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Cell was blasted through the air as yet another high velocity punch completely bypassed her defenses and rattled her skull like a particularly nut in its shell. Colors seemed to jumble together for a brief moment before she regained her senses and tried to spot Goku before he attacked again, but it was as fruitless as ever: a kick that came from straight above was enough to send her careening through the air yet again.
Needless to say, she was not overly thrilled with this situation.
Allowing a swell of her power to erupt in a shapeless blast all around her, Cell managed to terminate her trajectory and come to a halt in the air, breathing raggedly and sporting several bruises on her new body. Internally, she was split between spitting rage at being manhandled by the saiyan, and a deep, paralyzing fear the likes of which she hadn't felt since being unable to find Seventeen and Eighteen in her native time. How should she react, or even think when faced with something that just completely overthrew what she had known as fact and practically defied logic in its existence.
A Super Saiyan should never have even been capable of half this power, all data pointing to a upper limit range around that bulky state Trunks had stumbled upon. But here Goku was, quite clearly shattering that analysis as easily as he was batting her around; stronger even than her half perfected state. This was ridiculous, purely ridiculous. Sixteen had overpowered two super saiyans without even trying and he had been only barely as strong as her original form. Just what kind of joke of genetics were at play here? Surely not the normal variety, or else she'd have been a-
Lost in thought a moment to long, Cell completely missed the jab that caught her cheek squarely and with enough force to flip her bodily backwards. Blinking away spots of darkness and ignoring the quivering pain that rested just below her eye, she took the chance to gain some distance and flew with all her might at the horizon of water and sky, a jade rocket.
There was a way to figure this out, there had to be. Both he and Gohan were wearing the same clothes she had seen them in last, though in remarkably worse condition, with burn marks poking holes here and there and tears cropping up here and there; Gohan's even seemed to have shrunk, as it was rolled up at the legs to make shorts rather than pants. Whatever training regimen they had undergone had obviously been strenuous and destructive. Perhaps he had merged the Kaioken technique with the Super Saiyan form, even if the concept sounded like he should have exploded rather than grow vastly stronger. Or perhaps he was shunting around his power to fuel one move at a time to supercharge it, however drastically draining that seemed. She just needed to figure out the how and the what if she wanted a hope of beating him.
Determining that Goku would again employ the tried and true method of appearing directly in front of her and hitting her really hard, she waited until a barely noticeable tingle in the air heralded his teleportation before throwing herself back, narrowly avoiding the swinging fist that seemed to materialize a half fraction of a second before the rest of the saiyan did. Goku's follow up was instantaneous in the form of letting his forward momentum carrying him into a spin kick that she had the opportunity to see coming, crossing her arms to absorb the blow. It still hit like a meteor and hurt well besides.
'Alright,' Cell tried to think as she exploded in a flurry of punches meant solely to buy her time, 'this is Goku; I know Goku as well as I do myself. Use that, girl! He has weaknesses, same as anybody else, even if his are less-' A kick slammed into her ribs, but she was already moving backward to negate much of the force behind it. 'Ow. His are less readily exploitable. He believes in a straight and honest fight, so this must probably be sticking in his craw worse than anything else. He will place the safety of others ahead of himself, but the only people around that I can threaten are the islanders and Gohan. Attacking either of those will leave me wide open, not to mention Gohan might very well be similarly empowered, which is just insulting since he wasn't even a super saiyan yesterday, let alone one that could take down an android.'
Holding the wrist of one hand with the other, Cell opened fire with a hailstorm of ki bullets as she sped diagonally upward. Goku made a token show of zipping out of the way of some of the blasts, but the ones that did impact against him merely exploded like a firecracker and didn't seem to have any effect at all.
'He's both trying to put me down quickly and holding back enough that he won't do it in one blow. His sense of duty clashing with his instinct to battle. Now that I can use. If his natural inclinations were stronger than what his brain is telling him is necessary, he won't be able to resist the prospect of a decent fight. But how to facilitate this?"
Cell continued to dodge and block, as well as she could, while her mind worked at a fever pitch, planning her victory.
