A/N: I don't own DBZ or the characters, that honour belongs to Akira Toriyama. I use British English spelling.
Vegeta and his eight year old son Trunks go back in time to warn the past of the Androids' arrival. When the machine needs repairing the two of them are stuck. At least the past has good food! There's just one problem... Bulma begins to fall in love with Future Vegeta, instead of his younger self. Can Vegeta ensure his son's birth, defeat the Androids, and save the world?
Sorry for the unexpected hiatus! Details on that at the end.
As a reminder of what happened in the last chapter, on Earth, Vegeta and Bulma continued with their flirtatious arguing, and in space Trunks found out more about Seria's past. Now, onto this chapter!
"She's asleep," Ara said as she came back into the main living area, closing the door to the bedroom softly behind her. She padded across the room towards Vegeta, twisting her long yellow hair into an intricate braid as she walked, before heading into the cramped adjoining kitchen.
Vegeta nodded in response, then rubbed his temples at the shot of pain throbbing through his skull at the movement, his head aching from Seria's intrusion into his mind. The girl's abilities were impressive. He'd found Ara's unnerving, but having that much power in the hands of a child was downright frightening. He sighed and leaned his head back against the wall he was currently propped against. "Her ki isn't as pathetic as yours," he commented, noting how even in sleep it hummed strongly, and with a distinctly Saiyan edge to it.
Ara scoffed at that. "I'm aware. When she has a mind to do something I don't want I hardly have the strength to stop her." She poured a cup of water then crossed the room and handed it to him. "Drink. Being mind-swept is dehydrating."
Vegeta took the cup and tossed the water back in one gulp. As he set the glass on a wall shelf, then sank into one of the ratty seats Ara had furnished the bunker with, Ara sat down opposite him, her pale eyes watching his every move.
"What?" he snapped.
"Seria said she was trying to see how you managed to keep the WTO off our trail." She tapped her long fingers on her knee, her unblinking gaze still focussed on him. "She only saw the aftermath, but I must admit, I'm curious too."
Vegeta clenched his jaw. Although Ara had been on many purging missions, she radiated an innocence that should have been stripped from her long ago. "You don't want to know," he said finally, breaking her stare to look down at the broken tiles of the floor.
"If I ever get captured, I need to be able to corroborate your story," Ara pointed out.
He sighed and looked back at her. She was right, he knew. Although the idea of them getting caught was… unpleasant. Fear was a constant in his life, as much as he pretended never to feel it, but fear for others wasn't something he felt often. "The best way to avoid telling the truth in a torture session is to make sure you appear to be hiding something," he said, placing his hands carefully on his knees to avoid the temptation to ball them into fists.
"That seems counterintuitive… don't you want to appear innocent?"
"No one is innocent," he replied. "There were two other soldiers at the whorehouse. I killed them and everyone in it, then when tortured I admitted - but only under a lot of pain - that I'd…" Vegeta scrunched his nose in distaste at the mere thought, "…developed an ongoing interest in one of the whores. I said that I got into a fight with the Yerlo's men trying to protect her."
"And they believed you?"
"They believed that I'd been trying to keep that secret, but had succumbed under torture. It was… convincing."
"That was reckless," Ara said with a growl. "You had no way of knowing if they had another like me. They could have got the truth - the real truth - from you easily."
"My intel said there was no one else with your abilities. Perhaps it was reckless," he admitted before throwing her a cocky smirk, "but it was strategically reckless."
Ara frowned at that. "And your…" She swallowed audibly, then reached over the table and tentatively placed her hand over one of his. "Your punishment?"
Vegeta's hand stiffened under hers and he fought the urge to throw her off. "It doesn't matter."
"It does to me." She wrapped her fingers around his palm and squeezed.
"Ara…" He pulled his hand back slowly then stood up, turning away from the unreadable expression on her face. "I'd endured worse punishments for less," he said, striding to the door. "Train the girl. I'll come by if I can do so without raising suspicion." He paused in the doorway and glanced back at her. "I will defeat Frieza, and when I do I'll tell Raditz the truth and he will come for you."
