DragonBall Turbo: Cell Games Finale Chapter 3
"The Life and Death of Android 16"


Vegeta's roar had no end. Dust flew in spiraling whirlwinds as his yellow aura grew and brightened around around him. Veins popped out on his face, which started to contort and look less human and more alien. His eyes gleamed like green lasers. His muscles bulged and hulled to boulders on his body. Trunks and Piccolo backed up as the light and sheer force became too oppressive to tolerate. Vegeta blasted like a missile at Cell, fists and feet flying out like sword slashes.

Cell wasn't impressed, he had seen this trick before. As the bullet like punches came in, Cell simply leaned left and right, dodging almost casually. He began to laugh as Vegeta tried harder to no avail. Vegeta screamed in anger and dropped back, setting both hands out together in twin claws.
"Eat my Gallic Gun!"
The sky alit with red as a wide swash of energy, like a rainbow of blood, shot at Cell. Another shockwave carroomed through the valley as the beam connected with Cell in a nova of energy. The blast compressed the air in the valley like a thunderclap and the ground beneath Cell spiderwebbed in faultline cracks.
---

Chi-Chi shook Roshi's 100 pound projection tv like it was a baby rattle, screaming for Goku. The image kept cutting from static to a shaky view of smoke then back to static, with the whiny anchorman begging for an answer from Hercule. Master Roshi closed his eyes, again searching for Goku's energy signature, still feeling nothing. He massaged his moustache, and his eyebrows shrunk under the thick lenses of his glasses.
---

Mr. Satan struggled back to his feet, this time not bothering with the dust stuck to his brown gi. His back was screaming, but still, his first thought was for the camera. He gave it a thump with his free hand and the image in the viewport stopped fizzing out and got clear again. He zoomed in on the cloud of smoke in the sky, and cleared his throat.
"I'm just fine, News Anchor Dude! It takes more than that to phase me!" The champ ignored the anchor's thanks to heaven and popped another painkiller into his mouth, chewing it so he could swallow with his mouth so dry. He kept the view focused as wind blew the smoke away, and Cell was floating there fifty feet from the ground.

"Impressive, Vegeta!" Cell's smile lit up with perfect big teeth. "Oh, Dont look so depressed!
Believe it or not, that actually hurt! But thanks to Piccolo, my regeneration abilities are without paralell." Cell snickered. "Back to normal even before the smoke clears! Ha!" Cell waved to the Namekian. "Thanks, Piccolo!" he shouted.

The Camera view swung wildly to Piccolo, who was baring his sharp teeth, and back to Cell, smiling, then back to Piccolo! "There's our proof," Mr. Satan said into his mic. The camera had picked up on Cell's shout. He crept on towards the hill.
-----

Earlier and Far away, in West City, Bulma and her father, world renowned scientist Dr. Briefs, worked busily in the Capsule Corp. lab on their project to backwards engineer the body of Android 16. This android had rejected the evil goals of 17 and 18, and even disobeyed his own programming directives, and destroyed himself. Bulma remembered the situation as Krillin, who was unconcious upstairs, had related it to her before he lapsed into a coma.

Two weeks ago, When the three androids stopped terrorizing East City and decided to finally cone after Goku, 16 had behaved very strangely. Just before 16, 17, and 18 arrived on Turtle Island, where Goku was bed-ridden and sick with the heart virus, Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillin arrived to guard Goku. Because Piccolo had absorbed Kami, his was intellect doubled. Thusly, he was able to outsmart the badly stacked odds by playing to 17 and 18's arrogance. Piccolo challenged 17 to a one on one fight and sent Gohan and Krillin to get the virus cure to Goku. 17 and 18 were content to the terms of battle. 16, however, was not posessing of a similar free will and instead acted immediately on his directive to kill Goku and followed Gohan.

Bulma was intensely curious about 16's AI. Krillin's side of the story after that didn't make much sense. As she went through the wires in 16's brain, she could tell he was actually unfinished. Many connections in the personality simulator had no crossing wires and some had no power. Krillin had said very early in the ensuing fight that 16 laid him out with one punch, and Keillin said he didn't remember much except for Gohan carrying him afterwards. Apparently, Gohan said 16 had deactivated himself rather than kill Gohan or Goku. But why?

