CHAPTER 2: BULMA'S DISCOVERY
The morning sun did not discriminate; it made the entire of Satan City bask in its beautiful, warming glory, the last bit of morning dew being vaporized by the rising temperature. The massive white dome of the Capsule Corp. headquarters shone almost blindingly within the low hanging sun, a gentle breeze ruffling the low cut grass on its lawn. The place was almost stark in how it strived to look perfect; not a single stain upon the smooth building edifice, not a single blade of grass out of line, no renegade plants. Several gardeners seemed to be at work in the beautiful morning, tending to the flowerbeds and trimming the hedge. The entrance to the property itself was an automated gate with a security booth next to it, which was occupied by a corpulent security guard paging through a magazine with an air of indifference. The gate was open as it was morning; Capsule Corp was open to visitors, granted they had an appointment. A dampened sound of tumult seemed to emanate from the equally huge backyard, on which an odd, spherical construction was erected; the black and white edifice of the Capsule Corp gravity chamber, muffled yells from a raspy voice were alternated with the sound of impacts; a mild glow seemed to issue from behind the windows that shifted from a whitish to a golden color as a quite extortionate yell could be heard. A yell, or maybe the power that was released when this yell occurred, shook the premises ever so mildly; Vegeta's outbursts could be so powerful indeed that they overcame the dampening qualities of the gravity chamber. It was constructed on top of a massive shock absorber exactly to counteract things like these, but with the prince of all Saiyans, precautions were often insufficient.
Panting mildly, Vegeta had sunken into a slightly low stance; the gravity reading had reached to the enormous heights to 650 G. One could almost swear that the gravity was literally pulling him down, an electric sensation that coursed throughout his supercharged body. He was normally quite able to handle this momentous pressure in his current state, as a Super Saiyan, but he had bruises all over his form, his muscles had swelled quite opulently, and he seemed to be at his last breath after a long and consuming training session. His breaths were deep and strong, struggling to carry as much oxygen into his body, to keep feeding his amplified metabolism. Saiyans had an extreme endurance, but eventually even they succumb to the brunt of lactate buildup. His body seemed to burn; he had worn himself out, but the intractable Vegeta wouldn't have it. His one track mind made his eyes tunnel forward, his fatigue blackening his peripheral vision. He had lost all focus, but still he kept moving, issuing weighted punches and kicks in the thin air around him. A thin veneer of sweat had accumulated over his body, making it shine with an almost diabolic glare underneath the red ceiling lights.
Vegeta's training outfit was quite simple, really. It was pretty much a pair of trousers and an undershirt of the same jumpsuit material that Bulma used to manufacture her heavy duty Saiyan armors. Though his body was unimpeded with armor at this point in time, the boots and the straps around his wrists had every impression of being weighted. Even a relatively light 25 kilograms per boot and 10 kilograms per wrist teamed up to add a staggering forty-five tons to his weight, within this environment; enough to lock him in his movement were he to return to his normal Saiyan state. His breaths became more powerful, and his frown deepened, his brows furrowing mildly and then causing the bridge of his nose to wrinkle with some mild rage.
"Damnit. Is this all? Is this everything Vegeta has to give?" he growled to himself, highly dissatisfied, as he watched his reflection in the shiny metal wall. His teeth gritted together and he railed back his right hand, before bringing it to the front with his last strength and ramming it into the wall, creating quite an indentation. With a grunt, he pulled back his hand, with some effort, from the warped cavity, and he popped his neck with the audible sound of his vertebra shifting mildly. A slight electric charge sprang forth from his ablaze, golden Super Saiyan hair, and he walked towards a blast hatch in the central pillar of the room. The gravity chamber was pretty rounded from outside, but the inside layout had a large column in the middle of the chamber; At extreme gravity, the structural integrity of the chamber's outer hull alone was not enough to sustain the structure. Thus, the training room was torus-shaped. The blast hatch in the column was there as a precaution; to prevent Vegeta's intense power to accidentally damage the controls. He brought forth his hand and opened a plastic flap over a bulging red button, which he then proceeded to push. The hatch opened up with a mild mechanical whir and revealed the operation console. An annoyed grunt left him as he set the gravity back to a 'more bearable' 35 G, his rest-gravity. As that happened, he finally allowed his power to slip away, the golden aura that enveloped him breaking down and his spiked-up hair losing its golden color to become its usual raven black. He hunched over and brought his hands to grab his knees, stretching his muscles and opening his mouth wider, panting as he looked at the ground. Those anti gravity tiles that wanted to suck him up. Sometimes, he could almost envision Kakarot's face being right there. It was maddening at times, even though their experiences, their hardships together had revealed much to him. He gritted his teeth in defiance to them; even though in this gravity, he had little trouble to remain afoot. It was simply his obstinacy that wouldn't let him let off.
Vegeta's eyes suddenly turned about to gaze upon the intercom console, a ruffled peep could be heard emanating from it. He was called. Gritting his teeth, he released a slight throat noise as he walked up to the console and pushed a button.
"Vegeta, are you in there?" he heard a woman's voice speak. He looked away with some indifference within his expression, but returned his orbs upon the device.
