"Isn't it a bit early to be wearing the bowl head?" Bardock glimpsed at the curly, blond-haired bombshell, clad in a full space suit and loading her arsenal of guns. "We're nowhere near reaching Planet Imecka yet."
"Don't sass me!" Launch aimed Bardock, making the Saiyan tilt his eyebrow in curiosity as to what his companion was trying to achieve with this ridiculous attempt at intimidation while she ground her teeth from inside the protective dome for her head. "It ain't for the planet we're going to! It's for the trip! I don't need to transform into the Other Me right now. I've gotta be the one to see this thing through."
"You should stay behind in the ship," Bardock crossed his arms and closed his eyes. He tried to make it seem like he was cutting this argument short and relaying that he would accept no refusals of this proposition, but he knew all too well that he was only shutting himself in with his body language because he knew how troublesome trying to debate this with blond Launch was going to be.
"Like hell, I will!" Launch locked and loaded two LMGs and vaulted them over her shoulders, utilizing what Bardock saw as impressive physical strength for an untrained Earthling who bruised and battered only based on her peerless levels of aggression and lust for trouble alone.
"You heard what Bulma said on the comlink about that Cell creature," Bardock insisted. "He's attacking our guys to challenge and defeat them in combat. It wouldn't be safe for you to leave the ship in the first place. Imecka is a planet that was once a calm ocean planet with tropical weather and its inhabitants had made the planet one massive resort. However, greed, abuse of power, and resource mining have left the planet desolate and dry. Saiyans had the planet marked for conquering a long time ago, however, because of its condition when the Saiyans arrived, it was useless to the Frieza's empire. The planet's ruler paid Frieza ten times what the planet was worth, sparing the Saiyans from being allowed to do as they wished and sparing the planet and its population from being reduced to space dust. Imecka is just a pile of sand and dust to choke on and cough yourself to death inside out, crawling with giant lizards and amphibians whose ancestors swam in its endless oceans."
"I don't care what the planet's all about," Launch argued. "It's got that Dragon Ball thingy on it. The thing that can make me and the Other Me separate. I've gotta be the one to take it. Someone else won't have the guts to do it!"
"Take it down a notch," Bardock sighed and shook his head before turning to the porthole to glare through it and into the boundless expanse of space their spaceship soared through. "That might have been the case when you were all alone. Now you're among friends. People who care about both you and the Other You and would do anything to help. I'm one of them. Don't forget–I want you and the Other You separate just as much as you do. I want you two to be happy."
"Right!" Launch reared her teeth, putting one of her massive machine guns down on the table and stepping up into Bardock's face while rearing her fist to pound him on the head. "You just want me out of your way so that you can have the Other Me all to yourself! You just wanna have a sweet little thing that won't argue and fight with you and with whom it will always be your way or the highway!"
"Talking to you has made me appreciate the appeal of that proposition," Bardock subtly growled back at the blond bombshell, knowing that arguing with her was a fruitless affair. "But no. It's nothing like that. It's just that the Other You reminds me a lot of another sweet, pure-hearted, and cheerful gal I used to know. All I want is for her to be happy and have a life of her own because I'd have split the heavens and the dirt apart with my bare hands to keep my Gine smiling back in the day and there's not a single day the loss of her doesn't tear me apart inside. I thought I'd moved past it, I thought I'd cut all ties and cut her loose to live her new reincarnated life. I intend to keep that promise, of course, but… It still hurts inside. Always."
"Heh, that's why I never understood the Other Me's crush on you. You're such a wussy softy, unlike my Tenshinhan…" Launch cringed to herself, however, her expression became softer, and she tossed the oversized gun over on her shoulder while patting Bardock on the back. It seemed like the trigger-happy alter ego had accepted Bardock's motivations as pure enough for her to let down her guard and cooperate with him. "I'm still coming with ya, though."
"It'll only hold me back, but that's fine. I don't expect too much trouble from Planet Imecka," Bardock rolled his eyes. "It's this Cell guy that makes my fists itch. I'm sure that he'll make his move on us, somehow. Because Bulma suggested he might only be after powerful fighters, leaving you behind on the spaceship would help me keep my mind at ease that you're safe."
