A pearly shine of No. 13's teeth could've been seen through Chayote's oversized hand that wrapped around the Android's scalp. The converted warrior grit his teeth and flexed his muscles, crossing up his arms and legs together while in the grip of the Legendary Super Saiyan. Once the murder robot expanded his limbs, he burst with a teal-colored barrier that expelled a blizzard of tiny Ki blasts in all directions. The attack did little to disturb Chayote, though it forced the Saiyan to cover up her face since she absorbed most of the energy blizzard because of being at such close distance to her foe.
"This… Is our planet, it belongs to us! I'll kick you alien lot out even if I have to sprinkle your dust out into space!" Android 13 cursed, placing his hands in front of his chest while pointing his cupped hands against each other.
A baseball-sized scarlet energy sphere flickered into existence while a darker, sanguine-colored shroud surrounded Artificial Human No. 13. The energy ball began spiraling in the artificial warrior's hands as the gaseous aura unfurled around him. It looked as if the sphere had become unstable as it sent pulsing shock waves around No. 13 and, with each pulse, it grew in size until it stretched all the way across Android 13's chest. From his right hand all the way to the left.
"S. S. Deadly Bomber!" Android 13 yelled out, pushing his hands out and sending the channeled and fully charged energy sphere to spiral at a slow pace toward Chayote. "Good luck trying to escape this technique. I know how itching you are to run off and infest everything somewhere else, so I've designed a technique that will follow you everywhere you go!"
"Escape?" Chayote turned her head sideways. The power behind that attack was incredible. Even though she couldn't sense the Ki of Android 13 himself, though she could sense the immense pressure coming off from his attack and how its immense mass bent and shifted the fabric of space-time around it. A lot like gravity. This was good, this was just right. Dealing with this technique would help her rid of that swelling power, putting nothing and no one at risk.
Android 13 gasped in terror when Chayote's face shifted in a psychotic grin. The Legendary Super Saiyan lowered her arms and plunged toward the deadly blast, mirroring its pace. When the two made contact, the energy blast spewed out flashy pink sparks in all directions while Chayote grit her teeth and pushed on with her chest puffed up high. The shocked Android covered himself up when a crimson nova drowned out the entire devastated landscape of the Diablo Desert and the epicenter of the blast began drawing in even the user of the technique himself, forcing grand amounts of effort to resist the pull.
The blaze expanded all throughout the desert region, growing like a pimple attached to the Planet Earth itself before imploding into a booming pillar of energy flowing spaceward. With its outward torrential flow, the explosion quickly dissipated, leaving just trails of smoke and a darkened sky in the area. Artificial Human No. 13 turned to where he had last seen Chayote and exclaimed in shock.
The Legendary Super Saiyan stood where she had last embraced the devastating blast, covered with skin-deep bruises and many patches of small light burns, and a layer of dirt. Chayote wiped the grime and dirt off her face with the back of her hand, wincing in discomfort over a myriad of aggravating scrapes all over her body. Strands of fortunately located cloth covered up her extremities while the rest had been singed off. Except for those ultimately insignificant injuries, the Saiyan suffered no damage.
"That's impossible, nothing should have been able to withstand the might of my fully charged S. S. Deadly Bomber!" Android 13 yelled out. "This is unnatural, this power is a spit in the eye of mother nature!"
"That was a terrifying blast, I'll hand you that much," Chayote shook her head for it to stop ringing as being in the epicenter of a fearsome detonation such as the one she's consumed her in a howl capable of snuffing out one's hearing a billion times over. "It took me most of my Ki to resist it. Now that I've actually strained myself, everything feels clearer. I'm in most control over this form than I've ever been."
"Tsk, this is ridiculous!" Android 13 clenched his fists and burst with a clear-white aura around him. Unexpectedly, the artificial warrior blasted off northward. "The records state that there's at least one remaining Android in Jingle Village. I need to reduce it to scrap and fuse with it if I am to stand a chance against this monster…"
"Where do you think you're going?" Chayote turned her head toward the blitzing Android. She suspected that at that distance and with how worked up the Artificial Human was, he may not have been able to hear her taunting him, but it wasn't like she particularly cared about that either. "You helped me clear my head, don't think I'll let you off without your reward…" the psychotic grin colored Chayote's jaw again as she meekly raised a limp yet oversized index finger.
