Prologue

A second chance

The Androids were destroyed. Cell was vanquished. This should have been the end of the war. So I had hoped. I had hoped that the world and the survivors upon it would heal. That they, no we would rebuild. Like a flower blooming beneath the cracked and destroyed pavement of the city around me, we would slowly but steadily regrow.

Sadly, that tiny flower, that oh so fragile bud and stem was trampled underfoot by Cell. A Cell from an alternate future sneak attacked the world from his hiding place. That foul Android had taken us unaware, and destroyed almost every city and town on Earth in one massive barrage of Ki blasts.

I was asleep when it happened.

I couldn't even fight it. I woke up to the feeling of my clothes being burnt off in the heat of the Ki explosion. It wasn't strong enough to kill me, but that was by design.

That sicko wanted me to feel the deaths of everyone. He wanted me to know that he could have killed me in my sleep, but he wanted to let me know that he had taken everything I had left. He wanted to break me, and he damn well almost did.

The messed up part was that he hadn't even reached his semi-perfect form. He knew he would die by my hand.

Before I blasted him into oblivion, he said one thing that both haunts and infuriates me beyond anything else. Beyond my anger at Frieza, Beyond my anger at the Androids. He hit me where it hurt.

He reminded me that no matter how strong I became, I was still helpless.

"Your mother, Bulma was it? She tasted great" the sicko taunted me with his slimy raspy voice that bordered on sexual arousal.

Even now, as I sit here on this empty planet writing by myself, I think about how complacent I had become. I naively thought that it was the end of my heartache, but no, I fell back into the arms of sorrow.

For many days I traveled the world, country by country, city by city, town by town. I had hoped desperately that my Ki sense was wrong. That there were survivors. I did not want to accept that everyone was gone. I lied to myself. I told myself that the survivors were just great at hiding.

That flimsy lie did not last long.

After months of living off the remainders of supplies and canned foods, I began hunting for food like Gohan had taught me before. Everywhere in cities stunk of rotting and rotten food. I suppose it was a reprieve that Cell had vaporized every human on earth along with the beast people and pretty much everything sentient.

It was a cold reprieve. One wrought of death and twisted irony.

As I sit here in the remnants of my mother's lab, typing on this keyboard, I can't help but wonder what mother would say. What Gohan would say...What father would say.

Well, its getting dark out, and everything is silent. Some stray dinosaurs tried to nest in the lab the other day. I had to get rid of them. They were some form of raptor, and they were not sentient.

I guess its time for me to end this report and wash off. I don't know what I would do without these solar powered generators. We even have working turbines.

It's time for me to log off for the day. There's not much else to do or say.

A week had passed before Trunks decided to go for a long flight up to the lookout. It wasn't like there would be anyone there to greet him, but the solitude up above was better than the endless solitude below.

At least up here one was meant to be alone.

What was his purpose here?

He was the last man on earth. What could he do? The time machine and every schematic was destroyed when cell practically destroyed most of the surface of the planet.

He couldn't even go to the past.

It took a while for the gravity of the situation to sink in, and even longer for the loneliness to hit him fully.

With it came longing.

Was he really going to go insane in a prison made by Cell. Even in death Cell managed to hurt him. The realization of what Cell had truly done was only now bearing it's long poisonous fangs at him.

This wasn't a death by a Ki blast, nor was it at a hand of a stronger enemy in battle. No, this would be a slow death in a prison with no bars or doors. A slow and long death of mind, body, and spirit.

Cell had won.

Tabitha closed her book softly and tucked it under her left arm, adjusting her her cloak so that no debris could harm the pages she would be reading later. Her firm and resolute determination built through her work and experience keeping her much more composed about the familiar summoning ritual than her peers.

"Tabitha, its your turn" Professor Colbert, an aging man with a balding head and firm stance underneath his teaching robes called out to the young blue haired girl that had just closed her book.

Stepping forward to begin the ritual with the proper degree of respect and consideration for such an important spellcasting, she began her quiet but firm chant. Raising her staff, a circle of bluish white runes twisted and swirled in a circle a good three meters in front of her.

"My familiar, somewhere out in the cosmos. Come to me and serve" the girl took a breath before continuing.

"Heed my call, from the winds of time and space. Come to me" she chanted, controlling her magical frequency to make sure that no unwanted elements were chosen.

"Let it be done" she finished. The chant was short and to the point as the chant was not the deciding point of the ritual. Instead, the magical frequency and elements interwoven would determine just what would be drawn to the spell.

The runes that had been twisting and swirling like a winter wind blowing up snow had settled into a wide light blue swirling portal of energy the size of a very large doorway.

Tabitha stood quietly and patiently waiting, as these things could not be rushed, lest it end in disaster.

Sure enough, stepping through the portal was a human. He looked odd, like he hadn't slept in days, and his blue hair fell over his face. On his extremely muscular body was nothing other than a tan shirt and blue pants. His shoes looked old and worn, similar to those that a commoner wore but still strange as that particular make was not one Tabitha had ever seen in her travels.

The man stepped onto the grass, muttering something to himself in disbelief as he saw the people around him. It was the look of a man who hadn't seen a person for years.

Then, as if it was all so overwhelming, he fainted there and then.