The Rematch At Last! Vegeta's Madness!
Their blows came swiftly and with unmatched ferocity, each strike carrying truly terrifying force, delivered with nothing less than the killing intent. He was a whirlwind of malice in his attacks. He was trained precision combined with feral rage. He would defeat her. He would destroy her, as he always knew he would. She pierced that whirlwind like a knife, straight, true, and completely focused. Behind her anger at the slaughter, there lay a heavy weight of disappointment to see him fall so far. She really thought he could be better than this. The battle continued to rage and the earth shook with each attack. For never was there a battle of hatred so true, as that of King Vegeta and Son Goku.
A bestial roar ripped out of Vegeta's throat as he drove a knee into Goku's face, sending her flying before she caught herself, pushing off of a pillar of stone and flying back at Vegeta. He met her charge with a snarl, swiping at her like his hand was a claw. She caught his wrist and elbow and spun him around and around, hurling him to the ground. Vegeta landed hard on his feet and barely ducked a kick that whizzed past his head as Goku was upon him in an instant. She pivoted to regain her balance and pressed the attack, firing rapid jabs at his face and chest. He blocked them all before grabbing her fists and yanking her forward, ramming his feet into Goku's chest before slamming her into the ground. Vegeta raised a hand high overhead and created a blade of ki, driving it down into Goku's heart, passing right through her afterimage. Goku threw out a palm strike into small of Vegeta's back, going through his own afterimage. She just managed to move her head in time to avoid another slash with his ki blade before grabbing the third swipe with her own ki-charged hand at the wrist and smashing her elbow up under his jaw, snapping his head back and making his teeth crash together. Vegeta spat the blood into Goku's eye, making her cry out and try to rub away the blinding red. His opening found, Vegeta kneed her in the stomach as hard as he possibly could, sending her hurtling away and crashing into mountains.
'Damn,' Goku thought with a wince as she blasted the rubble off of herself with her aura, 'He's really good. I guess I shouldn't be surprised if all he's been doing is training for seven years.' He was fighting differently as well, Goku noted. Not only had his style changed in the twelve years since they'd had their first encounter but there was a savagery to his technique as well that Goku couldn't really remember encountering against any opponent. It was dangerous, she knew, both for her and for him. Before she could formulate a strategy, however, Vegeta came screaming in with a flying roundhouse kick, throwing his entire body into it. Goku barely had a chance to bring up her forearm to block it and the momentum of his blow made it carry through and he swung around her forearm, hitting her in the back of the head with his toes. The blow made Goku stagger forward and Vegeta grabbed a fistful of her golden hair, smashing his fist into her kidney area, over and over again. Goku had a feeling that the only reason that these blows, while still very painful, weren't as debilitating as they should have been, was because she was dead. She threw her leg back when Vegeta pulled back a fist for another blow, jamming her foot into his knee. Vegeta cried out in pain as his leg buckled and she swung her elbow around to smash him in the nose. The King of All Saiyans wiped the blood from his nose and snorted the rest of it out before looking down at the blood on his glove. Then he looked back at Goku and fixed that horrible grin on his face again before lunging at Goku once more. This, Goku thought to herself as she deflected a haymaker punch and countered with an uppercut, was not how she'd wanted to spend her day. 'Nope,' she thought to herself as Vegeta weaved out of the uppercut's path and headbutted Goku under the chin. 'Definitely not.'
"Finally," Vegeta snarled as he grabbed Goku by the front of her gi with one hand, his other hand smashing her across the face with hooking blows. "I'm finally free! Back to the way I was before! There's finally nothing getting in the way of our battle, of my triumph! I can put the universe back the way it was meant to be!" Goku ducked under a hook and smashed her fist hard into Vegeta's side, making him crumple around the blow and drop his hand from her gi. She followed this with a roundhouse heel kick to the side of Vegeta's head, sending him away before he caught himself in the air and flew up high, raining ki blasts down on her. He laughed madly as Goku evaded and deflected the blasts, madness in his eyes. "How my blood races again! How my heart pounds! You could never understand how this feels, Kakarot! Unfettered and wild, living only for the battle, fighting for the sake of fighting! Destroying because it was in your power to destroy!" Goku used her Instant Transmission to appear above Vegeta, driving her knee into his back and appearing in front of him again when the blow sent him hurtling to drive an axehandle blow into his sternum.
