TruMai

TruMai is the het ship between Trunks and Mai from the Dragon Ball fandom.

Canon
Mai was part of the Pilaf Gang, led by the eponymous Emperor Pilaf, a trio of ineffective and goofy villains who sought the Dragon Balls to rule the world and along the way crossed paths with Goku and friends as the heroes' first enemies, later on they would team up with Demon King Piccolo who literally tosses them away when their purpose is done in his plans, albeit being merciful enough to let them live. Some time later at a point during the Dragon Ball Z era the Pilaf Gang successfully found and used the Dragon Balls but having grown older wished to be younger so they had more time to live and rule, but got regressed back into children both physically and mentally ruining their plans. Trunks is the son of Vegeta and Bulma, born sometime after the defeat of Frieza in Namek following Bulma taking in the injured Vegeta and the two falling in love along the way; Trunks would eventually grow into a strong warrior with a future version of him helping warn the Z Warriors of the dangers of Cell and the Androids which helped save the day, Future Trunks returned to his time and defeated his versions of the Androids and Cell once he had finished helping the present timeline.

Trunks and Mai met in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Super, there the de-aged Pilaf Gang attempted to steal the Dragon Balls, which Bulma had found, so they could once again try their hand at ruling the world but were discovered by Trunks and Goten, the latter being Goku's son and thus intimidating them by accident due to his resemblance to his father; out of fear of retribution, Pilaf and his Gang returned the Dragon Balls followed by Mai giving back a diamond she had stolen as well to Trunks personally, after she leaves the latter took his chance to claim to Goten that Mai was his girlfriend, with his naive best friend believing it. Much later Trunks is held hostage by Mai with a gun to force the heroes to surrender the Dragon Balls, though predictably since they all are unaffected by bullets they don't take her seriously except for the God of Destruction, Beerus, who is eager to punish the mortals for their behavior until Vegeta claims that she was Trunks’ girlfriend and was merely playing with him and the others; when a stray bullet from Mai's reflected shots by Gohan hits Beerus and enrages him, Mai is scared enough to faint but Trunks catches her and moves her to safety. At the end of the film/saga, the two are shown bonding in a tree with a mutual attraction developing between the two as Pilaf and Shu watch.

In Resurrection F, Sorbet and his men force the captured Pilaf Gang to find the Dragon Balls for them so they can resurrect Frieza with them, Mai states that Trunks is her boyfriend and warns Freeza's followers that if she is hurt or killed then Trunks will go after them in retaliation.

In Super, Trunks and Mai don't get quite close after the incident with Beerus but remain friends and the Pilaf Gang more or less settles around Bulma's house, where Trunks lives and occasionally accompany him in his escapades. In the Future Trunks/Zamasu arc, the alternate timeline Future Trunks and Future Mai are in a relationship, which they developed after spending several years fighting Goku Black and saving the few humans left after losing most if not all their other loved ones. Even against the power of Goku Black, Mai manages to find ways to support Future Trunks. She helps him escape death once when he is beaten with smoke screen missiles. Future Trunks mourns when he thinks she has been killed, and is greatly relieved when he finds her alive. When Mai is nearly killed, Trunks saves her life by giving her a Senzu Bean mouth-to-mouth and when he himself recovers from his injuries after a disastrous fight against Goku Black, he hallucinates Mai about to do the same (as the person looking over him recovering was Future Yajirobe who clarifies he wasn't going to do that). After the defeat of Goku Black and Zamasu, following the future timeline getting completely erased by Zeno after Fused Zamasu kills all the other remaining humans and threatens to spill to other realities, the future Mai and Trunks are sent to a new timeline where Whis warned Beerus of Zamasu's plans and the God of Destruction eliminated the mad Kaio as soon as he tried to attack Earth and thus prevented the tragedy, when the two get ready to depart to a promising new life they say their goodbyes to everyone from the present timeline with Bulma stating how her future self might become a grandmother soon, much to Future Trunks and Future Mai's embarrassment.

Fanon
has some followers due to their time spent together in Dragon Ball Super. Most fanfics take place in the alternate timeline as they fight Goku Black. It rivals TruPan and Truten with some friction between shippers being common albeit not quite extreme when it does happen.

The common depiction for the ship in the Present Timeline involves Trunks bonding with Mai and her friends and mostly going out on innocent dates and the like. The Future version is a lot more serious in depiction thanks to both Trunks' and Mai's shared angst in their losses and failure to save their timeline from Zamasu. Them settling in a new timeline also drives more material to write them raising a family together, sometimes alongside their new timeline's counterparts.

A point of contention for the ship is the fact that Mai is older than even Bulma and thus could be easily Trunks’ grandmother if she hadn't been de-aged into a child, with her retaining some degree of memories of her life as an adult also turning the relationship creepy for some, though others don't take issue since the memories are vague and inconsistently depicted and on top of that both her maturity and physical age are those of a child instead of retaining her adult mind and age. The Future Timeline version of the ship is much less contentious as Trunks met Mai when they were both the same age and have spent time developing a mutual relationship with each other.

Fandom

 * FAN FICTION
 * Future Trunks/Future Mai tag on FanFiction.net
 * Trunks/Mai tag on FanFiction.net
 * M. Trunks/Mai tag on FanFiction.net
 * Mai/Trunks tag on FanFiction.net
 * Mai/Trunks tag on FanFiction.net


 * TUMBLR