Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Reciprocity ❯ Sh*t Gets Real ( Chapter 2 )

Bulma arrived home to the smell of barbecue and her mother's humming. She greeted her mom and nearly tripped up the stairs in her haste to make it up to Vegeta for embarrassing him the night before. Although she firmly believed that it wasn't her fault that he was too thickheaded to understand a closed bathroom door when he saw one, she knew he was alone here, left to float in strange waters. Bulma's home was enough to overwhelm anyone, not to mention that he must be reeling from culture shock. Whatever the madman did before he dropped in on Earth, she wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had a feeling that his life out in the vacuum of space was a lot different than his new one in the comforts of West City.

Bulma quickly pulled on her coveralls and a CC cap, buckled her tool belt around her waist and strode across the lawn to the Gravity Room. It clanged and rocked as she approached it. Bulma frowned. Wasn't the GR supposed to be down? She rapped on the door.

The door opened and a sweaty Saiyan filled the doorway. Bulma gave him a cheeky grin and held up her wrench. Vegeta just stepped out of sight, which Bulma took to be an invitation in.

"I thought I told you nothing above 150 G's. That's why I'm here in the first place, isn't it?"

Vegeta had lowered himself to the floor, retreating into push ups on his fingertips.

"The room isn't powered on," he informed her, aloof. "But the fan has been running since the system crashed 16 hours ago."

Bulma frowned. "I better make sure the engine hasn't overheated, then. But what was all that racket I heard before you opened the door?"

Vegeta was suddenly landed a front flip right behind her. "Me," he breathed.

Bulma scrambled over to the engine bay across the room, hiding her blushing embarrassment. *Damn Saiyan, always looking for a way to make me lose my composure.* It didn't take long, though, until she was smeared with grease and littered with parts, pounding out code on the computer as she griped under her breath. She was brought back to reality when she was startled by Vegeta, who had bent down beside her. Bulma looked up at him as he frowned down at the mess.

"What's the problem?"

"When the new system crashed it altered the intake and exhaust system codes. The subsequent build up of pressure caused the engine core to overheat and alerted the simulator to lock down. I have to reset the system codes and replace some parts that got melted and warped, but otherwise it should be back up and running for you by midnight." She gave him a small smile and went back to loosening a bolt.

Vegeta looked at her peculiarly out of the corner of his eye and scoffed. "It's dinnertime. Aren't you going to eat first?"

Bulma tried very hard to stare above her into the dark bowels of the simulator and remark casually, "Nah. It shouldn't take long to fix." *Damn Saiyan, wouldn't accept help if it was offered on a silver platter.*

After a long pause she heard Vegeta grunt and step out of the simulator, headed presumably to clean them out of house and home. She groaned as her stomach grumbled and she imagined her mother's entire pan of burnt ends devoured by the Saiyan before the repairs were complete. Bulma sighed and returned to her monkey wrench.

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It was going on 11:30 by the time she was done, and her stomach was warning her it was going to start eating itself really soon. Bulma put her tools away, wiped her hands on her coveralls and headed inside. The kitchen was deserted, and she ate a burnt ends sandwich in solitude, chewing thoughtfully as she mulled over installing additions to the GR that the new system, albeit untested, made capable. It was only after showering and slipping into a tank and boy shorts that she remembered the liberated capsule she had once used for nights over at Yamcha's, so long ago.

"Oh, yeah!" She exclaimed, climbing stiffly out of bed and reaching for the bright pink capsule on her night stand. Finally, she would be reunited with some of her favorite T shirts, a few blueprint pipe dreams she had drawn up on sleepless nights, and...

"A strap on!"

Leather lingerie and one single, incriminating adult toy fell gracelessly into a heap on her bed. Bulma stood gaping until the reality hit her full force in the stomach. Bulma's hand rose to her chest, her heart pounding a clamorous rhythm against her palm.

"This isn't mine. This isn't..."

She sank onto the edge of her bed.

"A strap on?"

