A/N: Ugh! Don't know why these bits were so hard so write. But my darling husband and muse requested Vegeta playing mini-golf, so I humbly present Vegeta playing mini-golf...and doing other things.


"Honestly, I don't know why I didn't think of this first," Goku said with eternal optimism as he peered into a series of glass display cases.

Piccolo wisely said nothing, because that was what he was best at.

"Do you have any samples?" the Saiyan asked the unsuspecting vendor behind the counter. The man dutifully produced a tray of colorful macarons and sumptuous truffles. Before he could point out some of the finer features of his merchandise, Goku had swept the whole out of his hands and was busy cramming the delicacies into his mouth.

Oblivious to the look of horror on the proprietor's face, Goku paused in his appreciation of the wares to hold out a few sweets to his companion in chocolate-coated fingers. "Want to try?"

Piccolo shook his head mutely and tugged his baseball cap lower, trying desperately to look less like a terrifying green alien in a gourmet chocolate shop.

"These are fantastic!" Goku flashed a guileless smile at the shopkeeper that further unnerved him. "Could we get a dozen of each of these…" He began to gesture at the cases. "Six of those...Definitely a couple of those marzipans...Is that all you have of the raspberry-filled ones? We'll take all of them..."

When Goku was finished and the total was rung up, there was an expectant silence on the part of the owner while the two warriors exchanged a frantic glance.

Piccolo cleared his throat. "Perhaps something small and tasteful might be better?"

"You're right," his friend agreed. "That's more Vegeta's style. Anything too over-the-top might make her suspicious."

Sometime later, the shopkeeper took a momentary break from tabulating his losses to glance out the front window, hoping that the strange pair had finally vacated the sidewalk outside. Unfortunately, he could still see the intimidating man with the peculiar skin condition loitering nearby. The fact that his accomplice with the perpetual bedhead was nowhere in sight was more a source of a relief than curiosity, however. And it would have taken more imagination than he was capable of to have guessed that his erstwhile customer was currently materializing in the home of one of West City's most preeminent residents.

Goku had been unable to lock onto an energy signature from either Bulma or Vegeta at Capsule Corporation, but after a few minutes of frustrated searching, he had recognized that of the red-haired man from the previous day. Eric was coincidentally delivering some documents for his boss to the main house, and he turned to make his blissfully ignorant descent down the stairs at the same time a Saiyan appeared in the doorway to Bulma's room. Goku held himself rigidly still as he watched the stranger dip out of sight, his precious cargo tucked under his arm. A distant beeping sounded as Eric used the keypad in the kitchen to reset the alarm, but Goku largely ignored it as he sprang into action. Intent on completing his mission swiftly, he darted across the room and bent to nestle a heart-shaped box of chocolates in the unmade sheets.

And that's when the world exploded.

The next morning dawned in a quiet kind of way that unsettled Bulma to her very bones. She woke from the dreamless sleep of the truly exhausted and stumbled through her morning routine, nearly giving herself whiplash from the amount of times she glanced over her shoulder at an unexpected noise. By the time she made it downstairs, she found Vegeta, who was still barred from the gravity simulator on the grounds it was too great a distraction, performing some handstand push-ups in the yard. She kept him in sight through the kitchen window as she prepared, cooked, burned, and disposed of breakfast. Afterwards, she sat at the table drinking coffee and contemplating the day before her. She had ruled out the possibility of visiting her lab until the traumatic events of the previous evening had faded some—or at least until the door was reinstalled—but that didn't mean she was completely without a sense of purpose. So, while Vegeta showered, she spent some time picking out her own brand of armor: pencil skirt, blouse, blazer, and a particularly killer pair of shoes. Then, when they were both presentable, she drove them across town for a mid-morning meeting with some investors.

Vegeta's interest in the proceedings was non-existent, and he whiled away the time by standing in a corner looking unconsciously sinister. Whether this had any influence on the outcome of the affair was impossible to determine, but Bulma seemed pleased with the negotiations. For someone under imminent threat of death, she was suddenly remarkably buoyant, right down to the uptempo click of her heels on the concrete as they navigated the parking lot.

Upon reaching the car, Bulma dug around in the back seat for a minute before emerging brandishing a pair of sneakers. "I've had a brilliant idea."

"And presumably this has something to do with your choice of footwear," he observed dryly.

"It's a wonder I ever doubted there was a brain behind all those muscles," she matched his sarcasm as she sat sideways in the driver seat. Leaning over to slide off her heels, she simultaneously began a losing battle against her skirt bunching up her thighs. "Since you're so extraordinarily observant, surely you've noticed that all the threats against me so far have centered around Capsule Corp." She gave an ineffectual wriggle and tugged at her hemline before returning to lacing her tennis shoes. "Now it's time to do something unpredictable to see if this creep can actually track my location." She stood again to smooth her clothing back into a semblance of respectability. "And because I'm feeling confident right now, I'm going to beat you at something."

Vegeta's expression as he leaned against the trunk told her just how likely he thought that was.

She ignored his skepticism. "I know a miniature golf place not far from here where we can kill a couple of hours," she informed him.

