"Oh, hellooo!" Bulma's mother waved her hand in the air after cupping them together to make herself heard as high up as she could so that Goku's attention would immediately center on her. "I'm so glad you're here, Goku-kun! Would like to help yourself to some milk and cookies?"
"Boy, would I!" Goku exclaimed, immediately forgetting the reason for which he had come to Capsule Corps to begin with. Brimming with excitement, the Saiyan followed the curly-haired woman through the Capsule Corps complex into a sort of meeting room where she served him a massive bowl of cookies with a jar of milk accompanied by an empty glass to serve it to oneself in.
"Please help yourself!" Panchy weaved her fingers together and admired Goku, stuffing his stomach full with both hands with the passion of someone whose job it was to feed people treats.
"Chayote, I've sensed some trouble in the mountains. I figured that by the time I got there, you and Son would have solved it. What happened?" Piccolo approached Chayote from the far-off edge of the God Temple grounds when her feet touched its ground.
"We were attacked. Some kind of freaks looking like corrupted people. One of them might have been humanoid, the other one looked like a member of Frieza's race. Both of them had horns like those of an Earthling cicada, wings, armor, and a tail," Chayote replied while slowly strutting to the temple building itself to meet Kami Upa and find out what was happening on his planet.
"So, Cell flipped the script again in record time," Piccolo gnashed his teeth and clenched his fists in fury. "This time it won't be stupid enough to show his face again. How on Earth are we supposed to find it now!?"
"Cell?" Chayote stopped and turned to Piccolo, realizing that she may have wanted to talk to him instead of Upa. "I'm both surprised and a little disappointed that as the head of the largest private security and military firm in the world, I know nothing about this "Cell" thing you're talking about."
"So, Cell truly has abandoned its attempt to live its life in peace? If you and Goku have already met it, that means that the battle that will lead to the black omen that the future foretells is upon us," Kami Upa sighed after emerging from the God Temple.
"So, it's got something to do with that "Dark Omen" errand you've been running for Upa?" Chayote turned to Piccolo. "Interesting. As for you, I thought by now you'd have gotten better than to rely on those future-sight gimmicks. Those are changing and bound to be changed all the time. I've wasted so much time here on Earth giving them too much credit."
"Oh, I can relate to your frustrations," Kami Upa admitted with a sullen face. "Piccolo isn't the only one to blame for letting Cell fool him. He's had both me and the destiny itself fooled, it seems."
"It feels like I'm missing some key context here," Chayote crossed her arms, scanning the two with a brazen look and demanding answers.
"It's unfortunate you didn't come here with Son, there's a whole lot of baggage to clue you in on and I feel like cluing him in on it will be particularly painful," Piccolo sighed, resolving to fill Chayote in with what she's been missing out on.
"Achoo!" Goku sneezed, rubbing his nose with his right index finger while chuckling with a goofy look and nodding in appreciation of Panchy wishing him blessings for it.
"Someone might be gossiping about you. Oh my, what if they're badmouthing you?" Panchy gasped, pressing her hand to her cheek in appalment over what her own imagination brought to her simple mind. "It certainly can't be my Bulma though. She said "I wish Son-kun was here. We could really use his numb-skulled, wrecking-ball approach to everything right now". Just an hour before you came by, in fact!"
"Ah!" Goku gasped in horror. The somewhat sated Saiyan jumped up and shoved the chair he sat on earlier aside with his rear end, hopping on his toes like a nervous kid while he pointed at Panchy. "She said that!? I need to see Bulma right now then! Why didn't you say anything earlier!?"
"Oh, well… You looked so excited to have some cookies, I didn't want to be a poor hostess…" Panchy smacked her cheeks and shook her head in embarrassment at merely imagining how horrible she'd have felt if she didn't offer Goku treats and didn't let him enjoy all the cookies he could stuff his face full of.
