General Rilldo aimed his fists out at Piccolo, shooting them off like rockets toward the Namekian warrior, who nonchalantly leaned his head to the right to avoid one rocket before turning his whole body to the left and dodging the second. Where General Rilldo's wrists had shot off, there was a ring of glowing barrels that turned around the hole in the middle like a Gatling gun. Piccolo skillfully weaved around the barrage of yellow Ki blast lasers while closing his distance from his opponent.
A concentrated energy wave blasted Piccolo's hand as he extended it to chop General Rilldo's throat and leave him coughing and choking up. Gritting his teeth, Piccolo continued his offensive with a scorched arm, turning his body around and throwing a high push kick aimed at Rilldo's chin. With solid metallic clinks, General Rilldo's wrists reattached to his arms, letting Rilldo catch Piccolo's kick, but before the commander of the Machine Mutant forces could counter, Piccolo shot with a knee strike right to Rilldo's face.
A deafening thud resonated through the battlefield as General Rilldo shoved his impaired hand elbow-deep for a block at the last second. Just a few microseconds later, the rocket fist reattached to Rilldo's second arm too, returning full mobility to the Machine Mutant general. Throwing his entire body behind the attack, Piccolo shot with a soaring knee strike, blinking with a lustrous electric aura around his entire body, but General Rilldo crossed up his arms and formed a see-through green energy barrier around him that absorbed the entire blow.
With his opponent stuck in mid-air, General Rilldo shot upward with a rising uppercut and slammed it into Piccolo's gut, making the Ultimate Namekian warrior cough up sage-colored slobber and blank out for a second. With vicious and skill-less left and right swings, General Rilldo forced Piccolo to put up his arms to his sides to weather the painful storm of the incoming beatdown before bellowing out and bursting with an explosive energy wave that pushed General Rilldo away.
"What the heck… And here I thought that after merging with all the Namekian warriors there was nobody in this universe capable of surprising me anymore," Piccolo wiped the spit off of the corner of his lips before pulling his burnt arm off and yelling out in pain as he forced a new one to burst in a violent expulsion of blood splattering from the stump.
"I never thought there'd be a Namekian capable of exchanging blows with me either," General Rilldo snickered before putting his dukes up again. "We may have more in common than I thought. Like you, I was designed to be an almighty warrior capable of protecting the Machine Mutant race and the M-2 Star from any threat in this universe, but it was incredibly boring. Dr. Myuu made me to be the perfect soldier, a warrior, so my soul hungered for conflict, yet no matter whom I fought, there was none to be found. I was a perfect warrior by design, and it drove me mad."
"Heh!" a minute crack escaped Piccolo's chest with a smirk lingering for a few moments longer than the quick chortle. "Maybe we have similarities. In any case, you've brought your scrapyard on the planet I've sworn to protect, so, perfect soldier or not, I'm putting you down."
"Interesting!" a beam of excitement glimmered in General Rilldo's eyes. "Bring it on!"
Piccolo extended his hand out, curving his claws inward just before elongating his arm and shooting it off toward his opponent. General Rilldo leaned to the side, dodging the straight shot before wrapping his arms around Piccolo's elongated limb. He must've thought that he could entrap the Namekian warrior by controlling his arm, but Piccolo snapped the rest of his body back to his hand, zipping his whole body to it and slamming his forehead into Rilldo's. Both warriors staggered back, wincing and shaking their heads before throwing a punch at each other.
Both Rilldo's punch and Piccolo's reached their goals at the same time, both slammed the other's jaw, rocking their heads back. As if seeking retribution for this painful blow, both fighters erupted in a wild series of blows while answering their opponent's strikes too. Flashing sparks spreading out with deafening concussive bubbles in all directions signaled the thunderous collision of each blow as the two didn't stay in one place, each one applying pressure and shoving their opponent front and back, moving across the entire planet in split-instant before tuckering out and being forced to get on the defensive for a moment.
