Masculine panting filled the empty spaceship hallways. The irritating sound of boots dragging across the steel floor overpowered the pleasant hum of the optimized spaceship engines and turbines cooling down the systems while cleaning up the air inside the space vessel. Vegeta's scorned expression, still decorated with a handful of shiners and streaks of dried-out blood, stared on toward the end of the hallway. Through physical effort, the Saiyan king dragged himself to the control panel and interacted with it.
"Hello, King Vegeta," the computer's image flashed, displaying Dr. Puri's bored face instead of the tables that Vegeta was interacting with. "I figured it might be you since there is no reason Gohan would interact with the control panel instead of healing himself up for the upcoming battle and Son Goku… Well… He simply cannot operate this panel at all."
"Upcoming battle?" Vegeta sneered at the face, sitting in a fancy leather chair and staring back at him through the screen. "What upcoming battle?"
"I've taken over most of the communications from the Dark Planet and as many of Dr. Lychee's files as I could get my hands on. The cybernetic stars are all connected to a singular hive network. Someone employed by Dr. Lychee but unwilling to communicate with him sent a large army of Machine Mutants down to Earth. I could surmise that much by tracing a massive communication blackout and by reading some communication information from some of the less intricate Machine Mutant drones. The Earth is under attack," Dr. Puri explained.
"Hmph… So Kakarot and his brat went into healing pods to prepare to swoop in at the last second and play hero again?" Vegeta grit his teeth and looked away with spite oozing from his pain-ridden expression.
"I would advise that you follow their example too, King Vegeta," Dr. Puri crossed her legs while placing her head on her right knuckle for support. "You wouldn't want your family to see you showing anything less than your absolute best while rescuing them from an alien invasion, do you?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" Vegeta slammed his hands onto the control panel touchscreen, jumbling the display on the screen and prompting Dr. Puri to interact with his ship and return their communication to the active display. "Haven't you heard what Dr. Lychee said? That monster Hatchiyack is en route to his last operational cyber-star! Our priority should be to intercept it and destroy it!"
"I strongly disagree," Dr. Puri yawned. "Even if you got into the fastest one-man pod and blitzed off at once, it would hardly do you any good. Your chances at intercepting Hatchiyack would still be slim, and then you would have to face Hatchiyack and whoever is in control of Planet M-2 alone and injured."
"I wouldn't be injured if I took the Senzu off Kakarot and his kid," Vegeta limped to the other end of the room, sinking into the shade that the ceiling lights couldn't illuminate fully. "It's not like he needs it that much! He showed that when he left the damn sash behind after crashing on the Dark Planet!"
"They said they've reserved those for their injured friends when they came back to Earth. That's why they used the healing pods instead of the Senzu and left me in charge of the ship," Dr. Puri pushed her cheek off the knuckle and sat up straight, then leaned back in her chair again with disappointment brewing in her expression, "Though I know you well enough to know this won't affect your decision at all. You've made up your mind, haven't you? I've prepared a pod for you. If the lives of your family, your people, and friends mean so little to you, rush off to the unknown corners of space to tackle some deadly challenge, you have no hope of winning, by all means."
"Hmph…" Vegeta closed his eyes and shut himself off for a second. "Piccolo is all that Earth needs to fend off this alien invasion. It's highly unlikely that anyone, whatever corner of the universe they come from, could beat him. Even if he gets in trouble, the Earth still has the rest of my Saiyans fighting to protect their home, the martial artist Earthlings, and even those two troublemaker Android brats of yours."
"True, now that you put it that way, I am beginning to feel bad for the enemy," a sheepish grin colored Dr. Puri's face.
