Author's note: Here it is, The Rescue, Part Two!

Usual disclaimer: I don't own these characters, none of us here do, but I do really, really like them! Please accept my humble explanation that I mean no harm and no loss of income or IP degradation!

They tracked him all the way to the Son household, nestled into the fields and trees on the side of Paozu Mountain.

'Dammit, this makes things even trickier!' growled Vegeta. 'When is he going to make his next jump?'

Trunks parked his machine a distance away from the house and then walked to the front door. Chichi, Goku and Gohan all greeted him at the door, which then closed, leaving them blind to all that was going on inside.

Bulma set the machine to jump ahead one hour. The black time machine remained parked. She waited for the capacitators to prime again. Another hour, still there. She did this again and again, jumping through the evening and the night one hour at a time.

'Is this it?' she said. 'Is he going to spend the whole time until the androids arrive staying with Goku and Chichi? Maybe we shouldn't wait for him to leave, just make the swap now.'

Finally their jumps showed them more than just the outside of the Son house. Goku and Gohan came out, followed by Trunks. Piccolo was landing, swooping down over their machine to land next to the other three. But then he turned and looked back over his shoulder towards where their machine lurked, giving the area a suspicious and calculating eye.

'Shit!' said Bulma, but Vegeta reached up and clamped a hand over her mouth. Piccolo's eyes narrowed and then he finally turned back to the others. The four of them flew away, heading up the mountain, far away from the house.

'That Namek's senses are more perceptive than the others,' Vegeta warned. 'He can hear a whisper a hundred yards away.'

'Shall we swap the vial now? Or wait till Trunks has left? If he leaves?'

'Not now. Kakarott's mate is still in the house.'

She fast forwarded hour by hour again. Chichi did not leave the house, but eventually all the Saiyans had returned.

'Is he staying for dinner or staying for three years?' fretted Bulma.

'Woman, you should not have told him to train with the others!'

'Why the hell not? It was a pretty good idea at the time actually! Just because it's not what happened in your timeline doesn't make it the wrong thing for him to do.'

'How are we to make any meaningful prediction about this future if we let Trunks get so far away from what happened in my timeline? Anything could-'

Vegeta suddenly dropped their argument to look behind them. He swore and the time machine rocked, a blaze of energy wrapping around his hastily thrown up chi shield. Piccolo stood in the afterglow of his attack, peering quizzically at the machine he couldn't see. He was talking, but they couldn't make out his words.

'What do we do now?' shrieked Bulma as Piccolo lifted his arm for another shot.

'We don't let him blow us up, that's for sure!'

Vegeta hit the cloaking button, revealing themselves, and popped the dome release. Piccolo gasped.

'Vegeta, I thought it was you! What are you doing snooping on Goku? And Bulma!' He looked backwards and forwards between them and the time machine. 'What's going on here?'

'It would take an age to explain,' said Vegeta. 'You already know that the boy Trunks is from the future. Trust us when we say that we are too. Leave us be, and tell no-one we were here.'

'Not even Trunks!' added Bulma.

Piccolo floated up till he was at eye level with them, his gaze flitting around the cockpit, their clothes and themselves. 'You're dead in the future Vegeta. Should I trust a dead man? Although I can see that you are older, so maybe what you say is true.' Vegeta growled, and Bulma realised that Vegeta might possibly be sensitive about his age, as ludicrous as that seemed. 'You though Bulma, don't look any different. Though you are.'

'Vegeta's not dead because he's from this future, not mine,' she said in an attempt to explain. Piccolo's mouth went slack, and she realised she wasn't making any sense to him. 'Look, we're just trying to make the future turn out right. Do you know how long Trunks is planning on staying here with Goku?'

'He's here to train he said. So we're training.'

'Well get rid of him,' said Vegeta. 'Send him into the wilderness or the hyperbolic time chamber if you must, but I'll not have my son trained by Kakarott before I have the chance!'

