"Come then," Cell smirked, dropping its guard on purpose to strike a challenging and wide-open pose, as if to taunt Ultimate No. 21 to do her best. "Show me how powerful this Ultimate Class Artificial Human is."
While compliance wasn't exactly the feature that best defined Dr. Puri, the newly ascended Ultimate Android complied with Cell's request, launching herself forward at a speed that shocked Cell stiff. A straight thrust of her arm with a palm strike shoved the limb clean through Cell's abdomen, curling the Bio-Android up and forcing it to spit up oozes of purple liquid from its mouth, frothing mint-colored foam and purple blood alike.
Having established her superiority, Ultimate Artificial Human No. 21 decked Cell in the face and sent the Bio-Android flying. With a snap, Dr. Puri closed the distance between her and her airborne opponent and swiped her feet upward vertically, whipping Cell into the air and shooting him through multiple shifting room configurations in the process with thunderous cracks.
Enveloped in a scarlet aura with a blotchy inky outline, Dr. Puri shot toward Cell with a vanishing flurry, slamming her elbow into Cell's face before turning around and driving her elbow into Cell's gut. Turning around once more, the Ultimate Android slammed her entire leg into Cell's chest horizontally, then vaulted over her axis vertically with an overhead guillotine kick that sent Cell through another wrecking ball trip and crashed Cell through countless labs, hallways and empty metallic storage units.
"What's wrong? Could my strength perhaps be too much for you?" Dr. Puri wondered, bringing herself lower to the metallic rectangle that Cell ended up stuck in, smashing it into a folded heap of scrap with the rough landing.
"Don't get cocky!" Cell screamed out, erupting with a vivid golden aura and booming fiery plasma geysers from the heap of scrap it was stuck in, molting it away and liberating itself as Cell soared out from its makeshift prison. "I came here fully aware of your potential. That's why I made a few stops at some handy planets to gather some extra cells before challenging you."
"You mean you assimilated the features of species that my future self taught itself to be more efficient in eradicating in her paranoia? Your entire joke of a life has been playing catch-up, it seems…" Dr. Puri mocked Cell to its face, forcing all semblance of restraint out from Cell's expression. The seething monster of fringe scientific advancement bellowed out a war cry and rushed at its ultimate opponent.
Two speeding comets, one scarlet with flaming black motifs and one lustrous and golden, heated the air to force the surrounding technology to go haywire and erupt with wild thunderstorms that shorted the Puri Star out and made it explode with vivid colors. As the two humanoid comets crashed into one another again and again, the infinite memory space processors began dancing with hyperactivity to keep up their quotas. Again and again, the two forces crashed with one another, exchanging hundreds, thousands of blows with each collision with their bodies looking like they barely twitched from place each time.
"I am the apex!" Cell bawled out, connecting with a deafening straight to Dr. Puri's jaw and stunning her in place, extinguishing the ionic deluge that raged inside the artificial mega-structure. "You've designed me to be your guinea pig, but I have outgrown your expectations! You acknowledge that I am now alive! I will be free of you!"
Cell clobbered Dr. Puri with hammering shots and straights coming from different angles with all four of its arms frothing from the mouth, grinding its teeth with pulsating veins emerging all over Cell's face. Cell's bloodshot eyes bulged out from their sockets as the Bio-Android vaulted with a backflip and kicked Dr. Puri away, engaging with a vibrant golden aura and chasing after her.
The pursuing Bio-Android crashed into its maker with a flying elbow strike to Ultimate No. 21's throat, prompting the artificial woman to gasp for air and spit up slobber from her crushed throat. Cell vanished and appeared behind where the force of impact would have carried Dr. Puri off to, stunning her with a double cross-chop to the sides of her neck, then grabbing the Ultimate Android with its two lower arms and slamming her spine from a vertical position into Cell's knee.
