Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ DragonBall Zenith: How Young Hearts Bleed ❯ Space Days ( Chapter 5 )

Episode 5 - Space Days

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Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ, its characters, story line, or any likeness of the characters. My name is not Akira Toriyama. However, this story line has been created by me to be used by me and to be written by me. You know that drill. Also, I do not own Mountain Dew, though I really wish I did. I am not endorsing any brand names I use here in any way either, along with the future topics of gangs, fighting, and the like. If you look carefully, you'll notice that I am strongly against those things and try to make that clear to you, the reader.

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A/N: And here it is: the lovely Episode 5! "Brilliant work, Willow! Brilliant! You are such a genius!" Hehe. Awww shucks. I knew that. Anyway, a big thanks to Jason for letting me quote him here and a bigger thanks to the one person who even bothered to try writing the talk show. Thank you, but I don't really appreciate swearwords being used once every two words, and mostly without any reason. As I have stated before, neither my boyfriend nor Mirai Trunks swears, though they do shout stupid insults like "You run like an old lady with an emu stapled to her back!" There. You still have a while to fix it, though. Thanks everyone!

Broken bodies, broken dreams.
All is lost, or so it seems...

""Why did you have to tell me? You should have said 'No, Jason. We didn't have any homework. Go live in your delusional candy land'." - Jason Novak

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Trunks's visit to New Namek was a blast. The Nameks were leery of Trunks's ship at first, but upon learning who he is, they welcomed him whole-heartedly, partied for a while, and sent him on his way with many new photos for Earth and directions to the nearest political center of the galaxy. Since Frieza's empire fell the rest of the universe reverted on its old habits, like the change of currency from standard to local, though standard was still accepted in most places.

Trunks sent many captain's logs back to Earth during his travel time in space, some of which included:

"Captain's log, day 1:
"The takeoff was exceptionally smooth on the New Hope's maiden voyage. Space itself is beautiful, more so than I ever could have imagined back on Chikyu's terrestrial bubble. Tomorrow I will train in the gravity room, but for now I'll just take in the sights.
"Attachment: Photo of Earth from 2x-moon orbit."

"Captain's log, day 2:
"It feels so good to vent all that energy in USSJ mode. (That is, Ultimate Super Saiyan [or Saita-jin, the alternate spelling]. Essentially, where strength is multiplied massively but speed is sacrificed as the user's bulky muscles are awkward to use.) I really would like to go SSJ2 (slightly stronger than USSJ and speed is greatly increased, but it is a much harder stage to reach), but I'll have to train more for that. Mom, I have to say you're a genius."

"Captain's log, day 7:
"It didn't take nearly as long as expected to reach New Namek and the engines aren't even running at 75%. Today I paid the Nameks a visit. They were kind of leery of the ship and me at first because, as the elder told me, no one besides Goku has ever visited the planet before but once I told them you were my mom, they were more than eager to help out. They gave me directions to Girtopia, the largest political and commercial planet within a reasonable distance. I should reach it in about 3 weeks with this speedy little cruiser, but I'll need to do more training than usual to keep up with the energy demands. I found out something else too. It seems as though the Nameks have given up on the production and upkeep of Dragonballs. They said that they destroyed the last set 20 years ago. Actually, that's a good thing. At least now we won't have people like Frieza going after them anymore.
"Attachment: Picture of several of my new Namekian buddies and me. Left to right, Nako, Goru, me, the Elder, Kadan, and Arian."

Trunks sighed and leaned back to look at the ceiling of his room in the living area. He already took care of the needed checks for the day and even put in a little extra training, but he still had time to burn before bedtime.

He studied the metallic coating. It sloped gently upward, following the curve of the wheel, as did the floor. Everything in the living area had to be designed to fit the slope, even the beds though they had support beneath them to make sure they wouldn't collapse or cause back problems.

Trunks had to admit it: he was bored, terribly so, and almost lonely. It's been two days since he left New Namek and hadn't picked up ships or dangers on radar. Of course, that didn't mean there weren't any out there. He knew from experience that just because no sensory equipment or his own personal senses picked anything up didn't mean that he was safe, and the androids were a perfect example of this.

"Well, I'd better check out the CD's then…" he finally decided, speaking aloud to fill the depressingly empty corridors with the sound of his own voice. Aside from the muffled din of the engines, not a tone reached his ears.

He stood up, withdrew the room, and climbed the stairs to the second, inner level of the living area. This level had a profoundly weaker gravity, but that was ok.

Trunks exited the gravitated area up and through the center of the "doughnut" and flew lazily down the glass-rimed bridge and to the main storage area.

This area was little more than rows upon rows of capsulated items that made up a good quarter of the ship's size. He flicked on the light and looked up the music and instructional CD's which his mother included in the packing. He pulled out information on the technicalities of the ship's build as well as some calming instrumental music. Trunks didn't know why but music always seemed like the best form of stress relief for him. He just liked it, but not so much the lyrical stuff, just the instrumentals. There was a collection of lyrical music onboard, but not quite as much as the instrumentals.

