A panicking Cell Jr. dashed upward, surrounded by a shining, violet aura. Spreading its arms off to the side, it charged twin electrified energy balls. It pointed them forward, pumping them with thrusting motions of his arms and firing spread-shot barrages of Ki blasts in all directions that curved and homed in on Ultimate No. 16. The detonating Ki blasts created sizzling, electrified energy domes before they all converged together and exploded in a vivid scarlet flash pillar.
When the smoke and rubble cleared out, only the stalwart Ultimate Android remained standing, staring at the lashing out in panic Cell Jr. with a bemused look on its visible lower face, relayed by the stiffly pressed together lips. Gnashing his teeth, Ultimate No. 16 stuffed his forearms underneath his armpits and clutched them with his upper arms, while pulling the forearms off and revealing concealed cannon barrels inside. The detached forearms ignited rocket thrusters, allowing them to hover independently of the literally disarmed Ultimate Android.
Ultimate No. 16 tilted his cannon arms in the air, spreading a swarm of minuscule Ki particles from the tiny mini-gun barrels surrounding the thick cannon barrel. The flocking Ki particles converged into a singular sphere while the hovering satellite arms helped shape it into a proper sphere while supplying additional energy from the sides, allowing the energy bomb to charge twice and strong, twice as fast. Horrified at the sight of a shimmering, yellow energy bomb growing before them, the Cell Jrs hurled some stray energy blasts, but they brushed off of Ultimate No. 16's adamantine body.
A few of them launched quick Kamehameha waves, Galick Guns, and Special Beam Cannons, only for Super One-Nine to swoop in and overload her energy-absorbing hand gems with energy, prompting them to create swirling, energy-absorbing fields that vastly surpassed the energy absorption capabilities of an ordinary Energy Absorption type Android. The two swirling energy singularities gobbled up the incoming energy attacks, supplying the doll-like Super Android with more energy than she could need to deal with bruising battle beasts such as this type of Cell Jr.
"Mega Hell Energy Bomb!" Ultimate No. 16 chanted out, throwing his arm cannons downward and propelling the golden energy sun to hurl toward the bundle of panicking Cell Jrs. A lone Cell Jr. clenched its shaking fists and powered up, changing the color of its fur to golden yellow and surrounding itself with a golden Ki with a scarlet King Kai's Fist outline before growing ten times its ordinary size and rushing forward to tackle the incoming energy bomb all by itself. Despite the amped-up beast stopping the energy ball, Ultimate No. 16 pointed its energy cannon arms at the power struggle and fired a Ki wave from its cannon arm, detonating the bomb and letting the erupting energy overwhelm and decimate the colossal-size Cell Jr. whole.
"What an annoying runt…" Super One-Nine sifted her hand through her hair, flipping a thick and curly strand over her shoulder before glaring at the terrified Cell Jrs with a frustrated look. "That blast was meant for all of you, you know."
"It makes no difference," Ultimate No. 16 extended its energy arms only for its detached forearms to reattach again so that the Ultimate Android could lean into it and rush off to combat. Surrounding himself with a shiny white energy field, the Ultimate Artificial Human rushed forward with a shoulder tackle charge, slamming against the nearest Cell Jr. and splattering it into gooey bits upon impact. With a glint in its red vizor, the Ultimate Android fired a strident energy blast from it and obliterated the slimy remains entirely before the creature could regenerate. "While I lament having to eliminate a living being struggling for survival, it would pose harm to my family otherwise. Protecting my family is my prime directive."
"Die!" with a bellowing, guttural roar, a simian Cell Jr. burst into a flurry of bone bullets, springing from within its armored body and firing in all directions through the cracks. The bemused Ultimate No. 16 covered itself with its arm, causing the barrage of bone chunks to bounce off of his adamant surface with sparking clangs. It was far too late when the Ultimate Android noticed that the bone chips were hovering around him and engaged an electrical field.