Dr. Puri's tormented scream filled the infinitely configurable hallways of the merged Four-Star, echoing off and dying out in its incalculable vastness. Crackling with a field of golden static electricity, Cell punted the Ultimate Android away and crossed its arms. Cell's chest became liquified and malleable. As the Bio-Android pumped its chest outward, it spat out shiny, diamond-shaped obsidian rocks that erupted in a machine-gun blizzard.
Ultimate No. 21 scrambled back to a right-side-up hovering position and deflected the incoming shower with front-hand and backhand smacks, showing meager bruising where her hands contacted the tiny jagged obsidian bullet storm.
"Planet Graphendal is a tiny planetoid with an estimated gravity thousands of times that of Earth. The incomparable gravity that defies the laws of physics crushes all organic matter, however, even in these absurd conditions, life finds a way. The Graphendalians are an alien species that resemble these very shards I just used, living obsidian diamonds with the densest particle structure in the known universe. The gas and biological waste they secrete becomes hardened into beautiful metallic halos by the gravitational pressure of Planet Graphendal," Cell said while glaring straight in the emotionless, almost inhuman yellow eyes of Dr. Puri.
"You obnoxious tit," Dr. Puri reared her teeth with an angry expression. "I've spent years traversing the universe and I've had all the bottomless research of Dr. Lychee at my fingertips all this time. Spare me the condescending extraterrestrial biology lesson!"
"You misunderstand, Mother," Cell shook its head. "What I meant to show with this example is that life surpasses the expectation of its maker. Intelligent or otherwise. Whether someone intelligent manifested the miracle of Planet Graphendal, or it was born of some twisted cosmic accident and perfectly aligned conditions, no one could have predicted that sapient life could blossom there. Just like you couldn't have imagined what potential I had."
"You're right, I will never find out. Because you killed my Cell," the Ultimate Android feigned a disinterested yawn. "Just like you and your insufferable parasitic spawn exterminated the Graphendalians."
"I didn't exterminate them, I established Cell as the apex predator species of that planet!" Cell argued with passion. "Before you grew soft before you lost your way, you too knew all too well that only the apex predator can be allowed to live their life freely and without fear of losing everything in a cruel twist of fate. The blink of a moment. That's the only reason you made Cell–to learn how to become that apex predator that stands above all other species in the universe. In a way, you succeeded. You may not have become the apex predator, but you have created one. The perfect creature that stands above all things in the universe."
"Are you quite done titillating yourself?" Dr. Puri jerked her head to the side with a pitying look in her eyes. "You're demeaning my future self's work by using all that potential just to polish your pearls non-stop."
"If you're thirsty for action, I'm more than happy to oblige!" Cell positioned its arms to the sides and made a mocking bow.
"You've had your chance, but you wasted it flapping your fishy, black gums," the Ultimate Android gnashed her teeth, becoming enveloped in a scarlet field of energy with a crackling black electric outline. "Hors d'Oeuvre Crash!" she chanted out, charging at Cell at incredible speed and becoming a beam of red laser that split reality like it was a panel of glass.
Cell emerged from the wreckage surrounded by a teal electromagnetic energy field, an improved version of the Android Barrier that absorbed most of the force of Ultimate No. 21's energy-charged tackle. Despite Cell's best efforts, it still suffered a mean wallop that blasted Cell outside of the Puri Star mega-structure and into empty space. The Bio-Android looked around only for Dr. Puri to blindside it and whack it back with a kick from behind, planting Cell firmly into the cybernetic star's surface.
"Urgh!" Cell seethed, spreading its legs and clenching all four of its fists at the sides, exploding with a King Kai's Fist aura outline. "King Kai's Fist!" Cell cried out, becoming enveloped in a mish-mash of golden and scarlet lights that swirled into something remarkable and incomparable. Cell's unique body structure and regenerative abilities allowed it to balance out the demands of both the Super Saiyan energy burn and the stamina drain and physical hurt of King Kai's Fist. Cell pumped its forearms, forming four pink energy blades around each arm and taking off at the Ultimate Android. Cell's kick from the take-off left a visible, rumbling crater underneath.
