"But who can remember pain once it's over? All that ever remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind." - Margaret Atwood

Back in the indoor garden at the compound, I had come back and reclaimed my previous spot on the grass. The boy had been taken to get cleaned up and was now upstairs, playing in his bedroom. That left no one but myself and the boy's grandmother.

The woman was sitting at a patio set a few feet away from where I was sitting, admiring her garden as she sipped on a cup of tea.

We had been sitting in silence, nothing but the serene sounds of nature surrounding us. But, suddenly, the woman decided to break that silence.

"So," she began, placing her ceramic cup on the small table. "You and Bulma were gone for quite some time. Did you two manage to work everything out?"

I looked over at her with a questioning look. "There was an emergency at work and she asked me to come along for assistance, but, somehow, I feel as though that is not what you are referring to,"

"Oh, well that was nice of you. But I was referring to the fact that you left right after she did, and she's now wearing a different blouse than before," she said, playfully and suggestively.

My eyebrow twitched in annoyance, and slight embarrassment, at her audaciousness. "Not that it's any of your business, but she told me to meet her upstairs to talk," I angrily explained, my cheeks feeling warm. "And before you ask, the only reason we went up there in the first place was because she needed to change after picking up the boy, whom of which got her shirt a bit dirty,"

"Relax Vegeta, I was only teasing," she smiled, leaning back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. "I can always tell when my girls are in a bad mood, especially Bulma. So, what did you two talk about?"

"Nothing," I quickly lied. The conversation that took place was not one I wished to revisit.

"But you said that you upstairs to talk. It must have been something if you needed privacy, right?" she continued to pry.

"Privacy. Something that is surely lacking around this madhouse," I said, crossing my arms tightly across my chest. "And I'm not telling you a thing. You want to gossip, go talk to that daughter of yours,"

Her face softened, for some inexplicable reason, at my reluctance. "Come on now, you can tell me,"

"No, and that's final, woman!" I sheepishly exclaimed.

She raised her hands up in mock surrender. "Alright, I can take a hint. But when you feel as though you need someone to talk to about this, I'll be here for you," she sincerely offered. "I know how complicated loving someone like that can get. Trust me,"

I raised an eyebrow at this. "What do you mean?"

"Loving someone like Bulma. More specifically her father," she clarified. "I know what it feels like," I was about to argue that I simply cared for the mother of my child, but she continued. "No one has ever truly noticed this, but, Bulma and her father, believe it or not, are two very stoic individuals,"

To anyone else that might have sounded like the most obsurd way to describe the upbeat father-daughter duo, but I was just relieved that someone else actually saw the woman the same way I did.

"Boxa was born into a lower-class family. Nothing even remotely close to what he has today. Growing up, and as the eldest of only two sons, Boxa's father desperately wanted him to make something of himself, so much so that he put all of his energy into making sure that his son would become a diligent professional. And that's what he became because..."

"Because the pressure was put on him to do something great with his family's name," I finished her thought.

She nodded. "Yes. After his mother passed, his father became even more strict with him, all the while giving his younger brother the freedom to live as he pleased. Boxa said that their father saw no potential in his brother, so he never wasted his time with him,"

I thought about how my father had treated myself and Tarble in a similar fashion. Very early on in life I decided that I wanted to be exactly like my father, a ruthless man who ruled with an iron fist over his subordinates, so the King did everything in his power to mold me in his image. Tarble, on the other hand, was more like our mother, an oddly a kind-hearted soul amongst a horde of heathens. But unlike Tarble she was fierce when she had to be. Our father deemed him too soft to be a ruler, so eight months before the destruction of our planet, he stripped him of his rights to the throne and banished him at the age of three. The same age as Trunks was at the time this was all happening.

"His father made sure that all he had time for was studying and work." She continued. "Boxa graduated high school at the age of sixteen and was working as an intern by seventeen at an engineering branch of the Red Ribbon Army, which is where he met Dr. Gero," I was actually shocked to hear that bit of info. "Even after he finally got from under his father's thrall by attending a grad school over seas, he still saw that it didn't matter, because the damage was done. He got stuck in his father's ways,"

"Dr Briefs worked under Gero?" I asked, so many questions swimming around in my head.

She shook her head from side to side. "No. Gero was known for never taking on interns, never wanting to get distracted from his work. Boxa worked under one of his colleagues, Dr Flappe,"

"That figures," I muttered under my breath.

