A/N: I recently lectured a very good friend on how to define and explore characters (among more broad topics), which got me thinking about a couple of characters I 'knew'. I found I wanted to explore one very special one…
This is a prelude to another fic I am thinking about writing, and may even be the first chapter.
**
I picked up the cup, and held it to my lips, sipping it carefully. It was hot.
I stared straight ahead, trying to wake up. This was my favourite way to wake up, because it was how I used to wake up, a long time ago.
Another sip passed my lips. I felt it's heat spreading through me, like all good coffee does. This coffee was a rare Icejin brand, one that Freiza had introduced me to, long ago.
My eyes opened a little wider. I really should stop falling asleep on the job, but I enjoy – no, that isn't the word for it… Maybe it is. It's my hobby, whether I enjoy it or not…
It is a valuable pastime, I reminded myself. After all, it had created the wonderful visions that filled this room.
Only one of them was real.
Another noisy sip.
Age gets 'em eventually. It's one thing I haven't learned to circumvent yet.
Why, age? Why did you take her away from me?
**
Still, she is there. In front of me, a fragile statue, a ragdoll, encased in an impenetrable shell. Not even age, not even time, can hurt her now.
I reclaimed a little of her time. My inventions, good as they are, cannot restore her. They can only, for the moment, hold her in the balance.
I wonder what it's like to look out from a cage you can't touch? The impenetrable prison?
Of course, it isn't truly impenetrable. I can reach through it… not physically.
Just to reassure myself that my prison wasn't harming her, I reached out, mentally.
Calmness. She's asleep.
I always get that.
It seems almost as if she is comatose, but no matter how far I reach back, I get nothing from her. Only a thoughtless, dreamless sleep.
Damn you! Damn you, Kakarott… Why won't you let me!
**
I take myself into another room, before I think again. I will not sully Bulma's personal space with these… piteous thoughts.
Sealing my Bulma in her iron cavern, I travel up to the laboratories in our home.
You'd love it here, Bulma. Thousands of laboratories. A veritable treasure trove, in which any scientist could find their own personal wet dream.
Yet I still seeked the magical, the spiritual. I wished that Kakarott had not swallowed the Four Star Dragon Ball… I would love nothing more than to wish my Bulma back.
I traveled towards the battery room.
**
Standing outside that magnificent metal door – like the Gravity Chamber's, Bulma! – I sat on the floor, thinking again.
I had the mechanism. I could pull Bulma back to how she was when she was conceived, then let her grow in my Chrono Chamber until she is adult…
…and watch her, comatose, just existing.
Something from her was gone. The soul; spirit. That most important piece of life not governed by mere science.
Why could I not define it? I, Vegeta, conqueror over Time, could infinitely sustain a life inside a Chrono field, but not even discover the nature of a soul?
I drained the rest of the coffee – a cold sludge by now – and disintegrated the cup.
**
Two hours later, I emerged into Energy Lab again. Two full hours of Super Saiya-jin level One.
I didn't have the concentration, the urge, or the need for Two.
I pass my hand through my hair. Another week's worth of power added to his massive power credit. He wondered if TerraBank would ever work out how he was so rich.
Like they matter. I need this power for my experiments.
I need this power to resurrect my Bulma.
**
A Human Queen over a Saiya-jin Empire… yes, she would rule us Saiya-jins well. Loving both me and Kakarott, she would have no trouble exerting her muscle over the rest of them…
…if only I had the way to give someone life, after I had given them time…
I could make hearts beat. I could make lungs breathe. I even mastered Dende's art of Healing, and Piccolo's art of Creation… and added them to my own art of Destruction.
A few thousand years of boredom had seen me even master the Frieza Beam and the Kienzan.
Oolong and Puar's transformations had been mastered in under a decade, with relative ease… even working out how to do it via mere science was child's play.
No amount of creating bodies, creating organs, healing anything and anyone who had been Chrono'd – nothing worked. All I could do was disassemble them, log all the data, and try again.
This time, guesswork won't cut it. I'm sick and tired of my endless reasons, workarounds, and outright excuses for why my next solution would work. I was only trying to work around the solution, because I couldn't define a soul.
I need someone who can.
**
I put my hand through my grey hair again, thinking.
Theoretically, in an infinite number of parallel universes over an infinite period of time, someone must have defined the soul in some form. So all I had to do was find them.
This time, I needed Astro Lab.
**
Even blasting myself into my component atoms and reassembling myself from scratch is automatic now. It also proves that there is something base, something more simplistic and powerful than the physical body. That is the soul, that I am searching so hard for…
I spread my arms, and rose to the right height. Holding myself there, I telepathically instructed the computer to hypnotise me.
**
I will find a way.
My Bulma, my rose, this is for you.
**
Back in the Chronos Chamber, the figure frozen in time changed.
A single rose was held in those perfect hands.
**
A/N: Yeah, in case you didn't realize, that was Vegeta and his motives about ten to eleven thousand years after Bulma died.
Saiya-jins have an effective maximum lifespan of 150 years, approximately double that of humans. However, due to their high-impact lives, they tend to wear out a lot faster and die before they lose control of their faculties.
When a Saiya-jin goes SSj1, his entire Ki flows through his body all the changing the DNA and cells, so he can move faster, react faster, and the like. However, where a normal Saiya-jin dies eventually, a Super Saiya-jin – providing his Ki remains high enough – has his body cells regenerated by his Ki.
Vegeta is over 11,000 years old now. His Ki is as strong as ever – his warrior spirit has faded.
Please R&R.