Last time on Growing into your own
The pink beam of energy struck the child, turning him into a fluffy pink macaron with a startled cry. The dessert floating in the air as Gohan approached, his arm outstretched to try and reach it, even as everything felt like it was moving through sludge to the teen. Even his own body. And it was with startled horror that he watched the dessert-ified version of his brother race through the gaps between two of his fingers towards 21. His Cyan eyes following the treats flight path…
Right into 21's mouth.
The Bio-Android didn't even stop to chew, the treat just disappearing into her taught and toned pink stomach with a loud gulp. Gohan hit the ground.
"Mmmm~ That was delicious~"
XXXxxxXXX
Now, on this chapter of Growing into your own
Gohan scraped along the ground until his momentum died out. His body frozen in the same position he had been in while trying to grab his baby brother, his last family left. His gaze trapped on Android 21 as she licked her lips before sucking a few of her fingers somewhat sensually.
For a few moments she waited for Gohan to do something, grinning mockingly and making a 'come at me' gesture with her pointer finger. Her Ki raising in preparation for the typical Saiyan aggression she'd get from the usually mild-mannered boy. It was what Saiyan's did when their precious people were injured after all, they couldn't help it. They lost all sense of rationality and attacked whatever was responsible, or just anything around them.
Except….Gohan just continued to lay there on the dirt, staring blankly at her with an unmoving expression, his eyes beginning to go red from him not blinking for so long.
"Awww. What's wrong Son Gohan? Aren't you going to fight me? Aren't you going to continue throwing those feather touches you call punches?" She mocked him, feeling her annoyance growing after another few moments of no reaction from the Demi-Saiyan.
With a disappointed sigh the pink skinned woman just pointed a finger at the frozen form of her adversary, beginning to charge up a familiar pink ball of energy.
"G-Goten.." For a moment she stopped feeding energy into her beam and tilted her head to the side with a sadistically amused expression.
"Such care, it's so sweet~" Her unfired beam doubled in size.
"Give…Give him back…" Unlike what she was expecting, his voice actually seemed to lack anger.
No, instead it seemed to be empty, weak, like a facsimile of a human being. The Demi-Saiyan shaking as he slowly got to his feet, the lightning crackling around him previously having died out but his hair and eyes the same colour as his Ascended Super Saiyan form. The colour was the same but the hardness in his eyes was gone, the strength in his stance was shattered, the raw fury that powered the form was nowhere to be found and instead, in its place, was unmitigated despair.
"Give….him back. Goten…Give Goten…" His words were mumbled on repeat as he got to his feet, his arms reaching out shakily as if he could somehow grab Goten out of thin air.
'This Demi-Saiyan snack is shattered. He's shattered. So why?'
21's hand twitched and her tail tensed, her beam beginning to fire, creeping through the air between them.
'Why do I feel this foreboding!?'
Off to the side of the two combatants, a tree turned into a macaron. The cause of which took Android 21 a few moments to register as she blinked in stupification.
'He…He backhanded my beam?' She could feel her anger beginning to flare at this little gnat thinking he could mock her this way.
"Give…Give my brother back."
Lightning exploded out of Gohan's form and his aura shattered the earth beneath both of their feet. All of the muscles in his body tensed up and in a singular instant all of the strength he had been missing since she ate his brother returned with interest. Lifting one foot from where it had been placed beforehand, he curled his knee up to his chest before slamming it down into the ground.
21 flared her Ki to increase her rate of cognition, watching and feeling as her senses sped up to the point that everything began to slow down. From the point of impact, chunks of earth the size of houses began to tilt up into the air around the suddenly much more competently grounded stance of her opponent. Abusing her sped up reflexes she opened a palm towards him and began to charge up a Ki blast, watching as even with the world ground to a near halt around them, his aura still flickered and expanded faster than her own Ki ball charged.
With a scowl that twisted her beautiful features into something ugly and aggressive, she fired off her Ki blast, watching it impact his aura and be deflected by the smallest of margins to fly over his shoulder.
It was child's play to adjust her aim to make sure that the next blast struck him, or it would have been, if not for Ruby's meddling once more. Three of her fingers took on a lighter pink tone and twitched back, the movement throwing her aim off and sending the Ki blast on a wild axis that threw it out of orbit in a couple seconds.
