The Beast from the Future! Three Super Saiyans!
The first place that the gang took Lapis and Lazuli to was the Capsule Corp building so that Bulma could run a few scans on the twins to see how Gero had changed them and how it might affect their health.
"I feel like I'm being sent in for a tuneup," Lazuli grumbled as she lay on a slab in Bulma's lab with electrodes at her temples and on her chest, a semicircular bar hovering over her back and forth, a thin green line of light running over her as the machine hummed softly.
"We're not cars," Lapis reminded her from a similar position. "Just think of it like a checkup to the doctor or something."
"I hated going to the doctor," Lazuli retorted. Some of the others watched while Bulma was running her tests, including Trunks, who held his younger self on his lap. Every now and then his gaze would drift down when he felt Baby Trunks' tail moving on his lap.
"Hey," Krillin asked, "Where's your tail?"
"Gohan cut it off," Trunks responded.
"Sorry," Gohan said automatically.
"But why?" Krillin continued. "Doesn't Bulma own the moon in your timeline? I thought that was supposed to keep you from turning into an Oozaru?" Trunks shook his head while stopping Baby Trunks from going for his sword.
"It's not that," Trunks explained. "Gohan never knew how to train me to remove the weakness from my tail, making it a huge weak point. So he cut it off." He looked down at the toddler's tail swishing around and smiled. "Sometimes I forget I ever even had a tail." While this was going on, Bulma's machines finished their scans.
"Give it to me straight, doc," Lapis asked melodramatically as he swung his leg around and sat on the slab. "How long have we got?" Bulma looked at the readout on her screens with an expression of growing disbelief and confusion.
"Uh… forever," she replied.
"I'm sorry, what?" Lazuli asked bluntly. Bulma shrugged as she looked back and forth between the data she'd accumulated and the twins.
"I mean, I've never encountered this kind of nanotechnology before. Gero may have been a piece of shit–"
"He was," the twins assured her in unison.
"But he was also a genius. So it's going to take me some time to figure out exactly how the nanites affected your bodies. Just based on these preliminary readings, though… yeah, you two are functionally immortal. You need to stay hydrated but, other than that, the infinite energy reactors he put in your chests mean you don't ever have to eat, sleep, or even breathe. You'll age but very, very slowly."
"Huh," Lazuli muttered casually. "Neat."
"Wait, wait, wait," Lapis interjected in an apprehensive tone that was more appropriate for this kind of bombshell. "So… we can't die?"
"I mean, if something was strong enough, yeah, it could beat you to death," Bulma replied bluntly.
"A little less neat," Lazuli remarked.
"Uh…" Lapis' face reddened, as if he were embarrassed to ask out loud. "What about kids? Can we, y'know, have them? Did the doc… I dunno, mess us up down there?" Lazuli rolled her eyes and blew a few strands of hair out of her face. Clearly she wasn't bothered one way or the other.
Bulma snickered and gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I mean, there's only so much I can guess on this first scan. I'm flying blind here. Especially if you keep your pants on. I mean, I could run more tests in the future," she added while looking over her shoulder at Trunks, Gohan, and Krillin, "And maybe some of you could go poking around Gero's lab for schematics or samples or something useful!"
"We'll get right on that," Krillin assured her with a touch of dry sarcasm and a thumbs-up. As it happened they did not "get right on that." Everyone was far more interested in the twins and getting them acclimated and adjusted to the real world after being subjected to Gero's experiments for so long.
OoOoOoO
"Wait," Lapis muttered as he stared at Ten and Launch's DVD collection, "The blond dude died in like 18-fucking-whatever. How does he have a son in the year 2000?!"
"Seriously?" Tenshinhan asked with a raised eyebrow. Lapis turned around to look at him incredulously and he shrugged. "The manga's been out for… what, at least a decade now?"
"We just watch the show," Lazuli explained. Tenshinhan shrugged and the twins turned back to looking at the collection.
