Bulma oversaw a smooth carrying of the Capsule Corps spacecraft through the atmosphere of Planet Vegeta. The suspicions and an awkward, nagging feeling in Bulma's chest started almost immediately after breaking through the uppermost layers. The head of Capsule Corps took over the controls meanwhile navigating through the public information on Planet Vegeta's atmosphere.
"Something's wrong. The skies on Planet Vegeta are meant to be a blend of beetroot-red. Something way drowned them out. I'm picking up much higher air toxicity and pollution levels as well," Bulma scowled while multi-tasking. While it felt weird reporting this stuff to an actual three-year-old, the toddler proved to have far more maturity than other kids his age due to both his Saiyan heritage and the prodigious intelligence he gained from his mother's side of the family.
Because of the violent culture of the Saiyans, their young had to be on their feet and in combat condition as soon as possible, which was why many Saiyan younglings started serious training and soldier-like conditioning from the age of four. That, combined with the intelligence that ran through Bulma's family's bloodline, made for a combination of a three-year-old that sometimes seemed to be more functional than some of Bulma's friends.
"Is that bad?" Trunks wondered, leaning back on the makeshift pillow of his own hands. Due to how smoothly Bulma was handling the landing, he had little trouble staying on his feet the whole way through.
"We shouldn't suffer any adverse effects short-term, but if we stayed to live here–we'd have an elevated risk of heart disease and tumorous growths. I'm also picking up a certain spike in radioactivity in certain centers of the planet that spits out harmful radiation all over the surface. We should handle it for a brief stay, but we're guaranteeing health disorders if we stay here too long," Bulma reported while shifting her focus from the data readings of the scanners and handling the landing.
Having found a station to put the spacecraft down in, the blue-haired pilot swooped through an open hatch, looking surprised to see not a single soul overseeing their landing. This was beyond odd. Nobody asked them to identify themselves over the comlink when they approached the planet's atmosphere. No one asked a single question during the entire landing procedure and now it seemed like not a single soul would point blasters at them and grunt out Saiyan signature landing greetings either.
Something seriously wrong was transpiring on Planet Vegeta.
Bulma had a gnawing itch to ask her son to stay on the ship as the bad feeling in her gut began pulling chunks of this itch to feed on and grow larger. Despite that motherly instinct to watch over her boy, deep down she knew he was her only chance of pulling through and out if any threat presented itself as out of the two of them, Trunks was the one with a head hard enough to withstand blaster fire and instincts to dodge it if need be and carry his mother out of a dangerous predicament.
"Let's go meet your dad, Trunks," Bulma chuckled uncomfortably.
Little Trunks' eyes shined with marvelous splendor from the moment he got off-board. The young one blitzed around the empty landing station, taking in the sights and floating up to examine various parts of present, inactive spaceships that looked like they had been halfway stripped for parts and hadn't flown in months. Bulma scratched the back of her neck, not liking this sign one bit. Why would the Saiyans keep their largest landing station as some scrapyard of half-dismantled ships?
"Huh?" Trunks turned his attention to a single dot of red light that lit up far away in the distance. In a shadowy corner by the wall that extended to the gate, leading deeper into the landing facilities. A mechanical hum of cybernetic activity followed by clockwork ticks and automated thumps and squeaks followed as the red light began beaming around. "I think something here is active!" he pointed at the light before taking off from a busted spaceship and floating toward the source of the red light.
"Trunks-kun, remember what I told you about lights? Red light means it's forbidden to go there…" Bulma tried warning her son to be careful, but he listened to her about as attentively as Bulma herself used to listen to her goofy old man when she was her son's age. Maybe that was why she didn't get angry when she only got to speak to Trunks' back.
"Organic life detected. Source: Saiyan-Human Hybrid. Bio-energy output: desirable short-term source. Source: Human. Bio-energy output: meaningless. Preparing engagement protocols. Objective: Capture Saiyan-Human Hybrid. Exterminate: Human," a bland, robotic voice came from the source of the red light as a white and gray robot with blue augmented armor pieces emerged from the shadows. It had been at least four to five meters in size and looked to be well-armed for combat.
