Fate of The Universe! Showdown Against a True Evil!
"W-what," Xibito said flatly in deadpan confusion. "Wait… where are they?" She hoped that Goku had been able to use Instant Transmission before Boo had destroyed the Earth but where were they going? "Oh n–" Just as the idea was appearing inside her mind; Goku, Vegeta, and the other four mortals they'd dragged with them appeared suddenly and went flying, hitting and rolling across the ground, before they all came to a stop.
"Oww," Goku hissed as she sat up and cracked her neck. "So, momentum's still a thing when I use IT. Didn't know that." Lapis looked around at this alien, ethereal, higher planet and raised one eyebrow.
"Where in the fuck are we?"
"My house, that's where in the fuck you are," Xibito told him bluntly as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Goku, why did you come here?!"
"Well, where else was I gonna go?" she asked as she got to her feet and helped Hercule and Dende to their feet, since Vegeta and Lapis were already on their feet. "I can't go to New Namek, they've already lost one planet, and I can't go to Yardrat because those guys didn't do anything."
Vegeta rolled his eyes at this discussion and sneered. "I have a better question, what in the Hells are they doing here?!" he jabbed a finger at Hercule and Dende, who were trying to take in the sight of the world around them, although Dende had an easier time getting acclimated to it, as he was a divine being… even though there really wasn't much to be divine of anymore. "Instead of our children, you grabbed these idiots!"
"Well, I only have two hands!" Goku exclaimed defensively. "I was already grabbing you and Lapis and Lapis grabbed them! Why didn't you grab somebody?"
"I hate to say this," Dende added, "But I have to agree with Vegeta. You really should have just let the rest of us die and saved your family."
"But what about the Dragon Balls?" Goku asked.
"What Dragon Balls? The entire Earth is gone, I'm pretty sure the Dragon Balls are disintegrated."
"Wait, Dragon Balls?" Pracya interrupted. "What the heck does your planet's destruction have to do with Zalama?" As he asked this, Xibito began to tiptoe discreetly backward and away from her elder.
"Za-who-whatnow?" Goku asked in confusion. Vegeta, similarly bewildered but not wanting to show it, raised an eyebrow.
"The Dragon God!" Pracya exclaimed, as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe. "The Galaxy-spanning beast of the Dragon Balls who can bend the very fabric of reality to his whims and bring anything into existence! Whose power trumps Zenou himself! Who has always been and shall always be! That Zalama!"
"Nnnnope," Goku replied bluntly while Vegeta, Hercule, and Lapis shook their heads. "Doesn't sound like our dragon. Shenron's pretty big but he isn't that big."
"Porunga could wear Shenron like a scarf," Dende added, "And even he isn't galaxies big." By his expression, it was clear that Pracya had no idea who they were talking about, and slowly turned his withering gaze back toward Xibito.
"Wh-what are you looking at me for?" She asked, trying and failing miserably to sound innocent. "I-I mean it's not what you… I-I didn't…" He kept looking at her and, soon enough, she cracked. "I just thought that there was a better way to harness the energy of the Dragon Balls to be used as a net positive without destroying seven planets every time someone wanted to wish on them so I asked Shengda and hewasokaywithit and so I took a sliver of a Dragon Ball and shaped it into seven and–" at this point, everyone was gawking at the fact that Xībito had not yet taken a single breath– "Then I went to NamekandIusedtheDragonBallstocatchPorungafromtheDragonRealmandtetherhisspirittotheballs and then maybe a couple million years later I showed the Namekians how I did it andthenoneofthemwenttoEarthandmadeDragonBallsthere,okay?!" Finally done with her explanation, Xibito gasped and gulped down air, panting both from the exertion of her run-on sentence and the stress of Pracya still glaring at her.
"I don't like it!" he told her sharply. "The Dragon Balls were meant to be used in only the most dire of situations! When the fate of whole star systems or the very universe is at stake! Not for trivial flights of mortal fancy and the concerns of a single world! I've got half a mind to go to this 'Namek' and this 'Earth' and strip the magic away from all their balls permanently!"
"But we need the Dragon Balls!" Goku insisted. "We need them to wish back the Earth and everyone Majin Boo killed!"
"Then you should've tried harder to make sure he didn't kill them in the first place!" Pracya told them with a huff, crossing his arms and turning up his nose… right until Lapis stomped up to him and grabbed two fistfuls of the front of his shirt, ripping him off the ground and shaking him.
"Listen, you wrinkly little purple bastard! If we don't have the Dragon Balls, I can't get my family back! So if you even think about–"
Goku moved in quickly before things could get any worse, putting an arm between Pracya and Lapis and pushing the Cyborg away with her other hand holding the back of Pracya's shirt and letting him gently back to his feet. "Lapis, calm down!" she told him. "You getting angry isn't gonna fix this!" Then she turned her attention back to Pracya and used her best attempt at a sly expression, dropping her voice mostly so that Vegeta might not hear them. "Hey, if we can't wish Earth back, you can't get a date with that hot blue-haired babe we showed ya," she reminded him, which immediately got Pracya's attention. "And, if you let us keep using the Dragon Balls, I'll get her to take some naughty pictures for ya, too!" The twin jets of iridescent white blood that shot out of Pracya's nose launched him straight into the sky, which Goku took as a good sign.
What was not a good sign was the iron grip Goku suddenly felt on her shoulder. Clearly, Vegeta had heard her. "Oh, Kakarot," he growled, "that 'blue-haired babe' wouldn't happen to be my wife, would it?!" he spun her around and gripped her by the throat with both hands as he started to throttle her. "What the hell is wrong with you?! Why don't you prostitute your own wife?! Or yourself?!"
