Dr. Puri screamed out in pain, though her expression got drowned out in the thunderous rumbling of the collapsing ground platform that she busted through. Instead of pulling 21's head out from the rubble and smashing it back in again, like she's been doing for a while, Chayote kicked the entrapped Android clean through the rubble. This sent Puri smashing through the ground and building ruins alike.
Chayote soared through the sky like an arrow with her foot stoutly sticking out. It cracked into the bottom of Android 21's chin, forcing Puri's neck to churn as it stretched out to nearly twice its length. Considering her opponent's extended neck hilarious, Chayote whipped her right leg back and forth, smacking the Artificial Human's head about on both sides while her strained neck retracted to normal length. Just as her irises were beginning to return to her, signaling that Dr. Puri was snapping out of her daze, Chayote grabbed hold of Puri's shoulder and spun her around fast enough to form a natural whirlwind around the artificial woman.
Another deafening crack resonated through the demolished city landscape. The whirlwind gasped for fuel but, as it found none, it dissipated in a violent expulsion of air in all directions. Puri shot skyward and through the clouds, challenging the upper layers of the atmosphere in just a few blinks' time. Buzzing through the skies, Chayote flew in with a vertical flip kick and bashed her spinning foot straight to the top of Android 21's head. This punted the Artificial Human back down like a flaming comet. The rampaging Super Saiyan vanished once more, catching up to her falling opponent and pushing her foot into Puri's chest with a battle cry and stomping her to crash back down even faster.
Puri's eyes fluttered slowly. Testing just how much light and awareness they could sift through before her failing systems caused the artificial woman a rampant headache. Chayote lowered slowly in a flaunting pose, with her entire body stiffened and beaming her muscular prowess while she stared down at her fallen foe with wide, teal-colored eyes. Despite the apparent madness in her gaze, something made Chayote hesitate from attacking. It was only when 21 tried to pick herself up that she realized she was impaled on a bunch of rebars of collapsed debris and loosely hung over boiling magma down below.
Puri was a mess. Battered, broken, and bruised. Her once lovely auburn curly hair was now just a mad haystack soaked in the bio-fluid used as a blood replacement for Artificial Humans. That same bio-fluid drenched Puri's face. Her glasses had long since smashed to pieces with some of the glass still stuck in Artificial Human No. 21's face and pumping trickles of bio-fluid down. Her lab coat and dress had been a network of torn strands of rags and Puri's right arm hung loosely attached to a handful of wires while her left leg had splintered off of her body and fallen into the lava below. Oddly enough, it didn't melt, just float on the surface, though the fire it had caught from the heat failed to damage it consistently.
"So it's over… Huh?" Dr. Puri muttered with a husky tone. Despite her best attempts to sound defiant in the face of her impending obliteration, her tone passed more for being submissive, as it lacked any hint of aggression. "Look around this place. This is the Earth that you've saved from the horrible, sick, and twisted Dr. Puri…" the Android coughed out. Even though her visual input lagged and glitched out when she turned her head to face the bane they've etched into the flesh of their own home planet, she felt responsible for seeing it all before she went away.
Chayote raised her hand over her head. A lemon-colored energy blast formed in a crackling sparkle and began growing in size as the Super Saiyan put more and more energy into it. The Saiyan snarled while her tail lashed left and right. Like a dog that waited for an order to sic, Chayote was impatient to obliterate the woman that had nearly ruined her little corner of paradise she's found on Earth. The sooner this all is over, the sooner peace will return to Earth. No more Saiyans, no more demons, no more Frieza Army… The universe will, at last, be a safe enough place to raise a child.
"This makes me wonder just how much humanity remains in me. Do I still have a soul to purify? Do Artificial Humans get to go to an afterlife in the Otherworld? If so, I'd very much like to end up in the same place as Gero and Gebo…" Puri squinted and looked away as the light from the oversized energy sphere that Chayote was intending to throw at her was becoming overwhelming to look at.
