CHAPTER 5

Gohan sat down tiredly on his bed and began gingerly removing the weighted boots from his aching feet. He had forgotten what it felt like to be exhausted. After all, it had been almost twelve years since he'd had a sparring partner, excepting, of course, the androids, whom he did not count because he almost always ended up lying in the dirt unconscious when he encountered them. Trunks, he noted as he removed his second boot, was remarkably strong for his age. Not as powerful as Gohan yet, but certainly getting there. The progress the boy had made in just two weeks of training was astounding. He stretched out his feet and then turned upon hearing a noise from the doorway of his bedroom.

"Hey Ade-o," he said with a smile at his sister. The twelve-year old was leaning against his doorframe, arms folded, with braided black pigtails hanging around her shoulders. He assumed she was on her way to bed, considering the late hour and oversized Capsule Corp. tee shirt and flannel pajama pants she was sporting. Ada had a habit of finding her brother and hugging him goodnight each evening, a gesture he returned with a light kiss on the forehead. That had been their nighttime ritual as long as Gohan could remember.

Yet, tonight she was not moving from her spot in the doorway. In fact, she wasn't even returning the smile.

"You're home late. Long day?" Ada asked as if she already knew the answer. Gohan's face fell somewhat as he tried to guess at what she could be playing at.

"Yep. You okay, baby sister?" he inquired, attempting to cut to the chase as quickly as possible. She looked as though she was searching for words. After several moments of silence, she took a few steps into her brother's room and closed the door behind her so as not to draw her mother's attention to their conversation. Then, Ada crossed her arms and stood square in front of her brother, who was now standing up to face her in much the same position.

"You're training Trunks, aren't you?" she accused suddenly, looking up at Gohan with fire in her eyes.

"What on earth would give you that idea?" he replied quickly and, Ada thought, rather sheepishly. Gohan, of course, knew that she had him figured out but still always automatically kicked up an excuse when questioned about anything secretive. He assumed it was something he had acquired from dealing with his mother for so many years.

"Don't lie," she stated flatly, her cheeks reddening.

"Ada, listen-" Gohan began before being cut off by the fuming young girl in front of him.

"Why would you train him instead of me, even after I've begged you for so long?" she exploded. "Is it because I'm a girl? Or d'you just thing he's stronger than me?"

Gohan passed a hand over his eyes and sighed. Whatever he said to her would be meaningless. She was young, she was angry, and she was, in some ways, her mother's daughter. Perhaps more frustrating than that, he realized that Ada simply would not understand if he tried to tell her the truth.

"Because he's not!" her tirade continued, rivers of tears ready to spill out of her eyes at any second. "I can do it, too! I've practiced!" She had run out of breath, the last word coming out with specific emphasis and complete desperation. Ada looked down at the floor, teardrops falling onto the carpet of her brother's room.

"C'mon," Gohan said softly, placing a hand on her right shoulder. She shrugged it off angrily, looking up at him again.

"I want to fight!" she practically yelled as the knuckles of her balled-up fists began to whiten. "Dad trained you, so what about me, huh?"

Gohan, knowing any other attempt at reasoning with her on the subject was futile, hardened his eyes and frowned.

"No," he said firmly, the one word carrying more gravity than all of his sister's pleas.

"That's not FAIR!" she shot back, this time putting both palms, splayed out, against his chest and shoving him. Sure, she'd started a fight or two at school when she was younger after being made fun of, but Gohan knew that these days she would never do something so immature around anyone but him. He was Ada's release, the one she came to when she needed to channel some anger or have a good cry. Gohan understood her, and for that reason alone was she comfortable enough to operate almost purely on emotion when she was around him.

"You're just acting childish!" he countered gruffly. "Go to bed, Ada. This conversation is over."

She looked at him for a moment, now hurt beyond words, as tears streamed down her cheeks. Then, she turned on her heel, threw open the door, and walked briskly to her own room. Gohan heard her door slam as he flipped the light switch and then made his way to the bathroom. He needed a shower. More than that, he needed his father to materialize and tell him how in the hell he was supposed to raise a teenager.

After stepping into the shower, Gohan looked upwards at nothing in particular.

"She's your daughter," he said angrily before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He had wanted to ask the ceiling, 'So where are you?' but knew it was pointless. Angry at himself for getting into the mess in the first place, Gohan began to have second thoughts about having taken Trunks as his pupil. He wondered whether teaching the boy how to fight was not the same as pushing him off a cliff. Bulma, naturally, was going to be furious if she found out.

And then there was Ada. Gohan was completely void of ideas about how to explain the decision to her. Assuming his sister would probably spend the rest of both their lives not speaking to him, he began to wonder what possible excuse he could give her. She would scoff at the truth. Nonetheless, he thought he would at least see how it sounded. Looking again at nothing but the shower wall, Gohan dropped his voice to a whisper.

"If something happened to you, I would never forgive myself. Not in this life or the next."

xxx

It took less than an hour for Trunks to realize how badly he needed a break. He was sweaty, exhausted, and terribly on edge. One more slow dance with Louisa pushing herself up against him, he figured, and he would end up saying or doing something that would hurt her feelings and cause an unnecessary scene. It was simply too much too fast.

Throwing open the door from the stairwell, he stepped outside and took in as much air as he possibly could.

"Come out here for a breather?" an unfamiliar voice inquired, making him jump a little. Trunks looked to his left to see the source of the question- a couple of the guests taking a smoke break. He nodded at them, and they turned around and continued their conversation. The young man turned the other direction in search of a place to sit on the ground that was at least marginally clean. A few buildings just south of that area had been attacked several days before, and the dust from their destruction had settled in thick sheets around the area. This particular sidewalk, Trunks noted happily, was somewhat less filthy than he expected.

