Third Person POV
"Tell me, monkey," began King Cold, folding his arms. "Do you honestly not regret your sin?"
"I would say… I enjoyed killing him," Escarot said, plenty of answers came to mind, but he settled on the one that was both true and the most fun.
Cold's jaw tightened. "Then I will enjoy this more than I expected… A warm up, if we might?"
Escarot said nothing at first. A warm-up?... Why not? He didn't know how strong King Cold truly was, and there was no better way to take the measure of a man than crossing fists with him, so a grin tugged at his mouth as he let his arms fall loose, shifted one foot back, and waited.
Cold noted the guarded stance, allowed himself a thin smile of his own, and struck.
The blow he aimed at the Saiyan's face carried a leisurely arrogance of a man that thought he had already won the fight. Escarot parried it with one hand, and countered with the other. Cold twisted aside and caught the Saiyan's wrist, and used the momentum to hurl him skyward, but Escarot righted himself easily, halting a few meters up, upside down, as he watched Cold move after him, dodging a flurry of blows before a faster than expected sweep of that thick tail cracked across his neck.
"Well?" Cold rumbled.
"You're stronger than your son," Escarot answered, and attacked. "But that's not much of a compliment, isn't it?"
Wasting no time, Escarot unleashed a series of heavy punches that Cold managed to dodge, delivering a kick to his exposed midsection.
Escarot took the hit directly but landed on all fours, skidding over the dirt to halt the momentum from the blow, before he charged back at Cold, his golden aura bursting in power, however, despite the tremendous speed, Cold dodged Escarot's punches with a calm expression on his face.
This time it was the Saiyan who circled, hunting openings with quicker, sharper strikes. Cold parried and gave ground before an elbow drove into his gut, forcing a grunt out of him. He recovered at once and answered with a rising knee, which Escarot had already read, tucking into a roll beneath it and popping up behind him, he charged again and for a brief moment they traded heavy blows at blinding speed as shockwaves rippled across the planet, with neither gaining ground, before they broke apart.
"Now, little ape, you will see the power that built this empire of mine… I will not hold back anymore, not for the creature that took my heir."
Escarot's grin widened, it pleased him that the old emperor was holding back too, because he was, and had every intention of winning this fight.
Cold lunged, throwing a right hook, but Escarot ducked the punch aimed at his face, before pressing forward and pivoting, looking for an opening.
Escarot was a tough opponent, that much Cold could admit now that he'd gotten a proper look. Even staggering from his own attacks, the Saiyan kept swinging with brutal force and speed.
The tyrant smiled as he barreled forward. Escarot sprang to meet him, their forearms slammed together with a crack that spun them both before they tore apart as each hurled a sphere of energy, the blasts meeting and detonating, throwing up a curtain of red dust.
King Cold crashed down out of the cloud onto the ground, and Escarot drifted down after him, plainly pleased to have gotten the better of that exchange.
"You fight well, for vermin," Cold conceded.
"I wish I could say the same about you," Escarot replied, grinning. "All that power… and you lack any sort of discipline, no wonder your son never trained, he had you for an example…"
The reply soured the tyrant's expression, and before he knew it, he rushed again. Escarot caught the wide arc of the incoming attack, snapping his muscles taut, before driving his whole body into a savage counter-attack that Cold barely got his arms up to block, the impact dwarfed everything that had happened so far, as the shockwave alone tore a crater into the red soil of Planet Vegeta swallowing both fighters in dust and debris.
Cold felt something grab his forearm through the dust, but answered with an uppercut that landed clean as Escarot sailed backward, jaw ringing, momentarily out, he was unable to guard before Cold seized his legs and spun, faster and faster, dozens of times before throwing him straight down.
Escarot smashed into the ground in an eruption of debris, and Cold, taking advantage of this, didn't wait. Palms open, he loosed a roar of concentrated ki that tore the ground apart where the Saiyan had fallen.
The dust hung thick, with no signs of Escarot, however before the emperor could celebrate, the smoke began to clear, showing Escarot where he stood, upright, arms folded, gold aura raging around him.
Above him, Cold's expression changed. That had been no ordinary blast, sure he was still holding back… but that was more than enough to harm him, even if he was stronger than Frieza.
Escarot unfolded his arms. "That hurt," he muttered. "My turn." He shot upward with a burst of speed.
