The Nightmare Never Ends
Mini-story 3 – Grave of the Unknown
He stood in front of the makeshift grave in the backyard, his thoughtful blue eyes studying every detail of the painted rock, and wondering for the hundredth time who this man was and what he was like. His father had died when he was too young to remember, fighting those terrible Androids, trying to stop them from causing the destruction of his once-beautiful world. Vegeta went out like a true warrior; he lost to the strongest evil the world had ever seen…an honorable death, for sure. All that Trunks knew about his father was that he was the prince of the Saiyan race, a warrior race that was betrayed by the creature known as Freeza. Both his mother and mentor said the same things about him – proud and as stubborn as a mule, but very powerful. There had to be more, though…
I wonder if he would be proud of me, if he saw how I was fighting the Androids, Trunks thought, but he dismissed it. How could anyone be proud of him when he couldn't even land a punch on them? If there was anyone to be proud of, it had to be Gohan; after all, he'd fought harder than anyone to try to destroy those monsters. No, he thought, no one would be proud of me…especially not my father. He'd be saying that I need to try harder, that I have to work at it, but I'm trying the best I can! I work so hard to train, and Gohan is trying to hard to teach me…yet I can't seem to do it…I can't beat them…
Warm, salty tears started to flow from the teenager's eyes as he thought about how he was going to fail them, all of them. The fate of the whole world rested upon his shoulders, a burden heavy with the guilt of letting so many people die already. Too many innocent lives have been lost to those murderous beasts, and he was to blame. If he only trained harder, if he was only stronger, if only there were one instead of two…there were so many things that he wished he had – time, strength, endurance, etc. – but they were so out of reach at this point. How could he even hope to defeat them?
I'm convinced…we're all doomed, was his last thought before he headed back inside his dear home, sobbing with all the pain and sadness the Androids had brought upon him. As he collapsed on his hard mattress, he vaguely realized that he had forgotten to leave the flowers he had brought with him to the grave, but by this time, he no longer cared; all he wanted to do now was sleep, to temporarily leave his troubles somewhere else while he drifted off into a dreamland where he could be happy. And maybe, just maybe, he would see his father there, standing as tall and proud as the king he rightfully is.
