Vegeta's initial plan for immortality

[rereboy]

You are being way too much influenced by what other mediums of fiction consider or call "immortal".

Most mediums of fiction call certain creatures or beings "immortal" to make them look impressive, but there is almost always a way to kill them (like the immortals in Highlander).

And, as it has already being pointed out, the definition of immortality is just that, being unable to die. Purely and simply.

Therefore, if there is a way to kill them, a way for them to die, then they aren't truly immortal. They are close to being immortal since they could potentially live forever if they were not subject to what can kill them, but, nevertheless, still able to die, so not truly immortal in the true definition of the word.

Its obvious that Vegeta wanted true immortality. Being unable to die, no matter what. So, there is no reason to believe that the Dragon wouldn't give him just that and that his body wouldn't behave accordingly, within the 3 possibilities I've already described in this topic.

Also, even if its possible for a soul to be destroyed in Dragon Ball, if the Dragon granted immortality to someone, and if that someone's body was destroyed (without it reforming or being indestructible due to the wish of immortality) his or her soul would probably just become indestructible or being able to reform after being destroyed due to that wish, since that would be necessary to fulfill the requirements of immortality.

In the most likely scenario, immortal Vegeta would just have an indestructible body (and, therefore, an indestructible soul) or a constantly reforming body (and, therefore, a constantly reforming soul).
The Dragon most likely wouldn't screw Vegeta over by just giving him a indestructible or constantly reforming soul (without a body with those benefits) which would be unable to cross over to the afterlife, being kind of living soul, after Vegeta had his body destroyed. That situation would technically make Vegeta immortal, but since the Dragon tends to give people what they really want despite the semantics, I wouldn't consider it likely.

[Michsi]

But can we presume that the dragon follows those rules that you are talking about?
As I said, souls, Buu, possibly Roshi, can be used as examples as what immortality means in DB universe.

I can picture clearly what happens to Buu when he blown to bits. With Vegeta, not so much.

And leaving the immortality debate aside , I still don't see Vegeta making use of the zenkai in that battle. It would have been different if he planned on leaving namek aterwards but he saw that as a way to defeat. He didn't know about Dende, how exactly did he plan on getting healed during the battle?

But then again I suppose the notion is vague enough in allow several interpretations of what Vegeta's immoratlity might have meant.
You version withthe indestructable body is not what I think of because it means he also became stronger. I was thinking of a way where the attributes his phisical body remainded the same.

[Bussani]

If souls can get destroyed than so can everything else.

Souls aren't even immortal or everlasting in all religions, let alone in Dragon Ball. Heck, there are versions of Christianity where they're not.

The immortals from Highlander are also immortal but still still die when beheaded. ( or are they also what you would consider half immortal or immotal with a "but"?)

Somehow I knew Highlander would come up. That's definitely immortality with a but. "Immortal, except to beheading." The way the franchise portrays it is that their bodies are completely immortal except for their necks. You may as well say Cell is immortal except to core-busting.

As I said, souls, Buu, possibly Roshi, can be used as examples as what immortality means in DB universe.

Except that none of those are immortal.

[rereboy]

Despite not being canon, Garlic Jr is the best example for what immortality is.

He simply can't be killed. They could only defeat him by sending him into another dimension.

Buu, Roshi, Cell, all of them could be killed and, in fact, they were killed, even if they could regenerate from almost nothing or even if they didn't age.

[Michsi]

Despite not being canon, Garlic Jr is the best example for what immortality.

Hypothetically speaking, do you think he could win against Freeza? No Dead Zone.

[rereboy]

Despite not being canon, Garlic Jr is the best example for what immortality.

Hypothetically speaking, do you think he could win against Freeza? No Dead Zone.

No. Freeza would just get frustrated that he couldn't kill him and he would blow up the planet where he was on, making him drift in space while Freeza just went away in his spaceship.

That, or he would imprison Garlic Jr in some place, strong enough for him, once he realized he couldn't be killed.
He could, for example, just drop him in some giant Star. The gravity alone probably would prevent Garlic Jr from ever being able to leave or do anything, even if he couldn't die because of it.

Garlic Jr isn't nearly strong enough for Freeza and he wouldn't have any sort of dramatic improvement in his power from fighting Freeza a couple of times, like Saiyans do with their zenkais, so he would never win.

