by Jamie L. Word
"The Battle Begins"
Zodoria.
As the robots closed in for the attack, the heroes stood ready for the conflict. Dokharis observed with a wicked smile on his face.
"Yoshio, you and Sumio go get that last dragon ball!" Kien yelled to his two allies as he prepared to fight the robots. "We'll try to hold them off as long as we can!"
"I can't sense these metal monstrocities' power levels!" Makiko exclaimed in a bit of concern.
"They're machines! Their power cannot be detected by our senses or even a scouter!" Kato explained. "So, let's just see what they're made of!"
As Yoshio and Sumio flew on ahead to search for the last dragon ball, The Saiyans and the Nameks got ready for battle! Makiko drew her sword as the robots neared! The Nameks stood at the front of the group to take the brunt of the attack from the robots!
"The kid's right!" Tieh declared with a burst of adrenaline and a grimly determined visage. "Let's just see what they're made of!"
With that declaration, Tieh charged the robots with a mighty battle cry! He slammed his fist into the chest plate of one of the robots, stopping it in mid-flight! All eyes were on the seemingly paused action between the mighty Namek and the metal menace! His fist had dented the armored chestplate deeply, but the robot retaliated with a powerful punch to the face, turning the Namek's head from the force of the blow!
"It looks like we're going to have to turn this up a notch!" Makiko said as she then grunted and powered up to Super Saiyan status.
Kato and Isao likewise transformed into Super Saiyans with short battle cries accompanying the transformation! Tieh then responded to the robot's punch with a spin kick to the same spot on the robot's chest plate, knocking it across the landscape and into a rock formation with a crash!
"Their armor plating is very tough!" Tieh informed the others as he kept his attention on the other robots as they closed in on him. "Don't hold back!"
"Don't worry!" Makiko said as she used her Super Saiyan strength to slice a robot's arm off with her sword. "I don't intend to!"
Kato and Isao flew up to the robots and singled out individual opponents to fight, and then they proceeded to unleash their furry with simultaneous flurries of Super Saiyan punches! As a pair of robots tried to sneak up behind the two boys, Kien flew in between the robots and their intended victims, intercepting them! He then hammered one with a driving elbow bash to the head, knocking its head completely off, and followed that up with a fierce kick to the other robot's chest plate, knocking that robot across the landscape and into a rock formation with a crash!
"Not on my watch!" Kien snarled at the robots as he turned his attention to other robots as they closed on his position. "Now I'm going to show you what a Super Namek can do!"
Kien erupted into a furious assault against the group of robots, and the robots fought hard to match his skill, power, and speed, relying on their superior numbers to even up the difference in ability! Tieh was fighting with great skill as well, but he was clearly less skilled than Kien! Mariko was just slightly more skilled and able than her Namek friend Tieh, but not quite at Kien's level! The two boys were just a little less skilled than Tieh!
One of the robots managed to snatch the sword out of Makiko's hands, and she responded by destroying the robot with a powerful energy blast from her hands, taking only a moment to charge the blast! Kato and Isao likewise finished off a couple of robots with quick-charged, powerful energy blasts! Kien continued to fight his robot adversaries hand-to-hand as three robots flew off in the distance in pursuit of Yoshio and Sumio! Tieh charged up a masenko ball technique and launched it with a cry of "Masenko-ha!"
The masenko ball attack slammed into the robot and exploded, destroying the robot! Four more robots moved in to take that robot's place, and Tieh grimaced at the sight of it! Then a smile formed on his lips!
"So that's the way you want to play it?" Tieh rhetorically inquired of the mute machines of destruction. "Then let's play!"
Tieh crossed his forearms in front of his face and began a drawn-out yell! A pale glowing energy aura surrounded his body immediately, and three more duplicates of himself were spit forth from his body, evening the numbers odds against the robots to make it four-on-four! The four Tiehs engaged the four robots with power, speed, and skill, Tieh's multiform technique giving the robots a tough time!
Meanwhile, the three robots who were pursuing Yoshio and Sumio caught up with them a great distance away! Yoshio and Sumio were distraught over this turn of events!
"Oh, great!" Yoshio muttered in response. "We had to fly slow enough to track the dragon ball, and that enabled those overgrown tin cans to catch up with us! This is bad!"
"Well, we don't have much time to spend complaining about it!" Sumio informed Yoshio as he prepared to do battle with the robots, powering up for the fight with a drawn-out yell as his body was surrounded by a pale energy aura almost immediately.
