The arena noise collapsed into a single, taut string of sound the moment the five androids stepped onto the field. They moved as one machine—slick chrome, segmented armor, optical sensors glowing a cold blue.
Where they walked, the light bent slightly, as if the air respected their presence.
Across from them, the group gathered like a living knot:
Buu at the center, relaxed and coiled;
Bardock a coiled fist beside him;
Bulma and Mai flanking, synchronized by instinct and training;
Panchy near the edge protected by the others warriors forming the outer ring.
Buu smiled, simple and dangerous. "Five toys" he said.
The first android leapt, hydraulic pistons hissing. Metal met air in a blur; the others followed, a storm of engineered intent.
Buu watched for a beat, then moved like a smile made solid.
He didn't rush.
He bent, letting a beam slice his sleeve; when it reached through, he closed his hand around the light and twisted. The beam extinguished like a candle pinched.
Sparks spattered and the android hiccuped.
Beside him Bardock detonated into motion—raw, savage.
He launched forward and hit the nearest android with a closed elbow that sounded like a drumbeat. The android staggered but its outer shell reconfigured, plates sliding and sealing, sensors cycling.
Bulma ducked under a servo arm and planted a pulse of energy into its chest, then sprinted as Mai covered her with a rain of ki blast.
Buu laughed—a bright, happy sound—and split himself: one copy advanced like a living battering ram while the original floated, observing.
The clone threw itself into a crowd of blades and projectiles, absorbing, regenerating, then deliberately tearing apart its attackers.
Every time it broke and re-assembled, Buu pulsed outward like a bell struck harder and harder; the group felt it, fed on it, grew braver.
They fought as a weave. Bulma's improvised trappings kept the machines from coordinating; Mai's precise strikes exploited micro-gaps; Bardock's savage tempo kept the biggest units off-balance; Buu alternated between childlike play and surgical brutality—he would unzip a servo joint with a pink tendril and use it like thread, sewing through gyroscopes until the whole chestplate came loose.
Amid explosions and the metallic smell of overheated servos, the group found rhythm.
Bulma watched Buu dance with those machines and, for the first time in a while, felt the old, dangerous thrill—curiosity matched with hunger.
Mai, meanwhile, kept her eyes on Buu longer than necessary. Each time he smiled or caught Bardock's toothy laugh, something soft shifted in her expression. Training had begun to bleed into something like affection.
The fifth android, smallest but fastest, zipped between fighters and tried to reconnect the others—to force a network reboot.
A thin filament of light sought the fallen units like a surgeon's wire. Bulma was on it instantly, fingers flying. She improvised a counterprotocol—her hands moved like a pianist—rewriting routing channels mid-burst. The filament collapsed back into static.
Bardock's fist found the android that had tried to reroute.
He shattered the mask in a single, brutal arc. Under the cracked plating, a second pattern glowed—something someone had embedded: a faint violet glyph.
Buu glanced up when that glyph flashed through the debris.
His brow tightened for the barest moment, 'Fu'. He crushed the glyph between fingertip and thumb as if crushing a bug.
Across the field, one by one, the machines fell to pieces. They collapsed, whined, and then simply went still.
The crowd roared, a living ocean of cheers washing over the scarred tiles.
When the dust settled, Buu strode to the center and flexed. He had been playing, yes—but every break, every regeneration had been a test.
He'd pushed them, and they had grown stronger.
Bardock clapped him on the shoulder, grinning with that dangerous sort of pride that comes from a fight well won. "Not bad for the first fight togheter as a group."
Bulma wiped dirt from her face, breath coming hard but steady.
She looked at Buu—at the way light still clung to his skin—and felt an odd mix of professional thrill and something rawer. "You could've let us get killed," she said, half accusation, half flirt.
Buu tilted his head. "I wanted to see you fight."
Fu watched from a distance, the edges of his portal flattened like a shadow's smile.
He had stood back on purpose—observation gave him more than intervention. He catalogued responses: Bulma's improvisations, Mai's learned tempo, Bardock's instinctual brutality.
Buu gathered the fallen components and tossed them like toys. "Good round," he declared, amusement clear. "Next?"
Bardock laughed. "Bring it."
Around them the arena buzzed.
Fu's silhouette receded into the crowd. For a moment his voice—cold and casual—carried like a single note.
"Fascinating."
Buu only answered with a grin and a look toward his messy family. "Then watch more."