"Impossible! Is this…?" Cooler's bloodshot eyes seemed like they were about to spring out of his sockets if he widened them any further. The horde of titanic Great Apes all froze in place, turning their attention to their ascended king and his opponent, who quivered in the face of Super Saiyan Vegeta's golden splendor.
Frieza's brother writhed and shook, yanking on his arm in a desperate struggle to pull his hand out of Vegeta's grip to where he threatened to rip his own limb off if he didn't ease up on the pull. Without warning, Cooler's face malformed as his own fist dug into its center. Vegeta lowered his hand, having let go of Cooler's fist without warning, causing the distressed tyrant to hammer it into his own face out of inertia. Bleeding through the self-caused crack in his forehead, Cooler fled back, simmering in wrath.
"Retreat. Now." Vegeta's cyan eyes turned to scan the massive army of giant ape monsters. Even if they may have tried to speak against him in their base forms, having become Great Apes, they had no other choice but to listen. One by one the apes all ascended into the air and sought for a plot of sky far away from the battle site to hover in a state of stillness that should have been alien to savage creatures such as the Great Apes. Vegeta might have dispelled the artificial moon, though he rather enjoyed how obedient the Saiyans were in this form. Choosing to keep them that way was a deliberate move to prevent them from interfering any further.
"So, you've finally stumbled into the shiny new form that beat up my little brother and now you're acting all high and mighty, is that it?" Cooler hissed, spreading his fingers from consoling his busted face. "I'll show you the greatest might in the universe that no amount of golden shine can overcome!"
Cooler soared into the air, raising his finger up over his head as his black lips turned to an upward smirk, and the tyrant showed his pearly whites. The sudden shift in the tide of battle seemed to have busted right through his aura of coolness that he exhumed earlier. Even if just for a little while, Cooler showed more than a few manic similarities to the sadism of his younger brother.
"Begone with this entire asteroid belt, your savage people and armada!" Cooler yelled out, forming an infernal sphere looming over his finger and drastically expanding in size and density, as it became almost like a dwarf star hanging over his head. With a shrill yell, Cooler thrust his finger down, commanding the Supernova to make its way down in an almost deliberately torturous crawl and cause rampant trembling all across the asteroid field.
Not a single space rock could avoid the immense gravitational phenomenon that seemed like it would pull every asteroid apart and made even the tiniest pebbles on the surface dance. Perhaps, had it not been for Cooler's own psychic powers clenching the asteroid together earlier, the asteroid would have collapsed and gravitated inward toward the coming, fiery demise above.
Vegeta tsked and lunged upward. Enveloped in a bright aura, he charged to tackle the devastating Ki sphere head-on. Even the cold vastness of space became bright and infernal in the scorch of Cooler's ultimate attack, but Vegeta raised his arms up and grabbed hold of it regardless, feeling the weight that threatened to rip the entire cosmic region apart resting on his palms. A loud Kiai propelled the sphere a bit further back so that Vegeta didn't have to touch the Supernova directly. Despite Vegeta's transformation, he felt the attack pushing him back. Then again, he was just using sheer force against it, which hardly even counted as trying.
"Well, what's wrong Vegeta? Even if in this fancy new form of yours you might survive my attack unscathed, you'll still choke in the cold, merciless vastness of space while I will go on to rule the universe while my brother is busy hunching and drooling and my father is too preoccupied playing nanny!" Cooler taunted Vegeta as the king's expression twisted with physical effort. Vegeta grumbled, pushing the sphere back with another Kiai pulse, then another.
"What's that?" Cooler leaned back in terror as he thought the Supernova was about to crash right back at him. Not even he could oppose his own attack with his current level of power. He'd become completely powerless before his own show of force.
Vegeta let out a resonant roar as he spread his arms and legs out, stressing his muscles to their limit as the golden aura surrounding his body intensified and became shinier and less ethereal in appearance. Soon enough, the Super Saiyan became surrounded in a flash of golden gleam which formed a devastating bubble. The two competing forces detonated together and the resulting gravitational rips and expanding cosmic blasts swallowed each other up and canceled their opponent off.
"That wasn't a bad attack," Vegeta smirked, emerging from the pillar of dust standing wide open, in between the asteroid that provided him with the artificial atmosphere needed for breathing and Cooler, who hung in the upper layers of that atmosphere. "I mean to test the full might of this legendary power, so you better not disappoint me and die too soon. Come at me with everything you have and try to keep up!"
