"What did you mean talking about Earth's metal and technological advancement, answer me!" Piccolo barked out at his opponent who only smirked and nudged his own cheek with a knuckle.
"Don't disappoint me by quaking your knees, Namekian!" Rilldo laughed out with confidence and mockery. "This is the match of my life here so I won't let it end in some weaksauce whimper!"
The Machine Mutant commander put his arms up, not willing to clash with his opponent hand-to-hand in his current burnt-out state, Piccolo exploded with King Kai's Fist aura and drew his arms back. Just as his opponent shot right at him, malicious, ethereal violet tendrils surrounded Piccolo before he extended his hands with electrical Ki sparkles in each hand.
"Barrage Destructive Demon Wave!" Piccolo grumbled, shooting a quick energy wave from each hand while thrusting each hand front and back and continuously pelting his opponent with Destructive Demon Waves. Rilldo weaved around each wave, slipping them and treating each energy wave like a separate punch. He closed the distance, despite Piccolo's objections, and threw a vicious uppercut that rocked Piccolo's head up and back.
A push kick sent Piccolo flying off at hypersonic speed, with the eyes of a possessed Machine Mutant locked onto his opponent, Rilldo entered hot pursuit, dashing in with another primitive push kick. While Piccolo felt the clobbering in his ribs and each kick felt like it was busting through the wall of Piccolo's skeleton and scrambling his organs from within, being the experienced fighter he was, Piccolo realized his opponent wasn't inflicting as much damage as he could have given the circumstance. Instead, he was pelting Piccolo with hefty slams and strikes that sent him flying farther and farther back while Rilldo pursued after and pushed Piccolo farther back again.
This wasn't a mugging as much as it was a violent relocation.
Bellowing with violent joy from the bottom of his heart, Rilldo smashed a vicious left hook into Piccolo's chest, forcing the overwhelmed Namekian to spit out an extreme amount of blood and white out. It was in part because of Piccolo's own abuse of King Kai's Fist that this beatdown was this effective. Because of the exhaustive strain, Piccolo's bones felt brittle like chalk, his own muscles tore apart from the tiniest hint of tension. Rilldo had some sort of trick in mind, of this Piccolo felt certain, however, even if he decided against resorting to this hidden ace of his, Piccolo had few doubts about his opponent's chances of sealing this bout.
A hook to the gut nearly plunged Rilldo's fist through Piccolo's abdomen, bending the exhausted and bruised Ultimate Namekian over on his opponent's fist. Pulling it out, Rilldo rocked it into Piccolo's jaw. Islands and small towns shifted through Piccolo's sight as the two combatants traveled halfway across the world in the time that it took for General Rilldo to put his hands on Piccolo. Racing across the distance separating them, Rilldo slammed his flying knee and then extended his hand again.
"Shooting Knuckle!" Rilldo laughed out, launching his left forearm like a rocket at Piccolo. The dislodged rocket punch crashed into Piccolo's right jaw and blasted the Namekian, crashing him through multiple rows of skyscrapers. Still loopy, Piccolo crawled out from the rubble and looked around, realizing that his opponent had carried the fight to a bustling city, far away from the leveled wreckage of the Machine Mutant landing.
"Metal… Technology… He wanted to bring the fight to a city…" Piccolo grumbled while scrambling back to his feet, still licking his bruises and holding his head while shaking on wobbly legs. "But why…?"
"Heh, there you are!" Rilldo descended from the skies and landed directly in the backyard of some corporate skyscraper that Piccolo just crashed through and leveled. "Finally, I'm going to break both your body and your spirit by showing you how the precious planet you're fighting to protect sustains and supports me! Mark my words, for all your hard work and heavy swings, all you'll get back from it, in the end, is rejection, because subjugation and assimilation always triumph over fusion and cooperation!"
