Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ...Why? Because I'm broke and they would never
sell it to me anyways. *sniffle* At least I still have fanfics! (he he he)
A/N: This story is a romance/angst. It also has some gore in it, but so far, so good. It takes place in an alternate universe. This is the world of Mirai no Trunks, except a few odd twists of fate have thrown the future into more chaos than even the young demi-saiyan can't handle.
The Deaths of Two Great Heros
Part 1: Jennifer's Story
She hugged her knees to her chest and sobbed, her bosy heaving up and down as tears streamed down her rosy cheeks and dampened the tattered leather of her pants. Her right leg was broken, no, shattered. The bone pierced the skin and her blood flowed freely, unobstructed, from the fatal wound. but her crippled leg didn't hurt half as much as her torn heart.
"O-otousan (father)," she whimpered as her body shivered, goosebumps encompassing her skin. She sniffled before she went on. "Okaasan (mother)...Oniichan (older brother)...Minna (everyone)...Everyone is gone." She let out a soft groan and tried forcing the tears back into her eyes, but all that did was cause more to come. The lump in her throat grew larger, so now all she could do was sob and try to choke down some of the filthy air that surrounded her.
"Why?" she tried whispering, but it came out as a whimper instead. /Why did they take them? Mina...All of them except me...Those bakas. I hate them!...Why? Why do they do this?/ She pulled her legs closer to her chest as she leaned more of her weight on the tree at her back. /How can they hate humans so much, when we look so much like them?!/ Jennifer shivered. /Okaasan...Why did you try to protect me? Now I'm alive and no one else is! You shielded me with yourself. Your soul for mine./ She wiped some more of her mother's blood from her face with her hand and looked at the smears of scarlet. /But what am I supposed to do now?/ She let out a long groan and shivered. /I'm cold, hungry, and alone...So horribly alone./ The tears resumed the rapid flow they had before. Jennifer was so weak that she simply let herself collapse onto the small, clear patch of earth beside her. A sharp pain exploded in her skull as the darkness washed over her and the rock she hadn't noticed was bathed in her blood.
***
"Kuso!" Trunks muttered to himself as he flew over the broken buildings to the orbs of golden light that kept exploding on the horizon. "I'm not going to make it! Damn it!" Trunks increased his speed as much as he could, but his inner strength and will to protect, was no match for the sheer power and destruction expertise of the beasts he raced forwards to stop.
Before he was within a mile of the town, the explosions stopped. Wicked, shrill laughter filled the air after a few brief moments of silence and two trails of light fleeing in the opposite direction told him the sinister creations of Dr. Gero were off to take the lives of more innocent victims, or just relax. After all, most of the world was theirs now, anyways. Humans were an endangered species, and within a couple more years, extinct would be much more conflict.
By the time he finally set foot on the demolished city, more ruble remained of this once majestic part of Japan, not just ruins and scattered pieces of reinforced concrete. There was blood everywhere. This was one of the resorts to the survivors, to what was left of the human species. There couldn't be over 200 left now. The crimson painted streets and blood splattered windows, aside from the fact that he couldn't detect a single strong chi signal, told him that none of the fifty people in the town survived.
Trunks had to fight the tears that threatened to grace his cheeks and walked onward through the ruble, hoping against all hope that maybe someone, anyone, had survived this brutal massacre.
"Dead," he said with a aigh as he dropped down onto a fairly large hunk if cincrete. He buried his face in his hands and then combed his fingers back through his hair. "No...not again..." Vegeta had died mere months before and Gohan only weeks after him. The time machine was never finished, and since Trunks wasn't also born with his mother's gift with technology, it has stayed that way ever since she died those three pain filled months ago. "I have no one now," Trunks whispered to himself, his fingers still tangled in his mess of lilac hair. "The rest of my new found freinds are dead...And if I had arrived just a few minutes earlier this would've never happened. Damn it!" Trunks screamed as he loosened his grip on his hair and slammed both his fists into the concrete. "It's not fair!" Teats started to slip down the cheeks of his hung head. He was defeated. Useless. "If only I hadn't fallen asleep! Then they all would still be alive right now." /But you have to sleep, Trunks,/ a voice in the back of his mind seemed to say. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thoughts, and it worked for a few seconds. Just long enough for him to hear the faint drip-drip of blood and the shallow breathing of the inconscious.
