Vegeta shot out a thrust kick, rocking a charging Meta-Cooler and rattling its body core. The Super Saiyan swept his leg down under him, tripping up a handful more and leaving them swinging weightlessly in mid-air. The cybernetic horde was beginning to pile on him and Vegeta's only solace was that being indoors and inside of a reactor chamber, as massive as it was, provided the 10 000 000 000 Meta-Coolers incredibly limited space for all of them to move at once.
With a golden burst of energy, the Saiyan royalty vanished and appeared before a stationary Meta-Cooler that was observing the battle from up above and smacked his entire leg into the perturbed face of the cyborg clone. Vegeta spun in mid-air, switching between the kicking legs as the wide-angle of his kicking rampage allowed him to swat away the rest of the incoming Meta-Coolers while his exploding Ki aura dealt with the meek Death Lasers homed in on him.
The Saiyan finished his ruthless beat down of the observant Meta-Cooler with a flying dash kick that sent the Meta-Cooler hurling across the reactor chamber like a bullet train. Vegeta extended his hand, overflowing with golden Ki before a shiny cerulean orb formed at the end of his palm and his golden Ki disappeared into it, transforming into azure and cerulean shine while the Super Saiyan's own aura vanished.
"Big Bang Attack!" Vegeta once again chanted, hurling a massive Ki energy ball across while the clumped in billions of Meta-Coolers freaked out at their limited ability to dodge such a wide attack with all of them occupying the same chamber together. A handful of Meta-Coolers whizzed away in a mad dash of Hyper Movement while the poor, discombobulated Meta-Cooler doppelganger disappeared into a heap of stray scrap upon collision with the Big Bang Attack.
"You cocky bastard…" Vegeta wiped his lip with the back of his dirty and bruised knuckle. "I've powered up significantly since being brought back from the brink of death. One of you, a million or even a billion, it won't make any difference for a lump of nuts and bolts you've allowed yourself to become, Cooler!"
And yet, it didn't appear like Meta-Coolers would give Vegeta too much of downtime to recoup after the Ki he had spent on disposing of a single Meta-Cooler as another silver cyborg blitzed in from behind with a power blow to the back of Vegeta's ribs. The Super Saiyan grunted out, struggling to maintain his balance and consciousness while an entire platoon of Meta-Coolers shuffled before him. That proved to be a distraction, however, as the Meta-Cooler behind Vegeta repeated his attack with another jackhammer thud that bent the Super Saiyan's body entirely out of its natural shape and whited his teal eyes out for a blink.
Another Meta-Cooler shot in from the formation like a living bullet, slamming into the Super Saiyan's forehead and knocking him back and stumbling before the attacking Meta-Cooler crossed his arms and beamed a mocking smile Vegeta's way while his doppelgangers rushed ahead like a hungry pack of scavenger beasts to rip into what remained.
"I bet you'd like to transform into your hideous Great Ape form right now, wouldn't you? Become that Golden Great Ape nonsense that disposed of the original Cooler before, right? Has it dawned on you, I wonder, that your own precious family is in this very majestic cosmic construction you see around you? Surely they couldn't handle it if you destroyed it and left them floating in the middle of space, without a way of returning to their home planet. Or maybe they could? Are you willing to take that gamble? One thing's for certain, Earthling women floating in inhospitable space, gasping for a breath of air, are very easy targets for a stray shot, don't you think?" Meta-Cooler laughed out while a pack of his copies put a thorough beat down on Vegeta.
Lined-up all together and slowly rotating around, the Meta-Coolers threw coordinated yet entirely skill-less flurries of fists, kicks, stomps, tail whips, and aerial flips with lashing heel stomps. In their coordinated precision, the automated tyrant warriors worked like a real machine. Precise and beautiful in some way, yet brutal and unrelenting in another. Somewhere, to some observers, the two concepts may have touched and rubbed the edges of their content to some extent.
The cackling Meta-Cooler pointed his index toward the struggling Super Saiyan while hundreds of thousands of Meta-Coolers began rushing toward him like a living downpour of cyborgs, soaring across and accelerating with Hyper Movement before mercilessly slamming their entire bodies into the Saiyan king with no worry about what damage they'd inflict upon their own bodies, for when they collapsed their bodies quickly evolved a stronger, thicker and more pronounced spine, more capable of withstanding similar impacts in the future.
