"It's over, Baby!" Bardock called out, distracting the Tsufurian from examining his new form, which resembled a merger between Tsufurian and Saiyan features instead of being an outright possession. "The Saiyans won't listen to you anymore. You can look for your own Dragon Balls, or better yet–piss off!"
"Hmph..." Baby Vegeta closed his eyes and exhaled. Before Bardock could realize it, the transformed Tsufurian was up in his face and shot a high kick straight into his face. Pursuing Bardock with that same infernal speed, Baby vanished and appeared before Bardock's airborne body to stamp another flying kick into his body. In a showoff of breakneck swiftness, Baby Vegeta vanished before and behind his opponent, overwhelming him with kicks that passed the Hyper Super Saiyan around like a play ball.
After he felt content with the beatdown, Baby Vegeta vanished up in the air and pointed his arm down, firing a fully powered energy wave down at Bardock and hitting him dead-on. A smoldering blast of dust, smoke, and violet flashing lights drowned out the flattened West City district. Baby landed not too far away from the edge of where the rising cumuli of debris and dust went up with his arms crossed.
"If you think that after everything I've accomplished, given the survival of my species and our legacy is at stake, I will just turn around and leave just because Saiyans didn't disappoint my expectations with their capacity to disappoint me, you're more delusional than I thought, savage," Baby Vegeta scoffed at Bardock's suggestion.
"It was worth a try!" Bardock clamored from the cloud of dust, splitting it apart and dissolving it with a powerful burst of aura as he dashed toward Baby Vegeta and collided with the transformed Tsufurian mid-dash. The pair vanished and began rapidly clashing around the city without ever appearing within the scope of what human vision could comprehend. A bombardment of aerial shockwaves telegraphed their incalculable aerial collisions before Bardock's barrage of roundhouses knocked Baby Vegeta away.
Weaving out of the way of a straight that was meant to intercept his rush, Bardock plunged his fist into Baby Vegeta's gut, transitioning into a brutal double-hand ax handle slam to the head and a sweep that socked Baby Vegeta's head just as it positioned itself around the level of Bardock's feet. A raging flurry of spinning roundhouses sent Baby Vegeta flying off, but the Tsufurian recovered just in time to answer Hyper Bardock's dashing hook with one of his own, sending both fighters shooting off to their own districts of the devastated West City.
When the two rushed at each other and met in the flattened and smoldering wasteland they'd left of the city square, Baby Vegeta bawled out wildly and slammed his forehead into Bardock's staggering the Saiyan back and leaving him reeling and rubbing his grazed forehead.
"What's so funny?" Bardock snarled while still in pain.
"This form, this power. There's no doubt about it. It's nothing that King Vegeta has experienced before. His muscle memory and instincts are useless in managing it. This will take some getting used to," Baby Vegeta replied, seeing no reason not to indulge a soon-to-be deadman.
"Poor you..." Bardock sneered with bitterness. He thought his opponent was just showing off, and it didn't look like Baby Vegeta was taking this collision anywhere near as seriously as he did earlier.
"No. This is excellent!" Baby Vegeta stuck a grandiose pose of pride in his ascended state of being. "No longer will I have to rely on Saiyan power and the mercy of Saiyan savagery and combat experience in order to resurrect my people and bring about their golden age. King Vegeta's fighting instincts and experiences will be invaluable in mastering this new power, but my peerless intelligence and capacity of learning new things as a genetically engineered Tsufurian super-organism is just as essential."
"So, you're showing your true colors!" Bardock barked out, soaring through the air toward his opponent, unleashing a flurry of punches and kicks only for Baby Vegeta to block or deflect them all effortlessly. Extending his arm out, Bardock fired a Kiai shockwave that drowned Baby Vegeta in dust and skid him away from the raging Saiyan.
"You're no savior, you're a subjugator!" Bardock continued, charging out from the smoke with a clenched fist and driving it into Baby Vegeta's cheek before reverse-side kicking him up into the air. "All that fancy talk and you're no better than Frieza in the end! Stomping on everyone and everything on your way to get what you want!" Bardock screamed out while flying up to Baby Vegeta and punching him further into the air. After vanishing and appearing before Baby, Bardock grabbed his head and kneed it a pair of times, then vaulted over him and kneed him a few times in the back before backflip kicking him up into the air.
