"Trunks! Wake up, Trunks!"

He heard the shouting as he rose above unconsciousness, his mind swimming in a murky sea of confusion and pain. His body ached, ached so badly that it hurt to inhale. Even his heart seemed to be taking a great effort in beating; each pulse in his blood was dim and slow and painful. The voice spoke to him again, and the sound of it coaxed him to rise further above the darkness and find his way back into the world once more. He didn’t understand the words at first, could only catch snatches of it as he rose above the splashes of dizziness that were sloshing through his head. The voice, though, he knew. It sounded more like singing, a melody of words and syllables running over one another like waves in the ocean. It was a soft voice, a soothing one; a voice that he knew well. A voice like that was characteristic of one person, and one person only.

Tayhei. She found me. He thought. With great effort, his eyes flickered open and found her beautiful green eyes gazing back at him, blurry with tears. As soon as he saw her, as soon as he was able to make out her face, he began to feel as though he had been suddenly warmed all over. Instead of the cold and clammy feeling that came with unconsciousness and death, warmness began to move through him like a gentle flame, wakening his limbs and comforting his heart. The feeling of warmth and comfort was stronger than he could have ever imagined it to be, and he soaked it in greedily, wanting it to last as long as possible. He could not force himself to look away from her gaze, couldn’t force his eyes to move away from her face. Her eyes were darker now, and he could see tiny points of light in them, as though someone had trapped the nighttime sky and placed it inside of her. Moonlight was pouring down on the both of them, bathing her skin and tinting it a deep blue color that seemed to shimmer when she moved. Vaguely, in his state of confusion, he felt that she was holding his hand tightly, radiating heat from her own small body into his. He didn't care about anything else just then --- not the jinzouningen, not their fight, nothing. He was just glad that she was there with him, holding his hand.

"I’m sorry, Tayhei.” He told her softly, and his head spun as he spoke. He moved a shaking hand back behind him and braced himself as he sat up. “I've been such a fool."

She reached over with her free hand and placed it on his back, holding him up softly, yet forcefully, her touch warming his entire body. "No, I'm sorry. I should have never run away like I did. I wasn't thinking straight." She relented, shaking her head.

Her golden locks splayed across her shoulders, glinting in the moonlight, and Trunks felt his knees go weak from something other than pain. It was something that he had been feeling a lot lately --- this feeling that made his heart ache deliciously in his chest. After Tayhei had left, he was certain that that feeling would drain away, but instead it had only grown. Although he had felt more lonely and miserable in the one month that she was gone, he had also grown to realize things about himself that he would never have known otherwise. He was strong, yes, but it wasn’t just his muscles and his inherited Saiya-jin blood that made him so powerful. It was fighting for the people in his life that he loved. And even though he knew that he was incredibly weak and broken at the moment, he felt stronger than he had ever felt in his life then, staring at her.

"Thank you, Tayhei, for staying here with me." He murmured, and squeezed her hand.

She gave him a rare smile in the darkness then, and leaned in closer to him to put a hand on his forehead, checking for a temperature. His entire face immediately glowed with warmth of her touch and the pain in his head disappeared as he stared into her concerned green eyes. Again, she smelled like the fruits that grew on the trees next to the ocean; papayas, mangos, and coconuts. It was a smell that he identified with the happiness of being in the wilderness --- of being outside and free. He took a deep breath, inhaling her scent and praying that she wouldn't notice. It was too tempting for him not to breathe it in, not to ignore the way that it made his heart feel.

"I don't think I am in good enough condition to fly back to the underground city for senzu." He admitted to her, forcing himself to ignore the way that his dizzy heart was stumbling around in his chest. "I think we should stay here until morning."

He could see her turning the thought over in her mind, examining the positive and negative sides of staying in the city, then nodded. She pulled her hand away from his forehead and brushed back a stray lavender strand that had fallen across his face. "Hai. If you feel you aren't able to fly, we should not attempt it. You might hurt yourself far worse than you are hurt now. Your mother would be so sad if she lost you."

