The spar with Piccolo had been a ploy to know more about the teenager, and she fell for it. She forfeited before things got serious.
Now to deal with the consequences.
"Are you alright Piccolo-san?" Gohan had seen the last blow the Namekian took, and felt the brief peak in ki in the opponent, he could visualize how much it must have hurt. Piccolo let out a brief grunt to his pupil's question as he landed and crossed his arms. More sociable fighters expected him to say something, anything about the spar, but he wasn't about to volunteer the information. These people weren't his friends.
Bulma pointed down as she recognized gestures she'd seen a thousand times at home. "Is he smoking? He's smoking! You're too young to be doing that, you're a child!" She'd tried to get her own father to quit for ages. She fought Yamcha and demanded. "Fly me down there, I gotta give him an earful.". Her boyfriend laughed nervously and refused, pulling her back away from the cliff. "You'll scold him when he comes back up here okay, B?"
While Yamcha was dealing with Bulma listing all of the harmful effects of smoking, the rest looked straight at Piccolo, expecting him to say something, but he didn't. Tenshinhan was the one to actually finally ask something that would give him some insight on the stranger. "Good spar?"
"Decent." That meant anything and everything. "That kid has experience fighting, didn't break eye contact and didn't flinch," he added. Piccolo thought what he said was no news to the experienced fighters, but he figured that was information Gohan could use. He'd berated the boy for losing sight of his opponent more than once.
"You think he held back?" Krillin ventured a more contentious question.
Piccolo didn't care to answer the idiotic question. Of course the teenager held back, he didn't transform. If it had been a real fight, the kid would have made quick work of him. Piccolo hadn't stopped training since their return from Namek, but there were stronger threats out there, and Son still outclassed him. If anything, that little spar reassured him that training was not wasted.
Gohan figured that talking to the teenager would give him more information, especially as he was alone down there and they'd already somewhat bonded. He took the teenager's sword and flew down the cliff.
Trunks sat with crossed legs in the cliff's shade, looking at the carnage she'd left on the landscape. It was now a little similar to the landscape she saw in her time. She had her hands on her opposing elbows and her cigarette between her lips. Gohan touched ground nearby and a glance from Trunks accepted his presence, especially with the item he was carrying. The smoker used her left hand to hold the cigarette, and blew some smoke upwards. Gohan sat down near her like he had an hour ago, and handed her the sword. With a silent nod of gratitude she put the sword on her lap. She didn't inhale from the cigarette and put it back in between her index and major, on the opposing side from Gohan. She pointed up.
"I heard Bulma-san's screams." If smoker-Bulma was hard to handle when it came to that topic, non-smoker Bulma who saw a teenager smoking would be an absolute beast. Delaying that confrontation was a survival tactic. "I wanted to finish this before going back."
"I can't imagine what my mother would say," Gohan wondered, but it couldn't be good. Trunks hid a smile by taking another dose of nicotine. I'd take a beating from Eighteen over facing Chichi, anytime.
"Say mister, did you hold back against Piccolo-san?" Gohan went straight to the point.
"I didn't," Trunks answered honestly. "It would have been disrespectful to Piccolo-san if I had. I just didn't transform." She looked up and blew a circle with the smoke, noticing Piccolo near the cliff. The Namek was keeping an eye on them. The smoke dissipated in the warm summer wind. "It wasn't about raw power but about endurance, speed, wits and technique."
"Ah I see.. did he hurt you?"
"Not really, it's all superficial. I've had worse." From you, actually. Trunks rolled her left sleeve to show him some of the scratches.
Gohan looked, somehow reassured, but he also noticed older and deeper scars on her forearm and the state of her hands; small, thin, but muscular and somewhat hardened. He remembered his own training with Piccolo two years prior, but he hadn't retained scars from that period. Once he'd seen, Trunks took another dose of poison and pulled down the sleeve.
"He's a good tactician and teacher," she added while blowing smoke upwards again, making brief eye contact with the man in question, still way above them. He might have had his back to the cliff, but his head was turned enough so he'd have an eye on the two children below. This spar confirmed what little she knew of the Namekian.
Gohan felt a sudden urge of pride, he was so happy to be Piccolo's pupil, and he agreed with the statement with stars in his eyes and an assertive nod. They'd not really trained since their return from Namek, but Gohan hoped he, his dad and mentor would spend time together.
"So.. he's got better endurance, and you've got better speed?" Gohan went back to what sparring tested and took an educated guess. Trunks disagreed with a slight head shake. She'd feel offended if she knew any better.
"No, I bested him in both those areas. Piccolo-san is smarter and more experienced, his technique was more refined than mine." Trunks figured Piccolo would tell him anyway, so she wasn't worried about explaining it to Gohan. "I forfeited because I got distracted and lost my cool." She admitted with a defeated sigh. She took a last drag and blew the smoke before disintegrating the butt.
