Surrounded by Cell Jrs, despite seeing an opportunity to leave the planet and confront Meta-Cell directly, Vegeta lashed out at Cell's evil little creations. Dashing at the group, Super Saiyan 2 Vegeta weaved around the counterattack straight and slammed a knee in the Cell Jr's face, quickly dashing above the imp and driving a vertical elbow butt into the black core cranium of the creature, prompting its head to indent and for the Cell Jr. to stick its tongue out and bulge its eyes before shooting straight down and crashing.
Another Cell Jr. rushed in, but Vegeta raised his bent arm for a block of its punch and push-kicked it aside. With a bloody smirk, Vegeta slammed his forehead against the incoming blow of a third Cell Jr., breaking the creature's knuckle and then shooting a rising knee strike into the Cell Jr's face. The Saiyan king took off in a homing dash toward the final Cell Jr., eager to inflict the most punishment he could before being taken down. The Cell Jr. extended its arm and fired an energy wave, but Vegeta ducked down under, rolling around the energy wave before approaching the Cell Jr. and ramming a rising uppercut into its chin. Shrieking, the Cell Jr. shot into the air off the end of Vegeta's fist.
"What's wrong!? Is that all you've got!?" Vegeta taunted, panting and heaving as he wouldn't relent burning through whatever cinders remained of his energy.
Reacting to a snapping sound that accompanied a vanishing, Vegeta turned behind him, only to receive a punch in the jaw for his trouble. Vanishing again, the Cell Jr. dropped from above with both its knees, knocking Vegeta down while the cackling menace channeled a fuchsia-colored energy field around it and charged at him. The bright pink star engulfed Vegeta and carried him down all the way, crashing into the blue rock continent and obliterating it to chunky debris with Vegeta's limp body floating weightless.
Slipping down under, a Cell Jr. drove its foot into Vegeta's back, knocking him up like a rag-doll before vanishing and kicking him away from the front, then vanishing again to appear where Vegeta's limp body would have ended up only to thrust both its feet into Vegeta's face and send him on a collision trajectory toward another Cell Jr.
Chuckling, the third Cell Jr. placed its arms out in front, locking Vegeta in place in a golden energy dome around him. While the third Cell Jr. kept Vegeta locked up, the fourth descended behind its sibling and tagged them out, pointing at Vegeta with finger guns and letting them rip with tiny, but focused energy bullets that shot through Vegeta's energy prison and punched into Vegeta's flesh with painful twinges and gruesome blood splatter. Gasping and grunting in pain, Vegeta's gaze blanked out for a second as he slumped down.
"Wh-What am I doing!?" Vegeta thought to himself after feeling everything around him going dark. It was as if he plunged into an icy lake in the middle of the night to relieve the excruciating pain twinging all over his body. The cold forced itself onto Vegeta like frigid ice needles squeezing through his pores. They were so cold that they chilled Vegeta's body to a critical state where even being skewered by those needles felt like they were boiling hot. Just before he drowned too deep to tell up from down and see the street lights reflected on the surface of the proverbial lake, the Saiyan king clutched his fists and flew out from the lake, bellowing a loud battle cry.
Yelling and burning with a passionate golden aura, fighting with loaned energy and vitality, Vegeta slid forward through the air and slammed a brutal elbow strike into the abdomen of the sadistic Cell Jr., delivering enough force to break the imp's body completely as the puny dwarf collapsed entirely onto the Saiyan king's elbow, gasping from air and frothing snotty slime from its mouth with bloodshot eyes.
"I could have left this planet! I could have joined the rest! I could have… I could have confronted that bastard Cell!" Vegeta cried out, punishing himself with crazed blows to his own cheeks. For a second there, the Cell Jrs abandoned their fighting stances and just stared at the mad Saiyan king in confusion, wondering if their sick beatdown had finally truly broken King Vegeta the IVth. "So why… Why am I okay dying on this miserable back-end world against pathetic, cheeky runts like these!?"
After letting out a crazed scream and nearly peeling the flesh off his own face, the Super Saiyan 2 dashed forward, surrounded by a stream of blinding light, rolling over his front with a double ax handle slam. Grumbling, the Cell Jr. put its arms up and blew up with a golden aura around it, absorbing the tremendous shock from the double-arm slam that expanded far and wide and ground the hovering blue rock debris to tiny pebbles from concussive pressure. The defending Cell Jr. looked terrified and stressed, struggling against the King of Saiyans with all it got.
