Trunks stood there, completely awestruck of the hulking figure that stood 20 meters across from him. He hadn't expected this, and he feared that he wasn't prepared for it.
"Let's begin," Cooler announced and rushed from his spot with his incredible speed.
The Super Saiyan's eyes widened in shock and all he could think to do was run away in that moment. Trunks's aura kicked into high-gear as he darted into the air and narrowly dodged the impact of Cooler's fist against the ground, leaving the area to erupt in a cloud of dirt.
"This shouldn't be happening!" Trunks griped aloud as he looked to the dust cloud that had formed. "How could there have been no mention of a guy this strong in my timeline? What has happened here to throw this universe so off track?!" Trunks grated his teeth in frustration as he continued to fly backward, putting as much space between him and the cloud of dirt that surely housed Cooler.
However, the boy soon realized his folly as he suddenly connected with an immovable figure and was brought to an immediate halt. His eyes bucked with fear the second his senses caught on to what exactly was behind him.
"Going somewhere?" Cooler mocked casually and before Trunks could think of running again, a mighty backhand struck the side of his face and sent the teen flying through the air. The Super Arcosian tyrant quickly followed up as he chased Trunks down. It took hardly five seconds for Cooler to catch up and when he did, he stopped the boy with a punishing knee to abdomen and pressed on with an elbow right into his spine. Before Trunks's limp body could fall from his clutches, Cooler struck out a hand and clasped it firmly around the teen's head, his entire hand cupping the top of Trunks's head in a brutal vice grip.
"Feel the might of my power, Super Saiyan! Understand who the mightiest creature in this galaxy truly is!" Cooler roared out triumphantly as he squeezed down on Trunks's skull, the pain of the assault nearly making the hero's eyes roll in the back of his head.
Yet, Trunks didn't given in to the assault and grasped at the fingers that clutched his head in a vice grip. Cooler cackled out loud at Trunks's attempt, but the teen managed to loosen the tyrant's grip just enough that he could spin around with a roundhouse kick right to the base of Cooler's neck.
Cooler staggered back in pain of the kick, leaving Trunks with plenty of room to press both hands forward and shoot out blast after blast of energy. The small barrage attack careened over Cooler's body in a massive of small explosion that absolutely swallowed the evil monarch. After Trunks had issued out over two dozen blasts, he paused to watch as the smoke cloud surrounding Cooler slowly wafted away knowing full well that a minor attack like that wasn't going to finish off the tyrant.
Trunks wasn't given long to wait as the smoke dissipated, and once he began to catch sight of what loomed beneath the smoke cloud, his eyes widened in shock. Cooler offered another malicious laugh as the smoke cloud disappeared and left the tyrant surrounded in a large, translucent blue dome. "This was a present from the Coralian race," Cooler offered as the barrier surrounding him slowly faded away. "They called it the Psychobarrier. Care to witness their second present?"
Before Trunks had time to even consider guarding, Cooler's red eyes flashed and a beam of blue electric coils rushed out surround and ensnare Trunks's body. The teen grunted out in pain as the coils held him in place and he glared to Cooler, who watched with a malevolent smile. "You're no match for me, Saiyan!" he declared as his long tail swung out from behind him and slapped across Trunks's face. The scowl that formed on the teen's face filled Cooler with so much joy. "I am the strongest and you are nothing!" Cooler went on to say as he allowed slap after slap to strike Trunks's face via his tail. "You will bow before me!" With that, Cooler allowed one final tail slap to strike the hero, this time with so much force that Trunks was sent spearing towards the ground.
Trunks blinked against the rush of wind against his face and he grunted at the pain that had come from Cooler's attack, but as he watched the dirt surface come closer and closer, he could feel the electric coils around his body losing their grip. His eyes widened in surprise when the coils disappeared just seconds before his impact, and with a flourish, Trunks flipped through the air and slammed feet-first into the terrain effectively stopping his impact. However, the second Trunks looked up, his moment of peace was brought to an end.
Cooler careened in on top of Trunks just as the boy had landed. His massive foot slammed over the teen's body and ushered the hero deep into ground as he impacted. The surrounding terrain cracked and creviced under Cooler's might and the tyrant cackled out joyously as he felt Trunks being buried beneath his foot.
"Too easy," Cooler crooned in satisfaction as he slowly rose out of the rubble that he'd created. He slowly lifted back into the sky and focused his eye in on the center of the crash site below, thinking that he'd see Trunks burst out of the tomb any second. When seconds nearly turned to a minute, Cooler's brow furrowed in distaste. "I can't sense the little brat anymore. Surely I didn't kill him already," he said thoughtfully and finally sighed when a minute passed. He lifted a finger and aimed it at the rubble below. "We're done here, Super Saiyan."
