The morning of May 20th started with a 'death certificate delivery', but Goku was not at Kame-House, and the two Cyborgs (and one Android) were not about to just.. not deliver the package. And Piccolo was ready to face them.
"I told you Son isn't here. Get going."
"I don't suppose you'll just tell us where he is?"
"Good guess."
"Sixteen said it was either here or West City."
"Oh no, we've spent enough time looking around, we're not going to knock on every door of West City. Someone here will have to talk, mh?" Eighteen inquired, the voice playful, but the eyes cold and deadly.
"Well, you heard the lady, we'll have to beat the information out of you then, Green man."
"I'd love to see you try," Piccolo taunted, and indicated away. "But not here."
"These guys never learn," Seventeen shrugged, but was happy to play along. This was fun, after all.
The three artificial humans agreed to follow the Namekian, but not without first having a good look at whomever was present. Tenshinhan, Krillin, Yamcha by the door and Roshi and Chichi at the window. Tenshinhan was ready to follow Piccolo, but Piccolo told him to stay, that he'd get in the way. A telepathic link later, and Piccolo aiming to stall was clear to the former Crane student; throwing his own life away and possibly getting in Piccolo's way was not a good strategy. Vegeta and Trunks would surely show up with Piccolo's ki spikes as soon as they step out of the Room of Spirit and Time. And Krillin shot back inside, ready to dial Capsule Corp as soon as the menace had left, to know whether the Briefs found something they could use, like, right now.
"No Vegeta, no Trunks, no Son Goku, leaving your buddies at home, what's up with that, Piccolo Daimao?" Seventeen asked after the four of them landed on a nearby archipelago.
"I assure you, the Saiyans are the least of your worries."
"Hey sis, I know I called dibs on Lilac, but I'll take this one too, since you got two last time. Sixteen you don't mind, right?"
Both Eighteen and Sixteen sat under a tree, one looking far more interested in its little inhabitants than the other. Sixteen had already expressed a few times to his newfound siblings that he would fight Son Goku, and only Son Goku.
"Alright Piccolo Daimao, you're buying time, or have a death wish or whatever, I'm cool with that, if you want to fight I'm your man."
"Only you, Seventeen?" Piccolo tossed his cape and turban aside. From their previous encounter eight days prior, it was clear Seventeen held a sense of 'honor' about fighting one on one, and Piccolo was counting on it. He was glad he wasn't wrong.
"Well it's a great honor for you to fight me, the strongest combatant of this universe," Seventeen said, hands on hips, fully believing his words, approaching the Namekian and separating from the other two. Eighteen rolled her eyes at the self-proclaimed title. "But to be perfectly honest, I kind of wanted to run into Lilac again. I mean, after the whole killing Son Goku game is over, you know, get a proper date and shizz. Yo sis, you'll help me pick up sorry-I-broke-your-sternum flowers right?"
"Fuck off, Seventeen," she called back from afar.
The raven-haired cyborg shrugged and turned back his attention to Piccolo, walking towards him and putting more distance between him and the other artificial humans.
"For real, think I got a shot?"
Piccolo looked absolutely confused by the conversation he witnessed, but he chose to appreciate the cyborgs wasting time themselves. Perhaps if he could continue…
"What are you even talking about?"
"A shot at asking Trunks out, geez Piccolo Daimao. Nevermind, stupid question, of course I got a shot, I mean, have you looked at me? I'm me! On another note, Eighteen wants to know what lingerie baldie likes, he really caught her eye."
Piccolo could only stare in disbelief at the Cyborg's attempt at getting dating advice. From him. What was even lingerie?
"If you're talking about human customs, you've got the wrong guy, but you won't need to worry about any of that mammal stuff once I destroy you."
If he could destroy even just one of them, then Cell wouldn't achieve his perfect form regardless… Even if, according to Trunks, Seventeen was more powerful than Eighteen. He quickly built the power necessary to attack first and hoped to end it quickly.
