The Three Legendary Saiyans.
Chapter 101: An Old Foe Returns.
With a clamp gripping his right arm, Raijin had no choice but to allow himself to be teleported away from his friends and Namekian brothers, the sight of them all together vanishing from his eyes as the scenery around him changed from the forests around the base of Korin's Tower to the vast and expansive desert where little life could get in the way.
As soon as Raijin's composure had been regained upon the split second it took for his mind to take in the surroundings only to find the mechanical foe staring him down; the white cloak billowing in the sandy wind and a crimson targeting eye marking him for termination, Raijin snapped into his Super Saiyan 2 on the spot with all of his incredible strength and smashed the white-cloaked mechanical Elite with a swift elbow to the crimson eye, the attack knocking back the foe as the desert winds blew off the cloak revealing it's silvery-metallic machine body with a single ruby-red cracked eye with a crosshair targeting pattern.
"Thought so… a machine" Raijin muttered to himself as the machine released the clamp hand extended outwards and instantly meta morphed into a circular saw, the humming sound of the saw warned of the sharpness that would take off Raijin's limbs or even his head if he fought recklessly, narrowly dodging as the saw suddenly fired out from the machine's arm proving itself to be a projective launcher.
Crouching down and willing himself to move without thought; Raijin resolved to take out the machine before another shot was fired, taking out without any warning and faster than the crosshairs could track as Raijin tore through the machine with a single blow: striking dead-centre with a direct punch to the machine's core and pulling his hand free by firing a beam out from his palm inside the machine's body.
The machine let out a cry of static as pieces disintegrated in the sand but the bulk of its body remained; only the core components disappearing to Raijin's own eyes but the tough armour had forced Raijin to strike extremely hard to the point that he needed a second to catch some breath.
Taking in a breath as the Elite Soldier lay in scrapable pieces of metal in the sand; gritting his teeth at how hard he'd had to strike in order to inflict damage against an Elite when he wanted to be conserving his restored strength for facing Frieza, Raijin rotated his neck as his muscles still felt stiff after escaping that paralysis hold but felt a chill when a footstep crunched the sand.
"Ok; I'm just about done with this underling but not much of an Elite… what the hell?!" Raijin spoke with a renewed vigour after taking in some breath; the machine having been tougher than he'd expected but still fell to pieces with the sheer force that Super Saiyan 2 Full Power provided until he turned to meet the next enemy only for the sight of shock him to his very core as to who was standing before his eyes.
Standing before Raijin's very eyes was the metallic body of a person he never thought he'd see again; the reflective metal alloy body, the crimson scanner-like irises staring him down, the long serpentine tail slapping down into the sand leaving an impression of a foe from long ago.
"Do you remember my name?" The Metallic Foe spoke; his voice highly synthesised but it was definitely the same voice that he'd heard all those years ago and heard again in that strange and disturbing premonition that Chronoa had shown him of his own death, the foe stood in wait for his name to be spoken.
"Yeah… I do, you're Cooler… you and I fought to the death in the same forest where your little sentry caught me, but I thought you died after being shot into the sun" Raijin spoke slowly; allowing himself to smile widely as an old foe had returned from the dead to face him once more, recalling the bloody battle they'd fought and how he'd been to foe that forced him to attain the form he now stood in.
"How you honour me with such recollection; to think after all this time you'd still remember my name and how you killed me" Cooler spoke with a matching smirk; standing only a few meters apart but both looking to one another with acknowledgment and respect.
"And yet you're still standing here… right now, care to explain?" Raijin retorted with a surprising calmness given he shocked he'd just been; questioning on how Cooler was present when he'd been considered dead for over a decade.
"You will gain that knowledge in due time; however… your powers appear to have grown considerably" Cooler gloated with a gleeful tone; almost excited for the moment when he would reveal the details of his rebirth to his desired target and destined foe, his lips curling into a smile at the sight of the power that had defeated him once before.
"Is that so? Well a lot has changed in these last couple of years!" Raijin spoke with a wide smirk in the face of facing off with Cooler once again, his golden spiky hair becoming more rigid as white bolts of lightning sparked for Raijin flexed his Full Power state for showmanship reasons.
