2121/Outstanding Business

Outstanding Business
Date of Scene:	28 April 2015
Location:	Reptilon <Rep>
Synopsis:	Cell and Kakarot take care of a promised duel. Cory watches what happens when they do, and shows she might be the smartest Saiyan in the local spacetime area.
Cast of Characters:	696, 723, 768
Tinyplot:	A Wish for the Future

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Kakarot (723) has posed:
The arctic wastelands of Reptilon are a death sentence for cold-blooded races. Even warm-blooded ones find it difficult to deal with.

Which doesn't explain why Kakarot sits on top of a glacier face, staring out into the frigid wind as snow tries to overwhelm him. He simply sits there and endures, crosslegged, in a meditative position.

Everything he has done is coming to a head. The process is almost complete. Only a few steps remain.

But before that there is some... unfinished business. He owes Cell this much. And Kakarot is a man who always pays what he owes.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Kakarot is going to die.

     It's not a question of if. It hasn't been a question iof /if/ for a long time. Cell knew Kakarot was going to die the moment he learned about the situation. Kakarot was doomed to die to satisfy the urges of Vegeta, doomed to suffer the consequences of being a Saiyan who dared to reach above his station. He was doomed to failure because, unfortunately, Vegeta worked for the side with the pointiest sticks and the most guns, and in war, that was who won: the guy with the pointiest sticks and the most guns.

     Clever plans could mitigate it. Strategies and tactics could help make up the difference. But in the end, it was the guy with the most guns who won.

     In some way, Cell is delighted by that. Monkeys killing monkeys was a wonderful thing. Each successful monkey meant one less monkey in the Multiverse, and there was little Cell hated like the monkeys.

     In another way...

     Well, Kakarot was just about the only Saiyan who hadn't had to *earn* Cell's respect.

     Unfortunately, that also meant that Kakarot was an enormous threat, so...it was probably for the best.

     Cell touches down in the arctic wastes. The cold doesn't bother him even a bit. Namekkian DNA made sure of that. There's a cigar between his fingers, trailing smoke into the sky as he folds up his wings over his tuxedo. His tail swings up and around like a scorpion's, ready to sting.

     "Hey." He's casual. He doesn't need to be anything but.

     "They took your kid back. Sorry. I tried. I like him." Cell shrugs his shoulders and looks up at the sky. "Tried to get him to think for himself. Maybe it'll stick. Maybe not."

     "We'll see."

     Cell swings the cigar in front of him. "You want one? I've got plenty."

Kakarot (723) has posed:
Kakarot opens his eyes as Cell addresses him. He glances over to the tuxedoed man and nods. "It was inevitable. He's just independant enough to scare them. We'll see how long he tolerates it." He flexes, standing and shrugging off the ice rime that formed across his body, allowing it to crack and slough off harmlessly.

Cell offers him a cigar, and Kakarot makes a thin smile. "Smoking will kill you, you know." Gallows humor from a man who knows his future. Every moment rushes towards that goal and all he has to do is keep up the moment, keep the overwhelming, multidimensional force and resources of two massive universe-spanning factions from getting in the way.

The only thing he needs to do is die in the right way.

Everything else... Is a bonus.

He shakes his head. "Not yet. Maybe later." He looks out over the frigid wasteland. "I sent the Bardock home. I don't want these damn dirty lizards wrecking any more of it." He lets Cell draw the conclusions there.

Cell (696) has posed:
     "Way I figure it, you're a dead man anyway," Cell replies, "Might as well live a little."

     A snap of his fingers later, and there's a cigar in hand. He passes it over to Kakarot, lighting it with another snap. The smokey smell is pleasant and refreshing in the frigid, clear, crisp wasteland, filling the area with definition. Cell takes a deep breath, drawing the smoke in.

     He does not exhale.

     "They'll probably rename it the Vegeta," the Commander notes over his cigar, "In honor of his daddy. And that'll be a waste, too."

     "Well, you know what they say. First step to mastery is mastering yourself. Maybe one day they'll get it. Maybe one day they won't."

