"Ugh, let's not spend any more time in this dump than we have to, Krillin…" Lazuli lamented stepping foot on the green planet the surface of which seemed to be coated with dust and a thick layer of dirt that stuck to Lazuli's boots.
"Huh, look there, that looks like a bunch of farms," Krillin pointed at a small settlement of oval-shaped buildings that seemed to be entirely wrapped out of silk and resting on a cushion of puffy yet adamantine strands.
"Oh, great… Just what I wanted to see," Lazuli rolled her eyes. "Are we close to the Ultimate Dragon Ball yet?"
"It would be of no use looking around here, but shouldn't be too far," Krillin gazed at the handheld panel gadget that relayed the location of the Ultimate Dragon Ball. Following its signal, the two space explorers walked through the mushy soil and found themselves a pathway leading through the farm. While Krillin kept his eyes cemented to the screen, Lazuli looked around at the locals who were working the surrounding farms.
A species of insectoid aliens with segmented bodies, like those of a caterpillar, inhabited Planet Caterpillia. Most of them were plain green-looking with black or mud-colored dots. A queue of possibly venomous spikes was sticking out from the sides of the locals' bodies, with a pair of arms sticking out from the top segment of their bodies. Their heads didn't look very insectoid. In a way, they resembled Namekians in terms of skull structure, though perhaps the skull structure of these caterpillar aliens was more brutish.
A caterpillar skittering across the muddy farmland looked up and dropped its jaw in awe, looking at the pair of aliens wandering through the farm. It quickly burrowed into the thick layer of dirt, finding a pocket in which to conceal itself. A bulkier caterpillar alien with a low-pitched feminine voice grumbled to herself before yelling out in fear. The thick caterpillar lady was pushing and pulling a six-legged colossal grasshopper-like bovine thing around, but after seeing just a glimpse of Krillin and Lazuli, the lady lifted the entire mega-hopper over its head and skittered off toward the building.
"These folks don't look very excited to see us," Lazuli stated the obvious, but only because Krillin wasn't paying much attention to his surroundings.
"Huh? Don't worry, they're not going to cause us any trouble, and neither will we. It's just a simple scoop job. We drop, pick up what we came for, and leave," Krillin brushed it off and a nothing-burger.
Before they could walk past the caterpillar-people settlement, headed toward a gigantic castle-like structure looming on the horizon beyond the woods, a handful of caterpillars skittered out from their buildings and blocked their path off, rising at high up as their long, segmented bodies allowed and cracking their puny knuckles out in front of the pair of explorers. Unlike the farmers from earlier, these bulky caterpillars all had a pair of arms for each of their segments, suggesting that they may have been a warrior caste of their species.
"What are you, and why have you come here?" the boldest one of the caterpillar aliens asked.
"Jeez, these bug-yokels are becoming an eyesore…" Lazuli's face was beginning to relay her displeasure with this destination. Krillin knew that look on his wife's face–it meant that it wouldn't take too much of a push before she started sadistically punishing these bug people for all the dirt and hassle on their planet. Sensing trouble, he took over the negotiations section of their visit.
"We're Earthlings from Planet Earth. We're looking for our artifact that's landed on your planet. If we don't retrieve it and return it to Planet Earth–our entire planet will blow up. We're only after the artifact and we'll leave when we've picked it up," Krillin said with his best attempt at non-violent and pacifying body language. Forcing to chuckle and wrestling his muscles to appear non-threatening made Krillin crack a sweat, which may have cast the wrong impression on the locals that he was getting worked up for being a poor liar.
"We don't take too kindly to strangers around these parts, and that palace beyond the Weevil Woods is where our King lives. We won't allow anyone to enter the hallowed grounds of the woods, let alone waltz into the King's castle!" the caterpillar soldiers began wriggling their tiny arms equipped with large and round fists, punching the air as an aggressive gesture that was meant to intimidate Krillin and Lazuli to go back to where they came from.
"Jeez!" Lazuli squinted her glare and charged at the caterpillar soldier. The violent outburst blew mud that was pooling around her boots in all directions, which slowed Lazuli down a fair bit until her feet emerged from the mud and her dash could set off properly. This gave the caterpillar soldier just enough time to curl up into a ball, though it wasn't like it served them any use. Lazuli punted the caterpillar soldier into the atmosphere and pointed her index and middle fingers at it, ready to blow the bundled ball out of the sky.