Alas, Sixteen quickly stated 'this isn't Piccolo Daimao' . And Seventeen connected that information with the observation Sixteen did a couple of days prior, when the little group stopped because of an earthquake. Sixteen said it was no earthquake, but two unknown powers clashing, one of which 'was at least as high as yours' . Seventeen and Eighteen had dismissed the observation as a radar malfunction, but considering the sudden hits by Piccolo, Seventeen had to admit he was in the wrong.
Piccolo's power could be felt across the planet. Clearly it was a ki in combat, not a ki in training, but its opponent couldn't be sensed. Those who knew, knew that the opponent was certainly a Cyborg. Gohan had to be stopped and reassured by Goku, the idea of Piccolo fighting the Cyborgs didn't sit well with him, despite how strong his mentor had become, and Cell finally found his path to perfection. The timer just started, and Piccolo knew it.
"If you stop calling me every hour, maybe I'll get something ready faster, Krillin!" Bulma roared on the phone. Interruptions in workflow has gotten on her nerves. She was already in a sour mood. Vegeta and 'big Trunks' had vanished the day prior without a warning. She'd been working for thirty-six plus hours, all hands on deck to decipher the hard drive's content and all of the schematics brought from Gero's lab. No break for anything, just caffeine and spite. Poor Panchy was left to deal with a cranky half-Saiyan baby on her own.
"I'm sorry Bulma-san, but they just arrived, and Piccolo's fighting them right now to buy us time!"
"I'm working as fast as I can, so unless you get me my future son back to be my lab assistant, because he knows his way around the lab unlike the rest of you, fuck off and wait for me to call you! "
Krillin couldn't answer, the phone had already disconnected. If Bulma was fierce and impatient in general, she was up to eleven. But she wasn't wrong, and Kame-House inhabitants knew it.
Capsule Corp had dropped everything non vital to work on the immediate situation. All of the computing power was redirected to analyze and decode the hard drive's absurd amount of research and documentation. Dr Gero discarded nothing, and while Bulma was glad Trunks chose to take everything just in case, there is such a thing as too much data. She had finally gotten a lead, it was a matter of designing and building a prototype. Now if only there was a way to inject caffeine directly into her bloodstream…
Being 'in heat' barely registered as a thing that was actually happening in her body, but since she was told about it, Trunks began questioning a lot of things. As mortifying that conversation had been, and how indeed her temperature was higher than usual (the thermometer confirmed), she decided that just forgetting it was not a Brief-worthy path. She took a third notebook to write down every single word exchanged, and every instance where Vegeta spoke to her, including the demeaning insults, the strange actions, everything. She'd need to have all information clear and documented if she was going to actually leave a trace for the benefit of this world's Trunks and Gohan. Since obviously Vegeta wasn't going to put himself in that position ever again. And since Vegeta wasn't going to be around her for a while, that meant binder-free time in bed to do her documenting.
She first started with what she knew about Planet Vegeta; higher gravity, longer years. Probably longer days, as higher gravity implied the planet was bigger, and as such, probably rotated slower. She then added a calendar with corresponding details, using lunar months as the conversion key that Vegeta had used. A Saiyan year was twenty earth lunar months, or 560 earthling days. She would be able to add the length of a Saiyan day-night cycle (about forty hours) once she managed to probe the information out of a better-mood-Vegeta (which made their years 330 Saiyan days long). Planet Vegeta seemed to also have four seasons, since the man said 'heat' lasted one season and that was a quarter of a year. Her mother had told her Vegeta claimed he was five years old when his homeworld was destroyed by Freeza, but he told her how old he was, in lunar months. He was five Saiyan years old. That meant a little under eight, in earthling years. Old enough to remember and feel loss, and powerlessness. The more she thought about it while writing it all down, the more Trunks felt she had so much more in common with Vegeta than she first thought. And the more she saw why Vegeta clinged to his title of Prince and his pride; it was the only thing that remained, and actually talking about any aspect of being Saiyan must have been painful. The culture was gone. Only some biological traits remained. She suddenly regretted not having made Freeza suffer.