"I know! I know!" Yoshio muttered pathetically as he put the dragon ball radar into the backpack and put on the backpack before powering up for battle with a drawn-out yell and a pale energy aura surrounding him.
As the robots closed in, Sumio engaged two of them in hand-to-hand combat, and he seemed to be holding his own fairly well! Yoshio, however, chose to focus his efforts on defense, narrowly evading each lumbering attack by the huge metal attacker left to him! Sumio used his superior speed to avoid the robots' attacks while he pounded them with his fists and feet, but he had great difficulty doing any damage to the robots!
"Their metal casing is very tough, Yoshio!" Sumio called out to the human warrior. "I'm barely making a dent in these metal menaces!"
"Oh, that's real good news!" Yoshio muttered with dread. "You're stronger than I am! I probably won't even be able to put a scratch on them at all, if you can barely do any damage to them!"
"We're going to have to create some distance between ourselves and these haywire machines so we can open up on them with energy waves!" Sumio called out to Yoshio.
"Right! I got it!" Yoshio returned his response, seemingly a bit more confident than he was before.
With great speed Sumio flew from between his two robot opponents and high over them! He charged a powerful ball of energy in between his hands with a drawn-out yell and then launched it skyward as the two robots flew up towards him! As they were closing the distance, the robots didn't notice the growing ball of energy plummeting downwards towards them and Sumio! With a split-second to spare, Sumio flew out of the path of his own attack as it streaked towards the robots! One of the robots managed to likewise get out of the energy ball's path, but the other was hit squarely with the energy bomb, and the explosion was tremendous! When the smoke cleared, the robot who was hit by the energy bomb was destroyed!
"Ha!" Sumio laughed joyously in victory. "How did you like that? That was my energy bomb technique, a Zodorian favorite!"
Yoshio quickly flew away from his robot foe, putting some distance between himself and the robot! While the distance was there, Yoshio began charging up a kamehameha wave! Before the robot could close the distance, Yoshio fired his kamehameha blast, and it scored a direct hit on the robot! The explosion obliterated the robot, much to Yoshio's pleased surprise!
"Oh, yeah!" Yoshio cheered enthusiastically at his great success over destroying the robot with his attack.
About that moment, the robot who evaded Sumio's energy bomb conked Yoshio on the top of his head from behind, knocking him to the ground with a thud! Yoshio lay there looking up, his eyes glazed and seeing non-existant birds circling just over his head! He moaned with a stupid grin on his face!
"Yoshio!" Sumio called out to his downed friend as he flew to go to his aid. "Are you okay?"
Above the Zodorian warrior, the surviving robot began powering up an energy blast of its own from the ports in the palms of its hands! Sumio was unaware of the danger as he landed next to the fallen Yoshio! He waived his hand in front of Yoshio's face, and Yoshio grinned like a drunkard!
"Yoshio, are you alright?" Sumio inquired with great concern, trying to elicit a response from the human. "Speak to me!"
"Thanks for chasing the birds away," Yoshio muttered like a drunk trying to interact with reality from his stupor. "Hey, look at the bright light! Is it the sun?"
"Huh?" Sumio responded in confusion, looking up to see the robot's energy blast streaking towards them. "What the -?!? Oh, no!"
Sumio crossed his forearms in front of his face in preparation to try to shield both himself and Yoshio from the attack!
Meanwhile, back at the other battle, Kien stood ready to battle Dokharis while his friends fought the robots! Kien looked grimly determined, but Dokharis only smiled!
"You look as though you mean to fight me," Dokharis said to Kien almost mockingly, tauntingly, with a nearly-unbearable smugness.
"I mean to do more than just fight you, demon," Kien decreed with resoluteness in his voice and countenance. " I mean to defeat you!"
"Oh, my! You sure are anxious to die!" Dokharis taunted the Namek with an amused chuckle.
"Don't worry about me," Kien replied confidently as he stood his ground without the slightest hint of fear or worry. "It won't be me who dies if we fight today. Of that you can be certain."
"Foolish mortal!" Dokharis snarled at the Namek with a contemptuous glare. "You Nameks might be long-lived, but I'm afraid it all ends for you here and now! I am a demon lord, no mere demon underling like that weakling fool Kun was who was killed by a pitiful Namek like you!"
"Not a pitiful Namek like me," Kien replied to the fuming demon lord, a slight smile having come over him now. "It was me who destroyed Kun!"
