Wednesday 7 October

I bitch about Trunks, a lot. And it isn't just in my journal. The main victim of my ranting is usually Nao.

Now, don't get me wrong, I really do love the violet-haired lunatic. But Nao is about as different from Trunks as you can get, and that's probably one of the main reasons I like him. Where Trunks is chaos and mayhem and, let's face it, a healthy dose of arrogance, Nao is one of the most chill and down-to-Earth people I've ever met. Nothing gets to that guy. I haven't told him about the fact that I'm not fully human, and I've only hinted at the super-strength thing, but I could probably tell him everything and he wouldn't bat an eyelash. He'd shrug, calmly make sure I'm not going to lay alien-spawn eggs in his brain, and let it go.

The only reason I haven't told him is because I don't need anyone else carrying around my secrets. So, of course, to make up for it, I bitch at him about my relationship. (Stop judging me. It makes sense in my head.) I'd gladly return the favor if Nao would just find something to bitch about. But short of eviscerating (great word, learned it from Trunks, so much more graphic-sounding than "disemboweling") his mother and feeding the dear woman her own intestines, I'm not sure what could tick him off enough that he would need to vent.

In any event, I was whining at Nao before calculus yesterday morning, primarily about how Trunks seems to be physically incapable of apologizing. Nao cut me off mid-sentence and asked, "If he really makes you so crazy, why are you still together?"

It's a good question.

Allow me to flash back to, of all things, Bra's birth. Now, "peaceful" is not a word I (or anyone else in their right mind) would normally associate with the Briefs family. But when I think about the night Trunks' sister was born, that's the only way I can think of to describe it.

It was nothing like Pan's birth a year later. See, when Pan was born, it was in the middle of the afternoon on a slow news day. So, as you can imagine, I could barely shove my way through the throngs of reporters that had crowded into the hospital, trying to get that first picture of Mr. Satan's granddaughter. Between Hercule freaking out, my mother freaking out, Gohan freaking out because everyone else was freaking, and my dad doing everything in his power to keep everybody calm—which wasn't too successful—it was a complete fucking circus.

I finally had to hide up near the ceiling and fire small ki blasts at all the photographers' cameras to get rid of them. None of them could figure out what happened to their cameras, and none of them realized that I had actually done them a favor. A few broken lenses were nothing compared to what Videl would do to those journalists if they ruined her special day.

Of course, it was all worth it by the time Pan came shrieking her way into the world. But the waiting period was less than pleasant.

Anyway, back to Bra. I was twelve, and I remember being woken up at about one in the morning by the phone ringing. Just as I was starting to get back to sleep, my dad came in to get me up, saying that Bulma had called and that we should get to West City. It's weird to think about, seeing as I've actually known Bulma a lot longer than I've known my dad, but she is his oldest friend. He'd insisted that he call her when the time came, and she hadn't put up an argument.

Bulma had opted for a home birth—apparently, it was the same thing she'd done with Trunks. She'd hired a midwife and a couple of nurses that she could trust to keep their mouths shut about the fact that her kid would, more than likely, be born with a tail.

Gohan and Videl were away at school and in the middle of university exams, so they had promised to swing by the next afternoon. I grabbed onto my dad's left arm, my mom held his right, and he used instant transmission to get us right into the Capsule Corp living room. We went upstairs to see Trunks leaning against the wall in the hallway. Vegeta was—and this was a shock—actually in the bedroom, and god knows how Bulma managed to get him to agree to that.

What am I saying? A pissed off Bulma is scary enough on a regular basis. I sure as hell wouldn't want to go up against an angry, pregnant Bulma.

Anyway, my mom was pacing up and down the hallway, debating out loud if she should go in there and try to help. My dad reminded her at least three separate times that Bulma had gotten the best medical assistance that money could buy, and would probably want to be left alone until the whole bloody process was over. I stood against the wall with Trunks, watching him frantically tapping his foot and trying to hide how anxious he was. Bulma, meanwhile, must have gotten the world's largest epidural, because I swear the bedroom was almost completely quiet until we heard that distinctive screeching that can only come from the (surprisingly strong) lungs of a newborn.

Now, Trunks is a lot more like his dad than he'd care to admit. He has a hard time showing emotion (unless, of course, you count "boredom" and "lust" as emotions). But while Vegeta hides his feelings behind a veneer of iciness and stoicism, Trunks hides behind his own utter insanity. Don't get me wrong, he is a genuinely weird guy, with a host of very bizarre interests, but he plays it up to the point where it's hard to tell where sincerity ends and the act begins.

So it was weird—in the best possible way—when one of the nurses opened the door and let us all in. Bulma was holding the baby (which already looked like a mini Bulma-clone) and looking equal parts drained and relieved. Vegeta had this weird expression on his face, and it took me a minute to realize that I'd never seen him smile that genuinely before.

Well, okay, that's a lie. I've seen it once, right before the guy blew himself up fighting Buu. But seeing as the circumstances weren't nearly as happy, I'm not going to count that.

It was even weirder seeing Vegeta actually nod at my dad when he congratulated him and clapped him on the shoulder, instead of shrugging him off like I would have expected. But nothing matched the moment Vegeta handed Trunks the little blue-haired bundle, wrapped in a pink blanket. I swear to Dende, Trunks melted on the spot. I'm never going to forget seeing Trunks hold Bra, in that awkward way all thirteen-year-old boys seem to handle everything. (I blame puberty and the way it makes your hands and feet grow to adult-size before anything else.)

