The End of Cell

The wind over the ruins of North City tore the sunlight into fragments.

Ji Ming stood atop a broken overpass, looking down at the ruins below that had once been called "North City." Three months ago, this had still been one of Earth's largest cities. Now? The wreckage of steel and concrete stretched to the horizon, the charred frames of cars lay scattered across the streets, and the skeletal remains of half-collapsed buildings occasionally jutted out from the rubble like broken ribs. The air carried an indescribable smell—not gunpowder; that had long since been scattered by the wind. It was something deeper, the mingled scent of metal and stone melted by extreme heat, coldly drilling into the nostrils.

There was no one left here.

Back when Cell had drained the first city dry, Bulma had relocated the populations of the world's major cities into underground shelters beneath West City. She had frantically built those shelters before the war using all of Capsule Corp's resources. They were more than two hundred meters deep, their shells capable of withstanding a full-force blow from a Super Saiyan in normal condition. Ji Ming had visited once. The place had been crammed with people, the air murky and the lights dim. Children huddled together to play cards while adults stared blankly at the ceiling. They did not know what was happening outside. They only knew that a monster called "Cell" was wandering the surface, and that gods and Saiyans were trying to stop it.

"Gods"—the word sounded especially ironic now.

Ji Ming withdrew his gaze and looked farther away. Kami's Lookout floated high in the sky, shrouded in a pale golden barrier. Dende had erected that barrier using an ancient Namekian method. It concealed their energy and blocked all external detection. Dende was kneeling in the Lookout's plaza, both hands pressed against the ground as divine energy continuously poured from his small body into the stone tiles. His antennae trembled faintly, and his forehead was covered in sweat, but he did not stop. Piccolo stood behind him, silent as a mountain, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Dende's every movement. His arm was wrapped in bandages—three days ago, in order to cover Dende while he completed the first stage of the barrier, Piccolo had taken one of Cell's full-power ki blasts head-on.

"Cell's sensing ability is more than a level above Frieza's," Ji Ming said to the others behind him. "He can assess our abilities and battle power in an instant, then devise an efficient response. The Lookout barrier is the only way to keep him from locating Bulma's supply routes for now, but this misdirection is only temporary."

"Then why not fight him at the Lookout?" Ash covered Krillin's bald head, and his eyes were bloodshot. He had not slept for three days. "He can obviously fly up there. Why does he keep wasting time on the ground?"

"Because he's waiting." Vegeta's voice came from behind him, cold as polar ice. He leaned against a broken bridge pillar with his arms crossed, golden aura flickering around him. Two months had passed since he broke through to Super Saiyan Second Grade, yet there was now no visible trace of that breakthrough in his Super Saiyan form—his power flowed and withdrew at will, his control was precise, every strand of aura exactly where it should be without a single unnecessary glimmer. "He's waiting for all of us to attack together. He wants to finish us all at once. He isn't fighting. He's enjoying himself. Enjoying the look on our faces as we come one by one to die."

"Vegeta's right." Ji Ming stepped down from the overpass and sat on a broken prefabricated slab. He took out the cloth pouch Chi-Chi had sewn for him. There were only four Senzu Beans left inside. They had started with twelve, but after three months of drawn-out fighting, more than half had been used. "After completely draining several cities' worth of humans and Earth's fighters, Cell's battle power can no longer be measured by a fixed number. In the original story, his Perfect Form was completed by absorbing Android 17 and Android 18. But in this timeline, he never found them—we hid them from the very beginning in underground bunkers beneath the Saiyan settlement. So he chose another route: wide-area absorption. He has absorbed the life energy of over a million Earthlings, along with more than a dozen low-level Saiyans and two Namekian fighters. It may not be the perfect fusion of his Perfect Form, but the sheer scale of his power... is already close to that level."

Silence followed. The wind over the ruins suddenly grew stronger, picking up several scraps of charred plastic sheeting. They spun a few times in the air before falling limply back into the rubble.

