After yet another deafening snap that seeped through every cell in Chayote's body, the Saiyan took a precious few blinks to snap back to reality before realizing that Meta-Cell's grip was still fixed on her wrist. Turning around, Chayote chopped at Meta-Cell's neck, forcing the transcendental life-form to block her attack with its free hand. Having distracted Cell, Chayote lashed at the forearm holding her in place, but, before her strike would connect, Cell suddenly released her and dashed back in a blurry blink.
"That'll be quite enough. I didn't bring you here to fight you," Meta-Cell said, crossing its arms and glaring back at Chayote's wrathful scowl and slowly bubbling wrath that translated in pronounced veins pulsating on her forehead and a vicious, stern look focused on it.
"Here?" Chayote closed her eyes and shook off the entrancing plunge into unbridled wrath, emerging from the ocean of boiling red and seeing the figurative sky and stars above her head. Cell had brought her from the Capsule Corps spaceship she was sharing with King Vegeta to some hi-tech room, some sort of spacious laboratory surrounded with blinking lights, flashing neon lights positioned in rigid angular patterns, and cybernetic do-hickeys Chayote couldn't have begun wrapping her head around. "Where is here? Is this one of your planets?"
"Not the sharpest tool in the shed, huh? That's okay, I was ready for it," Meta-Cell sighed and rubbed its metallic temples in second-hand embarrassment. "This is the merged Four-Star. The home and laboratory that Dr. Puri and her family stole from the Tsufurians and used for her own ends in research and countless projects meant to further her interests. Before I stopped her, she was hard at work upgrading her and her family's Artificial Human bodies to God Class using the stripped technology of the Machine God Luud."
"This is the Four-Star?" Chayote looked around, finding it difficult to believe that Meta-Cell would bring the most destructive soldier of the Dragon Team to his most sensitive headquarters, which was responsible for his complete transcendence over life and death. After all, if Chayote were to destroy this facility, wouldn't Cell remain trapped in the mechanical body it currently occupied and would his life not end at the same time that body was destroyed?
"Indeed," Meta-Cell crossed its arms. "However, before you make any sudden and ridiculous moves before fully considering their ramifications, I would like you to hear me out first. I came here not to fight you, because that is in and of itself pointless, given that your end means the end of this universe, but to offer you a proposition."
"Cut the crap!" Chayote lashed out, swiping her arm in dismissal of Cell's suggestion. "The reason you don't want to fight me is because I'd trash that ridiculous body of yours, and however many billions of replacements you have! You're all just pretty porcelain and I'd level this apex predator fantasy you've built for yourself in five seconds!"
"You're just as flat as I thought you'd be, and it shows. You forget that I too possess the Saiyan and Legendary Super Saiyan cells that make you special. In all ways you can define, I am more special than you. There's no victory for either of us if we were to fight, that is why I was never excited for a second to fight you as I was with Son Goku, who is even less special than either of us," Meta-Cell shrugged. "Just to make sure I have your attention–what I'm offering to you is a chance to save Trunks."
"What does Vegeta's brat have to do with anything!?" Chayote gnashed her teeth, putting up her fists even though through shakes she had to restrain herself from charging at this polished cybernetic fop and smashing it to pieces. "Given that I'm a mother, you'd be wise not to involve anyone's children, or else there's no deal to be made."
"You tit…" Meta-Cell sighed. "I mean YOUR Trunks, the Trunks from the future, your son's father."
"T-Trunks!?" Chayote blanked out. Her arms dropped limp to her sides as all violent intents vanished like a flame without oxygen. "But that's impossible. Trunks… He disappeared. He returned to his home time, didn't he?"
"Come on, Chayote, you're a helpless knucklehead, but even you must see through this as nonsense, don't you? While I've spent a long time planning this charade, and I had the greatest motivation of them all to make it count–the need to survive and earn my right to live my life free of test tubes, labs, and experiments, I was a speck of a being I am now when I devised that plan…" Meta-Cell laughed out. "Think about it more than not at all–why would Future Trunks wish to return to his time, if the time he'd be returning to wouldn't be his own anymore, but a separate timeline, that branches every time the time machine is used? Even a cyborg such as him would choose to live as a father and a husband rather than to chase meaningless illusions of a future that's no longer his."
"So… What truly happened to Trunks?" Chayote looked up and finally gained the lucidity of thought to confront the transcendental menace by looking Meta-Cell directly in the eyes.
"It's simple–he's dead. Erased from time-space alongside his miserable, doomed future and the timeline he'd created," Meta-Cell shrugged. Chayote's eyes whited out, her hair began spiking up and ripped free of the rubber band that held it in a ponytail. Loud rips spread through the empty cybernetic hall that Cell and Chayote stood on with the metallic floor beneath Chayote's feet denting from erupting, invisible pressure. "Settle down! That's exactly what I'm offering you to correct. If you take me up on my offer, you'll be able to rescue your precious Trunks from this depressing fate."