Before she could do so, however, the segmented caterpillar brutes wrapped themselves firmly around both Lazuli's and Krillin's bodies, grabbing hold of their wrists and their heels and raising them in the air. "It's time for the ace technique of the Caterpillan people - The Tickle Torture!" the caterpillar alien holding Lazuli captive exclaimed. Lazuli was just about to tear her way out from the bug's hold, but the confusing name of the technique made her hesitate just long enough for the brush of the Caterpillan's hands to reach her sides.
"W-Wait… S-Stop!" Krillin started laughing and jerking violently in giggling agony as the Caterpillan holding him hostage began mercilessly tickling his sides, employing its many arms to navigate Krillin to positions where he'd be more susceptible to tickles while its large and rubbery arms with thumb-like protrusions brushed against Krillin's and Lazuli's sides, seemingly perfectly designed by nature for maximum efficiency against ticklish opponents.
"This is ridiculous!" Lazuli exclaimed, expelling a violent Android Barrier around her body and sending the Caterpillan holding her in the air flying, utterly knocked out of its senses. "Let my husband go at once! Only I'm allowed to torment him with tickles when I need him to go to the convenience store for me!"
"Damn!" the Caterpillan holding Krillin hostage discarded the bald martial artist, intimidated by Lazuli's demand after her impressive show of force. "We must assume our Ultimate Metamorphosed Fighting Forms!"
"U-Ultimate Metamorphosed Fighting Forms? You mean your species can transform?" Krillin gasped while pulling himself out from the dirt pit which the Caterpillan cast him into. While Krillin was wiping his face and clothes, liberating himself from the yuck coating him, Lazuli observed as all the Caterpillan soldiers simultaneously spat out puffy strands of silk into the air that gently wrapped around them and surrounded the Caterpillans into an impenetrable cocoon.
Lazuli and Krillin stood in uneasy anticipation of the monstrosities that would crawl out from the cocoons, but as more and more time passed, it became apparent that no such thing would happen. Just as the two were about to drop their guard, the Caterpillan guard whom Lazuli blasted away with her Android Barrier recovered enough to chuckle and skitter back on six feet, while dangling two more pairs of arms in front of it.
"You've done it now, fools! In 1200 years, we will emerge from our cocoons as the Ultimate Metamorphosed Fighting Forms!" the Caterpillan laughed out megalomaniacally before following the example of its peers and coating itself in the silky cocoon. The same material that these Caterpillans built their homes and palaces out of, it seemed.
"D-Did he say… 1200 years?" Krillin's right eye twitched in disbelief.
"It figures that these mud-crawling bugs are imbeciles. In all these years, they still haven't advanced much past their medieval stage, from the looks of it," Lazuli ran her hand through her hair just to settle her hair into order and proceed through the Weevil Woods.
The Weevil Woods proved to be a deep sprawling woodland with the trees having grown so tall and dense that natural light struggled to break through the leafage. Given how the Caterpillans employed their silk to build all of their buildings and horns or claws of chunks of chitin shells of other species living on Planet Caterpillia to craft their simple plowing tools, the woods on Planet Caterpillia grew completely out of control with nobody to control the tree population or their growth.
The Weevil Woods proved to be home to a lot of Planet Caterpillia's wildlife that fled into natural monuments such as this to avoid the ticklish offensive of the village soldiers. A few times, Krillin and Lazuli had to halt in their path to let a rumbling giant resembling a mixture of a caterpillar and a freight train slither on its way in front of them and move from one massive bundle of trees into another. A few more times, Lazuli and Krillin had to wrestle a makeshift juggernaut battle machine made of hollowed-out chitin shells of some insectoid caterpillar-like creature with a massive spike on its front and rolling on detached Caterpillan segment wheels to the ground, fending off mindless bipedal grasshoppers that rolled inside these makeshift battle machines, gigantic bees and massive condor birds that could rub their feathers in a way that produced electric jolts.
"This is nothing!" Krillin exclaimed with cheer as he kicked another massive condor bird to the ground from the side with a flying kick and patted his arms down. The bald martial artist looked over the moon having had a chance to show off in front of his wife by dispatching such a massive predator all on his own.