"Two years after receiving his Ph.D in technology and his doctorate in science, Boxa had finally put the finishing touches on the original version of the Dino Capsules we use today. He took out a loan so that he could get more of them manufactured and sold them from a kiosk stand, and eight months later they were in high demand," she looked down at the cup on the table. "Ironically enough, his father passed only a couple of months before Boxa was able to buy his first capsule factory and later expand to different locations,"

"The man spent his entire life grooming his son for greatness, only to not live long enough to actually see his work come to fruition," I wondered aloud. "That is truly depressing," I said without a hint of humor.

She shrugged one shoulder. "It's sad, but very true."

"When did you come into his life?" I asked, curious to know more.

"Well, I met Boxa during my junior year in college. While I always found solace in nature, he was a man who found peace surrounded by technology. I loved to stop and smell the roses, while he loved finding reason as to how it manages to create such a pleasant aroma," she said with a longing smile. "Despite our obvious differences, I fell for him. And years later, we had two beautiful girls to help occupy our time,"

She looked off thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. "As a consequence to how Boxa's father treated him, Boxa unintentionally became exactly the kind of parent he never wanted to be, but a bit milder," she sighed, leaning her elbow onto the table and rested her jaw on her fist. "When Tights was ten years old and Bulma was five, he began trying to get them interested in his line of work. He brought them along to his lab and made them study his work. He would make them come up with a project and, if he deemed it good enough, they had to learn how to build it. He made them enter competition after competition, even if they didn't want to."

She cleared her throat. "After nearly two years of this, he decided that he should focus on just Bulma," she gave a sad smile. "As you know by now, Tights is more of a nature girl like me. Bulma, on the other hand, had taken a liking to everything he showed her. She had a real talent for it. He would go on to spend the next nine years nurturing that talent on an extreme level, with a very tight leash," she looked over at me. "Have you ever heard someone refer to her as The Golden Child?"

"I've heard her cousin call her by that name a few times over the years. Why?"

"Because it wasn't just Vanessa who used to call her that. Everything that she did throughout grade school and high school, she excelled in it. Literally everything. The girl hadn't made so much as an A minus since first grade," she proudly recalled. "But that placed her atop a pedestal she couldn't help living up to. Thanks to her father, not only grooming her to be successful, but also a die-hard perfectionist. It was only after she graduated high school at the age of fourteen did she finally convince him to give her a little more freedom before she went off to college. She would spend the next couple of years travelling, which is how she met young Goku,"

"I don't understand this at all," I suddenly said. "He's such a cheerful man, and the two of them seem to have a pretty stable relationship. I can't imagine him being that way,"

"Oh, make no mistake, he was a very loving father to our girls. He only wanted to know that one of them would succeed him when the time came," she quickly clarified. "It's just, when you place expectations on a young child, it places pressure on them. The pressure to live up to those expectations. And, as seen with Bulma, it can easily be carried into adulthood," she explained, expertly. "She's always felt as if she had to fight for her place in our family, even if we told her otherwise,"

"From my perspective, I say she's achieved more than even she thought possible," I shrugged. "For Other World's sake, the woman created a time machine and met her son before he was even born,"

"That's from the outside looking in. The mind of a perfectionist is much more complicated than either of us could possibly imagine," she told me. "You see Vegeta, at its root, perfectionism isn't really about a deep love of being meticulous. It's about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success,"

I looked down at the grass as I mulled over this new information. I thought back to a couple of days prior, on the day of her accident. We were having lunch with the boy at a restaurant downtown. We had a small disagreement involving our child.

"I don't understand why you insist on having him sit in one of those things," I said, referring to the booster seat she just requested for the boy.

She sighed. "We've been over this already. He's just a child, Vegeta, and children need things like that to help them," she explained.

I gave an unconvinced face. "Help him how?"

She sent the look right back. "Seriously?" she deadpanned. She picked the boy up from her lap and placed him in the seat between the two of us, and the only thing that was still visible was the top of his head.

"He can stand up to eat," I suggested, noting how small the boy was.

"That's definitely not happening," she shot down, immediately, before placing the boy back on her lap.

"Even still, his motor skills are up to that of someone three times his age,"

"And I don't doubt that,"

"So why the need for that ridiculous cup?"

