"Well, Goku, for how much longer do you think your body can keep up going toe-to-toe with me? You may have mastered the state of Super Saiyan 2, but you're burning through your stamina when you're fighting at full power regardless," Meta-Cell taunted Goku, who didn't look too concerned.
"You think I've been fighting at my full power now?" Goku raised an eyebrow, visibly enjoying taunting Cell and seeding doubt in whatever passed for the creature's heart. "Trust me, Cell, I still have some aces up my sleeves!"
"You're bluffing," Meta-Cell sneered. "You're running on pure cardio and toughness right now whereas I'm all fresh and new!"
"Well, then…" Goku shook his right fist while stretching his body in a brief warm-up session and vanishing away in a snap. In a split-instant, he appeared before Meta-Cell with a punch that Cell caught. Goku was smirking, having caught his opponent sleeping while Meta-Cell was shaken and reeling. Despite connecting with two successive attacks earlier, Goku moved just as fast as he did back then while looking much more relaxed–he did have something up his sleeve!
"It should be easy for you to push me back and beat me in that case!" Goku taunted Cell while smashing through his self-deceit. Stepping up, Goku thrust a hook into Meta-Cell's waist only for the transcendental predator's body to become malleable and liquid and morph around Goku's plunging fist. Adapting in an instant, Goku extended both his arms and exclaimed with a vocal shout, forming a round Kiai bubble around Meta-Cell that contained the monster within and then thrusting his open palm to shatter the bubble with another concussive Kiai shockwave.
"Ka… Me…" Goku grumbled out while soaring in pursuit of Cell and thrusting a flying push kick that connected with Meta-Cell's knee. Grunting in pain and lamenting the pressure that Super Saiyan 2 Goku was putting on him, Meta-Cell tried responding with a counter by driving an overhead elbow down at the top of Goku's skull, only for Cell's elbow to collide with Goku's uppercut. "Ha… Me…!" Goku continued.
"D-Damn you, how will you launch a Kamehameha with your hands full, Goku!?" Meta-Cell cursed his opponent, throwing its entire body into a charging knee ram, which Goku blocked with a cross-arm block, letting Cell push him back a fair distance. Riding the kinetic energy and the impressive momentum of his charge, Meta-Cell threw his feet out, gliding across the ruined Galactic Arena with a slide while Goku skidded his feet in a circle, sidestepping around his opponent and positioning behind Meta-Cell.
"HAAA!" Goku exclaimed except he didn't throw his hands out. Twin Kamehameha waves fired from his feet, blowing away the straps left of Goku's boots from the destructive and gruesome battle and shooting the Super Saiyan 2 soaring toward his opponent with a boosted elbow slam right into Meta-Cell's core. Meta-Cell's renewed body bent at the mercy of Goku's attack and frothed from the mouth, spitting out slobber and shooting harmless, beckoning red beams of light from its dark hole eyes.
With Meta-Cell soaring away and crashing through the western wall of the Galactic Arena, the right Kamehameha wave blasting from Goku's right foot carried him on. The Super Saiyan 2 rhythmically controlled the streams of the energy waves to send him flying faster and make him hit even stronger, with little to no drawbacks. Goku's left foot slammed into Meta-Cell's waist before firing a point-blank Kamehameha from the foot and blasting Meta-Cell away again.
Kicking the air with instantaneous Kamehameha bursts from his feet, Goku rushed in pursuit of Meta-Cell before the cybernetic monster exclaimed "ENOUGH!", thrusting both its arms and feet off to the side and creating a moon-sized violet and black energy barrier around him that stopped Goku in his tracks and canceled out the Saiyan's streak of successive attacks.
"It appears that there was more truth to what you were saying than I thought…" Meta-Cell admitted while dragging its bloodied knuckle across its face and wiping the smears of processed bio-matter mixed in with machine oil. Something that must have passed for blood in Meta-Cell's perfectly ultimate, polished body that transcended life and death. "However…"
Meta-Cell snapped away, appearing before Goku to kick him in the chest with a whiplash kick, but Goku ducked and rolled under it. Cracking a sadistic grin, Meta-Cell focused its eyes on Goku's back, emanating immense psychic energy and stiffening the Saiyan straight. "Gotcha!" Meta-Cell exclaimed, crossing its arms over its chest and laughing out to itself.
