Cooler's eyes scanned over the report on the screen in front of him. His lips curled into a subtle, entertained grin.
"...So, my little brother has decided to enlist the monkeys' aid in addressing his past mistakes. Perhaps I should help, like a good older brother…" Cooler chuckled inwardly at his private little joke, or rather, the punchline that naturally went unsaid.
"Capori. Pull up the Saiyan List." The ship's Systems' Engineer pulled the list up for Cooler.
Cooler ignored the names, looking at the number.
Sure enough, his list of AWOL Saiyans, or at least Saiyan-Blooded individuals, that he still had at least some general idea of where they were, was still over two hundred in number.
Even if half of those trails, like Tarble's, had gone cold or the Saiyan in question had ended up dead somehow, because they were Saiyans, that was likely at least somewhere around a hundred individuals with Saiyan blood potentially plotting revenge against his little brother. This list didn't just extend to the North Area where the Saiyans used to live, but the other areas as well.
Cooler, unlike the rest of his family, had a habit of being careful. He actually kept a pretty strict surveillance on both his brother and his father, as well as their useful assets.
Cooler had been born with a 'meager' power level of only 10 million. He'd gotten to where he was by sheer effort, making him, unlike the rest of his family members, a true martial artist. He didn't fear power greater than his own.
The warning passed down by Frost Demons for generations upon generations about the Super Saiyan wasn't something that scared him, but rather, simply something that he couldn't ignore, so he'd kept an especially close eye on the species in question.
As such, one could honestly say that Cooler was the universe's premier expert on all things Saiyan.
There were actually quite a few of these curiosities that he, specifically, had looked into in more detail than anyone else in the entire universe. You could call it Cooler's hobby.
Frieza dominated planets. King Cold lavished in luxury and carnal pleasures. Cooler's hobby was battle.
Now, a good big brother would have given the comprehensive list of every Saiyan alive and known tracking methods to Frieza. That would have allowed the younger Frost Demon to easily destroy all traces of the species before any of them became powerful enough to revolt against him in any way, shape, or form.
With a cruel grin, Cooler had the data encoded anonymously, then, a copy was sent on its merry way.
…
On the final leg of his several-week-long interstellar journey, Vegeta was awakened, despite a bit of the space pod's sedative still coursing through his veins, due to a small, repeating chime from his scouter.
During his sleep, he'd gotten a message.
Vegeta checked the message, and his eyes instantly went wide as a massive amount of information scrolled across his scouter's tiny display.
It wasn't just a list of Saiyans… it was locations, tracking methods, everything Vegeta would need to locate hundreds of Saiyans.
Most of which were, unfortunately, in the East or West areas of the universe. More than a handful were in the Galactic Prison, out of Vegeta's reach.
Vegeta checked his destination against the list.
He wasn't particularly surprised that the navigator for Tarble's team showed up, correlating with the location of the planet in question.
Vegeta remembered the general course of what'd happened with Tarble rather well, despite all the years that had passed since.
Currently, he was headed for the planet that Tarble's team had been originally assigned to, a planet in Sector Sixty-Three. Apparently, not a single registered spacecraft had entered its direct vicinity since the Elite squad that'd been assigned to find Tarble had sent back word from the planet's surface before leaving to find the young prince… and vanishing.
Officially, the navigator, a woman named Mel, had been exiled, a disgrace due to her inability to control the young Tarble, and her loss of her tail. Her current status was unknown.
If she was alive, then Vegeta had already decided to recruit her. Even without her tail, she would almost certainly still be of more use than the crippled Soy. Besides, she, fundamentally, already had use, simply being a female.
If she was dead, Vegeta's team would simply finish the mission that his younger brother had been sent to complete all those years ago, and make their way to the planet in Sector Seventy, where Tarble had been last seen.
The path to Sector Seventy, unfortunately, was a race against time. While it would take Cui quite a long time to clear out the other habitable planets in the sector, Vegeta had no idea just how much time he actually had before Cui made it to that planet in particular.
And Frieza didn't care enough about Tarble to order Cui to leave Vegeta a trail. Once Cui made his way to that world, any trace that Vegeta's brother left would be erased, along with all native life.
Vegeta needed to get there before that happened.
He solidified the plan in his mind as his pod finally hit the target planet's atmosphere.