1659/Cell vs. Serori: The Smackdownening

Cell vs. Serori: The Smackdownening
Date of Scene:	24 February 2015
Location:	Void - Deeper Void (North)
Synopsis:	Serori and Cell duel in order to blow off some mutual loathing.
Cast of Characters:	37, 696

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Cell (696) has posed:
     Cell loves a challenge.

     He can't help it. Whether it's his Saiyan DNA, the personality aspects he acquired from Vegeta and Goku, or programming inherent in his biological systems, he loves a challenge. Honing himself to perfection was the whole basis of his existence. Personally, he felt it was a hallmark of his independence, of his individuality, that he had managed to suborn his infinite drive for Perfection into something wholly unimagined by his creator.

     Surely Gero could never have imagined that he would take up jazz tap, or painting, or cooking. Surely Gero could never have dreamed that his creation would surpass him in scientific acumen. Surely...

     Well, no one ever accused Cell of being humble. It was likely no one ever would.

     That's one of the reasons he'd agreed to meet Serori here, on this distant rock. It's that desire to be perfect - in everything, not merely in form - that led him to show up for a battle that could ultimately only be a waste of resources.

     Then again, if he did actually manage to kill the Saiyan girl, it was a waste of resources he could accept.

     By the time Serori arrives, Cell has clearly been there several hours. He's taken the time to arrange the battlefield, and it is, in and of itself, a show of both power and creativity. With careful telekinesis and superhuman strength, Cell has built for himself a city square out of the rocks and nothingness of the planet. It's nothing but four buildings - but then, it's four buildings that weren't there before, squat skyscrapers that tower like pillars at the edges of a ring. In the center is a fountain, though it has no water and pumps nothing.

     In front of the fountain is Cell, dressed in his usual Red Ribbon business suit, his phone in hand.

     There is probably more to this display than just showing off. The question is, what does Cell actually have planned? And why did he go to all this trouble?

     Find out on this week's exciting episode of DRAGON BALL Z-3!

Serori (37) has posed:
As Serori approaches the little planet at the designated hour, both her energy signature and appearance become increasingly obvious. She streaks across the sky with all the heat and vigor of a meteor trying to punch through the atmosphere; first, a distant yellow spark, then a brilliant fireball that could challenge the sun for radiance. Thunder and roaring winds accompany her direct arrival, all her glory put on full display in utter defiance of the stealth training she'd mentioned as a child on Planet Vegeta. Let Cell see her might. Let him think, if only for a moment, that she might be something remarkable after all.

Serori comes to a halt high above the planet's ground. In full sight of her opponent, she hovers above him as a saiyan warrior, her black hair creating a wild and uncivilized frame for her sharp, fox-like features. The white chestplate symbolic of her people is worn in proud, pristine state over the black battlesuit cut in leotard style she favors. Brassy plates reinforce the armor's abdomen, and also wrap around the toes of Serori's white boots, and the fingertips of her white gloves. The red-lensed scouter marking her PTO affiliations rests over her left eye. Fawn-colored leggings further accessorize the battle-ready outfit from mid-thigh on down 'til they disappear beneath her boots at mid-shin.

Most striking of all is the scarlet cape flowing back from her shoulders. It drifts in the winds her invisible aura generates, providing a dramatic backdrop to her initial stone-faced assessment of Cell and the scene he's prepared.

The temptation is there to leap right into combat; however, she's not stupid enough to pass up the opportunity for an interesting dialog, even if she does sometimes act the fool. With her anger at Cell cooled, she can be a bit more rational in her approach of him, and so, when she drops from the sky to alight with silent grace a few feet in front of him, it's not to attack him.

She cocks her head to the side and up to meet the bug-monster's eyes. "I'm sorry. Did I keep you waiting too long? It looks as if you've been here awhile. Perhaps you should have named an earlier hour."

Cell (696) has posed:
     The biomonster holds up a finger as Serori starts talking. He's flicking through something on his smartphone, it looks like. Maybe he's keeping track of some secret Red Ribbon communique, or reading important emails?

