The Show — DBZ & DBS

T1 Cell arrives a year before Trunks, still in larval form. He burrows underground and waits years for the Androids to activate.

T3 is a fresh copy of peaceful T2 — identical except that Cell is now buried here. Because T2's history already included T1 Trunks arriving with the cure, that arrival is copied too: a second T1 Trunks now exists in T3. He kills Frieza, hands Goku the medicine and warns of the Androids, exactly as his original did in T2.

Trunks slices down Frieza and King Cold the moment they reach Earth, then hands Goku the medicine — the iconic debut.

Dr. Gero (Android 20) and Android 19 ambush the Z Fighters. Goku's heart virus strikes mid-battle, but Trunks's cure pulls him through. Vegeta unveils Super Saiyan and destroys 19; Gero flees to his lab.

Gero awakens Androids 17, 18 and 16, who kill their creator and set out. These versions are nothing like the ones Trunks knew in his own future — the timeline has truly diverged.

Trunks and Krillin find Dr. Gero's lab and destroy T3's native Cell. But the visitor from T1 is already underground, biding his time.

The buried T1 Cell surfaces, hunts down Androids 17 & 18, absorbs them both, and achieves his Perfect Form.

For a window of time, T3 holds two machines at once — Cell's (from T1) and Trunks' (from T4). A detail with enormous consequences.

Cell stages his tournament. Gohan ascends to Super Saiyan 2, Goku sacrifices himself, and the Father-Son Kamehameha ends the visitor from T1 for good.

This is where T3 finally diverges from T2. In T2 the Trunks simply went home to T1 — but this duplicate can't, because T1 is fixed (his original dies there to Cell). So his trip home instead forks a new branch, T4, where he survives.

Babidi and Dabura harvest fighting energy to revive Majin Buu. Vegeta lets Babidi take his heart to grow stronger, and Goku faces a Majin-controlled Vegeta.

Enough energy is gathered and Majin Buu awakens, turning on Babidi and laying waste to the Earth.

After the fusions and Gohan's stand, Goku finishes Kid Buu with a Spirit Bomb. Supreme Kai survives, and Beerus lives.

Forewarned, Beerus erases T3's present-day Zamasu before he can become a threat. A normal event here — no branch, no new timeline.

The Universe 6 Tournament, the Goku Black arc, and the Tournament of Power all unfold here in T3 — the present.