Trunks scanned the surrounding mountainous region. The scouter on his cybernetic half of the face beeped and squeaked with warnings. It was tough to believe that such a white and quiet area could be so deadly. While most martial artists with great Ki control could protect themselves from the harm of radiation, Trunks' unique semi-artificial body build provided him with even better protection than anyone else's.
"Trunks, how's the comlink?" Bulma reached the future version of her son through the communications network.
"You're not on the God's Temple? I think it's got to be the safest there, right? Gohan stayed behind to protect that place in case 21 surprises us with upgrades that let her armies bypass magical barriers," future Trunks noticed Bulma's signal lacking any usual choppy properties when coming from behind the magical barrier and its location being noted significantly further away.
"I'm onboard the Capsule Corps Star. I don't think there's a safer place on Earth's orbit, at least until Puri hacks it. Someone's got to stay behind and see what they can do to prevent Puri from taking control over a cybernetic star…" Bulma replied. "I'm picking up signals incoming your way."
"I'm aware of them. You forgot I can track electromagnetic signals and Ki?" Trunks replied.
"Right… I guess you've grown into a bit less helpless little man than my own Trunks…" Bulma ran her hand through the hair nervously before Trunks ordered the visual projection to turn off as the skies began swarming with giant humanoid robots with cannons sticking all over their limbs like a part of their exoskeleton. These were just a handful of different models, duplicated over and over and over again as if produced by a conveyor belt.
It was a sign that Trunks was going the right way.
The future traveler stopped in place, slipping his bulky human arm and his cybernetic one from under the cover of his jacket that he flapped behind him like a cape. Trunks' double-barrel cyber shotgun integrated through a connection with his cybernetic arm while electrical crackles lit up at the end of the barrel.
"Do you need help?" Bulma asked through the speakers.
"I'm going to put you on hold," Trunks closed his eye and breathed a cold puff of breath out as signified by a stream of white vapor as he swung his integrated cyber-arm back. "While my sword might be broken, Kami Upa taught me to forge a new one. One that doesn't break as long as my spirit stays intact."
Two identical beams of energy shot out from Trunks' double-barrel gun, connecting by the middle into a single claymore of crackling energy, twice the length of Trunks' body. The semi-converted warrior from the future vanished with a snap, leaving only trails of after-burns from his crescent-shaped slashes as, one by one, each tall robotic suit flinched in place. Some of them blew up immediately, others had their separated parts skid off of their bodies beforehand while others suffered violent electrical short-circuits before the blast of flames and smoke engulfed them and had them scatter down on the ground.
Future Trunks observed the downfall of the welcoming committee with a strict, one-eyed glare from behind them while his hair flapped about in the robust mountain gales. After seeing the last trail of smoke evaporate while its scattered parts poured down on the snowy mountain passes below, Trunks took off toward the location of the Muscle Tower.
"The air still won't be completely safe to travel, as long as some of the Muscle Towers remain intact. When Muten Roshi-san takes down the one in the Red Sea, at least the skies over the oceans will be safe to travel and people can return to some sense of normalcy," Trunks informed Bulma that he picked the call back up with a vocal response.
"I'm… Interception… Too strong… Fallout…" Bulma's voice went through a staccato shift made more frustrating by the constant static. There didn't seem to be any further use in continuing the conversation. The radioactivity in the area must've gone through the roof. This must've been close to where Commander Red detonated his ace missile from the Battle Jacket all those years ago, willing to take Chayote with the rest of the collapsing Red Ribbon Army.
It only seemed fitting that at least one of the Muscle Towers found their way here. It couldn't have just been because of the historical importance of the place. The radioactive surge in the area would've weakened any martial artists trying to challenge the tower, while it would've outright fried any ordinary military technology and made a military response impossible. If at least one Muscle Tower stays standing–Puri's conquest still holds hope. They needed to wipe it all out.
Trunks lowered from the skies, diving under the clouds to gaze into what he would've best described as a separate stack of pancakes stuck into a mountain of cream. Red, white and night blue flat floors of the Muscle Tower laid etched into the mountain peak, separated by a few hundreds of meters of howling blizzards that poked fun of the term nuclear winter. It didn't take long before steampunk soldiers riding jetpacks burst forth from their little winter hive.
Without bothering too much about their building-up forces, Future Trunks aimed his double-barrel shotgun and fired an all-encompassing beam of energy from it that devoured and incinerated the cybernetic soldiers stuffed with human entrails whole. Before more of them could show up from the first bunch got there, Trunks dived with a soaring kick and crashed through the roof of one floor. The hefty, thunderous crash sent the entire structure sliding down in an avalanche that consumed all the lower floors as well, while Trunks turned his attention up.