Cooler smirked a little wider; his gleaming metallic body reflecting the desert sun as he kicked off the sand leaving a wall of sand behind in his wake upon rushing Raijin, Raijin opening his hands and blocking Cooler's opening attacks by catching each and every punch he should read; carefully watching for an opening to counterattack through Cooler's systematic assaults, the metallic foe only stopping his assault for a single split second to fire his Death Wave leaving Raijin an opening to move his move.
Slamming his hands down into the sand and firing an Unspoken Masenko mere seconds before Death Wave was fired; Raijin propelled not only himself up into the air but also a wall of sand that took and deflected the Death Wave back at Cooler which Cooler himself barely dodged before Raijin came descending out from the air and striking with an axe kick directly to Cooler's left shoulder and firing arm but only leaving a dent in the metallic body.
"Only for a few seconds; can't rely on Three too much but I need that power to do some damage" Raijin thought to himself after seeing how little damage he'd inflicted though Meta-Cooler narrowed his eyes at him as Raijin clenched his fists to raise his powers, Meta-Cooler rushing off the sandy ground and body-blowing Raijin in mid-air with all of his speed and striking moments before a forceful blast of air pushed the machine back several feet as Raijin transformed into his Super Saiyan 3 in his moment of recovery.
"A new transformation? You Saiyans really value increasing your strength" Cooler spoke with a cool and calm disposition; the reveal of Super Saiyan 3 barely fazing him but his eyes visibly twitched at the unstable half-formed feathers emerging in Raijin's Aura as he stood in the air wrapped in blazing golden flames.
"Sorry Cooler; am much as I'd like to show off my abilities with someone like you, but I need to stop Frieza and save the fabric of reality" Raijin spoke as he dropped into the sand and crouched down; adopting a tiger stance to alter his movements so to catch Cooler off-guard, his longer golden hair flowing in the desert winds before leaping and reach out to claw at Cooler's face.
"That I cannot allow; for your opponent is none other than Me!" Meta Cooler answered harshly; breaking into a sprint from a single step and attacking with a swift knee strike to Raijin's beckoning hand, the pair blocking and parrying each other's attacks from Cooler's knee strikes to Raijin's claw-fists until both separate with neither taking a blow.
Letting out a deep exhale; Raijin narrowed his focus on Cooler alone; mentally putting Frieza and the rifts aside to win this fight with his next blow, pooling his energy and ignoring the stamina cost by diving into his Super Saiyan 3 Full Power: lightning and electricity sparking off his blazing golden flames in all directions, blasting off the sand at such speeds that even Cooler could barely even perceive as Raijin rushed past Cooler only to come to a halt with some object tightly held in one hand.
A brief pause passing between the pair as Raijin's long golden hair faded back to its base black; letting go of his fully-powered transformation for a single attack with an entire metallic arm in his claw-like grip while Meta-Cooler yelled in apparent pain as his empty socket where his entire right arm had been from hand all the way up to his shoulder was torn off by the high-speed attack leaving exposed wires and circuitry exposed, though Raijin couldn't celebrate tearing an arm from his foe as the exposed circuitry and wires jutted out from the wound and instantly replaced with missing arm with a brand new one as if the one Raijin had never done any damage at all.
"Self-Repair? What exactly happened to you?" Raijin spoke with widened eyes as he watched Meta Cooler's arm repair itself while the one he had dropped into the sand burnt away leaving little pieces of scrap and burnt wires that would fade into the sand, narrowing his eyes again as he looked back to his enemy flexing his repaired arm.
"The devastating defeat you handed me turned out to be quite the blessing-in-disguise, for as my body was burning in this Galaxy's Sun; a miraculous occurrence transpired for I was contacted by The Big Gete Star, a cybernetic lifeform that has blessed me with this new magnificent body… an immortal body that will not only repair the damage you inflict but be improved and more durable so such an injury might never be inflicted again!" Meta Cooler recounted his rebirth and the gift of the perfect technological body where any wound would be repaired and improved so he might never suffer as such again all the while flexing his newly repaired arm while the old one disappeared entirely into the sand.
Raijin felt a pang of dread at the idea of fighting a foe who could self-repair and reinforce against any damage he could deal, watching as Cooler vanished from sight only for Cooler's metal tail to re-enter his field of vision and slap him across the face and leave a long cut across his face, Cooler following up with another tail lashing that Raijin backstepped before he could be impaled by the razor-sharp tail's edge.