"I'm here. What do you want, woman?"
"Could you come to the tower? We might need your help."
"Yeah, sure. Whatever," Vegeta grunted as he moved towards a locker mounted into the outer wall. He undid his shoes and his straps, putting them in there and retrieving from it his usual footwear. A simple tap upon a panel near the exit made the ramp open up and come down upon the soft grass, allowing Vegeta exit. Several seconds after he stepped off the ramp, it lifted itself up again in order to seal the gravity chamber hermetically.
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It was in the meanwhile that Son Gohan and his young brother Son Goten had reached Satan City's airspace, the cityscape zooming by underneath rather quickly. From all the way up here, they were both oblivious to some of the ugly intricacies that could only be seen from ground level. Satan City was almost sterile when you looked at her from a bird's eye view. The roads, though packed solid with traffic, seemed to be woven together with superb efficacy; the trees that separated the two opposing lanes of some of its avenues were places in a perfect line. The buildings seemed to be flawless, varying from high rise office boxes to the spherical and oval design elements that were inextricably bound to this city. The building that they were moving towards, though, almost resembled the Buckingham Palace in a way; it had virtually the same exterior layout and honestly it wasn't that much smaller either; Hercule's manor, where Gohan would reunite himself with Videl so that they could have a nice spot of breakfast. The wind fought against his form as he cleaved through the air. Having pushed the button on his wristwatch long before he reached the city, he himself was now adorned by his Saiyaman uniform; it consisted of a black jumpsuit with a green tunic on top that gave him plenty of maneuverability. The came that was attached to his tunic was red, and despite the helmet that he wore in the very early days of his crime fighting career had been replaced, for quite a long time since, by a white bandana and sunglasses. His smile, at this point, was almost blinding, his white teeth glittering in the low hanging sun that they were moving towards.
"Gohan! Do you think that I could fight Mr. Satan's students? That would be so much fun!"
"Eheh, I don't know, little man. You might want to go easy on them. After all, they're still training. Ehem..." Gohan mumbled as he looked ahead of him. Goten would make mincemeat out of them, but he doesn't seem to know yet. His little brother was oblivious to the status quo. He'd go all out.
"He could seriously hurt someone..." Gohan mumbled to himself. Goten, flying around in pretty patterns to pass the time while they were traveling, came to hang upside down in front of his older brother as he gave one of his upbeat smiles.
"What did you say?"
"Eh… Nothing." Gohan flinched and would bring his hands in front of him. "Let's just get Videl and have a snack. And then we can go to Capsule Corp and you can have a rounder with Trunks, okay!"
"Yaaay!" That was sure to redirect the youth's enthusiasm. So much so, that he suddenly accelerated, his little orange gi flopping madly around his body as he sped ahead of Gohan.
"Hey, wait!" he yelled, but suddenly turned around, stopping mid air, the lower flaps of his green tunic coming to rest over his hips and upper thighs again, his eyes mildly flickering behind his sunglasses. Raising his brow, he looked upon an odd cloud of grayish smoke coming from the west part of the city.
"Huh, what's that?" He heard an odd, faraway popping sound from that location; it was next to the industrial grounds. Was it fire? No, it almost sounded like...
Gunfire.
"Goten, wait up here!" he yelled at the top of his lungs as he diverted his course. He raised his ki output and as soon as he did this, his body was exposed to a powerful acceleration. Narrowing his eyes behind his shades, he quickly flew, lowering himself to between the buildings, their edifices zooming by very quickly and the wake of his energy causing the air behind him to wobble, as if heated by a jet engine. He flew through between the buildings of a long avenue, then changed course quite mildly and forced himself through between some of Satan City's high-rise. He raised himself and barely topped a sky scraper under construction, passing through between the top floor and the tower crane on top, causing several of the workers to almost lose balance, madly flapping their arms around in their attempts to regain it. Gohan looked behind him with a slightly widened gaze. "Sorry guys! My mistake!"
With that, he homed in upon the odd smoke, his muscles bulging with the excitement of hero work as he ended up right above the sound of gunfire after several minutes of flight. It was surprising how much it lessened after only this short of a time. He looked around at the heavy, almost exaggerated barricades made up from numerous police cars. He then gazed down in the construction pit, where several of the frightened gang members were holed up. And then he heard his name. His eyes widened as he now recognized the figure of Videl on her hands and knees. His face lost all color as he noticed the huge minigun in the behemoth's arm. No time to spare. With all his might, he twisted around his torso, railing his left arm behind him and yanking himself back in an almost cartoonesque starting pose, then throwing himself forward, right at the ground. The buildings and streets were, in the speed of his approach, reduced to lines and blurs, his every attention diverted to that patch of asphalt right between Videl and the Ironskull's minigun.
It was like he fell upon the ground between them as an anvil; a dead weight. With a sound like steel hitting stone, it was like he suddenly appeared, the speed and strength of his landing causing his feet to sink almost a foot deep within the ground, his face bent in a fearful rage as the tremor from the heavy thump reproduced itself through the rocky ground. He was standing upright in a symmetric pose. It was only a fraction of a second after he interjected himself between the two that the minigun spewed its bullets. Gohan did not dodge. He was the shield that would save Videl's life. The sound of the bullets impacting were not so much detached impacts, but a steady stream, and dozens of bullets hit Gohan's body. Though Gohan recoiled quite liberally from these high speed, high power impacts, he managed to keep his footing, the shoulder where he was hit last jolting back, causing his upper body to mildly twist.
