AN: DBZ and all its respective characters are not my property; they're owned by Toei Animation and by Akira Toriyama.

What.

The.

Holy.

Fuck.

Trunks – the one that everyone was comfortable and familiar with – was used to strange things happening. Not 'hey, let's give your world a complete mind-fuck' strange, but rampaging killer robots were pretty much the norm for how he grew up. Like Terminator, only no one ever came back in time to try to assassinate his mother and no one sent a robot back in time to tell him that he was going to grow up to be the leader of a resistance army. Unless you counted that he sent himself back in time to make sure everyone didn't die, a plan which had seemed to royally backfire-

So maybe the robots were the only similarity his life had to the movie. That, and the time travel. Still, a certain amount of normalcy was expected every day. Like, you wake up, you brush your teeth, you go off to fight the big bad evil bent on destroying the world; there were parts in there that were definitely not of the norm, but it had a flow that he could wrap his mind around. There were no pieces that were just thrown into the mix, nothing that happened solely so that he could react to it.

Except maybe up until now, the moment that had to be the most surreal incident of his life. Lying, bleeding and wounded and feeling unable to scrap together enough energy to sit up, and watching a carbon-copy of yourself being verbally harassed by a woman all while fighting alongside her to kick the big-bad evil's ass had to rank up somewhere in the top ten list of 'Moments I Never Wanted To Have Happen In My Life'.

Watching his parents have sex, or knowing that he had somehow managed to facilitate the action, and knowing that he had missed his own conception and birth by mere days was number one on that list, but it was a number one that he never, ever, wanted to think about.

Whoever they were, they had obviously known what they were going to be dealing with and had prepared according; it hadn't taken long for Cell to be taken down, every cell ( no pun intended ) to be eradicated by a final ki blast from his merry look-alike. The two were left battered and bruised, blood dripping from the rips and tears in the jeans and shirts, but a comparison between them and any other fighter showed a world of difference; they were still up and chatting, laughing wearily together as they walked carefully over the broken ground, tired but not broken from the fight.

Someone crouched down beside him, offering a hand out to help him stand, and Trunks found himself face-to-face with the man who looked like him. He smiled softly, giving a small shrug with one shoulder as the confused warrior hesitantly reached up. "I know, it's all a bit confusing now… but you out of everyone here should be able to figure out, or at least understand what's going on better than anyone else. You pulled this same trick a few years ago." As Trunks stood the man grinned. "I should know; I did the same thing too. At least," he added, looking momentarily perplexed, "I... think I did."

That certainly explained things.

Pain still wracked his body, causing even the action of standing to be a challenge, but it was something that Trunks could easily bear. The woman was standing a few feet behind the second purple-haired man, arms crossed with a sardonic smile playing over her lips, and as the man glanced back she rolled her eyes. Trunks stepped closer to them hesitantly, seeing his father, Piccolo, and the rest gathering as well in his peripheral vision.

"You don't need to act like we're going to bite," the woman said lightly, sliding the hand with the now-torn glove back through her hair. It got caught on a knot and she made a face before shaking her hand out. "It'd be a pretty warped plan, coming back to get rid of the guy that was going to wipe half of you out only to turn around to get rid of you ourselves. I could think of quite a few better ways to accomplish that… namely not getting rid of Cell in the first place."

"So, ah…" The woman arched a brow as the question caught on Trunks' tongue. He seemed to have become the de-facto spokesperson for the group, a role he wasn't exactly comfortable fulfilling. "Who… exactly are you? And why, again, are you here?"

They both grinned in response to that, the purple-haired man stepping back to sling an arm around the black-haired woman. "Well, my name is Trunks, as you probably could have guessed," he said. "And this-" he started, gesturing at the woman.

"My name is Mumei," she said, cutting him off. He blinked before shrugging, accepting her answer as fact. "You guys sent for us, remember? With the message in the time machine asking for help…?"

