Chapter Text
“Someone, made another Cell?”
It's straight out of Eighteen’s nightmares. If she didn’t know better, if there weren’t other details that were too wrong - Goten and Trunks, this Trunks, not the one that stares at her with hatred and mistrust, being here, for one - she would have sworn she was dreaming.
She'd heard Cell looked totally different after he. . .took her, but that was all secondhand. From the time she felt the pressure of that tail envelop her, to the moment she woke up on the Lookout, surrounded by nothing but what the computer that made up part of her mind insisted were enemies, she didn’t remember anything.
In her nightmares, Cell is as she saw him last. The green, dark-spotted carapace, tail whipping back and forth like an impatient cat. That fat-lipped, leering grin as he towers over her. In her nightmares, Cell is enormous. The spikes on his head touch the sky. She knows that’s not right. She even, in desperation, replayed her memories of those last moments after she first woke with a scream clawing the back of her throat. The computer always confirms Cell was only twice her height. It never helps, the illusion persisting in each nightmare.
Even with the computer insisting this “Cell Max” is the wrong color, has the wrong tail, and really is gigantic enough to touch the sky, all Eighteen sees is the monster that had taken her brother to become something, and was going to do the same to her. The one she couldn’t escape.
The creature roars, more in agony than anything else, but it’s no less terrifying when his power bursts like a ruptured dam. It’s all she can do to keep Krillin from being blown away.
Piccolo says something and goes on the attack. Gohan, Goten and Trunks follow. Eighteen wants to run, as far and fast as she can, but she won’t. She refuses to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, wondering if a monster’s closing in to take everything from her again. Especially not when she has so much more to lose than she did last time.
“Screw it, I’m going!”
Eighteen’s stronger now than she was years ago, but it doesn’t make a difference. Her blasts bounce off like rain against the windows of her home. One of the Gammas - the androids’ desire to protect will remind her of Sixteen later, but there’s no time now - mentions a weak spot on the head.
Piccolo can’t even dent it. Trunks and Goten flub their fusion and Eighteen could tear them apart for that. Don’t they understand how dangerous this is? What Cell could, what Cell Max could do? Still, they don’t quit, and their double-thick skull cracks that shiny black dome.
A start, but not a finish. It’s a massive target and the thing seems to operate on instinct; no clever plans like moving underground or Solar Flares. No gloating or taunting or using Seventeen's voice. She's not sure this thing can even speak beyond bestial roars.
She still can’t get a bead on it. It’s fast, or maybe she’s slow. Her targeting isn’t reacting like it should, the combat protocols Gero built into her, the training she’s done with Krillin to keep a clear mind, all falling apart. She keeps expecting it to focus on her and she needs to be ready to run -
And it does turn her way, a hand that blots out the whole world reaches for her, promising to take everything from her again and she can’t move can’t react -
“Destructo Disc!”
The words, and the familiar high-pitched whirring, cut through the static in her head. She watches razor-thin ki dig into the monster’s brow and knock it back. The hand falls short of her as Krillin comes to a stop at her side.
“You OK, Eighteen?”
She nods, barely able to do more before the clouds burst to reveal a sky turned an unnatural blue. Gamma 2’s all-out charge.
“Eyes shut, you guys! Solar Flare!”
She does, enjoying the thought of Cell being on the receiving end of that technique.
‘It’s going to be different this time.’