"UGH! Childish fool!" 21 snapped, gripping her fingers with her other hand, only to suddenly go cross-eyed as her right eye moved outside of her control.
'YOU KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED THAT CHILD! I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU! DIE! DIE! DIEDIEIDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE!'
The bubblegum pink skin of 21 began to bubble up in a facsimile of goosebumps, the wind picking up and the clouds condensing overhead in a suffocating black smog. A localized natural disaster focused only on the figure across from her, who's rising Ki flaring unstably into the atmosphere and the earth.
21 growled and threw her hand out, gritting her teeth as two of her own fingers pierced clean through her forearm, throwing off her aim once more. The sheer, frothing at the mouth anger of the ex-human woman who had once been the basis of this body continued to throw off her attacks at the Demi-Saiyan who's very screams were shaking the earth and whirring the skies. A force of nature unlike anything the world had ever seen before.
At least if you discounted 21 herself, as she did. She still had more power than the brat. She was a lifeform even more powerful than that of Cell, even at what she estimated to be his peak, and the alien DNA added to her and not to him made her more than a match for whatever Son Gohan was doing. Or she would be, if Ruby would just roll over and accept reality already. All she was doing was being annoying and delaying the inevitable, honestly this wom-
CRACK!
21 hadn't even known what it was like to break a bone before this point, she didn't think she even could. She didn't have bones, did she? No. No she normally didn't… But that didn't stop the surprisingly heavy fist of Gohan from sinking into her side.
Like a slingshot the elasticity of her body kicked back in and flung her away from Son Gohan at a speed that surprised even herself. The woman righting herself in midair and hitting the ground feet first, her magically acquired heel's tearing trenches in the ground as she whipped a glare up at-
The fist of her enemy struck the top of her head and continued its downward arc. The earth meeting her face in a biblical explosion of boulders, sand and wind as the force of the hit travelled straight through her body and into the ground. Around them, towers of earth rose into the air slowly, as if monoliths to the power that both beings seemed to exude simply by existing.
Carving the earth out from underneath her by flaring her aura she twirled and slipped out from underneath her opponent's fist in an explosion of Ki that didn't so much as make him twitch a finger. His Aqua eyes trained on her retreating form with an intensity and a ferocity that even made her shiver, despite the still apparent power gap between them.
'Golden hair? Check. Length of the hair? Grown. Down to the knees currently. Bioelectricity? Increased production and intensity. Additionally, eyebrows seem to have disappeared amongst the changes inherent with this new transformation. Power output is increased by a factor of 4 but power leakage has increased by a magnitude of at least 8, maybe 9' 21 categorized to herself as she shot high into the air, her power swelling and swirling around her.
The clouds churned and began to swirl. The wind picked up as what had previously been a snap-thunderstorm turned into an artificial, devastating, cyclone that began to pick up more and more force as her swirling Ki forced the winds to obey. Even as high up as she was, the monoliths of earth hung a mere hundred meters below her feet, seeming to frame Gohan in what she saw as a prison of his own making.
Kicking off the ground in an explosion of Ki, the teen flew up to meet her faster than he could ever have with just his pure muscle-power alone. The ground beneath him shattering further and the monoliths crumbling in a catastrophic display of raw Ki power. His hand twitching and a gigantic demi-sphere of solid Kispawned, starting from the Kingdom's castle and encasing majority of the Ox Kingdom in a protective aquamarine dome.
'He can still think clearly in this berserker state!? Impossible. I can feel his Saiyan instincts clear as day. He should be no more man than beast.' 21 growled, twirling out of the way of her opponents attempted knee to the chest, only to be flung away by the wind-pressure of his follow-up kick.
'He dives deeper and deeper into his Saiyan instincts. An Oozaru in a human's body! His power grows but so does his leakage. How is he catching up to me!? How! HOW!?' The bio-android pulled her arm back and began to charge a condensed, chaotic ball of pink Ki.
An action that was matched by her snarling opponent. His Ki flaring around him and his eyebrow-less eyes narrowing further at her.
"Give them back. Goten, Ruby, every innocent person you've ever eaten. GIVE THEM ALL BACK!"