"Come on… You've got to be here, Mecha Frieza…" Trunks grit his teeth and charged upward, enveloped in a fiery Ki aura.
"Nothing personal, kid!" a cybernetically augmented voice resonated behind Trunks, surprising the swordsman from the future. While the Android was foolish to alert his opponent before striking, the technology cloaking his energy and heat signatures was impressive. Alongside the natural properties of emitting no Ki signal to trace, this Artificial Human seemed all but untraceable when in battle.
A stroke of heat burnt at Trunks' throat, leaving the future warrior plummeting down with sparks shooting out from his throat. His half-cybernetic body now served as a double-edged sword–while it helped him survive nearly getting his throat slit by a laser-edged katana blade, it also now left him with a sparking throat spewing heat and smoke directly into his lungs on the inside.
"So you're the Android guarding this place," Trunks spoke with a similar cybernetically augmented tone as the attempted assassination had damaged his voice box.
"I am…" a black, silver, and violet hi-tech armor with a slick, head-concealing, sentai-style helmet with a grated, knight-like mouth guard and a black visor over the Android's eyes with just two red clusters of glowing pixels forming what were meant to be the Android's eyes.
"I also am…" another matching doppelgänger of the first descended to join his copy.
"So am I…" a third clone descended to pose nearby his two copies. Together, the three formed a colluding pose with the middle Android kneeling in mid-air, gesturing toward the M-shaped golden decoration of its helmet while the other two flexed their biceps with one arm while stretching out the other to their respective sides.
"Together we are Artificial Human One-Seven!" they chanted out in unison.
"Humph… So you're using your own invention to multiply yourself…" Future Trunks gnashed his teeth in frustration as slaying three Androids at once might have proven difficult.
"My name is Artificial Human One-Seven. You've killed my brother. Prepare to die!" the leftmost One-Seven grabbed the hilt of his futuristic laser katana and prepared to charge at Trunks. This declaration seemed to confuse Trunks at first, as he didn't remember killing anyone or anything looking quite this flashy and exuberant.
"Laser Boomerang!" Artificial Human One-Seven in the middle chanted out, placing his hand by his M-shaped helmet decoration and producing a boomerang made of Ki. With a neat ace pitcher's form, the Android flung it toward the Saiyan, who took it to the air.
A sharp sensation lit up Trunks' nerves on the back. The Saiyan plummeted back down while the Ki boomerang he had just tossed took a sharp curve and began chasing him again. As Trunks plummeted, he saw the Android with the laser sword that had taunted him earlier over his head. He must've moved there with swiftness to its step and slashed him back down. Trunks corrected his course in mid-air and crossed his arms up to block the incoming explosion of the Ki boomerang.
When the smoke cleared out, Trunks stood tall with his hair spiked up and gleaming gold and a flashy aura surrounding him. The detonating boomerang tore his black bodysuit in a few places, but it left no lasting damage beyond a few bruises. It was then that Trunks realized what the triplets meant by that last remark.
"You've sent one of yours alongside that bunch of battle jackets to greet me," Trunks said without requesting affirmation. "If that's the case, you lot must be awfully weak, because I didn't even notice killing one of you."
"You've killed the wrong pair of brothers. We work to Puri & Co and when we salvage what's left of you, we're attaching a chainsaw up your bumhole!" the rightmost One-Seven pointed an accusatory finger at Future Trunks, confusing the Super Saiyan some. He didn't think he'd already killed two of One-Sevens.
"You mean the collapsed floor and the avalanche?" the baffled Super Saiyan scratched his head. "You guys are awfully weak, aren't you?"
Trunks vanished in a bright flash of gold, appearing before the central One-Seven and socking him right in the face before dashing behind him and slamming him in the back with a double ax handle slam. The Super Saiyan bobbed and weaved around the dancing laser swords from both sides before taking a plunge after the One-Seven he had just sent crashing down and grabbing his face with an open palm and flinging him limply in the air.
Trunks' arms became blurry from a combination of rapid strikes delivered all over to soften the Android up for a single finishing strike. The futuristic warrior ignited his cybernetic Ki sword arm again, slashing the central One-Seven by the middle and sending him for a ride alongside the after-burn projectile of his Ki sword slash. Trunks turned back only to gasp at the sight of a total of five One-Sevens posing alongside each other just as the One-Seven he just sent crashing into another floor of the Muscle Tower collided and exploded alongside the structure.
"That's the benefit of being an actual Artificial Human and not just some half-asser, punk. You can be everyone and everywhere at once!" one of the bunch gave Trunks a peace sign with the back of his hand in mockery.