A dot-sized pixel of pure white starlight sprinkled at the very tip of her fingernail. The speck of white reflecting all the colors of the spectrum wobbled around Chayote's finger for a moment before shooting off in the direction of the Android that fled for its life. A grievous shooting sound forced a drastic shift in the atmosphere as Android 13's body stopped in a grotesque, stiff twitch. The eyes of the artificial warrior blanked out before coloring blood-red as yellow numbers began counting unintelligible symbols up and down, trying to deal with the critical system error.
"Cannellini Burst!" Chayote clenched her fist. Far, far away from her location, a white pillar of raw energy beamed out into the sky, expanding in its size width, and range and spanning from the minuscule speck of energy dust that blasted inside of Android 13's body and detonated in such a cosmic manner from within.
"The parts… I need to pick up the parts for… Bulma…" Chayote grumbled before an emerald burst of aura from within surrounded her body and began rapidly building up in size and luminosity. "Enough… Stop…" Chayote growled before bellowing out a resonating howl that translated into concussive sonic shock waves. An azure beam penetrated the dark clouds. Expulsion of an airplane-shaped energy construct shaped from within the beam of light shortly before it cleared out.
"Is this… Diablo Desert? How horrible…!" an airplane with a cartoonish cat face exclaimed with a high-pitched squeak.
"Why are we even here? Let's get out of here until Chayote blows us up too!" a round-belly pig-man shook his fist over his head before looking down at his quivering stubby legs. "I don't care how many panties Bulma said she'd buy me, what good are they if I'm dead?"
"Bulma-san said that Chayote might be in trouble. We need to help her focus on who she is to help her power down. She might destroy the entire Earth if we don't do this, you know," the cartoonish airplane scolded the short pig riding it.
"Bah… Where even is she? I bet she transformed back by herself and went home… Speaking of home, why don't all of us go home?" Oolong smacked the door of the cartoonish airplane.
"Can't you stop being such a scaredy-cat even for the sake of the whole Earth? Plus, don't you care for Chayote even a bit?" Puar, transformed into an airplane, bawled.
"What's that?" Oolong pointed at a convergence of lightning that spiraled, drilled, and expanded outward with unstable electric jolts. "How about we go as far away from there as we can? Wait… What are you doing? I said as far away as we can, not right toward it!"
"Just remember the plan. If you screw this up, all of us will get obliterated," Puar hissed.
Chayote cried and bellowed with an inhuman, animalistic roar, shooting off stray energy blasts in all directions that rained down from above, with dome-shaped fireballs left in their wake. The Legendary Super Saiyan curled into a fetal position, desperately trying to restrain herself while Puar bravely navigated around the spraying energy blasts.
"Wow, Puar… You're pretty amazing!" Oolong peeked out from the cockpit with a surprised look on his face.
"I've worked on my transformation skills, you know. Now I get the qualities of whatever I transform into! This is nothing to a jet with a state-of-the-art Capsule Corps Ki radar!" Puar stuck out an oversized cartoonish tongue while navigating around the round chartreuse-colored energy blasts.
"Showoff…" Oolong crossed his stubby arms while Puar did sick cartwheels and death wheels. The cartoonish jet halted in place with a shrill shriek while it ejected Puar from his seat to flop him over on its front in full display of Chayote. The confused she-ogre straightened her back and turned her attention to the colorful pair of characters that approached her with a widespread pair of eyes.
"Hurry up, she won't stay surprised for long…" Puar cried out, snapping Oolong out of his panic.
"Uh… Hey, Chayote… Don't freak out and kill us… Okay?" Oolong poked his fingers against each other. Just as he saw the Saiyan's expression snarl and rear her fangs at him, the pig-man hopped up and surrounded himself with a flashy cloud of smoke. "Transform!"
