Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball, Dragonball Z, or Dragonball GT. Those and the characters were created by Akira Toriyama, so please do not sue.


Chapter 3 - The Past



She didn't hesitate to contemplate what her next move would be. Summoning every ounce of will power that she possessed, and attempting to regain the little ki that remained in her wearied body, she drove her teeth straight into her tongue, the excruciating pain reverberating through every inch of her body. Finally there was the snap in the back of the brain that signaled that there was enough. It was hardly adequate, yet it was the best she could ever desire for in her present condition.

A silent whistling in her ears foretold that she had arrived at her destination. In the cockpit of the damaged and rapidly plunging aircraft, the blue-haired woman at the controls was mad with panic. Sweat ran down her blanched face, her hands gripping the edge of her leather seat as her eyes slammed shut to the undeniable death that was certain to result from the crash.

"Oh God, please let it be quick and painless. Please take care--"

"Hang on!" She gripped the blue-haired woman's shoulder, hastily focusing her energy within herself. Beneath her, the ground speed closer and closer to meet them, its lips inching closer and closer for the kiss.

Several more seconds and undoubtedly the impact would tear the plane apart. Once again she bit her tongue, the metallic taste of blood itching to spill into her stomach, nauseating her already at the moment. The snap in the back of her brain, the distant faint echo of a whistle and they were on their way.

The two women slammed hard against the concrete panels of a nearby rooftop, the force temporarily jolting their bones and causing their brains to rattle in the crevices of their skulls. Down below, the sound of distant thunder resounded throughout Satan City, metal and aluminum blazing in the rapidly spreading fire of the plane. Sparks and burning embers leaped high off the ground, landing amid the tops of the lower buildings and quickly setting off the colors of red and orange on them as well. Amongst the raging fire down below, the air attained a vast quantity of thick black smoke, thicker and more malevolent than before. Carried by the slight breeze, it directed itself eastward, away from the two women who were still flung askew on the rooftop.

Bulma was the first to recover. She glanced over to the woman across from her, propped on the chimney pipes for support. At first look, she seemed about several years younger than she was, maybe at twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, with smooth hair the color of blood drawn up into a loose ponytail, a few strands already out of place. Her eyes were a stunning scarlet, ones Bulma had never seen before, and ones that she would never forget.

She suddenly recalled what had happened and realized with a start why she was once again on the rooftop, panting for air but alive nevertheless, instead of having the scorching flames lick at her charred remains.

"Thank-thank you for saving me," Bulma did not intend to stutter her words, yet the disbelief at what had just happened was just slowing sinking it. "If it weren't for you, I would be burned toast by now. For that I'm truly grateful…are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. It's just this heat and all…" she trailed off; her hand automatically went to her forehead and took a swipe at the accumulated perspiration. "I'm just glad that you are okay. For a moment I thought I was too late." A sheepish grin crossed her worn-out face.

Bulma chucked good naturedly, "I thought so too. When the plane started to fall, I thought that there was no more hope left and I've been a goner if you hadn't gotten it…" In real perspective, the urge of asking this young woman how she had done what she had done was almost too much to hold in. She had only seen Goku do what she had witnessed about her, so was it possible that she was a Saiyan? No, it couldn't be possible. The only two full-blooded Saiyans alive on this Earth were Goku and Vegeta, and Vegeta did not have any children, and Goku only had Gohan as a son. So if she was a Saiyan, where had she come from? No, she could probably run out that theory. It was a dull pain, this desire to ask all about her, yet she restrained herself from doing so. Instead she asked her, "What is your name?"

"Sashima. And yours?"

"Bulma. Bulma Briefs."

"It's good to meet you Bulma…although under these circumstances I wouldn't describe it as anything near good. We should probably head out of here if we don't want to walk through a wall of flames on our way out."

Bulma nodded her agreement and rose to her feet. She eyed Sashima with concern as she hesitantly pulled herself up on shaky legs. She voiced her concern once more.

"Are you sure you're okay? Here, let me help."

"No…it's okay seriously…I'm just--"

An unexpected wave of dizziness overcame her at that moment. Swallowing up the contents of her thoughts, the world once again started to spin, faster and faster until she could no longer make out Bulma in front of her. Mist crept in from the hidden cracks, thick as the smoke still rising from the burning plane. Her legs snapped stiff as if dipped in starch, and the last thing she heard was Bulma yelling frantically at her to get up. Then all was darkness.

