In another dimension, twenty years in the past . . .
They had just awakened, and were preparing for another bruising all-day
sparring session in the Room of Spirit and Time. Trunks brushed his lengthening
hair away from his face and chewed thoughtfully on a carrot, watching his father
from the corner of his eyes. Vejiita stood with arms folded, looking out over
the utterly blank landscape of the Room, his expression unreadable as usual.
He'd already finished his meal, and hadn't yet snapped at Trunks to hurry up and
finish his; unusual behavior for the former prince. Trunks considered for a
moment asking if something was wrong, then sourly decided against it; he'd grown
tired of trying to initiate conversation with the man. If Vejiita wanted to
spend their whole time in here in complete silence, so be it.
But as if he'd heard the thought, Vejiita suddenly spoke, his voice soft but sounding loud against the silence. "Gohan trained you, back in the past?" he asked.
Trunks stared at him in surprise, then collected himself. "Yes."
Silence again, and Trunks was on the verge of deciding that that had been their conversation for the week when his father spoke again. "And then died himself." Vejiita snorted softly. "Stupid. About what I would expect of Kakaloto's offspring, though."
Trunks felt himself bristle, and controlled his instinctive reaction to any criticism of Gohan-san. He'd save it for the day's sparring match.
Vejiita glanced back at him over his shoulder, and Trunks suddenly realized that his father was aware of his anger, although Trunks had not allowed his expression to change. Predictably, Vejiita granted him a cold smile. "You're stronger than him, now, aren't you?"
What was he getting at? "Yes."
Vejiita nodded as if this pleased him. "Then he did well enough as a teacher." He looked away again, out over the infinite white space. Trunks frowned, confused. Vejiita was so strange---insulting Gohan-san with one breath, obliquely praising him with the other. . .
The Prince spoke again. "Perhaps it was good that he died, then, once he'd taught you everything you needed to know."
Trunks put the carrot down and pushed himself away from the table. He'd had enough of Vejiita's disparagements---
"He must have realized that the thirst for vengeance would drive you to achieve more than he could have ever taught you. A warrior driven by such determination is formidable, indeed."
Trunks froze in mid-rise, thrown again by Vejiita's mercurial nature. "I doubt he died on purpose."
Vejiita shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The result's the same. You're only a boy, but you've realized much of your potential. I doubt if he could have done it better if he had planned it." He nodded, almost to himself. "Determination, then, is the key."
Trunks stared at him, utterly confused now. That last statement of his had sounded suspiciously like a compliment . . .
Vejiita turned, the thoughtful look replaced now with his usual scowl. "Hurry up, damn it. We haven't got forever."
Trunks pondered the nature of determination, as he watched Ko Shiatar struggle to stand.
They'd just completed another sparring session, this time at the gravity chamber's upper limit of 400 Gs. Shiatar was doing well, for someone who had never fought under such conditions, but between his attacks and the gravity chamber's pressures, she was nearing the limits of her strength. Even now, she was pushing herself up on shaking arms, standing on unsteady legs, in the effort to rise and face him again. A trickle of blood had run down her chin from where she must have cut her lip after his last blow, but her eyes as she got to her feet were savage. Her lips had drawn back from her teeth in a silent snarl, and although he could feel her ki wavering in power, her fists were clenched to begin again.
Trunks regarded her from a few meters above, keeping his arms folded and his face expressionless. After two weeks of training, he'd come to realize that the former arena warrior responded best to him when he maintained an aloof, cold posture. She didn't like it, but she seemed to perform her best when he treated her with a mixture of contempt and disdain. Perhaps it was a legacy of her days in the arena; whatever sort of training she had undergone as part of that life, it must have been harsh. She expected harshness from him, as her teacther---harshness and clear superiority. He didn't even dare allow himself to power down when he was in training sessions with her, for she immediately began testing him, verbally and occasionally physically; the sessions were almost as much work for him as they were for her. Of course, he was aware that a good deal of her impatience was based on the fact that he hadn't yet shown her what she really wanted.
