Piccolo hovered just a meter beneath the cloud level above a boundless ocean cluttered with islands once every dozen nautical miles. This was not a stretch of land that he was overly familiar with, however, this was a place he had to be in when at the very end of his line and not much closer to finding out the truth about the dark omen after over a year of studying it and searching for the cause.
It was like the figurehead of the dark omen awaiting the Earth had some kind of insight into Piccolo's methods, his strengths, and weaknesses and could conceal not only their abnormal level of Ki but also the fact that it was active. Piccolo only presumed the fact that whatever the Earth was up against dealing with its dark future ahead had something to do with a massive battle power, since if this avatar of gloom was actually weak, it wouldn't have had a chance of causing such dire consequences for the entire planet.
But then how did it know how to conceal itself? What was it exactly? How did it accumulate such a level of power and how did it know to keep its Ki suppressed at all times? Who taught that creature Ki control, or who made it to be that way? What were its goals and how exactly was it going to bring about the dark omen that Kami Upa feared? If it truly was capable and about to destroy the Earth, wouldn't it have advanced that goal much further by now? Mass murder would have been something Piccolo would have easily noticed.
"You're early," Lapis' voice alerted Piccolo to the direction of the promising young artificial human. Being unable to sense Lapis' Ki, Piccolo couldn't tell when his partner for the day was coming or where he was coming from.
"Will I have to meet you here every time?" Piccolo asked with a grumpy disposition.
"You know well enough that the location of the Monster Island is meant to be a secret. My boss only arranges tours for school children once every year and only brings around the brightest and the boldest. It's an island full of monsters, after all. Though monsters deserve protection too. We've had problems with poachers looking for the thrill of a lifetime hunting monstrous prey before," Lapis explained.
"You realize I could probably find it with a thorough enough scan of the place?" Piccolo rolled his eyes at the inconvenience.
"Not without catching my attention and having to explain yourself you wouldn't," Lapis pulled his black gloves to hang tighter around his hands. "Don't worry, you won't need to meet me about this again."
"You believe that we'll sort this thing out today? After it took me over a year just to gather a couple of clues about the monster's existence and the way they work?" Piccolo sneered, liking the young man's enthusiasm, but feeling like Lapis was counting the chickens way before he even saw the eggs.
"You're a fighter, not a Monster Island ranger," Lapis replied without as much as twitching the corner of his lips in any semblance of emotion. "Now, what clues about this monster have you gathered so far?"
"It's easier if I show it to you," Piccolo closed his eyes and turned around. On one hand, this cold shoulder treatment will be the reward for an appropriate level of distrust from his partner's side, on the other–Piccolo truly thought that Lapis wouldn't believe it if he were to hear it from Piccolo.
The two blasted off, enveloped in transparent yet thick auras, like twin phantom comets. They soared high above the ground at just the right speed to get to where they had to go at an acceptable time frame while not inconveniencing the Earth with too severe of speedy after effects like sonic booms or quaky light-speed dashing. Despite significantly restraining their traveling speed, the pair ended up above an island on the opposite side of the world tout de suite.
"See anything unusual?" Piccolo turned to Lapis with his arms crossed, looming over what seemed like an unimpressive little island in the massive archipelago on the southwestern side of the planet. Almost a full diagonal cross of the globe across from where the pair met up.
"Seriously, gonna start this off with games now?" Lapis rolled his eyes and groaned.
"I thought you loved games," Piccolo smirked.
Lapis smiled in response before releasing his flight and plunging straight down before stopping to hover at the level above the treetops of the little self-contained jungle located on the small island. Lapis hovered around, turning his eyes around the place for a quick examination. Piccolo wondered if his partner refused to use the hi-tech radar technology he had accessible to him because he actually took Piccolo's challenge and decided to play this game as an ordinary human or because it didn't dawn on him to look for a piece of technology.
"Wait, is that…?" something fancy yet completely devoured by the natural overgrowth of flora caught Lapis' attention and demanded a closer look. Realizing that his companion had just struck gold, Piccolo dived after him to accompany him to the wrecked pill-shaped rocket ship with bent and broken metallic legs sticking out from the sides and additional jet engines that appeared blown out and eroded.
"That's the apparatus that Trunks from the future arrived in," Piccolo answered Lapis' question, suspecting that Lapis might not have been aware of that since he was working on the opposite side at that time and Dr. Puri handed out information on a need-to-know basis only.