     Hah, no. Cell would never put something important on something so disposable. The phone was just there as a display. No, that was the trick Cell had learned best in his years of politics and secret deals, the trick that he considered his most important, his most powerful, his most incredible. Stealth was not merely the art of hiding in shadows, but the art of exploiting peoples' expectations and convincing them to look the wrong way. It was what he considered 'separated' him from Gero, and from the other Androids - except, of course, Sixteen.

     Cell *is* looking at something on his phone. But it's not that.

     After much longer than is possibly polite, Cell looks up. Though he has no lips, his eyes are filled with a wry and terrible smile. "Ah, Saiyan Queen. It's nice to see you could tear yourself away from hubby's horde of extra girlfriends. I'm honored."

     He folds his hand over the place a real person's heart would be. The biomonster's tail swings back and forth in the air, like a snake readying to strike. His hand comes off his breast and swings out at the battlefield. "What, this? No, no. This is just something I threw together. What can I say? I've always had a penchant for the arts."

     "I'm thinking of calling this one 'The Fall Of Queen Kong," he chortles. He adjusts his tie thoughtfully, as though he's considering whether or not it's too much.

     In actuality, he's planning. Because that was the other trick Cell had learned.

     There was no such thing as an opponent who could be dismissed. There was no such thing as a regular enemy. There was only the possibility of defeat, and ways to minimize it.

     Fortunately, Cell had his plans in place. The tie was, like the phone, a distraction to buy him a few seconds - and, hidden *in* the tie, a tiny remote.

     His finger slips across the remote.

     From the window of one of the skyscrapers, a beam of energy comes pouring down - nothing but an old Red Ribbon blaster. It wasn't meant to hurt her.

     It *was* meant to draw her attention before he shot her in the face with his eye beams.

Serori (37) has posed:
Political plays, head games -- these things are often lost on someone who lacks a certain savvy. Unfortunately, as far as saiyans go, Serori has been involved in too many board room meetings not to understand what he's doing by staring at his phone instead of acknowledging her arrival in any timely manner. Lips pursed into something almost like a sour frown, she lets a small, sharp huff flare her nostrils serve to express her displeasure.

"I'm not /married/," she mutters. The first words she gets him to notice, and they're wasted on petulance. "What do you care what I do in my private time? Unless /you/ want to fuck me, too? Tch. I'm getting sick of that kind of attention. Besides, I don't think you have the right parts."

The look she gives him couldn't possibly be more disgusted.

If she thought he could be insulted by her disregard, she'd keep it up; however, while she knows he's prideful, she also knows that's not the right button to push to get him heated, and so her sneer slips back into a hard, alert stare as Cell moves to take off his tie. If she wants to get under his carapace, she knows she'll need to change tack.

Serori watches his fingers loosen his necktie's knot.

From the corner of her eye, she spies a flash.

Rather than cut to the side, the Queen of the Saiyans drops in a half-seen blur to the ground, adopting a crouch so low she's almost sitting. Right leg bent at the knee, left leg extended, as Cell's eye lasers cut through the thick folds of her trailing cloak, Serori sweeps his ankles in an attempt to weaken his stance. Of course, she knows better than to expect something like /that/ to take him by surprise, so whether or not she sends him sprawling, she quickly follows through by lunging up and forward, both her hands pushing a broad flash of explosive energy toward his torso.

"Faster!" she snaps at him -- scolds him.

Cell (696) has posed:
     It's her knowledge of political maneuvering that impresses him more than her reaction time. Other Saiyans would probably have fallen for that. Hell, *humans* had fallen for that. He had ruined warlords with that cell phone trick. He had sat down in the chairs of mighty businessmen, played with his cellphone until they lost their shit, then murdered them in cold blood.

     So that part really impresses him quite a bit.

     The blast catches Cell in the chest. He goes flying backwards, the front of his suit peeling itself off from the sheer pressure. He didn't make his threads *that* durable. He didn't wear combat armor. He didn't normally have much need of it, and Red Ribbon armor wasn't *that* good, anyway.