Vegeta screamed as he slammed his fist into one of the gravity room's bots, revelling in the sensation of skin and bone against crumpling metal. It didn't make the fury bubbling inside disappear though, and he spun in the air to send the last working bot against the wall with his foot.
It dropped abruptly to the floor and lay in a twitching, sparking mess. Cursing inwardly, Vegeta landed in front of the control panel, sweat pouring down his bare chest, limbs shaking from the current level. With all bots down his training would be hampered for a while, and all because of a temper tantrum over events that happened years ago.
He didn't know why he was recalling his brief moments with the half Saiyan girl and her mother, but the memories filled him with almost as much rage as his inability to transform into the legendary did.
He'd failed them both, just like he'd failed the rest of his people. He hadn't defeated Frieza. Raditz had died too soon to ever find out about his daughter. Had died hating him.
With a low growl, Vegeta turned the newly upgraded gravity room up to its highest setting, letting the pain of the weight bearing down on him burn through his limbs. He could barely move to begin his press ups, but he pushed past the pain, past the memories haunting him, and focussed on the only thing he could do. Get stronger so he didn't fail again.
Vegeta had travelled extensively enough to know that most of the known universe was barren and devoid of life. The Gol'thak quadrant however, left to develop on its own for millions of years thanks to the dangerous meteor fields surrounding it, was famous for having a disproportionate number of life supporting planets. Named for its unusual ring of rocks that had brought down many a warship, Gol'thak loosely translated to paradise through hell's gates.
That's not to say it was impassable - Vegeta himself had been through a few times in his small pod - but how Zersa had managed to get hundreds of warships through safely to take over the quadrant was something he hadn't managed to figure out yet. He had to find a way to work it out though, because they were going to need to get The Clunker through, preferably undetected.
"Cloaking is up and being monitored automatically every five minutes," Han said from his hover chair at the ship's main control panel. "We are about three sleep cycles away, so we need to figure out our plan before we arrive."
Vegeta glanced up from the other side of the room with a frown. He was well aware that they needed a plan, and that both Han and Ara were counting on him to come up with one. "I need the exact dimensions of the ship." he said, scrawling notes onto a piece of thick paper in front of him.
He sat on his own hover chair in front of three holographic screens of scrolling data. Ara had provided him with the last twenty years of meteor activity from the quadrant, and Vegeta had been studying it for hours since, to no avail.
He continued his methodical process of copying down any key information that stood out in the hope that it might spark an idea, snatching the piece of paper Han handed him without a look in the man's direction. The ship's size was proving to be a problem, with very limited windows of opportunity for a ship that large to get through.
How had Zersa managed it?
Vegeta dropped his pen with a disgusted hiss and slumped in his chair. Not for the first time, he wished that Bulma were here, for he knew she would have written an algorithm to discover any correlation between meteor activity and ships that made it through successfully.
He tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him with a frown, reminded of the last time he faced a mathematical problem like this…
He'd copied out Bulma's time machine plans onto paper and taped them on the wall of the small room he'd commandeered for his use in the human's hideout. Unable to find more paper, he'd moved to literally writing on the walls in an attempt to alter her calculations for his purpose.
The machine she'd designed was meant for one person, but Vegeta had no intention of leaving Trunks behind on this hell hole. If they were going back in time, they were going together. Unfortunately, while Vegeta's physics skills were better than the average human thanks to his time spent maintaining his space pod, the sheer amount of complex equations involved were doing nothing but giving him a headache.
Rubbing his temples, he sighed and sank into a wooden chair beside his desk, staring miserably at the wall in front of it. He'd always been rather proud of his intellect, using it to his tactical advantage time and time again in battle, but he had nothing on Bulma's genius, even with her notes designed to dumb it down for him.
"Do you want to spar, Papa?" Came a small voice from the doorway.
