A/N: I don't own DBZ or the characters, that honour belongs to Akira Toriyama. I use British English spelling.


"Before you go all Dexter on me, I want your blood," Bulma said, not looking up from her microscope.

She knew it was Vegeta who had just walked in despite him not making a sound - or rather, because of it. No one else but her father's cat entered a room as quietly as he did. It was odd how she could feel his presence without any other indication he was there. Maybe she'd learnt to detect ki and hadn't noticed until now.

"I do not know what a 'dexter' is, but I need your whiteboard," Vegeta responded.

Bulma looked up from her microscope at Vegeta, who was already taking it off the wall. "Hold on! Let me at least take a photo of what's on it." She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture, getting Vegeta's irritated face in it. It might have been the only picture she had of him, she realised as she put her phone away.

Vegeta set the board down by the door, then hovered in the middle of the room.

"Sit." Bulma pointed to the spare office chair then started getting her equipment ready.

When she pulled out the needle, which was a lot nastier than one she would have used on a human, Vegeta watched calmly as she prepped it. She inserted it into a vein on his arm, wincing herself at the size of the needle breaking his skin, but he didn't flinch, and just studied the whole process carefully.

Bulma put a bright pink plaster on the needle mark on his arm. "All done."

Vegeta raised his eyebrows at the plaster, but didn't take it off. He stood up, then collected the whiteboard.

"Don't you want to know what I need your blood for?" Bulma asked in amusement.

Vegeta shrugged, juggling the whiteboard up and down with his action. "You want my blood while I'm showing symptoms. Then you will test another sample of my blood after."

"Oh. Yeah." Bulma grinned at him. Of course he'd figured it out. "You've had to do these kind of tests a lot, huh?"

"More than I would like," Vegeta said.

"If you find the killer, how long will it give you before you get symptoms again?"

Vegeta frowned over the large board. "Likely less than a month. Two if I'm lucky and they prove to be a challenge."

"If you stay afterwards, I will find a way to stop them coming back at all," Bulma said, watching his face for any sign of agreement.

Vegeta's expression didn't slip. He stood where he was, watching her silently, his gaze unblinking.

"You'll stay and let me try?" Bulma asked, desperate for him to agree.

"Why else would I donate my blood?" Vegeta said before slipping out of the room as quietly as he'd entered.


"I need more information on something," Vegeta said to Mrs Briefs. "Does this planet have an information gathering system for news events?"

Mrs Briefs frowned over the creamy sauce as she stirred. It smelt incredible and Vegeta took note of the ingredients she was adding to try it himself later. She had chopped up a small grass-like dark plant he'd seen growing in the garden, and now sprinkled it into the sauce.

"Do you mean a newspaper?" She asked.

Vegeta huffed in frustration. "I have one of those. I need more information on a particular article."

"Oh, you need access to the internet. Go get the tablet I gave you for reading books, dear. I'll show you how to connect."

Vegeta blinked in surprise. Could it be that easy? He went and fetched the tablet from his room, then handed it to Mrs Briefs.

"Keep stirring the sauce for me, would you?" She handed him the wooden spoon, and he obliged, taking in the heavenly scent as he did so.

Mrs Briefs started tapping away on the tablet, then motioned him over. "The sauce will be okay for a minute while I show you. Now, you type in words related to what you are looking for here, and then click search." She showed him how to navigate back and forth between articles, then handed the tablet back.

Vegeta sat at the breakfast bar and started pulling up as many articles on the Red Dress Killer as he could find, writing down anything of note on a piece of paper.

Mrs Briefs placed a large bowl of pasta, covered in the sauce she'd just made, in front of him. "Did you find what you want?"

Vegeta shrugged. "Don't know yet."

Mrs Briefs looked over his shoulder at the paper. "You're looking into that serial killer! I read a few news stories on it. They don't have much to go on by the sounds of it. If you ask me, he could be a barista."

Vegeta frowned at the unfamiliar word. "What's a barista?"

"Someone who makes coffee. The wider area the girls were taken from is well known for being a coffee district, and I read in the news that a detective noted the smell of coffee on three of the victims."

Vegeta stared at Mrs Briefs in surprise.

"I watch a lot of crime shows," she said with a smile, before disappearing with bowls of food, presumably to deliver to her husband and daughter.


Bulma entered Vegeta's room to find the usual stark atmosphere gone, and chaos in its place.

Vegeta had the whiteboard up on the wall, with pieces of paper, printed articles, and a map pinned up on the wall beside it. His desk had about fifteen takeaway coffee cups from different cafes scattered over it, and the bottle of medicine she'd given him for his headaches had tipped over, pills spilling out on the desk.

He stood in front of the whiteboard, holding a tablet in his left hand and writing notes in a blue marker on the board with his right.

"If you weren't already an alien, I'd ask if you'd been abducted and replaced." Bulma walked in and started reading his notes - or the ones she could since he still seemed to use an odd hybrid of languages to get his thoughts down.

Vegeta only grunted and continued with his work.

Bulma picked up one of the cups on his desk. "Did you drink all this coffee?"

"Don't touch them!" Vegeta turned around and snatched the cup from her hand, placing it back on the desk. "You'll contaminate my evidence."

"Contaminate your… you are taking this very seriously. Where'd you learn forensic lingo?"

"C.S.I." Vegeta gave her an almost feral grin. "I watched an episode with your mother."

"Good grief." Bulma put her head in her hand. "You're watching T.V. with my mother. Should I be concerned? And what's with the coffee?"

