Trunks soared onward from his irradiated battlefield over the western region of the planet toward West City. Preserving his strength, the newly awakened warrior to surpass a Super Saiyan now hurried toward the most important battlefield in his base form with his hair fluttering erratically to the sides. That way his mechanical implants were in plain view, though there was no one Trunks would have wanted to conceal them from in the vicinity.

While the future traveler couldn't tell where Dr. Puri was, he could trace where all the most important fighting was going on by tracing the Ki of other combatants. Someone with enough power to render both Son Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo powerless could have only been Dr. Puri herself. Trunks' new power couldn't have awakened at a more opportune time. This was the strength he needed to save the future of this timeline. This was the strength to earn hope once more. Most importantly, it was the strength that would make him strong enough to save Chayote and create a peaceful world for his son. One Trunks himself didn't have the luxury to see.

"Solar Fist!" an unexpected croak resonated from below, stunning Trunks with how unexpected the interception was. The time traveler stopped and covered up his right eye while thrashing about in pain, focusing on his tearful eye.

Trunks' open hand shot out. It locked around the wrist of a green, chitinous shell and stopped a fist in place. A golden aura boomed from the traveler from the future, igniting the hopeful flash of gold in his spiky hair as well. With his right eye closed, Trunks turned to the unexpected enemy with a grumpy look. Mockery for how little effort the enemy thought would have sufficed to kill him.

"Impossible!" the enemy croaked with a low-pitched noise, reminding of the cricket's chirping modulated and added to human speech.

Trunks' right arm reached for his shotgun, pointing the two barrels at his opponent without as much as a twitch to his lips but just as the whiff of his opponent's Ki reached his sensory input, Trunks' hand stopped from pulling the trigger, and channeling his Ki to blast this mysterious interceptor to dust.

"Your Ki… It's… Chayote's… Who are you? You're not an Android of Dr. Puri's that I'm familiar with, are you a new model?" Trunks wondered. He should've blasted this insect away and moved on to join Chayote on the battlefield, but… There was no possible way for someone to have Chayote's Ki. One's Ki was unique to that person. It couldn't have been emulated. If this creature could have Chayote's Ki, it could've had the Ki of just about anyone or anything else.

As far as Trunks might have known, he might have been following another copy of this creature while trying to trace Chayote's Ki. It was for that reason that he must have had an answer. What if Dr. Puri was trying to emulate Chayote's Ki to clone her so that she could be able to finally kill the Saiyan and have her unconditional revenge?

"I see… It's that cybernetic eye of yours, isn't it? The last time we met, we didn't have a chance to fight properly, so I wasn't sure about how your Artificial Human parts worked…" the insectoid creature purred with a croaking tone.

Now that the flash of light had subsided, Trunks finally could have a clear look at the creature he ended up against. This enigmatic interloper was a humanoid-shaped creature, though it had many features to it that were alien to ordinary humans. He had minty-colored horns, a beak-like mouth that reminded him of a cicada's face, and three fingers for both his feet and hands. His body had been coated with segmented armor hard as steel, though it had a texture of chitin. Twin beetle wings twitched at the creature's back, though it seemed quite capable of flight using Ki.

It had predatorial, long, vertical eyes, though they appeared to have an armored membrane closing over it when the creature blinked that was deep green. The creature's abdomen had been pink and some segments of its armor had a color that didn't quite match the other segments, making him an odd sight to behold from afar.

"The last time?" Trunks gnashed his teeth. His expression shifted from apathy and haste to irritation. This enigmatic monster was the last thing he needed in his way right now. "I've never met you before. Now talk or I'll make you talk."

"You're right… Sort of. You haven't met me yet, but I've met your future counterpart and have come to this timeline using your time machine…" the monster smirked. He must have known that he had little chance of beating his opponent, though he had information that Trunks desperately wanted.

"My time machine? That's impossible. My time machine was wrecked…" Trunks reported in a strict tone, twitching his trigger finger. Nothing this creature was talking about made sense, but he had an overwhelming feeling of Chayote's Ki within him. "Last chance. Your Ki is the same as Chayote's, why?"

