Ch. 193: Cooler

"Look at this thing. It's totally fried. It would have had to pick up something on the level of a Super Saiyan to fry itself this badly..." Pigero muttered, looking at the blackened sensor that he'd just pulled out of the ground.

"Yeah, yeah... Hey, Gabriel, do you feel that?" Despite the fact that there was nobody around but them, Tien still called Pigero by his codename as a reflex, since they were currently wearing their Legacy uniforms with the full face masks. 

"Three... no, four..."

"But that last one-!"

"Frieza?!" Pigero and Tien exchanged information in fragments, scared almost stiff by the energy waves that they were feeling. The first three guys, they were sure that they could take. They weren't weak, but Silver Mode would easily turn the fight from even to overwhelmingly in their favor, but the final energy signature was on an entirely different level. It reminded them of Frieza, in his final form, as a matter of fact.

"Is that King Cold?" Tien wondered aloud, remembering that Hanna had, in fact let the Frost Demon escape. Pigero shook his head in response.

"If it is King Cold, then he's a lot dumber than I thought he was." Pigero replied, pressing a button on the side of his helmet in order to activate the communication system inside. "Turn the mission black. Frieza-level energy signature sighted. Attempting contact." 

"Roger that, Gabriel. Sending the mission back black. Adding note." A digital voice replied immediately. That was WAN, Work Analysis Nexus. Essentially, it was an AI designed by Capsule Corp to process Legacy work. Now that WAN was aware of what was going on, he'd send the mission back to the board as a special black mission with an extra note, which made sure that anyone who'd be taking it would know the basics of what Tien and Pigero were dealing with, as well as whoever else had already been dispatched. It was likely that Goku, Vegeta, or Hanna would notice the new black mission immediately and take measures, which meant that all Tien and Pigero now had to do was hold out until stronger backup arrived. 

But it went without saying that neither of them wanted to simply wait around for someone stronger than them to arrive and fix everything. They'd been training for years in anticipation of far stronger enemies than this guy, and they weren't about to shy away from this fight.

...

"You're not King Cold." Pigero called out, appearing in front of the group of four in Silver Mode already, the only way he'd been able to output the speed required to catch up to them.

"You know of my father, on this rock? Since you aren't a young girl, does that make you Goku? The Saiyan who beat my brother?" The Frost Demon in front was the one that answered Pigero, who pressed a button on his neck that retracted his helmet into the rest of his uniform to free up his vision for the upcoming fight.

"No. I'm one hundred percent human... and you're on the wrong planet, brother of Frieza." Pigero replied. 

"I'm here for the Saiyans who humiliated my family. They must die. If you show me to them, then I will allow you and your friend here to live." Cooler offered. His offer immediately made two things clear to Pigero. One, he was telling the truth. All Cooler wanted to do was kill the Saiyans, and he didn't really care about anything else, which meant that he'd destroy the planet or spare it depending on his whims at the time, and two, that he was looking down on Pigero, and rightfully so. Even maxing his Silver Mode out, there was a large difference between the power levels of Pigero and Cooler, a gap that couldn't be overcome by sheer willpower, and they both knew it, but Pigero had still chosen to start this fight himself.

"I can't do that. I'm going to stop you right here." Pigero announced, getting into a battle stance. 

"I see..." Mildly annoyed, Cooler generated a blast of energy and tossed it at Pigero. This wasn't exactly a serious attempt to kill him, but Cooler couldn't sense energy. He was essentially using the energy blast to determine how much of a threat Pigero was. If the man deflected it, Cooler would get serious. If it killed him, Cooler would simply interrogate the other human currently behind him. 

If all of that failed, he'd turn the big scouter on his ship back on and go to wherever the highest power level on this planet was. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the Saiyans who humiliated his family were dead. 

Immediately upon seeing the energy blast heading toward him, Pigero realized that he couldn't fully block it. There was too much power inside that tiny ball of power, more than he could stop with his current level of power, so for a single moment, Pigero pumped his Grey Mode's energy multiplier up past its safe limits, all the way to 30, in order to bounce Cooler's energy blast up towards the sky.

"Agh!" His overreaching had immediate consequences. The muscles on his arm bulged dangerously for a moment, causing extreme pain before calming back down once more, leaving a black burn mark and a trace amount of lingering pain from the overreach. If he used Silver mode to fight Cooler once the Frost Demon began fighting seriously, Pigero knew that his own power would end up being his downfall as the technique took energy from necessary bodily functions. 

"You're not weak... Perhaps even you'd have been able to kill my brother if he were to let his guard down, but I'm not my brother. You'll have to die here." Cooler noted, seeing how Pigero had managed to only barely deflect his energy blast. That put his power level at about half of Cooler's current power level, in his normal form. In another league from his men, for sure, but Cooler wouldn't need to take him seriously in order to kill him.