"Launch-san, Launch-san, wake up!" the sea turtle smacked the unconscious woman's chest a few times with his flippers. He had been smacking the knocked-out woman for a few minutes though only now did her eyes begin to show some vexed movement as a sign for his efforts yielding some positive results.
"Huh, wha!?" Launch drove her palm into the sea turtle's face, sending the reptile rolling aside to the other end of the room and hitting the television set while falling over on his back alongside it. The blonde rose with a groggy look on her face, rubbing her eyes as she looked around. "What happened? This doesn't feel like the other times I've changed into the other me… You! Tell me what happened, dang it!"
The rowdy woman turned to the sea turtle. Her hand desperately browsed her immediate surroundings for one of the dozens of guns that she had stashed all over the house but she couldn't find any. Despite her confusion, Launch settled for the largest kitchen knife that her hand caught on to the handle as she pointed its tip at the turtle.
"The Evil Tribe barged in and beat Muten Roshi up. They took a bunch of our stuff and Oolong with them. I've tried calling Bulma but I don't have fingers or thumbs… Please, Launch-san…" the sea turtle pleaded. "If the demons make it to West City before we can warn them, they'll take the Dragon Radar and hurt Bulma. They'll probably kill the rest, they're on a real warpath here."
"Demons again? Dang it, if only I had been awake!" Launch growled, driving her fist hammering into the cutting board with the other end of the knife, and she grit her teeth. The blonde looked through the blinders to see Muten Roshi laid out on the beach without signs of life and slowly stumbled her way onto the phone hanging on the wall.
Launch must still have suffered from some vertigo and blurry vision as she took double time to input the numbers. Once she was done, a brief moment of silence reigned before a low-pitched, masculine voice boomed from the other end.
"What is this?" Bardock grumbled.
"Whaddaya mean "what is this?" ya jerk!? Where the heck is Bulma, you crude asshole!?" Launch yelled out into the phone.
"Bulma? How should I know?" Bardock shrugged.
"Now listen here, you! You're talking on her goddamn phone, the number that she gave the old geezer and they've been using for well over a decade now! So, you either buckle up and help us blast those demons outta the sky or you call Bulma right now!" Launch pulled the phone off of her ear so that she could yell into the microphone loud enough and point her index finger at the speaker as if Bardock could actually see her on the other end.
"Get off my back, you shrill harpy. Bulma gave me this spaceship of hers to hang in until Chayote and that Namekian come back from space and we can go to Planet Vegeta and rescue my wife. I don't know if it uses the same communication number or whatever but until those demons are floating over Planet Vegeta, I don't give a crap…" Bardock might have hung up then and there if he had a clue as to how exactly that was meant to be done. With a hint of hesitation, he pressed a few buttons on the communicator, judging by the beeps and Launch starting to hear her own voice on the other end, he had no idea how to operate an Earthling phone.
"This motherf..." Launch growled. She drove her fist down, the resonating force knocked over the pepper while her careless smashing had flipped the switch that turned on the fan, quickly filling the room with airborne pepper dust. It was a sneezing accident waiting to happen, worried that she might accidentally sabotage her work and cost Bulma her skin and a pound of her flesh in the process, Launch fumbled to turn the thing back off while inside a sneeze-inducing smokescreen of pepper powder.
"Oh… Hello, hello, I appear to be talking over the phone… Who is this?" blue-haired Launch inquired, stunning Bardock in shock over the sudden switch in voice and tone.
"Who is this now? This is Bardock, your pissy friend called me to deal with some demon problem or something…" Bardock answered with a shallow and husky tone, feeling obliged to explain it if only because he wasn't sure how to end this call until the other side did so first.
"Oh… Maybe it was the other me?" Blue Launch covered up her face, watching the pepper dust settling down on the ground and identifying the general mayhem that followed her blond self. "Demons? Oh my… That sounds important…"
"The other you…?" Bardock shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Earth was weird.
