It was a holiday, and naturally, everyone would be in attendance at Capsule Corporation for the festivities. The new year was a big thing, and the Briefs family was known for adding extravagance when it came to already big things.

Trunks, who worked for his mother's company, was of course given the day off. His career had taken up a lot of his life lately – not that he always minded, there were only so many alien battles one could take – and he was grateful for the reprieve. It was a way to get the Briefs, the Sons, and friends of both families in one place; holidays were perfect excuses. There hadn't been a convenient enemy from outer space to bring them together in a long while, and though none of them had forgotten what they'd been through in the past, everyone leading separate lives had caused the group to grow apart a little.

Unless you were Son Goku, then camaraderie with persons you almost never saw was second nature. The man acted like the heydays of the fighting group were yesterday, and he used his time to pursue what perhaps was his only passion – training. Most everyone else had settled down to an ordinary life, with a little of the old zest left in it when free time permitted. Excluding Goten, who was a lot like his father and had difficulty holding a real job. At least he could be counted on to show up for every event.

Guffaws of both father and son could be heard echoing from the porch. Trunks assumed Krillin, or maybe someone else, had cracked a lame joke and sent the two sprawling.

Despite that it was winter, the beautiful night sky had lured everyone outside to socialize. The stargazing was not as spectacular so close to the city, but it captivated the party-goers, enough for them to feel at home in the cold, open air. The light of the moon hadn't obstructed the view of the constellations in years, and the endless night heavens above conjured a sense of freedom.

Trunks, content with being under a roof, took a sip of his drink.

He'd sequestered himself indoors, away from the social business going on outside. It wasn't out of shyness, but a natural lull in connection that he'd been experiencing more often lately.

The door creaked open, but Trunks chose not to look at the person entering.

"Hey Trunks," came Bulma's voice, "have you seen Bulla?"

He turned to meet his mother's eyes. They'd grown a bit duller as she aged, closer to fading denim than to the sky-blue orbs they'd once been.

"Come to think of it, I haven't," he said. Bulla was usually the self-instated centre of attention. Though she had her good qualities, she was spoiled rotten by both her parents, and her vanity knew no bounds. To top it off, she was just entering her hormonal teen years, and her worst tantrums often involved throwing full sized trees at her brother when he irked her. Feminine propriety be damned when you enraged the half-Saiyan daughter of Vegeta.

"If you're gonna mope inside, at least make yourself useful and go find her. Bring her out to see the stars with us. They're beautiful tonight," said Bulma.

"I've already seen the stars before, mom. Unless a spaceship is flying down at us from them, they don't need my attention. But I'll fetch Bulla for you."

Bulma shook her head and retreated back outside, clicking the door shut behind her.

Trunks's ability to sense ki, while not as often used now, was still something he could call upon at will. It was no trouble to detect his sister's energy, pulsing from below him and off to the side a little ways. That meant she was in the basement.

He set his drink down on the table as he passed it, making for a set of stairs he'd been down a thousand times.

He took his time descending the steps, in no hurry. If he had been, he'd have used the elevator, or accessed his heightened speed to arrive within seconds.

The main room of his mother's basement lab was littered with gizmos, unfinished projects or tech in need of repair. Some tasks were menial, and she had hired staff to deal with the excess chores and tinkering. Some she took on herself, and all those projects were kept in the space present before Trunks.

There was no sign of Bulla in the room, and her ki signature seemed to be in a further place still.

Passing through a doorway to an adjacent section of the lab, he approached the door that his mother always kept locked with a keypad. Somewhat redundant, when every other member of the family could break down the barrier with ease, but should that occur, it would be obvious who the perpetrator was.

Trunks found the door ajar, whole and not opened by force. Bulla must have figured out the key code somehow, but that wasn't anything too surprising, considering who her parents were. She'd neglected to re-lock the door behind her, just as she often neglected to return cold goods to the refrigerator or books to their rightful place. Trunks was meticulous about cleaning up after himself and he'd still gotten yelled at more. His parents had become softer, lenient over the years.

The no-longer-locked room contained all Bulma's projects labelled secret or dangerous, or just untouchable to anyone but her. For all their inherited brains, neither Trunks nor Bulla could always make sense of her creations. Gohan was brilliant too, but not in the same way, and with Dr. Briefs having left the living a few years back, only Bulma herself remained to understand the mechanisms behind her technology. For all his strategic smarts, Vegeta had trouble holding anything finer than a pencil without snapping it, so he was no help.

The room was still sizable, considering there was not much in it. White desks lined the walls in a streamlined fashion, uniform and pleasing to the eye.

What drew Trunks's attention was the large, egg-like contraption near the centre of the room, propped up by three attached leg segments.

It was a time machine, created after Future Trunks had arrived and inspired his mother from the past to make her own. Equipped with better technology than the future counterpart, the device was supposedly manufactured with far more advanced methods than the first.

They'd never tested it, and most of the group had agreed to leave it as it was – a decorative prototype. Trunks assumed his mother had made it just to prove she could, even if she never planned to use it other than an emergency.

The glass hatch was open on the time machine, and a pair of cream, stick-sized legs adorned with hot pink boots dangled over the side.

Due to her half-Saiyan biology, Bulla was predisposed to a more muscular build, even at her age. Well aware of this fact, and not desiring to stand out from her peers, she never indulged in vigorous exercise, and thus maintained a svelte and girlish figure.

