"Finding Cell will be a problem, it knows it's beneath Piccolo-san and has the ability to hide.. If it attacks, as soon as we move, it'll feel us and will drop again." Trunks rephrased what Piccolo had stated earlier. It wasn't actually like the Cyborgs of her world, it was worse. This monster fed off humans, seemingly, it wasn't 'fun destruction'. And unlike the Cyborgs, this android could probably sense them, since it's not mechanical in any way.
"You're wasting time with all this planning since Cell's already run away, let the thing absorb the Cyborgs if that's its goal, then it'll want to test its strength, because it's got Saiyan cells." Vegeta didn't see the problem with letting the creature get stronger; he'd rise to the occasion. One opponent instead of many, and more room to act. Kakarot, brat, aren't you both pissed these things are stronger than super Saiyan?!
"You barely got a scratch on Eighteen, Vegeta, don't underestimate the power Cell could get if it reaches its goal. We can't let that happen, this isn't just about Earth, it's about the entire universe since it has also got Freeza's cells." Piccolo was being the voice of reason, but Trunks knew better than to antagonize an angry, still-dealing with humiliation Saiyan Prince. Especially with the previous night's.. 'talk'.
Krillin, Gohan and she would have to wait a little before going to Gero's lab, as clearly the tensions hadn't died down. Trunks uncrossed her arms and maneuvered Gohan behind her slowly. The gesture wasn't lost on Krillin who had approached the two and was ready to go to the lab as he had offered prior.
"Are you fucking bad-mouthing me Namekian? I don't care how strong anyone gets, I'll surpass them and kill them! Maybe I should start with you."
"Don't try me, Saiyan."
Trunks thought Piccolo was bluffing; he hadn't taken a bean after the fight. While she doubted the green alien was wounded, she was certain he was at least tired from their fight with Cell. So she moved quickly to face her would-be father before he'd actually call the Namekian out on his bluff.
"Vegeta-san," she breathed, hoping to defuse the situation, even if her own blood still boiled.
Vegeta stared back, cold black eyes trying to read the tone and intentions of his heir. There was little the blue iris could hide under normal circumstances, yet he only saw determination and conflict.
"Tsk, you bastards do whatever you want," he hissed and blasted off while Trunks shielded her eyes from the sudden dust vortex.
"Pfft. Stupid Saiyan short-temper," Piccolo loathed it all while eyeing the others. "We have to work together even if Vegeta intends to rush to his death."
"I agree with you, working together is the right choice. However Vegeta-san is goal oriented," Trunks made the same observation she'd made already twice, albeit to different people this time, her eyes locked on the sprinkle that disappeared in the horizon. She remembered what he'd told her the night prior and slowly it clicked: 'Surpass my limits, surpass super Saiyan.' She hadn't even considered it to be a possibility.
"Working together? You say that now but five minutes ago, you weren't exactly on our side." Tenshinhan hadn't forgotten the little flare from earlier.
"Leave it be, Tien," Krillin intervened, and Trunks just shook her head, much calmer.
"No, I understand. It's deserved, I still owe you an apology for my outburst, but I will not apologize for my initial.. presentation of my findings." She turned back properly to face the others to show some good will.
"This all brought you nothing but confusion, brought me nothing but stress about my intimate sense of self, and brought us nothing but useless conflict. It was what I tried to avoid. I'm just.." she hesitated, trying to find her words. "What's important is that I am your ally and our goals are the same. We must focus on saving this world, and not press each other's buttons."
It took a few more clarifications in which Trunks had to establish she was indeed hot-blooded despite her manners, as she carried both Bulma and Vegeta's temper in her veins, before the men understood she just needed some boundaries respected. If anything, they could trust her as a fellow fighter, if not as a person. Gohan disagreed, but he didn't say a word, letting the adults solve their issues.
Krillin, Gohan and Trunks were about to take off to the lab, before Trunks remembered that a terminal would be necessary to access whatever data was in there. She told them to go ahead, she'd go back to Capsule Corp and grab her computer, then join them. She asked Gohan to flare his ki once they'd arrived so she could track him. Krillin indicated the general direction before they went their separate ways.
Tenshinhan decided to go to Kame-House to warn Yamcha and Chaozu (and Goku, as keeping him updated was necessary even if he was asleep most of the time), and keep an eye out for the Cyborgs should they show up, and Piccolo decided to try and stalk Cell in case he felt the monster, and would go to Kame-House in case of failure.
