With young Trunks grabbing his father and slipping his unconscious body over his floating body, Bulma freed of the remaining restraints wrapped around her arms and legs while Gohan and Meta-Cooler stared down at one another. There was no doubt that Meta-Cooler sought to finish off the Saiyan king and his remnants of an Earthling family, but his scan couldn't find a viable opening to attack from. Despite standing perfectly still, Gohan had all potential approaches covered.
"Gohan-kun, I'm glad you're here but… Where's Piccolo?" Bulma asked while caressing her rope-burnt wrists and ankles.
"Piccolo-san and Dende are still recovering after Planet Namek. It's better they sit this one out. Please leave now, Bulma-san, and take Vegeta-san to our ship. Once he recovers, Dende can take care of his wounds. We can only hope that Vegeta-san survives that long," Gohan glanced to the side ever so slightly and Meta-Cooler's arm twitched, but the moment it did–he found Gohan's bemused eyes focused on him again.
"You're a Saiyan too… Curious. The Saiyan brat that Frieza missed? No… You're too young. Unbelievable, so the Saiyans have started a new breeding ground? Infesting the Big Gete Star's universe like parasites…" Meta-Cooler clenched his fist with a metallic and carbon weave rub to his digits.
"That's right," Gohan confirmed it while Bulma let young Trunks flee with his father's body over him. Once her son had vacated the fueling station, Bulma left as well, sparing just a brief look to wish Gohan good luck and survival before fleeing through the dimly lit halls clad in complex cybernetic machinery. "I am Son Gohan, son of Son Goku. The Saiyan from Planet Earth that stopped Frieza on Planet Vegeta."
"Curious…" Meta-Cooler sighed after a brief scan of his opponent made him realize that this wouldn't be a quick clash and that he might miss out on his opportunity to kill Vegeta, Bulma, and Trunks here. Maybe if he could convince the Big Gete Star to employ the rest but… There would be no way that the Big Gete Star would concur on spending this much energy on finishing off a barely breathing corpse and his weakling family. "So, you're both an Earthling and a Saiyan… What an absolutely insufferable combination!" Meta-Cooler shrieked out, erupting with a lively aura that drove the surrounding cybernetics into overdrive.
His opponent was incredibly powerful. Gohan wasn't sure if he could stop him for long. He felt absolutely sure that he couldn't beat Meta-Cooler decisively. Then again, his father constantly got involved in battles far above his paygrade and came out on top merely out of the toughness of his spirit and the integrity of his grit. Gohan was his father's son. There was no reason he shouldn't be able to do the same.
"Mom… Where are you going?" Trunks yelled out when his mother made a sudden turn, dashing through a dark and empty hall as opposed to the trail of smoking and destroyed Cyclopean Guard that Gohan left for them that led to where the young Saiyan docked his ship.
"We're not leaving Gohan-kun to fight that thing alone. There's no way that I can look Son-kun and Chi-Chi in the eyes after getting their son killed. Plus, there's no way Vegeta will survive until Dende recovers. He needs immediate medical attention," Bulma replied while running through the empty hall at half-speed, fully suspecting to face grand resistance from the Cyclopean Guard aboard the Big Gete Star's major vessel hallways.
It didn't take long before mechanical hums and sizzling plasma jolts came their way with resonant explosions over Bulma's head. As predicted, Gohan hadn't confronted the Cyclopean Guard in that sector and, even if he did, the Big Gete Star had both the capacity and the fuel to produce an infinite number of its fearsome mechanical protectors. Trunks let go of Vegeta, pressing his back against the nearby wall as glimmering Ki spheres lit up around his tiny fists.
With a bold battle cry, the young Saiyan halfling charged at the Cyclopean Guard, but one robot transformed their hand into a mechanical hook and shot it toward the young boy. The mechanical grab secured around Trunks' waist and the Cyclopean Guard pulled him in toward him, slamming him into the ground and then shifting its hold on to the boy's ankle, only to turn around and bash him about without a care.