     Given the damage to his chest, he might be rethinking that. As he flies backwards, pressure pushing against his chest cavity, he roars in what seems to be outrage, flinging blasts of energy in Serori's direction. They hammer against the fountain's grounds, explosive and powerful. Tiles and rocks and dust fly up around Serori, making an awful noise and an awful lot of property damage, but not really...hitting their target.

     Then comes the sound of him crashing into the wall of the building.

     Which is strange, because the buildings were at corners, and he was shot straight backwards-

     Actually, it's not that strange at all, really, when you consider the trajectory of the attacks.

     When he hits the wall, Cell's presence vanishes. His power level disappears, smothered under his willpower. He's too easy to track like that. He had to go...natural.

     By the time the dust clears, there's only the tattered remnants of his tuxedo dangling off the wall.

     And then the second part of Cell's trick is revealed. There was far, far more dust and fragmentation in those initial explosions than there should've been. If Serori blew up the plaza, Cell would have one hell of a dust cover to work with, a dust cover that would take time and energy to clear.

     Of course, if she didn't...

     Well, Cell was an ambush predator, after all.

Serori (37) has posed:
In Cell's defense, it's a very good trick. Most of his opponents hadn't played General for almost a year in the Confederacy, that's all. It's safe to assume Serori's done and seen and participated in some things most saiyans -- most /humans/ -- wouldn't care to imagine.

Some of those things had been so /boring/.

Serori expects at least one of Cell's attacks to land; instead, none come close, and she's left confused and on guard in the center of a choking dust cloud, coughing as her lungs itch, squinting as her eyes burn, an unspent energy sphere humming away in her outstretched hand. Senses stretched to their limits, she searches for some sign of Cell until long after the dust starts to settle.

There's no sign of him.

"Tell me you didn't /leave/," she grumbles, her voice rough around the edges. Another cough clears it. Serori spits the dusty phlegm from her mouth, and follows that up by tossing her cape out on the ground, too. "SHOW YOURSELF!"

The last echo dies unanswered, and Serori scoffs to herself. The length of her tail unwinds from her waist to snap an irritated lash at the air.

Giving the ground a good kick proves the theory -- that dust is a serious obstacle. So, she's going to have to fight smart, and she's going to have to fight low key. Bristling at the realization, Serori grits her teeth around a soft curse, and blinks to the rooftop of the nearest building in a flit of more of that too-quick-to-be-seen movement she considers her specialty.

From there, she does the opposite of what she's supposed to do in this kind of situation. Forget instinct, forget cunning -- why pick up rocks to find a bug, when you can afford to just scorch the field clean?

The sphere she conjures between her hands is unusual. It's a beautiful color, pure and white. Hints of blue and silver swirl through its midst as it grows to the proper size. As Serori cups the sphere and coaxes it into existence, she smiles her pleasure at its appearance. It's lovely, it's perfect, and soon, it's more than big enough to represent a devastating attack, if one considers the usual scale of these things. Yet its ki signature is almost /frail/...

Serori releases the sphere into the sky, where it soars up higher and higher, until reaching the necessary altitude to bathe the region in its glow. Once there, it expands out to an immense size, and the glow intensifies to a dramatic incandescence.

The transformation taking Serori is swift. The building she stands upon soon quakes beneath the mass she flaunts as a forty-foot-high fang-toothed monkey monster. Eyes lurid and scarlet, her teeth bared in a savage snarl, her long tail swatting around behind her crouched form, Serori reveals the true form of a saiyan -- the oozaru.

She ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARS.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Serori's cunning serves her well. Transforming into Oozaru mode is a great trick, and one of the few things Saiyans can do that Cell *can't*. The power, the strength, the size - these are all great advantages for the Saiyan Queen, and, again, advantages Cell can't emulate. His own size-growing trick would make him a big, ugly, vulnerable target, one that was easy for her to break through, because it didn't actually increase his strength at all.

     But it was an ability known to him.

     And that meant he could plan for it.

     From his hiding place, Cell flicks a switch on his phone. His voice booms over the radio, indistinct. "I want you to think real hard about the title of this piece."