"Na… Vy…?" Chayote muttered in a rough and husky voice. Her own unfurling aura blew away the smoke from Oolong's transformation, revealing just a cutesy picture of a baby wrapped in a blanky, framed in redwood frames and tied with a scarlet ribbon on the corner with heart-shaped stickers on it. After Chayote's eyes began tearing up, the tears even drowned out the sight of an animated pair of eyes and a mouth that spoiled the image.
Chayote bellowed in pain and cracked her neck back as she turned her head up. Her entire body began twitching and jerking wildly as booming energy rays rend her flesh, making her skin bubble from inside as destructive emerald rays leaked out from her pores and her aura escalated in intensity, shaking up Puar's stability and blasting the two shapeshifters away.
"Mayday, mayday… Going down!" Puar cried out.
"I knew we were all going to die!" Oolong joined him in announcing his peril.
Then the howling and the thundering ceased. Puar and Oolong opened their eyes, having failed to meet the perilous splash into the underground channels that flowed with foaming rivers of magma of the devastated wasteland. Both of them looked up with wonder on their faces, meeting Chayote's warm and a tad bored eyes with tearful crystals sprinkling off their corners.
"Chayote!" Puar cried out in glee over the Saiyan's successful return to her base form.
"Oof… That's the least you could've done for us sticking our necks for you like that," Oolong deflated in Chayote's hands. He took surprisingly long to realize that he was being held pressed up close to an almost completely bare female body, at which point his relief became a twisted expression of swirly eyes and a sticking tongue.
"Thanks, guys, let's go look for those microchips now, right?" Chayote smirked and let go of the pair, prompting Puar to transform into a jet again and catch plummeting Oolong out of thin air in the cockpit again.
With a light and dusty tap of her torn-up leather boots, Chayote landed on the drilled crater and shined Oolong, transformed into an industry-grade flashlight to illuminate the deep underground crevice, at the bottom, she picked up on minute microchips that looked a tad banged up and smoldering but somewhat intact. With the vital parts this durable, it was no surprise why these Artificial Humans were so durable and how each successive creator could build up on the flaws of the previous one.
The very moment that the Saiyan leaned down to pick up the pieces and load them onto Puar's baggage section, an azure energy beam slammed down like a lightning bolt from the sky, enveloping the trio and reducing them to luminous basic particles while driving them up the photon stream all the way into the laboratory of the Capsule Corps Star.
"Chayote-san, you did it!" Gohan pumped his fists, rushing up to the tattered Saiyan and grabbing her hands to greet her. Chayote smiled gently in his direction before nodding at Videl with acknowledgment.
"You did good, don't get discouraged, we'll build up on your strength. The next time you meet a guy like that, you'll make him regret taunting you," Chayote said.
"It surprised me to see that you could make someone this strong in such a short time. Maybe I should've picked up training too?" Bulma teased by throwing a few sloppy punches at thin air and approaching Puar. Oolong transformed back into his normal form and Chayote let go of his collar, prompting the pig-man to belch a few times over the stress of beaming up and down in such a short period.
"How many Artificial Humans are still active?" Chayote wondered while Bulma collected the remaining parts of Android 13 and carried them to the nearest wall that quickly rippled like a lake surface and produced a storage unit in a compartment it just transformed into.
"I've drawn up an energy signature from the parts gathered from Artificial Humans No. 14 and No. 15. They use an identical type of Infinite Energy Reactor. Their models are actually inferior to those of numbers 16 to 18, they gather energy in wholly different ways. Instead of building it up passively, their reactors produce energy when triggered," Bulma sighed and approached a control panel to work on what she picked up from Puar.
"Artificial Human No. 13 said that he and his brother used to be humans. Are you sure it's ethical to treat them like spare parts like this?" Gohan wondered, approaching the control panel and looking at the entire desktop full of extracted data that was constantly being updated as new data was uncovered.
"Whatever they had Artificial Human No. 20 do to them, there's almost no trace of humanity left in them. They went above and beyond the mere conversion process. They've effectively forced Artificial Human models inside of the remains of their flesh. It's harrowing to even think about someone signing up for this radical of a conversion process…" Bulma quivered, wrapping herself in her arms and rubbing herself with them as if fending off a chill. "It doesn't look like what Artificial Human No. 20 did to them was as gentle and caring for their humanity as what Dr. Puri did to No. 17 and No. 18 was."
