Bulla was on all fours trying to catch her breath, her side still throbbing from where Cell's tail had penetrated. She reached up to touch her nose. It was still broken, but at least it had stopped bleeding. Her shirt and jacket were covered in blood, and the day's worth of fighting had left her pants in ripped tatters.

She stood up, brushed herself off and made her way over to the Z Fighters congregating where the fight with Cell had just abruptly ended. By the time she had made it over to them, they were already discussing something with vigor.

"I think it's the best idea," Piccolo said sternly. Goku nodded his head.

"What's the best idea?" Bulla asked.

"We're going into the hyperbolic time chamber," he responded.

"The what?" She had never heard of such a place in her time, but then again there was a lot she was learning by being in the past.

"It's a room at the Lookout meant for training. One day is the equivalent of a years' worth of time. Two people can go in at a time and train there undisturbed."

"I used it as a child," Goku added. "Though I was only able to last a few months there."

"Why is this the first we're hearing of this?" Vegeta sneered. "We could've been training for the past three years in there!"

"It's not that simple," Piccolo interjected. "A person can only enter the chamber for its full duration twice in their life. It's a tool that should be used only when necessary."

"Which now seems like a good time to use it," Goku responded.

"I agree," Piccolo said, crossing his arms. "We need to figure out who will go in with who."

Vegeta huffed, his sour face becoming increasingly irritated. "I will be going in alone."

"No you won't," Piccolo said sternly. "You will be going in with someone else. That's the most efficient use of our time, which we don't have a lot of before Cell eventually figures out where 18 is, and we can't keep moving her without getting caught. She doesn't have a ki that he can read, but I wouldn't put it past Gero to have some sort of device that tracks her. Still—it's going to take time for Gero and Cell to find one another, then find 18 before coming and finding us. At best, we can probably use the chamber to its full capacity two times."

"Why don't you go with Bulla?" Goku suggested. Vegeta glanced at Bulla for less than a few seconds before rolling his eyes and letting out a mocking laugh.

"I wouldn't dare," he crowed. Bulla shot him a menacing glance before she protested on her own.

"There's no way," Bulla said. "I'll go with Gohan."

"Gohan is a child," Goku said. "And while you're strong, you're no master. You both have a lot to learn, and Vegeta and I can teach you. It makes sense for you to go together."

"But-"

"You're not going to win this argument," Piccolo snapped. Vegeta fixated on Piccolo and grit his teeth.

"That's real rich coming from the man who wanted to team up with the androids just moments ago."

The group shifted uncomfortably. No one really knew Piccolo's motivations by proposing an alliance, and up until this point everyone had been so focused on Cell it seemed like a strange afterthought. Vegeta thrummed his fingers across his bicep and tapped his foot anxiously, his eyes scanning on the Namek as we waited for a reply. But before Piccolo had a chance to explain himself, Bulla was jumping to his defense.

"It's real rich that you of all people don't understand why that's a good strategy," she snapped. "Didn't you try to kill all these people? And now you're standing on the same side of them."

"Don't remind me," he snarled. "There's one reason and one reason alone that I've so shortchanged myself in aligning with this pathetic lot, and that is to prove my strength and take my place as the strongest fighter in the universe. Those androids will fall to me and me alone."

"But why can't we ally with them, Vegeta?" Goku said calmly. "Who says they won't help us in taking down Cell? He's everyone's enemy now."

Vegeta let out a boisterous laugh and shook his head. "Because they do not deserve to remain alive."

"Can't you see how big of a hypocrite you are?" Bulla sneered. "You, mighty Saiyan Prince, who thinks he's so much better than everyone else—that no one is as redeemable as you. Look around you, Dad, you were in the same position as they were once, and you got a second chance. What makes them different from you?"

"They're machin-"

"They're humans!" She screamed. "They're being controlled by an evil man hellbent on destruction—and for what? How is Gero any different from Frieza? How many people did you kill on his behalf, hmm? How many planets did you destroy? How much did you like it?"

"Enough!" His teeth gnashed in his mouth, and he let out an animal-like growl. But before they could finish, Goku had made his way in between them.

"You two can sort this out in the hyperbolic time chamber," he said sternly. "We don't have any more time to waste."

Dust circled around the group, the breeze quietly sweeping through the empty field where Cell had attacked. Wordlessly, Piccolo took flight and headed toward the Lookout, and it didn't take long for the rest of the Z Fighters to join him.


The time chamber was cold and grey—much like Bulla's mood. Vegeta had finally agreed to enter with her, only after much cajoling by Goku and a veiled threat from Piccolo that he wouldn't let the Saiyan enter at all if he disagreed. The prospect of training for a year undisturbed far outweighed the fact that he would be stuck here with a much stronger, much more ornery version of Bulma.

