CHAPTER TWO – Invincible

Disclaimer: I own nothing and really should be writing my thesis.


"Increasing gravity simulation: 400 times planet's normal gravity."

The ground wavered in the red warning lights of the chamber. There was a low hum that vibrated the floor, but the pieces of cracked tile remained stationary, pinned in place. Several round, metal droids hovered into a five-pronged formation, whirring at the ready, dispersing a small cloud of smoke that hung in the air.

A heavy knee fell to the floor. Panting, Vegeta held his side where he had fallen victim to one of his own attacks. His breath came out in ragged huffs as sweat dripped down his neck and back. Forcing his hand to move from his side with some effort, he noted the blood that tinged his palm and fingers with an irritated groan. "I can do more," he muttered. "I can do better."

He pulled his wet fingers into a tight fist, observing the new formation the robotic sentinels took. Unbidden, from the corner of his eye, he could almost see a flash of gold. His teeth clenched and he powered up another energy attack into his hand, smelling the blood that began to burn off into sickly brown wisps. "I can be better," he growled. Sweat dripped into his eyes, blurring his vision. The red light of the trembling room began to shimmer into a fluttering orange gi, and with a feral snarl, Vegeta launched himself from the ground, hurling his energy in a quick, concentrated blast.

"I will be better!" he screamed as the ball of energy whistled through the air at the sentinel droids.

With a quick deflected bounce back, the white light came rushing back toward him, and he thrust himself upwards to dodge it. A flash ricocheted from behind as a droid moved in to deflect it back. It brushed dangerously close to his cheek in a bright white streak, the sharp sting from its passing cutting his cheek like a silver-bladed sword.

"No!" he barked as the light came back at him. With a furious jerk of his forearm, he swatted the blast away, speeding its course to yet another droid. The image of another golden-haired fighter, slashing with his sword leapt before his eyes, and Vegeta clasped his hands together to pummel the blast away again. "I am the strongest!"

Back again, the ball of energy barrelled toward him. He dodged once more as the sentinels closed in, making each rebound quicker than the last. As the ball of light whizzed within inches of his ears, slamming into one droid after another, the metallic clanging echoed around him, like a hollow, twanging laughter.

"Just wake up; you're blind and delusional."

Vegeta swung wide to the right to avoid another blast, shoving a sentinel droid out of his way and opening up his fighting area. Their pattern broken, the droids shifted around, recalibrating a plan of attack, still bouncing the energy blast between them with that empty, mocking, clanking sound.

"Such an ego. You really believe all that? A Super Saiyan?"

Another blast, this time at his wounded side. Vegeta held his hands over it in defence, catching the blazing ball and using its momentum to swing round and hurl it back, singeing his fingers in the process. Panting, he could feel himself slowly descending as he began to tire, and he gave another burst upward to level himself.

"I must say, somebody has some high hopes."

He had flown right into it. The light was blinding and the impact shook the entire ship from its foundations. Propelled backward, his shoulder and side crunched against the reinforced walls of the chamber. As the light slowly began to fade, Vegeta felt himself slide down to the ground in a heavy heap. Coughing up a gout of dark red blood, he forced himself off his injured side and onto his knees.

He struggled to breathe as blood and air wrestled within his throat. After a few more wracking coughs, what appeared to be the remainder of the blood from his injuries came out, and his shoulders trembled with the exertion.

"How long," he managed to choke out, "how long must I keep fighting shadows?" Staggering up to his feet, he clenched his fists, stiffening his back and setting himself in position. "I need . . . a real fight," he panted. "I need to . . . to prove . . ." Glaring up at the whirring droids, he set his jaw.

"If you have proven yourself worthy, perhaps someday you will become a Super Saiyan."

The sweat fell from his forehead and into his eyes as he watched the sentinels set up in their default arrangement. Ignoring the burning in his muscles as he resisted the gravity's insistent pull, he widened his stance.

"If you have proven yourself worthy . . ."

He snarled at the central computer. "Again!"


