THE TIME TRAVELLING ADVENTURES OF THE NEXT GEN DB GANG, AND #17
chapters 2,3 & 4
Chapter 2: Where in time are #17, Trunks, Goten, Marron, Bra and Pan?
Pan blinked. She remembered playing with her father's new device (the one he was working on all the while he was forgetting about his family). And suddenly she was in this strange land. It was rocky and bare, and the earth was shaking violently. She could feel a familiar ki nearby. It was very strong, as though the person was in the middle of a battle. "Uh oh," she thought. "What have I done..." Before she could do anything else, Marron and #17 suddenly appeared too.
"Pan! What have you done? Where are we?" Marron asked. Pan couldn't answer. She felt like crying and trying hard not to. She was feeling bad for playing with her father's work. "What if I ruined it?" she thought. Her father had worked so hard on it. He'd be mad if it was broken.
Meanwhile the earth still shook. Before she could do anything, #17 carried both girls and floated in the air while waiting for the land to become stable again. Pan promptly freed herself from #17's arms. She could fly by herself just fine.
"You feel that, Pan?" #17 asked her. "Yeah, it's from there," She pointed to the origin of the ki. #17 nodded, Marron still holding on tightly to his uncle. Of the whole lot, she's the only one who can't fly.
"Come on, let's go," #17 said, flying to the direction of the ki, followed by Pan.
They landed on the ground and found themselves face to face with Trunks! Trunks stared at them in horror. In particular he was staring at #17 in horror. #17? Impossible! He already killed both #17 and #18. How could he be alive again? When he got over his shock, he noticed the 2 girls with #17. He's got to save them!
"#17! Let them go!" He yelled while turning into a Super Saiyajin and preparing ki attack on his hands.
Pan and Marron were staring at Trunks too. He was wearing a black tightfitting outfit covered by white armor, gloves and boots. That wasn't what he was wearing a minute ago. And he was acting real strange.
"Trunks! What's gotten into you? Don't you dare hurt my uncle. And why are you wearing that strange outfit?" Marron stepped forward and asked.
Trunks blinked, confused. How did that girl know his name? He's sure he's never seen her before. And WHAT did she just call #17?
#17 finally figured out what was happening. He decided to get a word in before Trunks started to attack.
"Trunks, wait. Listen. I'm #17 from the past you visited. I'm not evil anymore. This is my niece Marron, #18 and Kuririn's daughter." He pointed to the blonde girl. "And this is Pan, Son Gohan's daughter." He pointed to the black haired girl. "For some reason we've crossed dimensions," he looked at Pan with a slight frown. Pan looked like she was about to cry, and looked down in shame.
Trunks was so shocked, he dropped out of Super Saiyajin mode. But before he got the chance to get over his shock, another one came in the form of a young Goku (with a different hairstyle), a very young Bulma, and the mirror image of himself (wearing different clothes). The three figures suddenly appeared in front of himself, #17, Marron and Pan. This time Trunks' jaw just dropped and his eyes bulged in the classic shocked pose (or like plenty of GT Trunks pictures the author has seen ^_^).
The three newcomers got up and dusted the dirt from their bodies. (They had landed with their butts on the ground.) Goten turned to his niece. "Pan! What have you done?!" Pan felt really small now. Everybody's mad at her. And they were right. This was all her fault.
#17 cleared his throat. "Ehem... Trunks, Goten, Bra, meet Mirai Trunks. Mirai Trunks, meet Goten, Goku's younger son, Trunks and his sister Bra."
Next: Exchanging news
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Chapter 3: Exchanging news
The introduction, and initial shock over with, Mirai Trunks finally asked, "How did you guys get here?" Everybody turned to look at Pan. Red-faced, she told them about her father's work and what she had done. When she finished, Mirai Trunks looked at the group thoughtfully. "Time travel eh? I've still got my time machine, but it can only take 1 person at a time and it takes a long time to recharge it after use. Come with me. Maybe Mom can do something."
They flew back to Capsule Corp. On the way, #17 asked Mirai Trunks, "By the way, Trunks, what were you doing just now?"
"Oh, I just killed Cell," Mirai Trunks answered.
