Age 737. There was once a warrior who stood alone against Frieza as the tyrant sought to extinguish Planet Vegeta.
His name was Bardock. He was the father of Kakarot—the man known as Goku—and the master who had trained Turles. Though a low-class soldier, his countless brushes with death had elevated his combat power to a level that made him arguably the strongest Saiyan of his era.
Yet, even the "strongest Saiyan" was a flea compared to Frieza. He was swallowed by a massive sphere of flame, screaming his son's name as his life flickered out.
...Or so history recorded.
Fate may have abandoned Planet Vegeta, but it did not abandon him. Just before the Supernova consumed him, a rift opened in the fabric of space-time—a wormhole. Swallowed at the final second, he survived, only to be cast into the distant past. It was likely a side effect of the constant distortions caused by Towa and Mira. His survival was an anomaly, a glitch in the "official" history.
Drifting into the past, he was nursed back to health by the inhabitants of Planet Plant—the world that would eventually become Planet Vegeta. Through a battle with Chilled, an ancestor of Frieza, Bardock awakened the legend: he became a Super Saiyan and repelled the threat.
But his story didn't end with a "happily ever after." One day, he was plucked from time once again. He arrived at a singularity separated from the flow of history—Toki Toki City.
"Bring me someone strong! Someone who can fight alongside me!"
The wish had been made by Trunks, in a time far beyond the era where Lisette and the others now struggled. Trunks had been charged with the crime of altering the past via his time machine, and as penance, he was bound to serve the Supreme Kai of Time. But the battles of Goku and his friends were the axis upon which history turned. Trunks was too deeply entwined with them to intervene directly.
And so, he wished for a guardian. A warrior who could protect history in his stead—someone to watch over Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, and Lisette. Shenron granted that wish by summoning the lost traveler, Bardock. Bound by his own unintentional crimes against time, Bardock was given the mantle of a Time Patroller.
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Bardock let out a guttural roar as he charged. His fist was cloaked in the searing flames of his refined ki. He unleashed a full-power right hook, showing zero hesitation despite his opponent being a woman. It wasn't a lack of chivalry; it was the simple realization that he couldn't afford a single pulled punch.
His Heat Phalanx slammed into Lisette's barrier. It didn't budge. But in that instant, Bardock saw it: a vision of the Goddess dropping her shield and piercing his heart with a needle of light.
"Tch!"
Bardock veered off before Lisette even lowered her defense. An instant later, a beam of light lanced through the space where his chest had been a millisecond prior. No matter how fast an attack is, it cannot hit a target that has already moved.
Lisette tilted her head, her silver eyes reflecting a flicker of confusion.
「...?」
She responded by increasing the volume. She fired a volley that split in mid-air—ten beams became a hundred, then a thousand, then a million. Each was a hammer of ruin capable of vaporizing him on contact. A literal avalanche of light surged forward.
Bardock moved like a man possessed. Sweating profusely, he twisted and dove through the gaps, dancing between the streaks of death. He was moving faster than light, reacting before the ki even left her fingertips.
"You've gotta be kidding me! Every single one of these is a one-shot kill?!" Bardock yelled. "How many 'deaths' are you gonna show me, lady? If it weren't for my eyes, that would've been my 225th time dying today!"
Visions of his own demise played on a loop in his mind. His skull crushed. His heart punctured. His face erased. Every time Lisette twitched, a new "future" of his death flashed before him. There was no timeline where he survived a direct hit.
Long ago, on Planet Kanassa, Bardock had been cursed by a dying alien with the power of prophecy. It was meant to be a torment—to show him a fate he could never change. But now, untethered from his original destiny, that power belonged to him. For short bursts, he could peer into the immediate future.
It was supposed to be an absolute advantage. Yet, even with it, he was barely surviving. He couldn't even think about attacking; every branch of the future that involved him going on the offensive ended in his immediate execution. If he stayed in her sight too long, she'd stop his heart with telekinesis. If he stopped for a second, he'd be atomized.