     And then the buildings burst into light.

     There's light *everywhere*. Floodlights, flashlights, flashbangs, bright *everything*. Some of them are even shots from the hidden turrets, but they're all aimed at the same goal - blinding the big monkey to make sure Cell's gamble went off without a hitch.

     Cell emerges from his hiding place with speed. He comes in under the flashing lights, under the flaring flashbangs and laser blasters. He comes in low and hard.

     He goes for the tail.

     This was an obvious attack. It was an obvious target, against a blinded Oozaru.

     Then his ki flares with Krillin's light.

     "DESTRUCTO DISC!"

     The attack goes soaring - but /not/ for her tail. Oh, it was the same angle. Oh, if she turned and attacked him, she'd be able to hit him if she was predicting that. But he wasn't aiming for her tail.

     He was aiming for her legs.

     From one of the buildings, a net fires off. It is aimed at her head.

     'The Fall Of Queen Kong' was not allegorical.

Serori (37) has posed:
The HOOOOOOOOOWL Serori lets loose in pained response to so many bright lights shakes the entire false city like an earthquake. Angry, blinded, the monstrous transformed saiyan stomps down her foot in a forceful attempt to bring down the building she's standing on, as if, like she'd dodged Cell's eye lasers, she could similarly dodge whatever ambush he's planned.

Instinct takes over. Since she can't see, she can't defend herself to the best of her ability -- she's no blind fighter, no matter how superhuman her senses, and she lacks the knack for tracking unseen motion. It's not like she's helpless or anything, but being blind is kinda inconvenient, right? So, to do what she can to keep herself and her appendages protected, as Serori's building begins to collapse, she recoils her tail and winds it several tight times around her own big monkey thigh.

Serori /also/ opens her mouth to sweep the immediate area with a broad energy cannon, the kind of destructive super-beam only an oozaru can create. The beam is angled at the ground, and gets about three quarters through drawing a big smoking ring-shaped crater before Cell's attack hits, and the net catches around her head.

Whether or not the net's fried by Serori's mouth beam, that's something only so Cell will see. Until those blinding green blobs clear from her vision, the saiyan is pretty much unaware of her exact surroundings. Furious, she doesn't even notice how badly she's been injured by the Destruco Disc, not right away. Once she puts weight on the leg, however...

The Destructo Disc is a nasty technique. Pretty simple in design, it's nevertheless a real killer, as it can slice through and destroy just about anything. Vegeta's tail. Frieza's tail. It could take the tops off mountains, so a saiyan's leg shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?

Fortunately, an oozaru's bones are dense to the extreme, so while Serori's leg is carved like the Christmas turkey, it's not.../totally/ gone. Just...yeah. It's gonna be pretty useless.

In response to this, Serori's big head swivels along the Destructo Disc's trajectory, and she ROARS out another immense swathe of power, the beam so big and searing it crackles on its edges and blisters white-hot in its center. This beam makes pebbles of the buildings in its path.

Cell (696) has posed:
     And this was the problem with gambling. Sometimes, you lost.

     This is a gamble that Cell loses. He's caught in the sweeping beam, the Oozaru's blind rage and speed enough to grab him in its mouth-blast and burn right through the last few fragments of his tuxedo. The dust everywhere is a small victory, one he's not able to appreciate as pressure and heat peels off a layer of his skin. Then another. Then another. Then yet another.

     The process is as painful as it gets. The act of having his skin blistered off is not something Cell could cunningly prepare for, could ready traps for, could set up countermeasures for. No, the only thing he could do was close his eyes and bear it as his eyelids are stripped away, as his horns are scorched and blackened, and as his body is peeled like, well, like a bug under a microscope.

     And then Cell reminds them both that that isn't the only thing he could do, once he had suppressed his pain and kicked his thoughts backwards, back into that primal place where his true hunter's instincts lived, back into that place where he drew all his power from. He was smarter than Gero. He was stronger than Frieza. He was greater than the Saiyans. He had been playing the mercenary game for so long, he had almost forgotten what it was like to do anything else. To be anything else. To be what he was.

