Piccolo and Lapis vanished at once, expelling rings of dust in their wake as they rushed toward each other and smashed their forearms in the center of the entire distance between them. The two exchanged blows and kicks but answered each other's call flawlessly while using the backlash from their knee strikes to vault away from each other and backflip like two duelists counting up their ten paces.
The Namekian warrior snarled while thrusting his palms rapidly and expelling sparkling Ki blasts with electric properties. Artificial Human No. 17 hunkered down, crossing up his arms to defend against Piccolo's barrage of Ki blasts. The Android vainly expected Piccolo to waste too much power and whittle down the vast difference between them in terms of sheer power and speed.
While 17 grunted and felt the cruel expulsions of Ki socking into his tempered body with a sharp, electric bite and skid across the ground, both fighters knew deep down that Lapis had a good ace with his infinite stamina. One that had the potential to turn the tables, given Piccolo's impaired condition. The question remained if that advantage was weighty enough on its own to let Lapis overcome these odds.
Piccolo wasn't just going to batter his opponent from afar with Ki blasts. The sneaky Namekian extended his left arm and grabbed Android 17's heel, pulling him in and slamming into the ground behind him before dragging the discombobulated warrior back in and punting him in the gut. 17's eyes dulled out and bulged while his mouth spat up an excess of slobber. Piccolo's kick tilted Android 17 off the ground and left him clutching his devastated gut.
With a roundhouse kick, the Ultimate Namekian sent 17 hurling across the mountainous patch of land before once again using his elongated limbs to whip and claw at Lapis from afar. Given Piccolo's long-range method of fighting, there was little that the overwhelmed Artificial Human could do. With what seemed like an average slap of his extended arm, Piccolo secured a grip and, instead of pulling 17 to him, dragged himself across to his enemy with a devastating push kick to Lapis' chest that stomped the Android down into the ground and dug out a crater underneath from the powerful shock wave.
Since the formation of the crater left both warriors in mid-air, Piccolo transitioned into a roundhouse kick before shooting his knee up into 17's face. The Android soared into the skies while Piccolo pursued after him with a stoic expression. The rushing Namekian had to stop in mid-air while Lapis yelled out and expelled an explosive Ki wave out of his entire body just to get some space between the bullying opponent and himself.
The runt was fast. Even with full knowledge and expectation of seeing his limitless stamina in action, Piccolo still couldn't see it coming and read it well enough. At a moment's notice, despite being properly pummeled and pushed into a corner, the bruised Android just vanished immediately after concluding his destructive Ki bubble burst and appeared in front of Piccolo, smashing his elbow into the Namekian's solar plexus.
While Piccolo did his best to stonewall that attack, Lapis didn't waste much time, nor did he spare any blinks to appreciate the fact that Piccolo withstood his attempts at opening him up with only minor damage and barely any flinching. The Artificial Human swooped down with a leg sweep that flipped Piccolo up, rolling in mid-air, and then formed twin Ki spheres in both hands. With his compromised aerial position, there was little Piccolo could do to protect himself and thus Lapis drove both of his Ki balls into Piccolo's chest, sending the Ultimate Namekian flying away with a scorch on his chest while 17 took a breather and wiped the slobber and whatever Dr. Puri substituted the twins' blood with off of his lip.
"This isn't possible…" Android 17 grumbled, looking at his bio-goop-stained hand as it quivered in his blurry sight. "We are Artificial Humans, perfect fighting machines created to be able to kill anyone in existence. Immortal and unrelenting… Nobody should be able to match us, let alone push us to a corner!"
"Unrelenting?" Piccolo cracked his neck and rolled his knuckles, readying for a follow-up round with the Artificial Human. "Proving you wrong almost sounds more alluring than making you get gone in an instant."
"Y-You…" 17 seethed, clenching his fists together as he scowled in Piccolo's direction. "You just got lucky, that's all! Don't overexert yourself, old man!"
