ESCAROT

I dropped from the sky with both feet extended.

The kick caught Frieza dead center in the back of the head. His face slammed into the dirt, his body skipping across the ground like a stone on water, tearing up a trench before crashing into the ground.

I landed in the space between Okara and Nail, my back to them.

"Leave," I said.

"What?" Okara replied, gasping for air. She was at her limit, she had been using the insta-trasmission technique just to avoid being killed, and it had taken a lot out of her to keep this up constantly, basically replacing movement for the technique itself.

"I said leave. Both of you. Now."

"Don't be stupid, I can still—"

“Very well, Escarot… we’ll be on standby,” Nail replied.

"Thanks for the assist, now go…" I didn't turn around. "You've done enough. Now it's my turn."

She didn't respond for a second. I could feel her staring at the back of my head, that stubborn heat she carried everywhere burning against my back.

"If you die, I'm killing you myself," she said.

"Noted. Go."

I heard her grunt, felt her grab Nail, and then a flicker of ki as they teleported away. Good. That was one less thing to worry about.

The rubble behind me shifted.

Frieza emerged slowly, pushing a boulder off his shoulder, dust and debris falling from his body. His expression was something I'd never seen on him before. Not rage — that had been there before. This was something past rage. A cold, tight, controlled fury that made his movements look mechanical.

"How," he said.

I turned to face him, smiling. “You’re gonna have to be a whole lot more specific than that.”

"How are you still standing? How are you healed? You were almost dead a few minutes ago!"

I rolled my shoulders. "Oh that? What can I say? All I needed was a nap and some juice."

His eyes twitched.

"Juice," he repeated.

"Yep."

"Juice."

"That's what I said."

The twitch became a tremor. His tail struck the ground hard enough to crack it, and his aura flared so bright that the sky above us turned purple.

"I had fun playing with you, monkey," Frieza hissed. "Truly, I did. You provided me with a few moments of genuine amusement, which is more than most insects manage before they're squashed. But this has gone on long enough. You've wasted my time, embarrassed me in front of my subordinates, and made a mockery of my power. I am done being patient."

His ki spiked violently, and in the blink of an eye the pressure hit me like a wall, and I felt my stance widen involuntarily just to stay upright.

Then he was in front of me. No transition. No movement I could track. One second he was thirty meters away, and the next his fist was buried in my stomach.

I felt my own energy react or try to. My body knew what to do — shift, block, counter — but the signal got lost somewhere between my brain and my muscles. By the time my arms started moving, his fist was already deep in my gut, and I was doubling over it, blood spraying from my mouth.

He pulled out and hit me in the face. My head snapped sideways. Before I could recover, a death beam pierced my shoulder — clean through, entrance and exit — and then another one grazed my ribs, and then his knee was in my chest and I was on my back, staring at the red sky.

"Did you feel that?" Frieza said, standing over me. "All it took was five percent more. Five percent, and you're on your back again, gasping like a fish. That's the difference between us, monkey. That's what you're up against, you are strong, but against my power… you are nothing but a wriggling worm waiting to be stepped on."

I spat blood onto the dirt.

That was just five percent more?! Holy fuck… I couldn't even see his movements.

I got up.

Where was that Super Saiyan transformation when you needed it? 

Pushing those thoughts aside, I kicked off the ground towards Frieza, trying to punch him. He leaned away from it lazily, like I was moving through water. I threw another. He tilted his head caught my fist and squeezed until my knuckles cracked, then let go and backhanded me across the face.

I stumbled, recovering my balance, before throwing a ki blast. He batted it aside with his tail. Wasting no time, I closed the distance between us and tried to strike him with a kick. He sidestepped it and drove a death beam through my thigh.

I bit down on the scream.

"Getting up again?" Frieza said, tilting his head. "Admirable, I suppose. Foolish, but admirable."

He was toying with me. Every hit was deliberate so as to not kill me, every hit was precise enough to hurt as possible without killing me. He was drawing it out. Making it last.

He wanted me to suffer. And he was very, very good at it.

BEERUS

"This is disappointing."

I was lying on my side on a rock somewhere in the middle of nowhere, watching the fight through Whis's staff.

"He's losing," I said, stretching my arms.

"It appears so, my Lord."

"I thought he was ready."

"He is… but he needs something."

I yawned. "Can he turn this around?"

Whis hummed. That hum meant he was thinking, which usually meant he already knew the answer and was deciding how much of it to share with me, I hated these know-it-all angels.

"There's a chance," he said finally. "But it's difficult to say. Escarot is fighting to the best of his ability. The problem isn't his technique or his tactics. It's something else."

"Which is?"

"Look at him, my Lord. Really look."

I squinted at the projection. Escarot was on his feet again, bleeding from half a dozen wounds, charging at Frieza with the same stubborn determination he'd had since the fight started. Getting hit. Getting up. Getting hit again.

"I see a guy getting punched."

"You see a guy getting punched who isn't angry."

I paused. "What?"

"He's not angry, my Lord. Not truly. Frustrated, yes. In pain, certainly. But angry? No. Even now, with Frieza toying with him, piercing him, humiliating him — he's not mad."

"So what, he needs to get mad?"

"Essentially, yes. He needs something to break through those inhibitions of his. A push — something that strips away everyting and leaves nothing but the warrior underneath. Until that happens, he's fighting with one hand tied behind his back, but that's just my thought."

I yawned again, stretching out on the rock. "It would be a massive disappointment if he died."

"Would it?"

"He makes good food. Best in the universe. Though… If he dies, I'll just bring him to work for me permanently, which would mean food any-day everyday but still. Disappointing."

"Then let's hope he finds his push," Whis said.

ESCAROT

Frieza's foot pressed down on the back of my head.

