The space station nearest Planet Imecka was comparably damp and gloomy. Whereas most space stations at least attempted to emulate a natural, planetary environment to prevent its dwellers from feeling like they were stranded in a glorified metal cage floating in deep space, this one did very little in that regard. No hanging gardens, plucked and planted rocks, fountains, buildings, or anything of the sort. Had it not been for the station's size and the brewing chaos inside, one would have had trouble telling its interior apart from most ordinary spaceships.
"We took some good stuff from that wreck at Planet Imecka," Bardock grumbled while staring at the ridiculous amount of sticks carved out from different metals. "Goddamn Pols…" he muttered while grinding his teeth and staring at the metallic sticks as if they were his sworn enemy.
"Is something wrong, Bardock-san?" Launch peeked with her wide and curious eyes and blue curls slipping from Bardock's side and hanging down, loosely drawn by the station's artificial gravity. "Did we not salvage enough money to fix our ship?" she asked with a meek and high-pitched voice.
"We've got more than enough to buy a whole new ship," Bardock dismissed Launch's worries, softening his voice when speaking to her while squeezing the metal sticks in his hand and moving them out of his sight to get them off his mind. "It's just that the currency this station deals in is the one that's been used everywhere within the reach of Frieza Army. You could say it's Frieza's signature little touch."
"Oh… I see…" Launch covered her mouth with her hand, squeaking out like a little mouse.
"Oh well, it's best we don't linger around too long. Let's just get our parts and get off this gloomy place," Bardock moved his clenched hand up, looking at the ends of the Pols in his hand that were sticking out from the cover of his grasp.
"Anything I can do to help? The Other Me has been taking notes and sketches of the various spaceship parts…" Launch showed Bardock a filled journal.
"Heh, that's odd. I didn't take her for the artistic type," Bardock smiled. "Fine. Listen closely, as I've mentioned previously, these things are called Pols. Most planets have their own currency, kind of like Planet Earth has its Zeni, but stations don't deal with those. The most popular ones are space credits, Pols, and Blue Aurum."
Bardock opened his hand to scatter some of the metallic sticks into Launch's hands. The blue-haired woman pulled her cupped hands with the bundle of Pols closer to count them and try to determine their worth. They looked pretty and shiny and there were several different kinds of Pols of different colors, probably made of different alloys.
"Right, those steel ones are the cheapest. Each of them is worth one Pol. The golden Pol is more expensive. It's worth five steel Pols. The blue one is the most expensive because it's crafted from a rock of Blue Aurum and can alternate as fuel for some spaceship engines. That one's worth eight golden Pols or forty steel Pols. Don't ask, it's a proportional weight and value thing. Because the golden Pols are made of gold, they had to balance the value based on the value of Blue Aurum compared to gold," Bardock explained while Launch just nodded erratically, trying to commit it all to memory.
"I see…" Launch squeaked to signal her acknowledgment.
"Let's start with a communications system. Normally, I'd just replace the broken parts, maybe the emitter or the transceiver, but, because we are just so flushed with Pols, it'll be easier to just nab a complete communications system and install it instead of Bulma's busted one," Bardock pointed out while gently borrowing Launch's journal and showing her some of the parts that went into a complete communications system. "Ideally, we want something that's able to send supercausal encoded signals across the distance of at least nonillion light years. Cherenkov-299 is an excellent communications system, it should go for around 9 Pols. Raylaxy Ree is the model that most of my crew's ships used, so I can vouch for it. Shouldn't cost more than 7 or 8 Pols."
A sharp snapping sound made Bardock turn toward its source. The Saiyan's eyes were wide and his stare dulled, because he could vaguely recognize that sound. It was the same sound that Yamcha's teleportation technique used, and it came from somewhere inside a crowd of weary and opportunistic space travelers. Just as the presence of the crowd around the source of the sound began bothering Bardock, the different aliens staggered back, shaking in fear of what they were looking at and the sudden appearance of this enigmatic monster.
"What the shit…?" Bardock stammered through a shocked exclamation as the parted space station dwellers and visitors revealed a sturdy brute of a muscular, vaguely humanoid build. The monster had wide, U-shaped horns and a salad-green outline with occasional obsidian color armored shells around the creature's joints. The armored parts were cracked and glistened with a starlit glow from something radiant underneath them. Black metal that looked slick and gave off an impression that it could have oozed off of the monster's arms shined around the monster's arms.
