Vegeta's Last Blast! The Truth of Perfect Cell?!
Perfect Cell lifted her foot off of the back of Vegeta's head with a smirk on her lips as Vegeta struggled back to his knees. Her smirk widened as she chuckled and rubbed her foot on his face.
"Y'know," she mused as she looked down at him, "This never gets old. The proud and mighty warrior looking up at his superior from his knees. There's always something…" Perfect Cell paused significantly, "Amusing about it." She could practically feel Vegeta glowering against the sole of her foot before he shoved her angrily off of him and forced himself back onto his feet.
"You presume too much if you think I am beaten," Vegeta spat as the blood from his burst knuckle dripped out of the hand wrap and onto the ground. "So if I were you, I would hesitate to start rubbing myself again."
"If you were me," Perfect Cell retorted smugly, casually crossing her arms while Vegeta got into a fighting stance, "You would be Perfect. Which, I mean, we can obviously see that you're not." Vegeta snarled and lunged with a flying kick that was aimed squarely at Perfect Cell's face. In the second before impact, however, Perfect Cell was suddenly three feet to Vegeta's left. "You're too short," she observed as Vegeta landed and spun around on his foot, launching himself at her with both hands out to tackle her to the ground. "Too temperamental," Perfect Cell added as she lifted her knee up into Vegeta's jaw, snapping his head back and making blood spew out from between his clenched teeth, "Not to mention egomaniacal." Vegeta staggered back before catching himself and letting out a bellow of rage.
"Silence!" he screamed indignantly as he thrust his hand forward. "Big Bang Attack!" Perfect Cell effortlessly palmed the blast and chucked it into the sky where it harmlessly exploded.
"You're vainglorious to the point of insanity," Perfect Cell carried on as if nothing had happened, now behind Vegeta as she delivered a hard punch to the kidney that made Vegeta arch his back and cry in agony. "You obsess over how others perceive you while insisting that you don't care about the opinions of 'commoners'," she added while casually grabbing the back of Vegeta's head and slamming him face-first into the ground, flying along and dragging him up and down the landscape. "All of this," she went on, "While acting like a big macho warrior king to hide how sad and alone you are. You miss mommy and daddy. You're sad that your brother hates you. You're all alone in the universe. Basically extinct. You're just a sad, lonely little boy floating out in space." Perfect Cell frowned and shook her head as she hauled Vegeta up to his feet. "It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic." Vegeta broke out of her grip with a shriek of fury and headbutted Perfect Cell and hit her square between the eyes to no reaction. She shrugged and broke out into a wide grin. "Ah, what the hell, I'll laugh anyway." Then Perfect Cell burst out into a high and uproarious fit of maniacal giggling, right in Vegeta's face, before slapping him hard and knocking him across the island.
OoOoOOO
Trunks watched this all and was totally numb. How could this happen? How could he let it? He had all the knowledge, all the foresight, he'd known exactly how the world fell apart. But it still happened anyway. Lapis got absorbed. Lazuli got absorbed. How had he let it come to this? He'd failed both worlds now.
The worst part of it was that he could have done something. He had as much power as his father. He could have destroyed Cell himself. The monster wouldn't have stood a chance! Why did he give Vegeta the first shot?
'Because you're stupid,' he thought. 'Because you're a dumb kid who wanted to see his father slay the monster. You wanted to watch dad save the day despite all the things mom told you about him and what little you could remember of him. You stupid sap.'
Meanwhile, Krillin's emotional reaction was very different. He was completely frozen for a few minutes while he stared at Cell in horror over what she had done and what she was. It wasn't long before something suddenly snapped inside Krillin's brain and he let out a mindless scream of fury and launched himself at Perfect Cell like a rocket before Suno could even react.
OoOoOoO
Perfect Cell casually backhanded Krillin back over the horizon without ever taking her eyes off of Vegeta, who had staggered back to his feet. He was bleeding from several cuts and scrapes, with bruising along his chest and across his face. His blue bodysuit had chunks torn out of it along his legs, arms, and torso. His face was the picture of impotent rage.
"Some darn big mosquitos on this island," Perfect Cell muttered casually while rubbing the back of her hand. "Stubborn, too," she added with a smirk that let Vegeta know she was putting him, the King of All Saiyans, in the same category as Krillin.