"Super Saiyan or not, you've suffered significant damage before ascending. You can't be anywhere near as powerful as a true Super Saiyan. You're bluffing, Vegeta. That's why you struggled against my attack." Cooler settled down, dragging the back of his knuckle over his busted face to wipe the trail of blood from across it.
"If I'm just bluffing, why are you shaking?" Vegeta mocked his opponent while Cooler's troubled fighting stance suggested the alien ruler felt himself in dire straits. "I assure you, Cooler, I am as true as a Super Saiyan gets. Kakarot merely borrowed the form and tested the water for the real deal!"
"Real or not, this form doesn't absolve you Saiyans of your savage, primitive state of being. No matter the form you take, you cannot best one that is above you!" Cooler clenched his fists and leaned back, preparing to charge at Vegeta. "If you still haven't accepted that I am simply inherently superior to you, no matter how hard you struggle, you're in for a rude awakening, Saiyan!"
Looking mighty confident in his abilities, Vegeta crossed his arms and dashed back, giving Cooler a wild goose chase to wear himself out on as the tyrant dashed onward and onward still, pursuing his elusive target with a power blow after another yet he only scooped and wailed on thin air. Vegeta wriggled in zigzags backward until the duo traveled around the entire compressed planetoid and returned to the same location they were in, with Cooler coming close to nailing Vegeta, the king moved aside from Cooler's punch and found an opening in his opponent's exposed right side.
"You're working so hard at this, almost like you're also convincing yourself…" Vegeta mocked his opponent instead of instantly exploiting the opening. Cooler turned to the Super Saiyan and raised his palm, unleashing another hail of Arc Blasts after him. But the royal Super Saiyan had taken a dive over his opponent's head. Cooler looked up, his eyes lit up bright red as concentrated beams of energy left them coming right at Vegeta but only piercing an afterimage.
"Or maybe you want to be proven wrong, you want to lose, don't you, Cooler?" Vegeta charged from directly ahead of Cooler with a flurry of punches that overwhelmed the self-appointed emperor. A rising uppercut sent Cooler flying off into the highest peaks of the artificial atmosphere. Vegeta's stiff kick sent emergency signals resonating through Cooler's body from the epicenter of his ribcage as the tyrant whited out for a second.
Ascending above his opponent, Vegeta unleashed a hail of punches aimed downward and rattling Cooler with thunderous blows before throwing a stray rushing kick that sent Cooler flying wildly around the asteroid he sought to conquer on this campaign. With grit teeth and a determined expression, Super Saiyan Vegeta dived with a cross that collided with Cooler, causing a whirling explosion of golden energy. Vegeta let out a battle cry and forced his punch downward further, diving with his punch embedded into Cooler's caved chest as he took his opponent for a heaven-splitting ride down.
It seemed as if an apocalyptic meteor had struck the homeworld of Crosstillians as candy red energy enveloped the entire area, sinking only the most distinctive shapes in black shadowy, almost artistic appearance as its outstanding might rattled the cosmic body. Vegeta leaped out of the colossal crater he had left Cooler laying in and landed on the edge, sneering down at his helpless opponent with crossed arms and a strict expression.
"Don't think this is over, Super Saiyan!" Cooler's eyes shot wide open out of nowhere, unleashing a penetrating gaze of purple shine headed right toward Vegeta that slammed into the Saiyan's forehead, forcing him to cock his head back and stagger lightly. Cooler rolled onto his side and dashed like a madman straight toward Vegeta as if he had smelled blood in the water.
Vegeta's head returned to its original position before Cooler could even close the distance to the Saiyan, frightening the tyrant. But he continued the push, nevertheless. The king of Saiyans leaned down and raised his left hand, absorbing the power blow of his opponent before the two collided with knee shots. The clash of powers caused a violent eruption of electric jolts and a ring of bright energy to expand vertically that ripped across the upper layers of the asteroid's crust and left them as blazing ridges of molten rock. Exclaiming each blow proudly, the two warriors battered each other with blows while absorbing each other's attacks at the same time, dashing about and around the cosmic body they collided on while vanishing and switching altitudes at the same time.
