Centers of ringing yet pleasant to the ear howling popped up one by one around the laboratory. Flames and Destron shrouds alike became a unified swirl of light and darkness as they vanished down a complex mosaic system of drains. With a shockingly calm and indifferent expression for someone whose victory was now in question, Dr. Lychee followed his own Dark Planet, absorbing and processing Destron Gas that should've ensured his victory into raw energy.
"The Destron! It's disappearing. I can feel my strength returning..." Gohan looked around in disbelief before turning his attention to his shaking hands, which began to feel like they could accomplish anything again.
"The Luud Star, or as I'm now calling it, the Puri Incorporated Star, is connected with the Dark Planet into a singular network. Dr. Lychee's got a pretty fancy operational system going on. Even to me it would have been troublesome hacking but, thankfully, our friends here at the now-extinct Cult of Luud have provided me with a backdoor," Dr. Puri explained the important part of what she had accomplished.
"I'm not sure what's going on but... Thank you!" Gohan nodded with confidence pumping in his expression. He formed his knuckles and pressed his arms by his side, bursting with a golden aura and igniting that Super Saiyan shine he had lost because of the Destron's oppressive influence.
"Why, it's quite elementary. Dr. Lychee is a careful and calculated scientist. He wouldn't work with something as unstable and dangerous as Destron Gas, a gas that feeds on emotions and the ephemeral side of existence and makes it come to life, without some sort of countermeasure. I've figured that his little cyber star should've had the option to purge Destron in case of emergency. I merely activated it from my end," Dr. Puri leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs while admiring the victory that she may have granted to the Super Saiyans, but which was all hers to take credit for.
"Of course, Dr. Lychee's plan takes entire centuries to come together. He wouldn't risk something like that on the whim of the unstable nature of Destron Gas," Super Saiyan Gohan nodded before turning his attention to Super Hatchiyack that was preparing to tear apart his father while Goku was still busy preparing the Spirit Bomb.
Just as Super Hatchiyack channeled an emerald energy blast in one hand and reeled it back to blow Goku out of the air and leave him crippled and unable to defend himself, Goku winced and turned his head back, preparing his body for the impact. He didn't foster any false hopes of being able to take such a blast point blank, but if he lowered his arms and stopped channeling the Spirit Bomb–they'd have had no chance of stopping Hatchiyack anyway, so he simply couldn't stop now. Not after Vegeta nearly laid his life down for him to prepare the Spirit Bomb.
Gohan snapped in front of Goku with his arms extended to the sides. With a brave shout, he erected a golden energy bubble around him and his father, that blocked the straight Ki blast before blinking away with a puny flicker. Gohan's arms went limp by his side, but the teen quickly forced them to go up as he prepared to do what he had to in order to help his father deal with this monster.
Charging into Super Hatchiyack's face with a wound-up right cross, Super Saiyan Gohan made Super Hatchiyack stumble and lean backward. The teen transferred all that force and drive to help save everyone into a baseball slide that tripped Super Hatchiyack up and positioned Gohan directly beneath his opponent. Exploding with a fiery marigold aura, Gohan shot into the air with a rising uppercut that launched Super Hatchiyack shooting into the air.
"Ka... Me... Ha... Me..." Super Saiyan Gohan drew his arms back, channeling a strident azure energy blast in between his cupped hands while Super Hatchiyack leveled himself in the air.
"Stop, Gohan! The Spirit Bomb, I've got the energy from all the surrounding planets, it's got to be ready!" Goku called out.
"No, draw more energy. From the surrounding star systems, from the entire universe, if you have to. The oppression of Destron has been lifted and right now it feels like I can do anything. I'll make this monster waste all of its energy, I'll wear it out and make sure that your Spirit Bomb connects and that it's as strong as it can be. A good scientist leaves nothing down to chance," Gohan turned to his father with a confident smirk that assured Goku that everything was going to be alright now. With a goofy smirk and a chortle, Goku nodded his head.
"You've grown, Gohan. Soon enough your old man is gonna just be a burden to you," Goku teased his son, though Gohan couldn't hear it. With all of his energy put into the strongest Super Kamehameha he could pull off, Gohan thrust his arms out at last.
