"Whoa, this is seriously amazing!" Pearl squeaked out when a yellow-skinned, slender alien in plain villager clothing served her a round lump of cheese with a sweet black cherry sauce. "This sauce looks like Takoyaki, but it's actually as sweet as cherries!"

Yamcha smiled, looking happy to see his fiancé having the time of her life. After dealing with their rampaging alien monster problem for them, they were not only happy enough to give Yamcha and Pearl their Ultimate Dragon Ball, but also whip them up a feast. Pearl looked as overjoyed as a glutton like Goku would have been to try out all the different desserts from across the universe. Even if it took them a while, Yamcha and Pearl have finally scored their first Ultimate Dragon Ball!

"Tako… Yaki?" the slender and short, feeble-looking alien with a round and disproportionately large head and a single antenna sprouting out of the top of their head, making their heads look like berries in a way, muttered. "We do not have a dish like that here. The black cherry sauce is the pride and joy of the Planet Banna culture. It is difficult to imagine that there are sweets somewhere in this universe that can compare to it."

"Takoyaki ain't sweet," Pearl pouted. "It's a type of snack made of flour. You're supposed to stuff them with octopus bits. They're more salty than sweet…"

"Y-You eat other creatures!?" the horrified alien leaned back in a bit of cultural shock before overcoming the struggle with the truth and clearing his throat. "Well, I suppose that explains why you're tough enough to defeat the Pufferpon. It too eats the heads of the Bannans it catches. It's… Horrific…"

Pearl stood up and comforted the weeping Bannan by rubbing his back. The alien relaxed with a pant and sort of got into it, wiggling in a rhythm according to the beat of the back rubs while wearing a sublime facial expression.

"Now that you got me talking about octopi, you guys kind of look like octopi from the head down. You're so pudgy and gooey, weak to the point of being malleable," Pearl noted only for the Bannans surrounding the lavish feast party to gasp, stand up, and stagger back in terror. Even the poor guy who was enjoying Pearl's back rub before pressed to the ground, crawling back with a horrified look on his face.

"Y-You mean… You're going to make Takoyaki out of us?" the appalled alien gasped.

"What? Eww, no… I was just making some small talk. We may eat octopi, but we don't eat people we meet…" Pearl crossed her arms and turned around, looking almost offended that the mind of her newly met friend even went there.

"Oh… I apologize if we offended you, however… It's really hard to say when you intend to eat someone or not. After all, you eat other living beings after all," the Bannan bowed in apology a few times with embarrassment apparent on his expression.

"Honestly, you guys should try eating some meat too sometimes," Yamcha pressed his hands to his hips. "You going full vegetarian might be why you're so awfully weak that even a giant, walking pufferfish with teeth is bullying you around. I still think you should have cooked it and ate it up. I've never tasted seafood that lives on land."

"We apologize, but we simply cannot take the life of another living creature, even for the sake of eating it. Besides, after living off of fruits, vegetables, and berries for so long, I'm not sure that our bodies would even know how to digest a living creature…" the Bannan politely refused Yamcha's advice.

Yamcha's eyes became transfixed on a whip of something he hadn't seen before on this planet. It was a long, green tail with a bone-like stinger at the end. Just as the thought of just how strange this sight was began bugging Yamcha, he heard a pair of gruesome thuds and horrified screams. Alerted by the ruckus, the Bannan in front of Yamcha wanted to turn around to look at what all this noise was about only for his surprise to remain rooted in his chest as a tight grip locked around his throat and tilted the helpless alien into the air.

"That's why you're a useless evolutionary dead-end," a curious creature resembling a bipedal, humanoid insect with green armor colored like the Namekian skin, gemstones over on its shoulders and chest, exactly like the ones Frieza had, and a pale white skin underneath to complete the impression hissed. The long tail, equipped with a dangerous-looking stinger, was exactly the thing that Yamcha saw earlier and it dangled low and close to the ground level, underneath a pair of hefty armored wings. The arms and legs of the monster were fashioned after the Saiyan armor, even to where the adamantine chitin shell resembled the Saiyan armor material to the point. The creature's face was the most uncanny feature of all, mimicking the appearance of either human or Saiyan face, albeit submerged in the weirdness of the other features.

