Time slowed down to a crawl. Bulma sat in the old flowerbed and tried not to let panic get to her as she felt surely he should be back by now. She looked at her watch. Thirty seconds had passed. Okay.

She distracted herself by doing a more thorough investigation of the contents of the box of components. She couldn't keep her mind on it. She imagined time passing for Trunks in the past. She imagined his meeting Goku. How would it be? She was sure they would like each other. She suddenly felt jealous. Man, would she like to be there, to see Goku take Frieza and his father apart like they were lego men all over again. She wanted to live in that happy place where they were all safe because Goku was alive. She'd see Vegeta again. As she remembered it he was particularly bad tempered that day. Not only had he hated the shirt she'd picked for him, but Goku's display of Super Saiyan power had put him in an even fouler mood than usual. Her heart squeezed – Trunks would see his father for the first time, maybe even meet him. How would that go? What would they make of each other?

The urge to look at her watch became too great, but when she did her heart began to pound in fear.

'Oh shit! Four minutes!'

She looked into the sky, but there was no sign of him. Panic was coming over her.

'Stay calm Bulma! You never actually saw the exact time he punched in, maybe he was playing it safe and gave himself a few extra minutes leeway.'

She sat back down in the flowerbed and stared at her watch and the seconds passing by. Ten, twenty, another minute. Two…Three…

'No, no, no!' she moaned.

She felt something then that shut her up. A presence, up high maybe. She looked up into the sky again, but her relief sublimed into fear as she spied not a time travelling machine, but the tiny speck of a person growing bigger fast as they rocketed towards her.

Bulma threw herself back into the flowerbed and wriggled backwards under an overgrown camellia bush.

She heard whoever it was touch down lightly in the long grass. A couple of seconds passed.

'What the…?' Whoever it was, was obviously discovering that the machine was missing. Bulma's heart continued it's pounding.

'Where the hell is it?'

The rough voice took her by surprise. It was familiar. She felt no less scared, but she suddenly had an urge to jump out of the bush and see the speaker.

'Where is my time machine? Woman! Come out here, I know you're hiding under that damn shrub!'

Bulma didn't think her heart could beat any harder, but after a skipped beat it did. Surely, she was fooled? It couldn't be…it couldn't…the universe wasn't that cruel…

'WOMAN!'

Shaking she crawled out from under the bush. As her eyes travelled up from the ground she saw scuffed grey boots, black jeans, red t-shirt, a leather vest, muscular folded arms…She paused, scared.

'Where has the machine gone?' he said, more softly this time.

Finally she looked at his face. She felt her lips go numb. Her voice failed. The world dimmed.

'Oh-no, no, don't you faint on me, princess!' She felt an iron hard grip on her elbows that lowered her to the ground. 'Breathe deep - it's real.'

She looked up at him, at the hard lines of his mouth, the thick dark brows pulled down into a scowl over the obsidian sharp eyes. Yep, it was Vegeta all right.

'How?'

'Time machines. You should know. Think about your N theories, about what Dr Protractor said.'

She obeyed, marshalling her brain, clinging to the hope that if she concentrated this disturbing hallucination would evaporate.

N-theory dictated that time was an ever branching thing – that to the observer it seemed linear, but in fact at each instance where a quantum event occurred there was not only one outcome, but all possible outcomes occurred simultaneously, splitting the universe into many, again and again. To the observer it would appear that only one outcome had occurred, but the observer themselves would be in each new universe observing a different outcome. So what would happen, when you travelled back along their timeline, was that a new, very major set of quantum events would happen, and the universe would split again. The time traveller would change the future of the universe they had just caused to be created, but the history of their own timeline would not change. Obvious really. The time machine in her head was designed with a bounce beacon feature – it couldn't take you to a specific universe, but it could take you back to the one you left from, leaving the timeline created with the initial jump instead of just jumping forwards along that line. But Vegeta was dead in this universe. How was he here?

'You're not from this timeline, are you?'

'No.'

'That time machine, I didn't built it, did I?'

'Not in this timeline.'

'I built it in yours?'

'Of course!'

She looked at his angry face. He looked older. The lines of his face were more deeply chiselled, his skin not as taut, there were fine lines around his eyes. It was just as hard to put an age to him as ever, but he was older. His hair threw her though. His amazing flame of black hair was gone, cut into flat spikes across the top. His whole style was so human – the clothes, the hair cut…he looked like a hood from a biker gang. Even his white gloves were gone – instead he wore black leather, fingerless driving gloves.

'Why are you here?'

'That is not any concern of yours. But that fact that my time machine is missing is about to be. Now tell me what you've done with it!' he said, his lips pulling back in a snarl.

Bulma's shock was draining away, and in it's place was fear. Who was this Vegeta? What was she to him? He was angry, and he had never thought much of murder. She stayed where she was on the ground, trembling, trying to decide what to say.

'Have you forgotten how to talk? SPEAK!'

'Ah! W-what can I say? I don't know w-where your machine is.'

He looked down at her, his eyes steely. 'You certainly took your time to confess your ignorance. I don't believe you at all.' He shook her once. This immediately ignited her anger.

'Get off me!' She scooted backwards out of his reach. Vegeta stood up again, his snarl becoming vocal now.

'I don't think you know how important this is! I am STRANDED without my machine! Talk Woman, talk before I do something drastic!'

Bulma considered her options. Where the hell was Trunks? Did it really matter what happened to her now if he was lost in time?

'We borrowed it. We were going to return it before you got back.'

Vegeta's face turned red with suppressed anger. 'Well, where is it then?'

'About…twenty years ago.'