"And what is that?"

"It's golf. But smaller."

"You realize that is not helpful."

She smirked. She couldn't help it. Sometimes he was just such a perfect target. "I think this is something I just have to show you."

Which is how Vegeta found himself standing on a strip of artificial grass, holding an absurdly fragile club, staring into the jaws of an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex. He drew a long breath through his nose as he concentrated on channeling all the embarrassment and anger roiling through him into a short, controlled movement that would hopefully send the infuriatingly tiny pink ball into the equally tiny hole just between the dinosaur's outstretched claws.

A moment later the golf ball smashed through a windmill three holes over and ricocheted straight through an aluminum-sided trailer that sold snow cones during peak hours.

"Again," demanded Vegeta, holding out an open palm.

"I did explain about how the lowest score wins, right?" Bulma worried at her lip with her teeth as she watched the ball roll away, wondering if this had all been a terrible plan to begin with.

"Again," he said.

She shrugged and dug around in the sack she was carrying. When she dropped another neon pink ball into his waiting palm, he regarded it for a moment with obvious consternation. Mentally he was making a note that once he was done beating this minuscule spheroid of torment into submission, he would go in search of whatever halfwit employee she had bribed to further his humiliation. But first, most importantly, he would sink this putt, because he had never backed down from a challenge.

His next shot sailed over the main office and into the parking lot. Distantly, a car alarm began to wail.

"We'll leave a note," Bulma said, struggling somewhere between a wince and a snort of painful amusement.

"Again," Vegeta said.

She withdrew another pink ball from her collection but held it just beyond his reach. "Let's slow it down here for a minute, sport. This isn't about brute strength. You're trying too hard, and that's where it's all going wrong." She stepped closer to slide her hand under his elbow. She felt his whole body tense with the effort not to immediately strike her down, but she wasn't afraid. She had since learned that there were scarier things in the universe than the Prince of All Saiyans, and at least he didn't have any scales or clawed feet or other unsettling appendages. "Relax." She shook his arm a little for emphasis. "All of this stress is holding you back. Now, let it go."

The club hit the ground as it fell from his suddenly loose grip. She smothered a laugh and bent to retrieve it. "Okay, maybe less literally. Give me your hand." With obvious reluctance he offered it up. "Put your hand here, with your thumb like this. And then you wrap your other hand around like this. Feet apart, knees slightly bent, shoulders down." Her touch fluttered lightly from knee to nape of neck back to elbow as she rattled off instructions. "Remember, it's mainly in the wrist, but you need to shift your hips a little through your stroke. Oh yeah, and most importantly, try to have fun."

She released him and retreated a few steps. Resting one hand against her hip, she smiled encouragingly at him. "You think you've got all that, champ?"

"This is an idiotic pastime with absolutely no actual consequences," he said aloud so it mattered less. Then he settled his attention on the trial before him. Relax, he repeated as he felt his fingers deforming the grip of the putter. Let it go. Let it go.

This time, the head of the club made contact with a muted thunk, and the ball accelerated at an easy, steady pace along the turf. There was an unbidden stab of hope between his ribs as it raced smoothly towards a raised ridge that stood between the tee and his target. Unhappily, it was soon evident that the ball was losing momentum as it climbed the slope, and it teetered for a moment on the crest before rolling slowly, inexorably backwards to rest at his feet.

He was busy crushing his opponent into a fistful of pink dust when Bulma's cell phone rang.

"Hey, boss," Eric greeted her slightly breathlessly when she answered. "Everything is okay, but—" Bulma abstractedly knotted her fingers in the material of her blouse because that was exactly what someone said when things were not okay. "—did you mean for your room to detonate? Just a little, I mean."

She ran a nervous hand through her hair. "Did you check out the damage?"

"Yeah, no worries. The fire department and the police have already been and gone. Nothing structural. Mainly just personal effects."

"Ah. And did you happen to find, uh, any remains, human or otherwise?"

"No." Eric was too good of an assistant to be surprised by her question. "Should I have?"

"No," she answered automatically before reconsidering. "Yes. Maybe. It's complicated. I'll explain later, but we're on our way back."

Hanging up, she made an urgent gesture that drew Vegeta out of his detailed musings on his plan for ultimate retribution. "I'm just going to put you down for three strokes. We've got to go put out some fires. Hopefully just the figurative kind."

Operation Bigger Laser had been an unmitigated failure.

A little moan of despair escaped Bulma as she stared at the charred remains of her bed. Ironically, the only part of her mattress that had survived the blast was a little island on which sat a heart-shaped box of chocolate-covered strawberries. The half-melted sticky sweet remains taunted her with her inability to get ahead of her unknown invader.

"Take that outside and blow it up," she demanded of her companion.

Vegeta was surprisingly happy to oblige with the pyrotechnics. When he returned, she was piling splinters of bed frame, singed blankets, shreds of clothing, and the disemboweled remains of a couple down pillows in a corner. Stray feathers drifted on air currents, falling like fat, lazy snowflakes, and one clung stubbornly to a strand of blue hair. He did not point it out to her, but unconsciously he clenched and unclenched one fist as he stared at it.

