A trio of blue-skinned aliens with egg-shaped heads dashed across the hallways with a hi-tech radar gizmo in their hands. It showed what was supposed to be an unidentified life form that had infiltrated the Puri Star. Bon Para, the largest out of the Para Brothers and the group's leader, interacted with the control panel of a closed door while his brothers patiently waited on each side.
When the door opened, Don Para, the tall and slick egghead, slammed a colorful handful of marbles onto the floor and popped a quartet of differently colored clouds shooting off streamers and holographic decorative shapes out of the epicenter of the smokescreen. "Para Brothers!" all three yelled out, striking a flashy pose in front of the clouds before dashing through the open doorway only to repeat the process on each locked-down hallway they ran past.
"Man, I'm getting short of breath," Son Para, the smallest chubby of the triplets, panted out after the trio stopped by another door Bon Para had to unlock for them.
"It's because you eat too many sweets and skip out on training," Don Para scolded his little brother with his arms placed on his hips in a righteous pose of a Super Sentai-type hero, proclaiming with a low-pitched, melodious tone of a true champion of justice.
"No, it's because I have the shortest legs, so I have to make the most steps whenever we run places!" Son Para objected with a mean scowl, stomping his thick foot down as he growled at his taller and slimmer brother. "Did we really need to take care of this all together?"
The door opened. Because Son Para was arguing, he almost forgot it was his turn to throw the smoke bombs for their flashy pose, causing Don Para and Bon Para to stand around with their arms crossed and judging their little brother for his fumbled setup for their poses. Cursing to himself under his own nose, Son Para pulled out a handful of colorful smoke bomb marbles and created an ideal smokescreen background for their posing, making all three exasperated brothers strike their poses and exclaim "Para Brothers!". This time, however, Son Para lagged a little behind his brothers, his pose was half-assed and his "Para Brothers!" lacked much passion. He called it out just because he needed to. That was their thing, after all.
"Don't be silly, Son Para," Bon Para replied while the triplets dashed across another hallway. "Of course we need to take care of this together! It takes all three of us to perform the Para Para Boogie!"
"That's… Another thing I wanted to talk to you… Guys about…" Son Para huffed out while the trio ran across another shifting hallway to deal with the threat. "Frankly, we don't really need… All three of us to perform the… Para Para… Boogie."
"You shouldn't talk while you're running. You'll waste all your running breath, Son Para!" Don Para scolded his little whiny brother.
"When you're asleep… And snoring… I flick boogers into your mouth at night…" Son Para lashed back at his older brother, causing Don Para to gasp, stop, and lean back in righteous outrage at this foul villainy.
"I can't believe it, my own dear brother!" Don Para squeaked out in terror and mischievous betrayal.
"I cannot believe you, Son Para! That is highly irresponsible. When we're asleep, the lights are off, so you might be flicking boogers into my mouth and not know it," Bon Para wagged his finger in a wise scolding of his misbehaving little brother. "And what's this about not needing all three of us to do the Para Para Boogie now?"
"That's… What I was trying to tell you guys. Bon-san is the one who carries the boombox around. Son is the one with the disco light and the reflective mat, and I'm the one with the lighting. Honestly… Either of us could just carry all three around to assignments and that way we'll be able to tend to three jobs at once!" Son Para spat some hard-hitting truths.
"I cannot believe this! Who taught you this?" Don Para shook his head, shaking his slender legs wobbly like a damsel in distress.
"I was talking to One-Nine, and she said that the three of us were dorks and that she didn't know why No. 21 is even keeping us around. I asked her to lay down the facts, and, frankly, guys, now that she did, I have to say… We do kind of suck," Son Para explained himself with a raspy voice spreading in a self-loathing tone.
