Super Saiyan 2 Goku and Golden Great Ape Baby Vegeta vanished at the same time. A barrage of vocal sonic booms cluttered the surface of the Big Gete Star, causing the outermost layer of the greatly damaged artificial planetoid to cave in and collapse inward. This left jarring craters where the cybernetic planet's shell collapsed into the inner laboratories, mechanical rooms, and corridors and revealed the climactic clash raging outside to the bustling, leaderless Machine Mutants who did their best to keep the Big Gete Star operational despite everything.
With the two warriors parting ways, Baby Vegeta extended his massive finger and channeled pink energy beams at the end that were hefty enough to be taken as energy waves. Dropping his guard and martial arts stance, Goku burst with an electrified golden aura and began racing across the surface of the artificial planet while the guffawing Golden Great Ape fired a barrage of thick beams from up above. Disastrous pink explosions filled the area, leaving furious firestorms where the injured Big Gete Star bled fire after being skewered by the beams.
Vanishing countless times in rapid succession, Super Saiyan 2 Goku closed the distance between himself and the Golden Great Ape and kicked straight into his midsection. Not seeing any visible damage, Goku kneed and then transferred all of his Super Saiyan 2 energy into a glowing kick enveloped in a golden, ripping shine. The focused kick exploded upon rocking straight into Baby Vegeta's body, forcing the golden beast to stagger for a moment while Goku, being the excellent martial artist he was, perfectly transferred all of his momentum and kinetic energy into his left leg and repeated the kick from the other side, sending the colossal Great Ape flying.
With another flurry of snap vanishes and afterimages, Super Saiyan 2 Goku appeared before the black snout of Baby Vegeta's and elbowed it, causing it to cave inward like a squeezed accordion. The whirling striker followed it up with a pair of power blows straight in between Golden Great Ape Baby Vegeta's eyes, causing the giant to hiss and tear up. With a bold battle cry, Super Saiyan 2 Goku exploded into a rapid flurry of fists, whaling on the super-sized golden beast and rattling him with each blow, which emanated with a thunderous concussive shockwave.
Bellowing from the bottom of his chest, the Super Saiyan 2 crashed his uppercut into Baby Vegeta's massive chin and sent the Golden Great Ape tumbling and spinning vertically and further into space, away from the Big Gete Star while Goku lowered himself closer to the artificial atmosphere of the cybernetic planet with a calmer disposition.
"You can't beat me," Goku muttered with a solemn tone, never letting his eyes wander off of his opponent, who stabilized his spinning and lowered slightly lower, still looming above the planetoid with a rabid snarl on his face. It didn't slip the Super Saiyan's attention how he landed plenty of focused power strikes on Baby, yet it didn't look like he drew blood once. It could have been that Baby was still adjusting to his new size, or maybe he was holding back for some other reason, but Goku felt like he could dance circles around his opponent the way things are now.
"Aren't you the one who always prefers to fight until the last before making these kinds of statements? A fight isn't over until the last punch is thrown, and the like…" Baby Vegeta snickered with lined-up fangs that were as large as Goku himself while rolling his knuckles and preparing to go at it again the moment his head stopped ringing and the bruises stopped stinging.
"Sure. And normally, I would have enjoyed a good fight against a strong guy. But this is different. You've got all the strength in the world, Ki far dwarfing my own, but you'll never land a punch on me. That's because of our mindsets," Goku broke his stance and pressed his thumb and index finger to his temples, nuzzling them. "I no longer fight just to test myself. I fight to protect Gohan, Videl, that tiny, round robot, and their futures. You may talk a lot of noble gibberish, but ultimately you fight only for yourself."
"HOW DARE YOU, SAIYAN!" Golden Great Ape Baby Vegeta snapped his jaw open, shooting off a stream of flames from his mouth. Goku braced himself and crossed his arms up, feeling the flames washing against him like a torrent while he winced and gnashed his teeth but weathered the heat with just a meek golden outline surrounding his body as a sign of perfect Ki control that protected him from the heat. All was not as flawless as it seemed, as Goku's shirt had been singed away and his body wore some mild burns and ashen bruises. These were signs that his Ki was struggling to keep up and the damage he suffered to his body before going Super Saiyan 2 was catching up to even his ascended body.