Bulma knew Trunks locked his room when he wasn't inside, and he guarded his privacy like his life depended on it. The teenager was still distant, disconnected even, despite his amicable face and friendly demeanor, his willingness to take care of the baby version of himself from time to time. His unwillingness to get help being cleaned after the previous night's injuries only distressed Bulma so much more. Bulma was this teenager's mother, and she was certain the future version of herself had tended to his injuries before. Despite his insistence that she wasn't the same person, the connection was made, and Bulma was not going to give up. Even if she knew the teenager only pushed her away when she was being motherly.
And yet, he left his room unlocked, his (well, his mother's ) computer open, the radio on, and just about all of the teenager's belongings on the desk. The only object she couldn't locate was the sword (and considering the news, Bulma figured the kid took it with him). The bed was lazily made, the pajamas more or less tucked under the pillow.
Bulma was curious. She needed to know more about her future kid, and she had a golden opportunity that probably wouldn't repeat anytime soon. She needed to act fast, because she wasn't sure how long she had before Trunks would be back, and despite knowing it was wrong to go against his wishes to keep distant and to separate the two, Bulma sat at the desk. Each second counted, so the Capsule Corp genius thought fast. The computer was connected to the network, and Trunks had been reading his and Vegeta's logs from the night before. Bulma hadn't thought to invalidate that computer's credentials to the internal network, there was nothing she'd keep from her son in there, after all, even if he didn't trust her back. He'd been ordered to, by herself, after all. That didn't lessen the hurt, and so Bulma quickly browsed the computer after taking a good note of what was open. Looking at the internal structure of the files, that a version of her had made, she quickly localized where personal files were located; she knew the research and other documentation was similar to what she currently had (as Trunks admitted to copying everything three years prior), with the notable exception of the Time Machine's codes. She sent a copy request of those personal files to the server, so she could take them out from another terminal, and Trunks wouldn't know. However, wherever the Time Machine research was hidden, she couldn't find it, and the stress of being found out got to her; she couldn't copy the whole disk, it would take way too long. She put back the computer in the state she found it in while waiting for the copy procedure to finish, and looked over at the belongings left behind by the teenager.
The cigarettes, first. She opened the pack. It was almost full, and contained the lighter. As far as Bulma knew, the teenager hadn't smoked while on the Compound. The access card. Trunks usually wandered in the Compound during the night, but from what Bulma had seen from the surveillance and logs, the kid just went to the kitchen and to the menagerie. She'd seen him when her baby woke her up twice over the past four nights.
The capsule case. Some capsules were clipped upside down in the case. Two were labeled "wardrobe", and if Bulma knew anything about her own organization, the upside down capsule would contain dirty clothes, which explained why Trunks didn't use the hamper and did his own laundry. A capsule house (Chichi told her he'd refused to sleep in the Son household, and he had tried pulling that with her too). Pharmacy (Bulma was shocked but not surprised the teenager carried medical supplies). The car. The mini fridge. A generator. Tools. The unlabeled ones, one of which had a red marker circle on it and was upside down. By elimination, Bulma deduced those were the Time Machines. A label was missing its capsule (the computer, which was of course out of its capsule form).
The wallet. Bulma opened it to find a photo, one different than Trunks' 13th birthday she was allowed to see, but it was on the same day. Or night, perhaps; a photo of both Trunks and Gohan asleep on a couch, the younger snuggled against the older, half covered under a blanket. Gohan was without a shirt, and Bulma saw the stump where his left arm was amputated, as well as a few other scars on the adult version of her best friend's son who had his remaining arm around the teenager version of her own son. Trunks had accepted the party-hat from earlier that day, it was pinned on his hair, his arms desperately holding Gohan. In contrast to the other picture, where Bulma had seen a hint of the somber heaviness in their wary eyes, despite the festive occasion, in this picture the two sleeping boys were relaxed, at peace. If Bulma had seen the scene herself, she would have taken the picture too (which is how she realized that she probably took that picture). In the wallet, she also found a pre-charged card, a little cash, and some business cards from different commerces. A little paper she recognized; the one she slid into the capsule case she gifted the teenager three years prior, with a little drawing of herself (Bulma found it sweet the teenager kept her scribble). And her ID (or rather, his mother's ID, as this one looked like it hadn't been renewed in two decades). Why would Trunks carry Bulma's ID? Bulma took a second to consider the probable reasoning, with the information she had about Trunks' world; Trunks didn't carry his own ID, so carrying his mother's would ensure… that if he died, if his body was found, his mother would be informed. The grim trail of thought made Bulma tear up; this kid was surrounded by death, including his own. He doesn't want to get attached, because he doesn't want to mourn nor to be mourned. He doesn't value his own life.
Bird noises by the open window caught her attention, she stayed too long, she needed to leave the room before Trunks came back. She knew if he found out she snooped, he would never forgive her. She looked at the window, then quickly retreated out, and ran to her lab to retrieve the files she copied, and remove them from the server. The timing was tight, because Trunks came back through the window soon after Bulma had left.