"Sh-shut up," Vegeta spat out, his voice trembling from both the pain and his fury. "I… I am the King of All Saiyans! The greatest of the only true bloodline of a mighty warrior race!"
"Can't have been that mighty if they're all dead," Perfect Cell observed. Vegeta screamed in a mindless rage before shooting up into the sky like a golden comet in reverse. Perfect Cell cocked her head to one side and watched him idly, wondering what his next move was going to be.
OoOoOoO
"Hey," Suno remarked as she picked the disoriented Krillin out of the ocean, "Vegeta's not… running away, is he?" Trunks was wondering the same thing.
'Maybe that's for the best,' Trunks thought sourly. 'He won't get killed if he gets out of my way.' Still, Trunks had a hard time believing that was his father's plan. From what little interaction they'd had in the last year, Vegeta hardly seemed like the type to run. On top of that, he was just going up. So what was he doing?
OoOoOoO
Vegeta finally reached what he decided would be the apex of his climb and glowered down at the green speck that was Perfect Cell down on the ground below.
"Cell!" he roared down at her as he thrust his arms forward and slammed together his hands at the wrists. "Now you will know the fate of all those who would dare mock the King!"
"It's Perfect Cell!" Cell corrected from far below with her hands cupped around her mouth to project her voice. "And I really doubt that! Go ahead, though. Just don't disappoint me! If you do, I'll have to discipline you!" Vegeta's whole body seethed with mindless rage until it seemed to shimmer like a heat haze. He snarled and roared as the haze burst into sparks of electricity that lanced out in all directions, ripping through clouds and slicing through the sea and land. Some of the arcs missed Cell by millimeters but she never moved from the spot as she watched Vegeta with growing interest, even as the island underneath her shook.
OoOoOoO
"What is he doing?" Trunks muttered as he squinted at his father, finally able to speak again. He was gathering an immense amount of power but for what? And if he was actually aiming all of that power down at Cell, that would mean he would also hit… "Oh no," Trunks whispered.
"H-hey," Krillin groaned as Suno flew off with him, no doubt intending on going back to Korin for some Senzu or something. "If Vegeta hits Cell… won't he be hitting the planet, too?"
Suno's eyes bulged to the size of dinner plates and she nearly dropped Krillin. "Hang on a sec," she said quickly, "Turnin' back around!" She spun around and flew back towards the steadily-growing light that was Vegeta, narrowly avoiding the ki-lightning that was emanating from him. Of course she wouldn't be able to stop him physically but maybe she could try and reason him like she'd tried to do with the twins. 'Which worked out so well,' her subconscious reminded her bitterly. It always sucked when her sarcasm turned itself against her.
OoOoOoO
The quakes reached as far as the South City Island, even reaching the coast of the main continent. Waves created by the pushback of the energy Vegeta was generating crested more than fifty feet high. From the Lookout, Piccolo, Ten, Launch, and Bulma squinted at the blinding yellow light growing brighter in the distance.
"What is he doing?!" Launch demanded angrily. "Has Vegeta gone crazy?" Despite being similarly concerned about whatever Vegeta was planning to do, or if there even was a plan, Bulma couldn't help but feel a small swell of pride.
"Go get 'em, babe," she whispered with a little smile. Still, depending on the time of day, Vegeta hit the sun and take out the whole damn solar system, not just Earth. Still, he wouldn't be crazy, right?
...Right?
OoOoOoO
Vegeta had started to gather energy in his hands, the yellow ki pulsing and crackling in his hands like a tiny starburst of energy while his aura flared violently around him.
"Vegeta!" Suno called out to him. It was hard to get close, however, from the power he was putting out and how hard it was pushing her back. "Listen to me! You don't have to do this! Think about it! If Cell has Freeza's DNA then blowing up the planet won't kill her! Namek blowing up didn't kill him, remember? All that you're doing is admitting that you've lost!" Vegeta glowered at her but otherwise completely ignored her existence.
"Let me help you!" Trunks added as he flew to Vegeta's other side, able to get a little closer than Suno was. "We can fight Cell together, father! There's no need to go to this–"
"Silence!" Vegeta roared, sending out a shockwave that sent Suno and Trunks tumbling through the air and Suno to nearly drop Krillin again. "I am the King! The King will not listen to the words of commoners and bastards!" Trunks narrowed his eyes at Vegeta before taking Suno and Krillin and carrying them somewhere safer. Wherever the hell that might be.
