<There!> He could sense his prey’s distinctive ki-signature, relaxed and unwary.  Stealthily, he crept towards his careless opponent preparing to strike -

"Aaaiieee!"

A swift tickle at the ribs sent Goten shrieking into the sky with a shudder.  After several deep breaths he floated back down to the ground, to stand with his arms folded across his chest.  He glared down at his assailant.  Trunks was rolling around on the ground, howling with laughter.

"That wasn’t funny, Trunks!" Goten told him crossly, his normally smiling face turned upside down into a dark scowl.

"Oh, yes it was!"  Trunks was still laughing.  "You should have heard yourself scream!  You sounded like a little girl!"

"I am not a little girl!"  Goten shouted, outraged, before leaping at Trunks with his fists ready to do battle.

The previously quiet and peaceful countryside became a temporary war zone as the two young half-Saiyajin tumbled around the campsite, a whirlwind of arms and legs.

After a few minutes even the remarkable energy of the two powerful boys started to wane, and they came to a giggling halt over the remains of their tent, having thoroughly enjoyed their impromptu sparring session.

"Ooops," Trunks commented when he noticed what was beneath them.  "Looks like we’re sleeping in the open tonight."

"But it’ll be cold!"  Goten grumbled.

Trunks rolled his eyes.  "It’s not that cold!  And besides, we can have a campfire!"

"But I didn’t bring any matches, did you?"  Goten worried.

"We can use our ki, baka!"

A quick race around under the nearby trees brought them a decent-sized bundle of firewood, just as the sun was setting.  They swiftly formed two piles, one which Trunks lit with a spark of power, and the other, larger pile, ready to feed the first.

"That should probably last the night," Trunks declared after examining the second pile.  He grinned at his younger friend.  "Good thing, too - you’d probably be too scared to go further into the trees in the dark!"

"No I wouldn’t!"  Goten didn’t budge from his seat in front of the warm, friendly fire.

Goten still had several misgivings about camping out without anyone else.  Every other time they had at least had Gohan with them, and he had known that his brother could handle absolutely any situation that might have come up.  However, on this occasion his brother’s comforting presence was missing; and thanks to Trunks’ guile neither of their families really knew where they were, both expecting them to be with the others.

He gazed determinedly into the flickering flames, desperately ignoring the dancing shadows that lurked at the edges of his vision.  <Trunks would laugh at me if he found out I was scared…>  He glanced out of the corner of his eye at his friend.  Trunks was feeding small twigs and leaves into the fire with a nonchalant smile on his face - while his eyes were darting around the edges of the clearing they were using for a campsite.  Goten grinned to himself.  <Or maybe not!>

"What are you smiling about, baka?"

"Nothing."

Trunks’ smile turned slightly malicious.  "So you’re obviously not worried about the man-eating bears."

"Man-eating bears?"  Goten blinked, before scowling.  "You’re making that up!"  he accused.

Trunks smirked.  "Am I?  Then what about the zombies that rise up out of the old burial ground near here after dark, to prey on little boys?"

"There isn’t any old burial ground!"

"It’s so old it’s been forgotten by most people."  Trunks leaned in closer towards Goten, so that their noses almost touched.  "And the zombies can smell the scent of fear - it brings them running!  So you better not be afraid, Goten!"

"I’m not afraid!"  Goten’s voice had risen an octave.

"That’s nice to hear,"  a strange voice commented, as a hand was placed on one shoulder of each of the two boys.

They froze, their huge eyes glued to one another’s, neither daring to turn their heads to see the zombie that had come to eat them up…

The ‘zombie’ laughed gently.

They two boys blinked at each other.

"You’re scaring them, baka!"  Another stranger.  Another zombie?

<Can’t be!  I made them up!>

Trunks turned his head, ever so slowly, to meet a pair of smiling black eyes.  Perfectly ordinary eyes.  He heaved a small sigh of relief.  Beyond the dark-eyed man was another figure, wrapped in shadows, but still distinctly human…

"Who are you?  And why’d you scare us like that?!"

Another chuckle.  Both boys scowled.  The stranger smothered the sounds of his mirth in the face of their disapproval, but his amusement was still evident in his eyes, along with touches of some other, sadder emotion...  He tilted his head, considering their questions.

"You seemed to be doing a pretty good job of scaring each other silly without me," he told them with a smile.  "And as for who I am - well, I guess you could call me a cousin, of sorts."

"A cousin?"

"Whose cousin?"

Both boys studied the stranger’s appearance.  <He does kinda look like Niichan…>

"Well you’re both part-Saiyajin.  So am I."

"Really?"

"Really!"  A grin, and a wink.  "But you have to keep it a secret!  You can’t let your families know about us."  He nodded back over his shoulder at his shadowy companion.  A snort of derision was barely audible over the crackling of the fire.

