Frieza's Fear

Golden and white light collided wildly above Namek, each clash like a miniature star exploding in the sky. The shockwaves ground the rubble of the temple ruins into dust, uprooted distant spherical plants, and vaporized the waves kicked up from the lakes into white steam. The entire planet trembled.

Ji Ming used the force of a head-on collision to retreat, golden aura blazing fiercely around him. His arms had gone so numb he could barely feel them, while a fine layer of blood beads surfaced across the skin of his left arm—the marks of capillaries repeatedly ruptured by the impacts. But he did not stop. His breathing rhythm remained tightly controlled. Every inhale landed precisely in the gap after Frieza pulled back his fist, and every exhale gathered strength for the next strike.

Frieza had been in his final form for over four minutes. His battle power was dropping from its peak—Ji Ming could feel it. Frieza's heavy punches had become lighter than before. Not light enough to ignore, but no longer carrying the kind of weight that could kill someone outright with every blow. His internal counter kept ticking: four minutes, four and a half, nearly five. Frieza's ki had slipped from its high point of 120 million to somewhere near 90 million, and the rate of decline was accelerating.

"Noticed it?" Frieza's voice suddenly exploded beside his ear as a whip-like kick swept toward Ji Ming's temple. It was faster than before, and the wind pressure it generated tore through the air with a piercing whistle.

Ji Ming raised an arm to block, but the force this time was over twenty percent heavier than he had expected. His blocking arm was jolted away, and the impact sent him flying hundreds of meters. He crashed through two stone pillars before barely stabilizing himself. Looking down at his reddened left arm, a flicker of alarm crossed his eyes. Something was wrong. Frieza was not weakening—he was bursting forth. This bastard was not foolish enough to sit around and wait for his strength to run out. He was compressing the power lost through his decline into every single attack. It drained his overall energy faster, but every strike still retained near-peak lethality.

"You thought I'd foolishly wait until I grew weaker and let you turn the tables on me?" Frieza slowly emerged from the smoke and dust, his pure white body gleaming coldly beneath the firelight. "You calculated well, brat. My final form truly cannot last long—so I've decided to kill every last one of you before I weaken completely."

His figure vanished again.

This time, he was faster than ever. Ji Ming's pupils had barely contracted before Frieza's fist slammed into his abdomen. The golden aura caved inward from the blow, and the shockwave burst out through his back, blasting a huge radial crater into the rock wall behind him. Ji Ming doubled over like a shrimp and spat out a mouthful of blood. But he did not fall—he seized Frieza's wrist with one hand and swung his other clenched fist toward Frieza's temple. Frieza tilted his head back to evade it. The fist wind brushed past his nose, shaving off a small piece of purple shell. Both men retreated at once, then charged again at the same time, colliding once more.

"Your body is shaking." Frieza sneered coldly amid their storm of punches and kicks. "Your third breakthrough has reached its limit, hasn't it? Potential may surge as high as it wants, but without time to build it up, it is ultimately hollow."

Ji Ming did not argue.

Because Frieza was right. His third breakthrough had indeed reached a bottleneck. Porunga's reconstruction of his potential was not an endless spring; that portion of power had already been exhausted in the repeated clashes earlier. A warrior with Super Saiyan transformation layered over his base Super Saiyan state now had a stable battle power of around 20 million—enough to crush any member of the Frieza Force, but still leaving a gap against a Frieza who could still fight with peak-level strength. His body was sending warning signals: more than fifteen percent of his muscle fibers were torn, his left arm had a fractured bone, and the ligaments in his right leg were damaged. If he kept enduring this head-on, Frieza's explosive attacks would tear him apart in three minutes at most.

But that was within his calculations as well.

He had never been fighting this battle alone.

"Vegeta—!"

Ji Ming's shout pierced through the turbulent waves of ki in the sky and reached Vegeta's ears. Vegeta had not heard that kind of tone in a long time—not an order, but trust. Not, "I order you to go," but, "I trust you can do it." A savage curve tugged at Vegeta's lips. Purple flames erupted beneath his feet, and his body shot into the battlefield as a violet beam. He did not charge straight at Frieza. Instead, he cut in from the flank and, just as Frieza was about to pursue Ji Ming, smashed a fist into Frieza's ribs.

Frieza failed to evade that punch completely. Purple flames exploded at the point of impact, knocking his body half a step off balance. He retaliated with a finger-fired ki blast at Vegeta. The finger-thick purple beam ripped through the air, but Vegeta had already moved aside. The blast grazed his shoulder blade, scorching only a small patch of his battle suit.

"You're just like before—only capable of sneak attacks from behind." Frieza looked at Vegeta coldly, that bug-like contempt returning to his gaze. "You think a sneak attack can defeat me?" He raised his hand, another ki blast gathering at his fingertip, but this time his target shifted from Vegeta to Piccolo. "I'll dismantle this troublesome Namekian first."

