A Place in Time

Chapter Four: Suspicions Arising

By: SSJ Pan-chan

Pan groaned in boredom as she lay back against Bra's bright pink bedspread and listened to her insanely girly best friend chatter on. The young tomboy was nearly lulled to sleep by the swift flipping of pages in the plethora of party idea magazines. Her friend had so many of them, it was like she had been waiting all her life to be able to plan this party for Pan.

Finally noticing that Pan wasn't so into her ideas, Bra put down the magazines and joined her on the bed. "Hey, you look like you need to get out. Want to take a break? Mom should have just come back from grocery shopping by now and I'm sure that Daddy will be downstairs ordering food to be cooked soon."

Pan jumped up and nodded vigorously. Bra smirked; it was always to easy to motivate Saiya-jin—just offer them a meal. She was a demi Saiya-jin as well, so she knew from personal experience.

"Alright then, what are we waiting for? Ikou!" Pan exclaimed, grabbing Bra's hand and running downstairs with her.

Since the night before, Bra was happy to say that the family had regained some semblance of normalcy; for example, Vegeta wasn't letting his newfound grandchildren interrupt his training schedule (although he let little but the prospects of sex or food do that anyway), Bulma was down in the lab again, more excited than ever to have the time machine back to work on, and Trunks…well, therein lied the flaw in their would-be average lives. No one had seen a glimpse of him but at breakfast, and even then he disappeared quickly and without a word to anyone. Provided, he had a board meeting early that morning and had to rush—for as they all knew, he wasn't one to wake up on time so that he would have some to spare—but they all knew that he was taking the news hard.

She couldn't blame her older brother, really. It was tough news to take, without question. However, she couldn't help but thinking that he would have to suck it up and eventually tell Pan about it. He was a man, after all, and as far as she was concerned, he could take it like one.

Now, for her best friend, Bra couldn't be happier. She had to bite her tongue a lot, half of the time having to resist calling Pan 'sis' unconsciously. 'I would much rather have my best friend as my sister-in-law than that girl that big brother's currently dating.' This girl, suddenly (since the previous night) a 'whore' to Bra's name was Kate. She came from a semi-affluent family in the United States, over in Japan because she had dropped out of college to pursue modeling and the Land of the Rising Sun was there the job had taken her. Trunks had made it a big deal when Bra found out about his romantic liaison with this American that she couldn't tell anyone else. Bulma was already on his case for the constant fall in company value and had told him that she'd take his job if she found about any relationships. But, of course, being Trunks, he couldn't help himself around the women and had ended up going against Bulma's will and Bra's advice and started seeing her.

Bra couldn't help but think of how funny it would be when the paparazzi got a hold of this story, which was inevitable when you were Trunks Vegeta Briefs. They seemed to know everything about him, sometimes before he knew it himself.

Trunks seemed to be blind to his tendencies, but the rest of his family knew them…he was letting his position and wealth get him all the things—or women—that he wanted, and he hadn't yet seemed to realize that these things weren't of the substance that he thought they were. Right now, he was living out his boyish dream of having all the fine toys and beautiful girls that he could get and with his possessions growing, his ego grew as well. 'He's almost unbearable to live with anymore,' Bra thought, annoyed. 'He's not the big brother I grew up with now, that's for sure.'

Brushing it off for the time being, the blue-haired Saiya-jin led her friend down to the kitchen where, sure enough, the aroma of food could be smelled. Both girls took a seat at the table and awaited the food that was sure to come out. However, when it did, it wasn't Bulma who brought it…

"Niichan?" Bra asked, confused. "Where's Mom? She always makes lunch…I didn't even know you knew how to cook."

Trunks let the comment roll off of him, slightly distracted by the presence of Pan. Pan noticed that he was avoiding her again and glared shortly in his direction before taking a couple sandwiches off the tray he had brought. The Capsule Corp. executive took a seat, looking weary and sighed, picking up a sandwich and chewing slowly. 'That's not like him,' Bra thought before nearly devouring two of the sandwiches in one bite.