Trunks cried out in pain with whited-out eyes. Vegeta muttered something with his back pressed to the wall, his body bleeding and perforated with scorched holes and his consciousness still drifting midway between life and hellfire. There was no way for Bulma to pass through this way and find a communications station. She bashed her hand against the cybernetic panel on the wall, but it refused to cooperate. Her son's rag doll body could only entertain the cold and calculated Cyclopean Guard for so long…
The arm of a Cyclopean Guard robot lit up with bright light at the other end of its barrel as Bulma once again faced her imminent obliteration. Before the bolt could incinerate her innards from within, however, it stopped midway in the Cyclopean Guard bot's barrel and began spouting up sparks. A meaty clutch emanated from the other end of the hallway as the blast detonated inside of the robot, taking away the robot's arm and almost half of its body.
The hooked arm clutching young Trunks and slamming him about emitted a flock of sparks as well before snapping off of its owner. The arm immediately opened up and released the beaten boy before shooting back and through the face of the very confused robot. It then drove downward, parting the Cyclopean Guard in half like a saw and detonating it at once. The baffled robotic protectors began scurrying around and scanning everywhere, trying to determine where these unnatural attacks came from.
"You're…" Bulma pointed at a tiny Namekian boy at the other end of the hall with eyes emitting deep blue light. "Dende…?"
"I was…" the tiny Super Namekian confirmed before redirecting two barrels of plasma cannons that the Cyclopean Guards planned to use against him to point at each other instead. Dende's telekinetic powers ran rampant and tore through the Cyclopean Guard with little trouble, but sweat poured down the forehead of the Super Namekian, making it difficult to say for how long he could still carry on his effective telekinetic rampage. "Please… Flee…" he muttered.
"Absolutely not! You can heal, right? You must treat Vegeta!" Bulma stepped aside, gesturing at the delirious and dying body of the Saiyan king beside her.
"I… Can't…" Dende hissed, ripping entire limbs off of the Cyclopean Guard, but the pressure of the robotic attackers overwhelming him as they began reducing the range advantage drastically. "I am still tainted by the noxious atmosphere of Planet Namek. Because of this sickness, I can't employ my Namekian magic to heal."
"Then could you please hold these guards off? You can destroy them by damaging their cores behind the armored shells on their chest," Bulma pointed out. This knowledge allowed Dende to employ his telekinesis to rip the cores straight out from within the Cyclopean Guard and twirl in mid-air before he smashed them and let the robots fall lifeless on the floor like scrap. With the demise of the immediate threat of robotic guards, Dende staggered to the wall and collapsed nearby young Trunks.
"I sensed great distress from you. That's how I was able to wake up and find you… Piccolo is still asleep. He fused with all the surviving Namekians except the elder, so his disease is far greater than mine," Dende explained, with heavy panting to his breath. Once his telekinetic rampage had halted, even his eyes stayed firmly shut.
"That's okay, please take care of my son while I save us all," Bulma nodded before rushing to a nearby door and interacting with the control panel. The door must not have had restricted access or the Big Gete Star wasn't used to having potentially nosy passengers onboard as it opened with a pleasant and quiet mechanical hum. Bulma rushed inside and began waging intense warfare on a plate of glass with shining holographic projections of keys. This passed as a keyboard aboard of the Big Gete Star.
"Hello!" Bulma called out to a staticky screen before the image cleared out. The prodigious scientist had to stagger back as it shocked her to see Chayote's face zoomed right up on the image. The stunned Saiyan jumped up, startled from having heard Bulma's voice too, and began looking around Trunks' cybernetic half to determine where the voice came from.
"M-Mother…?" Future Trunks called out with a faint tone, still unsure if they truly heard Bulma's voice coming from his cybernetic half or if he and Chayote just had a collective hallucination after all the sleepless nights fighting off Artificial Humans and the remnants of the augmented Rainbow Ribbon Brigade. "Was that you?"
