The golden light still clung to him.
Not as a warm flame.
Not as the joyous first sunrise that a Saiyan should feel when breaching the wall to Super Saiyan for the first time.
No… for Trunks, it was a jagged, burning crown of grief.
His boots crunched against the rubble of West City's ruins with each step. The glow of his aura flickered and flared uncontrollably, every footfall leaving tiny quakes that rattled shattered windows and sent pebbles skittering into the dust. He wasn't even conscious of it — the energy was pouring out of him in waves, raw and untamed, pulled not from training or pride… but from loss.
In his hands, he still clutched what remained of Gohan's gi. The orange was now a grim brown from dried blood and soot, the torn fabric fluttering weakly in the wind. In the pocket of his jacket, wrapped in a scrap of cloth, was something far worse — the severed arm. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at it again since picking it up.
By the time Capsule Corp's half-collapsed dome came into view, his golden hair had dimmed, but his eyes still burned that piercing emerald. Bulma was outside, bent over a table scattered with tools, welding something for the filtration system. She looked up — and froze.
Her wrench clattered to the ground.
"Trunks…?" she breathed, scanning him up and down — the trembling, the dust, the blood on his hands. The aura. "What happened?"
He didn't answer. He just walked forward, the scrap of Gohan's gi dangling in his fist. When he stopped a few feet from her, his hand opened, and the fabric fluttered to the ground between them.
Bulma's face went pale. Her hands came up to her mouth. "No…"
"He's gone, Mom," Trunks said, voice cracking. "They—" his breath hitched "—they didn't just kill him. They… they took him. Or what's left of him. I found this. I found—" His voice broke entirely, and he couldn't say the rest.
Bulma's knees nearly buckled. She knew. Saiyan or not, Gohan had been more than just a protector for Trunks — he was the last link to the old world, to a time when there were still enough fighters to make a difference.
She stepped forward, wrapping her arms around her son. For the first time in years, Trunks didn't try to stand tall. He let himself sink into her, trembling, tears burning his cheeks.
Neither of them noticed the shadow that fell over the Capsule Corp lot until it was too late.
---
Chichi
It took hours for Bulma to make the trip to Chichi's home — the trek wasn't easy with half the roads destroyed, and the remaining cities were dangerous even without the Androids. She insisted on going, though. Trunks had begged her to let him do it, but Bulma knew this was something a mother had to hear from someone who understood.
Chichi opened the door with that same stubbornly kept hair bun, apron dusted with flour — somehow, impossibly, she still cooked like the world wasn't in flames.
Bulma started gently, but there's no gentle way to deliver a message like this. When she told her Gohan hadn't come back, Chichi's expression didn't break the way Bulma had feared.
Instead, she laughed.
A short, disbelieving laugh. "Don't be ridiculous, Bulma. My Gohan's the strongest there is. He's probably just training, or he's on one of those… those missions you people always come up with."
"Chichi…" Bulma's voice was soft, but her eyes were already glassy.
"No! Don't you dare say it!" Chichi shouted, stepping back, hands clutching her apron. "You're wrong! He's just—he's—" She shook her head violently. "He's not gone. My baby isn't gone. He promised he'd come home!"
The refusal was absolute. The dam was cracking, but Chichi's pride and denial were stronger — for now. Bulma didn't push further. She just stood there, letting her own tears fall, and left quietly. Behind her, Chichi's sobs finally began, muffled and breaking against the empty walls of her home.
---
Androids 17 & 18 — The Watchers
From the rooftop of a gutted department store several miles away, two pairs of inhumanly sharp eyes tracked the movements below.
Android 17 sat cross-legged on the edge, twirling a piece of broken rebar between his fingers like a baton. "You see that? Kid's still standing. Even after we… y'know."
18 leaned against the air-conditioning unit, arms folded. "You mean after you decided to leave him a gift-wrapped trauma bomb?"
17 smirked, but there was no humor in it. "Call it… stress testing."
"Call it what it is," she said flatly. "You're watching him like you care."
He didn't deny it. "He's… interesting. Most people break. He didn't."
In truth, both of them had been quietly altering their patterns for months. The destruction hadn't stopped entirely — it couldn't, not if they wanted to keep up appearances — but lately, their attacks had been more about spectacle than slaughter. Fewer targets, more noise. Just enough to keep Trunks chasing them, and the world still seeing them as villains.
Neither could say out loud that it was part of a bigger plan. That their real work was being done far away, deep underground, in the lab that had become both a tomb and a crucible.
---
The Chamber
The lab was silent but for the slow, rhythmic hum of machinery. Gohan floated in a vertical suspension tank, pale under the green light, missing arm replaced by a lattice of unfinished cybernetics. His hair was longer now, drifting in the fluid, and along his spine, sleek black conduits had fused into his body.
17 and 18 didn't come here often. It was too easy to stare at him and wonder if they'd gone too far — if giving him back in this form would be any less cruel than killing him outright.
But the programming cycles were still running. The neural interface was rewriting slowly, layer by layer. It would be years before the transformation was complete, especially with the new delay code 18 had embedded.
Neither noticed the secondary containment pod buried in the sublevel beneath the tank, sealed under multiple failsafes. Its occupant — a writhing, embryonic form — twitched once in the dark, as though stirred by the ki signatures above.
The file on its casing read only: CELL — PHASE 0.
---
Elsewhere — The First Ripple
Far away, in the bureaucracy of the Other World, paperwork piled as usual. Rows of ogres stamped, filed, and redirected souls into their next lives.
One junior ogre, assigned to cleansing duties, had gotten into the habit of listening to Earth music while he worked — a little habit he'd been warned about. Today, he didn't hear the containment alarm blaring through his headset as he bobbed his head to some rock track.
A single corrupted soul slipped past the cleansing flame.
Then another.
And another.
The mist pooling in the back corner of the purification chamber began to congeal, slow and heavy, drawing in every scrap of rage, hatred, and malice it could find.
The first distortion in reality formed with a sharp pop, and the walls began to melt.
A shadow stirred in the chaos. A grin began to form.
Something was coming.