A line of aliens rushed out through the lowered platform from Frieza's saucer-shaped spaceship. Their feet put on a coordinated military beat and they lined out and around the platform to make way for the almighty space overlord and his two top henchmen. Although a quartet of charismatic alien warriors stood before them, having landed almost at the same time as the space tyrant, the soldiers kept their serious glares at the back of their departing master.
"Lord Frieza!" the quartet of the Ginyu Special Squadron chanted out in perfect sync as the elite fighting force greeted their descending ruler.
The bunch shuffled in between one another, as a short and plump alien with mint-colored skin and four eyes, two small ones found where those of an ordinary human would have been and two much larger, located at the opposing sides of the alien's head rolled under the spread legs of his much larger ally. The mint-skinned shorty stood on one foot as he bent his right one over his left, standing leg and bent his right arm over his plump abdomen while he put up his left in the air and turned with left side to the front. "Guldo!" he shouted out.
An orange-skinned humanoid alien with thick and fuzzy white hair sprung backward vaulting around the frozen formation of his comrades as he mirrored Guldo's pose except performed it in reverse in terms of the sides of his body that he pronounced and the side of the formation. "Jeice!" the orange-skinned alien shouted out.
"Recoome!" shouted a living tower of a man of incredibly broad shoulders and well-defined musculature and a square, almost hick-like looking jaw turned his backside and leaned to the front, pressing his burly arms beside himself like a fleshy tutu as he captured a highly sensitive expression with his face.
"Burter!" the tallest member of the Ginyu Special Squadron with blue skin, red irises and no pupils and a spotted skin texture and a cracked open head that proudly displayed a yellow core underneath the layer of flesh covering his face hissed out for this limber colossus didn't possess a nose to breathe or filter air through.
"Together we are the Ginyu Special Squadron, ready to take orders!" the squad posed together, having changed their original pose to have more gravitas and integrity and cover up the obvious missing space in the center. The squad had several years of practice to accomplish the task and judging by their proud stares aimed right toward the evening sky of Planet Vegeta–they've accomplished their goal.
"I thought you've already informed the Ginyu Special Squadron about their mission here?" Frieza turned his head to Zarbon's side with a light blush on his cheeks that was elementary to make out over the pale skin of the center area of the tyrant's face.
"I did, but you know the Ginyu Special Squadron, they'll never skip a chance to pose." Zarbon defensively shook his hands out in front of him. Knowing the short fuse of his master, the last thing he had in mind for that evening was to get obliterated over some silly, pose-related misunderstanding.
"That's right!" Jeice rubbed his chin with a proud expression. "We've worked long and hard to make it work when Captain Ginyu left the active roster for the super-special, secret mission you gave him. I don't believe that you've had the chance to see our newest combined pose after Bonyu left the Special Squadron, have you, Lord Frieza?"
"I see, I don't believe I have…" Frieza shook his head with his black lips waving like on a night after a bad seafood dinner. "Although it might be for the better that all of you gathered in one place. This operation shall be massive, so I want there to be no confusion about your mission here. Soon enough the Saiyan welcoming party will arrive and you shall eliminate all of them. Then, you shall spread throughout the planet and eliminate all Saiyans one by one."
"You know me, Lord Frieza, I'm never one backing out of a fight but… Should we be talking in the open like this? The Saiyans here might listen in on their scouters…" Dodoria cracked his knuckles, looking excited about the mass slaughter that he was about to take part in.
"That's where prince Vegeta did us a little favor. In his childish hissy fit, he destroyed the communication tower of this region. The bad part of this is that we've lost contact with Captain Ginyu and we weren't able to warn him ahead of time. A party should pay a visit to the royal palace and making sure that Captain Ginyu is aware of our intentions." Frieza spoke with a calm expression, his tail waggled beside him in a serene waving rhythm as if he wasn't discussing a genocide on the homeworld of the species he was about to commit genocide on.
"We've been preparing for such an eventuality, troops!" Zarbon addressed the curious and slightly frightened faces of the surrounding aliens. "This will not be like the original plans for this scenario, as we'll be leaving Planet Vegeta intact and try to protect the military facilities, as Lord Frieza fully intends to keep Planet Vegeta as an operational military asset under his control. He's just looking to rid this planet of the Saiyan element."
