"Prepare to die," each of Cell's bodies said in unison, flying in opposite directions.
Not knowing what they were planning, I ignorantly stood still and smirked. "Whatever you're doing won't work on me!" I shouted arrogantly. Super Saiyan 2 was beginning to put a major toll on my judgement. I wasn't even focusing on their energies at that point.
After about a minute, both released powerful energy waves directly at me in an attempt to sandwich me between them. "HAAAA!" I think one was a Galick Gun and the other was a Masenko. They were equal in strength, both plowing through any rocks and trees that were in the way.
I simply placed my hands in the way of each blast and charged energy in my separate palms. 'I didn't think I would actually need this today,' I thought.
"Now what's he doin'? Is that some sort of a battle pose?" I heard Hercule wonder out loud. I'm not even sure of how I heard him over the roar of energy coming from my aura.
"Dual Destruction!" Two golden energy beams came out of my hands, each immediately intersecting with Cell's attacks a foot (30 centimeters) away from me, creating a massive double shockwave that then formed a massive crater beneath me, this one even larger than the ones created by Trunks and Vegeta. Lava was starting to seep up through a crack in the bottom.
"Hah!" the Android shouted from both sides of me. "A little light show won't stop me, especially since it's nearly equal in strength to my blasts!"
"I know." Suddenly, my fingertips began to glow with the same light as my attack. "My technique isn't over just yet!" Suddenly, ten thin yet deadly energy beams came out of the tips of my fingers, five quickly approaching one Cell while the remaining ones sped in the opposite direction.
"What?!" he exclaimed from both mouths.
"You're not the only one who was inspired by Frieza!" I yelled in response as five small holes appeared in Cell's separate bodies. Both stopped shooting out energy simultaneously, then allowing my main beams to deal even more damage consequently.
"Yeah! He got Cell!" Krillin exclaimed joyfully, accidentally beginning to float from excitement. He realized this quickly and landed.
"At least I didn't have to unleash my Wolf Fang-"
"SHUT UP!" Vegeta shouted. "NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR DAMN ATTACK!" That made Yamcha pout.
Oh, yeah, Yamcha woke up earlier when he heard all the fighting.
I hovered in the air for a couple of minutes, venting out my remaining anger through my aura, before I decided to make my descent.
"You only hurt yourself by doing that," I mumbled to myself as I powered down to my Base form. "Your death must have been twice as painful as it otherwise would have been."
'I'm not done just yet, boy,' a faint yet enraged voice suddenly said in my head.
"I'm not fully surprised that you're not dead yet," I said, turning toward a faint energy signal that was slowing getting stronger while I simultaneously transformed into a Super Saiyan. "I've seen your regeneration firsthand, remember?"
"Then you know that my near-death experience has only made me stronger!" boomed the voice of the now fully regenerated creature. He was standing where his Masenko-shooting body had been before, so I assumed that one was the only one to survive my attack. Bio-electricity crackled through the air, turning some of it into plasma as it was superheated by Cell's energy. His strength had once again increased, and to my surprise, I had been surpassed.
"You Super Saiyans are pathetic," he stated. "I am the Perfect being, because every time I survive with only a few cells remaining, I come back even stronger!" He released a massive kiai in my direction, forcing me to put my hands in front of my face defensively.
Angry that I had been so arrogant and that Cell still wanted to destroy Earth, I let my power explode out of me once more, transforming into a Super Saiyan 2 in the process. "Prepare to die."
He scoffed at me. "I'm getting tired of you and your surprises. I might as well kill you with your honor still intact, though." He cupped his hands by his side and began charging energy between them. "If you don't block this attack, you can say goodbye to the whole Solar System, this time for real! Hahahahahaha!"
I got into the same position and began concentrating my own energy into my palms. "As if I'd let you do that!"
Several minutes passed of us just charging our energy, Cell laughing maniacally the entire time. Rocks floated around us, apparently indicating great power or something. Finally, each of us formed an energy ball, finally ready.
"Kamehame...HAAAAA!" we shouted in unison, our seemingly identical beams flying directly at each other. They clashed with the force of a small supernova, but thankfully, the resulting shockwave was fairly small and only created a crater below the growing ball of energy between our attacks. Immediately, however, my Kamehameha Wave was pushed back toward me, changing the crater's shape from a circle to an oval.
"What's wrong, Fruiota?!" the Android called from across the energy. "Running out of steam, or are you just too weak for me?!"