"Poor Trunks… You must be so used to having the knowledge of the future over everybody. What does it feel like to be on the other side?" the monster's eyes squinted while his beak mouth stretched to the edges of his face. "You pose me an interesting dilemma though. I have all the time in the world, but it would feel so delicious to rock you right out from your military boots right now, just like I did back then, in the future…"

"Tsk… I've had enough of your riddles…" Trunks grit his teeth, unleashing an explosive energy blast from his Ki shotgun. The insectoid monster yelled out and sprawled as a thunderous blast enveloped it whole and began charring its body. Some mangled remains flung out from the other end of the blast. The nearly cooked insectoid flopped down into the water on its back. Its blackened body shook and twitched in agony while its eyes hung wide open alongside its mouth.

"Talk…" Trunks muttered after lowering himself closer to his charred enemy and moving his hand to the handle of his sword. So far, the creature has shown a superhuman amount of vitality. This was something that'd work in Trunks' favor as he could now cut off limbs to get answers out from this monster.

"I see… You've strayed from your other counterpart this far, huh? It might be worse than I thought…" the monster rolled on the surface of the water. It took the stance of a water strider as a long and nimble tail emerged from the creature's back and lashed behind it. It had stayed concealed underneath its armored wings earlier, which made it the least scorched area of the insectoid's body. "I'll do you one better then. How about I show it to you? By altering the timeline again, you've forced me into action far sooner than I should have revealed myself. That's fine, I've come prepared…"

Trunks' sword flashed with a silver blur. The flapping tail with a suctioning end jerked once before its upper half separated from the lower and spat purple blood from both ends. The beaten monster looked up in bafflement at its slashed appendage. It was only after a few blinks that it realized that Trunks had cut his tail off. At that point the insectoid creature gasped and exclaimed in terror, moving its tail's lower half closer to his hands.

Just as Trunks was about to repeat his warning, the insectoid enigma raised its hands with its right and middle fingers pointing out and positioned them around its temples. There it was. That cursed, immovable self-confidence. Even with its armor's outer layers charred to the point of crumbling, its body covered with bruises and burns, and its tail separated, the monster still felt like it was in complete control.

"Devil Mite Beam!" the monster croaked at the same time as it extended its fingers at Trunks. The eyes of the Saiyan widened in shock as a fuchsia-colored, spiraling beam shrieked out from the tips of its chipped fingernails. "Just like the Artificial Humans, your anatomy makes you different enough from ordinary humans. Enough so to survive the Devil Mite Beam, anyway. But I don't want you to die. I want you to see your future. To see the end of everything and provide me with my bridge back…"

Trunks grunted as the beam smashed into him and enveloped him with a fuchsia-colored glow. It formed a sparkling, artificial aura that left the Saiyan powerless. Even if he had attempted to dodge this beam, from what he remembered from the time Chayote attempted to use it against some of Puri's artificial soldiers, it tracked one's evil thoughts. It had been completely ineffective against fully artificial beings like the cybernetic soldiers, though what this mysterious monster told him now, apparently, Artificial Humans could have survived it through different means.

An overwhelming, pulsing pain made Trunks cough up darkened blood and clutch his chest. The time traveler jerked his arms to his sides, overcoming the tremendous pressure he felt swelling up from inside him as he roared out in both pain and effort. His hair spiked up and dyed gold once more. This seemed to only make the monster cackle.

"That's right, Trunks, become a Super Saiyan… The Devil Mite Beam fixes on your malicious thoughts. It feeds on anger, rage, desire, ambition… Your Super Saiyan is a power awakened through evil thoughts. Violent and deadly intents, lust for power. This transformation only strengthens its effects. It makes the evil thoughts that feed it swell up hundredfold!" the creature barked out with mischievous glee.

"It's as you said… I'll survive this attack because I'm part Artificial Human. Once I do, I'll put my full power into obliterating you in an instant," Trunks threatened the monster. This appeared to only incite more malice in its cackle and fuel the hilarity that it saw in this meeting.

