A Pair of Socks
Goku and Piccolo try their inept hands at behind-the-scenes matchmaking for Bulma and Vegeta in order to ensure the birth of a certain warrior from the future. Meanwhile, Bulma begins to suspect someone is trying to kill her.
Bulma clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the escape of an involuntary squeak. She stood rooted to the spot, her breath rattling in harsh, short gasps against the barrier of her fingers as she strained her ears to hear anything beyond the hammering of her own heart. She remained frozen for nearly a full minute before any signals from her higher brain managed to pierce the senseless howling of her more primordial instincts. These reminded her with devastating rationality that if she really was under some imminent threat, standing in full view in the middle of the open lawn was definitely a tactical error.
Risking a quick glance around, she roused her misfiring nervous system and scuttled back into the shadows in what she prided herself was an unobtrusive fashion. She reached out and rested her hand against the door to the laboratory she had exited not long before. She didn't unlock it just yet, but the mere promise of escape allowed her to pause and assess the situation logically.
What was the probability, she wondered to herself, that she might have travelled billions of miles through space and survived a homicidal interstellar maniac, assorted minions, and an exploding planet, only to die in her own backyard? Infinitesimal, surely. There was nowhere she felt safer than at the Capsule Corporation compound, where both the newest prototypes and their creators were protected by a myriad of security measures. Any intruder was almost guaranteed a swift and inventive form of death and dismemberment—and not necessarily in that order. So in the absence of blaring alarms and firing lasers, the only plausible explanation was that her senses were deceiving her.
She brought a hand up to swipe hastily at her bleary eyes. It was somewhere past two in the morning, and she had been asleep at her desk no more than a quarter hour before. She had woken, disoriented and alone, to the eerie hum of idling machinery in a half dozen darkened and empty laboratories. It was a depressingly familiar scenario since she had once again found herself single and staring at the other side of thirty. Not wanting to linger on her life choices, she had taken only the time necessary to peel her face away from the stack of papers to which it had adhered and snatch up her keycard—upending an untouched sandwich on a paper plate in the process—before lurching groggily outside into the fickle starlight.
Given this, it was easy to accept that what she had thought she had seen was no more than a dream. The fleeting glimpse of a spectral figure disappearing into the shrubbery only a creation of her drowsy brain. The faintest whisper of a boot against gravel just an auditory hallucination conjured by the conspiracy of a burgeoning headache and an empty stomach.
Like ninety percent of things in her life, this could all be satisfactorily explained and categorized into a narrative that fit within the predictable laws of nature. She took a steadying breath, but her heart rate refused to slow.
There was, however, still that irksome ten percent, which was populated by things like magical Dragon Balls and body-swapping aliens. It was that ten percent that kept her clinging to the door, unwilling to go backwards or forwards. Waiting. Waiting for an echo in the dark. Waiting for a ghostly flicker on the edge of her vision. Waiting for the impossible and the impossibly terrifying to find her.
A few more minutes passed in agonizing suspense before she snapped herself suddenly upright, letting out a muffled curse. Pull it together, Bulma. You are a beautiful, brilliant, confident, grown-ass woman, and you can walk across your own yard at night. She assessed the empty expanse between her and the house. It wasn't far at all. She glanced to the side, catching sight of the crimson glow from the gravity chamber. But Vegeta was closer…
Her feet began moving before she was conscious of making a decision. She took the last vestiges of her fear and fed them to the small flame of irritation burning under her rib cage, kindling a new emotion. She knew better than to show the Saiyan prince anything resembling weakness.
In fact, she had developed a certain expertise in manipulating her resident alien over the past year and more. She had begun by thinking of him a bit like a stray cat hanging around the compound, showing up for meals and otherwise assiduously evading human contact. From there, she had successfully built an unlikely type of rapport between them. This largely consisted of her yelling at him not to do things, and him ignoring her while strutting regally around her home. So, almost exactly like having a cat.
