The golden mane of the deep-blue lion lit up with bright light, expelling electric jolts from each separate strand of hair and creating a considerable lightning storm in the core chamber of Planet Luud. Android 16 placed his arms out in front of him, but the resonating electricity was too much for him to defend against, not to mention not something that could just be easily blocked. Twitching and jerking at the mercy of the uncompromising current, the cumbersome Android fell down onto a low-hanging platform from which he trailed with smoke.
"Gebo!" Android 21 called out with desperation in her voice. It wasn't often that she dropped the façade of control and gave in to emotion, though hurting her family was one of the premier ways of achieving this result. The mechanical beast plummeted down, slamming its paw against Android 16 while the rest of its paws held itself etched onto the vertical walls of the core chamber and suspended above an abyssal drop. The mechanical lion opened its jaws and reared its sabertooth fangs but before it could blast Android 16 away point-blank with a mouth energy blast, Dr. Puri came in from above with a diving kick.
Kicking off of the stunned beast, Android 21 flipped backward, gliding through the air and positioning herself above it with an arm raised over her head. Bright crimson energy began seeping into her open hand. While Android 21 couldn't quite absorb any of these Machine Mutants, with them being a living synthetic race rather than simple machines she could merge with, that didn't mean that Dr. Puri couldn't use the machinery and gadgets present in this cybernetic facility, and drain its power to bolster her blasts. Seeing these cultists feeding energy into something massive just like a standard Spirit Bomb gave Artificial Human No. 21 this very idea.
"Wh-What's going on? Our tech is freaking out!" the cloaked cardinal of this Luud Star cult dropped his attention from the cruel Super Android putting the hurt on him and focused it all on the malfunctioning and short-circuiting tech around him that fed red energy bolts to Dr. Puri's energy ball.
"Total Detonation Ball!" Artificial Human No. 21 chanted out, throwing her hand down and directing the massive red and black energy ball to hurl toward the reeling mechanical lion. Howling, the mechanical beast took the blast head-on and flew back into the abyss down below. Dr. Puri corrected her spectacles, feeling like this wasn't the last they'd seen of this hardy and savage beast.
"Mother..." Artificial Human No. 16 sat up, shaking his head to snap out of the daze and malfunctioning sensory input caused by the physical beating he took.
"Stop fooling around, Gebo. You've received my upgrades earlier on the ship, assimilate them already and transform into a Super Android. I won't stand seeing you getting hurt," the artificial woman scolded her son with a strict and scolding look.
"I... I'd rather not," No. 16 replied before standing up on his own and cracking his neck to each side to get the feel of his mechanical body again and run complex system diagnostics to determine which of his functions were crashing and in need of repairs after this conflict ended.
"What do you mean, you'd rather not?" Dr. Puri lashed out, losing some of her cool again. "I'm your mother, aren't I? Don't you trust my judgment about what's best for you?"
"Sorry, mother. I love you just like you love us, but... I've come to learn from Son Gohan that someone isn't meant to be what their parents want them to become. It's up to someone to define their own path in life themselves, even if they take their parents' advice to mind," Android 16 explained himself before hearing clamoring roars from down the abyssal hatch of the core room. "I have nothing but respect and love for you, mother, but I'm not yet sure if becoming a Super Android is what I want for me... I'm not sure if I'm okay assimilating the parts of another Android just like me to fuel that transformation, to delete the essence of another being just like me just to become stronger. I don't think I believe in the strength that is achieved through such means."
Hissing with a plasma crackle, the whip of the hooded cardinal ripped through the air and smacked at the face of the distracted Super One-Nine, throwing the doll-like young lady aside. Rushing through the distance between them, the cumbersome cardinal slammed the weight of his entire body, sending the flinched Super Android slamming into the wall of the core room and falling down on her front. Then, the cardinal stomped on the back of the young lady's head and lit up his plasma whip before frantically whipping the exposed back of his opponent with a peal of maniacal laughter.
"I'm not sure who you are or where you've come from, but it doesn't matter. Anyone who comes here becomes food to the great Lord Luud and part of his grandiose wholeness! A sinful young lady like you has no purpose in life, some artificial machine has no soul so you're not worth anything more than the energy you'll provide Lord Luud with, I'm afraid!" the maniacal cardinal bawled while whipping the troubled Super Android with his plasma lashes.