Growing ten times its usual size, the Cell Jr. swarmed the bone plates around its right arm, surrounding it with additional muscle tissue and making it grow even further out of proportion. Ripping electrical discharges fired off from the energized, gigantic energy fist, reflected and contained by the bone chips that gave the electrical discharge a vaguely fist-like shape. With this ludicrously gigantic and lightning-charged fist, the roaring Cell Jr. hurled itself at Ultimate No. 16 while shining with King Kai's Fist aura.
Pulsating, blazing jets fired from the thrusters on the back of Ultimate No. 16's armor, throwing him forward and homing straight into the center of the ludicrously oversized thunder fist. The fearless pinnacle of Artificial Human technology drilled clean through the energy fist, smashing through the muscle and bone plates alike with a tackling charge and leaving nothing but shredded bone and muscle bits around a stunned and mortified Cell Jr.
The Ultimate Android punished it with a downward jab to the back of its head, then a straight kick to its gut, a rapid barrage of hammer fists, like beating a gigantic drum that caved in more and more with each proceeding pound and blew out its eyeballs from the mounting pressure. Surrounding himself with an energy field, the Ultimate Android slammed its shoulder at the devastated Cell Jr. before stopping and repurposing all that momentum into a dropkick that shot the Cell Jr. crashing through guts and planet-scale organs and leaving it buried in spillage of unidentifiable goop and gore.
Reacting to a warning in his energy readings, the Ultimate Artificial Human turned around to grab hold of gigantic, ravenous jaws seeking to chomp the entire upper half of his body from behind. Ultimate No. 16 grabbed hold of the Cell Jr's bestial fangs and held the overgrown jaw wide open. Clicks in his forearms made the stunned Cell Jr. very confused, as No. 16's forearms detached from the rest of its arms and kept hovering while locking down Cell Jr's jaw. Meanwhile, the Ultimate Android blasted an energy beam clean through the Cell Jr's gut, ripping clean through its mouth, digestive tract, and the rest of the body and dropping the grievously wounded Cell Jr. down as a sad and demolished fleshy bit.
Seeing another Cell Jr. rearing to pounce on her big brother, Super One-Nine's eyes glinted and fired white eye beams that scanned across the place and left a charred trail where they burnt the organic planet's walls. The Cell Jr. braced for impact, growing bony plates around its forearms that made a makeshift shield that allowed it to tank the brunt of the eye beams, but some rays still burnt through and pinned the sneaky Cell Jr. inside a wall of guts behind it.
Another Cell Jr. stomped down on Super One-Nine from above, pinning the Super Android to the fleshy ground. From behind, it built a dozen tendrils with enormous fists at the end out of muscle and bone cells and engaged the Glomulon DNA traits in making them punch at machinegun speeds, pummeling the Super Android into the structural wall of planetary innards. Joining in on the action, another Cell Jr. grew its head a dozen times larger with the aid of Namekian cells and reared its bestial jaws, multiplying into multiple clones and charging into the gory mess Super One-Nine had been sunken into in some sick game of Pacman.
By focusing energy into the tips of her hands, Super One-Nine surrounded them with Ki blades and sliced through the guts around her, cutting herself a tunnel to escape the burrowing, voracious Cell Jr. jaws that were pursuing her from all sides. Before she could cut her way through, a frustrated Cell Jr. released a strident lightning discharge that hit Super One-Nine square in the chest, shocking her and shooting her the nearest way out, smoldering and bruised from the beating.
Writhing on a soft, warm, and sticky floor, pulsating with unclear biological processes transpiring inside whatever planetary scale organ Super One-Nine landed on, the wounded Super Android desperately tried to crawl away and regroup with her brother. A beastly roar alerted her to the incoming Cell Jr., frozen in mid-air with an incoming double ax handle slam. Before it could do so, however, a rocket punch plunged straight through its chest before freezing in front of its face and firing an energy blast that blew the twitching upper half of the beast clean off.