[ULTIMATE DRAGON BALL DETECTED! ULTIMATE DRAGON BALL DETECTED!] A small, round-shaped, cerulean and white robot with a protruded head and a red lamp glowing on its face, halfway embedded into the spaceship's control panel, dangled its tiny arms above its head. Bulma had adapted the remains of the Machine Mutant scouts found thrashed on Planet Earth after the invasion to make assistant and navigation AI drones that accompanied every newer model of the Capsule Corps spaceships.
Bardock and Launch approached the central control screen and looked up at the centered image of a blue planet with crawling, feathery strands of clouds circulating it. Planet Imecka didn't look that different from Earth if one were to remove all the green from the image. However, based on the planet's statistics, and atmospheric and geographical data, it was two times larger and two times denser than Planet Earth.
"This is Planet Imecka?" Launch leaned back from the screen with a curious tilt of her eyebrow. "I thought you said the planet's all dried up with all the fish having grown legs and begun to walk on the desert wasteland?"
"Well… It appears the planet's got an incredibly thick atmosphere with much more layers than that of Earth. The atmospheric layers must be covering all the sand up when looking from above. Must be why the Saiyans couldn't see the massive disappointment coming when landing on the planet when they first came," Bardock shrugged with indifference. He approached a small storage unit below the central control panel and opened up a storage compartment, taking out a version of the Dragon Radar that looked like a more advanced version of the Frieza Army scouter and one that the user could wear on one's face like a scouter.
A rumble and a loud noise made Bardock turn around with wide eyes and look at his companion. Something had happened underneath that bowl-shaped spacesuit helmet, of that much Bardock was sure. When he looked at Launch, he saw familiar blue and lush locks and the cutesy blue-haired sweetheart removing her helmet and rubbing her nose, as if it was ticklish.
"I'm sorry, it's just that all that hair was brushing against my nose in there…" Launch squeaked out in a shy and overly polite voice, bowing her head in apology for having startled Bardock.
"Not a problem. Bless you, you sweet angel," Bardock smirked in relief. "In any case, I'm putting my feet down on the ground on Planet Imecka. It will be safer for you to stay in the spaceship. Don't put that helmet back on until I come back."
"Ooh! I'll brew you some coffee and prepare you some sweets for when you come back!" Launch clapped with a delighted grin.
"If that's what you feel like doing," Bardock nodded with indifference. His eyes slightly widened as he contemplated what the other Launch had told him about him preferring Launch to act more submissive. Even though Bardock knew that wasn't the whole truth, somehow, enjoying Launch's niceness began rubbing him off the wrong way now.
"It's the least I can do for doing all the hard work!" Launch shook her hands out in front of her, making it seem like no big deal.
"Alright, I'm off…" Bardock turned around and put on his spacesuit, approaching the shuttle that would fire an Attack Ball pod modeled after the Frieza Army models, except improved with Capsule Corps technology, made tougher and faster, also decorated with Capsule Corps insignia for some invaluable intergalactic promotion opportunities.
Bardock stopped when he felt arms wrapping around him from behind. When he turned, he felt a soft and wet peck on his scarred cheek before Launch scampered off, shaking her rear and giggling to herself as she fled the scene of the crime. Only the yelp of "Good luck, Bardock-san" reached the Saiyan berserker's ear. Spaced out, Bardock slipped into the pod and the spaceship fired the Attack Ball hurling toward Planet Imecka.
"There sure is a lot of peanut butter and jelly stacked in the refrigerator units," Launch wondered to herself out loud while stacking sandwiches one on top of the other. "Bardock-san must be eating as much as Goku-san, but… Is peanut butter and jelly really good with coffee, I wonder?" the blue-haired traveling companion pressed her index to her cheek while she pondered long and hard about this hard-hitting question.
