(15 Years in the Future)
Orbiting the solar system in the third place from the sun, an eerily familiar planet continued its infinite lapping of the region. Looking at it from a distance, this world lacked any and all life. Its surface was blackened, covered in volcanic fissures and cracks stretching from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere, and its atmosphere was clogged up with smoke and hurricane-like storms. On first glance it seemed like some random planet in another galaxy or star cluster that was practically uninhabitable. But in reality, this planet, which possessed the exact same weight, makeup and consistency as the earth, was in fact the earth.
The only problem was that, unlike the earth of the present, this one looked as though the apocalypse had finally come and laid its claim upon its inhabitants.
Across the once lush, green landscapes and ocean covered floors of this futuristic dystopia, death and decay dominated the surface of every continent. Volcanoes, crevices and barren wastelands stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, and in the city ruins where large populations of people once lived peacefully with one another, sleek, steel factories, cooling stacks and skyscrapers resembling enormous computer terminals towered above the ruins, symbolizing the current empire in control of this part of space. The best way to describe this new world was post-nuclear fallout, where the skies had turned black with smog, the air had become toxic, and the humans that once existed as the guiding lights of the world had all but lost to the machines.
In actuality… this illustration couldn't have been any closer to the truth even if it tried. The thunder and lightning that reverberated across the countryside only seemed to accentuate this fact.
Beneath the beating heart of the steel, industrial centers dotting the surface of the world and the metropolis formerly known as West City, in the bowels of the earth where enormous sewer systems weaved around in an endless labyrinth, a figure was currently on the run.
Dashing down one of the concrete tunnels at Flash-like speeds, the tiny figure's silhouette flickered past the few remaining lights still illuminating a path through the maze. Her footsteps clapping against the mud covered floor and splashing through the occasional puddle, the mysterious runner then skidded to a stop at a fork in her road. Amidst the low rumblings and tremors reverberating around her from the surface above, the figure's face revealed itself from the shadows to be a young, thirteen year old girl with short black hair trimmed to a shoulder-length bob cut, with a pretty face and charcoal black eyes. She also had on her a pair of martial arts boots, a red and blue gi with a blue belt tied firmly around her waist, and a very familiar power-pole strapped to her person, which sat alongside a khaki backpack.
Appearing both battered and scuffed from whatever adventure she was returning from, the muddy girl panted as she took a moment to catch her breath. All of a sudden, the post-apocalyptic adolescent then looked behind her in alarm when she heard a distant whirring noise and a loud clanging of pipes. Upon hearing the sound echoing off of the walls, the raven haired runner then took flight down the tunnel to her right and continued making her way across the city via its hidden highway.
Her sprint through the maze carried on for several more minutes. The sounds of distant explosions could still be heard booming throughout the labyrinth despite its size and scale, and were made even more pronounced in the various pockets of intersections and flood ways the girl entered, which were now barren and empty. After traversing through seemingly endless miles of dried up passages and pipes the girl soon happened upon a large, rusty iron door, which had been built at the end of a long corridor.
Stopping in front of it, she banged against the side and waited. Moments later, the door opened up with a loud creak, and the familiar, lavender haired form of one of her closest friends and allies stepped into view.
He was also one of the only family members she had left.
Looking to be in his late twenties with most of his hair tied back into a ponytail, wearing combat boots, black pants, a maroon turtleneck, scarf, a brown trench coat with a fur collar, and a katana hanging at his side, the now adult Trunks looked down at the new arrival in surprise. "Pan? What's going on? What ha-"
"No time to explain," the girl said loudly, pushing past the Saiyan and jogging down the brick-lined hallway with speed and purpose. When the hybrid warrior shut the iron gates behind them, he quickly followed after her. "They know where we are and they're on their way."
Looking startled at the news, the lavender haired boy quickly fell in step with her as they ran towards the main room built just down the tunnel. "How many?"
"Too many to count. Enough to invade an entire star system."
Frowning at the news, the demi-Saiyan with the sword looked ahead of him as they closed in on the archway. "Then he must be serious this time."
"We've been a thorn in his side for over ten years now. Frankly I'm not surprised he's coming after us with everything he's got," Pan replied without a single hitch or stammer in her voice. Despite how scary the situation sounded, the young fighter knew that this was no time to clam up. They all needed to be strong, now more than ever… even in the face of overwhelming odds.
When the pair finally exited the corridor and into the central room of their home, the raven haired girl stopped and looked back at her senior. "Do you think he'll be there with them?"
"Most likely," Trunks murmured, nudging past her and heading down the metal steps. "Knowing the kind of scumbag he is, there's no way in hell he's going to miss the opportunity to finish us off himself. Especially since we now hold the key to destroying him once and for all." He then stopped at the base and looked up at his comrade with a serious look in play. "You have it, right?"