"Rampage and rave all you want, it won't change the truth!" Goku swiped his hand and split the stream of flames into two, canceling out the attack while his muscles swelled up to the peak of their tonus since his body had reached a critical point. Right on the verge of a meltdown. However, it was right before a meltdown that the power output was at its highest. "You don't fight to resurrect your people, you fight because you hate Saiyans! You hate the Saiyans, and you hate the Earthlings because they don't hate the Saiyans like you do! Not to mention, you're envious of the Earthlings too!"
Baby howled, unleashing an invisible, concussive shockwave that sent Goku flying away while his battle power continued to skyrocket even past the point of the initial limitless heights after Baby transformed. In a snap, Baby Vegeta appeared before Goku and grabbed hold of him in his hand, putting a squeeze on him and making Goku cry out in pain while Baby squeezed the life out of him.
"Envious? What do I have to be envious of?" Baby Vegeta lightened the pressure around Goku just enough to have the Saiyan speak his mind. Meanwhile, Goku forced the hands open just a bit more through sheer force and then pushed his arms to the side, producing a Kiai bubble around him that threw Baby's hands away while Goku burst with Super Saiyan 2 aura and ascended into the air.
"You're jealous of the relationship the Earthlings and Saiyans have! You'd like to have that sort of co-existence with the Saiyans, deep down, you just want everyone to get along, but you're too lost in all this grief and despair. That's exactly why I can't force myself to destroy you like I would anyone else who's pushing so far out of line. Because you're not a bad guy, you're just in over your head and you think you've got to be some kind of papaya all by yourself. That's not true! We can all live together and make it work!" Goku pleaded with Baby Vegeta before firing up and shooting off toward the Golden Great Ape, slamming his flying fist into Baby Vegeta's jaw and then unleashing a rapid beat down, then flipping over his front with a rolling aerial double foot stomp and a strong uppercut to send Baby flying while Goku erupted with radiant and sparkling Super Saiyan 2 aura.
"I won't be lectured by some nincompoop who confuses the word "messiah" with Earth fruit!" Baby snarled with a mix of blood and slobber foaming from his mouth, but Goku stopped him before he could go on. Vanishing and covering the distance between them in an instant, Goku slammed his elbow into Baby Vegeta's round gut, bending the Great Ape over and bulging Baby's eyes out. Still fortified with earth-shaking power, Goku delivered a stiff cross, a knee strike, an overhead, a roundhouse, and a sweep before finishing his combination with a flurry of explosive right-leg kicks.
Goku's teal eyes widened in shock when he saw Baby just wiping the tiny traces of blood from his mouth with a snicker after all of this walloping that he had taken. "You're right, at some point, I would have preferred to cooperate with the Saiyans and Earthlings. Maybe, if the Saiyans proved that they have evolved past their savage and treacherous nature, I would have even tolerated the idea of our species sharing New Planet Plant again. However, that time has passed! Saiyans have proven that they're every bit as savage and opportunistic, selfish and barbaric as they've always been and the Earthlings have dug their own grave in repeating the mistakes of the Tsufurians and heading down the same path. Now my mercy entails only putting an end to both your civilizations and this planet you share before history can repeat itself, before the Earthlings can tire their planet and drain its resources and the Saiyans can lash out with genocidal tendencies."
"You're wrong!" Goku swiped his hand in dismissal of Baby's so-called mercy. "I've grown up on Planet Earth as one of its own children, even though I was a Saiyan. Chayote, someone murdered and thrown away by Planet Vegeta's own army she wanted to be a part of, found sanctuary here too. Vegeta and his Saiyans came here fleeing persecution, and they found a home among the Earthlings as well. They've enjoyed the luxury of dropping their guards, growing chubby and complacent, they've built families with the Earthlings. There's no separation between the two peoples, they share the same cities and even the same home. Sure, they're fighting each other sometimes, but Chi-Chi yells at me all the time and sometimes I don't really understand why, but we love our children and we'd let no one threaten our family. The dynamite between Earthlings and Saiyans is completely different from how things were with the Tsufurians, history doesn't have to repeat itself unless you force it to!"