Turning around he saw a girl collapsed on the groud behind him, her leg nearly beyond repair, and her blue-cotten candy looking hair slowly turning crimson. He brown leather pants and white Capsule Corp. shirt were worn and tatteres, and seemed to be flecked with blood that wasn't her own. He lifted the blood soaked figure into his arms and took off towards the last palce he thought safe. His home. His refuge. What was left of his life.
***
She awoke on a matress laid on the floor that was pushed up against one of the wals in the tattered room she was in. She sat up and moved to stand up, but was stopped by the sharp ain that radiated up her left leg, and caused her to quiver as it flooded through her body.
Hearing a painfilled gasp, Trunks rushed in from the adjoining room to see how the sole survivor of the blood massacre had faired.
The first live person she had seen since her life had shattered in front of her very eyes, stumbled into her room. He had lilac hair that fell to right above his ears and deep blue eyes. His clothes were as tattered as her own and he had the battle scars to prove that he too had his fair share of close calls in this death trap called "Earth." A faint pink scar graced the left side of his face from his cheekbone to an inch away from his chapped, pink lips. From the concerned look on his face, she could tell that he had saved her, and from the empty room that surrounded her, the only one that was saved. She tried smiling, but all that did was cause the corners of her mouth to twitch. She really was alone.
He walked towards her and knelt down on the floor nest to the beaten up matress. "Hey, are you all right? I didn't look like you'd make it. You looked pretty bad when I found you."
"I have a splitting headache and it feels like something chomped my left leg in half."
Trunks smiled. "You're not too far off...Your left leg was nearly destroyed, but my Mom, being the genius that she is, some how managed to fix it." Trunks shrugged his shoulders. "It still baffled me how she does that." Then he looked into her deep green eyes with his own burning saphire for a moment before he went on. "You cracked your skull open on a rock too. Heck, you're lucky to even be alive!"
Jennifer looked down as her hands and the sheet that covered her. "Yeah lucky. Sure," she mumbled to herself.
"What was that?" Trunks asked in a cheery voice, knowing damn well what she had said. /Oh God, please let her not commit suicide like the others. I don't think I could take all that blood again./
Jenifer snapped out of her ensnaring thoughts. "Huh? Oh, nothing...It's just that...Well, I know this is a stupid question, but I have to ask anyway." Trunks nodded his head. "Way anyone else...I mean, am I..."
Trunks nodded his head once more, now with a solemn look on his face.
"Dammit!" Jennifer pounded her fist into the cement floor next bed. Pain shot up to her elbow, but it didn't matter. they really were all gone, and now she was stuck under the guidence of this stanger, someone who didn't lover her ot care about her at all. Hot tears started burning down her cheek faster than she could wipe them away. "It's...not...fair," she managed to choke out betwenn unwanted sobs.
"Hmm?" Trunks asked, leaning towards her to hear her better, her last words had barely come out a breath above a whisper. He regreted his reaction a minute later when she flung her head back up and ended yelling into his face from two inches away. "It's not fair! Why did they have to die?! Okaasan...Oniichan...Why couldn't they have killed me instead?! Tell me!" she scremaed into Trunk's cool eyes, her own raging with fire she didn't doubt in the least.
The next thing that Trunks did was the only thing he knew how to do to calm hysterical people down. Ones who had lost everyone and everything and just don't want to except that everything they had known and loved was gone. He extended his arms and pulled her close to him. She resisted as first, punching and kicking against his embrace. But in the end, she gave up, and collapsed, crying, into his warm chest.
***
She must've blacked out, or just been overly tired because when she opened her eyes again, the tears were gone, but her face was still puffy and the lilac haired young man had fallen asleep beside her. After she stared at him for a good five minutes, wondering who he was and why he had done who he was and why he had done what he did. His eyes fluttered, then opened, and his eyes met hers almost imediately.
He sat up, smiled, yawned and stretched. Then looked at her calmly, as if he expected her to ask him anything and everything and he was willing to answer to all of her questions.
"Who are you?" she asked, the first question Trunks expected because it was always the first one he got.
"I'm Trunks Briefs."
"And wher-?"
"This is Capsule Corp. And I rescued you because even though you were bady injured, you were still alive." Jennfer shut her mouth and looked at him with admiration, but also with question and wonder. "And you are?" he added as an afterthought.
"Oh me?" Jennifer asked, pointing at herself. "I'm Jennifer Aoikaze. I'm from...Well, it doesn't matter because it doesn't exist anymore. Nice to meet you, Briefs-san."
"Just call me Trunks."
