Weeks went by.
Bulla went to school by day, and to parties nearly every night; shopping and concerts on the weekends and luncheons with the royal family every week. Throngs of boys ate out of her hand, answered to her every beck and call, but even after a month no clear favorite emerged.
A month and a day after their arrival the King asked Vegeta and his family to go to Earth.
"Of course it won't be exactly like your own Earth," he said, as they chatted in his office. "But the three of you might be able to pick up on things our spies have missed."
Vegeta nodded automatically before fully registering what the King had said.
"Three?" He straightened in surprise. "You want Bulla to go?"
The King straightened in equal surprise.
"Of course. She is your heir, is she not? I think she's old enough."
Vegeta's mind raced. His heir? Well, wasn't she? With Vegeta's firstborn inheriting his mother's empire, and his secondborn the favorite of gods and angels, already a Super Saiyan and looking for a stronger husband than her universe could provide— who wouldn't assume she was her father's heir? A fighter, just like her old man.
Was that what all the young men thronging around her were assuming as well?
"Of course," he said. "We will go."
Bulla was, of course, delighted for the chance to broaden her fashion horizons even further. She asked and was given permission to bring along a select few of her school chums who were in the cadet corps (Teito not among them, Vegeta noted with disappointment but not surprise), making it even more like a pleasure trip. Two boys and one girl, comprising, as far as he could make out, her inner circle.
The girl, Chisha, was far more athletic than Bulla, but just as enamored with clothes, and the boys, Tace and Char, were muscular, handsome, charming, and utterly stupid. They were also terrified of Vegeta, which made the prospect of having them along only mildly unbearable.
Cabba, who had gone on missions to Earth before, would also be accompanying them, and he brought along his own heir. Baji had proven himself over the past month to be both hopelessly smitten with Bulla and utterly unable to do anything about it. Vegeta supposed that was for the best, considering he was only ten years old. Bulla was distantly polite to the boy, and seemingly unaware of his heart in his eyes, which was also likely for the best.
The trip to Earth took several days, spent in pleasant boredom for everyone else, and absolute misery for Vegeta. Being forced to watch his daughter be flirted with and being unable to do anything about it was something like torture. Being prevented from fully burning off his frustration in training by the relative fragility of their spaceship only made it worse. He found an unlikely kindred spirit in Baji, who also found watching the flirting unendurable, and they spent a few hours in surprisingly interesting conversations about Saiyan culture and the differences and similarities between their universes.
The Earth of Universe 6 was eerily similar to the one in Universe 7. As they wandered through a major city, Cabba pointing out this or that interesting feature, Bulla dragging her compatriots into various shops, it felt as though they were merely in a city on their own planet they'd just never gotten around to visiting, rather than an entirely different universe.
"Really?" Cabba asked, surprised. "It's that similar?"
"Yeah," Bulma said. She wasn't quite as on edge as Vegeta, but neither was she acting as carefree as her daughter. "Same level of technology, same style of architecture, same-looking people." They passed a street musician playing a tune that would not have been out of place on the radio back home.
"Even the fashion's kind of the same," Bulla chimed in. She was carrying a (for her) modest amount of shopping bags. "Kind of disappointing, actually."
"I dunno, I think these are cute!" Chisha gushed, holding up a pair of jeans. "Kind of hard to move in, but they make your butt look amazing!"
Vegeta rolled his eyes. He took another step away from the group, stepping out into a crosswalk (blinking white for go with a very similar but not quite identical walking person motif)— and stopped dead.
"What?" Bulma was the first to notice his shock. "What are you—" She turned to look in the direction he was looking, and gasped. She brought a hand to her mouth, and they both stared. Vegeta absently pulled her to him when a car horn blared at them but otherwise neither of them moved.
"What's wrong?" Cabba asked, turning to look, and then turning back to them in confusion. "What do you see?"
Bulla reached them then, and she too was taken aback by the logo that was emblazoned on a large yellow domed building sitting in the middle of a large compound— right in the part of town Capsule Corp would be, if this Earth had a Capsule Corp. Instead, it seemed, they had—
"Red Ribbon?!"