"Hai. It would hurt her so much after losing Otousan." He agreed, leaning his head back against the wall behind them. It felt cold and sharp against him, such a cruel contrast to the warm, soft girl that sat at his side.

"She talked to me before....About Vejiita. About their relationship." Tayhei murmured, looking up into the moonlight sky. Surprised, Trunks looked on in interest. His mother hardly ever spoke about his father. He had always assumed that it was just too painful for her to talk about and always refrained from asking her too many probing questions. But the way that Tayhei said it, it sounded as though Bulma had given her this information freely.

Tayhei paused for a moment, looking back down at him. For some reason, her eyes avoided his, studying the blood-stained collar of his jacket instead. She looked sad and tired, as if she could have curled up right then and cried for hours. “I didn’t tell her this at the time, but I thought that losing the love of your life was like losing half of yourself."

His heart stumbled again, and he blinked. The truth and feeling behind her words struck him somewhere deep inside and he struggled to keep his voice from failing. "Maybe it is, Tayhei. I just hope that I will never have to find out if it is true or not though."

They were silent for a moment, a comfortable silence in which they just stared up at the moon, holding each other’s hands. Trunks's gaze fell on Tayhei again, who was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest like a child. There were so many things that he still did not know about this enigma that had wandered into his life. Being with her was like looking through the window; always on the outside. Whether or not he was welcome to the secrets that she held within was the question that was bothering him. All people had gone through tough times in life --- just as she had told him a month ago in anger. The degree of which the troubles were was the difference. Looking at her, he could see, even from a distance that whatever she went through had been horrifying to say the least. He thought back on what she had said about her baby sister dying in her arms and thought it best to ask her about it; if nothing else, she would know that he cared.

"Tayhei?" He asked quietly. She turned to face him in reply, staring at him with wide green eyes. He swallowed hard and looked down at the ground. "What happened with your sister?"

She felt her heart stop beating in her chest for a moment, then the familiar ache set in, and she felt tears gathering in her eyes. She hadn’t expected that question and didn’t quite know how to answer it at first. Part of her didn’t want to answer it at all. It was her grief, her guilt --- she shouldn’t have to share it with anyone. Just the thought of talking about it brought back a lot of painful memories that she wasn't ready to fight yet. The jinzouningen might have been powerful foes, but they were nothing compared to the guilt and the anguish that was wrapped up inside her heart. Her little sister had been her life. Her everything. But Trunks was looking at her with such kindness and such encouragement that she couldn’t possibly ignore his question. There was no intent to hurt in his eyes, and no malice in his heart. He only wanted to know, wanted to help. And she knew that he wanted to feel what she felt, if only to be able to give her the comfort that she had needed for so long.

Tayhei took a deep breath, then began to speak.

"I'm going too."

The voice startled the young girl as she was preparing to leave the small cottage that she and her sister lived in. It was a modest home, but clean home that was always warm in the winter and cool in the summer. They kept the house up the best that they could, doing household chores and gardening in their spare time. Besides the modest beds of flowers that lay beneath the eves of the windows and along side the house, there was also a vegetable garden, where most of their food was grown. These days, there was no such thing as a market or a grocery store. People took care of themselves. People had to take care of themselves. The jinzouningen holocaust had begun and nothing was the same as it used to be anymore. The young girl tucked her long golden hair behind her ears down smiled at her little sister.

Yakosoku stood in front of the door with her small arms crossed tightly across her chest, blocking the way out. Her normally happy expression was drawn into a pout and the dark curls of her hair had fallen into her deep brown eyes, making her look almost intimidating. She was just a child, but on the inside she was tough and strong. In this world, she had to be. There was no place for childlike wonder and innocence here. To further prove her point, Yakoskou raised her chin up in a challenge, as if daring her older sister to say no. The older girl gave an exasperated sigh and put her hands on her hips.

"Ya-chan, you can't come with me. I've told you that before." Taking a step forward, She placed the younger girl’s hands in her own and stared into her wide brown eyes, smiling softly. "It's just too dangerous. You know that the jinzouningen could be anywhere. I don’t want you to get hurt."

