Goten and Melody landed side-by-side on the high ridge, looking down into a battlefield where the slaughter was already well underway.
The first thing Goten noticed was the smell: superheated, scorched stone mixed with something unnaturally sweet underneath, like raw metal left out in acidic rain. Embers drifted across the wasteland in slow, glowing spirals. The ground below had been torn wide open, carved up by craters large enough to swallow a residential house, their jagged rims still glowing white-hot as the walls slid in on themselves. Heavy smoke rolled over every ledge. Somewhere in the dense haze, ki blasts flashed violently and died out. No pods were falling anymore. The second wave had landed long before they arrived.
Melody came to a halt beside him. Neither of them said a word. Whatever reassurance or plan they were about to speak vanished completely.
Five massive shapes stood out from the chaos below.
A hooded figure in torn black robes, its face resembling cracked obsidian with violet light leaking through the deep fractures, glided silently through the smoke. Skeletal hands hung open at its sides, each finger ending in a long, curved claw. Three pale, translucent spirits orbited its frame, their mouths frozen in silent, hollow screams. Goten looked at them for a fraction of a second too long and felt a sharp, sickening tug behind his eyes—like someone gently turning an iron key inside his mind. Down on the field below, an X-fighter suddenly swung a frantic strike at his own ally. Then another. They were trapped in illusions, convinced they were battling the enemy. Goten tore his eyes away, and Melody's hand tightened sharply on his arm. She had felt the psychic wave, too.
To the south, a mountain of scarred flesh bolted into heavy armor plating dragged itself through a ruined defense line. Steam vented continuously from rusted pipes across its back, and dull yellow lights pulsed in its shoulders and belt like slow, heavy heartbeats. One of its fists was clamped inside a riveted hydraulic piston, big enough to flatten an armored truck in a single blow. Reinforced barricades folded under its weight like wet paper. It moved slowly, completely unbothered, knowing full well it didn't need to be fast.
Hovering above the thickest smoke, borne on ragged wings of torn black and violet, hung a giant moth-like monstrosity. It shed glittering, toxic scales that drifted through the air like radioactive dust. Beneath the wings hung a exposed skeleton with a grinning skull, glowing purple eyes, and four spindly legs tipped with red-edged blades. Goten's scouter flickered erratically on his hip before dying completely. Across the field, an X-fighter's comm unit popped, sparking before going dead. The moth wasn't even actively attacking. It was simply breathing, its very presence severing all technology and communication.