She glanced up at him absently as she was busy making a mental list of tasks to accomplish. "I know it's not technically in the job description, but would you mind lugging all this out to the trash? And the rug and mattress too? Thank you," she added without waiting for an answer. "I must have screwed up the calibration on the laser somehow, but I'd feel safer taking it apart just to be sure."

By the time he had finished the menial labor, she was perched precariously on a ladder underneath the laser hanging from her ceiling, her head haloed in multicolor wires, as she unleashed a seemingly endless stream of profanity. He withdrew as quietly as he had come, eager to be spared any further dictates. She already paid one man to do her bidding; she had no right to expect him to jump when she snapped her fingers.

The hours of solitude that followed should have been a relief, but unmoored from his usual routine, he drifted between one diversion and the next with a growing sense of frustration. Only one woman was responsible for this new form of torture and tedium, but strangely when she appeared again, laptop in hand, rather than snarling at her, the restlessness that possessed him subsided ever so slightly.

"I wanted your opinion on this," she said, sliding next to him on the couch and flipping open the screen. "This is the footage from my thermal camera. Everything's fine until about a minute before the blast. Then the feed glitches and totally whites out. Something generating a lot of heat might be able to reset the sensors like that, or maybe a huge source of electromagnetic energy could disrupt it. But it sure wasn't my laser that did it."

He watched her as she rewound the video to pour over the moment of malfunction again. "What you are thinking," he said slowly, "is that it was not something but someone. Someone capable of generating an enormous amount of power. But you don't want to say it, because you want me to say it."

"Yes." A hysterical laugh escaped her. "I'm terrified that I'm out of my depth here. If I can't track it and I can't make it explode, I'm basically out of options. Thanks to our excursion today, the only thing I know right now is that my housebreaker isn't keeping dibs on my exact location. So maybe it's time to throw in the towel. Pack up our things and find a hotel to put up at until this blows over."

His face remained the same scornful mask as ever, but there was a shade of disappointment in his eyes as he regarded her. "You will retreat."

She sighed as she ran a hand over her face. "What other option do I have?"

"You can stay and fight. This is your home."

He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, so that she even stopped to consider it before remembering that he was the crazy one. "And how do you suggest I do that?"

He arched a condescending brow at her. "Why ask me? I am merely the hired help. All I can say is that if you run now, you will be running for the rest of your life, and that may not be long at all. Better to take a stand here, where you hold the higher ground."

"Time to choose the hill I want to die on, hmm?" She leaned her head against the back of the couch. Well, damn, if he was crazy, maybe she was a little bit too.

"Perhaps I need to remind you that the goal is not to die?"

"Noted." She covered a yawn and squirmed against the cushion. "At the very least, we can sleep on it. Hopefully my next genius plan will be revealed to me in a dream." She cast a mischievous sideways look at him. "Speaking of which, congratulations on your new roommate. I think we're going to get along splendidly."

With her bedroom in shambles and none of the guest rooms equipped with additional security monitoring, it was the only logical move to bunk with Vegeta for the evening. But as easily as her decision was made, that did nothing to alleviate the actual awkwardness that ensued.

She had no misguided expectations that he would offer up his bed for her comfort, leaving it incumbent upon her to wrestle a twin mattress down the hallway and gather up whatever spare bedding she could find. He silently observed her progress, back stiff, arms crossed, and if he didn't offer any assistance, at least he didn't offer any surly remarks either. Even still, by the time she had adequately constructed her pallet on the floor, she was slightly out of breath and entirely out of patience, so not even holding his tongue earned him a full reprieve.

It was only fair that if he wasn't going to be a gentleman about this, she was under no obligation to be a lady. Defiantly, she stripped down to her usual nightly garb of underwear and tank top. Which was when he laid down on his bed and pointedly turned to face the wall.

With an exasperated huff over prudish princes, she hit the lights and curled up on her mattress. She anticipated between her unfamiliar surroundings and the constant tide of anxiety washing over her that sleep would be evasive, but as she wrapped herself in the glow of her spiteful little victory, it came to greet her like an old friend.

A kick to the stomach ripped her from the arms of a dream, and she instinctively curled into a defensive ball. This protective maneuver only succeeded in tripping a startled and half-blind Saiyan. There was a confusion of limbs and sound, which ended with her head wedged into his armpit and one of her arms wrapped around his midsection.

"Unhand me this instant," Vegeta growled, and, pressed indecently against him as she was, she could practically feel rage vibrating through him like a live wire.

She released him as if he really had shocked her, rolling flat on her back, arms falling limply at her sides. As he rose to his knees in the semi-dark, a single thought surfaced—or more like the shape of a thought, since she pushed it down ruthlessly before it had a chance to take form. And yet, shrouded in shadows as much as his features hovering over her, it still accelerated her heartbeat and flushed her skin as it brushed against her consciousness.

