High above the battlefield...
After releasing his full-power Final Flash, Vegeta was now panting heavily.
That explosive momentum had abruptly plummeted into exhaustion.
Since unlocking this new transformation, it was his first time unleashing the Final Flash at full power.
The energy, stamina, and mental strain had nearly drained him completely.
He hadn't held anything back, and now he was paying the price.
"Huff... huff... No way... There's no way you survived my full-powered Final Flash...!!"
Vegeta's face twisted into a grimace, convinced his attack had finished it.
Still, he stared unblinking at the place where Broly had been engulfed.
Time passed slowly.
As his breathing began to steady, the smirk on his face faded.
In its place, shock and dread.
"Th-This... This can't be!!! You took my Final Flash full-on... and you're still alive?!"
His voice trembled. He could barely speak.
In Vegeta's view, Broly's body was shredded and his clothes tattered, yet his aura was stronger than ever.
In fact, it seemed the raging energy from the Final Flash had actually helped unlock something inside Broly, a sealed reservoir of Legendary Super Saiyan energy.
Now, a continuous stream of power surged from deep within him.
With that gate opened, Broly's physique bulked up even more.
All the injuries he'd sustained began to heal visibly.
And his Super Saiyan form? It was shifting into something even more extreme.
His golden, spiky hair shimmered with green highlights, and an ancient, primal Saiyan energy was awakening.
He was on the brink of transformation.
But just as the power was about to erupt,
It was suddenly suppressed, pushed back by some unknown force.
Something inside Broly was blocking his true awakening.
"He's… transforming again?! No, no way! Not even a Legendary Super Saiyan can evolve forms this quickly!"
Vegeta was in denial.
But his instincts forced him back, putting distance between himself and Broly.
Though panicked, he didn't realize,
He had just missed a perfect opportunity.
At that moment, Broly had burned through nearly all his internal energy, and the stronger power had failed to emerge.
He was at his weakest.
Had Vegeta attacked then, it could have been fatal.
But Broly's outward aura was so terrifying that even Vegeta was intimidated into hesitation.
Eventually, as time dragged on and Broly still hadn't unleashed that latent power, Vegeta pieced it together.
And then, humiliation struck.
"Damn it… I backed off? I, the Prince, flinched?! What a joke, what a freaking joke!!"
Consumed by fury, Vegeta turned humiliation into killing intent.
His dark aura blazed once more.
Overcoming his fear, he lunged at Broly and struck with a rage-fueled punch straight to the face.
It landed cleanly.
But now, even such a solid hit did nothing.
Broly had weathered the weakest phase, and this attack couldn't hurt him.
Worse yet, the punch shattered the last internal barrier holding back his power.
Broly didn't move. Instead, he slowly raised his blood-soaked face, a sadistic grin curling across his lips.
That grin, like a demon tearing open its mouth, sent chills down Vegeta's spine.
To Vegeta, it was mockery.
"You bastard… you're still mocking me?! DIE!!!"
He went berserk, unleashing a storm of strikes, every one filled with the fury of someone who had just been humiliated.
But it was useless.
The attacks that had once worked... now didn't even tickle.
Baptized by Legendary power, Broly's body was now absurdly durable.
Among peers, he was invincible.
BANG! BAM! BANG! BAM!
Vegeta's attacks were relentless.
Yet Broly's expression slowly darkened,
Until, at last, he raised his right hand.
CRACK!!!
He swung.
One space-shattering strike crashed into Vegeta, sending him crashing like a meteor into the ground.
BOOOOM!!!
The earth shattered, forming a crater hundreds of meters deep and kilometers wide.
Dust and rubble flew in all directions.
At the center of the pit, Vegeta stood trembling, barely holding himself upright.
His right hand clutched his left arm, his power had dropped off a cliff.
He had reverted from Ultimate Malice Super Saiyan 4 back to regular black-haired Super Saiyan 4.
Even that was hard to maintain.
The earlier outburst had cost him everything.
Though he could still fight, he was no longer eighth-dimensional.
"D-Damn you... I'm not going down that easily!!"
Though nearly finished, Vegeta's pride refused to die.
But to Broly, he was just prey struggling before the final blow.
"I'll… KILL YOU!!!"
Broly's voice echoed through space.
Hovering high, he clenched the void in his hand,
And formed a small, emerald-green energy orb, about the size of a basketball.
It flickered ominously.
Despite its size, its destructive force reached the thousands of zhi.
This was Broly's signature move, Meteor Bombardment.
Enough to annihilate Vegeta entirely.
