A flashing meteor tore through a thick layer of clouds. Sparkling with a sharp outline, the shining blitz slammed into the ground. The impact formed a blast that lit up the jungle red and tore through the small industrial and military zone of Planet Vegeta, reducing it to rubble. A green-skinned Namekian stood from the blast zone, taking the alien soldier he slammed into the ground with such ferocious violence and tossed him aside with a disappointed look on his face.
Seeing the cowering bunch all around him clutching for their wounds and struggling to get up after he hadn't even attacked them once yet frustrated Piccolo. Here he, someone transcending both god and demon alike, an ultimate warrior who hadn't yet met his match in battle had been cowering from these scumbags. Killers that reminded him of the demons he grew up around, Shura's disgusting lot that hardly shared their king's sense of honor.
"Away with you!" Piccolo growled as he jumped into the air, the snuffed-out light faded away, giving in to shadows that enveloped the dashing Namekian as he extended his arms that were glowing with sparking, electric aura. Once Piccolo extended his hands aiming toward the soldiers, they were gone in a flash of light.
The ultimate Namekian warrior cracked his neck and knuckles and looked to where the rest of the Dragon Team had been gathering. Some of their Ki had been diminished, suggesting to Piccolo that they have met their match in battle but survived. That was good, he wouldn't have to hold their hand and babysit them the whole way through. Piccolo couldn't stand the idea. God, demon and two-part-warrior had better things to do than to hold somebody's hand.
On the other hand, there was a towering beacon of Ki, absolutely frightening in its size to the far-east of the planet. Power surpassing that of Turles' and approaching Lord Slug's might. With how frightened Chayote acted of this Frieza, Piccolo couldn't hide his disappointment. He'd have stomped Lord Slug if the old trickster didn't pull that whistling thing out from somewhere. The more Piccolo stood around waiting for Gine to be found, the more frustrated he grew and more he wanted to just snap to Frieza and blast him to hell where he most likely belonged.
"A Namekian, here on Planet Vegeta?" a snobby voice reached Piccolo's sensitive ears. They twitched while receiving the notice of someone's arrival. The alien hadn't stood out from the rest of the fluff enough to Piccolo so his Ki sensory wasn't exactly excited to warn him about this one. It was a mint-skinned, relatively well-trained fighter with green hair hanging in a long and thick braid flipped over one shoulder. "Why I'd never have thought I'd see the day."
"Sorry about ruining the illusion," Piccolo turned to his new guest, cracking his knuckles in preparation to deal with yet another one of Frieza's lapdogs. Maybe if Piccolo ripped their master's head clean off his shoulders and paraded around with it, they'd stop hassling him. "This disguise thing really outstayed its welcome so I had to stretch out a little bit."
"Disguise? Oh, I see… You must be the green alien of undetermined species that's been reported to hang around the space pirate bunch accompanying the Earthling Saiyan. We've received reports about that and I had hoped to enlist your aid," the green-haired warrior crossed his arms, looking none too pleased about the revelation of trickery behind the space pirate bunch of potential recruits. "I suppose Lord Frieza will want to know all about who you people are and why you're here on his turf."
"Our aid? With what exactly?" Piccolo wondered as he stretched his wrists and neck some more.
"Well, I don't think you've noticed but we're sort of in the middle of eliminating all Saiyans here. It doesn't look like a Namekian would have any love lost for a bunch of savage space primates and I don't think the Frieza Army has had the honor of having a Namekian in their ranks yet," the warrior chuckled to himself, striking a composed pose of a refined gentleman. "My name is Zarbon, I am a field commander in charge of the elimination of all Saiyans. I can make your enlistment in Frieza's Army happen, you know. I'm one of the guys you lot have been waiting for. What do you say?"
"Two words. Get. Gone." Piccolo took a fighting stance and vanished at once.
"Get… Gone?" Zarbon raised an eyebrow, befuddled by the structure of that sentence. The flustered warrior looked around for his opponent, failing to find any signs of him anywhere. It was only when his scouter activated again and blasted off his face at once from the incredible surge of power closing in lightning-fast that Frieza's aide noted the rapid movement directly above him and whited out in awe of it.
Piccolo's rock-solid chop split his opponent half into two, spraying an alarming amount of teal blood before the Namekian blasted the grisly remains of his opponent and absolutely obliterated him with a Ki blast. Looking down on the sprinkling of dry ashes into the burning wasteland of his creation down below, Piccolo's glare sharpened and his scowl became even more twisted in wretchedness.
This Frieza whom the entire universe appeared to fear and cower away from surrounded himself and allowed himself to be protected by worthless trash like this? Piccolo found this to be difficult to believe and while he did sense Frieza's Ki to be significantly larger than anything or anyone around on this planet, he still posed little to no threat to him the way that Piccolo was now. He may as well have settled this matter once and for all. Just as Piccolo moved his arms to his sides and prepared for a wild dash that would have carried him right to Frieza's doorsteps he stopped and relaxed.
Piccolo looked down at his flabby arms and breathed out. Why didn't he move? Was he afraid? There could have been no way that he feared Frieza or anyone else in this universe now so what was the meaning behind this hesitation he felt in confronting this enemy? Piccolo felt like he had a clear power advantage over the threat at hand and eliminating that scumbag space emperor would have made things significantly easier for everyone involved.