"I'm glad you know so much about all that, I bet that saving all that data from Dr. Puri's archives was worth the hassle we went through dealing with those murder-bots," Chayote approached Bulma with a vexed expression on her face. "I knew you were a scientist and that the data was invaluable, Bulma, but some things are better left behind and buried. If you kept that data buried, none of this would have happened. We'd have known about the government occupying your labs and kicked Dr. Gero and whoever those new models were in their previous lives out."
"I thought you of all people would understand!" Bulma turned around, pausing her work until she could verbally spar with Chayote over this properly. "We need this intelligence! Dr. Puri had records of how to beat all of us and how to make it painful and efficient. We need this information to know how to handle her if she ever became a threat again! We need to learn how to return the favor!"
"This is wrong, Bulma. You should have left it alone. Dr. Puri got rid of that data, she doesn't need it anymore. She's happy with her new family. If she moved on, why can't you?" Chayote replied while approaching the nearby storage unit and slipping into a containment suit just to stop feeling the breeze and constantly feeling threatened that a little rip at what remained of her outfit would expose her. With a rubbery rip, Chayote's tail burrowed its way through the protective material to waggle free on the outside.
"Yeah, well… You shouldn't have screwed with the future version of my toddler son either. Nobody's perfect, so sorry if the way I deal with nearly losing the grip over my life isn't up to your holier than thou standards," Bulma lashed back, spewing venom that corroded deep under Chayote's skin.
"Take care, Bulma. I'll fly my way back home. If you ever beam me again without my permission, I'll rip this station of yours apart with my bare hands," Chayote did her best to return the favor.
"Yeesh…" Videl scratched her elbow awkwardly while leaning up to Gohan's ear. "I thought these two used to be pretty tight back in the day…"
"Yeah, Bulma-san was Chayote-san's mentor in the business world. She taught Chayote-san everything she knows about all the corporate stuff," Gohan replied.
"Hey, Bulma, can you beam us back home already?" Oolong shook his fist over his head, as if he was being held against his will, and demanded release.
"Sure, where do you want to go?" Bulma raised an eyebrow that had a nasty nervous tick to it after the falling out with a friend she just had.
"I want back to Aru Village. I've come to realize that I won't get anywhere hanging around with the old geezer. I think I'd rather live in my mansion surrounded by adoring followers again…" Oolong crossed his arms.
"Be careful, if I find out that you've been kidnapping people again or harassing the villagers, I'll have Trunks knock some sense into you. It'll make some light training for him," Bulma massaged her temples while producing a remote from a compartment rolling out from under the control panel she was working on. With a tap of a button, Oolong beamed back down to Earth and the next time he inhaled, it was the fresh air of Planet Earth he drew in.
"If it's all the same to you, Bulma-san, I'd like you to take me to the Titans' Stadium. I promised Yamcha-san I'd help him pick out a ring for his engagement," Puar squeaked out.
"Huh? Yamcha-san is getting engaged?" Gohan gasped in awe. "That's amazing, please pass on my congratulations to him!"
"Will do!" Puar nodded.
"Of course he is…" Bulma rubbed her tired eyes before hammering her fist down and sending Puar to the stadium to finish spectating the rest of the West City Titans' baseball game. "Well, where do you two want to go?"
Before Gohan could answer, the screen behind Bulma blared a vocal alarm and lit up bright red. Startled, the brilliant scientist turned around and began mashing and plowing through the buttons to find out the reason the Capsule Corps Star had been malfunctioning.
"No way… The Artificial Human parts… They're all gone!" Bulma gasped as the stress reverberating throughout her whole body made her hair stand up in curls.
"Gone? But… How is that possible?" Videl shook her head. "Who could've attacked us all the way out here in the outer atmosphere?"
"That's if someone attacked us from outside… I suspect that the sabotage came from within! As if in a certain hysterical rage monster!" Bulma gnashed her teeth.
