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Currently on chapter 30.
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Cell, who barely a second ago had proclaimed himself as absolute perfection, went completely stiff.
His eyes, fixed on Zaiko's figure, trembled imperceptibly, and a drop of cold sweat slowly slid down his face.
Ignoring Cell's panic, Zaiko closely observed the reactions of the others upon feeling the overwhelming pressure exerted by his Divine Ki for the first time.
Satisfied with the surprise plastered on their faces, he smiled and returned his gaze to Cell, although his mind began to wander to other matters.
Thinking about it... in the original story, Gohan would face Cell at this very moment under Goku's insistence, receiving a brutal beating.
And it wouldn't be until Cell was torturing the Z Fighters with his clones and mercilessly crushed Android 16's head before his eyes, that the trauma of his loss would unleash all his hidden power.
Gohan would only heed the last words of his friend—who would ask him to let out his anger to protect nature and the living beings he loved so much—to finally manage to transform into a Super Saiyan 2.
Now, with his sudden intervention in the tournament, none of this would ever happen.
Maybe Gohan would never reach the Super Saiyan 2 level in this timeline.
Perhaps, with him protecting the Earth and eliminating threats before they escalated, the boy wouldn't even need to train again in his entire life.
He might not even ever decide to become his embarrassing superheroic alter ego, known as the "Great Saiyaman", to fight crime in Satan City without drawing the attention of his classmates at Orange Star High School.
And, if Gohan didn't become the Great Saiyaman, it was highly likely that he would never catch the attention of the stubborn Videl.
Because of him, it was very likely that even little Pan would never be born...
After processing this entire chain of catastrophic consequences, Zaiko closed his eyes and let out a sigh, before snapping them open a few seconds later.
It wasn't his problem.
That was his conclusion.
The future was destined to change drastically from the exact moment he was sent to this world.
Until now, although he hadn't tried at all to make his actions go unnoticed, he didn't think they could alter the future he knew to such a magnitude.
But, from the moment he decided to step into the arena and actively participate in the Cell Games, he had mentally prepared himself for everything to be different.
For some strange reason, just thinking about it, a big and genuine smile formed on his face.
What was fun about knowing exactly everything that was going to happen in the future?
Breaking the canon and seeing how the world adapted to his presence was, probably, the best thing about his new life.
Besides... if in a few years he saw that Gohan hadn't managed to hook up with Videl on his own merits, maybe he would approach him to give him some advice.
After all, whether they liked it or not, he was now his older brother.
And a good older brother should always help his little brother.
While observing Gohan in the distance, a fleeting thought crossed Zaiko's mind.
«Broly will love knowing that I have a little brother now... knowing her, she'll surely start treating and spoiling him as if he were hers too», he thought to himself.
Imagining Broly interacting sweetly with Gohan, a genuine and exceptionally warm smile appeared on Zaiko's face, dispelling his intimidating aura for a second.
However, his pleasant thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the unmistakable voice of his supposed father.
"That is absolutely impressive!" Goku exclaimed from afar, his eyes shining with pure excitement. "Is that the next step of the ordinary Super Saiyan?!"
Beside him, Vegeta stood with his arms rigidly crossed over his chest.
Although he tried to hide it beneath his furrowed brow, his gaze was fixed on Zaiko, awaiting the answer with the same or even greater impatience than his rival.
Perhaps, deep down, they both already knew the answer, which simply made them feel more excited and impatient.
Zaiko didn't even bother to turn his head to look at them while he answered.
"I call this transformation Super Saiyan Rosé," he explained in a calm voice, without taking his eyes off Cell. "It is the result of the fusion between the ordinary Super Saiyan and Divine Ki."
Vegeta nodded slightly to himself, the gears in his mind working at top speed.
«So it's that simple... I just have to find a way to obtain that Divine Ki before Kakarot does», he thought with a small, crooked smile.
But Zaiko destroyed his idea immediately.