"HA!" he bellowed, unleashing an overwhelming, tunneling energy blast that seemed to engulf the entire collapsing cybernetic star. Super Hatchiyack extended his arms out to the sides.
"SAIYANS... WE WILL... NOT DIE...!" the cacophony of wailing Tsufurian voices all sang in disturbing bestial unison as a flickering green energy field formed around Super Hatchiyack, triggering a collision and a struggle between Super Saiyan Gohan's Super Kamehameha and Super Hatchiyack's energy barrier.
"NO MORE DEATH... REVENGE!" Super Hatchiyack clamored, swiping its hammering arms to the side and popping his energy shield to detonate the Super Kamehameha alongside it and take minimal damage from Gohan's genuine attempts to destroy the monster. Super Hatchiyack crossed his arms and began drawing in bright emerald energy bolts from all sides toward the central glowing singularity forming in front of his crossed arms.
Gritting his teeth, Gohan charged toward Hatchiyack but, unexpectedly, Super Hatchiyack ceased his Revenger Cannon channeling to slam a straight high kick into Gohan's head and send the young Super Saiyan flying, then crossing his arms again and finishing the charge. Instead of unleashing his Revenger Cannon all at once, Super Hatchiyack split its arms to the sides with glowing energy spheres around each hand and threw consecutive energy blasts in Gohan's direction, only for each energy blast to detonate with a vicious green energy dome explosion.
After the smoke cleared up, Gohan appeared from it embedded into the laboratory wall sprawled out, battered and bruised, flickering between his base and Super Saiyan states with only his drive to ensure their victory sustaining the Super Saiyan form after the collective beating he took that day. Super Hatchiyack crossed its arms again, beginning to prepare a final Revenger Cannon to decimate the teen utterly.
"Huh..." Goku felt an overwhelming, pulsating influx of spirit pumping into the Spirit Bomb which grew out of proportion and turned a blinding sky-blueish hue while emitting white bolts of light in all directions and even soaking the Saiyan himself in a white, serene aura of righteous power. "It's ready!" the Saiyan called out.
"SAIYANS... ERADICATE!" Super Hatchiyack, reacting to the impossible-to-miss expanse hovering and humming with so much volume that it overpowered the Destron pumps themselves, turned his attention and his channeling Revenger Cannon at Goku.
"This is so much bigger than just your revenge, Hatchiyack. This is about the whole universe pitching in to stop the Destron Gas together! Dr. Lychee's plan puts the whole universe at risk, so it's only right that the universe itself will fight back through this incredible Spirit Bomb!" Goku growled while physically strained to his limits just to lob the overwhelming Spirit Bomb encompassing a bit of the entire Universe's energy at Super Hatchiyack. The Spirit Bomb drew a speck of spirit from each planet in the cosmos, its animals, plants, and all living things, creating a previously unseen energy bomb that not even a monster like Hatchiyack should've been able to rival. "Take this, Spirit Bomb!" Goku roared.
Super Hatchiyack parted his crossed arms, beaming emerald lights from every gemstone decorating its body and forming a wall of emerald energy in front of the rampaging machine of revenge. Despite all of its power, the Spirit Bomb slammed against the barrier, expelling stray bolts of spirit energy in all directions that snuffed out under pressure. Sizzling and struggling against the incredible opposition, the Spirit Bomb stopped in place.
"The Spirit Bomb!? No... How can this be!?" Gohan blanked out.
"Damn it... Move... Move, damn it!" Goku's eyes whited out and a strident golden blaze drove through his spiky hair, igniting the Super Saiyan splendor around the Saiyan's whole body. With a reignited fighting spirit, the desperate Super Saiyan shoved his right hand out and forced the Spirit Bomb to bust through the emerald barrier.
Super Hatchiyack grumbled and growled. A crack spewing Destron fumes from within the avatar of resentment popped in Hatchiyack's right temple, then another on the forehead. The entire body of the evolved monster began littering with chained failures and explosions that burst with green destructive rays from within the leaked Destron fumes from the monster's core. That was before the Spirit Bomb engulfed Hatchiyack and turned him into just a charred carcass, lifelessly jerking around the obliterating nova of spiritual singularity that disassembled Super Hatchiyack utterly into ash-like dust and vaporized all the Tsufurian super-weapon at once. The Spirit Bomb's uncompromising humming and clamoring drowned out Hatchiyack's final throes.