This woman was a nightmare. Compared to her, even Towa and Mira seemed like children playing with matches.
However, she wasn't completely gone. Unlike Bardock, the Xeno Trunks who had arrived with him was being treated with a strange leniency. She seemed confused by the presence of two versions of the same boy; her attacks on the Patroller Trunks were half-hearted, lacking the lethal intent she directed at the "Saiyan pest" Bardock.
"What's the play, Trunks? She's way out of our league!"
"We just have to buy time! If we can hold her off until Goku and the others recover..."
"Against her? Don't be stupid."
Bardock shot down the suggestion. Buying time was impossible. The longer this went on, the more she would refine her lethality. There was a limit to how many "deaths" he could dodge before she covered the entire area in an inescapable zone of erasure.
There was only one way: snap her out of it before she finished them.
"Listen. She drops the barrier for a split second when she strikes. I'll be the bait. You find the opening."
"But—!"
"Don't worry about me. Who do you think you're talking to?"
Bardock smirked and fired a flurry of ki blasts. They did nothing, of course, but he used the cover to lunge into her blind spot.
「...」
Lisette dropped the barrier and seized Bardock's arm.
Gotcha, he thought. He didn't care about the pain. He threw a punch with his free hand, but Lisette was a ghost of motion. She twisted his arm, flipping him through the air and wrenching his joint out of its socket with sickening ease.
Bardock didn't pull away. He ignored the feeling of his own bone snapping and skin tearing as he used the momentum to vault behind her. He wrapped his good arm around her in a desperate, bruising embrace.
He had sacrificed an arm, the bone now protruding through the skin in a bloody mess, but the price was worth it. If he could hold her for even a heartbeat, it was a bargain.
"Now! Shoot us both!"
"But—!"
"Just do it! A Senzu will fix me! Fire!!"
He knew he couldn't hold her for long. She was already beginning to slip through his grasp like water. Xeno Trunks steeled himself and unleashed a massive wave of ki.
Lisette didn't flinch. She didn't even look surprised. She grabbed Bardock's shattered arm and used his own body as a shield, spinning him into the path of Trunks's blast.
A direct hit of friendly fire. Bardock took the full brunt of the attack while Lisette remained untouched. Sensing her moment to end the annoyance, the Goddess prepared her ultimate judgment.
She floated vertically, her halo erupting with a blinding radiance that seemed to defy gravity. Debris from the shattered city began to float upward as she became the center of a localized gravitational well.
In her hands, a tiny, concentrated spark of white light flickered.
「...Saiyans... extinguished...」
It was a sphere of pure Destruction energy, condensed from her divine ki. Small as it was, it contained enough power to wipe a galaxy from the star charts. She was refining the output, targeting it with a delicacy even a true God of Destruction would envy. Her target: every "evil" being in the North Galaxy. There was no escape.
"Can't hit me because I'm too fast, so you're gonna erase the whole neighborhood?" Bardock coughed, blood matting his bandana as he watched from the ground. He let out a rasping laugh. "That's exactly what I was waiting for. You can't dodge while you're holding a charge like that, can you?"
「...?」
Bardock looked past her toward the rooftop where he had dumped the others. There, standing tall and cloaked in a familiar golden aura, was Goku.
Everything had gone exactly as Bardock had "seen" it. He had known Goku would recover at this exact moment. He had known Lisette would drop her automatic evasion to focus on her galaxy-ending spell. This was the only window of victory.
"KAMEHAMEHA!!"
Goku, revived by Piccolo's Senzu, unleashed his signature wave with everything he had. The blue torrent swallowed Lisette whole.
The dust settled. There was no damage.
The gap was simply too large. Lisette stood there, her clothes unruffled, not a speck of soot on her skin. It was as if she hadn't been hit at all. But she didn't fire her spell.
She looked at Goku. Her eyes flickered.
"... Goku...?"
The blast hadn't hurt her. It hadn't even pushed her back. But the spirit of the attack, the soul behind the blow, had acted like a thunderclap to a sleepwalker. The shock of his presence snapped the thread of her trance.