"Cell?" Marron interrupted. She was sitting on #17's back. "In our timeline, Mr. Satan killed him."
The others chuckled. "What?" Marron demanded.
"Actually, Pan's dad killed him, Marron," Trunks (from Marron's timeline) said.
Marron pouted. How come everybody knew about this except for her? "My parents never tell me anything," she grumbled silently to herself. "When we get back, I'm going to make them tell me everything, and maybe teach me how to fly too," she thought to herself.
"Well, in this timeline, people believed he killed #17 and #18 too," Mirai Trunks said. Some things never change, he thought, smiling to himself.
"Oh... you mean Grandpa is around here too?" Pan asked.
"Grandpa?"
"That's right, Trunks. Mr. Satan's daughter married Gohan in our timeline," Goten said.
"Umm... Why did Mr. Satan kill #17 and Marron's mum?" Bra asked.
Mirai Trunks looked at her. She really did look just like his mother. This Trunks is lucky to have both parents around, and a sister too, he thought. "Well, in this timeline, they were programmed by Dr. Gero to kill everybody," he said.
#17 looked away, thinking how close he and his twin sister had come to being mindless killing machines. He didn't really understand how, but somehow that programming was erased after he was absorbed by Cell. As for his sister... that bald monk must've had a very big influence on her. At least there was a silver lining to Cell's arrival to their timeline. Marron looked at her uncle wonderingly. She couldn't imagine her uncle and her mother as killing machines. But then, there were so many things about their past that neither she nor they know about. "I wonder how their lives would be if Dr. Gero hadn't captured them and turned them into cyborgs," she thought. "They'd look older, for one thing." Both her mother and her uncle never really aged. Now that she's nearly 17, she looked the same age as her mother and people always mistook them for sisters. In a few more years, she'd look older than her own mother. She did not like the thought very much.
"Here we are," Mirai Trunks said. They looked down from the sky into the Capsule Corp. building. It didn't look very different from the one in their own timeline, except that many parts were clarly damaged and under reconstruction.
They landed in front of the front door. "Stay here." Mirai Trunks said. "I'll get Mom. I don't want her to get a bad shock when she sees you guys," he said, leaving them there and went in to get his mother.
"Mom! I'm home," Mirai Trunks called out. Mirai Bulma smiled and hugged her son. "Trunks, you're back. How did it go?" she asked.
"Perfectly. I had no problems getting rid of Cell," Mirai Trunks answered, returning his mother's hug.
"Mom?"
"Yes, son?"
"I brought home some guests."
"Guests? Well, let them in. Where are they?"
"Umm... they're not from this timeline. Don't be shocked when you see them." He then told her about what happened just after he killed Cell. After his short recap of the events in the previous chapter, they both went to the front door to welcome their guests.
Next: Night in the Mirai Capsule Corp.
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Chapter 4: Night in the Mirai Capsule Corporation
Mirai Bulma stared at the group of 6 in front of her. Even after what her son had told her in advance to prepare her, she was sitll shocked. Right there in front of her stood the evil android #17. Well, he's not evil anymore, she reminded herself, though she couldn't help but feel nervous being so close to him. And the children... This Trunks looks just like her son, though his features were not hardened by years of suffering. And Bra was so pretty! Just like her when she was that age, she thought (vainly ^_^). She smiled to think that in another timeline she and Vegeta would actually get married, settle down and have another child together.
She smiled at the other children in the group. Goten really looked just like his father. If he'd had the same hairstyle she wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. Pan the tomboy, was Gohan's daughter, and Marron! She couldn't believe it when Trunks told her that Kuririn had married #18. Well, here was their daughter right in front of her. She certainly looked a lot like her father, and had her mother's hair and figure.
"Welcome! Come in," she welcomed them in after she got over her shock. Trunks and Bra couldn't help staring at this woman, who in this timeline was their mother. She did look like their mother but older, even though she should be younger. She was just as beautiful nevertheless.
