Chapter 47: The Rebirth of the Replacement Emperor of the Universe
With a small but fateful meeting began an adventure spanning decades, across galaxies. This adventure culminated in the reincarnation of the fearsome Majin Boo being taken under Son Goku's wing to learn all that he had to offer… And from the ashes of the end of this adventure came the beginnings of new adventures… One encompassing the entire universe as it took the Capsule Corp. heir Trunks and Son Goku's younger son Goten to explode from within themselves all they had, and more! And now, three years after the decisive defeat of the fearsome, godly bio-android Cell in the future timeline, a new threat has begun to stir in the reaches of Planet Freeza No. 001…!
"Yet another planet has been taken by those damned Galactic Patrol vermin… Curses!" said a hooded figure, "How?! Just how is this happening?! And after Mu's empire was so conveniently toppled by those Saiyans on Earth!"
"It cannot be helped, Sorbet-taichou," said a grey-skinned individual wearing a double-eared visor-shaped Scouter, "after the Machine Mutants that annexed most of our remaining forces were toppled, those wretched Galactic Patrol agents have been traversing in and out of Earth, receiving training from the son of Prince Vegeta! And it's rumored that he and his friends not only destroyed Baby, but another all-powerful figure in the ruined planet of New Namek!"
"And thanks to the ruination of that planet, we can't even hope to resurrect our lord Freeza-sama in the hopes of bringing his empire back to its former glory… nor our senior leader, King Cold!" Damn it, Tagoma! Is there simply no hope but for us to surrender to the Galactic Patrol and beg for mercy?! Our soldiers are numbered less than a thousand, now!"
"There may be one way," said a Freeza soldier.
"Yes?! You do realize you are speaking out of turn, correct? What bright idea have you in mind, Cranberry?!"
"Worry not, Sorbet… You do remember the planet that Freeza-sama used as base before the siege on Namek ruined our once-powerful army? I myself was there to see it all, the chaos and carnage on Namek over the Dragon Balls!"
"And?! The Dragon Balls are long since destroyed! Which brings us back to our prior tangent, that without the Dragon Balls, there isn't a single shred of hope we have to reconquer this universe and bring this once-powerful army to its former glory!"
"You do remember the rumor, don't you? That Freeza-sama was not born alone, that a twin brother of his came from the same womb?"
"Y-You mean that rumor?! It's just preposterous! The thought that Freeza-sama was birthed with a siamese twin… You have to be joking! To go ahead and bank all our resources on taking back Planet Freeza #079 just to hope that this 'twin brother' of Freeza-sama's just happens to be in suspended animation there…"
"And? Do you not remember the graveyard of fetuses that Cold slayed for being unworthy of his bloodline?! And his musing that only Freeza-sama of all his would-be children inherited his cruelty and abnormal power?! Berryblue here will be here to attest! Berryblue! Is it or is it not true that Freeza-sama was born with a twin elder brother of his attached to his waist, and that he was readily removed before King Cold took his favored son to the healing chamber to recover from the injury?"
"It is as he said. Freeza-sama, our young lord, was indeed born with a twin attached to his waist, who despite only having a body of a head, was the first to crown among the two… However, King Cold indeed saw him as a disgrace to his bloodline and had him readily removed. However, I personally saw to it that the head of this removed sibling was not simply buried like all of Cold's other failure sons, but preserved in an underground bunker… A cooler of sorts, if you will."
"So there! There's our chance! If we manage to take back that planet and use the technological advances we've made to the medical machines to graft onto this individual an organic body, we may be able to bring the Freeza Forces back to its once-towering glory! I should know what kind of glory we once managed to enjoy at the peak of this universe, being that I was personally hand-picked to be one of the soldiers taken to Namek! And thanks to that Super Saiyan's friends resurrecting everyone killed by Freeza-sama's men, including those killed by that accursed wretch Zarbon, I lived to tell the tale! The sole survivor of the battle on Namek!"
"Grrr… Very well, Cranberry. I will go along with your farfetched plan. Thanks to the blueprints of Freeza-sama's mechanical body that our scientists built in image of his original one, grafting an artificial and synthetic, yet organic body for this individual may not be impossible after all… But should this plan end in failure, Tagoma here will have your head! Got that, Cranberry? The only reason we even promoted you to a sub-leader of our forces is because you were the only living witness of the battles on Namek!"
