A barrage of fiery bubble blasts littered the sky. Tenshinhan bobbed and weaved around the anti-aircraft measures put in place to prevent exactly what he was trying to enact–the destruction of the production facility of the Android army heavy machinery. The constant aerial pressure that the anti-air cannons and crawling mecha-spiders with seemingly an endless supply of missiles on their cargo loaders kept Tenshinhan moving and didn't let him focus on high-scale destruction, only dispatching of singular models.
That was when a bright flash lit up the area and a bloodthirsty battle cry that sounded quite human filled Tenshinhan's ears. While a loud and obnoxious sound, it was a welcome change from the mechanical screeching and automated hydraulic pumps that overstayed their welcome by now. With the rushing handful of Saiyan grunts applying pressure from the ground, Tenshinhan, at last, began decimating the construction facilities at a larger scale and truly began putting a dent in the heavy machinery production.
Vegeta's Saiyan army rushed in and tore the mechanical spiders and tanks apart with their bare hands, skewering the heavy machinery with its own appendages and weapons and a few Saiyans even mustered up a way to rip a tank's barrel or the Gatling gun off of a mechanical spider and use it against the cybernetic oppressors.
Tenshinhan's eyes swiftly moved to his right, and he threw a roundhouse kick that swatted a bulky mass of muscle aside from him. The familiar sight of a burly mountain of muscle with dark military pants, hefty leather boots, and a long navy coat torn by the sleeves to allow the man's massive arms to move around freely. The Artificial Human, known as One-Six, stroke his mohawk and cracked his neck to toughen up before facing Tenshinhan again.
"So, you've come at us seriously at last," One-Six cracked his knuckles and took a boxer's fighting pose. "You must have split up to tackle all of us at once, instead of giving us a chance to breathe. It's the right choice, albeit risky. You've stretched yourselves thin and even if a single Muscle Tower does not fall–we'll regroup and obliterate you with our full force."
"Is that truly what you care about?" Tenshinhan warmed up for battle and took a fighting pose. "Our previous battle was interrupted. My pride as a martial artist demands that we settle this and that I avenge the peace that you've trampled underneath the belts of your tanks. Prepare yourself, Artificial Human. I've grown much stronger during the last year and I don't intend to dishonor both of us by holding back."
"Your obsession with hand-to-hand combat does not make rational sense, given your supposed love for peace," One-Six reported with an apathetic expression. A handful of Saiyans rushed right at him, flinging Ki blasts, but the burly Android just deflected them and grabbed the Saiyans by their necks, snapping them easily before grabbing another Saiyan and pummeling his gut with a barrage of punches. Tenshinhan noted the precision and brute force of the hydraulic pummeling behind One-Six's punches. The Artificial Human had also upgraded himself during the downtime.
"Leave this Artificial Human to me!" Tenshinhan turned to the growling Saiyans that shook their fists at the Android from down below. The Saiyans grumbled and objected with unintelligible murmuring, but they must have realized that there was no use in them lingering here any longer, and so they engaged the tanks and mechanical spiders that swarmed the mountain base area.
The two warriors charged at one another. Tenshinhan had attempted a long-distance sweep, but One-Six's sliding uppercut connected first. The force of impact rattled Tenshinhan's entire body with resonance passing from his chin all the way down and his brain mercilessly bashing at all sides of his skull as if looking for a path to escape. One-Six's punch dug into Tenshinhan's gut, forcing all air out from the body of the three-eyed martial artist while his opponent dashed onward with a rough shoulder charge.
The brutal offensive had pushed Tenshinhan to a corner as the mountainous pillar of stone and moss hit his back and halted his backward glide. One-Six's explosive uppercut shot the three-eyed martial artist into the air like a shooting rocket, while the offensive powerhouse pressed his charge in pursuit of his opponent. A bright flash of explosive energy burst from One-Six's fist when it came right for Tenshinhan's ribcage but, when the dust settled and the flash dimmed, Tenshinhan had forced a grumble out of his opponent by revealing that he had hunkered down in a cross-shaped block and absorbed most of the shock from that blow.
Before One-Eight could wind up for another strike, Tenshinhan lashed with a back-handed strike, flexible as a whip yet stiff as a bar of iron. After the back-handed smack flinched the cybernetic boxer up, Tenshinhan's elbow dug into One-Eight's gut. Even the muscle-packed giant spat out something gooey and thick from his mouth and his face shifted from apathy to an expression of paramount torment. Tenshinhan dashed up while spinning with a roundhouse kick and swatted his opponent, rolling aside and splitting the cottony cumuli decorating the skies.
With a sharp snapping noise, the three-eyed martial artist appeared before his opponent and jabbed at his gut, then shot his foot up high and forced his flinched opponent to roll back against his will. Tenshinhan pursued further, jabbing with a rapid flurry of snake-style palm strikes, then kicked his opponent even higher up.
"Sports Combination Technique: Soccer!" Tenshinhan yelled out as he kept on the relentless pursuit of the burly Artificial Human and kicked him like a fleshy soccer ball again and again. Once the air had become unbearably thin, the martial artist snapped over his opponent and flipped backward with an overhead kick that drove One-Six back crashing down.
