Turles's one booted trudging march had finally come to an end. Every muscle in his body screamed for mercy as they stretched and strained around the holes Kakarot had burned through his body, he should have died miles ago. When the planet screamed and cracked, ripped wide by the growing roots of the Tree of Might, he should have fallen into a canyon, and died before he even reached the bottom. The tree should've killed him itself.
But he did not die, he could not die, he was a proud soldier of Cooler's Army. The only thing he was going to do was report his success to his lord.
He stood at the base of the tree and took ragged breaths as he gazed upwards. He'd grown one Tree of Might before and thought it was awe inspiring, but this one made the last look malnourished.
The tree was so massive that he had barely been able to see around it since he started walking towards it. The canopy of blue and green leaves and branches was always growing, and would soon cover the entire planet. Walking underneath the tree was like going on a midnight stroll, the darkness lessened by the green glow of the leaves above, a brightness that rivaled that of a full moon.
He squinted his eyes and saw the small bushels of fruit shining amongst the leaves. They were cornucopias of blue glints amongst the sea of green. The clusters of fruits grew rapidly, going from sprouts to fully matured fruits in seconds. Once one cluster was finished, a new one would sprout, one after another creating an unending feast of limitless power.
He'd done it.
It was good fortune that the tuffles had contacted him when they did, dumb luck had let him pick up that namekian's poorly encrypted transmission, but it was his own genius to use them as fertilizer, and his sheer will to live long enough to see the plan come to fruition.
If any other being was standing where the saiyan was, they may have taken a moment to think of the limitless possibilities; A different potential for their life and the fate of the galaxy rested on each and every fruit, the paths he could take were as infinite as the power of the tree itself, but Turles only saw one destiny reflecting on the surface of them all. Serve Cooler's will.
"Time to make you proud … Lord Cooler." Turles grimaced in agony as he levitated into the air.
Each bit closer he got to his goal his body shook with the same trembles of death that he'd made so many suffer before, but he knew he had to live. The tree itself was hundreds of miles high, but there was a branch with fruit on it only a few hundred yards above him. He just had to grab the fruit and take a single bite, then he could finally be the hero that Lord Cooler had told him he could become.
By the time he finally got to the lowest hanging fruit from the branches his body was shaking so bad that he struggled to even get a grasp on it.
The fruit was the size of his head, round as a marble, rough to the touch, and covered in splotches of turqoise and neon green. The last fruit was a clay red and half the size, but the namekian must've caused the difference.
He tried to tug the fruit away, but it was firmly latched onto its branch. A last tug and a failing grunt later, his strength to fly left him, he latched onto the fruit for dear life, and dangled thousands of feet in the air.
Turles's forearms burned in agony as he gripped onto the fruit, his hands slipping on its rind .
I'm so close … this can't be happening, Turles thought to himself. I brought the tree back when everyone thought they were extinct, I was going to make Cooler the strongest army the galaxy had ever seen, but …
Turles turned his head down and saw the fate that befalls every planet that had the Tree of Might grow from it. The roots had consumed entire cities, the once stark gray horizon of steel and concrete had become overgrown, conquered by the inescapable nature that laid beneath its pipes and wires.
No one would ever be able to live on this planet again, and anyone left here after a few hours would find the ground they walked on as their grave.
And now it was going to be his.
Turles's grasp broke and he fell from the sky like a bird with its wings clipped, flailing his arms helplessly to try and fly back to the tree where he belonged.
He wouldn't consign himself to death silently, and let out a scream so violent that his vocal cords strained and the muscles in his neck bulged as he plummeted. Everything he had ever worked for in his life had led up to this moment, and it was falling away from him.
He couldn't stop reaching out, trying to grasp the fruit as it got further away with each passing second. Lord Cooler was counting on him.
Turles had no explanation for what happened next, but he believed it to be as clear a sign as there could be that he was blessed by fate. The Tree of Might burst into a tower of green and blue flames with a thundering roar that carried out for hundreds of miles. The fruits burst into green flames as they shot towards the ground like cannonballs fired from their branches, traveling fast enough to kill.
Turles had nothing to lose, he stretched his arms out, and he kept his palms open to catch death.
His wrist snapped as he was sent spiraling with the fruit, but he couldn't care less, he caught it. The flames didn't hurt him at all, but he could feel the strength of the fruit by just looking at it. A scouter would've been redundant, It would be the strongest of the fruit he'd ever eaten.
He opened his jaws as far as he could, shoved it into his mouth, took one bite, and had to resist spitting it out. The fruit tasted like shrapnel tearing the inside of his cheeks and peeling back the flesh of his tongue. It tasted of bitterness and flames, resentment and freedom, raw fury unbound by the limits of nature.
