"Bulma's boy was born in June."
Trunks looked up at Chichi, speechless with the information. Then down at Gohan who was basically snuggled up under her left arm, looking at the timeline scribbles with a whole lot of sciency interest. Then at Krillin. And then Yamcha, who kept quiet about the child his ex-girlfriend had with the person who was more or less responsible for his death (and who was busy making sure the vehicle stayed on course).
"Well.. I guess that is another change caused by my intrusion in your world. At least this one is not dire." Her words trembled. Her fingers tightened on the pencil. The date was somewhat important, because it implied many other things concerning the relationship between her parents (and Trunks' mind absolutely refused to go there, ew), but Bulma would have not misled Chichi with her baby's gender. This Trunks was male. No, wait, hold on. Did this Bulma AMAB'd her female baby because she thought she was perhaps destined to be a boy? Shit I fucked up?
Trunks changed November 767 to June 767 on the 'this world' line, replacing the current baby's birth month to the correct one, her hand less still than it was before. No wonder that baby had such a similar gaze to hers; that Trunks was almost a year old. She was always terrible at telling kids' ages, so between a six month old and an eleven month old one she only saw afar…
Hold on, was Isupposed to be male? Am I?
No. The Dragon said she came from another universe, and only the Time Machine linked the two worlds. This was a headache, she questioned her medical history. This Trunks and she were different people, but she'd need to clear that up with this world's Bulma so she does not impose the perceived maleness of 'Trunks, but from the Future' on that baby's education, if she was indeed a baby girl.
"Regardless of the changes, thanks to you, Goku-sa's alive, so I'm really thankful," Chichi added, unknowingly pulling Trunks out of her inner turmoil, putting her hand on her husband's forehead. Trunks gave her a kind smile. That was the purpose of her mission, the main focus, regardless of this whole issue about herself and this world's version of her. She appreciated Chichi's words even more than she could express.
"That's the most important thing. Hope lives," Trunks responded with a little more conviction. The shock wore off, she'd focus on that later, there were more pressing subjects at hand than whatever those questions were.
Gohan had noticed the sudden change in the teenager when the information of Trunks' actual birth month came through; he was so close he could feel the teenager's heart pound, his muscle tense, his ki fluctuate. He cared about his new friend, he looked lonely and Gohan only wished to give him warmth and welcome. He'd saved his dad, after all, and he had killed Freeza before he could do them any harm. 'Tora' was a hero, and the panic he could almost smell on the teenager.. his heart sank for him. And he had no tools, no agency to help him. Gohan wanted to stay close, to learn more and to be able to be helpful. Even if he was just a child.
Trunks gave back the pencils to the young boy, and started closing the sketchbook when a flash of yellow grabbed her attention. The sketchbook wasn't empty, Gohan had drawn something at the end of it, and she had a peek. A drawing of the time machine. She felt Gohan shift a little when he realized the teen may have seen his drawing, so she closed it to give it back, not commenting on it. Gohan, whichever version, kept her mind from wandering too far off into despair, and she put her left hand briefly on top of his head, hesitant, to indicate it was ok. Like her Gohan used to do with her as a child. Focus on what's important for this world, she told herself.
"Speaking of baby-you, we should call Bulma and let her know what's up, Krillin, can you do it? Kinda piloting the plane here." Yamcha asked. Krillin was reluctant, he made a comment about how much an earful he'd get from 'your mother'.
"That is how she is, even in my world," Trunks commented, uncomfortable. This Bulma wasn't her mother, but it was just too confusing even for herself to not think of her as such.
Krillin pressed the numbers from the copilot seat, and asked to speak to Bulma when someone picked up, announcing his name, and Bulma's voice soon echoed on the speakers.
"Finally Krillin! Is everyone OK? I tried calling everywhere! Gohan should've been home already?"
"Yes!" Krillin panicked, then breathed in and out. "I'll explain, but we lost to the Cyborgs, Gero managed to activate them, Senzu beans saved our hide. They're searching for Goku, so we're moving him to Kame-House. Piccolo's probably on Kami-sama's Lookout, Vegeta's gone somewhere to vent-"
"What about my handsome son from the future? Where is he?"
Trunks held a little yelp at the sudden compliment and was confused as to why Bulma was even asking for her.
"Right in here, he can hear you," Yamcha laughed.
"Is he? That's great," Bulma never lost a beat. "So, we got a call from some farmer a good distance away from Gingertown, and he'd found a strange vehicle. He couldn't take it because he didn't find a way to turn it into a capsule. We wanted to help so we asked for the model type, but he said there was no number. You know we put numbers on all out creations right? We told him it wasn't a Capsule vehicle, but he insisted it was branded Capsule Corp without any serial, so we asked for a photo, who knows maybe it's a lost prototype or something, and I just got it."
