Outside on the Capsule Corporation grounds, Goten and Trunks strolled slowly, talking between themselves as they walked. Goten looked down and picked up a stray twig and flung it back towards the bushes that it had come from. The relationship that Trunks and Tayhei shared confused him. Both Trunks and Tayhei in general confused him. The two of them had very complex, very shifting personalities. Just when Goten thought he had their character nailed down, they did something completely unexpected and different. Tayhei especially was hard to figure out. But he supposed that was what made them interesting people. If Tayhei was completely one dimensional and boring, Goten probably wouldn’t even want to be friends with her. His own life was simple and boring enough; he didn’t need his friends to lead the same boring lives. At the same time though, their tumultuous relationship sometimes made him feel like slapping one of them. In particular, the thing that bothered him was that neither Trunks nor Tayhei was willing to admit what they truly felt. Even though everyone else in the world could see an attraction, the two of them were perfectly content pretending that they despised one another.

Goten had been listening to the laments of his friend for almost half an hour now, and he was getting tired of it. Yes, he sympathized. He knew how frustrating it must feel for Trunks to feel so threatened by the future warrior and how angry he would be over Tayhei’s actions. But what he couldn’t understand was the fact that Trunks kept insisting that this had nothing to do with his own feelings for Tayhei. According to Trunks, he still hated the girl. Yet he was willing to spend half an hour discussing the situation, and was visibly upset; his movements held the jerky, shaking feeling of someone that had nervous or suffering from shock, and his eyes had a wild, scared look in them. Emotions like that didn’t come out of nowhere. Trunks obviously had more in his heart for Tayhei than just hatred and anger. Goten knew that there was much more to it than that; he might even venture as far as to say that it was love.

“I don’t know what you’re stressing over if you know that you don’t have feelings for her.” Goten reasoned with him in a firm voice. He paused in his steps and crouched down to the bright green grass, reclining back and resting his palms on the ground. “I mean, if you say that you hate Tayhei, then why do you care about what happens between her and Mirai Trunks?”

Trunks looked down at him in frustration, as if he couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. Goten knew that Trunks tended to get annoyed when he felt that he wasn’t being listened to. And at the moment, Trunks was probably only looking for someone to tell him that he was right and that both Tayhei and Mirai Trunks should go to hell. Anything except for that reply simply wasn’t good enough for him. Sky blue eyes narrowed down into slits, and lavender haired warrior took a seat on the grass as well. Cross-legged, he hunched over and crossed his strong arms over his chest. He muttered darkly. “She just doesn’t belong with the guy.”

Goten thought about that for a moment. Trunks was right. He didn’t know much about the future warrior, but what he did know about Mirai Trunks just didn’t seem to mix well with Tayhei. The girl was far too feisty and vibrant to be together with someone as sullen and dark as Mirai Trunks. And placing Tayhei in the barren, wasteland of the future world would be almost like killing her. She wasn’t an incredibly shallow person, but Goten doubted she would be able to survive very long without the latest technological gadgets or a trendy boutique. Things in the future world were just far too rough for her; there was no way that she could survive out there without ending up completely miserable. And as for Mirai Trunks, he could see why he would be attracted to Tayhei; who wouldn’t be attracted to a gorgeous, vivacious girl like her? But he didn’t understand how Mirai Trunks could think that he would have a long, meaningful relationship with her. There were just too many differences between them. “I do agree that it’s an odd pairing, but if they’re happy.”

“They’re not happy. They’re fooling themselves.” Trunks snapped back angrily, turning his head to the side and glaring fiercely at the ground. He sat up just a bit straighter, and the muscles in his arms began to bunch up with anger and power. “Mirai Trunks is just at Tayhei for some gorgeous young companion to play around with and she….Frankly, I don’t know what she sees in him. I think she is just chasing after something that doesn’t even exist.”

Goten decided that it was time to quit dancing around the subject and simply get right to it. If Trunks wasn’t willing to admit that he had feelings for Tayhei, then he was just going to have to drag it out of him. He was tired of playing all these games with Trunks and having his friend always try to divert the subject whenever he tried to talk about something serious like this. He raised his eyebrows and met his friend’s gaze in a cool, pointed manner. “Maybe she is paying attention to Mirai Trunks because you’ve never paid attention to her.”

“What?!” Trunks howled, looking absolutely shocked and even a bit disgusted. His arms immediately uncrossed and he gestured with them wildly, as if trying to brush away the accusation. “How can I not pay attention to her? She demands attention. She demands attention in sick and frightening ways. Do you even remember half the things that the girl has done to me? She can’t even walk into a room without me jumping on edge and becoming some defensive, paranoid wacko. Tayhei has all the attention that she needs, trust me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Goten interrupted his friend quickly, before Trunks could continue on his tirade. If Trunks was planning on naming off every single one of Tayhei’s antics, they just might be here all day. “I meant if you had shown more of a romantic interest in her, perhaps she wouldn’t be looking for love in other places. And I find it highly suspicious that the one guy she decides to fall for happens to be the future version of you. It’s too much of a coincidence, if you ask me. She must have looked at you and decided that you were never going to admit your feelings for her --- and so she thought she might as well try the older, more mature version of you. You have to admit that Mirai Trunks is more adult than you are, and he is probably willing and ready to shell out love and affection. She knew that she wasn’t going to get that from you, so she went to him. But I don’t think that means her feelings for him are necessarily true. He’s kind of like a substitute for the real thing.”