Hovering her lower body off the ground, Super One-Nine drove her foot into the chin of the sadistic cardinal, forcing him to stumble off of her while the Super Android returned to her feet with a hover. Twirling around through the air like a spinning top, with one leg sticking out, Super One-Nine navigated around the extreme reach of the hooded cardinal's whip and slammed straight into his front before turning around him and giving him a proper spinning pummeling before landing on her feet and throwing a finishing roundhouse that sent the cardinal slamming against the wall and leaving an indentation in it before he slumped to the ground on his rear looking loopy.
"You're wrong," she stated calmly while patting down her frilly dress that got all ruffled up from the hectic engagement and sifting through her doll-like hair with her pale hands. "I used to believe that the purpose of a machine is that which its creator assigns to it, but, after becoming a part of my mother's family, I've come to realize that even a machine can determine the direction of its own life. A cyborg from the future once told me that human feelings that empower them are mere chemistry and that nothing prevents an Artificial Human from emulating that chemistry if they're advanced enough. He himself used those same chemical reactions to empower himself past the wall of his limits. And even though it feels a bit artificial at the moment, I believe that one day I too shall understand that chemistry and offer my family the true human love they deserve."
Android 21 aimed her hand down, expelling a hail of red energy bolts at the mechanical lion that ran up the core chamber walls, charging back at its targets. The beast appeared to simply power through No. 21's energy barrage and rushed at her with a pounce, seeking to pin her down just like he had done to the son of her makeshift family. The blue lion seemed frozen in mid-air for a second, stunned at this moment in time, before a crude shove sent him crashing into the wall and through the railing to the right. Android No. 16 slammed his shoulder straight into the beast's jaws and sent him flying before preparing to engage it in battle again.
The blue lion opened its mouth wide open and expelled a machine-gun barrage of bright plasma bolts that forced Artificial Human No. 21 to take cover and weather them in place. "Careful, mother! My sensors indicate a massive energy build-up in this model. It's preparing for something powerful!" Artificial Human No. 16 warned the matriarch of his family just a moment before the lion snapped its jaws shut and took a pouncing position again.
A powerful lemon-colored energy aura engulfed the mechanical beast as it took a pounce directly aimed at Android 21. Not feeling like letting the lion pin her down, Dr. Puri rushed back at it and grabbed hold of it by the large paws, flipping it over her and derailing its predatory charge while making it land on its feet on the other side. The lion snapped its jaws wide open, firing an intense mouth blast at No. 21 unexpectedly. Android 16 called out to his mother just moments before the mouth blast engulfed her but, after it subsided, he sighed easier seeing an Android Barrier protective bubble humming around her.
Vanishing and appearing right in front of the blue lion with a golden mane, No. 16 threw a quick yet resounding jab right at its snout before throwing his entire body into a shoulder charge that shoved the stunned beast back like a bulldozer. Grabbing it by the open and loose jaws, Android 16 flipped it over and flung it into the nearest wall before dashing right up to the beast and throwing a pummeling barrage of punches and kicks and slamming a double ax handle to the top of the beast's head. This left the lion plummeting down the hatch again, though only for a second as its paws stuck to the walls as if assisted by its electromagnetic paw pads.
Blue crosshairs lit up the lion's yellow eyes while its jaw snapped open. The cybernetic beast took aim at Dr. Puri from the darkness of the core chamber hatch and fired a precise beam straight at her forehead that rocked her head back. Once Android 21 lowered her head back, a graze shined on the injured area, and let a puny trickle of cherry-colored blood drip down her face.
"I can see what you're doing, mother," Android 16 turned to the matriarch of the Android family. "You're putting your body at stake to make me scared for your well-being and force me to transform. It won't work. However, I do care for you, so please stop getting hurt on purpose."
"Oh... Is that what I'm doing?" No. 21 chuckled, licking the trickling blood off her lip before shrugging her shoulders in a teasing manner. "Well, well... Caught, I suppose."
The blue lion vanished, pouncing through the core chamber at previously unseen speed and becoming just a deep-blue blur that was difficult to perceive because of the dim lighting of the area. Even the energy readings coming off from the sensory systems in Puri's family of Androids struggled to keep up with the aggressive guardian of the Cult of Luud.