"Is it? Is it really though?" Lapis turned to Piccolo with his cool façade having shattered in an instant. "Did you have Bulma analyze it?"
"Bulma wouldn't hear it back then with her husband's life being at stake during the whole Four-Stars conflict thing… Now, I kind of no longer need it anymore. I'm almost certain of it," Piccolo shrugged and shook his head before hovering to a specific surface and wiping at the natural grime and moss that had accumulated since the last time he wiped it off. Penned and lightly smeared across the ring frame that held the entire system of engines and pill-shaped rocket ship together was a lone phrase that had smeared and faded a little over time, but was still readable with enough effort, because of its simplicity.
"Hope…" Lapis uttered, omitting the need to raise his voice to emphasize the exclamation marks that were at the end of the mark.
"It's something that Trunks marked on his time machine after… Well… After Chayote helped inspire hope for humanity and this timeline back in him. This means that this time machine is the exact one that Trunks used to access this timeline from the future when he came back to warn us about the heart virus and Dr. Puri's machinations," Piccolo explained some further context that Lapis might have been missing.
"I see, and you believe this time machine to be somehow related to this mysterious monster of yours?" Lapis bent his head off to the side while slowly hovering around the broken machine and examining it for some more monster tracks like claw marks or acid burns if the creature could produce vitriol powerful enough to corrode whatever durable material was necessary to traverse through time-space.
"I do, solely because I have no other explanation of why Trunks' time machine would be here," Piccolo gestured at the enigmatic apparatus. "Some time after he helped us defeat Dr. Puri's artificial human empire, Trunks just disappeared without a trace. Back in the day, we thought it was because he jumped back to his time with new inspiration to forge a bright future ahead of his timeline, as we did in ours. However…"
"If this time machine is here, Trunks couldn't have left this timeline on it," Lapis scratched his chin while completing Piccolo's sentence when the conclusions Piccolo was about to draw became predictable.
"Either that, or someone, or something, grabbed the time machine and jumped back here," Piccolo pointed out. "However, in that case…"
"Trunks would have arrived in this timeline once again to warn us," Lapis sighed, again completing Piccolo's sentence when what Piccolo meant to point out seemed easily readable. "With his sweetheart and kid stranded in this timeline, there's no way he'd have allowed someone as dangerous as this to target them. Even if Trunks didn't have a way to access this timeline specifically, a different future version of Trunks would still have arrived. Even if he was left without a time machine, Bulma, or Trunks himself, would have been able to build another one, given enough time."
"Unless whatever hijacked Trunks' time machine killed him," Piccolo closed his eyes with an expression as deadpan and dire as the situation demanded it. "That means that we've got an unexplained time traveler from the future roaming loose."
"A time traveler?" Lapis' eyes widened as he leaned from the side of the time machine he was examining for beast marks. "Besides Trunks… And Gohan? Honestly, it's beginning to feel like a rotten sci-fi movie franchise in here at this point."
"When I told about this discovery to Kami Upa, he told me something interesting. Future Trunks actually theorized about there being another time traveler beside him and Gohan. However, he thought that this mysterious person came much earlier and has been making more changes to this timeline since as early as when Chayote appeared on Earth," Piccolo pointed out some more context that Lapis was unaware of.
"This only raises more problems," Lapis' face soured like a raisin. "If this time traveler is the one we're looking for, then why were they using the time machine from after Trunks marked it with "Hope!"? Did they use that time machine from the future to bring themselves that far behind in the past? If so, what have they been doing all this time?"
"Kami Upa said Trunks noticed more than one difference between this timeline and his future, meaning that this person, or monster, likely interfered quite a few times, however, they stayed behind the scenes and desperately wanted to remain unnoticed," Piccolo replied.
"Do you think that Trunks might have gotten close to figuring out who this time traveler was and the time traveler struck him out of his problem list for it?" Lapis wondered.
"It's possible, however… He'd have had to do so from the future because he'd have had to have obtained Trunks' marked version of the time machine. However, he used it to end up here, in the past, meaning that he couldn't have been in the future when he had to dispose of Trunks and steal his time machine. This is all…" Piccolo grumbled with an aggressive rear of his pointy teeth while stroking his sore forehead.
