Okara Vs. Cooler — Last Standing

Cooler fired.

Okara, gasping for air, shot a blast into the ground under her feet using the recoil of the blast to move sideways as Cooler’s beam carved a path where she had been standing.

She came down rolling, before using her tail to stop herself.

Cooler dropped to a knee too, as the dead leg gave under him and he caught himself on one hand as more blood pumped out of the hole in his side in time with his breathing.

“Just give up, bastard…” Okara wheezed from the dirt, forcing a dark chuckle.

Cooler gritted his teeth and pushed himself up, before his tail lashed behind him, propelling him forward as he swung for her skull. She barely got her good arm up in time to block, and for a moment, the block held, but the force behind the strike crushed her to both knees, spiderwebbing the earth beneath her. 

Cooler stepped through the collision and slammed his knee into her chin, sending her sprawling onto her back, before he fell into the ground, coughing blood.

Through sheer force of will, Okara stood once more, her legs shaking beneath her. She staggered toward Cooler and drove a kick straight into the wound in his side as he was standing up, her feet sank deep into the wound, and Cooler folded with a wet, ragged sound, before yanking her leg free, dodging right as his hand slammed down where her head had been, punching through the rock right up to his wrist.

She got one foot beneath her and pushed herself upright. Her body was finished, and begging for a break, every breath burned, her arms felt heavier than ever, and she could barely keep her balance. Still, this was a fight she couldn't afford to lose, so she stepped in and drove a punch into the side of his exposed skull. 

His head jerked sideways, and she almost fell with the motion, catching herself with a clumsy step before swinging again, her fist landed in the same place, and the red light in his eyes flickered for half a second, before it came, glaring at her, as he swung his tail low and took both her legs out. 

She hit the ground on her back with a grunt, and wasting no time, he brought his working fist down at her face. Barely able to track the blow, she jerked her head away and watched his fist crater the dirt beside her ear. Before he could recover, she twisted around and bit down on the muscle of his forearm with all her might until purple blood welled around her teeth.

Cooler ripped the arm free, hearing as part of his arm ripped and remained on her teeth, before backhanding her across the plain.

She skipped back twice before digging her heels into the ground, coming to a stop in a low crouch. There, she spat the chunk she'd torn from his forearm onto the dirt, and grinned through bloodied purple tinted teeth.

“You… animal,” Cooler spat, as he limped toward her.

And Okara did the same, dragging herself forward, until eventually, they stood a few meters apart, without saying another word, until the two of them moved, and their battle resumed.

He hit her; she hit him. 

She caught a punch on her good forearm and drove her forehead into his face; he answered with an elbow that split her cheek open to the teeth. 

His tail wrapped her waist and threw her; she twisted mid-air and fired a weak blast into his open flank on the way down, forcing a grunt of pain out of him. 

He came down on top of her with his knee into her stomach and she felt a rib go and clawed her fingers into the hole in his side and pulled, and he came off her fast.

She got up.

He got up.

A cycle that repeated.

Again.

And again.

To the point their guards had long since disappeared. Every strike was thrown on instinct and pure willpower alone. Every step threatened to be the one that sent them crashing down for good, every strike threatened to take their lives.

Cooler staggered forward first, swinging.

Okara met him.

Their fists collided with each other's faces, forcing both to stumble back, neither had the strength nor the physical dexterity to follow through, they simply lurched forward once more, trading another pair of blows that lacked the speed and precision they had possessed only minutes before.

Cooler's breathing came in ragged bursts, his damaged leg dragged behind him, and every shift of his weight looked as though it might send him to the ground. His wounds were getting worse, and his energy was dipping faster with each passing second, the only reason he was still alive and fighting, was because his species was specially durable.

Okara wasn't doing any better, she could barely see him, all he was to her, was a blur of movement in front of her eyes, not only that, her arm barely answered her.

Her every breath scraped against her wounds, forcing tears down her eyes. Still, she refused to fall.

“Even if you win...” Okara smirked, coughing blood as she did. “You've already lost… Look at yourself! You don't have enough left to leave this planet!” She laughed. “The next low-class warrior who stumbles across you will finish the job even if I fail. Imagine that. The mighty Cooler... brought down by a simple soldier! ”

Cooler let out a growl as rage eclipsed reason, and gathered what little strength remained, and with a final burst, he drove himself forward, tail lashing behind him to add momentum as his fist tore through the air aiming toward her head.