A manicured hand deftly tapped a stylus. "I've rescheduled your meeting with finance for tomorrow, filed all the legal reports, and gotten in contact with the Sage City Mountain resort."

"And the patents?"

"All filed in your family name and assigned to Capsule Corporation proper. As soon as we have a viable prototype for the next batch of inventions, we'll be able to apply for those too."

"Perfect, you're a lifesaver," Bulma smiled, tying her curls back into a loose tail. Standing up from her desk, she pushed her large, padded chair back and turned to use her panoramic office window as a mirror.

"Heading out Ms. Brief?" the other woman scrolled down her tablet, checking the weekly calendar.

"Just down to Research and Development, Nancy," Bulma took off her necklace and set it in a drawer of her desk.

"I'll let them know," Nancy pulled up the extension on her screen. "I take it you'll be skipping your lunch today?"

"I'm sure I'll pick up something from the company café," the blue-haired acting president switched her herringbone blazer for a lab coat, straightening the lapel over her silk blouse. Shutting her laptop, she shuffled some papers around, rolling up a few of the blueprints with some of her own notes scrawled on the edges.

"And if Wright Materials calls?"

"Tell them we've got progress, but don't promise anything yet," Bulma stepped over to the door, shifting the blueprints in the crook of her arm. "We don't want them getting too ahead of themselves now," she winked back at her secretary as she walked out.

"Of course," Nancy jotted the information down in a pop-up sticky note in her neat shorthand.

"Oh, and Nancy?" Bulma called back over her shoulder. "Take a break! You're making my job too easy!" The door clicked shut.

"But . . . that's what you hired me for," the skinny brunette blinked in the now empty room.

Bulma laughed to herself as she strutted down the hallway, observing the industry of Capsule Corp.'s administrative employees housed at the top floor of headquarters. Computer screens flickered stock options, and men in business suits rushed by, shouting commands on their phones, trying to grab a quick coffee and a bagel in the process. Several interns, looking at a loss at a stack of paper files, shuffled them around into folders, moaning about how not all of the departments had gone completely digital. A few accountants enjoyed a chat at the water cooler, congratulating each other on yet another successful annual audit. Bulma gave a friendly wave as she waited at the elevators, revelling in how just a few good hires had managed both to speed up productivity immensely and to increase her time away from the desk.

With a light chime, the doors opened and she stepped inside, congratulating herself in particular on finding Nancy. "OCD, workaholic, stick-in-the-mud, but she makes things run like clockwork!" she mused.

Leaning against the wall of the elevator, Bulma gazed out at the rounded white buildings of downtown West City as she descended. The numbers above her head chimed as the city's skyscrapers grew taller outside the glass, eventually giving way to the manicured plants around the Capsule headquarters building, until the windows revealed nothing more than dark, smooth metal walls.

"Basement Level 3: Research and Development Laboratories H—N."

With a soft hiss, the doors of the elevator opened and Bulma stepped into a world of white. Immaculate surfaces stationed men and women in white coats, hurriedly soldering, prodding, sketching, analyzing, and assembling gadgets left and right. Several beeping scanners spat out dossiers of informative statistics while technicians scribbled down notes onto their blueprints and designs. Men and women in goggles hovered over chemical compounds, furiously adding information to their records as the test tubes in front of them started to emit blue smoke on the left side of the main laboratory area. An impromptu lecture was being held in the central station on the circuitry involved in the newest addition to the Capsule Corp. patent list.

"Ms. Brief!" A man with narrow glasses and ruffled hair rushed up at the sight of her. "What brings you down here?" he panted out when he reached her. "Come to think of it, how did you find the time?"

Bulma shrugged. "I finally got the hang of the whole management thing."

"Third week's the charm, huh?"

"Something like that, Mark," she addressed the young scientist, indicating that they should move out of the elevator entrance and down to one of the workstations. "How's the communications project going?" As the two of them briskly walked down the clean hall, they passed a myriad of whirring machines and screens flashing analytical data in a complex, angular code. Several interns stopped chatting and straightened up as the two higher-ranking scientists brushed by.

