Three days after Guardian HQ, Mr. Perfect Cell had come to a realization.
Being the most powerful entity on the planet came with a significant amount of sitting around doing absolutely nothing.
He'd read everything in the cabin. Twice. He'd watched whatever the television had to offer. He'd reorganized the kitchen out of boredom, which took eleven minutes. He'd sat on the porch and listened to the forest for a while.
He went outside.
---
He found the court by accident — flying low over a neighborhood in Atlanta, no destination, no plan — when he heard it. The specific acoustic signature of a basketball hitting asphalt, sneakers cutting, someone talking shit.
He drifted down.
Half-court. Five guys running a pickup game. Good players — the kind of good that comes from playing the same court for years until the game stops being something you think about and starts being something you just do.
One of them noticed him.
Then another.
The game stopped.
Cell looked at the ball.
"Run it back," he said.
The guy holding it — maybe seventeen, fitted cap, had been absolutely cooking before Cell landed — looked at him. Looked at the ball.
Bounced it over.
---
Here's the thing about having Cell's body.
Rico Ramirez had played basketball his whole life. Pickup games, gym class, hours in the driveway. He knew the game. He had the IQ, the reads, the instincts — all of it was there, fully intact, carried over from a life that had ended via Cumneurysm and deposited wholesale into a biomechanical android built for the destruction of all life.
What he did not have was calibration.
His first dribble sent the ball straight through the asphalt.
Everyone stared at the hole.
"...My bad," Cell said.
Fitted cap looked at the hole. Looked at Cell. Looked at his boy on the sideline.
"Aye," he said slowly. "You got another ball?"
---
They found another ball. Older, a little flat. Cell handled it like it was made of tissue paper for the first two possessions, either losing it completely or launching it somewhere structurally inappropriate.
His first shot attempt left a perfect Cell-shaped imprint in the backboard.
"BRO—" someone on the sideline wheezed.
"I'M TRYING OK?!" Cell said.
Cell looked at the backboard. Looked at his hands. Made a quiet internal adjustment.
"Run it back," he said.
---
By the third game he had the touch mostly figured out.
By the fifth game he had fitted cap's tendencies mapped — the hesitation left before the drive, the way he telegraphed the pull-up — and started taking it away.
Fitted cap pulled up. Cell was already there. Clean contest. Ball off the rim.
"OH—"
"Nah nah nah," fitted cap said immediately, hands up. "Nah that was a foul—"
"I didn't touch you."
"You was in my space—"
"You shot it into my face—"
"That's a foul in the NBA—"
"This is not the NBA—"
"IT'S THE PRINCIPLE—"
"The principle of what—"
"THE PRINCIPLE OF YOU SUCK—"
The sideline was in pieces.
"Run it back," Cell said.
Fitted cap pointed at him. "Aight. Aight aight aight. I see you."
"You've been seeing me for five games," Cell said. "See me better."
*"OHHH—"*
---
He left after the seventh game. Score even. Everyone's dignity more or less intact.
"YO COME BACK TOMORROW," someone shouted after him.
He was already in the air.
He flew north with no destination, replaying the third quarter of game five in his head, thinking about the pick and roll coverage, which was either a sign that he was genuinely enjoying himself or a sign that he needed more things to do.
Probably both.
He was somewhere over New Jersey, moving at a comfortable pace, thinking about nothing in particular—
Something hit him in the side of the head.
Not hard. Not *combat* hard. The specific impact of something that had been moving with complete confidence and had found an obstacle it had absolutely not accounted for.
He stopped.
Looked down.
In the alley below, beside a dumpster, a kid was sitting up slowly and pressing his palm to his forehead with the expression of a man who had just walked face-first into a glass door he was certain wasn't there.
Cell floated down.
---
The kid was maybe sixteen. Red shirt, jeans, glasses that had somehow survived the landing. A bandana tied around the lower half of his face in the manner of someone who had watched exactly enough superhero movies to think that was a disguise.
He looked up at Cell.
His brain, visibly, was having a meeting with itself and the meeting was not going well. The hand extended toward him said *help.* Everything else in the picture said *run.* He sat with this conflict for a moment.
Took the hand.
Cell pulled him up.
"You good?"
"Yeah I—" the kid pressed his palm to his forehead again. "Did I just hit a person?"
"Biomechanical android."
"I hit a biomechanical android."
"Face first."
"I thought I hit a building or something—"
"I'm going to choose to be offended by that," Cell said.
He looked the kid over. The bandana. The glasses. The red shirt with absolutely nothing on it — no symbol, no suit, nothing. Just a teenager who had clearly gotten powers recently and decided today was the day.
Cell put his hand to his chin.
"Nine hundred and fifty, not bad Superboy" he said.
"...What?"
"Nothing." He tilted his head. "You got any relation to Omni-Man? Clone maybe?"
The kid's face did something very fast and very complicated — surprise, alarm, a flash of *Does he know* — before he got it mostly under control.
