Pre-note: This story is labelled as featuring Trunks and Goten, but toward the end, especially from chapter 15 onward, the focus will slightly shift toward Goten and a certain character.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball / Dragonball Z / Dragonball GT. I also don't own the movie you'll get to read about.

Happy reading!

It had been five years since the defeat of Majin Buu, and life had been too peaceful.

Atypical of Saiyan little boys, perhaps thanks to their mixed heritage compounded with their whimsical nature, Trunks and Goten had been lazier than a bear in hibernation. In these times of peace they had grown considerably soft and for far too long they had neglected their training, much to Vegeta's chagrin. On the other hand, Goku, being a carefree and happy-go-lucky person he was, didn't mind it one bit; the boys had done a great job in attempting to save the world, and being eight and seven at the time, that was saying something. He thought they would appreciate a period of rest.

Right after the Buu incident, Bulma and Chichi enrolled their children in Orange Star Elementary School, where Trunks was admitted into second grade and Goten first. Being the son of the most brilliant engineer-scientist, second grade subjects had been a walk in the park for the former and he managed to breeze through them no problem, acing every single test coming his way. The latter, however, wasn't that lucky; at first, he was having difficulties in coping with the overwhelming influx of new information related to the brain instead of brawn, but Gohan had always been there to help him with his studies, and his grades gradually became better and better.

Although they had to restrain their superhuman abilities, school had been fun for the Saiyan kids. They were jesters in their respective classes, everybody loved them, and the teachers were just extremely gullible to pull pranks on. They would get into trouble, of course, and their mothers were no stranger to be called over to the school, but at least along with their fellow students they could get a good laugh. Every lunch break, they would meet up in a secluded place—usually behind the sports hall—and discuss about what to do and whom to make fun of while eating their three capsules' worth of food. Life was good, and without a delusional galactic tyrant, narcissistic insect-like android, or deranged pink magical creature terrorising the universe, it couldn't get any better.

However, now that it had been five years after they first experienced the excitement of school life, the slow life of vacation period was steadily taking its toll on the now preadolescent Trunks and Goten. Don't get the wrong idea, though; they loved holiday because they could go places like they always did when they were still free all year long, but being unable to do anything for two full months was just plain boring. There was nothing to study since materials for the next academic year would only be available after the holiday—besides, Trunks was preparing for his enrolment in Orange Star Middle School, every video game title in their collection had already been beaten, and they would always try their best to keep martial arts training to minimum. They knew they had gotten rusty, but it had been too long since they last made use of their fighting skills they felt there really was no point in carrying on.

"Trunks, I'm bored! Do you have anything interesting to do?" complained Goten. He tossed aside the book he was reading so ardently just moments ago.

"Man, Goten. It doesn't take much to bore you, huh?" replied Trunks, who was sitting across him on the enormous bed. His attention was seemingly locked to something on his laptop screen. "What about the VR console I gave you for your birthday? It has lots of games, right?"

"I've beaten all the games already," the twelve-year-old rubbed the back of his head and produced that sheepish smile exclusive to his family.

His friend was quick to make a comeback, "Heh, no wonder you often flunked your quizzes."

"Hey!" Goten retorted by hurling a pillow to Trunks's direction, which he swiftly dodged, "Note the use of past tense! Now I always ace my quizzes. Besides, Gohan also plays a lot!"

Trunks smirked, put his laptop on the bed, and made yet another comeback, "Yeah, but he was born clever. Not like a certain someone I know."

"Excuse me?"

Goten lunged at Trunks with all his might. Although they had neglected training for a long time, one couldn't disagree that they were still a force to be reckoned with, especially because of the blood of this particular warrior race coursing through their veins. Locked in an even struggle, both boys rolled on the floor; fist met fist, elbow met elbow, and knee met knee, and foot met foot. This would go on and on until someone gained the upper hand, and after ten minutes of tussle, that someone appeared to be Goten. He seized Trunks and had him locked under the weight of his body, his forearm pinning his neck against the floor.

"Hee-hee! You're getting weaker with time, Trunks," he said with a victorious smile.

"Hmm. There goes your guard," Trunks retorted. In a flash, he flipped over and effortlessly reversed the position and smiled smugly. "Look who's talking."

Goten was surprised by the sudden turning of the table. "Hey, not fair! Lemme go!" he shouted while desperately flailing his arms and legs around to liberate himself, but his efforts appeared to be fruitless.

"Not until you give up."

"I won't… give up…" the younger halfling struggled to free himself of Trunks's hold, but suddenly stopped and relaxed himself in seeming disinterestedness. "But I'm bored."

Hearing Goten's remark, Trunks sweatdropped and let his guard down, allowing his hostage to break free. Backing away a good distance from him, Goten snickered, "You fell for it! You should've been able to see through me. I win, though I'm really bored."

