"Alright, let's see how sturdy they've made you," Lapis teased his half-cybernetic opponent before swirling right up in his face and tossing a sloppy jab that lashed into Frieza's cheek, jerking the body of the alien tyrant back. The manic stare in Frieza's eyes never faded. The veins littering the whites of his eyes only aggravated as aided by this humiliation.
Android 17 drove his knee into Mecha Frieza's face, dashing onward and taking the humbled alien overlord for a ride skyward, toward the eastern mountains at the farther end of the continent. Spinning around his axis, Lapis delivered a crushing backhand that sent Frieza smashing through said mountains and into the river pool, soaking their base.
With a shrill shriek, Frieza burst out of the water, but his revival was only met with Android 17, dashing right up in his face with an emotionless face and throwing a flurry of swift jabs with just his right hand. Just as the Artificial Human saw his opponent mounting a recovery and becoming accustomed to his playful strikes, he mixed it up with a roundhouse kick and a double ax handle slam. The finishing maneuver drove Frieza through the mountain pillar beneath him from top to bottom, clean through, reducing it to rubble.
"I don't know why the curly-haired hag wants your tech. It looks like scrap to me and it doesn't feel like it's doing you any favors either. You're even worse off than you were when Son Goku pummeled you into submission," Android 17 teased his opponent. The youthful cyborg danced around mid-air, waving his hand as if to relax his fist before he put it through some more work.
"Son… Goku… Die!" Mecha Frieza shrieked out, positioning his hands beside him as a metallic tail comprised of cybernetic discs with spikes on each end wrapped around the tyrant's body, producing a massive cannon on his back through a process of complex mechanical transformation of the technology present on Mecha Frieza's cybernetic half.
The cannon, vastly surpassing Frieza's own body in size, blasted a scorching blaze from its other end, propelling Frieza in a mad dash toward his opponent. Mecha Frieza's robotic foot dug into Lapis' abdomen, flinching the Android and forcing him to spit up slobber as he staggered back in the shock of the pain that his meager opponent inflicted on him.
The cybernetically enhanced tyrant shrieked unintelligibly as he kicked, again and again, riding the propulsion airwave of his cannon before he froze, and turned his body around to position his back before 17's face. The surprised Android saw light igniting at the dark end of the cannon's barrel before a heatwave washed over him. Frieza grunted and whined in torment and joined in on 17's grunts as the point-blank detonation of his cannon took even him aback with its brutal aftershock.
"Kya!" Mecha Frieza yelled out, flinging a fuchsia-colored disc buzzing toward Android 17. Lapis grit his teeth and returned to his focus just in time to vault backward and narrowly avoid the disc's frightsome edge as it passed him by. The slicing Ki attack passed through a nearby mountain, slicing it in half and detonating at the same time as Frieza lacked the focus to keep the controlled pursuit of his technique up.
"Well, well… Not entirely bad, are you?" Android 17 snickered, running his hand through an unruly strand of his black hair and putting it back into place. "This might just be a little fun."
Lapis vanished without a sound or a trace, appearing right before his opponent as he drove his elbow with the full intent and motion of his entire body. 17's elbow rocked and nearly penetrated through Mecha Frieza's abdomen, cracking through the mechanical shell and sending splatters of thick, cherry-colored goop all over his clothes and face and an even more massive splatter outward through the back as the tyrant slumped over 17's elbow strike.
"You've had your fun with Son Goku though, Frieza. Your time is up already. Now it's our turn, so how about you kick the bucket already?" Lapis smirked, enjoying the visible collapse of his opponent right before his eyes.
17 hooked Frieza's lower body with a tripping kick before punching Frieza's throat and forcing the alien overlord to spit up and choke on his own blood. A rocking power blow to Frieza's abdomen left a brutal indentation in the ruined emperor's flesh. Lapis rolled over the air like a living cannonball, transitioning into a downward elbow slam and cracking Frieza's skull open from the top. Sparks, oil, and Frieza's bio-mass all splattered outward through the crack at the same time.