"Your mother thinks the killer works at a café as a barista."

"You are taking detective advice from my mother?"

Vegeta placed his tablet on the desk and tugged on her arm to pull her directly in front of the map. "I think she's right."

Bulma raised her eyebrows incredulously.

"Look. The blue pins are where the bodies were found. Red for where they were taken, yellow for where the victims loved, and green for cafes in the area."

"This is intense," Bulma said, staring at the kaleidoscope of coloured pins in front of her.

"A detective claimed to smell coffee of three of the victims - the three whose time of death wasn't long before they were discovered." Vegeta's words came out fast, stumbling over each other, and he waved his hands as he spoke, looking more animated than she'd ever seen him. How much coffee had he drunk? "None of the victims knew each other, or appeared to have anybody they knew in common. But all five potentially visited the same three cafes on a regular basis." He prodded the map, pointing to three green pins.

"How do you know that?"

"I went to the crime scenes and picked up on the coffee smell. Then, I went to all the probable cafes the woman might frequent and bought their coffee. The scent is a particular coffee bean and only three of the cafes in the area use them. When I asked the managers if they'd seen any of the victims, they positively identified four between the cafes."

"Did you drink every one of those cups?" Bulma asked, feeling concerned about Vegeta's wide eyed gaze. He was high strung enough with his bloodlust without adding caffeine to the mix.

Vegeta waved his hand, dismissing her question. "The three cafes are from the same café chain and there are two baristas who work at all three. The killer is one of them but I don't know which one, who when or where they will kill again so I'm writing up a probability algorithm to work it out so I can make sure I'm in the right place next time they try to kill someone."

Bulma took a look, trying to decipher his cramped notes. "What are you using to hash the data? MD5?"

"No, the other one. What do you call it on this backwards planet?" He frowned, then clicked his fingers. "SHA256." Vegeta picked up the tablet and waved at her. "I've done the main algorithm on this and I'm using the board to track possible changes." He handed the tablet over to her, and she had a scan through. The amount of data he'd collected in such a short amount of time was impressive.

She picked up another marker and pointed to the board. "May I?"

Vegeta nodded, so Bulma started helping complete the algorithm, making notes on the board before making changes to the code. They worked together for a couple of hours, producing outputs and comparing the probabilities of each. She found herself smiling as they worked. It was just like it had been before he'd run off into space.

"I think we have it," Vegeta said finally. He took a couple of pills while Bulma inspected the board. He'd been taking them on the hour every hour, and the caffeine clearly hadn't done his trembling any good because the medication didn't seem to help that at all.

"Tonight, three to four hours after sunset." Bulma put a new back pin on the map. "There. Eighty six point five four percent probability."

"Good enough for a stake out." Vegeta gave her a sideways glance. "I wonder if I should be concerned that you are perfectly okay with this."

Bulma moved so she stood beside him, then laid a hand on his arm. "It's not ideal, but you'll be saving other lives. When I have a cure, you won't ever have to do it again."

"What if I…" Vegeta licked his lips and stared at the ground, his brow furrowed. "What if I want to. I know the experiments made me need to kill, but I… I've never been morally opposed to it, even as a child."

"I know that Saiyan's had different views, but it's not about that. It's about you being able to make the decision yourself. When this is over, you won't be forced into anything again, Vegeta. You can make choices that aren't just about picking the lesser of two evils."

Vegeta looked at the board on the wall and sighed. "What a novel idea that is."


He perched on a rooftop overlooking the area of the killer's most likely abduction spot. Grey clouds blocked out the moon, sending light sheets of drizzle over the city.

The police hadn't been completely sure if the Red Dress Killer targeted young women in red dresses, or if he changed them into a red dress once he abducted them. The victims were all females in their early twenties who lived alone. They all looked similar, with tall but curvy builds, and long dark hair.

If Vegeta and Bulma had their math right, he'd soon find out.

He'd arrived early and settled in, using his superior vision to scan the streets for any sign of the three suspects. Below him lay a series of interconnected alleyways that lacked in security cameras. The perfect place to kill someone, Vegeta thought with a grin. Although the serial killer wouldn't be aware that he was the one to die.

A man wearing a hoodie approached one of the alleys and leaned against the wall. He stuck to the shadows and Vegeta couldn't quite make out his features, although he did meet the build of one of the suspects.

When a woman who fit the description of the victims, sans the red dress, exited her apartment and began walking down the street, Vegeta stiffened. The possible killer stopped slouching behind the wall, and placed his hand on his belt. Vegeta spotted a flash of silver, and the man lurched forward, towards the woman.

Vegeta dropped to the ground and kicked the man in the side, sending him stumbling into the wall and making him drop the knife in the process.

The woman continued past the alley, oblivious to the close call she'd had, and Vegeta turned to the man.

The man dove for his knife, but Vegeta beat him to it, placing his foot over the blade.

When the man growled and pulled back his hood. Vegeta immediately recognised the man as one of the baristas.

"Who the hell are you?" The Red Dress Killer's eyes flicked back and forth, clearly looking for another exit.

Vegeta picked up the knife, balanced the end of the knife's blade on his finger, then tossed it in the air, catching the handle. "Who I am doesn't matter. I hear you have a thing for red dresses."

The man glared at him, clenching his fists. "That's not any of your business."

Vegeta let out a low chuckle. "Oh, I think you'll find that I've made it my business…"


A/N: I'm not a crime writer, but I wanted Vegeta and Bulma to work together to help remind him just how amazing they are together... even if they are plotting something morally ambiguous!