Chapter Seventy-one

The Ultimate Battle Begins! Son Goku vs. Freeza!

Freeza stared quizzically at this strange female creature as she seemed to completely blot him from her mind once he lowered his hand and no longer posed an immediate threat to the Earthers. Why Freeza hadn't killed them, he hadn't the foggiest idea, but something about her appearance made fighting these insects suddenly unimportant. He saw something radiating off of her. With his heightened senses and perceptions, Freeza saw it on every being, a sort of aura, a white outline along every being in existence. In lesser creatures, which was to say all creatures other than himself or his family (who were, in all honestly, only slightly more than lesser), it was only a thin white line. But this one…

The aura around her was like a wildfire, billowing and flickering with her every movement. She was different, Freeza realized. She was like him. A luminous being.

"Are you guys alright?" Goku asked as she approached her friends, putting her back to Freeza. "Oh, hey, Piccolo! You got a lot stronger!" He nodded wordlessly as they stared at her but Suno quickly spoke up.

"We're okay," she assured Goku. "Scared out of our minds but okay." Then she added, "I mean… some more of us than others." She glanced back at Vegeta and Goku followed her gaze with a wince. She had never seen Vegeta in such bad shape. Aside from the obvious hole in his stomach, Vegeta just looked… broken. She was sure he was dead but then Vegeta's eyes flickered open and he… he smiled at her. That worried Goku more than the gaping hole, to be honest.

"I'm sorry," Freeza interjected, "But who in the cosmos are you?" Goku turned to Freeza and frowned at him as she balled her fists.

"I'm Son Goku," she told him. "I'm a Saiyan from Earth. I've heard about you, Freeza. I know what you did to the Saiyan race." He smirked at that, which made Goku even angrier. "You're a jerk!" Freeza looked startled by that, as if no one had ever called him that before. "You're a bully and a killer and I'm going to make you pay for what you've done!" Freeza chuckled and pointed at her.

"I think not," he said in a blase tone as he fired a pink beam at Goku. She swatted the blast and it sailed away over the horizon. Freeza's eyes widened and a vein in his temple twitched. "No," he growled. Then he fired another, and another, hundreds more. To his ever-growing fury, Goku swatted them all. The air filled with lances of pink death and the entire area was awash in their deadly glow but he just. Couldn't. Hit. Her. It was only when Freeza stopped that he realized that she hadn't been deflecting them. She'd caught them. Goku held a ball of pink light in her fist and Freeza gaped at the sheer impossibility of it all.

If he was confused, Goku's friends were even more lost. One moment, Freeza had been pointing at Goku, the next everything had gone pink and then Goku had a big ball of pink ki in her hand. She threw that ball into the air where it exploded harmlessly overhead. After the sound of the explosion finished echoing, they all heard something that none of them had expected.

Vegeta… was laughing. It was a thin, weak, painful sound but Vegeta was laughing like he'd heard the funniest joke in the history of sentient life.

"He's going mad," Freeza muttered impassively, raising a hand to shoot him in the head as he had planned to do before.

"I assure you," Vegeta snarled as blood seeped through his teeth and dribbled down his chin, "I-I am quite sane."

"Debatable," Suno muttered under her breath as Vegeta propped himself onto his elbows to try and stop the blood from filling his lungs.

"I'm laughing," Vegeta continued undeterred, "Because she's going to kill you, fool." Freeza's eyes widened at the impertinence, the disrespect, at the sheer indignity of Vegeta's remarks. "I see it now. I was never the Super Saiyan," he admitted bitterly. "She is. I suppose it hardly matters. You're going to die, Freeza. All your long life, all your power, all the races you've slaughtered, and a monkey is going to kill you after all!" He threw back his head and laughed. Freeza snarled and shot Vegeta in the chest again before Goku had a chance to react. Vegeta let out a wordless gasp of pain and collapsed back into the dirt, coughing up a fresh pint of blood on the way down.

"Hey!" Goku exclaimed furiously as she wheeled on Freeza. "He had no chance of defending himself! Don't you have any kind of honor?" Freeza chuckled and gave a shrug.

"K-Kakarot," Vegeta stammered with clear desperation in his voice, "Forget about that! If you're still soft enough to care about me, that means you're not a Super Saiyan yet!" Goku looked down at Vegeta in equal measures shock that he was still talking and confusion as to what the heck he was talking about. "You have to be cold! You have to drive mercy from your heart and devote yourself to killing! Only then will you be have a chance to kill him!"