'That isn't what's important here, Vegeta!' she said.

'Yes it is! He barely survived the hyperbolic time chamber with me, and if I had to listen to him talk about Kakarott training him as well I'd probably kill him!'

'You wouldn't! Your own son!'

'Mine! And not Kakarott's! You might be forgetting that the me in this time is not so soft and cuddly as I am!'

'Soft!' She made a choking sound. 'Cuddly?'

Piccolo shuddered at her shrill tone and folded his arms. 'I can certainly believe you are Bulma and Vegeta – you're both already getting on my nerves. All right, I'll do as you say; I'll get rid of the kid. But only because he creeps me out, and not just at the thought of what went into his creation.'

'You mouthy green turnip! It's a good job for you we're in a hurry, or I'd have you laughing on the other side of your face!'

'Pathetic,' said Piccolo.

Vegeta began to stand up out of the seat, but Bulma hung on to his arm, attempting to keep him in it.

'Guys! This is pointless! He said he'd do as we said, so let him do it!'

Vegeta sat back down and gave Piccolo a shrewd look that broke into a gloating grin. 'Think about this conversation in a few years time and see if you still think I'm pathetic.'

Piccolo merely snorted in contempt, then turned his back on them and flew off into the night.

'Arrogant ass,' Vegeta grumbled.

Bulma rolled her eyes at the hypocrisy.

As they cycled through the night, one hour at a time, it occurred to Bulma that now was an ideal opportunity to bring forward the later stage of their plan.

'Vegeta, I'm going to install the N-clipper now. Before he has a chance to make another unpredictable move.'

Vegeta looked at her warily and then slowly nodded his head. It was around four o'clock in the morning for the sleeping Son family; the household should be deeply asleep. They cracked the dome again and Vegeta picked Bulma up to jump to the ground. They tip-toed through the grass to the other machine, armed with a flashlight, tools and N-clipper. Vegeta used his remote to open the hatch and then lifted them both up into the cockpit. He crouched on the rim holding the light while Bulma stood in the floor well, unbolting the seat for direct access to the time drive below. She was momentarily stymied by the unfamiliar layout, but even so, it was the work of minutes, and then they were done, flying back to their own machine.

Fast-forwarding through to the next evening the black time machine was gone after dinner time. Bulma backed up half an hour, then five minutes, then ten minutes, and then they got to witness Trunks saying goodbye to the Son family. Bulma wondered what Piccolo had done or said to move him on. It was a little risky to go backwards in time with the N-clipper while the machine remained stationary she realised. If they ended up overlapping themselves...well, she was sure it wouldn't be good. It also risked creating a time loop which carried unknown consequences, something that was impossible without an N-clipper. Vegeta had told her the Time Patroller Trunks had mentioned a traveller who tried to undo his own past with the N-clipper and was never seen from again. They couldn't risk doing anything when going back in time that would contradict their own selves' path to getting to that point. She felt sweat prickle on her forehead at the thought, but they would only stay the minute or two it took to confirm Trunks's departure. It occurred to her that maybe the N-clippers were double-edged swords.

At last Trunks got into the machine, raised it up into the air and jumped.

'Time or space, it doesn't matter – the way is now clear for us to do the swap!' said Bulma she said with relief. But first they needed an empty house. The next hour was very tedious for them while they scanned through the days looking for one where Chichi actually left the house for longer than it took to hang the washing or take care of the animals. When they found it though it was a sizeable chunk of time. She must've taken the hoverjet down to the city to go shopping – they moved backwards and forwards and found at least five hours in which the house was empty.

They made their move, pulling on the rubber gloves and vinyl booties that they'd taken from the broken med lab so that their scent wouldn't be left all over the house for Goku to detect, and then entered through the upstairs window. Bulma was assailed by a sense of loss as she looked around the modest, homely house, imagining it as she had last seen it - a burnt out shell.

She led them to the bathroom first, and rummaged the bathroom cabinet while Vegeta sifted the vanity drawers.