Grunting and panting, Super One-Nine fired supporting eyebeams to obliterate the remaining lower half of the Cell Jr. too. Picking herself off the ground, she saw the two remaining Cell Jrs looking around in terror, desperately trying to find Ultimate No. 16 before it found them. Another rocket punch of a detached forearm impaled a Cell Jr. from the back. This time, instead of punching clean through and navigating separately, it carried the Cell Jr. along for the ride, only to self-destruct without a trace left of the forearm or the Cell Jr. it impaled and annihilated.
Ultimate No. 16 swooped down right in front of the final Cell Jr. and extended its right arm to the side, only for the detached forearm that obliterated the first Cell Jr. to snap back and reattach. With the other one having self-destructed separately, it seemed like the Ultimate Android was one forearm short. However, that was before microscopic, metallic nanobots reassembled the obliterated forearm right around the Cell Jr's head as if it had grabbed hold of it.
The squeaking and thrashing Cell Jr. tried resisting and wrestling its way out of the ironclad hold only for the mechanical arm to return and reattach to the Ultimate Android's arm. With a fleshy splatter, the hand holding the beast's head clenched into a fist, squishing the Cell Jr's head and leaving a twitching, headless stump in freefall. Not keen on letting the beastly bruiser regenerate and threaten him or his little sister again, Ultimate No. 16 fired a horizontal eye beam, scanning the entire headless body of the beast and reducing it to ashes with a crimson glint of energy.
"Secondary mission complete. Proceeding with the primary mission objective," the Ultimate Android proclaimed before taking off and following the guide of his beeping Dragon Radar signal to the Ultimate Dragon Ball.
"Big Brother…" Super One-Nine descended near the giant and looked up at his visored head and the sticking red mohawk that stood out even more than his cumbersome black suit of armor. "Thanks for sticking up for me."
"You are family. Protecting family is my prime directive," Ultimate No. 16 stated in a cold and robotic voice. "That includes our mother. We cannot yet confirm her demise. We must confront Cell, the one that was the last to see her, and find out what it did to her from it directly. Then, I must destroy Cell for posing a threat to my family."
Before the doll-like, pale-faced Super Android could reply, loud sizzling distracted the two Androids with pixelated cubes flocking in opposite directions like sparks, leaving between them an open rift. As the two Androids looked around, examining matching energy signatures, they witnessed more and more portals exactly like this one in front of them opening up.
"Quantal Matter Particles… This technology is from the Four-Star," Ultimate No. 16 stated as a cold and obvious fact.
"That Cell!" Super One-Nine hissed. "It must be taunting us and inviting us to it!"
"Probable," Ultimate No. 16 affirmed with a stiff nod. "Cell is treating these Cell Games as just that–a scavenger hunt game. It appears that Cell is trying to make the game fair for us and offer us a chance to beam to the other planets in case one of the other parties fail to retrieve their Ultimate Dragon Balls."
"What do we do now?" Super One-Nine crossed her arms, tapping her foot on the ground.
"This is no conundrum at all. Collecting the seven Ultimate Dragon Balls and saving Planet Earth is my primary mission objective, however, protecting my family is my prime directive. In cases of conflict between my mission objective and my prime directive, the prime directive must be prioritized at all costs," the Ultimate Android pointed out with robotic precision and the calm pace of a tapping typing machine. "I will seek the portal that takes me to Cell and find out what it did to our mother, then–I'll destroy Cell so that it poses no future threat to us."
"Right, I'm right with you!" Super One-Nine nodded enthusiastically.
"Are you sure you wish to proceed, little sister?" Ultimate No. 16 turned its head down. If its eyes were anywhere underneath that black helmet and vizor, they were looking at his sister's eyes. "You may have drained a great deal of energy from these Cell Jrs, however, you have also been injured. I cannot guarantee your survival if you follow me."
"I want to find out what that thing did to our mother just as much as you do!" Super One-Nine objected. "Besides, my odds to survive aren't that much greater if I am to stay here or try to return to the ship. More Cell Jrs can't be too far behind and they can track our energy signatures with their own radar technology."