The force of the collision had been so intense that each one caused a minor explosion from the detonating Ki that the silver cyborgs used from a reactor within them to form their aura and generate the Ki attacks they employed in battle. The sum of the blasts made for a barrage of explosions that littered the already damaged and ransacked reactor room. Meanwhile, a younger Saiyan observed from down below, trembling and panting heavily.
"Vegeta-san…" Gohan whimpered to himself as he clenched his fists, trying to call forth some specks of power from within him but failing to do so. Should he just turn tail and run? Maybe if he found Bulma, she could heal him like she healed Vegeta by using the Big Gete Star's technology, and then he could rejoin the battle but… Should he even rejoin it? Even fully recovered and with his full power back, can he truly oppose 10 000 000 000 Meta-Coolers? Could any force in the universe?
The visage of the silver cyborg appeared before Gohan with an upward curve to his lips and eyes, just as cruel as Frieza's. "Shaking in terror, runt? That's fine. This one is aware that the full splendor of Project Meta-Cooler can be stunning," the cyborg mocked the teen and his hesitation to either join the battle or make any other type of decision.
With an unintelligible battle cry, Gohan charged at the Meta-Cooler with all the force he could muster up. The youth exploded with a brilliant, transparent Ki all around him as Gohan delivered a soaring uppercut and tested the extension of Meta-Cooler's neck, popping off more than a few metallic cords that soon tied back together and allowed for new, armored plating to surround this Meta-Cooler's neck to prevent beheading in the future.
Yellow energy gleamed and sparkled, surrounding the teenager's fists as he sought to continue his offensive against the unrelenting cybernetic threat, Meta-Cooler dodged by diving out of the way but Gohan didn't squander his chance, instead, he found another nearby cyborg to crash and swing at. With each smashing blow, the Ki around Gohan's fists burst with a mighty explosion that left Gohan's own fists with bruises, and the resonance from the aftershock could have been felt in Gohan's own elbows and shoulders afterward.
He was too spent to keep going for long, even his own attacks taxed him. The Meta-Cooler Gohan had just dodged, just lifted his hand up, pointing upward, and generated a blazing energy blast, similar to a smaller, contained version of the Supernova attack he used freely outside. Compressing the blast even further, the Meta-Cooler with neck plating fired straight into Gohan's back. The teen Saiyan cried out in pain and let the force of the blast toss him around like a rag doll since he lacked any meaningful amount of strength to resist its tide.
Before Gohan could fall into the shaft and plummet for what might have been eternity before the inevitable splat in the garbage dump, Meta-Cooler replicant dashed in from the side with Hyper Movement and delivered a knee strike to the young Saiyan's jaw, tossing his head back where he could grab an entire handful of the boy's hair and drive his fist with hydraulic propulsion behind the elbow joint straight into the boy's face, leaving Gohan just an unresisting sack of a bloody mess.
"Father…" Gohan could hear his own voice inside his head while everything around him just black. A deafening shriek couldn't shut it until Gohan spoke with his focused thoughts, which put the screaming down to a halt. "How do you keep fighting? How do you just keep going? I can't…"
"Hmm? Are you dying already?" Meta-Cooler wondered, scanning the helpless teen that he clutched in his iron grip while the rest worked on Vegeta, who still seemed like he had plenty of stamina and fighting spirit to chip away at. "After destroying one of us, after being so utterly persistent and annoying and helping that wretched Earthling woman and her spawn escape from my grasp, you have the gall to seek a quick death at my hands? I should have the Big Gete Star heal you again and again so that I could keep on breaking you over and over again because no matter how many times you Saiyans heal up and grow stronger, you cannot overcome the perfect precision and flawless craftsmanship of machinery. Even now, while you bleed in my grasp, the Core is producing even more Meta-Coolers that'll be ready for deployment if you miraculously dispatch of the 10 000 000 000 before you. Unlike you, we are infinite, as is our strength. Without the binding of the Big Gete Star's will, we can rule the universe instead of working as one. What do you think? One emperor is just so inefficient and limited. This one thinks that 10 000 000 000 emperors could manage this universe far better and keep its rebellious rabble in check with a literal iron fist."
