Trunks felt her ki before she even knocked. Her hand was poised for it, knuckles ready to rap, when he opened the door, but she dropped it back to her hip with a thwarted huff of breath. She was seventeen and unrepentant trouble.
"What'd you get kicked out for this time?" Trunks asked his baby sister, who would always be his baby sister no matter how old she got. He tried to contain the immediate instinct to laugh pulling at the corners of his mouth; the game was better the longer he could pretend like it wasn't funny.
"Excuse you," Bulla scoffed as she swanned past him into his apartment. "I wasn't kicked out, I liberated myself." She made a beeline for the living room and flung herself onto the same oversized puff she always claimed. "I'm going to see how long it takes for dad to notice and freak out."
Trunks grew up living in dread of their father's temper, but Bulla seemed to revel in it. It must have been easier to play games when she had never showed even a moment's doubt of their father's regard.
"Isn't it a school night?" Trunks's gaze narrowed suspiciously on her.
"What are you, a cop?" Bulla flipped onto her stomach next, coltish limbs all akimbo as she settled and scanned the room. Her focus honed in immediately on the empty beer bottle, then the half-full one, and then the open notebook beside them. "What are you doing?" she demanded. Like a cop.
"Nosy little monkey." Trunks sat back down on the couch and flipped the notebook closed with excruciating casualness as he attempted not to reveal his soft, vulnerable underbelly.
Teenage girls could smell fear.
Bulla was on him in an instant, snatching at the notebook, greedy to inflict embarrassment. Trunks crowed immediate objection, but he was a few beers in, and she fought dirtier than he did. She ended up on his shoulders, legs locked and notebook held out of reach, relying on his clear lack of desire to cause physical destruction to his apartment.
"I, Trunks Briefs," Bulla began reading in a sweeping, dramatic voice, "the much less cool Briefs sibling—"
"It does not say that!"
"—take S—" She quieted suddenly, scanning the lines rapidly. "Trunks, are these—?" Her voice wasn't teasing now; she was curious as she flipped through the many drafts he'd left behind.
"Yes," Trunks sighed, resigned to his sister's intrusions into every corner of his business. "I mean, no — they're terrible drafts of my wedding vows, because we said we wanted to write our own, which was the stupidest idea ever because neither of us knows how to write anything."
Bulla slipped off his shoulders with ease to settle on the couch instead. "They're not that terrible."
He flopped on the couch next to her and shot her a skeptical look, before his gaze settled back on the notebook with a pit of anxiety in his stomach. "He's visiting his family tonight so I figured it'd be a good time to work on them without worrying about him seeing them." He dropped his head back against the sofa with a sigh. "He's probably already finished his and they're probably sincere and heartfelt and perfect. Everything I write sounds like a person tripping over their own feet. Or like something out of a romcom. But one of the really bad ones."
Bulla studied him with a long, inscrutable gaze. And then, her voice deadly serious, she said, "Trunks, you can't disappoint dad like this."
He lifted his head, utterly flabbergasted. "What? You think this is the part he's going to care about? My wedding vows?"
"You know how he feels about oaths." She reached to place a gentle hand on his shoulder, her features achingly sympathetic. "Can you imagine if Kakarot's kid has better wedding vows than you do?"
The tension held in the air between them as Trunks stared at her.
And then, finally, he said, "They will never find your body."
Bulla's expression immediately broke into an absolutely unrepentant grin. "Lighten up," she said. "Clearly the universe wanted me to sneak out tonight and come over to your place so that I can rescue you from your fate." She shifted to set her back against the pillowed arm of the sofa and plopped her feet in his lap.
"Okay," she declared, pulling the pen off the notebook's cover and clicking it open with dramatic flourish. "We are going to absolutely murder these vows. Have you considered talking about ripping your heart out in service to him or whatever was in that Saiyan one dad made us learn?"
"I don't think that's the vibe I'm going for."
"Lame. Can I have a beer?"
"No." Trunks watched his baby sister, and the smile he tried so hard to resist earlier finally won. "Love you, monkey."
"Gross." Bulla glanced up at him; her smile warmed her eyes. "Love you too, loser."
