It didn't take Chayote too long before she encountered the first wall of defense protecting the shoreline of West City. Rows of dreadnaughts with colossal cannons rolling up and looking to blast her out of the sky with world-shaking destructive power queued up to overwhelm the Saiyan. Aerial drones dislodged fusillades of missiles, each of which carried the same explosive charge present inside each of the Androids if they ever saw the need to self-destruct.
"I thought we stopped all of this… Didn't Muten Roshi destroy the marine base?" Chayote stopped her vain attempt to evade the overwhelming weapon of mass destruction hell homing in on her and spread her arms out, forming an energy barrier that absorbed the blows for her. The resulting destruction caused enough chaos for at least a temporary stoppage of firing.
"No… I'm sure that Trunks took care of the machine duplication lab and Chi-Chi must've taken care of the aerial suppression units already… Something's off…" Chayote clenched her fists. Her uniform began feeling tight around her body as her Ki began swelling up with an explosive aura around her. "Jelly-Beam!"
Colorful sparks of various colors, sprinkling various elements with their brilliance, lit up around the tips of Chayote's fingers before firing off in the shape of Ki beams straying off far and wide in all directions. Beams of focused heat that sought to incinerate their target, beams that froze the enemy solid, piercing and invisible beams, packing the punch of an entire hurricane, and beams of pure force punching through like a rolling boulder with hefty blunt force. The aerial squadron of Puri's drones disappeared almost at once in the cascade of colorful explosions.
"Well, well… If it isn't the destructive buffoon, Chayote! The bumbling brute that destroys all she touches and ruins the lives of everyone around her…" Dr. Puri's teasing voice boomed from down below where the dreadnaughts were grouping up for another combined fusillade of destruction. "Even now, I can see your primitive, fleshy heart bumping its best, hoping not to muck everything up for your friends, most of whom just sort of tolerate you because you were useful once or twice to them. They've tried their hardest, didn't they, destroying my bases and unraveling my plans… Or, at least, what their brawling minds thought my plans were. As you can see, my cybernetic defenses are just as strong as ever. Your friends failed."
"Yeah, I suppose none of us incorporated the importance you'd place in putting your face on screens on your warships when putting our battle plan together. Guess we really had no idea how you think…" Chayote barked out a response before taking a fighting pose and preparing to obliterate the dreadnaught legion just like she did to the jet drones earlier.
"You're fighting against the Android 21 of yesterday. Destroying the bases that I've established early on in my plan to save mankind. You've failed already, all this effort and you didn't realize that I can control and rebuild my cyborgs and androids without all that outdated and cumbersome tech. Just like that insufferable boy-toy of yours, you're fighting a battle on the wrong time," Dr. Puri looked awfully self-content for someone who had just lost all the bases that Chayote and Trunks had seen as a crux to Puri's plans. Even if she was a twisted artificial woman, what if the reason she was so overjoyed by the result was that she truly won, somehow?
What if she truly didn't need the military bases anymore? What if she's merged all of their functions already and all that the Dragon Team had achieved that day was exposing themselves for capture? Something that Dr. Puri could not do throughout the last year because of the guerilla tactics of Chayote Security efforts.
"Oh? That's such a delicious expression you have on your face right now. But it won't do. For ruining my family's life, our chance to bring back our son to life, it can never possibly do! Come to Puri & Co, if you can manage it. Bring all that doubt and insecurity with you, I'd love to taste it from up close," Android 21 laughed out before her face vanished from the tall and wide screens of the dreadnaughts, replaced by the modified Red Ribbon logo that was now split in between blue and red and had the numbers 2 and 1 decorating it instead of the usual R & R.
Chayote crossed up her arms and drew her legs in, huddling up in a fetal position as a tight bubble of blinding energy formed around her. In a flashing shake, it began to expand before turning into an actual nova of power, spouting out destructive energy rays in all directions that answered the impending aggression from the naval fleet with a response that dwarfed their most optimistic daydreams. Chayote took off as a light-speed arrow enveloped by an aura of energy toward a towering skyscraper in the middle of the town, built on Bulma's own yard and devouring the entire neighborhood in its width.
