"What's all this about, Dr. Puri? You seemed to be so glad and proud to distance yourself away from Capsule Corps and establish your own company and surround you with your own people. Of all people, I've expected this the least from." Bulma said. The woman gave her past assistant an unsure look, one that appealed to the friendship they once shared, though one that expected Dr. Puri to just brush it off as if it had never existed.
"You aren't exactly wrong, Bulma." Dr. Puri lowered her head. This admission did indeed weigh on the woman. "I had achieved my goals, played around with your toys and leeched off of your influence and connections long enough so I had to break free and never look back. I would have never reached out to you had it not been for the desperate need to save the world, something that neither of us can do separately, only together."
"Save the world? What do you mean by that?" Bulma asked with widened eyes. Her red lips formed a subtle O shape.
"I'll let my associate explain. Lazuli is the head of our medical sciences team. She's made a chilling discovery recently, one that I immediately checked up on and confirmed." Dr. Puri turned to her left side and the young woman in a bubblegum-colored pantsuit, who ran her hand nonchalantly through her silver hair.
"People are about to get socked with a blow that they may not recover from. A wicked sickness is brewing and about to cut loose. A heart virus that infects and kills people in mere days of excruciating torment. Once a person is infected, there is nothing left but to see them wither and die." Lazuli explained without as much as a move of her lips in either direction or signs of life in her eyes that would have suggested any particular feelings that the young woman may have had about the sickness.
"Heart virus? What type? Adenovirus, Rubella?" Bulma said, taken aback. She had never even imagined an outbreak of a heart virus of all things on a scale, as the one suggested. Heart viruses had always had a place in medicine and had been plaguing humanity for as long as it walked the Earth, but there hasn't ever been a chilling pandemic of a heart virus. Their transmissibility had always been lacking compared to the more reaping viral outbreaks.
"Nothing like what we've encountered in human history before. I suspect that our contact with alien species has put both us and our foreign guests in jeopardy as we've bred new types of viruses and bacteria that neither one of us can deal with." Dr. Puri pointed out. "Saiyans have an incredible resistance to diseases, poisons and infections, an evolutionary advantage triggered by their gung-ho, brawl-loving nature. We haven't been able to procure a Saiyan heart to test our theories out but… The virus would reap through even such a fortified immune system, we believe."
"Someone with a bitchin' immunity system would for sure last longer, but it won't make a difference in the end. They'll kick the bucket just like everyone else…" Lazuli ruffled her hair, jingling her pearly earrings and playing with the gleaming gemstones with her index softly. "The virus is already out there. It'll only pick up in spread. Unless we do something soon, we're basically screwed."
"Our drones had picked up traces of the virus originating in the eastern regions. That's where both waves of the Saiyan invasion were the densest. That's also where a Saiyan named Son Goku grew up, isn't that right?" Lapis, the other assistant of Dr. Puri's spoke up.
"Son-kun grew up in Mt. Paozu. He's wandered all over the world but most of the time he's always made his way back either there or the Kame Island in the East Sea." Bulma pondered to herself. The news of this virus had hit her. Chayote turned her attention to Bulma, wondering just how was she supposed to take this. Here was a new type of threat placed in front of her, one that nobody knew how to deal with, one that couldn't have been just punched or blasted away like the rest of the problems in their lives.
"That, combined with the attention shown to Saiyan invaders to this specific region, would explain why the virus has originated in that region. It's only a matter of time before it spreads. The moment someone infected travels across the world, the entire humanity will be put in jeopardy." Dr. Puri said.
"Since you've contacted me, I'll take it you have done extensive studying on the virus and know that your people alone can not deal with it. What is it exactly that you are proposing, Dr. Puri?" Bulma asked directly, making Dr. Puri to smirk.
"This is Lapis. He is the head of our tech and innovations department. I'll let him explain." Dr. Puri turned to the young man with shoulder-length, slick black hair who nodded with the same cold and apathetic look that Chayote wanted to spit at after spending just fifteen minutes in a room with those two.
"Our proposition is that we use our dominating position in the market to outfit as many people as possible with these." Lapis placed a carrot on the table.
"We will outfit people with… Carrots?" Bulma raised an eyebrow, standing up and approaching the table to pick up and examine the carrot.
"This is no ordinary carrot. It's a carrot filled to the brim with nanobots, trademarked and invented by Puri & Co." Lapis explained, meanwhile Dr. Puri slipped her silky hands inside the chest pocket of her suit and removed a pair of white and fluffy gloves with soft and fleshy, pink pads at the center and fit her hands inside them.
"Say, Chayote-san, fancy a handshake?" Dr. Puri extended her gloved hands with a sly grimace. Bulma turned to Chayote and while originally Chayote froze up by the unexpected proposition, she shrugged and approached the woman, extending her hand hesitantly for the handshake.