"Come on, let's go, I need to see Bulma now!" Goku began running in place with a horrified expression. "She might know something about those monsters that tried eating Goten and Navy!"
"Oh my, eat them…?" Panchy gasped. "You know, Bulma once told me about a time when a pterosaur tried eating her when she was looking for those Dragon Balls in the wild… To think that monsters are eating kids as young as your Goten-chan… So horrible, what is this world coming down to? Oh, how is Goten-chan these days? How old is he now?"
"Oh, you know what, he's actually… Wait, there's no time!" Goku was about to get caught up in small talk before resisting the temptation and hurrying Bulma's mom up. Just as she turned around to lead him to Bulma's lab, Dr. Brief walked in.
"Oh my, is that cocoa I'm smelling? I'm more of a beer guy, but I heard in a sitcom that it's considered bad manners to drink beer in the morning…" Dr. Brief was muttering to himself, making his bushy mustache ruffle under his nose. "Oh, greetings to you, Son-kun!"
"Hello, old geezer, sorry, there's no time!" Goku smacked his hands together, almost like he was begging Panchy to help him navigate the confusing maze of this building complex already and take him to Bulma.
"My, my, aren't you lively?" Dr. Brief laughed out. "What are you up to these days? Why, I'll say, it's just the strangest thing. Bulma kept mentioning how she needed to get in touch with you and cursed how you live on a farm and are so hard to reach by phone sometimes just today, in fact. Boy, will she be glad to see you!"
"Why, dear, he's in a bit of a rush, he told me. He said that some monsters were trying to eat Goten-chan!" Panchy explained, still slowly shaken by the very idea and saying something so horrible out loud.
"Who's Goten-chan?" Dr. Brief scratched his head, looking off into the ceiling as if looking for one of the shiny lamps up there to give him a little reminder.
"Dear!" Panchy scolded her husband with an angry wave of her finger. "It's Chi-Chi and Son-kun's little boy! He's younger than Trunks-kun, isn't he?"
"Yeah…" Goku's head dipped to where his chin touched his chest while the deflated and submitting to despair Saiyan could only muster the degree of livelihood necessary to tilt one index finger in acknowledgment of the question he was being asked.
"Oh, Goten-chan, I remember him…" Dr. Brief snapped his fingers, pleasantly champing on a cigarette that was in his mouth. "How is he, Son-kun?"
"He got attacked, but he's okay now, that's why I came here to talk to Bulma!" Goku jumped up, ignited with the fire of a new life after realizing this was his opening to go all in. Facing these two felt like a battle and, frankly, Goku felt the most comfortable treating it as a battle, as that was the only way he could understand this strange conversation he was having with these two clueless people.
"Oh, I see, you should probably not indulge yourself with these freshly baked cookies and see Bulma then. Though I must admit that I can't really blame your distraction, this is an excellent batch of cookies. Honestly, my wife makes the upper echelon of cookies. If she weren't married to me, she'd be making a fortune selling these…" Dr. Brief began yapping again.
"Dear, you're rambling at this point," Panchy scolded her husband before waving to Goku and scurrying off and out of the meeting room and toward the Capsule Corps building complex where she could take him to the lab. Goku kept on prancing and shadow-running behind the woman, loathing her awful pacing but having no better way of reaching Bulma without her as he was bound to get lost in this massive place on his own.
"S-Son-kun!?" Bulma jumped up and turned around in her chair when the laboratory door slid wide open and startled the prodigious inventor and businesswoman with the courage to enter her lab in the middle of a productive workday. "You're exactly the person I wanted to see right now! Man… I can't believe I'm saying this but… We could probably use having Chayote here too, but I can't reach her in her office anywhere. I think her secretary's covering for the fact she's not working…"
"Achoo!" Chayote sneezed, surprising Piccolo in the middle of a heated exposition about his mission to track down and contain or destroy the dangerous, experimental Bio-Android Cell.