The teenager cursed at herself for having left everything on and open, departing without covering her tracks. She had forgotten to lock the door, but it seemed nothing was out of place, at least at first glance. She hadn't heard Bulma knock, she had left through the window before the young mother climbed the stairs to tell her about what she'd seen on TV. She turned her computer off and put it back in its capsule form, and with everything back in her pockets, leaving nothing behind, she took off towards the general direction Krillin had given her.
She was midway through when she felt Gohan's ki spike, pinpointing the exact location she needed to arrive at.
"Tora-san! Over here!" Gohan called in the air when he saw the teenager, his ki powering down now that he didn't need to serve as a beacon.
"My apologies for making you wait, Gohan-san," she appreciated how Gohan was her lighthouse, and checked her watch to save the coordinates. She'd need them to make sure the Cell from her world didn't mature.
"I didn't wait at all," the kid reassured with a little shy smile. "Was it hard to find me?"
"Not at all, your ki is unique and I've grown attuned to it, that is why I asked you to be my guide," It's unique because I spent so much time around another version of you…
Gohan didn't miss the hint of melancholy in the teenager's voice, but he didn't ask, especially after their discussion about boundaries earlier. They went down and approached the lab, nested within a cave in the mountains. As expected of a renegade scientist (it was either that or the arctic). The metal doors had been busted open, but the inside was more or less intact. Krillin was by the doors, and explained what happened, while they entered.
"So Gero activated the androids-"
"Cyborgs," Gohan corrected.
"Right. Well, Seventeen and Eighteen. We heard them fight inside, and Piccolo busted the doors. We saw Seventeen kill Gero because something-something-don't-activate-Sixteen-he's-defective and he said 'he was an annoying old man'."
They explored the lab slowly, looking at the open pods with numbers marked on them. Sixteen was the only horizontal one. There were scrap pieces of metal everywhere, a large table further back, and a whole lot of mechanical engineering equipment. Trunks kept close to Gohan, a protective left hand touching the boy's hair or arm, and Gohan happily remained close.
"That sounds like the Seventeen I know," Trunks confirmed with a grim whisper. She started looking at what the pods were connected to, and followed the tables to some of the monitors. No computer, but some sensors, and further at the back of the cave, a generator. The table had a lot of instruments which Trunks recognized as somewhat medical. If a butcher had been a doctor.
"So Eighteen activated Sixteen, and they walked out, blasted what was left of Gero on the way, and completely ignored us. Your dad who got there in the meantime was pissed about that. He just went and flew after them to challenge them. That's when you found us."
Trunks wasn't surprised about what Vegeta did, she still found that decision absolutely stupid, however… "They just walked past you?"
"Yea, talking about 'looking forward to the challenge of killing Son Goku', they just- didn't see us? I mean they did, but we were nothing to them."
"And you let them go."
"Yes, sorry.."
"No need to be. It was the right decision."
Trunks pushed aside scrap material from one of the desks with the monitors, and pulled her capsule case to find her computer and place it. She booted it and looked for the cables to connect to the monitors.
"Let me see what I can find here. Please look for a way to get into the sublab that Cell mentioned. I don't see a server or a computer here, so I guess it must be buried."
Gohan and Krillin agreed, and after an hour of tapping all sorts of surfaces while Trunks tried to recover whatever data possible from the pods and associated monitors, eventually, the entrance, hidden under the 'operating' table, was found by Gohan. Krillin pushed off the table and the three of them jumped down, Trunks mindful of the computer in her hands falling last.
The sublab was dark, cold, and dry. A perfect place for a supercomputer to do its work. A large glass-like green jar sat near the central server, containing a little creature, no bigger than a thumb, while the computer fed it the information that was collected over the past few years. Cell, in its early stages. Trunks put her computer on the first surface she could, to approach the massive server and see what she could gather from it, while Gohan and Krillin looked around for other clues.
"That's gonna become Cell?" Krillin observed in front of the incubator-thing.
"In twenty years, yes." Trunks tried to access the commands directly from the computer.
Oddly enough, it wasn't password-locked, considering its extremely hidden location. Gero stored his files in a way that was nothing compared to how Bulma did her research and code, so searching through the server's interface was tenuous at best for Trunks. She was a savvy user, not an experienced hacker.
The drawing boards, the desks, the crumbled papers, the pencils.. this was where Gero worked, and slept too, judging from the small living quarters, while above was clearly the workshop for application purposes. Gohan looked at whatever papers he saw, trying to make sense of all of the science he was seeing, Krillin looked at the robotics he saw, and searched for further hidden storage, passages or more.