"K...Whatever....Thanks for rescuing me, I guess," she said. Her eyes had shifted their focus and their gaze was shifting about the room, taking everything in. This town had obviously suffered some minor attacks as well as vitually every other that was left. There was a good chunk of the ceiling taken out, alone with the various holes in the longest wall. The one to her right. The only one with a window. Or at least an intentional one, anyway.
"Wait here," Trunks said. "I'll get you something to eat." He disappeared for a moments and came back with a brown, wooden bowl full of some grey, sour smelling substance." She wrinkled her nose at it and Trunks almost laughed. "I know it smells gross, but just try some."
Jennifer gobbled it down, ignoring the rancid taste, since food was more important to her growling stomach right now than anything else.
***
After three minutes of trying to stomach the horrible stuff, she realized she couldn't eat anymore. Once her mind had fully awakened, so had her memories of the loved ones that she'd lost, and the despair that now she was the only one left. Her home destroyed, she would have no where to go. The smell of the poridge grew worse with each passing moment, smelling more and more like the foul scent of spilt blood. One the aroma filled her nostrils yet again, after the full memories of this morning had come back, she felt what she had already eaten crawl back up her throat, and she ran to the window as her fervent efforts to keep it down, failed.
Trunks looked at her, concern present in his eyes, as the upper half of her body lurched and he heard the splash of semi-digested gruel on the broken ashfault outside her window. He winced when he saw her shudder and go limp. He could tell she hadn't eaten well in a long time, her cheeks had begun to sink in, but she was yet to look like a skeleton. She still had some life left in her, but he feared that the cloud of misery that had settled upon her would bring her to her family before her time.
He picked up the the chipped porclein bowl with its half eaten contents and the worn medal spoon Jennifer had used to eat what was left of the gruesome stuff. He sighed, and frowned as he walked over to the sink in the adjoined kitchen. He peered down at the bowl and then slammed it down into the sink, causing it to shatter and the spoon to come flying out slide across the tiled floor. Tears of anger and greif filled his eyes and poured down his cheeks.
"I am so SICK of this!" he said to himself in the yeling version of a whisper. "Every single damn time I try saving one of them, they end up wasting away in front of my eyes, and either dying in my hands," he stared down at then and shook them with fury. "Or," his eyes clouded over as he remembered the last one he had saved. A middle-aged man, around the thirty- five or so; he had lost his beloved wife of 17 years, and his three year old daughter and two year olf son. Trunks could hear his sobs as he cried himself to sleep every might, but acted as nothing happened suring the day. With every weak that passed he ate less, moved less, talked less. His cheekbones became more prominent and his eyes began to sink back into his head.
Somehow, he had found a razor. Bulma and Trunks still couldn't figure out where held it got it from. All they could remember now was the blood. They had opened the door to his room one morning and found it painting the walls and dripping from the ceiling. Trunks had nearly steped in the large, scarlet pool in the floor. They had found him, sprawled out of the floor, his eyes open, with a smile on his face. Trunks, even though he had seen equal gore in battle, still cried into his mother's shoulder, hiding his eyes from the seemingly unreal scene.
And now this young girl had lost hust as much, and he just couldn't bare to see her suffer the same fate. He hated the fact of saving people just to see them die. It made life more unbearable, worse than just finding them dead.
He furiously wiped the hot tears from his eyes and face and walked into her room with red rimmmed eyes. He went over to the window that Jennifer was still leaning out against and put his arm around her shoulders. When he helped her to stand and walk to the matress, he realized that she had been crying as well. That was when he promised himself that she would not die like the rest.
***
One moment she was leaning ou the window, the next, darkness had enveloped her and the soft touch of black was facing her from everyside, before she was thrown bakc into a scene she knew all too well. It had been playing in the back of her head and haunting her dreams since it happned, and now she was being forced to relive it again.
She had lived in a peaceful town, one free of destruction and the ruthless control of the androids for some time now. The houese had been repaired to the best of the ability of those who were left, and even the vines had crawled up the sides, hiding what couldn't be fixed. It was spring, the town blossoming in fresh beauty, the few cherry trees that were left showing off all of their splendor. She had been sitting beneath one with her family, enjoying the slightly warm breeze and the flower petal it blew into her hair. The town had become overgrown, yes, but letting it retuen back to nature had given it more beauty than the repairers could have ever accomplished.
What 50 humans had found this piece of paradise ahd thrived there, had managed to get some-what back on their feet and enjoying the small pleasures life once again, some for the first time. The children slimbed the blossoming trees and shook the pink petals into their friends below. Jennifer laughed. This plaace was a little touch of paradise in a owrld full of pain and destruction...Unitl those two palse streaks of light crossed the sky...bringing back what they ahd worked so hard to worget.
