AN: This isn't a story so much as it is the prologue to a story that I have no plans of ever writing. So I share it with you, gentle readers, both in the hopes that you will derive as much amusement from reading it as I did in writing it and as an open challenge to anyone who wishes to write the story that goes with it (or the story that goes with the hypothetical more serious version of this prologue, if that's your preferred writing style)
The problem with Saiyans – well, there were a lot of problems with Saiyans, depending on who you were talking to and how pissed off they were at the moment. But one problem in particular, and the real reason that Frieza had decided to terminate their relationship, despite any later insinuations of Super Saiyans and pants-wetting terror, was Saiyans were incredibly high-maintenance.
The Saiyans were a Proud Warrior Race (the capitals were, as far as anyone could tell, required), which meant they found nothing so satisfying as conquering or depopulating alien planets, a job they were also very skilled at. It was a happy turn of events, as Frieza had found that the best way to increase productivity, aside from eliminating incompetents that were dragging productivity down, was to put people in positions that they both excelled at and enjoyed. With Saiyans, however, it went beyond mere enjoyment. They seemed to need to defeat opponents on a regular basis, as though to prove their prowess as warriors. They may be a Proud Warrior Race, Frieza had once remarked to Zarbon during a particularly witty moment, but they weren't a terribly self-confident one.
In theory, none of this would be a problem. In theory, the universe was infinitely large with infinitely many planets ripe for taking over in the name of Frieza. But in practice, the Cold Empire was only so big and could only expand so fast, which meant Frieza often found himself with a bunch of planet-leveling Saiyans, and no planets in need of leveling.
Luckily, what the Saiyans made up for in brute strength and fighting prowess, they lacked in general intelligence. For example, they never seemed to notice that different groups of Saiyans were sent at different times to the exact same planet to exterminate the population. Nor did they notice that a very high percentage of the 'native' populations that they eliminated were in fact Frieza's men, something they failed to notice even the one time Frieza forgot to strip the men of their standard issue armor first. Altogether, it was a remarkably efficient way of both keeping the Saiyans busy and of weeding out those from Frieza's army who had been deemed 'too incompetent to live,' but also 'not important enough to be killed by Frieza personally.' Though, as the general competency level of his army began to skyrocket, Frieza found himself forced to fill in some of the gaps with in people with excessive body odor or weird and really annoying laughs. It also wasn't, Frieza began to realize sometime after the seventeenth time they had to rebuild Planet Dairy to a level suitable for destruction, a very cost-effective method.
Then there was the issue with the Saiyan infants. Saiyans, in what was either an example of a ruthlessly cunning way to cull the weak and unwanted from their race, or just further evidence of their inferiority superiority complex – Frieza was leaning toward the latter – insisted on sending out their babies to wipe out all the life on various planets as well. And since Frieza could hardly be bothered to waste anyone else's time and energy on carpooling stupid baby monkeys, it was left up to the Saiyans to fetch their child soldiers when their mission was completed. (Or, you know, whenever they got around to it.) But this meant the Saiyans actually had to keep track of where the babies were being sent, which in turn meant there was a risk that they might actually notice if Frieza were to have all the babies sent to the same handful of planets. That's where Bluribe came in.
Bluribe had joined Frieza's army for adventure, for the glory of the Cold Empire, and for the great dental plan, but was quickly categorized as being 'too incompetent to be trusted with anything important' but 'not incompetent enough to be worth the bother of killing.' So he was assigned to the task of combing the universe for suitable planets to ship the little brats off to. A boring and thankless job to be sure, but still preferable to being treated as cannon fodder for a bunch of bloodthirsty Saiyans. Bluribe spent most of his time in the long-range sensor lab, hunting for suitable planets – habited by weak beings and with at least one moon – and once every few days, maybe once a week, he assigned a new baby to one of the planets he'd found, sending the assignment to the hospital on Planet Vegeta. (The Saiyans only had the one hospital, partially because they were a very small race overall, and primarily because, aside from use of the healing tanks which was required for all of Frieza's soldiers, the Saiyans did not believe in caring for the injured, the sick, the elderly, the infirm, the disabled, the maimed, the mildly indigested, or anyone who might need medical attention besides a woman dealing with birthing complications or an infant less than three days old. Their somewhat circular logic was that anyone who was too weak to recover without medical intervention was not worth wasting the resources on.) Then, once the hospital sent back confirmation that the baby had been shot out into space, Bluribe promptly deleted the information from the records in order to save server space, Bluribe being unaware, or perhaps just not comprehending of the fact that Frieza had had three whole planets converted into servers to avoid ever running into that very problem.
Unfortunately for Bluribe, there were three important things that a young Frieza had learned on his father's knee – metaphorically, of course; King Cold did not care to be touched by small sticky children, even when they were his own small sticky children. First: fights, battles, and wars were won on the basis of power levels. Second: people will never respect you, unless they first fear you. And third: the downfall of every empire the universe had been caused by sloppy paperwork and poorly maintained records. (Frieza had also learned to 'be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind,' but that was from another set of lectures entirely and not pertinent to the matter at hand.) This came to a head after Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta and wanted to hunt down the rest of the Saiyan babies to make a good, clean job of it, plus it sounded like fun. Needless to say, when it turned out that the necessary information only existed in a hospital that was now so much space debris, Bluribe was promptly fired. From a cannon, for the amusement of Frieza, as was the person in HR that initially deemed Bluribe not worth killing.
Because no one else was remotely interested in traipsing across the universe to participate in the fairly unpopular sport of baby-slaying, the rest of Frieza's army collectively failed to mention that deleted computer records were typically recoverable, and in short order the matter was forgotten about all together. The people of Frieza's race were blessed with many gifts, but unfortunately –or fortunately, depending on your perspective on the matter – a good memory was not one of them.
By Age 777 there were 236 living Saiyans in the universe. There was the Prince of Saiyans, who was technically the king, but had yet to take up the title as he had never undergone the formal coronation ceremony, and his heir; 24 Saiyans who had rejected living under the rule of Frieza, King Vegeta, and Saiyan society, such that it was, in general and had become space-pirates, along with the 3 children they had had since then; 7 Saiyans who had been exiled; and 198 Saiyans that had been sent off as infants and never retrieved, including Goku, plus Goku's 2 children. And that was how things stood on the morning of May 17th, shortly before breakfast, when Goten and Trunks, in a fit of inspiration and with the best possible intentions that two pre-teen boys could be expected to have, gathered the Dragon Balls and wished all the living Saiyans to the Capsule Corp compound.