So, I spent a good time the last few days binge watching a lot of
MasokoX's Dragonball What If series, and it gave me an idea.
What if Dr. Gero created his own corporation like Capsule Corp post Dragonball?Or simply: What if Dr. Gero turned good?
Let's say that Gero makes a breakthrough earlier on in canon. He's testing his spy-bots, and through them, manages to find out what Commander Red wanted the Dragonballs for, and much like Staff Officer Black, has a similar reaction.
Going with the idea that his son was a Red Ribbon soldier, and died fighting for the army that he believed would make the world a better place, Gero's loyalty for the organization completely withers away when he discovers what a whole pathetic waste it all was for.
His son died not for a new world order...but for a man who wanted to be...taller.
Completely disgusted and depressed, I can see Gero deserting the army before its fall as the short lived Black Ribbon Army, fixating his hatred this time on the Commander rather than Goku. He starts on the schematics for a new Android, one much more advanced than Eight. Something that could strike back at the Army that wasted his son's life for something so stupid.However, long before he can even produce a prototype, he learns of the Commander's death and the end of the Army at Son Goku's hands.
Gero is lost. His target for revenge is dead and gone.
What does he do now?
So, Gero stews for a time, uncertain at what he should do with his life. He thinks about the idea of making Androids to conquer the world himself, but quickly dismisses it. The Red Ribbon Army was a sham, and their supposed goal of world domination is now tainted by Red's idiocy in Gero's mind. He'd be looked on as the Red Ribbon's successor or some loyalist to the faction, and that would be a disgrace to his son's death even more in his mind.
For years, Gero has no idea what to do.
He tinkers in his lab with this idea and that, but there's just no drive for him anymore. No real pushing force for him to invent or create due to his uncertainty and doubt. One day, meandering about the nearest city to his lab hunting for supplies or food, he comes across an advertisement for a new Capsule Corp product.
That's when the obvious hits him. He doesn't have to conquer the world militarily like that idiot Commander Red. He could easily just build a corporation that could dominate the world through the wonders of capitalism! And it would be legal too!
Essentially, you'd end up with a Gero who's more like a cranky Dr. Light, who not only has Gero-Tech as a major world corporation that is racing past Capsule Corp in the fields of robotics, bio-engineering, and other trans-humanist based technology, but also has created Androids that help protect the Earth.
At first, it would have been something like 16, based off his son to help him stem off loneliness, but it would advance from there as he made more Androids here and there and formed a sort of family with them as time passes, the Androids sort of mellowing out the Doctor into the sort of person that would want to use his intelligence to protect the Earth from future threats after he gets a wake-up call from the Saiyan invasion.
While it's unlikely that this version of Gero would kidnap and modify 17 and 18, if you wanted them in the plot, I'm sure you could work them into it somehow. I think it's canon that Gero kidnapped them at a young age. Considering that the two never bring up their past human lives, it could be either they don't remember, or that they're simply orphans who Gero snatched because no one would miss them. If it's the latter, a more mellow Gero might...might have adopted them, and modified them with their permission based on fears of them dying just like his son did in the future.
Whether or not Cell is in the plot depends upon Gero's thought processes about creating him. The Cell that causes all the problems is still from the future, and not the what-if version, so you'd still have a Cell Saga.
However, if Gero could create a good Cell, that would definitely be interesting, but unfortunately wouldn't change anything until way after Super itself given the gestation period. Given the normal What-if structure of having Future Trunk's time machine sending him into these alt-universes rather than the canon present, you'd have an interesting bit of conflict between him and the hero androids. You'd still have Cell from the canon timeline invading this planet, so, even more confusion there.
Thoughts?