"Y-yes," Cabba said nervously. "We should really get off the street. Um…"
Vegeta escorted his wife to the sidewalk, both of them sharing a meaningful look.
"Library," Bulma said decisively. "We need to go to the library. Now."
Cabba knew where one was, and he took them there, wisely not asking for an explanation until they were ensconced inside the walls and in relative privacy. Unfortunately, none of them had any explanation to give. Now that he knew to look, Vegeta noticed dozens of logos, on everything from small electronics to automobile emblems, all showing the double R on a stylized red bow. It was as ubiquitous as Capsule Corp's double C was back home.
"This is crazy!" Bulma exhaled, digging her fingers in her hair as she slumped over newspapers and magazines and history textbooks. Bulla and her friends were off in another section, ostensibly doing more research but likely goofing off. "This is nothing like our Red Ribbon Army, except that it's exactly the same."
"Speak more clearly, woman," Vegeta ordered. He'd been reading over her shoulder for some of it, but he knew little about the history of the Red Ribbon and had not been able to make sense of what he was reading. Bulma picked up a magazine and slapped the cover.
"Like, this! This is clearly General Blue, except it isn't. General Blue in our world was this awful guy who tried to kill us multiple times. But this is Red Ribbon Corporation's COO, Mr. Blue, who does charity work and has a husband."
"What's strange about having a husband?" Cabba asked. Bulma's nostrils flared.
"Nothing, if you're not a vile, stinking, horrible..."
She trailed off into muttering. Vegeta knew his wife well enough to detect some old wound there, and tried not to think about murdering a man decades dead.
"It's a Corporation, you say? How similar is it to Capsule Corp?"
"Weirdly similar!" Bulma picked up an open newspaper, yellowed with age, and flipped back to the front page, reading the headline. "'Red Ribbon Corporation invents Hoi-Poi Capsules, Revolutionizes Home Storage and Auto Industry'." She flung the newspaper down on the table as though it had affronted her. "My father had nearly this same article cut out and framed. It's been hanging on his office wall since before I was born. I practically have the thing memorized."
"So… there's a Red Ribbon Army in your universe, but here it's a corporation?" Baji asked. Bulma nodded, still frowning at the newspaper. "And in your universe, it's Capsule Corporation?" Again Bulma nodded. Baji cocked his head. "So what is Capsule Corporation in this universe?"
Bulma's head shot up and she stared at the boy so long he went red and looked at the floor. Vegeta nodded.
"That is an excellent question. Bulla!" he called. "Shh!" said the librarian. Bulla peeked her head out from the stacks, followed by three more heads. Vegeta tilted his chin in summons.
"What is it, daddy?"
"Have you been looking into old conflicts like I asked?"
"Yes!" she protested. "You'll never guess— in this Universe it's Capsule Corporation that's the bad guys. Only, get this, they call it the 'Capsule Confederacy'. But the logo's the same. See, look."
She held out an aging textbook, pointing to a grainy photo of a man standing on a tank with the double C logo clearly visible on its side. Bulma pulled the textbook out of her hands and stared at it.
"No," she breathed. She flipped through the textbook, found nothing satisfactory, and began shoving papers and books aside, giving a cry of triumph when she found a small volume at the bottom of the stack. "This is about notorious figures in history. I thought we'd try it as a last resort, but…"
She scanned through the book and then held it open and flat on the table, for all to see. There, in a full-color photograph, looking angrily into the camera, was a good-looking man with blue hair and eyes. Vegeta blinked rapidly as he tried to understand what he was seeing. The man could have been a relative of Trunks— put them side by side and no one would question that they were brothers. Except that wasn't it, not quite. He didn't just look similar to Trunks, he looked...
"Whoa," Bulla breathed. "Mom, that's you."
The man's name was Bock, he was missing presumed dead, and he'd been performing horrifying experiments on people in the last few years before he died.
"This says he got close to figuring out human immortality," Cabba said as Bulma stared at the picture of her male counterpart. "His subjects all showed remarkable regenerative abilities, though most of them eventually died of a genetic disease. But they could heal from catastrophic physical injuries in hours or days." He tapped his chin with the spine of the book he was holding and nodded. "Yes, actually, that explains a lot."
