Cosmic Crisis 3 - A New Enemy

Chapter 37 - Trunks explains the past

Trunks wasn't sure of how to react at first. Natalie, as he saw, was on the verge of tears. He wanted to tell her it was okay, but how could he say that when something like this would effect them for the rest of their lives. It wasn't something to look back on and laugh at. No. This stays with you.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Natalie cried. "No words? Is that it?"

Trunks cleared his throat and swallowed again, trying to think of something comforting to say.

"Nat...you can't even see that." He said. "You pointed it out and I still don't see much."

"Trunks!" Natalie exclaimed angrily. "That is not the point." She sat on her bed and gripped her hair in her hands as her head rested in her palms. "I thought it was all a lie." She said. Her voice fluttered slightly. "I really didn't think it would happen. How can it happen??"

"I think you're just scaring yourself. You weren't...gone long enough...to be pregnant already." Trunks said.

"How do you know how long I was gone?" Natalie asked. "You only know how many days I was missing. I could have been there...with him...for weeks, or months! Months Trunks. It has to be."

"I still don't think - "

"Because you're in denial." Natalie interrupted. "This is real, I'm afraid."

"I know that." Trunks said calmly, trying to soothe Natalie's nerves. "Look Natalie..."

Natalie looked up at him with red, tear-filled eyes.

"Stand." Trunks said. Natalie did so, slowly. Trunks took one of her hands and held it up, causing her tank top to rise and reveal her stomach. "There is nothing there." He said.

Natalie looked down. "Yes there is." She whispered.

"No, there's not." Trunks continued. "You're imagining it. Let's get your mind off of this, ok?"

"Trunks you're avoiding this issue." Natalie accused.

"I am not avoiding anything. But, you can't worry for weeks on end, waiting for a resolution."

Natalie, desperate, pulled her overalls back over her shoulders and snapped them.

"I'm going to ask Bulma about it." She said. "She will have some way of knowing."

"Not so fast, Nat." Trunks said. "We just got back. Wait a few minutes."

"Well, in the meantime, I am going to cut my hair again." Natalie said, running her hand through her long brown hair, which extended just past the inward curve of her waist. "I see you and Goten already did that."

"Hell yeah, I hate long hair." Trunks said, gesturing to his jaggedly cut strands. "I don't know how you can put up with it."

"I'm not even going into the things I don't understand about guys." Natalie said. She held her hair in both of her hands at the point where she wanted to cut it. "Where is everyone else?"

"Last I saw, Goten was helping Reena in one of the guestrooms." Trunks commented. "I don't know about Ceres or Sirius."

"I can't believe that..." Natalie trailed off. "Goten and Reena I mean. They haven't known each other too long, have they?"

"Not even a week." Trunks answered, realizing that Natalie's concept of time within the past few days wasn't exactly accurate, given that she had been confined in subspace for the equivalent of a couple of months.

"And they are already that close. I can tell we're going to have a hard time keeping Goten away from Capsule Corp." Natalie joked. Trunks laughed, relieved that she was forgetting about the other pressing issues. He also noticed that Natalie was looking better by the minute.

"Hey Nat are you feeling well?" Trunks asked. "Because you look a hell of a lot better than you did before we left."

"Oh yes, much better." Natalie answered. "What time is it anyway? Probably around mid afternoon, considering the time difference between this place and Hawaii."

"Yeah, probably." Trunks added. He looked down at Natalie's left hand and located the sparkling promise ring on her finger.

"Trunks can I ask you a question?" Natalie inquired. "It's about Ceres."

Trunks' initial reaction was to freeze. Had she somehow heard about what had happened in the gravity room before they left? She didn't believe it, did she?

"Y-yes." Trunks stammered. "What about Ceres?"

"Well..." Natalie said, "I think that Ceres has...well sort of a grudge against me. I don't really know why. I think I have an idea of it though."

"You think so?" Trunks asked. "Why do you think that?"

"This sounds crazy, but I think she was in love with Orion." Natalie answered. "I'm probably wrong, but I just had this feeling that-"

"You're right." Trunks interrupted. "She was. Probably still is."

