First the lights flickered, and then came the long, low tone that sounded like air being pushed through a tube. Bulma was hunched over a workbench using a microscope and microtool to move around wires in the chip, hoping this new combination of circuits would be the one to work. Just as she was redirecting a current, she was shrouded in black.

The power had gone out.

She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. She wanted to scream–she wanted to flip her entire desk over and send her tools clattering across the floor–but she was far too tired to even muster the energy. For the past 48 hours she has been exclusively in this room. She slept on the futon in the corner of the lab and she requested her meals be brought to her. The only person she had a conversation with at length was her father, and even then, she shooed him away within 10 minutes.

She slaved over this chip. White spots dotted her vision and the ache of her back was tortuous.

And now the fucking power was out.

"If this has anything to do with Vegeta," she said aloud to no one. "I will kill him."

In complete darkness, she slowly ran her hand over her desk until it collided with her toolbox. Somewhere there was a flashlight. She fished for it, her knuckles grazing a menagerie of loose screws, and she winced. When she finally felt its handle, she pulled it out and illuminated the room. Off she went to find the source of her problem.

Sunlight splashed across her face as she exited the lab. It was easy to forget how closed off her workspace was to the rest of the world, especially since it had no windows and Bulma rarely took breaks. When working on a tough project, she became a bit of a recluse. Usually the only person who could pull her away was Yamcha, and now that he was out of the picture, she had no motivation to stop.

Her eyes adjusted to the harsh sunlight and she wiggled her nose. Everything on the compound was quiet. There were no signs of any sort of explosion, no workers milling about trying to fix an accidental shutdown. She looked around, searching for some evidence of foul play, but was met with an eerie stillness.

"Bulma!" Her father was walking across the lawn. "Blow a fuse?"

"No." Great. If he didn't know anything about it, it meant that he and his team had nothing to do with it. It probably was Vegeta. "Isn't this why we have generators?"

"Yes, but I supposed whatever surged the regular breaker surged that as well."

She made a mental note to design a stronger, more jolt-proof generator prototype when the chip was done.

"What do you think caused it?" Her dad asked, lazily looking up to the sky. He could be so thick sometimes. Who, besides her and his staff, was using massive amounts of energy in a given day? Rage started boiling under her skin. She had a sneaking suspicion of what caused the outage and if she was right, everyone was going to feel her wrath whether they were responsible or not.

She turned her sights to the spaceship at the back end of the lawn. When she opened it up for Vegeta's use here on Earth, she had to make some adjustments to the power source. Burning jet fuel for long periods of time wasn't exactly environmentally friendly, nor would it make for a desirable environment for the rest of the family.

Her genius solution was to create its own power bank, one that would feed out from the main power source for the property. The power bank charged on its own, and afforded hours upon hours of electricity when the bank was full. But she explicitly–explicitly–told Vegeta that in order for the whole power grid to stay on, under no circumstances was he allowed to crank up the gravity feature while the power bank was engaged to the greater grid.

She could not stress it enough. Every time she was tinkering in there to repair, every time she noticed the hum of the spaceship as Vegeta sauntered inside, she repeated it over and over again.

And there it was, humming away.

She balled her hands into a fist and charged toward the spaceship. The Saiyan prince might be stronger than her physically, but she was going to lay into him and leave mental and emotional scars. He was not going to hear the end of it. Not today.

This was typical Vegeta: Selfish and unthinking. Picturing her hands around his neck she tore off, her father close behind, and just as she got to the spaceship's stairs, the door swung open. There stood a shirtless Vegeta, looking as smug as ever.

"Oh hello, woman." A devious smile crossed his face. "Beautiful day we're having."

"Spare me, jackass." She stormed up the stairs. Vegeta watched in delight as her fury continued to grow. "Remember that fun little conversation I had with you, say, I don't know, a year ago when I told you that you could not run the spaceship and the power at the same time?"

"Must've slipped my mind." Vegeta leaned up against the door frame.

She crested the top of the stairs, scowling. "Well, I happen to remember that very vividly. So, do you think you can explain to me why the power is out on our entire property and your spaceship seems to still be running just fine?"

