Super Dragon Ball: Paradise Hysteria

Terms of Engagement

Cell's squeaky steps closed in on Vegeta as the shaken Saiyan seethed at his defeat. From the looks of it, even if Meta-Cell were to step on Vegeta's head and obliterate the Saiyan while crushing him into the dirt, Vegeta would hardly mind, since his mind was already elsewhere. However, instead of finishing Vegeta off, the metallic transcendental being wrapped its tail around Vegeta's throat and lifted him up.

The pain and the alert to being strangled brought Vegeta back to reality. The Saiyan began to kick and grunt in pain, beaming mean stares at Cell as if he could defeat the newly ascended apex predator by merely staring him to death. In response, Cell smiled and moved his hand up. Vegeta's stare blanked out, and he gasped, fully resigning himself to his fate. However, neither the pain of being disposed of nor the liberty of his killer met Vegeta in the next blink of his awareness.

Instead, it was a bright flux of cerulean energy cubes washing over him and swallowing Meta-Cell and Vegeta. Before he even realized that this peculiar phenomenon wasn't hurting him, Vegeta thrashed around, as if trying to put a block up that would protect him against this energy rift. Before he knew it, Vegeta felt the fresh whiff of Earth's air and saw Meta-Cell standing on emerald grass fields with majestic snowy mountains looming on the horizon.

"E-Earth...!?" Vegeta gasped before Meta-Cell's tail slipped off his throat and released the King of Saiyans to slump down on the ground, coughing for air on his knees.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Vegeta, did you expect me to kill you?" Meta-Cell mocked his kneeling and wheezing opponent with a joking remark before laughing up to itself. "No. That was the old, cowardly Cell. The Cell who was prey, hiding and sneaking around, only hunting that which it dared to strike at and always looking behind its back, always scheming. That miserable slime was a weakling vulture, I, on the other hand, am the apex predator. I needn't fear anyone."

"You dumbass!" Vegeta scoffed, wiping the traces of blood off his lip while giving Cell a defiant sneer. "With you coming down to Earth, everyone can sense your energy and it'll take no time before..."

A snap interrupted Vegeta's warning. Son Goku, surrounded by the entirety of the surviving Dragon Team, now stood around Vegeta like a wall, staring at Meta-Cell as the transcendental predator stared back at its playthings.

"What is this...?" Ultimate No. 16 asked, looking baffled by the readings that his system was reporting. "You should be Cell, but... My self-defense system, which was programmed to forsake all other functions for the sake of reducing you to ash isn't triggering."

"Oh, Big Brother, look at you..." Meta-Cell cracked a light cackle while covering its sneering mouth with its index finger. "Gobbled up Artificial Human No. 8 to become an Ultimate Class Artificial Human. Isn't that just the cutest thing?"

"So, you're Cell?" Goku asked after giving Vegeta a reassuring glare and a thumb up, to which Vegeta only sneered and turned away in disgust. "You look nothing like your kids from back when."

"Their genetics are as inferior compared to mine as a handful of sand is compared to yours," Meta-Cell scoffed, crossing its arms. "I am pleased to finally meet you eye-to-eye though, Son Goku..."

A rumbling roar made Cell's eyes widen. Before a hysterical Saiyan could drive a flying haymaker into the jaw of the universe's most perfectly ultimate creature, Meta-Cell became intangible, causing Chayote in her Wrathful State to phase clean through the creature and skid on the other side while snarling at Cell.

"Hmph..." Meta-Cell scoffed at the pitiful level of challenge. The rest of the Dragon Team looked aghast that Chayote would attack the creature so openly and bring war to Earth, while it may have been entirely avoidable. "I thought perhaps we could talk a little, though it might be troublesome with this one rampaging around..."