A Place in Time
Chapter One: Aftermath of a Fated Tryst
By: Caelestis Dulcis
Pan groaned and rolled over in the crisp white sheets, attempting to escape the sun that shone obnoxiously through the bedroom window. Her movement stirred the figure beside her, and a strong arm wrapped tighter around her waist sleepily to keep her from leaving his side. She smiled and buried her head in his chest, the muscles he wore doing the job of diverting the light from her eyes quite well. At times like these, she loved that her figure was so petite, despite all the fighting she had done in her life, as she could easily fit into his chest.
Without a problem, the young woman found herself soon drifting back into her interrupted slumber. However, Pan had never had tastefully good luck, and the dreams she wished for were fated to come another day instead...
Seconds later--or was it hours; it had seemed like mere seconds to her--Pan was jolted awake once again. This time not as something so gentle as the morning sunshine, but by an invisible form, which was now bouncing on top of her stomach, causing her to growl in annoyance. Throwing the sheets off her head, she came face-to-face with a five-year-old version of herself with cerulean eyes.
Delighted that she had succeeded in waking the woman, the little girl stopped bouncing, and fell forward onto Pan, delivering her a warm embrace. "Kaasan!" she exclaimed jovially and in a high-pitched and very girly voice. "You're up! You're up! You're up!"
Despite the annoyance she felt for being forced from her rest, Pan could not help but smile and return the embrace. She sat up against the headboard of her bed and carried the little girl with her, positioning her in her lap as she cheered for her mother's awakening. "Good morning, Musume," she said, kissing the girl on the forehead in between strands disheveled raven hair.
"Good morning, Kaasan! You and Tousan sleep so long; I had to wake you up!"
Pan frowned and looked at the sleeping man beside her, then back at her daughter. "Hey now, you didn't wake him up!" she exclaimed. Musume looked confused for a moment and scratched her head, looking back and forth between her parents, the slumbering Trunks and the awakened Pan. Then, it seemed to come to her suddenly. "But Kaasan, I tried. Tousan didn't move!"
Pan sighed. Trunks was sure a heavy sleeper; not even his daughter's shrieks seemed to do the trick. Her brothers had inherited that as well, which was probably a good thing as she slept in the room in the middle of both of theirs and liked to try and wake up the whole household once she found it fit to wake up herself. Vegeta and Gohan could sleep through a lot. She wasn't so sure yet about their youngest, Kaeida. But there was plenty of time to learn about her for the young mother. The girl had only been born a little less than three months ago and they hadn't had much chance to experience a real pattern in her sleeping habits.
Picking up Musume, Pan set her on her feet on the floor. "Musu, go do your best to wake up your brothers instead, but be sure not to disturb your sister. I don't want her awake until I go in there, alright? I'll find a way to wake up Tousan."
She nodded vigorously and skittered off into the hallway. When she was out of sight--but definitely not out of earshot--the raven-haired woman rolled over on top of Trunks' sleeping form and nibbled lightly on his ear. He fidgeted at the sensation of her gentle bites and the feeling of her hot breath in his ear lobe and she smirked as his fidgeting made him roll over onto his back. Slowly, Pan trailed small kisses from his collarbone, up his neck, and then to his lips. After only a few seconds, he responded by kissing back and placing his hands on either side of her waist.
When she pulled back, his eyelids slid open to observe her contented face, a face which when he first met her thought was nonexistent. But he had thought that he himself could never look like that either...
"What a pleasant awakening," Trunks said, a slight purr in his voice that he knew drove her crazy. She laughed and shared with him another short kiss. He brushed a few strands of ebony hair behind her ear to get a better view of those deep brown eyes that he had fallen in love with at the first sight.
"I would hope so," she replied playfully, in turn fingering his unique violet locks which sorely needed a haircut. "I may have four children, but at twenty-three I would hate to think that I'd lost my touch already. You however, have a birthday coming up...how old will you be?" she teased. "Thirty-one? Thankfully though...I haven't considered you too elderly yet."
