Dragon Ball: Days of Future Past (Dead)

[PoptartProdigy]

The executive summary; BY ARC.

ARC 1

The team first meets, a literal hour before our first mission. We're going to Planet Vegeta (then Plant) with orders to ensure the Saiyan-Tuffle War happens on-schedule despite what looks like worrying disappearances among crucial figures. We begin butting heads immediately, starting a long and proud tradition. The team splits up, with Bonny, Mato, and Cynthia going to protect a crucial saiyan; Vector going to sneakily protect the Tuffle President; Bassoon going incognito in the saiyan slums, finding and befriending a saiyan-tuffle orphan named Appa; and Cyrax (a robot; we had one then) hiding in a cave as heavy backup.

The saiyan party successfully infiltrates a camp of saiyan rebels preparing for the war, but Mato and Cynthia melt down so spectacularly over the nature of the mission that it informs their relationship for several ARCs afterwards. Cynthia flies out to the desert and gets immediately jumped by Verde (an at-the-time mysterious faction working at purposes orthogonal to the Time Patrol's mission) agents (Richard and Jennifer, both non-super saiyans) while she's there, starting a fight that swiftly swells out of control. Bonny goes, at Mato's request, to watch Cynthia's back, and gets drawn in as well.

Elsewhere, Vector is made by security but nevertheless stops and captures the assassins going for the President (Time Queen agents, although at the time we assumed them to be Verdes). Afterwards, she heads to the fight and snipes. Bassoon, sensing the fight, puts his chat with Appa on hold and joins in, at one point opposing the arcosian Chryostis and starting a pseudo-friendship that yet endures today. Cyrax squishes some mooks and joins the fight. Mato follows two out-of-place saiyans Bonny identified and realizes that they're behind this disturbance, preparing to use a device called a, "Time Calcifier." They are revealed as not being saiyans at all -- rather, human-looking Verde agents, Endeyive (in fact an android) and Gerrin (a mage). Despite getting made, Mato successfully destroys the device and incapacitates Gerrin, before getting his shit stomped in by Endeyive and being punted into the developing furball.

The fight goes for a bit before the last Verde (Vegal, the team leader and a super saiyan) shows up, Chryostis in tow. Vegal and Cynthia, the only two super saiyans present, home in on each other and collide, absolutely dominating the field, being over a hundred million units stronger than anybody else present. As the fight proceeds, despite setbacks (Mato and Bonny both require medevacs, although Mato recovers in time to return with a zenkai), we gain the upper hand. The Verdes get knocked out one by one and yanked from the timeline by tech of theirs. Mato gets False Super Saiyan (not strong enough for the real version) and Vegal is in a losing 2-on-1 fight with Cynthia and Mato by the time Trunks arrives and puts an end to things, capturing Vegal.

In the aftermath, Cynthia goes off on her own again and has a brief chat with a mysterious young girl (God-Queen-of-Protection-Kakara-Gokun-Vegeta's first appearance in the guise of Karen the Girl) about Mato. Karen departs quickly with cryptic warnings about an, "emerald flame, for he believes beyond belief," (Jaffur, maybe?) and, "the empty one, who seeks nothing" (in light of later information, almost certainly the Enemy). Bassoon finds Appa again in the company of a blue woman (Adiago, who, it transpires later, was Trunks's predecessor as second-in-command of the Patrol). Bassoon ends up taking Appa to Toki Toki, essentially adopting him. Mato and Vector watch this exchange and argue the philosophy of redemption (beyond which Mato believes himself to be, Vector taking the opposite stance). Bonny is still in a healing tank, and gets out only in enough time to wait for our return. Cyrax leaves immediately. We return to the city; we debrief; we scatter.

Back at the Verdes base, we see the Verdes melting down without their leader's moderating influence before being called in to speak with their mysterious master. It transpires that Vegal's capture was all a part of their design.

The ARC ends.

ARC 2 to follow...

 

[PoptartProdigy]

ARC 2

We get two weeks' downtime. During this, everybody trains. Mato and Bonny collaborate to heal Agatha (Vector's civilian name). At this time, Agatha is extensively cybernetic, with all-mechanical limbs. Mixing Bonny's magic with Mato's medical expertise, they restore her to biological limbs. Mato then reconfigures her suit to the presence of actual arms and legs (secretly slipping in back doors to lock it down, in case she tries to stop him when he goes to try and genocide his timeline's saiyan race as he plans to do). Mato reveals the Black Soul to Vector so somebody knows what to do if he is called to use it. Mato avails himself of a Room of Time and Space (Hyperbolic Time Chamber) to acquire actual, if basic, super saiyan. Mato creates a Senzu Implant and gives it to the Patrol. Cynthia acquires Full-Power Super Saiyan. Bonny makes everybody training gear. Bassoon and Cynthia bond over alt history. Bassoon spends a lot of time training his new ward. Vegal is recalcitrant and the Time Patrol is lousy at prisoner interrogation.