Vegeta just continued to smile, one that Bulma wanted to wipe right off his face with the slap of her hand. She slammed a finger into his chest. He remained silent.

"Funny, because I know why!" She shouted.

His chest was so hard, it felt like stone. And it was damp with sweat. In the sunlight, it glistened across his perfectly chiseled body. Heat rose to her face and suddenly she felt very uncomfortable touching him. It wasn't like she wasn't used to half naked muscle men galavanting around her. Yamcha, Goku, Tien, Krillin–she had seen them all without shirts before, and all but Yamcha felt very platonic and normal.

But being this close to Vegeta, touching his bare skin this way–it felt a little more than friendly.

"Are you going to enlighten me or are you just going to stare?"

Vegeta's voice snapped her back to reality. She scoffed. "I'm not staring."

"I think you are."

"I think I'm not."

She rolled her eyes and tried to recover her fumble. "I think you ran the spaceship directly on the power grid because you knew full well that it would shut everything down, and that this is some sort of sick retaliation for not working on your drones."

Vegeta shrugged. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Fuming, Bulma turned on her heel and stormed down the stairs, past her father and straight toward the laboratory, where she was going to start the monotonous task of restarting the compound's grid. Hours of work lost, she thought. An afternoon of uninterrupted focus now completely gone because a Saiyan prince was throwing a pity party for himself that he didn't get exactly what he wanted when he wanted it.

If he wanted a war, he was going to get one. Bulma was equally as petty and she was not known to let go of a grudge. Once the power was back up, she knew exactly how to get him back.


The spaceship hummed all afternoon, uninterrupted by the power outage that affected the rest of Capsule Corp. It was true, Vegeta had surged the grid on purpose. He thought of the idea when initiating the grid last night after he stopped training for the evening. These silly little games seemed a little childish, but it stoked a devious fire that was always burning inside, one he had learned from Frieza and his cronies.

If mass murder was off the table, he had to find other ways to indulge.

But, somewhat disappointingly, the effect didn't have exactly the outcome he hoped. He didn't realize turning the grid back on was such a bear. He figured resetting everything would make her relent and help him with the busted drones. In hindsight, that wasn't a likely scenario. His next move needed to be smarter, more cunning.

He walked across the lawn just as dusk was falling. In the sky, cotton candy colored clouds swirled against the brilliant orange of the sun. For all of its downsides, Vegeta had to admit Earth was a beautiful place. And the food wasn't bad, either. He had seen so many planets in his lifetime and compared to some of the shitholes he found himself in during his younger years, Earth didn't seem so bad.

His stomach started to grumble. Usually around this time, the savory smell of Panchy's home cooked meal was swirling in the air. Tonight, though, he couldn't find it. He headed straight to the kitchen, still covered head to toe in sweat. The closer he got, the more his concern grew. There was no clattering of pots and pans, no steam billowing through the hallway, and there was no Panchy humming away to some song Vegeta had never heard of.

He turned the corner and the kitchen was completely empty.

Scanning the room, he looked for any signs of her, but everything was perfectly in its place–as if it hadn't been touched in hours. It looked almost too clean. He went for the fridge and swung it open. A single bottle of water was on the top shelf. There weren't even condiments. He moved over to the large pantry adjacent to it. Again, completely bare.

Something wasn't right. He searched every cupboard for any sign of food–even one singular grain of rice–and there was nothing.

"Looking for something?" Bulma's chirpy voice sang from behind. He turned and saw her leaning on the archway at the entry to the kitchen.

"What did you do?" he growled in tandem with his stomach. "Where is all the food?"

"Funny thing about the power going out, Vegeta, is that the fridge is affected by it too." She smiled triumphantly. "Had to throw all the food out, unfortunately. A real waste."

"The food in the pantry was fine, I'm sure."

"Oh, it was," Bulma pretended to check her manicure while Vegeta stewed. "But I thought, you know, if we're going to start over with the food in the fridge, let's just donate all the stuff in the pantry and start fresh there too. An unexpected opportunity to spring clean."

