The moment Gero returned to his lab, he threw himself back into his work. Better to work than to think over just how much of a disaster his 'recruitment' of Vomi had been.
The first thing he did was do some overdue maintenance on his damned hovercar, giving it the tune-up it was in clear need of. That managed to occupy him for at least an hour, and by the time he was finished, the car may as well have been brand new. After that he returned to the upper floors of his laboratory, deciding to tackle creating that chef-bot next.
That took another three hours to do, and he was rather pleased with the end result. The robot itself was given a rudimentary, humanoid frame, with little in the way of polish or accessories. What it lacked in its appearance, however, it more than made up for with its programming. Gero had downloaded a hastily compiled file of the world's greatest chefs into the robot's positronic brain, giving it the culinary skill it needed to create fantastic meals. Getting the ingredients it needed to make said meals would be another matter entirely, but he could always take a quick trip to North City to rectify that.
"Alright, let's see here…" Gero murmured to himself and reached over to activate the mechanoid.
Its simplistic, ruby-red eyes lit up moments later. The mechanoid craned its head this way and that with the muffled sound of grinding gears. Finally it regarded him directly and tilted its head.
"Greetings, father. What is my name?" it intoned in an emotionless, robotic voice.
"Hm," Gero stroked his chin in response. He should name the thing, shouldn't he? Just calling it a chef-bot would grow tiresome quickly.
"Akira," he decided, plucking the name at random.
Akira nodded and looked down at himself. After taking careful stock of his body, he asked a followup question.
"What is my purpose?"
Gero shrugged. "You make food."
Akira was silent for an uncomfortably long time. Then he brought up his claw-like appendages to the sides of his head and uttered, "Oh. My. God."
…Hmph. Well, this is what he got for doing a rush-job. Clearly the personality matrix had some kinks he needed to work out.
An alert from his supercomputer distracted him and Gero promptly forgot about Akira's existential crisis. He quickly dashed over to the computer's main console, letting out a relieved sigh as he read the notification.
His Androids were on their way back, and would be here at any moment. Perfect.
"Thirteen," he spoke aloud, his voice transmitted directly to the long-range communications link in his creation. "Bring the Attack Ball to the garage. I'll inspect it momentarily."
"Will do," Thirteen acknowledged. "Hm, actually, I had a question for you, Doctor. You see, while you were out of communications range, I—"
"Bring it up later," he gruffly interrupted. He was in no mood for whatever Thirteen wanted to talk about.
The last time he had allowed Thirteen to speak freely, he'd gone on an entire tangent about the benefits of creating a third Android who could be compatible with him. A female Android. He had been very particular about that, to the degree that it had been especially off putting. Gero had gotten tired of that real quick, and that had resulted in Thirteen's initial decommissioning some years ago.
While Thirteen deposited the Attack Ball, Gero waited to receive Fourteen and Fifteen. After another ten minutes, they both arrived and flew into the lab's main entry chamber. Gero raised an eyebrow as his gaze latched upon Fourteen in particular, who was carrying what looked to be a corpse over his shoulder.
"Yo Doc, it was freezing up there," Fifteen greeted, giving an exaggerated shiver. "I mean, we don't really feel the cold like you humans do, but goddamn. My hooch ended up frozen solid while we were there too, which didn't make things any better."
"Doctor," Fourteen gave him a more formal greeting as he nodded his head. "We come bearing gifts. Fifteen and I scoured over what remained of Wheelo's computer system and salvaged what files we could. We also found this: I thought it might be of interest to you."
With that said, Fourteen deposited his load onto the floor. Gero blinked rapidly as the unseeing gaze of Doctor Kochin stared back at him.
Kochin's body was torn in half at the waist, and what remained of his torso carried extensive battle damage, with large cuts and gouges all along his body. Furthermore, his face was half burned off, revealing the metallic chrome beneath the artificial layer of skin. And to cap it all off, his cranium was partially caved in, causing his remaining eye to bulge out of its socket.
