Vegetto glanced down at Jaz's words, frowning slightly before glancing away. Gogeta placed his hands on his hips, furrowing his brow.
"Well then, we'll have to find Jr. before we can get you both out of here."
He glanced over his shoulder, Darth Marr slowly making his way up to the fusion's side.
"He is in Republic custody now, they departed together after slaying Darth Soverus in the Council chambers."
The Sith crossed his arms behind his back.
"You two need to report to Lana Beniko at once."
Vegetto narrowed his eyes.
"Was that an order?"
Darth Marr nodded once.
"It is. Not from an authority of power, but one of significant importance. There is something wrong with everything that is happening here, and she has more information. You must see her; the fate of the entire Empire, if not the universe, likely depends on it."
Vegetto kept his stern stare, turning back towards Jaz.
"I'm sorry Jaz, but you can't back out of this now. When we find Junior, I'll take you both home. But for now, you're going to have to see this through."
===========================
Theron shook his head once, frowning in response.
"Perhaps, but there's more to this story from what I've already uncovered."
Vegeta kept his arms crossed, expression blank.
"What have you found?"
The agent crossed his arms.
"From what I can tell, two heavily coordinated and successful strikes on key home worlds for both factions is something that doesn't happen everyday. And by the looks of things, whatever Darok is doing, he managed to successfully hoard valuable Rakata technology from the Korriban vaults."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"The only problem is that the confiscated materials Darok spoke so highly of haven't arrived, and probably won't be in the near future. Along with the SIS intelligence boys informing me that Tython's vaults housed similar artifacts, which disappeared during the Sith occupation."
Beerus made a loud, audible cough. His narrowed eyes remained locked on Theron.
"Now you can mention what I referred to earlier."
Theron glanced up towards Beerus, letting out a light sigh.
"Ok, so maybe I was being a bit coy with what has happened today. But it's mainly because we had no idea about it until recently."
Beerus lifted his eyelid a bit.
"You managed to successfully land a weapon of mass destruction in the middle of the Empire's core worlds, and you didn't even realize it?"
Theron nodded.
"Yes, that's it exactly. Darok had reported to the Chancellor once the missile strike was successful, and I decided to take a look at what he launched and where it landed while you were taking care of business on Tython."
He leaned forward, pulling out a round metal circular object in his hand. A small image of a missile warhead loaded up into a blue holoimage, illegible text floating next to it.
"I had to run level five decryption slicing programs to break through the Republic's archive for this weapon, which has been developed secretly in the past few months with the specific intention of targeting the False Emperor himself. It's a parasitic disease, spreading to the vocal cords of its subjects where the small bugs only respond when the cords vibrate in a certain pattern."
Goku blinked.
"So they attack their victim when they make noise?"
Theron shook his head once.
"It's actually more advanced than that: the creatures are attuned to a certain language. If the infected person speaks a certain amount of words in the language we encode to the parasites, the bugs will eventually spread to the heart and devour the body from within."
Beerus rubbed his chin.
"Fascinating, but what does this have to do with anything?"
Theron nodded down to the image.
"This file was updated within the past fifteen minutes since we've been talking. The project has never come close to being completed, and after talking with some contacts in the higher level staff, the disease itself was only a design with R&D crews. A dream that no one had put to paper. Until this morning, where in some miracle, the weapon was updated to wartime availability."
Beerus remained silent, watching Theron pull up a second cylinder in his right hand. A blue holo-image soon appeared, showing playback footage of a crowd of civilians afflicted with the disease. Their necks glowed orange at the center, children and women alike among the men.
"The target of the strike was the capital city of the planet Ziost, something that is impossible to accomplish with only our level of code when it comes to slicing enemy anti-WMD defenses. It was an instant catastrophe, this footage was recorded only minutes ago."
The image panned out at Theron's direction of buttons, focusing on the large stairway where three lone figures stood. The crowd had turned their attention upwards at this point, staring on as the small visible image of Vegetto lowered into the Kamehameha stance, a bright purple energy beam forming in his palms. The crowd soon erupted into a unanimous salute, without sound as the massive energy beam shot forward, engulfing the lot with the image distorting from the force of the energy. The blue holoimage remained locked on the image of Red Mist attacking Vegetto shortly afterwards, Theron talking.
"Someone gave Darok access to the anti-defense missiles on the other side and managed to complete the Republic's design. Darok wanted to use that missile to land a successful attack on the civilian population of the planet over a military target."
The image soon showed the angry Vegetto lashing out at Red Mist, knocking Gogeta back in his attempt to stop the violence. Theron continued watching, his eyes narrowing slightly at the sudden surge of Vegetto's aura as the camera shook from the force. The fusion's fury was clear in his crazed expression, the scream nearly audible despite the device's lack of sound, before the camera erupted to abruptly stop the image.
"Someone is looking to make the False Emperor mad. And if they succeed, then we might not be able to stop him."