As the Prince's strange, exotic new pet, Trunks had grown used to whispers following him around the palace: speculation about his origins, appraisal of his prowess, and suspicion of his intentions. But even when he found himself ignored more and more, treated as commonplace as the guards and staff grew accustomed to him, he noticed the whispers didn't subside; they shifted. He no longer had that prickle at the back of his neck, the sense of being the topic of conversation as he walked by. People still quieted around him, but it was different now. They whispered secrets he wasn't supposed to hear.
He eventually tried asking. Garban was the most affable of the King's Guard that Trunks had dealt with; on a good day, Trunks would even call him friendly. But even he balked when asked directly about what might be going on.
"Nothing for you to concern yourself with," Garban said. There was a shift to his gaze, his manner uncharacteristically stiff and uncomfortable. He hesitated briefly before adding, "If the King wants you to be involved, then you'll be involved." And that was it.
Trunks weighed his options of Saiyans he had met who might be willing to talk.
Which is how he ended up back where he started.
"Trunks!" Gine looked at him in the doorway with the wide eyes of a woman who never expected the stray cat she rehomed to find its way back to her. "Hello! I didn't expect to see you again." A beat. "Ever."
Trunks smiled dryly. "I'm like a bad penny."
"A what?"
"Forget it." Trunks glanced past her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the familiar interior beyond that had served as a makeshift home for that brief moment of his life. He looked back to Gine. "I could use some help," he admitted. "And you're pretty much the most decent person I've met on Vegetasei."
Gine's frown came swift, her gaze sharpening on him. She studied his features with a focus that left Trunks confused. But after a moment, she seemed to come to a sudden understanding, and that sense of tension subsided.
"You shouldn't say things like that to a Saiyan," she warned him gently. "Most people would say something like that as an insult."
Trunks's brow furrowed, but after a moment he tipped his head in acknowledgment. "I'll keep that in mind. Bardock gonna try to throw a punch if you let me in?"
Gine's brows swept up in brief surprise, and then she actually grinned. "Maybe," she said with a shrug, before turning to lead him inside.
Bardock scowled. He hadn't bothered to follow Gine to the door when the knock came, but he certainly kept an ear out enough to hear his name in that particular sentence. When he stepped into the kitchen, Trunks was already sitting at Gine's invitation, and Bardock leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, to study him.
"Bardock." Trunks looked at him with a dry smirk, and Bardock grimaced. He couldn't shake the sense of hollowness from the man. Like he was a living ghost. Images from Bardock's dreams kept overlaying Trunks's face.
"Trunks."
"How's business? Enjoying the accommodations?" Bardock looked at Trunks blankly, until he sighed and specified, "The house. I left you a capsule, didn't I?" Trunks's brow furrowed as he suddenly looked less confident of his statement. Bardock wasn't particularly surprised; the offworlder had been more than a bit drunk at the time.
"Like a portable vacation," Bardock deadpanned. "Too fancy for my tastes. Fortunately for me, some Frieza Force flunkie finally nicked it my last mission out."
Trunks clicked his tongue. "Too bad. How are the kids?"
A bristle ran up Bardock's frame. "Alive."
Gine looked between the two of them, hands on her hips, with a long-suffering expression. "Kakarot's still growing well," she told Trunks with a more hospitable smile than her husband. "He'll be able to come out of the tank soon. His power level won't be as high as Raditz's, but—"
Bardock caught something strange in the offworlder's features. Something like surprise, or maybe regret. Gine seemed to notice, too; there was a flicker of confusion in her features, but she continued, "And Raditz is back at the training camps again. But he'll be home soon along with everyone else, of course."
Trunks seemed to hone in on her last words. "Why of course?" he asked her. "Why is everyone coming home?"
Gine blinked in surprise, and then looked at Bardock; he lifted his brows, but said nothing. After a brief hesitation, she answered, "The full moons."
The full moons.
Trunks stared at Gine as the words wormed their way into his brain. How had he not thought of it? How had he not seen it?
But he had seen it — the way the moons cycled in incongruous tandem, waxing near to full, and then waning. And now—
"It only comes every hundred years. Most people return home for it," Bardock said from his lean against the doorway. He studied Trunks a moment before adding, "It's not exactly a safe time."
"It's important," Gine said, picking around for the right words. "To the people, I mean. Not everyone will be coming back to actually transform that night — some people aren't soldiers, and they might go their whole lives without experiencing it. But it's important to be home. And with it being the prince's first time..."