"Bulma's hotter than us!" Goku gasped out before turning Super Saiyan to break Vegeta's grip around her throat. "She's got a bigger chest and butt, ya know? Because she's…" she trailed off, not knowing a complimentary way to point out that, since Goku and Suno were more physically fit and trained, they didn't have enough fat on their bodies to have big boobs or butts. "She's just prettier than us! It's a compliment!" Vegeta sneered but, at least for the moment, didn't seem to have the urge to strangle her anymore.
"Well, look, we're alive," Hercule finally said to get everyone back on track, "And I don't know a whole lot about this sorta thing but I'm guessin' Boo is, too. So, do you guys have a plan?"
"What about Fusion?" Pracya offered as he floated back to the ground like an open umbrella. "I mean, whatever he is, he's definitely weaker than the Boo Vegetto fought. He should be able to destroy him no prob–"
"No," Vegeta and Goku said in unison, although Vegeta's declaration was significantly more acerbic than Goku's.
"What?" Xībito demanded hotly. "Why not?!"
"Some god you are," Vegeta scoffed as he folded his arms across his chest. "You claim to have created us yet you understand nothing about Saiyans. Kakarot and I agreed to fuse only because that Majin Boo was stronger than either of us and we hadn't the time to gain the strength to defeat him on our own. We were fighting for the survival of our planet so all else was put aside. But now it's different." Vegeta's level gazed morphed into a glare as his voice dropped into little more than a growl at his next words. "We've failed. Earth is gone. But the good news is that this Majin Boo is weaker than all the others." He raised one hand and clenched it into a tight fist as he spoke, his voice rising to a crescendo with his spirit. "Kakarot and I can defeat him without any of your tricks. We will grind him under our heel and avenge our home, our people! Because that is the pride of the Saiyan race!"
Goku could only give a proud smile at Vegeta and a thumbs up as her smile widened into a toothy grin. Maybe she wouldn't have been quite as rude about it but, for once, she and Vegeta were on the same page. Plus, it was nice to hear Vegeta call Earth his home.
"...Fine," Xībito muttered with resignation. "You're all idiots. Do whatever you want, I'm going to search Otherworld for Gohan's soul and give him a body. He's the only one who ever actually listened to me." Before she could go, Dende grabbed onto her sleeve.
"Hold on, can you drop me off on New Namek?" he asked. "I might have an idea." Xibito shrugged and, the next instant, both of them were gone.
"Soooo," Lapis began as he turned back to Goku and Vegeta while still struggling to wrap his brain around the reality he found himself in, "How are you gonna decide who goes first?" Vegeta and Goku locked eyes and he gave her a resolute glare while she fired back a cocky smirk.
"Ro! Sham! Bo!"
Pracya, Hercule, and Lapis gawked in disbelief before the Elder God turned to the two remaining mortals. "I should probably get outta here, too. You fellas want a lift?"
Lapis shook his head and balled his fists. "I know I'm punching way above my weight," he admitted, "But I ran from this fight once. Now everything I was trying to protect is dead. I'm not running again."
"Majin Boo was my friend," Hercule added. "Just like I told that little green guy, I'm seein' this through to the end." And in the face of such bravery from mortal creatures, who were such small and fragile things even to a Kaioushin of Pracya's advanced age, how could he justify running away? So he decided that he, too, would stay.
OoOoOoO
It took no time at all for him to reconstruct himself. For several seconds, he stared out into infinity, out among all the stars that filled the abyss with pinpricks of light. He could feel them, could feel the lives and the souls and all their energy. It… hurt him, like a constant pounding in his head. It reminded him of the blue things that had hurt him before, that had cut him down and turned him into this. He hated it. He hated the light, the noise, the hum of life. It churned his insides and made him rage.
He wanted it to stop. He wanted all of it to just stop. He wanted to go back to when it was quiet and there was only him. He'd have to make them all stop. He'd have to make it all die. Every star, every light, every soul. Then, finally, he could sleep again.
Majin Boo opened his mouth to scream, yellow teeth glinting in the harsh golden light of the sun, blue tongue lolling out, flecks of rabid spittle flinging from his teeth and freezing in the abyss. He pounded his chest noiselessly into the void and then he flew, as fast as he could. He narrowed his body into a long needle, microns thick, launching himself like a javelin into the void. He went through stars, he went through planets, popping them, feeling some satisfaction as the lights went out. He went faster and faster until the stars blurred and everything turned into a thousand colors and–
OoOoOoO
"Scissors beats paper!" Goku crowed as she threw up a peace sign in triumph. "I finally beat Vegeta!" Vegeta stared at his flat hand in disgust as if his own appendage had just betrayed him before he huffed and kicked a clump of dirt over the horizon.
"Wanna play to see who goes second?" Lapis offered. Vegeta turned his glare on him and the cyborg held up his hands defensively. "Okay, never mind," he muttered quickly as he took a few steps back from the tense and irritable king. Before anyone could say anything else, however, the sky in front of them seemed to warp and stretch on a point, like a balloon being poked with a needle from the inside. The needle finally ripped through and a hole was torn in the sky. Pracya threw up his hands and whipped up a quick spell to seal the hole as Majin Boo reconstituted in front of them, glaring down at them as he hovered in the air.
"Alright, Kakarot," Vegeta said casually as he jerked his head up toward Boo. "Have at it." Goku grinned and cracked her knuckles and her neck, hopping on the balls of her feet before going quickly into her fighting stance.