"You've met your dead-end, king!" Cooler exclaimed, pointing his index finger down at Vegeta after an especially violent collision sent them hurling to opposite sides. Vegeta reached with his open hand and cushioned the focused Death Beam that came his way. Cooler raised his hands over his head, focusing his might into a round, yellow Ki sphere which he hurled toward Vegeta as well. It was no simply Ki blast, packing deceptively large amounts of Ki. Thrusting both his feet up while he leaned his entire body down backward, Vegeta sent Cooler's Particle Bomb away into space where it detonated, claiming hundreds of asteroids.
Cooler dashed across the space between Vegeta and him, having used Vegeta's efforts in sending his Particle Bomb away from their battle site with his right kick aimed downward colliding with Vegeta and carrying him all the way down while Cooler rolled back in mid-air and opened both of his palms, thrusting his hands forward as he aimed at Vegeta's general vicinity.
"Death Flash!" Cooler howled as he unleashed a mighty energy wave that exploded outward with a wide flasher but then focused into a more direct and subtler beam as it sped up toward Cooler's intended target. The attack enveloped Vegeta whole, causing a flashing lightning storm to erupt and make the merciless vastness of space seem utterly white. The resulting blast shined so brightly that it dulled the luminosity of the stars for a few moments before dissipating.
"That's great, that will do," Vegeta yelled out to Cooler while lying sprawled on the ground, embedded into a shallow layer of cosmic gravel and dust. As Cooler trembled at the lack of notable injuries on his opponent after taking Cooler's most genuine attempts to take his life, Vegeta jumped up on his feet and looked up at Cooler with a challenging look. "Now, where is that power of a superior race you spoke about? Where is all that luster of Cold's spawn with a penchant for hard work and training you bragged about earlier?"
"You're tough, I'll give you that," Cooler cackled to himself, admitting that his attempts to kill the Super Saiyan had been lacking in volume until now. "Then again, the ability of a workhorse bunch to take punishment was never in question here."
Vegeta rushed across toward Cooler enveloped in a golden aura, cocking his arm back as if intending to blow the tyrant's head clean off but Cooler expelled a purple shine and surrounded himself in a bubble of violet aura after a few pants and rushed toward Vegeta on a collision course. Despite his best attempts to shield against the Super Saiyan eruption of brutality, Cooler's protective shield popped on collision, though it sent both warriors further across from one another. Frieza's brother used this opportunity to launch a barrage of Death Beams to Vegeta, the Super Saiyan swat a handful of them aside before taking one to the left shoulder, then switched to dodging them before a stray beam hit his knee, only getting a wince out of the golden-haired Saiyan king.
Sensing a whiff of ecstasy after causing light bruising on the legendary Saiyan warrior, Cooler spread his arms and legs and enveloped himself in purple energy shield again before charging at Vegeta to detonate the shield in his face and crush the golden-shine warrior with all his might. Vegeta thrust his open palm, expelling a meek Ki blast that burst Cooler's Nova Chariot charge and proceeded with a rushing barrage of vicious blows before rolling in mid-air to add some momentum to his double ax handle slam. Cooler smashed down into the ground enveloped with a trail of white energy shine while Vegeta raised his hands over his head and channeled heaps of energy in both his hands, all of which he expelled in a downward Ki Blast Barrage.
"You can go to hell content, Cooler!" Vegeta barked in his face as he leaned back to prepare for a sky-splitting dash. In a single, golden blink, the Super Saiyan drove his fist into Cooler's jaw and continued to hail punches from a horizontal flying position hanging over his fallen and devastated foe. "Content knowing that even trash like you can overcome self-righteous, talented fops that haven't worked a day in their life like your brother!"
"I've overcome you, after all, haven't I?" Vegeta mocked Cooler with a cocky smirk as he winded up his last punch for a few moments before unleashing his full, unbridled force with a crushing blow at Cooler's chest. The tyrant spat blood and slobber from his mouth and bent to an almost a wrapping position around Vegeta's crushing arm that delivered the coup de grâce, however, once Vegeta pulled his fist out of his opponent's ribcage, Cooler collapsed helplessly in the blood-filled crater he laid in.
Vegeta blew cool air from his chest and took a bountiful leap in the air. He aimed with an open palm, hanging over his crushed and beaten foe, about to utterly obliterate him. The Super Saiyan took a few breaths to smell the victory and memorize the most deserving moment of being remembered. The moment that would signify the freedom of the Saiyan race from the wretched Cold Clan and their armies. Cold may have still been left but with him rushing to invade Earth and invade it out of sentiment, he would be broken and useless by the time Kakarot or that other rabid Saiyan wench would be done with him.