"No fair!" Goku coughed out through severe physical pain as Meta-Cell's peerless psychokinetic grip was crushing every cell in his body. "Why not… Attack me from behind… Instead of this cheap trick?"
"Because, Goku…" Meta-Cell gnashed its teeth with a bitter grimace. "I'm done playing your little game. I'll admit it–despite me being a perfect life form, you're a superior martial artist. That is why I'm done competing against you in martial arts. I'm just going to kill you using every ounce of my power and every ability available to me like the inferior shed husk of a worthless insect that you are!"
"Heh-heh…" Goku cackled while under an extreme amount of pain. "I wonder… If you can really call yourself the Perfect Life Form… When there's something that… I can do better than you can?"
"I suppose not," Meta-Cell sneered, anticipating this verbal jab from its opponent. "That's why I'll have to kill you so that there's no one left alive that can do anything better than I can do it! Now, vanish from my sight, Son Goku!"
Meta-Cell thrust its arm diagonally up, sending Goku careening off wildly into deep space, blitzing thousands of light-years in a single blink and hurling so fast that stars themselves became just blinking white lines that blurred past the corners of the Saiyan's vision. The speed of Meta-Cell's psychokinetic thrust was so powerful that even Goku's scream as his paralyzed body soared through the void of space became distorted and multiplied, then choppy and static.
"That's enough, Cell! Stop it!" Gohan exploded with a golden aura, jumping over the railing and throwing himself at Meta-Cell. Even if he couldn't quite compete with the transcendental existence of Meta-Cell and its incredible full power, Gohan's interruption would surely make Cell turn its eyes away from Goku and make it lose focus, which was necessary for psychokinetic techniques to maintain their grip. However, Meta-Cell didn't turn. Instead, a swarm of child-like Cell Jrs rushed at Gohan, placing themselves as obstructions in the teen's way.
"Please await your turn, Gohan…" Meta-Cell said in a tone that betrayed the creature's miff at Gohan's interruption. "Don't think I've forgotten you promised me you'd destroy me back on Earth. I'll make sure to make you pay for your arrogance from back then in spades after I dispose of your insufferable father. For now, play with my Cell Jrs instead…"
"Coward!" Gohan bellowed in despair, knocking, kicking, plowing, and blasting Cell Jrs aside, but always finding a dozen more cackling, devious little imps clawing, kicking, and scratching at him and keeping the young Super Saiyan more than busy and unable to distract Cell at all.
"Worthless evolutionary dead-end, witness an outstanding power that no martial arts technique in the universe's history could or ever will compete against!" Meta-Cell barked out with cheer and limitless self-adoration as Meta-Cell's eyes shifted their focus, weakening their hold on Goku, but quickly captivating something else. Something… Larger.
"HAAAAH!" Goku roared at a far-off end of the star cluster where Meta-Cell had flung him, exploding with radiant, golden power that broke the psychokinetic grip. However, a colossal dark shadow cast over the Saiyan, making him turn to his right and realize that it was far too late to dodge what was coming. A massive planet, flung by Meta-Cell's incredible telekinetic prowess slammed against Goku head-on, pushing him back as more and more planets rushed toward the discarded and forgotten Saiyan, clobbering him and smashing him between their solid surfaces and causing a horrid and cluttersome mess.
Backing off from the impassable line of Cell Jrs, Gohan glared at the hole through the Galactic Arena ceiling, utterly stupefied. All he could make out from there was a light show of sparkling blinks as more and more planets joined Meta-Cell's psychokinetic bombardment of his father with Gohan only being able to imagine the cosmic chaos Meta-Cell was creating in an attempt to dispose of his father.
