Vegeta barely had the strength to protest as the bull-creature grabbed him by the hair and, in a show that seemed eerily similar to something that had just recently happened, dragged him into the cavern against his will.
But unlike Vegeta, who'd done it because it was simply the simplest way to drag the other Saiyan along, the bean creature's bullish leader dragged Vegeta along specifically to humiliate and degrade him… and it was working.
Vegeta struggled as much as he could, which wasn't particularly much, as the creature dragged him beyond the bars that he'd destroyed earlier and into the cell where the other Saiyan had been kept.
But the bull creature didn't stop there. It kept dragging.
Vegeta's eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen, his struggle intensifying as the remainder of his desperate adrenaline all poured through his veins at once.
But it was pointless. Like struggling against a titanium claw. All Vegeta's struggling managed to do was intensify the pain in his scalp, which, by now, felt like it was literally being ripped apart.
A drop of blood poured down his forehead and into his eyes, but Vegeta's struggles didn't cease.
Then, the bull-creature stopped. In front of the suspicious brown pile in the corner of the cell.
Vegeta's face was smashed directly into the pile. The bull-creature rubbed him in deeper for a moment, savoring the victory, before releasing his grip on the Saiyan and, with something that was very clearly a laugh, turning to leave the cell as worker-bean-people began repairing the damage.
Vegeta had just been caged and tossed aside… like an animal.
The humiliation… he'd rather die.
Nothing ran through Vegeta's head except blind rage as he barrelled directly toward the bull-creature, intent on naught but blind destruction.
A foot casually slammed into Vegeta's gut, throwing him back with enough force to slightly shake the cave walls upon impact.
Vegeta slumped to the ground, vomiting blood, his eyes vacant, but trained on the flimsy, wooden bars as the bean-people workers slowly worked them back into shape.
He hadn't moved a muscle even an hour later, when one of the subordinate bulls, still transformed into their red form, half-dragged the woman back into the fully-repaired pen before shutting the door with an expression that, even on a bull's face, was a clear sneer.
She turned to Vegeta. For a long moment, the two stared at each other.
Clearly, she hadn't expected to actually, fully escape. She was dripping wet, her skin and eyes much, much clearer than they'd been before.
She'd used Vegeta's desperate struggle for survival… as a distraction to allow her to slip away and take a short bath in some nearby river.
To be fair, it'd done wonders. Her hair and skin were much clearer than before, and the light of civilized intelligence had returned to her eyes, transforming the feral rage and fear into half-feral, mostly-rage instead.
She still barely passed for humanoid, though. The bath had clearly been rather hasty, leaving streaks of dirt and encrusted grime all over her skin, her hair had only gotten slightly better, and her body was now covered in small scrapes and bruises, with a rather large, bloody cut on her forehead and another on her exposed stomach from what'd clearly been a rather quick, simple struggle against one of those bull-creatures.
"...You knew that they could transform." He finally spoke.
"..." She didn't reply immediately. Honestly, Vegeta didn't expect her to respond at all, he was simply trying to blame someone other than himself for his current situation, and she was the closest choice.
But, after a long pause, she opened her mouth. "Fool… Just… Father…"
Her 'common' speech was broken and clumsy from disuse, but Vegeta understood what she was trying to say, more-or-less.
The scowl on his face grew deeper. 'Fool. Just like your father.'
Vegeta didn't care one way or another about how foolish, or wise, his father may or may not have been. Whatever that man did, or was, he was dead now. Dead and gone, along with his entire regime. But being compared to the man still brought up facts that Vegeta would have rather preferred to ignore, always putting him in a foul mood.
Besides, Vegeta had surpassed his father long ago. He was superior to that man in every way, shape, and form, and not being able to prove it with anything other than numbers on a scouter was a special form of punishment that would torment the Prince until the end of time.
"I may be a fool, but at least I have a backbone. Mark my words, the Prince of all Saiyans will not spend the rest of his days cowering in a cage like a coward such as you." Vegeta spat.
"Pampered… Sh..." the woman responded with the annoyed tone of someone who'd been living in hell for nine years, and was now speaking to someone who'd visited for one day and already believed that they truly understood everything now.
"Mark my words, I'll get out of here, even if I have to break every bone in my body, then crawl with my tongue."
Mel rolled her eyes, sitting on her straw bed in the long-practiced silence that came with years of experience in keeping to oneself.
She'd had the same thought before. More times than she could bother to count, and she'd acted on it, over and over again. As such, she understood with unequalled clarity, the difference between saying something like that and truly acting on it.
Trying, time and time again, to escape, even after being beaten to the point where you genuinely break every single bone in your body, required something more than simple stubbornness. It required a certain drive, something far deeper than the simple, unearned ego that came with being born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
At first, she'd had that drive. During the first year or two, trapped on this planet, kept as a pet, Mel's power level had doubled and doubled again with every beating, every bone broken healed stronger, every muscle torn regenerating tougher.
By the time three years had passed, she was stronger than any of the natives, in their base forms, at least.
But… those transformations were something else entirely. In those bullish forms, no matter how powerful Mel got, it was like slapping an ocean, hoping to drain it. On top of that, their senses got incredibly sharp in that form. They could track her anywhere, across the entire planet, without any trouble at all. Running was pointless. Hiding, even more so.
Over time, that fact had transformed her, subtly.
Gone was the woman who'd respected nothing but strength, and even gone to this stupid planet of her own volition, knowing that the natives were far stronger than she. That person had vanished somewhere along the way of her respect for King Vegeta.
Even now that the prince had come, telling her that they finally wanted her back, that her exile was lifted, the idea of going back to Planet Vegeta, taking orders from the brown-faced imbecile half-dying on the cavern floor in front of her made Mel feel almost ill… moreso than usual.
But… It was an opportunity. If Vegeta Junior was here, then that meant that he had a ship. Even if she didn't know where she wanted to go, getting off of this hellhole needed to come first.
Mel grimaced inwardly, realizing what she needed to do.