"Keep talking…" Chayote snarled, still overcome by bestial urges to rip apart and smash through, held together by a thin line of sanity she focused on and held a firm grip on because of all the progress she's made in managing her wrath throughout the years. "And maybe, if I like what I hear, I won't let go and smash everything in my sight to bits and make you run through your collection of replacement bodies real fast!"
"Sigh…" Meta-Cell shook his head. "Very well, you see, back when I was still hiding, during your conflict with Dr. Puri and her corporation of Artificial Humans, I used Future Trunks' time machine to send him into the future. That's because, according to the flow of history, Future Trunks was always meant to return to the future, where I would kill him and snatch his time machine to return to the past. However, I noticed that Future Trunks' bond with you made this impossible, so I had to interfere and force him to travel back. That would've benefited me in multiple ways, it would ensure the proper flow of time and history and save a version of me in the future, that also wishes to live its life freely, just like I did, but it would also remove a powerful enemy in my present."
"It was you! It was YOU all along!" Chayote's body continued to bulk up, pumping with tension while her swelling muscles ripped through her spacesuit, leaving large tears in it.
"I have no awareness of what had happened in that version of the future, however, in my version of that future, Trunks returned with his time machine only to encounter me–a version of me that's gathered countless alien cells from across millions of different species in the universe. At that time, I was in what I then thought was the epitome, the peak of my development, Cell Maximum, so to speak," Meta-Cell recalled.
"Then why go through the trouble and time travel back here?" Chayote ground her teeth. From the looks of it, this infuriating creature meddled with her life in all the worst ways just because it could.
"It's ironic," Meta-Cell admitted. "You hate me because of all the ways in which I've affected your life in this timeline, sapped your cells and energy when you were injured in Jingle Village, trapped the father of your child in my doomed future, and left him to die there, now I threaten your home planet with my Cell Games holding the Ultimate Dragon Balls hostage… However, in much the same way it was you who meddled with my affairs as well, despite it not being intentional or even known to you. Ever since I first drew breath in the artificial lungs that Dr. Puri granted me so that she could fill them with deadly gas and test my reaction, I've wanted nothing more than to live my own life. The life I deserved, a free and dignified life. And yet… You were always there. No matter how strong I would grow, I would be unable to remove you from that equation and I'd always be a slave to the whims of Gods who would destroy the universe if something were to happen to you."
"You used the time machine to escape the doomed future, just so you could kill me and escape the consequences!" Chayote realized, much to her horror. "You mean you trapped my Trunks in a doomed future, just so you could commit murder and get away with the consequences!?"
"Well…" Meta-Cell scratched its head. "I suppose… From your point of view… The way I saw it–I was escaping to a new time, a place where I could start brand new and live the life I was entitled to via the circumstances of having been born. At least in my time, I didn't originally plan to use Trunks' time machine this way, the opportunity… Presented itself. Having killed Trunks and captured his time machine, then having killed you, at last, I made my escape. I felt like I owed a future version of me the same courtesy, the same opportunity to live its life free of Dr. Puri, of you… Besides, the version of you that I killed was a miserable little bundle of nerves and organs, you've been through decades of Dr. Puri's torture, with your life artificially sustained just so the universe could keep on spinning and Dr. Puri's dominion remained intact. If anything, I did the future version of you a favor."
"You haven't thought things through, did you? I exist on this new dream timeline of yours too," Chayote crossed her arms, finally having gulped down her pointless rage and engaged Cell on the terms the creature had chosen to engage Chayote in. At least for now. "You rushed head-first into the same trap you ran away from."
"Hmmm… Maybe, either way, I still had so much life ahead of me that I didn't think it would matter. From a position rooted far into the past, I could freely influence the present and the future in ways I thought necessary. It's a level of freedom I didn't have in my own time," Meta-Cell shrugged. Something about this didn't sit right with Chayote, but no matter how much she tried peering into that robotic and polished, glittering and chrome look of Meta-Cell, she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
"You didn't return to this time in your Max Cell form, or whatever. Why? Did you just want to live your life from the beginning as a baby, or something?" Chayote wondered, still distrustful of Cell's intentions of trying to engage with her in conversation rather than a fight. She still wasn't fully sure if Cell's declaration of them fighting it out being pointless was true or not.
"Nothing of the sort. Trunks' time machine was too small and my genetic composition in Cell Max form was too complex to send back through time. Frieza's race, whose cells I had for the longest time back then and whose abilities I have therefore mastered, can devise new transformations, and so I devised a form that shed the excess sets of cells, leaving me with only the primitive essentials for my existence. That's the version of me that traveled back to the past," Meta-Cell explained.
