Like his mother, Trunks stayed awake into the wee hours of the night working on whatever project was at hand. He was a young man composed of frenetic energy, with a streak of stubbornness and arrogance strikingly similar to his father’s; at times, his ambition clouded his vision, causing him to easily dismiss experiments and to work himself into a frenzy. Yet he kept most of these negative energies within, and although they would sometimes burst forth at random and disappear again, he stored them for the next fighting tournament. In addition, he and Vegeta shared a keen sense of their surroundings, and perceived what others did not. So, when Trunks heard his mother’s footsteps through the house that night, heard the door close, heard their tiny whisperings, he knew something was amiss.

He saw his mother’s files all in order among the chaos of the lab, where various tubes and wires and other instruments lay strewn about the crisp metallic floor. Frowning as he stepped through his own mess, he made his way over to the table and plucked a sticky-note off the top file; it read nuclear energy creation, use, and management. He smirked. Capsule Corp., against most protocols, was heading into weaponry. At least it would be lucrative.

Putting the sticky-note back, he left the lab and traveled over to the kitchen. The house was barely lit, shadows consuming most intelligible shapes. The space between the walls in the hallway seemed to shrink, and he suddenly felt claustrophobic, like he was not supposed to be here, some kind of trespasser. He laughed it off, understanding it was just his own paranoia-influenced fear; his life, like everyone else in the Briefs family, had always been a tense mess, somehow defying all odds and functioning correctly. Years of fighting (both physically and verbally), things unsaid, things that shouldn’t have been said, jealousy, and a multitude of other problems produced a seemingly stable, level-headed young man. His sister was well-off as well, he mused; she was smart, even if incredibly annoying and spoiled. Eventually, with a push or two, she would step onto the right path.

Exiting the hallway, he reached the kitchen and opened the refrigerator; he grabbed the carton of milk and drank some down, enjoying the chilling sensation in his throat. He placed it back into the fridge and let the heavy door close on its own. He then walked over to the kitchen table, standing in front of it and the light that hung above it, and craned his neck to the side. He slowed his breathing, closed his eyes, trying to be as quiet as possible, for he wanted to hear. The whisperings were soft and sounded like birds twittering in some far-away place, but eaves-dropping was a trick of Trunks’, and not many knew about it. He had recognized a difference in the air that night; it felt heavier, laden with something important that he just could not grasp. Irritated, he stepped lightly, half in the range of the light and half out, facial muscles held tightly in a deep frown.

Snippets entered his ears and fled again.

“She was astoundingÖ” His father’s voice, extremely muffled but still strong. “Purely driven by desiresÖDo you understand?”

Then, his mother spoke. “Well, yes and noÖplease, tell me moreÖ”

Trunks’ expression changed from intense curiosity to sudden disgust. “Oh, that kind of talk,” he whispered to himself. Sometimes this eaves-dropping ability gave him too much information.

He left the kitchen and went to his room across the house, through hallways and the living room, passed the door to Bra’s room and down another hallway, where his room waited at the end. The house was huge, he realized, and it seemed entirely too large in the dark. Opening the door to his room, he walked in and closed it behind him. He flipped a switch on the wall and the room was immediately illuminated, and the unrealized tension that had gripped his chest earlier dissipated in a flash. The walls were decorated with posters of things loved in the past; he didn’t have the heart to take them down. There was a disorganized desk nearby his futon, and dirty clothes and half-finished assignments on the floor. He sat down on the mattress, rubbing his eyes in tiredness, and allowed disappointment to seep out of him.

“I thought they might be talking about something interesting,” he said, to no one in particular. He had a habit of talking to himself; being an only child for so long instilled it in him. “Lately, they haven’t talked much at all. Nothing to know, I guess.” He smiled at his own penchant for having information that others did not. Some things that Goten had said about his mother while venting would have caused his father to guffaw and his mother to blush. Imagining his father laughing like a fool, Trunks smiled more and covered his mouth. He was not sure if they knew he was awake as well.

He was also not sure if they knew about his little secret hobby, either. When he had been rummaging through his grandfather’s experiment files one day, and Bulma had returned early from the office, he had told her that he was not hunting for information, but just had come across it. Bulma had chastised him severely and told him to never do it again, a command he never obeyed. Instead, he did it more stealthily, with sneaky methods he knew both of his parents would disapprove of, but, in full truth, he did not care. For some reason beyond his comprehension, he needed to know about other people, about their daily happenings, about what they kept stowed away in cabinets with locks and no keys. He thought it to be some compulsion, probably inherited, although from whom he had no idea.