The KidVegeta Anthology/We'll Never Feel Bad Anymore

I had long wanted to write a story about Future Trunks, even before the creation of Things Were Better Then. I had had various ideas of what to do (some of which were done in Bitterly Bothered Brother), but one thing we never get to see in canon is how Future Trunks functions after returning to the future. It's a bleak future he's returning to, so it's almost a punishment as opposed to where the Z Fighters end up after Cell. There is no bringing back Future Trunks, Future Goku, etc (since, for some reason, Future Trunks doesn't seem to want to use the Namekian dragon balls, which exist even in the future timeline). At one time, my idealized story would be about Future Trunks both dealing with his feelings of isolation and pain in the wounded future while also dealing with Babidi and Future Buu and stuff like that. I ultimately abandoned such a project when I realized I just didn't have the motivation to write about such a story.

Still, the idea of Future Trunks dealing with pain and isolation intrigued me. I knew it would be a short story, which was all I wanted to devote to Future Trunks. I wanted to just capture a snapshot of his life, as opposed to doing an expansive story about him, because I feel like his character works better like that (it's part of the reason why I didn't end up writing the longer story, too).



The above picture shows a very early character list for TWBT. Notice how Future Trunks is in the seventh position, aligned with Say It Ain't So. This was because I felt like his story would be one of intense pain and emotion at that time. However, I soon found better characters for story 7 (both Kuriza and Tien would have worked better than Future Trunks, in my opinion), and Future Trunks was pushed back to the sixth position, to align with Surf Wax America. I didn't ever have much of an idea for what to do for this song, both because "Surf Wax America" is my least favorite song on the Blue Album (and thus, the one I like listening to the least and don't really like to speculate about theme-wise as much as I do with the other songs). I wasn't entirely sure what to do with the plot, either.

What basically happened is I used weezerpedia to investigate the song's themes and then use what Rivers Cuomo intended with the song with what I also got out of it. The stuff about hedonism is certainly something I've known about this song for several years, and that was my main focus.

I got another idea shortly before I wrote this story - what if I only hint at Future Trunks' emotional state and what he's going through? One thing I've noticed about my stories is that I often have very emotionally-charged text, and I was a little tired of doing that for every story, as not only was it emotionally draining for me, but it made many of the stories uniform in that way. So what I did with We'll Never Feel Bad Anymore was, with only one or two exceptions, not say what Future Trunks was feeling emotionally. His emotional state was to be hinted at through symbols or metaphors or contrasts with others. In general, I try to do a mixture of this and emotionally-charged text in the story, but I thought it would be fun to go in one complete direction for this story. It was a new challenge, of course, and I like new challenges.



The above picture shows my early list for this story's theme colors. I settled on white initially, but after thinking it over, I thought white worked with story one better, so I switched it to yellow. Yellow is certainly a better color for a song about hedonism - that was a primary consideration in me picking yellow. Also, I interchange the color gold with yellow often in this song and that is no accident. I also consider gold a theme color; basically, gold/yellow are so close in color that they both work here.



The above picture shows that I had narrowed down the colors significantly by this point. Gold and yellow were separated at this point, but I would later combine them.



The above picture shows the finalized theme colors for all ten songs (yellow/gold ultimately was the theme color for this story but I didn't feel the need to specify both of them there, as yellow/gold are basically the same color).

Now as to why I chose yellow/gold, the simple answer is that color works best with the idea of hedonism. "Surf Wax America" is a surfing song, and the idea of a sunny beach locale instantly comes to mind while listening to it. That is why I originally thought white would work, but yellow works even better for such an image.

Now onto the writing process. I took a several week hiatus from TWBT after completing Suicide Missionary, for I wasn't sure what to do about this story at first. After coming up with some of the vague plot ideas mentioned above, I just sat down and wrote the story. Almost all of it was improvised on the spot. I began writing at 12:12 am on May 3, 2015 and finished the first draft at 1:20 am. I then edited the story from 1:20 am to 2:51 am. Once I was done editing, I posted the story.

