“You know this is dangerous,” said Bulma.

        “I know mom, but we don’t have any choice. If I don’t do this, our world will probably be destroyed,” said the 18 year old, as he brushed a few strands of purple hair out of his eyes. “I’m just not strong enough to fight those androids myself. This is my chance to do something.”

        “I know I can’t stop you, but I’m your mother. I’m supposed to worry. It’s not that I don’t want you to go, but there aren’t any guarantees you’ll come back. I don’t want to lose you like I lost your father.” Bulma smiled sadly at her son and turned away, trying to hide the tears starting to form in her eyes. “Promise me you’ll be careful Trunks.”

        “I promise.” Trunks gave his mother a hug. Bulma took a deep breath and said “Goodbye.” Trunks climbed up into the time machine.

        “I love you!”

        “I love you too mom.” With that, Trunks closed the door. He started up the time machine, waved goodbye to Bulma, and took off for the past.

        Everything was going along according to plan. The time machine slipped through the time tunnel perfectly. Then in an instant, everything changed. The machine started to bounce and shake. What’s going on Trunks thought to himself. As if the computer had read his mind, the automated voice said “Experiencing turbulence.”

        “Oh great,” he mumbled. Just then, the time machine hit an extremely rough spot and Trunks was thrown into the circuit panel and everything started fading to black. He forced himself to resist the darkness clouding his brain. It didn’t take long for him to realize, even in his condition, that the time machine was headed down and he was going to crash somewhere. He had no idea where, he just hoped it would be a secluded area.

        In a matter of minutes, the time machine landed with a thud. “Oh,” groaned Trunks. He stood up as best he could and made his way to the circuit panel. The main one was totally ruined. “Great,” he mumbled. “Where am I going to get another one of these?” He pulled the circuit out of the panel and put it inside his jacket. Leaning on the side of ship to steady himself, Trunks stumbled out the door of the time machine and looked around. He had luckily managed to land in a wooded area. He surveyed the time machine quickly. It looked ok from the outside. Trunks pulled an empty capsule from his jacket pocket and quickly bottled up the time machine. I’ll check it out later he thought. His head cleared momentarily and he remembered the sword strapped to his back. If I run into anybody, I’m going to have a hard time explaining it he thought. He reached back in his jacket and pulled out another empty capsule and proceeded to contain the sword. Then he put both capsules back in his jacket with the other ones. Darkness came over him as he passed out.

        Meanwhile, in another part of the woods, a group of five girls were spending their Friday night camping. They were sitting around the campfire having fun (instead of worrying about school). Well, all except Ami. She was reading as usual, trying to block out the noise of Rei and Serena’s arguing.

“Please, can’t we have a little quite?” pleaded Lita. They either didn’t hear her or choose to ignore her because the argument continued. Suddenly Mina pointed toward the sky.

“Look! Something’s going to crash into the woods!”

Everyone turned to follow her finger. “What are we waiting for?” said Rei. “Somebody may need our help.” Everyone got up quickly to follow Rei, everyone that is except Lita.

“You guys go on ahead. I’ll stay here and look after everything.”

“Are you sure?” asked Serena. “Luna and Artemis can stay with you ok?”

Lita nodded her head, and the others went off. It didn’t take them long to find something. It wasn’t the wreckage of a craft, but a person. He had purple hair that just brushed the tops of his ears and he looked to be about the same age as they were. He was lying on the ground and looked slightly banged up. Ami knelt down and checked his vital signs. After a few moments, she stood up. “He’s alive,” she said. “Unconscious, but alive. He needs help though. Lita’s house is closest, so I think we should take him there.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. “I’ll go bring her over,” said Serena.

“Don’t get lost Meatball Head!” yelled Rei after her.

Serena ignored Rei and made it back through the woods to the campsite. “Lita?”

Lita looked up at Serena with a rather pale face. “What?”