"That is a fair assessment," Ultimate No. 16 nodded. "In that case, let us proceed. However, I advise that you leave the fighting to your older brother from this point on. You aggravating Cell and potentially getting in harm's way will make upholding my prime directive extremely difficult, and, in case of the failure of my prime directive, I will have no other choice but to self-destruct."
"Wha…!" Super One-Nine jumped back like she was scolded by boiling water. "You're kidding, right!?"
Seeing the huge back of her big brother disappear inside the quantal particle rift, Super One-Nine called out and jumped after him. "Wait, you were kidding, right!?" she called out again.
"Damn it, couldn't that Cell have built that stupid planet closer to Earth!?" Vegeta hissed, slamming his fist at the border of the porthole.
"I think the distance is deliberate. Cell wanted our best option to be to split us up into teams," Chayote replied calmly. "It won't help our cause if you punch a hole in the porthole and throw us out into open space."
"Hmph, don't patronize me," Vegeta grumbled, crossing his arms and turning away from Chayote. "I know how to control my strength, I'm not some low-class dirtbag who won the genetic freak draw and can't help herself but throw hysterical fits whenever something annoys her, which is all the time."
"If that's truly what you thought about me, you wouldn't have tried pissing me off just now," Chayote smirked off Vegeta's attempts to rile her up. "Besides, you don't have to get impatient. Blowing up those Cell Jrs and securing the Ultimate Dragon Ball won't take more than a second. We can flip our coin at trying to find the planet Cell's on again soon enough."
"You got that damn right!" Vegeta sneered at Chayote, clenching his fist, full of confidence. Despite having hated Vegeta's guts most of the time Chayote's known him for forcing her to transform into a Great Ape during their initial encounter and robbing her of her bodily control, Chayote's come to realize she actually preferred the Saiyan king cocky and aggressive than the wreck he was after getting trounced by Cell.
A sharp swish sound made Chayote shoot her eyes wide open. Vegeta threw his shocked head back as well. A lone, split vein bulged out of his forehead from the extreme shock of seeing an insectoid in a platinum shell and mechanical black and red eyes Instant Transmission right into their ship. Chayote jumped to her feet, throwing a haymaker straight where she heard that sound just now, knowing that this could have only been Cell himself.
An ironclad lock wrapped around Chayote's wrist, bending it with a painful twinge. Cell could have probably tried breaking it from that position, but he didn't. Whether it was because he knew Chayote would let out all her latent strength and pummel him into the state of a scrapyard reject or because he had a different idea remained an enigma for now.
"Hello, you two. Sorry, Vegeta, I'm afraid I'll have to borrow your partner for a little surprise bonus round. No worries, right? You're the Super-Ultra Vegeta, or whatever… I'm sure you'll be able to take care of my precious little Cell Jrs all on your own, won't you?" Meta-Cell laughed out, vanishing in a snap alongside Chayote.
"What the…!?" Vegeta exclaimed, too stunned at the overwhelming influx of confusing emotions he wanted to have nothing in common with all coming crashing down like a tidal wave from a busted down dam. Before he could throw a single punch, or even fathom if he was terrified of the transcendental apex predator of the entire universe or if he wanted to rip him apart bare-handed, Meta-Cell was gone, taking Chayote with him, and Vegeta was left all alone.
"That fucking asshole!" Vegeta exclaimed, clenching his fists and glaring at his own shaking hands with disdain. Just when Vegeta thought he was ready to stand before Cell and take another swing at him, that chrome bastard had to ruin everything and sneak attack them like that, making everything so damn confusing again.
This blasted table flip happened at the worst possible time too, as before Vegeta's eyes after he turned to the porthole to hyperventilate his frustrations out with a dull stare loomed a sort of sandwich planet of two separate land masses, locked together with rising and falling magma showers and blue rock masses, extending upward and downward with mountain-sized stalactites and stalagmites and surrounded by a quintet of shiny red moons.
"Damn everything to hell!" Vegeta cursed, slipping into his spacesuit and slamming the shutter open to take a leap into space and soar toward the murky green atmosphere of the blue rock sandwiched cavern planet where the Ultimate Dragon Ball waited for pickup.