Tenshinhan grunted, pulling his arms in and setting off Red-Hot King Kai's Fist x 100 in a blink once more. While Baby still had a confident smirk stuck on his face, once Tenshinhan stiffened his back and cracked his neck back, looking up with rolled back eyes and continued to swell up further, Baby's eyes widened in surprise. Cataclysmic crimson lightning bolts severed the sky like bloody lacerations of the atmosphere of a dying planet while Tenshinhan tapped even deeper into his loaned reserves of power.
"Red-Hot… King Kai's Fist x 200!" Tenshinhan roared out, straightening his body like a board while a pillar of scarlet energy engulfed him and beamed off to the edges of the star system before thinning out in the vast regions connecting different galaxies together. Baby's face was a canvas painted with awe when he looked at his opponent, covered in a flashy, pink outline that perfectly coated his body. Around it, there was a flaming aura of blood-red that seemed to be everlasting and encompassing the entire planet and everything as far as Baby could perceive without thinning one bit.
Tenshinhan pulled his forearms, tucking them by the sides of his body while drawing his knees up. Just as Baby braced himself for an onslaught of unbelievable speed, Tenshinhan became a flurry of miraculous mirages as afterimages blitzed left and right, up and down. Each one possessing an impossible level of Ki that perfectly matched Tenshinhan's own swollen level of power. Telling the real deal apart in this realm of mirages was impossible, for all Baby knew, all of them were the real deal and Tenshinhan had legitimately reached a level of speed where he could exist in countless places at once.
Before Baby Vegeta could figure this befuddlement out, Tenshinhan hurled in with a frontal flip from above. His feet rammed into the back of Baby's head, rocking it down while Tenshinhan swept in front of Baby, ready to take his pound of flesh as he had Baby Vegeta all to himself for the duration of a single heartbeat. Tenshinhan's movements made him so light that it was as if like gravity didn't affect him at all. Without feeling the demand to land, Tenshinhan socked Baby in the jaw with a downward straight, then shot a football-style kick that stretched Baby Vegeta's neck out and nearly ripped the head off his shoulders.
Perfectly transitioning into a flying side kick, Tenshinhan sent Baby Vegeta flying after blasting him away with an intense crimson halo as all the pent-up force exploded from the sole of his foot alongside with the force of the kick. Vanishing and moving forward at untraceable speed, Tenshinhan lashed his foot with a low kick that corrected Baby's position in mid-air before driving a decisive fist into Baby's gut and bending him over. A punt to the side of the neck and a forward push kick accelerated Baby Vegeta into a flight of such acceleration that everything around him became just a pink, starry blur.
Leaning back and adopting a snake-style stance, Tenshinhan erupted into a devastating high-speed punch beatdown before two more arms sprouted from behind his shoulders and joined in on the flurry. They vanished away once the three-eyed martial artist had pummeled his opponent enough and thrust his open palm into Baby Vegeta's gut, then slapped him on the left side of the face and chopped him down to smash into the demolished planetary hemisphere with so much force that it split the hemisphere into separate, floating continents.
Meanwhile, Tenshinhan felt obliged to stop and grabbed hold of his chest. Only through sheer will and disciplined training did he manage to prevent his own body from collapsing. His heart pounded inside of his ribcage like a battering ram that sought to bust free. Veins that were popped out all over his body rippled and twitched, struggling to keep up with the outlandish demands that the bodily toll was issuing. His arms weighed down to his side, unable to even clutch his chest. With a look of calm and tranquility and eased breathing, Tenshinhan worked toward recycling the heat he expelled and the energy he burnt off into energy he could once again employ against his opponent.
This would be the first time in a long while that Tenshinhan tried applying the Spirit Cultivation Method to a double-edge technique amped up to such a ridiculous degree. Then again, Tenshinhan struggled to recall the last time he was this mad, and this desperately needed to win. A frantic bellow filled the air, overpowering even the apocalyptic thunderbolts that accompanied the inevitable demise of the planet they were fighting on. Baby Vegeta burst out from the bottomless crater the same way he came, disheveled, bruised, and bleeding. The mixture of Machine Mutant officer and Saiyan body armor that he wore had been cracked and peeled off his chest, scrambling and scattering away as the furious Tsufurian leveled with his opponent once more.
"Unbelievable!" Baby Vegeta wheezed out while wincing with a busted right eye. "To think that you could double your previous power, which already surpassed your limit several hundreds of times, and fulfill every word of your ludicrous promise!"