Trunks could feel the words echoing in his head. The emptiest head in the world. He was such an idiot. "His first time," he said, hearing his voice as if someone else was speaking. "Transforming, you mean."
"That's why it's not safe," Bardock said on the snort of a breath. "The heir's first time never is."
Trunks's brow creased as he finally started to catch up. "But he's so young," he said. "It's hard for children to control, right? But you just said not everyone transforms — why risk it? Why not wait until he's older?"
His words died on his tongue under the sudden force of Gine and Bardock's stares. Trunks recognized shock, but also something near to bafflement. Bardock almost looked insulted, but then it shifted to resignation in the face of Trunks's obvious stupidity.
"He's the prince," Gine said, her eyes wide. "It's the full moons." It was clear she found the words inadequate, just as it was clear she had no idea how to start explaining the true enormity of the event's meaning.
"The King wants to make sure his subjects see the true power of the heir," Bardock added, his voice twisting to the sardonic. "He just has to also hope that he's still strong enough to keep him from razing the entire planet. Most Saiyans who learn the transformation do it on other planets that we're already meant to clear."
Bit by bit, everything slotted into place for Trunks. The tension in the palace. The silent refusal to explain in front of him. He was the outsider, and this was — religious. Sacred. He could hear it in both their voices, even through Bardock's dryness.
Trunks scrubbed a hand across his face and then back through his hair as he tried to focus his thoughts. "So the royal family always has to be present when the full moon shows up," he slowly began to summarize. "Including the heir, whatever age he is. It's — ceremonial."
He could see them both balk at committing the word; Gine hesitated, and Bardock hedged.
"In a way," Gine finally admitted. "It's meaningful, anyways."
"The appearance of it matters to people," Bardock agreed.
Trunks looked between the two of them. "So if the Prince were able to control it," he said slowly, "right off the bat, what would that mean?"
Gine leaned her elbows on the table as she considered the question, her tail twitching thoughtfully beneath her seat. "He'd be a prodigy," she finally said. "I think everyone's expecting the King will have to rein him in. Someone the Prince's age, and his sort of power? We could lose a city or two. If he came out of it without so much as a casualty..."
"He'd be a legend," Bardock said flatly. "The Saiyan race would follow him to the ends of the universe."
Vegeta left the private audience chamber with his father's words ringing in his ears.
"The Queen and I will both be present, along with the Commander-in-Chief, the most experienced King's Guard, and a selection of nobility to bear witness."
Each additional identity carried an added weight of expectation. Vegeta knew the truth: most of those his father named would be fodder if he could not be contained. For an heir to be born this close to the full moon was already considered auspicious by his people.
The King needed his son to prove himself. Vegetasei needed its savior. The weight grew heavier. His parents had been teaching him about the transformation for years, preparing him for the full, overwhelming power of it. But Vegeta could still see the grimness in their gazes.
They were not certain he could control it.
Vegeta stopped in the hall on the way to his chambers. He started to turn, and then stopped again when he realized — he did not even know his destination.
"Where is my trainer housed?" Vegeta demanded of one of the two guards trailing him. But the words had barely left his mouth when a furious instinct overshadowed the question. "No." Why should Vegeta go to him? "Send for him. Summon him to my chambers." Yes. That was appropriate.
What was not appropriate was the report he received just a minute later that his trainer had left the capital.
"Where is he?!" he demanded of the guard unfortunate enough to bear the message. The very idea was outrageous. For him to slip off, sneak off, without so much as a word?!
"They're...not exactly sure, your highness," admitted the guard as he listened to someone reporting over his scouter. "He — does that thing with his power level. They can't track him."
Vegeta's ki flared to life in a fit of pique. "I can."
Trunks was in the midst of pulling details from Gine and Bardock about their experiences with the transformation, when his attention suddenly caught on the incoming presence of a very familiar ki. "What the hell—"
He was out the door before Bardock and Gine could so much as ask him what was wrong. Trunks's gaze swung up skywards, tracking the power with precision, until Prince Vegeta IV was touching down onto the street in front of him, swiftly followed and flanked by two frazzled guards who clearly hadn't expected to be taking a day trip.
Trunks crossed his arms as he looked the prince over. There wasn't any indication of urgency on Vegeta's face that Trunks could recognize, but he did look pretty pissed. "Your highness," Trunks greeted him dryly. "Miss me already?"
