Chapter 1: Mission To The Past

Chapter One: Mission to the Past

Time Nest · Conton City · Year Unknown

I · Conton City

The sky above Conton City was a flawless, cloudless blue - the sort of sky that made it difficult to believe the timeline itself was quietly unraveling at the seams.

On one of the city's open training grounds, a small group of new recruits had claimed a stretch of flat earth for themselves. They moved through a light spar with easy familiarity: reading each other's weight shifts, pulling punches just so, practicing footwork more than power. It was the kind of session that looked casual to outsiders but told a trained eye everything about how long these people had fought beside one another.

The moment broke when a sharp tone cut through the air - the notification chime of a green scouter worn over the left ear of the group's black-haired Saiyan, Eleryc. He raised two fingers to the earpiece without a word, and the others drifted to a halt, exchanging glances as the one-sided conversation playing out on his face went from composed to quietly alarmed.

"What? Are you certain of that?"

A pause. He nodded once, sharply, at whatever came back.

"Of course. We'll be right on it."

He pressed the scouter's release and dropped his hand. The training ground fell silent except for the distant hum of the city. His friends closed in around him.

Scarlett"Is there a problem, Eleryc?"

Scarlett Reinhardt, A veteran instinct behind young eyes - Scarlett wore a short-sleeved jacket in matte black over dark brown trousers and matching boots. Her fingerless gloves left the calluses on her knuckles bare. Tanned skin, red eyes, red hair, and a Saiyan's brown tail coiled around her waist in place of a belt. Two scars traced the left side of her face: one a clean line from the corner of her mouth to the jaw's edge, the other jagged as a lightning strike. She had earned them both.

Aiko Reinhardt- Scarlett's younger sister carried herself with a quieter gravity. Her red hair fell past her shoulders and framed a face with wolf-like ears perched above - a gift from their father's lineage. A crimson tail swayed behind her, not coiled but loose, a habit she'd never bothered to break. She wore a long brown jacket left open over violet plate armor, blue trousers, and boots that matched her gloves to the shade. Where her sister fought with cold precision, Aiko fought with patience.

Daikon- Black and silver hair, red eyes, and a Saiyan's unmistakable brown tail - Daikon had the kind of restless energy that made standing still look effortful. He was cousin to Tarro, one of the Time Patrol's more decorated veterans, and carried that bloodline in both bearing and competitive pride. His crimson jacket over a silver shirt had seen better days, but he wore the wear with something close to satisfaction.

Zero- The last member of the group was the one who still occasionally surprised people at first glance: a Frost Demon - Frieza's race - wearing the combat boots of a Saiyan warrior. Blue-skinned and red-eyed, his natural bio-armor caught the afternoon light in clean lines. He had black horns, a spined tail, and a reputation that had been built the hard way, mission by mission, until even the most skeptical of his Saiyan colleagues stopped questioning whose side he was on. His distaste for the cruelty of his own kind was not performance. It was personal.

Jinjer · Eleryc's Elder Sister, She dressed similarly to her brother - same base uniform, female cut, with a Saiyan chest-piece of armor layered over it. She had a way of arriving at the right answer slightly before everyone else, and the patience not to say so immediately.

Eleryc turned to face them. His expression had settled into something flat and careful - not panic, but the particular stillness that preceded it.

Eleryc"The Supreme Kai of Time has summoned us to the Time Nest."

Jinjer"The Time Nest? She wouldn't call all of us there unless something had already gone wrong."

Zero: "Then we should stop speculating about what it is and go find out."

No one argued. They left the training ground without ceremony, heading for the long stairway that climbed toward the Time Nest.

Time Nest · A short while later

II · The Briefing

Chronoa was already waiting when they arrived - standing with her hands on her hips and the particular expression of someone who had been watching the door for several minutes before choosing not to mention it.

Chronoa - Supreme Kai of Time: "There you all are. It's about time."

Eleryc: "Apologies, Supreme Kai. We came as soon as we received the call."

Zero: "With respect - what's happening? You don't call a full team to the Time Nest for a routine briefing."

The small deity let out a slow breath. The lightness left her face.

Chronoa: "You're right. It isn't routine. This concerns Universe 7 - specifically, the period just before the Tournament between Universe 6 and Universe 7. An unknown party has interfered in the battle between Golden Frieza and Super Saiyan Blue Goku. The interference created a cascade. The time scrolls have been changing faster than we can account for."

Jinjer: "How extensive is the damage?"

Chronoa: "Enough that Trunks and Tarro are already stretched across multiple incidents. I wouldn't be asking you if I had another option. You're needed - specifically for this section of history."

Scarlett: "Who's behind it?"

The silence that followed was its own answer. Chronoa's expression shifted into something that looked like old disappointment reactivated.

"You already know him. Demigra. And this time, he isn't alone - he has fused with Zamasu. Together, they call themselves Zamigra. They have allies. One of them, you have faced before."

The name settled over the room. Aiko turned instinctively toward Zero.

Zero- quietly - "Cooler."

Chronoa: "Yes. I'm sorry, Zero."

