Wrathful Chayote and Super Saiyan 2 Trunks charged at Cell Max simultaneously while the confident monstrosity sneered at the two. Chayote took the lead with Trunks happily accepting a more supportive role, attempting a flying clothesline, but Cell Max leaned its upper body back and avoided it. With a sharp snap sound, Super Saiyan 2 Trunks appeared in front of the perfected scientific abomination and unleashed a hail of claymore swings on it, with each strike bouncing off of Cell Max's armored shell with sparky and raucous clangs.
"Both of you are still a million years away from standing before me," Cell Max sneered while Trunks seemed to freeze in place, stunned at how little effect his attacks had on the herald of the doomed future. After shaking the figurative cold shower off, Trunks pointed his shotgun and fired two energy waves from its barrels point-blank, drowning Cell Max out in a flash of yellow light while Trunks blinked away with a swift combination of after-image and snap vanishing.
"In my body courses every set of cells of every species in this universe. I've spent decades draining energy and indulging in the trait of Legendary Super Saiyan cells to grow wildly stronger with each battle. I have every combat ability ever conceived and I've studied every martial arts technique ever invented. Love, anger, and hate… Such trivial things could not matter less in the face of my completeness," Cell Max spread its arms to the sides as if permitting the out of their depth pair to gawk at Cell's splendid perfection.
"That's not true!" Trunks exclaimed in objection. "Love is the only thing that can still destroy you, because it's the only thing you've never bothered to experience!"
Trunks looked off to the side, meeting Chayote's gaze as the mindless Wrathful Saiyan woman revealed herself to be in complete control over her berserker state. With an unwavering, lucid look in her eyes, she nodded, relaying that she understood Trunks' encouragement to make the first move, and dashed at Cell Max. With a double arm hammer smash, Chayote came down on Cell Max, only to be stopped by a crossed block of each of Cell's hands locking on the wrist of Chayote's opposite arm.
"You attacking me hand-to-hand is like trying to take down a Dyson sphere with bow and arrows," Cell Max mumbled with pouty lips before swinging its entire body around and smacking Chayote away with a spinning backhand.
Dashing directly in front of Chayote, Cell Max extended its hand to where it almost brushed against Chayote's face, firing a barrage of Ki blasts and creating a chain of calamitous bursts booming one by the other. Panicking, Trunks took off and attacked Cell Max from behind, causing Cell to turn around and chop Trunks' broadsword into tiny metallic shards with one strike, although Trunks channeled his Ki through the weapon. It appeared as if Trunks' fighting spirit shattered alongside his weapon, as the Saiyan's shaken biological eye blanked out, observing his shattered sword falling to the devastated city like morning dew.
Cell Max's foot dug into Super Saiyan 2 Trunks' chin, stretching the Saiyan out like a board and nearly kicking Trunks' head clean off his shoulders. A backhand smack and a spinning backhand later, Super Saiyan 2 Trunks flew off and crashed into the farther districts of Ginger Town while Cell Max returned to tussling with Wrathful Chayote one-on-one, having knocked aside the bothersome gnat.
"You're delusional for still holding back your true power against an opponent as beyond you as you are beyond a single amoeba cell. If you're still operating under the ridiculous belief that if you restrain your full power, you'll force me to restrain my own to avoid killing you, I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken. I've no problem killing you and moving on," Cell Max laughed out while rapidly jabbing at Chayote's extensive guard. The overwhelmed Wrathful Saiyan hunkered down, covering her upper body with her arms and weaving to catch Cell's jabs with the roof of her block.
Finally, having had enough of Cell Max, Chayote erupted with an explosive energy wave that smashed against Cell's façade like a torrential wave crashing against a stony shore. With a snicker, Cell Max rammed its hands against the tide of the explosive energy and pushed it inward, compressing the explosive energy wave and reversing the eruption. An explosion became an implosion, sending smoldering Chayote crashing down into a grassy dirt mountain of the countryside bordering Ginger Town and West City.
"Come on now, the weakling father of your child is probably unconscious and licking his wounds right now, his pride won't break seeing how powerful you truly are now. Nothing is holding you back from transforming and cutting loose!" Cell Max laughed out, taunting Chayote while descending from the sky and tapping its mechanical feet against the grassland.