It was only when she heard rustling in the kitchen that Bulma came to. It was...what, 4:30?...in the morning, and Bulma had been sitting listlessly in front of the TV in the living room for hours. A half eaten pint of ice cream sat forgotten in between her legs. An infomercial advertising a food processor for the low low price of $19.99 had been playing for the last hour.

Where had these last ten years gone? Adventure after adventure, one martial arts competition after another, running away from and fighting Pilaf, the Red Ribbon Army, and both Piccolos-it had made their companionship easy. She and Yamcha hadn't given any thought to their commitment or the future until he was revived; they had simply shared a place in each others lives as it moved forward one day after another. Bulma remembered his roguish good looks, his tacit enthusiasm and warm smile that had drawn her in in the first place. She had been the first pretty girl that he found the courage to speak to, making their individual quests for the dragon balls obsolete. They had bickered and made promises and taken their romance for granted with all the passion of first lovers.

Now, forced to evaluate their relationship, she came up short. Just when had the emotional distance lengthened irrevocably between them? Just when had the disconnect infiltrated their peace? Had there ever truly been a peace between them? She frowned in surprise. As far back as she could remember, their relationship had been pocked with dumb quarrels, but it was only in the months since his revival that their love for each other became corrosive. Was she to blame? What had she done to drive him away?

Yamcha was goodnatured, laid back, easy to please her...Was that it? Did his easy going nature provoke her to instant impatience? Was it those very things-his averageness, his mediocre ambition and will power, his interest in martial arts not for the passion of it but for the approval of his peers, his lack of interests in her interests, his lack of intensity like her intensity-that incited her to steamroll him? Their relationship had been trite for a long time, it seemed. It took a major change to make him ponder where he was going and what was worth valuing, and she hadn't made the cut. Although she felt numb against any more heartache at the moment, she decided that, despite the evidence of infidelity-*why couldn't he had resolved this with me rather than without me?*-the betrayal of their friendship hurt the worst. They had been through thick and thin together. Even if they weren't romantically involved, didn't he still care about her well being?

And now with the boys-men-all headed for battle, what was there for Bulma to do? What had occupied her time in the past-her relationship, her adventuring, her capricious affair with technology-all seemed childish in the face of the heady doomsday prophecy in less than three years time. Although she had no significant measure of ki and no martial arts skills to speak of, Bulma had always used her wits, her inventions, and her opportunism to sustain her during her travels. In several cases, her exceptionally powerful friends would have met a dead end had it not been for her resourcefulness. Although she could manage while her close friends trained for an apocalypse, what could possibly keep her busy, purposeful, important?

It was with the heavy clatter of a pan thrown into the sink that Bulma was shot through with an idea.

She couldn't believe it. How did she not think of this sooner? With all the modifications and upkeep that had to be done to the GR on a regular basis, why hadn't she thought of using particle technology on a microlevel, meaning less upkeep for her and more direct and effective results? She dully registered the couch cushion sink in beside her as her mind raced through algorithms and code, and her pint of ice cream was lifted out of her lap. Her head turned to the side as she became dimly aware that the person beside her was Vegeta. He smirked as he spooned her melted ice cream into his mouth. His hair was damp and he smelled like soap.

"Were you doing something, Onna?"

She considered bluffing to avoid embarrassment.

Well, here goes. "I grabbed a capsule from Yamcha's house by accident that was some other girls I think he's screwing." There, she said it.

Vegeta frowned at the wall and looked either distinctly uncomfortable or careless, empty carton on his knee.

"It had a strap on in it."

For a moment, she received only silence.

Then, great bales of laughter emptied out of Vegeta. He leaned back against the couch, posture still impeccable as he released sharp guffaws at Bulma's expense.

"So, Scarface has been taking it up the ass, has he? Call me when you've got real problems."

Bulma shocked them both when she reached out and gripped his shoulders. "Don't you see, Vegeta? I'm calling you right now! I've figured out how to help you while you train for the androids! And it all begins with ki enhancement technology!"

His irritated discomfort changed rapidly to keen interest.

"You don't say."

"And it will be so…very...cool," Bulma cooed, hoping to bait him.

His smirk deepened into dark satisfaction. "Mondo cool."