A horrific quake that resonated all throughout the ship flung Launch up in the air and made all the trays stacked with sandwiches shoot off in every direction with jugs of coffee falling off and spilling their contents off into the sink or all over the spaceship's kitchen table. Screaming and covering her ears, Launch crawled her way into the main hall to look through the porthole and see what was rattling the spaceship like that.
"Huh? Chains?" she wondered to herself after looking out into space and seeing small and round, highly maneuverable fighter ships swarming around the spaceship and tying it down with chains from all directions. It seemed strange to Launch that something as rudimentary as mere chains restrained a spaceship in the upper atmosphere of Planet Imecka, however, based on the reeling technology attached to the bottom of these fighters, this was specialized technology that someone had outfitted them with. In other words, tying the spaceship down was their goal here.
"Eek!" Launch shrieked out and stumbled back, falling on her rear because of the constant shaking inside the ship, when the image on the control screen began flickering and displaying flashes of a blush-skinned alien with spiky pink hair, dressed in a regal green and red robe with baggy sleeves and a face cluttered with make-up despite the alien's masculine appearance. Ruby earrings dangled off the tips of the alien's humanoid ears as it leaned closer to the staticky screen.
"Unidentified "Capsule Corps" spaceship, you have entered the atmosphere of Planet Imecka. Under the 11th Imperial Decree of Don Kia, who is me, by the way, nice to make your acquaintance… The planetary airspace of Planet Imecka is considered Imperial property and therefore forbidden for entry. All offending spaceships are therefore confiscated and made Imperial property!" Don Kia, the self-proclaimed emperor of Planet Imecka, declared. Launch covered her ears and cried out in terror when she felt immense pressure mounting on her body that crushed her to the floor, leaving her unable to move. The fighters that had tied Bulma's spaceship down were dragging the ship down with them to Planet Imecka.
"If there are any sentient, biological life forms on this vessel, I humbly request that you escape with any escape pods you have. Your vessel will be stripped for parts and sold, and blood, viscera, or biological remains of any sort greatly affects the price at which spare parts and sheets of space-faring alloy polymers can be sold for," Don Kia said, leaning forward and waggling his finger as if he was a teacher lecturing a class and not a tyrant forcefully grounding and kidnapping Launch with threats of potential industrial accidents when the spaceship she found herself trapped on would be crushed and stripped for parts.
"Hmph…" Bardock looked around the devastated landscape of Planet Imecka which looked exactly what he had imagined it to look. Like the bottom of a boundless ocean stripped bare of any trace of water, with crushed and grounded gravel now covering the immense landscape of the desolate wasteland that was the current Imecka. Having found someone lying on the floor, Bardock approached them and checked for vital signs.
"An Applazian?" Bardock grumbled to himself in surprise after rolling the body over and seeing a famished and withered, purple-skinned body with mustard-colored spots decorating a large long head and body. The corpse was dressed in rags and had a tortured last look in its expression with whited-out eyes. "What are you doing here…?" Bardock wondered to himself before checking the radar.
Because he was so close to the ground, examining the corpse of an alien species that had been accepted within the Frieza Army space long ago and even had multiple distinguished representatives within the Frieza Army back in the day, Bardock saw the dance of the pebbles beneath his feet and felt the intense vibrations on the ground. Looking up, the Saiyan noted cumulous dust clouds on the horizon, quickly dashing off to the side before seeing loud and roaring makeshift vehicles rolling up and passing through.
The Saiyan sat perched quietly behind a rock, observing the party of what looked like rowdy desert raiders. Bardock had never thought that Planet Imecka had enough civilization left on its desolate landscape to support criminal networks. From what he knew of the planet, Saiyans hit it pretty hard, giving them a blitzkrieg rampage that destroyed most of the planet within a few hours. What was left of the planet's local population was squeezed inside one final remaining city. The makeshift capital city, by a process of elimination, from which the planet's ruler bargained for the planet's survival with Frieza back in the day.