"Hey, squirt," Trunks said in her direction. When she didn't answer, he strode up to the pod and poked her boot.

"Quit it," she hissed, and he grinned.

"Of the few of mom's projects we're expressly forbidden to play around with, you choose this one," Trunks taunted.

Bulla waved her feet in the air, in high hopes of landing a successful hit on her brother without actually moving. Her legs swung in useless motions a few feet from Trunks's head.

"You gonna come outside? Mom's looking for you, and Pan and Marron are there," he asked her. Again, no reply.

Taking matters into his own hands, he hopped the side and settled into the alcove with her.

"Hey! Get out, you brute! There's barely enough room in here as it is," whined Bulla. She'd had to crunch her body in an awkward position to accommodate for the extra person, tucking her legs back in. The two of them shimmied around until they both sat with their knees curled, and Trunks with his arms spread out on the lip of the dashboard. The machine had a single seat, designed for one occupant, and the squeeze made Bulla irritable.

"Awfully touchy today, huh princess? Did one of your boyfriends break up with you again?"

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Keep rolling your eyes, maybe you'll find a brain back there."

"You suck," she replied, pouting.

Trunks adjusted his position in the cockpit again while Bulla glared daggers at him.

"Y'know, it's actually pretty comfy in here, I could get used to it. I see why you chose this spot."

"It's not comfy now. You take up too much space. You ought to lay off the weights a little, bro," she said, emphasizing the last word in a sarcastic way.

"You ought to lay off that attitude. It's very unbecoming for a princess." Trunks noticed she had her phone clutched in her lap. She'd probably been twiddling her thumbs away on the thing until he's arrived.

"Who were you texting?" He asked.

"No one."

"Mm-hmm."

"I'm serious. I was playing a game."

"Is that game a lot more interesting than the party?"

She pursed her lips and didn't answer.

"If you don't want to feel squished, you'll have to get out of the machine, because I'm not going to," said Trunks. "How much do I have to move around until you get annoyed and go upstairs?"

"I don't wanna go upstairs. I hardly even know those people that well."

"You see a lot of them whenever we have parties here."

"Whatever."

"... If it's any consolation, I feel like I barely know those people now too."

"You don't like them either?"

"Nah. A bunch of stuffy adults talking about boring adult things, am I right?"

"You're an adult. You almost run Capsule Corp by yourself."

"Yeah, I suppose I do. I get bored with it sometimes. Are you planning on getting out anytime soon?"

When she didn't reply again, Trunks shifted, reaching to close the glass dome hatch of the machine over them.

"What was that for?"

"So we can talk. Have an official talk space. You know. All the cool kids are doing it."

"You're not cool, you're annoying. And I don't really wanna talk to you."

"If you don't want to talk to me, pretend I'm someone who you can talk to about why you're really down here."

Her round, electric blue eyes that matched the shade of his own narrowed at him.

"If we take too long, mom might send dad to come find us. You'd better be out with it before then," Trunks said.

"I already told you, I don't want to hang out with those people. Or even Pan. Plus, it's probably cold as hell out there."

"I think that's an oxymoron, squirt."

"Stop calling me that! And I know what an oxymoron is!"

"What is it, then?"

"Get out."

"No."

"Get out! You're so annoying!" At that, she mustered as much of a shove as she could in the tight space.

There wasn't much force behind the hit, but Trunks found himself inching up onto the dashboard to avoid her flailing limbs that followed.

He wasn't sure if she'd nudged him onto it, or he'd misplaced his grip, but he was hitting buttons and all of a sudden the machine came to life.

The two siblings froze in place as an electric hum began buzzing through the air, and then they both realized it was from the machine.

Their eyes met in shock when they felt it wobble off the ground.

"What did you do?!" Screeched Bulla. "Did you turn it on?!"

"It wasn't me!" He exclaimed. "You were hitting me like a crazy person and you probably smacked one of the buttons!"

Both of the siblings tried to wedge themselves into a position so they could see the screen. Bulla, being the more flexible of the two, manoeuvred herself to view the display, pinning her brother to the back while she did so.

"What does it say?"

"I – I don't know! It's a bunch of numbers!"

"Can you recognize any of them? A date, a year? Is this thing going to take off with us in it to Kami-knows-when or is it on standby?!"

The time machine slowly lifted higher into the air. Trunks couldn't be sure through his sister's panic, but he could swear that the view outside the glass was looking foggier by the second.

"No no no! How do I make it stop?!" Bulla cried, panicking and selecting buttons to push at random.

"Stop touching the buttons! You're making it worse!"

"Land, you cursed thing! I didn't even think this machine worked!"

The teen girl's hand smacked a panel too hard, and a brief fizz was heard, and a tiny stream of smoke to go with it.

"Bulla!"

"Stop screaming at me! I know what I'm doing!"

"No you don't!"

Trunks yanked his sister back from the front and compacted himself there instead. The machine was shaking a little, but he could clearly read that there were indeed a lot of numbers on the screen. One of the larger ones was going up, a steady five digits per second.

Trunks couldn't be sure, he'd only looked for a second, but he thought it might have been the year.

He pushed one of the largest buttons on the control panel, in hopes it would either stop the machine or send them somewhere – or some when – close.

As their mother's lab faded into oblivion around them, they realized it was the former, and Trunks hoped this was something he could fix.

Stranded in a grassy field, minutes after their landing and analyzing the area of panel that Bulla had struck, Trunks realized with desperation that it wasn't something he could fix at all.