She moved on to write about how Saiyans went from children to adults in about three earthling years (or forty lunar months). That was correlated with what her mother had told her when Goku went off to train with Kami at age fifteen, still looking like a child, and came back at age eighteen, looking like a full grown adult. Bulma hadn't given many details about all of the adventures she had with the deceased gang, but that was something that had shocked so much she had to tell the story to her daughter (and she mentioned that 'Unlike Gohan-kun who did grow up normally' ). Trunks wrote down that half-breeds seemingly had a more earthling-like puberty, at least according to the two (2!) samples she had: herself and some sparse pictures of her version of Gohan growing up.
The whole 'in heat' thing. First one lasted 'a while', whatever that meant (the whole puberty period, maybe?), then five lunar months (or four and a half regular months) every three Saiyan years (or about four and a half years). She'd have to monitor her temperature to see whether it applied to half-breeds too. Vegeta had stated this was for Saiyans to signal their 'single' status, and find each other, so Trunks more or less imagined perhaps there was a festival held every three years where the planet's youth could gather, meet and mingle to find their match. She made sure to write gender didn't matter neither for mating nor for sex, and that sex didn't produce offsprings outside of mated partners, and that basically, everything and everyone was fair game. Though it remained to be confirmed to be true with mixed-species partners and half-breeds. 'There is a class divide between elites and others, it seems, and incubators… Selection perhaps?' Trunks wondered whether one was born into the 'elite' class as Vegeta put it, placed there at birth, or if it was something inherited, or if elites were created in a lab, or something else entirely. Vegeta seemed to consider her an elite. Him calling her his heir had probably more meaning and more weight than simply acknowledging their blood parentage, especially considering Vegeta was the Prince. She wasn't ready to ask about it, though, and she was certain Vegeta wasn't ready to give her an answer.
The whole mating and why it existed. She wrote down exactly as Vegeta put it, with the words he had used. She may have begged for death during the talk, but every single word was still very alive in her mind. Vegeta didn't speak much to her over the past eight months (Trunks counted they had three 'actual' conversations), so every word was valued, imprinted, and locked securely in her memory. How mating worked, by having the other's blood in one's system, however, 'with a cut usually on the hands' made Trunks realize something. Vegeta always wore gloves. And her mother did have scars on her hands. Sure, no hands-on engineer could ever have a successful career without a couple of accidents, but now she saw things in a different light. She didn't notice any scars on Chichi's hands, nor on Goku's, but Vegeta was adamant they did mate, and she wasn't about to ask either of them where/how they cut each other.
Trunks also took note of how some Saiyan senses were different. Both versions of Gohan had better eyesight than she did, and while she thought it was because he had been partially raised in the wilderness, but considering Vegeta's comments on the scars of her arms, she figured it could actually be a Saiyan trait she did not inherit. She'd have to subtly ask this world's Gohan if he saw something on her arms to confirm, because Vegeta sure as hell wouldn't sit through extensive medical tests to evaluate his vision.
As she kept writing the observations she made from the information the Prince had given her, her own experiences, what her Gohan had told her, and what her mother had told her about Goku and Vegeta, her mind went back to Gohan's death, her relation to him, and her sense of smell. It was time to evaluate that, with the new information she had, even if that memory remained painful to go back to.
Her mind went to why she smoked, and how she explained it to this world's Bulma. Her cries and anguish to the smell of blood, decay and death, her hopelessness to stop the carnage she could breathe in, even more so than others, was painful to reminisce. And she had no way of expressing it but with anger and by lashing out at Gohan who had for the longest time refused to train her, and it was violent. When Gohan died, when she was searching for his body, the smell of acid rain, blood and gasoline were overwhelming. Trunks barely remembered finding his body, but she remembered vividly the emotions and the state of her senses when she transformed. Every memory until after the funeral was blurry, and she didn't even remember when she started smoking, or under which circumstances. The screaming fit when her mother saw her smoke for the first time, however, was clear in her mind, and the fury within had her break more than a couple of pieces of furniture as she tried explaining that this was the only thing that somewhat killed the smell. Eventually Bulma accepted it and let her teenage daughter be functionally an adult in that Kami forsaken world. It was also when 'mom' became 'mother'. Trunks only noticed the tears on her cheeks when they fell down on the notebook.
