Here's the first part of a 22-part fanfic, "Dragonball Z:  The Last
Warrior."  Ever wonder what happened to Trunks after he returned to his
bleak future and destroyed his nemeses, Androids No. 17 and 18?  Did he
settle down and live a comfortable, dull life with his mother?  *I don't
think so!!*  This story focuses on what might have happened in this future
that might have been.  All is not well for our favorite lavender-haired,
sword-toting hero; he's got to deal with a ravaged planet in need of help,
major angst about his father, a rumble with some enemies we've seen
before, and a certain female warrior who sort of falls into his life---and
proceeds to turn it upside down.  Hope you like it; if you have comments,
email me at nkjem@aol.com or njemison@umdacc.umd.edu (preferrably the
former), please!  I'll send these about once a week until done; the
response I get will determine whether I want to make a regular thing of
it.  So please email me back, whether you love it or hate it; at least
tell me why!  =)  Thanks!

*****
Dragonball Z:  The Last Warrior
(Episode one:  HOPE AND DANGER:  THE DOORWAY INTO WORLDS)

 If he focused his mind on it, he could recall when his world had been
beautiful, green and full of people and with great, sprawling cities that
gleamed in the sunlight.  He could remember picnics amid trees and
flowers, drives up mountain roads, trips with his mother to malls that
bustled with activity and fascinating sights and smells.  No craters with
mirror-bright bowls caused by the fusion of sand into glass.  No piles of
rubble that mocked the cities they had once been, peopled by scurrying
two-legged creatures that fought with the rats over scraps.
 He'd seen how his world could have been.  It had been hard, indeed, to
leave the past he'd visited in his mother's time machine.  There, he'd
prevented the horror that had struck his world from occurring again, and
he'd seen how things had been; all that he remembered from his childhood
and more.  That world would never look like his own did now.  It had been
dangerous for him to stay there; the monster Cell could have done far
worse to the world than the Cyborgs, and he was responsible for that
threat, if indirectly.  His time-travelling had almost created a worse
future than the one he'd tried to prevent.  Yes, it had been better that
he return, and leave that world to the younger version of himself already
there; may that child grow up and never see the things he'd seen.  Better
to leave, perhaps, but still painful.
 But if it was his destiny was to live in this world, he'd accept it.  He
wasn't a child any longer, to rail uselessly against fate; he was a man,
and he played the hand he was dealt.  And his mother was right; if he
worked hard, he could put the world back on the path toward what it had
once been.  He was tired now, not as tired as he usually was after a day
of sparring or a good hard fight, but a kind of tiredness that was a new
and pleasant feeling to him.  Even more pleasant was the feeling of
accomplishment that he felt, unexpectedly; it had never occurred to him
that simple manual labor could feel so good.  Of course, simple manual
labor for him had been rebuilding one of the damaged towns nearby; it
hadn't been hard, just extensive.  There had been walls to erect, roofs to
replace, cracked foundations to seal with a focused beam of power,
underground pipe to lay . . . He hadn't expected the task to take all day.
 But the people of the village he'd helped had been so profuse in their
thanks . . .
 The grounds of the Capsule Corporation lay below, and he angled in his
flight to land on the front doorstep.  It was so strange, now, to just
land, without having to identify himself with the aerial sentries or speak
the password to get through the defense grid; just another sign of how
much things had changed.  He still couldn't get used to the way people
waved when they saw him fly overhead, where they had once run from
anything that flew.  He wished Gohan---*his* Gohan---had lived to see
these days.
 But at least his mother had.  Bulma ran out to greet him, her face
flushed as if she'd run through the whole mile-long facility, looking more
like the younger version of herself that he'd met in the past than ever. 
"Trunks-chan!" she cried as she came near, and he smiled in reply.
 "Okaasan.  What's going on? You look excited."
 She skidded to a halt, nearly losing her footing, and he caught her,
careful as always to modulate his strength.  She laughed nervously, and
brushed her short hair---ironic that she'd cut hers short again while his
had grown long enough to be a woman's---away from her face.  "You got back
just in time, dear," she exclaimed, and grinned when he frowned in
confusion.  "I've just completed a new invention!"
 A new invention?  She hadn't built anything since the time machine, a few
years ago--- "What do you mean?  What have you built?"
 "Come on and see!"