He heard a strangled noise behind him, and then the sound of knees hitting the ground started to quietly thump around the two of them. Gine and Bardock behind him, Trunks assumed, and then passers-by on the street who had been minding their own business.
"I require additional training," Vegeta declared, his chin lifting with a stubborn tilt that somewhat undermined the imperious demand of his order.
"Is that so—" Trunks started to reply, only to see Vegeta pick a direction and immediately take off without so much as waiting for a response.
Trunks sighed and took to the air to follow him.
Vegeta didn't go far: just far enough to take them outside town and find enough open space for them to work in. "Make certain we are not interrupted," he barked at the two guards as Trunks landed.
As the guards dispersed to try and form some sort of perimeter against incursion, Trunks studied Vegeta. He had grown more familiar with him over the last several months, his moods and whims, but something about this was new. Beneath all the usual royal bluster, there was a ripple of something different in his ki.
Nerves.
"All right," Trunks said. "What's got your panties in a twist?"
He was rewarded with the sight of Vegeta's eyes nearly popping out of his skull. "My what?! You dare to—!"
"Ask what's got you so riled up? Yeah, I dare." Trunks canted his head as he held his gaze steady on Vegeta, watching him go through an entire cycle of anger and internal bargaining on his face. It had Trunks's brows drawing up as he realized that Vegeta actually wanted his help badly enough to hold his temper.
So he waited. Patience wasn't Trunks's forte, but he could see Vegeta seething his way through his own reluctance to ask for help. And finally, he was rewarded.
"The full moons are arriving soon," Vegeta finally forced out between clenched teeth.
"So I've heard," Trunks replied. "Although I had to go a bit far afield to get a straight answer about it."
Vegeta's brow furrowed fiercely. "Do you know what happens?" he demanded with wary suspicion.
Trunks fell silent for a brief moment as a muscle pulled in his jaw.
The first mention of his father's tail that Trunks could recall happened in passing. An offhand mention in front of him when he was a child, casually dropped in the conversation he was eavesdropping on. It was maddening the way adults would casually glide over things when everyone knew what was being referenced. It meant much fewer details for him to grasp the context.
Those conversations always felt like secrets he wasn't allowed into.
"Why don't I have a tail?!" he demanded of his mother. All he wanted in the world was to be like his father. The sudden revelation of yet another difference was stuck in his heart.
His mother looked down on him in surprise. "Where did you — no, never mind." She leaned over to ruffle fingers through his hair. "You were born without one. Sometimes genetics are funny like that. Your hair's like your grandpa, and your eyes are like mine. But you've got plenty of your dad too, I promise, honey."
It would be longer still before Trunks understood what the tail meant. What its power was.
"I've never seen it," he finally said. "But yes. I do."
Vegeta's gaze dropped pointedly to Trunks's waist. "You do not have a tail."
"Observant," Trunks replied dryly, before tipping his head in acknowledgment. "I never have. I've never transformed. But I understand that it's...culturally significant." He paused. "And that a lot of people will be there to watch your first time. And they'll be expecting a lot from you."
Trunks felt Vegeta's energy flare with temper, even if his power level barely wavered. "I will be everything Vegetasei needs of me," he claimed fiercely.
Trunks could hear the echoes of his own childhood beneath those words. Expectations handed down generation by generation.
"You can be," Trunks said quietly. "I can help you."
He felt the approach a moment before Vegeta did; his gaze flicked towards the brush, sensing the flicker of a vaguely familiar ki behind it, and then he saw Vegeta raise his arm out of the corner of his eye.
He didn't have time to do anything but react. In a split second, he was between Vegeta and the brush, his arm slapping aside the ki blast that would have been more than enough to incinerate whatever was behind him.
"Careful, your highness," Trunks said in a low, taut voice. "You start incinerating all your subjects and you won't have any left to rule by the time it's your turn."
Once again, Vegeta was thwarted by this upstart offworlder with no respect for royalty. It was Vegeta's right to incinerate interlopers! It was his right to incinerate anyone he wished to!
There was a hardness in Trunks before him, and Vegeta slowly recognized a simmering anger that lay at the foundation of it. He lowered his arm, seething in distorted mirror of his trainer; his gaze didn't even pull away from him when he snapped, "Show yourself. Now."