"Do you think this Capsule Confederacy is to blame for the attacks and strange creatures?" Vegeta asked. Cabba nodded.
"Obviously I need to confirm some things. But it seems likely. Regeneration would explain some of the characteristics of the creatures we've been seeing, and the targets that didn't make sense as military objectives make perfect sense as experimental testing grounds."
Bulla shuddered.
"You mean he wiped out entire cities as an experiment?"
Her mother nodded grimly. "Our Red Ribbon wouldn't have hesitated to do that."
"But this isn't the Red Ribbon!" Bulla insisted. "This is you."
"It's not me, sweetie," Bulma said. "It's someone from an alternate universe who looks sort of like me and shares some biographical details. I refuse to view this as some kind of… mirror universe where morality is flipped."
"It's that way for the Saiyans," Vegeta pointed out. Bulma glared daggers at him.
"All the Saiyans I know are good," she protested, in a tone that brooked no argument despite her logic being suspect. Vegeta decided discretion was the better part of valor and said no more.
"Even if it's just a coincidence," Cabba said, "I'd appreciate any insight you have into this Bock person, Bulma. He's been presumed dead, but since there's never been a body, I'm inclined to believe he might still be alive."
Bulma hesitated, but then sighed and crossed her arms over her chest.
"You mean, if I was an evil genius, where would I hide after faking my own death?"
Cabba hesitated, and then smiled abashedly.
"Essentially, yes."
"Well, that's easy," Bulma said. "I've given that a lot of thought, actually."
Vegeta eyed his wife.
"You have?"
She turned an impatient look on him.
"I'm a powerful woman, Vegeta. I may be on top now, but public opinion can turn on a dime. It's not out of the question that I might have to go into hiding someday."
Somehow, Vegeta thought, staring open-mouthed at his wife, despite how long they had been together, she still kept managing to surprise him.
"The question is, if his life has gone differently from mine," Bulma mused, ignoring her husband's shock, "where would he consider a safe place? I mean, there's no way he has his own version of Goku."
Vegeta's shock turned to outrage. "Are you saying your safe place is Kakarot's house?"
"No, dummy, I'd hide out at Tien's dojo," Bulma snapped. Her eyes were still far away, like she was thinking. "No one would look for me there. But I only met him because of Goku." Her eyes focused a little bit, and she slid them toward him with a smirk. "A distinction you share, you know."
Vegeta gritted his teeth, but Bulma was already pulling faded tomes toward herself, muttering under her breath. He sighed, and looked around for Bulla, but she was already halfway down the stacks, whispering with Tace. The boy blushed, and glanced nervously behind him at Vegeta, jumping slightly when their eyes met. Vegeta eviscerated him in his mind, but then let it go. This was what they'd come here for, after all. Just because he still thought of her in pigtails and polka-dotted jumpers didn't mean everyone saw her that way.
Besides, now that he'd been forced to entertain the idea of Bulla marrying anyone, there was something appealing about the idea of her partner being a Saiyan. He'd have had no objections if she had chosen a human partner, of course, he wasn't a hypocrite, but the vast majority of humans were weak, in body and in mind. Perhaps she really would have a greater chance at happiness here.
He glanced at Baji, who was doing his best to sift through old newspapers for relevant details, his solemn young face furrowed in concentration. He had proven himself to be a bit of an old soul, more steady and considerate than a ten year old had any business being. If only Bulla could have waited a few years…
Ah, well. Vegeta accepted the scrap of paper Bulma hastily scribbled on and went to go loom over the librarian until she got him the book.
Bock's hideout was on an island in the middle of the ocean. They knew they had the right one when several missiles erupted from the tree cover and zoomed toward them. Chisha, Char, Tace and Baji all rushed out to meet them, kicking them into the ocean or making them explode in midair. They were so eager to show off no one else even got a chance.
"Beat you that time, Bulla!" Chisha teased. Bulla grinned back, but Vegeta had watched her flinch from the missiles, unused to testing out her durability on such a scale. The others had been out front and hadn't seen. Interesting, thought Vegeta.
