"Artificial Human No. 8!" the voice of Commander White roared through the megaphones leading up to the top floor of the Muscle Tower. "You're betraying your objective, kill those brats now, that's an order!"
Chayote sighed. There was little point in taking these threats seriously. No. 8 looked like he could have caused some damage but even if he was a dozen times the fighter that those Metallitrons were, he'd have still failed in taking her down. That must have been why Lord Frieza resigned to using living soldiers over robots. Even if they disobeyed on an occasion and had to be terminated, at least they were good at their jobs, as long as the job was destroying something or beating someone up.
"I will not." Artificial Human No. 8 shook his head, looking and talking to a megaphone as if it somehow could have heard him. "I hate violence."
"Dammit, you traitor!" White yelled into the megaphone, making the voice transmission device shake from tension and forcing Chayote and Goku to stick fingers into their ears in an attempt to relieve some of the irritation from White's excessive yelling. "I'll kill you in that case!"
"Shut up!" Goku finally lost his composure by yelling at the megaphone as if he was speaking to White's face. "We're climbing up the tower and we're rescuing the village chief! If you give him back now, we won't have to pummel you flat!"
"I'd rather prefer pummeling him flat." Chayote shook her head. Although, in the beginning, she was mostly indifferent towards the fate of this tower and its petty commander, all of this annoying yelling had ticked her off enough for her to see red. Besides, even if Upa was not here to set things straight, she was 47 percent sure that Commander White was evil and that it was okay to kill him.
"That's mean!" Eighter leaned back.
"You stupid tin can!" Commander White yelled out, "At least those brats have the guts to do what they think is right. It's fortunate that I can still fix all of my problems at once…"
"What do you mean by that?" Goku stopped from ascending the tower and looked at the nearest megaphone.
"I'll have to ask you lot to go back to Master Sergeant Murasaki's floor. There is a remote control in Murasaki's pocket that I want you to pick up and bring to me." Commander White issued an order.
"If we give you the remote, will you let go the village chief?" Artificial Human No. 8 stopped as well. Of course, the oversized automaton would leap at the first chance to chicken out.
"No, but if you don't, I'll shoot him in the face right now!" Commander White growled. His voice sounded strained enough for him to mean it. He was serious, more likely than not, he was a king cornered in his throne room and therefore had his entire kingdom positioned atop of a shaky card tower.
Goku and Artificial Human No. 8 leaned back in shock. Judging from their reaction, what Commander White said was pretty evil, even though it seemed like the rational play to Chayote. The man was more likely than not a weakling, similar to Commander Red, someone who had underlings do all his job for him, except he only had one Metallitron and his best assassin was light-years from Taopaipai. The village chief was his only ace so he was wise to play it.
"What's the remote for?" Chayote wondered.
"Oh, now you're interested?" Commander White calmed down and began sounding manipulative rather than desperate. "It's the same remote that activated that redundant failure of a robot, I'm going to detonate the self-destruction mechanism in his body. It is the most powerful explosive in the White Ribbon Army's control, the entire area might be destroyed but I'd happily eliminate the threat to Blue Ribbon. Years from now, Red Ribbon will rise again and the Dragon Balls will once again be in our sights!"
"The Dragon Balls?" Eighter wondered.
"Collect all seven, magical dragon fulfills your wish." Chayote got him up to speed for no particular reason other than not having to hear about it from him again.
"I dread the thought of what horrible people like the White Ribbon would do with such a thing…" Artificial Human No. 8 poked two of his index fingers together in sadness.
"Fine, I'll bring you the remote." Chayote shrugged. "Be right back…"
Before Goku could object, the Saiyan disappeared from his sights. She dashed back into the indoor garden and began scouring the place with her best attempt at a visual inspection. Everything around her looked like just a mess of unconscious bodies and scattered weaponry. She couldn't even begin to recall where she had put the remote after activating Eighter.
