The two feuding Artificial Humans, desperate to determine which one of them was superior in terms of carrying on both of their legacies and protecting those they care about, charged at each other. They collided midway, proving that both their speed was on a similar world of battle power. The two Androids weaved their hands and entered a pushing power struggle, erupting in a field of green static electricity and sending resounding shockwaves in all directions that shook the ground all around them and made mountains crumble from the pressure.
"Oh my, it might not be safe for me to remain here," Dr. Flappe observed, quickly jumping into his hovercar and speeding off alongside the mountain road leading to a location behind the mountain range which, the scientist assumed, would be much safer for him to wait the quarrel out in.
Whereas Super No. 16's face seemed stiff and strict, however calm, that of Super No. 8 was twisted in effort and desperation. The two broke off their struggle with Super Artificial Human No. 8 delivering a right-hand hook and Super No. 8 slipping it and thwacking Super No. 16 straight in the face with a wildly powerful overhead swing. Super No. 16 attempted to recuperate by throwing a straight, but Super No. 8 ducked it and delivered another swing to Super No. 16's gut, nearly shoving his fist clean through and forcing Super No. 16 to hover back from the close-range engagement.
Having realized that the first blood was his, infuriated Super No. 8, with his eyes whited out, a mean row of grit pearly whites, and a stitched together face of dead artificially cultivated human flesh bending in awkward ways as the blood vessels and metallic skeletal mechanisms bending and churning underneath twisted it from behind its inner layer, moved in with a double arm upward swing, bashing Super No. 16 in the air with a backhand smack.
"You're certainly much stronger than an Artificial Human as old as No. 8 should be," Super Artificial Human No. 16 dragged the back of his hand across his face to feel a couple of nasty bruises he took from the initial engagement. "However, your fighting style, or rather, lack thereof, betrays your shortcomings."
"I do not like to fight, which is why I have no use in learning how to!" Super No. 8 barked back at his opponent. Super No. 16 noted how despite him having disengaged from the fight, Super No. 8 still appeared just as enraged as before. It was as if he purposefully adopted this berserker state every time he fought in order to shake off reservations about fighting and his peaceful nature.
"That is why you are not suitable to protect those we care about!" Super Android No. 16 exclaimed, dashing with full force and speed at his opponent and bringing all the considerable weight and bulk of his body to crash at Super No. 8.
Super Android No. 8 spread his arms and legs out, throwing his head back and dismissing any notion of defense. He let out a deafening and resounding roar that echoed throughout the continent and brought about rampant quakes and fissures. Far across the planet, on the different side of the globe, the tremors caused the volcanoes to erupt in a destructive symphony as the ripping shockwaves tore through the thick web of cumulous clouds and dispersed them entirely. Super No. 16 braced himself, becoming engulfed in the resonating force and feeling the grievous damage that the seeping quakes inflicted upon him before submitting to the shockwave and letting it blow him away to avoid further strain and damage upon his systems.
When Super No. 16 recovered, pulling his crossed arms down, time seemed to freeze as the terrifying sight of rage-warped Super No. 16 hovering right in front of him, surrounded by a blaze of his searing jet flames that assisted the Super Android's flight, frozen in a state of a wrathful flying kick, was just a bit less than a meter away from connecting with that devastating attack. After its technologically peerless processor ran billions of calculations in a fraction of a second, Super No. 16's response came without significant delay, vastly surpassing the reaction time of even a hardened biological martial artist.
The Super Artificial Human grabbed Super No. 8 by the heel and dragged him down, slamming Super No. 8 into the jagged mountainous floor and crumbling it to smashed rocky debris upon impact. The crash resulted in an expansive halo of concussive force that shot upward drafts of pebbles and aggravated the state of violent fissures and landslides in the area, popping off the mountain peaks and causing them to rumble and slide down, caving Dr. Gero's abandoned lab which Super No. 16 Dr. Puri sent him to earlier in.