"If this was truly Vegeta fighting against me, he could do exactly the same thing," Tenshinhan stated with a look that seemed to radiate pure spite and disrespect toward his opponent. "We Earthlings pushed ourselves to become this powerful only in reaction to the Saiyans discovering their Super Saiyan state, not wanting to be left behind in the dust. It was our pride as martial artists that compelled us to soar to these heights. It's not something a mere body-snatcher would ever understand!"
"Super… Saiyan…" Baby looked down at the smeared blood across his gauntlets and the bruises he had collected from Tenshinhan's vicious punishment, as well as busting through the entire hemisphere and the mantle of the dying planet. "Yes, Vegeta's memories suggest a grand deal of pride in such an ability. So, with the power of Super Saiyan, I could also elevate my peerless power several hundreds of times?"
"Forget it," Tenshinhan closed his eyes. When he opened them again, nothing but contempt for one who would possess a powerful body of another man who spent their entire life training it beamed out. "All the Saiyans capable of ascending to that form have achieved it through extreme moments of self-reflection and emotional maturity. While I feel that being able to ascend to such untold worlds of power because of the way you are born sounds unfair, I respect the amount of work and training that went into achieving that form. Not to mention, Vegeta was the only one who had pulled it off twice and ascended to a form that was the equivalent of a Super Saiyan becoming a Super Saiyan. Super Saiyan 2."
"Super Saiyan… 2…" Baby mumbled, becoming almost possessed with driving his body over to that edge and then soaring past it.
"Even if you were to defeat me, Son Goku or Chayote, or whoever… The Saiyans on Planet Earth will never obey you, because they will have no respect for a king who has forgotten how to become a Super Saiyan," Tenshinhan proclaimed, pointing an accusing index finger at Baby Vegeta. Before Tenshinhan could revel in his self-righteousness and triumph against a contemptible creature such as Baby, he gasped wonder when seeing Baby's chin tucked and his whole body shaking while a dark miasma lingered around his body, burning in an intense, rose aura.
"Don't you dare…" Baby Vegeta hissed, looking up at Tenshinhan with a twisted expression of hatred the likes of which Tenshinhan had never pushed back against before. "Lecture me on Saiyans, Earthling!"
With a shrill yell, Baby Vegeta extended his hand, releasing a potent Kiai wave from his open hand that forced Tenshinhan to grit his teeth and set off a shockwave of Red-Hot King Kai's Fist x 100 to withstand. Tenshinhan unleashed a bubble of concussive force of his own, clashing with the invisible pulse of energy that Baby sent his way. It took all the power that Tenshinhan could scrape up to measure up to it.
"No one is more familiar with the cruelty, the violence, the malice that Saiyans represent than me!" Baby howled while rapidly thrusting his arms out and producing countless more Kiai shockwaves of matching power. Completely overwhelmed, Tenshinhan gritted his teeth and pushed his body to the limit, answering with a low-pitched roar that exploded with a mighty explosive Ki wave that shielded him from the almost obsessive Kiai wave bombardment.
"Ever since the first traces of my consciousness formed in Dr. Myuu's test tubes, I've been subjected to the boundless terror of the unbelievable cruelty they've shown to the Tsufurian people! I of all people know best, that the only thing a loathsome Saiyan respects is power! As long as I have power, they will all fall in line and heed every order coming from my mouth!" Baby screamed out, losing himself in the barrage of concussive waves until the combined detonation left him panting and wide open.
Tenshinhan came in, spinning rapidly before sticking out his leg and driving his calf into Baby Vegeta's face. The kick released a grisly and thunderous crack as it nearly indented Baby Vegeta's face. After kicking Baby straight in his busted and bleeding face, Tenshinhan switched dominant legs and repeated the same kick aimed at Baby's ribcage, seeking to drive all the air out from Baby Vegeta's body and to postpone his recovery for as long as possible. The three-eyed martial artist took off with an aerial cross punch to the face, followed by a snake-style barrage of pinches and a double-arm ax handle slam that sent Baby flying off far beyond the rapidly draining pockets of viable atmosphere and out into the devastated expanses of space.
Yet again, the pent-up, limit-breaking energy snuffed out from Tenshinhan's body with an explosive burst, draining his limbs and his body of all the additional flesh he put on and leaving him panting and struggling against the perpetual feeling of light-headedness. After suffering the additional aftereffects of Red-Hot King Kai's Fist x 100, before the Spirit Cultivation Method could recoup all the strength lost with the x 200 version, Tenshinhan drained his body of all energy and seemed to just be draining of strength with each passing second. His body became paler and much lighter as his muscles lost all mass, leaving him meek and suffering.
