"Everyone, I need to see all of you on the main deck in fifteen minutes," Bulma's voice filled the compact spaceship halls through the speakers while the Capsule Corps vessel was soaring through space back to Earth.
To some, a trip that ultimately proved to be rather pointless and lasted a few months would've felt infuriating. After all, recovering Vegeta was the whole point of it and the crew neither found him nor were bringing him back home with them. That being said, be it chance or measure, Bulma's choice of traveling companions led to the fact that neither of them batted much of an eye. Lazuli was just glad to be paid. Bardock and Goku thought little about losing a few months of their life as long as they could train with each other plenty.
If anything, they expected Bulma to be the mad one. She was a busy president of easily the richest and most influential companies in the world. Along with that position came the pressure to keep up and monetize that influence in a way that satisfied the ever-growing appetite of the company's investors. This was important even to those who cared little about business, as it was Bulma's position that let them shoot themselves into space with little forethought or devise gods of the machine when desperation demanded it.
"You're… Cooking?" Bulma scratched her head after entering the main deck to find Lazuli tinkering with something edible on the nearby bar from the contents of the nearby snack fridge.
"I'm going to get married soon. My experience with food is that I liked the candy that Dr. Gero offered us as kids, but I imagine Krillin won't survive long on that diet," Lazuli beamed a glare in Bulma's direction that challenged the tech sis to mock her pastime activity at her own peril. Even though Lazuli fully expected someone as sheepish as Bulma to cheek her, instead Bulma just dismissed the subject and began monitoring the ship's condition on the display screens and making small adjustments on the control panels while Goku and Bardock dragged their rear ends to the main deck.
"Phew!" Goku came in with a towel over his shoulders, wiping his hair and forehead. "Who knew Image Training can work up so much sweat? We're essentially just sitting around!"
"What's this summon all about?" Bardock cast his solemn look straight at Bulma. This was the first time that Bulma called them up to the main deck like this since they left, and there should have been no reason for it since they were speeding straight home.
"I'll need to run some tests on all of you. The last time you guys went space traveling, we brought back the heart virus. This time, we have to run the tests to make sure all of you are in good health and aren't carrying any pathogens," Bulma crossed her arms with a strict look that clashed with Bardock's and maintained its authoritative standing.
"Hmmm… You mean like flu shots? I'm immune to something like the heart virus, remember? That was the whole point of the old bag's Android conversion plan," Lazuli reminded Bulma, appearing resistant to the idea.
"You may be immune, but what about Krillin or the rest? Just because you can't be sick, it doesn't mean you can't be carrying something. You more than the others, you've accompanied me to Dr. Lychee's scrapyard, remember?" Bulma crossed her arms, scolding her hired muscle with impatience.
"Because you ordered me to! Besides, what about you? You also went out there! Are you going to run your tests on yourself too?" Lazuli thought she had Bulma on the ropes when the prodigious scientist closed her eyes and shut herself off from the discussion.
"Obviously, because I am not six years old anymore and I can handle a little cut here and there," Bulma replied.
"Well… Only because it might put Krillin in danger. He's my key to a freeloading and easy life and becoming a widow before getting married would seriously hamper my vibe," Lazuli caved into her hirer's pressure, wrapping herself up in her arms and looking away. It was safe to say that the Artificial Human wasn't much looking forward to the tests.
"Wait up, did you say cut? As if in something more than an immunity booster shot or some pills?" Bardock's glare tightened with a sharp focus. "What's that all about?"
"Obviously, because I've got no clue what I'm dealing with, I'm going to need to take tissue samples. If the virus is extraterrestrial, it might straight up bypass your immunity systems. Honestly, it's kind of pathetic how big and strong Saiyan warriors are behaving like toddlers in the face of some menial medical procedure," Bulma grumbled, smacking her forehead and sifting her hand through her hair with an aggravated look at Bardock and Goku.
"No way!" Goku shrieked out, waving his arms out in front of him. "No way I'm getting any shots or whatever! Two things really put the creeps in me and that's Chi-Chi when she's mad and needles! No way, no how!"
Bardock raised his eyebrow while looking at his son, waving around like a big child. Initially, he suspected something fishy about this entire thing, but seeing Goku stumble back and drop utensils and canned food as he fumbled and tripped over to gain distance between himself and this conversation made Bardock rethink it all. If this was how Goku was acting, maybe Bulma actually had a case to make here.
"Fine," Bardock closed his eyes with his arms crossed, completely shut off from what he was agreeing to. "But only because of how dangerous another outbreak like the heart virus would be. Kakarot, you're taking that test too. I will not lose another family member because of your squeamishness."
"N-No way!" Goku clenched his fist and shook it out in front of him. "You'll have to fight me for it!"
"I will if I have to," Bardock grumbled, looking at his son with a strict look that relayed exactly how serious he was about this.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Bulma slammed her hands against the ship's computer, grinding her teeth at how frustrating the two Saiyans were about this. "You will not fight while you're on the ship and we've got no time to waste looking for a planet for you to settle this on."
