Leaning over the small fry gathered to stop it, the Machine God Luud let out a bellowing cry consisting of hissing static that sent the surrounding station systems into overdrive. Mass short-circuits, popping screens and lamps, and sparking electrical discharges going off left and right. When the capricious reborn Machine God was being fussy, the entire cybernetic station felt it.
Luud thrust its fist down, prompting Artificial Human No. 21 and Super One-Nine to take off at once and avoid the Machine God's childish tantrum. On one hand, Luud's movements appeared to not be guided by any fighting style or martial art which made the Data Input program functionally useless, on the other–his fighting style was so simplistic that it didn't require any external method or program to read his moves. The moment he saw Android 21 and Super One-Nine taking off, Luud began stomping his feet around and thrashing with clenched fists, accidentally catching No. 21 with a backhanded smack but because of how unskilled the strike was, Puri quickly recovered from the attack with a mid-air flip.
"Alright, you three, give us an opening to do some damage," Dr. Puri sifted her hand through her auburn hair, throwing it back while pressing her arms to her sides and preparing to attack once the Para Para Brothers play their part.
"Alright, all together now!" Bon, Don, and Son began shaking their knuckles, transmitting a supernatural inclination for the intended targets to shake and trample alongside their rhythmic shuffle. Luud clamored with more staticky shouting, pressing its arms to its sides while expelling electrical fields from various points of its body and forming intense lightning sparks in the nexus points of the electrical currents that shot off ripping thunderbolts down, catching the Para Para Brothers and shocking them to collapse.
"N-No way…" Bon Para squeaked out while twitching in pain down on the ground.
"How could someone resist our dancing technique?" Don Para coughed out a whiff of smoke.
"Leave it to Lord Luud, the Ultimate Machine God of Destruction," Son Para muttered out while the three lay flattened on the ground with charred bodysuits and expressions full of acceptance of their defeat.
"Jeez! So useless, I swear…" Dr. Puri gritted her teeth while Luud pointed its arms out, almost as if seeking to grab and mash the Artificial Human to porridge in its hands. Bright yellow crackles formed around Luud's eyes, shooting off as thunderbolts with a violet outline straight at Dr. Puri. Gasping, the artificial woman staggered back in mid-air, realizing that the transformation beam was too quick for her battered body to evade.
"Mother…!" Super One-Nine cried out, driving her shoulder into Android 21's side and tackling the matriarch of their little family out of harm's way. The crackling lightning beam engulfed the pale artificial girl, stunning her in place while her outline began pulsing outward. In a drastic switch, Super One-Nine began shrinking down with the distance that her radiating ethereal outline spread reducing as well.
"Super One-Nine!" Dr. Puri called out, approaching her daughter with the wish to grab hold of her and not let her go only to realize that by the time she extended her hands to grab Super One-Nine, she was already transformed into a plushy doll and flopped in Dr. Puri's hand. "Daughter…" Puri wept out, her expression still shaking in disbelief that the cruel Machine God would take her daughter away so soon after Puri had wrestled her from Dolltaki's control.
"It's okay, mother… I hate to become a helpless doll again but… If it's to save you from the same fate, I'm ready for it. Please, save us. I know you can, but… If you decide to run away and make new versions of us, that's okay too, just… Please be happy and don't give up on your family… I love…" Super One-Nine was about to declare something she considered important with some manner of telepathic communication since she was no longer able of moving her mouth nor did she possess the lungs to breathe and speak with before Luud opened its mouth and began pulling everything around it in.
"Android Barrier!" Dr. Puri yelled out, spreading her hands and feet out wide to both sides while erecting a pink energy barrier around her, but it began hissing with static tension. She hated to admit it but Artificial Human No. 21 felt that Luud was overwhelming even her infinite energy resources with this intense sucking draft and that it would consume this entire station to the tiniest nut and bolt before giving up on sucking in its new and precious puppet. "As if… I'm not letting go!" Puri declared, struggling against the force of the pull.
"Mistress!" the Para Para Brother pleaded, grabbing hold of the nearest solid-looking thing to maintain their hold to precious solid ground. "Lord Luud won't give up until it sucks the doll in! Please… Let go or we'll all die!"
"You'll see me dead before I give up my family!" Dr. Puri gritted her teeth, biting her lip in despair before curdling into a fetal position and letting herself become engulfed by a sphere of golden light. The sizzling energy sphere sent rippling concussive shockwaves in all directions that, upon contact, even sent the cosmic titan Luud stumbling backward and interrupted its air-sucking attack.