"Well… I'm not quite sure what's going on but… Sir, if it's demons and the other me called you for help, things must be really bad. Please, please help us. The demons are really nasty business, they've almost taken over the Earth seven years ago. If they're back and up to no good, the others will need all the help they can, even if Son Goku-san is fighting by their side," Launch pleaded with Bardock. Something in the kind, mild-mannered tone that the woman spoke in made Bardock shake his head and smack himself in the forehead as painful nervous impulses started crawling up and resonating all throughout his scalp.
"Kakarot…" Bardock muttered. "Fine… Where are those damn demons? I'll blow them up for him."
"Ummm… I'm not sure…" Launch waved her palm like a fan as embarrassment had made her break out in a sweat.
"They're headed to West City!" the sea turtle yelled out, having gotten some semblance of a clue as to what troubled the communication between Bardock and Launch right now.
"Did you hear that?" Launch wondered.
"Yeah… You stay safe, okay?" Bardock muttered in a softer tone. "Leave all the fighting and blowing up to me."
"Ummm… Okay…" Launch nodded. She was a bit baffled by this request. She waited for something else that Bardock might have wanted to say as silence had taken over and extended the call but something high-pitched and electrical interrupted the call before a slow-paced rhythm of beeping took over.
"I think he smashed the phone…" sea turtle said a tad taken aback. "No wonder Goku doesn't speak much on the phone if those are the Saiyan manners of phone communication…"
"Farewell, Kakarot, let's just hope that your dad isn't being paranoid and we're not shooting you out to space for no reason…" Gine muttered, stroking her son right out of the incubator and still wet with incubating fluid in places where a quick wipe failed to dry him out. Bardock took a step closer behind his wife, wrapping his arms around her waist. Despite this display of softness, his face was cold and strict. He might have acted as a loving husband but his intent was meant to loom over his wife and tell her that if she won't muster up the courage to shoot the Attack Ball out into space – he'd do it without thinking twice.
"You might be mad at us but… Sorry, your mom's too much of a softie to fight with your old man over this," Gine looked away, feeling embarrassed about her own softness. She knew that it was because of that kind-hearted nature that she'd not see her son grow up, though, if Bardock's hunch and what he was telling her for the last couple of days was true – her boy might have been in danger and Gine would have been as strong as she needed to be to make sure that the end that Bardock dreaded doesn't befall her child. "Please, don't hate us, Kakarot." A tear ran down Gine's cheek as she watched the Attack Ball close shut and pressed her hand to the porthole in the center.
"Tsk… What the heck is my damn problem?" Bardock cursed to himself as she soared over the clouds, buzzing in a supersonic tunnel as various natural wonders and vistas buzzed right past him. "Always doing what kind-hearted women tell me, I'm supposed to be a battle-hardened Saiyan warrior, goddamn it."
Ever since he heard the voice of that "other Launch", he couldn't help but witness a surge of memories bringing him back to Gine and home in Planet Vegeta. He couldn't show his face there anymore, not ever since he started opposing King Vegeta openly, attacking his parties and even engaging his own beloved son, the bratty Prince Vegeta himself. Something about the shy and reserved tone, something about the voice of other Launch just reminded him of Gine and here he was – playing right into her hands, bowing to every request of his kind lady. Pathetic.
"Hey, asshole!" Bardock let his voice boom with a vociferous roar that instantly alerted the green, little goblin and his platoon of troops surrounding him, some of them cradled various chests and other valuable items that they must have looted off of the other Launch's house.
"Ki-ki-ki?" Medamatcha bent his head to the side, sticking out his tongue in confusion as to why this warrior was attacking him right now. He didn't look like an Earthling or anything. In fact, there was a furry accessory bound over his waist that suspiciously reminded the froggy Evil Tribesman of something a Saiyan would have.
"S-Sir… It's a… A Saiyan!" one of his troops exclaimed, pointing his finger to Bardock.
