Dr. Wheelo halted with an eruption of blinding jets behind him that reminded of Ki waves. The motions that the mechanical body of the arrogant scientist had to go through in order to halt its flight back were the most extreme that it had gone through up to date. The wires and tubes making Dr. Wheelo's limbs churned in tension as did the nuts and bolts holding the entire mechanical marvel together.
"He cracked the shell!" Tenshinhan quivered in shock, pointing at Dr. Wheelo who floated in a round, fetal-like pose in mid-air as flares of energy worked to keep him stationary. "Bardock almost broke through the glass protecting the brain with just one kick…"
"You dare attack me so suddenly!?" Dr. Wheelo yelled out as his body stretched out, releasing a thunderous shockwave from it once the flowing Ki jets ceased and Wheelo stabilized his flight.
"What are you talking about? I warned you to stop mentioning my son whether it is by his Earth name or his true name…" Bardock stretched the lower part of his wristband to correct it as the ones used by the Turtle School students were a great deal smaller than the wristbands worn by the Saiyan himself. "You've gone and done it. You've pissed me off so now I've gotta bust you up."
"Defeat me!?" Dr. Wheelo extended his hands to the sides, compartments surrounding the dome where his supersized brain resided opened up and bright light began beaconing from within them. A warning of the flashing destruction about to commence. "This mechanical body utilizes the materials from my lab, connecting them into a fully functional combat mech utilizing the finest Ki energy engine that modern science knows. Its might is fully capable of using that energy to shield this shell from any harm. Not even Muten Roshi, a champion of the World Martial Arts Tournament can handle it. What chance do you think you have?"
Rampaging Ki waves blasted out from Dr. Wheelo's open compartments in a gatling fusillade, Bardock took off, dashing sideways to distract the rampant destruction from the injured Dragon Team as it proceeded to obliterate everything it touched, leaving pillars of shooting out geysers of water and blasting shrapnel storms of solid chunks of ice but Bardock was nowhere near the blast zone each and every time to deal with it.
"Quit bragging!" Bardock roared out as he dashed in from the right and threw a hook in Dr. Wheelo's mid-section, bending the protective shell of the mechanical bot and ripping through the outer layer with his punch as if his fists wrecked through cardboard. "I've not fought the old man, you haven't punched me nor have you taken punches from me so you won't know how hard you can hit me and how hard I can dish it back!"
Bardock vanished, appearing before the cracked glass dome where Dr. Wheelo's brain rested in. The Saiyan socked a decent blow directly into the crack that his previous dropkick had left but Wheelo managed to turn just in time, having the blow skid off and leave a scrape instead of busting right through. It was about to stop the rampaging Saiyan as he smacked with an open palm, swinging his other, free arm downward and throwing Dr. Wheelo off-guard by throwing off his visual input. Another hook, this time to the front of the dome. The cracks on Wheelo's protective glass case widened and proceeded to reach all the way to the edge of the dome as the glass bent out of shape.
It was likely that Wheelo couldn't even see Bardock's transition to the softer close-range blows to the devastating thrust kick that sent him flying and appeared to disable any potential inputs from the doctor and take any attempts to establish control over his drone that was being trounced off the table. Bardock pursued his airborne opponent with a snap, driving his left fist into the lower part of Dr. Wheelo's robotic body, right underneath the core, and took the battle skyward with a rising punch. Electricity sparked out from the ridge that the Saiyan left on the more delicate part of Dr. Wheelo's battle-bot.
"Off my back, you annoying gnat!" Dr. Wheelo yelled out, opening up the claws of his mech to unleash yellow Ki waves of solid energy beaming at Bardock who continued to rush after his opponent with the full intent of crushing the entire mechanical structure Dr. Wheelo resided in to bits. The Saiyan yelled out in pain as he collided with the beams head-on and made a vociferous splash into the freezing waters down below.
Bardock burst from underwater without being gone long enough to be missed. The Saiyan roared out as he sought for his opponent but found him further away so the pair of combatants settled in preparation for their next clash. Bardock wore a few subtle bruises and burns and his Gi was lightly torn and ragged in a few places but it didn't seem like he had taken too much damage from a direct hit.
"Incredible! Back when he first landed on Earth Bardock was hardly a match for Piccolo but now he's got no problem trading blows with a monster like Dr. Wheelo…" Yamcha grunted in pain, clutching for his gut. Bulma rushed to his aid, looking worried over Yamcha's injuries. With a subtle grin on his pain-ridden face, Yamcha proceeded to wheeze and wince in pain to play his injuries up and force Bulma to dedicate more attention to treating him.