The Saiyan who emerged was older than Vegeta, but not yet fully grown; he had the lean, rangy look of a teen just shy of the rapid growth spurt common in their people. His hair was a mess of dark spikes that reached all the way down past his waist to his knees.
Once clear of the brush, the Saiyan rapidly dropped to his knee. "I'm sorry, your highness," he said with all the urgency of a boy well-aware of the fact that he would have been a smear on the ground if not for a miraculous intervention. "I — was just returning home from training. I heard the offworlder had returned to the town, and then people were saying he was going to be training you. I just thought—"
Every word just set Vegeta's temper on edge; that this peasant had maybe heard him admit to anything resembling weakness nearly had him raising his hand to take a second shot at murder. But Trunks stood between the two of them, his frustratingly attentive gaze never wavering from Vegeta.
Finally, Vegeta crossed his arms and turned his head away dismissively. "Tch. What do I care if some peasant wants to gawk at his betters? Get out of here before I change my mind."
"Thank your parents for their hospitality," Trunks added without shifting his gaze.
The Saiyan looked surreptitiously between Trunks and Vegeta, and then he was gone in a flash of self-preservation, leaving only student and teacher behind.
A long silence followed in the immediate aftermath. And then Trunks smiled a humorless sort of smile. "I guess that's your first lesson on control. It's not the show of strength you think it is, killing people less powerful than you."
He paused, studying Vegeta again for a long moment, and then his gaze drew upwards to the sky. As if he could track the moon's arc in its orbit. "I don't know what it feels like," he said. "And I'm not a total champion at fine control. From what I hear, no one else from your race is expected to be able to control the transformation at your age; the kids that experience it are off on other planets where survivors aren't the point."
There was a brief moment there that Vegeta thought he saw the flicker of something else is Trunks's expression. A tension of anger. But a moment later it was gone. And then Trunks said, "I'll make sure you're ready."
The group gathered in the wilds. There was a balance that had been struck: far enough away from the population centers to prevent immediate destruction, but not so far as to indicate a lack of confidence in the Prince's restraint. A hundred miles from the capital was apparently as far as Royal pride could allow; hopefully the forests, cliffs, and mountains would provide enough distraction.
Or at least slow him down.
Trunks stood on the fringes of those gathered. The outsider. He never would have been invited, if not for one, stark fact:
Vegeta wanted him there. And Vegeta was the strongest of them.
The King and Queen murmured briefly to each other, low enough that not even Saiyan ears could overhear, but Trunks caught one of Nira's glances in his direction. He saw the suspicion and hostility in her eyes. The offense.
He was intruding. And worse, he was intruding at a time they would be weak. Exposed.
This is very dangerous. They are birthing their savior, and they might not survive.
Trunks looked up at the moon. He had seen the two satellites orbiting through their cycles numerous times over the past months, waxing near to full, but never reaching completion; he wondered how many times over the past hundred years they'd grown so close, or if it was only a product of nearing that hundred year mark.
Both hung in the sky now, stark and white and perfectly full.
As a child, he'd liked to imagine he felt something, looking up at the full moon back home. That even if he didn't transform, there was part of him that still responded and reacted to the moonlight. He would play as the feral child, climbing and leaping across the roofs of Capsule Corporation, howling at the moon. He'd tongued at his incisors, trying to judge whether they'd grown any sharper. He'd insisted to his mother that he felt an urge for more red meat those nights.
As an adult, he couldn't tell whether any of it was real, or if he'd simply imagined it so fully and completely that he'd convinced himself.
It was the same now, looking up at the night sky of Vegetasei. He dug deep into the core of himself, trying to find the part of him that recognized it. Some part of his DNA that knew he was home. He wondered if the hole in his heart was shaped like the full moons of Vegetasei.
Trunks finally looked to Vegeta. The young prince's dark eyes were wide on the moons above; for a moment, Trunks even thought he could see their reflection there.
And then Vegeta began to change.
Vegeta didn't know if he'd ever be able to describe the sensation.
Looking up at the first full moon he had ever seen in his life, he could feel his body react. Even before anything truly changed, he realized that he had always been able to feel the moonlight; just as he could feel the warmth of the sun during the day, he knew now that the moon touched something else inside of him. Something primal and intrinsic. Something true.
It simply had never been enough before.
