Baby's face got serious when he pulled himself out of the rubble of the collapsed city hall stage. Bardock pulled his wristband back and took a balanced fighting pose with a look that threatened to slug Baby again the moment his guard went down. After being humiliated in front of the Saiyans, whose cooperation was of profound importance to Baby's plans, Baby Vegeta didn't intend to lower his guard again.
Soaring through the air, Baby Vegeta threw an overhead hook, but Bardock slipped into his personal space and weaved out of the way. A punch to the gut bent Baby Vegeta over, but it didn't stun him enough to take the swinging straight kick, which would have sent him flying. With a cross-arm block, Baby Vegeta absorbed it and rode the wave of the force all the way back with a hunkered-down skid.
When Baby moved his block down, Bardock's furious face was right up in his face. Baby Vegeta slipped his dashing blow and took a handstand position, thrusting his feet back like a horse, but Bardock blocked that. Pursuing Baby Vegeta on the flip that returned him to his feet, Bardock thrust a blurry and light-speed jab to Baby's gut again, forcing his opponent to wheeze and blow air out from his squeezed lungs.
The Saiyan berserker swept the leg, tripping Baby Vegeta up before transitioning into a roundhouse and rocking Baby Vegeta's core. With whited-out eyes and a scoffing expression, spitting up slobber, Baby's maw gasped for air before Bardock completed his roundhouse and took his opponent off his feet flying through the skyline. Pursuing the battle into the sky, Bardock delivered a pair of softening kicks to Baby's sides that stabilized his flight position in the air, like molding a heap of clay.
Energizing his right fist with a shining sparkle of Ki, Bardock plunged it in a diagonal downward smash that exploded on impact and sent Baby Vegeta crashing into the streets with enough force to drag across the road in a deep ridge while a handful of surrounding skyscrapers bent out of shape and came suspiciously close to falling over.
"As expected from a parasite body snatcher," Bardock lowered himself to the ground, abandoning the wary of a martial arts stance and just looming over his fallen and humbled opponent like a living tower. "You're too reliant on people's affections for the body you've possessed. So much so that you simply can't stand on your own when you meet someone who doesn't give a shit or even worse — someone who hates that guy's guts!"
"Sure... You can fight, Saiyan..." Baby Vegeta panted, rising out of the deep ridge that he burrowed with his head in the asphalt, wiping the traces of blood off his lip. "That much was never in question. But spare me your pathetic attempts at philosophizing and justification for your self-righteousness. No amount of your verbal acrobatics can justify genocide, so stop embarrassing yourself by trying to judge who I am or what I do!"
"I couldn't care less if you're a Tsufurian, Earthling, Saiyan, or whatever... If you brainwash the king and come to the Saiyans, barking up commands, you're just looking for a pounding!" Bardock showed his teeth and shook his fist out in front of him.
"You primitive imbecile!" Baby Vegeta flipped out, rushing straight to Bardock, except he didn't stop. The Tsufurian super-organism slammed his forehead straight into Bardock's, knocking the other Saiyan away before flipping over backward and stabilizing his stance. "I'm trying to save the Saiyan race from extermination! I'm offering them a chance to undo what they've done by collecting the Dragon Balls for me!"
Extending his arms out, Baby Vegeta channeled a pair of expansive and shining Ki spheres in each hand before thrusting them forward and merging the two energy spheres into one sparkling mass. An additional burst of energy made the merged energy ball burst into thousands of smaller Ki blasts that all hurled straight into Bardock's direction, forcing the Saiyan to brace for cover. A blast here and a blast there grazed Bardock and delivered a respectable wallop that made the Saiyan wince in pain while many more hurled off and blew the skyscraper or another structure it collided with up whole.
"You're doing it through lying to them! What kind of redemption is based on lies!?" Bardock swatted the last of the Ki blast barrage away, emerging from the smoke and the destruction. Behind him, Saiyans worked their hardest to pull out Earthling civilians from the wreckage, cover them from stray Ki blast fire by deflecting the wayward attacks, or straighten out the leaning skyscraper glass towers.
