"This whole planet's full of those tiny bastards!" Vegeta grumbled, suppressing his Ki to his base form and quickly moving between reverse stalactite mounds while observing his surroundings and keeping track of as many Cell Jrs as he could catch. Glaring back at the Dragon Radar drone that caught up with the Saiyan king and kept up with him without giving his position away too much, Vegeta noted the location of the Ultimate Dragon Ball and took off again.
After a repeated routine of checking up on the signal and shuffling around, remaining hidden to avoid wasting any more energy and taking any more of a beating than he'd already taken, Vegeta's eyes squinted with focus. The Ultimate Dragon Ball signal was moving. That meant that one of those critters likely had it on them, or possibly even inside them. That was just like Cell–placing the Ultimate Dragon Ball inside one of its creations to ensure that those seeking the Ultimate Dragon Ball must fight to get their hands on it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be much of a game…
With a nasty sneer on his face, Vegeta dashed out of hiding and burst with a golden aura shine, changing the color of his hair into gold and his eyes into teal. Thrusting his arm up, Vegeta channeled a blue energy orb in his right hand, surrounded by electric surges of energy, and thrust his arm, shooting it at the colossal, fractured landmass. The ruckus caught the attention of the Cell Jrs and caught them off-guard, alongside them–the Cell Jr. who had the Ultimate Dragon Ball. Horrified, the drone hurried to hide somewhere while Vegeta cracked and rolled his knuckles in preparation for another heated scrap.
Five more cackling menaces with pale faces and blue armor, matching the appearance of the last ones Vegeta crushed to bits, dashed in from all over the place, looking a bit taken aback by Vegeta's sudden outburst of violence and destructive potential he showed off just now. Fortunately for him, Vegeta reserved some of his energy by reverting to his base form in between fights, even now, surrounded by Cell Jrs, he assumed his Super Saiyan form to be more efficient with his Ki.
"Come on, you runts!" Vegeta sneered, referencing the hesitation of the maniacal imps to attack him after seeing the raucous devastation of his Big Bang Attack first-hand. Not being able to take more dilly-dallying, Vegeta attacked first, dashing at high speed toward the nearest Cell Jr., who stiffened and froze in place, shocked by Vegeta's outburst of speed and ferocity.
The Super Saiyan became a living cannonball, rolling over the Cell Jr. and positioning himself behind and over the stiffened runt. Having gained an advantageous position, Vegeta ripped into his opponent with a kick to the back of its neck. A shot that would have killed most organic opponents if it was unguarded. After positioning himself more to his opponent's level, Vegeta drove his fist into the back of the stunned Cell Jr., indenting it to a horrid degree and nearly shoving his fist through the creature, before kicking it aside.
Another Cell Jr. came rushing in from Vegeta's side. Having learned temperance in battle, even in heated situations like these, Vegeta regulated his breathing and leaned back, avoiding the rushing strike and ramming his knee into the gut of the hasty Cell Jr. before blowing him away with a disastrous uppercut that stretched the creature's neck to nearly triple its ordinary length. Taking off in pursuit of his debilitated foe before the Cell Jr. could regenerate the severe damage to its neck, Vegeta was intercepted mid-air by another Cell Jr., shimmering with the scarlet glow of King Kai's Fist.
The two exchanged a few blows, with the amped-up imp blocking Vegeta's daring straight and stopping a dangerous elbow shot with an open hand block, then colliding with Vegeta's knee strike with a matching attack, causing an electric discharge to erupt around the point of impact as a raucous shockwave boomed around it, drowning out the rumble of thunder around the battlefield. After flashing with a golden shine, the Cell Jr., with the aid of Super King Kai's Fist, slipped Vegeta's attack, and thrust a fist into Vegeta's gut, before unleashing a flurry of chained punches to Vegeta's face and kicking him away.
Grumbling, Vegeta regulated his position in the air while wiping his bruised face and bloodied nose with the back of his hand. Crying out with wrath, Vegeta's golden aura boomed with a devastating shockwave that blew all the surrounding Cell Jrs out of his way and reset the battlefield to a neutral position while the Saiyan king ascended to Super Saiyan 2. In a snap, the King of Saiyans vanished without a trace.