"Are you about done?" Perfect Cell asked. "Because if I have to wait much longer, you're not going to like it." Vegeta grinned wickedly despite himself.
"The time has come," he called down in a voice that shook the heavens, "For you to die, Cell! FINAL FLASH!" An absolutely monolithic blast of yellow-white ki exploded from Vegeta's hands, dwarfing him the size of its blast, exploding toward Cell with an almighty, deafening thunderclap. Trunks stopped flying and turned around to stare at the blast in gobsmacked disbelief, an expression shared by Krillin and Suno.
'Oh,' Perfect Cell thought as the blast came raging toward her and she could see the faint outline of an oozaru's face in the beam, 'Well that's actually fairly impre–'
The beam collided into Perfect Cell with a blinding white light like a sun exploding before curving slightly and skating past the planet's surface and out into space, narrowly avoiding the other planets in the solar system and flying harmlessly out into the void.
OoOoOoO
"The day is won!" Sorbet cried triumphantly. Cooler's forces stationed on Geldaria, several billion light years from Earth, gave a cheer and crashed their mugs together as they savored their victory over the forces of the Galactic Patrol. Sorbet was pretty pleased with himself, all things considered. A few more of these significant victories would surely ingratiate himself enough toward his new master that he could join the Armored Squadron. As the short, blue, square-nosed alien was pondering all of this, however, he suddenly had another thought. His last thought, ever. What the heck was that bright light heading toward the planet?
OoOoOoO
Vegeta's arms dropped down to his sides while he gasped for air, sweat running down his body in sheets. He'd put everything into that blast. Even accounting for having to arc the trajectory slightly to keep it from destroying the stupid planet, there was no way Cell could have taken that attack without effort. That would teach her for taking him lightly. If there was one thing Vegeta simply could not stand, it was undeserved vanity. He looked into the white light of the blast zone and waited for it to fade away to see his handiwork.
It took nearly a minute for the light to fade away but, when it did, it was the most beautiful sight Vegeta had ever seen. Perfect Cell was standing on the island, which was now an enormous sheet of glass, with an expression of shock and horror on her face. The entire right side of her torso had been blown completely off, leaving only a charred gray stump. She grit her teeth as if to keep from screaming in pain while Vegeta threw his head back in uproarious laughter. Jubilant, exultant, triumphant laughter. He had done it! He had proven himself and achieved the ultimate glory! How could Cell possibly defeat him now?
Trunks could barely believe it and yet there it was. "H-he did it," Trunks whispered, barely even daring to hope. He'd never seen Cell so damaged in his own timeline. "He did it!" he repeated eagerly and ecstatically. His father had done it after all! Vegeta… Vegeta had won!
"Okay," Suno admitted with grudging respect, "Not gonna lie, when I got up this morning, I did not think that Vegeta was gonna save the day."
"Yeah," Krillin added with shock. "This is… not gonna lie, not sure how I feel."
"I… I can't believe it," Perfect Cell muttered with dread. "You… you actually hit me!" Vegeta laughed all the louder, even beating his chest with both fists, bordering on hysteria. A few seconds after this, however, the shock went away from Perfect Cell's face and she rolled her eyes. "Okay," she said in a flat voice, "That's far enough." The gray flesh writhed and wriggled before suddenly exploding, a fresh arm and torso bursting out of the ruin. Vegeta immediately stopped laughing and the hope drained from the trio's faces as Perfect Cell flexed her hand and shook the green fluids off of her new limb.
"Cell can regenerate," Trunks mumbled numbly. Of course. Of course! Cell had Piccolo's DNA! How could he not know that? How had he not figured it out before?! God, he was so stupid!
"So," Perfect Cell said while rolling her shoulder, "You didn't technically disappoint me, which makes you a lucky little boy. You do seem tired, though, so–" Perfect Cell was suddenly in front of Vegeta and rammed her fist up into his gut. Vegeta's hair instantly flipped back to black and his muscles deflated as he collapsed from the impact and practically crumpled around her hand before falling down toward the ground below. Perfect Cell dusted off her hands as she watched him tumble down and cracked her knuckles with a smirk. That, she hated to admit, was a little close. If he'd just moved it a little to the right for a change…
"Suno," Trunks muttered as he pushed Suno off of him, "Go get my father. Then go back to the Lookout and heal yourselves." Suno looked at Trunks suspiciously, raising one of her eyebrows.
