"Dad!" Bulla stammered.

"Isn't it a bit past your bedtime?" Vegeta snapped. Gohan and Bulla both stood to attention.

"Look, I-"

"I should be thanking you," the corner of Vegeta's mouth curled. "You led me right to the androids and Gero, making killing them a hell of a lot easier."

He pushed past them toward Gero's lab with an evil look in his eye. Was he going to blow it up? Bulla jumped and blocked his path.

"If you're thinking about blowing up Gero's lab, I can't let you do that," her voice cracked. Her heart was racing, somewhat from the discovery of Gero's secret hiding place, but mostly because this was the third time she tried interjecting herself into her father's affairs and she knew how much he hated that. "There are important documents in there that will help us understand what we're dealing with. Let me look inside first."

"You think I should just let you have your way, huh?" Vegeta frowned. "Princess Bulla gets everything she wants."

"First of all," she said, her frustration beginning to grow, "If you blow this place up, you're only jeopardizing yourself. And secondly, I am no princess-"

"Oh really," Vegeta chortled, taking a step toward her. "Because you look like a little princess to me. Weak and idealistic, just like your useless mother."

Blood rushed to her face. She clenched her fists, her brow furrowed and it took everything in her not to strike him down right there and then. But she knew this wasn't the time to fight him, even if he deserved it. Right now she had to focus on getting into that lab and finding more information about the androids, not spinning her wheels trying to prove something to a man who was an absolute piece of work.

"If this is your way of taunting me, it won't work," she stood up taller, her eyes shooting like beams into her father. A devious fire flickered in his eyes. He had found the right button to push.

"I must say," he smirked. "I was cautiously optimistic when I learned you were my daughter. Strong enough to take down Frieza and King Cold, brave enough to travel to the past and meddle in other people's affairs. But now I see you're just as foolish as I suspected."

A long pause buzzed in the air while the two warriors faced off.

"What are you getting at?" Bulla snipped. "If you're looking for a fight, go bother someone else."

"Or what?" he taunted. "What will you do if I go right now and destroy that lab bit by bit? Hmm?"

Bulla ignored him and again made her plea. "If we find something in there we can use, Mom might be able to-"

"Oh!" Vegeta cackled. "Mom might be able to help you? Your mother is a weakling. There is nothing in there that can help us fight these monsters. It is brute strength and sheer will that will help us win. Your mother is nothing but an insignificant, foolish woman who is more a burden than anything."

"You're half the person she is," she spat back, wiping the smirk off his face. "You're nothing but an egotistical asshole! You would be nothing without he-"

"Don't tell me what I am!" Vegeta furiously interjected, reaching out to grab her by the collar as he had the morning before. "How dare you insult me like that. I am a Saiyan Prince and I don't need anyone!"

As she squirmed in his grip, a wave of rage overtook her. Clutching his hands, she powered up to a Super Saiyan quickly and threw him backward, mowing down a thick conifer behind him as he collided with it. She couldn't believe what she had done—did she really just physically challenge her father? It didn't matter now. Her choice was made, and now she was determined to show him just how strong she was.

Standing just a few feet away, Gohan's mouth hung open in absolute shock.

"Fine!" Bulla rubbed her neck. "Show me what you are."

In an instant, Vegeta pushed himself to Super Saiyan. He, too, formed a ki blast in his hand, ready to launch it at her. He narrowed his eyes onto Bulla.

"Wait!" Gohan shouted, rushing in between the two fighters. The father and daughter seemed not to notice—or perhaps not to care—when he began flailing his arms to get them to stop.

"This isn't what we came here to do!" Gohan pleaded with them. "Fighting is only going to waste all of our time."

In her heart, she knew Gohan was right, but there was part of her that wanted to challenge her father. All of her life she had believed that he was at least decent enough to be good in her mother's eyes, that possibly he harbored some affection for Bulma that he couldn't muster for anyone else. But he was just an arrogant ass who put himself first and didn't care who he hurt to get what he wanted. He was no better than Gero.

She powered down and stood stoically staring at her father. He laughed.

"You are pathetic," he quipped. "Just a scared little girl who can't even stand up to her father."

The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she knew better than to say them. You're no father of mine, she thought, desperate to release them so she could at least feel some semblance of satisfaction. She hated him. She hated his cockiness, his arrogance, his lack of empathy for everything and everyone, and to know they were related made her feel sick to her stomach.

"Don't blow up the lab," she said, her voice laced with hatred. "I don't care what you do, or where you go, but don't blow up the lab."

Her breathing had begun to quicken and her fingers instinctively began to flex as she tried to swallow down her rage. He surveyed the compound and looked off into the distance where the androids had flown off, and then briefly looked back into his daughter's determined face.

Without saying a word, he jumped into the air and traveled off in the direction the androids had gone. He hadn't even made it out of eyesight before she started cursing his name.

"What is with that guy?" She turned to Gohan, who remained shell shocked from the experience.

"That's...kind of how he is," Gohan sighed. "So, what do we do?" Bulla looked around, feeling for any signs of ki besides their own. There was nothing.