"Casuals," he muttered under his breath. Lapis spun back around and grabbed Ten by the shoulders.
"I'm sorry, what?" he asked confrontationally. "You may be my favorite martial artist but I am not afraid to drop you, old man."
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING 'OLD'?!" Tenshinhan asked, bristling furiously. Launch moved between the two and shoved them apart, needing a Kaiouken to keep them from grabbing at each other.
"Hey, hey, take it easy!" she snapped. "Come on, I think we've got something else you'll be interested in." Launch led Lapis and Lazuli down a hallway and toward an instillation on the house that Tenshinhan didn't recognize.
"When did we add this?" he asked, leaning down to mutter to Chaozu.
"Launch and I put it in that weekend you were contemplating all of time and space through a dewdrop," Chaozu explained.
"But we were all supposed to be contemplating all of existence in dewdrops!" Ten exclaimed in a particularly offended tone.
"Next time," Launch assured him as she opened the door at the end of the hallway. Lapis' jaw dropped and Lazuli's eyes lit up with an excitement that she hadn't even shown when she and her brother had flown. The room was a sound-proofed music room with guitars and keyboards, brass and woodwind instruments, and a drum kit in the center of the room. "I still get angry sometimes," she explained, "And sometimes it's nice to just jam out instead of breaking stuff."
"This is awesome!" Lazuli exclaimed excitedly as she and Lapis ran into the room. She instinctively grabbed a guitar while Lapis got seated behind the drums. "You wanna jam with us?" Launch shrugged and picked up a second guitar. Tenshinhan, not being particularly musically inclined, left them to their fun. After all, how long could they play?
Ten was lying in bed several hours later with a pillow wrapped around his head and his gaze turned to the ceiling while the house shook. "Four. O'Clock. In the morning," he groaned. He could still hear them from the other side of the house.
"You call me a bitch like it's a bad thing; You call me a freak like that means something!"
OoOoOoO
Meanwhile, Adrian was doing some searching of his own as he wandered down a highway road. He was still running system checks (there were a lot of weapons to check) and was now up to flight equilibrium. Though not the flight jets themselves. He came upon a car pulled over at the side of the road with smoke billowing out of its hood and a cat-woman ran out of the front seat up to him.
"Do you require assistance?" Adrian asked.
"Please," she begged urgently, "My son is sick. We need to get to the hospital in North City and my car's broken down. Do you have a car capsule or a phone or anything?"
"I do not," Adrian admitted as he looked into the backseat. The little boy's black fur sheened with sweat as he lay across the seat, panting, trembling, and wheezing with pain. "Please," he told her, "Return to the vehicle. Fasten your seatbelt." The cat-woman stared at him.
"But you–"
"Trust me," Adrian told her. "Please." She stared at him for a moment before climbing into the seat and buckling up. She let out a squeal of surprise as Adrian effortlessly lifted the car over his head and started sprinting down the street. It took him about fifteen minutes to reach the city and he dropped the car off in front of the hospital.
"Thank you," the woman exclaimed happily as she climbed out of the car again. "Thank you so much!" she threw her arms around Adrian's knees in a hug and he looked down at her impassively.
"You are welcome," he replied before pulling away from her and walking out of the city. A diversion, he thought to himself as he walked, nothing more. He had to return to his search. Still, it had made him feel… good. Adrian stopped outside the city limits and watched a bird land on his shoulder. "To know what is good," Adrian remarked as he held out his hand, "I must have a point of comparison." The bird rested on his open palm and chirped happily.
He crushed it into feathers and pulp. He wiped his hands off and looked at the blood with a frown.
"That made me feel… bad," Adrian reflected with a hint of sadness. "I will do good."
OoOoOoO
"Why can't I meet them?" Goku asked as the Son family did their morning handstand pushups in the back yard. Piccolo was participating, although he swore it was under duress. Even though they hadn't actually done anything except have Gohan ask him to join.
