It wasn't a common instance for Baby to just walk alongside the newly inhabited outer surface of Planet M-2. The cybernetic marvel has barely even begun to fill up and merely its outermost surface layer barely felt the strain of the influx of New Tsufurians arriving to live and thrive here in M-2. The station had still so much space to offer with the internal laboratories and pathways. It was like a whole internal ecosystem of its own down there. Its size could easily fit millions of worlds inside of it, so it would take an innumerable number of New Tsufurians to fully inhabit this station.
Everywhere Baby walked, the New Tsufurians parted ways and looked at him as if he was their messiah. They stared at him with blank eyes and open jaws, shivering in excitement merely to be in proximity to him. And yet, despite the immense pleasure that meeting their alleged idol offered, not a single inhabitant harassed or followed Baby. All of them felt content to only receive the impulse of uncontrollable happiness of being acknowledged at Baby's convenience.
Vegeta's body was strange. Despite the complex array of emotions and considerations all pouring through Baby's mind, all that this primitive simian body could portray was irritation and anger. Being adored made Baby Vegeta look angry, being looked at for guidance and guiding his people alike made him look disgruntled and angry. For a man who took such great pride in his people and being in charge of them, Vegeta's body appeared to be incapable of anything else than various shades of frustration.
And yet, despite the limited opportunities for emotional expression, nobody seemed to bat an eye about it. The absolute indifference of the New Tsufurians about how ugly and unsuitable to rule them Baby Vegeta felt and how eager to forgive and forget his people were was a source of genuine irritation to Baby. Something deserving an ironic roll of the eyes was that Vegeta's body could portray that primitive feeling all too well, and that was just about the only spectrum of feelings that Baby could show to those dearest to him.
With this being merely the latest episode of frustration, Baby Vegeta spread his arms and flew up into the sky, adopting his seated position on the top of a mechanical tower that scraped at the lower levels of the artificial atmosphere of M-2. Just when Baby wanted a Machine Mutant drone to accompany him, a teal-colored orb with thin mechanical arms hovered by his side.
"What is going on with my people?" Baby Vegeta vented to the drone. "I am failing them. I am hesitating and I refuse to act in their best interests and yet they do not question me. You, Machine Mutants, live your life hovering around like tools, tending to every need of me and my people when you are a sentient race. Yet despite my inaction to liberate all of you and leave you to tend to your home and manage your own fates, you continue to serve without objection. Why?"
"That is our purpose. To serve Baby," the Machine Mutant declared.
"All of you possess a shared network to a point, do you not? You can share information amongst each other," Baby Vegeta turned to his mechanical companion.
"That is correct, I can relay information to any and all Machine Mutants," the drone answered without delay as the red light in the front of its head slider blinked in a rhythm that suggested speech on many more levels than merely spoken speech. The blinks of the red light of the Machine Mutants must have functioned like a form of communication of itself, like the Morse code. A remnant of older functions, before the Machine Mutants were capable of spoken word, perhaps?
"I want to talk to my people. I want to assure them of my intentions and hear their concerns. They must have so many questions, yet they, for some reason, fear asking them. As their king, it is my responsibility to be transparent with them," Baby Vegeta declared.
"Understood!" the Machine Mutant reported. On the ground level, a handful of drones hovered up to the nearest New Tsufurian and turned around, skidding their back armored plating open and exposing a round display screen underneath. In the same vein, as it could have served as military radar, with a flicker, it showed the restless image of Baby Vegeta eager to speak to his people. "You may speak now. I don't have access to the communication monitors and the large display screens on M-2 that Dr. Myuu used to speak to us, but the engineers will patch you through soon. All of M-2 can hear you."
"Machine Mutants, New Tsufurians, I am proud of how many of you now live safely on M-2, having been granted a new chance at life. My intentions were not to rip you away from your home or to remove you from your old lives for my own nefarious purposes. I deliberately instructed the Machine Mutants to seek those who would most benefit from a chance at resurrecting a once glorious, intellectual, and peaceful people. I hope that the transitioning process is easy for you and that you will come to accept this new life and cherish it. That you will love each other as your own kind, as New Tsufurians," Baby Vegeta spoke. He wasn't able to see much in terms of a response at first, but soon enough a faraway building-sized display screen flashed, showing him an utterly dazzled and racially diverse array of faces staring at the Machine Mutant drones or the communications display screens.