Hearing a hysterical battle cry from inside the wreckage where Chayote crash-landed, Cell Max smiled and stopped its methodical pursuit of the cornered Saiyan. Curious, Cell turned off to the side where it heard a loud pop, witnessing a golden energy bubble forming and bursting at once. Then another jade one. All across the battlefield, jade and golden shockwaves formed and burst instantly, causing the sensation of being in an active minefield, being shelled from all directions that spooked even the indomitable Cell Max for a moment.
A rampant outburst of a golden energy pillar shoved wreckage out of the way, liberating Chayote from her grounding and elevating her curled and bellowing shape from out of the crash-landing zone. Instantly upon Chayote surfacing, Cell Max's attention turned to the crying Saiyan. The sly vanity from before vanished without a trace in Cell's eyes, looking like broken shards of a glass panel in the shock evident in the monster's expression.
A lime-colored outline intensified around Chayote while a green energy field smacked Cell Max with a raucous shockwave, potent and without compromise. Cell Max remained rooted and headstrong, but trees were uprooted and torn to woody shreds and boulders were picked up and shattered into pebbles from unbelievable pressure emanating from the transforming Saiyan woman.
The clarity in Chayote's eyes disappeared, her features became abstract in the radiance of her green energy aura that raged and unfurled with such intensity that the catastrophe could've been easily visible from space with a naked eye. Like a radiant, green asteroid impact that sent the entire planet back to the Stone Age. It was at that moment that Cell realized why Chayote hesitated to transform at first–she was afraid of what unbelievable damage her unchained power could cause not only to Earth but the entire universe.
"Ch-Chayote… What's going on!?" Trunks' voice surprised Cell Max, as the monster turned back to see a beaten and reverted to his base state Saiyan cyborg descending nearby. "Stop, Chayote! It's not worth it!"
"I wonder if she can even hear you right now…" Cell Max smiled, closing its eyes and imagining the uncontrollable beast it had called forth with its games and teasing. "Chayote was right to hide her power. This power is… Dangerous. Nothing compared to mine, of course, but I have impeccable control over my power. If Chayote cannot control herself in her Super Saiyan state, she'll tear this universe apart without a doubt. The only hope to escape the end will be your time machine. Hilarious, isn't it? By coming here to prevent the end of this timeline, this woman will end up being the one to destroy it."
"I… I wasn't aware Chayote had… This much power…" Trunks stammered out in disbelief.
As the green aura consumed Chayote whole, rampant shockwaves began expanding from her as the epicenter, rippling all the way to the edges of the universe and stressing the rays of light in free flight so much that they curved, bent and shattered like straps of stressed leather, causing violent shifts in light's color and chaotic auroras raging all across the universe. Chayote's voice ripped like a supernova, shattering windows, crumbling mountains and devastating radars and satellite systems, leaving faraway space stations powerless and dark, drifting in cold, inhospitable space.
Brown. Blue. Violet. Red. The color of light went through the entire spectrum before returning to normal. By focusing on the small phantom voice of her son, asking his mother to stop, to stay in control and return to him, Chayote's unchained power all leaked back into the tube. Still as powerful as ever, but this time – serving more as energy that fuels the universe's most potent battery rather than an uncontrollable calamity tearing through all of existence. Chayote's eyes turned blood-red before the green aura withdrew and formed an unstable black and green energy field around her that fired stray green lightning bolts in all directions, obliterating and disintegrating anything that got caught in their wake.
"Interesting, she controlled that power. I wonder if…" Cell Max's eyes squinted with focus. "Hmm… This might change everything…"
"That's right, Cell!" Trunks yelled out, desperate to overpower the center of the apocalyptic catastrophe shaking the ground just beside him. "It's all over for you! The future's going to be saved! You sent Chayote into the future to kill her, only to create your own destroyer!"