"What's wrong?" she called up to Boo. "Are you up there because you're short? Don't feel bad, I've fought lots of short guys!" Vegeta grit his teeth silently as he and Lapis retreated, Lapis carrying Hercule with him. With a roar of power, Goku ascended straight to Super Saiyan 3 before sliding into her guard. While this Boo was easily the weakest by far, she knew that going anything less than all-out would be suicide. Intrigued by the power before him, Boo let out a primal cry of his own and was quickly enveloped by a malevolent black aura crackling with pink lightning. Goku grimaced as the energy washed over her but strengthened her resolve as Boo beat his chest before turning his attention down to her. The two of them stared each other down, the whole universe holding its breath as the final battle was about to begin.
Then all Hell broke loose.
Goku took off from the ground like a rocket, crossing the thirty meters that separated them in less than an instant, and lashed out with a right hook that held the power to level a mountain. To her dismay, Boo not only managed to stretch his neck out to dodge the blow but continued to stretch it out as it curled around her arm like a snake. With a flick of his body, Boo made to hurl Goku into the ground but Goku quickly expelled ki from her entire arm, the barrier atomizing Boo's head and neck.
Goku twirled through the air as she was sent flying and managed to get her feet in position in time to land in a three-point stance on one of the many pillars of earth that dotted the landscape. As the pillar exploded from the force of the impact, Goku threw out a massive ki blast in Boo's direction on pure instinct and was pleased to see his lower body and one of his arms vanish in the blast, his head having already reformed.
Pressing the attack, Goku using Instant Transmission to get behind him but was caught in the side by a flying kick from Boo's legs that had reformed elsewhere. The rest of Boo's body appeared above her, his remaining arm pulled back and inflated to an almost comical degree. Goku barely had enough time to bring her arms up in a crossguard before the blow landed and she was launched into the planet's crust. Goku had just enough time to marvel at the fact that the Kaioushin's planet was a lot tougher than Earth before having to quickly erect a barrier as the area around her exploded in a barrage of ki blasts.
In the skies above, Boo stopped his barrage and raised his arms above his head, cackling madly as a sphere of dark pink energy tinged with black and red sprang into existence. When it was about five meters across, he was made to throw it but was stopped when Goku appeared above it and drove a spinning kick into its top. Surprised by the sudden reversal, Boo barely had enough time to even scream as his own attack came rushing down at him and enveloped him completely.
Goku let out a shaky breath and grimaced as she watched the attack continue on and sink into the planet. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment before the ground in what was easily a twenty kilometer radius suddenly imploded as if a great entity had punched it. Her marveling was cut off as she watched Boo start to reform as a writhing pink ball before her. She brought her hands to her side and started to charge up an attack before quickly spinning and kicking the other writhing pink ball away. She quickly thrust out both of her arms toward her targets and, with a cry of "Kamehameha!", blew them away with twin beams of blue ki.
This impressive display of skill, speed, and power did nothing to stop one of Boo's arms as it came from below to collide with Goku's jaw in a powerful uppercut that launched her into the stratosphere.
Thankfully, Goku had enough wherewithal and time to capture some of the air in her aura before she was launched too high. She backflipped to dispel her momentum before lashing out with a vertical slice of her hand, the resulting kiai cleanly bisecting the fully reformed Majin Boo but doing nothing to slow him down as he rammed into her stomach with the force of a comet. Goku coughed up spittle as Boo carried them into and through one of the planet's many moons. Once on the other side, Boo stopped his charge but wrapped his head tentacle around Goku's waist, her momentum making it stretch out until it was little more than a thread. With a yell that could be felt even through the vacuum of space, Boo swung his entire body and slammed Goku into the moon, dragging her along its surface to carve out a trench deep enough to expose its core before sending her hurtling toward one of the other moons.
Goku crashed painfully into the second moon but quickly pushed off from the ground in a handspring as Boo crossed several light-seconds in an instant to try and drive his feet into her spine. She slid across the ground as she quickly adapted to different gravity before launching herself toward the pink monstrosity and catching him across the jaw with a left cross. Boo was violently ripped from where he had been buried in the ground but managed to snake one of his feet around to catch Goku in the back of her head and pull her with him. Rolling with it, Goku launched into flight and tried to catch him with a right jab but Boo twisted his body out of the way before launching his counterattack.
On and on they went, each one launching attacks at speeds that left the other with less than a fraction of an instant to react to, as they spiraled around the moon at ever increasing speeds. When the moon was covered in a solid sheet of gold and pink, Goku growled in frustration before deciding to take a page from Freeza's playbook and launched a ki blast at the moon's core. The moon exploded instantly, Boo taking the brunt of the explosion as Goku had disengaged and erected a barrier. She watched Boo hurtle through space back toward the planet for a moment before giving chase, quickly catching up and ramming both fists into his stomach. The pair caught fire as the reentered the atmosphere at several times the speed of light and Goku pulled away at the last possible instant before Boo hit the ground with enough force to rival an exploding star.
As the fight raged on, Vegeta could only stare in silent awe. This was a monster far beyond his power and it was clear that Kakarot was the only one who could put him down. As he watched the two fight, he came to the realization that had eluded him ever since his first fight with her all of those years ago and that he'd demanded an answer to at her very grave: Why Kakarot was stronger than him. He'd tried to deny it at first. After all, as Kakarot had said, she had only managed to defeat him with her friends' interference. But the fact that a low-class warrior on a backwater, weak planet had even challenged him should have been impossible. The next time they met, she had not only caught up to him, but surpassed him. Him, King Vegeta, fourth of his name, greatest and proudest of all Saiyans ever born.