     "Probably not, though. I'll probably have to kill them all."

     Cell's tail swings back and forth behind him in slow, sweeping arcs. His multifaceted eyes remain locked on Kakarot's. Whatever conclusions he's drawing from this information, it's not obvious, but then, his face is always hard to read. He's silent.

     Eventually, he puts his hands in his pockets. No sense in drawing it out. "So. Let's get to it, then."

Kakarot (723) has posed:
"Fair enough." This time, he takes the cigar, inhaling it and taking a deep puff, savoring the flavor and smell. He spends a few minutes looking out over the wasteland, taking the time to enjoy it. "A good portion of them. The Union and Confederacy like the Saiyans just the way they are." He grunts. "Just like Frieza did. Do what you have to do, Cell. Just like my father saw, the Saiyans need to evolve or die. You're the dying part."

He grunts, tapping something on his Scouter before he nods to Cell. The remains of the cigar are vaporized in a hiss of ki. He considers Cell for a moment, and then sets himself, nodding. "All right."

The words have barely left his mouth before he vanishes in a blur of motion, flash-stepping behind Cell and attempting to grapple him from behind in a full-nelson. One foot stomps out to try to pin the tail to the ground, he doesn't need that thing stabbing him while he's doing a hold.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Kakarot's Scouter doesn't give him much to work with. Cell hides his power level as a matter of course - a matter of routine. If he didn't, he'd never has lived as long as he did. The Saiyans would've noticed him, and then stamped him out.

     "Suppose I am," Cell admits.

     And then Kakarot is around him. Kakarot's foot comes down on his tail, and Cell...doesn't struggle. He doesn't fight the Full Nelson at all. In fact, quite the opposite. As Kakarot gets his arms around the horrible bug-thing, he feels no resistance whatsoever.

     It may take Kakarot a moment to realize that Cell is laughing.

     Cell's joints immediately dislocate, reversing instantly. Elongated arms wrap around Kakarot in a most unnatural hold, each arm reaching around his body once, like a twisted green rope. Cell's laughter continues as he suddenly pours power into flight - lightning-fast flight, straight up.

     Cell knows he can't win in a straight fight. He knows he can't outsmart Kakarot - they both think alike, both soldiers ready and practiced at thinking rings around others.

     But Cell never fights without a plan.

     He picks up speed, arms still clinging tight to Kakarot. His head spins around, as if he didn't have a spine (he didn't), giving Kakarot a face-to-face look at his horrible, alien mandibles, parted in a horrible, alien smile.

     And once they've left the ground...up comes his tail...

Kakarot (723) has posed:
That was new.

Kakarot /likes/ new. Cell's instant reversal of a move which would have basically ended a fight on anyone with a typical humanoid exoskeleton causes him to suddenly brighten up, a crack appearing in that grim facade. He phoned in his opening move and Cell's punishing him for it.

And he /likes/ it. As they rocket through the air, Kakarot's surprised gasp is how long Cell has to begin capitalizing. He spends another moment to test the reversed hold and finds it iron-hard. Cell's probably used this trick to murder more people than he can casually count. He does, however, have a response for that smile. Even as the tail prepares to do its terrible job, Kakarot slams his head forward, putting that spiky hair to good use as he strikes once, twice, three times. Does Cell even feel pain? Kakarot doesn't know, but he does know this:

Cell still vaguely obeys physics. As they rocket through the air, there is a low pop in Kakarot's shoulders as he intentionally dislocates them, his jaw clenching in pain, as much the effort of doing the dislocation as preparation for what's going to happen next.

This is going to hurt. A lot.

A moment later, he suddenly exerts a massive counterforce, the Saiyan equivalent of slamming on the brakes when you're getting towed down the highway at 70. He needs to break free. Cell's alien bilogy is going to render his typical grappler style generally invalid, he needs to his alternate plans.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Cell does, in fact, obey physics. And he does, in fact, feel pain.

     And he's delighted by Kakarot falling for it.