My face was in the dirt. Again.

Blood pooling around my cheek, mixing with the dust and the small rocks that were digging into my skin. My knees were on the ground, my hands were flat, and the weight on my skull was just enough to keep me from lifting it.

I couldn't move. Not because I was physically unable — though I was close to that — but because every time I tried to push up, his foot pushed down harder, grinding my face into the earth like he was putting out a cigarette.

He was laughing.

"So," Frieza said, his voice light, conversational, like he was asking about the weather, it almost felt friendly if you could ignore the foot on my head. "I've been thinking about how to do this. Specifically, the order."

He shifted his weight. My cheekbone ground against a rock.

"Do you wish to die with your people, monkey? All at once, together, a nice tidy end where you can at least pretend you were their king to the last breath? Or would you prefer to go first? Watch from whatever pathetic afterlife your kind believes in as I cleanse this planet of every last Saiyan?"

I didn't answer.

Is this it?

…

……

The thought came unbidden. Quiet. Almost calm.

Is this how it ends?

I'd thought about this moment a lot. Ever since I'd woken up in this body, in this world, with memories of a story that hadn't happened yet. I'd planned. I'd trained. I'd calculated and strategized and done everything in my power to avoid exactly this scenario. And here I was. Face in the dirt. A foot on my head. The same villain who'd killed the Saiyans in canon standing over me, about to do it again.

My fucking life had been inconsequential.

All that training. All those months of pushing myself to the brink, learning techniques, preparing for this exact fight. All of it. The Ikari state. Surge. The combination that I'd bled to master.

Amounted to this.

A foot on my head and a question about how I wanted to die.

The irony wasn't lost on me. In the original story, the Saiyans had died without ever knowing what hit them. No warning. No fight. Just a single blast from Frieza's ship and that was it. Entire race, gone in a flash. At least I'd gotten to swing back. 

At least I'd made him bleed.

Some consolation. Those were the thoughts of a fucking loser.

My body hurt. 

That was an understatement; my body was a collection of wounds stacked on top of each. And through all of it — the pain, the humiliation, the foot on my head, the laughing, the taunting, the sheer indignity of being treated like an insect — I waited for something to snap.

It didn't.

I wasn't mad.

I was disappointed.

I should have been angry, that is. Everything about this situation demanded fury. The humiliation of being stood on. The pain of the wounds. The knowledge that my people were going to die if I failed. The memory of every moment I'd spent preparing for this fight, all of it wasted. Any one of those things should have been enough to light a fire under me.

Frieza pressed down harder. My vision blurred.

"Tick tock, monkey. I don't have all day."

Something flashed beside me.

Okara's foot connected with Frieza's face so hard the crack echoed off the nearest mountain. His foot flew off my head and he spun sideways through the air.

"I told you to leave," I said, standing up.

"Yeah, and I told you not to fucking die, and you ignored me, so we are even."

She landed beside me, eyes locked on Frieza. He'd already stopped spinning, hovering in the air, one hand touching his cheek.

"You again," he said quietly. "I'm starting to think you have a death wish."

"Yeah, I do… for YOUR death."

Frieza moved, closing the distance between us.

His right hand closed around Okara's head, lifting her off the ground. Her hands shot up, grabbing his wrist, trying to pry him loose, but he wasn't budging. 

"Since you're so eager to die with him," Frieza said, tilting his head, "I suppose I can accommodate you. I'll crush your skull first and let him watch. How does that sound?"

Okara's eyes met mine.

She wasn't scared. Of course she wasn't. She was glaring at me, and I could read the look on her face clear as day.

-Punch this bastard!-

I pushed off the ground towards him.

I didn't get far. Half a step, maybe. Then something invisible hit me. My arms, my legs, my whole body locked in place, frozen mid-stride like someone had pressed pause.

Telekinesis. He was using his telekinesis to stop me.

I strained against it. Muscles burning, teeth grinding, every fiber of my body fighting against the invisible grip that held me. I could feel Frieza's power behind it — and it wasn't even straining him. He was holding me in place with one hand wrapped around Okara's head and the other doing nothing.

"Now then," Frieza said, turning his attention back to Okara. "Where was I?"

Okara was still clawing at his wrist. Still kicking. Still not scared. Her aura was flaring, ki building in her palms, but Frieza's grip didn't waver. If anything, his fingers tightened, and I watched her face contort as the pressure increased.

"Let her go!" I hissed.

"No."

"I said let her—"

"You're not in a position to make demands, monkey." Frieza didn't even look at me. His eyes were fixed on Okara, studying her like an insect under glass. "You know, I've killed a lot of people in my life. Thousands. Tens of thousands, if you count the ones I wiped out in a single breath. But I don't think I've ever taken my time with one quite like this."

His fingers adjusted their grip. Okara made a sound — not a scream, she wouldn't scream — but a sharp, forced exhale through clenched teeth.

"You want to know why?" Frieza continued. "Because you've annoyed me. Both of you. This whole planet has annoyed me. And when something annoys me, I like to make an exxample out of is"

He looked at me.

"So here's what's going to happen. You're going to stand right there and watch. You're going to watch me squeeze, slowly, until this loud little brat's skull pops like a ripe fruit. And after that, I'll do the same to you. And then I'll do the same to every other monkey on this miserable rock."

His fingers tightened even more, and Okara's eyes watered.

"Any last words, girl?"

She spat in his face.

Frieza's expression didn't change. He just smiled wider, wiped the spit off his cheek with his free hand, and started to squeeze.

POWER LEVEL SECTION

FRIEZA

Frieza Final Form 80% = 96,000,000

ESCAROT

Escarot (Ikari + Surge ) = 75,000,000