Dr. Puri encased her own forearms with Ki blades and charged at Cell to clash with the technique she showed the Bio-Android. The two collided in mid-air, beginning an intense fencing match, attacking and defending in turn with Cell slashing like a mad berserker and Dr. Puri adopting a more reserved and refined, fencer-like style of Ki sword-fighting.
The two combatants began fencing so fast that they turned into living Ki blades themselves, vanishing away from vision and only appearing when they slowed down sufficiently within the realm of the concept of speed to deliver a powerful strike. Each warrior evaded their opponent's strike with elegance, skill, and precision, or blocked them with brute force, fueled by their mutual hatred for one another. Each combatant could tolerate the very fact of their opponent's existence no longer, inspiring them the strength to defy their ordinary limits and become living swords, embodying their demand for satisfaction that they could only achieve in their opponent's destruction.
Each of Cell's or Ultimate No. 21's slashes sent crescent projectiles that sliced cleanly through surrounding planets and moons, splitting them into pieces like fruit and obliterating the cosmic objects when the slice cleaved through their cores as well. This self-sustaining dance of swordsmanship only finished with Cell disengaged its Ki blade and let Ultimate No. 21 cleave through while Cell's de-powered arm grabbed hold of the strap of Dr. Puri's checkered dress and pulled her in for a headbutt.
Rearing a spiteful expression, Dr. Puri directed her forehead to collide with Cell's, expelling a thunderous and explosive shockwave where the two crashed their foreheads with lightning discharges sparking off in all directions and ripping through the surface of the merged Four-Star, ravaging it and threatening to shorten the entire gigantic space station out, leaving it stranded and hovering in a reaped star system. Cell slipped a knee strike into Dr. Puri's gut, forcing the Ultimate Android to barf up slobber, but No. 21 responded with a side elbow butt that dulled Cell's stare and stunned the Bio-Android into a blankly hovering daze.
Panting and wishing the agony of ten thousand deaths on one another, the two dance partners drifted apart from one another. Each proudly wore their shiners, bruises, and bleeders while eager to catch just a few fleeting air molecules in the ravaged artificial atmosphere found near the surface of the Puri Star.
"Kamehameha!" Cell exclaimed all of a sudden, thrusting its arms out and firing a cerulean energy beam from its cupped hands.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Ultimate No. 21 thrust her arms forward, mirroring Cell's movements and firing and wholly black Kamehameha beam with a sparkly scarlet outline. The two beams collided with one another and exploded in the middle, canceling each other out.
The two warriors stared each other down while the aftereffects of their colliding beams settled down. Burgundy smoke whiffed through each of the solemn-looking combatants while they planned their next move for when their blind wrath and hatred toward one another would allow them the luxury of executing a thoughtful strategy.
"What is your endgame here, Mother? Just to struggle against my omnipotence forever?" Cell scoffed in disgust, spitting out a razor-sharp fang from its mouth that was back in its place the moment Cell turned back to glare at the past version of its true maker.
"My plan hasn't changed–it's your destruction," Dr. Puri deflected the question.
"I will give you more credit than you deserve in pointing out what you should already know–I have more ways of avoiding destruction than one can count. I am effectively immortal, more so, my bottomless power is sent spiraling into even greater heights by the Legendary Super Saiyan gene attained from Broly's frigid remains, not to mention, the Saiyan ability to grow stronger each time I nearly die. Then there are the abilities of Super Saiyan and King Kai's Fist, that drastically multiply each of my power-ups. To ignore my invincibility is to be a fool and you are anything but. You created a version of me, after all…" Cell pointed out, for the first time showing no enjoyment in describing its own unfathomable power and combat talents.
"Anything that has been created can also be destroyed," the Ultimate Android deflected the question vaguely once again.