     Kakarot headbutts him. Kakarot's skull is as hard as iron; Saiyan skulls often are. Cell's skull, however, is external, and locusty, and cracks on impact, some sort of acidic green goo spilling out of it. Cell does not wince, but that's only because Cell is *practiced* at not showing pain, at not giving people the satisfaction. Cell is a master of doling out pain, and he's doled out pain on himself just to test how best to respond to it. Long nights were spent doing nothing but torturing himself, tormening himself, *understanding* himself.

     It's crazy to anyone else. But for Cell, it's just one step closer to achieving his goals.

     The crack seals up in an instant with an acrid hiss as acid blood drips on Cell's tuxedo and burns through it, and possibly on Kakarot's armor, too. If Kakarot wasn't an Elite, that goo might cause serious harm to him - as it stands, at best, it'll burn a little.

     Acid blood! Only a life-form designed for a pinnacle of murderous violence could have something like that.

     Kakarot throws on the brakes, and it nearly tears Cell's elongated arms off. At the speed they've going at, grappled as he was, his arms as *stretched* as they are, the nasty ripping sound is audible even in the thinning air. They don't come all the way off, but they provide a moment. Just a moment.

     But will Kakarot have time to seize upon it, as Cell's tail goes swinging around to grab at his neck like a noose? What does Cell intend to do, if not drink him dry?

Cory (768) has posed:
    For the last minute or so the two warriors might've felt a fairly miniscule power approaching, compared to their own.

    And because arriving ground just isn't what a Ki-powered warrior with any real style does, Cory flies in with tremendous speed, wreathed in a burning white aura. The aura disperses when she puts on the brakes a good distance away... just close enough to get a clear visual.

    You know. Standard viewer distance.

    The Saiyan woman goes pretty wide-eyed almost immediately. Disgust even flickers across her face. "Uh... oh great. It's those two I felt. Thought I felt a small army over here..."

    That's all Cell's fault.

Kakarot (723) has posed:
The acid splatters across his armor, sizzling as it burns into the surface. It is truly the work of a madman, a man made to murder a person much like Kakarot.

But Kakarot is not Goku. His style is different. His reactions are more ruthless, more tactical. He is willing to hurt himself to get an advantage, instead of just brawling his way forward and refusing to die.

Okay, so maybe that part is still somewhat similar.

When the halting comes, that moment is all he needs. There is a yell of pain as Kakarot uses his dislocated arms to give him the wiggle room to pull himself out of the hold, the tail swinging to grab at his neck. Kakarot shrieks in pain at the stress put on his dislocated shoulders in the process, but he forces himself to flex and pop one arm back into its socket, and then the other.

He still has a tail grabbing at his neck. He doesnt make the rookie mistake of grabbing for the tail as it would try to choke him out. You don't have the leverage there. There's a solution for this, one he was planning to use anyway. There is an explosion of golden ki as Kakarot adopts a different stance, spheres of light coating his hands. With a blur, he spins, the ki spheres lashing out like blades as he drags them throught the air, trying to sever the tail.

What is this? A new fighting technique? Some people get angry when they fight. Some people get quiet. Still others are full of sass. Kakarot? He gets /happy/. "I've felt so many strong people since coming here, but I think you're the first that's going to push me this hard, Cell! I LOVE IT!"

He doesn't spend a moment to look to the approaching Cory, he has to focus on Cell. Cell is stupendously powerful and he's going to need to focus, or else he could lose this.

And he can't allow that to happen.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Kakarot demonstrates something new, something Cell has never seen before. Cell's eyes light up at the prospect of new information, even as it carves clean through his tail. "That's right, Kakarot! Show me everything in your repetoire! Show me all that you've got! Carve your legacy into me! Let me make it mine! I'll carry the best of you forever into infinity!"

     The tail goes spinning free, melting into itself as it falls. Gero was flawless in making sure that no one could copy his precious work, that no one could copy his most beautiful creation. A new one explodes from Cell's back in an instant, burning up more precious energy. For once, he didn't care. He couldn't care. He didn't have time to care, nor did he have time to care about the new bystander, nor their allegiance - nor what they might learn from watching him. Kakarot forced him into razor-sharp focus. Kakarot forced him to pay attention to every little move, to every little trick.