"Do you see now?" Meta-Cell closed its eyes like a vain deity deciding to rest after a week of strenuous work, creating a perfect universe. "The power to move, create, and destroy planets anywhere in the universe with just a glance. Is this not the power of the ultimate life form? It's only fitting that it is this same power that kills Son Goku, a mere inferior, simple, and limited man. Like a god smiting a mere mortal insect by dropping a meteor on it, don't you think?"
"Cell!" Gohan roared, powering up to the max and surrounding himself with a lustrous golden flare that began unraveling what remained of the Galactic Arena's structural integrity. The transcendental apex predator glared at the teen with a grumpy pout, seeing him as yet another annoyance.
"Hmm…" Meta-Cell hummed out, looking back up at the messy hodgepodge of planets it rammed together in an attempt to crush Goku and keep him trapped until the Saiyan choked on his infernal superiority in martial arts and wished he'd have been superior to Meta-Cell in his ability to breathe in deep space. "I suppose merely keeping Son Goku trapped in my little Prison Planet won't do. I want a more chaotic and explosive, more entertaining death. Heh… I suppose since I'm about to use Demon King Piccolo's technique, it only feels proper to wish Goku to "get gone", doesn't it?"
Meta-Cell burst into a mad peal of laughter, striking a wide and flashy power pose as the apex predator's energy surged in the planets it still had a psychokinetic hold over and caused their geomagnetic fields to be disrupted to the point of bursting, causing apocalyptic explosions entirely focused at where each planet crushing Super Saiyan 2 Goku was contacting the Saiyan. This calamitous Mass Exploding Wave attack caused the hodgepodge of planets imprisoning Goku inside them to burst and color the cosmos in a colorful constellation of exploding worlds as their cinders scattered all across the cluster.
"D-Dad…" Gohan's eyes widened in terror as traces of tears began forming in them. With a dull and blank stare, the boy kept looking at the cruel and inhospitable expanse of space, almost as if expecting the absent Ki signature of his father to flare up and assure him that everything was okay again.
"Well, it appears my schedule's all cleared up. I'll take you on, if you're still eager to give it your best shot and realize that promise you've made me," Meta-Cell turned its head and glared back at Gohan before laughing up with a madman's mockery of Gohan's loss.
"You m-m-monster!" Gohan growled, hunching up and feeling wrath bubbling up inside him. Just as the teen Super Saiyan was about to take off and blindly let all of his pent-up rage out on Meta-Cell, a sizzling energy rift opened on his left, stunning Gohan and capturing all of his attention.
"Hmm?" Meta-Cell turned to the strange rift in space-time that appeared out of nowhere in the audience stand of the Galaxy Arena. "Great," Cell rolled its eyes. "Just what I wanted, more intruders. You better now chicken out and insist on taking your turn, Gohan."
"My turn?" Gohan said in disbelief before turning to the shiny space-time rift and gasping as Krillin and Yamcha dashed through the emerged portal, positioning themselves around Gohan from both sides. They looked a tad banged up, but overall, in a much better state than his father was after such a lengthy and brutal fight against Meta-Cell. "Krillin-san, Yamcha-san!" Gohan exclaimed in joy at seeing his friends alive.
"Heya, Gohan!" Yamcha waved at the teen before grinning with a confident smirk and taking his position at Gohan's side. "Nice to see you still standing against this crazy guy. Let us give you a little hand. Wait a second…" just as Yamcha got into his role as a heroic savior, he began looking around as if he had lost something and tried to find it.
"Gohan, where's Goku?" Krillin wondered.
"Hmph… I should have made some better Cell Jrs if those two losers survived…" Meta-Cell grumbled, crossing its arms over its chest. With the attitude of a disappointed father, Cell turned to the swarm of Cell Jrs hovering in the air instead of keeping the hostages captive, which let them scurry away and take cover in the hallways and the backstage areas. "Cell Jrs, you better kill those two off while I try to squeeze whatever fun's left of the Cell Games from Gohan. If I see those two getting the upper hand, I'll make you go extinct and start designing the race of my descendants anew."
