The Masked Saiyan Saga

The Masked Saiyan Saga begins in the quiet aftermath of resolved time distortions. Towa and Mira have gone silent, and the absence of their meddling unnerves the Time Patrol more than their schemes ever did. Chronoa, the Supreme Kai of Time, proposes a bold shift in strategy: rather than waiting for the next crisis, the patrol should go on the offensive and target the Masked Saiyan directly.

A Father Lost to Time

The identity beneath the mask has already been confirmed as Bardock, Goku's father, snatched from the moment of Planet Vegeta's destruction by a wormhole that Towa engineered. Chronoa reasons that Bardock would never serve the Dark Empire willingly; his compliance can only be the product of mind control. If they can free him, Bardock's memories of captivity might reveal the Time Breakers' plans from the inside.

Xeno Trunks and the Future Warrior travel to Age 737 to observe the exact moment Bardock vanishes. They watch as he hurls his Final Spirit Cannon at Frieza's Supernova, only to be swallowed by a swirling wormhole instead of the explosion. Towa and Mira appear moments later, and the patrol gives chase through the distortion.

Ruins of an Unknown Era

The pursuit deposits them in a devastated West City designated Age ???, a timeline so corrupted that it has no fixed place in history. Earth lies in ruins around them. Towa emerges from the shadows, and when Xeno Trunks lunges at her, his fist is caught by the Masked Saiyan himself. Towa taunts them, confirming that both she and Bardock belong to the current timeline, not a past version.

The battle that follows pits the Future Warrior and Xeno Trunks against Bardock and Mira simultaneously. Mira, empowered by stolen energy, proves formidable, but the patrol fights with a clarity of purpose that tips the balance. Blow by blow, they weaken the Masked Saiyan until his mask shatters, revealing Bardock's scarred face beneath.

Even with Bardock exposed, Towa refuses to concede. She opens a wormhole beneath Xeno Trunks and the Future Warrior, a one-way portal to the void between dimensions. As they begin to slide into oblivion, a ki blast erupts from below and blasts them back to solid ground. The freed Bardock stands with fury in his eyes, his Saiyan pride roaring against the indignity of having been someone's puppet.

A Saiyan's Payback

Bardock seizes Mira in a full nelson, locking him in a grip that the artificial warrior cannot break despite his augmented strength. Towa fires a bolt of energy from her staff, but Bardock dodges while maintaining his hold. With a grim declaration that he wants payback for every moment of manipulation, Bardock drags Mira into the very wormhole Towa created. The portal seals behind them, swallowing both warriors into the space between dimensions.

Towa collapses in shock. Her greatest weapon and her most loyal soldier are both gone. Xeno Trunks tells her it is over, but his words only snap the demon scientist back to her senses. She summons one final card: the legendary Future Warrior known as Ace, now wearing a mask identical to the one Bardock had worn. Towa reveals she captured Ace during the earlier pursuit, explaining the hero's mysterious disappearance.

Freeing the First Warrior

The battle against the Masked Future Warrior is personal and painful. Xeno Trunks knows only one method to break the mind control: overwhelming force applied with surgical precision. After a grueling fight, they shatter Ace's mask and free the warrior from Towa's grip. Towa, surrounded by failures, curses them all and vanishes, vowing to start fresh.

In a haunting final moment, the freed Ace begins to fade from existence, turning translucent before disappearing entirely. Xeno Trunks and the Future Warrior watch helplessly, and when the light fades, they retain no memory of Ace at all. Only a discarded mask remains as evidence that the warrior ever existed.

The Masked Saiyan Saga occupies a unique position within Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, serving as both a character rescue mission and a deeper exploration of the Time Breakers' ambitions. It transforms Bardock from a tragic footnote in Saiyan history into an active participant in the fight to protect the timeline, even if his methods are characteristically blunt.

Bardock Reborn

Bardock's defining moment in this saga mirrors his son's most famous sacrifice. Just as Goku held Raditz in place for Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon, Bardock locks Mira in an inescapable hold and pulls him into the abyss. The parallel is deliberate: father and son share the same willingness to sacrifice everything when the people they care about are threatened. Bardock's defiance also establishes that Saiyan pride cannot be permanently suppressed, not by Frieza's tyranny and not by Towa's technology.

The Cost of Temporal Warfare

Ace's disappearance introduces one of the saga's most unsettling concepts: that erasing someone from a timeline can also erase them from memory. The heroes do not mourn Ace because they cannot remember Ace existed. This detail elevates the stakes of time manipulation beyond simple battles; it raises the possibility that countless warriors have already been lost and forgotten.

The saga ends with history destabilizing across every scroll simultaneously, a crisis that dwarfs anything the patrol has faced before. The Masked Saiyan Saga does not conclude so much as detonate into the Warrior from the Demon World Saga, carrying its consequences forward into an even larger conflict.