"Super Cooler? Don't make me laugh!" Vegeta grumbled. Erupting with the golden aura of Super Saiyan vigor, the king of Saiyans charged right at his opponent. The first dashing strike collided with Cooler's jaw with a resounding thud. Cooler turned his head slightly, though Vegeta expected a far grander impact.
Not to be the one to let up on an opponent when he gained pressure. The royal Saiyan threw a wild flurry of blows, though Cooler leaned out of the second one and put up his forearms to block and deflect the rest. Cooler's body appeared to have gained a certain degree of monstrous toughness after undergoing the transformation. Whereas before Vegeta's blows felt like punching through a melon, soft and squishy on the inside, now Cooler felt more like a pile of boulders. Even if one punched with enough strength to move one, the density of the pile settled it all back into place and it felt like one suffered more damage in return by throwing hands at it.
Seeing an opening when Cooler leaned to his right to avoid a strike, Vegeta exploded with a right uppercut and sent Super Cooler soaring into the air before vanishing right back up to his flying opponent, ready to continue his royal punishment. A stiff knee to Cooler's back. Vegeta had expected to break his opponent's spine like this, but with his current toughness, it felt like he was still a thousand years away from it. Cooler returned to the fighting condition in an instant, recovering in mid-air and throwing a wicked hook, though it no longer found Vegeta.
The king of Saiyans had vanished back down, dashing with a golden shine of his aura back into the fray and moving around Cooler's fist to exploit the opening with a hook of his own. Cooler's red eyes widened and lost their sharp, triangular shape, becoming near-round after the tyrant reeled back from Vegeta's brutish impact.
"A Super Saiyan is a perfect warrior, cold and ruthless, there is no force in the universe like its own!" the rampaging Super Saiyan growled as he continued to throw power hooks from both sides to soften up his opponent's body, rattling Cooler's ribs with a relentless and cruel beating. Vegeta attempted to grab the back of Cooler's head and plummet, smashing him down into the ground, but Cooler's tail wrapped around his arm spun and released him down instead.
Vegeta's feet absorbed the shock from the fall as his warrior's instinct redirected the Super Saiyan to gaze upward where his opponent was already diving in pursuit of him. Like a golden arrow through the skies, Vegeta dashed right back at Super Cooler, spinning in mid-air and maneuvering around his hook to drive his knee into Cooler's gut and then throw a flurry of fists into the tyrant's back until Vegeta battered his enemy into the ground and burrowed him into another crater.
"Humph, it's irritating that you've recovered so much and powered up, but all it'll change is that it will make my beating take longer." The Super Saiyan taunted his fallen opponent while Super Cooler pulled himself out of the crater that had collapsed in on itself, revealing a primordial blaze shine from deeper within where the collapsing asteroid crumbled into. Whatever technology the Crosstillians used to hold this cosmic body together had collapsed in on itself and go critical.
"I wonder about that. This impressive, golden form of yours, just how straining is it really, Vegeta? Then again, why am I asking? This is the first time you've assumed it, after all…" Super Cooler let out a chuckle that took a grungy tone while passing through the impressive helmet the self-made emperor donned in this form.
Vegeta winced, clenching his fists in denial. Cooler wasn't wrong. The Super Saiyan transformation was even more taxing than fighting in one's full power the entire time. It was not a last resort type of technique to be used sparingly and on special occasions, though the fatigue that accumulated required greater training in control of the technique. It was despicable that this self-righteous fop had enough combat awareness to notice that. Cooler was like night and day from Frieza's own elementary understanding of fighting.
"In any case, you've made your statement, king. Now allow me to make mine!" Cooler pressed his fists by his sides, taking off slowly at first, but the bulky monster gained speed with each pace he blitzed through. Vegeta threw a left hook, to intercept Cooler's dashing strike which he had seen through earlier, but Cooler read Vegeta's own moves, by redirecting his momentum and shifting his body into a sliding position and halting himself from getting hit.