The white spark in her hands flickered and died. The halo behind her back shattered into mist. The Xenoversestate, the technique that had elevated her to godhood, was finally deactivated.
"Heh. Talk about a headache," Bardock grunted.
"But it's over... Lisette is back," Xeno Trunks sighed with relief.
"Alright, our job is done. Let's head back to Toki Toki City."
Seeing that the crisis had passed, Bardock and the green-sweatered Trunks began to fade. This wasn't a physical departure; they were vanishing from the timeline itself, returning to the sanctuary of the Time Vault.
Lisette watched them go in a daze, then looked down at the rooftop below. There was Trunks—the long-haired one she knew—staring up at her.
There's Trunks on the roof. And there was a Trunks helping me. Two of them.
She couldn't process it. Why were there two? And that man...
That was Bardock. I'm sure of it.
The face, the armor, the red bandana, the scar. It was the legendary father of Goku, a man who had been dead for decades, yet he had appeared as a Super Saiyan alongside a future version of Trunks. Nothing made sense.
"Everyone... I... I am so sorry."
Lisette descended, landing softly and bowing her head to Goku and the others. She felt the weight of her decision—the easy path she had taken by listening to Cell's honeyed words. She had used a technique she knew was dangerous and had nearly "purified" her friends out of existence.
Trunks and the others knew it was Cell's doing, but they also knew Lisette. If they told her "don't worry about it," she'd only feel more guilty, thinking they were walking on eggshells around her.
The silence grew heavy. Piccolo privately decided it was for the best that Vegeta was still unconscious. If the prince were awake, the air would be filled with nothing but insults right now.
"Whoa! Goddess, that was incredible!"
Goku's voice shattered the tension, his tone even higher and more cheerful than usual. Lisette blinked, caught off guard.
"Seriously, guys! Wasn't she amazing?" Goku turned to the group, giving them a subtle, deliberate wink.
Piccolo caught on instantly. I see. He's being uncharacteristically tactful. A small smirk touched the Namekian's lips. He decided to play along with the charade.
"You're right. I've never felt power like that in my life."
"And hey, you actually saved us," Turles added, crossing his arms. "If you hadn't cleared those Ghost Warriors, we'd all be dead meat by now."
"I agree," Gohan said, smiling warmly.
"Y-Yeah! You were great!" Trunks chimed in.
"Bottom line is, nobody died," Nappa grunted, already walking toward the unconscious Vegeta to carry him home. "Good enough for me."
Lisette looked at them, her eyes misting over again. "But... aren't you angry? I... I attacked you."
"Attacked? I don't remember any of that!" Goku laughed, playing the fool with practiced ease. He wasn't stupid; he just knew that for Lisette to move on, she needed him to be the Goku she knew.
Lisette saw through the act, but she smiled nonetheless. "Goku... thank you."
"More importantly, Goddess, I'm starving! Can we get some food?"
"Of course. You can eat as much as you like today."
Lisette spotted Cell slumped on the ground nearby. She summoned a ring of ki, binding him tightly, and began to drag him along with her telekinesis. He had revealed his true colors today. As a "thank you" for the disaster he had caused, she was going to squeeze every last bit of information out of him.
Data Archive
Xenoverse (Deactivated): The "God" form triggered by gathering universal faith. It allowed Lisette to use the "Ultimate Blast" and "Heroes God Mission."
Hakai (Purification): A divine spell that erases targets based on moral alignment. Lisette's berserk state sought to "cleanse" the galaxy by removing the Saiyan race.
The "Old Gods" Reinforcements: Mr. Popo, Korin, and the previous Guardians were rushing to help, but they arrived too late to do anything but watch the finale.
Current Status
Lisette: Restored to her normal state. Power level back to 550,000,000.
Cell: Captured and awaiting interrogation.
Goku & Co.: Exhausted but alive.
Vegeta: Still unconscious (probably for the best).
***
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