"I'm so sick of your bullshit!" Bardock bellowed while soaring above Baby Vegeta and swinging both his arms together with a heavy double-arm slam and crash-landing Baby in the flattened wasteland down below. The demolished asphalt, dirt, and gravel exploded from the forceful shock of the landing, leaving Baby Vegeta in a crater while sending a horizontal shockwave that made a handful of the dangerously leaning empty buildings collapse.
"I don't expect you, a Saiyan, to understand," Baby Vegeta replied, walking out from the rubble and stepping over the edge of the crater while dusting himself off. Despite the dirt marks decorating his battle-worn body, Hyper Bardock's passionate attack seemed to have dealt minimal damage to the transformed Tsufurian. "Collecting the Dragon Balls myself was always an option for me. It's just that I had to give the Saiyans their chance of redeeming themselves. It was only the merciful thing to do. Even if I fully expected Saiyans to mess it all up because of their savagery, I still had to offer them a chance to make things right."
"You're still spouting that bullshit!?" Bardock exploded, taking off with a golden aura charge toward Baby Vegeta. Baby Vegeta stepped back to avoid the dashing downward hook and answered Bardock's follow-up roundhouse with one of his own. The two spiraled into the sky, spinning around and lashing at each other with spinning roundhouses while becoming enveloped in swirly Ki vortexes colored after their respective auras.
The kicking contest was settled with Bardock's upper kick to Baby Vegeta's chin. It barely seemed to tilt Baby's head at all, prompting Bardock to gnash his teeth and lash back at his opponent with a hook, a spinning roundhouse, and a point-blank Ki blast slam right into Baby's face. After Baby Vegeta returned the favor with a swift jab to the jaw that nearly knocked Bardock unconscious and left him reeling, Bardock bellowed from the depth of his heart and spun his whole body around vertically, delivering a spinning backhand fist to Baby Vegeta's jaw that left a minuscule blood trail on Baby's lip while the desperate Bardock dashed back clutching his ribs and panting.
"Strongest in the universe? Maybe... But all that power and speed won't matter one bit if you can't land a solid hit on me. Your distaste for Vegeta's memories is tripping you over. He's spent years learning martial arts skills on Earth, and ever since you've discarded his instincts, you've been slacking and getting your strongest ass in the universe handed to you," Bardock smirked through the wear and tear.
"I don't need King Vegeta's help to master a body that's as much my own as it is his! He is just a stepping stone on my journey to becoming the greatest leader of my people there ever was! The one to revive the Tsufurian race and bring about their age of endless prosperity!" Baby Vegeta exclaimed with a furious look, breaking through the cool and aloof façade he's carried around since transforming. "Your art of fighting is an intriguing skill, I will admit. Despite a vast difference in power, speed, and toughness, it is incredibly difficult for me to catch you and land a blow. However, you underestimate my ability to process and adapt new information at your own peril, Saiyan!"
With a sheepish grin, Baby Vegeta extended his hand, firing a Ki blast that expanded in size until it eclipsed both Baby and Bardock alike. With a shocked look, Bardock pressed his hands against the surface of the Ki blast and began struggling against its flow, just like he had overpowered the Revenge Death Ball previously. Burning up with a desperate golden flare and energizing his punches, Bardock decimated the Ki blast and reduced it to ethereal sparks.
Much to Bardock's shock, this massive Ki blast was just a distraction, as Baby Vegeta pumped out dozens of Ki blasts a second. Unlike an ordinary Ki blast barrage, this attack didn't send the Ki blasts homing in on his location but positioned them hovering in mid-air. This way, Baby Vegeta had effectively created a minefield around the entire battlefield, limiting the freedom of movement.
"Tsk... Punk... This energy minefield hurts you far more than it hurts me–you've got an advantage in speed so you need the space to move around more than I do," Bardock tried taunting his opponent only for his insults to smack against a wall of Baby's smug grin.
"I have already analyzed the pattern of this minefield. I can easily traverse throughout it without getting caught in it once!" Baby Vegeta's voice didn't come from directly in front of Bardock, but from behind. Stunned, Bardock tried to turn around in time, but a punishing kick sent him hurling into a nearby energy mine only for it to detonate and hurl Bardock into another.
"Ha! Just look at that! It's like an energy pinball!" Baby Vegeta laughed out in mockery as Bardock couldn't help but bounce off of one mine and onto another. Despite Baby Vegeta's sly remark, this attack was no pinball. It was more like pool. Every single aspect of this attack, from the distraction at the beginning to the placement of each energy mine, was carefully considered and executed to perfection. It was only when Bardock bounced off of every single mine, setting off the whole minefield one blast at a time, that he had the permission to fall down on the ground as a battered and smoldering mess he'd become.
