Vegeta wiped the blood and slobber off his lip and scowled before rushing at Meta-Cooler. The metallic cyborg leaned back in a manner of flexibility only permissible to someone with an artificial spine and a cyborg's body before driving his forearm into Vegeta's gut. The blow took the Super Saiyan right out of the exhausted Saiyan, who sustained his battle frenzy solely through sheer rage.
The segmented metallic tail of Meta-Cooler wrapped around Vegeta's neck and pulled him in closer to further beat down. With a furious growl, Vegeta drove his forehead straight into Meta-Cooler's own front. The power struggle sent sparks of lightning crackling in all directions and riding the forceful shock wave emanating from their collision.
The two began clashing fists, forearms, and calves, throwing hands and legs at one another in an automated barrage. The two danced this way until bleeding scrapes burst all over the body of the only of the two combatants to not be fully automated and possess the qualities of flesh and blood to him. Despite this, Vegeta threw a solid side kick at the side of the cyborg's neck, which Meta-Cooler felt obliged to block. It socked the cyborg harder than he predicted, sending Meta-Cooler sliding aside and disappearing inside an opening within the Big Gete Star's wall.
Vegeta exclaimed in surprise at the sudden switch in the cyborg's battle tactics. He began scanning the entire room in search of his opponent and where he'd resurface again. It was only when his opponent had vanished that Vegeta recalled the fact that he couldn't sense Meta-Cooler's Ki. This made fighting him inside of a living cybernetic organism led by artificial intelligence that wanted its pet project to win at all costs complicated.
"You should give this up, Vegeta. Fighting for others was never your strong suit. Even this measly power-up you've scrounged up quickly faded away. Since fate can't seem to give it a rest without sending you against Cooler, shall this one reignite it in you?" Meta-Cooler's voice resonated from every device integrated into the surrounding systems of the Big Gete Star with a speaker.
"Don't you fucking dare, you cocky bastard!" Vegeta clenched his fists and tensed up his muscles in sheer hatred for the reborn, cybernetic image of the older brother of his lifelong nemesis and oppressor. "Bulma has nothing to do with our quarrel, you hear me!?"
"Maybe not, but she makes you so mad that this one kind of enjoys bullying her a bit. Plus, she gave you a rotten mutt for a child, and that's one more for us to crush. Since it isn't even a full-blooded Saiyan, it won't give this one the same satisfaction to kill it," Meta-Cooler's disgusting voice resonated throughout the fueling headquarters.
"What kind of martial artist are you?" Trunks yelled out from a compromised position. The same one that his mother found herself in as well. "My dad's your enemy, isn't he? Just show yourself and fight him fairly! Leave mom alone…!"
Vegeta turned to Trunks to scold him about such a naïve attitude toward combat, but then his eyes cleared up and his jaw dropped slightly as he contemplated something deep down and looked up. "Humph… I guess Cooler really died back in the rotten dump I killed him in. The Cooler I remember had a shred of honor, unlike his dirtbag little brother. Guess the Big Gete Star can only recreate lowlife imitations. That glorified toaster… Might as well trash it right now!"
Just as the Saiyan king raised his hand to blast at a random location and begin thrashing the Big Gete Star, the floor opened up with an escalating staircase, providing him with a shinier opponent of gleaming silver to attack.
"Don't you dare make this about honor now, Vegeta…" Meta-Cooler hissed upon emerging. "What you did to the original, that's rotten and unforgivable. You didn't challenge the original for his empire, you attacked Cooler with your full invading force and stole his empire from him. Then you ruled what he left after him from a throne of scrap and ashes while your Earthling cronies betrayed and crippled his clan back on Earth. You're no king nor an emperor. You're just a thug, and this one will butcher you as such."
"Hmph… So you showed up?" Vegeta smirked, charging toward Meta-Cooler with a flurry of staunch, standing punches from both sides. The reckless and powerful offensive made the silver cyborg hunker down with raised arms and block the hits from both sides. Seeing his opponent's hand, Vegeta wasn't just going to tire himself out against a cyborg with seemingly infinite energy. The king of Saiyans took it to the ceiling with a roaring uppercut that broke through Meta-Cooler's defenses and tested just how much his artificial neck could stretch.
