CHAPTER 2:
The Moon Kikaru

Trunks couldn't believe it. It had been several days… and they actually made it to their next destination in one piece.

No asteroid fields, no Para Para Brothers, no fuel leaks, and remarkably, no complaints from Goku about wanting to stop by any other planets for a meal. Trunks figured he was still feeling guilty about the whole mess that erupted in the kitchen.

Following Goku's and Pan's gaze, Trunks looked out to the gigantic dazzling moon before them and smirked contentedly. The dragonball was on that moon, and everything was looking good so far, as long as they weren't caught in its planet's gravitational field when landing. That could pose to be a real problem if they got caught within those green depths.

Trunks looked back to the control panel, "Yeah, it's chlorine alright." He punched a few buttons and brought his gaze to the planet again, "Pure gas."

"Wow, that's so cool!" Pan placed her hands against the window and pressed her face against the glass to get a better look, "So the moon is orbiting a gigantic ball of poison?"

"Well…" Trunks blinked and brought his right hand to his chin, "I guess you could look at it that way… I guess…"

"Grandpa!" Pan turned to Goku and grinned widely, "Lets go get a better look!"

Trunks shook his head, "If I were you, I'd stay here and strap yourself to your seat. We're going to be landing soon."

"Oh pfft!" Pan walked to Trunks' chair and leaned her elbows on his armrest, propping her head on her palms, "Wanna come look at the moon with us?"

Trunks closed his eyes and tried to prevent a temple from throbbing. He answered in his most emotionless voice, "No," before looking back to the computer, "I have to work on coordinates and preparing the landing gear."

"Aw come on," Pan leaned closer to him, giving him puppy eyes, "You never get away from work. Why don't you come to the observation deck with us?"

"I'd rather not."

"Gosh," Pan stood and flicked her wrist, "You're no fun."

"Yeah, well, I don't think I can take a break from this, unless you want us to spiral toward that planet," Trunks looked at her, "which is 50 times Earth's gravity, by the way, in case you didn't know. And although we may be used to handling that kind of gravitational pull, we'll never be able to get the ship out of the atmosphere."

Pan crossed her arms, "Grandpa could fly us out."

"No," Trunks growled, "because if Goku goes out, and even the slightest bit of that gas makes its way into the ship," he shook his head, "it's goodbye Grand Tour and goodbye Earth."

"Gosh Trunks," Goku turned around with a slight frown, "You really should come with us. You sound like you need a break."

"I'll take a break after we get this dragonball and head out."

Both Goku and Pan stood there for a moment as Trunks took hold of the steering wheel. He looked to them impatiently after they didn't move. "Well, are you going to go to the observation deck or not? You don't have that much time. We land in fifteen minutes."

Pan frowned at Trunks and then looked to Goku, "I guess that's our cue, huh…?" Sighing softly, she leaned over Trunks' chair again and pouted her bottom lip, "Are you sure you don't want to come? I'd really like if you could sightsee with us…"

"I get enough view of the moon from here, thanks."

Pan's eyebrows angled upward in a saddened frown, "Wow, you're mean."

"I'm not mean!" Trunks felt like banging his head against the dashboard. "I'm just trying to fly the ship, Pan! Please understand that!"

"Yeah, we understand. Come on, Grandpa."

Trunks sighed in frustration and mild exasperation as he watched the dynamic duo leave the cockpit and felt an incredible pang of guilt. He wasn't trying to exclude himself. They just didn't know when to leave him alone and to the flying. They needed to get serious; and fawning over a planet in the observation room was not helping.

Trunks sighed again as his conscience panged at him. Frowning defeatedly, he realized Pan did it again. She managed to manipulate him into doing something she wanted, and he wasn't strong-willed enough to resist.

He really did let her walk all over him. That thought in itself upset him more than the fact that he found himself unbuckling his safety belt, standing up, and pressing 'Auto-pilot' as he made his way over the observation deck.

He huffed out a shallow breath of air and inwardly kicked himself for having no backbone.

He'd have to figure out how to get Pan to bend to his will one of these days. Instead of jumping in playing 'hero,' they should use his mother's method, 'just take the dragonball and run.'