     And it forces him to adapt.

     Cell's ki flares, furiously. Around him howl the ghosts of countless dead, more dead than Kakarot can count. They scream and moan, the tortured remnants of Cell's many, many meals. The flare is massive, enough to blow apart a cloud with its sheer presence - easily equal to a Super Saiyan. Maybe to a Super Saiyan Two.

     Cell vanishes.

     Then he reappears immediately under Kakarot, his horrible clawed fingers curled upwards. Energy wraps around them, the technique Kakarot just displayed stolen and transformed into something new.

     Then his ki signature flicks to a completely different signature.

     "Hyper Wolf Fang Fist!"

     .../Yamcha's/?

     No. Yamcha hasn't had this kind of power in his *life*. As Cell surges upwards, each slash, each slice, each carving claw flashes outwards fast as lightning. Coated in energy, they leave marks in the sky, beautiful and elegant marks that slice through the air. Then his tail joins in, also coated in energy, stabbing outwards to cover an even wider range, to keep Kakarot from escaping to the side, to keep Kakarot...going upwards.

     Upwards, to where the air thins.

     And then, in the middle of the strike, Cell's mandibles part, and smoke erupts from the gaping hole in his face - the same cigar smoke he'd been inhaling earlier.

     *Devious*.

Cory (768) has posed:
    Cory occasionally repositions herself, always keeping a safe distance. But she halts in midair when Cell's powerful aura comes bursting out.

    The earlier look of disgust turns STRAIGHT to nausea and horror.

    Odd things to see on a Saiyan face, but some crimes are just so foul anything Alive feels offended.

    Crimes against life itself might just be a thing.

Kakarot (723) has posed:
The explosion of power is exciting to Kakarot. The urging for Cell to show him his power, to allow Cell to reap the secrets of his training, his endless drive to serve and protect his people, makes his blood boil. He knows exactly what Cell will do with those techniques. Kill his people, undermine the Saiyans and seek out ways to topple the Empire he built.

But in Cell, there is an Other. There is a focus. A thing that can help force others to adapt and exceed their self-imposed limitations even as he seeks to destroy or consume them.

Cell is raw and primal, a literal rule of nature given form and set loose upon the multiverse as the spawn of a madman.

As Kakarot said before, he can appreciate its... purity.

Instinctively, Kakarot moves to parry the incoming assault.

His ki defenses last one strike before shattering, Cell powering through them and tearing into him, blood flying and spattering across the frigid wasteland. He tries to escape upwards, and Cell uses that to his advantage, blowing the smoke at him in an attempt to force him to choke, to lose his oxygen flow. It is a devious plan indeed, as he coughs and chokes for a moment... And his eyes gleam.

Then he gives himself over to the joy of battle again, for a time. There is a howl, gold erupting around the red as Kakarot transforms, his hair seething golden as he works to match Cell's insane power. Both of them hang at the edge of a new, unknowable level of power, the conflicting aura of souls and light forcing against each other like two massive glaciers grinding against each other. Kakarot's motions blur, striking back with speed and fury as he whips downwards, streaking around Cell with a trailing halo of ki. fists slam together, and there is a sudden blossom of quick light. "GOLDEN FLARE!" He yells. It's no Solar Flare. The attack is similarly bright, but with the additional kick of a ki explosion. Kakarot dives then, spinning as he responds, "That's all we leave behind when we die, Cell. Memories! If you want them so much, I will give you ALL OF THEM!"

He yells in ecstatic glee as he spins, driving downwards in a spinning roundhouse that turns into a piercing, drill-like ki strike as he pierces downwards. "DESCENDING DEMON DANCE!" He yells, trailing a cometlike wave of force as he shears through Cell's position with insane energy.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Cell is a monster.

     But Cell is a terribly honest monster.

     It is, perhaps, his advantage in a multiverse full of hypocritical monsters, and lying monsters, and monsters who can't admit that they're monsters. Cell has long since left pretensions behind. Perhaps he was built without them, or perhaps he came to terms with them long ago. Perhaps he never questioned what he was. Perhaps he has never been allowed to.

