Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Reciprocity ❯ Two Planets ( Chapter 14 )

Two Planets_

In the highest northern regions where whiteouts gust without ceasing and the bone-chilling williwaw sings over ice-peaked mountains, a group of people huddled around a small space ship, their hopping and shaking to stay warm muffled by their thick parkas.

A thin holler came from the front of the ship, yanked from the man at the ship's head by the north wind and sent adrift in the wrong direction. He hollered again, throat objecting with the effort, but this time, the other men heard him.

They turned and shuffled against the wind, clawed boots steadying them on the icy, compact snow as the thick gray clouds churned restlessly overhead.

At the ship's head, the man handed the nearest person a small wooden box, who passed it to another, who walked it over to a small cart, where a team of Icéglié were harnessed, the long wool on their backs moving silently in the wind as they dug their beaks against their chest plumes to stay warm.

The small box was tucked into the rear of the cart, and the men again huddled, this time passing around something small before dividing into two, a few parting from the group and heading back towards the ship. At a second glance, those men setting out towards the space ship were less than native, their parkas less burly and their PTO-styled boots poorly insulated against the cold.

No sooner was the exchange over when a blaster went off, shearing the shoulder of one of the men's coats and nearly grazing one of the huge, lumbering Icéglié, which rose on its haunches and roared, balking at the errant energy.

There was a smattering of cursing and a few slaps against the hood of one of the men, who ducked from their disapproval with embarrassment.

Beams of light spilled from the ship, momentarily stunning the men on the ground. The sound of a cluster of oversized engines sparking, the whirr of the thrusters as they gathered the energy for takeoff, and in milliseconds, the ship had hovered off the tundra in the gray dusk, before it jumped time, its ring of windows spinning as it left earth and advanced to open space. Space, where leadership had crumbled, law and order were disparate, and a wild, unclaimed opportunity beckoned.

The men on the ground were small, even in their wooly parkas, their lined boots clawing the ground as they moved in tandem to the small, raw wood cart, a small swarm of ants on the ground to the strangers from above. The men hopped onto the cart and gripped it's fenced sides, mittens digging into the wood. The Icéglié bawled at the snap of a whip, and they all moved forward in the sheet of sleet that had roiled up again in this ever-present winter. Forward for several miles through the plains, across the Straight of Nazaglüm and into the mountains. Paid handsomely by some desperado from the sky, unknown, uncaring, to take a small, splintered box from here to a sprawling shrine in the north, its mythical marble and gold glinting even in the elements.

"Where to again?" Said one of the men over the creaking of the cart wheels as he clutched the cart, fighting to be heard over the shredding snow under the Icéglié's swift claws.

"The Palace of Innocents," hollered another over the sleet pounding their parkas and thundering in their ears, a new note of yearning drumming in their hearts as they advanced forward through infinite winter with the beryl-skinned stranger's trap resting innocently in the cart between them.

/ / /

Bulma pressed herself up against the wall and waved the gun at this new intruder.

"I'm here for something," Bulma warned him tensely. "Please don't get in my way."

The Saiyan didn't seem worried. He leaned against the doorjamb, biting his rolled cigarette and staring up at her from lowered lids with cool nonchalance. He was shirtless, his arms crossed over his smooth chest, linen lounge pants hanging from his lean hips. It looked like he had just gotten out of bed.

"You're here trespassing in my labs, and you think I'm just going to stand aside to let you do that?" It was laced with more amusement than irritation.

Her eyes narrowed, her thumb resting jumpily on the safety of the gun. "I only need something very, very small from you. I've searched all over the galaxy for it, and it appears to only exist here, in these labs." She tried keeping the pleading note from her voice. "This is your lab?"

He finally really looked at her. His dark eyes, even in the dim light coming off the oven, were unnervingly observing.

"Never seen a Saiyan in a lab before?" He blew smoke.

She released a nervous giggle. "Oh, no, I've seen a Saiyan in a lab before," she countered. "And then cleaned up his mess the rest of the week."

His eyes sharpened with new predatory interest, and Bulma shrunk in the crosshairs.

If this was his lab, maybe she needed to come asking nicely, the businesswoman berated her in the back of her head, without insulting him! So sorry, I'm new to this! She hollered back there.

As strung out and frantic as Vegeta's well being was making her, she needed to approach this very carefully. She couldn't win a fight with a Saiyan.

"Look," she began with quiet determination. "I would just like to know if you have the Saiyan-base hydralamine liposaccarine compound, and if you'd be kind enough to lend me about 40 g-mol's of it. I'm sorry about trespassing, but I really don't have time to go through the proper channels for it. I have someone's life depending on it." She wrung her hands in front of him genuinely, releasing the butt of the gun in a show of peace, its barrel pointed at the floor. As much as she wanted and needed to put her big girl pants on to accomplish this near impossible task, she was feeling well and truly destitute.

Nothing in his demeanor changed. She continued to be met with his silence, and bit her lip.

He put his fingers to the cigarette smoldering between them, sucked in, and flicked the small thing into the sink of this small kitchen, blowing smoke.

Bulma felt her heart begin it's anxious patter and her stomach twist. Every second he didn't answer her, she felt things slipping from her control. Here was a Saiyan- -a Saiyan! There weren't supposed to be any left! And she had no idea how to approach him. Bravely and with demands, as she would her Saiyans, because nothing else won their respect and ear? Prostrating, because he had something she desperately needed? As a colleague, if this was indeed his lab? It was hard to imagine any Saiyan besides Vegeta having the intellect or patience to find his way in a laboratory, and Vegeta barely had the forbearance to use his for something other than knocking someone's teeth into their throat.

The damned compound existed nowhere else in the galaxy, as far as the Nova's deep, extensive files were concerned, and as the primary ship of an intergalactic Empire, she viewed that as telling. He had to agree.

"Please," she begged. "This is very, very important."

Like the electric charge preceding a storm, something changed between them, something invisible but heavy with feeling and on the precipice of violence.

"Tell me why you smell like a Saiyan," he finally demanded, speaking fast. "Tell me why you need something as specific and rare as Saiyan-based hydralamine liposaccarine. Tell me who it's for and who sent you," he snarled, "and maybe I'll let you live long enough to see the sun rise on this godforsaken island paradise."

Bulma felt her stomach sinking, her whole world sinking, darkening, coming out from underneath her. She was dissolving, she was becoming a puddle of herself.

Something was stuck in her mouth, an argument torn between two priorities: wanting to throw something, wanting to plead for her and Vegeta's life. Her eyes welled with tears.