After a long time, Trunks finally answered his sister's question. "I don't know what's up with Mom lately," he said, rolling his shoulders as if he were sore. "I went down to her lab to find her a few hours ago and she shut the door quickly and told me to go away. The ki—" he caught himself before he mentioned the children and thanked Kami that Pan was too into her meal to have noticed his slip up. "Well…the, uh…you know what I mean. They were with her. I don't know what's going on. Whatever, though. She just told me to go out to the store for her and buy some food."

Bra's eyes widened in mock shock. "You?" she asked incredulously. "My big brother actually went to the grocery store like a common person? No runners or anyone to do it for you? My goodness, the world must be ending!"

He glared, but Bra could tell that his heart wasn't into it. "If you must know, I did try to complain, but she told me to suck it up unless I wanted Dad in here yelling at me for not obeying her. It'd be even worse than usual since by not following her orders he would be without his precious food…Besides, I guess was hungry too."

Pan had just then finished and tuned into the conversation again. Determined to get him to talk to her, she addressed him personally. "By the way, Trunks, how did your meeting go this morning?" she asked.

He groaned, allowing her to infer that it did not go as planned. Still not meeting her eyes, he answered. "It was the worst meeting of my career. Our deal with both the Chinese and British companies fell through, which in turn affected our budget for the year, meaning that we're going to have to hold off another year or more to establish Capsule's overseas outlets like we had planned. Mom's going to kill me. The company hasn't been doing as well as it should have since she started watching over my work less closely. I told her I was ready to take it all on by myself and I crashed and burned."

Pan winced. "Ouch. So what do you plan to do?"

"I have to tell her what happened… Kuso, I don't need this now." He put his feet up on the table and leaned back in his chair, trying to relax.

"Well," Bra ventured, "Why don't you ask Mom for help for a little while longer? You know that she'd set things straight in a heartbeat."

Trunks rolled his eyes. "You don't understand, Bra—I can't just ask her to help me. That would be admitting failure, and I'm not going to do that. I'm nearly 26 years old and I should be able to handle this on my own."

"But you can't." Bra finished for him. Silently reiterating the fact that he wasn't going to admit to defeat, Trunks ignored his sister's words and changed the topic.

"So, what are you guys doing today?" he queried.

"Bra's helping me plan my party because she's convinced that a normal party like we always have isn't good enough," Pan said with a roll of her eyes. Trunks would have laughed, had he been in a better mood at the time.

"Pan, Pan, Pan," he mock admonished, "When are you ever going to learn that no normal party is ever good enough for Bra? Making things into a big production is her purpose in life."

"Yeah, I know. That's why I'm letting her do it. I can't say that Grandma ChiChi is happy about not having it done the Son family way like was originally planned, but hell won't totally break loose as long as she gets to cook."

Bra observed all this conversation with a frown. "It's not my fault that I want something special for my best friend's sixteenth birthday!"

"Whatever," Trunks said, standing up and pushing in his chair. "It doesn't really matter, as long as the birthday girl is happy with it." He said this pointedly towards his sister, knowing that she'd make the affair into a big girly slumber party if it were totally left up to her. Bra caught this and stuck out her tongue.

Trunks didn't respond to her display of teenage immaturity and instead gathered up the empty plates and put them back into the kitchen. He left out the ingredients needed to make more sandwiches in case Vegeta came in later and was hungry—which was more inevitable than 'in case'—and set the dirty stuff in the sink. He came back into the dining room wiping his hands on a towel.

"I'm going to go call Goten" –and by the way he said it, Bra knew he meant Kate—"so I guess I'll see you later. Have fun."

"Bye," Pan bade him farewell, but he didn't answer, even though he was barely a yard from her. She frowned and Bra glared after him.

"So stupid," the blue-haired teen muttered.

"Hm?" Pan inquired, having not heard what she said.

"Nothing," Bra replied. "Just talking to myself… Let's go back upstairs, ne?"

"Hi Mom…"

For a long time, Bulma stared blankly at the radio, the voice—heard every day and yet not in years—sent shivers down her spine. How much just his voice had changed… She could tell so much from the way that he spoke. He was much older, definitely, and he sounded more mature…she noted not without some regret that he also sounded much more depressed than he had been when she last saw him.

