Blecker x Dragonball

Keystone! The Multiverse shutters

The group was gathered around a large table piled high with food. Cross and Vegeta's crew had no idea of the changes they were yet to experience. Wearing the largest grin on her face, Cross was ready to break the news.

"And so this time traveler just headed back to the future, after giving you the medicine and the warning?" Cross tilted her head, confused.

"Yeah," Krillin laughed, scratching his head. "I guess the time traveler forgot that they could just go back to any time and had no reason to stay and help us better prepare."

Even Vegeta chuckled at this, but Cross didn't.

"You think that, but time travel is a lot more complicated than you might think. It is limited by both the technology you're using and the universal rules in play for your dimension."

All eyes were now on her as they questioned just what she meant.

"In my travels, I have run across time travelers on more than one occasion. In fact, my ship itself can time travel as well, but there are rules that go beyond just our universe. There are systems in place where even if you were to travel to another universe, where the very laws of physics were bent in ways you consider unnatural, there are higher rules that affect the Multiverse. For example, there is a Multiverse scaler that affects how powerful you are in each universe. There are keystone characters upon which the ability of an entire universe rests, and there is the time travel enigma. To cover the last question, I'll tell you about some time travelers I've run across."

Even the prince was totally engaged, lingering on her every word. This higher-level universe stuff was fascinating even to someone like Nappa or Vegeta.

Cross continued, "In my own home Multiverse, far in the year 3000, there was a group of cops whose job it was to not only enforce the peace but also patrol time. Their big limitation was traveling back in time. While they could affect events and change the future, time worked at a sort of synchronous scale. If you moved back 20 years, it was 20 years in July. If you spent three days there, when you traveled back to the future, it was three days later in July, just 3000 years later. You could adjust the year but not the month, day, or time. Time travel was limited simply by rewinding or fast-forwarding, but everything else remained in sync. They could transmit messages back and forth across time because everything was in sync with itself, but it also meant that if some catastrophe happened and you missed the window to go back, you'd have to wait an entire year for that same month to come along and the catastrophe might still be there to make a second attempt."

"What do you mean your Multiverse? Isn't it all one big Multiverse?" Raditz asked aloud.

Cross rotated her arm like a balancing scale, left and right. "Not quite. You see, the Multiverse is broken up into groups. My Multiverse contained all of the alternate realities containing other rangers, as well as a pathway into our sister Multiverse, which was sentai teams and a Multiverse with some other characters that existed on the fringe of our universe, and our own variants. They had Kamen Riders; we had Masked Riders. They are the pirate Sentai Gokaiger while our was Super Megaforce. Visually, our universes were very similar, and we shared a lot of the same enemies, but they were separate Multiverses with their own tides, Earth's next door. When you discover the way to travel between universes, typically you only travel between your own circle of universes, but with the right technology, you can branch out into sister universes. But typically, that's where things end. No one really goes beyond that. But I did want to make sure no universe suffered the same fate as mine. I pushed past the barrier of our twin universes into the greater Multiverse. I knew they were beyond the reach of even Multiverse travelers. My scanner had picked up hints here and there, and I didn't want them to suffer the same fate, so I found a way out into the greater Multiverse. That's how I was able to get to you guys. In all honesty, I shouldn't be here. I am not from this circle of Multiverses, but like I said, I don't want any universe to lose in the way mine did."