Just as Vegeta raced up to Meta-Cooler to continue his beat down, the cyborg rolled up into a ball in a freaky manner before reassembling his humanoid shape and driving a double ax handle slam to the top of Vegeta's head. Grunting, Vegeta slammed against the ground with tendrils of cybernetic wires emerging from opening metal sheets that restrained the Saiyan king once more.
"That's what's so infuriating about you Saiyans…" Meta-Cooler coughed up while posing atop the restrained Saiyan brute. "Always picking fights the magnitude of which you cannot comprehend. Even right now, you've no idea just how out of your league you are. Unable to even power up to your Super Saiyan form in this state of weary, faced against the grandest project of the mighty Big Gete Star with all the infinite energy and backing of the greatest cybernetic organism that's about to become the living universe…"
"Careful now, runt. You wouldn't want to disappoint your master and kill me too quick, would you?" Vegeta grumbled while yanking the coils, restraining him, pulling, punching alongside them, and biting into them with a misguided attempt to rip adamant steel wires and coils apart with his teeth.
"Always have to say the absolute most infuriating thing too…" Meta-Cooler replied with a bitter facial expression. The cyborg's scanning technology locked onto the struggling king and pinpointed his most sensitive weak spots at that moment before a smile colored the cyborg's face. A gleam of sparkling energy appeared before Meta-Cooler that snapped toward the pinpointed weak spots in an instant.
A rumbling explosion littered the area. It even woke Bulma up from her daze as she screamed out from the sudden shock and chaos occurring all around her. Young Trunks grunted and used this blast as an opportunity to test the integrity of his restraints again. It didn't seem to be any more successful than at any other time he tried overcoming them. It seemed like any semblance of resistance only further fed the Big Gete Star, which in term bolstered its Meta-Cooler project with that same force.
"Well, well…" Meta-Cooler tsked, turning to the side in reaction to Vegeta emerging from the smoke and resolving blast with a golden aura around him and his hair spiking up gold alongside it. "I guess you've been saving some of that juice for a tough moment. If you think this was an emergency, you've got a whole different thing coming, Vegeta."
Meta-Cooler's radar eyes scanned Vegeta while the king of Saiyans settled down his transformation now that he had withstood Meta-Cooler's attack with just minor scrapes and needed to reserve that energy again. Vegeta pressed his forearms together in front of his face, grunting in pain and riding the force of impact from Meta-Cooler's knee strike. It flung him aside like a rag doll to the other end of the room.
"Dad, free me!" Trunks yelled out. "I can help you fight!"
"Stay still and shut up," Vegeta hissed in return while shaking from every joint in his body, shooting nervous ticks all over as he rose from the ground. "I've no use from a hybrid brat getting in my way. You'd just get both of us killed. You and your mother should have stayed on Earth instead of meddling in my business!"
"In-fighting?" Meta-Cooler teased Vegeta with a smile while descending with his arms crossed. "This one kind of doesn't want to kill them anymore, so if it's your strategy, keep going, it's working…"
"Vegeta…" Bulma muttered with a weak voice before her usual personality began bubbling back up. "How dare you!? This loser had you strung up like a wet rag in here before we came to pull your pathetic butt out of the fire!"
"Shut up, you infuriating Earthling woman!" Vegeta swiped his hand with dismissal and scorn in his voice. His movement ignited a golden shine around him and spiked his hair up while coloring his eyes teal. "I didn't ask for you to save me, and I certainly as heck won't be saving you or that whiny spawn of ours!"
"I can see why the Big Gete Star wants to keep you alive, Vegeta. This is amusing…" Meta-Cooler closed his eyes and turned his cheek down with a subtle chuckle.
"Of all the insufferable… For the record, you only broke out because of me," Bulma objected, mounting her own offensive against the restraints with an innate desire to smack the cocky nature right out of the Saiyan king.
"That's only because you made everything so messy!" Vegeta completely dropped Meta-Cooler from his attention, turning to Bulma. "You were never supposed to come here. This isn't your fight! You… You weren't supposed to…"
"Weren't supposed to what, Vegeta? Get hurt?" Bulma squinted her eyes, knowing exactly what got stuck in the throat of the Saiyan royalty and what he struggled so hard from setting free.