"Eek!" the Cell Jrs squeaked in terror at being forced to face the wrath of their creator. None of them thought highly of their chances of squaring up against a warrior like Son Goku, yet Meta-Cell managed to kill even him. Meek little imps like them who were yet to develop and mature into their best selves had no hope of surviving their premature extinction if Meta-Cell settled on it.
"Great… We ran away to escape exactly this kind of scenario!" Yamcha gritted his teeth, taking a fighting pose as Cell Jrs cluttered the Galactic Arena in the air, eager to tear the interlopers apart limb from limb to please their ultimate creator.
"We could really use some help here… You didn't answer us, Gohan, where's Goku?" Krillin glanced back at the spiky, golden-haired teen with a clueless smirk, almost as if he expected Gohan to tell them he left for a brief bathroom break or something.
"I… I'm sorry…" Gohan's eyes turned grim and gloomy.
"Wh… What are you saying!?" Krillin blanked out, making Yamcha lose his cool as well as the two fighters turned back at Gohan with completely panicked expressions.
"That's right, Krillin. While Goku was a worthy challenge, he greatly overstayed his welcome and so I…" Meta-Cell was about to say it when all four warriors turned their heads up. All of their eyes looked dull and blank from sensing something so outlandishly massive and powerful that it didn't seem right to exist. Like a microbe gazing upon a star up close. Neither of them had the mental capacity not to go mad when sensing this emergent energy, and so their minds lapsed to protect them from this madness. All four stared at the sky until their bodies felt confident about introducing lucidity back to the equation.
"N-No!" Meta-Cell ground its teeth, seething and frothing with yet unseen fury. "It's… Even if Goku wouldn't die from the explosion of a few dozen planets, streamed directly in his face… The inhospitable deep space should have…!"
"It's him!" Gohan exclaimed joyously. "Dad's alive!"
"Way to go!" Yamcha pumped his forearm, high-fiving Krillin.
"Keeping us on our toes like always, huh, Goku?" Krillin snickered. "He's coming back at ludicrous speed! He'll be here in a blink even though his energy's in a whole different galaxy or something."
"Wait, something's not right," Gohan's face became sullied with worry when the general attributes of his father's aura didn't exactly match what Gohan sensed previously. It was still ridiculously powerful, like a whole universe of its own that eclipsed any other power in existence, yet… It was as if there was none of the usual cheer and carefree nature to whiff in his father's signature. Like it was just a raw, unchained force of nature wearing his father's face.
"Hmph… Don't think I'll just stay still and continue to brawl with you, Goku! You need to learn how to kick your feet up and die!" Meta-Cell turned and raised its hand over its head. Yet again Meta-Cell's eyes turned to beacons of psychokinetic force, beckoning with a scarlet shining light like flashlights. The aura of psychic energy surrounding Meta-Cell was so incredible that it leaked out from just glistening around its eyes and enveloped Meta-Cell's entire body, rippling and burning like a fierce wildfire. "Galactic Eclipse Cutter!" Meta-Cell exclaimed, sending a tremendous pulse of psychic energy rippling from the palm of its hand.
The psychic energy extended across space-time, rippling and shaking all of existence while grabbing hold of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, magnetars, pulsars, and black holes alike. Puppeteered and dragged along for the ride, Meta-Cell began forming the celestial objects into a psychic energy technique, seeking to interrupt Goku's return to the fight before the Saiyan could put the hurt back on Cell and keep on humiliating the perfectly ultimate apex predator.
"Wh-what's that!?" Krillin gasped, pointing up above his head, somewhere far off in deep space, yet so ridiculously massive that it was visible from a different star cluster entirely with the naked eye.
"N-No way! It's a… A galaxy!?" Yamcha's eyes bulged out and his jaw dropped, revealing just how bizarrely mighty Meta-Cell was and how monumentally unimaginable the task of stopping it was.
"Can you handle this, Son Goku? An entire galaxy serving as my psychic Kienzan!?" Meta-Cell laughed out. "When the size of my energy disc is cosmic, there's no more need to control it like Frieza did, and there's certainly no chance of missing it! Disappear forever alongside this bundle of useless space junk!"