"This is nonsense!" Bon Para shook his head and resumed running, only to be followed by his brothers as they approached another locked doorway. This time, even when Bon Para unlocked the door, they had to wait for the correct hallway to shuffle up to theirs and make the connection. "We've never had an infestation in the entire time that this mega-station has been operational. Granted, it's most likely just some pest, so we'll be enough to deal with it, but you can't let life get to you. What if those pests were a bunch of Mouma taking this station for a gigantic asteroid? A single one of us would get gobbled up and then we'd be one brother short."
"Para Brothers!" the trio exclaimed after striking a pose together amidst colorful smoke bomb clouds and continued pursuing their mysterious intruding life form nest.
"Okay, now that you put it down like that, Bon-san, things kind of make sense again," Son Para nodded. "I mean… If one of us brothers got eaten, then we'd just be two brothers, and what's even the point of posing as a duo?"
"That's Son Para I know!" Don Para commended the return of his little brother's spirit. "Although you're wrong, brother. Posing as a duo can be extremely effective if both posers possess similar body types. They'll look extremely cool as a partner duo. But alas, none of us has a similar body type to either of us, so we'll never get that satisfaction."
"Not unless you put up some more muscle, Don-chan," Bon Para thundered to his leaner albeit similarly sized brother.
"Or you lose some weight, Bon-san!" Don Para snapped right back at his older brother. While the bunch stopped by another locked hallway.
"Now, now, brothers… Have you forgotten that…" Son Para was about to scold his feuding brothers but Bon Para was extra quick in opening this door, causing them to need to pose in colorful smoke and exclaim "Para Brothers!" in unison again as they continued their dash. "In order for a duo-type pose to work, not only would one of you need to make hard sacrifices for it, but also, I would have to make a literal sacrifice and kick the bucket?"
"But alas, you are right, Son-chan…" Bon Para nodded. "W-Wait, this can't be right…" he mumbled after looking at his radar and realizing that this mysterious invading life signature had spread throughout the ship, almost as if what was first just a handful of meek invaders became a massive plague spreading through the shafts in mere minutes. "What's going on here, it's all over the ship!"
Before one of them could propose potential theories of how this peculiar behavior was possible, black gas began hissing through the shafts, quickly filling the hallway and surprising the unaware mercenary trio that stayed behind to serve as glorified butlers on Dr. Puri's mega-station with its uncanny appearance. Before any of them could say a thing, the black cloud converged into a vaguely humanoid shape with four arms, a webbed cape that hung loosely in two parts like the wings of a fly, and two sharp-looking horns wrapped around a round obsidian core, shining and jagged like a jewel.
"I've been tracing you guys around, trying to understand what you are and if you are of any use to me, but your stupidity eludes my comprehension. So I must ask you guys directly, what the heck are you?" Cell mumbled after reshaping in a new appearance, attained in the brief time span in between fighting Krillin and Lazuli on Planet Caterpillia and hopping in-between different planets, establishing itself as the apex predator there and attaining the cells of the dominant local inhabitant species.
Before the Para Brothers stood a tall mixture of all manners of beasts, fish, and arthropods that could have been found across the universe. Slick black semi-mechanical legs with Cell's heel looking like a round and polished to the point of glistening metallic orb pressed into an armored frame. The black armored chitin shell crawled all the way to the knees, defining Cell's muscular calves. The black calves had a glowing static pattern that showed super-heated liquid bubbling up and down. In Cell's knees, chest, shoulders, and its core were black core jewels with jagged, diamond-like edges.
Cell's chitin armor scheme had shifted to sky blue with night blue dotted patterns, littered across his shell like stars in the sky. Cell's four pink arms looked organic and lacked the hardened shell of the body. They appeared weaved together of thin fuchsia segments and then wrapped with a hardened, black, metallic frame over its outer side and the more fragile parts of the hand with the knuckles shining with the core gems spread across the rest of Cell's body.
From the core, gemstones lingered a black miasma-like gas, identical to the cloud of smog that Cell solidified from, levitating behind him like a cottony black trail. Too dense to scatter, yet too light to weigh down in the air. Where before, Cell had tough and massive black shell wings that hardly helped him fly, now a pair of webbed fly-like wings took their place. Silky and looking more like two split strands of a cape than wings, but then again, Cell didn't have any need for natural flight.