Soon, everybody settled down and made themselves at home. They had a small dinner (by Saiyajin standards, because Bulma had enough only to feed 1 Super Saiyajin). But other than that everybody was happy as they traded stories. Bulma and Trunks' guests told them about Majin Buu and how Goku had been able to live again in their timeline. Mirai Trunks told them about his life and what happened after his trip to the past. Trunks and Goten listened attentively. They didn't believe it when Gohan told them the story when they were little, until they'd seen his world for themselves. And here they are face to face with Mirai Trunks himself. The girls just listened open-mouthed, as they've never heard anything about this before. #17 loked uneasy being in a world where the counterparts of himself and his sister had caused so much suffering. But Mirai Bulma went to him smiled to him. "I understand you and your sister were as much victims as we were, #17," she said. "But I'm glad you're able to have freedom and happines in your timeline. Your niece seems to adore you." She looked at Marron who was still hanging on to Mirai Trunks' every word. #17 followed her gaze and smiled. He adored his niece too. And he was amazed that Mirai Bulma and Mirai Trunks could still be kind to him even after all that his alternate counterpart had done to them. He smiled back at her akwardly.
It was late at night when they finally addressed the problem at hand, namely how to get their guests back to their own timeline. Pan and Bra werre asleep upstairs while the rest of the group discussed their situation in Bulma's lab.
"Portal-based time travel device, huh?" Mirai Bulma said. Goten and Trunks told her what little they knew of Gohan's and Bulma's project and how the device suddenly opened a portal that just sucked them right in.
Mirai Bulma was thoughtful. "My initial experiments were based on such concepts too. But I decided that using portals was too dangerous as it was very difficult to control their size and how long they can stay open. They also tend to suck other things in the vicinity into them. Which was what happened to you all. Actually, time travel in itself is very dangerous no matter what method you used as any little act you did in the past could change the future in unpredictable ways, effectively creating new timelines like yours. That's why the number of time travellers should be minimised, and that a time traveller should minimise his contact as much as possible with the other worlds he visits." She looked meaningfully at her son, who smiled sheepishly. "Which was exactly what my son DIDN'T do. I told him to just give the medicine to Goku and leave immedeately, not go and destroy Freeza's fleet then stay and chat with Goku and your parents. He could easily have nullified his own, I mean yours, Trunks (she pointed at Trunks) existence! And then--" "Well, they're here now, so no harm done," Mirai Trunks managed to cut in. Mirai Bulma glared at him for interrupting, but smiled again. She couldn't really stay mad at him for long. And she had no way of knowing that just giving Goku the medicine wouldn't have changed their own timeline. It was only after Trunks returned from his first trip to the past to their own world where nothing changed that she realized that her theory about alternate timelines was correct. What nobody knows now is what the effects of new timelines would be. If there are an infinite number of universes that can be created from time travel, what will the effects of crossovers be? Will it cause them to eventually converge into one? And what would be the effects of that? The possibilities are incalculable. Bulma could just imagine all the versions of Freeza, and Gokus who never bumped their heads, and Vegetas who never lost to Goku, not to mention Gero's cyborgs and all the enemies they've encountered in the past. "Anyway, time portals are very dangerous. Not only that, they are highly unstable and waste a lot of energy."
"That was why I constructed the time machine. With it I could ensure that only the intended traveller gets to travel to the past. Or so I thought," she said, remembering Cell.
"I don't suppose you could send us back one by one using Trunks' time machine," Goten said.
"I'm afraid not." Mirai Bulma said. "The machine takes approximately a year to recharge after a two-way trip through timelines. It takes too much resources for even 1 trip and we're rather low on resources here. And 6 trips through timelines will definitely exhaust the machine. It wasn't designed for more than 2 trips."
"What about the one Cell took?" Mirai Trunks asked. "I think I left it in the past since I can't find it anywhere here. With it, we'll just need 3 trips. I'm sure you can modify the machine for one more trip."
"Umm.. that machine was accidentally destroyed when we cleaned mom's old capsules..." Trunks said, exchanging a quick glance with Goten.
"So what can we do?" Marron asked.
"Looks like we'll have to stick to portals," Bulma said. "I may be able to construct a safe portal opening device to send you back home. I still have the blueprints of my early experiments. But calculating the exact timeline and designing and building the device will take some time, a few days at least." She looked at the tired faces around her. "You all look tired. I suggest we call it quits for today." Everybody agreed and they went to bed for the night.