"Some of you might have some very valid questions about the direction which I'm taking our people in as a leader. The purpose of this speech is to alleviate those concerns and let you know that the moment you no longer trust my ability to lead, you may elect a new leader. Also, if any of you have any concerns, you are free to approach me and let me address them directly. I wish to be transparent with all of you above all else," Baby Vegeta declared. He sought anything in the blank looks of the utterly zombified and diverse faces, but his image on the display screens completely hypnotized them, to the point of drooling.
"What's wrong? Can they not hear me?" Baby Vegeta leaned to look directly at the drone hovering before him and acting like a living camera. "Can I not hear their questions?"
"You should be able to, Baby!" the Machine Mutant jumped up startled and began scrambling about wildly as if trying to shake up their nuts and bolts loose and correct whatever issues it was experiencing. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry, Baby!" the Machine Mutant wrapped its mechanical arms over its head and flew off, detonating in a fiery ball that spewed mechanical parts in all directions and burnt up a reflective, jasmine-colored metallic mass to a crisp.
Baby Vegeta stared utterly stunned at the distress he had caused the little Machine Mutant. He would have never believed that his worry of not being heard or not being able to hear his people would make the Machine Mutant feel inadequate and undeserving of further functionality. Having just lost his companion, Baby Vegeta plunged down to the middle of the street, only to be surrounded by New Tsufurians. Yet even when his boots touched the ground, he couldn't hear a single word other than the dazed flock chanting his name.
"I wish to assure you, Machine Mutants, that this shared coexistence between the New Tsufurians and the Machine Mutants is only temporary. Right now, M-2 possesses peerless living conditions and perhaps the most advanced scientific facilities in the universe. Unbelievably advanced labs where not a single hurting Tsufurian would ever die of sickness, ample, artificially cultivated resources engineered to taste perfectly and provide a New Tsufurian of any background with any minerals and health benefits they may need, no matter their racial background… Right now, such utopic conditions are luxuries that our homeworld cannot provide and, currently, we do not have the means to terraform New Planet Plant to compare with M-2 or to even offer us a habitable environment. But rest assured, the Machine Mutants are looking into it and soon enough we can begin the terraforming of our homeworld back to its prime condition. From there, we can start our society anew and begin our thousand miles journey to rivaling the incredible society the Machine Mutants have here," Baby spoke to his people, but they all just stared back at him, muttering his name in utter fascination. "Would you permit the New Tsufurians to stay on your planet just a little longer until New Planet Plant is habitable again?"
"If that is what Baby wants," the Machine Mutants all replied. First in unison, then speaking individually and repeating it like a mantra one by one from all around the cybernetic star's surface.
"I know you've said time and time again that serving me is your reason for existing, I don't believe that. I think you can start your own individual life here and that you will become a splendid ally to our newly reborn race," Baby Vegeta turned around, addressing the Machine Mutants that looked about as robotic and programmed as the rest of the mesmerized New Tsufurians.
"If that is what Baby wants," the Machine Mutants replied with no opposition, despite having voiced their will that Baby and the New Tsufurians stay and live on M-2. Or, at the very least, let the Machine Mutants serve them by relocating them to New Planet Plant once it becomes a habitable world again. All of their beliefs, all of their convictions dropped at the turn of Baby's tongue, and, from what Baby just saw, any or all of them would die to fulfill that word they should have questioned.
Grumbling, Baby Vegeta ran his hand across his face, squeezing his left side hard as if trying to squish his own skull. He wasn't speaking to citizens with free will, although Dr. Myuu built them to be a sentient race with their own feelings and thoughts, likes and needs, not a single Machine Mutant rose above their drone status merely because that would oppose Baby's way.
"Have you nothing to say, no arguments to make!?" Baby Vegeta groaned at the Machine Mutants, wanting them to plead their case that he very well knew they still preferred in the deepest corners of their mind. They craved servitude, yet they wouldn't say it, merely because Baby Vegeta had his mind settled on freeing them. Yet if they wouldn't speak their mind even when free, were they truly freed at all?
