With his arms spread and wound back behind him, Broly charged through the rising pile of debris toward Chayote. Unlike her opponent, Chayote took a leap backward, beginning a chase-like scenario where she blinked from one pillar top to another while Broly cackled like an ecstatic toddler, smashing everything in his path.
Having lured what she saw as an opening out, Chayote moved instantly with no semblance of pulling back in her punches. Rushing in, her fist stopped just inches away from Broly's face as the Legendary Super Saiyan caught her by the wrist without having to look at her. Despite the downtime that Chayote had lying down and gathering strength while Broly sapped his away, their gap still felt abysmal if an unskilled brawler saw through her attack like that.
Broly swung her around with one arm, channeling an Eraser Cannon blast in his free hand and then thrusting it into what he thought would be Chayote's chest but the bulky Saiyan had vanished from his sight and hold, confusing the titan and prompting him to look around. A sharp whistle of buzzing air alerted and stiffened Broly while a double-arm ax handle slam rocked the back of his head and forcefully tucked his head into the neck with extreme strain to the spine.
Seeing her opponent stiffened, Chayote ignited a golden aura around her body and slammed into Broly with a shoulder tackle that released a vertical white halo of concussive force and sent Broly away. Halting himself in mid-air, the Legendary Super Saiyan slammed right back into Chayote with a superior shoulder tackle that grounded her and sent her skidding across the ground.
"You thought you could overpower me? You've spent way more time in this form than I did and you know it way less than I do!" Broly mocked Chayote by flexing his flawless musculature and posing with his arms spread out in mid-air. "This form grows stronger with each passing second, yes, but the escalation of strength is immeasurably greater when you're fighting. Just laying down and licking your wounds won't help you close the gap, Chayote. I've powered up way more than you did in the same time you've been resting by taking care of your trash for you."
"My trash?" Chayote grumbled, rising from the trenches and indentations of steel she's made by crash-landing onto the surface there. Bruises covered her face and body loosely, and a vexing strand of spiky, lime-colored hair floated just over her face.
"That's right. If you didn't have them dragging you down, we could've been king and queen together and ruled the Saiyans! You let your trash spoil your backyard and the rotting stench let them weigh you down to their level. Now all of you are in for gruesome, violent deaths, and this universe of yours will follow!" Broly pointed a finger at every battered and bruised Dragon Team warrior laying beaten down. Only Piccolo was still pulling himself out from the wreckage and tending to his scrapes, ready to take over in the case of emergency if Chayote failed to hold her own.
Broly was a unique breed of terrifying villain. The first one to whom the prospect of the universe's end upon Chayote's death wouldn't have mattered at all because he was mad enough to destroy it by his own hand and vanish alongside it, anyway.
"My friends! My planet! My son…!" Chayote took three bold steps, indenting the surface of the Capsule Corps Star surface and sending rampant shockwaves alongside it with each. "THEY'RE EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS TO ME!" Chayote bellowed, releasing a powerful burst of mint-colored aura from her body that dwarfed the entire Capsule Corps Star and made Broly's twisted expression shift to surprise. With passing pumps of passionate blood, Chayote's muscles began swelling up as her leaned down build once again buffed up with raw power to rival Broly's own.
"If you think it rivals the empty void that calls for destruction in my heart, then try to protect your miserable planet!" Broly cackled, launching a tiny, lime-colored energy sphere from his hand that inflated into a planetary-sized energy bomb of devastating power. It was as if Broly truly channeled the very core of his destructive potential, summoned forth the essence of his call to destroy the universe, and reduce everything to the blank emptiness he felt in his heart. An oblivious existence that desired to crumble all existence into oblivion.
Chayote extended her hands, catching the enormous energy bomb and feeling the stress passing down her entire body. The devastating destructive potential pulsed down her arms, coloring her stressed blood vessels that fed her muscles emerald green and forcing them to pop with bloody sprinkles and gleam with the emerald glow of Broly's Omega Blaster. The relentless and uncompromising force pushed and drilled Chayote deeper into the Capsule Corps Star.
Navy's cry echoed in Chayote's blank mind that was just about ready to give up and accept defeat. Submit to oblivion and crumble under irresistible pressure. Somehow, her rascal of a son managed to cry louder than the rumbling energy bomb that threatened to rip the universe asunder. Chayote moved her ruptured and lacerated left arm away, letting it weigh down and accepting the Omega Blaster onto her shoulders. What little remained of her clothes sizzled and burnt away until the emerald energy tearing her body up from the inside began gleaming from her eyes and the grievous wounds they'd left all across her ruined body.