Vegeta from Garenhuld Main pays a visit, embarrassing Trunks and witnessing Bonny making a scene of Chronoa's obvious attraction to Trunks. Cynthia meets Garenhuld Main Krillin and has an instructional (and slightly humbling) spar. Bassoon and Appa meet Garenhuld Main's Piccolo and Nail (defused through some providence), whereupon it comes out that Piccolo at some point ascended as the God of Nurturing. Bassoon gains Piccolo's approval by offering to help Nail design a real, non-joke Nail Gun. They eventually go to spar, joining Krillin and Cynthia for a group spar which, while a foregone conclusion, was very instructive. Meanwhile, Vegeta outs himself as the God of Kings and uses his Authority to mess with Vector. Mato goes back to his home timeline without announcing an itinerary (visiting his son and daughter and deciding to bring them back with him). Cyrax has some dreams.

And a new mission begins.

We are promptly split up into duos to handle a variety of trouble spots across the multiverse, where mysterious obelisks are driving people to increased aggression and evilness. Vector and Mato go to an instance of the Cell Games, Bassoon and Cyrax go to a place in the middle of nowhere, and Cynthia and Bonny go to what eventually proves to be a hidden Majin village.

Mato and Vector find their obelisk in a base of the same people who attacked the Tuffle President. Vector goes to infiltrate the base while Mato plays overwatch. Karen shows up to annoy him. Time Eaters (glitch monsters resulting from the mess Demigra made of the Time Nest) appear, necessitating all three of them to team up and destroy them. Karen casually displays monstrous levels of firepower in killing her share. Following this, Mato and Vector go back to the base. Vector takes valuable prisoners while Mato distracts the rest by way of slaughtering everybody in the base. At some point, somebody activates the Obelisk, causing the Cell Games to go wild. Mato fights -- and, with the help of a friendly patroller Super Buu, defeats -- a transformed Wolf Yamcha while Vector handles the Obelisk. Task complete, the two fold into Bassoon and Cyrax's timeline.

Bassoon and Cyrax, going after their target, find another base. They go to town on the place and start systematically disabling the obelisks. Then another contact appears and a Time Patroller in the area goes off the map. Upon investigating, Bassoon and Cyrax find the Verde agent Jennifer torturing the Patroller for information on Vegal. A fight breaks out, with Cyrax eventually engaging Endeyive in a separate fight. Both battles are difficult, if winnable, and continue until Mato and Vector enter. Mato brutally subdues Jennifer, having developed considerable personal antipathy for her, but before he can capture or kill her, is interrupted by Chryostis. A standoff ensues until Gerrin breaks it (despite a rather amusing beheading of his drone by Vector's sniping). The Verdes leave. The four fold into Cynthia and Bonny's timeline.

Cynthia and Bonny, looking for the obelisk, find a majin girl (Lilli's first appearance). Through many miscommunications and misunderstandings, they eventually make their way to the girl's all-majin home village, whereupon they are promptly attacked out of apparent existential terror. The local elder registers considerable distress at their affiliation, referring to somebody known as the, "Time Queen." Things escalate, Bonny tries to intimidate everybody with some fairly grisly threats, Cynthia takes her seriously and threatens her in return, the situation comes perilously close to exploding, and the Karen appears, relocates the village, locks Cynthia and Bonny away, and gives them impromptu group counseling. The others arrive at this point. Mato hunts down the Obelisk, Vector leaves Lilli a Patroller's manual to give her some context, Karen spirits Lilli away for a chat (PM between Monado and Lunaryon), and eventually the situation just kinda peters out. We return to the Nest and debrief.

It comes out that Chronoa once tried the same thing Kami tried -- dividing her evil and good halves. She is the good half, and the bad half promptly started a massive multiversal war. At extreme length, the bad half was sealed away. The majin were a hidden community of survivors from the bad half's -- the Time Queen's -- reign of terror, and presumably have assumed her to have won that war. Therefore, Time Patrollers are decidedly unwelcome. The team argues over the topic of to what extent Chronoa is disentangleable from the Time Queen on the level of personal identity, with Mato and Cynthia melting down yet again over the subject. We disperse.