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King Yemma flipped a page of his book with perhaps a bit more ire than was strictly necessary. No, he didn't actually have a reasonable excuse for this behavior, but he somehow felt as though he should, and that tugged his beard the wrong way. Maybe his cunning if mostly harmless cousin, Snake, was trying to ensnare and eat another hapless soul that had the misfortune to wander by. Or perhaps the old man was going to go on one of his 'trips' that promised to bring back all manner of problems for the realm of the dead.
"Honestly," the giant grumbled to himself while searching his desk drawers for a new pen, "if I knew the position was so stressful, I would have told him to shove it, lord of the lower kais or not. It's not as if he even has to do more than three things a millenia, and those are so simple even a-"
Whatever species Yemma held in the lowest mental capacity was not spoken aloud, because when the great judge absently pulled open the top left drawer, a rush of force blew out like a cannon, bowling him backwards with a yelp onto the floor.
Vegeta didn't stop to stare at the Overseer of the dead practically doing a handstand against the wall, blasting out through the large entryway and embarking on Snake Way at a speed puff balls had no right traveling at.
'I'm coming'
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Cell hacked up a thick wad of spit and blood and shot it onto the ground at her feet. Running her tongue across purpled teeth, she was half gratified to find that she wasn't yet missing any. Who knew if namekian DNA could allow for the regrowth of lost teeth? Though it was proving hard to remember a fight where the loss of teeth was listed in the details.
She was getting a little punch drunk.
Bent double and struggling, and failing, to bring her breathing under control, the would be annihilator didn't cut a very intimidating figure. She was now a patchwork of bruises and small cuts, more beaten than she had ever been in her entire life. Her opponent looked as fresh as ever, still scowling in a distinctly out of character manner that managed to unnerve her as much as his strength did. Goku hadn't even spoken a word beyond their meeting, and a terrible voice in her head said that he was refusing to acknowledge her, reducing her to an opponent that needed to be defeated and nothing else, nothing more.
An intense anger began to burn through her fogged mind. Why should she be so suddenly stonewalled by this saiyan? HE was the one SHE was supposed to kill, not the other way around! She had gone to extreme lengths to fulfill her destiny and purpose, and she would be damned if she gave up and died now! It was time to show this overgrown preschooler exactly who he was dealing with.
"You think yourself so mighty? You think that you've achieved the ultimate pinnacle of your power and can just step on me like a roach? Well think again you bastard; I could wipe you out withiut even trying if I achieved my full power!"
Goku appeared in front of her, a distance of about ten yards between them. He was still frowning heavily, but he didn't immediately take up his campaign of destruction, which was as good a sign as she could hope for.
"That's right: I have yet to rise to my strongest level. Would you really feel so content to know that you had beaten someone as handicapped as I am - unable to fight back?"
She saw it, the momentary flash of self-doubt in those shining blue eyes that spoke volumes by itself.
"I promise that you will have a fight for the legends if I but absorb Seventeen. How could you possibly refuse? He is your enemy after all, so you would only be doing yourself a favor..."
She could feel the indecision radiating off of the so called savior, nature clashing with nurture and all that. His face now openly registered intrigue at the prospect of what she proposed and the beginnings of triumph began to swell within her gut. She had done it!
Her victory was cut short when Gohan descended from the sky, and he wasn't alone: Trunks, looking rough around the edges but decidedly better than when last she had seen him, was supporting Tien between himself and Yamcha, who had a sling made from his orange gi top cradling his injured arm. Krillin was a second behind them, face sporting a large bruise and almost comically bearing the entire weight of Sixteen on his back and shoulders, the flame haired synthetic utterly dwarfing the already diminutive man even while still unresponsive.
"Goku, don't even think about letting her get in your head," Trunks spoke up first, glaring hatefully at the bio-roid. "She'll manipulate you like a puppet and have you dancing to her tune without you ever realizing it."
Cell hissed with embittered frustration and resentment at the B-Team's inconvenient timing. She was beginning to believe they only stuck around to do just that.
Goku seemed torn for a few moments, but his natural inclination of righteousness was quick to kick back in and he nodded, just once, in assent. Suddenly, Cell felt as though she had just run out of options.
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you live if you're just going to hurt and kill more innocent people. You proved what kind of monster you are when you emptied all of those towns and cities without even a second thought." Goku' voice was strained and harsh on her ears, but he seemed like he was dead set on this course.
