Chapter 43: Future Trunks Gaiden, Part IV
"W-We've…" said Future Trunks.
"Walked into a trap?" said Bra, in consternation.
"Kehehehehe… It's so wonderful to see that you two have joined us. Come, be my guests," said Mu, his electrically charged helmet generating a quiet sound akin to the sound of keys typed on a keyboard, "you are all welcome… my dead test subjects."
"Mu! At last we meet!" yelled Dabura as he suddenly generated a spear and prepared to hurl it at his opponent, "Tonight we end your empire and free the great Majin from your clutches, once and for all!"
"Majin Boo? The one sealed in that petty, purple ball? Fuhuhuhu… If that trivial being is your coveted objective, then I take it back… You are but a boorish extra, unfit to walk in the same realm as my exalted guests!" yelled Mu as he then snapped his finger, prompting the Machine Mutant #18 lookalike to restrain Dabura and bring him to the cold, metallic floor.
Rild then flew at #18 and tried to kick her away, only to hit her pink, impenetrable barrier. He was hurled dozens of feet backward, but fired a blast into the wall to propel himself toward Mu, who was then protected by a wall of liquid metal. Rild then blew it up with his hydrogen manipulation, but Mu had escaped into a distant corner of the room in another block of liquid metal. He then said with a nonchalant look in his face, "Rild… What is this behavior of yours? Do you not realize that I am the one who carved the way for your creation? Is this the way you treat your dear father?"
"My 'father' is none other than the great Lord Babidi, whom I now serve! You merely brought me under your control by modifying me into a Machine Mutant slave! And my disgraceful servitude, and all humiliations derived from it will be cut asunder tonight!"
"What a pity… I had hoped that the wiles of Babidi hadn't polluted your mind so. You served me considerably better than your subordinates of the Sigma Force Five. But now that you've turned your fangs against me, I've no choice but to show you my trump card!"
Future Trunks realized what Mu must be referring to and yelled, "D-Dammit! Dabura, spit on the one restraining you, now! A second's delay will prove fatal!"
Before Dabura could fulfill Future Trunks' demand, #18 halfway dissolved her barrier, allowing the bottom of the floor to meld into it. From there, another #18, with an absent-minded expression, was released from another blob of liquid metal.
The two #18 then said, "We two are one and the same… born to unite and fill in parts yet incomplete in one but complete in another… We will now be reborn and henceforth be known as…"
"Damn you!" yelled Future Trunks as he generated a blade of Ki and concentrated it around the hilt of his broken samurai sword before creating another Ki blade around the scabbard and rammed both into #18's barrier. Bra has at this point realized what the cyborgs must be trying to do from her knowledge of Super #17 from the timeline she originated in, and formed a Ki spear around her nyoi-bo and struck the barrier at the same time. Rild also shot a blast of explosive hydrogen and energy at the nexus of this fusion, thinking that if Dabura were offed to end their biggest adversary, it'd be a worthwhile means to an end.
However, from the nexus of the blast, a taller, more athletic and slightly more voluptuous female figure emerged, with waist-length hair, a blouse that had several zigzag-pattern openings exposing parts of her cleavage and midriff, as well as a long skirt with a side opening and high heel boots. The figure then went and absorbed all of the concentrated energy blasts into herself and said, "On the planet of New Namek we revived the #18 destroyed in battle on Earth… and Mu-sama constructed a Machine Mutant in her likeness from the CT image scan that was in the works through our many spies… I am their union, Super #18! The combination of the pinnacle of Tsufurian Machine Mutant technology and Earth's artificial human infinite energy model design!"
"G-Grr… They managed to complete this design considerably earlier in this timeline. Perhaps because #18 and #17 were far more active?! Damn it!" yelled Future Trunks.
Just then, Dabura's figure, which was still crushed beneath Super #18's feet, appeared half-translucent as his real body emerged next to Rild.
"Dabura! So you live!"
"Yes. I'd have liked to go ahead and take the head of the abominable machine mutant version of our master that Mu has brought under his control, but had I made such hasty moves, that foul being would've quickly taken my head off! Rild, it is time for a joint attack! It appears that fiend absorbs our energy, but she might not be able to absorb pure fire! From there, I'll try and disrupt her internal physiology with my weapons!"
"Right. And perhaps I can make use of my explosive hydrogen to destroy her from the inside out," replied Rild in telepathy.