"Don't get your hopes up. Super Saiyan Rosé can only be achieved by a true god by birth. You, simple mortals, will never be able to reach it, Zehahaha," Zaiko declared, laughing wickedly, feeling Vegeta's pride suffer, before adding, "Although it's possible that in the future you might achieve a similar transformation, which wouldn't necessarily be weaker than mine. You are also very far from managing to obtain Divine Ki."
Vegeta grunted with evident annoyance, while Goku simply scratched the back of his neck and laughed nervously, remembering that Zaiko was a god thanks to his mysterious mother, about whom they knew nothing.
If Chi-Chi discovers this whole mess he will be in serious trouble...
Driven by curiosity, Goku pressed both hands together in front of his face in a pleading gesture and bowed slightly.
Only with Zaiko's help will he be able to prevent Chi-Chi from sending him back to the Other World!
"Hey, please! Tell me about your mother as soon as we're done here!" Goku begged him. "I'm extremely curious!"
Vegeta, beside him, raised an eyebrow, looking at him as if he had grown a second head.
«Is the idiot Kakarot looking for a second wife?», he thought, genuinely bewildered.
He would never dare to try it... Bulma was scary when she got angry.
Zaiko simply nodded with a movement of his head, ignoring their antics completely, and focused all his attention back on the opponent in front of him.
"Let's have some fun for a while," Zaiko told Cell, widening his smile defiantly.
Without warning, Zaiko lunged forward.
Cell responded in the same way, though his mind screamed that he was at a disadvantage; the mere idea of fleeing or cowering simply didn't fit in his nature.
Both warriors clashed in the exact center of the arena.
The violent clash of their forearms created a shockwave so brutal that it immediately cracked all the tiles around them, kicking up a curtain of dust.
Cell grunted from the effort as he felt himself being hopelessly pushed backward by Zaiko.
Zaiko, without the slightest sign of effort, simply looked at him face to face.
With a small smile on his face, he winked at him in a blatant mockery.
Finally, the force was too much, and Cell was pushed backward mercilessly, forced to dig his feet into the ground and create a deep trench in the dirt as he was dragged several meters.
And yet... somehow, this made Cell—who had been terrified just a few minutes ago—feel strangely excited.
He didn't know exactly why; maybe it was the Saiyan cells coursing through his veins, but he felt his blood burning.
The primal desire to face an infinitely formidable warrior in front of him clouded his mind, and any trace of his previous reluctance or fear completely disappeared.
Now, both of them were smiling.
Their smiles grew even wider and more feral as they stared intensely at each other during that brief stalemate.
And then...
Boom!
Cell disappeared and reappeared right in front of Zaiko, trying to crush him with a fierce double blow from both arms.
Unfazed, Zaiko blocked it without the slightest problem, keeping one hand behind his back and using only a single finger to stop Cell's attack.
As he already knew, he didn't really need to transform at all to defeat Cell.
In fact, he could turn him to dust using barely 1% of his power in his base state.
But... HE LOVED SHOWING OFF WHEN HE HAD THE CHANCE!
He would never try to brag or lower his guard if he faced an opponent who was truly on his level... he wasn't a fool.
But with such an absurdly abysmal power difference between the two... it was the equivalent of seeing a weak Saibaman trying to defeat Zeno-Sama himself.
Cell simply wouldn't have a single chance to win even if Zaiko closed his eyes, tied his own hands and feet, and turned his back on him.
During the course of their combat, if it could even be called that, Zaiko frequently struck exaggerated poses, threw mocking winks, and made gestures of insufferable smugness, treating the entire fight as if it were a simple child's play.
He dodged Cell's swift attacks by mere millimeters, giving the bio-android the false hope of being about to hit him every time, only to respond with absurdly relaxed but considerably powerful counterattacks.
He fought with such laziness that, at some point, an amusing memory assaulted his mind.
In his past life, Zaiko had excessively consumed hundreds of Mangas, Manhwas, and Manhuas.
He still vividly remembered that in Chinese martial arts novels, a combat style known as Drunken Fist or Drunken Boxing very often appeared, a set of traditional movements that imitated the erratic and unbalanced walk of an intoxicated person.
Did he have the necessary confidence to try and perfectly copy complex movements that he had only seen illustrated in a Manhua?
