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Fire.
She had always loved fire.
She would sit for hours with the others, when they made camp in the woods, and just stare into the flames, watching them devour and burn.
Now, however, she was watching as the same fire she had come to know and love devoured her home, her life, everything that had ever mattered to her.
With a wrenching sob, she scrambled over the rubble to wrench open one of the special blast doors of Capsule Corps main building.
Shoving the burning piece of metal aside, she slid through the rubble, trying her best to walk delicately over the remnants of the collapsed, broken building.
Finally, she reached Laboratory #2, where the time machine was held.
Forcing the doors open, she froze, a scream rising in the back of her throat, smoke clogging her eyes, the smell of charred flesh making her nose sting.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she forced herself to move past the bodies, towards the shining silver hull that would take her out of hell.
Scrambling into the cockpit, pale green fingers darted across the keypad, punching in coordinates even as the machine began to hum to life.
She looked out on her broken world, engulfed in fire, and forced herself to focus on the blackened bodies strewn across the floor.
Tears streaming from her eyes, she murmured a soft 'I'm sorry' before the time machine shuddered, lurched, and vanished from sight.
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Bulma was in her Lab, tinkering with a new invention she had been stewing over for several weeks, when the room began to tremble.
Confused, she looked up at the computer screen, but there were no earthquake warnings flashing across the screen.
However, the trembling had become much more forceful, and, when she tried to stand, Bulma was barely able to keep her balance.
"What on earth…?"
The next second, and a blinding flash of bright white light illuminated the room, and Bulma was knocked clean off her feet, landing with a dull thud against the wall, helpless against the burning heat she suddenly felt against her face.
When the light finally began to fade, Bulma blinked desperately, trying to dispel the black spots clouding her vision.
When she could see again, she gasped in shock.
Imbedded in the wall of her underground lab was the glowing orange hull of her time machine.
Gaping at it, Bulma blinked, then scrambled to her feet, moving towards the smoking hull.
However, as she got closer, she could feel the heat still radiating off of the burning metal, and so looked around for something to extinguish the fire. Her eyes landing on the fire alarm on the wall, she walked over and pulled the handle.
Immediately, the room was filled with a loud blaring, red flashing lights, and a deluge of ice-cold water.
Bulma could hear the distinct hiss of the red hot metal cooling, and, upon closer inspection, she was able to find the lever that opened the pod.
Sweeping her blue hair out of her face, Bulma leaned over the edge, trying to see.
What she found made her stomach turn.
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"What the hell's going on!?" yelled Vegeta, as the rumbling grew louder.
The entire gravity room shook with the force of, well, whatever it was.
Then, suddenly, everything went still.
Confused, the Z fighters exited the gravity room, heading over to the Capsule Corp main building.
There, they spotted Dr. Briefs coming out of his laboratory, looking around in confusion.
"Hey, Doc. What was that?" asked Goku, also looking around.
Bulma's dad shrugged, and nearly jumped out of his pants when the fire alarm started to sound.
Glancing over his shoulder, Dr. Briefs looked at his computer screen, and his face drained of color.
"BULMA!" he cried, and took off down the hall, the confused Z fighters right behind him.
The alarm had come from Laboratory #2.
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"Bulma!" Goku yelled, pounding on the metal door to her lab. When he tried to open it, they discovered that it was stuck.
"BULMA!"
The muffled call from the other side of the door was barely audible, but it had Vegeta worked up enough to the point where he physically tore the re-enforced titanium door clean off it's hinges.
"Bulma!" called Gohan, scrambling through the cold downpour of water, trying to see through his sopping bangs.
"Over here!" called a familiar voice, and the Z fighters turned to see Bulma leaning over a time machine, her arms inside the cockpit, trying to dislodge the pilot.
"Help me!" she called, trying to lift the still figure trapped inside the machine.
Gohan, however, was frozen to the spot.
"Gohan?" asked Goku, noticing the boy's still visage.
Gohan was shaking uncontrollably, fear racing through him.
One of the bloodstained arms of the ships occupant had flopped out over Bulma's shoulder.
The arm was green.
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Gohan was the first to scramble over the debris to reach Bulma's side, almost too terrified to speak.
"Gohan, it's not what you think." Said Bulma suddenly. Looking over the boys shoulder, she motioned for Goku.
"Help me lift her." She said.
"Her?" whispered Gohan, confused.
Also looking rather perplexed, Goku stepped foreward.
When he laid eyes on the ships occupant, he paled, but reached down anyway, wrapping the figure gently in the white cloth surrounding it, and lifting the thin body out of the wreckage.
"Come on," said Bulma, and they all hurried out of the wet Lab, and down another hall to one of the building's main emergency units.
"Put her on the table." Bulma commanded, throwing on a white coat.
"Bulma, what's going on?" asked her father somewhat angrily, still confused. His daughter shook her head, then went to stand beside Goku, who had laid out the body on an operating table.
There was a collective breathe from the room at large.
Lying on the table was a namekian, that much they were sure of, but the features and shape of the individual where unlike any other namek they had ever seen.
A soft, rounded face was offset with a delicate nose, full lips, and large, gracefully pointed ears. Waves of lavender hair cascaded around the figure, held in check partially by the bandanna tied around the head.
The figure was clothed in simple, dark purple fighting gi pants, plain black shoes, and a cutoff shirt to match the pants.
The gentle curves of the body left little to the imagination.
They were looking at a female.
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