Lord Vegeta watched his eldest grandson, who wasn't paying the slightest attention to the Jazzicou game. Trunks was staring over the railing of the airship, watching the nobles whirl and flit around the massive vessel. In particular, he was watching Princess Avia.
So is that how it is?, Grandfather Vegeta thought, hiding a knowing smile. At least he has good taste, even if he is reaching for the unobtainable. With a soft sigh, he settled deeper into his deck chair, grateful for the sun-shielding canopy overhead. He really should nudge the boy back to the game, but really, it was just a time-killer until they got to Torganga. Seeing that the game wasn't going anywhere, Lord Vegeta let his gaze wander across the waste-land below the ship.
The sparse, hot sands flowed across the landscape, but here and there a dark rock thrust its way upward. Those rocks would get more frequent the closer they moved toward the mountains; three days away by airship, they were only an occasional landmark.
Quickly bored with the rocks and sand, Lord Vegeta raised his gaze to the Saiyan nobles flitting around the ship in their competitive game, trying to out-fly each other. The airship crawled along at a sedate pace, ensuring that even the slowest noble wouldn't be outflown. It also allowed the easily bored Saiyans a place to play and socialize rather than flying south in a ragged line.
A sad sigh from Trunks caught the old Saiyan's attention, and he glanced at his grandson. The boy was watching the other nobles loop in the air with a wistful gaze. Grandfather Vegeta blinked as the full realization of the boy's status hit him. He had always known that the lad was considered a slave, but he had never really seen it until now. "Why don't you go join them?" he said softly.
Trunks jumped and twisted to stare at him, his face going pale. "I can't," he gulped. "And why would you say that? You know that humans can't fly!"
"I know humans can't fly, boy," Vegeta grunted. "I told you to get out there." Trunks paled further, staring at his grandfather if stricken. Vegeta frowned as realization slowly dawned on him. He had just assumed that Trunks could fly, due to his Saiyan heritage. But had anyone bothered to teach the boy? "Would you like to learn to fly?"
"Humans are weak, Grandfather Vegeta," Trunks muttered, staring at the deck. "Weak creatures cannot learn how to fly."
"I didn't ask if a human wanted to learn to fly, boy," Vegeta growled, "I asked if you wanted to learn to fly."
He thought Trunks had gone pale before, but the lad's face turned white as he stared at his grandfather. A thump on the deck distracted both men as Avia landed nearly. With a laugh, she ducked under the shading canvas and kneeled on the cushion. "Jazzicou!" she said with an easy smile. "Can I play the winner?"
"You can have my seat," Trunks muttered, rolling out of the low deck chair. "I think that the sun is getting to me. May I lie down below decks?"
"Of course, lad," Grandfather Vegeta said, frowning a touch. The boy didn't trust him at all, he realized with a heavy heart as he watched the lad walk away. A glance at Avia dispelled thoughts of Trunk's problems; the woman was staring after him with a mixture of concern and forlorn sadness. "Avia, what's wrong?"
Avia jumped as if he had bit her; Grandfather Vegeta watched her face darken with a touch of amusement as blood rushed to her face. "I like Trunks," she murmured, focusing on setting up the game board again. "I'm concerned about him."
"It's more than that, girl," Vegeta grunted. "Tell me truly; is he the boy you spoke of several weeks ago?"
"Please," she whispered, her head bowed. "Please don't ask me that."
Vegeta grunted angrily. "You children, so melodramatic. Avia, do you honestly think that you would be the first Saiyan noble to desire a slave?"
Avia's head snapped up; her eyes flashed with anger as she snarled, "I want him for more than my bed! Is that what you want to hear, old man?"
"Actually, yes, because you wouldn't be the first Saiyan to want that either," he stated calmly. "There have been nobles who have been closer to their slaves than their bondmates."
Vegeta had expected to see hope or some relief in her eyes; instead, she just shook her head as a tear slipped down her cheek. With a hiss, she rubbed it away, but more threatened to fall. Vegeta waited for her to talk, knowing that if he was quiet long enough, she would feel a compulsion to tell him the whole truth. With a trembling sigh, she finally said, "He threw up."
"What?"
"It was dark," she said, her voice fighting to stay even. "I was in a mask with contacts and a voice modulator, everything that I could think of to disguise myself. I saw him there, and I wanted him. And he was willing, right up until he found out who I was." She rubbed her face vigorously with her hands, as if trying to scrape something off her skin. "Then he was horrified and threw up. He was physically ill when he realized that he had touched me."
Vegeta frowned; remembered that night well, and now that he stopped to think about it, Trunks had been terribly upset. He had asked the boy what was wrong, but the brat had been as stubborn as ever and had refused to talk. But now he would talk, Vegeta thought, whether he wants to or not. This has gone beyond you, boy, and I don't want to see it go on any longer.
