"This has been a blast, Namekian, but I feel like my squad needs my help so I can waste no more time here," Bardock lowered his block with a forced motion. His hands shook while his overheating body struggled to keep him in a state fit for fighting. And yet his fighting strength had skyrocketed somehow.

With a proud roar, Bardock dashed at Piccolo who did not respond to the opponent's attack, instead he chose to extend his arm and focus on a Ki blast. Bardock's fist dug deep into Piccolo's unprotected jaw, flinching the Namekian and drawing blood. Now that the Saiyan's power had escalated to the state where it rivaled and surpassed Piccolo's, Bardock didn't need to perform the equivalent of cartwheels of physical violence for elementary battle damage anymore.

Piccolo halted himself in mid-air, extending his arm out again and reforming the Ki blast he had channeled together, regaining all of the progress in a single instance before firing it with a yell that transitioned into a grunt of pain once Bardock navigated himself around Piccolo's round Ki blast and bolted himself into the gut of the reborn Demon King, nearly punching a hole through his opponent while sending Piccolo flapping and striding across the surface of the still, arctic waters in uncontrollable flips.

By the time Bardock noticed the blast coming at him, it was too late. In his rush and blind fury, his attempt to utilize every ounce of his unexpected second wind before his fighting spirit fades away, Bardock had missed the fact that Piccolo's Ki blast had halted right after missing the Saiyan and careened back at his face from behind him. Piccolo's Chasing Bullet hit Bardock right in the face, flipping the rebellious Saiyan over and smashing his scouter to pieces while streaks of red flooded the Saiyan's already injured face.

"I guess in your current berserk state a little pea-shooter like that won't kill you but... I've got to make sure that you don't power up like that again, just in case some of those useless humans kill any more of your comrades..." Piccolo chuckled to himself, wiping the purple blood off of his lip and nose.

The still surface of the water on which Bardock floated rustled, the rustles escalated into furious waves as the Saiyan shot his eyes wide open and burst upward like an arrow, racing against the clock and his own breaking down body until he had reached the height which his enemy loomed over the battlefield from.

"So you've smashed my scouter, prevented me from communicating or reaching my teammates, huh?" Bardock spat aside and released an unintelligible roar as he unleashed what remained of his enigmatic second wind burst of strength.

The rebellious Saiyan vanished before Piccolo's eyes, surprising the Namekian with the sudden burst of speed. Even with the Saiyan being so injured in the battle, even with him taking Piccolo Chasing Bullet square in the face, he still had this much Ki left to fight with. The Namekian spread his arms out wide, unleashing his own Ki into a smaller explosive wave that threw Bardock flipping back before he could deliver his speedy attack.

Piccolo vanished, appearing in front of his airborne opponent with a stiff kick to Bardock's mid-section. Having gained control over Bardock's aerial path, Piccolo shocked the injured Saiyan further with a chop to his chest that stunned the Saiyan in place while shaking the ramparts of his ribcage and driving an excessive amount of blood from Bardock's mouth as the chest area had already sustained plenty of damage in this brawl.

Using his swiftest flight speed, Piccolo took up higher from where he could divekick his opponent back down to the freezing depths below the surface of which had been beginning to boil from the heated exchange between the rebellious Saiyan that demanded everything this planet had to offer, including his own son, and a would-be demon that wanted to rule it as a tyrant he was meant to be. After dive kicking his opponent down, Piccolo pursued Bardock and slashed with his claws at his damaged opponent, leaving streaks of red wherever he struck.

Once his bloodlust had been sated for the moment, Piccolo transitioned to the more old-fashioned, physical beatdown, using a rising knee strike to elevate his opponent who was, at the time, crashing back down and shocking every bone in Bardock's body from the inertia that such a switch of direction placed on it. It was not only Piccolo's strikes that threatened to crush Bardock's body like a twig, but Piccolo had also become a more intelligent fighter, utilizing the very laws of physics and fundamental forces to aid his sadistic assault whenever he was not striking and clawing at his opponent directly.