"Intriguing," Gero muttered to himself.
So Wheelo's assistant had survived? Or at least, his body was still intact: clearly Kochin was in a nonfunctional state. Still, he could work with that. While Kochin himself was by no means a valuable find—Gero could already tell that he was the most rudimentary kind of mechanoid, and nowhere near as sophisticated or as powerful as his androids—the information he might have in his head was another story.
"Excellent work Fourteen, Fifteen. Go ahead and put Kochin in the operating bay, and deposit the data files you salvaged into one of our isolated networks," he ordered.
Fourteen nodded and bent down to pick Kochin's torso back up, walking away with it a second later. Fifteen, however, remained behind.
"Yes?" Gero questioned with an arched eyebrow. He swore to Popo, if this insubordinate fool started going on about something nonsensical—
"Need more hooch Doc," Fifteen declared, and shook his empty flask for emphasis.
"Oh for the love of—does it even do anything for you?!" Gero asked incredulously.
Fifteen just shrugged and shook his flask again.
"Oh fine, fine! Ugh, the lot of you are like a bunch of unruly children," Gero groaned, before reaching into his pockets.
"I mean, we are all under ten years old," Fifteen replied with a cheeky grin. "Should we be callin' child services' or something? Pretty sure you had us violate a lot of child labor laws today."
Gero rolled his eyes in response. He pulled out his wallet and car keys a second later and tossed them to Fifteen, who deftly caught both.
"If you're so eager to get yourself more alcohol, then you can take my car and go into North City to buy some. And while you're there, there's a list of groceries I need you to pick up as well," he said. "I'll have the Supercomputer transmit it to you once you've arrived."
Fifteen glanced between him and the keys and wallet in his hands before stowing them away into his yellow overcoat. "Can do Doc, but you sure you want the purple dwarf runnin' your errands for ya?"
"Oh just go already!" Gero hissed, his frayed nerves growing more incensed with every word coming out of the android's mouth.
"Aight, aight. But if the police end up pullin' me over, I'm blamin' you," Fifteen countered.
Gero rolled his eyes and stalked away, heading back towards the garage.
It was a short trip, and Gero soon found himself face to face with Goku's original spaceship. He took a good minute to study its design, slowly walking around it as his eyes scanned its spherical shape. It wasn't in the best of conditions, as far as he could tell, but most of that was likely due to disuse and lack of maintenance. Considering that Briefs had converted the thing into an entirely new spacecraft, he knew that some parts of the ship still could be salvaged or repaired.
A pity he couldn't completely convert the craft himself. Tempting as the idea was, he didn't want to meddle with the timeline too much, especially when it came to the pivotal events on Namek. He'd need to leave enough of the ship intact for Doctor Briefs to find in a year's time.
Still, even if he couldn't take the ship apart, he could still scan its inner workings and take a look at its innards. Perhaps he could even reactivate the old flight navigation? Surely the Attack Balls had to have some sort of navigation system or a star chart that one could look at to select their destination. Which meant, in turn, that he could possibly salvage a working map of the local galaxy.
It would be twenty or so years out of date, admittedly. But it would give him a head start when it came to his future galactic travels.
First he had his drones take detailed scannings of the pod's inner workings, uploading that information into his Supercomputer's database for further analysis. After that was done, Gero spent the next several hours knee deep inside of the pod's guts, grumbling to himself as he tried to restart the sphere's computer system. The technology was far outside what he was used to working with, but Gero was enough of a genius to figure out what he was doing as he worked.
After tinkering with the system some more, he managed to boot up the ship's power system, causing the entire pod to vibrate with life. Gero excitedly watched as the pod's computer system loaded up, and soon enough the main navigation screen flickered to life. The display rattled something out in a language Gero didn't understand, but that was something he could deal with later. He—
Huh. Wait. If the Saiyans had their own written, and presumably spoken, language, then how did Vegeta and Nappa speak English when they first arrived on Earth? How had Raditz known the local language, for that matter? There wasn't any language barrier issues on Namek either, for that matter...