He chuckled. "I'm not all that old, you're just too young to understand that," he countered.
She ignored the comment. "Do you think you can manage to get up and help me with breakfast now, or are you too old and crippled to move?"
"Hey, I resent that!" he exclaimed, picking her up and jumping out of bed himself just to prove that he wasn't old, even though he knew it was just one of his wife's ongoing jokes. "Now, shall we be getting down to that kitchen?" Instead of putting her down and letting her walk, he kept her tight in his arms like a bride and continued to carry Pan, through the hallway and down the stairs, into the large kitchen on the bottom story of their house. Finally, he got over to a counter and set her down on it, smirking at her as she laughed at the way he acted.
His personality was so attractive, once he let it out. It had taken her a long time break through his rock-solid emotional defenses, but once she had she had unearthed a person unlike any other, a person that she found she couldn't keep herself from falling in love with.
Just as she had jumped down and opened the fridge to see what they had to make for breakfast, three sets of feet could be heard racing down the wooden stairs, and Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume broke into the kitchen at full force. Musume was still in her pink top and white pajama pants, but the former two boys were full clad in their lightweight training uniforms, looking eagerly at their father. They walked over to Trunks and pulled on each a leg of his baggy gray sleep pants.
Trunks trained with his two boys every morning once all three of the men of the house were awake. He originally didn't want to teach his children to fight, but sadly, the world in which their family lived wasn't a safe one. That, mixed with the excitement of the boys to learn to defend themselves, had Trunks coming to the conclusion that it was probably better off that he just give in and do it. The same did not go for Musume.
His little girl had no real desire to engage in battle unless it was really needed, and so he had been thankful not to have to train all his children to do so. But...she didn't really need it at all. Musume had been a big surprise for the Saiya-jin parents.
One day, Vegeta had taunted her as they all sat in the front yard, telling her that she was better off keeping to her dolls when she had punched him in the arm for trying to steal her popsicle from her. She got angry and her ki shot up to far above normal levels, alarming her brothers and parents. It was only for a second then, but her eyes flashed turquoise and her hair glimmered gold. The boy had begun apologizing profusely. He knew was a Super Saiya-jin was, and though he didn't know how in the world his older sister, a girl--a toddler girl, no less--was one, he knew that he was outmatched if she went at him.
Immediately her transformation was dropped, and the family never saw any of it again, however just in case, Pan had taken up occasionally giving Musume lessons on how to control her energy and things of that sort. Otherwise, the girl was no more than a normal girl. She rolled her eyes at her brothers as they begged for Trunks to get dressed for training and made her way over to her mother to see if she could help any with the breakfast. She didn't like to fight, but she did love to be able to do anything with cooking, especially if it was with her mother.
And so begun a normal day in the Breifs household.
Pan set Musume up on the counter and began dumping ingredients into a bowl, then handed the little girl a spoon. "Now, stir this until it's all mixed up together well," she instructed her. "It sounds like Kaeida has woken up, so I'm going to go get her and be right back. Try not to make a mess like last time?" she pleaded the last part. It only took a second for the talented girl to make a floury mess out of the kitchen. She got a smile from Musume, which she took as an okay, and proceeded, into the baby's room.
The room was decorated beautifully in pastel colors and it was probably Pan's favorite room in the house. It was always so serene and looked like it came right out of a movie with its prefect ness. Light white curtains blew in the breeze that came through the window right above the crib, out of which you could see pristine grass and miles of forest. In that crib laid a fussing Kaeida, who seemed to mellow out almost immediately after her mother took her in her arms.
"Good morning, Kady-chan," she cooed to the baby, who in turn giggled and smiled. "Are you hungry? Let's go get you a bottle..."