"There," Bulma said from Vegeta's arms, pointing. "On the beach. Someone's down there."
A lone figure stood, waiting. As they descended cautiously Vegeta could make out a riot of pink and orange colored hair. As they got closer finer details resolved themselves and he saw it was a woman, with a star-shaped birthmark around one eye—
those eyes.
Vegeta didn't flinch. But several of the younger ones did, and he felt Bulma shiver against him. The light blue eyes, almost white, bored into each of them in turn with such intensity that it was like a physical blow. Eighteen had eyes like that. So did her brother. The woman's ki was low; almost certainly she was hiding it.
"Hello," Cabba said as they landed. "We're looking for Bock. Would you be able to guide us to him?"
"Leave," the woman said. Her voice was normal enough, if flat with hostility. But the cadence of her speech was... off somehow. Cabba chuckled in mock embarrassment.
"I'm afraid we both know that isn't possible," he said, still in a polite tone. "We would prefer to end this without bloodshed, so if you would be so—"
The woman raised a hand and shot a ki blast straight at Bulla.
Vegeta didn't know, looking back on it later, if she'd been targeting the weakest member of their party (save Bulma, who was still in his arms), or if it had been mere chance. Either way, Bulla screamed, flinched, and turned away cowering, leaving Baji, who was standing next to her, to kick away the blast. There was a fraction of a second that lasted an eternity during which no one moved. It was the inhalation before a scream, the calm before a storm, and in that moment Vegeta saw Chisha staring horrified, not at their opponent, but at Bulla.
Then all chaos let loose, as the boys all converged on the woman, venting their anger and wounded pride. But with a sweep of her hand the woman knocked them away. Chisha charged in, and fared better than her classmates, but soon she too was defeated. Vegeta pushed Bulma behind him, but Cabba raised a hand.
"Allow me," he said.
He raised his wrist to eye level, pressing a button on what Vegeta had assumed to be a watch. Instead of beeping, though, light shone out of the contraption directly into Cabba's eyes. Vegeta, catching sight of the light, felt the scar at the base of his spine stiffen in a peculiar way; a familiar way.
Blutz waves, he thought, amazed, and then Cabba roared.
It was primal, wild, almost a scream; totally at odds with the polite, even-tempered young man Vegeta knew. As he watched, Cabba's shirt shredded itself, helpless against the strain he was putting on it. Red fur sprouted from his arms and back. Cabba screamed even louder, and the lack of shirt allowed Vegeta to clearly see the tail that sprouted from the base of Cabba's spine.
A glance at Baji told him this was not new. His mysterious, "artificial" form, then. Finally Cabba calmed, his demeanor still wilder than normal, but now tightly controlled. He turned his head to speak to Vegeta without taking his eyes from the woman.
"I dread to ask if you've already achieved this form, Master."
Vegeta shook his head. "I have never seen the like."
A pleased look, and then Cabba was gone, tearing at the strange woman with his bare hands. She fought ferociously, almost as animal-like as Cabba, but it did not take long for him to overwhelm her and soon she lay dead on the sand before him. He shed his new form in shock.
"I... didn't mean to…"
Bulma rushed forward and knelt at the woman's side, plucking a strand of hair from her head an instant before the corpse began to disintegrate into dust. Within seconds the only evidence anyone had been there was a few scuffs in the sand and the single hair in Bulma's fingers.
"Thought so," she said grimly. "If it were me, and I guess in a way it is, I'd make sure not to leave any trace."
She put the hair in a small storage capsule and handed it to Cabba.
"You'll probably want to have that analyzed."
"Yes," Cabba said solemnly, accepting the capsule, and that, for the moment, was that. They could find no trace of Bock or his hideout anywhere on the island, just a few abandoned tanks which had fired the missiles. Bulma offered to continue the search, but Cabba demurred, thanking them for their assistance but not wanting to make his problems their own.
"Very well," Vegeta said. "But now your enemy knows your capabilities."
Cabba nodded grimly.
They went back to Sadala a more somber bunch than they had been on the trip out. Even Vegeta, for he was remembering the way Chisha had looked at his daughter after the fight was over: subdued, thoughtful.
Suspicious.