Essay time~~~
I know it’s not a super big thing probably in the great scheme of things, and it hasn’t as of this being typed even taken place yet, but after the Fight Club post last night I feel the need to reevaluate Trunks’ opinion on fighting and what he is and isn’t willing to do in camp. I probably should have waited a bit before typing about him and fighting at all anyway in hindsight but hey. My vision is far from 20/20.
So what I said before, how he’s not really willing to get in fights with campers because he sees fighting as Not A Fun Pastime still rings true. That view hasn’t changed. HOWEVER, while the androids from his time have been destroyed, and while he can certainly kick Cell’s first-stage ass as he is now, lessens from the past say to expect something to be stronger than you think it’s going to be. And after his failed assault on the barrier, Trunks is fairly resigned to not getting out of camp for a while (Trunks gives up too easily sometimes D:). This means that he’s going to want to train and keep his skills sharp for what time when he will be able to return home to defeat Cell. He’d probably want to do this anyway, being the only person left to defend Earth from any future threats. If he’s stuck here, he’s not going to slack off.
Right now the only person he knows to can hold their own in a fight with him is Gohan, who is wtf Great Saiyaman and being really secretive about his powers MORE ON THIS IN A MINUTE. And maybe that Thor fellow, after their conversation in the barrier attacking post. Trunks has at this point come to understand that there are people not from his world here, and that means that there might be others who he could train with and spar against. Hence his curiosity in the Fight Club post leading to OMG fight with Yuusuke.
To resolve the conflict between why Trunks was so spazzy and secretive when explaining the explosions in the barrier post and now willing to fight is this. They were using full power at the time. And Bulma and Goku are here. As teenagers. Of course Trunks is worried to death that anything he and/or Gohan do or say is going to fuck things up to high Heaven. But during his ongoing? conversation with Bulma he found out that Gohan has already told her that Goku dies fighting “a cell” and that he avenged his father’s death. Trunks has also added that he fought Cell as well. As of right now, Goku is the strongest person Bulma knows, and he’d only get stronger as an adult. If Trunks is able to fight and have lived kinda against something that killed Goku, then him denying he’s not a strong fighter at all is pretty illogical. The main things he’s trying to keep a secret from his mother are who his father is, his name just because, talking about events that could Seriously Screw Up Time, and the existence of Saiyajins.
Which leads to my last point. In Bulma’s time, people have seen energy blasts in the form of the Kamahameha, and people capable of flight (or they will during the Tenshinhan arc). And in Trunks’ time as well, everyone knows the androids and the terrible things they were capable of. And Mirai Gohan and Trunks both fought and went SSJ to defend these people, probably hoping people would see them because that would mean there were people still left alive. When Trunks goes back to the past, the cast flies around cities and reveals themselves on live television at the Cell Games. It’s not until the Buu arc, of which Mirai Trunks is never a part of, that the characters start getting actively paranoid about showing their powers off to normal people (and even then most of them do a pretty crappy job of hiding it). All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, as long as he’s not going SSJ or doing anything else that could ping Bulma and Goku about things they shouldn’t know, Trunks is willing to fly around camp and also fight against other campers should they prove a challenge. He needs the training, it’s not going to screw things up about the future any more than they already have been just by his being here, and he already subconsciously thinks the longer he's here that the best he can do is put a band-aid on the arterial gash of the time stream that two generations of Sons and Briefs existing at the same age at the same time is causing anyway. But that’s another essay completely and one I don’t have enough time with Trunks in camp to write with any certainty yet.