Right after seeing the bright shine of Bardock's aura, Chi-Chi focused and vanished. Her shape flickered with sharp snaps closer and closer to her intended target before the woman appeared in front of Bardock with her arms spread out wide, blocking his path. Bardock stopped, looking stunned that his daughter-in-law herself put herself in his way to stop him.
"What are you doing?" Bardock shook his surprise away and traded it for discontent again.
"Turn back. The dinner's ready and your wife needs you." Chi-Chi said.
"I won't just sit still and stuff my face full while my wife withers away and dies of some sickness! I'm going to make Dr. Puri tell me what she did and how to cure this disease. In the worst case, I'll make sure to avenge my wife!" Bardock clenched his fists with so much tension that his wrists shook beside his thighs while the Saiyan simmered in wrath.
"You may have known Gine-san far longer than I have, but, in the few years I've known her for, I've come to realize that Gine-san is a gentle and kind soul and that she wouldn't care about being avenged. She would love to have her husband and son beside her and… Even if she can't overpower this sickness, she'd love nothing more than to have her loved ones by her side in her last moments." Chi-Chi answered.
"That is exactly why I can't let anything get in my way, even my son's girl. Get out of my way or I won't hold back." Bardock demanded, raising his fist up and shaking it as an attempt to intimidate Chi-Chi, but the woman didn't back down.
Chi-Chi didn't give in to the attempts of her father-in-law to intimidate her. She elegantly took her fighting stance and offered him a look that was just as determined to make him see reason and turn back. Though Chi-Chi's eyes were far more rooted in the moment and focused, not stuck wandering in the past or the thousands of possible futures and delirious. This may have made Chi-Chi more concentrated on the fight. It also made her less aggressive and dangerous as well.
"Out of my way!" Bardock roared, charging at Chi-Chi with a crashing hook that was meant to send the woman flying aside and make way for him to soar all the way to the Puri & Co headquarters in North City. Chi-Chi lowered her hands, crossing them by her wrists and slamming her open palms to Bardock's own wrists, locking his right fist in place with an impeccable block that didn't challenge her attacker's superior strength but instead exploited his anatomy to prevent his hits from connecting.
With a crude yank, Bardock pulled his fist out of Chi-Chi's reach, connecting his hands together and driving them down in a double ax handle slam to send his daughter-in-law crashing down. Such a distraction would have given him more time than he needed to leave his pursuer in the dust. Yet even then, Chi-Chi gracefully skid across the air and to Bardock's side, exposing the Saiyan's openings to her. With a shooting palm strike to Bardock's jaw, Chi-Chi opened Bardock up and stunned him.
Chi-Chi swung her relaxed arms, whipping at Bardock with relentless slaps that used impeccable momentum and rotational force. They didn't leave any crushing damage to the man's bones or threaten to cripple him for life by any means, but that wasn't Chi-Chi's goal here. Just to smack some sense into this raging old man that had lost his way out of desperation.
With flawless grace, Chi-Chi soared forward with a knee strike that crashed into Bardock's nose and the front of his face, leaving the Saiyan gliding back in mid-air, covering up his aching face. Chi-Chi vanished again, appearing in front of Bardock as she swung her arms, tense and limber like tree branches, and smacked her father-in-law repeatedly with stiff shots from her wrists, upper arm, and elbows. The woman thrust her tensed-up palm, pushing it into the side of Bardock's jaw instead of slapping him. A lightning-quick kick to Bardock's chin opened the Saiyan up again while Chi-Chi thrust her open palms into her opponent's mid-section, resonating throughout his body with painful palm thrust attacks while she manipulated her body with excellent martial arts form.
With both horizontal and vertical rotation, Chi-Chi employed stiffened, hammering arm shots for mid to farther range attacks, elbow shots when she whizzed in up close to Bardock, and knee shots to cancel out his attempts at regaining control over the engagement or to wrap up her relentless flurries that dismantled Bardock's chances for a comeback. The moment Bardock recovered and thrust his fist in a quick jab, Chi-Chi ducked under it and dived like a shooting arrow over her opponent, kicking off Bardock's back while she put some space between her and her opponent.
