[Bounty] Reborn Under A Bad Sign (Cell vs Yukiko)

Cell had been traveling the cosmos for decades. In that time, He had taken the souls of a number of lives that He could no longer count. But that didn’t mean that they were uncountable. With greater lives and smaller ones, there were more than nine hundred billion souls within Him. As He moved back into a fighting position, His body stopped. His body seized and began shaking. His eyes unfocused, staring approximately at where her feet would have been.

This wasn’t an attack. This couldn’t have been. They were speaking. All of them. They were awake and they were telling him their stories. They each held memories and feelings, they all had a history that stopped at the same point. With Him. The Cell was a creature that had learned to cope with its captives, learned to work with them. He, however, subjugated all of them, kept them under heel and used their power as He wished. That was His method of fighting. He fought alone and used their skillset as needed, in order to accomplish His goals.

But that was not how The Cell had functioned. And now it was how Cell was being forced to function. Now, a mind designed to rule had been forced to hold court. To listen to its subjugates and acknowledge all of them. As they told their stories, they left. They left him all alone. Each mind clearing out, seemingly disappearing. His power dropped with each and every departure. He looked down at his hands. He was reverting. Back to the It. Back to The Cell. Proud, strong hands became green, insectoid claws. A de-evolution of insulting proportions.

But it went further. The Cell continued to revert. These insectoid hands grew thicker and the arms grew shorter. It felt its mind regressing. Back… to the first one. A bulbous body, long and huge like the most disgusting of bugs. Horns returned and it fell back onto all fours, unable to remain bipedal. Looking around, its surroundings changed as well. Through space and time it was traveling back to that laboratory, where it had been created. First, as a failed experiment to cure disease, then as a failed experiment in general. Felt more predatory and less intelligent. No longer thinking good. Now all instinct. No more self. Only hungry.

Big green water room. Home? Things swirled and changed as it was jutted forward or backward in time, the testing processes altering and changing its perspective. Green. Green? People around. White coats. Several people stared up at it with mute expressions, writing on clipboards and staring with curious eyes. There was disgust in their voices.
Finally, the latches unlocked from above and a claw-like machine grabbed at the creature even as it squirmed and hissed. It was carried into another room, never touched by human hands, and subjected to tests of indescribable pain. Poking, prodding, burning, shooting, stabbing, mutilation, electrocution, nothing seemed too far. Thunk thunk thunk. Tests. Burning. Finally, it was returned to the tube and its wounds healed. It had only one word for pain, and it couldn't help but use it.
Days, weeks, months later, the process was repeated. This time, it was pushed to its limit, and actually lost its life. Submerging it in liquid magma as it squirmed, cried and clawed against the walls, the scientists scribbled on their clipboards and watched with mute expressions. There was disgust in their voices. Thunk thunk thunk. Dead. Alive again. A corpse of a thing was returned to the tube and, within a month, returned back to the world of the living. The scientists wrote on their clipboards.
Within another time frame, one of the scientists began to sneak in and speak to the being. Every night she would sit with it, and talk. Like talking to a plant, a reassuring and calming voice, promising things like freedom and pride. Then, one day, she came in and opened the tube, pulling the creature out. Thunk thunk thunk. Talking. Kindness? Tricks. Burning. It was returned to the testing chamber. She was at the helm of the tests this time. It didn't squirm throughout the tests the tests. While other scientists watched, she wrote in her clipboard. There was disgust in her voice also.
Time and space fell apart with the repetitions of these horrifying events, of different scenarios and attempts to learn about it popping up in its minds eye like bubbles of a drown victim. Thunk thunk thunk. Tests. Burning. Burning. All around burning.
Life is burning?

Life is forever this? Even the bubbles faded away into nothing.

No. A voice said from deep within. This wasn’t a captured soul. Perhaps the only soul that it had never forcibly stolen. The only one that had been given. We travelled together remember? You’re bigger than this, Cell. You got bigger, I took care of you. You took care of me. Get up. We’re not done traveling together yet. It’s not real, you know. You’re better than this. You broke free, you killed them all, and then we ran together.
The voice beckoned him from elsewhere. Come back to where we are now. Come back to me and let's continue traveling together.