* * * * *

"How is she going to be?" Bulma asked, concern in her voice.

"Well…" the head doctor checked his clipboard and glanced once more at the patient still lying unconscious in the hospital bed. "Her breathing and heart rates are at normal right now, so I don't see any major complications. She has been under a lot of stress though, and she has an abnormal energy level, yet for the moment there is some difficulty to getting that energy to cooperate. She is very weak right now, and we have yet to determine what the underlying cause of that is right now."

"Will she need to be on anything? Medication? Or…anything else that is necessary?"

"No…not at the moment, she doesn't. She seems like a perfectly healthy person, from the tests that we ran on her. Although…" he hesitated, debating whether he should reveal the information or not.

"Although what? What is it??" Bulma demanded. She would not forgive herself if anything happened to Sashima when she had risked her own neck to save her from her foolish actions.

"Well…" the doctor backed away as Bulma inched dangerously closer and closer to him, having nothing but a clipboard to shield himself from her fury if she did tried to launch an anger attack on him. "When we took blood samples from her, her blood was…very peculiar…"

"In what way?"

"Normal humans would have either a Type A, B, AB, or O blood. Her blood does not fit into any of those categories. Also, her blood cells are constantly morphing, which normal cells do not do…"

"Morphing? What do you mean by morphing?" Bulma gazed through the glass window and into the room, Sashima still not awake. A chill ran down her spine at what Sashima might possibly be able to do if she WAS able to morph. She just hoped that she wasn't that kind of a person…

"When we mean by morphing, her blood cells do not take in nutrients, expand, and then kill themselves. Every few moments, we noticed that her cells seemed to have a mind of their own--they travel at speeds ten times those of normal cells and they constantly attack one another. It's almost like an inner battle within herself among those red blood cells of hers."

"But we consider this abnormal for humans?" Even though Bulma was a genius, her field was in technology, not medicine.

"In this case, yes, we do consider it abnormal, although we see this as no health risk to Miss Sashima. But that isn't the most unusual thing we've noticed about her…"

"What else is there?" A sense of guilt stuck in Bulma's heart. She didn't want to interrogate the doctor for information on the younger woman's personal health, yet her curiosity was an aching pain in the back--she had to get some answers.

The head doctor adjusted his glasses and spoke. "From the bone density results we've obtained, her bones are remarkably stronger than an average person's, yet they are far more flexible. In fact, she might just be able to twist her own arm into a loop if she tried, maybe."

"That IS strange…" said Bulma. Once again, she looked at the figure on the bed. She seemed far better off than when she had brought her in an hour ago; at least some of the color had returned to her face and she wasn't the color of her sheets anymore. Still, it was a little nerve-racking to find the person that had saved her life in her own hospital.

"May I go in to see her?" she inquired.

"Certainly. As soon as she wakes up, you can tell her that she can leave in a couple of days."

"Thank you Dr. Willis. I appreciate what you've done for her."

"It was no problem, Ms. Briefs." His eyes shifted to the steel clock on the wall in front of him. "I'd better go now, Ms. Briefs. One of my other patients would be waiting. Tell me if there are any more problems." With that, he hurried down the corridor and turned out of sight.

Bulma pushed the door open and closed it gently behind her. Taking a chair by the bed, she waited for Sashima to wake up.

* * * * *

"No…no…stay away from me…I said get away…NOOOO!!" Sashima stirred in her unconscious state, her eyes shut tightly as if forcing images from her head, sweat starting to pour down her face once again. She clutched the sheets around her, gripping them until her knuckles turned a ghostly white. It seemed as if she was in mental torture.

"What…? Stay away from…?" said Bulma, a bemused expression on her face, "Sashima, are you awake yet?" The sky outside the window had already turned a magnificent orange--dusk was approaching. Bulma glanced at her watch: 7:23 P.M. Had she actually dozed off in the hospital room for two hours?

She got up from her chair and strode over to the bedside. Sashima was calling out incoherent phrases in her state. Bulma could hardly understand what she was saying, yet from the emotion and pain on Sashima's face, it was definitely not cheerful thoughts.

"Come on, wake up…" Bulma urged.

There were more mumblings of speech. Slowly, the phrases became more and more sporadic, and pretty soon Sashima was not speaking at all. Her eyes carefully opened to take in the scene before her. Looking around, the dazed look gave off the fact that she was plainly confused. At long last, she spotted Bulma. Slowly, she raised herself from the bed.

