DRAGONBALL TURBO: Cell Games Finale Chapter Six:
"Four Cells, Five More Unconfirmed Defeats!"


Bulma and her father kept eyes glued to the readout screen, both nervously twitching. Their eyeballs stayed open wide as saucers, following the blocky green letters jot out across the black screen. The computer's voice droned on, every few seconds stating that Cell's power level had dropped again, and again. The master console kept up an entrancing wide noise, whirring like a big car engine then thrumming like an industrial metal press. The electronics ran so hard the entire room grew swelteringly hot. Both scientists sweat bullets, but kept their attention fixed.

"Assessing combat power levels...
Trunks: 4,000,000
Piccolo: 2,500,000
Cell... ... ...Undetectable."
Bulma screamed.
"It's over! It's over! Our boy got the bastard!" Bulma leapt up and down and threw the tv remote she had been clenching down on the ground like a touchdown spike. "I can't believe it! It's-"
"You shouldn't believe it." Dr. Briefs said quietly. He looked at his daughter, a solemn, serious cast to his face. "Do you truly believe Goku and Vegeta are dead?"
"Hell no! I-" but then she trailed off, disappointed realization dawning on her face.
Her father nodded. "Yes my dear, keep watching. I'm going to go get coffee from the kitchen. I'll be right back." the doctor shuffled with his short, old legs up the glossy steel step out of the laboratory.
Bulma watched the sensor reading. It sputtered back into a relatively gentle whir and declared combat over. The standby readouts spouted off that Gokhan, Tien, Yamcha, and Gohan were all alive and not fighting. Mercifully, the computer was able to slow it's processing for two minutes, and the room cooled some. Bulma could barely stand the tension, but the computer continued to remain silent, "Standby..." sitting still on the screen.

But then her adrenaline spiked, and her heart nearly stopped dead in her chest. The computer thumped unexpectedly and started thrumming as hard as ever.
"Combat detected. Assessing..." Almost immediately the heat in the room increased. Bulma's whole body contracted in anticipation.
"Possible sensor error detected. Proceed with readout?"
Bulma held her breath. "Yes, proceed." she whispered hoarsely.
"Power level readings:
Trunks: 4,100,000
Cell: 4,000,000
Cell: 4,000,000
Cell: 4,000,000
Cell: 4,000,000
Piccolo: 2,800,000"
"No," Bulma whispered, her voice barely audible. "No, no, no... Dad! DAD!!!"
----

"Dad?"
Gohan stepped softly into the crevice, peering down through the steamy darkness. He couldn't sense his father at all. The crevice wasn't truly a crater, but a trident of ultra-deep cracks surrounded by piles of dust and debris that was once a great hill. Heat from beneath the island leaked up in a smothering, humid, sulfur smelling haze.
"Dad!"
No answer. Gohan looked further down. As the crack slanted westward, no sunlight penetrated. It was pitch black, the only light emanating from Gohan himself. The boy steeled himself with a deep breath and dropped into the depths.
----

A gust of wind blew across the valley floor, and the carapace of blackened organic armor crumbled into dust.
Trunks gasped.
"It's hollow!"
"Indeed, Trunks." Cell called out, standing on the precipice of the west side of the arena floor crater.
"You were right, Piccolo," another Cell called out from the crumbled remains of the eastern plateau.
"It was a trap," a third Cell said from behind them, standing on the far north side of the valley.
"Yet it doesn't matter that you didn't fall for it!" a fourth Cell announced from high above them, a dot in the bright blue sky.
Trunks whipped his body around, facing one Cell and then the next, his inhuman eyes showing quite human signs of surprise, and worse, fear.
"How-but... How?" The Ascended Saiyan clenched his fists , unsure of which direction to back up to.
"He's using Multi-Form," Piccolo grunted, but a sly grin raised on his face. "It's a desperate tactic. Cell has divided his strength into fourths. If we concentrate, we can easily end this here."
The Cell that was above them suddenly flashed immediately between Cell and Trunks. The next instant, the other three Cells surrounded Trunks.
"You had better be sure," The Android's shouted in gleeful unison.