"So can we win now?" Krillin swallowed, his voice dry.

"We can." Ji Ming rose to his feet and brushed the dust off his pants. "But it has to be today. Cell adapts very quickly. He's adapting to every one of our abilities. Every day we drag this out, he gets stronger."

"Today?" Nappa's Adam's apple bobbed. "Right now?"

"When the sun sets." Ji Ming looked up at the sky. The sun was climbing toward its zenith, still about four hours from its highest point. He turned to face everyone, his gaze sweeping over every face—Vegeta's cold severity, Son Goku's rare seriousness, Krillin's exhaustion, Tien Shinhan's resolve, Chiaotzu's nervousness, the sweat on Nappa's brow, Piccolo's lowered eyelids, Nail's clenched fists, and Dende's small figure above them at the Lookout.

"Cell has the Saiyans' near-death recovery, the Namekians' regeneration, and Frieza's freezing abilities. What he can do, we can do too—but better. He doesn't get tired? Then we'll beat him until he has no choice but to regenerate again and again, until his energy runs dry."

Ji Ming began assigning tasks.

"Vegeta. Your Final Flash in Super Saiyan Second Grade can already destroy a small planet. Your task is not to lead the assault—Cell will expect you to come at him head-on. Cut in from the flank, and during every gap in his evasions, blast through one of his regenerative organs. Don't blow his entire body apart in one shot. Peel him away layer by layer. First his chest, then his spine, then his left shoulder—the order cannot change."

The corner of Vegeta's mouth lifted slightly, forming a cold curve. "Layer by layer. Got it."

"Piccolo. Your Special Beam Cannon is now compressed to complete silence. Cell will evade any energy attack toward the farthest possible distance, but if you fire while he's regenerating the side Vegeta has just punched through, he'll have to choose—either let you pierce him, or take Vegeta's Final Flash head-on. You won't get more than one chance to fire."

Piccolo did not answer. He merely raised two fingers, and purple light flickered at his fingertips before vanishing. The meaning was clear: one shot was enough.

"Dad." Ji Ming finally turned to Son Goku. This was the only point in the entire tactical briefing where he paused.

Son Goku stood as calmly as ever, the twin heat waves of Kaio-ken and Super Saiyan power alternately surging around him. He looked at his son without speaking, but the light in his eyes was steadier than ever.

"Cell's greatest technique—this time, it isn't Instant Transmission. It's a spatial leap ability he gained after absorbing King Kai's genes. Of everyone here, only you can use the same kind of leap to lock down his escape routes. You don't need to compete with him at the peak of raw power. I'll suppress him from the front first. You just need to stand behind me. The moment my punch breaks his guard, leap directly to his projected landing point and cut off his retreat. If he prepares to self-destruct in the instant before he escapes—your leap has to be faster than his thought."

Son Goku slowly chewed through the last stalk of grass, spat it out, and the blazing noon sun gathered into two tiny points of light in his eyes. "I know."

After arranging everyone's roles, Ji Ming went to sit beside a broken bridge pillar. He took the last Senzu Bean from the pouch and clenched it in his palm. In his mind, he began doing something he had done countless times since before Frieza entered the battle—reviewing every one of Cell's abilities, every fighting method, every trait down to the slightest tell before a punch or swing. In his mind, those traits were not words, but real-time simulations already mapped out in trajectories.

Time passed bit by bit. The sun slid from its zenith toward the west, casting longer and longer shadows across the ruins. At last, Ji Ming stood, placed the Senzu Bean in Krillin's hand, and spoke softly, though his voice cut through the wind over the rubble.

"Krillin, keep this Senzu Bean safe for me. If someone gets hit so badly they can't get up—not me, Vegeta, or Goku—you have to shove it into their wound as quickly as possible, then protect yourself with ki. You cannot go down before everyone else is dead."

Krillin cradled the shriveled little bean in both hands, his hands trembling uncontrollably. But his voice did not shake. "Leave it to me."