"Stop! What you're doing right now, stop that!" a croaky voice filled his head. It was a telepathic signal though Piccolo couldn't quite recognize the voice or its sender. They'd have had to have been somewhere on this planet or they should have been a remarkable telepath to be able to reach him all the way on Planet Vegeta. "What you're doing will doom both Planet Vegeta and Planet Earth, our entire universe even!"
"Who is this?" Piccolo hissed, clenching his fists, feeling as mad at himself as he was at this annoying voice interrupting his thoughts. "What do you want from me? You better have a good reason for invading my mind."
"This is King Kai. We haven't met yet but I am aware of the Kami of Earth's past that's an important part of your being, Super Namekian," the voice resonated once more.
"King Kai? By any chance, you'd the one who invented the King Kai's Fist?" Piccolo closed his eyes and calmed down somewhat, hearing a voice of some significance in this universe speaking to him inside of his head. With the annoying rubbish of being part Kami in mind, he'd have thought that chaff to have begun to bother him long ago with their incessant, pointless ramblings.
"That's right, but that's not the most important issue now. You must absolutely, under no circumstances confront Frieza!" King Kai warned Piccolo. "I'm picking up that Bardock has already found Gine. Your goal on Planet Vegeta is complete. Now you can get her to your spaceship and just leave. It seems that Bardock and Gine are quite slow because Bardock has been wounded in his scuffle with Captain Ginyu in King Vegeta's body but they'll reach the rest of the ground in the northern sector of the planet soon enough. You should make sure that all of you reach the spaceship and take off as soon as possible. With Frieza's forces nearly wiped out, the tyrant will soon take matters into his own hands, and, knowing him, he'll be absolutely merciless and unpredictable!"
"Hmph… Is that all you've decided to bother me with?" Piccolo turned his face to the right, dismissing King Kai's warning outright. "I was right to worry about you divine lot trying to make contact with me then. Let's make one thing abundantly clear – I don't take orders from you or anybody else in this universe. Just because I don't want to conquer it, or Earth, anymore or slay the humans as punishment, it doesn't mean that I'm your puppet to control. The only reason I'm no longer out to kill Son Goku is that I've grown past my predecessor's petty squabbles and wish for empty power. I've embraced the fact that I am a martial artist and a warrior first, everything else later and there's not a chance in hell that I'll miss the only being in the universe capable of making me actually try in a fight."
"Super Namekian… You… You just don't understand… The extent of Frieza's power…" King Kai shook on his side of the communication.
"You know what? I wish that I didn't. Because the power I'm sensing from him now is miserable. I wouldn't have any fun at all dealing with some pimple like that. I truly hope that he is able to draw some more of some hidden power out from somewhere because that'd the only way that I can still challenge myself," Piccolo snapped back at the divine being.
"Think about what you have to lose! If you make Frieza unhinged, he'll target Planet Namek next, Planet Earth too!" King Kai pleaded with the Super Namekian again.
Piccolo turned away, struggling with his own instinct to dash off and tackle Frieza head-on, engage in what might have been his only chance at feeling the excitement of a true battle. Satisfy the accursed urge for violence and combat that Piccolo had been born with. The urge he can only still resist because of the fact he was no longer merely Piccolo but something much more. The Super Namekian clenched his fist, his wild energy flowed freely through him, forming tendrils of vivid spirit around him before Piccolo's fist relaxed and he breathed a cool breath out from his chest.
"Fine." Piccolo caved in. "I'll pick up everybody's slack and get them off this planet already. But let's settle this matter once and for all. It's not because you told me to or because Frieza's power feels at all threatening to me. It's because he's the only thing out there even remotely challenging to my current power. To be frank, I'm afraid. The martial artist in me is afraid of confronting him and being disappointed again. I'm terrified that I'd be blasting the space trash to smithereens and realize that there's nothing else out there for me. That the universe is empty and weak. If Frieza sticks his nose in Earth's business, I'll blow him away without a second's hesitation. Otherwise, I'll let his rotten heart beat because as long as he draws breath – there's hope for a challenge in this universe. Hope for satisfaction."
King Kai's presence was no longer there. It might have just been that the King of Worlds left the Super Namekian alone the moment he got what he came here for. That was good. Maybe Piccolo could still have maintained a working relationship with those irritating gnats at the top of the universe's pecking order if only they left him alone and didn't bother him with their problems. Turning himself toward the cluster of familiar Ki signatures, Piccolo took off toward their location at once.
It was time to get them off this rock.
It had been a few hours without a status update. This was most unusual and it couldn't have been the case merely related to the insubordination of one of his loyal soldiers. Nor was it a case of baffling unprofessionalism. This was the case of what Frieza hated most of all – meddling. The extermination of these meddling, insolent monkeys had been a long time coming. If it hadn't been for Lord Beerus forbidding him from destroying Planet Vegeta, he'd have done it long ago already and Frieza tried working with those irksome animals, he truly did.