"Piccolo-san… I'm done for…" Gohan thought to himself as he couldn't even lift his arms up to try and protect himself from any potential follow-up attacks that Meta-Cooler might have gone for. "I'm not like my father. I can't just keep fighting and not think about anything but fighting. I… Don't even think I want to be like my father. Mom says I'm pretty smart and that I should be a scholar, but… I don't want that either. I like martial arts but I don't like this violence at all."
"Huh? You're just breathing out blood bubbles and choking up on yourself at this point. Fine, just because of the little spark of connection you had with the other Meta-Cooler earlier, one that remains in our records, this one will put you out of your misery before you can drown in your own blood," Meta-Cooler sighed before winding up for a finishing blow. A deafening thud followed. A vertical, ring-shaped shock wave spread out from the point of connection between Meta-Cooler's fist and Gohan's flesh.
"Huh?" Meta-Cooler's stare widened as numbers began counting up on his radar. His fist firmly stopped at an immovable wall of Gohan's palm and not his face where the cyborg was aiming. A washing aura of Ki ignited around Gohan as the teen no longer seemed to be just hanging in Meta-Cooler's hand, but floating on his own. Gohan's hair began washing upward and spiking up from the sudden surge of energy surging through his body.
Vegeta, who was pummeling and fighting back at the ceaseless hordes of Meta-Coolers, looked down through a trail of blood washing down his body from a crack in his forehead. He finished up his beat down with a downward elbow slam and sent a Meta-Cooler crashing with its head halfway split into two and sizzling with sparks before noticing Gohan's surge of power.
"Well, well… I guess Kakarot's runt finally found what keeps him going," Vegeta tsked, feeling a tad annoyed more than excited that his own legendary power began seeming less and less special to him as the Saiyan king when even a teenager could pull it off now.
Gohan's swollen eyes opened up with a teal shine in them. His face was still mashed with blood-red but some of the damage appeared to fix all by itself while Gohan's Ki became golden. Meta-Cooler's eyes bulged out as it struggled to believe the readings they were getting, but Gohan's tight grip didn't let go of the fist.
"I tried fighting you the way my father would have…" Gohan said with a light lisp, as he still lacked more than a few teeth. Despite the pain and weariness, his voice sounded calm. His golden aura seeped back into his body and even his hair settled back down while his eyes remained shiny with an unnatural shade of teal. "But I am not my father and I don't really like his approach to fighting, either. I want to fight differently. I love martial arts just like my father, but I'm also quite inquisitive like my mother taught me to be. That's why I want to understand different martial arts and learn more about how people I meet fight around the universe. I still want to be a scholar. A scholar of martial arts."
"Wh… What are you… On about!? Will someone give me a hand here!?" Meta-Cooler shrieked out and an entire blizzard of rushing Meta-Cooler's darkened the artificial light over the head. That was before all the golden aura that seeped into Gohan before exploded at once, coloring his hair bright gold as the blinding light and blunt force shock wave spreading out from the newly born Super Saiyan sent the Meta-Coolers flying back.
"Wh… Why does this keep happening to us?" Meta-Cooler hissed out before putting his index and middle fingers together and slicing at thin air, forming a violet crescent slash that sliced through his own doppelganger and sent him crashing separated in half down the shaft while the steel wires scurried to reconnect and regenerate the cyborg's body. The rest of the Meta-Coolers noted a significant lack of teenager's split body halves plummeting, leading the way.
"Where'd the runt go?" another Meta-Cooler grumbled while all the tin soldiers began doing a wide scan of the area. Their eyes whited out altogether when they noticed a busted opening at the top of the cylindrical tube in the center.
"N-No way! That runt went right for the original Cooler! He's headed straight for the core!" Meta-Cooler turned to the others.
"If he destroys the original, that will not do much to us. We can always make the brat pay for that later," another Meta-Cooler waved his hand at it.
"But that Earthling woman!" the third Meta-Cooler pointed out while a swarm of silver-colored cyborgs rushed through the opening after the young Super Saiyan. "Without the Core, there'll be nothing standing in her way of taking full control over the Big Gete Star!"
"B-But WE'RE part of the Big Gete Star!" the first Meta-Cooler leaned back with a petrified expression.
