Ch. 166: King Cold's Fate

"Wh-what just happened?! How is she a Super Saiyan!?" Vegeta was left reeling as he saw me turn into a Super Saiyan and immediately turn around and destroy Frieza. 

"Happened about six months ago. I didn't realize that she'd gotten this strong, though." Pigero told him.

...

As I turned toward King Cold, he took a step back, clearly petrified. "Get out of here." I told him.

"What?" Everyone exclaimed at once. As far as everyone else figured, I'd just turn around and destroy King Cold next, along with the rest of Frieza's forces, but I didn't see the point. He knew that he didn't stand a chance against me, so he wasn't about to try to attack me.

"Frieza was crazy. He wasn't smart enough to stop when he couldn't defeat us, but you are, aren't you?" I asked King Cold.

"Yes, I see it now. I cannot beat someone who destroyed my son so easily..." King Cold reluctantly admitted, "Please let me live. It was all Frieza's thinking. I just want to get out of here as soon as possible." He spewed a bunch of word-vomit at me, but I ignored it. I knew what was going through King Cold's head pretty well. He'd once told Frieza to stay away from Majin Buu and Beerus the Destroyer, because they were too strong to defeat. Right now, he was adding us Saiyans to that list, which made Earth safe from him. Frieza wasn't smart enough to back off like that, though, if he wasn't strong enough to deal with an enemy, he'd just mess with them instead, so he needed to die.

"You can't trust him! If you let any member of Frieza's family go, you'll regret it, I'm telling you!" Vegeta yelled, but I ignored him.

"If you ever attempt to attack Earth again, we'll stop it, then kill you. If you get in our way in any shape or form, we'll deal with it, and probably kill you." I told him.

"I promise. I'll leave this planet and never return, no matter what! Thank you so much for allowing me to live!" King Cold said, "Let us leave here at once!" 

"NO!" Vegeta tried to shoot King Cold's ship, rendering it unfit for flight, but I blocked the blast.

"Just to be clear, I'm not letting you go out of mercy." I told King Cold as his soldiers fled into the ship, "Stay away from Earth."

The real reason that I wasn't killing King Cold was actually something that I'd thought over quite frequently, but I honestly didn't care too much about it.

During the Tournament of Power arc, the seventh universe had the lowest overall fighting strength in the cosmos, because the only truly strong mortals had been the ones living on Earth. The main reason for that had been because the Frieza Force had been absolutely decimated. Naturally, that wasn't the only reason that our overall fighting strength was so low, but it was definitely a factor. 

Legacy would dramatically raise the average fighting power across Earth over time, which would contribute to our universe's overall score, but, as evidenced by the original scores being so low despite the fact that our team for the tournament had the highest average fighting power by far, single individuals, maybe even single planets, didn't change that score too much no matter how strong they were. 

The way I figured it, since I wasn't going to send the Core Girls around and have them set up Legacy dojos in planets across the universe, the second best way of ensuring that people got more powerful was to have a cowardly, yet strong person in charge of the Frieza Force.

I'd prefer it if he had the same goal as I did, making people stronger, and keeping the peace, but just having him around would be enough, and the people with him would be sure to spread the word of fighters on Earth that were strong enough to defeat Frieza, while we were at it.

A little cruelty wasn't a huge price to pay in comparison to the possible usefulness that King Cold could offer, so I didn't have any problems with letting him go.

"Get out of here, and don't come back." I told Cold as he went back into his ship, "Anyone got a problem with that?" I turned around to address the Z-fighters around me. Most of them were obviously annoyed, but Yamcha was the one to break the ice.

"Man, like father, like daughter, right?" He joked, "It's fine, guys. We just have to kick his butt if he ever comes back."

"Alright. But I don't like it." Tien agreed with Yamcha.

"You're too soft... But fine." Vegeta said, scratching the back of his head. "If he comes back again, I'll just have to kill him myself." With Vegeta's approval, everyone else was on board, too, and King Cold was allowed to fly off.

"You sure about that, Hanna? Someone doesn't have to be stronger than you to be a threat." Piccolo warned me after Cold and his crew were gone and I'd dropped my Super Saiyan transformation.

"You were a threat once, Piccolo. As was Tien, Yamcha, Raditz, Vegeta, and Nappa, too. I agree that Cold's never going to be an ally, or trustworthy at all, probably, but we don't know that he'll be a threat to us in the future. He may even end up helping us... Spreading tales of Legacy across the universe..." I admitted my true intentions to Piccolo readily.

"You're an ambitious kid, you know that?" Nappa muttered. I couldn't tell if he was exasperated or in awe, though.

"I want to leave something behind." I told him with a smirk.

"Well, you've definitely started something." Tien told me.

"No. Her father gathered you in the first place." Shay appeared behind me, causing me to jump.

"Shay?!" Pigero exclaimed.

"I'm just here to talk to Goku. If you wanna follow me, I'm going to the spot where he's going to land in a few hours, if you want to follow me." She told them curtly. With that, she flew away. Naturally, we didn't have to argue about following her.