She'd been so close before he'd gotten in her way! She had no other choice but to comply. But, if she told him, Vegeta's safety would be compromised. Her own, too. Suddenly, someone would know that Vegeta was eggshell fragile, the same Vegeta who conjured up more enemies than friends. Could she trust him? Of course she couldn't trust him! Her history with new Saiyans was 100% terrible, and those were pretty steep odds.

Could he be trusted to care about Vegeta's life? Vegeta was arguably loyal to his legacy, but he hadn't been very loyal to Nappa. He hadn't been very beat up about the death of Raditz, and he had had only one motive since he'd been discarded from Namek: rubbing Goku's face in the dirt. What if Saiyans cared nothing for other Saiyan's? What if that was their only similarity, the only thing which unified them? Not their love or pride for their fellow Saiyans, but love and pride towards the subjection and slaughter of others...any others?

Her gun was loaded, the pin was cocked, but she was definitely not fast enough to use it against a Saiyan. He'd disarm her before she could pull the trigger; he'd dodge the bullet; he'd catch in his bare hands and pop it in his mouth to chew it like bubble gum. Of all obstacles to come up against; she couldn't strong arm a Saiyan. She had nothing to protect her, nothing except her feminine wiles and her questionable common sense, and if Vegeta and Goku's superior martial tactics were any indication, a Saiyan would out strategize her any day.

"Well? Spit it out," he snapped, pulling off the doorway. He watched her with plain irritation.

She just couldn't help it, even though it made her feel like a little girl, giving up some ground as she stuttered and wiped the tears escaping their confines. She'd been in scarier situations, but she felt like she were on the brink of despair, and just the threat of his existence was callously pushing her off.

"I need the compound for my friend," she explained throatily, before taking a breath, straightening her spine, and looking him in the eye unflinchingly. "My friend is Saiyan, and I think he's suffering from a rare kind of metabolic disorder that maybe only affects Saiyans. His body, his energy, is eating him alive, and I need to do something about it quickly or he won't be alive or sane long enough for it to be any good."

Suddenly, it was the truest thing in the world. Vegeta had only so long to live.

His eyes grew contemplative, and now it was clear his initial smooth composure had been turned back on.

"I am the only Saiyan left alive," the man disputed, folding his arms back over his chest and leaning his upper back against the wall, watching her.

"No, you're not," she contended. "Until a few minutes ago, my friends were the only Saiyans alive."

His eyes snapped open wide. "So, it's true." The muscles bunched in his arms and chest, straining. She watched him warily. "Frieza's dead?"

Bulma's eyes widened. It wasn't the question she'd expected. "Yes?" Did he not know? Her eyes grew even wider. "Have you not heard the news here? Frieza has been dead for over a year now."

The Saiyan's nose flared, and as he stiffened, an emerald wall of ki energy built up effortlessly around him like water pouring from a dam. He bared his teeth and leaned into the wind of his ki.

"Frieza is dead. And I'm still here," he declared roughly. His head shook back and forth wildly with denial, eyes heavenward.

Then he dropped his head in his hand and sunk his fist into the plaster beside the door, the dense muscles in his shoulders jumping as the plaster cracked and splintered into dust around his wrist. Bulma flinched.

"The Legend," he rasped, clearing the space between them even as she tripped over her feet and her back bumped the wall. "It was a Super Saiyan, wasn't it?" Bulma felt the air get heavier and harder to breathe through with the tightening coiled spring of ki energy.

He closed the space between them until he was looking down on her fearsomely, and just as she considered that this might be where her road ended in a not-so-surprising way, looking up the barrel of a Saiyan's bad temper, he murmured, "It was Kakarot."

She froze.

"My vision was right." His eyes flicked over her shocked face. "I can see it on your face. It was Kakarot."

"How do you know Goku." She paled, breathing thinly.

"Who?" His emerald ki stuttered, baffled, flickering against the walls.

"Goku...Kakarot." She tread water uneasily. "Small world, huh? He's my friend. We call him Goku."

The Saiyan became immediately alarmed. "He's the one who's suffering?" His face tightened in an unusual display of emotion, focused on her with new openness.

Here it was. Sink or swim. Bulma had to make a decision, and make it quick.

Her head shook back and forth, her short hair swaying softly above her eyes. She gulped. "No," she whispered. "Goku...I mean, Kakarot," she corrected, "is fine. It's...it's your Prince. Prince...Vegeta."

The Saiyan's eyes widened alarmingly. "The Prince lives?" He murmured.

She nodded.

His head snapped to the side, where he looked out the window she'd snuck in from in a private moment, gazing at the stars above the wiry, blue grass.

He turned back to her after a moment, meeting her again with hard eyes and his irrefutable tenor. "Let's make a deal."

She regarded him with bewilderment. "What are your terms?" What could a Saiyan want on a planet as peaceful as this? Her mind shifted to her foul memories of Nappa and Raditz and her stomach tightened.

"I want off this planet." His announcement dripped with his own excitement. "In fact, you will transport me to the Prince."

She stiffened. "What do you want with Vegeta?" She didn't have the brawn to stop him. He could faze right through her if he wanted.

I still hold the upper hand, she chanted to herself. Only I know where Vegeta is.

"I have no attachment to this stinking planet," he explained huffily, "and no good reason to be here anymore, now that Frieza's out of the picture." He scowled. "I was sent here as a punishment three decades ago and I want out! I've sworn service to the Royal Family, and if they still live, then my duty is there!"

It left her mouth before she even examined it. "I want you to do everything you realistically can to fix Vegeta. I want you to give me full access to your labs to do it. You will not be giving me orders."

They stared at each other flintily.

"What do you care about Vegeta's well being?" He asked venomously. "You're not even Saiyan." His eyes roamed over her, taking her in in a way that made her indignantly self conscious. She was humanoid, obviously, but just by virtue of not being a Saiyan, lesser. And a woman. She was sure he was forming his own assumptions.

"What do you care? It's none of your business."

He pulled out another cigarette from behind his ear, lighting it with a flame of ki that emerged, dancing, from his fingers. It lit his scowl to fearsome levels.

"I 'care' because he's my Prince." His voice was mellow, maybe even tired, contradicting his stubborn glower. "He's one of the last damned warriors worth a shit out there." He glared at her. "I don't owe you any other explanations!"

"Well, he's my Prince, too. Let's leave it at that," she murmured, setting her jaw. She stared upwards into the Saiyan's stormy face. "So how do you know Kakarot?"

He looked down at her, gaze rippling across her features, gaging her. "I'm his father."

"Your son? Well, then." She cleared her throat. Mighty fine looking father figure Goku had here. "Let me explain a few things. Goku is fine, safe on my home planet." She gestured to the open window between them, out into space. Her voice turned melancholy. "But Vegeta is out there somewhere, going mad every second." Her throat tightened.

