Quick facts
Campaign: Campaign 1.5 · Where: the Coliseum, North City · Fighters: Ruby, Belle Pepper, Master Toshi, Elyon, Oolong, Terra Misu, Sophie, Greene · Opponent: Perfect Cell · Outcome: Cell destroyed; Shenlong restores his victims · Previous: C1.5 Chapter 02
Ten days after the broadcast, The Cacklers stepped into the North City Coliseum to fight Perfect Cell for the fate of Arlia. Cell was destroyed. Not everyone who walked in was there at the end.
Introductions
“Jimmy Firecracker here, reporting to you all live from the Cell Games, presented by Heatap.” Probably, he admitted, because nobody else would take the job. “But don’t you worry about me, ladies and gentlemen, because Jimmy Firecracker don’t give a fuck! He’ll take any job! He’ll take every job! He’ll take your job!”
Jimmy introduced the Cacklers one by one:
- Ruby Capulet, the daughter of the one and only Juliette, educated right there at the Cacklers Academy for Gifted Students (CAGS).
- Belle Pepper, a fresh face. “Her bite is bigger than her bark!”
- Master Toshi, the mentor to Greene, back on the battlefield after a nearly twenty-year hiatus with a new body.
- Elyon, champion of the Greatest Below the Heavens tournament, “the soaring sorceress of Spicetown.”
- Oolong, “the breaker of chains, the claimer of clouds, the shape-shifting savior of the Uknekians.”
- Terra Misu Umber, CAGS headmaster. “She is beauty! She is grace! She will punch you in the face!”
- Sophie Umber, CAGS headmaster, “the wizard with the voice so magical, it is only matched by her immaculate spellcasting.”
- Greene, “the man who smote the Rose Ribbon Army,” runner-up of the Greatest Below the Heavens tournament.
The crowd stomped, cheered and threw beer.
Cell’s children
“Oh, trust me,” said Cell, “I will huff and puff and blow this house down. Well, Cacklers, now that you’ve shown me yours, let me show you mine.” He screamed and grunted, and the tail on his back widened and began dropping gloopy blobs onto the arena floor. “Look at this nerd, he’s pooping!” Jimmy told the audience Cell was doing “one of two things I can’t describe on network radio.”
Seven blobs hardened into bluish copies of Cell, the Cell Juniors, and Cell crossed his arms to watch them work. Greene lopped the head off one, and it crumbled to ash. Master Toshi fired a kamehameha that left two of them as nothing but a pile of ash. “Yeah, still got it.” Greene and Terra cleaved through more between them.
“Well,” said Cell, “it didn’t take long for you to kill my beloved children.”
The invisible man
Cell vanished from sight and rained meteors down on the arena. Master Toshi dodged in and out of every one. “You guys should keep up with your training.” Cell threw a kienzan at Ruby, knocked everyone flat with a shockwave, and stunned Greene out of the air. “Oh, you guys are being boring. Aren’t you better than this? It’s just a little invisibility.”
Sophie called him out. “If you want this to be a fair fight, why don’t you show yourself? Quit being such a coward.”
“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. The funny thing is, I know you’re playing me. But you’re right.” He reappeared.
Belle Pepper hit him with lightning. “That hurt, you little snot.” He threw a kienzan at her, and she dispersed it in front of her face. “That’s the most damage anybody has ever done to me.” He threw another. “This is how it’s done.” She dissipated that one too. “Cute.”
Toshi falls
Cell sent a kamehameha through Terra and Oolong, who was fighting as a T-rex, then went after Master Toshi. “Remove this trash.” His first blow caved Toshi’s face in.
A spell muddled Cell’s thoughts so badly he could no longer throw his kienzan. Greene sliced him from head to torso. Cell stitched himself back together. “Oh, get to you in a minute.” He beat Greene down and fired another kamehameha. Master Toshi took the full blast, and when it cleared there was a pile of ash where he had stood.
“I’ll take care of you in a second,” Cell told the fallen Greene, and turned his beam on Sophie and Ruby. An icy shell around Greene took the next blows. Cell broke through it and stabbed his tail down into Greene’s back, but a healing spell had already reached him.
The Trickster’s price
Ruby called on divine intervention and asked for a wish: for all of them to be completely healed. Time froze. The Trickster stood before her.
“This is a tall ask. I’ll make a bargain. I’ll give it to you, but you have to come with me now.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Everyone was healed. When the others turned, Ruby was no longer on the battlefield.
Every atom
Cell stitched himself back together again and fired a kamehameha at Oolong. He peeked past the beam, smirking, expecting to see a pile of fried chicken. Instead he saw Sophie, panting, behind an arcane ward she had thrown up to protect Oolong.
Oolong then went and hugged Cell, wrapping his feathery wings around him, while the others begged him to get away. He let go, and Belle Pepper’s lightning arced up through Cell’s body. There was a burst of energy, and then silence. There was no body.
Having touched Cell, Oolong used Seerow’s Kindness to take his form. The others looked over to see Cell standing where Oolong had been. “All right, guys, let’s attack.”
A gust of wind blew across the place where Cell’s remains had been, and a body began to reform. “You think you could get rid of me that easily?”
The real Cell beat Oolong-as-Cell unconscious. Terra cleaved into the real one twice, and the light left his eyes as he crumpled. Even then, his body began to heal itself. Elyon threw a kienzan into the remains, and it danced back and forth across the ground like a printer head, carving up every atom of Cell’s existence. Without that, he would have come back.
Nothing stirred. The crowd’s yells rose. The Cell Games were over.
Who was left
There was a little pop, and Belle Pepper was removed from the battlefield. She had been summoned by her god to serve as a representative in a civil war among the deities, The War in the Heavens. Ruby, taken by the Trickster’s bargain, had been summoned to that war the same way.
Then Oolong popped off the battlefield as well. He has not returned.
Terra, Sophie, Greene and Elyon were left standing to accept the crowd’s accolades.
The wish
After the Games, the Cacklers gathered the Star Orbs and summoned the dragon. They wished to restore the lives of everyone Cell had killed and absorbed. Master Toshi lived again. So did 17 and 18, and the people of Ginger Town and every other town Cell had taken.
The FAM spent the Games in Bulma’s private suite overlooking the Coliseum (C2 Session 70). See also The Cell Games and Open Mysteries.
Previous: Chapter 2: Perfect Cell