The inevitable fallout from the broken window resulted in Goku's banishment from his own home, but he waited until well into the next day before he left his son under Piccolo's tutelage. Retreating to Kame House, he found it deserted except for Master Roshi, who was peacefully dozing beneath the kind of magazine he had learned not to look too closely at. This suited his purposes perfectly, since Goku had only come to borrow the phone far away from any possible interference by his loving family.

Time had no further prepared him for the task at hand, however, and whatever plan he had formulated was obliterated the moment Bulma answered the phone.

"I should have known this had something to do with you, you disgusting old pervert." Her voice cracked like a whip, and Goku took an involuntary step backwards. "Listen here, you fu—"

"B-Bulma?" he stuttered.

"Goku?" There was an astonished beat. "Goku! You have no idea how happy I am to hear from you!"

"You are?"

"Oh, yes! Everything is a mess, and I've been so worried—"

"Me too!" He jumped in ecstatically at the first sign of an opportunity.

"You have? Why?"

"There's this thing—a para...a para..." He dug for the term, but it remained elusive. He was sure it was a pair of something. A pair of docks? No, he didn't remember anything about boats. "A pair of socks! That's it. I just wish Piccolo was here to explain it, but it means you gotta have the one to have the other and..." His stomach dropped like a stone as he realized mid-sentence that in his enthusiasm he had said just about everything that he shouldn't.

Thankfully, Bulma was too preoccupied to follow his rambling discourse. "If this is about your laundry," she interrupted with obvious exasperation, "I'm sure Chi-Chi has it well under control. I have a real problem that I need help with."

He breathed a small sigh of relief, steadied himself, and plunged back into the fray. "How can I help?"

"I need protection. Someone has been sneaking around Capsule Corp. At least, I'm almostcertain someone has been. I thought I saw something the other night, and I've felt more than once that someone was watching me. And now there are these awful phone calls, but the person just keeps hanging up. I know it sounds like I'm overreacting, but I'm so worried that this is just going to get worse. They can already get into my home, so what's to stop them from hurting me?

"I thought maybe if you were to stay with me for a few weeks. You can bring Chi-Chi and Gohan. Even Piccolo if you really want. Just until I figure out what is going on."

Goku quickly envisioned several scenarios, all of which ended in his untimely death—either by succumbing to the heart virus after his unsuccessful attempts at correcting the timeline, or by succumbing to Vegeta smothering him with a pillow in his sleep. "Uh, I don't think that would be such a great idea. Have you asked Yamcha?"

Again, he spoke without thinking. Again, he was saved from his misstep by Bulma herself. "If you can get him to return your calls, you can tell him that he is the last man on earth that I would ever ask for help."

Suddenly, Goku saw his opening and delivered the blow with as much finesse as he could muster. "Well, have you asked Vegeta? It would certainly be convenient, seeing as he's already living there."

"I would rather die."

A deflection. The Saiyan floundered but came back swinging. "Come on, he isn't all bad."

"No, he isn't," she agreed, "which makes it so much worse when he does terrible things."

He shook his head, unable to unravel her logic. "I still think he's your best option."

Bulma gave an irritated huff, and he could almost hear her throwing up her hands through the phone. "Fine," she snapped. "I will take care of it myself. I'll just...build a bigger laser, or something."

"I'm sure you'll think of something."

He sensed the futility of his effort and quickly made his goodbyes. There may have been no path forward here, but that did not mean he was out of options. It only meant that it was time to call in the reinforcements and roll out phase two.

A warm, playful breeze wafted down the valley, urging legions of wildflowers to bow their heads in deference and plucking mischievously at the edges of Piccolo's cloak as he knelt to contemplate a rose.

Appealing pale pink petals...reasonable symmetry...few visible blemishes...inoffensive aroma…

"This one too?" he asked.

Stooping to peer over his shoulder, Goku spent a moment in studying the flower before nodding his affirmation. Piccolo reached out and pulled the rose up by the roots, then turned to add it to the overflowing collection nestled in the crook of Goku's elbow.

"That should be enough." The Saiyan shifted his burden with an appraising glance.

Piccolo dipped his head solemnly and reached into the folds of his gi to extract a length of ribbon and a small note. He tied the stems with their dangling network of roots neatly together before affixing the card prominently.

A small frown knit Goku's brow as he watched this. "You're sure about the note? It's really necessary?"