Determination, he mused, was the key. His own determination to avenge Gohan's death had propelled him into Super SaiyaÜjin years earlier than his father had reached the same level; later, out of his determination to prevent his terrible reality from coming to pass, he'd driven himself to the upper limits of that level during the fight against Cell. Determination to destroy Cell had goaded the past's Son Gohan to move beyond Super SaiyaÜjin. Determination was integral to SaiyaÜjin power; without it, all the anger in the world would not provoke the incredible changes needed to reach the next level of power.
Shiatar, however, was a strange one. Every other SaiyaÜjinÜÜÜor demiÜSaiyin, he amendedÜÜÜthat he had known had had no difficulty experiencing anger; it was the focus and willpower provided by determination that was usually difficult to achieve. Shiatar had determination and focus aplenty. It was the anger that she was having trouble with.
Sighing, he dropped down to her level and let his ki drop back to resting strength, signalling that the session was over for now. She tensed, angryÜÜÜbut acquiesced, dropping her own ki as well. She'd learned, grudgingly, to accept his orders while he was training her; the first few times he'd called an end to the lessons before she was ready she'd refused, and he'd had to attack her a few times to prove his point. Even then, she wouldn't have listened if he hadn't proven to her the soundness of his judgment; he never called a halt until he was certain that she could take no more. Like now; with herki wavering like that, she would never be able to withstand another attack from him.
As he went to the console and returned the gravity to normal, she walked over to him. Taking one look at her scowl, he sighed; she was going to be difficult today.
"Why did you stop?" she demanded. "I could have gone on!"
He did not turn to face her. "For another second or two, perhaps. But there's no point in letting me beat you unconscious." Predictably, she bristled, and he raised a hand, still not turning. "Let it be, Shiatar."
Silence behind him for a minute, and then he heard her sigh. She had acceptedÜÜÜbarely.
Privately, while his face was turned away from her, he smiled to himself. She'd done well today; he'd give her a reward. He'd been drilling her in the gravity room at the highest gravity now for two weeks, and there had been a surprisingly rapid discernible increase in her strength; he was ready, now, to begin training her in what she really wanted. It was time.
"I didn't need you unconscious," he said, turning finally, "because this lesson isn't yet complete. It's time, I think, that you learn the theory of becoming a Super Saiya-jin."
She started, her eyes widening, and he was pleased; it was the first time he'd gotten any kind of response out of her during training other than rebellion. Eventually he would get her to accept his wisdom as a teacher . . .
She stepped forward, her fists clenching with excitement. "Really? Do you mean it?"
He nodded, and motioned for her to follow him. Leading her out of the gravity room, he paused for a moment, noting that her eagerness had lent her an extra measure of strength, and then launched himself into the air. Deliberately he flew faster than usual, to force her to push herself. As he'd expected, she put extra effort into it, racing him. After a few moments of this, he stopped accelerating; it wouldn't do for him to wear her out completely. He just wanted to get her away from the Capsule Corporation; if she decided to try transforming, she might damage the facilities with the resulting earthquake. When he spotted a location that was suitably isolated, he moved to land on the rocky hilltop. A moment later, Shiatar dropped lightly to the ground beside him.
Trunks folded his arms again, and looked out over the landscape; from here they had a clear view of the countryside for miles around. The wind blew in a gentle breeze, stirring his hair and blowing a few strands into his eyes; habitually he reached up to brush them away. It was getting too long to be manageable. But that was unimportant now.
"The key to SaiyaÜjin power is emotion," Trunks said, and heard Shiatar take a step closer, behind him. "You know that; I've seen you use the feelings generated in battle to power yourself up. But there is a barrier which prevents most SaiyaÜjinÜÜÜ" he heard her make a sound behind him, but ignored it; she wasn't in her world any longer and there was no insult in being called Saiya-jin instead of demi-Saiyin here, "ÜÜÜfrom moving beyond a safe power level. This is the barrier that you must surpass."
"'Safe?'" Shiatar asked. He glanced at her over his shoulder.
"When I move to the next level, there are minor physical changes that occur as well. My body couldn't contain the power otherwise."