She had never actually seen the evil twins, but to see the devastation they had caused was enough to scare her. She had been to the cities, seen the damage that the infamous evil twins had caused. East Capitol City had been leveled nearly to dust, with huge craters marring the landscape. The skyscrapers that had once reached so proudly into the sky had been lying in broken, mangled piles in the streets, and the smoke and dust from the explosions could still be seen in the sky. It had been horrifying for her to see; it was something that she could never forget. In some ways, the jinzouningen were almost omnipresent to her. She wasn't actually seeing the destruction and horror that they were causing, but their spirits were taunting her, relentlessly driving her to the brink of insanity. In just a few short years, she came to fear the artificial humans like she had never feared anything in her life. Throughout life, she had been told terrifying stories about the jinzouningen that were so real it was almost as if she had been there. She frowned, and a stray strand of golden blond hair fell in her face.

I have lived a terrifying story. She thought, staring out the window at the forest the surrounded the small cottage.

When she was only seven years old, her parents had been killed by the relentless jinzouningen. They had been working overtime in the city, hoping to earn some extra money for the family. The building they were in had been blown apart by the jinzouningen and they had been killed instantly in the explosion. It was only a year later that she discovered what had actually happened to them. She met an old neighbor one day on a desolate city street, and they informed her of what had happened. But back then, she hadn’t known anything. They had no television and no phone. There was no way for her to know what had happened. She had waited expectantly for them to come home, but they never did, and she was left alone with her baby sister, who only one year old at the time.

Only six years had passed since then and every day the two sisters became closer and closer until the sister-sister relationship was more like mother-daughter. The older sister was fiercely protective of the younger and would give up her own life for her. She loved Yakosoku more than she thought was possible, watching over her and caring for her just as a dutiful mother would have done. She had changed diapers, talk her to speak, and showed her how act. On the outside, she was just a normal thirteen year old girl, but looking into her bright green eyes, you would find that she had already lived a lifetime. She had seen more death and more destruction than a young girl should ever see. In an ordinary world, those scenes might have scarred her and haunted her, hurt her psychologically. But in a world where death and blood was so apparent and normal, she was unaffected by it. It did make her angry though, and scared as well. It felt like she had to fight for her life every single day. The only happiness that life had given her was Yakosoku, and she loved her more than anything on Earth.

Yakosoku shook her older sister's hands away and crossed her arms again, defiant and proud. "Then why are you going out into the forest, Tayhei?"

Just like the older sister was protective of the younger, Yakosoku was also very protective of her older sister. It was sad, and at the same time amusing, to Tayhei how much Yakosoku could be like their mother at times. She knew it had to be scary for Yakosoku to wait alone in the house for her to come back, but there was no other way. It had to be done.

She pointed to the sword leaning against the far wall before she picked it up and sheathed it behind her back. "Because I can protect myself, Yakosoku. You don't know the first thing about martial arts. Besides, we need food. I am not about to let you starve."

Tayhei had been training ever since she was knee high, first with her father, who used to be a martial arts teacher in the city. He had to quit his job after the jinzouningen came though, to work in the factories, building weapons that were intended to kill the artificial humans. After he was gone, she continued to train by herself. A library of martial arts books was in the basement of their small cottage, along with the sword and several other pieces of fighting equipment. After six years, she had read every one of the books twice and nearly mastered all of the weapons that her father had kept. In their world, learning to fight was completely necessary. The training wasn't enough to defeat the jinzouningen, but it was enough to defeat any strangers who happened to attack her to steal from her in the forest. Renegades roamed the woods and the empty cities, victimizing anyone who they could get their hands on. They needed food too, but they weren’t willing to work for it. Instead they hid among the trees and in the charred remains of warehouses and skyscrapers, waiting for unsuspecting travelers. It seemed as though everyone had gone mad since the arrival of the jinzouningen. Right and wrong were no longer issues, life and death were.

Yakosoku stared at the sword with unblinking eyes. Her younger sister, who rightfully should have been so carefree and young, looked back up at her with a frighteningly mature expression. "Why are the jinzouningen doing this, Tayhei? Why are they killing everyone?"