"I dunno what a Super Saiyan is," Goku admitted with an edge to her voice, "But if it means being more like you, I think I'll pass. Now shut up! You're just making it harder on yourself. I'll take care of this guy."

"Listen to me, you fool!" Vegeta barked and the urgency in his voice made Goku pay attention, which was when she saw the most stunning thing of all: Vegeta was crying. "I don't care what you think of me!" he told her through sobs with tears running down his cheeks and darkening the dirt beneath his head. "This is not about me or you. This is about our people! Freeza enslaved us, made us do his killing! W-w-we served him f-faithfully for y-years and he killed us out of fear! Our numbers were growing and we were growing more powerful. Freeza f-feared that a Super Saiyan might rise among us and so he struck us down! Your parents, my parents, our entire race! I-I have served him all these years," Vegeta choked down a sob and probably another mouthful of blood as he looked at Goku, a desperate fire burning in his eyes. "I served him in the hopes of growing stronger. So that one day, I could give our people vengeance! But it was never meant to be me. I see that now. You, Kakarot. I know you do not care for our race but you are all that is left! You are the last Saiyan. It must be you that kills him! He must pay for his crimes, must die, by Saiyan hands! I… I…" the words seemed to be more painful than the actual process of death but Vegeta willed himself to say them, choking down his pride. "I am begging you, Kakarot! You must be merciless! You must have stone where your heart has been! This is not a game, woman! Only you can give our people vengeance! Only you can give us justice. You… are the last… Saiyan." Vegeta shut his eyes and turned his head to the side. "Please…" he whispered softly. Then he spoke no more.

A cold wind blew across the field, blowing Vegeta's hair softly. The King was dead. Goku looked down at the man who had tried to kill her, her son, her wife, who had played a hand in the deaths of many of her friends and had tried to destroy her planet. She looked down at his corpse and frowned softly. She didn't pity Vegeta and she didn't feel sorry for him. She was just… sad. His whole life, dedicated to a single goal. She could almost understand him. Goku turned away from Vegeta and snarled, blasting a hole in the ground with a kiai from her eyes. She bundled Vegeta up in her arms and carried him over to the hole, laying him down gently.

Freeza watched all of this with vague curiosity. He had never actually seen a burial before. When one of his own race died, the Arcosian custom was to launch the corpse into a star, the only thing deemed powerful enough to be worthy of destroying an Arcosian body. Then the Arcosian's body would be a part of the cosmos and, in a strange sense, be forever.

'I think I get it,' Goku told Vegeta as she buried him. 'You were a terrible person, Vegeta, there's no denying it. But maybe you weren't always meant to be terrible. If Freeza hadn't destroyed our planet, you might have been better.' There was no guarantee Goku had to be good, after all. If someone meaner than Grandpa Gohan had found her or if she hadn't hit her head then maybe she would have been a killer, too. 'All you ever wanted was to avenge your people. Our people. To bare your soul like that to me, to cry like that… I think you sold yourself short. You weren't as cold-hearted as you thought.' Goku finished covering Vegeta and patted the dirt flat with her hands. 'You were a proud warrior, Vegeta, but when it mattered you let go of your pride. Lend me some of that pride now. Let me share your warrior spirit. I may not have been raised a Saiyan and they may not be my people but I will fight for them and for you!' Goku stood and dusted off her hands before turning to Freeza.

"Finally," he muttered dryly. "I was beginning to think he'd never die." He half-expected Vegeta to pop out of the ground and keep rambling.

"Shut up," Goku told him flatly. Freeza staredd at her in open-mouthed astonishment. Once again, it looked like Goku had said something that he'd never heard before in his life. "People like you make me sick! There's no one stronger than you and you use your power to make everyone scared of you and let you do whatever you want!" Goku looked at Freeza and saw Tao Pai Pai and Piccolo Daimaou. "Well I've beaten them and I will beat you!" She got into a fighting stance and glared at him. "Bet on that!" She looked at the other four out of the corner of her eye as Freeza looked at her with an amused expression. "You guys need to get out of here. Start heading back to wherever Bulma is." The others blinked as if they had completely forgotten Bulma and Goku had just reminded them that she existed.

