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Bulma completely buried herself in the job of repairing Sixteen, allowing the numbers, scans and terms on her computer screen to dominate just about every waking thought. The goliath was usually pretty helpful, providing repair specs for delicate systems and instructions for the replacement of whole patches of his structure. When it came to his sensitive programming, he was forcibly rendered mute by the fail safes installed by the late Gero, but Bulma found that she was up to the task of circumnavigating the hateful doctor's meticulous but far from flawless digital matrices.
She was learning as she went, making new discoveries every time she looked in a different place, but that was how she liked it. After all, she had once re-programmed a scouter without understanding of the tech behind it or even compatible tools, and that had just been as a passing fancy. Now, she was determined to utterly thwart Gero and make sure that Sixteen walked out of her lab in even better condition than he had been when first activated.
Any second she wasn't working or passed out on her desk, she spent with her baby boy. It hurt, to look at his guileless face and see the sharp, aristocratic features of his father, but he was just such a beautiful and brilliant child that she wouldn't let that pain overshadow her fierce love for either of them. Making sure that he was fed and taken care of, she spent these short breaks in her schedule to grab a bite to eat, often the first she had had for hours, and try to connect with the future incarnation of her son.
Trunks was at first awkward around the heiress, but it didn't take long for a genuine bond to form between them, a pleasant blend of mother and son and as friends. She found that he was incredibly modest, not at all like his father in that regard, but he showed such a fiery determination about the things he viewed as important that it didn't take any stretch of the imagination to see the saiyan spirit burning behind his indigo eyes.
The teen from the future was doing a pretty good job of befriending the legends of his childhood. He fit right in with the more somber members of their little group, but he wasn't so far gone that he couldn't crack the occasional joke and goof around with the others. He and Krillin especially hit it off, which was not totally unforeseeable considering the diminutive warrior had also been the only one Vegeta really talked to.
(They all thought it had been because he was the only one besides Goku to really try and communicate with the prince, but the reality that nobody, not even Vegeta himself realized was that it was actually due to Krillin being the only one to try kill him when he had attacked Earth years before and been defeated. Showing that he had been willing to end his enemy honorably after a trying and gruesome fight, Krillin had endeared himself to Vegeta as someone he could at least respect, if not trust. Lost some points for not actually killing him, got a few back for blindsiding Recoome, a few more for having the balls to cut off Frieza's tail and then taunt him, and then actually being worthy of addressing by name after his death sparked Goku's transformation. Vegeta had an odd sense of worthiness.)
He even talked with Sixteen, when the giant was capable of dialogue in one form or another, learning everything he could about the androids. His interest went beyond information gathering; he was making an effort to see the two cyborg's humanity, distancing them from the two monsters from his home. He still wasn't sure what he felt about this time's twins of terror, be it pity or contempt, but Sixteen, being an unknown, was starting on a far more empty slate, and after looking past the fact that he shared a heritage as the other two, Trunks couldn't help but find that Sixteen was actually a decent being to be around, mechanical parts or not. It still went against the very grain of his upbringing to even consider androids as anything less than murdering, heartless machines – but he was trying.
However, the time-traveler found that his attempts to befriend the present day Z-Fighters came upon a sudden and unexpected stonewall: Gohan.
The young boy never made any attempt to socialize with the only other half-saiyan, or even anyone else for that matter, not even when he had been included in a conversation. He was never to be found at CC, and even rarely stayed at his own home, despite the year he had been parted from it. His mother was working herself into a panic over his behavior, and his father was grim on the matter; he could guess very well why his son was avoiding them all, and there was no way he knew of to correct it. Not even Dende, the new Guardian of Earth and a past friend of the boy's, could draw anything but distant looks and terse, abbreviated replies from him.
As for the rookie Guardian, he had been rather excited to take up the vacant post, even after Goku and Piccolo had described the dangers associated in painful detail, something that secretly made the fused namekian fighter very proud of his young cousin. Besides bringing a very effective healing ability, he had also set about reestablishing the Earth's Dragon Balls; when questioned, he said that he could power them beyond their previous limitations, rendering them capable of wishing people back more than once and able to provide three wishes rather than just one. While this somewhat defeated the symbolic purpose of the Dragon Balls, the the two senior Z-Fighters had decided that it would be for the best if they had access to such an advantage.
The only problem with this new development was that the modifications would take weeks, if not months of dedicated concentration – you couldn't just alter powerful magical artifacts like you could a computer file, regardless of whatever Bulma said to that effect. Again, there had been some deliberation, but it was reasoned that they had no idea when Sel would return, and they might actually have the time to wait out the changes and make use of the three wishes before she returned to finish them off. It was a chance they couldn't not take.