Tien barked in rage.
"That's Master Shen's technique! How...? That bastard!" Tien's body contorted in indignant anger and frustration. "Gohan was right! We have to do something!"
"But what can we do?" Yamcha shook his head, arms slack at his sides. "We're in way over our heads here."
"I have an idea." Gokhan's voice was quiet, uncharacteristic of his massive, muscular form.
"We have to get my brother back into this fight. He's not dead. Yajirobe said there is two senzu beans left, right?"
Tien considered it for a moment. Senzu beans took almost a decade to grow, and were a miracle food that could not only heal a fighter's most grievous wounds, but restore his ki energy fully, all instantaneously. For decades, Z-fighters turned the course of fights with even one of them. Yajirobe had prepared seven beans before the androids came. Since then, Trunks used one after fighting Perfect Cell the first time, Vegeta used one after his defeat at the hands of Android 18, Piccolo used one after fighting Cell in the monsters original form, Gohan used one to heal Krillin, who was near death after fighting Android 16, and Goku used one to fully recover after he was given the heart virus antidote, so he could immediately train in the time chamber. That did leave two. Tien nodded in agreement.
"Right."
"Where are the beans now?" Gokhan asked.
"Chi-Chi has them," Yamcha said. "She's watching the tournament from the Kame House."
"That's close by!" Tien clapped his hands in excitement.
Gokhan only frowned.
"That's barely one-hundred miles from here. At this level of fighting, a careless attack could easily vaporize the entire southern sea. Why should Goku's wife be anywhere near here?"
"You could never take good news for what it is, Gokhan." Yamcha clapped the Saiyan brute on the back. "I'll go get the senzu beans. That's as useful as I can get! Be right back!" Yamcha powered up, a white aura surrounding him, and he rocketed off north.
----

Oolong the pig rubbed his bruised face, worrying over the splintered remains of Roshi's flatscreen TV.
"Great, now how will we know what's going on down there?"
The television was in a billion tiny pieces, some splintered into the living room wall, many more sprayed like drops of water across the carpet. Oolong looked up the staircase to the second floor. Krillin hadn't uttered a peep since he slunk up there. The short, bald fighter seemed truly ashamed of his failure to win against 16, taking it as a failure even though both Goku and Gohan survived. Then the small pig looked back to the debris and kicked a twisted hunk of antennae.
"Guess all we can do now is wait."
"I fear, Oolong, that we won't be waiting long." Master Roshi said softly.
"For what?" Oolong didn't like the old codger's tone.
Master Roshi didn't answer.

Behind them, nestled in a crease between cushions in the living room sofa, was a small, brown leather sack. Inside were two senzu beans.
----

Taking the advantage of surprise, Cell slammed a huge fist up into Piccolo's stomach, shooting the Namekian up in the air like a firework. As the wounded Z-Fighter sailed upwards, Cell put his hands together at his side.
"Kame,"
"NO!" Trunks darted for that particular Cell, but the other three swarmed him. Two restrained his arms, the third got between the Ascended Saiyan and the first Cell.
"Not so fun getting ganged up on, is it, Trunks?" The Cell in front of him quipped, and started jackhammering him in the chest with speedy punches. The other two held Trunks' biceps tight, snickering.
"Hame," The first Cell continued, and a loud, warbling sound intensified as blue light gleamed between his palms.
Trunks screamed in exertion and whipped his legs up, seizing the fourth Cell's head between his tree-trunk thighs. Then he flexed his arms, using the other Cells as leverage, and hurled that Cell away. WIth his body parallel to the ground, Trunks got both his palms facing the Cells that restrained him, and released beams of energy from his hands to blast them off of him.
"HA!!!" The first Cell fired the Kamehameha wave at Piccolo. The beam was wider, brighter, and more terrifying even than Goku's. Within seconds, Piccolo would surely be vaporized.
Trunks rocketed after Piccolo, his body causing a small sonic boom. As a golden streak in the sky, he chased the great rounded head of the Kamehameha, which was as bright as a second sun.

Piccolo tried to recover himself, but found that he could not. His torso was crushed, nothing but a mass of pain between his neck and legs. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move. Still, with his last vestige of conscious thought, he willed his own body higher, away from the beam. He silently willed Trunks on too. The world now depended on Piccolo's survival.
The first Cell barked in indignant anger as Trunks overtook the wave and continued towards Piccolo. The Android turned his head to his other three counterparts. The other Cells nodded and collapsed back into the first Cell. The blue energy searing from Cell's palms flashed brilliantly with a shriek of sound. The kamehameha's head bursted forward ahead of Trunks.

"PICCOLO!" Trunks screamed, struggling to get to the beam's head.
Piccolo's eyes fluttered back open, but he couldn't even will his head to turn around and look back.
"Wish me back if you live!"
The Namekian's eyes fully opened. "No!TRUNKS!!!" Somehow, he found the strength to roll to face the Earth, seeing droplets of his own purple blood float away from his mouth in slow-motion.
The head of the Kamehameha was all he could see, like a great, city-sized wall of death creeping towards him. He sensed more than saw Trunks' golden aura streak into the great blue-silver ball. The whole world around Piccolo detonated, and he knew no more.
----