The ARC ends.

ARC 3 to follow...

 

[PoptartProdigy]

ARC 3

This is a very long and involved ARC. Very complicated. Lot of fiddly bits going on.

(At this point, Cyrax's player departs from the group due to availability conflicts, and the character is quietly retired.)

Mato goes home and calls up Karen for a chat. This results in them melting down in spectacular fashion and Mato ending up cursed to be unable to divulge her name. This would not be noteworthy, except that the meltdown follows directly on from Karen dropping Lilli in Mato's lap. Mato takes the time and trouble to bring Lilli to Chronoa's attention, and the majin becomes a ward of the Patrol -- not a Patroller, but probably headed that way, and with access permissions to basically anywhere in the city.

Training ensues. Mato trains super saiyan until he can maintain it like a FPSSJ, but snags completely on the 900 million power level mark, a limit which persists for arcs to come. Agatha achieves and begins to train super saiyan. Cynthia begins preparations to achieve super saiyan 2. Bonny makes friends with the Patrol's Broly and Freeza, and initiates the first of many doomed attempts to get into Broly's pants. Bassoon continues to be all but a father to Appa, with the, "all but a," swiftly shrinking. Lilli swiftly develops a crush on Chronoa. Lilli is absolutely terrified of Bonny. Chronoa prompts Agatha to pry Mato's auto-genocide plans from him, prompting another lengthy philosophical discussion where Mato asserts his lack of options and unworthiness for redemption, and Agatha asserts the opposite. This basically becomes their thing, and little progress is made.

This break is shorter, however, and we swiftly move onto the next mission. We're going to Ancient Saiya, the home planet of the Saiyan Empire of antiquity (fanon, unique to this RP). Apparently the maker of the obelisks is here, and we're to shut the operation down. We know little else, most records of this time being lost. We are, however, informed that almost all saiyan colony worlds are dead worlds at this point, and that if we see somebody going super saiyan, the planet is about to explode. Bonny shows up in a guise that terrifies Lilli, prompting yet another team meltdown. These are coming closer and closer together, of late, with tensions rising in every corner. At any rate, we eventually make it into the timeline, on that auspicious starting note. Lilli watches with Chronoa and Trunks from the Nest.

Immediately upon landing, we see a Saiyan God (the red form) trashing two oozaru like they're children's toys. The child responsible, Carrak, greets us, and suggests that we follow him through a portal to his base for a chat. Lacking better options when confronted with a god, we do so. Once Mato, Cynthia, and Vector are through, the portal closes, leaving Bassoon and Bonny behind with Carrak. Simultaneously, the Time Nest is locked out of entering or even observing the timeline.

Finding themselves in a ki-shielded, refugee-filled cave and out of telepathic contact with the others, Mato, Cynthia, and Vector sense Gerrin and immediately get under cover. He establishes contact with them regardless and expresses a desire for a truce. After some deliberation, the team agrees to hear him out and goes to meet him and the rest of the Verdes. Once there, it transpires that Jennifer's acts of torture were not authorized, and her punishment is social stigmatization. The Verdes don't even defend her when the Patrollers pile on the abuse, and actively deride her. They lay out the reason for their presence: the Verdes had an agent here, a mage called Doctor Harren who made many magical devices for them. However, he recently went rogue and started making his devices for the saiyan King. They're here to shut him down, but when they arrived, they barely escaped being mind-wiped. They have worked with the local resistance -- Carrak's group, once formed around a team of saiyan gods in resistance to the King. He is responsible for the timeline being shut down -- he has a time calcifier, and this is what it does. The Verdes propose a truce. The team accepts, grudgingly. Here it comes out that the obelisks, while originally a Verde project courtesy of Harren, were discontinued long ago, and the people in the bases from last time -- and the agents going after the Tuffle President -- are not Verde personnel. They're just as much a mystery to the Verdes.

Meanwhile, Carrak takes Bonny and Bassoon to the site of a Resistance strike on a caravan. As they arrive, the Resistance is executing the last enemies. The two take objection to this and step in. An old saiyan named Toma steps forward and explains the situation -- Harren gives the King's soldiers mind control implants, making them intractably hostile. The implants admit no tampering, lethally self-destructing upon the slightest interference. Bonny attempt to confirm this with various spells and finds that they do, indeed, admit no tampering. Toma gives them a local's view of the war and makes a positive impression on them both.