"What's wrong? Have you lost the nerve to come at me?!" yelled the Super Machine Mutant, with a completely twisted, hyper-confident smirk on her face, "Then, allow me to strike you!"
Super #18 fired off a rocket punch trying to strike Dabura, who barely managed to dodge it with an afterimage and appear behind her. Rild then warped himself behind Dabura as Dabura shot a cyclone of fire at the female monstrosity, who appeared to burn in the torrents of flame. He then yelled, "You're mine!" and tried to take aim with a spear, only to hit two afterimages. Super #18 then said, "You're slow to react… Even when you hit an afterimage of my afterimage!" and promptly kicked both their heads off, causing their lifeless bodies to drop motionlessly into the floor. She then psychically levitated the two fallen villains' blood and licked it in mid-air and said, "Two down… And five more to go!"
"N-No way! S-She's a monster!" yelled Bra as she almost fell to her knees in fear of this new, mighty foe, at which point Future Trunks struck down Super #18's detached hand as it tried to take the opening to grab his sister and absorb her energy, and crushed it to bits with a massive flurry of punches before vaporizing it with a one-handed blast.
"As I thought… When your body is crushed to pebble-sized pieces, your energy absorption is nullified," said Future Trunks, transformed into a Super Saiyan 2, "and that gives me all the hints that I need… To win this battle! Prepare yourself, 'Super' #18! You'll find that I came here quite prepared!"
"Prepared, you say? What a joke," said Super #18, "if destroying my hand is truly the best you can manage, your preparation just brought you one step closer to meeting an inglorious end!"
Super #18 landed with a heavy thud on the floor of the hidden laboratory, and then said, "Mu-sama! Do I have permission to move this battle elsewhere?"
"Yes… That may be salubrious. I'd like for my laboratory to not sustain any more damage. Rild and Dabura's bodies would serve as quite the interesting test subjects as well. You have my permission, Super #18!" said Mu through a telepathic message.
"Good! Now the time has come… For me to guide you to your final resting place!" yelled Super #18 as she prepared to launch a powerful kiai, at which point Future Trunks appeared in front of Bra to help her guard against it. Bra, too, quickly powered up, but the two were flown helplessly out of the laboratory and into a liquid metal city many hundreds of miles away.
"Bwahahaha! Kya hahahaahaha!" yelled Super #18 as she quickly caught up to the arc of their blindingly quick flight, "It is time now… for your lives to be forfeit!"
Future Trunks then said, "Don't count us out just yet, 'Super' #18. What you thought was a great move for you might just be what we wanted all along," before entering his full power, positioning himself above Super #18's head, and firing off a Ki blast from his outstretched arms, aimed at a raincloud that was looming over the city, while using its propulsion to land a kick straight onto her face and knocking her into the ground. Super #18 landed gracefully onto the concrete floor and said, "So… you held back when you fought me prior. But if that kick was the best you could do, this battle will be over in a flash!"
"Heh…" said Future Trunks as suddenly, droplets of rain began falling on Super #18, causing her to instantly look up into the sky and distract herself. "Rain? How?! The only water we use on the planet is the water we use to run our engines and clean our machines!"
"If there is air to breathe on this planet that's sufficient for us organic beings, there is enough water to evaporate from rising temperatures! Dabura's flame evaporated a huge amount of water when he set that laboratory ablaze! And thanks to my blast exploding in mid-air, rain has begun to fall all over this vicinity!"
"A-And?! That puts you in no more of a disadvantage than you, Trunks! I'll have my revenge for what you did to me on Earth yet!"
"And that's where you're wrong, as well! Bra, it's time for Attack Formation B!" yelled Future Trunks as his hands quickly formed a Taiyo-ken stance as Bra closed her eyes and appeared behind her brother, at which point he generated a blinding spark of light from his body and rendered #18's eyes useless.
"D-Damn you!"
"This is the first step in your defeat, #18! I am all too aware of your kind's ability to read our movements from vibrations in the air, and rain renders that power useless!"
"And here's the kicker!" yelled Bra as she powered up to her true full power in her Super Saiyan 2 state, raising her Ki four-fold.