"No," he said, his voice coming out shorter than he'd intended. He turned to see his son's crestfallen face quickly mask itself into an impassive expression so much like his own, and cursed at himself inwardly. "Wait," he said, stopping the boy from leaving. "Come look at this."
Trunks entered the room, his smile returning.
"We need to amend the calculations for the propulsion," Vegeta began to explain, standing up to show Trunks the diagram on the wall. "Your mother built her prototype for only one passenger."
Trunks stared at the diagram thoughtfully, then wandered around the room to the other walls, inspecting the scrawled calculations. "You need enough propulsion to create the force required to send us back in time," the boy said, running his fingers against a complex expression.
"Yes." Vegeta looked at his son curiously as the boy picked up another coloured pen and began writing another version of the equation underneath.
The boy had proven himself to be of above intelligence from an early age, but even if he had his mother's genius, he was only six years old. Surely he couldn't… Well, shit. Maybe he had.
Trunks stepped back, cocking his head at the calculation, then smirked at his father. "Will that work?"
Vegeta ran it through four times before conceding that he'd been outsmarted by a six year old. "Yes." Even as he wanted to feel embarrassed at how easily the boy had figured it out, a wave of pride washes over him. "Good," he said, ignoring how Trunks' eyes lit up at the praise and striding over to the other side of the room to point to another equation. "Now, how about you fix this one too?"
Vegeta chuckled at the memory as he felt for Trunks' ki. The boy was with Seria, and by the feel of their heightened ki they were sparring. Rather than going to Trunks, Vegeta pulsed his ki three times in an old signal from their own time, where they'd communicate in ki pulses when it was too dangerous to talk.
Immediately, Vegeta felt his son's ki pulse in response, then sensed the boy moving through the ship. When Trunks appeared at the doorway, face flushed and still slightly out of breath from his spar, Vegeta waved him in.
"I require your assistance," he said, jabbing a finger towards the screen.
Trunks came closer, peering at the piles of numbers with a frown. "What is this?"
"Data from the meteor field around Gol'thak." Vegeta swiped through it, pausing at key variants.
Han made a scoffing sound and twisted in his chair to look at the two Saiyans. "Ara said you were a master tactician, Vegeta. Are you seriously resorting to getting advice from a child?"
Trunks flushed, his eyebrows narrowing, but Vegeta cut him off with a raised hand before he could speak.
"Any worthwhile tactician knows to use the resources at his disposal, Lieutenant. I was the strongest Saiyan alive at four years old. Age has nothing to do with one's abilities." Vegeta turned back to Trunks then, continuing as if Han hadn't interrupted. "There are millions of meteors circling the quadrant, and every now and again they open up so there is space to fit a large ship through. I'm trying to predict when and where the next gap big enough to get The Clunker through is."
Trunks nodded and took over from the screens, pushing his father's chair - with Vegeta on it - so it moved out of the way.
Vegeta frowned at his son's insolence, but said nothing as he recognised the look on the boy's face. It was the same one Bulma got when confronted with a problem she was determined to solve.
"The translator doesn't translate written letters," Trunks said suddenly, frowning at the holographic keyboard displayed on the desk with blue lights. "I can write a script to analyse the data, but someone will need to type it for me."
Vegeta slid his chair back towards the desk, making Trunks jump out of the way. "Fine," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Tell me what to do."
The stubborn nut wouldn't budge. Whoever had tightened it could well have stripped the thread. Bulma swore as the spanner slipped out from her hand and skidded across the floor.
"I've got it," Daniel, the technician assisting her said, scrambling after it with his white lab coat fluttering behind him. He came back with the wrench in hand, brandishing it like a trophy.
Bulma wriggled in her uncomfortable position, legs under the space ship, and her other half curved up around the bottom to reach the control panel. She took the spanner and tried again, but the damn thing wouldn't loosen. "Give me a hand?" Bulma puffed out as she tried again.
Daniel slid under the spaceship as well, and reached up to help, his arms intertwining with hers to get a proper grip.