Piccolo was rising again from the debris of the mountain. His right arm could no longer lift, but purple sparks of the Special Beam Cannon were still gathering at the fingertips of his left hand. His previous shot had missed Frieza's vital point, but it had forced Frieza to halt one of his barrages. He was now covered in blood, green blood running down from his forehead and smearing half his face, yet his eyes remained fixed on Frieza without a trace of retreat.

"That's all you've got?" Piccolo rasped, the corner of his mouth curling in mockery. But he knew perfectly well that he might not survive the next attack.

Frieza's Death Beam shot from his fingertip, thin as a needle and swift as lightning, aimed directly at Piccolo's heart. Ji Ming moved first, throwing himself sideways into its path and spreading both hands to form a golden ki shield. The glowing barrier shook violently as the blast crashed into it. The torrent of ki tore through the air and slammed savagely into the shield's surface. He held it—but his knees sank half an inch into the ground, and the bones in his arms creaked dangerously.

"Nail!" Ji Ming roared without turning his head.

Nail cut in from the other side, the golden ki blast between his palms charged to its limit. In the instant after Frieza fired the Death Beam and his defenses loosened, Nail unleashed it. The golden sphere struck Frieza squarely in the chest, and the burst of light illuminated the entire sky. Frieza was blasted back several steps, but it did no real damage—with Frieza's current battle power, Nail's full-force strike could do no more than scrape his skin. Still, it gave Ji Ming a chance to breathe and forced Frieza to divide his attention once more.

"Annoying insects." Frieza's voice finally carried a trace of impatience. With a raise of his hand, he fired a huge energy blast at Nail. Piccolo kicked Nail aside in advance. The blast passed between them and blew a bottomless crater into the distant slope.

Ji Ming spat out a mouthful of bloody froth. His arms no longer obeyed him, but he still forced up his golden aura with the last of his strength and charged forward. He could not let Frieza pick them off one by one again; he had to draw the pressure of the frontal battle back onto himself. Golden light collided repeatedly with Frieza's fists ahead, every impact crashing down on the earth like thunder. Vegeta's flank attacks grew increasingly coordinated. Purple flame and golden flame began forming a subtle synergy through their repeated cross assaults, like two force fields of the same origin amplifying one another.

But what truly turned the battle was Vegeta suddenly stopping.

He halted in midair. His purple aura did not weaken; instead, it swelled another notch. He looked down at his hands, brow furrowed, as though he had suddenly understood something. All these years, he had believed that becoming stronger was for himself—to avoid being trampled beneath Frieza's feet, to surpass Kakarot, to prove that the Saiyan prince deserved to live more than anyone else. But now, standing here and fighting shoulder to shoulder with these people, having his name called by a four-year-old child with trust in his eyes, being shielded by Piccolo, supported by Nail's ki blasts—only then did he clearly realize that what he wanted to protect was no longer the title of Saiyan prince, but the people who fought beside him. That thought shattered the last trace of hesitation in his heart.

The purple flames began to change color.

Purple turned to purplish-red, purplish-red to dark gold, and dark gold to dazzling gold. Vegeta's hair rose strand by strand amid the surging currents of ki, its tips rapidly fading from black to deep brown, from deep brown to pale gold, until it settled into a brilliant gold that seemed to burn. His eyes changed from dark black to emerald green, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints. The golden aura erupting around him ground the nearby rubble into powder.

Piccolo stopped gathering energy, his antennae nearly numbed by the sudden eruption of golden ki. An incredulous expression appeared on his face. Son Goku finally opened his eyes as well. Looking at the figure wrapped in golden aura in the sky, the corners of his mouth slowly lifted—Kaio-ken still flowed slowly within him, but a flash of emotion only a Saiyan could understand passed through his eyes.

"So this is... a Super Saiyan. Vegeta, you did it."

Nail silently watched the golden light and murmured. He suddenly understood why Guru had regarded these two Saiyans so highly—they had not come seeking power. They had come to create legends.

Vegeta lowered his head and looked at his hands enveloped in golden aura, countless emotions churning within his emerald pupils. Hatred, resentment, humiliation—those things that had weighed on him for twenty years remained. But alongside them, there was something more. Something he had dug out with his own hands today. It was new, unfamiliar, and scorching hot.

He raised his head and looked at Frieza.

Frieza's expression finally cracked completely.

"Impossible—impossible! A Super Saiyan who appears only once every thousand years! Fine, one four-year-old brat, but even someone like you, Vegeta, can transform?!" His voice trembled for the first time, and his face became uglier than the distant red-hot rock formations. "First that brat, then you—why has the legend of the Super Saiyan fallen upon low-class warriors like you?!"

