Disclaimer: How do you know I'm not really Akira Toriyama in disguise? Maybe I DO own DBZ! Ha! Er... *sweats nervously as a pack of angry lawyers begins to circle her like a flock of buzzards* Never mind! I'm not Akira Toriyama, and I don't own DBZ. BACK OFF! AHHH!!! *runs away in terror as the lawyers chase after her*
Chibi Vegeta
(Prologue)
For a moment, the only thing Trunks could see was stars swirling in front of his vision as his father's fist connected with his face with enough power to send him tumbling across the gravity room and crashing into the wall with a bone jarring impact. The eight year old demi-Saiyan slid limply to the floor, watching helplessly as the short man with black-flame hair stalked towards him wearing a look of pure disgust.
"Get up, boy," Vegeta growled unsympathetically. "Or are you too weak to do even that?" Under the Saiyan Prince's mocking eyes, the lavender haired boy struggled to pick himself up off the floor, his body weighed down by the one hundred times Earth's gravity. But it was not to be. His young limbs were too shaky and exhausted to support his weight and he collapsed back to the cool tiles of the floor, a look of utmost shame on his face. "Pathetic," Vegeta snarled, reaching down to pick his son up by the collar of his shirt.
Vegeta stalked over to the exit, still carrying Trunks in one hand, and slapped the release switch that both turned off the gravity and opened the door. The spiky haired prince unceremoniously tossed the battered demi through the door and folded his arms. "You are a disgrace to our people, brat!" he barked, glowering down at the huddled chibi from where he stood. "Get out of my sight, weakling, and do not return until you can at least put up a decent fight!"
Turning on one heel, the arrogant Saiya-jin no Ouji allowed the door to shut behind him with an angry hiss. Thus it was that he didn't see his young son desperately trying to hold back the tears that formed in his crystal blue eyes.
~*~
Trudging despondently through the halls of Capsule Corporation, Trunks eventually found himself walking through the front door of the complex and into the outside world. It just didn't seem to matter to his dad how hard he trained or how strong he got. It was never good enough for the Prince of the Saiyans! Never mind the fact that Trunks was only eight years old and stronger than his dad or any other Saiyan had been at that age!
"Trunks! Hey, Truuunks!" The childish voice of his best friend, Son Goten, startled the moody chibi out of his reverie, his eyes immediately going to the source of the greeting. Zipping in on a golden orange cloud was a seven year old boy with a mass of spiky black hair that stuck out in every direction, waving his arms enthusiastically to catch the older boy's attention. Upon seeing his fellow half-Saiyan, Trunks immediately perked up, waving back as the cloud flew close enough to drop the boy off. "Thanks, Kinto'un! You can go now! I'll call you back when I need you again." Patting the cloud with one hand before allowing it to speed off into the blue sky, Goten turned to his friend with a huge grin plastered on his face. "Trunks, guess what?!"
"What, Goten?" Trunks asked, knowing from his friend's demeanor that it had to be something good. After the scene with his father, he could use something to cheer him up right about now.
"I got the last dragonball!" the spiky haired chibi crowed, holding up an orange ball the size of a baseball in one fist. "Now we can make our wish, Trunks!"
A thrill of excitement ran through the eight year old's veins as he snatched up the glittering orange sphere and performed a little dance of joy. "This is great, Goten! You don't know how much I've been wanting to go to our secret hideout the past couple of days. My dad's been really pissed off ever since that sparring match with your father where he got pounded into the ground." Remembering what Vegeta had said and done in the gravity room, Trunks's shoulders sagged a bit. "He's been taking it out on me every time he sees me, and especially when we train," he sighed, rubbing a developing bruise on one of his arms. "It's even worse 'cause we blew up our hideout by accident, and now I have nowhere to go when I just want to be by myself."
"Gee, Trunks, I'm sorry," Goten sympathized, placing one hand on his friend's shoulder. "But now we have the dragonballs, and we can wish the hide out back!" he chirped with enthusiasm.