With a twitch of his hand, before Yamcha could fully cope with what had happened, the murderous creature that broke the backs of two more Bannans on its way to this particular, scared Bannan who kicked and thrashed helplessly in Cell's grip, snapped the alien's neck and flung the corpse aside. Pearl screamed from the side, but Yamcha's clueless and lost look betrayed that he wasn't quite in the here and now to hear it. It was only when Pearl's screech reached a particular pitch and volume that it forced Yamcha back to reality and prompted him to adopt a fighting stance.

"You scumbag!" Yamcha grunted. "What did you do that for? Who are you?"

"My name is Cell. You not knowing who or what I am suggests that Bulma's communications hadn't reached you yet. Could your business in this clueless backside world have left you so busy that you didn't have the time to jump on the line?" Cell wondered, bending its arm to stroke its chin while it posed leaning back and whipping around with its tail. "I see now that I was right to pick you as my first opponent. You really are the bottom of the barrel if it took you so long to solve your business on such a worthless planet."

"Y-You monster!" a wailing Bannan holding the corpse of a lifeless alien in its hands called out to Cell with a teary and grieving glare. "How dare you mock our planet? Such a foul, cold-hearted monster, of all things!"

"Am I wrong though?" Cell turned his side and glared at the Bannan whose entire body froze in fear upon being gazed at by this merciless and cold killer. "This planet is warm, beautiful, and dry. It has no terrifying monsters or dinosaurs, no natural disasters or threats to bolster your kind. I pity you, you poor, worthless creatures, shell-less mollusks. It is the struggle that builds up character and inspires evolution. With no natural enemies, useless, evolutionary dead-ends like you end up thriving and making a mess of things. Thankfully, everything is about to change, because I am here now…"

Furious, Yamcha launched himself at this cruel and murderous monster who had the guts to mock the grief and challenge the very right of these poor aliens to exist and enjoy themselves on their home planet. With his arms by his side and his fingers positioned in a lion-paw stance, sharp like claws, Yamcha unleashed a dashing flurry of strikes, rattling Cell and sending it flying with one flurry, topped off with a double-hand thrust crashing into Cell's chest and resulting in the Bio-Android crashing into a faraway grassland hill and blowing it up as a result.

"Y-Yamcha-kun… What is that thing? What does it want?" Pearl cried out from behind a downed table, having placed herself as a human shield for the terrified and hiding Bannans.

"I don't know yet, nothing good, most likely. Don't worry, I won't let it do whatever it wants," Yamcha flashed his fiancé a thumb-up with a cocky smile before turning back to the hill he last saw Cell crashing into. What Yamcha found especially problematic was that he still couldn't feel the creature's Ki anywhere. It was almost like it was an Artificial Human.

Was that it? Was that what Bulma was meant to warn them about? Did Dr. Puri actually snap and start building Artificial Humans with the peerless forge of the converged Four-Stars? It was true that Yamcha goofed around on Planet Banna. Pearl was just having too much fun here, so Yamcha let her get acquainted with the locals and explore the culture some more. This was Pearl's first extra-terrestrial trip and… Maybe just a bit… Yamcha wanted to impress her.

"Yamcha-kun… Was it my fault?" Pearl wept while Yamcha frantically searched for the accursed creature. The desperation and anger on his face must have gotten to Pearl too. Throughout their entire stay here, and their trip across the universe, Yamcha always had everything under control. There were no bounty hunters, no bandits or extraterrestrial giant monsters that Yamcha couldn't easily handle and so seeing him like this, worked up to such an extent, after three Bannans got snuffed out in a snap with little to no fanfare, it made Pearl break down. Unsurprisingly.

"No!" Yamcha barked back.

"B-But… That monster said that Bulma was supposed to…" Pearl kept on weeping and fumbling her way through words.

"Don't you dare listen to a thing that creature says!" Yamcha lashed out. "It's just some murder robot, nothing more! I'll take care of it in no time flat and we can keep on adventuring together, and then, when we get back to Earth, we'll get married, just like I promised!"