It was his pride, Vegeta realized, that had been strangling him, holding him back and weighing him down. Not the family he loved— 'Yes, Vegeta, you love them, admit it,' he thought to himself— that he'd thought had made him soft and weak nor his growing fondness for the planet he'd come to call home or the life he had built but he, himself, had been the thing standing in his own way all this time.
'It's as you said, Kakarot,' he thought to himself, 'I took my strength for granted. I tried to brute-force fate to steer back in my direction as if I and I alone could be strong and that anything else was an aberration.' But Kakarot had never assumed anything. She had simply pushed herself, looking for the next challenge, the next opponent. When none existed, she made an opponent of herself and of her own limits. Fighting for the sake of the fight. For the sheer thrill of it. 'In a way,' he finally forced himself to admit, 'she's more a true Saiyan than I am.' He'd been disgusted by her once. That a creature with such a soft heart could be the first being in a thousand years to take the power that had belonged in myth and legend. That someone who would spare their enemies would be the greatest of them. But at last, he could accept it. 'Make our ancestors proud, Kakarot,' Vegeta thought. 'Claim our victory.'
OoOoOoO
Xibito's plan had hit a bit of a snag, she quickly realized. Since Gohan didn't have a body yet, she would only be able to find his soul which was nothing more than a puffy white cloud. Which shouldn't have been a problem, or so she had assumed, because his ki was so much larger than everyone else on Earth that she should have been able to find him in an instant.
The snag was the fact that, apparently, in the last several seconds, Majin Boo hadn't just destroyed the Earth. With hundreds of billions of souls to sort through, the collective ki was actually large enough to mask Gohan's, making the whole process the cosmi-spiritual equivalent of the needle in the haystack.
"Son Gohan?" Xibito asked frantically, jabbing one hand down into the puffy clouds as she flew over them, only to draw up a blue-skinned, pink-lipped creature who stared at her in confusion before she shoved it back down among the other clouds. "Nope. Son Gohan?" she hoped as she grabbed another cloud, pulling out a dark-skinned, bearded man with long hair and pronounced ridges on his forehead. He growled at her before she shoved him away. "Nope!" she let out a groan as she searched through the clouds. "Ugh, this is going to take forever!" she muttered to herself. While she was searching, she decided it was a good time to cover her bases. 'Hey, Dende!' she thought.
OoOoOoO
Billions of lightyears away in the land of the living, Dende was broken away from his conversation with the Elder Moori when the voice of the Daikaioushin filled his head. 'What is it?' he asked her silently while the others stared at him.
'If you're wishing on the Dragon Balls to return everyone to life that Majin Boo killed, make sure you restore their planets, too. We don't want all these people other than Earth's to be floating in the void before they freeze and die.' Dende wondered how Xibito had known for certain he was going to do that when she spoke again in his head. 'Daikaioushin, remember? Of course I can read your thoughts.'
Dende nodded and gave a thumbs up to, as far as the other Namekians could tell, absolutely nothing. 'You've got it, Daikaioushin,' he assured her, 'I've got everything under control.' He just hoped Goku and the others could say the same.
OoOoOoO
"Haaaaa!" Goku cried as she thrust her arms forward, firing a titanic Kamehameha that was nearly two kilometers in diameter at Majin Boo, feeling a burning pain surge through her arms and resonate through her chest. 'Oh, crud, is this what a heart virus feels like?!'
"Haaaaa!" Majin Boo bellowed in a wordless scream of rage as he parroted Goku's movements and her attack. Goku clenched her teeth and pushed back as another jolt of pain when the two beams collided.
"You dummy!" she spat between her teeth. "You think you're gonna beat me?! The Kamehameha is my dang move!" She pushed forward with another surge of strength, drawing on further reserves of energy, only to discover, to her horror, that those reserves weren't quite as deep as she'd hoped. Her attack began to falter and Boo's overtook her, sending her flying away and smashing through multiple moons. Her gi top completely burned away before she managed to create a shield around herself to protect her from most of the damage as she dropped away from the path of the beam and back toward the Kaioushin's world.
Majin Boo came screaming toward her with both fists forward and Goku found herself taking another page out of Freeza's book and flung out her hand to throw a shield around Boo, trapping him in a ki bubble. Then she mustered up her strength to launch him out among the stars and the shattered moons, watching him hurtle off into the distance until the yellow pinprick of light completely vanished.
"What's the verdict, Kakarot?" Vegeta asked from the side.
Goku grimaced before wincing as her hair started to shrink, "Vegetto was right. No matter how much I blast that thing, he won't stay down for long. He actually might be coming back even faster than before now."
Vegeta scowled at that, "I guess that leaves us with only one other choice. Which means that I'm going to have to buy you time."
Goku completely dropped out of all forms of Super Saiyan and staggered forward, nearly collapsing as she struggled to catch her breath. She hadn't been in this type of all-encompassing pain since she had used the Kaiouken x4 against Vegeta forever ago. "Where am I gonna get the energy I'm gonna need for this from?"
"I have a plan," Vegeta assured her before taking a moment to clear his thoughts and open his mind. 'Dende! Can you hear me?'
OoOoOoO
Dende froze in horror. 'Oh, no. Porunga, what did I do? Why can I hear your voice in my head now?!'
'Oh, shut up and listen to me!' Vegeta barked. 'Have you used the Dragon Balls yet?'
'Well, no, but–'
'Good. Use Porunga's first wish to restore the Earth and then the second wish to bring back to life every good person killed by Majin Boo, Babidi's minions, or me, do you understand?'
'You know, you could at least ask if Porunga can revive more than one person per wish!'
'...Can he?'
