DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ

AN: I was rereading the last chapter and I realized that (among some other mistakes) I left a certain matter unclear - especially in the last scene with Videl: to clarify, Cell is referred to as an "it". Believe it or not, but this is actually for a reason and you will see why in a few chapters. Until then…

DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ

In the Room of Spirit and Time, everything seemed to echo forever, while simultaneously the sounds they made were muffled, as though through thick fabric. The temperature would vary greatly at a moments notice, sometimes bitingly cold and other times blazing like an inferno. Goku had told Gohan that these were just illusions of the room, meant to push you both physically and mentally, but the boy still found that he could barely stand it and each day was a war of attrition waged against himself

Today was no different from the past two months: they would wake, usually Gohan rousing his father who seemed to sleep a lot more than usual, eat a cobbled together breakfast from the provisions stocked within the walk-in pantry, and then they would set about training. For the half-saiyan, getting used to the gravity wasn't that much of a challenge, his experience with increased gravity during the trip to fight Broly paying off greatly. But all of the other environmental hazards still plagued him and sapped his energy and left him exhausted if he wasn't careful.

Goku seemed far better acclimated to the conditions, having weathered them long before as a kid and now being multitudes more powerful than he had been then. But he was so overly concerned for Gohan's safety that he barely got in any training with his son, a fact that he didn't seem to mind very much. The gritted resolve was back, but the saiyan spark had been all but extinguished and the drive for battle was more an afterthought than a burning instinct.

This caused no end of frustration for Gohan as he tried day in and day out to get his father motivated again, to regain that unstoppable determination that had made him stand up to Vegeta and Frieza when they had been trying to kill him. But that part of his father was nowhere to be found, leaving only this overly cautious man with too much restraint to actually improve either himself or his child. Goku had been rocked thoroughly by the death of Vegeta, a close ally and something faintly resembling a friend, so the idea of Gohan being injured or even killed because of him was too much for Goku to even imagine.

Holding back nearly everything he had, Goku often lost the spars he and Gohan had, quick to congratulate the pre-teen. But Gohan always stormed off in disgust, not even wanting the false praise. He couldn't stand to even look at his own father when he was trying to pretend like Gohan had actually bested him. It was sickening because, for all he knew, all of his friends could be locked in deadly combat with the renegade androids at that very moment and he wouldn't be any better against them than when they had first clashed.

He needed to get stronger, to shatter his limits again and again so he could fight alongside the older Z-Fighters, and not need to be protected constantly by them. Now that the others had learned the Kaioken technique, he was once again the weakest among them and that notion was unnerving for the scholarly saiyan. What he needed now, more than ever before, was to discover the secret of the super saiyan and rise to claim the golden power for his own and join the pantheon of titans who had already claimed that power before him.

He had seen over and over just how much strength and power came with the transformation while watching his father and Vegeta train during their three year wait, but he had also seen a profound shift in the demeanor it brought with it; super saiyans weren't cocky, they were absolutely confidant. In that unshakable belief and knowledge that anything was possible, the battle oriented saiyan race were capable of performing the impossible and rising to new heights and becoming one with legends, soon surpassing even those.

That was what Gohan needed, that was what they all needed in these nightmarish days of uncertain life expectancies and ungodly powerful opponents that just seemed to crawl from the woodwork. Vegeta was gone, his father was weighted down by emotional baggage and Trunks was inexperienced with the form and all that it entailed. He would have to be the one to pick up the banner of hope and rally everyone under it. This was a war, no mistaking it anymore, and war time tactics were their only hope, as well as those with the stomach to enact them. Gohan wanted desperately to just be a normal child, with normal, boring parents and a normal, boring life where he went to school, got picked on, made friends his own age and lived life oblivious of the world destroying battles that raged on all the time.

But he was part saiyan, and the son of the Earth's strongest defender, so he never really had a choice in the matter. He had a responsibility to this planet, and its safety ranked higher than his own if it should come to that point. He knew that every waking second should be devoted to becoming stronger to meet the next threat head on, a guardian angel for those he protected and a demon of retribution towards his foes. This was the hybrid philosophy he had garnered from Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta and all the rest, established with the best from each of their own ideologies. He needed to be the absolute pinnacle of defense if no else could rise to the challenge.

But he couldn't do any of that if he couldn't even train properly! The frustration that grew like a contagion inside of him boiled everyday, but his gentle heart stopped him from giving into the dangerous anger that dwelt just below the surface. He knew from past experience that his anger was the key to a great power that he couldn't summon any other time, but it also scared him to no end. If he lost control like that, there was no telling what he would destroy in his rage. It was a double-edged sword, to be sure, but he didn't allow that fear to paralyze him like it had the senior Son warrior.

When he had watched the Prince of their nearly extinct race draw his last breath, Gohan had felt like he had lost a brother. When he had seen his father fall into depression, he had felt like he had lost a leg and had fallen. When he saw that horrible monster, Cell, fighting Piccolo, he had felt a sense of foreboding doom creep over them and threaten to smother them in the inky darkness. When they had entered the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, he could detect an unspoken feeling of direness, like this room had more secrets than he was allowed to learn.

All of these emotions and the situations that caused them were hanging over his shoulder, just waiting for him to slip up so that they could ravage his mind with everything his father was experiencing. If he allowed that to happen, then he was confident that everything he loved would be wiped away in the blaze of energy attacks or absorbed by that biodroid. He had to believe that he was enough to turn the tides in their favor once again. If not…then all hope was lost.

DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ

Speeding as fast as they could go without setting the ground below on fire with their combined energies, the Z-Fighters flew like comets across the afternoon day sky, their intermingled auras blending into the blood red sun as it approached the horizon. But as they flew, the sun became less and less red as they decreased the distance between them and it, traversing a quarter of the globe in a handful of minutes at full burn.

