//------------------------------//
// Break 
// Story: Out of Time 
// by Onomonopia 
//------------------------------//

The flight to the frozen north had been a long one. Though Trunks could have gotten there in mere minutes, having to fly alongside Twilight and the others had kept him at their pace. He had learned this when he had rocketed past them and hadn't noticed until he was almost to the mountains. According to what he had learned from them during the flight over, he had been the first Time Patroller to completely outclass the ponies speed. Rainbow Dash had been able to keep up with the other three patrollers for the most part. But not him.

'And that worried me,' Trunks thought to himself. The wind and snow barely bothered him, but the fact that one of the six greatest champions of the land couldn't keep up with him gave him pause. Because he was far from the strongest being out there, and if they came up against something like that, he didn't like the ponies chances. 'I hope that they have the ability to get stronger like I do, because if this is all they are capable of then I worry for their lives.'

"Alright everypony, this is where we found the body of Jarace," Twilight informed Trunks. He snapped out of his thoughts and glanced back to Twilight, who had already begun descending with her friends. He followed them down to the snow covered fields a moment later, his eyes already picking out why he had been brought there.

There was destruction everywhere. Parts of the field were blasted apart, the top of a hill was completely obliterated and frozen blood coated the areas of land that weren't covered in snow. Those parts of the land were also areas where he could sense a burning ki still resonating, identical to the ki that Jarace was know for using. Just as Twilight had said, this was the sight of his last battle.

But even as Twilight began telling Trunks what they had discovered and what shape Jarace body had been in, Trunks had already found something that had unnerved him. Or rather, a lack of something. The battlefield was still relatively new, so he could still feel the faint traces of ki among the grass and snow. When Goku Black had attacked his world, he had learned to sense even the faintest traces of ki so he could find survivors easier, allowing him to pick up on even the tiniest amounts that remained in the field. Yet what bothered him was that there was only the one trace of ki. Not another.

Trunks held up a hand to tell Twilight to cease her speaking, not that he had heard a word of what she had said, before he crossed his legs and closed his eyes, focusing all of his senses into searching for a hint of the ki of the foe that had slain Jarace. He was able to pick up on more of Jarace's ki, but there was nothing of the foe that had slain him.

"Find anything out?" Twilight asked Trunks once the warrior had opened his eyes and stood up. 

"I've found out that the person that killed Jarace either doesn't use ki or can hide it in a way that I've never seen before," Trunks replied. The cold tone along with his narrowed eyes told the ponies that this was not something to be happy about.

"But how can that be? Ah thought all ya Time Patrollers used ki as yer source of power?" Applejack asked. "Who could kill ah Time Patroller without using any ki?"

"About ninety percent of us do, though there are a few that use magic," Trunks asked. He glanced at Twilight as he said this, but she shook her head. The person that had killed Jarace hadn't used magic either. "Then for the time being we have to assume that the person who we're hunting doesn't use ki or magic and has another, perhaps even greater, source of power that allows him to match us. Great."

"Perhaps it was a misunderstanding?" Fluttershy asked hopefully. "Maybe we can talk things out? I doubt this person really wants to destroy our world."

Trunks had to bite down the urge to snap at her for that line of thinking. 'She comes from a different world than you, Trunks. Just because you lost your world doesn't mean you have the right to lash out at others. You are Vegeta's son, but you don't have to act like him.'

"That...is most likely not the case," Trunks replied in a controlled tone. "They've gone after three Time Patrollers. If the person's quarrel was with us, then they wouldn't limit themselves to this world. If I had to guess, they have something planned for this world and don't want any one of us to get in their way. So no, Fluttershy, I do not foresee a peaceful solution to this."

"Well darn, there goes the welcome to Equestria party I was going to throw for this person," Pinkie said with a bit of a smirk. Trunks turned his head to look at her, slightly annoyed with her comment, before his eyes froze when he saw her. Or rather, how she had changed.

Her mane was shorter and styled to the side, her eyes were colder and more serious and she wore a combat suit that looked similar to the ones that his own soldiers had worn. Beside her stood Rainbow Dash, who had a similar mane cut and now had a mechanical wing on her left side and she was also wearing some kind of suit.