Gero furrowed his brow, momentarily perplexed by the conundrum. Perhaps the Saiyans, or maybe the Planet Trade Organization, had installed some sort of universal translator in their soldiers?
He shrugged to himself a moment later, deciding to table the issue for now. He focused back on the display in front of him, his eyes sparkling with an almost childish glee. The secrets to intergalactic travel were now at his very fingertips! The things he could do with this knowledge…
An incessant beeping noise filtered through Gero's perception, dragging him away from his thoughts of galactic exploration. He frowned in confusion, going back to the inner workings of the computer system as he tried to figure out just what was causing that sound.
After another ten minutes of work, he managed to divine the issue. There was a device integrated into the outer network of the computer system, though as far as he could tell, it was not an integral component. Furthermore, Gero figured out that the device's purpose was to broadcast some sort of electronic signal. Though what that signal was, he couldn't say, not without a detailed examination. Perhaps it was connected to the communications system? Or—
Or it was a tracking beacon.
Gero felt a chill run down his spine. With all due haste, he yanked the device out, cutting off the signal entirely. The computer beeped angrily at him in response, but Gero paid it little mind. For good measure, he swiftly exited out of the pod and deposited the mysterious device onto the floor, stomping on it until it was completely and utterly destroyed. Once that was done he settled back into the comfortable interior of the pod, letting out a heavy sigh.
The Saiyans were long dead, so there was no risk of anyone there picking up on that signal. Still, he could only hope that someone from the Freeza Forces hadn't received something before he cut the broadcast.
After taking a few moments to rest and calm his racing heart, he returned to work. It looked like he had a long night ahead of him.
The next few days passed by in a blur. Gero put everything else he'd been working on to the side as he focused solely on the Attack Ball: even his examinations of Kochin's remains, and the data gathered from Wheelo's fortress, were put on hold. Every minute of his available free time was spent analyzing the data he gathered from the marvelous piece of alien technology sitting in his garage, Gero shuffling back and forth between the pod itself and his Supercomputer as he went over the details of his findings.
The spaceship was, in essence, the most advanced piece of technology he'd ever seen. It was far outside anything Gero had ever worked on himself, and made him feel like a strapping young lad, discovering his passion and love for science all over again. A whole new world of scientific advancement and discovery had been opened for him, and Gero thus greedily devoured every new nugget of knowledge he was able to decipher from his latest project.
Whoever had first pioneered these spaceships was clearly a genius of the highest caliber, and one of the most intelligent beings in the universe. A hyperbolic statement, perhaps, but it was true nonetheless. The Attack Ball was undoubtedly a marvel of alien engineering, combining together several different elements and technologies that, together, came to create a near perfect invention.
The exterior of the pod itself was a marvel in and of itself, created out of an alien metal that Gero had never seen before. The metal itself was far stronger than anything on Earth, the outer casing of the pod impervious to almost any attack one could throw at it. Gero had even calculated that it could even withstand the force of a nuclear explosion. Though it was still vulnerable to damage: Gero also calculated that someone of an appropriate strength could ultimately crush or destroy the pod, though it would require sustained effort and work to achieve this. And, of course, the softer interior of the pod left it vulnerable to damage that might not affect the ship otherwise.
Nevertheless, the uncommon sturdiness of the ship's metal framework left him with a variety of ideas. If he could find some way to replicate this material, adding it to his Androids would increase their defenses tenfold.
The pods were also equipped with a Faster-Than-Light drive that Gero could barely begin to understand, and its fuel source was just as mysterious and fantastical. Furthermore, the pod's environmental systems were just as marvelous as the engine that powered the ship, capable of putting its users in a state of suspended animation for up to three years. And then there was the navigational system…
It felt as if the navigational system had half the galaxy filled out in its star charts. Numerous different planets, space stations, moons, and other celestial bodies were mapped out in the charts, all scattered about dozens of different solar systems. Some of these pre-programmed destinations even had pre-typed notations attached to them, though Gero was still spending some time deciphering the Saiyan language.