[Michsi]

Despite not being canon, Garlic Jr is the best example for what immortality.

Hypothetically speaking, do you think he could win against Freeza? No Dead Zone.

No. Freeza would just get frustrated that he couldn't kill him and he would blow up the planet where he was on, making him drift in space while Freeza just went away in his spaceship.

That, or he would imprison Garlic Jr in some place, strong enough for him, once he realized he couldn't be killed.
He could, for example, just drop him in some giant Star. The gravity alone probably would prevent Garlic Jr from ever being able to leave or do anything, even if he couldn't die because of it.

Garlic Jr isn't nearly strong enough for Freeza and he wouldn't have any sort of dramatic improvement in his power for fighting Freeza a couple of times, like Saiyans do with their zenkais, so he would never win.

And I have similar scenarios in mind with Vegeta, because I don't see him making use of those zenkais in his battle vs Freeza.
So I go back to my first question. What good would it do him then and there?

[rereboy]

Freeza would have much more problems with Vegeta... Simply blowing up the planet and leave wouldn't be a solution since Vegeta probably wouldn't stop coming for him and Vegeta would probably know where to look and where to eventually find him, unlike Garlic Jr who would probably just find another planet to rule and stay there.

So, Freeza would have to deal with him permanently or Vegeta would kill him eventually.

Also, throwing Vegeta into a giant Star would probably be a bad idea... Thanks to the saiyan's zenkais, the "beating" that Vegeta would receive in that star per second without being able to die, would make him strong enough to leave that star's gravity and make him stronger than Freeza in no time.

In fact, the only way I see Freeza winning would be if he dropped Vegeta into a Black Hole or something like that where time itself would be all twisted (like 1 minute in the Black Hole would correspond to 1000 years outside of the Black Hole), or if Freeza actually found a way of holding him, making him unable to move even a muscle, but without hurting him, like putting him in a "stasis pod" or in a cryogenic chamber or something like that.

So, it would all depend on how smart Freeza would be and how fast he would come up with a solution, since Vegeta would probably increase in power very rapidly.

Of course, if we are to assume that Vegeta would somehow be incapable of having zenkais after becoming immortal, then he wouldn't be much different than Garlic Jr.

But, even without zenkais, he could train and still increase in power rapidly even without Zenkais, without being afraid of been killed. So, he would still be much more dangerous to Freeza than Garlic Jr.

So, in short, Freeza wouldn't automatically lose, but if he didn't put his act together and thought quickly of how to proceed, he would be in deep trouble in no time. Simply trying to kill Vegeta over and over or exploding the planets where Vegeta is, wouldn't do any good and would be extremely dangerous if Vegeta had zenkais... And even if he hadn't zenkais, it would be pretty dangerous for Freeza to spend most of his energy around Vegeta, making him vulnerable, or let Vegeta leave and increase his power with training.

[Michsi]

Freeza, while not the brigthest villain to ever grace to world of fiction, would probably still be smart enough to know what an immortal Vegeta meant. I'm pretty sure he'd not let Vegeta escape to get and allow him to get stronger. Ever. He'd weaken him to the point of uselessness and trap him somewhere for all eternity.

So I stil say the immortality wish would not have saved anybody.

Also, immortality in fiction: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Immortality

[roidrage]

He'd weaken him to the point of uselessness and trap him somewhere for all eternity.

How would he do that? The only place where that would be possible is in the Dead Zone, and that's a technique that seems to rely more on magic and demonic power than anything else. Freeza doesn't possess skills in either of those areas.

[Michsi]

He'd weaken him to the point of uselessness and trap him somewhere for all eternity.

How would he do that? The only place where that would be possible is in the Dead Zone, and that's a technique that seems to rely more on magic and demonic power than anything else. Freeza doesn't possess skills in either of those areas.

I wasn't thinking of magic at all, but of some sort of technology, a device that works like that. Considering what resources the Cold family has , it's very possible.

[rereboy]

He'd weaken him to the point of uselessness and trap him somewhere for all eternity.

How would he do that? The only place where that would be possible is in the Dead Zone, and that's a technique that seems to rely more on magic and demonic power than anything else. Freeza doesn't possess skills in either of those areas.

Knock him unconscious and insert him in the DB version of the matrix.

