A/N: Happy New Year 2024! Looks like the FFnet stats are back after being gone since mid-September 2023! And that means I'm also weaning myself back. And boy, do I have a lot of updates since September.

This story is the prequel to my epic-scale fanfiction "Goku's Humored" which I've been rewriting since October under a new title called "Legend & Legacy" ("L&L"), currently over 100k words on Archive of Our Own.

Despite how I'm labeling this prequel fic, Dancing with Strings, as a Trunks/Goten pairing, this is not a love story; this is a tragic hero story, and a very bolded Mature rating for this fic. Some parts may also be triggering to readers. I'll provide trigger warnings as applicable.

There are two intentions of this story:

1) Prequel to Legend & Legacy / Goku's Humored

2) Bridge Dragon Ball Super Trunks with GT Trunks, to show the kinds of trauma and his related decisions that made him become the unhappy President of Capsule Corporation by the start of GT.

Ages at the start - Trunks: 18; Goten 17

And without further ado... enjoy!

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I dedicate this story to AnnyRhale who helped me realize that this story could not stay contained.

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CHAPTER 1:
Break Up

Trunks finally graduated. After four long years at Blue Hal High School, the private Western preparatory school that he was ready to put behind him, he finally got his diploma, and could start to look forward to the next stages of his life.

At the time of his graduation, Trunks and his girlfriend Mai had been dating for three years - since the start of his sophomore year. That whole time, Trunks had been entirely faithful to Mai, even prioritizing her above hanging out with his best friend, Goten, who was one year below him.

However, despite how long Trunks and Mai had been "together," the truth behind their long-term relationship was that Trunks had been facing challenges courting Mai for almost the entire time they were together. No matter how much time passed, and no matter what Trunks did, Mai continued to be a little cold toward Trunks.

Their dates were fairly infrequent, and their conversations had always been shallow. Despite how much it always felt like an uphill battle, Trunks did whatever he could to try to add some spice to their rapport.

Trunks spent a lot of time and energy trying to get Mai to open up to him. Trunks still did his absolute best to bend over backward for her and try to win her heart. And it was probably because he had such a hard time trying to get her to warm up to him that he had stayed invested in the relationship as long as he had.

Mai had a particularly complicated history, since she had lived several lives within her one lifetime. Back in the day, she used to be an adult several years older than Trunks' own mom, Bulma. However, due to a reckless Dragon Ball wish years ago when Trunks was a kid, she and her Emperor Pilaf team had accidentally been wished into becoming children, around Trunks' same age at the time.

Young Trunks had developed a crush on Mai upon seeing her as a child his age, though it was mostly an innocent attraction. There was just something about her look, with her dark hair and dark eyes, that was attractive to Trunks, and his dreamy eyes toward her only intensified after his growth spurt, when he reached sixteen.

At the beginning of Trunks' sophomore year in high school, before Trunks had started to date Mai, things had been looking up for him. Back then, he finally got his longtime best friend Goten to attend his same school. Goten was in the class under him, but it made no difference. Goten always prioritized hanging out with Trunks, and now that Trunks had Goten solidly in his life, he felt comfortable enough to finally go out and pursue his superhero duo dream.

From his camaraderie with Goten, Trunks began to grow a new sense of courage - to finally ask a girl out.

And the first girl on his mind, at the time, was Mai, who had been working at the Capsule Corporation factory for years at that point.

When Trunks finally asked Mai out, though, he was flatly rejected.

Trunks had not noticed at the time, but his mother Bulma had been witness to him shooting that hoop with Mai just to miss the points.

The next day, luck mysteriously and inexplicably changed to Trunks' favor. Out of nowhere, it was as if he finally got the slam dunk he never expected.

Suddenly, that day, Mai gained an interest in going to school with Trunks. Mai was going to start attending all of Trunks' classes with him.

It was like a dream come true, for Trunks. After his entire freshman year in which Mai could have joined school with him, she finally came around to wanting to be a part of Trunks' life.

