"Mmmhmm, yea, that's right!"

            Little Washu raised her head up from her computer screen and stretched, glancing at her watch in the process, its light reflecting upon her face in the darkness of her lab.

            "Four, seven and ten o'clock, eh?" the woman chuckled to herself and stood from her stool, which promptly vanished from beneath her. Washu had been doing what Washu often did – experiment with the time / space continuum. Her Time Displacement Machine hadn't been working up to par with what she wanted it to, and Ryoko had just chosen the opportunity to start another argument of some sorts with the girls, and naturally the little genius had snuck off into her inter-dimensional lair and begun tinkering again.

            Yawning and giving another stretch, the ruby-haired wonder-goddess began pacing in front of her Mass tank, the small gray blobs following her strong will and mocking her paced movements. She had located and isolated the continuum problem within TSC-124, though what she had found was simply puzzling. Never one to pass up a challenge, Washu had thus leapt into a 12-hour analysis of what little data she had collected on TSC-124 (TSC standing for Time / Space Continuum #, or Alternate Dimension # mind you). And what an interesting 12 hours it had been. Expansive and incredibly unique with more than 12.7 giga-infinates of alternate changes, TSC-124 was a mad-scientist's dream universe, even just to watch.

            Washu's thoughts stopped their straying as she noticed Ryo-Ohki slowly prowling around the corner of her main sanctum, the little cabbit purring and beaming with delight as it rubbed its neck on the said corner. The woman's face smiled and she soon found herself walking over to pick up the cabbit, rubbing noses with it and then stroking her thoughtfully. It sometimes did well to bond with the little critter when she was deep in thought, Little Washu had found over time.

            "So, Ryo-Ohki, what brings you in here this time? The girls giving Tenshi hell as usual?" Washu asked with a knowing smile, to which the cabbit could only meow a happy reply and nod.

            'Tsunami only knows what those girls are doing today…'

~~~

            "Give me that back! It's mine!"

            "Hey, I saw it first, so nyah!"

            "Ooooh, I *made* it!"

            "Please stop yelling!"

            "Like I said, I saw it; therefore, it's mine."
            "Gah! You can't claim something for your own just because you saw it! I obviously crafted that bobble for Lord Tenshi and you are stealing it out of pure jealousy!"
            "Jealousy, eh? I wouldn't want something this shitty if it hit me in the face. Have it back!"

            "Ha! Thank you, Ryoko. Now I can give my project to Lord Tenshi; I'm sure he'll be most pleased."

            "Uh, girls… I'm standing right here…"

            "Hey! You tricked me!"

            "Damned right I did! Serves you right for –"

            "Ha-ha!"

            "Give me that back!
            Yosho sipped his tea in the central room of the house, the usual sounds of daily life within the Tenshi Household placing a pleasant – okay, not so pleasant, but now usual – backdrop for his afternoon meditation. The older man smiled and shook his head a bit, his trained mind tuning out the sounds as he sensed his Jurai energy and harnessed it within his body, refreshing and strengthening his muscles, bones and joints, not to mention sensing the life force of every living being about him. The sun was out, filtering through his translucent wall-panels, the wind blew a gentle summer scent, and the lake was calm. Amazing how Tenshi's girls could play such perfect polar-opposites to whatever mood the man was feeling.

            Yosho closed his eyes and placed his teacup down, inhaling deep and exhaling twice as long, long cleansing breaths, devoid of thought. His Jurai energy stretched further out, its patterns weaving beneath those of the life about him. They suddenly tweaked upon an oddity in the life force within his house – or rather without his house, for it was within Washu's lab, which was technically in some parallel universe linked to his house. But he was meditating, and going into *those* details was not going to provide him with peaceful thoughts.

            Odd; he was used to sensing strange things within Washu's lab, but this really was a kicker; whatever he sensed was faint, as if a door had been cracked somewhere, but it was definitely powerful. Well, it wasn't technically an *it* so much as a collective of "it's" and therefore an it within itself –

            Yosho chuckled to himself. He really could be confusing even to himself when times warranted. He was certain it was nothing – just another of the little genius's experiments that would inevitably provide another adventure for the entire gang within the course of the next week. The house was getting tense, and he was certain everyone could use an outing.

            Yosho returned to his tea and meditation, a wise smile on his face.

~~~

            Little Washu was sitting back at one of her many computers – which were essentially the same one, just wherever she wanted them – and peering into her Time Displacement Machine's presently open portal: one right into TSC-124-113, one of the definite separations within TSC-124. Oh how infinitely amusing space / time was, she grinned to herself, Ryo-Ohki soundly asleep on her petite lap, dreaming of carrots and greens.