     Time to stop forgetting.

     With a roar of challenge, Cell stops hiding, and the spike of power is palpable. The cheerful monster is thrown away and subsumed into the monster. The skittering bug is replaced with the furious nightmare.

     His hands rise, against all odds, and the beam parts against his muscles even as it tears - /sizzles/ - away his skin. As he rises, his own roar is deafening in his ears, challenging the Oozaru's scream with a chorus of cicada-wing shrieks of fury as he rises.

     He rises, and he pushes back the beam.

     He does not bring his own beam to bear, not yet. Instead he sets himself against the sky with equal parts telekinesis and sheer, stubborn nonsense, rising into the sky to shove the beam backwards right into Serori's mouth. Damn the risk. Damn the power.

     He was going to shove that beam into her face if he had to. And if he didn't, then he'd just come back with one of his own.

     He wasn't regenerating. Not yet.

     He could go without skin for a while.

Serori (37) has posed:
One major disadvantage Serori suffers is a real lack of brute strength, at least compared to Vegeta, Raditz, and Taylita. It's a weakness of her station, and her breeding; scouts were bred for long-term independent survival, speed, and silence, not front-line fighting. Unfortunately, this lack of overall strength extends to her ki mastery, too. Whereas Vegeta and Cell could go toe-to-toe for hours, Serori could last only a fraction of the time.

Long story short, the beam she's channeling peters out long before Cell exhausts himself. He wins the struggle. His power, his ferocity, pummel her right in the open maw.

The force is sufficient to dig a canyon-like crater through Cell's constructed city using Serori's body as the shovel; a long channel is formed by the time she scrapes to an inglorious halt. There, she lays out stunned, chest heaving up and down as she pants for breath. The chestplate she's wearing is ruined down to fragments at the back; the front still remains worn, but only just. Blood pours from the oozaru's mouth. Many of the teeth bared by Serori's next frothy, agonized snarl look to be broken, and it also looks like her grimace has been widened a gruesome degree on both sides thanks to the explosive force tearing her cheeks from the inside out.

There's no struggle when she gets up, though.

It happens all at once -- Serori lunges forward in a berserk-line frenzy of sudden energy and speed, charging at Cell almost without seeing him. Energy orbs fly from her hands in a deadly shower which pelt the whole region. Though blood still streams from her mouth and nostrils, she finds it in her to shake the earth with another roar, a roar so loud it drowns out her own explosions. She attacks like she's ready to rip apart the whole planet just to get at him.

"CELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"

The oozaru's immense tail deals out a final insult by smashing at the ground behind Serori, over and over and over.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Cell takes no time to celebrate his victory. He does not take the moment to regenerate, to heal himself, to grow back his skin. Cell does not take the moment to admire his own handiwork or be impressed by the damage he's wrought to both Serori and the battlefield. It's been so long since he stretched his legs. Since he called for the monster.

     He's not going to hold back.

     Cell flies into the energy bombardment at full speed. Each shot that clashes against his muscles burns away another piece of him and he is ignorant. One hit takes out his eye and he is ignorant. The blasts pelt against him and tear at him and it hurts, it hurts, and the hurt fuels the monster. The hurt feeds the monster. The hurt awakens the monster.

     He launches himself at her throat, his knee extended. He follows it up with a punch, with a kick, with furious hits and a screaming, hysterical laughter. She wanted his cool broken. Now she hears it, all over the battlefield. Now she hears his horrid cicada-wing laughter, the sound echoing through the ruined, dust-filled landscape like it's in a cave.

     "YOU WANTED THIS!" He laughs as he punches, and kicks, and punches, and kicks, each blow like a freight train, each at the speed of a machine gun. He's tiny, he's small, he can't match the Oozaru in raw strength, but no matter how tough, no matter how durable, an Oozaru is still ultimately flesh, and flesh has weaknesses.

     Especially the face.

     Eyes, mouth, nose (particularly the nose), throat - Cell darts up and down her face, hammering at them all, laughing all the way. "YOU WANTED THE MONSTER BACK! YOU WANTED TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY, LITTLE MONKEY! YOU WANTED ME TO /RESPECT/ YOU?!"

