Chapter 23

A day before, in another timeline.

It was a beautiful summer day in the Western Capitol, and 18-year old Trunks was cooped up in his mother's old lab. Bulma had assigned him the task of cleaning up her old lab, which is now a store room for her old inventions. Initially, Trunks was reluctant to spend his summer doing chores, but taking the cue from Vegeta, Bulma had threatened to cut off his allowance, so Trunks was forced to comply. He also dragged his best friend Goten into the project. Goten surprisingly agreed to help, as he was feeling a little neglected after his father flew off with the boy called Uub in the middle of the recent Tenkaichi Boudukai.

As it turned out, it was Goten who did most of the work. After finding one particular capsule from his mother's pile of old capsules, Trunks was preoccupied with studying the machine that was encapsulated within it, leaving Goten to do the rest of the moving, cleaning and sorting of the other things in the lab. One bright morning a week later, Trunks finally called Goten, who had since finished cleaning the lab, and showed him the result of his week long work. Outside, on the spacious grounds of Capsule Corporation's laboratories, Trunks showed the capsule to Goten, who could only guess what was inside it that made his best friend so excited.

Pressing the top of the capsule and tossing it a short distance away, Trunks grinned excitedly as it decapsulated into an egg-shaped machine. On it was printed the Capsule Corporation logo, the number 1 and also one word, scribbled using a marker pen: HOPE. Goten just gaped in astonishment when he realised what this was.

He turned to his best friend. "Trunks! Is this what--" "Yup," Trunks replied, still grinning. "Mirai Trunks' time machine, the one Cell used to come here." He walked up to the machine, and floated up to the hatch. Goten followed suit. Trunks had the hatch opened now, and showed Goten what was inside. "The glass cover was melted from the inside, so I replaced it," he said, tapping the new glass cover. "The hole left the controls exposed to heat and moisture, so I checked them and repaired the damaged ones. Luckily, none of the critical parts were damaged. The time machine's good as new now," he said proudly. Goten looked in, wide eyed and poked his finger on a few components inside.

"Whoah. Trunks, you repaired the time machine?" he asked, turning his attention back to Trunks. "It wasn't a too complex job," Trunks shrugged. "Just a matter of replacing the faulty equipments and testing them. The actual design though, was really complicated. I don't understand it myself. Truly the work of a genius, which my mother is,"he said proudly and went on."The machine uses a lot of energy, so I devised a chi energy charger which can be used to charge the machine in two hours if I go Super Saiyajin. If we used conventional batteries, the charging could take 6 months." He sounded proud of himself for making an improvement to the machine.

"But why did you repair the time machine?" Goten asked. Trunks grinned wider. "Goten ol' buddy, get ready. We're going time-travelling," Trunks rubbed his hands together excitedly. "This is going to be so fun. I can't wait--"

"We?" Goten interrupted. "But this machine can take only one person," he pointed to the single seat in the time machine.

"Simple. We fuse," Trunks replied, putting two fingers forward in the fusion pose.

"But, won't that be dangerous?" Goten asked, being the less adventurous of the two. "What if we suddenly diffuse in the middle of the travel?"

"Although I don't fully understand the theory behind time travel, I do know that time as we know it does not flow in the same way when the machine crosses the space-time which separates the two different timelines. In fact, during the time-travel, time can't really be said to 'flow' in any direction. So there's no danger that we'll suddenly diffuse in the middle of the travel. Don't worry, it'll be perfectly safe," he said confidently.

"I dunno..." Goten still wasn't convinced.

"Besides, how long has it been since we last had an adventure?" Trunks asked, and Goten had to agree with him. They've gotten soft, as Vegeta had said. He remembered how easily he was beaten by Mr.Buu during the Boudukai. Trunks too, had been beaten, by his father Vegeta. And Goten had to admit, he was curious. Gohan had told them the story of Mirai Trunks and the Cell Games (the real story, not Mr.Satan's version which was written in all the history books) when they were little. And here was the chance to see Mirai Trunks with their own eyes. He also suspected that Trunks had always half-idolized and half-envied the other version of himself, though he never actually said it. This would be a chance too good to not take for Trunks, and most likely he'll go with or without Goten. And damned if Goten is going to let him go off on an adventure without him!

And so, Goten agreed. So, with perfectly synchronized moves and a 'FUSION-HA!' shout, Trunks and Goten fused into Gotenks and began their adventure.

And that was how today they found themselves in Mirai Trunks' world, except that Mirai Trunks was no more. There was a Mirai Videl though, and as they explained their story, none of them would have imagined that their little time-travelling adventure had saved this timeline's universe from total destruction.

Chapter 24
back to the index page