Goku was thrown backwards by the force of the Spirit Bomb. He was covered in water, he saw only darkness. He felt himself pulled along by something.
I really hope that's Krillin or Gohan or Piccolo...
Suddenly, the damp cold fell away and a hard surface smashed into Goku. He coughed, grateful to be alive. In the distance, he heard Gohan and Krillin, yelling to him as they flew closer. Goku looked up towards them and saw Gohan landing.
"Dad! You're okay!"
"Hey, Gohan..."
The next few minutes passed in a bit of a blur for Goku, as the others talked and Goku slowly stood. Once he was up, they all stood in silence, staring at the sea where Frieza had died.
"Are you ready to go?" Goku asked Gohan. "My spaceship should be able to get us back to Earth in...just under six days."
Gohan smiled and cheered. "I finally get to see Mom and everyone again in less than a week!" He kept leaping in the air and cheering until Krillin cried out in fear.
"What is it?" Piccolo asked.
"Bulma's out there somewhere," Krillin whispered. Goku felt a deep sense of relief. "I totally forgot..."
Goku sighed. "Krillin, don't scare us like that. From the look on your face, I'd thought Frieza popped back up." He glanced back at the sea to be sure.
"Yeah, well, trust me, he's got nothing on her when she's ticked off."
Several seconds passed, then Goku and the others started laughing again. The laughter made Goku's ribs ache. "Don't make me laugh, my body hurts enough as it is."
Another moment passed. "It's hard to believe how much strife this little planet has endured. But perhaps the Grand Elder and my other kinsmen can at last rest peacefully."
"We've done more than that," Krillin said. "Well, mostly Goku, but he stopped a maniac from killing anyone else. That's worth just about anything, I think."
"I'm just glad the Spirit Bomb worked better than it did against Vegeta," Gohan said.
Goku smiled. "Yeah. You could say, he suffered from a bad case of—"
"No," Piccolo interrupted.
Krillin screamed again.
"Krillin—"
"It actually is Frieza this time!"
Goku turned to follow Krillin's gaze. Across the lake, a rock jutted out of the water. On the rock stood the battered form of Frieza, still alive and in one piece.
"It can't be!" Piccolo said.
"It is, okay?" Frieza growled. "Thanks. Die."
He fired a beam of energy from his finger directly at Goku, who was too exhausted to react quickly. Piccolo shoved Goku out of the way; both collapsed.
Gohan stared at Piccolo's fallen form. "No...no...this can't be...no...PICCOLO!"
I didn't even sense his energy, Goku thought. I can't...
Krillin crouched by Piccolo's side. "Piccolo...please, get up..."
Goku shoved himself to his feet, shaking with rage. "Frieza..."
"Oh, fine, I'll get to you in a moment, you insolent monkey. But I've realized I don't want to kill you just yet, a quick death is too little a punishment for you, for nearly bringing down the mighty Frieza. I've thought of an idea, I should thank the Namekian for that. First, you will watch your companions die. And I will start with the bald one."
Sparks of energy burst from Frieza's fingertip, and Krillin rose several inches into the air.
"Why me?" Krillin whimpered.
"Oh? You don't even remember an event as momentous as wounding the mighty Lord Frieza? If you don't, that just makes me want to kill you even more."
Frieza raised his open hand into the air. Krillin shot into the air and began screaming.
"Please, no!" Gohan shouted.
"You're next, brat, but wait your turn!" Frieza began laughing, and slowly closed his hand. Krillin screamed one last scream before exploding. "And now for the peanut gallery's reaction. Thoughts, peanut gallery?"
Goku glared at the tyrant. "You...you won't get away with this!"
"A ha ha! That's pretty funny. Hilarious, even. Good monkey." Frieza stared down at Gohan, continuing to laugh, considering how to kill his next victim. "As promised, you—"
A massive thing was flying through space, larger than anything Goku had seen, massive in a way he couldn't comprehend yet still alive. It was made of uncountable smaller creatures, dividing, combining, mingling, each piece moving as sinuously as the whole. He saw a thousand thousand almost-perfect mirror images, each moving slightly differently, avoiding slightly different obstacles, returning to the same shape as the others. He knew that each image was a part of the whole, as surely as he knew the individual pieces splitting off were a part of the whole.
It was falling apart, each movement of each image making a dozen pieces of the beast slide away, curving off on its own unique path, leaving the creature behind, finding their own paths. The creature was falling apart, disintegrating, shrinking. Goku could almost hear the creature communicating, whispering to its parts, directing them, the responses falling silent as the pieces begin to drift away, to fade...
"—will go next. Now, how shall I kill you?"
Goku felt some sort of ki flowing into him. He saw his hands glowing with a faint orange energy. He looked up at Frieza. "How about not at all?"