'What! And when will it be back?'

'It…it should've been back by now. Trunks…' The panic was overwhelming now. Bulma gasped for breath, unable to go on.

'You sent our son into the past in a borrowed machine?'

She nodded.

'What were you thinking? He's too young! He's not supposed to go back for another two years!'

To her surprise she saw horror spread across Vegeta's face instead of rage, and this only made her feel worse. What had she been thinking? What had she done?

'I don't know! I knew it was a risk, but I…I didn't think this…I'm sorry, I'm sorry! My Trunks! I've lost my Trunks!' She put her face in her hands and screamed.

'Oh my gods Woman!'

Suddenly she was lifted roughly from the ground by the front of her jacket. She found herself inches from this strange Vegeta's face.

'When was he due back? Tell me!'

'I don't know exactly. Maybe seven, eight minutes ago.'

'Not long then. Maybe he just forgot the exact time.'

'He put it in the scheduler.'

'Did you see what time he put in?'

'No.'

'Then maybe he got it a little wrong.'

She wanted to believe that. She put her feet back under her, shaky as she was. Vegeta let go of her jacket.

'We'll wait a while and hope,' he said, and sat down in the grass facing the place where the machine should be. Bulma sat too, eyes on Vegeta. For the first time she noticed that he had brought something back with him from wherever he'd been – a large Perspex cylinder filled with fluid, with some kind of disgusting looking animal foetus inside it. Its presence was completely inexplicable, but the puzzle only distracted her for a second from her worry. She tried to keep the panic clawing it's way back up. In the meantime a source of information was sitting in front of her.

'You seem to know what happens back then, when Trunks goes back.'

'I know what happened when he came back in my timeline.'

'At what point do our timelines diverge, do you know?'

'At that point. The day Goku returned from outer space. It's where all the timelines diverge from, that make this gods-be-damned snakes nest!'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean that that first incidence of time travel set it all off! Time travel Bulma. At first it was a blessing, and now it is thoroughly cursed. No-one's meant to be as clever as you. You're such an aberration I'm surprised the multiverse didn't spit you out.' The bitter edge in his tone was hurtful.

'You're saying I shouldn't build a time machine? But you just arrived in one that I made!'

'By all means, build one. Nothing I've ever said has changed your mind.'

'Huh? How many times have you tried to change my mind?'

'Three times. I try and avoid meeting any people in whatever time and universe I'm in, but you have a knack for being there right at the wrong time. Like today.'

Bulma looked away, down at the grass, eye eyes filling with tears. Her greatest invention, her last hope, it was a curse, she could believe that now. 'I'm sorry Trunks,' she whispered.

Vegeta sighed. 'That was unfair. This is a desperate time, and you are desperate people. Your time machine is the best way out of your troubles. It's my Bulma that shouldn't have meddled.' He fell silent, staring at the ground. Then he added quietly, in a voice she didn't think she was meant to hear, 'Who am I kidding? I'm the one that really fucked things up.'

Bulma looked up at him, surprised. The Vegeta she knew would never have made such an admission. He was looking at his clenched fists, a muscle in his cheek twitching. Self hatred. Now that was more like the Vegeta she recalled.

They sat in silence for a while. Bulma turned over his last speech in her head. The way he'd said 'my Bulma' had been very possessive. It sounded like more than just a way to say the Bulma from his timeline. It sounded like they were a couple.

Her watch beeped on the hour and her heart leapt back into her throat. 'Half an hour! He's been gone half an hour!'

'Shit!' swore Vegeta, striking the ground and making the whole overgrown garden leap with a spray of soil and small insects.

'He couldn't have got it that wrong could he? The wrong day? Wrong hour? Oh my God, please, send me back my son!' she cried to the universe in general.

'Cool it!' said Vegeta, angrily, getting to his feet.

'You cool it! I just sent my son to his death!' As she said this the words started sinking in and she fell into the long grass, face down in the dirt, a wail coming up from the bottom of her soul.

'Shut it Woman!'

She was way beyond hearing him, but suddenly she felt herself snatched up again by her shoulders this time. 'Be quiet and listen to what I have to say!' Vegeta yelled at her from a few inches away. She did, but not because he told her to. The instinct of the prey was telling her to save her energy to struggle free.

'We don't know that he's dead! And we are not exactly without recourse of action here! You're the most brilliant scientist there ever was, and you're building a time machine. And I am not exactly going to give up and settle down in this cheerful little branch of reality.' He gave her another shake. 'Stop squirming! Are you listening to me?'

'He might not be dead?'

'Even if he is, we can create an outcome where he didn't die.'

'What? But in this outcome…'

'Did you ever consider the possibility that you would end up in the negative outcome universe?'

'What, you mean one where Trunks…Trunks is…?'

'Dead? Or not even that. Remember that when Trunks returns to this time, that creates another branch in the timeline.' His black eyes were boring into her, sharp and uncomfortable.

'It does? I didn't think it would!'

He set her back on her feet, but she was so unsteady she had to grasp his arm to stop from falling over. He didn't brush her off.

'It's a theory. Someone told me it. In one branch the traveller will return safe, and in the other they'll never show. But I've never experienced it myself. Then again, I am usually the traveller.'

'What? So he might be okay, but I'll never know, and I'll never see him again?'

'Well, like I said, it's a theory.'

'Or he's gone to the next dimension?!'

'Either way, we're not going to sit around here wringing our hands about it. You've got a time machine to build.'

Author's note: So, now that Vegeta is actually here we can start cooking with gas! Please review if you're reading, just to say 'Hi!' if you like.