"Yes." A blush darkened his green companion's complexion. "I have to admit, I was skeptical when you first told me about this...bouquet thing. Presenting a potential mate with the decapitated remains of a living organism only to watch them slowly wither and die? It seemed a poor metaphor for any relationship." If possible, his blush deepened. "So I asked Gohan. He agreed with you. He said he saw it on a television show once, and the man placed a note just like this for the woman to find."

"And you're sure that it has to say, 'From your secret admirer'?"

"Yes. That is what Gohan said."

Goku shrugged, his expression lightening. "Well, okay then. Gohan is a smart kid, after all."

He touched a finger to his forehead and, using instant transmission, he was gone and back again before anyone was the wiser.

Bulma stumbled blindly into her room under the cover of darkness. Hopping awkwardly on one foot, she managed to wedge a shoe off, then she pulled a complicated maneuver that sent its mate flying into the opposite corner. She navigated the last three steps without tripping over any unexpected obstacles and hit the edge of the mattress with a sigh of relief.

She had spent more hours than she cared to admit reconfiguring the Capsule Corp security system. Now, the small of her back ached, one of her fingers was blistered, her brain was mush, and all she wanted in the world was to collapse into a minor coma in her own bed. She fell bonelessly into a tangle of sheets, grabbed a corner of blanket, and rolled.

Rolled right into something.

Her strange bedfellow stroked her face lightly with fingers that were both soft and waxy at once, while she felt a sharp pricking along her bicep. Her questing hand drew back reflexively, coated in something thick and slightly damp that clung to her fingers like coagulated blood.

She screamed and reared up, overbalanced, and hit the floorboards shoulders first. The pain didn't have time to penetrate her panicked brain, however, as she flailed around indiscriminately for a weapon or a light. She only succeeded in knocking over the bedside table, but as luck would have it, the lamp survived the resulting crash unbroken. She scooped it up, fumbled for the switch, then held it out in front of her as she rose on trembling legs to confront the horror in her bed.

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't the bruised spray of flower petals littering her pillows in shades of pink and red and purple. Their stalks were a wild tangle which glinted with the hint of thorns, bound together with a shockingly crimson bow. Below that, the labyrinth of their roots smeared dark mud across her white sheets like a mortal wound. And atop it all rested a small cream slip of paper.

She couldn't suppress the tremor in her fingers as she snatched up the card. She flipped it over quickly, as if prolonged contact might burn her, and read the words in an unfamiliar scrawl: From your secret admirer.She glanced back at the sinister bouquet lying in her most private sanctuary and felt the ominous threat encompassed in those words.

In the awful silence she could almost hear the zing of a neuron firing as she made a snap decision.

And just as simply as that, a mantle of unnatural calm settled around her. She bent to right the overturned table, then replaced the lamp. She walked to the window and glanced out, observing dispassionately that the gravity simulator was unoccupied. She turned and made her way out into the hallway, passing by several doors before opening the last one. Inside, a Saiyan prince sat up in his bed and regarded her cynically.

"Someone is going to try to kill me."

Vegeta, who had woken every day since the age of five with the expectation that someone would try to kill him, was unmoved by this bold declaration. "And?"

"I want to hire you as my bodyguard, or whatever."

He didn't even make a show of considering the proposal. "No."

"I can pay you, anything you want."

"Your money is immaterial to me. I have everything I require."

She gave her head an impatient toss. "It may be news to you, but everything you have in fact belongs to me. I can dismantle all your training gear and toss you out on your ass without food or clothing. Maybe then you would appreciate the generous offer I've presented you with."

"I can murder your family and destroy this worthless planet once and for all." As little as he had found she responded to threats, he reacted to them even less well.

They blinked at each other, having reached a stalemate.

After a tense few seconds, Bulma shook out her shoulders and deliberately relaxed her imperious pose. As usual, it was incumbent upon her to offer the olive branch. "I've been working on a new prototype for your armor. One with a forty percent higher strength-to-weight ratio. Lighter, more durable. And surprisingly easy to remove blood stains from. I can make you a half dozen suits in every shade of navy blue you could possibly dream of."

A slow, calculating look. "Perhaps an exchange could be negotiated." He held up a finger for emphasis. "With the understanding that this is a temporary arrangement. I am a warrior of royal blood, not some belligerent peasant with a sword for hire."