As a demonstration of his point, General Rilldo extended his arm to the side. Cable lines, scrap, and various technology parts and pieces from collapsing, disassembling city elements began surging toward the Machine Mutant commander, merging with him as the cable lines wrapped around him like blood vessels and began pumping raw power. In a blink, the torn-apart Sigma Force armor reassembled and the merciless Hyper Meta Rilldo was born anew. That was far from the end of Rilldo's endgame, however. The surging raw power crystalized the Machine Mutant commander into a statue of jagged, solid metal ore. That solid metal ore shell then liquified in front of Piccolo's eyes, becoming a layer of mercury-colored coating.
Rilldo stood with a muscular and lean, fully nude and chiseled body. His oval-shaped head, his chest, and shoulders had a handful of black holes sticking through them, but other than that there were very few features defining the new and slick, imposing exterior of the Machine Mutant military leader who flexed his arms to swell to ridiculous proportions.
"This is my ace form. I call it Meta-Rilldo. With the addition of those Sigma goons, it's now stronger than ever, though I'd say it's hardly as powerful as I am using it on my home of Planet M-2," Meta-Rilldo snickered with pride while scanning his own new and improved self with an adoring visual inspection. "In this form, I freely control all metal and technology. While your planet is around 50% covered in water and at least 40% of the remaining landmass is covered in wilderness, your level of technological advancement in your cities is sufficient for you to have no hope of victory."
Piccolo swung his arms apart, channeling a violet energy blast into each hand. "Scatter Shot!" he yelled out, firing many arcing violet energy blasts that homed in on Meta-Rilldo. The devastating barrage of Ki blast attacks littered the city in explosions and decimated Meta-Rilldo, ripping his body apart and leaving only a quivering lower half of the body while Piccolo's attack had scattered the remaining upper half all across the city.
"What the…?" Piccolo gasped at the strange level of success from his desperation attack. With a more careful inspection, he realized that the remains of Meta-Rilldo had been splattered with chunky liquid metal masses all across the city. After a few moments had passed since Piccolo stopped firing, they jolted back to life and began bubbling, forming a living army of Meta-Rilldo who stood atop the nearest buildings and skyscrapers, advertisement blimps and abandoned hovercars as stunned by the ongoing calamitous battle the people of this island city began evacuating.
"Do you understand yet?" all the Meta-Rilldo clones asked with a heavily cybernetically augmented tone of voice. "You can no longer damage or destroy me! I've become the cities and technology of Planet Earth! As long as a single, most basic electronic gadget exists on this planet, I can transfer my consciousness into it. As long as enough metal exists on this planet, I can reconstitute my body and however many bodies I wish, morph, and change them to my liking. I am unbound by the physical plane or a physical body, I am metal, I am technology!"
"And what if I level the entire surface of the planet!?" Piccolo growled, spreading his legs and extending his right hand out while grabbing hold of his right wrist with the left hand. "It would be a simple matter for me to turn Planet Earth into a desolate space rock with no trace of a city on it!"
"So, what you're saying is that you would throw away everything you care and fight for just so you can win? Thank you, warrior, I'm so proud of you!" Meta-Rilldo snickered to himself with a full-teeth simper. "Come on then, Namekian, exterminate those loathsome, pesky Earthlings for me and obliterate the Earth's cities! As you've said, it's your best shot for victory, isn't it?"
"Tsk…" Piccolo grumbled and seethed, shaking in his wooden boots as his tense and bruised body shook from pure, unchained wrath. How dared this Machine Mutant call his bluff? Had he no clue who Piccolo was? His predecessor was the Demon King himself, the Demon King Piccolo, a tyrant of the Evil Tribe. He'd have not twitched one finger in hesitation before obliterating the Earth's cities and decimating its population for victory.
With a furious and boisterous howl, Piccolo vented his frustrations in an explosive energy dome around him that burst into a sky-scraping pillar that beamed off into space like a trail of planetary tears. After his violent outburst was finished, Piccolo's hands hung limply by his sides as he stared back at his invincible, metal-clad foe with full admission of defeat, knowing that he would neither scar the planet nor decimate its population. All he could do was struggle and keep up this fruitless venture for as long as he could.
