Yamcha looked around the industrial facility and the machinery that his desert bandit mind could hardly grasp the basic concepts of just doing its usual thing. Whole deceased reptilian titans fell into one rotating hole that emanated with fleshy ripping sounds and something moist being pumped and filtered. Bones stacked in a neat pile ran out a conveyor belt multiple floors lower while heavy stamping hammers picked them up halfway on their journey and subtle, robotic machinery applied strips of processed meat around it.
It wasn't easy making out what the purpose of each machine was, but somehow Yamcha could make out the general idea of this facility, even if the idea of working meat this way seemed silly to him.
"Well, there you are, buddy, the Meat Processing Plant…" a bald-headed alien with large, squirrel-like cheeks and a shriveled lower jaw pointed at the interior of the industrial facility.
"Don't know how this smell and the general vibe of the place can get you into the right mood, man…" a red-skinned alien with purple spots over the visible areas of his body shook his hand in front of where his nostrils were.
Even if Yamcha had overcome his manic terror of all things female, he still hesitated approaching a Saiyan lady in an apron of white plastic over her standard-issue Saiyan armor of rather thick and large bones and a handful of moles decorating her face. While her Ki didn't knock Yamcha out of the park, she still looked like a mean-spirited lady who could whack an annoying gnat with one of those meat bones rolling around the belts she watched over.
"Say, ma-am, you wouldn't know a Gine, by any chance, would you?" Yamcha scratched his cheek while laughing the matter of him getting into this chunky woman's business off.
"Say WHA?" the woman turned around with a raspy, masculine voice. Yamcha's aloof attitude turned to frightful awkwardness.
"I'm looking for a Gine. She might have worked here some time ago. Who knows, maybe she's still working here?" Yamcha scratched his head as if attempting to excuse him interrupting the woman's work. Somewhere deeper in his mind, the martial artist thought to himself if the woman offering him her full attention was even necessary as he wasn't the one distracting her from work. She turned a full 180 at him all by herself when she could have either just answered him with information or told him off without getting all into it.
"I might know a thing or two. There are a lot of gals working here 'cause it's an attractive way of making yourself useful. One of a few ways that a Saiyan can make herself useful to the army." The raspy, chunky meat-processing lady answered after returning to her work examining the exiting line of the product before it fell into storage units and shut with an armored seal that looked almost like a link belt rolling onto the storage container to seal it.
"So, do you know something or not?" Yamcha squinted, wondering if he was wasting his time and if he should ask around someone else.
"I dunno. Maybe I could remember a thing or two over some pleasant stretch of time. A dinner, maybe an evening or something?" the large lady turned around and wrapped her arms around Yamcha, lifting him clean off the air as his wide eyes shook in an error that spanned his entire, twitching body while this titanic woman attempted to drown him inside of her hugging chest.
The first thing of some sense that reached Yamcha's inputs was the sight of the other aliens talking to one another, pointing their fingers vaguely in his direction. There was a cruel realization that he was making a fool of himself by letting this woman just fondle and manhandle him like this though this couldn't have been helped–Bardock's wife needed some rescuing and Yamcha wanted trouble with the Frieza Army about as little as Chayote did.
A sharp, electric noise filled Yamcha's ears, getting them ringing and making the martial artist twitch his head in reaction to the noise while the bright light preceding it blinded his eyes for a blink. The chunky woman fell flat on her back without a sign of life. Cold sweat ran down Yamcha's face as he stared at a blank expression on the large woman's face.
"That's… A bit of a drastic reaction, isn't it?" He muttered to himself before turning to the crowd of aliens that spread around the area, scoping out a worker of their own to eliminate. "Hey, what's going on? I get it that was out of line, but you don't need to hurt anyone over it. It's no big deal, I'm a bit of a chick magnet, I know."
"Get out of our way unless you want some of this too!" a crustacean alien shoved Yamcha out of the way as he took aim and opened fire at a faraway corner of the upper floor. After a shocking crack, a feminine form fell down the platform looming over the meat-processing machinery and several more fell into the main bucket of bio-material. This forced a stoppage in the procession as the whole industrial facility began an emergency shutdown. "This is Lord Frieza's orders. You can get on his good graces by helping us purge this place."
"Are you kidding me? These Saiyans aren't fighters!" Yamcha objected. Most of the people here were a minority of men in terrible physical shape or women that decided not to go against the natural physical curve and just be useful to their cause by working on helping prepare the rations for the military force.
"I know, right? We can all make Lord Frieza pleased by just killing a bunch of helpless monkey rejects. It's all 'cause of you bringing us here–I guess I should thank you." The alien posed with his hammer-like limb bending by the middle so that the soft muscular tendons inside of his arm-shell could stretch out and strain the shell armor in a display of physical strength. It's must have been his species' version of flexing one's biceps.
"No way," Yamcha objected, jumping up and swatting his crustacean companion aside with a spinning kick that flung him overboard and into the basement levels of the industrial facility. "I won't stand by and watch you goons hurt a bunch of women and helpless old geezers! I like women now that I'm not terrified of them, and an old geezer trained me in martial arts, so I owe my entire life to him."