'Nothing,' he complained. 'Nothing except lotion to be "applied once daily to the buttocks for rash."'

'Vegeta, I don't want to know!'

'You don't even want to know who it was prescribed to?'

'Gohan surely.'

'Wrong,' he said, chuckling.

'No! I don't want to know!'

Next they searched down stairs in the kitchen, which took a lot longer, searching every draw and cupboard. Vegeta searched the fridge. When she looked up he was cutting a fat wedge from a cake he'd found in a box in the fridge.

'What are you doing?!' she exclaimed.

'What's it look like?' he said, round a mouthful. 'No matter how annoying Kakarott's demon woman is, she's a good cook.'

'You can't steal their food!'

'Kakarott wouldn't mind.'

'Vegeta, this is food we're talking about – Goku would mind! Besides, what are they going to think when food goes missing?' It was ginger cake he was munching. She could smell it's tempting aroma from here. Ground ginger…she hadn't seen any of that for years. For that matter, she hadn't seen wheat flour either…

'Chichi will blame Kakarott, Kakarott will blame Gohan, and Gohan will also blame Kakarott, and I get fed. It's a win-win situation.'

'What! I can't believe you'd steal from your friends!'

He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. 'I stole from everyone and anyone. How do you think I found most of my meals whilst travelling through time?'

It was a sad thought – Vegeta reduced to a thief to feed himself. She could see he wasn't proud of it, although she suspected it was because of the lowly, dishonourable nature of the crime rather than the fact that it was a crime. Nevertheless, he was feeding his face on sticky delicious cake.

'There's still half the cake left if you want some,' he said as she watched him raise the cake for another massive bite.

They searched the dining and living room next, Bulma still licking her lips from her ill-gotten treat. She missed flour!

'Damn, damn! Where they heck could they have stashed it? It's not like they've got a lot of furniture!'

Finally there were only the bedrooms to search. Vegeta cautiously slid open the top draw of a chest of draws to be confronted with a jumbled pile of Goku and Chichi's underwear. He shuddered, and began to delve in.

'This is a new low Woman!'

She was just as timid about going into the bedside drawers. She knew what she had been known to keep in hers at times, and didn't really wish to know if Goku and Chichi shared her habits. Strangely though, one held mostly high school prospectuses and a lone romance novel. The other one…well, that was more like the contents of a small boy's pockets, if that small boy also had use for the prophylactic devices that were scattered amongst. String, pocket knives, broken watches, a dried lizard, dried acorn cups, old World Martial Arts Tournament programs, marbles…marbles? And everything was slightly grubby.

'Found it,' she announced, holding up the vial of antidote and replacing it with the good one.

'Thank the gods! Lets get out of here so I can burn these rubber gloves!'

Back in the garden Vegeta wasn't kidding, and burnt the rubber gloves they had worn to stinking ash with a shot of chi. 'I still feel soiled on the inside' he said.

'Drama queen,' she replied. They ate some of the food Korin had given them whist staring out at the house with the dome up.

While they ate Bulma remembered the question she had put aside this morning.

'What did you mean about Sixteen passing judgements on you?' she asked him.

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Last night. You said that, and Sixteen said your hand was forced. What did he mean?'

Vegeta's face went rigid. 'That is between him and me,' he said.

'Huh,' she said. 'What is the point of secrets now? In a few hours I'll never see you again.' It stuck in her throat to say that; the words catching on the emotions that lay so shallow under the surface, snarling them into an angry and bitter complaint. She was angry and bitter! She immediately wished she hadn't said anything. Vegeta turned his head away from her, looking out down the wooded slopes of the mountain. Their little lunch break was ruined.

She stared at the back of his head, wanting to scream at him all of a sudden for leaving her. She wanted to tell him to stay, but knowing why he wanted to go, she couldn't ask that! And she wouldn't beg. Not this time.

