Chapter 3: Time Wars, a new hope.

Hello, welcome back. This chapter is going to be more establishing the rules of this story. Like why you can't just Goku every issue.

Disclaimer:

The following is a fan-based parody of Dragon Ball written By Akira Tomiyama. I am not him nor did I create Dragon Ball please support the official release.

Sour opened his eyes after being enveloped in the white portal. He wasn't sure what he was he was supposed to expect after jumping through random holes in space time to escape death but he was pleasantly surprised. Sour was welcome to the site of some sort portal hub. It was kinda looked like a plaza. It was an open round space with a nice marble fountain in the middle and classic grey brick work on the floor like something you'd see in Italy. The whole vibe of the plaza gave renaissance vibes except for one major thing that ruined the classic Italian feel. Multiple large metal contraptions surrounded the plaza, they looked like arches with the same white energy in the middle like the portal that Sour jumped through only moments ago. Beside them were big chunky computers with large wires that were connected to the arch and the computers. Behind the computers were often two people per portal arch with headsets one busy talking to someone probably on the other end and the other typing away on the computer.

"Can you get out of the way!" One of the people who were operating the portal Trunks and Sour came out of spoke up. She was from the same race as that guy Jeice from the ginyu squad. Her hair was white and her face was red. Well redder than the rest of her body. She seemed stressed and angry. Though Sour liked to imagine her face was redder due to blushing at the site at his slightly bruised beauty.

"Sorry Jess," Trunks said, he picked up Sour by his collar and lifted him up with him. "Oh, and have you seen Chronoa I've kind of got a weird situation to describe to her."

"She's at the time nest. You know doing her job… Like I am doing right now." Jess said going back to her computer typing away ferociously at her oversized computer not bothering to look up at the two boys.

Looking around Sour noticed the plaza was very busy with races of all kinds. Some were dressed in battle armour with an assortment of weapons and technology, others were dressed in clothing you'd usually find people wearing in office jobs with button up shirts and ties. Clearly there was two different work forces here at this place. The people in armour were often jumping in and out of the portals while the nerds were at the computers shouting orders over their head sets and directing the fighters around the plaza in and out of the portal arches. Occasionally the people jumping out of the portals looked like they just went for a nice relaxing stroll. The much more common appearance when leaving the portal was broken noses, arms in weird positions and lots of blood. Some just straight up collapsed on the floor till a group of other people grab them and flew them off to either a hospital or a morgue.

"Oh! Can you get the Time Breaker clean up protocol up and running by the way?"

"Yeah, no its fine, I'll just get that done. Why shouldn't I do your job on top of mine that's cool. Makes lots of sense. And you're walking away, bye Trunks love you I hope you don't die on your next mission. Nose is looking great, was it always that broken?" Jess grumbled. At least Trunks had the curtesy to look a little embarrassed turning his head away from the girl.

Trunks looked at Sour nodding his towards away from the conversation as if trying to say 'please get me out of here'. Sour however was far too preoccupied with what he was observing. He had never seen this place in any restart, was this only exclusive to this one life or had this place existed in all his lives and just never seen it before. That shouldn't be possible over his lives he explored almost all of the universe's notable locations. How did this place allude him? Where was this hiding in the universe? He had tried expanded his ki sense but there was nothing further than this small city. A pocket dimension? That would explain why he couldn't find it, but still for an organisation that had people like Trunks in it shouldn't have gone unnoticed in his restarts. Or maybe they always did but he died too early. Maybe the weird change that often happens in his restarts is that this event occurs earlier. Sour continued to ponder what this strange place was but was ripped out of his thoughts by Trunks pulling on his shirt.

"Come on we got to get you to Chronoa, she's going to be so pissed at me for taking someone out of a timeline." Trunks started to fly up above the plaza which Sour chose to follow suit.

Flying above the city he had a better look. It was a small city that was heavily integrated with nature with trees and rivers naturally flowing thought the city as if it was city was built around the city. The second thing was that the city was so clearly developed by someone who had no idea of city structure. Sour supposed that was fine as he doubted anyone here had any real difficulty as most people could fly faster than trains but still the city looked weird. The city was separated into different parts with high rise building and what looked like a school was in its own section, the plaza was in its own place, a nice-looking hospital which was closer to the plaza then the city probably due to the tendency of bleeding when coming out of those portals and finally what looked like a training place was the furthest away being the most isolated which was probably smart considering the scorched earth and explosions. Everything was weirdly separated from each other. In the centre of the city was a mountain and at the top of the mountain was a large with some sort of temple looking building around it.