"Owowow! That hurts! Those things pack quite a wallop, you know!" he said with a look of abundant irritation in his eyes as his hands flicked around quite comically in front of him, rubbing his chest and his temple. He blinked slightly, no longer feeling his shades, and his Bandana had been shot to bits as well. Videl was trembling all over, still white to the bone, but finally gave out and one of the hands with which she held herself up, causing her turn over and land upon the asphalt with her back.
"Goh... eh, Saiyaman... You came..." she smiled, at which Gohan looked back.
"Yeah. Don't worry, Videl, let me take care of this creep." The smile returned to his face, but his hand was still rubbing beside his left eye. It was slightly black.
During all this time, Bulldog couldn't do anything but look at this display of superhuman force. His huge, dirty stinking mouth was open wide, his spoiled teeth glistening in the morning light. One would almost say that his jaw was stretched beyond the limits of the humanly possible and was resting somewhere knee-height, his eyes bulging well and truly out of their sockets. His massive undercarriage had taken on an exaggeratedly bowlegged stance, his huge knees trembling.
"Eh, I..." the massive thug mumbled as he looked upon the spiky haired figure that looked at him so sharply; no doubt enraged about what almost had come to pass.
"Shooting a woman in the back while she's down. You truly have no sense of honor. I'll make you pay for this!" Gohan crouched and railed both his hands back, ready to pounce and make mincemeat out of him. He however would snap out of his anger and looked at the thug with a surprised glare as the huge minigun clattered heavily to the ground; he was now brandishing a little white flag.
"I give up..." Bulldog spoke softly, his eyes were still like dishes, although then of a crusty, ugly yellow. Gohan, having keeled over from hearing this rather unforeseen bombshell, once more got to his feet and wiped off the dust from his tunic. It was still in one piece, thanks to Bulma's superior craftsmanship, but he did have a small handful of tiny bruises, as he hadn't had any time to focus his strength.
"Okay, eh... Guys, you can take him in now," Gohan spoke belatedly towards one of the police officers, but his gaze turned starkly towards Bulldog again. "You had better be complacent from now on, because if I see you do this type of thing again I'll be right there to take care of you!" his voice sounded through the crossing rather triumphantly - Bulldog nodded in his still perplexed state - and with that he turned around to help Videl on her feet. Some of the people that lived in the neighborhood stuck their heads out of their doors to see whether things had died down again. Half a dozen policemen advanced towards the mentally broken Bulldog and had no trouble whatsoever putting the biggest irons in their possession around his thick, ponderous wrists. A law enforcement van arrived on the scene and Gohan and Videl watched how the massive Ironskull grunt was, after several minutes of pushing and squeezing, successfully detained within the vehicle. Then, the SCPD was slowly removing their presence from the scene.
"Aaaaahhh!" Two perfectly synchronized yells could be heard coming from low in the air, followed by two remaining Ironskulls to smack down into the pavement. The skinny thug and the fat thug, to be exact, still drenched within the pasta dressing that they landed in earlier on. Goten, hovering in the air and wiping his hands together quite smugly would laugh.
"Got two more of them here!"
Gohan's laugh resounded softly through the crossing and he stuck out his thumb into the air towards his little brother, before turning to look upon Videl again. She was now standing again, and had recuperated from the blow. That overwhelming scare had gone as well. "Phoah," she mumbled, "I've bitten off more than I can chew." She looked down to the ground, slightly ashamed, and was invited in by Gohan's arms.
"Hey, I'm just glad that you're okay," he softly spoke and then raised his brow. "You are okay, aren't you? Did they ambush you while you were walking in the street?"
Videl shook her head and looked up at him. "I should have warned you. I thought I could do this one by myself." A look of understanding dawned on Gohan's face. He wasn't angry, though.
"Hey, you couldn't have known. Why don't we go and have breakfast somewhere?" he smiled.
"That sounds pretty good. I think I could eat as much as your father right now," Videl admitted and would gently hook her arm around his. The duo was however surprised as Goten landed upon Gohan's shoulders, almost causing him to tumble over.
"Yay, burger, burger!" he exuberantly yelled. Both Gohan and Videl raised their brows and looked at one another from the corner of their eyes, grinning mildly.
"Burgers it is. Let's go!" With that, the trio took to the air and disappeared from the crime scene, where peace had now returned. S.W.A.T. officers had surrounded the area in order to round up remaining thugs, who had been demoralized to the point of powerlessness. By the end of the afternoon, it was merely a little scare upon the hearts of the residents. By tomorrow, it'd be nothing more than a headline in the newspaper. By the end of the week, the bullet holes left behind by the gunfire would have become yet another testament of mankind's boundless apathy and no one would grant them a look of scrutiny.