Buildings exploded in balls of fire and the foliage nearby was quick to be lit by the blaze. The town, this place, that she had grown to love, was going up in giant pillars of charcoal-gray smoke. Bodies, perople she had grwon to know and love, littered the streets, thrown from the explosions that erupted inside their homes. Broken, bloddy piles: the dirt street soom turning a streaked crimson.
And then it was her turn to ne hit, time for her beloved home to be demolished like the rest. Throuwn through the thin wall of the building and into the overgrown pavement surrounding it, her leg taking the impact from both collisions. She heard it snap and then felt it break the skin from the collision of the ashfault.
Her mother, having only been thrown through the kitcen window, was far better off than she, sustaining only minor bruises and laserations. She walked over to her crippled daughter and bit her lower lip, her eyes clouding with worry, as she looked at the bloodied bone which jutted out from her daughter's leg. Unfortunatly, byt the time she reached Jennifer's side, the Androids had spotted them; the only survivors that hadn't yet been destroyed by their hands.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw them approach, and then land behind her and her daughter. She turned around to face them, greated by twin, demon-like smiled from the two androids. She stood in front of her daughter, blocking her with nothing but herself. If her injury got fixed, was healed correctly, she could live far lonfer than her mother, old and sick as she was.
She refused to move when the andriods began to power up to strike, even though Jennifer pleaded for her to go. She wasn't injured, she could run away, while Jennifer could barely move, nevermind escape. When the attack came, her mother absorbed it all, falling to her knees, and then collpasing at Jennifer's feet.
Her vision blurred. The last person she had left had just died in front of her. Now she had no one. She turned behind her to see her father's and brother's bodied pointing in unnatural directions, bones snapped, limbs mangled. She shuddered as she turned to face the murders of all she had ever loved, hot tears pouring from her eyes.
But they merely laughed in her face. Made no move to end her pitiful existance, but merely laughed.
"We shall let you live," managed 17. Once his laughter subsided. Jennifer stared at him. Let her live, why?
"It will hurt you far more now that you've lost everything, and you pose no threat, so you're free to go, howevere long that may be." 17 chuckled.
"So long, human," 18 said, as her and her brother flew off, probably to ruin someone elses's life as much as they had ruined her own.
Jennifer was left, sitting there, staring at all of the carnage that surrounded her. She was dazed. Had all this really happened? Yes, the pain in her leg proved it did. hot tears escaped her eyes as she got lost in the sheer misery that surrounded her.
And then she woke up, the young man called Trunks shaking her shoulder's violently.
***
By the time he looked at her again after he had sat her down, her eyes had glazed over and a blank expression was plastered to her face.
"Jennifer?" he asked, waving his hand in front of her face. "Jenn...oh, Shimatta!" /She's havaing a flashback!...Bad, very bad./ "Jenn!" he yelled to her face, grasping her shoulders in his hands. "Come on! Come on, snap out of it! Jennifer!" She finally came back to the present after he had spent five minutes shaking her shoulders.
"H-huh?Wha-?" she blinked a couple of times, then shook her head, and looked in confusion at the lilac haired teenageer who sat before her. She gazed at him curiously for a moment, and then the memories of the hours she;s recently passed returned, for a grave expression soon replaced confused curiosity.
"Jennifer," he said to her, his face so serious, yet full of care. "You cannot relive your past. I've seen many whither away by doing that...," his gaze shifted to his lap. "And I don't want to loose another."
Jennifer couldn't help but stare at him in shock for a few moments. /He-he cares...about what happens to me? Why? I just met him! It doesn't make any sense!...And yet.../ the look on his face told her he was genuinely worried about her, and she couldn't help but let her face melt into a warm face. "I'll try my best," she said. "But not just for myself, for you too." Now it was Trunks' turn to look confused. "It seems like you've lost as many as I, and no one deserves to live only to watch more die, so I'll spare you the sorrow of loosing one more."
Jennifer couldn't force the smile away from her lips if she tried, because he smiled warmly right back.
"Thank you," was all he said, neither knowing that what just happened meant more than either knew it to be.
***
A/N: Well? Wha'd ya think? Please tell me! Also, this is the beginning of a really long story I'm writing. The beginning is Jennifer's Story, and then it will move on to the main part and bulk of the fic. It's eventually going to be a Gundam Wing/DBZ cross. After the first several chapters you'll find out why. Enjoy, and don't forget to R&R! Ja ne!