As soon as the door shut, Vegeta turned to her and hissed.

"If you think you'll be training with me, you're out of your mind," he said as he moved into the thick fog that drifted onto the seemingly endless palatial floor.

"I don't need you," she responded curtly, her eyes sinking into him with the fury of one thousand suns.

"Tch," he walked forward and immediately powered up. Bulla could sense it was his version of passive intimidation.

Since the moment she had met him, she had wanted to scream at him. And now as he was dismissing her like this, she couldn't hold it back any longer.

"You think you're so much better than me," she said. "That you know something I don't. Well, one day you're going to have to reconcile that you and I are a lot more alike than either one of us wants to admit."

"Oh really?" Vegeta mocked. "Is that so?"

"You lost your planet—your family," she said. "I am losing mine in front of my eyes. I have a father I never knew and the moment I do get to meet him he treats me like a nuisance. I've done nothing to deserve your condemnation. In fact, the thing that drives you is the exact same thing that drives me: I want to be strong. I want to defeat my enemies. I have pride running through my veins—the same pride that runs through yours—and all I can do is fight."

His expression changed. Suddenly his brow furrowed less, his expression relaxed. As she stood in front of him, it was like he was seeing her for the first time—like she was being born all over again.

"I don't care if you don't want to train with me, that's fine," she shoved past him into the fog. "But don't you dare for a second pretend that you don't understand me and that I don't understand you."

Before she disappeared into the nothingness, and without turning around to look, she left one final stinging attack.

"I have never needed you, and I don't need you now," she was choking back tears, holding her voice as still as she could. "Maybe I'm better for it."

Vegeta didn't have the chance to respond by the time she ventured away.


Several weeks had passed. Vegeta and Bulla had made concerted efforts to not communicate with one another. They woke up at different times, ate on a rotating schedule. They even purposefully took rest days on opposite ends of the week to ensure that if they needed an extra day to recover from a particularly tough training session, they wouldn't see one another for more than a few moments at a time.

But being the only two there, it was impossible not to interact. They kept their conversations to short sentences that were grounded in a strange politeness but nothing more.

Rest days were the worst for Bulla, but they were a necessary evil. She often found herself spinning her wheels as to what else to do, fighting the temptation to work through her pain and start training again. Mostly she did light exercise like yoga, took long showers and tried meditation — but nothing seemed to fully occupy the endless hours.

There were a few books in the hyperbolic time chamber, and Bulla had taken to reading them while she tried to relax. One oddly enough was a book of poems. Bulla had never received formal schooling—most kids on her Earth formed small schooling pods for fear the androids would blow up schools if too many people congregated together—but her mother had given her a thorough education, one that was full of literature and math and advanced science.

She liked poems. She liked how they were simple on the surface but held something so much deeper underneath. Poems could mean different things to a lot of different people, and if you read them right, you could always find something new to consider.

Her feet were stretched out resting on the small, square dining table that sat in the sparsely decorated open room. It looked out onto the massive expanse where time and gravity and power seemed to just float. It was on an elevated platform that held the livable space. A small kitchen sat behind her—all white—and a pantry and refrigerator that magically seemed to restock. There was a modest bathroom on one side of the chamber's main door and a bedroom on the other that had two beds in it, draped in a rich red fabric that gave little privacy.

One lonely bookshelf stood in the bedroom, which was void of all other furniture besides a small dresser between the beds. If Bulla hadn't been from an apocalyptic wasteland, the living situation here might've been depressing.

She absentmindedly chewed on a pencil, lazily thumbing through the pages thinking she might want to take some notes in the margins. Why? She wasn't sure. It wasn't like anyone else was going to read them. She pictured Goku reading a book of poems and laughed. Maybe Gohan would read it next? He always liked to read. She pictured the future version of Gohan—her Gohan—in his orange fighting gi and the deep gash across his eye, his smile lighting up any room. Even though he had been gone for a few years now, the pain did not seem to dull.

She massaged the corner of a page between her fingers. When Gohan was alive in her time, he lamented that he never got to go to school. He loved to learn and so did she, and he was always recommending books for her to read. Sometimes they would go to the abandoned universities and scour the libraries for interesting books. They would take their haul, sprawl out on the Capsule Corp. lawn and soak in the sun as they took turns reading aloud to one another. Those days it was almost as if the androids weren't there at all.