She had stopped writing for a while now. She put down the pen and took her wallet from under her pillow to have another closer look at the picture she had of her mentor. The two of them snuggled together, her holding onto him as if dear life depended on it. She remembered how awful the cake tasted due to Bulma using salt instead of sugar, she remembered she hated the celebration and the attention, but she couldn't bring herself to hate the moment itself. She was absolutely mortified when her mother gave a copy of that picture to Gohan, because clearly Bulma had found the moment too endearing not to immortalize and loved embarrassing her to death. She made a big show of not appreciating having been photographed without her consent, but she was secretly thankful for it. It was the last photo she had of him alive. She valued the two gifts she got that day; the car from her mother, and the sword, from Gohan.
Apparently, this world's Gohan was all over her. Had she been all over her version of him, too? Gohan was twenty-one when he died. Had he had a 'heat' period that she caught on subconsciously as a child? She remembered sneaking out at all hours to meet him, using the radio as a good indicator of where she'd find him: she'd find him where the Cyborgs attacked. But she did it to help everyone, to save lives, to be trained, to prove her worth, to face the Cyborgs. It was strange to consider that she was both about nine years younger, and about nine years older than Gohan. He was dead before she hit puberty (and her 'heat', apparently), and she should be gone by the time he reached his. Trunks concluded that her kinship with either Gohan was more a question of the both of them being half-breeds and having no one else to relate to, rather than actual attraction. She and her version of him loved each other, and loved Bulma, because they just didn't click with anyone else. She liked the kid version of him because he represented so much more, she wanted him to grow up safer and happier than the version she knew. And he liked her because.. Because they were closer in age? Because she was a sciency time-traveler? Because she brought him cake? Yes, that was certainly the reason, and not mating instincts.
She thought back at how detached she was from people in general, and how Bulma, Gohan and herself had seemingly gone to great lengths to be isolated from everyone else, even before her schooling was halted and 'normal life' truly disappeared. Her mother once explained it was a self-preservation mechanism to become desensitized to loss, to grief. A survival tactic. Touch was a good coping mechanism for anyone growing up in that world, but unlike most earthlings in bunkers who more or less found support in communities, she only allowed her mother and Gohan into her personal space. Bulma called her clingy and needy. It'd been a problem during her first trip to this other world, she'd missed her mother. She winced at how she almost asked this world's Bulma to ease some of her touch starvation. But her desires mattered less than her mission, and she soldiered through it and only broke down in the shower. Now she was better prepared. She still missed the touch, but Gohan- this world's Gohan, she welcomed in her space. But not this world's Bulma, for some reason. 'Perhaps because I still have Mother, but no Gohan-san anymore,' she grimly concluded. She differentiated both Bulmas because hers was still alive. She also rejected everyone else because she didn't know them, perhaps…
She was part alien, after all, and so was Gohan. Even before Gohan's death, even before society fully collapsed, she stared daggers at people getting too close to her and to her mother. It's also when she was first nicknamed Tora- Tiger. Once society went down, she used that name for her radio communications, and it stuck with some of the militias. Even if the one wearing orange was Gohan, oddly. While the Cyborgs were a constant threat, militias and individuals fighting for supplies, territory, control, whatever were also a problem. Gohan never intervened in those, because he lived recluse, and not anywhere near urban areas. Getting the militias to cooperate and support each other was her mother's wish, which is why they had chosen not to join any community and tried to help everyone, but Trunks had seen some horrors when going to the bunkers on errands. It wasn't until after Gohan's death that her patience with men and their power trips ran out. She snapped hard on one of her errands, and once the first kill was made, a justified self-defense one against a tyrannical asshole who tried to shoot her 'to make an example' , there was no turning back. A few heads fell before she turned fifteen, and her mother never found out (or so she hoped). Coups and infightings were common, after all. 'Tora' was a threat and a promise, and with fearful respect, she withdrew back to her role as errand-runner and scout, and the incidents were never mentioned again. Thankfully they never realized 'Tora' and the Golden Warrior were the same person. 'Tora' was the aloof and ruthless lavender-haired teen who went from shelter to shelter to dispatch supplies. The Golden Warrior was a blonde and burning warrior who held off the Cyborgs and cleared escape routes.