"Huh… I could swear I handed it off to Goku before approaching No. 8. When he interrupted me, he no longer had it in his hands. Must have dropped it somewhere…" Chayote scratched her head. She could have moved at untraceable by human eye speeds but none of it mattered if she did not know where to begin looking. Once she got her mind in order, her speed would assist in looking for sure but…
"I guess I'll have to scan it all the old fashioned way…" Chayote sighed. The Saiyan dashed about in a blue blur, looking at areas where Goku stood when she handed him the remote, then just all around the grassy areas. She dived underwater inside those little ponds, looked inside the hollow stones that she took for actual boulders. The only place she hadn't looked for was the little house in the western part of the floor.
"What are the two of you doing here!?" Commander White growled through his teeth as he pressed the village chief tighter to his body and almost drilled the barrel of his gun into the poor man's head. "I thought I told you to bring me the remote!"
"Chayote's gonna bring it, just let the village chief go," Goku growled while his spiky hair went wild, like the hair of a very temperamental feline. Even the hairs on his tail spiked up, making it stiffer in its movements, almost like a solid stick swung left to right instead of its usual, effortless flow.
"Surely you cannot be this mean! There must be kindness in your heart to let this poor man go." Eighter pleaded to Commander White's reason.
"Nice try, I'd shoot you right in between the eyes for refusing to kill these interlopers and then bringing them here, all the way through the maze and the hidden floor!" Commander White ground his teeth. Somehow he had restrained the more primitive instincts to point the gun at Eighter and unload a pair of caps. Even if the handgun would have barely even registered to the Artificial Human, the fact of firing at him looked like it would have caused White some intense relief.
"Better yet, let village chief go and let's fight it out!" Goku almost demanded it.
"Tsk, tough luck, kid, so that you could beat me and then wreck all that I've built. Like you've wrecked the Silver Ribbon? They had the necessary gear to mine the mountains and some serious aerial combat vehicles, even if he was not a part of White Ribbon, Silver was a beneficial partner!" White smirked for he realized he was the player who found himself attempted to be played.
"What do you mean you won't fight me!?" Goku stepped back, while his face never changed from its sourness, the Saiyan looked somewhat taken aback by the fact that his problems were not about to be solved with such a simple way of settling their problems. The boy clutched his knuckles, his teeth protruded like the fangs of a wild simian who was about to pounce at his target and bash their brains in with their bare hammer-arm strikes.
"Don't, Goku… The chief…" Eighter pleaded.
"Heh, you're pretty fast, kid… Whattaya say, wanna push your luck? Maybe you could outrace a bullet and snag this guy from my hands after I've pulled the trigger and before a bullet kills him dead?" White raised an eyebrow, taunting Goku.
"Y-You monster!" Eighter clutched his fists together, in a manner mirroring Goku. "You have nothing to gain from blowing me up, we're all going to die together! You've got nothing to gain from abusing Goku either, you're just doing it because you like it!"
"I will not be given a psych-evaluation by a toaster!" White kicked the village chief forward while he charged for his control panel from which he observed the entire tower. "I had considered offering you work but… I'd rather see the Monster Buyon eat you up!"
Eighter got off Goku. "Sorry, sorry…" he rubbed the back of his head, apologizing with a goofy smile. He looked like he felt bad about falling on top of Goku with all of his colossal, mechanical frame but he knew that Goku was tougher than to be fazed by something like this.
"I knew you self-righteous pricks would fall for it. This turned out quite well for me, I won't even need to die this way. Now you'll feed my Buyon well. Careful, the invincible Buyon has not had a feast for a while, I'm afraid you will find him quite famished and his hunger quite… Shocking…" White cringed into his own knuckle while he imagined all the gruesome ways in which someone like the monster Buyon could have ended this pair.
"Hmm? You mean this bag of bones?" Goku leaned and pointed at a lifeless husk comprised of a tall stack of bones and a pink, moldy and putrid coat of skin hanging from it. The corpse did not even have a set of eyes, only a pair of swallowing holes, as deep as the described craving of the creature this once was.
"Huh…" Commander White stared at his prized executioner, or rather what was left of him. "No way!" came the denial stage. "Buyon can't be dead, I fed him every single man to have reached the sixth floor!"
"Eh?" Goku scratched his cheek. "Didn't you say nobody got past that Metallitron guy?"