"Hey," he said, nuzzling the baby's cheek. "I'm Trunks. I'm your brother." His voice was barely above a whisper, but the room was so damn quiet you could hear him loud and clear.

After sixteen years of friendship, I can count the number of times I've seen him cry on one hand. But Trunks actually got misty-eyed when Bra opened her eyes and looked right at him. I mocked him for it later, of course, but at the time, I was too stunned to laugh.

Now, I'm not going to say that this was when I realized I wanted to go from friends to more-than-friends. I mean, I was twelve; we didn't get together until almost three years later. But Trunks is always so damn guarded. The truth is, in the very rare times he lets his guard down, I really like what I see.

Which brings us to last night. It was about 8 pm, and I was working at the desk in my room at Capsule Corp, still trying to come up with a concept for the project Ms. Shi had assigned. I was chewing on a pen, staring at the prompt as if an idea would just magically materialize on the page, and generally wondering what the hell my art teacher had been smoking when she came up with this assignment.

Trunks knocked on my door, and didn't wait for me to answer before coming in. He walked into the room, slamming the door behind him. It's a bad habit of his, but it's something you get used to soon enough. He had his own backpack with him, so I'm guessing he wanted to camp out on my bed and study together. "Hey," he said, dropping his backpack onto the floor, "what are you up to?"

I half-groaned as I turned to look at him. "Still agonizing over my art project."

"You should really—"

"Trunks," I interrupted, "for the last time, I am not drawing myself coming out of the birth canal and going down on you."

He crossed his arms and frowned at me. "My brilliant artistic notions notwithstanding, I was going to say that you should really be studying for your calculus test. Seeing as it's tomorrow."

I looked at him in confusion, froze up as I realized what he was talking about, and dropped my chewed up pen to the floor. I then proceeded to slam my head, repeatedly, into my desk.

Trunks sighed dramatically. "You forgot, didn't you?"

"Damnit," I said, "you'd think Mr. Mori would have reminded us in class."

"He probably did when you weren't listening."

"Probably." I rested my head back onto my desk with a thunk. "I'm going to fail this test. Then I'm going to flunk calculus, be held back a grade, and my mother is going to spend the next two years alternating between screaming and crying at me."

Trunks plopped into the extra chair at the side of my desk. "What unit are you on?"

"Indefinite integrals," I said, forehead still pressed against the table. "And we're supposed to be able to write out the proof for something called the Rich algorithm."

"Risch algorithm," Trunks corrected, sounding exasperated. "Do you even know what it does?"

I sat back up. "Not a fucking clue."

Trunks pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he winced. "Okay, sit right there. I'll be back in ten minutes." He left the room, and, true to his word, he was back about ten minutes later, balancing tray of tea and two mugs in one hand and a pile of old notebooks in the other. He spread the books across my desk and set down the tray.

"Okay, Chibi," Trunks said, pulling up the other chair. He grabbed the red notebook at the top of his pile and opened it. "What is it you don't understand?"

I smiled at him sheepishly. "Everything?"

His face fell. "Can you be a little more specific?"

"Okay," I said, looking at his notebook. "What's the difference between an antiderivative and an integral?"

He shook his head. "An indefinite integral is the same thing as an antiderivative."

I smacked my forehead, which was still a bit sore from being slammed into my desk. That would have been good to know, say, last week. "Mr. Mori definitely didn't tell us that."

"He isn't much of a teacher," Trunks agreed. "Why do you think I never went to class?" Which is, of course, not true. Trunks never showed up to his calculus class because school is a complete joke for him. With his test scores, especially in math and science, he could have graduated and been most of the way through college by now.

Anyway, that's how we went on until about two in the morning. Trunks spent the next six hours going through every topic that would be on my test, explaining it in a way that actually made sense. I wasn't especially impressed with Trunks' knowledge of the subject—he's always been crazy-smart (on top of just being crazy). What was pretty surprising was how patient he was. He didn't give me a hard time for not understanding what are supposed to be pretty basic calculus operations, instead breaking every formula down step by step until I actually got it.

So, yes, Trunks is the kind of irresponsible, borderline sadistic jackass that will set me up for an encounter with an incredibly annoying not-so-secret admirer at an awful rock concert. But he's also the kind of boyfriend—and friend—that will blow off all his own homework just to help me prepare for a test I really should have spent the last two weeks studying for. And do a damn good job with it, too.

The last thing I remember from last night was Trunks saying he was going to restock our caffeine supply. Next thing I knew, it was 6:45 am, I was fully dressed in my bed, and Trunks was collapsed on top of my covers next to me.

Anyway, I think I did pretty well on the test this morning. I had trouble with a couple of problems near the end, but I actually felt pretty confident with most of my answers.

So, to answer Nao's question, I just said that the good outweighs the bad. It always has.

I should really go work on my art project now. I'm thinking I might just draw a landscape of the Mount Paozu area and have it fade into an image of the West City skyline. Maybe bullshit some explanation about the juxtaposition of urban and rural in modern life.

Or maybe I'll just go take a nap. Yeah, that's a way better plan.