Earth
Vegeta unleashed every ounce of ki he had, snapping straight into Super Saiyan (Full Power). His battle power spiked to 4 billion.
"Oh?" Cell's lips curled into a wicked smile. "Looks like this game won't be boring after all."
Back in his Perfect body, the arrogance came roaring back with it. Gohan saw it too, but he didn't warn anyone he was genuinely curious to watch.
Truth was, by now he barely counted Cell or even Majin Buu as real threats.
Cell, in a playful mood, suppressed his strength to match Vegeta's.
Still a bit short, Gohan judged, eyes narrowing on the Prince. Without brushes with death, your base doesn't leap.
The night before.
Watching Goku and Vegeta cut loose with "full power," Gohan had frowned.
One base at 70 million, the other at 50 million.
"Dad, why are your base forms this low?" he asked, baffled.
"Low?" Goku tilted his head.
Vegeta answered for both of them. "We've been tempering the body, yes but we haven't been fighting for our lives. Saiyans grow through battle. Endless grinding alone doesn't spike your base much. We've been sparring good for technique and experience, not massive power jumps."
So it's on me, Gohan realized.
In the original turn of events, once Vegeta entered the story, everything accelerated Saiyan saga, Namek crisis, Androids, Cell one wave after another. No rest. They sharpened themselves in real combat. (Not to mention Cooler in those side stories.)
But Gohan had pre-empted Cooler and Frieza. No worthy enemies had pushed them; their bases lagged behind. In the timeline Gohan remembered, by the time Goku mastered Full Power Super Saiyan, his base had likely cracked 10 billion. Here it was a mere 5.6 billion.
He started planning that very night.
Back to now.
Cell moved first low sweep at the legs.
Vegeta hopped clear, snapped a ki blast straight into Cell's face to blind him.
"Big Bang Attack!" Not thickheaded in the least, Vegeta had already felt Cell's ki was higher than his. He went right to a finisher.
Boom.
Cell went tumbling.
Vegeta pounced, both palms thrust forward
a point-blank Force Cannon slammed Cell straight into the ground.
"Ratatatatata !"
Hovering high, Vegeta unleashed his classic royal barrage: a rainstorm of ki shots pounded the crater. The half-dome of energy grew, and grew until it swelled to the size of a stadium, swallowing Cell whole.
Vegeta leveled his right hand at his chest, compressing a blue sphere so dense it looked solid.
"Photon Shredder!"
If style points mattered, the Prince would win them all. Of all the Z-Fighters, he had the largest arsenal of named beams he'd invented himself. He wound up like an ace pitcher and hurled.
Kra-THOOM!
The gold half-dome blushed red from the inside and detonated.
The island disintegrated. A yawning chasm split the sea; water roared back in; thunderheads marbled the sky.
For short, savage bursts, Vegeta was terrifying. That chain combo would flatten an opponent with double his power.
But Cell's was more than double.
"Haa !" Vegeta panted, chest heaving. The drain had been heavy.
And yet… his ki wasn't falling. It was rising. From 4 to 5 billion.
There it is, Gohan smiled to himself. Battle is the best teacher.
"Magnificent. Prince Vegeta is still as decisive as ever," Nappa breathed, eyes shining.
Creak snap.
A figure climbed out over the lip of the abyss.
Cell stepped through the steam, rolling his neck until it popped. "Not bad for a warm-up."
"Peh. You love pretending." Vegeta's lip curled.
"Come then. Warm-up's over." Cell crooked a finger.
"Who's afraid of who?" Vegeta flashed forward, high step into a brutal axe kick
Whoosh.
He hit a afterimage.
Whip-crack Cell's heel scythed through Vegeta's echo in turn.
They vanished into a blur, shock cones cracking the air in rapid-fire reports.
Bam bam bam !
Hundreds of exchanges in seconds. Vegeta's power kept climbing years of tempered foundation finally erupting.
5, 6, 7 billion…
The fiercer Vegeta fought, the more Cell answered pacing him, raising his own output.
Cell wasn't the only one who benefited. He was learning on the fly folding the Prince's rhythm and timing straight into his own style, climbing from early disadvantage to parity. Fist to fist, elbow to elbow, he matched Vegeta beat for beat.
"What a monstrous learning curve," Goku breathed.
"He's got all our cells," Gohan said. "I taunted him on purpose to needle the pride, but yeah. The brain's there too."
The two got faster and faster until the eye couldn't track them. Only their ki signatures told the story.
On the sidelines, just watching made Goku's ki rise of its own accord. Raditz and Nappa felt it too. Three years of hard training pressure finally breaking the dam.
As the first to dive in, Vegeta's gains were the biggest.
BOOM!
They slammed fists and skidded back, each to his own corner.
"Heh. Interesting too interesting exhilarating!" Cell laughed into the wind.
"What are you squealing about, mongrel?" Vegeta shot back, chin high, arms folded.
"You dare call me a mongrel?" Cell's tone went cold.
"You're a patchwork of stolen stock. What else should I call you?" Vegeta's arrogance burned white-hot.
"Heh… hah… die." Cell's smile sharpened. He crossed his forearms
and split into four identical bodies with a hollow whumm of displaced air.
"Whoa he even knows Tien's Multiform (Four Bodies Fist)!" Goku blurted.
Vegeta hadn't seen Tien's technique; to him it just looked like trickery.
"Afterimages," he scoffed. "Cheap speed."
"Heh. Try me," all four Cells said at once.
Vegeta blinked. Four voices.
Goku called out anyway: "Vegeta, it's Multiform! Three clones, each only a quarter of the original's power and it drags the main body down too!"
"Hmph. Don't need you to tell me." Vegeta wasn't taking help.
"Dad, that's kinda against the martial code," Gohan teased.
"Oops couldn't help it," Goku laughed, practically hopping in place. "Man, I want a turn. Hurry up, Vegeta!"
"Such chatter," Cell muttered, equally annoyed.
"Come on then!" Vegeta struck first
flashed beside one clone and blasted it away with a Force Cannon.
The other three piled in fists, feet, beams converging.
Unsure which to parry, Vegeta crossed his arms and tanked the lot.
Bam clang KROOOM!
He barely felt it.
"So they really are weak split off like that," he smirked.
"Arrogant!" The four Cells rushed again.
"Child's play."
Vegeta sank his stance, arms crossing tight as a sunburst of gold ripped skyward.
"Explosive Wave!"
The shock from his body detonated outward. The clones too frail to withstand the sudden surge shredded and collapsed back into Cell's main form.
"That move… is nasty," Goku whistled.
It was Vegeta's Explosive Wave a low-gear, controlled cousin of his future "Final Explosion." He condensed most of his energy and dumped it in an instant. The refined blast multiplied on the way out.
In the Tournament of Power of another timeline, Super Saiyan Blue's uplifted life-tier let Vegeta perform the true Final Explosion without killing himself; the price was an empty tank. This low-gear version still cost him heavily, but didn't wipe him out.
Against those weakened clones, it was more than enough.
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