Yamcha blinked onto the God Temple grounds with Chayote holding his shoulder with his hand. By the time Yamcha brought Chayote, everyone had already been gathered together and waited for their plan of confronting Broly to set into motion. One thing everyone agreed on was that the titan couldn't set foot on Planet Earth.
"Not bad, Yamcha," Krillin smiled. "It took no time at all for all of us to group up and prepare with your Instant Transmission technique!"
Yamcha's cheeks flushed with a more intense shade of pink as he wasn't used to being praised this openly. Usually, people only had things to give him flak for his words or decisions. This was a welcome change, though not one that he knew how to deal with yet.
"Tenshinhan isn't here," Chayote noted.
"He refused to come with," Yamcha blew the air that he had stuck in his lungs out while scratching the back of his head. "He said that he left all of it behind and now only practices martial arts to teach new martial artists."
"That dumbass!" Piccolo reared his fangs. "Doesn't he realize Broly will destroy every galaxy in the entire universe if we let him rampage like that? Refusing to acknowledge or confront the enemy is no answer at all."
"Come on, Piccolo, lay off of him already," Goku shrugged it off while casually leaning his head back in his hands. "After Chiaotzu died, Tenshinhan told us he's done using martial arts and that he'll only teach it to his students. I ain't surprised he decided not to come, even if it is a pity. I heard he got pretty tough out in space. I'd have liked to see it."
"Vegeta-san isn't here either," Gohan noted, pointing at Bulma who tinkered on her airship with only young Trunks by her side. While Trunks wouldn't be going to face Broly and hold him off from reaching Earth, God Temple was still the safest place for him to be. If things go south, Videl, Trunks, Kami Upa, Mr. Popo, and Dende can always slip into the Room of Spirit and Time and hide in another dimension, safe from Broly's rampage. Since the door to the room would be destroyed alongside Earth, spending the rest of their lives inside that dimension may have sounded grim, but it beat the alternative.
"Vegeta is dealing with his own baggage. I realize he is a powerful combatant whose strength you could use, but trust me when I say that it's for the best that he deals with whatever's been plaguing him," Kami Upa answered.
"That's too bad, Bulma said that Vegeta got to fight Broly after he recovered, so he probably knows how strong Broly got after healing back up," Goku pouted. Signature to him, discontent didn't sit with him for too long, so he was chuckling like an oaf just a couple of moments later.
"18, why are you here? Should we just accept that you are now a member of the Dragon Team like the rest of us?" Piccolo turned to the Artificial Human who was terrorizing the world less than a year ago.
"Someone's got to watch out for this guy," Lazuli pointed at Krillin. "He makes all the money for me, so I'm just watching out for my assets."
"I'm not a kid, you know..." Krillin blew his cheeks out while nervously kicking pebbles around. "I've done this whole fighting for the sake of the Earth thing before."
"She said assets..." Goku pointed at Krillin and Lazuli and laughed it up, clearly thinking that whatever Artificial Human No. 18 said meant something entirely different from what she actually said.
"Krillin-san and Artificial Human No. 18 have a strange relationship, don't they?" Gohan shifted his lips to the right side of his face, wondering if they'll be okay. "By the way, I can tell how strong you've gotten here, Videl-san. After we come back from space, we can both train here together. Maybe that way you can finish Kami-sama's training until school starts. But..."
"I know, I know..." Videl rolled her eyes. "I'm just going to get in your way if I come the way I am now..."
"W-Well... That's not entirely true but... It's for your own safety, really!" Gohan shook his hands out in front of him, figuring he had said something wrong and just trying to defuse the situation. "If we fail, please follow Kami-sama into the Room of Spirit and Time. It's a rough place, but from there you can figure out how to carry on next. It's an incredible place to train, and that dimension has many doorways you can use even if Broly destroys the one on Earth."
"Gohan-kun..." Videl awkwardly dragged her toes across the tiles of the temple with worry reflecting on her look. "Please don't talk like that. You're going to win and come back, right? We still have training to do together, and I don't want you to die before I get to repay the favor of training me by getting you into the best school money can buy."
"Jeez, you're really jumping through hoops instead of saying things as they are, huh?" Chayote squinted and patted her pupil's back. "If we don't get him, Broly probably can't be beaten. Please, in that case, take care of Navy for me. Upa, if we fail, you should try to evacuate as many civilians as possible to the Room of Spirit and Time. It's unlikely that they'll survive the conditions, but they deserve to take that chance as opposed to getting destroyed alongside Planet Earth."
"We'll do our best," Kami Upa blinked slowly.
"Alright, I guess everyone's here already..." Bulma approached the assembled group with her hands on her hips. "I'm sure that Vegeta will join you too whenever he's done dealing with his issues. I'll be on the lookout for him and send him to you as soon as I can. We've already discussed the plan with Kami Upa. We need to hold Broly in place and prevent him from rampaging long enough for one of you guys to beat him. We now know that Chayote's Devilmite Beam, for whatever reason, can't kill him."