Back at the Nest, the Patrol gradually panics more and more as they fail to re-establish contact with the team, with the timeline's set closing time swiftly approaching. Trunks readies the Elite squad of Freeza, Buu, and Broly, and Chronoa reluctantly accedes to using her Authority for a glance into the timeline. Despite this, they still have no means of entry. Lilli aids in brainstorming, eventually giving Chronoa the idea she needs. Chronoa settles in to meditate on her solution while Lilli chats with the Elites.

Back in the timeline, Bassoon and Mato re-establish scouter-to-scouter contact. They trade intel, and Mato learns of the implants. He goes in to request an explanation from the Verdes, implying that this is tech that they hoped to keep secret (since they had not yet mentioned it), to general disgust from them and Agatha. It is also to more particular disgust from Cynthia, who transforms, powers up to full, demands an explanation, and in so doing inadvertently shatters the cave's ki shielding, splashing the refugee camp's presence all over the map. The saiyan King immediately mobilizes troops for an attack, and the two teams prepare for a defense.

Toma reveals himself to be a master sorcerer, and he and Bonny go to take out Harren, Bonny leaving three multiforms behind. They arrive to the capital to find it emptied. Proceeding to the palace, they find Harren and ambush him. Unfortunately, Bonny runs into a trap, fails to kill Harren, and is involuntarily transformed into a misshapen beast. Mato and Agatha separately resolve to go to the city and take out Harren. Feeling the above transpire, they rush in just in time to witness monster Bonny finish slaughtering Toma. In a rage, Mato vaporizes the beast while Vector deals with the rest of security and besieges Harren.

Back at the cave, Bassoon and Richard ferry the refugees to a separate site while the others hold the line. At this time, Bonny's multiforms, who had been providing magical support, trying increasingly inventive ways of capturing enemy soldiers in the face of also-inventive ways of denying her those captures, are incapacitated by the fate of their fourth clone. Re-merging, they stumble out to join the fight, vaguely realizing that there's powerful death magic at play on the field that grows stronger the more people the teams kill. Unfortunately, she is too befuddled to communicate this in the heat of the moment, and on going oozaru and attempting to join the fight, she is swiftly knocked out. The slaughter continues, strengthening the King's forces.

The fight escalates, with stronger and more magic-boosted enemies assailing the teams. At the palace, Harren attacks and puts Mato and Agatha on the back foot. In response, Mato warns Agatha, and uses the Black Soul. It puts Harren down and ends his boosts to the army at the cost of broadcasting Mato feeling like the most evil thing in the universe across the planet. At this exact moment, Chronoa gets a window back on the timeline and is promptly sick upon sensing that. At this precise moment, the remaining saiyan gods also return, wiping out the King's army. In desperation, the King activates a failsafe set up by Harren. The missing civilian population, deep in the planet, is sadistically used as batteries to fuel the King. Monstrously strong, he prepares to slaughter the teams. Bonny, in reply, transforms and becomes the Legendary Super Saiyan. The fight ensues, with the nature of Bonny's form making it laughably one-sided.

Back in Toki Toki, Chronoa panics over Mato's use of the Black Soul and vanishes to make sure his children aren't being horribly abused. His son replies in the negative, she returns, and the people at the Nest wait for an opening to enter the timeline.

Those present for the fight against the king all pitch in, culminating in Bassoon destructively destabilizing the King's power-up. Everything explodes. The King is gone when the dust settles.

In the palace, Mato and Vector start going for the Calcifier (Toma's body has vanished) until, upon feeling the blast, Mato goes back to render medical aid. Vector continues to search, and eventually finds and destroys it, re-establishing contact with the Nest. As people recover from the chaos, there's a moment of calm before everything starts disintegrating again, with everybody finding somebody at whom to yell. Bonny and Carrak, in particular, begin to come to blows. In the midst of this, the saiyan King frees Harren and receives one last power up in the form of Harren sacrificing the entire civilian population for a massive boost. Carrak goes Super Saiyan Rage, everybody reorients to the new threats, and the fight is on. It is an affair of truly apocalyptic proportions. Everybody piles into the King, Trunks and the Elites come through and blast him, and the whole thing caps off with Richard forming a spirit bomb from the last remaining wisps of the saiyan population and nuking the King with it. This does not quite kill him, and he nearly kills Jennifer despite her transforming (through a lecture well over the line into psychological torture from Mato). She is saved only by Toma reappearing, very much alive...and revealing himself as King Verde, known otherwise as Jaffur Gokun-Vegeta, who goes Super Saiyan 4 just to execute Harren after he deals with the King.