"Shush, imbecile, that's not what I meant," Cell Max glared at Trunks with a death-inducing stare that froze his own words at the back of Trunks' throat. "Chayote's showing impressive control over such vast power. Indeed, Legendary Super Saiyan strength is limitless, the potential of that power has no bounds, however… With each ounce of additional strength, the power becomes a ton more difficult to control. While it is by far my most powerful cluster of cells, I cannot make good use of it, because I cannot afford to lose control. If I assimilate Chayote's cells as fuel for my own, I can teach my cells how to control the Legendary Super Saiyan cells. Of course, that'll only be useful if Chayote has learned to control her Legendary Super Saiyan state. Control over just Super Saiyan isn't nearly enough."
"The Legendary Super Saiyan state? Why are you mentioning it apart from Super Saiyan?" Future Trunks stammered out in befuddlement.
"Ah, that's right, you haven't seen Chayote take that state yet or fought the clone of Broly. Well… There's no use explaining it to a deadman anyway, as much as I enjoy bouncing ideas off of vaguely intelligent life forms," Cell Max waved Trunks' shock away while witnessing Chayote emerging from a crater of her own making, surrounded by a golden aura while wholly submersed in a green and black energy mass beaming skyward.
Step by earth-quaking step, Super Saiyan Chayote walked out from the crater with spiky golden hair and whited-out eyes that flashed with a sky-blue glint before the blue pupils formed in the round whites. The same control and lucidity that was present in Chayote's base form accompanied the raging Saiyan woman in her Super Saiyan state.
"That's a good sign. If she's got this much conscious control in her Super Saiyan state, then for sure…" Cell Max smiled and threw a kick, punting Trunks into the air while aiming his finger at the airborne cyborg Saiyan. A dot of fuchsia gleamed at the tip of Cell Max's nail before bursting into a barrage of pink energy beams, all homing in on Trunks, seeking an overkill on the cyborg Saiyan from the future so that Chayote could be pushed into her Legendary Super Saiyan state.
The air became electric, filled with static clusters that nuzzled the cheek. In a split-instant, Super Saiyan Chayote appeared in between the Barrage Death Beam and her Trunks, swatting the Death Beams aside while Trunks recovered from the kick and erupted with a golden aura, transforming into Super Saiyan 2 again. Cell Max observed this scene with a bit of uncanny confusion. He didn't think Super Saiyan Chayote would be this powerful. Didn't becoming Super Saiyan multiply one's power about fifty times? She shouldn't have been anywhere near this strong or fast…
Still, this was Cell Max she was up against. No matter how strong or fast Chayote became in her timeline, she was no match for this climatic, perfectly ultimate form of Cell.
"I won't lie, I'd have preferred if you didn't do that, but, at the very least, you might be able to provide one final entertaining warm-up exercise. There's nothing else really left for me to do in this boring future after all," Cell Max smiled while lowering its chin in admission that its plan to dispatch of Future Trunks quickly had failed. "Come now, let's see what all this anger and all this noise amounts to, shall we?"
The swelled-up Chayote and Cell Max charged at one another, winding back their respective punches and driving them into each other's cheeks, sneering at each other and spitting up slobber for a second before quickly snapping into a tumultuous exchange of blows. Cell Max proved that it wasn't lying before, its Data Input program was running at peak efficiency with unbound and limitless technological advancement of its peerless bio-mechanical operating system. Cell Max landed hundreds of jabs, but Chayote brushed them off, moving on despite the sore and fatigue, while Cell Max's impeccable movement and mastery over all martial arts alien and local, allowed Cell to deflect or entrap Chayote's strikes before they reached Cell Max.
In the climactic moment of the heated exchange, Super Saiyan Chayote ducked Cell Max's cross that should have broken her face, and instead plunged a diving straight of her own into Cell Max's gut, bending the perfectly ultimate creature over while Chayote completed her diving punch with an aerial roll. Frothing from the mouth and with bloodshot eyes, Cell Max staggered back, staring at Chayote as if it was trying to peer a hole through her skull.
"Y-You…" Cell Max hissed before straightening its body and patting itself down of dust, revealing no visible damage from the preceding exchange. Not even a dent or a scratch to the red and green armored alloy coating Cell Max's body. After the herald of the future's doom regulated its breathing, it didn't even seem like it was stressing and exchanging blows just now at all. "Far too weak to be of any threat at all, but by far the most ridiculously overpowered challenger in this timeline for certain."