"Shut up!" Vegeta roared out and charged at Meta-Cooler. This sudden switch startled the silver cyborg and made him switch his stance into one better suited for a defensive role. The re-awakened Super Saiyan weaved under Meta-Cooler's tail lash and threw a jab at Meta-Cooler's abdomen, stunning his opponent and breaking through his guard.
Now that Meta-Cooler had flinched, Super Saiyan Vegeta turned around while assuming a more stable position with both of his feet while throwing a stiff power shot with his entire forearm. The forearm shot hit harder than Cooler had any right to expect, exploding with a golden blast from behind him as Vegeta's Ki skyrocketed all at once and his power-strike formed a booming beam of energy that fired Meta-Cooler through the Big Gete Star all the way into open space. Almost immediately, the Big Gete Star began mending itself with wires covering up the rip like living blood vessels.
"That's right… Hide behind your fighting when you can't face the facts!" Bulma pulled her wrists and kicked her feet. All for the sake of hoping that the Super Saiyan would end up just a few steps closer and that she'd push herself just a few inches farther and end up hitting him. Violence seemed to be the only way of getting through to this nut-head.
"If I free you and that boy, will you get the hell out of here and go back to Earth?" Vegeta grumbled. "You might be feisty and as amusing as that fiery nature of yours is, you lack the punch to back it up."
"He's your son, Vegeta, whether you like it or not…" Bulma turned her nose up. "And he needs training as well as to know his father better."
"Training? You mean you haven't trained him yet?" Vegeta freaked out.
"He's three years old!" Bulma leaned forward, almost feeling her teeth getting sharper.
"And you haven't trained him at all!?" Vegeta stepped up to Bulma before a shimmering, teal energy bullet hit him in the back. Vegeta's eyes whited out as his Super Saiyan form blinked out in an instant. Meta-Cooler emerged from an opening inside of a busted pipeline and wiring like a scurrying rat that had spent decades living there. A teal gleam of matching color shined around his index finger.
"It'd be quite easy to step aside and let this Earthling woman die, wouldn't it?" Meta-Cooler's face shifted with a sadistic smile as more and more teal energy bullets began blitzing out from his index finger and speeding up toward Vegeta and Bulma while the two stood nearby each other. Vegeta grumbled and wrapped his arms around Bulma, covering her up from harm while absorbing all the locked-on Finger Blitz Barrage with his exposed back. "But you won't do that, will you?"
"Dad!" Trunks cried out with tears in the corner of his eyes.
"Stop yelling, you incessant whiner…" Vegeta panted with eyelids that hung heavy over his black eyes. Bulma could feel a warm splatter of his blood over her back and his muscular yet bruised arms shook from torment around her. He wanted to move them aside, to make her not feel how stiff and broken he was, but he couldn't exactly because of how stiffened his entire body was. Bulma would've dreaded to look at Vegeta's back right now. "Your mother's alive. I'd be a shitty king if I let a guest from Earth die on Planet Vegeta on my watch…"
Vegeta's arm reached up for the wires holding Bulma captive. Meta-Cooler's index finger shined up with teal light again, but it was just a feint. The Saiyan king moved his arm down with a quick pull, letting Meta-Cooler's energy bullet rip through the Big Gete Star's bindings. Vegeta quickly turned around and pointed two of his fingers at young Trunks, causing a Ki explosion over the bindings, keeping him suspended as well.
"You two… Get out of here and stop getting in my way…" Vegeta panted, feeling too heavy and battered to transform again at the moment. He'd have to weather some of the storm in his base form for now.
"Vegeta, you've freed us because… Because you know you can't win, right?" Bulma wrapped her arms around Vegeta's neck and turned him around to face her.
"I should blast you away where you stand, insolent Earthling woman…" Vegeta muttered with a weaker tone than he ever offended Bulma with before.
"You monster!" young Trunks exploded with fury as a crystal-clear aura ignited around him and his detached bindings dissolved into shreds around his limbs. Unable to produce complex Ki attacks on command or fight all that good, the youth charged at Meta-Cooler head-on just to throw fists. The boldness seemed to shock both Vegeta and Meta-Cooler alike.
"Know your place, mutt…" Meta-Cooler swatted Trunks aside with a smack of his tail, making Vegeta's eyes shoot out wide and his jaw drop in the shock that this monster would strike a pre-schooler.