"Low-class warriors? Who are you calling low-class?" Vegeta's voice was unnaturally calm, so calm that even he was unaccustomed to it. Then he extended his thumb and pointed it at Ji Ming. "That child taught me something—the switch to becoming a Super Saiyan isn't in the bloodline. It's in your bones."

Frieza's fists clenched tightly, his teeth grinding with a crackle. Seizing that instant, Ji Ming cut in from the side and resumed their exchange. Frieza knocked aside Ji Ming's heavy punch with one arm, while his other hand fiercely condensed two spinning red Death Saucers. One smashed toward Ji Ming, while the other flew in a slicing arc at Vegeta's neck.

But Vegeta did not dodge. With one hand, he crushed the Death Saucer barehanded. The red disc of light shattered into countless glowing fragments in his golden palm, the pieces drifting through the air and reflecting Frieza's twisted face.

"Are you mistaken about something?" Vegeta lifted those emerald eyes and stared coldly at the demon king who had oppressed the Saiyans for twenty years. "A few minutes ago, those tricks of yours might have killed me. But now, I'm a Super Saiyan, just like that child. And you—you're still getting weaker."

Ji Ming and Vegeta, two golden figures, moved at the same time.

Frieza blocked Ji Ming's frontal charge, but he could not block the golden ki blast Vegeta fired from the flank at the same time. Two golden meteors closed in from front and back, tearing at him, suppressing him. Every impact stripped away another layer of Frieza's ki. His battle power fell from 90 million to 80 million, then accelerated toward 70 million. He had maintained his final form for over six minutes.

He suddenly realized a cold fact, one that for the first time in his life required all his reason to process. Every bit of power he spent caused the power of those two Saiyans opposite him to rise another degree. The gap created by this deadlock was narrowing at an irreversible pace.

And on the ground, Son Goku slowly rose to his feet. The red aura of Kaio-ken around him began to draw inward, replaced by an extremely faint golden current flowing over the surface of his skin. He had not completed the transformation yet, but that golden current was already taking shape—a resonance stirred by the ki of two Super Saiyans, a sign that the door to Super Saiyan was slowly being pushed open from the other side.

"Give me a little more time," Son Goku murmured, then closed his eyes again. He was not resting—he was accelerating his charge.

Above the temple ruins, Ji Ming panted heavily, his golden aura beginning to waver. He glanced sideways at Vegeta beside him. Vegeta was not in good shape either—wounds covered his body, more than half his battle suit was shredded, and a claw mark along his cheek was still bleeding. Yet a genuine smile split his lips, the kind that only appeared in the most exhilarating battles.

"You can still fight, right?" Vegeta's voice was hoarse.

Ji Ming said nothing. He merely raised a hand and tapped Vegeta's shoulder guard with his knuckles. It was the gesture Vegeta had made when they first met—back then, Vegeta had refused to bump fists and had only knocked his index knuckle against Ji Ming's fist. Now Ji Ming returned the gesture in the same way, then leaped into the air.

The two golden lights charged at Frieza again. This time, Frieza did not meet them head-on. Hesitation appeared on his face for the first time. Not rage, not killing intent, not contempt—hesitation. When the emperor of the universe faced the pincer attack of two Super Saiyans, his subconscious reacted before his reason did—he took a step back.

Then he made a move no one had expected. He turned, accelerated, and flew in the direction away from the battlefield. He was not fleeing—he was heading for the Dragon Ball altar beneath the temple ruins, where there was still no battle-power signal. He intended to destroy the altar itself. If the altar ceased to exist, the Dragon Balls could not be summoned again. He wanted to eliminate at the root any chance of someone using the Dragon Balls to revive more enemies.

But Ji Ming followed in the exact instant Frieza moved. A golden meteor cut in from the flank, blocking the trajectory above the altar ahead of time. Frieza had just finished forming a Death energy blast in his palm when Ji Ming hammered his wrist with a fist. The purple blast immediately spun out of control and crashed into the distant wilderness, exploding into a crater several kilometers wide.

"You want to destroy the altar?" Ji Ming looked into Frieza's eyes, flames reflected in his emerald pupils. "You don't have the chance."

Vegeta sealed off Frieza's retreat from the other side and added with a cold sneer, "Don't even think about it."

The two Super Saiyans trapped Frieza between them. Above the altar, three lights occupied three different directions—gold, gold, and white. In the sky, the last dark yellow clouds were torn apart, and Namek's sunlight poured through the gaps, edging all three figures in silver.

Frieza's blood-red pupils darted back and forth. A bead of purple sweat seeped from his forehead and slid down along the grooves of his purple shell. For the first time in battle, he felt fear. Not because his opponents were stronger than him, but because he had discovered—he was becoming someone who could be defeated.