"I'm not going to tell you to fight your instincts," Trunks had said, standing in the desert emptiness outside town. "From what I've heard, that won't work. There's no fighting the sort of instinct you're going to be feeling; there's only working with it."
Now, Vegeta's wide eyes reflecting the perfection of an uninterrupted full moon, he felt something in his brain suddenly snap. Trigger. All in an instant, his mind cleared and then focused with laser precision.
And he began to change.
"You said that you'll be out in the wilderness, so we find you something else to hunt. You don't worry about restraining yourself: you focus on directing yourself. You focus on the ki around you when the time comes. Your father, your mother. Me. You remember what we look like. You remember what we smell like."
It started slowly at first. A shift in his muscles, a race of his heartbeat, a hunger in the back of his throat. His incisors elongated to fangs, and his lips parted on a gasp as his sharpened teeth grew too large for his mouth. He started to pant as he came to realize that this was not easy for his body. Natural, yes, but he could feel every muscle working for the transformation.
Vegeta didn't feel himself, but it was not because of how his body was changing; it was because the body he had lived in his entire life wasn't his true form. It was a vessel for something greater, something voracious and veracious, that was now clawing its way out of him.
Trunks made him meditate for hours, off and on. Focusing on the feeling of his ki. Finding his parents, miles and miles back in the capital. Focusing until it became second nature.
Inch by inch, he grew. The transformation gained momentum as it went, and what had started slow now sped rapidly. He looked down at a ground that grew farther and farther from his eyes, and then looked up at the moons that grew so near he felt like he could reach out and grasp them.
Why had he ever thought anything else in the entire universe held any importance? He was his truest self now: claws and teeth and fur and power. This was what Saiyans were made for.
"And most of all...you remember your name. You remember who you are. You remember you."
The monster opened his terrible maw, and his roar split the sky in celebration of finally being born.
Trunks knew he would be dangerous. He hadn't appreciated how dangerous, though.
Size was only one component of a fight, but he hadn't truly understood just how large the oozaru would be. And it wasn't just Vegeta: his transformation was the focus of everyone's attention, but he was only the first to change.
The King and Queen had their backs set to the moon above, watching their son and heir in his first, glorious transformation. But as Vegeta grew — and grew, and grew — they turned to lift their eyes to the moons and join him.
In that moment, Trunks understood — in a way he had never fully internalized — how Frieza came to fear the Saiyan race. Trunks had felt confident in his power since landing on Vegetasei, and no one he'd encountered had posed a true threat to him; but now he felt the ki around him expanding from all quarters and all angles, and even Trunks had a moment of unease.
It wasn't just one of them, after all. He suddenly realized: Saiyans hunted in packs.
Trunks pushed up into the air as he tracked the Saiyans' growth, rising nearly in parallel with them. Soon the small number of guards who had been trusted with assisting in tonight's duty were also rising and growing into the night sky, and Trunks drew higher. Until he could look down upon the pack of oozaru beneath him.
Vegeta lifted his head to the sky, and roared forth a mighty blast of ki that set Trunks wheeling back, arms crossed in front of him; it had been close enough that he could still feel the heat for an instant before it dissipated. Trunks looked down, and he saw massive red eyes — set in sockets large enough that Trunks could fit in one — staring back at him.
Vegeta's huge jaw dropped, baring teeth the size of a person, and Trunks could swear the monster was smiling.
And then Vegeta leapt forward, his massive body moving far faster than Trunks would have expected it capable of, to land on the nearest mountain. Rock crushed beneath the grip of impossibly large fingers, and then Vegeta hauled himself to the mountain's apex with another effortless leap. Ki burst from his maw again — first up to the sky, and then to more satisfying targets below.
He roared, and a mountain exploded.
His huge red eyes shifted to the other oozaru. Trunks could see them begin to shift and ready themselves, prepared to attempt to restrain their race's most powerful progeny.
I have to focus him.
Trunks moved through the air in an instant to force himself into Vegeta's eyeline. "Hey, pipsqueak!" he yelled, and lobbed off a ball of ki to boop the monster's nose to get his attention.
The problem, of course, was that he then had Vegeta's attention.
The oozaru roared and swiped its massive hands at Trunks, trying to alternately grab him or swat him from the sky. Trunks zipped in and out, weaving between the grasping fingers, and a laugh suddenly escaped him for the simple rush of playing keepaway.
But he had a job to do.
