Yamcha straightened his back and placed two fingers on his forehead. A transparent crystal aura boomed around him while his body became segmented into microscopic strings as if the martial artist had been cut up into pieces and each separate string was being pulled apart in different directions. Krillin's face lengthened in awe at the Spirit Control technique Yamcha was channeling, the rest, meanwhile, still needed a demonstration to understand what Yamcha has done.
"What is this?" Natt mocked Yamcha, "You've become all stringy and pixelated… Is this supposed to be some sort of signature Earthling technique like that golden hair boy?"
"Sorry, but in terms of speed, Instant Movement leaves even Super Saiyans in the dust," a confident smirk colored Yamcha's face as his ever-shifting body took a wide fighting stance and prepared to attack.
Natt let out a higher pitch robotic yelp as his body hurled and smashed into the ground. One moment Yamcha was preparing to strike, the other–he was standing tall and confident in the place where his opponent was earlier, with Natt having been smacked aside in an instant. Natt elongated his arms, trying to wrap them around Yamcha and pull himself in for a headbutt, but he only grasped thin air. Yamcha leaned down and patted Natt's green helm plate with a soft smile. A few moments after he did so, Natt's body began jerking violently with powerful concussive bubbles popping at various parts of the Machine Mutant's body.
It was as if Yamcha had thoroughly battered his opponent before moving behind him to gently pat his head in mockery. This display of speed floored Krillin, Tenshinhan, and No. 18 alike. While all of them knew Yamcha could transport himself anywhere using the Instant Transmission, this was more than just a few steps beyond that. It was as if Yamcha truly lived and fought instantaneously, appearing wherever he wished and doing whatever he liked.
"He wasn't bluffing! He truly has left the speed of a Super Saiyan firmly in the dust," Android 18 noted with a shocked expression that was very much out of character for the usually either stoic or aloof Artificial Human.
"This isn't just speed," Krillin observed, having trained on Planet Yardrat alongside Yamcha and learned the theory of Instant Transmission, though having chosen to specialize in the Cloning application of Spirit Control rather than Instant Transmission. "Yamcha might have gone further on the path of mastering Instant Transmission than even the Yardratans. No… He's right, this is an entirely new technique. It's a whole new concept for instantaneous movement!"
"Are you sure?" Tenshinhan wondered. "This looks like he's just using Instant Transmission at an absurdly high level. I've never seen him jump around like this in the middle of a battle."
"Hmm…" Krillin smirked. "No. Usually, Instant Transmission merely teleports you to another location in an instant. Just like the name suggests, it "transmits" the user. You disappear and reappear in another location instantaneously. What Yamcha is doing isn't Instant Transmission, it's "Instant Movement". He moves his spirit at an infinite, instantaneous speed toward the target location. The difference may feel arbitrary, but it makes a whole world of difference."
Like an instantaneous bullet, Yamcha blitzed left to right, up to down, pummeling Natt around like a rag doll until he felt like he's had enough and slammed the Machine Mutant down to the ground with a double ax handle.
"Okay, I guess it's my turn to wow the crowd!" Krillin rubbed his nose with his index finger and chuckled to himself. "I've been working out too!"
Krillin positioned his arms by his sides, clenching his fists together and bursting with a potent white aura surrounding him while his muscles rippled with popping veins, signifying the tension he put his body through. The resulting tension made Krillin let out a potent yell before he had completed channeling his technique. "Cloning!" he yelled out, splitting himself into an identical clone of himself.
"Huh? This is your new technique? Is it really any better than my Fist of Four Bodies?" Tenshinhan scratched his head, not wanting to offend his friend but seeing little point in Krillin's light show that merely resulted in one additional copy.
"Dummy, he's not done yet," No. 18 gave Tenshinhan a strict glare. "Besides, we made a deal that he wouldn't push it with too many clones because this technique can fail if he's splitting himself too much."
"I… I see…" Tenshinhan scratched his cheek. "Well, if it's any indication, Krillin's cloning technique doesn't seem to divide his Ki at all, so perhaps I spoke too soon."
"You're wide open!" Ribet popped the many lids cluttering his body open and revealed tips of missiles that peeked through each revealed barrel. Before the recycling-bin-shaped Machine Mutant could fire, Lazuli swooshed up right to him and kicked him aside before appearing before Ribet and slamming her elbow into the top of his head, which smashed the Machine Mutant into the ground.
"I told you not to interrupt my Krillin, dumbass!" Lazuli patted her hands while casting a solemn, death-inducing stare at the floored Ribet. "He's going to do something really cool."
"Thanks, Lazuli… Here goes…!" Krillin clenched his fists and both he and his clone crossed their arms, shooting off a resounding white aura all around him that was going out of control and trembling the ground despite the fight having taken to the air. "Gigantification!"