A dark red orb formed at his fingertip and was fired out immediately for the surface. The bomb zipped down to the ground at a rapid pace and was hardly one second away from impacting the ground when, all of a sudden, a deadly slice of ki burst from the ground below. It sliced clean through the surface, cut easily through Cooler's bomb, and rushed right up at the tyrant. Cooler was so taken aback by the attack that pure instinct alone made him lean to the side, leaving the deadly ki to slice through his upper shoulder.
With a snarl, Cooler looked to his wound and then back to the surface, where he now saw Trunks standing proudly on the ground. While an array of slurs were ready to leave the tyrant's maw, before he could say anything, the bomb that had been ready to strike the ground suddenly exploded mid-air in a fiery detonation that completely clouded his vision. However, he wasn't given long to anticipate what would happen next.
Trunks roared through the fiery explosion, his aura flared outward like a golden shield as he charged right at Cooler with his sword primed to strike. It was Cooler's turn to be surprised as he narrowly dodged getting stabbed through the heart. While Trunks took that time to prepare another strike, Cooler managed to lock eyes with the Saiyan hero, and the animosity that shined in the boy's emerald eyes was evident. Before Cooler could go on the offensive, Trunks swung around with the sword once more, this time aiming to slice Cooler's head off. When that attack was dodged, Trunks simply launched into a rapid attack of his blade, the weapon cleaving around for the tyrant at every possible angle and Cooler was actually put on his toes to keep from having a limb severed.
"Enough of this!" the evil Arcosian demanded, his aura roaring to life just as Trunks's blade swung in for another slice. With utter finesse, Cooler managed to catch the blade between his index and middle finger, his aura and strength working to keep the blade from slicing clean through his hand.
Trunks sneered at the catch and tugged desperately to yank the weapon from Cooler's clutches, but the tyrant had the sword locked in place as he growled angrily at the boy across from him. "This silly little weapon won't save you from me, boy!" Cooler yelled out viciously and aimed to slam a fist into Trunks's face, but he was suddenly halted abruptly as pain struck in his abdomen and radiated all across his body.
Gingerly, Cooler looked down to the boot that was buried in his stomach and he then carefully looked back up at Trunks, who offered a momentary smirk and placed a palm directly in front of the tyrant's face. "Get lost, Cooler!" he called out as an orange wave of energy was fired out at point blank range, the energy completely swallowing Cooler as the tyrant was sent flying out across the sky.
An angered roar poured from Cooler's mouth as he shot through the air. He grimaced as he looked back to where he and Trunks had been floating, only to see that the Saiyan teen had disappeared. His quick senses and instincts picked up long before Cooler could see the boy and the tyrant moved fast to stop his perilous flight with an extravagant spin and brought up an elbow that crashed against an invisible force. As soon as Cooler made contact, the figure came into vision and displayed where the elbow had crashed into his chest.
Trunks sputtered upon the unexpected strike, but recovered fast enough to slap the Frost Demon's elbow away and then strike out with a roundhouse kick to back of Cooler's neck, making the alien buckle under the power of the kick. With a snarl, Cooler turned back on Trunks with a point blank blast aimed at the boy. Quick as a whip, though, Trunks ducked under the flash of orange energy that could've enveloped him and instead slapped a kick into Cooler's arm that sent his blast shooting directly into the air.
Thrown off guard by the maneuver, Cooler was left wide open as Trunks moved back in with a punishing knee to the stomach and then an axe handle across his back that sent him spearing out of the air.
While Cooler was sent flying down to the surface, Trunks pulled out his sword again. His emerald eyes watched the tyrant carefully as a beachball size blue orb formed in front of him. He carefully moved into stance with his sword ready as he focused in on Cooler, knowing full well that the tyrant would be ready to recover any second.
The second that Cooler turned a flip and landed onto the surface, Trunks cleaved a slice though the ki orb in front of him, sending out a large, blue slicing wave. A moment of alarmed spread across Cooler's face as the massive slashing attack rushed down at him. With a grunt, he leapt out of the way, leaving the attack to crash explosively into the ground. He turned his eyes back skyward to see Trunks slice through the ki orb again and again and again until the slicing blasts were raining down on the surface like precipitation. Cooler jumped, flipped, ran, and eventually took to the air as the slashing attack rained down behind him in a bombardment of explosions.
Seeing that his attack was getting him nowhere, Trunks took one final slash at the ki orb, this time sending out a gargantuan slash of ki at the earth. The massive slash careened down to the surface, leaving Cooler to look up at the attack with a hateful glare. But that glare soon morphed to a conniving smile. He extended his index and middle finger before cleaving them through air, calling out "Fissure Slash!" as he did so. An equally powerful slash of purple ki was formed in the movement and rushed up at Trunks's attack in a perpendicular fashion. The two slashing attacks clashed in the air and negated each other immediately in a flash of light that sent dozens upon dozens of little balls of ki falling to the surface.