I remember writing this story from start to end, and it wasn't as smooth a process as it was with other Things Were Better Then stories. The editing process in particular took an hour and a half - longer than it took me to write the first draft of the story. I remember, after writing this story, I was convinced that it was the worst in Things Were Better Then, of the seven written at the time. I'm not sure if it actually is; we'll find out below. But I don't have good memories of the writing process because of that. It took me a long time to write, and overall, I thought it was okay, but nowhere near the exceptional quality of Suicide Missionary. Part of the reason for this was not having Future Trunks emote openly - an interesting thing to do, but not something I particularly enjoyed doing. For that reason, this story seemed more like a test than an actual story. But we'll see in the endnotes below if I still think that.

Story
This story's theme is Surf Wax America.

The sun was tucked away behind a cushion of rain and golden light falling light and fast. It was hotter out than Trunks had expected, leading him to remove his shirt as he trained. The rain was a warm rain, a summer’s rain, and it coated his body, running down his face and chest as he worked his muscles and moved about with superhuman speed. It was quiet, windless, save for the low beat of falling water. Trunks darted about the grassy summit of a hill overlooking a ruined city. There he trained alone while the sun rose higher and higher into the welcoming sky.

Trunks spent the greater part of the morning training without pause. Finally, he collapsed to his hands and knees in the grass, vicious breaths exploding from his heaving chest. He looked up at the half-destroyed city ahead of him when he heard a noise coming from his cream-colored training bag. With a quizzical look on his face, Trunks stood up and walked over to the bag before plucking his phone out of one of the pouches. Raising the device to his left ear, he spoke:

“Hello?”

“Trunks!” the voice replied gleefully. “I’m glad you’re up. Are you coming to the party?”

“Huh?” he replied. “What party?”

“The one we talked about yesterday. You know, the celebration for you defeating the androids! Gosh, Trunks, you’re such an airhead sometimes!”

Trunks’ face went red. “Uh… okay mom. Sure, I’ll be there. Whatever you want.”

“Don’t forget, it’s at the beach, and it’s about to start! Hurry down as fast as you can!”

The half-Saiyan hung up and bowed his head. “Yeah, celebration… but Gohan, father, and Goku are still dead. And they’re not coming back.”

He returned to his training until the yellow ball of fire coloring the empyrean air reached the summit of the sky. The day grew hotter, even as the rain continued to fall. It was finally summer, Trunks knew. At noon, the young warrior stopped his training, stretched his muscles, and changed his clothes. Then, sighing, he glanced down at the city and the expanse of sea beyond – the aqua-toned water was so clean it looked almost translucent save for where it foamed and formed great white waves. Trunks thought he could see small figures surfing out there, and there were plumes of dark barbeque smoke rising from the white-yellow sands of the beach. Trunks’ stomach growled. He shook his head, slung his bag over his back and made his way into the city.

It had been sacked by the androids, but the buildings’ wounds were old wounds, more akin to scabs than bleeding cuts. Ever since Trunks had killed 17 and 18, people had poured back into the town. Every night he counted more lights on in the houses.

Making his way through a back alley filled with scurrying rats and decomposing garbage, Trunks caught sight of something dark moving ahead of him, but it was gone before he could tell what it was. He kicked a ruptured garbage bag out of the way, causing a mass of scavenging gulls and grey-feathered seabirds to take flight. Then, in their place, a blond-haired woman stepped forward. Her face was ravaged from drugs; Trunks could see her bones poking out beneath pale flesh. The woman wore far too much makeup, which was smearing in the rain. Her clothes were skimpy, revealing, like air. She stared at him with big blank eyes, bloodshot and old.

“Hey,” she said, stepping forward.

Trunks stepped back awkwardly. “H-hey…”

The woman smiled. “You’re cute. I bet you get lots of girls, huh?” Trunks shook his head. “No? Oh. Well, like what you see?” She twirled around, showing Trunks her full package. “You can have it if you want. It won’t cost you much.”