"Trunks, don't get alarmed, I connected to your cybernetics since my future self likely modified them with Capsule Corps tech. I'm surprised that the image is so clear and that the connection's so great at the whole different part of the universe, frankly…" Bulma clapped her hands at the first sign of success thus far. "There must be some visual glitches. Chayote's face was all over the image at first, but it's okay now…"
"Yes… Visual glitches," Future Trunks must've nodded and turned away as the image that Bulma saw moved correspondingly to the time traveler's head. "Why did you hack into me again?"
"Oh… Right… Trunks, I seem to recall you telling me that Dr. Puri could control all machinery with the virus she introduced into the cybernetic solution she used to convert humanity into Artificial Humans, is that right?" Bulma asked.
"That's right, that's why it's paramount that I find Mecha Frieza and return to my time with his body. Your future version believes she can counteract it by making an antivirus solution from the earliest form of the virus. Mecha Frieza is the patient zero, so to speak," Future Trunks said.
"I see, I see… Well, I'd like to take a sample of the virus that Dr. Puri installed and introduce it into an original system. Basically, I'm pulling a Dr. Puri on a living cybernetic organism trying to devour the universe," Bulma began extracting static code and information samples from Trunks cybernetics.
"Okay… Assuming that makes any sense and I understand what you're talking about, how will you get the virus blueprint without Mecha Frieza's body?" Future Trunks wondered, feeling his mother's past version prodding around his cybernetics from halfway across the universe. He hadn't felt buzzing this funny and gone into such a fritz since the time that Bulma introduced the solution, slowing down and counteracting Dr. Puri's control over them.
"I can use your body…" Bulma replied while hard at work. Engaging with the time traveler while copying future Dr. Puri's highly disturbing yet innovative homework put her under a great deal of stress, especially since she's just been tortured and chased around by a robot death squad. "Your cybernetic parts still contain traces of the virus. They just don't work. I have a feeling that my future self overcame the virus by obtaining the source code of its then-current version and introducing workarounds, creating digital antibodies. Those antibodies have to contain information about how to counteract it, in other words–what sets them into motion. They have a detailed background on a version of the virus. I don't need any specific version. I need a version, any single one. Actually, the further into the future, the better, since the odds of the Big Gete Star countering it reduce by how much further into the future the version of the virus I pull it from is in."
"The… Big Gete Star?" Future Trunks muttered while his cybernetics entered sleep mode and then rebooted. Bulma clapped her hands on the other side.
"Okay, I got what I need. Talk to you when we come back to Earth or after I save your father's ungrateful, miserable life," Bulma smooched on the other end before going offline. "Alright, now, let's see how you like this…"
It didn't take long for Bulma to touch up on the bits of information on Dr. Puri's virus she extracted from Future Trunks' cybernetics and produce a version of the virus. After that, it was only a touch of a button away from being injected and introduced into the Big Gete Star's system. The lights of the Big Gete Star's constantly hard at work systems flickered as the entire cybernetic structure rebooted. Bulma cracked her knuckles and began rolling over the keyboard again. The door behind her opened up with young Trunks staggering in.
"Mom… Those robots are coming back again and Dende says he's tapping out!" Trunks yelled out. "We need to get out of here!"
"On the contrary, we need to turn those robots off!" an evil smirk decorated Bulma's jaw as she smashed her hammering fist onto the keyboard, shutting off the Cyclopean Guard and having them faceplant on the floor. "Hm… I wonder if I can make them self-destruct without damaging my Big Gete Star too much?"
"Your Big Gete Star?" Trunks gasped in shock.
"Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Dr. Puri's virus let me take over the artificial intelligence behind the virus, but the Star is still fighting back. There must be someone with a remote connection that noticed my hack. If I had to guess, the Big Gete Star denigrated part of its systems to this "original" Cooler, so I'm only in control over most of it now. Still, it'll be more than enough…" Bulma tapped her feminine fingers over the glass panel, making the wall behind them open up and offer tangles of cybernetic wiring exactly the same as the ones that restrained them while they were the Star's prisoners.
"Whaa!" Trunks jumped up startled, igniting a Ki blast in his hand, but Bulma quickly stopped him from destroying the emerging cybernetics.