"He's sustained so many injuries fighting us and then fighting Vegeta. It's no wonder that the natural Saiyan ability to grow stronger after every tough battle made him this strong now…" Krillin noted. He was there when Chayote first came to explain Goku unnatural growth in power after tough bouts or tougher training sessions. After all, the two had been roughly on the same level when their training at Muten Roshi's started but it always seemed like training was more effective on Goku than it was on him.
"Even Goku's training in the Otherworld now. Who knows how powerful he'll be after he returns?" Chiaotzu brought it up.
"Hmph. This doesn't satisfy me one bit. We've surpassed Goku once, I won't rest until we do so again," Tenshinhan grit his teeth, just a few days back he was the strongest Earth's protector by a decent margin whereas all of a sudden the lines became incredibly murky. It was not a need to become stronger than everyone else that fueled him nor was it rivalry with the Saiyans but pride as a martial artist.
"Yeah, guess we'll need to start working even harder than we did preparing for the attack of Piccolo Jr. again!" Krillin nodded with a resolute face as they observed Bardock and Dr. Wheelo collide in mid-air once again, sending repulsive ripples of air pressure that threatened to break their bones if they stood too close to the battle or to send them down if they didn't keep a close watch of their balance.
The clash between Dr. Wheelo and Bardock was highly physical with the two exchanging blows with one another and taking the other's before Bardock managed to slip in close enough to wrestle with the combat mech, pull and sprain its various limbs but just as Bardock devoted both his right knee and his left elbow to crush Wheelo's arm in between them, the scorpion-like tail of Dr. Wheelo wrapped around Bardock and clutched him with all its might before flinging him away.
"Your feeble humanoid body is no match for my emergency mechanical measures!" Dr. Wheelo gloated as a fiery-red aura enveloped him and the supersized mechanoid rushed at Bardock with the intent to tackle him head-on and blast him into oblivion with this rushing attack. The resisting Saiyan put up a cross-shaped block and met Dr. Wheelo's charge in the middle, taking a valiant stand against his rush but the overflowing aura proved too much and the Saiyan's resistance gave in, prompting the mechanical monster to take Bardock for a ride all the way to the upper layers of the atmosphere as his Gigantic Bomber burnt out.
"We're not out of the woods yet," Muten Roshi observed. "Even if Bardock has the might to resist and even overpower Dr. Wheelo, this might not be enough. After all, he is facing an opponent that is fully mechanic. He does not tire and produces energy infinitely whereas Bardock, even if he is stronger than his opponent, has to fight for every breath he draws when in such a rough clash."
"Huh? That's not fair! Bardock's way stronger, he has to win, right!?" Oolong objected.
"He should. If he doesn't burn out and lose his advantage in power first. Bardock is a very sloppy fighter, he is guided by experience and emotion, not skill, that is why he struggles to inflict much damage on Dr. Wheelo who without a doubt has studied and instilled plenty of martial arts moves into this contingency machine of his," Muten Roshi nodded with a grim face.
"Heh, you ain't half-bad, bastard. Don't you ever have to take a breather?" Bardock smirked while wiping the blood off of his lip.
"It is a despicable feature of this emergency body but no. As irritating as it is, this body defies the excellence in my conditioning. My complicated thought processes do not cause me headaches nor does this body suffer from fatigue. It is not my ideal choice for a body, for I prefer to be able to feel and taste something, the mettle of my intelligence is not tested unless I compute the answer to the problem before me myself. To use such a body is demeaning to me but that is the measures to which you wretches have driven me!" Dr. Wheelo flexed his limbs, spitting out flocks of wild sparks from the breaking points where Bardock had nailed him good.
"So, your strength doesn't dwindle as the battle goes on whatsoever? Ridiculous…" Bardock grit his teeth in frustration as Dr. Wheelo opened up his claws and sent barrages of blasting Ki blasts from the opening therein. The violent Saiyan warrior braced for impact and blocked them, lacking the vigor to outrace them as he had done in the early stages of the battle.
"Bardock's not looking too good…" Bulma looked up, seeing only the resonating cascade of blasts shaking the Saiyan rebel in his boots and threatening to blast him right out of them. She couldn't sense Ki which was necessary to track hi-speed battles such as this one but even someone like the prodigious inventor knew a worrisome outcome when she saw one.
"Back when he was fighting against us, Bardock counted a whole lot on the fear for the life of his comrades to power-up. Again and again, he overcame impossible gaps in power that way. I guess knowing that his team is dead makes that kind of ability impossible now…" Krillin recalled.
"Indeed. Son Goku is his only connection that could cause this sort of burst in power but he is not at threat at the moment. His resurrection and return are certain," Muten Roshi stroked his beard.