"Not quite, I'm afraid…" a familiar, altered masculine voice vibrated the speakers in Bulma's laboratory. Recognizing the source of the voice, Bulma ordered the system to display the view from the security cameras inside of the storage unit where Android 20's remains were stored. "I am quite glad that you've dispatched of those associates of mine. They installed many safeguards to prevent me from striking out on my own, but now that they're gone, all the protocols they were running ceased functioning as well. I can now assimilate their parts and compensate for the pitiful state they've left me in…"
As the cameras focused on who it was that spoke from the distant storage unit, the sight didn't become any easier to make out. The place had been thoroughly thrashed and the tempered glass tube sustaining Artificial Human No. 20's life had been in shatters. Instead, a bare and meek body of an old man wrapped in wrinkled, tanned skin, blue eyes, bushy white mustache, and flowing long hair save for the top of his head that shined with baldness. Bony ridges instead of eyebrows defined his eyes, giving the revived Artificial Human No. 20 an outlandish and inhuman look that was quite uncanny and alien in itself.
The nightmare was still not over, it seemed.
Bulma rushed to the control panel and began madly mashing buttons all around her and dragging her hand across the screen in all directions and all manners of complex formations and patterns. Seeing symbols and numbers switching before her, she stumbled back and wrapped her arms around herself while biting her lip.
"Just as I thought, the No. 13 parts are already gone. He must be rushing after the rest… We can't allow them to assimilate the parts of other Artificial Humans!" Bulma shook her head in absolute refusal to let the mad scientist achieve his goal and turned to Gohan. She didn't say anything, but it wasn't like she had to.
"Where are the other parts? I'll protect them!" Gohan boldly proclaimed while clenching his fists and preparing himself for combat.
"The parts are wherever I want them to be. This entire station is like a breathing, artificial intelligence with a malleable cybernetic body. It can produce control panels and cybernetic gadgets at command and do just about anything you ask. However, since they are not of the Capsule Corps Star's making, they have to be stored somewhere and cannot merge with the Star," Bulma explained how she's been able to just always have the perfect control panel at hand and how every room she was in turned out to be the right room for the purpose she needed it for.
Before Gohan could suggest a section for Bulma to send the parts to, the cybernetic door slid open. A bare-chested and smug-faced Saiyan king stood in the center of the opened door with a wet towel hanging over his shoulders. Young Trunks just barely squeezed his mushy face from his father's side, appearing to emulate the Saiyan royalty by wearing matching shorts and looking brighter than a morning pancake.
"Forget it, Kakarot's brat," Vegeta snickered with a mocking scowl. "I'll take care of that senile pilferer. You can go home and call your hopeless father. Better yet, don't even bother and just leave it to me. Even if Kakarot bothered to get off his rear and do something useful, I'll be long done by the time he comes for the clean-up."
"Why is this man so rude to you, Gohan-kun?" Videl turned to Gohan while young Trunks crossed his arms over his chest and tried emulating his father's overconfident look. By getting overly drawn into this fruitless endeavor, the young boy almost missed when his father stormed off to challenge the wandering Android that was looking to assimilate the parts of his rebuilders.
"He's rude to pretty much anybody, don't mind Vegeta, Videl," Bulma crossed her arms. Her bother with her husband's behavior triumphed over her worry about the escaped and semi-restored Dr. Gero.
"Vegeta-san isn't entirely wrong," Gohan replied without letting the king's words get to him too much. "He is the strongest person on this station. Hmm… That Ki… It's Krillin, isn't it?"
"Krillin? Yeah, he dropped by and delivered the pieces of Artificial Human No. 15. I thought he left already but he must've gotten lost or something, that twit," Bulma rolled her eyes and turned to the screen to track where Krillin may have been loafing around. "With Dr. Gero loose, Krillin could be in danger."
"Hmm… I'd like to regroup with him but… Are you sure you're going to be okay, Bulma-san?" Gohan wondered.
"I'll be just fine. The old coot isn't after me but the parts of other Artificial Humans, remember?" Bulma waved her hand.
