With the Legendary Great Ape rolling aside from the smashed Ultimate Android, the crushed titan could let out a pitiful wheeze and look around to witness the extent of the damage he had suffered from the rear slam. The Ultimate Gero's right leg had been detached from the knee down and his left arm had been detached from the shoulder down. The pummeled Ultimate Android glanced at the extent of his injuries with a long face before scrambling to get up and reattach all the missing pieces.
Despite his best efforts, it didn't seem like the mind-controlled Legendary Great Ape was about to let her opponent lick his wounds. A massive fist covered the skies with a black shade before crushing the fleeing Ultimate Android and drilling him deep through the diamond-dense ice and into the splashing oceans of magma beneath it. With the light inconvenience of magma scolding its knuckles, the Legendary Great Ape snarled and smashed its arms down with a hammering strike once more.
Caring little if it was actually smashing anything at all, the colossal Great Ape monster brought its arms up and down with each scolding bite, making it madder and madder and bolstering the strength and berserk wrath behind each smash. With the entire icy continent collapsing, the Great Ape collapsed into the magma knee-deep and had to burst out and float into the air where weightless ice platforms kept on floating as the gravitational laws of the planet had gone completely out of whack.
The Ultimate Android burst from the oceans of magma, bruised and burnt, securing his missing arm back in place with his missing shin already attached. Panting heavily, the overwhelmed Ultimate Android landed on top of an elevated icy pillar.
"No, no... No! I will not have it!" the Ultimate Android bellowed in denial of his inferior power and his toughness ranking much lower than the amount of beating that his enemy could dish out as he raised his arms over his head and formed violet energy masses around his hands before waving them down. "Photon Wave!" he yelled out, sinking the image of the Legendary Great Ape in a resonating chain reaction of devastating explosions that made the beast roar into the sky in pain.
Turning his back to the giant monster, the Ultimate Android followed the input in his radar sensors to locate Vegeta. Tiny red dots lit up in the center of Ultimate No. 20's blanked-out eyes and beamed out in the form of laser beams homing in on Vegeta. Just like before, the King of Saiyans ordered the distracted Legendary Great Ape to roll through the sky to cover up for him, and the behemoth did just that. However, just as the beams were about to hit the rolling Great Ape in the back, they twisted and bent out of shape, careening off and around the beast before punching straight into Vegeta's chest.
The King of Saiyans lit up his Super Saiyan flare at the final microsecond before the beams would've scorched his heart cavity out in an instant. This may have saved his life as, because of that, the beams merely drilled into his chest and inflicted grievous damage, but didn't make it through his heart or penetrate his body all the way through. The perforated King of Saiyans coughed and gargled with blood before falling down on his back senseless with a golden wash passing down his hair that left them black, and his teal gaze became dull and greyed out. It took Vegeta a few blinks before his consciousness returned to him, digging and writhing back into the painful world of reality where he laid with a burnt-up chest cavity down on the ground.
"Vegeta!" Goku yelled out, somehow managing to rise on wobbly feet to stagger toward Vegeta. The Legendary Great Ape monster turned its attention to Goku and sent a thunderous left hook his way. The unexpectedness of it all made Goku blank out. The Saiyan did his best to ignite the most powerful King Kai's Fist he still could in his current state to race to avoid the smashing he was about to receive, but this venture was only halfway successful.
The crushed Saiyan let out an agonizing scream, bellowing the torture in his lower section out as both of Goku's legs turned to dust and a bloody mess. The Saiyan fell flat on his back, panting heavily as his eyes greyed out and Goku's consciousness removed him from awareness of all the suffering and shock his body was going through at the time for his safety. Seeing the annoying loudmouth that attracted her attention down, the Legendary Great Ape monster scooped up an icy continent out of the sky and smashed it over its head. The raging beast unleashed a massive energy wave from its mouth that beamed out into space and reduced any planets or planetoids it touched to cinders and sparkly space dust in an instant, nearly decimating all the resident star systems the ultimate battle was taking place in.
"Damn it... Without Vegeta pulling the strings, Chayote went berserk..." Bardock hissed out, desperately working to overcome his injuries and return to his feet, but he couldn't. That may have been for the better, however, as any movement from his part may have caught the attention of the rampaging lime-furred rage monster that'd have obliterated him in a blink.
