Lapis and Lazuli beat on a Cell Jr. with a rapid flurry of punches and kicks, working like thrusting automatons with synchronized and deadly precision. Just as the Cell Jr's body began feeling soft and droopy, splashing with muddy goop, the two Artificial Humans extended their left and right arm respectively, firing a point-blank energy wave and splattering the Cell Jr. away to give them some time to deal with the rest while it regenerates.
The Cell Jrs began shuffling together, changing their tactics after realizing that they would be unable to simply overpower and beat down their opponents. Turning to shapeless sludge, they burst into a geyser of muddy goop that adopted the shape of more Cell Jrs, solidifying into the proper shape of more Cell Jr. clones.
"Their energy levels didn't drop from the duplication," Lapis noted while scanning the rapidly multiplying enemy ranks. "My, my… This will become quite the troublesome technique to deal with if we don't put a stop to it."
"Unfortunately for you runts, I've no problem attacking all of you at once! Infinity Bullet!" Lazuli exclaimed, thrusting her arms out forward and firing a widespread destructive barrage of violet energy bullets that created a blitzing bullet hell, impossible for the massive army of Cell Jrs to navigate. With each successful hit, the Ki blast either punched a hole clean through the Cell Jr., leaving them wide-eyed and whimpering in pain or outright blew them up into tiny, slimy chunks.
"Whoa, you must have hit an important one," Lapis pointed out with acted-out excitement, pointing at a gargling Cell Jr. with a gaping hole in its chest who got hit by another bullet and flew off into the air, only to explode. As a result of this, a portion of the Cell Jr. brigade began turning gray, staring at their impending petrification with terror, until they became unable to maintain their bodily shape, turning into cement-like slush and covering the metallic tiles below.
Taken aback by the successful attack that cost them one of the original Cell Jrs, Cell's perfect little monsters took a different approach, scattering and adopting their earlier approach of using their abstract environment as ramps and ground support to bounce off them and hurl themselves at the enemy like human-bullets. Lapis and Lazuli moved rapidly in the air, dodging each incoming tackle. That was until Lazuli bumped into Lapis' back.
"Hey, watch it!" Lapis exclaimed.
"You're the one who should watch it," Lazuli hissed, "You're taking these kids too lightly, you were never this sloppy during training!"
"What are you talking about?" Lapis' voice came from somewhere higher up, jolting Lazuli enough to turn toward it and exclaim in surprise upon eyeing her brother up above. Before she could turn around and confront the fake Lapis, tough and leathery straps of scaly skin wrapped around her, restraining Lazuli. The Cell Jr. behind her dropped their act of impersonating Lapis and trapped Lazuli in straps of leathery skin flaps, sticking out from underneath the insectoid plates of armor.
"Gotcha!" the Cell Jr. exclaimed while cackling to itself in an uncharacteristically low-pitched tone. The insectoid dinosaur hybrid swung the bundle of skin flaps around before releasing Lazuli to smash through multiple iron bar constructs and ladder structures, then skidding across the impossibly dense and impenetrable floor in a dented ridge.
Shaky and stunned by the impact, Lazuli dragged herself up only to dodge an incoming projectile of goop that would have left her trapped again. "Infinity Missile!" Lazuli exclaimed with a scornful expression, made even direr by the bruises on her body and face, and drew her arms back while channeling radiating yellow energy spheres in each hand. Then, she thrust each hand and cocked the other back, interchangeably, releasing a strident yellow energy wave with each thrust and shooting at random Cell Jrs around her in a berserk energy rampage that only she and her brother could perform because of their Infinite Ki Reactors.
"Kienzan!" a Cell Jr. exclaimed, elevating their arm over their head and turning it into goop, causing the arm's size to become malleable. By massively increasing the size of its hand, and therefore the surface it could channel its Ki through, the Cell Jr. managed to produce a gigantic Ki disc that it hurled at Lazuli, slicing through her energy wave.
"You pipsqueak!" Lazuli spat out with contempt. "You dare attack me with Krillin's technique?"
The blonde turned to the side, leading to the buzzing energy disc narrowly missing her and only thinly slicing her spacesuit a tad. Lazuli tilted her arm over her head, creating a violet energy disc of her own and hurling it at the gigantic Kienzan as it buzzed right back at her from behind, meanwhile, with her free hand, she fired another Infinity Missile at the bundle of Cell Jrs and forced them to bolt wherever they could to escape grievous harm.