"Heh, puny!" Meta-Rilldo barked in mockery before shrugging. "To be fair, you wouldn't have won either way. In fact, had you leveled the planet's surface for me and eradicated the locals, you'd have only done me a grand favor. On top of being a mutant of living metal, I am also capable of creating metal from any other substance. Within less than twenty Earthling minutes, I could convert this planet into a sphere of nothing but metal, from which the Machine Mutants could carve and tinker another cybernetic star!"
"Hmph… So you were playing me from the very beginning, then?" Piccolo bitterly admitted. "Well then, I'm at least glad that living here on Earth and fighting to protect it has instilled in me a shred of decency and that I didn't undo my legacy with one fruitless action."
"Legacy? Yes… I believe you deserve to have a legacy. You've pushed me farther than any other warrior in my entire life! Instead of destroying you, I think I'll make a metal statue out of you and place it here, where you took your final stand!" Meta-Rilldo nodded to himself. "Metal Breath!"
All the Meta-Rilldo clone bodies opened their mouths, snapping their lower jaws open all the way to their upper chests and creating a sparkling, mint-colored energy jolt in their mouths. This energy breath thundered down in a highly unpredictable, lightning-bolt-like manner, homing in on Piccolo's panting and burnt-out body. Something black blurred and rustled in front of Piccolo, surprising the Ultimate Namekian, who was almost prepared to admit his defeat.
With the mint-colored chain explosion dissolving and fizzling out, only a humming green energy barrier persisted around Piccolo and a fair-skinned young man of average height, slim body build, and straight, shoulder-length black hair. The young man had been slightly tanner than what Piccolo recalled him being just a few months back and his slender build had been offset by his open and furry brown bomber jacket.
"Hey, been a while, huh, old man?" a familiar face turned back to cast a passively cheerful look at Piccolo.
"Artificial Human No. 17!?" Piccolo gasped. Out of all the people he expected to see the bratty Android here the least. "What are you doing here? This guy's trouble, scram before he obliterates you!"
"Wow, wait to break my heart, old-geezer," No. 17 ran his hand through his hair. "Is that all that I am to you, just a robot with a model number, a living weapon of some sort? I have a name, you know, it's Lapis…"
"Are you even listening to me, you idiot!?" Piccolo lost it. "This guy's way out of your league! Get out of here! If you want to help, help as many people escape the city as you can!"
"Hmm… You're being awfully mean. Almost making me reconsider saving your bacon…" Lapis turned away to face Meta-Rilldo.
"Who… In the hell… Is this?" Meta-Rilldo leaned his head to the right. A rushing Meta-Rilldo clone swooped in from the left, forcing Lapis to defend himself with a high block, another came in from the right with a flying knee which prompted Lapis to vault over the first and push the two clones to collide with one another. Lapis navigated around the uppercut of an incoming third Meta-Rilldo and clashed with the fourth in mid-air, exchanging a series of swift blows and kicks while blocking every attack coming his way and discharging an apt answer for each attack. The two colliding combatants split in the skies while a fifth Meta-Rilldo crashed from Lapis' back and sent the Artificial Human crashing down while the regenerated original Meta-Rilldo hovered above Lapis with his hands lowered.
"I sense you are a warrior of metal, much like myself. Let's see if I can turn you into my puppet and have you help me exterminate the Earthlings!" Meta-Rilldo guffawed to himself while sending potent electromagnetic waves that were visible to the naked eye and rippled the air as vision-distorting ring-shaped waves that spread wider and wider the farther they spread.
"Sorry," Lapis stood up and sifted his messed up hair behind his right ear. "I guess the old hag really hates to share, so she built me of sterner stuff than just ordinary metal. Or maybe it's just my very human brain you can't control? Either way, you can bite it," the bratty Artificial Human flipped the one-man army of his metallic opponent off.
"Lapis…" Piccolo gasped. "That was amazing! I can't believe it… The last time we fought, you were hardly a match for me, now you're able to fend off multiple of Meta-Rilldos at once! What's going on here!?"