She nodded, and he knew that she was remembering his transformation from two weeks before. "You got bigger."
"A little. All Super SaiyaÜjin do. We must, once the barrier is broken." He looked out at the horizon again; the sun was beginning to set. "The key to that barrier is also emotion, in this case a very specific one. Anger is that key."
He heard her puzzlement in her voice. "Just anger? Is that it?"
He turned again to face her. "Of course not. If that was the case, every SaiyaÜjin would be able to make the change; you know the Saiyan temper." She lowered her eyes, and nodded.
"Anger is the key, but it must be an anger so intense, so allÜconsuming, that few can achieve it. Coupled with that anger, however, must be a motivating factor, such as the desire to fight. Or to kill. That combination, if intense enough, propels your ki to such a level that you break through the barrier, and your mind and body change in response."
She frowned. "I've been angry, angry enough to kill. It's been pretty intense before."
Trunks lowered his head. How could he make her understand? "Anger probably isn't the right word to use," he admitted. "Even 'rage,' or 'fury' aren't accurate enough words to describe the level of anger that you must feel." He sighed. He'd have to tell her. He hadn't even spoken of this to his mother. . .
"When I was a boy," he began, "I was trained by Son Gohan, the son of this world's Kakaloto. Under his guidance, I tried to reach Super SaiyaÜjin, and never could. He just told me it would come when I needed it."
Trunks closed his eyes, trying not to let the pain and grief of the memory overwhelm him. "All I wanted to do was be able to help him destroy the Cyborgs; he lost an arm when I fought with him, because I was more of a hinderance than a help." He braced himself against the guilt; it had been his fault that Gohan had lost his chance to defeat the Cyborgs . . . "The Cyborgs attacked again one day and I thought I was ready to face them that time. He knew I wasn't; he knocked me out and fought them alone. When I woke up and found him, he was already dead."
Memories assaulting him with painful vividness: the rain pouring down on an unnaturally still form, lying half in a muddy puddle amid the ruins of a city . . . Gohan had been a large man in life, like his father; even without an arm he'd had a kind of presence and vibrancy that had made him seem larger than he was. On the day that Trunks had found him, that presence had been gone. Gohan's body had been pitifully, painfully small, lying in the mud . . .
He drew himself, with difficulty, back to the present. Shiatar was respectfully silent, her head bowed before him. "I looked down at his body," Trunks continued, "and I felt only emptiness for a moment. I was numb. Gohan was only the latest of the billions of murders that could be laid at the Cyborgs' feet; his body was only the hundredth I'd seen that year. But then something changed; I realized that this time, those monsters had killed my best friend, my teacher, even . . . Gohan was the closest thing I had to a father. And they'd killed him. Something . . . broke, then, inside me."
He remembered the feeling: a kind of gentle warmth that had begun in the pit of his belly, spreading and growing rapidly into a savage, relentless, searing rage . . . his head pounding, heart bursting, hands clenched so hard that his fingernails broke the skin and he'd ignored it; the physical pain was insignificant beside the gaping, aching void that had been torn inside him, a void so great that nothing could fill it except vengeance. . .
"I can't even describe the kind of fury that overwhelmed me then. It was . . . it was hate, a murderous and vengeful hatred beyond anything I've ever known, made tangible. I could feel the hate like a living thing, growing inside me. And after a moment, it burst out of me, and I became Super SaiyaÜjin."
Shiatar said nothing, watching him from beneath drawn eyebrows. Wearied by the memory, he took a deep breath.
"So maybe you can see what kind of anger I'm talking about," he continued. He sighed. "Since then I've come to suspect that such anger can only be summoned through some sort of catalyst, an event or memory that provokes the kind of rage that's needed to break the barrier. I call that event a 'trigger.' Every Super SaiyaÜjin I've ever known seems to have one."
Shiatar stepped forward, her frown deepening. "A trigger?"
He nodded, and leveled his gaze on her. "You must find your trigger, if you are to reach the Super SaiyaÜjin level."