"Heh, heh... Leon is going to gobble your mommy and brother up. Don't worry though, Leon is a Machine Mutant, so he doesn't need food. He'll just process those two and the energy within them before transferring them to Lord Luud!" the hooded cardinal laughed out, putting his arms up as if in prayer to the many-armed fiendish statue in the center of the core chamber.
Seizing the moment while the maniacal Cardinal Mutchy was distracted, Super One-Nine dashed right up at his face and slammed her open palm into the center of his chest, striking with enough force to release a concussive shockwave from the other side of the cardinal's back and stunning the purple-skinned ogre. The rough-looking browless face of Cardinal Mutchy slipped out from the face rags as his eyes bulged out and the cardinal's tongue stuck out from the immense pain of the strike.
Slapping with the open hand, Super One-Nine sent the ragged cardinal flying before vanishing and appearing before him to throw a controlled barrage of chain punches delivered so elegantly that her entire lower body didn't twitch enough to rustle her frilly dress. The Super Android finished her combination with a roundhouse to Cardinal Mutchy's jaw that sent the purple-skinned ogre face-planting at the left wall of the core chamber.
"Whatever, but you're opening yourself up way too much," Super One-Nine ran her porcelain-skinned hand through her brown locks while keeping her eyes on the battered priest. "Sorry, but it's about time that I finish you off and help mother deal with that insufferable kitty-cat."
The doll-like Super Android young lady vanished, baffling the cardinal with a rapid flurry of snap vanishes that flooded the chamber with countless afterimages of hers. Forcing himself out of the bent out-of-shape wall, Cardinal Mutchy hurled his plasma whip over his head, ready to attack at any point that the Super Android would reveal herself and, using his superior range, lashing her out of this frantic combination attack.
Super One-Nine moved in a blink, filling the room with violet-colored bright crescent slashes as energy blades lit up around both of her hands and all afterimages swarmed with a slashing charge at Cardinal Mutchy. The eyes of the confused cardinal became dulled out as his perception just shut off, unable to deal with the innumerable count of images flashing right at him. Flashing right past the cardinal, Super One-Nine swiped with her energy blade before disengaging it. Cardinal Mutchy gasped and spat out some sort of mechanical fluid from his mouth just before splitting off into dozens of cube-shaped chunks his body had been skewered into.
"Take a hike," Super One-Nine turned around as a pink glint lit up in her eye. A bright halo of air pressure formed in front of her, from which thousands of tiny pink needles took off, racing and pin-cushioning each of the separate chunks that Cardinal Mutchy had been reduced to. In a cascading chain blast, each of the thousands of needles detonated separately, annihilating even the measliest chunks of the cardinal to nothing.
Meanwhile, Androids No. 21 and No. 16 braced for impact as Leon was blitzing them with its speed, becoming just deep-blue blurs that slashed with its golden claws and threatened to rend their flesh from their mechanical skeletons. Gashes and scrapes began opening up all over the bodies of both combatants as they hunkered down to look for openings to counterattack.
"Mother, brother, I'm coming..." Super One-Nine muttered to herself before turning to the two. Before she could take off, however, a tight, rubbery clutch stopped her in place. With shocked eyes, the young artificial lady looked down at the cybernetic whip wrapped around her torso and pinning her to place. "Wh...What's going on?" she muttered before an emerald light lit up around her entire body, making the Super Android bellow out in pain.
"That's right, Mutchy Mutchy, keep her in place!" a weasel-like voice came from behind the distressed Super Android, though she couldn't turn around and check who exactly was speaking. She thought she eliminated every trace of that Machine Mutant priest, so she had no idea why his whip was acting on its own. What was even worse–somehow, it was running her dry of her energy somewhat. With One-Nine being an energy-draining type of Android, energy was like blood to her - without sufficient energy, she'd switch to dormant mode and become utterly helpless to her family.
"Don't bother turning this one into a doll," a mechanically augmented voice joined in on the conversation, though Super One-Nine had no clue where it was coming from. "She's all-machine, so her energy is all that's worth anything. I'm almost done draining her for Lord Luud, then I'll crush her empty shell to bits and be done with it."
No. No, it couldn't have ended like this. Not when Super One-Nine had found her family and just when they were almost set up to live like one. Just when she became really powerful and thought she could be of any use to mother, just when she thought things would be different, when she thought she was strong enough for mother to keep her around rather than throwing her away to a remote lab, out of sight and out of mind...