"Distracted?" Gohan inquired, searching in her eyes for what that meant. Trunks took the sword in her hands, and stood, clipping it back in place, and looked back at Gohan who stood after her. Her Gohan would have known, but this young boy couldn't.
"I caught on to the reason why he asked me to spar." Trunks had failed to see Piccolo's trap until it was too late. She didn't elaborate, she wasn't certain, her paranoid mind often went overboard with people's intentions, and she figured Gohan would ask his mentor later.
Above, Vegeta looked at the horizon, the remains of the battle field, the burning remains of the spaceship. He pushed the existence of this other super Saiyan who isn't me out of his mind and mulled over a fact that got under his skin. He spent his whole life under Freeza's orders, getting stronger and planning for a way to revolt and kill the bastard. He'd even entrusted that mission to Kakarot on his deathbed (well, death-ground). That was infuriating enough on its own, but over a year later, he found out Kakarot failed, Freeza was still alive and coming to Earth. And what made it worse is that he knew he couldn't do anything to the tyrant, at least not face to face. And he came with King Cold, to top it all off, so whatever strategy he could think of went out of the window. Vegeta had trained relentlessly on the Capsule Corp grounds ever since their return from Namek to catch up to the third-class, but it wasn't enough. And out of nowhere this god forsaken brat shows up and deals with the threat like if they were mosquitoes, what the hell? He knew he owed the kid for avenging his entire species, but it was overshadowed by his self-hatred. Livid. Vegeta was livid. He found solace in the fact that the kid's existence proved the legend was not a one-person thing. He'd obtain that power, and then he'd kill them all.
Tenshinhan didn't know exactly what to make of this whole situation. How did the kid know about Goku's arrival? He'd implied he knew from Freeza, but he looked like an earthling. His clothes were, at least. His weapon, perhaps not. His spar with Piccolo was a puzzle piece he couldn't link to anything else. His silent conversation with Chaozu over the teenager's hardened body as well as Piccolo's assessment that he has experience fighting made him consider the teenager may have been a sort of child-soldier. Tenshinhan also concluded the kid had probably been through hell and back. Bones hardened by microcracks, unbothered by quite a beating, judging from Chaozu's information and his tanking of Piccolo's hits.
Trunks hovered back up, closely followed by Gohan.
"Don't you think you're getting away with smoking at sixteen, young man!" Bulma wasn't going to forget what she saw and approached the teenager with determination. Gohan went to Piccolo's side quickly, not wanting to be caught in the middle of any of that. The Z fighters knew better than to get in Bulma's way, too.
Trunks looked at the past version of her mother in disbelief. She reached and grabbed Trunks' ear, much to her shock. Not that Bulma would do that, but that this Bulma would. And she pulled on the ear. "You can't go around giving Gohan-kun such a bad example! Now you're going to give me those right now and I might not tell your parents." Bulma was having none of this kid's smoking.
Trunks only flinched out of habit but once the shock wore off and her mind confirmed this woman was not in fact her mother, she took Bulma's hand and forced her to let go. She even lost her smile to make a point. The teenager was still a stranger, and a powerful one, so they got alerted by the sudden change of mood. Trunks pulled the hand down slowly but firmly, making sure she wasn't hurting the past version of her mother.
"Bulma-san, while I understand your concern," she breathed low and narrowed her eyes to stare in the blue ones she inherited, "what I do to my own body is none of your business." Color drained from Bulma's face, and she tried to pull away, unsure if the teenager would let her go. The instant a muscle pulled to escape the grip, the grip loosened and Trunks' gaze softened.
Bulma walked back and promptly shook the fear away, stood tall, crossed her arms and "geez!"d instead, walking away back to her boyfriend and giving him an earful for not backing her up. Nothing could traumatize the Brief genius after all. Vegeta had been living with her for over a year already, so threats were basically normal communication. Trunks apologized mentally, her eyes following the other woman, and put back on a kinder smile, until the bip of her watch caught her and everyone else's attention. She turned off the alarm.
"Son-san should arrive any moment now," she declared with a brighter smile. She went to put back the mini-fridge into a capsule and put it away in its case, while the rest looked up, scouting the skies for the ship.
It didn't take long for the prediction to be confirmed, as they felt Goku's signature ki. Gohan exclaimed it was him, finally he'd see his dad again. Soon the space pod flew into the atmosphere, catching everyone's eye, and it crashed a few miles away into a rocky formation. Yamcha took Bulma against him when they all flew over to meet their missing friend.
Everyone landed by the crater, cheering as the pod opened to reveal the returning hero, who looked surprised to see them all here when he heard them. He hoovered over to them with a curious face. "How did'ya know I was gonna land here?" Goku asked before landing, and his eyes set on the new face he'd never seen before. Who's this?