When Pan got back downstairs, she was thankful to find that her oldest daughter was sitting calmly upon the counter where she had left her with the bowl's contents well-mixed and beside her. While she got a bottle out of the refrigerator and fed the baby, she instructed her little countertop helper on how to make the pancakes on the stove.
When they were all done with breakfast, Musume ran out into the yard enthusiastically. "Come on, come on!" she yelled to her brothers and father. "Come on and eat breakfast! I helped make it!"
Vegeta landed and walked past his sister smirking, "Well, now I really don't want to eat it," he teased, and for it received a rapid and bruising punch in the arm from the girl. "Ow!" he cursed, grasping his arm.
"Man, when are you going to learn to stop messing with her like that?" Gohan asked his twin amusedly. "You know she could kick both out butts at once. We only learned how to go Super Saiya-jin a month ago--she's been doing it since she was three!"
"Yeah, yeah," Vegeta replied, waving it off as he went into the house. He didn't like to admit that he was less powerful than his only slightly older sister. His father had found it amusing that the twin he had chosen to name after his father was the one that was the worst with getting his pride damaged. Then he found that the boy that he had chosen to name after his old friend Gohan had a personality resembling the eleven-year-old boy he remembered from the past. They had planned to name Gohan after Pan's father, but he had died months before she was born and she had never known him. Her mother had kept all information about him from her because she said it was better for her, and had died keeping that information to herself. That sometimes depressed his wife, but she had long since gotten over the fact that she would never know who he was.
Trunks threw a towel over his shoulders and followed his boys, going over the mental notes that he had taken on them during the little warm-up in his head. They were both progressing well, and to his knowledge were the youngest Super Saiya-jins yet (save for his daughter, of course, whom he still classified as a mysterious case). They were definitely turning out to be excellent fighters, fighters that even his father would have been proud of. He smirked, thinking of a Vegeta that was actually pleased. That would be quite a sight.
"Mm, smells good, Pan!" he called to his wife as she placed on the table large plates of pancakes, waffles, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and pitchers of milk and orange juice. It really was a job cooking for so many Saiya-jins. This would look like an absolute plethora of food to normal people, but Pan knew that on a few mornings she would have to cook a full other breakfast to satisfy her family's enormous appetites. Immediately, Vegeta and Gohan dug in, making their usual mess. Though Musume was hungry as they were, she preferred to take her time eating and be a lady, like her mother, who had also gotten over the habit of eating so grossly. Trunks was getting better at controlling himself, but he was still quite a pig when he ate, making it impossible for him to effectively teach his sons manners. Pan had tried in the past, but their father was who they looked up to more than anyone else, and he was the only one that seemed to be able to get them to listen.
"Thanks Mom, thanks Musu-chan," Vegeta said as he finished in record time. "I have to admit, that was pretty good." Gohan nodded in agreement and they both ran upstairs together to change. The family was going back to Capsule Corp., for the first time seeing it since Trunks had witnessed the destruction of his home. It was no longer a matter of strength as it had been in the past, but now he had to go back. He needed to go to his mother's lab. He needed to see what was there that could help them.
Though the Trunks and Pan made every effort to make every morning as peaceful and normal as this, the times were still bad, and it was a battle sometimes. Even more androids had awakened since he destroyed what he thought was just a leftover--two more, exactly. If possible, they were even stronger than any of the other ones. They had delivered irreparable damage to the world, knocking off more than 9/10 of the population, which just wasn't growing back. In the area, the Breifs family was the only group of citizens even still alive, and they knew that the number of people on the Earth was dwindling quickly. They also knew that they had no chance to right it.
Had it been just Trunks and Pan, they would have given it their all to finish these monsters. But it wasn't. They had appeared when Pan was pregnant with her second set of twins; Kaeida and Gaila. This in itself had made it clear that they had to protect their children, but they couldn't allow themselves to die doing so. The kids were so young; they couldn't leave them orphaned with no one in the world left to take care of them. They were so young, still so fragile, just playthings for those androids.
