"Energy management system… Rebooting… Sensory systems… Overclocked… Management systems… Dysfunctional… Rerouting auxiliary power… Rebooting…" Super Mega Turbo Sigma babbled to himself while standing still in place hunched over and shooting off sparks in all directions. In just a few moments, some lights returned to the excessive and sophisticated merged construction of the combined Machine Mutant and his body could at last stretch and return to life. While the targeting system still snapped about in random directions, switching to every viable or non-viable target frantically, Sigma looked up at the petrified yet still levitating Tenshinhan's body.
"Blasted Earthling…" the fused battle robot said to himself. "If I had known he had this much power stocked, I'd have not spared the power expense for liquifying and merging with the Earth."
"Tenshinhan…" Yamcha muttered, looking up at the petrified and lifeless body frozen in a distressed fighting expression. It was strangely suitable for a man defined by his martial arts skill and pride as a fighter that he would go out with a fighting expression etched into stone. His own body became Tenshinhan's memorial.
"He gave everything he had!" Krillin clenched his fists, shaking as his eyes began watering and his vision turned murky. Shaking his head to shake off the grief if only for a moment, Krillin took a fighting pose and burst with an explosive white aura, shooting off straight at the shaken Super Mega Turbo Sigma. "We don't have the luxury of giving anything less than that! We have to give it our all to honor Tenshinhan too!"
Still struggling with the energy management difficulties and the shock to his entire system, Super Mega Turbo Sigma answered Krillin's challenge by extending his arms and elongating them by partly liquifying them. Krillin rolled in between the elongated limbs and kicked himself into a higher gear, shooting off with a hypersonic rush. Metal plates all over Super Mega Turbo Sigma's elongated arms popped off, spreading grey wires that wrapped around Krillin's joints and his throat and locked him into place.
Lacking the energy to attack the ensnared bald martial artist with any meaningful attacks, Super Mega Turbo Sigma spun Krillin around and slammed him through a couple of mountains, crashed him into the ground, and pulled him in for a devastating headbutt before beginning to skip with the ensnared fighter like a jump rope.
"Let go of him!" Lazuli seethed with the unsinged half of her face, shooting off recklessly after the taxed Machine Mutant merger and her distressed fiancé. Super Mega Turbo Sigma flung Krillin aside, returning the metallic wires back where they belonged, only for his head to slide back and for a gigantic drill to reveal itself and rev up with some industrial ferocity behind it. Lazuli didn't seem at all perturbed by this unconventional weapon, so she pressed on her attack, meekly denting and pushing Super Mega Turbo Sigma back, but a strong right hand got the infuriated Android off of Sigma.
"Deafening Durable Drill of Daring Duty!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma chanted out with a flashy pose of widely spread legs and a drag of its right hand in front of the cumbersome body. The drill on Super Mega Turbo Sigma's head began revving up with extreme clamor and began sending blowing gusts a fair distance away from it while causing drafts that dragged nearby targets into the drill's reach as well. Super Mega Turbo Sigma shot off in a reckless, head-first charge straight at Lazuli, which prompted the Artificial Human to dive out of the way only for the draft to pull her back in.
A ripping noise followed by a painful grunt filled the air, waking Krillin up and forcing him to peel himself off the ground only to see Lazuli with ripped clothes and a nasty graze plummeting from the sky while Super Mega Turbo Sigma extended its platform legs out and did its best to stop its daring drilling charge. With his middle and index fingers by his forehead, Yamcha vanished from his location, employing Instantaneous Movement to throw his body on a fundamental particle level dashing around the world in an instant, accumulating a pound of infinite strength in his right and crashing straight into Super Mega Turbo Sigma's drilling head from behind.
The hit made Super Mega Turbo Sigma stumble, but the titanic battle robot turned around and, instead of continuously spinning his killer driller, stopped the drill and transferred the spinning momentum into his body while spreading his arms out for a titanic supersonic lariat that flattened the jolted Yamcha and left him reeling on the ground.
"The last-resort attack of your comrade really rattled me, I'll admit that. It overclocked most of my systems and made me reboot them. The overwhelming number of systems going through a reboot crashed my operating system, so I had to reboot it so that I can partially reboot some of my malfunctioning systems a dozen at a time. Then the software update from M-2 came at the most inopportune of times... But my fighting capacity should soon return and then I can finish exterminating the Earth's fighting force wholly with the full extent of Super Mega Turbo Sigma's power!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma flexed before the scattered and decimated martial artists.
"N-No way…!" Krillin blanked out with sweat pouring down his forehead with such intense trickles that it gathered and smeared the dirt that had gathered over it.
"Yes…! Truly terrifying, I'm glad you agree…" Super Mega Turbo Sigma switched his flashy pose and leaned sideways to flex its massive arms.
"You runt! I thought you were dead!" Lazuli grumbled while staring up at the sky. The half of her face that wasn't molten off and charred shot death-inducing stares at a figure up in the sky.