"Bardock…" The creature's eyes turned to the stunned Saiyan and Launch pressing herself to Bardock's arm in fear. Four hefty metallic wings spread in all four diagonal directions as cottony and colorful wing membranes began to hum. The creature spoke with a mouth of plump, black lips that had rows of sharp, anglerfish-like teeth sticking out from its voracious mouth. As the monster spoke, its thick tail, covered with segmented metallic armor, wagged by the side, smashing a black battering ram at the end into the floor and leaving a wicked indentation in it, despite the creature meaning no harm. At least not yet.
"You don't look like something that's been born. Just what the heck are you?" Bardock demanded to know, gently pulling his only functioning arm that wasn't in a cast and taking a bold step toward the monster that frightened the rest of the station dwellers and visitors alike.
"Bardock-san… You don't think it's that… Cell creature, that Bulma warned us about, is it?" Launch squeaked out, hiding behind Bardock's back.
"Hmm… So, you've heard already too?" Cell smiled with its plump, black lips. "That's right, my name is Cell, and I've come here to fight you and take your Ultimate Dragon Ball, Bardock. However…" Cell's thoughts he was about to voice lingered as the creature examined Bardock's state. All the bandage straps and band-aids, the visible scrapes and bruises, shiners and bleeders, not to mention the broken forearm that Bardock was healing. "You don't look like you're in any condition to fight me…"
"You runt! Wanna bet!?" Bardock shoved Launch aside and burst with a golden aura, spiking his hair up and turning it gold as a sizzling pulse of heat washed over Bardock from the feet up. The radiant gleam of Super Saiyan seemed to flicker, as Bardock's hair and eyes switched between their golden and black states. With a battle cry, Bardock launched himself at Cell with a wound-back fist but was slammed aside by Cell's wrecking ball tail end.
Bardock's eyes whited out for a second and the slam knocked the Super Saiyan out of the rebellious bruiser, sending Bardock flying and sliding across the ground. With a deafening boom, the downed Saiyan smashed into a vendor building and blew it to smithereens, sending shrapnel and merchandise flying in all directions while Launch screamed out and rushed toward Bardock.
"Killing you when you're like this would be pathetically easy…" Cell muttered in a soured mood. "It's no fight at all. What to do, what to do…?"
"Y-You… Bastard!" Bardock cursed Cell while Launch ran up to him and helped his head off the ground. In a desperate plight to protect the unrelenting Saiyan who didn't practice quitting in combat and only knew the word to have something to describe that which his cowardly enemies did, Launch hugged Bardock and shielded him with her body. Bardock's rampant aggression ceased in a blink as, in his loopy haze, he saw the tearful and slender frame of Gine hugging him and begging him to stay calm. Flashes of the depressing visit at her grave and the echo of the promise he's made to his dead wife filtered through Bardock's senses, killing his fighting spirit and igniting something new. Something different entirely.
He was no longer seeking wrath and violence. All he wanted now was to make sure Launch made it out alive, no matter what. Gulping, Bardock turned to see his shaking hand, which was overcome with fright. An entirely novel sensation to someone who didn't show fear, even in the face of a much more powerful opponent.
"Oh, well… You know what they say, no use thinking on an empty stomach…" Cell flashed a malicious grin of shark-like teeth behind those plump, black lips. Stunning everyone staring at the genetically engineered monstrosity, Cell snapped his jaw open and revealed a plump and pulsating pustule in his mouth. A pustule that opened up a vertical eyeball in its center and then burst with fleshy tendrils that were quick to coat with spines and ribcage-like protective bone layers.
Bardock's entire body became flushed with jitters, the Saiyan grabbed Launch with both his arms and pulled her out of the range of the incoming flurry of tendril jabs. His instinct proved to be the correct one, for each sting of Cell's inner tentacle rot whoever their bony needle end penetrated to a dry husk as the Cell drank them dry of genetic material in a blink of an eye, striking thousands of station dwellers and tourist at once and slurping their combined genetic material like some kind of smoothie.
"So banal, so boring!" Cell spoke after withdrawing the internal stinger tentacles back into his innards and wiping his slobbery lips with the back of his hand. "Nothing interesting to improve my form. Perhaps one truly can't improve perfection, and I'm as close to it as it gets. Or perhaps I've already sampled most of these weaklings at some point. At this point, I can no longer tell…" Cell mused to himself before erupting in a mad peal of laughter.