"What about the rest of you!?" Baby Vegeta scanned the dazed crowds spanning the entirety of M-2's surface. Decillions of New Tsufurians of countless races and backgrounds, all united under Baby's dream of reviving his extinct people as something new and utterly incapable of being anything more than that. "Don't you question a single decision I've made? Do you not think I've made far too few decisions? Aren't you mad that restoring our homeworld is taking so long that you're trapped in this metallic and industrial cyber-world and are sharing it with the Machine Mutants? Doesn't the fact your king wears the body of a loathsome Saiyan, the King of Saiyans, no less, make you belch?"
Finally snapping from his months-long period of accumulated misery, Baby Vegeta approached a hypnotized alien and tilted it in the air by its quills, like a rabbit. The perfectly round alien had both of its eyes on the sides of its body, making Baby Vegeta have to shift it around in the air like an inflatable ball he was playing with to glimpse the mirrors into the soul of his subject yet Baby Vegeta could only peer into unquestionable faith.
"I will vomit if it pleases Baby-sama!" the round-bodied New Tsufurian declared with a vocal barf of smelly gas.
Feeling heat surging up his body like boiling water threatening to flip the lid and spill over the floor with unadulterated violence that Vegeta's body was capable of, Baby flicked his forearm, sending the round New Tsufurian crashing into the crowd like a bowling ball. The mass of dazzled spectators fell over on their rears but completely avoided any injury. Exclaiming in wrath, Baby took off and left the crowd staring at the cosmos for a few more seconds before they snapped out of their haze and continued their day-to-day life as if Baby had never graced them with his presence at all.
Everything around was black. Darkness shrouded the mysterious space that Baby woke up in. In the farther corners there were flickering lights and Baby could feel a frightening presence moving around somewhere in the shade of this space. However, despite the cosmic dread that Baby felt whenever he gazed outside the glass tube walls he was trapped inside, Baby felt safe and comfortable in the bubbling violet bio-broth he simmered in.
"Hmph… You think you've won, is that it, you cocky bastard?" a masculine and assertive voice made Baby turn and slam its malleable, metallic forehead to the glass tube barrier keeping him contained in the space he felt warm and safe in. To Baby's left, a few steps further, was another tube, exactly like his. Inside that tube, connected to all the same wires and systems that Baby was, floated a muscular Saiyan body with wild and spiky hair in the prime of its condition. It was none other than Vegeta, the King of Saiyans.
"Vegeta? How is that possible? I am occupying your body, I've rooted my consciousness inside of it. My mind has fully taken over. There can be no chance for you to manifest in my head!" Baby tried to reason with the ludicrous sights he was seeing. It was true that whenever he sent a part of his flesh to occupy a body, it created a sort of mix between the host's personality and the primitive drive to serve Baby that appeared to be far more powerful than Baby initially thought, but whenever Baby truly set roots inside of a body–that body became Baby's and the host's personality utterly vanished with Baby being in absolute control.
"Don't you dare underestimate us Saiyans!" Vegeta seethed, clenching a fist so tense that it shook and made the bio-goop that both Baby and Vegeta were being canned in buzz with a rush of air bubbles. "Though perhaps you're right, maybe this is all just a dream. A figment of your imagination and you are seeing what you want to see? You don't have the stones to be king. I knew it from the beginning and, deep down, I think you knew it too. Now you're pissed that you're doing a shit job and that your mindless thought slaves are letting you get away with it."
"That's not true!" Baby pleaded, slamming his fist at the glass jar and causing it to ripple with cracks. "I've captured Hatchiyack, New Planet Plant is within sight. All we need is a way to terraform it into a habitable and prosperous world. The dream of the revival of the New Tsufurians has never been closer to being realized."
"Go ahead then, "king", leave my body and take over Hatchiyack," Vegeta crossed his arms and turned around, flashing his butt cheeks to the captor of his mind and body. "Just know that the moment you jump from my body, I'll be there to blast you to smithereens like the chunk of muck that you are. God of the Cyber-Verse? Give me a fucking break, you're just a pathetic weakling who can't get anything done on his own. Puppeteering other people's bodies and enslaving people to serve you. You're worse than Frieza! At least that runt made the first steps on his own."