"And as Whis-san made it abundantly clear, we absolutely have to destroy every trace of Broly, because just his mere existence puts our entire universe at risk. He's like the reverse-Chayote in that way," Kami Upa pointed out.
"Even if it can't kill him, it might still slow him down," Chayote shrugged. "Fighting him will be difficult, because if Broly really is just like me, then he'll be growing stronger with each passing second that he fights. Unlike me, he can access the Legendary Super Saiyan form at will and, unlike anyone else we fought in the past, he'll be getting stronger at the same pace as I am, meaning that my Legendary Super Saiyan power is no longer an advantage. It's hardly even an equalizer as we'll both be getting stronger, but if he starts from a taller step than me–I'll never be able to outpace him."
"In order to keep Broly from just mindlessly rampaging, he has to stay focused on something he really wants. At the moment, we could only pinpoint two things: Chayote and Planet Earth itself. For that reason, we have to give him both to maximize our chances of preventing him from just blowing up everything around him on a cosmic scale and staying focused on the fight," Bulma elaborated.
"Wait a second, I thought the idea was to prevent Broly from reaching the Earth?" Piccolo raised the bony eye ridge on the right side of his face. "Now you say we need Broly on Earth to keep him focused on fighting and not just blowing up half the galaxy in one go?"
"We need to prevent him from reaching the Earth, but that doesn't mean that he can't reach an Earth," Bulma's eyes closed at a malicious angle and her lips stretched upward across her face, making a snobby face that she adored so much. The expression of knowing something nobody else did and having thought of something clever to dangle over everyone's heads like a tasty treat. "That's where Kami Upa and his Magic Materialization ability comes in."
"W-Wait a second!" Kami Upa choked up. "That was your plan!? To have me just materialize a planet out of thin air using magic!?"
"It's not like it has to be the real thing or to be as large or weigh as much. Broly has never been on Planet Earth or seen it. He won't know the difference. All we need is something like a planetoid to fool him long enough. Since Dr. Gero blew up Jupiter, we've even got the perfect patch of space to materialize our Copy Earth in," Bulma insisted on her idea of creating an empty spitting image of Planet Earth to keep Broly fighting there, thinking he was wrecking the real deal. "This has to be the way we handle it. If we send Broly away to a remote planet, he'll just blink it out of existence alongside its star system and a handful of neighboring star systems in the vicinity away in one blast and keep charging toward Earth, growing stronger and stronger as he does so. He won't tire, just grow stronger. We need to do this now and we need to do it this way."
"Bulma-san might be right," Kami Upa sighed. "We can't let Broly just eradicate star systems, clusters, and galaxies as he pleases. Each time he destroys a star cluster in his childish, destructive caprice, he knocks our Mortal Level down and delivers a blow to our universe's chances of survival. However... There is no way that my Magic Materialization is strong enough to create even a minor planet. Not to mention, I've never used it to create something this far away. You would need the Magic Materialization of a Supreme Kai to accomplish something of that scale, and there is no way that we could even get an audience with one."
"There's no time for audiences, requests, and dealings..." Bulma nibbled on her index finger. "Darn... I really hoped I would get to avoid ever using that..."
"It's clear that you've got a Plan B in mind, Bulma, so spill it," Piccolo showed his fangs in aggravation. "The way our situation is, it's not like we've got much choice."
"Well... After all the exploration and learning of the Capsule Corps Star's systems that I've done, I've come to realize its true function. Whoever created the Capsule Corps Star, and however it got into the hands of Meta-Cooler, they meant for the Capsule Corps Star to be the living, cybernetic core of an ecosystem, be it a world, a star system, or a universe. In other words, the Capsule Corps Star can shape itself and function effectively like a cybernetic core of a cosmic ecosystem. A self-sustaining, cybernetic ecosystem at that. In theory, we could use the Capsule Corps Star's primary function to make it into the Mirror Earth and use holographic technology to make it look like it from the outside too," Bulma explained.
"Wouldn't Broly know the difference the moment he lands on its surface, though?" Yamcha wondered. "It might look like Earth from the outside, but surely he'll be able to tell that the planet's surface is just some cybernetic ecosystem."
"He's never been on Earth before," Bulma waved it off. "He might know how the planet looks from the outside based on the Galactic Patrol records of it he may have seen when Paragus' army commandeered a Galactic Patrol vessel, but he won't know how Earth's surface looks like and he'll have no reason to suspect a trick. Besides, he's kind of a raging lunatic psycho. It's not like he has the mental capacity to figure it out in time, either."
"Your body language shows that you don't want to do this, Bulma-san," Gohan noticed.
