DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DBZ, ITS CHARACTERS,ETC. ONLY THE PLOT IS MINE.

AUTHOR'S NOTEZ: To answer a few questions posed to me from "Corporate Calamity". Yes, I do know a bit about business. I myself, work in management in real life. And, what I don't know, I research by reading (and watching) business related material. As to the Pan/Marron debate from the last fic...well, by now you should know that I'm poking fun of the whole Pan/Marron ordeal in a story-telling sense. I can't believe some people have nothing better to do with their lives and DBZ fandom than bicker over a couple of imaginary characters! Get over it. It's better to have an open mind and enjoy as much as you can rather than limit yourself by making judgements and rules about this and that. You want total freedom? It's easy to find...free your mind. And if you're still wondering if I'm going to pair Trunks with Pan or Marron...why? Now, onto the sequel...

Back in the last chapter of "Corporate Calamity," Trunks has opted to search the stars and sift through the hand life has dealt him. He wasn't finding the go of it so easy on Earth with everyone bothering him about every little thing from work to his love life. So, he stole the spaceship he'd once used with Pan and Goku to search for black star dragonballs and he's now making his way through the wild, black yonder.

Meanwhile on Earth...

"That son of a bitch! I can't believe he did this to me! How irresponsible can he be!?" Bulma ranted after realizing that he just up and left the leadership of the company back into her hands and with a timeframe of 'indefinite.' She felt a pang of loss meandering with her anger and wondered if her dear little Trunks would ever return. The only thing she could do now is hope.

Trunks' departure had also had a strange twist on two others. Pan and Marron began to realize how much they had in common. With their source of competition gone for an unknowing period of time, neither could find a reason to lash out at one another. Rather, they found themselves renewing their friendship, though both secretly awaited the return of Trunks so that they could seethe and hiss at each other once again. But for now, just hoping he returned alive and well was enough to unify the two yearning ladies.

In the depths of near space...

Trunks groaned and slapped his head against the console. The maps he had were outdated and without Gill, he'd forgotten the coordinates to most of the planets they had visited previously. Trying to navigate the depths of the universe without a sense of direction would essentially be suicide, but...

Trunks noticed the signature of the map's maker. He hadn't noticed it before.

"Son Gohan eh? Well, if it's done by a scholar I know then I guess it can't be all that bad." Trunks muttered to himself as he looked over the star charts and planetary guides once again. Imegga was to be his first stop, and this time, he would actually find need to visit the still overzealous merchants.

After inserting some coordinates and setting the course in the ship's navigation system, Trunks increased the ship's throttle and sent the ship lunging forward at ever-increasing speed.

"Gohan's been in space before. These maps had better be accurate." Trunks muttered as he set the autopilot and allowed the ship to follow the course recently entered. Trunks then headed below the flight deck for a much needed nap.

A few hours later a large jolt sent him careening out of the bunk and onto the floor with a thud. Before he could regain his senses, Trunks could already hear the deafening cries of several warning alarms. Suddenly, he felt very strange and light. He didn't need to get up off the floor. The lack of gravity had already done that for him.

"Shit! What the f---!" Trunks trailed as he floated his way back to the flight control deck.

Looking at the various damage reports and the ship's position dial, he could tell that he was in for some serious trouble. The ship had been knocked off course and was somersaulting head over heels with still increasing acceleration. Gravity had been knocked offline and the ship's oxygen and water stores were damaged.

"Piece of junk." Trunks muttered as he struggled with the seat's safety harness whose straps kept floating upward and just out of Trunks' reach. After that minor skirmish, the son of Vegeta set upon his task of first righting his ship and setting it back onto a stable, known course.

