Earth
"How do you know my name is Trunks?" The blue-haired youth's guard shot up. The Gohan from his future was his master but this wasn't him.
"That part doesn't matter," Gohan said evenly. "What matters is that you're from the future."
"No… this is all wrong." Trunks staggered back a step. "Did my time travel… change history?"
"You give yourself too much credit," Gohan replied. "If I'm guessing right, you didn't jump back along your own timeline you branched into a parallel one."
"The multiverse theory is real?" Trunks' eyes widened.
"The past is fixed; the future's a fog. Even gods don't toy with time lightly mortals least of all. When you tried, the cosmos protected itself and spun up a new branch. Think it through: if you'd truly altered your past, there's a non-zero chance you'd erase the conditions for your own birth. If you weren't born, who's standing in front of me now? That's a paradox."
"Meaning even if I change things here it won't repair my world." His jaw set. "Damn androids."
Rage spiked. Golden light exploded around him Super Saiyan and a killing intent rolled across the plains so hard Goku and the others felt it from afar.
"Check it out?" Raditz started.
"Hold it," Goku said, hand up. "Whoever it is, he's no match for Gohan's ki."
"What am I supposed to do then?" Trunks' eyes shone red at the rims. "How do I save my ruined Earth?"
Gohan frowned. "Didn't… the me from your world train you?"
"You know that too?" Trunks blinked, then nodded. "He taught me a lot. I even broke through to Super Saiyan in a burst of rage… but I was too weak. If I'd held off just one android that day, Master Gohan wouldn't have died. Right before he fell, he could already go one-on-one with one of them he was winning." His voice cracked. "It's my fault."
Emotion churned his ki into chaos.
"Breathe." Gohan stepped forward, laid a palm out, and smoothed Trunks' turbulent energy with his own.
"I want to know how strong you really are," Trunks said, steadying then challenged him outright.
"Happy to oblige." Gohan kept his face calm; inside, a boyish thrill bubbled. Finally my turn to be cool.
Shing
Trunks drew the longsword slung across his back and brought it down in a clean, brutal arc.
At the last inch it stopped cold.
"Why didn't you dodge?"
"You weren't aiming to kill." Gohan's answer tasted very satisfying out loud.
"You are nothing like the Gohan I knew," Trunks said, narrowing his eyes. "Heads up. I won't hold back again."
He slid back a pace. Gold blazed up around him.
Goku and the others arrived, hovering at a distance.
"Gohan?" Goku asked.
"It's fine, Dad. We're sparring." Gohan waved them back.
"Be careful," Goku said, shepherding the others a hundred li away.
"Ready?" Trunks asked.
"Heh. Come on." Gohan lifted his right hand. A thin silver-white aura curled around his index finger.
The sword sang clang, clang, clang stabbing air and then Gohan, again and again.
Tink.
Gohan's finger met the blade tip, clean as a tack striking a needle.
Trunks withdrew and surged, body blurring, swordlight multiplying until a thousand phantom edges fell like rain.
Gohan didn't move his feet. He stood like a mountain, one finger haloed in ki, meeting steel a dozen then a hundred then a thousand times. Not a hairline scratch.
Shff clack.
Trunks halted, flipped the sword, and let it drop neatly into its sheath with a tilt of his head.
"I can't beat you." He said it with shining eyes.
"You want me to come to your future and kill the androids for you, don't you?" Gohan asked, already reading the hope there.
"Yes. Master Gohan please."
Gohan thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I won't go to your future."
Hope guttered in Trunks' face.
"But," Gohan added, "I will train you until you can beat them yourself."
"Me? Can I… really?"
"If I bail you out this time, what about the next threat? And the next after that? Will you jump timelines to beg for help again? If you don't cultivate the will and spine of a true warrior, my interference only delays the inevitable. The next enemy might kill you before you can even press your capsule button."
The words hit like a blow. In Trunks' mind unspooled a roll of the dead: Goku, felled by illness. His father, the Z Fighters, Master Gohan cut down by android hands.
"I'll protect my world," he said, voice steadying. "I will kill the androids."
Light flared around him resolve, not rage.
"Good. Not completely hopeless," Gohan said, almost smiling. He clamped a hand on Trunks' shoulder and vanished.
He left a single message drifting back to the others: "It's handled, Dad. Disperse."
Somewhere beneath his calm, a pettier instinct whispered that the less Goku and especially Vegeta and Bulma knew about Trunks right now, the better.
Sacred World of the Kais
"My stuff," the Elder Kai groused the moment Gohan appeared, scowl deep enough to plow fields. "Where is it?"
"Uh. I… forgot." Gohan scratched his cheek. Between Galactic Patrol runs and school, he hadn't set foot here in two years. The promised "gift"? Also forgotten.
"Two years, kid. Two! Do you know what I've been through? My magazine is practically antiques-grade now."
"All right, all right, Your Excellency," Gohan soothed. "Two years is a sneeze to someone your age, isn't it?"
"Hmph! No tribute, no help," the Elder Kai said darkly.
"Fine, fine I'll fetch it now." Gohan parked Trunks, blinked away
and popped back three seconds later.
"Here. For you."
He handed over an ominously hefty data capsule.
Galactic Patrol Headquarters, Evidence Locker
"Huh? Where'd it go?" a seedy old custodian muttered, rummaging. "I swear I put it right here. What a waste a one-terabyte collection of… ah… 'educational materials.' Gone!"
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