She snatched at a blanket as he stormed towards the door, disgusted by her body's betrayal. Sure, her research had required that she spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about alien sex recently, but that did not mean she would be making the leap from the theoretical to the realm of the experimental. She had zero intention of jumping on the first man-shaped being with a pulse, especially when said being happened to be an unrepentant murderer.

Lurching to her feet, she wrapped the blanket more securely around herself. She was quickly coming to regret her impetuous actions from the night before. In the light of day, she felt exposed and childish and small.

Except that it wasn't light, and she wasn't even certain that it was a new day.

"Wait," she called tripping over the edges of the blanket as she hurried after him. "What time is it?"

"Morning," he said curtly without bothering to stop.

"Yes, but what part of the morning, specifically? Because there's a part for sleeping, and there's another part for—well, honestly that's for sleeping too, but you feel more guilty about it."

He had finally paused in his flight to level a particularly chilly stare at her. He said slowly, as if speaking to a gerbil of only middling intelligence, "It is the part where you stop asking me stupid questions."

"Fine." She tossed her head, then immediately was forced to grapple with her impromptu garment as it slipped from her shoulders. "Since you were so generous as to arrange an early wake-up call, I'm sure you won't mind forfeiting first rights to the shower. I hope you like cold water, because it is going to take an awful long time in there before I feel remotely human."

"I will be within screaming distance," he snapped and resumed striding down the hallway, away from her.

Inexplicably, she found that reassuring.

Goku limped home in defeat. After his distressingly close encounter with Bulma's new security system, he was slightly singed and thoroughly shaken. And something Piccolo had said about Chi-Chi was rattling doggedly around in the back of his brain.

It had become suddenly and, well, painfully obvious that the opportunities for meddling in Bulma and Vegeta's lives would be limited from here on out, and their next maneuver may well be the last they could manage. Their penultimate ploy had to be brilliant and inescapable and downright poetic. And while he was a master of the martial arts, this required a very specific kind of genius that was completely beyond his scope. So, he had come in search of the only woman in the world who had ever successfully ensnared a Saiyan.

This time, he would listen to her, really listen. And then he would repeat it all to Piccolo just to be sure he understood it exactly.

The sunlight cascading through the kitchen window paused to rest on the curve of her cheek as she brushed away an errant strand of dark hair. Plunging her arms elbow-deep in a steaming basin of water, she hummed softly as she resumed meticulously scouring a large pot. Once she was satisfied with her scrubbing, she set it beside a neat stack of spotless pans and other cooking utensils.

He watched all this, paralyzed on the threshold, uncertain of his welcome after their last parting. But then she turned, wiping her hands with a cloth, and her smile was like the sunrise burning through a morning fog.

"Hello, Goku. Were you planning on coming in, or is this just a short visit?"

He returned her grin, letting go of a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "I'm sorry, you know."

"I would be surprised if you weren't." Something wistful slipped along the edges of her words, but her cheerful expression never wavered. She reached out to take his hand and led him to a chair. Pressing him to sit, she fussed and fluttered and fetched.

Halfway through a bowl of stew, it occurred to him that he might like to save the world for her, just one more time. Which meant he had to get all these next bits exactly right.

"Chi-Chi." He swallowed his mouthful of food and tried again. "Chi-Chi, I've been thinking, if there were one thing that I could do that would make you really happy, what would it be?"

The question took her aback, her mouth dropping open a little in astonishment. She gawked at her husband for a moment before turning to cast a searching glance over her tidy kitchen in her cozy little home. She narrowed her eyes at the tower of dishes resting by the sink. She looked down at her hands, still pink and slightly wrinkled from the scalding water.

"Well," she said slowly, warming to the idea, "it might be nice to have a meal together, just the two of us, but one that I didn't have to cook myself."

The simple wisdom of it struck him. "That's perfect!" He enthused. "A romantic dinner. Why didn't I think of that? Bulma will love it!"

Goku sensed the descending clouds of marital discord the second his heedless words left his mouth, and he and Chi-Chi locked eyes across the room. Just as she drew in a breath to begin yelling, her itinerant spouse winked out of sight, taking with him the remainder of his lunch.

Briefly, she contemplated smashing a few dishes, but no one else except her was going to clean them up afterwards, so she settled for violently polishing a serving platter until she could see her own thunderous scowl reflected in its glossy surface, beautiful and terrible.

Bulma hit the mattress with a wordless croon of pleasure. Basking in the unadulterated perfection of the sensation, she arched her back a little, head falling recklessly to the side as she curled her toes.

"Vegeta," she purred, "get over here."

When no response was forthcoming, she peeled open one eye to meet the equally confounded expressions of one Saiyan and one salesman.

"Seriously," she prompted, "you need to try this one."

With a grimace, Vegeta stepped forward. He sat deliberately on the very edge of the mattress and gave it one perfunctory bounce. "Entirely adequate," he commented flatly.

She propped herself up on an elbow and gestured pointedly at the space next to her. "No. Here. You have to get the full experience."

Ensuring that she could read the displeasure in his every movement, he settled rigidly next to her, folded his arms, locked his eyes on the ceiling, and gave a noncommittal grunt.