A Cell Jr. turned its whole body into goop, expanding it into a wide area by turning into a tidal wave of mud, crashing from over Lapis. With a nonchalant look, the Artificial Human acknowledged the threat and casually raised his hand, channeling a yellow energy sphere in his hand and shooting it in the shape of a blitzing energy beam. "Photon Flash!" Lapis exclaimed, firing the energy beam from the same source again and again and riddling the slimy wave with charring holes.
Bubbling, the goop reshaped into its original form, but something was wrong. The Cell Jr's body proved to be unstable, having had so much of its gooey form incinerated. An outer layer of cement-like crust began coating the wounds of the perfect little monster, expanding outward until the bellowing monstrosity crumbled away into dust with a violent shockwave burst. Some of the other Cell Jrs began to panic, while others seemed more aggravated by the nonchalant manner with which Lapis executed one of their own.
A Cell Jr. snapped straight up in front of Lapis, catching the Artificial Human off-guard with such aggression and courage. With a bubbling, gooey chest, the Cell Jr. puffed its body out, sending a hail of splattering goop that, upon separating from the Cell Jr's body, became metallic and incredibly dense, battering Lapis and leaving a handful of nasty bruises.
Meanwhile, a handful more Cell Jrs aimed their arms down, with the eyes they revealed to have on their palms closing and opening up as fanged, reptiloid mouths. The newly opened crevices began sending a wave of debilitating sound in a cone-shaped shockwave that forced Lapis to hunker down and tough it out. The vicious sound waves tore Lapis' Monster Island ranger uniform up into a pathetic rag and left lacerations all over his body, leaving his slick dark hair in a hectic stack, cluttered all over his bruised face.
"You guys are a danger to yourselves and everyone around you. I'm thinking that life as apex predators has spoiled you too much for life on Monster Island," Lapis sneered, fixing his hair and wiping it away from getting in his way.
Another Cell Jr. hurled itself at Lapis, with slimy arms shaped like blades, seeking to slice the Artificial Human to ribbons. Lapis swayed back, left and right, evading the rush of slimy blades while the bellowing Cell Jr. dinosaur sprouted sharp, muddy tendrils from its back, the tips of which solidified with density matching that of the planet's outermost metallic layer. Lapis backflipped away from harm, then delivered a powerful kick back at the Cell Jr.
The reptilian Cell Jr. reeled back from the shock of the impact, before leaning back into it with a mean sneer on its face. Lapis and the monstrous bruiser entered a ferocious exchange of blows, with Lapis attacking with his punches and kicks, while the Cell Jr. responded with a shiny scarlet aura of King Kai's Fist, sprouting slimy masses of mud from its back that shaped into massive metallic fists before clashing with Lapis. To settle the exchange, the Cell Jr. sprouted an extra pair of massive mud limbs that formed a hammer-like mass and smacked Lapis into the floor. The minor victory was also a pyrrhic one, as the Cell Jr. panted with sweat and weary after an intensive usage of King Kai's Fist.
"It's unlikely that we'll manage to wipe out all Cell Jrs from the universe," Lapis emerged from the dust cloud, cracking his neck left and right and rolling his knuckles. "I'd very much like to secure at least a few of you to bring back to Monster Island and preserve your species. However… First, I need to prove to myself that I can handle taking care of you and punishing you when you guys get rowdy."
A Cell Jr. had turned its body entirely into sludge, shaping itself like a gigantic meteor and erupting with King Kai's Fist aura, shooting itself toward the battle-worn Artificial Human like a living comet. Lapis shot forward, thrusting a devastating palm strike straight to the brunt of the incredibly dense meteor, stopping it in place. The counter-shock sufficed to force the Cell Jr. back to its ordinary shape so that its slimy shape didn't get obliterated like the last few cells Jrs.
Leaning into it, Lapis hit the Cell Jr. with a double ax handle slam, then turned into a thin green beam of light, accelerating across the entire planet back and forth and viciously blitzing the stupefied Cell Jr. before kicking it away to conclude the punishing beatdown. Lazuli swooped down to Lapis' level, pushing an unruly strand of her hair behind one ear as both Androids aimed their hands down and fired combined energy blasts, obliterating the downed Cell Jr. to dust, beyond the point where its body could regenerate.