"Hmph... It would be all too pleasant to leave you all here to bleed out or get eaten by this freak of nature. I'd imagine no better punishment for Chayote than to be forced to devour her friends whole or smash them like berries under a boot, but... I will not allow any creature to reign supreme over me! I am the Ultimate Android and the solution to the omnipotence paradox will be meaningless if I am not the almighty being in the universe!" the Ultimate Android lit up with a vibrant, warm-red aura as the pure-white energy beams fired off from his eyes. "Bionic Punisher!" he yelled out, supercharging his energy beams to their full intensity to sever Chayote's tail with a quick swipe of the beams.
The distraught colossal monster roared out in a twinge that passed over its rear end but, instead of severing the tail, the Ultimate Bionic Punisher merely left a trail of black scrapes and burns over the lime fur without even breaking the skin. This outcome severely shocked the Ultimate Android, who covered himself up and yelled out something unintelligible and fear-driven out of instinct as the Legendary Great Ape became distracted with him instead of the next loudmouth to pique its attention.
A devastating low blow blasted the levitating icy platform Ultimate Gero stood on to pieces. The battered Ultimate Android took up into the air, covering himself up and whining in agony as the thrashing beast began smacking and slapping and stomping him about with no forethought. Not even the impeccable Data Input function could predict the utter berserk warrior madness of a raging beast. Grabbing the beaten Ultimate Android with its free hand, the Legendary Great Ape began smashing and grounding it into its hand with its other fist before shaking the droopy with machine oil ruins and jabbing at it playfully like a cat teasing its soon-to-be-prey.
After a barrage of quick jabs, the Legendary Great Ape kicked the Ultimate Artificial Human off into the stratosphere before jumping up into the sky and disappearing even higher up. The Ultimate No. 20 grabbed hold of its battered head, shaking himself to awaken and get himself through the daze and confusion. By the time he noticed the bent out-of-shape and blazing planetoid over his head, it had been too late. Having grabbed a nearby moon with both its arms, like a basketball, the Legendary Great Ape straight out dunked it at its loopy prey and carried the rocky and fiery mess all the way back down to the planet.
The disastrous super-impact caused a tremendous expulsion of fire and molten minerals into the air in an expanding pillar as a concussive shock wave capable of obliterating and shoving every atom from the body of anyone unlucky to have been caught in its wake trembled and spread through the planet. Seeing the devastating impact, Bardock grabbed hold of Yamcha and put him over his shoulder, floating toward Vegeta and kicking him sideways to fly atop of Goku's limp and crippled body. Outracing the incoming shock wave felt impossible. The deafening rumbling, the white light, and the searing heat felt like they were nearly caressing Bardock's cheek, but Yamcha's hand felt Vegeta's back at just the right time to Instant Transmission them out of there.
*****
"What's going on?" Bulma's worried voice was the first thing to reach Bardock, who just wanted some peace and quiet after having just pulled out from that absolute nightmare. "Where's Chayote?"
Bardock stretched out over the pleasant steel floor of the Capsule Corps Star, feeling like his rattled ribcage flat out thrived in the artificial conditions of the simulated Earth-like gravity of the station compared to the gravitational conundrum that was the soon-to-be-dead planet Ultimate Gero and Chayote were left on. A teen girl carrying a few scrapes and bruises with an absolutely blood-soaked karate gi modestly approached the sprawled-out Saiyan warrior.
"Please... I need to know what happened. Chayote-san has a son back home," Videl pleaded with the overwhelmed and struggling to refrain from passing out half-converted Saiyan.
"Goddamn pandemonium..." Bardock sat up and looked the teen in the eyes. His honest look did the best possible job to define the madness that had been occurring light-years away on a remote planet in a whole different quadrant of space. "Are you guys sure we can't just resurrect Chayote back to life?"
"We've no clue, she's never died before so we don't know how soon the universe would end without her," Gohan limped up to his grandfather.
Bardock's eyes widened in surprise to see his grandson looking so chipper. When the Saiyan's spirits felt the most crushed, his grandson appeared to be celebrating premature victory. "Hey... What are you so over the moon about?"
"My plan... It worked. Vegeta-san's gamble. It paid off. Chayote-san bought enough time. This'll all be over soon," Gohan clenched his fists with a reassuring nod and kneeled to place his hand over his grandfather's shoulder.
*****
The Ultimate No. 20 slowly levitated over the swirling whirlpools of a bleeding hot planet. A strong expulsion of energy from his body cleared out the motherlode of all pyroclastic flows. The data running up and down in the Ultimate Android's eyes kept betraying him, displaying strange and irrational symbols in whacky sequences and sparking with frequent crashes which made the deadpan eyes of the Ultimate Gero come back to life as he browsed the cataclysmic wreckage for his bestial foe.