"Well... The Capsule Corps Star is an unmatched feat of cybernetic technology. It is, by all means, a living and intelligent cybernetic organism the size of a planet with its own goals and ambitions. Despite my best effort, I've got no clue where it came from or how it came to be. Still, one thing remains clear: whoever built it, meant for it to be used as an artificial planet. Even now I don't have full control over it. The best I can do is to keep it dormant and just puppeteer it remotely, hack it with programs I create on the spot to interact with its impossible operating system and computer viruses to do what I ask. If we set off its primary function... Who knows what can happen? It might wake up and set off on its quest to create a perfect, cybernetic universe again or do a million other troublesome things," Bulma grabbed her head, sifting through her hair with her fingers as she struggled to account for all the different ways this could go wrong.
"Either way, this is our best shot. We can't afford to try anything else. Broly is today's problem. Let's leave the cybernetic star as a problem for another day," Piccolo crossed his arms.
"I'm not really sure what all of you are talking about, but I'm itching to fight Broly again!" Goku clutched his fists by his sides. "I wouldn't want his attention to be anywhere else but on us. I want him to be focused and giving his best shot!"
"Yeah, no surprise there..." Krillin scratched his lower eyelid with his index finger, laughing nervously. "Still, it doesn't seem like a choice at all. If we beam Broly off somewhere, he'll just blast everything away and start charging toward us again, growing stronger and faster the longer he rushes at us. Eventually, he'll be strong enough to just take out entire galaxies in one go. We can't afford that."
"I understand your concern, Bulma, but this is Broly we're talking about. The all-destroying, invincible Legendary Super Saiyan that's stronger and has more control over his abilities than one of our own. One that's able to destroy entire clusters in a blink, just how much more dangerous can that cybernetic planet of yours be than that? I think that Broly's danger level sort of supersedes anything that cybernetic star can threaten us with," Yamcha said, frantically looking at everyone around him and trying to find out from their reaction if his reasoning was sound.
"I don't care what you do, I'm just here to protect Krillin so that he can buy me food, and clothes and entertain me," Artificial Human No. 18 shrugged.
"It's ridiculous we're even discussing that," Piccolo hissed. "Start that damn star already and set the plan into motion!"
"We'll deal with your fancy tech gizmo when the time comes, Bulma, if it threatens the Earth. Right now we need to deal with the immediate threat of Broly," Chayote sighed. She didn't like how obvious and one-sided the decision felt to her. Usually, it was those sorts of decisions that went horribly wrong in the end.
"What do you think, grandpa?" Gohan turned around and looked at Bardock's back as the veteran Saiyan stared off into the clouds, completely blanking out on the discussion and just waiting for the fighting to start.
"I think I'm sick of talking. My fists are itching to hit something," Bardock grumbled. "Hitting this Broly guy now, and whatever comes later, sounds like a good enough plan to me."
"Man..." Bulma groaned. "Why am I even bothering arguing with knuckleheads about this? Of course, you'd pick the option that leads to the most trouble. In any case, it's not like we've got the time to come up with a better plan. Broly's closing in more and more the more we bicker and the moment he comes into our cluster, he's in the danger zone of being able to destroy everything around us in one go, so we need to hurry."
*****
Broly split through the space like an asteroid enveloped by a lime-colored flame. A psychotic full-teeth smile stretched across his face while his titanic form blitzed through the cosmos on its way from faraway clusters to the Milky Cluster where Planet Earth was located. Whenever he felt like his overflowing power demanded release, Broly fired off an emerald Ki blast somewhere off into the distance and marveled at the destructive fireworks of an entire system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, space dust and dark matter all vanishing into cinders and then fade away into nothing.
A bright beam of energy enveloped the Legendary Super Saiyan whole, striking unexpectedly from the sky. Broly clutched and covered himself up with his right hand, expecting this to be an attack from the Galactic Patrol, or maybe Chayote and her Earthling goons. While he thought little of their cosmic-scale weapons of mass destruction and their ability to bruise him, he was surprised by how little he felt. Then another surprise hit him right in the head — oxygen he could breathe. Taken aback by this strange lack of destruction around him and pleasant conditions devoid of the various perils found in space, Broly lowered his swollen with muscle arm to examine his surroundings.
"You..." he muttered while looking at a familiar group of fighters lined up in front of him. Even if he couldn't recognize the steel-plated floor or the countless cybernetic towers with glowing neon patterns and various gadgets decorating them, the fact that Chayote and her Earthling goons stood lined up in front of him suggested he was on Earth.
"We couldn't let you destroy any more systems and clusters. You wanted Earth–you have it. You'll have to go through us to destroy it, though," Chayote said, banishing all of Broly's doubts and questions lingering in his mind.
"Ha..." Broly cracked a grin. "Ha ha... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" the maniac began laughing it up wildly as sonic shockwaves spread from the might of compressed air escaping his iron-tight lungs. Broly spread his arms to the sides and charged forward, his face twisted and looking like he was going to rip apart everyone in front of him limb by limb. He stopped and shifted his dash, sliding across the ground and throwing busted steel plates and dust aside in all directions. This was just a mock charge and seeing everyone shake in fear or power up to their max delighted Broly to no end.
"I'm going to bathe in your blood!" Broly declared, looking ecstatic about the odds and possibility of his prophecy coming true.