The trip would have been so much easier if they had stuck to that philosophy. But then again, all the adventure would have been sucked out of it.

Trunks exited the cockpit and walked casually down the small hallway that lead to the oval center room, pondering what-ifs to himself. It was just funny… It was funny how much Trunks had changed in his lifetime.

He remembered a time in his life when he may have been thrilled at the idea of going out and fighting, fist to fist, to earn a proper "adventure." That later changed to a romantic approach to traveling, like that one time in his late teens he wanted to tour the world for a week, and dragged Goten along with him one summer. That just seemed so long ago. They both were so different back then…

Trunks sighed, realizing he was daydreaming about home again. He stepped up the elevator putting and pressed the 'up' button. After a moment, the round platform began to move below him as he ascended upwards to join Pan and Goku in their pointless sight-seeing exhibition.

When he reached the top, he was suddenly hit with extreme darkness. Billions of stars glittered in a vast sea of sparkling fireflies before him. He stood there a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim blue lights that outlined the round floor of the room, and looked down to observe two stargazers, one sitting cross-legged on a flat futon on the floor, and the other, obviously Goku, on his knees, with his hands and face pressed against the glass.

Trunks walked over to Pan and sat cross-legged next to her, looking over to Goku as they all basked in the silence, the only sound being the steady low drone of the engine as they made their way toward the moon.

Trunks coughed a moment and casually cleared his throat as he felt Pan shift beside him. "So…" The magic of the moment was suddenly shattered as his voice brought Goku and Pan back from their daze. He felt their eyes turn to him as he adjusted his seat and leaned on his right arm for support, "I guess this is it."

Goku blinked, "What is it?"

"Another adventure." Trunks stressed the cursed word, knowing how they always seemed to get into predicaments with every single dragonball they recovered. He hoped to all Kais that this one would be simple and easy to retrieve, but somewhere in his gut, he had this terrible feeling this was going to the worst of all. I really hoped he shouldn't trust his intuitions.

Trunks sat forward and subconsciously adjusted his bandana as he forced a fake smirk to Goku before turning his head to look at Pan, "You two ready?"

"Heck yeah!" Pan stood and brought her hands to the roof of the glass dome. "One more dragonball and how many will we have? Let's see…" Pan brought her right hand down and counted her fingers, "One, t…thr…f… five!" She held out her hand to Trunks as if it would somehow prove her point.

"Wow!" Goku turned his head to look at her, his hands still against the glass, "We got all those balls in just a few weeks?"

"Weeks?" Trunks grimaced and shook his head at Goku's stupidity, "We've been on this trip for months!"

"Noooo!" Goku made a gasp and then clutched his stomach, "I've gone that long without eating?"

"Augh." Trunks hung his head, "Goku, you aren't serious are you?"

"Oh man, I'm so hungry…" Goku looked down to his hands and rubbed his stomach intently, "I don't know if I've ever been this hungry before."

"Grandpa, do you realize how many times you've never been 'this' hungry before?" Pan raised an eyebrow slightly, "Too many! I think you're turning into a regular boy who cried wolf."

"But I don't want a wolf." Goku sniffled and leaned on the glass, "I could eat a whole dinosaur."

"Knowing you, Grandpa, you would."

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Considering the moon was so enormous, it came as a huge shock to them that there was so little gravity… or at least, it came as a huge shock to Trunks. Pan and Goku had very little appreciation for anomalies of science. There really was no way to explain the small gravitational pull unless one relied on the existence of magic.

But then again, magic was real. Trunks had even witnessed it himself during the whole Buu escapade. Chi Chi was turned into chocolate right before his eyes, and so was everyone else as he, Goten and Piccolo struggled to make their way out of the Room of Spirit and Time to make their way back to Buu…

Trunks found his mind was wandering as he climbed down the ladder to the grass below the ship. With several blinks and one hand shielding his eye from the glaring red sun, he saw Goku hopping about on the grass, jumping several meters high before doing flips and landing on all fours, just to spring to action again.