Cooler's tail smacked Vegeta across the face, sending the king of Saiyans flying back. Minute droplets of blood filled the air, though Super Cooler dashed through them, leaving grim smears over his outer layer of bio-armor. Vegeta coughed and wheezed for air when Cooler's devastating right nearly punched a hole right through him. The king's cyan orbs dulled out and nearly faded from the whites of his eyes. A backhand that stressed Vegeta's neck to keep the king's head on his shoulders and a flexible kick up sent Vegeta soaring to the upper levels of the asteroid's artificial atmosphere.
The self-proclaimed emperor dashed in pursuit of his opponent, smashing into Vegeta with his head and knocking him even higher up, before turning his body and whipping Vegeta clean into space, while Cooler dashed with a fuchsia gleam right after his breathless opponent. Just as Vegeta regained consciousness, the dread of being unable to breathe hit him. Then a different threat altogether, when snapped right up in his face and backhanded Vegeta away like a rag doll.
A thunderous thud, stones showering upward from a severe impact. Vegeta's vision felt blurry, but he felt coarse roughness of gravel underneath him. Cooler had backhanded him onto another asteroid inside the belt, and the terrifying pink nova of Cooler's charging aura wasn't too far away. The tyrant was pursuing him after another pound of Vegeta's flesh. Just as the king's eyes had straightened his perception out and he began reading Cooler's movement speed again, the tyrant vanished, as if mocking Vegeta's perception. The proud king heard his own blood-curdling yell when Cooler's knees dug into his gut with a guttural, churning sound.
The Super Saiyan's body bounced off of the asteroid's surface while the entire asteroid underneath him collapsed and shattered into smaller, town-sized boulders. Seeing his opponent weightless and breathless, Super Cooler ravaged Vegeta with a brutal flurry of strikes before pointing his index at the king, as if mocking him. A chain reaction of psychically induced explosions devastated the remains of the asteroid, leaving nothing but space dust of it.
The immense heat had settled down, the gravitational meltdowns of the asteroid's destruction had ceased and only cold and cruel embrace of space had caressed the king's body as he flew weightless and battered. No matter how hard he tried to move, Vegeta could only twitch his fingers. He let out a pathetic grunt when Cooler snapped right up in his face again and kneed the Super Saiyan in the gut before enveloping his right hand in a violet gleam and backhanding Vegeta away.
Vegeta focused his heavy eyes, forcing his eyelids open halfway, looking for the nearest source of atmosphere he could find. If Cooler continued to wail on him out here in open space, with no oxygen to breathe right and defend himself–he'd be a goner. The only sources around were the collapsing Crosstillian asteroid and the Saiyan armada, though leading Cooler back to the Saiyans was the last thing Vegeta wanted. Bringing up the remains of his strength, Vegeta burst with an explosive second wind and split toward the sad-looking asteroid that had a reddish, eternal-sunset-like shine in its last moments when viewed from outer space.
At last, a gasp of fresh air entered Vegeta's lungs, clenching his busted ribs while breathing up to his heart extent. The Saiyan looked around and extended his Ki sensory to track Cooler. The king of Saiyans gasped in shock when he saw his hated enemy standing still with his arms crossed just a few hundred meters away from him. Having moved here in an instant from where the tyrant had last hovered out in space, marveling at the devastation of Vegeta's body that he had caused.
"Well, finally seeing your place now, are you?" Super Cooler wondered.
"Don't make me laugh!" Vegeta objected, wincing in pain as he couldn't let go of his burning ribs. "You've just lucked out that I can't breathe in space, that's all! No power in the universe measures up to the legendary might of the Super Saiyan!"
"I'll make you eat those words, Vegeta," Super Cooler chuckled to himself, breaking out in savage brutality in an instant as he dashed with his mountainous body and grabbed Vegeta's entire head in his hand, carrying the helpless Saiyan king along with him for the ride. It was as if Cooler had become a living comet, soaring through space as he blasted Vegeta through one asteroid after another before seeing his blood-covered and writhing opponent and realizing he may have had enough.
Cooler turned around and plummeted back down, smashing Vegeta back into the Crosstillian asteroid and leaving the battered Saiyan in the crater as his own royal blood had accumulated and mixed in with the gravel. The tyrant hovered up over the writhing body of his opponent, marveling at Vegeta's crushed fighting spirit for as long as it took for the king of Saiyans to shoot his eyes wide open and peel his bleeding face back off the ground.