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The tower, 9.44 AM. The tower was in fact a construction atop of Capsule Corp's dome, whose shape was in fact a dome as well. It was a dome atop of a much larger dome, which earned it a rather suggestive nickname from Bulma's father, Mr. Briefs; the Nipple. It was in fact an astronomy tower, and closer inspection revealed a rotary mechanism that can revolve the entire dome a full 360 degrees on top of a massive spindle ring. A huge, wide truss was in the ceiling, pretty much like a massive letterbox; the opening that the telescope required to observe the skies, although now it had been closed by a sliding door mechanism. The inside of the tower was illuminated merely by a row of tube lighting that was imbedded within the sloping wall about six yards above the ground. The telescope, of course the center of this chamber, was suspended by a system of beams and jacks, in order to allow it movement so that it can properly observe the sky in every direction. It was a very advanced piece of technology, doubly so by human standards. The center of the astronomy tower was separated by a thick banister, as in the middle of the chamber rested an enormous mirror; it was perfectly convex and the imperfections in its shape were less than a micrometer small; it was this precision instrument that with a similar rig of jacks and hydraulics could be moved in accordance with the telescope, which is the main cause for its enormous resolution. The telescope was so incredibly sharp that it could tell how many fingers an astronaut on the moon was sticking up.
As the construction of the telescope made it impossible for a person to look into it directly, the images perceived by the telescope were transmitted to a data center; half a dozen of computers linked to a secure server which could analyze the procured data. Bulma and her father were sitting at a computer each, their eyes inextricably bound to the screen. The operating system on Bulma's computer showed a window that browsed through a set of captured images, while sifting through and comparing strings of numbers that were incessantly renewed.
"Are you sure, Bulma?"
"Pretty much, dad. Look here." She made wild gestures with her arm.
Mr. Briefs got up from his chair with a soft, venerable grunt, the black cat that always seemed to sit on his shoulder mewing rather happily, like it had no care in the world. With his hands within his pockets and a cigarette bumbling around from corner to corner in his mouth, he moved behind his daughter and looked over her shoulder, one of the fleshy wrinkles underneath his left eye frilling mildly. What he saw upon the monitor was quite spectacular. It was a beautifully sharp picture of a rusty colored sphere that almost looked as if it had acne. In the corner of the picture there was the barely visible edge of a large beige sphere, which any astronomer would recognize as Jupiter, and several other spheres were smaller in the distance.
"Oooooohhh..." Mr. Briefs exclaimed almost mockingly as he watched the sphere in focus.
"That's a really big eruption, right there," he said, making Bulma almost fall off her chair. Indeed, there was a good sized, bluish blotch visible at the edge of the sphere.
"I'm not talking about Io. I'm talking about this here thing." She took the pencil that she was chewing on twixt her thumb and middle finger and tapped against the computer's tube monitor on a small whitish speck in front of Io, a rust-colored, highly volcanic moon in Jupiter's orbit. Mr. Briefs was not surprised that he looked over that little thing; it was hardly bigger on screen than the tip of the pencil that was pointing it out..
"Can you magnify?" he asked.
"Sure, let's see." She moved her hand towards the mouse as she pressed the Ctrl and M keys, bringing up a transparent box over the picture. She hovered it with the mouse over the white dot and clicked, magnifying the contents of the box over the entire window. Everything was still as sharp as a knife, but the white speck was now the size of a marble. She clicked again; ping pong ball, and again. Now, the picture started to show slight distortion as the resolution was insufficient. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at it. Mr. Briefs slightly widened his eyes and canted his head to the side as he tweaked his moustache in a rather interested fashion.
"This is 4000 magnification. What do you think, dad?" she asked.
"When did you find this?"
"Last night. It made me stay up all night."
"Mm... It doesn't look like ordinary space matter to me." His croaky voice pierced the silence, which was thickened by excitement.
"It looks artificial to me; look at the shape," he spoke, his analytic mind hard at work. "In the case that it's mineral, it's too light to be an ordinary meteor. I've seen comets like this; those can have abundant magnesium and gallium deposits, which can cause very bright colored sediments to form. But then, a comet has a tail..." he slightly laughed and scratched the back of his head.
"Did you record more of this? If we know the way it moves we might be able to tell more."
"Way ahead of you." Bulma mildly grinned as she gathered the recorded images and played them with one second intervals. One could clearly see the movements of Io itself, and of course the path that the odd, light colored dot made in comparison with Io. It was a gradual movement of seemingly constant velocity. Bulma raised her brow and moved her hands in her lap, slightly playing with the fabric of her red dress. Her father simply leant his hand upon the table and watched intently.
"It looks to me like it's in geosynchronous orbit. Its speed is constant with Io's axel, like the communication satellites in Earth's orbit. For a space rock that's pretty much impossible, let alone highly unlikely. It has to be a ship."
"Yeah, but look how big it is. At least I think it's big."
"Cross-referencing the size of the object with the radius of Io given their relative distance is such that geostationary orbit occurs, I'd say it'd between 30 and 35 kilometers from end to end," Mr. Briefs calmly opted.