The Saiyan narrowed his eyes at her as he sucked the last of his cigarette in a parody of the cool guy he'd been before she'd unloaded all this on him. He pulled the scorched thing from his mouth and flicked it across the room even as he sunk to one knee and placed his fist over his heart.

"I swear to Vegetasei, I'll do whatever it takes to keep him alive," he recited. "On my honor, and my father's honor before me." He bowed his head, his defined neck stretched beside her waist, before he turned his eyes up to her.

Bulma held out her hand, though he regarded it with confusion. He startled as she grabbed his hand and clasped it in her own before shaking the stiff thing.

"I swear I won't betray you," she assured him genuinely. "I only want Vegeta healthy again. If I can give you freedom too, well...it doesn't seem so bad of a deal."

She released his hand awkwardly, but he grabbed it back as he stood, and this time, shook it solemnly.

"I'm Bulma," she issued, suddenly bone-tired.

"Bardock," he said stolidly, before his face melted into the distant, teasing thing it had been before, sending butterflies fluttering throughout her belly. She heard her mother cooing in the back of her head. Oh, what am I thinking, I'm a married woman!

"You're damned lucky to have found me," he grabbed a toothpick from the counter and bit down on it, turning his head over his shoulder to wink at her as he led her out the door. "I just happen to be the universe's resident expert on Saiyan physiology."

Bulma's face went slack.

"No shit," she said.

/ / /

Something black hovered at Vegeta's vision. A silhouette, maybe, long and lean sometimes, sometimes stout and low to the ground like a tree stump with stick limbs, its willowy arms waving in the crosswind of some other plane. Sometimes it wasn't solid at all, and would roll in like fog, and he'd have to part the mist like a veil to see the faces of the soldiers staring back at him. But most often, it congealed at the corner of his vision, an angry black rain cloud companion, churning and heavy to unleash a torrent of unknown promise.

Silently, it meandered in and out of his periphery, and sometimes he would swat at it like a gnat, and sometimes he would turn towards it lightning fast, trying to rip into it before it could escape. But it was too swift. It existed between time, and it would make its wispy appearance to disappear in the same second. Vegeta had learned his lesson, after he had followed it across the room one day, overturning everything in his way as it slid to and fro across the tiles. Just as he would lean forward, his hands outstretched to claw at it, it would scutter to the side, leaving a trail of ink behind that he would have to trudge through like mud. It sucked at his boots and he sunk deeper and deeper into its muck until he was up to his neck in it.

At first he'd tried to weather it out. He was a soldier at heart, after all, and he'd been in situations like this before in combat, like trudging through the towering walls of snow on O'ppu'ln 9 on his first mission. But he hadn't managed to outwit it; he was too impatient, and a surge of fury would envelop him until he was spitting curses and he'd summoned his energy, managing to briefly knock the quicksand contrail back and crawl out. He didn't try to catch it anymore, but he kept his eyes open, the small black irises sliding to its corners over and over again, trying to get a glimpse of the slinky thing.

Some days it was worse than others. Some days, it would be at his side without fail, a companion only he could see. Other days, he'd be searching for it constantly, glancing left or right as some captain or other spoke to him, the captain's voice underwater, his profile shimmering.

He had evolved beyond the need to eat and sleep, he was happy to have discovered, and the more extraordinary he became, the more it tagged along.

Even if he never knew whether the black thing would tag along behind him one moment to the next, churning its black smoke, there was one thing he was always certain of. And that was the certainty there was something magnificent growing inside him.

He first understood it as he was walking down the barren halls of the ship.

The white walls, a door measuring every few yards, queued past him. Sometimes the ship's fluorescents would blink, and he'd be left disoriented for a moment, his keen Saiyan pupils contracting. Only the sound of his boot footfalls filled the space, slapping the linoleum, slap, slap, slap, one after the other. Sometimes his heart would join along and thump thump thump in his ears to its rhythm.

His stomach suddenly lurched, growling, and he stumbled. Catching himself against the walls, he breathed shallowly with the pain. His gut contracted jerkily, causing bile to rise in his throat. Vegeta's knees weakened; he felt suddenly feeble. He'd force himself to lean against the wall stiff as a board as he grit his teeth, inhaling through his nose while his stomach clenched and spasmed.

It took a moment before Vegeta realized it had passed. The blood rushed in his ears, and dots flit in and out of his eyesight, through heavy lids and sweat, as he focused on the metal white walls.

He had sunk to his knees, which pressed the floor achingly. The stabbing pain in his gut had left a deep thrum through his body, and he panted with exhaustion against the wall before prying himself off, rocking back onto his bottom and falling, splaying out on the floor, unable to catch his breath. He squinted against the blinding fluorescents and shakily wiped the sweat from his forehead, hand catching in his hair, tangled and coarse.

He sat up trembling, jittery, and looked up and down the hallway.

Empty.

He forced himself to stand, having to catch himself briefly against the wall before straightening and putting one clumsy foot in front of the other. He had to get somewhere, somewhere.

"How about the medbay," a husky, feminine voice snipped, "or to the cafeteria to eat."

He laughed throatily, and it caught on the edges of his sore throat, coming out in hacks.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you."

He kept advancing down the hall, and even if he lilted, even if he swayed or tripped over his feet, he kept on walking.

"You need to take care of yourself, Vegeta," her voice snapped. "Look at you-you're all over the floor."

Vegeta looked down heavily. She was right; there was a trail of blood behind him, down the long main hall of the ship, reaching as far as he could see and trailing into blackness.

"I am taking care of myself," he countered proudly. "See? This is all mine." He gestured at the steel walls, the painted red floor. "I am finally giving myself what I deserve." His hoarse voice dripped sarcasm.

"Real nice, Vegeta," the woman's voice replied with disapproval. "A level of selfishness only you could be proud of."

He meant to chuckle, but instead bile rose up in his throat and projected out of his mouth, splattering against the floor. It gleamed up at him rosily.

He hinged at the waist and caught his palm against a doorknob bruisingly.

"Where are you, Vegeta? Who are you?" The voice asked him with plaintive disappointment.

"Right here, woman." It was a rasp, and more bile scalded the back of his throat, choking him. "The one and only." He cleared his throat before almost slamming face first into the wall, his arms holding him shakily. His boots had slipped in the bile, and he barely had the strength to prevent himself from catching himself in it.

"He exists between the worlds now," came another woman's voice, except this one was old, warbling between them. The woman's seemed to come from right next to him- -always there, he could never get rid of her- -but the crone's drifted around him. "It won't be much longer until he exists only in one world, and there he will remain."