"Pfft. We know that's a lie. You only had to elevate me to that spot because we're so low on numbers after all these decades of barely staying afloat!"
"Silence! We head to Planet Freeza #079 this instant! Tagoma! Given that you were one of the few individuals whom Freeza-sama had to use his first transformation to defeat, can I trust you to be able to salvage his brother's skull by yourself?!"
"Yes, Sorbet-sama. Anything to honor Freeza-sama's legacy," said Sorbet's right-hand man Tagoma as he powered up and released a furious aura, causing the floor below him to crack and the windows of the mother spaceship the remnants of the Freeza Force were situated in to nearly break. After safety measures that were in place to prevent the spaceship from being destroyed from exposure to the vacuum of space were abruptly activated in response to this massive quake, Tagoma and Cranberry set out on what the former could only describe as a goose chase… One that would, however, yield promising results!
Around the time that this was happening, on Earth Bra had grown weary of being forced to study to one day inherit Capsule Corp. from her elder brother Trunks should he fully embrace the role of a warrior and abdicate his CEO position, and knocked her tutor out cold with a karate chop to the back of his neck.
"Oops… I went and did it again. But don't blame me, old man! It's half your fault too, for making this just so daaaaaang boring! And I'm off!" yelled the half-Saiyan warrior as she yanked open the bars covering the window and used a watch she'd stolen from her mother's basement to transform herself into Great Saiyaman No. 2, Videl's once-favorite superheroine alter ego. She then took off with a stack of 10,000 Zeni bills her mother was to pay her tutor for her lessons and bought herself an air car, with which she went on a joyride toward East District 439 with.
"Yee-haw! Hell yeah, this is just the life! Get out, get out of the way, losers, if ya don't wanna get run over! Hahahahaha!" yelled Bra as she broke nearly every traffic law humanly possible on her way there, before the vehicle summarily ran out of fuel. By the time this had happened, Bra had already reached the mountainside adjacent to Goku's old home.
"Hehehe… Flyin' here woulda been a piece of cake, but goin' on a joyride and scarin' all those innocent city bumpkins and countryside hicks was just sooo much more fun than plowing through a bunch of clouds…! Now let's see… Is Goten-san here? If not, this'll certainly draw his attention…!" said Bra as she activated her Ultimate state, upon which she drew a quick, deep breath and formed a ball of Ki. In the middle of this action, however, her attention was suddenly drawn to the brassiere that was automatically formed when she activated Videl's superheroine outfit, and she then said, "Gah! Whatever it is that Gohan-san was drawn to when he married Videl-san, it certainly wasn't to her upper chest! Her waistline's too big for my size, and her bra cramps the crud out of my breasts! It's hard to maintain this level of power with these constrainin' clothes on me!" said Bra as she ripped her top off and then removed her brassiere, at which point Goten arrived at her location using Shunkan Idou. He was entranced, yet shocked by a sight he had not expected to see…
"B-Bra?! W-What are you doing with your shirt off, at a place like this?! And with your Ki flared up all the way, too! I-Is this some kind of raunchy prank?!"
"Oh, don't tell me Goten-san the player is some kind of prude…? Seeing a girl naked… Surely that can't be too rare of an occurrence for ya, right? C'mon, give my jugs a little puff to the puff…."
"B-Bra, get your mind out of the gutter and put this on, right now!" yelled Goten as he took off his jacket and threw it on Bra, at which point she did as he said and put the jacket on, while still exposing part of her midriff and cleavage.
"Whew. Just what were you thinking, Bra?! Taking off your clothes?! I-Is this some kind of attempt at seducing me?! I'm old enough to be your uncle!"
"Excuse me, if I did want to seduce anybody, it wouldn't be the grown-ass man about fourteen years my senior, I'll have ya know! I only took my shirt off because your sister-in-law Videl-san has herself a magnificently flat chest! And it was chokin' the ever loving crap out of my beautiful breast!"
"Bra, you're sixteen years old! Try to learn some modesty! I didn't come here just to give you an earful about raising your power, but because I sense an eerie premonition…. One unlike anything I've experienced in the past three years…!"
"Three years… Right, three years ago we had no shortage of big and bombastic fights… First the battle against the Evil Dragons, and then that future android Cell, back-to-back…"
"Yes. And something about the great peace we've experienced since then tells me that it's not going to last… As if we're about to get into a battle that'll cost us our lives…"
"Pffft! Goten-san, you worry too much! With no Dragon Balls left and those Galactic Patrol guys patrollin' every corner of the universe, just what do we have to worry about?! Don't tell me you're getting' old and soft on me, now!"