The latter looked shocked for having tricked by his cunning friend. He had forgotten about the tricks Goten always seemed to have up his sleeves. Nevertheless, he actually felt exactly the same and couldn't agree more to him. He sighed in genuine lack of excitement, "Yeah… me too."

They climbed up the bed and returned to what they had been doing previously: Goten continued to read a cooking book full of recipes that made his mouth water in no time, and Trunks resumed the movie he had been watching on his laptop. When the younger boy had had enough of flipping through countless pictures of impeccably prepared food, he approached his friend and joined him in the movie.

"Whatcha watching?" Goten inquired curiously. He was keen to know what kind of movie was capable of keeping Trunks's attention on it for quite a long period of time.

"Just watch," was all Trunks said as he shifted slightly to the left to make room for Goten.

And so they watched together. It was a science-fiction horror movie in which a number of space monsters had infested the protagonist's spaceship. These black intimidating aliens had uncanny abilities such as spitting highly corrosive substance, matching their body temperature to their surroundings much like the Z-fighters could hide their power levels to avoid detection, having a thick exoskeleton impervious to firearms, and being equipped with a strong tail capable of piercing through a spacesuit.

Goten couldn't even stand thirty minutes of the movie because of the gruesome deaths experienced by the unfortunate crews of the doomed spaceship. All the blood and gore proved too much for him to handle, and he screamed like a little girl—much to Trunks's amusement—upon seeing an alien kill a man by piercing his skull with something that looked like another mouth coming out from its mouth. Unable to stand the violence any longer, he returned to the cooking book, but found himself losing his appetite because of the macabre movie and began feeling nauseous, so he curled into foetal position and tried his best to un-see the grisly scenes from earlier.

Seeing his friend cower in fear, Trunks couldn't help jeering at him. "Heh, Goten, considering we've gone through Majin Buu, you're a timid one, arentcha?"

"Hey, watch it!" Goten, who had never liked the idea of being made fun of, retorted with a deadly glare. If looks could kill, he would've killed thousands.

"Whoa, whoa, just kidding," not wanting to involve himself in yet another meaningless scuffle, Trunks apologised as quickly as possible. Goten calmed down in record time, but all that followed was silence with an air of dullness.

The obsidian-eyed boy was struggling to get the visual details of the terrifying alien killing the poor spaceship crew, but to no avail. The black, perpetually salivating monster had imprinted itself in his brain and refused to be displaced, even by force, and whenever Goten tried to steer his mind to other thoughts it just simply homed back to this very creature. Seeing there was no way for a get-around for the time being, he had no choice but to man up and cope with it.

However, he couldn't help musing about the aliens' physical appearance. As far as he could remember, the only aliens he had seen up to this point didn't have such grotesque looks and had been more human-like. Were there numerous races residing in the vast unknowns of space? Did every race look different from each other?

"Piccolo is also from outer space… how come he doesn't look like them?" Goten's thought escaped through his mouth.

Hearing this, Trunks shuddered. He couldn't imagine the familiar green man being black and having elongated skull with another mouth inside his mouth; that would simply be horrible. "Well, our dads are from outer space, too, and they don't look like them," he replied, gaining a nervous chuckle from his younger counterpart. "And so are Kibito Kai and Old Kai. They're from outer space too, you know… oh!" suddenly his eyes gleamed in excitement, "Hey, I wanna see what Frieza looked like!"

Goten was surprised at Trunks's sudden desire. It was true that they had never seen Frieza before; they had heard stories about him from others, but they weren't satisfied enough with their description of him. Although the idea of seeing what Frieza looked like seemed appealing for Goten, he couldn't immediately come out with any way to fulfil that wish.

"But how?" he cocked his head to the left and a furrow formed between his eyebrows, "I mean, he's dead now, and somehow there are no videos or pictures of him. I thought the internet was a place where you can find absolutely anything."

Trunks smirked. "Well, we can't see him on the screen, alright…" he said knowingly. Goten had somehow expected it; his best friend wouldn't come out with an idea if he hadn't thought of a means to achieve it, one way or another. "But that means we'll just have to see the live broadcast."

Goten caught Trunks's flow and started hopping in anticipation. He was extremely thrilled and practically beaming with excitement. "Really, Trunks? Wowee, this should be fun!"

"Yup, Goten," replied Trunks as he spread his arms wide in hopes of adding a dramatic value to his words, "Tonight, we're going to the past."

Post-Note: A nameless reviewer informed me that 5 years after Majin Buu Trunks and Goten would be in middle school instead of elementary. That's correct. In this story, they were enrolled in elementary school right after the Buu saga, when they were 8 and 7. Paragraphs two to four were set during that time. Hopefully this clears the confusion, and thanks for pointing it out :)