Hiking down the rest of the flight, the girl frowned at him as she passed. "Of course I do. What? You think we went all that way out into no-man's-land to come back empty handed?"
The lavender haired man smirked back at her. "Just checking." After seeing her saunter on, the older Saiyan followed.
As expected of an underground, secret base, the facility had everything it was supposed to have. The central room in particular was a large, round chamber with archways leading and connecting to a whole bunch of other tunnels, making this a convergence point for over a dozen pipelines. The interior of the room was constructed out of bricks, with walkways and stairs crisscrossing the space and leading to different levels. Since this also served as a home for the people that lived here, not only were there a couple of worn out couches, cupboards and cots set up in the living area on one side, there was also a rundown kitchen area and a small wreck room.
The majority of the place was filled with computers, monitors, Tesla coils, and all other manner of scientific equipment, most of which was state of the art, whereas a good other percentage of it looked salvaged. This included pipes, wiring, cooling equipment, and some of the processing towers. There also appeared to be a couple of reactors set up against the side of the chamber, including a particle accelerator and a massive workshop equipped for heavy duty maintenance on vehicle-sized machinery.
It was here where the rest of their group was currently stationed.
Gathered around the workshop's central control panel, there stood three figures. One of them, standing in the middle of their formation and working away at the board, was a woman in her mid-fifties yet still looking incredibly young, with long blue hair tied into a ponytail, wearing combat boots, tattered jeans, a white shirt, yellow Capsule Corp vest, and a red ascot.
The person standing next to her and also typing into the keys of the computer was a fit-looking, middle-aged man wearing a black suit, with slicked-back black hair, and a mustache and goatee. Though his outfit was completely out of place, considering the time and setting they were in, he seemed completely unaffected by the harshness of the world around him. His uniform, in contrast to his compatriots, was completely spotless.
The third person standing guard alongside the diligently working pair was another beautiful young woman with shoulder-length black hair in a hime-cut, wearing army camouflage pants, combat boots, an orange singlet that exposed her toned midriff, and an RAF jacket. Despite how turbulent the earth had become and the exhaustion that racked her body, the female fighter still looked as beautiful and vibrant as ever. She was currently leaning against the control board of the work station and was watching the pair of scientists toiling away, but as soon as she sensed the two youngsters approaching them from the stairway, she looked across at them and stood off of the panel.
Her eyes instantly landing on the woman in the pilot jacket, Pan's expression lit up and she rushed over to her, "Mum!"
"Pan," the thirty-odd year old female replied, sighing in relief when the adolescent leapt into her arms and hugged her tightly. Returning it while simultaneously patting the child on the head, Videl then set her daughter to her feet and looked at her with concern. "Your energy signature disappeared. We were all worried sick about you. What happened?"
"Sorry, mum." The child frowned as she stared up at her parent. "We ran into some trouble."
"Trouble?" Drawn to the attention of the hybrid Saiyan, the blue haired woman at the control panel, Bulma Briefs, turned to face the Son's daughter with a serious gaze. "What kind of trouble?" She then had a quick look around. When all she saw was Trunks ambling down the stairs after the newcomer, her face slowly formed into one reflecting dread. "Where's Paprika?"
Expression falling, Pan looked away from the women staring at her and shook her head. "She… didn't make it." It was this announcement that had everyone standing in the area freeze and their moods plummet. After several moments of silence passed, the child then looked back at Bulma with her eyes gleaming with hurt and loss. "When we broke into the master control's mainframe, an entire squadron of drones was waiting for us… including one of the android's generals. Paprika held them off long enough for me to get away from there, and killed the commander by sucking both herself and it into the Dead Zone."
The quiet in the room carried on for some time after that, in which all the people present used the next few minutes to recover from the shock of learning that another of their closest friends had been lost. They paid their respects to her.
When one of the distant rumbles eventually echoed into their midst and broke the ice, the group was soon joined by two more figures walking in from the other side of the chamber. Their presences shaking them out of their trances, the team standing by the computer terminal looked across the workspace to see the familiar form of Zangya, adorned in white shorts, yellow boots, a white singlet top and blue vest, step into view. She was also accompanied by a second figure, a much younger girl around the same age as Pan, with a fair complexion, red hair similar in style to her mother's, wearing an orange singlet top, dark blue spandex shorts, yellow boots and wrist guards, and a long purple scarf. She also had a machete sheathed onto her back and a combat knife belted to the same bandoleer at the front.
As soon as she appeared, the Hera, arms folded, looked around at her teammates sternly and with great purpose. "We can still save her." When she saw she had their full and undivided attention, she then directed her gaze over to the workstation, where the machine all their hopes were resting on was currently parked and waiting for launch. "Save her and the rest of the universe. As long as we still have breath in our bodies and strength in our legs, there's still a chance we can win this thing."