Trunks started flying towards the temple and Sour followed suit going towards the temple at the top of the mountain. Sour could only sense two being at the location which was apparently called the time nest. Dumb name Sour thought, but then again, he was named after a type of taste. Still could be worse he could be named after the literally devil and the embodiment of evil in Christianity.

"So, what kind of leader is this Chronoa? Is he a strong take no nonsense leader with an iron fist but in reality, a heart of gold? Some dusty old man who made a huge mistake and has hated himself ever since so he tries to make up for it by serving the community? Or some comedically unprofessional person who reached their position of power through hilarious hijinks?" Sour asked flying slightly behind Trunks.

"Well first of all she-"

"Oh, rad a female leader, progressive, shatter that glass ceiling. I feel bad for assuming, my apologise."

"Yeah, well as I was saying she is a kind leader. Someone who always tries their hardest and treats everyone fairly and will always be there for you."

"Sounds more like a therapist then a leader." Trunks didn't look impressed with Sour's negative attitude but the look he gave Sour just looked silly with his misshapen nose. However, instead of progressing the conversation Trunks just chose to speed up. Curses! Physical competition was Sour's only weakness.

Sour continued to follow Trunks at a distance till they reached the time nest. The landed outside the temple looking building on a stone footpath that led from the base of the mountain to the summit. A little pointless to build a footpath when everyone can fly but Sour wisely chose to keep his mouth shut for now.

While waiting for whoever this badass time traveling commander was a pink twelve-year-old with her pet bird walked out of the temple. Sour guessed that she must have been this leader's daughter. She wore potara earings and purple robe that cut off at her shoulders revealing a black singlet underneath meaning that this little girl must be the child of a kai from her appearance. The bird on her shoulder was white and yellow with red eyes and talons. Sour was never a big bird person but he never seen one like it. It's feathers by some miracle made the appearance of a beard.

"Oh, my Trunks what happened to you!" The daughter of whoever Sour thought they should be meeting ran up to Trunks and Sour examining the wounds they both had. "Get yourself to the healers I can't have one of my best time patrollers looking like this!"

"Of course, lady Chronoa." Trunks bowed to the 12-year-old surprising Sour a little which was a pleasant feeling.

"You forgot to mention she was 12 years old." Sour whispered over to Trunks in front of the small girl. It would be fine; she was so short she probably couldn't even hear them up here.

"I am 75 million years old!"

"Is… is that supposed to be a brag? Congrats?"

"Trunks who is this!" She demanded looking frustrated stomping her foot repeatedly on the stone path. Chronoa had two rules, never compare her to a child and never say anything negative about her cooking.

"This is Sour."

"Hello!"

"He's, well… He's kind of an idiot. But Towa was after him so after a tactical repositioning," Is that what you call a cowardly retreat? "I took him from the timeline abandoning the paradox. Don't worry I got Jess on time breaker clean up."

"What does Towa want with you?" Chronoa asked examining Sour looking him up and down which made him feel a little weird due to her being like 12 years-old.

"My raw sex appeal?"

"We don't know, she didn't say." Trunks spoke trying to cut Sour off sending him an irritated look.

"Trunks go get healed; I want to speak to our new guest one on one." Shocking the half-Saiyan.

"But we aren't done with the mission debrief, and why him? I hardly like spending time when he was helping me not die. Who would intentionally you want to spend time with him?"

"Well… that is incredibly hurtful and a big assumption."

"Trunks please the more I look at your nose the more I feel sick." Trunks brought his hand up to cover his nose looking away.

"I- uh. Of course, Supreme Kai." Trunks gave a small bow before he flew away in the direction of the hospital.

"Talk about a tool." Sour murmured to Chronoa.

"Trunks is one of my strongest time patrollers and he's one of my of the few strong ones that doesn't do this just to fight strong people or boredom. He actually cares about the people he saves. Now please follow me, I want to understand what's going on."

Chronoa walked to the temple while Sour was busy healing his ribs. Actually, he could have healed Trunk's nose. They are just cartilage, if anything it would have been easier then ribs. Whatever. Sour began to follow Chronoa into the temple which he thought was named the time nest which Sour still thought was a dumb name. "So, what the whole deal with this sort of time travellers' police and why have I never met you?"

Examining he temple he noticed it was very white and marble. Really gave a Greek temple vibe. In the centre there was a big white table while along the white walls there were large mirrors on the walls that were completely tinted so it was completely black. Chronoa walked over taking a seat on the table in the middle crossing her legs and crossing her head in her palm examining Sour once again putting him in some discomfort.