"And what are you gonna do?" she asked. Trunks glowered and grabbed the handle of his sword.
"I'm going to end this," he hissed between his teeth.
OoOoOoO
"So," Piccolo observed with a numb glibness, "Vegeta's ki just dropped sharply."
"Wait," Bulma asked worriedly as the color drained from her face, "You don't mean…" she couldn't actually ask it out loud. She couldn't explain it but she definitely felt an affection for the insufferable warmonger and not just because he was an epic roll in the hay.
"Don't worry," Piccolo assured her, "I can still sense something. He's alive but in pretty rough shape and definitely out of the fight."
"I can sense Suno heading back this way with him and Krillin," Ten added, "But Trunks is staying behind."
"What?!" Bulma asked explosively. "Why?!"
"Guess he thinks he can take Cell himself," Launch assumed. Bulma looked at Launch before looking back at the horizon and chewing nervously on her thumbnail. Her baby…
OoOoOoO
Perfect Cell casually watched Krillin and Suno fly off with Vegeta's carcass before turning her attention toward Trunks as he flew toward her with murder in his eyes.
"Well daddy's not here," she pointed out, "So you don't have to worry about hurting his pride. I can tell you were holding back against me because of him, even when you were trying to kill me." She casually gestured for him to bring it on. "Go ahead, let's see what you've got." Trunks narrowed his eyes malevolently and drew his sword.
"Gladly."
Trunks' body flashed with flickers of golden light like his body was a thunderstorm. Then his aura exploded around him without warning and his muscles began to expand, his whole body writhing as if it could barely contain his power. The blue scrunchie Bulma had given Trunks burst into flames and his hair exploded out in all directions while his eyes went white. He screamed with rage, the power distorting his voice. He was boiling with fury, overflowing like a volcano, as two decades of powerlessly suffering in terror exploded to the forefront and his power grew and grew, surpassing Vegeta's almost immediately.
OoOoOoO
"Unreal," Piccolo whispered as he broke out into a cold sweat. "Simply unreal! How does Trunks have this kind of power?!" Bulma was practically bursting with pride as she shook her fists in the air like a cheerleader.
OoOoOoO
"Stop," Perfect Cell said suddenly. "Stop. Just stop." Trunks was so startled that he actually did stop powering up. She didn't sound frightened or confused, instead she sounded… bored. "Sorry," she added, "It's just… I don't want to do this anymore."
"What are you talking bout?" Trunks asked, his voice half an octave deeper and slightly gravelly, both from the powering up and the screaming.
"I mean all of… this," Perfect Cell explained, gesturing to all of him. "You power up, you get big and strong but really slow, we fight, I slap you around, you die. It's just so… boring! I've done it like fifteen times already and each time it's the same." Trunks narrowed his eyes contemptuously and choked up on his sword like he was gripping a baseball bat. He let out a war cry and swung for the fences at Perfect Cell's neck, intending to take her head off. Perfect Cell rolled her eyes and caught the blade in one hand a second before even the breeze would have touched her neck. Her fingers closed around the blade and it resisted for a handful of heartbeats before exploding as easily as if it were sugar glass. Trunks pulled away as if he'd been electrocuted, staring at the jagged bits of metal sticking out of the sword hilt in shock and dismay before powering down almost immediately. "That's better," Perfect Cell said agreeably as Trunks crumpled to his knees.
"What are you?" Trunks asked her. "How did you know I could transform? How do you always seem to just… know things that you shouldn't know?" Perfect Cell smirked and floated up into the air until she was lying on her back with her arms crossed behind her head and one leg hooked over the other.
"Stop me if you've heard this one," she told him while lounging casually in the air. "Dr. Gero creates a monster called Cell that starts gobbling up all of humanity. Cell absorbs all of your friends, your father, and kills Gohan. But the difference," Perfect Cell went on, "Is that I killed you and Bulma, too." Trunks stared up at her in shock. "Oh, yeah. I won. Killed the last few humans on Earth and completely replaced Earth's population with bioandroids. Although, I'll give Bulma credit, she went down swinging."
OoOoOoO
Perfect Cell wiped Trunks' half-saiyan blood off her hands with the shirt his headless corpse was wearing when she heard a whistle.