"I think this is the one," she gushed in the face of his sullenness. "I think this is the mattress I've been waiting my whole life for. I may never leave my bed again."

He turned his head to regard her and in his dark eyes was not only a silent castigation of her character but also a curse on all her ancestors who had ultimately given rise to this moment in time.

She sat up halfway and gestured dismissively at the salesman who was still staring in obvious confusion. "Give us a second to discuss this one, will you?"

"Of course." The man appeared visibly relieved at the opportunity to escape a palpably awkward interaction. "If you like this one, there's another pillow top I can cut you an unbelievable deal on, but you and your husband take all the time you need. I'll just be over there if you have any questions."

She half-opened her lips to tell him exactly what she thought of his antiquated assumption that any smart, successful woman couldn't possibly contemplate an expensive household purchase in public without first shackling herself permanently to some witless male. But she quickly realized this might require explaining that the particular male accompanying her was no more than a freeloading alien who was passing the time until the arrival of a couple of killer robots, and that his sole purpose in being here today was to protect her from a ghostly assailant who was making her life a walking nightmare. Instead, she settled for smiling at him and making some carefully neutral reply that would hasten his departure.

She flopped over on her side to face Vegeta. "Now that he's gone, tell me what you really think."

"I think," he said, making each word cut, "that I am going to save your secret admirer the trouble and kill you myself."

She laughed, which was decidedly not the reaction he had been aiming for. "Okay, but first you're going to answer my question. What do you think?"

A sigh. "I think, as sleeping contraptions go, it is unexceptionable."

"Ugh." She made a face at him. "I thought royalty was supposed to have taste. Isn't that what 'The Princess and the Pea' is about?"

"What do vegetables possibly have to do with any of this?"

"It's a fairytale in which a young woman proves her nobility by being exceptionally thin-skinned. A fairytale," she continued quickly, anticipating his next question before he could voice it, "is a made up story we tell to children. They're mainly about maidens in distress being rescued by handsome princes." She paused to waggle her eyebrows lightheartedly at him.

"They sound ridiculous."

"Well, they are," she agreed, thinking of a bandit from the desert who had never quite come up to the snuff of happily-ever-after. "But you might like the ones about young kids in mortal peril."

He snorted. "Why bother to lie to your offspring in the first place? A Saiyan child would have been raised on the tales of his people's greatest triumphs—"

"Blah blah blah, crushing skulls and bathing in the blood of your enemies. Spare me the details. The point I'm trying to make is, you've lived an awful long time for someone who has never enjoyed life. I know that wandering around exterminating planets doesn't lend itself to collecting comforts, but as long as you're hanging around me, I'm going to teach you to appreciate some of the finer things in life. Starting with this mattress. I'm going to buy one for each of us, and hopefully you will grow to cherish it so much that you will never get me out of bed before dawn ever again. Ever."

He frowned. "It seems unnecessary. Besides which, that man did claim he could sell you another mattress for significantly less."

"That man is selling a fairytale as much as any story. Odds are it would be lumpier than a sack of potatoes within a few months. No, part of growing up is realizing that what you're told you want is frequently nothing like what you actually want."

In the downturn of his lips was a perpetual wariness that she had grown accustomed to, but something new watched her from his eyes with a sharpness she couldn't decipher. It made her acutely nervous, and she jumped to pick up the stray threads of conversation. "My mind is made up, so why am I still boring you with this? Especially when there are at least fourteen other things on my shopping list I could be boring you with. Like...curtains! Have I told you how desperately I need new curtains?"

"I have examined this from every angle," Piccolo explained to Goku, shuffling seriously through a stack of papers in his hands, "and there is only one plausible explanation."

Carefully, reverently, he began to lay the sheets on the ground, pinning each in place with a rock to protect it from a cool wind swaying the branches above them.

"Any two people can share a meal," he continued instructively. "Father and son." He nodded in the direction of Gohan, who was engrossed in a set of training exercises. "Friends. Even enemies have been known to eat together on occasion. So what signals that a dinner has a more amorous intention?"

Goku scratched his head thoughtfully, but Piccolo went on without waiting for additional input. "I failed to uncover any specific food that serves this purpose. Flowers we already found to be ineffective. That leaves only one obvious solution—candles."

Goku took a second look at the visual aids his friend had provided and began to appreciate the common theme. Multiple pages torn from magazines and advertisements, even a lone movie poster, all showing besotted couples gazing at each other by candlelight.

"However," Piccolo expounded, pointing to a few examples from his collection, "there is no consensus on how many candles to use. One, two, six. The only reasonable assumption is that more candles are more effective." He ended by gesturing at a photo that, unlike the others, showed a man down on one knee in front of his sweetheart while dozens of tealights gleamed around them.

Goku nodded, quickly doing a series of calculations of his own. At one point, he was forced to resort to using his fingers. "This is our last shot. We have to make it count, so I'm thinking at least twenty-five—no, thirty candles should do the trick."

Piccolo shook his head, folding his arms resolutely. "We cannot fail. Make it fifty."

