PART I: CONTON CITY CASTAWAY

Chapter 1: Welcome, For The Rest Of Your Life, To The Time Patrol

A/N: And so, after not one, but TWO prologues, we finally begin this epic tale of time hopping and super-powered punching properly! And the author finally makes an author's note! And also something of an introduction as well. I hope you'll forgive me this slight indulgence of putting this here before the first chapter and not before the prologues but I felt that if I did that, I might lose some of you before the story even began. You see, this fic has been a long, LONG time in coming. Originally I called it Dragon Ball Z: Cosmic Castaways and started outlining it around about… probably 2002 or so. Yeah, it's been nearly twenty years since I originally came up with the basic idea for this fic. Back then DBZ was at the height of its popularity in the States and I came up with two ideas for fanfics concerning it. One was my now-never-to-be-finished continuation of DBZ called 'The Kakarot Saga,' and the other was an idea for a team-based fic. But because this was back during the height of Saiyan-mania, and also because I didn't really know much about the world of Dragon Ball at the time AND because we didn't have awesome games like Xenoverse 2, it didn't end up being very good. The 'team' I came up with for the original version of the story was pretty much just a group of saiyans. Not a whole lot of imagination or variety there, right? Well, like I said, we were all obsessed with super saiyans and I just didn't really fathom the idea of having characters that could be anything else. The other reason the original Cosmic Castaways wasn't that good (and partly where the name came from) was that it was essentially just a straight re-hash of the DBZ story, starting from just before Radditz's arrival on Earth and then going on through the subsequent sagas. I did try to change up a few things here and there, such as the saiyan team transforming into Oozaru to try and combat Frieza or having some of them accompany Mirai Trunks back to his timeline to fight the androids and also coming up with a much more elaborate introduction for Super Saiyan 3 but there wasn't too much more than that. I ended up getting to just the beginning of the Majin Buu saga before I finally gave up; a combination of Majin Buu being my least favorite saga and finally admitting to myself what I've been explaining here, that I was just reworking DBZ, not coming up with anything really all that original.

Now having said all that, you might be thinking, 'well aren't you doing the same thing since you said that this is going to be based on the Xenoverse games?' Well, yes and no. Because of the nature of the Xenoverse story and the conflict between the Time Breakers and Time Patrol, I'm not going to be rehashing things plot point by plot point directly. Also, In an effort to make this story worth reading and put my own twist on Xenoverse 2, our Conton City heroes aren't going to be fixing time anomalies that have to do with the main timeline DBZ story and some of DBS… they're going to be intervening in anomalies that have to do with the MOVIES. Yup, I'm going there. And I mean, why not? Turles and Lord Slug were already villains in Xenoverse 2 so I decided to change things up a bit. How is any of that going to interfere with the things at the Time Nest, you may ask? Well… you'll just have to read to find out.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, friends near and far, Dragon Ball fans and children in truth and in heart, I present to you: Dragon Ball Xenoverse - Cosmic Castaway: The Heroes of Time Saga! Have fun!


As she slept, memories intertwined with dreams.

"So if we use this machine of mom's, we can go back in time and prevent Goku's death at the hands of the androids?" asked Trunks.

"We can only hope…" she replied.

At first, it had all been so simple; go back in time, prevent Goku from dying, save the present. But things had only begun to spiral out of control from there.

"They're a group of beings intent on exploiting time travel for their own selfish ends. They call themselves the Time Breakers."

"Is that why Majin Buu has become so powerful?" she asked the hooded and cloaked stranger. This stranger had come to them at the Budokai, trying to recruit their help against the evil wizard Babidi.

"Indeed. They went back in time and made sure that Buu absorbed ALL of the Supreme Kais."

If only they'd known…

She felt herself responding, even though she knew she shouldn't, should try to steer her friends and family away from this course, but her dream self asked the question anyway.

"How do we stop them?"

"Go back yourselves and stop Majin Buu's original creator, Bibidi."

"But won't that just create another alternate timeline?" asked Trunks.

"A small price to pay, to avoid annihilation, don't you think?"

It hadn't been a small price, not even close. The dream shifted; she was rushing into the Time Vault, finding the scrolls within being consumed in the throes of temporal destruction.

"No… No! This isn't supposed to be happening!" she cried out in dismay.

"Oh but it IS happening," chuckled a very familiar voice.

She watched as herself turned to face the hooded man, what little of his face under the hood expressing glee at the destruction happening around him.

"It was you… you've been manipulating us from the start…"

"Oh yes. And now, thanks to your feckless interventions throughout time, this timeline is now doomed. And really, it's not even my doing, really. I just gave you and Trunks and everyone else a little nudge in the right direction and well…" He held up a scroll, sparking and pulsing with energy and it crumbled and burned as it did so with bright blue fire.