Throwing his hand forward, Meta-Cell directed the shuriken-shaped galactic cluster of nebulae, connecting different psychic energy imbued and dragged along celestial bodies to hurl in the direction where Meta-Cell last sensed Goku. Far away in deep space, a spiky-golden-haired Saiyan with a bare, bruised, and swollen with muscle back halted in place, glaring at the inconceivable sight of an entire galaxy condensed with psychic energy coming right at him from across light-years away.
"Ngh!" Goku grumbled, tucking his knees in and clenching his arms together, then stretching them apart and exploding with a black aura, surrounded by a golden outline on the outermost edges. The energy resonated far and wide, rippling across the different edges of the universe as the Saiyan wound back a mighty punch and flung it forward, taking off in a cosmic tour across the light-years separating him from where he last saw his son and his hated enemy.
"H-Huh?" Meta-Cell blanked out, questioning if what it sensed was indeed true. Soon enough, Cell no longer needed to sense the collapse of the psychic control it had over the nebulous cluster of celestial bodies. Like a black and golden arrow, Goku tore through in a straight line, cutting through the galactic energy disc. The furious Super Saiyan homed straight in on the Galactic Arena, bolting like a shooting star and splitting the galactic psycho-cluster, liberating the dragged celestial bodies from Cell's hold until Goku stopped just short of a kilometer above the Galactic Arena with the Galactic Eclipse Cutter collapsing in on itself behind the Saiyan's back.
"Agh! No…! It's impossible!" Meta-Cell cried out, but, before it could say anything more or attempt to attack Goku again, an empty shockwave caused by Super Saiyan 2 Goku's sudden stoppage clobbered and sent Meta-Cell crashing back.
"Amazing! Even after ripping through a whole psychic galactic Kienzan, Goku still had enough speed for his stop to hurt Cell without even touching it!" Krillin exclaimed, admiring the newfound, unbelievable strength of his best friend.
"This… This isn't right, something's wrong about Dad," Gohan shivered, looking up at his father in unease. Seeing the boy's fear and sensing the sweat pouring down his face and back, Yamcha turned at him and then back at Goku.
"Huh? What are you… Oh yeah…" Yamcha uttered, realizing that Goku, while possessing overall the same appearance as his Super Saiyan 2 state, was a tad bulkier and the sparks defining the static electricity field of the Super Saiyan 2 were pitch black. Also, Goku's skin had a darker, grayish hue while his eyes were whited out and the Super Saiyan aura had darkened from a pure golden luster to one more similar to mustard.
"Damn it! What's this ridiculous transformation now!? What in the world have you become now, Goku? Ultra Super Goku!?" Meta-Cell frothed while emerging from the crater, still shaken and holding its horned head. In a blink, an electromagnetic energy pulse washed across Meta-Cell's body, regenerating the cracks and the dents and boosting the apex predator's power via a modified combo of Legendary Super Saiyan evolution and the ordinary Saiyan Zenkai.
"This is just like Vegeta-san described it happened on the Dark Planet, when Dad became subjected to the influence of Destron Gas while affected by grief and rage. The wild power-up that allowed Dad to trade blows with Hatchiyack for a time," Gohan shook with a despaired expression while staring at a heroic image of the man he had always seen as his savior. "Except this time, he's gone berserk while in Super Saiyan 2."
"Destron Gas? But that thing's all gone, isn't it?" Krillin turned to Gohan in disbelief. "You don't mean Goku's been whiffing on some hidden supply of it or something?"
"No, this has to be something else…" Gohan clenched his fists, wondering if they could even reach Goku, wherever he was in this berserker's soul, still swinging fists and breaking through all limits through the force of fighting spirit and willpower alone. Finding ever-new heights to which his power could skyrocket.
"Who cares!?" Yamcha exclaimed, looking like his position on the matter was shifting with each passing moment from one of cheer to one of terror. "As long as Goku crushes Cell, right!?"
Gohan gulped, wondering if things really were that simple. By now, the table had flipped so many times that it was impossible to tell which direction it was pointing and how many legs were still intact.