"Trunks, are you okay?" Twilight asked once more. But Trunks could barely hear her. It was like her words were slurred and disoriented. Trunks blinked his eyes and shook his head, trying to figure out what was going on. All around him the world began to warp and shimmer, flickering between the image of a snow blown land and a barren, desolate wasteland.

The ponies themselves began to change as well, flickering between the images of the ones that he had met and another group, similar yet so different. Their other versions seemed more hardened, more battle weary. Looks that Trunks knew all too well. 

Despite the world shifting around him, flickering back and forth between two images that couldn't be any different than the other, Trunks managed to lift his eyes to the sky, his instincts telling him to. And there, among the shifting images of a snowy sky and an ash filled sky, he saw someone. A being that wore a brown coat with coat tails, had a top hat upon his head, and held a strange, almost ethereal can in his hands. Trunks could barely make out the beings face among the distorted imagery, but what he could see was that the being seemed to almost be entirely made out of metal.

Then the being snapped his fingers and everything went black.

Cc

Trunks conscious returned to him like he had been slapped in the face. The moment he felt himself awake once more he shot up to his feet, grabbed the hilt of his sword, and quickly assessed what had just happened with a quick look around...only to find the world had completely changed.

It was only his long and painful history with things going bizarre on him that Trunks didn't visibly react to the way the world around him had changed. The sun was completely blacked out by clouds of darkness and ash that were hued with the darkest of reds and purples. The ground beneath him was barren, dead, and devoid of anything that could remotely be called alive.

Yet the landscape was not empty, as there were plenty of items littering the land. Such as suits of armor with the wears bodies still inside. Weapons like spears, swords and shields lay scattered and broken, while primitive looking siege engines laid ruined, shells of the majestic weaponry that they used to be.

It was the bodies that drew Trunks full attention. He darted over to one of the corpses and glanced down at it, his eyes narrowing when he recognized the armor as identical to the armor that the pony he had seen yet not felt had worn. The insignia was the same, the craftsmanship was the same and even the pony inside of the armor looked similar.

A quick glance to the other side of the graveyard revealed something else to him. There were other dead ponies, but these ones wore slightly different armor than the hundreds he was looking at. He was next to the bodies in a moment, once again narrowing his eyes at the sight.

Whereas the others had worn armor of gold and seemed to have an air of royalty, the black and menacing armor he was currently looking at told a different story. The eye holes were like slits, spikes covered every part of the armor that they could fit upon and a dark insignia was seared into the armor. The insignia of a dark pony, one with a crimson tipped horn that radiated darkness.

"Two forces engaged in a war. A sneak attack that worked all too well from the looks of it," Trunks muttered to himself as he pieced together what had happened. He rose up to his full height and glanced around, noticing that there were six ponies that happened to be missing. "Twilight! Applejack! Any one?!"

His calls were answered with silence, telling him that they were no longer with him. He closed his eyes and began to concentrate, reaching out to sense their energy. He almost instantly felt the energy of Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, telling him that they weren't too far away. Applejack and Rarity were father away, but close together. Fluttershy's was on the other side of the world, far away from the any other signs of ki.

He couldn't sense Twilight at all.

"Changed scenery, bodies everywhere, things going on that weren't happening before I was knocked out. Seems like there was more than just a fracture in the time line after all," Trunks muttered before pulling out a communication device. "Supreme Kai, I've found the source of the time disturbance you felt here. Or at least I've felt it's effects. You were right, it's a whole different timeline completely. Kai, do you come in?"

All the device did in response to his questions was stare blankly at him and Trunks had a feeling that his message hadn't gotten through. 'So not only is there someone here who can kill Time Patrollers, but they can block their communications as well. No wonder we didn't learn about the death of Berts until we sent another member in.' He then thought back to the strange metal being he had seen, quickly figuring that he had something to do with what was going on.

"Time to find our metal man...after I deal with this temporal problem," Trunks muttered. He kicked off the ground and rocketed into the sky, flying towards where he had sensed Pinkie and Rainbow Dash's energy, something telling him that they would need his help. That something was the thousands of life readings he had sensed around them, all of them battling with one another.

A minute after he had sensed this, he arrived in the air space above the sensed energies and nearly ran into a squadron of pegasi that were waging war with shadowy looking ponies. He moved past them and looked down, finding Pinkie and Rainbow Dash easily due to sensing their ki.

And they were both surrounded by hundreds of ponies in the dark armor.