"COME TAKE THEM BACK! OH, GREAT PROTECTOR OF EARTH!" 21 cackled while throwing her hand forward, a cloud of intertwining and swirling energy beams flying towards him.
A cloud that Gohan was more than happy to meet with one of his own. Their Ki blasts meeting in the middle and halting as two forces of equal and opposite force struck each other. Every single tiny beam beginning to struggle against each other, creating a chaotic, swirling mix of both of their Ki at the center of each beam clash. With each beam that met, more and more either joined in or caused their own swirling mixture of energy. A stalemate that began to break down with each second that 21 kept firing beams and Gohan had to counter with his own.
The dome of energy around the Ox Kingdom began to flicker, evidently difficult for the Demi-Saiyan to keep up even with his newfound well of Ki. Though 21 couldn't capitalize on it either, despite her returning power, since she knew that getting distracted for even a moment against this new Son Gohan would spell bad news. He'd beaten one eternally regenerating bio-android after all, and she was in no mood to find out if he could somehow repeat the feat against her.
At least her power was returning now. Ruby must have reached her limit. It was understandable. She was but an echo of a woman who once used to exist after all. One who's body technically didn't even exist anymore considering the amount of experimentation that had been done on it. Lord knows she hadn't died as young as her body now looked.
21's beams lost ground for the briefest of moments in her distraction, her red irises glowing with enmity as she refocused her attention on taking down this damn Demi-Saiyan hunk that refused to die!
'Goten!' A voice in her mind echoed.
A singular pulse left her heart and seemed to rumble throughout every cell in her body. A bead of sweating forming and evaporating on her temple in an instant as her eyes widened in fear. It was impossible. Ruby couldn't have found him. She shouldn't have been able to. This physiology was purely hers! Not that deluded idiots! She couldn't let her find the others. Not now. Not while she was facing Son Gohan of all people!
He'd kill her. He'd end her, atomize her, decimate every hint of her very existence. She didn't even doubt that he would break his way into Hell if he had to make sure that even that didn't survive.
Son Gohan was not his father. And Son Goten was the catalyst that made that so very obvious to the bio-android.
'YOU STAY AWAY FROM HIM!' Her own voice that she heard within her mind was doused with fear and anxiety.
She had spoken a big game before, but if Ruby had found Son Goten, then she was screwed. She knew she could 'release' the lifeforms that she had consumed, she didn't know how she knew, just that she did. But she also knew that to do so would weaken her, distract her, lethally so in her current circumstances.
In an instant the fear welling up inside her travelled along her beams of Ki like an omen of the destruction to come, her eyes widening as she watched the static along her own power grow closer and closer to the stalemate between her and her opponent.
The power to her beams cut out, her body beginning to fold and curl inwards as she sent her Ki out into a sphere around her. A flickering, hardening sphere of bubblegum pink Ki that solidified with each passing fraction of a second that it took the static along her beams to grow closer to the epicenter. And reach them it did. The 'shock' of the sudden shift in energy de-stabilized the united combination of their Ki and began a chain reaction that even had 21 worried.
And then, the lack of backup for her beams reached them, no longer pushing against Gohan's frenzied energy and letting both his beams and the de-stabilizing sphere's inch closer and closer to her.
'This isn't how this was supposed to go! I'm stronger! I'M STRONG-'
The sphere's detonated, engulfing the skies in a ball of heat to rival the sun and melting the ground that the sphere grew close to. The sheer energy output by the detonation creating billions of volts of lightning that surged both through the forcefully retreating clouds and that struck the ground both below and surrounding the epicenter of the explosion. Travelling outwards like a shockwave of destruction, each bolt of lightning melted through and detonated everything in its path.
The weight of the blast and the true shockwave of the detonation surged through the planet, shaking tectonic plates, stirring the atmosphere and churning the oceans. A dominion of land, sky and sea that no creature in the planet's history had ever matched. Yet one that Gohan had never wanted.
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Hercule City
"SIIRRRRRR! WHAT'S HAPPENING!?"
"J-JUST A WEAPONS TEST! N-NO NEED TO WORRY!" Hercule shouted back, clutching the marble countertop of his penthouse and sweating all over.