Panic set in and the Nearly-Perfect bio-roid tried to bolt, shooting into the sky and away from her appointed executioners, but she was intercepted by Gohan, whose fist was already in motion when he snapped into view directly in her path. Caught off guard, she plummeted back to the ground, reeling more from shock than pain, though there was plenty of the latter; the little brat hit almost as hard as his old man did, which meant that even of she dealt with the senior saiyan, the little son could easily take his place and obliterate her.
As it stood, it seemed that that was going to be her fate regardless: Goku had cupped his hands and brought them close to his waist, feet spaced out and bracing himself for what would come next. "KA" The blue-white glow materialized between his palms, and though she could replicate the technique flawlessly, this felt like an entirely different matter altogether. "ME" She had seconds to come up with a new plan. She was outnumbered, outgunned but not yet outwitted, and that would hopefully prove to be her saving grace. She rose slowly to her feet, not taking her eyes off of the growing ki blast as it pulsed and matured. "HA" She had almost had him last time, but she had been thwarted by the appearance of the rest of the Z-Fighters and their affect on the strongest of their number. But what if she turned it around, made that seemingly invincible bond dissolve and crumble? "ME" She had one chance, so she might as well take it.
"You kill me, and you kill thousands of those innocents you were so set on defending."
She waited with bated breath and a stony face.
"What do you mean?" She had him.
"All those people I absorbed, they are part of me now, their very souls a part of my power, and if I die then they don't get to come back with a mere wish. So by blasting me straight to Hell, you'll condemn all of those innocents to the same eternal punishments I'll receive. No middle ground on this one Goku; you have to choose between the life of one android, and the lives of untold thousands."
The ultimatum had the desired effect of startling not only Goku, but the rest of his group as well. Expressions of horror and realization were shared between all of them, and the glow of the Kameamea attack shrank and vanished into nothing. She would have told them that the number of those absorbed was more in the millions range when those from her native time were included, but she didn't wish to test their abhorrence in her. Now to go in for the kill.
"But I only want what I was created for: to be a perfect and whole being. Let me have Seventeen, and I will release all those I absorbed, free and unharmed."
And with those words, her trap was primed and set. She only needed for one of the others to speak so as to set it off. Once again, Trunks obliged in this regard.
"Goku, she's trying to manipulate you again. Don't listen to her!" The tinge of desperation showed that he hadn't thought his words out carefully enough; all the better for her then.
"So you would damn all those I absorbed? I thought you wanted to defend them, not pursue your petty grudge against all androids, no matter who gets hurt in the crossfire," Cell spat, appearing for all the world like she was disgusted with his choice. Trunks visibly paled as he realized what he had just stepped into and predictably tried to backtrack out of it.
"No! I'd never endanger others to fight the androids!"
"Really?" Cell cocked her head inquisitively, squinting at the young demi-saiyan with clear contempt. "I believe it was you who, no more than half an hour ago, blasted all of your allies aside to fire a destructive blast at Seventeen and Eighteen, putting all the rest in the danger of the detonation. You didn't even think, you just saw them as obstacles in your path and you needed them out of your way."
Trunks was rendered speechless, blood having completely deserted his face now. Yamcha tried to come to his defense. "He didn't have any way of knowing that we had come to an agreement with those two, that we weren't going to fight each other!" Fuel for the fire.
"So he was also going to gun them down when they weren't going to raise any kind of resistance? Just kill two defenseless beings like a rabid animal?"
Yamcha gaped, stunned into silence right alongside his friends. Goku was looking back and forth between Cell and the six at his back, eyes beseeching them to say that she was lying, that they hadn't tried to descend to the likes of Frieza in the attempt to accomplish their goals. But none of them could argue back, none of them could honestly dispute her claims. And none of them could say that the life of one was worth more than the lives of thousands. But they had already lost his instinctive trust.
Cell had made them the villains of this situation.
"I..." Goku began, voice sticking in his throat. Gohan saw something in his father's eyes, something that scared him more than facing down the arcosian tyrant or going head to head with the Legendary Super Saiyan: he saw anger directed at his friends.
"Dad! You can't listen to her! She's just trying to turn you against us. There's no telling if she will even uphold her end of the arrangement if you do help her!"
