Soon the pair of childhood friends found themselves sneaking out of their fathers' meeting room. Their respective bodyguards were watching one entrance but not the other - it wasn't as if anyone else was aware the meeting was occurring - and so Videl allowed Azel to guide her through the empty one.

The place reminded Videl of an old council building, old-fashioned and with a squeaky wooden floorboard or two if you weren't careful about where you placed your feet. The stone courtyard and strange statues - of who, or rather what, Videl could not quite decipher - helped to do nothing except add to that feeling. She rubbed her bicep somewhat gingerly, the muscle still sore from the workout she had done yesterday.

Azel noticed.

"Did you do something to your arm?" he asked, curious, brown eyes that would have had any lesser girl melting in his lap wide open as they stared at her right upper arm.

"Weightlifting accident," she scowled, the edges of her vision acutely drawn towards the offending undershirt. "I bit off a little more than I could chew."

"Somehow, that doesn't quite surprise me y'know," he said with a light-hearted smile.

"Even with a sore arm, I could still wipe that grin off your face with my eyes closed," said Videl promptly. She didn't care if she was being rude or snarky: Azel was not a person that deserved any courtesy from her.

"Really?" he asked with a smirk about him. "Why don't we have a little wager then, since I know how much you love to make anything and everything about fighting?"

Well, he wasn't wrong.

"I'm listening," said Videl, cracking her knuckles through her - now weighted - fingerless gloves. In all honesty, it wouldn't be much of a fair fight given that she had twice lifted the Junior World Martial Arts Tournament belt and had come very close to lifting it a third and final time at the last tournament, but Videl felt that anything that wasn't about the same old oil and money nonsense was fair game.

"Well it'll just be a friendly spar, there wouldn't be much pleasure to be had in either of us taking it further than that," said Azel diplomatically. "Let's say that if I win… you agree to come out with me so that I can show you just what it is that you're missing."

Videl snorted. "Fine then, but if you lose, you've got to finally drop this and leave me alone."

"I suppose that's a fair deal," said Azel as he brushed his hands against his shirt. It was a little odd not seeing him in a suit because their last few encounters had only been during formal occasions.

"How do I know that you'll keep to your word, though?" asked Videl, pausing for a moment as she eyed the boy in front of her, trying to understand just what his endgame was.

"Aside from the fact that I'm a gentleman who stays true to his word, you mean?" he asked with a faux scoff before glancing towards her to meet her blue eyes. "I suppose you're not wrong, though. I have no way of knowing that you'll keep to your end of the deal either."

Videl waited for a while, a pregnant silence overcoming the two of them before she finally responded after choosing her words carefully. There was no going back from here. "Fine, then the outcome has to be publicly announced."

"I thought you weren't friends with the media, the Princess of Satan City and all that aside," remarked Azel, a hand running through his hair to maintain its styling in the face of the strong breeze that was facing the duo.

"I'm not, but both of us will have to keep to our words with our reputations at stake," said Videl evenly. He seemed fairly satisfied with that response so Videl dropped her weight onto the balls of her feet and settled into a basic defensive stance. It would be smart to wait for him to make the first move and then pounce quickly. "You ready?"

Azel stretched his arms out and removed his maroon west, flinging the garment to the ground a few metres away from them. "As much as I'll ever be," he said before lunging forth with a fist.

Videl sidestepped it by the skin of her teeth, almost faltering because her body still wasn't sure how much force to use with her weighted clothes. She returned fire with two quick jabs to his shoulders, but he managed to shrug them off and raise a knee towards her gut. The crimefighter blocked it with her left forearm with ease before mustering as much strength as she could and pushing the boy off balance.

It would have been more elegant to simply swipe his left foot of the ground with one of her own, but Videl had decided against it, given that she wasn't fighting a trained martial artist. Nevertheless, he crumpled to the floor, beginning to pant heavily.

"We can call it quits here so that I don't have to embarrass you any further," offered Videl with a cruel smirk about her face. As much as she didn't want to beat up someone who couldn't fight back, she was hardly going to complain too much at the opportunity to plant a few well-placed fists in Azel's gut.

"I'm not some petty crook so you're going to have to do a little better than that to take me out," said Azel, pushing himself off the floor. "There won't be a Saiyaman to come help you out once you get in over your head either."