"King of it, though," he joked, resting his forehead against his knees.

"I can't allow that," his woman's voice declared firmly.

"Ever the contrary one, aren't you," he said through a numb tongue, and he spat, the thick, phlegmy stuff pink as an Earth sunset.

"You're one to talk," she drolled.

"He has something growing in him," the crone explained tenderly, and suddenly her voice was loud in his ears, ringing, and he slapped his hands over them to keep her out. She was booming in his head. "It's only time now until he is a Ghost Prince, Dark Prince of all those who wait for him in the Otherworld."

"Not if I can help it," his woman snarled.

"I'm not going anywhere," he growled, and something was cold against his nose. He opened his eyes. It was the wall.

"Like hell you aren't," said his woman. "You're coming with me."

"Sneaky little woman. I'll be making you come under me by nightfall," he promised with a chuckle, lying against the linoleum again, watching the flickering lights spin over head like a carousel.

His comment was met with silence, all quiet except for the fizzy static in his ears.

"I see you don't have anything to say to that.".

"No one is here," said the crone clearly in his ear, and it woke him up, startling him. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see. The lights flickered on again, and he felt a sense of relief. "No one but you and I."

"And my men. On my ship. And all the subjects of my kingdom, out there in space." His hand gestured up to the ceiling, 'out there,' before he rested his forearm on his sweaty forehead. "Everyone. Everyone in the entire universe is mine."

"There's no one left, Vegeta," came his woman's voice sadly, distantly, and he turned towards it to curl himself against it. "You've killed them all."

His eyes flung open.

The hall, lit by the bright lights, was stark white against the blood on the floor.

He tried to tell himself to breathe through it.

"There is something growing inside you," the crone whispered, and he felt the world growing dimmer. "It grows in your belly. It looks Saiyan, it acts Saiyan, and it will consume you, like a Saiyan."

"The Legendary," he rasped.

"It is not a legend," said the crone as the lights blinked black, "so much as a curse."

The black thing had returned, facing him as the world slid back and forth. Vegeta finally closed his eyes and slept.

/ / /

"Why hasn't the Nova responded?" His master's head turned around, lips pulling into a pretty sneer as he sent a dirty look his way. His master's braid tousled with the movement, and the slave kept his eyes on that, the silky sea foam green thing, wound tenderly around itself and tied with a gold ribbon.

"I don't know, sir," he replied without making eye contact, knowing that his master was less eager to hear it than not saying anything at all.

His master kept walking, strong calves jumping with every foot fall through the street, the seething crowd parting intuitively. His lord's taciturn countenance was met with laughter from a group of revelers, a few men hugging the waists of some women across the street, ripe with attention from it. Their round faces, coated in face paint, glowed with mischief, and he watched his master's face blacken as his gaze moved across the women's just as they stuck their tongues out at him and snickered. His master needed the clamor each night as much as he despised it, and, like a practical joke, the noise from the celebration grew markedly louder each night. Pandaemonium, they called it, and every fifteen years this planet, just out of reach of Frieza's bastion, celebrated the intimate position of their planet to the sun.

Every ten years, the planet gave a sigh and a heave and, as it turned in its orbit, began pointing its face the opposite direction, gifting the folk in the lower hemisphere with the opposite season. Trapped for ten years in winter, the cities were now preparing for summer and its upcoming féte. It was not uncommon for offworlders to fly in for the event, and so his master's alien features could be overlooked, though there were far less PTO soldiers milling about this time around.

From winter to summer only a few times a century, and all of the casinos and eateries were gearing up for it, all of the whores and fishermen on these sprawling isles, all of its citizens and politicians. As the season turned over, it was tradition for the royals and councilmen and women to step down. It was lawless, it was free, for a handful of days until the Solstice, when new royals would be crowned. It was a prime place for his master to lay low and form the connections he needed.

"He must have caught on. My spies are telling me nothing! He must have cut power, knowing he was being watched. I wonder how much he knows," his master argued with himself, his pink cape catching the knees of others as he walked through the dense crowd without regard.

"I'm not worried, though." His master turned back to him with an oily smile. "We only have another week until the dragon balls have been gathered, yes?"

"Yes, sir. All reports so far on New Namek have so far been satisfactory."

"What a laugh." To prove his point, his master gave a delicate chuckle, and turned back to him as they entered the heart of the celebration, this time catching his eyes as the din of the reveling mass intensified. "New Namek. I don't know how it escaped its fate last time, but we will have to rectify that this time around. I hope you will not disappoint this time, will you? I would hate to have to slice off another finger because of your thick headedness."

"No, master," he wheezed, squeezing what was left of his fists at his sides. "I will not dishonor my lord again. The dragon balls will reach Oi'glass'eer before Summer begins."

/ / /

"I have so many questions," she panted as she and Bardock walked to the labs, long strides quickly putting distance between them so that she had to skip and hop to catch up again.

She thought she heard a grumble.

"All of them pertinent," she countered saucily, peering up into his face.

They strode through a foyer, a breeze and a counter breeze playing out between them. It smelled of sea.

"I bet," he replied with disbelief.

"There's something I need to know first," she issued. "Why are you here? Vegeta said he and his men were the last Saiyans left. How did you wind up here?"

"Frieza had a special assignment in mind for me," he grouched, before slamming the door open onto a dimly lit lab. As much as he didn't want to talk about it-hadn't talked about it, in twenty years-the anger over it was clawing to get out.

"He sent you here?"

"Half right." He flicked the lights on in the room and advanced toward yet another door.

"You're better at dissembling than Vegeta," she griped, wiping sweat from her forehead.

The Saiyan moved easily through the darkness. He was darker than Goku and Vegeta, a burnt sienna to Vegeta's bronze, thought just as well built. It may have been natural, but Bulma suspected it was from island living. As tall as Goku, though, with the same wild hair. Their features were identical, except a cross shaped scar splayed across his cheek, and the impatience with everything he carried around that Goku might only show in his impatience to win a fight.

He turned to her finally, looking into unusual blue eyes. "Frieza sent me to die a special death. At the hands of a special Saiyan. It's a traitor's death, for Saiyans; he robbed me of my power so that I couldn't fight back and he sent me out into space to die. Instead of dying, I wound up here. No formable ki, nowhere to go. There's not much to tell."

"Half right," she countered, frowning. "What did you do to earn a traitor's death? Were you supposed to die aboard your own ship? I don't understand."

"No. He wasn't hospitable enough to give me a ship." The Saiyan's every statement was laced with a biting humor, despite his cool composure. Not like Goku at all, then.

