Chapter 4

"So this is it," Trunks said.

The three were standing in front of the egg of the dormant Majin Buu.

"Yes," Kiviya stated.

"And what are we doing now?" Marron questioned.

Kiviya had led them here at Trunks and Bulma´s request. She had not made any attempt to refuse giving them information about this.

In fact she had not said or done much at all ever since the message from Goku, Vegeta and Lord Zeno.

It was clear that the events from the last weeks had completely broken her confidence. The question was would this be the start for her to change herself or not.

"I am not sure myself," Trunks admitted. "As you two have said, two Super Saiyans with the same form Gohan had reached during the Cell Games were needed to destroy it, right?" he asked.

"Yes. Well, it is not sure that this much power was actually needed to do it," Marron commented. "Two Super Saiyan Two´s at their full strength might have been overkill. But... "she hesitated for a moment, "well, it can not hurt to be careful."

"Exactly," Trunks stated. "I don´t want to end up accidentally awaken Buu ourselves instead of stopping him."

He looked at Kiviya.

"By the way, do you know how exactly Buu was stopped in the other timeline, I mean the normal past-timeline, not... yours?" he asked her.

Trunks realized the bizarre was of thinking to consider one timeline more `normal´ than the other. Especially since he had been told that their own only existed because it split-off from another identical one when Kiviya and Marron had appeared.

"No," Kiviya admitted. "All my father had told me was that the Kaioshin were helping the Z-fighters in this battle. That they somehow restored Son Goku to life to fight against Buu. And that he, together with Vegeta somehow managed to defeat him."

Goku and father, Trunks thought. Working together against the same being that was sleeping inside this egg.

And the Kaioshin, as Marron and Kiviya had explained, they were the highest rank under the Kaios, right beneath this Zeno character as it seemed.

"So Goku had been resurrected at that point," he said loud. "And later he and my father had obviously met the supreme god named Zeno and joined the battle against this Demigra."

"And yet your father, who was also in that battle, had not even told you that Zeno and Demigra existed," Marron commented to Kiviya. "Do you still think you had been anything but a pawn to him?"

Kiviya could not even respond to this. She know it was right.

"We will leave the egg here for now," Trunks said. "Until we know for sure that we can destroy it. It has been lying here for thousands of years. So it is more than unlikely that Buu will awaken on his own."

"But Babidi might show up at one point," Marron suggested. "That he had not done it so far might simply be because he had to collect energy on some other planets, with all the fighters on Earth being gone. So he might still be out there."

"We will have to keep our eyes open in case he ever appears," Trunks responded.

xxxxxxx

Two weeks later

Trunks, Marron and Kiviya were currently `helping out´ with the rebuilding at a large construction site at the outskirts of West City.

A very large construction site. In fact nearly an entire town´s district was being completely rebuilt.

Helping out meant in this case carrying large weights that normal people were not even capable of moving without cranes or other heavy construction-machines.

And heavy machines that were still functional were a rarity given the complete destruction the Androids had wrecked all over the world. This was one of the reasons the rebuilding was taking so long everywhere. The tools and resources needed to do the rebuilding in the first place had to be rebuild themselves first.

Trunks had been helping with this regulary during the last three years. Here and sometimes also on other places around the planet.

This time however it were just Marron and Kiviya who were both carrying a small pile of steel joists in their arms, while Trunks was standing by and currently talking to the foreman.

The reason however was not that Trunks was weakened right now or had other things to do. But rather because of the special kind of training he was performing.

Like Goku and Gohan had in the past, he had spend the last two weeks entirely as a Super Saiyan. And he feared he would cause more damage than good if he tried to help here in this state before he had learned to control it well enough.

In fact he had spend nearly the entire first week camping outside in an unpopulated area out of the town, out of fear of accidentally destroying something.

Trunks had made some sporadic attempts at mastering his Super Saiyan before. But, just like he had always interrupted his regular training, he had always broken it off after some time, to help with the rebuilding.

So the development of his power had come to an halt after his return after the Cell Games.

But now he was training seriously again.

His power had already increased somewhat during the last weeks, both in Super Saiyan and also in Base Form. But it was still not nearly as high yet as Goku´s and Gohan´s had been after they had left the Room of Spirit and Time.

