Author's Note: A week or two ago I watched "Bojack Unbound." I thought it would be a good movie, as the premise sounded promising, but unfortunately it was the most disappointing of all the DBZ movies to date. I've seen them all, excluding the Brolly one (as I heard Vegeta was a coward in it, and though he is no longer my favorite character, if there is one thing he's not, it's a coward), and this one was not very good. The beginning was interesting enough, but they killed off the best looking villain first as if they didn't want Trunks to have competition, they had Bojack kill one of his minions for no reason as if the writers felt they needed more proof that he was evil, and Bojack had a stupid voice. So did many of his minions, but he had the worst. They also all had the same personality (including Bojack).

However, the worst travesty of the entire thing, other than Gohan going SSJ2 because Goku says, "Gohan, I know you can do it!" is how Bojack reacted to Gohan's transformation. He gaped, attacked with no plan, got a hole punched through his stomach, threw an energy blast (which promptly got overwhelmed by Gohan's Kamehameha) and died. Think about it, when it happened to Cell, he briefly freaked out, but he managed to find a way around Gohan's superior power and it was only Vegeta' interference that stopped him from being victorious. Two good points: Gettting to watch Piccolo kick Krillin's butt without moving and then insulting him, and one line said by Gohan. Well, it actually wasn't such a great line, but in comparison... anyway, here it is. After Bojack expressed disbelief at Gohan's power, the demi-saiyan said, and I quote: "You forgot one thing; I am my father's son!"

Now I am going to give you the newer movie awards:

History of Trunks: Most heart-wrenching

Bardock, Father of Goku: Best back story for DBZ

Lord Slug: Best fight scenes

Cooler's Revenge: Best villains

The Return of Cooler: Weirdest premise

Android Thirteen: Most amusing ending

Brolly: Never saw it

Bojack Unbound: Well, I suppose it deserves strangest reason for a fighting tournament

And now, 9,000 words after the story's beginning, the main character actually makes an appearance! It is disturbingly hard to write angst. In humor, one stupid joke doesn't ruin the story, but one misplaced adjective in angst just kills the whole mood.

Jay Goose: Goten isn't the main character; he's one of them. Big difference. This thing is still mainly focused on the weirdness between Gohan and Cell. I just took a while to get to it.

Cell didn't have a destination in mind when he left Fulkin behind him. So he just wandered, though he had enough sense to stop at the nearest planet he came across and get a good idea of the location of Taros III. Having direction was enough to alleviate the feeling of purposelessness, even if that direction was just going the way Gohan wasn't.

It was not, however, enough to alleviate the feeling of guilt. Initially, Cell had gotten some amusement out of imagining how the encounter between Goku and Gohan would go. Something like. . . "Gohan, I know there is still some goodness in your. . . ahhhhh! My eyes!" Though he was probably picturing it wrong. Twenty years had passed, after all. Gohan wouldn't be a child anymore. It stopped being amusing after that.

He had kept a low profile, for various reasons. One, he didn't want to attract the attention of the locals, as even this far out the Emporium had influence, and that would lead to getting the attention of Emporium officials, which could only end one way; badly. Two, the ki shielder Marron had handed him as he left the Rebellion base wouldn't allow him to gather a significant amount of ki without overloading the thing, and that would be a far more straightforward way (and therefore, even more undesirable) of getting Gohan's attention than number one.

He still fought, of course, as tournaments were the most direct method of getting funds, and though Cell had a variety of other marketable skills, they required he stay in one place for long periods of time. He couldn't take the chance, especially if he stuck around on one planet too long the natives started to notice. . . things. You can only stare blankly at a wall so many times before mental institutions start to sneak into conversations. Cell wasn't entirely sure he shouldn't follow their advice.

The hallucinations were getting stronger. At first, it had been nothing. A whispering in the back of his mind, something just out of sight. On the edge of his vision. Irritating, but easy enough to write them off. Then he had started dreaming. It didn't make sense. He hadn't needed to sleep before, but now it was almost impossible to stave off the exhaustion for more than a few days. And he finally understood why humans used the nightmare as an analogy for the worst of horrors.

Blood. Pain. Fear. And a voice, a constant murmur, never ceasing, always there. The dreams stayed with him, long after they should have faded. Vivid, instant recall. For the first time, Cell cursed the flawless memory that had been granted to him. Like now, after three days had passed without rest, and Cell knew he could put it off no longer. Collapsing against the wall on a planet no one had heard of with a people not worth remembering, Cell fell into unconsciousness.