"It's too risky," Suno explained. "We just need to give them some time to make sure that Gero's brainwashing is out of their systems. It's more than likely that you were the biggest target of his anger and, since they don't have any ki to sense, they might actually be able to kill you."
"I don't see the problem," Goku replied. Suno rolled her eyes and groaned. The phone rang in the house and Gohan flipped out of his handstand and went inside to answer it.
"Hello," Gohan answered. "Oh, hi, Trunks! How's it staying at Capsule Corp? Kinda awkward? Yeah, I thought it would be. ...So you're sure it's today? Okay, I'll go tell them." Gohan hung up and ran back outside. "It was Trunks," Gohan explained. "He said today's the day Cell attacks Ginger Town." Goku and Suno synchronously flipped out of their handstands and onto their feet. Piccolo simply floated right side up.
"Let's get going," Goku declared excitedly. She put a hand on Suno's shoulder, who put a hand on Gohan's, who held Piccolo's hand. Goku put two fingers of her other hand to her forehead and focused on the ki signatures of the people of Ginger Town. The quartet teleported to the mountains outside of Ginger Town with a "Zip!" Vegeta and Trunks appeared a few minutes later, Vegeta flying as far away from Trunks as possible while still sharing the same hemisphere. Then Krillin, then Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Launch, and finally Yamcha.
"Where's Lapis and Lazuli?" Krillin asked.
"Chi-Chi took 'em with the twins to the beach," Yamcha replied. "I think Roshi might be there."
"So we should keep an eye out for Roshi heading for the moon?" Launch asked.
"What do we do now, boy?" Vegeta asked Trunks. "This creature's ki. What does it feel like?"
"All of you," Trunks explained. "All of you powering up at once. Plus Freeza and his father."
"So now we wait?" Chaozu asked.
"So now we wait," Trunks agreed. And wait they did. For nearly three hours.
"Alright," Piccolo grumbled, "Even I'm getting bored."
"You're sure this was the right day?" Gohan asked as he looked up at Trunks. He didn't want to come off as condescending or doubting. After all, Trunks was the one from the future. But you'd think whatever Cell was would have shown up by now.
"Of course I'm sure," Trunks snapped before immediately recoiling. "I'm sorry, it's just… this is it! This is the day, the exact day. Cell should have attacked two hours ago! None of this makes sense. Something's wrong!" Vegeta scoffed.
"I blame the woman's blood for my only son being a disappointment," he sneered. Almost immediately he turned and made his way back for West City. Trunks dropped his head with a sigh before Gohan put an appreciative hand on his arm.
"Hey," he suggested, "Why don't we go check out Gero's lab? We can root around for some stuff and maybe see if Cell's still there." Trunks nodded and he, Gohan, and Krillin flew Northward toward Gero's mountain lab. It was a quick flight back now that they knew where it was. The power was still on, surprisingly, and they spent a little while rummaging around Gero's files and across the workbenches that made up almost half the lab. There were blueprints all over the place that Krillin stuffed into a capsule for Bulma. Maybe they could be used to build cybernetic limbs and stuff. Trunks also found a jar to scoop some of the nanites that were still flowing and put that into the same capsule. A little more rummaging around found…
"Hey," Krillin muttered as they looked down at the floor, "Trap door. He really was a mad scientist." Trunks blasted the door open with a scowl on his face. He knew what was down there. The only light in the dark and creepy little hovel was a faint green glow coming from… a puddle of iridescent fluids on the floor. There was a massive glass tube in the middle of the room but a hole had been punched through it.
"No," Trunks whispered in shock, "No, no, no!"
"What is it," Krillin asked with concern as he reached up to put a reassuring hand on Trunks' arm. "What's wrong?" Something crunched under Krillin's foot and he looked down to see glass strewn all over the floor. Someone hadn't broken into the tube. Something had broken out.
"Cell's out," Trunks muttered in numb terror. "Cell's already out!"