All in all, the contents of the Attack Ball were set to advance his own scientific understanding by decades, if not centuries. Not to mention all the various scientific applications of the pod's different systems! Creating his own brand of spacecraft was just one of many different things he'd be able to do, once he fully reverse engineered the technology behind the pod. The suspended animation technology alone was a goldmine, and was already giving him plenty of ideas on how to double the security surrounding Androids Seventeen and Eighteen. Not to mention the practical applications of being able to put himself, or other humans, in such a state.
Of course, breaking everything down would take him a great deal of time. Not to mention the additional time it would take to recreate the technology himself. Still, that wouldn't impede him for long. After all, he had plenty of free time to analyze and decipher it all.
Gero was in the middle of translating the Saiyan language when an incessant beeping noise erupted from his computer, tearing him away from his work. He blinked rapidly, frowning as he stalked over to his main console. He typed away at his controls, spending a few seconds to figure out the cause of the alert. When he did, Gero froze in place, his eyes widening in disbelief.
Vomi was calling him.
Gero spent a few seconds frozen with indecision before he managed to shake some sense into himself. He quickly looked himself over, making sure he was in a presentable state before answering the call.
His Supercomputer projected Vomi's face over the main screen. Gero felt a painful twinge in his chest as he looked at his ex-wife, a rush of memories assailing him as he recalled their last, disastrous meeting days ago.
"Vomi," he greeted her, nodding at her respectfully.
She didn't reply right away, choosing instead to scrutinize him with her piercing gaze. Gero fidgeted slightly in response.
"I want you to make me a promise," she finally said, still staring at him with a watchful look. "And I want you to consider my promise long and hard before you respond. Don't think about trying to lie to me, either. If you do, then that will be it. I'll break this pad and we'll never speak again."
Gero couldn't help but bristle at her words, but he did his best to restrain his anger. He wanted her help, after all, and nothing would drive her away faster than getting into another argument with her.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I want you to promise me that any technology we work on, that we invent together, won't go toward hurting innocent people," she said, giving him another hardened stare. "I will not contribute to the defense against the Saiyans if defeating them means you'll just use what we made to hurt innocents later on down the road. I will not have my hands stained with any more blood than they are already."
Gero furrowed his brow, weighing her ultimatum seriously. On the surface, it wasn't an unreasonable demand. Gero had been ambivalent at best about civilian casualties in his prior calculations and projections, though he'd since grown ill at ease with the idea. No doubt that was due to the influence of his extra memories. Normally he'd be annoyed by that, but in this case at least, it wasn't an unwelcome development.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Vomi quickly cut him off.
"And before you say anything, I'll let you know that this promise extends to Son Goku and his friends as well. When I say I don't want to hurt any innocents, I mean it. So think carefully about this before you say anything, Gero."
Gero shut his mouth with an audible click, a grimace flashing over his features. Now wasn't this a clever little trap?
Perhaps it was harsh to think of it in such terms, but Gero felt that way all the same. Of course Vomi wouldn't want anything to do with his vendetta against Son Goku. She'd made that clear multiple times. With that in mind, it was reasonable that she wouldn't want any new research of hers applied in that direction. Still, the fact she was twisting his arm like this irked him to no end. Gero had half a mind to break off the deal then and there…
But he needed her. If she wanted to keep her hands clean so badly, then fine, that was an acceptable compromise. He was already putting his vendetta on hold until the Saiyans and Freeza were dealt with, after all. And besides that, he had enough ideas up his sleeve that he wouldn't need to use any of Vomi's future breakthroughs to go after Son Goku.
Hell, alternate versions of himself had been capable of making Androids powerful enough to overpower and kill Son Goku's allies in multiple timelines. Clearly, he didn't need Vomi's assistance in making that a reality.