"Tsk… For all the times she runs her mouth about optimizing her shit, she's still working in a cumbersome eye-poker like this," Chayote grumbled before scanning the skyscraper with her eyes. She couldn't quite sense where she could find Android 21 since the artificial woman didn't put out any Ki signature. Chayote would've been wasting time trying to run around that massive tower looking for Puri, not to mention the amount of underpaid and vexing tin cans she'd need to scrap along the way.
That was when the Puri & Co logo parted away, revealing an azure beacon of light. The Saiyan wondered if it was meant to obliterate her or if it served a more practical purpose. Despite her warnings, Chayote allowed the beckoning blue light to engulf her whole before it began drawing her in like the cosmic tractor beam that locked entire space stations in place and prevented them from escaping their grip even if they were to do so using their peak of power output that would have brought them to different star systems in a blink on a normal occasion.
The sky had been particularly gloomy that day, due to all the hectic fighting going on all around the world and the tragic effect it was having on the Earth. Still, when the cerulean beam of light engulfed Chayote and began drawing her in, it created a flash that had accustomed the Saiyan's eyes to intense light, all of which vanished causing her eyes to go through a momentary period of grief over the lost luminosity inside of a dark lab, full of defunct, skeletal Android frames.
"Is this supposed to be symbolic?" Chayote reared her teeth with a bitter expression. "Are you trying to make me feel bad by emulating the look of Dr. Gero's lab when he blew himself up for no reason, like an idiot?"
"An idiot?" Android 21's left eye twitched as she tried to play it off cool and stoic, but Chayote's verbal lance broke through her iron facade with shattering force. "Not that a simpleton such as yourself could appreciate it, but my husband's mind was one of the brightest in history. To prepare for this day, I've contacted countless alien civilizations that King Cold and Frieza had crushed under their heel as well and not even they have fostered sheer brilliance of scientific mind comparable to Gero."
"And yet he couldn't grasp the simple idea that I had nothing to do with his son's death, I didn't blow up the Red Ribbon Base, and I didn't give a shit about his vendetta, meaning that I wouldn't have cared if he just packed his shit and bolted to live the rest of his days as a family man. I don't know what's so scientific about blowing yourself up for no reason to kill someone who doesn't care about who you are and has nothing to do with what you're so mad about…" Chayote took a few steps forward, feeling her size grow a good few dozens of centimeters as forceful pumps of energy began bulking up her muscles underneath the subtle frame that she usually held her suppressed state in.
"Even if the Red Ribbon commander was the one to nuke the headquarters, it was your attack that forced his hand. The Red Ribbon did not know about your existence or of Saiyans in general. You were the aggressor, and it was because of you we couldn't complete our research and retrieve our son's body in a timely manner to bring him back to us," Dr. Puri lashed out in response. "Had the Red Ribbon Army survived that day, my husband would've received his remains and preserved them until he and Dr. Flappe could have completed their research into Android technology. You took our son away from us, no matter what excuses you may hide behind!"
Android 21 vanished with a flickering afterimage and drowned the entire room in white and auburn blurs. Chayote tilted her foot, avoiding the sweep that came at her before Chayote even saw her opponent appear again. The two women clashed with knee charges that they've started at the same time, each one mirroring the other's best attempt at hurting their despised enemy. Android 21 hopped with her back foot, making her leg disappear from the knee down as she unleashed a graceful rush of wide-ranging kicks. Chayote crossed up her arms and hunkered down. Initially, the hits seemed to bounce off of the Saiyan while her body bulked up more and more, tearing out from her outfit. Chayote let out a resonating roar and exploded with a Kiai bubble that swatted her opponent aside and prevented 21 from punishing her too badly with continued attacks.
The auburn-haired scientist charged forth without skipping a beat. Instead of using some elaborate method of attacking, she merely slammed into Chayote and began pushing the bulking-up Saiyan aside, but Chayote answered with her own forceful struggle. Dr. Puri vaulted backward, smacking Chayote at the bottom of her chin with her feet like a wet blanket, before dashing up to the brutish Saiyan and grabbing hold of her collar.
"You ruined my job!" Puri yelled out, smacking Chayote with a slap while holding her by the Saiyan's collar.