Fixing his unruly hair once more, Lapis vanished below to where Frieza had been plummeting and swung his leg in a round, slamming kick to deflect his thoroughly punished opponent and send him soaring into the sky. Waving his numb fist, Android 17 checked on the sky-high trajectory of his opponent with pride of his unmatched and youthful power.
"The likes of you shouldn't dance with the likes of us…" 17 mocked his skyward opponent before vanishing again and appearing directly behind where Mecha Frieza would have been in a blink. Lapis threw a downward cross, coating his fist with a green, electric aura as his fist cracked into Frieza's back like a sledgehammer, leaving the battered tyrant stuck with a haunting expression of agony stuck on his face. "If you do, the least you can do is try to keep up."
17 vanished again, appearing before Frieza and vaulting over his side with an overhead kick, then vanished again to behind his overwhelmed opponent and drove his foot at the back of Frieza's head, forcing the tyrant to slam down into the peak of a mountain, curb-stomping him through it. The numbers and complex calculations running through Frieza's cybernetic sensors malfunctioned because of the excess of bio-mass and massive external damage being dealt to it. When Mecha Frieza opened his psychotic eyes, the sight of Android 17 leaning over him with a mocking smirk, examining him floating on the surface of the river pool, greeted the ruined emperor.
Frieza let out a manic shout, recovering in a frantic leap and dashing toward his opponent with a combination of strikes. All of which Lapis weaved around without even the smallest aid from either of his arms and carrying himself with a mocking and cocky grin the entire time. The battered alien pursued the Artificial Human prodigy throughout the river and the surrounding mountain bases, but 17 navigated through them with his back turned as if it was nothing while evading Frieza's best attempts and carving out a pound of Lapis' flesh for himself.
Android 17 whipped a stiff kick that sent Frieza up into the air. Just as the Artificial Human intended to pursue his opponent, Mecha Frieza vaulted over his back and cocked his giant back cannon into position over his shoulder, unleashing a supercharged fuchsia Death Wave blast right toward 17 and prompting the Android to cover up with a cross-shaped block to weather the storm.
"Tsk… That was dirty, you could've decimated a whole bunch of planets with that blast if I didn't cushion it," Lapis teased his opponent as he lowered his block and opened back up, smoldering with smoke and covered with minor bruises and burns but mostly unharmed. Frieza's unintelligible shriek greeted him from behind. The charging lunatic tackled 17 and sent him flying face-first through a mountain peak.
Mecha Frieza placed his cannon over his head, accumulating energy at its tip and forming a blazing, star-like sphere that continued expanding seemingly to no end. While Mecha Frieza appeared to be weaker than the sum of the force, he could output back in his prime, because of his cybernetic enhancements he didn't continuously burn through his stamina so he could whip out his most powerful attacks without worrying about being able to keep his guard up right after.
The battered alien conqueror flung his Supernova right toward the 17, still handling the downfall of the mountain rubble on top of him. With a single blink of a brilliant aura, Lapis repelled the mountain rubble and dashed out from the debris, punting the Supernova out into space to where it could detonate and do its worst far away from the planet that rightfully belonged to the Artificial Humans now. The Supernova grazed and disintegrated the cumbersome cannon over Mecha Frieza's shoulder on its way into the cold depths of space while Frieza quivered in shock at the outstanding display of burning, youthful power.
"That attack wasn't half bad. But I've no interest in letting you destroy our playground. It's time that we put everything worth something about you back into the scrap box and do away with the useless rest." Android 17 flexed his neck before answering Frieza's maniacal call for violence. The two dashed toward each other, exchanging fists like two machineguns firing simultaneously at one another and each and every high-caliber bullet deflecting one off of another, causing quaking shock waves that collapsed nearby mountains just because of their sheer resonance and trembling might.