Bardock pushed himself off the ground, covered in bloody bruises and tattered. His Hyper Super Saiyan form flickered a few times, but his artificial Ki reactors supplied enough energy to keep his stamina running at max capacity even through gruesome injuries. With twitching muscles and shaking hands, Bardock bent and clenched his fist out in front of him, resolute to keep fighting until the very end.
"Is that the best you've got?" he mocked Baby with a scathing question, doing his best to maintain his cool through injury and smoldering smoke from the burnt grazes decorating his whole body. "All that bitching and whining about the death of your people and this is all that your revenge amounts to? It's milk-warm!"
Ripping through the space separating the two opponents, Bardock slammed his elbow into Baby's jaw. The resounding impact just barely turned Baby's head to the side, but Bardock was far from finished with his counterattack. With a push kick, the Saiyan punted his opponent away and extended his right hand, firing a fully powered energy wave at the airborne enemy. Baby's unscathed emergence from the smoke with a solemn expression interrupted Bardock's incessant heaving and panting, coloring his expression with shock.
"Even with your incredible augmented stamina, you're approaching your limit, Saiyan. It is your resolve that's wavering, not mine!" Baby proclaimed with an accusatory gesture.
With a ferocious battle cry, Bardock charged toward Baby Vegeta, receiving only a double ax handle slam to the top of his head that grounded him into the asphalt below. Snarling and sneering with a violent expression, Bardock rose off the ground and rushed toward Baby Vegeta again just for his desired target to vanish, appear behind him, and kick him through a couple of leaning and abandoned skyscrapers, toppling them down.
"Feel the despair felt by my people. Not just the pain and misery of death and extinction, but also the pride of seeing the greatest potential of your species realized before the shock of understanding that nothing you do will be good enough. Your fabled Super Saiyan form is irrelevant before my vastly superior transformation, your martial arts are an open book for me to read and improve my skills. Nothing in your handbook is of any consequence, you will die a defeated and broken Saiyan. Just because I genuinely doubt your mental capacity to be able to come to this grim conclusion, I want you to know before you die that the rest of your species will follow. I will exterminate every Saiyan on this planet to avoid seeing history repeating itself and you turning on the Earthlings. Die, knowing that everyone you hold dear will soon follow you to hell!"
"BABY!" Bardock roared, exploding with a white dome of brilliant light and flinging the debris of a whole collapsed building that laid on top of him into the air, cluttering the whole city district with levitating chunks of debris while Bardock's golden Hyper Super Saiyan aura raged, reigniting his flame. "Finally, you've shown your true colors! That's what this is all about, isn't it? All that bullshit about being a benevolent savior! Cut it out! This is just eye-for-an-eye to you, it always has been! Well, the Saiyans won't just roll over and die! This is the power of our rebellion against the fate you've prophesied for us!"
Bardock's power unfurled in a bright, starlight beacon that punched through the cosmos, splitting the gloomy clouds away and letting the dusk bleed through the split patches of the sky. Baby found himself brought to the point of awe at this power, even given his own unique Saiyan-Tsufurian assimilation transformation. A radiant golden aura surrounded the booming stardust sky beam. The starlit energy mass concentrated around Bardock's right fist while the golden radiance simmered down significantly.
Releasing a ferocious battle cry, Bardock flashed forward, appearing directly in front of Baby Vegeta, blitzing the Tsufurian super-organism exactly as Baby blitzed Bardock before. Baby trembled with a horrified expression, filtering thousands of thoughts in a microsecond, wondering how on Earth could Bardock's power have skyrocketed through the skies like that purely by being taunted and mocked. Baby knew that a Saiyan's power could grow because of an agitated emotional state, but the instability of Bardock's Ki far surpassed any intel that Baby had on that ability and any potential estimations of how fearsome this ability was.
A right hook sent Baby Vegeta crashing down and flat on his back. Writhing and crawling backward, Baby scrambled to pick himself off the ground while surveying the Saiyan, determined to punish him with all of his residual strength. Bardock appeared before Baby Vegeta again, but this time Baby thought he was ready. He flung a jab of his own only for Bardock's hand to catch Baby by his wrist and clench it hard enough to make Baby cry out in pain.