"Right!" Grinning from ear to ear, the lavender haired chibi pushed his troubles aside for the moment and ran back inside the house with Goten hot on his tail. "We just have to get the dragonballs we collected out from under my bed, and then it's wish time! Mom's busy working on some invention or other, and dad's still training in the gravity room, so they're not gonna notice when we summon the Dragon. We just have to keep our ki hidden so your dad can't find us when he realizes what we're doing, or else he might stop us before we can make the wish."
Pulling a box out from under his bed, Trunks opened it up to reveal six shining orbs, each with a different number of red stars floating inside them. He tossed in the last ball and watched with awe as the seven magic balls seemed to glow for a moment. "Okay, Goten, lets take the dragonballs outside!"
It barely took a second as the two chibis raced outside with the box of balls, dumping them into the soft green grass before arranging them in what seemed to be a good pattern. Trunks glanced at his best friend, who smiled at him encouragingly, and took a deep breath. "Arise, great dragon, and grant our wishes!" he called out, a vague feeling of nervousness fluttering around in his gut. After all, it wasn't every day that you called on the powers of a wish-granting being who would actually grant those wishes!
The dragonballs glowed a bright white for a moment before a great, scaly green dragon shot out of the center of them, reaching up for miles in a suddenly black sky, then lowered its head to examine the two creatures that had summoned it. Slithering its massive coils against each other, the Eternal Dragon Shenlong rumbled, "YOU HAVE TWO WISHES, MORTALS. SPEAK WISELY, FOR THEY SHALL COME TRUE."
"Shenlong, we wish that our hideout that we accidentally destroyed got restored to the way it was before we blew it up!" Trunks bravely shouted up at intimidating Dragon, refusing to act like a coward in front of his friend.
The dragon's eyes glowed a bright shade of crimson before it spoke again. "IT IS DONE. NAME YOUR SECOND WISH."
Opening his mouth, the eight year old paused and glanced at Goten in confusion. "Goten, we never decided on a second wish," he said, raising an eyebrow as though to ask if the other boy knew what to do.
"Gee, Trunks, what should we wish for?" Goten lifted a hand to scratch the back of his head uncertainly, his eyebrows scrunched down in thought.
After a moment, Trunks bowed his head and kicked at a rock. "Well, sometimes I think it would be nice if I were stronger. Then maybe dad would respect me," he sighed dolefully. "It's not fair, Goten! He treats me like a baby! It's like he doesn't even know what it's like to be a kid! I wish he knew what it was like to be treated like a baby! Then maybe he wouldn't be so-"
"YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED. FARE WELL." With these parting words, the Eternal dragon shone a brilliant white, then vanished as the seven balls shot off in seven different directions. The sky returned to its normal shade of blue, the birds chirped obliviously, squirrels romped playfully in the grass, and two boys gaped in shock at the place where there had once been a giant dragon.
"But," the older boy stammered, "I didn't make a wish."
"Yes, you did, Trunks," Goten corrected, blinking away his surprise. "You said you wished your dad knew what it was like bein' treated like a baby." Pausing to contemplate the implications of this wish, the black haired boy brightened optimistically. "Hey, maybe the wish worked and now Vegeta won't be so mean!"
"You... think so, Goten?" Trunks asked, a spark of hope dancing in his eyes. If it was true, then he couldn't have made a better wish even if he'd tried!
"Come on, let's go find out!" Grinning broadly, the younger demi-Saiyan grabbed his friend's hand and darted off in the direction of the ki that belonged to the proud Prince of the Saiyans.
~*~
With a final grunt of exertion, Vegeta discontinued his pushups and calmly walked over to the gravity controls, wiping a hand across his sweaty brow while turning the five hundred times Earth's gravity off. Stepping out of the gravity room, he grabbed a towel and began to rub the perspiration off his spandex-clad body, a satisfied smirk on his face as he thought on the progress he had made today. Soon he would be able to beat that blasted, no good, third class idiot and prove once and for all who the superior fighter was, thus reclaiming his rightful place as the Prince of all Saiyans.
A sudden wave of dizziness overcame the short prince, causing him to drop the towel and hold his hands to his head. Staggering, he dropped to his knees as the feeling only intensified, distorting his vision and senses. Suddenly, everything seemed... bigger, and the spandex that hugged his body released its grip, no longer clinging to him like a second skin but instead seemed loose and overly large.