"Whoa… Cut it out, drag your father here, Trunks. We'll hook him up and get him back to shape in no time. Remember what he said? Every time the Big Gete Star drained him or the Meta-Cooler project tortured him, the Star brought him back to perfect health by the time it needed to drain him dry again. That means that the Big Gete Star can regenerate better than even those healing pods Chayote scribbled the blueprints of," Bulma grabbed her son's wrist and wrapped her arms around him to calm him down. This entire nightmare must have been dreadful for him. It was absolutely crushing to Bulma, and she's seen a whole heap of weird things like demons and aliens all throughout her life.
"You mean… You will control the Big Gete Star to heal dad?" Trunks looked up at her with hopeful, teary eyes.
"The Big Gete Star is such a mouthful. Let's call it the Capsule Corps Star now," Bulma winked while rushing out from the communications chamber and dragging Dende and Vegeta inside to get them back to shape in a snap.
Meta-Cooler blinked out, covering the space between himself and Gohan in an instant while driving a metallic elbow into Gohan's gut. Driving his entire body into it, the silver cyborg turned around with a tornado elbow strike and knocked Gohan, flipping backward and away. Blinking right up to his pummeling toy, Meta-Cooler shot his foot up, blasting Gohan to bounce off of the ceiling at once while Meta-Cooler merged with the Big Gete Star's floor again.
His foot emerged from the ceiling, kicking the back of Gohan's neck and sending the battered boy flying down. The cybernetic wall opened up again, shooting Meta-Cooler out as if from a cannon to headbutt the falling Gohan in mid-air before mechanical tendrils wrapped around Meta-Cooler and drew him back into the Big Gete Star.
An escalating staircase emerged from down below, allowing Meta-Cooler to surface while mechanical hands picked the teen Saiyan up and squeezed him until his bones churned with a gruesome grinding noise. The arms moved to the side, holding Gohan suspended by his forearms while Meta-Cooler pummeled, kicked, and stomped the helpless Saiyan and whipped him with his segmented metallic tail. A hefty push-kick rattled Gohan's ribs before Meta-Cooler fired a Death Laser through Gohan's chest.
The mechanical arms released the teen Saiyan, taking him as done in already. Gohan popped back into action, with a gritty gargle and a mouth full of blood, he charged at Meta-Cooler only to be greeted by a follow-up barrage of Death Lasers that drilled into his kneecaps, his biceps and forearms and his chest and his forehead. The last one sent Gohan flipping over and planting on his back, sprawled out and breathless, while Meta-Cooler approached and stomped over his new toy's ribcage.
"You crafty runt, wriggled around in the Big Gete Star's grasp to avoid the Death Laser shooting through your heart… Just the type of stunt this one would expect from a Saiyan who doesn't know when to die," Meta-Cooler smirked with overjoyed sadism as he pointed his finger at the boy's forehead and a purple light lit up at the end of his finger.
Then, the lights went out. Even if they only took a moment to light back up, this was enough to distract the cyborg into stumbling further away from his battered opponent and begin trying to make sense of what had just happened.
"The connection with the Big Gete Star… It's… Severed?" Meta-Cooler muttered to himself. "Authorization Project Meta-Cooler: Initiate Full Status Report!"
Gohan let out a slight chuckle as he rose on one knee, still shaking in pain and bleeding all over the malfunctioning cybernetics. It was his act of defiance. He had met not only his match but his superior in Meta-Cooler. If only he could transform into a Super Saiyan like his father… Did father always go through this sort of pain when he fought to protect everyone? Did he too feel like brushing shoulders with death each time? No… He couldn't have… He couldn't have come this close and then succeeded. The human body wasn't meant to be battered and broken this way. He'd die here. If he stayed and stood his ground, he'd die here for sure…
Meta-Cooler's eyes lit up as a trace of glittery stardust accumulated in front of them. The cyborg's 3D scanning technology locked onto Gohan's chest before he unleashed his lock-on burst of energy and blasted the tormented teen off his knees and down on the floor again.