He could sense something calling out to him, but It did not matter to Turles what it was, it was something that he had to swallow down, and so he did.
One instant later he smashed onto the ground chest first. His armor split in half, his ribs fractured, and he laid still on the ground.
The wind blew, but Turles did not feel its chill. His skin grew hot. He was growing in size, bulking to as far as his muscles and skin could push. His flesh felt hot enough to cook off of.
it had never felt like he was bursting into flames when he ate them before.
His broken wrists, his fractured ribs, the injuries from Kakarot, all of them vanished in the heat as his breath picked up and his remaining armor broke off of him.
He could feel his heart trying to escape his chest as pools of sweat started to run from his face.
"L…Lord Cooler?" Turles struggled to slur out. "What's happening to me?"
He stood to his feet, clutching his head in his hands, and let out an anguished scream. His aura of ki exploded around him as he wailed, rising to heights he couldn't comprehend as it shined violet and green.
Kakarot, Raditz, and Vegeta materialized into the enemy command center. It felt like being poured out into a glass, an unhelpful sensation to feel as a steel door came hurtling at their heads.
Nappa's scream of, "Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me!" Was all they heard before Kakarot ducked underneath the door and jerked his head back to watch it narrowly pass over his nose, all while still carrying the unconscious Vegeta in his arms.
Raditz leapt to the side with a yelp, and came to a pause as all of them who could made eye contact with one another.
For the first time since they had landed on the planet, the five of them were together.
Only three of them were even conscious, Broly looked pale as a sheet, and The Prince was covered in blood. Instead of the triumphant celebration they'd expected once they got back together, all of them instead shared the same look of growing concern.
"Where are the bad guys?" Kakarot asked.
Nappa ran to the trio, cradling Broly's head to not shake him too much. "What happened to Vegeta?!" Nappa's voice broke as he looked at the bloody heap he was supposed to have protected. "Vegeta, wake up!"
"He's stable," Raditz said as he held his arms out to take Broly from him, "but it's going to take weeks for him to recover, at best. Judging by his ki it's a miracle he's even alive, the only thing that held him together long enough to find us was his stubbornness."
Nappa handed Broly over to Raditz as Kakarot continued scanning the room. When Kakarot finally realized what was happening, he handed Vegeta over to Nappa.
"Did they get away?" Kakarot asked. "Did you see which way they went?"
Nappa's glare was unnoticed by Kakarot.
"Why is Broly like this?" Raditz gently laid Broly down on the floor and put his head to his chest. His ki and his heartbeat were both stable, but he'd never felt them this weak before.
"He was wrapped up in that tree, it was sucking the life out of him but we broke out, he…" Nappa was at a loss for words as he stroked away the half-dried blood off of The Prince's eyes with his thumb.
"He what?" Raditz's grip tightened on Broly's wrist. "Kakarot, hurry up and heal him like you did Vegeta!"
Kakarot took one last look around the room, sighed, and then said, "Okay, I'll give it a shot, I guess. But no promises."
"No promises?!" Raditz winced in pain as he shouted, his broken arm screaming its frustration at his continued ignoring of it. "I saw you bring back Vegeta from the brink of death as if you were his damn guardian angel, but Broly needs help and you're acting like it's some difficult choice to make!"
"Huh?" Kakarot scratched at his head as he looked at the pair. "I don't really think it's like that, it's just-"
"You won't even heal my arm because all your stupid ass cares about is your next fight!" Raditz placed Broly's head down as gently as he could manage, then got up and went chest to chest with his younger brother as his screaming continued. "All you've ever cared about is getting stronger, well what about us? I'm injured, he's dying. You're going to let us suffer because you don't think we're worth it. We're not strong enough to be entertaining for you, so why even bother trying to help us?"
Kakarot opened his mouth to speak, but Raditz cut him off before he could get a single sound out. "I know exactly why you broke that scouter in the lab, it's because you saw me going off the path that would've been the most fun for you and actually enjoying myself for once. Well sorry I'm shit at fighting, Kakarot. I've always been shit at it and I'm always going to be shit at it, I've known that since the moment we started training together.
"Well you know what, I may not have learned everything you did, but we still had the same teacher, I still know how to see the fundamentals of a technique." Raditz charged an aura of ki that created a bright white outline around his body, flickering into violent spikes as he talked. "If you're not even going to try and heal him as well you can, then maybe I will!"
"Stop!" Kakarot grabbed his brother by his shoulder, but Raditz smacked his arm away.