Goku laughed and did a cartwheel in the air before landing back on his feet, "Wow, this is fun! Pan! You can hop really high here!"

"Grandpa, stop acting silly." Pan crossed her arms on the grass and huffed, "We need to find that dragonball. Hey, Giru!"

At the sound of his name, the little robot flew down the ladder, whisked past Trunks, and immediately latched onto Pan's left shoulder, a very characteristic trait of Giru, except most of the time, Trunks was the one who fell victim to the robot's clutches

Pan smiled happily at Giru and reached her left hand up to pat him on the head. "Hey Giru, can you tell us where the dragonball is?"

Trunks removed his blue backpack and took out the remote that would close and lock the ship. Pressing several buttons, a red light began to blink on the remote, and the ship suddenly stirred on its own, retracting the ladder before closing and locking the exterior.

Taking a few steps closer to the ship, Trunks made sure the red security light was blinking at the bottom of the ship as well. After their experience at Imecka, with their ship being stolen, Trunks installed a security device that would send an alert them via the remote if anyone were to tamper with the ship. The last thing they needed was to be stranded on a third-world planet or moon while their ship vanished somewhere.

"Come on, Giru, this is how you to a cartwheel!"

Trunks looked up to see Goku, Pan and Giru all cartwheeling around in circles on the grass. Just watching them do that instantly brought a wave of embarrassment through him. What they were doing was just plain humiliating, and they were too oblivious to note it.

Trunks sighed openly, and thought exasperatingly, why two kids? He shook his head, mostly to himself, and then opened the backpack flap, dropping the remote in with the four other dragonballs he kept by his or Pan's side. The fifth, the Four Star ball, was always tucked away in Goku's belt pouch. It was always best to keep at least one ball separate from the others, in case another group of Para Para Brothers or anyone remotely similar decided to come along and steal all the eggs in the basket.

While the other two were off in their own world, Trunks took the opportunity to look around, walking away from the party.

They seemed to be in a large field of pale green grass. A bright red sun and the giant green planet hovered above them, adding an eerie effect to the color of the sky, making it a purplish dark blue.

Trunks stared in amazement at the green planet. Wow… He just couldn't take it all in, he was so hypnotized by the view. Is that what the moon would have looked like, back on Earth? Just hanging in the sky like that?

It was beautiful, and the more he looked at it, the more he wished that Piccolo had never destroyed Earth's moon. There was no reason for its destruction, as far as Trunks could tell; Piccolo was probably doing it to prove some sort of point to Gohan. At least, he thought it was to Gohan, but his memory of the tale was somewhat vague. It had been a long time since Goten told Trunks of Gohan's past with Piccolo, and Trunks couldn't remember it all.

It had struck him as a surprise at the time, though. Trunks could never really picture Piccolo going out of his way to actually train anybody. He was such a loner, a self-proclaimed outcast, it was really hard to work with him. Trunks may not have been able to remember everything from before he was ten, but he definitely still remembered the terror Piccolo struck in him whenever that Namek got mad.

And that Namek sure had a temper when someone rubbed him the wrong way. And sometimes Piccolo could really go overboard, like blowing up the moon. It was a shame it had to go. Earth was really missing out on a beautiful display of light.

"–t way!"

Trunks tore his vision from the planet a moment and watched as Pan was running toward him.

She, on the other hand, was someone who could really benefit training under Piccolo, that was for sure. At some point, someone would have to smack some maturity in that girl. Otherwise, if she kept getting her way all the time, even manipulating Trunks into doing things for her, she was never going to grow up.

Pan reached him and stopped, leaning forward as she placed her hands on her knees and gasped for breath. "Trunks!" She panted heavily and then stood up, her face slightly flushed from excitement, "Giru says the dragonball is that way," she pointed to the direction away from the sun, "about twenty miles!"

"Wow, that's pretty close." Trunks took one last glance at the planet and then turned his head to look at her, "So you ready for some flight?"

"Aww," Pan faked a frown and said with mild sarcasm, "We're not going to take a capsule car?"