"S-Soft?! I'll have you know, Bra, that I still keep up my training day and night…"
"Oh yeah? I suppose that's where you got these big biceps from, eh? Your physique's impressive… Almost enough to turn me on. If you weren't so old, that is!"
"BRA!"
As the half-Saiyan children of Son Goku and Vegeta were having their banter, Tagoma and Cranberry were busy at work, attempting to retake the planet of Planet Freeza #079 without much resistance. As Tagoma kept blasting away at his opposition, Cranberry then said, "T-Tagoma! Are you sure it's wise to rain blast after blast on these fools?! All we need is to raid the Freeza Clan graveyard to find the cooler we need to salvage, at the rate you're going, you'll destroy everything!"
"You need not worry. My Scouter detected vital signs resting thousands of feet below the surface of said graveyard. In order to retake that land without a hitch, destroying all opposition on this planet is necessary. Now, I shall relay onto you the location of the bunker beneath the Freeza Clan graveyard! I will keep our enemies at bay, you go and infiltrate the cooler, and bring our target back! Afterwards, the next phase of our plan to retake the universe will begin!"
"Grr… You just have to task me with the dangerous job before our enemies are even wiped out… Very well, it was my idea to go after the man resting in the cooler, so I shall!"
Before long, virtually any and all opposition that had come to resist Tagoma's flashy rampage had been reduced to naught. Pulling a chain that hid a secret passageway to the innermost, long-hidden cooler that housed their soon-to-be-crowned lord, Cranberry located a freezing chamber in which a decades, if not centuries-old window that reflected a hibernating head in the middle of many wires that were no doubt keeping its vital life functions intact could be seen. Cranberry formed a tiny Ki blade from his index finger and tore open the password-operated door and cloaked himself in a Ki aura, hoping to stave off the intense cold that simply burst from the cooler as he quickly cut the wires and salvaged the head of an individual that looked remarkably similar to Freeza… Only, his countenance housed an expression of a fury far greater, with a hint of sadness and regret. As Cranberry took hold of the unconscious head and tried to ascend back to ground level, Tagoma was shot down by unexpected opposition.
"C-Curses! I had no idea that the Galactic Patrol housed such a powerful warrior…!" yelled Tagoma as a large, brawny warrior of immense stature and the face of a red-skinned bull descended to the ground and said, "That's what you get for assuming that your organic power would be enough to fight a cyborg like myself. I am a Galactic Patrol cybernetic agent, the great Shisami! Thanks to my enhancements, if an instrument happened to be capable of reading my power, it would be in the tens of millions! And my power is masked completely, giving me complete and utter mastery over the element of surprise!"
"T-Tens of millions?! A-At the state our army is in, this guy alone could take down all of our forces by himself! W-We're in for more than we bargained for! T-Tagoma, I hate to do this, but you're on your own!" yelled Cranberry as he tossed the hibernating head he'd retrieved into the distance and attempted to flee, upon which the head awakened and said in a booming voice, "Runningggg…. Away…..?! And you callll yourself…. A SOLDIER?!"
"Huh?!" said Shisami as he looked curiously at the decapitated monstrosity before the reanimated head released from its eyes a pair of powerful laser beams, drilling straight through the cybernetic warrior's skull. Completely incapacitated, Shisami fell powerlessly to the floor as the head, spitting a significant volume of blood, then said, "You… Tagoma, was it? Go and execute that absconding failure, and take myself and this Shisami creature to wherever is your main base of operations, now! Such was what you'd planned to achieve as your objective from the beginning, was it not?"
"He's just awakened from a decades, perhaps centuries-long slumber as just a disembodied head… And already he's this powerful, and regal! I swear to serve this man with my life!" thought Tagoma as he then said, "Yes, sir. And allow me to step out of line and ask what the name of my new master is?"
"Name? I was never given one, when my father tossed me like trash and wired me to that primitive life support machine in the midst of that frigid cooler… Very well, if I were to name myself in the vein of Cold and his brethren, perhaps… Coola will do."
"Coola-sama… Yes, it is indeed a magnificent name. I shall do as you command," said Tagoma as he charged a small blast in his fingertip and summarily executed Cranberry, after which he took Shisami's dying body in one hand and Coola's head in another, and brought them both before Sorbet and Berryblue.