"You've got moxie and moves," Bardock admitted while still staring ahead toward the northwest, leaving his back exposed to his daughter-in-law if she wished to continue her skillful siege on his defenses and willpower. "But your hits barely even sting. I don't want to hurt you, but I will put you back in your place if you keep pursuing me. That's your last warning, girl."
Bardock burst with crystalline aura and took off but, enveloped with the crimson glow of King Kai's Fist, Chi-Chi dashed out in front of him and whipped her leg right into Bardock's face, sending the Saiyan rolling back and wiping his nose that splashed a trail of red from the stiff shot to the face he just took.
"I must have let too much of Gine's character rub off on me down here on Earth. Back on Planet Vegeta it kept happening too, but back then I had missions on my back all the time, so it never left this much of an impact on me. If someone saw me right now, they'd think I've gotten soft." Bardock sighed, taking a simplistic, fist-throwing fighting stance.
The Saiyan dashed right up to his opponent, throwing a wild, power-based uppercut that could have blasted Chi-Chi's head clean off her shoulders but, given the woman's skill in martial arts, its odds of connecting were so minimal that such an attack had almost no degree of danger to it. Chi-Chi vanished, appearing behind Bardock and hooking her leg from behind to scrape Bardock's back and kick him rolling forward.
While her opponent was airborne and reeling from the backward hooked leg shot, Chi-Chi turned around and raised her arms as if shooting a bow, though instead of an arrow she fired a focused, upward-pointing fist right to Bardock's exposed back. Chi-Chi turned around rapidly, throwing backhanded slams or elbow shots and riding that rotational momentum, inserting a knee shot or a kick just when it seemed like Bardock was about to recover to fumble him up and rob the Saiyan of his balance and breath.
"That's okay. I loved you like that and I'm sure that Goku-sa enjoyed seeing you settling in too. There's nothing wrong with being a husband, a father, and a grandfather. Gohan-chan loves being with you two and even if he fills his head full of adventurous fluff whenever he spends his time with you, as a loving mother, I can't object to my son's happiness. It would crush him to see his grandfather like this." Chi-Chi's strict voice ran through Bardock's nervous cords, just like her attacks punished his wrathful sloppiness physically.
The Saiyan roared, expelling a violent explosive wave and forcing Chi-Chi to hunker up and ride the overwhelming air pressure all the way back from her opponent. With all sense of thought or reason gone from Bardock's eyes, the Saiyan shot a full-powered energy wave in Chi-Chi's direction. Bright light flooded Chi-Chi's senses and blinded her, making her eyes become dulled out for a second, but she never lost track of the attack through Ki sensory. Just when it seemed like the Ki wave would decimate Chi-Chi and leave her broken and battered, plummeting from the sky utterly humbled, the woman burst with a red aura and rolled around it like a mid-air cannonball, driving both her hands with a leaning, sideways thrust of her fists.
Chi-Chi swung her arms around like hammers, punishing the Saiyan for leaving himself wide open, and spun around with a brutal kick straight to the front of Bardock's face that sent the Saiyan flying back again. After finishing her counter-attack, Chi-Chi entered a low-fighting stance again, using the air that the two fighters levitated on as a substitute for solid ground.
"What the hell do you know about what a family is or how a family should act like?" Bardock bellowed out, wiping the pitiful traces of blood off his lip as his body bulked up from his intense emotional duress. "For someone who puts her family over everything else, you have awfully few ideas of what it actually is. Everything you know comes from those ridiculous magazines and Earthling television!"
Chi-Chi gasped, feeling the figurative stab digging in sharply in her gut and twisting with a devastating churn. Now that her enemy had the emotional drop on her and Chi-Chi had dropped her guard, Bardock found his chance to strike. Without mercy, the Saiyan warrior exploded in crystal-aura and dashed right up to Chi-Chi, who realized her own unpreparedness far too late given the tremendous difference in raw power, speed, and toughness between the two.