"What the hell?" he muttered his bewilderment, collapsing to the floor as his body seemed to lose all its strength, no longer able to support himself in an upright position. Laying there on the floor, he struggled to lift his head and perhaps look around for some clue as to the source of this sudden weakness. All he saw was blue, the same color of his spandex body suit, only there was too much material laying bunched up on the floor and on top of him. Where the hell did that come from? he wondered to himself as he stared at the blue spandex, brow furrowed in thought. And how did it get on top of me without my noticing? Kicking the thing off his body, he weakly crawled out the folds of cloth and onto the bare tile, cursing the fact that even this simple act seemed to require more effort than it should.
Momentarily winded by the physical exertion of freeing himself from the mysterious cloth, Vegeta allowed himself to flop belly down on the floor, grateful that neither his mate nor his son was there to see him in such an undignified position, too weak even to get up off the floor. A wave of exhaustion washed over him and he instinctively rolled onto his side, curling up into a fetal position. He didn't understand why he was so tired all of a sudden. While he had been pushing his body to its limits and he would naturally be feeling some fatigue, it shouldn't be anywhere close to what he was experiencing right now!
The unexpected feel of fur against bare skin drew his attention to the fuzzy brown tail that had wrapped itself around one of his arms, and he suddenly became aware of two things. One, somehow, he was no longer wearing any clothing whatsoever. Two, he had a tail. When did my tail grow back? he silently wondered, staring in utter fascination at the furry appendage as he experimentally uncurled it and waved it in front of his face. On impulse, he reached out with one of his hands to grab the thing, missing by a few inches when the tail flicked away. Determination etched itself on his features and he made another grab for the wayward appendage as it once again waved into his reach. This time he caught it, and he brought it close to his face so he could examine it more closely. For some reason he couldn't explain, it was the most interesting thing in the world and he couldn't help but watch in fascination as the fur parted between his little fingers.
"He's in here, Goten! His ki is really low, but I can still feel him." Vegeta could recognize his son's voice as it drifted to his ears from the hallway. He didn't know whether he should panic or be grateful, since Trunks would now see him lying on the floor like a weakling, but might also be able to figure out what's wrong with him and help remedy the problem.
"What do you think's wrong with him, Trunks?" Cursing inwardly, the prince suddenly realized that the cursed spawn of Kakarot was accompanying his son and so would also witness his humiliation.
"I don't know, Goten," Trunks's disembodied voice replied. "His ki dropped so suddenly, it's like he was in a fight. But there's no one here except him!"
Dropping his tail, Vegeta obeyed the childish desire to run and hide, releasing his tail so he could pull himself to his hands and knees. Crawling seemed to be the only way he could move while under the influence of... whatever it was that was making him so damn weak, so crawl he would. Anything to avoid being seen by the little clone of Kakarot!
Unfortunately for him, it seemed that not only did his condition make him too weak to stand, it also slowed him down to a literal baby's crawl, so he had only managed to travel a few feet before his son and the boy's friend burst into the ante-chamber of the gravity room. Sighing in defeat, the Saiya-jin no Ouji stopped in his tracks and shoved himself in a sitting position to meet whatever fate had in store for him with as much dignity as he could muster. His brow furrowed in puzzlement when he looked up to find the two chibis literally towering over him. How the hell did they get so tall?!
As Goten and Trunks stared down at the naked baby sitting on the floor not far from one of Vegeta's spandex suits, they gulped simultaneously and traded nervous looks. "Uh... Trunks? I think you made a mistake..."
~*~
At this point, I don't know what I'm aiming to get out of this fic. I don't know exactly how funny it will be, and I already know it won't have much in the way of "action." Mostly what I intend to do is torment Vegeta in a fluffy kind of humorous way (that's the best way I can figure to word my intentions). Very little in the way of what I think of as plot, though I doubt it will be completely plotless (I have no idea if I can even WRITE something that's completely devoid of plot.) I guess that I'm writing this fic mostly for my own amusement. Hope you enjoy reading it anyway. ^_^
Questions, comments, quandaries, constructive criticism, suggestions, ideas, praise, etc. always welcome. ^_^