"That's right, soldiers. All the non-Saiyan personnel had access to the plans for Order 737. I, Lord Frieza, order the immediate execution of the order. Cut out the parasite of the undesirable monkeys from our force, shall we?" Lord Frieza chuckled to himself, transitioning into a full-out megalomaniacal ball. "Zarbon-san, I trust you to oversee the execution of this order."
"Yes, sir!" Zarbon bowed with his right arm pressed to his chest.
The Ginyu Special Squadron went through a myriad of personal poses for each member as they appeared to express excitement and loyalty to the Frieza Army through posing as well. With the activation of the army's scouters, the beeping and flashing symbols warned them of the wary Saiyan welcoming party that loomed over the hill of the crater which the combined landing of the Frieza military force had formed on their planet. The Saiyans were right to be worried, trouble was usually inbound when Frieza showed his face personally on their planet and this case would be no exception.
In fact, it would be both an outlier for the most amount of trouble they've ever seen, and a slight spoiler for what awaited the rest of the Saiyan race soon. The Frieza Army took off, charging at the emerging party of Saiyans and unleashing fire upon them.
The Saiyans had an advantage of raw strength and combat potential over the common mooks of the Frieza Army, but they lacked the numbers. In addition, one thing they expected the least right now was this unexpected explosion of violence from the army to which the Saiyans had sacrificed everything: they've submitted their freedom, their culture, and even their pride that used to mean everything in their society before they folded it up and discarded it for the sake of survival.
The survival they've won revealed itself to be temporary. The welcoming party of Saiyans grunted in pain and tried to flee, as the barrage of Ki blasts coming from Frieza's soldiers wasn't enough to finish them off. Even a handful of alien soldiers accompanying the welcoming party of Saiyans instilled more dread still by turning against their comrades whom they stood shoulder to shoulder with as they turned and opened fire on the Saiyans with the lone signal of "Order 737" flashing on their scouters.
"Heh, all bullshit and talk! They say that Saiyans have spines but theirs are soft and squishy like a sponge!" Dodoria blurted out as he slammed and tackled multiple fleeing Saiyans, goring them down for painful deaths as the fallen Saiyans slowly asphyxiated once the paralysis choked out their numbed lungs.
"Focus on the job, Dodoria!" Zarbon yelled out as he grasped his open right palm with his left hand by the right wrist and unleashed a blazing energy blast that swallowed up a decent number of fleeing Saiyans and incinerated them immediately. "If even one of them flees or alerts, the others–we'll have a tougher job hunting them all down."
"Allow me!" Guldo of the Ginyu Special Squadron rolled out in front of his much more handsome field commander and posed with his arms raised over his head as he took one knee. The fleeing Saiyans appeared to freeze in place, leaving themselves open for an easy execution at the hands of the vastly outnumbering and overpowering force.
"Nice way to be useful, Guldo!" Jeice threw a handful of red energy blasts at the frozen Saiyans, picking them off the air like fish in a barrel. "It's like your Psychokinetic abilities were made for Order 737!"
"It's not like they can outrun the fastest being in the universe!" Burter hissed out as he blurred about enveloped by an azure aura and head-butted or tackled the Saiyans he homed in on, felling dozens in mere fractions of a second as he matched Dodoria in power with little effort and while he fell a little behind in brutality, he compensated with an astounding advantage in the number of confirmed kills because of his exceptional speed.
"Dance with me, Saiyans!" Recoome taunted his terrified victims as he dashed about the battlefield, striking up poses and prancing about in a goofy, dance-like manner while executing more than a handful of victims with each attack. His arabesque-like kicks broke necks while he employed even methods as underhanded as smacking the frozen Saiyans with his buttocks to finish them off in one hit.
"Your moves aren't half bad, Recoome," Zarbon nodded to himself, observing the burly humanoid of the Ginyu Special Squadron with great interest after finding no surviving Saiyans around. "For your sake, I hope that you guys aren't mocking my elegant fighting style by having a hick bully like Recoome emulating it though."
"Huh?" Recoome scratched his head. "No way, you're being paranoid, field captain! I've learned to fight during my dance lessons as a child. I've always been fighting like this!"
"Hmm… Very well then," Zarbon cleared his throat, still having not fully ruled out his suspicions of being openly mocked. "Seeing how Lord Frieza appointed me the field leader, I shall oversee the successful execution of Order 737. I hope no one here has any problem with that and will take my orders as seriously as they'd take Lord Frieza's."
