Clues

*Boom*

Raditz could sense the fight going on top of his head, infact he could even hear the fight, they weren't skimping on ki blasts, that's for sure.

But even if he felt Yamcha's and Chiaotzu's ki go dim, he wasn't able to do much right now, his work was much more important than a momentary save.

Because currently he was in the basement of the lab blown up by 16, it was here that he found a culture tank, an empty culture tank.

"Don't tell me, that's Cell's culture tank?"

Raditz frowned while looking at the empty tank, this was eerily similar to the tank where Cell's embryo was supposed to be in.

But this was a different lab in a different place from orginal, unless Gero moved Cell's embryo for whatever reason, this shouldn't be Cell's tank.

"The electronics are still active, it's a seperate power source from the lab above."

Looking at the glowing computer, Raditz decided to check for himself what this was all about.

Walking upto it, he tried to open it up.

"Error"

But received an immediate error message, this required a password he didn't have.

Not letting that bother him, Raditz pulled out a satellite phone and connected it to the computer's port.

*Beep*

The satellite phone beeped and soon Bulma was on the line.

"What's going on?"

Asked Bulma while checking what Raditz was transferring through the Cellphone.

Raditz explained to her in brief, although he didn't meet her after returning, he knew master Roshi must have told her that he was back, so he didn't comment on it right now, currently more important things were going on.

"This is Gero's computer, see if you can crack it, try to find out what happened in this lab."

"Something is wrong here, an empty culture tank, two android's are missing, Gero himself is gone, I need to know what's going on."

Bulma nodded with an understanding look and then quickly began decoding the computer.

While Bulma worked her magic, Raditz set the phone down and began physically exploring the lab.

Soon he found some traces, a tattered reddish handkerchief was lying in a corner, seeing that Raditz narrowed his eyes.

"That's 17's."

Concluded Raditz as he picked it up, this was what 17 wore on his neck all the time, Raditz was familiar with the thing, after all he faught against the guy for three days straight.

And spent a long time in the future, 17 was around a lot, he can't mistake this, this was 17's.

"What would have caused him to drop his favourite scarf?"

Raditz frowned, as he stored the scarf in a capsule, who knows, maybe he might find some DNA evidence from it, letting him know what transpired here.

After keeping the clue secure, Raditz kept walking around, occasional feeling some ki signatures going up and down above him.

Although he couldn't do much about that, but his repeated exploration did manage to give him one more clue.

"What is this?"

In a corner of the lab, there was a patch of green slime, from the dark patches, most of it was evaporated, but a little bit remained.

Bending down, Raditz reached for the slime with his finger.

*Boom*

But almost lost balance due to the lab shaking, as if it's foundations were going to crumble.

"Tch, still fighting on top of the lab, they aren't able to pull the androids away from here."

Raditz clicked his tongue, the lab's electricity was flickering, this was why he wanted the fight to happen away from here, but it seems that isn't possible anymore.

After the lab finally stopped shaking, Raditz reached for the slime again.

*Stretch*

And felt it with his fingers, this was a green slime which was giving Raditz a feeling of amniotic fluid, just green in colour.

This coupled with Cell's embryo missing, has already painted a picture for Raditz.

"Cell is matured? But how! It should still take a long time for this to happen."

"Not only that, Cell should be hunting for humans to absorb for a while too, before he attacks the androids for absorption."

Vaporizing the fluid stuck to his fingers, Raditz thought quietly.

*Beep*

"Raditz, I found it."

And after some time of putting clues together, Bulma finally called out from her end.

Walking upto the phone, Raditz picked it up.

"What's the matter? What happened here?"

Bulma sorted through the data and started speaking.

"There are some logs, it's about how a creature codenamed Cell's maturation time has shortened due to pre available mature genes."

Raditz narrowed his eyes, pre available genes of a mature Cell? Isn't it-

"I found a footage, it's from a city area, Gero seems to have some means to collect data from the entire world."

"Even many of our group's activities are in recordings, I'll go through them later."

"But I checked the recording associated with this creature, remember that android from the future you killed a while ago? It's that guy's recording."

Bulma became quite for a while, before speaking again, having checked something.

"Raditz, you won't believe it, Gero got his hands on a dna sample of future 'Cell', and he added it to the current larvae."

"Instead of taking his time maturing, the larvae matured immediately! Just from some of his future cells that contained his 'imperfect form's' data."

Although this was shocking to Bulma, this wasn't new information to Raditz, he knew Cell can do stuff like this.

Every Cell of his contains information of any stages he had achieved, this was why he was able to jump from semiperfect to super perfect after being reduced to one Cell.

This shouldn't have been possible, as android 18 was not absorbed by him anymore, but he did it anyway because his cell's remembered the time he had absorbed android 18.

Reverting from imperfect to his larvae stage, changing from semiperfect to Super perfect, Cell seems to have the Freeza race's transformation abilities hard-coded inside of him.

After understanding everything Bulma said, Raditz put it all together in order and pondered.

"So Gero found future Cell's dna, made use of the information stored about his imperfect form, and injected it into larvae Cell?"

"Is that why Gero's not here anymore? But what about the androids? Do you see any file named 17 and 18?"

Bulma had a lot of information to comb through, so she didn't get everything in one go, but after being told by Raditz she stared searching for this in particular.

And soon found some results, exclaiming with shock, Bulma told Raditz what she found.

"There's a clip! This creature, Cell, he opened two life support machines, and, absorbed two people using his tail."

"A girl and a boy, the girl was absorbed before she woke up, but the boy attempted to put up a fight."

"But Cell changed after absorbing the girl, he looks different now, the boy was absorbed too."

"Wait, he's changing again!"

Bulma watched the clip and commented in real time as Raditz was starting to have a headache.

Oh god, future Cell accelerated Gero's progress too much, so much so that he didn't even activate the uncontrollable 17 and 18 and directly let Cell absorb them.

Cell's perfect Cell now isn't he, damn it, Gero is a crazy bastard, does he really think Cell will obey him, he's simply dooming the Earth.

"Cell has changed, but there's an old man here too.. Wait I remember that face, that's Gero! But his brain is in a transparent skull, I think he's an android Raditz."

"Yeah, he's totally an android, and he took Cell with him, the footage cuts after a while, an explosion happened somewhere."

Rubbing his eyebrows, Raditz wondered what he should do now, if Cell was around, he can go fight him immediately, but he wasn't, and on top of that Gero didn't die!

He was the brains behind Cell, now that Gero took Cell away, what does he plan to do?

Advanced chapters ahead on patréon