Tayhei's green eyes narrowed, remembering all of the destruction and pain she had seen because of the two androids. It was too unspeakable to tell her little sister about, but she had a feeling that somehow she already knew. "I don't know, Ya-chan. Some questions can never be answered. We might never know what made the jinzouningen murder all of those people or why they feel that they have a right to destroy the Earth. I think perhaps we aren’t meant to know. Maybe they don’t even have a reason. Some people are just bad, Yakosoku. Some people are just born evil, through and through."

She sat in the small chair by the door and began putting on her boots, brushing her long blond hair away from her eyes. They were sturdy boots, but they were old. Sooner or later she was going to either wear them through or grow out of them. She hoped that she would be able to get a few more years of use out of them, though. She needed them dearly. "I should be back in a few hours, okay? I'll try to find something bigger this time so I won't have to go hunting again for a while."

The younger girl nodded hesitantly, then looked down at her feet. "Be careful."

When her boots were properly latched, Tayhei stood once again reached back to assure herself that her sword was in place. "I will be back. You have my word.” She smiled, then her face dropped back to seriousness. "Remember, do not go outside for any reason at all! Don't even step foot outside that door, okay?"

Yakosoku saluted Tayhei. "Hai. No answering the door, no going outside, no talking to strangers, and no using the oven."

She opened the door for her and Tayhei waved to her younger sister as she walked off into the brightly lit forest that surrounded the quiet cottage. The birds were just beginning to sing, chirping loudly and insistently in the branches of the pines, lightening Tayhei’s heart as she walked. She always enjoyed the sunshine and the birds. They reminded her of the days when she and Yakosoku would go outside and work in the vegetable garden, letting the warmth seep in through their skin. It was early morning now, and she hoped to be back before it got dark. She was not a skilled hunter, and her heart often cringed at the thought of killing another animal, so it always took her awhile before she took something down.

Before she disappeared into the trees, Tayhei turned around and grinned broadly at her younger sister, who was already at the window, eagerly awaiting her return.

Tayhei paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. The next part was the hardest part, the part that she had never told anyone else. She had locked this memory away, so deep within her soul that she wasn’t even sure that she could tell Trunks the rest of the story. His sky blue eyes comforted her though, and she squeezed her hand, his palm feeling warm and dry against her own. For some reason, she had to tell him, even though she knew she would stumble through the words and eventually start to cry. She needed to let it out, though. It was time that she released those memories and let them live on. There was no use in hiding such things anymore. Not with Trunks. Not with anyone.

She leaned back against an outcropping of rocks and massaged her sore ankle, wincing in pain as her fingers touched the tender joint. It had started to rain earlier and the sky had darkened into a threatening gray. The rain was coming down heavy and fast and the trees had not provided her any shelter as she walked through the forest. Because of the rain that had gathered on the ground, she had slipped and skidded into a small riverbed earlier, soaking her even further and twisting her ankle as well. She had limped the rest of the way home, choosing the longer path because of the fact that she would not have to climb or jump on her sore ankle. The rain continued to fall from the sky, relentlessly pounding against her shoulders as she placed her boot back on her foot and prepared herself to walk again. The hunting trip had been unsuccessful. She hadn't caught sight of one animal larger than a squirrel since she had left home that morning. She brushed her damp hair out of her eyes and sighed, trying to relax. She didn’t have far to go and once she returned home, she could mend her ankle and get some rest. The hunting would have to be put off until tomorrow.

The sharp smell of smoke brought Tayhei to attention, creeping through the droplets of rain and the long branches of the pine trees. Instinct made her stumble to her feet immediately, and she cursed when the pain shot through her ankle. It hadn’t even been an hour since she sprained it and she definitely wasn’t ready to put her full weight on it. But for some reason, the smell of the smoke made her stand up straight again and walk anyway. Her heart started beating faster in her chest when the scent of smoke grew stronger and she broke out into a sudden run, worried about Yakosoku. With a rush of adrenaline, she hurriedly limped towards her home, trying to ignore the pain. When she saw smoke rising out of the trees in front of her, mixing with the sheet of rain, she quickened her pace. She was beyond worrying now, beyond concern. White hot fear spread through her veins and numbed her limbs. Running through what was left of the trees, she didn't even notice the pain in her ankle anymore. She was terrified. When she finally came to the clearing and found her home, she skidded to a stop, nearly falling to her knees.