The Bio-Android's head had perhaps changed the least, however, the beak had vanished from Cell's face and so did the yellow growth adapted from the Bannans Cell absorbed. Instead, Cell's lower face had a jaw similar to that of the anglerfish. To those who had visited it, Cell's jaw would have reminded them of the Sandoans from Planet Sando. Cell's horned headdress mostly kept its old shape, except for the color change, however, the mix between Frieza and Sandoan DNA made Cell's anglerfish mouth defined by black lips.
"Who is this guy!?" Don Para shrieked out in awe and terror at the cool and deadly appearance of the new and improved Cell.
"Hmm… He looks bug-like, must be some kind of pest! It's time for us to make our donuts and exterminate it!" Son Para exclaimed in a raspy voice, striking a pose of empowerment by pinching his right biceps with his left hand, turning to the right side, and flashing a cool grin in Cell's direction that could not have had any less effect.
"Come on, brothers, this monster asked us what we are. Let's tell him, we are…" Bon Para encouraged his brothers to work with him as the bunch began quickly tapping their feet and dancing in place before Don Para twirled around and struck a pose of his own, calling out his name–"Don Para!". Then, the shortest of the Para Brothers followed, falling on one knee and raising his arms over his head while hanging his hands at a static angle like the head of a snake. "Son Para!" he exclaimed. Then, Bon Para stopped spinning with a boombox over on his shoulder and shot an index finger at Cell. "Bon Para!" he called out his name too.
"Together we are…" The trio began building up to a climactic crescendo again before Cell's eyes flashed with a scarlet psychic pixel, causing a ripping psychic explosion just in front of the three brothers, close enough to scatter them to the sides like bowling pins.
"I've got no time for this. Where is your boss? Tell me and I'll leave you alone. Even a predator won't disgrace themselves by devouring bottom-feeders," Cell squinted in second-hand embarrassment.
"You've messed up now, monster!" Don Para shrieked out with a high-pitched voice after cackling maniacally to himself, still sweating in fear. "For you see, when we, the Para Brothers, are pushed into a corner, we can perform an equal part amazing and artistic technique that cannot be beaten and that no being in the entire universe can resist!"
"Oh? Interesting…" Cell brought its right eyebrow ridge down while staring at these goofballs with a suspicious glare. "Show it to me then, I'd love to see it firsthand."
"You've done it now, villain!" Son Para laughed out in a raspy chuckle with his arms wrapped over his chest. The flamboyant triplets took off from their disgraced and downed positions and soared in the air. Don Para stuck a disco ball and gave it a good smack to make it spin, then he laid down a flashy, reflective mat on the floor while Son Para pulled out a handful of different-color flashlights, manipulating the beams with his hands and neck while holding them and biting into another pair of lights. Meanwhile, Bon Para landed on his feet with the boombox still on his shoulder, playfully bobbing his head to the rhythm while he twitched his shoulders and snapped his fingers.
"The Para Brothers' Para Para Boogie!" the trio exclaimed in unison while Cell's embarrassed right eye twitched in loathing. While every single cell of Cell's being wanted to obliterate these fools and throw their leftovers out into open space, there was always a chance that this combination technique could have been something as impressive as they claimed. Dr. Puri kept them around, after all, and Cell knew how ruthless and intolerant of nonsense that infernal woman was.
"Hmm?" Cell muttered, turning his attention downward as his eyes widened in shock. It was as if his body moved on its own, perfectly replicating the ridiculous movements that those goofballs performed. Just like them, Cell began shaking and twisting, twerking and spinning. However, despite being deadlocked alongside the dancing dweebs to keep on shaking and joining them in the cheerful boogie they did, Cell still awaited some sort of pernicious effect that simply never came to be.
Dancing. Dancing was all that this ridiculous technique did!
