"These guys aren't messing around!" Goku said with a serious face as he dashed into the air to avoid an energy shot from a Godgardon and backflipped with a mid-air backward glide to avoid the follow-up barrage of energy bolts. With his feet firmly touching the wall, the Saiyan kicked off the wall and soared above the army of guardian robots while evading their successive attacks and drawing their attention from the rest of the group.
Goku's knee slammed into the face of one Godgardon, flinching it and testing the integrity of its neck though, surprisingly enough, despite a rubbery churn to the wires holding it attached, the head remained attached to the guardian robot. Turning around, Goku thrust his foot with a roundhouse dive kick before shoving his fist into the Godgardon's core, testing its integrity and lifting the robot off the ground. A rapid barrage of shots to the core body and an overhead power blow later, the Godgardon took off somewhere, having taken surprisingly little damage from a beatdown of one of the strongest warriors in the universe.
"Agreed!" Gohan yelled out before shooting an uppercut into the middle section of a guardian drone and jump-kicking it into a backward roll in mid-air, like a rag doll. "I wonder what Dr. Lychee built these to defend against… They're easily more powerful than the Frieza Army."
Vanishing and appearing in front of the stunned and still rolling Godgardon, Gohan shot his foot out and punted the weightless opponent away, still unable to thrash the robot. Usually, when one encountered mass-produced guards on the battlefield, they expected these guards to not be able to take more than a few hits, whereas these Godgardons appeared incredibly well-equipped and matched Artificial Humans in power.
"They couldn't have been built this strong. He must've been using the Destron Gas to upgrade them time after time since their creation," Vegeta surmised while keeping a handful of the drones pinned down under his volley of Ki blasts. He too felt washed by a cold shower upon firing a handful of Ki blasts and not seeing these ancient robots break apart in moments. Out of nowhere, a Godgardon appeared from behind the King of Saiyans and drove into his back with a shoulder charge. This was enough to snuff out Vegeta's Ki blast volley and leave him surrounded by Godgardons.
Goku pursued the guardian drone he had begun fighting against and fired another flurry of fists in its direction, but the robot erected a solid energy shield that reflected a shocking jolt back at the Saiyan, which stunned Goku and made him retreat. With the energy shield still up, the Godgardon engaged the jets on its back and feet and threw itself at Goku, slamming with full force and knocking the Saiyan aside.
"Alright, no use holding back against these guys…" Goku chuckled to himself while wiping the slobber off his face. The Saiyan pushed his hands to the sides and lit up with a bright aura that colored his hair golden with a single shout. In a blink, the fighting potential of the Saiyan warrior skyrocketed beyond his earlier abilities into the class of legends.
"Yeah…" Gohan found an opening to do the same, turning Super Saiyan in a blink before bursting with an ethereal golden glow and charging after the group of Godgardons. A high kick knocked one of them aside, a straight sent another into a stumble, and a double ax handle from the top floored the third and left it sliding aside with a blazing trail of energy on the floor.
"It's going to be a tough battle, but you should pace yourselves. If you burn through your stamina by fighting as Super Saiyans now, you'll be winded when we confront Lychee," Vegeta scolded the pair while weaving and dashing in mid-air and struggling to evade or smack aside the Godgardons' energy bolts.
"Burn through our stamina as Super Saiyans? Don't worry, Vegeta, our skill with the Super Saiyan transformation doesn't have a weakness like that," Super Saiyan Goku attacked the group of Godgardons with a smirk on his face. After pummeling a handful of them aside, Goku noticed the rag-dolled robots standing up and forming a ring around him. The Godgardons aimed their arms at the Super Saiyan, revealing gatling-like barrels around their knuckles and unleashing a hail of blue energy bolts.
"Tsk!" Goku grumbled, covering himself up and absorbing the combined assault of all surrounding Godgardons, giving him all they had at once.
"Get off of him!" Gohan bellowed, erupting in a radiant burst of Super Saiyan aura and shooting head-first into the nearest Godgardon. Banged up and pummeled by the brutal headbutt, the robotic guardian shot off to the side and hit the wall while Gohan cradled his body in mid-air and became engulfed in a yellow energy field. By extending his hands out, the teen Super Saiyan released a wave of energy that engulfed and reduced to ruin another Godgardon.