"So is this the strategy you've developed in the last seven years?" Goku asked as Vegeta hung limply around her fists. "Talking me to death?" she allowed herself a bitter chuckle. "Because I hate to tell ya, that's gonna be a pro–" her words were transformed into a sputtering gasp of pain as Vegeta drove his fist into her gut.
"Actually, Kakarot," he snarled as he grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, "I thought I'd beat you to death." He drove his fist into Goku's stomach a few more times before she kicked his hand away.
"Good luck with that," she spat and wrapped her arms and legs around the arm choking her. Vegeta let out a bark of pain as Goku wrenched back, trying to snap his arm at the elbow. Vegeta dove back toward the ground, smashing himself and Goku into the earth with a tremendous explosion.
'Man,' Goku thought as she bounced off the ground and spun through the air a few times, 'I hope Gohan and Xī are having better luck than me.' Vegeta rocketed toward her out of the smoke as debris rained down on them, swinging a punch like a maniac with a meat cleaver. Goku grabbed his fist and threw a punch of her own, which Vegeta countered by catching it, leaving them to smash their knees into one another, only to block those attacks with their other knees. With a unanimously frustrated snarl, they headbutted each other, the shockwave of that impact sending them flying away from one another.
OoOoOoO
Babidi watched Goku and Vegeta's battle with glee, rubbing his hands together and cackling madly as the two clubbed each other half to death. It was everything that he'd hoped for and more!
"This is perfect!" Babidi crowed triumphantly as he danced exuberantly from foot to tiny foot. "Look at the power these two have and the hatred that they're fighting with! I'll be able to resurrect Majin Boo in no time at all!" Sure enough, the needle of the dial on Boo's egg was climbing higher and higher, moving swiftly closer to completely full. "Time to take this outside," he decided, waving his hands in the air to bring himself, Dabura, and the egg out into the open air, quite a distance away from the ship, just in case Boo got a little rowdy upon being free. The raw, destructive force of Boo's evil was too great for him to be released in the ship or even near it. Babidi's magic wouldn't be able to contain it and the ship would be destroyed. "Closer," he whispered eagerly as he looked back at the dial again, "Closeeeeer…"
"Master," Dabura informed him, "It appears we have company." Babidi turned back around to see Gohan and Xī flying toward them and his smile faltered. Of course. In all of his excitement, he'd forgotten that– for whatever reason– Vegeta had elected not to kill the Kaioushin and her pet. Well, he told himself, it was nothing that Dabura couldn't handle. Especially since they wouldn't be able to fight him to their fullest without giving more power to… what was that thing on the boy's chest?
A few moments earlier…
"So what's this thing you're putting on my chest?" Gohan asked as they flew from Babidi's ship's location, having not found any sign of Babidi or Dabura's energies. Xī made quick, intricate movements with her hands as she spoke.
"It's a counterspell to Babidi's magic," she explained. "It should shield you temporarily from the effects of the Majin Spell so that you won't give any energy to Boo's resurrection from fighting Dabura."
"Why couldn't you have done this before?" Gohan wondered as the glowing white symbol appeared on his chest. It looked a little bit like the character for 'West', actually.
"I needed a close enough exposure to Babidi's magic to figure out its properties and the magic that would counterbalance it," Xī told him. "Ironically enough, I wouldn't have been able to get the proper reading without Vegeta getting possessed right in front of us." Gohan frowned, trying not to think about those events too much. They'd have to deal with that later. Maybe Vegeta would be freed once Babidi was dead.
"So how long's this last?" he asked as he shot up to Super Saiyan 2.
"Well it's a rush job," Xī admitted with a shrug, "So probably not more than a few minutes. Make it count!"
OoOoOoO
Gohan barreled into Dabura like a freight train, sending the both of them hurtling away as he rained punches down on the Demon King's face. "That last one was a draw!" he shouted as Dabura shoved him away, the pair flying across the desert, locked in a twirling deadly double-helix. "Time for the rematch!" He threw his fist into Dabura's face, who parried the blow with the back of a hand.
"That's the only sort of match you'll be for me!" Dabura declared arrogantly as he aimed a spear strike at Gohan's heart. As Gohan kicked his hand away and drove an ax kick down toward Dabura, a small part of him almost maligned the fact that he had to kill Dabura.