She gave an incredulous look. "His motor skills have nothing to do with the fact that he is prone to spilling things,"

"He wouldn't be spilling things if he had more practice drinking from a real cup," I said, dismissively.

The waiter came with the booster seat and she placed the boy on it. She thanked the server before he left again and began securing the boy to the seat. "I know that you believe him to be above all of this because of your half of his DNA, and in some ways he is. But he is still just a child. I don't want him to feel like he has to grow up so fast, because we both know what it's like to have pressure placed on us at a young age," she lamented. She finished strapping him in and settled in her seat before turning to look at me. "Can you honestly say that you want him to grow up the same way you did?"

The question had taken me off guard, and I didn't even bother to ask about what she meant by having pressure on herself at a young age. One could easily guess that the woman had to have been held to certain expectations, simply due to who her father was. But now a lot of things were beginning to make more sense in terms of how she lived her life, and how she chose to raise her children.

Two broken individuals, ruled by the ugliness of their past, raising a child together. A more cruel joke had never been told.

I was taken out of my thoughts by a hand on my shoulder. I looked back up to see that the woman was now standing beside me.

She smiled down at me. "Like I said, if you feel like you want someone to talk to, I'll be here to listen,"

I gave her a silent nod and watched as she retreated beyond the bushes of flowers to continue tending to her garden.

I stood up and went in the same direction she'd just disappeared in. I quickly located her and found that she was trimming a tall shrub.

"That was fast," she said without looking at me. "I didn't think that you would come around quite this soon,"

I rolled my eyes, ignoring her assumption, and they landed on the plot of dirt my son was working in earlier. "What is this?"

She stopped what she was doing to turn around and see what I was referring to. "Oh, that's just one of the new plots that Trunks is helping me fill,"

"With what?"

"Tomatoes, specifically Cherry Tomatoes,"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why continue using your land for this? Don't you have enough of this stuff sprouting around the place?" I asked her, genuinely confused. For as long as I had known her, I had seen her put as much effort into her garden as Bulma had put into one of her inventions, and it confused me to no end.

She smiled brightly at me. "I suppose I enjoy creating life, watching it grow and find purpose. The way I see it, it's not that much different than giving birth,"

"Your daughter might disagree with you on that," I deadpanned, thinking of the time she told me that actually giving birth was the most difficult thing she had experienced in her life.

"She might. But, just like a fetus, a seed needs to be properly nurtured so that it may one day emerge from Mother Nature's womb into something beautiful," she looked at me. "Besides my wonderful grandson, have you ever created something?"

"Creating things was never in the job description. My only priority was to learn how to destroy, and to destroy completely,"

She went over and picked up a small shovel and offered it to me. "Well, maybe it's time for a change,"

I raised an eyebrow, staring at the tool. "What do you mean?"

"If you can learn how to destroy, then you can also learn how to create," she placed the tool in my hand. "You think you're up to helping me with the rest of these plants?"

"If a child is capable of the task, then I am more than capable," I scoffed. "But what makes you think I want to help you?"

She shrugged. "You're not doing anything else at the moment, so why not?"

"So I should spend my free time playing in dirt?"

"It can be very therapeutic," she added. "What if I made this a bit more interesting for you?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Like how?"

"After you're done helping me plant the rest of these," she gestured to the stack of tiny potted plants. "I'll let you choose one to take care of,"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"To see if you can make it grow, that is if you even know how," she said, giving an underhanded insult.

I caught her insult. "Of course I know how. There's nothing to doing something as trivial as gardening," he snapped a bit, slightly offended.

"Prove it," she challenged, moving aside for me.

"Fine, I will," I accepted, stepping past her and onto the plot. I stared down at the dirt with the shovel in my hand, not entirely sure of where to start or how.

She suddenly came to stand beside me and pointed to where there were already some plants in the ground. "You can pick up where Trunks left off," and I grumpily went to work digging. "Be sure that the hole is only about eight inches deep and at least a foot away from each other,"

"I knew that!" I told her, discreetly refilling the hole that's at least a foot and a half deep.

"Alright then, I'll check on you in a few minutes,"

After I finished with the hole, I grabbed one of the plants. I saw a small pile of empty plastic pots and assumed that I had to remove it. I took the plant and placed it in the hole. I began burying it, trying to make it look similar to the ones beside it. Once I was done with that, I looked around at the large, mostly empty plot.