"That's what I wanted to tell you, old man… You just won't listen." Lapis shrugged and shook his head. "You showed me how cool martial arts can be, so I picked up martial arts and found myself a job at a nature reserve and everything. Turns out, infinite stamina means that I can practice martial arts at the full-throttle whole day and don't need to rest. Given how there's not much going on in a nature reserve, I have nothing better to do but train. I've gotten crazy-strong over the last few months."
"So I see…" Piccolo sighed. "Though I don't think our opponent is someone who can be beaten by just pummeling him into submission. He can control and regenerate by merging with metal and technology. He is living metal himself. I really don't think you're the right opponent for him."
"One thing I've learned from practicing martial arts by watching martial arts movies is that nothing is decided until the last punch is thrown," Lapis cracked his neck to the sides and pumped his fists, taking an elementary fighting stance. "Come on then, let's fight this guy together, and let me show you what I've learned."
"You… Learned martial arts from movies? You know that either of us could have taught you, right…?" Piccolo squinted at his unexpected partner. "Some of us are making a living teaching martial arts."
"Whatever, I did a lot of bad things and figured that you guys didn't want to see me. It would've been fishy if the guy working for the mean old lady trying to take over the Earth suddenly asked you guys to teach him martial arts, right?" Lapis waved his hand in dismissal. "Besides, I can't leave my job unless whatever's going on threatens to spill into my reserve. When I heard you guys causing a ruckus from my nature reserve, I realized I had to do something, or else you'll start wrecking shit on my workplace and that'll all come out of my pay. Most of the animals there are one-of-a-kind, so it'll take me 3000 years to cover for them out of my wage."
"Wh… What are you even on about right now?" Meta-Rilldo's right eye twitched in disdain for this new guy who decided he could just jump in and join his fateful clash with the Namekian warrior. "It doesn't matter, because I'll take however many of you there are out, anyway!"
Lapis stopped the rushing Meta-Rilldo in his tracks with a blinding jab. Then rocked him away with a flying knee. Wasting no time, the Artificial Human flew in from the side and knocked away a Meta-Rilldo bullying Piccolo with relentless haymakers from the sides and keeping him hunkered down. Dashing across the city district in mid-air, No. 17 drove a devastating elbow into a Meta-Rilldo's chest. One of the reeling Meta-Rilldo's stretched their arms out and burst into a downpour of metallic rods.
Lapis and Piccolo took on the defensive role and began racing away from the raining rods of liquified metal as they splattered across the ground and turned the nice city park into a yard of metal, turning even the pond and the trees into shiny reflective metal statues of their former selves. From each of the scattered metal rods, another Meta-Rilldo came forth, rushing into the fray of the hectic brawl. Weaving aside from the incoming hail of hooks and haymakers, Lapis slipped in close to one of the Meta-Rilldo's and demolished its face with a flurry of swift jabs.
Vaulting and diving under a Metal Breath burst, Lapis charged toward the Meta-Rilldo that fired it and slammed his kick straight into the lower spine of the bent out of shape, and bewildered Meta-Rilldo. Following this up with a collision with another Meta-Rilldo and a beatdown topped off with a double ax handle slam, Lapis established an early upper hand against the ever-growing ranks of Meta-Rilldos.
"Not bad, you've got skills brat!" Meta-Rilldo cheered for his own opponent with a slow clap from farther away. The floored Meta-Rilldo splashed like molten ice cream into the pool of liquified metal and returned multiplied dozens of times, spawning an additional Meta-Rilldo from each splatter of the big splash of the pool of liquid metal. "Let's see for how long you can dance with a tapped-out dance partner by your side…" the Machine Mutant commander thundered with a cocky and boisterous laugh.
"You know, by messing up that park, you really ground my gears just now," Lapis replied with a cold and deadpan stare. "I wouldn't count on being immortal helping you out here. I've got the infinite stamina to keep up."
"Damn it, it's just my luck to end up in a bout against two tireless guys…" Piccolo panted and heaved by Lapis' side, struggling to keep his arms up while his whole body burnt with sprains, fractures, tears, and the accumulated abuse of King Kai's Fist.