They had been going like this for a good while now, completely ignoring the three-hour benchmark that Piccolo had set for them. Cell had been popping up all over the world, appearing just long enough to completely drain a town or settlement of its inhabitants before vanishing from their senses once more. It was an infuriating game of cat and mouse, one where the pursuers realized that they were actually the mice chasing the cat. When they reached the location that Cell had been at just a few minutes before, only empty buildings and abandoned clothes greeted them, testament to their failures.

But this time was different and they had a sliver of hope for a change: Cell had attacked an entire city, probably feeling overconfident with eluding the Earth's defenders thus far and deciding to hit a big target. While it was a terrible thought, they knew that with more people to absorb, Cell might be stalled long enough for them to make it there in time to put and end to its rampage. They had been close to Central City at when they had sensed the vanishing energies from half the globe over and had high-tailed it like never before.

Trunks caught himself muttering "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" repeatedly to himself, wanting to ascend and rush ahead to intercept the terror, but he knew as well as the rest that they only stood a chance as a group. Cell had managed to take on a newly reformed Piccolo easily, even with the kaioken, and he had revealed to have killed and absorbed most the Trunks of his native timeline. If the son of Vegeta faced him now then he would almost certainly be killed just as easily as his counterpart, perhaps even more so since Cell became stronger the more people he absorbed, and so far he had absorbed a horrifying number of innocent and oblivious earthlings.

He had indeed gone to see this version of his mother after leaving the rest of the fighters a while back, and it was a good thing he had done so. Bulma was a wreck, if Trunks was being brutally honest with himself; having gone nearly manic in what had fortunately been a short lived fit, trashing her's and Vegeta's bedroom while screaming incomprehensibly in anguish. When the time traveler had found her, Dr. Briefs and his wife had already taken the bawling baby Trunks downstairs to try and calm him down and the heiress was slumped in the corner between her bed and the wall. She had gone past the point of uncontrollable crying and was now unsettlingly quiet, only embracing him tightly when he had knelt down in front of her. He had stayed by her side for over an hour to make sure that she was going to be able to cope before hurriedly returning to back up his allies in their search for Cell.

So he just had to wait now, traveling as fast as his base form could allow and being matched by the other warriors, some needing to use a low level kaioken to keep up with the naturally powerful namekian and half-saiayn. He could see from the looks on their faces that they were just as anxious and nerved up as he was right now, and that only made it harder for him to maintain his composure. He had heard stories of these guys from his mother and Gohan, about how they had been the most fearless fighters either had ever know. And to see them terrified of this new threat was a sucker punch to his childhood dreams. But he knew better than to expect the impossible from the very heroes he now called his friends. They were as failable as anyone else, just like him.

The minutes rolled past at as agonizing a slow creep as could be perceived. It seemed like they weren't going to make it in time, to arrive and just find more of the silent carnage waiting for them and the trail going cold yet again. It was as motivating as it was disheartening.

But to their surprise and hesitant relief, they touched down in the city square of a metropolis they didn't know the name of and they could still feel the presence of that disgusting freak hanging around somewhere. It felt clouded, obscured, and they couldn't concentrate on it to pinpoint the location. The remaining belongings of those already absorbed were cast around, evidence of the terrible fate that had befallen these unsuspecting people. But with Cell still around then there might be a chance that there were citizens they could yet save.

"Stay together," Piccolo ordered, scanning the tall buildings around them for any sign of the amalgamated creation, "if we split up then we're just making targets of ourselves."

"But shouldn't we try and cover more ground separately so we don't waste any time?" Yamcha inquired, looking along the four different roads that branched off from this main thoroughfare.

"Strange that you of all people would be asking that. Remember what happened with the androids?" Piccolo raised a brow towards the former bandit, but he meant well.

"Yeah: we found them. Sure it sucked getting taken down that easily, but I ate my senzu right after and no harm no foul." He patted the ripped hole in the front of his gi, a matching one on the back. Unfortunately, he hadn't managed to get a new emergency senzu bean after they recovered from the beating they had taken at the rocket-powered hands of Android Sixteen, having used most of the stock then, and only Piccolo had a spare left over for whoever needed it the most.

"I'd say it was a pretty big harm," Tien murmured wryly, but Yamcha only chuckled nervously at him.

"Still, we stay together. You might not get a chance to signal the rest of us before Cell absorbs your energy. Strength in numbers." Piccolo finished and turned to walk down the closest street, the rest of the warriors following closely on his heels. Yamcha decided that it was a sound plan anyway, not raising any further objections as they moved as quietly as they could. It wasn't for any particular precaution, but the atmosphere between those monuments of glass and metal was particularly forbidding, pressing in on them from all sides.

Trunks' eyes darted from window to window, trying to detect what his sensing abilities could not, but it was a futile attempt. If Cell was near here, it wouldn't be lurking in front of a window and looking down at them. It was as conniving as Vegeta and intelligent as Piccolo, so any number of possibilities were likely from the bio-droid. It was a terrible scenario for them to find themselves in, but they were nothing if not adaptable, and a lot was riding on just that.

"Hey," Krillin suddenly spoke, startling all of them from their thick silence, "do you guys see that?" Following where the monk was pointing, they all saw what had alarmed him: a small person wrapped up in a blanket, probably a young child, was walking among the discarded clothes in another wide open space, bending down to inspect the bundles before moving on to the next one, never doing anything more than look.

Without a word being spoken among them, the Z-Fighters quickly made their way towards this mysterious figure. It was a relief to see a survivor, and they wondered if any useful information could be pertained from it. Stopping at a respectful distance, they paused, expecting for the person to acknowledge them. But the figure did nothing, back to them and gazing down at a crumpled track suit.