OoOoOoO
When everyone had started to disperse, Yamcha decided he was going to fly out to meet his family and the twins at the beach. It was pretty weird, he thought, that Cell hadn't shown up when Trunks had said it would. Halfway to the beach, though, his phone started beeping like crazy from texts. He grabbed his phone out of his pocket and saw that the texts were for the Wolf and Fox app from the mayor of Parsley City. Guess it was time to do some city-saving. Yamcha opened the messages and his face immediately fell.
"Oh no," he whispered in shock. He had to get to Parsley City, now. He immediately twisted around in the air and changed course, rocketing along and following the GPS.
"Please help," the messages said, "Monster attacking city. Green. Eating people. All gone. Looking for me. Please. Help."
OoOoOoO
It was a horrible feeling. Yamcha had flown over plenty of cities and small towns. Even in little villages you could feel the ki from all those living in it, radiating from the city like a flame of a candle. But when he flew over Parsley City, there was… nothing. It was so empty and the cold sent a shock through into his bones.
'Too late,' he thought miserably. They were all gone. Then he sensed it. Just like Trunks told them. All of their powers except… not. It felt sick and twisted. It was so… dark. 'Not too late,' he corrected himself as he dove down toward the city. 'Not too late to kick some ass.'
It looked over the buildings with an impatient hiss in every step, its tail swishing from side to side. More. It needed more. They couldn't all be dead already. Then it sensed another power coming, larger than the entire city.
"Yamcha," it purred. Not bad for a snack, it supposed. Yamcha crashed into the ground in front of Cell, whose sum total "fighting stance" was to cross its arms and smirk as best as it could with a beak.
"I'm guessing you did all this," Yamcha growled as it got into his guard. Cell nodded. "Let's dance." He charged at Cell with a flying kick who bent backwards and watched him sail overhead before twisting at the waist and launching at Yamcha like a rocket with a horned headbutt. Yamcha grabbed the horns and swung Cell around before tossing it overhead. It landed on one of the empty builds and stood perpendicular, its feet pressed flat to the wall. Yamcha flew up to meet it and they met in a furious exchange of punches and kicks against the side of the building. Windows shattered from the impact and concrete cracked and exploded. Cell sidestepped an elbow from Yamcha and thrust its palm out with a kiai that sent Yamcha to the ground, although he managed to catch himself and landed firmly on his feet. Cell put its arms back over its chest and smirked.
"You must be wondering what I am," it called down smugly in a rasping voice. "Well, I–"
"Cell, bioandroid made by Dr. Gero," Yamcha called up bluntly. It stared down at him with an understanding look and Yamcha took that moment to attack. "Kaiouken!" He flew up at it with a kick and smashed his foot into its throat before following up with a right hook that sent them both into the building. "What else…" Yamcha mused as they came out of the other side of the building and plummeted toward the street. "Blah blah blah Red Ribbon Army, Blah blah blah revenge against traitors," the pair of them smashed through the street and down into the subway, "Blah blah blah DNA of the galaxy's greatest warriors, blah blah blah protect mankind from the alien horde," he smashed Cell down through the bottom of a train car and smashed its face into the electrified third rail and had to raise his voice to be heard over sparks and explosions, "Blah blah blah absorb the cyborgs 17 and 18, blah blah blah become the Ultimate, Super-duper Perfect Lifeform." All the power went out of the subway and everything went dark and quiet. Cell wasn't moving and there wasn't any sound except the sizzling of its skin. "Did I leave anything out?" Yamcha asked without dropping out of his guard. If this thing had been able to kill everyone in the future, he sincerely doubted that any version of this story could possibly end with "And Yamcha saved the day."