"Fine. You have my word," he finally said, giving Vomi a curt nod.
She didn't say anything, choosing instead to stare him down, as if challenging him on that statement. Her eyes sought his own out and Gero met her gaze, hoping that his intentions got through to her.
Whatever she saw in his eyes seemed to satisfy her. Vomi slowly relaxed, her features softening as she gave out a small sigh.
"I'll hold you to it then," she said.
Gero smiled gratefully at her, though that action seemed to alarm her as she gave him a weird look. Gero just as quickly wiped that smile off of his face and adopted a more stern, professional expression.
"In that case, do we have an agreement? Will you help me in preparing for the Saiyan Invasion?" he asked.
She nodded, looking off to the side as she spoke. "Give me a day to put my affairs in order over here, Gero. Ponshu won't be happy about this, but I'll talk him around. When I'm ready, I'll give you a call. Okay?"
"Very well, that is fine by me," he replied.
With that done, there wasn't much else to say. Vomi ended the call soon after, giving him one last look as she hung up.
Gero leaned back in his chair, sighing softly to himself. Despite his own efforts at self-sabotage, it looked like he had successfully recruited his ex-wife. Soon enough, he'd have a partner working at his side, and a new set of eyes to look at all the problems set before them. In a way, it'd almost be like what they had done in the past: working side by side as they made new advances in scientific theory.
Gero smiled to himself, his mind temporarily lost in the memories of better times. All too soon, however, he dragged himself back to the present with a thoughtful frown. Despite his nostalgia, his new partnership wouldn't be able to capture that same magic. Too much time had passed, and too many wounds had opened up between him and Vomi. They might be able to maintain a professional partnership, but there was no way they'd be able to recapture that easy-going friendship they'd maintained in their youth.
God, he'd screwed up so much with her. If only…
Well. Short of using the Dragon Balls, or a time machine, there was no changing the past. And Gero was not about to attempt to use either. He'd have to live up to his mistakes, for better or worse.
Gero stood up from his chair a moment later, stroking his mustache as he glanced around his lab. This base was his main workplace, but he had other, auxiliary laboratories hidden throughout the world, locations that he largely had prepped in the event he needed to abandon this specific facility. That way he'd always have a base to fall back to in the event this laboratory was destroyed, or otherwise compromised.
This base still had a great deal of purpose to fulfill, but it might not be a bad idea to relocate his main headquarters to one of those auxiliary labs. Perhaps one closer to Central City. He was already going to need to set up some firewalls and other protections in his Supercomputer, to ensure that Vomi wouldn't accidentally stumble upon any information relating to the RPC or Androids Seventeen and Eighteen. Relocating would also ensure that Vomi couldn't discover the stasis pods for Seventeen and Eighteen in the sub-basement.
Gero knew that if Vomi found out anything about his wayward cyborgs, she would freak out. And rightfully so, he had to admit. That sort of knowledge would break their already shaky partnership, and worse still, she might try to free Seventeen and Eighteen. He was sure that wouldn't end well for anyone involved. Of course, it also gave him additional motivation to figure out what he was going to do with the twins…though that was also easier said than done. If he could, he'd turn them back into normal humans and just let them go, but that wasn't an option. The process of converting them into cyborgs was completely irreversible.
No, best to leave his main base behind, and set up shop elsewhere. That way he could keep Vomi in the dark about his more morally questionable projects.
That decision in mind, Gero started moving about his lab, barking out orders to his Androids as he did so.
If he was going to move labs, he'd need to bring Sixteen, Nineteen, and Twenty with him, and that was going to require some careful handling.
A massive space station flew through the deep recesses of space, far away from any habitable planets or locations of importance. The interior of the station was large enough to house thousands, but at the moment it was host to only one person. Since the destruction of Planet Vegeta, the station had skirted the edges of known space, avoiding any contact with those connected to the wider galaxy. And those few it did come into contact with would come to regret their association.