"Chayote-san!" a somewhat familiar, shrieky-sounding voice called out from far away. Focus flicked back into Chayote's irises as she shook her head, and lowered her hand to turn back and face the energy source coming in hot from behind. Surprisingly enough, it didn't belong to a lone Super Saiyan warrior, but also another curious-looking brawler right beside him.
"Gohan?" Goku gasped from the sidelines. Seeing his own son fly in close enough to get caught in all the trouble, though realizing that in Puri's current state the amount of trouble that still could've been caused was limited, Goku took off to come closer to the pair.
The balding giant with a sprout of red hair focused his gaze on Goku. His look tightened with intense focus and his expression changed to straight out ire. The towering brute clenched his fists and seethed in some internal conflict, making Chayote hesitate to lower her guard even though Gohan was the one leading their pair and he apparently trusted this big guy enough to expose his back to him.
"This is… Another one of Puri's Androids! You dumbass, move aside!" Bardock growled, shoving Goku to the side as he jumped out in front of him and extended his hand to channel a yellow-colored energy blast that he fired promptly somewhere in between both Gohan and his companion. With a miffed look on his face, Gohan swatted the energy blast aside with his back fist. The boy's fist showed signs of bruising and a small trickle of blood ran down his backhand from his deflection. "Why would you put your own body on the line for this assassin!?"
"You're wrong!" Gohan objected vehemently. "Artificial Human No. 16 is no assassin! He's modeled after Dr. Puri-san's own son! He's the only one that can appeal to her for a peaceful resolution!"
"A peaceful resolution?" Vegeta closed his eyes while his lips slowly crept up his cheeks before the king of Saiyans burst into a peal of mocking laughter. He extended his hand and aimed at Dr. Puri's immobilized remains. "You're wrong, runt. We don't need this tin can for a peaceful resolution! I can resolve her into a million pieces right now! Big Bang Attack!"
A tenacious gust of air washed over Chayote's front and rustled her spiky, golden hair. For someone the size of a small house, Android 16 moved fast enough to dance with the strongest fighters Chayote's seen. Puri didn't build this guy like a pushover at all, which made the hysteric Super Saiyan wonder why she held this guy at bay all this time and would have rather sacrificed herself before sending this Artificial Human into the fray.
Artificial Human No. 16 swooped in front of the Big Bang Attack and caught it mid-air with both of his hands. He grumbled and struggled to keep it in between his hands but with a forceful roar, he compressed it into a minute, golden singularity and let it detonate in between his hands. The Android's stalwart body protected Dr. Puri from harm by proving himself a powerful shield from energy bursts or shock waves that could've sent her plummeting into a magma bath down below.
"See? This oversized bastard still defends her! He's working alongside her, just like the rest!" Vegeta barked out, pointing at Android 16.
"You're wrong," Android 16 replied. Even though his face was still locked in a scowl of violence and struggle, soon it shifted back to a calm demeanor full of balance and tranquility. "I am not working for Artificial Human No. 21, because I have only been activated about twelve minutes ago. Whatever plan Artificial Human No. 21 hatched, she wanted me out of it, which is why she kept me de-activated."
"Hmph… I guess she isn't all that smart then. To keep a powerhouse like that locked up in some warehouse somewhere…" Vegeta crossed his arms defiantly after realizing that there was little he could do to change the situation in his current state of wear and tear. Even his last Big Bang Attack, while enough to obliterate Dr. Puri as she was now, was just a pimple compared to his full power.
"Please, Chayote-san! I know you can feel that there's good in Dr. Puri! We don't have to destroy her! We can let her live and try to redeem herself, just like Tenshinhan-san, Piccolo-san, and even Vegeta-san have! Even grandpa invaded the Earth trying to kidnap dad, without caring what happened to Earth," Gohan put up his little dukes and hunched over, trying to show how much this mattered to him to the swollen Super Saiyan.