The real trick had been learning never to show him all her cards, but only to reveal enough of her plans to make him suspicious of her. A suspicious Vegeta would drop almost anything to stalk and study her. While he puzzled over her ulterior motives and plotted her ultimate downfall, she often managed to convince him to do two or three constructive things in a row. Like shower and change his clothes.
Jabbing at the button that turned on the video screen inside the gravity chamber, she drew a deep breath before launching into a well-rehearsed tirade. "R-E-S-T. Rest, Vegeta. Your body needs it, even if your brain is too atrophied to realize it. You obviously can't become a Super Saiyan just by beating yourself half to death, or you would be one already. All you're doing is ensuring yourself an early grave on a backwater planet, your name and all your people an insignificant little blip on the universal radar.
"And I wouldn't give a damn about your dumb legend, except my life and my planet just might depend on your survival. Look at me, Vegeta. I am too lovely and talented—" There was a sharp, annoyed exhale of breath from within, and the light softened inside as the simulator was shut down. They both recognized the inevitable crescendo of her diatribe, and she plowed ahead without pausing, "—to die because you are an egotistical, sociopathic, musclebound, dim-witted, pint-sized, son of a bit—"
The door opened and Vegeta loomed with a practiced air. Although the negligible difference in their heights made it easy to stare him down, she found herself focusing on his bare chest, covered in sweat and half a dozen shallow cuts dripping blood. He crossed his arms and muscles rippled. She felt a little light-headed, but she attributed that sensibly to her plummeting blood sugar.
He was silent long enough that she began to worry she may have laid it on too thick this time, and a small flicker of relief flashed through her when he spoke. "I grow weary of explaining the many ways in which Saiyan physiology eclipses your weak human body. I will rest when I require it."
"I've patched you up enough times to develop some familiarity with your physiology, and that, frankly, is bullshit."
Even in the unreliable light squeezing around him through the door frame she could still trace the fierce blush that crept down his chest. If it was possible, his tone became even more frigid. "If we are speaking frankly, I will remind you that not only does your long term survival depend upon you leaving me in peace to train, but your short term survival does as well."
Good. Death threats. Things were progressing just as expected. "It's exactly your short-sightedness that's the problem. Putting aside for a moment that your main reason for sticking around is to beat one of my oldest friends into a bloody pulp, you won't even last until the androids at this pace. It's a marathon, not a sprint, Vegeta. And this is your friendly reminder that you can't prove you're better than anyone, let alone Goku, if you're dead."
"Kakarot—" he sputtered. One of his eyebrows twitched as he fought down his knee-jerk reaction at the mere mention of the other Saiyan. His features sharpened, and he leaned in menacingly. "How touching that you were so concerned about my health that you came all this way in the middle of the night just to insult my honor. Your benevolence is truly limitless."
She heard the note of wariness in his voice and knew her victory was at hand. Still, her heart was drumming in her chest like a small rodent caught in the claws of some slavering beast. Going toe-to-toe with a man who had destroyed entire planets was no walk through the park.
"Yes, well, I don't see anyone else around—"
In the space of a blink, his hand gripped her chin with enough force to draw a gasp from her and his voice growled in her ear, "There is ink on your face, woman."
Her often ignored sense of self-preservation began clamoring for attention. Abort, repeat, abort mission.
She settled for stepping back with as much easy confidence as she could muster. The sting of his rough handling lingered and her cheeks were flushed with chagrin, but she was proud of her casual tone. "One rule, Vegeta." She flourished an admonitory finger at him. "No touching the goods."
He grunted as he crossed his arms again, dismissing her interjection with a jerk of his chin as he worked through the puzzle before him. "So you have been working late in your laboratory. And for some reason you decided to berate me for doing the same. Why? Is there not something frivolous you would rather be doing?"
She winced internally, but managed a dispassionate shrug. "So maybe we're both highly driven individuals. Maybe we have more in common than you might think. Which qualifies me to let you know when you're being unreasonable."