She swallowed down the rage. It would be a very uncomfortable few hours if she gave in to it now. She wished she wasn't rammed into the bubble of the time machine hard against him. She wondered if he wanted to get away from her as much as she did him.

'Here's another question then,' she said, after a few moments, keeping her voice even and conversational. 'If there's an Eastern Supreme Kai, does that mean there is also Southern and Western and Northern Supreme Kais?'

Vegeta cleared his throat and answered without turning back to her.

'Yes.'

'Why have we only seen the Eastern one? Are we in the Eastern part of the universe?'

'No. But Kibito Kai is the strongest of most warrior-like of the Kai. The Eastern Supreme Kai was smaller and gentler than he is now, but he accidentally fused with his bodyguard Kibito. It made him far stronger, but it was permanent. The other Kai are too scared to come down to any world where I may be lurking. Also, he knows me from before I ever time travelled.'

'Don't tell me – he was your friend too?'

Vegeta snorted. 'No. Though we didn't used to be enemies.'

After a few minutes he heaved a sigh and turned back to the control panel.

'Lets see how well that fresh antidote worked out,' he said. 'Now it's my turn to drive.'

From this point on their plan was based upon Vegeta's memories and his scruffy handwritten notes he had amassed over the years. The next jump took them three years into the future and to another stretch of wilderness. A large stone flagged arena with a stone pillar in each corner lay before them in the distance, and a lone green figure hung over it. A news helicopter was buzzing on the peripheral.

'Welcome to the Cell Games,' said Vegeta. They looked through their binoculars at the small group of warriors assembling along the top of a low rise. 'Looks like everyone is present and correct.'

She could see all the Z-fighters and was surprised to see Sixteen as well...And Trunks, who's hair was long and tied back, and who was wearing a set of Saiyan armour, boots, gloves and jumpsuit just like the younger Vegeta next to him!

'Oh wow!' She felt that this was some sort of outward sign that Trunks had bonded with his father. 'Did you say that you and Trunks trained in the hyperbolic time chamber together?' Maybe while she had got to know Vegeta all over again, this new and improved version, Trunks had been getting to know his young father at the same time, so to speak.

'Yes,' was his stony reply.

She dropped the binoculars and looked at Vegeta. 'Was it…fun?'

He also dropped his binoculars to scowl at her. 'No. Unless achieving the Ascended Saiyan form is counted as fun. The Hyperbolic Time Chamber is the closest thing to Hell on Earth that I can think of. Your weanling barely survived, but it did make him a lot stronger.'

'Weanling!'

He shrugged one shoulder. 'The boy was still wet behind the ears. I don't normally train with anyone, unless I mean to pound them to paste. The solitary nature of our training in the time chamber didn't suit him well, and we neither of us held anything back. To merely survive he did well.'

He backed them up, a long way from the action.

'Let's skip to the end,' he said, selecting the next pre-programmed time and hitting jump.

The arena and the surrounding area were smashed up and the pillars were gone. Sixteen, Goku and Cell were nowhere to be seen and the remaining warriors looked ragged and injured, fanned along the edge of the arena. Cowering behind a rock was a news crew and what looked like a band of rodeo clowns or perhaps pro-wrestlers. They were watching a raging dust storm boiling out of thin air, it's centre obscured. Bulma had her binoculars trained on Trunks and Vegeta when a thin, deadly shaft of energy shot from the whirlwind and went straight through Trunks's chest.

'NO!' she screamed, jumping from the seat and banging her head on the dome.

'Sit down Woman!' said Vegeta, wrestling her down onto his lap. 'You already know that this happened! Trunks died! We revived him, and that's what we'll be checking next.'

'I know! I know! It's just that…'

Vegeta peered out at the scene again. 'I know. I was there Woman.'