Trunks, having achieved his objective, flew off to the command center at the front of the ship and popped the CD's in.

"Play," he commanded the computer.

"Both at once, Captain?" the feminine voice of the computer asked.

"Yes." Trunks replied and sat back in his chair, a few electromagnets working with his metal belt to hold him in place.

"As you command, Captain." Bulma's voice and a soothing melody quickly replaced the computer's younger tones. Trunks concentrated hard on trying to understand the facts, figures, and graphs set before him and frequently asked for pauses and replays of such thing. So his second education began.

"Yawn." Trunks couldn't help himself.

"It is late, Captain, 10:34 PM ship time. Due to your recent expression of fatigue, it is advisable that you proceed to your sleeping area." The computer advised him monotonously. Trunks found a slight bit of humor in how many big words it just used to say, basically, "Go to bed."

"I guess you're right. G'Night, computer. Keep those CD's here; I'll look at them again tomorrow." Trunks gave his final instructions.

"Would you like to send a log back to Earth?" The computer asked.

"Skip it," Trunks waved the suggestion away, "there's really nothing worth logging."

"Alright. Good-night, Captain."

2:54 AM ship time

* Boom! *

* Shakow! *

* BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! *

"Wha-… OW!" Trunks sat up too quickly and smacked his head on the sloping ceiling. "Computer! Report!" He commanded.

Several alarms were going off at once. "We have entered the space above a planet in the Dekko solar system and a battle is raging around us. Escape is highly recommended."

"No fudge!" Trunks rolled his eyes, slightly annoyed at the obvious conclusion.

"A direct route is impossible. Recommended course of action: a quarter orbital rotation around the planet and escape. This lowers our chance of being shot at." The computer stated calmly.

"By how much?" Trunks asked skeptically.

"Two percent." The computer stated plainly.

A sweat drop rolled down the side of Trunks's head as he fought to keep his balance from the pointlessness of it all. "Uh, yeah. Do that. I'll meet you at the control center." Trunks hopped around, dressing in his favorite outfit: gray sweat pants, a tight black muscle shirt, and his Capsule Corp. jeans jacket. As a second thought, he capsulated his sword and secured it on his belt. He didn't want it to bounce around and slash anything if the ship experienced too much turbulence.

On his way to the command center, an unexpected jolt rocked the ship and sent Trunks into a wall.

"Computer! What just happened?" He asked forcefully.

"We are under attack. One of the other ships has turned its fire on us." The computer replied monotonously.

"Cripes, it looks like the universe still doesn't appreciate peace. Computer! Activate the shields. Close all internal airlocks! Let's get out of here!"

"Alright, Captain."

Trunks arrived in the command center milliseconds later and assumed his role from there. He took to manual piloting and maneuvered skillfully around the larger fire which the ship's shields couldn't block while trying to disable the weapons on the other ships without killing anybody. Years of terror had taught him the value of every single life. Unfortunately, the other pilots far outmatched Trunks in skill, considering the latter had only been a pilot for a little less than a month.

In the end, "Warning. The ship has taken excessive damage and a crash course with the planet is imminent. Warning! The left docking bay has been totally destroyed, landing gear is disabled, engines at 20% and falling. Warning-"

"Great. This just makes my day!" Trunks growled sarcastically, bracing for impact and hoping he could save at least some of the ship from its death struggle with the planet's hard crust, but things didn't look good…

Back on Earth, everyone was sleeping peacefully when an alarm suddenly blared, knocking the residents out of their beds and onto the floor.

"What? What is it? What's going on?" Andy asked as he stood up, hastily pulling jeans over his boxers and hopping out the door on one leg.

Bulma gasped as she walked out into the hall in her robe, seeing the flashing red lights. "No…" she mouthed quietly as she ran down the hall toward the tracking machine that had hummed along in the background for so long while she and Trunks's three friends went about their daily lives, glancing at it only once in a while.

"What's going on?" Mike asked, walking down the hall.

"Why are the alarms going off?" Tim asked, opening his bedroom door in Mike's face. Mike hit it and fell backwards, holding his nose.

Andy hopped past the two, still struggling with his pants.

Moments later, Tim and Mike reached the doorway to the room Bulma now occupied. She was frozen, shock still, and as the three men looked over her shoulder and at the screen, they saw why.

What he saw shocked him.

The blinking white light that was Trunks's ship was no longer blinking. It was a red dot surrounded by lettering. That lettering said…

"Position of last transmission. Signal not found."

Bulma was shocked. Nothing, nothing could have disrupted the signal. The transmitter's container was strong enough so that not even Trunks could break it. If something was powerful enough to disrupt the signal…

Then it must have been powerful enough to kill Trunks too…

To be continued…

Oh no! What has become of our lavender haired hero? You'll have to find out in the next exciting enstalment of "DBZ: HYHB"!