"So, you're the filthy slug-thing who destroyed Kun!" Dokharis snarled, a bit angrier after that revelation.
"Yeah," Kien interjected with an ever-widening grin. "And now I'm going to make it two-for-two. You're next!"
"Enough of this!" Dokharis yelled in a rage as he clenched his fists and prepared to fight. "Now, you die!"
"I tried to warn you!" Kien retorted as he assumed a battle stance in preparation for the conflict. "Have it your way!"
With unfathomable speed, Dokharis and Kien blurred in and out of sight! Their attacks and counters were fast and furious, but both fighters appeared to be of equal skill and ability! Both fought hard, but their skill and power was too close for either to gain an advantage over the other at this point!
Meanwhile, Makiko had put some distance between herself and the robots! She charged up a powerful energy blast between her two hands and fired it into the chest plate of one of the robots, destroying it in the explosion! Weaving in an out of the midst of the robots, Makiko pummeled the robots with Super Saiyan strength-powered punches and kicks, doing slightly more damage to the robots than Tieh's strength was doing!
Tieh had returned to a single form, and he was using Makiko's weaving style of fighting to showcase his great fighting skill as well! Occassionally, Tieh would use the masenko ball technique to blast the robots with energy, and sometimes he would use a basic-tyle energy blast to destroy the robots! Then Tieh turned to the use of his scattershot technique to pepper a large number of robots with multi-shot, rapid-fire energy blasts!
Kato and Isao were weaving in and out from the midst of the robots, peppering them with energy blasts! The blasts were destroying the robots, and the boys were showcasing their skills and talents! Kato moved away from the robots to create enough distance to charge up and fire a kamehameha blast into one of the robots, destroying it! Isao put some distance between himself and the robots enough to fire a strong energy blast like Vegeta's big bang attack into one of the robots, destroying it!
Other World.
Koji and Yukio were sparring in Super Saiyan form, and Koji was faring a bit better than Yukio was! Yukio seemed a bit frustrated, but still he pushed himself harder to match Koji's skill and power! Koji noted this, and he pushed himself to push Yukio harder still!
"This is madness!" Yukio screamed in frustration while he was sparring with Koji. "I'm not able to surpass this level unless I assume the Ascended Super Saiyan form! That's the only way!"
"Don't be a fool, Yukio!" Koji rebuked his sparring partner. "I surpassed the Super Saiyan level without being limited by the Ascended Super Saiyan level restrictions! I found a new level, higher than the Ascended Super Saiyan! I call it Super Saiyan Two!"
"It's just not possible!" Yukio shouted back in dismay and diminishing confidence. "Maybe the Ascended Super Saiyan level is the upper limit for a low-class Saiyan! Maybe this is as powerful as I can become!"
Koji hammered Yukio with a powerful punch to the face, knocking him to the ground uncerimoniously! Yukio sat up and wiped the blood from his lip where Koji had struck and bruised his face! Koji seemed aggitated!
"Now you listen to me!" Koji growled at Yukio. "You wanted to achieve a higher power level! Now either you get up and achieve it, or quit wasting my time! You will get up and reach that pinacle! Where's your Saiyan pride?"
Yukio got up from the ground, obviously angry at Koji's words. His head was slightly lowered towards the ground, and he was trembling in anger. Koji noted this, so he took his hand and placed it under Yukio's chin, lifting his head up so that he could look him in the eyes.
"Perhaps you need a demonstration," Koji said as he glared into Yukio's fiercely angry eyes with purpose.
In an instant, Koji's muscles became slightly larger and his hair spiked even more as his golden, flaming aura flared a bit and electricity crackled in and around his energy aura! Yukio looked on incredulously! Tong-Li watched the confrontation intently!
"Now let's see if we can get you angrier!" Koji growled at Yukio as he backhanded him across the cheek, bruising his cheek and knocking him back down to the ground again.
Yukio sprang back to his feet in one fluid motion, seething in anger! His golden, flaming energy aura flared slightly as his hair attempted to spike even more! Koji noted this and restrained from the urge to smile at his near-success! Yukio was trembling even more in rage as he poised himself to fight back against Koji!
"Ah! There!" Koji commented, failing to restrain just a slight hint of his smirk from crossing his countenance. "Your Saiyan pride returns! Now let's see if you can channel that pride into success!"
Koji assumed a fighting stance as well, preparing to spar far more intensely than before with the seething warrior Yukio!
Continued in Chapter 6.