With the golden energy sphere shrinking down, Dr. Puri lowered her feet and straightened her back with an unhealthy inner indentation to her spine. Dr. Puri's curly auburn colored hair flowed wildly in all directions after having taken a spikier texture and a red color with Artificial Human No. 21 having dyed her skin dark blue and donned a metallic armor plating as a replacement for her torn checkered red and black dress. Puri's eyes gleamed bright yellow and lost the irises and the pupils entirely.
"Wh-What happened now!?" Son Para grabbed hold of his egg-shaped head with a drastic and terrified shriek. "Mistress transformed!"
"Hmph… I guess I was wrong to doubt my ability to take control over my hubby's Ultimate Form," Dr. Puri looked down, examining her blue-skinned appearance and carefully caressing a spike of her red hair in her hand, becoming completely lost in the stunning new transformation and the ultimate level of power that came with it. "But now poor Gero's consciousness is completely lost. Hopelessly outclasses and overwritten by my brainwaves. My family lost their father because of you, so I hope you're ready to pay now."
With a furious look, Dr. Puri turned to the Machine God Luud, who appeared to be too brainless to comprehend the fact that its opponent had just changed her appearance completely and may have been infinitely more dangerous than before. Luud opened its mouth to suck air again, but Dr. Puri merely tilted her right hand's index and middle fingers, expelling a piercing and concentrated beam of red energy from her fingers.
A resounding blast spread from the point of contact where Luud's open mouth met Ultimate Android 21's Photon Swipe. A shrill and artificial shriek comparable to thousands of tin scrap sheets being rubbed against one another in the background of hissing static spread from the side of the taken aback Machine God of Destruction. Instead of letting her opponent go with just this much punishment, Ultimate Puri dragged her fingers about, swiping up, down, left, and right frantically while causing a series of chain explosions with the swiping energy beam that drove Luud to despair, forcing the green and black robot to curl down and wrap its hands over its head to hunker down as much as possible against his opponent's merciless counter-attack.
"I'm sorry, Super One-Nine…" Dr. Puri mumbled to herself while attaching the plushy doll to the waist of her skirt. "I suppose I should also apologize to you, Super 16. I've risked your lives by taking you here just because I wanted a bigger house for us. All because I wanted to fit some image of what I thought a family should be like. After our family got kicked out of Earth, I wanted us to have a place to belong. A world to truly live in and call home, rather than live on the road, trekking across boundless space. Now both of you are paying the price. But not for long."
Igniting red Ki blades around both of her hands, Ultimate Puri prepared to slice her brainless opponent into ribbons for what it did to her children but halfway during her blitz toward Luud, a powerful shockwave sent her rolling back and wrestling against incomparable air pressure. Luud straightened its back, drowning the entire station into a blinding red flash of energy that drove the Para Para Brothers to dig their heads underneath their hands like a group of ostriches digging their heads in the sand while Ultimate No. 21 struggled against the intense flash of bursting energy.
In a blink, the flashing red energy vanished. Once Dr. Puri lowered her hand and looked at her opponent, Luud revealed itself to have also been transformed. This struggle against an Ultimate Artificial Human had driven Luud so mad that the green and black robot had ditched the green and colored its metallic outer shell hot-red as if burning away through the limitless supply of energy brimming within its core. With such a tremendous energy output, Luud may just have threatened to burn through the energy resources of all the dolls fueling him from within.
Given how Super No. 16 was part of Luud's doll fuel supply, Ultimate Puri just couldn't let that happen. Scowling back through the interruption, she reignited her Ki blades and dashed head-first at overheating, hot-red Luud. Becoming a snap-vanishing mirage, Ultimate Artificial Human No. 21 avoided the countless electrical thunderbolts that shot out from the static electricity field around melting down Luud and flipped into a horizontal roll, kicking with her heels, and sending red crescent Ki blast projectiles to smash into Luud's face from afar.
A teal pulse of energy emanated around Ultimate No. 21, then the Ultimate Android vanished and appeared directly in front of the melting-down Machine God, unleashing a wild flurry of palm strikes and kicks. Puri's punches were so swift and resoundingly powerful that they expelled a flashing flare of sparks, yet the flash had no time to subside before more and more slaps and kicks joined in on the beatdown. An upward slam rocked Luud's head backward, making the overheating robot stumble and cry out static and bit-crushed baby wails.