'Yeah, he can now. Elder Moori made some changes to the Dragon Balls after our time on Earth and–'
'Fantastic, shut the hells up and do it.'
'...Walked right into that one. Alright, fine, but what about the last wish?'
'Just… I-I don't know, hold onto that one for now!'
Dende gave a resigned sigh and began relaying those instructions to Moori.
OoOoOoO
"So how long will you need to create a Genki Dama that draws ki from everyone on Planet Earth?" Vegeta asked Goku aloud after standing there in silence for a full minute.
Goku paused and furrowed her brow for a moment as she faced her greatest challenge… doing math. "Maybe… a minute or two, once there actually are people on Planet Earth and they start giving their ki willingly?"
Vegeta gave a resigned sigh. Clearly, this was his godsdamned penance. "Alright, go ahead. I'll buy you that time. Once you've gathered as much ki as you can, hold onto it and store it then give it to Gohan with Xī returns with him." Now that caught Goku by surprise. "We only have one shot at this," he told her. "We need to put our faith in the strongest of us."
"Well, okay," Goku agreed, "That makes sense. But how are you gonna get everyone on Earth to give us their energy? They won't even know what's going on!"
"I've thought of that, too," he replied before turning to Pracya. "Old man!" he barked. "On Earth, the Wizard Babidi cast a spell that made everyone on Earth watch Majin Boo cause destruction. Can you cast a similar spell to make the people of Earth see all of this?" While Vegeta had been dead at the time, he was discovering that the fusion had been imparting snippets of memories on him from inside Kakarot's head.
Pracya puffed up his narrow, withered chest and pushed back his sleeves. "You mean can I out-magic a shriveled little green punk whose father was old before I'd grown my first mustache hair? Hoho, baby! Go ahead and watch me!" Vegeta actually smirked at that, ever so slightly.
"Good," he told him with a nod. "When I give the signal, you start charging," he pointed at Kakarot, "And you cast the spell," he pointed like the old Kaioushin. "I'm counting on you to convince the people of Earth, Kakarot. You're their hero, after all, and they probably remember me killing several of them."
"I'll do my best," Goku assured him as a pink star fell from the sky. Goku didn't know what Vegeta expected her to do. She wasn't much of a speaker and it wasn't like she was all that famous but she'd give it her best shot!
As the snoring form of Majin Boo fell out of the sky— having fallen for so long that he'd actually fallen asleep from waiting— the three heroes tensed and waited for the moment to set Vegeta's plan into action.
OoOoOoO
"Ah ha!" Xibito exclaimed as she pulled an incredibly confused Gohan out from among the clouds by his hair. "There you are! We don't have a lot of time, I need to take you back to the–" But then he was gone, slipping right out of her fingers to return to the mortal world. "Are you kidding me?!"
OoOoOoO
On Earth, as on planets all across the universe, people were suddenly realizing that they weren't dead anymore. Andy, Greg, Emmy, Rhodey, and Jaime all jumped on Adrian in excitement as they realized that everyone was okay, but their mother wasn't quite so quick to jump for joy.
Her brow furrowed in worry and her ears flattened against the sides of her head. "Where's your father?" the fox-woman muttered softly.
Out in the desert, Trunks, Goten, Piccolo, and Gohan were equally confused. "What's going on?" Trunks asked. "Did we… win? Hey, Gohan, did you blow up Boo?" he asked, turning to look at the older boy.
Gohan shook his head. "No," he admitted with a frown. "But mom definitely wasn't strong enough to beat him, so what the heck–" Before he could finish that though, Xī appeared in front of him, although she seemed to have straightened out her hair and… hit the gym?
"Xī?" Gohan asked with a tilt of his head. "What are you—"
"No time!" she said quickly, grabbing him by the collar of his gi. "Need you!" As quickly as she had arrived, Xī was gone again, Gohan vanishing vanishing with her. Trunks and Goten stared dumbfounded at the spot where they had been not a moment before while Piccolo simply pinched the bridge of his nose, a pained expression on his face.
"Uh… Who was that? And what did she do with Big Bro?" Goten asked after her tongue started working.
That seemed to snap Trunks out of his stupor so he smirked and placed his hands behind his head while shifting his weight to one leg. "No idea but I'm surprised that Gohan's seeing two different girls at the same time. Didn't think he had it in him."
As Goten and Trunks got into a shouting match over both the insinuation, Piccolo couldn't help but wonder if he should just stay dead next time.
OoOoOoO
Up on the Lookout, which had thankfully also been restored, everyone was experiencing the same confusion as nearly everyone else in the world. Namely what was going on and why they were alive again. For half a second, Videl thought she had sensed Gohan's ki and nearly cried out in triumph that she knew she'd been right before he was suddenly gone again. Then, before she could ask if anyone else had noticed that, they, as everyone else on Earth, were bombarded with the same image.
OoOoOoO
All at once; Vegeta, Goku, Pracya, and Lapis were aware of several planets' worth of ki signatures returning to the world. "Now!" Vegeta cried as he powered up to Super Saiyan 2. He launched himself at Majin Boo while Goku flew into the air, her hands thrust up high. Bringing up the rear, Pracya wove his hands through the air in an intricate pattern of light to cast the spell. While Goku was waiting for everyone on Earth to see what was going on, she started collecting ki from the planet itself and the ambient energy of the universe surrounding her. She just hoped it wouldn't take too long. She was a little rusty with this move, after all.
'Everyone,' she thought desperately, 'Please, listen to me! My name is Son Goku and if you can hear my voice, we need your help! We're fighting Majin Boo but we can't do it alone! Raise your hands to the sky and lend us your energy!'