Trunks stared at her for a moment, his mind blanking out as to what she could possibly be referring to. But several things were suddenly made clear; they were from the future, one where more warriors were left alive and whole after the android incident and one where he was even stronger. And they somehow had been made aware of that horrible mess that was about to be made of the past, something that wouldn't have been too hard to accomplish though with their references that they were asked to come…

… Goddamnit Bulma. A sickening sort of sense was starting to descend upon the situation, one that made Trunks sigh. He had shrugged his mother's questions off earlier – after all, he was the one that knew what to do with the time machine. If he said there was no way to use it to ask for more aid, then there was no way…

Excepting the fact, of course, that his mother was a technological genius and that she did, technically, build the damn thing anyways.

A smile was plastered on his face as he nodded at the two. "… So we did," Trunks said after a moment, voice sounded slightly strained. Mumei twisted her mouth into an expression of perplexity before glancing at the second Trunks with another shrug.

-----

"So what's your future like?"

Two ships had come to pick the warriors up. Yamcha, Tien, and Trunks had gone in the first one along with the reporters, Mr. Satan, and his disciples – the future warrior flat out refused to be near the other future copy of himself longer than necessary – while Krillin, Piccolo, Vegeta, Gohan, and Goku stuck around to ride in the second one along with the two new comers. There was a bit of an awkward silence as Gohan and Krillin regarded them in almost unabashed awe while the others were more reserved, with Vegeta practically seething in anger. Trunks at least had the decency to act somewhat ashamed; Mumei seemed to hardly care and acted as if nothing out of the norm was occurring.

"Huh?" The dark-haired woman glanced back at Gohan, blinking. "Our future? You mean, what's like… our time like?" she asked, pointing to herself. Gohan nodded slowly and she made a moue before glancing at Trunks. "Not really sure that's a question I can answer…"

"I don't see why not. We already changed it; whatever happens is already going to be different." Trunks stretched out, back pressed against the metal wall of the ship, and tilted his head slightly to stare at the five judgmental faces. Gohan was struck by how different he seemed from the Trunks he knew – the sense of duty, obligation, the worry and seriousness were all there, but a layer of relaxation and playfulness was coated over it. The clothing was different, but it was more that he wore his whole body differently, acting far more at ease while still accepting command of the situation.

"Okay, all right." Mumei was sitting cross-legged and used her hand to flick her hair back; there was something about her that seemed familiar to Gohan as well, though he couldn't place it. "I just mean… what do you want to know about it? Who's there? How we live? What all we do…?"

"Who are you?" Vegeta asked harshly, glaring at the woman. Her eyes widened.

"Ookay… I'm a friend of Trunks. When he saw that I had an aptitude for fighting he started teaching me different things that he had learned, mainly from you Gohan, but I'm no one… I mean, if you look I'm sure you'll find a Mumei, you'll find me, but I'm no one special right now."

"So you're just a human?" She smiled at the question.

"Yup. Just a regular old human, fighting alongside a half-saiyan against evil robots that are trying to take over the world." Mumei laughed, glancing over at Trunks. "I'm pretty good for a human, but when push comes to shove I'm nowhere near as strong as he is. I mean, you could definitely see he was the one carrying us through that fight."

Gohan didn't argue that point, but frowned to himself; from where he had been watching, they both had seemed to be holding their own equally well… "So you learned from me in the future? I don't get it; Trunks came back, he originally came back in time to stop all the destruction from happening. Shouldn't you have been able to learn from…?" His question trailed off as he looked from Mumei to the second Trunks, waiting for one of them to answer.

The purple-haired man took this question, sighing slightly as he did. "I don't… exactly have any memories of coming back, because I didn't. Time works in funny ways; there are an infinite number of time loops that have already completed before this one, and in one only Android 17 and 18 woke up and then I came back in time to warn you. After that came Cell, though, and that's our timeline… Cell destroyed everything. You, Gohan… survived, but… A lot of people ended up dying. We trained to be strong enough to defeat him but it took years and we swore never again, the destruction wasn't worth it, but then…"

"Then the message came," Mumei said. "You have no idea. I mean, we were… 5, 6 when Cell was finally defeated, just barely being trained in everything, and Gohan, you were like… the world's best dad combined with the world's greatest older brother. And we knew that what we were living in, what we were going through, we were happy with it, we made a life, but it just wasn't right, you know? Totally was because of a stupid fuck up that had happened before… and of course there's a chance that doing this means we're opening the door for another fuck up down the line but… you guys are alive now and Cell's dead and it's like halle-fuckin-lujah, praise the lord, now everything can finally go back on track the way it's supposed, at least for some people."

