Vegeta stepped out from the dome-shaped entryway building, accompanied by Fortuneteller Baba. While the King of Saiyans stared off into the sky, contemplating his next course of action, the old hag stared at him with an amused, toothless smirk. The warriors that were lined up to test their mettle against Fortuneteller Baba's fighters stood in awe of the appearance of the King of Saiyans who intimidated their lot earlier as well as the old witch all of them gathered here to meet.
"So, what are you going to do now?" Baba wondered out of curiosity. Her voice trembled with excitement. There was no reason for the old lady not to be excited, she just netted a brilliant gemstone of a prize in the body of King Vegeta IV.
"Not sure. Fake bastard or not, Broly is a Legendary Super Saiyan, and just knowing that he's not what he pretends to be won't change the fact I can't defeat him the way I am now…" Vegeta's blank expression shifted to frustration. "Contrary to my father, I don't believe that royal blood alone wins fights."
"The others are fighting Broly right now on your wife's space station all the way where Jupiter used to be before Dr. Gero destroyed it. They seem to have wrapped it up in Earth's clothing and presented it like that to Broly. So far, the deception appears to be working…" Fortuneteller Baba said.
"I know, I can sense their energy from all the way here…" Vegeta gnashed his teeth, turning to a blank point in the sky he couldn't even see a shiny dot on. Broly's power was so wild at the moment that one could probably sense it from a whole different quadrant of the universe. Up there, a Ki signature was rising to rival it. Piccolo's Ki was in a league of its own too. "You must be beside yourself. Can't wait for me to join the battle and kick the bucket so that you can wrap your wrinkly fingers around my stiff body!"
"Who's to say?" Fortuneteller Baba shrugged with a malicious smirk. "If you want, I can take you to Kami Upa and ask him to open up a portal to the battle."
"Why are you so sure I even see the point in joining the battle?" Vegeta turned to the old hag with a sour expression. "If neither the Legendary Super Saiyan nor the Namekian can stop Broly, I won't fare that much better."
"Let's just say I have a hunch. It's not like you to sit out battles, even ones you know you have no chance of winning…" Fortuneteller Baba chuckled. "Take care of that body for me, will you? Train it up much more for when you pass away, I'm counting on my investment paying off in spades."
"Just see that you don't drop dead before me," Vegeta sneered at the old hag and took off. The resulting concussive ripple resulted in the tended to grass rustling and tearing out from the soil and sand gathering in mighty, blinding gales that made even the largest and toughest fighters brace themselves lest they be swept aside.
"Our King!" a Saiyan dressed in ordinary clothing pointed at the sky. Gathered in the Capsule Corps' building yard were Saiyans. Ones dressed as builders, blacksmiths, fast food workers, and low-ranking office clerks responsible for copying documents and trivial office work. They may have looked like a pathetic Earthling lot in those get-ups, but their spiky black hair, battle-worn faces, and crystal-clear black eyes relayed they were still the mightiest race of space warriors in the universe somewhere deep down.
"What is the meaning of this?" Vegeta hissed after landing in the center where the gathered Saiyans parted and made way for him to land amongst them. "I don't recall issuing an order for you to get involved!"
"You didn't, our King! But… This Saiyan, Paragus, issued a challenge to all of us. He declared a Saiyan civil war and, as Saiyans, we swear to fight in your name!" a random Saiyan dressed as a mechanic and still wearing thick patches of machine oil smeared all over his face and uniform declared, adopting a strict, militaristic stance.
"We may have grown accustomed to the Earthling lifestyle, some of us have started families, but we haven't forgotten the plan, we haven't stopped training, King Vegeta!" a female Saiyan dressed as a nurse and carrying around a green-eyed baby with a lone brown curl of hair wrapped on the center of its forehead pumped her fist.