"Hmph, for such a weakling planet that doesn't have any challenging opponents on it, the locals sure are aggressive," Lazuli sighed. She had previously thought that planets that would produce the weakest resistance would be those that experienced little conflict, but Planet Caterpillia seemed different since both the locals and the wildlife were aggressive to foreigners, however, neither proved to be much of a challenge.
"We're closing in on the Ultimate Dragon Ball!" Krillin shouted out, pointing at the screen of his handheld Ultimate Dragon Radar panel while turning it for his wife to see. "We might not even need to deal with the King of this planet or their guards. Lucky!"
"Speak for yourself. You're paying for my shopping trip when we get back to Earth. This trip ruined my boots," Lazuli crossed her arms.
The husband-and-wife duo walked past a few more patches of bushes and out into the swampy clearing full of razor-sharp blades of grass that measured up taller than an adult human. Carefully, Lazuli and Krillin hovered over the bog and landed on the mossy other side that still felt soggy, but cushioned their feet well enough to maintain balance on. In front of them laid a gigantic cocoon that must have been so old it was covered with moss as well.
"There's no doubt about it," Krillin confirmed with the Ultimate Dragon Radar. "This cocoon is where the Ultimate Dragon Ball is!"
"Are you serious?" Lazuli rolled her eyes in frustration. "I knew I was going to chip my nails as well. This stuff has to be as tough as steel. This is why I hate nature trips."
"That's okay, honey, I'll take care of it!" Krillin yelled out. With youthful vigor, the martial artist leaped into the air and flipped over his front, driving a diving kick into the cocoon only for all the force of impact to be absorbed inside. Completely stunned, Krillin cupped his hands together and drew them back, shooting off a quick Kamehameha wave into the cocoon that was powerful enough to wave and bend the surrounding trees and rip their thick leaves off their branches but still couldn't leave a dent in the cocoon. Frustrated, Krillin raised his arm over his head and formed a yellow energy disc at the palm of his hand.
"Kienzan!" he exclaimed, flinging the buzzing energy disc sawing straight at the cocoon. The buzzing of the energy saw intensified when it hit the cocoon, however, even the Kienzan failed to cut through the cocoon. It wasn't that the bundle of silk was too tough to be cut, more so that upon contact with the Kienzan, it bent and produced more and more silk, proving to be as elastic as it was tough when it needed to withstand a Kamehameha.
"Tsk, at this rate, it will take another 1200 years for your Kienzan to cut through!" Lazuli objected to how their quest was progressing.
"Maybe I can help?" a confident and low-pitched voice stunned Krillin and Lazuli as neither of them could pick up any energy signatures behind them. A mustard and coal-colored tail equipped with a bony stinger at the end whizzed right past Lazuli's silver hair and stabbed into the cocoon. After a few pumps of something, drawing some of the silk in and pumping something out through the tail, the cocoon decayed into rusty and brittle threads and collapsed into powder, releasing the Ultimate Dragon Ball from inside to roll out by Krillin's feet.
"Umm… Thanks," Krillin mumbled before leaning down to pick the Ultimate Dragon Ball up, but before he could grab it, it shot into the air and hurled toward the mysterious interloper. It was as if some psychic force guided the Dragon Ball. Mustard-colored fingers, coated in a chitinous shell wrapped around the Ultimate Dragon Ball, pulling it off from obstructing the creature's face and revealing a humanoid insect with a mixture of mustard and coal-colored outer layer of armor and jewels decorating its head, chest, and crotch. It had a humanoid face with an ash-colored beak, four sideways-split mustard-color horns on an armored headdress that looked more akin to a crown, and a black growth at the rear that stretched almost to its waist, as well as a lashing tail equipped with the bony stinger that decayed the cocoon which some local creature concealed the Ultimate Dragon Ball in.
"Don't drop your guard, something's off with this guy. He has a distinct aura to him compared to any other creature on this planet," Lazuli warned her husband, turning serious herself for a change.
"Huh? I don't know, Lazuli, this guy looks pretty buggy himself. We've seen plenty of those on this planet already, haven't we?" Krillin rubbed the back of his head and winced his right eye in thought.