"What? No. I don't — why would you even—"
"Relax, I'm messing with you." Cell waved a hand. "What's your name, Superboy?"
"Stop calling me that."
"What should I call you."
"I—" a pause. "I don't have a hero name yet."
Cell looked at him. At the bandana. At the jeans. At the glasses sitting slightly crooked from the landing.
"First day?"
The kid looked down at himself.
Back up.
"...Yeah," he said.
"Right." Cell nodded slowly, generously, like he was about to give genuinely useful advice. "Okay. Whatever name you pick — and I mean this with full sincerity — it should reference falling. Specifically falling. Out of the sky." He paused. "Like Pigeon Shit or something."
"I wasn't *falling,* I was *flying—*"
"You hit me at five hundred kilometers an hour over New Jersey and dropped into a dumpster."
"That was an *accident—*"
"A falling accident."
"A *flying* accident—"
"What were you flying *into,* the dumpster?"
"I didn't see you—"
"I am two meters tall and bright green—"
"I was going fast—"
"*Into me—*"
"I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE THERE—"
"WHERE DID YOU THINK I WAS—"
The kid stopped.
Breathed.
"I'm still getting used to the speed," he said, with enormous dignity.
"Sure," Cell said pleasantly.
"I am."
"I believe you completely."
"You don't have to say it like that—"
"Like what? I said I believe you."
The kid looked at him with the expression of someone who had just identified a specific kind of person and was unhappy about it.
"You're one of those guys," he said.
"What guys."
"The guys who say something nice but make it sound like the opposite."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Cell said. "I think it's very impressive that you're out here on your first day. The bandana especially. Very intimidating."
The kid looked at him.
"...Thank you," he said carefully.
"The jeans really complete it."
"Okay—"
"Very heroic. Very *I just got my powers and grabbed whatever was clean.*"
"I'm going to—"
Sirens.
Both of them turned. Three blocks north — police sirens, and underneath them something heavier. The specific sound of mass moving through a street that wasn't built for it.
The kid was in the air in under a second. No deliberation, no plan, just *sound* and then *gone,* the beautiful reckless instinct of someone who had decided what their powers were for approximately seventy two hours ago and hadn't second-guessed it since.
Cell watched him go.
*Kids.*
He followed.
---
From above: two cruisers blocking an intersection, officers behind cover, and a man built entirely from granite jogging through the street carrying two guys in his arms like oversized groceries. Both passengers clutching duffel bags with the specific grip of people who had recently acquired something that didn't belong to them.
The kid was already descending toward Titan with the committed energy of someone who had a plan.
Cell appeared in front of Titan first.
One finger. A flick. The precise calibrated force of someone who had spent three days learning the difference between *redirect this* and *remove this from the planet.*
Titan left the ground horizontally, cleared a parked sedan, and introduced himself to a police cruiser at the far end of the block with a sound like God closing a car door.
He did not get up.
His passengers landed in the street. One duffel bag opened. Money distributed itself across the asphalt.
The kid was frozen six feet off the ground, staring at the space where Titan had been standing.
"Hm," Cell said.
He glanced at one of the officers, who was looking at him with the expression of a man whose training had not covered this exact scenario.
"He should probably see a doctor," Cell said, nodding toward the end of the block. "The other two are fine."
The officer nodded. Reached for his radio.
Then the Ki signature hit.
Enormous. Unmistakable. Moving with the directional purpose of something that had picked a destination and was eating the distance.
Cell looked up.
Omni-Man came in from the east and landed thirty feet away like punctuation. Eyes moving across the scene in two seconds — criminals down, money in the street, police, Cell —
And then his eyes found the kid.
Something crossed Nolan's face. Fast, controlled, mostly hidden. The specific expression of a man who has found something in a location he did not put it.
He looked at Cell.
"Where did you meet him." Not a question. Flat, with something underneath it that was trying not to be an edge.
Cell found this very interesting.
*So. Not a clone.*
"Would you believe," he said, "about ten minutes ago? He flew into me. Literally. Over New Jersey."
Nolan looked at the kid.
The kid looked back at his father — because that was clearly what this was — with the expression of someone doing very fast math on how much trouble they were in.
"He's telling the truth," the kid said. "I was flying and I didn't see him and it was an accident—"
"With me," Nolan said. "Now."
Just that. The tone of a man whose attention had completely relocated.
He went skyward.
The kid looked at Cell.
Cell was holding a bucket of popcorn.
The kid stared at the bucket. Stared at Cell. Stared at the bucket again with the expression of a person whose brain had just added one thing too many to the pile.
"Where did that come from," he said.
Cell looked at the bucket. Looked at him.
"What?" he said.
The kid stood there for one more second. Decided, with the practical wisdom of someone who had already had an extremely full fifteen minutes, that this was not a question he needed answered today.
He flew after his father.
Cell watched him go.
Ate a handful.
Looked at the officers. The officers looked at him. Money fluttered in the street between them.
"Good kid," he said.
Flew north.