Chayote closed her eyes and breathed in. Recalling all the times learning the craft of managing her own business from Bulma, she drew from those experiences of controlling herself to visibly shrink down to her ordinary meek side while her spiky golden hair rested on her shoulders in a hectic yet graceful descent. The strained clothes that were about to tear now hung loosely over Chayote's body as her muscles and inflated features no longer threatened to tear what's left of them up.
"I don't care about destroying Puri. I just need her to stop ruining everyone's home. I don't give a crap if she tries to kill me every once in a while. I just need her to keep her paws off of my son and stop wrecking everything," Chayote turned to Puri face-to-face as if appealing to the devastated Android and laying her terms for a peaceful resolution.
"Have you lost your mind!?" Vegeta lashed out from the sidelines. "I won't let my people share a planet with this maniac! I refuse it!"
"I would have never thought I'd be sharing this planet with you either," Chayote shrugged. "One thing you'll have to learn about Earth is that if you want to live here, you live by its rules and step up to protect it for everyone else when it comes under threat. Otherwise, the party's over for all of us living here."
"This goes way beyond just being a stupid idea. Though if Puri gets to live a few more days, maybe she'll get around to fixing me one of these days," Bardock ran his hands over the back of his head and ruffled his messy hair.
"I see… She can start working for Bulma again and make us all sorts of new training machines and new Androids to fight!" Goku pumped his fists, getting excited. "As long as they're a lot less murdery…" he scratched his head when the problem with his idea popped in his head at long last.
"Forget it," Chayote waved her hand. "I've no problem with not blasting you away. You spared the life of my son when I asked you to. That means a lot to me. Enough for me to consider leaving you alive, but you're not staying anywhere near Earth. This is my home now and you're a danger to it, so take a hike. I don't care where you go, but I won't let you live here to threaten this planet some other time."
"Forget it!" Dr. Puri yelled out, rattling on her makeshift debris prison. From the looks of it, she wasn't afraid to lose any more limbs or to completely ruin her artificial body as a price for escaping and getting to continue this fight a little longer.
"Tsk, what kind of Legendary Super Saiyan are you?" Vegeta seethed, clenching his fists and gnashing his teeth. "She just threatened you and your miserable planet, blast her away already! Show her no mercy!"
"You're the reason my son and my husband are dead. There's nothing you can say or do that can make that amount of hurt feel like any less. This can only end in one way between us. My only regret is that we're fighting on Earth, which deprives me of the option to self-destruct and leave you choking on space, you wretched animal!" Artificial Human No. 21 called out to Chayote, though the Saiyan didn't appear to sell this challenge with any amount of inherent spite.
"And how do you think I feel?" Chayote finally opened her eyes, giving No. 21 a blunt look. "The Red Ribbon Army and their mercenary assassin found me first. They tried shooting me, stabbing me, and blowing me up and ended up blowing themselves up. Your husband sent his unfinished prototypes at me and tried to blow me up too. The scattered commanders of the Red Ribbons tried killing my friends to ruin my life. And you… In just trying to cause me pain and suffering, you've nearly doomed Earth itself. And you care about it too, I know you do. And yet this bullshit between us will leave both of us blinded and will leave everyone around us paying the price. This shit has to end for good."
An asphyxiating grip locked around Chayote's chest from behind. In a strong heave, the Saiyan could not feel the ground under her feet. She didn't need to see the face of the square-jawed giant to know that Artificial Human No. 16 locked her up.
"What are you doing!?" Gohan cried out. "This isn't why I activated you!"
"So it was you that activated him…" Dr. Puri chuckled before succumbing to a painful and bloody cough. "For an intelligent boy, you are such a fool, Gohan. Do you know why I left Artificial Human No. 16 to rot in the abandoned lab I hatched him in? Because when he lays inactive, he looks exactly like him. Like my Gebo. But when I activate him… Everything about his programming reminds me he's just a broken, metal toy that I try to cope with the death of my son with. Just stuffing a sprinkle of someone's brain and flesh into something doesn't make them that person. Artificial Human No. 16 is just a doll, a gadget that a sick and lost, grieving mother built to lie to herself and make herself feel better."