"This is why you are bound to lose this fight," Baby Vegeta hissed while covering his busted nose with the back of his right arm, unable to restrain all the cracks, shiners, and bleeders he had accumulated in this limit-breaking bout. "It's because this is the extent of your hatred for me. You dislike me for who I am, for the way I was born and how I must survive, just as the Saiyans despised my predecessors as weed, infesting the planet they saw as rightfully theirs. You hate me for forcing you to raise a hand against your students. But that hate. That anger. It is nothing compared to the plight of subjects of genocide and the infinite fury they feel against their tormentors!"
Shining with a malicious, violet aura and sparking with golden electricity, Baby Vegeta smashed into Tenshinhan, throwing a mindless combination of fists before digging a hook into Tenshinhan's gut and slamming both of his hammering fists down onto his back. Grunting yet too worn out to resist, Tenshinhan hurled down toward the collapsed and drifting continental remains of the abandoned planet.
"The Saiyans will submit to me like the techniques of their king work for me now," Baby Vegeta proclaimed, bursting with a nova-like expanse of purple energy that surpassed the infinite void of space and the beaconing light of the stars above. Spreading his arms and legs out, Baby Vegeta channeled a pair of violet energy spheres, one in each hand, before connecting his arms together in a cannon-like formation with the hands sticking wide open and the violet energy spheres converging. "Final Flash!" he yelled out.
Tenshinhan blanked out with the overwhelming tunnel of the supercharged destructive energy wave coming his way. Gritting his teeth and focusing all of his remaining strength on his core, Tenshinhan formed a reflective Kiai bubble in a manner similar to the technique used to reflect the Kamehameha back at the user. Tenshinhan hadn't quite practiced dealing with the Final Flash for as long as he practiced defeating the Kamehameha as a youth training under the rival of the Turtle School, but when evaporation was his only other option, difficulty and lack of practice became less of a barrier.
Despite his valiant attempt, the Kiai protective bubble burst almost immediately and betrayed him to the devastating tide of the Final Flash. The vast energy wave beamed off to unknown horizons of deep space, washing Tenshinhan like a tidal wave except infinitely more destructive. In the end, only a stray handful of rocky chunks remained floating in the nexus of blazing stardust, as the planet was no more, despite the most genuine attempts to restrain their wild power by all combatants.
"Hmm… So this Spirit Cultivation Method doesn't reliably reignite the fighting spirit into a broken and defeated body every time," Baby Vegeta panted out, drawing the back of his hand across his busted lip. He pulled some of the punch of that last attack and spread its destruction out wider than he could have. Had he focused it entirely on Tenshinhan, Baby felt like he'd have completely obliterated his opponent and left not a single speck of ash of him, which was never Baby's intention. "As expected, Vegeta vastly overestimated his own fighting skill. Then again, I shouldn't repeat his mistake and shake off humility. It appears that this Super Saiyan transformation is vital to drawing out the full potential of this body. It's good that this came up now, rather than during a crucial stage of my plan."
Hovering over to Tenshinhan's battered and broken body, Baby Vegeta scooped him up underneath his armpit and hovered to the nearest chunk of continental remains. The Tsufurian felt a notable sting to his entire body and his lungs burned. While he had an innate knowledge of his body's ability to breathe and survive in the vacuum of space, the same most likely couldn't have been said about Vegeta's body.
"Tsk… Taking their sweet time…" Baby's face turned sour as his mind wandered back to the Big Gete Star and the Machine Mutants that were supposed to track his progress. A cerulean beam washed over the two battle-worn warriors and transported their particles back to the Big Gete Star's many hallways.
"You didn't exactly rush to bring me back," Baby turned to the nearest Machine Mutant with a strict look of beady black eyes that made the poor drone shake off responsibility in distress.
"W-We thought you were going to finish the Earthling off! We didn't want to distract you or intercept the coup de grâce!" the poor Machine Mutant mumbled.
"Hmph… Why would I do that? I didn't come to this planet to eradicate Earthlings. Frankly, if you lot didn't invade this planet before my awakening, we'd have likely had far fewer problems interacting with it right now," Baby Vegeta dropped Tenshinhan's body on a nearby Machine Mutant scout and crossed his arms. "Treat his wounds," the Tsufurian ordered.