"I...I am?" Natalie stumbled. "Did she tell you?"

"Yes. The morning we left, she came into the gravity room just as I was starting to train, and...well you probably won't like this, but she started to hit on me." Trunks explained. Natalie didn't seem to react one way or another to that statement. She just focused and listened as Trunks continued. "And when I resisted, she did something to my short-term memory that made me forget what she had done. However, I don't know whether it's because of the time shift or what, but I started to regain those memories."

"Yes, so then what?" Natalie asked.

"Well she had told me that she was more or less angry because she was in love with him, but you were the one he cared for." Trunks continued. "My memory is still foggy, but I do remember that scene in which she told me."

Natalie was silent. Ceres, her guardian, and her friend, was in love with the same person who killed innocent people and even possibly impregnated her against her will. If Ceres had loved him, he must have been a totally different person on Vela. She struggled to remember, but it was useless.

"Trunks, I wish I could remember." Natalie said softly. "I just want to be able to look back on those memories. I don't know where they went."

"I don't either Natalie." Trunks said. "I'm sorry, I wish I could help."

"Tell me what happened, when you came to...well save me." She said, blushing slightly. "How did you do it?"

"Your friends did it." Trunks said. "After you disappeared, --"

"I don't even remember that. I have one cloudy memory of waking up and seeing a shadow hover over me, and everything was dark." Natalie interrupted.

"Hours after you were gone, those three, as if they were on cue, just showed up. They explained what had happened, a concept which kaasan had already elaborated on, to some extent." Trunks explained. "They told us that we would have to travel back in time, to the day you were killed on Vela, and something like record Hermes' energy output and then return to the present to trace it. I'm not sure about all of the calculations and decisions made there, I just know that Ceres and Sirius did that part."

"You went to Vela?" Natalie asked, her eyes widening slightly. Trunks nodded.

"You should have seen it. Well, indirectly you did. But you know what I mean, right?" he asked. "It was a lot like Earth. But, the population was more advanced, technology was far greater, and even the common people had a power level of at least 5 thousand."

"So did you see any...people?" Natalie asked. Trunks could tell that she was hinting.

"Lots." Trunks answered. "I remember that the first person we saw was Orion."

"Who else?" Natalie asked.

"We saw your parents, your three guardians in their younger forms, and we even saw you as princess Carina. Believe me, that was weird." Trunks said, smiling. "And we ran into you in one of the hallways in the castle, and you introduced yourself, and you asked me what my name was. I said it was Kakarotto."

Natalie giggled. "Tell me more."

"We were sneaking around everywhere at first, petrified that we would be caught by the guards, or even your parents. But, as luck would have it, we ran into you and Orion." Trunks said.

"Orion was there?" Natalie asked, looking at him strangely. "Why?"

"Don't you know this, even from what he told you when he came to earth? You two were basically going to end up married. When we went, you weren't even engaged, but it was evident that you would have been." Trunks replied. Natalie made a face. She obviously didn't like that idea. "Well if you think that's bad, try this. There was a party that night, and we all went because we had to keep ourselves in the same general vicinity as you were, because we had to be prepared when Hermes would strike. Well, the girls all had escorts. I assume you know who yours was."

"Yeah, yeah." Natalie said. "I know all about how we were supposed to be a 'couple'. Ceres told me, actually."

"You two were close, Nat." Trunks said. "I'm glad Goten and Sirius were there, because there was more than one occasion in which I almost lost it. It was a close call."

"What happened next?" she asked, her eyes filled with the curiosity of a child.

"Well..." Trunks said, pausing. "That would be the part where everyone dies."

"Everyone??" she cried.

"Okay, okay. Let me explain it. You and Orion, for whatever reason, left the party early. Just minutes after you did, there was a bright flash of light and everyone inside the room panicked. It turns out that Hermes had taken the opportunity while you were alone, or almost, to...kill." Trunks said, trying to spit out the last few words. "The five of us all ran out and saw it. It wasn't something you see every day. You'll never believe what Orion did."