The two decked each other in the face, each combatant propelling their opponent backward before they returned to their senses and dashed toward each other to meet once more. Mecha Frieza's spiky, cybernetic tail wrapped itself around 17's arm, shredding his sleeve and leaving shallow cuts over his forearm because of the tight grip. 17 deflected Frieza's counter-attack and yanked his trapped arm back, pulling Mecha Frieza's tail right out, spitting up sparks and oil from the stumpy remains while 17 unraveled the coil and flung it to sink to the bottom of the river below.
"The one to die… Will be Son Goku… He will die… By my hand!" Mecha Frieza showed off a surprising display of awareness of the situation he ended up in considering his severe mental damage accumulated both from the ruthless beating that the awakened Super Saiyan put him through and the extensive torture and experimentation of the Artificial Humans he went through right after. The ruined emperor waved his hand upward, causing 17's moves to stiffen up.
"What the heck is that?" Android 17 grumbled, trying to wriggle out of an intense bubble of a psychokinetic field formed around him.
"What are you doing? Get out of the way!" Lazuli hurried her brother, but he just growled back at her, clearly unable to do so as the psychokinetic field detonated in a devastating blast. As the smoke and the blazes cleared out a bit, Lapis stood in the epicenter, dusting his lightly scorched shirt off as he gave Mecha Frieza a chilling stare.
"You've overstayed your welcome," he stated, vanishing at once immediately after getting serious. The next time that Mecha Frieza saw him was the last time in this lifetime, as 17 appeared right in front of him, gliding in mid-air as he delivered an overhead downward kick. Lapis' leg had been entirely coated in green, electric Ki and sliced through the two halves of Mecha Frieza like a laser beam melting through fresh snow.
Frieza's last image of his assassin became split in the middle and he couldn't quite make out his end clearly, but Android 17 vaulted over his back, creating two Ki spheres, one in each hand and flinging them both toward Mecha Frieza. The first one separated the split mechanical half from the biological, sending each of them flying their different directions while the second half of Lapis' Power Blitz obliterated Frieza's biological remnants with a golden flash of light and a resonant blast thereafter.
"Sheesh," Android 18 teased her brother. "I thought for a second that you were going to blow him up or something. It was dangerous of you to attack him for real like that."
"That wasn't even close to my actual power," Lapis corrected his sister, sighing easier while fixing his hair to stay behind his ear again. "Didn't this guy put Son Goku through so much trouble just around a few years back? Sheesh… I hope Son Goku isn't a disappointing rag doll like this guy."
"No one likes a braggart, Lapis," 18 rolled her eyes, "Frieza almost pushed you to take him seriously. That's the only disappointing thing about this."
"That's where you and I are different, sister," Lapis sighed before crossing his arms and observing Lazuli salvaging the cybernetic half of Mecha Frieza from underwater where he had sent it to. "I actually want to be pushed to fighting someone seriously. I don't enjoy hopelessly crushing my opponents and there's no fun to be had when I don't even get to see the true power that we now have. Where you're worried about your outfit getting ruined or using too much effort, I want to see every single bit of power that the old geezer and his hag gave us being used."
"You're right, I don't get it at all. Fighting annoying idiots that just won't die like Frieza just feels like such a chore…" Lazuli sighed, flinging Mecha Frieza's cybernetic remains to her brother who caught them out of instinct with moderate surprise on his face as a splash of oil covered his right cheek up to the ridge of his nose.
"What gives?" he asked his sister. "Why am I supposed to be lugging this thing around all the way back to North City?"
"Because you were the one to hog all the fun. Plus, maybe having to drag this deadweight with you will get those stupid ideas about games, planes, and cars out of your head…" Android 18 placed her hands over her hips and lectured her brother who just sighed and caved in, figuring that arguing with his sister when she was like this was more trouble than it was worth.
"So… How do you plan on going about finding Mecha Frieza or locating this other time traveler?" Chayote wondered, approaching Future Trunks as he practices his martial arts with Mr. Popo supervising from the sidelines. Trunks was the only Saiyan Chayote had met who missed out on lunch and even when he ate, he ate amounts of food that would have been tame even by normal human standards. Some things this guy did made Chayote doubt Trunks was a Saiyan at all and his unnatural for a Saiyan hair color didn't help this impression at all.