Pursuing his opponent further, Piccolo struck with his elbow to Bardock's gut, trying to make a mashed mess of the Saiyan's internal organs before stomping his enemy a couple of dozens of times and striking with a flurry of chops, slashes of his claws and knee strikes before vanishing behind Bardock and kicking him in the back, vanishing again to emit a Kiai shockwave right in front of Bardock's face and sending the Saiyan crashing into a faraway glacier, reducing it to mere snowflakes from the force of the Saiyan's impact as Piccolo took a calmer breath and regained his composure.

He didn't like how rigid Bardock's body and his muscles felt when Piccolo was striking it. Every punch and kick felt like hitting a brick wall to the point where the Namekian wondered if he had even gotten to any of Bardock's internals with his rampage. He had expended a decent amount of effort in an attempt to quell this frightening second wind and had to resort to fighting at full power in a way only Son Goku had ever forced him to.

It was over now, it had to be. Piccolo pressed his hand to his chest that twitched and pulsed from the physical effort he had exerted. He wasn't used to fighting at full power. He might have trained hard in order to become strong enough to crush the humans' resistance but nothing was a suitable substitute for real life-or-death brawl like this. Bardock's Ki had dwindled after this beatdown though being more than just a bruiser Piccolo noticed it wasn't because of the damage Bardock had sustained.

When Bardock smashed against the glacier, he still had more than enough Ki to challenge Piccolo and regain his footing in this clash. It was shortly after that Bardock's Ki had dropped several times over and became too weak to threaten even the weaker human martial artists. With his scouter destroyed, there would be no reason for any more emotional outbursts or surprises. Bardock was done.

A loud splashing noise of separating water made Piccolo's glare sharpen and witness the rising waves washing away the remains of the glacier Bardock had smashed into as the Saiyan emerged from underwater with blood washed away from his body, for now. Battered and bruised, the Saiyan emerged to challenge Piccolo once more. This man might just have had more guts than his son.

"Hmph... Your strength had dwindled so low that I might not have noticed if you tried to slip away. You should have just run." Piccolo mocked his opponent while clenching his wrist and relaxing his hand in preparation for what he perceived to be a much less hardy beatdown. Whereas hitting an opponent of Bardock's berserk state power felt like punching against a brick wall, beating down someone as weakened as his current state would have not been much different from crushing a tomato.

"You're crafty, I'll hand you that..." Bardock panted, clutching at the bleeding wounds on his chest. Piccolo noticed that there were a few burns over on Bardock's face, suggesting that the Saiyan had used some crude Ki blasts to cauterize the wounds on his face so that he could see better.

"Without your do-hickey, you can't know for sure how your team is doing. That means you won't be going out of control on me again. This is no longer a battle, this is your execution," Piccolo finished warming up and took a fighting stance in mid-air.

"Heh..." Bardock chuckled.

"Defiant to the very end, just like your son. I must say, when Son laughs in a perilous moment, stating he enjoys battles like that I sort of understand him. You, on the other hand, your sadistic tendencies... That's something even a reincarnation of a Demon King like myself cannot comprehend," Piccolo hissed at his opponent.

"You might have made a grave mistake by blowing up my scouter, Namekian..." Bardock's eyes widened. A sudden feeling of dread rushed into Piccolo's chest, fuel for an unexplained flame of terror. "I've noticed how you were capable of tracking the course of battle without a scouter. Sensing my location, tracking battles all over this planet with careless glances here and then..."

"No way!" Piccolo exclaimed in disbelief. "You couldn't have!"

"Master your method of battle power tracking? No. Not quite... I cannot understand the principles of the way you Earthlings fight just yet but... It seems so odd, so... Spiritual." Bardock tore off the wristband that had been tattering over his arm and barely holding on a few threads, just getting in the way and threw the wristband away, standing before Piccolo with his bare chest and just shallow remains of his black bodysuit weave on his lower body and stripped bare of any alien technology he landed on Earth with.

"It's called martial arts. Another Saiyan had become so entranced by this concept that she far overstayed her welcome here on Earth too." Piccolo replied.

"I see... So there are more Saiyans willing to disobey King Vegeta, that bastard Frieza and honor the traditional Saiyan way of life, I'm glad to hear that." Bardock nodded with a calm face.