The silence that met her comment was a censure in its own right. She rolled her eyes. "Look, let me simplify it for you. I'm tired and hungry. I need to know, do you want to eat with me? Or eat...adjacent to me? In the same room. Not saying anything to each other. Possibly glaring malevolently." She glanced quickly up at him, meeting a pair of forbidding dark eyes. "Oh good, you've already started. Yes, exactly like that." She half turned, firing a challenge over her shoulder. "Well, come along, your highness."
She marched ahead towards the house. Vegeta followed. She did not look back.
—
Miles away from West City, Piccolo came to rest on a rocky outcropping. Clenching his fists, he silently berated himself for his foolishness. He had been so focused on suppressing his ki and avoiding detection that he had entirely forgotten to account for a human's feeble night vision. White, billowing cloaks were apparently a poor choice for nocturnal reconnaissance missions.
He allowed himself a few more moments of self-recrimination, then thoroughly ground the emotion down in order to focus on more pressing concerns.
The timeline was altering.
True, he had no exact birthdate to work with, but the window of time in which a boy could be born some two years after the arrival of a warrior from the future was rapidly narrowing. Even by his most generous calculations, Bulma should be carrying a half-Saiyan child by now.
He had feared this possibility ever since he first overheard the true origin of Trunks. That even though the boy had sworn Goku to secrecy, simply by travelling into the past Trunks had already altered events in any number of small, incalculable ways and inadvertently prevented his own birth. Perhaps Vegeta became too preoccupied with training for the androids' arrival. Perhaps Bulma became consumed with inventing a system for mass dispersal of the cure for the virus. Perhaps any number of strange permutations of events cooperated to keep the unlikely pair apart.
Regardless of the mechanism, they were racing headlong towards an unknown deadline days or maybe weeks in the future, after which Trunks' existence would be entirely erased. From there, Piccolo could only surmise that the timeline would seek to self-correct by collapsing the two divergent realities into one. Then there would be no memory of a messenger from an apocalyptic future, no medicine to save Goku, and no hope left for the Earth.
Until now he had been content to monitor how events were progressing, feeling a proper amount of reticence over further disrupting an already uncertain outcome. However, the time for restraint had obviously passed. Maybe the universe was counting on him to take a more active role in securing the Earth's future after all, like a green-skinned deus ex machina waiting in the wings.
But first, he needed to consult an expert on human mating rituals. Unfortunately, all he had was Goku.
—
Goku's eyes were wide and slightly crossed as Piccolo attempted to simplify the concept of a time travel paradox for the fifth or sixth time. "So you see, if Trunks is never born, he can't come back in time to warn us about the androids. It will be as if none of the events since his arrival had happened, and you will die of the heart virus."
Goku opened his mouth. Closed it. Traced with a forefinger the diagram that Piccolo had etched in the dirt to illustrate his theory. Finally he said, "And then all this training will be for nothing. All the progress we've made...gone."
Not exactly the first response Piccolo expected when discussing one's certain death, but at least his unlikely ally was beginning to show some understanding.
Goku rubbed unconsciously at the back of his neck. "But how can you be sure? About—about Vegeta and Bulma, I mean. That Bulma's not—well, you know," he finished, stuttering and blushing his way to a precipitous conclusion. Some firsthand experience in such matters obviously did not equal an easy fluency.
Piccolo squeezed his eyes closed with a pained expression that caused the Saiyan to wonder if he had eaten something that disagreed with him. A heavy sigh escaped him. "I can...smell it."
"Smell…?" Goku allowed the question to dwindle away as his eyes widened once more.
"Yes." The lines of profound affliction bracketing Piccolo's mouth deepened further. The two warriors exchanged a speaking glance, and a solemn pact to never mention this again was silently forged.
After an uncomfortable few moments, Goku recalled another concern pricking at the back of his brain. "But I promised Trunks that I wouldn't say anything to Bulma."