“Enough! This farce ends now!”

She tried to move, but her battered body reacted a fraction too slowly, so instead of slipping past the blow as she intended, the punch clipped her shoulder rather than her jaw, spinning her sideways with enough force to nearly send her to the ground, but somehow, she caught herself on one foot before she could collapse.

Cooler, however, had overcommitted in his rage, as his momentum carried him another step forward, which was just enough for Okara, who saw the opening, seizing the front of his chest with her good hand, before pulling with everything she had left.

The sudden tug brought them face-to-face.

Cooler's eyes widened.

"You—"

A glow formed between Okara's teeth, faint at first, then brighter as recognition flashed across Cooler's face.

He tried to pull away, but even if he managed to do so, he knew he wouldn’t be able to dodge at this distance.

"Eat shit fucker!" Okara grinned through the light, before opening her mouth wide, as the beam exploded outward at point-blank range, engulfing Cooler whole and driving him backward across the shattered battlefield, carrying him beyond the atmosphere before finally erupting in a brilliant explosion for everyone in planet Vegeta to see. 

Nail

The light from the explosion was still fading out of the sky when I reached her, it seemed I was wrong, she won, without my help.

I had wanted to help her, especially after Cooler’s power dropped so much I could’ve killed him myself… but I knew the moment she recovered from this fight, she would rip my arms off and use them to beat me until she was satisfied.

That said… I would’ve intervened if she had dropped. But she didn’t, not until she had won.

“Okara,” I said, looking at her, she was face-down in the dirt.

For one horrible moment I thought the winning had cost her more than just a few injuries, that she had held on exactly long enough to finish and not a moment longer, which would have been very much like her or Escarot… I’m starting to see a pattern. 

I could barely feel her ki, if I didn’t see her, I would think she was dead.

I turned her over as carefully as possible.

She looked worse than I had imagined, which I had not thought possible, the cheek split to the teeth, one arm broken in… at least eight places, a few broken ribs from what I could feel under my hands, and there was so much blood, that I could not immediately tell which of the wounds were the ones killing her.

But she was breathing, barely… with a wet sound in it I did not like.

And she was smiling.

Unconscious, half-dead, one arm ruined, face broken open, and still… smiling, the same obnoxious grin she'd always had when winning in our spars. 

Saiyans are truly… a most bizarre species, after all… beyond then, I have never met one who smiled like that at the bottom of a fight they nearly died in.

"You impossible stupid creatures I somehow had the misfortune of befriending," I said quietly, before gathering her up and flying towards the castle.

"Get her in a tank," I said as I entered the medical wing. "Now."

They took her from me and put her on a table and there were suddenly a dozen of them, cutting away the ruined armor, assessing the situation, all while I stood against the wall and let them work.

"Arm's shattered in eight… no, nine places—"

"—internal bleeding, get me a reading—"

"Rib's punctured something, she's filling up—"

"Then move faster."

They got her into the second tank, the one beside the Escarot’s.

I hadn't thought about that until the fluid closed over her, the two strongest Saiyans alive, both of them broken nearly to death within a few months of each other. 

"She'll live," One of the doctors said, as she watched the readout. "It will take a while, but she’ll live."

I nodded.

Around us the room began to calm down, the crisis finally passing, unless King Cold had a third son, which I hoped he didn’t. 

As I mused about that possible scenario, one of the younger physicians standing at the base of Okara's tank looked up at her with an expression I can only describe as awe.

"She killed Cooler," he said, to no one in particular. "Two Super Saiyans..."

"We don't know that he's dead," another said.

I couldn’t feel his energy, I was pretty certain he was dead.

"Did you see the sky? He's dead."

"He's a Frost Demon. They don't die that easily."

As the doctors talked about it, the first one, the young one, kept staring up at the tank.

"The future queen," he said, mostly himself, "is just like the King."

I looked at him.

"The exact same," another tech agreed quietly. "Walks out alone. Fights something that should kill them. Comes back looking like that..." He shook his head, and there was something in it that wasn't quite horror and wasn't quite pride, but a mix of the two. "You'd think one of them was enough, the legend was supposed to be ONE, but somehow we got two."

Future queen….

May the Gods have mercy on these people if Okara truly becomes the Queen of them.