It began as a shadow. A shadow that loomed larger as the Legendary Great Ape came closer. Then, a pair of hands sifted through the hot ash and reached out from the shroud to lock themselves around the Ultimate Android and crush him into a wet mess of broken parts. That was when a green and orange figure shuffled in between the titanic beast and the battered muscle-head. The hypersonic giant rammed his shoulder into the Ultimate Android, sending him crashing away from the beast's emerging hands.
"Android Barrier!" the red-haired burly man yelled out, extending his bulky arms to the sides and erecting a teal-colored electric barrier around him. The clapping hands of the Legendary Great Ape snapped shut around the barrier, squeezing on it and littering it with cracks as the mysterious interloper grunted and wheezed from immense tension.
A black and white, round spacecraft swooped in from the pyroclastic flow and into the clearing, opening its airlock to reveal two feminine shapes standing by the edge. A woman with a lab coat and wild, curly, auburn hair and another. A doll-like little girl with red leather boots and black tights. Pale-skinned with turquoise eyes. Wearing a frilly brown, white, and black Lolita-style dress over a tight black corset and a shirt and tie.
"One-Nine, de-power Chayote," the auburn-haired woman corrected her glasses while addressing her doll-like daughter.
"Yes, mother," the doll-like girl teetered over the edge of the airlock until letting go and entering freefall, only to engage flight mid-fall and instantly break the sound barrier while accelerating far further beyond in speed. In a blink, One-Nine reached the hovering Power Ball moon. The doll-like Super Artificial Human extended her hands and began absorbing the moon one sprinkling dust of energy at a time. The rate of absorption escalated quickly. Dust turned to clusters before the entire moon swirled around the open absorption pads on the Super Artificial Android's hands.
The infuriated Legendary Great Ape snarled, letting go of the burly red-haired Artificial Human struggling to stay whole in the beast's grip. With the Android Barrier having shattered, Artificial Human No. 16 emerged from the beast's grip, slightly dented and bruised. A few of his joints spat sparks and his left eye remained closed as the flesh had bruised off of the metal skeleton from the pressure.
"Gebo..." the Ultimate Android muttered after getting a hold of himself since the surprise attack that had saved his life. "Could it be?"
The Legendary Great Ape monster tried letting out another world-shaking roar from the bottom of its chest, but the voice that broke out sounded oddly feminine and human. As if beast and woman both roared at the same time before the second overpowered the first and the lime-colored fur changed back to gold and the gold changed back to ordinary brown. The Great Ape's fur began retracting back into her skin at the same time as the Great Ape began shrinking back down to a humanoid size.
"Father..." Artificial Human No. 16 turned to the Ultimate Android. "You've molded with enough Artificial Humans to transcend the Super Artificial Human class..."
"Correct, I call this flawless state - Ultimate Artificial Human..." the Ultimate Gero posed, extending his arms to the sides and striking a few flexing poses.
Android 16 didn't humor the man behind the plans and ideas that motivated his mother to build him with a response, instead turning his look up to Super One-Nine and Artificial Human No. 21, both of whom descended to take a stance on the devastated planet's surface. The doll-like Super One-Nine held unconscious Chayote hanging down by her hair, unceremoniously nude with only intense pyroclastic flow covering up most of her body.
"I didn't know you survived, Gero. I came as fast as I could. I've left far and deep into space but you seemed to have chosen a faraway location for your fight so we got lucky," Artificial Human No. 21 fixed her glasses after the quick swoop with her free hand used as support.
"Vomi..." Ultimate Gero said, struggling to find words to say. "You may think I am thankful for your assistance, but only because of your ignorance and outdated intellectual capabilities."
Super One-Nine turned to her mother as if waiting for a command to follow to break the trash-talking Ultimate Artificial Human. When such a command did not come, the doll-like Artificial Human turned her turquoise eyes back on the remains of the prodigious scientist, figuring out the core principles behind Artificial Human technology long before the technology was even available.
"I don't use that name anymore, dear," Artificial Human No. 21 closed her eyes with a self-evident look of bitterness in her expression. "If you must call me by a name and find "Artificial Human No. 21" a mouthful, Puri will do. It may be just a fake name I offered Bulma so that my true identity as your widow wasn't discovered, but I've come to prefer that name."
"As I've said, 21," the Ultimate Artificial Human brushed it off as meaningless drivel. "I should break you and those inferior offspring where you stand for interfering with my work. But, because I feel pity for your inferior classes and builds, I'll spare your lives."