     Cell is not a person. Cell is an existence. A primal force of violence and destruction is perhaps the most accurate statement Kakarot could possibly imagine. A crime against life itself may be accurate, too. But is Cell the criminal, or the crime? And does the crime bear responsibility for the nature of its crime? Certainly, Cell has never balked at the idea.

     Nor does he balk now when Kakarot dives and spins. On the contrary, Cell takes full advantage of his own abilities. He plows directly into the attack, shorn nearly in half by Kakarot's strike. His exoskeleton cracks, his musculature splits down the right side, all the way to his waist.

     But his hand and tail - that accursed tail! - snap outwards to grab Kakarot by the leg as soon as the energy has passed his waist. And he spins, using Kakarot's on momentum against him to fling him upwards once more. Even as he throws, the left side of his body is shorn off by the sheer speed of it, falling and melting away. The pain would stun a normal creature. The pain would kill a human being. It might even slaughter a Saiyan.

     It has always been Cell's point of pride that he's just /better/ than those things.

     As he ascends, his muscles are already knitting together, growing, stretching, exploding. Ki forces itself into his body and stretches out his arm. Exoskeletal elements form as he follows Kakarot. Before his arm can even finish regenerating, he throws his hands upwards at his face. His aura flares to match Krillin's and Tien's.

     "SOLAR FLARE!"

     And then, before the flash has even died, "FIVE-EX DESTRUCTO DISC!"

     Five discs - one from each arm, one from each foot, and one from the tail - are flung upwards, razor-sharp sheathes of energy, guided by Cell's will and telekinetic abilities. They swirl upwards, moving not to kill Kakarot, not to carve into him, but to push him upwards, to guide him up.

     Eyeblasts pepper the area, cutting off his escape.

     Cell's plan is more than obvious, now. Cell cannot win in a fight of power alone. Cell cannot outmaneuver Kakarot with clever tricks and traps.

     But only one of them can survive in space.

     And it's not the guy who needs to breathe.

Cory (768) has posed:
    Cory's now lagging behind. And not just because she was gaping for a few critical seconds when Kakarot transformed. "he's a Super-" WHOOOOOOSH.

    ... off they go.

    Now she looks up, scrunching up weirdly in midair.

    Trust a show of power like this to make her feel very small.

    And... at the time, give her something to shoot for. Power once again explodes around her, a pure white light. Up she goes, trying to stay close enough to observe between her senses and sight proper.

    It ain't easy. Some of their moves are too quick for her.

Kakarot (723) has posed:
Cell's regeneration is fascinating. The fact that Kakarot can hit him over and over again with attacks that would kill lesser beings and he'll just KEEP COMING BACK is amazing. It's not a cheap immortality gimmick like Vegeta. It has to have a limit /somewhere/... But Kakarot doesn't want to /kill/ Cell.

Okay, that's a lie, he TOTALLY wants to kill Cell, but not /immediately/. This is too much fun. The Solar Flare explodes in Kakarot's face, the instant-use attack catching him by surprise like it does for so many others. It always works /once/.

But the shearing 5x Destructo Disks are a bigger problem Kakarot tries to push back, but Destructo Disks are serious business when they're not being used by Krillin. He rains out short ki blasts to try to knock them aside, but the herding of the Discs and the eyeblasts are taking their toll. There's precious little oxygen this high, and Kakarot can't survive without it for long. This is why they have capsule craft!

There is a grimace. Cell is too fast for many of his big attacks and he can't just power through it...

He's going to need to get inventive. Something he doesn't expect. He smiles, and brings his hands together in that signature pose. "KAME...." What, is he really going to fire a Kamehameha at that range? The leadup time is insane at this speed.

"HAME..." The power gathers, brilliant light pulling together as he engages his massive ki to draw it into that singular strike. But how the hell does he expect to-

Suddenly, he vanishes, reappearing behind Cell at point blank range. What?! Instant Transmission!? "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" The beam fires out into space, Cell at point-blank range... Even as the backblast of the attack begins launching him back down towards the surface of the wasteland at insane speeds, the Saiyan burning a meteoric trail in the air from reentry.