Letting out another desperate cry, the golden-haired Saiyan warrior broke through the Cell Jr's block before ramming a life-shaving headbutt into the Cell Jr's belfry, temporarily stunning both combatants while sending the recipient of the headbutt flying back and crashing through random rocky debris. Vegeta looked down at his trembling, bloodied, and torn gloves, staring at his chipped fingernails still decorated with the stripes of pale flesh he tore off his opponents.
"I'm a proud and ruthless, Super Saiyan Super-Elite! I cannot… I will not… DIE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS!" Vegeta exclaimed proudly, erupting with a bright pillar of light spanning in both directions like a strident pulsar. "There's no one, NO ONE in this universe, or any other, that I am afraid of!" the distressed Saiyan king began beating himself up again, earning a handful of stray looks from the Cell Jrs who wanted to be the ones laying down the beating.
Drawing its arm back, a Cell Jr. fired a massive, blue energy wave. The sudden outburst of azure light left Vegeta shocked and spaced out. Despite bracing himself for impact and putting up a valiant block, the tunneling energy wave overwhelmed the Saiyan king and washed him away, leaving him powerless and suspended over a hovering chunk of blue rock debris that drifted in circles around the artificial blaze-red planet's core.
Vegeta felt stuffed. Everything was dark, and it felt like he was drowning. Jolting himself awake through force made Vegeta cough up and vomit the wet chunks of blood stuck in his throat and bleed it out from his mouth and his nostrils before opening one of his eyes to a blurry reception. All four Cell Jrs posed in front of the blindingly bright and exposed core, drowned out in its peerless light, the psychotic imps looked black and shadowy.
Enthusiastic about playing with their food, since they were unlikely to see any more worthwhile challengers in years, the little rascals began substituting one another while they battered Vegeta like a punching bag. The King of Saiyans was too pummeled and too exhausted to even put his arms up, leaving him hanging limp like a bone bag and taking every shot unprotected. The battery left Vegeta's right eye too swollen to see through it, though it didn't look like the sadistic imps were any closer to being done with him.
"Tsk… Who am I kidding!?" Vegeta thought to himself after a devastating punch to his gut nearly shut his consciousness off completely. It felt as if the beating had knocked Vegeta's soul completely out of his body and left it hovering somewhere high above. It was as if he was spectating the torturous scene from above, watching his body getting pummeled into a swollen lump by a handful of no-good brats who lacked the decency to put him out of his misery and appeared to enjoy seeing how much more torment they could still put Vegeta through before a blow ends up killing him, like some kind of demented game.
"I'm getting exactly what I wanted–those dumbass brats are killing me in here. But that's what I asked for, isn't it? I could have just left, stood before Cell alongside the others… Who am I kidding? If I'm to die here, I may as well be honest with myself–I'm afraid. I'm not afraid to die, I never was. As a proud Saiyan super-elite, I have always welcomed death in battle. But… I'm afraid… Of it. I'm afraid to stand before Cell and throw everything I have and for that punk to laugh it off, to make a mockery of everything I've ever sought for, every bit of power I've ever felt proud of and I've spent a lifetime honing! I can't… I can't go through that again!" Vegeta closed his only working eye, squirting out a warm torrent of tears while the cackling menaces pummeled his gut with chain shots, sneering with mockery.
"I knew what I was signing up for. I knew they'd kill me, I had no hopes of surviving. Even if I somehow defeated this bunch, more and more would've come until I'd have inevitably died. This is so fucked up! Why am I so okay with dying, when the asshole I'm shaking in fear for would have just killed me in the end anyway!?" Vegeta wept while the Cell Jrs sharpened and elongated their claws and began cutting him up, slashing his already ruined battle armor and cutting through his chiseled muscles and rugged face with ferocious and merciless swipes.
"Is it that bad to experience fear, even for an elite Saiyan warrior? Does a person truly deserve to die for being afraid?" Vegeta gritted his teeth, opening his tearful eye and venting his tears. The sight of the Saiyan king clarified in his left eye, letting him weave out of the way of the incoming claw swipe that shattered the blue rock chunk Vegeta was imprisoned in and liberated him.
Surprised by Vegeta's unexpected second wind and the sudden revival of his will to fight, despite his broken body and barren Ki reserves, the Cell Jrs staggered back while base Vegeta's white aura intensified and became a turbulent typhoon the little critters had to struggle against. Eager to deny Vegeta his comeback, a Cell Jr. charged forward with a packed punch to the jaw. Despite a thunderous crack, Vegeta stumbled back and turned around, accepting the inertia of the impact and nullifying most of the energy behind the punch.
