How was 18 still alive in Cell's body after it had been blown half off?

[precita]

When Goku was fighting Cell he blows his entire torso/chest/head off. This is when Cell shows he can regenerate for the first time. However 18 was inside him that whole time (as we know when Gohan punches her out), so her whole body had to be blown up when Goku blew up half of Cell.

Yet she is still in one piece when he spits her out. Is there an explanation for this? Did her body regenerate because she was inside Cell? Technically she should have died there.

[Lionel]

The Daizenshuu mentions how Cell's process of absorption merges the cyborgs into his framework or something along those lines -- it would explain why he began to take on more of their characteristics as he absorbed them. If #18 was melded into Cell's being then it stands to reason her compositional segment of Cell would have been restored whenever he regenerated.

Now regarding the question of how she could have been removed -- maybe the blunt force trauma caused some type of diffusive reaction as the cyborgs were still relatively new components of his make-up? #18 would have come first as she was the last of the two to be absorbed.

[TobyS]

The Daizenshuu mentions how Cell's process of absorption merges the cyborgs into his framework or something along those lines -- it would explain why he began to take on more of their characteristics as he absorbed them. If #18 was melded into Cell's being then it stands to reason her compositional segment of Cell would have been restored whenever he regenerated.

Now regarding the question of how she could have been removed -- maybe the blunt force trauma caused some type of diffusive reaction as the cyborgs were still relatively new components of his make-up? #18 would have come first as she was the last of the two to be absorbed.

I mean characters lose Ki as they are beaten so maybe when he could no longer maintain super perfect levels or power he had to spit out the last android he absorbed, keeping them in would continue to make his body try and hold onto the perfect form he'd no longer maintain burning him out more. That's just my headcanon.

He's not as large and 17 and 18 combined but they were concious in him so I don't think 18 got remade as a solid form until she got spit out, so the warp kamehamha didn't effect her either way imo.

[LoganForkHands73]

Both #17 and #18 were fused inside Cell's being at a, well, cellular level. Rather horrifyingly, they were kept alive and aware the entire time they were absorbed by Cell, presumably even while he was getting obliterated by Goku's Kamehameha. It's just like how Gohan, Goten, Trunks and Piccolo's bodies remained intact within Super Buu's body even after he got blown to smithereens by Vegetto several times -- although that was more magical in nature, the principle is the same. Cell conveniently bulked himself up twice his size by the time Gohan forced him to vomit up #18. I like to believe that Cell's "power-weighted" form accelerated his body destabilising, but presumably if he had sicked up #18 while at his normal size, she would've been ejected in a miniature form before popping back to normal size. "Look Vegeta, people-popcorn!" Like that.

[Koitsukai]

Maybe they were inside some kind of biological hoi poi capsules, and when Cell took too much damage, one got opened and 18 had to be expelled from Cell.