Part I

Chapter 8: Only normal

It was a beautiful summer day in the middle of July. With the sun throwing its warm beams at earth and with the birds singing in the trees everything seemed to be peaceful and idyllic – at least to the outer world. No one out there seemed to know, acknowledge or even suspect that it was quite possible for hell to break loose within the next few minutes – or within a few minutes in general for that matter – which would definitely destroy this picture of perfect harmony in a matter of seconds…

She was slowly tiptoeing through the small forest that belonged to the large compound, careful not to step on a twig or make a sound that could give her away. They were close and she swore to herself, this time she would get them. She smiled, her large blue eyes sparkling with anticipation. All the other times they had tricked her, having used their power to their advantage.

A small rustling came from a bush in front of her, followed by some noises that definitely didn't belong to an animal. The smile on her face widened. Gottcha!

Two small boys were sitting behind said bush, trying hard to stifle their giggles. But still they didn't succeed fully. The whole situation was just too funny. At least for them. Playing hide and seek was always fun, especially when they were the ones to hide. The two boys looked at each other, the black haired one having a wide grin on his face, while his lavender haired friend smirked, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief. No matter how quiet she was, they were always able to detect her. Her inability to suppress ki usually worked for their advantage, just like this time.

The lavender haired boy raised his right hand, counting silently down from five to zero. At exactly the same moment he lowered the last finger, a shadow came over them, followed by a girl yelling, "Found ya!"

By the time the girl jumped through the bush, ready to tackle at least one of the boys, they were already gone. Having gathered way too much speed in preparation for her attack, she stumbled and couldn't keep herself from falling – directly into a puddle of mud. Scowling she looked up again, just to see the two boys landing directly in front of her. The lavender haired boy had his arms crossed over his chest and smirked down at the girl, while the other one's expression resembled one of regret.

"Hey sis, you okay?" he asked.

But she didn't say anything. She just looked at them, her lower lip quivering though the scowl remained on her face. She blinked a few times in the hope of holding back the salty liquid that was threatening to fall. She didn't want to let them see her cry. It was bad enough that they were always so far ahead of her, that her own strength was nowhere near theirs, that she was weak – that she was just… normal. She sniffed one time before she got up, head bowed and tightly clenched her fists at her sides. Her clothes were a mess – the once red sneakers were dirty brown and her black shorts and white T-shirt were stained with mud, as well as her face and blond hair.

"Jenny?" the other boy asked, suddenly not seeming so smug anymore.

"Not fair…" Jenny mumbled and then looked up again, her blue eyes glistening with unshed tears. "Not fair!" This time she yelled, brushed past the boys and ran through the small forest back to the house.

"Where are you going, Goten?" the lavender haired boy asked his friends, when he turned to run after her.

"After her…"

"Why?"

"Look, Trunks… I think we really made her mad this time. I wanna say sorry," Goten said and you could both see in his eyes and hear in his voice that he truly regretted the trick they had played on his sister.

Trunks snorted. "Do what you want. But I thought it was fun." Shaking his head and still with his arms crossed over his chest, he went after the other boy.

Goten caught up with Jenny in the backyard and gently put a hand on her shoulder. "Sis…"

"Go away!" she yelled and turned around to face him. Goten's twinges of remorse got even worse, when he saw her cry. She had never cried before, when they'd made fun of her. "You cheated. You always cheat!"

"Do not," Trunks, who was now standing a few feet behind Goten and Jenny, quipped.

Growling Jenny walked up to him and poked a finger into his chest. "Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

In the house on the second floor a black haired teenage boy was groaning, when he heard the fight through his open window. He just wanted to do his studies and then maybe later head over to Piccolo. But he should have known that it would come like this. In the last few years he had learned that they, or at least Jenny and Trunks, never got along one week without fighting. And the last few days had been way too quiet for his liking. Usually their fights were about something Trunks had said about her or when he and Goten had again played a trick on her by using their powers. He knew that Goten only tagged along, because Trunks was his best friend and that he always felt sorry afterwards, but Trunks had too many Vegeta-genes in his body to stop playing tricks on her. And, well, Jenny… She was much too proud and stubborn for her own good – he had no idea where she had gotten that trait from; it couldn't be in her genes since neither he nor Goten were like this – and so those two just seemed to be predestined to argue with each other and he sometimes wondered if they would ever manage to become friends.

He shook his head. They were just four – in Trunks' case five – years old and still had all of their lives ahead. One day they would be old enough to see how stupid their fights were and then they would become friends.