Cell (696) has posed:
     Goku's own technique, learned from Cell, turned against Cell by Goku from another world. The irony is *palpable*. It catches Cell right in the back, sweeping him upwards in a blast of overwhelming power. The heat of it burns against his back, sizzling through his wings as the force of it presses against his exoskeleton. His tuxedo evaportates under the pressure, vanishing into nothing as pressure hammers him from the front and the back like a bug pinned between a foot and a stone. He flies, flies, flies, as his wings melt through, as he burns. If Cell had teeth, they would be grit. As it stands, his eyeballs are bursting and reforming faster than he can keep track of, popping under the constant assault, much as his muscles are.

     This is not enough to kill Cell.

     He breaks through the atmosphere, and is suddenly freed from pressure, gravity, and heat. Cell rolls off the Kamehameha. It travels off into space, carving through the sky like a shooting star.

     Cell realigns himself, looking along the trail of Kakarot's beam as he rebuilds wings, as he reassembles muscles. The smart thing to do would be to leave. The smart thing to do would be to bail, because his plan failed, Kakarot figured it out, and he didn't really have a backup. It was wasting resources.

     But...

     But he *wanted* it. He *wanted* to keep fighting. He was *enjoying* it. He was *delighting* in it.

     And so Cell falls. No, more accurately, he streaks downwards, all speed and fire. Unlike Kakarot, Cell does not care about the burning heat afflicting him. Kakarot cannot regenerate his body, cannot expend ki to constantly refresh the reentry burning away the uppermost layer of his skin. Kakarot is limited in his descent by gravity and pain.

     Cell is not.

     Cell accepts the pain. Cell invites the pain. Perhaps it is the part of him that is Vegeta, or is Goku, or is...who knows? It's such a common trait among warriors.

     He streaks downwards, a flash of green. Sonic booms - multiple sonic booms - trail past him as he wields the force of gravity to accelerate.

     Cory gets a glimpse of something gooey exploding out of his body, and fingers held to his forehead, as Cell streaks past. Multiple, successive sonic booms rock the air moments later. He is going much, much faster than a living thing should be able to.

     When he catches up with Kakarot, Kakarot can see what has burst out of Cell's body: two extra arms.

     And then four extra Cells.

     "MULTI-BODY!"

     Kakarot can feel Cell's power level divide. But at this speed? At this rate? It doesn't matter. That's not the point of the Multi-Bodies. The first one, burning hot, grabs at Kakarot's arm with all four arms, its tail wrapping around his leg. It is white-hot. The second clone grabs his other arm, his other leg also snared. The third reverses it, grabbing the leg with all arms and the arm with the tail. The fourth does the same with the left leg.

     The last one plows into Kakarot, two fingers on two hands going to its forehead, its other arms wrapping around his chest, its tail wrapping around Kakarot's tail like two serpents entwining.

     "DEMONIC PIERCING-LIGHT MURDER CANNON!" Cell roars.

     Sure, it's only at a fifth of his power. Sure, his attention is divided five different ways, his ki drained even more. Sure, he's going fast enough that even Cell's hands are burning red, and not because their loud roar tells him to grasp victory.

     But the more distractions he can stack on Kakarot, the harder it'll be for Kakarot to break away from the momentum.

Cory (768) has posed:
    "Oh %@$^*!" With Cell suddenly zipping past WAY too close for comfort, spewing guts all over the place, burning, AND charging more energy than Cory can fathom, she pani<span class=" bold_fg_r bg_n ++ s.

    "chr">KAIOKEN TIMES FIVE!</span>" Power floods her whole system, stressing muscle and bone and all the squishy things inside, but she uses all of that power for a tremendous burst of speed -AWAY FROM THE ONCOMING CALAMITY.- FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

    She only stops when she's about a kilometer and a half away...

