Another Time Machine? Bulma Uncovers a Mystery!

A puzzling phone call reaches Bulma at Capsule Corporation. One of her company's employees has stumbled upon a strange vehicle out in the wilderness, and the photograph they send matches the design of Future Trunks' time machine in every detail. The discovery makes no sense: Trunks has his own time machine safely stored in its capsule. Yet the one in the photograph is covered in moss, vines, and layers of weathering, appearing to have been sitting outdoors exposed to the elements for several years.

Future Trunks, Gohan, and Bulma fly out to investigate. When they reach the overgrown site and land beside the moss-covered hull, Trunks confirms his worst fears. The machine bears the word "Hope" written on its side in his mother's distinct handwriting, a personal detail unique to his specific capsule that no duplicate or imitation could possibly replicate. This is unmistakably his time machine, somehow existing in duplicate, an impossibility that defies everything they understand about the mechanics of time travel. The instrumentation panel inside reveals that this machine arrived in the current era roughly one year before Trunks' own first visit to warn the Z Fighters about the android threat. Someone, or something, used it to travel here long before anyone was even aware of the coming danger.

Inside the abandoned cockpit, Gohan discovers something deeply unsettling: a large, translucent shell, like an enormous insect casing that something hatched from and left behind. Whatever creature emerged from this shell rode the time machine to this era and has been hiding somewhere on Earth ever since. The egg-like remains are unlike anything the group has ever seen, organic and alien in texture, and the implications are terrifying for everyone present.

Trunks is visibly shaken. Someone, or something, stole his time machine in the future, shrank itself down to a larval state small enough to fit inside the cockpit, and traveled backward through time with a purpose that none of them can yet understand or predict.

High above on the Lookout, Kami has been wrestling with his own growing dread. He reveals to Mr. Popo that four years ago, he sensed the arrival of a sinister energy, something far more malevolent than the androids. He had dismissed it at the time, but the feeling never left. Now, watching the news reports of entire populations vanishing without a trace, Kami realizes the true threat is not the androids at all.

With this revelation, Kami finally agrees to fuse with Piccolo. Whatever hatched from that shell is already on the move, and the Earth will need every ounce of power it can muster.