The human warriors were healed up quickly by their new Guardian, making full recoveries from what would have put them out of the fight for far too long. Tien wanted to retreat to the mountains again and continue training, but an insistent Yamcha managed to drag him, a reserved Krillin, an uncertain Trunks and a very eager Roshi through a loud and high-speed weekend in the city, making sure that they all had at least something fun to remember in the days to come.
In all of this, the ever-present threat of the perfect android loomed, overshadowing. When the time came, they knew all too well that they were more than likely going to die along with their planet. But not one of them even considered running – they were heroes, after all. Even if the job really sucked sometimes.
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King Kai wisely contacted South Kai first with his idea. As he had predicted, the tallest of the lower Kais was the most receptive to his plea for a gathering of their fellows, albeit with the proper amount of stubborn refusal and reluctance. He hadn't forgotten what the northern galaxy warriors had done for him, but that didn't mean he couldn't exercise his right to complain.
Though it was no skin off his back, South suggested that he be the one to approach West Kai, seeing as the pint-sized braggart and North could hardly even be in the same sector of Otherworld without descending into a childish argument without purpose, and he didn't really want whatever it was North was planning to take too long and keep him away from his own duties...like napping.
This proved to be a very good idea, as King Kai had enough of a trial convincing East to join them in their meeting without worrying about his rival. As it was, East was utterly dismissive of North's claims of a threat that needed addressing; her's had been quadrant of the galaxy least troubled by nightmarishly powerful entities in the last so-and-so thousand years or so, so talk of Frieza and Broly hadn't ever really impressed her. It wasn't until North admitted that they might be facing something even worse than Bojack that she finally paid him some serious attention. Even she had been forced to witness some of the atrocities the galactic pirate had enacted in his rampage.
Despite their species natural tendency to put everything off 'till later, the lower kais of Universe 7 managed to gather together at the planet of their direct superior in just a week and a half, something of a record. The Grand Kai met them all in the meeting hall of his palace, a deceptively modest room in the vast building with shiny, white pillars encircling a rectangular table of the same material, North and East on one side, South and West on the other, and Grand Kai at the head, completely ignoring any symbolism they could have tied into the seating arrangement.
"M'kay," the elderly leader spoke up, once everyone had taken their seats and had a drink in front of them, "we're all here and the suspense is thick, so out with it North Kai."
All eyes, behind sunglasses or a monocle, turned to the blue god, who straightened up in his seat – he knew that he would have to speak very, very carefully if he wanted even a chance of enacting the Rube-Goldberg Machine of a plan he had been piecing together.
"Yes, thank you Grand Kai. And to the rest of you as well, for showing up on such short-"
"Damn right you should be thanking us!" West piped up, willing and capable of antagonizing the other kai every chance he got. The others groaned in annoyance; it wasn't the quickest the two had gotten into an argument over nothing, but it was pretty close.
But to all of their surprise, North didn't retort, even though they could see that he was clenching both fists and his jaw to stop himself. He waited a few seconds until he had calmed down a bit before continuing as if nothing happened. Grand didn't remark aloud, but this was the first real indication to him that the matter was serious indeed. (Both King Kai and Vegeta unknowingly shared a characteristic of keeping their snark to a minimum when the situation was dire enough, and those around them had all come recognize the signs pretty clearly, if somewhat unconsciously in most cases.)
"I asked you all here because a matter has arisen in my quadrant that I believe is a serious enough danger for the rest of you to become aware of it."
"Figures that trouble would pop up in your backyard North," West sneered, annoyed that his previous barb hadn't caught. It was South Kai that spoke up in retaliation.
"It may be in North's sector, but whatever it is, it's not his fault. I'm not going and blaming him for what that saiyan did to my own sector just because Planet Vegeta was in his jurisdiction. And let us not forget just who let the Big Getti Star slip through their fingers when the TechnO Empire collapsed."
West recoiled in embarrassment and frustration. He was never going to live that one down.
"Ah, yes, thank you South Kai. As I was saying: a scientist from the planet Earth, named Dr. Gero, had created several beings, some entirely mechanical and a few that were cyborgs – collectively called Androids. Nearly all of them were as strong as Frieza of the Arcos, and several were even stronger. They were crafted with sole intention of killing the one who did actually defeat Frieza, and they did indeed defeat him, even though he had gotten stronger since his showdown with Frieza."
"Would this be the 'Goku' you were bragging about at the last luncheon?" East inquired, leaning forward slightly.