OoOoOoO

Back at base camp, Bulma had completely dismantled the toaster, the microwave, her hairdryer, and had taken out the eccentric rotating mass vibration motors from a few of her "personal devices." She had done all of this, mostly out of boredom, but also to cobble together a working radio. Or, at least, she was pretty sure it'd work. The motors all vibrated at different frequencies, which worked to find the frequency for a receptive signal, which she searched for with an antennae she'd made by stripping some of the wires in the microwave and tying them around one of the filaments in the toaster. Hopefully, it worked on the same principle as the phone she'd used to call Earth, which she'd also had to destroy, by bouncing off the stars. Mostly she was looking for music or something to listen to. Anything to break up her monotony. She fiddled with her hodgepodge monstrosity, her tongue sticking out in furious concentration as she mostly got static. At least that was something. After all, the microwave would usually only say "ding."

"You guys need to get out of here," Goku's voice suddenly said. Bulma was startled by the sound, having not heard Goku's voice in a month, and nearly fell out of her chair. Still, though, victory! At least now she wasn't completely isolated from whatever was going on outside the cave anymore.

"Fear not, Enrique," Bulma said wistfully to one of her dearly departed devices. "You shall not have died in vain!"

OoOoOoO

"Goku," Piccolo asked nervously as he eyed Freeza, "Are you sure you can handle this?"

"Yeah," Krillin added despite his shaking voice, "Freeza's pretty powerful." Krillin was, of course, desperate for a way out of this situation but he wasn't going to just leave Goku without her saying so.

"He's mine," Goku assured them. The others nodded and began to leave, Suno stopping to give Goku a quick kiss on the cheek. Gohan lingered the longest but he eventually followed after them. Freeza chuckled again and flexed his fingers as he eyed Goku like a cat seeing a dog for the first time.

"I'm sure you believe you're doing something noble," he told her, "But I know the truth. You're sending them away because you don't want your loved ones to see the mangled corpse you're about to become." Goku scoffed.

"Are you gonna fight me or what?" she asked. Freeza chuckled and they charged. The island exploded immediately under them, blasted completely into oblivion by the force of their collision. They traded kicks and punches, each avoiding the other's attacks, cutting through the air with violent gusts of wind from the speed and strength of their attacks. They filled the air over the island with their attacks, appearing here and there, always coming from above or below to try and find a better angle of attack but never getting through the other's defenses, always just being dodged or blocked. Goku threw a blast of ki at Freeza who dodged and fired eye beams at Goku through the spray. Goku dodged the wild blasts while wondering how Freeza's aim could be so bad. Goku stepped and was behind Freeza in a flash. She went to smash an elbow into the back of his head but was surprised when it went right through him. She heard Freeza burst out of the water and spun around just in time to see him blast her with a massive pink ki ball. She went to throw up her hands to block it and the ball shoved her down into another one of the islands.

To Freeza's shock, the blast didn't kill her immediately. Goku continued to push back as the ball pushed her into a mountain and drove it away, putting her fists together to spike it into the sky like a volleyball. Freeza watched the ball fly away with mounting annoyance before looking down at Goku who was fanning her smoking hands in visible pain.

"Ow, ow, ow, owowowow!"

OoOoOoO

On Kaiou's planet, Launch looked up from the poker game that she, Yamcha, Ten, and Chaozu were playing to look at the Kaiou, who hadn't said anything in about half an hour. He was just staring out into the pink sky.

"Hey," she called, "What's goin' on? You want Yamcha to deal you in?" Kaiou shook his head.

"Goku's fighting Freeza," he explained.

"Oh yeah?" Yamcha asked as he frowned at his miserable hand. "How's that goin'?" He had a sneaking suspicion that, as the only non-Crane student among the dead, Chaozu was making sure he always got shit hands.

"Freeza killed Vegeta," Kaiou told them over his shoulder. "Easily." The foursome dropped their cards and scrambled toward him, their game forgotten immediately.

"Goku can't fight someone like that!" Ten muttered breathlessly. He wasn't sure if anyone could. As the other three had all been killed by Vegeta's buddy Nappa, who was weaker than Vegeta, they all shared his dread.

"Actually," Kaiou corrected, "She's holding her own." The others' expressions brightened at that so he kept 'For now' to himself.

OoOoOoO

"I'm impressed," Freeza admitted as he touched down on the island Goku was standing on. "You're strong for a monkey. I didn't think there was anyone outside my own family that could be stronger than Captain Ginyu."

"Oh yeah," Goku told him as her hands finished smoking. "He tried to steal my body because I was stronger than him."