"But you're in control of the station, aren't you?" Videl brought it up. "If he captured you, he could threaten you into delivering him the pieces by just dropping it on him from a hole in the ceiling or something…"
"Well done, I guess you've stumbled onto something…" Bulma sighed.
"There might not be a choice," Gohan looked down with a grim look on his face. When he lifted his eyes up to look Bulma right in the eyes, his eyes looked determined to do what's right and fight the hard fight. "It may be less dangerous to send the Artificial Human parts to lure Dr. Gero to where we want him. Send Artificial Human No. 14's remains near Vegeta-san, then Artificial Human No. 15 to Krillin-san."
"Why's that?" Videl wondered.
"No, I see what you're suggesting. That's pretty clever, let's do it!" Bulma snapped her fingers and turned to operate the computer screen to send the Artificial Human parts where Gohan proposed. "We don't know if Dr. Gero can track them somehow, but it's better if we use them as bait to send him right to the other fighters that could stop him."
"Not just that," Gohan pumped his fists while slowly moving to the door. "With his goal easy to find, Dr. Gero won't be wandering around and scheming. He's less likely to go for the jugular and target you two. I'm leaving, 'kay?"
"Go, I'll let Krillin know to wait for you," Bulma waved her hand before slumping right onto a fancy leather chair that just popped up from a hidden compartment on the cybernetic floor. "If something bad happens, Videl can protect me."
"Give that old man hell," Videl nodded her head with a subtle smirk. "Don't forget that you owe me martial arts lessons now. It's your job, so don't you dare get hurt and miss out on it!"
"I won't," Gohan snickered with a goofy laugh that gave Bulma a nostalgic smile when the image of Gohan's cheerfulness resembled that of his father that Bulma had experienced ample time in the past.
"Hmm… The technological advancement that's occurred in the time that I was gone is troubling," Dr. Gero's eyes squinted tighter in disdain of complex machinery and cybernetics he could hardly grasp. It took him standing for a few seconds for the data input systems to estimate what he was looking at. "It doesn't seem like there's any chance of hacking this impressive station, either. Maybe if I had the body that I planned to live in alongside my dear wife, but not in this antiquated model that's only capable of absorbing base parts…"
Golden numbers began counting up inside of Dr. Gero's eye, prompting the blue-eyed old man to turn in the direction which he was picking up an exemplary energy reading from. With a shallow grunt, Dr. Gero shot out a Ki blast underneath his feet. Having cracked through the floor, the Super Android swooped down into the pipeline with impossible malleability for a humanoid. The doctor's Artificial Human anatomy permitted him to bend and turn in ways no human could without hurting something.
"Huh… Smoke?" young Trunks croaked in surprise, pointing at the ruined floor.
"Hmph… That old fart is more resourceful than I gave him credit for. It's new to me to challenge a foe that I can't trace and that's this cowardly," Vegeta turned away with a disgusted scowl, barely able to restrain the instinct to spit to the side.
"Should we go back and ask mom to tell us where the bad guy is?" Trunks wondered, looking up at his father's revolted face with childish wonder. He had never been this involved in actual combat and judging by the pumping blaze in his gut that went up and down rapidly, the kid appeared to be enjoying it.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Vegeta scoffed at the idea, turning away. "A true Saiyan super-elite never asks for help. They especially don't need help from their insufferable, arranged Earth-wife."
"That's an awfully specific ruling…" Trunks' face turned sour as he glared at the fingers which he began bending up and down as if working on a complex math problem. Truthfully, he had simply assigned different teachings from his father to different fingers, but they have grown so numerous that he had lost count by now.
"Vegeta!" Bulma's voice pierced through the Saiyan king's ears and made him flinch before snapping his neck back to glare at the screen displaying his wife on it, that had appeared so spontaneously. With Vegeta being permanently stuck on being livid and strict, the widely shot eyes now betrayed the fact that he felt embarrassed for his wife catching him unaware like this and regretted showing startlement to her image. Even worse, he was still contemplating if she could have, by any chance, heard his earlier remark as well. "Stay where you are. I'm sending the Artificial Human No. 14 parts to your location. I'm sending No. 15's parts to Krillin."