"B-But… What if he attacks you again!?" the fumbling and worked-up Machine Mutant jumbled out. "He's proven to be more powerful than anyone could have possibly expected Earthlings to be."
"I have a good feeling that after our fight he's mellowed out," Baby Vegeta looked at the bruised body hanging over his faceless subordinate. "After taking the body of this Saiyan, I believe I've come to better understand how the mind of a martial artist works. We've settled our differences with our fists, so he has no more reason to challenge me until he trains himself up and achieves new heights."
The Machine Mutants shifted their blinking red dots for eyes, focusing them on many different focal points, as if wanting to express doubts but being afraid of being obliterated on the spot for it. The habits of being terrified of their old leadership would likely take a long time to die out.
"Besides, these Saiyan bodies are quite handy. They possess an ability known as Zenkai, meaning that after I recover from these wounds, I shall become much stronger than I am now. This Earthling will have no use in challenging me immediately as he'll be defeated even more soundly," Baby Vegeta stared at his twitching muscles and bleeding bruises in awe. Even now, with the battle tension having only partly subsided, he felt like he was an entirely different person. Saiyans truly evolved with every battle.
"Incredible!" a couple of Machine Mutants cheered for Baby Vegeta, the one on top of which Tenshinhan's body laid flopped grew a central ground wheel and went off, racing across his peers toward a nearby lab where the Earthling's wounds could be treated.
"Make sure that, once he recovers, this Earthling can return to his home planet," Baby instructed the others before ripping his destroyed uniform off completely and standing before his subjects bare. Instead of appearing as proud of his own chiseled self as he felt, Baby looked a bit slumped and clutched some aching bruises. This was no shape to approach the Saiyans in.
"We'll prepare the Big Gete Star to treat your wounds as well, Baby-sama!" a cheerful Machine Mutant drone declared, rolling off toward a nearby control panel to command the cybernetic planetoid to entangle Baby Vegeta in steel wires and suspend him in the air while the mechanical star healed his wounds and refreshed his body before his meeting with the Saiyans.
Reflecting on the words that Tenshinhan mocked him with and the memories locked away deep inside Vegeta's subconscious, Baby drifted off into a trance. A state between being fully awake and slumbering. Being powered up and healed before he approached the Saiyans with his demands came second to re-learning how to tap into the Super Saiyan state inside this body. For whatever reason, Baby couldn't quite call forth this power despite it being intimately familiar as snapping his fingers to Vegeta.
And yet, Baby felt that if he were to attain that form, there truly would be no equal to him in this universe and he'd be able to force the Saiyans to redeem their past sins if he had to. Even now he could humble one of the strongest and bravest Earthlings that dared approach him with a challenge, someone familiar with and undaunted by Vegeta's abilities. A power hundred of times beyond this seemed almost untouchable. The programming traces left behind by Dr. Lychee and Dr. Myuu kept insisting that Baby merged with Hatchiyack would be an omnipotent force to dominate the universe, yet Baby struggled to imagine a force more powerful than his current self attaining the legendary and awesome power of Super Saiyan.
There it was. Baby felt it ever since taking over Vegeta's body. He felt eager to be proven wrong. Excited to meet a worthy challenger and someone to put him against the wall and draw the Super Saiyan out of him. On this entire planet, Vegeta's memories noted only three warriors that were worthy of his time. All of them Saiyans: Bardock, Kakarot, and Chayote.
This could have become a problem. Baby already felt it during the last fight. He didn't possess a blank slate like Hatchiyack; he possessed a man with his own personality and swagger. Bit by bit, those traits of the King of Saiyans were tainting Baby, his dreadful, violent consciousness was leaking out and making a unique cocktail while mixing with Baby's own. When Baby possessed Vegeta, he didn't have another choice. It was either that or dying and no one would choose the latter. Now he needed Vegeta's body to have the Saiyans cooperate without Baby having to exterminate them for their stubbornness in refusing to hand him the Dragon Balls.
The moment this body has served its use, Baby swore that he would have to switch to Hatchiyack. Just like he wouldn't impose his will upon any living and conscious being by corrupting it with its parasitic flesh, Baby dreaded the idea of the united consciousness and knowledge of millennia of Tsufurian existence being tainted or wiped by outside influence. This must have been why Dr. Lychee made Hatchiyack to be a mindless organism.
So that the Tsufurian legacy remained pure.
Author's Note: Thanks to all the nice and funny guest reviews. I'm not able to thank every guest personally, but thanks for the feedback and observations. It's always appreciated.