With a gleeful look on his face, smug to where it seemed like Vegeta knew something that Frieza didn't, the Saiyan prince launched himself in a straightforward dash toward his opponent. Frieza bent his head to the side, avoiding the first strike, looking as vexed and bitter as he was since first setting his sights on Vegeta. The prince rushed forward with a knee strike, but Frieza's open palm caught it. Vegeta let out a grunt, throwing a powerful uppercut while the space emperor leaned back and floated away in mid-air.
"Surely this must be some kind of joke, Vegeta-san," Frieza muttered with no trace of enjoyment. He looked as disappointed as a teacher to whom his favorite student had just handed a cutout of a dirty magazine instead of a completed task. "We've come to this den of savagery and insolence attracted by your power. We've registered a power level as high as over a million. This is a pathetic waste of my time."
"You might think so now, Frieza, it's true that your power level is far beyond mine at the moment, but this is where I fulfill the legend of the Super Saiyan and ascend to the state of an ultimate warrior that will defeat you!" Vegeta pointed to himself with his thumb, looking mighty proud of his void accomplishments so far.
"My, my… Lost your mind already and I haven't even started smashing your head yet," Frieza sighed. The tyrant raised his arm up and let a miniscule pink flash shine at the tip of his finger. Vegeta's form froze with a shocked expression. A massive hole gaped in the center of the prince's chest, though the Saiyan's body looked rather… Floaty and ethereal. As the transparency of Vegeta's essence began fading, Frieza realized the deception behind Vegeta's technique.
The Saiyan dashed in from behind, smashing head-first into Frieza and bouncing off of the tyrant while stroking his aching forehead in frustration. It didn't take him long to continue his relentless attempts to prove himself to the fortune that was to grant him the power he deserved. A knee strike that didn't bother Frieza nor made him flinch, a backhanded smack that resonated through Vegeta's own hand rather than making his opponent wince or turn his head, Vegeta drove both of his arms downward with a double ax handle slam but his strike remained stuck on Frieza's unmoving head. The prince vanished back to a safe distance the moment that Frieza breathed in and sighed again.
"That Afterimage technique earlier was something I've mastered by watching the Earthlings. They call it martial arts. It's an art form of combat, and they're awfully proud of it despite their weakness. I think it'll suit a perfect warrior, the Super Saiyan, far better, don't you?" Vegeta chuckled, taking a fighting stance.
"I am much more interested in something else you've said. You appear to be able to judge the extent of our power levels and therefore see the vast difference between us without the use of a scouter," Frieza said.
"True, a scouter is a useless heap of junk and you're wrong to rely on it, Frieza," Vegeta smirked, looking mighty proud of the fact that he had picked up the ability to sense Ki, being the natural genius in combat that he was. "I could sense your power level earlier too. It was much greater than it is now. You've lost a great deal of power fighting that Namekian runt. That's too bad, but I won't be feeling sorry for you anytime soon, Frieza."
"What's that? You think that my battle power from my last form was superior to this one?" Frieza raised his bent finger up to his lips and let out a reserved chuckle. "Oh, dear Vegeta-san, you misunderstand. The reason why I am currently weaker than I was in my last form is that I am merely tapping into 1% of my power that my original form can muster. I must be very careful not to finish you off before truly making you suffer."
"1%?" Vegeta's eyebrows tilted a fair bit. The Saiyan prince trembled lightly, but he was quick to shake it off. "You're bluffing, Frieza. Your battle with that Namekian drained you out of your strength. You can't fool my superior fighting instincts."
"Well, then… Shall we see if that is the case?" Frieza dipped his chin down and raised his eyes up with malicious intent as he stretched his arms out and burst out with a pink aura. Although it had been a late time of night and Planet Vegeta had suffered a tremendous amount of damage to its integrity over the intense battles that had occurred on it recently, Vegeta's face went pale when he realized that his vision had begun obstructing over a sense of drowning inside of a bottomless lake.