"Not dead yet? Impressive…" Super Cooler commended his opponent, who was on the verge of breaking down with each successive strike that the self-made emperor landed. While initially, their strengths seemed near-equal, Vegeta had spent a decent amount of time and effort fighting Cooler in his base form already. "Though your Super Saiyan form was just a second wind. Nothing more. We know second wind to only last for a heartbeat and your heartbeat has officially run out fighting my base form already. You've got no other choice but to succumb to your injuries, king."
"You cocky bastard…!" Vegeta seethed, shaking in despair and wrath combined. Every few moments he stressed his smashed to a pulp innards enough to send bloody coughs up, but the last thing that the king of Saiyans felt like doing was surrendering. "Nobody is going to tell a king what to do!" Vegeta bellowed, erupting with tenfold the golden luminosity as his bright aura became a shining beacon visible from outside the asteroid belt.
Splitting the luminous flash of light with his own righteous fist, Vegeta charged toward Super Cooler. Crash. A splitting impulse of pain resonated through Vegeta's arm as his muscles and flesh itself tore open, unable to contain the pressure within as his fist left no sort of impact whatsoever and it was Vegeta who suffered the recoil from that almighty thud. Cooler stood in mid-air and observed Vegeta's fruitless defiance with an excited wag of his tail.
"Eat this! Super Vegeta's Big Bang Attack!" Vegeta yelled out as he extended his only functional arm toward Super Cooler. The air around Vegeta became denser, flowing like a mirage. It came to a point where even Cooler felt obliged to look around and try to deduce just what sort of technique he was facing. The light from Vegeta's aura enveloped the entire asteroid and ravaged its surface, almost enough to carve a planet's crust off all by itself. Rampant earthquakes swallowed the last remaining buildings and monorail systems whole. Debris crumbled into bottomless fissures and became swallowed up in flames, while rampant blizzards of stone blasted through anything and everything they met in their way.
Shimmering rays of white light emerged from within the epicenter of this outstanding energy in the center of Vegeta's open palm, becoming a concentrated, white Ki sphere. Eventually, the wave of white washed over and swallowed the golden gleam of Vegeta's aura entirely, drowning everything in overwhelming light before the kindle became so extreme that it had burnt the white-out and changed into all-black. A void of darkness with serene waves of white energy overlay that concentrated into an intense blue luster. From within the center of that incandescent ring, the Ki sphere shot out, and it didn't have that far of a distance to travel from Cooler's face.
The bemused space emperor raised his hand nonchalantly, letting the sphere collide and contend with his pure strength as the brightness lost its concentration and washed over him. Vegeta covered himself up as the backlash from his own technique sent him hurling back and flipping until he smashed awkwardly back into the ground. Pain resonated through Vegeta's whole body as he had landed awkwardly on his neck. The wave of torment translated physically by Vegeta's golden shine washing away, leaving just his base, battered self to wheeze in helplessness, hands, and feet sprawled out as if welcoming whatever outcome destiny had in store for him.
The Big Bang Attack still caused havoc, however. A golden sphere of energy, resonating with pressurized rings of shock waves throughout the fabric of space-time before the technique lost its concentration and integrity and washed away the entire asteroid, crumbling it into dust with one final bubble of luminosity. The Saiyans covered up growling and grumbling while still in their Great Ape forms, their spaceships that they used as platforms to stay afloat in the upper atmosphere had to compete with powerful shock waves that threw them out into open space, leaving the apes roaring and thrashing, unable to understand why they were choking and feeling calamitous.
The smoke cleared out, revealing the Crosstillian asteroid to be just a flowing cluster of pathetic, smoldered boulders cooling off in the icy embrace of space. Super Cooler stood with his arm raised. His muscles still twitched from time to time as minor burns littered the arm he had used to absorb Vegeta's ultimate attack. Cooler waved his arm, trying to shake off the present numbness and pain.