Groaning, the one word that could save me popped into my mind. "It's neither, Cell! You know why?!"
"Oh, what is it, scum?" came his annoyed response. "Are you going to make up some silly lie that you haven't used your full power yet?"
"Not exactly," I mumbled. Then: "KAIOKEN!"
"What's he doing?!" Piccolo exclaimed. "Doesn't he know that using Kaioken with Super Saiyan 2 can kill him?!"
"I think he knows it," Gohan replied calmly. "It looks like he's willing to give up his life for Earth, even if it means sacrificing himself."
Krillin crinkled his nonexistent nose. "I don't know what to think of it, but as long as Cell is destroyed after this, I'll be happy. I don't wanna die a virgin a third time!"
"You should really watch what you say, baldy," Vegeta managed to say despite being in complete disbelief at Cell's and my power.
"Kaio-what?!" Cell was absolutely shocked that I was boosting my power in such a way.
A burst of orange raged through my aura as my power increased just in time to prevent Cell's attack from overcoming my own, then push it in the other direction right away. I recognized the strain and the possibility of my own death, but I completely ignored them both, only thinking of saving the planet and its inhabitants.
"HAAAAAA!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, pushing the ball of energy closer and closer to my opponent.
"You know what?! I'll just join you!" he yelled. "KAIOKEN!" His aura became red almost instantly, and the amount of energy he was releasing increased. As soon as his new surge of power met the end of his old beam, the ball between our attacks stopped moving in either direction. We were evenly matched.
"Hahahahaha!" Cell laughed. "It takes you so many power-ups to even match me at a small Kaioken! Doesn't something seem wrong with this scenario, you who once had more than enough power to destroy me with both hands behind his back?"
Ignoring him, I called out to Gohan in my mind. 'While I have him distracted, you guys need to go behind him and attack! Let's sandwich him!'
Rather than giving a response, the young Saiyan powered up to Super Saiyan 2 and flew behind Cell quickly. Not surprisingly, he was too focused on me and his attack to notice Gohan.
Piccolo immediately knew what Gohan was doing, and he seemed to inform the others about the plan. Then, they all flew over and joined Gohan, even Vegeta, and they powered up to their maximum strengths, Vegeta utilizing Super Saiyan 2 once more (he was likely still angry about what happened to Trunks).
Cell definitely noticed this. "A bunch of maggots like you can't do anything to a being such as myself!" He used his tail to shoot them one by one quickly, knocking them all down right away.
I smirked. "Are you sure you don't have any cells from Popo?"
I heard his arrogant laugh clearly over the roar of our energy. "Oh, how I will miss such a challenger as you, Frui."
Suddenly, a large cramp formed in my right shoulder, likely due to the strain of using Kaioken with Super Saiyan 2. The pain was like someone shocking me with electricity, and it forced me to cancel the redness in my aura. My Power Level immediately dropped, and my legs buckled underneath me; instead of catching myself, I stopped shooting out energy and Instant Transmitted to behind Cell.
His Kamehameha Wave rocketed into the upper atmosphere instantly. "You foolish brat!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, a sense of victory emanating from his soul. "You just doomed the entire Solar System! If you survive, you can know that the destruction of so much is all your fault!"
Gohan got up, still in Super Saiyan 2 himself. "It's headed toward the Sun," he mumbled. "If that hits, everything within at least 1.872 light years should be incinerated by the combination of Cell's attack and the explosion of the sun. None of us is strong enough to stop his atta-"
"NERD!"
"But...but Piccolo," the boy complained, "I'm trying to think of something to get us out of this situation."
My mind was racing through possibilities as well. Since the energy attack was already in space, I couldn't Instant Transmit in front of it with any of the others to counterattack simultaneously with them. My body was drained to the point where simply maintaining Super Saiyan 2 felt like a Kaioken times 20, so after a few seconds, I reverted to my Base form and sat down. I considered multiple other options, like getting Gohan to severely injure me and then somehow get healed so I could get stronger, but after thinking about ideas like that further, there was always something that would make the possibilities not work.
Suddenly, a massive energy signature appeared, I'm assuming near Mercury or Venus. It was in front of Cell's overpowered attack, obviously waiting for it.
Krillin immediately jumped up and looked in that general direction. "Who the hell is that?!"
Vegeta looked angrier than earlier, though he was still laying on his back, lightning coursing through his golden Super Saiyan 2 aura, his fists clenched. "Damn it!" he mumbled, slowly raising his voice. "First he kills my only son and gets even stronger, then he kills Kakarrot, and now SOMEONE EVEN STRONGER THAN HIM COMES OUT OF NOWHERE?!" At this point, he was shouting, and he punched the ground in fury, leaving a small crater where his fist had landed.