"You're telling me you don't wear yourself out fighting as Super Saiyans at all?" Vegeta grumbled out while blocking the continuous energy wave focused at him by a handful of Godgardons and struggling against their push with his hands open.
"Yeah, we can't quite pull off the transformation you and Trunks from the future used, so we settled on perfecting our ordinary Super Saiyan forms instead," Goku grinned while throwing fists and kicking around without the surrounding mechanical bullies taking little to no damage. It was like they've adapted to fighting the increased physical strength of a Super Saiyan, completely releasing any tension from their bodies at the moment of impact and just letting the kinetic energy resonate through their bodies freely. While this made them less tough and resistant, it also made them hurl away from strikes with little to no physical damage.
Even Gohan, who had successfully vanquished two Godgardons at once, now found himself slacking and received a headbutt from one drone while another one stomped him down, then locked its grip around Gohan's chest and dragged him for a little painful ride across the floor.
"Damn it… Damn all of you…!" Vegeta cursed, feeling pushed by some no-named goons that Dr. Lychee didn't even seem to have factored into his initial plans for the invaders at all. An old protective measure that was since been forgotten and abandoned. The King of Saiyans didn't feel like letting himself be bullied around by something menial like that, so he exploded with golden radiance, becoming a Super Saiyan as well.
"You should mind your own advice, Vegeta-san," Gohan warned the super-elite Saiyan. "Fighting as a Super Saiyan will burn away your stamina quickly if you're not accustomed to spending a lot of time in the form."
"Shut up! I'm disassembling these heaps of scrap!" Super Vegeta growled, letting his muscles swell up and his hair to grow even longer and spikier than before as his body got a reflective golden glint of an advanced grade of Super Saiyan transformation. The King of Saiyans vanished in a blink, appearing before a Godgardon that blanked out in something resembling terror.
In a single thrust of his fist, Super Vegeta produced a concussive shockwave that knocked all the Godgardons in front of him down. However, the King of Saiyans had different plans for one of them, rushing in pursuit and driving the back of his fist into the Godgardon's belfry, he positioned the airborne robot to be at Vegeta's mercy. Exclaiming a potent battle cry from his chest, the Saiyan royalty slammed his fist into the chest of the stunned Godgardon and sent him bouncing about from the ceiling and floor with too much pent-up kinetic energy and nowhere to release it.
"We've had just about enough trouble from the likes of them. It's time to shut down all the fighting robots permanently!" Vegeta snarled before clenching his fist and leaving the fallen Godgardon's chest to explode with a Ki blast that the Super Saiyan generated inside of the robot during the moment of contact when Vegeta punched it.
Goku exchanged blows with a handful of airborne Godgardons, observing the improving martial arts skill in their opponents, who seemed to have been recording and studying their opponents as they engaged them. With his mouth wide open, Gohan let out a brave battle cry, shooting out a yellow mouth blast as he scanned the top layer of the room and engulfed the handful of guardian robots while Goku slipped under it.
"Whoa…!" Goku exclaimed. "Where did that come from?"
"I learned it from Piccolo-san while training in space," Gohan stroked the plentiful golden hair at the back of his head with a softened tone. "Didn't quite seem like my type of technique back then, but… Something took over me and I just let it out."
"If you're quite done chatting already…!" Vegeta coughed up from physical stress as his explosive energy wave began absorbing the combined energy bolts coming from the gatling cannons of the Godgardons. "We've got a fight on our hands that's going embarrassingly bad!"
"Come on, Vegeta…" Goku dropped the goofy grimace and charged a golden energy blast in his right hand, snapping away and appearing before a Godgardon to punch it in the gut with the energy blast and leave it embedded, instead of detonating it point-blank. With the Godgardon flying away, Goku blinked up in pursuit of his opponent and grabbed it by the legs, swung it around, and released it with the Ki blast still stuck in his body, causing a tremendous blast when the Godgardon Goku threw at his pals blew up after the Dragon Throw. "You don't believe that…" Goku smiled, watching the smoldering pile of decimated Godgardons.
Catching another Godgardon unaware, Gohan overwhelmed it with a barrage of rapid-fire kicks before driving one kick into its waist and kicking it aside with the free leg. "I agree with dad. It's useful for us to fight together and get a good feel for each other's abilities. Having seen my Mouth Blast attack, dad would never get so close to getting caught by it again."