Curled on a lawn chair, Bulma nursed the fading light of day like the final few drops in a glass. It had been nearly three days since the last explosive visit from her unknown enemy. The week she had bargained with Vegeta for was rapidly drawing closer to its end, and while she had spent her time dropping a hefty sum expediting the renovation of her bedroom so that she no longer needed to crash with the Saiyan down the hall, she was lamentably no closer to solving the mystery of her attacker. In spite of this, she was beginning to embrace a cautious hope that the narrow escape from her laser had sent whoever-it-was screaming for the hills. So, although she had initially settled down with the intention of sketching some security updates, she had since allowed her thoughts to drift unchecked onto greener pastures.

She paused in the midst of some furious scribbling to search her surroundings for an elusive variable. As she stretched the limits of her brilliance, Vegeta was completing a series of stretches himself. Catching her eye mid-side bend, he raised enquiring brows at her, and she obligingly flipped her notepad for his appraisal.

"A time machine," she explained succinctly.

"If you are going to waste your time on useless projects, I suppose it is no concern of mine."

"Well," she retorted defensively, "if that kid with a sword is the real deal, that means it's not hopeless. Someone invented it. What has been bothering me is I want it to be me. If it's possible, I would hate for somebody else to succeed where I failed. But—" she stopped herself before she finished that thought. But I guess you know what that's like. "But I'm still struggling with how to condense matter enough to create a—"

She realized Vegeta was no longer paying attention a moment before he asked, "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she replied automatically, but then her eyes followed his to the house, where she could see the frenetic flickering of light through the windows. A moment later a high-pitched siren registered on her senses.

"Shit!" She tripped over her chair in her haste to spring to her feet. "Vegeta—the fire alarm!"

They were both running. He reached the door first, but hesitated after opening it, trying to ascertain the source of the smoke. She ducked under his arm while he faltered, pelting down the hallway, a terrible certainty lodged in her chest. "This way!" she called over her shoulder. Reaching the dining room, she dropped to her knees and, against all reason, crawled into the heat of the blaze.

The scene before her tied her stomach into a sickening knot. The table had been set for two, complete with gleaming china and crisply folded white napkins. Serving dishes were crowded between the settings, overflowing with a diverse range of delicacies. Every other possible surface had been choked with candles, some burning straight and true, others slumped and guttering as their wax spread in molten pools. At the opposite wall, three candles had fallen over entirely, setting fire to a wooden cabinet and feeding the flames now climbing the wallpaper towards the ceiling. And in the riotous, unsteady illumination of the growing inferno, the table still waited under an eerie veil of stillness and calm for its nameless guests.

"Vegeta," she gasped, beginning to inch towards the windows, hoping to pull down the curtains and smother as much of the fire as she could before it had a chance to spread much further. "Fire extinguisher. Dad's lab." He was indisputably faster, and her father's laboratory was closest.

She didn't turn to look at him, keeping her head as low to the ground as she could, but suddenly she felt an electricity crackling through the already sizzling air. Then, the guy who had a reputation for incinerating things unleashed a staggering gust of air that extinguished the flames like an oversized birthday cake.

She had fallen flat under the initial force, but she quickly recovered and staggered to her feet. Taking a wobbly step in Vegeta's direction, she distantly heard the tinkling of broken glass from the blown-out windows and felt the first faint trickle of fresh air hit her face. "That was am—"

She slammed into the wall with enough velocity that spots briefly danced across her vision. As she slid down to rest on the floor, snuffed candles rained down around her, spattering her with hot wax. She was too shocked to cry out, but she blinked unbidden tears from her eyes and tasted blood in her mouth as she attempted to focus on her attacker.

Vegeta still held the hand he had struck her with out in front of him, while with the other he shifted the weight of a charred section of ceiling that had collapsed. Plaster crumbled around him and a heavy wooden beam hit the ground with a splintering crash when he tossed it aside.

Time sped up and slowed down simultaneously. She could barely recall peeling herself off the floor and shambling back outside. The arrival of the fire department was a blur of flashing lights and shouting. The paramedic's examination hardly registered as she limply submitted herself to scrutiny.

But a part of herself remained in that moment, bruised and stunned in the corner, the metallic taste of blood welling up from where she had bitten the inside of her lip. The stars in her vision dimmed, and there was Vegeta, a look of unprecedented fierceness on his features transforming him into someone completely unrecognizable. The only thought in her head was how wrong, how utterly wrong and foolish she had been.

From the very beginning, she had only ever intended him to act as a sour-faced deterrent to whoever was threatening her. She had never imagined that if her life had actually been in immediate danger that he would have ever have lifted a finger to save her.

It was always a mistake to underestimate Vegeta.

Once she had been cleared by the paramedics and provided a preliminary statement to the authorities, she went in search of her unlikely rescuer and found him rather vehemently rebuffing a medical examination of his own. She slid between him and the visibly uneasy young woman, pointing him back towards the house. "Go change your clothes," she ordered. "We're both unharmed. The fire damage is confined to two rooms. We're going to celebrate. And I don't care if either of us is hungry, because it might be our last meal for awhile. When we get back, we're throwing out every scrap of food in this house. I don't trust any of it."

