Maybe it's because she spent a good chunk of her misspent youth watching zombie films, but there's something about big, abandoned stores that freaks her the fuck out.
She doesn't trust this damn place as far as she can throw it, so she shines the beam of her flashlight down the aisles in front of her. There's nothing, save for a few cereal boxes on the floor. Someone probably dropped them in their haste to grab things and get out of there. But that doesn't tell her what's in the other aisles, the ones she can't see down—who knows what's lurking behind the cover of the shelves, waiting to take her by surprise the next time she turns a corner.
Holding her breath, she strains her ears to pick up something, anything, but it's a moot point. There's nothing she'd be able to hear over the pound of blood in her ears.
She breathes out and, like a dumbass, turns her back to the rest of the store and enters the pharmacy.
This little jaunt had been timed perfectly. The most recent attacks had been 229 miles away in Papel Town, which means she probably has a good hour before boredom drives the cyborgs back toward West City. It's a good thing, too. Too many people are sick with things that ought to be easily preventable: diseases are mutating faster than she can synthesizes vaccines, and the constant threat of the cyborgs hanging over them isn't helping.
"Fucking Gero," she mutters, pawing through shelves of discarded bottles of stool softener and birth control pill-packs.
This is her fault. She should have known Goku wasn't hard enough to finish off Gero when he had the chance. And it was too much to ask of a boy who knew nothing of the world to accept that kind of blood on his hands. Even at sixteen, she should have looked away from Yamucha long enough to recognize how formidable an inventor Gero was—she should have known what he was capable of. This is all on her. If the only way to make amends to the people suffering her mistakes is to get them antimicrobials, then she'll venture into a hundred deserted stores.
She reaches for a box at the back. A neti pot. Fuck's sake.
It's only by the grace of a god that is no longer on the Lookout that she doesn't just kick the damn shelf over. This isn't the fruitful mission she hoped it would be. It took almost an hour to convince Trunks that not only would she be back but that she'd be the Santa Claus of drugs. Not to mention the precious time this is taking away from the first tests of the time machine.
She's forty minutes out from West City. Maybe if she moves quickly, she'll get lucky at the pharmacy near Fizz Pass before she has to head home.
Just as she turns to leave, her gaze lights on a metal door on the opposite wall from the drive-thru window. She brings her flashlight up and the beam illuminates what looks like hundreds of gouges and bullet marks near the keypad above the door handle.
Relief hits her like a ki blast as she makes her way over, free hand fumbling for the case in her back pocket. She clicks it open and delicately removes capsule 4-L0k, depressing it and tossing it to the floor. When the smoke clears, her electric decrypter beams up at her like an old friend.
It's short work to rig the electrodes up to the keypad and find the passcode. She keys in the sequence—56-2-901-83-1-1—and trips a little when the door swings open at her. Who seriously makes pull doors anymore? Honestly.
Her flashlight beam curves over shelf upon shelf of bottles and boxes, all aligned neatly like soldiers in formation. If she gets a bit misty-eyed at the sight of them, well, no one's there to comment on it.
Grinning so wide her cheeks complain, she begins shoving the important things into a pile to be encapsulated. Penicillin-V, azithromycin, chloramphenicol, morphine, peramivir, carbamazepine, doxycycline—god, it's a treasure trove. It's a miracle. This will help so many people; this will help her in synthesizing new, more effective compounds. There is literally nothing that could ruin this moment for her.
"Why, Ms. Bulma Briefs, I do declare. Fancy meeting you here."
The label on the bottle of atorvastatin in her hand blurs, and inside the tablets begin to rattle. Slowly, she straightens.
"My secretary used to call me Ms. Briefs," she rasps, swallowing a gathering of saliva that drags like knives all the way down. "Usually when I missed a meeting. My friends called me Bulma. You're neither."
When she turns, Juunanagou doesn't so much as shift his weight. He stands with his arms crossed, an almost soft look of boredom upon his classically beautiful features. There's an anger that's been left to simmer in her gut over the years, but seeing him like this—so close, so unaffected—makes it boil over.
"So when you address me, you'll use Doctor Briefs. I earned that title three times over."
The corner of his lips twitch. "Fair enough, Doctor. Doing a little shopping, are we? I'm surprised to see you so far from home and all alone. Earnest Ernie isn't with you?"
Bulma dredges up what her father used to call her "professional" smile—the pleasant facade she'd show to their shareholders and the press. The one that says I am a consummate professional who won't stab you in the neck at the first chance, I promise. "Trunks is nowhere near here, sorry."
Juunanagou snaps his fingers, downtrodden. "That's too bad. I had a little surprise for him."
"He knows not to take things from people he doesn't know."
"Aww, come on, Doctor. It's not like we're strangers," Juunanagou chirps with a smile that would be kind on anyone else. "Hell, we're practically besties."
"Yeah? And what kind of mother would I be if I let my kid hang around with the guy who decimates an entire town every week? I mean, I'm not the greatest parent in the world, but give me some credit."
She glances behind Juunanagou to the exit, but it's not even worth the energy she'd expend taking a step to try. He'd be on her before she could blink. Where the hell is Gohan? He'd gone to try to contain them in Papel Town, but if Juunanagou's here then Juuhachigou must be skulking around somewhere nearby.
It occurs to her that there should probably be more screaming and crying and pleading happening in the face of the physical embodiment of all her nightmares, but all she can muster is a feeling of inconvenience. All this medication, wasted. All that work on the time machine, wasted.
"So, how was Papel Town?" As if she doesn't know.
He sucks air through his teeth, all teenage petulance. "Boring. There was nothing there worth our time besides a bunch of stupid little gift shops and a barn movie theater. Like, it was a literal movie theater in a barn."