"The scumbag from Kakarot's crew is going to be a problem. Eliminate him like you would any Saiyan!" a commlink echoed through the facility as someone must have made their way inside the overwatch chambers on the top floor and used the access to the megaphone reaching the entire processing plant. Yamcha rushed around the place, sadly finding nothing but corpses or shot down targets about to become ones. These soldiers were damn efficient and there were a lot of them here.
This whole plant was just so confusing to navigate as well. There was no way for Yamcha to save everyone and if he tried to rush around chasing laser bolts, he'd only see more and more targets fall dead all over the place as for every lady with too much meat on her bones that Yamcha shielded from certain doom, five more fell dead somewhere in the facility with their last gasps permeating the stuffy air of the plant.
Overcome by anger and having decided to just beat all the present soldiers to a pulp instead of rushing to the rescue of their victims, Yamcha flung himself rolling in mid-air like a cannonball, slamming into a large, ogre-like alien before bursting out of his rolling formation with claw slashes and wide, rapid flurry of kicks. Yamcha vanished, appearing over another fiendish alien, and swiped his open hands from behind his head, knocking the alien out without signs of life and slamming him beside a frightened, adolescent, female Saiyan.
"Are you Gine?" Yamcha yelled out, hearing more and more last moments of dying Saiyans filling the air. More and more soldiers were filling the place as Yamcha could sense their Ki. Where were all those guys coming from?
The petrified girl shook her head. Yamcha tried asking her if she knew where Gine was, but a fully powered up energy blast distracted him mid-sentence as it careened off from a faraway corner of the plant toward the young Saiyan. Using all of his skill, as such a maneuver demanded it, Yamcha vanished and appeared in front of the female Saiyan, swatting the energy sphere aside as it could have easily decimated her alongside the platform she stood on.
"Go, find safety. I'll find you later." Yamcha growled out before confronting the pair of tremendous Ki that handled the attempt at this young woman's life.
"Not bad, to deflect the energy attack of the fastest being in the universe!" an annoying, high-pitched voice filled the air, coming from a tall and athletically built, blue-skinned alien with red irises and black spots permeating his entire body. A red-skinned human-like alien with white hair stood beside his partner with crossed arms, looking similarly amused because the pair had met someone interesting in what was to be a simple elimination mission.
"I'd be careful making statements like these, punk. As someone modeling their fighting style after wolves during my time as a desert bandit, I am also somewhat of a speedy fighter." Yamcha replied with a displeased expression on his face as he realized that the entirety of the Saiyans in this plant had been sentenced to death if he engaged with these two. Their Ki were something else entirely compared to the others and Yamcha would have had his hands full with either of them alone.
"That so?" Jeice laughed out as the two broke into goofy smiled. The red-skinned elite of the Ginyu Special Squadron tilted his leg up in front of him and began twirling like a hurricane. His powerful, reddish aura assisted him in this flashy feat of theatrics before he froze in a pitching-like pose. "You must be one from the Earthling crew looking to join the Frieza Army that field commander Zarbon spoke of. It looks like you're still loyal to your Saiyan crew leader. Then allow me to introduce the Red Magma of the Ginyu Special Squadron–Jeice!"
The larger of the two aliens disappeared in a blur, blitzing around the entire location, making it difficult for Yamcha's sensory to keep track of him, let alone the warrior's eyes. "And the Blue Hurricane of the Ginyu Special Squadron–Burter!" the larger, self-proclaimed fastest warrior in the universe made another declaration before freezing in a flashy pose of his left leg bent while his right one stretched out while he bent his right arm in front of his chest and extended the left one to the side, carrying his body weight onto the bent left leg entirely.
"You guys are a bunch of weirdos. That's a neat pitching pose though." Yamcha smirked with the left side of his face.
"Oh… You can tell?" Jeice broke his pose as he became immersed in this topic.
"Yeah, I was an ace player during the times of peace back on Earth. When the World Martial Arts Tournaments all gone down after Papaya Island got wrecked, a guy had to make a living somehow…" Yamcha looked back at the time just after he and Bulma broke up permanently. Those were a wild couple of years.
"You are but a novice in that case. For you are in the presence of the ace pitcher in the Galactic Little League!" Jeice proclaimed, looking mighty proud of his childhood accomplishments.
"Little League? I was an actual pro, you know…" Yamcha scratched the back of his head.
"What's that? You were only a pro on only one planet, whereas I competed against the entire system. Pro or not, you wouldn't be worth handing out water bottles to even the kids from Planet Cooler No. 98, let alone Planet Frieza No. 57!" Jeice became flustered as he took Yamcha's response incredibly personally. The Red Magma turned to his partner with a determined glare.
"Burter. I'm fighting this fool to teach him a lesson about the next level of competition that caused the development of my unmatched Crusher Ball pitching technique!" Jeice demanded his partner to agree to these terms.
"That's not how we handle things in the Force, Jeice. You know that we play Rock-Paper-Scissors, that's the protocol! You'll jeopardize the entire operation 737!" Burter pleaded with his nervous partner who appeared to be having none of it. "Plus, you're not the only one that has something to prove–he suggested that he might be faster than me and I cannot allow that as a warrior who has the reputation of being the fastest in the universe to uphold!"