'He looks like such a villain and we've got a great repartee,' he thought. 'He'd make a great archenemy!' The battle carried them well away from Babidi, who was defenseless as Xī loomed over him.
"Well, well, well," Xī drawled with a rare moment of vindictive malevolence as she held a hand over her head. "Isn't this familiar?" The shuang go appeared in that hand and Babidi could only let out an airless squawk of terror as she swung for the fences, directly at his head.
Babidi's head was sent flying away from the blow. As was the rest of his body, as he'd managed to throw up a magical barrier around himself in the split-second before his head should have come off. Babidi bounced and rolled along the ground in his purple bubble of protection, scrabbling and kicking desperately to try and right himself as Xī came hurtling down at him again like a comet, smashing down on the bubble and causing an enormous crack to appear at the point of impact. This, Babidi realized as his already bulbous eyes bugged out even further, was bad. He looked frantically up into the sky to see that Dabura's attention was still focused on the Kaioushin's champion and, when Babidi tried to summon him away from the fight, the boy grabbed Dabura's cape and wrapped it around his head, blinding the Demon King as he wrapped his legs around him from behind in a bodyscissors and started raining punches down on Dabura's head. Xī swung a third time, the crack growing larger as Babidi tried frantically to hold the bubble together.
'Vegeta!' he called frantically. 'Vegeta, Vegeta! Get over here!'
OoOoOoO
The voice in his head made Vegeta flinch for half a second, stopping him from driving a palm into Goku's knee after she'd caught a kick in his underarm. His guard dropping just long enough for Goku to rip her leg free and slam it into his face, sending him smashing into a rock wall.
'Vegeta!' Babidi echoed again frantically as Vegeta fell down from the wall onto his knees, blood dripping from wounds on his arms and down his forehead from where he and Kakarot had headbutted each other, seeping into the fabrics covering his chest and legs. 'Stop your silly battling and get over here at once! Kill the Kaioushin before she kills me! I command you!'
"Be quiet," Vegeta demanded as he got to his feet. "I don't care about whatever grievance you have with the Kaioushin! My battle is here! I will not be denied!"
'That's adorable, Vegeta,' Babidi told him in a terrified voice, 'But seriously, enough is enough! I command you to come here at once! I am the master, you are the servant! You shall be what I say you are and do as I tell you to do!'
"Shut up!" Vegeta growled as he grabbed the sides of his head, the freakishly-engorged veins twitching. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"
Goku took a moment to catch her breath as Vegeta argued with Babidi in his head. Like Vegeta, she was pretty banged up already. On top of the cut on her forehead and a few other cuts here and there, she had bruising all along her ribs and most of her left shin. Chunks had been torn out of her gi again but that had never really bothered her. There was no excitement from this battle like she'd been hoping for when they were at the Budoukai. There was only grim resolution. She had to beat him. She had to stop this mess.
'Enough of this!' Then Vegeta was down in the dirt, screaming in agony as his body seemed to course with electricity. 'You will obey me! You are mine to command! By every fiber of your body, by the blood running through your veins, by the soul squirming in my grasp, I command you!' Vegeta howled in pain as he scrabbled in the dirt, one hand clutching his stomach as his blood burned like acid and the mark on his forehead felt as if it were branding itself into his flesh.
"Get out of my head!" Vegeta bellowed as he got back onto his feet. "I will not be distracted! You will not keep me from my destiny! Your words may invade my mind and you may hold my soul in your hand, but there is one thing that you shall never lay claim to! The one thing a true Saiyan warrior always keeps!" His body tensed and he grit his teeth, calling on all his strength. "HIS PRIDE!" He cried, stretching out the word and turning it into a roar as his aura flared like a raging inferno, driving Babidi out of his mind like poison being drawn from a wound.
OoOoOoO
The backlash from Vegeta's refusal sent a shockwave through the shield Babidi had created, causing it to explode just as Xī made her downward swing, sending her flying back and driving Babidi even further down into the ground. He crawled out of the dirt as quickly as his spindly arms could pull him, his hands trembling as he struggled to understand what had just happened.
