Chapter Text
The power that exploded from Broly was as crazy as it was gargantuan. Even standing a ways away, Goku felt the overwhelming force of it blast in his face as though they were just inches away. The ball of green ki expanded closer and closer until it burst, shooting up into the sky in a massive pillar of raw, angry power. The wind burst and howled, sending huge chunks of the cracked ground flying away. Inside the ki, Broly screamed on and on, his sense of reason vanishing or already gone.
There was no doubt about it, Broly was reaching into the strength of a Super Saiyan. But not an ordinary one, Goku remembered the first time he tapped into it on Namek all those years ago. It was like comparing an ant to a mountain. Holding his ground against the outburst, Goku put his right arm and leg forward into a fighting stance and looked inside the ki storm. Once Broly floated back up, it spiked all over again, turning into a thick, pulsating ball of pure ki. It shrank then expanded out, changing the colors of their surroundings into a bizarre mix of purples and blues.
"Yes!" He heard Freeza scream from far away, his smug voice clear despite the windstorm. "I succeeded!"
Goku glanced at his direction for a second, giving Freeza a nasty look his old opponent probably didn't even see. He smelled something fishy about Broly's dad getting killed all of a sudden, with the two of them fighting away from them the whole time. This just proved it: Freeza killed Paragus to make Broly power-up once he lost the edge in the fight. He might've seemed like a bad guy, but Broly didn't, and Goku couldn't help but feel sorry for both of them getting played like this.
Not that it changed much, really, Goku still had the fight to win. It just became a whole lot more terrifying and exciting. The fingers in his hands twitched from anticipation, sweat covered him from head to toe. Even just being close to Broly was making it hard to breathe. For a second, Goku considered falling back or running away outright. There was no chance he could win with the power he had right now. But he also knew something else, that if Broly's power kept rising and Goku's limits were pushed far enough, he could get the strength to win. Not just that, but to practice something he'd been after ever since the Tournament of Power.
Inside the ki ball, Broly let out another grating scream. With his blank eyes, he growled and looked at Goku. Goku stared back without flinching whatsoever. He even smirked a little. The big guy knew a challenge when he saw one and sure enough, roared again. His orb of ki grew thicker, changing the colors of their surroundings all over again. Goku's posture tensed in anticipation for the attack to come, the power of Super Saiyan Blue flared all around him to its maximum strength.
Broly howled again and from the ball shot out hundreds, thousands of frighteningly powerful ki blasts in every possible direction. The ground exploded and shook with each impact. For all the force behind them, Broly's anger and lack of control made the attack much less than what it could have been. For every few blasts that came directly at Goku, forcing him to knock them aside with a flurry of quick chops, most of the rest missed completely. Still, even the relatively small number of ones to get to their target were both fast and forceful enough to make Goku's entire body shake after every chop.
Broly quit firing them soon after, roaring and flying forward with the massive ki ball still surrounding him. Everything in its way was swallowed up and destroyed into nothing. Miles and miles of broken ground and half-melted snow and lava were just gone. Goku stood his ground, gauging the force behind it even as the distance shortened with every second. He focused on every bit of ki running through the length of his body. The process easy and quick thanks to the perfect ki control of Super Saiyan Blue. Once the ball was just moments away from crashing into him, Goku blasted off the ground and high into the sky.
"Kaio-ken... Times..." He muttered, already feeling his body and ki flare up for the imminent burst of power. Broly chased him after him, shouting and leaving behind the ki ball. Goku let his opponent close the distance, fly wildly until the last possible moment. Once Broly was just a few feet away, he struck. "Ten!!"
Spinning in mid-air with the new rush of ki, Goku effortlessly avoided Broly's punch and positioned him just above the gargantuan Saiyan. With all of his built up momentum, Goku's right leg shot outward and hit Broly upside the head, propelling him all the way back into his own ki ball. The impact was like a spark in a powder keg, swallowing most of the ground in a fiery explosion. It barely lasted a few fractions of a second before another billowing outburst of ki from Broly scattered it into all directions. In even less time, he'd reached Goku, who only barely managed to put his arms up in the last moment defense. The backhand sent a flash of pain running through Goku's whole body, propelling him backward through the sky.