Before Super No. 8 could stand up, Super No. 16 slammed both arms to the back of the opposing Super Artificial Human, stiffening the giant up and causing him to bark out in pain and for his bulky body to bend backward from the strain of the hammering smash. With a horizontal double arm handle, Super No. 16 sent Super No. 8 flying away, while the Super Android produced long barrel-shaped exhaust pipes in the back and fired red-hot blaze jets from them to dash forward in pursuit.
After closing the distance between them in a snap, Super Artificial Human No. 16 grabbed hold of his opponent's giant and bulky body upside down and slammed it with a jumping mix between a powerbomb and a piledriver that shoved Super No. 8's head into the shattered rocky terrain and drilled his body almost halfway through the crumbled stone.
"Have you been convinced yet of your inferiority? While of the two of us I am more willing to fight for that which I must protect, I do not enjoy violence and would prefer avoiding further fighting," Super No. 16 addressed his stuck upside-down opponent whose only twitching legs were sticking out from the ground. Kicking and thrashing, Super No. 8 pulled itself out of the ground and up on its wobbly feet, having suffered bruising all across his artificially cultivated flesh and tearing to his fur coat and rags underneath.
"It's easy for you to call for that when you're ahead!" Super No. 8 cried out, after tearing the sleeves of his fur coat off and flexing his massive muscles, growing even larger in size and thickness as the Infinite Energy Reactor pumped out more and more energy to bolster the Super Android's already swollen overtaxed frame.
"Hoooh!" Super Artificial Human No. 8 clenched its fists and erupted with emerald firestorms that shot from underneath his torn fur coat, boosting him forward as the blazing Android put his head down and soared forward with a reckless gigaton headbutt.
Super No. 16 raised its open palm and let the headbutt connect with his hand, which cushioned the impact. A vertical halo of concussive force boomed in all directions, slicing through rock, mountains, and the faraway cities where it shattered glass panels and threatened to make skyscrapers collapse. Super No. 8's body awkwardly curled inward after the sudden stoppage of his heinous crash.
With his hand firmly locked around Super No. 8's head, Super No. 16 flung him aside before removing his right hand and revealing a concealed wrist cannon that was glowing from somewhere deep inside already. "Hell's Heat!" Super No. 16 called out, firing a blinding energy wave from it that was blindingly bright and threatened to blow Super No. 8 away. With plenty of help from the dancing emerald flames emitted from a jetpack somewhere on its back, Super No. 8 vaulted over with a flip and put himself in the proper hovering position, then moved aside from the blast's way, redirecting all the heat in his flying device into a sideways dash. This caused Hell's Heat to beam off across the planet's surface and take off into space until it met a cosmic object to obliterate.
"Your chances of victory right now are at 0%," Super Artificial Human No. 16 declared after securing his wrist back into place and adopting a balanced boxing position. "Even if you can produce astounding power for your outdated model. You may not be obsolete, but against me, you are outgunned."
"And why is that?" Super No. 8 grumbled back with a husky tone of voice. While the Infinite Energy Reactor didn't let the older Super Android model tire after strenuous evasive action, the Super Android suffered some damage already in this bout. That didn't let him feel fresh and at his peak anymore.
"Because your unbelievable power only surges through you when you fight to protect someone. That is your programming. That is the condition in which all of your unbelievable power becomes available to you. However, right now, you are not fighting to protect anyone but yourself, which is why you're struggling to keep up with a superior model," Super Artificial Human No. 16 explained. "While I hold some of your beliefs, I have no problem with fighting when I feel it is necessary and foster no false hopes of solving things peacefully every time. That is why I am unburdened by such weaknesses. I am your successor in every conceivable way."
"You are wrong!" Super No. 8 barked back at his opponent, swiping in dismissal with his massive arm. "And I will prove it to you right now!"
Super No. 8 crossed its arms together and then spread them apart, throwing his body back while he erupted with a violent expulsion of energy, burning up with flames that began changing to a more turquoise color as their tips became brighter blue. Far from even the farthest reaches of Super No. 8's blazing desperation power-up, a field of crackling static sparks became apparent, soaking everything solid in electromagnetic charge.