A/N: This story is a romance/angst. It also has some gore in it, but so far, so good. It takes place in an alternate universe. This is the world of Mirai no Trunks, except a few odd twists of fate have thrown the future into more chaos than even the young demi-saiyan can't handle.
The Deaths of Two Great Heros
Part 1: Jennifer's Story
She hugged her knees to her chest and sobbed, her bosy heaving up and down as tears streamed down her rosy cheeks and dampened the tattered leather of her pants. Her right leg was broken, no, shattered. The bone pierced the skin and her blood flowed freely, unobstructed, from the fatal wound. but her crippled leg didn't hurt half as much as her torn heart.
"O-otousan (father)," she whimpered as her body shivered, goosebumps encompassing her skin. She sniffled before she went on. "Okaasan (mother)...Oniichan (older brother)...Minna (everyone)...Everyone is gone." She let out a soft groan and tried forcing the tears back into her eyes, but all that did was cause more to come. The lump in her throat grew larger, so now all she could do was sob and try to choke down some of the filthy air that surrounded her.
"Why?" she tried whispering, but it came out as a whimper instead. /Why did they take them? Mina...All of them except me...Those bakas. I hate them!...Why? Why do they do this?/ She pulled her legs closer to her chest as she leaned more of her weight on the tree at her back. /How can they hate humans so much, when we look so much like them?!/ Jennifer shivered. /Okaasan...Why did you try to protect me? Now I'm alive and no one else is! You shielded me with yourself. Your soul for mine./ She wiped some more of her mother's blood from her face with her hand and looked at the smears of scarlet. /But what am I supposed to do now?/ She let out a long groan and shivered. /I'm cold, hungry, and alone...So horribly alone./ The tears resumed the rapid flow they had before. Jennifer was so weak that she simply let herself collapse onto the small, clear patch of earth beside her. A sharp pain exploded in her skull as the darkness washed over her and the rock she hadn't noticed was bathed in her blood.
***
"Kuso!" Trunks muttered to himself as he flew over the broken buildings to the orbs of golden light that kept exploding on the horizon. "I'm not going to make it! Damn it!" Trunks increased his speed as much as he could, but his inner strength and will to protect, was no match for the sheer power and destruction expertise of the beasts he raced forwards to stop.
Before he was within a mile of the town, the explosions stopped. Wicked, shrill laughter filled the air after a few brief moments of silence and two trails of light fleeing in the opposite direction told him the sinister creations of Dr. Gero were off to take the lives of more innocent victims, or just relax. After all, most of the world was theirs now, anyways. Humans were an endangered species, and within a couple more years, extinct would be much more conflict.
By the time he finally set foot on the demolished city, more ruble remained of this once majestic part of Japan, not just ruins and scattered pieces of reinforced concrete. There was blood everywhere. This was one of the resorts to the survivors, to what was left of the human species. There couldn't be over 200 left now. The crimson painted streets and blood splattered windows, aside from the fact that he couldn't detect a single strong chi signal, told him that none of the fifty people in the town survived.
Trunks had to fight the tears that threatened to grace his cheeks and walked onward through the ruble, hoping against all hope that maybe someone, anyone, had survived this brutal massacre.
"Dead," he said with a aigh as he dropped down onto a fairly large hunk if cincrete. He buried his face in his hands and then combed his fingers back through his hair. "No...not again..." Vegeta had died mere months before and Gohan only weeks after him. The time machine was never finished, and since Trunks wasn't also born with his mother's gift with technology, it has stayed that way ever since she died those three pain filled months ago. "I have no one now," Trunks whispered to himself, his fingers still tangled in his mess of lilac hair. "The rest of my new found freinds are dead...And if I had arrived just a few minutes earlier this would've never happened. Damn it!" Trunks screamed as he loosened his grip on his hair and slammed both his fists into the concrete. "It's not fair!" Teats started to slip down the cheeks of his hung head. He was defeated. Useless. "If only I hadn't fallen asleep! Then they all would still be alive right now." /But you have to sleep, Trunks,/ a voice in the back of his mind seemed to say. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thoughts, and it worked for a few seconds. Just long enough for him to hear the faint drip-drip of blood and the shallow breathing of the inconscious.
Turning around he saw a girl collapsed on the groud behind him, her leg nearly beyond repair, and her blue-cotten candy looking hair slowly turning crimson. He brown leather pants and white Capsule Corp. shirt were worn and tatteres, and seemed to be flecked with blood that wasn't her own. He lifted the blood soaked figure into his arms and took off towards the last palce he thought safe. His home. His refuge. What was left of his life.