"Even Bulma was all too eager to start messing around with time, as if there would be no consequences down the road. That's the problem with you Dragon Team guys; you have an extremely bad habit of taking things like this for granted. The Dragon Balls for instance; did any of you have even the slightest idea what overusing the Balls might lead to?"

All she could hear was the thundering of her own heartbeat in her ears.

"YOU'LL DIE FOR THIS!" she screamed and the familiar golden aura surrounded her and she charged at the cloaked stranger… only for him to dodge. In the blink of an eye, he held forth a staff and blasted her with its arcane energies.

"Oh please. That's another thing you guys have a bad habit of; trying to fight opponents that clearly outclass you. In this case, an opponent who doesn't rely on being better at punching through mountains than you."

She collapsed to the ground, her body twitching and convulsing, sparks of dark energy wreathed around her.

"Allow me to show you what happens when you try to take on someone who is better than you muscle-heads in every way," he said, glee in every syllable. He raised his staff and dark lightning shot out of it and engulfed her body.

She screamed.

"Screaming won't stop this, you know," said a gruff voice. She turned and found herself facing Piccolo, his gi torn and dirty, his face and body bruised and bloodied. They were standing in the ruins of the Capsule Corp atrium. Through cracks in the walls, she could see West City being consumed as Earth convulsed in its death throes. Even the sky seethed and boiled with raw energy. It was strangely beautiful in an apocalyptic sort of way.

"Then what do we do, Piccolo? What in the name of Kami can we do?! Everyone else is dead and even if we beat that bastard, we can't stop REALITY from dying, not even with the Dragon Balls."

"Well, the Dragon Balls might not be able to stop it, but we may still be able to cheat a bit," he said, fangs showing in his grin as he pulled out a familiar object out of the bag he was holding. It was a Dragon Ball but instead of the familiar red stars, this one had black stars.

The dream shifted again and they looked up into the sky, Black Star Shenlong almost filling the pulsating sky.

"Your wish shall be granted," the dragon boomed, with the gravest tone she thought she had ever heard from one of these beings. She turned to Piccolo, even though she knew what she would say, her dream self still spoke the words.

"No! I'm not going to leave you like this! I don't deserve to be saved! I'M RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS!"

Piccolo just looked back at her with a weary smile.

"Kid, I don't have time to go into a speech about how you're wrong and about how this is all ultimately that bastard wizard's fault. Basically it all boils down to this: one of us has to stay and make the Last Stand, try and make Beez pay for what he's done to us. And one of us has to live. Live so that at least one small part of this reality gets remembered. If you think that's a cruel burden then consider it a punishment of sorts. But whatever else you do after this… please, remember us." She would swear right to her dying day that was the closest she had ever seen Piccolo come to tears. She felt herself being pulled away from him, being hurled up into the sky and had that strange sensation of falling but not falling that you get in dreams, like your body is remembering a sensation but can't replicate it properly in a dream.

"PICCOLO!"

The dream was over.


She gasped and sat bolt upright on her cot. After a few moments of heavy breathing and blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she heard a voice from the other side of the wall, beyond the bars of her cell.

"Attention all proud warriors! Have you ever considered joining Time Patrol? As a Time Patroller, you'll prevent history from being changed…"

Ah yes, that. This was the second time in as many days that she'd heard that recruitment commercial and it was no more interesting this time than any of the other times. Someone in the guard office outside must have had a monitor on or something, though for the life of her, she could not figure out why a TV station in Conton City would be playing a Time Patrol recruiting ad so many times when pretty much the only people who lived in Conton… were members of the Time Patrol.

Maybe it was a passive form of torture.

The young woman brushed some spiky, dark blue hair out of her bright blue eyes and tried to stretch out her lithe frame but the prison cell she was in seemed to have been built for someone much smaller than her; her gloved knuckles rapped on the wall above her head. She wore a simple blue bodysuit with simple, unadorned white gloves and boots. A brown tail lazily flicked from side to from where it poked out from the small of her back. She tried to stretch again but it wasn't just the confines of the cell that were a problem but the heavy pair of dark grey manacles she wore around her wrists. She regarded them with a mix of annoyance and resignation; she wasn't inclined at the moment to break out of here so she couldn't help but think they'd put ki-sealing handcuffs on her as another form of indirect torture, no matter what the Patrollers said about 'standard operating procedure.'