She brought the binoculars to her face again, shaking, and saw Gohan stand up to Cell, who stepped out of the dust. Before he could make a move though the younger Vegeta flew at Cell in a full frontal attack. He let fly a massive energy beam so bright she had to lower the binoculars. She didn't need them to see the intense firestorm he rained down on the beast. She could imagine the scream of grief and anger ripping from his throat for his son, and it echoed in her heart. That Trunks even had to suffer the pain of dying was bad enough...Thank god today was not the day she lost Trunks forever!

The young Vegeta fought till he was spent and blasted from the sky by Cell. As Cell came in for the mortal blow a small figure threw itself in front of Vegeta, taking the brunt of it as it dragged them through the dirt with it's force.

'Gohan!' That brave, brave kid. She could see he was injured by the way he held his arm, and yet he still got up and advanced on Cell.

'He is Super Saiyan level two, the first of us to achieve it,' said the Vegeta beside her, grim faced.

He backed the machine up further. She couldn't make out the figures even with the binoculars now, but soon a massive and intense blister of energy was forming, almost too bright to look at. It shuddered and trembled, shifting backwards and forwards, growing, until finally it exploded outwards in a burst that whited out half the sky. Bulma was hardly breathing from the tension.

'It's finished,' said Vegeta. 'Cell is gone, and this timeline appears on track. It must've been the expired antidote as we thought.'

'You were amazing,' she said.

He cringed. 'I was a fool, and a liability in battle that day. That was...Gohan and Goku's day.'

'You just called him Goku!'

He bit his lip. 'So I did.'

He brought up the next time and space co-ordinates. Kami's lookout came into view, a dark sky and the massive green coils of Shenron hanging over it, rippling with electricity. Even inside the time machine they heard his huge booming voice.

'YOUR WISH WILL BE GRANTED.'

Vegeta guided them in closer while Bulma looked around the large concourse of Kami's lookout. Trunks lay on the tiles in his battered and broken armour and then sat up and looked around at the people gathered around him. Gohan helped him to his feet and he joined Yamcha, Krillin, Piccolo, Tien and Chao-Tsu. There seemed to be a great deal of discussion. They seemed upset.

'Why is the dragon still here?' asked Bulma. 'And why are they so unhappy looking?'

'They're trying to figure out how to use the second wish to bring Kakarott back from the dead.'

'Goku's dead? Wait – second wish?'

'Dende's Shenron grants two. And yes, Kakarott is dead, for the time being. They are just probably being told now that he doesn't wish to come back. To keep the Earth safe, he took himself out of the equation so it wouldn't be threatened by his enemies any more.'

'Goku! What a guy!'

'What an inflated sense of self-importance you mean.'

'What do they end up wishing for?'

'Krillin wishes the bombs out of Eighteen and Seventeen because they couldn't be wished human. He trusted there was good in Eighteen's heart.'

Bulma leaned back against Vegeta and stared at the sight of the Eternal Dragon, feeling the power and the glory of it she always had. What she wouldn't do for Dragonballs...Maybe she could get round to building that space ship now that the androids were no longer a threat. Maybe if they could find New Namek she could convince Dende to return to Earth as a new guardian like he did in this timeline?

As if he had read her thoughts Vegeta told her something that crushed that new hope right out. 'Dende has been taken from your timeline. I would have left you with a guardian for the Earth, but he's been stolen from your universe.'

She looked down at his face, his cold expression steadfastly staring outwards, anywhere but at her. There was warmth locked away behind that closed door. He had thought of her well-being, and Trunks's…and their daughter's…She would try and remember that when the day came that she would have to tell the child the sorry tale of how she came to exist.

'Thanks for trying, Vegeta.'

'I don't deserve your thanks, Woman.'

'IT HAS BEEN DONE,' came the dragon's voice.

The dragon pulsed with intense golden light and wound back up into the glowing dragonballs, which rose into the air and streaked away on seven different directions.

'It is done indeed,' said Vegeta, with a sigh of relief.

He pressed the jump button and now they were in he air above the Capsule Compound. Bulma's heart squeezed to see it just as she remembered it before the androids levelled West City. The black time machine was parked in the garden outside the house, and it was evening, getting dark.