"A-Amazin'!" Goku grunted, smiling despite the ache running through his limbs to the rest of his body. "I didn't even slow em down!"
He soon realized how much of an understatement this was. Broly's following attacks only intensified in speed and power. Goku tried to keep things even, answering every blow with one of his own. Soon enough, it became impossible. Broly's erratic fighting style, or the complete lack of one, made it difficult just to keep track of blocking and dodging. Very quickly, Goku resorted to a times twenty multiplier increase just to keep himself from being completely overwhelmed.
From the sidelines, Bulma watched the battle, to the best of her ability. The two Saiyan's duking it out looked more like a pair of lights, dots, and streaks smashing against one another in the sky. One red and blue, the other green. She knew things had taken a turn for the worse when Broly's light show began minutes ago, turning the burnt-out north pole into a total, fiery hellscape. The fact Broly seemed to press Goku back, pounding away at him, winning, validated her worry.
"What're you waiting for?!" Bulma turned to her husband, staring at the fight with that annoying, arms crossed too cool to care look. "Go and help him! This isn't the time for your Saiyan fighting maniac crap!!"
"That fool's made his choice," Vegeta actually had the nerve to scoff at her. "He knows he can't beat Broly, not like this, the fact he's trying to do it anyway clues me in on his little scheme."
"Hmph, or maybe you're just scared to jump in yourself."
"W-What did you say?!" Vegeta snapped, all of his cool vanishing in an instant. She knew it wasn't just wounded ego ticking him off. The faint blush of embarrassment proved she was right. "Now listen here, I-"
"While his fear is perfectly understandable, given the circumstances," Whis said, smiling in that knowing way of his while Vegeta growled and seethed. "Goku's plan is not entirely without merit. Broly's rising power just may soon reach the necessary level to bring Ultra Instinct out again."
"... That thing from the Tournament...?" Bulma had badgered them incessantly about what happened in that strange, other dimension the second they returned. From everyone's account, Goku, unsurprisingly, got himself into a giant mess with the king of all meatheads, Jiren, and walked out of it with another power. Some new transformation so strong it could punch even Beerus' lights out. "Wait a second... Didn't he nearly kill himself getting it last time?!"
"Oh yes," Whis replied as though it were nothing at all. "Though, only the first time. I suspect it won't take such drastic events to bring it out again, probably."
"... Probably he says...."
Miles away from the safety of their cliff, Goku felt a trickle of blood trail down just above his eye where Broly struck him. Another among many cuts and bruises he'd gotten across his whole body during their increasingly one-sided match. Counter attacking or attacking at all was impossible. Broly was either too fast or resistant to whatever ordinary hits Goku could send his way. There was no time to try a ki blast. The giant Saiyan was always on him, clawing, snarling, and pounding away. Even keeping the Kaio-ken times twenty active was beginning to make Goku's insides feel like someone was cooking them.
What he didn't feel was the power of Ultra Instinct building up. Despite Broly's power already well surpassing most of the competitors at the Tournament of Power, and Goku's own body approaching its absolute limits, it wasn't coming out. Either Broly wasn't strong enough to trigger it yet, or Goku needed to push harder still.
"Well... I knew it wouldn't be easy!!" Gritting his teeth through the endless attack string, Goku managed to concentrate enough ki to teleport himself away from Broly and several miles away to ground level. The giant Saiyan hit empty air and hung there for a while, staring and snarling at nothing.
Goku took a second to check his surroundings, keeping his guard up to prevent Freeza from trying any more funny business. Then, he took a deep, long breathe, easing some of the pain and tension away from his body. Given what he was about to do it, it was the last bit of easy-going it would have for a while. The fiery sensation from the Kaio-ken came back, stronger than before, and possibly stronger than Goku had ever felt it. This alone was a massive risk, a gamble that might blow him up before Ultra Instinct even came back. But if he was going to beat Broly, and more importantly, himself, it had to be done.
Goku's ki flared back up, sending a ripple of force through the ground and air. Broly noticed it right away and snarled, charging at him. Every vein in his body seemed to bulge and pop, every tired muscle ached, and thick vapors of steam came with every breath. Immediately, he knew trying to keep this much energy inside would blow him, even as part of a burst. It needed to be fired out. And so Goku positioned himself just for that, aiming his impending Kamehameha at a forty-five-degree angle, straight at Broly's trajectory.