A punch made Chi-Chi's entire body weigh back despite being just a mere jab, the woman's eyes dulled out as she turned off for a few blinks, making her unsure if her father-in-law had just punched her once or if he realized his promise of not holding back. Bardock finished his beat down by turning around and kicking Chi-Chi in the gut, forcing all air out from her and making a mouthful of blood gash out from the woman's mouth while Bardock finished his attack off with a double ax handle slam, sending the woman crashing down into the rice field below.
Chi-Chi gasped and wheezed, trying to breathe. No matter how hard she tried, her lungs had been filled with some sticky mass that didn't budge at first. It was only once Chi-Chi forced herself to peel herself off the moist ground that the pressure on her chest forced the masses of blood off from her airway and colored the rows of water underneath her murky red.
A snap came unexpectedly, Bardock swept his leg, kicking Chi-Chi's arms that supported her slowly rising body and tripping her up while Bardock thrust his punch like a sledgehammer, he put most of his force into it as the fist almost set ablaze with wrathful Ki aura in its journey from Bardock's side to Chi-Chi's jaw. The hit was so brutal that the woman didn't even grunt or scream. All that came out was the gut-wrenching thud and fearsome cracks of bones. Chi-Chi floated in mid-air, completely weightless and defenseless. In this serene tranquility, she appeared completely out of it, but with his ability to track the woman's Ki, Bardock felt like she had more than enough strength left to keep opposing him.
And she wouldn't stop as long as she physically could oppose him.
Bardock flexed his muscles and worked out his wrist, waiting for his opponent to fall into position, doing it all so fast that the progress of time appeared almost as if it had stopped completely. With a focused, homing charge, Bardock stuck his fist into the center in between Chi-Chi's chest and abdomen, freezing her in mid-air while the Saiyan kicked his daughter-in-law into the air with a high kick.
Expressing his burning wrath as he soared in pursuit, Bardock knocked Chi-Chi higher before dashing up to his unresisting opponent and flipping over her shoulders to get behind her. Bardock thrust his knee twice into the woman's back, releasing her after the second thrust to let the inertia from the impact send her flying while Bardock pursued his helpless opponent to smash her back down with a double ax handle slam.
Bardock observed his daughter-in-law crashing into the ground like a comet from high in the skies with merciless eyes. The impact sent a resonating quake thousands of kilometers away and ravaged through the nearby Aru Village, totaling most of its buildings. Once the debris had settled down, the smoke and the dust cleared out, Bardock confirmed Chi-Chi's battered body lying in the crater and took off again.
Just another broken thing that Dr. Puri would have to answer for when he confronted her.
"Dr. Puri…" Bulma closed her eyes and drew her strength to confront her protégé, now turned her bitter rival. The woman who wished to save humanity solely that she could control it. "Before I give you my answer, I'll need to know something. Why are you doing all this?"
"All this? You mean invent the only way for humanity to save itself? Must a scientist have an ulterior motive in wishing for their intellect to serve humanity? Would you not make the same call in my place?" Dr. Puri spread her hands, spilling more questions in response to Bulma's straight shot. "We have the means to save humankind. All I need is your production means, human resources, and goodwill with the world. The goodwill that Capsule Corps has accumulated over decades, even going as far as assisting the world in fending off the Red Ribbon Army. Yes, if the savior of the world–Capsule Corps, the corporation providing shelter to people fleeing from the apocalypse when the Devil sign appeared, will advocate the cybernetic conversion, everyone will fall in line. Everyone will live."
"Okay, let's say that you genuinely wish to save people. I find it suspicious that you've predicted the course of this virus and even invented a solution ahead of time. Why not come to me earlier? Why not use the Dragon Balls to cure humanity together?" Bulma asked.
"If you thought the Dragon Balls would work, you wouldn't be talking to me right now." Dr. Puri shut her ex-superior down with a calm look at the computer screen. "It appears that for us to walk together on the path of saving humanity, I will need to be honest with you. Do you think that me predicting the rise of the heart virus all the way back was too prophetic? Maybe you believe I caused the heart virus to begin with, just so I could provide the world with the solution and become the big hero? Do you truly think so little of me that you think I would use this worldwide catastrophe to promote Puri & Co?"
"That thought has crossed my mind, yes," Bulma admitted.