She turned half away, her expression suddenly unreadable in profile. He sensed a great disturbance in her aura, and focused on her more closely.
"An event, or a memory, that provokes a rage," she murmured. "I have plenty of those."
Trunks folded his arms, hating what he was about to do. But he would have to find out what her trigger was if he was to break that emotional control of hers . . . "A gardenÜvariety memory can't serve as a trigger," he said harshly, causing her to throw him a swift, angry look. "You had a hard life; so did I. It takes more than that to forge a Super SaiyaÜjin."
She turned to face him, and he was pleased, though a bit startled, to feel her ki swell suddenly. "You don't know what I've been through," she spat, her voice dropping. "Don't dismiss my memories until you've lived through them yourself."
He faced her without blinking, aware that this was another testing moment, and a dangerous one. She was an upstart young wolf in his pack, and he was the leader; if he showed the slightest sign of weakness she would tear his throat out. More importantly, he could not let her see that his cruelty was a calculated act. The success of her training could depend on that crucial factor.
After a moment, she turned her head to the side and spat off the edge of the cliff. At the same time, her ki subsided; he'd won again. And he'd sown the seeds of a future lesson . . .
"That's enough for the day," he said, finally. "I'm going to check on one of the nearby villages; you can stay and practice out here if you want. Just remember, wherever you practice: if you manifest a highÜenough ki, you'll probably start a minor earthquake; the Earth's magnetic fields are very sensitive to that kind of thing. So try to practice in an area like this, isolated from people who might be harmed by your power."
He saw her eyes widen slightly as she realized that there had been a purpose in his bringing her out here, and again stifled a smile; he had a purpose for everything, she was learning. With that warning, he jumped off of the cliff and into the sky, knowing that she wouldn't even begin until he was out of range.
He would give much to be able to hide and watch her from a distance, but Shiatar was far too sensitive to surveillance for him to do so without detection. Besides, he recalled from watching Piccolo train Gohan back in the past, it was good to allow a student some unsupervised time to test her own limits. She was low on energy, and it was doubtful that she'd be able to reach Super SaiyaÜjin today, but she'd probably need time to assimilate what she'd just learned.
As he flew, Trunks reflected on the past few weeks. It hadn't been as difficult as he'd thought, assuming the role of teacher; he'd found himself unconsciously adopting the mannerisms of some of his own mentors. It had surprised him, really, how easily it had come to him; he hadn't realized how much he'd really learned from Gohan and Vejiita and even vicariously from Piccolo and Gokuu. It seemed that he was a natural teacher, with an almost instinctive sense of what his student needed to improve, what she could take, what she wasn't ready for. He'd know whether he'd been successful when and if she finally achieved her goal.
However, he'd been trying to come to grips with a peculiar dilema that none of his teachers had ever faced. Namely, how to be an effective teacher for a woman that he found himself increasingly attracted to.
Unbidden, an image of Shiatar as she so often faced him came into his mind: crouched and ready, green eyes glittering like emeralds and fists clenched, hair bristling where it had escaped from the severe braid . . . and incredibly, he flushed. Even then, he found her attractive; her anger brought a vibrancy and high color to her face that was appealing. Whenever he was able to catch her in her rare quiet moments, it was even worse: she could be startlingly beautiful when she lowered her guard. It didn't help that as he grew to know her better, he became more and more convinced that his first assessment of her had been wrongÜÜÜor perhaps it had been denial. He'd told himself that she wasn't his type. But with her proud bearing and intense, driven manner, he found himself identifying strongly with her; she could be a friend, if she'd ever relax enough to stop viewing him as a potential threat or an obstacle. He knew the look of grim determination in her eyes, the bitter taste of defeat that so often curled her lip, the pain of memories so powerful that she sometimes seemed to get lost in themÜÜÜhe'd experienced those same things every day of his adolescence. Shiatar was cut from the same rough cloth as he. No simple village girl would ever understand the darkness in his soul, or accept it; Shiatar, he sensed, could.