Having achieved her ultimate goal, she had to bite back several peevish retorts that rose to her lips. "Understood. Give me one week. Starting now. Get up and come with me."

"What?"

Even with her best efforts, she couldn't quite repress an eye roll. "Someone just broke into my house and vandalized my bedroom. There's no way I'm sleeping tonight, so neither are you, buddy."

That captured his attention. He threw back the sheets and came to his feet in a fluid motion. "Show me."

It turned out to be more complicated than that, however. First she had to explain the significance of the chilling object in her bed.

"This is what that atrocious caterwauling was about?" he asked incredulously. "A handful of dead plants?"

So she lectured him on the meaning behind the giving of flowers, occasions and Earth holidays during which such things were typically exchanged, and societal norms governing composition and appearance. Then she showed him the card.

He turned it between his fingers as he read the words aloud. The look of perplexity on his face only grew. "And all of this is meant to be...romantic?" He fumbled over the last word, making it clear he was speaking a foreign language. "A few weeds and some meaningless drivel?"

She sighed and rubbed a weary hand over her face, realizing she had failed entirely in enlightening him. "Well, yes. Under the right circumstances. But this makes a deliberate mockery of all that. It's obviously meant to be a threat or a warning of some kind."

He gave a little nod at that. Romance was a foreign concept, but intimidation was something he was fluent in. He dropped the card and began a meticulous circuit of the room. He checked the balcony doors and found them still locked. He investigated the bathroom, inspected the closet, and knelt to peer under the bed itself.

After completing his inventory, he returned to where she stood. "There is no sign that anyone forced their way in, but it is impossible to tell if anything else is amiss in this utter disaster in which you live."

Vegeta's commentary on her organizational skills was low on her list of concerns at the moment, so she refused to rise to the bait. "Whoever did this was in and out without even setting off the motion sensors. I just finished the thermal imaging system, but I was waiting until tomorrow to give it a trial run-through." She shuddered. "Well, lesson learned, I guess. In the morning I will be better prepared, but right now I don't want to spend another minute in here."

She turned with a wordless gesture and was a little surprised to see he followed without protest. She led him downstairs to the living room and began gathering up the obscene number of remotes required to operate the single, oversized screen.

"We're going to liquefy a few brain cells via some good, old-fashioned radio waves," she explained despite the fact that he had neither asked nor betrayed the slightest hint of interest.

"You mean television," he said, settling at the farthest possible end of the couch.

"Right. But nothing too violent. No horror films or slasher flicks. I don't think my nerves can take it."

"What about one of those nature documentaries? I have watched them on occasion with your father and found them educational."

She pictured some sleek jaguar ripping out the throat of an awkwardly adorable tapir and grimaced. "Let's stick to something with absolutely no grounding in reality: the romantic comedy."

To his credit, Vegeta lasted a full eighty-seven minutes in silence, looking a bit like a man attending his own funeral, before his will broke.

"Why did she—"

"Shhh."

"But how could—"

"Shhh! This is the best part. He is just about to realize that blonde bitch has been lying to him this whole time. He'll rush to Lucy's apartment to apologize, but all her stuff is already gone. And then her roommate will make some offhand comment, and he'll know that she must be at the bridge where her umbrella broke the first time they met—"

"You have seen this one before?"

"No, but it's so obvious."

He frowned at her with more concentration than this piece of cinematic froth warranted. "It is impossible that you simply guessed all that. Either you are lying, or this is some obscure Earth tradition. Is there some cultural significance attached to bridges? Maybe some form of ritual suicide?"

She groaned and lobbed a throw pillow across the couch at him. It was effortlessly deflected. "What movie have you been watching, Vegeta? Don't you remember during their date at the museum, she said—"

He pulled her up short with a brusque gesture. "Date?"

"Yeah, date. You do know what a date is, don't you?"

"I am familiar with your solar calendar, if that is what you are asking."

"No, no. A date. It's when two people go out to dinner or a theater or something and, well, just talk about themselves and decide whether or not they're compatible. Like a form of courtship."

He snorted. "An absurd exercise. How could you possibly assess your partner's power level under such conditions?"

"O-kay," she drawled between spurts of laughter. "So maybe you're working with a bit of a handicap here. How about you tell me about your customs, and I'll fill you in on the Earth things you might not know. Like, how would you go about wooing some Saiyan hottie?"