"We've got the prototypes up and running," Mark trotted up behind her, his lab coat billowing open around his argyle sweater vest. "We're still performing a few tests to see if we can't expand the translation chip tech to decode exclamations and sound effects from contextual clues algorithmically."

He led her over to another lab station surrounded by glass. Peering in, the two of them observed several lab technicians projecting a holographic model of how the proposed chip was to work with the other less-advanced components in a mobile telephone. The central image spun slowly to display all of the odd connective angles, and one tech punched in a few lines of code to display the proposed method of attaching the chip to the outlying circuitry within the phone. The other technicians jotted down a swath of notes as they observed the further applications for the project.

"Hm," Bulma nodded, noting the image's display giving the predicted compatibility success rate. "Not bad for just a tiny chip from a single old scouter."

"Not bad? It's incredible! With this new audio technology, you can translate speech instantaneously and you wouldn't get a dropped call even if you sent your phone to the moon!" Mark pushed back his glasses, which had slipped down the bridge of his nose in his excitement. He tried to contain the rising pitch of his voice. "The applications of it are going to be astounding—not to mention it's damn good job security."

Bulma smiled at his enthusiasm. "Well, if you like that, then I've got a real treat for you."

Mark eyed the blueprints under her arm hungrily. Rubbing his hands, he felt the sweat build up there like he was on a first date. "Are those . . . what I think they are?"

Waving the rolled-up sheet in front of her top scientist teasingly, Bulma responded in a little sing-song voice. "Guess who just got the newest results of her dad's research . . ."

"Gimme, gimme, gimme!" Mark snatched one of them out of her hands, unfolding it in a swift motion onto the workstation. "Oh, wow," he whistled. "High energy impact . . . malleable metal alloy . . . this is . . ." there were almost tears of joy in the excitable scientist's eyes, "this is almost too good to be true! Can you imagine if we made cars out of this stuff?"

Bulma nodded. "I know," she leaned over and pointed to her own notations on the side of the sheet. "If we could use it to coat the chassis of a vehicle, fatal car crashes would be a thing of the past."

Stars nearly danced from Mark's eyes. "Please tell me you pooled the resources for this new project already."

"What do you take me for?" Bulma scoffed at him. "Of course I did!"

Mark could barely contain himself. "With tech like this, Capsule Corp. will be . . . no, we'll be . . . we'll . . ."

Rosy lips pulled in a smug smirk. "We'll be unstoppable," Bulma finished for him.


The wire cords zipped taut and pulled a clanking mass behind them. Retreating, the metal weights clattered back in place, and the cords slid upward. Another tight tug, and the weights were lifted again, climbing up the back of the exercise machine. Hard muscles bunched and rippled, abdominals tensing as they guided the rest of the core upward. A single bead of sweat dripped down a strong back as full biceps forced the wire cords forward and the metal weights up.

"This is too easy," came a mumble.

"You can't overdo it, Yamcha," Puar cautioned with a small squeak. "Remember last time—"

"Yeah, I remember," the fighter sighed at the thought of how much money he had had to pay the gym when he had damaged their weight lifting equipment. Another pull at the weights, and they rose with ease. "This isn't going to get me anywhere, though."

"You could train with Krillin," the small blue feline circled around the back of the machine.

"He said he wanted to train alone for now," Yamcha frowned with another rep, his grey tank hardly even dampened from his lacklustre workout. "And Tien and Chaozu are practically inseparable. I'd be a third wheel."

"What about Goku?" the small cat added helpfully, his ears twitching.

Yamcha let out an exasperated huff of air. "He's got Piccolo and Gohan to train with," the weights clanked down again. "Besides, you know I'm nowhere near their level."

"But think how much you'd improve!" Puar insisted. "You'd get better in no time."

"There's no point," the scarred fighter released the wire cords. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "I'd just slow them down."

