A/N: Writing this just after the first chapter was posted. My original intent was to wait a week or so to judge reception, but...meh!

Disclaimer: Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super, and Dragonball GT are all owned by FUNimation, Toei Animation, Fuji TV, and Akira Toriyama. Please support the official release!

Chapter 2: Laid bare

Trunks wasn't sure what shocked him more: the fact that his mother had struck him, or what she had said. He blinked in stunned silence, his golden aura from his Super Saiyan state fading, though the transformation remained. He opened his mouth to speak, but his mother cut him off.

"Nuh uh. Nothing justifies calling her that, Trunks. You've been acting strange since you've...well hell, I don't know what happened." Bulma's eyes burned with tears that started to form at the corners of her eyes. "Let's start with where the hell you've been Trunks! We thought Cell killed you! You've been only Kami knows where this whole time doing, what? Training to become Super Saiyan? You couldn't tell us you were okay!?"

Trunks looked down at his mother, still slightly in shock. Killed be Cell? She shouldn't even know who Cell was. Hell, Cell shouldn't have even been active yet! Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. Either he had crossed into another dimension or he simply returned to the wrong time line. The Trunks of this time line apparently lead a very different life if he was killed by Cell and had started a relationship with one of the androids. The thought made him want to vomit. The androids of his time line weren't capable of compassion: their sole enjoyment and function was to destroy. They'd killed how many people? How many mothers, children and fathers? How many lives never got to be fully enjoyed because they were stolen away?

He allowed his eyes to fall on 18 who, much to his shock, appeared hurt. Though there were no tears, the look in her eyes showed that she was taken aback by either his words or actions. Maybe both.

No, this wasn't his time line. Frankly, this was some fucked up place he did not want to be.

Finally, Trunks looked back to his mother, allowing his Super Saiyan transformation to fade, his long lavender hair falling back to his shoulders. He was satisfied that this 18 wasn't like the one from his own time line, thus he had no need to kill her. "Mom, listen I—"

Bulma looked to him, her eyes becoming red with the tears that flowed freely now. He placed his hands on her shoulders and gave his best comforting smile. "This is going to sound weird, but you have to promise to hear me out."

Bulma reached up and wiped her tears, sniffling slightly. "I'm just glad you're back...we thought you died, Trunks."

'Well, she wouldn't be wrong,' Trunks thought to himself. He had died, after all, in his fight in the past. Still, he had to explain this the best he could.

"I'm not your Trunks," he started, and Bulma scoffed.

"Well, I mean I am your son...but I'm not your son," he followed up. Bulma raised a brow at him and 18 folded her arms as she stepped up to look him over.

"You are older," she confirmed. Trunks looked to her and nodded, though it was a rigid sort of nod.

"Listen: this time line...this reality that's yours, it isn't mine. My mother built time machine that allowed me to go back into the past. With it, I was to stop androids 17 and 18 from killing everyone we know—and to give Goku medicine for a heart virus that he was going to die from. After doing so I was...well I thought I was, on my way home to tell her the good news. Apparently something got messed up."

Bulma looked up at her son with furrowed brows and 18 was silent. The android moved fast, faster than Trunks in his normal state could perceive. From the position he was in, to the position he wound up in, Trunks gathered she had grabbed his head and forced him down before she began combing through his hair.

"H-hey," Trunks yelled, though 18 shushed him as she leaned over further, causing Trunks to blush as his forehead was buried in her chest.

"You clearly struck your head," she said in a casual tone. He managed to free himself, standing up straight as annoyance crossed his face.

"I did not. I'm telling the truth," Trunks shot back before he reached into his jacket. Removing his capsule case he produced the capsule that contained the time machine. Hurling a few feet away, the machine in question appeared in a 'bomf' and cloud of smoke. Bulma's eyes bulged at the appearance of the machine and 18's did the same.

"Trunks, this is..," she muttered, approaching the machine and running a hand over it.

"The time machine you built in my time line," Trunks finished, folding his arms across his chest. Quickly, he followed up. "Sorry.." He did feel bad. This mother of his had lost her son, and he was shattering all of her hopes that he was the son she lost.

"No, I mean, I was building something like this for 18...so that she could go back and save you," Bulma confessed. "Well, our Trunks." Trunks nodded in understanding, and 18 folded her arms under her chest.

"That might no be a good idea, though. If Cell was after the androids to become whole, having two 18s would double his chances. And 18 stood no chance against Cell's second form," Trunks said. 18 scoffed.

"I at least have to try," she said.

Trunks was about to comment that it'd be suicide if she went back, but he didn't care to. Who was he to care what happened to this time line's androids? If she wanted to go get herself killed, so be it. Still, there was a nagging feeling that these androids could have been different—such as they were in the past. He shrugged it off. They probably became different after Cell showed up and started trying to suck them up. Survival instinct caused people to do crazy things. Well, he supposed that wasn't true: the androids weren't 'people'.