Trunks listened, unsure about how any of this was her business, but she knew better than to interrupt her mother; the woman needed to work through her thought process to explain her reasoning and the relevance would eventually come. Krillin, however, did not know any better.
"And what's that got to do with anything-?"
Bulma screeched. "I'm getting there, you impudent imp!" Gohan giggled a little, and Trunks had a hard time containing her 'I knew it' smile.
"So where was I- ah right, your car! So I got the picture of the vehicle, and I saw your car, because I never saw this design before. You made it?"
"No, you did-," Trunks pinched the bridge of her nose a moment, and corrected. "Mother designed it and created the engine, I followed her instructions to weld and manipulate the body work."
"Oh I see- Because Capsule Corp didn't do either your car nor this strange vehicle, and wondered if perhaps it was yours. The turbines are very similar. Can you have a look? I'm sending a fax to your helicop-model."
While everyone in the helicopter waited for the machine to receive the data, Bulma continued.
"That a good car, by the way, seems I didn't lose my engineering touch with age."
"Well, Mother did create a Time Machine, the car was a side project of hers. I would appreciate it if it was returned to me, it was a birthday present after all," she spoke with little confidence, asking for something back was not in her education, and she wasn't really that attached for material goods, but the car was something special. Bulma giggled and agreed without question.
Once the paper had printed, Krillin took it, took a look at the photo, then walked the couple of steps to Trunks who extended her hand to take it. Gohan also had a look.
"You got the picture now right? It looks like it's been there a hot minute, did you abandon it here three years ago?" Bulma asked, impatient.
Gohan had a little gasp looking at the familiar egg-shaped vehicle, covered in moss, with the cockpit somehow burnt. He looked up at Trunks' white face. The teen had recognized the Time Machine as well, despite its scruffy state.
"That's-"
"Where is it?" Trunks almost growled, shifted, Gohan moved back to let the teenager get up. She did, paper in one hand, sword in the other, to walk towards Yamcha and the phone. As if she'd get closer to this Bulma that way.
"So it is yours!"
"Where?!" Trunks demanded, more assertive, not quite shouting yet, and pointedly didn't answer the question.
"Let me check the envelope." Bulma asked for a little more time. Trunks clipped her sword on her back, folded the paper and put it in her pants' pocket. She then reached for her capsule case; yes she still had all her capsules with the exception of the car. She checked on her watch for coordinates for Gingertown. The town wasn't that far off from their current path, all things considered.
"I'll meet you there. The sector.." Bulma gave coordinates. Trunks gave the voice all of her attention to burn the numbers in her memory, and moved to the side of the ride, intending on opening the door and going. She had a moment of common sense to put her hand on the lever, and look back to make sure her intentions were clear to everyone, except sleeping Goku, so they could prepare for the incoming wind draft. Gohan and Krillin had walked behind her.
"I'm coming too," the boy had decided. Trunks didn't fight him off, she barely even registered his words. She opened the door and took off slowly so as to now disturb the plane, then picked up speed. Gohan followed despite Chichi's protests, and Krillin closed the door behind them.
It's only when she arrived near the sector that her tunnel vision finally cleared, and Gohan's presence and words registered.
"That is your Time Machine isn't it, Tora-san?"
"I need to see it to be sure.." Trunks flew down the forested area with Gohan, but both kept above the trees to be able to see and look for the machine. They separated to cover more terrain, as they'd done a few months/years prior when looking for the Dragon Balls.
Gohan's keener eyes, more used to finding things in nature, was the first to spot the sun's light being reflected in a strange way in a prairie. He checked, then rose up again to call for the teenager, who came rushing.
They both touched ground near the mossy machine. Trunks was still white as a sheet of paper and she walked around it, then hovered above it, looking every detail she could, not daring to touch it. Exactly like Gohan had scrutinized her machine four months ago- or two and a half years ago. She didn't register Gohan's words when he said he heard something, probably Bulma, and that he'd go and help her find them both. She lit herself a cigarette, trying to calm down her nerves a little.
Only Bulma's voice calling her name while hopping off her small plane managed to take her eyes off the strange yet identical machine.
"Trunks! There you are. Look at your beautiful young mother," Bulma ran over, but frowned seeing her teenager kid smoke.
"Bulma-san," Trunks acknowledged with a little nod.
"So, what's this? It's yours?" The genius looked at the vehicle she'd seen as a picture. "I thought it was bigger, somehow."