Since she was obviously the lesser of two evils, Vegeta stalked away to obey her commands. In his absence, she leaned heavily on the power of her charm and a little on the influence of her wealth to gently but firmly send all of the emergency personnel packing. Relieved and bone-weary, she threw on a fresh set of clothes herself with none of her usual scrupulousness, scrubbed her face, and collected her cantankerous bodyguard.

For the site of their victory feast, she settled on a steakhouse for which they were decidedly underdressed, but a smile and a few words in the right ear secured them prompt seating at a secluded table. She had chosen this particular establishment for one key feature: the lack of menus. This was an all-you-can-eat experience where waiters appeared regularly to carve up different cuts of meat tableside. She figured it would be one less part of the dining experience she would have to educate her secluded houseguest on.

Whatever trick he had pulled with the fire must have worked up quite the appetite, because contrary to her indifference, she found that Vegeta was eying the circling waitstaff with obvious impatience.

"How do you summon one of the food servants?"

"Shhh!" She made a quelling gesture. "Look, one's coming this way. And could you maybe refrain from calling them servants? Most people take offense at that."

She had already predicted the next scene the moment she set her mind on this restaurant, but it was somehow better than she imagined. The waiter presented a rack of lamb for them to enjoy a small portion. Obviously underwhelmed by this offer, Vegeta promptly relieved the man of his burden and began tearing into the meat with unselfconscious pleasure. She laughed, and when no one was looking, slipped the server an extra tip, promising that everyone would be compensated handsomely if they just kept the food coming.

Unlike she expected, however, her amusement at his expense did nothing to lift the cloud over her. Instead, it opened up an ache between her ribs, small, but sharp and tenacious. Suddenly the table between them stretched to impossible, impassable dimensions. He was distant as a quasar and just as unreachable.

She had dabbled in astrophysics more than once through the years, and she knew quite a few people who had fallen in love with stars. People who looked into the darkness and saw a few points of distant light and were struck to their very souls.

Not that she was in love with Vegeta, because that would be absolutely the stupidest thing she had done in a long string of stupid things. But she began to think she might understand why astronomers could spend their whole lives watching the heavens passing them by.

And it occurred to her then that she had been monumentally unfair to Yamcha. For so long she had blamed the latest and last collapse of their romance on his death, which, in her defense, was a totally reasonable conclusion for most girlfriends. She had traversed the empty reaches of space and risked her life for a second chance with him, and if she had panicked when he started talking matrimony, it was obviously his fault. Something about him had changed irrevocably between death and resurrection. Yet, the truth was, he was still just as sweet, just as earnest, and just as faithless as he ever had been. She was the one who wasn't the same, and it had all begun the moment she left Earth's atmosphere. Having travelled the stars, it was absurd to believe she could have ever been happy again with her feet on the ground.

But this wasn't about Yamcha, and this wasn't about love. This was about the simple desire to touch him, just once, without him flinching away.

She tucked that impossible dream between her teeth and smiled her way through dinner. What she said was of little consequence to her or to Vegeta, but she kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversation throughout their meal. The tide of speech dried up somewhere on the drive home, but neither of them truly noticed. There were only a few words she had left, and it took the long walk upstairs to find them at last.

"Vegeta." She held him with her voice alone as she paused at her bedroom. "Thank you. You saved my life." One hand came to rest lightly against the center of his chest, and she leaned in to skim a quick kiss against his cheek.

This latest assault in the bizarre form of physiological warfare she had been conducting over the last few days was unprecedented. He couldn't remember ever hearing those exact words in that exact order. They sank into his skin like hooks and pulled. She still smelled of smoke and ash as she brushed close, and the memory of last time she had been pressed against him—and wearing considerably less—reopened like a wound. When he turned his head just a fraction so his lips met hers, it was the smallest defeat of his life.

Because he could obliterate her casually, his arms came up to hold her loosely. Because he could vaporize her carelessly, he kissed her with a restraint that he would not have thought himself capable of. And after the space of a breath had passed, he released her.

Stepping back, she bounced once on the balls of her feet as she pressed her lips together thoughtfully. "Mmm, not bad," she pronounced as a playful gleam lit her gaze, "but you can do better."

He had never backed down from a challenge.

Sometime later her head and shoulders hit the wall a little too forcefully. She gave a yelp and punched him in the shoulder. It wasn't so much a complaint as a friendly reminder that she was human, and therefore breakable. In fact, complaining was the farthest thing from her mind. The ache from earlier was no bigger than before, but it had developed all the gravity of a black hole. She was falling in, accelerating and tearing into the most exquisite pieces, until her last atom split in a shattering explosion, until the only thing holding her together at all were his hands.

And he was not gentle and he was not kind, but neither was she.

He tracked mud across her kitchen floor, and for a long minute she stared at it, her lips compressing into a thin line. Then she looked up, taking in the clump of flowers in shades of buttery yellow and burning orange clutched in one hopeful fist, the dirty weave of their roots hanging down below his grip.