"That shouldn't be possible," Babidi whispered to himself in disbelief with a shake of his enormous head. "No one can resist my powers! No one can tell me no! Once they are under my control, they belong to me! He shouldn't even be able to breathe without my express permission!" Even so, he noticed the needle moving closer and closer to Boo's release and decided that it wasn't important. All that mattered was that soon his triumph would be at hand! Yet he couldn't let it go. He couldn't wrap his brain around it, couldn't understand it. It was… it was… "Inconceiva–" Babidi started to cry before he found himself staring up at Xī again, her blade pointed right between his eyes.
"Babidi," she told him coldly, "Scion of the mad sorcerer Bibidi. You share the burden of his crimes, on top of your own atrocities in the pursuit of his power. You sought to resurrect Majin Boo and bring untold destruction to the universe. So by my supreme and sole authority as Kaioushin, protector and creator," she raised the shuang go above her head. "I do sentence you to–"
"Paparapapa!" Babidi screamed desperately as he flung his hands forward. There was a starburst of darkness and Xī dropped her weapon, clutching at her eyes in pain as she fell to her knees. Babidi tried fruitlessly for a moment to pick up the blade while the Kaioushin was defenseless and slay her with her own weapon in the name of poetic justice but he was far too weak to lift it from the ground. Instead, he contented himself with hiding behind a rock and recovering, holding a hand to his heaving chest. His body wasn't meant for this kind of exertion. It was fine, he told himself, Dabura would kill her when he had an opening. In the meantime, she'd be stuck in her own little hell while he waited.
OoOoOoO
Xī stood in complete darkness and, for a moment, she thought Babidi had struck her blind. However, she soon discovered that he'd done something far, far worse to her.
"Xiiiii," the voices whispered hauntingly, echoing off of nothingness. Out of the darkness, they came. Shengda, Bei, Nan, and Dong.
"Oh no," Xī whispered as she took a step back away from them, shaking her head frantically as they moved to circle her. "No, no, no!"
"Why didn't you help me?" Nan asked her. His deep, soothing voice had been turned hard and brusque. "Why didn't you join the battle sooner? Why didn't you try to pull me to safety? How could you let me be consumed by the beast?"
"I-I didn't…" Xī stammered weakly, "I tried to–"
"Why didn't you listen to me?" Bei demanded. His warm, fatherly face was contorted into a miserable scowl as he looked at her accusingly. "Why didn't you heed my council? How dare you use my weapon in my stead? You do not honor me!"
"I was trying to carry you on," Xī insisted, "My weapons were destroyed, I needed to… I-I wanted to live by your teachings…" her words were weak and hollow. What could she do? What could she say?
"Why weren't you faster?" Shengda wondered, his friendly, jovial voice turned into a mocking song. "Why didn't you come to me sooner? I could have called on the Hakaishin! I would not have had to sacrifice myself for you! And what have you done with that sacrifice, hmm?"
"Nothing," Dong interjected before Xī could even defend herself. His eyes, that had so often looked at her with such warmth and gentleness, were icy cold and full of contempt. "The same that she did with my sacrifice! Always so arrogant, always so headstrong, and look where it has gotten us!" Every word that he said was a dagger driving into her.
"You have led the universe to ruin! You have failed! Because of you, death and chaos have spread like a cancer upon our creation!" Their words all came at once and Xī shook her head frantically, covering her ears to try and block it out. It was no use, however she fought it, the words simply burrowed into her brain. "It is all your fault! All your fault!" Xī crumpled to her knees and huddled into a ball as luminescent tears streamed down her face.
"My fault…" she whispered with a nod, "My fault…"
OoOoOoO
A snarl passed through Goku's lips as she rolled with a right hook from Vegeta, using the momentum to plant a spinning knee viciously into the side of his head. "I have to ask," she taunted him as flipped backward and caught him under the chin with a kick. "If your pride's so important to you, why did you let yourself become Babidi's slave?" Vegeta slowly lowered his head and spat blood out onto the desert dirt far below them, their battle having carried them high into the sky.
"You would dare ask me that?" he asked her coldly. "You, of all creatures?!" He lunged forward, tackling Goku and cinching his arms around her waist, driving them both hard into the ground, burrowing through the earth until they came to a sudden stop. He climbed onto her chest, pinning her arms down with his knees and driving hammering blows onto her unprotected face. "Because I needed to return to my former self! My true self! A warrior without equal, living only for bloodshed and violence!" Goku fired a ki blast out of her mouth into his chest to knock Vegeta off of her, but he came right back before she could even finish getting to her feet, driving his knee into her stomach. "You drove me to this, Kakarot!" He snarled, grabbing her by the remains of her shirt and hauling her up to her feet.