Cell quickly got to its feet and dusted itself off, even as its skin was smoking. Just as Yamcha had expected, this fight wasn't even close to over. Then, to Yamcha's surprise, it chuckled. "Was everyone expecting me in Ginger Town?" Then it added, in an almost excited tone, "Was Goku there?" Yamcha stared and Cell struck him with its tail to send him crashing up through the street and sprawling down the avenue. He grabbed onto a car and pulled himself up to his feet. One hit and he could barely walk. This was about to suck. Cell came bursting up through the ground and landed in front of Yamcha in a flash. "Well, since you stole my monologue…" Cell muttered as it drew a fist back, "I guess there's no point in holding back." Yamcha blinked and suddenly found himself bouncing off the side of a building. Then Cell was right over his head and kicked him down through a house.
"One more hit," Yamcha muttered as he struggled to his feet again, "And I'm dead. Guess there's only one thing to do." It was gonna suck, though. "Kaiouken times three!" He roared, powering up as high as he could. Then he pulled his arms back and balls of ki formed on each of his fingertips as Cell came flying toward him. "Jousokidan!" he flung the ki balls as hard as he could and, using his mind rather than his fingers, made the balls buzz around Cell's head in complex patterns to dizzy and disorient it. Cell let out a roar of its own and its ki aura exploded out to make the balls burst like bubbles. Then it shoulder checked him through another three houses and it was only the Kaiouken that had kept him alive. After Yamcha skidded to a halt in someone's lawn, Cell appeared in front of him in another eyeblink, looming over him and blotting out the sun.
"So," Cell hissed as its tail swished and snapped and poised to strike, "Any last words before you become a part of the most powerful being to ever live?" Yamcha chuckled through bloody teeth and weakly pointed up into the sky. Cell spun around to see Piccolo, Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Launch, Krillin, and Suno bearing down on them.
"Not so dumb, am I?" Yamcha asked with another pained chuckle. Cell growled and smacked him down into the dirt before flying up to fight them. Launch and Tenshinhan were already in Kaiouken and Piccolo, Suno, and Krillin were stronger than all of them. It didn't do them much good. Cell knew all their styles, all their flaws and weaknesses, and fought like all of them. Launch's explosiveness with Ten's precision, Suno's focus with Krillin's redirection, plus Piccolo's relentlessness, Goku's violent grace, and what could only be Vegeta's brutal ferocity.
Piccolo did the best of them and was still fighting after the others all went down. Then Cell did something unexpected and opened its beak to let out a high-pitched shriek. Piccolo crumbled to his knees, screeching in agony, and Cell kneed him in the face so hard that the "CRACK!" echoed across the city. Piccolo collapsed in a heap with blood running down his face as Cell looked down at them all, broking and groaning, with a look that could only be described as the textbook definition of invincible.
"Really," Cell sighed, "I'm almost disappointed. I mean, I knew I was going to win. I always do. But this is just… too easy."
"How about you try us on for size?" a woman's voice called down. Cell's head snapped up and it stared eagerly at Goku, Gohan, and Trunks, with Vegeta coming swiftly up behind. Goku, Trunks, and Vegeta were all Super Saiyan. This actually made Cell get into a fighting stance.
"Okay," Gohan said calmly, "We need to attack precisely and in uni–" Trunks couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear anything for the blood pounding in his ears. All he could see was the thing that killed his friends. His father. His… world. It looked up at him like it… knew him. It made him see red. He was strong enough. He could kill it, right now. He grabbed the sword in both hands and drew it with a bellow of bloodlust and rage to fly down with all the hate in his body. "Or… now. We can just attack now." Gohan and Goku followed suit, each throwing out a flying kick, Goku's with two feet and Gohan with one, while Vegeta dropped out of the sky like a meteor with both fists out. Cell dove, wove, slipped and slid through the four Saiyans' attacks with the grace of a synchronized swimmer and the murderous intent of a viper.
"Now this is more like it," Cell laughed as it backflipped and twisted through the air to avoid a series of ki blasts. "I was hoping you'd be alive, Goku! Dodonpa! Makankosappou!" The straight yellow beam flew from one hand, grazing Trunks' leg, and the spiral of purple and yellow missed Goku's ear by half an inch. "Come on," Cell crowed arrogantly, "Show me what you've got!"