"Hmm, yes," Freeza mused, "He does that. Or did that, I suppose." He shrugged. "You're still going to die." He rushed Goku with a flying kick but she flipped backwards and drove her feet into his back. Freeza arched his back so that her toes just grazed him and wrapped his feet around Goku's ankles before flinging her away. She threw out her hands and feet to drag herself to a stop in the dirt and broke into a sprint, kicking up small craters with every step as she threw her shoulder into him. The tackle sent them both stumbling and when they came up to their feet, Goku went for a roundhouse kick but Freeza deftly dodged the attack and smacked Goku down with a chop, shoving her through the ground so that she punched out at an angle and into the ocean below. As Goku recovered and got back to her feet, she didn't immediately rush into the fight. Instead, she strategized.

OoOoOoO

The others hadn't actually gone very far, as it turned out, and had found a cliffside perch to watch the battle from. Well, watch was generous. They had struggled to keep up with Vegeta and Freeza and this fight was a completely different animal. All they had to keep up with were flashes of color and thunderclaps of impacts that were dozens of times the speed of sound and nearly knocked them off their feet.

"Hey," Krillin muttered after they watched Freeza knock Goku through the ground and into the ocean, "She's been down there for a while. You think she's okay?"

"Mom's ki feels the same," Gohan reminded him. "She's fine."

"Besides," Suno added, "Goku can hold her breath for a really long time."

"Something you discovered from personal experience?" Krillin asked. Suno punched him in the back of the head. "OW!"

Piccolo was weighing the pros and cons of ripping off his own ears.

OoOoOoO

'So,' Goku thought, 'He can't sense ki. That's why his aim was so bad when he was trying to shoot me with his eye lasers when he couldn't see me!' Which meant Goku had an advantage and it gave her an idea. It was something she'd never tried before buuuuut if Yamcha could do it… Goku pushed her hands out into the water and concentrated, focusing the energy carefully through her palms. 'Kaaaa meeee,' a blue-white ball of ki formed in each hand. 'Haaaa meee…' the balls gently popped off of her hands and Goku splayed her fingers out and pushed her arms forward slightly as if urging them to stay. 'Ha!' The balls doubled in size and Goku grinned. 'Perfect! Here goes nothin'.' She lifted up her right hand and the right ball surged up through the water and into the air.

Up above, Freeza was beginning to grow irritated and was about to blast her out before a white light surged up out of the ocean.

"Ha!" he laughed as he swung his arm out to strike. "That must be–" then the thing zipped past him, entirely too small to be a person. "...Her?" Then another flash from his left. "This one!" he declared assuredly as he kicked at… another ball, which exploded against his foot. "What in the cosmo–" Then something hit him in the side of his head with the force of a ship dropping out of lightspeed and crashing into a planet.

"Gotcha!" Goku crowed as she rammed her feet into Freeza's head with a dropkick. Freeza went sailing down to the ground with such a tremendous force that the impact caused a planetwide quake so fierce that, on the other side of the planet, Bulma was nearly knocked from her chair again. Goku grinned as she watched Freeza push rubble off of himself and glare at her. He didn't really look hurt, just scuffed up mostly, but she could tell by the look on his face that she was getting to him.

Freeza's mouth twisted up in a little snarl and he raised his hands into the air. It was time, he decided, for this monkey to learn her place. Using his awesome telekinetic might, he broke nearly the entire island into rubble and hurled it at her from every direction. She dodged the interweaving ferocious stony assault for a few moments before, showing surprising intellect for a monkey, she blasted them away with an explosive bubble of energy. That was when Freeza made his move. He flew behind Goku and threw out his hand, trapping her in a bubble of telekinetic energy. Goku growled in pain as she struggled to break free of the trap and glared at him. Freeza laughed before launching Goku away. He smacked her across the sky, battering her around and around, always moving to where she was going to land and hitting her again to send her somewhere else. He finished off with an energy blast to send her flying to another one of the little islands with an almighty explosion.

"Well," he said as he watched the mushroom cloud, "That should be the end of that."

"Jeez," Suno muttered as she watched Goku pick herself up out of the crater she'd created beneath them, "That was some attack." It was hard to tell who was stronger between Goku and Freeza. They were both so far above her own power that it was difficult to see the differences between them. It was, she reflected glumly, like asking an ant the difference between a skyscraper and a mountain. They were both impossibly large to her. 'But which one is which?' She wondered fearfully.

"Ah man," Goku muttered as she dusted herself off. "I'm getting holes in my gi!" Then she flew off again to meet Freeza, kicking up a cloud of dust and creating contrails as she flew. When she got to Freeza, he was waiting smugly with his arms folded, using his tail like a chair as he hovered in the air.

"Which do you prefer," he asked to her surprise, "The air or the ground? For fighting, I mean." Goku thought about that for a moment.

