"Wow, this place has some fairly high power levels, Vegeta. There's one that's even higher than mine… by a lot, and a few others that could give me a run for my money." Nappa noted, turning on his scouter.
Vegeta checked the power levels, too. Nappa was right. For Tarble, back then, this planet would've been a death trap. There were several dozen power levels that broke 7,000, even closing in on (or even surpassing) Nappa's, and even the weakest of the signatures never once went below ten, with the vast majority over a hundred, but under a thousand.
That meant that this planet was home to a proper fighting race, and he knew from the reports that it didn't have a moon, either. '
Not that it mattered to Vegeta right now. For him, the most important thing was finding Tarble's navigator and getting off of this planet.
And he had a pretty good idea of where to start, too.
"I'll be right back." Vegeta decided, "It'll be faster if I go alone. The rest of you, guard the ships." Finding the Saiyan wasn't particularly tough. After staying on a planet like this for long enough, they were bound to be the strongest thing around. In this case, that was actually rather obvious. While most power levels hovered somewhere notably under 9,000, this particular power level was much higher than that: Just over 14,000.
Following the signature led Vegeta to a cave opening. A few dozen large, four-armed, four-eyed humanoid, walking beans milled about in front of the opening. The planet's natives. Clearly, the Saiyan had already domesticated them into serving them, long ago.
Most of them weren't doing anything at present, though. Lazy bastards. If that was how they dedicated themselves to serving their superiors, then nobody would be able to complain about what happened next.
Landing, Vegeta slaughtered every single one with precise energy blasts. Almost immediately, the campsite was transformed from somewhere homely, but not particularly lively, to a place veiled in the stench of death.
In other words, more to Vegeta's tastes.
The issue of comfort solved, Vegeta simply walked directly into the cave, nobody stopping him.
Only to pause, wrinkling his nose in disgust as his brain processed the image of what was inside.
It wasn't a palace, honoring the Saiyan's strength.
The Saiyan was a literal monkey in a cage. Disgusting.
Crude wooden bars, tied together by lashings of roots and vines, blocked off the deepest part of the fairly shallow cave. Inside was, with no other way to put it, an animal pen.
It stank… like the pile of decomposing slop in the front corner of the cell. If one followed that particular wall, they would eventually come across another pile of something that Vegeta didn't want to think about.
And then, crouching on a pile of straw and grasses in the far end of the pen, was the Saiyan, staring at him with a guarded, feral look in its… her… eyes.
Vegeta had to consciously stop himself from instinctively defaulting to thinking of the Saiyan as a feral animal. Signs of a civilized past had long faded from her face, nine years of living like an animal having stripped all of that, leaving the raw, sub-human thing below that ran only on instincts, and didn't have the mental strength to spend on the small things like hygiene.
Her skin was covered in muck and blood, her hairstyle, while still in place, too Saiyan to be fully altered by simple living conditions, matted together with something sticky and decidedly not-black in some places, such as blood and various oozes that'd piled in over years of having little to no access to water in high enough volumes to wash in.
Then there were her clothes. Animal and reptile skins, haphazardly stitched together in a half-hearted, sloppy attempt to cover the essentials. Clearly, her battle armor, and even the jumpsuit that Saiyans tended to wear underneath, having long ago shredded or shattered beyond the point of no return.
Vegeta's disgust for the whole thing far outweighed any sense of caution, seeing a Saiyan with a battle power of 14,000 caged like a beast would have normally awoken.
Nor did he think about the fact that Frieza Force battle armor could theoretically handle horrible conditions like these for decades, and only tended to ever wear down during heavy combat.
Instead, he sneered at the woman, raising a hand to rip half of the wooden bars right our of the stone. "Disgusting. A Saiyan warrior, reduced to a dirty pet in a cage."
She snarled at him.
He sneered again. "You've gone completely feral. Did you hit your head in that slop heap?"
No audible answer. Only a feral, animalistic caution.
Vegeta shrugged. "No matter. Feral or not, you still have your uses. Congratulations, your exile has been revoked. You're coming with me… whether you like it or not."
Another low snarl… then… "Veeegeeeetaaaa…" She managed it with the slow, low drawl of vocal cords used to snarls, huffs, and snorts rather than human speech, but the words came through.
"Yes, you met my father once, didn't you? Congratulations, you can say my name." Vegeta replied sarcastically, before holding a hand up. Above his hand, a dark orb of ki appeared, softly pulsing with power. "I'm not playing games. Come. If I have to spend one more moment with this stench of fecal matter assaulting my nose, my power is going to slip, and this entire trip will be wasted. I have a feeling that you don't wish for that to happen, either, do you?"
The woman then did something that rather surprised Vegeta. Rather than meekly obeying his order as he'd expected, she lunged at him with animalistic speed.
Fortunately, the power gap between the two of them was real. Even surprised, Vegeta managed to dodge, and with a fluid motion, grabbed her by the hair and slammed her into the ground, dispelling the ki orb in his hand.
Still, even with Vegeta's hand on her hair, the woman struggled and squirmed, lashing out underneath him.
Vegeta hissed as her long-untamed nails swept across his ankle, cutting through the jumpsuit's special, blue fabric and drawing a line of blood. "ENOUGH! You're coming with ME!" With an angry motion, he slammed his kneecap directly into the center of the feral woman's back.
She gasped in pain, then resumed her futile struggle.
In response, Vegeta simply pushed harder, and harder.
Eventually, she finally stopped struggling, the lack of air having caused her to lose consciousness, at least temporarily.
Annoyed, Vegeta wasn't gentle with the unconscious, dirty Saiyan woman.
He began dragging her out of the cave by her hair.