“Ship Friend,” Like a snap, the Being's eyes opened. Submerged in a green viscous fluid, it hung like the abject horror that it was. It squirmed and thrashed in what appeared to be a non-Newtonian liquid, for it fought harder the harder the creature fought. It took a calm movement to the glass to finally drag a single claw down through the exterior. One time didn't do it. Ten times didn't do it. But it happened. The glass cracked and broke, sending the Being sliding down to the ground on the worlds slowest slip'n slide.

It remembered this room well, the surroundings flooded back into it, with all the sounds, smells and tastes surrounding it. As it began to move, the scientists flooded the room. Their clipboards were in their hands. The being pounced. Claws slashed and ran through the scientists. The looks of disgust on their faces were replaced with permanent fear. The being began to move through the laboratory, bits and pieces of its shell breaking off and allowing it to stand up completely, once again as the Creature that had travelled the stars for so long.

It walked with determination to the entrance of the Laboratory. Originally, it had crawled through vents and snuck its way through the building, in fear and a self-doubting determination to make it through the facility to freedom. But now, it walked through the building with pride and certainty, straight to the exit. As it did, the souls that had abandoned it rejoined by the droves, a flood of energy following behind it, empowering it to destroy the building around it. This memory was just that. This feeling of the past would haunt it forever, perhaps, but like the shadow of far-off trees, it posed danger equivalent only to the amount of attention that was given to it.

It flung the doors open. And there it felt her. She whom it had absorbed in order to reach this newest form. This form purely for overwhelming power. That it feared, but that could get the job done. It represented not only the Cell itself. But their time together. It was the escape from this memory. The way out of this nightmare.

His eyes snapped into focus and looked straight at her.

There was an exhale from his nostrils, hot enough to cause steam to burst forth. The electric energy started to jump and dance around him, the heat evaporating the sweat that drenched his body as the changes that had been forced upon him were reverting. The organs that had been misplaced were readjusting, the minds that had temporarily departed were awakening once more, their eternal rest once again taken from them. But this awakening was unanimous. The minds gathered as one and they seemed to share the same absolute wrath that seethed from Him. He and The Cell were of one mind on this. Kill her.

His hand lifting was the preparation He gave, his energy bursting from his body and solidifying into a saucer shaped disc, glowing with the same purplish energy that covered him, as though He had put actual souls into the attack. He burst with speed through the space between them, flinging the whizzing ki at her, at such close range that it may as well have been a melee strike. From his other hand came another one, moving upwards like an uppercut, with the goal of spinning vertically along her body and continue slicing into her.

He used the momentum from the attack to rise into the air, right hand jutting out at her with His left hand bracing it for support. With a thunderous war cry, the electricity that had been running along His body transferred to a burst of royal purple energy that crashed down on her last known location, causing the ground to crackle and spark with resonant energy.

Without letting her relax, that same hand curled into a fist, His body surging with energy as He followed that blast straight at her, attempting to almost burst through it and pierce her straight through. But she had proven resilient. And He had learned that she had something severely wrong with her mind. Something that needed to be punished out of her.

So rather than stop there, He turned around in mid air, copies of himself multiplying into the same shadow-like beings that had appeared before, exponentially. Each one of them gathered energy into a discus shape, much like the other. With any luck, He had deceived her into thinking that this one carried the same power as those. However, a serrated edge and massively higher concentration of ki revealed, ideally at the last second, that this one was capable of much, much greater and more terrible things. Hopefully more than she could handle.

As though it was her birthday, and the best present had been saved for last, one of the shadow copies seemingly switched with the real Cell, reappearing above the battlefield as a whole, "Just die already," There was disgust in his voice also. With a wide, sweeping gesture, unleashed a battlefield destroying blast of outrageous energy. This poor forest had suffered trees being destroyed, entire eruptions of energy and electricity. There were even a few unexpected magma eruptions.

However, this technique seemed to be much, much worse, lighting the landscape ablaze like an irresponsible deforester, and causing a crater to boot, that would leave a permanent mark on this continent's peaceful landscape.

The mind could do so much. But a wrathful soul could dole out so, so much more.

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[Base PL: 898,620, C-Rune, Champ II+20%]