In a flash, a golden burst sent a tumultuous wall of pressure for the Cell Jrs to struggle against as Vegeta's hair turned gold and changed the color of his aura. Because of his bloodied face, Vegeta's eyes couldn't be seen. The right one still rested somewhere beneath a swollen fleshy lump, whereas his left remained closed. The Cell Jrs squeaked, trying to sift through the raging Ki storm to attack Vegeta again and this time to not stop swinging until the King of Saiyans stopped breathing.
"That's it, isn't it?" Vegeta muttered out loud. "All this, fighting insurmountable odds and a battle I cannot win. It isn't some kind of grand gesture, is it? It's just some miserable heap of bullshit! I wasn't signing up to die proud in an arduous battle against an opponent I cannot defeat. I was just quaking in my boots."
A Cell Jr. charged at Vegeta, punching him in the gut and doing its best to shove its fist clean through the Saiyan's abdomen. Vegeta's body accepted the hit, bending over, but the blanked-out Saiyan didn't grunt in pain nor did he collapse. Immediately after delivering the hit, the Cell Jr. backed up, adopting a defensive stance out of fear, because of the Saiyan king's reaction, expecting that Vegeta purposefully got hit to lure him in close.
"I wasn't just avoiding an opponent I was afraid of either," Vegeta said, almost as if he was speaking to himself. Despite burning up with Super Saiyan flare, he looked like could hardly even lift his arms anymore. "I wanted to die here, I was punishing myself for being afraid, despite all this time training to face Cell. I felt like a joke. But… There's nothing loathsome about being afraid, is there? And I'm done punishing myself for it."
An alarmed Cell Jr. drew its cupped arms back before thrusting them at Vegeta. It exclaimed "Kamehameha!" in a high-pitched, squeaky, and childish voice. Vegeta leaned his head narrowly to the right and let the beam miss his head and trail off behind him, where it detonated the first obstacle it came into contact with.
Vegeta clenched his right fist, flashing in a bubble-shaped golden energy cocoon that transformed him into Super Saiyan 2 after washing over him. Vegeta's blue eye gleamed through with an energized glow, contrasting his bloody and battered exterior. The King of Saiyans stood buffed up and stressed to the limit, knowing that this statement he was about to make would decide everything. His fate, the fate of this planet, maybe even the fate of Planet Earth and his family. That's why King Vegeta had to speak from the heart and be honest with himself in what could have been his final moments.
"In the days of my youth, I'd have hated myself and thought less of myself if I realized I experienced fear of fighting a certain opponent. However, I've built a family of people I care about too much to give a shit about crap like fear anymore! One thing I absolutely refuse to do is punish myself and resign to death for being afraid!" Vegeta exclaimed with a thunderous and authoritative voice that made the Cell Jrs tremble.
The Saiyan king hunched in extreme strain, feeling a previously unheard-of surge of energy rising from within some deep, unexplored corner of his body. His aura expanded wider and wider, becoming a raging golden wildfire while the electric sparkles became shooting thunderbolts, lashing out in all directions, even shooting off into the heavens, electrifying the planet's atmosphere and coming down with a wild thunderstorm.
"HAAAAAAAAH!" Vegeta exclaimed, unable to contain the swelling battle power that wildly exceeded even his peak strength when his body was fresh from battle strain. Veins bulged out and ravaged his forehead, as well as his exposed, hardened muscles. The ephemeral, radiant golden aura became an electrified golden energy field surrounding Vegeta with a darkening outline. An emboldened Cell Jr. charged at Vegeta, rearing its elongated claws and seeking to part Vegeta's head from his shoulders before the king could unleash whatever he had in store and flip the tables on them. The poor dolt disintegrated immediately upon coming near the strident energy field surrounding Vegeta, horrifying the rest of its siblings.
"Eek!" the Cell Jrs freaked out, horrified. Knowing that this couldn't have meant anything good for them, they fled, employing Super King Kai's Fist and taking off to cold, dead space, abandoning their home planet and taking their chances in dark, starry oblivion. The other Cell Jrs took off en masse, fleeing their planet while Vegeta's rampant energy disassembled the collapsing planet bit by bit, slowly circling the surrounding debris around him as if Vegeta just became the most gravitating energy source in the star system.