"Kaio... Ken...." The mostly red ki blast with a blue center began to form around his cupped hands. Broly's roar grew louder and louder, acutely felt by Goku's drastically empowered sense of hearing. He let the furious Saiyan come closer, to maximize the potency of the blast and to give his straining body enough wind-up time. "Times... Fifty...."
Once they were a hundred a fifty feet apart, Goku opened fire. "KamehameHHHHAAAA!!"
The force of the blast was so strong he was very nearly flung back through the ground by it. The rush of forcefully amplified ki came roaring out of him in an almost blinding release of power. More importantly, it was working on Broly. The big guy was so taken aback by the massive rush of energy suddenly fired right at him, he found himself blasted face-first hundreds of feet back into the air. Goku didn't let himself get fooled by this to hope for a sudden victory.
If the power of the blast vastly surpassed and overwhelmed Broly's own, he would already be beaten to a pulp or dead. Instead, the Kamehameha was soon enough halted by him. Broly, snarling louder than ever before, pushed it back with his bare hands, forcing even more of his hidden power out to overtake it. Another fiery aura of green ki surrounded him and slowly began to propel him back down.
Goku would've stopped to praise him if he wasn't so singularly focused on winning the tug of war. He didn't think about the risks of the Kaio-ken, or what Broly would do to him when the distance inevitably closed. He ignored the aches of his beaten, bloody body, the nerves that were on fire, the teeth hurting from the way he clenched them. Just keep pushing back, and whatever happened, happened.
Broly's advance continued and then stopped at a distance of sixty feet between them. By now, the clash of their powers was of such magnitude and close proximity, the entire area violently shook. Bulma held close to Vegeta, who looked at the flashing collision of red and green with a curled lip. Whis watched it all happen with the same knowing, unworried smile.
Freeza gleefully took it all in with a keen, predatory eye. His plan, with a setback or two, had progressed wonderfully. Before Broly even touched down on his ship, he'd sensed the hidden potential within the Saiyan. A power so very similar to the wild girl Kale, yet much more unfathomably stronger. Waiting for the proper spark to ignite it into a perfect weapon for the one true overlord of the universe. Even the faint regret Freeza himself wouldn't annihilate Goku or Vegeta this time wasn't enough to ruin the sheer spectacle of witnessing it in such spectacular fashion.
As for the two Saiyans, their deadlock persisted, each new moment in their contest of power causing another quake, explosion of wind, or outburst of ki. Broly's voice thundered with a harrowing echo, his power propelling him toward his enemy with an unceasing, single-minded obsession. It was fought back by Goku's own focused determination, pushing his exhausted body and stamina reserves to the absolute limits of their limit. It didn't waver or stop even when Broly steadily flew closer and closer, even when every fiber of his body was screaming in silent agony.
Goku simply soldiered on, letting the Kamehameha perpetually fire. The closer Broly got, the more determined he became. Foot by foot, the wild Super Saiyan's power overcame the ki blast, growing larger until Goku was left pressing back a gargantuan ball of energy just five feet away. His hands shook, his knees were frozen stiff, and his stamina reached the last shreds it had left. Until inevitably, it all backfired.
Without warning, Goku's Kaio-ken cased. His Kamehameha fizzled away to nothing, leaving him standing there, frozen in place. A sudden hollow feeling washed over his entire body, a strange numbness where his body should've gone limp and collapsed to the ground yet stayed upright. He became more aware of everything around him, seeing Broly's oncoming attack in slow, agonizing detail. In a scant few fractions of a moment, he closed the final distance and, with all his built up power, smashed in Goku's direction with a pair of massive, raised fists.
A pillar of green ki rose hundreds of feet into the sky before contorting and bursting out into a mushroom cloud-shaped explosion. In every direction, the force expanded into a massive, circular whirlwind followed by thick, searing firestorms. Bulma held onto to Vegeta, who shielded her with his body, she tried to scream, but the wind drowned her out. Whis stood still, smiling on as though nothing were wrong.