Heh, absolutely not.
But trying to imitate it clumsily made it even more fun and doubly humiliating for Cell!
From what he could remember, the style was characterized by deceiving and confusing the opponent, making them believe the fighter was defenseless, stumbling, or about to fall, to then counterattack from impossible angles.
Zaiko only successfully managed to copy the part about appearing unstable and about to fall, staggering around like an idiot.
But, even so, the tactic worked perfectly, as it managed to make Cell feel insulted and get increasingly angry at not being able to land a single blow on a guy who looked like he was drunkenly falling over.
At some point in his frustration, Cell realized that he would never manage to hit him in direct combat.
So, pushed to the limit, he made a move that Zaiko did not expect.
Cell decided to create the Cell Jrs.!
Zaiko stopped dead in his tracks and let out a pronounced grimace of disgust upon seeing Cell begin to expel three small blue clones straight from his tail.
He was spawning offspring right before his eyes, an ability inherited from Piccolo's cells.
"That is genuinely disgusting..." Zaiko told him, wrinkling his nose. "I would have never guessed you were actually a female with that deep voice of yours."
Cell froze, staring at Zaiko in complete silence for a few moments, totally astonished and offended by his words.
He had created the Cell Jrs. specifically to attack Zaiko from all possible blind spots.
Unlike in the original story, Cell didn't create seven of them to torture the Z Fighters and force Gohan to unleash all his hidden power; instead, he created only three, considering his own power combined with those little demons' would be more than enough.
Ignoring the comment questioning his gender, Cell decided to lunge forward once more.
This time, he was closely followed by the three Cell Jrs., who let out high-pitched, malicious giggles under their breath as they scattered and ran around him, preparing a coordinated assault.
Upon hearing the brats' annoying giggles, Zaiko shook his head, dodging Cell's fist by moving his neck barely a few centimeters to the side, without even deigning to look at him.
While dodging, Zaiko was thinking very carefully...
«Is it morally okay to kick these brats?»
«Can I kick them?»
«Actually... I really want to kick them.»
«I could finally cross off 'kicking an annoying kid' from my bucket list without feeling guilty.»
«Yeah... I'm going to kick them.»
Right when Cell's fist was finally about to connect for the first time—and Cell truly felt it, forming a huge, triumphant smile on his face—... Zaiko simply vanished.
Cell's fist phased through Zaiko's body as if it were mist!
He had moved at such an incomprehensible speed that he had left behind a perfect illusion, completely deceiving Cell.
In a single blink, Zaiko appeared right in front of one of the little Cell Jrs., with a huge smile on his face.
Vegeta and Goku, who were the only ones among the Z Fighters capable of seeing even a blurry shadow of Zaiko's movements, were the first to witness his actions.
They both watched in complete astonishment as Zaiko drew his right leg back as far as he could, taking a ridiculous wind-up, before kicking forward with all his might.
His instep smashed squarely into the poor Cell Jr.'s face, sending it flying out of the arena at the speed of a meteorite.
Goku, alarmed, moved quickly.
Wincing greatly in pain from the inertia of the impact, he managed to catch the little Cell Jr. with both hands in mid-air. He descended slowly and placed it on the ground of the Wastelands.
The next second, Goku had to repeat the exact same action, running back and forth two more times, when Zaiko kicked the last two brats toward him as if they were soccer balls.
The three Cell Jrs. were now on the ground, completely unconscious after taking a single hit.
Cell simply observed this entire surreal scene with his jaw dropping in disbelief.
He hadn't even been given the time to move a single muscle to stop him!
That was when Cell's mind finally broke.
"It's impossible! Impossible!" Cell began to scream, clutching his head, going completely mad and babbling incoherently. "I am the Perfect Being! I am the absolute pinnacle of evolution! My cells are flawless! It is impossible for someone like you to humiliate me this way! My perfection... my perfection is untouchable!"
Cell's long and desperate monologue made one thing very clear...
Zaiko, who had spent the entire fight mocking and humiliating him, had tested his patience until he managed to drive him completely insane.