Many parts of 16's brain was coded, there was no way to access his scouter readings, or his nerve system, or his incomplete emotional simulator. However, his memory files were, for some reason, unlocked. Bulma plugged her PDA into his brain and played the recording from the fight. She saw Gohan furiously swinging at the camera view and green armored hands rising to block. Around the screen were strange graphs and dials in coded language, all set in blue and green. Soon the graphs and dials went "up" and 16 went agressive. The hands stopped blocking and started swinging. Gohan flew away in a spray of blood. The view zoomed after Gohan and a blue foot smashed him into the sand. Gohan went limp.

Bulma flinched and covered her mouth as the view zoomed in on the door to Master Roshi's house and the door shattered. Even though she knew both her best friend and his son survived all this, she had no idea it had been that close. She heard Gohan's voice.
"Please don't hurt my dad..." Gohan said.
Bulma didn't believe what happened next. The view suddenly shifted to another memory. 17 and 18 were blowing up a gas station and laughing, but then the view cut to an image of a bunny rabbit chewing on a blade of grass, Then to a bird chirping on a tree branch. Then it cut sharply back to the doorway of Roshi's house. The graphs were all yellow now.
"I said, DONT HURT MY DAD!" Gohan's voice screamed. Suddenly the view took a gut-churning speed up through the house. the living room, kitchen, and a white wall flew by, then bright sunlight, then blue water as the view came back to focus. The view looked up into Gohan's wild face, bubbles flying from his mouth in an underwater roar, fists raining down. The graphs all spiked and the dials and meters fluctuated wildly and went red. Then, queerly, another memory cut in.

17 was holding a little baby boy, balling in his hands. The boys mother screamed and pulled at 17's hair, trying to make him put the baby down. 18 took the woman's head in her hands and gave it a sharp twist. The woman collapsed. Then 17 set the baby down, a bored look on his face. The two androids walked away while the view zoomed in on the baby pawing at his mothers face, screaming in grief.

Bulma looked away in shock. She looked across the lab table and saw her father busily pulling wires out of 16's leg. He nudged her over and started planting the wires into 16's head. Bulma looked back to her PDA and saw a turtle swimming quickly away underwater, as well as a school of frightened fish. The view panned down to a starfish wriggling away on the sand. She thought it was another bizarre memory but the view panned back up and there was Gohan again, fists flying right into the screen. Suddenly the graphs really started flipping wildly. Bulmas eyes widened as green guantlets shot up again and seized Gohan by the wrists as 16 bodily dragged Gohan, kicking and yelling back out of the water.

"You are trying to kill me," 16 said to Gohan in his queer, monotone voice.
"You're trying to kill my dad!" Gohan yelled and struggled to break 16's grip. 16, however, easily held his grip and ignored the kicks.
"Is that the only reason?" 16 asked.
"NO! You're all evil! You're trying to destroy the Earth and torture everyone to death!"
Bulma watched the graphs as they grew and shrank, strange numbers and loops fluctuating and going from red to purple to black and back to red.
"Do you..." 16 started to speak, then a list of words popped up: like, interest, enjoy, appreciate. Appreciate turned green. "Do you appreciate the Earth?"
"Yes!" Gohan scowelled at 16 and tried to wrench free of the huge hands holding him. "Its my home! Everything and everyone I love is here, and you want to kill it all just because my dad beat up some dumb old man back when he was just a kid!"

Bulma remembered Dr. Gero from her youth spent with Goku and shuddered.
"And your father," 16 looked deeper into Gohan's eyes, "does he love the Earth?"
Gohan's eyes glittered with rage and conviction.
"More than anything! he would die for the Earth. He's done it before, he would do it again, and I'll die too before I let you touch him!"
16 released Gohan.
"I know what you say is true," the android's strange voice responded. "I have come to appreciate this Earth too. I do not want to see it destroyed. If... If only Goku can stop my siblings from destroying this planet... If he truly... Loves... This planet enough to defend it with his life. Then..."
all the graphs went flatline.
"Then I choose not to kill Goku. Now I must deactivate." for a second, the image of a bunny rabbit sniffling curiously at the screen, held in two big green hands appeared. Then the screen went black.

Bulma leaned back against the steel railing guarding the lab CPU and sighed in exhaustion. Everything seemed so precarious now. The whole world was balancing on a knife tip, and she just watched it almost tip. Everything in that video posed so many questions, adding to all the questions started since Trunks first arrived from accross time. Even now, the future was far from certain.
Bulma found her own memories from last month, when she, Trunks, and Gohan had gone searching for the monster Kami claimed was a threat worse than the androids; the monster now known as Cell. Trunks told Bulma that she was his mother, and that in the future the androids had destroyed everything. But there was no Cell yet. Then Trunks related how Piccolo had told him Cell had come in a time machine. They had found that time machine in a forest. It was exactly like the time machine Trunks had come in. Then later Trunks had discovered the Cell in this world, and killed it in it's embryionic stage.