"It's exactly because I know Saiyans would never agree to help me and force me to inflict upon them the same malady they put my people through that I need to approach them as King Vegeta and not myself. I don't want them to force my hand! Just like my predecessors, whom your kind stomped beneath their rampaging feet and smashed to bits, deep down, I believe in co-existence with the Saiyans. However, also just like my predecessors, I possess a scientific mind and am willing to admit that sometimes exterminating a species that cannot coexist and threatens the safety of the universe like weed is the only way," Baby Vegeta replied.
"You ASSHOLE!" Bardock seethed, clenching his fist out before him. The raging Saiyan vanished with a snap, only to appear in an instant right in front of Baby Vegeta with a crashing fist, but the Tsufurian caught it in his hand with a sullen expression on his face. "Just who are you to underestimate the Saiyan race and pretend like you know better? What gives you the right to make these kinds of judgments and think you know what the Saiyans are going to say or do? Don't bullshit me, you fancy tapeworm, the only reason you're jumping bodies and posing as someone else in front of the Saiyans is because it's easier for you! It's easier when no one bats an eye when you don't need to make a case when you're not the one who has to make the tough choice! Even if Saiyans deserved genocide you say you bring about, you wouldn't have the guts to do it!"
"Easier?" Baby Vegeta raised an eyebrow. Bardock grumbled when he felt a loss of balance and an overwhelming force waving him about like a wet sheet. "Miserable caveman! Exterminating you and your peers would be by far the easiest option for me! Eye for an Eye, what's easier than that!?"
Baby flung Bardock away, soaring through the clouds while he straightened his hand out and aimed at his airborne opponent. Large and bright, fuchsia-colored Ki blasts formed in Baby Vegeta's hand and took off, racing toward the airborne Bardock. The flurry of rapid Ki blasts made Bardock force a quicker recovery and take off in a mad dash across the skies to evade their explosive sting. Much to Bardock's chagrin, the Ki blasts followed right after him, and, before long, the sheer number of them trapped him in an inescapable configuration and bombed him into a purple firestorm, obscuring the skies and wiping the entire hemisphere clean of clouds.
Continuing his technique, Baby kept on sending Ki blast after Ki blast to keep pelting at Bardock, who laid knocked out and just submitted himself to being treated as a rag doll to the explosive forces. It was quite possible that the previous detonation had knocked the sense out of him shortly, leaving him wide open for follow-up attacks.
"Do you see how easy it is to exterminate you Saiyans? Make no mistake, right now, with this body, you're no grander than weeds to me! All that is left to find out is if the benefit of genetic diversity that you bring to the universe is superior to your violent and destructive tendencies. You've lived here on Earth for a few years now and you've managed to adapt, it seems. To someone who carries the legacy of the Tsufurian race, someone who was in the same place as these Earthlings here on Planet Earth long ago and paid the price for it, it is a welcome surprise that you haven't turned on them as you've turned on us..." Baby postulated while sending Ki blast after Ki blast to punish the rebellious Saiyan with grazes, shiners, and bleeders.
"Do you want to know why!?" Bardock's voice thundered through the skies, making Baby's eyes widen as the cybernetically augmented Saiyan took his second breath and enveloped himself with a devastating aura that blast aside the fuchsia Ki blasts bombing him from the skies and made the entire Earth shake and tremble because of his awesome, skyrocketing power. "It's because, unlike Tsufurians, Earthlings aren't in a race to destroy their own planet!"
Bardock became an ethereal Ki energy tornado, spreading his arms with clenched fists out to his sides and turning around so rapidly that the Ki he emitted turned him into a horizontal silver whirlwind. No matter how many supplemental Ki blasts Baby Vegeta fired, Bardock's spinning backfist cracked him straight in the cheek and shot him into the crater in the ground, collapsing a handful of skyscrapers on top of the deepening sinkhole.