"You appear to believe that this attempt at justifying your actions would somehow make me understand what you're getting at, but…" Chayote glared at Meta-Cell, still feeling just as willing to reject any of his attempts at striking a deal with her as she was when this forced meeting started.
"You misunderstand. I don't need a justification to save my life. I'll kill anyone and anything to live. The reason I explained what happened between me and Trunks from the future wasn't because I wanted you to understand me or because I felt like I owed you an apology, or whatever other misguided ideas you might have formed in that thick skull of yours. The reason I explained this to you is because it will be important for you if you are to accept the terms of my deal, and I feel you're going to want to do that," Meta-Cell replied.
"The vanity…" Chayote's right eye twitched in shock at how much this alleged transcendental creature was misinterpreting their situation. "Just because I'm itching to tear you apart more and more, I suggest you get to your proposition already, so I can decline and beat you into the ground already."
"Given that I'm offering you a chance to rescue your Trunks here from his doomed fate, you should be more grateful," Meta-Cell smirked, appearing as if though he knew something Chayote didn't. Something of extreme importance that would inevitably flip the status quo over on its head when revealed.
"You've made that claim already, explain yourself, and it better makes sense!" Chayote's face soured since she hated Trunks' name being used as a shield from her beating the shit out of Cell here and now. Still, it worked, as much as Chayote hated admitting it. As long as there was hope… She stood there and listened.
"I cannot promise you that my explanation will make sense to you, given your feeble intellect, but for my deal to work, I need to explain things as clearly as I can. What I'm offering you is to use the time machine I've built inside the Four-Star and jump into the same point in space-time as I sent your Trunks and prevent his death," Meta-Cell finally revealed his hand.
"Didn't you just explain to me why that wouldn't work?" Chayote squinted with profound bitterness in her expression. "You just said that every time a time machine is used, it creates a separate timeline. That means that if I were to jump to that same point in the future, it would be in a separate timeline, and Trunks wouldn't be MY Trunks. Heck, who knows if this future would even have Trunks after all the machinations Dr. Puri and Bulma of the future did with time and history."
"Ah, so you were paying attention," Meta-Cell smiled, painfully reminding Chayote of one of Frieza's dementedly polite smirks. "Good. Good for you and Future Trunks, that is. I couldn't care less if you succeed or not."
Slowly, just enough so for Chayote to understand immediately that Cell's sudden shift into motion wasn't related to an attempt to attack her, the apex predator turned around and approached the metallic pillar, flashing with cybernetic patterns and colorful lights behind him. After pressing and dragging its fingers across several control panels, the metallic pillar opened up and down, splitting down the middle and revealing it to be some sort of containment device. Hidden inside was a cradle of intense energy, shining so brightly that Chayote's eyes needed to grow accustomed to its glimmer. Even then, she needed to follow Cell and approach the column's core to see what it was that Cell wanted to show her.
"A ring?" Chayote exclaimed upon peering deep into the source of this flashing light and spotting a tiny piece of jewelry inside its core.
"This is what is known as a Time Ring," Meta-Cell explained. "It is a creation of the Gods governing this universe. Those Gods use these rings to travel through time "naturally", that is to say–without creating separate timelines. Using this ring, you can jump into the future or the past of this timeline and make corrections. If you were to, say, prevent Future Trunks' demise in the future, those changes would stick to the present, because the outcome of that doomed future affects the present of this timeline."
"I'm… Not sure I understand…" Chayote winced, grabbing her head as all those timelines and all this talk of past, present, and future were making her go cross-eyed.
"I wouldn't expect you to, no one can understand, because it's a paradox. It's the reason time traveling is a mystical phenomenon only available to the Gods, and shouldn't be performed by mere tin can time machines," Meta-Cell pointed out. "My meddling with time so much, Future Trunks embedded himself into this timeline by meeting all of you and fathering your child. Also, his time machine is essential to my presence in this timeline, so he cannot not exist on this timeline. I share the blame with Trunks for meddling with the flow of time, I'll admit, but I did so back when I was desperate and I didn't understand the laws of time travel nearly as well."
"You said it's a time paradox?" Chayote gasped.
"Correct. If you were to attempt to draw a definitive flow of history and time, that is to say–draw a line connecting each separate important events in history, it would be impossible to do so. This timeline is messy and disjointed because of the actions of Future Trunks and my future self who traveled into the past using Trunks' time machine. Future Trunks is both essential to this timeline, and he doesn't exist in it. In the same way, I should not exist in this timeline, yet I am essential to it by becoming the center of its recorded history. Time no longer makes strict sense anymore in the way you can fathom. It's all squiggly lines and paradoxes…" Meta-Cell explained. "That is why, you can jump into the future on this timeline related to Future Trunks, because that event is at the epicenter of the paradox distorting all of space-time."