"We ain't stupid, we've heard Lord Frieza command us to off all the Saiyans! That's what we're gonna do!" Dodoria lashed out and stepped on his toes to measure up closer to Zarbon's height that way.
"Respect the rank, Dodoria, Lord Frieza has great trust in Zarbon and that is why Lord Frieza chose him. It's clear that it wasn't his battle power, or else Lord Frieza would have chosen someone from the squadron as the field leader," Jeice nodded to himself while waggling his finger at Dodoria as a warning.
"That's right, you better use all of that aggression bashing Saiyan heads, spiky-head!" Recoome pointed his finger in an accusatory manner to Dodoria.
"Listen up, this operation will not be a walk in the park. Prince Vegeta scrounged up a massive power level in secret by abusing his Saiyan ability to power-up after grievous injuries sustained in battle. He is quite a threat to any of us, we believe his full power might measure up to as high as over one million." Zarbon said.
"One… One million!?" Guldo freaked out. "Th… That's almost like ten Captain Ginyus! Is even Lord Frieza himself that powerful!?"
"Calm down, Guldo, field commander's not yet done explaining his point, are ya?" Jeice scolded Guldo before looking back in Zarbon's direction.
"That's right. Prince Vegeta hasn't fully recovered from his injuries when Cui attacked him. Still, despite his injuries, he's dispatched of Cui rather easily and went on a rampage. Recently, there hadn't been power levels this intense except near the royal palace, though they were far smaller. It is believable that Captain Ginyu might have been the one fighting as we also recorded his battle power on our spaceship's radar." Zarbon briefed the squad.
"I see, if Vegeta took on both Cui and his pops, who's actually Captain Ginyu in disguise, he's either dead or really messed up. It's our chance to nab him, isn't it?" Burter hissed and turned to take off before Jeice's scolding glare washed over Recoome, who grabbed hold of Burter's shoulder and turned him back to their field leader.
"Thank you, Burter's assessment might have been spot-on. We must first affirm the situation at the royal palace and find out the state of Captain Ginyu and his hold over the Saiyans. He might have information about where prince Vegeta is. With his massive power level, he won't be able to hide on Planet Vegeta–we'll hunt him down by tracking his battle power." Zarbon nodded. "Therefore, our destination is the royal palace!"
"Right!" the entire Frieza Army standing by and awaiting orders from their field commander saluted in unison before Zarbon jumped up and took off, only to be followed by the universe's most fearsome planet-conquering army. A force now focused on the elimination of the entire Saiyan race.
"So, Zarbon, I see you're doing well after your failed audition…" Jeice beamed an ecstatic grin in Zarbon's direction only for the fabulous field leader to not even acknowledge it with a look as his stoic expression remained focused on what lay ahead and the scouter readings regarding it. Once prince Vegeta is no longer a threat–the force can execute Order 737 with nothing to worry about.
"Yeah, your rejection hasn't bumped you down on your relationship with Lord Frieza, that's good to see." Burter nodded with a smile. Zarbon could have sworn that the Ginyu Special Squadron was just mocking him all-around with this, but he needed their power and uncanny abilities and he'd have seemed unhinged to his troops by lashing out at them right now.
"Or maybe Zarbon hadn't told Lord Frieza yet?" Recoome chuckled, turning to his fellow Ginyu Force members.
"It's impossible to keep secrets from Lord Frieza, he knows," Zarbon grit his teeth in discomfort, recalling his failed attempts to becoming a part of the Ginyu Special Squadron once.
"Wait, Zarbon once tried becoming a member of the Ginyu Force?" Dodoria cracked a grin. He might have enjoyed more the fact that his fellow most trusted henchman of the universe's ruler failed in his audition rather than the knowledge of the fact that he auditioned itself.
"That's Ginyu Special Squadron to you!" Guldo squealed out, shaking his relatively tiny fist over his head as the crew flew toward the royal palace.
"Calm down, Guldo, your slobbering does more harm to our reputation than mere nicknames. That's right, Zarbon reached out to us in an hour of desperate need. We respect him for it, Bonyu had just left and Captain Ginyu also was occupied with the super-special, secret mission. We were only four members and our poses were a complete mess…" Jeice grit his teeth, overcome with distraught as he recalled the troublesome period from not even that far back.
"It was a crisis that may have dissolved the Special Squadron as we knew it…" Burter nodded with heavy foreboding in his voice.