"You're goddamn right and I'm pissed as all hell so I wouldn't want to be you guys right now…" Bardock clenched his fist while letting his arm hang by his side and opened it, forming a Ki blast that enveloped his entire hand before throwing it out in the shape of a blue-colored Ki wave. The Evil Tribe soldiers scattered while Medamatcha covered himself up and skid back for what seemed to be entire miles before he slipped off of the way of the mighty force of the blast that he was struggling against.
"That's just fine, maybe you can tell us where we can find your Saiyan friend, ki-ki-ki?" Medamatcha wondered, racing across the distance that he had skidded across the sky to rejoin his scattered platoon of soldiers.
The soldiers opened fire but Bardock was too fast. The Saiyan warrior leaned out of the way of the first few plasma bolts before vanishing and moving in with a trail of transparent after-images to drive his elbow into the face of one soldier, utterly smashing his belfry to meaty chunks and sending his headless body down. The poor fellow detonated in a resounding blast halfway down to the ground.
The Saiyan fixed his torn up wristband before charging at the rest of the frightened, demonic soldiers and punching another one's head clean off, passing right past the poor dead man, Bardock appeared in front of yet another soldier, kicking him up into the air and sending his broken body to detonate in the face of a few more of his fellows. The snappy sound of vanishing alerted the soldiers but Bardock was already right behind one of them, thrusting his knee in his back as he appeared over the already dead soldier and smashed him from up above back down into the fray of the demonic troops, detonating his victim right up the faces of his friends which caused a chain reaction of detonations.
Bardock extended his hand, unleashing a chaotic but fully-charged up energy wave from it that enveloped the entire squad of troops reducing them to ashes and sending them sprinkling over the grassy landscape below as he turned his attention to Medamatcha.
"H-Hey… Watch it, you nearly blew me up too, you meathead!" Oolong's annoying voice reached Bardock as a measly bat flapped its wings right by his left side.
"Oh, hey, it's you…" Bardock muttered, vaguely recognizing the shapeshifting pig from his voice. "Take a hike, I'm going to let loose here…"
"Fine but maybe mind my feelings just a little bit, maybe?" Oolong smacked his words right out into Bardock's face as he bolted in the direction from which Bardock came from. Medamatcha tried racing after the fleeing bat but Bardock flashed right in front of him with his hand open and pointing at the froggy demon goblin. With a malevolent cackle, Medamatcha dashed back and scratched his cheek.
"You'll pay for this, Saiyan, you'll beg me for death, ki-ki-ki…" Medamatcha chuckled with his yellow eyes still bulged out and as oblivious to any deeper meaning lying in anything transpiring around him as ever.
"You seem to know Chayote, has this routine ever worked on frightening her?" Bardock asked with a calm and quieter tone than the explosion of wrath he displayed earlier.
"You seem to need to be taught just how frightening the Evil Tribe can be, ki-ki-ki!" Medamatcha cackled as he extended his arms out. "Evil Comet!"
A continuous barrage of energy bullets erupted from his arms, racing around, over, and under each other, each bullet eager to reach its intended target first as they raced toward Bardock. The Saiyan didn't move or twitch a muscle, allowing the barrage to envelop him whole and form an oval-shaped golden formation of dozens of smaller domes, each an explosion from one of Medamatcha's volley attacks hitting the Saiyan head-on. At the smoke cleared, Bardock continued to stare at the amphibian midget utterly unimpressed, donning only a few bruises over the exposed areas of his body.
"You mean the Earthling woman got me to stop training for this?" Bardock growled as he charged onward like a shooting arrow and kicked Medamatcha in the gut, stunning the froggy demonling and making his irises and pupils fade away in the yellows of his eyes as his face belched all of the air contained within his middle section. With a spinning elbow strike, Bardock sent Medamatcha flying before extending his hand and firing an unruly Ki blast arcing toward him that erupted in a crackling explosion after smashing into the airborne and unconscious demon.
Medamatcha wiped the purple goop trickling down his busted lip and shook his head to shake off the blood from his wounds that began dripping into both of his bulged-out eyes. The demonling smacked its face with his palms, clutching at his aching elbow and shoulder as even the uncanny bodily integrity of a demon began failing him.