Puar's ears drooped a little. "But if you build up your strength—"

"It's not going to cut it," Yamcha snarled. "You know what happened when I tried to train at a higher level—I was almost squashed to death by that gravity machine and it took me over a week to recover!"

"You just tried to do too much too fast," Puar amended.

"I need training that's more at my level if I'm going to get anywhere," Yamcha pondered. "But I can't do it with just a couple weights. We're going to be fighting a battle—I need to fight with someone—a real person—who isn't going to wipe the floor with me," he turned to his companion a little sadly.

Puar's eyes had gone wide and he nudged Yamcha's cheek a little urgently. "Don't look now, Yamcha, but that scary aerobics instructor is coming your way."

"Not that Sandy Raufer lady again," Yamcha paled, scanning across the weight room only to have his fears confirmed by a mess of crimped blond hair bobbing up and down at the far end. "It's like she's stalking me!"

"Well, she probably is. She said she's a fan of yours," Puar commented. "I think she likes you."

"No kidding," Yamcha ducked when he saw her head turn in his direction. Just the thought of those eyes heavy with blue eye shadow batting in his direction made him shudder. Crawling toward the exit, he silently made his way around the equipment when a piercing voice made him turn blue in the face.

"Have you seen that stud-muffin Yamcha anywhere?"

"Huh? You mean the baseball guy? Well, he was here a minute ago . . ."

The sense of dread at being discovered almost overwhelmed him and he decided with a quick leap to make a run for it. Sprinting down the hallway and past the aerobics and yoga classes, he zipped into the men's locker room, huffing a little at his narrow escape.

"Yamcha," Puar floated in behind him, "I thought you weren't afraid of girls anymore. Are you having a relapse?"

Yamcha set his hands on his knees and took a few quick breaths. "I'm not . . . afraid . . . of all girls . . . just that one."

"I don't know, she seems nice to me," Puar quirked a brow.

"Sure she's nice . . . and crazy," the fighter blew some hair from his eyes. "She's a fan girl—she doesn't leave me alone! I took one lousy aerobics dance class with her, and she's been tailing me ever since!"

"Well, don't tell Bulma about it," the blue cat squeaked nervously. "You know she always draws the wrong conclusions."

Recovering his breath, Yamcha leaned up against a locker, crossing his arms. "Not that she'd even notice now," he grumbled.

"What do you mean?"

Yamcha stared at the ground intently. "Things have just been so different since I got back. I thought once I was wished back to life, we'd be . . . I don't know . . . getting serious and settling down . . . now I'm lucky if I get to see her at all."

"Do you think she's found someone else?"

"No," Yamcha frowned. "It's nothing like that—it's just that she's always thinking about work. She never seems to even think about going on dates anymore, let alone . . . getting . . . you know," he tapered off with a meaningful look to his companion.

Puar took it up. "Getting married?"

"I don't even know if she'd say yes," he sighed. "It's been over ten years—you'd think we were already married by now!" His tone became frustrated. "Ever since we heard about those androids, I've just been afraid that I won't have enough time . . ."

"You mean you don't think we can win?"

The breath Yamcha exhaled felt like it came from a hollow pit in his stomach. "It's . . . not exactly that. I just . . . I don't know. I can't stand this not knowing!" he pounded a fist into the locker behind him. "What that guy from the future told Goku was that we all die except Gohan and Bulma. I don't know if I can do enough in the time I've got left to face that kind of enemy—an enemy strong enough to send a Super Saiyan running to the past for help."

With a shaky breath, he almost whispered, "I don't want to end up dying before I've had the chance to really live."

"Yamcha," Puar floated over to his hand and held it reassuringly. "You can't keep thinking like that. It'll eat away at you until there's nothing left. What happened to the old Yamcha who wasn't afraid of anything? The one who always wanted to face challenges head-on, and who got too excited to stop himself from joining in any fight he could?"

Yamcha scoffed. "He got killed by a stupid green vegetable man."

"Stop it," the cat tugged his arm sternly. "Thinking that way doesn't solve anything. It won't help you in the fight and it won't help you keep Bulma."