"If you truly believe that, then you'll never be able to keep up with us again," Piccolo closed his eyes, looking almost disappointed. "To face a challenge and harden yourself to overcome it is the essence of martial arts. If you keep relying on your youth and vigor and believe that everyone that got one over you merely lucked out, you'll never run out of bad luck. In fact, the only ones you will score will be because of that same luck."
"So full of it… If you won't stuff it, I will!" Lapis yelled out, extending his hand and forming a full-power Ki ball in his hand that blasted off in a round trajectory, careening straight at Piccolo. The Ultimate Namekian straightened his back out and turned to the side, letting his arms hang down in a relaxed state. In a blink, he expelled a growl and forced a Kiai wave that detonated the Ki ball long before it reached Piccolo.
"You've got the boundless talent to match that stamina of yours and you waste it all on temper tantrums…" Piccolo stated before closing the distance between him and his opponent in a blink. Lapis freaked out, unable to prepare for such a sudden advance. He lashed out with an elbow strike but it simply didn't register on Piccolo as the Ultimate Namekian swiped with his hand, smacking Android 17 flying aside like a rag doll.
Piccolo wasn't content with just humiliating his opponent with a smack like that. He rushed in pursuit and shoved his foot into 17's gut, repositioning him in a stunned state in mid-air as he cocked his fists up for a pummeling. The Namekian roared out while delivering a banging bash into Lapis' abdomen, bending the Artificial Human out of shape and whiting his eyes out while threatening to force the young man to belch out all the mechanical contents of his innards with a single blow.
Displaying the true unrelenting spirit of a martial artist, Piccolo whipped his leg into the side of 17's knee, leaving it at an odd-looking turn that disabling any ability of the Android to regain his footing and answer Piccolo's beat down. Seeing his opponent reeling and utterly overwhelmed, Piccolo shoved his foot into 17's face and blasted him out of his sight before employing his elongated limbs to beat on his opponent in mid-air. A backhanded lash left 17 rolling in the air while Piccolo stretched his hand out and grabbed the hold of his wrist.
"Destructive Demon Wave!" Piccolo yelled out, expelling a blinding flash in an instant but stopped himself in mid-air unnaturally, almost like he saw Piccolo's attack coming, and pirouetted away from the danger zone. The overwhelmed Android staggered in mid-air, clutching his ribs and spitting up blood from both his mouth and the bruises that decorated his face. "The difference between you and me is that I can recognize your skill in evading this attack and not just blame it on a lack of luck on my part."
"You shouldn't get cocky, Piccolo. My superior hearing let me hear the tendons in your wrist tense up and the immense data in our archives immediately tipped me off to your Destructive Demon Wave. That same data let me identify the range of your attack and told me where I'd be safe from it," Lapis cackled even though he did so through a grievous pummeling. Piccolo had to hand it to the brat. He knew that Android 17 registered every punch he took and felt pain from it. His infinite stamina had nothing to do with the no-quit spirit of this guy.
Despite being pushed to a corner, the truly unrelenting Android charged right back at the face of adversity and threw a right-hand cross at Piccolo's jaw. An attack that was as basic as they come. Wanting to prove a point to his opponent and further test the limits of his guts, Piccolo took it square in the jaw and barely flinched from it. Without even expressing his shock at his opponent's hardiness, Lapis vanished and dived from up above with an elbow drop aimed at the back of Piccolo's head. It hit straight at a vital point. Usually, direct blows to the back of the neck meant certain death, yet Piccolo just raised his head back up and cracked his neck to the sides.
"You said you had data on all of us. In that case, you should have known that us demons are tougher to put down than humans, and merely hitting a few vital points won't do," Piccolo hissed while Lapis retreated to a safe distance.
"I knew that. I don't want to snap victory away by just hitting a cheap shot! I'm gonna beat the snot out of you, old man, fair and square!" Lapis growled out, putting his dukes up again and charging at Piccolo.