"What the hell did I do?!" Goku asked in frustration, causing Vegeta to hurl her away in fury. Goku collided painfully with an enormous boulder, her back spasming from the impact and making her drop to a knee, panting for breath.
"For seven years, I trained," Vegeta explained as he advanced on her. "For seven years, I kept improving. I never accepted my limits, I never stopped pushing even after you were dead and gone. Or so I thought," he remarked bitterly. "I couldn't even see it at the time but I was slowly being poisoned by this damnable, disgusting planet, much like you had. In time I had a… family," the word passed through his lips like bile, "And had even grown to care for them! I had contented myself with 'excellence' in other aspects of life as I silently accepted my fate. My mind no longer raced with thoughts of destruction and battlelust no longer made my heart beat within my chest. Instead, I was remembering birthdays and attending boardroom meetings, attending school plays and going on family picnics! And the worst part was that I was growing to like it!" Vegeta's rage bubbled forth again as he glared murderously at Goku. "I couldn't even see that I was dying!"
OoOoOoO
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Goten asked as she and Trunks flew side-by-side.
"Yeah," Trunks told her, "I can feel my dad's ki!" But it felt wrong. His dad's ki was so… violent, evil, and awful. What had happened to him? Trunks just couldn't understand.
"What are we gonna do when we get to your dad and my mom?" Goten asked, fighting every instinct that told her to pull away. Not because she was scared as they drew closer and closer to the growing power, but because she could sense Gohan's energy and couldn't shake the feeling that her big bro needed her.
"I… I dunno," Trunks admitted with his eyes downcast. He'd never been unsure of anything before but this was… it was just crazy! Their parents were so much stronger than them! What could they do? "But we've gotta try something! We've gotta make them stop fighting!"
OoOoOoO
"I remained happily ignorant of my failures, Kakarot," Vegeta continued as they circled each other slowly, Goku back on her feet. "I was content and self-assured in mediocrity. Until you returned!" He lunged at Goku with a diving kick that she bent backward to avoid before standing up again, swinging a backfist at the back of Vegeta's head that he brought up a forearm to block. "You appeared out of the ether and made a mockery of everything I am, once again!" He balled up his fists so hard that his nails bit into his palms and made them bleed. "You had surpassed me yet again, even more than before!" He swung a bloody fist at Goku, catching her on the shoulder before she retaliated with a chop aimed at his collarbone that he pivoted to avoid, her fingertips grazing his flesh. "It's ridiculous! It's disgusting! You and your… innate ability to grow stronger, that damnable gift that the gods granted you to make a mockery of me! I saw that today and was forced to confront the miserable truth that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, the King of All Saiyans would forever live in the shadow of a low-class cow. Can you even imagine my rage, Kakarot, my shock at the undeniable truth that you were simply better than me? What else could I do but sell my soul?" He asked as they parried and deflected one another's blows, attacks so ferociously powerful that even the grazing impacts would have wiped out entire continents. "When you were so clearly favored by the gods to stand above me, what other recourse did I have than to make a deal with the devil?" He charged a ki ball in his palm and drove it into her chest, making Goku cry out in pain as it burned her skin. "Now that the gap has closed between us, I can finally break free of this unending nightmare and crush you under my heel, as I should have done twelve years ago!"
To all of Vegeta's diatribes, Goku only had a single answer.
"You're pathetic," she spat at him. The words caught Vegeta so completely off-guard that he was wide open as she drove her palms into his chest. "Kamehameha!" The beam sent Vegeta hurtling away, his chest red and burning as he careened through a cliffside before Goku was behind him, kicking him high into the air, only to knock him back down again with an almighty axehandle blow, causing him to hit the ground with tectonic force. Goku had a moment to catch her breath before she noticed the ground down below starting to turn red. She drifted closer and realized that not only was it reddening, it was becoming much less solid. That was when Vegeta dragged himself up out of the boiling earth, hatred in his eyes like no other living creature had ever known. His power was so great, his rage so white-hot, that the ground around him had begun to melt and turn into lava. A wordless, animalistic bellow of fury ripped out of his chest as he threw himself into Goku with all his might, punching her in the face as hard as he could.