"Typically, such things began by presenting your intended with the severed right hand of your enemy. Although a tentacle would be acceptable in certain circumstances."

Without realizing it, she had crossed half the distance of the couch and now knelt on the center cushion, her arms wrapped around another pillow as she leaned in curiously. "And then what?"

His eyebrows drew together in a tight furrow as the corners of his mouth turned down. After a few seconds, he shook his head. "I was a child when my planet was destroyed. Maybe I missed some of the finer points."

"Nothing else?" She absently hooked a strand of hair behind her ear. "What about later when you were marauding around space? Any instincts kick in, or any words of wisdom from Nappa or Raditz?"

He shrugged indifferently. "Life under Frieza did not leave much time for...fraternization."

In the quiet dark between them some missing piece of a puzzle materialized. She ran a mental thumb over its edges as she examined his face in the sharp angles of shifting light reflected from the TV, as if seeing it for the first time. Vegeta, prince of a lost planet, heir to a dead man, last of his name, and almost certainly a virgin. Maybe it was only a small piece of a convoluted whole, maybe it wasn't even an important piece of the picture, but it was a thread of loneliness running through that was entirely unexpected.

She flopped back against the couch and grabbed a remote. She would not pity him because that would be a worthless exercise, and she could not sympathize with him because she only understood about five percent of the things he had done and seen before he came to Earth, but the tight knot of feelings that surrounded the thought of him softened somehow.

"I guess that just leaves us more time for your crash course in embarrassing things humans do to attract mates. I know the perfect movie to play next. It has a prince in it, so maybe you can relate."

"Are you going to tell me how this one ends too?"

She looked sharply at him, wondering if he had just made an attempt at humor, and caught something wry in his expression that made her smile. "Would you mind if I did?"

One corner of his lips lifted just the tiniest fraction, an expression usually reserved for gloating over the pleas of his enemies for mercy. "Let me assure you, nothing can lessen my enthusiasm for this whole experience."

There had never been a queen of the Saiyans.

Perhaps an outsider would have attributed this to some inherent bigotry, but he could have named any number of female warriors immortalized in the legends of his people. The reality of it was that to crown a queen would have diminished the king. It would have implied that their ruler required a partner to shoulder his responsibilities, that the ultimate warrior had an equal, and that was just untrue. So his mother and his grandmother and his great-grandmother, they had all been nothing more than a female who rose to the king's attention and disappeared just as quickly into obscurity.

For so long, a queen had been nothing more than another backwards, pointless Earth tradition to be sneered at and forgotten. And certainly the character from the film last night had not helped to elucidate the concept any. That woman had been nothing more than a scheming harridan, and although she raised a few reasonable objections to her royal son marrying some clumsy, lowborn simpleton, the very thought of her was laughable.

Yet after living for so long in this forsaken place, the true capabilities of a woman in a position of power were reluctantly dawning on him. Like a dagger wrapped in silk, soft and sharp at once, on whose edge balanced the fates of innumerable others. Thatwas what was on the faces of these people as they peered out at Bulma's progress across the building. Each wave or shy greeting was as good as a full obeisance. And it was not because she was a rich man's daughter that they stopped her over and over again to seek her approval or opinion on a particular project. She was absurdly weak, she could be destroyed with a flick of his wrist, but somehow she had their respect.

And he walked three steps behind her. Not, he argued to himself, as a sign of deference, but because it was easier to watch her back from that position. Now that he had bound himself to this foolish enterprise, he could not tarnish his honor by failing to prevent her death. At least until the end of the week.

Still, he was gritting his teeth by the time their halting procession reached a nervous, gangly redhead. Having already been the recipient of a lecture by Bulma on the proper method of handling the prickly prince, the man straightened and offered the pair an unsteady smile.

"Good morning! I wasn't expecting both of you today, but I would be happy to fetch you something for breakfast if you like, Vegeta sir."

"Don't bother, Eric," Bulma interrupted autocratically. "Vegeta survives entirely on the tears of the innocent. But I'll take two coffees."

Shockingly, the fool had the audacity to wink as a real grin flashed across his features. "Coming right up, boss."

Bulma ushered Vegeta inside her lab, and he waited until the door was closed before asking, "Why do you permit him to address you in that way?"