"You robbed me of my husband!" Puri continued, smacking Chayote with the back of her hand in a return slap.
"You've ruined my son's chance at life!" Puri's voice rose in volume and became sharper in intensity as she continued her slap-down. Chayote froze in place, none of these hits dealt too much damage but the sheer scorn in her opponent's voice and how satisfied and invested she was in such a meek method of attack that served better as a source of humiliation than an actual attack left the Saiyan woman stunned.
"And now you want to lead my entire race to extinction and deny me their salvation!" Android 21 put significantly more power in the finishing slap that became almost like a rising palm strike that smacked Chayote swinging into the air. The ceiling of the cubical cybernetic room wasn't that high up, so the two fighters were approaching it almost immediately.
Chayote's eyes blanked out when Puri's knee drove into the center of Chayote's chest. With a sly smirk, the artificial woman slashed with her hand, focusing her Ki so intensely that it created black Ki blades with an outline of scarlet electricity over them. Yet when her hand drove down to inflict grievous injury upon her hated target, Puri's hand stopped in mid-air as her wrist found itself within Chayote's firm grasp.
Without faltering for a second, Dr. Puri rolled in mid-air and delivered an overhead strike, twisting her arm to where it seemed to dislocate by the shoulder yet, because of the unnatural anatomy of the Android, she managed to pull such an unorthodox and highly flexible method of attack off flawlessly. Chayote coughed out in pain but didn't let her opponent slip from her grip. The Saiyan rolled her opponent in as if she was dancing an aerial tango with her while driving her own knee into 21's face before wrapping both her arms around Dr. Puri and flipping over with a spinning head-first drop into the ground.
Everything went black. The first thing that returned to Chayote was the combination of grunts and painful moans, both hers and that of Dr. Puri. Feeling battered and numb all over, the Saiyan rolled over on her back and caressed her head, witnessing a few splashes of red over her hand after inspecting it. The two were immensely slow to stand up after the cybernetic floor of the place effectively refused to give in to the world-shaking slam and transferred the force through the spines and necks of both fighters trying to dent it.
"Holy shit… What did you make that stuff out of!?" Chayote shrieked out in pain after sitting up on her bottom and desperately try to massage her numb back of the neck and head.
"Vengeance…" Dr. Puri panted out while slowly rising on her feet. "Every nut and every bolt I screwed in each of my soldiers, cyborgs and Androids alike, each individual piece I've augmented them with was put there to destroy you one way or another."
"When will you finally realize that your whacko husband brought this onto himself?!" Chayote grumbled before following her opponent back up even though the fortitude of her own body didn't come even close to matching the unrelenting advances of the seemingly invulnerable Android in front of her. "Yeah, you're right, I attacked the Red Ribbons out of aggression, as an invader, and a malicious force that saw them as her rivals. I wanted them gone so that they didn't stand in the way of me wiping all life from the planet. Still, they always were evil. The more I find out about them now, the more sure I am of this."
"Evil? That's rich coming from you!" Android 21 swiped her hand aside, igniting her black and scarlet Ki blade and rushing toward Chayote. The Saiyan vaulted over the repeated thrusts of the Ki blade and slammed her sole into Dr. Puri's face, making the Android stagger backward. Chayote advanced with a high roundhouse and then returned her foot with a reverse roundhouse.
Seeing her opponent staggered, Chayote charged forward. Tears resonated around the stress points of her Chayote Security uniform, and the lenses of her shades popped out from the frame that bent out of shape and clanked down on the floor. Chayote's knee hammered into 21's chest with a deafening thud, and a visible flash of emerald aura blew out from behind the overwhelmed Android. Seeing Puri's head down and her body flinched, Chayote grabbed hold of her neck and delivered a cutter with a facelock, followed by a flying backward slam. This made 21 hit her unbreakable cybernetic stage floor face-first again.
"Your husband's workplace tried taking over the world just a few years before I arrived and was fended off by the combined world military. You're right to say that I attacked the Red Ribbons in part because I felt threatened by the fact they'd conquer the world before me, but that wasn't the only reason. They were a powerful military force, a potential thorn in Frieza's side but they were also flat-out evil and at the time it was my creed to kill all the evil people in the world first so that I could proceed to off the good. I'm incredibly thankful for martial arts and the friends and enemies I've made along the way so that it never got to that part," Chayote proclaimed after rising from the floor and clenching her fist as a sign of her oath.