"Can't you just knock him out or something?" Lazuli turned to Bulma with a look that was about as vexed about this ridiculous bump in the road as the woman paying her bills was. "I mean like… With some meds or something? Or give that big baby a painkiller or something?"
"And shooting him up with a painkiller requires what, exactly, you twit!?" Bulma lashed out at her hired muscle, throwing her arms in the air. "We'd be back where we started. Though if you're being this pitiful about it, Goku, I suppose I can use knockout gas or put an oxygen mask and knock you out by quickly sucking your air out."
"This numbskull can hold his breath for over twenty minutes. That's enough to settle an entire gauntlet of fights," Bardock grumbled. "Though maybe some knockout gases could work if Kakarot suppressed his Ki and completely let his guard down."
"I'm not really sure I like that," Goku pressed his index finger to his chin, wondering about the suggestion. "But I guess it beats getting pricked or operated on."
A hovercar speeding through the aerial network of monorail roads hanging above the ground and level with the tallest skyscrapers of West City swerved off to the side. Its driver didn't notice in time that they'd been staring at the sky while the aerial tunnel took a sharp swerve to form a wide ring around a corporate tower built in its way. The hovercar busted through the side of the tunnel and teetered above the edge, dangerously close to falling.
With his little fists clenched by his sides, Trunks blasted off into the air. His grandparents who were accompanying Trunks on a little weekend family trip to the movies and the playground grabbed onto their clothes and covered their heads as the turbulent gust from the sudden take-off splattered Trunks' ice cream and pulled away Dr. Brief's candy cotton off its stick. Trunks grabbed the hovering car by its teetering side and shoved it back into the tunnel.
When the flabbergasted driver stumbled out from their busted vehicle, Trunks flipped it over and shoved it to stuff the broken hole he left in the monorail with the flipped hovercar laying rolled over sideways. The driver just gulped, realizing how close to certain death he was while the accident and the sight of a preschooler pushing and throwing cars around like they were one of his model toys left the other drivers stunned enough to stop and leave their cars to survey what was going on.
"What the heck, man!?" Trunks turned around and flipped out at the careless driver. "You nearly got yourself and someone else killed driving like that! I'm four years old and I drive better than that!"
"S-Sorry…" the pale and sweating salaryman collapsed to his knees before pointing up in the air. All the noise and flare kept the jaw-dropping sights of city-size machinery hovering in the sky and fragmenting into even tinier, almost building-sized chunks that split and shot off in all directions almost fully unnoticed by any West City denizens. "I just saw that and… What is that? You're Bulma's son, aren't you? Is it another one of her Capsule Corps' projects or are we being invaded by aliens again?"
Trunks stared at the sky, noticing the all too familiar, continent-sized constructor block chunks of the Capsule Corps Star. There was no chance that Meta-Cooler could've been back and that he'd reclaimed the Big Gete Star as his own. The last Trunks heard of it, the Capsule Corps Star was fully totaled when his father and the other heavy hitters of the Dragon Team fought Broly on the outskirts of the solar system. Why was it here? Did his mother bring it back? Why would she prioritize something like that over dragging his father back home?
"I… I don't know…" Trunks pouted his lips, realizing that once again he was out of the loop. He was out of the loop despite doing his best to save the world a few times already. All that before he was old enough to start school.
Trying to dodge further questions as the inquiries were becoming more boisterous, Trunks took off and flew off. He followed the monorail path until he found an exit that led to a staircase descending to the ground level, at which point he swerved and returned to the park where he left his grandparents. Unbelievably enough, by the time Trunks found them again, they appeared completely oblivious to the fact that a cybernetic world machine was being disassembled and scattered all across the Earth.
"You should really practice some restraint, boy," Dr. Brief mumbled to himself, showing Trunks his empty cone of ice cream. "You've splattered the ice cream all over the pavement, flying off on your own like that."
"Never mind that!" Trunks barked back before pointing at the sky. "Look! The Capsule Corps Star is hovering above West City in pieces!"
"So it is…" Dr. Brief looked up and corrected his glasses. "Interesting. The station itself doesn't appear to be lighting up with any sort of activity. That means that there's an external engine handling this fragmentation and delivery process. It would probably take an engine almost as powerful as the Capsule Corps Star itself to produce something like that and, if we were to plan it, it would almost certainly take years of mapping things out and drawing blueprints, and making sure that the engines have just the right activation jingles and whatnot…"
"Almost as powerful as the Capsule Corps Star…" Trunks scratched his head before slamming his hammering fist in his open hand. "It's Dr. Puri! She said that she has another cybernetic star, like the Capsule Corps Star. She must be the one delivering it to Earth. But… I thought Mom said that rescuing Dad was her immediate priority. It's been months since they've left. What's going on here?"
"Why don't we call your mom and find out?" Panchy booped Trunks' nose, making the little preschooler blush over being humiliated in public like this by his grandma. Once he heard Father grumbling that if it weren't for the woman's delectable cookies, he'd have blown her up long ago. While Trunks' embarrassment didn't make him feel anywhere near as homicidal, he could somewhat feel where his father was coming from at that moment.