"Yeah, Papel Town has never been what you'd call hopping."
"Doesn't matter now, though."
She sighs, suddenly very tired of this game. "There's nothing there worth anyone's time, is there?"
"Flattened it," he agrees with a sage nod. "I mean, if anything, it looks much more interesting as a flaming pile than it ever did as a town. Your boy Gohan did his best, but in the end? You can't fight city hall."
All right, enough of this. With a deep breath, she turns her back on Juunanagou in her second dumbass move of the day and goes about encapsulating the pile of medicine at her feet. She slips the capsule into her case and tucks it into her pocket, standing back up. When she turns to him, he tilts his head at her, a slow sneer curling his lip.
"So."
She exhales. "So, nothing. I'm going home."
"Oh, are you?" He looks like he wants to laugh out loud at that, but doesn't, probably under the impression it'll make him look less cool. Gero may have made a first-rate product, but he could've put in five extra minutes of work to get rid of their personalities. What the hell was he thinking, mechanizing a couple of teenagers?
"Yeah," Bulma says. "I am. Move."
"And if I don't?"
"Stand there and rust, then," she snaps.
When he slams her into the wall, she almost doesn't feel it. It's so fast, so out of left field, that she's already stationary by the time her stomach catches up and drops. Hot breath washes over the curve of her jaw as Juunanagou's hands force her wrists back against the wall on either side of her head. Blood roars in her ears at his closeness, both in revulsion and a terrible need; it's been years since someone was so close to her. If she were to close her eyes, she could pretend the fingers pressing into her pulse points were dressed in white and gold cloth.
"You seem to be operating under the impression that I won't kill you." His voice is a cruel, sensual drag of gossamer over gravel. "What makes you so sure?"
The fear that had been missing from before rises in her throat, thick like sludge, and she tries to breathe around it but can't force her lungs to work.
He presses forward, their edges and outlines meeting, and his hand pulls her right wrist back, slides his fingers up to curl around her own. When he squeezes, it's with the promise of pain.
"What makes you think I won't break these pretty hands?"
"Because," she rasps. "When you break, these are the pretty hands that will fix you."
At that, he pulls back. "What?"
Dragging in a breath, she forces out, "What happens when something goes wrong? Something always does. It's the nature of technology. Nothing's built to last—not even you."
The best part is, it's not even a lie. She has no idea what went into making the cyborgs, but Gero could only design and create to a point. There are no foolproof things, not ones built by human hands. That the cyborgs turned on their creator already speaks of a design flaw. What will happen in five years? Ten? Will their tissues and muscles still accept the wires and servos forced inside them? Eventually, their bodies will reject the changes.
By the look of confused anger on Juunanagou's face, it's obviously never crossed his mind. Isn't that just like a teenager to believe himself immortal?
She grins at the edge she has and uses the terror clawing at her to hoist herself onto it. "You're not a sure thing, Juunanagou, and neither is your sister. And what's to say that Gero didn't have a contingency plan if you turned on him?"
"He didn't."
"No? What makes you so sure?" It's an unexpected treat to throw his own words back at him. "All scientists have contingency plans."
"Oh yeah?" Juunanagou snarls. "Do you?"
She thinks of the gleam of gold, the bending of physics. When she smiles, it isn't kind. "Of course I do, but we're not talking about me. We're talking about Gero, and who knows what he has in store for you and your sister. Whatever it is, I bet it's perfect."
(Years later, she'll look back on that and laugh until she cries.)
He says nothing. Something ugly twists his mouth into a lock that won't open.
"So go ahead. Make sure I can't lift a wrench or tap a key ever again. See how long you last then. You break me, you break you. There's no one else in this world who can do what I do."
It's true… for now. Trunks knows where all her notes, published articles, simulations, and tutorials are. If she dies before the time machine's done, it won't languish incomplete. Her boy will take up her work and safe his future himself. He's got her brains and his father's determination. And with Gohan there to guide him, there's nothing that will stop him from delivering this world from her mistakes.
"Step aside, you loser. Let me do the honors."
His hand tightens around hers for a brief moment before releasing it altogether. The desire to rip her limb from limb roils like oil in his eyes, but he blinks it away, stepping back.
Bulma looks over his shoulder to where Juuhachigou watches them.
"Leave her alone, Juuhachigou." He stares deep into Bulma's eyes as he says it, the words stilted and reluctant, all teenage hatred.
"What?" Juuhachigou looks offended at that. "Oh, come on, you want to grind this bitch to dust as much as I do. Look at you! You're practically shaking with it!"
But as deep as he gazes into her, she gazes right back and sees straight down into him where the possibility—certainty—of death lingers. Among the blood and gears twitching beneath his skin, there is no future to be found, and he knows it.
"And we will," Juunanagou promises. "But not today. Today, she gets to go to the underground base she thinks we don't know about and hug her annoying kid."
Don't have to tell her twice. With one last look, she pushes away from the wall and walks quickly past them both, close enough to Juuhachigou to smell her stolen perfume. Rose and lilac.
She's out of the pharmacy and halfway down the aisle when Juunanagou's voice floats after her: "That goes for you, too, Doctor. You're not built to last, either. I'll make sure of it."
Her feet slow to a stop, but she doesn't turn. Instead, she smiles at the future that yawns out like a new horizon before her.
"I don't know," Bulma says. "I think time's on my side on this one."
When no answer is forthcoming, she starts forward again. The bells above the door frame jingle as she leaves. Her motorbike is right where she left it in the alley down the block, and it revs quietly to life under her touch; the case of capsules in her back pocket presses reassuringly against her as she straddles the seat.
It's usually forty minutes to West City, but she has a feeling she'll make better time than that.