"The reason I didn't issue any orders is that I don't intend for you to have to get involved," Vegeta swiped his arm aside, dismissing the Saiyans gathered here and itching to fight in the civil war. "There won't be any civil war. The enemy snapped and killed their own men. Now there's just Broly and we can handle one man. You stick to your own business and work on repopulating the Saiyan race so that we can reclaim our homeworld one day. That is your responsibility, those are your duties, not some wanna-be king and his lot!"
"B-But… King Vegeta… Is it true? That the enemy is the Legendary Super Saiyan?" a trembling voice came from somewhere in the rich crowd. An army of builders, mechanics, carpenters, and the like with the power to reduce entire planets to ruin.
"So what if it is!?" Vegeta clenched his fist in a foul mood. "Either way, we'll handle it. This isn't something I'm willing to risk all of your lives and everything we're building here on Earth for. This is my responsibility, my fight as your king!"
"He's not!" a meek voice found an opening to slip out. This made the clumped-together mass of Saiyans rare out, revealing a handful of Saiyans clad in ruined, modified models of the Saiyan battle armor. These were the Paragus' men that Bulma pulled out before the destruction of the star system Vegeta fought Broly on and their ship. By now they must have recovered already, though Bulma left them behind. "A Legendary Super Saiyan that is… Broly has no claim to be the King of Saiyans!"
"You should stay quiet!" a boisterous Saiyan shook his fist over his head, threatening to pound the rescued soldier of Paragus' army of exiles and rejects.
"No. This was no moot pandering, was it?" Vegeta fixed his stare on the slim Saiyan soldier. "You know something, don't you?"
"King Vegeta…" the salvaged Saiyan exile collapsed to his knee and brought his head to the ground before looking up at his king in respect. "My name is Beetro. Before Broly's recovery, Paragus entrusted to me his secret. He suspected that, whether it be by the hand of Broly, or the doing of one of Chayote's Earthling friends, he might become a target and perish. He needed someone aware to stay in control and continue his plan to completion. He chose me."
"Sounds like you're a loyal boot licker. How come you're coming clean and willing to lick my boots now?" Vegeta raised an eyebrow.
"The secret… King Vegeta, it's… Broly is a sacrilege to everything holy to the Saiyan people. An abomination so vile that neither Galactic nor Saiyan laws would permit its existence. It never sat right with me, I lied to Paragus that I'd continue his work, but I would never have followed up on assisting a freak like that take the Saiyan throne! Not to mention… It flipped out and killed all of my people, my friends, and comrades on a cruel, capricious whim. Its own maker too…" Beetro's face grew sullen and sweaty as the slim Saiyan returned to the day he nearly confronted his own mortality thanks to Broly's destructive tendencies and perchance to chaos. "Not to mention, realizing that I owe the royal family my life and seeing the trust and loyalty that you inspire in the Saiyans makes it painfully obvious that we have made a grave mistake trusting Paragus out of our need to be trusted and accepted by the Saiyan people that booted us out to faraway worlds as toddlers."
"Maker?" Vegeta's eyes widened. "That's a curious choice of words…"
"I didn't misspeak, my King!" Beetro straightened his back while remaining in a kneeling position. "Paragus isn't Broly's father, not conventionally. Broly isn't a real person to be fathered, he's a science experiment. An abomination that hardly even qualifies to be called a clone."
"A clone!? Explain yourself, and don't call that bastard Paragus. Who knows what his real name is, but he's not the actual Paragus that fathered the real Broly, speculated to have been a Legendary Super Saiyan, who deserted to Planet Vampa. He's just a nameless pretender!" Vegeta seethed while demanding Beetro to spill the beans already.
"I see… So the regent's deception went far deeper than he even let me in on…" Beetro looked down and away in shame and regret ever to have trusted that man. "Whoever he is, he is not Broly's father. For the longest time, the Broly you've met didn't even exist. The regent made his way to Planet Shamo, willing to create the Legendary Super Saiyan through genetic tampering. Planet Shamo's atmosphere and conditions, as well as the natural abilities of the Shamoian people to invigorate all life felt to the regent as the perfect world to shape his experiment into being."