"Pfft, it's not like I need him to come cleaning up after me," said Videl as she shook her head.

"Tell that to the bus which would have driven straight off a cliff if not for him," shrugged Azel, with the cocky grin on his face that Videl had never been able to emulate despite her best efforts.

"That's it," grunted Videl. "You're going down."

"Bring it on," he taunted, circling around the girl on his toes, this time waiting for her to make the first move.

Videl was more than happy to oblige. She stepped in towards him, a little slower than she would have liked due to her clothing, before kicking at his chest. He was sent flying a foot or two away from the girl but somehow managed to land on his feet with a stumble.

She flocked to his stumbling form, making sure to wait for him to regain his footing, before crudely shoving him off balance again. Videl was a martial artist, she knew how to and understood the importance of fighting with grace, but it had been clear to her from the very beginning that this was not a match between two fighters.

As she caught an outstretched right fist before it could make a clean connection with her, she began to wonder why exactly the arrogant young man in front of her had suggested the fight. Ducking under his retaliatory blow and twisting his extended arm over her right shoulder, she couldn't quite determine if he was deluded enough to believe that he could actually beat her or if it was just one big joke to him.

She didn't snap his arm like a twig, even though it would have been painfully easy to. The girl was tempted to swing her secret lover around and send him crashing to the ground in a display of the brute strength she still possessed despite building her fighting style around swiftness but had to settle for letting go of Azel's arm and jabbing her knee into his stomach when he began to look as though he would break free. He shrugged the blow off and responded with yet another fist - however, this time, Videl could only half block it as she mustered up the strength to place her left arm in the way of her chest.

Videl frowned when she noticed him smirk a little. Clearly, she still hadn't been as fast as she had hoped for all her domination of the fight. She could feel herself begin to sweat beneath her undershirt. It was a cold, icy morning, but the overly excessive warmth of the extra layer further tempted her to rip the damn thing off.

She drew a few sharp breaths and moved a few strands of hair that had escaped from her pigtails away from over her face.

"I didn't peg you as the type to be scared to hit a girl," said Videl with a bit of a smirk. She knew well enough that he wouldn't get close to hitting her if she didn't let him but at the same time she couldn't entirely tell if he was really trying. Videl couldn't convince herself that the lack of fight in his eyes was due to the stereotypical rich boy apathy that she had encountered so many times before - she knew him better than that. But why wasn't he getting frustrated when he didn't connect with her? When she dodged one of his strikes without even looking or managed to block one after thinking on it for a few, vital drawn-out seconds?

"I thought you were the one who didn't like being a lady," said Azel coyly, draping his arms into some kind of a stance. From what Videl could tell, it looked like a shoddy attempt to replicate a protective stance that he had been taught at a self-defence class as an eight-year-old. "Look, I might not be much of a fighter but even you have to know that you'll never beat my wit."

"Won't hear me complaining as long as I can beat your face in," said Videl as she grinned sweetly. She raised her left hand mockingly. "Y'know, I bet that I won't even need this to win."

"To win what?"

Videl spun on her heel, hesitating for a moment as she realised that she was granting Azel an opening. To her surprise, she found herself face-to-face with the pruned face of Azel's father, her own father standing off disapprovingly a few metres behind him.

"Uhh we were just having a friendly contest," said Videl, her left hand falling limply to her side.

Hercule surveyed the sweat that had accumulated on both their foreheads and Azel's discarded vest, raising an eyebrow. "I can see that."

"It was just a little exercise," Azel lied smoothly. "Videl here was showing me some of her moves. I'm not much of a martial artist but, I have to say Mr. Satan, uhh sir, she's just as good as I thought."

Videl's eyes drifted towards her former friend. Even though he was clearly lying through his teeth, she couldn't help but bask in the praise that he was offering her. Maybe Erasa was right about her being an attention magnet after all.

"With all due respect, sir," he said, rubbing his shoulder blade with a sheepish smile that Videl hadn't seen in years. "You better watch out at the next tournament."

Maybe, just maybe, Azel wasn't that bad.

"What do you think of this one?" asked Videl as Erasa shrugged her shoulders lamely.

"It looks pretty cool," said Erasa as she pointed to the huge blown out painting. "But with that price-tag, I think you'd be better off buying your father a million afro-curlers."