Vegeta's stomach howled. He had grown accustomed to being served and now he was becoming soft. Yes, he could probably go out and find some wild animal to kill and cook just fine, but he didn't want to do that. After a long day of training–and it truly was a good day, seeing as how his mood was sky high–he wanted to just eat and go to bed.

What was worse was that the woman did this on purpose. The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know.

"So this is your payback for the energy grid," Vegeta seethed, stepping closer to her. She didn't flinch. "I don't think you understand what it means to mess with a hungry Saiyan."

Her victorious smile turned into a wildly serious frown. "And I don't think you understand what it means to mess with a scientist on the cusp of a breakthrough."

Taking away the energy temporarily was one thing, but depriving him of food was inhumane. He stepped forward once more, now within just a few feet of Bulma. He had half a mind to throw her over his shoulder and force her to cook for him, or at the very least send one of her lackeys to procure him some dinner.

As he inched closer, he tried to decide what to do. He needed to eat. His head was so clouded by hunger. Before he realized it, he was standing extremely close to her, and despite being about the same height, his presence was looming.

He placed his palms against the archway on either side of her head, forcing Bulma to press her back hard against it. His pupils were so dilated the entirety of his eyes were black, like a great white after smelling fresh blood. She swallowed hard and felt her heart start to pound.

"I don't think you understand." His voice was gravely and deep, eliciting a strange emotion in Bulma that teetered between fear and anticipation, as if he was going to swoop in and take a bite out of her. "I need to eat."

His body shifted and it was so close she could feel the heat coming off his core. She knew he ran hot–she discovered that when the spaceship blew up and he needed to be temporarily hospitalized. She and Yamcha dragged him from the rubble and took him to the Capsule Corp., infirmary. This was before the constant bickering, before everything he did annoyed the absolute shit out of her.

Back then, she had thought he was kind of cute–that was, before she began hating him with every fiber of her being.

Now, though, she was stuck between a wall and the Saiyan prince. Hatred gave way to something else, something that made butterflies flutter in her stomach and made warmth pool in between her legs. Press harder, the thought flashed across her mind. Press me into this wall.

Suddenly, he sprung back, storming down the hallway toward his room. Bulma was left standing there, her face flushed and holding her breath.


When Vegeta finally made it to his room, he had to stifle a groan.

His poker face was normally immaculate. He did need to eat, and he fully intended on ordering an exorbitant amount of food on Bulma's tab for delivery. What he did not intend, though, was that his appetite would grow in other ways.

Holding her there was meant to be an intimidation tactic. Instead, it had nearly been his downfall. He wanted to eat more than just a meal. He wanted to take a bite out of her. Lying on his bed, he tried to forget the way her cheeks went pink, the plumpness of her lips and the intoxicating aroma wafting off her body as he got closer.

It was everything he could do to pull himself away. What he wanted to do was rip off her clothes and fuck her right there against the wall, lifting her up in his hands as she rode his cock. He wanted to bite her ear and hear her beg for it, devouring her for hours on end over and over.

"This can't be happening," he said to himself.

This all had to stop. They were at war, weren't they? He didn't even really like her that much. Maybe it had just been so long since he had been with a woman that he was trying to fulfill some primal urge, and as she was the only woman he knew on Earth (except for Panchy and Kakarot's shrill of a wife), he was inserting her into some weird fantasy. It had been years since he had been with a woman, and while it wasn't something he thought about all too often, he was still a man, wasn't he?

He sat up, desperately trying to quell the throbbing desire roaring through him. A cold shower, he thought. That would clear his mind.

After mindlessly scrubbing for nearly 20 minutes, she was still haunting him. He pictured her dripping wet underneath the showerhead, her flesh exposed and that look in her eye he saw in the kitchen earlier that night, the one that was just as feral and desperate as his. He pictured biting her bottom lip and hearing a soft moan escape before kneeling before her and tasting her delicious center.

Ice cold water didn't even stop him from getting hard.

He was a goner. He just knew it.