CHAPTER 2

Trunks raced into the mostly-destroyed ground level of his home, holding his date by the hand and pulling her along. After nearly tripping over an old box, the young man darted for the door that led to the basement. His hand reached for the knob only to find the door locked. Trunks gritted his teeth and jiggled it.

"C'mon…c'mon…" he urged under his breath. Sniffles and frightened squeaks came from the girl behind him as he reached into his pants pocket for his key ring.

"Trunks," the helpless voice said shakily, "hurry up! W-" An explosion some half a mile away made her scream and wrap her arms around him. He grumbled in frustration. How in Kami's name was he supposed to get the door open with this girl on top of him?

After several more seconds, the purple-haired warrior threw the unlocked door open and began making his way down the stairs, his date's nails digging into his left arm as she followed suit. As Trunks set foot on the floor of the basement and glanced around, he saw his mother and Son Ada standing mere feet away, looking in his direction and poised to fight. Bulma, seeing her son emerge from the stairwell, breathed a sigh of relief and passed her hand over her eyes.

"Dammit, Trunks," she managed to say. "You scared us half to death."

"Sorry," he replied, catching his breath. Trunks glanced quickly over at Ada, whose look was a mix of relief, surprise, and anger. He tore his eyes from her when he heard the girl attached to him begin to sob. His date clutched ever tighter to him, burying her face into his arm.

"Oh, Trunks," she sniffled. "I thought it was all over! I thought we were goners!" Trunks looked down at her, a bit of a blush staining his cheeks.

"Well…" he started, somewhat unsure of what to say. "Looks like we made it!" He laughed nervously. At least their escape from destruction gave him something to speak to her about. In the hour preceding the attack, Trunks reckoned that he had come up with maybe ten words to say in response to all of her stories, comments, and jokes.

"Hey kid- go lock the door," Bulma told her son, picking her chair up and settling back into it before rubbing her eyes. As Trunks ran to do so, his date stood alone in the middle of the floor, surveying Bulma and Ada with, at most, marginal interest.

"I'm Louisa!" she volunteered as a smile rather inappropriate for the situation spread between her ears. "It's so lovely to meet you, Ms. Brief!" Turning to Ada, she paused to think of something to say. She settled with: "And Trunks didn't tell me that he had a sister!"

"Um…" Ada forced a smile. "I'm actually not related to him." Was the hair color not a dead giveaway? she wondered.

"Oh! Well, my mistake," she said with a giggle. "Now that I think about it, I guess you don't really share Ms. Brief's girlish features."

"Yeah…ha ha…" Ada responded (Flattery is one way to go about trying to impress your boyfriend's mother, she observed with a grimace.) as Bulma, who stole a look at the demi-Saiyan, suppressed a laugh. The girl was trying so hard to smile that she was beginning to look like she was in pain. Trunks appeared again at the bottom of the stairs just in time for Louisa to make some more enlightening conversation.

"Wait a second- what's your name?" she pressed.

"Me?" Ada was somewhat taken aback by the girl's rather rude forwardness. "Son Ada."

"Oh!" Louisa squealed. "I thought I remembered you from somewhere! You've certainly changed a lot…but something about your face was driving me crazy! We went to school together when we were kids. Or, you and my sister went to school together. I'm a year older."

"Huh," Ada responded, unsure of what to say. Trying to be polite despite her surety of having no idea who this kid could be, she asked, "What's her name?"

"Mira," Louise stated matter-of-factly. "I'm sure you think I'm nuts for even remembering something like this, but I'm pretty sure it was you. My mother was absolutely livid!"

This peaked Ada's interest. "Oh? About what?"

"You don't remember, do you?" Louisa's face fell a little bit. "She must've said something to make you angry, because I'm almost positive- if I'm not thinking of someone else- you tried to beat her up!"

A rather long and extremely awkward silence ensued. Ada wasn't sure how to respond.

"Well anyway!" exclaimed Louisa, smiling again and pulling a chair up to the table. "I'm so glad…"

Ada had stopped paying attention. Louisa had indeed remembered correctly, and, for some reason, Ada recalled that particular experience as well.

xxx

A small child, no more than seven years old, sat at the head of her bed with her knees pulled to her chest. She fingered her long, black hair and then rubbed her puffy, crimson eyes. She looked around her room; it was simple, but cozy, with construction paper, scissors, and glue strewn across the floor in one corner and various pieces of artwork as well as several photographs haphazardly scotch-taped to the walls. On the shelf to the right of the door were a great many books, mostly bedtime stories about sleeping princesses and ugly ducklings. A large, smooth, perfectly spherical gray stone sat on a small cushion at the very top of the shelf. When she knew her mother was nowhere near, the little girl would climb atop the shelf to get the stone. She would then sit cross-legged on her bedroom floor with the rock in her lap, rubbing it and staring at it, sometimes tapping it. This particular stone, she knew, had been in her brother's room when he was a child. She found it very difficult to believe, but it had supposedly belonged to her great-grandfather at one point. There was nothing special about it, she would note skeptically. Just a regular old rock. And yet knowing that it was somehow important made her curious enough to take it down every once in a while just to make sure it wasn't doing anything exciting.