Gohan floated further and further into the dark, silent crevasse . The only light down in the stone was the white glow from his own hair. Five endless minutes passed. Still, he continued deeper.
This far down, the heat was brutal. A couple minutes later, Gohan discarded Piccolo's armor mantle-and-cloak, and seconds later, Vegeta's armor breastplate as well. Fear gripped him as closely as the humid heat, but, soon after that, he felt numb, the shock of everything gripping even tighter than that. The world would end without his father there to stand against Cell. It was all over any way it went from here. His only thought was to find his father, dead or alive, then stay with him until the end.
When Gohan found the faintest hint of orange and blue amongst the constant brown, he didn't believe his eyes. A few seconds he stared, but the colors didn't move, didn't fade.
"Daddy?" he whispered.
Even miles overhead, the power of the fighters above sent a tense shudder through the subterranean depths. The shape moved.
"Go...Gohan...?"
The Super Saiyan boy sobbed and collapsed on Goku. He gathered his broken father up into his arms with rivers of tears flooding his cheeks. This close, he could see the damage. Gohan knew the Earth's greatest champion was inches from death.
"Daddy! Daddy, I love you! Listen, I'm going to get you out of-"
"NO!" Goku shouted. "You listen Gohan."
His father's angry voice frightened Gohan. The boy recoiled. Goku couldn't see anymore, couldn't move another modicum of an inch, could barely breath, but he refused to die until his son was set straight.

"This is what I brought on myself with my choices, son." Goku said, with all the dire sternness he could stress every word with. The effort made his lungs seize and he coughed violently. Gohan gasped and bit his lip to keep from crying out when he saw blood spritz from his father's mouth to stain his arm.
"Dad-"
"You still have a choice, Gohan." Goku struggled in another breath, "You've saved my life so many times, saved the whole world, saved so many millions of lives...."
"No Dad, I-"
"Be QUIET, Gohan!" Goku coughed again. Gohan felt more warm blood on his wrist and he whimpered.
"There's...There's not much time.
I know you have the power to defeat Cell. All along...All along, you were...You were the only one who could. The whole world is..." Goku shook as he forced another breath in. "I. I am counting on you, son."
Gohan closed his bloodshot green eyes. "How can you say that? I'm nowhere near as strong as you, or Vegeta, or Trunks, or even Master Piccolo! How could I stop Cell?"
Gohan hugged his father closer. In the dim white glow of his hair, Goku's face was a mask of blood. With his wristband, he gently cleaned blood from his father's face. Goku's chest shuddered with a deep breath, then fell. Then Goku was silent.
"No! No!!! No daddy, don't you die on us!" Gohan shook him.
"Rrrr..." Goku's eyes flickered open, but then focused and pierced Gohan with a fearsome stare.
"Why are you still here? I didn't raise you to damn the world for my sake!"
Gohan recoiled as if slapped.
"Look inside...inside yourself, Gohan. You are...Are my son." Goku drew another breath, his body contorting with the effort. His eyes closed and then opened, a vital, deadly-serious gleam in them as they locked onto Gohan's. "You have the will to defeat Cell. That's all you need. You already have the strength. You always have." Goku breathed hard again, a wheeze screeching through his lungs as he drew the strength for two more words.
"Now GO."

Then the cavernous crater quaked hard enough to rattle Gohan's teeth. Some sort of massive explosion happened above ground. Rocks rained down as the tunnel started to collapse in on itself. Gohan shielded his father with his own body and extended his aura in a dome to keep the granite ceiling at bay. Like a freight train, the ground rumbled and closed in on the father and son.
----

Dr. Briefs was very lucky to be on the right side of the master console when it happened. He was putting in exhaust port fans, coolant injectors, and power surge protectors.
"My dear, I'm sure the readout error was just a result of a malfunction from a power surge. This ought to-"
The left side of the console spouted jets of acrid black smoke and a shower of white sparks.
"Shoot!" Bulma spat out the last of the fingernails she had been chewing and rushed to a drawer beneath the table 16 lay on. Now geared with thick rubber gloves and black-lensed goggles, she sprinted to the console and started yanking out circuit boards before they got fried.
After a frantic ten minutes spent repairing the damage, Bulma rebooted the computer. Before the system could finish announcing it was online, Bulma demanded to know what happened.
"The sensor assessment array was overloaded." the feminine voice droned in polite answer. "The cause was determined to be a massive explosion on Island 22 of the southern granite islands. The epicenter was located in the center of the Cell Games Arena."
"Computer! Give me a full readout list of all fighters present NOW!"
The computer thrummed for a few seconds, though not quite as loudly as before.
"Assessment complete. Combat not detected. Power levels present are as listed:
Gokhan: 275,000
Tien: 775,000
Cell: 4,000,000"
Bulma violently shook her head, unbelieving.
"No, no, NO! Computer, confirm readouts for Trunks, Gohan, Piccolo, and Yamcha!" she was screaming hysterically now. "Confirm Goku! Confirm Vegeta, CONFIRM, damn you!!!
"I'm sorry," the computer responded, unperturbed, "All requested level readings remain undetectable."
Dr. Briefs hung his head sorrowfully. Even he started to tear up now. When he reached out to touch his daughter's shoulder and felt nothing, he turned to find Bulma collapsed, unconscious, on the floor.