[Luke Groundwalker]

I think it entirely depends on what HE thinks is immortal.

Whatever limits that holds, will be the limits for him.

If he thought being immortal mean he could only get killed by getting his head cut off, then that would be the case.

I don't think there's a monkey's paw for wishing, and it entirely relies on what Vegeta himself means when he says immortal. Whether this means he wishes to be unkillable is unknown.

[jjgp1112]

Buu isn't immortal because he can be killed. Sure, doing the deed is a ridiculously daunting task because you have to make sure not a single trace is left of him, but still. What Vegeta and Frieza were after was the inability to die - like Rereboy said, the Dragon would likely grant that wish regardless of semantics. You're using other shows as examples, and that's not good. Garlic Jr. is the best example of how it would work in Z. He wished for Immortality, and then Gohan drove a hole through him and he just regenerated. His body isn't subject to the physical limits of mortal beings. Immortality isn't like some drug that screws up the nerves that register pain, where you're still susceptible to death despite not feeling anything. If Frieza were to rid himself of any Vegeta "menace," he'd need to rely on smarts, and I mean, locking Vegeta away in some other dimension kind of smarts.

[Kendamu]

I think I'll just stick with the simple answer and assume that Vegeta and Freeza were going for the same type of immortality that Garlic Jr. ended up getting.

[russ869]

Look, they specifically talked about this in the show. Remember just before the Ginyu Corps had arrived, Vegeta was able to sense them approaching the planet? After he expressed to Gohan and Kuririn that there was no way to defeat Ginyu and his men (as they were each at least as strong as he was), he managed to convince them that their only hope was to wish for immortality in order to survive. (This was at the point when Vegeta was about to get all of the Dragon Balls. He already had all but the one Gohan had stolen from the lake.) Kuririn suggests they wish for Gohan to be immortal as he can't bear to let someone as evil as Vegeta get his wish, but Vegeta retorts that even if Gohan achieved immortality he didn't have enough fighting experience or strength to be able to even make a scratch on Freeza. Vegeta was overconfident, but he had recently experienced multiple sudden increases in his power. At this point he probably was not pondering the possibility of becoming a Super Saiyan (actually maybe he was, after Dodoria and Zarbon's comments), but it seemed like a better chance if he were made immortal that he would eventually obtain a level or power capable of killing Freeza. Of course, while the victor of a battle in Dragon Ball is usually determined by strength, this is not always the case. It could be possible that Vegeta was also considering a way of killing or escaping Freeza that involved outsmarting him rather than overpowering him.

I think Vegeta always new that the only way his plan could work would be to kill Freeza. I don't know if he always intended to gain eternal life before doing so. Vegeta was very meticulous in his revenge throughout this arc, constantly luring Freeza's men into one-on-one fights, making sure he defeated them in a specific order, gradually whittling down on Freeza's strength to compensate for his extreme disadvantage. Eventually if it came down to just him a Freeza, he simply needed to gain eternal life first while also making sure that Freeza couldn't (possibly by destroying a Dragon Ball or killing the Namek elder). Even in a situation where Freeza's power was still far above Vegeta's (which is likely), Vegeta's strength was still not to be taken lightly. Freeza could survive the onslaught for a while, but not forever. Besides, Vegeta may have been able to take him by surprise and kill him before he even had a chance to do his 2nd or 3rd transformation (which Vegeta didn't even know about at this point, so he wasn't factoring them into his calculations).

[Maphisto86]

Concerning what "immortality" means in Dragonball it is hard to pin down. I think it is safe to say though that the "immortality" Vegeta, Nappa and then later Freeza were aiming for was not only unlimited youth and life but also indestructability. Basically no matter what happened they could not be killed. Either that or Vegeta's bid for immortality amidst Freeza's onslaught is another one of the Saiyan prince's bad ideas. Another confusing thing though is after Freeza was defeated and Vegeta was left on Earth, why didn't he try to find the dragon balls Kami created? Even though he wanted to defeat Goku through a fair contest of strength and skill, wouldn't making sure you could survive until that day make sense? Then again Dragonball is full of such plot holes so . . . maybe Shenlong can't grant a wish if the plot does not demand it?

[jjgp1112]

I think Vegeta just lost his desire for immortality after he got killed by Frieza.