Trunks and Goten looked at their ‘Saiyajin cousin’ with deep suspicion.

"What’s in it for us?"  Trunks demanded.

"What’s in it for you?"  their ‘cousin’ repeated, raising one eyebrow.  "What do you mean?"

"I mean, we only have your word that you’re Saiyajin…"

"And you might want to do something bad…"

"So we should really tell our families…"

"So either you give us one good reason why we shouldn’t …"

"Or we will!"

The duet came to a conclusion, and the stranger blinked bemusedly.

"I don’t suppose you rehearsed that?"  He shook his head, and laughed once more.  "You want me to prove I’m a Saiyajin?"

The boys exchanged glances, then nodded together.

The stranger smiled.

"All right, then.  Can either of you go Super Saiyajin?"

"No,"  Trunks frowned.  "But Tousan and Gohan-san can!  So you’d better not try anything!"

Another laugh.  "If I really wanted to ‘try anything’ I doubt either of them could stop me in time…"  A low hissing sound came from the direction of his companion.  He glanced back over his shoulder, shaking his head slightly in a form of unspoken apology.  "But I’m not going to ‘try anything’.  What I am going to do is transform into a Super Saiyajin."

"Like Niichan?"

"Hai, like Niichan," the stranger confirmed with a mysterious smile.  "Watch."

He floated up, above and away from them, and began his transformation.  They struggled briefly against the air currents that arose from the sudden surge in his ki.  In a matter of seconds hair that had been black as midnight burned golden, and dark eyes now glowed aquamarine…  The ‘stranger’ was indeed a Super Saiyajin.

"Believe me now?"  The soft voice echoed through the very earth they were standing on, as the Super Saiyajin lowered himself back down to the ground.  Both boys nodded solemnly.

"But we’re still going to tell," Trunks informed him.  "Unless…"

"Unless…?"  He prompted him, with a smile.

"Unless you teach us how to go Super Saiyajin!"  Trunks concluded smugly.

The stranger smiled once more.

"Why should I?  In fact, I don’t know if I could teach you…"  He folded his arms over his chest, contemplating.  "It takes a lot of hard work to achieve that level of power and control…"

"We can do it!"  The reply came in chorus.

Still the strange Saiyajin hesitated…

"We have to learn!  What if somebody bad came along while Niichan and Vegeta were away?  We’d have to fight them ourselves, and it would be a lot better if we were Super Saiyajin…"  Goten trailed off.  They still didn’t know much about this strange ‘cousin’ of theirs…  <Like what he’s here for…  He might be bad, after all...>

But the stranger simply nodded sadly.  "Hai," he murmured, half to himself, half to his ghostly companion.  "It would be better…"  He looked deep into the eyes of each boy, so full of the promise of life that comes with youth…

"All right.  I’ll teach you."

The boys broke into delighted cheering.

"Starting now!"

Most of the night was passed in lessons for the two young Saiyajin, both physical and mental sparring, given by their ‘cousin’.  Their ‘cousin’s’ shadowed companion lurked ever near, but never close enough to the trio for the boys to identify the person wrapped within them.  Eventually the children fell into an exhausted sleep; when they woke, their ‘cousin’ was nowhere to be seen.

"He said he would teach us how to become Super Saiyajin!"  Goten complained.  "Now he’s gone, we’ll never learn…"

"We could ask Gohan or Tousan…"  Trunks suggested, unenthusiastically.

"Niichan’s always so busy studying…"

"And I’d rather surprise Tousan…"

They gazed at each other, their cause momentarily lost.  Trunks shrugged his shoulders, and set his expression to one of fixed determination.

"Fine!  We’ll teach ourselves!"

"How?!"

"You were listening last night - he said emotion is the key.  We just have to want it really badly.  The rest is just sparring to get our strength and power levels up.  We can do that ourselves!"

Goten considered this, blinking.  "Uhn!" he agreed, then grinned.  "Want to start now?"

Trunks grinned back at him.  "Uh huh!  There’ll be no stopping us now!"

In the blink of an eye, the two boys were joined in earnest battle once more.

They were not unobserved.

"No stopping them indeed.  No wonder they were such brats in that world."

"We have no way of knowing if they became them."

"I bet you they did.  You shouldn’t have encouraged them."

"No harm done - and maybe a little good…"

"Maybe…  Or maybe not…  The possibilities are endless."

"And we just created a few more.  Don’t worry about it."

"Somebody has to - you sure don’t!"

A grin.  "You worry enough for both of us, Trunks."

A scowl.  "Just hand me the damn dimensional transporter, Goten."

A flash of green light, and all that remained was a breath of wind blowing over two young boys with a future of possibilities opening up before them.