So, in short, Trunks came from the future, but Cell claimed before he came to this time, Trunks had tricked and deactivated 17 and 18, and that Cell had to kill Trunks and take his time machine to back when 17 and 18 existed, in order to consume them to realize his true form.
So far, the events unfolding in Bulma's world had nothing to do with Trunks' or Cell's future. When Trunks said 17 and 18 would arrive, he was an hour off the time, and it was android 19 and Gero's clone, android 20 who appeared, not 17 and 18. Trunks said by that time arrived, he would be 7 months old in this time. But Trunks had prophesized all these things three years ago when he killed Frieza. When Trunks came back last month, Bulma had been dating Vegeta, sure, but she'd tested herself several times. She wasn't pregnant.

"I know so many quantum theorists who'd go nuts over this. I know I'm starting to," Bulma mumbled to herself.
"Ah-Ha!" Dr. Briefs exclaimed, sticking two fingers up in a V-for-Victory. "Ive made a high functioning scouter now, made from 16's sensors that I've decoded by splicing in non coded data from his muscle functions! Now I can determine the power level of every fighter in the Cell tournament!"
"Really?" Bulma rushed over to her dad. "Tell me it's based on Vegeta's old scouter?"
"Precisely! Only it won't fry if it detects a level over 200,000!"
Dr. Briefs connected 16 to the lab CPU. "Computer, show a list of all Cell Games participant's power levels!"
The screen remained blank.
"Dammit," Briefs typed on the central keyboard, "OK, single readout then."

The computer began randomly listing sensor readings.
"Gokhan: Saiyan, brother of Vegeta. 275,000." The computer's monotone female voice droned.
"Yamcha: Human. 305,000."
"Wow..." Bulma mumbled.
"Piccolo: Fusion of the Namekians Kami, King Piccolo, and Nail. 2,800,000."
Bulma hissed in a breath. "That's huge!"
"Trunks: Half-Human, Half-Saiyan. 1,750,000."
"That's odd, you'd think Trunks would be way stronger than Piccolo," Bulma said.
"Easy to explain my dear," Dr. Briefs said, and sipped his coffee. "Trunks probably isn't a Super Saiyan right now."
"Gohan-"
Bulma sat up straight. Would this explain those readings during 16's memory recording?
"-Half-Saiyan, Half-Human, son of Goku and grandson of the Ox King. 2,600,000."
"Hmmm, I wonder..." Bulma rubbed her chin.
"Tien, human. 750,000."
"My! I wish I could be a human of such power. At least my brain power level is one million! Haha!" Briefs smiled.
"Mr. Satan, alias Hercule, current World Martial Arts Champion. 2,500."
"You're kidding, right?" Bulma rolled her eyes. "Maybe he isn't a total fraud, after all."
The computer paused for a moment. The CPU whirred noisely.
"Vegeta, Prince of Saiyans. 3,875,000."
Dr. Briefs and Bulma both swore in surprise.
"I suppose maybe Vegeta's fighting as we speak? That's such an amazing power level! I wonder what Goku's and Cell's are?" Briefs sipped his coffee again.
The computer whirred more and the voice sole again.
"Cell, Biological Android, complete form. 4,250,500."
"Oh no," Bulma whispered, unwilling to believe there could be anything that strong, "I hope Goku is out there fighting too..."
The CPU stopped whirring, the screen went blank, and a long silence ensued.

Dr. Briefs got angry and thumped 16's head. Still blank. Briefs then hit some buttons on one of the computers massive arrays of keypads.
"Computer, confirm file on Goku."
"Acknowledged. Goku: Saiyan. Trained by Roshi, King Kai, Lord Yadrat. 6'7'' 255 pounds. Age 31 years-"
"Shut up, Computer!" Briefs slammed his fist on the keyboard. "Computed, confirmpower level of Goku at, or anywhere near the Cell Games at the southern Granite Islands!"
The computed was silent for a few seconds. Dr. Briefs purple push-mop of a moustache rippled in anger.
"Goku's power level is undetectable."