Trunks materialized in his home timeline—the world of his birth, the future he'd fought so desperately to save.
This Earth held all his most precious memories. Though his beloved mentor Gohan could never return, Trunks had managed to restore everything else. Following Raditz's guidance, he'd journeyed to New Namek and secured their Dragon Balls, using them to resurrect the planet's ecology and civilization after the androids' devastating rampage. Humanity had been given a second chance.
People had rebuilt their lives. Cities flourished again. His mother Bulma waited for him at home, continuing her brilliant scientific work in a world finally at peace.
Trunks visited whenever his Time Patrol duties allowed—checking in on his mother, walking through the restored cities, marveling at how far they'd come. He had a favorite spot on a hillside where he'd trained with Gohan years ago, a place where he'd sit for hours with one leg drawn up, looking out over West City's skyline. The view always made him nostalgic, filling him with bittersweet memories. Gohan's image would appear in his mind's eye—that confident smile, those encouraging words—and Trunks would find tears streaming down his face before he even realized he was crying.
Eventually, Bulma would call him home for dinner, and he'd strap the Brave Sword across his back and fly to Capsule Corporation. They'd share a warm meal under soft lights, talking and laughing, savoring the simple peace they'd fought so hard to achieve.
This time, Trunks had especially good news to share. He was the heir to the Supreme Kai of Time! His mother would be so proud. He could already imagine her reaction—that brilliant smile, the excited questions about what the position entailed, maybe a few tears of joy.
The moment he set foot in his world, Trunks wore a grin like a child bringing home a perfect report card.
Then his smile froze, cracking like ice under pressure.
What...?
The cityscape before him lay in complete ruins. Every building had collapsed into rubble. Twisted metal and shattered concrete stretched as far as he could see, creating a vast graveyard of architecture that radiated suffocating despair. The metallic scent of blood had faded with time, but the oppressive atmosphere remained—thick, heavy, wrong. Dark clouds churned overhead, blocking out the sun and casting everything in sickly gray light.
"What happened here?!" Trunks's voice came out strangled, his body trembling as his eyes darted across the devastation. His mind raced through impossible scenarios. Did I arrive in the wrong era? Have I somehow come back to when the androids were still active?
No. That couldn't be right. Lady Chronoa had personally opened the temporal gateway—she didn't make mistakes like that. This was definitely his timeline, his present...
But how?!
Wind howled through the ruins like the breath of death itself, cold enough to chill his soul. Ashes rose in the desolate gale, swirling like a gray snow that coated everything in a fine layer of dust. The world looked like it had been salted and burned, left as a monument to extinction.
Trunks shuddered violently, struggling to process what he was seeing.
"Mom!" The thought burst through his paralysis like lightning. "I need to find Mom!"
If he could locate Bulma, she'd be able to explain what had happened. This world had been rebuilt—he'd seen it thriving just months ago! How could it have fallen back into apocalyptic nightmare so quickly?
Unless...
The extra timeline. The one that appeared in the Scroll Library.
The pieces clicked together with terrible clarity. This was what Raditz had suspected. This was why he'd insisted Trunks return home to verify the situation. Raditz had known something was wrong here, had recognized some threat that Trunks himself had been too blind to see.
That's why he told me to come back and check!
Pushing aside his shock, Trunks focused his senses and searched for his mother's ki signature. Even though Bulma's energy was negligible compared to warriors, Trunks knew it intimately—he'd been sensing it since before he could walk. It didn't take long to locate her presence, faint and hidden in a remote location, deliberately suppressed to avoid detection.
She's alive. Thank Kami, she's alive.
He shot through the sky toward her position, desperate for answers.
Deep beneath the ruins, in a makeshift underground laboratory, Bulma worked by the light of emergency lamps. Her hands moved with practiced precision as she prepared chemical compounds, her attention focused on the partially disassembled time machine before her.
The basement was the safest location she could find. After all, this area had already been destroyed once—their enemy likely wouldn't waste energy bombing the same location twice. It was morbid logic, but it was all she had.
This world stood on the brink of complete annihilation—even worse than the android crisis that had defined Trunks's childhood. At least during that first apocalypse, there had been other warriors helping humanity resist. Piccolo, the androids' earlier victims, scattered survivors who'd formed resistance cells...
Now? Trunks was away in the Time Realm, and there was no one left strong enough to oppose this new threat. The few humans who'd tried to fight back had been massacred. Earth's population had dwindled to scattered pockets of terrified survivors who hid like rats, starving, traumatized, some driven completely insane by the relentless horror.
Bulma was one of the few who'd kept her sanity—barely. She'd pinned all her hopes on Trunks, and on the possibility of reaching another timeline for help. She knew Trunks had forbidden her from using the time machine again after the last crisis, knew the danger of creating temporal paradoxes...
But desperate times demanded desperate measures. If using the time machine meant possibly saving Earth, she'd gladly risk it.
BANG! BANG!
Someone was pounding on the reinforced steel door to her hideout.
Bulma's heart seized, blood draining from her face in an instant. She didn't dare respond. Instead, she grabbed the pistol from the nearby workbench, holding it with trembling hands aimed at the entrance. She'd been a decent shot in her youth—had even gone on wild adventures where such skills proved necessary. Those days seemed like a lifetime ago, but muscle memory persisted.
"Mom! It's me—Trunks!"