"This is no laughing matter, mutt. This one can't connect to the Big Gete Star at all, only the original Cooler remains in control. Even worse, something locked out even the original of most of the Big Gete Star's functions. There is nothing funny about that. We will not be stranded, defeated, and alone in space, we will not cower for our lives again, never again!" Meta-Cooler shrieked out gaining a cybernetically altered tone to his voice as he stomped and kicked his downed opponent, sending teeth and blood splattering aside as he showed little care for what grievous damage he inflicted on the broken body of the young Saiyan.
"King Kai's Fist x 10!" Gohan bellowed out while charging out from under the ground and flipping the proverbial table from under Meta-Cooler's foot. The silver cyborg caught Gohan's fist by his wrist, but feeling unable to struggle against the boy's second wind, he twisted Gohan around and flung him aside to win some time.
"What's this power-up now? We have no data on it…" Meta-Cooler wondered out loud while turning to face his opponent, who tapped into his second wind after being thoroughly trounced until now.
"That's because… Mom and dad told me to never use it unless I have to protect my life or that of someone dear to me!" Gohan clenched his fists and took a fighting stance with a vermillion aura still flaring up around him. "They also told me not to crank it up too high, or else I'll break my body but… My dad constantly breaks rules and limits and he is the greatest hero this universe has ever known - a Super Saiyan!"
The left side of Meta-Cooler's face tilted upward as the cyborg closed his radar eyes and crossed his arms, lashing about with his tail. Sensing this moment of downtime, Gohan snuffed out his King Kai's Fist to preserve strength and stamina.
"A Super Saiyan? The greatest hero this universe has ever seen? Let this one tell you about this Super Saiyan, hybrid. The Cold Clan has been at the top of the universe, establishing and keeping up order all throughout. Ruling the universe that was rightfully ours because we were strong enough to take its reins. And then, one day, a Super Saiyan came and beat the original Cooler's brother within an inch of his life, leaving him just a slobbering invalid for the rest of his days. Not content, another Super Saiyan sought Cooler out and then slaughtered his underlings whom he legally employed and who were just doing their jobs and then beat Cooler within an inch of his life with his army of Saiyan Great Apes, leaving Cooler's mangled soon-to-be corpse floating in the inhospitable embrace space and sinking the universe back into the chaos that the Cold Clan sought to lift it from. Does any of that sound like the greatest hero to you?" Meta-Cooler explained with sneering mockery seeped into every word.
"So that's why you get along with the Big Gete Star so well…" Gohan said.
"You're not wrong, boy. Both of us want chaos eliminated from the universe, for it to stay orderly and make perfect sense. For there to be perfect, mathematical precision in its every aspect… Most of all–no unbelievable agents of chaos, no Super Saiyans spoiling its perfection!" Meta-Cooler lost his cool, swiping his arm aside in dismissal of the legendary figure of a Super Saiyan. "It must be said, you're far brighter than most Saiyan bonobos this one has heard from. It's a pity that you deny yourself your own intelligence and see to follow the footprints of imbeciles and invalids. A piece of advice, one prodigal son to another, make your own path in life. Spit at what your blind father tells you to do or be. Well, not that you'll live long enough to heed this one's advice…"
"You're wrong!" Gohan objected with similar dismissal to Meta-Cooler's. "My mom and dad love me and wish for me to follow my dreams and succeed!"
"Could have fooled me…" Meta-Cooler snickered. "Then how come you've ended up here, discarded and alone, your refugee father and xenophile mother nowhere in sight to protect you? Stop kidding yourself, runt, they've discarded you because they're disappointed and they're likely hard at work making a superior replacement right now."
"Don't you dare… TALK ABOUT MY MOM AND DAD LIKE THAT!" Gohan's eyes whited out and his hair spiked up as the young man shot off like a dog broken off its chain. A vermilion blaze surrounded him and drowned out the shade of the barely functional fueling base while the two warriors prepared for another clash.