In the time it had taken Goku to finish that thought, Vegeta had reached Majin Boo. With a cry of rage, he unleashed his attack, raising his hands and throwing down ki blast after ki blast, a thousand lances of razor-sharp light. Boo sneered up at him and charged, zipping between the blasts like living lightning before he appeared above Vegeta with a cackle of malevolent laughter. He raised both fists and slammed them down onto Vegeta before the King could react, sending him crashing down to the ground below. With another wicked laugh, Boo curled himself up into a ball and dropped directly onto Vegeta's sternum like an asteroid, drawing out a cry of pain and a mouthful of bloody spittle as he drove him further underground. He lashed out his leg like a whip and drove a savage kick into Vegeta's ribs, sending him burrowing through the ground, raising a hill with his body until he shot out and tumbled through the air. But when Boo went for another attack, Vegeta blocked it with a forearm. He savored the monster's look of shock for a moment before he pressed both palms into the pink, pliant flesh of his chest. He let loose his ki with a roar, blasting the monster's torso away, then fired again at his arms and his legs. When he aimed for the head, though, Boo was already gone, cackling away as he evaded Vegeta's blasts.
"Hold still, damn you!" Vegeta snapped at the obnoxious pink irritant. Majin Boo only laughed again and fired pink lightning from his eyes that Vegeta just managed to dodge. The disembodied head lunged and Vegeta swung a fist, only to cry out in pain as the sharp yellow teeth dug into his flesh. With a surge of fury, he focused his ki into his arm and managed to blast Majin Boo's bottom jaw off and fling the rest of him away. Regenerating as he somersaulted through the air, Boo turned back and tackled Vegeta again, sending them both crashing through a pillar of stone. There was a moment of silence from beneath the rubble, and then an almighty cry of "BIG BANG ATTACK!" and a blinding flash of light as Majin Boo was sent flying.
OoOoOoO
"Okay," Suno instructed the others, "Everybody, hands up! Genki Dama time!" She threw up her hands toward the sky, with the others following suit, even if Videl and the kids looked more than a little confused. Marron and Kani were just doing it because their parents were doing it.
"Huh," Yamcha muttered as he felt his ki traveling out through his palms, "So that's what the Genki Dama looks like. Really wish I coulda learned it…" Bulma was just glad to see that Vegeta was alive and on their side again. But if they all made it out of this, he would have some serious apologizing ahead of him.
All across the world, those who recognized and knew Goku were raising their hands. The village that the Son family lived in, Jingle Village, and Aru Village, as well as Upa and his family, Muten Roshi, Uranai Baba, and King Giran.
At the Crane school, Chaozu came bursting out of his apartment with his hands already held to the sky. "If you all don't start raising your hands right now, I'll have you doing laps until your lungs turn inside-out!" With that in mind, the students quickly raised their hands to the sky to lend Son Goku their energy.
OoOoOoO
Something amazing was happening. Due to the nexus of energies that surrounded the Realm of the Kaious, Goku's plea wasn't just going to Earth, but all throughout the universe. There were many planets that didn't speak Galactic Basic, or didn't know who Son Goku was, or what Majin Boo was, so they simply chose to ignore her. But for those who had known the tyranny of Freeza, her name was well known and they raised their hands without a second thought.
On New Namek, five hundred Namekians raised their hands to the sky as a perplexed and not-quite Eternally Patient Porunga looked down upon them.
On Yardrat, they remembered the name of Son Goku, the Super Saiyan, and five million Yardratians held their hands high and sent their energy.
And in the Otherworld, Olibu raised his hammer high above his head with a mighty cry. "Raise your hands, my brethren!" he roared. "Son Goku calls for aid and we shall answer!" The other souls gave a cheer and lifted their hands to the eternal sunlit sky.
With a slightly annoyed smirk and a shake of his head, Pikkon joined them. 'Of course the best fight's happening when the Daikaiou puts a barrier around the Otherworld. Give 'em hell, Goku.'
OoOoOoO
Goku felt a sudden surge of energy as the light above her grew sharply in its intensity. She looked up and had to squint against the brightness. "Whoa nelly!" she exclaimed in disbelief. The Genki Dama was huge! She actually had to push up to send it higher into the sky, it was getting so big. Any closer and it might start getting pulled by the planet's gravity! Goku could feel so much energy radiating out of it, it was crazy! 'That's great, everyone! Please, keep giving us your energy!' She looked down at the battlefield below and frowned deeply in concern as sweat beaded on her forehead. "Come on, Vegeta," she muttered under her breath, "Just a little longer!"
Vegeta screamed in pain as Majin Boo stomped on his back, flickering back to Super Saiyan for a moment before gritting through the pain and powering back up. He summoned a mighty explosion of ki to send Boo off of him, radiating it off of his body as he struggled to his feet. "Come on, you pink bastard!" he spat through a mouthful of blood. "Give me some more!" For a moment, Majin Boo was shocked by his enemy's resiliency but it didn't matter. He was going to die. Everything was going to die. He lunged at Vegeta with his mouth opened impossibly wide like a great serpent to strike–
"Photon Blast!" Lapis cried out as he slid across the grass like a blur, firing the yellow beam up through Majin Boo's upper jaw. Then he charged a green swirl of ki in his other fist and pulled it back with a look of fury in his eyes. "Quantum Uppercut!" he drove the fist up into Majin Boo's stomach to launch him high up into the air.
"Stay out of this!" Vegeta spat indignantly as he tore away the last scraps of tattered fabric from his bloody chest. "This is my battle! I need this!"