"Damn it…" Bardock tried standing up, only to wince in pain. Launch pressed herself harder to him to prevent him from doing something Cell would consider threatening and respond with violence.
"Hmm…" Cell hummed, shutting its mouth before letting a bony armored layer shut over it and connect to Cell's insectoid armored horns, leaving only the monster's eyes visible from the armored headpiece. "Right now, your Ki is too meager to bother absorbing. Your cells are absolutely worthless as well. I've absorbed plenty of Saiyan DNA to acquire Saiyan traits and, as I've experienced in the past, even if I drain you of all your bio-matter, I won't be able to tap into your unique ability to empower yourself spontaneously when in emotional distress."
"That's because that ability requires you to care for someone other than yourself more than your own life. I've only known you for a few seconds and I'm already sure that's impossible to one such as yourself," Bardock spat back in Cell's face, defying the creature's imposing build and menacingly lashing tail that sought to make the crushed bones sing underneath the weight and speed of its swing.
"Perhaps it is so. But nature functions under the absolute law of survival of the fittest. Prey only exists to sustain the predator. Since you've lost your one purpose, you're useless to me. Nature has no tolerance for useless things," Cell sneered in sadistic disdain before clenching its fist and creating a shimmering crimson mass of energy around it. Bardock gasped in shock that Cell would retaliate with so much power all of a sudden. The monster proved to be vicious and unhinged.
"You monster… Launch is right here!" Bardock cried out, but his desperate plight vanished in the expansive nova of Cell's energy. The energy that devoured the space station and the ashen corpses of the aliens Cell sampled earlier. A fiery scarlet sun ignited in a dark and inhospitable section of space to which the one bustling space station provided with meager signs of civilization and teetering life. In a blink, the destructive energy burst vanished, leaving Cell hovering in open space, surrounded by a few bits and pieces of scorched metallic debris.
Cell's eyes squinted and focused on a glimmering energy dome of last hope for the two desperate survivors. In the last microseconds before Cell's destructive nova burst would have reached and obliterated Bardock and Launch, the desperate Saiyan berserker clutched up and drew from the last bits of energy he'd recovered, multiplied it by an unquantifiable amount for the sake of protecting his companion. Thus Bardock and Launch survived inside a protective golden energy bubble with Launch wrapped around Bardock for her dear life.
"Oh… Just like the cockroach, the desperate, meek, and rancid creature that offers no inherent value to the ecosystem proves difficult to kill," Cell sneered at the shimmering protective energy bubble as if its existence was offensive to the creature. "I thought I'd do away with you two alongside the station, but it seems like I'll need to put more of an effort. Very well, I'll offer you the grand finale that a Saiyan warrior wants."
With little fanfare or effort behind it, Cell extended an arm and sent an invisible Kiai pulse that seemed to bend and rattle the fabric of time-space itself, like it were a field of a table game being waved and threatening to keel over. Bardock screamed out in pain as every muscle in his body was subjected to so much force that it felt like he was being crushed from every conceivable angle. The cruel vastness of space drowned out the Saiyan's screams. His protective golden barrier shattered like glass, leaving Bardock and unconscious Launch to float helplessly in open space.
With a malicious glint behind its eyes, Cell tilted its right index finger over its head, forming a tiny blazing speck of energy at the tip of its finger. In an instant, the speck expanded to the size of a basketball before escalating to unimaginable proportions and growing to the size of a small moon. It was as if the ultimate life form had birthed an entirely new celestial object at the tip of its finger.
"That's… Frieza's!" Bardock's mind escalated to an uproar in outrage.
"I believe Bulma told you I could master techniques at a mere glance. However, Bulma's intelligence was outdated. Before challenging you, I've defeated Dr. Puri and confiscated her precious cybernetic haven of technology and information. I made sure to download the records of all the fighting techniques Dr. Puri had recorded for analysis. Her long-term scouting work and my peerless fighting instincts proved to be the ultimate combination!" Cell laughed out, booming telepathic signals straight into Bardock's mind before hurling the Supernova right toward Bardock and Launch. The creature didn't have to be precise. Just flinging them in the vague direction would've disintegrated the unfortunate pair of space adventurers in a blink.