OoOoOoO
"Come on," Babidi muttered, his face pressed up against the dial. "Almost there, almost there! Just a little bit more!" The Kaioushin continued to shiver and shake in her little ball, bringing him no small measure of pleasure. He almost wished that he could see inside her mind to see what was agonizing her so. No doubt it was delicious.
Gohan allowed himself a moment to look away from Dabura after he'd sent the Demon King flying off with another Masenko, wondering what was going on with Xī. She should've been able to kill Babidi by now! That was when he saw her, curled into a ball. He had never expected to see her like this, a figure so confident and intelligent, always in control.
'Babidi must have cast some kind of spell on her!' he realized. 'I've got to snap her out of it!' That distraction was enough for Dabura's hands to find their way around Gohan's throat and his black nails dug into the flesh, drawing blood.
"I would keep your focus on me," Dabura warned him. "I've gotten your measure, boy, and you're all out of tricks." He chuckled as his hands squeezed like a vice and Gohan's face started to turn blue. "It's not your fault," Dabura assured him, "You simply don't have the arsenal at your disposal I have."
"Maybe…" Gohan croaked out. "But I've got one move that always helps out in a jam," he slowly started to bring up his hands. "And I learned it from one of the guys you turned to stone!" He flung up his hands in front of his face, his palms practically in Dabura's eyes. "Taiyoken!" The bright blast blinded the salmon-colored sadist, causing him to let go of Gohan's throat to clutch at his eyes in pain. It gave Gohan a moment to gulp down air gratefully before he was at Xī's side with Instant Transmission, his hands grasping her shoulders and shaking her gently. "Xī!" he called to her. "Xī, it's Gohan! Whatever spell Babidi has you under, you've got to break out of it! You're stronger than that creep! You can–" Gohan's motivation was cut off by Dabura flying in and kicking him in the head, sending him sprawling.
"I'd concern yourself with the task at hand, boy!" Dabura taunted him before he turned his attention to Xī thoughtfully. He knew that Master Babidi had wanted the Kaioushin to see Boo resurrected first but, well… he raised his hand overhead and a sword flashed into his grip. "Why take chances, eh?" He asked as he took the sword in both hands and turned it downward, aiming to drive the point down through her spine. Gohan smashed into Dabura with all his strength, roaring in defiance as he sent them both hurtling away.
OoOoOoO
Xī was still huddled up in the darkness, her long-dead friends still hurling abuse at her for all her failings, all of them true, all of them things that she had told herself time and time again. That she wasn't good enough, she wasn't wise enough. That as hard as she tried, she could never do the work of five Kaioushin. She could never hold the universe in balance. It was all her fault.
Then, like a pinprick of light, she realized what she'd been thinking. Her friends. Only these were not her friends. This was nothing more than a trick of Babidi's, making her see some black vision, her darkest fear, to try and destroy her. His magic had reached into her mind and drew out all of her doubts, all of her self-loathing, and used the memories of those she held dearest, warping and perverting their images to try and break her. They were nothing. They weren't real. She found her strength in that understanding and fought her way back to her feet, no longer weeping or covering her ears.
"My friends," she breathed out as the specters continued to circle her and scream their hatreds. "I have mourned you for five million years. I have loved you all so much and I have held you deep in my heart." She smiled at them fondly. "You would never say such things to me. Because I know this, you have no power over me. Today, I let you free." She put her arms around Shengda's great frame as best she could and his warm smile returned before he dissolved into a hundred thousand scattered white petals, faintly illuminating the darkness. She turned to look up at Nan and stroked his face gently. He, too, smiled at her again and turned into petals, the light growing brighter. She held the back of Bei's head and pressed her forehead against his. When she looked at him again, he nodded approvingly and was gone as well, the darkness was nearly driven back. All that was left was Dong. He no longer spoke, but he still glared at her with hatred beyond measure. She kissed him gently and when she pulled away, he was blushing before he fluttered away. Xī was left alone, standing freely in the light.
OoOoOoO
Xī got to her feet with a grin as she stood straight and proud, breathing in deeply. She was free. Today, she would avenge her friends once and for all. She dusted the dirt off of herself before turning to look at Babidi, who was pressed up against the egg and staring at her in shock.