"Fuck you, buddy!" Lapis shot back. "You're not the only one who lost people!" Leaving Vegeta stunned for the moment, Lapis raised both hands to the sky as Majin Boo started coming back down. "Chou Dodonpa!" he roared, firing the yellow beam from his outstretched fist.
Vegeta blinked and snarled, not to be outdone. "Galick Gun!" he bellowed, firing the purple blast out to coincide with Lapis's attack in a flash of purple and yellow spiraling energy.
OoOoOoO
"Daddy!" the children exclaimed in unison, delighted to see that their father was alive and fighting the bad guys. They all raised their hands in unison and Amy quickly did the same. The cops from Lazuli's precinct, recognizing Lapis as her twin brother, lifted their hands toward the sky as well.
OoOoOoO
Boo held Vegeta and Lapis by the throat as he smashed them into the ground and dragged them along the ground, laughing all the while. This wasn't a challenge like the long-haired lady. This was just fun. This was a game. A predator toying with his prey. He lifted Vegeta and Lapis up and slammed their faces together before throwing one and then the other, sending Lapis at Vegeta and knocking them both to the ground in a tangle of limbs. He laughed and laughed as he raised himself into the sky and starting raining down a volley of ki bolts at them, his face twisted in a malevolent bastardization of childlike joy.
"No!" Goku cried out in distress. She felt so helpless! She wanted to do something but if she stopped collecting energy for the Genki Dama, she'd lose it all and have to start all over, meaning that Vegeta and Lapis would be taking this beating for nothing!
When the dust cleared, Majin Boo was still laughing, absolutely laughing his head off. Lapis and Vegeta were laying in a heap, bloodied and battered, clothes torn and smouldering.
"What's so godsdamned funny?" Vegeta demanded in a gurgle. He spat out a mouthful of blood as Boo slowly stopped laughing. His eyes widened and he gawked, mouth falling open in disbelief as Vegeta dug his fingers into the dirt and pushed himself slowly back to his feet. Every inch of his body screamed in pain and blood was flowing down his face and matting in his hair but he didn't care. He was still breathing. He was still in the fight. "Did you think I was just going to roll over and die, damn it?!" he asked furiously as he advanced on Majin Boo who, impossibly, actually took a step back. "That's nothing! You didn't even put any holes in me!" Majin Boo snarled as veins emerged from underneath his skin again and steam whistled out of his holes. "You're nothing! Just a freak! A cosmic joke! I am a warrior! The King of All Saiyans!" With a lion's roar, he powered back up to Super Saiyan 2. "I AM VEGETA!" He charged Majin Boo as the other barreled toward him and they collided with the sound of a volcano erupting.
OoOoOoO
"Yeah!" Trunks exclaimed excitedly. "Go, Dad!" he powered up to Super Saiyan and Goten, not wanting to be left out, did the same. Piccolo already had sweat running down his face from the exertion and wasn't sure how much more energy he could give.
'Come on, Goku,' he thought tensely. 'What are you waiting for?!'
Even as out among the stars, Namekians and Yardratians and a dozen other races collapsed from the exhaustion of giving Goku all of their energy, so many on Earth were still hesitating. They were all gripped by uncertainty and doubt. They'd seen Goku fight Majin Boo before. If she couldn't defeat him then, how could they possibly help her? They didn't have any powers. They were small, they were weak. They were all just so afraid.
OoOoOoO
Hercule watched in horror, transfixed, as Vegeta and that… thing that used to be Majin Boo beat the hell out of each other, punches and kicks flying as they tore into one another. They were just unreal. He had no idea what the hell was going on. But what he could see was that Vegeta was losing. He started giving ground as Boo kept hammering him with blows, beating him into the ground. A spark of madness seized him suddenly and raced through his blood like fire. He wouldn't be helpless again. He wouldn't just stand there, afraid, useless. He would prove he was the Champion of the World.
Hercule grabbed one of his boots and threw it at Majin Boo as hard as he could, bouncing it off of his head. Boo actually froze and turned his head slowly toward him with murder burning in his red eyes. "Y-yeah!" Hercule shouted at him, beating his chest. "Come on, ya ugly pink bastard! You killed my friend! Come and get a piece of me!" He got into a fighting stance, despite knowing that he was going to die. What the hell, he'd died before. What was one more time?
OoOoOoO
"Honey, what're you doing?!" Miguel shrieked in horror as both hands clapped to the sides of her face. What was he even doing there?! Sure, he'd beaten Cell before but this was different!
"Dad?!" Videl gasped out, nearing exhaustion, struggling to keep his arms out. "Dad, what the hell?!"
"Hey, it's Hercule!" someone shouted. With that realization, a murmur passed through the crowd. Hercule was fighting Majin Boo! Maybe they'd be saved after all!
OoOoOoO
Just as Hercule saw his life flashing before his eyes, Lapis leaped over him and hit Boo with a Rider Kick. 'Nanomachines, don't fail me now!' Lapis thought as he raised his arms out in front of him and held them in a diamond shape. "Shin Kikouhou!" He fired it once at Boo, then again, and again, and again. "Ki! Kou! Hou! Ki! Kou! Hou!"
Hercule sprinted away from the action frantically, hopping slightly on his one booted foot. "Hey!" he barked at the people on Earth. "What're you all waitin' for?! What part of 'We need your help' don't you people get?!" He'd heard Goku's continued pleas for the people to give her more of their energy, whatever it meant, and was almost as frustrated with them as he was terrified of everything else. "What, you're scared?! Join the club! I'm scared outta my damn mind! I was scared of fighting Cell! But I'm still here, doin' what I can! And we need you to do what you can! Help save yourselves! Raise your damn hands to the sky and lend us your power!"