Kakarot (723) has posed:
The power spike of Cory getting the hell out is notable for its intensity, but Kakarot has waaaaay too much on his mind to deal with it.

Like Cell splitting himself to grapple him with an intense number of arms. Were it in another situation, he could easily take out the individual clones, but they were able to close in on him too quickly. He scorches, screaming in pain as the multi-Cells press their boiling bodies in, adding to the pain. Every moment, more of his skin flays off from reentry. Cell is right, but it is a sword that cuts two ways...

And boy, is that ground approaching fast.

It's when Cell begins yelling out the attack that Kakarot's eyes widen. He's heard that before... A burning spear of death from a dead man.

There is a brief, terrifying surge, electricity edging the corners of the aura as it flares even higher for a moment, on the edge of something great and horrible, and terrible.

But he holds back. Cell can /feel/ him pull it back from he brink.

There is a sudden explosion of light as Kakarot shrouds himself in his ki, creating a deadly pulsing wave that radiates out from him. "BURNING STAR COLLAPSE!" He screams as the air around him becomes an envelope of consuming ki energy, allowing it to all explode out from him in a detonation wave. At one-fifth the power of the original Cell... This might get ugly for the clones. And without them, he can decelerate and maybe not get a hole punched in him by the Murder Cannon.

Cell (696) has posed:
     That *does* get ugly for the clones. The explosion tears them apart, collapsing them back into the singular, four-armed Cell, arms still wrapped around Kakarot, still forcibly accelerating. And then...

     ...and then, at the last minute, Cell forcibly decelerates. There's a brief flare of red light identifiable as a Kaio-ken, probably not because Cell wants extra power, but because he needs the reflexes to stop and not *snap Kakarot's spine*. The result is Cell and Kakarot brought to a dead stop, with most of the force transferred to Cell (who lacks a spine, and thus flops backwards and forwards in what would almost be comical did it not look so horrifically painful), a dispersal of the Murder Cannon, and...

     And Cell steps back, dusts himself off, folds his extra arms back into his body (without ki, they just stop existing), and slowly rebuilds his tuxedo.

     "I win," Cell notes, "But only because collapsing my clones puts me back at normal speed. Then I Kaio-ken you into the ground while you're recovering. Or I snap your spine with the sudden stop. The cannon was just a distraction. Evidently a good one."

     "But," Cell adds, producing a cigar out of thin air, "If you hadn't held back there, you would've won. I could feel the power you were holding back. Like a tidal wave."

     He lights the cigar and takes a drag. "So I'm inclined to call it a draw, Monkey King. Besides, I'm not inclined to let someone else reap the benefits of all my hard work. And it's just like Vegeta to come screaming in and try to kill us both after a fight like that."

     Cell drops to the ground and dusts off his hands, looking off in the direction of Cory for a brief moment, a thoughtful look on his horrible face. Then his eyes track back to Kakarot.

     He stands there on a rock, smoking peacefully.

     "Toughest fight of my life. Wish I was Perfect. I can't imagine anyone would be as good a test. Maybe your son. Maybe myself." Cell puffs on the cigar, then offers another to Kakarot.

     "Glad we got that done before you got turned into carrot cake. If you manage to survive, look me up when I become Perfect. I'll take you for another round."

Kakarot (723) has posed:
And just like that, the fight is over. Kakarot ends up lying on the frigid ground, bloody and battered. He doesn't have Cell's regenerative capacity, but he does have insane stamina. He gets back up, breathing heavily for a moment as he stares at Cell...

And he laughs, long and loud. "A draw. That's good, I haven't had one of those in ages." He releases his power, returning to his normal Saiyan stature as he shakes himself out. "We'll see what happens in the future. For now... I want some things to stay a surprise. They think they have my measure."

He chuckles. "They're wrong. And they'll find out soon." He turns. "Thank you for the fight, Cell. It was invigorating. I'll see you around... And if I somehhow survive, I'll take you up on that." He heads to the glacier cliff face and grabs a boulder, moving it out of the way to reveal a cave. He walks in, looking back to Cell for a moment, before he waves.

And then he pulls the boulder back into place.