"How are you, Trunks?" she asked, a hint of oncoming tears in her tone. He chuckled a little at the manner of her voice and she felt them threatening to spring into her eyes. She had missed him so much…

"Don't cry, Mom," he told her as if he could see her. She laughed and she could almost feel his smile on the other side. "I'm fine. We're fine. How are you doing? I hear that you've been chosen as babysitter for a while."

Bulma smirked. "Yeah…but your kids know how to choose a good one," she winked and Gohan thought her infinitely strange to do when he couldn't see her. "They're angels, Trunks… I can't believe it—I'm a grandma!"

He laughed and nodded. "Well, I wouldn't call them angels quite yet. You haven't had a chance to really live with them." Musume frowned and made an indignant noise. "Anyway, I'm glad you're happy. Don't worry, we'll be there in a little while. Pan's working on getting the newer time machine up and running—you left behind a lot of detailed blueprints and she thinks she can figure it out."

"Well, I'll be happy to help any time," Bulma said. "Just contact me and I'll see what I can do."

Trunks paused a moment and another voice could be heard slightly. There was a bit of movement and he came back on. "Pan says that she'd appreciate that," he relayed his wife's message.

"Mom, I was also wondering something else…"

"What is it?"

"Well, I don't know how much the kids have told you, but there's a bit of dilemma that we're in right now. This time is falling apart and we're practically the last people left. I'll explain what happened later, but it's the reason why we were suddenly messing with the time machines."

"You want to come back," Bulma guessed.

"Intuitive as always," Trunks said with a sigh. "But this time…it'd be for good. We need to escape. We've got kids to watch out for and…well, we just had a baby three months ago whose twin was killed hardly after birth. It brought forth the realization that we can't possibly stay here."

Bulma opened her mouth to say something, but her son was now babbling on. "I know we're risking the chance of causing disruption in the timelines and whatnot and that it could really mess up some stuff, but we're hoping that with some explanation that we'll be able to prevent that and if---"

"Woah there," Bulma said, laughing. "Don't worry about it, Trunks. Do you really need to explain yourself? We'd be happy to have you and Pan and the kids here with us, even if there was no trouble."

Trunks sounded dreadfully grateful. "Thank you… It's such a relief to hear that."

"Any time," the scientist replied. "But, ah, Trunks…I've got to warn you… there are some people in this timeline who are going to be a little shocked and probably rather angry for a while at your appearance."

"Why is that?"

"Well, for one, Gohan probably won't be so happy that his little girl is married to someone so much older than her…"

Trunks blinked, confused. "Gohan? What does he have to do with this?" he queried.

"What? Didn't you know?" Bulma asked, a bit stunned. "Gohan is Pan's father."

"NANI?" a female voice came over the speakers and she could hear a rustling sound from the other side. Pan had pushed her husband out of the way and run to the radio. "Bulma…" she said, slightly out of breath, "you-you know my father?"

Bulma laughed, albeit a little confused as to Pan's reaction. "Of course I do, honey. The Son and Briefs families are close friends, after all…"

There was silence on the other end for a long time. Pan never answered, but Trunks finally did. "Sorry, Mom. I should explain… I never knew that Pan was Gohan's daughter—I always thought her last name was a coincidence seeing as I thought I would have known if Gohan had a child—but I guess…it all makes sense now." He chuckled. "I always wondered how in the world she got that Saiya-jin blood."

There came a sigh, and then the scientist's voice, broken up by static. "Look guys, I'd love to talk about this more, but the radio is dieing. You're going to have to get here before we can really talk." As she progressed through her sentence, Bulma's words were harder and harder to dictate.

"Mom? Mom!" Trunks exclaimed as they began to lose her. Realizing that there was no way to keep the radio working, he spoke hurriedly. "We'll be there as soon as we can, alright? Gohan, Musume, Vegeta, you guys stay out of trouble. We'll see you in a while!"

Tears in the sides of Musume and Vegeta's eyes, they both bade goodbye to their father's fading voice. In the midst of the excitement of their arrival, none of the children had realized just how much they missed their parents. Gohan, the only one composed, held a strong voice. "Bye, Dad. Bye, Mom. Fix the time machine quick, okay?"