Just as Baby put himself through a labor of passion, digging himself out of the crater, Bardock was right up in his face, content to not let his assault up for a second. A powerful kick tested the mettle of Baby Vegeta's neck, stretching his head out to ungodly lengths. A step-in uppercut to the gut left Baby Vegeta breathless and incapable of responding to Bardock's accusations while Bardock continued.
"That's right, you forgot that little detail, didn't you!? The constant cybernetic plague and race for more resources you put our planet through threatened to destroy it! Back then, Planet Plant knew everything: burning skies, acid rains, heatwave winds, and geysers of magma bursting from the underground, sinking cities and villages whole! All because of you and your experiments! Because everything that brawn is to the Saiyans, the brain was to your race and you just wouldn't stop pushing it!"
Bardock flipped the switch, slamming a double-hand ax handle slam into the back of Baby Vegeta's head before shooting his knee up into the plunging chin of his opponent. A roundhouse into Baby Vegeta's chest sent the carrier of the Tsufurian legacy flying while Bardock pursued Baby, continuing his verbal and highly physical beatdown with unskilled but very brutal and effective pounds and merciless kicks before pulling his hand out and charging up a golden Ki blast in his hand, then slamming it right into Baby Vegeta's face to make him fly off and bounce off of multiple buildings, skidding across the city outskirts street like a pebble jumped across the lake surface when flung right.
"To think that you would be this rotten... To try to justify genocide..." Baby Vegeta grumbled while rising on shaky feet and wiping the blood and slobber off his lip with the back of his hand. "Then again, maybe your conscience is just ripping into you so hard that you have to bend backward and make yourself feel better?"
Exploding with a golden aura around his body, Baby Vegeta dashed forward and collided with Bardock. Baby's wide left swing met Bardock's raised forearm block with a supersonic boom that shattered the windows of the surrounding buildings and made forceful ripples wash through steel beam frames that kept the West City buildings standing. The two fighters erupted into a heated exchange of blows, spamming punches, and kicks against each other, and instead of defending, answering their opponent with a counterattack in a split of the moment.
The West City had significant trouble containing the raging battle as the Tsufurian and the Saiyan vanished and reappeared in different sections of the city every second, covering hundreds of kilometers in a blink while merely exchanging blows and not even noticing their frantic movement that would make the two fighters appear to be fighting in every district of the city simultaneously.
A punch to the gut made Bardock cough up and his eyes turn dazed, with a follow-up rapid-fire beatdown, Baby Vegeta carried Bardock through multiple skyscrapers and reduced them to a crumbling mess before double ax handle slamming Bardock down into another crater. Baby Vegeta panted while looming above the smoldering hole in the ground.
"Even if the Tsufurian technological advancement and expansion threatened Planet Plant. We would have settled the matter the same way we bumped into that problem–by thinking outside the box and putting our ingenuity and millennia of boundless scientific advancement to good use. You had no right to solve this problem for us, let alone commit genocide against our people!" Baby Vegeta yelled out at the dust-riddled hole, figuring that the Saiyan resting at the bottom could hear him just fine and was in a conscious state of mind to understand him. "You didn't approach our people, you didn't initiate negotiations, you just did what Saiyans do best–trample, smash and obliterate!"
"You ain't entirely wrong," Bardock elevated himself from the crater, wiping the grazes and dirt off his face with his wristband. "Saiyans have made plenty of mistakes and exterminated far more people than just yours. Yours was just the beginning, the first of countless. After all, if we couldn't dominate our own planet, how in the world could anyone fear us or trust us to exterminate life on any other planets?"
"This knowledge, this memory... Living with the feeling of adoration and pride about all of this bloody and fiery conquest despite it being against my nature, just because of the body I inhabit. It's sickening!" Baby Vegeta hissed while staring at his shaking hands and feeling a bitter taste in his mouth about the split nature of his mind.