The ground was shaking worse than he'd ever felt it shake before and the wind's that battered the city were at a level that he'd only ever heard stories of from the worst climates the planet had to offer. If so many of the buildings hadn't been built and reinforced after the Cell debacle out of sheer anxiety and paranoia than he was certain that half of the city would have collapsed by now.
A lightning strike nearby had him shrieking in fear, but it was (luckily for his ego) overshadowed by the ear-splitting scream that left Videl's mouth as she clutched his leg tightly. The suited guard on the other side of the living room stumbling and falling over, staring blankly through the reinforced windows as a surge of lightning travelled through the clouds and created hundreds of lightning strikes all across the city.
'What….What sort of weapon creates this?'
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Ox-Kingdom
Gohan landed on the ground of the still molten crater just outside the kingdom that his grandfather ruled, and that he was one day meant to rule as well. His aura still swirling around him and the ground cracking beneath even the slightest movement of his feet.
He could still feel the life-forces of his kingdom's people. But there were less than he expected, and he couldn't help but grimace at that. Knowing that each and every one of those deaths were one's that he could have prevented. If only he'd been stronger, smarter, better.
Just like Goten…
The burns and injuries littering his body meant nothing to him, they might as well have not existed for all he cared. All he cared about was the energy signature right in front of him and making her return everyone that she had ever eaten or pay the price of her sins.
The sound of dry heaving wasn't one that he was expecting to hear. Knowing how similar she was to Cell though; he wouldn't discredit her having a way to credit mini-me's as he had been able to.
"S-Stop. T-This is my body! Mine!" With a swipe of his hand, the dust cleared the vicinity in a blast of heated air, thanks to the lava that still surrounded them.
What he saw was a pitiful sight, but not one that he really could feel sorry for. At least not so long as 21 was the one in charge of the body. The women on all fours as she bucked and heaved, clearly struggling with something, if the way her fists were clenched was any indication.
He could feel her energy weakening as well. Weakening to something that he could actually match. Something that he could annihilate. And then a body left her mouth in a display that was more familiar than he truly wished it to be. But his disgust didn't matter because his baby brother was back.
In a gust of wind, the baby that had been about to touch the superheated ground of the crater beneath his feet disappeared alongside Gohan. The teen now standing behind the pink skinned woman as she panted and shivered, holding his brother with a softness and tenderness that was the exact antithesis of his current appearance.
"Please…" His gaze narrowed back in on the woman who had once, and still technically was, his friend.
She struggled to move, as if her body was fighting itself; he wouldn't have been surprised if it was, considering everything he had figured out about how her psyche and transformation worked.
"Please. S-Spare-" She managed to force out, turning so that she could look at him as best as the straining muscles in her neck and back would let her.
"You want to live? After everything you've done?" She growled, his very voice seeming to vibrate the earth beneath their feet as it started to finally cool.
"I-I can't- I- I want to li- P-Please." The woman begged, finally realizing the situation that she was in.
She was a prideful creature, yes, but unlike Cell and Frieza, she was not above realizing when she was beaten. And she was certainly beaten in this moment and time.
She had a brain to match Gohan's own, power that outstripped his and a regeneration factor that could even keep up with Perfect Cell at his very best. By all intents and purposes, she should be able to defeat him, rather easily at that, but she couldn't. Because while she may be fighting Son Gohan in body, she was fighting Ruby in mind. A two-pronged battle that sapped her strength and left her even more susceptible than usual to the breakdown of her body from whatever DNA made up this pink, bubblegum body of hers. The longer she fought Son Gohan, the worse and worse her performance got.
The power of the alien DNA outstripped everything else her body could offer. It was a strength that not only ate away at her own but also tore her apart from the inside and she was beginning to realize that, only now in the wake of it catching up to her.
And that terrified her. She didn't want to die. She didn't deserve to die! She was a creature that wanted to grow stronger, yes. A creature that wanted to show that superiority to others, yes. A creature that wanted to instill fear in anyone and everyone who came across her, yes. But above all else she was a creature that wanted to survive.
So, if she had to bow down for now? If she had to throw her pride to the side, to beg and plead and break down into hysterics? She would do it all and more. She would leave her pride and dignity in tatters to the wind if it meant that she would get a chance to survive and recuperate her strength for a round 2 someday.