"The ground," she told him. She was always used to fighting with something under her feet, something to push off of and land on. Maybe it was all the tournaments or maybe it was because she'd only learned to fly a couple years ago. Freeza smirked and looked around before jerking his head in the direction of one of the islands. They flew down to it and landed, Freeza rolling his neck from side to side as Goku tossed off her ruined overshirt.

"Gee," she quipped, "I'm surprised you let me pick where to fight."

"What can I say," Freeza replied, "You amuse me. No one's gotten dust on me outside of my own family in my entire life." He had, of course, completely blotted the blood Vegeta had drawn from his mind. "Tell you what. As an added bonus, I won't use my hands." He held his hands up to show Goku and crossed them over his chest as if pantomiming to a stupid child.

"Wow," Goku muttered sarcastically, "So generous. Maybe I was wrong about you."

"I am many things, little monkey," Freeza shot back. "You couldn't begin to imagine half of them."

"Whatever," Goku said dryly as she got back into her stance. "I'm gonna punch you a lot now, okay?" Freeza smirked and gestured with his tail for Goku to attack. Goku lunged forward and slipped through Freeza's handicapped guard to send him staggering back with an elbow under the chin. Goku peppered Freeza's chest and neck with spear strikes while he was off-balance and cracked him across the back of the head with a heel kick to make Freeza stumble forward into a straight punch in the nose. Freeza glared at Goku while he rubbed his nose with his tail and Goku smirked at him. He snarled and charged at Goku, his kicks coming fast and furious. Goku blocked and dodged and fired back, now having the limb advantage in this encounter. Freeza got in a fair share of kicks to Goku's chest and face which, given the shape of Freeza's feet, felt oddly like getting punched.

Goku did several handsprings to escape Freeza's range and lobbed a series of ki balls at Freeza's feet, kicking up an explosion of dirt and dust. Freeza smirked at the patently obvious strategy and whipped his tail behind him but instead Goku came from the left. Freeza fired his eye beams at Goku but they went right through her and she came at him from above, smashing the point of her elbow down onto the top of his head. Freeza let out a grunt of surprise, even pain, as Goku grabbed him by the ears and headbutted him as hard as she could. The blow sent Freeza flying and Goku gave chase. Freeza twisted in midair and cracked Goku twice across the face with his tail, the tip biting into Goku's cheeks and drawing two thin crimson lines. He went for a third strike but Goku grabbed his tail, ignoring the stinging pain in her palms as she spun Freeza around and around like a top, carrying him higher into the sky and spinning ever faster, Freeza crying out in distress all the while. She flung Freeza hard down to the ground and he streaked like a comet before hitting the island with enough force to make a crater and burrow a hole into the ground. Goku landed on the lip of the crater and, having learned from her fight with Vegeta, waited for Freeza to come out. He came rushing up from behind her, even faster than she had expected, and wrapped his tail around Goku's throat.

"Gack!" Goku cried out as Freeza's tail squeezed. He began to laugh maniacally as his tail constricted ever-tighter. Goku pulled at it, her fingers digging into the alabaster flesh as she struggled and kicked, trying to break Freeza's grip. As the edges of Goku's world began to blur and grow black, she did what came naturally: she opened her mouth wide and bit down as hard as she could.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!" Freeza shrieked in pain as Goku's teeth sank into his flesh. She snarled around his tail as the taste of blood filled her mouth. Freeza broke the grip of his tail and stumbled away from Goku, staring at her in disbelief and horror as he gingerly stroked his tail, blowing on the teeth marks to try and make the pain go away. Goku, for her part, spat out Freeza's purple blood and her face screwed up in disgust.

"Blech!" Goku exclaimed before spitting a few more times. "You really need to bathe more, Freeza! You taste awful!" Then she chuckled at Freeza's dismay and his features contorted into a mask of rage. How dare she mock him?! He was the great and powerful Freeza! He darted to Goku and, in a fury, pulled back his right hand and punched her across the jaw. Goku was sent flying back, a thin rivulet of blood trailing after her. Freeza looked down at the blood on his knuckles and smirked. That was better. Then, to his immeasurable perplexment, she began to laugh.

"What are you laughing about?" Freeza demanded in a mixture of anger and genuine confusion. Goku was still grinning as she got to her feet and wiped blood off her lip with the back of her hand.

"Made you use your hands," she pointed out. Freeza blinked and gawked at her. She had.

"Let's say that coupon is expired," Freeza retorted with icy fury, "As you soon shall be."