Ch. 199: The Strongest Frost Demon

"You made the right decision, giving yourself up. I will make your death quick and painless. I will even do you the honor of remembering your name, before I kill you." Cooler told Tien condescendingly. Honestly, though, his condescension was well-earned. Tien's energy boost from Pandora had been completely drained, and his current maximum power was around the 2 million that he could access in his base form, nothing against Cooler, who was probably around a hundred and fifty times stronger. No trick could close a gap like that.

"How nice of you. Tien Shinhan. And you are...?" Tien prodded, trying to keep Cooler talking.

"Oh, how forgetful of me. I never introduced myself, did I? Just so that you can know who killed you... I am Cooler. Now die, Tien Shinhan!" Apparently, Cooler wasn't so keen on talking, beyond giving his name. Thrusting his hand out, the energy that he'd originally gathered for the point of destroying the forest all concentrated into an energy wave of epic proportions, heading straight for Tien. In an instant, he knew that he wasn't fast enough to dodge it, nor strong enough to defend against it. As Tien's life flashed before his eyes, the wave of death seemingly moving at a turtle's pace, it happened.

"Not quite!" Suddenly, between Tien and the energy wave was a bright white light that seemed to suck all of the power inside of the wave into itself before dimming, the power now completely under control. 

"Hanna?" As Tien muttered the name of his savior, every ounce of energy in his body seemed to give out at once, the tension leaving him. Suddenly, he couldn't even muster up enough energy to fly, as Pandora closed up on him, sucking most of the remaining energy in Tien's body back into it.

"I gotcha, Mr. Tien." Gohan caught Tien as he began falling out of the sky, setting him down in the ground where Raditz and an unconscious Pigero were waiting. Meanwhile, Piccolo, Hanna, and Goku were up in the sky, facing off against Cooler. 

"Are those... fishing caps?" Tien couldn't help ask. Raditz, Goku, Gohan, and Hanna were all wearing fishing gear, jackets and fishing caps. 

"We were on a fishing trip when Hanna got the emergency message." Raditz explained. It'd been a break from their normal training schedule, except for Piccolo, who thought fishing was stupid, and had been meditating instead. Then, they'd gotten a message from WAN explaining that there was a Frieza-level threat on Earth. That ended the fishing trip real fast.

Fighting something that strong was far more exciting than fishing.

"Three against one? Hardly seems fair." Cooler noted, sensing out the powers of Goku, Hanna, and Piccolo. None of them felt like a threat to him, but he wasn't fooled. The girl had absorbed his energy. If the three of them could enhance their power levels like the last two, it was entirely possible that Cooler wouldn't stand a chance. And his wariness of that possibility became much bigger when he noticed the girl's belt. "You're the Saiyan who took my brother down, aren't you?" He asked me. 

"Yup." I didn't have any reason to deny it, "If you leave now, you know, you'll come out of this alive, Cooler." I made the offer, but Cooler shook his head. 

"If I leave now, I look weak. As weak as my father, and I can't have that. Unfortunately, this battle is inevitable, Saiyan." Cooler declared.

"You Friezas don't seem to be the 'family love' type." Piccolo wondered.

"We're Frost Demons, but you're right, Namekian. I hated my brother, and my father. Part of me wanted to kill that bastard myself... but he was still my brother, so I must avenge him. You'll find me much harder to kill, Saiyan." Cooler told us.

"Then, I suppose we're at an impasse." I noted, "You want to kill us, we don't want to let you."

"Then I'll simply have to kill all of you, Saiyan."

"Yeah, that wouldn't be fun." Goku interrupts me and Cooler as we begin to prepare our energies, "Three against one isn't fair at all. If we're going to do this, I wanna make it fun."

"Fun...?" Cooler muttered to himself while Piccolo and I rolled our eyes, having already expected this. 

"Oh, come on. Like the two of you don't agree with me!? Three against one just wouldn't be fun, here!" Goku said. I had to admit, he was right. Goku and I had been training with Piccolo, Raditz, and Gohan for the last two years straight now. While neither Raditz nor Gohan had unlocked Super Saiyan yet, Piccolo had done slightly better. 

Namekians were kind-of like humans in that there wasn't such a thing as a 'Super Namekian,' but Piccolo had still managed to gain enough power to challenge a Super Saiyan in the original, due to his Namekian healing factor allowing him to do far more intense training than an average person. In this case, that meant that he could push his Silver Mode to new heights that humans couldn't, putting more stress on his body and allowing his power level to grow faster. Due to that, he'd managed to grow his power level far faster than any of the other Z-fighters. He wasn't anywhere near as strong as he'd eventually grow to be, but in his modified Silver Mode, he could go head-to-head with me or Goku for a short while, meaning that he probably stood a fair chance against Cooler, even though he was four or five times stronger than Frieza had been. 

That meant that each of us three were strong enough to go head-to-head against Cooler and stand a fair chance of winning at the least. A three on one battle against Cooler would be too easy to be fun. So we did the obvious thing.

"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!" Goku, Piccolo and I played rock, paper, scissors to determine who would fight Cooler.

"WAIT, I want to do it. I want to fight him!" Gohan stepped in just as we threw our hands.

"Gohan... You're not..." A Super Saiyan, I tried to say, but dad cut me off. 

"Are you sure, son?" He asked. 

"I can't stay behind you guys forever. I won't stand behind you guys forever." Training against me, Piccolo, and Goku would never be enough to propel Gohan into the Super Saiyan state. Vegeta might be able to do it, if he'd unlocked it himself, but I didn't think he had quite yet.

"Alright, Gohan."

"Piccolo?!" I turned on the Namekian, exasperated. 

"Let him fight, Hanna." Dad ruffled Gohan's hair.

"... Good luck, Gohan." I muttered, my fears not assuaged, I decided to let him fight anyways.