Jaffur promptly tries to enlist the gods to his side, and a debate ensues. After a while, Lilli enters the timeline, and has cause to mention Karen. Jaffur has an exceptionally strong reaction to this and ends up threatening to abduct Lilli if she won't elaborate. In the middle of the general outrage in response to this, Cynthia sees fit to compare Jaffur to his father. Registering his objection to this characterization, Jaffur withdraws his team and leaves with a threat. Mato patches people up, and then there's but one thing left to do.

In a very difficult conversation, the team convinces Carrak and the gods to commit suicide in destroying their planet for the good of the timeline, a fate to which the gods eventually accede on the condition that the refugees are withdrawn. Mato, under orders from Chronoa, assents to this in the (to this day shared with nobody else) understanding that any refugees who might stop the complete and utter collapse of saiyan civilization will die quietly of heart attacks and assorted other maladies over the course of the exodus, as Time cleans up its mess with all of the big pieces put in place. The gods die, the team returns.

In a place beyond time, the Time Queen receives her report of the calamity and smiles at the opportunity Carrak and the others' afterlives present as bait for one of her enemies, as she prepares to resurrect Harren and begin her war on the Patrol.

The ARC ends.

ARC 4 to follow...

 

[PoptartProdigy]

ARC 4

Immediately, the team collapses.

Bonny and Bassoon's literal first action is to trade recriminations and threats. Cynthia is too traumatized from the mission. Agatha is tired from having shards of her visor pried out of her face. Mato is unconscious. We split up for the night, our debrief scheduled for the next morning.

It's a long night.

Cynthia and Bassoon run across Adiago (Trunks's predecessor, who looked after Appa until Bassoon came around) wandering around Toki Toki. Bassoon takes the opportunity (after Cynthia goes home) to vent to Adiago about the team's troubles, prompting Adiago to agree to come into the debrief to give her advice and thoughts on the situation (this is the moment Bassoon talks her out of retirement, not that he realizes this in the moment). Agatha beats the shit out of a guy who tries to slip her GHB. Bonny and Lilli go home (they're rooming together, at this time), get food, and chill. Lilli talks with Karen about Lilli's ideas for ki tricks (which look remarkably similar to what Jaffur does). Mato and Trunks have a spar that ends in them mutually blasting half of each other's skin off, then requiring intervention and healing from Karen. That last one concludes in a disabled Mato being tied to Bonny's dinner table as she demands to be allowed to examine his soul and try to rip out the Black Soul.

Despite the evening to cool down, when we reconvene the following morning, the situation is still tense. During the debrief, Bassoon, Mato, and Agatha all express the opinion that the team needs to be benched in order to work out their issues. Following this, Adiago shows up, to considerable glee on Chronoa's part. Adiago promptly weighs in on the side of benching the team. It also comes out that, during her tenure, the Patrol had a much more hierarchical structure, and the change dismays her. With her old friend and assistant back, Chronoa agrees to more or less immediately bench the team for a year.

At this time, we are assigned two new patrollers. One is Lungshaohan, with Bassoon assigned as his mentor. Lungshaohan (Lung for short) is a three-eyed human in the style of Tien. The other is a(n apparent) human psychic named Luke, assigned to Cynthia. Lilli is officially offered a spot on the team as a proper Patroller. It swiftly comes out that Luke is a veteran of a decades-long conflict with a genocidal saiyan empire, and the presence of saiyans in the Patrol is a minor issue over the course of the year.

The year begins.

This gets...scattered, and difficult to recap in any concise form. There's a lot, and I know I'm going to miss things. There is too much, and it's too disunified for me to hold in my head all at once. To take a broad approach: shit gets done, the newcomers are integrated, and much -- but not all -- of the underlying tension is addressed. In particular, Bassoon and Bonny continue to have underlying issues that come up later. Lots of training occurs. All saiyans besides Bonny (and Mato, who continues to snag at the 900 million mark) are now Full-Power Super Saiyans. There's a side plot with Appa and Mato's son Endivan starting to hate each other's guts. Luke and Lilli wind up drawing nearer together, bonding very strongly in a mentor-student (respectively) relationship. The team does some side missions, recreationally. Mato starts mentoring Trunks in command. On one side mission, the Patrol encounters an odd magical effect that defies explanation. Agatha goes home, murders her personal bugbear in the form of the arcosian Emperor of the Planet Trade Organization, takes over the PTO, and then sells it in order to destroy it completely. Garenhuld Main's Goku shows up as the God of Fighting, and it turns out that he's succumbed to combat addiction, at least partially as a direct function of never being able to turn his Authority off. We get a hint as to Luke's true nature (bio-android, a la Cell).