A pair of blue eyes lurking in the shadows of the ruined underground floor that consisted mostly of service facilities and vents blinked slowly. A moment later, they vanished into the shade. Even if someone would have seen them blink, they'd have only seemed like a distant phantom. An illusion that didn't repeat itself and therefore seemed irrelevant.
"Krillin-san!" Gohan rushed in through the door that made the bald martial artist jump up and exclaim in fright before blowing a huff out in relief and deflating upon seeing a familiar face.
"Gohan, what are you doing here? How did you find me? Also, why are you sneaking around like that, my heart isn't what it used to be in my prime, you know…" Krillin chuckled, rubbing his nose while laughing his embarrassment off. "I guess my brain's getting pretty old too–I got lost in this massive maze."
"I followed your Ki, you should try to suppress it, Krillin-san. We've got something dangerous going on and we need your help," Gohan tried to explain it in as few words as possible, as Dr. Gero was a living and very dangerous threat that could've struck at any moment.
"Huh… I thought I sensed Chayote some time back. She didn't seem all that worried about suppressing herself and she's way stronger than me, so… I'm not sure why you're asking it of me for?" Krillin scratched his head.
"Chayote-san had a falling out with Bulma-san and left. I don't think we can rely on her right now. Plus, I don't think Bulma-san would want Chayote-san rampaging around in her station either…" Gohan shrugged it off. "You've brought in Artificial Human parts, right?"
"Huh? Yeah, how did you know?" Krillin wondered.
"No time, a seemingly harmless Artificial Human had escaped captivity and absorbed the pieces of another Artificial Human. One that gave me and Chayote trouble, even. That makes Dr. Gero a Super Android," Gohan put it simply while turning serious. "Bulma-san said she'll send the Artificial Human parts you brought in here to lure Dr. Gero either to us or to Vegeta-san."
"W-Wait just a second…" Krillin shook his hands out in front of him while stretching out his face in panic. "Y-You're gonna lure a S-Super Android here!? Why doesn't Bulma just destroy those blasted parts already and finish off those Artificial Humans already?"
"What do you understand about all of it, anyway!?" Bulma's voice gave Krillin another earful. The suddenness of the descent of the screen displaying it nearly gave the poor fighter another heart attack. "Those parts are invaluable! They've got traces of technology jumpstarted by Dr. Puri and her husband together, besides the upgrades made by the government scientists back on Earth. Not to mention, they'll help me make some effective countermeasures against Artificial Humans like a shut-down remote or even a radar to track them. Now stop whining as if you don't love this fisticuffs stuff and just do your thing! I've stored the pieces in a locker close to your location already!"
"Excellent…" a soothing, masculine voice unfamiliar to either one of the folks present in the room made Gohan and Krillin jump up at once. A pair of tight and intense red beams pierced the floor, punching clean-through Krillin's chest and dropping the bald martial artist on his back, and coughing out blood while slipping in and out of consciousness. "It would seem that Dr. Brief has raised a fine assistant out of his daughter. Her first-rate delivery service is simply superb!"
"You bastard!" Gohan yelled out, igniting a golden aura around him and spiking up his golden hair while turning Super Saiyan in a blink. "You'll pay for what you did to Krillin!"
The young Super Saiyan dashed at his opponent with a rushing uppercut, but Dr. Gero leaned to the side with a confident smirk on his face. Kicking off the ground, Gohan swiped his leg with a high kick, but Dr. Gero caught the teen's foot with his open hand before locking his grip around the ankle and slamming the Super Saiyan behind him. Super Saiyan Gohan intercepted the slam by thrusting both his arms out and stopping himself by the ground, then shifting his weight into a push kick with his free leg. Employing his other arm, Dr. Gero caught the other leg as well.