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

He sighed and ran a hand through his thick and short black hair. Well, Bulma was in her lab tinkering away and Vegeta was in the gravity room – not that he cared anyway – so he was the only one to put an end to this fight and maybe even find out what it was about. He put the pen down on his desk, closed the exercise book and walked over to the open window. He climbed out of it – something that Bulma wouldn't like to see, since she always told all of them to use the door like normal people do – and slowly descended to the ground.

"Do too!"

"Do…"

"Hey, what's going on here?" he demanded to know, his voice having become firm, when he saw his sister's clothes and the tears that were running down her cheeks.

Both boys winced upon hearing this voice, but Jenny immediately ran up to him, burying her face in the tall boy's pants. "Gohan," she cried. "They-they cheated. They tricked me and I fell. I hate them!"

Gohan threw a sharp look at the boys. "Is that true?"

"It was Trunks's idea," Goten quickly blurted out.

"Shut up!" the other boy hissed and hit him on the back of his head.

"What? But it's true, Trunks. You said you wanted to play a trick on her and 'cause of that we hid directly in front of the puddle of mud and…"

"But you were with him, though," Gohan stated and his younger brother immediately lowered his head.

"I'm sorry…"

"You should be. What about you, Trunks?" The other boy crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head away. Gohan sighed. "Trunks."

Trunks rolled with his eyes, but eventually said, "Sorry. Won't happen again."

"I hope so. Now you go up to your room. I'll come later to you." The boys wanted to say something, but Gohan cut them off with a wave of his hand. "Go."

Trunks shot Goten a glare and then went to the door sulking. Before Goten followed him, he looked back. "I'm really sorry, sis…"

Gohan watched them go and when they were gone, he crouched down in front of Jenny, putting both hands on her shoulders. "And now we'll get you cleaned up, okay?" She nodded still sniffling and then Gohan picked her up, flying back into his room with her. Together they went into his en-suite bathroom and he sat her down on the toilet lid. Jenny didn't look up once and she was still hiccupping slightly. First when she heard the water running she raised her head to see her brother filling the bathtub. "Hey," Gohan said softly, when he looked into his sister's red and puffy eyes. "You wanna tell me what they did to make you cry?" Her face started to turn red, but more out of embarrassment that she had allowed herself to show this weakness as Vegeta would put it in front of the boys than out of anger, and she vehemently shook her head. Gohan frowned lightly and started to untie her sneakers. "Come on, sis. I know that you and Trunks don't get along that well, but you've never cried before…"

"It's not fair…" she mumbled.

"What is not fair?" He put the sneakers aside and pulled now the T-shirt over her head.

"They always win. They're always better than me. They're way stronger, faster and they can feel it, when I'm around, just because they are Saiyajins and I'm just normal. I hate that. I wanna have those powers, too."

The frown on Gohan's face deepened, when he helped her down from the lid and pulled her shorts and panties down, before lifting her into the bathtub. He closed the faucet and got some shampoo to wash the mud out of her hair. So this was her problem. She hated it to be normal, something he himself had always longed for. A normal life without having to fight to protect the Earth, without having to worry about being different than others.

"Hey, whaddaya thinking 'bout?" Jenny asked, upon seeing the faraway and thoughtful look in her brother's eyes.

"Nothing," he answered, putting a smile on his face. But maybe this was it. She didn't want to be different, just like him. Only that it was the other way around. Maybe being normal among four other Saiyajins was what made her different. Just like he always wanted to be normal to fit in with others, his sister wanted to be a Saiyajin to fit in with her family. "Jenny?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I know what you mean… and don't worry. I'll talk to Goten and Trunks about their behavior." He gently massaged the shampoo into her hair and after having rinsed it out, he let her sit in the bathtub for a few more minutes, while he gathered her dirty clothes and put them into the laundry basket. After he had done that, he turned to her. "Mmh, I think you might need some clean clothes. Can you stay alone here for a few minutes, while I'm gone to get you some?"

This question brought a scowl on the girl's face and she crossed her arms over her chest. "Of course. I'm not a little kid anymore."

The teenager laughed and ruffled through her wet hair. "Of course you're not."

Still smiling he left his room and walked to the one next to his – the room of the twins and of Trunks. About two years ago, when the twins had been two and Trunks three years old, Bulma had let the wall that separated the two rooms of the kids be pulled down, so that they would 'grow closer' as she put it. But Gohan somehow doubted that her plan had worked so far. Sure, Goten and Trunks were best friends, but Jenny and Trunks were like fire and water – mix them together and you'll get a lot of steam. When he opened the door, two pairs of eyes immediately rested on him, watching warily his each and every move as if expecting the worst. But Gohan just ignored them. He would take care of them later, once Jenny was again clean and dry.