"This is much harder than I thought it would be," said Videl with a sigh. "Fifteen years ago, all I would have to do is try and scrawl some crappy drawing onto a piece of paper and call it our family."

"Well, I mean, what do you buy a man who already has everything?" asked Erasa. "With you, I've never really had a problem because you never treat yourself. And besides, your dad hardly hands you billions of zeni to blow."

"No idea," sighed Videl. "He's always seemed to enjoy the finer things in life… if I could afford it, I'd probably buy him his own yacht stocked with enough whiskey to sink the damn thing."

"Hey, these paintings aren't that bad a start," said Erasa with a playful grin. "I mean who wouldn't want to hang the one that looked like un-tossed salad above their mantlepiece."

Videl growled a little in frustration, but a smile still rose to her lips. "You know, maybe it wouldn't be that bad an idea to commission a painting of him. Picture him standing victoriously over Cell's corpse as he raises that freak of nature's detached head up the air."

"Quite sure he already has an entire room in that mansion of yours dedicated to that," said Erasa coyly. "Besides, I thought you were the one who didn't want to feed that ego of his."

"Well, it's his birthday - what kind of daughter am I if I can't put my personal feelings aside for one day?" asked Videl, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Y'know, what?" asked Erasa. "I'm feeling pretty hungry and we're not making much progress here, so why don't we go and get ourselves a bite to eat. You can also tell me what happened to all those cute clothes I worked so hard to pick out for you."

Videl nodded in agreement, gesturing for Erasa to follow her as she led her best friend out of the store. "Saiyaman said he liked them, but he pointed out that wearing weighted clothing is a pretty good way to train without training."

"Weighted clothing?" asked Erasa as she sceptically rose an eyebrow. "That sounds like a pretty lame excuse to not wear a skirt every once in a while."

"Basically, under this get-up," said Videl, gesturing towards her usual outfit consisting of an oversized white t-shirt and shorts, "I'm wearing some really heavy clothing. It's kind of like resistance training if you know what that is."

Erasa stared at her blankly. "No, not really. But more importantly, why are you guys making all this about training? It was supposed to be about you two dating!"

"Well fighting is the only real common ground that we have," said Videl. "I mean, he's a pretty weird guy in person. Weirder than you'd think with the weird voice and awkward poses, anyway."

"Well what if this is his way of seeing if you're just trying to use him to get stronger?" asked Erasa.

"Not everyone looks for opportunities to use other people, Erasa," said Videl, forcing herself to refrain from getting too agitated at her friend. "And besides, he's hardly taught me anything. He's just given me a pointer or two and shown that he's a real bastard to land a hit on."

"Nuh-uh," the blonde protested with a shake of her head. "Think about it, it's not going to bode well with him if you rock up to your next date all sweaty, wearing your resistance clothing or whatever and expecting a spar. From his perspective, this whole romance thing has come out the blue and the poor guy's probably not sure if you're still trying to unmask him or not."

"I'm still trying to unmask him," asserted Videl, crossing her arms across her chest before deflating. "Just… not in a bad way, anymore. I don't think he's really got all that much to hide."

"So you're finally accepting that he's a good guy?" asked Erasa. "What was your first clue, when he stopped a little kid from getting murdered or when he helped an old lady retrieve her kitten from the top of a tree?"

"Shut up," said Videl as she flicked Erasa's shoulder playfully. "But look, I'm sure he's not going to read too far into if I don't rock up in a frilly, pink dress, okay?"

"Well you can't wear your weighted clothing all the time, so take it off when you go to meet him," said Erasa stubbornly. "I'm not going to bother trying to convince you not to attempt to break his neck because that's inevitable but at least try and look a little more like his girlfriend while you're doing it."

"So it doesn't bother you that I'll be wearing normal clothes like ninety percent of the time?" asked Videl, dramatically gesturing towards her normal attire.

"Of course it bothers me," scoffed Erasa. "Seeing your complete ineptitude for fashion makes me want to strangle a cat. But you not screwing things up with Saiyaman is more important than you deciding to like your wardrobe change."

"Well I'm still not going to rock up in a long, flowy skirt after letting you style my hair for two hours," said Videl. "If I'm going to spar with him, it would be nice if I wasn't wearing stuff that makes it even harder to land a punch."