 He followed her through the corridors into her workshops, startled to see
that the usually orderly chambers were strewn with tools and wires and
components of unrecognizable mechanics.  Bulma ignored all of it, jumping
up onto the short scaffolding she'd erected around her newest toy with an
energy he hadn't seen in her in quite a while.  And when he looked at the
object she presented to him with a flourish . . .
 He had no idea what the hell it was.
 Trunks had never been particularly mechanical; that was his mother's
gift.  He'd spent his life around the gadgets and strange devices she'd
cooked up in the Capsule Corporation headquarters, and perhaps had more
than the average man's knowledge of such things, but this was completely
beyond him.  Privately he decided that the end of the Cyborgs' rule had
been a good thing for his mother, perhaps the first good thing that had
happened to her since everything had gone wrong with the world.  Perhaps
now, in a world in which she had the leisure to create again for the sheer
pleasure her tinkering gave her, she could forget all that she had lost. 
Perhaps she could even forget his father now . . .
 He blinked and focused his mind on the present.  He'd never hear the end
of it if she thought he didn't like her . . . whatever it was.  It was
huge, more than thrice the height of a man, and shaped like a giant hoop
set on its edge.  Strange protrusions and clusters of objects were
fastened all around the outer edge of this hoop, linked by wires and pipes
and things he couldn't recognize, and within the circle---
 He blinked again, wondering if something was wrong with his eyes.  The
air on the inside of the great hoop seemed to waver slightly, like
heat-haze over the desert at noon.  The far wall of the chamber was
visible on the other side of it, but it, too seemed to waver.  He gaped
openly, and looked at his mother with utter confusion.  She beamed back
proudly.
 "Do you like it?"  she asked.
 "Uh . . . yes.  Um . . . what is it?"
 Her smile didn't falter, but it shifted subtly into something slightly
less ecstatic and more exasperated.  She turned away for a moment, and
heard her mutter something about him being more like her if he'd been a
girl, and then she whipped out a remote and turned on the schematics
screen on the far wall.
 "It's a Dimensional Inverse Translocation Matrix!" she declared, and the
screen resolved into an image of the device in blueprint.  Parts of the
blueprint blinked as she called them off.  "Look.  Using the capsule
technology, I was able to link a standard radio wave receiver to a
dimensional scanner, and loop that through a frequency wave amplifier in
order to---"
 She must have seen the look on his face, for she broke off.  "What? 
Don't you understand?"
 He smiled a little, sheepishly, and Bulma sighed.  "Oh, very well.  You
spent too much time training with Gohan-san as a boy; you should have
studied a bit more with me.  Now, now," she said to his almost-voiced
protest, "I know it couldn't be helped.  Still . . . the DITMIX, as I call
it, is essentially a doorway.  It can link itself into other dimensions,
and then we can travel to them."
 Trunks hated to feel foolish, but he had to ask.  "Dimensions?"
 "Mmm-hmm.  *Other worlds*, Trunks-chan.  We don't even need a spaceship!"
 He shook his head.  "I don't understand.  How can you travel to other
planets through that?"
 Bulma shook a finger at him.  "Not other planets.  *Alternate* forms of
this planet."  She pushed a button, and the screen changed to a diagram of
what looked like the same planet, overlapped upon itself over and over
again and extending away into the distance until it appeared that there
were infinite planets on the screen.  "The Earth is in only one dimension.
 But you've travelled back in time, and you've seen the impact that
changing one event can have; even small events can make a great
difference.  You saved Son Gokuu's life, and changed destiny.  What do you
think the world would have been like if the Cyborgs had never been
created?  Or if someone invented something even better than capsules? 
There are an infinite number of changes that could create different
Earths, some very similar to our own, some very different.  For every
divergent path that can be taken, there is a different dimension, parallel
to this one in the space-time plane, very close but never touching.  Like
the doorway into the Room of Space and Time where . . ."
 She trailed off, and Trunks lowered his eyes.  The Room of Space and Time
where he'd trained with his father, in the past.  He hated it when Bulma
inadvertently reminded herself of his father.  His own feelings were
mixed; he'd spent his whole life wondering what his father was like, since
Vejiita had been killed just after Trunks' birth, but when he'd travelled
back in time and actually met the man he'd idolized from a distance . . .
it had been hard, dealing with the disappointment.  Vejiita was everything
he'd expected---a mighty warrior, proud and honorable.  And Vejiita was
not a few things Trunks didn't like:  arrogant, self-centered, cruel . . .
