"So, who wants to die first?"
Frieza stood before them, his presence an suffocating weight. Turles and Piccolo took their stances, while Gohan and Krillin backed away to gather their fallen friends. They knew they were nothing but liabilities in this fight; the best they could do was move the wounded out of the crossfire.
While the Senzu Beans had saved the others from the brink of death, the beans didn't automatically restore consciousness. Goku and the others were physically healed, but they remained deep in a restorative slumber. Piccolo and Turles had to buy time until they woke up.
Meanwhile, Vegeta stood apart, staring at the unconscious Goku with a calculating glint in his eyes.
"Hey," Piccolo grunted, eyes on Frieza. "Do we have a chance?"
"If Kakarot wakes up, his power should have spiked," Turles replied. "We Saiyans grow stronger every time we claw our way back from the edge of death. Depending on how much his power jumped... there might be a glimmer of hope."
"I see. And can you buy that time?"
"I'm not making any promises, but I'll damn well try."
As they spoke, Frieza made no move to attack. He simply watched with an air of supreme boredom, allowing them their desperate whispers.
Turles gathered energy in his palm, mixing it with the oxygen of the Namekian atmosphere. He compressed the energy into a glowing white sphere and launched it into the sky.
"Burst and mix!"
A fake moon, an artificial satellite of Blutz Waves, glowed intensely above. While lower-class warriors usually required a full moon to transform, some elite-tier Saiyans—or those who had grown powerful through other means—could trigger the Great Ape transformation at will. Turles, though born a low-class warrior, had eaten enough Fruit from the Tree of Might to master the technique.
"I'll warn you now... don't get too close to me," Turles growled, his voice deepening. "I'm liable to lose my mind."
"You can't control it?" Piccolo asked.
"I'm a low-class soldier, remember? Finesse isn't in my blood."
His tail reacted to the Blutz Waves, and the transformation began. Turles's body swelled, his skin sprouting coarse brown fur as he grew into a towering behemoth dozens of meters tall. The intelligence in his eyes vanished, replaced by a wild, crimson feral glint. He wasn't like Vegeta; once transformed, he was a slave to his instincts until his tail was cut or the moon vanished.
"ROOOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRR!!"
"Hmph. A hideous monkey," Frieza sneered.
The Great Ape's roar was a physical force, kicking up a gale-force wind that ravaged the landscape. Yet Frieza remained unmoved. He looked disgusted by the sight, but the idea of losing to a beast never even crossed his mind.
Turles swung a massive fist. Frieza dodged effortlessly, the punch obliterating the ground where he had stood.
"OORRRRRAAAAA!"
Turles flailed with raw, tectonic power. Every movement carried the force of a final attack. Even Piccolo, standing a safe distance away, felt a chill run down his spine. At this size, Turles's power was multiplied tenfold. With a base power of 2.5 million, the Great Ape Turles now wielded a staggering 25 million.
But his opponent was the Emperor of the Universe. To Frieza, 25 million was still nothing.
"Well... that's about what I expected," Frieza said with a thin smile. "My turn."
Frieza blurred, appearing at Turles's throat. He delivered a single kick. The impact lifted the massive ape off the ground, and a follow-up strike from Frieza's tail sent the giant skidding across the horizon like a discarded toy.
"GUH... OOOOOH!"
Turles rolled mid-air and landed, immediately leaping back toward Frieza. He used his immense weight and the momentum of the fall to bring both fists down in a hammer-blow. Frieza caught the attack with a single hand—and then, incredibly, flipped the Great Ape over his shoulder.
The giant crashed into the earth, shaking the very foundations of the planet. Frieza walked toward him with casual steps, his small stature a stark contrast to the absolute dominance he displayed.
He was the victor. The conqueror. No matter how large the foe, Frieza would always look down upon them. He kicked the struggling ape back into the dirt, treating the legendary Saiyan trump card like a common punching bag.
"This is a nightmare," Krillin whispered. "He's not even breaking a sweat."
"He's too strong..." Gohan added, his voice trembling.
The power they had gained from the Grand Elder felt like a drop of water in an ocean. Turles was their strongest asset, and he was being dismantled. Their only hope was Lisette, but she was locked in her own life-or-death struggle against an even more monstrous foe elsewhere.
"The energy coming from Lisette and that 'Cooler' guy just keeps growing," Krillin gulped. "I feel like I'm stuck in a bad dream."
Goku still hadn't moved. And even if he did, Krillin couldn't imagine a world where Goku could bridge this gap.
Suddenly, Vegeta stepped toward Krillin. "Hey, baldy. Do you have any more of those strange beans?"
"Huh? The Senzu Beans? We each have one left for emergencies, but why?"
"One each... good enough. Listen to me. You're going to beat me to within an inch of my life! Then, you're going to use those beans to heal me!"
Krillin stared at him, wondering if the Prince of Saiyans had finally snapped under the pressure of Frieza's power. But Vegeta's eyes were cold and focused.
"Turles said it himself. Every time a Saiyan survives a mortal wound, our power increases exponentially. If I repeat the cycle of near-death and revival, I will become strong enough to kill Frieza!"
"But... if it doesn't work, we've wasted the beans! We won't be able to heal anyone else!"
"You fool! If we don't kill Frieza, there won't be anyone else! Do it now, or we're all dead!"
Krillin hesitated. Vegeta was still technically an enemy of Earth. He didn't want to hand him that kind of power. But the logic was sound—it was their only gambit.
"Fine... I'll do it. Get ready."
Krillin raised his hand, gathering energy, and fired a beam straight through Vegeta's stomach.
Two massive energies were locked in a violent dance. On one side, a hulking alien wreathed in a purple aura; on the other, a young girl cloaked in pure white light.