"We should get formally introduced. I am Chronoa the Supreme Kai of Time; I am in charge of watching over the timelines and making sure space and time doesn't unravel and destroy an entire universe. To help me I have created the time patrol in order to help me as you can imagine time is vast and so very fragile."

"Fragile?"

"You see time isn't linear, even without space and time altering machines it's possible to manipulate time. Drop a ball from a plane and the person on the plane will perceive it slower than the person on the group as even though both people agreed on how long it took for the ball to hit the ground the person traveling faster will perceive it slower."

"I know how time works."

"Do you know how the multiverse works?"

"I'm more then familiar with the concept. That there are multiple universes that run parallel with our own. Slight differences can occur though." Chronoa looked at Sour harder than before narrowing her eyes. Sour felt more judged then when his female classmates ranked all the guys at his school. Teen girls can be cruel.

"Time is weird, it is never stationary. Constantly changing and adapting to every minor choice. Believe it or not the future is not predetermined, we are not slaves to our own fate. However, such flexibility has its own downfalls, sometimes within the infinite amount of multiverses time tends to have little hiccups. Paradoxes. Something that should not logically exist. Paradoxes are sometimes not a big deal; it could be some random person getting displaced or sometimes it can be much worse. For example, Cell being in his perfected form before absorbing androids is something that shouldn't exist. Boom! We have a pretty big issue. If a paradox exists too long then time starts to unravel. Things start to un-exist and things from the possible future gets pulled in to the past and basically that timeline gets destroyed ending countless lives. Anyway, my time patrollers get sent in fix the paradox and time doesn't get ruined. We originally use these portals to travel to the different timelines," Chronoa gestured to the black mirrors on the walls. "But it wasn't enough to handle all the paradoxes, one at a time wasn't cutting it. So, we created the time plaza-".

"You know you don't have to put the word time Infront of every noun?"

"The TIME PLAZA," Chronoa said choosing to ignore Sour continued to speak. "Used the same magic as these portals but with the help of some technology we could make more than the amount on these walls. You've seen them, they are the massive arches you use to arrive here. Also, the temple can fit only so many people, the plaza made for easy ins and outs.

"So, what's the deal with the two smurfs and the robot army then? They said something about protecting the paradox but I fail to see how they benefit from the death of an entire timeline."

"Mira and Towa collect energy from the paradoxes to free the demon realm which has been isolated from the timelines, they often stop milking the paradoxes before they become a catastrophic issue. We only have one time patroller strong enough to beat Mira. Unfortunately, he's an arsehole and is rarely available. So generally, we let Mira and Towa steal as much energy as they want then stop the paradox once they are done if we have no one strong enough to face them."

"Seriously? I know Mira is strong but he's by no means the strongest. Surely you can just get a few Goku's and kill him?" Sour argued, having access to the time line must mean they have an infinite number of fighters.

"Time patrollers don't work like that. We don't get to choose who we can recruit. We can't take whoever we want as to take someone out of their timeline would start to destroy it. Even if it was for a short fight any longer than a couple of minutes would start the rapid production of paradoxes. Of course, there are some exceptions like your main time traveller Trunks when he goes back in time to warn Goku of the androids. Except he doesn't actually leave his timeline, he just causes his own timeline to splinter. Kind of like a multiverse in a multiverse."

"Getting off track."

"Oh right, anyway. Within the infinite timelines with the infinite amount of people so very very very rarely can a person exist outside of it. Those people can be time patrollers. Unfortunately, since we don't get to choose our potential people, they are often very weak. The average strength is Nappa level. A feeble power level of 4 thousand. Kind of an issue when a paradox involves anyone stronger than that. We mainly have to recruit random aliens with power levels around 5 to 10, then by some miracle, train them up to 4000. Then and get this because this is the best part. Die to someone like Cell or Vegeta and then quit from the trauma. We can only revive people so many times before PTSD kicks in or they get home sick and go back to their original timeline. With recruitment amount is low and the death rate is high we'll really and say yes to anyone. Even a person who jumps from timeline to timeline."

"How do you know that!" Sour's eyes widened and his nostrils flared. This was the first time someone knew about his weird time situation and if she knew then there might be a way for others to know. Or better yet get him out of his infinite hell.

"Please. It took me awhile but I figured it out, but anyone who can use time magic sufficiently enough can see how time flows around you. It looks like it is trying to grab onto you but it can't get a grip. I couldn't understand it at first, but time hates you. It struggles to flow around you. But as the Supreme Kai of Time, I can understand how it flows better than anyone else."

"How did this happen."