Enveloped with a red aura, Ultimate 21 dashed up like a piercing arrow, rising beyond the artificial atmosphere of the Luud Star before igniting a Ki blade in her right hand and crashing down. Luud covered up its face to prevent its head from being split open by the focused Ki blade, but a red line drew vertically down across Luud's arm, splitting it just above the forearm. In a blink, hundreds of diagonal and vertical lines blotched all over the arm of the stumbling Machine God before the cut-off limb became reduced to strings of cut-up scrap. Ultimate Puri's Ki blade had utterly sliced Luud's arm up despite visually only cutting him once.
Struggling to believe the grisly sight of now lacking a whole arm until the shoulder, Luud stumbled back while his melting-down systems spewed fuel that ignited upon the faintest contact with oxygen. Puri vanished and appeared before Luud's core section, driving a knee strike into it and thrusting both her arms in while still brandishing focused Ki blades. Shoving her arms in through the stab holes, the Ultimate Android sought to peel Luud's gut open and pull Super 16 out.
Achieving little success, the Ultimate Android vanished in a combination of shifty movements, dancing around thunderbolts forming around the static electricity field surrounding Luud before snapping away and appearing in front of Luud's core again. With her most genuine attempt yet, Ultimate Puri ignited a Ki blade and sliced downward, putting her whole body to it. Luud whined out a bellowing of crushed static and senseless cacophony, but his gut only spewed out sparks. Luud waved its massive arm to swat Puri like some bothersome fly but the Ultimate Android vanished and appeared over the head of the overheating Machine God, vaulting over her front with splits and driving her right leg into Luud's forehead which made Luud sit down by force.
"Just like before, back on Earth, I chased a family I considered normal. Back then, I wanted you two to be as close to being human as possible, now I wanted us to live in something as close to home as possible. I should've just accepted things as they are. Cherished the life I had and thanked the universe for the fact I had a family in the first place. For everything I've done, I deserved everything but a happy ending and yet that's exactly what we had…" Puri closed her eyes in crushing acceptance of the fact that she was separated from her family once again.
Luud slammed its continent-sized fists down, shaking the entire Luud Star after the crushing slam as it threw a seated tantrum like the universe's biggest baby. The entire air became red hot with pressure again as if the unrelenting heat defining the melting down Luud leaked out into the surrounding universe again. Luud snapped its jaws open, pulling air in again, but this time it wasn't trying to suck a doll of its making in, it was trying to draw in the heatwave it had made and concentrate it into a single beam.
The cosmic-sized baby shut its mouth, munching on something before spewing out a crimson energy wave so massive that its blink would've snuffed out stars and planets as wide as the human mind could wrap around. Puri leaned back, igniting a Ki blade around her forearm and focusing more energy than usual on it in order to supersize its length. Turning around her axis, the Ultimate Android whirled and sliced clean through the mouth energy wave until she made her way close to Luud, at which point she shifted the dominant slashing arm to her left and swiped it horizontally, creating an infinitely stretching red line splitting everything neatly into two.
With a deafening clang, Luud's lower jaw split off of the upper one and crashed down with all the heft of an apocalyptic asteroid strike. Ultimate Puri vanished away, appearing far and high above her seated and split-mouthed opponent as she extended her hand and sent an electromagnetic expansive pulse throughout the Luud Star. With her bolstered technopathic abilities, Ultimate Artificial Human No. 21 took control of the Luud Star's systems and turned every defense system against the colossal baby stomping and throwing a tantrum on its surface. Plasma beams slinging bolts intense enough to blow planets up to smithereens fired at a machine-gun rate from all directions as far as the eye could see, outmatching the number of buildings in a busy metropolis in numbers.
Luud whined out, falling flat on its back and curling up into a ball from pain. Puri saw the so-called Machine God breaking apart. It already made a grand mistake by entering its meltdown Full Power mode, something that it wouldn't have done if it had a living mastermind to command it. Currently, it was simply burning through energy and while Ultimate Puri felt absolutely certain she would crush this overheating goliath, time wasn't on her side. Luud was burning up energy at an unbelievable rate, burning through hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dolls each second. Her Super 16 could've been any of those…
"Enough! You can't beat me! Take me and my infinite strength and let it feed you!" Ultimate Puri extended her hand like a mother scolding her child, which was excited to wallow in mud would have when reaching out to pull the kid up on their feet. "You'll die if you don't convert me and suck me in, you know. You might think I'll dodge the beam, but I won't. My family is everything that means a damn thing to me and I would die alongside them before being cursed with another turn of decades, living alone in grief and spite!"