"Yeah, we did plenty of stuff to not be proud of. It would be dishonest and ridiculous to deny that. And who knows, maybe the zillions of people we've extinguished throughout the centuries of war-mongering and working with the Cold and Frieza Armies isn't something you can be redeemed for? Maybe all of us have long since made our beds in hell for what we've done and maybe our sins are so heavy that even our descendants are doomed to burn in hellfire just because of the history they've become a part of. Even so... None of this... NONE OF THIS IS FOR YOU TO DECIDE!" Bardock bulked up in a snap before stiffening his body and exploding in a straight, golden pillar enveloping his body that spiked his hair up and turned them creamy yellow while his eyes adopted a red color.
"This incredible power, this is... Super Saiyan!?" Baby Vegeta gasped.
"Not exactly..." Bardock looked up, giving his opponent a chilling glare that made Baby conflicted between the two immediate needs. The first one being to flee, the other one was the indomitable grip that Bardock's glare had on Baby's body, paralyzing it in place like a critter in the majestic presence of an apex predator. "It's an improvement I've made after combining the original Super Saiyan transformation with a greater energy input I can afford because of the leftover Android enhancements improving my stamina and my ability to experience much stronger emotional fits compared to other Saiyans and amp my power even further. With a superior energy input and a greater source of what triggers the transformation, it makes this form a super-charged version of Super Saiyan, a Hyper Super Saiyan if you will..."
"Damn it! Damn you...!" Baby Vegeta clenched his fists, throwing them up and down in an immature fit. "Even a low-class Saiyan has not only triggered the fabled Super Saiyan state but improved on it too! Mark my words, Saiyan, I will discover a way to push this royal Saiyan body to the Super Saiyan state and I will have the unquestionable loyalty of the Saiyan people! I will have the Saiyans collect the Dragon Balls and I will resurrect my extinct race! I swear this to you upon their graves!"
"I ain't gonna let you do that," Bardock wiggled his finger in front of him with a confident look on his face. Even though it just started with a sassy smirk, eventually he burst into a fit of laughter. In response to Baby's baffled look at him, Bardock shook his head. "Sorry, it's just that the reason I won't let you do it is gonna sound strange. I'll beat your ass and stop you but it ain't just because I'm so fired up about kicking you down a peg and putting a stop to your plan, it won't even be because you're using the King of Saiyans or the Saiyan people as your puppet. It's because the one to collect the Dragon Balls and use them is going to be me," Bardock pointed to himself with his thumb while returning to the confident smirk from before.
"Y-You? What idiotic wish could you ask the Dragon Balls for? What is so important to you that you would deny the resurrection of my people for it!?" Baby Vegeta demanded an answer, becoming emboldened by this sudden resolution from Bardock's side.
"I have someone dear to me. An Earthling woman who's been ailed by a condition she's been experiencing since birth. You see, whenever she sneezes, she becomes someone else. Whenever she's her kind, loving, nurturing, blue-haired self, she's the light in my life that I thought I'd lost when my wife Gine passed away. But the other, brave, lively, and opinionated her is smitten with another man. It's silly, I know, but I find it outrageous that in all those years no one has asked the Divine Dragon for splitting the two into two different bodies so that they could live their own separate lives so that's what I'm going to do!" Bardock proclaimed, pumping the air in front of him with his fist to seal his declaration in history.
Despite higher-level, ideological and political differences between these two, in the end, this clash was also highly personal for both the Saiyan and the Tsufurian as well. This would only mean that each of them would fight tooth and nail and make this the definitive battle of each of their own lives so that they could make their dream a reality. It was only most unfortunate that the dream of the other man clashed with the dream of the first and like two goats on the opposite side of the bridge, neither of them will give any ground and wait another second after having waited what to each amounted as entirely too long for their dream to come true.