"I must say, king Vegeta, that was some attack… If you had used it against me back then, in my base form, you'd have left no trace of me, without a doubt. Even now, I had to put a meaningful effort not to let this attack overwhelm me. If you caught me by surprise with it, you would have pushed me as far as it gets. Perhaps there is more to the Saiyan race than I or my brother have considered. In this universe, the power of a Super Saiyan is certainly second only to mine." Cooler scanned the debris of the asteroid until his red orbs focused on Vegeta's helpless body floating in space. "While Saiyans are nothing but primitive savages, the golden luster of the Super Saiyan and its exceptional power certainly elevates certain Saiyans to the step of being elite of the universe. You deserve a quick death, king."
Sealing the deal that he made with his words, Super Cooler raised his hands over his head. Heatwaves similar to cosmic solar winds began washing up his way, forming a blazing sphere over his head just a few meters wider than his head. With each passing moment the Supernova over Super Cooler's head grew larger and larger in volume, Cooler had intended to wipe out everything with it: king Vegeta, the Saiyan race, this entire asteroid belt, reduce it all to nothingness and wipe this sector clean.
"How… How can this be?" Vegeta thought to himself, lacking the strength in him to even speak up. "The power of a Super Saiyan was meant to be absolute. Nothing in this universe can compare. H-How… How could I… A Super Elite, Super Saiyan king of Saiyans could be defeated? This is ridiculous, I won't accept it, I won't accept this!"
Vegeta's bruised and blood-soaked hands clenched into fists as the sprawled body curled into a fetal position and lit up with a golden aura. For just a few seconds though repeatedly and without failure or end, Vegeta's hair spiked up and became golden before the Super Saiyan transformation dissipated again. Only for Vegeta to try again and struggle against his impending doom and that of his entire race.
"Damn it, damn you, Cooler!" Vegeta grumbled as Cooler hurled the Supernova at him from far away, as the supermassive infernal Ki sphere came closer and closer, its fiery light and pulsing heat became almost unbearable, and very few sources of light could compete with its intensity. "If I was to die and let my people die here, I would be the worst king in the universe! Worthless! Do you hear me, Cooler? I will use everything in my power to survive and destroy you, no matter how pathetic and useless that straw is!"
Vegeta stabilized his Super Saiyan transformation and extended his hands, grabbing hold of the Supernova. The overbearing weight of an entire supermassive planet landed on his shoulders, nearly pushing his arms right out through his socket and shredding Vegeta's body on impact but a thin barrier of Kiai separated the struggling king of Saiyans from all-destroying doom that he competed with. Vegeta turned his head away. The heat was too much and his very skin was unraveling and peel off from his face while the underlying flesh and nerves were swelling up.
"What's that light?" Vegeta muttered his head in a prime position to see luminous moonlight rays from diagonally behind him. "The Power Ball!?"
"Humph… Struggling until the very end. It would have been better for you if you accepted your end quickly, just as I offered it to you, king Vegeta. You're only making it harder for yourself…" Super Cooler observed as he held his right hand to control the Supernova and made a powerful push with an additional pulse of energy but, strangely enough, the sphere remained stuck in place. "What?" Cooler hissed to himself.
The Supernova didn't move, no matter what. Almost as if something had gotten hold of it and actually taken over it. A crude burst of shock wave pushed the sphere back a few inches, terrifying Cooler. Colossal, furry muscles began taking peeks from behind the infernal ball of flames as a titanic Great Ape monster, shining with a golden fur and furious red eyes just like those of its peers punted the Supernova away, whizzing just a few hundred meters over Super Cooler's head as the tyrant trembled in shock of this awe-inspiring sight.
"A Golden Great Ape monster?" Super Cooler muttered to himself as his red eyes became round and lost their sharp focus and grit. The Golden Great Ape let out a vociferous roar the emanated throughout the entire system as a rampant, earthquake-inducing shock wave. The monster couldn't breathe, but this only made it madder and more eager to smash everything in its sight to a pulp.
An unexpected development had flipped the tables once again in this climactic battle between the strongest of the Cold Clan and the newly ascended king of all Saiyans!