I suddenly sensed the unknown power begin to increase as the Kamehameha Wave quickly approached it. 'I sure hope it's an ally,' I thought to myself, hopeful that what this being was planning would be helpful instead of detrimental.
"Oh, so that's how you want to play it, Delado?" Cell suddenly shouted, revealing that he had been telepathically communicating with this mystery fighter. "Well, if that's the case, DIE!"
A few minutes earlier:
'Hello there,' Cell remarked into the mind of the person standing in the direct path of his attack, though they were still millions of miles away from it. 'Who might you be, and why are you so strong?'
'You may refer to me as General Delado,' replied the stranger mentally. 'Why are you shooting such highly-concentrated energy directly at the central star of this system?'
'The people of Earth have failed to defeat me, so as punishment, their entire influence on the cosmos must be destroyed!'
'How about we have a little contest?' Delado licked his lips hungrily, secretly excited that someone from Earth could come this close to his own power.
'I'm listening.' Cell sounded like he was quite intrigued by the sudden offer.
'I'll attempt to negate your attack. If I successfully do so and kill you in the process, you have to promise to comply with the Afterlife's staff and never hurt another living or non-living being. If you win, I'll die along with the entire star system.'
'Hmm...that's fine by me. Besides, there's no way a truly Perfect being such as myself can lose to a miscellaneous worm that crawled out of nowhere!'
Delado raised his energy as high as he could, his blood-red aura coursing around his body. 'I've seen what this putrid creature can do,' he thought to himself. 'There's no point in holding back.'
Right when the energy attack would have hit him, he dove head-first into it, his aura piercing straight through it and stopping it from continuing, his fists out in front of his face. Quickly, he closed the gap between himself and Earth, definitely faster than a speeding bullet, never leaving Cell's attack. He skillfully traversed into the atmosphere and, by using his aura, ensured that there would be no heat production from entry, making him look more like a blur than a meteor.
He slammed right through Cell's gut in Goku-versus-King-Piccolo fashion, the resulting shockwave knocking down everybody who had returned to their feet before, including me. "I win," stated Delado. Quickly, he turned around and blasted what was left of the Android, making sure to destroy even the very last morsel to ensure that Cell wouldn't survive. The greatest creation of Doctor Gero was finally dead, but my kill had been stolen from me.
Suddenly, everybody heard a couple of dings. Many miles away, in Kame House, a certain counter on the wall increased by two.
"Come on, only one of those was actually me!" Krillin complained.
I really hope you enjoyed this chapter; I've been building up to it for a really long time, not to mention it took me SO LONG to finish (I started working on it before Chapter 37 was originally uploaded). This marks the end of the Cell Arc, with a new one starting next chapter with a brand new story, never seen before!
Frui's new technique, Dual Destruction, was created by him just for the heck of it. He got bored waiting up at "night" while Gohan slept, so after mastering the Kienzan, he developed a new technique that can harm two opponents simultaneously. Because of this, hundreds of energy attacks of two different sizes are now racing into the depths of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, never to stop due to it not having walls.
Since Cell got a second Zenkai, I'll call him Ultra Perfect Cell at this point. His use of the Kaioken technique, which he apparently forgot in canon, is something that I always thought should happen, which is why I made him use it here. He experienced little strain from it due to his body being so immensely durable and stable, not to mention it was a small Kaioken in the first place. After all, he really does have the maximum in everything for his Power Level.
As for Delado, his name is pronounced like "Deh-lah-doe." (Screw those fancy-looking things you see in English class.)
Further information regarding his appearance and background will come at a later time.
There are quite a few of Power Levels to go through, so here you go:
Super Perfect Cell's Galick Gun and Masenko: 81,500,000,000 each
SSJ 2 Frui's Dual Destruction: 82,180,000,000 per energy beam
Ultra Perfect Cell: 124,192,000,000
Ultra Perfect Cell's Kamehameha Wave: 250,000,000,000
SSJ 2 Frui's Kamehameha Wave: 235,000,000,000
Frui's Kamehameha Wave (Kaioken x1.275): 299,625,000,000
Cell's Kamehameha Wave (Kaio-what?! x1.2): 300,000,000,000
Delado (suppressed): 132,000,000,000
FP Delado: 440,000,000,000