"I think I found something." Gohan declared eventually, holding large pieces of papers he'd found under a whole lot of similar papers near a drawing board. Krillin got closer, saw a whole lot of math and some humanoid schematics, with n°17 written on it. Trunks finished plugging her computer to the supercomputer in hopes of using her own as an interface, since Gero's interface was a cluster, and approached as well, to check it out. Trunks took the papers to check them and read what was on it, and her face lit up when she more or less understood what it seemed to be.
"'Cyborg Seventeen alpha design'. Good find, Gohan-san! This looks like the first prototype. Dr Brief and Bulma-san should be able to study these and find a flaw. Let's take them."
Gohan, proud of having found something useful, took one of the tubes and put as many of the most relevant schematics he found in it, rolling the papers carefully.
Trunks finally got a hold of the server, but instead of properly checking everything, she ordered it to copy all data to one hard drive and did another tour of the lab herself, looking over some of the papers for anything useful. Gohan moved on to the living space, while Krillin checked other pieces of equipment.
"I understand enough to know I don't understand any of this," the teenager was frustrated, it was hard to see what was useful and what wasn't. She decided to take everything that wasn't preliminary sketches, like Gohan did, and put them into a couple of tubs.
"I found his diary!" Gohan shouted coming back with a large black notebook full of papers sticking out, and handed it to Trunks, who exchanged it for the tubes she just closed. Krillin got closer to have a look. It didn't look like a diary to either older fighter, but Gohan said it was…
"I found it under the bed." Oh that makes perfect sense. Trunks wondered whether Gohan had a diary.. or whether her Gohan had one too. She opened the book carefully to not let anything fall off, and checked a few pages. Each page had a date, a whole lot of notes, scribbles, scratches, rants, thoughts and wishes, but mostly ideas, the occasional equation, and a whole lot of photos of different people. They recognized none of them, except from some old posed photos of a man in a military uniform that looked like Sixteen. As well as two teenagers who looked like Seventeen and Eighteen, but younger. Those were stolen pictures taken by a stalker, without a doubt. Way too much to unpack.
"That looks like them," Krillin observed.
"Probably the human bases for the Cyborgs," Trunks sighed, pushing away any empathy that came to her heart, and handed the book for Krillin to carry, while she went back to her computer to order it to eject the hard drive, once everything had been transferred.
"That's awful, Gero was a monster." Krillin's stomach had turned at the tangible revelation, he and Gohan understood that the scientist had used humans to create his cyborgs, and if the 'operation table' near the pods were any indication, he didn't exactly work with medical ethics in mind. Trunks chose to ignore the circumstances for now, to her, the human bases were killed long ago and only the monsters remained. After turning her computer back into its capsule form, and putting it in the case, she wrapped the hard drive from the supercomputer in her handkerchief to protect it from dust particles.
"I took everything I could. Anything else?"
With the other two confirming they'd turned every rock possible in the sublab, the decision to destroy everything and leave was made. They'd stayed there for at least three hours of searching and looking through materials. Krillin carrying the diary and a few chips and robotic parts, Gohan carrying half a dozen tubes of drawings and schematics, and Trunks the supercomputer's hard drive. Before leaving however, Trunks took a moment to stare at the present-version of Cell, knowing it had killed a version of her in another timeline, and extended her hand to blast the creation into oblivion. This world won't need to worry about Cell reaching maturity. She then did the same to the supercomputer, destroying all traces of the research done in these facilities, methodically. When they went back to the main workshop, she, Krillin and Gohan did the same: destroy everything, and bury the whole thing under the mountain.
Back at Capsule Corp, Bulma and her father were all over everything brought to them. They were now well into the late afternoon, and Trunks' watch bipped, and she shut it down with a little smile. There was still time. Since the three warriors were useless when it came to unpacking all of the documents and understanding what Gero did, and since Vegeta was in the gravity room, Trunks figured she could leave Capsule Corp for the night and join Gohan and Krillin at Kame-House, to talk to the others and perhaps rebuild some trust, but the main goal was much more… lighthearted. She asked Krillin whether it would be ok for her to join them there, and he approved, but before getting on their way, Trunks asked them to go first, as she had a couple of things to pick up. The timing wasn't exactly the best considering the day's events, but she'd planned for it by placing orders with the right commerces. They weren't closed yet, so she could pick up her purchases and join the group at Kame-House.
When she arrived, driving her car instead of flying, it was early evening. She knocked at the door, holding a very large white box held by a string on one hand, and another box under her arm, wrapped in starry blue and white paper.
Gohan would turn nine with cake and a birthday present.