The planet's core began dissolving, becoming a swirl of fiery jets of energy that swirled around Vegeta, becoming a maelstrom of molten metal and blazing gases, but Vegeta was at a point far beyond where such things would bother him.
"Damn that Vegeta, where is he!? The others are getting slaughtered out there, they need his help!" Bulma slammed her fists against the control panel before shaking off her fear for her husband's life and beginning to rapidly tap buttons on her horizontal, transparent touchscreen. Her face blanked out in disbelief. "What are those energy readings? Turn off the energy radar system now, or else it'll short out the spaceship!"
Bulma was so distraught about the behemothic energy readings in the area where she last contacted Vegeta that she overlooked the fact her husband may have still been there, as opposed to confronting Cell with the rest of the warriors, manually shutting the down erring energy radar systems so that the monstrous readings didn't short out the spaceship electronics and leave Vegeta stranded in space.
"Vegeta, what are you doing out there? What's going on?" Bulma clenched her fist and pressed it to her chest, hunching over and shaking in stress before regulating her breathing and manually sending Vegeta's spaceship, still hanging on standby, into sleep mode, so that the rampant energy signatures in the area didn't somehow cook its electronics or otherwise sabotage it.
The intense light radiating off of Vegeta's energy field was flashing with dazzling, white light that pierced the cosmic darkness to the very edges of the star system. Horrified by the flashing lights, the surrendering Cell Jrs turned back at a minuscule speck of their home planet they'd just abandoned, shivering in awe of the sparkling-white light washing over them and drowning out the black void of space. The uncontrollable cosmic storms raging in the region shattered the drifting, circling continental land masses of blue rock, reducing the planet to nothing but blue space sprinkles.
Vegeta's long and spiky golden hair began growing out longer and longer, curving as it extended beyond his shoulders and curved over Vegeta's back, continuing to grow even longer still with no end in sight. The unbelievable field of energy around Vegeta became the epicenter of a calamitous quake that rippled beyond its center, expanding all the way to the star system, the galaxy, and reaching the ever-expanding edges of the entire universe, like a tidal wave washing against shores, built-up by a tremorous quake somewhere deeper in the ocean.
Vegeta's light became so intense that everything that wasn't him or the incredible energy field surrounding him became pitch-black, vanquished by his radiance. Whatever mental blocks or limiters for his absurd strength still existed in his mind, whatever psychological restraints or walls there had been, they shattered like a wall of a glasshouse, devastated by a shooting cannon. Vegeta's howl became mixed with the bestial roar of a Great Ape, and when his consciousness swept back from the confines of his mind, where he witnessed some wild, trippy sights, Vegeta's golden Ki field became a flashing orange blaze, washing with destructive power.
Then, almost as suddenly and unexpectedly as it began, it all stopped. Weightless and unconscious, Vegeta was drifting in the ruins of the collapsed blue rock planet with every single one of its scarlet moons eroded, like apples that have had a large bite taken out of them, by the strident destructive energy field that enveloped Vegeta and accompanied his ascension, all the way until the exhausting and crippling battle took its toll and knocked Vegeta out mere moments after experiencing a new world of power. A wilder power than anything anyone's ever witnessed before.
"Good," Bulma sighed, realizing that the status reports of her spaceship in the area had stabilized, letting her turn on the energy readings again. "The situation in the region has stabilized. Now, to take manual control of the ship and bring my husband home. I have a nasty feeling that Vegeta won't have the strength left to drag himself into the spaceship on his own…"
Responding to its creator's whims, the standing-by Capsule Corps spaceship in the region swooped down, homing in on a barely rustling Vegeta's energy signature, and seeking his unconscious, floating body amongst the ruins. With a strong inward draft, the spaceship dragged Vegeta's body in and closed the shutters with little resistance. Sighing and collapsing in her chair from relief, Bulma stroked the sweat off her face and lit up a cigarette while inputting the commands to engage the autopilot, activating the service drones in the ship that would place Vegeta in a healing pod if necessary, and for the ship to bring the unconscious King of Saiyans home.
"Hmm… That's odd, there's no Ultimate Dragon Ball signature in the planet's wreckage. Either the Ultimate Dragon Ball isn't there, or Vegeta has it on him hidden somewhere. I'll need to ask him when he wakes up…" Bulma thought to herself, spinning in her chair and staring at the ceiling with her head leaned back before blowing a wide black cloud of cigarette smoke in her lab.