There was a moment of silence after she finished her speech. Gohan felt oddly, if awkwardly, touched; he obviously meant a lot to them, though there was no way he could ever possibly return the same sentiment. Vegeta broke the silence and the feeling, though, with a snort and a harsh question: "You were nearly six when Cell was defeated? It took you that long to kill him?"

"Actually, Mumei wasn't even born when Cell first started, so it was more like seven years, but yeah," Trunks said calmly. "It took us that long. I guess that doesn't match up to whatever level of perfection we should have been striving to meet but at the time survival was a little higher on our priority list that proving we had bigger dicks that the bad guy." Mumei snorted into her hand, grinning madly at his response. "So sorry to disappoint, Dad."

"O… kay. Most awkward family reunion ever," Krillin mumbled lowly before speaking up. "So now what are you guys going to do? Sounds like your world's pretty torn to pieces."

"Oh, no, it's not," Mumei said quickly. "Cell went around and pretty much fucked everything over, yeah, but we killed him, right? And that was… a good ten years ago, more than that, I'm legal now so it had to be awhile ago so Gohan and everyone else all started rebuilding. And that's what we do. We train, and we protect, and we rebuild. It's turned into a pretty sweet gig now and everyone knows us and we're all like 'hey, it's those guys' and we're like 'yeah, we're awesome' so it's all worked out." She nodded, chewing slightly on her lower lip. "Yeah… so that's kind of… not really working out for any of you, is it?"

"I don't know 'Mei, I think your oh-so-eloquent 'they're so awesome' totally captured a picture of modern day life living in a post-apocalyptic world environment," Trunks drawled out sarcastically. "Your words are like an artists' brush."

Hearing the two interact made Gohan smile. Whatever they had gone through they were still friends and they were still able to joke around, something that allowed him to have hope for himself and his own future. Maybe he wouldn't find a friend like her – they definitely seemed to have a bond that wouldn't be found just from any ordinary relationship – but regardless of whether his parents chose for him to follow a life of scholarly pursuits or to train as a warrior he wouldn't be ostracized from the rest of the world. Hell, he would always have the younger, present-day Trunks to spend time with.

"So yeah, ignore the guy with the girly hair," Mumei went on, hardly batting an eye at Trunks interruption. The man grinned as she rolled her eyes and shoved his shoulder hard. "I mean, really, who listens to someone who looks like they've got a wad of spun candy for hair? My point was, we're probably going to go back home. Staying here wouldn't be a good idea anyways… this isn't where we're from. And they need us back there; things won't have changed even though… you already know the whole time stream pitch."

It made sense, but it also made him feel vaguely sad, both that they weren't going to even have a chance to get to know the two warriors and that the two warriors were going to simply hop back to their torn-apart world, smiles still stapled to their faces. It was probably better that way, Gohan realized – the other Trunks would have the memories of the family he could have had always hanging around, something that would both help and haunt him when he was alone, while they would only know that they helped and that was all they needed to do. Still-

"So soon?" Goku's strange stretch vow of silence was broken suddenly as he looked up, blinking in confusion at the two. "But you just got here; you haven't even met Bulma or Chi-Chi or anyone else and you have to be tired after that battle. Don't you want to take a rest or something?" Mumei smiled, but it seemed wane in comparison to the expression she had before.

"It's not that we want to just 'fight and run' or anything like that… we just really don't want to pollute your time stream. So much has already gone wrong because of the few times people have gone back before. Coming back and defeating Cell? Totally an A plus. But if we stick around, that could be when we end up doing something that pushes our actions over the edge from being helpful to being totally useless."

"As soon as we're sure you're all safe and that Cell is truly dead, we'll go back to where we landed and leave. What the other Trunks does is up to him, though we advise that he departs as soon as possible as well." Trunks frowned before shrugging. "I would have liked to use this opportunity to get to know all of you – all we have left are some records and what we've been told by our Gohan. But… But I'll pass up those opportunities to ensure that this timeline is left intact.

"This timeline is what's important now. We've made our own lives by picking up the pieces. I don't expect, I don't want you to need to do the same."