A/N: This was written for The Prince and The Heiress July Drabble Night! Five prompts which were all pictures, and ~400 words per each.
Mark Twain once spoke a truth that Bulma has long since accepted: that there's no such thing as a new idea, just a lot of old ideas that we put into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. After all, by this point, it's estimated that 100 billion humans have ever lived, so it's not surprising that someone's beaten her to an incredible idea. The difference, is that Bulma has the power and the determination to make them real.
Bulma has never looked a gift horse in the mouth, and so she relishes in fueling her creativity with things that already exist. She contemplates how flowers follow the sun's path, and creates a mobile solar panel that can rotate to absorb the maximum amount of the sun's rays at any time of day. She goes to open-air markets and sees vegetables braided down a single rope, and decides to invest money in vertical underwater farming to increase production per square meter of land. Her ability to see the potential in anything keeps the revenue flowing into Capsule Corp hand over fist.
So, when people ask Bulma where she gets her ideas for inventions she just smiles and tells them it's her little secret. She has shareholders and executives breathing down her spine no matter how many times she reminds them that she's in charge, and she doesn't need them monitoring her journeys for inspiration too.
It's with this in mind that she escapes the lab today, telling her secretary she's onto something huge and marches out the door. Sure, she doesn't know what it is yet, but she's got a good feeling that inspiration will find her.
And that's how she finds herself stumbling into, well, she doesn't quite know what it is. It seems to be combination of a martial arts supplies store, but also a homeopathic wellness shop? The room is littered with crystals and orange balls glowing softly.
And what the hell is a Senzu bean?
This is it. She can practically feel the hum of new ideas in the air, now she just has to find them.
She decides to start in the back and work her way to the front. At the last shelf, a set of lava lamps catches her eye. They're day and night, fluorescent blue-white and dark red-black, warmth and cold. And in their reflection, a severe face standing behind her, face fixed in a glare.
"Can I help you?"