"Well, you always did have a good eye for spatial comparison... I'll see if I can increase image detail by running it through a couple of sharpening filters," Bulma sighed and yawned slightly, her sleepless night had left her quite tired as she went into the program console and started to profusely rattle her fingers over the keyboard. Mr. Briefs was becoming more and more absorbed with this extraterrestrial object, playing the cigarette around from his left to his right corner. He hunched closer to his daughter.
"Have you thought about running a mass spectrometry analysis, Bulma?" he asked as he grasped a ribbed plastic cup, with which he walked towards an espresso machine that was standing upon a small table against the wall. It churned and bubbled very mildly as he put the cup underneath and pressed the latte button.
"Who do you hold me for?" she asked, as if insulted, then pointed towards a printer that had been steadfastly pooping out a string of paper that had already amounted to an inch thick stack. The printer was whirring with an almost angry sound at each additional piece of A4-paper that rolled out, as if it had been fatigued by its task. As the cup filled, Mr. Briefs took it out from under the machine and let out an appreciative grunt, feeling the warmth of the liquid against his bony fingers whilst grabbing two cubes of sugar and dropping them in it. The black cat on his shoulder meowed very gently as Mr. Briefs' shoulder mildly raised; he moved up his hand towards his ear to take hold of a pen that had been lodged there. Stirring his coffee with the butt end of the pen, he walked towards the printer as it continued its diligent labor. He took the latest A4-paper as it left the printer with a calm speed, examining the readings with the corner of his left eye as he stood angled slightly away, while bringing up his coffee for a long sip.
"Hmm...Hmmmmmm... Let's see..." he mumbled to himself as his scientist's eye scoured the string of numbers.
"This is odd," he added, as he continued looking, but now he put down his coffee on top of the printer's plastic enclosure, pitting both eyes onto the paper, "This reading looks a little bit like Vanadium, but... it has an inexplicable peak at 650 megahertz. And this set of readings... I don't recognize these at all. Are you sure that these readings are accurate?" Mr. Briefs asked to Bulma, who was still sitting at her computer, running a broad spectrum of sharpening filters at the station 5 meters away.
"Pretty sure. A computer doesn't make the same mistake twice. And I checked three times."
"Hmm... Very strange indeed," he muttered and brought his hands down, taking within his hand a random part of the stack and inspecting the figures there, before slackening his thumb to allow paper after paper to gently fall back down on the stack.
"Well, there are clearly discernible readings now and then; this is tungsten. This is selenium... Ehh... This looks like pyrite or some other metallic oxide. That is odd. And here start a string of readings that I can't make sense out of."
"What are you saying, dad?" Bulma asked as she had been listening in with one ear.
"Nothing much, except that the only explanation I can think of is that this object is mostly constructed of materials that contain elements that are not in our periodic table."
"... like you'd expect from Aliens?" Bulma grunted a bit sarcastically.
"Well, looks that way. I sincerely doubt that NASA has the combined wits and knowledge to put something that big all the way there." Mr. Briefs shrugged his shoulders, causing another annoyed meow from the black cat as it was forced to fight for balance.
"If we can't, they certainly can't," Bulma answered with a bit of spite, but quite suddenly looked behind her as the double doors bearing entrance to the Tower were loudly forced open, slamming against the wall and slowly coming back to fall shut. The shape of Vegeta, his body still embroidered by the training jumpsuit, was standing in the doorjamb, looking around with his narrow frown as he always did.
"What do you want, woman?" he grunted; his mood was seemingly worse than usual.
"Hey, cool it, Vegeta. Save your arrogant sneers for the bedroom. I just wanted you to have a look at this." Vegeta kind of swallowed as a barely visible shade of red came to his cheeks, after which he simply sighed with the sound of yet another grunt, walking up towards his wife. The enlarged image of the 'ship' was gradually sharpening each time the filter traveled over it, like a horizontal line moving slowly from top to bottom, leaving the entire image a tiny bit sharper every time.
"Have a look at what," Vegeta gritted his teeth, persisting in his obstinacy. Bulma simply pointed to the computer screen, slightly riding the office chair a bit to the side to give him a better view. Vegeta slightly hunched over and put his hands on the desk, narrowing her eyes at the whitish shape on the screen. The first ten seconds, he did not seem to move, his eyes as if frozen on the image. When he stood up again, it came over as very sudden, almost causing Bulma to flinch and fall off her chair.
"Eh...?" she muttered, though the sound of question was apparent.
"Looks like a space ship." Vegeta's voice sounded almost exaggeratedly bored.
"Seems to be. Do you recognize it?" Bulma asked, but Vegeta had already turned about and walked back towards the door, his defiant steps underlining his Saiyan pride. There was however an odd sneer pasted upon his face; one which Mr. Briefs caught from his position at the printer, but didn't really react upon; sometimes he simply didn't get those two, let alone how they could possibly have come to wed. As Vegeta's hand came forth to open the door, he turned to look back and grinned towards Bulma.
"Get some sleep, Bulma. You look tired." With that, he exited, slamming the door shut behind him and leaving a completely bewildered Bulma. Get some sleep? That was a side of Vegeta she hadn't really seen before.