Commander White shriveled in misery like a penetrated inflatable tube man. It took him almost no time at all to switch from being defeated and jumping back to his original plan. The cornered commander grabbed his hostage and pointed his gun back at his face. He aimed his gun at the hole through which he had imagined the boy and the rebellious artificial human to emerge from but was surprised by a whole different kind of entrant making her way to the top floor.
The foundations of the entire tower shook and rumbled, the tower leaned forward in a dangerous enough degree for most of its surviving inhabitants to think that it was about to collapse when Chayote flashed into the room, having just busted through two whole floors of hardened steel to get there.
The village chief cornered himself and wrapped his arms around his head. He lucked out that all the shifting of the floor forced Commander White to let go of him on accident and not just blow his head off, as it may have very easily turned out. Even while Commander White had no more leverage over the Saiyan, the teen extended the remote she clutched in her hand.
"Here's your stupid remote, now do you have any more robots here or not?" She grumbled.
White leaned forward with shot-out eyes and a face lengthened by the shock that befell him after he had realized that the Saiyan still played by the rules he set out of her, despite the fact that he no longer had anything to threaten her with.
"Power Pole, Extend!" Goku's voice came from below as both the shorter Saiyan and the artificial human hanging on his back rose up from the hole. Artificial Human No. 8 just flopped on his face awkwardly while Goku performed a flip to round his landing up and make it neat and flashy. The brat then turned his furious face at Commander White.
"Don't give him the remote, Chayote." Goku declared. "He's through!"
"Meh, I went through so much trouble to find it, plus, I'm still curious how he would blow Artificial Human No. 8 up when the remote only has one button and it both activates and de-activates him." Chayote shrugged and tossed the remote at Commander White. White dived forward to catch it but the only thing he caught was Goku's roaring kick striking him right in the face and sending the commander flying. The surprising show of strength appeared to confuse even Goku himself. The boy must not have realized yet he was multiple times stronger than before, or at least only realized that he was stronger but not yet comprehended by how much.
"It's okay," Artificial Human No. 8 approached the frightened village chief with a welcoming smile. Due to the unnatural and very monstrous appearance of Eighter, it did not help the village chief's situation whatsoever.
"Get back! I said get away, you monster!" the village chief groaned before crawling on the floor to the remote that Commander White had failed to catch and pressing the button in the middle with both his thumbs as if attempting to scoop the button out altogether. Goku yelled out something unintelligible while Chayote just grinned, she wondered if that was how one was supposed to make this primitive device operate.
The command center that Commander White chose to close himself off to darkened as television screens descended all over the walls and the windows. The television screens flashed and displayed something blurry before the image sharpened and cleared out.
"Hoo, you're such a naughty girl, take this!" a young and voluptuous woman in a pink ninja suit splashed about in Murasaki's artificial pond, as displayed on all the screens at once.
"Ah, you've splashed me! Murasaki-kun is going to be so mad!" a purple haired woman of similar rating on the attractiveness scale and no modesty whatsoever, judging from her choice of clothing, shrieked as cold water soaked her fishnet bodysuit.
"Hmm? What's that?" Goku wondered. "That doesn't seem like it's going to blow Eighter up at all…"
"Umm… Chayote-san… Where did you get that remote?" Artificial Human No. 8 poked two of his fingers in shyness as he could not bear to look at the erotic videos being displayed on all those high-definition screens. The village chief, however, was a whole different matter entirely, the man gawked at the images, failing to pick a single monitor to view the video from. He was distracted by the attractive Earthlings enough to stop caring that much about Artificial Human No. 8 being in the same room as him.
"None of the Murasaki had it. I checked inside the little hut he has, it had a bunch of pictures of those ladies and this remote…" Chayote shrugged. It appeared that the true location of the remote would be lost in the vastness of time-space.
"Whatever, we've rescued the village chief…" Goku smiled and gave Chayote and Eighter a peace gesture with his right hand while his mouth grinned like a little monkey who had gotten its tiny paws on a melon. "Let's go back to Jingle Village, I'm hungry!"
"Chayote-san… You should come too." Artificial Human No. 8 did not rush to invite the female Saiyan immediately but he did so nonetheless. He was too polite to mind the fact that the very alien he just invited to eat with him would have been fine killing him and making a spaceship from his parts and has almost resulted in his destruction multiple times that very same day.