Once Chayote's hand touched the glove and felt the soft caressing of the silky fur and the soft bump of the pad in the center, her head went woozy and her mind blanked out. Bulma jumped up in terror when a carrot fell from a cloud of smoke and flashing rays of colorful lights. One that Lapis scooped up from the ground and placed on the table beside the carrot that he had provided as an example to show that these carrots had been identical.
"That… That carrot it's…" Bulma pointed at the original carrot sample that Lapis provided.
"Don't worry," Dr. Puri clapped her hands, dispelling the magic that had transformed Chayote into a carrot and leaving the Saiyan sprawled out in an undignified position on the table. This indignity and the flush of red in Chayote's face seemed to amuse Dr. Puri in a very malicious sort of way. "This carrot isn't actually another person. Puri & Co may tread on the cutting edge of technological breakthrough every day but we still abide by the scientific method and etiquette. This was merely a demonstration so that you understand what we have achieved in these last few years."
"That ability…" Bulma gulped. "It's the ability of Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots."
"It is." Dr. Puri seemed pleasantly surprised because Bulma knew the source of her invention. "Through experimentation with dear Mr. Rabbit we've pinpointed the exact nature of how his ability works. That which we called magic may as well just be science ahead of our understanding."
"We've turned Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots' ability into a storage tool. We can make anything we want into carrots, similarly to the capsules of Capsule Corps. In some ways it is superior, since our carrot-transformation ability can make sentient beings into carrots as well whereas the ability of storing sentient beings within capsules is extremely limited." Lapis explained, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Yes, yes… I'm sure that you are all over the moon being able to devise such a competition but my businesswoman's intuition suggests that people would rather still use our capsules than turn things into carrots to store them." Bulma crossed her arms with a grumpy look on her face. So far no one, not only on Earth but on the entire universe, had replicated or even come close to competing with the Capsule Corp's capsule storage technology. That Dr. Puri had made this suggested she might have snagged a few secrets during her runaway and while Bulma couldn't prove anything to base an accusation against, it was still mighty suspicious.
"That isn't the point, Bulma-san." Dr. Puri slipped off her gloves and fit them back in her suit's pocket. "We never intended to create something to push Capsule Corps and your famous capsules off the market. When we started working on this, we already knew of the virus' existence. We merely were researching an effective delivery mechanism for our solution."
"Solution?" Bulma asked.
Lazuli removed a pair of glasses from her pocket and handed them to Bulma while Lapis took the original carrot and shook it up in front of the Capsule Corps party. Once Bulma put the shades on, she gasped and scanned the Puri & Co party before taking the glasses off and handing them to Chayote. Chayote thought that Bulma may have been exaggerating with her reaction, but when she placed the shades on the ridge of her nose, she went through an identical one.
It was the carrot that Lapis held in his hand. It had been swarming with creepy crawlies, giving out squirming signatures of life from within the vegetable. That was not the only curious thing. Those same crawly sensations came off of the entirety of Dr. Puri's, Lapi's, and Lazuli's bodies. For whatever reason, their bones had registered on the shades in a way that Bulma's or Chayote's own did not. Lapis extended her hand after approaching Chayote, insisting that the Saiyan gave her the glasses back.
"I'm no organ-scientist, but I think you may have some issues you need checking out." Chayote muttered with a grim expression as she handed the spectacles back to the scientist. Lapis only chuckled to the remark and pocketed the shades.
"What is the meaning of those readings, Dr. Puri?" Bulma demanded an answer by slamming her hand on to the surface of the table authoritatively. "What's inside that carrot and… What is it that's inside all of you?"
"This was just a humble demonstration so that the negotiations went smoother and you would be on the same page." Lapis shrugged. "We've created this carrot by using the magical ability of Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots on a swarm of our hive-minded nanobots. Because they all possess a singular hive mind, it has transformed them all at once. Using this carrot, we can deliver those nanobots into the bodies of every person on Earth who isn't allergic to carrots and, in that way, protect them from the heart virus."
"Those unusual organ systems you've seen inside our bodies are similar to what our proposition is–these nanobots change the human body from inside out. They will rebuild one's own heart, cell by cell, into something more reliable and bio-mechanical. Something that the heart virus or any of its mutations or future strains cannot affect. In that way, the human heart will become effectively immune to malady of any sort." Dr. Puri explained. "Wanting to extend a gesture of good will, we've undergone the process ourselves and, in fact, went a few steps further."
"You're experimenting on your own workers?" Bulma gasped in terror and disbelief.
"Make no mistake," Lapis tipped the corners of his lips. "We've volunteered for this process. After all, who in their right mind wouldn't want to render their bodies immune to sickness?"
"This explains why I can't get any Ki signatures out of them." Chayote turned to Bulma. "Still, I don't think merely making your heart mechanical would do it…"
"Don't tell me you're one of those conservative fanatics, like Lapis?" Lazuli groaned, placing her hand on her hip as she struck a sassy pose. "That guy kept on whining about the tests we did on Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots too."