“We found a guy in the woods. He’s hurt, and Ami says that we should take him to your house because it’s closest.” Lita looked very reluctant. “If it makes you feel any better, we didn’t find any wreckage anywhere. We just found this guy. It may not have even been a craft that went down. Maybe it was just a shooting star. Anyway, somebody needs your help Lita. Please?”

Lita took a deep breath and nodded. “OK,” she said softly.

“Good,” said Serena. “Now follow me.” Serena led Lita through the woods back to where the others were. “There he is,” she said and pointed to the ground.

Lita looked down at him and felt her heart skip a beat. She flushed a little, but managed to control her feelings knowing that she would be teased endlessly if she even mentioned that he looked like her ex-boyfriend, only better looking. She quickly snapped out of her trance. “Are you ready to take him back to my house?” she asked.

“Somebody has to go back to the campsite and get our stuff. Ami and I will volunteer,” offered Serena. “Luna and Artemis can help too.” Serena turned and headed back to the site dragging Ami after her before anybody could protest.

Rei, Mina, and Lita proceeded to Lita’s house, dragging the mysterious guy along with them. In the process, Lita noticed something fall out of his jacket pocket. She quickly picked it up and slipped it in her pocket unnoticed. After a long, slow trek, they finally got him onto the couch in her living room.

“Whew, I’m exhausted,” said Mina.

“Same here,” said Lita and Rei together.

Just then, Ami, Serena, and the two cats came in. Serena deposited a pile of stuff near the door. “How is he?” she asked.

“Still the same,” answered Mina.

Ami walked over to the couch. In the light of the living room, it was now clear that the stranger had several cuts and scrapes. “Where do you keep your first aid stuff?” Ami asked Lita.

“In the upstairs bathroom.”

“Can you bring down some peroxide, cottonballs, and a couple band-aids?”

“Sure,” Lita answered and disappeared upstairs. She returned a couple minutes later with the requested supplies, and Ami set to work. When she had finished cleaning up all the cuts, she put a band-aid on a cut over his eye.

“All done,” Ami said. “Thank you for the supplies.”

Lita just nodded. She gathered everything up and went back upstairs. A few minutes later she returned with two blankets that she spread over the purple haired stranger.

“I wonder if he saw the crash,” said Ami to Rei.

“Maybe. He might have even been in it. After all, judging by his appearance, my guess is that he isn’t from around here.”

Trunks began to wake up to voices. They’re talking about me he said to himself. I wonder if they saw anything.

 He sat up and heard a voice say, “It looks like he’s awake.” Trunks stood up and turned around to find himself facing a group of five very different looking girls.

In turn, the girls looked back at him. He was about 6’ tall, and they could see now that he had blue eyes. He was wearing a blue jacket with a patch on the sleeve that said Capsule Corp. Underneath was a black shirt, and his black pants were stuffed into a pair of brown and yellow boots. He brushed his hair back and stared at the girls curiously. Then he began to feel a little dizzy, and started to sway a bit.

The short, blue haired girl spoke up first. “You should be sitting down. You haven’t recovered from your accident yet.”

Trunks sank back onto the couch and looked up at the five girls.

The girl with two blond pigtails hanging from buns and blue eyes stepped forward. “My name is Serena.” She pointed to a black haired girl with purple eyes. “This is Rei, and next to her is Ami,” she said, indicating the girl with blue hair and blue eyes. Next, Serena pointed to a longhaired blond with blue eyes. “This is Mina, and last but not least, Lita.”

Trunks looked at Lita. She had brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and large green eyes. She also seemed unnaturally pale, making her eyes look even bigger and greener than normal. He looked back at Serena and said, “My name is Trunks.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Ami, befitting her studious nature.

“Same here,” chorused Mina and Rei. Trunks just nodded, noticing that Lita had stayed silent.

Serena turned to her brown haired friend. “It’s getting late. We probably should get out of your hair. Are you going to be alright by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself. You guys go ahead and go on home. I’ll be fine,” Lita assured her.

Serena turned to Trunks. “Goodbye!” she said cheerfully.