SWITCH

"You're new." Why was it that no matter where he went, he always ran into Trunks? He didn't even like Trunks. Hell, he didn't even not like him. But this, this wasn't the Trunks that so resembled the one from the future, the one that guided him through his divided soul. This one had eyes that were so dull and lifeless Cell had to check twice to make sure it was in fact the demi-saiyan who had spoken. Approximately the same age as Mirai Trunks, maybe a few years older. Hair past his waist, wound in a tight braid. A lavender tail, hanging limply down, weaving around the ankles. A thin, golden collar. And a bite.

No matter the universe, Trunks wasn't stupid. "It's faded quite a bit. In a few weeks it will be gone entirely. Yours looks rather recent. Did you arrive yesterday? Sorry I didn't greet you." A weak grin that held no humor, a smile that would have been blasphemy to return. "I was kind of out of it at the time. Blood resin will do that to you."

"I wouldn't know."

"You will, soon enough. I'm sorry I won't be able to help you adjust."

Well, that sounded ominous. "Any particular reason why?"

"Gohan is going to kill me tomorrow, and it's kind of hard to show the new guy around when you're dead." Trunks smiled softly at the look of surprise apparent in Cell's eyes. "Don't look so shocked. You're here. You're the one Gohan has been looking for. Now I'm useless." The demi-saiyan rubbed his temples. "The resin must have really wasted me. Of course you didn't arrive yesterday. You've always been here."

Cell felt his blood run cold. "What?"

"Wherever Gohan is, you are. And I am an idiot." The absent smile that came with the demi-saiyan's self-incrimination was incongruous with what he was saying. Who would be amused at their own thoughtlessness? "That bite is a good twenty years old. Sorry, I've forgotten what it's like for the bonded." This chill went down his spine, but left a searing coldness in its wake, and didn't fade.

"Elaborate."

"Well, the bite's permanent, for the bonded. The mark only fades if one of them dies."

Trunks' eyes softened at the stricken look that Cell couldn't hide. "You'll be okay. I. . . I was just joking, about the blood resin. Gohan won't do anything to you. He can't. You're his other half. He would be hurting himself as well."

"Trunks. . . you of all people should know that I've always been a bit of a masochist."

A voice from the shadows. The voice from his dreams. Reminiscent of Goku, but with a bitterness that Goku couldn't carry off at his most murderous. It seemed odd that the words reverberated. The room couldn't be more than fifteen feet going both ways, and half that in height. ((Wait a minute. . .)) There had been no echo. That second sound. . . he had heard it before Gohan had said a word.

A hand brushed his neck, a gentle caress. An arctic wind would have been warmer. "It's funny. When I did this to you, I had no idea what it meant. It was a foolish child's whim, an unrepressed instinct. Thoughtless of me, but I suppose I could have chosen worse." Dark amusement graced his next words. "My father, for instance. Then I would have had to kill the fool."

"You call Goku names, but you easily forget that he was already dead. And either you yourself are a fool, or you've been telling your concubine over there lies."

"Whatever do you mean, dear one?"

Cell ignored Gohan's attempt to goad him. "You gave this to me when both of us were in Heaven, so why hasn't it faded, if death is the catalyst?"

"So observant." The demi-saiyan touched his cheek, ran fingers across the android's face, before abruptly grasping Cell's chin in a bruising grip and forcing them face to face. Cell felt his heart sink as he realized the situation, beyond all probability, had actually gotten worse. Having to crane his neck to see the demi-saiyan's eyes sent an implacable, irrefutable fact slamming down on Cell's logical, left-dominated brain; Gohan was taller than he was. It wasn't by much. In reality, it couldn't be more than two inches, but the android could literally feel his last advantage slip through his fingers, and that made it seem much, much larger.

"Gohan. . ." The ebony-haired demi-saiyan responded without moving his gaze from the wide pools of violet, disturbingly focused in plunging the depths.

"Trunks, you know as well as I do that your worth to me is minimal. It isn't so much a question of wanting to die. It's more of knowing whether you want to die quickly and painlessly, or a horrible, long, lingering death that will add to the servants' already considerable repertoire of nightmares?"