Bulma frowned further.

"He left you in the vacuum of space without protection."

"Yes."

"You said you were to die at the hands of a Saiyan," she argued.

"Yes."

"You're speaking in riddles!"

Up close, even in the dark, he looked conflicted.

"He sent me to die with one other Saiyan, who was supposed to kill me, and kill himself in turn by virtue of his own stunning power. He didn't. He saved us, somehow. We wound up here. And we've been here, and no one fucking knows it, and no one cares."

"There are two of you," she breathed.

"There is one of us, and a husk," Bardock corrected. "You pick whose who."

With that, he opened up a large steel door, and they were met with a wall of cold air.

Bulma's eyes widened.

Test tubes lined the walls neatly.

"Number 01221. Lefthand corner. Grab it."

She took a step in and then looked back guardedly, peering at him over her shoulder warily.

"I'm not gonna lock you in here unless you take too long," he replied, rolling his eyes.

Bulma approached the lefthand corner, searching over the labels of all the corked glass test tubes. There weren't many of them-not so many of them that would suggest the lab did a lot of work.

And there it was. A smoky red, resting benignly in the cradle of its plastic base.

She reached out to grab it delicately. Her fingers closed around it, and she let out a breath.

"Come on," Bardock snapped, "before I catch a chill."

"You're just as unpleasant as all the other Saiyans I've had the displeasure of meeting," she griped as she walked tenderly out of the freezer and past him, making sure her grip was firm on the tube, cradling it with her other in case it dropped.

"What a lovely compliment."

She glanced up. Bardock was smiling at her leisurely from her side. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"All you Saiyans are the same," she murmured as she followed him back to the previous lab.

"I am unlike any Saiyan you will ever meet. I have no workable ki," he said matter of factly, although it had a note of bitterness. Bulma's eyebrows knit with concern.

"What about the other Saiyan?"

Bardock glanced back with foreboding at her. "Let's not worry about him."

"No. Lets," she retorted. "There's another Saiyan here, who was supposed to kill you but didn't, and you're just going to leave him here? You aren't even going to ask him if he wants to come?"

There was a large snort that echoed in the corridor as they made their way back to his apartments.

"No."

"And why not?"

"Because!" He snapped behind her, his impatience echoing.

"You summoned me, my lord?"

Both Bulma and Bardock startled as someone appeared before them.

He had on only pants and a headband to tie back his long chestnut hair in the heat of the long island night, and his eyes were lidded with a sad fatigue. He was strikingly lean.

"Broly," Bardock breathed, stopping in his tracks. "You are awake."

"Yes."

"There's no trouble here. I did not summon you. You can go back to bed, now."

Bulma glanced up pensively at Bardock at the note of anxiety in his voice.

"Yes," the man replied dumbly. "I must have misheard you. I will see you in the morning."

"See you in the morning," Bardock replied, letting out a breath of air as the man turned and ducked back into the shadows.

Bulma's stomach tightened at the sight of a furry brown belt there was no mistaking.

As the man melted into the shadows, she turned back to Bardock angrily. "That's the other Saiyan?"

"Keep your voice down!" He seethed quietly, his head snapping towards hers.

"You're being awfully deceptive. That's not something we agreed upon," she snipped, moving forward again slowly.

"I'll tell you whose deceptive." It only took him a few strides to catch up. "You!" He whispered next to her ear.

"I told you what you need to know!"

"No. You've told me nothing."

Bardock fixed her with an angry stare as he opened the last door, and Bulma had only a second to be surprised as he held it open for her. She clutched the serum protectively.

Bardock flicked on a light switch, which lit the small space, and stared at her until she walked past him guardedly. A small room, furnished with all basic laboratory tools. Everything seemed clean and sanitized. He slumped into a chair and glared at her.

She sat in the one opposite him and frowned back.

"How do you know my son?"

"We grew up together," she replied incredulously.

"How do you know the Prince?"

She bristled. "What is this, an interrogation? He came to my planet, causing havoc." Bulma's heart seized with the reminder before she put down its panicky rebellion. "Goku put him in his place. And then we met again on Namek, looking for the dragon balls."

"Kakarot put the Prince in his place? Impossible. The brat had a minimal power level,"

he mused offhandedly.

"Go ahead and challenge him to a fight, then. I dare you." Her eyebrow rose cockily.

He sniffed. "Smart aleck."

They regarded each other across the table.

"Kakarot killed Frieza," he finally stated, this time more quietly.

She nodded slowly.

"Where was Vegeta?"

"On my planet."

Bardock looked distant.

"Kakarot reached the Legendary to win that battle."

"Yep. At least, that's what everyone keeps telling me."

Bardock turned sharp eyes on her, and she clutched the serum to her chest.

"Vegeta hasn't reached that height yet?"

She shook her head.

"Vegeta was born with an astronomically high power level, relative to others. It is in Vegeta's genetic makeup, and is part of our Saiyan nomenclature. So why did Goku reach it, and Vegeta not?"

Bulma's eyes drifted to the table, where she pulled some supplies toward her, and sat the tube carefully into a holder.

"Goku has always been impossibly strong, and only gets stronger," she mused. "Vegeta has been working very hard to become a Super Saiyan since he learned Goku could do it. It hasn't come as easily to him."

Bardock looked at her thoughtfully.

"Tell me, how is Vegeta acting?"

"He's possessive. More aggressive. Less controlled. More..." She cleared her throat, blushing faintly. "Sexual. His ki isn't the same blue, it's...it's black. It's jumpy, and sometimes it turns in on him and hurts him to use. His...his eyes, turn red sometimes." She frowned down at the serum pensively.

"I think I know what's going on," Bardock grated, gazing at her measuringly. "He's going to go into metabolic shock, and the Oozaru spirit inside him is trying to defend him."

Bulma lit up. "I knew it was metabolic related! But how? Why? Is he suffering from a genetic disease of some sort?"

"The Saiyans have no known metabolic diseases," Bardock replied softly, "but we do have something almost as rare. And that is the Legend. I think he is on the cusp of the Super Saiyan legend. But his body isn't fit to contain the energy."

"Are we speaking genetically or physically?"

"I don't know. It doesn't make sense that Goku would be able to withstand it and Vegeta...and Broly...not."

"What?" Bulma looked at him in horror. "Are you telling me- -"

"Yes." He rubbed his hand over his eyes. "Broly is the Legend, and the only thing that holds him back from killing all of us now is his fucking headband, created by the daijjians to bring him some peace."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Vegeta is dying," Bulma finally said weakly. "Or going insane. Pick your poison. We've got to get to work." She looked up at him tiredly. "We will deal with Broly afterward. Let's just fix Vegeta and figure shit out afterwards."

