Hi all, this is my first DBZ fanfiction that goes on the Net, so please be understanding!
English isn't even my mother language, so forgive any mistakes or oddities you might find and please signal them at my e-mail address so I can fix them!
Thank you!
CHAPTER ONE:THE RUNNER
"So here we are" she thought.
Looking down at the yellow dome below her, she felt nothing of the things she expected to feel.
Excitement, joy, relief...even anguish or the will to cry...no one of these feelings was in her now.
Just a great weariness and , suddenly, an unexpected desire to sleep in a warm bed.
How long hadn't she done that?
As far as she could remember, it was ages. She suddenly saw herself a little child, waiting for her mother to come wake her up before going to work, while she was waiting under soft blankets, still drowsy and yet looking forward to begin the new day.
All of that was gone. She would be the mother now, and she would have a little girl to wait for her in the mornings.
"Let's go" she said, and came down slowly towards the dome, carefully watching for anyone that could be around.
She was a short girl, with nervy legs and bony shoulders, small pale hands and yellow eyes that burned like coals under the dark red-purple bangs that fell on her forehead, partially hiding her face. Those eyes had seen too much; those almond-shaped eyes were on the point of seeing even more, if anything went wrong. But she had all the skills to make it right, and she had to get it made.
thirty minutes before
"How beautiful the weather is tonight. If I don't find too much traffic, I could be home in less than one hour."
Such were the thoughts of Bulma Briefs in that crispy, transparent early spring night. She was driving home from a work trip, one of the many she used to undertake in those days, for now that those monsters no longer went rampaging over the Earth and reconstruction had begun her multi-sided skills of scientist, computer programmer, engineer and sometimes even self-trained physician were greatly needed.
Those monsters had been the Jinzouningen. Cyborgs, in a simpler word.
Forever gone as they were now, the thought of them alone was still enough to scar the life out of men and women in villages and towns all over the Earth. Not that there were particularly many left now, for the Artificial Humans' fury didn't spar anything or anyone that existed, and most of the human beings had been killed through thirteen years of terror and grief.
Juunanagou and his sister Juuhachigou simply got rid of anything that stood in their way.
"Oh, I don't have to think about such things. We are reconstructing now, all I have to care about is being serene and working hard. Everything will be alright. I can' wait to be home again and see my son" she said to herself, and she ran a hand through her hair, thoughtfully.
"Now that even Cell has gone, there really is nothing left to fear. There is no jinzouningen left on earth...not even just one!"
She was cheering herself like that, when she turned her head slightly leftwards to catch sight of something that was moving very fast in her rear-view mirror. It was too small to be dismissed as an overtaking car, and too fast not to be a machine...Bulma choked on her own breath. It had a human shape.
The "j" word obviously was the first to occur to her, with all its load of fear and disbelief. The second word that came to her mind was "girl". That human shape was that of a girl. She could have been fifteen for all that Bulma could tell; just, it was the fastest fifteen-year-old girl she had ever seen.
Her dark, short hair was ruffled by the wind it rode over, and the yellow colour of her eyes was clearly visible in the distance; her legs almost blurring below her, her feline moves, the effortlessness of her pace, all this made for some kind of weird grace.
And there she was, intruding between the cars , picking up speed step after step, fast and furious, a force of nature, or maybe just a force of technology. Whatever she was, "human" was not the right word.
This is what Bulma was thinking when the girl - or the whatever - decided to run past her car and , for Kami knows what reason, suddenly cut in front of her.
It was too late for the woman to stop the irrational thought that she could hurt the girl if she ran over her. She should have known, for having experienced that so many times in her life - with her best friend who had died of a heart disease a long time ago, with the mate whom had given her a son, with her son himself - that a creature capable of such a performance couldn't get hurt just by a car, going at top speed as she was or not.
And this is what made her turn abruptly to the side of the road,hit the guardrail, lose contolr of the car, and shut her eyes tight before everything collapsed around her.
Bulma awoke to the feeling that something was rubbing a spot just under her collarbones, and it hurt.
That good. If it hurt, she was alive.
So she didn't think it was some kind of supernatural being that she was being taken care by when she opened her eyes and realized that she was being held.
All she saw was a yellow spot, that slowly split into two, enlarging then to reveal a pale, sweetly smiling face.
It was the hyper girl.
Bulma was overtaken by fear all at once; if the girl was what she thought she was, that smile was the cruel prelude to a hand suddenly shooting to her throat or to her heart to tear the life out of her.