The vehicle she was referring to of course was the ever familiar, single-seated time machine she remembered Mirai Trunks traveling in all those years ago. However, unlike that particular model, this version of the yellow time capsule was larger and, aside from having a sleeker design, had some extra additions melded into the surface. It was this very medium that Bulma… that everyone gathered in that room… had all their last remaining prayers and expectations resting in its seats.
Bulma, hearing her friend's words loud and clear, steeled her jaw and nodded affirmatively. "That's right. Once we send you kids back into the past, we'll be able to make sure none of this ever happens and change things to the way they're supposed to be. This war, our friends' deaths, this hell of a world… we'll be able to reverse it all." She then turned back to where Videl was standing and set her eyes on the girl's daughter. "Did you manage to get the data we need to finish the omega cycle?"
"Yes. We got it all," Pan replied, quickly jogging over to the woman and handing her the USB, "The final piece to the puzzle."
"Excellent," Bulma exclaimed, taking it from the girl and quickly rushing back over to the computer. Stopping beside the man in the suit, the blue haired woman handed it to him. "Can you make this work?"
Looking like he hadn't aged a day, the suit-wearing gentleman, who was none other than former Talos Industries leader Kaiser, looked in the woman's direction and quickly took the device from her. "Of course I can. Who do you think you're talking to?" He smiled when he held the USB between his fingers. "I did say this was the last one, didn't I?" Wasting no time in plugging it in, the man's fingers then flew across the board and began typing into the computer at blinding speeds. The screens in front of him flickered with thousands upon thousands of lines of code, which zipped past at the exact same rate Kaiser's fingers danced over the screen. After several tense seconds of watching the man tap away, a series of beeps rang out as the segments of code were then arranged into a 3D rubix cube of information. A green text soon appeared over it reading 'complete', upon which the machines in the corner of the room started to buzz with life.
A few hisses and clanks later and a large terminal was suddenly ejected from the side of the block in the form of a drawer. When the panel appeared, Bulma marched over to it and removed the contents from the case, which turned out to be six vials of a grey, swirling liquid. The sediment inside the small tubes looping and swirling about at random, the blue haired woman quickly moved over to where the others were standing and held out two of them to her compatriots.
"They're finished," Bulma informed, watching Pan walk forward and stop just a few feet from her.
Kaiser, looking on from his station, smiled at the raven haired child when she analyzed the items curiously. "Thanks to the information you and Paprika were able to steal over the last six months, the two of us were finally able to complete the weapon that will allow us to destroy the abomination plaguing our universe once and for all, and save trillions of lives in the process." He then gestured towards the tubes in question. "These nano-machines Bulma developed are specially designed for the sole purpose of killing the A.I they've been programmed to target, by shutting him out of all other electronic and mechanical interfaces, thereby confining him to a single body and rendering his transfer capabilities inoperable."
"If these get into his system, there's no way he'll be able to eject them and there's no way he'll be able to escape. All you have to do after that is destroy his body and his brain, and make sure there isn't a single piece of him remaining," Bulma added. When she saw the young Saiyan child in front of her nod in understanding, the scientist then placed two of the vials into her waiting hands, before beaming warmly in her direction. "Just stab him with this and let the nano-machines do their job. The rest will be up to you and Eva." She nodded towards the long haired teen standing next to Zangya, who stood at attention upon being addressed.
Blinking as she glanced down at the vials in her hands, the thirteen year old Pan thought about them for a good long moment. Upon which she then looked across at her mother and martial arts teacher. "But… why us? Can't you or Trunks go back in the time machine and do it?"
The lavender haired adult folded his arms and stared back at his student seriously. "We've talked about this. It has to be you two. No one else is more qualified."
"That's not true. You, mum and Zangya are so much more powerful than us and have way more experience. Any one of you guys would be able to do this easily."
It was at the girl's questioning that Bulma once again spoke up. "It's not because they don't want to go… it's because they can't go, Pan." Placing two of the other vials into Eva's steady hands, the blue haired scientist turned to stare across at the young Saiyan with a solemn expression in play. "The reason we're sending you and Eva back to destroy the cyborg before he can achieve full power is to make sure this future never happens. Not in this reality… or any other reality. To do this, we've programmed the time machine to travel along this universe's time stream and to go back to the year before any of this started."