Goku clenched a fist, the knuckles popping loudly in the silence that hung thick around them. "What other choice do I have? Kill her and find out we really can't wish back all those she absorbed and have all the blood of all those people on my hands? I can't allow that." Slowly, like the will of nature itself, Goku turned around and faced the Z-Fighters. "Where is Seventeen?"
"Goku!" Tien gasped, a personal nightmare of his coming to life, as it was for all the others. "You can't-"
"Where. Is. Seventeen." Goku ground out, hating what he was doing, but hating even more the consequences of the alternative.
"Dad, we can't just let her take him!"
"I still might be able to beat her. You are all so afraid of what she'll become that you haven't even bothered to think of our chances. You and I are stronger than we ever though we could be, Gohan. Who's to say that she'll overpower us? Who's to say that we aren't worrying over anything!?" This last came as a shout as the Earth raised saiyan felt the floor drop out beneath him. His friends and allies had always believed in him, had always backed up his decisions. But now they were advocating the permanent deaths of all those people, and in fear that he wouldn't be able to defend the Earth as he always had.
Gohan, realizing that his father had made a decision, knew that it landed on his shoulders to prevent the catastrophe that would happen if they allowed Seventeen to be absorbed by this creature. Allowing his aura to burst into life, he charged forward, straight at Cell, with enough energy built up in his hand to disintegrate her outright. He had barely covered the distance before a lightning fast punch connected with his face and sent him tumbling across the ground. Rolling onto his feet, the young warrior felt his heart drop when he saw that it was his very father who had stopped him. Hurt and betrayal filled him, but they gave rise to an abrupt anger that burned through his veins like an inferno.
Roaring at the top of his lungs, he launched himself at Goku and the two Full Powered Super Saiyans clashed at speeds the others couldn't hope to follow at all. Conussive bursts and bright coronas of golden energy erupting in the air was the only indication of the colossal fight that was occurring right above their heads.
"Well now," Cell murmured, a smug grin contorting her purple lips like a mocking caricature of the expression, "it seems it falls to me to find out where you've hidden darling Seventeen." She licked her lips while the horrified and already drained Z-Fighters recoiled, now without any means of defense. "Who wants to volunteer?"
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With a gigantic splash, Seventeen broke the surface of the water, Piccolo clutched in his grasp. The namekian had miraculously regrown his entire body from his severed head, though the effort had drained him of his last drop of energy and he would have met a watery grave without the android's assistance. As it was, he was still completely unconscious – as well and completely naked.
Seventeen had looked for the lost body, but it seemed to have withered away, taking the traditional purple gi with it, so he was left awkwardly trying not to think about it while he set the green alien down on a knoll in direct sunlight. Hopefully, his regenerative powers would kick in and he would start recuperating before too long.
Seventeen and Trunks had sped back to this no name island when the half breed had felt Goku engaging, and completely outmatching Cell, carefully skirting around the edges of the fight to retrieve the fallen Z-Fighters. Obviously, Seventeen had said that he would search the surrounding ocean for his one time opponent while the others went to see if they could back up Goku, or at least watch the fight. Something about seeing that they hadn't died to buy him time to escape, Sixteen in particular, had felt somehow...heartening to the raven haired android, even though he couldn't rightly explain why. The loss of his sister must be messing with him more than he had thought.
Walking to the edge of the island and looking in the direction Trunks and the others had flown off in, he couldn't really see any sign of the conflict going on for a few minutes, but all too soon the distinct golden flashes of a super saiyan's aura could be spied even from this distance, filling up the sky several miles away like a dazzling fireworks show. Delayed by distance, the booms and crashes of supersonic combat followed soon after, somewhat muted.
Glancing back in Piccolo's direction, Seventeen determined that there really wasn't much more he could do to help the namekian's recovery. If Goku was as strong as Trunks and Korrin had claimed, then it should be perfectly safe for him to watch the saiyan destroy that disgusting monster and avenge his sister. He took to the air and sped towards the battle, not realizing that he was possibly dooming them all.
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The two super saiyans circled each other as they rose through the air, furiously exchanging punches and kicks. The had trained together for a whole year, and knew each others moves as well as they did their own. And while Goku had far more experience and control, Gohan's rage was proving a very adequate compensation.
Each blow was packed with enough destructive potential to restructure the face of the planet, or even to destroy it piece by piece, but they endured and evaded them as they would any other, on another level of strength entirely from what the others could relate to. But still neither went all out; how could they when it was father against son? For as much as the other needed to win, they couldn't bring themselves to launch a potentially fatal offensive.