"Now then," she said easily as she advanced on him. "Where were we?" Babidi summoned up his magic and threw out his hands, creating a wall of force with all his power that pushed the Kaioushin back. Her feet stomped into the dirt and she pushed forward, advancing on him ever-so-slowly. He looked frantically back and forth between Xī and the dial, his face growing pale.
'Please, Vegeta!' he begged despite knowing that his messages would no longer reach his maverick servant. 'Please! Just hit her a few more times!'
OoOoOoO
A fist burst up out of cooled magma as Goku clawed her way back up onto the surface, gasping for air as she pulled herself out and flew into the air, rubbing at her neck.
"Jeez," she muttered as she looked around. "He really wasn't kidding about hating me." She still knew that Vegeta hadn't quite closed the gap but she also didn't want to use her trump card just yet. She knew it would burn through most of the time she had left and there was still more work to do. "Now where the hell is–" Vegeta came dropping out of the sky like a meteor, driving his elbow into Goku's back, making her cry out in pain as he drove her forcefully back into the ground.
"What's the matter?" Vegeta asked as he stood over Goku, watching her get up onto her hands and knees with a smirk of sick satisfaction. "Am I still pathetic?!" he drove his foot into her stomach, knocking her to the ground. She did her best to roll with the impact and got to her feet again, bringing up her fists. "Is this battle not as easily won as you thought?!" He was on top of her in an instant, going for a looping hook, only for Kakarot to slip under the blow and catch him straight in the face with a jab.
"I never said it would be easy," she shot back. "The first time I beat you wasn't easy, either!" Vegeta chuckled at that, despite the seething rage underneath his smile even as he recovered from the blow. He staggered back and wiped the blood from his mouth before raising his hand to Goku and she got into her guard, expecting a beam or a blast of some kind. Instead, five rings shot out of his fingertips, ensnaring her wrists, ankles, and throat. The rings tightened and with a flick of his wrist, Vegeta sent her careening off into a mountainside, dragging her along and laughing in her face.
"You won't be winning at all!" he taunted her, raising her up and slamming her down a few times before slamming her into the wall again. Goku's breaths were ragged as she fought and struggled against her restraints. Vegeta chuckled, slapping her across both sides of her face with his free hand. "What's the matter, clown?" He asked. "Are you feeling angry?" He wondered. "Are you feeling humiliated?" His laughter turned into a bitter bark and his face curdled with a scowl. "You don't even know the meaning of the word!" He told her as he drove his knee into her groin. "You couldn't even begin to imagine it! But I will teach you," he promised her, "My lesson will be long and arduous, but it is still nothing compared to the teachings I took from you!" He battered her face and chest with his free hand, his grip making the rings tighten over and over as Goku cried out in pain. "I was a King! Unchallenged in my knowledge of my own supremacy! The universe once trembled at the very mention of my name! In my veins runs the sole great bloodline of our people, the bloodline of kings! It was my burden to avenge our people! My destiny to become the Super Saiyan! You stole that from me! You stole everything from me, Kakarot! You ripped it away with your filthy, common hands when you dared to challenge me! You handed me my first true defeat! I actually owed you my life! My world began to crumble around me, my honor forsaken and my pride questioned by your every waking breath! Well, no more! You will be cut down inch by inch, the way you have stripped away everything that mattered to me!" He grabbed Gokus' face in his hand as he leaned in, closer and closer. "I shall have my victory," she told him as his voice dropped to a malevolent whisper. "I shall have everything that I deserve!" His face was less than an inch away from hers now.
"Oh, will you shut up?!" Goku demanded as she finally ripped free from the restraint around her throat, headbutting Vegeta across the bridge of the nose. He staggered back and she brought her arms forward one after the other, tearing chunks out of the mountain with her and smashing Vegeta in the sides of the head with them. She broke one leg free to pay Vegeta back for the low blow, then kicked him in the face with the other foot as he doubled over. "I'm so sick of this!" she told him as she punched him across the face with rights and lefts, sending him staggering back, "All you ever talk about is your Saiyan pride! How you were meant to be the strongest, how you were meant to be better than me!" She kicked Vegeta hard in the chest, sending him flying. "That's the craziest thing, Vegeta, you were stronger than me!" she reminded him as she appeared from behind him, grabbing the back of his head and slamming him down into the dirt. "I had to multiply my strength four times to be stronger than you, and I still needed Gohan, Krillin, and Suno's help to beat you! But I didn't let it bother me! You wanna know why?" Vegeta snarled as he rolled over and sprang to his feet, right into a Goku uppercut. "Because I never took anything for granted! I never just assumed that I was the best! I'm glad Freeza blew up our stupid planet!" she told him as she sent him flying with a spinning backhand. "Because otherwise, I might have grown up to be a coward like you!"