Immediately following his finish, their only means of contact with the other timeline went silent.

"Bye, Dad. Bye, Mom. Fix the time machine quick, okay?"

Pan felt a stinging sensation in her eyes and stared fondly at the console which had helped her to communicate with her lost children and, in turn, had quelled her worries. She found herself hugging tightly onto Trunks, thanking Kami above the whole while that they were safe and in good hands…and that they would be joining them soon.

Trunks smiled affectionately at his wife, cerulean eyes sparkling with a happiness that he had imagined would never come again. Snaking an arm around her shoulders, he rubbed her back gently, soothing her tears away. Even though he knew that they were ones of delight. "Come on," he said to her, slightly tangling raven locks in the comb of his fingers, "Let's not turn into a basketcase, ne? We've got work to do, remember?"

Pan nodded into his shoulder and reluctantly pulled away to go back to the mound of papers awaiting her across the room. However, right before she could completely leave his embrace, he caught her hand in his and pulled her close again, kissing her soundly on the lips. She retracted herself and laughed a little. "I thought we had work to do," she said in a mock admonishing tone.

"We do," replied the lavender-haired man beside her, "But I had a burst of spontaneous hit me. What, do you have a problem with that?" Trunks made a fake disappointed pout appear on his face and she could do nothing but continue to laugh at him. He certainly was a character, this man of hers.

With another couple peals of laughter, the Saiya-jin shook her head in response. "Not at all," and without another word of protest, went back in to finish what he had begun.

"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow to go shopping for supplies, Panny!" Bra called to her best friend from the top of the stairs.

"See you," Pan replied, much more weakly than her constantly boisterous friend. As she made her way down the hallway and towards the front room, she yawned.

It'll feel so good to be able to get home and relax, she thought, relishing the mental feel of her soft bed and the coziness of the country home she shared with her parents. It was nice, sure, to have a mansion like the Briefs family did, but when it came down to it, nothing beat the homey feeling of a Son household.

Talking to Bra all day always wore her out. It was like she had a never-ending supply of energy stored in that petite frame of hers. Maybe she had more energy because she didn't fight… But even when she had skipped morning warm-ups with her father, Pan still got worn down by spending too long with the girl. It wasn't like that when she came to see Trunks, though. Sometimes she felt like she could never tire of his presence—so much more understanding and accepting than his sister, even if only on a deeper field. Bra understood and accepted her, sure, but it was only when she shared conversations with Trunks did her true feelings seem to show through. No one else had ever seen them but him…

That's probably why we became such good friends after we returned from space, she mused. We fought all the time before then but now we're like brother and sister. I've recently realized…he knows a lot more about me than I ever imagined I'd tell any living soul. Something about him…Is that what the deepest form of companionship is, maybe?

She allowed herself a chuckle at her thoughts. I look too far into things… I should be a psychiatrist with the way I dissect feelings. Rolling her onyx eyes, she continued on down the hallway, wondering why in the world that any family needed a house that was big enough to have a hallway this long. It was late and she wanted to get home and take a nice hot bath, read a book, and go to bed.

"Aah! Go-chan, how dare you! You cheated!"

Pan blinked. There were voices coming from the room just down and to her right—she recognized it as the living room. What's going on? she thought. The voices didn't sound like those of any of the residents of the house…they sounded young. They sounded like they belonged to toddler-aged kids. Is Bulma babysitting? No…that doesn't sound like her. Why would there be little kids around here, then?

"I did not, Musu. You're just mad because you can't even fight right in a video game!"

"Shut up, I can too fight! Or do you need a reminder!"

"OW!"

It sounded like someone had just been punched and from the resonating sound of contact it had made, Pan imagined it had been hard. Too hard. No normal toddler is that strong, she thought, now genuinely curious about the situation. Walking carefully so that her footsteps could not be heard, the quarter Saiya-jin snuck stealthily through the hallway until she was right beside the room she had heard the voices coming from. Tentatively, she peeked slightly over, keeping most of her body obscured.

What she saw was, to put it lightly, puzzling beyond all belief.