The bright aura surrounding Krillin became an intense field of static flashes while his bodily outline began pulsing outward, gaining additional size and bulk with each spurt of growth. In just a few moments, Krillin and his clone grew at least ten times the normal size. This transformation appeared to stun the Machine Mutants of the Sigma Force, who have finally acknowledged Krillin's Spirit Control prowess as something noteworthy.
"Interesting… His energy readings have shot skyward alongside his actual size. He may have actually powered himself up ten times while creating a clone of himself of identical power…" Bizu noted the readings that his sensors relayed to him while unintelligible symbols and beeping came out from his blue vizor.
"If you think this is impressive, don't hold your breath just yet. This is the really interesting part!" Krillin and his clone smirked before high-fiving each other. Their mutual gesture caused a violent, lustrous reaction that shot off electrical jolts and created a white lightning storm field where giant Krillin and his equally gargantuan clone high-fived each other. A single electrical bolt shot off into the sky, shattering through the energy reaction and splitting it apart into flashy sparkles, revealing just a single version of normal-size Krillin pointing his index finger at Ribet — his intended target.
"Alright, now I'm all amped up!" Krillin hyped himself up before raising his hand over his head and creating a flat, disc-shaped Ki blast he flung at Ribet.
"This is nothing, I'll stop it!" Ribet barked out, hopping out from the ground and hunkering down by pulling in his puny arms and legs to form a fortified shell. The disc-shaped blast detonated with a vicious rip that made Ribet shriek out with a high-pitched robotic yell as the poor robot flew aside like a bit of rubble spewed out from an explosion. Ribet's tech vizor flashed red, displaying multiple malfunctioning systems that shut themselves down after a devastating hit. "Wh… What happened… I was… It was… Just a Ki blast!"
"Hmm… These Earthlings are highly unnatural," Commander Nezi declared. "That one appears to be capable of transporting his very atoms to another location by shooting them at a speed accelerated to an instant. That other Earthling can manipulate his battle power by splitting into an identical clone, inflating both of their battle powers separately, and then fusing back together. Sigma Force! These opponents leave us no choice! Super Mega Turbo Formation!"
"I knew it…" Bizu lamented, shaking his head while his damaged body spewed off sparks. "We're using the Super Mega Turbo Formation and the commander will be in charge. I never get to be in charge…"
Crossing their arms over their chests, all four members of the Sigma Force began twirling around their axis before they began turning around one another. Commander Nezi was the first one to break formation, dropping to one knee and pushing his arms to the side while leaning his entire body forward. Bizu flexed his massive arms by his sides, standing tall as he leaned to the left behind Commander Nezi. Ribet left his spinning drill formation with a wide-leg stance, pointing at the sky on the right and turning his entire body in the same direction while Natt performed an elegant leap, freezing in mid-air over Commander Nezi's shoulder. A robust white blast engulfed the force while their bodies emitted transparent beams of red light from their joints. All four Machine Mutants split apart, beginning to converge into a singular, much larger, and tremendously more powerful foe.
The resulting mechanical goliath was a true fusion of all four members of the Sigma Force. Solid and thick black pads with thick white and red legs, mostly influenced by Commander Nezi. A bulky and round frame for a body, mostly influenced by Bizu, with slight influences from Commander Nezi's slicker frame and Natt's collar. A merger between Natt's and Bizu's designs for arms with two round steel pods connecting and ending in a jasmine-colored gauntlet and yellow rubbery fingers. Ribet's armed and armored black missile base body influenced the pelvic area and the central split in between the thick Bizu's armor layer sides. All that was topped off by Commander Nezi's upgraded head, equipped with his futuristic and most impressive sensory systems, a reflective vizor that augmented the energy beams that Nezi's head cast, and the most potent communication systems of the commander of the Sigma Force.
Having completed its transformation, the amalgam robotic titan struck a pose a bit too flexible and extravagant for his newly bulked-up body, turning it sideways and raising his right knee up while bending the left hand stretched over his face, flexing and twitching the expanding rubbery yellow fingers while a reflective beam of sunlight danced in on Super Mega Turbo Sigma's vizor.
"We have combined to form one being of unparalleled military might... The all-powerful Super Mega Turbo Sigma!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma declared. "Now you're in trouble, Earthlings. It's a rare occasion that all four of us fuse. Usually, just Super Sigma or Super Mega Sigma is enough. Against Super Mega Turbo Sigma, you don't have the slightest chance of victory!"
"Heh, we'll see about that…" Tenshinhan grinned with the right side of his face. "By merging, you've left us only one opponent to fight, enabling us to work together!"
"Right!" Yamcha and Krillin nodded, each showcasing their new signature fighting styles and ready for the upcoming bout against the giant merged mech.