"Oh, I bet he'd wish to be in more places at once. Can't find your precious Mecha Frieza, can't save your future or even your precious mommy…" another one twirled his laser katana with a pleasant hum as the laser blade moved cutting through the air.
Another one flung his katana, swinging at Trunks. The bemused Super Saiyan leaned his head aside, dodging the buzzing blade before two more One-Sevens dashed in from the side. Trunks blocked both of their flurries at once before feeling a rustle in the air and a disturbance in the pelting snowflakes.
"I'll have my blade back now, asshole!" a cybernetically augmented voice rumbled from behind Future Trunks as the owner of the laser katana dashed behind Trunks to grab his sword from thin air and attack his nemesis with it once more.
"Yeah, you will…" Trunks replied without looking at the dashing One-Seven as he scooped the laser sword from the sky before the rushing One-Seven could and snapped behind the One-Seven. The Android grumbled and spouted out static as the laser sword penetrated him from behind. The ruthless time-traveling warrior kicked the twitching and spark-spewing Artificial Human aside together with the laser sword sticking out of him to leave it to explode into spare parts by its lonesome.
The disgruntled time traveler spun around with a wide and high reaching kick that swatted aside a whole brotherhood of One-Sevens flooding him. With a golden blink, the Super Saiyan appeared before one of them, flipping them up in mid-air before aiming his double-barrel shotgun arm and disintegrating it at once. With another blink, Future Trunks vanished to another one and slashed it into two clean with his reignited Ki sword. Trunks opened up a panel of his cybernetic arm to type something into his hi-tech gauntlet. Just when a third One-Seven would have slashed him in the back again, Trunks' time machine tackled it from behind and careened off to the Muscle Tower.
Trunks flipped the lid back on his cybernetic panel and transformed his cybernetic arm back into a double-barrel Ki shotgun to take aim into the sky and expel a beam out that engulfed an entire accumulating swarm of One-Sevens, incinerating them by the handfuls though it still didn't seem to be much faster than the duplication facilities in the Muscle Tower could produce them in. There was just no way to dispose of these scrap fools and search the facility for Mecha Frieza at once.
"You dumbass, once your pal from the future let Artificial Human No. 21 know about why you needed Mecha Frieza. She got all the data she needed from him and destroyed him. Your poor future will just have to stay doomed! Maybe you should've wasted less time with people whose lives don't matter and should've worked harder on saving your timeline. Maybe then you could have been in time…" a One-Seven that was particularly frustrated about the lack of progress in disposing of the ruthless Super Saiyan yelled out.
"The lives of the people we save every day do matter!" Trunks declared, clenching his shaking fist. "That's the only thing that ever mattered because if we don't save the people, there's no use in saving the timeline! A bright and hopeful timeline with no one to share it with is the bleakest one of all!"
The time traveler straightened his body out and opened up a compartment inside his cybernetic arm. One just large enough for his other arm to fit up to the elbow while the double-barrel end connected into a singular, cannon-shaped barrel and began accumulating colorful specks of stardust that lit up with a golden flare at the deepest end of the cannon's barrel.
"Super Buster Cannon!" Trunks chanted out, unleashing a massive golden beam of energy toward the assembling field of One-Sevens that began drowning out the white of the mountains in black, silver, and violet. After the beam finished drilling through the seemingly endless and ever-duplicating ranks of the One-Sevens, Trunks panted, lowering his cybernetic arm while seeing a massive hole in the horde that didn't seem like it would fill up too soon.
"Face it–the more of us you destroy, the harder the duplication facility will work to replace us. For every one you destroy–you'll have to face five more. Even if you overpower us, you won't be able to keep up eventually. You can destroy the duplication facility, but then you won't have the chance to make sure we didn't lie about Mecha Frieza," One-Seven yelled out from amongst the lowered ranks while Trunks seethed in his own desperation.
"That's right. Boy, would you feel stupid if you ended up being the one obliterating the Mecha Frieza brain chip that could help you liberate your future…" another One-Seven mocked Trunks, pointing his finger at him.
"Oh… Wait… Can you even liberate your future anymore? I mean… Your crafty mommy's been caught, given how you've wasted an entire year saving nameless, faceless nobodies. She's probably long since kicked the bucket. I guess your future's screwed either way," yet another voice that didn't feel like it belonged to any faceless drone in the accumulating horde taunted Trunks.
"Face it, your future's always been doomed. After all, it has you as its savior…" another One-Seven laughed at Trunks, creating an endless wave of laughter alongside all of the One-Sevens.