Prince Vegeta sat on the stern balcony of the airship, watching the sands flow away behind them. It was a dammed boring view, but then that was why he had chosen it. Hopefully, no one else would think that he would be back here. He had a lot to think about.
Like his sister. He loved Avia – to himself, at least, he could admit it – but he wasn't sure that he approved of this fascination with the human slave. And then there was the human in question, Trunks. No matter how much Prince Vegeta tried to wrap his head around it, he was couldn't figure out how a human could get so strong. He glanced at the datapad in his hands again, rereading the information. A lot of it was scientific gibberish to him, but one point that was very clear: a human could never surpass the Third-class level, if that.
Which meant that Trunks had somehow broken past his genetic limits – no, he had smashed through his genetic limits to become the Legendary. Vegeta sighed and turned off the datapad. There were no answers in this machine. But where should he go from here?
"To the beginning," he murmured as an idea came to him, and he turned the pad back on. He scrolled through the menus to the palace's personnel files, stopping at the 'b's. "Briefs, Briefs, ah! Here it is," he muttered as he opened Bulma Briefs' file.
She had been acquired from her home planet twenty years ago during the summer. Her preliminary task was house-servant in the main palace for the six months before she was tested for proficiencies and found to have an astounding intellect. She was immediately placed in the Royal Sciences Division, and was only there for three months before she was elevated to the highest position a slave could reach: personal research assistant to the Head Scientist.
At this point, Bulma's record had been a textbook account of a slave rising through the system; her evaluations and supervisor notes had all said that she was attentive and hard-working, if a little temperamental. Not long after reaching her final position in the Palace, the Head Scientist noticed that she became emotionally unstable and distracted. It had a minor negative effect on her work, and he submitted her to an enforced vacation. When she came back, she was happy and bubbly, more so than before. The supervisor believed that she had found a romantic interest. He was eagerly awaiting any children that she might have, as he wanted to see how much of her amazing intellect she might pass on.
Less than four weeks after her vacation, the King informed the Head Scientist that she had been given to a Third-class who had greatly pleased him. And that was the end of it, other than a note stating that she had died in Bardock's service. Prince Vegeta frowned, not satisfied with the pieces of the story that were clearly missing. What had happened on her vacation to improve her mood? Why had Grandfather Vegeta removed her from the Palace so suddenly?
Vegeta opened up the picture link, and felt his eyes widen in surprise. Trunk's mom had been hot! His friend's blue eyes stared out him, but as he searched the rest of the face, there was little else that matched her son's features, even accounting for the differences in genders. Trunks must resemble his father more, Vegeta thought idly. He thought about letting it go there, but he found that he was curious.
It was only a few more moments of work to pull up Krillian's picture, but Vegeta was not pleased with the result. The round face that stared sullenly from the screen bore even less resemblance to Trunks' than Bulma's.
Vegeta set the pad down and rubbed wearily at his eyes. All of this searching into Trunk's background had only found more questions. What he needed were answers. "So Krillian isn't his father," Vegeta muttered, working it through his head. "Why lie about that? It had to have been one of the slaves that came over from their homeworld, as she was here for a long time before he was born." Vegeta picked up the pad again and checked the human's gestation time and converted it into Saiyan time, idly noting that Saiyan and humans carried young about the same amount of time. Then he checked Trunks' birthdate.
And the first piece of the puzzle fell into place. "She was pregnant when she left the palace!" Vegeta realized with surprise. "But no one would have cared if she had breed with one of the humans – that's something they're supposed to do. So why lie?"
Vegeta checked Krillian's file again to see where he had been at the time. Not in the palace; he had been assigned to a hydroponics farm well away from the capitol at the time, so he couldn't possibly be Trunks' father. So who?
It would help if he could get an idea of what Trunks' father had looked like. Pulling Bulma and Trunks' pictures into a photo program, he programmed the pad to remove all of Bulma's features from Trunks' picture and show the results. Vegeta tensely waited as the computer worked through the program, his eyes moving to the flowing sands below the air ship. The pad beeped softly as the program flashed a picture up, and Vegeta glanced down.
His father's face stared back at him, freezing the Prince in shock. He glanced at the controls of the program to see if he had mis-programmed the machine, but he had done it right. And then he realized the problem; the program was built for Saiyan specifications, so the computer had added dark eyes and Saiyan hair, but that didn't matter to Vegeta as the truth dawned on him. "Trunks is the missing bond-child," he whispered. "The true prince."
He didn't think at that moment, he just did. His hands convulsed around the datapad, crushing it. Digging around in the debris, he pulled out the memory crystal and crushed it as best he could, grinding what he couldn't break into dust under his boot. Only one thought existed – his father could never find out that he had a true son. No one must ever find out. And finally, Vegeta understood why his friend had always been so jumpy, so cautious and apprehensive. Half-breeds were not allowed to exist; Trunks feared for his life.
As he made sure that he destroyed all the evidence from his mission, he didn't stop to ask himself if he was protecting himself or his new-found brother.