Trunks never thought to ask why Mai suddenly had a change of heart to go to school. Trunks at the time had been fairly sheltered and gullible, and never thought to question any of Mai's motivations.

After Mai joined Trunks' class, she spent time with Trunks both during school and partly after school, and it was hard to see her any other time. However, whenever Trunks pushed to get additional time with her, she never put any extra effort into maintaining the relationship. And it frustrated Trunks.

There were never any secret flirts or text exchanges late into the night. There were no secret rendezvous or any steamy encounters. Besides a couple pecks on the cheek that Trunks felt Mai never put her heart into, the truth was that Trunks had never even been truly kissed by her.

All he wanted was a kiss on the lips. But, Mai stayed cold and reserved. After three years, she still hadn't kissed him.

He didn't understand what he had been doing wrong.

He researched relationship blogs, and watched social media videos and even went to the school library to peruse books on psychology and love languages, just to try to get ideas and a comprehension of Mai's mentality.

They went out often enough that Mai kept Trunks hanging and bending backwards to try to win her over, even though they technically had the titles of boyfriend and girlfriend. Trunks wanted to woo her with over-the-top dates, such as dinners in helicopters, blimp rides, sailing in yachts, and even one time an entire orchestral performance on the top of a hill after a long hike, just to be a soundtrack to Trunks asking Mai to their senior dance.

Trunks never really considered himself a natural romantic, but he did acknowledge how hard he tried. He just wished that Mai had seen it too, enough to at least compliment him. But he got nothing.

After three years of being with her, Mai's comments toward Trunks remained dry and emotionless. Her eyes remained unfocused as if she were daydreaming of being somewhere else. Her dreams for her future remained vague, as if she never were able to picture Trunks among her wishes.

Even still, for three years, Trunks tried to claim whatever small victories he could with the relationship.

When they went out to movies, Mai was willing to share the popcorn, and Trunks got his thrill by brushing her hand.

When they went to the carnival and boardwalk, Trunks got to see her laugh and share a cotton candy.

When they went to the park, he got to sit on swings with her.

There were all these little things that added up, that gave Trunks micro-wins, enough to keep him holding on and hoping for more. They were ordinary, really, but to Trunks, who was starving for anything to give him any sense of hope, those moments meant the world to him.

However, no amount of time, attention, or thrill could sway Mai's heart.

Trunks didn't know what to do. All he wanted was for his girlfriend to want to be with him. He wanted her to let him in, and to confide in him. He just wanted to hold her hand and feel like she wanted to hold his.

From age sixteen through eighteen, that's all Trunks wanted - just to be wanted. He wanted to be appreciated. He wanted Mai to tell him how awesome he was. He just wanted to be held and told that she was happy to be with him - that he made her happy.

He wanted to be able to take off his Saiyaman X-1 superhero mask and have his girlfriend be just as enamored to see his own face, as compared to her wishing he were a different version of himself.

He at least deserved that. He knew it deep down.

He just wanted her love.

When none of that came to fruition during high school, Trunks knew he had to do something before he headed to college.

None of his high school attempts had worked, so he made the assumption that Mai likely held his youth against him, since she mentally was much older and more mature. He justified her inactions toward him as evidence that she was not attracted to the thought of being with a high schooler.

But now that he had graduated, maybe it would finally change their dynamic.

He put all his eggs in that basket, and decided to bank on it.

In secret, he planned a special moment between him and Mai two days after his high school graduation. He fibbed to her that they were going to visit his Aunt Tights by the beach, and for her to bring an extra pair of clothes. He didn't tell her his actual surprise - that he had actually intended for them to spend the night together in a hotel room that he secured with his trust fund credit card.

Trunks was eighteen, and he was ready. He knew Mai was not a virgin before she had turned back into a child years ago. Feeling secure in their history together, and knowing that Mai was experienced, Trunks felt it was time for them to take their relationship to the next level, and he wanted to lose his virginity.

The truth was that he wanted to lose his virginity a long time ago, ever since he was sixteen, but Mai's icy hard-to-get demeanor had set his expectations back a bit. He still had high hopes, though.