“Oh…” Trunks said, searching for the words to say. “I-I, uh… no thanks. I don’t… don’t want…”

“Shhh…” the woman replied, inching closing to Trunks. “Don’t worry boy, it’s okay. You don’t have to get all flustered. What’s a few zeni for a little fun?”

Trunks took another step back and scratched the back of his head. “No, sorry, please. I’m not interested.”

The woman wasn’t looking at Trunks; her eyes wandered off the path behind him. “What?!” Her voice was an echo, her surprise as forced as her appearance. “You don’t think I’m pretty?”

She began to sob, but Trunks could not tell if she really was crying or if she was merely using the rain to her advantage.

“H-hey…” he replied, stepping forward and grasping onto the woman’s shoulders as she lurched forward in pure hysteria. “Whoa… calm down, I didn’t mean to…” Trunks began.

Though the young man tried to console the wailing woman, she refused to give in, to say anything. Her sobbing was endless, like a torrent pouring out of a broken dam. Trunks didn’t know what was going on. But he didn’t need to. For as Trunks realized a bit too late, she had only been distracting him long enough for a willow-haired man to sneak up behind the boy and thrust a gun into his back.

“Drop it. Drop it! Don’t move!” the man screamed, his voice quivering.

Trunks turned his head ever so slightly to get a look at the man. He was lanky, unshaven, sweating, covered head-to-toe in a black jumper. His eyes were crazed; he was certainly on something. “Whoa man, what are you doing?”

“I’m takin’ all your things, okay?”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“No, you are! I swear, I’ll shoot you if you don’t drop that bag right now! I’m not joking!!”

“Do it!” the woman screamed lustily, jumping away from Trunks, her tears gone, her yellow smile wide and malicious. Trunks noticed how red her lips were, how her head was just slightly misshapen. “Listen to him, kid. You don’t wanna get shot.”

“You’re in this together!” said Trunks, in sudden realization.

“Drop the bag! You have five seconds, man! Five seconds and I shoot!” the mugger screeched.

“Okay, have it your way,” Trunks replied. Trunks dropped the bag.

Suddenly, the half-Saiyan disappeared. As the shock began to register on the two muggers’ faces, Trunks reappeared behind the man, kicked him forward, and then caught his bag with ease. The frail robber skidded forward into a puddle of mud and grime and rotten fruit. He spun over, spitting venom and screaming. “I warned ya, kid!”

He raised his pistol and fired. But Trunks was moving like lightning. The boy shot towards his bag and reached for something inside it. As the bullets buzzed towards him, Trunks spun around and smacked them aside with his sword in hand. The noble blade gleamed silver in the summer rain.

Shock covered the man’s face. He went to shoot, but Trunks knocked the pistol aside with his sword, sending it to the air in little broken fragments. The blond woman began wailing again.

“Look you two, is this really any way to live?” Trunks said angrily. “I mean, the androids were just defeated! For the first time in a long time, you don’t have to live like this. You don’t have to be afraid! Now things can return to how they were! How good they were! We were all in this together, and this is what you’ve become? You’re no better than the androids!” Trunks raised his sword over the man’s head. The boy’s face was flushed again, and a light golden aura was forming around his body. “I didn’t save humankind for people like you!”

“Please… please… let him live! He didn’t do nothin’ to no one!” the woman cried.

The man raised his hands. There was fear on his face, as plain as tapioca pudding. “Please man, don’t do it!”

Trunks stood there with his sword over his head for a while, unsure of what to do. Eventually, he sighed and lowered the weapon. He nodded to the two. “Get out of here. But if I ever see you again, I won’t be so generous.”