"A coward?" Vegeta echoed as he stood there in shock before it immediately gave way to his seemingly-infinite fury. "A COWARD?!"
"What else would you call it?" Goku demanded. "What would you call it when the second life goes any way other than exactly how you think it's supposed to, you start to have a crisis? What do you call it when your life is validated by being strong enough to do whatever you want and falling apart when suddenly that changes?" She narrowed her eyes, pointing at his forehead. "What do you call taking the easy way out when things got hard?"
"Get over here," Vegeta demanded as he bared his teeth like fangs and bent forward in a predatory crouch, "And I'll show you just how much of a coward I am!"
"Do you want to know why I let you live?" Goku asked. "Not just because you were strong. Not just because I wanted to fight you again so that I could prove I could beat you on my own. But because somewhere, deep down, I knew that you could have been more than what you were. That there wasn't that much separating what I could have been from what you were. I wanted to give you the chance to better yourself, to prove me right." She scowled in disgust. "But if this is all you are… I should've just let Krillin kill you." Vegeta exploded out of his crouch, pouncing for her with both hands outstretched like a lunging beast. Goku flew at him in response, throwing her leg out for a flying kick.
OoOoOoO
Babidi strained desperately as his arms trembled, beads of blue sweat running down his forehead. He just had to hold out a little longer… Then the dial flashed and a chime sounded. It was like a chorus of angels to Babidi's ears. He let out a maniacal laugh as steam escaped from the seams of the egg and it slowly began to open.
"You're too late!" he taunted the Kaioushin, his spell keeping her fingertips just out of reach. "You're just too late!" Her eyes went wide as the egg began to open and she whipped her head around to look for Gohan. She couldn't let this happen. She could not have come all this way just to fail! Millions of years of ruling and centuries of searching could not have been for nothing!
"Gohan!" she called out to him once her eyes finally found him. "You've got to do something! Anything! Do it now!" Gohan grabbed Dabura by the cape and swung him around and around as hard as he could before letting him fly, sending the Demon King hurtling off into the sky until he disappeared from sight. There was only one thing for Gohan to do. He pivoted his body to one side and reached down deep inside himself to draw upon that power, the one he'd used to defeat Cell seven years ago. It had vanquished an ultimate evil once. He hoped it would be enough to do it a second time.
"Ryyuuuuu…" a red light gathered in Gohan's' hands as red lightning arced and snaked over his body, like a dragon wrapping itself around him. "Haaameee…" Gohan's spiked hair grew even higher and even started growing longer, slowly running down his back. "HAAAAAAAAA!" He screamed with all the power in his body and thrust his hands forward as the enormous red dragon flew from his hands, roaring as it went straight for the egg. Xī dove out of the way and Babidi could only gawk in horror as the great beast of ki smashed into the egg, wrapping around it and ensnaring it until the whole thing was engulfed in an enormous explosion of flame and there was a blinding white light.
When the light faded, there was nothing. No egg and… barely a Babidi, the lower half of his body having been blown apart as he let out weak, rasping, wheezing gasps. There was only scorched earth and smoke.
"You… you did it," Xī gasped in amazement. The egg was gone. Everything was gone! There was no way Boo could have possibly have survived!
"I did it?" Gohan echoed as he floated back down to the ground, panting as his hair returned to its normal shade of red and its normal length. He knew that Dabura would be back here in a few minutes but… had he done it?
"You did it!" Xī exclaimed with a cheer. She laughed joyously and jumped into Gohan's arms, her arms encircling her neck. Gohan was stunned silent for a moment before he joined in her laughter and joy. Majin Boo was gone! Not to mention, with Babidi very clearly on the verge of death, his spell on Vegeta would soon be broken. They'd won the day!
However, the pair were so lost in their revelry that, unbeknownst to them…
The smoke…
Had begun to turn pink.