Sliding back through the loose and shifting sand; Raijin slipped on the unstable surface beneath his feet and unwillingly gave Cooler an opening to strike, the foe being more than happy to take the opportunity to teleport in close and slug Raijin in the face with an obscenely hard metallic punch and following up with a swift kick to Raijin's ribs that laid Raijin flat in the sand though writhing in pain.
"I remember the last time we fought, I was about to leave you to die under several tons of rocks when you rose back up to steal victory from my own fingers, that won't be happening again" Cooler gloated; the sand beneath his feet rupturing as wires erupted out from the sand and coiled around Raijin's body; pulling him down into the sand to bury him alive once again.
Waiting until buried under the sand; Raijin shot Cooler a defiant stare before disappearing under the sand dunes leaving Cooler alone in the desert, a deathly silence hung in the air with only the whistling winds as Cooler stared at the spot in the sand where Raijin had vanished until the sand dune exploded outwards as Raijin in Super Saiyan 3 Full Power rose back into the air and instantly firing a blast from both hands that took off Cooler's tail leaving in to fall and disintegrate into the sands.
No words needed to be spoken as Cooler glared back up at Raijin while his tail reconstructed itself to be harder and sharper than before, Raijin glared back down at Cooler; his blazing aura still producing half-formed feathers whilst the flames billowed in the desert winds like wingbeats but reverted back to flames.
Raijin grit his teeth at yet another failed attempt to manifest an Aura Form and stun his opponent with the display but that was for naught, his instincts flaring as Cooler had rushed him once again; firing beams with one hand while the other discharged an rotating energy blade akin to a chainsaw that Raijin recalled as his Sauzer Blade, narrowly dodging a slash of the blade aimed for his throat but drove a kick into Cooler's ribs that left a deep crack in his metallic body but the damage quickly vanished via his repairing abilities.
Cooler kept teleporting in and out of Raijin's vision but Raijin knew he couldn't hold up against this pressure for much longer and would have to finish the fight soon or he'd be too drained for the later fights, releasing his Super Saiyan 3 and regressing back to Two so he could focus energy on manifesting his newest technique.
Raijin barely flinched as Cooler vanished from view again only to act on instinct as Cooler re-emerged to punch Raijin in the side of the head but Raijin's right hand rose up and caught Cooler's fist, countering the attack by slamming Cooler down into the sand with a judo over-the-shoulder throw but Cooler span out from Raijin's grip upon hitting the sand as the two charged each other; both fighters grasping each other's hands in an attempt to overpower the other with sheer energy output and strength.
Sparking flew in all directions as Raijin and Cooler fought; their hands gripping each other's as the electricity generated by their pooling energies arced in every direction and superheated patches of sand into glass, Raijin gritted his teeth hard as blood was drawn from his teeth but also his hands under Cooler's grip; but cracked surfaced on Cooler's metal arms and spread up his limps all the way to his shoulders before shattering into millions of tiny metal shards, Cooler barely had time to be surprised before Raijin moved his hands to his chest for a new beam attack.
"White Dawn" Raijin spoke with a calm voice; having abandoned his Divine and Hyper Masenko for a new stronger beam of his own he'd created after experiencing Cress' mighty Black Dawn firsthand, his own white beam blasting out with so much force that Raijin himself slid backwards from the recoil while Cooler's machine body crumbled under the fierce blast leaving a burnt-black metallic skeleton behind.
"You fought hard; you earned this victory however brief" Meta Cooler spoke with a bow of his burnt-black skull of a head; his remaining facial features cracking and disintegrating along with the rest of his mechanical bones, with his bones fading into less than scrap and wires; Raijin dropped down into the sand for breath after claiming victory once again.
Now gasping for breath after using Three more than he'd liked to have done; Raijin couldn't help but smile as he'd defeated Cooler for a second time, letting body power-down back into his base form and letting his black hair matt-down with sweat and grease from fighting so hard against a strong foe but that foe now lay in a smoking heap of scrap metal and burnt circuits until the voice spoke aloud again.
"Sorry to rain on your parade Saiyan, but this battle is far from over yet" Spoke Meta Cooler's voice but this time the voice sounded like it had been spoken many times, Raijin turned behind him as a new and shinier Meta Cooler rose up from under the sand but he wasn't alone as thousands of other Meta Cooler's rose up and each wore the same confident smirk as his scanning red eyes glared at him each with glistening metallic bodies, every single one altered to withstand Raijin's prior attacks and beams.