"It's true that your full power is a wall I cannot overcome at this time. I'll just have to leave explaining the nature of your folly to the future version of me. One whom nothing can stop, no matter how much power you've got in this timeline," the monster mocked Trunks. Trunks' vision blurred as the swelling up pressure in his chest became too much to bear. The pain curled the warrior from the future over. The insectoid clenched both his arms into fists. "Now, evil, explode!"

Trunks' grunts became full-out yells as the swelling malice overturned him and bent the modified warrior outward. The resulting blast drowned the expressions of Trunks' torment out and sent him diving underwater with a grievous opening in his chest cavity. Sensing a moment of weakness in his opponent, a yellow flash gleamed in the eyes of the insectoid monster. The underwater current surged as something mechanical was washing toward Trunks' drowning body from the abyss.

A pill-shaped rocket with a glass top slipped in to intercept Trunks' injured body. Its top slid open, letting the time traveler fall into it before it closed and drained its internal station of any traces of water. The malicious insectoid tilted his arm, enveloping the time machine rocket with energy as it elevated from underwater. It shined like a star of hope that this time machine was originally meant to represent.

"My name is Cell. And I've taken the liberty of setting the time and date of this time machine to the one of our original meeting already. I knew I would have little time to pull this stunt on you. It wasn't like you were going to travel back to the future with you and Chayote getting all lovey-dovey in this timeline, now was it? How's an almighty bio-android trapped inside of a doomed future supposed to find its way to a better time then?" Cell cackled to himself as, by the time that Trunks was snapping out of it, the time machine had already slipped into the time stream and vanished. The insectoid monster took a plunge to take his severed half of the tail and force its needle open to remove a handful of Senzu from it. Cell took one, instantly regaining his form.

"Beautiful. I hadn't had the time to test it, what with all the hiding I've been doing for entire decades, but Chayote's Saiyan cells within me seem to work just like they're supposed to. This level of power I can work with, for now…" Cell basked in the glory of his newly restored form and the glistening state of his armor. He looked up at the sky as if trying to follow Trunks on his one-way trip to the doomed future where Cell had sent him. There was a great deal of certainty in Cell's eyes of what it was that Trunks would encounter at the end of the trip.

One figure, far too troublesome for Cell to deal with, was now off the board! At last, Cell could begin assembling the world's greatest collection of cells that he had gathered in the future before being forced to abandon them to make it to this timeline.


A shrill battle cry resonated through the decimated West City grounds. Android 21 ignited the scarlet Ki blades around her hands and let the full might of her Ki explode at once. Not worrying one iota about wasting a speck of her infinite stamina, the artificial woman charged at Chayote while the transformed Saiyan hovered without losing her lime-colored luster.

With a vicious grunt, Dr. Puri thrust her Ki blade aiming right at Chayote's eye. The head of the Super Saiyan leaned back at an almost static angle as the stunned bystanders gasped and grunted in shock but gorgeous and radiant sparks of scarlet fluttered in the area as 21's Ki blade shattered upon colliding with Chayote's face like a glass tube smashed against a brick wall.

The artificial woman grunted again, re-igniting her Ki blade as she twirled around with her arms spread wide, creating a terrifying slicer zone around her. Puri's rampant Ki erupted into a whirlwind while the Ki blades decorating both of her arms added a slashing property to the marvelous scarlet tornado. Occasionally, crescent projectiles splintered off of the vortex and hurled in random directions. One of them passed dangerously close to Goku and Vegeta, stunning the two battered Saiyan warriors and forcing a droplet of sweat to run down their foreheads.

A deafening clamor made the Saiyans clench their ears and crouch down in discomfort. The thunderous volume made a round and ever-expanding shock wave of pure, relentless noise that shattered glass, peeled steel like sheets of tin, crumbled stone, and cement alike. The expanding bubble of a mindless roar busted Puri's whirlwind slicer and sent the Android rolling back from the shock of the impact. It took the artificial woman a few blinks to roll back into place and recover from the violent toss back.