I shook my head. What had I gotten myself into? "I really should have just left when I had the chance,"

A couple of hours later, I was sitting at the computer in my lab at home. My eyes were carefully pouring over the e-mail that was sent to me a little while ago. It was the inventory report for the burglarized warehouses, which were now on mt ever-growing to-do list of things to be taken care of, along with the other warehouse locations. But, unlike everything else I had to do, I had been thinking of a possible solution to this sort of problem for a while now.

As I finished reading over the report, for the third time, my eyes narrowed at what I was now seeing. "What the fuck is going on here?" I said to myself, thoughts running wild. Every item on that list was of little value in comparison to what could have been taken, and easily replaceable. Just a bunch of tools and small parts. Plus, if that person was looking to sell it, they didn't get nearly enough to make a profit worthy of the break in. So I didn't get it. What was the plan for all of this?

I leaned back in the leather chair. "I should really take a look at the security footage Van sent me. Maybe I'll see something that she didn't," I told myself as I went to open the video file of the very first break in.

The video began in the currently unoccupied space within the warehouse. It appeared as if the guards were in the middle of changing shifts. A perfect opportunity. Suddenly, someone could be seen climbing down the wall to the left, dressed in all black with a cap over their hair and a mask over their mouth. The person, gender unidentifiable due to their attire, went over to one of the containers, which was heavily locked, and attempted to open it.

"So this person obviously made it past the guards and entered through the skylight, probably knowing that it wasn't guarded, but they didn't expect the containers to be locked." This was an interesting observation I made, so I took a mental note of it.

The person tried to pull it open a few times, but it wouldn't budge for them, so they stopped and began looking around. They halted when they spotted something and then went over to it.

"That must have been the moment they found the main security system," I murmured, remembering that the report said that it had been tampered with.

A moment later, all of the containers automatically opened up, and the person came back into view. They immediately went inside of one before exiting a few moments later, stuffing their find into their sling bag. The thief went back off screen and the containers all closed. The thief came back into view and then climbed back up to where they must have came in. The video ended with that.

"How did they do that?" I said in astonishment. That person had not only managed to open the security system, but also close it. The system was designed to shut down if ever someone attemped to hack their way inside, as was all of our systems. So how did someone who didn't even seem to know about the system to begin with know how to break into it without setting it off?

I reached over for my phone. I needed to talk to Van.

The phone rang a few times before it answered. "What is it, Bulma?"

"Van, how did you all find out about the break in at the very first location you told me about?" I asked.

"One of the guards thought they saw someone fleeing the premises, so they went to check around and found that the system had been tampered with,"

"Yeah, you told me that earlier." I leaned forward on my forearm. "But the report never specified how it was tampered with. Do you know?"

"Why?"

"I'm just following up on something regarding it,"

"I believe they said that there were burn marks on it,"

I tensed, staring blankly ahead. "Burn marks?" I dumbly repeated.

"Yes, that's what I was told,"

"It can't be," I mumbled quietly.

"What did you say?" the easily upset woman on the other end asked me.

I could feel my mind racing so fast that it was giving me a headache.

"Bulma, are you still there?" Van asked in an annoyed tone. "Bulma!"

The sound of my name being yelled in my ear brought me out of my head. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm still here," I quickly answered. "Van, can I call you back later? There is something that I need to look into,"

"Whatever," she scoffed before hanging up.

I looked at my computer screen and went to open the file I had gotten from Tatsuki earlier. I immediately went back to the image of the burned door on the jet. "Is it possible that this was the same person who caused my accident?"

I thought back to when I was leaving the auto shop. There was a black mark on the keypad beside the door. Maybe the same thing that was done to my jet also happened to these other places. I desperately tried piecing it together.

I leaned forward to look more closely at the image, but my arm hit the keyboard and the photo changed. An image of the shattered windshield taken from the inside was now being displayed. I was about to change it back when something caught my eye outside of the jet. I zoomed in on it, and it appeared to be a shadow on a tree. I enhanced the image even further, trying to make it clearer. I enhanced it once more and my eyes went wide at what I saw.

There, standing with their back facing towards the camera as if calmly walking away, was very much a person. The person was dressed in a black long sleeved shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans. Their physique was being obscured by a long, dark mane of hair covering the entirety of their back down to their rear.

I flashed back to that night in the park. I could remember someone leaning over me, my head being surrounded by long hair.

"Oh my God!" I gasped. "That's them! That's the person who attacked me that night!"