"Just a savage gnat…" Dr. Gero smirked while flinging Gohan aside. The Super Saiyan teen clutched himself to ignite a luminous golden flash and focus all of his energy on stopping himself mid-fling. By the time that the youth stretched out, his opponent was nowhere to be seen. A dull sensation of pain spanning most of his back, sudden as a lightning bolt, overwhelmed the youth and drove him down on his front. Dr. Gero had snapped away and appeared behind young Gohan, slamming both his knees into the boy's back and temporarily incapacitating him. "I've not a single doubt that those bonobos built themselves the ability to interact with my body parts, making Super Androids out of themselves by assimilating my parts. That means that my current form should have backward compatibility with that function…"
"N-No way," Gohan rolled on his side. He understood what Dr. Gero meant by that, so he rolled up on his feet as if scolded by boiling hot water after hearing it. The teen charged at Dr. Gero, prompting the Super Android to extend his right hand to answer each blow that the bashful Super Saiyan sent his way. With his left, Dr. Gero reached out to his left, sending a faintly visible electromagnetic pulse from his palm.
"Can you imagine that those backwards hayseeds gave a cutting edge Artificial Human body to a toy? The mockery they made of me, the scientist who made this all possible… No matter, they are dead now, and I am about to be the most alive I've ever been!" Dr. Gero seethed at first, but then soon transitioned into a mad peal of laughter as the remains of Artificial Human No. 15 shot through the walls and embedded themselves into the exposed and shriveled, grey-skinned chest of the restored scientist. The hi-tech parts surrounded themselves in a crackling, electric Android barrier while phasing into the Super Android.
The resulting energy burst made Gohan fly off like a rag of cloth flung aside by a capricious owner. The teen bounced off of the wall and fell flat on his face. Because of the wallop that the explosion that hit him packed, the Super Saiyan writhed on the ground for a few seconds before scrambling back to his feet. Yet when the teen stood up again, he couldn't help but gasp and shiver in awe at the shining new form that Dr. Gero had taken.
"Yes… Even though I may have fled from Vegeta prematurely before, with this power I'll make mincemeat out of him easily," Dr. Gero examined his eggplant-skinned hands while his white hair had taken a youthful shine and turned into a shade of salmon-pink. Instead of his eyes, only a single, long vizor stretching out across his entire central part of the head reflected light frantically from its pitch-black surface. It didn't look like Dr. Gero had gained any bulk, though his previously exposed upper body now hid underneath a marigold tuxedo with a literal red ribbon hanging over his neck.
As if Gohan and Krillin weren't in the room, the upgraded Super Android turned his attention to a blank point in the wall to his right and then turned his entire body in that direction. A hot-red, transparent energy bubble lit up around Dr. Gero as the Artificial Human blasted off in that direction, just leaving wreckage and pummeled bodies in his wake.
"Krillin!" Gohan yelled out, running up to the fallen fighter and helping him lean his upper body in a position where he was in no threat of choking on his blood. "Let's get you to a wall. Bulma-san, Krillin-san is hurt, please make a healing pod at our location!"
Even though no screens manifested, strands of silver, bronze, and green wires slithered down the ceiling and scooped Krillin off the ground, entering his wound and connecting to the severed blood vessels while working their sci-fi healing magic on the experienced fighter.
The door behind Gohan spewed off sparks. It was malfunctioning after the extensive damage that the room went through. It spewed off sparks again. This time, Gohan got the clue and walked up to the door, peeling it open with his hands and scanning the corridor outside that had an alarming atmosphere or red emergency signals blaring off all over the place.
"Even though you must not be able to reach us, Bulma-san, I think I still understand what you're asking me. I can't promise you anything, Dr. Gero has become insanely strong and grown stronger still now but… I'll do my best to help Vegeta-san and keep Trunks out of trouble!" Gohan nodded with a determined face and took off, speeding across the corridor to where he sensed Vegeta's Ki.
As tough as it'd be, Dr. Gero had to be stopped before he assimilated the wrecked parts of Artificial Human No. 14 as well. With that much power, and upgrades that extensive, he'd become something far more than just a Super Android, whatever superseded it…
Author's Note: So, on top of working on this double-sized chapter, I also published my first book on KDP that's available on Kindle and Paperback. If you're interested, you can check it out on my profile description. It'd mean a lot to me if you checked it out and, whether you liked or hated it, let me know either way.