"And we won't," Piccolo assured him firmly. "This will be a strictly secret operation. But for this plan to work I will need your help, Goku." Piccolo lowered himself to the ground, legs crossed, expression concentrated, determination radiating from his being. "Tell me...what do women want?"
—
Bulma slung a pair of goggles across the workbench while her other hand reached up automatically to smooth away the red lines left etched in her face. She set a timer, then swiveled in her chair to inspect the glowing screen of the computer, which was tirelessly transcribing an entire encyclopedia of knowledge in a four-letter alphabet. She was reaching for the keyboard when the phone on her desk rang.
She sent it a quelling glance. There were only a handful of people who possessed the direct number to her office, and even fewer who would actually use it. When the ringing continued unabated, she wheeled herself closer with an irritated huff and snatched up the receiver. She bit out a curt, repressive greeting and waited for her unsuspecting victim to offer up an apology for the disturbance.
Instead there was a brief guttural noise followed by a heavy, unnatural silence. "Hello?" She adjusted the receiver as if that might fix the connection. "Hello?" When no answer came, she replaced the phone but continued staring at it for several moments longer as if it were about to detonate. Her fingers drummed an uneasy rhythm against her desk, but within a minute they moved as if of their own violation to snatch up a nearby pad of paper. By the time the alarm on the workbench sounded, she was busily sketching ideas on an already cramped sheet of notes.
When the phone rang again twenty minutes later, her finger slipped and she ejected the contents of her micropipette over the counter top. Swearing loudly, she tossed the pipette away from her impatiently. But it wasn't anger that made her pulse quicken, and when she actually rose to approach the offending device, she did so cautiously, in a roundabout way, as if ambushing a small, rabid woodland creature.
"Hello?" This time there was the distinct sound of heavy, panicked breathing on the other end. "Who is this? Helloooo!" The breathing went on without pause, and a small shiver of terror lodged at the base of her spine. She slammed the phone down and covered her ears with her hands, her own breath coming in heavy gasps. In her mind's eye she saw again a phantom melting into the bushes.
When the phone rang a third time, she pounced on it. She had barely choked out a syllable when there was a loud crack. Then, all other sound was drowned out by a rushing noise, like what someone would hear in a speeding car with the windows down. After just a fraction of a second, the line went dead.
Bulma stared at the phone in bewilderment. Set it down. Picked it back up. Then dialed a familiar number. It went straight to voicemail.
—
When Yamcha bothered to check his messages, the immediate force of Bulma's temper sent him tumbling out of his chair with a surprised yelp.
If this is your idea of some kind of sick joke, Yamcha, I will personally murder you. I will break your legs so you can't run away, and then all your fingers, and then I will cut out your tongue. I will feed your kidneys to a dinosaur and I will gouge out your eyes and I will call every single girl in your phone book and I will—
Yamcha deleted the message before he found out what other grisly fantasies his ex-girlfriend had in mind for him. He deleted her second message as well without ever listening to it, so he never heard the softer, tear-filled plea that followed.
Yamcha. Yamcha. Please, please pick up. I'm sorry. I'm just so scared. Either—either someone really is going to kill me, or I'm going absolutely crazy. And either way, I need help. I need you. Please.
—
Goku carefully smoothed the deep creases of a small scrap of paper. Years before, Bulma had scribbled down her phone number on it and handed it over with a command that he call her once in awhile. He had thanked her cheerfully and promptly forgotten all about it until yesterday.
But now Piccolo had entrusted him with phase one of their plan: intelligence gathering. Somehow, he would casually reach out to Bulma without raising her suspicions. Somehow, he would gently lead the conversation around to Vegeta to determine how things lay between the pair. Somehow.
He tried not to give the particulars too much thought. He would pull it off in their time of need, or he would die trying. That's what he always did.
Still, his palms were growing slightly damp with sweat. He set the piece of paper down and wiped them against his thighs. He cast a glance at the door, but managed to tamp down the desire to check the hallway just one more time. He knew without getting up that Chi-Chi was in the kitchen, probably humming softly to herself as she cooked, and Gohan was in his room applying himself to his studies. There should be no interruptions from either of those quarters.