A trio of Godgardons rushed to a straight line, pressing themselves shoulder-to-shoulder as they took aim at the top and generated an energy wave from each barrel of their gatling arms. Gohan engaged an explosive Ki wave burst to block the incoming barrage of Ki waves. This left an opening for Goku to throw a single Ki blast that slammed into the front of the Godgardon while the Super Saiyan snap-vanished several times, charging behind the rearmost enemy.
By wrapping his arms around the waist of the final Godgardon and his Ki blast pressing all three of them together, Goku lifted off all three Godgardons in a single three-man suplex drop that left all three of them banged up and sparking with short-circuiting and malfunctioning systems and operations. Super Vegeta shot up into the air and positioned his hand down while blazing with a full-power Super Saiyan aura. The full-powered Super Saiyan brought his arm extended downward and opened his palm. In a matter of moments, the radiant burst of energy burning up around Vegeta condensed into a single Ki bomb in his hand that launched toward the fallen and bruised Godgardons.
"Big Bang Attack!" Vegeta cried out, obliterating the last remaining Godgardons in the chamber whole and leaving not a single microchip or armor plate to salvage. Having eliminated all of their opponents, the three Super Saiyans headed out through the corridor into a vast and mostly empty core chamber room. It had a single straight escalator line moving up toward the round, moon-sized core in the middle.
"These guys just won't let up, will they?" Goku snickered before pointing up to where whole platoons of Godgardons were flooding in from various chambers. More and more mechanical doors hummed wide open, letting more enemies flooding into the entryway chamber.
"Damn it!" Vegeta seethed with his muscles bulking further and veins popping out from his shoulders, biceps, and forehead. "When will they learn they're old news already!?"
"Ka… Me…" Goku chanted out, drawing his hands back as he channeled an azure energy mass in between his cupped hands. "Ha… Me…!"
"Super Galick Gun!" Vegeta cupped his hands and bent his arms, turning his entire body back while lighting up with a crackling purple energy bubble.
"Masenko!" Gohan placed his hands on his forehead, channeling a powerful golden energy surge in between them.
"Ha!" Goku cried out, thrusting his arms up.
"Fire!" Vegeta followed immediately after, not to be outshined by the low-class hick amongst the flock.
"Ha!" Gohan joined in, engulfing the entire area in bright light as the combined detonation of their attacks swallowed and disassembled all the flooding Godgardon squads in one mother of all blasts. Each of the three warriors panted after the blast subsided and stray ruins of the damaged Dark Planet began falling off of their rightful location down to the core chamber ducts.
Having vanquished all the obstacles in their path, the three Saiyans powered down and took the escalator that led to the inside of the main core of the Dark Planet Star, codenamed M-1. To the chamber where Dr. Lychee awaited with whatever trap he had set for the Saiyans to spring.
The mechanical door leading Goku, Gohan, and Vegeta into the main core chamber opened, yet the escalator rolled the three Saiyans even higher up. Goku and Gohan looked around with wide-open eyes, absorbing the views of the interior of the main core of the Dark Planet Star that looked like a dark city with flickering lights except every skyscraper was a towering super-computer that ran countless processes every microsecond to keep the cybernetic star operational. Vegeta's eyes, meanwhile, were fixed on Dr. Lychee, who hovered high above on the flat platform atop one of the sky-scraping super-computers.
"Lychee, stop wasting our time with your stupid junk already!" Vegeta called out before the escalator finished leveling them to the cross-legged, levitating Tsufurian scientist.
"Who the heck is this guy?" Goku scratched his head with a stunned expression. "Is he in charge of the Dunktron gas that's showering the Earth?"
"It's Destron gas, dad…" Gohan corrected his father, looking unbothered by the all-too-common mistake for how often he had to correct his old man. "Though Vegeta-san was the one to speak with his holographic projection earlier, so he'll know best."
"This asshole's a Tsufurian survivor…" Vegeta ground his teeth and shook in impatience for the escalator to elevate him up to the platform where the Tsufurian scientist rested. He probably could've taken off and dashed to him sooner, but if the head honcho of this cyber-star had any traps set for them here, Vegeta wanted him to think he is in control for as long as possible rather than rush into said traps without a second thought. "Don't even try it, Kakarot!" Vegeta hissed at Goku's budding attempts to spell it out himself. "They're an old rival race of the Saiyans. We used to share a planet together before Saiyans decided the Tsufurians had excellent technology and luxury on their hands and no means to protect it all."