"Could you perhaps be counting on exhausting me and my perfect body? No, that too is impossible because of the Infinite Energy Reactor. Each flawless talent for inflicting violence in my body is eternal," Cell vocally tried guessing where Dr. Puri was heading with this indomitable task of destroying Cell in its current state. "Not even my flawless combo of the Gudrochan brain matter, enhanced by the processing power of Artificial Human technology, can come up with a way to destroy one such as myself. And here I thought I would eliminate the possibility of being surprised by your intelligence by attaining the Gudrochan cells and adopting their peerless intellectual capabilities as my own."
"Elementary. The Gudrochans may be the most intelligent species in the universe, but the abilities of an Ultimate Class Android represent the peak of scientific advancement. The very pinnacle of the potential of where science can take you. The power to undo you, however, that lies somewhere beyond…" Dr. Puri nodded. What threw Cell off-balance was that Dr. Puri so calmly admitted to the existence of something beyond the absolute pinnacle of scientific advancement, almost as if she had been studying it already for a long time.
"You're bluffing!" Cell exclaimed, unleashing all of his strength and eclipsing even the merged Four-Star with the eruption of its golden and crimson radiance. "My power is absolute! It triumphs over all things! It's the power of freedom, the power of life! The power that will allow me to cut you out and live freely at long last!"
Cybernetic tendrils burst forth from the surface of the artificial mega-structure, wrapping around Cell in a vain attempt to restrain it. Countless more strands, segmented wires pumping with neon lights connected with the Ultimate Android, amping her full of energy at powering her up with the output of the merged Four-Star, dimming the glow of the peerless ancient space station as a result. Just as Cell ripped free of the restraints, Ultimate No. 21 was up in his face, grabbing Cell by its neck and elevating it over her head with a sadistic smirk on her face.
"Connoisseur Cut!" Android 21 licked her lips, igniting a lively Ki blade that beamed off into space off the surface of the Puri Star as she dragged her arm sideways with an ill-intent slice. Cell gnashed its teeth in desperation and vanished in a sharp snap. "Instant Transmission, huh? I'd have thought you'd have used this trick to get away…" Dr. Puri said while turning around to face Cell who panted with a hand over its chest, having just avoided a painful beheading at the Ultimate Android's hands. "In the future where you won, you've absorbed many more species, haven't you? How about you vanish away and hunt all of them down? See how many more you'll need before you can stand up to me…"
"Run away? After all the trouble I've gone through to find you? After this unique smile of fortune that led me here? No, not a chance!" Cell clenched its arms by its side. "I've got all the data I need on you and my data indicates that what I am is more than enough for the likes of you. It's true, the current version of you is far more dangerous than the future one I've killed, solely because of this damned thing we're standing on."
"If that is so, then why not destroy it? It should be child's play for someone like you. Besides, after all the trouble and deceit I've gone through to obtain this ancient cosmic artifact, losing it would break my heart. It's my precious family home, after all," Dr. Puri shrugged with a smirk before her face became more serious. "Unless, of course, you plan on using it after you rid yourself of the influence I still hold over you."
"But of course, such a thing is too useful to be rid of. But… Now that I've admitted it, why don't you destroy it? Unless, of course, you plan to use it to destroy me, somehow…" Cell smiled as two of the most cunning intellects collided in an invisible tug of war, not unlike their previous dance of energy blades in outer space that left the star system that the Puri Star occupied bleeding with showers of magma and space dust.
"Who's to say…?" Dr. Puri shrugged, feigning indifference. With a sadistic smile that perfectly relayed the enjoyment of bullying the abominable invention of her future self, the Ultimate Android burst with a scarlet and black flame that beckoned out into the vast, open space, visible from the surface of the gigantic cosmic mega-structure from the other corner of the star system.
"Super King Kai's Fist X10!" Cell howled out, matching the same energy output by combining King Kai's Fist and Super Saiyan into a golden and crimson swirl. An ethereal pillar that clashed with Dr. Puri's preposterous energy output and was its rival in radiance.
The greatest clash of both wits and muscle was still brewing hot in a faraway, ravaged star system somewhere in the North Galaxy quadrant.