CHAPTER ONE


 

Trunks flew around aimlessly.  There wasn’t much for him to do—the androids had been beaten; the world was safe.

 So why wasn’t he completely happy?

 He knew why.  He was bored.  There was nothing to fight against.  There was no one to train with.  There was absolutely nothing to do.
 He sighed aloud.  It wasn’t that he wanted the androids to come and kill everyone again.  It wasn’t that at all.  But now that they were gone, everything he had spent his life trying for was gone.  He had dedicated his life to removing them, and now that they were removed, so was his purpose in life.
 The sudden blast shocked him and he flew a couple of feet before he caught himself.  He hadn’t felt any ki approaching.  Who did that?
 He scoured the ground.  Nothing was there except for a small, round object … much like his own time machine …
 Trunks felt himself pale.  Time machine?  Who could have built a time machine, and why?

 _Bulma_.  The answer came to him unbidden. If his mother figured out how to build one, then of course the Bulma of the past could, too. But why on Chikyuu would she or someone else use it?
 Trunks flew down and landed next to it.  He waited a couple of minutes, but the person inside didn’t get out.  Finally, he summoned up a small amount of power and blasted a hole in it.

 A girl was in there, and she was unconscious.  As he pulled her into the light, his eyes widened in shock.
 “Bulma-san?” he whispered.  It certainly looked like his mother, albeit a much younger version, with her lavender hair and pale skin.  This girl couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen, and there was something a little … different about her.  Trunks couldn’t put his finger on it.  She definitely looked like his mother, but there were traces of someone else …

 But he didn’t have time to ponder it.  The girl’s pulse was strong, but she was knocked out for a reason.  He laid her down and examined her, looking for bruises and cuts.  Her clothes were torn and parts were bloody.  He found a few bruises on her arms and neck and there was a large, swelling, bloody knot on the side of her head.  On her stomach there was a long, purple scar and on her back there were red, still healing welts that seemed to be caused by a whip.  He felt his anger build as he imagined someone whipping her.  Even if this wasn’t his mother, _no one_ had the right to scourge someone like this.  The girl was obviously no threat—he could see her ki was insignificant.  Although, he had to admit, it was possible she could hide it, even when she was comatose.

 Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and he found himself staring into the largest, prettiest, most haunted pair of blue eyes he’d ever seen. “Trunks?” she said in a voice so soft he could barely hear.  Then she was out again.

 Trunks stared at her.  He certainly didn’t know her; how could she know him?  He shook himself.  Right now was not the time to worry about it—he could worry about it later, much later, when she was healed.  He picked her up, gently, mindful of the wounds on her back, and flew as fast as he dared towards Capsule Corp.


[NEXT]