That very fact was made painfully clear to the family when little Gaila, less than a month old, was taken and killed by them, in front of the eyes of her siblings and parents. It had been an unspeakable tragedy for the family and caused the two to begin to literally race to figure out a plan to get themselves, and most importantly their children, out of this place.
Though he was reluctant to revisit his childhood home and all the horrible memories that he had taken so long to push to the back of his mind, Trunks knew that the only place to escape to was...the past, back to the other timeline. And how else would they do it, but with his mother's old time machine? Pan believed that she could handle the technology--she was a scholar and very intelligent, just like his mother had been--and he believed in her. It was her speed and sharp mind that were what her whole family's future rested on.
He sighed deeply and rested himself on one of the kitchen chairs. Running a hand through his exotic lavender hair, he mentally prepared himself for this trip. For once, his bad day wouldn't be the fault of an android attack… He could feel it; this was going to be a lot harder than he thought it would be.
"You ready for this?" Pan's soprano voice chimed into his thoughts. He glanced up at her for a second, then reached out for her hand and pulled her onto his lap. She smiled faintly and rested her head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.
"I hope so…I think so…" he replied, and squeezed her lightly, burying his face in her raven locks and breathing in the fresh scent of jasmine and cherry blossoms. As long as she was with him, as long as he knew that he had this feeling waiting for him…"I am."
"Trunks!" the 17-year-old Pan and 16-year-old Bra whined in unison, each of them literally attached to a side of him. He groaned and put a hand to his forehead. His sister did this sort of thing all the time when she wanted him to do something, but he knew Pan better than to believe that this wasn't an act. She'd rather just beat him up until he did whatever she wanted. Not that she ever couldhe thought with a smirk.
Bra shook his arm rather violently. "Hey! Answer me!" she said, her voice peeved. "Stop staring out into space! You said that you owed us a day out with you and we demand that we get it! You're the one with the car and the money, so take us shopping!"
"What?" he asked, then a light seemed to pop on in his head. How could he have forgotten? They had made him promise to take them out when he had his last day off, but he had opted for sparring with Goten. They had understood, as it was a rare time when Goten actually took the time away from Paresu to fight, but they hadn't let him forget that he owed them one. "Oh, yeah," he replied to their expectant faces. "Sure, I'll go. By the way, Panny…" he began, looking curiously at the girl on his right arm, "Why are you acting like my sister all of a sudden? Wanting to shop, moaning and complaining until I do what you want…Quite frankly, it's frightening me…Ouch!"
Bra smiled, satisfied that her swift punch to the arm had hurt him. Pan exchanged a grin with her best friend and was about to answer when another voice joined the conversation from behind the trio.
"That's probably a good question…Why are you acting like such a girl today?"
"It's nice to see you too, Uncle Goten," she replied sarcastically. "But I would rather you not insult my femininity next time, if it's possible." Sometimes, she wondered why she bothered. She knew that she was always going to be considered a tomboy by her friends because of her youth of being the less-than-delicate one, and the only one of the girls that had chosen to fight. Bra and Marron simply didn't like to do it because it would muss up their hair and because they hated to see both sweat and blood. Just because she wasn't as squeamish, she had grown up taking Goten and Trunks' jokes concerning her ability to be a woman. She prided herself in that she had improved a lot in that department over the years, but even if they took the time to notice, she had the feeling they'd still make fun of her.
"But just so you know, I'm doing it because it's a sure-fire way to annoy this jerk here," she threw a thumb in Trunks' direction, "who dyed my hair pink just because I played a little water balloon prank on him! I hate pink! I refuse to let him get by with it, so he's going to hear about it for a long time if I can help it."
Goten chuckled in good humor and put his arm around her and looked incredulously at Trunks, "Dyed Pan's hair pink? That wasn't the smartest way to get back at her. I thought you knew better than that by now, man," Pan grinned an 'I-told-you' grin as Trunks smacked his forehead. She gave her Uncle an affectionate kiss on the cheek.