The pistol clattered from her hands as recognition hit. "TRUNKS!"
She ran to the door, fumbling with the locks in her haste, and threw it open. Her son stood there in his Time Patrol uniform, looking strong and healthy and alive, and Bulma couldn't stop the tears that immediately flooded down her cheeks. She threw her arms around him, holding tight as though he might vanish if she let go.
"You're finally back! Thank god, you're finally back!"
"I'm here, Mom. Are you hurt? What happened to—" Trunks gestured helplessly at the ruins above them. "Who did this? What enemy could have...?"
"I'm fine physically," Bulma said, pulling back and wiping her eyes. Her hands trembled as she tried to compose herself. "But you've seen the outside. The Earth has been destroyed beyond recognition. Again."
"But who? Who's responsible?" Trunks's voice cracked with desperate confusion. "Is it new androids? Something else? I don't understand—this world was saved! It was peaceful!"
Too many questions crowded his mind at once. The perfect future he'd created through blood and sacrifice had somehow transformed back into a hellscape of fire and ruin. The betrayal of that reality felt like a physical wound.
Bulma steadied herself, then began recounting everything—from the moment their new enemy first appeared to the present nightmare. Each detail she shared hit Trunks like a hammer blow.
The world he'd saved was gone. The beautiful afternoons watching the sunset, the warm dinners at home, the laughter of children playing in rebuilt parks—all of it erased. This was the future Trunks had sworn to protect, the dream that had driven him to join the Time Patrol in the first place. His entire purpose had been creating and maintaining a stable, peaceful world where people could live without fear.
And someone had destroyed it.
A wave of despair crashed over him, threatening to pull him under. But beneath that despair, something else ignited—something bright and burning and absolutely furious.
"UNFORGIVABLE!"
His roar echoed through the basement, raw and primal. His face flushed crimson as rage surged through every vein. "I'm going to find whoever did this! I'm going to destroy them! They'll pay for every life they've taken, every—"
"Hehehehe... you don't need to search."
The voice emerged from the darkness beyond the doorway—cold, mocking, utterly devoid of warmth. It carried an edge that made Trunks's skin crawl, and beneath the cruelty, there was something disturbingly... familiar.
"You arrived on this desolate Earth without even bothering to hide your energy signature," the voice continued, dripping with contempt. "How wonderfully reckless of you."
In the dim light filtering through the basement entrance, Trunks couldn't make out the speaker's face—just a dark silhouette that radiated malevolence.
But his rage had reached critical mass. The enemy is here. Right here. Delivered himself straight to me.
"SUFFER AND DIE!"
BOOM!
The ground erupted as Trunks exploded into motion.
His transformation happened mid-movement—golden light blazing as his hair spiked upward, crackling with electric blue arcs of bioelectricity. Super Saiyan 2, pushed to its absolute limit, strength surpassing even the third grade of regular Super Saiyan. His power shook the entire underground structure.
The Brave Sword cleared its sheath in a blur of silver, and Trunks's form became invisible with speed. He closed the distance to his enemy in a fraction of a heartbeat and brought the blade down with the force of falling mountains.
BOOM—CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
The sword strike connected with earth-shattering force. The shockwave alone obliterated what remained of the surface ruins. The ground itself split open in a massive fissure that threatened to literally cut the continent in half. Even the dark clouds overhead were blown away by the explosive pressure, revealing pale blue sky for the first time in who knew how long.
"It's YOU who destroyed this world—" Trunks's battle cry shook the air, but it died abruptly.
He'd seen the enemy's face.
No. That's... that's impossible!
The man wore black—dark gi top and pants that seemed to drink in light. His expression carried cruel amusement, completely unlike the warmth Trunks remembered. But that face...
It was Goku's face.
Trunks's sword had forced the man backward, even managing to draw a thin line of blood across one cheek. But instead of pressing his advantage, Trunks stood frozen, sword still raised, mind refusing to accept what his eyes told him.
Mr. Goku is dead in this timeline. He died from the heart virus years ago. How could he be standing here? And why would he be... evil?
That moment of hesitation cost him.
The dark man's cruel smile widened. His hands thrust forward, and suddenly the air filled with energy blasts—hundreds of them, a torrential bombardment that lit up the wasteland like an artillery barrage. Each blast carried devastating power, their sheer density making evasion impossible.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Trunks barely raised his guard in time. The explosions hammered into his defending form, each impact like getting hit by a freight train. Smoke and dust billowed upward in massive clouds. The storm of force sent him hurtling backward, crashing through several partially standing structures before he managed to arrest his flight.
When the dust began to clear, Trunks looked for his opponent—but the dark man had vanished.
Where—?!
"Instant Transmission!" Trunks gasped, realization hitting too late.
"Very perceptive."
The voice came from directly beside his ear. Before Trunks could react, a heavy fist buried itself in his abdomen. All the air exploded from his lungs. His golden aura flickered and dimmed as agony bloomed through his core.
For a brief instant, Trunks found himself face-to-face with the dark man. This close, there was no denying it—this was Goku's face, Goku's build, even Goku's fighting stance.
But those eyes... those eyes held nothing but cold malice.
And there, hanging from one ear, was something that made everything infinitely worse:
A Potara earring. The mark of a Supreme Kai.
What... what happened to this world?! Trunks's mind screamed. What kind of nightmare have I returned to?!
Then another fist crashed into his jaw, and the world exploded into stars.