Despite the cuffs, she rolled over and tried to clamp her pillow over her ears, willing the intrusive sounds of the ad to go away. The cell block had some pretty good echoes however and she could still hear Trunks' voice calling her name. Wait, calling her name?

She sat up and stared in surprise at the two visitors standing on the other side of the cell bars. The taller man was of course Trunks, in the flesh and trademark fur-collar trench coat he usually wore for Time Patrol duties, his sword buckled over his back. The second, shorter visitor was a woman and not just any woman but none other than Chronoa, Supreme Kai of Time.

"Hello there," Chronoa said, far too cheerful for the surroundings, "Are you feeling better today?"

The young saiyaness didn't answer but leveled a dead-eyed stare at her visitors and thrust out her hands with the ki-sealing handcuffs on them. Trunks blanched and made to operate the door controls but then glanced at the Supreme Kai. Chronoa said and did nothing, just continuing to smile at the saiyaness inside the cell. Trunks then activated the door controls, causing the bars of the cell to flicker at the edges and then retract in opposite pairs into the floor and ceiling. He then stepped into the cell and pulled out a set of keys from one of the pockets in his trench coat, using them to unlock the cuffs. The saiyaness sighed in relief and rubbed her wrists and then cast a quizzical look at Chronoa and Trunks.

"I'm surprised that you actually took them off," she said in a low but still feminine tone that almost didn't match her appearance. In fact, Trunks could have sworn there was something familiar about it.

"No offense, but with your current level of power, even if you tried to cheap shot me and run, it wouldn't do you much good," replied Trunks in a neutral tone.

"Also that's because you are more or less free to go, provided you agree to a few things first," replied Chronoa.

"There's always a catch," the saiyaness grumbled, "OK, so which is it? More or less?"

"Well, first of all, you'll be calling Conton City home from now on," said Chronoa, her previously cheerful demeanor changing into a more business-like attitude.

"Why?"

"Unfortunately, because of what happened to your timeline, your existence is now something of a cypher," answered Trunks, "That means we can't really resettle you in some other place or time."

"'What happened to my timeline?'" echoed the Saiyaness hollowly. Her head bowed down, as if she were carrying a sudden weight on her. "You mean the complete and total annihilation of everything and everyone I've ever known?"

Chronoa coughed lightly to try and diffuse the resulting awkward silence. "The other condition would be… well, have you ever considered joining us in the Time Patrol?"

The saiyaness blinked at Chronoa and then said, "Stop that."

"What?"

"Stop that. You sound like Trunks from that damn commercial, which I've now had to listen to way too many damn times now. Besides, the answer is no. Not interested," she said as she flopped back onto her bunk.

Chronoa's eyes gained a steely edge to them.

"As I said, that's a condition of your free release, meaning the difference between living in Conton as an ordinary citizen and one who is monitored as a criminal."

"Oh, so that's how it is?" the saiyaness growled, shooting to her feet right in front of Chronoa. The young woman was not small; she was easily six feet in height and thus towered over the diminutive Supreme Kai. Chronoa merely crossed her arms and regarded the saiyaness cooly.

"Give me one good reason that you'd want someone like me in the Time Patrol. After what happened in my timeline and especially what happened with that bastard wizard, I'm not much use to anyone." The saiyaness let out a short, bitter bark of laughter, "Hell, I'm pretty sure I'd barely be able to fight with Radditz right now."

"That will get better with time and training, according to the doctors," supplied Trunks.

"As for a reason, then how about this?" said Chronoa, "Time rifts and anomalies have been increasing ever since the Demigra Incident. It's most of the reason we had to rebuild Toki Toki City into Conton City. And if we don't find the source and put a stop to it, all timelines everywhere will suffer the same fate as yours!"

"The source being the Time Breakers organization," added Trunks, for which Chronoa shot him a glare that clearly meant that he'd mentioned something he wasn't supposed to.

"The Time Breakers? They're still around? HE'S still around?" growled the Saiyaness. Chronoa sighed, casting another look at Trunks, who looked very abashed and said, "Yes, the Time Breakers are still around and yes, even though we've yet to find out where their leaders Towa and Mira are, the Time Breakers are still causing us trouble and no, we don't know yet wether Beez the Wizard survived yet or not. But let me make one thing perfectly clear."

Chronoa floated up off the floor so that she was staring directly into the blue-haired saiyaness's eyes. "Becoming a member of the Time Patrol means becoming a member of a team. And vengeance is NOT our aim. If you were to put any member of the Patrol in danger or even worse get them killed because you tried haring off on some revenge quest…" she paused for a moment as her gaze turned arctic cold, "then you'll be begging me to spend the rest of your life in this cell."

