A humming energy orb of an emerald hue shine peeked through the smoke while it sifted slowly around it while spreading more evenly across the decimated cybernetic rift. Where initially after their ace Deadly Metal Needle attack, the Meta-Rilldos couldn't stuff themselves laughing, the emergence of the massive Android Barrier encompassing not only Lapis but also both of his allies in this fight made all Meta-Rilldo drones scowl in frustration.
"I'm guessing that was your strongest attack? Now who's losing their shit when the going gets tough?" Lapis mocked Meta-Rilldo's earlier observation in reaction to the desperate expressions on all the drones' faces.
"Not bad. To think that you could block something as powerful as that after a fight as tough as we've had," Piccolo panted, clutching his bruised chest that had at least several caved-in ribs and made him wheeze and cough blood once in a little while.
"That's the eternal stamina of the infinite energy reactor for you," Bardock grinned, the gentle vibrations within his own chest. While he went through a few surgeries to reverse the conversion process that Dr. Puri put him through during his crisis, Bardock insisted on keeping a few improvements.
"Oh, you kept yours too?" Lapis turned to the Saiyan berserker.
"Don't make me laugh," Bardock scoffed. "I had Bulma tinker with it a little. I still prefer to get my energy by stuffing my face full, so I had mine throttled by a bunch. My stamina beats that of any organic fighter, but it's not quite limitless like yours."
"That means you have no use to me, Saiyan!" Meta-Rilldo proclaimed, the metallic floor of the little patch of M-2 that the Machine Mutant had created rumbled down below before shooting off rising metallic platforms into the air that socked straight into Bardock and forced the Saiyan to push down against it to prevent being squished to the ceiling. "Hyper Meta Rilldo Punch!" Rilldo barked out, extending his malleable liquid metal hand and molding it into a drill before shooting the drill off like one of his rocket punches.
Navigating from above, the drill went for a downward thrust that would've drilled through Bardock against the rising metal pillar but the Saiyan rolled aside, taking a nasty graze from the rising pillar but leaving the drill to perforate it and decimate it with a downward tunneling rumble. Just as Bardock wound up his arm backward, Piccolo's verbal warning reached him and he instinctively plunged down, avoiding the mint-colored electrical stream of Meta-Rilldo's Metal Breath from his right side.
Bardock burst with a golden aura of the Super Saiyan and shot off, racing around the localized piece of a cybernetic star that Meta-Rilldo had created on this island while Meta-Rilldo coated everything around them in metal in an attempt to catch Bardock with one of their breaths. Bardock did a neat job outpacing the electrical fields that would've turned him into a block of solid metal, but the frustration over his defensive role became apparent on his face.
"Calm down!" Piccolo barked out. "You can't afford to make a mistake, so just mind your positioning!"
Immediately after, Piccolo closed his eyes and exhaled, turning the torment spreading throughout his body and diving into freefall. A mint-colored electrical wave flushed in the direction where he just now was. When Piccolo opened his eyes again, the transformed giant head of Meta-Rilldo, coming from an upside-down colossal communications tower, met Piccolo's gaze and corrected the direction of its metallic breathing. With rapid bursts of King Kai's Fist to throw his body around like a rag doll for just a single motion, Piccolo danced around the metallic breaths before the turning mint wave washed over him. Meta-Rilldo's laughter snuffed out when he realized he breathed his converting breath over a mere after-image.
Rumbling, Piccolo appeared directly in front of the colossal face and lashed out with a roundhouse kick straight to the jet-sized nose of Meta-Rilldo. Swiping his arm at the eyes, Piccolo turned them into a splash of liquid metal and blinded the face, forcing it to retreat. Snapping away from sight, Piccolo met a chasing Meta-Rilldo drone in mid-air and redirected his haymaker downward before rolling over him and kicking him down with a stomping foot thrust. Piccolo clapped his hands, producing a tangible body double that plunged down and began rapidly stomping the crashed Meta-Rilldo drone into the ground before it became just a puddle of liquid metal.