***
She awoke on a matress laid on the floor that was pushed up against one of the wals in the tattered room she was in. She sat up and moved to stand up, but was stopped by the sharp ain that radiated up her left leg, and caused her to quiver as it flooded through her body.
Hearing a painfilled gasp, Trunks rushed in from the adjoining room to see how the sole survivor of the blood massacre had faired.
The first live person she had seen since her life had shattered in front of her very eyes, stumbled into her room. He had lilac hair that fell to right above his ears and deep blue eyes. His clothes were as tattered as her own and he had the battle scars to prove that he too had his fair share of close calls in this death trap called "Earth." A faint pink scar graced the left side of his face from his cheekbone to an inch away from his chapped, pink lips. From the concerned look on his face, she could tell that he had saved her, and from the empty room that surrounded her, the only one that was saved. She tried smiling, but all that did was cause the corners of her mouth to twitch. She really was alone.
He walked towards her and knelt down on the floor nest to the beaten up matress. "Hey, are you all right? I didn't look like you'd make it. You looked pretty bad when I found you."
"I have a splitting headache and it feels like something chomped my left leg in half."
Trunks smiled. "You're not too far off...Your left leg was nearly destroyed, but my Mom, being the genius that she is, some how managed to fix it." Trunks shrugged his shoulders. "It still baffled me how she does that." Then he looked into her deep green eyes with his own burning saphire for a moment before he went on. "You cracked your skull open on a rock too. Heck, you're lucky to even be alive!"
Jennifer looked down as her hands and the sheet that covered her. "Yeah lucky. Sure," she mumbled to herself.
"What was that?" Trunks asked in a cheery voice, knowing damn well what she had said. /Oh God, please let her not commit suicide like the others. I don't think I could take all that blood again./
Jenifer snapped out of her ensnaring thoughts. "Huh? Oh, nothing...It's just that...Well, I know this is a stupid question, but I have to ask anyway." Trunks nodded his head. "Way anyone else...I mean, am I..."
Trunks nodded his head once more, now with a solemn look on his face.
"Dammit!" Jennifer pounded her fist into the cement floor next bed. Pain shot up to her elbow, but it didn't matter. they really were all gone, and now she was stuck under the guidence of this stanger, someone who didn't lover her ot care about her at all. Hot tears started burning down her cheek faster than she could wipe them away. "It's...not...fair," she managed to choke out betwenn unwanted sobs.
"Hmm?" Trunks asked, leaning towards her to hear her better, her last words had barely come out a breath above a whisper. He regreted his reaction a minute later when she flung her head back up and ended yelling into his face from two inches away. "It's not fair! Why did they have to die?! Okaasan...Oniichan...Why couldn't they have killed me instead?! Tell me!" she scremaed into Trunk's cool eyes, her own raging with fire she didn't doubt in the least.
The next thing that Trunks did was the only thing he knew how to do to calm hysterical people down. Ones who had lost everyone and everything and just don't want to except that everything they had known and loved was gone. He extended his arms and pulled her close to him. She resisted as first, punching and kicking against his embrace. But in the end, she gave up, and collapsed, crying, into his warm chest.
***
She must've blacked out, or just been overly tired because when she opened her eyes again, the tears were gone, but her face was still puffy and the lilac haired young man had fallen asleep beside her. After she stared at him for a good five minutes, wondering who he was and why he had done who he was and why he had done what he did. His eyes fluttered, then opened, and his eyes met hers almost imediately.
He sat up, smiled, yawned and stretched. Then looked at her calmly, as if he expected her to ask him anything and everything and he was willing to answer to all of her questions.
"Who are you?" she asked, the first question Trunks expected because it was always the first one he got.
"I'm Trunks Briefs."
"And wher-?"
"This is Capsule Corp. And I rescued you because even though you were bady injured, you were still alive." Jennfer shut her mouth and looked at him with admiration, but also with question and wonder. "And you are?" he added as an afterthought.
"Oh me?" Jennifer asked, pointing at herself. "I'm Jennifer Aoikaze. I'm from...Well, it doesn't matter because it doesn't exist anymore. Nice to meet you, Briefs-san."
"Just call me Trunks."