"Hey there."

He looked down the pavement a ways to see, of all people, Ada, who had apparently gotten the same idea.

"Hey," Trunks replied, taking a seat about a foot from her, careful not to sit on her dress.

"Having a good time?" she asked, fingering the diamond necklace that Bulma had lent her.

"Uh, yeah, definitely," he answered, nodding his head. "And you?"

"Mm-hm," she affirmed with a nod of her own. Silence.

They both turned their heads upwards to the stars.

"My mom told me," Ada observed after a while, "that in the old days, you couldn't see the stars from the city. She said that there were too many lights."

"I've heard the same thing," he said. "It seems strange, you know? The idea of something manmade being able to penetrate that kind of darkness, I mean."

"Yeah," she agreed. "When you go back, you'll get to see it, West City all lit up. You'll have to tell me what it's like." Trunks did not need to ask what 'back' meant. His excursions through the space-time continuum were spoken of as a matter of course.

"You will, too," he assured her. "After all this is over. When things get back to normal."

To his surprise, she laughed. "And what is 'normal'?"

"Well…" he was at a loss for words. "I guess it's whatever we want it to be. We're going to get the chance to start over, almost from scratch." He scratched his head a little, a frown on his face.

"I shouldn't be so confident," Trunks said gravely.

"Why would you say that?" Ada looked at him with scorn, a reaction that took him by surprise.

"It's just that, I mean, I've been training all of my life. And so have you. What's come of it?" he asked somewhat forlornly, squinting his eyes slightly as though searching for the light at the end of some invisible tunnel.

Ada huffed, a flame dancing in her eyes. "I can't believe that you'd say such a thing. You are supposed to be the cool, confident one. It's my job to fret over that sort of thing," she informed him matter-of-factly, anger evident in her voice. "And besides, if Goku really is what Bulma and my mom…and you, even…say that he is, he'll know what needs to be done. In their time and ours."

Trunks reflected on this for a moment. When she referred to her father, a rarity, she almost never called him by his proper name. That only happened, he knew, when she was angry. He breathed a sigh, his voice returning to normal.

"He really is something. I mean, I only spoke to him for a few minutes, but I could tell," he stated simply. Then, with a smile, he added, "His confidence made me want to stay in the past to train with all of them. I really considered it for a minute there."

Ada looked at him incredulously. "You're telling me that you thought about ditching your mom's plan altogether and staying in a different time?"

Trunks looked at her sheepishly. Something about the way she shot his words back at him made the whole thing sound idiotic. "Well, if you had been there, had seen how happy they all were after Goku came back, how ready he was to take on the androids…"

"I wouldn't have even considered abandoning the people that need me at home," she snapped, finishing his sentence for him. "What about your mother, hm? And all of the people in your time?" And me? she wanted to add but thought better of it.

"Well it's not like I actually did it, alright?" he said defensively, his pride taking over. "And how can you know that you wouldn't have considered the same thing? At least I was willing to go," he finished angrily, knowing immediately that he'd crossed the line. She only stared at him, her lips pursed.

"I'm sorry," she said tersely after several moments. "I forgot how very noble you are."

And with that, Son Ada stood, brushed off her dress, took a deep breath, and reentered the hotel.

xxx

Trunks heard nothing out of Ada for the next two weeks. Granted, he was spending most of his time in the basement of Building 2 of the Capsule Corporation complex, a very large, very open old warehouse that had been abandoned with most of the rest of the company when Bulma had been forced to shut down years before. Nothing about it was especially conducive to the intense training that he was doing, but it was the only place in or around the city that would work. It took only thirteen days for Trunks to become terribly frustrated with his utter lack of progress. Nothing to practice on, no extra gravitational pull, no sparring partner.

The latter, he reasoned, was the only one that he could possibly fix, and he grudgingly decided that he had no other choice.

One shower, a change of clothes, and an hour and a half later, he found himself standing on the doorstep of the Son house and knocking on the door.

"Why, isn't this a surprise?" Chi Chi, who answered the door, smiled broadly at the boy, dishtowel in hand. "Come in, Trunks!"

"Thanks, Chi Chi," he replied shyly, stepping across the threshold. "How've you been?"

"Oh, you know. About the same," she informed him with a small sigh. "But how about you, dear? Ada hasn't mentioned you in ages. I feel so uninformed!" After motioning for Trunks to have a seat at the kitchen table, Chi Chi made her way back to the sink to finish drying the dishes.

"I guess we've just been too busy to see much of each other," he responded, reddening a little at the fib.

"Understandable. Life gets in the way sometimes, doesn't it? And I assume you've been hard at work with your training," Chi Chi stated. She admittedly understood very little about the time machine business and didn't care to know more, but she gathered from Ada that Trunks had stepped up his training intensity in preparation for returning to the past.

"Yes," he said in a characteristically modest tone. "That's actually why I'm here. I'm sort of in need of a sparring partner, and I was hoping to-"

"Yes, yes, I was thinking as much. She's about half a mile to the west; she said she was going past the pond with the willow and to that nice, shady spot where the two streams meet," Chi Chi responded plainly. Trunks was still astounded by how well Ada's mother could read people, especially when they were hungry for a good fight. He assumed it was force of habit. Ada was, after all, the third warrior to grace the Son residence (not counting Chi Chi herself).

"Right," he said as he stood and smiled. "It's been a while since I've been out here – hopefully I won't get lost. Thank you!"

And as quickly as he had come, he was gone, his blood pumping furiously at the thought of a real challenge.