"Wait… Those tests you did on him… They were…" Bulma's pace of breathing picked up as she began, fearing that she may have created a monster.
"Don't worry, once we explained our goal to Mr. Rabbit, it excited him over the moon, excuse me the pun, to help save the world. I had never expected an animal-man with a criminal past to have such a messiah complex. Must have had a lot of foul deeds he wanted redemption for." Dr. Puri tried to pacify her situation with defensive body language.
"Then why are you speaking of him in the past tense?" Chayote took a bold step toward the scientist, prompting an involuntary, matching reaction from Lapis and Lazuli, as if they were ready to engage Chayote to protect their mistress for a second, before resuming their roles, hoping that nobody had noticed their sudden boom of fighting spirit.
"Rabbit Who Turns People Into Carrots is alive." Lazuli confirmed with a disappointed sigh. "We wouldn't have heard the end of it from Lapis if he'd have died, honestly."
"He's half-animal after all." Lapis spoke up. "Animals have done nothing wrong to anyone, so at least half of him deserves a decent life. He did make the generous sacrifice of his hands though."
"You took his hands!?" Bulma jumped up.
"That's how his ability works, Bulma-san." Dr. Puri stood up, trying to pacify the situation still. "It's not some technique you can just learn. It's… Magic. You can understand how it works, study it, but we weren't able to replicate it so we had to… Make gloves out of his hands."
"I wanted to make a gun but making gloves was easier since they already use the skin of the Rabbit's hands." Lapis crossed his arms and looked away, pouting like a child.
"A gun gives the wrong idea, Lapis!" Dr. Puri turned to her subordinate. "We're not here to shoot people with beams that turn them into carrots, we're trying to save the world. Gloves are more… Tame, elegant and scientific."
"If you think we can still…" Bulma was about to scold her ex-associate when the entire building seemed to flip over, as everyone had lost their balance centers and began floating for a second. Chayote took flight and scooped Bulma out of the sky before she could fly right through the glass window and slice herself to ribbons before flattening on the pavement three hundred floors down. Dr. Puri and her associates had the similar idea as all of them took flight at once as well.
"What's going on here?" Bulma turned her attention to the Puri & Co party, since one could attribute most of the disturbing and ground-shaking experiences that day to those three so it would have made the world of sense if those three were responsible for quite literally shaking the ground too.
"This isn't us." Dr. Puri denied it.
"Yamcha and Krillin are down below. I'll leave you with them to get to safety while I can do my job and handle this. Anything that can shake the ground like this can't be good and my men alone won't handle it." Chayote looked to her contractor and friend for approval.
"Are you sure you can handle it? Do you need me to call someone else?" Bulma wondered.
"I can sense a Ki I'm not familiar with on the ground floor. It's powerful but the way it is now I should be able to squash it out with little difficulty." Chayote answered. "Krillin and Yamcha seemed to have been giving it some trouble already."
"Lapis, Lazuli, assist Chayote." Dr. Puri turned to her associates who turned to their superior with apathetic looks.
"Sure thing. This looks like it's gonna be a fun game. Come on, Lazuli," Lapis' eyes glinted with little crystals of glee.
"Ugh, if we have to. I swear it, that runt that crashed our business meeting is gonna get it!" Lazuli clenched her fists.
"It's just another show of goodwill between us." Dr. Puri looked at Bulma. "One of many, might I add. Please, Bulma-san, reach out to me with your answer soon. Humanity won't be able to handle waiting for too long, I'm afraid. Only together can we stop the heart virus."
Chayote rammed the jammed, bulletproof glass door with her shoulder, folding it like paper before kicking through the elevator door and blasting a meek speck of Ki down. Since she didn't sense even the weakest Ki signature below her, it seemed safe to obliterate the elevator and use the empty shaft to take Bulma down the quick way.
"What are you doing?" Lazuli wondered.
"This is good thinking. We can get down faster this way." Lapis nodded, still smirking in excitement.
"Yeah, but she has to put Bulma down somewhere, doesn't she? Why not just dive out the window and put her down on the street first, then rush to the ground floor through the front door?" Lazuli objected again.
"If you keep nagging her like you nag me all the time, she's gonna get annoyed of you and not wanna work with you, sis." Lapis teased his partner.
"Outside is too dangerous. The building's shocked to the foundation. It's spraying glass all over the place so Bulma might get cut. I'd rather take her out this way and hand her to Yamcha and Krillin directly." Chayote answered.
"I see…" Lazuli ran her hand through her hair, settling down somewhat, even though she still looked a tad vexed. "Taking care of civilians sounds like a chore. Just another reason to go a step beyond just protecting your heart, huh?" she winked at Bulma while the three took a plunge down the dark shaft toward the ground floor.