"He's right, Bulma. You might as well go have some shuteye now," Mr. Briefs opted as he stacked the paper again and leant back against the table on which the printer stood, sipping his coffee. "Don't worry, your work here has peeked my interest. I'll keep an eye on things here."
"Thanks, dad. I'll be back at 3 PM. Try to put your ash in the ashtray this time," she yawned and skidded back her chair, standing up and straightening out her dress. Mr. Briefs watched her leave and grinned slightly, arching his back in a rather comedic stretching pose. The cone of ash that had amounted on his mildly smoldering cigarette dislodged and fell down into the neck of his blouse.
"Hmm? Ah! Ou! Ouch! Hot! Hot!" he stampeded around slightly, his arms flopping about in an exaggerated manner as he rubbed his chest not unlike a gorilla, causing him to have forgotten about the coffee he was still holding, splashing part of the hot liquid over his face and shoulders. Two seconds of silence ensued, before he started to blurt out again.
"Ahhh! HOT! HOT!"
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Having exited the tower, Vegeta's grin had boiled down again to his usual dead stare, his brows starkly lowered as he looked around him through the hallway. Capsule Corp interior was quite surprisingly homely at times; Mr. and Mrs. Briefs have done their best in order to indorse a domestic sense within the otherwise cold and sterile white walls of the place. Many potted plants and little bits of furniture were standing within the hallways and the white walls themselves were ornamented with quite a myriad of artworks, ranging from paintings to professional photography. Now and then one would walk past a pedestal on top of which the bust of a famous scientist was standing. Walking through the curving corridor towards the door that would lead him back into the yard and reacquaint him with the fresh morning air, Vegeta passed the torso of Niels Bohr; a highly famous chemist that was one of the first in history to compose a comprehensive and realistic model of the atom. Looking at it for a short while, he wondered what the Briefses' fixation was with clotting their hallways with the statues of old people. After all, these old guys were hardly warriors; they looked puny and useless in a fight, not to mention that even the most intelligent of beings did not necessarily have the wit to survive in a crisis situation. A stark grunt left the cavity of his mouth as the door closed behind him. Closing his eyes as the soft, cool wind hit his cheek, he sunk in thought.
"That ship...," he muttered to himself, his mouth curling in an even uglier frown as he put his hands within the pockets of his jumpsuit pants, his long, gravity defying hair being played with by the air.
I know it from somewhere, he thought and his teeth gritted at his inability to place it. It was clear as day that he felt nothing for sharing his ignorance on the matter with his frantic wife. He was in no mood for discussion right now, but seeing it seemed bring back memories of his father. Did it have something to do with him? It must have been something his father told him about. Something that was very important to the race of Saiyans. But for the love of anything dear to him he could not remember. His face contorted in a mild rage as he tightly clenched his fists. Sometimes he wished that he hadn't been so indifferent, that he had listened more attentively to his father. Always thinking to know things better than those around him was his greatest pride-induced weakness.
As he made his way towards the gravity chamber, which was simply one of Capsule Corp's space ships installed onto the ground, he thought about how much a waste of his time it had been to go all the way up to the Tower because that stupid woman had seen something with her stupid new toy. Commendable though it might be, it at least allowed him to recover his strength. He was ready for a second round; just himself, his sweat and his blood, and the 650 G's to keep him company. His eyes marginally widened though, as he noticed, from behind the tinted windows of the gravity chamber, the emanation of another's ki. It was golden, like his own Super Saiyan energy, so it could only be one other person. He narrowed his eyes and slightly growled, walking up to the gravity chamber and tapping the console mounted in the hull. One key commando and the ramp folded outwards, hitting the ground with a thud, allowing Vegeta entry. He could easily hear the excited yells of his young son Trunks and as he stepped within the chamber and first felt the gravity sheer, the ramp closing back behind him. He instantly let out a grunt, made his muscles taut and transformed back into his Super Saiyan state, a sudden swirl of golden energy enveloping him and then stabilizing around him like a thin golden fire.
"Well well well. My pint sized Super Saiyan hard at work..." he sneered. Trunks' emerald eyes would flicker brightly as he looked around to grin at his father, looking him up and down.
"Goten's coming here today, so I want to be warmed up when he arrives. He won't know what's coming to him!"
"That's the spirit, son," Vegeta grunted, not completely displeased. He looked upon the G-readout. It was fixed on 320 times Earth-norm.
"Would you mind clearing out of here once he arrives, so we can have a tussle in the grav chamber?"
Vegeta's eyes widened at his son's insolence, his teeth gritting for a moment, a vein throbbing on his temple. It was only shortly that effort was expended to fuel his anger. His expression changed into one of delighted sneering.
"It's a deal, but only if you manage to land a punch to my face." With that, Vegeta sunk in a battle stance, staring his son down with a grin. Trunks' glare became slightly unsettled at his father's answer, the corner of his mouth rising frantically. It only lasted for a short moment, as the determined young Saiyan quite immediately lunged himself forth towards his father to enter a seemingly endless exchange of punches, kicks and parries, the canned voices of son and father carrying far throughout the backyard.
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"...and then that huge guy pulled this really big gun at me, but luckily Gohan came to the rescue within the nick of time!" Videl spoke rather elatedly, happily sucking a bit at the straw, tasting the sweet punch drink that the robo-waiter had just now brought in.