"Let's go inside and see if we can't dig up some information on these androids."

"But how will we get in?"

"Easy," she smiled. "With force."

They took no time heading over to the building that Gero had emerged from. It was an open building—though, by the looks of it, it was never intended to be—and there were bits of debris and broken furniture all over the dirty ground. The only thing out of place was a bookshelf sitting against an interior wall that looked much cleaner than all the other items in the room, as if it was not simply just collecting dust over years and years of abandonment.

With ease she moved it, and there it was—a steel door. Carefully she formed a ki blast in her hand, one just big enough to take down the door but not destroy much else, and let it launch. There was a very small and dark room, the only thing in it was a staircase that led down to another dark but slightly more illuminated room.

Even though she and Gohan both had super strength, chills ran up and down their spines as they walked through the basement corridor. It was dark and dingy, smelling somewhat of mildew and hot metal. It was clear that this hallway was not used by many—debris covered the floor and the walls seemed to be laced with cobwebs and dust.

After several yards they finally came to it: A huge, open room that was lined on one side with strange pods. A steel operating table lay in the middle of the lab, surrounded by several other tables that held a slew of strange instruments and materials.

Around the perimeter opposing the pods were shelves full of random things: jars filled with strange color liquids, assortments of paper and books in no particular order, and what looked like several manufactured limbs made of metal and wire. From the ceiling hung a cascading wreath of wires, undulating and weaving from metal rafters that lined the length of the room.

The room was open in the back to another long corridor, one that was much wider than the hallway they had come in on, and that too was packed with bookcases full of stuff. That was the only way she could describe it. Broken pieces of glass, long tubes of materials, old smocks and used work gloves: it was a tangled mess illustrating one man's downfall into madness. At first glance, it did kind of resemble the ramshackle laboratory she and her mother were working out of at the Capsule Corp., of the future. That thought revolted her.

"So, where do we even look?" Gohan asked as he examined the contents of a shelf on the other side of the room.

"Not sure," Bulla picked up a piece of paper from a desk. "Just collect anything that looks like it might be important-a journal, a blueprint, whatever."

Nothing seemed to be of any material value. Bulla and Gohan made quick work of the laboratory, filing through random papers and examining the pieces of material on the shelves in the front of the room before making their way down the corridor. At the very back there was another desk pushed up against a wall, hidden behind a large bookshelf that was completely full of glass vials filled with random colored liquids.

Underneath an inordinately large and unorganized stack of papers, Bulla spied a thick, leather journal that was bound by a nearly non-functional string of plastic. There were pieces of paper shoved into it and its cover was stained by ink, the leather fading on the spine of the book and on the front lip. She called Gohan over and looked at it expectantly.

Inside it was page after page of random notes. His handwriting was like chicken scratch, and every page had some weird drawing or chart that didn't really make much sense. At one point, it appeared Gero was writing what looked like poetry pontificating about the ethics of human scientific experimentation.

Bulla read closer and realized that on a few of the pages there was a tiny date scribbled in the corner.

April 3, 754

The twins are better specimens than I thought. They have not yet hit puberty, which makes them take to the genetic regimen even better.

May 29, 754

Had a setback with Lapiz will start calling them by their new names.

June 3, 754

17 and 18 two injections, subset DNA with that in collection consider human strength? Mind control issue.

June 20, 754

They cry for their mother at night. I cannot sleep.

June 23, 754

Captured hiker tested for genetic deficiencies buried him by the old mess hall.

Bulla dropped the journal and gasped. She remembered what her grandfather had said. When he left university and joined the RRA, there were rumors he was doing unethical experiments with humans. Based on his own writings, it appeared that was true, and that 17 and 18 had been children when they arrived at Gero's laboratory in the year 754. That would make them in their twenties now—not much older than her.

"What is it?" Gohan saw the horror on Bulla's face.

"This notebook...it's Gero's," she whispered. "And I think the androids were...they were children...when they came here."

Gohan's eyes widened.

"Children?" He whispered.

"Yes," she flipped through some more pages. There were strange charts in the following pages accompanied by what looked like sketches of genetic code. Bulla was by no means the scientist her mother was, but she had assisted her in the lab her entire life. Naturally she picked up on things here and there, and while she had never specifically worked with the human genome, there was no mistaking the DNA and mRNA structures in the margins of the journal.

On top of one of the pages—one dated about five years ago—was the word "CELL" in all capital letters. Was this something to do with his cellular research? Bulla flipped the page, and found a drawing of what appeared to be a man-like creature with a long, pointed tail. It had no face, but Bulla couldn't help but feel its missing eyes burying into her soul.

"Okay, I think we found what we're looking for," she said, shutting the journal and tucking it into her jacket. "I think we can go now."

By the time they emerged from the laboratory it was morning. For the first time in a long time, Bulla had a feeling of hope that warmed her and gave her the power to keep pressing on—that is until she felt a familiar ki spike incredibly high in the distance.

It was then she knew her father must've found the androids.