The Artificial Human leaned aside from Piccolo's jab and threw a backhand of his own, whipping it into Piccolo's face only for his backhand to bounce off of it like thudding at a brick wall. Android 17 shoved his foot at the side of Piccolo's knee, taking away a move from Piccolo's book to achieve a much greater effect at crippling an opponent of flesh and blood as opposed to the emergency-mending body of an Android. Sensing stumbling in his opponent, Lapis drove both of his hands into Piccolo's face with resonating palm strikes to flinch his opponent before diving under for a devastating power blow to Piccolo's gut.
Piccolo actually felt that one. He belched up slobber mixed with blood as he staggered back. He almost felt embarrassed at his own growling from the sting of that power blow. Displaying the moxie of a staunch champion, Lapis dived from up above, slamming his elbow into Piccolo's scalp from up above and grounding the Ultimate Namekian before dashing away to clutch at what was broken.
"You've got heart, kid," Piccolo snickered while kicking back up on his feet and rubbing his aching gut. He couldn't toughen himself up right. Because of the damage that he still carried around from the tremendous full-body poisoning he took on Planet Namek, he was far from a hundred percent. Still, the spirit of this brat left an impression. Not since training Gohan did Piccolo feel as impressed with the next generation of martial artists.
"Short of breath? That's too bad, I'm gonna kick your ass, old-timer," Lapis rolled his wrists with a smirk while panting in the torment of a battered body himself. In a way, Piccolo envied having a youthful body that'll stay in its prime and the spirit of youth of feeling utterly invincible for the rest of one's days.
"Careful, if you get cocky–I'll blow you away and waste all that talent of yours," Piccolo waved his wrist before stretching his arms out to the side as he widened his feet and turned his knees to the side. With a sharp, sparkling shimmer, sizzling spheres of energy manifested in Piccolo's extended palms as his muscles pulsed and tensed up to the point of driving his veins to bulge out from stress. "This is me attacking you seriously."
From the looks of it, Artificial Human 17 appeared to be taking Piccolo's declaration of an incoming serious attack with enough respect to it. He took a proper fighting pose and began slowly dragging his back foot further behind as Piccolo's surging power intimidated even the normally cool and stoic youth. Piccolo's Ki exploded in a violent, electric aura that overwhelmed the daylight itself and forced the skies over the head to darken as dust and debris began swirling around the almighty Namekian and forcing Lapis to clutch for balance in the presence of such awesome might.
With a deafening and defiant roar, Piccolo thrust his arms out, shooting a barrage of Ki blasts at Android 17. The intimidated warrior transitioned into a full-on dash backward, looking out for incoming blasts to swat aside. Though with their current difference in power, Lapis visibly doubted if he could even swat a single blast aside. It wasn't long before the cocky Android realized that Piccolo's aim must have been off as very few of the countless Ki blasts truly threatened him directly.
"Did I move too far back?" Artificial Human No. 17 dropped his terror with a mocking expression. "Didn't realize that you were near-sighted…"
"I warned you not to drop your guard, imbecile…" Piccolo hissed while stroking his nose with the back of his hand. It took Lapis a few more blinks before he realized that the energy blasts that missed him were all suspended in mid-air. That was when the shock and awe returned to the Android's face. Though, before he could switch into a better position where he wasn't surrounded by impending destruction from all sides, the Ki blasts began turning purple and amping up before raining down in a homing trajectory, headed straight for the enemy.
One by one, the blasts joined in a blinding chain reaction of detonations and a blazing energy dome that grew vaster and vaster with more and more pelting Ki blasts of Piccolo's Hellzone Grenade joining in on the grand destruction. Mountains that stood hundreds of kilometers away split and crumbled from the pressure and the shaking ground beneath them. Winds howled in hurricanes while the darkened skies lashed out in lightning. The ruined ground beneath the warriors' feet crumbled and ruptured in fissures as the aftermath of the Hellzone Grenade became a bubbly assemblage of molded blasts that formed something grander and much flashier.