Trunks booked a room in a hotel along the beach on Sunday, May 23rd. It was two days after his graduation.

He remembered the date was May 23rd, because Gohan's daughter Pan had her sixth birthday the day before, on May 22nd, which Trunks attended with Goten. They had horsed around a little too much and had accidentally fallen on some of the catering, sending food flying everywhere.

Despite how Trunks had been a bit of a rascal at that birthday party, and his shirt by the end was stained in all kinds of food colors, he somehow walked away with a gift of his own. Gohan and Videl had prepared a graduation gift for him, and presented a green and orange custom-designed letterman jacket saying Orange Star, the university he was set to attend in the fall. The moment he put it on, it instantly became his favorite jacket.

Trunks greatly looked forward to college. To him, it meant new chapters in his life, and new growth. If Mai had wanted to stay with Trunks, he would have also been more than willing to keep his relationship with her. Despite the fact that Mai didn't have intentions to go to college, Trunks still envisioned her in his life when he thought of what his college life could be like. He was still hopeful that Mai might one day come around to wanting him.

Trunks was always a daydreamer. He always had a hard time paying attention in class, and tended to miss nuances within social cues. He also tended to default toward hopeful optimism whenever faced with a challenge, even when signs might have been right in front of his face saying otherwise.

When Trunks booked his hotel room for him and Mai, he did it because truly hoped that Mai had secretly wanted to be more intimate with him, too, and to also want to take their relationship to the next level.

When Trunks finally got Mai to the beach that Sunday, he told her about the room. He confessed that his true intention with Mai was to spend time alone at the hotel. He also confessed that he bought condoms, hoping it would help her understand his true intentions.

She asked him where the condoms were.

That was the first question out of her mouth, and it seemed odd. However, Trunks was honest and confessed that he brought only a few of them - that the main box was hidden in his safe, in the wall behind the TV in his room, where his mother would never find them.

Mai didn't bother to follow up with a second question. Instead, she excused herself, and looked down to her phone as she walked away, sending text messages.

When she returned to Trunks, she told Trunks that there was a work emergency. When Trunks asked what the emergency was, Mai simply said they had to get back to Capsule Corporation.

Although Mai didn't tell Trunks what the emergency was, she seemed flustered enough for him to believe it. So, they left the beach and headed back to Capsule Corporation.

Trunks was confused and disappointed. At the time, Trunks believed another one of his dates had gotten foiled, once again, because Mai prioritized her work over spending private time with Trunks.

After that incident, Trunks felt on edge, and was almost ready to call off his relationship with her, because he realized, at that moment, that it would be impossible to grow their relationship any further.

They had hit a ceiling, and their relationship had long-since plateaued. Trunks was exhausted, and ready to give up.

When Trunks got home from their failed beach excursion, Mai left to head to the capsule factory to address the alleged "work emergency." Trunks didn't even bother to follow her to learn what was up. He was tired, and despondent.

And when he reached the residential quarters and walked into the living room, he was met with his mother, who had been waiting for him.

To his horror and humiliation, Bulma had already infiltrated Trunks' safe and was waiting for him to arrive back, just so she could approach him about the box of condoms.

Trunks never had to ask how she knew about them. His mother confessed everything right away.

Now that Trunks had graduated, Bulma decided Trunks finally was old enough to have his own agency, and felt he deserved to know the truth about his high school experience.

Bulma confessed that Mai had been paid for three years to be Trunks' girlfriend.

Mai's undercover job was to watch after Trunks in high school, to guard him against other sleazy girls getting their hands on him. Mai's job was to keep him innocent and pure hearted, and in exchange, she was paid lucratively and with bonuses for every successful time Mai warded away Trunks' advances.

And now that he was interested in condoms, and he was eighteen and graduated, Bulma realized she could no longer control or stop him from making foolish decisions when it came to sex.

Bulma had decided that it was time for them to have "the talk."