"This… This changes nothing! Rage and thrash about all you want, it's even more pleasant to me to see you…" Dr. Puri was about to taunt Chayote before the Super Saiyan vanished and appeared before her, slamming her open hand over the Android's mouth and shutting the artificial woman up while gaining a handle on her.

Chayote flung Dr. Puri's heel backward, sending her rolling back while the rampaging Super Saiyan charged forward with her arms dragged by her side, ready to peel, rend and tear. The wrathful Saiyan snarled on her way there. Puri struggled to maintain her balance, but Chayote's push kick decimated the Android and left her at the Super Saiyan's mercy. Dr. Puri spat out dark, cherry-colored bile from her mouth as the look in her eyes turned hazy and the shape of an oversized boot malformed her body for a single blink. Just until Chayote pulled her foot back and continued her onslaught.

With a rushing lariat, the rampant Super Saiyan flattened her opponent and sent Dr. Puri crashing down on the ground and sliding across the splintered pillar of what little town remained above the boiling magma below. Chayote took a plunge down, driving a diving cross into the exposed gut of her flattened opponent and curling Dr. Puri up by her core. Using the fact that her opponent wriggled like a worm, Chayote scooped her arm up, catching Dr. Puri by her chin and flinging her in the air with a single motion.

The dominant Super Saiyan vanished in a blink, appearing just above Android 21 just at the right moment before the artificial woman had reached the peak of her flight. Only a radiant lime-colored halo remained on the ground level. A faint and an afterimage of the terrifying brawler that once stood there. The noise of Chayote's diving elbow digging into Artificial Human No. 21's face rivaled the lash of lightning but Chayote wasn't content with just rag dolling her opponent about, Chayote's tail wrapped around Puri's waist and hooked the Android up for a rising knee strike to the chin.

This shock sent Dr. Puri soaring into the atmosphere with the heated tail of a rising comet following not too far behind. "Pinto Bomb!" a primal and almost animalistic wail overpowered even the dance of super-heated and oppressed by overwhelming friction air around Dr. Puri. Chayote parted the clouds and beamed straight to her soaring opponent like a lime-colored beam of light. The bruiser slipped her head in between Dr. Puri's thighs and locked her muscular arms around them from below, plummeting down with a ferocious powerbomb slam that colored everything with a minty flash while the remnants of West City began crumbling down into boiling oblivion below.

Goku lost all feeling of direction or balance. It was only when his father's firm hand caught him by his waist and lowered him down by Vegeta who had extended his hands out in front of him to create an explosive energy bubble to absorb some of the shock wave decimating the area that senses returned to the Saiyan.

"Chayote's gone crazy. When she lost control, she used to be all power and no skill. She just swung her fists and went on a tearing rampage, becoming her own worst enemy…" Goku noted.

"Yeah, now it's as if the martial artist shook hands with the hysterical beast and became one being. She's powerful, more so than ever, but she uses that might smart too. She's got every ounce of martial arts skill that she's got in her base form…" Bardock nodded.

"It only makes sense," Vegeta's arms weighed heavy by his side as he panted with a torrent of sweat running down his exhausted and tense body. "She's never been too far behind us. Always just a step behind the curve, but punted over the edge by her insane, raw power and genes. It only makes sense that she'd find her way to balance and perfect the Super Saiyan form when we did. This is Chayote's answer to perfecting the Super Saiyan form."

A scream slashed through Vegeta's proclamation as Dr. Puri hurled out from a boiling pit of magma, still smoking and covered with nasty burns where she went skinny-dipping and her Ki failed to protect her body fully from harm. Chayote emerged not too long after with a bright mint-colored energy field around her and a clenched right fist shaking from the tension.

"I've just had a brilliant idea… I wonder if my future self has had it too," Artificial Human No. 21 chuckled after vaulting in mid-air and correcting herself into a floating position as she sent a hail of crescent Ki slice projectiles by swinging her Ki blade in Chayote's direction. These projectiles did little to hurt the approaching dread, but they slowed Chayote down by bringing the energy field she coated herself in down lower with each connecting slice.