"Data Input…" Super Saiyan Chayote said, making Cell Max's eyes widen in surprise after seeing Chayote speak so clearly and calmly in her Super Saiyan state. "Obviously, leagues ahead of the version used by Androids 13, 14, 15, and Ultimate Android 20 in our timeline, but that's to be expected."
"I have no records of such Artificial Humans, and yet… You said that your Cell sent you here using something called a "Time Ring", didn't you? Something that was supposed to send you directly into the specific version of the future of the exact timeline you were in," Cell Max observed.
"It's me, isn't it?" Trunks realized, soaring up to stand by Chayote's side as he asked her this. "These differences between this future and your present, it's a paradox. It's all caused by my time traveling, isn't it?"
"That's right," a squeaky, childish voice came from somewhere high, high above the heated battle. Shocked by the sudden interruption of this another interloper, Cell Max, Chayote, and Trunks all looked up into the sky, where a short dwarf with an oval-shaped head was playfully kicking his feet. The interloper had sky-blue skin except for two sections from his ears to the middle of each eye on both sides of his head, which were purple. The creature had small, round eyes, and something that must have passed as its ears, small and rounded gray. He wore a magenta and yellow-lined regal coat, with yellow pants, magenta shoes, and a black and white shirt underneath, with the kanji for "Everything" on the front. By far, the most unnerving feature of this curious dwarf was the utter indifference of its facial expression.
The blue and violet-skinned dwarf with a blank face didn't come to meddle with Cell Max's and Chayote's fight alone. It had two tall and identical attendants by its side, standing straight with their arms tucked behind their backs. The exact appearance of these attendants was impossible to know because only their cyan-colored faces were visible. They wore large, high-collared purple jackets with golden lining, buttons, and shoulders and this jacket covered the lower half of their face. Underneath these attendants wore a sectioned gray, full body suit and long golden and purple boots. Atop their heads was a long and pointy bronze hat. Unlike their dwarfish companion in the middle, these two had a very menacing and angry look to them.
"You made a real mess of all of time and now this entire timeline needs to be destroyed," the short creature with cute, dangly legs pointed an accusatory finger at Trunks.
"Wh… What is this? Another time traveler?" Cell Max's eyes squinted as if it had swallowed an extremely sour slice of fruit. "Take a hike!" Cell Max exclaimed before opening its mouth and firing a green mouth-energy wave with a dark center, homing in on the entire trio that dissolved into stardust on its way to them. "WHAT!?" Cell Max shrieked out in disbelief.
"You aren't very nice, you know," the tiny, blue, and violet-skinned dwarf pointed out the obvious, closing its eyes to feel the gentle brush of stardust against its cheeks. "I'm the King of Everything, and you're part of everything, so don't attack me, 'kay?"
"K-K-King of Everything!?" Cell Max cried out in panic.
"King of Everything?" Chayote spaced out, just as taken aback by the sudden appearance of the figure she was so intrinsically linked to for most of her life. The heralded destructive deity that would undo the universe if Chayote ever were to die.
"Yeah, nice to meet cha!" the King of Everything saluted the three fighters before opening its right hand. "Anyway, this timeline's all messed up. The Grand Priest said that fixing timelines is the job of the Supreme Kai of Time, but I'm bored this timeline is so ugly, so I'll just destroy it and start over, I think."
"W-Wait!" Cell Max waved its hands out in front of it, stunned that all of its lifelong planning would be undone by some cute blue imp in regal clothing. "T-The time machine!" Cell Max suddenly realized when the King of Everything made a shiny purple energy blast in its open hand and raised it over its head. Time-space began unraveling around the supreme deity that ruled over all existence, bending and tearing like it was being scooped out by a giant spoon, leaving nothing but an empty void behind.
Just as Chayote and Trunks turned to each other to press their hands against one another and come close, choosing to go out together rather than struggle against their inevitable fate in vain as Cell Max did, the expanding destruction around the King of Everything halted and all of time-space attained a sepia-like tone, freezing everything except Chayote and the King of Everything in place.