Trunks was not in any kind of mindset to have that kind of talk with his mother. His head at the time was still reeling from his mother's casual confession, in which she brushed off Mai's relationship with him, and outed it as a big, fat lie - a complete falsitude.

Trunks wasn't listening to his mother. His emotions were all over the place. Trunks' world had been thrown entirely upside-down.

For three years, he had struggled to be good to Mai, and the entire time, Mai had played his heart for the sake of money.

The worst part was that Trunks knew he should have known better. He had a suspicion about Mai's intentions the whole time, but in the end, he was a hopeless wannabe-romantic.

He should have known from day one, that Mai was only interested in either Dragon Balls or money. That's all she ever really wanted to talk about, whenever she did open up.

All of Mai's adventures growing up centered around her obsession for wishes so she could cheat her way ahead in the world. To Mai, Dragon Balls meant money and power, and they therefore were a central motivator in her life. As long as there were Dragon Balls, Mai would always desire more wishes.

Trunks learned from Mai that before his mother, Bulma, had developed her first dragon radar to locate the Dragon Balls, Mai had been finding them for years. She worked with Emperor Pilaf and Shu to always find and wish on the Balls for more money. That was how Emperor Pilaf became so rich in the first place that he even had his own castle at one point (until Goten's dad, Goku, destroyed it when he was a kid, as Trunks learned).

When Mai did talk about herself, she made up for her cold outward demeanor with warm stories about her past adventures searching for Dragon Balls. Trunks loved hearing them, just as he loved to hear his mother's stories of her adventures with Goku as bedtime stories growing up. He thought Mai's stories were her best quality, and it kept him engaged with their conversations and wanting to hear more, whenever she did open up.

He was attracted to the fact that she had so many stories of adventure. He wished there could come a day when he also could have his own stories to tell. He longed for his own opportunity to travel with Goku and gather the Dragon Balls. To him, that's what would make Trunks' life truly different and special, to have those kinds of stories that he could recollect with his own wife or children one day.

And, despite how many adventure stories Mai had to share, it became clearer and clearer to Trunks that none of those adventures included him. Mai never talked about Trunks.

Mai never said anything about being attracted to him. She never gave him signals for him to advance the relationship. She had purposely diverted conversations and feelings away from building their story together.

And now, suddenly, it all made sense to Trunks.

Mai had been in the relationship for the wrong reasons. And she fucked up all of Trunks' opportunities to open himself emotionally to anyone else, for the entirety of high school.

Trunks realized that Mai had been plant - a spy.

From the very beginning of their relationship, Mai had been working for his mother. Mai had been paid to keep Trunks out of too much trouble, and to relay his secrets to his mom.

The entire relationship had originally been a front; a PLOY to prevent Trunks from being hurt. Mai had been using her relationship with him to channel information to his mother, so she could indirectly monitor his activities as Saiyaman X-1 and all other times on Trunks' after-school schedule.

After learning about what Bulma did, Trunks' trust in her was permanently and irreparably damaged.

He had stormed away from that conversation with his mom feeling angry, betrayed, and paranoid.

Bulma had unintentionally changed Trunks' entire mindset about her. He now viewed his mother as a threat - someone incredibly invasive in his life, and someone with prying eyes trying to pull strings and to control Trunks through whatever means necessary.

Trunks saw his mother as someone who didn't care about Trunks' feelings at all. Instead, Trunks felt that Bulma lived her life through him. She was a helicopter parent who smothered him so tightly, that she had denied him love for years.

Trunks resented that his mother had used his weakness - his yearning to be loved, against him. She had taken advantage of his crush, just to get her way.

And she won.

Trunks had been successfully raised and protected within a controlled bubble.

In the end, he had no choice.

But that's not how Bulma saw it.

That Sunday evening, on May 23rd, Age 786, Bulma tried to be reasonable with Trunks and present her case.

At the time, they had been arguing after Bulma revealed the truth about Mai.

Bulma frowned, "Why are you angry, Trunks? You were happy with Mai. You got the girl you wanted for all of high school."