"I don't care about being the King of Saiyans or anything, but I'm okay settling what Saiyans have started thousands of years ago and, given what a massive cunt you turned out to be, I'm not even a little sorry about putting your species back into the ground..." Bardock muttered with a cold look before shoving his fist deep into Baby Vegeta's gut, then smashing Baby's head into the ground with an overhead punch. Grabbing Baby Vegeta's head in his hand, Bardock forced him into the ground before grabbing hold of Baby Vegeta's body by his arm and a leg, spinning and releasing him into the air.
Bardock charged a starlit energy sphere in his right hand while keeping a close track of Baby Vegeta in the sky. "If it's to protect Kakarot, his family, Launch, and every Saiyan living here on Earth, I'm fine being the villain again. The merciless Saiyan warrior. Begone, Rebellion Trigger!" Bardock launched his most powerful attack at Baby Vegeta as a silver, starlit energy wave while empowering the wave with additional energy bursts pulsing from his launching hand.
"N-No!" Baby Vegeta hissed, halting himself from an uncontrollable flight in mid-air with his arms and legs spread wide out to the sides. "I won't go extinct! The fate of my people! I won't let it end this way! Not to a Saiyan!" raging in defiance of his inevitable oblivion, Baby Vegeta released a strident purple explosive dome of energy around his entire body. Bardock's unbelievable energy wave swallowed up the comparably minuscule Baby Vegeta's explosive energy wave whole and cracked it like the shell of an egg in one's hand. The violet light spread from Baby Vegeta's body snuffed out despite moderate resistance against Bardock's miraculous last-second power-up.
After releasing the last of his power, Bardock collapsed on his buckling knees, panting, and raising clouds of residual dust and ash off the ground. His hair returned to spiky black and he could hardly muster up the strength to power himself up any further. Blood began trickling down from Bardock's wounds and accumulating in separate pools for each grazed limb and bashed body part that bled profusely on the molten asphalt.
Bardock settled on his rear, looking around the battlefield and sensing many more Saiyans that were knocked out by Baby's earlier fit but not obliterated yet. At least two-thirds of the Saiyans that gathered at the summit were still alive, even though their energy had been significantly weakened.
"Look at you guys... I tried to settle down and move ahead. To leave the life of a Saiyan rebel and a raging warrior behind. To move past the violence. Part of me wishes that I could have grown fat and surrounded myself with children... I guess it's not in the cards for someone like me, huh? Breaking promises, brawling and killin' is all I'm good for... Gine... You deserve someone better, I hope you can settle down and live a happy life in your next reincarnation. Sorry, I broke my promise to you. Though if I can help Launch and her other self live separate lives, I can make a real difference not with my fists, but by being kind, just like you would've wanted to see me be..." Bardock exhaled before wincing in pain.
A handful of Saiyans stumbled back on their feet, staring at Bardock in disbelief. After they sensed the limitless power of Super Baby earlier, everything seemed lost. Many of those that survived Baby's initial outrage had their lives and sins flashing through their eyes and begged for redemption just so they could continue living their lives the way they had been living them at the moment. Surrounded by their Earthling family and hybrid children, who would carry on and come to define a new Saiyan legacy.
"Bardock... You defeated the Tsufurian parasite!?" a bulky Saiyan with balding hair and a ponytail exclaimed in disbelief. "I thought I was a goner for sure! I thought... I thought I would never see my family again!"
"I wish... I wish I kept up with my training, that I could've been more of a help to you, Bardock!" a female Saiyan with short hair pounded the ground with teary eyes. The injuries of the surviving Saiyans weren't looking pretty, but the survivors would recover and grow stronger for them. That was what defined the Saiyans as a people–their ability to survive and grow stronger, evolution through constant struggle.
"Hmph..." Bardock closed his eyes in solemn surrender on his own karma. "Don't bother. Live a happy life! I'm fine becoming the foul war criminal, a treasonous rebel that I once was and I won't blink twice before accepting that role so that you can live your happy lives, grow fat and complacent around your sniveling mutt brats!"
"Bardock!" a chubby and towering Saiyan exclaimed with an excited look on his face. By the time of the moment that Bardock realized something was wrong was already too late. A colossal purple energy wave enveloped and swallowed up the district of Saiyan survivors in a snap, leaving Bardock blinking in a moment of delayed terror. If he could, he'd live in that oblivious bliss forever...
