Chapter 8: The Lord Lood War, Part II

The transformed Mutchi started flailing his whip-like arm appendages at Trunks and Piccolo with rapidly increasing speed.

"He's starting slow, but his whip-arms are speeding up fast! Is he just toying with us until we run out of stamina?" yelled Trunks as he struggled to avoid Mutchi's rapid whiplash swings.

"There's no way to know! His moves are too fast, I can't find an opening to read his mind!" replied Piccolo, "For now, just don't make any hasty moves! Remember, that statue increases dramatically in power even with the weakest of absorbees added to its system!"

"Meaning if either one of us ends up absorbed, we're done for…"

"If we have one advantage, it's the advantage of numbers! Not only did we recover fully on the trip here, but the strain of concentrating on each of our movements while ensuring that his two whips stay coordinated may wear him out in time!" yelled Piccolo, "For now, don't get carried away and try to attack him head-on! That may be what he wants, so he can counterattack at close range!"

"Hehehehe… You sure do a lot of thinking as you fight, don't you?" said Mutchi, "Well, I hope your plan works out for you. Hehehehe…."

For several minutes, Mutchi kept the two at bay while whipping at every corner of the building, leveling the walls and making the setting evening sun visible.

"Now, Trunks!" said Piccolo via telepathy, "I've gotten used to his attacking pattern, I shall be the decoy! Attack him while you're shouldering the setting sun on your back!"

"R-Right! His movements are so complex, if we can read his attack and cause it to backfire, and blind him as icing on the cake, he's through!"

Trunks then concentrated all of his power and raised his Ki to the highest possible extent.

"Here goes!" yelled Trunks as he began to charge a two-handed Ki ball into his palms and then let Piccolo take the lead.

"Hyaaaah!" yelled Piccolo as he charged Mutchi head-on and then backed away immediately as Mutchi's whips both targeted one of his legs, stepping on Mutchi's two whip-hands at the same time afterwards.

"You're through! Haaaaah!" yelled Trunks as he then charged Mutchi shouldering the evening sun intending to blast him to bits at close range, at which point the entire floor quaked, and the collapsed wall and all the tiles of the floor fell on Trunks at once while he was flying toward Mutchi.

"Gaaaaah!" yelled Trunks as he was immediately immobilized, "S-So this was what you were after!"

"Hehehehehe… I thought I said earlier, I noticed you two do a lot of thinking as you fight. But that's the thing with people who think too much. Once they've got you figured out, they never stop to consider that you have another trump card up your sleeve. I knew going after one of you was risky when the other could attack me, so I started small and went after the floor tiles."

"A-And you waited for just the right moment to reveal your trump card…" said Piccolo as he grimaced when his right leg, the one he used to step on Mutchi's two whip-arms began to wither into a darkened, lifeless husk.

"P-Piccolo-san! Y-Your leg!"

"T-This is nothing," said Piccolo as he tore off his right leg and then regenerated it, "but now we know we can't try to subdue him carelessly. Making contact with his limbs will siphon our Ki supply."

"T-This is bad! And we have the robot that turns people to dolls to worry about!"

As Trunks and Piccolo were struggling with their formidable adversary, Motchi, still carrying Pan's shrunken doll form, had reached the central monitor room of the Lood Empire.

"H-Hehehehehe… Mutchi-sama, you are just the greatest! I knew that they were no match for you," said Motchi, "but Lood derives his power to the highest possible extent once he has reached Level 2! If we're going to have the Super Saiyan and that pesky Namekian absorbed into Lood, we definitely need to save them for after we've had Lood ascend!"

"M-Mutchi Motchi-sama!" yelled a large crowd of followers, "We've lost contact with our brethren from Quadrant A! What has become of them? Were the sacrifices we brought from the Western Galaxy not enough?"