"Dead? Well… No… Not quite but… I suppose, as I've said before, my systems suffered a critical mass shutdown so… I was in trouble!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma ceased his ridiculous posing only to pop his drilling head back and roll the lid of his helmet back onto the hole which the drill popped from.
"Good to have you back…" Yamcha smirked. "You'll have to let me know how you did that."
"Were you not listening? I told you I'm not at full power yet!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma shook his fist over his head. "Besides, why would you of all people be excited about something like that…?" the fighting robot scratched the chrome dome positioned where one's head would be. It was then that his visual sensory input relayed an incredible shining mass of white energy reflecting off of the metallic surfaces around the wrecked area. His energy reading was still wonky, which was why he struggled to pick the actual energy reading until it started emitting visual cues.
"Y-You!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma shook, turning behind him only to see Tenshinhan bringing himself down from the skies with a crumbling layer of stone chipping off from his muscular body one by one. A white ethereal aura let out lustrous rays beaming in all directions as the Spirit Cultivation Method recycled the tremendous strain on Tenshinhan's body from his Neo Spirit Cultivation Cannon.
"I will admit, even I wasn't sure that the Spirit Cultivation Method could bring me back from exhausting myself past the point of living. I've never pushed it quite this far, but it seems that if the energy spent is enough to revitalize a dead body and if the cultivation comes soon enough, I can come back even from the point of no return," Tenshinhan observed his slowly recovering body. He could feel power pulsing through his veins like a plant thawing through the melting snow and feeling the gentle brush of sunlight in the early days of spring.
"Orbital Ocular Octagonal Obliterator of Outright Obsoleteness!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma chanted out, switching through multiple flashy poses before revealing eight red gemstones positioned around multiple areas of its body and shooting off intense red energy beams from each one, only for them to collide at a central point and converge into a shrieking energy ray of terrifying power and heat.
Tenshinhan braced for impact, realizing that he couldn't possibly compete with a beam this powerful at this early stage of Spirit Cultivation. His body still felt numb and a layer of grey stone still covered his limbs completely and was yet to be fully restored. The three-eyed warrior blanked out while a familiar yell filled his ears. Yamcha stood in front of Tenshinhan with his arms wrapped around the three-eyed warrior, only his right arm was utterly eviscerated and incinerated to the point of charring all at the same time.
"It's only elementary that the teleporting Earthling would attempt to pull the hidden ace of his team out of harm's way…" Super Mega Turbo Sigma flicked his dome to emphasize how smart he was. "However, you have to stop moving at instantaneous speed to move someone from harm's way to avoid crashing into them at full force. That means that my energy beam doesn't have to be faster than instantaneous travel to intercept you in time, just incredibly close to it."
"Yamcha!" Tenshinhan wrapped his arms around his fading friend. The tension around his arms popped them out from the petrification shell and returned Tenshinhan to life fully. "That was reckless. Always putting yourself in harm's way!"
"Don't be… Ridiculous…" Yamcha flashed a smirk through the pain-ridden expression. His right arm had been completely mangled and nonresponsive, while the rest of his right side had suffered some burns from the obliterating concentrated eye beam as well. "So far… You were the only one to dent that bastard… Even if I can't stand it… You're always one step ahead of me so… At least now that talent of yours is… His problem… Not mine."
Tenshinhan sat Yamcha up by a collapsed building some distance from the battlefield before turning around with the boiling wrath of a man who almost got to see one of his best friends sacrificing his life for him in battle. For this outrage, Tenshinhan didn't feel willing to forget and forgive. Neither, it seemed, was the rest of the Dragon Team engaged in mortal combat against the merged elite fighting squad of the Machine Mutant army.
Together, fired up and fighting from the position of their backs against the wall, Tenshinhan, Lazuli, and Krillin took off with a combined flurry of attacks. Having only two arms and two legs to defend itself and having just blasted off an excessive amount of energy, with its energy management system still in a bit of a fritz, Super Mega Turbo Sigma had little choice but to hunker down and take the beating for a little while. Before any significant chinks in its tank-like armor could form, Super Mega Turbo Sigma's armor popped its lids, releasing the iron balls connected through a coil of static electricity and kept in a rhombicosidodecahedron shape by an electromagnetic field.
"Brilliant Barrier of Byzantine Body!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma chanted out, igniting an energy field around the barrier that fried all three of the martial artists still opposing him and sent all three of them crashing down in their separate craters on the ground while Sigma vented black fumes through exhaust pipes in the opened lids on his armor from the accumulated damage it took.
"Krillin!" Lazuli crawled up to her fiancé, gently caressing his bruised cheek. Just halfway, Krillin opened his eyelids and chuckled with a chest full of busted ribs and a broken body.
"Sorry, I don't think I can move a muscle. Some husband I'll end up being if I load all the work on your shoulders…" Krillin jested even at such a dire moment. "I know that's not why… You decided to marry me. I was supposed to be the one… To do all the work for you."