Next: Mirai Trunks' world
chapters 2,3 & 4
Chapter 2: Where in time are #17, Trunks, Goten, Marron, Bra and Pan?
Pan blinked. She remembered playing with her father's new device (the one he was working on all the while he was forgetting about his family). And suddenly she was in this strange land. It was rocky and bare, and the earth was shaking violently. She could feel a familiar ki nearby. It was very strong, as though the person was in the middle of a battle. "Uh oh," she thought. "What have I done..." Before she could do anything else, Marron and #17 suddenly appeared too.
"Pan! What have you done? Where are we?" Marron asked. Pan couldn't answer. She felt like crying and trying hard not to. She was feeling bad for playing with her father's work. "What if I ruined it?" she thought. Her father had worked so hard on it. He'd be mad if it was broken.
Meanwhile the earth still shook. Before she could do anything, #17 carried both girls and floated in the air while waiting for the land to become stable again. Pan promptly freed herself from #17's arms. She could fly by herself just fine.
"You feel that, Pan?" #17 asked her. "Yeah, it's from there," She pointed to the origin of the ki. #17 nodded, Marron still holding on tightly to his uncle. Of the whole lot, she's the only one who can't fly.
"Come on, let's go," #17 said, flying to the direction of the ki, followed by Pan.
They landed on the ground and found themselves face to face with Trunks! Trunks stared at them in horror. In particular he was staring at #17 in horror. #17? Impossible! He already killed both #17 and #18. How could he be alive again? When he got over his shock, he noticed the 2 girls with #17. He's got to save them!
"#17! Let them go!" He yelled while turning into a Super Saiyajin and preparing ki attack on his hands.
Pan and Marron were staring at Trunks too. He was wearing a black tightfitting outfit covered by white armor, gloves and boots. That wasn't what he was wearing a minute ago. And he was acting real strange.
"Trunks! What's gotten into you? Don't you dare hurt my uncle. And why are you wearing that strange outfit?" Marron stepped forward and asked.
Trunks blinked, confused. How did that girl know his name? He's sure he's never seen her before. And WHAT did she just call #17?
#17 finally figured out what was happening. He decided to get a word in before Trunks started to attack.
"Trunks, wait. Listen. I'm #17 from the past you visited. I'm not evil anymore. This is my niece Marron, #18 and Kuririn's daughter." He pointed to the blonde girl. "And this is Pan, Son Gohan's daughter." He pointed to the black haired girl. "For some reason we've crossed dimensions," he looked at Pan with a slight frown. Pan looked like she was about to cry, and looked down in shame.
Trunks was so shocked, he dropped out of Super Saiyajin mode. But before he got the chance to get over his shock, another one came in the form of a young Goku (with a different hairstyle), a very young Bulma, and the mirror image of himself (wearing different clothes). The three figures suddenly appeared in front of himself, #17, Marron and Pan. This time Trunks' jaw just dropped and his eyes bulged in the classic shocked pose (or like plenty of GT Trunks pictures the author has seen ^_^).
The three newcomers got up and dusted the dirt from their bodies. (They had landed with their butts on the ground.) Goten turned to his niece. "Pan! What have you done?!" Pan felt really small now. Everybody's mad at her. And they were right. This was all her fault.
#17 cleared his throat. "Ehem... Trunks, Goten, Bra, meet Mirai Trunks. Mirai Trunks, meet Goten, Goku's younger son, Trunks and his sister Bra."
Next: Exchanging news
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Chapter 3: Exchanging news
The introduction, and initial shock over with, Mirai Trunks finally asked, "How did you guys get here?" Everybody turned to look at Pan. Red-faced, she told them about her father's work and what she had done. When she finished, Mirai Trunks looked at the group thoughtfully. "Time travel eh? I've still got my time machine, but it can only take 1 person at a time and it takes a long time to recharge it after use. Come with me. Maybe Mom can do something."
They flew back to Capsule Corp. On the way, #17 asked Mirai Trunks, "By the way, Trunks, what were you doing just now?"
"Oh, I just killed Cell," Mirai Trunks answered.
"Cell?" Marron interrupted. She was sitting on #17's back. "In our timeline, Mr. Satan killed him."
