Later that morning, after Jade had pulled herself together and worked off her embarrassment via a short and sharp sparring session that left Trunks badly bruised, she changed into a 'normal' outfit and the two of them sat out the front of Capsule Corporation waiting for their friends.
A pair of squirrels scurried down from a nearby tree, and Trunks fed them with nuts he'd brought along just for that purpose. One hopped onto his shoulder, and Jade leant across to pat the furry little ears.
Across the street, two children were playing loudly with slingshots, and without warning a pebble streaked past Jade's right ear, nearly taking the squirrel's tail off. She reached up and caught the small projectile effortlessly, but turned to glare at the little boy and girl who stood looking mortified towards them.
"S—sorry," the little boy called out. The girl cringed behind her playmate, and Jade concentrated a small energy blast, harmless, to shoot at them for their recklessness.
Trunks caught the motion and looked down at her sternly.
"Don't do that. You might frighten them."
Jade blanched beyond pale and nearly fell off her perch in shock. He said that in my dream, and then he died.
Trunks waved the children away, and at that moment Videl and Gohan pulled up with Eliza and Sharpener in a skycar.
"Jadali." Trunks mocked his father's voice that always hit home.
"Hmm?" came the inattentive reply.
"Come on, let's go."
When she made no move to do so, Trunks hauled her to her feet and helped her into the shining red vehicle. She murmured a greeting and studied the hands wringing in her lap. Gohan turned around to look at her. He frowned at what he saw.
"Jade, are you okay? You look awfully worried about something."
She dismissed his concern with a shrug of her shoulders and a half-hearted smile, throwing in a little colloquialism to distract him.
"Nah, I'm fine."
He laughed and turned back around.
By the time they reached the spot Videl had picked for their picnic, Jade had snapped herself out of her uneasiness to the point where it wasn't noticeable.
Deciding to ensure everyone thought she was alright, Jade resolved to toy with the blonde youth who hung on her every word. Despite the fact she didn't need any assistance, she allowed Sharpener to lift her out of the car and didn't push him away the instant her feet touched solid ground. She looked up at him demurely, thanked him through the piercing green eyes and trotted ahead to catch up with Trunks, who looked thoroughly confused. He queried her in Saiyan.
"What the hell was that? I thought you despised him."
Jade gave him a cheeky grin in return, not even vaguely reminiscent of the distraught figure he'd held earlier that morning. I crown thee Queen of mood swings, Trunks thought, looking at the mischievous face.
"Don't you ever play with your food?" innocently, sweetly.
"That's not funny." He ran his fingers through his loose hair in a gesture of exasperation, hiding a half-smile. The girl was spending far too much time around his mother.
Later that afternoon, the six of them lay back on the grass watching the clouds passing overhead. They spoke in sleepy monosyllables, until Eliza broke the silence with a keening wail.
"I broke a nail! And I left my file in the car! Someone come with me to get it." She looked pointedly at Trunks, who'd sensed it coming and feigned sleep. She huffed and puffed, and finally dragged Sharpener back to the car with her, which was parked about half a mile away.
"Really Videl, you could have parked closer." She stormed off to find the nail file.
Videl didn't care; she'd planted the item in the car deliberately so she could talk alone with her Saiyan friends. She propped herself up on her elbows, suddenly full of energy.
"There's a couple of things I've been dying to know. You're all warriors in your own right, but you never talk about what you do with me. Why not?"
Gohan batted a butterfly away lazily.
"Not much to tell."
"Don't give me that. Of course there is. If you think it's boring, try me. Disgusting, bloody, I don't care. Just talk to me."
She doesn't need to hear about that stuff, thought Trunks with protective irritation. His mother had always wanted to know details, and he'd figured out how to disgust her. Maybe it'd work on Videl too.
"Alright then. Gohan, who was your first kill?" lazily, casually, like he didn't care. It was the tone that had frightened Bulma, and it was working here, too. Gohan picked up his tenor, and shaded his eyes with one forearm.
"First thing I actually killed was Cell, and we all know about that little incident. Your turn."
"Frieza. Sliced and diced him. You have anything you'd like to contribute, Jade?" he rolled his head over and encouraged her to speak with his eyes. Adopting the careless casualness of her companions, Jade spoke.
"Deliberately or accidentally?"
"Deliberately."
"This year or in the past?"
"Just get on with it."
"Okay. I made my first kill when I was six. But it was an accident, I was deflecting a blast and it hit a man." Stunned looks greeted her.
"You were six?" Videl stammered.