At the same time as he appeared before a Cell Jr., selected at random out of the bunch, Vegeta slammed his head straight into that of his opponent's, knocking the immature menace loopy. With an uppercut, Vegeta sent the little imp flying before pursuing it and kicking it away once more, after a flurry of vanishes to confuse both his dazed opponent and the other Cell Jrs, Vegeta positioned above the unfortunate Cell Jr. to perform a crushing double ax handle slam to crash them into the lower blue rock landmass.
"I am a Super Saiyan Elite, and you don't even have souls to burn in Hell!" Vegeta exclaimed while spreading his arms off to the side, powering up with a tremendous white and golden aura surrounding his entire body. Throwing his arms forward, Vegeta yelled out "Final Burst Cannon!" before converging all the accumulated energy into a more advanced version of his signature Galick Gun and firing it in a strident white energy wave with a golden outline, ripping toward the crash-landed Cell Jr. The calamitous energy beam blasted a hole through the landmass, beaming off and obliterating another one of the planet's crimson moons to rumbly bits while leaving a gaping hole in the drifting continental landmass below.
With a solemn look, Vegeta turned his head to a terrified Cell Jr. nearest to him, who witnessed the traceless demise of its peer before its very eyes. With bulging out, bloodshot eyes, the frightened Cell Jr. turned and ran, but the smirking Super Saiyan 2 aimed his hand at it while gripping his wrist with his free hand. "Galick Blazar!" Vegeta exclaimed, firing a sparkling golden energy sphere and overwhelming and charring most of the Cell Jr. from behind, burning away its arms and legs and leaving just a wheezing, limbless stump, burnt to a crisp, to crash down on the ground just waiting to be finished off.
"Three left, huh?" Vegeta turned to the bundled group of Cell Jrs who, after witnessing the demise of their fleeing sibling, decided that fighting together was their best chance at survival against the ruthless Saiyan warrior. "Let the little charcoal boy wait until I'm done with you so that I can finish it off and take the Ultimate Dragon Ball off its hands…" Vegeta smirked with a sadistic grin while staring at the remaining three Cell Jrs.
The three Cell Jrs burst with Super King Kai's Fist auras and engaged in evasive maneuvers, employing a rapid flurry of vanishes. While Vegeta's perception would've been enough to track a single one, following the movements of all three overwhelmed his perception, despite Vegeta's hesitation to admit it. While he was able to dodge out of the way of a stray energy wave launched by one of them in a moment of stillness, it proved to be merely a distraction for its sibling to slam into Vegeta's back with a dive kick.
Sensing weakness in their fatigued opponent, two more Cell Jrs crashed into Vegeta head-on with dashing hooks, throwing him aside while the Cell Jr. that remained behind him rushed in with a flurry of stamping kicks, driving Vegeta into the air where the pair snapped in front of Vegeta's face and aimed down their hands shoulder-to-shoulder, firing a tag-team Big Bang Crash point-blank that wrapped around Vegeta's whole body and grounded him inside a calamitous nova burst that shattered the fissured drifting blue rock landmass below and reduced it to large drifting rocky chunks instead of a singular continent.
"D-Damn it…" Vegeta grumbled, dragging himself out of the rocky wreckage with one arm while feeling the painful twinge in his other one. He had to stop wriggling and writhing to wipe the stream of blood that overwhelmed his brow and obscured the vision in his left eye. Through struggle and pain, the Super Saiyan 2 forced himself off the ground, though with a bit of a stumble to resume his standing position. "Fighting at full power for so long must have drained most of my energy. Even against runts like those…"
Smelling blood in the water, one of the sadistic imps grew its black nails out on the spot and charged at Vegeta, rolling through the air like a bullet until it was right up in Vegeta's face. Vegeta tried defending himself with an energy wave, but the curled Cell Jr. unwrapped itself and kicked Vegeta's firing hand away, forcing the energy wave to miss, while Cell Jr. went to town, slashing up Vegeta with a berserker rush of claw strikes, rolling up and down, left and right, front and back before firing a round Ki blast at Vegeta's cut-up back and blasting the Super Saiyan away.