"You tell him. We've been rowing with each other since I was born and he still doesn't realize what's safe to do and what is going to cause me to kill him slowly and painfully," she commented.
"Touche," Trunks said, looking at her mischievously, "I could hardly stand the tomboy version of you, Pan, and now that you're acting so different, I can't stand you all together. Good return." She glared at him and if he weren't so used to it, he might have had to run for cover. That look could kill.
"That's such a lie," Bra laughed. "Pan-chan, don't listen to him. Niichan thinks you're just great all the rest of the time. You should hear him at dinner time after days when you guys have gone and done something together or spent the day sparring. You're all he talks about! I think Daddy's ready to burst with all this talk about "Kakkarot's third-class granddaughter.""
Pan blushed bright red, and if you could see any details of his face through the swift motion Trunks made to shut his sister up, you would have realized that he was blushing just as red. Goten found the whole thing very amusing himself—even so, he was quite sure that his brother wouldn't really agree—and knew for a fact that what Bra said was the truth. Whenever they weren't fighting—which really wasn't as much now that they had matured a little—he and Pan were like best friends; she often came over to Capsule Corp. to see Trunks instead of Bra, for whatever reason it may be.
"So, where are you guys off to?" Goten inquired to break the tension. He pointed to the keys in his friend's hand.
"We're going to the mall, out to eat, the normal…Wanna tag along? We've one seat left in the car," Pan invited him, knowing that the blue-haired girl beside her would make her a personal deity for doing so later.
As expected, Bra nearly died in excitement and jumped up and down a couple of times before nodding eagerly in agreement "Yeah, come on, Goten! It wouldn't be as much fun without you!"
Pan sometimes wondered why the girl always asked her to keep a secret the fact that she was smitten over Goten when she made such a blatant show of it herself. Of course, Goten never caught on; he was as oblivious as he had been when he was a little kid.
"Sure, sounds fun" he said as Pan and Trunks shared a secret smirk at the sight of Bra grabbing onto his hand and dragging him off towards the car.
"Well, come on, let's go…" Trunks said, coughing nonchalantly to hide the laughter he had over his lovesick sister and completely naïve best friend. He slung his arm casually over Pan's, breaking all previous tension that may have been left from the aforesaid comments. "Shall we depart, milady?" Trunks looked down and asked the young fighter jokingly. He held the car door open for her and bowed, directing her inside with his hand. She chuckled shortly and got slipped into the convertible, returning the friendly wink he gave her as he shut the door and got in himself.
This would be a good day, he could tell…
A/N: I dunno, I feel like I left that off a little awkwardly… Anyway, if you're wondering why I didn't start where most of you thought I would (right after the prologue took place), it's because I don't want to get into too much too soon. It's to be a story that's pieces will be discovered and put together over time. Notice I haven't told you where Pan came from yet either. You'll find out about that before you find out about Trunks—at least that's what I'm planning—but that's also supposed to stay a mystery for now. Anyway, R&R!
Reviewer Responses:
Miki23: Ah, how I know! I –love- Vegeta/Bulma…squee If only Trunks would take the time to realize that, he'd have been set! Groans St00pid Trunks…XD Thanks for the review!
Lala-bean: Thanks for reviewing, Laura! Hope this chapter is a little happier . Sets up the main conflict and all…
Sidel Sisters: Sorry for the lack of update, Sidel! I had a writer's block for a while. . Keep reading!
Houser's Girl: Thanks so much! Be sure to review again! D
ss-dragon-ladyI'll try . Thanks for the review!
Bitten by the kitten: He's not as melancholic in this chapter; he's the happy-nice-sweet-sexy Mirai Trunks that we all know and love (not to mention there's a little of the happy-nice-sweet-sexIER Trunks of the present!). Thanks for reviewing, and be sure to keep on reading. By the way, j'adore your name! D