Dragonball Super manga Volume 2 (Chapter 14)

 By Mark Rodriguez

The tournament between Universe 6 and Universe 7 had ended with Lord Beerus' team winning. Lord Zeno, the god of everything arrived, and even though he did not authorize this tournament, he thought it was fun and would want to hold a larger tournament with all the universes someday. Goku was excited and shakes his hand, treating him like a regular person, which Zeno found interesting. After Zeno left, Universe 7 summoned the Super Dragonballs and made a wish known only to Beerus. Beerus secretly wished for the Earth in Universe 6 to be restored and repopulated, showing despite all the arguing and everything, he still has some sort of respect for his brother Champa.  

Chapter 14- SOS From the Future!

The story opens as we see a person running through the ruins of a deserted city. As the wind blows, we see a newspaper with the headline reading that Android 17 and Android 18 were dead, and the war was finally over. As we get a better look at the person we see this is Future Trunks, but even with the Androids being destroyed by his hands, the world still looks bleak. He notices a rock fall off of a building and walks away, when suddenly an explosion sends him flying into one of the abandoned torn down buildings.

Fireballs come from the sky and Trunks does his best to avoid them. He fires back an energy blast, destroying a nearby building as water spills from a busted pipe. As the smoke clears, we see that the blast went completely through the building. Suddenly energy starts forming from within the building and Trunks sees this is bad, as the resulting explosion was so huge it could be seen from miles away. The explosion leaves a crater in the middle of the city as Trunks lays low until it's safe.

Later on Trunks enters a building and meets up with Mai, now grown up as an adult (for a second time, I guess). As Trunks sits down and drinks some water, Mai asks him what happened to Bulma. Trunks says his mother went to clean the dust off the solar panels and was caught. Trunks laments the loss of his mother and Mai holds him close, allowing him to grieve. 

Mai says she found something good, canned meat. Trunks eats up but gives her half since they both need to survive no matter what. Thanks to Bulma they finally got enough energy to power up the time machine, but it will be a one way trip. Trunks wants to go back 17 years, at a time where his father and the rest of the gang are still alive in a parallel world.

Meanwhile, in the main Dragonball timeline that we follow, Bulma and Jaco are discussing a parallel world that gets created whenever someone uses a time machine. Goku and Vegeta are sparring in mid-air. Beerus and Whis are enjoying some food. Kid Trunks and Pilaf are taking class. Jaco tells Bulma that using a time machine to create alternate worlds is a crime and he knows from Tights (Bulma's sister) that she was doing illegal research. Bulma says she was doing research and won't actually build anything as long as things stay this peaceful. She also asks why he didn't do anything about Hit's time skip ability and Jaco says it's an exception since his ability doesn't actually alter the past.

Tights asks what they mean by changing the past, and Jaco has trouble explaining the concept. Just then the class begins for Trunks, Pilaf, Mai and Shou, which just so happens to be about parallel worlds. The teacher uses a picture of Trunks as an example and calls him A. She explains that A wants to share his red bean buns with his mom in the past, back when she was a kid, so he travels back in time to do so. However his mom in the past chokes on the red bean buns and dies. Now this creates a parallel world where A's mom would never meet his future dad so A would never exist, but at the same time A still exists in his world. The teacher noticed she was reading a book meant for a university class and goes back to simple math.

Bulma asks Whis about the time they faced Golden Freeza and he turned back time three minutes before the villain could destroy the Earth. She asks if this means there was a parallel world where the Earth really was destroyed. Whis says he only turned back time a bit but didn't change anything, He can't do that again for a very long time so he doesn't disrupt time. Beerus asks why she's so worried since it's not a trick humans can replicate. 

Back to the alternate future, Mai asks Trunks why they need to go back specifically 17 years. Trunks says this was when the time machine was created so they can't go back beyond that. Mai knows he used the time machine before so he could destroy the Androids which gave them a few years of peace before the new threat arrived. Trunks says they don't have much time since this threat can sense ki, something the warriors in the other timeline were also good at. Trunks hands Mai her gun and they're ready to head off.