Trunks shouted with fists at his side, "But I want someone to love me for who I am!"

Bulma shook her head, "Everyone loves you. You could have anyone you want."

Trunks had run to his room in tears, his face red as he ugly cried and screamed, "I don't want just anybody!"

Bulma had followed him, intent on manifesting his happiness, "Then what do you want? Tell me about what you picture as your perfect girlfriend, and I'm sure I can help find her."

Trunks was indignant, "I don't know! I thought it was Mai, but now I have no idea what's even real. I hate this. I'm so angry. I'm so fucking pissed!"

Bulma asserted her authority, "Language."

That only upset Trunks, who felt he had no control left of his life, including the words he was allowed to say.

Trunks grabbed the letterman jacket he had been gifted the day prior and threw it on, marching away from his room, "I'm fucking out of here. Don't to try to call me."

"Hey where are you going?!" Bulma tried to follow him down the stars to where Trunks was heading to the front doors.

Trunks kept marching, and spat, "Fuck you."

"Hey!" Bulma was furious at the time, screaming back at Trunks, "Heyyy you come back here Trunks! How DARE you talk that way to your own mother! Trunks! TRUNKS!"

After Trunks slammed the front door behind him, Bulma changed her tactics.

She ran back to the living room, where she had last seen her husband Vegeta passing through on his way to Bra's room.

"Vegeta!" Bulma had screamed as she ran toward Bra's room, where Vegeta likely was, "Vegeta! Go after Trunks!"

Vegeta stepped out with indifference on his face, "Why?"

"Trunks is running off!" Bulma slammed her fist against the wall to emphasize her point.

"So what?" Vegeta huffed and crossed his arms.

"What do you mean so what?! " Bulma bared her fangs and hit the wall again twice.

Vegeta just rolled his eyes at his wife's hyperbolic reaction. "He's eighteen years old. He can handle his own temper tantrums now."

Bulma's tone shifted to try to be reasonable, "But you know he acts out!"

"Whatever. He's a teenager." Vegeta turned to go back to Bra, who had been constructing a building-block space cruiser, and was fumbling around with the soldering gun, which Vegeta had apparently been supervising.

"Vegeta!" Bulma insisted, desperate, knowing that Trunks would only listen to his father at this point.

"Stop babying him, and just let him grow up." Vegeta stated with finality.

Bulma was anguished and distressed, "At least tell me where Trunks is going?!"

Vegeta huffed and sighed, and with a roll of his eyes he looked back to Bulma and shook his head as if she were some kind of moron to have such a mundane concern, "Goten."

"Okay." Bulma looked down and seemed to calm for a moment, "At least he won't be reckless."

Bulma had a strange feeling in her gut, though, which told her that this time might be different than other times Trunks had seen Goten. After all, Trunks had just had his first breakup. Bulma wasn't sure what kind of advice Goten would be able to give Trunks, but she at least was happy to know that Trunks had a healthy outlet he could talk to.

As long as Trunks was open and talked about his feelings, he tended to avoid having temper tantrums. Everything had gotten better with Trunks once Goten had joined his high school, and that's primarily why Bulma never interfered with Trunks' Saiyaman superhero capers, even though she knew about them long before Mai had ever told her about them. Trunks kept forgetting that his watch was equipped with GPS. Bulma never reminded him, though, since his negligence worked to her advantage to monitor him.

All Bulma wanted was for Trunks to be mentally healthy, physically healthy, and happy. And yes, she was willing to go to extreme measures to ensure his safety, because he was her son and as a good mother, she knew she should do everything in her power to mitigate Trunks' weaknesses and prepare him for the real world.

One day, Trunks would look back on all of her efforts to protect him, and realize she did everything out of love for him. One day, he would thank her.

Until that day, though, Bulma was grateful that Trunks had such a good friend and confidant in Goten. Goten always tended to bring Trunks back from whatever funk he was in. She had full confidence that today would be no different.

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–Originally Published on AO3: 1/3/24–
–Published on FFnet: 1/9/24–