"I don't need Hatchiyack's body to resurrect the New Tsufurians!" Baby stated stunning Vegeta who turned around having expected anything but Baby's proclamation. "Hatchiyack is a machine of revenge that Dr. Lychee has built. A monstrous tyrant's body meant to subjugate and rule a strict and mathematical cosmos with an indisputable fist. That is not the type of ruler that I seek to become. I see no better body than yours to emphasize this, Vegeta. It's true that I jumped into your body to survive in the heat of the moment, but I've come to realize that this is exactly what I want. A body of a sworn enemy of the New Tsufurians to show the universe that I don't mean to rule by burning bridges and meting out vengeance, but by building bridges and forgiving old grudges. The body of a Saiyan, someone who descends from the people who committed the genocide of my people, that's the most fitting body to show my commitment to peace. You may not seek forgiveness for the faults of your ancestors, Vegeta, but I'm not asking you to take it. I'm forgiving and forgetting, whether or not you like it."
"Tsk! Cocky bastard!" Vegeta gritted his teeth, approaching the glass barrier, mirroring Baby's movements. The two trapped bodies pressed their hands against the glass tube and, suddenly, the tubes became parallel to one another. In another moment, the glass was no longer there at all and Baby was level with Vegeta with their hands touching each other. Like a booming nova far away in the stars, a flash of light enveloped the two and made searing irritation flush over Baby's head.
Baby Vegeta opened his eyes to an active lamp in his sleeping pod that alerted him to the set time for waking up. The cover of the pod slid open, letting Baby Vegeta slowly hover out of it and look around. A teal-colored Machine Mutant drone hovered in from Baby's right and leveled itself to Baby Vegeta's eye level.
"Good morning, Baby!" the drone opened its hands for an enthusiastic greeting. "Will you be needing anything?"
"As a matter of fact…" Baby pressed his hand to his forehead with a forceful rub, wiping the layer of fluid covering his body and keeping his body chipper and supplied with all of its needs while rejuvenating his skin during the time of rest. "I want you to change course. I had an epiphany yesterday, and I realized that I've made a mistake. I want to speak to my people again. Please, gather them all in the square outside and mobilize all the carrier ships we have and as many drones as you can."
"Mobilize? Eeek! Are we going to war, Baby?" the Machine Mutant gasped with its thin mechanical arm.
"Quite the opposite. You'll see…" Baby Vegeta entered a square cubicle and pressed a button that sprayed his naked body with water and rinsed the layer of minty fresh regenerative fluid off his body. After leaving, Baby Vegeta slipped into a dark bodysuit and Machine Mutant battle armor, trussing the gauntlets, boots, and chest armor in place.
It was not in any way surprising that it hardly took twenty minutes for billions of New Tsufurians to flood the district where Baby would be speaking from the balcony and addressing his people. They were exactly as bedazzled as they were last evening when the buds of Baby's new order of business sprouted in Baby's mind. Addressing his people, Baby extended his arms, knowing full well that they won't care if he kills or bombs either way. This gave Baby a sense of liberation. It was this sort of careless attitude that Vegeta's body was so excellent at. If ever Baby doubted his decision, feeling his body and mind working in tandem and seeing the hypnotized stares of his "people" was all the assurance that Baby needed.
"Over the last months, I've been collecting people and delivering them the gift of my body to them. I felt the power to change people inside me. A choice between personal growth and power and the ability to share that power and growth with others. At the time, it felt like no choice at all. Of course, at the time, I didn't know exactly just what this ability was, but I should have known. I should have known better, given that I knew the people that granted this ability to me," Baby Vegeta began his speech, and a crowd of billions that he could see and incalculable mass more beyond the horizon listened as if Baby's was the word of God itself.
"Dr. Lychee and Dr. Myuu, my architects, wanted me to rule as a tyrant. A supreme, unquestionable being. They didn't care about the rebirth of the Tsufurian race, so they didn't give me the ability to recreate my people, instead, they gave me the power to control people's minds. Well, I don't care for it!" Baby leaned over the rail, bending and turning the steel railing like it was a wet noodle. "I realize now that I've made a mistake. Now, when you make a mistake, it feels daunting to admit it. It's an even more challenging thing to begin working to fix it. You fear that you've walked too far, that you've done too much, and that it can't all be a mistake. You make compromises, most of all, you compromise what and who you are. That will never be me!"
