Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Second Time ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ, blablabla. This is just for fun and to unleash some fantasies about a Saiyan prince, no commercial interests.

The Second Time

Part One

Bulma worked in her lab, taking advantage of the rare peace in her home. Trunks was out camping with Goten (to train, they said, though Vegeta mumbled that the only thing they would "train" was their thoughts about girls, making Bulma laugh), and Bra would spend the weekend at Pan's. Vegeta, of course, was training; anyway, he rarely hassled her at that hour of the afternoon (he had been too quiet, ultimately. Maybe he was still upset because Goku hadn't sparred with him at the Tournament). So she was finally free to calmly make the last adjustments in her treasured secret project.

Since Goku had commented that she was aging, Bulma put all her heart into restoring her youth. Actually, she had been thinking about that for a while before he said it. Although the blue-haired scientist proclaimed herself as looking younger than she really was, and friends and employees agreed with her (they weren't crazy of saying no), deep, deep inside she knew that it wasn't entirely true. It hadn't been without regret that she had replaced her short, tight dresses with long, discreet ones, more suitable for a mature, respectable family woman and president of such an important company. It wasn't without bitter pangs that she tried to hide the first lines in her face with thick layers of make-up, causing Vegeta to remark that she looked like a clown. It was Vegeta, for that matter, who felt most Bulma's inward revolt against time, through her freqüent bad disposition and sarcastic snaps. After all, if it is hard enough for a woman to feel the height of years, worse still when your husband is a forever young Saiyan.

Poor Vegeta. When she had yelled at Goku that they Saiyans were freaks, he had given her such a hurt look (though no one beyond her would have noticed that he was hurt). She hadn't cared about it then because she was too mad, but now she regretted it. How to tell him that, inwardly, she was frightened that he could become sick of being shackled to an old woman like her and leave her for a girl? Or, what looked more probable, took off in a spaceship to never come back? He would call her pathetic.

Of course, there were the dragonballs. But the doubly busy family and businesswoman had no longer time or mood to run the world for them as she used before. Eventually, she started to build secretly a sort of time machine. Instead transporting people through time-space like Mirai Trunk's, however, this machine altered time in people. You could become younger or older, as you pleased. If it worked (if? it WAS GOING to work!), she could go back to her thirties or twenties. Maybe even... Bulma giggled and flicked the timer for sixteen years old. The age she had in her first search after the dragonballs. Hee, hee, she couldn't wait to see the look on Vegeta's face, when he saw her as a girl! Maybe she could rejuvenate him, too, tough Bulma didn't believe Vegeta would want. But it would be funny, anyway.

Respectively, Bulma and Vegeta had 30 and 31 when they first met. It hadn't been love at first sight. Afterwards, however, Bulma had madly fallen for the violent Saiyan, even knowing that the only thing he probably felt for her was lust. True love had come only much later. They had spent almost twenty years together, twenty years spiced with sex, fights and lots of passion. For Bulma, however, it was too little. How many years were left for them to spend together? Ten? Fifteen? It wasn't fair.

Maybe that was why she so much liked imagining how could it had been if she had met Vegeta when they still were teenagers. It was impossible, she knew: if he had came to Earth that time, even Goku wouldn't had been able to stop him. Vegeta was then much more powerful and experienced than the naive boy raised in the woods; he would had exterminated all Earthlings without thinking twice. Even still, Bulma liked that fantasy.

"If I have wished a boyfriend, maybe Shen-Long had brought me Vegeta and I wouldn't have wasted my youth and my virginity with Yamcha. And Vegeta wouldn't have spent half part of his life tortured by that Freeza. Many people wouldn't have died... damn it! How could I leave these wires loose like this? The machine'll never work without them!"

So absorbed Bulma was that she didn't notice when the door opened and Vegeta walked in, silently as always. The Saiyan Prince saw his mate kneeling over one of those mechanic monsters of hers and frowned. He knew she had a new project, but even now, after all the trouble he had to get rid of the brats she wouldn't get a break?

And what was that? Looked like a glass cylinder with a door, a bit like the chambers that the earthlings used to make phone calls, but one side was covered with a metal plate filled with tiny lamps. It was there where Bulma was working now. A sort of hair dryer, perhaps, Vegeta thought cynically. He reached over and put a hand on her shoulder: "Bulm..."

"Ouch!" Bulma startled and put the red wire where the blue one was supposed to be. They heard a buzzing sound and the lamps started to blink. The entire machine shivered like it was about to explode, causing the couple to back away.

"What a fuck...!"Vegeta just had time to ask before a dark cloud started to form in and out of the opened chabine before spreading all over the lab.

"Oh no! What have YOU done!" Bulma yelled as she ran for the fire extinguisher. Too late. In one minute, there was nothing to be seen and the only sounds that could be heard clearly were coughs and swearings in two voices.