One by one, the girls followed Serena’s lead and said their good-byes to Lita and Trunks. Then they all headed to the door and sorted out their stuff, picked it up, and headed back to their homes. “Bye!” Mina yelled, turning around as she headed out. Lita waved, and then shut the door behind her.

“I take it then that this must be your house.”

“Yes,” Lita said softly. She reached into her pants pocket and pulled out the damaged circuit. “I think this belongs to you. It fell out of your jacket when we brought you here.” She held it out to him and he took it, looking at her suspiciously. She looked up at him. “What is it?”

“A broken computer circuit,” he answered abruptly. He pocketed the circuit and said, “Thank you. If you don’t mind, I’ll just stay down here on the couch.”

Lita nodded. “If you need anything, I’ll be upstairs,” she said softly.

Trunks watched her go up the stairs. “I wonder about her….” He shook his head and went back over to the couch, pulled the blankets up and went to sleep.

All of a sudden, he heard a scream and he fell off the couch. That sounded like Lita he thought to himself, and he ran upstairs.

Trunks found Lita’s room almost immediately because the door was open. He peeked into the room, then moved so he stood in the doorway. A small lamp was on next to the bed.. Lita was sitting up in her bed clutching a pillow to her. “Are you alright?” he asked.

Lita turned and looked at Trunks. At that moment, he felt his heart soften some. Lita looked like a lost child. Her hair was down from the ponytail and falling over her shoulders and in her face. The traces of tears were evident on her cheeks

“I’m fine,” she said.

Trunks noticed the tremor in her voice, but decided too not to pry. He turned to go downstairs, but before he did he turned around to check on her one more time. She was trembling.

Trunks walked into her room. “What’s wrong Lita?” he asked softly.

She looked up at him ready to deny that there was anything the matter, but when she saw the concern on his face, she let a tear slip down her cheek and whispered sadly “My parents.”

Trunks sat down on the edge of  the bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She hesitated, then looked again at his concerned face and she knew that she did want to tell him. She took a deep breath and started. “My friends, the girls you met tonight, and I were out in the woods to go camping this weekend. Mina saw something falling from the sky. We don’t know what it was, and we didn’t find it, but it reminded me of the plane crash that killed my parents,” she said with a catch in her voice.

Trunks knew instantly what it was that she had seen, but he didn’t say anything. No wonder she looked so pale he thought. “How long ago was it? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Lita sighed heavily and answered, “Five years. The crash happened on my 12 birthday.” That being said, she couldn’t hold back the tears anymore as they fell from her eyes. On a sudden impulse, Trunks pulled her into his arms and let her cry into his chest. Lita just let her tears fall on his shirt while he held her. After a while she felt better and pulled back, her green eyes tinged red with crying and trails of tears down her face.

“I miss them so much,” she whispered.

“I know,” Trunks said softly. “I miss my father everyday.”

Lita looked up him. “What happened to him?”

He got an angry look in his eyes as he remembered. “My father died when I was baby. I never knew him. He was killed, slaughtered by the same people who killed my friends. I couldn’t do anything to stop it,” he said bitterly.

“I’m sorry,” she said looking up at him with sorrow in her eyes. “You don’t have to feel guilty though. Even though there was nothing you could do to help, I’m sure that wherever they are, they know that you wanted to. Sometimes, it the thought that counts.”

Trunks looked down at her in surprise. Then he smiled a little and said “I guess you’re right. Well, it’s kind of late, and I’m sure you’re tired, so I’ll just head downstairs.” He stood up to and turned to go, but Lita shyly put a hand on his arm.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked curiously.

“For listening to me,” Lita said softly.

“Anytime. If you need me, I’ll be downstairs,” Trunks said with a smile.

Lita smiled back at him. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Trunks turned and walked down to the couch. I’ve never met anybody like her he thought. I wonder how many people have seen this side of her?

Upstairs, Lita was thinking about Trunks. He didn’t have to come up here, but he did. I wonder why? I’ve never met anybody any like him.