"Oh Jesus, Videl, you don't need to wear a long, flowy skirt to look presentable when you get together with Saiyaman," sighed Erasa. She ran her fingers through her hair, frustrated. "Okay, give me one last chance dressing you up. If we can't come to a decent compromise then I promise I'll let you wear all the oversized tees you want."

"The weighted clothes were too much I take it?" asked Saiyaman, screwing up his face behind his visor. "I don't blame you, they're quite a big leap actually."

"Nah," said Videl with a smirk. "I just figured that if we end up sparring again, I wouldn't want them getting in the way of me finally handing your superhero behind to you."

"If we end up sparring?" repeated Saiyaman, an intrigued undertone to his voice. "Don't we always end up sparring?"

"There was that one time… well, I guess you've got a point," said Videl. "I'm not the greatest romantic."

"I can see that," chuckled Saiyaman. "To be fair, though, fighting is one of the only things I know."

"Well, what else do you know?" asked Videl, intrigued as she decided to plop herself down onto the grassy ground of their private meeting place. "I mean I don't even know how old you are to start with."

"Let's just say I'm under thirty," said Saiyaman, no doubt trying to avoid giving away any clues about his identity.

Videl rolled her eyes. "Oh really now?"

"Fine, I'm probably about your age give or take a few months," said Saiyaman, although his answer didn't really phase Videl. She had figured that from the way he behaved or how his voice occasionally cracked when he tried to make it all superhero-y."

"Well, I guess that's something," said Videl with a shrug. "I don't suppose there's any other information you'd be willing to enlighten me with."

"Hey," he protested somewhat comically, "you were the one who set the up that little trap for me in the first place. You knew that the helmet was a part of the deal when you chose to pursue a more-than-platonic relationship with me."

"You kissed back!" exclaimed Videl in mock outrage. "I suppose we've not done a lot of that lately, have we?"

Saiyaman either didn't notice her cue or decided not to act on it because he simply stared back at her impassively for a few moments. "I guess we haven't, huh?"

Videl sighed. This was about as hopeless as trying to force a fish to breathe air. "So…" she said, "How much do I know about you, Saiyaman?"

He continued to look at her in confusion, regarding her closely as she continued.

"You know Bulma Briefs, you've been fighting off dinosaurs with your bare hands since age six and you can also fly," said Videl as she drew a finger to her chin. "Sounds to me like some kind of scientific experiment gone wrong."

"... Do you mean like an android?" he asked, completely unsure which direction the crimefighter's tangent was headed in. "I mean they say that Cell was a cyborg of some sort, so I guess I could see why you would think that."

"Then again, the things that you can do seem awfully familiar to the Martial Arts of the good old days," said Videl, reflectively. "I'm not too well-versed in it, but I remember people jumping around and flying clouds and all kinds of wacky stuff - the world was a strange place twenty years ago."

"I think I know what you're talking about," said Saiyaman. "Look at King Furry - who could imagine a dog being the leader of the earth in the current political landscape."

"And you're obviously not used to the city life and all that, so that leaves me with two conclusions. Either you're some kind of robot or a time traveller of some sort."

"I swear it's all human in here," said Saiyaman as he thumped his chest as if to wave away her doubts by proving that it didn't clank. "For the most part, anyway, at least once you look past the green tunic and weird antennae sticking out of my head."

"And the more I think about it, time travel just sounds preposterous – well at least more so than swooping in to lift up an off-railed bus with your bare hands," she said. "So what are you? An alien? A mutant?"

She left her questions ambiguous so that he – and even she, herself – could not tell if they were serious or merely in jest.

"Does it really matter?" he asked, moving in to wipe a stray strand of hair from over her eyes. Her chest began to thump as if she had spent the last ten minutes finishing a marathon.

"If it doesn't, why won't you tell me then?" Her breath became shallow, as she found herself struggling to draw on the crisp afternoon air of the secluded clearing they were meeting in. She could only once – maybe twice – remember having felt like this in her entire life and already both occasions felt like they had happened eons ago.

He grasped her waist with a sturdy, gloved hand, gently luring her closer to him. She reciprocated by snaking her small, calloused hands around his gigantic back. "All in due time," he promised, his breath scentless as he cooly whispered into her forehead.