"You're quite strong! I can't wait to see that strength leave your body at once, go, my Medas!" Medamatcha hunched over, releasing four smaller doppelgangers from his back that raced to collide with Bardock. Freaked out by this method of attack, Bardock answered the rushing attack of the first Meda but felt a sticky hand covering his mouth from behind as the others grabbed hold of his neck and head and both of his arms.
"Yes, that's right, take all of that unruly power until the Saiyan spills the beans on where he's hiding the female Saiyan!" Medamatcha pumped with his fist as the Medas did their dirty deed of draining Bardock's energy one little bit at a time. "Let's just hope he has as much spirit as he has shown earlier, ki-ki-ki!" the froggy demon cackled to himself as it didn't look like the utterly mad Medas had any semblance of intelligence to understand why they were cackling themselves.
"Piss off!" Bardock roared, erupting in an explosive Ki wave bubble out of his body and obliterating every trace of the Medas holding his body down. Medamatcha's eyes remained wide and his fishy lips merely opened in a subtle O shape in the surprise of the death of his energy-draining doppelgangers. "With this, I'll blow you away!"
Bardock put his arm forward and channeled his energy into a blue Ki sphere before drawing his hand back. "This ends now!" he yelled out before thrusting his arm out forward and releasing all of the pent-up energy into a single, concentrated Ki blast "Final Spirit Cannon!" Bardock roared out as the cerulean Ki swallowed the shocked duplicating goblin up and turned his entire body to coal before scattering it into shapeless dust at once.
The rebellious Saiyan warrior lowered his arm down with a slight tremble. He put a lot of energy into that last blast just to make sure that the irritating little demon took his final hike and that there was no more chance of him surviving to make some more of his bothersome clones to drain Bardock's energy. After a few stretches, Bardock looked around, trying to use the odd ability that Earthlings possessed and he began picking up on to sense what was going on. The other Launch told him that his son might have been involved in whatever these demons were doing here, which meant that there was always a chance that their plans to infiltrate Planet Vegeta would have to be postponed again.
It might have taken Bardock a few minutes to feel anything but he was sure that there was a looming sense of darkness far off to the south from his location. It was on the other side of the planet which meant that it might have taken him a few seconds to get there if he booked it. It was then that something tight gripped and pulled on his waist, no, the target was his tail.
"Ha! Who could have expected that the opponent Lord Slug wanted me to face would be a Saiyan!?" Angila exclaimed in infectious cheer. "I had my doubts if I could still be able to compete against a warrior strong enough to dispatch of Medamatcha, I hoped that maybe that little freakazoid would have done a number on you but boy am I glad to see that tail of yours, Saiyan…"
"Huh? Are you some sort of an idiot?" Bardock looked back and blinked a few times, seeing an elongated arm grabbing hold of his tail. Once Angila realized that his strategy of weakening the Saiyan wasn't working out, he tried releasing the tail and snapping his arm back in place but Bardock grabbed his wrist and yanked Angila in.
"Evil Quasa…" Angila almost finished yelling out as a golden gleam manifested deep down in his mouth, in preparation for the mighty mouth energy wave that Angila intended to use but Bardock swiftly shot his foot up, driving it into the demon's chin and shutting his mouth. A meaty and wet blast resonated filled the skies, making Bardock stick a finger into his ear and waggle it a good few times just to get a sense of his surroundings as Angila's head had blown off of his body when his mouth blast misfired.
"These stupid demons all over the place… Kakarot's not in control of this at all. Damn it, I gotta go make sure that he's open to go save Gine and that there's no stupid bullshit like this holding him down," Bardock made a mean face, looking down at the headless body dropping through the clouds toward the ground below before it detonated a few feet short of the ground. He hated the idea of this meaningless brawl, especially since it seemed not to provide him with any sort of challenge whatsoever to grow stronger after but just freeing up his son's schedule would have to do as enough motivation to get him to South City.
By far the most rotten and the most powerful signature was there. That must have been where the boss of these folks was.