breeze rushed against their clothes as they whooped and hollered, seemingly without a care as if being a part of the upper atmosphere was the most natural thing in the world. Even at 4 years old she was aware that what others considered 'extraordinary' were nothing but things her family did on a daily basis without as much as a passing thought. She just seemed to be the only one left out.
Nothing ever came to her as easy as fighting did for their father or science to their mother. It was well known that Mommy was Smart. Daddy was strong. So what did that leave her? A little of both but not near enough to impress anyone. The scale tipped towards her mother if anything and not just in terms of appearance but that was nothing unexpected from a Brief child. Trunks on the other hand was a perfect mix of the two.
She was almost certain at that age, her brother was just born knowing how to do everything. He never seemed to struggle with anything he did and when their father looked at Trunks, his eyes shone with pride and while they reflected nothing but adoration for the young girl, she'd never seen him look at her that way.
In fact even she...
A bird fluttered from the trees startled by the two half Saiyans rowdiness, breaking her train of thought and she watched it glide with unyielding confidence through the sky towards its new destination. She envied the assuredness of its path and ability to roam on a whim with little to no complex feelings. After all a bird was just a bird. She could only dream of that kind of freedom as her gaze drifted back to the person she so desperately wished she could relate to.
...
They'd been in space for less than 24 hours and Bulla had scoured the entire ship for any basic necessities but came up short when all she kept finding was some type of weird cargo, labeled in a language she didn't know.
Trunks and Gotten had thankfully left her alone. Obviously she wasn't on good terms with either at the moment but the question of their current situation weighed heavily on her mind. The last thing she wanted to do was swallow her pride to ask but the desire to know was eating at her. Only hours ago had she been so grateful for the presence of the two she now wished could be as far away from her as possible. It felt too much like when she had been younger trying to fit between the two of them, vulnerable and outnumbered.
She hadn't voluntarily been on the receiving end of the isolation from the duo's tight friendship in a long time, not since she'd decided she was much too good to be begging for the attention of a pair of stupid, barbaric half Saiyans only concerned with what skirt to chase next. She was Bulla Briefs, a smart, beautiful, young independent woman. They were not worth her time or the constant blow their rebuffs took on her self esteem. That was something she still firmly believed and wasn't too thrilled at being forced on the outside of their impenetrable alliance, once more.
She sauntered into the entrance of the main control room with a confidence that refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her bothered. Her arms were crossed with a no nonsense expression pinched in a snooty way and she made her way to stand between them in front of the control panel glittering in an endless string of unmarked buttons.
"Any news on our position?" She demanded, causing two heads to snap in her direction from the window that stretched across a wide arc, offering a wide view of the vacuum of space ahead.
Her sudden, nonchalant presence made it seem like her previous 24 hour absence had nothing to do with the other two occupants in the room and that in its duration, had been unaffected in the least by the events in which had transpired almost a day before. She could feel a sneaked glance from Goten and Trunks offered her a funny look but she didn't bother to acknowledge either at her side before her brother allotted the question an answer. "We were just about to come find you, we should be arriving home in a matter of minutes. These aliens whoever they were, had surprisingly advanced tech for the distance we were from earth."
"Good, I've been through this entire ship and everything here is practically useless." Bulla snorted in disgust. "I'm ready to be off this piece of junk."
Not a second after the word's left her mouth, a foreign sound filled the contained space the three young adults shared, indicating atmospheric entry. She knew protocols for instances such as these, how could she not? For crying out loud, her family did this for a freaking living. This was wan alien ship though, capsule Corp protocols for landing didn't exactly apply so she was at a loss of what to do.
The sudden shift in gravity caused their surroundings to quake and arms circled her waist saving her from being crushed against the metal flooring in favor of her brother's chest. The force hit her body like a ton of bricks and she squeezed her eyes shut against it's intensity.
"Get ready Goten!" Trunks called out, prompting the younger Saiyan to position himself near the entrance switch, pressing down on it once the atmosphere pressure dropped. The mouth of the ship was opened sending in a rush of air with Goten's exit following.