     "SOLAR FLARE!" Cell roars, his hands going to his forehead. The sunlight flare explodes, but that's only to buy a few seconds. He knows the punches and kicks didn't do much. They never do.

     Solar Flare never lasts long.

     But, as the remains of the nearest building come free of their moorings - as the massive chunk of rock, loaded with explosive traps and Red Ribbon weaponry ready to self-destruct, rises into the air - he only needs a second.

     It's exhausting.

     He'll live.

     He always did.

     Cell drags his hands around and brings the building down, hard, for her tail.

Serori (37) has posed:
The kicks and punches are jackhammered insults. The pain is insignificant. It'll hurt later, yes -- once the adrenaline fades, once she's back to her more humanoid self, to feel only /hurt/ will be an aspiration -- but right now, she's blinded by fury. There isn't even a tiny scrap of her mind given over to cold calculation. That hate she'd contained comes back in spades. As Cell strikes, again and again, a buzzing annoyance like the cicada he resembles, she reacts through instinct alone, and her instinct is /rage/. It is /destruction/.

Serori draws back after taking a haughty huff of breath through her ruined mouth, and scours the world from horizon to horizon.

Cell no doubt dances around the beam. It didn't stop him before, and it won't stop him now. Like Serori, who fights through the blows Cell lands, he no doubt laughs his way through the torment of his carapace crisping and frying, laughs above the sizzling of his innards, and laughs his way through the execution of his plan.

Even a /little/ tactical awareness can outmatch raw power.

"NNNH!" Serori's hateful mouth-beam comes to a sudden end. Falling back two thundering steps, she swipes her paws at her blinded eyes. "I DO NOT...NEED TO /SEE/ YOU...TO BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES!"

Serori lashes her tail at the air she senses Cell go buzzing through, but the attack is too late -- he makes a clean escape. "RESPECT?! I HAVE THE RESPECT OF COUNTLESS WHO ARE /BETTER/ THAN YOU! WHO ARE /GREATER/ THAN YOU WILL EVER BE! THE QUEEN OF SAIYANS DOES NOT NEED THE ADULATION OF AN INSECT LIKE YOU!"

The world begins to swim back into view. Fuzzy shapes, first, all of 'em surrounded by red, confusing auras. Serori snorts blood from her nostrils and turns her head side to side in an attempt to find Cell. The building he lifts comes into view, but she can't quite make sense of it. Maybe she assumes it's just a surviving part of the cityscape? She looks beyond, trying to find him, trying to find Cell.

"I WILL MAKE YOU BEG FOR YOUR LIFE...AND /THEN/...WE'LL DISCUSS THE /PRICE TAG/ OF YOUR /RESPECT/!"

What's that, a business proposition? What a strange time to --

A concussive force strikes Serori from behind. Explosion after explosion after explosion turns the entire region into a demolitionist's wet dream. It's so huge a blast that it manages to consume the oozaru's entirety, drowning Serori in black dust and greasy smoke for a long, long time. At first, the only satisfaction Cell /gets/ is the SHRIEK Serori lets out. It's impossible to see his handiwork for a long, long time.

After the dust clears at last...

Serori, on her hands and knees, reduced to saiyan form, gasps for clean, pain-free breath in the center of Cell's newest masterwork. A great big metal shard sticks out from between her ribs, buried deep in her torso. Her skin's blackened by burns, and by smoke. Her armor's gone, her battlesuit tattered, her right boot lost, her right leg a mangled mess thanks to Destructo Disc.

There's something left of her tail -- enough to say she's still got one -- but it's stripped to the bone in places, and probably useless.

Serori reaches a shaky hand over to yank the shrapnel from her side; then, she slowly, and with most of her weight leaning left, gets up to her feet.

So, her body won't support the oozaru transformation any longer. Does that mean she's finished?

Not judging by /that/ look in her black eyes.

That's a storm brewing.