Bardock nodded, picking the last cigarette from the back of his ear.

"There is something else you should know," Bardock said, snapping his fingers under the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange.

Bulma looked up at him as she set up their gear.

"There is one more ingredient we need for this serum to work. And it's not on this planet." He gazed at her with a quiet kind of mercy.

She couldn't help it. Her mouth started to tremble, her brows knit protectively, and the first sob escaped her without any grace.

/ / /

She and Bardock had been up the rest of the night and the following day's night, working on distilling the serum into a workable solution that could be put into a plunger (and a few extras, just in case). Luckily, Vegeta was nothing like Goku; she'd pricked him more times than she could count with nary an eyelash batted. Her little guinea pig.

"Proud, stubborn brute," she mumbled as she fiddled with the dials of the radio.

Bardock had crashed on a couch in the adjoining living room, and she could hear his slow, heavy breaths from the small kitchen table, see his feet twitch in his sleep. It was almost painfully silent, except for the light hum of the air conditioner throughout the lab. The peace was at odds with the tangle of feelings she was experiencing.

Bardock had explained earlier how he had been gifted residence here in the Science Wing of the complex. The daijjiians had given him sanctuary here on this small inlet after he and Broly had crashed into the sea, sucked into the planet's orbit after floating out in space for days in a protective energy bubble of Broly's accidental devise.

"I am in my own personal hell," he griped as he bent over the microscope, grabbing one of the tools in front of Bulma. "Daijjiians have no real concept of science, only peace and the erudite and trade, and so here I am, trapped, taking care of Broly, surrounded by a lab and library I could have only ever dreamed of on Vegetasei, exiled to a fucking tropical paradise."

Bulma glared up at him through her goggles, biting back a shrewish remark about his ingratitude.

But he was smiling lazily at her, almond shaped eyes glinting. She was just beginning to understand that as typically impatient and demanding as this Saiyan was, he was also different. He was...relaxed. In the same way that his skin had absorbed the island sun, he had soaked up a bit of peace here.

"Not a proper place to retire, though," he said into his microscope. "No one to fight with here. It's a disgrace."

"Not even Broly?" She carefully slicked the concentrated serum onto a clean plate and adjusted the focus.

"We try our best to keep him as calm as possible," he admitted quietly. Another minute passed as they worked in the silence. "The daijjiians worship him here," he continued hesitantly. "That's why they've given us this sanctuary all to ourselves. And why I think he will be fine here, without me. But I don't think Broly understands even a bit of their mumbo jumbo. Kid's as dense as a rock."

Bardock had stood then, stretching, his lean muscles jumping as he yawned. He made his way stiffly out of the small lab and into the living room. "Time for a cat nap," he'd called as he settled in on the couch.

But Bulma hadn't been able to sleep, despite having been working almost two days now, and worrying her nails over Vegeta's welfare...and without Bardock there to take her mind off of it, unable to work.

So, with a pounding heart and that familiar voice in her head yelling at her for even considering it, she'd taken her small radio out of her pack. She hadn't wanted to contact him yet, not when events weren't yet perfectly in place and she still, technically, had no cure to offer him.

She adjusted the bunny ears stubbornly and sat back.

And signaled the radio.

The pulse went on out into space, heralding the Nova...

Bulma sat her chin on her palm and waited with baited breath.

/ / /

Something shrill was ricocheting off his eardrums, and Vegeta's head throbbed in protest.

He pried open his eyes. It was harder than it ought to have been. They felt matted and crusty, and Vegeta rubbed them drowsily. He looked down at his hand. Not the sleep of the sandman, but blood.

My blood?

A beast answered back.

No. Their blood.

Vegeta painfully craned his neck up. It took a long moment, his muscles protesting achingly, but eventually his eyes focused on a pile of clothes in the corner.

Vegeta frowned. They smelled sweet and heavy with rot and iron, like after a massacre. He sniffed the air more delicately.

Not clothes. People.

He sat up, muscles trembling in protest, and breathed through his nose shallowly.

The shrieking in his ears wouldn't go away.

He stood and no sooner had spilled out over whatever was in front of him, barely catching himself, dazed. Blood flaked off the buttons before him as he drug his hand across them, and painted the inside crescents of his fingernails.

The ship's main console. He regarded it dully.

The shrieking was still rending its rhythm through his head.

"It's a message," said the crone, who sat in the corner, unmoving.

After a second, Vegeta seemed to understand. The ship was being heralded.

"Captain!" He barked. "Answer the call."

"The Captain is dead," said the crone guilelessly. "You killed him."

"Then his inferior shall answer the call," he countered with military authority.

"You have killed him, too. You've killed them all, dear Prince," the crone's wizened voice explained matter of factly. She remained transfixed in the corner of his vision. "No one exists aboard this ship but you."

Vegeta fought an overwhelming resentment. How dare they? How dare they die on him? That was mutiny. Retreating to Otherworld was desertion!

"Where's the damned button? I can't see a thing."

"You can't see anything because the power is out," she said sonorously. "Everyone is dead, and no one is around to man the ship or maintain its power grid."

"What do you know," he growled. That explained why he was having trouble focusing. He was trying to see in pitch dark.

"I know quite a bit. I am, after all, much older than you." The crone cackled.

Vegeta felt around dumbly for a button, any button, that would answer the call.

"The emergency generators that maintain communication are still of use. I suggest you answer this call."

"Wouldn't that tickle your fancy," he sniffed.

He couldn't find the button. He snarled. "Where's the fucking button?" He kicked a chair, sending it careening into the wall. "Fuck it. Fuck them." He stomped away from the console. "I don't need them."

"Answer the call, Prince. It's your mate."

Something inside Vegeta that he wasn't entirely familiar with awoke, shivering, and raised its head.

Mate.

"Where's the button," it asked.

He felt something guide his hand to a small, indistinct button on the side of the console, and as quickly as he had felt it, it flit away.

Mate.

Vegeta flicked the button.

At first, he was met with only a deeper silence, the hushed, echoing ping of the radio waves bouncing around in space.

Then a small voice, a voice he knew very, very well.

He leaned into it and clenched his fists around it.

"Hello? Hello? Nova? Nova, this is Bulma Briefs requesting to speak with Veg-Lord Vegeta."

"To parley?" Something wicked curled the corners of his mouth.

A pause. "Vegeta?"

She sounded frightened.

Good.

"The one and only." His chuckled was ominous. "What are you doing, Onna? Where have you been?"