Everything went white for Bardock. No oxygen could enter his lungs, his muscles felt in a state of perpetual meltdown. Pulsating heat from the domineering and oppressive energy bomb swallowed even the cruel frigidness of open space. Bardock had to close his tearful eyes to prevent the radiance of the Supernova technique from burning away his sight.
"Damn it…" Bardock thought to himself. Because of the grave silence of open space, he couldn't hear the incessant rumbling of the energy ball that would spell out his doom. It wasn't just his doom. It would be Launch's too. Despite his best efforts, he would once again come short of saving the woman he loved.
It was just like it was with Gine again. Of all the accursed forms, and all the techniques in his limitless arsenal, Cell had to choose Frieza. The one who nearly snuffed out their love if it weren't for the Dragon Balls. After Gine's passing, Bardock cut her loose from his life, thinking that whomever she would reincarnate into would end up better off without him. He'd resigned from ever being happy again. Until he met a gentle soul that reminded him so much of her.
Right after Bardock finally accepted that he deserved to be happy. That he could help the woman he loved to be happy and free for the first time in her life… His happiness, his love, both of their lives. All burnt away into ashes and reduced to less than nothing.
No!
Bardock curled into a ball and then stretched himself out, as tall and tense as he could get, roaring with all of his remaining power as he focused a blue energy ball in one hand and hurled it into the limitless, infernal expanse that would reduce him to ashes. Ever the rebel, Bardock refused to vanish without a trace. Despite his valiant effort, Bardock's Final Spirit Cannon simply flopped into the thick mass of energy of Cell's Supernova.
"It all comes down to this! My fate, Launch's fate, our mutual happiness, together or apart. I guess your fate too, Cell! I don't know if you're listening and I don't care. WE'LL SETTLE THIS HERE!" Bardock beckoned with a resounding mental impulse, clenching his fist and exploding with a golden aura around him. He could only sustain Super Saiyan for a blink, but just a moment of all his power was all that Bardock wanted.
"Huh?" Cell pulled away from marveling at the impending fireworks, noticing swirling white nebulae all around him. Sizzling sparks of white the likes of which he'd never seen before. Deep in his mind, a resounding, passionate heartbeat drove fear into Cell's perfect nervous system.
"If only… If only I had more power! Back then…" Bardock's mind flashed through the smiling faces of his squad. "Back then…" Bardock recalled Gine playing with Gohan as Bardock watched from the little house in Mt. Paozu. "More importantly… Right now… I could… I could protect them all! Damn it… Swinging fists is the only thing I'm good for, so why can't I…? Throw a punch that could protect her!?"
Bardock's closed his eyes, feeling the impending reality of his demise, of Launch's inevitable end, and refusing to acknowledge it as his own. Everything. His loss, his desperation, and all of his sorrow shattered like a panel of glass, with Bardock dipping himself completely into his rage for not being able to change a thing. To protect Launch. Since being the brutal Saiyan rebel who fell in love with Gine and rampaged across the universe alongside his fellow Saiyan warriors, looking to restore the Saiyan way and depose King Vegeta, Bardock has matured so much. Then why? Why wasn't any of that maturity enough to change anything?
If all that maturity that led to him becoming a Super Saiyan was all worthless, then to hell with it! Bardock would rather lose himself, and become a mindless barbarian. A monster whom both Gine and Launch would loathe, but one that would keep them safe. Bardock would rebel against his fate, against his death. More importantly, her death too!
"What's this…!?" Cell's eyes bulged and trembled in shock. The only sign of emotion, the reflection of the monster's soul in an armored carapace of violence and carnage. Bardock's Final Spirit Cannon expanded to the point of becoming a white blink that held its own against a Supernova. Bit by bit, inch by bloody inch, Bardock's attack began pushing Cell back, against all odds.
"This time… This time for sure… I will PROTECT HER!" Bardock's roar forced its way into Cell's mind, psyching out the ultimate lifeform as Bardock's golden hair spiked up even further with Bardock's bangs flowing upward and spiking alongside the rest of his golden hair. The outrageous energy output caused Bardock's golden aura to adopt a more fiery, fierce, and jagged appearance, with space-time quaking pulses of energy. Electrical sparks formed a brilliant cosmic storm around Bardock as the newly awakened Super Saiyan 2 drew his arm back and channeled a blue energy sphere in it.