Fending off the incoming assault of another Meta-Rilldo drone from the left with a stiff whiplash kick, Piccolo shot his knee straight into its face and sent it flying, then burst with a King Kai's Fist aura before catapulting himself like a ball of rags toward another drone and exploding with clawed hand swipes, stomps, and roundhouses. Winding his right arm back, Piccolo bellowed while an electrical Ki field formed around it. Thrusting his energized punch downward, the Ultimate Namekian decimated the Meta-Rilldo drone he was beating down on before landing on the ground, panting with crumbling knees.
At least he could put up a fight against these drone bodies that were appearing like droplets from the rain. It was exactly how Meta-Rilldo said–this entire localized, terraformed batch of the planet that began resembling the cybernetic planetoid he sought to create here was like a massive, living ecosystem with Rilldo at its core. While Rilldo put a much worse beatdown on Piccolo when he was one and whole, with a solid, singular body, he was bound to it before. Whereas now, Meta-Rilldo was this whole ecosystem, as opposed to being just one of his countless drone bodies. He was everywhere, and he was everything, and he seemed nigh indestructible. Truth be told, Piccolo would've preferred the odds of facing a bulky powerhouse he could hardly compete against as opposed to seeing this mechanical virus overtaking his planet.
"Legion of Rilldo!" a nearby communications tower transmitted a vocal yet bit-crushed transmission as all the faraway spots hit by the barrage of Rilldo's Metal Breaths bubbled up. Instead of just bursting, the boiling bubbles popped like ripping cocoons, shooting out Meta-Rilldo bodies that soared forward like shooting humanoid missiles with a one-track mind. Lapis covered himself up and grunted in pain when the blizzard-thick onslaught hit him dead-on and washed him away.
Pummeling him with straights and haymakers, pushing and shoving between each other for the honor of battering their opponents, the countless Meta-Rilldos obstructed the view of anything outside of their own selves. Their incessant rumbling and cackling, the unwaning arrogance and ultimate trust in their own peerless skill were all that one's mind could pick up on when faced against an incalculable hail of opponents. Growling in desperation, Lapis swiped his hands imbued with green energy and produced a horizontal, crescent energy slash that split the mosh pit of Machine Mutants in half.
Piccolo threw his arms out, causing a violent explosive Ki wave that threw the harassing drones off of him and splattered them all. Bardock generated a pair of energy spheres, one in each hand, and thrust energy waves shooting out from each of them that overwhelmed any nearby wave of drones. All three of the struggling combatants could only exclaim in terror as Meta-Rilldo drones that splattered into puddles of liquid metal began producing other drones from each droplet slathered on the floor or ceiling. From each dispatched drone, as good as a dozen more came back, more vicious and self-assured than ever.
With their Metal Breaths, the tens of thousands of risen Meta-Rilldos created a virtual bullet hell for their opponents. They were forced to huddle up around Lapis, who erected an Android Barrier, but audibly, with an increased strain on his body than ever before. The missed Metal Breath fields brushed against other Meta-Rilldo clones, imbuing them with more metal mass and letting them regenerate, while others turned into strands of metallic wires and wrapped around other drones. As multiple drones joined, they bolstered and regenerated the whole of Meta-Rilldo while the pulsating cybernetic tumor grew and festered, becoming a visible from space wart on the planet's mass.
"What's wrong? I thought you Androids never get tired!" Bardock scoffed at Lapis, who dragged the back of his hand against his bruised face.
"Something's different with those Metal Breaths just now. It's like they're turning my actual Ki into metal as well. I need to forcefully reapply the barrier and rip through the metallic corruption over my energy, overclocking my stamina. My stamina rejuvenates infinitely, that is to say, an infinite energy reactor can produce an infinite supply of it, but it produces a certain amount that I can overclock and then I'm left powerless until it replenishes," Lapis explained. "Frankly, I never thought this could happen. This possibility was purely theoretical even when the old lady designed it."
"Good," Piccolo smirked. "You shouldn't rely on crutches like infinite stamina. Instead of having something like that to redeem your mistakes in a fight, you should focus on making fewer of them, to begin with."
"Sheesh, thanks for the lesson, old-timer…" Lapis rolled his eyes. "Is he always so pretentious?"
