Chapter 6: The Distorted Door of Time and Space
In the white void of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, space groaned under the strain.
Visible black fissures appeared and vanished in midair. The once-stable gravitational field had collapsed completely, shifting between a hundred times normal gravity and total weightlessness.
Son Gohan stood bare-chested, the muscles of his sole remaining arm sharply defined. He hadn't transformed, yet the aura he naturally gave off was enough to make the air within a hundred meters grow still.
Two years had passed.
For the past year and a half, he had never stopped striving to reach Super Saiyan 4. Every time he forcibly compressed his Great Ape Power, his body had teetered on the brink of collapse, and he had failed to break through that barrier. But this extreme training on the edge of life and death, combined with the terrifying growth of his Legendary Super Saiyan Bloodline, had brought an inconceivable surge in his base power.
His base power was forty billion.
Even during the Majin Buu Saga in the main timeline, that number would have been enough to pin untransformed Son Goku and Vegeta to the ground and beat them senseless. With the hundredfold boost of his Legendary Super Saiyan form, he was the strongest in the universe in an era without a God of Destruction!
Nearby, Trunks finished his final set of exercises.
The purple-haired boy was a full size more muscular than he'd been two years ago. The innocence and fear had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a steely hardness forged through countless trials. His base power hadn't risen nearly as dramatically as Son Gohan's, but it had still reached the threshold of one and a half billion. Androids 17 and 18 would be a joke against the two of them now.
"Time's up." Gohan picked up the tattered orange gi from the ground and draped it over himself, covering his many scars. "Let's go, Trunks. It's time to head out and deal with those two heaps of junk."
Trunks nodded firmly and followed Gohan toward the glowing doorway that led outside.
At the same time, in the outside world,
a suffocating tension hung over the plaza at Kami's Palace.
Son Goku stood beside Kid Gohan, both in their Super Saiyan forms and wearing Saiyan Battle Suits. Piccolo, draped in his white cape, stared into the distance with a deep furrow in his brow.
They had emerged from the Hyperbolic Time Chamber not long ago and were preparing for the Cell Games. The shadow of Perfect Cell's terrifying power loomed over Earth, and everyone was racing against time to get stronger.
Suddenly, an extremely deep rumble came from the depths of the palace.
The entire domed palace shook violently, and the red floor tiles cracked in great swathes.
"What's going on?" Piccolo whipped around, cold sweat running down his green cheek.
That direction—the door to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber!
"Something's wrong!" Son Goku instantly assumed a fighting stance. His golden aura erupted as he fixed his gaze on the door at the end of the passage. "It feels like... something's about to come out!"
"That's impossible!" Piccolo gritted his teeth, the veins on his forehead bulging. "Goku, you and Gohan just came out of there. How could anyone still be inside?"
Piccolo's face was grave, his entire expression turning even greener.
Suddenly, two terrifying, violent surges of energy, carrying a hint of something wild and primal, poured out from behind the door. One was weaker, about as strong as the Android siblings, but strangely familiar. The other had already caught up to Son Goku and Son Gohan in their Super Saiyan Full Power forms. It was frighteningly ferocious, and seemed anything but friendly.
"Such an evil aura..." Ten-year-old Kid Gohan instinctively clenched his fists, eyes wary. He had just mastered Super Saiyan Full Power and considered himself fairly strong, but the aura behind the door filled him with an inexplicable sense of danger.
Even the Perfect Cell holding the World Martial Arts Tournament didn't give him a feeling this intense.
"Get ready to fight!" Son Goku assumed a combat stance, his expression graver than ever.
Thud—
Thud—
Thud—
Heavy footsteps approached, steady and powerful. Two figures, one large and one small, emerged from the dark passage with a weighty stride.
The young man in front wore a tattered orange gi. His left sleeve hung empty, and a sharp scar cut across the corner of his right eye. He had black hair and eyes, and not a trace of energy leaked from him. Yet simply standing there, he radiated a terrifying sense of power.
The purple-haired boy behind him wore equally ragged clothes, his gaze sharp as a blade.
The two groups stood across the palace plaza, their eyes meeting.
Silence fell over the air.
Piccolo stared at the one-armed young man's face, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. "Goh... Gohan?!"
He whipped around to look at the ten-year-old Kid Gohan beside him, then turned back to the one-armed young man radiating such oppressive power. His mind had completely short-circuited.
The Son Gohan before him looked a little different from Kid Gohan, but Piccolo recognized him at a glance. After all, Piccolo had practically raised Son Gohan himself.
"Uncle Piccolo." The moment Son Gohan saw Piccolo, his eyes widened in shock.
Piccolo, who had been dead for over a decade, stood alive right in front of him. His body reacted instinctively, and the words escaped before he could stop them.
Then he looked to the side.
The golden-haired man, watching him warily, was his father, Son Goku—the father he had lost to a heart disease long ago.
And the child hiding behind Goku, who looked about ten and was also maintaining Super Saiyan Full Power... wasn't that his younger self?
Looking at them, Son Gohan immediately realized that he and Trunks might no longer be in their original world.
Repeatedly forcing his way toward Super Saiyan 4 inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber had unleashed an immense, violent energy that disrupted the laws of that other dimension and distorted time and space.
He hadn't returned to the despairing future he came from. He had opened the door to the main timeline!
"Y-you're me from the future?" Kid Gohan stared wide-eyed and stammered. He could sense the same origin in the other man, but was that enormous power for real? The Son Gohan standing before him was only in his base form. Could Perfect Cell really be nothing more than a bug this future version of him could crush with a casual squeeze?
"Time and space have been distorted."
As if confirming Son Gohan's suspicion,
Popo had appeared at the edge of the plaza without anyone noticing. His round eyes rested on Adult Gohan, and his voice sounded directly in everyone's minds. "You released more power than the Hyperbolic Time Chamber could withstand in another timeline, tearing apart its temporal anchor. You have now arrived in the past of a parallel timeline."
Young Trunks froze at those words.
He paid no attention to the parallel timeline. His gaze swept frantically around the plaza.
The green-skinned Piccolo, Son Goku, whom his mother had mentioned so many times, and Gohan, his childhood hero...
"Where's my dad?" Trunks couldn't help asking, his voice trembling with tightly suppressed emotion as he desperately searched for the figure he had only ever seen in photographs. "Dad... isn't he here?"
In this timeline, Vegeta should still be alive!
Piccolo swallowed, forcing down his shock, and pointed below. "Vegeta's training in the Gravity Chamber in West City, getting ready for the Cell Games in a few days."
"The Cell Games?" Son Gohan seized on the words.
It seemed the main timeline had already reached the point where Perfect Cell was holding the World Martial Arts Tournament.
Son Goku powered down from Super Saiyan and slowly walked up to Adult Gohan.
He looked at the young man, who stood half a head taller than him. His gaze fell on the empty left sleeve and the scars covering his son's face.
He paid no attention to the terrifying four-hundred-billion base power.
All Son Goku could feel was a deep ache in his heart.
"Gohan..." Son Goku raised a hand and firmly patted his son on the right shoulder. Even without having experienced that future himself, he could tell from the weathered body before him just how much his son had been forced to bear.
"Dad." Son Gohan's eyes grew warm, but he quickly suppressed the feeling. He was no longer a sheltered flower who needed his father to protect him. In this cruel world, he had long since learned to endure—and he had no choice but to stay strong.
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