He said nothing more. The nod he gave the Supreme Kai was answer enough.

Chronoa raised her hand, and the light of the Time Nest changed. The air shimmered, the world fell away, and in an instant they were gone - scattered forward into the rushing color of altered history.

Left alone in the vast quiet of the Time Nest, the Supreme Kai of Time stood still for a moment longer.

"I do hope they make it in time. If the vision holds... we may be gaining allies we haven't anticipated."

III · The Time Stream

The void between moments was not empty. It never was.

The five Time Patrollers tumbled through a corridor of fractured history - not the clean, linear sequence the scrolls were supposed to preserve, but something jagged and wrong. Around them, collapsed in on themselves like broken film reels, were moments that should not have ended the way they did. The battle against Kid Buu. Goku's Spirit Bomb rising - and then, in the altered version, faltering. Failing. The villain standing.

Jinjer"This is worse than I expected."

Zero"Look at the pattern. The changes aren't random - they're anchored. Something happened during the Golden Frieza battle and the fractures are radiating backward from there."

He pointed to a node in the stream: the battle on Earth's surface, a clash between familiar cosmic powers - and cutting through the middle of it, two unmistakable silhouettes. A dark-armored Saiyan with the bearing of someone who had always considered himself above consequences. A towering Namekian whose ambitions had been ancient before the planet they were standing on had been named.

Jinjer: "Turles and Slug. Again."

Aiko- flatly - "Of course it's them."

The time stream continued to flow backward, pulling them deeper into history than any of them had expected - all the way to a stretch of Earth sky familiar to anyone who had studied the origins of the Z era. The period before Raditz arrived. The world still turning in blissful ignorance of what was coming.

Scarlett's jaw tightened. This was not an isolated incident. The corruption had roots.

Zero stilled as something else reached him - a signature beneath the chaos. Structured, precise, and absolutely not natural to this era.

Zero- "Towa. And Mira. They're here too."

Scarlett- "Can we not get one clean mission?"

Eleryc processed this quickly, already working through the implications. He looked toward Jinjer, then back to the group.

Eleryc-"Jinjer and I can't engage directly - not here, not yet. Our appearance would raise questions that could destabilize this period further. Scarlett, Aiko, Zero, Daikon - you four are the forward team. Locate the disruptions and address them. We'll provide support from the periphery until it's safe for us to step in openly."

No one pressed the point. They all understood the weight behind it - Eleryc had shared it before, and the frustration of knowing it was correct had not made it any lighter to carry.

Jinjer placed a hand briefly on her brother's shoulder before they stepped back into shadow.

Jinjer-"Your time will come. We just can't afford to be reckless with it."

Eleryc-"I know. I know."

He said it like someone who had been telling himself the same thing for a long time.

IV · The Saiyan Who Landed at the Wrong Time

Scarlett and Aiko arrived on the battlefield just ahead of the worst of it.

They felt Raditz before they saw him - a power level that should have been, at most, a cold shock of intimidation to the era's fighters, but wasn't. Towa's enhancement had been woven through him like heated wire, invisible and structural. Whatever he would have been in the original history, he was measurably more dangerous now.

Goku and Piccolo were down. Not dead - but hurt, buying seconds they weren't sure they had. Raditz loomed above them with the patience of someone who had already decided how this was going to end.

Then Scarlett and Aiko hit him from either side.

The impact staggered him backward three full steps. He caught himself, straightened, and looked at the two women who had appeared as if from nowhere. His eyes dropped immediately to Scarlett's tail. Something complicated crossed his face - a flicker of recognition warring with offended pride.

Raditz-"You... - you're a Saiyan. Why are you defending these vermin?"

Scarlett-"I am. What of it?"

It was the disinterest in her voice that got to him. Not defiance - disinterest. As though the answer was so obvious it barely warranted air. Raditz felt her energy then: vast, steady, and completely unconcerned with his presence. His eyes moved to Aiko next, trying to categorize her and failing - Saiyan energy in a frame that didn't match any Saiyan he knew. Wolf ears. A different kind of tail.

He filed it away. He'd sort it out after.

Behind the sisters, Goku lifted his head from the dirt.

Goku- through a split lip - "Ha - thanks, whoever you guys are..."

Aiko-"Rest for now. We'll buy you time."

◆ COMBAT SEQUENCE

What followed was not a battle so much as a controlled demonstration.

Raditz attacked with escalating fury and received, in return, effortless evasion. Scarlett read every strike before it arrived, ducking and slipping with the casual economy of someone sparring a partner two weight classes below her. The more she didn't engage him fully, the angrier he became - which was precisely the point. An angry Raditz was a predictable Raditz, and a predictable Raditz was someone whose attention could be managed.

Aiko worked the angles. Every time Raditz committed to a charge at Scarlett, Aiko materialized on his flank - a quick kick to force his momentum sideways, a strike to the shoulder to break his guard, a sweep to his footwork that forced him to recover before he could follow through. The sisters had trained together long enough that the choreography was unconscious; they didn't need to call it.

At the edge of the field, Piccolo pressed two fingers to his forehead and began to gather something immense.