"It's something to go cross-eyed over, for sure. I can see why this took you over a year to work out now," Lapis stroked his chin, deep in thought. "But then… What makes you so certain that this is a monster at work and not another artificial human, or some sort of intelligent time traveler? All this points to our mystery figure being quite the schemer…"
"Oh, I've concluded that after I saw the second clue…" Piccolo left it ominous before he elevated himself into the air and followed Lapis until the young man leveled with him, at which point the Ultimate Namekian blasted off northward only to be followed by Lapis.
The pair drilled off through the skies like twin comets with ethereal tails, shooting off the outskirts of a small town outside of West City. When the ten-floor buildings with colored rooftops came into view, Lapis thought that Piccolo was taking him into the town. Even given their ludicrous to ordinary people speed, for a Namekian who looked like the Demon King that terrorized the Earth in the past and an Android to land in the middle of a city from the air would've aroused much suspicion. Fortunately, the angle of Piccolo's landing sharpened and brought them down on a ground level, plunging through the thick tree line, the pair landed on the outskirts of a town–a crowded part of the forest that surrounded the small town.
"What can you make of this?" Piccolo wondered, stepping to the side and showing to Lapis the most curious sight–a metallic shell of a cicada-like shape with a gruesome opening on the backside. Even now, the inner side of the shell blinked with mechanical lights and, when Lapis slipped a glove off to feel the shed skin with his own hand, it was cold and metallic.
"This… It's like some sort of Android cicada!" Lapis exclaimed. "It's just like the shedding of a snake that Lazuli read to me about during cold winters by the fire. Except it's all handmade. What kind of creature could rip out through a shed shell of solid steel? This isn't just about any steel, it's the same alloy that the most advanced models of Puri's design have!"
"So, it is another Android then…" Piccolo closed his eyes, feeling just about sick of dealing with those damned things. "If the first batch was made by Dr. Puri, the second by the Earth's government, who made this one?"
"This shape though…" Lapis leaned back and stroked his chin. "This doesn't strike me as one of Puri's designs. She used to see artificial human technology as a way to advance the human species, eliminate the factors of sickness and aging, and bring the dead back to life. She wouldn't just make a robotic cicada, it's not really her style."
Nothing in what Lapis told Piccolo seemed to surprise the Ultimate Namekian, striking Lapis up with an impression that Piccolo actually went through these same thought processes before and arrived at similar conclusions.
"Tell me the truth, did you invite me here because of my expertise as a Monster Island ranger, or just because I'm an artificial human?" Lapis turned to Piccolo, looking like he had a bit of a problem brewing with the second option.
"Had I never encountered the third clue, I'd have to say that a bit of both," Piccolo closed his eyes. It was tough to say if he acted offended by Lapis' accusation of having ulterior motives or merely unaffected by Lapis' internal gripes. "However… Something else came up. Something… New…"
"Another clue, huh?" Lapis scratched his head. "Alright, show me."
"It's problematic. It's in the God Temple and I'm not sure if Kami Upa lowered the magical defenses against robots and Androids yet. In his defense, we have just been invaded by Machine Mutants and Baby, so it makes sense he'd reset them since the Android conflict…" Piccolo stroked the back of his head. "Besides, it's not much of a thing to show. It's just that Krillin and Lazuli picked up on some more clues for me."
"You dragged Lazuli into this first? Why?" Lapis grumbled with some moderate displeasure at the idea.
"Not on purpose," Piccolo explained. "Before they left to space to look for the Ultimate Dragon Balls, they were enjoying an ordinary family life. Going to work in the mornings, meeting up over lunch, and ordinary evening routines of city folks in the evening. I wouldn't disturb them with this. Not that I'd expect much help from them if I did. It was Krillin who told me about this, knowing that I was looking for a mysterious monster. Apparently, the Earthling television has reported something about missing people. Once every nine or ten days, a person disappears and they are even never found, or just their clothes come up."
"Just their clothes? I see… So that's why you think it's a monster, not some sentient warrior looking for trouble," Lapis scratched his head. "Still, doesn't explain how they came up with the whole hijacking of Trunks' time machine plan. Nothing about it makes much sense, why it vanished exactly when it did, why it reappeared so far into the past, what happened to Trunks?"
"That's why I think our best odds are still by capturing our monster and asking them to explain it to us. They clearly have some intelligence to them to formulate an elementary plan like hijacking a time machine. The monster spilling the beans is still our best bet, though I was hoping your expertise in looking over monsters can help us find and capture it," Piccolo explained. "Though, if it's trying to escape and time travel around the different timelines, I don't think containing it in the Monster Island is an option at this point."