There were not just two, but three children. All of them looked around the same age, maybe only a couple of years apart. The girl, 'Musu', had a ponytail of thick, raven hair reaching down to her shoulders and, though she would normally never notice something like this, it was very prominent here… she had clear, crystal blue eyes. She knew exactly where she had seen those eyes before. Shaking her head to get the thought out of her mind, she turned her attention to the two others.

The boy who she was fighting with—'Go-chan', 'Musu' had called him—was nearly half a head shorter than his sister—or at least she assumed that's what she was to him. He had short raven hair like 'Musu's' and it was styled so that it was in Trunks' usual—Oh my Kami, Pan, stop thinking about him! It's like I'm trying to make them into our kids with the way I'm relating them! Trying to get her mind off of that slightly disturbing thought, she turned her attention to the last child.

The last of them, the unnamed, was wearily telling them to stop fighting. He looked like somewhat of the peacekeeper between the three, although Pan was sure that he had his share of bickering with them as well; nothing less could be expected of a boy so young.

There was something scary about this one.

His hair, his eyes, his face, his…everything. He could have been an exact replication of her grandfather and he certainly resembled her uncle Goten in those childhood pictures that sat around her grandmother's house. It was amazing how much he reminded her of Goku, though, and an indescribable feeling rose up in her throat. It felt almost like a sob. But it couldn't be…

"Guys, stop it. You're being stupid…"

The sound of his warning tone let off a very emotional bell in the young girl's head. "Oh Kami," Pan whispered to herself, putting her hands over her mouth. She backed up slowly until she hit the wall on the other side of the hallway. It jolted her slightly and brought her back to reality.

Desperate to get away from the sight of this little boy, Pan took off running through the rest of the house and didn't stop until she had to take off into the air. She powered up as much as she could, hoping to get home as quickly as possible and try to erase the mental image of the child from her mind. The subject of her grandfather's death was a very sensitive subject with her and although nearly two years had passed since then, the wounds were still fresh. With that in mind, and it having been so long since something—or in this case, someone—reminded her so strongly of him, it was difficult for her to bear.

When she had finally touched down on the lush grass surrounding her family's home, Pan wiped away her wretched tears and put on a good face for her parents. Trying to get control of her vaguely rampaging feelings, she composed herself a bit further before she went into the house.

Vegeta looked suddenly up, hearing a swift, windy sound pass by outside the door to the living room. "Hey, did you guys hear that wind pass by? I thought I felt a ki or something… Maybe it was a person…"

Gohan stared at his twin oddly. "Uh, I didn't hear anything…why?"

"Are you sure you're alright, Vegeta?" Musume queried. "I didn'thear or feelanything either."

"Yes," he stated emphatically, "I'm sure… Maybe you guys were just too busy fighting over that stupid video game," Vegeta said, not without a bit of sarcasm thrown in.

"Or maybe you're just paranoid," Gohan retorted with a smirk. "Ever think of that?"

Vegeta rolled his eyes and then stuck out his tongue, making him a contradiction in himself. Once they had figured that he was done speaking, Gohan and Musume went back to their video game. Vegeta decided to sit out on the festivities again and sighed, leaning back against the leg of the couch. "I still say that I heard and felt something," he told himself in a quiet tone.

But what he was afraid to voice was what was really bothering him…

It felt like Mom.

A/N: Because is rather picky about what I can and can not post in chapters any more, I will be posting all further notes and reviewer responses, etc. for all my fics in my livejournal from now on. Sorry for this inconvenience, but my fics have been getting deleted for some strange reason (though I have this uncanny feeling it may be someone just being a jackass), but one of them was justified as being deleted for being interactive (aka, having reviewer responses in it). Then again, the songfics that were deleted were reported because the 'content did not belong to the author' which is complete BS as I looked back and had disclaimers in each and knew for a fact there was nothing like them on before I posted them.

Anyway, because this site also does not allow me to post links, I'll post something to it. My livejournal can be found at:

www. livejournal .com / users / caelestiskibeth (without spaces, of course).

I also will have a rather important note in there regarding this fic (it will be in the entry with the reviewer responses), so please be sure to read up on that. I think you'll appreciate it :).