Oddly enough, ever since she was isolated in this strange white void of a dimension with Vegeta, the absence of her mother didn't weigh as much. Sure she missed her contact, but it wasn't as bad as it had been during her previous trip. The Room of Spirit and Time had strange effects on her mind, and this one worried her, even if for the stay, it served its purpose: focus on getting more powerful. This was probably why she didn't expect his touch, or fatherly love, or anything similar. And yet, she still called him Father, because part of her wanted to see his behavior as loving, the Saiyan way. He was an alien after all, applying any sort of human expectations on him was unfair to the both of them.
Her temperature didn't drop, so after a week of just evaluating her life choices, her lack of attachment to anything that wasn't her mother or a version of Gohan, and considering how to go further in her compromise, coming to terms with her existence as an alien, Trunks decided to resume training. There was still time, and she wanted to be sure she could fulfill her mission to completion.
By the beginning of the tenth month, she started taking Vegeta on, but from afar. Not wanting to be anywhere near her didn't mean training had to stop, so she just plain ki-blasted him one day. The older Saiyan shouted obscenities at being used as target practice, and returned the favor tenfold. While Vegeta was a great hand-to-hand tactician, ki techniques were his specialty, and Trunks regretted some of her life choices while licking her wounds, but she was stubborn and abandonning just because she lost wasn't like her. Might as well improve on this aspect of fighting too.
By the end of the year, Trunks had put all of her notes in order. She would keep the notebook where she wrote everything about culture and her actual exchanges with Vegeta, she would give hers to Gohan, so he could have some insight about her own struggles as a half-breed and dealing with anger and hopelessness, her wins and losses against Vegeta, her routine, and the dosages she tried for the senzu-powder bread she made. She didn't mind any version of Gohan reading what essentially became her journal. She did a quick double check on it about whether she used feminine language about herself, but she kept neutral. 'My mother's child', 'Vegeta's heir' ... Truth was, if she'd been a man, she wouldn't have expressed herself differently. And looking at Vegeta, she wondered if he truly would have treated her differently, if he knew she was female, but she trusted her mother's experience. As for Vegeta's notebook... She didn't know exactly what to do with her notes on Vegeta. She thought about giving it to Bulma, for data, but there was no data, just observations. Vegeta knew she'd been writing, but he expressed no interest in it. She decided to keep it.
Her temperature only dropped in the last ten days of their stay, and Vegeta decided to cram as many beat downs as possible to make up for it; this 'heat' situation had lasted far too long. At full force and energy, the both of them clashed for hours with little breaks to test their individual progress. Trunks' edge over her father was that she was faster and more resilient. Their raw strength was comparable. Her energy management, while decent, couldn't match Vegeta's experience. Her technique was truly her weak point, but there wasn't much she could do about it without formal tutoring, even if through observation (and brutal punishment) she had improved her guard and positioning.
She spent the last three days of their stay letting her body rest and recover. Vegeta had finally changed back to his blue outfit and his armor, and he has also decided to take it light these last hours. Trunks made sure everything was packed and somewhat decent.
They didn't expect the stakes to have changed so much in twenty-four hours, once they stepped out of the chamber.