We'll Never Feel Bad Anymore

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 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.