Trunks knew he was still far from fully mastering Super Saiyan.

xxx

Meanwhile the construction workers were starring at Marron and Kiviya. As the two seemingly normal teenage girls each carrying multiple joists, that each together weighted over a ton.

"I - I can barely believe it," the foreman standing beside Trunks, a man named Carl who he had gotten to know quite well during the last years, said shocked.

"You have seen me doing this before," Trunks stated.

"Yes - but you are one of the Golden Warriors," Carl replied. "And the one who has defeated the Androids. So with you it is... something else," he said, sounding a bit uncomfortable about this matter.

Of course. They all were used to Trunks doing something like this. Countless people had seen him fighting against the Androids again and again. Just like Gohan before him.

That was also the reason why nobody doubted that it was him who had defeated them, even when there had been only one witness.

After so many years of Gohan and him being the only one who resisted them, they could just not believe that it could have been anyone else.

"I and my Master are not the only person with powers like this," Trunks stated. "In fact there had been many others. Several of them legendary fighters. You know of Son Goku, Muten Roshi, Tienshinhan or even the son of King Piccolo," he said.

This was not a question. Carl had mentioned to him before that he had been a fan of martial arts and the Budokai when he was younger. He knew all this names.

"But the Androids killed most of them a long time ago," Trunks explained.

"I see," Carl replied stoically.

xxxx

The adoration the people of Earth held for Trunks also possessed a danger, he and Bulma realized some time ago. It could turn into blind faith and even worshipping him like some kind of god. And then there was no telling what kind of things could be done in Trunks own name.

In fact it was that they had heard rumors about a cult somewhere in the Northern Regions doing exactly that, worshipping the `Golden Warrior´ as some kind of deitiy, was that had caused them to notice this.

xxxx

That was also another reason why Trunks was helping with the rebuilding regulary, even if it meant neglecting his training.

It gave him a reason to interact with many normal people naturally and show them that he did not see himself as some higher being and did not want to be treated as one. And the fact that he offered to help them - normal humans - with their daily work did even more to proof that.

The construction foreman Carl had been one of the people who did not seemed to be sure how to treat him, Trunks remembered.

When he had come to this construction site the first time a few weeks ago, some of the man had bowed their heads to him and Carl had not been sure how to address him.

By now he and the others had loosened up to him and begann to treat him normally... mostly.

"I actually had great luck that I found this two," Trunks said to him, looking at Marron and Kiviya. "We can all need all help we can get."

He had of course not bothered to explain that the two girls had suddenly appeared from another time-dimension. Accepting that would have been a bit much asked for from normal people.

"Sure," Carl replied. "We can not trust you to do everything on your own after all." He grinned.

A moment later both he and Trunks were laughing together at this comment.

Yes - he had come a long way with the people here, Trunks thought. They had started to treat him like a normal person. That only left the rest of the planet.

But then...

Trunks sensed it from one moment to the other. Two great powerlevels that suddenly appeared from one moment to another in an area far away from them.

Of course he was not the only one. Marron and Kiviya of course noticed it as well. They both laid down the load they were carrying and turned into the direction this new powers had appeared.

Marron however froze after one moment and her expression turned into shock.

"Oh no," she said. "I forgot, I had simply not thought about it," she stammered.

"What do you mean?" Trunks asked her.

"Do you remember what I told you about Twenty One?" Marron replied. "This energies are in the same area like her base. But this two powers are clearly not her. It is someone else who had appeared very close to it."

"Base? You mean another lab?"

"More like underground storage facility and factory of the Red Ribbon Army," Marron explained.

"For Androids?" Trunks asked.

"And other weapons," she replied.

Great, Trunks thought, so possible some other kind of Androids who had been lying deactivated the entire time and were now somehow released. Androids with an aura were the exception, but they existed. Cell was the best example.

"And you just forgot to mention this place?" he asked her sharply.

"it is nice to see that I am not the only one who can mess up, isn´t it?" Kiviya commented.

"I... - there were just so many other things going on and Twenty One had been an ally, so I never saw her as a threat," Marron explained. "And since she, as you said, never appeared appeared in this timeline, I was pretty sure she was dead."

"That doesn´t mean that their couldn´t be something else hidden in that base," Trunks responded grimly. "We have to get there as fast as possible and find out."

He lifted off the ground.

Both Marron and Kiviya did the same thing.

"You are leaving?" Foreman Carl called out to them.