"No idea…" Future Trunks cracked his neck to the sides to stretch out after intense training and approached the edge of the God's Temple, looking over the clouds a good kilometer beneath the temple edge. "It feels like I've tried everything. It seemed like I had a plan of finding Mecha Frieza when I came to this timeline, but after the initial plan failed… I keep getting an impulse to just get my time machine and hop back through time into a different timeline to try again."
"Why don't you?" Chayote wrapped her arms over her chest. Trunks' idea seemed incredibly ruthless, but it felt like the exact thing he would have pulled.
"I may be part-machine and I admit I let that part do too much damage already. But I am also part-man. I've caused great harm and loss to this timeline and made too much of a mess of things here. I must remedy this and make sure that this timeline makes out alright before I fix my own. I guess… I feel responsible for it somehow," Future Trunks admitted. It took him some time to gather up the courage to turn back and look Chayote in the eyes with his altered, part-cybernetic face. Now that he had trimmed his hair some for convenience practicing martial arts in God's Temple, his cybernetics became much easier to make out as they had nothing to hide behind.
"I see…" Chayote sighed. By all means, she should have hated this man from the future. He killed men under her employ and made an enormous mess of things, partly threatened the security of her planet, and acted with reckless abandon when he first arrived. And yet… Maybe it was because he was a future version of her mentor's brat or maybe it was because he felt partly responsible for his deeds and owned up to that responsibility, unlike his punk father, that Chayote came to tolerate his presence as her partner in protecting the Earth during the time of everyone else's absence.
"What about you? You've recovered already. What are you planning to do next?" Future Trunks wondered, turning to face Chayote.
"Isn't it obvious? I'm going to raid every single base and level every tiniest encampment that those Puri's bastards build. I'm going to unravel their plan to convert the Earth before everyone comes back with the Ultimate Dragon Balls. It's both my job and my passion. I will protect the Earth," Chayote clenched her fist with determination shining through her eyes.
"That's reckless," Trunks closed his eyes but broke into a brief chuckle. "Though, I suppose, recklessness defines Saiyans. Without rushing head-first into certain doom, none of us would have ascended to become Super Saiyans or found each other. I don't think I'd have ever been born if my parents didn't do the same every time a chance to risk their lives came up. You shouldn't confront Android 21 alone though."
"Yeah, she has that energy-draining do-hickey she used to de-power me a few times already. It only worked on me in my Wrathful State so far, but she's had years to iron out that tech. It's more than likely she has a way to de-fang me even as a Super Saiyan," Chayote sighed, observing the clouds moving over the seemingly boundless Sacred Land of Korin. "My goal isn't to destroy 21, not yet though. Her generals won't stand down if she's scrap. I need to stop them from converting the people first, one army at a time."
"That's strangely noble of you." The corners of Future Trunks' lips tilted slightly to the side as he gave Chayote a cozy look. "Though, I suppose, if I am to redeem for the harm I have caused to your timeline, I must do so by protecting its inhabitants. If I am to repay the debt in the lives of your men that I have taken, I need to assist you with this thing you consider important. And, if I am to find even the tiniest clue about Mecha Frieza, I won't find them here either. I need to be down there, engaging Android 21's forces."
"It seems like you've got it all well-reasoned out…" Chayote closed her eyes, struggling to keep a teasing cringe down in her throat. "All the excuses you'd ever need."
"Excuses?" Future Trunks wondered, looking genuinely baffled at what Chayote was getting to.
"What's important isn't what you think you have to do. What's important is what you want to do," Chayote opened her eyes, revealing that she wasn't kidding when she said this to Future Trunks, who scratched his chin deep in thought.
"What I want… Then, I suppose, I want to fight Android 21 here, on this timeline, with you," Future Trunks settled on an answer.
Here they had it, together against the world.