Cooler offered out a bright laugh as he looked up to Trunks, noting the anxiety beginning to creep up onto the boy's face. "Care to give up yet, Super Saiyan?" he called out mockingly.
Trunks sneered at the mere thought and suddenly brought up his sword, aiming to slice another ki slash through the air. However, before the teen could complete the movement, his sword was suddenly yanked from his hands.
"No more of this!" Cooler snapped, appearing behind Trunks out of thin air. Trunks looked back to the tyrant in shock just as Cooler threw the sword aside. The Saiyan hero looked just about ready to ask how on Earth did Cooler appear behind him so quickly, but before he could, the Super Arcosian slammed a punch into his abdomen so fast that Trunks didn't even see it coming. "You have tried and you have failed," Cooler went on to say before ushering a knee up into the teen's skull, snapping the hero's head back in a gruesome fashion as blood shot from his nose.
Trunks was just about ready to fall from the sky as he dazed in and out of consciousness from those two strikes. However, Cooler snatched him up by the hem of his shirt before he could fall. The teen's eyes were closed tight against the obvious pain that was radiating in his skull and Cooler smiled as he pulled the boy right up to his face. "You were a good test of my strength and now I know, without a shadow of doubt, that I can defeat Goku and put an end to the Super Saiyan legend once and for all!"
With that, Cooler released his grip on Trunks, letting the teen begin to fall from the sky, but he only gave the boy a moment's rest. Suddenly, a backhand struck across the boy's face so violently that he completely spun around and then Cooler slammed a kick into his back, sending him flying across the sky. Before Trunks could get far, Cooler warped in front of him and slammed a furious punch into his face that sent Trunks spearing to the ground. The hero crashed explosively into a rock formation below, completely leveling the mound of rock.
By the time the dust and debris from Trunks's explosively landing settled, Cooler had drifted onto the ground, standing far away from the crash site. He stood confidently and watched as Trunks carefully stood out of the rubble, his clothing a mess and his face with a bloody gash on his forehead. A smirk worked its way onto Cooler's face by the time Trunks fully stood and at that moment, the teen's golden, spikey hair suddenly shifted back to its pink hue.
"We're done here," Cooler announced, lifting an index finger and aiming it right at Trunks's chest.
The Saiyan hero looked to Cooler without a trace of fear, making the tyrant enjoy the moment even more, but just before the blast could be fired, Trunks's eyes widened as he looked to the sky above Cooler. "No! Stop! That won't work on him!" Trunks had yelled out in desperation.
Cooler quirked a brow in confusion, but then his senses finally caught up with his surroundings and he was quick to look above him, where he saw the Namekian, Vegeta, those two other munchkins, and three other Earthlings that he did not recognize. Each of them held an orb of ki in either of their hands and all of their concentration was focused in on the tyrant below.
Trunks called out for the others to back off again, but it fell on deaf ears as a storm of ki blasts suddenly rained down on Cooler from all directions. Explosions rung out aplenty as blast after blast struck the surface, kicking up a wild and massive dirt cloud. The Saiyan teen covered his face and eyes against the rush of debris that ran from every blast that connected, and the rest of the Z fighters were focused in on nothing but the blast zone, where Cooler was sure to be.
"ENOUGH!" Piccolo called out after an uncountable wave of blasts had been slung down onto the wasteland and on top of Cooler. The Namekian panted against the exertion of the attack and cautioned a glance to his comrades, who all looked to be about as winded as he was.
A few seconds of cold silence passed in the area then as the Z fighters tried to calm themselves. Even Trunks was stunned into silence as he watched the scene.
"D-do you think we did it?" Krillin cautioned to ask and looked up to the others.
On cue, the dirt cloud that had been swirling around the blast zone was lit up brightly with an expansive violet aura. Everyone could sense Cooler's power exploded from within the cloud and soon enough they felt his might as Cooler erupted with a massive explosive wave of his energy. The invisible gust of energy rushed out from within the cloud, completely blowing away the dirt surrounding the evil monarch, before it crashed against the Z fighters, effectively knocking them out of the sky.
While the others crashed onto the surface in a heap, Cooler's violet aura lit up the surroundings like an eerie light show. Gusts of wind blew out from around the tyrant as he slowly lifted into the air, his red eyes seeming to glow with malice as he looked down on those that had the gall to attempt an attack against him.
By the time the light from Cooler's dominating aura had died out, he'd found a new resting place atop a small rock formation, giving him the prime spot to look down upon those that had stood against him. "I suppose the gang's all here," he announced to the heroes. "…all except the one that I'm actually here to kill…the coward!"