"I ran the calculations myself," Kaiser spoke up, drawing the teenager's attention over to him as he continued typing into the computer. Looking from the screen to the yellow Capsule Corp pod positioned on the production room floor, the suit-wearing gentleman then glanced over at the girl with a frown. "The vehicle has been uploaded with the coordinates and data necessary to make the jump down our reality's continuum, thereby enabling us to change this future and to make sure it never transpires. The only problem with this paradox is that if two bodies from the same time stream but from different time periods were to meet in the exact same era, the resulting contact could cause a cosmic shockwave that could tear this universe apart and destroy all of creation." The man then looked up at the stunned face of the young Pan and shrugged her way. "Not that it would be that bad of an outcome considering our current circumstances, but I would prefer avoiding that anomaly from taking place as much as possible."
While Pan was quite literally stunned by this information, Zangya's daughter, Eva, who was listening carefully from the sidelines, then narrowed her eyes on their former enemy in confusion. "But… didn't a Trunks from another future do that many years ago?" she asked while looking across at Bulma, who glanced back at the child inquisitively. "Videl told me and sis this story when we were both younger. A Trunks from a different future journeyed back to a time and place where he was still just a baby, and ended up fighting with you against Cell, the androids and Bojack, and the universe didn't fall apart then."
"That's because he came from an alternate timeline, sweetheart. An alternate universe," Bulma answered, looking the red haired girl in her crystal blue eyes to see her lurch a little in surprise. "The Trunks from that reality came to our world with the intent of warning us about the android threat and preventing the events in his future from ever happening. The me from the same timeline was able to create a machine that allowed him to do so. The only problem was that the me from his world didn't take the multiverse theory into account."
"The multiverse theory, or meta-universe paradox if you will, is the theory that there are multiple, parallel universes out there; each and every one of them branching out from the exact same starting point, yet each one following its own unique path," Kaiser interjected, focusing his attention on the group around him as the discussion progressed. "With every choice and action we make, we literally create a new world. History branches along two lines, creating one universe where we made the choice and a second where we didn't. That's the secret to creation; billions of people, making billions of choices, creating infinite universes… some so similar to each other you can spend a lifetime searching for any distinction… and others so radically different that they defy comprehension." He then tapped his nose at the kids with a half-smile in play. "And that's where the biggest complication with time travel lies."
"If the me from Mirai Trunks' time had wanted to alter their timeline and change their future, she would've needed to take into account the formulas necessary to maintain linear travel along a single continuum, so as to not break through the Coulomb and space-time barriers," Bulma informed with a grave look on her face. "Though she succeeded in solving the decoherence problem, she wasn't able to account for the slip-space imbalance. In the end, the Trunks from the future that we met ended up crossing over from his branch to another world altogether and back again. Hell, the Trunks that fought alongside us during the android crisis could've been a completely different warrior from the one that we met when Goku returned from space three years prior. It's a real pain in the butt to get around trying to solve this problem. Only the Gods would know how to travel through time without intruding on any of the other continuums."
"But where the Bulma from the alternate universe overlooked this fact, we did not. Thanks to the information Whis was able to give to us, I was able to perfect the space-time algorithm that will allow us to alter the time stream of our universe and change it for the better," Kaiser informed, pressing two more keys on the control panel and causing all the machines in the area to start humming loudly. A few seconds later, the pipes connected to the yellow time machine expelled steam before disconnecting, signaling the completion of his programming. Grinning triumphantly, the man in the neatly pressed suit turned to his colleagues with a look of excitement on his face. "That should do it then. We are finally 'go' for launch."
As Bulma quickly jogged over to the capsule to make sure all the cables were removed, Zangya crouched down in front of her daughter and, seeing the red haired girl look up from the vials she was holding, placed her hands on her shoulders and smiled warmly at her.
"You're ready for this, firecracker. I know you are," the orange haired adult whispered. She then brought her hands up to the teens cheeks and cupped them, tenderly rubbing her thumbs against them. When the girl's eyes shimmered, Zangya's did too. "Make me proud."
Tears starting to form at the corners, Eva nodded. Clutching the vials close to her, she beamed. "I will mum… I promise."
Holding back tears of her own, the alien mother sniffed and ran a hand through her daughter's beautiful red hair, before then attempting to straighten up her scarf. "Maybe when you go back… if you're lucky… you'll be able to meet your father… and see the great man that he was back then. Just… be careful… and look after your sister." When Eva nodded, the two of them then shared a hug, with the Hera being sure to kiss her daughter on the cheek. "Love you."
"I love you too."
As they said their final goodbyes to one another and Videl approached her daughter to do the same, there was suddenly a loud rumble that shook the room that they were standing in. The anomaly forcing all of them to look around in alarm when dust and granite cascaded from the ceiling above, the troop then stretched out with their senses in order to determine the exact cause of the quake. After a few more low rumbles suddenly echoed into the chamber, the scientists then shared a look with one another and frowned.
"He's here," Kaiser informed.
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