This story was born from a trip to the local playground with my daughter. At the time, she had just turned six and on the way home she asked for hot chocolate with six marshmallows, "because I'm six years old." Kids have interesting logic circuits.
I know that Saiyan children have a different aging process than humans, but still. It seems shitty but understandable when you think about King Vegeta sending a kid to join an army. But if you are around a five-year-old and see what they are like...it really becomes mind-blowing. A five-year-old is barely out of babyhood. Five-year-olds are tiny, helpless, fragile little creatures. I would have a hard time sending one to a summer camp without me; I can't imagine what might drive anyone to give one up for combat under a psychopathic tyrant.
Anyway, I thought of Vegeta as having completely normalized his experience in his own mind. I know that when I think of myself as a five-year-old, my memory is colored to see myself as probably significantly more mature than I was. What would happen when someone who went through a horrifically traumatic experience as a child, and grew thinking the experience was at least approaching normal, was confronted with how awful it actually was?
This was written fairly quickly--it was only my second story and I hadn't discovered the power of editing yet. I like it, but I see places I wish I'd spent a bit more time on. I may end up re-writing or at least polishing this sometime in the future.