"Kill you," Trunks snapped as his sword hummed through the air in a song of death. "I'm going to kill you, you murdering piece of world-ending garbage!" Goku was angry too, of course, since this Cell thing apparently killed everyone she knew in another future. Her benefit was that, with the training and experience that Trunks lacked, she channeled her anger into her strikes to keep everything focused and directed. Gohan's anger was similar to his mom's and did his best to keep a leash on his anger. It wouldn't do them any good if he flew into a blind rage now. So he kept everything focused and pushed his anger down.
'Just keep fighting,' he told himself. 'Do what you can. Don't think about how you're not a Super Saiyan, don't think about how this would be working if we actually had a plan or were fighting toge–' Cell kicked him into a bus.
"Gohan!" Goku cried, which left her open for a lash from Cell's tail.
"Out of my way, you idiots!" Vegeta snapped as he charged toward Cell like a rampaging bull, sending both of them crashing through half of the stores in the downtown. Vegeta was the only one not angry. Well, no more angry than was Vegeta's natural state of being. His only personal stake in this fight was that Cell had killed him. It was an affront to his honor and a challenge that must be met. "You are an even worse abomination than the brats," he snarled as he tried to strangle it. "Now die by a true warrior's h–" while Vegeta was monologuing, Cell smashed its palm under his jaw and sent him through the ceiling.
"I must get my desire to ramble from him," Cell remarked as it rubbed at its hand. Trunks and Goku came flying through the store and Cell twisted through the air to avoid their attacks. It flicked two fingers up in Nappa's style, although obviously neither of its opponents had seen it, and blasted the shop into oblivion in a tremendous fireball under their feet. Cell flew up through the blast to give itself some space when a bus smashed down onto it like a hammer to ram it down into the pavement.
"Not so funny, is it?" Gohan asked as he lifted the bus up and slammed it down onto Cell again. He raised it a third time but Cell roared and sprang to its feet.
"Masenko!" It snapped, blasting the bus to smithereens. Vegeta lunged at Cell again from the back and it spun to block and redirect all of his attacks before being hit in the back from an attack by Goku. Goku and Vegeta's combined assault was actually getting through Cell's genetically-engineered perfect guard and it was starting to take some hits.
"Check it out, Vegeta," Goku remarked. "We're working together!"
"No," Vegeta snapped, "We are most certainly no-OOOOOOT!" Cell took Vegeta's distraction to sweep his feet out from under him with its tail and grab his ankle to fling him into Goku, sending both of them crashing into a house. They rebounded immediately and came with a two-pronged attack while Gohan attacked from behind with a ki-charged axehandle blow and Trunks came literally screaming down from the heavens with his sword raised overhead. Only one thing to do.
"Taiyoken!" Cell cried out. The blinding flash exploded out in all directions and, as their heightened senses caused the Saiyans to cry out in pain, Cell followed up with an attack shared by Freeza and Piccolo and froze them all with a paralytic shock. When the light faded and they all recovered from their electrocution, Cell had completely vanished from existence.
"Damn it," Krillin groaned weakly. "Ten, why'd you ever come up with that stupid move?"
"You weren't complaining about it the fifty times it saved our butts," Launch pointed out painfully.
"Yeah," he admitted, "I'm just not used to someone using it on us to save their butts."
"So what do we do now?" Gohan asked as he started passing out senzu to the wounded. "Cell didn't really do a lot of damage to us–" he was interrupted by a collective groan from the injured, "Well, the four of us. If we just hunt it down–"
"No," Goku denied bluntly. Everyone stared at her in confusion. Was Goku saying that she was giving up? That was impossible. So she must obviously have some kind of plan. "If Cell can already fight the four of us together then it's dangerous, especially if it gets stronger while we're trying to find it. So we need to get stronger, and fast."
"But mom," Gohan protested, "We trained for three years! There's no way to boost our power in a short amount of time." Then Goku grinned.
"Don't worry," she assured him. "I've got an idea."