"So high and mighty…" Android 21 grumbled before spinning around the floor and picking herself up with an elegant hop back on her feet. It didn't seem like she had suffered much damage from this attack. This troubled Chayote, as it became apparent that she'd need to push herself onward to the Wrathful and even Super Saiyan forms in order to leave any dents on this woman. "That's because you've always had that unruly power of yours to back you up. You could make up all sorts of sick and twisted excuses and fortune would prove you right because you'd just smash anyone opposing you. Not anymore, this time you'll have to face your penance."
"Don't make this out to be some high and mighty divine business, Puri…" Chayote drew her arms back and bulked up her entire body with a single resonating pump of force that blew her body out of proportions and ignited a vibrant amber-colored aura around her while the hair of the Saiyan woman spiked up and her eyes took a golden glint to them. "This fight is just your attempt to get even, nothing more!" Chayote's voice became lower pitched and more savage and growl-like.
A subtle smirk colored the lower part of Puri's face while her lab coat gently slipped off of her shoulders and the woman crossed up her arms, striking a subdued pose while nibbling on the fleshy pillows of her right index finger. Something was off, this shouldn't have been the right reaction to the Wrathful State. The power-up that gradually built-up aggression and power the longer that its user continued to brawl, such a transformation should have frightened even someone like Dr. Puri. Even if she truly was the strongest out of her Androids…
"You've no clue for how long I've dreamed in all this last year that you would one day grow arrogant enough to face me in battle and stop running and playing superhero alongside that loser refugee from the future," Android 21 cackled lightly without breaking her pose or composure. "All just so that arrogance would blow up in your face, as it has to your future self. It hurts to be so behind my future self and having missed out on an entire year of making you pay for all your meddling…"
The cybernetic walls around Chayote let out a pleasant, rubbery hum as they opened up and revealed bulbs of tempered glass that lit up with the entire specter of colors that switched between themselves before forming a hampering gleam of beetroot-red and sinking the entire room in it. Chayote scanned the room, feeling unable to help herself from feeling drawn in by the change in the room's atmosphere. Something felt… Off… Not harmful or painful or… Where did her muscles go?
Chayote's body began deflating within sight as the tatters remaining of her uniform began hanging looser over her slimmed-down body. The Saiyan's eyes returned to being the deep, black dots while her hair settled down into a restrained ponytail again as Chayote could actually see herself shrinking down in real-time.
"Remember that device that helped me drain you of your excess energy during your fight against Lord Slug? It was one of my favorite inventions and I've had high hopes for it ever since…" Android 21 finally broke her subdued stance and ignited a black and scarlet Ki blade over her right palm. "I'd keep on powering up and trying to become Wrathful or even Super Saiyan, otherwise it will suck you dry of your power and I don't want you passing out too soon. We both know you'll keep on struggling until you can't move and, frankly, that'll make my revenge that much sweeter."
Chayote looked down at her hands and could see them shake from the oppressive atmosphere around her. It differed from a mere gravity chamber as there was nothing physically restraining Chayote and yet she felt weak, sickly, almost. It was only when she followed Dr. Puri's advice and burst with a golden aura of a Super Saiyan, pushing Android 21 back from advancing closer and slashing her bloody, that the Saiyan woman realized that she needed to actively power up and do her best to counteract the room's oppressive atmosphere.
It seemed that Dr. Puri had figured out a way to counteract Chayote's continuous power-ups. Not just that. Android 21 reversed it. No matter how hard Chayote struggled, she could only delay being sapped dry and not overpower or oppose it. Even now, when she tried becoming a Super Saiyan, all she could do was remain in her base form with the golden aura only repelling and bolstering the power source of the oppressive room that Android 21 drew Chayote to fight in.
Unlike her opponent, Chayote desperately needed to end this collision as quickly as possible, or else she'd end up collapsing and meeting the same fate as her future counterpart. Helpless and kept barely alive while Dr. Puri enacted whatever sick revenge plans she wanted on her day after day…