But would she? She'd expressed not the slightest interest in him. For all he knew, she could think he looked hideous; she'd already mentioned howÜÜÜhow had she said it?ÜÜÜHumanÜlooking he was. However much she hated SaiyaÜjin, she also had a pretty substantial resentment of humans; Trunks had the impression that she'd been treated badly by both races in her life. Did that mean she disliked his human features? Or that she liked his lack of the typical Saiyan look? He couldn't tell.
Sighing in mingled frustration and annoyance, he picked up speed, feeling the wind whip his hair into a thousand tiny lashes that stung his face if he turned his head the wrong way. Shiatar's arrival had stirred a longÜneglected sense of vanity in him and he no longer wanted to cut his hair, deciding that it looked better long; he would have to tie it back instead. Just another decision that had been influenced, at least in part, by the strange demiÜSaiyin woman who had fallen into his life. What was happening to him? He could remember when things had been simple: his purpose had been to defeat the Cyborgs, his friends had consisted of Gohan, his mother and himself, and his plans for his life had been clear, if shortÜterm. Now his focus was blurred; things were so much more complicated. And it was not entirely Shiatar's fault.
He'd been aware of a growing sense of aimlessness in his life, even before Shiatar's arrival; ironically, without the Cyborgs and Cell, he'd lost his sense of belonging in the scheme of things. Shiatar had returned that sense of purpose, if only for a short while. Was that the basis of his interest in her? He snorted to himself. He could rationalize his attraction with lofty ideals all he wanted; that wouldn't change the fact that Shiatar stirred a distinctly unÜPlatonic interest in him.
Not that it mattered. He sighed and dipped lower to wave at Dakon village as he passed overhead; that wasn't his destination today. With their new teacherÜstudent relationship, he didn't dare allow his attraction to her to affect his behavior or even influence his thoughts; besides being a disservice to her, it could compromise his ability to be an effective teacher. In order for him to push her beyond her current limits, he would have to do and say things to her that no hopeful candidate for her affections would dare. In fact, because his plan for her training required that he make himself the focus of her hatred, he would have to hurt her in order to succeed. He intended to recreate the emotional intensity of whatever trigger incident she had spoken of earlier, as soon as he discovered that incident's nature; she had neither the time nor the luxury for him to let her find her trigger in a more gentle way. It would be a difficult process for him, almost as difficult as it would be for her. But he had agreed to teach her, and he never halfÜdid anything.
And so he had submerged his feelings when he'd begun Shiatar's training, and so far he'd been able to keep his private interest in her very separate from his public distance. The disparity between his feelings and his duty to her as her teacher was difficult to manage; sometimes he felt as if he were two people, or one person with two distinct personalities---he supposed it would serve him right if he was going mad. Ironically, it helped him to better understand how his father could be both the arrogant ass Trunks had gotten to know and the beloved mate his mother recalled; it also confirmed his belief that Vejiita must have been a bit of a masochist. Anyone who willingly put themselves through this kind of painful dichotomy of feeling and behavior couldn't have been right in the head.
He'd almost reached the village that was his goal when abruptly, the beeper at his waist went off, sending a chill through him. Okaasan! Almost before the beeper stopped, he'd looped about toward home, fear lending speed to his flight. After a moment, he blasted into Super SaiyaÜjin mode for the extra boost, his speed now making a mockery of the pace he'd set for Shiatar earlier.
There could be only one reason for Bulma to activate the beeper, he realized. Another gateway . . . If one had opened, his mother would be in grave danger. From Shiatar's descriptions of the soldiers in her world, they would think nothing of killing a lone human woman . . .
Clenching his fists, he shouted into the open sky, summoning his power to him, and left nothing behind him when he shot off toward the horizon except a rapidly dissipating contrail, the rolling thunder of a sonic boom, and the fading echo of his cry.
Bulma's defense of her world has been successful; she has bought more time for Trunks to complete Shiatar's training. Will that time be enough? Can Shiatar learn to harness the power of her terrible past? The process begins in the next episode: THE MOST DISHONORABLE BETRAYAL: SHIATAR'S TERRIBLE SECRET IS REVEALED!