She felt her knees quiver but quickly pushed the hesitancy out of her body and through the soles of her feet, standing on her toes before seizing the moment like a fisherman reeling in his first catch. She thrust her lips onto his own, commanding his body to drop down to the evidently damp, grassy bed - drawing her own with it.

At first, it felt remarkably unlike her first kiss. Or her second one. The magic wasn't there – his lip didn't tremble as her tongue circled around his passageway to bliss - and she soon found herself pulling out for air. And she wasn't even out of breath. But then, wordlessly, he was on her and everything changed.

If she had gotten a taste of his very being in their first kiss, this time their tongues exploded on contact. She tried to push back with her own tongue but found her entire mouth almost giving out as Saiyaman's tongue touched and probed her own in all the right places. And no matter how much she resisted - not that she wanted to - she was unable to push back and make his tongue submit to her own.

When they finally broke apart once more, Videl almost didn't notice that her shirt was completely drenched from either the wet ground she had been pressed upon or her own body which felt as though it had nearly melted. She gasped for air, taking a few brief seconds to soak in the moment, before fighting back, fire blazing in her eyes, and all but jumping on the man to resume their dance - their fight, their struggle for victory.

Only once she heard him suppress what sounded like a purr did she allow herself to moan in pleasure.

She hated losing.

Videl twirled and twisted, ducking and weaving away from stray storms of bullets more elegantly than she had ever been able to compose herself on an old-fashioned, luxurious dancefloor. When a single bullet had almost grazed her exposed forearm five minutes prior, Videl had come to the realisation that with her additional burden, every fight would now demand more focus.

She was adapting well to the extra twelve and a half kilos that she put on as soon as she stepped out of the shower nowadays, but not looking like a slug that was about to sink into the ground was very different from being able to fight competently. When she was conscious of her next move, it came off most of the time but instinct - the one thing her mind could not override, no matter how much it tried - kept tripping her up. She would miscalculate the force needed to slightly jerk her body to the right and underdo it, causing one of her adversaries to exploit the vulnerability. Then, the next time, she would overdo it and send herself crashing into some inanimate object and have to do her best to avoid the fleet of bullets that inevitably followed her every movement.

'Where is he?' she found herself asking as she lunged for a thug's gun, only to have to stop and drop to the floor halfway through her manoeuvre as what looked like a miniature rocket went whizzing over her. She growled in frustration, like a lioness whose prey had slipped out through her enclosed claws, before sweeping the first thug's feet off the floor and smashing a fist into his face.

If bones cracked - either his nose or something at the back when his body crumpled to the floor - Videl paid it little notice. She couldn't, not when an Uzi was quickly emptying its clip into the space that had seconds ago been occupied by her body.

It was like a dance, trying to keep away from the bullets. Except it felt like she was a nine-year-old, dancing at midnight after having too much sugar. She was sweating, out of breath, somehow relatively uninjured and exhausted, but at the same time she was having the time of her life. If she was patient and ducked around enough, eventually a frustrated robber would leave an opening that almost welcomed her personally to exploit it. With the openings she could see and attacks she could feasibly pull off limited to a strict minimum, she found herself picking up on a lot more.

Suddenly, she saw a flutter of red and instinctively turned her head anti-clockwise towards the source. But there was nothing there – just air. She didn't have any time to mark it down to coincidence before she had to sprint away from her spot as she heard what could only be a grenade - especially in the context of the deadly silence from the normally mouthy thugs - roll towards her. It was a strange weapon of choice but in her times masquerading as a police officer, she had seen odder.

It exploded after about ten seconds which, even with her new undershirt, was more than enough time to flee the immediate scene and find a small car to hide behind. Videl wheezed in and out, grateful for the opportunity to catch her breath before her senses quickly tried to attune themselves in order to unearth the robbers' next move. She heard footsteps, muffled taunts and the unmistakeable sound of guns being fired blindly into the air in an effort to catch her off-guard.

This time, she growled after she caught a flash of green in the corners of her eyes. So he was here, then. Videl leapt away from her hiding spot with newfound ferocity and rolled behind another car which she used for cover. She would not let him steal all her thunder, not this time.