"Hey little fella," Krillin spoke up gently, moving forward until he was right behind him, "are you all right? Can you here me?" He leaned forward to lay a comforting hand on the shoulder closest to him and-

The monk was shooting past the rest of the Z-Fighters at incredible speeds, only narrowly dodged by his companions without and room to spare and quickly crashing through the front of a business office. They all looked at the little figure in shock, not having seen it even move. But they weren't going to let whatever it was catch them off guard, and everyone allowed their power to rush back to the fore and tensed their bodies for combat.

As ridiculous as it looked to be readying for a fight with something practically the size of a toddler, they were absolutely right to do so. A wheezing laugh started to rock the shoulders of the mysterious assailant, escalating into a full blown raucous cackle that sounded like a chain-smoking cat. Short digits gripped the hem of the blanket and ripped it off and into the air, leaving the creature beneath in plain view.

To their equal parts surprise and horror, it was practically an identical replica of Cell, except that it was only three feet tall and was blue where the original was green. The same cat slit eyes leered at them from over that shell like mouth, somehow conveying its deep enjoyment at the looks on their faces as it reveals itself and pushes its not inconsiderable power out as a blasting vortex of sickly green energy.

But the assembled warriors draw their alarm back in and instead solidify iron solid resolve. They are warriors, martial artists, defenders and they will no longer cower in the face of some impossibly strong threat. Piccolo leads the pack, roaring in that near bestial way of his as the indomitable might of the namekian race soars upwards to the absolute peak of his unenhanced limit. Tien follows suit, matched almost perfectly by Yamcha as the two unlikely friends clench their fists and yelled out as their own strength surged like a pent up ocean that had finally broken through its dam. Trunks was the last to act, though everything happened in mere seconds, wrenching his sword from its scabbard as he literally blasted into super saiyan, a scream of rage and exertion parting ways with his lips like the call for blood.

Suddenly, the Cell Jr. got a very good look at what it was facing…

…and laughed even harder at them. The only one of note was Piccolo, being stronger than even a super saiyan, but the spawn of Cell dwarfed even his power. In the time since their last fight, which had ended in a draw, Cell had absorbed thousands of additional lives, making itself far stronger than before, and that meant all Cell Jr.'s created henceforth would be consequently stronger as well.

And besides, even if they all somehow ganged up on it and overpowered it, there was still far more to worry about than just one of the second generation biodroids.

As though summoned by that thought, several more Cell Jr.s sprang from various hiding places: through windows, up from opened manholes, the roofs of the nearby buildings, from inside otherwise deserted cars. Before a full second had elapsed, ten Cell Jr.s were baring down on the group of four warriors who instinctively huddled up shoulder to shoulder, one guy facing one direction.

To the average earthling, it would appear like nothing was actually happening and the sudden gusts of wind and bursts of notice had been completely random. But for the Z-Fighters, they could watch as their attacker all rushed towards them at once, every single one of them cackling that husky and mad laugh of their progenitor.

"NOW!"

In sync with each other, the two human Z-Fighters acted upon Piccolo's shouted command and let loose with the strongest Kaioken they could manage, Tien at a multiplyer of four and Yamcha at two. With their strength boosted drastically, Piccolo stopped wasting time to watch over them and brought his full attention to the three Cells hurtling towards him like rockets.

Grunting, he threw his arm out at the one in the middle, the flesh and ligaments of the appendage continuing onward as his arm stretched like a rubber band and closed the distance in a flash. Grabbing onto the face of his target, the super namekian whipped it around bodily to slam into his closest kin, offsetting both of them and sending them crashing to the ground when he released his hold. The third one tried to outmaneuver him and went into a spiraling corkscrew while maintaining his trajectory towards the emerald skinned fighter. Simply waiting until the last second, Piccolo moved at ridiculous speed, making his form blur in the eyes of the Cell Jr., and brought the heel of his foot down and into the back of the monstrosity.

Tien and Yamcha were, separately, too weak to handle a threat of this level, but when they worked together against the untrained foursome now engaging them, then truly remarkable feats were regularly achieved, something Vegeta had once pointed out during one of their group training matches. Moving with ease befitting their experience, the two weaved and ducked around the small but deadly fists of the Jr.s, managing to evade nearly the entirety of the barrage. When it came time for them to take the offensive, they did so with duel bursts of ki from their palms that scattered the enemy into the air above them, instinctively avoiding the blasts while also trying to turn it into a counterattack. The two earthlings didn't give them the chance, rocketing upward to intercept them, fists and feet slamming whole-heartedly into the chitin like flesh of the creations.

Trunks had neither the advantage of a fighting partner nor an extremely high power level beyond that of super saiyan, but years of surviving against the androids had crafted him into a hardened survivor; crafty in ways most normal fighters never even thought of. Even as the last three Cell Jr.s tried to swipe their dangerously clawed hands through his face, the shining blade of the Brave Sword shot up and blocked all of their strikes in quick procession. Momentarily distracted by the shock, the little devils failed to notice that Trunks wasn't even holding the blade anymore, having let go of it as soon as the attacks were halted and moved around in a streak of color, nearly turned grey by the speed of it. An elbow connected with a kack sound that nobody knew could come from a living being, and one of the Cells was thrown face first into the ground, driving through a foot of cement like it was cardboard.

The other two had already noticed him and turned to set upon him. One opened its beak like mouth and a wide beam of green energy spewed from its maw straight towards the half-saiyan. Growling, Trunks brought the back of his hand around to forcefully deflect the attack, only just diverted over his shoulder. Unfortunately, the second of the pair had taken that opportunity to zip around the swordsman, the beam acting as a blind spot for it to travel behind, and wrathfully slam both fists into the side of Trunks face, taken completely unawares. Thrown back by the force of the sneak attack, he shook off the stars dancing at the edges of his vision and transitioned his flight into a tight back flip, his body going through numerous rotations before he pistoned his legs out and landed in a half crouch.