By now, Bardock thought Imecka to have surely either been completely desolate and abandoned, with the ruler having fled somewhere off to space to live out the rest of their days as a moderately rich space station dweller, or the famished locals having started a rebellion and overthrown the rulership for what specks Frieza allowed them to keep of their resources. If that were the case, those barbaric rebels would've long butchered one another by now…
Not to mention, there was no use for someone like an Applazian to have ever come to a place like this. Bardock gasped with a shocking realization that the marauders he just let rumble through in their raiding party of vehicles had all stopped around the remains of Bardock's Attack Balls. Gnashing his teeth, Bardock dashed toward the vehicle circle while the marauders surrounded the crater and examined the pod.
"That's strange," a pink and muscular alien, most resembling a hippopotamus from Earth but with a scaly, dinosaur-like skin, scratched his chubby shin. "This sphere looks similar to a Saiyan pod…"
"S-S-Saiyan!?" a mixture between a rat and an ostrich in bipedal alien form squawked from a shaking and chattering beak protrusion in its face. "B-But… I thought the Frieza Army was done for already! That the Saiyans had perished alongside their planet, or something…"
"Indeed, this looks like a Saiyan Attack Ball. Could the Saiyans have come back to Imecka? What could they possibly want from a dead, back-end world such as this one?" a levitating jellyfish with the upper body looking like a round and reflective disco ball, shining in the sunlight, as if it was made of glistening metal alloy or glass, pulsated with telepathic signals, overflowing with a surge of psychic energy that maintained the creature floating in the air.
"Mercy! Lady Fortune have mercy on us!" an orange-skinned humanoid alien with lean, feminine features stuffed her fingers into her mouth, buckling by the knees and collapsing on the ground. "We're all going to die, aren't we? I'll die on Planet Imecka without having ever escaped from here! Please… I don't want to die here, not before my family and friends know where I am…"
"This doesn't have to mean bad things for us," a walking and driving mountain, made of solid, dark gray stone, a material that stuck out on a desolate desert wasteland planet, addressed his fellow marauder gang. "The Saiyans would have no use of small-fry like us. If they've come to this planet, they'll come for Don Kia, just like that wussy aristocrat had always feared they would. They've finally come to kick him to the curb for denying them their conquest! We should join and serve the Saiyans, and maybe they'll crush that pimple Don Kia, and let us leave this planet!"
"Don't be ridiculous!" a mixture between a bat and a shark hissed out with a mouth full of ferocious teeth that would've seen it as a small thing to shred flesh and muscle and even crunch bone to bits. "Saiyans only know violence and war, there's no bargaining with them!"
The head of the shark-bat-like alien creature dressed in rags it evidently looted from some other corpse, just like one of that Applazian laid out in the middle of the desert, caved in when Bardock snapped directly above him and drove an elbow into its top. With a broken skull and rolled-back, whited-out eyes, the creature dropped on the sandy floor with its tongue rolled off its row of horrific, savage teeth.
"If you marauding scum wish to keep breathing, you'll walk away and leave my pod in peace," Bardock snarled, shaking a fist in front of him. Howling and screaming, the marauder gang fled in terror back to their vehicles and took off like they'd seen the face of war and carnage personified before them. Something utterly invincible and something that was beyond mortal nature to overcome.
"Sorry, bud… It looks like there's no honor among thieves and that your buddies left you to die," Bardock sighed, looking down at the unconscious and grievously injured marauder he disposed of just to show those scumbags he was the real deal and that conflict with him was best avoided. "It seems this planet operates on some form of survival of the fittest rules and you were neither particularly fit nor intelligent."
After pulling the rags off of the fallen and dying alien and stripping himself of his spacesuit, stuffing the alien inside it, and then placing him into the space pod with it, Bardock wrapped the rags around him like a cloak and then closed the Attack Ball door. With a press of a button on the pod's side, the pod flooded with medicinal fluid that left the injured alien submerged in it until he made a recovery.
"Time to find out what's going on this damn rock, get my Ultimate Dragon Ball and leave," Bardock gnashed his teeth after turning around and facing the vague image of skyscrapers sticking out like heaven-grazing mountains far on the horizon. One glance at the Dragon Radar suggested that was exactly where the Ultimate Dragon Ball was.