"COOLER!" Vegeta bellowed, wrestling out from Bulma's grasp and charging toward the metallic monster. The Saiyan wounded up a hefty strike to pound the life out from his enemy, but a shine in Meta-Cooler's radar eye froze Vegeta in place as Meta-Cooler blasted a hole through the weakened, rushing Saiyan.
"This openly hostile, secretly loving father schtick is getting old. This one thinks this one speaks for everyone that it's time to end it," Meta-Cooler shrugged while wires burst forth from all around the fueling headquarters and weaved into hand-like shapes before the detached steel plating connected to them. Once the transformation was complete, massive hands formed all around the chamber that grabbed hold of Vegeta's limbs while keeping him suspended.
The proud Saiyan king yelled out in pain. Then again. Then again, when Cooler's Death Laser blasts hit him in various non-lethal areas of his body. They easily punched straight through Vegeta's weakened body while incinerating the wound in an instant not to cause a bleed out. The suspended Saiyan king gasped and wheezed as no one could estimate just how many Death Lasers punched straight through his lungs. Riddled like cheese with blood tapping and pouring onto the metallic floor, Vegeta panted heavily while the mechanical arms of the Big Gete Star didn't let go despite Meta-Cooler pushing the luck of his direct orders.
"For once, your roach-like vitality is a source of joy for this one," Meta-Cooler smirked with a teasing bend of his head as if trying to peek at Bulma, who quivered behind Vegeta. The Earthling inventor fell on her backside when rapid beams began blasting straight through her love and nearly perforated her as well.
"Y-You meanie!" Trunks snapped out of his stupor and charged right back at what he saw as an opening in the Meta-Cooler's exposed back. The boy dived to kick at Meta-Cooler's knees, swept at his shins, punched and hammered all over the cyborg's body, but none of his punches seemed to affect the cruel automaton. It only made the boy weep and wince with each backlash of reaction, reflecting at his own childish knuckles and joints when he failed to make an impact.
"T… Trunks…" Vegeta wheezed. "That's… Your name, right?"
Young Trunks froze in mid-air, quite shocked to see his father not only alive but still speaking after the alarming number of what he saw as gruesome and deadly wounds scattered all over his body. The comparison with a slab of cheese was not too far off. Though using his hi-tech scanning technology and knowledge of Saiyan anatomy via years of studying Vegeta's body and using that sum of information stored in the Big Gete Star allowed Meta-Cooler to tempt his luck and push his sadistic tendencies farther than he ever dreamed of.
"D-Dad…" Trunks collapsed, moving away from Meta-Cooler and bursting into tears.
"You've… Got spirit, kid… Run… Protect… Your… Mother…" Vegeta gave one more flippant smirk as a final tease to Meta-Cooler who clenched his fists to where they squirted out some cherry-colored, gooey bio-material from within them.
"This one doesn't have to restrain itself. The power of the Big Gete Star will let you defy death, Vegeta! No matter how hard you crave it!" Meta-Cooler shrieked out, firing a beam aimed right for Vegeta's chest, where his heart would have been with more than enough power to make it explode into a blubbery mulch and boil from the inside.
Yet, instead of the fleshy noise of devastated organs and Vegeta's final throes, just a slap-like thud reached Meta-Cooler's sensors. Vegeta's vision blurred while he worked his body halfway past overtime to look up and see what had happened and why he was still breathing. Despite the blurry vision, because of how close it was, he identified the back of a teen dressed in a purple Gi and donning a familiar cape. It was as if Son Goku was cosplaying as Piccolo.
"Hey, Bulma, we got your message," Gohan glanced back at Bulma after getting to them just in time to deflect Meta-Cooler's finishing beam. "Sorry I'm a bit late, those robots didn't make it easy."
"You're… Kakarot's brat…?" Vegeta muttered before fainting.
"Wow, that doesn't look too good. I better wrap this up quick and get Vegeta-san into a medical pod," Gohan brushed the back of his spiky black hair before turning to Meta-Cooler and pointing a finger at him. "You! I don't know who you are, but I suggest you pack up and leave. If you don't – I'll knock you flat for hurting Bulma-san, Vegeta-san, and Trunks."
"Geez…" Bulma teared up a bit while staring at Gohan's unwavering back. "It's like I'm staring at your back again, Son-kun."