Just as the powerhouse Android rode the comet tail of heated gas back down and decimated most of the military base by merely crashing into the ground and reducing the entire mountainous area to rubble, just as silenced reigned in after the crash, Tenshinhan's merciless plunge resulted in both of Tenshinhan's knees slamming into the middle of his opponent's arm, bending it out of shape and leaving it in a pitiful and mangled state, spewing sparks.
Tenshinhan took his distance, flipping and vaulting through the air until he landed a good few steps away from his opponent and didn't move either of his three eyes away from the fallen artificial warrior for a blink. Even if the Android's injuries looked dire and the beat down Tenshinhan delivered appeared severe, Tenshinhan didn't fool himself with wishful thinking that this was the end of this battle. Here, his experience of fighting demons helped him suspend his disbelief that someone could've possessed such remarkable vitality and toughness.
"It's almost impossible to believe…" One-Six's voice filled the air as he rolled on his side and returned to his feet, grabbing his busted arm and stuffing it under the elbow of his healthy arm. With an intimidating yell, One-Six tore his arm off by the middle, revealing that his limbs were detachable, and the connector plate by the elbow suggested that this was a functionality that One-Six's designer always intended for the Android. "How much you've powered up in just one year. Your power is like that of a completely different person. You've gone beyond even what we Artificial Humans can accomplish through upgrades."
"Do you intend to continue fighting one-armed?" Tenshinhan wondered as his eyes lingered on the still-twitching, discarded half of One-Six's arm. His eyes fixed on reinforced gemstone-like marbles on the Android's knuckles, revealing that his Ki Absorption devices weren't on his palms but instead attached to his knuckles to complement One-Six's fighting style.
"By no means…" One-Six replied with a low-pitched grumble while approaching a ruined tank by his side. The musclebound giant punched into the tank's turret and pulled it off of its original owner, connecting it to his severed arm through a shared connection and forming a type of shielded barrel-arm out of it. "I can connect with most of the heavy machinery we produce at this Muscle Tower by utilizing the connectors all over my body. I have only just begun to fight."
"I see…" Tenshinhan closed his eyes before opening them back up and taking a fighting pose to prepare for another collision with his opponent. "In that case, show me just how potent your ability to adapt to the tide of battle truly is."
The two fighters attacked each other at the same time. Just as Tenshinhan expelled a powerful Ki blast from his hand, One-Six moved his turret-arm to shield himself from it while a flash lit up at the other end of the barrel. The luminosity of the attack grew as the potency of the blast built up and it was just a mere moment before the charged-up blast left the barrel. It left with a kick that forced even One-Six to dig his feet into the ground so that he didn't stumble and the ground down under shattered from the force of impact that resonated through the Android and passed down his feet.
"Silver Howitzer!" One-Six yelled out as the lustrous blast formed a shell-shape mid-flight and howled toward Tenshinhan. The three-eyed martial artist closed his eyes, keeping only his third one open, and swiftly turned aside, letting the Silver Howitzer whizz just an inch away from his chest while Tenshinhan skid across the distance between the two with a thrust of his index and middle fingers into the center of One-Six's chest. The Android's eyes whited out and his jaw dropped.
This breach of his opponent's hunkered-down defenses was a sign for Tenshinhan to keep going. Thus, the three-eyed martial artist unleashed a flurry of strikes using just his tempered middle and index fingers, jabbing with impeccable precision and all the toughness of a bullet. Tenshinhan dived to sweep his opponent and left him fumbling in mid-air before kicking One-Six in the back to propel him into the air again.
Tenshinhan placed his hands by his sides, emitting a bright yellow light from his entire body as he crossed his arms in front of him. He split into four separate bodies that wasted no time before coming after One-Six. The first one dashed in with an elbow strike from the front, the second one ravaged his opponent from behind with another flurry of machine-gun jabs with his index and middle fingers before kicking him away towards the third that exploded with a barrage of punches and kicks overwhelming the Artificial Human.
"Sports Combination Technique: Volleyball!" the third doppelganger of Tenshinhan's chanted out before slamming his palm with a chopping motion that would have split the skull of any lesser opponent but only cracked One-Six's and force oil to drip from the giant's eyes and nose as he crashed back down on the ground.
Being fully aware of the flaws in his technique, Tenshinhan didn't allow his doppelgangers to overstay their welcome, calling them to enter his body again in a flash of yellow light and reversing how he produced the technique.
"Your new combination, while powerful, lacks the speed and finesse to keep up with me," Tenshinhan declared to his opponent. In a violent outrage which the martial artist didn't expect, One-Six hammered his turret-arm, detaching the turret he had fused his arm with and letting it fly toward Tenshinhan. Just as the three-eyed martial artist prepared to perform a simple evasive action and avoid this primitive method of attack, the turret lit up with bright light and exploded in a super-heated fireball that burnt through the solid, frozen rock and gravel that hosted the Muscle Tower.