"Enough!" Cell barked out, dissolving into gas and ridding himself of the limbs that would have kept on dancing for as long as these dorks kept up their ludicrous jig. "How about I show you food chain dead ends what a true puppetry technique looks like?" Cell's disembodied voice came from the irksome shroud that snuffed out the Para Brothers' light show and began crawling into their nostrils, their mouths and squeezing in through their eyelids. "Courtesy of Phanterans from Planet Phantera, a massive gas giant inhabited solely by a race of adaptoids capable of shifting from a slimy liquid state to an incorporeal gaseous state to travel across their pitch-black planet by riding the winds of the native cosmic storms!"
The Para Brothers began coughing up, grunting and screaming as the gas that squeezed through inside of their bodies suddenly turned into black goop that pumped through their very blood vessels, as it could have been seen from outside based on their blacked out eyes and popped out, blackened veins. It seemed as if the Para Brothers had been completely taken over, forcefully puppeteered by the bile that flowed through their blood circulation systems on the inside.
"What's wrong? Why aren't you fools dancing anymore?" Cell hissed with spite apparent in his voice. It wasn't much like the Bio-Android to torture without an obvious purpose, such as forcing his opponent to reveal a hidden technique it could copy or to force its opponent into a state where Cell could feed on their energy or assimilate them. Crying slimy, inky blotches from their blackened eyes, the Para Brothers screamed out in pain as Cell's wicked jerking of their bodies dislocated their joints, but this didn't stop Cell from throwing his new victims around like rag dolls.
After the Para Brothers fell on the ground, unconscious and wearing horrified expressions of agony on their faces, tufts of black smoke pumped from their open mouths which reassembled into a denser black cumulus and then solidified as the new and improved Cell that laid siege on the Puri Star. Cell's fanged, anglerfish-like jaw slightly snapped open for a second before shutting and twisting in a wicked smile.
"So much time wasted on this dreg. Absorbing you pathetic wimps would waste even more. I wouldn't want Dr. Puri to slip away from my grasp after I've made all those important pit stops on my way here to prepare for our mother and son reunion," Cell reflected to himself before feeling an ironclad clutch on its shoulder. Slightly startled, Cell turned to look behind it as neither its Ki sensory abilities nor any of Cell's advanced energy radar systems failed to anticipate this visitor that made themselves known.
Instead of a greeting or a snappy remark, Cell received a thunderous left hand straight to his jaw, sending him flying through the locked-down mechanical door and ripping through it as sparks and electrical discharges spilled out for blood of the damaged cybernetic ecosystem. Cell whooshed back into place in a black and blue blur with the molten metal in the pipeline-like patterns decorating the black armored shells of his body, calves and outer forearms intensified to bubbling white, elevating the Bio-Android's body heat to unimaginable heights.
"Get out of our home," Super 16 stated bluntly with stiff lips and only a mechanical red visor staring straight at Cell, undaunted by Cell's speedy recovery, its uncanny speed or a myriad of different alien cells that it's assimilated into its body based on its knowledge of their location and abilities from the doomed future timeline where Cell truly became the apex predator, shortly before the timeline's demise.
"I don't have time for this," Cell hissed, clenching all four of its fists by its side. "Then again, presenting mother with the torn-off head of her dream son would have a sense of poetic justice to it. Merely killing her without smashing her dreams and everything she stood for might not be enough to serve as retribution for what she's done to me!"
"Correction. What the future version of mother did to you. It was you who killed the Cell of this timeline before it could develop," Super 16 locked and loaded its heavyweight forearms, preparing for the physical and heated collision. Meanwhile, metallic wires dropped from the ceiling, entangling the defeated Para Brothers and withdrawing them to the nearest infirmary chamber where the remnants of the Big Gete Star could whip them back to shape. "You are an aberration from a future timeline that does not belong here and is only causing trouble. An aberration I shall exterminate."
Super No. 16 and Cell prepared to collide. Even though Cell didn't feel like it had plenty of time, something suggested that this might not have been a staunch guardian that it could have dispatched of quickly.