"Tch, !"
From the pit, Vegeta sensed the horror of this energy.
It rivaled his own Final Flash. One hit, he'd be vaporized.
But Vegeta wasn't one to sit and wait for death.
He was Vegeta, after all!
He reactivated his bloodline power, ready for one final counterattack.
His remaining energy surged into his palms,
The final beam clash was about to begin.
But then, a sudden distortion shook the battlefield.
From a distant location, a pink beam of energy pierced the sky, followed by a strange and powerful aura descending.
Its source, was unmistakably the sealed egg of Majin Buu.
Both Broly and Vegeta stopped charging their attacks, distracted by the phenomenon.
Everyone outside the arena also turned their attention to the sky.
The towering pink energy pillar faded, revealing a cloud of strange pink mist.
It condensed rapidly into the form of a cape-wearing pink fat man,
Majin Buu had been revived.
"So that's it… He absorbed the stray energy floating through the area and broke the seal,"
Lin Chuan murmured, gazing at Majin Buu in the distance.
Scanning Buu's power level, Lin Chuan's eyes narrowed slightly.
"He's absorbed more energy than expected... his strength's higher than I thought."
In the original timeline, Fat Buu, after absorbing Gohan, Goku, and Vegeta, reached a power level of about 600 billion.
He could explode with more power in rare cases, but it still didn't compare to this.
This Fat Buu now had power in the hundreds of jing (京 = 10^16), fully sixth-dimensional.
That level dwarfed anything from the original series.
Of course, all the recent battles were on insane scales, and even the ambient energy released by Goku, Raditz, Vegeta, and Broly was enough to resurrect Buu.
"Still, so what if he's revived? Even at this level, he's way too weak,"
Lin Chuan thought, shaking his head.
If Buu had shown up earlier, maybe he would've made things interesting.
At that moment…
Goku, Raditz, and Piccolo were still figuring out what just happened.
When they sensed Buu's aura, their expressions shifted, equal parts surprise and recognition.
So Majin Buu had come back after all.
But… his level? Honestly, not impressive.
Even if it exceeded initial expectations, none of them saw Buu as a threat.
"Looks like Supreme Kai was way too paranoid. He probably never imagined…
it wouldn't be Buu, but Broly, the guy we didn't even worry about, who turned out to be the true threat."
Goku laughed bitterly.
"Tch! You mean you blame me for killing Babidi, and Pāragus died, causing Broly's rampage, right? Kakarot?"
Raditz snapped, catching Goku's undertone.
"No way, Big Bro! You're reading too much into it!"
Goku laughed nervously, cold sweat running down his cheek.
But he had been thinking that… and Raditz saw right through it.
Still, he wasn't about to admit it.
If he did, it would drive a wedge between them.
"Honestly… even if Raditz hadn't killed Babidi, Broly would've still gone berserk,"
Piccolo interjected, sharp as ever.
"His father's death may have lit the fuse, but this Broly, he's not just berserk anymore.
Now he's simply releasing and enjoying his power."
His analysis struck home.
It told Goku and Raditz that there was no point dwelling on what-ifs.
What's done is done.
Thanks to Piccolo's words, they quickly set aside those thoughts.
Buu, frankly, wasn't the issue anymore.
Broly, he was the one to worry about.
Even with Vegeta's new transformation, he'd still been crushed.
If this battle continued, it would end in Vegeta's complete defeat.
"My, my~~ things are getting more and more interesting,"
Vados said casually, as if sensing something in the shadows.
"Looks like someone's lurking in the darkness, playing games with us."
Whis chuckled beside her,
"You're quite intrigued too, aren't you, sister?
This timeline has never been this lively in ages."
Their banter shocked Goku, Raditz, and Piccolo.
They had no idea what they were talking about.
Even Champa glanced over at Vados and Whis.
He might've seemed dim-witted on the surface, but he was sharp.
Realizing what they meant, he expanded his godly sense, scanning the world.
If someone was indeed interfering from the shadows, as a God of Destruction, he had a duty to eliminate them.
A destroyer's purpose was to remove any threats to the universe and time-space itself.
Meanwhile...
West City.
At this moment, Shin (Supreme Kai) and Kibito had already returned to Bulma's place, bringing along Gohan, Krillin, and Tien.
They immediately pulled out a crystal ball to observe the distant battlefield.
Everything that had happened so far had already been terrifying.
Now with Majin Buu's revival, their fear only deepened.
Especially Shin, even if he sensed Buu might not be as fearsome as before,
the trauma from millions of years ago erupted again from deep within him.