Ji Ming smiled faintly, turned, and walked a few steps forward. Golden aura began burning from beneath his feet, climbing upward inch by inch until it completely wrapped his body in blazing white-gold radiance. His black hair ignited strand by strand from root to tip, turning into a burnished gold, steadier than sunlight, forged through countless battles. His eyes became emerald green, his pupils like two frozen gems.

Since the battle with Cell began, he had never used his Super Saiyan form. Every time he fought Cell, he had suppressed his strength to normal condition, never allowing Cell to gain any data about his true limits. Now, for the first time, he unleashed his full power before Cell. The long-suppressed ki erupted like a breached flood, grinding the surrounding rubble into dust and blasting an enormous hole through the clouds overhead. A pillar of golden light split the gray heavens over North City, and the edges of the cloud break burned into a blazing white crown. The entire North City basin could see that brilliant radiance shooting from the ground into the sky.

Vegeta and Son Goku transformed at the same time. Piccolo and Nail raised their ki to the limit as well. Dende knelt atop the Lookout, both hands shaking, yet he clenched his teeth and sealed the last thread of the barrier around them all, locking away the first stirrings of ki from this decisive battle.

From deep within the ruins, Cell emerged from the shadow of a half-collapsed skyscraper. His three-meter-tall green body gleamed coldly in the setting sun, black armored patches covering his joints and spine as his tail slowly swayed behind him. His face had fully settled into one of near-perfect cruelty, his narrow eyes glinting with calculation.

He raised his head to look at the golden pillar shooting into the sky. The corner of his mouth slowly curled upward into a satisfied smile, as though the main course he had waited so long for had finally been served.

"So you're finally getting serious. Super Saiyan—full version? No, you've been suppressing yourself all this time. Interesting." Cell tilted his head and spoke to the golden figure as it gradually descended, landing firmly amidst the ruins. His voice had changed noticeably—it no longer carried any stiff echo, becoming low and fluid, entirely stripped of its synthesized quality.

Ji Ming noticed it too. In the time since their last encounter, Cell's voice had evolved. Its tone was more natural, calibrated to the frequency range most intimidating to humans yet still flexible, with every pause between breaths perfectly measured. This was probably another "side effect" of his wide-area absorption.

But Ji Ming did not attack immediately. He merely stood there calmly, composed and unhurried, and answered in an offhand tone.

"I know your next form isn't self-destruction. Saiyan, Namekian, and Frost Demon bloodlines are mixed within you, and those three bloodlines have never truly stabilized. Self-destruction is your final way of shedding your shell, isn't it? The body you blow up is only the old shell. Your true core will shrink more than three hundred meters underground in the instant of the explosion, then spend seven days rebuilding a stronger new body. Am I right?"

Cell's smile froze. Not the stiffness of having a secret exposed, but the true stillness of someone whose trump card had been pulled directly from the deck. His tail stopped swaying. His eyes narrowed to slits, and the curve of his lips hung in midair, briefly beyond his control.

"How do you know?"

Ji Ming did not answer. He did not need to. Cell would think for himself. He would think that after living so long and absorbing so much DNA, no one had ever seen through the structure of his core with a single sentence. This boy—this boy who had kept his normal state suppressed beneath the threshold of Super Saiyan since their first meeting—what else was he hiding?

Fear. In that instant, what Cell tasted was not pain or frustration, but an unfamiliar emotion he had never felt toward any opponent before, rising from the deepest part of his programming. It was fear of the unknown.

"Attack."

Before Ji Ming's words had even faded, the golden figure vanished from where he stood.

It was not high-speed movement. Space itself rippled visibly from the force of his first step. His golden fist, carrying ki compressed to the limit, blasted toward Cell's chest. In a fraction of a second, Cell raised his guard, but his crossed arms bent beneath the blow, green armor cracking as purple blood sprayed. He was hurled back dozens of meters, his feet plowing through the rubble and leaving two scorched trenches behind. But he did not fall. Even as he blocked, his tail had already curled behind Ji Ming and stabbed toward the back of his head.