No words were exchanged, none could even be thought of. They were both betraying the other on such a fundamental level that they had no idea how they could ever broach the gaping rift that had been torn between them in just a few seconds. For now though, they would fight and do everything they could to overpower the other and ensure that their goal was accomplished, come what may afterwards.
Below, Cell was picking apart the meager resistance the Z-Fighters were presenting. Trunks was the only who had been healed at all since their last engagement, but it was only barely enough for him to transform, and that had already been determined to be far too little to match her indomitable strength. She was feeling so much better than she had just minutes before, when she was facing death down the barrel, and decided that she could again show some mercy and refrain from ripping their heads from their shoulders. It was almost fun to watch their horror rise higher and higher as she brushed off their attacks like they were nothing. Not even the single Destructo Disc Krillin managed to dredge up could cut her anymore, so lacking in power that she allowed it to break against her back like a poorly made snowball.
Trunks was the only one she needed, being the one she knew to have escaped with Seventeen, so he was the only one that she didn't eventually knock out cold. When it was just him left standing, Cell could practically see the well worn terror in his eyes from all his brushes with his own versions of Seventeen and Eighteen, the hopelessness and tantalizing fear that she could smell on the air like a beast. And like a beast, she knew that he was prey.
"One chance, since I feel so charitable right now. I'll give you only one chance to tell me where Seventeen is willingly before I decide to employ," she allowed her tail to coil over her shoulder point threateningly at the immobile half saiyan, "much more invasive methods."
The fear redoubled behind his teal eyes at the prospect of being absorbed into her like all the countless victims he had seen traces of in all those towns and cities they had chased her to but been to late to save anyone.
"He's...He's already far away from here..." he stammered, unconsciously taking a step away, and then another, as crept towards him, her tail never wavering in its aim. "I-I told him to hide where...where you could never find him. Even if you absorb me, you won't know where he is because I don't know." His primal, animalistic side was warring spectacularly against his natural heroism, she noted with coy amusement, but it didn't hide the fact that he was a terribly liar and fidgeted badly when trying to fool her. He knew alright, and soon, so would she.
Sooner than she thought, as it turned out. Because even as she was moving in to stab the super saiyan with her stinger like tail, the very object of her ambitions flew in from the horizon, stopping only a short distance away. His pale blue eyes took in the scene quickly, shock and alarm easily evident in his expression. Trunks, noting her distraction, looked where she was and audibly groaned in dismay, any fleeting hope he may have had vanishing into air like vapor.
"Oh Seventeen, you do my heart well by returning to where you belong. I knew that you were such a clever young man, even if a bit crass." Cell practically cackled, fingers twitching with excitement as she absently whipped Trunks across the face with her tail, knocking him aside as his transformation burned out. "And here I was, expecting to have to force you out of hiding like a bird in the bushes. No mater, no matter; all that repugnant behavior is behind up now. Come, let us watch the show before we fulfill our destinies." She gestured upwards, and Seventeen couldn't help but follow with his eyes towards what he had believed to be Goku fighting Cell, but now realized what it was he was truly seeing: the death of hope.
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Goku had felt such hope, such pride when he and Gohan had exited the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. He had thought that they had not only found the means to save the planet, but had also become closer as a family, truly bonding as father and son like they hadn't done since before Vegeta and Nappa had arrived on Earth years ago now.
But those feelings had been brutally ripped from his chest when his Gohan had chosen the greater of two evils, the choice he had thought none of them would be so heartless as to make. For his own child to do so proved that they were still as distant and alienated from each other as ever, two strangers playing at closeness.
It broke his heart worse than he could ever say, and it only broke further that they were forced to fight. But even with all that emotional baggage, the longstanding hero of Earth wouldn't back down from his ideals and fought with all the focus and resolve he would bring to any other fight, forced to view Gohan as just another opponent or else risk slipping up. He couldn't fail all those people, not as his closest friends had failed him, not as his son was doing. He would prevail, and then...then he hoped that he could forgive them all. That this would just become one of their stories they told at their get-togethers.