            Unbeknownst to Washu, the tank of Mass behind her was its own diverse universe, the strange creatures pressing up to watch her with seemingly curious expressions within their collective. Across the room, the TDM itself stood whirring away, a small orb – the aforementioned gateway – held open and stabilized at its center, revealing the wonders of this other plane.

            Normally the alternate dimensions Washu glanced in on were nearly identical to her own, or to what she liked to call "normal realm" – one without the three major gods (Herself included, she laughed inwardly) and their intertwined extras. Yet this one was so diverse, and held so many inward alternatives that she had needed to begin categorizing them. The two things that struck her as most peculiar were the different makings of TSC-124's physical laws (Which seemed to be comprised of almost nothing but massive amounts of ki and chi) and the continuum warps within TSC-124. It appeared to Washu that someone at some point within its continuum had managed to use time travel, and therefore set off uncountable alternatives of its own, making it very hard to track and catalog. Washu had already given up recording TSC-1 – her own timeline as she would call it – simply because of all the time / space altering that she had done herself, and the results it had played within all possibilities.

            Groaning, Washu rubbed her temples and sat back, Ryo-Ohki mumbling in her sleep within the genius's lap. She was getting a headache from this brutal examination; genius or not, this was heavy stuff to contemplate for 12 hours on end.

            "Well, that's enough of that game, eh Ryo-Ohki?" Little Washu muttered, nudging the sleeping cabbit, whom merely rolled over in a cute manner, making the woman smile. "How about a different one? I think a little experimentation could shake my old noggin up and give me a nice break from thinking…"

             Washu nodded and made a few noises to herself, getting up (And setting Ryo-Ohki on the seat to continue sleeping, thank you) and walking over to the Time Displacement Machine in one corner of her room, the Mass following her with their "eyes".

            Placing a foot up on one of the control panels, Washu plunked her head into her palm statuesquely and stared at the small gateway before her, turbines of the machine whirring to keep it open, energy cackling in the room and making her anti-static clothes quite static.

            "What to do, what to do, what to… hmm." She pondered, yawning wide and closing her dreary eyes with boredom. The present continuum she had been watching was presently privy to nothing exciting, though she had discovered a strong link between the realms of "living" and "dead" within said continuum. She was pretty certain this Heaven, Hell and Living Plane theorem was another strange constant within 124, but really didn't want to play with it at the moment. However…

            Reaching over to the control panel, Washu unconsciously put on her devilishly happy grin and moved the probe, pushing threads of T/S and delving into "Hell". Moving her portal about and its monitoring devices trailing, the genius locating an interesting specimen whose genetic scan came up the most diverse of all. He wasn't exactly the most "powerful" being in "Hell", but as a scientist Washu found herself subconsciously drawn to him. She had spotted him earlier in a few other 124 alternates when he was alive, and she had a strong gut feeling he was possibly one of the reasons that 124 was as alternatively diverse as it was. Could he be somehow linked to all that time-travel-stuff?

            Chuckling aloud, Washu tried to shrug aside her zany idea. Bring him here just to poke at and examine? That was a stupid and crazy idea… crazy enough it might even lighten her spirits!

            "Alright then, crazy it is. Ryo-Ohki, tie yourself in, Washu's going to play with her Time Displacement Machine!" the woman laughed aloud, drawing the portal open wider and causing the turbulence within the room to increase dramatically.

            "Meow!"

~*~*~*~*~

            The air was humid, the sky was red, a sunless heat beating down, the stench of putrid blood in the air – all in all, it was a rather nice day in hell, Cell mused, frowning as he lie beside the blood lake near the entrance to the home for infinite losers. Lifting up his black sunglasses, Cell's frown somehow furrowed deeper as he watched Jeice and Burter play volleyball nearby. The perfect genetic mutation really resented that name; he wasn't a loser, not even in the least sense. Why, if anyone had caused more damage to Goku and the Z-Senshi, besides that idiotic Kid Buu, it was he. But musing like that only caused sour thoughts and thoughts of revenge, things that were not good to dwell on in infinite nothingness.

            "So, Cell, what are your plans for today?" came an all-too-familiar prissy voice. Cell had just replaced his glasses and closed his eyes, and as Frieza wasn't worth the effort to take them off and gawk at, he merely smiled his arrogant smile and rolled a sarcastic reply off in his head.