'We have only a narrow window of opportunity here, though we have bought ourselves some breathing room by putting the N-clipper in already,' said Vegeta. 'We should have about an hour before I return. Gather the note and let's go.'

As soon as he said those words Bulma had a slithering feeling of dread. The note in question, that they had spent so long labouring over the composition of last night, she didn't recall packing with their other supplies this morning. She remembered folding it and leaving it on the small bench in the hangar the Eighteen and the Kai half destroyed, and thought to herself I mustn't forget it's there. She rummaged the cloth bag that Trunks had given them the N-clippers in, in which she had packed the other things they had needed for the day.

'Oh no!'

'Don't say you don't have it!'

She unpacked all the odds and ends form the bag onto the seat next to Vegeta, item by item in case it was just hiding from her. It wasn't. When she lifted her eyes to look at him he swore loudly.

'I don't even have a pen to write another one,' she said.

'Well we can't just change the destination time and not leave a note!' he said. 'If he notices and changes it back he'll end up making a time loop with that N-clipper!'

'I know!' Kami, what could they do? 'Vegeta, I'll have to get pen and paper from the house and write a new note.'

'That's...risky.'

'I only need to run into the kitchen! I know where there should be paper and pens. In and out.'

He thought for a moment. 'I'll check the coast is clear, then change the return date while you're inside. I'll meet you under the other time machine.'

They slipped out of the cloaked time machine and dropped down to the garden.

'They're all upstairs. Go!' whispered Vegeta, and she took off running across the lawn, and in up the steps through the back door to the kitchen. It all felt a little dream-like seeing this place she though she'd never see again. The sight of the kitchen hit her like a physical blow, and for a second she stood there dumbly, forgetting even her reason for being there. It was exactly how she remembered it. Even the smell of the kitchen triggered a cascade of memories.

'Move it Bulma!' she snapped at herself. She jumped to the corner unit where a phone hung on the wall, and opened the little draw under it, grabbing the notepad and a pen that her family kept there. She was about to dash back out when an idea came to her. Scribbling fast she wrote:

Whatever you do, and whatever the temptation, DO NOT build a time machine. It is better for your loved ones to die and spend eternity with you in the Next World than it is to lose them forever in another universe, and you will do untold damage to the multiverse if you try. The Supreme Kai of the universe told me so. Bulma.

Then she folded the paper and wrote For Bulma on the back of it, and pinned it to the noticeboard next to the phone.

The she began writing the second note.

Dear Trunks

We changed the time that you return to us in the computer. Whatever you do, don't change it back! I can't emphasise this enough! Our very existence hangs on it. Just trust me on this one.

Love from Mom. Yes, your actual Mom! And to prove it I'll tell you that

But before she finished a voice made her leap out of her skin with fright.

'Oh, there you are, Bulma!' It was her mother, her bright, bubbly mother coming through the door in her fluffy pink slippers. 'Did I give you a start? I'm sorry, dear!'

Bulma was frozen, choking on some sublime mix of joy and anguish.

'Mom?' she said, her voice breaking. Her mother immediately rushed to her side.

'What is it dear? Is something wrong?'

Bulma shook her head as her mother gathered her in for a hug.

'I know dear, it's been a long day with the boys going off to fight that dreadful Cell person. Why don't you sit yourself down and I'll make you a hot chocolate?'

She found herself deposited at the kitchen table, tears streaming silently down her cheeks as her mother got milk out of the fridge to heat it. She should leave. But she just couldn't make herself get up. Just a minute or two more with her mother, listening to her confident prattle about this and that...would that really hurt?

'Bulma, why are you wearing such old shabby clothes?' her mother was asking. 'Have you been working outside on something messy?' Bulma merely nodded. 'Well, you'll wear yourself out working after a day like this! I thought you were going to cut Trunks's hair this evening. Oh, isn't it strange! Having two grandsons at the same time, but they're both the same grandson! Well at least we know he grows up handsome! Are you sad because he's leaving tomorrow?'