"HAAAAAH!" Bardock exclaimed, thrusting his right arm out and firing the strident energy tunnel to slam at the back of his Final Spirit Cannon and propel the clashing novae back at Cell.
"This is… W-Wait just a…! I am… Nature… I am… Perfect!" Cell howled only for his voice to disappear in the indifferent universe he craved to subjugate as the apex predator of it all. The resulting explosion found nowhere near enough space-time to devastate, running out of the universe and whatever lay beyond its boundless edges to ravage. Time-space itself erred against the inconceivable destructive presence, ripping in bloody fractures before shattering and revealing a cosmic outer realm of boundless possibility. A dimension in which nothing existed and everything was real simultaneously. A point of no return, but also a point of boundless possibility.
Bardock's golden splendor vanished, snuffed out like a candle struggling against a typhoon. The Saiyan went limp, losing the breath in his lungs and becoming pale and frigid. Somewhere far away, Launch, rag-dolled by the immense forces of doom and one man's rebellion against his fate, suffered the first signs of a similar fate.
Cell bellowed, flexing its apex predator body, forged in combat and conquest of lesser opponents, just like nature ruled. He brushed away the sum of Bardock's retaliation and knocked what was left of the remnant energy from their desperate power struggle aside, coming out of it with just minute bruises and squirts of violet body fluid from somewhere underneath the armor. Instead of running like blood, Cell's bio-fluid vaporized with a colorful, curled trail, almost as if Cell bled lingering gas.
"You've defied fate… Bardock. Well done!" Cell exclaimed in mockery while speeding onward to defy the beckoning of the collapsing space-time that dragged him into the paradoxical singularity. "Now, disappear without a trace forever! Big Bang…"
Before Cell could complete his triumphant proclamation of victory, a sudden flurry of stomping kicks erupted upon his face, sliding Cell back and stunning him for just a blink while a flash of orange and black rushed across the cosmic distance between Cell, pulling and clawing its way out of the paradox singularity, and the hovering, half-dead Bardock.
Yamcha pressed his hand against Bardock's chest, snapping to Launch, then snapping away. The scarred martial artist thought he had spent an eternity racing at infinite speed toward the hyperspace rift that would have let him leave the paradox crack Cell had left him trapped in. The dimensional fissure that Cell's and Bardock's struggle caused opened another rift between the paradox hyperspace and reality. One which Yamcha escaped through.
Maybe if he didn't have the collapsing bleed of space-time dragging him toward the point of paradox singularity, with the combined weight of both dimensions oppressing Cell like some ridiculous black hole of the sum of all dimensions and interdimensional planes pressing against him at once, the monster could have pursued Yamcha through Instant Transmission back to Earth, but he couldn't. Not for a few precious seconds, it would take for Cell to rip the bleeding rift apart like the jaws of a voracious dragon and let the dimensions settle back into place and heal.
Cell noticed a blinking orange pixel an incredible distance away, dragged toward the same point of no return that Cell was pushing against. The ultimate lifeform opened its armored jaw and mouth, unleashing a fleshy and bony tendril that opened up its stinger and drew the Ultimate Dragon Ball into it, devouring it inside and claiming it rather peculiarly. Feeling like the entirety of his body was on fire, Cell ripped his way out of the dimensional bleed and cried out in wrath and despair at being bested by what measured against him as mere cockroaches.
Cell thought he had become the perfect lifeform, but not yet. Mere insects like Yamcha and Bardock and their struggle for existence against the laws of nature would have been irrelevant against a true form of hate and ruin. After letting the bleeding dimensions set into place and the pained universe to heal, Cell pressed its fingers to its forehead and vanished away back to the amalgam of the Four Stars.
Puri's science was what gave birth to him, her cruelty and wicked curiosity was what taught Cell how to hate. It only made sense that her life's work would help him become the apex too.
Author's Notes: Hey, sorry for taking so long to update. Truth be told, I don't have any reassuring news. The Annual chapter for Tales of a Ninja Magician is taking all my spare time and it's escalating out of my control in size and it's still nowhere near done. I'm afraid I'll have to devote my Paradise Lost time to working on the Annual if I'm to finish it in time. Once the Annual is done and posted, I'll resume the regular updates. If there's any good news about any of this, it's that my creativity and need to write this story has gone nowhere and I've got a solid plan for how I'm going to finish this arc. Sorry, and bear with me. Pretty please! :P