This made little sense. Saiyans were a warrior species that took great pride in their combat ability and took grand enjoyment from fighting an enemy even far surpassing themselves. They would never work on designing a guardian combat robot to fight their battles for them.
"Preparing engagement protocols. Objective: Capture Saiyan-Human Hybrid. Exterminate: Human," an identical set of commands and code reports echoed throughout the landing station and more and more red lights lit up and more and more of these heavily armored robots emerged from the shadows. A few of the seemingly defunct spaceships engaged and began transforming and unraveling, revealing themselves to be the same model of the guard robots positioned to appear like a defunct spaceship curled into a fetal position.
The red light came from a singular dot that, once the robot engaged in combat, took more complex shapes like that of a crosshair, circle, or triangle to portray the robot's state. The red light danced around on a lone, black screen, making the robots look some sort of cybernetically replicated species of cyclopean ogres.
The robots aimed their arms at young Trunks as their red dots transformed into crosshairs to indicate their long-range combat protocols being used. The young Saiyan evaded a few of the energy waves, but the sheer numbers and his relative inexperience in combat led to a blast wave hitting Trunks from behind and quickly grounding him. Bulma cried out and dashed toward her son while keeping her head down and concealing herself behind the scrapped ships that weren't disguised Cyclopean Guards.
"Trunks-kun, are you okay?" she said, caressing her son's head after scooping him up from the ground. The bruised and covered with oil and dirt face of her son shook as his eyes fluttered and he woke up from the daze that had taken him over.
"I'm fine, I have to protect you!" he yelled out, wrestling out from Bulma's grasp and taking it to the air to deal with the advancing ring of the assault robots that had the visitors utterly surrounded.
Trunks weaved aside from an incoming energy blast, extending his hand with gritted teeth and a wrathful scowl on his face. "I can do that trick too!" he declared before faint light began glimmering in his palm and he fired a stray energy wave from his hand. The wave hit one straight in the center and sent him gliding back. The robot slumped over and began venting smoke from its insides before shutting the vents again and straightening up. Despite taking a direct hit from Trunks' attack, it didn't seem like it had done much damage to the robot at all.
That, combined with the immeasurable numbers of the flooding robots, quickly drove terror into young Trunks, one that overcome his anger at these robotic assailants trying to obliterate his mother.
"M-Mom… What's going on here?" Trunks turned to his mother in confusion. "I thought this was the Saiyan home planet. Where are all the Saiyans?"
Seeing an opening and a faltering offense from the side of their target, the Cyclopean Guard lined up and began launching a combined, ranged blaster offensive that lit up the garage and threw the defunct spaceships that Bulma tried hiding behind around like toy constructor blocks with the helpless woman falling to the ground and covering up her head in terror. In moments such as these, it didn't much matter to Bulma that the oil and grime present on the floor would stain her dress. In moments such as these, she just wanted to stay alive.
The arm of one of the cyclopean robots extended and secured a tight grip around young Trunks, pulling the toddler in closer and locking a bearhug around him. Meanwhile, the rest advanced closer to Bulma's position to blast her into oblivion and remove even the smallest smidge of her biological signature from this place. Fire picked up from all the obliterated spaceships. Not as intense and heated as it should have been. It then occurred to Bulma that they had scrounged these spaceships for gas and other valuable remains before placing them here. They didn't abandon the ships here. This wasn't a scrapyard, this was a storage facility.
Even as certain, metallic, and merciless death approached from all sides, the scientist in Bulma still made herself known and tried working out the inner workings behind this mysterious party in play here. One thing felt very clear–no one would come to save her. Had the Saiyans any power to resist whatever this was, they'd have fought this enemy to their final, dying breaths. Those two that Bulma and Trunks encountered in space must have been some sort of refugees hoping to bribe their way back into the service of whoever was in charge.
"Leave… My mother… Alone!" Trunks roared, abandoning the fear behind as his Saiyan, warrior instincts took over and the golden shine of Ki now bubbled around his entire body in an explosive energy wave which scorched the robotic guard that had been smothering him. After freeing himself from the robot's grasp, the toddler blasted off toward the direction of concentrated blaster suppressing fire and pointed both his hands at the robots, forming twin energy waves in his hands from which barrages of Ki blasts began pelting the advancing formation of cyclopean robots.