Scarlett spoke - loud, deliberate, meant to keep Raditz's eyes on her.

Scarlett-"Your arrogance is the most predictable thing about you. You can't see what's forming right behind your anger."

He lunged. She dropped and rolled. Aiko swept his legs.

In the half-second Raditz was off-balance, Goku was already moving - battered, deliberate, and exactly where he needed to be. He locked his arms around his brother from behind in a hold that left no leverage to escape. Raditz fought it. He would keep fighting it.

Goku-"Now, Piccolo - do it!"

The Special Beam Cannon was a spiral of concentrated finality. The sisters moved clear without needing to be told.

It pierced through both of them - just as it always had, just as it was supposed to.

The two brothers fell. History held its line.

Neither sister spoke for a moment. There was nothing wrong with what had just happened - it was precisely what was supposed to happen - and that didn't make the weight of it easier to hold.

Aiko- quietly - "Good work."

Scarlett-"Let's hope Zero and Daikon are having as clean a time of it."

They withdrew before Piccolo could turn around. Behind them, the Namekian stared at the space where two women had been standing a moment before and found only open air.

He stood there for a long moment.

Who were they?

V · The Canyon

Several miles east, tucked into a rocky canyon whose walls would bear the scars of this fight for decades, Daikon and Zero were having a considerably less clean time of it.

They had caught Turles and Slug in the act - planting seedlings from the Tree of Might in the shadow of the canyon's western face. The interception had been clean. Everything since had not been.

◆ COMBAT SEQUENCE

Turles moved like someone who had been waiting for a fight. His ki blasts came in precise bursts - not wild, but probing, looking for gaps in Daikon's defense. The dark armor he wore seemed almost to absorb the ambient light around him, and Towa's enhancement ran through his energy like a current through a wire. He was faster than his record suggested. Stronger than he should have been.

Turles-"A Time Patroller. You're defending a timeline that doesn't deserve defending."

Daikon-"And you're tampering with history because you're not strong enough to build anything worth remembering on your own."

Across the canyon floor, Zero faced a different problem entirely. Lord Slug at full size was a matter of physics: reach, mass, impact. Even with his natural speed, Zero was spending more energy on evasion than offense. A Death Beam lanced through Slug's shoulder - and the wound began sealing immediately, dark energy crackling through the tissue in a way that had nothing to do with Namekian regeneration.

Zero-"Daikon - they're enhanced. This isn't their natural level. Towa's work."

Daikon-"Noticed. We need to-"

Turles disappeared. A split-second later, Daikon took a hit that sent him through a cliff face.

In the dust and rubble, Turles reached into his armor and produced a fruit. Familiar. Wrong.

Turles-"Did you think we came here without insurance?"

Zero moved. He was too late.

The Fruit of the Tree of Might hit Turles's system already charged with Towa's dark amplification. The result was not an addition of power - it was a multiplication. Purple energy detonated outward. The canyon walls cracked. The shockwave rolled across the ground like a physical thing, and when it passed, Turles stood at the center of it looking less like himself and more like something that had used his face as a frame.

Daikon pulled himself out of the rockfall. He wiped blood from his lip. He assessed. He did not waste time being surprised by it.

Daikon-"Alright. So it's going to be one of those missions."

Zero stood beside him. For a moment, neither of them moved. The dark-amplified Turles waited across the crater, power spilling off him in waves that distorted the air.

Zero made a decision he had been avoiding for most of his career.

He had never liked using transformation. The power that Frieza had wielded as an instrument of extinction - power that members of his race were born carrying - felt like wearing something that didn't belong to him, no matter how many years had passed since he'd chosen a different path. But standing here, watching Daikon brace himself against odds that were no longer balanced, Zero found that his principles and his loyalty were pulling in opposite directions - and loyalty won.

He planted his feet.

◆ TRANSFORMATION

The roar that came out of him was not performed - it was an exhalation of something he had been holding back for a long time. His energy detonated outward as his body began to change: the ground cracked under him, loose stone rising as the pressure built. He grew. His shoulders broadened, his silhouette shifting from compact to something with weight and menace behind it. His horns changed. His face took on the elongated quality of a deeper, older form - the one his race wore when they stopped measuring their opponents entirely.

The transformation finished with a concussive pulse that blew a shallow crater into the canyon floor.

Slug took a step back. He hadn't planned for this.

Zero- voice lower, carrying a new register - "You asked about my race's power. Here it is."

He covered the distance between himself and Slug in the fraction of a second that even enhanced reflexes could not fully answer. The impact drove the massive Namekian through three successive rock formations before he caught himself.

Zero-"Daikon - switch!"

They crossed - Zero taking Turles, Daikon rotating to Slug - and the battle reset into something that no longer had a predetermined outcome.

The canyon filled with the sound of impact and the crackle of dark energy meeting something older and more honest. Somewhere in the shadows of the eastern ridge, Eleryc and Jinjer watched, ready and waiting, holding the line they had been asked to hold.

The timeline held its breath.

Continuing in Chapter Two: Escalating Battle