Surprising Super No. 16, Super No. 8 dashed forward with one arm wound back. Super No. 16 dashed forward with a soaring fist of his own, but, in a shocking turn of events, the rumbling force coming from Super No. 8's side was too powerful, knocking Super No. 16 flying and rendering him limp for a few seconds as all of his taxed systems shut down for a swift reboot. Before they could do so, Super No. 8 dashed up from behind to Super No. 16 and locked his hands around Super No. 16's back and chest, holding him locked and suspended in the air that way.
"Ever since Chayote and Goku freed me from the Muscle Tower, I've met so many nice people. Suno-chan and her parents, Dr. Flappe too… I've lived a long life of happiness and peace, only fighting to protect Jingle Village and its inhabitants! If I am to become just a part of you, all of that, all of those sweet memories I have recorded in my hard drive, will become obsolete! They will cease to be as they merge with your data! I will not allow that to happen! I will not allow my life, my memories, my friendships, and my happiness to be deleted! That is why… That is why even if I'm fighting for myself, I WILL GIVE MY EVERYTHING!"
"Wh… What is that power?" Super No. 16's mouth opened ajar as a few drops of sweat squeezed through the thick metallic vizor and ran down the exposed cheeks and mouth of the heavily fortified Super Artificial Human. "It's coming from… Your core, but…"
"That's right, while Dr. Flappe may have removed the explosive device in my chest, replacing it with another energy reactor to give me more power to protect those I fight for, upon merging with Artificial Human No. One-Six, I've ended up with something in between an Infinite Energy reactor and the standard Artificial Human bomb. A highly volatile energy reactor with the capacity for explosive meltdown. It's what supplies me my insurmountable force to fight to protect those I hold dear!" Super No. 8 explained with whited-out eyes that began beaming with turquoise light.
Super No. 16 observed in terror as the turquoise light began seeping through all the cracks and orifices of Super No. 8's body, just before the swelling up energy pent up inside the gentle giant began making Super No. 8's body expand and inflate like a balloon. However, instead of exploding in an uncontrollable, suicidal burst that would have threatened the entire planet, Super No. 8 cried out from the tremendous strain and began releasing the energy swelling up in his body as an explosive wave all around him.
The slowly expanding explosive energy wave burned off the fur coat and the rags around Super No. 8, revealing patches of flesh in various degrees of disarray, some pale, some rotten green, some graying, and some dark. All across Super No. 8's back were flat conductor coil generators that produced the emerald and turquoise flame and allowed Super No. 8 to jet around the battlefield. Super No. 8's stitched-together artificial body swelled up to unparalleled proportions to contain the immense power that was about to explode from within his core during this explosive meltdown attack.
"This is… Trouble," Super No. 16 muttered to himself. "However, as I've said before, I am the superior model!"
Super No. 8's adamantine grip faltered as incredible energy began burning up within Super No. 16 as well. When the locked fingers slipped from a tight weave, Super No. 16 finally bent his bulky arms and grabbed hold of Super No. 8's forearms before the explosive energy wave that threatened to devastate even Super No. 16 could really get going. With forceful stutters, the two powerhouses entered a power struggle as Super No. 16 sought to undo the tight lock around his chest while Super No. 8 fought to preserve it. In the end, Super Artificial Human No. 16 parted his opponent's arms and slipped away from Super No. 8's grasp, delivering a quick horizontal kick to Super No. 8's face that canceled out the brimming destructive energy burst and sent Super No. 8 crashing down on the ground, flattened and defeated.
"I… I submit, I am defeated!" Super No. 8 cried out with round and thick tears streaming down from his face while the damaged, torn-up, and bruised giant laid in a mess of broken metallic coils that he had busted after the messy crash. The Super Artificial Human seemed to hardly be holding himself together as the crushed conductor coils sent painful sparks all across the twitching, muscular body of the Super Artificial Human, further tormenting him for his defeat. "To me, my friends and my family felt like a source of insurmountable power, and yet… You broke me despite me drawing strength from those precious bonds. Perhaps they truly are meaningless, perhaps I truly am weak and every bit of a failure as Dr. Gero thought me to be when he stashed and abandoned me?"