"K...Whatever....Thanks for rescuing me, I guess," she said. Her eyes had shifted their focus and their gaze was shifting about the room, taking everything in. This town had obviously suffered some minor attacks as well as vitually every other that was left. There was a good chunk of the ceiling taken out, alone with the various holes in the longest wall. The one to her right. The only one with a window. Or at least an intentional one, anyway.
"Wait here," Trunks said. "I'll get you something to eat." He disappeared for a moments and came back with a brown, wooden bowl full of some grey, sour smelling substance." She wrinkled her nose at it and Trunks almost laughed. "I know it smells gross, but just try some."
Jennifer gobbled it down, ignoring the rancid taste, since food was more important to her growling stomach right now than anything else.
***
After three minutes of trying to stomach the horrible stuff, she realized she couldn't eat anymore. Once her mind had fully awakened, so had her memories of the loved ones that she'd lost, and the despair that now she was the only one left. Her home destroyed, she would have no where to go. The smell of the poridge grew worse with each passing moment, smelling more and more like the foul scent of spilt blood. One the aroma filled her nostrils yet again, after the full memories of this morning had come back, she felt what she had already eaten crawl back up her throat, and she ran to the window as her fervent efforts to keep it down, failed.
Trunks looked at her, concern present in his eyes, as the upper half of her body lurched and he heard the splash of semi-digested gruel on the broken ashfault outside her window. He winced when he saw her shudder and go limp. He could tell she hadn't eaten well in a long time, her cheeks had begun to sink in, but she was yet to look like a skeleton. She still had some life left in her, but he feared that the cloud of misery that had settled upon her would bring her to her family before her time.
He picked up the the chipped porclein bowl with its half eaten contents and the worn medal spoon Jennifer had used to eat what was left of the gruesome stuff. He sighed, and frowned as he walked over to the sink in the adjoined kitchen. He peered down at the bowl and then slammed it down into the sink, causing it to shatter and the spoon to come flying out slide across the tiled floor. Tears of anger and greif filled his eyes and poured down his cheeks.
"I am so SICK of this!" he said to himself in the yeling version of a whisper. "Every single damn time I try saving one of them, they end up wasting away in front of my eyes, and either dying in my hands," he stared down at then and shook them with fury. "Or," his eyes clouded over as he remembered the last one he had saved. A middle-aged man, around the thirty- five or so; he had lost his beloved wife of 17 years, and his three year old daughter and two year olf son. Trunks could hear his sobs as he cried himself to sleep every might, but acted as nothing happened suring the day. With every weak that passed he ate less, moved less, talked less. His cheekbones became more prominent and his eyes began to sink back into his head.
Somehow, he had found a razor. Bulma and Trunks still couldn't figure out where held it got it from. All they could remember now was the blood. They had opened the door to his room one morning and found it painting the walls and dripping from the ceiling. Trunks had nearly steped in the large, scarlet pool in the floor. They had found him, sprawled out of the floor, his eyes open, with a smile on his face. Trunks, even though he had seen equal gore in battle, still cried into his mother's shoulder, hiding his eyes from the seemingly unreal scene.
And now this young girl had lost hust as much, and he just couldn't bare to see her suffer the same fate. He hated the fact of saving people just to see them die. It made life more unbearable, worse than just finding them dead.
He furiously wiped the hot tears from his eyes and face and walked into her room with red rimmmed eyes. He went over to the window that Jennifer was still leaning out against and put his arm around her shoulders. When he helped her to stand and walk to the matress, he realized that she had been crying as well. That was when he promised himself that she would not die like the rest.
***
One moment she was leaning ou the window, the next, darkness had enveloped her and the soft touch of black was facing her from everyside, before she was thrown bakc into a scene she knew all too well. It had been playing in the back of her head and haunting her dreams since it happned, and now she was being forced to relive it again.
She had lived in a peaceful town, one free of destruction and the ruthless control of the androids for some time now. The houese had been repaired to the best of the ability of those who were left, and even the vines had crawled up the sides, hiding what couldn't be fixed. It was spring, the town blossoming in fresh beauty, the few cherry trees that were left showing off all of their splendor. She had been sitting beneath one with her family, enjoying the slightly warm breeze and the flower petal it blew into her hair. The town had become overgrown, yes, but letting it retuen back to nature had given it more beauty than the repairers could have ever accomplished.
What 50 humans had found this piece of paradise ahd thrived there, had managed to get some-what back on their feet and enjoying the small pleasures life once again, some for the first time. The children slimbed the blossoming trees and shook the pink petals into their friends below. Jennifer laughed. This plaace was a little touch of paradise in a owrld full of pain and destruction...Unitl those two palse streaks of light crossed the sky...bringing back what they ahd worked so hard to worget.