Baby raised his hand and channeled a black energy blast over his head that swirled with black jets all around it. The people flocking beneath him of all shapes and sizes began twitching, bending over, grunting, and screaming. A liquified metallic mass began pouring out of their crevices, eyes, nostrils, and mouths. One by one, the "New Tsufurians" began returning Baby the gift that he gave them.
"If I had compromised on this, it would have been the end of my dream as I know it. Being a New Tsufurian could have never been your identity. None of you ever had an identity, to begin with. After taking back the body that I infected you with, I now task the very Machine Mutants that kidnapped you from your home planets to deliver you back to where they found you. Every one of you. From this moment on, you are no longer New Tsufurians, nor are you my people to protect. You are guests on this planet," Baby clenched his fist and extinguished the compact black hole swirling in the palm of his hand and absorbing within it all traces of corruption inside of the aliens' bodies.
"Wh-What's going on…"
"Where are we?"
"Who's that? What are those things?"
"I want to go home!"
Baby closed his eyes and pressed his back to the side wall of the passageway leading to his balcony. Hearing the murmuring, the panic, the discord all around him, it felt so right. At long last, he received the pushback, the objection for his failures that he craved. This was just the taste of the free will that his people will have. Once they are reborn and settled in their home, of course.
"There are decillions of specimens here. Some of them were seconds to death and they will die without your body. It will take time to return all of them to their homes," the Machine Mutant drone reported the conditions as the Machine Mutants either gently led the very confused aliens toward the shuttles and carrier cruisers to carry them back to their true home worlds or gave up reasoning with them and began manhandling them through force and stuffing them into the vessels that would take them home and exile them from the M-2 star.
"That is fine. Let me know when it is done. I will have another mission for all of you. It might sound familiar, but this time we won't fail, because I am with you," Baby stated without dropping the smile on his face for a second and staring at the glistening stars in the cerulean sky, high in the rare and thin artificial atmosphere of M-2.
"A mission?" the Machine Mutant's red light blinked rhythmically in acknowledgment of a word it understood very well.
"Direct M-2 toward Planet Earth. Dr. Myuu had memories of special wishing orbs there and King Vegeta's memories supplement them. They are called the Dragon Balls and they can fulfill any two wishes you please. And, wonder of wonders, I have the perfect pair: to restore New Planet Plant to a utopic and prosperous state, prime for colonization and to revive the Tsufurian race!" Baby Vegeta couldn't help himself. After everything felt so neatly into place, he could only burst into manic laughter and, once again, both his body and mind worked in unison. Almost as if King Vegeta loved megalomaniacal laughter very much during his time in charge of his body.
"Eek!" the Machine Mutant drone's red light went through a series of erratic blinking.
"Speak, what's the matter?" Baby Vegeta dropped his ecstatic mood to gaze at his terrified subject.
"M-2 forces were wiped out on Planet Earth. Both the Sigma Force and even General Rilldo… most of our military units as well," the Machine Mutant cried out, rattling its armored shell to where it could have slipped off and fallen to the ground easily. It must have been the Machine Mutant equivalent of ripping one's own hair out. "Baby will be in danger!"
"Not at all, have you forgotten, Machine Mutant? I am King Vegeta, the strongest warrior in the universe. Also, every Saiyan survivor lives on Planet Earth. It's only fitting that the descendants of the Saiyans that eradicated the Tsufurians would hand me the Dragon Balls that will restore it!" Baby Vegeta marveled at the spectacle of his perfect body and the grand social standing of it that would grant him the rightful subjugation of the Saiyans that committed genocide against his people. "I'll figure out what to do with the Saiyans and Planet Earth while we're going there. It doesn't feel right to leave the poor Earthlings living on the same planet as the Saiyans. At the very least, they should know what danger their cohabitants pose to them. Then again, these Saiyans won't be the same that committed atrocities against my people. It feels wrong to punish them for it… What a tough decision is ahead of me."
"You will know what's best, Baby, I believe in you!" the Machine Mutant pumped its mechanical arm into the air before floating over the balcony and off to the control tower to direct M-2 toward Planet Earth. They may reach their destination much faster than the drones would deliver the aliens back to their home worlds, but they don't need a bunch of workers for their mission on Earth. That's what the factories have been brewing military units on conveyor belts for almost a full year for…
Ever the optimist, Baby Vegeta thought it wouldn't even have to come to that.