The almighty Lord Frieza looked down at the puny monkey named Son Goku and chuckled. "So eager. Well, I'd much rather do the child first, but if you—"
A burst of energy shot from the monkey and struck the mighty ruler, making him briefly lose his balance. "My, my, how rude. I was tal—" Frieza realized that the monkey looked different. Its injuries were healed. (What a pain, he thought, considering how hard I worked to give those to it. It was actually work!) Even its tail was back, when all reports said it had been missing since before he got to...whatever this boring planet was named. The fool had a familiar look of anger and hatred, but an unfamiliar orange glow, which kept building up. It wasn't the normal charging-up aura, either—too close to the body, building too fast.
The monkey began talking to its whelp. Something about a musical instrument. The whelp grabbed the Namekian and flew away.
"Hm. My, my, do I need to teach you some manners. Don't ignore me, don't interrupt me, and don't make me break my promises." Frieza smiled and pointed at the flying fools, preparing an energy beam, deciding if he wanted to knock them out of the sky and watch them struggle or just kill them and beat up the dumb gorilla. Unfortunately, these deliberations were interrupted by said monkey, who grabbed Frieza's wrist.
Frieza twisted out of the monkey's grip and flipped over, kicking it in the head. When his foot met face, he felt an energy pushing back at him, surprising the mighty Lord Frieza and causing him to spin and fall to the ground, several meters from the monkey.
Frieza slowly floated upright. "That's a lovely trick you have, but it won't—" He was interrupted by glowing images which looked much like the monkey slamming into him, one after another, slowly driving Frieza back until he dug his feet into the ground. "Okay, let's get back to the questions. What the hell are you?"
The monkey—the Saiyan—smiled. "Can't you tell? It's like Vegeta said. You aren't dealing with the average Saiyan warrior anymore."
The mighty Lord Frieza felt a rare feeling stirring in his gut—fear. Deep, deep fear. He tried to keep his composure. "Oh—please, I've heard it all before. Y-you're not the first person who's claimed to be the fulfillm-ment of some ancient prophecy."
It shook its head. "Perhaps. But you know I'm different. I am the hope of the Universe. I am the light in the darkness. I am a Saiyan, who came here from Earth to defeat you."
The fearsome Frieza tried to think of a response. "Why—why should I be afraid of an Earthling more than some home-grown hero? For that matter, didn't Vegeta come here by way of Earth, too? He's—twice the Saiyan you are."
The Saiyan's new aura continued to brighten and grow as he talked. "You're wrong. I am the protector of the innocent. I am a legendary warrior—known throughout the entire universe as the most powerful warrior to ever exist—whose heart was awakened by your violent rage."
"Huh, s-some legend. I've certainly never heard of it. Is it about—some sort of quest? A journey? Those always bore me. A lot."
"I am the alpha and the omega—an ally to good, and a nightmare to you!"
You have no idea.
"I am Son Goku, and I am a Super Sai—"
A million red-and-blue planets exploded. No—the same planet exploded a million times simultaneously. Among the debris, flying out past the planet's satellite and into the blackness between stars, the emptiness between galaxies, were clouds of tiny, massive fragments, each alive, each moving. He realized that each of the million images were similar, but not quite the same, each with different obstacles to the living fragments, each shifting around them differently. It reminded Frieza of the hyperdimensional fractal Cooler had as his screensaver for a while, only infinitely more complicated.
One cloud of fragments, now far away from the others, was making its own path. It searched galaxies in its path, searching for intelligent life. Eventually, it found one, billions and billions of parsecs away. On millions of versions of that world around millions of versions of its sun, there was a species of vermiform chordate living in massive hives; on many worlds, the hives grew large and complex, used advanced technology, fought wars, and so on. The cloud shifted its path slightly, before examining the millions of worlds more thoroughly...
The Super Saiyan clutched his head. "D'no whacha...did, Freezer, but it...won't help you any."
"What I did? What d-did you do?"
"What do you mean, what did I do?"
The mighty Frieza forced himself to smile. "I suppose it doesn't matter, does it? I mean, you're just a monkey with a few tricks. I've killed millions—billions—of other monkeys just like you! You're nothing special—you're just another boring, stupid, filthy, backwards, uncultured, worthless, pathetic monkey!"
The Saiyan floated in place, his aura continuing to grow. "...Are you done yet?"
Frieza cried out in rage and hurled a ball of energy at the stupid Saiyan. It dodged, leaving a bit of its aura behind as a glowing clone, which promptly charged at Lord Frieza.
"What is this?" The thing crashed into Frieza, trying to harm him, forcing him to disperse the energy with his own. "Argh! That was a unique technique, but don't expect me to be caught off-guard again."
The great Frieza realized he felt something. Watching the Saiyan, waiting for its next attack, he realized he felt the something where it was. It was like an extra sense he could perceive things with, and yet...part of something else, too. He reached out for the Saiyan and closed his hand, feeling the something he felt flare up slightly, watching it slow and look around in surprise, feeling a tiny trickle of some form of energy into his aura.
"Yes...don't expect me to be caught off-guard..."