The two monsters had already been rejoined by their third brother, shaking powered cement from its body and giving him a malicious smirk. Faintly, he wondered if they were even capable of free thought, but he easily banished the thought, deeming them as no more than the byproduct of an even greater evil. He didn't have any remorse to spare for their pathetic fates, having shed all of his tears for those that had perished at the hands of his androids in the future, two more nightmares created by Dr. Gero.

The sword finally clattered to the ground, having taken that long to fall in their heightened perceptions.

All three Jr.s resumed their charge at him, cackling madly and flexing their bodies in anticipation. Trunks jumped back, warding off their various attacks as best he could, struggling to keep an eye on all three at once. He could match any of them in sheer power, but their numbers might very well give them the edge and allow them to overpower him. Emboldened by that sobering thought, Trunks caught a punch to the cheek, but managed not to let his head roll with it. The Jr. behind the little fist cringed at the unexpected pain, but it got a whole lot more when Trunks brought his boot up and into its gut. The others noticed the move and moved as one to either side of him, forcing him to split his attention between them. This inevitably meant that a lot more blows landed on his body, each one felt by the super saiyan.

The two earthlings weren't doing so much better themselves. While they managed to watch each others back, their cumulative strength was still much less than what they needed-and even that was with the aid of the taxing kaioken technique. Neither could maintain it indefinitely, and the pounding they were slowly receiving wasn't helping the matter at all.

"We might need to fall back," Tien muttered quietly to Yamcha when they found themselves in a brief reprieve, their four adversaries temporarily blasted into the side of a truck by a regular tri-beam attack.

"I really don't like it when you're the pessimistic one," Yamcha tried to joke, though there wasn't any humor in his ragged voice. "Usually, you're the ones to see things through to the very end-you, Piccolo and Goku."

"Are you saying we're the stubborn ones?" Tien shot back, grinning slightly despite himself. Yamcha did laugh at that, the sound barking in his throat and quickly turned into a coughing fit due to all of the loose particles knocked into the air from the three simultaneous fights.

His coughs were cut short when a bruise yellow ki blast shot from the raised finger of one of the Cells and hit the baseball star in the chest, knocking him back painfully though thankfully not doing any lethal damage. Tien was about to return fire when, to his surprise and horror, the other three Cells landed directly in front of him, fingers connected in just such a way as to make a crude triangle. Recognition flickered in the triclops' eyes just before the three-way tri-beam was fired at him.

"TIMES FIVE!"

The utter roar of his power was enough to drown out the sounds of the three ki waves as they were pushed back by his kiai and withered away without effect in the air above them, close to where Piccolo was grappling with two of his opponents at once. The former assassin bellowed from the exertion his body was going through, muscle fibers shredding themselves like string cheese and nerve endings overloading from the sensory explosion. But he knew that he had ,maybe, a second in which to act before his body could no longer put up with the strain, and he intended to use it.

Launching from his spot, though that word hardly did the violent action any justice, he crossed the distance between himself and the closest Jr. faster than anyone would credit as possible, literally burying his fist into, and through, the torso of the cretin. A look of unfiltered pain and surprise fleetingly took over the aberration's monstrous face before the wild and untamable aura of the kaioken actually burnt it up from the inside out, leaving only a crispy husk to fall off of Tien's fist and burst into ash upon hitting the ground.

Gasping in pain, Shinhan couldn't hold the power any longer and fell to his knees, quaking spasmodically and bereft of the crimson hue of King Kai's signature technique. The other three Cells recognized the weakness and pounced at him, ready and willing to shred him to pieces with their claws for what he did to their brethren. Managing only to look up, the three eyes warrior met the oncoming death head on.

The veritable history of "last millisecond-miraculous rescues" gained yet another addition when an opalescent ball of energy, no larger than a grapefruit, shot into view from overhead and proceeded to smash into the faces of the Jr.s. Jerkily, Tien looked back to see the battered form of Yamcha, standing at the end of the ditch his body had dug into the pavement and directing his Spirit Ball with two fingers while he braced his wrist with his other hand.

With the benefit of the kaioken, the ex-bandit was able to keep the unerringly fast ball at the same level as the Jr.s, managing to just barely keep ahead of them while also harassing them nonstop. It was draining to focus so much energy and then sustain it, but not nearly so much as Tien's desperate kaioken had been. He just needed to keep them occupied for a few seconds longer-

It happened as suddenly as though from a cartoon: the pulsing orb weaved around the outstretched hand of one of the Jr.s, slammed into the pelvis of the second, and was promptly eaten whole by the third. Its two fellows, and even Tien, gaped at it agog, not particularly sure if they had seen that right. The Jr. in question just rubbed its stomach appraisingly and belched…

…and then exploded violently.

"I was kinda hoping to get all of them with that," Yamcha confessed wearily, drooping and loosing his kaioken, "but I guess that'll do."

Tien simply gave him a wobbly thumbs up in praise. They both knew that they were screwed: Piccolo still had three of his own to handle and Trunks was barely handling his own trio, meaning that they had effectively isolated themselves without any reserves to take on the last two of their attackers, which were looking particularly angry right then.

Unseen by all, Krillin at last stepped out of the lobby of the office building he had so intimately been introduced to, holding his head in one hand and leaning against the was with the other. He had blacked out there for a moment, completely dead to the world from the strength of that sucker punch. But now he saw the battlefield that the wide street had become, road blasted to bits and buildings half demolished. He took stock of the Z-Fighters and their opponents in a heartbeat, thinking as fast as he could.