"You don't want to know…" Bardock smirked. "If you sissies are all tuckered out, I'm more than fine taking it over from here!"
"No!" Piccolo hissed. "We need to attack all at once. Rilldo's cybernetic planet only encompasses the span of a continent right now. His Planet Rilldo is nowhere near complete. This is the state of his plan where we can still overload him and cause his little planet project to melt down and blow up!"
"Roger, Roger, commander…" Lapis teased Piccolo, taking a fighting stance shoulder-by-shoulder with Bardock while Piccolo hung in the back of the two, having taken the worst beating out of the three by far and exhausted himself far more than the rest too.
"I have an incredibly powerful technique still in store. I never dreamed of counting on it in battle, since I can't quite pull it off during battlefield conditions with an opponent coming after me but with a little time to get ready and an opening, I might obliterate Rilldo and this whole cybernetic tumor of his," Piccolo made a bold proclamation while the other two turned to him with shocked expressions.
"Alright, but not because I need it. It's because I'm curious to see that super-technique of yours," Bardock snickered and exploded with a golden nova of Ki that cast blinding light to the farthest reaches of the terraformed cybernetic continent.
"Yeah, sounds like a flashy light show. I love big explosions and if they're blowing up cumbersome cities and technology as opposed to nature and the animals–I'm all for seeing it in action!" Lapis nodded with an excited look on his face.
"Then go!" Piccolo clamored, spreading his arms to the sides and engaging a violent power-up process as violet Ki with an electrical moss-colored outline surged around the edges of his malevolent aura. His muscles bulked up to the peak of his condition that Piccolo's body could support without breaking down and veins rippled across the Namekian's body with complex, intertwined networks, pulsing excessively to pump an immense amount of blood. Piccolo's eyes rolled back, and he showed his sharpened fangs, exclaiming a battle cry during his strenuous power-up process.
"Alright, come 'ere, you creep!" Bardock yelled out, driving a full-body right hook into the face of the nearest Meta-Rilldo, causing its head to cave in. Plunging with a sweeping dive, Bardock swept the leg and sent a concussive shockwave with his sweep that tripped up a whole group of Meta-Rilldos. Soaring in between the group, Bardock kicked each of the Rilldos with a spinning roundhouse once, switching the side and angle in between each of the drone bodies he punished with his beating. Having positioned himself in the middle of the group, Bardock turned around his axis with a whirlwind kick that caused a golden energy tornado to pick up around him and drag in any nearby drones for a pummeling. Roaring, Bardock ripped down with an energy-infused fist and crashed down like an apocalyptic asteroid into the peering gigantic face of Meta-Rilldo formed on the floor. The resulting explosion left a crater of devastated cybernetic ruin around Bardock, who looked up and tightened his wristbands while exhaling a hefty mass of air from his lungs.
The Meta-Rilldo drones extended their arms to the sides, engaging humming energy fields around them, similar to Lapis' own Android Barrier but much lighter and more translucent. Encased in these energy orbs, the Meta-Rilldo drones hurled forward like a machine gun barrage of cannonballs, powering through Lapis' double energy wave and slamming him away. The Meta-Rilldo drones began frantically bouncing around the battlefield like the world's most chaotic pinball machine, juggling thousands of balls at once. Bardock soared into the air, putting himself in front of Piccolo, who was still powering up and began scanning the environment with the aid of cyborg sensory and radar technology that let him track the frantic cannonballs and blast them away by predicting their trajectories.
"I'm done charging the attack!" Piccolo exclaimed, surrounded by a quasar field of violet aura that shot off electric jolts in all directions, powerful enough to rip through, bend and break apart the metallic spikes and tidal waves that Meta-Rilldo tried sending Piccolo's way. "I just need an opening!" he cried out. "Sooner rather than later, if we miss this chance and I lose my concentration, I'll need to charge it up all over again!"
