"Ha!" A rueful grin touched Rhode's lips, the earlier excitement cooling into pragmatic assessment. "It seems I'm still not a match for you right now."
He held his stance but didn't press another attack. The thrill of testing his limits was one thing; suicidal overconfidence was another. The gulf between them wasn't a challenge—it was a death sentence if Frieza ever stopped toying with him. His primary goal had been to see if he could overwhelm Frieza's first form. That answer was a resounding, and humbling, no.
"Oh ho ho ho~" Frieza's laugh was one of genuine, cruel delight. "You are impressive! You possess perhaps… one or two-tenths of my power!" His gaze swept over Rhode, shifting from murderous intent to something resembling avarice. A tool this sharp was rare. "Would you consider serving under me? I would grant you the highest honors."
Rhode couldn't help but chuckle. It was classic Frieza. When utterly confident of his superiority, he could afford to be magnanimous, even charmingly polite. It was only when his control slipped that the monster was fully unleashed.
"Lord Frieza," Rhode said, his tone light, "aren't you afraid I'll become a Super Saiyan and defeat you one day?"
"Oh ho ho ho!" Frieza's confidence was absolute. "I am a born prodigy! A true genius! Even if that legend were real, you could never hope to reach my heights." Their skirmish had given him Rhode's measure. Less than a third of his own power. If that was a Super Saiyan, the legend was a pathetic joke.
Rhode's brow furrowed slightly. Was this the blind arrogance of power, or did Frieza have another card to play? A wild thought struck him: What if this confrontation makes him actually train? The image of a Golden Frieza appearing to counter his own future Super Saiyan form was almost comically absurd.
"And? Will you serve?" Frieza pressed, anticipation in his eyes.
"Sorry," Rhode declined, his voice firm. "I'd rather try to be a good person."
He wasn't claiming sainthood, but next to Frieza, he felt positively benevolent.
"Oh?" Frieza's expression shifted to one of profound, condescending regret. "How… pedantic." In his worldview, he wasn't a villain. He provided homes for the homeless (by selling their planets). He worked with divine mandate (for a God of Destruction). Lesser minds simply couldn't appreciate his grandeur.
"In that case," Frieza's voice dropped, all pretense of courtesy vanishing, replaced by a glacial finality, "I shall send you on your way."
His finger rose. A Death Beam, magnitudes more potent than before, lanced out—a violet line of pure erasure aimed at Rhode's heart.
It pierced through… and kept going. Rhode's form wavered, shimmered, and dissolved into nothingness. An afterimage. A phantom left by Instant Transmission.
"Damn it!" Frieza snarled, his composure cracking. He scanned the void, but Rhode's energy signature was utterly, completely gone. The Saiyan had vanished without a trace.
BOOM!
A new disruption drew his furious gaze downward. Planet Vegeta. The massive Planet Destruction Ball, which should have been crushing the world to dust, was… moving. Upwards.
It erupted in a cataclysmic blast high in the atmosphere, a premature firework that lit up the dying planet's sky.
Frieza's face twisted in rage. Worse, he saw them—dozens of spherical Saiyan escape pods, like spores from a crushed fruit, shooting into the upper atmosphere from the chaos below.
Biu! Biu! Biu!
Frieza's hand became a blur. Death Beams, precise and merciless, shot out, picking off the fleeing pods one by one, turning them into brief, fiery blooms against the dark. This operation, this cleansing, had been implied by Lord Beerus himself. Failure was not an option. His father's stern warnings about the beings one must never, ever offend—Majin Buu, the God of Destruction—echoed in his mind. This mess could not stand. The Saiyans had to be erased. Completely.
Not content with just shooting down the escape pods, Frieza decided to eliminate any possibility of survivors. He descended through the dissolving atmosphere like a lavender comet and drove his foot into the trembling crust of Planet Vegeta.
Terrifying energy, concentrated and vile, pulsed from the point of impact. It didn't explode outward—it speared downward, through the mantle, through the core, and out the other side.
BOOM.
Planet Vegeta didn't just explode; it unraveled. It fractured into a billion glowing shards, a silent, spectacular supernova of rock and molten metal blooming in the dark—a final, gruesome firework for the Saiyan race.
Hm? Even as the planet died, Frieza's sharp eyes caught movement on the far side of the expanding debris field. A few more spherical pods, late to launch, were making a desperate bid for freedom.
Biu. A casual flick of his finger. A Death Beam lanced across the void, aiming to snuff out the last sparks of Saiyan life.
ROAR!
A sound shouldn't have carried in the vacuum, but this one did—a psychic blast of pure, bestial fury. From behind a tumbling planetoid chunk, a colossal Great Ape erupted into view. It swatted the Death Beam aside as if it were a gnat and, with a speed that belied its size, teleported—Instant Transmission in its Oozaru form—directly in front of Frieza.
"FRIEZA, DIE!" The thought-roar hammered into Frieza's mind as the ape's massive palm came down like a falling mountain.
"Hmph." Frieza's response was a sneer. He didn't dodge. He raised his hand, a compressed sphere of violet annihilation condensing instantly in his palm. He didn't throw it; he placed it against the Oozaru's descending chest, a kiss of absolute death.
Whoosh!
Just as the energy sphere was about to detonate, a smaller figure materialized beside the giant ape. It was Rhode. He grabbed a handful of the Oozaru's fur and vanished with her in another flash of displaced space.
BOOM! Frieza's sphere detonated in empty space, a futile blossom of light.
That Saiyan monkey! Recognition and pure, boiling hatred flooded Frieza. It was the one who had refused him. And the ape he'd saved… that would be the other one.
In an empty stretch of interstellar space, Rhode reappeared, the massive, snarling Oozaru—Aira—writhing in his grip.
"ROAR! RHODE, LET ME GO! LET ME KILL HIM!" Her mind was a red haze of rage, the destruction of her homeworld and people short-circuiting her higher reasoning.
Rhode felt a strange mix of relief and exasperation. The relief: this visceral, protective fury was a sign of profound change in her. The old Aira might have watched Planet Vegeta die with cold, analytical detachment. The exasperation: this change didn't make her any more capable of fighting Frieza. A tenfold power boost still left her hopelessly outmatched.
Bang!
He didn't argue. With a thought, the shimmering portal of the Portable Time Chamber snapped open beside them. With a well-placed kick fueled by Oozaru-augmented strength, he launched the struggling giant ape through the gateway.
He followed, the door sealing shut behind them. Inside the sterile white expanse, Aira was still roaring, swinging blindly. Rhode flashed behind her, his hand glowing with precisely calibrated ki. He brought it down in a sharp chop to a pressure point on her massive neck.
The roaring ceased. The Oozaru form shrank rapidly, resolving back into the unconscious form of Aira, floating limply in the artificial gravity.
Rhode left her there to rest and cool off. He stepped back out of the Time Chamber, the door winking shut. Taking a steadying breath, he focused his mind on the coordinates now marked by a cloud of cosmic debris.
Whoosh.
He reappeared in the space where Planet Vegeta had once spun. All that remained was a glittering, expanding asteroid field and the silent, watching form of Frieza, his lavender skin stark against the eternal dark.