"So that's what you want from me? To correct the paradox by rescuing Trunks and preventing you from further distorting time?" Chayote finally put it together.
"Correct," Meta-Cell nodded, sighing in relief that Chayote finally understood what he was getting to. "This is not an exact science, but I am immensely worried about the potential implications of such a paradox distorting all of space-time. It could lead to a complete collapse of the fabric of space-time, the end of all existence as we know it, a potential tear that would eventually wrap around and consume all the infinite timelines of all existence, corrupting and dissolving them like a corrosive virus. Either that or the timeline might become more unstable, leading to unexplainable and erratic events occurring all over the place, each further complicating matters until space-time collapses in on itself."
"But if I were to prevent you from arriving in the past using the Time Ring… Wouldn't that…?" Chayote looked up with her index finger pressed to her lips, trying to unravel this confusing ball of threads.
"Aww, are you actually worried about me?" Meta-Cell burst into laughter. "Don't worry, I've made sure to upgrade my body to coat it with the same alloy as the Time Ring. Usually, only Gods can use the Time Rings, but I've bypassed that law, it seems, by using one to fuel my time machine and duplicating its alloy to coat my shell in it. Changes to time, the laws of cause and effect should no longer affect me in the present."
"So you've become immune to changes in the past?" Chayote rolled her eyes, feeling like Cell was just taking the opportunity to flex. "Do I need to know how you got your hands on a Time Ring in the first place?"
"If it will make your consciousness feel any clearer, I did not kill a God to steal theirs. The Four-Star has observed the universe and noted every important event since before humans walked on two legs. It has data on a massive extinction event in which most Gods in this universe were exterminated by something or someone millions of years ago. Because the mystical properties of the Time Rings render them invulnerable to decay, I was able to find the site of that massacre inside an empty void of an obliterated quadrant of space and retrieve those rings," Meta-Cell explained.
"Tsk…" Chayote gnashed her teeth, stuffing her hands inside the decorative pockets of the damaged space suit.
"Is something wrong? Please understand that we're talking about the end of everything scenario here…" Meta-Cell grumbled, reacting to Chayote's hesitation.
"If only this occurred years ago…" Chayote pouted, switching between decisions. "Why can't you go? You want to save space-time too, and this whole thing is partly your fault anyway!"
"I thought you'd jump at the chance to rescue Trunks," Meta-Cell replied with a blank expression, seemingly baffled by Chayote's hesitation to rush recklessly toward this opportunity. "As I've said, my Time Ring coating renders me invulnerable to temporal meddling. If space-time were to collapse, I'd survive this event and could use Instant Transmission to jump outside the confines of the physical universe, where I would be safe from this event. The collapse of space-time concerns me a lot less than you might think. You're the one with everything at stake here."
"Fuck!" Chayote cursed, grabbing her head and sifting through her loose and messy hair with her fingers. "Navy… Why do I have to keep disappointing him? Why does the universe keep separating us all the time, just when I thought we'd connected?"
"Ah, it's your son, is it?" Meta-Cell sighed in relief. "You needn't worry. If anything, you should rejoice. After you rescue Future Trunks, you may use one of the Time Rings I've retrieved from the destroyed quadrant to power the Time Machine to bring you back to this timeline. It was never a one-way trip for either of you. Your son will be able to see both his parents."
"I… I still don't understand," Chayote shook her head in befuddlement. "If you would survive the collapse of space-time, why are you so concerned by correcting the paradox?"
"Because, contrary to what you might believe, I'm no dastardly villain or a selfish prick like Frieza was. I'm looking out for my own interests first and foremost, that is true, but only because I've experienced enough life to know that unless you take care of yourself–no one else will. Just like you, I intend to become a progenitor of a new apex species of beings. To be an apex predator, me and my children need a universe to thrive in. I'm no longer satisfied with mere survival. I seek to live," Meta-Cell replied. "Now, I would like your decision. My duel with Son Goku is demanding most of my computing power, so I would rather not have my drone bodies occupied with foreign business. Do you wish to fight a meaningless battle against this body, or will you take my offer and rescue your beloved Trunks and all of space-time itself?"
"When you put it like that, I don't really have a choice, do I?" Chayote grumbled, looking away submissively.
"You lesser life forms and your restrictive moral barriers… Until you realize you have all the choice in the world, you'll never truly live a day in your life, Chayote," Meta-Cell smiled, walking up to the control panel in charge of the Time Ring time machine and inputting the necessary commands to send Chayote forward through time and into the same moment he's sent Trunks to all that time ago to start this whole mess in the first place.
Sometimes life was like poetry. In the same way, this conflict had to be solved at the same time and in the same place that it all started in.