Raditz only got one step further before Kakarot grabbed him again, this time his broken arm, and squeezed.
Raditz dropped like a brick, screaming as his brother held him in place.
When Nappa began to move towards them, Kakarot flared his ki. Nappa's charge stopped as soon as it had started.
Kakarot hadn't expected Nappa to be able to sense his ki, but the difference in their strength was obvious no matter how he found it out.
Kakarot lightened his grip just enough to hold Raditz in place. He no longer spoke to him like a brother, his authoritative tone sounding like that of their captain. "The reason I broke that scouter was the same reason I break mine. It was going to be used to track you eventually, and then what? You get ambushed while we're split up or resting? We've seen how these people fight, I'm not risking my brother's life like that."
The silence and stillness of his brother was all the response Kakarot needed to continue on, "If you were strong enough to fight them, maybe. But it looked like you barely survived against that other saiyan, Murluck. I could've beaten them without trying. If they were sending them out for you, they must've had stronger people just waiting in line."
The older brother couldn't even look up at Kakarot. His head was bent down to the floor as his aura dissipated, but Kakarot kept his grip firm. "Just heal Broly, Kakarot. Please."
Kakarot let go of him and spoke with a smile, "I'll try, but I don't really get the technique. It's all about trying to match your inner ki to someone else's and transfer it to them. I always mess it up and end up wasting a lot of my own ki and only healing the other person a little bit. If you did it just because of watching me, well …" He looked at his brother's arm. "You may have a lot bigger issues to worry about than that."
As Kakarot walked past Raditz and started healing Broly, his brother didn't move a muscle. He only continued looking at the floor.
Nappa didn't have the energy left to be incredulous, his voice only strong enough for weary curiosity as he looked at the bloodied body of his son. "Other saiyans, inner ki. What are you talking about?"
Kakarot rested a palm on Broly's forehead. "Outer ki is when we flare up our energy, inner ki is what's always there, kinda like our default power level … but different, I guess?" He shrugged. "I didn't really get the fine details outta them before they died. Accidentally killed them doing this."
Kakarot tried focusing on his ki, matching it to Broly's exact rhythm, but he couldn't get a tag on it. Fighting somebody and understanding their style was one thing, but trying to heal them always felt like another entirely. It was about as natural to the saiyan as fighting in reverse and with his eyes closed.
Cold sweat drained down Kakarot's face as ki flowed from him like a faucet. It was going too fast, too slow, too much ki, not enough. He needed to save Broly, but syncing up with him felt nearly impossible. One second Broly's ki was a still ocean, the next it was whipped up into a typhoon, and Kakarot was just a boat trying and failing to flow with the current.
Everytime he tried to pour his energy into Broly and missed the mark, the energy may as well have been thrown into the wall as a waste that may as well have been thrown against the wall. If he messed up too far he wouldn't even be transferring energy, he'd only end up blasting him with raw ki.
It was so easy to sync up with Vegeta, that he barely had to think about it.
"Dammit!" Kakarot shouted as he recoiled from Broly, gasping for air as his aura dimmed. "Just give me a second, I'm going to get him. I know I 've got this."
Before he could give it another go, Kakarot saw Nappa place Vegeta down beside them, and then put his palm on Broly's head.
"I'm going to heal him," Nappa said.
Raditz finally raised his hand and looked at Nappa, both of the brothers sharing a look of utter confusion.
"Are you out of your mind?" Raditz asked. "You just learned how to sense ki, and you think you're going to accomplish one of the most advanced techniques that none of us even actually know how to do?"
Nappa nodded. "'Bout the only person I can think of it working on. When I got him out of the tree … I saw things Broly could do that you can't imagine. If he's anything like what he was back there, he could be the strongest person in the universe. You don't really forget power like that."
The panic in the brothers' faces grew as Kakarot said, "But that's what we're saying! That's him trying to show his power, not who he really is. He keeps to himself so much that I wasn't even sure what I was getting a hold of for some parts there."
Nappa went silent, closed his eyes, remembered the visions that he saw with Broly, the talks they had, and raised his ki.
Not even a second passed before the Nappa and Broly gasped in unison.
Broly sprang off the floor as he sat up straight, and Nappa looked smugly at the brothers."I think I know plenty. Broly, you okay?"
Broly's face was scrunched in silent puzzlement until he looked to Vegeta and asked, "What happened to him?"
"I failed him," Nappa said. His excitement over his accomplishment crumbled away as quickly as it had built itself up, he made a snort that held back his tears. "I should've been there to protect him, but he went off fighting by himself, and now the best we can say is that he's breathing."