Goku split his arms to the sides and channeled a pair of radiant energy spheres before rapidly thrusting them forward and producing a hail of energy blasts homing in on Baby Vegeta, as a last-ditch attempt to delve into his most latent resources and draw out every bit of power to hold his own against Baby Vegeta. At least until that stubborn lunatic sees the truth.
"The word you're looking for with your pathetic drivel is "dynamic", savage!" Baby Vegeta moved his own hands to the sides and erected an explosive energy wave around him that absorbed the incoming hail of energy blasts without much trouble. "And don't think I can't see what you're doing. Even your battle-hardened, bloodthirsty body is running short and beginning to fail you. You're too proud to beg for your deplorable life, so you're trying to fill my head with this baloney about our species living together in harmony. If the roles were reversed, you'd be snuffing my life out instead of wasting your time with words."
"YOU FOOL!" Goku cried out, drawing his hands back and then thrusting them out in the open, drowning the entire section of the galaxy in a complete white-out. His power was unrelenting, ever-expanding, and devoured everything that the light came into contact with. However, Goku's righteous Super Kamehameha didn't destroy any planets, spaceships, moons, stars, or other space objects it wrapped around. They merely trembled with cosmic quakes from the awe-inspiring might nuzzling them, but Goku's wrath avoided destroying any of them entirely.
With the azure light snuffing out and the black of space with miniscule bright specks of faraway stars taking their dominance back over from the sudden eruption of universe-shaking power, Goku stood before a bruised and bloodied Golden Great Ape monster who reeled back with an utterly gobsmacked look on his face. He didn't expect this sudden lash of such massive power that could have easily obliterated him if he was not the single strongest creature in the entire universe. Regardless, Goku's retort hurt him. It even wounded him!
Despite a great deal of success in smacking some sense back into Baby's lunatic mind, Goku's hands weighed heavy and threatened to slump by his sides. His musculature had shrunken down and he fired all of his strength at Baby Vegeta at once just now, meaning that he knocked himself out of not only Super Saiyan 2 but Super Saiyan as well. Goku's eyes looked like they were about to do an executive takeover over the Saiyan's body and send him straight to sleep for ten days straight for the abuse he put his body through that day.
"Heh, now I see why Vegeta had to put Broly down in an instant after awakening that form. It takes getting used to…" Goku whimpered with an apologetic and weak tone while hunching over with a wince and clutching his body that ached all over. With this woeful stance, he was completely defenseless. "It's no excuse though, you've gone through two whole new forms and worked them out while fighting me. You really are… Just a crazy guy…"
After speaking his mind, Goku lost even the ability to fly. The body of the sleepy Saiyan relaxed and his eyes shut, leaving him suspended in the uppermost layers of Big Gete Star's artificial atmosphere while Baby still struggled to wrestle control over his body away from the tension and panic taking hold of it. Even the sight of his hated enemy collapsing before him didn't snap him out of this terror, just like the knowledge of how small and insignificant a hornet buzzing in front of you was helped little against the experience of how painful its sting could be.
"Unbelievable…" Baby Vegeta hissed, slowly twitching his hands off to the sides to examine them as they quivered in panic. "That little runt had this much power stored deep down yet he still wasted breath bargaining with me? Is he some kind of village idiot, or could the Saiyans truly be different from what I made them out to be?"
Gnashing his fangs, Baby Vegeta turned his snout off to the side in disgust. Frothing from the mouth and thrashing about, throwing fiery Ki bombs in all directions that burst with bright and destructive novae and put the universe through even more of a ringer than Goku's all-out Super Kamehameha had already put it through.
"No! That can't be! I am presently inside the body of King Vegeta, I only need to look deeper into his mind, and into his experiences to know that Saiyans haven't changed one iota! They're still proud, they're still savage, they're still bloodthirsty and brash, they… Why? Why can I no longer find that resolve to eradicate the Tsufurians anywhere? Was that genocidal drive ever there to begin with?" Baby Vegeta pondered to himself, calming down for a lone moment of serenity before turning his furious sneer back at the tranquil slumber of Goku. "This one told me that the Earthlings are bustling to collect the Dragon Balls and remove me from King Vegeta's body. If that were to happen, I'm sure that King Vegeta would obliterate me without a second's hesitation for taking him over. It's that Saiyan's fault for confusing me!"