"Well actually, it was both Goku and another surviving saiyan: Prince Vegeta. They had both achieved a racial transformation called 'Super Saiyan' and were far more powerful than nearly any mortal I've ever heard of."
"You refer to the two in past-tense," Grand Kai noted, taking a sip from his drink which left traces of foam in his snowy beard. "Did they die?"
"Yes, well no, but-" North halted the beginnings of a ramble. "Goku is alive on Earth and even stronger than ever, but Vegeta was struck down by Gero, poisoned with microscopic machines that ravaged his heart from the inside. He was allowed to keep his essence intact due to the deeds he had performed in the last several years, but he was sent to Hell in soul form, his body stuck on Earth thanks to the nanomachines still lacing his body. Despite this, he still managed to get back to Yemma's check-in station and then cross Snake-Way to alert me to the danger on Earth, though he does not wish to return to life and rejoin the family he had started there."
"These androids do sound ferocious, but I would hardly call them a danger worth the consideration of us kais." Grand Kai surmised as he picked at the loose strands of his denim jacket, uncomfortably knowledgeable on the topic of absentee fathers.
"I agree," South linked both hands and rested his chin on the index fingers. "You seem to be overreacting about this whole thing. You said that Goku had gotten much stronger; shouldn't he be able to handle these androids easily?"
"That's just it – the androids themselves weren't the real threat after all. Turns out, another creation of Gero had come back through time, as a future version of Vegeta's son did to warn the Earth warriors of the androids in the first place."
"Time Travel is a serious affront to the rules the kais before set eons ago!" West snapped, standing up and placing both hands on the table, leaving smudges that Grand Kai frowned at. "Perhaps we should be looking at just how many breaches of nature your precious saiyans and earthlings have committed."
"WOULD YOU JUST LET ME FINISH!?" North finally exploded, slamming both fists down onto the table, gritting his teeth and hissing in breaths. "I'm trying to prevent a catastrophe the likes of which our generation has never seen!"
West was somewhere between indignation at being yelled at and intimidated from the undisguised anger in the other kai's voice. It wasn't often at all that the low level gods came to blows, but there was a good reason that North had earned the title 'King', and not even West was willing to push the matter if the risk of getting slammed into the ground was greater than that of just another bout of childish arguing.
"Calm down, North Kai m'boy." Grand Kai, ever the mediator between his endeared underlings, held up both palms, urging the two to settle down. West was quick to sit back, glad for an easy out. North seethed for a second more before slumping back, the worry for his students, their families, and everyone in the northern quadrant of the galaxy weighing his shoulders down. Rubbing at his eyes beneath the ever present sunglasses, he resumed his explanation.
"The creature that came back, a being known as Cell, came to absorb two of the other androids and obtain it's 'Perfect' form. Vegeta observed the fight from a looking glass in Hell, and saw how after it absorbed just one of the androids it became far stronger than before. And now that it's absorbed both, its full power is greater than anything Goku could manage. I've been looking in on the Earth and saw that Cell has actually promised its destruction and the death of everyone on it when she returns from a trip into space. Already she's destroyed one planet like it was nothing, and slaughtered entire armies just for kicks."
"She?" East perked up, feeling oddly vindicated that the next apparent threat to the Galaxy was female. It was always some beefed up male with a positively medieval sense of gender roles that was upsetting the delicate balancing act that was life in the cosmos.
"Yes, 'she'," North affirmed tiredly, somewhat guessing at what the short speed-demon was thinking about. "Cell is too powerful for the warriors that wait to face her on Earth, even if they devote all the time they have left to training. When she returns, she will destroy them, then the planet, and then anything else she deems unfit. She must be stopped."
"So you gathered us to discuss possible means of stopping her?" South queried, inching his glass around with a finger. "Do you think that we should take similar measures as we did with Bojack?" The other three members of their group showed differing signs of apprehension at this, but North absently waved his hand to dispel the notion.
"No, nothing like that. Even if I thought we could trap Cell, who has thus far proven to be just as devious as she is powerful, we would risk releasing Bojack from his prison with our powers so divided. I can't just stop one threat at the cost of unbinding another."
"So what then?" West spoke, the first time in the whole gathering that he hadn't been needling his rival. He appeared thoughtful, pondering the ramifications of something possibly even worse than the Pirate. "I take it that you do actually have a plan, something that you need all of us to help you with; otherwise you would have kept the problem to yourself and let your little martial artists handle it."
Grand Kai drummed his leathery fingers along the edge of the table, looking at the four overseers of the galaxy with interest – nothing this exciting had happened since Big B had rampaged about, and before him it had been the TechnOs a few millenia past. He took his position very seriously (a sentiment his easily irritated son didn't share), but he sure did enjoy it when the fireworks were happening.