A pair of arms grabbed hold of Yamcha's heels from underground, pulling him down and driving him neck-deep into the cool and soft Planet Banna soil. Almost at the same time, an elongated tail with a stinger erupted from underground like a spike and impaled another Bannan, who dropped dead on the spot the moment Cell retracted its tail back.

"Maybe I should stick around on this planet for a bit? Hell, maybe I should abandon Earth altogether and seek out miserable balls of fluff like this planet and drive evolution forward? The way these Bannans are right now, they're not even worthy draining of their energy. I'd probably burn more energy attacking them than gain after draining them." Cell wondered, staring at the cherry-red sky of Planet Banna. "Although, couldn't an apex predator also be someone who has become the greatest predator on every planet in the universe? Makes you think…"

Yamcha flared up with a violent expulsion of aura and burst forth from underground. He landed directly in front of Cell, twice his arm's reach, away from the living nightmare that followed them on Planet Banna. One thing that became incredibly apparent to Yamcha was that he needed to get Pearl away from this planet and this creature as fast as he could. So far, the wild things that Cell said barely connected to anything cohesive in Yamcha's mind, making talking to Cell on its own terms next to impossible.

"Although, I've already made such good progress on becoming the apex predator on Planet Earth. May as well keep at it," Cell turned and faced Pearl with a wicked smirk. Yamcha's eyes blanked out in dread. He placed two fingers over his forehead. With a sly smirk, Cell turned its attention away from Pearl and glared right at Yamcha at the same instant that the Earthling martial artist vanished. The last thing registering in Yamcha's brain was a sparkly red glint in the corner of Cell's right eye.

Yamcha pushed his way through the danger, with Pearl at stake, he wasn't worried that Cell might have picked up the dreadful habit of surpassing instantaneous travel with their natural speed that some of the recent enemies Yamcha fought had picked up. Yamcha instantaneously transmitted himself to Pearl's location, grabbed her elbow, and then transmitted again, seeking the Ki signatures back on Planet Earth. By now, Yamcha's mastery over Instant Transmission has become sufficient to perform such a drastic jump across the galaxy.


What Yamcha didn't expect to hear, however, was the swoosh noise that froze the tiny hairs on the back of his neck and made him quickly turn around to witness the only likely threat that could have followed him here to Earth using his own technique.

"Instant Transmission, such a nifty little technique. It sure beats flying through space and relying on Frieza race cells to survive such a trip," Cell marveled at himself after jumping across the galaxy immediately following Yamcha all the way from Planet Banna to the Sacred Land of Korin where numerous tents of the Karinga tribe spread wide across the luscious woods. Pearl's shrill scream raked Yamcha's ear as the woman staggered back and flopped on her rear in revulsion, seeing the horrifying monster from space follow them all the way home to Earth.

"Flying? Is that how you reached Planet Banna?" Yamcha clenched his fist, realizing that he had nowhere to run now that Cell could find him anywhere he'd decide to jump to. However, time was now in Yamcha's favor. With any luck, someone would reach them soon enough and, given how it's on Earth, backup couldn't have been far behind if he elevated his Ki and started fighting Cell.

"Of course," Cell nodded. "I felt like I have reached a plateau here on Earth, so I left for space. I've found myself in a very unenviable position of needing to power up, however, there was no one around fitting for that. Fighters left on this planet are either too weak to power me up substantially or offer any worthwhile techniques, or too strong for me at this stage. I knew almost immediately that you were the ideal target–not too weak, but not too strong either, your mastery of the Instant Transmission made for the ideal target, however, I thought I would need to kill far fewer people to force you to tuck your tail, run and show it to me."

"So, you were after the Instant Transmission all along," Yamcha's face became sour. However, he couldn't hate himself too much. He simply had to get Pearl away from Planet Banna somehow.

"It will be useful in helping me avoid tight spots and hunting down the others," Cell replied.

"The others?" Yamcha's eyes tightened with focus.

"Yes, Krillin, Tenshinhan, Bardock, and Vegeta, preferably in that order," Cell stuffed his knuckle under his chin, pondering on it while figuring out the ideal order. "Thanks to your technique, they won't be able to escape me."