"It is my Time Machine, but it is not my Time Machine. I have mine here in my case," her voice shook, and she checked the capsule case once more, just to be sure she did not hallucinate. Pragmatism first. She took out the unlabeled capsule, pressed it and threw it next to the other. Bulma stood in wonder in front of the clean model that just poofed into existence, and took a good look at it.
"So this one is the one you used," the genius had to ask, while she walked to the other, rundown one, "but not this one."
"Yes. I would have never left such a precious vehicle out in the open like this. I also never came close to this area," she said while blowing smoke after holding in a breath a little too long. At least 'seventeen years old, from January 784' Trunks hadn't. But she wouldn't have left the Machine laying there, regardless of her age, would she?
Gohan hovered over the cockpit of the mossy version of the Time Machine, and dared to touch the edge of what he thought was burned. "The glass dome is broken, perhaps the pilot was attacked? But there's no one inside."
"Just how many machines did Future Me made?"
"Mother spent night and day working on it for over three years and using all resources just to build the one, Bulma-san," she tapped ash and finished the cigarette, much faster than she'd have had under normal circumstances. She finally braced herself to hover by the cockpit too, and after rubbing some moss off, pressed the button to open it.
"I have to look at its settings," she trembled. Did an alternate version of herself traveled and ended up in this same universe? There were already two Trunkses in this universe, at the moment. The implications were freaking her out.
She hopped in the cockpit, but noticed a strange half sphere on the mossy, pollen-filled seat. She found another one at her feet, and grabbed them both, then looked up, thinking they may have fallen in from the trees, but no tree branch was directly above the machine. A shell? But she was more interested in the machine's settings, so she handed them over to Gohan who looked more interested in the new clue.
Gohan put the two items together to form a sphere, staying stationary by the cockpit, and Bulma asked to see them as well. The boy brought them down while Trunks sat in the familiar cockpit and used her handkerchief to clean off some pollen from the commands and screens, then turned on the machine to access its inner computer's data.
"This looks like an eggshell of sorts.." Bulma concluded, observing the details of the half spheres, its purple color, its spikes, and the odd ochre coloring at the seam. "But not from any creature I know of. Far too big. It also has some fibers… Looks organic."
Gohan went back up to the dome. Now it was open, he could squeeze underneath it and look more closely at the burn marks from the inside. Acid marks. What melted and attacked the glass-like top of the machine. He studied them carefully, touched a little more, and tapped a little the glass-like material to check how solid it actually was. At least as solid as the Capsule Corp spaceship.
Trunks took a moment to put her hands underneath the consoles while everything else started to boot, and found what she was looking for: her mother's procedures notebook. She browsed the pages while inputting some commands to access the computer's data, her eyes darting from her mother's handwriting, to the console, to the other Time Machine. The fuel reserves were about half full according to the sensors, but most importantly, the origin and destination finally appeared. 787 to 763.
"Tora-san," Gohan called again, hovering in front of the teenager's seat, outside of the open cockpit, and he pointed up at the dome. Trunks had been staring at the numbers so intensely she'd forgotten about the two others and hadn't heard the first call. She blinked, looked at Gohan, then upwards, following what the child was trying to show her. He spoke low, he didn't want to worry Bulma.
"I don't think.. another you used the machine. It melted from the inside. From that weird egg, I think." Trunks stood in the cockpit, and looked closer at the hole in the Plexiglas, and agreed with Gohan's educated conclusion.
"It seems like it. This machine arrived here four years ago. It-" she sat down to confirm the dates again, and verified the information again. "It also departed from the year 787. Three years from my world's 'today'." She put back the notebook in its place and eventually turned off the machine, stepped out of it and touched ground. So many questions. Trunks had a bad feeling about all of it; she had no reason to see why she or her mother would send an egg to the past, three years after this current trip she was in, let alone send it that far into the past.
"Bulma-san. I would like to borrow your laboratory, I need to run this through extensive diagnostics," she lit herself another nicotine stick, her paranoid mind was worried about potential implications, and whether this arrival, prior to her first one, was the cause of the many changes between her world and this one. She also worried sick about that 787 version of her mother. She didn't register Bulma's light scolding her about the nasty habit, even if she agreed to lend her lab to the teenager.
"I found something!" The two women heard Gohan's worried voice call out. They hadn't noticed him wandering off, so they ran towards the voice, one dropping the eggshells on the way, the other her cigarette.
Bulma's external screech was as loud as the absolute disgust Trunks had by looking and the massive brown moult Gohan had found.