Back to our world, the food was ready so Goku and Vegeta join the rest to eat. Whis notices that both of them are good at controlling their ki, especially Goku when he was fighting with Hit. He says it's a good advantage but not something he should always rely on. Goku asked why Beerus was so scared of Zeno when he couldn't even feel his ki. Whis explains he can destroy entire universes on a whim and explains there actually used to be 18 universes at one time. Vegeta notices just how close things were due to how Goku acted around Zeno.

Jaco is going to head off in a new stylish spaceship. He got it from the Galactic King to make sure he doesn't tell anyone what he saw at the tournament. Bulma says it's hush money over Hit's time skip ability and Tights wants a ride. 

Back to the dark future, Trunks and Mai go through a sewer until they arrive right outside Capsule Corp. The door is locked so Trunks blasts it open. Just then he senses the new enemy standing on top of the building behind them. Trunks fires off a shot at him and runs inside with Mai. However due to the Capsule Corp building not having much of a ceiling left, the villain can still see them and shoots some fireballs at them. Trunks says this guy can sense their ki and grabs Mai, diving out of the line of fire. He tells her to run to the time machine without him. Trunks pulls out his sword and says he'll hold him off as long as he can.

Trunks flies off to the face the threat and is quickly attacked and sent back to the ground. The person lands in front of Trunks and tells him he won't hide from him this time. Mai opened fires on him and tells Trunks that he's the one that needs to go. The person fires off an energy blast towards Mai. The railing near her explodes and she falls onto a pile of rubble. 

Trunks dashes off to get the debris off of her and holds her tight as it looks like she has fallen as well. The villain walks towards Trunks saying he's next. As oil starts to spill from a nearby drum and starts catching fire, the villain is revealed to be Goku, but looking evil.

The bonus page is Future Bulma (looking more like she did in DBZ) telling Trunks there's only enough energy left for a one-way trip, and suggests maybe they can just stay in the alternate timeline and live out their lives there.

My thoughts- 

It's been a while since I've seen the anime version of the Goku Black arc but I definitely don't remember Bulma and the gang just casually talking about time travel and time machines before they got directly involved with Future Trunks. While the anime had the teacher teach Trunks and the Pilaf crew about math, here they discuss a bit of time travel. It's cool to see these theories reviewed here, since every series has their own rules for time travel, and it's good to get a reminder of how the rules work in Dragonball. This reminds us that even if Trunks went back to warn Goku about the heart virus and the Androids back in DBZ, it didn't change his future when he returned. Goku and the rest were still dead and the Androids were still running around killing people. 

Overall this starts a whole new arc and the first chapter both in the manga and anime got everyone excited on the villain being an evil version of Goku. There were tons of theories going around at the time, everything from why an alternate version of Goku would turn evil and corrupt, or even that it could have been a grown up Goten that somehow turned evil. 

One change that they did between the anime and the manga is that we get to see a little bit of Future Bulma before Goku Black kills her. It's only mentioned here in the manga, but the anime pulls at the heart strings more to actually see it happen. Trunks was never old enough to remember Goku and the rest during his own timeline, and he lost Gohan to the Androids. Now the last remaining person he had left, his own mother also died. Very tragic indeed, and it will get worse.

Now that Pilaf, Mai and Shou will be having a larger role in this arc, particularly Mai, I might as well explain that sometime between the Buu saga and Super, the trio managed to get their hands on the Dragonballs. They were pretty old by then so they tried to wish to be younger, but Sheng Long took it too far and de-aged them back to childhood. This is funny and ironic since in GT, Pilaf and his buddies remained old while accidentally wishing Goku to become a kid again. On top of that, in Trunks' alternate timeline, there's even a different version of how they de-aged again so that this time Mai would grow up to be around Trunks' age. We'll get into that one in the next chapter.

The bonus page was kinda confusing, unless 'the three of you' was a typo for 'the three of us' when suggesting to just abandon this timeline and live out their lives in the alternate timeline. That's some Rick and Morty stuff right there, though if it is 'the three of you', who is the third if not Bulma? I'd be surprised Bulma would choose to die along with everyone else, but then again the main timeline probably wouldn't be able to handle two Bulmas.