Another pause. "I'm sorry I left without explaining to you the whats and whys. But I had to find something for you, something that will make your ki better. I think I've found something that will help- -"

"You're going to be very, very sorry you left me." A smile crept up his face. "Very sorry."

He was met with silence.

He frowned.

He didn't like her ignoring him at all.

"Would you rather me spank you here in front of everyone" -he glanced at the bodies- "Well, they're all dead. Or would you rather come ingratiating yourself in front of me? I might forgive you, if you seem regretful enough."

"For Kami's sake, Vegeta!" She had whispered it. Did she feel the tug between them, too? But she sought to dampen the fire between them, and the animal wanted to lock his teeth around her so that she couldn't.

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you for leaving me?" His voice seemed languid, unhurried, even as his muscles tensed with the frustration of all of the space between them.

"First, I'm going to slip between your legs and incinerate those things you call panties with my teeth."

"Vegeta, now is not the time- -"

"Then I'm going to put my mouth on that hot mound of yours and eat your pussy until you're dripping wet, just like I'd intended to all along. My tongue all over that round ass of yours until your lips are parted open wantonly. Until you're so wet, you're craning your back off the table, begging for me to put a finger in you...Would you beg for me, Onna? Beg for me right now. Tell me how much you want it," he purred, swiveling in the captain's chair. "Do you want me to slip it in real slow at first, taking my time playing with your clit as I slip slowly in and out of you," his nails rapped the arm of the chair thoughtfully, "or do you want me to go ahead and plunge all fingers in and finger fuck you until you're dripping over my hand, hm?"

"No-" She croaked.

"There's nothing more in the entire universe I want right now than to bend you over the console of the Nova and fuck you until you're screaming."

"Vegeta," she resisted brokenly. "I-"

"She won't be able to do that anytime soon," quipped another voice over the line- -a MALE voice- -"as she is currently fucking me."

A shock ripped through Vegeta's chest. Something like hatred but much, much more insidious was shredding his gut and churning out of him in apoplectic waves.

"Who the fuck are you?" He snarled viciously, his energy flaring around him, his shredded voice dragging against it.

"I'm Bulma's newest mate, stronger and better than you, and I want to fight you for her. Meet me on Oi'glass'eer as soon as possible. Oh, and Vegeta?"

Vegeta's teeth gnashed so hard his teeth threatened to shatter.

"I'll be fucking her the whole way there."

The line went dead.

Vegeta didn't know how to breathe.

He only knew that he was a living effigy for a spitting firestorm of rage, and as his ki ripped around the room, shredding metal, hurling bodies, he knew only that he was going to visit this new power on the source of that voice, even if he had to blow himself and the universe up to do it. It was absolutely thrilling to consider.

"Mine!" He shrieked, plunging his fists through the walls.

A torrent of inky darkness surged around him, bathing the walls in the deepest hue of wrath as he spiraled to heights previously unknown. Metal groaned and crashed against walls that soon folded up and disappeared as a maelstrom of energy, glinting like obsidian, ripped through the ship in increasingly wider swathes.

"Your highness," came the sibilant voice of the crone from behind him clearly. "The pods are on the lower east level."

He could barely think. He clenched his teeth around a tormented howl and turned his ruby eyes on to her.

"I will destroy the universe if he touches her."

The crone gestured around her, and he followed her movements before recognizing dully that he'd blown much of the ship to bits. If he didn't leave soon, there would be nothing but he and shrapnel flattened and chewed in the vacuum of space.

"Than start by leaving for Oi'glass'eer."

Vegeta first sprinted to the bay, dodging falling debris, before hurdling over rubble and taking to the air, his ki a black cape of energy growing like a tempest in the dark.

/ / /

"How the fuck are you not going to tell me you're mated to the Prince?" Bardock's furious face hovered in her watery vision.

She couldn't answer. Bulma sat staring at the radio with sinking horror.

"Oh, sure, I figured maybe you were his slave or his concubine or something, why else would you be interested in a Saiyan's welfare? But his mate?"

"Why...why would you say that to him?" She glared at him with a mixture of anger and despair. "Our relationship is not any of your business!"

"It is my business, when you've got an enormously powerful Saiyan thirsty for blood on the loose and you're housing his mate!"

"I did what I had to," Bulma cried out, mostly to him, tears trembling to fall from her eyes. She dashed at them clumsily. "It was all I could do. I had to leave him. If I didn't...I couldn't help him. I'd be complicit, I'd be...be just as lost as he is." She hated herself for crying, like there wasn't hope. She fisted her hands against her temples and turned her trembling jaw to him. "Why would you say those things? Why would you want to provoke him? He's unstable right now!"

"How else are we going to get him to Oi'glass'eer so we can get the compound in him? What else is going to provoke an insane Saiyan who's on the hunt for his mate?" Bardock's clenched teeth revealed his pronounced eyeteeth. "I can't believe this!" He stomped around the kitchen, arms whirling as he simultaneously sought to destroy things and refrain from causing a mess. "He's going to want blood, and I don't even have any ki!" Bardock seemed to think on it for a moment. "Although, it would be a fun fight."

Bulma sat stiffly in the chair, staring at the radio, trying unsuccessfully not to let the sobs escape her. The Frankensteinian thing glinted back at her benignly. The one link to Vegeta that she'd had in weeks. He'd sounded awful. Sick. Like he'd screamed his throat raw. And yet...she could feel it, that thing between them, tugging at her. His voice wove a spell around her. If Bardock hadn't come in...if he hadn't have ripped the mic away from her and cut her off from the sound of his voice...

All he would have had to say is 'Come here,' and she'd be walking back to her ship and inputting his coordinates without a thought in her head. She felt sick. Where could she put all this agony? She wasn't big enough to contain it.

Slowly, she looked up at Bardock with new, steely resolve. "What do you mean, mated?"

"What do you mean-What am I-Argh." He pulled at his hair before shuffling through the stuff on the counters, finding his cigarettes. He pulled one from the pack and lit it with the smallest spark of ki, and then plopped down in the chair beside her.

"What do you mean, what's mated?" He asked with barely restrained impatience. His rich brown eyes bore into her own sapphire ones.

"I don't understand any of it," she quavered.

"Let's stop right there," he said, standing and pulling another cigarette from his pack before shoving it between her lips and snapping his finger at the tip of it. His nearness made her jump.

He sat back down and stared at her severely as she coughed up smoke.

"You and Vegeta, you're fucking, right?" He narrowed his eyes at her as he awaited her response.

Bulma stared at him harrowingly, sucking on the cigarette, which tasted lightly like pineapple and wood smoke, blowing smoke from trembling lips.

"I don't know if you'd call it fucking," she replied, a tiny nervous titter escaping her.