He returned to his room not even a few minutes later after having gathered some new underwear, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and found his little sister sitting on his bed, wrapped up in one of his large and fluffy towels. "Hey, finished already?"

Jenny shrugged. "I was getting bored."

"I see." Gohan sat down on the bed next to her and gave her the clothes. "So, you wanna get dressed now so that we can maybe play a bit afterwards?"

Her eyes lit up immediately after her brother's offer and she nodded, having a huge grin on her face. She quickly jumped from the bed and put on the clothes. She was just ready and wanted to take her brother's hand, when a yell echoed through the house.

"Brats! Get down here!"

Gohan sighed and looked at his sister with a sad look in his eyes, noticing that the grin had also disappeared from her face. Both knew what a call like this usually meant. Vegeta wanted to train with his son and the brats of Kakarotto, who were still useful to train with. And this excluded Jenny, as Vegeta made it clear the one time she asked him, if she could train with them. Words like 'weak' and 'pathetic' still sounded in her ears and she had learned that day that she'd probably never be a fighter.

"You should go," Jenny told him disappointedly.

Gohan crouched again down and put his hands on her shoulders. "No. I promised I'd play with you and I intend on keeping my promise."

"But do you really want to let Goten and Trunks train all alone with Vegeta? What if he hurts them?"

"I thought you hate them," Gohan asked with a slight grin on his face.

Again, the girl shrugged. "Right now I do, but I don't wanna see them hurt. You should really go, just in case."

The teenager sighed. "Okay… if you really want me to. But I don't want to leave you all alone here. Maybe should go to Bulma and help her a bit in the lab, okay?"

Jenny nodded and walked with her brother into the corridor, where they parted.

While Gohan went to the stairs, Jenny strolled through the many corridors of Capsule Corporation until she arrived at a door with a sign that read 'Laboratory – No entry!'. She reached up to the panel and entered the code that would open the door. Once she'd stepped inside the door slid shut behind her and she looked around, spotting Bulma working at one of the machines. Her face lit up. Though she was just four years old, she loved spending time in the lab almost as much as she loved spending time with her older brother. Bulma always let her help and she could spend hours just tinkering with some tools. Whistling she walked up to the woman who was the closest thing to a mother she ever had.

Upon hearing someone whistling, Bulma looked up and smiled, when she saw Jenny walking up to her. "Hey Jenny. What's up?"

"Vegeta's training with the others…" Jenny told her and Bulma could hear in the girl's voice that she was sad about not being able to train with them.

"Well, then. You wanna help me finish this? And after that we can make some cookies for the boys. How does that sound?"

"Sounds great!" Jenny chirped.


A few hours later, Jenny was sitting in front of the oven, eagerly waiting for the rest of the chocolate cookies to finish. The bowl on the kitchen table was already almost full, but Bulma first allowed her to try one, when the last ones were also finished. And just about one minute later the egg timer went off, signaling that it was finally time. She jumped from one leg to another and licked her lips - her mouth was already watering by just smelling them. "May I? May I?"

Bulma smiled at her and handed her one of the still warm cookies. The woman was glad that she had managed to cheer the girl up. She was probably the only one who could understand the girl's problem like no other. Among the Z-fighters she had been and still was the weakest, but at least she could help them with her technology, something that Jenny could most likely also help them with, once she was older.

She found the girl grinning up at her, a look that definitely told her that the cookies were good. Well, Bulma wasn't known as the best cook, but having to raise four part-Saiyajins and having to feed one full blooded eventually left her with at least some cooking skills – and if it were just the cookies that they all liked. "So, shall we now bring out this plate for them? I'm sure they are already starved."

"Sure!" Jenny took the plate filled with cookies from Bulma and walked out of the kitchen, followed by the older woman.

They had to walk around the house until they found them all training in the backyard. Vegeta and Gohan were sparring with each other, as well as the two boys, who were shooting ki-blasts at each other. Jenny, who was still standing in front of Bulma, and Bulma herself stopped to watch them for a bit. Goten had just sent a – for them – smaller Kamehameha that could kill, or at least burn a human really bad, at Trunks who reflected it with ease. The older boy just wanted to prepare a counter attack, when he saw Goten's eyes growing wide. He turned around, just to see that the very same ki-blast he had just deflected was now directly flying at Jenny and his mother. A scared "Mom!" escaped his lips, getting everyone's attention, but it was too late. The moment they also noticed the blast it was already too late for them to dodge or for one of the others to interfere and just a second later a detonation was heard all over the compound.