He picked up the phone and slowly, repeating each digit to himself, dialed Bulma's number. As it rang and rang, a tangle of half-formed sentences tumbled through his head. None of them seemed right, though, and they only became more disjointed as his sense of dread increased.
Just as he heard the click of a receiver being lifted, the door opened and a horned head was thrust through. "Goku!" The head was soon followed by the impressive bulk of his father-in-law. "Goku, you're home! That must mean my grandson is—Are you okay?"
At the first hint of intrusion, Goku had sprung from his chair, slamming his shin into a wooden nightstand with a force that surprised a grunt from him. He managed to shove the incriminating phone under a pillow before Ox-King had rounded the door, but he was still caught wincing and clutching at his battered limb.
It took some time to reassure Ox-King and dispatch the affable giant in Gohan's direction. Goku waited even further until he was sure the duo was happily engaged in conversation before he dared to pull out the phone and dial again.
He had just heard a slightly apprehensive "Hello?" when Chi-Chi turned the door knob. Without pausing for thought, he dropped and rolled, phone and all, under the bed.
"Goku?" Chi-Chi called, casting a confused and exasperated look around the room. "Oh! That man, he is never around when you need him!" She continued to grumble and slander his character as she made her way around the room, randomly straightening a throw pillow here or picking up a piece of stray laundry there.
In his hiding place, Goku tried to remain as quiet as possible, but his breathing unconsciously grew shorter and more ragged the closer his wife came. After a few minutes of vengeful cleaning, Chi-Chi exited, and he allowed himself to relax. Even still, he was cautious in emerging from his refuge.
Sitting on the bed, he leaned over to fish the phone out. He cradled it in his hand, knowing that this time it would be better to plunge ahead before any further disruptions. He dialed from memory now and it only rang once before the other line picked up.
"Dad!" Gohan called. "Daddy!"
Goku reacted reflexively as panic squeezed his chest in a tight band. He launched the phone straight out the window.
"Daddy!" cried Gohan as he peeked around the door. "Mom wanted to know if you've seen the pho…" He trailed into silence as he took in the halo of broken glass surrounding his father.
"Oh no," Gohan whispered. "We are going to be in so much trouble."
Goku paled.
—
Having successfully terrified an unsuspecting assistant into a blubbering, cowering wretch, Vegeta swallowed the bitter taste of yet another hollow victory and shouldered his way into Bulma's laboratory. Her blue head was bent over her laptop, and there were assorted parts which had presumably once formed a telephone scattered over her desk. Another computer terminal across the lab was blinking an alert message, but both he and it were equally ignored.
He closed the door harder than necessary, and when this failed to elicit a reaction, he tossed the mangled bots he was carrying onto the laboratory bench. Not only did this produce a satisfactory crashing, but it also sent a styrofoam container of ice toppling to the floor, spilling the contents of several small vials.
"Shit, Vegeta!" Bulma was on her feet in an instant. There was a wildness around the edges of her eyes and a shadow of real fear on her face that surprised him. She hadn't looked at him that way since they had been on Namek.
Pressing a hand to her chest to ensure her heart hadn't really leapt out of her throat, Bulma sagged back into her chair. She surveyed the mess on the floor and raked a hand carelessly through her hair. "Why is everyone acting like nucleotides grow on trees?" she grumbled resentfully.
Finding no obvious significance in this remark, it was easily brushed aside. "I have been unable to locate your father. You will need to repair these for me immediately."
"Sorry, out of luck. My dad is away at a conference for a few days. I will get to it as soon as I can." With a careless shrug, she reached over to tap a button which set a machine whirring into a cleaning frenzy across the floor.
"That is unacceptable."
"It's the best I got. I need to finish this," she said, jabbing a finger towards her laptop, "but I can promise to start on the bots as soon as I'm done." Bending once again over her work, she turned her back on him.