They tugged hard, and the nut finally moved, so suddenly that the wrench flew from their hands and both Bulma and Daniel fell back against the floor.
Bulma tipped her head back with a huff to see two bare feet in the doorway of her lab
There was only one person who would walk around a dangerous laboratory with no shoes on. Bulma scrambled out from the ship, and away from the now very flustered and red-faced Daniel, to greet her guest.
"Vegeta," she said brightly, ignoring his cold expression that flicked from her technician to her. "What do you think?"
His gaze fell on Daniel again, who seemed to wither under the stare. "Think about what?" Vegeta asked, folding his arms across his deliciously tight t-shirt and dragging his head back towards Bulma, looking her up and down.
Bulma felt her cheeks heat up at his unblinking look, and she realised how dishevelled she was in her old lab clothes, covered in grease. Vegeta, meanwhile, looked good enough to eat, wearing loose slacks with his muscles clearly defined by his shirt, and his hair still slightly damp from a shower. He smelt good too, even from this distance.
"The spaceship," Bulma replied, narrowing her eyes at him to hide how much she wanted to jump him then and there.
Vegeta finally stopped focussing on her and looked at the half-built machine. He strolled up to it, undid all four bits with his fingertips - even the ones she hadn't attacked with a spanner yet - and inspected the control panel. "This has more power."
"It will be twenty percent faster than the old one," she said.
"And will have smoother controls," Daniel added.
"Is that right, human?" Vegeta snarled, taking a step towards the technician who shrank under the Saiyan's glare.
Bulma stepped in between the men, placing a hand on Vegeta's chest, hiding a grin. Was the Saiyan jealous? "Yes, that's right. The new controls will make navigating through meteor fields much easier. Despite its size it will have the manoeuvrability of a motorbike."
Vegeta's eyes flickered with confusion, but he didn't reply, and Bulma realised he wouldn't know what a motorbike was, but certainly would never admit to not knowing anything.
"That will be all, Daniel," Bulma said without turning towards him, keeping her gaze locked on Vegeta instead. "Take the afternoon off."
"Are you sure-"
"You heard the woman," Vegeta ground out, and Bulma felt his chest tense under her hand.
"Ah… okay…"
Bulma heard the lab door click, and when Vegeta visibly relaxed his shoulders, Bulma knew Daniel had left. Vegeta still didn't seem happy though, with his eyebrows knitted together and his lips tight.
"You are building another space ship," he said, stepping to the side so that Bulma's hand hung uselessly in the air. "You already have one."
Bulma shoved both her hands in her deep lab coat pockets. "Future you is taking it with him when he and Trunks go back to their time."
"You don't think I can do it." His black eyes stared at her intently. "You think you will need to escape Earth."
"Excuse me?" Bulma balled her hands in her pockets. Did he really think that she was building a spaceship to run away?
"You are building that ship," he pointed roughly at the half complete shell, "to leave Earth if we do not defeat the androids."
Bulma dug her nails into her palms, ready to snap back at him that she was not a coward, when she caught a glimpse of something else in his eyes. He wasn't accusing her of being scared, she realised. He was hurt, thinking that she'd lied when she'd said she had faith in him to destroy the threat to Earth.
Slowly, Bulma uncurled her fists and brought her hand out, placing them palms out in front of her. "That's not true." She stepped towards him again, settling both hands on his bicep. "I want to have a ship so you can use it."
But that just made Vegeta appear more upset, his eyes widening and blinking unusually rapidly for a Saiyan. "You… you want me to leave?"
"No!" She gripped his arm tighter, digging her fingers into it as if she were strong enough to force him to stay. "That is not what I meant. I don't want you to leave, but I don't know what you'll want to do after the androids. I want… I want you to have a choice."
Vegeta gradually unfolded his arms, cocking his head as he crinkled his nose with a frown. "A choice."
"Yes." Bulma breathed out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding as the man's muscles relaxed underneath her touch.