To a casual observer, the power gap was obvious. Cooler's raw strength far exceeded Lisette's. Yet, through sheer technical brilliance and a refusal to give an inch, she remained in the fight.
"Seeker Spears—manifest!"
Lisette launched spears of condensed energy. Using a variation of her self-guided blast technique, these spears would pursue the target until they made contact. They were essentially sentient versions of the homing blasts used by Piccolo or Krillin, capable of independent thought to adjust their flight paths.
Cooler dodged, but the spears banked sharply, coming at his back. Simultaneously, Lisette doubled down.
"Thousand Blades—manifest!"
Caught between the Seeker Spears from behind and a cloud of energy swords from the front, Cooler clicked his tongue in irritation.
"Tricks!"
He unleashed a massive omnidirectional wave of energy, intended to vaporize everything in his vicinity. He assumed the projectiles were gone. However, the spears—possessing a rudimentary "will"—dodged his energy wave and plunged into his shoulder.
"Nngh...!"
Cooler's durability was insane. The spears didn't penetrate deep; they merely left shallow puncture wounds. But a distraction was all Lisette needed. She materialized a physical blade and lunged for his throat.
The white blade flashed. Cooler jerked his head back, the edge merely grazing his neck. Lisette, anticipating the miss, stepped deeper into his guard.
"HAAAAA!"
Lisette had spent two centuries mastering every form of combat. She was a grandmaster of the Hundred Arts. To her, weapons weren't a crutch; they were a means of bypassing the physical limits of her human base. She couldn't trade bare-knuckle blows with Cooler—his density would shatter her bones—so she brought the "strength" of her energy-hardened weapons to the fight.
Her swordplay was textbook perfect—the result of obsessively refining the basics until every swing was a masterstroke. Sparks flew as her blades clashed against Cooler's armored hide.
"Hup!"
As they separated for a fraction of a second, Lisette manifested a Chain-Sickle, wrapping the weighted end around Cooler's ankle. She yanked.
She didn't try to pull him—he was too heavy. Instead, she used the anchor to pull herself toward him with explosive speed.
"Fool! You're coming straight to me!"
Cooler lunged with a punch. But Lisette didn't meet it. She slipped past his reach and drove a Bo Staff she had just manifested into his solar plexus.
She knew the reach of her weapons better than he knew the reach of his arms. She spun the staff, striking him with the fluid, whipping motions of a snake. Before he could grab the staff, it transformed into Nunchaku, then a Nine-Section Whip, lashing across his face and neck.
Cooler's guard was failing. Lisette shifted to Tonfas, parrying his heavy blows and following up with a kick to his gut. When he tried to block her next strike, he found his arm being pried away by... her foot.
Having removed her shoes, Lisette used her toes like a second set of hands, gripping Cooler's arm to ruin his balance. She followed up by manifesting a katana, the tip aiming directly for his eye.
Cooler jerked away, but she was already transitioning into a side-kick, her foot hardened into a blade of energy that pierced his ear canal.
"Gah...!"
Cooler was reeling. He had never fought anyone so annoying. Her tactics shifted every second, her weapons changed mid-swing, and her movements were entirely unpredictable.
She manifested Twin Swords, raining down a flurry of cuts on his armored guard. Then, she merged them into a Greatsword, bringing the massive blade down on his head with tectonic force.
"Gah!?"
As Cooler fell, Lisette accelerated. She used a focused telekinetic burst to drive him toward the ground even faster. She opened a Gate, appeared on the surface before he could land, and delivered a palm strike to his spine as he descended.
Even that didn't stop him. Cooler flipped in mid-air, throwing a desperate counter-punch. Lisette slipped it by a hair, grabbed his finger, and used Aikido to throw his massive weight against him, snapping the joint in the process.
As he tried to stand, Lisette kicked sand into his eyes. It was a primitive, "dirty" move, but incredibly effective. Even at Cooler's level, the biological reflex to blink gave Lisette the split second she needed to thrust her fingers into his throat.
She followed up by bringing her wrists together, placing her palms against his chest. Fajin. She sent a shockwave directly into his internal organs while simultaneously flooding his body with her own volatile energy.
The internal explosion forced purple blood to spray from behind Cooler's mask.
But the tyrant didn't care about the blood. He snarled and grabbed Lisette's right arm.
"Don't mock me, brat!"
"!"
He drove a knee into her stomach. Even through her guard, the impact was enough to make her cough up blood. He prepared a second strike, but Lisette used the arm he was holding as a pivot, flipping her body to throw him over her head.
Lisette jumped back, pushing her Burst Limit to 40x and launching a Destructo Disk. Cooler watched as the blade sliced off one of the horns on his head, but he didn't stop. He ignored the blood and charged, throwing a relentless barrage of punches.
Lisette dodged and countered, but the tide was turning. The gap in their physical stats was simply too wide to bridge with technique alone.
Suddenly, the Destructo Disk she had missed with earlier banked around. She had been remote-controlling it the whole time. It slammed into Cooler's back, carving deep into his armored hide.
"Grr... ENOUGH!"
Lisette gasped. The blade was deep, but it stopped. Cooler hadn't used a technique—he had simply flexed. His sheer muscle mass was holding the spinning energy blade at bay.
"I am... nothing like my pathetic brother Frieza!"
Cooler erupted with an explosion of ki that sent Lisette tumbling. He leapt high into the atmosphere, looking down at the planet below.
He held his hand toward the void. A spark of orange flame appeared, instantly expanding into a miniature sun.
"I am the strongest in the universe!"
The technique was the Super Nova. It held the destructive power of a dying star—his ultimate trump card. This woman was a threat to his pride, to his very existence. He wouldn't play with her anymore. He would erase her, his brother, and this entire miserable planet.
The orb of apocalyptic light descended toward Namek, ready to turn the world into stardust.
***
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