"Hey bugbitch!" Bulma screamed furiously from atop the Capsule Corp building with tears in her eyes. Perfect Cell looked at her curiously as Bulma pointed a hand high up toward the night sky, her other hand holding some kind of remote control. "Suck on my moon laser!" The clouds parted and Perfect Cell looked up at the bright full moon, Bulma's face glowering down at her and her mouth opening wide with a purple light coming from inside.
OoOoOoO
"Full credit where it's due," Perfect Cell continued, "That hurt almost as much as the Final Flash. But anyway, I was deciding what to do next, probably head off into space or something, when I came across your mom's time machine and her notes on time travel. See, it was your mom that introduced me to the concept of multiple timelines. Being the perfect lifeform with perfect logical reasoning, I decided that if in this timeline I won, there must also be timelines where I lost. That was just unacceptable. So I fueled up the time machine, instantly mastered the controls, and went to one of these timelines."
Trunks could barely wrap his head around it all. So this Cell was from a third timeline, where she had already won. The fact that this Cell had killed him was more than a little unnerving. Or it would have been if he didn't feel so… completely numb.
"That first time was a mess," Perfect Cell admitted painfully. "Had no idea what I was doing. Didn't realize that I had to get back down to my larval state to even fit in the machine, I was weak and it took forever to get my power back. By that point, they'd all killed 17 and 18 in that timeline to keep me from becoming Perfect and killed me. I'd had to be very careful and nearly bit the dust a few times but I eventually got them all. Finally got enough power to become Perfect by eating Gohan, actually. I can still remember how surprised he was right before I absorbed him." She chuckled and shook her head. "Each time after that, I got a little smarter. I went further back in time and made sure to make adjustments, always made sure to absorb myself before someone interacted with the Cell of that timeline to avoid a mess. I was careful, I got prepared. Not too prepared, though, because every timeline has its little fluctuations."
"How… how long have you been doing this?" Trunks asked in a worried tone. He wasn't really sure he wanted the answer. Perfect Cell rubbed at her yellow chin and thought.
"If I had to guess," she guessed, "Which I don't, because I have Perfect memory… I've been messing around with timelines for about fifty years now. They're all more or less the same, no matter how things change. In some timelines, Goku's a man, in some of them Gohan's a girl. Sometimes you're a girl, sometimes you don't exist at all. Raditz is a good guy, Goku never hits her head, all these little ups and downs and tiny fluctuations that I've grown to appreciate over the years. It's like finding easter eggs, y'know? Still," Perfect Cell went on as the weight of that knowledge left Trunks horrorstruck, "I started to get bored after a while. So I stopped following the same pattern for a little bit and just messed around for about five years. I killed Gohan before he ever found Goku in the woods, I ate baby Bulma. I killed the Nameless Namekian the minute he landed on Earth, I set Mutaito on fire, I strangled Freeza in his crib. Just to fuck with people, y'know?" She chuckled to herself. "I really should go back and check on those timelines at some p–"
"Why don't you just kill me?" Trunks asked suddenly, his voice hoarse with emotion. "You've probably done it before, plenty of times. So why not just get it over with already?! Just do it and end this sick game of yours!" Part of him wanted her to do it. If she'd just kept winning, over and over again, and there was no way for him to stop her… he just wanted it to end. The nightmare of the last twenty-three years. He could just… close his eyes and let it all go.
"Like you said," Perfect Cell retorted, "I've already done it. In fact, I've already pretty much done everything. Although it's funny you call it a game, Trunks, because that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm gonna shake things up for this last time." She held out one arm, stretching out the thumb and forefinger of one hand to indicate the size of the headline on an imaginary newspaper. "The Cell Games! An open invitation for Earth's Champions to battle the mighty Perfect Cell to the death to save the world. After I win," she continued, "I figure I'll go all the way back to the beginning of time, remake the universe in my Perfect image." Perfect Cell unhooked her legs and uncrossed her arms before standing up in the air and dusting off her hands. "I won't do it right now, of course," she clarified, "Give you some time to lick your wounds, kiss people goodbye, all that jazz. It'll be… ten days, a week? Still workshopping the exact time. Til then, just keep the TV turned to the news, okay?" Then she flew off without another word.
Trunks knelt there on the glass for a long time, the wind occasionally blowing through his long blue hair and making him shiver. He looked down at the broken sword as he processed everything Cell had said. Then, without warning, he took a single long breath and fell face-first into the ground as he broke down and cried.