There was a pause, in which Trunks looked nervously between the two women, wondering if the saiyaness might really take a shot at the Supreme Kai of Time and then the blue-haired young woman broke into grin.

"You're a lot more forceful and direct than they make you out to be, Lady Chronoa. I like it."

Chronoa smiled and floated back down to the floor. "Despite what some people may say and even though I leave most of the day-to-day operations to Trunks here, I take my responsibilities as Supreme Kai of Time very seriously."

"So, does this mean you'll agree to our offer?" asked Trunks.

The saiyaness looked from him and then back to Chronoa.

"I wanna know one thing first. Why weren't any of you there when everything was going to HFIL in my timeline?"

For the first time since the start of this meeting, Chronoa's gaze softened, as did Trunks'.

"I am truly sorry that we couldn't," Chronoa said, "Despite our name, even we can't be everywhere at once."

"Also," added Trunks, "the events that led to the destruction of your timeline occurred roughly at the same time as we were dealing with time rifts that had overrun Toki Toki City, so we couldn't have come even if we had wanted to."

"But surely you could just go back…" the saiyaness began but Chronoa interrupted her.

"You're timeline is completely gone. I'm sorry, but there is nothing to 'go back' to."

"…Dammit." For the first time, the saiyaness' tough demeanor dropped and her shoulders began to shake as she held back her tears. "If only I had never… If I hadn't believed HIM then I wouldn't have tried…"

Trunks put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"I also tried to change my timeline with the best of intentions. It may have worked out in the end but as Chronoa-sama has repeatedly drilled into me and from what I've seen working for the Patrol, it could have ended in disaster. Many of our Patrollers don't really understand what can happen when time is meddled with; they just go in, fix what went wrong and then come back. But you, you've seen exactly what will happen if people are allowed to foolishly interfere with time, especially if they're doing so with malevolent intentions."

"And while you may bear at least a small measure of responsibility for what happened, although you were tricked into making the changes you did, we know that you and your friends and family tried to set things right. We also bear some responsibility for not being able to help you. So allow us to try and make it up to you in the only way we can; by letting you join the Time Patrol, so we can all make sure that what happened to your timeline, never happens to another one again."

The saiyaness heaved another sigh and then straightened up and looked Chronoa right in the eyes.

"I'm not entirely convinced but… this cell was starting to drive me crazy anyway. OK, I'm in, but there are a couple of things I'd like from you guys in return."

Chronoa cocked an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"First, I'd like it if no one around here knew my real name. It doesn't mean much anymore and I don't want anyone treating me weird because they know who my… relations are."

Trunks and Chronoa shared a look and Trunks said, "Actually we were already going to have you change your name since we might have people from the primary timeline working with us in Conton from time to time."

"In any case," continued Chronoa, "what would you like us to call you?"

The saiyaness paused a moment, head cocked to one side slightly as she thought and then said, "Roma. That's a good saiyan name, not at all related to my birth name either."

"Alright then, Roma, we'll do that," said Chronoa, smiling up at her, "But I hope the second thing isn't something we'll have to say no to?"

"I hope not," Roma said and then looked at Trunks, grinning, "I need a sword. Got any around here?"

Trunks returned her grin. "As you may have heard from those commercials, we have a fully-equipped item store."

"In that case, I guess I'm your newest recruit," said Roma, with a heavy sigh.

"Great!" cried out Chronoa, her demeanor having changed once again from cautious acceptance to practically child-like, "Let's get you over to the Academy so that you can get fitted for an official uniform," she said excitedly, grabbing hold of Roma's hand and almost pulling her off her feet as she dragged her out of the cell, Trunks hot on their heels.

They exited the small jail and went through some sliding doors out into Conton City's business district, location of the Patrol's headquarters. Roma, blinking the sun-blindness out of her eyes, almost crashed into Chronoa, who had let go of her hand and pirouetted around to face her, Trunks coming to a stop by the little Kai's side

"Oh and before I forget!" She began to go into an elaborate pose routine. "We welcome you to…" she paused, looking over at Trunks, who hadn't moved at all and was looking like he'd rather be anywhere else right now.

"Trunks…" she said, drawing out his name.

"Uh, right."

Blushing like mad, Trunks joined her in the pose.

"We welcome you to…" they said as the pose routine finished with the two of them holding their forearms in T-shape, "the Time Patrol!"

Roma blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

"Yeah, no, I'm not doing that. Like, ever."


ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE: Roma is introduced to life in the Time Patrol, school, item shop, flying laws and everything. But wait, there's a new partner being thrown into the mix as well? Find out in Episode 2: Training With Ultka. You won't want to miss it!