Ji Ming did not turn around. His body had already sensed the tail's direction—Ultra Instinct's passive evasion had not fully formed yet, but his body's reaction speed had already surpassed his conscious mind. He twisted aside. The tail's tip brushed past his ear, shearing off only half a lock of hair. He countered with an elbow strike to Cell's spine, knocking the tail that had attacked him from behind several meters away. After it carved a trench into the ground, Cell tightened his core and snapped it back into place.

Cell wiped the purple blood from the corner of his mouth and laughed softly. "Not bad. You're more than twice as strong as before. But you still haven't reached the level where you can kill me—"

Before he could finish laughing, a streak of purple light sliced into the battlefield from the side. Vegeta appeared behind Cell's left flank, Final Flash gathering in his palm. There was no charging motion; it went from zero to maximum instantly. The violet-gold beam struck Cell's left chest with perfect precision—the spot Ji Ming had cracked during their first collision. Cell's regenerative organ lay between his left chest cavity and shoulder blade, and the strike blasted a hole as wide as a bowl through the newly regrown regenerative core.

Cell grunted and backhanded Vegeta away with a punch. Vegeta tumbled twice through the air, and by the time he stabilized himself, his left arm had been dislocated. He gritted his teeth and forced the joint back into place with a sharp crack. But he did not stop. Purple flames reignited beneath his feet as he cut back into the attack line.

Piccolo seized the fraction of a second after Cell retracted his fist. A thin purple beam shot soundlessly from his fingertips. The line-like wave of the Special Beam Cannon, compressed to its limit, gave Cell no room to evade. It pierced through his right lung, spraying purple blood. Cell's body stiffened for an instant—not from pain, but because two regenerative organs had been struck at the same time. Their synchronization had been broken. His regeneration slowed.

Just then, Son Goku appeared behind Cell. Spatial leap—having the same genes, he and Cell could predict each other's landing points. Cell had been about to retreat to evade Ji Ming's pursuit, but Son Goku had already blocked his path from directly behind. Kaio-ken in Super Saiyan mode set Son Goku ablaze with crimson-gold flames. He pressed a palm against the back of Cell's neck and forced him downward, completely cutting off Cell's escape.

Ji Ming's fist arrived.

Cell failed to block this punch.

The golden force of the punch struck him squarely in the chest, blasting a hole straight through his torso. Purple blood erupted like a fountain as Cell was hurled away, crashing through the ruins of buildings along half a street before barely coming to a stop. He dropped to one knee amid the rubble, his entire body shaking violently. His regeneration had clearly slowed— the gaping hole in his chest was healing at less than half its previous speed. The regenerative core in the left side of his chest had been repeatedly bombarded by Vegeta's Final Flash three times and had suffered irreversible damage. Piccolo had followed up the puncture wound in his right lung with another Special Beam Cannon, boring in through his chest and out his back. The edges of the wound were stained with purple scorch marks and refused to heal.

"You..." Cell struggled to raise his head, the cold gleam in his eyes flickering uncertainly. "You're... going to dismantle my regenerative organs... piece by piece... before killing me... bastards..."

"Smart." Vegeta spat out the two words coldly, Final Flash glowing in his palm once more.

Ji Ming, however, did not continue his attack. He landed a dozen meters in front of Cell and calmly watched the biological weapon that had been forced to its limit.

"There's one more thing that needs to be removed."

Cell's eyes trembled violently. For an instant, he was dazed. He thought he had heard Ji Ming's voice, yet he could not understand what those words meant.

The next second, Ji Ming and Son Goku moved at the same time. Two golden figures appeared on either side of Cell. Ji Ming gripped Cell's head with both hands, white flames invading his cranial cavity through his temples and locking onto the self-destruction core chakra—twice the size of an ordinary Saiyan's—that Cell used to launch his final gambit. At the same time, Son Goku pressed both palms against the midpoint between Cell's heart and tailbone, pinpointing the rhythm of the core's resonance with millisecond-perfect perception.