"Yes, I had a plan," North admitted, looking, for the first time since they had all got there, somewhat sheepish and self-conscious, "but I'm preeeeety sure none of you are going to like it. At all."
"I doubt it could be that bad," East dismissed instantly audibly scoffing; she didn't get riled up easily.
"I have to agree with East here," South mumbled, having sat back in his tall-backed chair and let his head lean back against it. "You do tend to blow these things out of proportion. Remember when your planet was demolished by Lord Beerus and you wanted to declare a state of emergency?" North puffed up in annoyance.
"First off, it had been kind of a big deal because I happened to be on that planet when he blew it up for no good reason. And secondly, you're the only person who still pronounces his name that way anymore."
"It's the southern pronunciation."
"Pffft."
This last interruption had come from West, who didn't believe in accents, despite boasting one of his own. "We're getting off track here. North, what was it that you thought we would be so opposed to?"
The others quieted down immediately and looked once more to the blue kai, now nervously coughing into his fist. Grand Kai meaningfully nudged North's crystalline glass of mystery drink towards him, somehow indicating with a waggle of his bushy eyebrows that he should just come out and say whatever it was that he had planned, or else it would just get harder and harder every second.
"Alright, well," North took a quick drink, "I don't think it feasible or even advisable that we try to take action against Cell directly, there's no telling what chaos she could wreck if we did, or even if we might succeed. I believe that we need to approach this from a more...secondary position."
"What?" East quirked an eyebrow in annoyance.
"No, that wasn't quite right. I mean that we need to...to...we can't just take a piece off of the board to solve our problems – we need to thinks three steps beyond."
"And how do you propose we finish this board game metaphor?" Grand Kai asked, excited despite himself.
"Instead of taking away a piece...we put one in."
He told them his plan.
They didn't like it.
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Sel had, admittedly, been indulging herself a bit. For most others this might mean some secreted sweets, or splurging on a luxury expense, or even just napping all day. To each their own. But in Sel's case, it was less about chocolates or pajamas and more about smashing her way through hordes of enemies with her bare fists.
She'd pick a planet at random, sometimes provided with the name of it thanks to a very foggy and distant memory from either Frieza or Vegeta, taunt whichever government or religion held the most power until she was public enemy number one, and then let them throw their miserable might against her like dust mites taking on a brick wall that fought back. She delighted in the expressions they made when some ultimate attack, or unbeatable weapon completely and hilariously failed against her, oftentimes without her even having to lift a finger. She had especially enjoyed the planet with the gross, smelly little runts with bulbous side-eyes and the shamans that could very briefly stop time, because they made the funniest noises when she instantly tracked them down when they thought they had escaped her.
She was having...'fun',would probably be the word for it. She had spent so little time on anything but achieving perfection over the years that she only now realized that she had absolutely no idea what she liked to do, or what interests she might have. Everything was a new experience for her, and everything was always worth a second look.
She didn't just smash entire armies before lunchtime. On several worlds, peaceful centers of civilization, she had walked through teeming markets, tranquil parks, bustling downtowns, roaring stadiums. She was rarely even the strangest looking one there.
She had taken a beginners lesson in pottery - something Gero would never even had considered including in her itinerary – but couldn't help glowing with pride upon seeing the plain, unadorned, but flawlessly shaped pot fresh from the kiln. She learned numerous languages, through speech and script, and read the native novels of a dozen different star systems. She went to some kind of festival celebrating that planet's harvest season where she was pulled into a giant group dance, whirling about and joining hands with countless revelers until she fell on the sidelines, laughing uncontrollably, a delicate bracelet strung with blue and orange beads now around her wrist. She played with them idly, twisting them about on the twine to observe every defect or whorl in the stone.
Basking on the glowing beaches of some resort moon, she was intrigued to see that she was attracting the attention of several males of different races. Nearly all of her life had been spent as a monster that was constantly lurking in the shadows, a nightmare in flesh as well as deed. To be seen as a woman was...well, it certainly could be flattering, if they knew well enough to leave her alone and not bother her. Those that did met with what she deemed approriate recompense, variable on the severity of the trespass, ranging from puncturing their egos in front of everyone, to flicking their heads off their shoulders and into orbit like bottle caps.
However, in the midst of all her revelry and discoveries, she came face-to-face with the darker aspects of the galaxy all too frequently: entire planets still under the facist thumb of the decaying PTO; slum planets where the inhabitants desperately struggled every day just to find a scrap of food to stave off the gnawing and everpresent hunger; whole economies that relied on the crushing labor of slaves; large, open-air arenas where people would be put into blood sports just for the demented amusement and profit of the onlookers.