The ground shivers in warning. Gravity becomes confused as pebbles, then larger chunks of rock, tear themselves from the earth to start hovering upward. Serori's hair stirs in a wind that shouldn't be, then blasts up and back as a wild vortex erupts from around her feet, surrounding her body in a flickering aura.

Serori (37) has posed:
She's not Super Saiyan.

She's just /pissed/.

The sky above erupts into sudden chaos. Thunder, lightning, and gale-force winds punish the arena and those who occupy it, but Serori doesn't bend to the pressure, she creates it. Heedless of any agony lancing up her leg, she plants both her feet, and cocks her fists near her hips. The stance she takes is classic -- a half-squat, braced all over, her muscles and tendons taut to the point of trembling. Power surges through her, and power crackles around her, all of it focused by her will into the shape she demands it takes.

A weapon like nothing else.

Serori's glare fixates on Cell.

In the next flash of lightning, she vanishes from the crater, only to appear in the sky with the sudden storm roiling in tempestuous backdrop to her luminescent form. She takes up a new stance, throwing her arms out wide to either side, her feet spread out a bit wider than shoulder-width. The first word gives Cell all the warning he needs.

"FIIIIIIIIIINAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL...!"

And yet that warning might not be enough.

"FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!"

Serori's arms snap forward, colliding together at the inner wrist, her hands cupped to aim her furious cannon at her foe.

It's not a world-destroying behemoth like Vegeta's, but the technique is considered an ultimate force for a reason. Every last bit of strength she can muster -- all of it bolstered by frenzied emotion -- charges forth to devour Cell without remorse.

Cell (696) has posed:
     There is delight in Cell's sick eyes as he sees the remains of her tail. That is worth the entire thing. It doesn't matter what happens from here on out. It doesn't matter what happens beyond this point. The delight at her tail's destruction - knowing what it means to her, knowing how much she cares for it, knowing how she begged him not to tear it out last time - is worth it.

     And he does delight in it. Cell is a *monster*. He loves the pain he's caused. He loves the hurt, the fury, the screaming. He loves the frustration, the anger.

     Most of all he loves the pain.

     Her pain, her anger, her suffering, is worth the Final Flash. When it flashes upwards and drags him in, Cell is still laughing. Still laughing his mocking cicada-bug laugh. When it consumes him in its flash, when it carves through the landscape, reshaping the horizon and cutting a swath through a nearby moon, he is still laughing. His laugh is drowned out in the roar of power, in the roar of heat and destruction. It drinks him in and he disappears.

     Serori would be forgiven for thinking he's been consumed. His power level disappears again, vanishing with the dying of the Final Flash. She would be forgiven for thinking that she's won, for thinking she could rest easy. The pain Cell went through in that last moment was enormous. Was immense. Was staggering.

     His muscles were exposed, then burned away. His eyes were fried. His skull was blackened. His bones were scorched. His wings were set aflame. For the brief instant she saw him, the pain he was in must've been enormous.

     So when the light dies, Serori is forgiven for thinking that she's won, because for all intents and purposes, she had.

     It is only when the skeleton, the /remnants/ of Cell, lands in front of her that she is proven dreadfully wrong.

     The muscles explode outwards as the skeletal leg takes a step forward. They rebuild themselves at a furious pace, knitting together in less than an instant before her very eyes. Like centipedes twisting together they crawl up his pelvis and down his tail, dragging themselves around his ribs. His organs expand before her eyes as the muscles fill around them, bizarre, alien, impossible. His eyes emerge from the brain protected by his horned skull, literally swelling into being as he takes his second step forward. They rise like bubbles, then burst, popping into being one by one.

     Skin patches itself together up his legs. It races up, filling in the remnants of his body as his final bits are completed. In less time than it took him to walk three steps, Cell is restored.

     His cicada-jaw face twists into something like a sneer as he strides forward. He snaps his fingers, his standard business suit simply emerging as steps over a hunk of stone. He adjusts his tie slowly and licks his horrible lips.

     "Tell me about your price tag," Cell sneers slowly, his tail swaying back and forth as he points two fingers at her leg, "Tell me about how you're going to make me beg for my life, little ape-thing, while you *scream* that I'm nothing but a bug."

