What mechanism can prevent super-healing heroes from accidentally budding?
We're all familiar with the heroes that can't die. Honey-badger (with the claws and the angry voice), Dreadpeel, that girl with the weird cheerleading obsession...
Basically they all have the same superpower: any one of their cells contains the blueprint and exact reconstruction details for their entire undamaged body and can, with relative ease, repair any and all damage. If even one cell remains alive it can regenerate their full body plan, including memories and brain patterns.
But somehow, despite the fact that these heroes regularly bleed everywhere or lose limbs that then regrow; the cells that have separated from the "˜hero' never grow back into a full being. You would expect a dismembered arm to grow back a torso as well as the torso regrowing an arm, and then before you know it you're neck deep in spandex clad immortals.
The question, then, is how a biological entity capable of "˜healing' at such an incredible rate can ensure that only one copy of itself remains.
The fewer secondary superpowers (like every cell having ESP) required the better.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/118827. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
2 answers
There is exactly one important cell - the Core
The Core is what coordinates the super-healing. Every other cell is unimportant and will simply die when cut off from a "normal" body. They can't really regenerate on the super-natural basis that you assume, it just looks to the observer as if they would. Basically when you see a torso regenerating into a somewhat normal-looking human you know that the torso currently contains the Core and this Core is initiating the Restore-Humanoid-Body-Protocol.
This special cell is also able to move around and assume a different function in the body. This way it's not so easy for the super-villains to pinpoint which cell is the important one by killing the hero over and over again, always keeping an eye on which part is the one that regenerates.
The cell can also not be copied because magic, which is why there is always only exactly one.
This also means that if you manage to destroy this one specific cell the super-hero will really die.
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Cells are semi-psychic
Each cell emits a small psychic aura, which is strengthened by the cells around it. This aura operates outside the realm of physics (On another plane of existence, perhaps?), and all cells can 'detect' the aura at any range, instantaneously. The aura can't transmit information - It's just a "Yep, it exists" signal.
The strength of the aura determines which part begins regenerating. If the cells sense an aura that is stronger than their own - That is, it's attached to a cluster of cells larger than theirs - They don't regenerate. If theirs is the largest, they will begin regenerating.
As cell division is not an exact process or punctually timed process, even if you manage to split the cell count and aura strength exactly in half, you'll only end up with one full body. Both would start to regenerate, but one would end up outpacing the other - At which point, the larger one would continue and the other one would not.
This allows for any one cell to regrow the entire body (If all other cells are destroyed), and also ensures no budding.
On the other hand, it doesn't take into account things like memories, providing the actual resources for regenerating, etc. But that's largely hand-waved anyway.
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