Our New Chapter

Darkness fell upon the city with the power conceding to defeat by lightening hitting the newly constructed power plant. The people were used to having almost little to no power during Black's reign of terror and thus very a small interruption. However, there was a house near the outskirts of the reconstructed city that needed power and was growing nervous.

Trunks held Mai's hand as another contraction hit and attempting to keep slow deep breaths was becoming difficult. When a minute had passed her grip relaxed, but the dread didn't lift at all. Her contractions were a little less than four minutes apart and her labor was going on twelve hours now.

Bulma was out making sure that the generators were at least going to power the necessary equipment for the house, unfortunately that did not include the malfunctioning medical supplies.

"Where's Aya?" Mai didn't see the midwife anywhere. "T-Trunks!" She called out as she felt another contraction hit her back.

Trunks let her hand go, got behind and began to apply counter pressure to his wife's sore areas. Within seconds he could hear her breathing slow, even, this technique was making some progress.

"She went to help my mom to see if she can get the fetal monitor to work." Trunks explained as Mai managed to get on her knees in bed and lean on the headboard with a pillow for cushion. "It won't be much longer."

"That's what you said five hours ago. Don't think this baby will be coming for awhile. Ah, why do people do this?"

"Because sometimes pain is a requirement for something good to come about." Trunks tried to sooth her.

"Our maybe the universe just hates wome-urgh!" The contractions were getting closer and more intense.

Trunks turned Mai around, placed her arms around his neck, and began to massage her back. No one ever said that this would be one of the hardest battles he would be facing. Exhausting was eating away with each second, no, nano second. Every blink felt like weights, each movement was draining. He had fought against Cell, Black, Androids, with each fight he had a drive to keep going, to see things through.

With this situation, he wanted it to end, this was far too painful and if he could fight or blast this away he would've done it when the contractions started. It wasn't fair!

Why did she have to suffer this on her own?

Haven't they, hasn't she suffered enough?

"Trunks," Mai lifted her face to meet his. "It'll be okay, after our baby is born, we can take a nice long nap."

Aya came into the room with a still dysfunctional fetal monitor, but assured the young couple that she will take care of them to the best of her abilities. Checking the status of Mai's progress through the labor she was pleased to announce that she was almost up to ten centimeters. Although, that didn't mean that this was going end soon.

Over the next eight hours proved to be some of the most grueling than the last twelve. Mai's muffled grunts started to turn into screams of agony. The mantra of 'everything will get worse before it gets better' waned hours ago.

Mai even lost consciousness a couple times only to wake up to pain. Bulma, Aya, him kept telling her that with one more push it will all be over. Constant encouragement of that 'one more time' kept her going, but it didn't for him. Trunks found himself losing his voice as he was losing hope in that phrase.

"Mai, the baby is almost here, just one more push and that's it over!" Aya cheered.

"You can do this, just one more time!" He whispered in her ear before kissing the top of her forehead.

She nodded, took in a deep breath, chin to her chest and pushed.

A couple seconds later they heard the most beautiful sound in the whole universe.

A newborns cry.

Aya wrapped up the baby and immediately handed her over to her father.

His heart skipped a beat, their daughter was here. Finally, after all the battles, each contraction, she was finally here.

"Tsuki, time to meet your Mom." Trunks breathed with astonishment. "Mai, Mai?"

Still she was, quiet breathes, unmoving, like a corpse!

"Mai!" He took her hand. "Mai, look, she's here; our Tsuki is here!" He begged.

Her eyelids fluttered open, glancing to the right, what energy she had left mustered together to raise her hand to hold Tsuki's hand. "Hi, I'm your Mommy and the man holding you is your Daddy."

Trunks' smile flipped upon closing inspection to the woman who began breathing like the air was being sucked out of the room, the Earth. That red color that appeared through the effort of her pushing was fading back into her skin. Almost as if it knew that it was needed inside to help preserve the life it resided in.

No, no, no!

They had survived the Androids, Black, Zamasu…everything that was thrown at them. Mai has stared death in the face many times and always came out on top. All of those actions were painful, however what those monsters had in common was the evil intention.

What was evil about giving birth?

Why could she avoid death from Black's blast, but not the effort of child birth?

"She's so small, but she's strong, like her Mom." Trunks attempted to chase away the chasm forming in his gut.

"Yeah…" Mai dropped her hand from exhaustion. "Hey, do you mind if I take that nap now? I'm kinda tired."

"Wait, let's talk just a little while longer. You haven't held Tsuki yet." He could feel a lump forming in his throat. This can't be happening. He lived without his father and Tsuki might live without her mother. The cycle needs to stop, it has to stop!

"Tsuki, Mommy is…" Her breathes were becoming farther apart. "…sorry."

"Mai, no, come on. Stay with me, with us. She's going to need you when school starts. When she falls down, when she feels crushed, alone, lost, Tsuki needs her mother for those things." His lower lip quivered.

Tsuki wouldn't stop crying, he rocked her, but she didn't stop. On some level Tsuki knew that something bad was happening.

Stoic, empty, frozen…Trunks just sat in the chair with his crying daughter just there. This wasn't right, she gave birth to the most perfect little girl and she was going to die for it?

"Don't die on us yet!" He heard a feminine voice scream in the background.

It sounded so distant that even his daughters crying was soon becoming silent. A black curtain was falling over his vision, this was a nightmare. He'll wake up to a very pregnant Mai craving dried mangos at every hour doing the day. He'll put the finishing touches in the crib, go to visit Gohan's grave.

This is all a dream.

"Her colors coming back!" That same voiced reached out to him in the darkness. "Trunks look!" He was pulled out of the darkness and back to his bedroom.

Bulma was there on the other side of the bed with an empty syringe in her hand. Tracing the where the syringe was injected, superior to the site, was Mai's face, alert, alive! She held up her arms at Trunks.

"I haven't held Tsuki yet, no fair." She pouted to Trunks.

Bulma jogged over to the other side, got Tsuki from her son and handed her to Mai. Aya reassured that Mai is out of the woods and that he should relax.

"I made a mixture with one senzu bean as the main component." Bulma said. "No one is dying today."

Mai quickly sat up much to Trunks dismiss and chuckled. Looking for a certain sound, he realized that Tsuki had stopped crying. She was nuzzling against her mother's chest, almost grateful for this second miracle.

"What did I tell you? Remember what I told you?" Mai arranged herself so Tsuki would be in one arm. "A man shouldn't be so quick to tear up." She ruffled his hair.

"Can't help it, you and Tsuki are my everything." He caught her hand, savoring the warmth that returned to it. "Thank you, Mai."

"Thank you, Trunks."

For this chapter, I wanted to test out the waters of turning a good event into a loss. All the characters in DBZ have faced death countless times from all this evil intention, survived, came back to join the fight and win. In DB Super, the (Spoiler Alert) Dragonballs no longer exist and thus don't have that luxury to bring the dead back to life. One of the things that I love about Future Trunks is that I think he humanizes the events in the series. While they can bring the dead back, he can't and thus, in my opinion has a more appreciation in life.

Hope you like it!