A deafening pound from Chayote's left to the surface of the planet-sized universal bomb. Broly's eyebrows twitched in shock when the Omega Blaster lightly moved just an inch. Another punch let Chayote's right hand shove the destructive energy bomb off of her shoulder with just the right hand that held the bomb ready for successive blows. Chayote's ravaged left arm became a blood-splattering machine gun. With each punch, reversing the course of the energy bomb just a little more back to its source. The Omega Blaster began bending out of shape, becoming a deflated blob of glowing emerald-colored energy.
"She's absorbing it!" Piccolo hissed in disbelief. "Chayote, it'll rip your body apart! What's the point of protecting the universe with your life if it'll be destroyed anyway after you die!?"
"Hmph…" Broly bit his lip until he drew blood. Throwing a tantrum by thrashing about with his fists. It must have hit him hard to realize that someone much weaker than him may have had resolve so strong that it not only matched his resolve for universal oblivion but also surpass his destructive tendencies by evening their nasty odds. Unable to cope with that realization, Broly send a small Ki blast at the deflated Omega Blaster, detonating it prematurely in a green energy nova that flung Chayote's limp body with blown-out and dried-up blood vessels flying aside.
The Capsule Corps Star had a nasty crunch bitten out of it, reduced to a moon-like crescent shape. Despite Broly's intent to destroy solely Chayote and her annoying resolve to protect the Earth, her friends and her family, and Chayote's best attempts at absorbing all of that energy within her body, the blast still nearly consumed the Capsule Corps Star whole and would have, had it not been for Chayote's valiant body placed as a shield.
"Bulma…!" Piccolo exclaimed in panic. He felt a puny flame of Ki safely tucked away in a distant corner of an ever-shifting room configuration. The scientist and hacker of the Star must have sent herself as far away from the blast as possible to maximize her odds of surviving it. Even in her current state, a paltry energy signature still rustled in Chayote too.
Sensing this as well, Broly extended his hand to lob an Eraser Cannon and obliterate his obsession from the material plane. With an interloping, flying kick, Piccolo swatted the Ki blast aside and placed himself in front of Chayote's ravaged body.
"Don't you go around getting any fancy ideas when we heal you back to life," Piccolo muttered to Chayote's whited-out stare and grey-skinned, husk-like body that laid behind him. "It's not because I care about you or anything that I'm stepping in and risking the life of the Ultimate Namekian warrior. It's because I both want to prove to this devil that I'm the strongest in the universe and that the Namekians are the No. 1 martial artist race, and because if you die–the universe goes with you. That includes all trace of the Namekians with it, so I can't afford to let this stalker of yours finish you off."
"What's that you're mumbling about, bug? Prayers?" Broly mocked Piccolo. "You could use some divine mercy, but your prayers will be of no use for you once I kill your gods too and doom them alongside this universe!"
"Who said those prayers were for me!?" Piccolo hissed, throwing his hands aside and preparing Ki blasts that he surrounded the entire space sector with. Like a baby galaxy born within the solar system, except Ki blasts of the Hellzone Grenade flashing instead of stars. Momentarily stunned by the massive scale of his opponent's attacks, Broly pushed toward Piccolo like a juggernaut of an inevitable end.
Piccolo crossed his arms, sending the first cluster of his "stars" to explode right up in Broly's face. Not feeling like he was in one of his more merciful moods, the Ultimate Namekian commanded the rest to follow the first, succeeding with the following cluster of star-like Ki blasts to go supernova all together in a chain combination that swallowed Broly up in all-consuming light and a galaxy-rumbling quake that tugged at the fabric of space-time as if it was a tablecloth laid upon the wooden foundations of all creation.
Broly's psycho grin peeked through the blaze-color smoke and a miniature version of his Omega Blaster flashed in his right hand that the rushing Broly held wound back. A much larger and more intense version of his Eraser Cannon slammed right into Piccolo's chest, whiting the Ultimate Namekian out as it drilled into the chest cavity and left it charred with nasty burns, and flung him into the air where the Gigantic Eraser detonated in an emerald nova of power and sent tattered and bruised Piccolo plummeting down, surrounded by a trail of black smoke.
"The wreck of this planet will be the grave of your race. It'll be the grave of all races and all of existence!" Broly posed proudly in front of Chayote's husky and senseless body while Piccolo rolled on his side and began peeling himself off the ground, drooling with bloody trails all across his body.