"Ooo, you poor dear. Everything is alright, I hope?" Mrs. Briefs opted with a worried look in her face; tall, and remarkably pretty for her age, that large tuft of blond curls atop of her head almost just as gravity defying as your average Saiyan's hairdo. She was wearing a rather stunning black dress that revealed her healthy figure quite nicely, so far as to make one wonder what Mr. Briefs's obsession with 'babes' was good for. Her eyes, which almost always seemed closed or almost closed would curl in a happy smile, her octopus lips slightly opening as to let in the straw of her own drink.
"Eh... Yeah, sure. I'm alright, but Gohan's got a black eye. How ironic that his shades were destroyed," Videl giggled a little bit as she sat against Gohan, who had trouble finding himself within this group of people. Something about him seemed to lock up when he was around multiple women, more so when they were talking about him.
"Oh, well, it will pass." He rubbed his sore eye socket. Yeah, those minigun rounds really packed a wallop.
"We went to have breakfast at a local Bagel & Juice. There's nothing like some food to squelch a little hurt," Videl spoke and then looked up from her drink towards a door that was flung open all of a sudden.
The room they were in was modern in every way, pretty much like the rest of Capsule Corp. It was in the south wing, and not too far away from the main entrance. It was the living room of the Briefs family; the ground was a sterile black plastic, the saloon table was a rectangular glass plate with chipped corners, held up by a chromed crux-shaped standard coming from a pedestal of heavy black marble, several art deco chairs and a modern looking black couch surrounding it. A rather gargantuan Samsung TFT High Definition Television was hanging from the wall, underneath which a low, open closet was standing with its glass doors open, revealing a stereo, a HD-DVD player and a Game Console, about a dozen boxes spread throughout the place as to approximate the sensation of a true Home Theater system. The television was at this point displaying a high resolution fish-tank screensaver, which was used to endorse the living room's atmosphere. The walls were white, although on several places hung with potted hang plants, as well as an array of equally modern art pieces; an authentic Mondriaan piece was suspended from the wall right next to the door, for instance. The wall that separated the living room from the kitchen was thick, and contained a large terrarium that contained a manner of small amphibian and reptilian creatures. The kitchen behind was just as modern, with a large black dinner table and all manner of domestic apparatuses to make the life of the rich all that more easy.
Goten gave his best clueless face as he looked around through this splendid living room, before setting his sights on Mrs. Briefs' form rather happily.
"Do you know where I can find Trunks, Mrs. Briefs? He's not in his bedroom."
"He isn't inside," spoke a raspy voice from behind, causing every head in the room to rear itself towards the source of this voice. It carried all the hallmarks of irritation. Vegeta's form starkly marched into the living room, slightly rubbing his cheek and looking around with marginal surprise. Gohan and that idiot world champion's bratty daughter were here too, he thought. They were all looking at him all doe eyed, too. This annoyed him further.
"Hey Vegeta!" Gohan said with a smile, "What happened to you?"
"Nothing!" he blurted out and starkly turned towards Goten, his dark eyes almost electrified with irritation.
"O...kay..." Gohan murmured and looked around a little bit; anywhere but where Vegeta was, really.
"He's in the gravity chamber. Now shoo," Vegeta grunted and made an aggressive arm gesture towards Goten, who could only smile that much wider... and more jocularly than ever.
"Thanks Mr. Vegeta." The boy quickly ran out of the door and his soft footsteps quickly disappeared. Vegeta's eyes narrowed slightly and then settled on Gohan, who immediately recoiled a little bit.
"Euhh?"
"Where's Kakarot?"
"Where's Bulma?" Gohan asked at the very same moment as Vegeta spoke, but then reclined a bit more.
"Dad said he was planning to go to Kame House," Gohan answered politely, "...but it's all too possible that mom's got him chained to the kitchen table by now."
"Didn't know Goku's wife was that kinky..." Mr. Briefs said, having just now entered through the door, looking throughout the room. Gohan and Videl both railed forth and spat out the punch they still had in their mouths and Mrs. Briefs mainly looked around, a tad clueless at what was transpiring. Mr. Briefs simply walked on past the terrarium into the kitchen to get himself another pot of coffee, humming the tune to Sex Court and acting as if nothing happened, or maybe being just as oblivious as his wife. Vegeta conjured a bit of color on his face, then simply left the room as well, growling mainly to himself.
"Ehh..." Gohan recovered and scratched the back of his head, "Where's Bulma?"
Clueless Mrs. Briefs was halfway about raising her shoulders in a shrug, but her husband popped back out from the kitchen, now brandishing a large white thermos with steaming coffee inside.
"She's having a nap till three in the afternoon," he answered, "She found a spaceship in Jupiter's orbit last night. She was fascinated and stayed up all night to chart its course and take pictures and all that jazz. Hmm... Darned capuccino machine in the Tower is all out of beans again"
"Wow, really?" Gohan said, perplexed.
"Yeah. Now I have to do with run of the mill stuff you buy ready in the Supermarkets."
