South City, a small coastal town
Piccolo touched down and scanned the streets, pupils narrowed. Nothing. No ki. No movement.
"Damn it. Was Goku's tip even right?" he muttered.
"Demon King Piccolo…" A voice drifted from an alley behind him.
"Who's there?!" Piccolo snapped, whirling around
Smack!
A broad, cold hand clamped over his face. Piccolo felt his ki drain in a torrent.
Not good! His mind flashed hot he forced a finger to twitch and fired the thinnest beam he could manage into the sky.
Bang!
That pinprick of light and the plummeting ki were enough. Goku and the others, sweeping the island, felt it at once.
"Piccolo's ki is crashing!" Gohan jolted; the others felt it too.
"They've found us, Twenty," Android 19 said in a flat voice.
"Let them. It changes nothing," Dr. Gero Android 20 replied, just as flat.
Seconds later Piccolo's ki guttered out. He was a breath from death.
"Hands off!" Gohan arrived first in a flicker. Twin lances of light burst from his eyes toward Gero.
Boom!
Gero dropped Piccolo to avoid the blast. Piccolo hit the cement, limp.
Gohan flashed forward, eyes hard, and a silent shockwave hurled both androids down the street. He pressed a Senzu Bean between Piccolo's teeth.
Piccolo's eyes snapped wide. Breath roared back into his lungs. "You bastard sneak up on me?!"
"Not here," Gohan said, cutting him off with a look toward the clustered apartments. "Too many people."
"Scrap heap come with me if you dare," Piccolo snarled.
"As you wish," Gero said coolly.
Piccolo shot into the sky toward a barren plain. Nineteen and Twenty rose after him.
Goku's group arrived breathless. "Let's move," Gohan said before the questions started, then streaked after them. The rest followed.
They touched down in a wasteland of cracked stone.
"Die, junk!" Piccolo didn't wait; he flicked a ki-bomb at 20.
Twenty lifted his right palm. A red port in the center of his hand drank the blast dry. "Impressive output. You're stronger than expected," he said, almost pleased.
"Piccolo those red circles in their palms absorb energy attacks," Gohan warned.
"Absorb this, then." Piccolo rolled his shoulders, tore off his cape and turban. "I'll just beat you to scrap."
"Boy, you talk too much," 19 said, head rotating a quarter-turn as his blank eyes settled on Gohan.
Gohan dropped his folded arms. "I was being polite."
A wet rip and 19 looked down in shock at the hole punched straight through his chest.
In the heartbeat no one saw, Gohan had appeared in front of him and driven a fist clean through the chassis.
"You even dyed your motor oil red and call it blood?" Gohan twisted his hand, fingers hooking. "Think that makes you alive?"
He tore the power core free. Red fluid spattered his palm. "Gross," he said, flicking it away with a ripple of ki.
Staggering, 19 lurched skyward to flee.
"In your dreams." Gohan's eyes flashed; two razor-thin beams knifed up at his head.
"Absorb !" 19 thrust both palms into their path.
Sssst!
The beams drilled through the absorbers, through his skull then detonated.
Kra-BOOM!
Android 19 vanished in a fireball.
"Nineteen!" Gero's composure cracked. Cold fear pooled in his gut. Nineteen's specs matched his own. If the kid erased 19 so easily…
Retreat screamed through him.
"Scrap heap eyes front!" Piccolo's fist crashed across Gero's jaw, flinging him like a rag. Piccolo chased, caught an ankle, and whipped him into the ground.
Stone shattered. Something red oil, coolant, who knew splattered from Gero's mouth.
"Pretty realistic," Piccolo sneered.
"Filth!" Gero reared up and spat a beam from his mouth.
Whump!
The blast blossomed in Piccolo's face. Smoke billowed. Gero bolted.
"Running where?!" Piccolo tore through the haze, hot on his heels.
Gero was fast; Piccolo was faster. The gap closed.
No. Not like this. I can't die. My masterpieces haven't awakened yet. Gero's teeth clicked. He angled toward the mountains toward his lab.
They streaked across five hundred… a thousand… five thousand kilometers.
"Junk, where do you think you're going?!" Piccolo was three meters off his back.
"Out of my way!" Gero snapped, snapping a blast over his shoulder.
The flash stuffed the sky with white. In that instant Gero dropped, skimming into a jagged ravine and hugging the shadows.
No ki no trail. On the ground, leaping from rock to rock, he slipped out of Piccolo's direct line of sight.
"Get out here! Hyaaah!" Piccolo hurled a swelling energy sphere into the gorge.
Gero sprang up, both hands wide the port in his palm gulped the attack down. "Perfect."
"Found you." Piccolo blinked behind him. That last blast had been bait; he'd gambled Gero couldn't resist a feast like that.
Rrrip!
Piccolo tore an arm clean off.
"Guh !" Another blinding blast erupted at Piccolo's feet. Dust geysered, choking the air.
"I'll recycle you myself!" Piccolo snarled, sweeping the grit aside with ki only to find empty rock. Gero was gone again.
He ran. Piccolo hunted. Hawk and mouse in a maze of stone.
High above, Piccolo hovered and searched, eyes like knives.
Crouched against a cliff face, Gero saw the mountain ahead the hidden entrance to his lab. So close. He stilled every servo and waited.
Skree! A stray blast grazed his chest and sizzled past. The heat melted the armor over his heart into a warped ring.
He didn't flinch.
Just a little farther. Wake Seventeen and Eighteen… and you're dead, Namekian.
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