The others chuckled. "What?" Marron demanded.
"Actually, Pan's dad killed him, Marron," Trunks (from Marron's timeline) said.
Marron pouted. How come everybody knew about this except for her? "My parents never tell me anything," she grumbled silently to herself. "When we get back, I'm going to make them tell me everything, and maybe teach me how to fly too," she thought to herself.
"Well, in this timeline, people believed he killed #17 and #18 too," Mirai Trunks said. Some things never change, he thought, smiling to himself.
"Oh... you mean Grandpa is around here too?" Pan asked.
"Grandpa?"
"That's right, Trunks. Mr. Satan's daughter married Gohan in our timeline," Goten said.
"Umm... Why did Mr. Satan kill #17 and Marron's mum?" Bra asked.
Mirai Trunks looked at her. She really did look just like his mother. This Trunks is lucky to have both parents around, and a sister too, he thought. "Well, in this timeline, they were programmed by Dr. Gero to kill everybody," he said.
#17 looked away, thinking how close he and his twin sister had come to being mindless killing machines. He didn't really understand how, but somehow that programming was erased after he was absorbed by Cell. As for his sister... that bald monk must've had a very big influence on her. At least there was a silver lining to Cell's arrival to their timeline. Marron looked at her uncle wonderingly. She couldn't imagine her uncle and her mother as killing machines. But then, there were so many things about their past that neither she nor they know about. "I wonder how their lives would be if Dr. Gero hadn't captured them and turned them into cyborgs," she thought. "They'd look older, for one thing." Both her mother and her uncle never really aged. Now that she's nearly 17, she looked the same age as her mother and people always mistook them for sisters. In a few more years, she'd look older than her own mother. She did not like the thought very much.
"Here we are," Mirai Trunks said. They looked down from the sky into the Capsule Corp. building. It didn't look very different from the one in their own timeline, except that many parts were clarly damaged and under reconstruction.
They landed in front of the front door. "Stay here." Mirai Trunks said. "I'll get Mom. I don't want her to get a bad shock when she sees you guys," he said, leaving them there and went in to get his mother.
"Mom! I'm home," Mirai Trunks called out. Mirai Bulma smiled and hugged her son. "Trunks, you're back. How did it go?" she asked.
"Perfectly. I had no problems getting rid of Cell," Mirai Trunks answered, returning his mother's hug.
"Mom?"
"Yes, son?"
"I brought home some guests."
"Guests? Well, let them in. Where are they?"
"Umm... they're not from this timeline. Don't be shocked when you see them." He then told her about what happened just after he killed Cell. After his short recap of the events in the previous chapter, they both went to the front door to welcome their guests.
Next: Night in the Mirai Capsule Corp.
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Chapter 4: Night in the Mirai Capsule Corporation
Mirai Bulma stared at the group of 6 in front of her. Even after what her son had told her in advance to prepare her, she was sitll shocked. Right there in front of her stood the evil android #17. Well, he's not evil anymore, she reminded herself, though she couldn't help but feel nervous being so close to him. And the children... This Trunks looks just like her son, though his features were not hardened by years of suffering. And Bra was so pretty! Just like her when she was that age, she thought (vainly ^_^). She smiled to think that in another timeline she and Vegeta would actually get married, settle down and have another child together.
She smiled at the other children in the group. Goten really looked just like his father. If he'd had the same hairstyle she wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. Pan the tomboy, was Gohan's daughter, and Marron! She couldn't believe it when Trunks told her that Kuririn had married #18. Well, here was their daughter right in front of her. She certainly looked a lot like her father, and had her mother's hair and figure.
"Welcome! Come in," she welcomed them in after she got over her shock. Trunks and Bra couldn't help staring at this woman, who in this timeline was their mother. She did look like their mother but older, even though she should be younger. She was just as beautiful nevertheless.