A smile formed across her face and her eyes drifted from the page to the ceiling. She caught herself laughing before she felt a lingering presence behind her. When she turned to look it was her father looming several feet away. Instead of his regular grimace, his expression seemed almost mournful, like he was seeing something familiar, something precious he had lost along the way.

The silence buzzed in the air and Bulla sat up straight in her chair.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked, a bit meaner than she had intended. He stood there examining her.

"You're a lot like your mother," he said, his voice quiet but strong. "That's how she reads."

"What?" Bulla thought she had misheard him. Was her father really trying to engage her in a conversation that didn't revolve around how much food there was in the pantry or how big her energy blasts were that day?

"Bulma," he cleared his throat. "She puts her feet up when she reads. And she chews her pencils like that."

"Oh," Bulla said softly, looking down at the pencil resting between her fingers. She shifted uncomfortably as she placed it gently down on the table. Stiffening her back, she pressed her hands onto her lap, becoming all too aware of her body language. "Yeah, well, I guess she does."

"You're like her in a lot of ways," he chuckled, but only slightly enough for Bulla to hear it. "Strong willed, intelligent, unwilling to take orders…"

His voice trailed off and Bulla had to actively force her mouth from going agape. They both stood there awkwardly. He shifted his weight and cleared his throat again, looking away into the distance before making sheepish eye contact with her.

"In the future—Bulma—is she happy?"

Bulla studied her father's face before answering. It was a loaded question. Of course, in some ways, the Bulma of the future was happy. Even as the world crumbled around them, it was Bulma's piercing optimism that kept them afloat. But living in a world full of destruction had its toll. No one could ever truly be happy when their life was constantly in danger, as their friends and family fell to the viciousness of enemies that seemingly could not be defeated. It tested everyone's mental fortitude.

Why was he asking this? Did he really want to know about her mother of the future, or was he asking for a different reason? His eyes pleaded with her to answer, and in her heart, she knew what he really wanted to know. This wasn't about the future; this was about the present. He was conflicted about his life on Earth, confused as to why his heart was urging him to stay. Despite his best efforts, he had created a bond that was much stronger than he had intended, and now he was staring the result of it straight in the face.

Did he know that she never forgot a birthday? That she sang as she cooked? That—even to this day—she brushed her daughter's long hair and traced small shapes on her back while they tried to think about the wonderful things of life? Despite every card she had been dealt, she still smiled, but it was one tinged with a sadness that could only be caused by a broken heart.

There were plenty of things she could tell him—plenty of revelations she could share. But Bulla realized he didn't need convincing that her mother was beautiful inside and out. What he needed was a reason to come to understand those things himself—a reason to fight, to stay, to let her in. He needed to know she needed him, too.

"No, she's not really that happy," she said with much sincerity. "She misses you terribly."

"She does?" He let in a deep breath and sighed. Bulla nodded her head.

"Yeah," she chuckled. "She never moved on, really."

Vegeta nodded solemnly, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. It was a rare moment where he seemed to really be listening to his daughter instead of fighting her.

Opening his eyes, he examined his daughter as she sat. He frowned just slightly, but not one of anger or malice or frustration. She could see he was struggling—that he was sad in his own strange way. Before she had come to this time, her life was spent wondering what it might be like to know her father. To say she was disappointed when she actually did meet him was an understatement. But he was letting her see a glimpse of what her mother must've known, of a sensitive man who deep down loved his family—who deep down loved her.

The events of the past few days seemed to dim. The biting rage and the indignation she felt for him faded now, her heart becoming softer. Whatever shield he had around himself was starting to lower. He was letting her see him.

"You know," Bulla said gently. "I'm not that happy either."

He glanced at her with an eyebrow cocked expectantly. Bulla felt a lump forming in her throat.

"I have this picture of you and me," she said softly. "When I was a baby, I mean. It's not a great picture, but it's the only one I have. I look at it all the time and think about what life might've been like with you, and it pushes me to be better. It's in a box under my bed. I looked at it before coming here the first time—and the second time actually, too."

A long silence formed between them.

"I never knew you, and now that I do, it's going to be even harder to not see you again."

Vegeta's eyes lit up in a way Bulla had yet to see. She could feel him there, his soul aching for her and her mother, for two people he inadvertently left behind. Maybe, she thought, he was realizing the opportunity he had in front of him: to love and be loved. His heart thrummed in his chest as he turned his back to her.

"Tomorrow," Vegeta said, still refusing to look. "Tomorrow we will train together. Be up by 5 a.m."


Editor's Note: Ahh! I am so excited for you guys to read this chapter! When I first thought of this story, I thought of this scene, and I loved writing it. Thank you guys for all the likes and comments, hope you're enjoying it :)