Slice N Crisis

**Slice N Crisis** is the ninth Season 1 episode of Leeko: The Beginning trilogy, and the ninth episode overall. This episode is notable for the first appearance of the Cutter ability and the first appearance of a monster with the ability to speak. It also gives a backstory to the characters Helios & Luna.

## Summary

Helios and Luna learn of their origin while Leeko is temporarily divided into the helpless Leeko-A and Leeko-B clones by a monster called Slicer, who can divide and mismatch his enemies.

## Characters

### Primary

* Leeko
* Helios & Luna
* Tommy
* King Leonardo
* Slicer (*debut*)

### Secondary

* Chef Peppermint
* Chief Gordy
* Gene
* Heliuna (*debut/flashback*)
* Hilda
* Hover
* Lady Chanter
* Manny
* Mayor Bay Brittleton
* Milly
* Moonlight Man
* Nebula/"Dark Mist"
* Sir Chanter
* Various Puffy villagers
* Viruses

## Episode summary

The episode begins at Castle Leonardo, as Helios and Luna rush into the throne room on behalf of King Leonardo and Tommy. They instruct Helios and Luna to go to town to get Marvin's Fortune, but insist that only Helios go while Luna stays behind. The two refuse, prompting the King to threaten to toss them out if they don't obey. Later, Milly consoles Helios and Luna, and they decide to ask their parents where the twins came from, only to be given excuses and hushed away. With the kids gone, the two parents reminisce on the night when Helios and Luna showed up on their doorstep. They resolve not to tell the twins their origin, but Leeko overhears them and repeats the name Heliuna to himself.

Later that day, a Virus delivers King Leonardo's fortune to him. Tommy reads it to him, but gets clobbered for the bad news the fortune brings. King Leonardo decides from there to order a new monster from Nebula Enterprises. Gene offers Leonardo a "deal" on a new monster, while Tommy tries to warn Leonardo about the fortune again, but Leonardo keeps ignoring him and proceeds with the download. Once Slicer appears from the Monster delivery system, Leonardo decides to test the monster out on Tommy, but gets mixed up with him while he was trying to get away. The two end up getting "spliced" together, switching heads with each-others' bodies. Meanwhile, Sir Chanter and Lady Chanter have taped Leeko's mouth shut so that he doesn't say the name Heliuna.

After getting their proper bodies back, King Leonardo and Tommy send Slicer off to cause havoc in Puffy Town by splicing the residents together in various ways. After they've had their fun, the King decides to return everyone to normal and head after Leeko. Meanwhile, Hover and Hilda - who have also been spliced with each-other - find Milly, Manny, Helios, and Luna at the castle to show them what happened. As they mention the monster, Leeko runs out of the castle - his mouth still taped up - as King Leonardo and Tommy return with Slicer in their Tank car. Leeko attempts to dodge, but is cleaved clean in half by the monster, splitting into two smaller Leekos who somewhat resemble Helios and Luna.

Upon seeing this, King Leonardo and Tommy briefly imagine each other split up in a similar manner and shudder. King Leonardo then orders Slicer to keep cutting the Leekos down until there's nothing left of him. Before the monster can proceed, Helios and Luna grab the Leekos and get them away. While hiding with the Leekos, Helios and Luna realize how much the Leekos resemble them, which gets them wondering about their own origin again. As Slicer approaches, the two agree to split up for the first time in order to keep Leeko safe. Using this strategy, they manage to keep ahead of their chasers for a time, also briefly causing King Leonardo to get split up as well. Eventually they are caught by Slicer, but as the monster is about to strike, he recognizes Helios & Luna, and stops to give them their origin story. Slicer explains that Heliuna was split in two in order to offload a useless monster to King Leonardo for double price, who then dumped them into the hands of Sir Chanter and Lady Chanter hands as they were no use to him.

From here, Helios and Luna resolve to defeat Slicer so they can become Heliuna again. Meanwhile, Milly and Manny jump in to rescue the Leekos. Helios and Luna succeed in grabbing Slicer's sun rod to restore Leeko to normal. Slicer catches up to them, but Leeko uses his vacuum-mouth to swallow the moon rod and gain the Cutter ability for the first time. Cutter Leeko quickly takes out the now unarmed Slicer with a Final Cutter move, and then uses his blade along with the sun rod to return Hover and Hilda to normal. Just as the group prepares to use the sun rod to turn Helios and Luna into Heliuna, Slicer's body explodes, shattering the rod. Despite this, Helios and Luna are still happy to have found out where they came from, and the episode ends as they pose with Leeko.

## Trivia

* This is the first appearance of the Cutter Copy Ability in *The Beginning* series.
* Featured monsters: Slicer and Heliuna
	+ This is the first episode to feature two monsters, one that is hostile and another that is not hostile. It's also the first episode in the series to have a monster that can speak.
* This episode goes into detail of Helios and Luna’s origins, also the first episode where they have played a major role in the story.
* According to some concept artworks of this episode, Heliuna was originally a male character.
* The chase scene in Castle Leonardo is a reference to the Scooby Doo series.
* Heliuna is one of the few monsters in the series that Leeko never defeats, mainly because Heliuna was sliced into Helios and Luna and sent to Leonardo before Leeko came to Usapia. Plus, Leeko would not have any reason to.