In many ways, the station could be considered a floating tomb. Its sole resident had long thought of it in such terms, though she had never been bothered by the idea. With the annihilation of most of her race, the Saiyan scientist Nion had long since come to terms with the idea of this being her final resting place.
But Saiyans lived long lives, and were able to enjoy the prime of their youth for longer than most species. Thus, Nion intended to enjoy every moment she could, carrying out her one major passion: to seek out strange new life and civilizations, and study them to her heart's content. With no King to answer to, and no loyalty to Freeza, Nion had spent the last two decades under her own command, traversing the galaxy as she sought to unravel the secrets of life.
Nion was in the middle of her latest experiment, which involved dissecting the corpse of an Arlian, when she heard a chime from her computer. Nion cocked her head, taking a second to remember just what that chime was supposed to alert her to. She put down her tools thereafter, discarding her blood-soaked gloves as she made her way over to her main computer console.
Nion typed rapidly at the console, smiling to herself as she keyed up a specific set of windows on her computer screen. The alert had been for the activation of a Saiyan Pod transceiver, letting her know when the remnants of her race were on the move.
Truth be told, she had tracking beacons installed on every spaceship used within the Planet Trade Organization: the perks of being one of the main engineers behind the latest model of modern PTO spacecraft. She could slip in a covert tracking beacon into the schematics of the ship design, and no one would be the wiser.
However, she had a separate program to keep track of any spacecraft used by what was left of the Saiyans. Perhaps it was nostalgia for her dying race, or a desire to know what the remains of her people were up to: whatever the case, Nion made sure to keep a close eye on their movements.
"Now then, just what caused that alert?" Nion mused to herself, her eyes browsing through the latest updates.
The Prince and his entourage were still on the move, heading steadily toward the planet Earth. Turles was still in deep space, doing god knows what with his special little tree. Paragus and his brat, if they were even alive, were still on Vampa, their marooned ship blasting out a distress signal that no one would ever pick up. Then there were the few other survivors, each making out meager existences throughout the universe. And…
And there was a new signal.
Nion blinked rapidly, checking her instruments again to make sure she wasn't just experiencing some computer glitch. But no, it was real: there was a new signal being broadcast from a previously inactive Saiyan pod.
She put all of her attention on that anomaly, her brow furrowed as she typed away at her console. A quick search revealed that the pod itself had been registered to a Saiyan named Kakarot, in the hours before Planet Vegeta's destruction. Hm, Kakarot, Kakarot…ah, hadn't that been Bardock's new whelp? So he'd been sent out to conquer a planet or die trying, it seemed. Not too unexpected: it was the normal fate reserved for lower-class Saiyans of a certain power level. Though not an assignment handed out to newborns, typically.
"Are you still alive, Kakarot? After all this time? Or is someone tinkering around with your old pod?" Nion mused to herself, her eyes sparkling with delight.
Before she could investigate any further, though, the signal abruptly cut off.
Nion frowned, typing away at her console again, but nothing she did could bring the signal back. So nothing was wrong on her end: meaning something had happened to the pod itself. Either someone had destroyed the craft, or they'd damaged the tracking beacon in some way.
Nion hummed in thought, drumming her fingers against her keyboard. She decided to bring up Kakarot's profile thereafter, looking to see where it was that he'd been sent to. It was always possible someone had found the pod and flown it elsewhere before reactivating it, but that seemed unlikely. No, it was much more probable that it was still right where it had originally landed, which was…
"Planet Earth?" Nion questioned aloud.
Kakarot had been sent to Earth? Interesting. Earth, the same planet where Raditz's transponder had gone dark; Earth, the same planet that the Prince, the General, and the General's daughter were traveling to even now. Earth, the same planet where after two decades of silence, Kakarot's old pod had been reactivated.
Curious. Very curious.
"Now," Nion mused to herself, a devilish smile spreading across her lips. "Just what am I going to do with this information?"