'Well, it worked against the saibamen, so here goes nothing!' Mustering up energy into his hands, he fired it off like a normal ki blast. When it reached the center of the fighting, he jerked his hands upwards, bring the trajectory of the beam with it. Waiting until it reached optimum altitude, he surged his energy and caused the head of the yellow ki wave to explode, sending eight separate blasts shrieking out towards the Jr.s. 'Got 'em!'

His jubilations were quickly ended when the scattershot impacted against the group of quasi-clones and did jack all. The power in each shot was just too diminished to actually even scratch them, let alone harm them. It did, however, get all of their attention squarely on him and him alone. Swallowing nervously, he slowly smiled and waved casually at them.

"SCRAAAAHH!" One of the Jr.s squealed, pointing a dagger nailed finger his way, obviously not pleased. It made to fly his way and proceed to beat him into paste, but an even bigger hand with long nails clamped down on its head between the twin horn/crests. Piccolo smirked darkly before driving a devastating punch into the creature's back, arching its body forward for a second before falling back into his kick that sent it shooting out of view.

The namekian and Trunks were soon back in their furious melees, trying to manage without any aid. But the two remaining ones that had faced Yamcha and Tien were still glaring poison at the dwarf, turing to full face him and slowly, ominously, start to approach him over the rubble ridden street.

Feeling the blood drain from his face Krillin took a step back in fear, hands shaking despite his wishes otherwise. 'Maaaaaaybe I shoulda used my destructo disc on them instead' he admitted to himself, unable to find anything funny about it.

The two creations of the creation were in his face apparently instantly, raining down blow after blow, buffeting him backwards from the force until he was pinned against the wall and was absorbing the full force behind each punch or kick. Cracks branched outward from where he was quickly becoming pat of the architecture, running from floor to ceiling. At the epicenter of the destruction, Krillin tried to bare his teeth against the pain, but he found that his endurance level was much lower than that of a saiyans, and soon blood was flying from his mouth with the spurts of saliva already coming out.

Outside, the fights were starting to take a turn for the worse on the side of the Z-Fighters. Piccolo, admittedly the strongest one there, was showing the damage from all the blows he had received and they were beginning to take a toll on his stamina. His regeneration wasn't meant to cope for this kind of abuse, and he was starting to lose his hold on the situation. In stark contrast, the Cell Jr.s seemed as energetic as ever, hooting insanely as they fought, driven by whatever manic thoughts they maintained. Piccolo remembered Cell saying that it had his cells as well (damn you accidental rhyming!), and that more than likely meant it had his regeneration as well, blown grossly out of proportion when compared to the original, as all of its other characteristics and abilities seemed to be.

Trunks didn't even have the luxury of saying that he was starting to lose; he had been losing his fight for some time now, getting far more punishment than he doled out and having lost track of his sword completely, his only tie breaker. The three Jr.s were taking turns to bash him in the face, laughing and blowing raspberries as they dodged under his ever slowing retaliatory strikes. The last royal saiyan tried to reanimate the rage that had fueled him before, that piece of Vegeta in him that his mother and Gohan had often pointed out nostalgically. He had wanted that fire to be more than just a memory, more than just some standard that was constantly overshadowing him.

But as he took yet another shot to the ribs, Trunks practically saw that anger drifting away, leaving him barren save for the dread and hopelessness that rushed in to take its place. The next punch was a twisting uppercut, briefly parting him from the ground in a wide arc across the road before slamming into a parked car, indenting the surface to conform around his limp form. His eyes fluttered for a valiant moment before closing completely and the gilded light left his hair.

'Not much you could have done anyway.'

Bored with their unconscious opponent, they turned their eyes on the still downed earthlings in the middle of the street. Piccolo briefly caught their attention when he grabbed a Jr. that had gotten careless and rammed Masenko into its face. One of the three unoccupied Jr.s flew up to take the other's place, but the other two still had their eye on Yamcha and Tien. Gleefully, they bounded next to them and started kicking them relentlessly, their prey unable to resist from their prone positions and yelling as each hit bruised their bodies more and more.

'I mean, you can't even lay a finger on one of the androids. What made you think you were so strong anyway?'

An explosion of light and noise erupted from within the nearby office building. The two Jr.s zooming out merrily as the whole structure collapsed in on itself, Krillin in the very center of it. A choking tsunami of dust and debris was blasted outwards from the shockwave, but the fighters were left alone as their auras burned and pulsed with enough vibrancy and power to cut a clear swathe into the otherwise blinding cloud.

'And you thought becoming a super saiyan would be enough to change everything? All you've done is make yourself another target.'

Piccolo was now slowing down considerably, trying to focus whatever energy he had left into defending his busted body, though that barely changed anything at all. The vile Jr.s were still cackling at him, high-pitched versions of that spine chilling hiss of the original, routinely pulverizing him as though he wasn't even putting up any effort. Piccolo knew that his power as a super namekian had more than likely scared Cell enough that he would probably have had told these abominations that he was their main target, ganging up on him and wearing him down to nothing where he should have been able to simply destroy them if it had been one-on-one, or even two-on-one. That had probably been the plan all along: lure them to an ambush, and have all the Jr.s engage them at once until inevitably only Piccolo was left, and then he would be fighting nearly all of them at once and he would stand no chance in hell.

'If Vegeta was around, he would make short work of these things, even if he was confined to your pathetic level. Why couldn't you be more like him?'