"Oh, please, we all know that Captain Ginyu, Lord Frieza, King Cold, Cooler-san are all much faster than you!" Jeice yelled out something that made him freeze a moment after he said it. Burter's eyes wavered before becoming overwhelmed by profound sadness as the once proud and charismatic speedster became a shriveled mess of a man that descended onto the platform below him and began dangling his feet over the drop into the meat grinder that had ceased its solitary function until someone manually restored functionality to the plant from the central operations facility.
"So that's what you really think of my speed…" Burter mumbled as Jeice landed beside his distraught friend with a crushed expression, trying to soothe the gloom that had overcome his partner.
"P-Please, Burter… I didn't… You know I didn't mean to…" Jeice babbled, scolding himself a thousand times for letting this uncomfortable truth make the slip while Yamcha stared at the two with utter bewilderment. While these two engaged in this buffoonery, Yamcha found a moment to rescue any survivors. The martial artist raised his hand up and grabbed hold of his wrist with his free hand, forming a golden energy sphere in his hand.
"Spirit Ball!" he yelled out, throwing the ball and guiding it to bash at every airborne soldier within a visible distance that had eliminated most of the Saiyans by now and were using their scouters to look for the stragglers.
"No, no… It's what you really think. It's what everybody's saying behind my back, isn't it?" Burter sniffed the petite pair of holes in the center of his face he breathed through.
"That's not true, Burter…" Jeice tried laughing it off like it was no big deal while the soldiers under their command pleaded to their commanders for help as Yamcha's guided Spirit Ball technique was plowing through their ranks like a hot knife through a slab of butter. "Don't you remember Captain Ginyu telling you you were faster than him? We've not seen Lord Frieza fight much, have we? Who knows how fast he really is? King Cold and Cooler-sama aren't even conquering new planets anymore. They've got to be in awful shape by now, in no condition to race with the Blue Hurricane at all!"
"You're just saying that to make me feel better…" Burter sniffled.
"N-No way!" Jeice faked a laugh to make this notion seem ridiculous, no matter how close to the truth it rang. "Ask anyone, they'll tell you that the Blue Hurricane is the fastest guy around! Hey, soldier, who's the fastest in the universe?"
"Please, help us, Jeice-san!" the soldier howled before the racing Spirit Ball hit him square in the face and sent the soldier plummeting down while whited out.
"Oh, right…" Jeice smacked himself on the forehead while he tilted his right leg before his face and wound his arm back as if preparing to pitch a ball. "Crusher Ball!" he yelled out, sending a red energy sphere like a blitzing bullet that homed in on Yamcha's Spirit Ball and detonated alongside it. The terrified, fleeing soldiers breathed easier as they left Yamcha and Jeice some space to duke it out between themselves.
"Fine, Burter, let's hurry and play Rock-Paper-Scissors for it then!" Jeice turned to his sulking partner.
"Whatever… Just take him out, Jeice. I'm in no mood to fight anymore. My entire life is nothing but a sham." Burter sobbed to himself while turning away from his partner and leaving Jeice to widen his eyes and gap his jaw as it bewildered him just as much as it did Yamcha to see this whole situation transpire.
"You're a wicked snake, Earthling. To turn me against my partner with your deceitful wiles!" Jeice hissed at Yamcha.
"Huh!? What do you mean? How is this my fault!?" Yamcha leaned back with a stiff expression of shock. "You're the one who snapped at your friend."
"It's only because you brought baseball into the equation. My life's passion that makes me all heated and competitive! You know, even that loser Salza and I used to be friends at one point, before he dared claim that he could bat any ball I pitch any day of the week!" Jeice appeared to seethe in hatred, just at the very idea that someone could make that claim.
"I see that you're really passionate about baseball… At least we can duke it out uninterrupted this way." Yamcha accepted this as a win on his part. He only left himself hoping that those soldiers hadn't killed Gine off in their extermination spree or else Bardock would really lose it and, as someone who was where his wife worked, Yamcha would get the worst of it.
The two baseball aces snapped away, colliding in mid-air and throwing fists and feet at each other. Jeice preferred stiff, long-reaching thrusts, hammering fists, and whipping kicks. No knee strikes or elbows, not even bending his arm by the elbow to deliver a blow, whereas Yamcha was flexible. Favoring tiger-style swipes and strikes as he overwhelmed the overly complicated style of his opponent with a rush of palm strikes from his cupped palms before knocking Jeice away with a thrust of both palms to Jeice's chest.
"Well, well… I guess you weren't a complete load of hot-air like Salza…" Jeice wiped a trace of blood from his lip, panting while Yamcha froze in the same pose he delivered the finishing stroke of his combination from.
"I better not make this last. That depressed partner of his can return to fighting shape at any time. Just this one guy's already going to keep me busy, I can already tell…" Yamcha thought to himself as he felt the Ki of Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu nearby. They were in a heap of their own trouble, however, from the sense of things so they might not come to his aid here even if the odds weren't quite fair. Still, after failing to help his friends out during Lord Slug's attack on Earth, Yamcha was as full of determination as ever to prove his worth as a martial artist.