Android 21 wouldn't sit peacefully and just let Son Gohan and the people of the cosmos live happily ever after, but a period of peace and non-action in exchange for being able to survive was infinitely ideal to perishing here and now.
"You murdered millions. And you just expect me to let you go?"
"I-I'll return- AGH!" She convulsed, collapsing onto her side on the ground for a brief moment. "R-Return them. I-I'll let Rub- Ruby take c-control. J-Just- please. P-Please. Let me- Let me-" Tears began to leak out of her eyes, making for even more of a pitiful sight than she already was.
With one arm holding Goten protectively, a second one raised above his head, a ball of Ki forming as the cold, uncaring eyes of the teen pierced down into her. Eyes that promised no mercy and no escape. Eyes that made her shiver and break into a cold sweat, already preparing to begin releasing the people that she had absorbed to try and get him to reconsider for even a single moment.
"Sir Gohan!" The charging energy ball ceased its charging for a moment, though his eyes never left 21.
"Get out of here Zangya."
"Sir Gohan! Please re-consider!"
"You're siding with her?" The green skinned girl shivered and shook her head wildly, her hands held up in surrender.
"No! No, never! But Sir Gohan! You are this planets protector!"
"She threatened every life on this planet. Without mercy, without remorse. It's a repeat of Cell all over again and I won't repeat that mistake!"
"I get that! I really do Sir Gohan. But King Kai informed me of how many souls would be destroyed alongside her own. There's so many that won't return Sir Gohan. Even with the dragonballs!" The fingers on the hand charging the Ki blast twitched slightly, his resolve evidently being battered by that revelation.
"I-I'll return them! All of them!" 21 added on, latching onto this chance for survival with everything she had.
Gohan growled, evidently not believing her.
"I-If I get to live. Every life will be returned, and Ruby w-will be reinstated as the one in charge of the body." Android 21 continued, gulping but not backing down as the ball in his hand suddenly doubled in size.
"Sir Gohan! Please. Don't let this chance go to waste! We can figure out something about 21 afterwards. Don't let your species be destroyed like this. Please. You're better than Bojack! You're better than him!" Zangya pleaded with him, taking a few steps forward and placing a hand on his shoulder.
"I-If she lives. If she lives, she'll just repeat this all over again…"
"But we know about it now. We know her abilities and her strength and we know that she exists." Zangya argued, her fingers squeezing his shoulder comfortingly. "She's beaten. You've protected the earth. Now please, Sir Gohan."
Gohan breathed out deeply and the ball of energy floating above his palm seemed to grow more chaotic for a moment before starting to disperse.
"I've had enough death for today. You can live, now free them." He sighed, carefully keeping his energy ball still active just enough that he could act if she tried to double-cross him.
But Android 21 wasn't stupid, and she knew that Gohan wasn't stupid either. With the clear distrust he had in her he'd never let his guard down enough for her to get a clean kill shot, and as a Saiyan anything less than instant death was too dangerous of a prospect. So with a deep inhale, her back began to bubble and expand.
Hundreds, thousands, millions of pink balls fired out of her back and around the planet, her opponents Ki flaring for the briefest of moments before the purposes of each ball became clear. As each ball cracked open and disintegrated to show a slime-covered body. Men, women and children alike fell out of the pink orbs. All unconscious but all alive.
And with each ball that left her body and disintegrated to nothingness, her power level dropped, and with each drop in her power level, her pink skin and alien appearance faded little by little back into the natural appearance of Ruby herself.
Until eventually, finally, all that was left was the completely human form of Ruby herself, panting on her knees and giving such a devastated look in Gohan's direction that he couldn't help but feel sorry for her as his energy ball died down completely.
"You…Should have….Killed her." Ruby muttered, her eyes rolling up but a moment later and her body falling limp.
"Yeah…probably." Gohan muttered to himself, falling to his knees in an explosion of golden motes as his knee-length golden hair transitioned back to his usual black hairstyle.
As he felt his muscles return to their normal size and saw the black surging into his vision, the last thing he saw was his baby brother. Alive and uninjured in his arms.
If only he could have stayed awake to enjoy it a moment longer.
XXXxxxXXX
Hi!
I have no excuse.
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Exodus12345: Yep! Gotta hurt the child to make a good story tho. *Shrugs*
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