"To make someone into a Legendary Super Saiyan through genetic tampering?" chills went up Vegeta's spine. While the idea sounded alluring at first, the means of achieving such a thing would've made that level of power pointless and shameful, not to mention the utter sacrilege and disgrace to the Saiyan culture that such a being would mean.
"Eventually, the renegade scientist created some sort of fetus and sustained its life by combining his own cells, as well as the native cultural, homeopathic secrets of the Shamoian culture. Any attempts to engineer the Legendary Super Saiyan mutation were moot and pointless. None of them ever got anywhere and the research never took off. Desperate and frustrated that his entire life's work was just some abominable clump of barely living flesh, Paragus began roaming the universe, looking for a sample of different Saiyan cells. He needed tissue samples he wasn't able to extract from himself, also, he needed to research various ways in which the Saiyan genes can mutate. That's when he ran into Chayote, the genuine Legendary Super Saiyan, on a remote Frieza Army space station," Beetro explained.
"Could the Legendary Super Saiyan Chayote be involved with the coup?" a wave of mumbling resonated through the rustling crowd of Saiyans.
"The renegade regent explained to me he actually wasn't aware of who Chayote was and just wanted some of her tissue samples. Meanwhile, Chayote was seeking some currency or tech that was accepted by the Frieza Army for some business on Planet Sando. It was only when the rogue scientist studied Chayote's tissue samples did he realize what he was looking at. This one freak accident led to the jumpstart in Legendary Super Saiyan genetic engineering and the completion of his life's work. Broly is nothing else but an artificial fetus, a blank canvas of life in name only, genetically engineered and grown through cultivated Chayote's Legendary Super Saiyan cells. There's nothing neither legendary, super, or Saiyan about him…" Beetro concluded.
"So that renegade got himself booted out from Planet Vegeta and decided to make his name by posing as some runaway nobody who fathered a freak of nature. He didn't have a freak of nature, so he stitched one together from genetic scrap and named it after some infamous myth. Still, that troublesome tramp too!" Vegeta gritted his teeth and looked down at his shaking fists. "Messing with my plans of conquering Earth, bedding the future version of my son, becoming the fabled Legendary Super Saiyan… Why is she always making my life so difficult? Maybe my father was right to send the Legendary Super Saiyan as far away from him as possible. Those guys are more trouble than they're worth!"
"My, my… What is going on here?" Dr. Brief raised his hands up in gentle shock after leaving the Capsule Corps building alongside his wife. "I'll say, Vegeta, are you hosting a union strike here of some sort? I'm afraid Bulma is off-planet, so she won't be able to hear all of your demands until she comes back."
"Do all of you want cookies?" Mrs. Brief extended a stacked tray. "All this loud unionizing can be so exhausting."
"You lot, scatter," Vegeta waved at the gathered Saiyan people. "As for you…" he turned to the handful that Bulma rescued and healed. "Find yourselves an Earthling home and a job. Make an Earthling family and help us rebuild the Saiyan ranks so that we can reclaim our home planet as one powerful people. Even if your road back home was tough and you've strayed, this is your chance to prove yourselves to yourselves and your people. From this point on, you're the Saiyans you've always wanted to be."
One by one, the working Saiyans in Earthling civilian clothing began taking off to return to work from their lunch breaks when they planned to fight their civil war. Some of the revitalized exiles teared up though they too promptly followed the rest, itching to chat to them about the Earthling life and culture to make their new start easier. Beetro gave his King one last look of assurance and flew off to start his own new life on Earth while the King of Saiyans strutted to his father-in-law.
"Do you have a spacecraft I can use to get to where Jupiter used to be?" Vegeta demanded.
"This is Capsule Corps. We have the largest and most flourishing space tourism sector in the whole world, possibly even the entire universe. That being said, those spaceships might take a few minutes since they always choose the scenic routes and stop to let you gawk at all the various planets, asteroids, clusters, and whatnot…" Dr. Brief pondered out loud. "I could probably program a surefire shortcut route for you if you have a spare day or two…"
"What's the point of taking a day or two charting a map to avoid having to take a few minutes!?" Vegeta's lid flew right off from the pent-up influx of livid steam.