            'Not screwing around with you, that's for sure.'

            "Not a thing, dear Frieza; why do you ask?" he stated drawly, placing his arms over his head and stretching out on his reclined lawn chair, the putrid humidity bouncing mostly off of his hard-skinned exterior. It was something one never got used to, the reek and humidity, no matter how long Cell had been roasting down here.

            Frieza's tail swished through the air with apparent boredom from its owner, as Cell's perfect ears – courtesy of Piccolo's Namekian blood – caught their noise, as well as Frieza's footsteps as the Icejinn slowly moved to lean against Cell's bent knee, his weight and shadow falling upon the genetic creation.

            "Oh, nothing I suppose, though I do wish you would stop being such a bore and actually *do* something with the rest of us."

             From the tone in the "Galactic Ruler's" voice, Cell could picture Frieza staring at his nails as he often did. Opening an eye beneath his glasses, Cell silently allotted himself a personal smile – he was right, as he often was.

            "What's the use of exerting any energy when it has no use? Recreation is a dumb-man's folly, lest he need the exercise to gain strength – something I fear none of us could easily accomplish in these conditions. You do recall how stifled our energies are down here, no dear Frieza?" Cell lectured in his stately voice, urging a stifled hiss from his comrade.

            "Don't remind me…"

            Frieza stood up, alleviating his dead weight from Cell's knee, though taking away the slightly cooler shade that Cell was just getting accustomed to as well. The Icejinn was apparently walking away, for Cell's ears tracked his footstep-falls to roughly 3 meters away, and his voice was slightly more distant in a second reply.

            "At least it's better than lying around all the time." Frieza snapped, obviously agitated as he often was.

            "And father and I had set the Scrabble tournament with a place for you…" the alien added as a slightly more silent afterthought most likely not intended for Cell's sensitive ears to pick up on, as the perfect being had never mentioned his Namekian senses to the annoying royal pain-in-the-ass brat. Cell smiled and even allowed himself a chuckle – a real treat, he laughed inwardly.

            'Another wonderful day in Hell all right…' he mused sourly, laying out his leg and soaking in more of the sunless red rays.

~~~

            Ryo-Ohki bounded onto Little Washu's shoulder with a dull thud, though the little cabbit's weight was so subliminal that the genius barely noticed it; that, and she had her hands and mind preoccupied with watching the one addressed as Cell's movements, or lack thereof.

            Washu had finally managed to coax her picky Time Displacement Machine's scanners into narrowing in on one subject, and though it had no audio conversions – just visual – Washu wasn't as old as she was without knowing a little lip-reading.

            Grinning, the pink-haired woman applauded herself inwardly, the tank of Mass behind her bubbling with reflective activity. Well, she had a name to go on for her beautiful find, though he was either stupidly silent or a silent genius. Little Washu was betting on the second – after all, whoever had made him (He was obviously genetically engineered, there was no way such a perfection could be made in nature) would have been smart enough to give him great brains and brawn.

            "All right then, Washu, you little genius you…" she laughed to herself, standing up and pondering a moment, a finger dwelling on her lip. Ryo-Ohki looked up at her with a tilted head, her face carrying the curiosity Washu sensed from the little cabbit's mind.

            "Yea, yea, I know, I really shouldn't be doing this – he's probably in this 'Hell' for a reason… but it's just so damn tempting!" Washu beamed to the critter, looking down (Alright, not so far down, just to her right shoulder) and posing it a question.

            "You decide cutie: do I keep on being boring and just catalog, or actually bring him here?"

            Ryo-Ohki tilted her head, obviously took the question in and thought a moment, before wrinkling up her face with her reply.

            "Meow!"

            "Hey! You're not supposed to disagree with me!"

            "Meow-meow! Meow meow meow meow!"

            "Oh all right…" Washu frowned, pouting. She had lost an argument to a cabbit – her own creation at that – and wasn't pleased.

            "Wait just a minute! Why am I taking your opinion? You're just a little fraidy-cat!" Washu stuck out her tongue, making Ryo-Ohki meow in protest and bound off of her shoulder, floated away several feet and then peering out from behind a terminal of some sorts.

            "Meow!"

            "Fine, be that way!" Washu yelled in reply, turning back to her machine with a grin of sheer delight.

            Cracking her knuckles, Washu reached over to a lever and pulled it. Naturally she had designed the machine to be that dramatic – what was the fun in pushing a button or calling a command when she could pull a bit ol' lever?