"However, Dr. Lychee looked ecstatic about his would-be triumph in sending Hatchiyack to M-2," Vegeta looked down at his torn and battered body. The impalement wound in his gut seemed all closed up from the couple of hours he spent in the healing pod, but he was far from his best condition still. "Even if he is just a dirty Tsufurian runt, Tsufurians were a species proud of their intelligence. If Saiyans were as smart in battle as a Tsufurian was with their tinkering, we'd have been unbeatable…"
"Your odds at defeating whatever Dr. Lychee has cooked up are still better together with everyone, facing the brunt of the Four Stars Plan when it comes crashing down to Earth for vengeance for the sum of Dr. Lychee's failures," Dr. Puri waved her hand off. "If you run off now, you'll just be throwing your life away."
"Maybe, but my life is mine to throw away. A Saiyan never backs down from a fight!" Vegeta lashed out, turning his back around and clenching his fist with a passionate shake of tension to it.
"Yawn…" Dr. Puri teased the King of Saiyans. "You're so predictable. Sometimes I look at you and all the ways you sabotage your chances at complete victory and wonder how I came to lose to you guys. I suppose I lost despite your input, rather than because of it."
"Mock me all you like, you will never understand what the pride of a true Saiyan is," Vegeta turned around and stormed off toward the escape pod that Dr. Puri claimed to have already prepared for him.
"Perhaps not, I am utterly unfamiliar with all that macho business you let control your life. Nor do I know or care to come to know about the ancient traditions of your race you can't shake off. That being said, I know what it means to have a family you care for and love. Everything I've ever done, every achievement I've accomplished, and every mistake I've made in life, all of them were for them. In that way, my life is never all mine to throw away like some meaningless thing. I must now consider what it would mean for all those dear to me too," Dr. Puri's face followed Vegeta, flashing across the countless monitor screens and speaking through every control panel and every speaker in the way between the main hall and the locker room where Goku and Gohan had their clothes and equipment stashed, Senzu included.
"You're like a damn computer virus I can't shake off," Vegeta ground his teeth with an unhealthy twitch to his left eye. "Aren't you and Bulma sworn enemies for life? What do you care if I break her heart or not?"
"I care because, despite our differences and rivalry, I've come to empathize with Bulma. Within her, I saw so much of what defined my early life. Just like me, it felt like Bulma was willing to admit defeat and throw everything else away for the sake of her children. Chayote was that way too. I can no longer dream of crushing them like insects in my hand once I've come to see a crystal of myself in them and come to realize that things driving them forward that make them human and weak are all the same things that drive me and make my knees buckle and shake. Frankly, it's a little surprising to see a shocking lack of the same care in you," Dr. Puri explained herself, trying to be genuine with the King of Saiyans who looted the discarded clothes of his friends and stole a pair of Senzu, munching on one immediately while slipping one under his armor he changed into.
"Did you stare at me change?" Vegeta asked boldly after leaving the locker room.
"I couldn't care less about any of that. If I wanted to see you in the nude, I could have spied on you while you were recovering or hacked into Bulma's home security cameras any time I wanted to. Don't change the subject while you're throwing your life away," Dr. Puri answered with the strict and calculating tone of her voice softening as the sentence went on.
"Hmph. Don't think I'm overlooking you. Building up your strength and rebuilding your own ranks... One of these days, I might just come to consider you a threat to my people and come to smash you and that makeshift family of yours to bits. Just give me an excuse…" Vegeta tightened the grip of his glove and turned around to face the nearest screen displaying Dr. Puri's face.
"You've been making nothing but mistakes your entire life, King Vegeta. Threatening my family would be the dumbest of them," the ultimate-class Artificial Human leaned back in her chair, disappearing in the dim lighting of her laboratory from which she was hacking into their vessel. Only the bright yellow eyes of the blue-skinned Android beamed through from the shade covering her body from the waist up. "Go now, rush to your doom, and ruin everything you've built. Let your mistakes and not your victories define your legacy, foolish man."
Vegeta strutted to the rescue pod and slipped inside with a confident smirk. The moment that the lid of the pod closed, Vegeta noticed Dr. Puri putting in the coordinates of the M-2 star. That saved Vegeta a lot of trouble. Although Ultimate Android 21 didn't approve of Vegeta's decision to pursue Hatchiyack's pod to M-2 to intercept it and destroy the real retributive rampage machine, she respected the fact that it was his choice to make and helped him maximize the chances of successfully gambling on gaining up to Hatchiyack's pod in time.