General Rilldo finished the exchange by thrusting a hook into Piccolo's gut before shooting the forearm off like a rocket and detonating it with a strident blast. As the smoke cleared out, Piccolo revealed himself to be mostly unharmed if a little dirtied by the blast, while thin violet laser bolts flowed in massive quantities from all around the planet, converging into a single flashing violet mass around Rilldo's missing arm. Then, with one blinding flash of violet light, the exploded forearm was back in place and reformed.
"So, you can regenerate too?" Piccolo spat to the side before rearing his fangs at his opponent with an angered scowl.
"Who knows? I'm receiving new command strings I've never seen before while fighting you. I haven't had this much fun since that playful fight with Super Mega Turbo Sigma!" General Rilldo laughed out with a smug, full-mouth grin. There was something about this guy that rubbed Piccolo the wrong way. No matter how he approached this guy, Piccolo didn't seem to be able to get an upper hand on him, just barely managing to match his pace despite all the wild power Piccolo had accumulated. As difficult as it was to believe, this guy might have even been able to bully Broly around before the Legendary Super Saiyan power swelled up too much.
"You're receiving commands?" Piccolo raised the bony green ridges hanging over his permanently displeased expression. "And here I took you for a fun and competitive guy."
"The one issuing me with new commands is me!" General Rilldo seemed to take some umbrage at the suggestion that someone was backseat guiding him through this fight. "Like most Machine Mutants, I have an impeccable artificial intelligence program running background processes and relaying me the information I may have missed. It's a lot like the subconscious of you, organic races, except instead of hiding what I subconsciously picked up on, the artificial intelligence we use brings it out to the forefront. Also, by issuing certain command strings, artificial intelligence can unlock the untapped potential of my body since it is more intimately familiar with all its capabilities than me. What about you? Don't you share the collective experience with the other warriors you've merged with?"
"Heh, guilty as charged…" Piccolo snickered, scratching his neck. Lashing out without delay, he bulged his eyes out and fired a white, electric beam from both his eyes that blasted with a contained explosion in General Rilldo's location. The Ultimate Namekian warrior vanished without a trace, appearing behind General Rilldo, who took off into the air to avoid the eye laser, falling for Piccolo's distraction.
As if he knew his opponent was there, General Rilldo threw his entire body back with a nasty elbow slam straight to Piccolo's gut. The Namekian warrior was so committed to his surprise attack that the blow landed precisely as the Machine Mutant had planned, creating a dent in Piccolo's abdomen as General Rilldo nearly poked his whole arm through Piccolo's body.
Using Piccolo's head like his own punching bag, Rilldo unchained a left and right slugging combination on Piccolo that rocked the Namekian's head both ways. One strong right later, General Rilldo threw his entire body's weight behind a crushing headbutt slide which flattened Piccolo like a lariat. With Piccolo taking off on an uncontrollable flight, General Rilldo burst with a crystal clear Ki aura and took off in pursuit, passing by the Namekian while slamming his whole body into Piccolo's waist or his back on each dash front and back before finishing the beatdown with a double ax handle slam from the top.
Raising his arm over his head, General Rilldo channeled a yellow energy sphere in his palm before lowering the arm to fire it as an energy wave and flatten the battlefield while raising a cloud of dust that swirled all the way to the clouds. Beginning to grow tired of this bout, General Rilldo cracked his neck to the side and rolled his knuckles while waiting for his opponent to reveal the fact he was still very much alive. Rilldo could confirm that much with his sensors that registered a strong vital signature and a terrifying energy output from the grazed Namekian.
Piccolo took plenty of damage from this beatdown, though. His clothes were dirty and had multiple tearing holes in them while the grazed Namekian reared his spiteful scowl at his opponent and gnashed his teeth from the epicenter of the whirling dust storm. If Piccolo was to prove himself against the mightiest Machine Mutant, he had to find a way to kick this battle up as his current strength was beginning to bore Rilldo after the Machine Mutant commander began syncing up with his inner AI to bring out the best of his battle potential.
"What's wrong? Are you going to call it quits yet? That's too bad, I had such high hopes for you to be really entertaining!" Rilldo taunted Piccolo with a wide smile stretching across his whole blue face.