"All... Kill you all... Saiyans..." a seething voice echoed from up above, overpowering even the thunderous quaking of a hole that jarred with seemingly no end and radiated with a fiery glow from down below. In no time at all, the wound began bleeding molten magma like a gunshot wound to the Earth itself, with the magma enveloping the bodies of the surviving Saiyans and burning them down to ash. Panting, torn-up, and bleeding profusely, yet still alive and kicking, Super Baby Vegeta hovered high in the sky with his arm pointing up and smoldering with smoke. That hand was like a smoking barrel that revealed him to be the culprit of the mass murder that had just occurred. "Starting with YOU!" Baby Vegeta exclaimed, vanishing and appearing before Bardock.
Bardock couldn't resist anymore. The overhead punch clocked him straight to the jaw and bounced Bardock off the ground while Baby's follow-up gut punch made him turn off and collapse. Completely under Super Baby's mercy. With a devious smile, enjoying the punishment he was putting his powerless opponent through, Baby Vegeta jumped up and kicked him away before spreading his arms out and channeling a strident purple energy aura around his entire body, accompanied by pink electricity.
"Revenge Final..." Baby muttered before the pink electricity vanished and the purple aura died down. Baby looked around as if still bothered by something. With a careless swipe, he raised a blazing hell around him with a far weaker attack than he was preparing just now, scattering and enveloping every Saiyan around, but only killing a handful of them.
"Tsk... Meddlesome Earthlings..." Baby gnashed his teeth, sensing hundreds if not thousands of Earthlings gathered around the city premises. If he lashed out with enough force to extinguish the life of every Saiyan on Planet Earth, he threatened to catch them in the crossfire. "Can't they realize I'm doing this for them!? I'm saving them from a similar fate that befell my people! Tsk... I'd best make sure that, at the very least, that Saiyan is dead. I'll pluck the rest when the opportunity presents itself. Unbelievable as it is, given my limitless power, he's too dangerous to be left alive."
No matter how hard Baby sought Bardock's unconscious and crippled body, he couldn't find it anywhere. Even Bardock's energy had completely vanished off the face of the Earth. Closing his eyes, Super Baby believed he had sealed this chapter and welcomed the most troublesome Saiyan he'd ever met to the hell he belonged in.
*****
"Did he see you?" Goku turned to Yamcha, who gently laid Bardock's broken body on God's Temple floor. "Instant Transmission or not, Baby Vegeta's new power is so wild that he might have tracked you here regardless..."
"It was close, but I don't think so..." Yamcha laughed out, scratching the back of his head. "I got a sense of his power though, I'm sure that you could pummel him into the dirt right now, Goku. His battle against Bardock wore him out to his limits."
"Just what do you mean "beat him into the dirt", you idiot!?" Bulma lashed out, smacking the back of Yamcha's head. "That parasite is still in my husband's body! No one will beat anyone into the dirt until Baby is out of Vegeta for good! It's enough that this raging psycho nearly lost it and destroyed Vegeta's body!" Bulma sneered at Bardock's battered and unconscious body with crossed arms.
"Oh... I didn't think about that... I guess Vegeta's become one of our friends now so we can't just leave him be," Yamcha sighed in reluctant agreement with Bulma. Part of him only agreed to not aggravate Bulma's wrath any further.
"That's okay," Goku smirked. "If I get to fight Baby, I want him to be fresh and fully powered up. I wouldn't want to clean up after my father's scraps."
"No one's fighting anyone!" Bulma pointed her finger up in Goku's face, making the baffled Saiyan lean back with a fearful wince. "We're going to collect the Dragon Balls and ask the Divine Dragon to separate Baby and Vegeta. I'm sure that Vegeta will want a few words with Baby afterward, so our problems will solve themselves..."
"Collecting the Dragon Balls? That will be difficult with Baby still active. Didn't you just tell us that Baby intends to revive his people and terraform Planet Vegeta back to its ancient state, back when Tsufurians still inhabited it?" Yamcha complained. Collecting the Dragon Balls with a strong foe active and looking for them didn't make for ideal conditions.
"It will be a simple matter to beat Baby in a race," Bulma smugly proclaimed, turning her nose up. "In his mindless fury, Bardock pummeled him so hard that Baby will need time to recuperate. Besides, he doesn't have a Dragon Radar like we do!"
"Racing to collect the Dragon Balls, sure brings back memories of old times, huh?" Goku snickered with his arms crossed, looking on into the sky.