"That's up to me to decide," Lapis shut Piccolo's implication down. "When we meet and hear it from that monster, that is. This time frame… Nine to ten days… It's consistent, relatively consistent."
"I guess so, what are your thoughts?" Piccolo wondered.
"I think the monster is "feeding" by consuming these people. That's the monster's schedule of sustenance," Lapis surmised. "Where have the disappearances been reported? If we narrow down the area…"
"It's useless, it's been happening all around the world for almost twenty years now, apparently," Piccolo pointed out. "Because of how widespread all this stuff was, and how low-key a few missing people are in the grand scale of demons, Saiyans, artificial humans, and the sort is… No shock we missed it. People are snuffing themselves out every day in mass quantities for no good reason, no surprise Kami Upa missed it too. He was the first one to come around though, got to give him credit, even if it's a case of better late than never."
"I see, so no luck narrowing down the habitat," Lapis sighed in disappointment. "All this points not only to sentience and a relatively tall level of intelligence for a beast but also a hint of malice. The monster knows what it's doing is considered evil and is intentionally avoiding attention. They've been masking their actions, what you told me Trunks believed to be interventions to the timeline, for years, a couple of decades even."
"So you think we're not dealing with a monster after all?" Piccolo turned to Lapis with a face that was willing to give up already after the time and effort that went on this quest at this point.
"I'm not saying that yet," Lapis shook his head with a calm disposition. "There are some monsters that we consider "mythical" that have displayed a relatively impressive level of intelligence for a monster. Far surpassing that of any animal or beast, approaching that of a human's intelligence. Still… This one, if real, they're going to hit the record for how intelligent a monster can be."
"I see, meeting up with you and hearing your thoughts gave me an idea. Do you have a camera?" Piccolo wondered.
"In a manner of speaking…" Lapis pulled out a flip phone from his pocket with a Capsule Corps logo surrounding a lens that looked camera-like. "It's of vital importance for rangers to be able to snap pictures and shoot videos of monsters doing something cool or unusual for studying. Besides, it's useful to stay in touch too. It helps my boss hit me up when she finds something out about poacher activity in the area."
"Let's take some pictures of these clues and bring them to someone. They might help us apparate some clues out of thin air. I'm not sure about the price she'll ask for it though," Piccolo grumbled, stroking his eyes while contemplating the metaphorical door they were about to knock on.
"Let's do it. After we check your end, we'll check up on mine. It seems like both of us will have to meet some unsavory type of people to find this creature today," Lapis nodded in confirmation.
A mechanical squeaking sound followed the strutting of a bio-organic creature while it scaled a snowy hill and ended up staring down a snowy and cozy-looking village. On the northern end of the village, where once stood the daunting Muscle Tower of the Red Ribbon Army, then the Rainbow Ribbon Brigade, now stood a lab fashioned like an old-timey stone castle. A peculiar-looking structure stuck somewhere in between being a cathedral, a laboratory, and a palace, built entirely out of stone, though bolstered with steel plates and illuminated by gaslight torches.
While a strong blizzard that wasn't at all an uncommon sight in the region obstructed the view of the humanoid creature, a slithering tail with a bony end equipped with a protruding spike that looked a bit like a stinger. The tail waggled up and down as the monster stared at the tranquil scenery of Jingle Village as it schemed on how to infiltrate it and complete the assignment he had.
Dr. Flappe knew too much to be left alive. While he already spilled the beans on Cell to Tenshinhan, Cell had covered those tracks up and the fool thought Cell had been vanquished for good. Perhaps in this timeline, it was. However, if Cell's secret was to ever come up, the fact that Dr. Flappe knew about Cell and a lot about what Cell was would have been too useful to the Dragon Team and Cell simply lacked the power to fight them all. With the cells of Broly, the Legendary Super Saiyan boosting Cell's power with each passing second, maybe soon, but not yet.
He had enough to contend with Super Artificial Human No. 8. In fact, killing Dr. Flappe would help Cell cover his tracks while providing him with a clean cell sample for sustenance and give him a sample of Super Android cells that were non-existent in the future timeline. Yes, even if making a move on someone the Dragon Team knew was dangerous, as was destroying a whole laboratory so close to Jingle Village, it simply couldn't have been helped.
Dr. Flappe had to die, and its trusty guard dog, Super Android 8, was long due for the scrapyard.