"It's... It's over..." Gohan shot his fist out into the air from the crater in the wall that Hatchiyack's blast put him in.
"Sorry, Hatchiyack... It wasn't right that Lychee put you together just to rampage and kill, but... I couldn't let you hurt my friends," Goku panted in the air before plunging from up above. Gohan soared through the air and caught his father, placing him on the ground in a seated position.
"Over? You say...?" Dr. Lychee's white eyes stared blankly at the collapsed father and son. "You don't have the faintest of clues. You've prevented nothing. Even after my demise, my plan will continue unimpeded. I've ensured that much."
"What do you mean?" Gohan stood up and turned his attention to the rambling Tsufurian madman. "The Dark Planet is the nexus for all Destron Gas and all of it's been vented off and processed. With the Big Gete Star and Hatchiyack destroyed, you've got no chance of creating the cyber-verse anymore or a ruler to govern it."
"Pea-brained idiot, what do you think you've just destroyed right now? Did you truly believe that I was foolish enough to challenge you with an incomplete, brainless version of Hatchiyack's body? What you fought was merely a Ghost Warrior version, forged from my hatred of Saiyans," Dr. Lychee spread his arms out and burst into maniacal laughter. "I even went as far as to stay behind myself, to lull you into a false sense of security. You were so insufferably stupid that I even tipped you off halfway through your fight. I told you I am unnecessary for the completion of the Four Stars Plan–even I, Dr. Lychee, am expendable!"
"N-No way!" Goku tried standing up but winced in pain and caressed his ribs while sitting back down. "Then... Where is the real Hatchiyack's body?"
"I sent it off to M-2 the moment I picked up your landing. The first time I contacted you three was to keep your attention on me so that you didn't notice a shuttle shooting off into space. Now it's too late to intercept it already, you've lost. Dr. Myuu, my greatest subordinate, has already completed the creation of Baby–a perfect Tsufurian hive mind composed of all the knowledge that I've recorded, all the collective Tsufurian experiences and it will be the perfect mind to occupy Hatchiyack's indestructible body. The future is already here, and it is Tsufurian," Dr. Lychee stared off into the air, watching his Dark Planet tremble and collapse. A sizeable chunk of the ceiling lodged off and hurled toward the Tsufurian scientist. Even if Lychee could hover away, he accepted his end, knowing that his plan's success was now assured.
"Hmm... It appears that Dr. Lychee is the first person to win a game of chess by sacrificing the king," Dr. Puri's staticky voice came from a nearby hacked control panel. "Hurry, you two. Pick Vegeta up and bring him to the ship. I've got you a shuttle in the nearby docking bay. I'll program the autopilot to bring you back to Earth. Healing pods are standard technology in this day and age, so they should be equipped with one. That should make short work of even Vegeta's injuries."
"Thank you, Dr. Puri," Goku nodded and gave the flickering image of the night-blue-skinned artificial woman a thumb up.
"Please, you're making me sick," Dr. Puri rolled her eyes. "Don't make me regret pulling your asses out of the fire."
*****
"Sigma Killer Driller!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma rolled its head back, revealing a whirling gigantic drill on the top. With pulsating jet flames elevating the combined battle bot off the ground, it shot forward with a whirling drill attack. All of Tenshinhan's and Lazuli's attempts to overwhelm the incoming drilling juggernaut with energy blasts failed as a gruesome shower of blood spilled onto the rocky floor and splattered all over the surrounding wreckage.
"Tenshinhan!" Krillin cried out, laying on the ground too powerless to do much of anything. Lazuli's shocked half-faced expression twitched in absolute horror at the sight of Super Mega Turbo Sigma's drill penetrating Tenshinhan and drilling through his innards. With the ravaged martial artist's limp body hanging off the tip of the drill, Super Mega Turbo Sigma shook its head and sent the rag-dolling body falling to the side like a wet sack.