"I was talking about the spaceship thing..." a slight bead of sweat seemed to comically drop at the side of Gohan's temple, "Can we see it?" he added.
"Sure, kiddo. Why don't you come with me? All very interesting stuff! That cute little fiancée of yours can come too. Heh heh." Gohan slightly flinched as Videl stood up and angled her head towards the grey haired, moustache wielding scientist when he left the room.
"He's like that sometimes. But he's kind; think of him like Roshi."
"Great minds think alike, huh?" She mumbled and gave a slight grunt, then followed. Who wasn't curious about a real spaceship, after all?
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"Awesome!" Videl yelled as she laid eyes upon the picture for the first time. Since Bulma left to take a nap, the sharpening filters have worked non stop, until they reached a state of entropy where the image could no longer be enhanced. It was sharp as day now and the shape of the vessel could be readily determined. 1.00 PM. Even Mr. Briefs had stumbled upon newfound interest, as now was proven without a shadow of a doubt that it was in fact a spaceship; you could see the individual plating. The overall shape seemed to be like a massive ring; sort of a short, stumpy cylinder, with four huge engine outtakes at the back and a spire on the front. There were several antennae at the very top of the spire, and it was unmistakably scuttled.
"Look at all that damage..." Gohan muttered bewilderedly as he looked over Videl's shoulder. It was true. Huge gaps were in the superstructure, that showed the mangled insides. It was as if a huge disaster occurred, although visual imaging alone could not determine the type of event that lay at its base. Neither could mass spectrometry, since most of the discovered elements that were used in its construction did not appear on the periodic table of elements, therefore their properties weren't known and neither were their reactions to specific events.
"Could it have been hit by an asteroid?" Videl opted with a questioning look towards Mr. Briefs, who narrowed his eyes and searched around in his lab coat for a lighter. When he found it and lit the new cigarette in his mouth, he coughed shortly and inhaled a puff of nicotine, causing some of the grayish smoke to linger around his face.
"Doesn't look like it," he said, "The patterns of destruction along the outer hull doesn't correspond with the impact of a large mass. Here..." He pointed towards one of the largest gaps within the superstructure. It almost had the shape of an elongated scrape, or a gargantuan clawmark.
"The edges of this particular breach seem to have slightly curl outwards, you see? It almost looks like this destruction was triggered from within this ship."
"Maybe it was a fight," Gohan said calmly, gently resting his hand upon Videl's shoulder. Both looked back at him with a bit of a raised brow.
"A fight?"
"Yeah. I see no reason why someone with power like my father's or Vegeta's couldn't have done it."
"Hmm..." Mr. Briefs mumbled and looked around for a moment. "I have yet to think about the implications of the vessel's presence in our solar system. A race of extraterrestrials with the power to build such a spacecraft harboring ill will against the inhabitants of this world could do serious harm. Maybe Bulma and I should do a full radiological examination of the object when the sun sets. Get an emission spectrum on the darned thing."
Gohan suddenly got a feeling welling up inside of him. It was an odd sense of ambivalence about the matter. He had fully forgotten his moral dilemma about his assignment concerning 'aliens'.
"Should this be made public?" he asked, with half hope.
"I think we should spare mankind this knowledge, lest we could induce mass panic amongst our denizens," Mr. Briefs answered and took another drag from his cigarette.
"But we cannot know for sure what NASA or the RKA would do. I suspect that both these agencies will have detected this thing within the next seven days at the most; probably they've done so already. We found this thing by chance, but they have hundreds of the brightest young minds on this planet in their employ and they are monitoring the sky 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. It's just too bad that when they relay their information to the heads of their respective states, other people take over. These other people are cursed with a profound lack of both intelligence and tact, and are prone to make self-destructive decisions," Mr. Briefs took a breath and laughed slightly, tapping the cone of ash into a metallic ashtray on the desk. The desk itself was plentiful with small scorch marks from when in his haste or exhilaration he missed the target.
"If I'm right, there'll be government officials drooling on our doorstep once they've 'rated the threat'," he finished, with quite a sense of elitism in his voice at this point. Who could blame him? Capsule Corp, as one of the largest, most technological and wealthiest companies on the face of the planet, will no doubt be asked to spearhead a mission into outer space. He didn't really feel too much for that, despite the urge he was feeling to be able to go there and touch that ship with his own hands. Part of him wanted to go and start designing a spaceship in order to get a sizable crew there, but another part of him was sickened by the idea of courting to those idiots. He sighed and slumped himself down within a seat, booting up the computer in front of him and cricking his neck side to side a little bit, before taking the thermos and pouring hot, black coffee within a polystyrene cup. Gohan and Videl got up not too much later, greeting Mr. Briefs and making themselves scarce, probably gone to check up how Goten and Trunks were doing. Peace returned to the Tower and Mr. Briefs himself - bless him, he wasn't the youngest anymore - dozed off and plentifully snored as the keys of the keyboard on which he had passed out slowly imprinted themselves upon his cheek. Under the soft flicker of the blue Monitor, displaying 'Password Incorrect', he entered dreamland. The black cat that always perched upon his shoulder had followed his example and curled up delightedly, purring in its sleep.
(RKA: Russian Space Agency)