"Are you okay? Please don't tell me you're gonna catch a cold or something…" Piccolo scratched his cheekbone, taken aback by the crude interruption.
"I'm fine, someone's gotta be gossiping about me," Chayote grumbled. "I see, so we haven't finished cleaning up Puri's mess yet. Honestly, it sounds like she wants this settled as much as we do. We should get her in on the search."
"Well, you see… It's a whole thing…" Piccolo began nervously scratching the back of his neck, hesitating to tell Chayote about the entire awkward call between Bulma and Dr. Puri and how that went. "Bulma might have… Well…"
"Ugh… You don't need to elaborate anymore," Chayote deflated in her place with profound disappointment that the Earth nearly got doomed because of Bulma's rivalry with the banished Ultimate Class Artificial Human. "This is awful! Dr. Puri could be a powerful asset and because she's off in space, Bulma's the only way we can reach her without actually getting on a spaceship and shooting off to space, aiming to hit a jackpot and bump into her anywhere in the universe."
"Yeah," Piccolo admitted with regret pouring down his face as trickling droplets of sweat. "It is a predicament, to be certain. However, maybe if all of us spoke to Bulma together, we could still convince her. Are there maybe any business favors you can offer her? Some sort of sponsorship deal with that entire World Martial Arts Tournament project your company's endorsing?"
"Not a chance," Chayote dismissed it outright before blushing and realizing she was acting the same way Bulma was with Dr. Puri. This helped her ease up a bit on the deal-breaker attitude. "I sent Kakarot to talk to her. Those two know each other from way back. Maybe he can get her to see reason if we explain everything to him? Upa can still communicate telepathically, right?"
"Achoo!" Goku sneezed, rubbing his nose with a goofy smirk again while Bulma beamed a furious stare back at him for being sprayed with Goku's sneeze. "Sorry! I think I got the gist of it, though!"
"Really? You understood all the intricacies of Cell's molecular, artificial, and biological architecture and the complex social issues that make dealing with Cell infinitely more difficult?" Bulma raised an inquisitive and doubting eyebrow.
"Nope, but I got enough. Cell's a crazy tough and dangerous guy and we need to knock him flat to teach him a lesson!" Goku snickered. It was almost as if the Saiyan knew he fudged the details and only got the bare bones of the story Bulma told him right, but was only a smidge apologetic about it.
"Ugh, you're no help at all unless it concerns fighting! Ever since Lapis called me and let me know Cell escaped Monster Island, I've been trying to reach everybody and see if they've finished collecting the Ultimate Dragon Balls. My guess is that it's not that simple, but we might not have the luxury of just ignoring Cell if this continues," Bulma spun in her large and comfy leather chair with her fingers playing with a handful of rubber bands to keep her mind occupied.
"Cell was on Monster Island with Lapis?" Goku wondered. "That's odd, Lapis is a powerful guy. If Cell slipped from his grasp, we may not be in for a simple scrap."
"Yeah… From what I've heard, Lapis and Piccolo felt bad about Cell's background and took pity on him. They let Cell live on Monster Island. Apparently, some poachers attacked the island not too far ago and Cell became distraught. He left rambling about becoming the apex predator or whatever…" Bulma said, wondering if at least one of those things would give Goku an idea. As unlikely as Goku being the planning type was, even a simpleton such as him derived inspiration from the strangest of places.
"Hmm, that's odd, did Cell really get pushed around by some dogs? I thought Cell's supposed to be this bafflingly powerful guy…" Goku scratched his chin, looking up at the ceiling in confusion.
"I said "poachers", not "pooches"," Bulma growled. "Lapis' boss wondered if perhaps Cell might have grown too attached to its newfound peaceful life and that losing it and being subjected back into the darkness it's been delving in all this time made Cell's mind crack again… Anyway, it's not like we're planning to play shrinks here, if a Bio-Android adaptoid monster is on the loose, trying to become the apex predator, we'll have to stop Cell for real this time."