With a sneer, Gohan launched back to his feet and yelled out, "My dad is coming back, Cooler! And when he does, you'll be sorry!"
Cooler watched Gohan for a long pause then, his eyes still as they seemed to analyze every inch of Gohan's determined frame. After the passing of a few seconds, Cooler scoffed. "No," he replied, dismissively as his right hand suddenly was encased in a fiery, blue energy. He carefully lifted his hand into the air, above his head, saying, "It's your father who'll be sorry, boy, because he wasn't here to save your lives this time. Now DIE!"
All of the heroes flinched back, gritted their teeth, or outright whimpered in the expectation of their doom as they watched Cooler hand begin to descend, and they could all feel the amount of power that he had in that one attack. It was enough to destroy any one of them several times over. In that split second, they either kissed their butts goodbye or made plans for a futile defensive maneuver, but before anything could be finalized on the lives of the Z fighters, Cooler's arm was suddenly halted in mid-air.
The tyrant's eyes bucked in shock as he felt his hand stop the attack and hardly a full second later to he realize that someone had his arm snatched up in a vice grip. Cooler first looked to the hand that had seized up his arm and then he casted his angry eyes back to the person foolish enough to stand in his way. "How dare y-!" he began, only to be cut off mid-exclaim when a fist crashed into his side with a knee-buckling amount of power.
Whatever energy Cooler had gathered in his right hand was lost immediately as he curled in on the might of the attack and when he snarled at the pain and attempted to attack his new foe, a leg came across his face with enough fury to send him flying off his current rock formation and spearing through two more before he started bouncing across the surface like a rock skipping across water. After slamming into the dirt three times, Cooler landed the final time on his hands and feet, grinding into the surface as he fought against the power of the attack. After carving a very defined crevice in the surface, he looked back to where he'd once been standing to take in the full figure of the person dumb enough to challenge him.
He wasn't all too surprised to see that it was Goku now standing atop the rock formation. However, what certainly took Cooler by surprise was the attire that the Saiyan adorned. If Cooler didn't know any better, he could've sworn that those were same style of clothing that Nosa wore.
"GOKU!" Krillin, Yamcha, and Chiaotzu all exclaimed in joy.
"Kakarot! It's about damn time you got here!" Vegeta growled out.
"Dad, I knew that you'd come back! I knew that you'd save us!" Gohan cheered with tears of joy forming in his eyes.
Goku looked to his friends, offering them a pleased smile, before looking past them to the ragged appearance of Trunks. Goku simply offered the hero a nod of respect and then turned his attention back to Cooler. Without a word, he levitated off of the rock formation and drifted onto the flat land. The second that he feet touch ground, he began stepping over to Cooler and morphed into his SS form instantly, easily, and gracefully.
Ignoring the remnants of pain blossoming in his midsection, Cooler brightened with a confident smirk. "At last, THE Super Saiyan makes his appearance!" Cooler crooned cockily.
Goku allowed a smirk to adorn his features as well as he stepped right up to Cooler and tilted his head back so that they could look right into each other's eyes. "You're taller than I remember," Goku offered lightly.
"And MUCH stronger," Cooler added.
"Yeah?" Goku spoke, teetering his head playfully as he smirked up at Cooler. "Me too."
Like the flip of a switch, both warriors suddenly moved with such blinding speed that their movements were indiscernible, but it all became clear exactly what had transpired when Cooler's fist crashed into Goku's palm, the Saiyan hero blocking the mighty Arcosian attack with ease. Cooler snarled like an animal as his punch was halted, but then growled with fury as he found his fist locked in place with Goku's finger holding it hostage with a vice grip.
"In fact…" Goku went on to say, drawing the tyrant's attention away from their locked appendages to the now tenacious scowl on the hero's face. "…I'd say that I'm leagues stronger than I was on Namek."
Cooler opened his mouth, ready to lash out with a scalding retort, but found his tongue seized before a word could form as he was suddenly yanked into the Saiyan, only to be silence with a punishing knee right to his abdomen that sent a shockwave of pain rippling through his body. "Yes, Cooler, I am THE Super Saiyan," Goku said while the tyrant curled in on the knee buried into his midsection. "I am the Super Saiyan that will put an end to your tyranny right here!"
With that, Goku shoved Cooler away from his person, making the tyrant stumble back and eventually fall to the ground, still holding onto his abdomen. The Frost Demon looked up to Goku then, noting the severity with which the hero's emerald eyes looked down on him.
"Get back to your feet, Cooler," Goku said as his golden aura flared around his body once more. "Let's finish what we started on Namek!"
I'll be at a science convention next week, guys. So I'm afraid I'll have to postpone the next update until Saturday, 2/20.
Also! We have a new Cooler-centric story in the fandom by a fan and friend of mine, ConnorRambles. Check out "Frigid Future." You won't regret it!