"The best part about there being so many of these rowdy eyesores is that even my softy brother won't cry over a few cracked eggs," Lazuli remarked about the decimation of a handful of Cell Jrs at their hands.
"That was too mean, Lazuli!" Lapis gasped in feigned outrage. "Though perhaps the entire population is way too much even for me to handle…"
Two Cell Jrs opposing Lazuli looked at each other with evil intent, relating to one another on a deep level, the imps began to snicker like hissing hounds before turning to the Artificial Human fending off heaps of sludge duplicates. One of them plunged their hands into their face almost up to the elbow, molding and caressing the face until it looked just right as the Cell Jr's body liquified and began adopting a shorter, more humanoid form.
"Eighteen!" Cell Jr. called out in Krillin's voice, directing the attention of the Android toward a transformed duplicate of her husband, covered in red sludge, meant to simulate blood, with another Cell Jr. perched on top and pointing a chunk of iron bars at the transformed Cell Jr. "Please, help me!"
"You dare…!?" Lazuli seethed, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth. The Android launched herself in a mad dash toward the impish pair. Even if she knew that there was no chance her actual husband was being pummeled here, on this planet, and needed her help, just the fact they dared to take his form and try to play on her feelings toward Krillin made Lazuli furious to where she couldn't see straight.
Chuckling to itself, the Cell Jr. looming over the fake Krillin placed its hands on the ground, prompting metallic bars to burst from the ground, as dense as the toughest the Cell Jrs could render their bodies. The innumerous rods crossed with each other in an attempt to weave into iron bars, creating a forest of exotic steel rods which Lazuli ended up trapped in because of her one-track-minded assault on the enemy.
"Got 'er!" the Cell Jr. pumped its fist before high-fiving its thespian partner in crime, who swiftly turned back into Cell Jr. shape.
"Now slice 'er up!" the other chucked, super-sizing its forearm by constructing a monstrously large limb from sludge and hurling a massive Kienzan at the forest of iron rods entrapping Lazuli inside. The energy discs whizzed past, cutting through the impossibly dense iron rods with moderate difficulty, with the exotic alloy shrieking and spewing sparks for a few seconds before giving way. Cackling to itself, the sadistic imp clenched its fist, splitting the Kienzan into hundreds of smaller, more precise discs to cover more ground. It was quite necessary since Lazuli lay suppressed inside the thick iron rod prison.
The bruised and restrained Android grunted, trying to force her way out of the restraints, but found no way of building up enough force because of the uncomfortable position she found herself pinned down in. With a dire look on her face, Lazuli heard the energy discs whizzing closer and closer to her, trimming the bothersome forest of iron rods by a substantial margin. Just when it seemed like an energy disc would split her head into two, alongside the thick layer of rods keeping Lazuli pinned down, the Android's eyes lit up red and she fired a pair of yellow eye lasers. Instead of hitting the incoming Kienzan head-on, Lazuli aimed at the top of the disc, forcing it to correct its trajectory and cut the roots of the bars imprisoning her, liberating the Android from her predicament.
With their eyes on the target, the Cell Jrs nodded to each other with determination to try out more of their uncanny abilities they've been itching to train but lacked the sufficient challenge to do so. Bursting with the King Kai's Fist aura, the Cell Jrs stretched their armored insectoid shells with swelling of their muscles until it could no longer contain them. Becoming living tendrils of scaly leather flaps, the Cell Jrs shed their shells and began swirling in a combined, focused attempt at attacking Lazuli.
Despite firing a blaze of Ki blasts at the swirling pair of scaly skin flaps, the swirling strands, shimmering with scarlet shine, smacked Lazuli in the waist area. The force of the impact stunned the deadly Android for a minute, with the swirling, animated skin flaps drilling into her together, one after another, crashing Lazuli through a bunch of iron bar walls and structures and slamming her into the wreckage of a ladder mountain, until they swirled back into their shed armored shells and resumed normal shape, cackling alongside one another with manic laughter, wrapping each other up with strain in their bellies from the hilarity of their unorthodox attack.