The year concludes with Mato setting up a picnic for a team meeting to finish resolving some issues.

At this meeting, the first issue is the yet-unresolved question of field leadership. The two candidates who emerge are Bassoon and Mato. It comes to a team vote, with the two abstaining. It's a close vote, but Bassoon takes leadership with Mato being relegated to 2IC without protest. The paradigm that emerges is Bassoon as leader, with Mato having broad tactical authority due his his past experience. Following this, there is a brief discussion about airing issues. To a greater or lesser extent, everybody manages to move past their problems, although Bassoon and Bonny still have lingering tensions that will flare up later. (At this point, due to extensive personality conflicts, Lungshaohan's player departs, and the character is dropped without further comment.) Mato asserts that the Black Soul will have no long-term effects on him (an assertion which becomes far more significant in light of information gained in later arcs), and Cynthia is midway through challenging that when a Patroller enters and tells Trunks that all comms and ki sensing are down in Toki Toki.

It turns out that the Verde team is attacking the city to rescue Vegal. Gerrin is maintaining a spell to smother communications. Luke's telepathic net is the only thing that gets through. The team fights a running battle with the Verdes that eventually takes them out into the clouds surrounding the city. The Verdes fight a losing battle, but manage to summon King Jaffur into the city, whereupon the fight ends. There's a tense exchange of insults before somebody says something to set Jaffur off, and he then transports the team, Trunks, and Chronoa into a Garenhuld timeline, on Earth.

Standing in front of them is the Enemy, surrounded by the corpses of the Z Fighters.

Battle is swiftly joined, although to call it that would be rather hilarious. The Enemy cripples Trunks and Chronoa and kills Cynthia outright in fairly short order (although Cynthia does reach SSJ2 immediately prior to her death, via the realization that her PQ-based origins do not make her any less of a real person, because fake people aren't mourned by their friends when they go). Bassoon lights up the Enemy with the most spectacular willpower push the RP has ever seen, Luke discovers his Kaiser form (a Xillan transformation derived from his DNA), Lilli comes near to unlocking a Pure form (a Majin transformation), Bonny goes LSSJ again, and all of it does roughly nothing. The team steadily loses until somebody thinks to call in Karen. At this point, she assumes her adult form, transforms into a super saiyan rose, reveals her Authority, and throws down with the Enemy to buy time for the team to evacuate. Even she begins losing, and barely gets the bulk of the team out alive. Meanwhile, Mato finds the local Gohan and tells him what has to happen for the sake of the timeline, and the two pull Karen out from under the Enemy. Then the Enemy sees Mato, recognizes him (from somewhere yet-unknown), and tries to murder him. Thanks to Mato's non-Black-Soul soul abilities, he survives, although it could not be called a successful defense given how much it took out of him. Gohan distracts the Enemy and Karen pulls herself and Mato out as the timeline corrects.

Everybody lands in the world Karen maintains. Mato has basically no soul left after holding off the Enemy, Chronoa no longer has a chest, and Trunks is a millimeter away from being bisected. One by one, these matters are addressed.

Back at Toki Toki, the Verdes withdraw, Jaffur stopping his scrying with annoyed comments on the block on his spell (Karen), satisfied comments on the team's overall survival, and cryptic comments about the Enemy's reaction to Mato. Vegal, it comes out, is Jaffur's grandson, and as they return to their base, Jaffur asserts that the time has come for Vegal to step forward as Jaffur's heir. The scene closes with Jaffur meeting privately with an agent of his named Gorrak, and instructing her to find and capture Mato so that they can uncover the secret of his connection to the Enemy.

The ARC ends.

ARC 5 to follow...

 

[PoptartProdigy]

ARC 5

It's infodump time. Karen reveals herself as an alt of Quest!Kakara who married Jaffur, reigned as Queen beside him, and died when the Enemy came to Garenhuld, whereupon she ascended as the God of Protection. At some point, she fused with the shattered time shards left behind in the wake of Demigra's assault on the Time Nest and is now technically a gestalt consciousness that both inhabits and is this divine realm of hers. Jokes are made about us being inside of her. She explains that Kakara rules as Queen here insofar as that's gainful while Karen serves as the face for the gestalt as a whole, and as the part which holds their Authority. She explains the nature of the Enemy -- a mage using Void magic -- and that the reason for his strong reaction to Mato is that Matos are always the first ones to oppose and fall to Enemies, being staunch opponents. This was her initial interest in the team, although since then she has come to care for them all. She furthermore explains that she physically cannot cooperate with Chronoa, as Chronoa's Authority has something wrong with it and rejects Karen's existence completely.