Despite Trunks' wrath and, as Bulma assumed, skyrocketing combat power, his stray energy blasts just seemed to bounce off of the guards' armored shells and leave not even a single scrape on it. That was until Trunks hit a very specific point in the center where his fusillade had scraped the armored shell earlier and his energy blast dug inside the robots' core attack unit. A single cyclopean guard out of several hundreds of them detonated with a deafening blast of fire, smoke, and electric crackles in the air.
The resulting shock wave sent the surrounding guards stumbling while even Trunks rolled backward and had to struggle to keep control over his flight.
"You did it!" Bulma cheered for her son. "Trunks-kun, aim for the central attack core and focus your attack to break through the armored part. That's their weak spot!"
Having a scientist with her own decent understanding of robotics, as cybernetic warriors had been causing enough trouble on her own planet recently, certainly worked out in young Trunks' favor as the young boy focused his energy around his fists, creating bubbles of shiny gold around them, almost like boxing gloves, and rushing into battle. Despite figuring out the robots' weak spot, exploiting it and destroying them turned out a task far too tall for the inexperienced and rage-driven child. His impact bent the armored parts protecting the attack unit core, but they failed to break through it in one go and the Cyclopean Guard didn't look like they were ready to provide him with too many chances.
Multiple Cyclopean Guards extended their arms at once, shooting out metallic nets made out from the same alloy that their impenetrable armor had been made of. Try as hard as young Trunks might have, he couldn't move it one inch and that was before the net shocked him into unconsciousness and left him limp and helpless on the ground. The robotic arm of a Cyclopean Guard shot out, grabbing the boy and pulling him in for capture while the rest advanced on Bulma's position to eliminate her.
Bulma hated this feeling, cowering and crawling on all fours, hiding underneath stripped spacecraft and junk like some garage rat. Her knees and elbows had been bruised bloody, her hair sticky with oil and it seeped into her eyes, prompting irritating wipes that made just looking itchy. This was just a question of how much further she will push her luck, how much further was she able to put her through this humiliation and taint herself before either the robots close in on her completely and make further retreat impossible or one of the stray blasts catches her and leaves her broken, or worse.
Barrages of purple, golden, and white energy blasts came in from all sides as the garage door blasted down. Bulma wasn't sure what was happening, but these energy blasts had been ironed out, focused, and left no hope for the armored shells of the Cyclopean Guard to withstand them. Without asking for forgiveness, they drilled right through the robotic assailants and decimated their attack unit cores, blasting them to smithereens and obliterating nearly half of their ranks present in this location in just one push.
Shocked by this development, Bulma took a peek, risking exposing herself this way, and the sight of grisly, dark-haired brutes in standard Frieza Army gear sneering, grumbling, and scowling at the Cyclopean Guard met her eyes. These were the Saiyans! This look of a battle-hardened barbarian of a mere Saiyan grunt could not have been confused. No one else in the entire universe had those sorts of mugs on them. These Saiyans took it right to the robots, slamming into them with shoulder charges and ripping into their attack unit cores with their bare hands.
With the shocking Saiyan pushback having obliterated over half of these Cyclopean Guards, one would have thought that these robotic assault units would have reconsidered their task, but they did no such thing. They simply turned for the Saiyans, postponing their plans for Bulma's obliteration for a later moment.
"Identifying threat: Saiyan. Energy output: Great. Danger level: Moderate. Risk Factor: Attack Unit Compromised. Proceeding with elimination," the Cyclopean Guards ran their calculations in the background of beeping and booping robot noises before arming themselves and advancing on the break-in Saiyan ranks.
"You tin-cans and your emperor have been bossing us around for too long! We're done gathering scrap for you to drain! Thanks to Vegeta's Earthling mate, we've figured out your weakness! The Saiyan rebellion starts now. You and the whole Big Gete Star are history, Cooler!" one proud Saiyan proclaimed, clutching his fist out in front of him before a concentrated energy wave pierced his chest and fell him down.