OoOoOoO
"Hercule! Hercule! Hercule!" Someone started chanting as they threw their hands into the sky. It passed from one person to the next, to the next after them, and so on, until it was spreading all across the Earth, the chanting carried on the wind.
'I can't believe it,' Piccolo thought with horror. 'Hercule really is going to save the world. The universe, even!'
OoOoOoO
The Genki Dama surged with energy from all of mankind and grew in size yet again and Goku let out an exhilarated laugh. "Thanks, everybody!" she cheered. "Thanks, Hercule!" she started gathering the ki down into herself with a grunt of exertion. She hadn't done this part in forever! Not to mention she was still waiting for–
"Back!" Xibito explained as she appeared next to Goku with Gohan. "Sorry about that, all that screaming Boo and Gotenks did was causing some kind of havoc with the dimensiona—" Then she noticed the Genki Dama— "What the Zenou is that?!"
"A Genki Dama?" Gohan asked with one eyebrow raised before looking back at his mom. "Are you sure about this, mo-oh, jeez!" That was when he saw that his mom was topless and averted his eyes as hard as he could. "What the heck's up with Vegeta?" he asked. "He's… on our side again? Jeez, what'd I miss?!"
"No time!" Goku explained through gritted teeth as her body started to glow blue. "Just stay right here, gimme your hand!" The last of the Genki Dama's energy was drawn into her body. Gohan held his hand out for his mom to hold and she grabbed onto it fiercely. He gave a gasp of shock as the collected energies of the cosmos flooded into his body and light shot out of his eyes.
"Kakarot!" Vegeta bellowed up at her and Gohan as he struggled to stay on his feet. "Now?!"
"Not yet!" Goku called back at him, struggling to speak while maintaining her focus on the transference. "Just one more minute!"
"Oh, for Galick's sake," Vegeta muttered wearily as Boo tossed Lapis's limp body to the ground. He tried to conjure the image from what he'd seen from sharing Kakarot's mind and braced himself for the oncoming pain. "Kaiouken!" he cried before launching himself at Majin Boo, even as he felt his muscles tearing themselves from the bone.
"I'll try to buy you some more time!" Xibito added as she flew down toward the battle. "Lances of Light!" she cried as her voice echoed through the heavens with her arms outstretched. "Wings of Ten Thousand Angels!" Thousands of V-shaped ki formations appeared in the air and rained themselves down on Majin Boo as Vegeta hammered him with blows, grunting and screaming through the pain as blood started pouring from his mouth. It took all of his willpower but Gohan managed to avoid looking at the scene down below or thinking about it, focusing only on absorbing the power his mother was sending to him, the blue glow fading from her body and starting to emanate from his. At last, it finished. Gohan had never felt such power resonating inside his body before. It was… breathtaking. He turned and prepared to fire an attack down at Majin Boo but there was just one problem.
From a mixture of exhaustion, pain, and blood loss; Vegeta's body gave out and he finally collapsed facedown in the dirt. He and Lapis were too close to Majin Boo to attack him without killing them as well. Before he could call down to Xibito to grab them, she and Pracya were already casting a spell on Boo to hold him in place.
"There's only two of us," Pracya admitted through a grunt of effort, already soaked with sweat as crimson bands wrapped around Majin Boo and trapped him inside a golden ring, "But you're stronger than Shengda. We can hold him in place just long enough!" Even with the circumstances, Xibito couldn't help but swell with pride from the Elder Kaioushin's praise.
"Mom," Gohan grunted, "Can you—?"
Goku shook her head. "I don't have the energy," she admitted, "I'm totally burned out." She looked at Gohan and gave him a serious expression. "You have to do it. We won't get another shot!" The thought turned Gohan's stomach. How could he do it?! But she was right. He had to.
That was when Hercule made his move. He ran as fast as he could toward Vegeta and Lapis, even though it meant putting himself right in front of Boo. Another spark shot through him. At first he thought it was insanity again but it was some kind of… energy. More intense than any adrenaline rush he'd ever felt before! It coursed through his body and filled his muscles, letting him run faster than he'd ever run before in his life. He was a blur, he was a bullet, he was moving at the speed of light! He ran past Boo, grabbing Lapis and Vegeta in one fluid motion, tossing them both over his shoulder and carrying them like they didn't weigh anything.
"I got 'em!" he shouted up at Gohan. "Do it!" Just as he cried that, Majin Boo broke free of his bonds and, sensing Gohan's ki as the largest, flew up at him with a scream of rage. It was now or never.
Gohan channeled all of the energy into himself, focusing it as he cleared his mind. As he moved, almost involuntarily, everyone who had given energy to the Genki Dama moved with him. "Tamashii no Jinrui," he declared emphatically as he brought his hands down to his side. "Kibou no Sekai!" His aura wasn't blue or golden or blisteringly white. It was a never-ending cascade of every color in existence, each one flowing into the next as it roared around him like a flame. "Shin! Genki! Ryuu! Hame! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Gohan thrust his hands forward and the universe struck out against Majin Boo as one as an enormous white dragon flew from his hands, roaring with its jaws opened wide. Gohan pushed forward with all of his power, his eyes and hair burning red for half a heartbeat. Majin Boo roared back in defiance as he plunged headfirst into the dragon's mouth. But the roar turned into a scream as its touch burned him, burned him as nothing before ever had. It devoured his body completely and he couldn't regenerate from it. He tried to escape, tried to shrink down or change shape as primal, paralyzing fear sunk into the mind of a being older than time itself. But it was useless. In one last glorious flash of light that destroyed him down to the final quark, Majin Boo was finally defeated.