A ditch that went darker and darker as more and more cold, hopeless water poured down on top and as the reckless vortex dragged the prince of Saiyans further and further down it. The prince had let go of his pride; it had sifted through his fingers entire kilometers upper down this well of despair, and it was late to drown alongside the man who let it to define his actions and his thoughts.
"That power…" Vegeta trembled. "Screw Kakarot, a dozen Kakarots can fight alongside me and we won't come close."
"I see that my little demonstration has put you on the same page, glad to finally have you with me, Vegeta-san. All this lack of hopelessness and absolute horror in your eyes has really made it difficult for me to get into the mood, you see…" Frieza chuckled, allowing his white tail to wrap around his legs and torso and wave its tip while the tyrant enjoyed himself.
"All this power, it's incredible," Vegeta grabbed the hold of his head with his hands as he erupted into manic laughter, staring up into the dark skies. "It makes me just imagine how much more powerful I shall become as a Super Saiyan to destroy you."
Filled to the brim with vigor, Vegeta glided across the space between him and Frieza with a spinning backhanded strike. Frieza's tail smacked to clash with Vegeta's strike and fended it off effortlessly as the confused emperor observed what his foolish, rebellious goon would pull next. Using his other hand to hook underneath Frieza's legs, Vegeta actually gained an upper hand by pulling on them and leaving Frieza suspended in mid-air while the Saiyan delivered a charging kick both to send his opponent flying and kick himself off into the air while he curled his fingers and placed both of his hands together at the chest level aimed down at Frieza while jagged and sparking, fuchsia-colored aura surrounded the Saiyan prince.
"This is it, Frieza, the awakening of the ultimate warrior that will defeat you once and for all! The advent of that which you feared the most in the entire universe. The one that will bring liberation to the Saiyan race and rule as king! Meet Super Saiyan Vegeta's, Super Galick Gun!" Vegeta yelled out while his hair bent backward in reaction to the unruly energy that he produced around him and veins popped out on Vegeta's forehead.
A powerful and world-ending beam charged forth toward Frieza. The space emperor glanced behind him, seeing nothing but a ruined ghost town, the vexed tyrant raised his hands and blocked the oncoming attack by merely stopping it in its tracks until the entirety of its force fizzled out without as much as a scrape on his hands.
"Im… Impossible… Why… Why can't I harm you at all? After powering up so much, I should have been stronger, I should have become… A Super Saiyan… A Super Saiyan is the one that must defeat you… What is the meaning of this?" Vegeta trembled in mid-air, realizing that the attack that he meant to solidify his status as a Super Saiyan with barely did anything more than shattering the glass of the buildings in the abandoned city below.
"Now you've done it, you delirious ape." Frieza hissed. "I can handle the total insolence, even though I've killed for less, I can somewhat tolerate that hogwash about some stupid, useless, old folk tale that you filthy monkeys put your sniveling brats to sleep to. But… To force me to put myself in between your attack and this miserable planet, that… That I will not forgive. That I will never forgive!"
"What?" Vegeta leaned back in terror before realizing that he had been floating directly above the surface of Planet Vegeta and that his last blast had dozens of times the energy needed to destroy it. Had Frieza dodged his attack–he'd have destroyed his entire planet. Why? Just because he wanted Frieza gone that badly? "Maybe that's why… Maybe that's why I can't ascend? Because I've let my obsession with killing Frieza impede becoming a true Saiyan king?" the broken Saiyan prince muttered to himself, expressing his pondering aloud as he observed his trembling hands.
Seething in wrath and pointing his grinding teeth, Frieza breathed in and let out a cooler breath before cracking his neck to the sides. The emperor rolled in a single, elegant and unmatched motion until he had moved directly above Vegeta, fast enough for the prince to follow with his meager battle power, but nowhere near enough to do anything about it. Both of Frieza's arms connected and slammed down at the top of Vegeta's head, splitting the skies and driving Vegeta like a sledgehammer smashing into the abandoned city street so hard that the resulting quake alone reduced a handful of surrounding buildings to rubble.
