in my timeline, future trunks smiles and laughs a lot because future knives is there, she's the one who makes a lot of jokes, who trains and share hobbies with him.
her presence comforts him.
maybe, having a friend who understand his pain is all he's ever needed.
she FEELS his pain and yet she remains hopeful. they're both hope in different ways, but they're still each other's hope.
both are destined to save the world and suffer at the expense of it.
that's why they’re best friends, because they understand each other's pain and burden.
even if their world disappears, they'll carry the memories of those they loved.
knives is going to carry bulma's legacy as a engineer and trunks is going to carry gohan's memory as a warrior
and, both are going to carry the memories they've together in their erased world.
Incidentally, we can't really talk about pragmatism without talking about Future Trunks.
Krillin is a devious and underhanded martial artist, but still a martial artist. Trunks is an assassin. He goes straight for the throat at every opportunity. He's not here to fight; He's here to kill.
Much like his father, Trunks is not a martial artist. Every bit Vegeta's son, he's naturally gifted and has already become a Super Saiyan by both of his first appearances - in the story, when he fights Frieza on Earth, and also chronologically in Trunks the Story: A Lone Warrior.
I can't really say he's untrained. He was trained in the basics by Gohan. But Gohan is also not a martial artist; He's had one year and six months of proper martial arts training. One year from Piccolo and six months from Krillin.
Gohan's a fighter, guided by emotion moreso than technique. So there's a limit to how much Trunks can learn from him. Even Gohan admits that he's a poor substitute for his dad.
This, I should note, is a meaningful admission from Gohan because this chapter was published at the very beginning of the Cell Games. Gohan outright saying "I wanted to follow in my dad's footsteps but the clothes aren't enough" sets up an important contrast to the Gohan of the present time who has had that time with Goku and is ready to take his place.
But his concession of inadequacy is important for how we interpret Trunks as well. Trunks knows the stuff. He can perform Bukujutsu. Throw ki blasts. Power up into a Super Saiyan. But he's not Goku or Krillin or Yamcha or Tenshinhan; Like Gohan and Vegeta, he is a fighter, not a martial artist.
His heart is in the right place, but he's reckless and foolhardy. Chomping at the bit for a piece of vengeance.
This recklessness carries into his journey to the past. He never quite learns from his brief offscreen shitstomp by the Twins. He returns to a point in history just after Goku's return from space. Historically, this was a key moment in history where Goku showed up in the nick of time to save Earth from Frieza and his father King Cold. Which should technically be Great King Cold as it's Cold-Daio but he's far from the first king to have his Greatness dropped in translation, eh Piccolo?
But when Goku's late to the party, Trunks starts to worry and decides to step in himself.
Look at him. The spitting image of his father, full of piss and vinegar.
It's here that we get to see Trunks as a fighter for the very first time. Even chronologically; In Trunks the Story, they skip most of the action; It's very brief.
I mean. It's an absolutely hilarious joke that we see Trunks flying off half-cocked to go get revenge and then he's waking up from a coma on the very next page. Amazing cutaway gag.
But we're here to talk about Trunks's DNA as a fighter, so Frieza offers us the first material we have to work with. And Trunks? He does not fuck around.
Your soldiers are dead. Who's next?
You're dead. Who's next?
Your father's dead. We done here?
Trunks gives zero shits. In the span of two chapters, he massacres Frieza, Cold, and all of their soldiers without an ounce of hesitation. He is not playing.
He was even paying attention to the part where Frieza can survive grievous amounts of harm and come back. He takes great care to thoroughly and utterly annihilate every last bit of Frieza. Taking no chances.
Trunks isn't here to fight. He's here to kill. He is not interested in a protracted martial arts bout.
This fight, incidentally, also gives us a moment to talk about Trunks's sword. Cold-Dumbass thinks Trunks's sword is the key to his power.
He's an idiot. There's a reason he only exists for like three chapters and one page of a fourth. This man doesn't even understand how weapons work in anime.
Japan and the West have very different relationships with weapons. When Westerners think of weapons, we think of guns. Even when we write medieval weapons, we treat them like guns. Guns are disposable tools that bestow killing power upon their wielder. Any average Joe with a gun suddenly becomes a lethal warrior.
But Japan has a rich history and philosophy baked into their culture surrounding weapons and their role in martial arts. In anime, a weapon does not grant power; It manifests power. The weapon is an extension of its wielder. It's a means by which the wielder expresses their own strength.
In Trunks's hands, that sword can cut through Frieza. Because Trunks is powerful, and his might outshines Frieza's.
In Cold's hands, however, that sword is harmless. Because Cold is weak and cowardly. (Uh, relative to Trunks.) He has no power to express.
