02: Chapter 02
I came up with this plan late one night after Videl stopped at my office. She rather jokingly said she should have me abducted by some goons so I could have a break from work and she could show off her skills of being in control of my company. I laughed but inside I was wondering if she didn’t have a good base idea. It kept popping up in my mind and it just had to happen. In fact, it has given me a goal that has kept me going.
I have been secretly working on getting an operational time machine ready to go. I found all of my mother’s notes, which helped greatly. The hardest part besides obtaining the necessary components was the actual technical part. I didn’t inherit much of my mother’s engineering skills but I still persevered and I am going to use it tonight. It will work. It just has to. I need to get away but I must come back. It is still my destiny and I care too much about my world not to but this also must be done and now you know everything.
It’s also too late to stop me. I hop into the seat of the time machine. The coordinates are already preset, they were too important to leave to chance. Everything looks OK. I hit the switch as everything runs smoothly and the familiar sensation of time traveling comes back to me. I open my eyes and see a rather similar looking landscape as to the one I left behind but definite differences can be seen. It’s also rather deserted which is also something I was trying to do. It seems there are not as many differences between my timeline and this one’s as I think.
The air however seems the sweetest I’ve ever smelled and every other sense is telling me this is the most wonderful place in the universe. I am completely biased but perhaps it is. As I bask in the glow, I let myself go and sense a very familiar energy an unfamiliar one is nearby as well, in fact, they are together. I am not quite ready to meet a new person yet until I find out what is going on but I so want to fly directly up to them. I will be patient though.
Instead, I head towards the house that I know is nearby keeping my energy low. A woman is inside preparing supper. I slip into a bedroom window and know I’m in the right one from all the books everywhere. For a moment, I just absorb what I can about the room and its occupant. I notice that another bed is here and that it has toys near it and on it. I find a piece of paper and write a simple note asking that “an old friend” be met later tonight by the river. I place the folded note on his pillow and take off not a moment too soon because I can sense the two energies returning and smell that supper is almost done. I laugh to myself about saiyan appetites and make my escape.
I fly to my chosen meeting point and pop out the capsules I brought along for my own meal and anxiously await his arrival. There were several reasons I chose him as my contact. One is that as much as I knew Bulma would be happy to see me, I’m not quite ready to run into the me of this time, people need to be warned first that I’m here before traipsing around. He can help me with that. Another is that I have always felt a close connection to him and after the trials of my timeline, I need the assurance he can give me.
It’s starting to slowly get dark when I feel his energy heading towards me. I am sitting against a large tree and for a minute he can’t see me as he lands and I get a glimpse to observe him before he spots me. Oh wow, I can’t believe what a difference time can make. He has changed from that boy into the young man I see before me. I had calculated coming back to a time several years after I had left but Gohan is still quite a bit of a shock.
Actually I must be quite an observation too from the incredulous look he is wearing right now. It can’t be my appearance since I still wear my hair the same way and my clothes aren’t that much different than what I have worn before. I know I am a bit older but I haven’t aged anywhere near as much as he has since we last seen each other. “Trunks!!?” is all that comes out of his mouth. I can’t help it, I have to laugh as I get up and give him a hug that he returns after a still dumb-founded moment.
I can honestly say I can’t wipe the smile I am wearing right now off as I look into his face. He looks so happy and surprised. It's like someone secretly gave him a party when he had forgotten his own birthday. I answer his unspoken question, “I’m on holiday and decided to visit old friends for it.” He still looks rather incredulous but he laughs over my comment anyway.
I ask him to sit down and start catching up on this timeline. Strange how things work out when one changes the past slightly in some way, how it ripples out. It ripples until it is incomparable to another timeline. Goku is still dead but a younger brother of Gohan’s exists. It’s strange but I just can’t seem to get enough of him. I must be staring at him but he is so animatedly telling me about everything that he doesn’t notice. Soon enough he is asking me about what I have been doing, so I go into some small detail of the rebuilding process. It's only after I finish that he seems to notice how late it is.
The perfect gentleman that he is asks me to spend the night at his house. I tell him I don’t want to impose but he insists so I agree. We fly to his house and I wait patiently outside for him to explain to his mother. I hear a “WHAT!!?” from inside but she gets over the news quickly and I’m soon invited inside. She tells me that I can share Gohan’s room while Goten will sleeps in the living room. You would think the kid would be upset that he is being deposed from his room while a stranger is near his property. Instead he met the news with a cheer that was followed up by a reprimand of “no TV all night either” and a groan. Which was the cue for the household to go to sleep.
Gohan used the bathroom first to do his nightly ritual while I unpacked my stuff. He came back out wearing only a comfortable pair of pants to sleep in. I followed his example and put the T-shirt I had unpacked back into my things and went to change after surreptitiously wiping the drool from my chin. I came back in and didn’t dare look at Gohan but crawled into his younger brother’s bed.
Gohan soon fell asleep but I couldn’t. The day had been too much and I realized that my secret was going to be hard to keep, but maybe that was the whole point of this adventure: to have another know it. My secret is that I have been in love twice. Both times it has been with two quite different individuals, two people who are actually the same person, Gohan. And the funny part is that I know that I’m going to fall for him again but maybe this time he will actually fall for me.
