Earth
Cell's split bodies shattered under Vegeta's Explosive Wave and snapped back into the main body.
"Interesting… ha-ha… too interesting!" Cell's fighting spirit burned hotter by the second. His ki didn't ebb if anything, it climbed. A fight this exhilarating was dragging his latent power into the light.
Vegeta's ki dipped a notch, but his bloodlust surged no less than Cell's. He paused just long enough to steady his ragged breathing.
"Laugh it up, mongrel oh wait, you don't even have a mother." Vegeta's smirk went feral. "Still, you've got our cells in there. Call me Dad, and maybe heh."
Cell's pleased expression iced over. His eyes went knife-cold. "You'll pay for that."
"Please. Even if you begged me to be your father, I wouldn't claim an eyesore like you. Just looking at you makes me want to puke."
Cell trembled shoulders, wings, the whole frame. Rage made him shake.
"What's Vegeta doing? Why bait him?" Raditz asked, baffled.
"He's pushing Cell into a kill-or-be-killed fight to crack his own limit," Goku said at once.
When it came to battle, Goku's brain always ran white-hot.
Great minds, Gohan thought. Saves me the trouble.
"Die!"
Cell's back-wings snapped. He blurred appearing in Vegeta's face.
"So fast !"
KRAKOOM!
Vegeta folded like a cooked shrimp and cannoned away for hundreds of kilometers, plowing into a mountain on another island before he finally stopped.
Cell was right behind him, unrelenting.
"Move!" Gohan shot first; the rest streaked after.
The instant Vegeta hit bedrock, Cell arrived and let fly
Bam-bam-bam-bam!
A gatling of sledgehammer fists. Vegeta crossed his arms, tucked his knees, guarding tight as his body bored a ragged tunnel through a kilometer-long ridge.
Rumble crashh!
The range collapsed. A rain of boulders thundered down to bury them both.
"Hah!" Cell roared. A shock-burst detonated off his skin; the rocks mid-fall powdered to dust.
That opening was all Vegeta needed. He didn't bother with the debris hands spread, palms churning with savage light.
"Galick Gun!"
He wrenched his arms to his chest and hurled a thick, brutal beam.
"Special Beam Cannon!" Cell snapped back with Piccolo's signature.
Gold versus azure two pillars smashed together. There was no tug-of-war; the instant they met
KABOOM!
The island ceased to exist.
"At this rate we'll run out of islands," Gohan muttered.
"I checked no humans on this one," Piccolo said, cool as ever.
A second sun bloomed on the sea. But the planet didn't so much as twitch; Earth's core hardened by Shenron didn't even ripple. Gohan's last worry went quiet.
Tsunami walls raced toward the coast, then flattened out and vanished as if a giant hand smoothed the ocean.
So the wish fortified the planet with a hint of rule-power too, Gohan noted.
When the glare died, a vast maw yawned where the island had been; seawater poured in and swallowed it whole within minutes.
Cell hovered, cold and composed, sweeping for a target.
"Ve-ge-ta come out!" he bellowed.
Fwip.
"Looking for your granddad?" drawled a voice overhead.
Vegeta stood on Cell's head, arms folded, toes lightly tapping the crown.
"Man, classic Vegeta," Gohan cracked up. "Always has to stand on someone."
"Stand on what does that ?" Raditz began.
"He's showboating," Gohan said.
Raditz, Nappa, and Krillin blinked then burst out laughing. Piccolo's face twitched; the urge to grin battled his dignity.
"Gohan, don't pick up bad habits," Goku scolded lightly.
"What? I didn't " Gohan bit back the retort.
Back to the fight.
"You've gone too far!" Cell snarled. "I'm done playing Yaaaaah!"
He stopped sandbagging and erupted. A tidal wall of ki blew Vegeta off his perch; gold flared up the sky and within it, the faint crackle of lightning.
Gohan's eyes narrowed. "Well now… right on the threshold of Super Saiyan Two?"
The jetting flame, the fleeting arcs that was the tell.
Raditz and Nappa reacted fast, flicking on their earpiece scanners.
"Eighteen billion! Nineteen twenty still rising!" Raditz's jaw unhinged.
"Prince Vegeta's down at about 9.5 billion," Nappa said, tense.
"You're hideous, but your strength holds up," Vegeta growled. "My turn!"
He sank, arms crossed; a terrifying pulse rippled out. The sea reared into a spiraling waterspout.
"Yaaaa !" Vegeta's aura surged.
"It's climbing ten… ten-point-five… twelve… thirteen-point-eight!" Nappa rattled off.
Vegeta stabilized around 14 billion. Still a gap but this was the natural order: three years of deep training erupting now, versus a newborn Perfect Cell tuning a fresh body on the fly.
"Die, Vegeta!" Cell moved first.
"In your dreams!"
Vegeta answered late on purpose palms snapped out twin air cannons, staggering Cell just long enough to crash a straight right into his face.
Experience.
Vegeta smelled the opening and buried his fists in a string of headshots. Cell's brain rang.
"Binding Ring!" Vegeta stabbed a finger; a golden hoop sprang into being, cinching Cell's upper body.
Smooth as silk, the combo locked Cell out of his own power. The ring's heat scorched him awake
Vegeta was already set.
"Big Bang Attack!"
The detonation blossomed right on Cell's chest.
Smoke means no damage, Gohan thought dryly as a green barrier flashed into being. In the instant of impact, Cell split the ring and ballooned a shield.
He'd only held Seventeen inside a short while, but it was enough he'd already copied the data. Of course he knew how to throw up a ki barrier.
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