He only knew he had clenched his hands into fists by the bite of nails against his palms. He felt that thing again. That feeling like the first few moments in the gravity simulator, when he was pinned into immobility by a seemingly insurmountable force. That was the peculiar kind of helplessness this human woman engendered in him.
After all this time he still had not discovered the secret to coercing her to do his bidding. There was nothing to be gained in intimidating such a frail creature physically. He could not destroy her lab in case some tool necessary to his success might be an unintended casualty. Her parents, too, held a certain value to his ultimate ascendency. And each successive threat he offered her generally made her less likely to comply with his request.
There seemed to be only one avenue open to him, and he would not be reduced to begging. So he stood, proud, unmoving, until Bulma felt the weight of his glare.
She glanced up, her lips slightly parted in an expression that mingled surprise and annoyance. "Since you've got some time on your hands, maybe you could squeeze in a nap or a shower. What about a snack? Have you eaten anything recently?"
He sniffed. "I have already been to the kitchen. There were no offerings available."
"There won't be anything for a few days. My mom went with my dad to the conference. I'm sure she said something to you—Anyway, you'll have to forage a little in the cabinets. Open a few cans. You should be able to find all the ingredients for a sandwich, though…" Her voice died away as she met his decidedly blank look.
She dug around her desk for a moment, came up with a sticky note and pen, then quickly jotted down a brief reminder: Explain sandwiches to Vegeta.
"Never mind," she continued. "I'll throw something together for us when I'm done here. Or, better yet, I'll order out. But you don't have to sit here waiting on me in the meantime. There must be something, a book you've been meaning to read or...Wait, do you have any hobbies besides breaking femurs and eating small children?"
His sneer was a study in haughty disdain. "I stick to things I am good at."
He turned on his heel and began a slow, predatory tour of her lab. He poked and prodded at a few obviously fragile pieces of equipment, but failed to receive any reprimands. Finally, having proven that he would not be dictated to, he slouched down against one corner of the cabinet and proceeded to stare.
He watched as a set of chipped red nails flew across the keyboard. Watched as they selected a screwdriver from among the tools nesting on the desk. Watched as they skillfully and efficiently reconstructed the phone.
He was so consumed with watching that he nearly forgot to be truly observant.
"What are you doing?"
His question startled her into another little jump, as if his previous silence had cloaked his presence from her. "This?" She waved the receiver in her hand. "I'm trying to write a program that will trace all calls coming into the lab."
He nodded. It was a sensible endeavor, but he did not grasp its urgency. However, he judged it better to hold his tongue than risk having his own project's exigency called into question.
They lapsed back into silence as he was once again drawn in by the easy, steady movements of her hands from one task to the next. He was unsure of how much time passed before she spoke.
"What did you do to Eric, by the way?"
"Who?"
"My assistant, Eric. Bright red hair, freckles." She gestured vaguely around her own face as if that might illuminate her description. "Eric. You had to get past him somehow."
Vegeta raised an eyebrow. "I did not kill him, if that is what you are asking."
"Good. That's...reassuring." She bit her lip thoughtfully. "But in the future, I'd prefer you just come straight to me rather than terrifying my employees. I will let them know that my door is always open to you from now on."
This declaration was met with an eloquent grunt. And with time his presence faded into a comfortable shadow in the back of her mind as she worked, like the soft hum of a white noise machine.
"You changed your hair. It is less...poofy."
This time she startled for an entirely different reason. She reached up to touch the ends of her short, straight blue hair. "Yes. I cut it three weeks ago."
They regarded each other for a long moment, but she saw clearly that he had nothing further to add. "Thank you, Vegeta. It would have taken Yamcha at least four weeks to notice."
His expression became thoughtful. "The one with the scar on his face? I have not seen him recently."
"No, you haven't."
That was the last thing either of them said until much later, when Bulma hurled a bot at the alien on her floor and demanded that he get his ass out of her lab or she wouldn't order an extra serving of that noodle dish he liked.