Finally relaxing his form, Yamcha glanced over at his furry blue companion. "You're right," he smiled with a half-hearted pull at the corner of his mouth. "If I want to spend more time with Bulma, I'll need to figure out a way to make myself strong enough to survive those androids."

"That's the spirit," Puar grinned, tugging the tall fighter out of the gloomy locker room and hopefully out of his funk. "Let's get back to work!" he chimed as the two of them began walking out the door into the hallway.

"Now I just need to find a partner with the right fighting lev—oof!" he bumped into something small, soft, and femininely rounded. Hardly looking before he backed up, he let out a small, involuntary yelp. "Oh no, she found me!"

"Huh?" a warm alto voice questioned. "Found you? I wasn't looking for you."

Yamcha blinked from his crouched defensive position at the woman in front of him, who was decidedly not Sandy Raufer. Her dark hair was tied in a tail that gave off a slight indigo shine when it hit the light in its thick waves. Brown eyes with questioning brows stared back at him as she shifted a duffel bag on her shoulder. Crossing her arms over her yellow sports bra and tank, she gave a slightly amused smile as she eyed him up and down.

"But it sounded like you were looking for someone to fight with . . . want to have a go?" She raised a fist connected to a toned arm.

"What? With . . . you mean . . ." Yamcha stammered, still barely recovering from his initial panic. "I . . . I couldn't fight a girl."

Rolling her eyes at that, the woman shrugged it off. "Oh well, your loss this time, buddy," she reached into a small compartment of her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. "The next time you're looking for a partner with some skill, call me up. You look like you might give me a decent work-out," she grinned with another once-over and handed him a business card before heading off with a small sway in her hips.

Yamcha was too confused to move as he watched the strange sporty woman walk away, and Puar took it upon himself to take the card from his hand and read it.

"Zisha Bergamot: Kickboxing champion and instructor."


He had to turn over to prevent the blood from pooling in his throat and choking him. With a few wracking coughs, a red mass formed by his face, sticking to the side of his cheek. His hand shaking, he pulled the rest of his body upward, forcibly straining with the effort to raise the nearly thirty metric tons of it under the extreme gravity. Above him, he heard the whirring of the sentinel droids closing in.

"Program Delta completed," the computer's hollow voice rang out, echoing in the circular chamber."Initiating Program Epsilon."

Another cough of blood. "C-cancel . . . cancel program," Vegeta rasped out before he was forced to curl into a heaving mass on the ground.

"Program cancelled. Gravity simulation terminated. Normal gravity restored."

The red warning lights dimmed and returned to soft white, and the immense pressure pulling his body downward immediately dissipated. Finally able to lift himself up to a sitting position, he took stock of his injuries. A gash in his right leg throbbed, charred on the edges to the point where it no longer bled, but it still smouldered. His left shoulder had taken the brunt of the most recent wave of damage, the skin all the way down to the edge of his upper arm burnt and flayed from both energy blasts and repeated falls at 450 times normal gravity. Several minor scrapes laced around his chest and face, but the worst of the damage lay in his right side. The wound had grown, aggravated by another energy blast and the prolonged stress of his training in general, opening wider to reveal two ribs jutting out slightly from the reddening gash. As the last of his coughing spasms emitted yet another glob of dark blood, he determined that one of his lungs must have been perforated.

Standing slowly, he struck out at the wall in frustration. I've reached the limit, he thought morosely as he wiped a stray trickle of blood from his brow. What's the point of all this? I'm not getting any closer. At this rate, I'll never . . . Clenching his fist, he tore some of the reinforced metal in a crumpled mass. With a laboured breath that was almost a sigh, he turned to look out one of the portal windows, noting by the scarlet-tinged sky that it was soon to be evening. Leaning his arm on the wall to support his wearied frame, he opened the capsule door and waited as it descended with a small hiss.