 And yet, his mother had loved the Saiyan prince.  And yet, Vejiita had
been grudgingly admired by his allies, back in the past . . .
 Bulma pulled herself from her reverie and resumed her discussion,
although she seemed less animated than before.  "Anyhow, the Room of Space
and Time is an example.  It's in another dimension, one where gravity and
time work differently than in this one; when you step into that Room, you
leave the dimension where the earth exists.  But the door into the Room
only goes into one dimension; this one will go into any of them.  The
number of worlds out there is infinite!"
 Trunks folded his arms, finally comprehending.  "I see.  But why would we
need to travel to other dimensions?"
 She sobered.  "You've seen how the world is here, Trunks.  Now that
you've destroyed the Cyborgs who terrorized us for so long, there isn't a
single city or village left undamaged.  Almost all of the people are gone,
murdered by those monsters out of sheer whimsy or carelessness.  The ones
that are left need help; I've got the capsule factory working overtime to
put out basic necessities---food, medicines, and so forth---but it isn't
enough, with just this one factory left standing.  We need more raw
materials to help us rebuild, more food to help us until people get stable
enough to support themselves again, more tools, more machinery . . . 
Somewhere out there may be a world where we can find help."
 Trunks nodded, contemplating the potential of this invention.  "I could
go into different worlds, find Earths where the Robots never happened, is
that it?"
 "Or Earths where the people have a surplus of food or the things we need,
or any number of other Earths.  We could rebuild this world into something
to be proud of!"
 Trunks felt a surge of excitement.  She was right.  Without that help . .
. winter was coming.  He had been doing all he could to help the surviving
people prepare, but it would never be enough.  There simply wasn't enough
food about, and most areas didn't have electricity, so heat would be a
problem . . . and there simply weren't enough of people like him, people
willing and able to help others, when everyone had their own problems to
worry about.  What if he could go to that other Earth, the one that must
have grown from his interference with the past?  Would Gohan and the
others be there?  Surely they would be willing to come here and help out .
. .
 But then he frowned, as a worm of discomfort moved through him.  Had he
forgotten about the negative consequences of tampering with destiny?  Cell
had achieved his perfect form by using the time machine, and he had nearly
destroyed everything Trunks had worked for.  *That monster even killed me
. . .* he thought to himself, shuddering at the memory.
 He looked up at Bulma again.  "Okaasan, what if we find a world where
something's gone even worse than this one?  A world where monsters like
Cell exist, maybe?"
 Bulma frowned.  "The only way to know is to go to that world, explore it
and see if it's dangerous.  If so, just come back here and tell me, and
I'll program the computer never to latch onto that dimension again.  The
DITMIX can't find a specific dimension unless it has that world's exact
frequency, but it can be made to avoid frequencies that it's found."  She
nodded to herself, apparently liking that idea.  "Yes, that should work. 
If you're careful, there should be no danger.  You're very powerful, you
know."
 He knew exactly how powerful he was, and still felt uneasy.  He felt
strongly that his mother was underestimating the potential danger of this
device, but he was a good son and respected his mother; he said nothing.
 Bulma laughed and moved to jump down from the scaffolding; he levitated
and lifted her down gently.  "I'm still talking like this will definitely
work.  I've tested the DITMIX, of course; I've even sent live animals into
it and brought them back with no harm.  And I sent in a mobile camera, but
all it recorded was a picture of a tree.  The final test will be sending a
person in, to see if it actually does go to a different earth.  For all I
know, my invention could just be teleporting things over the next hill."
 He nodded, and sighed, hearing her unspoken request.  She would never ask
it of him, but she knew him too well; his curiosity was piqued, in spite
of his misgivings.  "I'll go, Mother.  I want to see if this will work as
well as you, and if it has the result we're both hoping for it will all be
worth it.  And it's safer for me to go than anyone else."
 She smiled, but the smile faded a bit.  "You should be careful, too, my
son.  Strong or not, you're all I have left."
 He took her hands, trying to reassure her, but Bulma had never been one
for open displays of affection, or at least not the Bulma of this
timeline.  Perhaps that was how she'd gotten along with Vejiita.
 "When do we start?"  he asked.