"I've always hated those stupid big robot cartoons. They kept introducing new gimmicky crap like this to get Lapis into wanting a new toy every week and I rarely, if ever, got new clothes," Lazuli ran her hand through her hair with a frustrated look before adopting a technically sounder martial arts stance, a result of training alongside Krillin from time to time. "It'll be nice to have a giant punching bag to vent my childhood frustrations on."
"You've put on loads of weight, so I'd wager you haven't gotten any faster!" Yamcha proclaimed while vanishing and appearing behind the super-sized merger of the Sigma Force. A myriad of concussive blasts resonated in a unified chain all around the giant Machine Mutant mech but didn't seem to leave a dent.
"Mega Turbo Roar Omega!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma went through multiple exuberant poses showcasing the surprising flexibility of his rigid-looking body before leaning his whole upper body down and lifting the left foot off the ground, becoming even as a board. Sigma's vizor flashed red a couple of times as a warning. With mechanical clinging and humming, Super Mega Turbo Sigma's head transformed into a wide, red barrel.
"You think this is going to hit? You couldn't telegraph this attack any louder!" Yamcha sneered at his opponent, becoming shifty and stringy as his bodily particles began rippling in several directions, making him appear like a choppy holographic broadcast to anyone staring at the martial artist from the outside.
The red barrel boomed with a vocal sonic rip, expunging a supermassive, all-encompassing shockwave that raced to the outer edges of the solar system. As the rippling concussive force expanded, it seemed as if anything at the other end of the barrel would've had to face its wrath and Super Mega Turbo Sigma's wrath was considerable. Ground ruptured, blew out, and collapsed underneath the tremendous pressure of the expansive hypersonic waves that left the usual speed of sound in the dust because of being expelled with such potency. Even with his Instant Movement, Yamcha would've had to move to the other side of the galaxy to avoid the ripping shockwave. Like a toy flung by a capricious owner, Yamcha smashed into a nearby ruined building halfway submerged in dust and wreckage.
It wasn't the speed that was the problem; it was the ludicrous range of this move. Sigma transformed his head back to normal and struck a stiff and straight pose before bowing in the direction of the wreckage the mech left Yamcha lying in. Then, the animated ace of the Sigma Force turned on one foot and struck a flashy, idol-like pose, leaning its body and spreading its rubbery yellow ringers out in front of the vizor.
Krillin vanished in a halo burst of white fluffy aura, appearing directly in front of Super Mega Turbo Sigma and driving his elbow into the mech's face before crossing with his right arm, then repeating the same punch with the reset left. This sent even the hefty Super Mega Turbo Sigma into a stagger. Few would have expected Super Mega Turbo Sigma to recover, but it did just that, snapping its head back into position and beaming a triple eye laser at Krillin, but the bald martial artist was no longer there. Snapping away to Sigma's mid-section, Krillin drove a powerful uppercut into the very core of the fused mech before winding his fist back and channeling brute force into it until a sparkling white shine began glimmering around his fist.
Yelling, Krillin drove his sparkling punch into the chest area of the giant robot, sending Super Mega Turbo Sigma into an uncontrollable slide. Krillin took off to pursue his skidding foe and begin a more methodical beatdown but Super Mega Turbo Sigma's chest lids popped open, shooting off a barrage of Bizu's metal spheres that formed a dodecahedron-shape around the mech before lighting up with a mustard-colored energy field that connected each of the metal spheres like a separate nexus point.
"Sanctuary Shield Aurum Beta!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma chanted out with his arms spread to the sides. The protective barrier hummed for a little while before turning off and the metal balls returned to the open lids scattered orderly throughout Super Mega Turbo Sigma's body.
Tenshinhan appeared behind Super Mega Turbo Sigma, shimmering with a vaguely visible white outline that vaporized with a white trail around his body. The three-eyed martial arts master sought to rock his opponent with a stiff swing kick, but it bounced right off of Super Mega Turbo Sigma. Stunned at his lack of success, Tenshinhan moved his arms around in a wide, vertical circle, masking the appearance of the Four-Witches Technique, and with four arms he unleashed an unmatched flurry of fists that sparked plenty and let out clamorous rings but didn't seem to dent the merged bot one bit.
Slowly, Super Mega Turbo Sigma turned around to face Tenshinhan with a vizor that sparked with yellow electrical discharges. A strong beacon of light shined from behind the vizor, drowning it out and making it appear as if it was a yellow light flashing and sparking wildly outward. The left arm of the Super Mega Turbo Sigma clanked, dropping from the wrist piece and held attached only by wires. The wires surged with visible yellow electricity while Super Mega Turbo Sigma began swinging his hand like a whip over the head.
"Mega Thunder Chop Sigma 1011!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma chanted out, swinging the elongated hand down like a yellow energy blade that seemed to split the very three-dimensional space and shined a diagonal yellow beam across the horizon, extending out toward infinity and devastating asteroids and planets it came across on its journey. A bloody gash spewed red since Tenshinhan impeded the slash at the very beginning of its trip. Even though it only opened up a grievous laceration, Tenshinhan staggered back, clutching his injured chest.