There was a sheepish expression on his face as he raised the other hand to cup the back of his neck. "Chi-Chi, you know I—"

"Stop." For once a dutiful husband, Goku closed his mouth, and she made an impatient gesture. "Give me those."

Turning away from him, she set the flowers on the counter. She selected an appropriately sharp and sinister-looking knife and began trimming the stems. While the activity did give her an outlet for some lingering violent inclinations, it was intended more to provide her husband a sobering opportunity for self-reflection than it was for her to control her emotions.

This misunderstanding would unravel itself like all the rest. She had loved him since she was a child, since before she realized how big loving someone could be, and it was far too late to give that up now. He was imprinted on her skin, he was buried in her bones, he was written on her soul, and staying angry with him was like holding a grudge against herself. Casting him off was worse than amputating a limb. But there was no sense in letting him see that.

She selected a vase and prolonged his unease a little longer as she meticulously arranged the cut flowers to her liking. When she was satisfied, she set them on table and stepped back so that she and Goku stood side by side, allowing them both a moment to appreciate her artistry. Like always, she took the things he gave her, raw and untamed, and transformed them into something beautiful.

She turned into him after an appropriate amount of time, burying her face in his shoulder, and was surprised to feel the material beneath her cheek become a little damp after a few seconds. "Oh, Goku," she whispered, "all I really wanted was your time."

"You've got it." He brought up one arm to draw her closer. With the other, he made frantic shooing gestures at the two expectant faces peering through the window, waiting to see if their banishment had been lifted.

Gohan was faster on the uptake than Piccolo, and he tugged impatiently on the Namekian's hand. Suddenly, a whole day in the company of his mentor had opened up before him. As he led his perplexed friend away, an endless series of possibilities danced before his eyes, stretching out under the eternally blue skies of childhood with a promise that no android could destroy.

Bulma stretched and rolled into cool sheets. She cracked open one eye and rapidly assimilated several details. Enlightened but not alarmed, she felt no particular sense of urgency and closed her eyes again. She twisted and burrowed, rested again for an indeterminate amount of time, then stretched once more. Slowly, she sat up, at last ready to take a more conscientious approach to her situation.

Clothes were a must. She went hunting for the articles she had discarded so haphazardly the night before. Pants, bra, shoe, shirt, underwear, other shoe, sock…

Twenty minutes later, she perched on the edge of her bed, only half-dressed, with a single sock balled in one hand. She stared at the lonely piece of cloth whose mate she had been unable to locate despite an exhaustive search, feeling a confused sense of dread pressing on her chest. There was something she was missing here, greater than just a sock. Something lost to the shadows of memory. Something small which had suddenly become so vitally important.

She threw the sock aside in frustration and pulled on the rest of her clothes in a hurry. She decided while she wrestled with her top to scrap her initial plans for strutting around and generally lording things over Vegeta. Something about that solitary sock had awakened a new purpose in her. Something was amiss in the universe, and she had to set it to rights as soon as possible. Whatever it was.

She found him exactly where she knew he would be, exactly where he shouldn't be the morning after some lunatic tried to burn down her house. She confidently deactivated the gravity chamber from the outside and stepped through the door, before realizing her fatal error. She had forgotten about the battle bots.

She screeched and dove to avoid the friendly fire, ending in an inelegant little summersault. There was an explosion and a metallic crunch as the bot hit the ground a moment later.

"You will need to repair that," Vegeta informed her cooly, his face impassive.

"Hey." She smiled up at him cheerfully from her ungraceful sprawl on the ground, as if this had been her intention all along. "We need to talk. Not about last night," she amended quickly as she saw the first sign of alarm reflected in his eyes, "because that would be awkward and weird. But we're adults, so we're going to talk about tonight, and the next night, and maybe even the night after that."

She propped herself up on an elbow, making a brief catalogue of her bruises. "I'm sure by now you've already completed some pretty complicated mental gymnastics, and you're thinking that somehow I trapped you or tricked you for some nefarious purpose. There's not much I can do to defend myself against something like that, but I would just like to say that I don't have an endgame. In fact, I have no idea what is going on here.

"All I do know is that now that the door's open, I'm going to keep it that way. No plots, no pretense. You can come or you can go, and it will not break me. But I think, if you stayed, it might make me happy. So," she finished lamely and shrugged her shoulders eloquently. Then, she got up and left, not waiting for an answer and not looking back.

She did not think about him the rest of the day. Her hours were full enough under normal circumstances just keeping the family business afloat, but today she also had to squeeze in calls to contractors and a rather apologetic conversation with her parents. Between the two, she felt harried and loved and exhausted by the time she crawled into bed that night. That she did so alone was no great surprise, and she fell asleep effortlessly.

When the other side of her mattress dipped sometime past midnight, she was even less surprised. She curved into the heat of his body as he slipped between her sheets, and his hands gravitated instantly towards her skin, making the kinds of demands his mouth never would. She reached back for him automatically, holding him as close as a secret. And when he finally said her name, there was no one around to hear but her.