"What, did he go ballistic and kill everyone?" Natalie asked.

"No." Trunks said. "He cried."

Natalie's jaw dropped open. "You lie." She said. "There is no way in hell."

"I swear. You can ask any of the others. We all saw it." Trunks said. "After that, Hermes started to go crazy. He killed your father and attempted to kill the younger guardians as they escaped. After we left, he ended up blowing the planet to pieces."

"Oh man." Natalie said, stunned. "That's awful. God, it's...I don't know what to say."

"So then we escaped in a Sidra-jin space pod and returned to the future and found Hermes' base, or what we thought to be his base, on the moon of Vela," Trunks said, "which apparently survived the explosion. When we landed on the moon, Andromeda I think it was called, we searched for some kind of physical structure, but there was nothing. It was so weird, because we could sense the power from somewhere on the moon, but none of us could figure out where it was coming from. I'll never forget that feeling. That energy...it was the kind that made your hairs stand on end. We were five people on the desolate, barren moon. There was nothing around, except for that energy."

"I remember that energy." Natalie whispered. "I remember the feeling it gave me when he attacked me with that black light."

"We were all sucked into this void, and we ended up in that large room. I think it was all one room. Either that or several rooms joined together. The next thing I know, the Saiya-jins, Goten, me, and Sirius, we all had tails. We didn't even know Sirius was a Saiya-jin until then." Trunks continued. "Then we saw Hermes. That's how it started."

"I can't believe you remember all that, and I remember nothing." Natalie complained.

"You weren't in control of your body for most of the time we were there." Trunks said. "In the very beginning you were, but Hermes changed you. He took away your conscious free will. The only reason you lived was because he preserved your life energy in some kind of marble thing. Orion had one too."

"Trunks, what happened to Orion?" Natalie asked, sitting straight up.

"What do you mean? He died." Trunks replied.

"But so did you, temporarily, as did the others. If you came back, then why didn't he? Or didn't he?" Natalie said. Trunks looked at her. She was right in the logic of it.

"But we don't sense him." Trunks said.

"He might be on another planet. Who knows." Natalie countered. "Why did he die?"

"Well basically Hermes killed him and took over his body, and then you killed him in that form. The black hole finished off whatever remained of him. Now that was not something you would want to see." Trunks said.

"I am worried now." Natalie said. "He could still very well be alive. And if he is, what would his motives be? Would he remember anything?"

"I'm not sure, Nat. Nobody can be sure." Trunks answered. "It's best not to worry. If he does come back, which would make three times, I don't think he would be too much of a threat."

"That's not what I'm worried about." Natalie said. "Not too much. I'm worried because if he does return, what will we do? We can't kill him. From what you tell me he was one of the good guys on Vela."

"Well yes." Trunks said. "But if he comes back one of the bad ones-"

"I don't think he will." Natalie said. "His father made him that way. Orion, in a sense, must have been brainwashed as well before he came to Earth. That's the only reasonable explanation to that. If he were to come back for the third time, not of his father's doing, he would not retain that evil."

"Nat how on Earth do you figure that?" Trunks asked.

"I just know it." She replied. "It's logical, Trunks. It's not a hard concept. I'm still curious to what his motives would be. Would he still be looking for me, or would he assume I was dead? If he did, and he eventually found his way to Earth, what would we do?"

"Natalie stop worrying over this." Trunks said. "We can do that when the time comes. Right now, we worry about the present and not so distant future."

"You know what I find weirdest out of all of this?" Natalie asked.

"What's that?" Trunks replied.

"I remember them...Sirius, Ceres, Reena. I remember them as if I had always known them, which I did, but without memories, it doesn't seem to make sense." She described. "When I woke up yesterday, on that beach, it was just like I knew, without having to say anything. I even knew that Sirius was my brother. I just knew all of them that instant."

"That is pretty weird." Trunks commented.

"I know."

"You know what?"

"What?"

"We've been in here for over 20 minutes."

"I know that."

"Don't you want to go see kaasan?"

"Later, I will."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive. Thank you for talking to me Trunks."

"Any time, Nat-chan."