Down on the ground, Vegeta heard the taps of his busted forehead bleeding below him. Panting, he felt the warmth of his breath bouncing off the rocky floor and brushing back at his face. Grunting in pain, Vegeta rolled forward, evading a hail of Ki blasts from above as the Cell Jrs were just playing with their food, having realized that they had the upper hand again and that Vegeta lost too much of his energy maintaining Super Saiyan 2 and firing Ki attacks left and right.
He had one chance to fix this situation with one massive blast, the best he could do given the situation. It would have to be everything, one rowdy stream of energy. If Vegeta could kill at least a few of those runts with it, it'd be worth the effort. He could finish it up from there, even if one Cell Jr. somehow managed to survive. Two was a questionable matter, but all three at once was a fatal battle, even someone as vain as the Saiyan king knew it.
"Laugh it up all the way to hell! FINAL FLASH!" Vegeta exclaimed, stumbling back to his feet and turning around with his arms spread to the sides. His golden aura intensified tenfold, becoming so bright and thick that it effectively blinded the baffled Cell Jrs, who looked shocked to see Vegeta still having so much juice left in the tank. Bringing his arms back together with his hands cupped in front of him, Vegeta fired a tunneling energy wave carrying the final remnants of his relevant battle power. A strident wave that must have obliterated everything in its way without question for Vegeta's gamble to work and this battle to be won.
The Final Flash beamed off toward the inverted continental land mass drifting in the air, blowing it up in one mighty burst of energy and scattering the blue pebbles in every direction, leaving only the drifting chunks of blue rock that drifted around the exposed blood-red core of the planet humming in the center of the artificial cosmic structure. With the flashing light subsiding and the debris settling in place, with the dust parting, Vegeta's gamble proved to have paid off. Two whole Cell Jrs obliterated without a trace, with the last one in the end mangled to bits, half its head and its right side completely blown off.
Looking down at his shaking hands that weighed down by his sides, Vegeta cursed with a mean scowl. He needed a breather to even put his arms up. His golden aura vanished around him as the buckling Saiyan royalty managed to keep hold of at least his Super Saiyan state, despite it blinking a couple of times with flashes of his ordinary, spiky black hair. This temporary setback allowed the Cell Jr. to shriek and burst the blown back parts of his body back out from the fleshy wounds, surrounding the rejuvenated body parts in thick, green goop.
The surviving Cell Jr. was no longer laughing or enjoying itself. It too had lost a lot of Ki after regenerating, not to mention the measures he had to take to survive the Final Flash, amping his energy up to its limit in the vital moments of the battle. Right now, the duel between the two was a matter of determining the one fortune would favor to survive this encounter. Shrieking, the Cell Jr. dashed toward Vegeta, elongating its claws and thrusting its arm forward. Vegeta's body was still far too stiff!
A fleshy thud was the first thing Vegeta heard. He didn't feel any pain in the beginning, even though his eyes whited out and went blurry even after his consciousness swept back to the here and now. The only thing that betrayed the fact that the Cell Jr. plunged its clawed hand inside Vegeta's gut like a knife was that revolting sound and the tapping of Vegeta's blood against the rocky floor. With a smirk on its face, the Cell Jr. already believed in its victory after the first critical strike. It swept its other hand, aiming for Vegeta's neck and going for a quick decapitation.
Thud!
Cell Jr's eyes bulged wide open in shock as its arm stopped with Vegeta's hand firmly locking his opponent's wrist in place mid-swing. With Vegeta's body flashing with Super Saiyan 2 aura for just a second, the Saiyan king jumped with his opponent's arm still stuck inside him, driving his knee into the Cell Jr's face so hard that the sadistic imp flew off without its arm, ripping it clean off the shoulder and leaving the clawed hand stuck in Vegeta's abdomen.