The Super Saiyan from the future saw red. It was as if wrath itself had engulfed him and blazed on with limitless heat, but it felt good. Almost as if Trunks could draw from it, accept it as part of himself. The half-converted Saiyan warrior curled up into a fetal position before breaking it and stretching out, overflowing with power as he let out a resonant roar across the devastated nuclear wasteland that began shaking the scattered Muscle Tower floor facilities and shattering their windows from its sheer volume alone.
Son Goku turned back with a terrified expression on his face. Chayote turned back at the same time. She had been a little worried about letting Future Trunks go alone to one of the most dangerous Muscle Towers that was located in one of the most desolate and deadly places on Earth but he was right in saying that he was the only one that could go there and survive a brutal fight against an Artificial Human.
"That power… No way!" Son Goku gasped. "Is that… Trunks?!"
"It's like he powered up to the very ceiling of what makes a Super Saiyan and then just head-butted through it, soaring to uncharted heights…" Chayote blinked rapidly, unable to believe the rapid boom of power in the western region, far away from West City where the two were headed.
Gohan, Dende, Mr. Popo, and Kami Upa both shivered at the edge of God's Temple. They were the only ones capable of sensing the enormous eruption of raw power coming from the south of their current location. It was as if Future Trunks exploded with all of his might and engulfed the entire region with nothing but his energy. If he didn't properly control his might, he might have had the region of the planet crumble into space dust just by standing there.
"Is that even the power of a Super Saiyan anymore?" Gohan muttered.
"It's like he's gone Super Saiyan while being Super Saiyan… Unbelievable…" Kami Upa looked down with a solemn expression. "We're lucky that Chayote tamed this man. If he turned such unfathomable power against us or joined the Androids, I've no clue how we could have dealt with it."
"There's no way Trunks would join the Artificial Humans. He may be half-artificial himself, but he's still a sworn enemy of the Artificial Humans, right?" Mr. Popo gulped, turning to Kami Upa.
"Maybe so… But the interests of Trunks' timeline don't necessarily go alongside ours. It's a good thing that it's up to Dr. Puri to deal with this power now and not us," Kami Upa sighed, closing his eyes and accepting this realm of power as his new reality.
"Becoming a Super Saiyan while being Super Saiyan… Super Saiyan Squared? No… Sounds like a mouthful… Super Saiyan 2!" Gohan promptly named this new state of being that Future Trunks had discovered.
When Trunks settled down and the overwhelming destructive dome of energy retreated into his body, the half-converted Super Saiyan 2 glared at his numerous enemies with an icy stare while his hair had gone completely rabid and spiked straight up in a staticky soar upward. Even when Trunks powered down and withdrew his rampaging aura, electric crackles still passed up and down his body.
"It's not being everywhere and everyone at once that matters. Being everywhere at once is cheap and meaningless," Trunks calmly stated while moving back just a few steps. The stunned Artificial Humans gasped as they couldn't even trace Future Trunks' movements even though he didn't use Snap Vanishing or any kind of hi-speed movement technique. He just levitated by the mountain where the Muscle Tower floors had been.
"What are you doing, you idiot?" One-Seven taunted Trunks.
"That's the Muscle Tower with the duplication facilities. You can still salvage something from there that can save your future. Even if Mecha Frieza is destroyed…" another One-Seven yelled, but a lash of lightning from a stormy sky over his head drowned out the Artificial Human's voice.
"It's when you can only be in one place, do one thing and you have to choose… That's what defines a person. The choices and the sacrifices they make," Future Trunks cocked his cybernetic arm while raising it above the elbow. His rampant Ki erupted once more, shaking the mountainous region and causing wicked avalanches that washed almost halfway to the mountains' peaks and drowned everything in their reach in a frigid, radioactive tomb. "Disappear forever!" Trunks yelled out, raising his arms over his head.
His aura turned into a booming energy dome while resonating quakes spread across the entire world. A blinding energy wave spanning almost the entire western mountainous region in size burst forth from underground and devoured Trunks' energy dome, continuing to beam upward and propel outside the Earth's orbit.
Bulma struggled to stay seated as the whole Capsule Corps Star shook left and right and vibrated like a float during a typhoon. If she had the perseverance to open up a porthole or to check the recording on the malfunctioning screen flashing with static in front of her, she'd have witnessed a massive energy wave flushing outward from Earth, eating up any space bodies it came to contact with and reducing them to pebbles and stray, sparkling dust.
When Trunks Heat Dome Attack was just a terrifying memory, Trunks floated over a devastated, empty field with all the radioactive debris flung into space. The mountain ranges that spanned for hundreds of thousands of kilometers had gone alongside it, the Muscle Tower and its duplication facilities, its laboratory containing all of its invaluable data up in smoke.
No Androids in sight either.