After a few more audible spurts of gunfire, the footsteps became louder and if that alone weren't enough to give away that a robber was on the other side of the car, the obscenities that sprung forth from his mouth certainly were. Videl caught him by surprise, turning a corner and kneeing him in the gut before snatching the rifle out of his hands. She spun and fired twice into his shin before darting around the car, back in her original position.

The incapacitated robber yelled in pain, but his pleas for help soon ceased as his conspirators quickly rushed to his aid. Three of them, all slightly taller than her and definitely more well built. Whether they knew she was on the other side of the car mattered not because a few seconds later, Videl was smashing the butt of her rifle into the hip of the largest. A swift strike to his temple sent him sprawling to the floor, but the other two were on her immediately.

There was no long ranged fire from the two pseudo-snipers (she doubted they actually were snipers or she would have known about it when she was peeking out from behind the car), thankfully, which Videl figured was because they didn't want to accidentally shoot one of their own. A plan quickly formulated in her head - if she could move the fight towards the thugs posted at the end of the store, she would take away their long ranged advantage and once she took out the two robbers currently engaged with her, she could move on to the rest without pause.

She flipped backwards, taunting the two to follow her, as she slowly guided them back towards the store. Unfortunately, they were able to give chase at a faster rate than she had anticipated and she soon found herself ducking under a fist and looking to swi-

The sound a loud gunshot rattled her. She wasn't sure if she was meant to be glad that she was still alive, but that didn't stop her from rolling her eyes as her superhero 'boyfriend' made his dramatic entrance.

"Miss Satan, it seems like you might need a bit of help taking down these rotten criminals," his voice boomed with the dorky tenor that had intrigued her so for so long as he dropped the bullets he had caught in his gloved palms to the ground.

The two thugs immediately in front of her looked to use the opening left by the distraction but this time she was faster. She punched one squarely in the gut and kneed the other in the balls for good measure.

"Nah, I'm doing just fine," she said, resisting the temptation to poke her tongue out. She had an image to maintain in front of all the crooks, after all.

He raised what she imagined to be an eyebrow before vanishing in a flash and reappearing with her two pseudo-snipers, both incapacitated.

"You were just looking for a good opportunity to show off," said Videl as she shook her head in disbelief.

"Well it looked like you had it handled, Miss Satan," he said, his voice still grand and large as though he was speaking to a crowd instead of just her. There were a few policemen stationed a small distance from the store, but it wasn't as though they would be able to hear, not if her boyfriend would lower his obnoxiously loud voice anyway.

"Didn't I tell you to call me Videl on like the first date?" she reprimanded him but she was starting to get the feeling that he enjoyed the theatrical corniness more than putting the bad guys away.

"I-I have no idea what you're talking about!" he said as he looked around nervously.

Videl broke into laughter. "I thought you said you read the papers. Did you think the world just forgot about that kiss in front of the cameras?"

He seemed to be at a loss for words, before finally stammering. "I… I always thought that was something normal. Y'know, like it wasn't that big a deal or anything."

"You're not wrong," she agreed, "but with me being Satan City's very own damsel in distress and you being able to fly as fast as a jet, we're anything but normal."

"I suppose," he said, unconvinced. "So if the cat's out of the bag, does that mean people are going to expect us to start doing stuff?"

"Stuff?" Videl grinned. She was no beacon of romantic knowledge but hanging around Erasa for fifteen years tended to rub a little bit off on someone. "Like what?"

"I don't know, like handholding and kissing and all that," said the superhero.

"Uhm… excuse me." A police officer interrupted the pair. "I know you're both in the middle of a conversation right now, but we really need to cuff these guys and wheel them off to the station."

"Just give us a moment, and I'll come along with," said Videl, nodding her head. She turned back to her supposed crush. "So… uhm, yeah, I guess they might. I don't really know?"

"Well then, Miss Satan, it would be improper of me to not bid you adieu," he said in full superhero mode as he guided her towards him by her waist.

He turned his head slightly and kissed her. This time, no fireworks went off, maybe because she had finally gotten used to the sensation. She didn't melt into pudding that could easily integrate itself into the city's sewerage system and there was no fight for victory — no quest for domination. It just felt simple, like how Videl would have expected a kiss to feel.

A few moments later, Videl wordlessly gave chase to the police officer with a grin on her face.