"Dr. Puri… Mother…" Artificial Human No. 16 called out to the impaled artificial woman. "Please, it's not yet too late. Just tell them you accept Chayote's conditions and we can still live together and learn about this universe together like an actual family."
"A family? Didn't you hear me the first time, you broken machine? You're just a metal suit of lies, nothing more. I've built you as something that could give my son new life and you've failed that goal. Therefore, you're a failed model, No. 16. You should've never been activated at all…" Dr. Puri replied to the gentle giant with a deadpan look that accumulated tears and was transitioning into the field of spite. "I've been such a fool… I should've just let Gebo go… Both of us should have. That way, we would've never had to fail over and over again."
"Chayote, what are you waiting for? Transform and rip that bastard's arms out, then beat him with them!" Vegeta demanded with a hateful froth shooting from his mouth. The only reason he didn't attack again may have been because he had little to no energy left. Also, quick and forceful movement may have aggravated his injuries to bleed even worse than they already were. The king was already on the verge of passing out.
And yet, despite the orders from the king of Saiyans, or maybe because of them, Chayote remained in her shrunken form and just partly kept Android 16's arms further from squeezing the life out of her, but locked enough to hold both of them in place. A single popped vein branched out on her forehead as a sign of half-assed resistance on her part, just enough to keep her from passing out but not forceful enough to break the hold.
"That's not true! You don't mean that!" Gohan hammered his fists in a forceful downward swipe while tears ran down the corners of his eyes. "You can't possibly mean that! You love Artificial Human No. 16! Otherwise, you'd have eaten him up like the other failures and strengthened yourself!"
"Maybe…" Dr. Puri's face mellowed out to subdued somberness as she relaxed and slumped helplessly on the bars that were skewering her remains. "Maybe I couldn't harm someone donning the face of my poor boy, just like I couldn't ruin the life of another mother and doom her to the same fate she's doomed me to. When he was de-activated, he looked like just my Gebo. So peaceful, just… Asleep. Forever. But all of this was just a dream, it wasn't real…"
"IT IS REAL TO ME!" Artificial Human No. 16 roared out, shaking the ground and sending rippling shock waves with the boom of his voice. "You've built me from a box of scraps and dead tissue samples. Even if I am not Gebo come back to life, like you wanted me to be, I'm still alive! And the fact that you made me from nothing still makes you my mother under my understanding!"
"No. 16…" Dr. Puri appeared shaken by the Android's words. Whether it was because of the simulated physical reaction to grievous injury or because of something deeper, a lone tear ran down her cheek.
"You said that you should've let Gebo go, that you should've moved past the scorns of the past! I believe you may have been right with that estimation, mother! Otherwise, what is the point of eternal life if you live that life hating someone you're going to outlive anyway!? Leave this revenge plot behind, leave all of this behind and let's live a new life together!" Artificial Human No. 16 yelled out.
"Mother… You called me mother… Oh, God… I've been so obsessed with Gebo that I didn't realize just how many children I've created and how I've treated them…" Dr. Puri slumped her head down.
Chayote felt the grip around her arms loosen and the muscular branches locking her down widened enough to slip her down to the ruined stone platform while Artificial Human No. 16 staggered to his slumped and lifeless mother, reaching out to her as his face and horrified jaw twitched, fearing the worst. It was then that Puri leaned her head back, letting her hair fall back while she stared at the choking fumes accumulating as dooming shrouds over her head.
"I've abandoned you too, didn't I, One-Nine?" Dr. Puri said in a high-pitched and somber tone. "What kind of mother have I been to all of you all this time?"
"The only one we have…" Artificial Human No. 16 flew up to Puri and chopped his adamantine hand behind her, snapping the bars holding her numb body in place and smashing the rocky platform while he scooped the broken artificial woman up with his free arm and pulled her close to him. He turned back to Chayote with an unsympathetic pair of eyes, though the corners of his lips tilted a bit. "We'll leave your planet and we won't threaten it ever again. My prime objective is to destroy you, disassemble your life to make you crave death in every way imaginable. I'll abandon all of that too, for the sake of a better, more peaceful life."