"I haven't thought about what will happen afterwards," Vegeta said, still rigid in his stance, but unflinching as Bulma edged closer. "Other than using my Super Saiyan powers to defeat Kakarot, of course."
"Of course," Bulma agreed with a small chuckle, noticing immediately that he'd said 'defeat' and not 'kill'. "I haven't much either to be honest."
"You've thought about it enough to build a ship," he pointed out.
Bulma slid her hands from his arm, to across his chest, clutching the front of his shirt lightly. "Even if there weren't androids turning up to destroy Earth, I'd still have built this, if only because I can. Now, did you come down here for a reason, or were you just trying to scare off my new technician?"
"All the bots are broken. And I don't like him," Vegeta said with a scowl, the words vibrating in his throat.
"You don't like anyone," Bulma retorted. Ha! He was jealous.
The Saiyan raised his eyebrows at that, and leaned in towards her, until barely centimetres parted them. "Is that right?" He asked in a husky whisper, leaning further forward so his lips scraped against her ear. "I'll leave you be then."
Bulma giggled at the soft breath on her sensitive neck, and placed a hand on his cheek, turning his head to face her. "Don't you dare," she said, before closing the gap between them and pressing her lips to his.
With Trunks' calculations, they managed to get The Clunker through the field using a rare gap in the meteors and full thrust. Trunks had held his breath the whole time, terrified that the numbers his father had put so much faith in would be wrong. But other than a few surface dings, the ship was unscathed, and the ship and its occupants had landed on a remote part of one of the outer planets.
They had all gathered outside the ship, standing in formation in the frigid, oxygen-thin air, all standing tall under the planet's fifteen times Earth's gravity. Every single one of the ship's occupants - from the soldiers to the ship's chef looked dead ahead at Vegeta, ignoring their surroundings.
Not that there was much to see, Trunks realised as he snuck a glance from his position with Seria at the back of the group. There was nothing but ice for miles.
"We need to do this quietly and efficiently." Vegeta stood rigidly in front of all the soldiers on the ship, an imposing figure in his full Saiyan armour. "Right now we have the element of surprise. We lose that, and I guarantee we won't get anywhere near Zersa."
"We've landed in the middle of enemy territory," Ara added. "Zersa's hold on this quadrant is extensive. Now is the time to be strategic, and to use any advantages we have."
Vegeta bared his teeth into a feral grin, his gaze flashing past Trunks for an instant. "The base on this planet is a port for two thirds of the quadrant's spaceships. The majority of Zersa's fuel comes from here. We take this port, we limit her reach." He snapped his fingers at Han, then began barking out more specific instructions at the man who then strode off, sending groups of people off in different directions.
"Where is everyone going?" Trunks asked Seria, impatient to find out what his father would have him do.
"This isn't a direct attack," Seria replied beside him. "They are going to destroy the fuel reserves on this planet."
"Exactly," Ara said, coming towards them. "And you two are going to stay here."
Trunks scowled at that. "I want to help."
"You can, by staying with the ship," Ara insisted.
"But I-"
"But nothing, brat," Vegeta snapped, striding forward with a glare. "I need someone to keep on top of comms and to protect the ship. I need someone I can trust to do both of those."
Trunks opened and closed his mouth, torn between feeling like he'd miss out on all the action and pride at knowing that his father had chosen a task specifically for him. "Yes, sir," he said finally.
"Good." Vegeta placed a hand on Trunks shoulder and squeezed it gently. "Go to the comms centre. I want you to relay between squads where necessary and to try intercept any comms coming in from Zersa's forces. If anything of interest comes through for Zersa, patch through to me directly."
"What about me?" asked Seria eagerly.
Vegeta pulled back from Trunks and furrowed his brow. "Stay with Trunks. Don't do anything stupid."
Seria pouted at that. "I could help interrogate anyone you capture."
"Absolutely not," Ara snapped. "Stay with Trunks, keep the shields up, and protect the ship.
"If anyone gets within fifty clicks, contact me immediately," Vegeta added, before nodding at Ara then taking to the sky.