"You can take that serenity to your grave, at least I'll know you won't haunt me from deep down under," Piccolo taunted his opponent.

"You've underestimated me and my bond to my squad, Namekian." Bardock focused his glare at Piccolo, reigniting the passionate flame of combat within him and using his eyes as mirroring lenses to his burning warrior's soul. "I don't need some worthless scrap to know when my friends are in danger!" he roared out, unleashing a shockwave of raw power from deep within that flung Piccolo back without asking permission from the aspiring Earth's ruler first.

"W-What!?" Piccolo hissed.

"We've fought alongside on countless worlds, we've become far closer than mere just family and any one of us would be willing to die for any one of the others. That is a bond you cannot separate me from!" Bardock continued to surge with Earth-shaking power that called for sky-scraping waves by the raging Saiyan merely expressing the spiritual connection to his squad and floating above the ocean.

"Shugesh, Taro, Celipa... I can hear your cries. Don't worry, your captain's coming. These fists will blast through even Frieza in order to save you!" Bardock leaned on his right foot that he moved behind him in preparation for an assault.

Bardock charged without wasting the Ki on vanishing or after-images. This was the shared strength that he drew from his teammates and he would not squander it by throwing it away on crafty movement tricks. Though that might have been his mistake. Piccolo placed his block feeling the weight of entire moons smashing against his hand. The overwhelming pain, the utter panic inspiring by his bones popping with a volume comparable to an explosion.

Even defending himself against this relentless rampage felt like going through hell. Piccolo threw wild punches and kicks in response, clashing with his rampaging opponent midway and dancing all across the continent, neither one of the two cared much to examine how fast they were exchanging blows. The eyes of both Piccolo and Bardock had gone white and both combatants had chosen to abandon their forethought and any intellectual comprehension of their tango or else they'd have gone mad from the pain that they were causing to each other's bodies.

Piccolo was the first one to return to his senses. His body would no longer listen to him when he ordered it to. His arms hung weightless by his sides, broken and squirting fountains of purple while his bones stuck out from multiple gashes where he had clearly overexerted himself. The cruel arctic sent its chilling breeze though Piccolo could only feel it when it caressed the bleeding patches of his body as he was simply too overworked and sweaty to care in any other case.

The Demon King spread his arms out and roared, with explosive bursts, both of his ruined arms exploded into chunks of bone, flesh, and blood and, with a second wild grunt, new ones took their place. Strength seemed to be evaporating through his pores just like the warmth he had garnered from this gruesome physical labor had been this whole time.

Piccolo's antennae lit up with a thunderous crackle, sending a jolt of electric Ki in Bardock's direction. The mindless Saiyan who operated only with a bloody vengeance in his mind attempted to swat the lightning aside only to become engulfed by it. The electricity contorted Bardock's body into a position of discomfort as the Saiyan found himself stunned in place by Piccolo tapping into some of Kami's psychokinetic tricks.

"The one to get gone will be you!" Piccolo huffed as he pressed two of his fingers to his forehead and began focusing more and more Ki into their tip.

"Damn you, Namekian!" Bardock yelled out as he wrestled against the psychokinetic hold with the full realization that his life might have depended on it. "I should have known you'd pull some dirty trick like that!"

"Heh, oh, the irony... I intended to use this technique to kill your son but I'd end up using it to send his father to the Otherworld instead. The only drawback is that I will need to charge it long enough to hear you speak. At least have the decency to beg for your life after the trouble you've caused me," Piccolo finally found the confidence in himself to laugh and mock his opponent right in his face.

"I'll kill you! Even if you kill me first, I'll smash your head in from beyond the grave, remember this, Namekian! The only way for you to escape my wrath is if my son caves your skull in first!" Bardock appeared to have dealt with his upcoming fate as he had failed to wrestle out of Piccolo's hold and, even if it was weakening with each movement of his continuing struggle, it did not appear that he'd manage to break out in time no matter how much he struggled against it.

"Special Beam Cannon!" Piccolo extended his middle and index fingers, sending a focused beam of Ki with a spiraling secondary beam rotating around its tip crashing right at Bardock's chest, aiming to pierce right through the Saiyan's heart. Bardock cried out in pain while the beam struggled and drilled against his chest and detonated after a brief struggle.