"You're a paradox. A very unique one. I don't think you understand how rare your situation is. It is statistically impossible; a paradox must have involved you right at your death at the right time at the right place in the right timeline. You exist in timelines you shouldn't. But since you are a paradox that belongs to a different timeline you don't cause it to collapse and destroy itself. Is that what happened? You must have died very early, child birth even before we could even fix paradox. Suddenly you were ripped from your timeline due to the paradox and put in one where you were just born. What is this your 3rd or 4th time."

Sour was shocked. He died at child birth in his original timeline? Not always he lived as a baby but after learning ki he never really had that issue. Also even though the Kai knew he could restart she had no idea how much, he wouldn't be surprised if it was way over 200 restarts. After the 50th you just stop caring. "A few more than that."

"Anyway, it's brilliant! You can exist in different timelines without causing time destroying consequences. You're basically a time patroller. We could really use some help. Towa and Mira weren't a huge issue but she recently found two people who could exist outside of the timeline like the time patrollers. One of which is Meta-Cooler, a hive mind robot with hundreds of bodies."

"I'm familiar with him."

"So how about it? Want to join the time patrol?" Chronoa held out a hand to Sour who looked at the outstretched limb like a cancer refusing to touch it.

"What do I get out of this?"

"What do you want?" Sour brought his hand up to stroke his chin. What did he want? He of course wanted to no longer restart but not even the dragon balls could free him.

"Could you make me stop restarting?"

"Mmmmm, I suppose I could. It's a complex issue as I said you're unique. How about a compromise. I research and try to fix you're issue; under the condition you are a time patroller for that duration."

"And I'm just supposed to trust you? How do I know you'll not just stall for time and make me one of your patrollers while you do nothing to fix me?"

"Well, two reasons. One because you have nothing better to do. And two, because I'm your only option. You seem desperate and I as the Supreme Kai of Time and the best choice." Sour noticed that she looked a little too happy with that outcome. Huh, who knew that this little 12-year-old was a cruel manipulator?

Sour reached out and shook Chronoa's hand, a bit more reluctantly than anything else. "You're a little blackmailer aren't you."

"I refer to think of it as some ethical incentive. You're welcome to leave at any time."

"Look you're far from the worst people I've worked with in order to free me from this curse. I'll handle some slavery if I can finally die."

"I'd rather if you didn't make it sound so suicidal but a deal's a deal I guess." They broke away from their handshake cementing their deal. Slavery for the ability to die. What a fun result.

"If you don't mind me asking, how strong are you?" Chronoa asked getting off the table. Sour watched as she started to walk out of the temple. Deciding not to want to be left alone in this temple Sour followed suit walking besides the 12-year-old outside the time nest.

"Let's see, this restart was supposed to be a break but I did some training so I could at least take over the world if I got bored." Chronoa gave Sour a questionable look trying to figure out wither he was joking or not. He was of course. He tried uniting the world in one restart to make humanity have its own galactic power but there was too much infighting and he just gave up on that idea. The only way he could unite Earth was through dictatorship, but after reading the Injustice comics from DC, he made a promise that he would never go down that path. Sure, he made deals with the villains of the timelines and joined the Frieza force more than once. But he'd stop if anything went too far often resulting in his own death.

"But I would say… around Vegeta when he first lands on Earth. So around 18,000, probably 20,000." Hearing this Chronoa looked at Sour with joy. Sour could have sworn he saw a little love heart shape glow in her eyes.

"You're that strong! That's amazing!" Sour blushed a little. It was rare he got complemented on his strength when he was surrounded by people who could easily kill him. Hell by the time Buu came around Krillin, the strongest human was almost Ginyu level. Which is insane for a human, but then again, he did receive some strong power boosts and having 18 as a wife must really improve cardio.

"You should go to the housing units and get yourself registered as to have a place to sleep tonight. Be prepared for tomorrow, the multiverse is a big place and we are almost running on a skeleton crew. Enjoy your employment."

I know it's a very small chapter. I try to make them around 5000 but this one is only 4000. Just seems pointless to continue it beyond what it is now, just writing for the sake of writing. Once again, the internet has made this harder than it had to be. I said Krillin was around Ginyu by the end of DBZ. I chose this number as the variety of power levels. Someone said that Battle of the Gods Goku was equal to Tournament of Power Krillin. I assume they were talking about base but even then, that's so much bull. Dragon ball super has so much power scaling issues for the sake of cool fight scenes but never ever should a human be able to beat even Namek frieza at full power. No less BoG Goku. Another site said 3 billion power level ToG krillin. Once again why I don't like using power levels cause from that same site Perfect Cell at full power is 3.25 billion. I'm sorry what? Krillin even ToP is not perfect cell level. One guy on the internet said between Goku and Ginyu in namek so that seems the most realistic.