Tenshinhan staggered from the resounding detonation of the machine limb before the lumbering shape of his opponent appeared from the smoke. One-Six's healthy arm grabbed hold of Tenshinhan's collar and pulled him in, delivering a series of brutal headbutts that sank Tenshinhan's third eye under a torrent of blood bursting through the crack on his forehead. Spinning his legs like a human whirlwind, Tenshinhan reclaimed his freedom and dashed away from his juggernaut of an opponent.
"Your breathing… Your stamina… What the hell is going on here?" One-Six bellowed out while cracking his head sideways a few times and punching into the side of a fallen aerial drone to pull out a Gatling gun arm from the side. "It's like you've upgraded yourself to become an Artificial Human yourself. What is the meaning of this?"
"You're right, even when an ordinary martial artist is winning an engagement, they pay the toll of battle in stamina. I bet that against most human opponents, even ones surpassing you in strength, you could overwhelm them eventually through toughing their onslaught out and then defeating them with sheer power and your limitless stamina. That strategy will not work on me," Tenshinhan smirked, finally finding the strength in him to move his hand away from his bloodied forehead and take a fighting stance.
"You can't be using King Kai's Fist… That technique greatly chips away at your own life and it's almost as if you hadn't fought a second until now… Have you mastered that power-up to where you don't have to suffer its drawbacks anymore?" One-Six inquired, wishing to update his seemingly outdated information profile on Tenshinhan and share it with the rest of the Artificial Humans so that they'd be mindful of similar tricks on their fronts.
"No," Tenshinhan shook his head. "King Kai's Fist, Hot-Red Mode… My new fighting style makes me have no need for such double-edge sword techniques. I have become as powerful as a Super Saiyan without the need of gambling the integrity of my body as a result. No. In a way, my new fighting style surpasses even the transformation of a Super Saiyan."
"Have I hit your head that hard?" One-Six grit his teeth and put up his duke and his Gatling gun arm.
"I guess I'll just have to show you. My Spirit Cultivation Method," the corners of Tenshinhan's lips curved upward as the martial artist gleamed with confidence in his abilities. "I must say, I haven't truly tested it in a real life-or-death battle, but so far it has surpassed my expectations. I simply can't see any flaws in this technique."
"You're delirious! Silver Gatling!" One-Six yelled out, aiming with his Gatling arm and unleashing a tunneling blizzard of Ki bullets rushing toward Tenshinhan. Tenshinhan closed his eyes, relying solely on his Ki senses, and leaned aside from the first bunch of Ki bullets before vanishing from the rest of the barrage. Even when One-Six directed his Gatling arm in pursuit of the three-eyed warrior, Tenshinhan merely outran his opponent's ceaseless barrage of Ki bullets before vanishing with a snap again.
"Dash Knee Upper!" Tenshinhan yelled out as he soared in from high above his opponent, using a weakness in the fact that raising his Gatling took One-Six a few moments more than simply aiming it to the sides. Tenshinhan's knee socked One-Six straight in the forehead, stunning him and leaving the giant wobbling in place. "Cross Chop!" Tenshinhan chanted as he flung his entire body with his arms positioned in a cross-shaped formation by his sides. A spin on Nam's Cross Arm Dive, Tenshinhan's flying dash connected with the wobbly giant, laying him out and leaving him flat on his back.
"You should give up now. In our current states, there is no way for you to win against me," Tenshinhan calmly stated, clenching his fist by his chest as he kept his guard up and his opponent firmly within view. "I haven't even begun to truly tap into the potential of my Spirit Cultivation Method."
"Damn you…" One-Six rose from the ground with a quiver in his knees. His lower body worked overtime to keep up with the crushing weight of his core and upper body. The connector by his arms expelled smoke and detached from the Gatling gun, dropping it on the ground. "My sensors don't indicate why your battle power is so incredibly high. There's no mistaking it, it will take nothing less than the full power of the Artificial Human army to destroy you!"
One-Six grabbed his coat and tore it off, revealing his entire, exposed upper body, swelling up with muscles and filled to the brim with iron rings augmenting connections matching those on the other end of One-Six's right arm. With a deafening roar, One-Six raised his arm and expelled a shapeless blast of energy in Tenshinhan's direction. The three-eyed martial artist didn't worry too much about it, merely covering up his eyes and tensing up his body as the blast lacked finesse and focus to pack much of a punch.
While the smoke still lingered, electrical crackles and mechanical humming could've been heard from all over the battlefield. The Saiyans halted in fear as their enemy began vanishing one by one in this blinding snowstorm. When the smoke was cleared, four cores of the mechanical missile carriers formed One-Six's lower body, two trailer carriers connected to his arms with a handful of turrets that guarded the roof of the trailer carriers aiming at Tenshinhan. A few more tank turrets connected to One-Six's back and pecks, producing a walking juggernaut military machine.
"So this is your answer to my Spirit Cultivation Method? To discard what little humanity you've had and become more war machine than man? Disappointing…" Tenshinhan noted, taking a fighting pose with a bitter look on his face.