It had been literally burned to the ground. The peaceful cottage had been reduces to nothing more than a charred black mass of wood and glass, with dark, ugly smoke curling up from it and into the rainy sky. A few glowing embers still remained in the ashes, glinting red in a sea of black, turning to small clouds of smoke as the rain fell on them.

"Yakosoku!" She screamed, in a voice that she had never used before. It sounded panicked and horrified, absolutely tortured. She ran through the wet ash, desperately pushing through the debris, and tried to find her sister.

Through her incoherent shouting, Tayhei could barely make out a weak call, a small, quiet plea for help. A small hand appeared from underneath the charred remains of window. She turned and ran towards it, feeling as though she were going to be sick. The horror and the pain were too much to bear. When she saw her sweet little sister, badly burned and lying haphazardly on the ground, her heart felt as though it were physically breaking. She knelt at her side and felt tears gathering in her green eyes. She couldn’t even speak, could only just stare at her little sister, who was almost unrecognizable beneath all of the black and the blood.

Yakosoku managed a weak smile and lifted her hand. It trembled hard, shaking the little girl’s entire arm as she reached for Tayhei. "You came back….just like you promised."

With tears running down her cheeks and her heart still breaking, Tayhei gently grasped her hand and pulled the Yakosoku towards her. As delicately as possible, she maneuvered the little girl into her lap and held onto her tight, ignoring the blood and the horrible burns. Her sister. Her baby sister. She clung to her tightly, tears falling onto Yakosoku’s face as she cried, still unable to find words, still unable to do anything but cry.

"Why do people hurt each other Tayhei? The world would be such a better place if we all stopped hurting one another." Yakosoku weakly observed, her eyes lowering as death began to wrap its icy hands around her little heart. She looked so small then, so young. It was as if all the years and maturity had faded away and she was just a child again. Just a normal child. She coughed once, an awful, wracking cough that came from deep within her lungs. “I had always thought the jinzouningen would look like monsters; they had to be for killing so many people. But when they came here, they were normal. They looked just like you and me. Just like any other person. But they weren’t like you and me at all. The were just monsters in disguise.”

She took a deep, raspy breath and then continued, her brown eyes blurring with childlike tears. “I stayed in the house, Tayhei, just like you told me too, but they set it on fire somehow, and I couldn’t leave. They were so mean, Tayhei….”

Tayhei felt her chest tighten and she put a cool hand on Yakosoku's wet cheek. It was her fault. This was all her fault. Guilt swept over her, just as thick and ugly as the smoke that curled around them, mixing in with the deluge of rain. "I’m sorry. I should have been back earlier....I could have stopped them." She cried through tears, burying her head in Yakosoku’s wet curls.

Yakosoku spoke softly and comfortingly. "No, I'm happy. I always wanted to see Okaasan and Otousan. Now I have my chance."

"I love you, Ya-chan." Tayhei sobbed suddenly, gathering her little sister closer to her and holding her tight. She didn’t want death to take her, didn’t want to see the life leave those beautiful brown eyes. She couldn’t take it. She would rather die herself, would rather sacrifice her own life and die here among the smoke and ashes, if it would mean that Yakosoku could live. She was so young, had so much hope. She wanted her to live on, wanted her to be able to grow up and become the wonderful person that she knew she would one day become. But fate was not so kind, and death was too strong for Tayhei to fight off.

The little girl drew in one last deep breath and fell limply against Tayhei.

The world fell silent as Tayhei gently rocked her little sister's body back and forth, sobbing quietly as the rain fell violently around them. The only sound that could be heard in the forest then was her sobbing, heartbroken and desperate as she rocked. The rain fell. The fire died. And a gentle wind picked up the nearby ash and smoke, carrying away the remnants of Tayhei’s life with them.

Chapter 12
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