Tien was now quite sure that he was bleeding even more on the inside than he was on the outside, if the stream of crimson pooling from his lips was any indication. Yamcha was in even worse shape, having lost consciousness completely, though that didn't deter the Cell Jr. that was kicking him in the slightest. In his mind, where he wasn't getting pummeled mercilessly, he could only marvel at the utter futility of it all. Three years they had trained in preparation for this day, for this threat; and still they were soundly losing. It was maddening, still, after all that hard work and dedication, still being the weak links, still being the ones that were slapped around until some miracle appeared and saved them all, though still rendering their lives redundant. Well, now there weren't any more miracles. Vegeta was dead, and Goku was a shadow of his former self. The very people that they had all relied on were now the ones ultimately failing them, as much as the thought sickened him.

'Hell, he'd probably find some way of surpassing super saiya -, to go beyond and continue being one of the strongest mortals in existence. So tell me Trunks-'

Krillin pulled himself from the hillock of rubble, the entire top of his turtle school gi shredded with only scraps of blue or orange material hanging from his waist. His skin was pockmarked with cuts and abrasions, all covered in murky brown dirt. Wiping at his face with equally dirty hands, the dwarf tried to stand, but his legs failed him and he toppled forward, only just putting his hands out to stop him from falling flat on his face. Breathing irregularly, he spat out thick wads of muddied saliva when he could, trying to get the overbearing whining sound from his ears, limitedly successful on that part before the Jr.s returned. Twin feet slammed into his shoulders and ground him into the scattered brick and mortar that he was lying on. Their mad yapping was evidence enough of their enjoyment of the situation, though Krillin could have done without.

It seemed like this had been their last hurrah after all, despite the even greater threat that was still out there, absorbing innocent and ignorant people. The Z-Fighters had failed in their mission to protect the Earth and its inhabitants, and that failure would haunt them for eternity, and they were sure to have eternity to remember, thanks to their sacrifices and victories in the past. Piccolo almost chuckled at the dark irony of it as he was hit from three sides at once by imitation Kameamea waves, blasting him from the sky like a downed aircraft. His only hope was that Goku and Gohan would have a better chance then they had had, though a gut feeling told him that they hadn't even begun to see the beginning of what they were to face.

He closed his eyes for what he was sure to be the last time as the Jr.s giggled profusely as they charged up another volley of ki blasts to finish him off. He could sense that all the others were likewise getting ready to end whichever fighter they were torturing. At the very least, they would go together, a sentiment that would have meant nothing to him before battling Nappa years before, but now seemed slightly reassuring in the face of-

"What the-?!" His eyes shot back open as his senses picked up something else close by that was rising way too quickly.

'-why shouldn't you be able to do the exact same thing?'

The raging power of a super saiyan once more exploded in all their senses, startling all of them, both Z-Fighter and Jr.s alike. What they felt was rapidly becoming alien to what they recognized and remembered, morphing into something almost completely different. Where super saiyan had been a storm, this was a hurricane; even wilder and more destructive, it rose up and through the what they had assumed was the limit of a SSJ, climbing to new and terrifying heights.

The lingering fog of kicked up dust was whipped into a frenzy, roiling around them like an angered serpent, encircling all of them while getting ready to crush the life out of them. It drew closer and closer, creating a towering vortex through which nothing was visible, the one safe haven from where they could observe the anomaly.

As abruptly as the power had arisen, the dirt was blasted away, flowing through the cityscape on the influence of a great shockwave, the entire area now shrouded by threatening storm clouds that had obscured the entirety of the sky as though an eternal dragon had been summoned. They could now all see well and clear just what had caused the uproar, though for most, they wished they couldn't.

Standing with feet spread shoulder length apart in the dead middle of the road, Trunks was holding his arms in front of him, perpendicular and equally as tensed under the strain of his new power. His face was set in a near savage snarl, turquoise eyes managing to stare into the eyes of all the Jr.s at once. The only visible change was in his musculature, which had bulged substantially, stretching his clothes to the limit and even ripping them in places. To go right along with his frame, his power was something unbelievable to behold, greater than anything they had ever sensed before by a ridiculous margin.

Ominously, a pure yellow bolt of lightning slammed into the ground just a few feet away from the half saiyan, paid not even the slightest bit of attention by him.

Standing tall and resolute, Trunks closed first one hand into a fist and then the other, readying himself for round two against the monsters, feeling oddly confidant that not even eight of them at once would be enough to deter him. After all, they only knew of 'super saiyan'. He was something greater than that now - something higher.

"Tell me," he growled out to his targets, the unbridled wrath and anger in his voice making them flinch, "are you ready to witness a power unseen for countless millennia?" Not waiting for their reply, the Ascended Super Saiyan flared his aura and sped towards them, green fire in his eyes as his formerly suppressed Oozaru side roared in his ears.

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"Hrrrrrrrrgggghhh!"

The bestial growl slid from Gohan's clenched jaw as he pushed against the might of his father's mirroring grip, the two of them locked in a fierce struggle for domination that had so far lasted an entire minute. Goku's brow was slick with sweat, and even though he wasn't actually making a sound, the look on his face was definitely strained, if the tautness of his skin was any indicator. All around them, the tumultuous arena that was the Hyperbolic Time Chamber seemed to warp around their tensed bodies and flared auras, brilliant lights dancing alone the border of their struggle like and aurora. The beauty didn't fit.

Feeling the muscles in his arms beginning to weaken under the unending onslaught, Gohan tried to push even harder, desperate to break through the superior endurance of the older saiyan. But his arms began to wobble ever so slightly, and then he found his own hands creeping closer and closer to himself. Closing his eyes in concentration, the half-saiyan tried to rile himself up, to spark some kind of desperate emotional stimuli that would give him the edge over his father for a single, crucial second; but that elusive power eluded him and he was forced ever backward.