Meta-Rilldos all positioned themselves in a rhombicosidodecahedron formation, extending their hands toward Piccolo and causing the entire cybernetic battlefield to hurl metallic rods as thick as skyscrapers in his direction. Piccolo's electricity surged through them and began ripping them apart, but one glance from Bardock relayed that this wouldn't last. Piccolo couldn't concentrate while dealing with those attacks and maintaining his energy field. Gritting his teeth, Bardock took off and formed a golden energy bubble around his body, expelling dozens of stray Ki blasts from the explosive energy wave and attracting the attention of the fragmenting metallic rods that plunged straight through Bardock's body, skewering it in mid-air but giving Piccolo a bit of leeway to work with.
"Don't fuck it up now…" Bardock coughed mouthfuls of blood while slumping, trapped in his metallic torture network.
"I'll give you the opening!" Lapis grit his teeth, extending his hands and sending rapid, flashing energy rays in all direction. "Flash Bomber!" he yelled out, concentrating the energy rays into his fingertips and then firing hundreds of small yellow energy waves akin to a machine-gun-type blast. These energy bullets ripped clean through the Meta-Rilldos unless they engaged their energy barriers or covered up and bolstered their bodies with enough energy to cause the blasts to detonate upon contact. The Meta-Rilldos grumbled in pain, stumbling back.
"Special… Demon… Howitzer!" Piccolo brought his right arm forward, like he would when performing the Explosive Demon Wave, then grabbed his extended wrist with the left hand. The colossal energy field encompassing him burst outward, shooting off with all of its potency, while another, separate Explosive Demon Wave spiraled around it, just like an energy beam spiraling around the Special Beam Cannon. It was a combination of the overwhelming, uncompromising power of the Explosive Demon Wave and the speed and stride of the Special Beam Cannon. Because of the sheer size of the energy field around Piccolo that blinded and shorted out any radar technology peering through to the Earth from all across the universe because of its calamitous output, it was impossible to say that it was firing for certain unless peering at it from millions of kilometers away.
"N-No!" Meta-Rilldo blanked out. "N-No!" he repeated, destroying all of his pawn pieces to merge with his cybernetic structure and form dozens upon hundreds of solid metallic barriers in the way of Piccolo's attack and him. Meta-Rilldo merged with the cybernetic growth he had produced on Planet Earth, ramming the farthest barrier with both hands and becoming a planet-sized growth from the torso up, hoping that his tremendous size would prevent all traces of him from being destroyed.
All was left to fate now. Everything turned to a golden supernova blast, then all light seeped out, and the world sunk into a dark violet shade before strident electric surges devastated it all into a field of overwhelming white. Even with the limited control over this obnoxious technique, Piccolo did his best to direct the devastating potential to merely channel through Meta-Rilldo's metallic obstacles, his own merged cosmic avatar body, and the cybernetic continent he had made. Eventually, the light was too bright, the booming–too clamorous, and the destruction–too intense to stay lucid. Everyone blanked out before submitting to the cruel whims of the destructive shockwave that flung everyone away, smoldering.
Yet every trace of Machine Mutant metal melted away, hardened, sprinkled into charred dust, and dissolved into nothing, burning up without a trace and vanishing forever. It was a little while before Lapis' systems rebooted and his vision returned to him. Shaky at first. Blurred. Grunting and hurting all over, the Artificial Human rolled over and peeled himself off the ground, looking away.
Bardock panted with his back pressed against the nearest rock with a handful of charred metallic rods in hand. The blast cauterized his bleeders while a strong breeze reduced the rods Bardock pulled out to lifeless ash and scattered them into the ocean. Piccolo floated on a shaky ocean surface, face-up. He looked out cold, but alive. Lapis hovered up to him and scooped the Namekian up.
"What now?" he turned to Bardock, who only shrugged.
"I don't make plans. I just swing fists at whatever I don't like," Bardock grumbled in return, still ticked off at the sores plaguing his body.
"We could drop by the Capsule Corps. Maybe Bulma can fix up what's busted on us and give us a freebie medical pod session for our troubles?" Lapis suggested.
"I wouldn't mind some grub either," Bardock sighed, standing back up, though his movements were stiffer. The Saiyan still struggled against the pain of being skewered by cybernetic rods earlier, and he lacked Piccolo's Ultimate Namekian physiology to just walk wounds like those off easily.