"If I can't defeat you, you damn freak... at least I'll take everyone else with me! I will destroy them along with this miserable planet!" Cell roared, completely beside himself.
Having lost his sanity, Cell made the decision to self-destruct.
He began frantically accumulating and overloading his own Ki inside himself, inflating his chest with the intention of detonating and wiping the Earth off the map.
But, before his body could even begin to grotesquely expand to release all that energy... Zaiko's right fist sank into his stomach.
And, to Zaiko's own great surprise, his fist didn't just sink... it pierced right through Cell's stomach with astonishing ease and came cleanly out his back, spilling a thick puddle of purple blood onto the ground.
For a moment, he felt like Conquest when he turned Invincible's stomach into a plate of spaghetti.
"Oops... Excuse me?" Zaiko told him, slowly lifting his gaze from his own arm until it met Cell's bulging eyes.
His original intention hadn't been to hit him that hard, but honestly, he still wasn't entirely used to the power that Super Saiyan Rosé granted him.
Although this form was naturally inferior to his Super Saiyan 5 phase, the Rosé multiplied his base power thousands of times over.
Cell, who a second ago was preparing to self-destruct, suddenly brought both hands to his mouth, widening his eyes enormously, desperately trying not to spit out.
His entire body began to convulse and tremble, as his power began to drop rapidly.
Zaiko, knowing perfectly well what was about to happen, pulled his skewered arm out of Cell's stomach with a swift motion and an obvious grimace of disgust, jumping backward to avoid getting splashed.
That was when Cell collapsed to his knees and vomited violently.
Two human figures, completely covered in viscous gastric saliva, fell heavily to the ground.
Zaiko's gaze fixed first on the black-haired young man, Android 17, who lay completely unconscious.
It was quite a surprise that this time, unlike the original story, Android 17 was also expelled.
After ignoring him completely, his eyes traveled to Android 18.
Zaiko raised his eyebrows and let out a small, soft whistle of appreciation.
Although Cell's viscous saliva significantly reduced her charm...
He had to admit it... she was pretty cute.
But the exact instant that thought crossed his mind, Zaiko mentally slapped himself.
He quickly shook his head. «Calm down, idiot. Don't think with your lower head. You already have your Broly», he reminded himself firmly.
Looking up at Cell again, Zaiko saw that upon losing both androids, Cell had suffered a severe regression, reverting to his Imperfect Form (his First Form) with an insectoid appearance.
"Do you have any last words, bug?" Zaiko asked him, giving him a few moments to think.
Cell, panting from a lack of air and completely astonished by how quickly he had been defeated, slowly raised his gaze toward Zaiko upon hearing his words.
Terrified, he tried to stumble back a couple of steps, but his feet tripped over each other, making him fall clumsily on his ass onto the ground.
"Wow... it turns out the self-proclaimed 'Perfect Being' is now not only Imperfect, but also deeply pathetic," Zaiko said.
With a sigh, his aura dissipated and his pink hair returned to its characteristic white color.
He had returned to his base form since there was really no need to keep wasting energy transformed.
Zaiko knew very well that Cell possessed a special core in his head that granted him a kind of biological immortality. As long as that tiny "organ" wasn't destroyed, Cell could regenerate completely from a single cell and eventually reach his Perfect Form once again.
But Zaiko wasn't going to give him that chance.
In fact, he considered he had already been quite compassionate letting him live for this long.
At that moment, the only thing he really wanted to do was finish off this annoying insect once and for all, seize the moment to form a good friendship with Goku, Vegeta, and the rest of the Z Fighters, and then... return quickly home to Broly.
After the exhausting day he'd had saving the world in his own way, he felt he deserved to be pampered and spoiled all night by his beautiful woman.
For that very reason, Zaiko didn't hesitate for a single instant.
Raising the palm of his right hand directly in front of Cell's pathetic face, he didn't give him the slightest chance to react.
A wave of Ki blasted from his hand at point-blank range, in a way very similar to Piccolo's Evil Explosion.
A blinding flash illuminated everything that remained of the combat arena and the Wastelands for a split second, followed by a roar.
And just like that... Cell had disappeared forever from the face of the Earth.