Arced with a tail of white energy and racing across the cosmos with a time-space bending tunneling beam, Vegeta's pod shot off toward the coordinates of M-2 that Dr. Puri gave him.
Piccolo turned around his axis, horizontally, diving under General Rilldo's haymaker, and drove his fist into the lead Machine Mutant's gut. While Rilldo staggered back in mid-air, Piccolo dashed forward and shot his knee into Rilldo's face, kicking him in the side to make Rilldo lower his guard before stomping his boot into Rilldo's face, then turning around and shooting a straight kick with his left leg that evened his body horizontally like a board and expelled a blinding white flash, sending Rilldo flying.
With a flying kick, Piccolo pursued Rilldo as the two flashed around different continental parts of the world. Mountains, deserts, cities, and glaciers raced across them as the two traded blows. General Rilldo slammed his knuckle straight into the center of Piccolo's X-shaped block. A blue energy sphere began accumulating and growing out of proportion at the point of impact as it drowned the surrounding into black with the intensity of its light. Yellow electricity began sizzling around Piccolo as the Ultimate Namekian warrior hunkered his whole body behind his crossed block and placed his arms on his shoulders. A white outline appeared around Piccolo shortly before he cast his arms out and raised them over his head.
An expansive energy mass engulfed General Rilldo in a point-blank range, blanking him out and blasting him off into the atmosphere, seemingly unconscious. Enveloped in the King Kai's Fist aura, Piccolo pursued his opponent and slammed a hefty hammer arm before flicking his antennae and shooting off a jolt of demonic electricity to engulf Rilldo and stun him in place. Shooting his elongated arm out, Piccolo dragged Rilldo back in for another hectic and thunderous exchange of blows. Piccolo's overwhelming and relentless offensive let him find an opening to plant a left hook and an energized uppercut to the gut that cracked Rilldo's abdomen open and sent metallic shrapnel flying in all directions.
The energized Ki shine around Piccolo's right fist expanded to engulf his entire body as the Ultimate Namekian could hardly contain the power surging within him. Yelling in stress that it was putting his body through and fighting spirit alike, Piccolo charged forward and crashed through Rilldo's guard with a devastating amped-up haymaker before grabbing Rilldo's head and kneeing into his face a couple of times.
"Get gone already!" Piccolo called out, snapping his jaw out of place and spitting out a strident mouth beam that was easily his own size after fully escaping Piccolo's dislocated jowls. Rilldo extended his arms, tackling the energy beam and struggling against it, but the Ultimate Namekian crashed through the back of his own energy attack with a ruthless shoulder charge and clotheslined Rilldo off the sky, leaving him to crash back down into the grassy plains.
Rolling his knuckles and cracking his neck to the sides, Piccolo panted after descending on the outer edge of the devastating crater he left his opponent in. Rilldo was taking some damage to his exterior and shedding the outermost metallic shell with each power strike Piccolo connected with. Still, he couldn't hide his frustration at the lack of progress in tearing his opponent apart. King Kai's Fist wasn't exactly a balanced technique that offered Piccolo too much time to recuperate the strain he put his own body through. Even with his regenerative Namekian abilities assisting him, he couldn't exactly just crank King Kai's Fist to extreme heights without severe consequences to his bodily state.
"Hmph, not bad!" Rilldo scrambled back to his feet and cracked his neck to both sides, then warmed up his joints with impromptu stretches. "Had me rattled with those blows. Not only do you have some real strength behind your swings, but you know how to fight too!"
"Don't tell me you've got some sort of analytical program watching my every move…" Piccolo snickered while snuffing out his King Kai's Fist for a moment's respite.
"You know me too well, I'm impressed!" General Rilldo opened himself up with a wide-arm taunt. Still, with Piccolo's whole body burning up on the cellular level, it would've been a fatal mistake to rush at him now and try to deck his square jaw. "Did I make it that obvious?"