"Controlling it comes with age and experience," Bardock had said. "The off-world troops, we do it all the time. Can't even count how many times I've transformed at my age." He paused for a long moment. "The problem is that it doesn't feel like losing yourself; it feels like…finding yourself.
"We can't make the oozaru what it's not. To control it, we just find...common ground."
Trunks flew in closer, until he was practically standing on the oozaru's muzzle. "Vegeta," he said in a clear, emphatic voice. "It's time to hunt."
There was a fly that he could not catch.
The moons were full, and the monster found that satisfying. He was huge and he was powerful, and the monster found that even more satisfying.
But the fly was too fast.
There was no room for complexity inside of the monster: any feeling or instinct he had filled the entirety of his huge body. He was hungry and angry and frustrated, but he could only focus on one of them at a time.
He wanted to crush the fly.
The monster chased after the blurring creature, leaping onto cliffs and destroying mountains in his wake. But every time he reached for it, it would slip between his meaty fingers, so that they closed only on air. Until finally it drew so close that the monster had to look down its muzzle to find it; his eyes nearly crossed with the effort.
And then it started buzzing.
"...ge...time...hunt..."
Something scratched at the monster's brain. It was a strange and uncomfortable sensation, and so he roared his frustration with a blast of power. The fly flitted about his head, keeping out of reach, and then returned to the top of the monster's muzzle.
"...time...hunt!"
The scratching in his brain grew worse. The monster scratched at his muzzle, as if it was an itch left behind by the fly's presence.
Hunt.
He looked around him. He was not alone here: it was not just the fly, but other monsters. He wasn't sure if they were pack or prey. They were watching him, and he knew why: he was stronger than them. Of course they would follow him.
Something smelled familiar.
"...control!"
The fly stung him. The monster whipped its head back around to find it, and found the fly hovering within reach. This time, when the monster reached to grab it, it didn't move. The monster's fingers closed about it, and the fly just looked at him.
"Vegeta," the fly buzzed. "Get your shit together before I knock you sideways."
The monster brought the fly closer into view. It closed its other hand around it, too. It would be so simple to crush it.
But it kept looking at him. The monster's gaze narrowed. The fly had a face.
"Do you know who I am?" the fly demanded. "If you let me go, we'll get you a proper hunt. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to put you down for the night."
The monster roiled with affront. To think this fly would threaten him, the prince of all Saiyans—.
The monster's mind grew quiet.
Vegeta's hands opened to let Trunks go free.
Trunks closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he searched for the words.
He'd recited them before, to prove he'd been listening. To prove he remembered them. But that had been more years ago than he'd care to admit. He heard his father's voice in his ears, low and formal, as he gifted his son a piece of his heritage. Trunks had echoed them back, thrilled to be given anything by his father. Thrilled to feel like one of his father's people.
The pack hunted in the darkness. Vegetasei was home to a host of dangerous prey, waiting in the thickest, darkest corners of its forests. Trunks watched Vegeta close a massive hand around a creature five times the size of a normal Saiyan, with tusks long enough to gore through the same number all at once. He watched the hands begin to crush the beast between their fingers.
"I swear to you my hands."
He was kneeling before the throne. King Vegeta III sat there, watching proceedings with a cool, focused gaze. Queen Nira stood to his right.
But it was Prince Vegeta IV who stood before Trunks, his fists extended. And Trunks hands laid atop him, palms up, in a gesture he had to dig even deeper to remember.
It didn't feel real.
Trunks watched Vegeta lift the raging, desperate creature to crush its neck between his teeth. He watched blood spurt across Vegeta's muzzle. He heard the crunch of bone as Vegeta began to devour it.
"I swear to you my blood."
He was outside of his body, looking in. Watching his life as if it were a spectator sport. He caught his grandfather's face beyond Vegeta, and the satisfied smirk that curled at the corner of his mouth.
Trunks saw the other oozaru watching Vegeta, too. He saw the recognition in their blood-red eyes as he led them on a hunt beneath the twin moons. Their savior was stronger than they'd dared to hope.
"I swear to you my heart."
It was not the seat of love for them: the heart was the strongest muscle of all. Keeping them alive, to honor their oath. Trunks remembered his father explaining it once. He couldn't remember how long ago it was anymore.
"I swear my body and my service to the hands of Prince Vegeta IV."