Most immediately actionably, Karen confirms that Cynthia died to various traumas, not the Enemy's magic. This means that she is not irretrievably dead, and instead has had her consciousness folded back in with her main branch counterpart (i.e., Cynthia Main, in my quest in this same continuity, "Dragon Ball: After the End"). Given her status as a Patroller, she has leave to keep those memories, and thus has continuity of experience, albeit being stranded until they go get her. Upon being returned to Toki Toki, the team resolves to take a week to recuperate before mounting a retrieval mission, Trunks resolving to go with them.

The week passes relatively eventfully. Mato does research on his alts, hoping for intel on the Enemy. He finds that unless he's really changed his fate, he dies at thirty-eight. Trunks asks Karen for information on how to achieve god forms. Bassoon and Luke train together and Luke tries to out-shounen the entire rest of the cast. Bassoon seeks general counsel from Karen. Luke talks to Adiago (who is a Xillan) by way of Karen for advice on kaiser form, and is advised that it creates a separate, sociopath personality of himself which will slowly assume control of him until there's nothing left, unless he kills it. She volunteers to execute him if he fails, to his appreciation. Lilli learns about Pure Majin forms from Elite Patroller Buu.

We all convene for the mission and enter Garenhuld Main (with me watching like a hawk to make sure they don't intersect the quest's POV at any point). Immediately, they sense four incoming power levels at base saiyan max. Immediately, things start to go wrong. Little do they know, they're been warded since the instant they set down -- a sequester spell wrought by the Time Queen. The incoming contacts are her agents. Luke managed to get a signal out because she neglected to ward against psi, and she then revises the ward. The team goes evasive while they decide what to do.

Meanwhile, Trunks, having just finished his recovery from his injuries, tries to follow them, only to be redirected and forced into a duel with a warrior who looks oddly like Goku (actually a Goten, the slave, General, and only semi-willing lover of the Time Queen). Trunks wins handily despite Goten receiving a divine power-up from the Queen, and Goten is removed to be healed. Trunks is left stranded. We learn that the Time Queen goes by (or takes from Goten, at least), "Cora." She summons a horde of shit golems to attack Trunks, pretty much entirely out of spite.

Back in Garenhuld Main, Bassoon makes the call to engage. Meanwhile, Cynthia investigates to find out why the team went silent. During her stay, she brought in Lord Berra and Matriarch Apra as trusted contacts of the Patrol (although a warning from her Uncle Carrick of certain doom should Scion Kakara learn of the Patrol from anybody else kept her from making it a hat trick). The two nobles join her in her search once she explains the situation. As they do this, the team easily incapacitates the incoming hostiles, only for more to show up and begin carpet-bombing the forest in which the team is hiding. The nobles and Cynthia see (but cannot sense, due to another swiftly-patched hole in the sequester) this. Open combat erupts, Cynthia and the nobles simply enter the spell (prompting Cora to give up on subtlety in frustration and just quarantine the whole area), and battle is joined. This also resolves swiftly, but before the team can do more than catch their breath, Mato is sniped, and a team of super saiyans decloaks in the middle of the team before attacking.

This latest wave is composed of the Talts -- that House Yammar Vegeta butchered years before After the End began. Resurrected and under the control of the Time Queen, they are led by an empowered and resurrected Oni Goku, the Traitor Lord. The fight is difficult because the enemy fights cleverly -- the previous waves were bait, to draw out the team's capabilities. That said, the team still possesses enough resourcefulness and power to overcome this, and eventually do. Cynthia, in particular, goes SSJ2 and then ASSJ2 and takes down Oni in a truly brutal duel.

Meanwhile, the Verdes watch from a distance. Vegal orders them into battle against the Time Queen agents, but later second-guesses himself and orders his team to evacuate while he goes on alone to help. A final wave of reinforcements arrives, and this one brings a mage which shorts Vector's tech and Luke's psi. This enrages Luke so intensely that he activates his bugman form for the power boost. This battle is a truly annoying one, but especially with the aid of Vegal -- now transformed into an entirely different, super saiyan 2, individual, and carrying a sword -- the team ultimately prevails. During the fight, Cynthia's new form twists her into enough viciousness that Berra and Apra decide to knock her out for safety's sake.