Closer to the battlefield, Freeza raised a barrier around his whole body, exerting a considerable amount of will power to keep himself from being devoured by the fires. Yet even as he grit his teeth, he smiled and peered through to the epicenter of the explosion. Inside, raging on and growing even more powerful was Broly. Soon enough, another outburst of energy came rushing from him, unleashing a force wave so powerful it swept the firestorms into nothingness. Next to him was nothing at all, not even a corpse. Nor could Freeza sense particularly loathsome energy there or anywhere else on the planet.
The thought was so unbelievable, Freeza refused to accept it outright. For many agonizing moments, he focused on finding him. Some trail or sign that the most loathsome Saiyan to ever disgust the ruler of the universe had survived and scurried off somewhere. There was nothing in their immediate vicinity or anywhere else on the planet and beyond as far as Freeza's perceptions could tell. He had seemingly done it, Broly had succeeded in destroying Goku.
As tempting as it was to simply accept this and bask in the laughter threatening to overtake him, Freeza didn't. No, Goku was a monkey of a different kind from the rest. Particularly troublesome to kill, even when all common sense showed that he was. No, there was more to this than met the eye. Freeza could feel it in his bones. A worrisome notion that didn't trouble Broly in the least, on and on, he raged and roared, pounding his chest and unleashing further bursts of energy. It was the perfect opportunity for someone, say a sneaky Earth raised simian to strike and win the battle.
"No, this isn't over, not even by a slim margin," Freeza muttered, whipping the cracked ground with his tail. Before he could fly over and try to warn Broly, something powerful stepped on his tail, sending a wave of pain through his whole body. Freeza only barely kept himself from shrieking, biting his tongue. "Y-You! I knew you weren't dead!!"
Snapping his head to look over his shoulder, Freeza scowled and gritted his teeth at Goku pressing down on his tail. He was battered and bruised, with well over a dozen bloody spots covering the length of his exposed upper body. His stance was slouched, giving off the false impression he was vulnerable, weakened. Yet that glow surrounding him, and those silver eyes were proof no such thing was accurate.
"Yer almost right," He spoke in a calm, deep voice, twisting the heel of his boot against the end of Freeza's tail, eliciting a pained groan. "Even with Ultra Instinct turned on, I'm in pretty bad shape. So why don't ya do me a favor an keep Broly busy fer a little while."
"What makes you think I would do any such thingAAAAAHHHHH!" Another sharp twist of Goku's heel cut through Freeza like a knife, releasing a building up shriek of sheer pain to explode from his throat. Then, Goku let go of the limb and kicked Freeza across the chin, propelling him for hundreds of miles across the battlefield. The force of the blow was so powerful, Freeza could swear there were stars and black spots building in the pits of his eyes.
Then, a fresh wave of pain from the top of his head took over, and he smacked down into the ground most ungraciously. His face was buried in burning, cracked gravel.
"Worthless Saiyan scum," He growled, forcing himself back up. "I'll make him- Oh, oh, dear...."
Once his eyesight had cleared up, Freeza realized it was Broly who he smacked into it. Craning his neck to gaze at the Saiyan's face, the ruler of the universe found a visage of absolute, bottomless, and seething anger in that pair of blank, white eyes staring down at him. Suddenly, Freeza felt quite acutely vulnerable and began to slowly and steadily walk backward in the opposite direction.
"N-Now, wait just a moment!" Freeza raised his hands, feeling his lips go dry. "D-Do not strike me, do you understand! I am lord Freeza, the commander of your later Father, and I will suffer no-"
A moment later, Freeza suffered the first of many blows to come. Whis, Vegeta, and Bulma observed the beatdown from the cliffside. Each punch and kick send a new quake to ripple through the ground, Broly's shouts were only matched by Freeza's agonized cries of pain.
"W-Wow," Bulma muttered, actually finding herself cringe from every new cry. "He's really giving it to him..."
"Hmph, it's no less than he deserves."
"But wait," She snapped her head in every direction, wishing she had a pair of binoculars or something to get a better look at what was going on down there. "Goku smacked him into Broly, right? So, where is he? Why isn't he fighting them himself?"
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Whis' smile widened. So enigmatic, it ticked Bulma off and made her want to smack him until he spilled his guts. "He's merely taken a short break to... Compose himself for the next round, I expect he'll rejoin us very, very soon."