She shrugged. "I like him, he somehow magically always has a pen when I've lost mine, and he knows all my secrets. I can't afford to lose him at this point. In fact, it may be the closest to being married that I get." She handed him the breakfast sandwich waiting on her desk, and he accepted it wordlessly. "In case you didn't know, that is your social cue to offer me meaningless reassurance. Something along the lines of 'Oh, Bulma, you're still so young. Any man would jump at the chance to be with you.'"

He regarded her with as much hauteur as someone with a mouth full of sausage and egg could manage.

"Nevermind, it was worth a try." She flapped a hand at him and turned to begin rearranging the precarious stacks littering her workspace in a manner that was completely devoid of logic. "Go ahead and make yourself at home, then."

Since he had already inhaled the offered food, he did just that, and when she was done yelling at him for moving a few pieces of expensive equipment, he found he had an adequate amount of space to do some exercises. Just because he was relegated to guard duty for a couple days, there was no excuse to go completely soft. And as an additional benefit, he was finding that when the Earth woman was absorbed in her work, she was far less apt to chatter than under normal circumstances. So aside from her initial fit of hysterics, he was left uninterrupted until he chose to break the silence.

Taking a brief break to stretch his muscles, he made a short lap around the lab and stopped to peer over her shoulder. "What is that?"

She waited until she had fully released the contents of her micropipette into the tiny well before bothering to answer. "Gel electrophoresis. I've been trying to sequence Goku's DNA to see if I can identify a gene that makes Saiyans more susceptible to the heart virus. Right now I'm trying RFLP—restriction fragment length polymorphism—to compare Goku and Gohan's DNA in hopes it might help me narrow things down from an entire flippin' genome."

He scoffed. "I would be shocked if that boy was useful for anything."

"Hey," she said sharply, laying aside her pipette and pushing the hair back from her face. "That boyis something really remarkable. Sure, he's already far surpassed Goku's strength and abilities at that same age, but the real miracle is that he exists at all."

"Having met Kakarot, I have often had the same thought."

"No, no, no. You're missing the whole point." She brought her hands down against the table for emphasis. "You've been watching those nature documentaries, right? Think of all those billions of species on this planet. But only a select few are capable of reproducing across species. There's all kinds of barriers to it—genetic, geographic, differences in mating habits. So if interbreeding between species that evolved on the same planetis incredibly rare, how is it possible that some humanoid creature from light years away managed to come to Earth and knock up one of the local residents? The improbability of it is mind-boggling."

Her eyes were a bright, electric blue as she grew more impassioned. "He is possibly the most special thing on this planet, and merely by being alive he creates all kinds of compelling problems. Like, is he the end of the line evolutionarily? Is he a sort of mule?"

"Explain that," he demanded.

"The offspring of a horse and donkey. They're sterile, incapable of reproducing because—"

She was startled when Vegeta doubled over in a kind of choking laugh. "Wait," he rasped. "Tell me that word again. I want to remember it."

She caught the evil glint in his eyes and immediately went on the defensive. "Absolutely not. You are not to repeat any of this to Gohan. He's just a sweet little kid. I'm doing this as much to help him as you or Goku. And so much of it is just theoretical anyway, since it's proving difficult to identify the important bits of an entire genome from just three samples."

As unexpectedly as it had come, the mirth died in his face, crystalizing into something hard and brittle. "Did you say three samples?"

Her heart rate kicked into a higher gear as she scrambled for an explanation. "Yeah, I was already trying to establish some baseline values for you next time you landed in the infirmary, so it only made sense to—"

He sent her gel agar crashing to the ground with a quick sweep of his hand. Each word echoed with a ruthless finality. "I. Am. Not. An. Experiment."

He could have blown a hole through her laboratory. He could have killed her and set the whole place on fire, then strolled casually out of the ashes. But he simply stepped past her and walked out the door. He did not even bother to slam it.

Piccolo was wondering why he had ever wanted to rule a planet full of such ridiculous creatures whose continued existence rested entirely on a convoluted, illogical, and messy set of traditions and practices. Surely, asexual reproduction was a far superior process, where one could relax in peace and solitude before simply spitting out an egg. It was unbelievably foolish to attach any kind of emotion or ceremony to what, at its heart, was a selfish perpetuation of one's own lineage.