But if he wanted there to be a peaceful future, he couldn't afford to lose now, and that meant he needed to bring Gohan down. Allowing an opening to form in his defenses, Gohan tried to lash out with a kick to his thigh, but Goku twisted with it and took hold of the other super saiyan's leg, spinning around once as he pulled both of them towards the ground and smashing Gohan into the ground, knowing that wouldn't be enough and proceeded to smash him several more times with similar rolls, each impact leaving the island with gaping pockmarks and scars that would never heal.
Gohan fired a one-handed ki blast, trying to shake loose the hold on him but missing entirely. He tried again and again, adding frantic kicks to the flurry as he was further bashed into hard rock. On the last swing, he managed to bring his other foot up and caught himself before the crash. With the steadied purchase, he fired off another blast that managed to clip the shoulder of the arm Goku was holding him with. Goku let go, but he didn't do so lightly, bringing a kick in to blindside the younger saiyan. Not letting up, he ducked under and around the counter kick that would have caught him in the jaw and rammed his fist into Gohan's stomach, driving the wind from his lungs with a wheezing gasp. Another, and then another punch followed, each fueled with the desire to end this fight as quickly as he could. Before he knew it, he had descended into a storm of rapid fire punches that were driving Gohan further and further into the rock beneath him.
The second the golden glow escaped Gohan's spiky hair, Goku froze his arm mid-punch, breathing raggedly and not entirely from exertion. Staggering back, he couldn't bare to look at what he had done to his boy and turned away sharply, tears burning in his eyes. Trying to get himself under control, he breathed deeply for several seconds before turning to face Cell, Seventeen frozen in place a little ways away from her.
Without preamble, he nodded jerkily at the bio-roid and hung his head in shame, feeling like a failure despite his success. Almost a whisper, he managed to mumble "Don't forget your promise."
Cell appraised him with a startlingly serious expression, looking over to where Gohan rested in his bed of stone and to all the other Z-Fighters and Sixteen, all of them incapable of stopping her. "As we agreed," she assented without mirth or sarcasm. "All the lives I absorbed in exchange for Seventeen's."
The surviving android felt sick. He had been the linchpin of a deal made with the devil? He wanted to rage against it, to hate Goku as much as he hated Cell, to call him a coward and curse his name.
But...what if someone had told him they could bring Eighteen back if he killed one of them, a random person of the street? Would he really refuse such an offer, when she was half of his whole world? Would he endure the necessary evils if only for his sister to have a better fate than what she had gotten?
"Goku." He spoke quietly, the fight leaving his body. The tortured saiyan looked up at him, with miserable eyes that spoke of a deep self-loathing that should never have been in such a kind heart. "Tell Trunks that...tell him you made the only decision you could. That you-" he broke off, not really knowing what to say to make his predetermined enemy understand that he wasn't to blame. "Tell him that not all androids are bad, yeah? That some of us still have a little bit of humanity left in us to feel. He should know that he didn't fail by coming back. He deserves that much."
Giving a halfhearted smile, he turned towards Cell and steeled himself as best he could. "Alright you overgrown creepy crawler, let's get this over with."
Cell couldn't smother the smile, nor did she even want to. At long last, she had succeeded, and her destiny lay before her. Willing the end of her tail to extend with a horrific noise, she took the few steps separating them quickly and brought the hungry aperture down over Seventeen's head.
Within seconds, he was gone, sucked up through the length of her tail and into her body. For several seconds, nothing moved...
And then Hell came to Earth.
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The storm of power was felt the world over. The sky grew dark and winds kicked up to hurricane levels in seconds. Bodies of water around the planet erupted into sea spouts and flooded the coastlines. The atmosphere itself was distended into space like a horrible growth.
People from every continent felt the ground beneath their feet shake without explanation, and those more in tune with their inner ki could feel the elemental wrongness that had appeared on the planet, even if they themselves didn't understand the feeling. Even in the far reaches of space, multiple species looked up into the sky as the wave of energy resonance reached them from billions of miles away. Some thought it to be a trick, while many others believed that it was a message from the gods themselves.
As for the beings that acted as gods, only one was particularly aware of what was occurring, and he was more than powerless to stop it. The others felt a chill run up their spines as some ingrained instinct sent a out a warning, but they dismissed it after being unable to identify the source of such distress.
