Semi-Perfect Cell

"Wonderful! With my current strength, I can even start absorbing the androids now!" Cell was joyous!

Swish! Piccolo appeared and kicked Cell and sent him tumbling.

"What kind of monster is this!?" Piccolo was shocked by the different Ki he felt from Cell. It even had his own Ki.

Piccolo had been in meditation and had vague felt something happening from far away. Maybe because he was connected with Kami, and Kami was observing the situation below from the Lookout. Piccolo had an ominous feeling, which might have stemmed from Kami, but no matter, he teleported to Kami to find out.

By the time he had arrived at the scene, Both Trunks and Vegeta were already close to dying.

Piccolo's strength was only around Trunks' level, seeing that both Vegeta and Trunks were defeated, Piccolo quickly picked up both of them and teleported away. He brought them to Capsule Corp and dumped them in a Rejuvenation Tank.

"Dammit! How did Piccolo disappear? The Dragon Balls are also a problem. I need to find a chance to get rid of Piccolo." Cell cursed. But since he had already absorbed all of Vegeta's and Trunks' Ki, he did not try to track them.

"I'll deal with you later, once I've become achieved Perfect form." Cell decided to track down the androids, the energy he had just absorbed has powered up him so much he was confident in taking down atleast one android in a one on one fight.

Cell quickly hid his Ki and disappeared.

...

Piccolo waited half a day until Trunks and Vegeta had recovered and asked for Cell's identity. Unfortunately, none of them had a clue, but piecing together their experiences with Cell. They were shocked that Cell was able to use Kamehameha and Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon.

When Cell used Kamehameha, Goku's Ki was especially prominent. The same went when he used Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon, Piccolo's Ki became very prominent.

"Do you think that monster can also use Super Saiyan?" Trunks asked worriedly. Since Cell was emitting Goku's Ki, it might be possible for him to transform.

"Nonsense! Only a Saiyan can transform into a Super Saiyan!" Vegeta denied.

Their discussion ended, Trunks and Piccolo decided to go meet Kami in the Lookout. Vegeta paid a visit to Bulma and asked for the Dragon Radar. But nothing was showing up on the radar. Bulma said it meant that the Dragon Balls had already been used and he would need to wait a year until they recover.

Vegeta wasn't a patient person, he directly flew to Kami and demanded him to fix the Dragon Balls. Of course, Kami denied him sternly.

Piccolo took the opportunity to disclose the Hyperbolic Time Chamber which time passes 365 times faster than their world. That is to say 1 day is equal to 1 year inside, to Trunks and Vegeta. The duo quickly entered the room and started training. Piccolo flew back to the dojo and told Raditz, Goku, and Gohan about the new monster that had appeared. Neither Kami nor Piccolo had much of urgency since they knew just how strong Raditz, Goku and Gohan were. This was also because they did not know that Cell was far from his perfect form.

Raditz did not have many people to choose between as his partner to enter the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. The ones he could choose between was Goku, Gohan, Piccolo and Tien Shinhan. Nappa was even weaker than Vegeta even before he achieved the Super Saiyan state. And Raditz had no intention to waste his time and see if he can be lucky enough to make Nappa transform into a Super Saiyan.

Only Trunks and Vegeta had a sense of urgency to become stronger after meeting Cell. Piccolo, Goku, and Gohan were more neutral, since Piccolo's description of Cell did not sound too strong. Rather than wanting to train hard and become stronger, they were looking forward to fighting Cell.

None of them were interested in entering the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Even Piccolo was more interested in fusing with Kami to become stronger. But Kami did not feel any urgency as of yet and refused.

Piccolo paid a visit to Tien Shinhan, Krillin and Yamcha and told them about the monster as well.

Raditz decided to see if increasing Kami's base power would largely increase Piccolo's power after they fused together. He paid a short visit to Kami and gave him the 7 remaining Fruits of Tree of Might to Kami and urged him to eat them a bit at the time so he can digest more of its energy without wasting.

Due to the time constraints, Raditz decided not to pay a visit to one of Frieza's bases and look through their databases for a planet to plant the Tree of Might. He would only do so after the Cell Tournament. He didn't want to end up going to space, only for the Cell Tournament to already have ended by the time he returned. Or for the Z Team to have been defeated.

Then, Raditz and the rest at Mt. Paozu went back to their daily training again. Loud explosions boomed in the sky.

The next day, Trunks and Vegeta left the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Their base Ki had increased significantly. Vegeta had also learned to control his Super Saiyan transformation. With Trunks' experiences of becoming a Super Saiyan, Vegeta was also able to experiment and come up with the power stressed forms, the Ascended Super Saiyan and Ultra Super Saiyan. With this, both of their battle powers had increased by leaps and bounds.

Maybe because Vegeta has too little experience with the Super Saiyan state, but he had made the Ultra Super Saiyan as his trump card. Even though it gives an incredible boost in power, the great loss in speed made this form quite useless.

A month passed, Vegeta spent most of his time searching for Cell without success. He had also been harassing Kami endlessly, but even so, Kami stood firmly without the intention of resetting the Dragon Balls' cooldown.

Because of his constant visits on the Lookout, Vegeta and Piccolo had clashed, and Piccolo lost the fight. Ever since Piccolo had also tried to have Kami fuse with him. Since the fusion required both sides' cooperation, Piccolo naturally failed. Piccolo went back to the dojo and continued meditating.

Raditz had been largely confused since it's been so long since Cell had acted, but there were no follow-ups. But this was because Piccolo never found out Cell's goal and did not go and try to get rid of the Androids before Cell absorbed them. And neither did they know Cell was also Dr. Gero's creation, they did not enter the secret lab below Dr. Gero's lab and get the blueprints of the remote control.

Because Raditz had defeated #18 in a fair one on one battle, the Androids lost interest in following Dr. Gero's quest to find and kill Goku. As such, neither the Z Team nor Cell managed to find the Androids.

Since the Androids were hard to find in such a big place like Earth, Cell was doing his best to comb through each city and village.

Suddenly, everyone in Z Team turned their heads facing North City. There was a huge surge in Ki, and the Ki felt extremely familiar to all of them.

"What an incredible Ki! It must be that monster, Uncle Piccolo told us about!" Gohan said.

"What a monster! How did he manage to raise his power in just a month?! Just how many people did he absorb?" Piccolo did not know Cell's goal to absorb the Androids and had thought Cell simply absorbed an absurd number of people to raise his power to such a level.

In North City, Cell had just managed to absorb #17. The young man had always been so arrogant and had easily fallen into Cell's trap.

A crowd surrounded the Androids and Cell, many of them took out their cellphones and started recording. They thought it was only a play for a movie.

"That cockroach costume looks really realistic. I wonder which movie they are filming?" A young man chatted with his friends.

"No, the special effects in transforming from an ugly cockroach into this more human-looking figure is more interesting!" A woman said.

"What strength! And this is only my Semi-perfect form, once I achieve my Perfect form, how strong will I become? I'll be the strongest fighter in the whole Universe!" Cell looked at his hands and clenched, feeling the incredible power coursing through his body.

"What monster is this! He absorbed #17! Release #17" #18 was shocked.

"#18, quickly run!" #16 stood in front of #18 to protect her.

#18 ran into the crowd, hoping to mix into the crowd. Cell tried to absorb #16, but found out he was a complete robot, after swatting away #16, he blasted apart a large part of the city. He couldn't care less about how many humans he killed. He just made sure his Ki blast wouldn't be strong enough to kill #18.