The wheels of the cart he had chosen were obviously broken. He tried to swivel it unobtrusively into the grains A section, placing both hands firmly on the bright green handle. As determinedly as he thinned his lips, though, it still insisted in swerving left and right and bumping along stubbornly. Lightning quick, he darted out a hand to save several boxes of Super White washing liquid that threatened to bury him under a mound of ultra chlorine thanks to their close encounter with the cart's front.
He sighed as he straightened them once again into a unified whole. Years of honing his skills as a warrior, and here he was getting beaten by a shopping cart and washing liquid.
A ways off, his mother checked her shopping list, apparently unaware of his plight. She murmured to herself about corn and sausage and people who stormed into what was probably the last functioning supermarket on earth with no consideration for future buyers. Every now and then she would reach back without looking and drop whatever she had picked up into the cart.
Trunks pushed it forward hastily to save a jar of sauce from certain, messy death.
Okaasan should really check to see if the shopping cart IS there, every now and then. I can just see how she'll react if I fail to catch a jar of something and it ends up all over me and the floor...
He shook his head in amusement as his mother dropped in two cans of beef and motioned for him to follow her into the next aisle. She really is something.
Stopping for a while, he let his gaze travel across the expanse of the supermarket. It was indeed one of the very few left. Not that it had survived unscathed, if indeed anything on earth had. It had been almost six months since he had destroyed the Jinzouningen, and reconstruction was painfully slow. The survivors lacked the materials needed to construct even modest shelters. So surviving foundations such as the Capsule Corporation Headquarters and the very supermarket he was in were forced to either go unrepaired or repair their structures by cannibalizing themselves. A woman in aisle D had told him that this supermarket was repairing its canned food sections by using the material from the frozen meat rooms. There was no use for them now, with no meat to speak of. The population survived principally on canned food, and coupons were the shopping norm, given the ravages that the Jinzouningen's attacks had worked on the economy. Soon, even the canned foods would run out, with no more companies to produce them...
Trunks shook his head to clear it. He had destroyed the Jinzouningen. Humanity was safe now. And he'd see to it that they carried on. Somehow...
He let his mind occupy itself with the task of choosing some extra items so that he wouldn't have to think too much about the things he could not solve, and which made him feel worthless and inadequate.
He added several cans of potted meat and corn to their cart. Not really because he liked them, but because he felt it was time for something new. His mother was a fair enough shopper, buying what he liked as well as for herself, but she generally bought the same things over and over; it was up to him to improvise. Today he put an even greater effort into it, hoping that the decision making process would help him clear his mind.
And it did, to a certain degree. Once satisfied with the hearty selection of vegetables he had chosen, he wrestled his car into aisle B, hoping his mother wouldn't be too cross at his tardiness.
In all, it took them about 65 minutes to finish shopping.
Battling his car into a decent position in the checkout line, he watched, with his usual amused calm, all worries gone from his mind after a healthy day of shopping, as his mother scrutinized every new item he had picked up. Some clearly met her approval, and she even commented on the meal she'd make of them. Others she frowned upon, wondering, he had no doubt, what in Dende's name they were, and why anyone, let alone her own son, would like them. She merely grinned at the Yama Yo no Peanut Butter Bars, and he felt his mouth stretch into a grin of its own.
Once the items had survived her scrutiny, she began to stick little coupon tags on them. Trunks noticed that, as usual, many items had been chosen just because she had a coupon for them. He was aware that his mother could very well afford all of the items they had chosen, but she preferred to use coupons because the money saved could then be used to aid the survivors of the Jinzouningen's attack.
Watching her, Trunks let his mind wander to what his father might have thought of this, if he could have been here. Vejiita wouldn't have come shopping with them in the first place, but he probably would have commanded that only the best things be bought for him. He could almost hear Goku-san teasing his father about the coupons, and he was sure his father wouldn't have found it at all funny. Still, Trunks recalled that when he had first arrived in the past to destroy Freeza and Cold, his father had been wearing a plain shirt. He had been having a barbecue with Yamcha and his mother. So even Vejiita hadn't been beyond the pull of a peaceful life, as in spite of his immense pride.
Trunks smiled at the memory --one of the few instants, however impeerfectly he had glimpsed it, when his father had not been merely the prince of the Saiyajin but something more akin to almost human.
Startled out of his reverie, he could only offer an embarrassed reply when his mother asked what was so funny.
One day he would tell her what he'd seen in the past. But not now.
For now, he had to ensure that their cart made it through the shopping line.
And then, make sure that their car, which was bigger, smoother, and much more thrilling to drive than an old, broken-down, piece of junk of a shopping cart, made it home.
Home and to dinner.
Trunks sighed. How easy it was to take these things for granted, even after a lifetime of living amid the destruction and fear brought upon them by the Jinzouningen. Looking around him, at the shoppers, at his mother leafing through a months old, outdated magazine, at the garish 1/2 price signs and racks of emergency batteries, he suddenly felt a deep sense of peace. Something so powerful and strangely sublime that it almost took his breath away.
They were alive.
Troubled and scarred, but alive.
It was a wonderful feeling.
"Okaasan?"
"Yes, Trunks?"
"Oh, nothing... Um, we reached the end of the line."
"Well, it's about time. I thought we'd spend our whole lives in this shopping centre."
Trunks only smiled.
Author's Note
This was my first fan fiction, ever. It was originally submitted to Nora Jemison's Dragon Ball Z archives at Miriai's World, way back in October 1996. By then the moniker Team Bonet hadn't been coined yet, and I was described as a "painfully shy" newcomer whom you should be kind to least I run off in abject fear. Lord love me, but that enough time has passed to make me chuckle wryly at all that.
The story, by the by,
was written in one of those journals they make you keep in introductory
English essay writing classes at the Uni. Blue notebook. I still have it.
I thank Ms. Jemison all the way 'til today for taking a chance on my writing,
and bringing me all the way to today.