Trunks looked down to look in his shirt pocket and brought his right hand up to pull out a dyno-cap container. "You can take the convertible if you like." He looked to her and held up the box, "I'd rather save some time, though."

Pan's eyes suddenly beamed, "What? You mean it?" She took in a deep breath of air as her shock settled in, "I can drive the convertible?"

"Ahhhhh…" Trunks suddenly remembered her kamikaze driving skills back on Imecka, and thought twice about it. He lowered his tone slightly as he gave an embarrassed frown, "You know what… I mean…"

"Oh please!" Pan latched onto his arm, which Trunks instantly brought back in a spring of surprise.

"I don't think so!"

"But I'm fifteen! I'm old enough for a permit…"

"No…" Trunks shook the container at her, "You are fourteen. You're not allowed to round up for permits."

"But my birthday is in two months!"

"No way." Trunks retracted his arm and put the container back in his shirt pocket.

There was a brief pause as Pan stood there, looking at Trunks.

After moment, Pan frowned and sniffled, obviously trying to hold back invisible mimed tears. "You're so mean." She looked away and crossed her arms with a slightly as she pouted her bottom lip.

"I'm not mean!" Trunks gave a groan and shook his head, "It's just so happens that this car is a nice car, and I am not sure I can trust your driving skills with it."

"What are we going to hit?" Pan spun around, flinging her arms out to point in all directions, "We're in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah, and that's until we get somewhere."

"You know, Trunks…"

Trunks spun around, his heart suddenly leaping in his chest from the surprise of someone standing right behind him. "Goku! Goku, you almost gave me a heart attack!"

Goku grinned sheepishly and brought his left hand behind his head while his other gripped Giru, "Whoops, sorry. Didn't mean to sneak up on ya." Goku lowered his hand, "But yeah, I mean, I don't see why Pan can't drive the car around. This place is like one big parking lot, right?"

Trunks crossed his eyes and raised an eyebrow, "And what would you know about driving, Goku?"

"Hey!" Goku pouted, "I got my license fair and square."

"Yeah," Pan grinned and shifted in her stance, "after how many tries?"

"It doesn't matter. We're just wasting time talking about this." Trunks reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the dyno-cap container again.

Sighing inwardly about how he could never hold his ground against Pan, Trunks opened the box and took out the capsule labeled '249'.

"You win." Trunks clicked the container and threw the capsule, like all his pride, away from them.

There was a huge explosion with topsoil rising in clouds of dust around the capsule machine. When the smoke cleared, a beautiful newly-waxed red convertible lay on the grass, shining with a celestial splendor.

"Her name's Van." Trunks tossed a set of keys to Pan.

Pan frowned as she caught the keys in both hands, "Van?"

"Yeah, Goten's girlfriend's nickname. Don't ask me. He named it."

Pan grimaced as she made her way to the right side of the car, "God, I hate how he always gives weird nicknames to all his girlfriends."

Goku perked up as he followed Pan, "He does?"

"Yeah, there was what? Bunker for Tirana?"

Trunks opened the passenger door, "No, it was definitely Bumper. He met her at some Go-Kart place."

"Bumper?" Goku cringed.

"And then there was what?" Pan opened the driver's seat door and slid in, "Oh yeah, Sausie for Vienna."

"Yeah… I think that covers the main ones." Trunks leaned back in his seat, taking in the open air of the convertible. "He's been with Havana for a pretty long time."

Goku hopped over the car and settled into the back seat. "Okay, lets get a move on!"

"Giru!" The robot sprung up from Goku's right hand and flew up excitedly. "New adventure! New adventure for Trunks and Pan!"

"Alright, here we go!" Pan turned the key and then floored the gas.

The car sputtered a moment, and then died.

A long pause lingered as the three just sat there.

After a while, Trunks turned his head nonchalantly and gave an emotionless grin. "You do know how to drive stick, right?"

Pan sat there another moment in the silence and then gave an embarrassed cough as her cheeks flushed a light pink.

"You know… on second thought…" Pan gave a large innocent grin as her eyebrows knotted upward, "I think we should maybe fly…"

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–Updated 4/21/05–