     He releases a simple shot, and his power spikes again. Then he surges forward to punch her in the throat. "Tell me about how I'm so much LESSER than you, you USELESS LITTLE APE, AND RUMINATE ON THIS SIMPLE FACT!"

     He punctuates each line, each shout, with his fist. With his foot. With his slashing tail, with his rage. "YOU CANNOT BEAT ME! YOU CANNOT KILL ME! I AM IMMORTAL - AND THIS IS ONLY WHAT I'VE MANAGED AS A /BUG/!"

     "IMAGINE WHAT I'LL BE LIKE ONCE I BECOME A *GOD*!"

Serori (37) has posed:
It hadn't been enough.

All her strength. All her fury. It hadn't been enough.

Serori sags into a exhausted posture. What defiance she has left to spare hardens her gaze, but can do nothing to pour endurance back into her muscles, or to rebuild the defenses replaced by weakness. No longer fast, no longer strong, Serori has nothing left for the fight.

Frustration presses her lips together, and pushes a small, thin sound up from her throat. "Not enough -- gkk!"

Cell's fist hits her right in the trachea, and silences any further words.

From there, it's a pummeling. Serori falls back time and again, presenting an easy target to Cell, whose resilience so far outclasses her own. She notices he isn't throwing around big energy attacks anymore, but that doesn't matter -- he's still strong enough even without those flashy techniques. Beaten, bloodied, the Queen of the Saiyans can barely keep her feet. Sometimes she deflects him, or worms out of reach, but at this point, it's just a matter of time. After a backhand cracks her head to the side, she snaps at him --

"/ENOUGH/!"

And if that stops him long enough, Serori gives him his victory. The pride is pulled out of her like needles being ripped from her skin.

"...that's...enough..."

Serori's right leg buckles, and she goes down hard on her left knee. It's an unintentional posture, but to any onlooker, it's appropriate for this kind of thing, isn't it? Serori looks up at him, and wonders if it'll even stop him to say it.

"I y...I /yield/."

Cell (696) has posed:
     As she screams out her victory, Cell considers. It would be so much fun. So much fun to tear into her. To break her skin apart piece by piece in a physical way. To burn her.

     But he's exhausted. It was a good show, but it had been one without any energy blasts, without any of his best tricks. It had been one where he'd had to conserve, conserve, conserve, and it had cost him dearly in power. He would need multiple 'failures' to make up what he'd wasted here.

     But, a moment later, he withdraws his hand and adjusts his tie. His tail swivels in the air, hanging ominously like the sword of Damocles, as he looks down at her.

     She earned his respect, at least. There can be no doubt of that. She earned his respect, his fury, and his frustration. She was a dangerous, dangerous opponent, one not to be taken lightly under any circumstances. And it was the best fight he'd had in a very long time, possibly ever. His fingers twitch, filling in the last bits of skin, and he nods.

     "I'm a businessman, girl. First and foremost. You want to talk price tags? The price of my respect," he hisses, "Is that now I take you *seriously*."

     "Let the buyer beware."

     Then he turns and walks away. He had a report to make to the Red Ribbon Regiment and he had to drink his fill before he got ambushed. He had...he had a lot to do.

     And he was tired, and angry, and he had used up so much energy today.

Serori (37) has posed:
"...you fought well..."

Later, Serori might become angry again, or fearful, or fearful /and/ angry, or regretful, or a dozen other reactions, but for now, as she topples sideways into the dirt to bleed and to simmer in frustration, some part of her experiences a savage joy. The agony is temporary; the /challenge/ experienced tonight, however...that's something that'll imprint itself on her memory for the rest of her existence. Serori yearns for the Cell she knew as a friend and compatriot, but it's this Cell making her yearn for the /fight/ and that's an almost intoxicating thrill she'll have to be careful in pursuing.

For now, she's ribboned meat and broken bones and exhaustion and dizzy from lost blood.

She waits to be rescued with an increasing sense of /ouch/ dominating her thoughts.