At the very epicenter of the event, Goku had frantically gathered up his friends and allies, shielding them from the brunt of the force with his own power, but he was hard pressed as it was. Nothing he had ever felt before could match this singular event, and despite himself, he could feel his saiyan blood heating up with the prospect of a truly equal opponent. He knew that this was wrong, but his heritage demanded it.
For what felt like endless hours, the opaque dome of writhing power kept sending out the merciless pulses of energy that shamed the capabilities of Frieza's entire family and bashed against his defenses without pause. Sixteen was convulsing as all of his electrical components screamed in protest, but Goku had no way of helping him. He couldn't see what was happening inside that zone, but he knew that whatever came out would far surpass even the likes of Broly at his worst.
The battle for the fate of the Universe was about to commence.
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Almost anticlimactically, the winds died down quickly and the overwhelming power subsided to almost nothing. The sudden loss of light in a dark world was terrifying in its own right.
And then the shroud of shadow covering the globe broke in a brilliant geyser of blessedly warm light, the nights redeeming dawn. But this was only the start of the night, leading into the midnight of every living soul on planet Earth.
Goku blinked away the sudden spots in his vision, keenly watching the indistinct blob of energy that now hung suspended above a smooth and symmetrical crater ranging nearly the entire surface of the island. Groans from behind him told him that the others were finally coming to, but he had to block that out for now.
Slowly, practically leisurely, the cylindrical mass of pale green energy descended down into the shallow crater, losing more and more of its luminescence as it went. Just as it touched down on the razed earth, the glow dissipated entirely and Goku and the rest could at last see the final form that the terror from the future took on.
Perhaps the most notable change at first was the size: before, Cell had been larger than Sixteen and built similarly – like she could effectively suplex a dump truck. But now it seemed like she had drastically shrunk, right down to normal human height and perhaps just slightly under Goku's. Her body had, well, definitely become much more feminine; with a much smaller frame, narrowing of the hips, lengthening of the legs and the unmistakable swell of modest breasts in the black, glassy substance that appeared to make up a chest guard over her pectorals. Her wings had also thinned out, as well as separate into halves, giving her four in total. The former horns now resembled hair more than ever, cradling her head in a long bob of purple so dark it could be excused as onyx. Her feet had, interestingly, also shrank to match her new size, but they had also abandoned the moccasin look and were now actual feet, with toes, arches and heels.
Her skin, previously mottled green and unsightly, had lightened all the way to the gray of steam, or smoke while the rest of her chitinous coverings became a uniform sea green, no longer speckled with splotches or dots of darker color. Pinkish sinews could been seen in open gaps around her joints and creases in her natural armor. Lastly, her face was now a far cry from the broad and barely female one preceding it: narrow, with angled cheek bones and a small, rounded chin, a pert nose resting beneath catlike eyes, now wine red with a kohl like liner, red streaks framing the sides of her face and the chin guard and ears had become a flat yellow, or golden.
She stood in utter silence, staring upward at apparently nothing but the sky. None of the assembled warriors felt like they should or even could break the deathly hush that had stilled the air. With agonizing slowness, the now completely female bio-roid brought her hands up to observe, flexing and clenching her fingers with interest. Maroon eyes slid over to take in the Z-Fighters watching her and she grinned, not maliciously, not mockingly, but with genuine glee.
"Well, looks like that turned out pretty well, huh? None too shabby if I do say so myself." She even sounded like her appearance suggested – a young, attractive woman, not too far off from Eighteen's own lilt. "What do you guys think? Too skinny? Too, uh," she looked down at the two additions to her figure on her chest, "well, yeah?" She shrugged, still grinning. "In any event,now you can officially call me perfect Cell."
Then she frowned, furrowed brow marring her otherwise smooth face, and even that looked good with her new features. "I think it's high time that I took a new name, one that isn't associated with those two desperate forms before this one. How about," she crossed her arms and perked her head slightly while she thought for a moment before giving a playful little smile. "S-E-L. Sounds the same, but looks completely different."
Then her entire body tensed, all of her muscles going rigid as one. She eased out of it while rolling her neck and arms to work out the kinks. Her grin turned predatory.
"So Goku, you wanted a fight? I think it's time you got one."
DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ-DBZ
AN: Fun Fact: 'Sel' is actually used in the anime. Try and find where for some good old fashioned DBZ binging.