Broly looked at him for a moment, trying to find the correct words, then blinked and said, "Well you saved me. Thank you."
Nappa covered his eyes with his fists and began shuddering. Broly hugged him, and the two brothers, after taking a moment to absorb what they were seeing, put their hands on his shoulders with reluctant affection.
"Thanks, everyone," Nappa sobbed, "thanks for making it."
"No problem!" Kakarot said
Raditz let out a weary sigh. "You know that not talking is always an option, right?"
Kakarot was the first to laugh, and one by one the rest of them began laughing as well. It was more out of collective hysterical exhaustion than anything else, but it was one moment that they needed after the events of the last few hours.
"Alright," Nappa said as he got up and scooped Vegeta into his arms again. "Let's get the hell off of this planet. Vegeta is stable but we need to get him to a doctor or a healing chamber."
"What about fighting the bad guys?" Kakarot whined.
"They left, you dumbass," Raditz said.
Nappa and Kakarot both looked back at him with raised eyebrows.
"We teleported into this room," Raditz pointed to the sphere of screens showing every room in the base and said, "they probably saw us coming and ran away. Nappa, what was the last thing that happened to you?"
"Well I was chasing Mireau after I got cut off from Vegeta because I knew Broly would be with them. Then I got here and they showed me all those screens and what you guys were doing in that lab." Nappa pointed to the sphere of monitors they were next to.
"And then… " Nappa chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. The loss was far too fresh to admit to. "Then they took me to Broly, and I was in some sorta like dream world that Broly had created inside the tree, and Broly powered up enough to destroy a whole galaxy, and then we got freed. Oh, and the tree is blown up. It's actually on fire in that room back there."
Raditz's face couldn't move. He had already taken so much mental turmoil from having to hear Kakarot talk, that hearing Nappa casually explain whatever he was talking about was too much. Maybe this was where his brother got it from.
"Okay. I was going off the assumption that since there weren't any dead bodies in this room that they had just fled to avoid fighting us, and were taking what seemed like the death of Vegeta as enough of a victory."
Raditz walked over to Doctor Lychee's computer, it had a screensaver of clusters of spores floating in lines in a black void. Some time must've passed since they last touched it.
"But before we teleported here," Raditz said, "they were probably able to teleport somewhere else. We saw that there were offplanet options, so they're probably long gone by now. Left sometime between you being put in the tree and us going through the lab. At least that's what I would do."
Nappa gave him an odd look.
"What?" Raditz asked, his finger hovering on the keyboard.
"That why you're dressed up exactly like one of them?" Nappa said.
Raditz glanced down at his black and white tuffle jumpsuit, ignored the question, and pressed a key.
Immediately the entire room shook hard enough that Raditz had to hold onto the computer to keep his balance. The lights flickered and monitors fell from off of the sphere as a burning tree root pushed into the room, peeling back the metal of the ceiling.
Nappa hunched over, protecting Vegeta from the falling monitor with his own body, letting it explode across his back.
Kakarot grabbed the groggy Broly by the collar and hopped out of the way, dodging them entirely.
"I don't think that was the right button!" Nappa said as he stood back up.
Raditz was silent as the root burned to a crisp over his head and its ashes fell down on the computer screen.
"Whoa!" Kakarot stared up at the hole in the ceiling. "That ki is amazing, I would've been fighting the barkmen if I'd known they were that strong!"
Broly stared at the hole, then quietly said, "That's me."
Kakarot looked at Broly, then to the hole as its dirt poured from it like a fountain. Someone or something was drilling in from the other end.
"Like you're doing that right now?" Kakarot asked. "Well quit it, Raditz is about to teleport us out of here."
"No, that's my ki. I can feel it"
"But it was really strong. I mean I felt your ki earlier but …" Kakarot didn't finish his sentence as he pieced it together. "Is that you at full power?"
"Raditz," Nappa said, "hurry up with that teleporting thing. We need to get out of here before we have to dig ourselves out."
When Raditz turned to face them, the color was drained from his face. He only stepped away from the computer and let them see the large message on the screen.
"Tuffle Base Self-Destruction Sequence Initiated. Three minutes remaining."
The small hole in the ceiling exploded into a crater sized gap with a bang of violet and green ki.
The members of Vegeta Squadron all looked up and saw the outside world, a sheet of green and blue flames of ki burning the Tree of Might, illuminating one hulking man with madness in his eyes.
Turles's face bent into a rigid grin. "Lord Cooler," he said as he rubbed at the flowing slick of sweat on his forehead, "I found them for you."