"Can't you see, you stubborn primate? It's true that your obsession with that ridiculous legend used to drive me insane back in the day. I never for a second believed it, but the mere implication that you had the hope of some laughable warrior rise one day and challenge me made me boil. I had been prepared to exterminate every single one of you for the mere crime of thinking these ludicrous thoughts, for the very notion of this wacky hope you all shared," Frieza vanished, appearing before Vegeta's writhing and busted body and stepped over Vegeta's head, putting a light squeeze on it while the humiliated prince grunted and cried in pain.
"It made me even more sullen when I couldn't destroy your pigpen of a planet and wipe out all of you savages in a flash. But then, the more time passed, the easier it became for me. You know why, Vegeta-san?" Frieza continued to speak while his tail lifted Vegeta off the ground by his right arm and placed him to stand up on wobbly legs while blood streamed down his busted head.
An elbow strike to the center of Vegeta's chest shattered the prince's entire ribcage all at once. A cross to Vegeta's head made the prince think he'd get beheaded as it taxed the muscle fibers and the vertebrae in his neck more than anyone had ever taxed them. Frieza's tail jabbed, punching forward like another limb while sending Vegeta flying across the bustling street, all the while the psycho space tyrant pursued him alongside, riding as if on a current of wind and throwing jabs, elbow strikes, and puny, punishing kicks at every exposed weak spot he could find.
Frieza shrieked while pointing his hand downward and letting out a blaze-colored Ki blast underground that curved and bent upward, exploding at Vegeta's back from underground and sending the Saiyan flying again. Snap. Frieza vanished again and appeared above his helpless opponent, diving with a ruthless kick to the gut that reduced Vegeta's innards to a bloody porridge spilling nothing outside. Continuing his punishment, Frieza vaulted over his front and whipped the Saiyan prince down with his tail. Before Vegeta could sense his opponent vanishing again, Frieza was subtly walking up from across the decimated city street closer to his opponent.
"It's because your promised Super Saiyan hasn't shown up. That's because it never will. You'll never see or hear about a Super Saiyan because that is just a preposterous story made to entertain babies. That's why I don't let you apes culture yourselves, it's because even the simplest, most cliché-ridden, and awful child's tale warps your feeble, primitive minds. You just couldn't handle the finer things in life. Saiyan destiny… Poppycock, the Saiyan destiny is to serve, bark, and bite at my order and fizzle out. Killing and dying are the only two things your archaic race is good for," Frieza continued to rake his words into Vegeta's mind as the prince writhed and tried to stand up but couldn't.
An azure gleam lit up in the corner of Frieza's eye. The tyrant manipulated Vegeta's limp body back up telekinetically before extending his hands to the sides and letting a powerful aura surge from within him as the ground underneath them shook and swallowed entire buildings whole. Pebbles and boulders alike rose from underground and burst into dust while the vigorous, purple aura manifested and grew into a massive bubble around Frieza, and the tyrant launched himself in a charging tackle while enveloped in this energy.
Vegeta let out a helpless scream, making it difficult to say if he was conscious or not as he'd have never given his nemesis the pleasure to hear him snorting, grunting, and shouting in torment. Like an accelerating rag doll, the Saiyan prince smashed into a remote building wall and stayed stuck in it in a cross-shaped position while Frieza elevated himself over the rooftops of the abandoned city, still blowing the ash of Saiyans exterminated that day while the tyrant aimed his hand and fired a puny Ki blast.
It was enough to cause a violent, mushroom-shaped blast of rampant force and flames that ravaged the building and flung it violently in all directions. It pleasantly surprised Frieza to see the Saiyan prince somehow still intact, despite laying on his back seemingly lifeless, bloodied, and burnt. For all intents and purposes, he may have already been dead, though Frieza would not take that chance again. Not because he was genuinely afraid of a Super Saiyan revealing himself, just because Vegeta surviving this day would make his boasting and illusions of childish tales even more insufferable.