"I hate to disappoint. Let's see what I can do to make up for that…" Piccolo stretched his stiff arms, realizing that his stunt in ditching an injured limb and re-growing it earlier cost him heaps of Ki, which made him dip beneath his opponent's level whereas they started out completely equal. That wasn't the only strange thing that Piccolo noticed. Despite spending great effort in keeping up with Piccolo, General Rilldo's Ki barely dropped from the level he started on. He may have had some Artificial Human traits to him, even if he didn't have infinite stamina, he appeared to deteriorate at a much slower pace.
This was a losing battle if Piccolo had ever seen one. That was why he had to innovate and push himself beyond just being an Ultimate Namekian warrior. After some brief stretching, Piccolo spread his legs and brought his point of balance lower while pulling his arms to the sides and bending them. General Rilldo's right eye twitched while the red lines crossing his eyes formed a focused crosshair around his dot-shaped black pupil. Veins littered Piccolo's stressed body and his muscles swelled up, in a snap, a crimson aura shot out from his entire body that dimmed the skies in an instant and caused turbulent windstorms and violet thunderbolts to crash around the pair.
"King Kai's Fist!" Piccolo growled out, sneering his fangs. His strained expression had an intimidating sight to it since anything that made someone as strong as Piccolo put this much effort into it must have been a mortifying technique to anyone else.
"Incredible! His blood pressure and muscle mass skyrocketed out of the blue!" General Rilldo gasped in disbelief. "Not to mention, his energy output multiplied several times, shooting higher than when he started! You magnificent bastard, were you holding back on me?"
"Well… Yes, and no…" Piccolo smirked, vanishing away in a halo of a crimson concussive ring. Appearing directly in front of General Rilldo, Piccolo stuffed his forearm into Rilldo's gut, bending the Machine Mutant over and making him gasp for oxygen while drooling from the mouth with bulged eyes.
"I was fighting you at my full normal power when we started out," Piccolo explained while General Rilldo hovered away from the Ultimate Namekian warrior while clutching his waist all keeled over. In an instant, Piccolo burst with a crimson aura in a blink, shooting a knee strike to General Rilldo's face and leaving rippling black cracks throughout it while the supreme Machine Mutant took off into the atmosphere completely senseless.
Piccolo snap-vanished and appeared above General Rilldo, exactly where the Machine Mutant commander was meant to be while rolling his knuckles. "King Kai's Fist is a technique that amplifies your usual battle power several times. That being said, this power-up isn't your true, hidden strength, it's you hitting it beyond your limits. That's an advantage that we biological life forms have over machines designed and built to reach a specific battle power limit." Piccolo explained before shooting off with a flying kick that knocked General Rilldo flying.
"Don't get gone just yet…" Piccolo grumbled, extending his limb and elongating it to reach around the whole continent to where General Rilldo ended up. With a forceful yank, the last Warrior Clan Namekian pulled the Machine Mutant commander in while charging up crackling malevolent Ki in his left hand and thrusting his whole hand into General Rilldo's chest, plunging it inside while sending a layer of metallic shell flying off General Rilldo's chest.
After pulling his arm out of General Rilldo's chest cavity, Piccolo let his opponent plummet while sneering at Rilldo's peaceful expression from above with disgust. The Machine Mutant commander appeared to be in a trance-like state of ecstasy. His eyes were so relaxed that the crosshair circle around his pupil had expanded throughout half his eye while the corners of his lips turned upward and Rilldo's mouth stayed open, hyperventilating with pure excitement.
Piccolo's eyes gleamed with a red light that filled them throughout. Focused energy beams fired off with a scan that caused a chained reaction of apocalyptic explosions, detonating high above the clouds to prevent as much damage to the planet as possible. Just Piccolo employing King Kai's Fist without having mastered the precision and control of the technique was causing undue damage to Planet Earth, so Piccolo had to use it in short bursts. Destructive red rays burst forth from the smoke clouds, lingering after the chained obliteration.