"Huh? Then what the heck gives? If you need people that badly, why didn't ya take him in? Did he mess up that badly?" Dodoria scratched his pink, spiky head. The ridges over Dodoria's eyes took a sharper angle as Lord Frieza's most trusted brute always became aggravated when thinking got too hard for him. Given his below-average intelligence, that was quite often, though it came to Frieza's benefit as the tyrant liked his brawny bully a bit peeved.
"Not at all, you dolt! Things just… Didn't work out!" Zarbon yelled out at his shorter but much burlier pink partner in crime.
"That's right, Zarbon-chan was so elegant and pretty, he was a natural with poses! We'd have liked him to be just a bit stronger though… Guldo's already an embarrassment as it is," Recoome guffawed to himself, finding his mockery of a fellow Special Squadron member so hilarious that he rolled himself up in mid-air.
"Recoome, a little respect for our field leader, maybe?" Jeice scolded his comrade. "Well, it turned out that Zarbon could power up by an impressive amount. Enough to fit our ranks, maybe, but… When he did power-up… Let's just say he wasn't all too good with posing and being elegant anymore. A truly messy situation and we felt so bad about rejecting such a promising candidate."
"Heh, what about me?" Dodoria pointed to himself with his stubby thumb. "I've got plenty of muscle and I might not be a looker, but I sure am prettier than Zarbon's other form."
"Sure, if you can beat Recoome at arm-wrestling, we'll sign you up for an audition. See what your pose-game is. It'll be a tough sell though, we've perfected our four-men posing already so you better shape-up, lose some weight maybe?" Jeice all but dismissed Dodoria's candidacy without actually dismissing it.
"Hey, what's with all those wild battle powers all over the place?" Guldo wondered, scanning the areas that his scouter range could still reach. "Could more Saiyans have powered up alongside Vegeta? What if that mean bully was gathering an entire army to resist Lord Frieza with? Now it makes sense why Lord Frieza executed Order 737 at this point in time."
"No, some of our associates reported that new recruits have appeared on Planet Vegeta. Some of them are Saiyans. The entire group served as space pirates for a little while. Their battle powers are significant, so we'll reach out to them in time and see if the non-Saiyans will shoot their allies in the backs for a place in Lord Frieza's army." Zarbon answered with a straight place. His calm attitude revealed that he had already taken the space pirates from Earth into consideration.
"Who wouldn't sell out those crude and smelly bastards if given the chance?" Guldo stuck out his tongue in disgust. He may not have been that far off the common opinion around the Frieza Army.
One by one, the soldiers stopped and examined the remains of the royal palace. They activated their scouters and looked around the devastated, rocky landscape and the violent thunderstorms that lashed the evening sky and gloomy clouds covering the area. Something quite apocalyptic must have occurred in this area, as the signs were all over the atmosphere and the entire region.
"What's the meaning of this? Where is Captain Ginyu's signature? He can't be…" Jeice muttered with a sweaty expression of terror frozen on his face.
"I'm afraid we cannot rule out that possibility if prince Vegeta's unbelievable power readings were true," Zarbon closed his eyes, needing just as much convincing of his own words to take them for granted as everyone around him needed it.
"But then where's Vegeta-chan?" Recoome scratched his head. "He had to be injured, but he's nowhere here. This place is a complete dump!"
"Yeah, we're wasting our time here, there's nothing but rocks and smoke as far as the eye reaches!" Dodoria threw a fit, boxing with the sky.
"We'll need to check every power level that stands out. Guldo, Jeice, Burter, Recoome, Dodoria, take a hundred and twenty men each of you and head toward the nearest notable battle power reading that's below your level. We'll tackle the larger ones together. There's enough for all of us to cover, and one of us is bound to run into Vegeta. If neither of us does–that means that Vegeta's battle power had dipped to critical stages. We'll then have to check every facility on the planet with operational healing pods individually!" Zarbon briefed the squad. He didn't need to say pretty please since as soon as he finished his briefing, the Saiyan Elimination Platoon splintered off and took off toward the nearest notable power level.
Nobody wanted to face prince Vegeta at full power if he could do something as unbelievable as this and rise to a million power level units while injured. That's before he recovers and powers up again. As much as the group dreaded that possibility, they may have needed to ask Lord Frieza to get involved himself and while it wouldn't be a death sentence to the one suggesting it to the tyrant himself, as it would have been usually, they'd still need to do the dirty work and find the Saiyan prince for him themselves before they approach the emperor.