"No, it's just not the first time facing an opponent that analyzes my data during the fight," Piccolo grumbled, unable to hide his frustration that only put him on a tighter clock than he was already on. He had to crank up King Kai's Fist to keep up with Rilldo, which burnt his body like venom and ripped his tendons apart one by one as if pumping acid through his veins that spilled into his innards every time he cranked it up. Now it became apparent that Rilldo was learning martial arts from Piccolo's moves too, making it more necessary that Piccolo sealed the deal as soon as he could.
With his dukes up, General Rilldo bobbed and weaved with a myriad of flashy snap vanishes, appearing in front of Piccolo in a blink and putting the Ultimate Namekian on the defensive. A shooting uppercut that was meant to punch Piccolo's head off by ripping it off his neck, Piccolo slipped it. A knee strike that perfectly mirrored Piccolo's own knees, Piccolo padded it with his hands, a follow-up step-in overhead hammer strike. An improvised move, not like anything Piccolo had seen. A burst of King Kai Fist's scarlet flame around him and a crossed-arm butterfly wing block with his wrists put an end to that and trapped Rilldo's wrist.
A right-arm elbow slam to Rilldo's face flinched and staggered the adamantine Machine Mutant general. Snarling with an ecstatic grin on his face, Rilldo powered through with a right-hand haymaker, but Piccolo dove low and flipped over his head, shooting his right foot up while supporting his upside-down body with his left hand. The two took off into the air after Piccolo's kick. Red lights flashed in Piccolo's eyes as the Ultimate Namekian scanned the skies with crimson eye beams and devastated them with chain explosions.
With Rilldo stiff and hunkered down, Piccolo appeared over his head and brought a hammering strike down, crash-landing him back into the same crater before channeling twin blue energy orbs into both of his hands. Crossing his arms up and bringing the energy spheres out, Piccolo's body swelled up with potent force, pumping through his system and tense veins rippling across his muscles. "Flashbang Giga Ray!" Piccolo snarled, expelling thousands of penetrating energy beams from each energy sphere and creating a battlefield of expansive skewering energy beams that punched into Rilldo's body and clean through. Each beam penetrating Rilldo or anything in its path widened into an expansive arc of light, obliterating the area or person unfortunate enough to be caught inside it.
With his right arm hanging limply by his side and his left wiping the dirt and slobber off his face, Piccolo surveyed the battlefield with utmost care. At any moment his impossible-to-trace opponent could've given him the slip. Even if Piccolo's own body begged him not to pursue this monstrous bar of iron any further and drag this battle out, his pride as the Ultimate Namekian warrior and a martial artist in his own right would have never allowed him to let his opponent bolt away.
"Unbelievable… I would have never thought that a mere Namekian could provide me with such a fun battle," Rilldo appeared from the smoke, wiping his own dirty and bruised face. His armored façade had been cracked and his body was littered with patches of shattered armored skin and exposed gray venting black fumes from the inside. "The damage and strain you're putting your own body through just to keep up with me is alarming, but what does it matter if I could end this fight with one punch if I cannot land that punch, right?"
"Oh, have you gotten this confident or have I just busted something in that cinderblock head of yours?" Piccolo smirked, rearing his demonic teeth.
"Truth be told, I could probably counter this unruly power-up of yours by simply toughing your beatdown out until you run out of stamina to keep it up, then finishing you off with one devastating attack. As I've said, one good blow is all I need to end this fight. However, I cannot afford to put my body through such a torturous ringer. I cannot afford to survive this battle, I need to trounce you since I still have a planet to devastate and terraform. Heh… I've just received the most interesting report!" General Rilldo smiled, bursting into a maniacal peal of laughter as if he'd heard the best joke in his life.
"You really have lost it, I'll give you credit, to be in such good fighting shape after having your brain this scrambled is quite the achievement," Piccolo joined his opponent in a good laugh.