"Don't forget who is the true leader of this cult, Mutchy Mutchy. You are just a Machine Mutant soldier, a servant confined to this mechanical star. I am the one that communicates with Dr. Lychee. I'll be the one who decides what to do with this girl and I say she's turning into a doll!" the weasel-like voice rose higher in pitch. A bright violet beam pulsing with white spirals around it engulfed Super One-Nine.
"B-But I wasn't done draining her yet!" Mutchy Mutchy barked out. His objections didn't matter. One-Nine couldn't feel the stress around her arms anymore, she felt... So lightweight. Everything around her had grown massive or... Was it just her that had shrunken down? The ground was racing against her, though she lacked the strength to brace herself. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't move one inch. The force of impact resonated throughout her whole body, but it didn't hurt at all. Almost like she was made of plastic and lightweight.
"Tee-hee-hee..." a grey-skinned alien with blue eyes and browless bony ridges over his eyes picked Super One-Nine off the ground and pulled her up to his eye level with a creepy smile. The guy had an exuberant fuchsia and black-colored outfit and a purple scarf covering his long neck. Signifying his importance in the Cult of Luud, a regal white cape hung over his shoulders, though his girly short-cut blond hair did this alien no favors. Dolltaki pulled Super One-Nine closer to his face and rubbed her against his cheek while waving his stuck-out tongue in ecstasy. "Such a cute little dolly! I swear, it's like you've been made to look cute on my stand!"
Doll? No... That couldn't have been right, could it have? No! It was true that the original One-Nine's design was based on a girly doll on Dr. Puri's stand when Puri was still just a young girl, long before she met Dr. Gero, but Super One-Nine had transcended that. She was so much more now than just a sassy doll decorating a nightstand! Though no matter how much One-Nine wanted to punch, kick and bite that disgusting grey cheek that Dolltaki rubbed her against, she couldn't move one inch.
Her immediate disgust vanished in the face of awe when she saw the plasma whip of Cardinal Mutchy hovering above the ground, engulfed in crackling emerald energy that it had drained from Super One-Nine. The whip began untangling, flashing with emerald light as it took a humanoid shape with the upper body, head, belt, and arms adopting a mustard color, while the lower body became black as the rubber straps comprising Cardinal Mutchy's whip. Brown leathery boots, and shoulder and neck pads wrapped around his humanoid form Mutchy Mutchy's arms and his head stretched out to a long, whip-like shape. A black, beak-like nose shut from the front of Mutchy Mutchy's face while red eyes and blue irises opened up where one's eyes should have been. Black crosshairs crossed out the blue irises as the blue-mouthed, fully transformed Machine Mutant hissed in disgust.
"You're seriously weird, Dolltaki-sama..." Mutchy Mutchy grumbled out with a husky tone. "Do you wish for me to turn those others into dolls too so you could play house with them in your spare time?"
"Hmm..." Dolltaki carefully stroked Super One-Nine's hair before connecting her to the ring on his black leather belt wrapped around his waist and stroking his cheek in thought. "No, they're not cute at all... That mohawk muscle head looks like he'd beat me up for enjoying playing with dollies and take away my bun money. That other woman looks like she'd tell me to "Grow up and get a job" or something, just like my mom, or take away my dolls from me like my school teacher. I only keep the dolls that look like they could be my friends, I could dress up and have tea parties with them, not ones that plague me with bad memories. You can drain them of their energy and do with them whatever you like."
"Understood..." Mutchy Mutchy cackled, lashing with his whip hands and sadistically licking his black beak with his blue tongue. "Have fun playing with your new toy, Dolltaki-sama. I'll take care of business here."
"Make sure you do," Dolltaki gestured with dismissal while walking away from the core chamber with Super One-Nine in his hands. "I'm going to try on all the different dresses on this one to see which one suits her the most, so I don't want to be distracted."
No matter how loud Super One-Nine cried for her mother to notice her being whisked away by some creepy bowl-cut weirdo, No. 21 and No. 16 remained fixed on fending off the fearsome guardian Leon, completely oblivious to the machinations of the Cult of Luud behind them or the looming danger of Mutchy Mutchy's true form that was about to become their most immediate problem.