Tenshinhan, surprisingly enough, writhed in pain and coughed up excessive amounts of blood, but didn't die immediately. It was the Spirit Cultivation Method that sustained him, slowly cultivating him spiritual energy and vitality that he had spent on taxing techniques like the King Kai's Fist and Hot-Red Mode into him. With enough Ki, he could sustain the life within his body, even with the most gruesome of injuries. Still, this wasn't some sort of miracle machine as the gritty shock to his system made the Spirit Cultivation Method lose focus on the spirit that Tenshinhan had prepared for cultivation with his last King Kai's Fist. This left the martial artist fallen and out with only burnt and battered Lazuli left to stand up to the fearsome Super Mega Turbo Sigma.
"Excellent, this Earthling's ability to recycle wasted energy into vitality was troublesome, especially when he has such wasteful techniques with ridiculous energy output potential. Fortunately for us, organic life is so fragile and bound to its physical anatomy!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma posed, spreading its legs and turning its arms around like clock arms into a right-pointing position. "Now, just to deal with you and regroup with General Rilldo. Most of our ground forces aren't responding, but just us two should be enough to wipe the surface of this planet clean once DB4649T2006RS secures the Dragon Ball!"
With fuel jets blasting the Super Mega Turbo Sigma unit off the ground, the merged battle machine swooped in with a devastating uppercut that took Lazuli soaring off into the sky. Flying up through the air with a swirling, coil-like trajectory, Super Mega Turbo Sigma appeared in front of the airborne half-burnt Android and drove its knee into her back, making Lazuli scream out in pain as her body bent in ways that a human body wasn't meant to. It was only because Lazuli lacked an ordinary organic human body she shook off this chilling move.
Hammering its fist down with a step-in smash, Super Mega Turbo Sigma sent Lazuli crashing back down before plunging and opening up its many bodily compartments and revealing tips of innumerable missiles sticking out from them. A daring fusillade bombardment rocked the Earth's skies, drowning them out in blaze and smoke with singed Lazuli plummeting down on the ground in freefall. Not content with letting Lazuli escape with just this bit of trouble, Super Mega Turbo Sigma charged in and raised its drill head up for Lazuli to get impaled on it.
Lazuli's bloodied and bruised hands grabbed the tilt of the drill. The artificial woman swung herself around it and directed both her boots into the core of Super Mega Turbo Sigma's body, sending the merged fighting machine dragging across the battlefield with wobbly legs.
"You're just an obsolete type of machinery. No better than the most basic foot soldiers of the Machine Mutant army. Even worse. Even the most primitive model of Machine Mutants can interface with other technology and assimilate it, but you've got nothing useful to offer me so I think I'll just blow you to bits!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma called out, taking off in a mad dash toward Lazuli. Swiping its left arm with a backhand smack, Sigma's attack sent Lazuli flying away with a painful grunt.
The injured and half-burnt Android bounced off of the ground on her wild trajectory before Super Mega Turbo Sigma outraced her to her destination and grabbed hold of Lazuli's heel, swinging her over its head and slamming her face-first into the ground, bouncing Lazuli off the ground and positioning her in the air for a devastating left hook to her gut. Lazuli groaned in pain and threw up slobber and some sort of mixture of mechanical fluid, oil, and blood before Super Mega Turbo Sigma punted her away like a football.
"That's an awful lot of trouble you're going for just to die painfully. You didn't strike me as the type of woman to work hard, didn't you claim to just be using those meddlesome Earthlings for your own gain? Why not flee, why not leave them to die if they're just assets to you?" Super Mega Turbo Sigma wondered. "I've got no use for you, so even chasing you down and finishing you off would be too much hassle for me, you know."
"Dumbass..." with hardly functioning right arm, moving it with choppy intervals up to her only open eye, Lazuli pulled her lower eyelid down and stuck her tongue out in fruitless defiance. "Bite me," Lazuli flipped the immovable machine dreadnought the bird.
"That didn't answer my question at all!" utterly infuriated, Super Mega Turbo Sigma shook his fist. "If you insist on acting so human, I'll make mincemeat out of you like I would from a no-good Earthling! There's nothing worth recycling in that outdated punk-attitude bucket of bolts of yours!"