"You still do not understand, do you?" Super No. 16 said after bringing himself down and landing on firm ground right in front of the fallen Super Android and extending his hand to help Super No. 8 up. "The reason I could break your hold and escape your desperation move is because, as you've made it clear in the beginning, I am based on Gebo, Dr. Puri's son, just like you were."
"B-But… What does that have to do with anything?" Super No. 8 wondered, extending his hand to grab Super No. 16's hand and stand back up.
"Your ability to draw strength from the bonds you've forged and records of people you treasure is not one that is unique to you. Nor is it unique to me. It is a trait of Gebo. And because you were the first attempt, a prototype of the model that would once store Gebo's preserved brain and genetic material, and because I was the latest in that line of attempts at such a prototype, both of us possess the same quality. My love and the need to protect my family matched the power you could draw by relying on the bonds you've forged. In the end, I was the newer, stronger model, which is why I could break out," Super No. 16 explained with a lukewarm smile on its face.
The two Super Artificial Humans observed a trail of smoke as a hovercar was speeding up to them from over the mountain range and took off the mountain road to fly over the collapsed wasteland to skid across the ruins and end up hovering near the two Super Artificial Humans who had settled their differences. Dr. Flappe jumped out from the hovercar and lit up a smoke, taking a few puffs before pinching it with his fingers and pulling it out from his mouth.
"I see, so Dr. Puri's model won it in the end, huh? Can't say I'm surprised, but… It's a blow to my pride as a scientist to see my greatest work lose like that," Dr. Flappe sighed.
"I only won because of how much alike the two of us are. After matching you blow for blow, I can tell that the Ultimate Artificial Human from our fusion will be strong enough to defeat even Cell," Super Artificial Human No. 16 nodded in acknowledgment of the impressive battle power and the peerless effort that Super No. 8 put into this quarrel of theirs. "However, you've miscalculated again when you've drawn your conclusions, Super Artificial Human No. 8."
"Huh? What do you mean?" Super No. 8 scratched its cheek, looking slightly embarrassed. Both about his mistake and the praise he received from everyone.
"The emergence of our new Ultimate Artificial Human does not need to make for the end of one of our dreams or the disappearance of one of our records and bonds. Someone as mighty as that will be powerful enough to protect everyone everywhere. Dr. Puri, Dr. Flappe, the Jingle Village and the entire universe," Super Artificial Human No. 16 explained. "And their storage space will be mind-boggling, so there will be no need to dump the data of the happy memories recorded in your system. We can relive them all over again for as long as we're operational."
"Right," Super No. 8 laughed out with tearful ecstasy. "Let's do this, Super Artificial Human No. 16, let us protect everyone together!"
As the two Super Artificial Humans extended their hands for a shake, the skies darkened and their bodies became surrounded by a soft, gleaming golden outline. Despite the black and shrouded skies, Dr. Flappe covered his eyes and stumbled back, flopping into his hovercar from the luminosity of the transformation as, from where he was standing, it seemed to be brighter than the warmest summer morning. Like drawn by a magnet within each of their cores, the two Super Artificial Humans slowly and gently phased into each other until they became one and converged in the epicenter of the luminous light show.
The shape of Super Artificial Human No. 16, who would be the recipient and the master of this Ultimate Class ascension, became ethereal and entirely made of golden energy as it morphed according to the demands of their dire need for an ultimate warrior capable of protecting the universe and those both gentle giants loved and sought to protect. The sparkling nova of energy faded out, revealing the completion of the Ultimate Artificial Human transformation.