"Where…where am I?" she asked.

"Don't worry," Bulma replied, reassuringly, "this is the hospital wing of Capsule Corporation. You would get some of the best medical treatment here, so please don't worry. You're in absolutely good hands."

Sashima smiled. It was a mischievous smile, yet it had an honest look about it. "Thank you for bringing me here, Bulma. It must've been very upsetting of you to bring me all the way from that building."

"Well…to tell the truth, I did get panicky again…" Bulma paused to reflect back on what had happened several hours earlier. "I was really scared that you had died of exhaustion or something like that and the fire just made it worse. It had seriously started to burn onto the building, and I couldn't carry you all the way down…but then I remembered the capsules that I always carry with me. I got out another one of the helicopters and flew my way here."

"Capsules? What are capsules?" Sashima was genuinely confused. She had never heard of anything called a "capsule" before, except when used in the medical professions.

Bulma was shocked. Ever since her dad had invented capsules and started Capsule Corporation, they had been distributed far across the world, and practically everyone knew about capsules nowadays. Or at least she thought so.

"Capsules are…well they're really hard to describe. Oh here!" Bulma dug in her back pocket and drew out her capsule case. "See?" She took one out and showed her. "If you press this little button here…" She delicately pressed it and her makeup case popped out.

"Wow…that's amazing…we don't have those where I come from," said Sashima.

"Seriously you don't?" Bulma recapsuled her makeup case and slipped it back in with the other capsules. "Where are you from? You're not from anywhere near Satan City are you?"

"No, I'm not. I come from Harakatsuma--"

Bulma gasped out loud. Harakatsuma…it couldn't be…

"What's wrong?" Sashima asked, puzzlement written across her face.

"Well…it's just that you said you came from Harakatsuma…"

"…and?"

Bulma took a deep breath before she spoke. This woman honestly did not know what she was talking about. Either that or she really WAS from a Harakatsuma, even though that was virtually impossible.

"There is no place today on Earth named Harakatsuma. The only one that ever existed…"

A sense of dread permeated her. "What happened to it?"

"It was wiped out by a tsunami over a hundred years ago. There were no survivors…"

"But…but…" Sashima could not believe what she was hearing. "That can't be true. Just several hours earlier, before I met you, I WAS in Harakatsuma!" She buried her face in her hands and tried to comprehend what she was actually hearing.

"I know we haven't known each other for long, but may I ask you a question?"

She looked up from her hands and stared straight at Bulma. She had only known her for a mere three hours, yet she felt a deep amount of trust in her. "Go ahead. Ask anything."

"Well, you said you came from Harakatsuma before you saved me from the plane crash. What happened before you got to Satan City?"

It was not the question that she had expected her to ask, yet she was secretly relieved that she hadn't asked it. She didn't want to tell, or at least not yet.

"Well I guess I have to start from the beginning then, if you want to know how this led up," she began. "I was a police officer in Harakatsuma, and even though I was happy with my job…there seemed to be something…just something…"

"Something missing in your life?" Bulma supplied.

"I guess you can say that. It was just hollowness inside of me, one that ached constantly for days on end sometimes. Ever since high school, I had always wanted to be a police officer. So I enrolled in a police academy when I graduated and took college classes during the evenings. When I was twenty, I joined the force. I've been there ever since."

"Not to be rude or anything, but how old are you Sashima? You don't look that old to me."

"I turned twenty-two two months ago," suddenly she started to giggle. "I was the youngest person in our station, and the only woman, too. I guess I sort of made the men really uncomfortable that I managed to solve a lot of the cases that they couldn't."

Bulma laughed along with her. "Just to show that we women can just be as tough as them guys!"

"Right you are!" Sashima became serious once more and continued. "But even though I was happy solving crimes, I wanted something else…" Here she paused and did not speak for a moment.

Bulma thought that she had spoken enough and wasn't going to let out any more information. Seriously, she scolded herself, she shouldn't have been so nosy and asked. But Sashima soon spoke once again. This time her voice was much quieter, and Bulma detected within her the sorrow she felt.

"My parents died on a ship when I was six. It sank in terrible seas, and my older sister and I were the only ones who survived. I remembered crying for days on end over my parents, but my sister was always there to comfort me. We were put in an orphanage, and soon we were adopted. I hoped that life would eventually be better for the both of us, yet it didn't. Our adoptive parents already had other children, and we were routinely abused by them. When I was twelve and my sister was fifteen, we ran away and out onto the streets."