Her mother plonked the mug of hot chocolate down in front of her and Bulma was finally raised from her stupor to sensible thought. Vegeta would be wondering what had happened to her. She needed to get out of here, but at least her mother mistook her for the Bulma that was upstairs somewhere. She had forgotten that they must look about the same now.

'No,' she said thickly.

'Is it Vegeta?' her mother asked with sympathy.

'What do you mean?'

'I know you're upset that he didn't come back today. You can't hide these things from your mother! But you know what? That boy can't keep away from you. He'll be back, don't you worry.'

Bulma smiled back at her mother, fresh tears spilling over, knowing she was right and wrong in so many ways.

'You're an angel Mom.' She stood up and hugged her again, still holding her hot chocolate. The old familiar smell of her mother's perfume and hairspray wrapped her up in its comforting miasma. 'I love you!'

'I love you too, Bulma dear!'

Bulma forced herself to let go and turn away. Wouldn't it be so much more wonderful to stay here with her son and never go home? Because it felt like this was her real home!

'I got to get back outside to…to my work.'

When she opened the back door Vegeta stood on the top step, staring at her.

'What are you…' she started, and then the words dried up in her throat. His hair was a tall flame. His battle armour was scorched and scuffed. He looked wild and lost, and his eyes locked on Bulma's with a glittering sharpness that made her suck her breath in through her teeth. What had Vegeta said before? The me in this time is not so soft and cuddly as I am.

'See?' said her mother behind her. 'What did I tell you?'

Bulma couldn't move from panic. Vegeta's eyes had something nasty brewing in their cold, angry depths. Self-loathing.

'Have you nothing to say to me, Woman?'

'Come in, Vegeta!' cooed her mother. 'Are you hungry?'

Vegeta's jaw clenched, his next words coming out clipped and dangerous. 'Are you not even going to let me in?'

Bulma moved aside and he sprang across the threshold, turning away from her, his shoulders slumped, and he threw himself down in a chair at the table, at the mercy of her mother's ministrations. His butt had hardly hit the seat though before his head snapped up, looking up at the ceiling. Then he stood back up again, looking at Bulma with confusion and suspicion, then back at the ceiling. Then he was running through the door to the hallway, up the stairs to where she knew he could sense another her.

She leapt out the back door, hearing her mother gasp in confusion. She spilt hot cocoa on her hand before remembering that she was carrying it and threw the mug into the rosebushes as she sprinted back across the lawn to the other time machine. She'd made it most of the way there when a dark streak hit her round the middle and yanked her up and into the cockpit of the black time machine.

'He's looking upstairs! He'll figure it out!' she hissed.

'Tell me you've got the note already!'

She nearly shrieked with panic as she scrawled out the last line of the letter:

...your first kiss was with S'now's daughter S'leeta that day she was selling apples at the market.

She tore the letter off the notepad and slapped it on the dashboard.

'Go!'

Vegeta hefted her roughly, turning in the same instant to hit the remote to close the dome, and Bulma saw the shadow of a flame haired Saiyan cut into the light spilling from the kitchen door.

'Oh –' the scenery changed '- shit!' she cried.

They were above a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

'Are you okay, Woman?' asked Vegeta, turning her in his arms and catching her legs up to sit more comfortably against him.

'Yes.'

The sun had only just dipped below the horizon where they were now.

'I wasn't supposed to be back so soon,'said Vegeta. 'I didn't even go back inside the house till morning - I just sat on the roof all night. An unpredictable difference.'

'I wonder what you - he - that other one, thinks just happened?'

He shook his head. 'Who knows. I just hope there's no way they can find our time machine. The last thing we want is to get time-jacked again.'