She tried to free herself from the girl's embrace, to wake, to run, but her enjured body hurt everywhere, and all she could do was roll weakly in her arms, wanting to holler.
But instead of her own voice she heard another one : a treble, crisp voice, almost resembling the one of a child, but sharp and feminine nontheless.
"Guess who" she just said. "Seems I decided to save life to the right person. Or maybe to the wrong one, what can I know? Let's go to some place where they can take care of you better than I."
And, saying so, she took flight and headed for the nearest hospital.
Then she was gone.
Back home, at Capsule Corporation, Trunks was worried for his mother. She never left home without telling him where she was headed, and never forgot to call if for any reason she had to be late. In this case her silence was all the more troubling, because the young boy knew that she had gone quite far. A small village in the south-west had required her presence and , generous as she was, Bulma would never refuse.
Trunks wondered where in the world she could have got into hot water.
Speaking about the world, it was much safer now that the Jinzouningen had been defeated.
Almost a month had gone by since even the last and most dangerous of Gero's creations, which went under the name of Cell, had been killed and destroyed by Trunks himself.
Too short a time to forget thirteen years in the company of Juunanagou an Juuhachigou...too short to forget all the dead people, all the havoc, all the terror they caused.
Too short to forget of all his dead friends.
Trunks often wondered if it was the right choice to go back to the past and save the life of Gohan's father.
Well, actually he knew it was right: by doing that, he had created an alternative, happier timeline, where the Earth hadn't been destroyed, where the warriors that kept watch to mantain the peace were still alive, and where Gohan, the best friend he'd ever had, had survived, and now had the chance to live out a better life than that of his future counterpart. A life without the nightmare of the cyborgs.
He missed Gohan. Meeting him again in the past, even though he was younger than the Gohan he knew, had opened again an old wound in his heart he believed to be sealed forever.
He missed Gokou, Gohan's father, whom had been able to infect him with his cheerfulness and optimism even in the few weeks they'd been together.
And most of all he missed his own father, Vegeta, the proud and defying prince of the Saiyajin, whom he'd never met in his timeline. He had died when Trunks hadn't even learnt to speak ,by the hands of the Jinzouningen.
Some days, when he was alone and thinking, all of these memories hurt him like being stabbed in the chest with a piece of splintered glass. What he had lived through sometimes was simply too much to stand.
For months after the defeating of the Cyborgs, before the coming of Cell, he used to wonder around in the country, where big craters still stood to signal a place where the Jinzouningen had had a better time in battle than usual , or just had felt like digging a hole in the ground.
He was completely alone in these journeys of his. He tolerated the presence of no one: whenever a shape that could have been human appeared in the distance, he turned his way to go somewhere else.
He had too much to think about to draw his attention to conversation.
Bulma often was troubled by this solitary attitude of his: if it kept on going like this, he would develop exactly the same character as his father.
But it is to be said that she didn't dislike this perspective as much as she wanted to make believe.
"Hai, moshi moshi" he said picking up ther receiver when the telephone rang.
"Your mother is at the hospital" a young female voice whispered in his ear. "Go now!"
"Wait! Who are you? How do you know that? Whare are you calling from? What happened?"
Too late. The call had already been closed, leaving Trunks completely upset. His mother! His mother had had an accident!His mother was at the hospital, almost certainly with some kind of problem, probably injured, maybe dying...how could that girl tell him nothing about what had happened to her? How could she cut the call like that?
He had to run! He had to go! To the hospital, right now!
Trunks had never approved his mother running around here and there to bring help wherever she could, and entering the small Eastern City Hospital he once more figured out the reson that made him think like that.
Just the perspective of seeing his mother in such a place was horrible.
The hospital was little more than a hutment, at least since the cyborgs had last been there.
Cracks were running all over the bleak, peeled off walls. Where the floor had once been, now there was something hardry recognizable as the remainings of tiles, and most of the windows no longer had their glass. The entire building gave the visitor a feeling like it was still standing on itself for a miracle.
"Okaasan"Trunks murmured, lifting gently his mother's hand.
"Trunks...Trunks...I thought I'd die..."
"What happened? Who did this to you?"
"There was a girl...then she saved my life...and she run, she run..."
Bulma's words were little more than delirious now; the shock of the accident had still serious consequences on her.
Trunks looked down at his mother in concern, and she looked back at him; thanks Kami her injures were not as serious as it had seemed in a first moment, and her life wasn't in danger.
Trunks sat down at his mother's side.
Whoever had done this to her, he had to pay.