Future Reborn Prologue - Reboot
"Gosh, you don't know how proud of you I am for doing this." Bulma felt her eyes glimmer. With what, she wasn't sure. Happiness, sadness, fear, hope— all seemed to mend together as she realized her boy had grown up into something special. "You look so handsome, Trunks Briefs. I'm gonna miss you, son."
Trunks was so caught up in the moment that he didn't even notice Bulma handing him an odd capsule until it rested in his palm. "I guess… this is the antidote for Goku?"
Bulma nodded. "Do me a favor… don't drop it, okay? That was hard enough to get a hold of!"
Finding a sense of comfort in his mother's tone, Trunks smirked. "Right… okay. That should be the easy part." Before he left, he gave his mother one last look—realizing how far they had come in this desolate future, and just how little was left to go. "Stay out of trouble while I'm gone," he teased, before realizing that his mother's eyes had left him.
"M-Mom? What's…"
Trunks followed her eyes and found his own agape not even a millisecond later.
"You're leaving us?" cut in a new, yet horrifyingly familiar, feminine voice.
"Well, that's disappointing."
As if out of nowhere, Androids Seventeen and Eighteen descended from the sky, the twin terrors' ice blue eyes sweeping over the bulging, horrified azure eyes of the Briefs. They looked at each other for a brief moment, smirking at one another.
"No!" Trunks balled his left fist, careful not to break the antidote in his right. "This wasn't the time… we should've waited until we knew a city was under attack!"
That made Eighteen chuckle to herself. "We both know your love of playing hero wouldn't let you do that." She noticed the odd contraption behind the duo, tilting her head as she did so. "Hmm… and just what is that? For the Briefs family, I'd have expected something more… flashy."
"Enough quips, Eighteen. The more flustered he gets, the less of a challenge he becomes." Seventeen seemed detached from the situation; his focus was more attuned toward the woman standing next to his rival. "Although I will say… I should have expected Bulma to be your mother, kid." Seventeen watched as the gracefully aging woman trembled where she stood. "It was the only way to explain your hair color." He narrowed his eyes. "Although… purple instead of blue… seems a little odd."
"E-Enough of this!" Trunks growled, turning Super Saiyan almost immediately. The wave of power generated by his ascension pushed Bulma back, an occurrence of which he was grateful for. The farther she got away from them, the better. "I don't have time to play with you, so just leave!"
"Play?" Eighteen smiled. "I wasn't aware that you were 'playing.' Because the way I see it, if you don't answer where you're planning on going…" She phased out of Trunks' vision, already having shoved Bulma down to the ground and placing a knee on her spine, eliciting a shriek of pain as she just barelybegan to press down on her. "Your mommy might not be going with you."
"You monsters…" Trunks hissed, but remained motionless. Charging into battle recklessly was one thing, and he'd do it five hundred times over if it meant he could save even just one life. However, this was his mother's life on the line. He knew that if he didn't give into the androids' demands, they would just as easily kill her as they did Gohan and his father. "…What do you want to know?"
"T-Trunks—gaaaah!" Bulma cried out in pain as Eighteen pressed down harder on her spine, forcing her face into the ground and sending her into the realm of unconsciousness.
"Can't have you interrupting blondie, Bulma," Eighteen dryly remarked. Taking delight in Trunks' growls of pain, she looked back up at him. "So, feeling talkative yet?"
"It's… a time machine." Trunks hung his head in shame. 'I can't believe this happened… it was all supposed to be different…'
"You're kidding me." Seventeen had to admit he was intrigued. "I thought that stuff only existed in sci-fi movies."
"It did… until my mom made this one." Trunks' hair lost its Super Saiyan sheen, an act of submission on his part. He wanted to change the future, but no future was worth living through without his mother. "If you want it, it's yours. Just please… please leave her alone."
Eighteen scoffed. "What we want, we take. That was never the question. However…" She mulled over a few possibilities in her head. "I'll be generous. You tell me what we need to know about working this thing, and you and your precious little mother can live."
"Are you kidding me, Eighteen?" cut in Seventeen's voice. "We've spent the last few years hunting this kid down. He's been our last source of entertainment for a while now. And you're just going to give it up for a time machine?"
"Maybe you should start thinking with your head, brother," Eighteen scowled. "We could go back in time and hunt all the Z-Fighters down again if we wanted to. Every city we destroyed… waiting to be destroyed again. I'm not going to blow this opportunity just because you want to kill him."
She could tell from the surprise in his eyes that Trunks didn't expect to come out alive from all this. He was more than eager to show the androids every nook and cranny of the machine, Bulma's cries of desperation being silenced by her voice giving out on her. Honestly, Trunks seemed like a perfect gentleman as he lifted the cover to the machine, telling them the historical background of the date set in the machine.