Dashing over through the air, Vegeta kicked his opponent with immense force, then, as the battered Cell Jr. peeled itself off the ground, Vegeta launched himself forward in an instant, delivering a crushing blow to the stomach of his one-armed opponent. The disembodied arm stuck inside Vegeta retracted its elongated class post-mortem, dropping the arm down on the ground while Vegeta delivered a close-range vertical kick to the Cell Jr's face and sent it flying straight into the sizzling core of the planet, burning it down to ashes while screaming in torment.
Stumbling, Vegeta dragged his feet to the charred Cell Jr. that's fallen earlier and still trembled in shock. "Your dad has no use for a paralyzed kid. You're just deadweight to him now," Vegeta muttered with a bitter expression before grabbing hold of the crippled brat and flinging it into the air. Pressing his arms to his body, Vegeta generated a surge of electricity around his body, converting it into a bluish-white aura around his body and thrust his chest forward, firing a huge energy wave at the airborne Cell Jr. The crippled and charred body of the shocked Cell Jr. violently contorted before wholly disintegrating.
Reverting to his base state, Vegeta slumped down with his numb arms hanging loosely by his sides. It was only when the Ultimate Dragon Ball fell with a dull thump nearby that the panting Saiyan opened his eyes and crawled to secure it from the dusty remains of his opponent's body. Bloodied and beaten, Vegeta peeled himself off the ground at the sight of a sizzling rift opening up before him. Instead of moving forward, the King of Saiyans looked down at the Ultimate Dragon Ball he clutched in his hand and then back at the portal.
As if sensing his hesitation, more and more rifts began opening in close vicinity to the initial rift. A total of five rifts, all identical to one another. Closing his eyes and focusing his remaining senses on the portals, Vegeta could send several Ki signatures inside the nearest one to him–he could sense the energy of Gohan, who took off alongside his father from Earth. Also, the Ki of Piccolo, Krillin, and Yamcha. That must have been where everyone regrouped to take their last stand against Meta-Cell. Strangely enough, Vegeta couldn't pick up Goku's energy signature.
Vegeta's lips stiffened and moved up, closer to his nose as his entire body shook with tension. Unable to keep himself stiff and tense anymore, Vegeta relaxed with a shaky breath and hurled the Ultimate Dragon Ball through the rift. Instead of going through it, Vegeta let out a crazed scream and dashed upward, firing a puny energy blast at the exposed core of Cell's artificial planet. Even before Vegeta's outburst caused a violent calamity to rip through the barely holding-together planet, Cell Jrs swarmed the skies, rushing to his location.
"Come on!" Vegeta taunted them, neglecting his chance to step through the rift and join the rest in their struggle against Meta-Cell. "Even if I'm tired and beaten to a pulp, I've still got one more genocide in me!" he boldly thundered toward the incoming hail of Cell Jrs. The malicious imps even halted from their heated dashes toward Vegeta's location, looking stumped that Vegeta was still here and still looking to bust some heads or have his own busted. A few of them even took the luxury of glancing at the five open rifts leading straight to the other planets and their maker defending his own Ultimate Dragon Ball on one of them.
Vegeta used the cover of their collective befuddlement to make the first move. Powering up to Super Saiyan 2 and willing to burn up the last cinders of energy he had left in him, Vegeta took off at the Cell Jr. closest to him. Dashing from above, he delivered a dropping elbow strike only for the baffled imp to catch it. Dropping lower down, Vegeta threw punches and kicks to the best of his ability, seeing the little maniac deflect or block all of them. Bellowing with rage that scraped the bottom of Vegeta's chest, the King of Saiyans threw a combination of hectic power strikes and kicks, only for his assault to be answered by the Cell Jr. perfectly mirroring his moves with matching power.
"Come on, which one of you has the guts to come near me? Maybe one of you will get lucky, eventually? Just imagine, one of you might have the honor of being the one to defeat the King of all Saiyans! That drone surely will be the one to rise above the rest as the Super Elite!" Vegeta taunted the Cell Jrs who, for the first time since their creation, believed they'd met someone even more deranged than they were.