Emerging from the electromagnetic static electricity field was an almost 3 meters tall bulky giant with a slick black armored weave extending from his boots to his neck and face, opening up only at the area around Ultimate No. 16's mouth and hair, which was now much thicker and spikier, resembling Super Saiyan hair but vivid red in color. The armored weave with metallic cybernetic patterns decorating it didn't cover Ultimate No. 16's shoulders and arms, letting the swollen muscles breathe with only a metallic plate covering his shoulders and the armored salad-green and black gauntlet wrapping around the lower forearm, wrist, and hands of the Ultimate Artificial Human.
"Oh, my…!" Dr. Flappe gasped after fumbling his way out of the hovercar that he stumbled back into, gazing upon the newly born and still basking in electric luminosity Ultimate Artificial Human. Before the scientist's eyes, the black tempered glass visor covering up Ultimate No. 16's eyes lit up with two red, interconnected by an arcing line, glowing eyes.
"Son Goku…" Ultimate No. 16 uttered in a distinctively No. 16-sounding voice as the Ultimate Artificial Human turned around to face the stupefied Saiyan hovering above the ruined mountainside. "You've come at just the right time. Our business here is concluded."
"What's going on here?" Goku leaned back, visibly freaked out by what he was seeing. "Looking for Androids sure is tough, but I thought that surely one of them has got to be where all this ruckus and rotten clouds are coming from. And yet… I've never seen you before!"
"This is Ultimate Artificial Human No. 16! The Ultimate Artificial Human born of the willing union between Super Artificial Human No. 8 and Super Artificial Human No. 16, and quite possibly the most powerful Artificial Human to have ever existed!" Dr. Flappe crossed his arms, laughing while looking immensely proud of this newly born, unbelievably powerful Android.
"Ultimate Android!?" Goku gasped. "Don't tell me, you're looking for a fight!" the Saiyan became more serious and adopted a fighting stance.
"That would be pointless. The ancient programming of Artificial Human No. 16 is buried in the backlog while the new programming is being drafted as we speak. While Super Artificial Human No. 16 was indifferent toward your fate, Super Artificial Human No. 8 considered you to be a good friend. For that reason, fighting Son Goku is illogical," Ultimate No. 16 reported with a mechanical and strict tone, looking up at the uneasy and intimidated Saiyan with his luminous and pixelated red eyes, beaming through a black-tinted visor. Unlike the singular beam of Super No. 16's visor, these glowing eyes appeared much more malleable and able to express different emotions. Therefore, they were much more pleasing to look at by all the people Super Artificial Human No. 8 sought to protect and cherish forever.
"So… Eighter is gone, huh? Man, that sucks…" Goku winced and scratched his head with a sad look on his face.
"That is not entirely correct, either. Both Super Artificial Human No. 16 and Super Artificial Human No. 8 willingly have forged a new, invincible Artificial Human to better accomplish both their goals. Therefore, Ultimate Artificial Human No. 16 retains both their programming and some of their key parts. I, therefore, am both Super Artificial Human No. 16, Super Artificial Human No. 8, and none of them at the same time," Ultimate No. 16 explained.
"That's as confusing as Piccolo's situation!" Goku grabbed hold of his head to prevent it from splitting apart from too much thinking. The Saiyan kicked around while hovering in the air as if struggling to stuff all the complex thoughts down from where they came from.
"Your ability to understand me is irrelevant. Right now, only one thing is key for you to understand–we both share a common enemy that we must destroy. That enemy is Cell. Son Goku, I will need you to trust me and take me where you are preparing to fight Cell with the rest of your allies. Right now, our interests are in alignment," Ultimate No. 16 pointed out only for Goku to calm down, gulp, and nod. After Goku lit up with a crystal-clear white aura and took off, Ultimate No. 16 slowly hovered off the ground, still electrified as if riding the electromagnetic currents around him, then blasted off radiating no aura around him, yet able to instantly match up to Goku's speed and maintain a respectful distance behind the speeding Saiyan.
The birth and alignment of Ultimate Artificial Human No. 16 with the Dragon Team's side proved to be an incredibly beneficial and important development in the ever-lasting nightmare of the conflict against Cell.