A massive laboratory complex had been built into the mountain range farther south of the Sacred Land of Korin. It was a bottomless money pit of an investment–cleaning up the traces of radiation persisting in the large chunks of the continent after the decimation of the Red Ribbon Headquarters. Luckily enough, Puri & Co picked up the tab during their world conquest days and established a bunch of military and research bases in the mountain range, going further than the Red Ribbons ever have. Once Puri and her family left Earth in exile, the Capsule Corps had vacated lab complexes to work with.
One of the skyscraper-sized building blocks of the Capsule Corps Star, carried by a metallic gravity ring with four jet engines attached to each side, hovering by the center of the block, descended to the landing station. Almost immediately engineers and drones began disassembling the lump of scrap and picking up the data transmissions from the Luud Star hanging around in between Earth and Mars and scarcely visible from the ground with the naked eye about the pending colossal workload.
Seeing the unbelievable task at hand, the engineers could just tilt their helmets and shake their heads, wondering if it would be them or their grandkids that would complete this project. Fortunately for their sanities, someone in each facility heard rumblings from the Capsule Corps headquarters in West City that they had their own Machine Mutant drone that cooperated with them and that it would only be a few weeks before they would produce adequate clones of the drone who would take up the meat and bones of the workload.
Something nobody in the facility knew, however, was that even in their remote mountain district, surrounded by nothing but cloud-scraping mounts and chilling layers of snow, there was an unexpected and extremely sneaky visitor. A visitor with a most unruly appearance that would have made most beholders accustomed to Earthlings, Saiyans, and on some occasions, Namekians, and Machine Mutants, scream. A chilling biological artificial creation that combined Dr. Puri's finest Artificial Human work and bio-engineering breakthroughs that wouldn't come available until decades in an alternate version of the future where her work continued unimpeded.
By that time, Cell had spent years feasting on nothing other than human DNA, getting little to no value from it, other than a meek energy boost each time he replenished his unique cocktail of genetic material from different species. While he had got Namekian, Saiyan, Machine Mutant, and Earthling DNA, as well as the unique mutated variations of Frieza's and King Cold's genetic material, Cell's genetic composition was currently still overwhelmingly human.
It may have been because of this that Cell's appearance had a certain uncanny valley twist to it, resembling all the genetic samples he had gained, but wrapped in human skin. A soft and fleshy interior, covered in a mechanized, insectoid shell of Machine Mutant with jewelry and horn decorations coming from Frieza's and King Cold's DNA. Like the creepy crawly he was, Cell waited for the late hours of the night when the engineers and other staff stationed at the facility would have left for a nearby housing station for Capsule Corps personnel with only the armed guards monitoring the vast laboratory complex.
There was a very specific piece of DNA that was likely to still be present onboard the recovered Capsule Corps Star. Cell could feel it calling out to him. The treasured prize that he could not claim during his decades-long existence in this timeline in complete hiding–the Legendary Super Saiyan DNA. He had his opening to absorb it from Chayote when she was knocked out as a teen by Dr. Gero's bomb in Jingle Village. But something Cell has come to learn was that when he absorbed new DNA samples, it degraded the source. That meant that if he tried to assimilate the Legendary Super Saiyan DNA from Chayote, he risked decaying her body to crumble into featureless bone dust.
The sample that might have still been present in this laboratory complex, that of Chayote's abominable scientific offspring–Broly, Cell wasn't worried one bit about degrading it. Unlike with Chayote, whose death would have meant the destruction of this timeline where Cell felt warm, safe, and cozy living and feeding on scraps, Broly was already an abomination against nature, which meant that even if the Dragon Team were to find out about his existence and deeds, they'd thank him for this one. Not to mention that, unlike Chayote, Broly wasn't entirely human and was more of a sick and twisted scientific golem, rather than a living being. Meaning that whatever genetic degradation his genetic material present on the Capsule Corps Star wreckage experienced in space, it might have still left a vague trace of his perverted life in it for Cell to assimilate.
After crawling through the ceiling past a few guards and using Frieza and King Cold's cold-blooded anatomy to slip past heat detector scanners, Cell slipped into the lab where he only needed to use the Artificial Human part of him to light up his eyes like torches and feel the colossal piece of the Capsule Corps Star's debris. The life present in the dried and crusty blood and dried out meaty chunks of Broly still present in a handful of crevices of the cybernetic structure called out to Cell, crawling over it, the humanoid bio-mutant thrust his tail to slurp up the remains and scrape the genetic traces clean. With the scarcity of viable samples, the last thing Cell wanted to be was sloppy.
If only he attained the limitless evolutionary potential of a Legendary Super Saiyan and added it to his rather limited selection of genetic data, Cell could finally step out into the light and claim his right to live acknowledged and recognized as the apex species of Planet Earth, just like his creator unwittingly made him to be. And anyone who would deny him his right to live freely and experience everything that life and acknowledgment of his right to freedom and being treated as a human offered deserved to be snuffed out.
After all, how could they not see him as human when human genetic data comprised 94% of his DNA?