Baby pointed his finger at Goku and prepared a pink energy beam to blast through the Saiyan's tiny body and splatter him to bits with one go. Now that his body was completely numb and tuckered out, he wouldn't put any resistance against it anymore. After doing away with this fool, Baby Vegeta would command the Machine Mutant survivors to send him to Earth, where he'd put all those defiant Earthlings in their place. He'll squish that scheming wife of Vegeta's underneath his boot first thing…
"Jelly-Beam!" a feminine voice interrupted Baby's daydreaming as some white energy beam with noticeable, cool white vapor hit his finger beam from down low. This turned Baby Vegeta's finger beam into a road of solid ice while a pair of stray beams, one looking like a stray jolt of electricity while another one was like a blazing comet, socked him right in the eyes and temporarily blinded the Golden Great Ape monster, forcing him to reel back and rub his tearful eyes in an attempt to recover his eyesight.
Glowing with a Super Saiyan aura, Chayote ascended into the air and scooped Goku up, lowering him to the ground level. She stomped her heel into the steel plating and uncovered a concealed underground tunnel, carrying the slumbering Saiyan through it to a local missile silo. With her bare hands, Chayote ripped the missile apart and hollowed it out before stuffing Goku in, sealing the missile, pressing her hand to the other end, and blasting it off with a Ki blast that shoved it with enough velocity to propel it toward Earth.
A devastating quake threw Chayote around for a loop, forcing her to swoop up and blast her way out onto the surface layer of the malfunctioning and burning Big Gete Star that could probably only take a few more good hits before blowing up to smithereens. By punching her way out through the armored outer layer shell, Chayote swooped up to Baby Vegeta's eye level.
"YOU!" Baby Vegeta grumbled. "The Legendary Super Saiyan!"
"Sorry to disappoint, but right now I'm just a pissed-off mom," Chayote rubbed the back of her head. "I don't take kindly to giant monsters invading my planet, brainwashing, and kidnapping my friends, and then deciding they're going to destroy my home and hurt my kid. I've lived my life trying to control my temper, but it's at times like these that I'm happy to go a little hysterical."
"Hmph… That scarred Earthling must be cruising for a bruising to show his face back here. If you hadn't blinded me then, I'd have caught him and pulled his annoying gnat head off," the Golden Great Ape growled, demonstrating how he'd have accomplished this with his hands.
"Scarred Earthling? You mean Yamcha? That oaf's licking his wounds at Capsule Corps. I had to pull some favors of my own to get here. Luckily enough, I'm in charge of the most powerful private army on Planet Earth," Chayote crossed her arms.
"The missiles coming here from Earth!" Baby Vegeta's eyes widened in sudden realization. "You came here onboard one of those!"
"Yeah, figured you'd try to intercept if I fired just the one I'm headed in. Frankly, there was still some danger you'd blow all of them up and leave me gasping on space. It's a good thing that Kakarot distracted you as well as he did. Nearly kicked your ass, what a crazy guy." Chayote cracked her neck to both sides and rolled her knuckles to prepare for a brawl. She wasn't sure if the others had some sort of plan of getting Baby out of Vegeta, but all Chayote knew was that she wouldn't let Baby cross any lines and cause consequences she'd be unable to live with. Killing Vegeta to deal with Baby wasn't something weighing too hard on her mind, even if it would ostracize her from Bulma's circle of friends forever.
"Took your sweet time joining us," Baby Vegeta sneered with a sadistic grin, seemingly all jittery about getting to pull apart the loathed Legendary Super Saiyan limb by limb by himself. "Scared of being exposed as a toothless myth and a weakling whose legend belongs in a museum?"
"To be honest, I got a little lost. Thankfully, you guys blew up enough of the place to show yourselves to me. Didn't want to blast my way out, figuring it might blow up the whole thing and I don't much like open space," Chayote shrugged with an embarrassing confession, then put her dukes up. "Put 'em up, Baby. I'll spank you out of Vegeta's body and send you packing."