"Why don't I convert you into an Artificial Human and devour you whole myself? Put your meek brain into a mechanical shell, then eat it up whole… Then I'll be the Legendary Super Saiyan, it makes me crack up just thinking about it…" Dr. Puri shrieked out with madness cutting nervous strings with the shape of the woman's voice. "It'd be what you loathsome Saiyans deserve for ruining this planet and making life hell for us humans! It'd be just desserts. Desserts I'd be sharing with the whole of humanity since I've been so greedy. I wasn't the only one whose life you Saiyans have utterly ruined…"

Dr. Puri licked the back of her hand while igniting the most focused Ki blade she could beam out. With the full brunt of her speed and ferocity, fueled by raw hunger and liberated by the idea of finally being able to eviscerate her hated enemy freely, Android 21 rushed toward her bulky foe with hungry eyes. Yet when her hands flashed with a cross-shaped downward slice that was meant to remove Chayote's arms and legs simultaneously, an ironclad grip locked around Dr. Puri's wrists.

Chayote's jaw dropped as a violent howl left the bottom of her lungs. The foot of the Super Saiyan smashed right into Dr. Puri's face with the rampant beast, not even taking letting go of 21's wrists into consideration and spraining the woman's arms. Puri screamed in agony and terror, fearing for her arms as leathery tears resonated through the ruined West City and the tears by the armpits, elbows, and wrists spewed sparks and sprayed hot oil outward.

The dominant Super Saiyan pulled her opponent back, hurling Dr. Puri into a spin while her helpless and ruined arms dangled helplessly and with no sign of weight behind them by the woman's side. Chayote snarled while clenching her fist and pounding once with hydraulic impressions, straight into the core of Puri's face. The impact nearly caved the artificial woman's face in and drove a booming vertical shock wave of air pressure to split the ruined city into two separate halves. The boiling blood of the agonized planet spewed in arcs above the ground, coloring the night sky with shades of sangria.

Sensing weakness and no resistance in her opponent, Chayote roared again with a thunderous uppercut that sent Puri rolling back through the skies. The relentless Super Saiyan vanished in a flashy mint halo, appearing right before the pursued woman while delivering a spinning barrage of back fists. Just as it seemed like Puri would plummet down and have a chance to reconsider the life path that led her to this moment, Chayote's foot socked sharply into Puri's gut, making the battered Android spew cherry-colored bile from her mouth and collapse helpless.

Sensing her opponent's agony, Chayote grabbed hold of Puri's thighs from an overhead position with a diving, aerial takedown and slammed her through a shaky skyscraper, crumbling the entire structure to ruin while Chayote howled over her fallen and ruined opponent with both her fists up. Instead of pounding the remnants of life out of Dr. Puri, Chayote slipped her hands under her opponent's body and flung her backward with a toss, like she'd toss a handful of pancakes from a pan right onto a plate. The artificial woman flopped face-first into a rocky platform while Chayote dashed up to her and grabbed Puri's head from behind, pulling it out and slamming it back at the rock repeatedly. Hysteria in Chayote's mind left the Super Saiyan's lust for violence looping, as there seemed to be no end to the battery.

At this stage, nobody doubted that Chayote would rip Dr. Puri apart. While not everyone watching her do so from the sidelines felt as excited about it as the rampaging Super Saiyan herself, no one seemed to try to stop her. Be it due to a lack of necessary strength to do so, or because some part of them realized Chayote deserved some retribution at this point.


Author's Notes: Okay, so I KNOW this Cell acts and looks and works a bit differently from canon Cell. If you want to criticize me for misrepresenting him or an aspect of his history, please wait until the next chapter when my take on Cell can truly get to breathe and when you'll get most answers about what he is in this version of the story and how he's connected to the story. His meeting with Trunks in this timeline was meant to be a little confusing. Please wait until the next chapter gives you some more answers before you rip me a new one about all this mess ;)