"Oh, about that…" said Motchi as he took off his cloak and said, "They are currently involved in the affairs of Mutchi-sama, my master! But don't worry, the sick and elderly among them will soon be fully revitalized once they are inserted into Lood -"

"Sir! But I thought it was blasphemy to utter Lood-sama's name without an honorific! A-And were the seven Dragon Balls not required for Lood-sama's resurrection as well?"

"Heh… Hehehehehehe…" said Motchi as he smirked fiendishly, "Oops, I've let the cat out of the bag."

"C-Cat out of the bag?!" yelled the once-devout followers, "Y-You've lied to us?!"

"Ha! Hahahahaha! There's no point in hiding it anymore, so I will tell you! Your 'Lord' Lood is no god, he is but a machine mutant foretold in the Oracle's fortunes, an invincible cluster of cells that survived two heat deaths of the universe itself, reanimated by Machine Mutant technology!"

"A-A machine mutant?! Then… this entire religion you've amassed – "

"Yes! It was but a farce so that all of this galaxy and the neighboring galaxies' mightiest fighters may be gathered at one place, to bring Lood to his fullest potential!" yelled Motchi deviously, "Sadly, it did appear that after the disbanding of the Freeza Force and after Majin Boo and Babidi's deaths there were only so many great fighters we could add to Lood's system, but they did bring Lood to level 1 and then some!"

"A-And then some?! You don't mean – "

"Yes! Once you and the other fighters gathered at Quadrant A are absorbed into Lood, his transition into Level 2 will be complete!"

"Damn you! Damn you!"

"Just consider it an honor that your lives will be forfeit to bring my Mochan people back to life!" yelled Motchi as he took out a remote, zapping the followers gathered in the floor below him and turning each and every one of them into dolls.

"Heh… Hehehehehe… That went smoothly enough," said Motchi as he seated himself into a chair to observe Mutchi's battle with Trunks and Piccolo, "this monitor will serve to show me the perfect opening to turn either or even both of them into dolls while Mutchi-sama has his way with them. Just one press of this remote, and Lood shall enter Level 3 before the night falls!"

"T-Trunks! Piccolo-san! You can't let that guy win!" thought Pan to herself while still gripped tightly into Motchi's left hand.

"Huff… Huff…" panted Trunks as he wiped some blood off his cheek, "He's not even going slow anymore, at this rate our stamina will deplete before we get a good hit on him and finish him off…"

"Yes, I've had to regenerate two limbs already," said Piccolo via telepathy to avoid informing Mutchi of their thoughts, "but that gives me an idea."

"You sure it's going to work this time, Piccolo-san?" replied Trunks in his thoughts.

"Yes. I haven't had the opening yet to read his mind, but the way he described his slick whip maneuver from before, I'd wager he's already shown us all of his cards and is assured of his victory. That's where we'll strike."

"B-But how? We're weaker than we were when he got us last time, and our advantage in numbers is pretty meaningless when he can control the whole surrounding," thought Trunks, "and even one opening means he'll drain our energy!"

"Yes, we are weaker, and he's gotten cockier," said Piccolo through telepathy, "strategizing is more about how you use the cards you're dealt, Trunks, not how many or how powerful the cards themselves are."

"I-I don't follow…"

"If he wants our energy, we'll give it to him. He's definitely targeted you the most, just like how a light-absorbing creature from the Darkness Planet would target you more for your abundant light energy. Just as he comes after you when he thinks I've gotten desperate and launched a reckless attack, you simply give you the rest of your light energy!"

"I-I see! But I should keep just enough that I don't immediately turn back to normal?"

"Yes. If he notices that you're out of power, he'll just switch targets to me. This has to go just right…" said Piccolo as he backed up in front of Trunks, and then flared up a flight aura.

"NOW!"

"Haaaaaaah!" yelled Trunks as he shot a slow-moving Ki wave at Mutchi, at which point Mutchi avoided it saying, "Hah! I can read your moves!"

Mutchi then grabbed Piccolo, who warped himself behind him, and then targeted Trunks with his other whip-hand.

"Ha! Hahahaha! This was all too easy!"