"So the mission was a success…. It is as you said, Berryblue. Our lord Freeza was indeed born to an unexpected twin birth… and here is his elder brother."
"Yes. And now, we must restore him to full fighting shape at once. Our young lord, please follow me quickly," said Berryblue, whom Coola recognized as the woman who delivered himself and Freeza as a midwife. Coola was put in a new-type medical healing chamber in which was inputted a series of DNA alleles and anatomical data stemming from Coola's own DNA and the blueprints of Freeza's organic anatomy that the scientists who rebuilt his body had painstakingly compiled, and bit by bit tissue began to grow below his neck. First came his heart and ribcage, and then a pair of arms, followed by his pelvic region and his tail… After those, his legs. In a matter of hours, Coola's reconstruction was complete. The chamber burst open with his powerful energy as Coola broke out of the chamber, which released green rejuvenating liquid that spurted onto Shisami's dying body, healing the gaping holes in his skull and causing him to half-awaken from his brain damage induced slumber.
"Grrrrrraaahhhh…. Just what happened to me?! Where am I?!" said Shisami as Coola emerged from the healing chamber and lightly choked him with his newly grown tail and said, "Do you want to once again engage in an exercise of futility in opposing me, or shall you lend your services to me and declare me your new master?! You were no match for me when I had no body, and you're certainly no match for me at present. Am I wrong?"
"Brrraaaammmmmrrrfff…. Wuuuuuaaaahhhh…" Shisami incoherently grunted as Coola tossed him unforgivingly toward the ground strongly enough to make the entire ship quake, after which he said, "Yes. You've defeated me twice now, my master. I only joined the ranks of the Galactic Patrol in the hopes that I'd run into no shortage of battles to test my cybernetic enhancements….! If serving you means serving a more powerful being, and more opportunities to fight, then join you I shall!"
"Perfect. You and Tagoma will be my right and left-hand men," said Coola as he took breath with his own lungs for the first time in his life and said, "So this is the outside world… For a century now I've dreamt of walking this ground with my own two legs, grasping everything with my own two hands…. But to go so far to resurrect me, you must have done so to eliminate some insurmountable competition, is that not right?" surmised Coola, correctly.
"Y-Yes! You're a mighty clever mind, as intelligent as you are powerful, sire!" yelled Sorbet, "The Freeza Forces have long since dwindled to a mere several hundred, and some of our best ships captured by enemies that called themselves the Machine Mutants…! But the Machine Mutants are long since gone, and they were defeated by a legion of fighters on Earth who call themselves the Saiyans…!"
"The Saiyans, eh? I remember in my slumber hearing about the 'Super Saiyan' who defeated and overcame Freeza, my foolish brother. It must have been when his body was being rebuilt that scientists and my wretched father Cold passed by my prison.
"Y-Yes, you are well-informed, my lord! The Saiyan's name is Son Goku! And we have on him detailed files, dating back to his childhood! All thanks to the memoirs written by his son, Son Gohan!"
"Memoirs, you say?! Hand those to me at once! In order to be rid of any obstacles that stand in the way of my universe conquest, I must be well-informed of the history of our enemies!"
Before long, Coola had finished reading through the files compiled by the Freeza Force spies, as well as finished in his read of Gohan's memoir, the Book of Dragon Legends.
"Not much of this tripe interests me in the slightest…. But it does contain some valuable information. According to this memoir compiled by Son Goku's son, what enabled Son Goku to defeat his first alien foe Piccolo was a power-awakening trinket known as the Choshinsui, was it not?"
"Y-Yes! According to the research compiled by our spies, it is a secret Ki-altering substance that awakens the inner potential of its drinker! But even a glass of it is a potent poison that killed many an Earthling martial artist…!"
"Feh! After surviving the grueling hell that my life was up to this point, a tank of such material need not rouse my fear! We head toward Earth at once, to procure this power-awakening trinket! And after we have analyzed its properties thoroughly and drawn out my innermost hidden powers, universal conquest awaits!"
And so, born from the ashes of the Freeza Forces' ruin is yet another new threat… One that seeks to attain the pinnacle of power! With uncharted territory yet to explore, Coola's forces now head toward Earth to use her power artifacts to bring certain doom upon the universe… Is this a premonition of the doom that Goten sensed…?!
To be continued…