Hearing the thunderous rumbling in the atmosphere, Cell reached for his forehead with two of his fingers while waving farewell to Yamcha. As if he were scolded by boiling water, Yamcha jumped to react, nearly attempting to follow the Bio-Android. Pearl called out to him and wrapped herself around Yamcha's right arm.

"No, Yamcha-kun, please don't go!" she screamed, shaking and crying. Cell vanished away from sight just as Chayote, Chi-Chi, Videl, Sharpner, Goten, and Navy all crashed down on the ground level, ready to rumble against and defeat Cell so that Goku and Piccolo needn't bother.

"Yamcha, what the heck happened here?" Chi-Chi barked out. "You weren't supposed to be here on Earth, so the moment we sensed your Ki, we got together and took off!"

"It was Cell, sorry, we missed Bulma's warning that we were supposed to look out for him. He copied my Instant Transmission and bolted before you could corner him," Yamcha explained the gist of it.

"Yamcha-kun, I'm sorry. I know you wanted to chase after that thing, but… It's too scary, I don't want you to fight that thing and get yourself killed," Pearl sniffled in a less than dignified position hanging on Yamcha's right arm and nearly kneeling on the ground. The poor lass experienced a lifetime of trauma in just a handful of minutes because of Cell's surprise appearance.

"It's okay, babe," Yamcha snickered, mimicking Goku's goofy, play-everything-off nature. "It's not like I could have followed Cell with his Ki signature being untraceable anyway. Now, the entire universe is his playing field and there's nothing we can do to stop him. But you're safe here. He doesn't actually want to kill you, he just used you as bait to lure my technique out."

The chilling snapping sound made Yamcha's heart sink to his heels. With him, the Yardratans, and now Cell being the only potential users of Instant Transmission, it didn't take a cunning genius to imagine who it was this time. Within a mere moment, Yamcha felt a tight grip of a tail locking around his throat and elevating him into the air.

"Oh, I forgot one more thing. I'm not just going to let good Ki go to waste. Better drain you dry before looking up Krillin," Cell uttered before vanishing again. With Cell having caught Yamcha in such a dangerous position, easily able to snap his neck or blast a hole in him from behind if he wanted to, no one dared interrupt his taunt until it was too late, and Cell and Yamcha were away.

"NO!" Pearl screamed out with so much sheer panic in her voice that she lost it entirely. Videl approached the kneeling, writhing and horrified woman to comfort her and lift her up, but, other than that, there was little to nothing they could have done to help. As much as it hurt to admit, Yamcha was on his own right now.


The next breath Yamcha took was that of the air of Planet Banna. He jumped up and thrust his feet back, at the same time locking his fingers tightly around the tail to prevent Cell from snapping his neck with one forceful squeeze. However, Cell withdrew before Yamcha could strike him with his attempt to struggle out of the ironclad tail grip.

"Why did you bring us here?" Yamcha looked around. "Haven't you caused enough harm to this planet already?"

"I've had a brilliant idea, actually," Cell shrugged with a rich smile, wondering if Yamcha would agree with this assessment. "All of you are gathering the Ultimate Dragon Balls to save the Earth, aren't you? Once I track down you, Krillin, Tenshinhan, and Vegeta, killing the rest might be a bit of a hassle. Why don't I rob you of your wish-granting orbs and make you truly desperate? That way, you'll need to find me!"

As Yamcha gnashed his teeth in disgust and prepared to fight for his life, Cell erupted into a manic fit of laughter. So grand was his amusement with his own idea of making this brief hunting trip of his into a proper game. After all, with the Earth's survival at stake, no one would dare hide from him. Everyone would come at him with their full strength and Cell would be able to at long last become the apex predator by defeating the strongest of the strongest in battle. Then, he'd live truly free. Free to live the life this universe owed him.

At last, Cell made its move, however, it was a move that cornered the Dragon Team almost into the position of a full-on checkmate. With their fighters prime to being picked out one by one, Cell only boosting its wild strength and arsenal of techniques with each fighter whose techniques it learned and whose Ki it absorbed, all the while, putting the Earth on a tight deadline.