Piccolo then used his gigantification ability to have his upper body enlarge to 10 times its normal size, breaking out of Mutchi's grip. He then used his enlarged mouth to consume Trunks' energy donation whole, at which point he flipped over and elbowed Mutchi with a massively Ki-charged attack strengthened by his weight. Mutchi's other whip-hand made contact with Trunks and made him revert to normal, but Mutchi being KO'd by Piccolo's move caused the Ki absorption to cease immediately.

"Whew! That was one of the toughest fights I've had in years," said Trunks as he wiped some sweat off his brow and grabbed a sword that had fallen off the walls that Mutchi kept slinging at the two. He then cut Mutchi's whip-hands off and said, "that takes care of this pesky yellow lizard bastard."

"Yes, now we must find where they've taken Pan. Since we can't sense her Ki, it would seem she has either been drugged or turned into a doll like them…"

Just as Piccolo and Trunks were about to relax after a tough fight, the Lood statue suddenly let a glow out of its eyes and then shot a revitalizing ray out of its mouth at Mutchi's unconscious body, and he woke up and restrained both Trunks and Piccolo with his severed whip-hands.

"D-Damn! I didn't count on them being able to do this!" said Piccolo as he tried to break out, only to realize that the whip-hands were still sapping their energy.

"Shit! We should've just killed him when we had the chance!"

"Heh… heheheheh," laughed Mutchi to himself as he levitated Trunks and Piccolo's bodies closer to him, at which point he said, "now, Lood's resurrection is all but complete! I shall give him the greatest and most delectable meal of them all – "

"Well, if there's one weakness they both share, it's that when things have gone their way, they can't stop rambling," said Piccolo to Trunks via telepathy, "and that gives me one last-ditch idea for a plan."

"R-Really? What could get us out of this mess?"

"It's simple. Although he's managed to levitate his severed limbs, it doesn't seem he can reattach them like Majin Boo, nor regenerate them immediately. He's probably only able to manipulate them separately from his body when they're detached, and his Ki absorption speed has gone way down compared to before! Trunks, you still have that sword, cut the whip restraining you and deal the fatal blow to Mutchi when he's most assured of victory!"

"I-I see! You're a genius, Piccolo-san! You're just one ingenious plan after another!" thought Trunks as he pretended to have tasted complete and utter defeat.

"D-Dammit, I'm running out of Ki now," said Trunks as dramatically as possible, "my vision's blurring… I guess this is the end…"

"Ha! Hahahaha! Your Ki will go into reviving Lood, and he shall reach Level 3 one tier at a time!" said Mutchi as he brought Trunks and Piccolo's ensnared bodies within reaching distance of the Lood statue.

"Now's my chance!" yelled Trunks as he turned Super Saiyan, instantly bolstering his strength enough to slice the whip restraining him before stabbing Mutchi right in the neck.

"Gwaaaaack!" yelled Mutchi as the psychic grip restraining Piccolo expired along with his ebbing life, at which point Trunks cut his head off to ensure his demise.

"Heh, that was a good act you were able to pull," said Piccolo as he wiped some sweat off his brow, "but sadly, the Ki taken by his whip-hands don't appear to be returning to our bodies. We've lost quite a bit of stamina from fighting him."

Suddenly, the Lood robot's mouth opened to reveal a speaker function and broadcast Motchi's voice, "M-Mutchi-sensei! I-I swear I won't let your sacrifice go in vain!"

Just then, the Lood statue turned all of the Mutchi Motchi followers that Pan had knocked out earlier with a Kiai into dolls and shot another revitalizing ray at Mutchi's corpse, giving him just barely enough life to have his whip-hands absorb the energy still remaining in his dismembered body, having it be absorbed directly into Lood.

"W-What the?!" yelled Trunks as the ground then began shaking, as the Lood statue cracked open like a walnut as Mutchi's corpse completely disintegrated to a mass of energy, and all of the dolls in Quadrant A were absorbed into the statue along with Mutchi's power. It morphed into a humongous, yellow and short-limbed robotic monster with the body proportions of an infant.