Then, almost undetectable, Goku's arms wavered, just a slight tremor. But that was enough for Gohan to act on, encouraged by the vulnerability. Feeling like his own arms were about to quit on him, he pushed back with all the strength in his adolescent body and, inch by sweat soaked inch, began to reverse the course of the grapple. He opened his eyes again to see the same strained look on his father's face, though now he was half squinting from his own exertions taking a toll on him.

In what felt like no time at all, Gohan had managed to completely turn the tide on the taller fighter, their interlocked fists practically touching the full-blooded saiyan's chest. Seeing how close he was to victory, a surge of unexpected but mot unwelcome power flowed into his tired arms and Gohan gave one last effort and at last succeeded in toppling his father onto his back, defeated.

Falling onto his own back in exhaustion, the half-saiyan grinned triumphantly into the air, laughing a bit though his lungs felt like they were on fire with every breath he took. They both laid there for several quiet minutes, resting in the relatively moderate zone of the HBTC until they had recovered enough to do anything else. Unsurprisingly, it was Goku that managed to stand first.

"Wow Gohan, that was incredible! I didn't think you had it in you." His father's words of praise set the boy's mood aglow, happy that his father seemed to be acting much more like his old self again.

"Thanks dad," he responded from the floor, grinning widely at the white expanse above.

"I'm going to head back now, you coming?" Gohan waved the offer off gently, still pretty tired and just wanting to rest for a while longer. Goku chuckled and turned and started off towards the single structure in that whole pocket dimension leave. Gohan took the opportunity to perform one of Piccolo's mind strengthening techniques and reviewed the entire sparring match in his head, trying to recall even the tiniest details. It had been a great fight, both of them giving it their all for a change and having a blast while they were at it. Remembering just how he had momentarily overpowered his father, Gohan's grin grew bigger, figuring that he was pretty close to matching his father's base form, and from there…

"I didn't think you had it in you." For some reason, those words played in his head, distantly, as though from across a large room. But they were just words of surprise, his power up managing to start even himself.

"-didn't think you had it in you." The words were louder this time. Annoyed by the oddness of his memory choosing that single line to repeat. Still, had his father really been that surprised by his progress? Sure, it hadn't been very long since Goku completely surpassed him, but that wasn't any reason to…

"-didn't…you had it in you." Why would somebody say something like that? They could just be really surprised at something, or they might be trying to…convince?

"-didn't…had it in you." Actually, now that he thought of it, his strength really had developed far faster than it really should have. But that was just his saiyan blood…wasn't it?

"-didn't…in you." Their grapple had been a miraculous win for him, but he hadn't hidden how much strain he was going through, even closing his eyes for several seconds. Could his father really have…have thrown the duel?

"-did not…in you." But…why would he possibly do that? Yes, he had been regrettably easy on Gohan during their three years of training, but he had never actually lost on purpose before.

"-not…in you." The answer came unfortunately easy to the boy; after all, his mother still wanted him to be a scholar. Goku would only have thrown this match, and possibly many others in the past, so that Gohan felt like he was doing well, progressing and getting stronger when in reality he was still at the same level.

"It's not in you." His father was still holding back, still trying to prevent him from getting hurt, or give him cause to get hurt from the androids. Despite how short sighted and…stupid it was! His father was not only holding himself back…he was holding Gohan back as well!

"You don't have it in you, and I'm going to keep it that way."

"HEY!"

The shout stopped Goku cold in his tracks, only about a dozen feet away. He had heard that tone before, and it had come from his own mouth: on Namek, when he had ordered Gohan and Vegeta to leave, Gohan had protested and Goku had snapped at him. That lack of restraint and wild anger was now reversed on its head, a cruel mirror of that same situation.

"HEY!" Again, Gohan yelled at Goku's back, slowly rising into a crouch, and then an unsteady stand, though he refused to address his father from the ground. "Have you been losing intentionally?" The last word was spat out like a curse, eerily reminiscent of how the old Vegeta used to say 'Kakarot'.

The question was merely a formality; they both knew the answer to it. Gohan was just using it as a test, to see just how much his father was still in the grasp of depression.

Goku failed the test.

"Of course not." He turned to give his son a big grin, though now Gohan could see the cheapness of it, like a plastic mask thrown on but was peeling at the edges. "You're not giving yourself enough-"

"Shut up!" The bellow took Goku by surprise, completely eradicating the fake look of cheer that had occupied his face only a moment before. "Just shut up! You expect me to believe that? Do you think I'm as dumb as you are?!"

Goku knew he should be angered by that, insulted at least, especially when it came from his own son. But the darkness of poisonous emotions that he had kept carefully hidden for months swallowed the rising tide of ire and left him with what was fast becoming a familiar gloom and deathly outlook. He could only stare at his son with regret; not towards the eleven year old, but at himself.

"We've been in this forsaken room for over five months! And in all that time I don't think we've made even one serious breakthrough in either of our powers! So you tell me: have you been wasting our time? Do you want all of this to mean nothing so we can go back out there and be slaughtered by the anroids?"

"Gohan…" But the lump in his throat stopped him from continuing further. Seeing the look of disbelieving anger in his son's innocent face was like a slow death, counting it as yet another one of his failures that the boy was experiencing something like that at so young an age.

"All of our friends are counting on us to get stronger so we can beat the androids, and we can't do that if you're sabotaging our training every chance you get!"

"Gohan," Goku at last found his voice, though it still hurt to talk around the lump, "If you got hurt, or I lost you, I wouldn't b able to live with myself. Do you understand? I'm only trying to protect you."

Instead of pacifying the half-breed, the words only further stoked the inferno that was his anger and resentment. Goku got a sudden flash that if he didn't defuse the situation quickly then Gohan might actually snap and do something that might hurt himself.