"Tenshinhan, are you okay!? Your Ki just dropped drastically!" Krillin dashed to his friend instead of trying to attack the enemy during the downtime between its universe-shaking attacks.
"My Spirit Cultivation Method is a double-edged sword in and of itself. It cultivates and replenishes my Ki with the waste of other double-edge techniques, but it can't do it if I get knocked out of them!" Tenshinhan panted heavily, landing on the ground while falling to one knee. His eyelids looked heavy and the ground must've never felt so inviting as it was to the critically injured warrior at that time. "If I can land a few blows and keep the Red-Hot King Kai's Fist burning through my stamina and Ki, I should be able to recycle their strain into spirit energy and return to battle but… Not even with Red-Hot King Kai's Fist x20 could I dent his frame."
"That's because it is made of Machinium Zingerzoid Mutanium 100%!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma leaned his body to the left, raising and leaning his arms to the left as well with a goofy fighting pose unsuitable for a battlefield. "It is 100% impervious to hits that are too weak to hurt it!"
"That name sounds fake and those properties don't do your miracle alloy any justice, you know…" Krillin squinted with a twitching right eye while his mouth drooped into a long frown at how ridiculous the opponent they were getting cornered by was acting.
"Jeez!" Lazuli exclaimed, dashing directly to Super Mega Turbo Sigma from behind and smashing it down with an overhead double ax handle slam. "Hearing you talk just keeps reminding me of all those ridiculous episodes of those spastic cartoon abominations Lapis watched on the TV. He never let me watch any reality shows because of them!"
Super Mega Turbo Sigma slammed down on the ground feet-first and turned up, it didn't seem like the smack he took dented or damaged the chrome dome, but the fact that Android 18's attack fazed him at all left Krillin and Tenshinhan with gapping jaws while Yamcha flipped the heavy building floor pressing down on him off of him only to get a better look at No. 18 when she was throwing a tantrum.
"Plasma Automaton Burst Galaxy…" Super Mega Turbo Sigma began chanting the ridiculous name of another technique as he raised his arms up and popped the tips of his fingers off, revealing two rows of plasma rifle barrels underneath, but Lazuli was faster. She vanished and appeared before Super Mega Turbo Sigma, throwing a shooting knee strike straight to his head, then flipped backward with a kick. Super Mega Turbo Sigma began throwing his arms around, trying to swat the persistent gnat away, but Lazuli vanished again.
Appearing from directly above the Super Mega Turbo Sigma, Lazuli dived with a barrage of Ki blasts that all bombarded Sigma from above. The defiant Artificial Human floated around the attempted counterattack, positioning herself directly in front of Super Mega Turbo Sigma before she unleashed an energy burst point-blank that forced the giant mech to cross its arms in a block.
"Dastardly of you not to let me finish preparing my attack! You'll pay for your heel tactics, Earthling fighting robot!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma popped his head in and shot a massive drill out. The lids around Super Mega Turbo Sigma's body popped open, spewing out metal balls that liquified and merged into the shape of a gigantic jetpack. Tremendous flames spewed out from the other end of the jetpack that propelled the Super Mega Turbo Sigma forward in a drilling rush, but Lazuli outpaced Super Mega Turbo Sigma in the air, dashing with her hand extended outward and further blasting at him with Ki blasts.
"What a wild tactic, she doesn't let up with those blasts, does she?" Tenshinhan noted with respectful surprise coloring his expression.
"She doesn't have to," Krillin snickered with pride in his fiancée. "We figured that since she has infinite stamina anyway, she can just keep throwing those at any given time and only stop to attack with stronger attacks from up close."
"Come on, guys, we can't get outperformed by an Artificial Human. It'll give her the wrong idea that we've grown soft and that we're ripe for being conquered again," Yamcha approached the two while stretching his neck.
"Tenshinhan should stay back. His Spirit Cultivation gamble didn't pay off and it might be dangerous for him to keep fighting at this rate," Krillin expressed his worries.
"That's just fine," Tenshinhan shook his head and stumbled to stand on his own while combining the Red-Hot King Kai's Fist that burnt through his stamina and Ki with the Spirit Cultivation Method that cultivated the wasted energy and recycled it back into usable power. "My martial artist's pride won't let my heart rest unless I prove to myself that Spirit Cultivation is the greatest fighting style that not even the most powerful fighting machines in the universe can defeat. Unless I am the greatest, most well-rounded martial artist, I am not someone who can teach other people martial arts!"
And thus the three prepared to challenge their toughest foe yet together while witnessing the cascading light show that Lazuli put together while pacing around the gigantic fused fighting machine that was Super Mega Turbo Sigma.