The battle concluded, the sequester spell falls. An enraged Karen shows up, screams at Vegal, and teleports him away to yell about letting strange entities share brain space with him. The team returns to Toki Toki to find that...Trunks is still missing. We get some down time to recharge our batteries, and Cynthia immediately picks up where she left off before the mess that ended with her dying, calling out Mato regarding the Black Soul making him suicidal. He corrects her, saying that it's actually the only time he isn't. The rest of the break is made awkward as it becomes apparent that Cynthia is in denial regarding the extent of her bloodlust in SSJ2. The team collectively elects to avoid challenging her on it until after Trunks is back and they don't need to be ready to go.

Once we're done resting, it's back out to the field, and we are immediately split up again. Mato ends up on Trunks's planet, and they wipe out the shit golems together before trying to break out of the barrier surrounding the planet through the time-honored tradition of screaming and blasting it really hard. Luke and Lilli end up in a Majora's Mask ripoff. Bonny and Bassoon end up on Ashihara. Cynthia and Vector arrive at the destination they intended, aboard Vector's ship.

Luke and Lilli meet with the local expies and learn about the rock hurtling towards the planet in just enough time for the rock to be destroyed, releasing a motherfucking dragon. The battle is desperate, and they start losing swiftly until Luke pulls a (non-fatal) Piccolo to Lilli's Gohan. In response, Lilli ascends to a Pure Rage form (Majin transformation, giant Asura's Wrath reference) and murders it, burning out her ki for a week in the process. Karen takes them back to her world to recuperate while the others finish up.

Bonny and Bassoon land in front of Taka and Friends, and after some tension over Bonny's status as a mage, agree to work together for the moment. They first effortlessly slaughter a saiyan, then fight Time Eaters and a resurrected Harren. Bonny and Bassoon melt down more and more as time goes on, sparking off of each other over absolutely everything. Bonny gets turned into a monster. Again. Taka acquires the Divine Weapon. The fight stalemates for a lengthy period of time.

In Karen's world, Karen is hosting Vegal, Luke, and Lilli. They chat, Karen takes the opportunity to fill in Luke on some things, up on which he's not been caught (simultaneously dispatching a multiform to Mato to tell him that Luke needs a summary much like the one you are presently reading), and eventually Karen describes what the others are doing. On hearing about Harren, Luke and Vegal demand to be allowed to help. Karen uses this and the threat of ripping it out and eating it to convince the presence in Vegal's head to tell her something about who it is and what it's doing with her grandson, and then gives the boys a portal to the fight. They go and join in. Bonny breaks free, having (to her considerable dismay) an SSJ2 epiphany in the process. The fight takes just about everything those assembled have, and it's only won when Vegal goes SSJ2 and everybody hits Harren at once. They attend to the dead, and Taka gets a recruitment offer to the Patrol, which he accepts on the condition that his comrades Kuma and Kurenai can come with.

Cynthia and Vector find a Tree of Might turned into a base for the Time Queen's forces. Cynthia goes SSJ2, and subsequently goes completely blood-crazy and slaughters everybody there in the most sadistic ways she can imagine while Vector investigates. Vector finds that the tree is the housing for a fetal dragon, one being used to power the barrier keeping Mato and Trunks imprisoned. Making contact with the dragon, Vector convinces it to release Trunks and Mato, who swiftly re-establish contact. They meet back up, Trunks goes back to Toki Toki, and as Mato, Cynthia, and Vector re-board Vector's ship, it swiftly becomes apparent that Cynthia has gone completely insane. Mato tries to talk her down until Vector loses patience and goes for the blunt approach. Cynthia promptly breaks down once it gets through to her. Mato establishes a suicide watch while Vector gets them to Karen's world to retrieve Lilli. Then they go back to the Nest.

At this point, we receive a general recall of all Time Patrollers, summoning us back to the city. Vegal informs the ones he's with that Jaffur has also recently issued a recall, which historically means he's preparing to take a tilt at an Enemy.

We then have an interlude of Jaffur himself, staring at a violet crystal and doing magic to it to pry secrets out of it, reflecting on how it tried to corrupt him, at first, but he of course was far too strong of will and magic for it, and after one last fearful assault, it subsided completely. Having failed. Yes. He then gets a status update from Gorrak, to remind us that she's still out there, hunting down Mato.

The ARC ends.

ARC 6 to follow...