Bulma watched a V of geese fly by underneath them, heading into the gold and orange band on the horizon. 'I don't know. It wouldn't be so bad to get stuck here, don't you think? I saw my Mom. She made me hot chocolate…' She laughed as the tears started flowing again, and knew that Vegeta was looking at her closely, which he hadn't all day so far. 'Think I wouldn't mind staying here with Trunks.'

He was silent for a long moment, and then he said softly 'Woman…Bulma…I can't tell you what to do. But I can't stay here. When Trunks gave me the N-clippers and the co-ordinates, he didn't just give me a way home; he gave me a mission. I have a chance to undo a lot of the damage I did…more than I ever knew I had done.' His voice was hoarse. 'I can't refuse. The guilt of a thousand broken universes rests squarely on my shoulders.'

He pressed his face against the top her head, and he pulled her against him harder.

She snorted through her tears. 'Only a megalomaniac like you could make such a grandiose statement in seriousness. And you said Goku had an inflated sense of self-importance!'

He didn't answer her, just shook his head against her hair.

She sighed. 'Don't worry, I'm only kidding. Mostly. Of course I'll go back where I came from. There's a lot of work to be done. I don't want to abandon all the people there, and they'll still need Trunks. And I'll see my parents and all my friends again some day. I can't deny them the chance to spend their eternity with their only daughter and grandson. And I've got to drag you up out of Hell when I die, remember?'

'Woman, you know I don't deserve it!'

He set them down below the tree line of the mountain and they walked in silence through the wind-gnarled mountain beech just to waste time before going back. It was a ghostly, mossy place with the half light filtering through the leaves. The trees were draped with beards of hanging lichen and other fungus. If looked like a forest out of myth, and she would never have guessed it was here. She wondered if he had come here a lot. There were so many things she didn't know about him still, that she would never know. She wandered wherever her eyes alighted, brain far away on the unknown happenings in the Capsule Compound, while Vegeta trailed her silently.

'I guess the Kai will be pleased with you for once, if you're going to undo a pile of damage,' she said eventually.

'They will. But I don't do it for them.'

'How are you going to do it?'

'Collapse a pile of universes with a chain reaction.'

She nodded. She guessed that the N-clippers could do that if you prevented the right event from happening.

'Let us risk the Capsule Compound again,' he said.

They appeared half a mile from the compound. Vegeta took them closer, slowly, feeling his way and ready to transmit them away at the slightest sign of their detection. They had to uncloak the time machine to find it, then swiftly piled in, recloaking and sweating with haste to set the jump out of there.

The night dimmed to black, and then a moment later morning broke on them through the plexiglass. They were still in the Capsule Compound, but right on the edge of it to minimise detection. They watched through the binoculars for more than an hour until Trunks approached the time machine. The other Bulma followed him carrying a baby Trunks, and her parents behind her. They said their goodbyes, talking and hugging, and then Trunks raised his hand to someone out of sight. Bulma look a moment to find who it was through the binoculars, but finally locked onto the younger Vegeta, leaning up against a tree in the shade. He had two fingers raised in a salute to him.

When Trunks leapt up to the cockpit she held her breath, straining to read his reaction when he found the note. She knew the instant he found it - he picked it up and froze for a long, long moment. Then he looked back out of the cockpit at the others, talking to them. He read the note again, then closed the cockpit, frowning and sat there staring at the dashboard. Then he began pressing buttons.

'Don't change it! Don't change it!' she chanted.

He guided the time machine up into the air and waved one last time at the family below, and the next instant he was gone.

She turned to Vegeta. If they had got this right, Trunks would be waiting for them in the wild garden of the ruined Capsule Compound. If they had failed…they had left very little room with the N-clippers to try again.

'The moment of knowing,' he said.

She brought up the last programmed jump – the jump home - and her hand shook over the button.

Vegeta closed his hand over hers and together they pressed it.

Outside the dome, darkness fell.

Author's Note: As well as reviews I also like PMs, wink wink, nudge, nudge. Sorry, but I don't know how long it may be for the next chapter! Should be less than a week though.