"I am sorry - something came up. We need to go somewhere else," Trunks told him.

"I understand," the man said seriously, "another danger?"

"We will have to see about that," Trunks responded.

He and Marron flew off.

Kiviya hesitated one moment longer.

She looked down at her own hand. Just where one of her stingers had been burned off two weeks ago.

`Parasit, monster, abomination,´ she remembered how people who were not mind-controlled had called her in the past.

Not that they were wrong, she admitted to herself. It was funny how the last two weeks had shattered her delusions about herself.

She had told neither Trunks or Marron that one of her stingers had been regenerated by now.

One moment later she flew up and followed them.

xxxxxxx

Somewhere else

It was far away, on top of a hill in an empty area, the place where the Red Ribbon base had been.

But it were not Androids who had had awakened inside the base, who had appeared.

In fact from the base there was nothing left but a giant crater. The work of Seventeen and Eighteen many years ago. And this time they had clearly not made the same mistake like with Doctor Gero´s own lab and left a basement facility intact.

And it were not only two of them. Instead a group of six figures had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Three of them were alien figures with long tails, three toed feet and hairless round heads, ressembled the long dead galactic overlord Freeza in his final form. Only sleeker and a bit taller than he had been. But more importantly, they were not creatures made of flesh and blood, but beings made of metal. They were robotic creations, designed to ressemble Freeza´s kind. Or more precisely, designed to ressemble Freeza´s mostly unknown brother - Cooler.

While two of the robots were looking completely identical to each other, the one standing in front of them was slightly bigger and with broader shoulders than the others. And in opposite to the other three, his body entirely silver colored, but had a few traves of red and purple at his face and the sides of his head. It was obvious that he was the leader - the `real´ Cooler, as real as he could be being in a robot body.

Two others were Saiyans. An older and a younger one. Both of them were tall. The older had deeply tanned skin and a mustache. The younger one was even taller than him. He had long hair that fell down on his shoulders and back and was wearing a crown like ring on his head and some kind of necklace-like device on his shoulders. Their names were Paragus and Broly.

The last figure was in fact an Android, one that Trunks would recognize instantly, but not one that Trunks would have ever expected to see again. It was Doctor Gero himself, turned into an Android. But his Android form was different from the one Trunks had met in the past.

Right now Gero was starring angrily at the crater where his secondary base had been.

"Damn it," he growled. "It is completely destroyed. There is nothing left."

"This is not entirely unexpected," Cooler pointed out. "By what Master Demigra had told us before his consciousness went dormant, in this timeline your creations Seventeen and Eighteen have killed most of the powerful fighters of this Earth and devastated most of the planet."

"Yes," Gero replied.

"But that is another reason why this planet is an ideal starting point and why Master Demigra chose it to send us here. Barely any resistance. The sensors confirm it, only three noticably powerful fighters on this version of Earth. And the remains of your base can still serve as raw materials," Cooler said, scanning the traces and leftovers of metal-wreckage that had not been vaporized by the blast and were lying around in a few kilometer´s radius around the crater.

xxx

They all remembered the voice in their heads as Demigra spoke to them telepathically.

"You are some of my most promising agents," he had said to them. "I have one last task for you. One that will serve both our purposes. I will send you to a new world, one that you will be able to rule like you desire."

Demigra knew he might loose the mental struggle with Zeno over their now shared consciousness. To a great part thanks to Son Goku and Vegeta and some of their compatriots aiding Zeno by distracting him by attacking him and his Servants from the outside.

But Demigra had a contingency plan. He had used the power of the Super Dragon Ball, that he had absorbed to remove them from their own timeline before the Multiverse was erased and send them to a new one when it was recreated.

But not before sending a data-package with information about this timeline directly to Meta-Cooler´s AI.

xxx

"So this is it," the saiyan with the mustache, Paragus, said.

"Yes - this world looks very promising," Cooler stated.

He suddenly turned around to the horizon.

"They are coming. They must have sensed your ki," Cooler said to Paragus and Broly.

Of course, this two were the only one under them who had ki.

"Good - I am in the mood for a fight," Broly commented.

"Maybe it is not a bad idea to remove this obstacle as early as possible," Paragus commented.

"But not the one called Trunks," Cooler stated. "We have still use for him for my plan."

"Maybe you should tell us what this plan is," Doctor Gero remarked. "We are supposed to be allies after all."