Trunks snorted indignantly and tossed his head to the side. “I really doubt that Tayhei is that needy. She never seemed like she was thirsting for affection to me. You make her sound like some cute little kitten that is crying out to be loved and petted, but trust me, Tayhei is more like a….cactus or something. Any time you get close to her, she just turns around and causes you infinite amounts of pain and humiliation. She has never giving me the impression that she was longing for anything, let along longing to be adored and appreciated. That just isn’t like her. She’s a ruthless bitch. I doubt there are any kinds of feelings at all lurking beneath that flawless skin. She could care less about affection. The only thing that girl wants is money; money, control, and power.”

Goten shook his head quickly, narrowing his eyes at Trunks. He hated it when Trunks said things like that about Tayhei, especially things that Goten knew were completely false. It put him in a bad position, as if they were both asking him for his loyalty. In moments like this though, it didn’t really matter where his loyalties were. He just had to defend what was right. And in this case, he knew that Tayhei really wasn’t the way that Trunks had described her. It simply wasn’t right to assign those kinds of awful personality traits to Tayhei. Goten was willing to admit that the girl was not a complete angel, but she was a good person and he wasn’t about to let Trunks try and ruin her reputation like that. He would have had the same reaction if Tayhei had said something like that about Trunks --- which she had, many times before.

“That’s not true at all and you know it.” Goten told Trunks firmly. “On top of all of the selfish inconsiderate things that she has done, she had done some amazingly kind things as well. She isn’t nearly as one dimensional as you make her sound. And this might sound rather odd to you, but Tayhei is the loneliest person that I know. She keeps everything and everyone at a distance, and protects her heart with barbed wire and armed guards. She’s afraid of something, though I haven’t quite discovered what it is yet. She’s too afraid to let herself feel. If things are ever going to get better between you two, you’re going to have to be the one to admit your feelings. Because I can tell you right now that she will never say the words.”

“I don’t know why you keep blaming this on me. There is nothing for me to admit. There is no attraction. I could care less about her.” Trunks desperately tried to argue as he looked down, as if suddenly fascinated by the tiny green blades of grass that surrounded him on all sides. His voice was quieter now, more defeated. And Goten guessed that somewhere in his friend’s heart, Trunks knew that he was right. Goten hadn’t said anything that Trunks wasn’t already aware of. He just needed to be able to accept it and face it, instead of trying to push it away and hide from it. During times like these, you simply couldn’t hide anymore. Things had to be dealt with now, before they got too out of hand. Before it was too late.

“Then why have you been agonizing over the situation for the past thirty minutes, Trunks? Why can’t you just forget about it?”

Bulma’s old workshop had not been used in quite some time; Tayhei was not quite as talented when it came to technical work, and fooling around with little gadgets and new Capsule prototypes was not her idea of an enjoyable work day. The entrance to it stood off from the doors to the laboratory. It was a small unassuming door that led down a short flight of stairs to the very heart of the Capsule Corporation building. Tayhei had rarely been done there without Bulma at her side, and as she descended the stairs now, she had a strange feeling burning in her mind, as if she had forgotten something, accidentally left something behind. She had never felt scared going down into the workshop. Although it was in the basement, there were still rows of windows along the ceiling and it was well lit and obviously cheerful. It was quite a change from the laboratory, which was bright but void of any personality whatsoever. It was simply the place where Tayhei worked --- the workshop was where Bulma had practically lived.

She tried not to notice how much it hurt to walk down the stairs. Her struggle with Juunana-gou had left her feeling sore and bruised everywhere, and the weakest part of her longed to just stay in that infirmary bed and rest. But she knew that things had to be done and she couldn’t just lay there uselessly while all of this activity was going on around her. Besides, it seemed as though every time she showed any sign of weakness, Mirai Trunks grew more protective of her. As it was, she practically had to fight him in order to be able to walk down the stairs on her own. She didn’t want to give him any more reasons to touch her, because that just clouded over her mind with even more confusion than she already had. She was already confused about what kind of feelings she held for Trunks in her heart, but adding Mirai Trunks to the equation made it even worse.

She had glimpsed into the laboratory on the way to the workshop, and noticed that Mirai Bulma was holding some sort of a meeting with Kuririn and a man who was most likely the surgeon that she had hired on for the jinzouningen project. Tayhei wasn’t sure that any of that was going to work out the way that was planned, but she hoped for the best. She wasn’t too terribly fond of Kuririn or anyone in his family, but she knew that it would be a big disappointment to everyone if Mirai Bulma’s experiment didn’t work. The three of them were intently conversing, and there was also another girl there in the background, most likely a member of the surgeon’s staff. As they passed by the laboratory doors, she could tell that Marron’s demeanor instantly changed. The young girl slowed her pace and stared at them for quite some time with worried eyes. Tayhei wondered briefly why the girl was about to go off on this dragonball hunt instead of staying by her mother’s side during the surgery. She assumed it was because watching that kind of thing might be just a little too difficult for her. Marron was the weak sort of girl --- she couldn’t handle very much emotional turmoil before she would snap into the realm of insanity.