With noodle legs, completely unable to defend herself but willing to stand her own until the inevitable end, Lazuli put her dukes up to meet the whirling killer driller that came her way. A ripping bright halo sent Lazuli staggering back and falling on her rear as the image of a masculine back with a torn turtle Gi obstructed Super Mega Turbo Sigma's image. It was only a moment later that long and curly black hair settled down on Yamcha's back.
"What are you doing? You'll die!" Lazuli objected.
"You're fighting to protect us with your life, right?" Yamcha glanced behind him and gave Lazuli a thumb-up. "Hey, you!" he turned to Super Mega Turbo Sigma again, who reeled back from a devastating Instant Movement impact from his left side. "You were right back then! When I use Instant Movement, I do have to slow down if I don't want to hit my friends with an infinite amount of force and unstoppable momentum. Unfortunately for you, I don't have to worry about any of that when fighting the likes of you!"
Whizzing around the place in an instant and forming a dome of blurry orange streaks, Yamcha began battering Super Mega Turbo Sigma from all sides with a barrage of Instant Movement attacks before concluding the beatdown with a thrust of both his hands in a double-palm strike that sent the fused war machine rolling and bouncing off the ground while losing a spectacular amount of nuts, bolts and steel plates from all over its mechanical body.
"Instant Wolf Fang Bullet!" Yamcha chanted out, in a Wolf Fang Fist stance before collapsing on his knees with the sum of his injuries being too much to keep going with.
"Ridiculous...! Why...? Why am I... Super Mega Turbo Sigma falling apart?" Super Mega Turbo Sigma looked around, seeing chipped-off parts and plates falling out and feeling looseness all over its body. With an ignition of a fiery halo under hits boots, the massive mechanical frame sent itself soaring with a flying stomp that sought to snuff Yamcha out before a square-shaped energy cannon sent him flying away from Yamcha.
With triangle-shaped hands, Tenshinhan panted with his back resting against a wrecked building roof. The counterforce from his quick and unfocused Spirit Cultivation Cannon collapsed the stone platform that Tenshinhan had been resting by and left him buried under it, but it bought his friends just a few extra seconds.
A turbulent expulsion of destructive energy beams obliterated the building ruins that Super Mega Turbo Sigma crashed into and the malfunctioning, sparking, and collapsing merged prime fighting robot soared out with loose wires and puny implosions chaining up all over its body.
"You're wrong about Lazuli," Krillin peeled himself off the ground, wobbly and unable to dash around or throw a punch but still feeling a fiery mass of Ki brewing inside of him. "Even if she can be bitter and cold sometimes, there's still one part of her that is worth dying to protect — her human heart!"
Krillin raised his arm over his head, channeling the energy that begged him for a release into a lively and waving energy disc before lobbing it right at Super Mega Turbo Sigma, who was suffering from a massive and widespread system failure. "Fierce Kienzan!" Krillin cried out before collapsing on his front, face-down.
"Redirecting power...!" Super Mega Turbo Sigma clenched its mechanical knuckles and focused his energy into his jet boots. With a vicious rip, Sigma's legs blew off from the failing jet propulsion systems, leaving Sigma suspended in mid-air and about to face Krillin's music. The lone and wavy energy disc split into a dozen just mere moments before it would have sliced Super Mega Turbo Sigma in half, with clean, shimmering slices, Krillin's Kienzan variation sliced Sigma to bits. Electromagnetic lightning jolts extended from each separate body part and connected with the torso part, initiating a chaotic and staticky reconnection procedure.
"Lazuli...! Go...! Do it...!" everyone chanted together.
"Infinity Bullet!" Lazuli chanted out, extending her hands and channeling her infinite Ki into flickering pink energy spheres that emitted a streaming barrage of stray pink energy waves, splitting off with a raucous salvo of pink chain explosion domes that obliterated each separate pieces into even smaller parts that trailed with black smoke with no signs of being able to shuffle back together again.
Distraught with shock, Lazuli collapsed on her rear and stretched her arms out to the side. One downside of having infinite stamina was that she didn't have the crutch of passing out that the others could rely on.