But Goku is strong. Goku knows power intimately, far beyond Trunks's understanding. And so Trunk's sword, his expression of power, is useless against Goku.
This is what Trunks's sword means, to him and to the story. It's an extension of his character and his strength; The means by which he delivers his killing force. Which is precisely what makes this moment so devastating.
When 18 breaks Trunks's sword, she breaks Trunks. The damage to his blade is honestly not that severe. It could probably be reforged. But the damage to Trunks's self-image, to his psyche, is unshakable.
Trunks never uses his sword again. He leaves it on the plane here.
And then we never see it again. Instead, Trunks decides to pursue greater martial arts training alongside his father, following in Vegeta's footsteps.
But he never quite loses his assassin streak. Though he begins to develop his abilities as a fighter from this point forward, Trunks is goal-oriented. He wants to kill the Twins. He doesn't care how that happens.
In the original version of these events, before Cell further altered the timeline, those blueprints were the key to Trunks's victory against the Twins of his timeline.
Though Cell has no idea how Trunks pulled off this victory despite being too weak to defend himself from Cell himself, the discovery of Gero's lab offers us a possible explanation.
The Twins have shutdown switches built into their systems. Though 17 destroyed the remote Gero built, Bulma is able to use these blueprints to build a new one.
So there's a solid implication that the weaker Trunks of Cell's timeline took Bulma's remote home with him and disabled the Twins that way. Again: He's not here to fight. He's here to kill. It doesn't matter how he does it.
...well, I guess it does matter 'cause that Trunks got wasted by Cell five minutes later.
Point is, Trunks wears his goal-oriented ruthlessness on his sleeve. He's not driven by pride of by love of the art. He has a job he's here to do.
However that single-minded focus, that determination to get it done, also holds him back. Trunks has never had proper martial training. He's been taught by Future Gohan, who is not a martial artist. And he's... taught himself near Vegeta. His developed his abilities and increased his strength, but he doesn't know fighting the way Goku or Krillin or Yamcha or Ten do. Nor does he have Vegeta's natural brilliance and general understanding.
Trunks, for all his strength and all his determination and all his killing instinct, is an amateur. We all know what happened to him in the last fight he ever fought here in the present.
Vegeta breaks the limits of the Super Saiyan and realizes that this power is good but comes at a cost, so he should only do it sparingly.
Goku breaks the limits of the Super Saiyan and realizes this form sucks and is stupid, and decides to go a different route entirely.
But Trunks breaks the limits of the Super Saiyan and goes "AWWW YEAH THIS IS THE SHIT GIMME THAT POWER" because he doesn't know. He has a killer's instinct, not a martial artist's. He's never been trained in technique.
We see, over the course of this series, both Trunks's strengths and his weaknesses as a fighter. In every altercation, he goes straight for the throat. Which is brutally effective when he has the power to back it up but Trunks, more than anyone, is vulnerable to a crushing defeat if he doesn't have the Power Level to back it up. He has nothing else.
Still, he gets to go out on a high note. His final chapter sees him return to the future, not with the remote but with the great strength he gained in the Room of Spirit and Time. And he gets to clean house his way - slaughtering the Twins efficiently and thoroughly, in true Trunks fashion.
And also getting Cell for good measure.
Godspeed, killer. You were the best your world had left to offer but you rose to the occasion, and that's the most that could be asked of anyone.
shes my dragon ball oc and the character who i paired with future trunks
knives is launch's daughter but in the future's timeline, launch died protecting her from the androids when knives was a little baby, so she doesn't know who her mother is.
she was taken in by an organization of professional assassins who raised her like them with the objetive of defeating the androids. they believe that she had a lot of potential and they trained her very hard to make her stronger than anyone in the world.
the strongest assassin in the world who could eliminate the androids.
at age 15, they witnessed her high level as an assassin and they thought she was ready. reay for the final mission.
they sent her to the androids, believing she could destroy them.
but she can't. and almost ended up dead.
then, a 15 yo boy found her at her most vulnerable moment.
and saved her from her cruel fate.
she met Trunks, a boy with extraordinary powers and a impressive kindness. He would be the one who would help her become stronger. Teaching her how to handle ki and different techniques of it.
she would be the one who would help him protect the world. protect their future.
she met bulma, an extraordinary woman, the incredibly and coolest genius sciencist in the world. bulma was the one who introduced her to the world of engineering. she told her about her plan to save the world by creating a time machine and knives wanted to help her to achieve it. so, in the first days of rest for her injuries, she learned everything about engineering. bulma taught her everything she knew and knives carried that knowledge in her heart even to the future where his mentor no longer existed.
thanks to that fight, she was able to find her found family.
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