"The truth is that I did not predict the heart virus decades back. It had only been a few years since I've seen the signs of an upcoming malady. It's just that nanomachines, cybernetic and android technology are sort of my specialties. I merely applied my specialty, which, as it turns out, solves an upcoming problem. It was just good fortune that we have advanced the field enough to provide this solution when the signs of the problem arose." Dr. Puri answered after a deep sigh.
"So you have been working on this technology since before you have even known of the heart virus? Why?" Bulma shook her head in disbelief. She had almost bought into the nobility cause of Dr. Puri's in curing humanity this way, but catching this proclamation caught her off-guard.
"Because… It is the continuation of my late husband's work. The work that all went into ruins when the Saiyan invaders killed him and destroyed his lab. Not only did they kill him, but they also had to rob us of our son as well…" Bulma could hear Dr. Puri's voice become emotional on the other end. Even Lapis and Lazuli turned to their superior with moderate surprise that she could become this emotional.
"The Saiyans? But… We've been working together for longer than that…" Bulma wrapped herself deep in a web of thoughts.
"I'm afraid you are mistaken," Dr. Puri shook her head with teary eyes, wiping the crystal traces off the corner of her eyes with her thumbs. "It wasn't Bardock or his crew or prince Vegeta, the father of your child, that ruthlessly obliterated my entire family. It was that hysterical barbarian you're sheltering and that hick boy toy of hers."
"Chayote and Goku!?" Bulma dropped her jaw. "Wait… Just who was your family? Those two hadn't killed that many people. They couldn't have been demons… But then…"
"Exactly. My son was a Red Ribbon Army soldier. A strong and sturdy young man with a kind heart of gold. As strong as he was, not even he could survive nuclear annihilation of the entire region. Not only was he killed during Chayote's raid on the Red Ribbon Army military base, but the resulting nuclear fallout prevented me or my husband from retrieving his body until we have perfected cybernetic conversion to where radiation sickness was of no threat to our Artificial Humans." Dr. Puri explained. "Not for the lack of trying though…"
"Wait… That doesn't… Make any sense…" Bulma scratched her chin. "Chayote destroyed the Red Ribbon Base almost twenty years ago. For you to have an adult son at the time… You would have to be an old woman now. You looked like you were just out of university when I hired you."
"That is the wonder of the Artificial Human technology. The breakthrough that my husband and I worked toward achieving. My husband sacrificed himself for the dream of one day, his technology becoming advanced enough to salvage the body of our son from the nuclear ruin. Also to bring him back as an Artificial Human, just as kindhearted as our son was in life. As his greatest project, I was entrusted to carry that mission out after his passing." Dr. Puri leaned back in her chair in her full splendor, crossing her legs over.
"You're an Artificial Human already. Android 21…" Bulma muttered.
"I was one of the first official projects of my husband's. My attempts to recover our son's body had ruined my own as a result. I was going to die and thus Gero had to speed up my conversion. Oh, how difficult it must have been for him to be forced to perform a procedure so beyond his time. In his unlimited genius, my husband recognized that the advancements in Artificial Human technology would spiral out of control and that he would doom me to becoming obsolete by converting me in such early stages of our research. He has designed a way for me to update myself by consuming old and obsolete technology as the only feature of my model. That way I can stay ahead of the Artificial Human evolution and never become outdated." Android 21 explained.
"That's why… That's why you acted like an intern, like my protégé, and signed up to work at Capsule Corps." Bulma realized. "All those prototypes you've claimed to have thrown out, you devoured them to stay up to date."
"That's true. Once in a blue moon, I tossed some toy your way just to keep the spotlight off of me. You didn't raise many alarms. After all, I kept working longer and harder than even you, and I was just some brat, right? Of course, more than a few of my pancakes would come out a bit charred, right?" Android 21 teased Bulma with a manic smirk from the other side. "I used your company and your resources to further my research and keep my tabs on the barbarians that ruthlessly killed my family. I've even come to learn the uncomfortable truth that I can never kill Chayote unless I wish to doom the entire universe along the way. A pity that…"
"I've felt so betrayed when you walked out and started your own company. I thought you were a real viper, but I never imagined just how devious you were…" Bulma grit her teeth.