"Zeno-sama, please stop this!" a familiar voice rang in Chayote's ears, prompting the baffled Super Saiyan to turn to her right. Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, was another Trunks, wearing a black trench coat with a furry brown lining and a dark brown tank top underneath, with long lavender-colored hair and visible enhancements to his cybernetics, that looked more divine and elegant in appearance with white metallic plating and golden circuit lining and a red robotic left eye. Instead of his usual claymore-style broadsword, this Trunks held a key-like golden blade, comprising a long handle and several gear-like parts and a red gemstone embedded within one of the gears and acting as a pommel. Protruding from the top of a semi-gear of the divine sword, there was a small golden spike.
"A Time Patroller?" the King of Everything, referred to as "Zeno" by this new and different Trunks, mumbled. "Uh-oh, am I in trouble with Supreme Kai of Time?"
"Not at all, Zeno-sama, but… Please, if you continue destroying this timeline, you'll destroy all the time associated with it. Your power is too much and you have never done anything like this to only delete this specific paradox. Please, allow me to fix this paradox for you and spare all of the time of your judgment. The Supreme Kai of Time would very much appreciate it if you didn't leave her without a job, Zeno-sama!" this divine version of Trunks, referred to as a "Time Patroller" by the King of Everything, kneeled before the King of Everything who remained unaffected by the time stoppage, despite its widespread annihilation of all of time being frozen.
"T-Trunks?" Chayote muttered. Somehow she felt it, she knew… This could have only been HER Trunks. Why else would he specifically keep her out of his time-freezing abilities?
"Chayote…" Trunks turned back at her. His lone human eye shook, overflowing with mixed emotions, before he turned back to Zeno to hear his judgment.
"Time was all messed up here, but these three were having a pretty entertaining battle. If I stop destroying all of time, you'll have to beat up that paradox over there, right?" Zeno pointed at Cell Max, frozen in time with an undignified look of absolute horror on its face and body language, fleeing to a broken time machine that was part of a rippling temporal shockwave already like a child running to its mother after someone said something mean about them.
"That is correct, Zeno-sama. I will have to delete that paradox from existence and correct this timeline so that time makes sense again. Then, all the discrepancies you've noticed should stop existing," this Time Patroller Trunks confirmed with a nod.
"Teehee!" Zeno exclaimed with a childish giggle, excitedly pumping its tiny little hands in the air. "Alright, I won't destroy the timeline, but I wanna see a really cool battle! Like BOOM and POW, 'kay?"
"Hmm…" Trunks turned to Cell Max with a sullen look on his face. "I would have preferred to just delete this monster from existence while it is part of the malleable time stream, but… If you insist, Zeno-sama. I could use your help too, Chayote. This Cell's power has grown wild beyond comprehension. It might not be a simple matter, even if I fight for real."
"I want explanations first!" Chayote barked out. "First you vanish without a trace, then you're that guy, now you're this guy!? What the heck is going on here!?"
"I apologize, Chayote. Zeno-sama is an omnipotent deity that can create and destroy whatever it pleases in an instant. If it deems so, it can destroy this timeline or the entirety of time. An infinite number of timelines, gone all in a snap. However, Zeno-sama is also a tad childish. We can appease him if we put up a flashy show for him. There'll be all the time in the world for explanations later, as you can see…" Trunks raised his new and fancy divine sword for Chayote to see, referencing how he used it to stop time before all of it was undone. "However, Cell Max isn't exactly the only source of a paradox here…"
Extending his divine sword, Time Patroller Trunks fired a red, transparent energy beam from the gemstone embedded into it and hit the version of Trunks Chayote fought alongside with earlier, turning it into pure energy and absorbing it within his sword.
"B-But! That was you!" Chayote yelled out, unable to believe that Trunks had just destroyed another version of himself.
"That's not true," Trunks shook his head. "That was a paradoxical version of me. I'll explain later. Now, let's focus on destroying Cell Max and correcting time so that Zeno-sama doesn't destroy it. Cell's plan, what happened to me, and what I'm up to, I'll explain everything later. Then, we'll go back to your time and see Navy, okay?"
"I'm holding you up to that, you time-traveling deadbeat," Chayote turned to Cell Max with a sullen look in her eyes. Not knowing what was going on was giving her a severe case of headache and made her fists itchy. Either Trunks or Cell Max would've had to alleviate that itch with their stupid faces.