The ship had already had its autopilot knocked off so Trunks didn't hesitate on grabbing the control yoke in one hand and the throttle lever in the other. Working the two systems to react to each movement of the ship, Trunks managed to cease the somersaulting, but he couldn't slow the ship. Looking out the window, he suddenly realized that he recognized nothing. But, his path looked devoid of any obstacles for the time being. With a frustrated growl, Trunks opted to just let the ship go along its current path. He had to fix his life support systems now anyway. With limited oxygen and water, Trunks would have a limited life. Donning a space suit in case of any holes in the ship, Trunks floated back down beyond the living quarters and into the ships bowels.

Once he deemed the room still airtight, he removed the bulky spacesuit. He could see the damage however. A large wrinkled wall on the ship's left side showed a point of impact. Shrugging, he ignored it and began working over the various control panels and systems.

"Why did my mother make this thing so damn complicated?! This panel could be designed with less compents than this." Trunks muttered as he looked over panels. Soon he found the one he was seeking. Manually flipping a special lever, hissing could be heard from within. Trunks had sent sealing patch material through the oxygen and water lines in hopes of it repairing the leaks in the two systems.

Moments later, that problem seemed resolved. The oxygen and water meters both stabilized thus indicating that no more of either substance was seeping away. With a slight sigh of relief, Trunks tackled his next task, the gravity.

"Now where did mother put that?" Trunks muttered as he looked over some blueprints of the ship that Bulma had left within it as precautions for situations just like this.

"Ah, same room as this one! At least mother wasn't completely out of whack when designing this thing." Trunks said victoriously as he floated towards another panel. Fiddling with several wires, Trunks restored the gravity in no time at all. With gravity restored, Trunks landed solidly back onto the ground like a cat.

"Damn! I should volunteer for the police bomb squad sometime. I'm damn good at manipulating wires and stuff!" Trunks confidently said as he strutted out of the machine room and back to the control room.

"Now, this speed problem. Still nothing in my way though. What the hell hit this thing anyway?" Trunks muttered as he pulled up the tape from the ship's external cameras and rewound it. From a forward camera Trunks noticed that his ship entered some strange asteroid field.

"Hmm...that wasn't on the map." Trunks said as he summoned the star charts once again. He whacked his own head with his hand as he did see something Gohan had etched into the map. Backtracking his coordinates, he found that what Gohan had placed there was exactly what his ship had smacked into.

"Namek's Graveyard eh?" Trunks read outloud. Sure enough, his ship had ventured into where the original Planet Namek had once been. "Well, at least I know where I was, but where am I now? I don't even know which direction the ship had turned in reference to that asteroid field. Guess I'm still in some deep shit. Damn this bad luck of mine!"

Moments later, Trunks spotted an object in his ship's path.

"Crap! When am I ever going to get a break?!" Trunks yelled as he began reading the data on the planet. It wasn't named, it wasn't listed on any maps, and worse yet, it had its own lifeforms upon it.

"Well, at least it's got oxygen and water. It's liveable and I can make better repairs there and resupply the life support systems. Now, I only hope those life forms are not hostile. C'mon ship, slow down!" Trunks muttered as he tried in vain to slow the ship. Even the side thrusters weren't obeying and reverse didn't seem to be in the ship's vocabulary anymore.

Within minutes Trunks felt the panging jolt of the gravitational pull of the planet. Locked in its grasp, Trunks did the only possible thing he could to slow the ship. He manually forced the shutdown of all engines. The ship moaned and whined as it entered the atmosphere. Trunks quickly donned his spacesuit once again. The heat from the high speed and the friction it was causing as it descended was heating the inside of the ship like an oven on full bake. It was short-lived ,however, as the shaky flying inferno ceased its tantrum and entered a blue cloud-filled sky.

"Crap, c'mon, we gotta go slower!!!" Trunks yelled at the ship as he tried every emergency air brake he could find. He even pulled the emergency drag chute, but unfortunately that was fried in the inferno. "This isn't going to be pretty." Trunks sighed in defeat. The ship had slowed somewhat, but still not enough for a normal controlled landing. The ship was going to crash and there was nothing Trunks could do about it but hope that he would somehow survive it.

to be continued...