The version of Trunks that Cell kills never went to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, so while he was strong enough to kill Freeza and King Cold, he didn't get much stronger then that, so he used the remote to deactivate the Androids permanently instead of being strong enough to kill them and Cell easily killed him.
@Hylian
Hear me out:
- In the original timeline, Goku kills Frieza and Cold. Heart virus. Gero unleashes Androids, who presumably kill
Super SaiyanVegeta and the rest of the gang. - Trunks heads back in time to warn about Androids. He goes to a timeline where he arrives earlier than Frieza and Cold, bada-bing, bada-bah, he gets the Androids' schematics, goes back to his time.
However:
- Had this occurred using Time Travel Version 2-A, Trunks would still probably end up giving Goku the heart medication, which would prevent Goku from biting it early, and he'd make the difference against the Androids, thus Trunks never becomes a battle-hardened warrior and Bulma doesn't build a time machine (unless its actual Time Travel Version 1). Can't happen.
- Let's say Goku doesn't make a difference and he just lives longer, and Trunks still winds up going back in time, with altered knowledge of Goku surviving because of the heart medicine but still being killed by the Androids. With TT V.2, does Gohan still live to become Trunks's mentor?
- Assuming he does, and is killed by the Androids, Trunks returns to his time with the schematics and shuts the Androids down. Cell kills him and travels back in time.
New timeline:
- Due to Cell's appearance, the Z-Fighters trail Gero to the lab. When Krillin and Trunks come back, and Krillin blows up Past Cell, Cell can't have existed using Time Travel Version 2A, and thus he never killed Trunks because he was killed by Krillin, and thus the Cell/Android Saga doesn't happen.
- The timeline reverts back to Trunks having the schematics, because Cell was killed/Gero's mountain was blown up before Trunks came back with the schematics.
- Semi-happy timeline where Trunks saved the day... or rather, Krillin did.
Hence: if time travel worked the way [I'm used to it working], the Cell Saga would not have happened.
Since time travel in Z allows the traveler to return to their own universe despite changing the past/other universe, killing Cell did jack.
Krillin's little cheer, "I KILLED CELL" made me think about that - "Wait, why didn't that fix things, oh right, time travel doesn't work like that in Dragon Ball. Sorry Krillin, any one could have done that."
edited 30th Sep '14 6:51:33 PM by FOFD
Simply put, Cell is from a timeline where that Trunks never met Cell when he went back to the past. Somewhere in the multiverse there's a timeline where Trunks came back and helped stop the Androids, but Cell himself never came back in time - we never meet anyone from that timeline, but the Trunks that Cell killed visited it.
Basically, there was the original timeline (Trunks'), which was split in two twice - once by Trunks going back, twice by Cell going back.
edited 30th Sep '14 6:56:12 PM by KnownUnknown
Nah, time travel in DBZ is one of the few times where it doesn't raise questions.
3 timelines: A, B and C. Cell is from timeline C, where he killed that timeline's Trunks. He then used that Trunk's time machine to go to timeline B, which is the main timeline. That timeline's Cell got killed as an embryo by Krillin. The Trunks we know and love is from timeline A, and kills timeline A's Cell at the end of the arc.
Not too complicated. Timeline C's Trunks is likely only about as strong as the Timeline A Trunks that killed King Cold and Frieza. If he [Timeline C Trunks] had gone through the Room of Space and Time/Hyperbolic Time Chamber training, there's no way in HFIL Imperfect Cell would be able to best him.
"If you weren't so crazy I'd think you were insane."Wait, aren't there 4 timelines?
One where the Androids killed everyone and Trunks came back with the schematics, only to be killed by Cell. We never see what becomes of this.
One timeline where Trunks intervened and went back with the schematics. Presumably, Cell would've gone back here, but instead:
He went to another timeline, arriving sometime before Trunks showed up. But time travel works on parallel lines here, so he can't have come back to the exact same timeline, just before Trunks arrived. Yet Trunks shows up here anyway, three years after giving the Z-Fighters a warning...
There's an extra Trunks here, and if Trunks would have left with the schematics, then what about Cell's appearance would have made him just give Goku the heart medicine and leave, only to somehow return 3 years later?
Yeah, what Krillin did here was basically ensure that the main timeline never has to deal with its "native" version of Cell.
True, by the time that Cell developed and woke up, he'd have been so horrifically outclassed that it wouldn't have been funny, but Cell's still perfectly capable of horrifically killing a city before being discovered, so it's for the best to deal with him now.
By the way, what's up with none of the Future Trunks timelines having Babadi showing up during the intervening years?
I have a message from another time...And given how thoroughly the Super Saiyans outclass Frieza, the Strongest Warrior in the Universe, who is himself entire orders of magnitude above the rest of the uniquely, ridiculously, incomprehensibly strong-by-comparison mutants, and yet a complete drain of Super Saiyan Gohan's power was only sufficient to put Buu's revival at 50%, there's a good chance that without the post-Cell Super Saiyans to provide godlike levels of power, Babidi's going to spend the rest of his life searching in vain for levels of energy he will never, ever find.
He'd be better off doing it the way Base Cell and Goku's Spirit Bomb did it, pulling tiny amounts of power from huge numbers of people.
edited 1st Oct '14 8:18:15 AM by TobiasDrake
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Ah, I was wondering how Cell was able to kill Trunks that easily.
Oh God! Natural light!