Many years ago, as a young child I was walking alongside a woman, who had her long dark hair braided down, down a long pathway through the countryside. The woman and I were both dressed in silver-colored noble armoured clothing of our people. Our silver collars hung down over our chests that matched the thick plate wrapped around our abdomen, but only the woman was wearing a silver serpent bracelet winding around her right bicep and a winged sun tattoo wrapped around her left one, all with a white tunic beneath.

I looked up at the woman. "So what did the King want with you and father earlier?" She was my beautiful, young mother.

Mother sighed. "He wanted to discuss our next course of action to take,"

"And what has he decided upon?"

"Nothing that involves you," she immediately said, giving me a stern look.

"Mother, I believe that I am old enough to at least begin learning about your inner circle. I will be a part of it one day,"

She stared back ahead towards our path. "Not one day soon, though," she corrected. "Now let's head home, night will soon be upon us,"

I sighed, defeatedly, continuing on in silence. Looking around the area, I stared on solemnly at the sight.

The rolling hills of green were littered with large pieces of rock from the crumbled mountains that once lined the background of the land. Ruins of a small town lied in the distance. These details betray the facade of peace, telling a story of war.

Try as they might to shield me from it, my parents had never successfully been able to hide our war-torn reality.

We were almost to our destination, a large cottage coming into view, when suddenly, an explosion erupted in the distance. Mother and I turned around to see smoke rising from the city from which we just departed.

"Fukayna!"

We heard Mother's name being called from the direction of the city, and light-haired man, dressed similarly to us and with the same tattoo on his bicep, came running towards us. The man was my father.

"Nour?!" she replied back in confusion.

He reached us and immediately ushered us to the cottage before either of us get a word out. Once inside he turned to us, breathing heavily. "We have to go. Now!"

"Nour, what is going on out there? What happened?" Mother frantically asked Father.

"It's the Saiyans! They are attacking the city, and are on a straight path towards the capital!"

Mother's face became determined. "Let's go," she told him, both now heading for the door. She was stopped by a yank on her arm from me. She looked back and down at me. She grabbed my hand and crouched down. "I need you to go and find someplace to hide. Someplace safe, until we get back. Am I understood?" she gently instructed

"But where are you going?" I tearfully asked.

"Your father and I have to find the royal family so that we may protect them," she placed her hand atop my dark hair. "Wait for us. And be brave, my child," she gave my hand a squeeze before getting up and rushing out the door.

I allowed the hand to slip away and watched the two as they departed. The last thing seen of my mother that day was the tattoo on her arm as she vanished into the distance with my father.

Something in the night sky caught my eye. I looked upward to see a large ball of light suspended in the heavens above. "What is that?"

I stood on a balcony, staring up at the lunar body that was lighting the night, my mother's words echoing in my ears. "I will be brave. But I am done waiting," I said harshly. I looked out at the city below, one dome-shaped building stood out. "Soon,"

Over in the 439 mountain area, the boys and I had just finished dinner so I was currently doing the dishes when Gohan walked in.

"Did you finish getting your brother ready for bed?" I asked without looking away from the sink.

"Yes. He's playing in the living room right now," he answered, coming to stand beside me at the sink. "Do you want some help with the rest of these?"

I looked to my right at him, not having to look down too much because of him being nearly my height at that time. "Have you done your homework yet?"

"I don't have much to do, so I can get started after I'm done helping you," he said, grabbing a cloth and began drying the dishes I had already cleaned.

I watched him for a moment before going back to washing. I wanted to protest him doing this, but I knew that it would have just fell on deaf ears, just like so many times before in the last year or so.

I had noticed that since the passing of his father, Gohan had been spending more and more of his time at home. He had been more helpful around the house and with his brother, which made me playfully wonder if it was Goku who discouraged him from doing housework in the first place.

Once we were finished, he kissed me goodnight and went to his room to start his homework, taking Goten along with him.

I removed my shoes and settled on the couch in the living room. I reached over to pick up a book that I had been reading earlier, The Calligrapher's Daughter, and opened it to where I had bookmarked the page I left off on.

As I read on about Najin's defiant journey to womanhood, the soft music playing from the old radio on the corner table distracted me. I looked over at the wooden piece. The music is creating a soothing scene for me to relax in.

I smiled as I went back to my book. "That reminds me. I should probably give Bulma a call tomorrow,"