"You've got to be joking?! How many of you are there?" Raijin coughed his words as the desert wind blew sand into his mouth as it briefly hung open in stunned shock of the reveal, rising back to his feet and standing at full height against the ever-increasing number of foes.
"To quote your biblical texts, we are legion for we are many" Many of the Meta-Cooler's spoke at once, their voices resonating in perfect unison, several hundred of the Meta-Cooler's growing in size and mass to perfectly recreate Cooler's transformed state amongst the horde to prove a much hard fight was instore, the resonating laughter forcing Raijin to again recall the vision and confirm that it was indeed Meta Cooler that was supposed to kill him and that this was the battle he had to overcome though the location was still different.
Unable to suppress his own inherent Saiyan urges to fight and do battle with a literally infinite foe; Raijin's body pulsated as his body re-engaged his transformation into a Super Saiyan 4, his body shifting into the more primal and beastly power as the army of Meta Cooler's came running toward him each with a confident smile as the battle between Raijin and Cooler resumed.
Rushing into the horde with golden flames bursting into life with every step; the half-formed Aura Form flapping in the desert winds, Raijin leapt high into the air as the thousands of Cooler's raised their right arms and transitioned their right hands into laser beam cannons, firing beams upon beams into the skies as Raijin relied on his instincts to dodge and weave between beams until driving his fists directly through the heads of two of the Meta Cooler's with the two disintegrating on the spot.
Pulling his hands free before the melting metal could further burn him; Raijin felt an obscenely large metallic fist strike him on his right side, glancing to his right to see numerous Meta Cooler's and Meta Transformed Cooler's merging together into a gigantic Meta Transformed Cooler standing three times larger than the regular clones.
Narrowly dodging a pair of sweeting kicks from three Meta Coolers that if made contact would likely have taken off his head, rolling to the side as The Gigantic Meta Transformed Cooler's huge fist came down on top of the three Cooler's that had attacked; striking the trio of clones but instead of crushing the three clones they'd been assimilated and making the giant clone grow larger.
Cursing under his breath; Raijin brought both hands to the sand and blasting the ground to lift himself into the air and away from the clones though the infinite number of Meta Coolers were quickly blanketing the sand dunes; all firing Death Beams, Death Waves and Death Ball's from every conceivable direction forcing Raijin to curl himself into a ball and focus his energy into a defence as the numerous blasts struck him leaving a thick black cloud.
From the ground; the army of Meta Cooler's stared up at the smoke cloud in wait for Raijin to return, the cloud dispelled by a sudden golden Divine Masenko blazing out from the cloud and searing a path through the army of Meta Cooler's by incinerating the metallic clones several dozen at a time as Raijin emerged from the cloud as a Golden Super Saiyan 4 Full Power.
Gazing down at the burning remains of the hundred Cooler's he'd destroyed with a fully powered Divine Masenko while the thousands of remaining Meta Cooler's scanner-like eyes glared up at him while their mechanical bodies reinforced themselves to endure the strength of Raijin's strongest beam attack, gritting his teeth against the enemy he faced; he surged back down into the swarm of foes only to struggle against raining blows from metallic fists, kicks, stabbing weaponised tails and lasers, fighting hard with Meta Cooler's falling to any punch, kick or blast he could muster until wires sprung up from beneath the sand and wrapped around his entire body.
Trapped within the myriad of wires; several hundred Cooler's all grinned with imminent victory as Raijin felt the wires draining his strength from him, letting out a mighty and beastly roar that blew apart the looming sandstorm and unravelling the wires from his sheer force of will, extending out both arms and firing a pair of Masenko's that tore through a Meta Transformed Cooler's head and hips thus destroying another clone.
After pulling his arm free from the burning disintegration; Raijin took a series of punches and blows to his head and body from the army of Meta Cooler's, with the taste of blood in his mouth Raijin let out a powerful scream that blew apart the sandy winds only to force the winds to grow stronger; leading Raijin to punch, kick and blast apart as many Cooler Clones as he could while the winds of the sandstorm kept growing even stronger until he could barely see his foes anymore.
The battle raged on with the sandstorm obscuring the fight from the eyes of the satellite cameras; the constant sounds of fighting, metal striking flesh and bone, metallic clones being destroyed until the sound of shrill synthesised laughter rang out from the shifting sands along with the halting sounds of battle.