"No, you bonehead…!" Lazuli cried out, slamming her hammering arm into Krillin's chest and further aggravating his aching ribs while sinking her healthy left side of the face under the only remaining half of her platinum blond hair. "No… You're right…" she wiped the downpour of tears streaming from the healthy left side of her face. "You're supposed to pick up my slack and don't you forget it so… Don't die! Don't you dare die on me before we get married and you buy me a big and fancy house and leave me a lot of money!"
With a goofy smirk on his face and his eyes peacefully closed, Krillin passed out. Sniffling and quietly weeping, Lazuli stood up with her knuckles pressed by her side while Tenshinhan limped up to her side, still willing and able to keep fighting.
"My Spirit Cultivation used all the cultivated energy into revitalizing my body. I have little Ki left in me," Tenshinhan reflected to his last standing ally. Possibly the last person he'd have thought he'd be teaming up with in a battle for the fate of the Earth if one told him a few years back.
"That works just fine for me. Just help me get my hands on that asshole," Lazuli ignited fields of yellow energy around her shaking fists while putting them up for a fight.
"King Kai's Fist x100!" Tenshinhan roared out, bringing his body down low while bulking out of his mind and ravaging his body with a network of bulging muscles and pulsating veins. A strident crimson energy wave exploded from his body, shattering the ground underneath their feet and expanding throughout the entire battlefield. Gloomy clouds began gathering overhead from the unbelievable energy that was taxing the Earth itself to sustain on its surface, which leaked out from Tenshinhan's body at the expense of his very life force.
He had little Ki, so he had to multiply it as high as he could for it to make much of a difference.
Iron balls flooding the fighting stage positioned themselves like watchful eyes over the battlefield. They lit up hot-red with blazing energy and crackled with red light before emitting a network of crimson lasers, but Tenshinhan flickered and navigated his body with a new lease on life around them. Sweeping at the stubby legs of Sigma, then driving his backhand with the weight of his entire body leaning behind it, Tenshinhan shot the cumbersome merged fighting robot flying.
Pursuing it with a leap, Tenshinhan rocked Sigma with a spinning horse hind kick, then spinning his whole body around its axis, built up a tremendous amount of force for a high kick that sent the merged battle robot flying even higher. Tenshinhan weaved his hands together into a triangular shape, emitting a light Spirit Cultivation Cannon shockwave to prop his opponent higher and stun it in place. Appearing in a flash before Sigma, rushing through the single heartbeat of King Kai's Fist he was guaranteed, Tenshinhan shot out a roundhouse before erupting into a flurry of snake-style jabs, then rolling in mid-air like a cannonball and stretching into a volleyball passing pose.
"Volleyball Fist!" he yelled out, splitting into three versions of himself with the Tri-Form, to pass the airborne Super Mega Turbo Sigma around in between them only for them to merge back into one and for Tenshinhan to prop up over it with a slamming dunk into the ground. "Lazuli, all yours!" Tenshinhan barked out with King Kai's Fist aura around him fading out and leaving the three-eyed martial artist exhausted and with a broken-down body.
"Grgh…" Super Mega Turbo Sigma grumbled while shambling back to his feet from the floored position and staggering with his hand over his head.
"Hey…" Lazuli said bluntly while dashing across the distance between her and the stunned fighting robot merger. Wrapping her arm around Super Mega Turbo Sigma's head, Lazuli spun around him hundreds of times in a tornado DDT-type motion, creating a blue whirlwind of energy that escalated the battle into the air. Instead of planting Sigma's head into the dirt, Lazuli rolled over it and stomped her knees into the back of it, driving it down with a diving slam. "You messed with my Krillin. Never mess with a woman's money bag, prick!"
After running her hand through the lone side of platinum blond hair on her left side, Lazuli extended her hands and unleashed a yellow energy storm that ignited a calamitous explosion that burst out from the massive crater with sprouting energy beams looking for an escape. Lazuli leaped out from the devastating crater, watching the ground collapse into a black abyss of the ruined Earth while she landed near her panting ally.
"My third eye is still picking up a jet flame down below. You didn't finish him off…" Tenshinhan panted out.
"I know, a tough and persistent bastard," Lazuli bit her lip in frustration.
"I'll need a bit of time to cultivate the life force invested into my King Kai's Fist back into Ki, but, if it works, I should end up stronger than I was before while recovering my body to the state I was before using King Kai's Fist too. I just need some time," Tenshinhan relayed. With a heavy-duty trembling, Super Mega Turbo Sigma emerged from the abyss riding a jet fuel flare under his platform feet only to be met by Tenshinhan's shoulder charge that pushed him dragging aside with crossed arms. "You've taken some damage, let's see just how much…" Tenshinhan said with a stoic expression before placing his arms together in a triangular shape and letting his eyes light up with bright cerulean flares.
"Hmph…!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma grumbled as the very contours of its body became cerulean blue and abstract, making it difficult to tell for certain just where its surroundings ended and where the merged Machine Mutant began. A strident telekinetic pulse rocked and sent Super Mega Turbo Sigma flying back and crashing through ruined buildings and boulders while Tenshinhan collapsed on one knee, having bought himself some time.
The last few exchanges would be the crucial ones that would decide this battle!