"Hmph... I guess the beam was too weak to penetrate your heart, still... Not even you could have..." Piccolo huffed.

A thunderous fist that robbed Piccolo of his senses shut him up before he could finish his sentence. With an expression of blind fury, Bardock had dived out from the rubble, having broken out of Piccolo's psychokinesis just after taking the brunt of his Special Beam Cannon and sent Piccolo reeling and stumbling back with a bruise on his jaw.

"Damn..." Bardock winced in pain and tried comforting his broken knuckles. A patch of blackened burns decorated the Saiyan's chest with a couple of trickles of crimson running down though Piccolo's coup de grace appeared to have failed to do quite the damage that Piccolo intended to do with it. "I'm sorry, Shugesh, Celipa, Taro... I... I guess not even our combined strength is enough,"

"Y-You! This can't be... Unless... That's it, I must have squandered too much Ki regenerating my arms, I knew I didn't put in enough charge time too but... Who would have thought that the first Special Beam Cannon seen by someone else would end up being so piss-poor?" Piccolo hissed at his opponent.

"Hey, it's Piccolo!" a vexing voice distracted the two fighters. Piccolo turned behind him, ignoring the greatly weakened opponent who had once again lost his dramatic surge of emotional strength, knowing that the Saiyan was far too honorable to attack him when his guard was down. In addition to that, Bardock himself had quite an interest in the approaching duo.

"Kakarot!" Bardock muttered.

"Yo, Piccolo! So, you've been taking on the Saiyan all by yourself, huh? Wow, if this guy's giving you this much trouble, he must be crazy-strong!" Goku shrieked out in excitement. His cheer turned to shock when he turned at the Saiyan and witnessed the striking similarities between himself and the enemy.

"H-Huh!? How come the enemy Saiyan looks just like Goku!?" Krillin's jaw dropped as he pointed at Bardock.

"You mean you didn't know? This Saiyan is Son's father," Piccolo grumbled. He hated seeing these two here but by now the battle has weakened him to the point where he couldn't quite do anything about it.

"My father...!?" Goku rattled back without his breath.

"This isn't quite how I expected us to meet, Kakarot," Bardock turned to his son face-to-face. "Sorry I sent you to the same dump as this mongrel, I wasn't aware that the Namekians were sending their children away to toughen them up too."

"So, you're my father? You're kind of a jerk!" Goku objected to the man before him. "Why did you send that Saiyan to destroy my house!? My son was in there!"

"Your... Son?" Bardock's eyes widened.

"That's right, Gohan was in there and your gorilla almost blew him up! So, don't go around calling me Kakariek or whatever. My name is Son Goku and I'm a Saiyan raised on Earth and I don't want any of your Saiyan business here!" Goku yelled out.

"Fierce... So fierce..." Bardock smirked and let out a brief snicker. "Come on, then. I want to see just how strong you've grown."

"Hey! Don't think our fight is over!" Piccolo objected, throwing his fist out.

"Fine," Bardock sighed. "I'll take you both on at once then."

"Both!? Don't make me laugh, you could barely handle me..." Piccolo sneered.

"Holy crap, this guy's absolutely insane, I don't any part of this!" Krillin freaked out.

"We should give him a Senzu," Goku scratched his head.

"Absolutely not!" Piccolo growled at his oaf of an accidental partner.

"It doesn't feel very right fighting him when he's all banged up like that though..." Goku sighed though he still assumed his fighting stance.

"Don't be ridiculous, Goku, he's a Saiyan like you and Chayote. His strength would go way up if we gave him a Senzu now. Plus, we don't even have any at the moment..." Krillin shrugged from the sidelines, looking for a glacier he could observe the battle from though it appeared that the raging battle had totaled the entire area already.

"Don't you worry, son, as a Saiyan, my true strength only becomes apparent when my back's pressed to a wall. We must keep challenging ourselves without fear or limits, or else we'll never improve!" Bardock replied in a rare moment of serene self-reflection. "Now, show me what you've learned."