"Trunks" Bulma called, having climbed up t look in the cockpit, "come here."

Trunks moved to the other side of the craft, climbing up to look. Bulma pointed to the dash that had the information about time lines. "Is this correct?"

Trunks peered over and looked to the console. What he read made his stomach sink. Every thing was correct, it should have taken him home. He nodded mutely before he frowned. "Perhaps it's broken?"

Bulma gave a small smile. "Just like your father. I make you an elaborate machine and you break it with your clumsy Saiyan hands." Bulma climbed down from the cockpit and Trunks followed. "I'll take a look at it. With the schematics that I have, it shouldn't take more than a few days. But Trunks...I'm going to warn you now, there's a possibility that this thing isn't broken at all."

Trunks narrowed his eyes. "That's not possible. Changing the past creates a branching time line, it doesn't change the future that is already a reality."

"Not true," Bulma said, causing Trunks to raise a brow.

"But you told me-"

"Trunks, time travel is still a mystery. There are tons of theories out there, and it's never been done until now so there's a lot that's still unknown. Your actions in the past could have changed your present.."

Trunks reeled at the thought. No, but that made no sense. If this was his present, and he had died, that meant that he should have appeared dead. That would mean there's was two of him? One here, now, and one in the Otherworld? Or maybe he just fell in on himself? Had his death in the past changed everything? Perhaps that was the key. Him dying in the past caused his present to change? Or perhaps there was something else? He reached up and ran his hands through his head. Bulma smirked at this.

"You're thinking too much," she commented. He sighed. No matter if this was his time line or another, his mother knew him, and knew him well. He couldn't fool her. "Something you did in the past, Trunks, could have caused this time to shift.

"But he died" 18 spoke up, walking around to Bulma's side, "and he isn't anything like the Trunks from our timeline."

"True," Bulma commented.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Trunks muttered.

"You shouldn't. You're an asshole," 18 said bluntly. "That time in the past must have let Vegeta rub off on you."

Trunks opened his mouth to speak, but Bulma stepped between the two. She knew them both well enough to know when a fight was about to take place. "Listen. Trunks, perhaps we should go inside. You can tell us all about what you did in the past. Perhaps we can find out what happened."

"And that's when I came back," Trunks said. They had gathered in underground laboratory. This one was similar to the one his mother always worked in, but apparently they had built tunnels to travel too and from. The upstairs was nothing more than an abandoned house, having literally went underground in hiding from Cell.

Bulma pinched her nose. "You...died," she asked, closing her eyes in frustration. "Trunks, that is what went wrong."

"I don't see how. I was brought back," Trunks offered.

"Yes, but you don't understand. You died. That means that everything you could have done was erased—including returning and stopping the androids. When you were brought back everything was messed up. Time is a current, and if it's disturbed that's fine: it will keep flowing. But when you put an immovable object in it, the water will split around it creating two different rivers."

"Yes, branching time lines."

"Correct, but if you were to knock that immovable object away, or remove it, what happens? The river will come back together. Two separate time lines merged, Trunks. Yours and another that perhaps is similar to this one joined as one. Your death was probably the cause of it all, that immovable object." She gave a small smile. "Not so immovable with the Dragon Balls, though."

Trunks buried his forehead into his hands, remaining silent. So, there was a chance—a good one at that—that this was his home time line. His death had caused things to go astray and his revival molded his time line into it's current form. But the question that remained was what had happened in the past of this—his—time line. If the androids hadn't killed everyone, was it Cell? How could Cell, in his first form, have stopped all of the Z Fighters? Why hadn't Gero activated 17 and 18?

"Mom, can you tell me what happened in the past? I mean what happened to get the time line this way? I know that in my time line 17 and 18 murdered everyone before they started their rampage."

"As if I'd kill the people who tried to protect me from Cell," 18 scoffed, rolling her eyes. "That's borderline insane."

"There was no Cell in my time line," Trunks said flatly. "You do it because you enjoy watching other people suffer."

18 grit her teeth at this accusation, standing from where she had been seated. "You're making me want to consider it," she shot back. Trunks' own teeth grit and he moved to stand, but Bulma cleared her throat and spoke loudly.

"WELL! As far as how things had gotten to this state..."

A/N: The next chapter will discuss what happened in the past, why 18 is on their side, and 18 may find out that Trunks just murdered her brother. With her dead boyfriend's sudden re-appearance, she hasn't had time to consider what the ramifications of Cell dying means. Please read and review, as all reviews motivate me to work faster! No reviews tells me people don't like the story.