"Exactly!" the third Meta-Cooler concluded before redirecting billions of Meta-Coolers to rush after young Gohan in order to prevent him from inflicting harm upon the Big Gete Star.
After a quick dash past a tunneling service shaft, Gohan emerged in a dome-shaped, massive room with electrical wires extending all the way down the metallic walls with cybernetic patterns on them down toward the center where a bulbous core of metal and flesh pounded like a heart. Bits and pieces of Cooler's original body, all that survived Vegeta's attack that disposed of most of the Super Cooler's body, laid attached to a pulsing, metal heart. A beady, red-eye focused on the lone light of the Super Saiyan emerging from the service shaft and meeting him face-to-face.
"You're more interesting than I thought," Cooler's voice rumbled through the room, spread all across it through means of cybernetic augmentation of the booming tone. "Not only have your parents discarded you, just like my father severed his ties with me, but you've also got a sly and devious vein to you, not unlike me, as well. Unlike that oaf Vegeta, you're heading straight for the jugular, aren't you, boy? I'm a little proud of you, to be honest… But…"
Just as the Cooler Core stopped stalling for time, the swarms upon swarms of Meta-Coolers began emerging from service shafts feeding into the core room from all around the Big Gete Star. Without saying a word, Super Saiyan Gohan kicked off of a ring-shaped golden pulse in mid-air and arrowed in a straight line right at the Cooler Core.
The metallic buzzards began pestering Gohan from all around him, the Super Saiyan calmed his breathing and stopped his head-first rush, spinning around while deflecting a barrage of Death Lasers before driving his uppercut into the gut of a nearby Meta-Cooler and punching clean through him, spitting up a spout of black oil that ignited from the sparks his electronics flicked out and made the cyborg explode.
Turning around a full 180, Gohan shot his foot up and kicked the head of another Meta-Cooler trying to stop him before turning around and driving his foot into the metallic ribcage of yet another Meta-Cooler that flew back and slammed into the wall, severing more than a few neuron-like strands connecting the Big Gete Star to the Cooler Core. Finding yet another Meta-Cooler within his arm's reach, the teen Super Saiyan beat up on his head before sending the mangled mess down with a double ax handle slam.
"You will not!" A Meta-Cooler dashed up and collided with Gohan before the two engaged into a two-sided beat down. A hit struggle between the cyborg and the Super Saiyan teenager that couldn't be contained in any singular section of the Big Gete Star and began transitioning to all over the core chamber with resonant thuds and shock waves. The static electricity they were producing began shorting out the signals between the neuron strands in some sections and the Cooler Core in the center.
"We won't let you!" the Meta-Cooler proclaimed when pain lit up in Gohan's ribs, forcing the Super Saiyan to flinch at which point Meta-Cooler kicked him aside before lighting up with rampant Ki aura all over his body and dashing up to his opponent for a follow-up punt. Another Meta-Cooler blitzed in from the side, stopping just in front of the teenager's face with an open palm. A devastating Kiai blast sent the Super Saiyan crashing down like a golden comet before the golden light got snuffed out and Meta-Coolers began piling on top of the fallen Super Saiyan by the millions.
Super Saiyan Gohan cried out in pain when one of the Meta-Coolers closer to his body formed a Ki blade around his arm that dug under Gohan's rib cage and forced the youth to transform back. A resonant blast kicked the non-existent door down from down below as the Cooler Core quickly turned around to see what had unraveled the entire floor structure of the core chamber.
Super Saiyan Vegeta hovered in from the hole, with a limp body of a Meta-Cooler hanging over his shoulder and an arm of another still clutched in his hand. The Super Saiyan king quickly rid himself of the detached hand that he held on to out of sheer instinct and battle madness.
"Cooler, I've run out of your little toy soldiers to smash. Don't tell me you directed all of them at some little nobody runt boy and left me, the king of Saiyans unattended," Vegeta made a mocking grimace while staring the terrified Cooler Core right in the eye. While the odds were overwhelmingly in his favor, Cooler Core still looked like he would much rather rip himself off of the mechanical heart that sustained his life and crawled somewhere else, anywhere where his attempted murderer wasn't.
