"Final phase, boys! Pack the last batch in before the tree dies! And somebody get me my respirator before the poison cloud gets worse!" Turles shouted to his crew as he plucked a fruit off of the nearest branch and shoved it into his mouth, constantly moving to give orders.
The Tree of Might was an incredible thing, but the problem with it was in the fact that, after it truly killed a planet, it almost immediately shriveled up to nothing, dying along with all of the fruits left on its branches.
Already, the ground was blackened, grass turning to sand around them in real time as the planet's life force gave its last dying breath. This was one of those planets with very little in the way of life, so the boosts from the fruits weren't much, but every point gained made the Saiyan stronger, so he wouldn't dare allow it to go to waste.
As soon as the final fruit was plucked from the tree, it began its withering. By this time, the only members of Turles' squad that were still on the ground and not waiting in the controlled atmosphere of their ship were the species that could either breathe in oxygen-deprived environments, or were wearing respirators similar to Turles'.
Suddenly, Turles' scouter beeped. His eyes widened slightly as he watched the tree disintegrate before his eyes. Multiple power levels. Two over ten thousand. His natural battle power, with all of the fruits that he'd eaten over the years, had only managed to break 18,000 so far, which meant that whoever this was, they were top-tier.
Turles wasn't exactly worried about being defeated in battle, don't get him wrong. Currently, his battle power was still on a high from the fruit he'd eaten while he'd waited for the tree to grow. It was likely over 100,000 or so at the moment. He feared very little in his current state…
But that didn't mean that caution wasn't necessary.
Powerhouses with power levels of above ten thousand, in this universe, always tended to be connected to higher-class powers. The Galactic Patrol, Lord Slug's Demonic Force, the Cooler Force, the Frieza Force, and the Cold Force were the prominent five.
Turles had, long ago, defected from the Frieza Force, so he wasn't particularly worried about the youngest Frost Demon deciding to finally track him down and end him, and the Galactic Patrol had their hands full just keeping the Galactic Center from destabilizing, but the Cooler Force was an entirely different problem.
Turles had once met one of Cooler's elite squads. Not long ago, in fact. They'd had a power level of fifty thousand, and he'd only managed to defeat them after inhaling a fruit. His current scouter, a custom model with a power cap of fifty thousand, was a spoil of that particular battle.
Turles was still a little paranoid about Cooler looking for retribution for that little scuffle, not realizing that, with his meager power level, Cooler couldn't care less about him if he tried.
As such, upon seeing multiple strong power levels show up on his scouter, heading directly toward his planet, Turles knew that it could only be one of two things: Either it was a coincidence of some sort, which, with the power levels displayed on his scouter, wasn't likely, or it was a scout from the Cooler Force.
Which meant that Cooler himself, or at least one of his top lieutenants, wouldn't be far behind.
The Cooler Force's top lieutenants tended to have power levels that reached into the mid-hundred-thousand range. Turles didn't dare underestimate them.
Still, though, he smirked as he dug the seed out from the ground, right beneath where the Tree of Might had just rotted away into dust.
They were too late. The planet was dead, and the fruits had been harvested. By the time Cooler's squad landed, he and his team would already be off-world.
In his head, Turles decided that their next target would be the furthest, darkest fringe world in the North Quadrant. If Cooler was truly looking for him, then Turles needed to lay low at all costs.
…
As the Saiyan spacecraft entered the planet's atmosphere, Vegeta looked down through the front window in disgust. The planet looked unsurvivable. More like a giant bowl of dust and death than an actual planet. Still, he turned the backup scouter on his face on. Instantly, it got a reading. Something headed… upward?
The ship shuddered as Vegeta's scouter exploded off of his face. Not because of the tiny explosion caused by the scouter. No, it was because of the other ship passing them by.
A ship containing someone who had a power level of over 20,000.
Their own ship was programmed for an automatic descent. Vegeta then walked out of the ship to get a better look at the ship that was rapidly vanishing from the atmosphere. It wasn't a Frieza Force model ship.
Vegeta gritted his teeth. It was clear to him who was on that ship. There was only one Saiyan out there besides himself who could possibly be capable of breaking a scouter with sheer power level.
"...Dammit, Tarble." He muttered to himself, "NAPPA! Set a course! We're following that ship!"
"Right, Vegeta!"
Their ship blasted off, locked onto the signature of the scouter that they'd followed down to the planet in the first place, following the other Saiyan, who was clearly Tarble, into the great unknown.
Too bad the other ship was slightly faster than theirs.
The small team of Saiyans would find themselves trapped in that ship for the next full year, chasing the Saiyan that Vegeta believed to be his brother.