"Hey! What's wrong with you!?" Bulma shook her fist up in the air, addressing Bardock. "Don't you want to make it to Planet Vegeta and kick that king of yours to the curb, beat up Prince Vegeta, and rescue your wife? Do you want Goku to resurrect only to find out that his father is dead? Get it together!"
A resonating roar pierced the howl of bombarding Ki blasts, prompting Dr. Wheelo to stop his infinite bombardment in awe of the escalating boom in his opponent's persistence to go on. Seeing nothing of note but the resonating battle cry, the mechanical shell of the esteemed scientist resumed his crusade to obliterate the resisting Saiyan.
"Where the hell are you aiming at!?" Bardock's growling voice stunned Dr. Wheelo as the Saiyan had blinked up right next to him and his mid-section that had a number done on it from back earlier.
A single diagonal punch up took Dr. Wheelo soaring into the stratosphere as Bardock raced in pursuit. The Saiyan vaulted over his opponent, kneeing Wheelo in the back of his protective dome a few times before jumping back over and driving his arms down in a double-ax-handle slam. The rampaging Saiyan wasn't about to let up as he took a plunge after his opponent, throwing stiff hooks and strikes that decimated and peeled chunks of steel open, exposing the sensitive inner workings of the bot in the process. In a snap, Bardock vanished, Dr. Wheelo turned around, hoping to intercept his opponent but Bardock didn't vanish to the ground and behind the plummeting opponent of his – he vanished back up.
The Saiyan extended his hand, unleashing a bright blue Full Power Energy Wave that crashed right into Dr. Wheelo, overwhelming the damaged mechanoid and leaving him smoking, bent and beaten out of shape and in an overall sorry-looking state. The Dragon Team began cheering and high-fiving the sky at the sight of the sorry state at which Bardock's beatdown left the barely functioning Dr. Wheelo in. Only Tenshinhan and Muten Roshi looked grimmer than the rest of their friends.
Bardock descended in between Dr. Wheelo and the crew of Earthlings so that the desperate mech didn't get any bright ideas. The source of concern for both Tenshinhan and Muten Roshi was the fact that despite this unnatural soar in power, Bardock failed to finish off his opponent which usually spelled out a drastic drop-off in his own strength. Both Muten Roshi and Tenshinhan were fully aware of the cost of surpassing one's own limitations in a demanding battle, even if ever so briefly.
"Damn you… Damn you!" Dr. Wheelo cursed as he flexed his body, the flocking sparks turned to outright bursts of flames and smoke that erupted from within the malfunctioning robot in minute pops and alarming blasts that looked like the entire robotic body was twitching with malfunction. "You've broken the mechanical body necessary for me to survive in the vacuum of space if I ever needed to resort to such a measure. Now if I am to execute my final contingency plan it would be as sacrificial as it would initially seem!"
"Piss off…" Bardock crossed his arms over his chest, staring Dr. Wheelo down with a calm look. "I've beat on you plenty, my fists ain't itching anymore. Pack your junk and leave already."
"The arrogance!" Dr. Wheelo shook, continuing to expose new and more troubling malfunctions and twitches in the structural integrity of his mechanical shell. "Martial artists…! You've ruined my experiment, decimated my Bio-Warriors and now you've wrecked my mechanical body, you've destroyed my lab, leaving me with nothing!"
Bardock descended back down, ignoring his rambling opponent completely as he checked up on the injured. Yamcha appeared to be able to fly, though slowly, Krillin and Chiaotzu had a number done on them, Tenshinhan was pretty banged up too so it was unlikely that any of them would have been able to carry Bulma and the old man all the way home to the other side of the planet. The Saiyan groaned, realizing the bothersome situation he found himself in while he was just looking to get to the eating part of the party sooner.
"I've got nothing left… Absolutely nothing… It's not fair. The world where the brightest minds, capable of changing the world and making it jump forward, making our entire way of life evolve are left with nothing… I refuse to accept such a world!" Dr. Wheelo forced out a widespread resonance with a booming voice that shattered glaciers and sent avalanches down all around.
"Stop! If you push your mech at this state, you risk overheating it. If the cooling unit was damaged in the brawl, you'll end up burning yourself up or blowing yourself up entirely!" Bulma objected, noticing how Dr. Wheelo was enveloping himself in a flashy, golden aura once more, building up energy for another Planet Geyser that would reduce everything to space dust.
"Begone, abhorrent, and useless world!" Dr. Wheelo bellowed in his own madness, Bardock offered the maddened psycho a wayward look but he saw where Wheelo's outrage was leading him to. The Saiyan quickly grabbed Bulma and Roshi by their belts and took off, hurrying the rest of the crew to take off as fast as they could.