She paused for breath and went on. "Our adoptive parents didn't even come to look for us. We were forced to live on the streets, and we didn't have anything else on us except the clothes on our backs and twenty dollars my sister was able to save up."

"We lived like this for about two months, in alleyways, parks, anywhere else where there was shelter and food to be found. One day, we met up with a group of thugs. They attempted to kidnap me, but my sister saved me from them. She was outnumbered and she stood no chance against them, yet she fought tooth and nail for me. She told me to get out of there as fast as I could, and I had no other choice but to do what she said."

Bulma's heart reached out for the woman. At such a young age, she had endured so much. "What happened next?" she inquired.

"After I had ran away, I hid for an hour until I was sure they had gone away. It took me awhile to locate the spot where my sister was. But she was not there, and I looked everywhere for her. I had nowhere else to go, and without her, I didn't know what to do. Eventually, a police officer spotted me and took me to the orphanage again, where I remained until I was eighteen. Oh sure, I attended school and such." she added after seeing the look on Bulma's face.

"I joined the police academy, and I got into the police force. The first thing I did was try to locate my sister. I hadn't seen her since that day, so I didn't know what she looked like now. I searched police records and various other sources until…until…"

Sensing that this bore enormous emotional stress on her, Bulma did not need to hear anymore. She was nevertheless curious, yet instead said, "You don't have to continue if it's too much for you…"

"No, it's okay. I can handle it." Taking another deep breath, she fought down the pain inside of her. "Five years ago, a prostitute was found on the street dead, twenty bullets shot through her head…" Unexpectedly she finally broke. Huge tears streamed down her face, and she sobbed loudly, wiping her tears on the hospital sheets. Bulma came over and sat down on the bed next to her, wrapping her arms around her for support. Still she wept.

"I'm so sorry…if I had known, I wouldn't have asked…" she patted the crying woman's shoulder. "I'm sorry that I made you relive your past…"

She sniffed a few more times and wiped the remainder of her tears dry with the back of her hand. "Seriously Bulma, I'm fine. I have never told anyone this before, so today, it seems as if a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders."

Bulma nodded silently, understanding running through her.

"After I realized what had happened to my sister, I finally realized that I was missing something in my life. I don't know what exactly, but I dealt with this for about a year. Yesterday…or today I guess…I went to my captain's office to ask for a few weeks leave. As I was in my office, this strange whirlpool thing just came out of the ceiling and covered the room with darkness. I guess I was unconscious for awhile, but when I woke up, I was in Satan City."

"Hmm…this is certainly mysterious…I wonder if the whirlpool you were sucked into was a portal to this dimension…" Bulma mused. The gears in her head were already spinning, and she made another mental note to check this up later on her computers in her laboratory.

Lying back on the pillows, Sashima stared blankly up at the ceiling, half expecting another whirlpool to come out of nowhere once again. "Yeah I suppose it is," she replied after a moment, running a hand through her red hair. "But the weirdest thing of all was that all of my strength was gone when I arrived here. I don't know what happened, but I sure as hell know that I didn't do anything to myself before I got here. I mean, at first, it took all I had just to get up. I guess that's why I collapsed when we were on the roof and--"

She was cut short by a resounding crash that echoed throughout the hospital and the rest of Capsule Corporation. The ground shook violently, the things on the walls and ceiling swaying dangerously.

At once, Bulma whipped out her cell phone. She hit the speed dial button for security and waited for a response.

"Hello? Tom? This is Bulma. What the hell was that noise?! Don't tell me that another one of the trucks tipped over again…" she pressed the phone closer to her ear. "WHAT?!… He's doing WHAT?! Hang on, I'll be right there!" Clicking the phone shut and tossing it back into her shorts, she leapt from the bed and rushed to the door, but suddenly remembered.

"I'm sorry I have to go now, but there has been an emergency on the main grounds of Capsule Corporation, and I'm afraid I'm the only one who can settle this at the moment. If you need anything, just call one of the doctors!"

"I'll be fine here; you go on ahead."

"I'll be back once the matter is finished!" With that, Bulma dashed out of the room and ran the length of the hall and down two flights of stairs. The sun was just setting over the horizon when she arrived out on the lawns of C.C., a beautiful sight that most days she would stop and just watch, yet this time she had more important matters at hand.

Vegeta owed her an explanation.