"I am… The last Namekian warrior!" Piccolo claimed while standing up on wobbly legs and raising his dukes to continue his fruitless resistance. "I am also… A martial artist and my pride won't let me accept the end of the Namekian warrior clan legacy. Not to the likes of you!"
"Spoken like someone who has a choice…" Broly's expression turned to bitterness in a snap. From the looks of it, he didn't have a bit of a problem in mangling Piccolo some more just to hammer his lesson that much harder.
"If you think you're so invincible, how about you take this head-on?" a malicious grin colored Piccolo's face while sweat began pouring down his face. The Ultimate Namekian touched his forehead with the middle and index fingers. Ki began pouring down his body, picking up turbulent gales and quaking the remains of Bulma's Capsule Corps Star. Electricity surged up and down Piccolo's body, accumulating at the tip of his fingernails until the built-up force created a sparkle of energy engulfing his fingers halfway.
"Huh? You expect me to just stand here and wait for you to be ready?" Broly turned his head to the side. "Even if your pathetic challenge intrigues me, I'm getting the jitters to destroy everything!"
"What's wrong with you!?" Piccolo hissed through extreme physical strain, doing his best to gather as much energy into his Special Beam Cannon during the trivial time that he could buy. "After all this time proclaiming yourself and your heart of void to be the strongest in the universe, you'll just back down and avoid my challenge?"
"Hmph…" bitter in his expression, Broly clenched his right fist, erupting with all-consuming emerald Ki that shielded his entire body and created a colossal destructive energy wave that began expanding with a very real threat to consume and obliterate both Piccolo and the Capsule Corps Star.
"Tsk… I won't be able to cut it!" Piccolo reared his fangs, removing his middle and index finger from his forehead and spreading his hand open to transform the pinpoint energy spark into an electric shimmer surrounding his entire hand. Forcing an eruption of energy from his body, Piccolo mirrored the electric flasher on his second hand and connected the two together to unleash a fusion between Explosive Demon Wave and Special Beam Cannon in a violet energy wave with a beam spiraling around it. "You damn coward!" Piccolo cursed, feeling the trembling and irresistible advance of Broly's Super Explosive Wave. All that Piccolo's attack could do right now was slow down its advance.
A golden wave of light hurled from far away behind him. It was absolutely massive, easily capable of engulfing and swallowing the entire battlefield. It was more than just an energy wave–it was a beaming flash of light itself. As radiant and just as quick. The golden flash crashed into Broly's Super Explosive Wave and halted the progression of the explosive wave's increase. Piccolo closed his eyes and felt blood vessels around his entire body bursting from tension, his muscles felt completely burned up with fatigue and he had long since abandoned his limits and scratched them in favor of a new world of power available solely through a cruel cocktail of desperation and hope.
Desperation to protect himself, his race, and its legacy, Chayote and therefore the universe, also Bulma, who, for some reason, refused to beam herself off the star and back to Earth. It was possible that the beaming function of the Capsule Corps Star was no longer available in the Star's current state. What inspired Piccolo with hope was the fateful aid of this golden beam of light that helped him halt Broly's destruction until the Explosive Wave faded out. It was only when the emerald green nova vanished and Broly's perturbed expression showed itself to Piccolo once more that the Ultimate Namekian found an opportunity to check on his savior. It was tough to say which one hated to see this man more: Broly or Piccolo.
"Vegeta?" Piccolo hissed, realizing that the golden energy wave was nothing more than Vegeta's most powerful Final Flash. "It's a bit too late for you to brave up and come here to fight. Everyone's on death's doors now. Just take Bulma and Chayote and flee. I'll try to stall for time as much as I can. The bastard's powered up beyond any semblance of reason and anything we can ever try to challenge."
"That's not true though, is it?" Vegeta hovered lower to take his place by Piccolo's side and crossed his arms. "I've sensed you channeling the Special Beam Cannon but you've powered it up dozens of times in a snap. You wouldn't have chosen that inferior technique if you didn't have a goal for it to accomplish."
"Hmph… It's too late now!" Piccolo barked out. "The scar tissue around Broly's chest, the nasty scar stretching across his entire body… That's where Broly's heart exploded out of his body in a bloody burst when Chayote hit him with the Devilmite Beam last time. It has to be a weak spot of his. A place that doesn't have the unbelievable toughness of the rest of his body. If I could have only hit him with a Special Beam Cannon–the strongest technique with drilling properties I know, I'm sure I would've killed him or left him folded and at our mercy again."