 She nodded, and turned toward the computer console over to the side of
the great hoop, inputting commands into its screen.  "It's ready now, but
I want you to have time to rest.  I'll just set it to the world I want to
explore, and shut it down for the night.  I thought we might have more
luck if we explored those dimensions nearest to our own frequency because
those Earths would be most like this one, except for minor changes.  Just
let me. . ."
 The wavering air within the hoop shivered suddenly, violently enough that
Trunks was able to see it this time for certain, and he took a step
closer, fascinated.  It seemed that the very air was darkening, becoming
opaque in some way that he could not truly fathom, and from nowhere a wind
began to blow through the laboratory, stirring the pale curtain of his
hair.  The wind increased as the darkness deepened within the hoop, until
Trunks took an inadvertent step back; it felt as if the hoop had become a
vortex, drawing everything in the room toward it . . .
 Abruptly the darkness changed, as strange and nameless colors began to
flicker and swirl within the circle, and suddenly it no longer seemed like
just a hoop; it looked, and felt, like an *opening,* an aperture of some
sort, into where he could not fathom.  And then the wind increased
suddenly to gale-force, howling as it soughed through the lab; over to the
side he could see that Bulma had strapped herself into the console chair,
which was apparently designed just for that purpose.  He planted his legs
more firmly and ignored the wind, reassured that his human mother was
safe.  But something was happening within the circle---
 The wind stopped.  And within the circle, a pale barrier, like a
half-solid bank of opaque fog, had formed.
 Bulma sighed and released her restraints.  "Ah, that's that.  The link
has been established with a parallel world; all you have to do is step
into the opening, now.  But for now, I'll just seal it shut---"  She began
tapping on the console again.
 Suddenly there was a great clapping sound, as if thunder had cracked just
beyond the foggy barrier in the doorway, and Trunks started while his
mother gasped.  Reflexively, Trunks felt himself fall into a combat
crouch; that sound had been somehow familiar . . .  Bulma cried out, and
he focused on her; she had risen from her chair, eyes fixed in shock on
something the console was displaying.  "What?!" she gasped.
 "Okaasan, what is it?  Okaasan!"
 She looked up at him, her face pale.  "Trunks, I . . . s-something's
coming through the doorway---"
 The sound came again, and he thought he heard a voice let out a terrible
cry, but he couldn't place where the voice came from.  The thunder-sound
was almost like an explosion of some sort; the wind began again, blasting
with tornado strength *from* the circle, this time.  Every instinct of his
was screaming a warning; he gathered his *ki* about himself and braced
himself for action of some sort, his hands clenching into fists.
 The lights in the lab flickered, and abruptly flashed bright before
dying, but the gray-white light from the DITMIX was more than enough
illumination.  And just as the lights flickered half-heartedly once
more---
 A great blast of energy came hurtling through the opening, shooting
straight at Trunks.  Instinctively he leaped away, blurring as he moved,
and he felt the power of the blast's passing, strong enough to singe his
jacket as it exploded past him and blew the back wall of the lab to
smithereens.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move, and with
the reflexes he'd honed in years of combat he spun, hands raised to
strike---but it was an object, falling out of the mist of the circle and
thudding to the floor like a sack of earth.  Over the howl of the gale he
heard his mother shouting.
 "Trunks!  I'm shutting down, stay clear---NOW!"
 There was a different sort of concussion, and the gale increased
momentarily into a blast of its own, strong enough that Trunks had to
exert some of his *ki* to prevent himself from being blown away, using the
aura that manifested about him to shield himself.  With a cry, Bulma was
blown back and away, toward the gaping hole in the lab wall---
 And then silence.  The gale was gone; the space within the DITMIX gate
now showed only wavering air and the far wall of the chamber again. 
Immediately Trunks flew over to where Bulma had landed, against the wall
next to the hole.  "Okaasan!"
 She sat up as he helped her, shaking her head to clear a daze.  "I'm
fine, Trunks.  No harm done."
 She seemed to be truly alright, so he helped her to her feet and stood
by, watching to make sure.  "Then what happened?" he asked.  "Did the
DITMIX break down?"
 She shook her head again, and winced a bit at the injudicious movement. 
"The problem couldn't have been with the gate.  That wasn't supposed to
happen . . ."
 Abruptly they both heard the sound:  a low groan, and a soft sliding
sound from the floor in front of the gate.  Trunks instinctively moved
back into a crouch, positioning himself in front of his mother, but Bulma
took his arm.  "Wait, Trunks.  Look. . ."