"Father, what are you talking about?" Artificial Human No. 16 snapped. "We've come here to help you and tell you to abandon this foolish vendetta against Chayote! We can live together now, as a genuine family, with the entire universe as our home! Not even the sky is our limit, father!"
"Poor Gebo..." the Ultimate Gero chuckled while slowly shaking his head in disappointment at his son's limited mental capacity, by his understanding. "Can't you see that your interference got in my way? I am an Ultimate Artificial Human. Peerless and invincible. Yet my life's mission is to create one better than I, to solve the omnipotence paradox that has plagued lowly humans seeking meaning and greater cosmic understanding for millennia. Chayote had become a threat to my stance as all-powerful, so I must destroy her with my own hands to correct the conditions of my experiment. Only an all-powerful god can create one greater than him and solve the omnipotence paradox, after all. Thusly, if I cannot crush Chayote with my own strength, I am just a lowly man tinkering with toys."
"And what's wrong with that?" Artificial Human No. 21 shot a scolding stare from her reflective glasses at the titan that was once her husband. Both of them had walked a long journey to where they were and lost most of what they were along the way, but never what truly defined them. At the edge of their reunion, just when it seemed like their family could live and prosper once more, the Ultimate Gero seemed to choose a different path for himself. Despite all that Puri had sacrificed for him.
"I'm not even mad at you, Vomi," the Ultimate No. 20 sighed in bitter disappointment. "How can I be mad when you're such an old and outdated model? Riddled with flaws... Though an ultimate creator never fixes, he scraps and begins anew."
A pink energy beam pierced the shroud of hot ashes before flicking straight into the Ultimate Android's forehead, throwing his head back with a violent jerk.
"Call me old one more time, dear..." Artificial Human No. 21 hissed.
"Humph..." the Ultimate No. 20 dropped his chin back in its place, revealing his face to be stuck in a psychotic grin. "You know, when they awakened me from being just a string of frozen brain tissue and reconnected me to the grid, I learned about your failure. I realized that everything we've worked toward was wasted and failed miserably in your poor, misguided hands."
"You're wrong. I've made my dream come to life. Look around you, your family is here. You need nothing else," Android 21 gestured at Super One-Nine and No. 16 standing on both of her sides.
"You didn't let me finish, dear," Ultimate Gero wiggled his finger in front of him with a cartoonish expression before clenching an adamant fist out of that hand. "I've learned to deal with losing you and losing Gebo. And once I've obtained this ultimate power, I realized that this isn't that bad. I don't need you and I don't need Gebo anymore. You are all just rusty, pathetic, outdated past. Nothing but old..."
Artificial Human No. 21 shot her hand out wide open and formed a swirling sphere of pink and black energy whirling toward the center and colliding into a lone singularity. Electromagnetic ripples shocked across the time-space, making everything around wave and ripple like a reflection on a disturbed surface of a lake. Ultimate Gero grunted aloud with his voice stretching out across multiple pitches and adopting many different volumes as his ultimate body clanged and shook like a box of tools when a powerful super-magnet hovered above it.
Then, the Ultimate Artificial Human disassembled into spare parts with a single overwhelming pulse of energy taking it apart and began shooting toward Artificial Human No. 21. The ultimateness of Gero's body slammed against Dr. Puri's making it ripple, but the oversized, complex parts just oozed into her like liquid being poured into a larger jug. By the time Artificial Human No. 21 was finished absorbing the mechanical parts of the Ultimate Android, Dr. Gero was just a pathetic charred wraith with a greyed-out mustache and a beard.
Unable to cope with the catastrophic conditions of the dying planet, a single blowing heatwave dissolved Dr. Gero's remains into a sprinkle of ash that became part of the pyroclastic whole. Not a trace that could have been resurrected remained, not even a soul or a body that could be brought back because the Artificial Human that died had long since lost his humanity. Only memories of the real Dr. Gero, the man that Puri once loved, lingered warm and cozy in her memories. In more ways than one, Dr. Gero lived on within her.
"Don't feel bad. You warned him, mother..." Super One-Nine smiled sheepishly.
"It is hard to imagine a decent man being capable of becoming such a monster," Artificial Human No. 16 spoke while staring blankly at the gloomy and burning skies lashing out with fracturing vicious thunderbolts in all directions.
"How sad. He abandoned his humanity for this supposedly ultimate power, yet all he got in return was raw strength. I can't sense a single new talent or function in this ultimate body of his," Android 21 observed her hands as if they were no longer her own before slivers of tears clouded her vision. "Come, children, we've got to take Chayote back to Bulma's fancy space station. Her little son must be worried sick back home."