They exerted force simultaneously.

Not to destroy it. They pressed in from both sides, forcibly "peeling" that self-destruction core out of Cell's energy circulation network. Cell's body arched violently as he let out a long howl that belonged to no language. A red-and-black light core rose through the meridians Son Goku had crushed, inching its way out along the centerline of the skull beneath Ji Ming's hands. Unformed explosive patterns churned across its surface, threatening to spiral out of control at any moment.

"Piccolo—Special Beam!"

Ji Ming shouted until his voice cracked. Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon struck at the exact instant the light core emerged, blasting it completely out of Cell's body. The moment it broke free, the core exploded into a purple-black plasma cloud hundreds of meters across, erupting violently above Kami's Lookout before being swiftly contained under Dende's barrier. The shockwave flung rubble across several kilometers. Ji Ming and Son Goku were both driven back over a dozen yards by the blast before they steadied themselves, their battle suits covered in scorch marks. But the threat of self-destruction vanished completely with the plasma cloud.

Cell collapsed amid the ruins, his body no longer capable of regenerating. His mouth hung open as though he wanted to say something, but only a muddled, low sound emerged.

Ji Ming gave him no further chance to speak. He walked up to Cell, raised his right hand, and brought his five fingers together.

One palm strike. Just an ordinary palm strike, without the name of any technique. Golden energy pierced Cell's forehead and burst out the back of his skull, carrying away the last trace of purple blood. Cell's body slowly crumpled to the ground, the cold light in his eyes extinguished completely. His corpse began to disintegrate—the cellular self-destruction program had been triggered, and green and black fragments gradually broke down from the center outward into ash-gray powder.

Wind blew in from deep within the ruins, sweeping away that powder in a single gust.

Ji Ming lowered his hand, took two steps back, and looked up. The sun was setting beyond the horizon of North City's ruins, its orange-red light spilling over broken overpasses, charred car frames, and the faces of everyone still standing. Krillin sat slumped on the ground, still clutching that Senzu Bean. His hand was no longer shaking, but his grip was impossibly tight. Tien Shinhan leaned against a broken bridge pillar, tears streaming from all three eyes, yet he bit down hard and made no sound. Nappa stood behind Vegeta, covered in dust and missing half a shoulder guard, but he was grinning. Vegeta looked down at the ash-gray powder that had once been Cell, then tilted his head back and exhaled a breath of stale air toward the sky. He remained silent for a long, long time.

Piccolo gathered his cape around himself again and turned toward Kami's Lookout. Nail followed behind him, and in the sunset, the silhouettes of the two Planet Namek warriors stretched long, like two pillars rising once more beneath the celestial court.

Son Goku walked over to Ji Ming and reached out to ruffle his son's hair, making his already hopelessly messy golden hair even messier. "That method you mentioned for lifting the restriction—I used it just now."

Ji Ming turned to look at his father. There was no exhaustion in Son Goku's eyes, only that utterly clear light that appeared only after a true battle had ended. "You didn't intend to kill yourself, so it worked."

Son Goku scratched his head and chuckled twice before falling silent. The two stood side by side amid the ruins where Cell had vanished into ash, and neither spoke again. In the distance, the sky gradually faded from orange-red into violet-blue. Dende leaned out from the edge of Kami's Lookout and waved at them with all his strength. Chi-Chi's voice came through the temporary communicator Bulma had set up, tearful as she laughed and cried and cursed them several times, her words broken apart by the intermittent signal.

Ji Ming looked up at the starry sky brightening overhead. Slowly, he clenched the right hand that had delivered the fatal strike and raised it above his head.

The stars shone like they had been washed clean. The wind continued to blow over the ruins of North City, over broken walls and shattered remains, over the first wild grass of early spring. This battle was over.