"I don't care much about this village but… I could eat." Chayote shrugged. She did show off her grumpiness by wrapping her arms over her chest and pouting her lips but her lower lip continued to pulse with blood rushing inside as her belly growled.
"Hey, village chief, are you coming?" Goku looked back at the chief who was still slouched over on the ground and stared at the video.
"I don't like violence but I will absolutely topple this tower." Artificial Human No. 8 declared, "You should not linger around here, Sir."
"Yeah, yeah… Just keep going, I'll catch up!" the village chief waved his hand at the door.
"You know, I should kill you two for forgetting to let me in on the fact that this blasted place had a maze and a hidden floor…" Chayote grumbled while giving Eighter a cold stare.
"Ah, I apologize, it slipped my mind…" Artificial Human No. 8 scratched his head in apology while Goku laughed it off.
"You've busted through anyway!" he waved his hand at it.
"I'm surprised that nobody has found this Dragon Ball yet." the patriarch of the Jingle Village family, one that saved Goku and then that Goku saved only for them required saving once again, something that Chayote rose to the occasion for, remarked.
"Whoo… I'm stuffed!" Goku relaxed in his chair while his eyes made an unpleasant flicker due to rising nausea deep down. The young Saiyan only stopped eating when he physically could no longer do that. "Outdid you again, Cha… Hmm, where's Chayote?" the boy wondered.
"She's out in the snow. Haven't you noticed her leaving?" the little, red-haired girl replied, looking horrified by how abstract minded Goku got when eating.
"Actually…" Artificial Human No. 8 pulled out a hanky and placed it on the table, letting it unfurl and a tiny, orange orb with stars to roll out from its capture. "I found it some time ago but I kept it to myself because I've heard Commander White say he was going to kill all the villagers once he found it."
An uncomfortable silence took over the room. That was the status quo until a boisterous thud of the wooden chair and a declarative stare from the side of the village chief.
"What kindness! To think that I mistook you for a monster when we first met, I apologize! I insist that you stay in Jingle Village, if you have nowhere better to go, that is! Goddamn it, I'll adopt you myself if I have to!" the village chief straight out yelled out into the face of the Artificial Human. Nobody must have taught this man how to deal with his feelings, which resulted in such an off-putting expression of emotion.
"Heh heh… Thank you!" Artificial Human No. 8 scratched his head and nodded it a few times. "Nobody did anything this nice to me for years!" the big guy sniffled.
"Are you going to stay too, Goku?" the little girl wondered.
"Absolutely not." Chayote declared after entering the back into the house, covered in snow. A condition she fixed by shaking the layers of snow off indoors. "He owes me military-grade tech samples I can build my spaceship out of and I won't let him waste time until he gives me that back!"
"Nah," Goku shook his head and then pointed at the Two-Star Dragon Ball. "That isn't my Grandpa, my grandpa's memento is the Four-Stars."
"If it is military-grade gear you need, you can always check around the remains of the White Ribbon Army bases. The place is full of warehouses that were just left abandoned once the tower crumbled and the soldiers just scattered." The village chief suggested, addressing Chayote directly.
"Yeah, but don't you want to leave in the morning?" Goku wondered.
"That's just fine, I'll check them right now, you go and have your beauty sleep if you want while I myself work off your debt." Chayote flipped her hand off while turning back and leaving through the door. She wasn't sure why but hearing the village chief adopt Artificial Human No. 8 earlier made her extra layer of grumpy. The Saiyan extended her palm and tried forming a Ki blast. Tried being the keyword.
"To hell with this truthful to oneself bullshit… I don't need this power, I'll just kick the ass of whoever I face with bare hands, to hell with this Ki nonsense!" Chayote roared out while her Ki erupted in an explosive outburst of aura that sent snow all around in a blizzard-like, spiraling fury. The Saiyan leaped into the air and dashed onward towards where the Muscle Tower used to stand before the oversized tin-can toppled it.
Not only was she unable to destroy him and use him for parts, but the blasted brute also wrecked the tower too, what if it still had some gear to salvage? Son Goku was supposed to help them get back to Planet Vegeta and the Frieza Army but he was actually kicking Chayote down the figurative progress ladder.