The cool evening air brushed against his sweat-covered skin with a chill. Stepping out from the capsule, he saw the sky had turned a bright red on the horizon, tingeing the white buildings of the Western Capital with a rose rim. The last gold rays of the sun barely flickered above the skyline, and in its place were crimson clouds and a flame-brushed sky. Pausing as the door to Capsule 3 rose shut, he gazed into the red sky, his pain momentarily shoved to the back of his mind as his eyes took in the vibrant colours, distantly piercing into the image. A familiar ruby sky with towering white spires came to mind, and he could almost imagine space pods streaking past in flashes of blue-white, like rising comets—

"Miss Brief, Miss Brief!"

With a blink and a turn, the image was gone, and he could see the hoard of camera-flashing journalists dogging that blue-haired woman to her home through the bars and reinforced tinted glass of the main gate. As the reporters' questions increased in volume, Vegeta took the effort upon himself to head inside to avoid the bother.

At the gate, Bulma barely avoided running into a fourth microphone. "Yes, we've added a few more employees, but we haven't fired anyone."

The dark-haired man adjusted his glasses. "So you're not doing an overhaul of the company personnel structure?"

"No," Bulma stated simply, brushing his microphone from her face. The space from her car to her house had never seemed so far away.

"What about your ongoing research in the communications sector?" An older man held his notepad at the ready.

Bulma was losing her patience as another television camera barred her way from the gate's electronic keypad. "We're nearing the final stages, but I can't tell you any more than that."

"What about your relationship with Yamcha?" an all too familiar NewzPop shirt came into view, followed by several camera flashes. "No one has seen you two together in weeks."

"I won't comment on personal matters," Bulma had to repeat to the over-eager blog reporter.

"Does this mean things have fizzled?"

"No comment," Bulma grumbled as she stretched out an arm between several paparazzi to punch in the code for the gate.

"Is working at the company putting a strain on your relationship?"

The gates swung open and Bulma tried to force her way through the mobbing cameras into her front yard, dodging pencils, microphones, and questions. "No comment."

"What about the rumours about a new man in your life?"

"For the last time, stop asking personal questions," she began to fume, barely extricating herself from the swarm.

"Who's that?"

"Huh?" Bulma squeezed her way out of the mass and through the gates. Following the pointing fingers and camera flashes, she gasped and quickly slammed the button for the gate to close, bowling over most of the paparazzi.

Across the lawn from her, Vegeta was leaning against the headquarters building, smearing a red streak over the pale yellow walls. Holding his side, he appeared to have trouble maintaining his balance, taking each trembling step very slowly.

"Vegeta!" she shouted, rushing over to him. "What are you doing?"

With a pained grunt, he barely turned his head to her. "Well, I was trying to avoid all the loud questions, but I suppose now I've lost my chance," he bit out sarcastically.

Blowing a few curls from her eyes, she warily looked over her shoulder at the gaggle of reporters and was loathe to see a few of them had boosted each other up to continue filming over the top of the gate. With a resigned sigh, reached out to help him walk.

"I don't need your help," he snapped at her when she grabbed his left arm, the movement aggravating his shoulder injury. He pulled himself away and took a few more steps forward, streaking more blood from his side onto the wall when he stumbled.

"Listen to me, tough guy," Bulma put her hands on her hips. "I've got a mess of reporters out there filming your new paint job on my house. Either you let me help you get inside fast, or you can bleed out on candid camera."

He opened his mouth to speak, but only red-flecked coughs came out. Taking the opportunity, Bulma sidled herself under his left arm and eased him inside, ignoring his sputtered protests.


AN: Yes, Zisha Bergamot's name is a pun on tea. Zisha is a type of yixing clay used for teapots, and bergamot is the citrus juice found in Early Grey tea. In the spirit of the DB franchise, I will attempt to pun on names as I go along, but only on the more important minor characters. I'll try not to add too many.

Also, I hope I make this clear: I am somewhat sympathetic to Yamcha. Hell, I'm sympathetic to pretty much every DBZ character—except maybe Cui or the saibamen. They don't really get enough screen time for proper development, though—oops, I'm even being sympathetic to them now.

Anyway, how's the story going? Thoughts?