"You've fucked. He bit you. You met with the Saiyan elders in Otherworld. You were mated, and now you're gone, causing an already emotionally unstable Saiyan to become even more distressed. That explains why you're a mess." He gestured at her wet cheeks and red eyes. "Are you following me?"

"Are you patronizing me?" She narrowed her eyes at him.

They locked eyes.

"You're weak. You're not Saiyan. You can't help that you're a blubbering mess."

"I am not weak. I'm mated to a Saiyan." She pointed at herself with her thumb, scowling. "And you've got your own anger problem."

Bardock growled deep in his chest. "Fair enough."

"You need to tell me," Bulma issued dangerously, "exactly what you mean by Saiyans in Otherworld and all you know about the science of mating, or you're not leaving this planet intact."

"You don't scare me."

"You don't scare me."

"I'm plenty scary," he smiled, canines gleaming, "when I wanna be."

"What is mated?" She yelled.

"I don't know, you tell me!" He hollered back.

"He bit me," she shrieked, "yes, he bit me! And that's it! I blacked out, I came to. That's it."

"There was no Otherworld?" He scrutinized her from under his eyelashes, cigarette glowing. "No Elders?"

"No!"

"Well then I don't know what to tell you!"

"What the hell does that mean?" She was screeching now.

"Mating is as rare as the Super Saiyan, okay?" He bellowed, looking sheepish and familiarly like Goku. He sucked hard on the last of his cigarette and then dashed it between his feet. "All I know is hearsay."

"What do you know," she trembled, with agonizing anger.

"You're supposed to go into a dreamscape and meet the Elders. They guide you through your visions and then you two come out bonded. Forever in defense of the other, forever sympathetic to the other. It is more a legend about the friendships forged in war as it is less romantic jibber jabber. I think the daijjiians have some literature on the folklore in the main library."

"I didn't meet any elders. All I saw was blackness." Her voice was melancholy.

Something in the back of Bulma's mind alighted. "The Super Saiyan transformation is a physiological one. That's why the physical strength of the Saiyan is so important- -they have to be a suitable vessel for the power."

"They must have the mental acuity, too. Or else the power will drive them mad."

"Yes." Something was surfacing from the abyss of her despair.

"Broly is physically able to contain the power," he added quietly, "but mentally, he is gone. That's why we fear him."

"Tell me, Bardock," Bulma said with a hint of excitement, "is Oozaru the same?"

Bardock frowned thoughtfully. "You don't have to be sane to turn Oozaru. Oozaru is the opposite of sane. It is destruction embodied in a nearly unstoppable frame. It's the truly powerful who are able to control and calm the Oozaru mind."

"Yes." Bulma was on the edge of her seat now, cogs turning.

She and Vegeta had always had an uncanny attraction to the other. Neither of them were prepared for it, and neither of them were expressive about it. But there was nothing calm and controlled about each time they were...intimate. It was always jumping into the fray, always desperate and forward. Only with all of the events between them out in space that drew them together were they able to slow down a bit and appreciate how they felt.

It wasn't until Vegeta's body had been pushed to its limits in the Eeyuris camp- -ki-clamped, starved, beaten, and finally, surrendered- -that he'd seemed truly off.

The electricity he could generate from the energy of his body had seemed to blow a fuse. His body was operating on less than all cylinders now. The energy wasn't able to complete a full circuit.

It wasn't until he'd prowled around, alight with sexual promise, that he'd seemed to lose the most control- -she, too. Something was missing in the circuit that the beast in him was trying to fill.

Bulma's eyes widened.

And the beast sought to be filled by her.

It had been like the Oozaru had been calling out in him, seeking to be freed, let loose, through their attraction to one another. The Oozaru in him was still there, tangled up in a new event: mating. That's how the Oozaru wanted out. And she had, somehow, been able to reciprocate.

Her colleague's voice echoed back to her, as they had rewired the group of robots in his basement that winter she and Vegeta had been estranged. They run on batteries, sure, or alternate or more efficient forms of power, like solar, but these robots eat up the energy quick. Robots are simple and effortless almost, but their bodies can't compare to a human body in the profound way they absorb and conserve energy.

Saiyan's ki manifested and anchored itself to their body by their metabolism.

Once balance to his already fast paced metabolism was restored, Vegeta wouldn't be physically ill anymore.

But he'd still be all animal.

"Unless we also restore his tail," she breathed.

"What?"

"That's it!" She squealed, hopping out of her chair to embrace Bardock even as he stuttered, her cigarette falling to the floor. "I'm a genius!"

She couldn't help but whoop for joy.

"Modest, aren't you?" Bardock grumbled.

"Adult Saiyans who have lost their tails don't grow them back, do they?" She asked him breathlessly.

"No." He gaped at her sudden transformation.

"Well, they do now! I need some of your DNA. I have some of Vegeta's DNA, some hair or something, I'm sure of it, in my pack!"

She grasped his shoulders.

"We can do this," she assured him, smiling. "We make the cellular compound to restore his tail. We finish the compound to rebalance his metabolism. We fly to Oi'glass'eer. We get the last ingredient, we meet with Vegeta. I'll distract him, you inject him. Eureka! He's himself again. I'm myself again. And we can go home."

Bardock stared at her in disbelief.

She beamed. "How long until we arrive at Oi'glass'eer?"

"Lucky for you," Bardock said into his cigarette, "we're in the same solar system. A day, tops."

"Oh, good. It will take Vegeta a week at best to make it there." Her grip tightened on his shoulders. "Now, let's get to work!"

Bardock looked at her with a pained expression.

"But I'm tired."

She stared at him in shock. "We can get this done in a day. I'm ready to go, we'll just make a pot of coffee- -"

The light went out on her and she heard Bardock's voice dim as he moved back to the couch. "Get some sleep, you mated nutjob."

Bardock heard her huff and move to the couch opposite him.

"You're going to need it," he griped into his pillow.

/ / /

A/N: It's been a long time. I know, I know. It's almost been two years since I first began this story! It was my very first fan fiction. *clasps hands together and looks moonily off into the distance* And it's been since last July that it was updated. I'm appalled, too. That's why I'm so excited to be able to offer you another chapter. I never, ever intended to abandon Reciprocity and be one of those cruel authors who never finish their story, although there were times I considered that it was a lost cause and that I was, indeed, one of those cruel authors. This chapter was a product of several months of brainstorming, over-thinking, and general agony. Once I started writing this chapter with any success, it took me sitting in front of it every day for a month to get it right. There are so many things I doubt and am self conscious about with this story. I would be pleased as punch and so grateful if you'd be kind enough to leave a review and let me know how you liked it.