"Lood! Lood! Level 2 achieved! Lood!"

"T-This is bad! All the energy we've lost to Mutchi has been absorbed into that robot, along with the followers that were knocked unconscious!" said Piccolo, "And if my hunch is correct, that robot has probably added Mutchi's Ki absorbing function to itself by integrating him!"

"S-So if we paused to eat the Senzu and get caught in his grip…"

"Yes. We'll probably give him the opening to make himself even stronger. There'd be no stopping him."

"This just can't get any worse…"

Meanwhile, Motchi was frantically typing a passcode into the central computer, causing it to read, "contacting the Oracle. Transmission within range. Starting video call in 5-4-3-"

"I don't have five seconds! Start communication already, damn it!"

"Hello, Mutchi Motchi… Or shall I say, Motchi of the Mocha planet! What is your emergency?" said the hooded figure holding a purplish-glowing crystal ball with a crimson, high-tech orb floating inside.

"Y-You said that if we assisted with your Lord Lood's revival, both my and Mutchi-sama's lives would be guaranteed! I even gave all of the sickly people who survived the Styxxan Plague on my planet as sacrifices for your little Machine Mutant cyborg!"

"Oh yes… I did promise that," said the hooded figure, "but rejoice, for the life of your idol and master has gone to a much more grand and fulfilling purpose! The energy amassed by Lood shall bring into motion the revival of two of my most esteemed masterpieces!"

"M-Masterpieces?! I thought that you were the Oracle, the all-seeing who discovered Lood's core by accident! You-You promised me! That Lood's power shall heal the sickly and ailing! That it will be the revival of my people!"

"Hehehehehe… Did I say that? I suppose there's no point in hiding things now that Lood has already reached his second stage, so I shall know who you've been serving before you meet your end," said the "Oracle" as the screen suddenly faded into a gray, static blur before his form changed into a blue-skinned, visor wearing scientist with a bushy, orange beard, "I am the great Doctor Mu of the M2 Planet! Lood was but a prototype of mine to build the ultimate Machine Mutants through the energy it contains! The Styxxan Plague was but a nice trinket I acquired in Rild and my failed invasion of the Planet Styx, and it was easy to have a patrol robot spray it into Planet Mocha's atmosphere."

"Y-You! You tricked me!" yelled Motchi heartbrokenly, "I-I've been dancing to your tune the whole time?!"

"Hehehehehe… Where there's a crawler, there's a runner above him, and there are the fliers who soar higher still. You've served your purpose, you can sulk there until the Saiyan and Namekian have been captured and when that happens, you four can all join the others inside Lood and provide for my two creations the ultimate power supply!" yelled Mu nefariously as he tauntingly showed Motchi the same exact remote that he was using on the Lood followers, reminding him that his fate of being turned to a doll and eaten by Lood was inevitable.

Meanwhile, Trunks and Piccolo were trying and failing to deal any damage to the Lood robot.

"Huff… Huff…" panted Trunks as he stared at his torn gloves, with blood seeping out of the open wounds on his knuckles, "I can't put a dent in this thing at all! I've been trying to conserve the Ki to turn Super Saiyan again, but it's surprisingly fast! I can barely read it!"

"Yes, this could be our toughest battle yet on this journey thus far," said Piccolo, "pausing to eat the Senzu will not be an option. At this point, there's only one thing I can do."

"W-What is it? Piccolo-san, y-you're a genius, you must have a plan to beat this thing!"

"I'm returning you the favor of you giving me my energy. Make it count, Trunks," said Piccolo as he mustered the last of his energy and then shot a mass of Ki at Trunks, dropping to the floor powerlessly afterwards.

"P-Piccolo-san!" yelled Trunks as he grinded his teeth so hard that he bled from his lips, at which point Lood stomped on Piccolo's motionless body and crushed him into a bloody mess.

"PICCOLO-SAN!" yelled Trunks at the top of his lungs as the Ki Piccolo donated reached his body, at which point he was revitalized enough to turn Super Saiyan again.