No. He hadn't suffered even nearly enough. For all the insolence, for the sneaking behind Frieza's back, for plotting to overthrow the emperor that not only allowed him to live on in his empire but also used him as his personal muscle and favored the young prince compared to much stronger and more promising officers. Frieza tipped two of his fingers, causing a violent explosion from underneath that sent Vegeta's limp body flying in the air while the tyrant dashed down with an elbow strike to Vegeta's neck.
The prince no longer screamed, didn't open his eyes, or let Frieza know that he still felt pain. His mouth jarred and a quick wheeze soon died out when the snapping neck of prince Vegeta cut the air supply short. Still wrathful, Frieza vanished backward and then dashed right back in with a knee strike at the Saiyan's chin, throwing his dead body in the air while the emperor swooped back up grabbed hold of Vegeta's head with his feet while diving back down and smashing it into the ground so hard it caused rampant fissures.
Seeing Vegeta's broken body falling into the opening fissure, bashing against a few ragged edges on its way down into the abyss of oblivion, Frieza turned away. These insufferable fools. Somehow, even when Frieza killed them all away, they ruined his mood even more. That monkey from before, the Namekian, now prince Vegeta too. All of them robbed pleasure from the act of killing an annoying pest, and Frieza just couldn't remember how satisfying it used to feel, no matter how hard he tried.
Realizing that he had killed Vegeta, the Namekian, and some other nameless Saiyan already, there wasn't anything or anyone holding him to this planet anymore. Especially since these insolent pests gave him so many places to ransack and punish for the deaths of so many of his valuable officers. The suffering of the Namekians and the Earthlings would be legendary, their screams would be so loud that they'd overpower any naïve parent filling their child's head with folk tales of Super Saiyans and Super Namekians. That was the only cure for insolence and the only punishment after one has been insolent.
"No…" Frieza turned in the direction where that Saiyan woman had gone off to. He had seen no spaceships take off, even though Frieza was sure that the woman fled toward a spaceport. She planned to flee, but she correctly deduced that Frieza would spot and shoot down or rip apart any spaceship trying to leave Planet Vegeta. He could level entire mountains with his telekinesis, holding a lump of steel, tubes, and glass would have been child's play.
That woman still needed to pay. And if she found any other survivors, any friendly souls to aid her in the time of need, all of them needed to die too. While Beerus' insistence on keeping this planet whole made things vastly more complicated and Frieza could have used someone with Vegeta's ability to track battle powers, it only delayed the inevitable and, as Vegeta just found out, only made their death and disposal all that more agonizing and violent.
Lighting up with a lustrous, pink aura, Frieza took off toward the fleeing Saiyan woman, seeing no further need to pursue the location where his scouter had last picked up Saiyan battle powers before breaking. He didn't travel too long. Hanging above a white layer of volcanic ash mixed in with decimated Saiyan remains, Frieza stopped with a look of confusion on his face when a handful of combatants appeared to confront him.
Before he could dispose of them all, just as he did with Vegeta, Frieza and the warrior in an orange gi with spiky, black hair stared each other down without saying a word. Each looking baffled by the appearance of the other as one had no clue who this new opponent was, while the other had never seen the space sovereign described only as a ruthless monster by all who had earlier met him.
Amongst this bunch, Frieza's eyes laid upon a tall yet meek in stature, Saiyan woman. She instantly caught his eye since he was looking for a Saiyan woman that had escaped, though this one looked taller and wore a newer and superior model of Saiyan armor. Had all those annoying Saiyans not looked the same, maybe he wouldn't have had to spend so much time looking at them, trying to tell them apart.
"I assume you've all came to die?" Frieza crossed his arms and sank his chin down with a peeved look on his face.
"I'm Son Goku, a Saiyan raised on Earth, and I've promised Vegeta that I'd send you flying for what you did to him and his race!" Goku proclaimed, raising his fist up as a promise of a fight that he was about to deliver on.
"You can tell him all about how that promise went when you next meet him," Frieza grumbled, preparing to exterminate yet another line of dolts standing in the way of him executing that meek and cowardly woman. "Saiyan… Raised on Earth…" Frieza repeated, loathing every part of that origin story, each word more than the last.