"Yes. Kind of old, huh? If you want deliberate examples, it's kind of difficult. You know who my father was, and he took me with him when he trained. By 'train' I mean 'destroy a planet's inhabitants,' of course. It's hard to remember individual incidents." She had adopted a casually cruel tone that surprised even Trunks. Videl looked shocked.
"So, you've…killed a lot of people?"
Jade stared directly into the other girl's face.
"Sweetie, to use one of your phrases, I've killed more people than you'll have hot dinners." Videl blanched, but sensed a flaw in the statement.
"Isn't it 'you've had hot dinners'?"
Jade turned her gaze skyward again.
"Maybe, but I meant what I said."
Videl dropped the subject. Thankfully, Sharpener and Eliza returned moments later. The sat quietly, until Sharpener worked up the nerve to speak directly to Jade.
"Hey, why did you knock me into that tree when we first met?" he looked searchingly into her face for signs of remorse, but found none. Hearing the nature of Sharpener's question, Trunks held his breath. Please don't give him an encore performance, Jade…
In her soft lilting voice, she replied frankly:
"Because you asked for it." Sharpener was stunned, and sat bolt upright.
"What? How?"
She looked directly into his face, all lightness and humour gone from her voice, and the expression she bore was that of a warrior used to slaying her enemies for a misplaced hair.
"Think yourself lucky. The last person who tried to kiss me had every bone in his body damaged in some way, all from one shot. He'll be lucky if he survived, I don't rightly know if he did. And I did that because he irritated me. Just imagine what could happen if you really got on my nerves."
Sharpener did his best to maintain his cool.
"You're funny when you lie, you know that?"
"I wasn't lying, I don't know how to." Her voice was cold and deadly serious.
"Really? But look at you, you're even lighter than Eliza, and she'd be doing well to draw blood on me. What do you say to that?"
"Believe what you want."
Gohan felt the miniscule shift in energy that signified Jade's struggle to control her Saiyan half – he'd felt his own Saiyan blood urging him to annihilate anything that stood in his way, and he didn't particularly want to referee a match that would certainly result in the blonde youth's death. He came up with a feebly veiled distraction.
"Hey, enough of that. Let's take a look around, it's beautiful up here."
And it was. They were sitting on the crest of a grassy knoll in a shady forest clearing. Down the hill from them, a clear brook bubbled and chattered over granite and sand, and birds twittered in the trees.
Gohan hauled Videl to her feet, and the two of them led off purposefully. Eliza, who'd spent the entire afternoon staring at Trunks, fell in behind them and a still-smitten Sharpener quickly joined her. Despite all her efforts to dissuade him, Jade was still the unintentional object of his affections.
Jade rose from her seat gracefully and moved to follow the others, but Trunks caught her arm and yanked her back.
"What's the matter?" she asked cheerfully.
"You're the matter." He returned in a fierce whisper.
"What did I do this time?"
"You don't just tell people things like that. They won't believe you and I don't want to clean up the mess if you decide to prove them wrong. Just keep away from that blonde idiot, okay?" he hissed at her and she'd had enough and snarled back at him.
"Trunks, anyone would think you were jealous. Despite what you obviously think I'll do, I'm not going to kill him. I'm not an undisciplined savage and I don't appreciate being treated like one. To be perfectly honest, you people drive me crazy with your double standards and the way you dance around the truth. I'm sick of it, and if I had a ship I'd be out of here in an instant."
She folded her arms defensively and glared at him belligerently. Nothing but silence passed for a long moment, and the voices of their friends faded into the distance. Trunks broke the reticence in a gentle tone, peppered with something else Jade couldn't discern.
"Were you…I mean, can you really not tell a lie?"
"Of course I could if I wanted to, baka. But it's not part of who I am. Before I came here, I'd never heard a lie told. I could lie if I felt like it, but it would be so screamingly obvious that it'd be a waste of time," she snapped back at him hotly.
"Fair enough. Who did you nearly kill for trying to kiss you?"
"I'd rather not talk about it." The venom slipped from her voice and she hung her head.
"Would…would you do that to me for trying to kiss you?" Trunks braced himself for the slap he could sense coming his way.
"No." she said simply.
He crossed the small gap between them, pushed her chin up with one hand and stroked her hair with the other one. He stooped down to her height and kissed her on the cheek. A sharp sting met one of his own cheeks, and he looked with surprise into the glowering face beneath his.
"Do that again and I may have to hurt you." The glower turned into a smile, and he reached down to kiss her fully and sweetly. Their lips brushed, but the instant they did, their heads jerked away in surprise at the huge, uncontrolled power level they simultaneously sensed.
"Papa," Jade breathed in terrified recognition.