"Can you channel it again?" Vegeta wondered. "To be fair, I came here lacking any semblance of a plan. I've found out from my father in hell just what sort of abomination Broly was, and I wanted to let him know about it before he kills all of us. I was curious if he could live with himself knowing the monster that he was, there was a small possibility he'd have just offed himself but… I like the odds of your plan better."
"That bastard got some mean licks in. I can channel the Special Beam Cannon, but it'll take much longer than normal. Everything hurts, but I feel like I may have enough of this adrenaline-high left to power through for one last shot. I'm not sure I trust your chances of surviving against him long enough," Piccolo gave Vegeta a blunt look. "He must hate your guts as much as he does Son's…"
"He hates Kakarot that much? Can't say I blame him, that guy has a tendency to rub people off the wrong way. Good to know, maybe I'll use him as a shield… Don't worry about me. I don't care if I survive, I just can't allow an abomination like Broly, a meaningless clump of cells, and a crime against science and nature alike to rule the Saiyans! At this point, I'd accept that Legendary Super Saiyan wench or Kakarot as king before I accept him!" just imagining any of these scenarios in his head made Vegeta clench his right fist and erupt with a radiant golden aura around his body. Vegeta's muscles swelled up and his hair spiked out of control.
"Never imagined you to be the type to make the sacrificial play for us," Piccolo mumbled in a solemn, yet softened tone. "I'll do my best to get this charged up as soon as I can, make sure you do your best to survive this too. Never mind your people, you've got a family now. Survive this for their sake!"
"I hear a lot of yapping and none of the charging…" Super Vegeta replied with a solemn face, signing off on whatever punishment and torment awaited him, challenging Broly alone, intending to hold him off and stall him. With a sassy smirk on his face, Piccolo pressed his index and middle fingers to his bruised and bloody forehead and began surging with electricity and a crystal-clear aura around his entire body. Seeing Piccolo having begun powering up, Super Vegeta flashed up to Broly in a snap to obstruct the titan's path to victory.
"Oh? You're going to fight me? Alone?" a showcase of pearly whites stretched across Broly's face. The giant's eyes widened in amazement since he found this development so bewildering that it felt almost entertaining.
"Before I redecorate your abominable mutt face, I've got to tell you where you've come from, Broly. Who you and your charlatan father really are," Super Vegeta said with a straight face. "Your father isn't the real Paragus. Just a science team reject kicked off the team for unethical practices, adopting the name of another exile. You're not Broly either. The real Broly is on Planet Vampa on the very edge of the universe, unable to escape because of the uncontrollable universal expansion holding both of them prisoners in that region. You're just a lab tube baby, a clump of Chayote's cells and tissue cultivated into a freak of nature that must be destroyed if the Saiyan race is ever to have any dignity again. No wonder your fraud father resurrected you from certain death heartless–you were never truly alive, to begin with."
Broly's eyes gleamed with psychosis and his smile changed into full-on maniacal laughter. He broke his stiff wrestling stance to spread his swollen arms to the side and bawl out to his heart's extent while tremendous aerial shockwaves made the entire space sector tremble and his wild laughter made epic cosmic storms accumulate around him.
"Now it makes sense!" Broly barked out, still struggling to restrain his mirth. "Why it was so hard to quash Chayote and so easy to obliterate my father! He wasn't my father at all, whereas Chayote is the closest thing to a mother I've had!"
"Tsk…" Super Vegeta spat to the side with disgust. "I need no more power to stop you. As if I could ever allow a madman like you to rule the Saiyans! I'll stop you with my resolve to protect the dignity of my people alone!"
"Rule your people?" Broly stuck his tongue out in manic disgust. "I'll obliterate them alongside with this loathsome, pathetic universe! With every second I stay in this form, my power is growing, overflowing! Soon enough I'll have enough power to destroy everything to have ever existed and with the void of pure hatred left where my heart and feelings once were, I'll never stop being a Legendary Super Saiyan! I'll stay mad forever!"
A dominant burst of lime-colored aura exploded from Broly's body, with violent electrical outbursts crackling in the chaotic atmosphere around the two clashing warriors. Vegeta tensed his entire body to resist the surging force that threatened to send him hurling all across the galaxy from the immense pressure emanating from Broly alone before even a single punch could be thrown.
It will be a nightmare to face him and hold the line for Piccolo. But it was what Vegeta had to do as a king, father, and husband. Even as a friend to all of those pathetic losers laying sprawled in the wreckage and feeling sorry for themselves. It had to be him to hold Broly off; he was the Super-Elite King of Saiyans, after all!