"It's too late to run away, when this entire backward world is ashes, you'll have nowhere to hide from penance for your ignorance!" Dr. Wheelo cackled in a mad rambling that was cut out short by a blast inside of his protective dome that splattered chunks of the brain that it was meant to protect all over the inside of the dome. Unable to keep up the pressure of being attacked from both directions, the protective glass burst open, forcing the brain of Dr. Wheelo to flop out helplessly as a chunk of it drooped all over the ice, dyeing it crimson.
Resonating blasts continued to decimate the mech as it was unable to contain the power of its ultimate Planet Geyser and Dr. Wheelo's mech blew up. The widespread devastation expanded at the speed of light, racing across the northern continent all the way to Bardock and the fleeing Dragon Team. Seeing the incoming flash, Bardock grit his teeth and flung Bulma and Roshi to the rest of the martial artists as he put his hand to the side and charged up a blue energy sphere.
"The bastard must have absorbed some of his ultimate technique in the blast. You dumbass!" Bardock roared out as he threw his Spirit Cannon right at the brunt of the incoming blast, stopping it in its tracks and halting its expansion, giving the rest some time to retreat before Dr. Wheelo's swift demise dragged them all to their graves with the maddened doctor.
As the dome of destruction began retreating back to its source, shrinking down to a measly pillar of light that soon faded away, Bardock breathed out easier and took off toward the continent where the Dragon Team had stopped to rest for a moment.
"Do we have to fly all the way back home?" Krillin lamented, clutching his aching sides.
"Are you stupid? I'm hungry…" Bardock objected. "I didn't pull your asses out for nothing, you know."
"Yeah, you did," Bulma smirked. "You talk mean, just like Chayote, but you actually care about us more than you want to admit. Face it, soon enough you'll be powering up every time somebody threatens us as if we were your new squad."
"Hmph… Don't be foolish. Don't presume to ever be allowed to talk bad about my squad. If you do, I won't care if you're some weakling Earthling woman, I'll kick your ass," Bardock growled. "Still, I guess it would suck if my son's friends he cares so much about got blown up. I've felt the pain of losing everything you care about first hand when that impubescent pimple Vegeta attacked. I don't want Kakarot to ever go through anything like that. It's my duty as a father to protect him from that kind of pain."
A plane appeared in the distance. Bulma looked up, raising her hand up to cover herself up from the luminosity of the sky that seeped into her eyes and obstructed her view of the airborne vehicle. It carried a distinctive Capsule Corp logo on it. This confused the prodigious inventor though she continued to observe its descent. Familiar, curly locks made Bulma smirk when they flashed before her briefly, once the plane opened up and a woman in a checkered dress of red and black stepped out and ran her hand over her curly, spiky, auburn hair with a confident smirk, everyone breathed out easier.
"Dr. Puri, what a lifesaver…" Bulma sighed.
"Hm? The scientist woman… How did you find us?" Bardock wondered as it took him a few moments to recognize Dr. Puri without her round glasses. The woman had left both her work clothes, her lab coat, and her glasses back home, seemingly dressing for a party before she found them.
"I've placed trackers on all of you…" Dr. Puri admitted, running her hand through her hair in slight embarrassment. "Given your penchant for trouble, it only seemed right. I apologize, you weren't supposed to find out this way."
"I don't remember instructing you to do that, Dr. Puri!" Bulma placed her hands over her hips, getting a bit distraught at her subordinate but given their current predicament, she could only sigh in relief again and admit that they were fortunate that her lab assistant was so shady. "Although this time it's a real lifesaver. Have you brought any capsules with you?"
"No," Dr. Puri shook her head. "I came dressed for an evening of festivities, as instructed. Evening dresses aren't known for spacious pockets. In any case, my aircraft should be able to host most of you in it. The North Town is the nearest, it shouldn't take us long to get to the hospital."
"No. Just take us home to Kame House," Muten Roshi hopped onto the plane and dangled his feet through the open door. "I should have a sash of Senzu there, let's hope there are enough left for all of us."
"I can take the Dark Kinto, that way all of us should fit onto the plane," Krillin suggested. "There's no reason for that madman Dr. Wheelo to interrupt out party plans."
"Oh? You've met Dr. Wheelo? I didn't know he was still alive. I've heard he had some sort of brain condition and needed emergency surgery though he refused treatment…" Dr. Puri uttered in surprise over the nature of her crew's adventure.
In a slow and controlled turn, the plane lifted off and took off toward the Kame Island with Bulma instructing Dr. Puri on the directions behind the wheel. At last, the nightmare was over, this one at the very least and only so until the next one dawned to take its place.