"Hmm… Something's been buggin' me," Goku admitted after a brief pause of thinking. "What's this "apex predator" thing about?"
"It means an animal at the top of the food chain. The king of all predators in the area. Someone who can feed on anything they want and isn't hunted by anything else," Bulma explained.
"Oh, like that horn-crown, round-forehead giant lizard guy that's hassling everything in the wilderness or the sabertooth tigers in Mt. Paozu…" Goku nodded to himself.
"Horn-crown, round-forehead giant lizard? You mean a Wildsaurus?" Bulma muttered. "I didn't know any lived close to your area. Then again, I guess when you're the apex predator, you live where you want…"
"I feel a bit bad about Lapis. He sounded so peeved about Cell's escape. It's almost like he blamed himself for Cell's betrayal," Bulma turned back to the screen that blinked with the wavy communication signal while she tried reaching out to any of the Capsule Corps spaceships she gave out to the fighters searching for the Ultimate Dragon Balls across the universe.
"It's not that," Goku said in a collected tone of voice that made Bulma turn her attention to him, as it was quite uncharacteristic of him to speak that way. "I think that Lapis related to Cell in a way. I think I can understand Cell too. Becoming the apex predator is a lot like becoming the strongest fighter in the universe. I'd hate for that to happen to me, then I'd have no more tough and cool guys to fight, but a lot of guys I fight want that, so I've come to understand that point of view by now."
"Did you now?" Bulma squinted her eyes, suspicious of Goku's sudden clarity of mind. She almost expected him to say something stupid, so she braced herself in her chair and put her half-drunk mug of coffee down so that she didn't spill it on her face when Goku said something stupid and made her fall over.
"Yeah, if Cell wants to be the strongest, it'll fight stronger and stronger guys, starting from the weakest one Cell thinks it can handle," Goku explained. "If you speak of nature as the food chain, Cell will need to climb that chain if it wants to assume its position at the top."
"Hmm… But it's not like the T-Rex, Wildsaurus or Triceratops can offer much of a challenge to Cell at this point," Bulma sighed, realizing that the world truly must have been close to ending if Goku offered such sound nuggets of wisdom.
"No, heck, Chayote conquered space even before the Saiyans came to Earth. I think Cell sees martial artists as a type of predator too. Just about the only threat in the universe that can still "feed" on it. No doubt about it, Cell's gonna go after martial artists," Goku tightened the belt of his gi, realizing that his prediction of having to beat Cell up may not have been that far off.
"Damn, Cell's going to pick up heaps of martial arts techniques and it's got Saiyan cells in it too. Not to mention, Piccolo and Puri mentioned it can drain someone of their life force energy, essentially powering itself up too," Bulma leaned over her table, covering her face up. "Damn it, Vegeta! Pick up already!"
"It's dangerous for anyone to be out there alone," Goku said. "We should bundle up in God Temple like in the old days. Could you let every martial artist that's still on Earth know?"
"I'll try. The last time I tried calling a press conference, Baby made the Capsule Corps stocks scrape the floor overnight by causing the largest terrorist attack in recent years… I can't make any promises," Bulma rubbed her temples with popped veins twinging on the sides of her head and her hands shaking.
"Don't worry, Bulma," Goku snapped his old friend out of her spiral into a dark abyss of negative thoughts with one call-out. "Out in space might not be such a terrible place to be right now. Besides, Vegeta ain't some piece of meat that Cell can just "feed" on. He might very well be at the top of the chain, meaning that with him is the safest place for Trunks to be."
With a tearful and grateful glare, Bulma etched the vision of a smiling Goku offering her his thumb up before the Saiyan turned and left to ask Panchy for some guidance about how he should have gotten out of this building. Bulma knew that sight all too well. It was the look that spelled "Everything's going to be alright". How could it not have been? After all, Goku was itching to pick a fight with Cell.
There was no way that Goku, of all people, would have lost!