"That's when the Saiyans waged war against the Tsufurians and committed genocide, leaving the Saiyans as the lone race living on Planet Plant, as if was known at the time. By the time the Vegeta bloodline took over the Saiyan throne, they renamed the planet after themselves, being the ever humble and benevolent monarchs that they are," Dr. Lychee finished the story with the Saiyans ascending the platform and realizing that they were standing in front of some sort of monster that loomed directly behind its floating mastermind.
"Wh-What's that!?" Gohan muttered in a husky tone. The size and bulk of this red and pink monstrosity made it look incredibly intimidating, though it appeared to be dormant.
The cybernetic colossus of Tsufurian making was a bio-engineered marvel of pink skin-like substance and red armor covering it from the top. Red leggings and chest plate and a mask concealing its oval-shaped head that had a gemstone embedded in it that was half the size of a regular person. More murky green gemstones decorated the bio-warrior's gauntlets and its knuckles with another massive one attached to the center of its chest. In its dormant state, the warrior had inactive black eyes and all of its gemstones were darkened and pine-colored. It stood tall with its arms crossed over on its chest, slumbering in a rather peculiar position.
"That is the instrument of Tsufurian vengeance against you. Hatchiyack," Dr. Lychee smiled while giving his one functional eye a sheepish stretch. There were almost certainly things that this crafty cybernetically augmented Tsufurian knew that the Saiyans didn't, though the company of its towering creation looming behind him made any attempts to peer into Dr. Lychee's mind obsolete with the sheer intimidation factor.
"Tsufurian vengeance?" Vegeta sneered, letting his bulk vanish and slimming down his body while retaining the Super Saiyan transformation, albeit in a more controlled state that burnt away less stamina. "I thought you had a chip on your shoulder against the Tsufurians as well… I'm beginning to think you're getting senile and leaking some memory from that chrome dome of yours. Let me show you how Saiyans fix faulty tech. You've been away from Planet Vegeta for centuries, so you may not be caught up."
"So eager to taste defeat and feel your ego crumble underneath Hatchiyack's heel? Very well, King Vegeta, enjoy yourself," Dr. Lychee hovered away, positioning himself behind Hatchiyack as a surge of Destron Gas leaked out from the monstrous bio-warrior like a substitute for its energy. A vile black and violet concoction of malicious emotions that ignited life into the dormant machine.
Hatchiyack's eyes lit up emerald green, passing down a matching luster down to its many gemstones and brightening them up to a shade of bright emerald.
"Alright!" Goku punched an open palm, brimming with excitement. "I guess we'll get to fight a super-strong guy after all! I call dibs!"
"This is the enemy's ultimate weapon, dad. Let's fight it all together," Gohan objected, perplexed that his father would hog such a monstrous opponent overflowing with Destron Gas and the infinite potential for energy production that it possessed by converting emotion and all things ephemeral into very physical and very real raw power.
"I'm with the bed-wetter here," Vegeta sneered with disgust for the Tsufurian abomination. "No way I'm letting Kakarot get knocked around and powered up after a rough fight against this monster. Frankly, as your king, I deserve to go first, but I realize Kakarot won't stop whining if I do, so I'll compromise by letting you fight alongside me."
"SAIYANS… REVENGE!" a chilling concoction of millions of voices, old voices, young voices, masculine and feminine husky whispers all turning into a singular wailing cacophony thundered in a resonating shockwave coming from Hatchiyack.
"Those… Voices…" Gohan gasped.
"That's right, Hatchiyack is just a vessel, a soulless body through which the feelings of the millions of Tsufurians crushed by the Saiyans call for their vengeance. With Hatchiyack being powered by the purest form of Destron, rest assured, this Engine of Resentment will taste victory. This is just a small lick of the eradication of all Saiyans that's to come," Dr. Lychee replied with a confident smile, looking up at his finest creation from behind Hatchiyack while the colossus colored by its foul mood powered up with surging Destron aura to the max and prepared to attack the Saiyans with full-fore.