This evening, however, the child didn't think twice about the rock atop her shelf but rather rested her chin on her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. After the shouting her mother had done when the girl had gotten home from school, she figured there was absolutely no way she would be welcome in her home again. The child kept trying to take a last farewell look at her room but just could not bring herself to think of leaving it. She was fighting back another round of tears when the door to her lamp-lit bedroom slowly opened. As she looked over, she saw a tall teenage boy with short black hair step in, closing the door behind him. Gohan. In spite of everything, the little girl could feel her heart lighten a bit.

"Hey there, Ade-o" he said quietly, stepping over to the bed and holding a plate out in front of him with a smile. "Warmed you up some pizza."

Son Ada sniffled but said nothing, so he set the plate down on her bedside table and took a seat beside her on the bed.

"Mommy hates me, doesn't she?" Ada said, tears welling up in her eyes again.

"Whoa now," Gohan replied, pushing her hair behind her ears. "Why would you say a thing like that?"

"Because she's never yelled at me that much before, not ever…and she said that there was no hope for me, and that I was gonna be like Daddy because I don't know how to do anything but fight and that…and…" The little girl collapsed into sobs.

"Well why don't you start by telling me what happened?" her brother suggested kindly. Ada gulped down tears and looked over at him.

"I hit Mira Ito today," she said without shame. The 'without shame' part was what had made Chi Chi twice as furious. Ada lamented that her mother simply didn't understand; the other girl had it coming.

"You hit her?" Gohan asked, wincing. Poor girl. She couldn't have been expecting the force behind Ada's fist.

"Before I bit her," Ada added quickly.

"You bit her," the boy stated blankly, completely unable to grasp his younger sister's behavior. He rubbed his temple and sighed with a bit of disappointment coloring his voice. "Ada, you-"

"People treat me different," she cut him off, staring down at her toes.

Gohan looked at her with pity. He wished he could tell her that whatever it was they were saying didn't matter, that she was almost certainly the most intelligent girl in her class and would get farther in life than any of them, that she was a terribly pretty child and was going to be gorgeous when she grew up, that they had no right to cut her down because she very well could be saving the world one day. He wanted to tell her all of these things because he knew them to be the gospel truth, but he also knew it would not help in the least. She was so young; she could not possibly understand such things. All she saw in the situation was that someone was mean to her, that she had defended herself, and that she was in big trouble for it. At seven, life just isn't fair.

"They…they just don't know what to say," he said finally. Though substantially less meaningful than all of the other options, this one was still true. Ada was a unique girl with a very different personality that, despite her loving disposition, gave others a bad impression. Gohan assumed that her classmates knew, too, that she lived out in the middle of the woods with a mother that could frighten even the world's strongest warriors and a teenage brother who played 'daddy' most of the time. Besides that, the Son family didn't have a great deal of money, so most of the toys Ada took to school were hand-me-downs from Gohan.

Ada thought on her brother's words and then on Gohan himself. After a time, she burst out, "Why does Mom fight with me? Why isn't it you?"

"Huh? Why would I fight with you?" he asked confusedly. Ada rolled her eyes as though everything she said were obvious.

"Because we're brother and sister. It's our job," she stated. "That's what syllables do."

"I think you mean 'siblings'," he replied with a smile. "'That's what siblings do'."

"That's what I said," Ada told him with a nod. He chuckled at her, which she ignored. "Anyway…you're my brother…and…" She struggled with her words. "…And I like you better as a brother than a dad."

"Yeah?" Gohan asked seriously. She nodded

"I only need one parent. Having Mom is enough," she sighed. Suddenly remembering the rest of the day's events, the little girl began to sniffle and fight back tears.

"G-Gohan…will Mom…is Mommy gonna m-m-make me move out of the house and live in the woods so she can have another b-baby who does what she says and then have it live in m-my room and-"

"Oh, Ada," Gohan said with a smile, scooping his little sister up in his arms and sitting her on his lap. She sobbed into his t-shirt. "That's such a silly thing to say. You know that she loves you with all her heart. And she'll get done being mad soon. I promise." He planted a single kiss on the top of her head and proceeded to rock her back and forth until she had cried herself into an exhausted, peaceful sleep.

xxx

Postscript: Thanks to Disney and the writers of Lilo and Stitch for lending me some of the dialogue for this chapter. I'll be on vacation for the next week or so, but there will be an update or two or five as soon as I get back- I've already begun working on a couple future chapters. I'm really getting into writing this…I hope you enjoy reading it! As always, please read and review!