Mu then said over the monitor, "Feh! So the Namekian figured out that Lood was toying with them to ensure that we could capture them and absorb their group alive, eh? No matter, with his energy depleted he was no good for Lood anyway."

Mu then pressed his remote, zapping Motchi as he spaced out in desperation and turning him into a doll. He then commanded Lood over the remote, "Lood! Absorb those two and any other follower that may be in doll form in this vicinity! You shall enter your mightiest form yet!"

"Lood! Lood! Transformation to Level 3, commencing!"

Lood then levitated Pan, Motchi and many other dolls scattered throughout the Lood planet and sucked them all in at lightning speed, entering Level 3 afterwards. He then heated up and entered a red form, before spitting out the six-star Dragon Ball from his mouth saying, "Foreign substance! No life energy usable in object!"

Trunks, biting his lip again so hard that his blood was dripping onto the ground, then said, "You can beat me up, you can even usurp control over my company. I can take care of all of that myself, I don't need kid gloves. But when you make my friends sacrifice their lives for me, and make a plaything out of an entire planet for your selfish little purposes…."

Trunks then entered Grade 3 and yelled, "YOU HAVE TO PAY! HAAAAA!"

Trunks then shot a Final Flash of unprecedented proportions at the Lood robot, engulfing a third of the planet in the blast and destroying everything as far as the eye could see. Lood seemed defeated, and Trunks collapsed onto his knees on the floor, and saw the Ultimate Dragon Ball rolling on the ground and said, "What good is this now when I've sacrificed my friends…. Piccolo-san, Pan…. Pan-chan…"

Trunks ripped off his neck scarf and punched a crater onto the ground, at which point Lood emerged again from the rubble.

"W-What?!"

"Ha! Hahahahaha! You fool!" said Mu through Lood's mouth via transmission from M2, "That was a magnificent blast, it would've even obliterated Lood! Or, it would have if I hadn't specifically installed in it a plasma reflective property onto its armored skin, giving it complete invulnerability to all energy attacks from the outside!"

"T-This can't be!"

"Now! You shall perish! I would have you eaten, but it seems your energy is depleted after that attack! Goodbye!"

Lood then backhanded Trunks, knocking him hundreds of miles away into a jungle where Trunks fell straight into a 400-foot tall amazon tree and hung on a branch, apparently defeated.

"S-So this is where it ends, huh…" thought Trunks to himself, "It was a short life now that I think about it. Then again, I died once when I was a child, so I guess this isn't even the first time…"

Just then, Goten and Oob beating Trunks senseless when he collapsed during a training session mere days before the intergalactic journey began flashed into the battered Saiyan warrior's mind.

"Trunks-kun! We keep telling you and telling you, you can't lose your cool like that and expend your energy so fast! At equal levels of power like ours, it's always who can keep his cool and keep his head on his shoulders that takes home the prize!" rang Goten's voice in Trunks' head.

"Yes, that's right, Trunks-san! Your issue with rage is that you never manage to harness it, you're always just trying to take out your rage as quickly as possible so you can go back to feeling normal! But Goku-san always taught me, rage isn't something to blind yourself with, and it doesn't control you! You are the master of your own strength!" preached Oob in Trunks' faint memory as his consciousness continued to dim.

"I am… the master of my own strength…" muttered Trunks as he reminisced on his own experience from weeks ago, "my rage doesn't control me… and…."

"Yes." Said Oob and Goten both.

"It isn't your weakest trait, Trunks-kun! It's your greatest weapon, just like it was for my brother Gohan!"

"Rage will bring out power you haven't yet mastered. These two weeks before the journey may not be enough for you to harness it quite yet, but you will soon learn…" said Oob as his voice continued to ring loudly in Trunks' battered skull.

"You are the master of your own strength! And rage is your greatest weapon!"

"Rage… is…" said Trunks as he suddenly mustered the strength to turn Super Saiyan, "MY GREATEST WEAPON! HAAAAAAA!"