"Stop him, stop Vegeta!" Cooler Core instructed his drones, all of whom promptly rose from the panting and sprawled out, battered and broken body of Gohan and charged at the Super Saiyan brawler right in front of them. A blinding wall of silver cyborgs stood before Vegeta and the Cooler Core.
The Super Saiyan drew his hands to the side while a golden trail with rustling tendrils of energy formed around his body. The golden energy aura turned bright white from the immense amount of energy that the Super Saiyan's body channeled. Vegeta threw his arms out in front of him. "Final Burst Cannon!" Vegeta shouted out before emitting a vertical ring-like pulse from his hands and then firing a super-charged Galick Gun through it right toward the living wall of Meta-Coolers.
The blast collided with the wall, pushing at them and reducing the ones that contacted it to spare and scattered metallic parts before new Meta-Coolers took the place of the scrapped ones to struggle against the hefty Ki attack Vegeta tried to destroy the Cooler Core with.
"Gohan! Wake up! Now… If you've still got the strength to do it, do it now!" Piccolo's voice made Gohan's eyes shoot wide open before he raised his hand up. "Ka!" he chanted out. "Me!" he breathed out. "Ha!" he breathed in again, feeling the burn in his ribs where the Meta-Cooler had stabbed him in. "Me!" he cried out, both in pain and tension from the energy that he had to dig to the very bottom of the barrel to find. He needed just a tiny bit of strength more. Cooler was just a few strands of flesh attached to a beating metal heart. He just needed it to connect.
"No! What are you doing, stop him!" Cooler Core shrieked out in terror upon seeing a golden aura rustling around Gohan's lying body, signaling the re-emergence of the Super Saiyan transformation. A hidden passageway opened up on the side wall, revealing an extending metallic bridge on which a lone Namekian stood with his eyes gleaming cerulean and his palms open.
"I… I c… Can't move!" A Meta-Cooler drone proclaimed, followed by matching declarations from the rest of the fold as Dende's telekinetic grip locked the army of Meta-Cooler's in place.
"Thank you, Dende…" Gohan chuckled out through tremendous burn in his ribs before scrabbling back on one knee and struggling to raise his hand up and aim it at the Cooler Core.
"Ha! You don't have any strength left to do anything, do you? That's the drawback of a flesh and blood body for you. It's only fitting that the lackluster design of your body would prove to be your undoing. Now it's only a matter of time before your Namekian friend loses concentration and Vegeta runs out of juice to keep his blast going and my Meta-Coolers rip all of you apart limb from limb!" Cooler Core mocked Gohan by laughing in his face.
"HA!" Gohan cried out, releasing his charged-up Kamehameha into the floor and propelling himself upward while he transformed into a Super Saiyan again and focused all of his remaining Ki to form around his body since he lacked the strength to put his arm up. Cooler Core cried out in terror before Gohan's airborne body blasted right into him, submerging the remains in Gohan's lustering golden aura and incinerating every bit of flesh on the core while the metal heart flopped on the ground, separated from the neuron strands that connected it to the walls.
The ground was coming in way too close for Gohan as his Super Saiyan form vanished immediately after his tackle with the Cooler Core. Dende's gentle telekinetic grip kept the young Saiyan from crashing down while guiding him closer to the Namekian on the emerging bridge. Vegeta's Final Burst Cannon ran out of energy. The king of Saiyans panted with his arms hanging heavy by his sides, but the Meta-Coolers just hovered in mid-air, completely helpless.
Then, one by one, they began detonating with exploding pops that were just strong enough to send their limbs and contents scattering across the core chamber.
"Sorry, guys…" Bulma's voice came from the speakers. "I know those guys could've been useful, but I just really, really hate those guys. To the scrapyard they go! This artificial star, though, this will be useful…"
Gohan formed a tiny smirk while panting heavily, feeling like he couldn't move a muscle by Dende's side. The young Namekian aimed his hands over Gohan to make him hover into the air before heading back to the hallway leading up to the control room where Bulma worked from. Dende's soul was still too corrupted by the rot he had absorbed alongside the elder he fused with so he couldn't heal his friend himself. Bulma would make a quick work out of it though, with the Capsule Corps Star's technology.
The dread of the Meta-Cooler was finally over with.