Soon, everybody settled down and made themselves at home. They had a small dinner (by Saiyajin standards, because Bulma had enough only to feed 1 Super Saiyajin). But other than that everybody was happy as they traded stories. Bulma and Trunks' guests told them about Majin Buu and how Goku had been able to live again in their timeline. Mirai Trunks told them about his life and what happened after his trip to the past. Trunks and Goten listened attentively. They didn't believe it when Gohan told them the story when they were little, until they'd seen his world for themselves. And here they are face to face with Mirai Trunks himself. The girls just listened open-mouthed, as they've never heard anything about this before. #17 loked uneasy being in a world where the counterparts of himself and his sister had caused so much suffering. But Mirai Bulma went to him smiled to him. "I understand you and your sister were as much victims as we were, #17," she said. "But I'm glad you're able to have freedom and happines in your timeline. Your niece seems to adore you." She looked at Marron who was still hanging on to Mirai Trunks' every word. #17 followed her gaze and smiled. He adored his niece too. And he was amazed that Mirai Bulma and Mirai Trunks could still be kind to him even after all that his alternate counterpart had done to them. He smiled back at her akwardly.
It was late at night when they finally addressed the problem at hand, namely how to get their guests back to their own timeline. Pan and Bra werre asleep upstairs while the rest of the group discussed their situation in Bulma's lab.
"Portal-based time travel device, huh?" Mirai Bulma said. Goten and Trunks told her what little they knew of Gohan's and Bulma's project and how the device suddenly opened a portal that just sucked them right in.
Mirai Bulma was thoughtful. "My initial experiments were based on such concepts too. But I decided that using portals was too dangerous as it was very difficult to control their size and how long they can stay open. They also tend to suck other things in the vicinity into them. Which was what happened to you all. Actually, time travel in itself is very dangerous no matter what method you used as any little act you did in the past could change the future in unpredictable ways, effectively creating new timelines like yours. That's why the number of time travellers should be minimised, and that a time traveller should minimise his contact as much as possible with the other worlds he visits." She looked meaningfully at her son, who smiled sheepishly. "Which was exactly what my son DIDN'T do. I told him to just give the medicine to Goku and leave immedeately, not go and destroy Freeza's fleet then stay and chat with Goku and your parents. He could easily have nullified his own, I mean yours, Trunks (she pointed at Trunks) existence! And then--" "Well, they're here now, so no harm done," Mirai Trunks managed to cut in. Mirai Bulma glared at him for interrupting, but smiled again. She couldn't really stay mad at him for long. And she had no way of knowing that just giving Goku the medicine wouldn't have changed their own timeline. It was only after Trunks returned from his first trip to the past to their own world where nothing changed that she realized that her theory about alternate timelines was correct. What nobody knows now is what the effects of new timelines would be. If there are an infinite number of universes that can be created from time travel, what will the effects of crossovers be? Will it cause them to eventually converge into one? And what would be the effects of that? The possibilities are incalculable. Bulma could just imagine all the versions of Freeza, and Gokus who never bumped their heads, and Vegetas who never lost to Goku, not to mention Gero's cyborgs and all the enemies they've encountered in the past. "Anyway, time portals are very dangerous. Not only that, they are highly unstable and waste a lot of energy."
"That was why I constructed the time machine. With it I could ensure that only the intended traveller gets to travel to the past. Or so I thought," she said, remembering Cell.
"I don't suppose you could send us back one by one using Trunks' time machine," Goten said.
"I'm afraid not." Mirai Bulma said. "The machine takes approximately a year to recharge after a two-way trip through timelines. It takes too much resources for even 1 trip and we're rather low on resources here. And 6 trips through timelines will definitely exhaust the machine. It wasn't designed for more than 2 trips."
"What about the one Cell took?" Mirai Trunks asked. "I think I left it in the past since I can't find it anywhere here. With it, we'll just need 3 trips. I'm sure you can modify the machine for one more trip."
"Umm.. that machine was accidentally destroyed when we cleaned mom's old capsules..." Trunks said, exchanging a quick glance with Goten.
"So what can we do?" Marron asked.
"Looks like we'll have to stick to portals," Bulma said. "I may be able to construct a safe portal opening device to send you back home. I still have the blueprints of my early experiments. But calculating the exact timeline and designing and building the device will take some time, a few days at least." She looked at the tired faces around her. "You all look tired. I suggest we call it quits for today." Everybody agreed and they went to bed for the night.
Next: Mirai Trunks' world