Buildings exploded in balls of fire and the foliage nearby was quick to be lit by the blaze. The town, this place, that she had grown to love, was going up in giant pillars of charcoal-gray smoke. Bodies, perople she had grwon to know and love, littered the streets, thrown from the explosions that erupted inside their homes. Broken, bloddy piles: the dirt street soom turning a streaked crimson.
And then it was her turn to ne hit, time for her beloved home to be demolished like the rest. Throuwn through the thin wall of the building and into the overgrown pavement surrounding it, her leg taking the impact from both collisions. She heard it snap and then felt it break the skin from the collision of the ashfault.
Her mother, having only been thrown through the kitcen window, was far better off than she, sustaining only minor bruises and laserations. She walked over to her crippled daughter and bit her lower lip, her eyes clouding with worry, as she looked at the bloodied bone which jutted out from her daughter's leg. Unfortunatly, byt the time she reached Jennifer's side, the Androids had spotted them; the only survivors that hadn't yet been destroyed by their hands.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw them approach, and then land behind her and her daughter. She turned around to face them, greated by twin, demon-like smiled from the two androids. She stood in front of her daughter, blocking her with nothing but herself. If her injury got fixed, was healed correctly, she could live far lonfer than her mother, old and sick as she was.
She refused to move when the andriods began to power up to strike, even though Jennifer pleaded for her to go. She wasn't injured, she could run away, while Jennifer could barely move, nevermind escape. When the attack came, her mother absorbed it all, falling to her knees, and then collpasing at Jennifer's feet.
Her vision blurred. The last person she had left had just died in front of her. Now she had no one. She turned behind her to see her father's and brother's bodied pointing in unnatural directions, bones snapped, limbs mangled. She shuddered as she turned to face the murders of all she had ever loved, hot tears pouring from her eyes.
But they merely laughed in her face. Made no move to end her pitiful existance, but merely laughed.
"We shall let you live," managed 17. Once his laughter subsided. Jennifer stared at him. Let her live, why?
"It will hurt you far more now that you've lost everything, and you pose no threat, so you're free to go, howevere long that may be." 17 chuckled.
"So long, human," 18 said, as her and her brother flew off, probably to ruin someone elses's life as much as they had ruined her own.
Jennifer was left, sitting there, staring at all of the carnage that surrounded her. She was dazed. Had all this really happened? Yes, the pain in her leg proved it did. hot tears escaped her eyes as she got lost in the sheer misery that surrounded her.
And then she woke up, the young man called Trunks shaking her shoulder's violently.
***
By the time he looked at her again after he had sat her down, her eyes had glazed over and a blank expression was plastered to her face.
"Jennifer?" he asked, waving his hand in front of her face. "Jenn...oh, Shimatta!" /She's havaing a flashback!...Bad, very bad./ "Jenn!" he yelled to her face, grasping her shoulders in his hands. "Come on! Come on, snap out of it! Jennifer!" She finally came back to the present after he had spent five minutes shaking her shoulders.
"H-huh?Wha-?" she blinked a couple of times, then shook her head, and looked in confusion at the lilac haired teenageer who sat before her. She gazed at him curiously for a moment, and then the memories of the hours she;s recently passed returned, for a grave expression soon replaced confused curiosity.
"Jennifer," he said to her, his face so serious, yet full of care. "You cannot relive your past. I've seen many whither away by doing that...," his gaze shifted to his lap. "And I don't want to loose another."
Jennifer couldn't help but stare at him in shock for a few moments. /He-he cares...about what happens to me? Why? I just met him! It doesn't make any sense!...And yet.../ the look on his face told her he was genuinely worried about her, and she couldn't help but let her face melt into a warm face. "I'll try my best," she said. "But not just for myself, for you too." Now it was Trunks' turn to look confused. "It seems like you've lost as many as I, and no one deserves to live only to watch more die, so I'll spare you the sorrow of loosing one more."
Jennifer couldn't force the smile away from her lips if she tried, because he smiled warmly right back.
"Thank you," was all he said, neither knowing that what just happened meant more than either knew it to be.
***
A/N: Well? Wha'd ya think? Please tell me! Also, this is the beginning of a really long story I'm writing. The beginning is Jennifer's Story, and then it will move on to the main part and bulk of the fic. It's eventually going to be a Gundam Wing/DBZ cross. After the first several chapters you'll find out why. Enjoy, and don't forget to R&R! Ja ne!