"Mistress…!" the Para Para Brothers called out. "What about us?"
"You couldn't keep this monster dancing and keep it from tearing my family apart. You're no good at serving it. You helped me save my daughter from that creep so you can run away and keep on living but you won't be serving this family you've failed," Ultimate Puri turned her nose away from the weeping trio of egg-headed goofballs in red, skintight bodysuits.
Luud's hungry eyes sparkled with yellow flashes, shooting off stray thunderbolts with a violet outline around them that hit Ultimate Dr. Puri head-on. Closing her eyes and accepting her fate, sighing in relief, Ultimate Dr. Puri became a weightless plushy doll and began hovering in the outer layers of the atmosphere like random space junk.
Unable to draw air in again because of its ruined jawline, Luud leaped into the atmosphere like a flopping shark. The melting-down Machine God snatched Ultimate Puri's and Super One-Nine's dolls from thin air and gobbled them down, granting itself boundless energy to prevent a complete meltdown and pushing back Super 16's timer before it had to burn down in the fuel furnace by heaps and bounds.
"What a cruel twist of fate! Just when we helped Mistress turn her daughter back with Dolltaki's staff!" Son Para pressed the back of his hand against his forehead, turning away in a dramatic pose as if willing to accept imminent death at the hands of the rampaging Luud.
"W-Wait… The staff!" Bon Para called out, taking off with a goofy yet spirited bolt toward a pile of fallen junk under what once was Dolltaki's office. The other Para Para Brothers ran after their fate-defying brother, their eyes beamed similar spirit to Bon Para but they had none of his clarity of mind despite doing their best. Bon Para leaped off of the busted bridge and flopped into an endless junkyard, plowing through scrap and junk of all sorts. "Help me look!" Bon Para rushed his brothers.
"For Dolltaki's staff?" Son Para scratched his head but jumped down and began burrowing through the garbage just because his brother told him to. Similarly lacking a clear understanding of why he was signing off to dying while digging through trash instead of trying to find a way to escape the doomed Luud Star, Don Para performed an elegant grande jeté before splitting straight into trash.
"There it is!" Son Para appeared covered in filth, bio-fluids, and machine oil, but beaming with a sheepish grin. "Quick, brothers, help me get back on the platform!"
Bon Para pulled out his hands and raised them over his head, Don Para jumped out from the trash yard and stepped on his brother's shoulders while Son Para took off into the air, letting himself get flung a frightening distance up by Don Para's push. Becoming level with Luud, Bon Para aimed Dolltaki's staff at the Machine God and set off an expansive spiral of energy to beam directly at its core black furnace where the nexus of all the doll energy was.
Furious with the appearance of the flashy gnats, Luud's eyes lit up with crackling sparks of energy before intense beams burst through its orifices, terrifying the poor juvenile titan. Luud's eyes became distraught with bottomless sadness and it wailed out one final lamentation of static and bit-crushed baby crying before a ripping blast scattered the Para Para Brothers all over the place.
"Well, well…" Ultimate No. 21 clacked her heels against a sheet of Luud's remains, lifting it off the ground and turning it into raw energy for her to absorb and become one with. While Puri couldn't quite absorb Machine Mutants until she upgraded herself and studied the species adequately, she could merge with their spare parts once they became nothing more than scrap after a Machine Mutant's untimely end. "Those three oafs pulled their own weight."
"We're… Back to normal?" Super 16 looked at his hands in awe.
"Using Dolltaki's staff to reverse Luud's Doll Beam was a cunning plan. Don't tell me you had it planned all along that way all along, mother?" Super One-Nine turned to the now cobalt-skinned matriarch of their family.
"Hmm…" Ultimate Dr. Puri looked around. "Let's start cleaning our new home up, shall we?" she ignored the question completely.
Whether it was because she didn't want to reveal the fact that her grand sacrifice and emotional speech was all just a front to fool the admittedly dopey Luud, or because she was more bothered to admit that the three absolute nincompoops figured out something she had completely overseen remained a mystery for now. After all, one would've made her look less human, and caring and made her look cruel, the other would've made her seem absent-minded, emotional, and not nearly the flawless genius she preferred to be seen as.