Trunks flared up his aura fiercer than ever before, and was surrounded by streaks of powerful electricity. He destroyed the amazon forest with his aura, and landed on the floor and opened his eyes, at which point his new, enhanced senses saw Lood a hundred miles away.

"T-This… This power… it's the true surpassing of the Super Saiyan! SUPER SAIYAN 2!"

Trunks took a deep breath and flew headfirst into Lood, striking him precisely in the heart and piercing him with the image of a gold-colored Oozaru appearing in his wake. Lood began to collapse and shot a last-ditch wave of energy at Trunks, who punched it away with a powerful uppercut before then flinging the sword he used to cut Mutchi earlier at Lood's head, shattering it instantly.

Trunks then sighed and returned to normal before grabbing the sword he'd thrown like a boomerang, at which point all of the people absorbed by Lood returned to the ruins of the Lood cult palace as rays of light. Pan was next to Motchi and the Para Para Brothers were among the many followers freed.

"P-Pan-chan! Y-You're alive!" said Trunks as he threw his sword away and embraced Pan, causing her to blush and try to push him away, saying, "Y-You're embarrassing me, Trunks! I-I was never dead, we were actually taken to some weird pocket dimension inside that robot where we've been trying this whole time to destroy his core, but then you managed to do that with a single punch! You were amazing, just like my dad!"

"Feh! Some amazing fighter I am," said Trunks as he threw the six-star Dragon Ball onto the ground and lamented, "what good is this Dragon Ball when I can't even save my friends?! I've been getting mad and mad and mad all the time ever since I became the Capsule Corp. president, and the one time I finally manage to make use of my rage and push myself to a new level, I can't even save my friends! Piccolo-san, I'm sor-"

"Sorry about what?" said Piccolo nonchalantly as he descended into the ground, fully clothed in his weighted cape.

"H-Huh?!" blurted Trunks, flabbergasted, "B-But you were… you were squashed into a bloody mess by Lood! I saw your body!"

"You saw the remains of the body I discarded. In that very moment, I channeled all of my energy into my head and decapitated myself so my brain would survive the attack and regenerate out of line of Lood's sight. Silly Trunks, I am connected to the Ultimate Dragon Balls, if I had died they'd have turned to stone," said Piccolo with a slightly twisted, yet happy and proud smile on his face, clearly overjoyed to see Trunks' progress as a fighter.

"Y-You tricked me! I-I really thought you were dead!"

"I wouldn't say that I tricked you when the hints were laid out before you and were clearly obvious. It'd be more accurate to say that I predicted you would be too blinded by your rage over my supposed death to think clearly. Hahahahaa!"

"W-Why you! I'll get you for this, Piccolo-san!" yelled Trunks as he again turned Super Saiyan 2, at which point Piccolo held his hands out in panic and said, "T-Trunks! I-I didn't mean you any harm, and I even saved our bag of Senzu by stuffing it in my mouth before Lood squashed me! And I'm still drained after that fight-"

"Shut up! You'll pay for this!"

"T-Trunks, you know…" said Pan.

"Huh?"

"That's the first time you called me Pan-chan, isn't it? I thought you hated me, for ditching Uncle Goten on Earth and tagging along!"

"I-I guess it was just the slip of the tongue. I was just so glad to see you survived…" said Trunks as he tried and failed to make excuses for his change in demeanor.

"Hah! You're blushing, Trunks! You don't have to lie, I know I'm pretty!"

"I-I don't like little kids!"

Meanwhile, Mu looked at the purple power orb at the M2 Planet and said, "So the three pesky ants from Earth survived their battle against Lood after all. No matter, Lood was able to transfer the energy he'd absorbed into this orb before his demise. The next phase of our plan is well underway… Isn't it, my two babies?"

A thunderstorm stormed the area, lighting a large tube in which a machine mutant was in the middle of gestation into view, as well as showing the image of a tall humanoid laid onto an autopsy table…

To be continued…