She watched these acts of depravity, selfishness and brutality for days on end with a critical eye. She wasn't such a hypocrite that she condemned them as actions and decisions she was above, or even had the position to judge. Gero had always said that everything had a place in the systems they belonged to, be they prey or predator, and she was the ultimate predator. She should, by right of birth, struggle and strength be the pinnacle of any and every food chain she turned her eye to. There were no others like her for a reason - perfection was not a trait possible to share with any but herself. She was...she was perfect, in all senses.
Her ensless observations turned to ruminiation, which evolved into reflection, and which finally birthed revelation. She was Perfect. A being, not even originally from this timeline, who had pursued a seemingly impossible destiny and had emerged from all conflict more singular and distinct than before. She had grown beyond the mortal constructs of wants and desires. She never again needed to weigh the pros and cons before acting. If her whim was to do so, then she would do so. No one could match her strength, no one could question her resolve, and nobody, not a soul, could lay claim to even a fraction of the potential that had allowed her to move heavan and earth to become more than it was ever thought possible to be. When one was given the power to rule, one must rule.
Her decisions were the final word. She executed those she saw as blights, malign agents to her grand territory. Entire worlds vanished into debris and fire as they failed her tests, proved that they were nothing but liabilities. She sculped solar systems to her liking, often removing a moon or planet if it interfered with the lighting, or shaving down coastlines to be more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
On the planets she deemed worthy of her patronage, she would come them and educate. Many stilll tried to fight, but she began to exercise patience, killing only as many as it took to quell the treasonous reactions. She told them of their new place in her domain, one that reached from the furthest possible star to the other. She would show them her radiance, illuminate their lives with knowledge of her existance and amazing power. For the worlds that especially pleased her, she came up with a little ceremony to reward them; using a nail, she would cut along the palm of her hand before rubbing it along the face of a stone monolith she had summoned and shaped from the earth around them. The arcing streak of her purple blood would remind them that their goddess had smiled upon them, and their children would hear stories of this day, as would their own children, and so on, long after the elements had eroded the monument.
Her age had begun, and she could luxuriate in knowing that she had finally found her place in the wide universe, at long last. She had been born into conflict, but was now untouchable.
Untouchable...except by a handful of warriors who shared her cells. They were the only remainder of the life she had cast off like a shed skin, and it wouldn't do to let them continue on as extensions of the time before her ascendancy. It was her obligation to put the past, and them to rest.
It was high time for a homecoming...
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A robotic device, no larger than a bird, zipped through the atmosphere of the planet, experiencing only mild strain from the hefty gravitational pull. Even as it arrived, a pinprick on the horizon soared straight upward and into space – Sel, departing from the newly sanctified planet.
With only an oscillating purr to mark its presence, the drone took note of her trajectory, running up a projected path forwards but also recreating her flight back. Following the numbers, it arrived before a four sided pillar of luminescent white stone, sides completely smooth and unblemished save for a ribbon of color on one face; blood.
A sensor reader extended from the remote device and and made contact with the biological material, able to read all the data from even dried matter. The integrated computing system parsed the information provided, filtering until it had categorized the DNA strands. Pulling from information held in the central mainframe, the disparate DNA samples were identifed as mutated variants of human, namekian and, most importantly of all, saiyan. Exactly the group of individual species that being hunted for
Lightyears away, amid torrents of transmitted data from thousands of identical probes, a primal satisfaction filled a dark heart. The long hunt was over, and now it was time to close in for the kill.
"Found you."
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In another section of space, farther away than any mortal could possibly travel to in their lifetimes, the life form known as Whis was swapping out the God of Destruction's linens, albeit around his sleeping form.
Unexpectedly, the cat like deity's eyes cracked open blearily, despite still being decades before he had set his alarm.
"Oh, Lord Bills, did I wake you?" Whis asked moderately, fluffing out a pillow as he did.
"S'not how you prununce," the God mumbled, almost entirely still asleep, "'s Beerus." And then he was back asleep, snoring lightly and rolling away from his attendant.
Whis allowed himself a weary sigh, summoning his ringed staff to hand. Tapping it once on the floor beneath him, he sent out a subtle alteration in the fabric of the universe, changing a simple fact to a new one. Entirely unobtrusive, it would be an undetected shift for any who knew the name of the Destructor.
Still, this was the third time Lord Beerus had changed how his name sounded in the last millenia alone, and it was getting expensive to replace all of the pre-signed stationary.
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