The emperor, caught off guard by the sudden acceleration, failed to block the knee that buried itself in his stomach as he doubled over, spitting blood. But he recovered quickly and struck back, a broad, precise sweep that cracked against the back of Escarot's skull, followed by a chain of attacks: a punch to the gut, an uppercut, a knee beneath the chin, another to the stomach, a final hammer toward the face, but this time Escarot caught the last blow on his forearm and stared the tyrant down — grinning.
Seizing Cold's arm, the Saiyan drove a kick into him he couldn't recover from, then let him drop once he'd had his fun. Cold hung there, dazed until Escarot approached, and the tyrant's eyes snapped open, loosing a point-blank blast. It did nothing against the Saiyan's guard, but the flash bought him room.
"You love striking on the back…" the Saiyan grinned.
"Such reflexes," Cold admitted grudgingly. "So this is the Super Saiyan…"
Escarot's grin sharpened. "Same to you. You are the strongest opponent I've had the pleasure of facing. Shame about your son — he wasn't."
Cold's composure cracked. "You will choke on those words." He drew a long breath, ki gathering and roiling deep in his chest, and when he judged it ready he opened his jaws and unleashed it — a torrent of raw energy erupting like a geyser toward the golden warrior.
The wave crashed against Escarot as he flared his aura outward, shaping a shield of ki that the blast couldn't breach. Cold poured more into it, the beam swelling and brightening from deep purple to searing white as its surface spread wider.
"No use…" Cold growled, stopping his attack.
Escarot raised a hand, palm out. "My turn."
Ki erupted from his fingers in a storm — dozens upon dozens of rapid golden bolts, carrying the ferocity of a Saiyan who fought for the joy of it.
Cold twisted and wove through the barrage, his great bulk moving with unexpected speed, and still one bolt scorched a line across his shoulder, another an inch from his chest.
"So fast—" he snarled, "and still he accelerates!"
Escarot's smile widened, he was enjoying this far too much.
Moving through the barrage, the Emperor reached Escarot, conjuring a blade of frozen energy — The Cold Saber, catching him by surprise, before delivering one clean, savage stroke that cut through the Saiyan's left shoulder.
Escarot's arm dropped to the red soil, severed clean, blood spraying across the dirt, as the energy blade bit deep.
Grinning, the tyrant bore down, roaring, confident about his victory, "DIE, monkey!"
But as he pushed, the blade went no further. It ground against something immovable, Escarot had clamped his remaining hand around the frozen edge, aura flaring furious around the stump, refusing it another inch even as blood ran freely from his shoulder.
"You will regret that…" the Saiyan ground out through his teeth.
"Wha—?"
Escarot forced the blade back and turned to face him, fist still locked around the frozen energy. "You don't kill a Saiyan this easily."
He crushed the tip of the blade in his grip, and it shattered into glittering shards of frozen ki that scattered across the ground as the rest of the Cold Saber dissolved as Cold recoiled.
"You sure are stubborn…" the tyrant laughed, "You've already lost, it's only a matter of time before you bleed out."
Escarot only grinned wider as he squared his shoulders, clamped down on the agony — and let it feed the fire, as his aura roared brighter, thicker, the ground cracking beneath him from the pressure alone as his muscles bulged.
"You were saying?" Escarot said.
Cold's laughter died in his throat.
The Saiyan came at him one-armed and faster than before, the stump at his shoulder searing shut under the raging gold aura. Cold threw up his guard and the first blow drove him back a full stride across the red soil.
"Guh—!"
"You cut off my arm," Escarot said, almost conversational, hammering him down. "I'm going to enjoy paying that back."
Cold caught himself before he hit the ground, wove aside from a descending heel that split the earth in two, and answered with a flurry of his own. Escarot ate two of the blows and dodged the rest. The tyrant moved back, and landed a clean shot to the jaw and Escarot's head barely moved. He drove a knee into the seared stump, and Escarot only grinned wider through the pain and headbutted him hard enough to break his nose.
They broke apart.
Cold hung in the red sky, purple blood at the corner of his mouth and nose, and for the first time in a very long life he took the full measure of what he was fighting.
"I am… impressed, by all means you should be dead," he said quietly. "You've lost an arm. And yet…. you're getting stronger as we fight."
"That's the fun part." Escarot rolled his remaining arm, his golden aura roaring. "Every time you hurt me, monkey gets meaner."
Cold's expression went very still. Then, slowly, it settled into a smile.
"…Then I have been insulting you," he said, "by half-measures." Cold folded his arms across his chest and went still, as the pressure around him began to climb, the planet trembling under his power. “I won’t play around anymore…”