"As amusing as it would be to devour you two while you're so cutely clueless, my pride won't allow me to be compared to the insipid worms living on this planet. Just like many other planets in this quadrant, it requires an apex predator, a proper challenge to jumpstart evolution to correct its mistakes and breed some worthwhile creatures. Before that can happen, however, I'll be taking this Ultimate Dragon Ball from you," Cell smiled, looking at the mystical wishing orb it clenched in its hand.
"Watch out, Krillin!" Lazuli took a fighting pose. "This is it–the creature Bulma warned us about–Cell!"
"C-Cell?" Krillin freaked out and stumbled back.
"The one and only," Cell pressed its hand to its chest and bowed its head, delighted that its meek prey feared it like a rodent would fear a true, ferocious predator. "I must say, it's a pleasure to meet you, older sister. Or rather, it will be a pleasure to devour you whole. Don't think that I've forgotten how you and Lapis did nothing to stop Dr. Puri from experimenting on me all those years."
"What are you talking about, you dumbass?" Lazuli gnashed her teeth at the judgmental insectoid creature. "Neither of us had any clue about a guy like you existing."
"I find that hard to believe, given how you were the head of the Medical Sciences team of Puri & Co. It should have been impossible to just create an artificial life form and perform boundless experiments, leaving the fringes of all ethical boundaries behind without your knowledge!" Cell dropped the polite act and returned the aggression it received from Lazuli's side. Nothing in the body language of these two indicated that words alone could have stopped either of them.
"Bark, yap and dribble all you want, fuckwad. If you're as well-informed as you pretend to be, you should have known that neither Lapis nor I took our poser jobs seriously. To Lapis it was all just a big game that he dropped when it got boring, to me, it was just a chance to wear some fancy clothes and make heaps of money. Even if my systems could analyze data reports in seconds, I didn't read them because I couldn't be bothered storing useless and boring information like that in my brain," Lazuli smirked with malevolent glee that she could brush off Cell's life's torments like that and make a mockery of the Bio-Android.
"Then you're guilty of negligence!" Cell bawled out, taking off with its arm wound back, ready to slap Lazuli's head clean off her shoulders with one swipe, but Krillin's kick caught Cell off-guard and sent it flying and skidding back into place. Cell brushed the bruise off its beak before freezing Krillin in place with a deadly gaze.
"I'm not just going to stand here and let you hurt my wife, you know…" Krillin barked back at Cell with a terrified expression and sweat running down his forehead.
"I had planned to drain all of you of all your Ki quickly before you got the chance to exhaust yourselves. Obviously, with No. 18, that is impossible. However, after wasting these opportunities with Yamcha and Tenshinhan, letting them die on me before I could absorb their energy, I am a bit behind schedule. Fortunately enough, these Legendary Super Saiyan cells are working overtime and amping me up with every second of conflict. Let's see if I can overwhelm and absorb the two of you quickly…" Cell taunted, adopting a fighting pose.
"Yamcha… Tenshinhan…?" Krillin spaced out. Fear vanished from his face, replaced by wrath as the martial artist clenched his fists, put his arms by his sides, spreading his feet for an all-out offensive fighting position. "You bastard, I'll make you pay!"
"Krillin," Lazuli glanced at her husband with worry. She wasn't yet sure if him losing his mind was a good thing that would prevent his goofy nature and comical shenanigans on the battlefield, or a bad one that would cause him to forget all of his experience and technical skill in martial arts.
"What's the matter, No. 18?" Cell cocked its head to the side with a sadistic smirk, daring Krillin to attack by lowering its guard. "Don't you have just such a cavalier attitude toward life? Let's see if you'll be as indifferent about the pain of Krillin as you were to my torment and plights for my life!"
"Cell!" Lazuli let go of wary, rearing her teeth and shifting her face into a look of pure, animalistic wrath.
"That's a good look, it suits you better than the ice queen act, older sister. I'll see if I can preserve it on your face after I've removed your head," Cell braced for impact after psyching out both Earthling warriors into foolishly attacking the Bio-Android together.
Cell wouldn't accept any more half-ass blunders like with Yamcha or Tenshinhan. The Bio-Android was gunning for a complete wipeout victory and acquiring the Ultimate Dragon Ball for this one.