"You misunderstand, I am not being delirious or denying the inevitable. Quite the contrary, I'm about to hasten the inevitable. Out of respect for the incomparable entertainment you've given me, I'll give you a little lesson about the Machine Mutant society. On Planet M-2, the home of Machine Mutants, I reign supreme as the commander of the Machine Mutant military force. The Sigma Force, an elite squad of the very best of the Machine Mutant military, possesses an uncanny technique to merge into an ultimate fighting machine whenever our military desperately needs a breakthrough. Even though I never tried to destroy it, I've only ever fought that ultimate fighting machine up to a standstill. It's an incredibly entertaining punching bag. It appears that the Sigma Force have all been wiped out," General Rilldo explained, sounding eager to get to the point as quickly as possible as if he were to receive a bundle of candy for it.
"So, the others fended off the Machine Mutants then…" Piccolo shut his eyes, tracing their dwindling Ki signatures. Even if they won, they wouldn't be much use for this fight in their current critical states. Still, they were moving toward the Sacred Land of Korin, so they weren't unconscious and dying, at least.
"Another important lesson you need to learn to fathom your inevitable doom is that we Machine Mutants assimilate an obsolete piece of technology and keep growing by adapting it into our upgraded bodies. I suppose it's not too much unlike your Namekian assimilation…" General Rilldo pointed out, spreading his arms and legs wide to the sides and bursting into laughter again. "Come to me! Sigma Force!"
"What!?" Piccolo blanked out. "You intend to merge with your elite soldiers!?"
It was too late, Rilldo hunkered down with his swollen arms pressed to his sides as a paralyzing veil of gravitational pressure collapsed upon the battlefield. The pressure of overwhelming energy being released from Rilldo's body and causing a calamitous gravitational phenomenon of the crushing force that swirled into the shooting shockwave pillar of energy converging upon Rilldo as the point of singularity and washing upward stunned Piccolo in place. He would have had to break his body just to resist this incredible pressure. Even if he were to interfere with this merger, he'd have been left drained and powerless to resist Rilldo afterward.
A storm of a whole scrapyard washed toward Rilldo from all directions. The gravitational storm around him became a swirling vortex of energy that turned bright green while the scrap metal swirled around Rilldo. The flashing emerald light made Piccolo brace himself and cover-up. The washing blizzard of scrap around him made it impossible to see what was going on anymore. One by one, the microchips and scrapped armor pieces connected with Rilldo, interfacing with the living operational system and upgrading it. Obsolete scrap became revived into additional muscle and body parts. Rilldo's own vitality and peerless artificial perfection turned any piece of scrap converging with him into an upgrade.
At long last the flash subsided, letting Piccolo stumble with relative freedom as the ironclad grip of capricious gravity released him. A shocked gaze up confirmed Rilldo hovered above ground surrounded by a cloud of smoke that persisted close around him like dry ice. The smoke took no time at all to reveal the newly reborn, polished, and perfected new body of General Rilldo. Features of the armor of the Sigma Force members came to define Rilldo as an outer layer of armor. The remains of his own comrades became a suit of armor he wore. Despite what Rilldo said, this was nothing like Namekian assimilation.
"Yes…" Rilldo grumbled with a transformed, more mechanized voice as if speaking through an artificial speaker. All the while, his right arm had transformed into a drill that he observed whirling without as much as a hitch in front of him. "This is a fine body. Not too cumbersome and flashy, but just upgraded enough… Excellent. Just what the Machine Mutants need to ensure total, overwhelming victory! Sadly, it appears I have assimilated the flair for the theatrics of the Sigma Force too, I feel compelled to give this new body an absolutely ridiculous name… Let's call it, Hyper Meta Rilldo!"
Just when Piccolo felt the pressure mounting up and felt like he was failing to keep up, his opponent forced him to crank his drastic power-up even higher lest he risked getting wiped out and leaving behind one tremendous problem for the rest of the team and the entire Planet Earth.