With the raining energy bullets ceasing, the resulting cloud of dust didn't take too long to clear out while Piccolo stretched his neck and kept his eyes on his opponent, or at least where one was meant to be. He couldn't quite track Artificial Human No. 17, so Piccolo had to rely on his other senses. His eyesight and impeccable hearing to keep up and fend off any surprise attacks. While he had a confident edge over his enemy, Android 17 had already proven that he could shake Piccolo's ribs if he puts his whole heart into it.
Only a pleasant hum filled the air after the collapsing ground shut up and gave way to it. With more and more of the dust clearing out, Lapis stood in the epicenter of the calamitous devastation with his arms stretched out and a green energy barrier covering him up while an emerald shine glittered from around its edges.
"Nearly got me with that one… But that was pretty hefty, I wonder how much Ki you've wasted on this?" Artificial Human No. 17 hovered over an abyss of cracked ground while disengaging his barrier after the period of time that the technique stayed active concluded.
"More than you'd think…" Piccolo closed his eyes before pointing over his head with his index finger.
"Huh?" Android 17 looked up and scanned the dark clouds, looking absolutely baffled by what his enemy was pointing at before the energy readings from his scanning technology came in. 17 went fully pale in the face as his mouth jarred open and the overwhelmed Android couldn't even muster up a movement other than quaking to protect himself.
Over the clouds, surrounding the entirety of Earth's atmosphere, hung millions more of Ki blasts Piccolo held back until a better time to test his opponent's mettle. With his hand being revealed, the Ultimate Namekian sighed and opened his eyes. With his arms crossed and a stern look on his face, he intended to give this cocky brat a chance to walk a different path before obliterating him whole.
"You've made a critical error in showing this technique to me earlier and using it to block a meager attack. Knowing that you had a technique like that barrier of yours available, I could play around it," Piccolo explained before clutching his fist. "Hellzone Grenade!" he barked out with pride as millions of Ki blasts scattered all around the atmosphere, hurled back to obliterate the entire West City outskirts and crush his foe for him.
With Lapis' grunts of pain filling the air, Piccolo didn't have a single speck of doubt on the question of if his attack landed or not. Each building-sized blast of Hellzone Grenade planted firmly into the devastated soil and ruptured it further, leading to the entire landscape crumbling into a bottomless hole with just a handful of solid platforms of charred stone staying tall where they stood.
Lapis laid stretched out over one of the devastated pillars of stone with his arms and feet cradled in front of him and still shaking from the aftershock. Black smoke trailed off of his bruises as it took the battered Android a few more seconds after the hellfire had concluded before he collapsed on his back and began panting with a tormented expression on his face. Most of his clothes had been tattered, and the exposed flesh and muscle shined with bloody bruises and burns. The left side of the Android's face didn't seem to mesh well with pummeling from the outside combined with an artificial skeleton from the inside as it had swelled up from the two-side conflict as neither Piccolo's fists nor Lapis' skull gave way, which meant that only his flesh was left to do so.
"You're done," Piccolo stated, crossing his arms. "You've put up amazing resistance for someone who fights just for the sake of it, but you should use your eternal body to train up and become a better martial artist and a better person instead of throwing it all away for your pride or cruelty."
"Wh… What are you talking… About?" Artificial Human No. 17 fumbled while trying to force something solid under him so that he could rise back on his feet and put his dukes up when his entire body yelled about major system failure. "I have… Infinite stamina… I can go on… Forever…"
"Damn, you're really making me blow you up for good, at this rate," Piccolo snarled in objection to his opponent's persistence to keep up his vain attempts at tiring his opponent out. While it was true that Piccolo spent energy fighting but Lapis' body would have failed long before Piccolo felt tuckered out. The Namekian was simply far too strong.
Just as he raised his hands up and moved them to the center of his chest, igniting his brilliant and transparent aura and bulking his entire body out, the ridges over Piccolo's eyes raised in a snap as he turned around and canceled out any intents at finishing the battle at hand. Even Piccolo's wildest assumptions about how powerful someone could get were shaken by an awe-inspiring explosion of pure power far off in the west.