Future Trunks then generated a sharp buzzing noise around himself as his Ki vibrated in extremely intense frequencies, causing his fist to phase through objects. He managed to dive into Super #18's range and tear out her eyes by phasing through her skull and eyelids. Bra then followed up with a heavy swing of her lengthened nyoi-bo, damaging her skull further.
"D-Damn you!" yelled Super #18 as she tried to buy the time to regenerate her eyeballs using nanotechnology by generating a barrier around herself, at which point Future Trunks simply phased himself inside it and said, "No use! Your barrier may keep any physical attack or regular Ki blast from reaching your body, but when Ki vibrates at this frequency, not even you can absorb it!"
He then kicked her in the chin by solidifying himself before phasing through her barrier and tearing a hole in it, at which point Bra quickly landed a series of swings onto her torso, ripping parts of Super #18's stomach off and nearly exposing her Machine Mutant core.
"T-This can't be…! H-How can I be backed into a corner by the likes of you two?! My power clearly dwarfs yours! Combined!"
"In raw power, yes. You hold a complete and decisive edge. But you only look at power, rather than its application and our strength in numbers! Bra and I have been practicing this strategy precisely in preparation for fighting someone like you! And this is where you die!" yelled Future Trunks as he tore out Super #18's eyes before they regenerated, yet again. Bra followed it up with a series of staff strikes before Future Trunks then tore off Super #18's torso skin altogether and fired a blast into her core, slightly disrupting it. However, Super #18 then fired a straight beam of pure, green energy from the core and forced Future Trunks and Bra to both dodge, at which point the core quickly repaired itself as one of her eyes regenerated.
"I see… So, the core itself has a self-defense mechanism. No matter! Bra, we move into Formation C! This wasn't unexpected, it is a core of pure energy, after all!" yelled Future Trunks.
"So… So far everything has been going according to your plans, has it?! Then, allow me to throw a wrench in your calculations!" yelled Super #18 with a demented, banshee-like tone to her voice, at which point a certain figure flew from Mu's secret laboratory into the battlefield.
"It's…!" yelled Future Trunks.
"Babidi! The one Mu modified!" yelled Bra.
"So, these two cretins have managed to find a way to render Super #18's power advantage null, is that it?! Then, under Mu-sama's orders, allow me to render that strategy utterly moot!"
"Paparapapa!"
Swirls of ominous, purple energy erupted from within the Mutant Babidi's arms and gathered around the heavily damaged Super #18, at which point Super #18's face, torn and one-eyed, quickly repaired itself as veins emerged from her forehead and mascara-like lines of black emerged under her eyes. As a large, curved M insignia appeared on her forehead, Super #18 let loose a humongous cyclone of energy, one so massive and intense that Future Trunks and Bra could not even approach it.
"D-Dammit! This totally wasn't what I expected!"
"O-Onii-chan! Her power's so vast, I can't see a limit to it!"
"I-If we can't approach her, then we can't damage her… No, forget that, with her energy this strong, my body itself might disperse if I tried to phase into this storm of power!"
"How right you are! Die, Trunks!" yelled Super #18 as she completed her transformation and quickly elbowed Future Trunks in the nape of his neck, as she then emerged next to Bra, and kicked her in the stomach with such force that her spine broke, and she was knocked straight into the outskirts of the central laboratory of Mu.
"G-Gggggwarrrrk!" yelled Future Trunks as he tried to get up, only to spit blood out of his mouth and collapse onto the ground.
"So… You're still alive, are you? Well, now that your dear little sister is completely incapacitated, allow me to take pleasure in making you regret… REGRET THAT YOU WERE EVER EVEN BORN!"
Super #18 kicked Future Trunks into the air and struck him in the left shoulder, cracking his shoulder blades and snapping his rotator cuff, after which she elongated her nails and began slashing at his stomach until blood had completely dyed his shirt red. She then stabbed him in the right side of his torso and cut his liver in half before flinging him into the ground with her knee, jumping high into the air, and dropping both of her knees onto his legs, snapping them both.
"G-Gwaaaarggggh!" yelled Future Trunks as he spat blood and rolled around in agony.
"Ho… Still alive, are we? And you're still persistently hanging onto your little 'Super Saiyan' transformation, at that! Allow me… To FIX THAT FOR YOU!"