"I've seen too many people get hurt or k-killed," his words hitched on the word, very vividly remembering every time a friend and teammate had perished in one way or another, "and I won't let the same thing happen to you."

"So," Gohan was no longer shouting, but his words still carried the same level of emotion and were unnervingly dark, "you'd pamper and baby me, give me special treatment because I'm your son?"

Goku felt like he was walking into a trap, but he nodded anyway. Gohan nodded as well, though much slower and with a hint of disgust.

"Piccolo was right all along: you are too soft to train me right." He actually stopped his father from speaking with an upraised hand. Goku saw that it was trembling from his restrained anger. "You think that I want you to protect me, when all I really want to do is to help the others and protect them. How can I do both at the same time?" He was practically growling at the end. "How can I live up to what you've accomplished in the past if I can't even train right?" Yep, definitely a growl.

"Gohan, trust me; I know that you think it's your responsibility to defend the planet, but it isn't. You're just a kid, and there's no way anyone can expect you to-"

"Not my responsibility?!" Goku noted with no small amount of trepidation that the power flowing around his son was becoming more and more agitated, lashing out like a wounded animal. "It was my responsibility before I was even born! It is my inheritance to keep the Earth safe, thanks to you! I had to start fighting for my life when I was four years old, and I haven't stopped since! How can you say I'm 'just a kid' when I've seen and done things that most grown ups have never even done in their whole lives? My childhood is much better than what you or Vegeta had, " Goku was surprised at the comparison, "but it has still made me into nothing but a fighter. What else can I do but fight?"

He seemed to be calming down slightly for a moment, but then his eyes narrowed and the senior saiyan felt that dangerous spark run through his energy.

"If you're so determined that you won't fight, fine. But don't you dare try and stop me from fighting. It's my choice, my destiny! Take that away from me and you will have lost all of my respect." The cold words were just another painful throb in Goku's heart, but these lasted longer than the rest.

"Those sound like something Vegeta would say, and I failed him as well. I can't let that happen again, ever!"

The look in Gohan's eyes became truly livid with anger, aura now visible as he let loose with his restraints, power flowing freely around him and buffeting the gaping Goku.

"How dare you! You would use Vegeta's death as an excuse to hold me back!" It wasn't a question. "After everything he did to help protect this planet after he tried to kill all of us more than once, you would throw dirt on his name by using it as a false weight to drag both of us down! He wouldn't cower like this!" His ki was now frenzied, uncontrollably rushing around like an incredible tempest. Goku bent over double and shielded his face with his arms while trying to keep looking at his son. He had never before felt someone's ki behave this way before, and it truly scared him.

"HE!" Fists clenched.

"WOULD!" Teeth ground together, the word just barely squeezing through.

"FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"

The spike in power was so great that it blasted Goku clear off of his feet and away from the epicenter of the explosive display, landing a good several dozen feet away. With wide eyes, he watched in near horror as his boy screamed out with every fiber of his being into the air, his unchecked aura expanding freely.

But when he sensed the energy continuing to rise, Goku was now staring in wonderment as the blue aura started to lighten, shifting through the color spectrum until it was a rich golen hue, his unkempt hair joining it with a brilliant flash that was like a star being born right before his eyes. The eyes of the half-saiyan, which had briefly become blank white, were centered with twin discs of teal, bright and vibrant with the energy and emotion behind them.

Watching his son ascend, Goku felt the sense of awe he imagined everyone else felt when he or Trunks had transformed. Seeing the inherently powerful and legend worthy power of a super saiyan from the outside seemed to infuse him with a measure of that golden light, a sense that anything was possible, and he had the power to make it happen. The shafts of illumination speared through the creeping shadow that had smothered his spirit and heart, driving it back into the dark pits from which it had first crawled. He knew that strength flooding back into his body as it became lighter of its own accord, he knew that power shining from his feet to his fingertips, that unstoppable will that could move anything in its path.

The storm eventually subsided, though it didn't leave completely. Gohan stood exactly where he had from the beginning, trembling; this time from the excess energy that was searing in his veins, yearning for release in the form of brutal and honest combat. Looking down at his hands, he seemed to get a grasp on what he had done, coming to grips with the birth of another golden warrior of legend.

"Gohan." Goku's voice was devoid of the angst that had laced every word, or the fear that hid behind every syllable. Looking back up towards the focus of his anger and frustrations just moments before, Gohan saw the other saiyan standing upright and facing his son steadily. As soon as their eyes made contact, Goku allowed his own energy to hit that hidden reserve, propelling him upwards into the super saiyan form with the ease of practice.

"Father…" Gohan was suddenly unsure of what he wanted to say. Seeing him like this, it brought back the feeling of being a small child again, watching his dad's back as he strode towards the most recent threat.

"If you want to test that form," Goku quipped, small grin tugging the corners of his mouth up slightly, "you're going to need a sparring partner you can go all out against."

Gohan's mouth opened slightly, realizing just what his father was saying. But he snapped out of it quickly and adopted the Turtle School fighting stance, smile of his own creasing his cheeks. Goku matched him, now letting the grin take over and show the excitement and pride that were filling up his heart and mind. The looked at each other over the small stretch of emptiness for a moment, father and son seeing eye to eye in what felt like a very, very long time…

…and then thy charged.

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AN: if you were wondering why only Yamcha and Tien were able to kill a Cell Jr. where the others couldn't, it's partly due to my own sympathies: they were both the only two Z-Fighters not to have killed any of the saibamen back in the saiyan saga (what about Chioutzou?) and I felt like they deserved some badass points. Also, the split personality clone thing will never happen again. I hated it that badly. "Why is it in the chapter then?", you may ask. Simple: padding.

Anyway, it'd be a reeeal dick move to stop the chapter right here…

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