 The object that had fallen through the gate was moving, but only feebly,
and as they watched, it shuddered and stretched out something---an arm. 
Bulma gasped, and moved with Trunks toward the crumpled form carefully. 
In unison, they gasped as they drew close enough to discern what lay
there.
 It was a person, or at least it had been.  Whatever he--for it seemed
rude to call him "it"---looked like was indistinguishable, for everything
about the figure from his tattered clothing remnants to his hair had been
charred, as if blasted by a flamethrower; the figure was also bleeding
from half a dozen wounds and at least a dozen small cuts.  Even the face
of the creature was invisible beneath a mass of half-singed hair matted
with blood.  Smoke curled up from the figure's skin, of which not one
single inch was unmarred by char or blood, and there was the smell of
burned hair and another, less pleasant smell that Trunks recalled grimly
from years of experience:  cooked flesh.
 Yet, incredibly, the figure was moving weakly and seemed to be struggling
to breathe.  Trunks looked up at his mother; Bulma's face was a rictus of
horror, and he frowned.  She shouldn't have to see someone this close to
death.  He'd seen all too much of the same when he'd tried to help the
victims of the Cyborgs' whims.
 "Trunks," she whispered in shock.
 "Kaasan.  This person isn't likely to live long.  Is the regeneration
tank working?"
 Mutely she nodded, and he bent to gather up the wrecked form lying there.
 The creature was pitifully light, as if whatever had done such damage to
him had burned off the very substance of his body, and he could almost
feel the pain that his burden must be in, so great that it seemed to
create its own aura.  He could feel other things that were wrong, too,
with his hands, things that were broken and out of place; whatever or
whoever had done this to the person, it was amazing that he was still
alive.  "Okaasan, hold on to me."  Carefully, hoping not to cause any
further damage with injudicious handling, he flew with his burden toward
the hall that held the regeneration tank, as his mother clung to his back.
 By the time they reached the chamber, Bulma had recovered some of her
composure.  He landed and she went immediately to open the tank, fiddling
with the controls to activate it as he placed the broken form inside.  If
their nameless guest could survive long enough, the tank's almost magical
properties could heal almost any injury practically overnight; it was
another of the Capsule Corporation's inventions that had come in handy. 
Trunks had spent time in the tank himself, after foolishly tangling with
the Cyborgs before he was ready, as a boy; if the figure within the tank
was meant to live, the tank would make it so.
 He closed the lid, and took a deep breath to focus himself, as Bulma set
the tank beside him and then leaned her head against the smooth metal. 
There was nothing else to be done, now; they would have to wait until
morning to see if their guest survived.  He glanced at his mother, and saw
his own confusion reflected on her face.
 "Trunks," she said, "I don't know what this means."
 He shook his head.  The person in the tank could survive or not; he could
be friend or foe.  "Kaasan, perhaps you should just concentrate on seeing
whether the DITMIX has been damaged by this accident.  There's no point in
worrying about this now.  I'll set the security grid in here so we'll know
if anything changes during the night; I'll check the tank in the morning
to see how he's doing.  I don't want you taking any chances in here until
I check."
 She sighed, recognizing the wisdom in what he was saying, and nodded. 
"Trunks . . . be careful.  I have a strange feeling about this."
 He turned away to glance into the tank.  The figure had reacted already
to the tank's healing powers, curling itself into a foetal knot.  Perhaps
he would survive after all; he'd made it this far in spite of his terrible
injuries.  He could not say this to his mother; he'd never been one to
disclose his feelings aloud to others, even to her.  But he, too, felt
uneasy about this turn of events, although not unpleasantly so; it was
more like he could feel a kind of impending *importance* about this night,
as if some significant turn of fate had just occurred.  And like Bulma, he
could not fathom what it might mean.
 He turned to his mother.  "Kaasan, I'll clean up the lab for you in the
morning."
 She nodded, and patted him on the shoulder.  "Thank you, son.  Get some
sleep."
 He walked with her to the door, and turned the lights out as he left.

****What fate lies in store for Trunks and his mother Bulma?  What fate
lies in store for the earth?  Who is this mysterious stranger that has
fallen through the gate from another dimension, and what does this event
portend for the future?  In the next episode:  THE OMEN AWAKENS:  WARRIOR
FROM A WORLD GONE WRONG!!****