Piccolo plunged down into the dust clouds forming in the skies, bringing himself lower from the upper layers of the atmosphere to level with his opponent, who dragged the back of his hand across his face with a chuckle. The outer shell around Rilldo's wound appeared scorched around the edges, exposing robotic parts inside. His face and armor had sustained damage as well. Rilldo had not a drop of blood to bleed, being more machine than something alive that could mutate.
"There it is!" Rilldo snickered like a child. "A perfect opponent to test my skills. Even now, the AI is going insane with rapid-fire command prompts for different moves I could try, and options to explore. Yes, I knew that battle was meant to be like this! I knew I wasn't mad! Dr. Myuu built me for battle, but I never really fought, not like this! Yet I had a certain craving for it! Let's keep going! Let's fight forever, or as long as your feeble, fleshy body holds, Namekian!"
"Hmph… You're not much different from an insufferable goofball I know. You might be stronger than him, but I can never say for certain, he keeps evolving all the time. I'll imagine I'm wailing on him when I'm caving your face in, that ought to appease a certain side of me," Piccolo cracked his knuckles and threw his arms to the side with a wide open fighting stance.
"You've grown awfully cocky, let's see if you can survive me genuinely trying to kill you!" General Rilldo smirked while leaning his head to the right with a psyched-out expression. Munching on something inside his mouth, the Machine Mutant commander opened his mouth and fired a mint-green airwave of Ki-infused breath with a glossy and shining texture to the energy breath. The blast pierced through Piccolo's afterimage, which stunned General Rilldo in place from surprise.
Piccolo swooped in from Rilldo's right, encased in a burning crimson aura around him, and slammed a high knee into General Rilldo's lower jaw, which shut his mouth and canceled his shiny mint-green energy breath attack. The last Warrior Clan Namekian turned into an afterimage, blurring around General Rilldo's swift right hook meant to punish him for lacking the oomph behind his wallop to make his opponent flinch. Having lured an attack out, Piccolo dashed right back in with a rising knee strike that sent General Rilldo flying again.
Piccolo's arms became flexible and elongated, with curved claws, the Ultimate Namekian thrashed around with his elongated arms, spinning his entire body to intensify the arm-whipping while he lashed and battered his opponent in mid-air. Snapping his arms back into place, Piccolo whipped his antennae, shooting off a bright electric jolt that encased General Rilldo and stunned him in mid-air, flickering with malicious orange crackles around his whole body while billions of volts passed through his whole body.
"I'll show you the power of the last Warrior Clan Namekian, the martial artist that defines what the Namekian legacy will be from now on!" Piccolo yelled out, smashing into General Rilldo and punching him straight out of the electrical field before kneeing Rilldo in the stomach, hook-kicking Rilldo away, extending his arm to grab Rilldo and drag him right back to Piccolo, then chopping him away his right hand and track the Machine Mutant as he smashed down into the ground with a ferocious slam, leaving a massive crater.
"You may think that we're similar, and in some ways we are, but what makes me stronger than you is my power of hatred," Piccolo swooped back down and planted his feet on the soft and ground to dust dirt underneath his wooden boots. "Whereas you've been created to be the strongest warrior of your people, I was rejected every way I turned. I'm a reincarnation of all evil thoughts expelled from a Namekian refugee, even demons don't acknowledge me as one of their own! And yet I keep beating sense and acknowledgment into everyone I meet. I made the demons fear me by becoming the strongest out of them all, I made the Namekians accept me as one of their warriors by saving their planet where their finest warriors came up short. And now… I carry all of their hope for the future, all of their strength, and all of their experience inside me. You've been built different, I've been built abominable and became the ultimate!"
There was familiar trembling in General Rilldo's eyes as the battered Machine Mutant commander scrambled, grunted, and scoffed to return to his feet and stand firm against his Namekian opponent. Just like he's done his entire life, Piccolo turned a certain loss and mockery in his opponent's expression into triumph and a sense of fearful respect in his enemy. Amped up by a belief in his own self what he represented, and what he fought to preserve, Piccolo felt like he couldn't possibly lose, no matter how hard Rilldo fights back.
The strongest Machine Mutant was wavering before him. The legacy of the Namekian Warrior Clan was a formidable force, even against such an adversary.