"All this fighting for worker's rights must have gotten you a little hangry… Here, have a cookie…" Mrs. Brief extended the tray. "I offered them to all your union friends, but they all flew off, so I guess you can have all of it to yourself, Vegeta."
"I don't… Want… Cookies…!" Vegeta grumbled while stuffing his mouth with cookies with his entire hands full just to get some extra calories in him before he went to kick that abominable freak of nature fake-Broly to the curb. "I… Need… A spaceship!"
Lowering her arms to her sides, Chayote roared out a battle cry that tested the integrity of the Capsule Corps Star and began shorting out various systems and popping light bulbs and capacitors all over the station. The Dragon Team braced themselves to hold themselves steady at the accumulating power of their heaviest hitter, who finally got herself pissed off enough to assume the form they needed to stand a chance.
The newly transformed Legendary Super Saiyan brought her heavy frame lower to the ground by spreading her legs and putting up her dukes. In a snap that left a halo of mint-colored energy and thundered with a vicious sonic boom, Chayote blitzed to Broly with a body blow from the right. The titan crossed his arms and absorbed the blow, letting the overwhelming force of impact carry him back while the bellowing giantess chased after him with a double ax handle slam. Broly's hands locked around Chayote's wrists, then swung and released her to the side, but the Legendary Super Saiyan dashed right back in before Broly could recover from his own spin and release trick with a devastating hook to Broly's jaw.
With his sadistic expression fading to surprise for the first time, Broly leaned away from the blow out of sheer instinct to avoid pain and bodily harm. Piccolo gasped in surprise as he hadn't seen the Legendary Super Saiyan ever fear any attack enough to trigger such a primitive response before. Chayote pressed on, cracking with an elbow shot, but Broly answered with one mirroring Chayote's. A blinding shockwave began toppling cybernetic towers and beacons all around and washed the stunned Dragon Team away. Chayote's massive frame rolled back from the shockwave too, but the Legendary Super Saiyan wasn't willing to admit weakness just yet.
Relentless, she pressed on with a boxing-style flurry of punches, clarifying that she kept her martial arts prowess and technical knowledge of the art of violence in this mostly mindless form. Broly hunkered down and covered himself up with his oversized arms, taking the shots to the ribs and his arms that focused to protect his upper body.
"This is great!" Yamcha pumped his fist. "Get him!"
"Look for an opening," Piccolo turned to his naïve friend.
"What? No way! We won't even need one! Look, Chayote's got this guy on the ropes!" Yamcha objected.
"You fool, she's swinging wide and lot, she's making a lot of noise, but she's not doing any damage. While both of their battle powers are rising, eventually, her stamina will force her to take on the defensive and that's when Broly will find his opening to counter. Something tells me his counters will be a lot more effective than Chayote's wild swings," Piccolo explained.
Broly roared, surrounding himself with a destructive energy wave that swatted Chayote aside and forced her to struggle to maintain her composure and balance while the Legendary Super Saiyan spat out entire fusillades of emerald Ki blasts from the bursting destructive Ki bubble around him. A few of them got some mean licks on Chayote but roaring with an almost animalistic voice, Chayote's frame pumped with even more muscular bulk and the swelling wrath assisted her in deflecting a handful of the others coming her way.
"It's like her wrath's blinding her. She can't focus on anything other than hitting that guy," Bardock had the time to examine the situation clearly while the rest of the Dragon Team fostered no false hopes of attacking Broly at the moment which helped them focus on protecting themselves and avoiding the Ki blast blizzard coming their way and decimating the surface of the Capsule Corps Star. "I know that feeling, it doesn't lead to anything good."
"Come on then, let's help her out!" Goku pumped his fists and encouraged the rest of the Dragon Team to get themselves together and come to Chayote's aid since not even she could win this battle all by herself.