"Come now, Bulma-senpai…" Puri teased the scientific prodigy. "Don't you realize that I've abandoned my dream of bloodshed and cruel vengeance for my family just because I cannot doom the universe for extinction? Science must serve to understand and enrich, not destroy. Why my heart would have burst into a bloody stain if it weren't mechanical."
"I see…" Bulma sighed, admitting that Android 21 had played her. "In that case, I suppose it is likely that you truly just wish to save the human species with this stunt of yours. The enslavement and gradual consumption of your subjects to keep yourself relevant must have come later then…"
"What on Earth are you talking about?" Dr. Puri wondered.
"It doesn't matter." Bulma dismissed the subject she herself brought up.
"Well, in that case, I'm glad that you see things the way I see them. This whole being honest and telling you my sob story thing wasn't entirely a waste of time, right?" Android 21 crossed her arms over her chest.
"Oh, I will never agree to your offer. As far as I or a single member of the Dragon Team lives, humanity will remain of flesh and blood. We'll fight your cybernetic conversion with everything we've got!" Bulma clenched her fist in front of the screen, her face shined with the fighting spirit she had studied in the expression of the man she loved and at that moment the scientist mirrored King Vegeta's spirit perfectly.
"B-But… The heart virus!" Android 21 lost her cool, widening her stare and jumping up from her seat. "You're dooming humanity. Think about what you're doing, Bulma!"
"Oh, I have." Bulma's expression plunged into bitterness as she reached out to the button to turn off the communications with Puri & Co. "We'll save the world without dooming it right after. We'll find a way or we'll invent one because that's what scientists do!"
With a click, Bulma cut the communication link short. She could almost hear Android 21 flipping out, screaming, and throwing heavy machinery all over her office, maybe even cursing at her trusted companions in Lapis and Lazuli. With some luck, they'll get sick of being bossed around and kick that old hag's head off or something…
"Are you sure about this, mother?" Future Trunks wondered. "There is no way that we know of to cure the heart virus, even almost two decades in the future. Humanity in your timeline does not have that much time now that you have made this decision."
"That's because you didn't need to find a cure then. You had already converted humanity, so why bother, right? Don't worry, I've got a plan. Plus, what are you so bothered by, didn't you come here thinking this timeline didn't matter?" Bulma smirked at the future counterpart of her son.
"Great, so all this charade and prancing about in that monkey suit were all for nothing. What now?" Lapis sighed and turned to Android 21, who kept on seething, deflated, and collapsed in her chair. The auburn-haired woman, stuck in the physical prime of her youth, stared at the inactive computer screen like she tried to induce death upon the woman she just chatted with.
"It appears that Bulma wants a war. Very well, we have more than enough soldiers to force the conversion. If some old demon that can't handle imprisonment in a rice cooker can take over the world government and impose his will upon humanity, then the innovative Artificial Humans will enact the conversion in no time at all." Android 21 replied after standing up, turning around, and heading toward her office door. "Activate the rest of the One-Models. Tell them it's time for them to be soldiers again and instruct them to force the world to convert. With both the heart virus and the One-Models working against them, there's no way that humans won't cave in to our demands immediately."
"Why don't you stop bossing us around and do your own dirty work for once?" Lazuli gave her superior a mean look. "Just because that old geezer gave us candy for assisting him in the lab and to stave off our pranks, it doesn't mean that we're your stuff to manage."
"Oh, I think you'll change your tune, Lazuli. Once you realize that I'm letting you off the chain." Android 21 turned back. A tiny, malicious star shimmered in the corner of the artificial woman's eye. "No more corporate meetings, no more pretending to be a scientist, no more business suits, cut loose, go wild. The future that Gero promised is now, and it belongs to you two."
"Seriously!?" Androids 17 and 18 both stiffened with their eyes blasted open wide. It was a rare occurrence for these two to show this much emotion and be so excited.
"Sure, as long as humanity gets converted into Artificial Humans, you're free to do whatever you want." Android 21 beamed a smile their way.