Flash Forward 3: Lunacy
55 Years After the Birth of the Super-Saiyan

He was five when the moon came.

They were ill-prepared for his ferocity in oozaru form. Most did not believe the oozaru form was even possible for the young Prince, if only because he lacked a tail. Others thought his human half would somehow offset the bestial fury inherent in the transformed state. They were sorely mistaken. A series of lightning-fast events happened when the Prince stood at his father's side in the Royal Gardens and looked upon the rising moon for the first time. There was a primordial scream, the unexpected whipping of a newly-grown lilac tail, then the most bizarrely-colored oozaru crouched in the Prince's stead. The King himself was unceremoniously swatted when he tried to force the Prince to regain control. It took the Captain, landing on the Heir's shoulder speaking careful words into his ear, to calm him to a point where he could be restrained. "It's not like we have any continents to spare," he remarked to the King, coldly.

It was not long after that another one of those strange, sotto-voice arguments occurred between the King and the King's Captain. The Heir had gotten used to the near-silent quarrels over the last couple of years, but he was reaching a stage where he was beginning to understand more of what the argument was about, what the difference of opinion was. The Captain would say, "Talk to the boy! Do you want him to find out from someone else?" And the King would snarl back any number of choice imprecations that usually mentioned how close the Captain was to becoming ancient history himself.

If it was important that the King himself tell him, it was already too late. The Prince knew who they were talking about. No one seemed to understand that his hearing was as acute as any other Saiyan's, even as they did not expect him to react with a Saiyan-like ferocity in oozaru form. That was because it was not how The Other One would react. And it was becoming increasingly more obvious, as much as the King did not want to acknowledge it, that he was not like The Other One.

He had little direct knowledge of The Other One, but what he did know was from sources the King would have never considered. Before the Moon came, as tutors and trainers prepared him for the rituals that accompanied the Heir's first transformation, a minor Eastern chieftain among them remarked, "Why bother? He'll just be a complete wuss, too."

"Zenza, hush," hissed another noble.

Since the incident with the Captain's wife and children, the Heir had been very conscious of his position. He was in the habit of ignoring underlings, half out of fear of what his father might do to them. However, her words caught his attention. Turning, he examined the woman. She was on the other side of the room, far enough away that she assumed, as too many did, that he couldn't hear her. Except for the King himself, he had never seen so many scars on one person. At some point she had taken a brutal blow to the face, and there were ridges of melted flesh draped around her upper arms, indicating she had also survived a point-blank ki blast.

The woman shrugged her shoulders dismissively. "To think we're in any danger from this one is foolish. I was there last time. He couldn't —"

"The King has destroyed planets for less," remarked a voice, and the Captain strode into the room, giving the woman a baleful glare. She crossed her arms and sniffed, and just for an instant her gaze caught that of the Prince. She immediately turned her head away, but there had been a brief wince across her torn visage, and the Prince could tell she didn't like looking at him.

He thought it was probably because, even though he didn't act like The Other One, maybe he looked like The Other One. That he wasn't as sure about. But he finished the rituals required of him and went oozaru when most thought he was something he couldn't do, and many of the disparaging whispers that followed him stopped for a little while.

He did not know what else was said, or how it was said, or even who said it. But three days after he first turned oozaru, the King and the Captain together took him to the Hall of Martyrs.

The first thing seen after walking in the door was a huge holograph of Zarbon with the long-gone Prince, both frozen in a very non-Saiyan pose, Zarbon smiling down at the boy with his hands on the child's shoulders, the boy looking up with a big grin and a look of open adoration in his blue eyes. The Prince stared into features more delicate than any he ever saw around the palace and blurted, "Is that my mother?"

His father cuffed him, hard, then dragged him to the other side of the Hall and showed him the Queen. "That's your mother." She was sitting on the silver throne that still sat empty by the King's in the great hall, smiling slightly, the sparkly blue dress she wore matching her eyes and her hair. "That's how she looked," his father said unemotionally, even coldly, "when she first came to Vejiitasei."

He looked up at his father, meaning to say how pretty she was, and saw the Captain in the background, staring up at Zarbon's holograph with naked grief sitting on his usually-impassive features. And for the first time in his five years, he began to realize what death was, that it was more than someone going away without coming back, that emotional loss was involved as well. He wanted to run back to his trainer and tell him not to be sad, but he knew his father would just hit him again. So he looked steadily at his mother and said nothing, storing the image away.

He was too young to ask questions like, how can she be my mother when she's been dead for fifty years. Those came later.