"You runts… You better believe you're all dead!" Lazuli muttered to herself after shoving tons of immensely dense scrap off her and stumbling out. The violent battle she's been through on this planet left her space suit torn into a handful of rubbery straps, barely clinging together. With a decisive rip, Lazuli put the poor thing out of its misery and prepared to engage the irritating imps with better knowledge and experience of their abilities and her wild power burning up with the need to obliterate them all.
With gnashed teeth and motivated effort, Lapis crashed into the bundle of Cell Jrs again and again, failing to find a way to slip a punch or a kick in. These little pests were incredibly skilled with utilizing King Kai's Fist at the level of a master with lifelong training, activating it at the most dire moment, and then turning it off when it wasn't necessary. To make matters worse, their regenerative abilities repaired the damage to their bodies that King Kai's Fist inflicted in the brief pause between uses, effectively neutralizing the downsides of the power-up technique.
"Jelly-Beams!" Cell Jr. growled out, curling into a malleable ball of sludge and sprouting hands from all over the messy surface of the sludge mass. Each of the fingers fired a different sort of energy beam, ranging from electrical Ki beams to freezing or burning ones. Whereas Chayote, the original inventor of this technique, could launch ten beams tops, this fellow improvised a way to hurl over a hundred from all over the place, making it almost impossible for Lapis to defend from the attack.
Spreading his arms wide, Lapis created an Android Barrier only to see it covered in a round mass of ice. The ceaseless barrage of Jelly-Beams overwhelmed Lapis' Android Barrier with its strange Ki manipulation methods, shocking and blasting Lapis away while continuing to pelt him with more and more beams as the Artificial Human bounced and skidded off the ground.
"Tee-hee-hee… Let's play together!" the Cell Jr. exclaimed, snapping right up in the face of the overwhelmed Artificial Human and aiming with its beefy hand, revealing a swirling eyeball at the tip of the hand that stunned Lapis in place and left him completely hypnotized and helpless with Lapis' eyes changing to reflect the appearance of the hypnotic eye sticking out from the Cell Jr's hand.
Lazuli couldn't keep either of the two Cell Jrs she was exchanging blows with close enough to land any impactful blows. There wasn't that much of a difference between their speed, but whenever she cornered one and began throwing a barrage of punches and kicks their way, the rascal managed to fend for itself just long enough until the other either tackled Lazuli away or forced her to back up with an energy blast.
Just as Lazuli was about to home in on one of the troublesome pair of reptilian Cell Jrs, her sensors registered an alarming energy signal from her upper right, prompting her to redirect her attention and spread her arms and legs to erect an Android Barrier. However, it wasn't one of the Cell Jrs' techniques that hit her barrier–it was a blinding stream of yellow energy bullets launched by Lapis' hands. Lazuli's brother hovered above her with his arms pointing at her, his hair rustling backward at the mercy of the backlash of the energy he was shooting. Worst of all, the whites of Lapis' eyes had a creepy, pink coloration to them, almost like the blood vessels in his eyes had burst all at once.
"What are you doing, Lapis!?" Lazuli barked out, panting from the sum of the battle damage she'd suffered.
"Come on, sis! I'm bored! Maybe those Cell Jrs didn't have such a bad idea? Why don't we all just play a game together?" Lapis exclaimed with enthusiasm that was eerily unlike him. Seeing the curious Cell Jrs hovering behind the hypnotized Artificial Human instantly relayed the big idea behind this twist to the backed into a corner Lazuli.
"Damn it, we don't have time for this!" Lazuli sneered back at her brother. "How could you have gotten yourself caught at such a moment?"
"Don't act so smug, just because you're the older sister," Lapis scolded Lazuli with a sharp yell of an unjustified level of aggression. "Come on, Lazuli, haven't you ever been curious about which one of us was stronger? Let's play a game and find out!"
"You're unbelievable!" Lazuli gnashed her teeth with desperation, seeing the looming and seemingly insurmountable threat of dozens of Cell Jrs, accompanied by their mud clones, backing Lapis up like a circle of ill-mannered friends, throwing scornful remarks and insults from the back and encouraging him to beat up his older sister for them. "I guess I'll have to knock some sense into you!" she clenched her fists, sensing some light shaking in them.
This will be a hellish slugfest, deep down Lazuli knew her brother was always the stronger of the two of them. Even when she managed to one-up him, it was always because of his tendency to play stupid games and impose ridiculous handicaps on himself. Not to mention, there was still an entire army of Cell Jrs to deal with…