The two scampered off like a pair of gerbils, wordless and sniveling, crawling their way over garbage and filth and rotten food. A family of mangey rats cheered them on with impassioned squeals. Soon they were lost in the dark corners of the alleys. Trunks placed his sword back into his bag. He stood there for a moment, looking off into the distance, chewing his lip. Then he raised his head, closed his eyes, and let the warm rainfall wash over him.

“Smoke dope! Smoke dope!!” a Jamaican with a painted clown’s face shouted joyously as he ran across the sweltering sand dunes.

It was hotter than ever, the kind of heat that makes one feel alive. There was music blasting from large, cube-shaped speakers located around the entire beach, so numerous and loud that Trunks couldn’t hear himself think. He made his way over to some benches filled with food and conversing people and found his mother sunbathing.

“Hey mom,” he said, startling her out of her trance.

“Oh hey Trunks,” said Bulma, sitting up. “How long have you been here?”

“Oh, I just got here…” he laughed nervously.

“Typical! You’re just like your father, you know? Time meant nothing to that man! He’d be five minutes late to the new year if he could!”

“Ye-yeah,” Trunks continued to fake-laugh, “sounds like dad. Anyway, I’m going to get something to eat. Have fun sunbathing…”

Bulma sat back down in her chair and closed her eyes. “Just make sure you have some fun too, Trunks. We’re celebrating what you did after all.”

Trunks found himself a chicken kabob and sat down at a bench watching the other people have fun. There was joy on their face, elation, relief. Some were surfing the high waves as the sea foamed like a bottle of beer; others were playing beach volleyball. Trunks watched a girl dive for the ball as it came over the net, her breasts bouncing as she slid into the sand. He tore at the chicken with his teeth.

Next to Trunks were two boys making a contest of eating lemons. Tears streamed down their faces as they sucked on the sour rinds, refusing to blink. This went on for some time until one boy finally blinked when a volleyball hit him in the side of the head. After seeing what happened, the other boy screamed in victory, jumped off the bench, spiked his half-eaten lemon in the sand, and ran off with the speed of an adolescent cheetah.

A man in nothing but swim shorts and jet black sunglasses ran over to Trunks, jumping onto the table and whooping like a drunk Kentucky Wildman. He beat his chest and then gulped down a whole cup of golden beer before smashing the red plastic cup on his forehead and screaming. When he saw Trunks, he started shooting air pistols at the sky.

“Hey Trunks! Trunks, my man, my main man! Yo, yo, yo! Ya wanna go surfin’ with us?!”

Trunks looked perplexed. “Uh… surfing?”

The man laughed. “Yeaaaah, baby! Dude, it’s a riot! I promise. Come on, ya know how ride?!”

“I-I don’t know…”

“Hahaha, that’s okay, I’ll teach ya, dude!”

Trunks shook his head. “This might not be a good idea.”

The man stood up and patted Trunks on the back. “Nah brah! Brah, nah! It’s easy! You do know what fun is, right?!”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then let’s go dude, come on! We’re goin’ surfin’!” The man began skipping through the sand. “We’re goin’ surfin’! We’re goin’ surfin’! Let’s go!! Yeaaaah!!”

The man ran off. Trunks realized he didn’t like that guy’s face. The man couldn’t be older than twenty, which meant he was drinking illegally. He was the classic over-partying college boy. He was tool, no denying that. But it wasn’t Trunks’ place to be the man’s keeper. He stood up, popped his neck, and stepped forward into the sand.

“I wonder what dad would do,” he said, looking up at the weeping sky. “Heh, he’d probably slap that guy across the face and sit back down.” Trunks laughed to himself and began walking towards where the beach met the water ahead. “But I’m not my dad, I guess. And they are celebrating what I did. I guess I should humor them.”

The sun was high in the air, shining its golden rays down on the kinetic sea. The air smelled fresh of salt and sand. People ran by him, laughing, playing, drunken. But as Trunks walked to where the dude with the sunglasses was readying him a surfboard at the water’s edge, the young warrior couldn’t help but feel he was still running from something, even though the androids were dead and gone.

Endnotes


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