Goku, however, was becoming increasingly confident. "I'm sure of this one. Chi-Chi is always saying I should open doors for her. The problem is, there's never been a door she couldn't open herself. And then I realized, what if I could create a door she couldn't open? Bulma isn't nearly as strong as Chi-Chi, so it should be easy."

"Is this a common thing, locking unwilling women in rooms so that—"

But Goku was already gone. He reappeared a moment later just outside Bulma's lab. He had located Vegeta's power signal across the compound, and he knew the heiress was inside alone. However, he still paused to make sure his entrance had been unobserved and spied a red-headed man with his arms full of folders caught in conversation with a young woman in a white coat at the end of the hallway.

His window for action was obviously narrow, so he drew in a deep breath to center himself. He had to get this precisely right—just a small spike of energy to draw the other Saiyan's attention, but not enough to give away his identity. He let the breath out of his lungs in a short exhale as he reached for the doorknob and quickly crushed it.

When he reappeared in front of Piccolo after a few seconds, he found him apparently in deep meditation. The Namekian opened one eye and fixed his friend with a look that managed to be at once reflective and reproachful. "I may not understand human women, but I think I'm beginning to understand Chi-Chi. Has it ever occurred to you that you're not really listening to your wife, Goku?"

Bulma had spent several hours sulking. She had yelled a lot of unflattering things about arrogant extraterrestrials with dumb, gravity-defying hair who didn't appreciate the efforts of a certain genius to save their stupid lives at some oblivious machinery. And then she had banged on some other pieces of metal and circuitry until her temper had cooled enough to realize that she wasn't so much angry with Vegeta as she was furious with herself.

Of course the guy whose entire race had been nearly obliterated might be a little sensitive about his identity, even at a cellular level. Of course the guy who had been enslaved to a tyrannical mass murderer might have some control issues. Of course.

She had known it all along, deep down, but she had deliberately stored those samples away without his permission. Because she had wanted to. Because she was selfish and entitled, and no amount of good intentions could erase that.

So, when Eric brought her lunch later, she told him not to disturb her for the rest of the day and sat down for some existential soul-searching over a burrito. Fortunately, that took her no more than a half hour, but afterwards the afternoon stretched out in an interminable monotony punctuated only by brief bouts of guilt and misery.

She did not want to leave the lab. She did not want to walk out onto the lawn and see the scorch marks on the grass where the spaceship had once sat. She did not want to know he was gone for good this time and it was all her fault.

So she threw herself into several half-forgotten projects until she was sure the building was deserted. Until her eyes began to blur with fatigue. Until it was dark enough outside that she would barely be able stumble home without tripping over some stray pet from her parents' collection and she could ignore the ugly hole in the yard until the morning light. Or forever, if she happened to be abducted on her way.

Suddenly, kidnapping and torture was looking like an appealing option.

She was busy imagining what the newspaper headlines might have to say about the disappearance of the daughter of the world's most famous inventor as she gathered up her belongings and reached for the door. She absently turned the knob and nearly tumbled over backwards when nothing happened. She jiggled it in astonishment and gave a few more experimental tugs and shoves.

This swiftly escalated to pounding on the door with her fists and shouting for help when nothing else seemed to be working. The strange events of the past few days had primed her nerves, and a locked room in an empty building was more than enough to plunge her into a full blown meltdown. The air in her lungs seemed artificially thin and the walls seemed unnaturally close as she turned up the volume on her pleas. Never mind that whoever had tampered with the lock must be securely on the other side of the door, she desperately needed out of this impromptu prison.

Two bruised knuckles and several tears later, she slumped into her chair. That level of terror was impossible to sustain, and there was a numbness creeping in at the edges that allowed her space for a few coherent thoughts. If anyone was capable of solving this conundrum, it was her. So, with hands that were still shaking, she logged into the Capsule Corp system and tried a manual override of the keypad outside of her lab.

When this failed to produce any results, she kicked irritably at the barrier between her and the outside world. Then she limped back to her seat on yet another injured limb to contemplate the phone that had previously caused her so much anxiety. It wasn't until this moment that she realized how pathetically short the list of people she could turn to in her hour of need was. Her parents were too far away, Goku was frequently off the grid, Yamcha was out of the question, and Eric would undoubtedly be relaxing at home after all the times she had berated him for trying to adhere to her erratic work schedule.