"Trunks, the son of Vegeta? He needs to die," Paragus said.

"Yes, but not now. Or at least don´t destroy his body. He has something that can be of great use to our Triumvirate and I don´t want it to be destroyed in case he carries it with him."

"Okay, okay - I promise I will just play with him a bit," Broly stated.

"I will explain everything to you when we have time," Cooler told them, "but right now..."

It was right now that Trunks and Marron arrived.

They were both starring in complete surprise at the six beings who were floating over the crater that was all left of the base.

The two saiyans were being the least surprising of them.

Marron for a short moment starred down at the completely destroyed base. She knew this meant she had been right and Twenty One was dead in this timeline. That left the question who this six were.

"Gero," Trunks said coldly. "How are you still alive? Are this three some of your creations?" He looked at the three Freeza like robots.

"No, not at all young man," Doctor Gero replied. "Cooler and his drones are designed by an alien AI, but we are allies. But to answer your other question, I am not the Doctor Gero of this world or this time. We have travelled here from our own reality and just arived."

Just like Marron and Kiviya, Trunks realized.

"And what do you want here?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Cooler asked with a grin on his metallic lips.

He suddenly moved forward in incredible speed and threw a punch.

Trunks, already in Super Saiyan, like he had been for the last weeks, blocked it. But it was strong enough to push him back several meters. This being was powerful, he realized even if he could not sense his energy. Most likely stronger than himself.

"Broly," Paragus called out and touched a device on his wrist. "Go. Show him your power."

The saiyan named Broly powered up into another Super Saiyan.

And Trunks instantly knew he was outmatched. This was the strongest Super Saiyan One he had ever seen.

Trunks wasted no time and powered up even more. His muscles bulged up and his entire body became bulky as he turned into Ascended and then directly into the state he had dubbed Ultra Saiyan.

That meant he was sacrificing speed and stamina in exchange for raw power. But what choice did he have if he wanted to survive even one attack from this opponent?

Broly charge at him and attacked. Like Trunks had feared, his strike was even stronger than Cooler´s. If he had not powered up this far, his arm would have probably been broken by this one hit. So much for being a higher being, so much for being invincible, he thought sarcastically.

Marron had already gotten at distance and send a few blasts at Broly. But it didn´t affect him at all.

Broly just continued to send punches and kicks at Trunks. Which did not do too much damage thanks to his blown up powerlevel, but he could not stop a single one of them. He was simply too slow.

Marron was also not longer able to assist Trunks in any way, since Doctor Gero suddenly appeared next to her.

"Very interesting. You are one of my creations. A quite advanced one. None that I recognize. But you remind me of Number 18."

"Shut up," Marron hissed.

She send a punch to Gero.

But to her surprise he just caught her fist and stopped it.

"You see - my new allies convince me of a mistake most of my counterparts made. They concentrated too much on creating the ultimate Android and neglected the strength of their own bodies, which often led to their demise. So found ways to upgrade mine."

Marron just scowled and threw a kick at his side to force him to release her.

Cooler meanwhile was just standing back, watching the fight and recording everything for combat-data.

Broly only laughed and to Trunks and Marron´s horror, he transformed once again.

But not into an Super Saiyan Two, but into a bizarre form with green hair instead of golden and an unbelievable menacing terrifying aura.

This being was even more powerful than Gohan and Cell had been during their last fight... much more.

Trunks knew, unless some kind of wonder happened, they had no chance to survive this anymore.


As we all heard, Akira Toriyama died recently. Sad news for fans world-wide.

We will see if and how Dragon Ball continues after Daima. Well, six series and over twenty movies and OVAs should probably be enough anyway.

The Broly appearing here is obviously based on the old Z-version. While the new canon version had already in a way appeared in the prequel story `Tales from the Future´.

xxc

Powerlevels:

Future Timeline:

Future Trunks: 22.000.000 - SSJ: 1,1 Billion - ASSJ: 1,55 Billion - USSJ: 2,9 Billion

Marron: (Human:) 140.000 - (Android mode:) 290.000.000

Bra/Kiviya: 6.000.000

Meta Cooler Prime: 2,3 - ... Billion

Meta Coolers: 230.000.000 - ...

Broly: SSJ1: 2.4 Billion - LSSJ: 4,6 Billion

Doctor Gero: 310.000.000

Paragus: 4.400