"I'd appreciate that…" Chayote nodded after standing back up and stretching her back as all the wriggling and struggling got it all numb. "If I never saw another Android or a ribbon logo of any color ever again, I wouldn't mind that one bit."
"Wait..." Dr. Puri said in a weakened tone. Her eyes gleamed pink and fired off a bubblegum-colored jolt from her eyes, producing a stone-blue-colored chip with golden cybernetic patterns on it. "This is the module that Future Trunks came here for. It'll help Bulma reverse-engineer everything I've built. Mecha-Frieza is a Patient Zero of sorts in terms of my most cutting edge work."
"Huh... Trunks went through all that trouble for this little cinch..." Chayote winced, eyeing the little trinket in between her fingers.
"You must be joking…" Vegeta stumbled forward but winced in pain and nearly collapsed while Bardock grabbed hold of him from behind. Seeing this matter as already resolved, Son Goku rushed off to his son with a cheerful smile on his face.
"Who knows? Maybe all of this is wrong after all and maybe Artificial Humans are only meant to live out their programming and nothing more? But I'd like to believe that this is wrong. My mother lived her life in pursuit of vengeance, she's given up on her youth and her body. Maybe even her soul, that is yet to be determined. But what she achieved by that is teaching me that life in pursuit of violence and vengeance will lead only to pain and misery, which in term helped me break my own programming. And making the lives of your children better by teaching them something through your own mistakes, so that they don't have to learn from their own, is what defines a good mother, I think," Artificial Human No. 16 said before nodding and taking off, cradling the artificial woman he labeled his mother and was ready to die protecting.
"That was a really dumb thing you did. Bringing that lug here," Bardock shook his head, looking at Gohan. "But scolding you ain't my job. It's the job of my kid, so I'll leave it at that."
"It was dangerous. If Puri gobbled him up immediately, she'd have powered way up and probably killed us all…" Chayote followed the one massive pain in her ass flying away with a promise to never bother her again and leave her little paradise in peace, as far as they could help it.
"Still, it all worked out just fine in the end, so I'm proud of you, Gohan!" Goku smacked his son lightly on the back before locking his right arm around Gohan's head and nudging his head playfully. "I usually resolve stuff by swinging my fists and hope stuff will just work out in the end. This could've really gone hairy, but it ended up just fine because of you."
"What backward-bullshit, nonsense lesson is that, Kakarot!?" Vegeta yelled out from behind. "Is that what sort of rubbish you've been feeding your son? No wonder he's getting all those weird ideas and bringing our enemies just the thing they need to kill us right to them…"
"I was terrified at first," Gohan nodded, letting his golden hair fade out back into black, though their formation remained mostly the same. "But Dr. Puri is probably the smartest being in the entire universe. She must've seen the chance to absorb Artificial Human No. 16 immediately. The thought must have crossed her mind before we even landed. But when she didn't go for it, I knew it would all end peacefully. Dr. Puri was just a grieving mother who channeled that gloom in all the wrong ways, so the only person who could have reached her was No. 16."
"I guess… Shit…" Chayote cursed after turning around and seeing lightning lashing out from the noxious fumes overhead and magma coiling in mad, boiling arcs all over the place. Hot-red threatened to drown the entire remains of the world because of the series of unbelievable battles for the fate of the world that took place. "We probably should've asked Puri to fix all this shit too before she took off. That'd have begun to make up for all the stuff she did, at least."
"I know the deal was that Dr. Puri and her family of Artificial Humans never set foot on Earth again, but… I kind of want to see Artificial Human No. 16 again some time…" Gohan turned to where No. 16 and No. 21 were no longer visible on the horizon, staring at the invisible point in the sky longingly before snapping back to the world they still had to fix.
At long last, the nightmare of the Androids was over.