There was always emergency services, and she briefly entertained a fantasy of some attractive firefighter bursting in to her rescue. That short daydream left her disgusted with herself, however, and more determined to resolve the situation on her own. Truthfully, there had never been a dilemma she couldn't solve with the proper application of a hammer.

Fifteen minutes later, she had dismantled the door hinges and watched as the damned thing toppled inwards. Dusting off her hands a little, she stepped over her fallen foe and sauntered triumphantly into the hallway.

She had barely begun her victory lap, however, when a hand closed around her upper arm in an iron grip and yanked her sideways. She reacted instinctively, pivoting around to strike out with her free hand, while unleashing her most fearsome war cry. The sound died on her lips, though, as Vegeta effortlessly caught her wrist and jerked her to a standstill just a handspan away from him.

Her throat was still raw from screaming and her cognitive processes had been thoroughly scrambled more than once in the past half hour, so he was the first to speak.

"I believe you now."

"You—What—When—" She tried to start three different questions simultaneously as the dam between her brain and her mouth broke open.

He released her and went to lift the door so that he could show her the mangled remains of the knob on the other side. "No ordinary human did that. I believe you now. Your life must truly be in danger, because a person capable of something like that does not bother with idle threats."

"Wait, you believe me now?" All the charitable thoughts she had had about Vegeta over the past few hours were rapidly evaporating. "What about last night? And if I'm in so much danger, where the hellhave you been?"

"If you are going to try to hit me again, woman," he said, glancing pointedly at her balled fists, "I would suggest waiting until I am incapacitated in some fashion. Or possibly dead, if you really want to stack the odds in your favor. Rest assured, even if I did not catch the culprit in action, you were never at risk."

Despite his warning, she was doing a quick calculation of how many bones she was willing to break in the hopes of slapping the smug look off his face. "So what, you've been just—just lurkinghere in the hallway all this time? Didn't you hear me screaming for help?"

"It seemed like you were equal to the problem at hand."

Something inside her went a bit wobbly and sideways as the train of her argument derailed. She had lost count of the times her life had been in mortal peril over the years, but not once could she remember one of the men in her life stepping back and saying, "I was going to save you, but it looks like you've got this under control. Good job." In typical princely fashion, he had managed to be high-handed and petty while simultaneously delivering an honest-to-goodness compliment, and she would be furious except for the little flush of gratification that was running through her.

She took a deep breath and unclenched her hands. "Alright, Vegeta. I'll say this quickly because neither of us is going to enjoy it very much. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I didn't have any right to do what I did. You're used to people who manipulate you to get what they want, and no matter my intentions, I haven't proven myself to be much better than them. So, from now on, I'm taking a more straightforward approach, and if there's something I do that you don't understand, just know that it's probably because I'm glad that you're alive and I'd like to keep you that way. Although it may be because you annoy the shit out of me sometimes. Fifty-fifty odds."

He acknowledged all this with a stiff nod. "After considering it, I have decided you can keep any samples already in your possession and continue with your research. But if there is anything further you require from me, you will ask…so I can have the pleasure of telling you no myself."

She grinned, feeling a little giddy with relief. "Then shall we seal the deal with a sign of goodwill? I've got something for you." She hopped quickly over the door, rummaged around in the drawers of her desk for a few minutes, then emerged with something clasped in her hands.

Vegeta frowned as she dropped a small cylinder into his hand. "It's a communication device," she explained. "I've got the other, so that next time you pull your disappearing act I can contact you."

"I am not a dog that you can call to heel."

She pinched the bridge of her nose as she sighed. All her best gestures were lost on him. "Ideally, this is supposed to increase your freedom, Vegeta, so you don't have to spend every moment of the day chained to me. However, if you still need some incentive, just remember that the only way you get your new armor is if you are a very good boy and come."

Having already exhausted her magnanimous feelings toward him, she turned and started for the exit. Vegeta remained where she had left him, running an uncertain finger over the comm device, torn between a desire to incinerate it and, strangely, to laugh. In the end, he did neither, simply pocketing the object. He covered the distance between them in a few quick steps, resuming his designated defensive position.

Three steps behind. Never closer.


A/N: Thank you all for your kind words so far! I've been using this little story as an exercise to get back into writing after more years away than I care to admit, and the feedback is wonderful. Hopefully you'll stick with me for another two chapters!