Vegeta wiped his face with a gloved hand, staring at the cavern ceiling as if he could see through it to the stars in the sky beyond.
He knew several facts.
Firstly, and most importantly, he could not stay some prisoner in a cage. The Prince of all Saiyans did not allow himself to be treated like some animal in a zoo. Death would be infinitely preferable.
But that was the backup option. He would find a different way to escape, first.
Secondly, his team would wait for him as long as required. Even upon the imminent danger of death, Nappa knew Vegeta's abilities and temperament well. Leaving the planet wasn't just an eventual death sentence. Vegeta would track them down one by one if necessary and torture each to death in the most personalized way possible for the betrayal, Saiyan or not.
Lack of a spaceship wouldn't stop him. Eventually, Frieza would notice his disappearance and send someone to check, even if they reported a false death.
Beyond that, the medium-sized spaceship that Vegeta had ordered from the Frieza Force base in the neighboring sector several weeks ago would arrive within hours, and there was a small chance that, upon its landing, it would draw unwanted attention that their own landings had probably just managed to avoid by some miracle.
That meant that the window for escape was potentially closing rather rapidly.
Vegeta looked around the cavern, assessing the situation with more clarity.
Some of his ribs were broken, but it wasn't particularly important damage in the short run. His maximum power output had likely only been cut by 10-15% or thereabouts. He'd taken worse hits in the shower. This was not crippling.
As for the woman, she was sitting on the bed of straw, staring out the open mouth of the cave with that razor-sharp look in her eye that Vegeta had earlier pegged as something completely thoughtless, feral. Now, he recognized it for what it was. Assessment.
While she saw culture, habits, patrol routes, likely even individuals, all Vegeta was able to see through the mouth of the cave were bean people milling about, seemingly randomly.
That would be helpful… if Vegeta needed aid. He did not.
He simply needed to find the patterns that she saw and learn to exploit them as she was likely planning to, before the woman threw him to the wolves in service of her own escape.
He considered grabbing his scouter out of the pile of muck, where it'd been dislodged when the bull had rubbed his face into it. He looked at the pile. The green display piece jutted out about half-way, but the rest of the thing was completely buried.
Vegeta decided that he'd rather his analysis and enemy locating abilities be crippled than touch that thing.
Vegeta spent the next several hours wracking his brain for a plan.
His first thought was to use his giant ape form to destroy everything… but this planet had one moon and a slow lunar cycle. The full moon wouldn't come for months. He didn't have enough time.
As for running?
While he could break through the feeble bars of the cell with ease, and even walk straight through the camp, he had no idea which three of the bean-people outside were capable of transforming and defeating him. He simply couldn't tell them apart well enough to know the right timing.
On top of that, these creatures had a hunter-gatherer type society. A lone Saiyan in the woods? Trackable with ease, for the bullish transformations, at the very least.
The more Vegeta wracked his brain, the fewer solutions presented themselves.
…Perhaps he would need to wait for the full moon.
Dammit.
But just as Vegeta found himself thinking that, the woman made a sudden move.
She moved to the front of the cage and called out to one of the guards. Pointing at something happening in the camp outside, she exchanged a few words with the guard
The guard's attention shifted. He barked something out in the native tongue. Another bean-person replied angrily, and a third walked out of a makeshift tent to mediate.
Then, the guard said something to the third bean-person, and both turned on the one that the woman had pointed out.
The exchange began heating rapidly. Barks transformed into shouts, then shoves.
Then, the two (other than the guard) took fighting stances, and transformed at the same time.
"...Smart." Vegeta realized. If only three were capable of stopping them, then make two of those three fight amongst themselves.
"...Show me your ship… and you live."
"You don't order me to do anything, woman." Vegeta spat as the woman cut the door of the pen open with precision rather than simple brute force, to minimize the spectacle. "...But fine. We have a deal. You scratch my back, and I'll get you off of this rock. But if you can't keep up, I'll throw you to these beasts myself." He warned, being completely honest with just how little he valued her life at this point.
She snorted softly, then they slipped out of the camp together.
A few of the natives noticed them, but none were able to shout louder than their tribesmen who were cheering at the high-level battle going on in the middle of the clearing, so by the time anyone capable of slowing them even noticed that they had left, Vegeta and Mel had a nice head-start on their enemies.