Super #18 then grabbed Future Trunks by the head and nearly crushed it in her grip, before headbutting him and knocking him out of his transformation. However, Future Trunks managed to go Super Saiyan 2 again and then bite into Super #18's shoulder, at which point she said, "Piss off!" and spun around and hurled him straight into a metal forest, causing him to drop back into his base form once more.
"Geez, he was a persistent one. Any normal fighter would've kicked the bucket long before he did," said Super #18 as she quickly used nanotechnology to repair the bite mark Future Trunks created, at which point she swung her arm around and said, "Now it's time to go ahead and murder the little girl. I'd normally bring both of them for Mu-sama to experiment on, but I want to kill them…"
Just then, Future Trunks smirked, still half-dead, as suddenly a huge spark of light erupted from where Bra was flung by Super #18. And before Super #18 could contain her shock, a glowing, nigh-invisible figure emerged from the light and punched her in the stomach, causing her to be knocked back and nearly fall to the ground.
"W-What… What IS THIS?!"
"You let your guard down, #18… I knew I'd be your main target, and with your sadistic nature, you couldn't resist taking your time to halfway kill me before going to retrieve my sister. Kaioshin-sama, the highest deity in this universe, has something called a Time Ring! With it, he managed to bring a certain someone from Bra's timeline… Someone with the power of Fusion!"
"Fusion! The dance merger that is the specialty of the Metamorans!" said Super #18, now clearly afraid.
"Bingo! Kibito-san was a little stingy about it, but he healed me back to health… And now we've gone and merged into… the all-powerful force of nature! The mightiest fusion, Brapan!" yelled the fused warrior, transformed into a Super Saiyan.
"Kha wa rrrrrraaaaargh!" yelled Super #18 as she raised her power to the limit and became significantly more muscular as she swung her sharp talons at Brapan, only for her to strike the Super Machine Mutant's chin with her knee and twist her neck, momentarily incapacitating her. Then, while Super #18 was struggling to repair her injuries, Brapan struck down the cyborg's one good hand with her right foot and then pulled her neck backwards, saying to Future Trunks, "Hey, uh… Trunks-san! Her weak point is her head, right? She killed Rild the same way, after all."
"Yes, but be careful. You have to get it done entirely with physical attacks, otherwise she'll absorb your energy from the slightest contact," replied Future Trunks as Kibito warped behind him and began to heal him with his godly powers, causing his deep wounds to subside rapidly.
"That isn't all I can do!" yelled Super #18 as she fired off her arm from her main body and fired a blinding flash of light from the Ki absorbing jewel embedded in a ring resting on her middle finger which was fused into the top of her palm, and then positioned it at Future Trunks' neck, intending to both kill him and take his energy for herself. However, Brapan was one step faster yet again, and quickly transformed to a Super Saiyan 2 to position herself directly above the detached hand. She crushed it completely by landing on it at high-speed, at which point she yelled, "Haiyaaaaah!" and hit it with a flurry of punches, finally crushing it to pieces before vaporizing it with a blast.
"Guess this arm had the same weakness as the other one we destroyed, huh? I think it's about time we end her, Trunks-san," said Brapan.
"Agreed. But to be safe, we'll hit both her head and core at the same time to minimize risk of her pulling some desperate move to take us down with her," said Future Trunks as he calmly went into Super Saiyan 2, before entering his full power.
"D-Damn it all! It's as if they had all of this prepared from the star – "
Before Super #18 could finish her last words, Brapan completely crushed her head with a swift, heavy elbow attack as Future Trunks struck her with a powerful two-handed strike to her torso, shattering her Machine Mutant core. Terrified, the half of Babidi converted by Mu rendered himself invisible and fled the scene of battle.
"Finally… It's done. The people of the Mother Planet can spend their days in peace in this timeline also," said Future Trunks.
"It's early still to celebrate!" yelled Juruse, the cloaked leader of the M2 Resistance as he and his hundreds of followers quickly stormed the area and said, "According to our intelligence, Mu possesses a special, revitalizing material that can repair any Mutant just once! He likely hid it in his laboratory to repair #18 in case of a situation like this!"
"Right! Mu is just ahead and so is the wizard, we shall meet at Mu's underground laboratory, Leader!"
"Yes! Let us give chase and finish them off! This is the final battle!" yelled Juruse as he and his followers flared up flight auras and headed for the laboratory along with his followers and fellow warriors, Future Trunks, Brapan, Kaioshin and Kibito…!
To be continued…