"So, we get to test our strength against not only this Frieza guy… but Goku himself." Seventeen rubbed his hands in anticipation. "How interesting. I'm sure they're both weak by our standards, but perhaps that'll finally terminate that itch in my head to kill Son Goku."
"Speaking of Goku… take this." Trunks gave Seventeen the capsule he'd been holding for so long, feeling a shiver as he did it. Not only was he making non-violent contact with his father's killer, but he was doing it in order to doom another timeline—just to save his own. "It's… heart medicine. Time travel has its consequences… and who knows if he'll be suffering."
"That virus was what killed him here?" Eighteen asked inquisitively. When she saw Trunks nod, she scowled. "What a weakling. Even still, he's the only one that we have to kill. Wouldn't be much fun if he had a virus causing him to kick the bucket before we did." she smiled flirtatiously, almost if she was like a real girl that hadn't murdered more than half the world's populace. "Thanks for the tip."
"Y-You're welcome…" Trunks breathed out, hopping down from the machine with a shudder. Eighteen thought she noticed Trunks fiddle with the side of the machine for a split moment, but paid it no heed. This little brat wasn't worth worrying about anymore now that she had a whole new world to raze down with her brother.
Teasingly, she winked at the young man. "Have fun rebuilding. Maybe by the time we're done, we can get some more mileage out of this world!" The look of horror on his face indicated that he hadn't considered the possibility of them returning, and that was enough to carry the twins into unbridled laughter until they lifted off and disappeared into the timestream.
A dark smirk overcame Trunks' face. In their moment of arrogance, they hadn't seen him damage the fuel tank of the time machine. They would make it to the past with no problems, but there was no chance in hell they would ever be returning.
"It's finally over..." Trunks breathed out, walking on shaky legs back to the Capsule Corporation with his mother in his arms. "Maybe not the way I thought it would be, but we'll never have to worry about them ever again."
By the time he had set his mother down in her bed, he couldn't help but give a small smile of hope. "I know it's not the way you or Goku would've approved, mom... but our future is saved."
As he turned the light off and went to his own room for a well-deserved rest, he tried to keep his mind off how doomed the past was.
Well, I didn't see this coming! 2018 has been a very transformative year for me in a lot of ways, but I think that one of the most important things to me was remembering just how important creation(of any sort) was to me. I've been learning how to remix music, doing some video and photo editing… but I dunno man, there's something that I really missed with writing, and this particular story was one I've had in the back of my mind for a while now.
Being able to step away from this site for a while also allowed me to notice something: I always had divergences either prior to or starting at the Saiyan Saga. Truth be told, although I like both the Saiyan and Frieza arcs, I've always been way more interested in working with elements from the Cell and Buu arcs(and even in my story outlines, those were what I had the most passion for). One of my good friends SpiderLedgic(author of Half-Remembered Dream) sort of helped encourage me to put this out after hearing this idea. But, truthfully, what made the final push for me to do so was reconnecting with an old friend named LucifVegeta, who after years of inactivity on the site also put out a piece of his own(which I encourage you to check out) in attempts to get back into prose writing.
With all of this said, I'd like to make a few things clear about the launch of this story:
For one: I'm probably putting nowhere near as much time into writing this story as I did any of my others. FFN and interneting in general is basically at the bottom of the totem pole for me in terms of my priorities and hobbies, but creative writing is an important part of my life that I've unfortunately let go in the past two years. I want to be able to revisit it when I can do so, but I'm making no promises regarding the frequency of updates or the like. If you are even remotely interested in this story, I strongly recommend you follow it—it's not for the sake of analytics, but because this story could see weeks without updates, or three updates in three days' time. Really depends on my muse and availability—and even when I have the time to write, it doesn't necessarily mean that I will choose to use that time writing.
Second: My writing ability probably isn't exactly up to par in terms of the work I put out years ago, but to be honest… I'm really just here to write a story. I'm not exactly going to be spending too much time looking to make my writing "sharp" in comparison to before; I'm just looking to get some ideas on paper and be able to look back on a story that has been in the back of my mind for a while now.
Third: It should be said that there will probably be some creative liberties taken here and there, but deep down, man, this is just Dragon Ball Z fanfiction. Even Toriyama himself boosted Frieza and Android 17 to levels unseen before for the sake of the plot.
And finally, fourth: There's no shot this story goes beyond much farther than the Cell arc. There's no glory in stretching a story out just for the sake of it, so I'm aiming to write what I feel makes sense for this story and no more.
This is already getting too long(I had a bad habit for extensive A/Ns back in the day… seems I still do), but I think that about covers it! One of my favorite things about this site is connecting with my readers, so feel free to either leave me some feedback or even just message me about anything and I'd be happy to speak with you!