It was almost disgusting how easily Trunks wilted from Gohan's idle threats. Though perhaps it was slightly hypocritical to look down on someone for wanting to avoid the bloodthirsty demi-saiyan's wrath, when he himself couldn't tear his eyes away due to a paralysis brought on by sheer, undiluted terror.

Then the two of them were alone. Cell, during Trunks' quiet and abrupt exit, had tried to jumpstart his logic centers, but had only been partially successful. Really, Gohan currently wasn't even a super-saiyan, much less ascended. Why in Kami's name didn't he kill the demi-saiyan while he had the chance and shove this whole nightmarish experience into a deep, dark little corner to never be seen again? He would have followed his own advice. . . if he could get his limbs to move.

Then Gohan was kissing him, and his scar started to burn. Rather than being at war with his current state of frozen terror and granting him a temporary respite from extreme temperatures, the fire that trickled down his shoulder and into his spine formed a truce with the ice, borne of the common goal to make him miserable. Not that they really had to work hard at it. Despair was already setting in as hands gripped his upper arms in an unbreakable embrace, and the little voice blew past irritating straight into migraine-causing. ((I can almost taste your fear. It is. . . intoxicating.)) It was nerve-wracking in hindsight to realize that the echo he had heard earlier had actually been in his own head, Gohan's thoughts shattering his barriers like cheap glass before any words were spoken. He did not get a shadow of Gohan's emotions; he received them pure, untainted, as full as Gohan himself experienced them. And Cell could no longer tell the difference between the reflection and the one who cast it. ((You are my other half. The balance to the scales. I need you.)) And Cell felt himself kissing Gohan back. ((I love you.)) And though he didn't know whose thought it was, neither did he care.

SWITCH

Cell woke to a voice filled with terror. For once it wasn't his own. "Leggo, please leggo of me arm! I wasn't gonna steal nothin', I just saw you lying there an' I thought it looked uncomfortable an'. . ." The grip Cell had on the rather greasy beggar's arm tightened as he studied his memory. How could he have imagined it in such detail that he thought it to be reality? He didn't even know what Gohan looked like anymore. The beggar's panicked whine declined into gibberish as Cell's fist clenched, pulverizing the bone that lay directly under the skin, tearing muscle. The android abruptly let go, not out of any sense of guilt so much as the sudden need to be away from civilization, leaving behind a now crippled beggar and a wall stained with violet handprints.

Deep in the woods of the planet Cell still couldn't remember the name of, he examined why the dream had so badly affected him. Other nightmares had rattled him, but this was impossible. Even after waking, it still felt less like a dream and more like a memory, though a deeply disturbing one. He had almost convinced himself of the triviality of such imaginings (all dreams were, were a manifestation of fears, after all), when he finally saw the bruises, which encircled his upper arms in a ring of dark purple and an imprint of finger tips. An earlier vision came back to him. (('He will always be with you, when you're awake, while you sleep, while you dream. . .'))

"Why is it that even the dead prophets have everything wrong?" The tree next to him wasn't forthcoming with an answer, but Cell hadn't expected one. Why had Bardock seemed so convinced that distant would weaken whatever hold Gohan had on him? Of course, it could be even worse than it looked; that the dream actually was weaker than what Gohan could do him, if they actually met. If they saw each other face to face in reality, not just illusion.

This was ridiculous. Gohan hadn't really even done anything to him. The bruises were already fading. Why was he, so. . . rubbing his arms didn't drive away the cold. ((He's going to find me. It's not a matter of if, but of when.)) The lake edge beckoned him, and he walked over to the clearing, looking at the three moons that moved in the planet's orbit. ((His reflection. . .)) Half-expecting to see Gohan when he looked in the water, Cell was relieved to see no one but himself, though it was a him that looked far more defeated than he was. ((Do I want to be running when he finds me?)) Stalling the inevitable wouldn't change the conclusion, but the bravery to face your worse fears was only found in the souls of heroes. And Cell was no hero. However. . .

((Gohan may be insane, but he is still Goku's son. And if we do share the same soul, then all I have to do is borrow his courage for a while.)) And Cell allowed himself a genuine smile, feeling like himself for the first time in almost a month. ((I'm an evil android created to live off the essence of humanity and destroy the world. If I'm not allowed to cheat, who is?))