"Say hello to…" Vegeta was about to deliver his finishing line that would seal Cooler's demise before Cooler wrestled gravity itself to return on both feet.
"You must be right, king Vegeta…" Cooler gazed down with a crushed look of defeat frozen on his face. Not even Vegeta could vanquish an opponent so hated and so beaten. "Maybe I was just translating how I saw my brother to you, hoping to be proven wrong. It is as you said, if someone like you could best someone like me, then there is nothing stopping from me surpassing my father and heinous little brother with hard work and training alone even if I wasn't born into freakish power like they were."
"If you're about to plead for mercy, don't waste your last breath," Vegeta replied with a distant look befitting his cyan eyes and strict demeanor. "You and your clan, your whole military, and the empire you've forged is history, we'll make sure of that."
"Oh, Vegeta… Ever the court jester, jumping to brag before the occasion…" Cooler snickered. "The only reason I admit to you this moment of self-reflection is because I've been saving one grisly mystery away from you. I figured that my hesitance in crushing you and ending this battle had a lot to do with my wish to be proven wrong, but now I'm done playing around. It's time to show you just how misguided you truly were to come here and challenge me."
"Have you gone mad? The power of a Super Saiyan is absolute, a Super Saiyan is an ultimate warrior, ruthless and peerless across the universe. There is nothing you can do to surpass it with your battered battle power." Vegeta called Cooler's alleged bluff.
"It's true that this Super Saiyan nonsense is ridiculous. I thought that only the exalted, elite races of this universe could transform to escalate their already majestic power. To be on the same shelf as lowly grunts like you Saiyans, it bitters the taste of my inevitable victory. The crunch of your bones won't sound the same, you've spoiled it, Vegeta." Cooler seethed, hunching over as he put up his fists and bent his arms to his sides, erupting in a fuchsia glow, though his booming power was as far from Vegeta as the Super Saiyan claimed.
"What are you on about, Cooler? Don't think that you're postponing your inevitable execution by talking empty threats. The moment you begin to bore me, I'm blowing you away." Vegeta ordered his beaten foe, clenching his open palm into a commanding fist.
"You wouldn't know about it from watching my brother, but our race can transform not only to decrease our power. With enough training, we can shape entire new forms and mutate our bodies to drastically boost our power. Though this had remained a mystery since both my father and little Frieza were lazy to the bone. Frieza was worse than that, the wasteful fool even transformed to limit his own power as opposed to boosting it!" Cooler's muscles bulked up in one forceful pulse that added a pound of flesh on each of his limbs.
Tornadoes of whirling platinum dust rose from underground and gathered steam from all across the asteroid's surface as mere pebbles hurled across the place like bullets. The resonating shock waves of Cooler's escalating power even sent Super Saiyan Vegeta for a tumble and threw him off the stance that he had adopted for his finishing move.
With each successive circulation of blood, Cooler's body grew rapidly, each time blood passed through to supply his muscles with oxygen, the energy surge threw them into overdrive as Cooler's biceps, forearms, calves, and forearms, not to mention his chest expanded to a ridiculous extent while his waistline only seemed to drag in length to form a ridiculously excessive mountain of pure muscle. Vegeta covered up his face with a blank expression, to shield himself from the hail of debris.
Cooler's eyes became white, then lit up with a candy-red glow while his head changed shape and grow spikes from the sides until he had completed a crown-like decoration that seemed to surpass his own beefy chest in size. Cooler's bio-armor made way for this increase in bulk as Vegeta blinked twice, noticing a match of his own in power being born before his very eyes. All injuries seemed to vanish in a wrapping of new sinew and the transformation had ground all bones to dust and rebuilt anew to better serve this new carcass of flesh.
"A Super Saiyan, was it?" Cooler smirked with his cruel black lips, while his red eyes gleamed with utter malice. The bio-armor over his head covered up his mouth in a helmet-like carapace appearing equal parts like a regal crown and a decoration of a mighty warrior beast. "I suppose I should call myself something equally ridiculous. Super Cooler, perhaps?" Cooler mocked Vegeta with a grungy, artificially enhanced voice coming out from behind the layer of cover over his mouth and through the vizor-like opening for his red eyes.