~~~

            One moment Cell had been basking in the reeking pits of hell, and the next he found himself (And his lawn chair) in a rather dark, inhumid, laboratory smelling room. His eyes darted open in semi-panic and confusion, and in a flash he stood, jet-black wings stretching out as his body slid into defensive mode.

            Little Washu nearly fell over, laughing with delight, as Ryo-Ohki meowed in either fright or surprise, diving behind her cover and trembling, paws over her eyes.

            Cell's eyes scanned the room about him, which brought back sour memories of his origins, and then let his gaze rest on a small pink-haired humanoid girl who stood confidently before him, dressed in a bizarre, colorful attire. A giant machine whirred behind her, apparently shutting off, for light emanating from it slowly subdued, turbines kicking out.

            The genetic perfection stared through narrowed eyes, an unreadable expression on his face, his body tense with automatic defense.

            Washu broke this tension with her bubbly next set of words.

            "Heya! I'm Little Washu, this is my lab, and I've just brought you here through the wonders of science!" she beamed.

            Cell blinked, blinked again… and sweat dropped.

~*~*~*~*~

            The perfect, genetically engineered being known as Cell stared with a dumbfounded look on his face for a moment more at Little Washu before he snapped out of it, his expression changing instantaneously into one of annoyance. He couldn't let himself get weak or distracted like that again; it was that kind of human trait that had gotten him killed in the first place.

            "Excuse me… but just exactly where *is* here?" Cell asked through gritted teeth, his annoyance checked only by his logical and curious side. His eyes gave the expansive room – which appeared to fade into nothing after several tens of meters, defying laws of light and space dimension – another quick look-over, resting once again on the small woman.

            He jumped, rather shocked; the pink-head was walking around him as if he were a science specimen, running a scanner over his legs, forearm, waistline, pulled-in tail –

            "Just what the hell do you –" Cell began, though Washu looked up at him with her usual beaming smile and, much to his amazement (He needed to stop being shocked so easily, no matter how easily it was coming…) floated up to his eye level with apparent ease.

            "I'm sorry, you must be rather confused, lost, befuddled and what not." Washu stated dryly, a spark of humor in her eyes and she looked up and tried to think of a quick way to explain things. The problem with her thoughts was that she really didn't know what she *was* doing, so how could she explain it? Tell him the truth – she happened to be bored and wanted to further her awareness? That would never work.

            "One could say that…" Cell stated, though he stopped, mouth held open in half-stride speech. He had just caught his reflection in a massive floor-to-ceiling pool filled with strange gray blobs; he no longer had a halo, the telltale sign of a dead-man… His internal sensors and his own mental sensing probed himself, checking his body, cells, energy out…

            He felt weird, truly, but… he was *alive*…

            Cell allowed himself a grin as he inwardly began to awaken his massive energy level; he had no clue what this strange young woman had done, what was going on, but he was still to be cautious…

            "How did I get here, I suppose I should be asking first."

            Washu nodded.

            "A wise question…" she stated, sitting cross-legged as a pillow appeared to float as a cushion beneath her rear in the thin air before the Bio-Android. She thought a moment more, and decided to go for honesty in this response.

            "I used my Time Displacement Machine to bring you here from your dimension to mine, what you would call a parallel Universe, though I must say our laws of being are quite different from one another." She began.

            "That would explain why I'm no longer –"
            "Dead?" Washu grinned, having just observed this as well; the halo she had taken to be a token of his passing had faded the moment she'd brought him to her lair. Another thing to be researched into at a later time… but first she should get to know her specimen, she reminded herself with a childish grin. Ryo-Ohki meowed timidly and peeked out from her hiding space across the lab, making Cell's piercing gaze shoot down to her; the cabbit bounded back into hiding in response.

            Cell narrowed his eyes and returned his look to Washu, testing his senses; if laws were different… he felt her out, sensed her energy, which felt… muffled…

            'Probably something to do with the different laws here; everything feels funny in this place…' he concurred inwardly, still wearing a frown as Washu gave him another one-over with her eyes.

            "Well, Mr. Cell, I suppose you want to know where here is, eh?" she winked.

            "Indeed." Cell nodded, folding his arms and lapsing into semi-relaxed pose; he couldn't sense anything and trust what he felt here; therefore, he would remain on-guard, but not obviously or stressing so.

            Little Washu, inventor extraordinaire, grinned, bowed slightly and appeared – *appeared* -- several meters away near a computer terminal that likewise appeared from nowhere.

            "Time for the grand tour I suppose!"