"Wait, what's going on?" Bulla screamed in an effort to be heard over the wind muffling noise around their ears. She went ignored by Trunk's who moved them both to the edge.
"Goten, catch!" He hollered down below before throwing her out of the ship and into air.
"TRUNKS!" She plummeted, screaming bloody murder and wondering what the hell her brother was thinking. She had no idea what his plan was but it didn't matter because she was going to kill him once she got her hands on him after this.
A pair of strong arms halted her decent and she opened her eyes long enough to see Goten as the source of her newfound safety. They may not have been falling anymore but the wind still whipped against them causing her hair to fly straight up and he offered her a reassuring smile before turning towards the ship and she did the same, following his gaze. She barely caught the moment when Trunks having made his exit, flipped his body sending a blast that engulfed the space ship in a blinding light before exploding into a million pieces.
She awed the giant ball of smoke in the aftermath above as they made their final decent onto the ground below.
"Hey!" Bulla called out sharply to the stoic faced, purple haired Saiyan once they touched the rocky surface they'd landed on, swiftly dropping to her feet while Goten released his grip on her legs. She dusted herself off in a huff, smoothing down her tattered dress as she did. "Next time you wanna show off Trunks, how about a little warning first?"
Trunks regarded her nagging with an unbothered indifference, surveying their surroundings and no doubt trying to calculate their next move inside his head. She interrupted his thoughts with an irritated. "Hello, are you even listening to me? What was that entire display about just now anyway, huh?!"
His cheek twitched in response. "We have to get back home as soon as possible and alert Mom and Dad about what happened, that is if they don't already know..." He cut off the sentence giving the ground a hard glare before snapping out of the dark direction his thoughts had taken him. "Anyway there's no way we could've taken that into the city without directing too much attention to ourselves and we can't take any chances leaving it here for humans to stumble across it. The only logical option left is to just get rid of it."
As usual, Trunks' steadiness had a calming effect. Trunks could let a lot of things go. If it wasn't worth getting upset about, he'd ignore the problem (though how Bulma Briefs and Vegeta's son could have such a laid back manner and an almost complete lack of a temper was beyond her). It was just that much harder to be upset around him if he was cool and collected.
She sighed, reluctantly resigning to her brother's explanation despite her urge to confront him on his insistence of not clueing her in on a "need to know" basis about the details of any of his decisions. They'd be home soon anyway, Trunks would join the others and her father in the effort to divert yet another threat to earth while she'd stay on the sidelines where she belonged. Once all this was over, everything would go back to normal again. He'd go back to his cozy position as chairman of Capsule Corp, holed up in his personal penthouse on the other side of the property separated from the main house and far away from her. She wouldn't have to put up with his superiority complex for much longer.
She flew with Goten back to West City. As irritated as she was with him too, she'd rather not be anywhere near her brother's arms for the time being considering the fact she'd just been thrown out of them not too long ago. She had no way of judging the time, but the sun told her it was well past noon and she imagined it must have taken them at least an hour to make it out of the empty valley into the first sign of civilization.
West City was already going about it's day when they arrived with people walking along the sidewalk too busy with their own lives to notice their presence in the air. Something was off though, the city seemed almost unrecognizable. Whenever she thought she saw something familiar, she'd look for a nearby building and find it missing or looking completely different.
What's even weirder was Trunks sudden stop in front of them which had Goten doing the same before following his lead into the abandoned alley below.
"What's up man?" Goten approach her brother's back once his feet touched concrete. "I thought we were going to going straight to your parents, why'd we stop here?"
They weren't far from Capsule Corp but they idea of anyone seeing her current state was mortifying.
Honestly, could he have not landed closer? But her nerves made her keep the whine to herself.
Trunks stayed silent as they neared, gaze locked forward. His head tilted upward giving them some kind of clue to what held his attention so vehemently.
A plasma Tv on the building directly adjacent to them displayed an image, one of a rocky landscape with what looked like an arena and Hercules Satan (looking much younger than they'd last seen him) speaking on the side of it in an interview. The caption?
THE CELL GAMES - 3 YEARS LATER.