The Cyclopean Guard rolled around on mobile jets to reposition and form an enclosing, advancing arc around the points of entry where the rebellious Saiyan grunts sought to attack them from behind and overwhelm their ranks. Concentrated suppressing fire began downing one Saiyan after another as neither of them could handle direct blaster fire too well and the only places they had to retreat to–endless hallways leading further into the station, had been too compact to give them too much space to move and dodge in. Like cattle to the slaughter, the advancing ranks of the Cyclopean Guard pushed the Saiyans back into the hallway and then eliminated them all with ruthless efficiency until their sensors relayed no more life signs in that direction.
The killer robots turned around, switching their tactics from a merciless and slow, surrounding advance of a closing ring to a sweep. Bulma ripped open a grate and began crawling into it, having abandoned any sense of dignity and, after acting like a lowly rodent for the last few minutes that were some of the worst of her entire life, she was now resigned to that role and would've been fine saving herself by crawling through the vents until someone found her and pulled her out from there.
Maybe some Saiyans still lived? Maybe not all of them rebelled right now and found their deaths?
A cold, iron-tight grip locked around Bulma's heel as the extended robotic arm reeled back, dragging her through the grate. Her greased and grimy dress got caught on the uneasy grating and ripped in a few places and the crude yank opened even more bruises all over her body, but this was nothing to what Bulma's mind desperately tried to avoid as she screamed for mercy.
The Cyclopean Guard extended its blaster. Light shined in from the other end of the barrel before Bulma's scientific mind resigned itself to acting like that of a cowering prey. Where once she sought for ways to fight back, looked for weaknesses and things she could have exploited to survive that day, now she found herself wondering if dying would hurt this time. She hoped that it'd be a lot like last time–a brief flash of light and washing heatwave. Then… Nothing.
"Manual override. Authorization: Project Meta-Cooler. Elimination protocol: Interrupt!" a cybernetically augmented voice rung in through the Cyclopean Guard. This seemed to be unlike any method of communication that Bulma had heard from these mindless killing machines before. It was as if they served as a communication device to someone in control over them. This could have been because the robot that was ready to blast Bulma away just a moment earlier now hesitated on executing the order and only held her at gunpoint.
"You're important to that runt Vegeta, aren't you? His brief fling from Planet Earth, right?" the cybernetic voice that sounded rotten and sneaky but nothing like anything that Bulma could put her finger on continued. "I want him to see this. I want him to suffer. I'll break his heart and dreams of resurrecting his beloved Saiyan race right before his eyes, and then I'll suck his kid's bio-energy dry for fuel and keep tormenting him every day. That's the least he deserves for crushing my dream the same way."
"Th… That's…" that weak muttering came as a voice Bulma could recognize.
"Vegeta…" she said to herself, wondering if Vegeta could hear her on the other end.
"Bulma… What are you… What are you doing here, damn it!?" Vegeta grumbled.
"Oh… After years of fueling the Big Gete Star's energy, you still have the strength to thrash about? That's the impressive thing about you Saiyans, I'll admit. You're always ready to surprise everyone with how tough you are to finish off. Like roaches. Alright, he's seeing this, and he's very distraught. Termination protocol: resume. Oh, and there's no use in crying for mercy, Earthling woman, the Cyclopean Guard are mute and deaf and only know their orders and the data they're processing," the slimy, cybernetically altered voice seemed to take joy in Bulma's impending demise even though Bulma did not know who they were.
The blaster of the Cyclopean re-activated and the light at the other end of the barrel lit up again. Something broke out in the background. The cybernetic voice rang in again. Something deafening roared from the background. It was Vegeta! It was his battle cry!
"Manual override. Authorization: Project Meta-Cooler. Elimination protocol: Terminate. Initiate capture protocol. Target: Earthling woman."
Vegeta's wild roars of "I'LL KILL YOU, COOLER, YOU COCKY BASTARD!" were the last thing that Bulma heard before a hydraulic thump, signifying the Cyclopean Guard knocking her out.