While initially confused, it didn't take long for Lapis' radar systems to pick up that soaring, infinite tower of power that appeared to shoot off over the clouds of what the Android even found possible. The dire expression of battle wear faded away, and the swollen lump over Lapis' eye swallowed it all up as the healthy one gapped in shock.
"That Ki… It can't be…" Piccolo hissed. "Trunks?"
"Trunks? Did you say Trunks!?" 17 huffed out, almost fumbling over on his knees and falling down on his front from exertion. "But… How can this be? My radar shouldn't be registering his power output!"
"It's true that Trunks is almost converted into an Artificial Human himself. Though what you are sensing right now isn't his Android power. That is meaningless in the face of what he has achieved as a Saiyan. By feeling the crux of simple human emotion, loss, regret, joy, and hope for the future too, he's become far more powerful than the strongest machine with a singular purpose could ever be. Challenging perfect and calculating machines and toughening yourself up to overcome their peerless challenge is the essence of martial arts. Through endless training and self-improvement, even an ordinary martial artist can surpass the efficiency of a machine," Piccolo said with a grumpy tone, wondering if anything he was saying was registering in the head of his thick-skulled opponent.
"Tsk… This is hopeless…" Lapis staggered back and collapsed on his bottom, staring off into the void where an explosion of golden aura revealed an aurora of flashing light to brighten up the gloomy skies. "That guy really is the strongest now, huh?"
"He could be…" Piccolo closed his eyes. "Or… You could work hard and toughen yourself up and surpass him. I've already told you, you've got talent as boundless as your stamina. You're not just an ordinary machine either. You and your sister, you're different from those other Androids, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I guess…" Lapis stood up, clutching his bruised and twitching arm. "The old hag modeled us to be perfect assistants. To work for her without tiring out. We weren't even all that strong initially, since we were prototypes for what she wanted to make her son and herself into in the future. We got to where we are by testing the limits of our new bodies, even though the old hag demanded we kept our fun secret."
"Do you want to live your life in servitude? Seems like a lousy way of spending eternal youth," Piccolo scowled. "I'm not much of an expert on those things but… Son, Chayote and Trunks, even Vegeta, it seems… They've all grown better people and martial artists settling down and living a normal life while training to better themselves with each opportunity they have. It could work for you two as well."
"Of course, neither of us wants to serve that old hag!" Lapis objected passionately. "We started out as kids, doing chores for the old man for candy! With time, our rewards grew, but we didn't even notice when we became lab hands and then… Lab rats. What's the point of having an eternal, powerful body if all you can do with it is serve someone else out of fear she'll turn you off and eat you up to become more powerful herself? Are you telling me you'd let us just live our lives like that?"
"The dominant part of me is the reincarnation of an actual Demon King. Yamcha robbed thirsty and dying people in the Diablo Dessert for their capsules and money. Krillin sought to become strong so that he could let off the steam and frustration he lived through being bullied in the Orin Temple by bullying other people, those weaker than himself. Chayote and Vegeta were both Saiyans who wanted to wipe all life out on this planet and sell it off to gain favor with Frieza. Son was originally meant to wipe all humans out too. No one's perfect, but in living our life looking for improvement, we've all found our purpose and a better way of life. A pair of annoying rascals just looking to have some fun doesn't seem all that bad in the grand scheme of things," Piccolo stretched himself out to ease the constant numbness of the toxins still in his body as he taught the young runt a lesson.
"Heh, not bad for someone who's still effectively a teen. You sound boring already…" Lapis smirked, though this time his eyes were devoid of malice. Even if he lacked the ability to be tired, the Artificial Human appeared to be all tuckered out emotionally as he laid calmly on his bottom and stared off into the clouds that began parting bit by bit. "We sure did a number on this place," the Android mumbled after returning to Earth and looking around. "I guess you lose track of yourself when you're having fun…"