Tayhei entered the workshop with Marron close behind her, and Mirai Trunks trailing at the rear. The future warrior stopped for a moment in the doorway and looked around the room with an uncharacteristically pleasant expression on his face. Tayhei wondered why for a moment, then realized that this workshop probably made him remember his own mother’s workshop back in the future world. She didn’t blame him. Every time she came down here to retrieve something or work on a project, she was overwhelmed with memories of the woman that she had admired so greatly. There were traces of Bulma everywhere here --- dark rings on the countertops from coffee cups and burned out cigarettes still resting in the ash tray. Her notes were all over the place; stuck to files and walls and tables; she preferred bright green sticky notes, and they were all scrawled with the same black pen --- a gift from Bra on her last birthday. It had been here in this workshop that Tayhei had first broken down and cried after Bulma had been killed. Standing in this workshop, looking at all the notes and cigarette stubs, it was almost as if Bulma were still here.

There had been a small part of her that wanted to board up this workshop and never let anyone inside of it again, especially Bra and Trunks. If she had been affected by the workshop so horribly, she could only imagine how members of her family would feel when they stepped inside. She wasn’t so sure she could handle seeing that sad, lost look in Trunks’s eyes again. She could handle that same look on Bra’s little face; she knew how to comfort Bra and make her smile again. She didn’t find it so difficult to take her little hand or hold her in her arms. But Trunks….whenever that awful look appeared on his face, she simply didn’t know what to do. Her heart just about broke into pieces every time that she saw it. She didn’t know whether she should hold him close and comfort him or merely feel annoyed that he couldn’t hold emotions in the way that she could. Neither option was pleasant. It just made more sense for her to stay away from him when that lost look appeared on his face. Things were less complicated that way.

It took her a moment to pull herself together before she could speak again, but she shook her head sharply and tried to focus her eyes on something other than the ash tray sitting on the counter in front of her. She raised her line of vision to the small black air car that was sitting on a raised platform in the corner of the room. Next to it dangled a set of matching black keys, sparkling in the light as if they were just beckoning someone to take a spin in it. “That’s the car that I was talking about. It’s so new that we don’t even have a name for it yet. It was one of the big projects that Bulma had started before she left for Sukuashi. She claimed that she was building it because she was tired of getting left behind all the time. When you live with people that get from place to place by actually flying, it’s a little hard to keep up. It looks small, but it had enough speed and power to be able to keep up with a Super Saiya-jin Trunks during the first flight test.”

The younger girl stared at the air car in amazement. “And you’re letting me use it?”

“I’m not letting you use anything.” Tayhei corrected quickly. “I am protecting my investment. I am giving you the dragon radar in exchange for a wish, and I expect you to find those dragonballs as soon as possible so that I can get what I want. Besides, I wouldn’t want everyone else to have to be annoyed with you the entire trip, always having to slow down so that you won’t fall behind. You’re annoying enough as it is already.”

Marron’s cheeks instantly deepened into a dark red color. “I am not annoying!”

Tayhei lifted an eyebrow. Not annoying? How could any sickly sweet little girl who wore the color pink and tied her hair up in pigtails be classified as anything but annoying? Tayhei had to exercise great patience just to stand in the same room as her. She couldn’t even imagine how difficult it would be to have to go on a dragonball hunt with her and be with her every second of the day. Just a few hours in the cargo hold of the ship on the way to Sukuashi had been more than enough for her.

“Do you want to use the air car or not?” Tayhei asked her with absolutely no hint of emotion in her voice. “If you’d like to just drive your own car or attempt to hike after everyone else, you’re more than welcome to. I just thought I might make things go a bit faster.”

Marron glared at her. “Fine, I’ll take the car.”

Wordlessly, Tayhei flung the set of keys at her, along with a compact satellite phone device. The poor girl fumbled with them but eventually managed to place them in her pocket, still blushing furiously. Tayhei tried desperately not to roll her eyes. She didn’t want to come off as a complete bitch in front of Mirai Trunks. If the future warrior hadn’t been standing in the room with them, she probably would have been far more vicious, but at the moment she had an image to uphold. “Use the phone to call me when you find all of the dragonballs. I will meet you at Kami’s palace, and that is where we will make the wishes.”

Then she turned and walked to the other side of the room, where a wall of cabinets was situated. The cabinets held all of Bulma’s inventions over the years, almost like a showcase of her greatest accomplishments --- the accomplishments that could fit into a small cabinet, anyway. Tayhei knew that the dragon radar was here. It had the honored position of the very first cabinet on the wall, because it was the “invention that started it all”. Bulma had told her about the day that she met Gokuu many, many times --- so many times in fact that Tayhei felt as if she had been there as well. And though it was rarely ever used, Bulma had still taken good care of it; it was taken out and lovingly dusted every month. Tayhei opened up the door of the cabinet and took the dragon radar out of the small box that it was kept in.