Taking over the port was easy. Too easy, Vegeta thought uneasily as he barked orders at the few soldiers they had to secure the area. The planet's inhabitants hadn't put up a fight, claiming that they only worked for Zersa because they had no choice. Zersa's actual soldiers numbered in the tens and were easily contained.
He stomped into the control room where Han was rifling through all the digital records to look for clues to Zersa's exact whereabouts.
"I don't like it," muttered Han, echoing Vegeta's thoughts. "Zersa has left this planet too unprotected for it to be the quadrant's main source of fuel."
"She doesn't need fuel," Ara said, striding into the control room. "I swept the memories of every one of Zersa's soldiers and they all say the same thing. Zersa is using a renewable energy source that doesn't require charging."
Vegeta frowned at that. "Everything needs to get its power from somewhere. Nothing lasts forever."
"Well, this mysterious energy source is powering Zersa's entire fleet. No one knows how it works." Ara began helping Han skim through the records. "Look for anything with the word cognilium."
Leaving the two to their hunting, Vegeta picked up the room's comms unit and patched through to The Clunker. "Trunks? Everything still intact?"
"Affirmative," came Trunks' crackly voice through the speaker. "No problems here."
"Open that one," Ara said in the background. "No, the larger file. Son of a… Vegeta, you need to see this…"
Vegeta glanced at Ara, whose eyes had gone wide. "Son, I've got to go. I'll return soon-"
"Wait, Papa. I'm getting some weird disturbance on the security system," Trunks said in a rush. "It's coming from high up, in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, but it's coming in fast."
"Vegeta!" Ara sounded panicked. "Zersa has a whole automation army powered by this energy source."
"How soon before it arrives?" Vegeta asked Trunks.
"Not it," came Seria's voice. "Them… it's thousands of machines coming in as one."
"Papa," Trunks said quietly. "What should we do?"
Vegeta cursed under his breath, then blasted a hole straight through the roof of the control room, revealing the sky above. Even though it had been daytime minutes ago, the sky had darkened, blotted with dots silhouetted by the sun behind them and making it appear as if stars were above them.
"That's them," Ara said. "That's Zersa's army. And Vegeta, if the records are to be believed, they are one hundred percent machine and all have the same abilities as Zersa."
Han swallowed noisily. "That doesn't sound good."
"Papa?" Trunks asked again through the speaker. "What do we do?"
Vegeta's breath caught in his throat and he clenched his fists so hard he felt his nails pierce his skin. "Get everyone back on the ship. Retreat and cloak the ship. Don't wait for me."
Vegeta felt Trunks' ki flair in the distance. "Papa! Let me come with you!"
"Stay where you are," he replied. "That's an order." Not that Trunks ever obeyed his commands, but it was worth a try. Vegeta cut the comms to his son then dropped his stance to take off into the air.
Before he could leave, Ara grabbed his arm. "You're going to do something reckless, aren't you." It wasn't a question, but she raised her eyebrows and dug her fingers tighter.
He smirked back at her and shook off her hand. "Strategically reckless perhaps."
Wow, it took me a while to get this chapter out! I did want to get it done sooner, but I had a massive project at work requiring a lot of overtime (now complete, yay!) and then I had to travel overseas for work AND THEN to top all that off my husband has had some unexpected health issues that have thrown both my schedule and my ability to think creatively completely out. Honestly, this has been a very tough few weeks, so thank you for all of your reviews and support on this story (and on my completed It all adds up which I noticed a few of you have read and reviewed - thank you, thank you!).
Review Q&A:
You write the word count on your profile page before the subsequent chapter is published, but how can you tell how long it's going to be?
Before I officially start writing I plot the chapter. I can guess how long it is based on how many scenes I'll be writing. I'm usually off a bit, but I update the estimate over time. If you checked back often you'd probably see those numbers jump around a bit!
Have you thought about starting a Pateron account?
I have a wonderful (if demanding at times) job and don't need the money. Unless that changes reviews are the only payment I would ever request:)