Frieza's only regret at this time was that it took him this long to realize that he didn't need to obliterate the Saiyans' home planet to exterminate their miserable race. All he had to do was purge every single monkey from this universe and that would be all. It was unusual for him, that was why it took Frieza so long to come to this conclusion – after all, he was used to obliterating people with their entire planets, their primitive cultures, and savage ways of life included. It was convenient, it was efficient. It kept his excellent empire all orderly and obedient.
Two things those primates would have had no clue about even if it stamped them their initials on their ugly foreheads.
The space emperor sighed and placed his toy train down, pressing the button that hid his model for an intergalactic micro railway system away into his worktable. Frieza approached the porthole and opened it up to gander at this rocky, despicable establishment. So ugly, it basically begged utter obliteration. It didn't make much sense for Lord Beerus, the supposed God of Destruction to call to spare a planet from the very thing he was a god of. Still, if the old cat had been growing complacent at its job, Frieza would have been more than glad to replace him at it. Maybe he ought to talk to that cultured, blue-skinned fellow who hung out with Beerus all the time, he appeared to be the one subtly pulling the cat's strings…
Frieza pressed the button to activate his scouter. Perhaps it was hasty of him to send out his men to deal with a threat that had the potential to exceed a power level of a million. It was nothing of note to Frieza himself though it might have been troublesome even for the Ginyu Special Squadron to handle. Still, prince Vegeta must have been incapacitated, based on their intelligence, he shouldn't have been capable of that rapid increase of power anymore and his little plot to rebel had been outed. The ground had been laid well for Frieza's chilling triumph then why? Why was the communication utterly silent?
The space emperor sighed and tried reaching out to any of his officers. Zarbon's scouter was offline, so were those of the Ginyu Special Squadron, Frieza even tried contacting that ugly, little, salad-colored dwarf with multiple pairs of eyes. Not even the ugly one was online. One of their scouters going offline was possible, if they encountered a foe of respectable power, they'd have potentially blown the scouters up. Still, these scouters were the top-notch, upper shelf stuff, capable of calculating up to a million power level units before going out of order.
Just what had happened to his men out there? This silence, even more, this guttural implication bubbling deep down and making Frieza seethe in the fury that he might have failed in his attempt to exterminate the Saiyans had been driving him utterly mad. If his entire organization unravels, everything his father built and handed down to him, the army, the order, the Ginyu Special Squadron, he'll be the laughing stock of his annoying, rogue brother and father. Worst case scenario – father comes out of retirement and embarrasses Frieza.
He was the strongest being in the universe, he would not be embarrassed, nobody and nothing had the power necessary to embarrass him. He was Lord Frieza and he would not be made a fool of! The glass of the porthole shattered into shiny sprinkles and fell in diamond dust while Frieza took off like a meteor splitting the skies, shining with a pink aura of exuberant energy, and headed toward the nearest cluster of large power levels. The highest amongst them was 92 456. The rest were weaker than any of his esteemed officers of the Ginyu Special Squadron, then why…?
Well… He'd ask those miserable insects why soon enough. Right before he subjects them to the most harrowing world of pain imaginable and punishes them for the inconvenience and embarrassment they'd caused him. Death. Death to all who stand in Lord Frieza's way.
With a resonant roar, Bardock dashed onward, driving both of his arms in a hammering swing that stunned a purple, long-headed alien soldier with a single pound. Freezing in mid-air, his arm cocked back and loaded, lit up with golden energy that enveloped Bardock's entire fist. The Saiyan had still been slow and dragged down by his injuries and yet this battle-worn façade only granted him more legitimacy and instilled more terror in the few murder squads that managed to find him and Gine on their path to reconnecting with their son.
With a low-sweep, Bardock tripped Appule up and hammered with an overhead smash, driving the poor guy's head into the rocky dirt and splashing yellow blood all over it as Bardock busted his opponent open. Knowing that he was too weak to finish his opponent with just that, the Saiyan leaped up, timing his descent for when Appule would inevitably rise, and slammed down on top of his opponent with a diving smash once more. With Appule's body bouncing off the ground, Bardock blasted him away with a Ki blast, proceeding to rush with power strikes, stomps, and kicks, driving both of his arms out and exploding with a blast of energy to kick his opponent away before Bardock swooped in with an uppercut that snapped the neck of his enemy.
The Saiyan froze in place. Cold sweat rushed down his forehead and even as his wife ran out of hiding and wrapped her hands around his neck and rubbed her sweet and delicate face close to his, expressing her worry about his well-being and cheering for his survival, with a shaking pair of eyes, madness leaking out of them, Bardock looked up at a pink flare-up in the sky hovering right above them. The terrifying beacon of boundless energy couldn't have not noticed the signals from Bardock's struggle against the alien soldier murder squad while on his way to the same destination Bardock was heading to. And so now he hovered, staring down below at a battle-worn Saiyan with just hours of rest in between periods of slow and methodical trekking with a glare of seething, passive-aggression.
At that moment, Frieza's and Bardock's eyes met. The boiling hatred that was yet to spill over and unrestrained terror akin to that of having boiling water wash down one's tired and sore all over back. The kettle had tipped and flipped over and violence was about to leak all over.