Nearly a week had passed since Vegeta had arrived on the shores of Lake Turkana. He spent the better portion of his days acclimatizing his body to the simulator's higher levels of gravity. With the rest of his time, he slept or bathed in the lake's waters. Every so often, he would swim deep beneath the surface to test how long he could hold his breath. Humans, according to the research he had done on them before coming to Earth for the fist time, could only go without breathing for about three minutes. By contrast, he could last half an hour. The extreme difference, he admitted to himself, had seemed particularly strange once he had read everything his scouter's database had on the human creatures.
It had truly shocked him to learn how closely human anatomy and physiology likened to Saiyans'. Because of this, he couldn't help assenting to Bulma's request to study Saiyan genetics; he used her curiosity to sate his own. Although the fact had not surprised him, he had not anticipated ever learning that Saiyans had an extant evolutionary relative. Even so, the discovery only brought more questions to his mind. Even though some ancestor of Frieza's had fabricated at least part of what made Saiyans Saiyan, that ancestor had not altered so much that Saiyans no longer resembled their early human forebears.
Frieza's ancestor, apparently, had engineered Saiyan power with great and targeted precision. Perhaps, as Bulma had suggested, the geneticist had tampered with the brain, allowing more efficient production, channeling, and focusing of energy. Alternatively (or additionally), perhaps the geneticist had synthesized the genes involved in mass bodily transformation. Frieza's race could shape-shift, and, just maybe, one of their geneticists had imparted this ability to the Saiyan race—namely, the ability to transform into the planet-purging Great Ape. Vegeta would not put such purposes and strategies beyond Frieza.
He could envision, however, how tampering with genes geared towards transformation could inadvertently unlock transformations not purposefully created or anticipated. The Super Saiyan transformation, Vegeta thought, could have sprung out of a mutation of the genes involved in transformation.
While meditating at the bottom of Lake Turkana, Vegeta thought of the tail he had lost in battle. At the time, he had considered it a grievous affront to his person and his pride. He thought about it differently now. If some ancestor of Frieza's had synthesized that tail, he would have despised it, and he would have amputated it zealously, delighting in the pain the amputation brought. While he confessed to himself that he missed his tail intensely, imagining it as Frieza's creation helped soothe the hurt of its loss. Consequently, Vegeta convinced himself that Frieza indeed bore responsibility for the tail. It was therapeutic, and solace washed over him like the warm waters of a healing chamber. With this thought, Vegeta resurfaced.
The hot afternoon sun made Vegeta's swarthy skin gleam and the lake's face sparkle. Feeling the sunshine and breathing again made him feel somehow different, as if Lake Turkana had birthed him anew. In the deepest of senses, he was an Earthling, he realized, and he was not ashamed. If he felt ashamed of anything, he felt ashamed only of anything Frieza had created in him.
Vegeta spied his Capsule Corp. ship on the horizon. He would blast out of the lake and into the air, enter the ship, then fetch a towel to dry himself from his swimming. As he flew through the air, he noticed that the shape of his ship's silhouette seemed different. Drawing closer, he saw that someone had set up a tent beside it. Immediately, he knew that Bulma had done it. Anger surged within him, and he beamed toward the tent, landing his feet directly in front of its entrance.
"Woman!" he screamed savagely.
Sure enough, Bulma scrambled out of her tent, stumbling over herself.
"Explain yourself! Consider yourself fortunate, for I have had a good enough day to refrain from killing you on sight!"
Bulma took a moment to compose herself before she could answer. When she did speak, however, she said only, "Vegeta! You're naked!"
The Saiyan stuttered as if he was going to respond, but he instead blasted the earth in front of Bulma's feet. Before the dust from the small explosion could clear, he had already disappeared inside the ship. Muttering curses, he rinsed the dirt from his body before drying off and hastily throwing on a pair of shorts. Although he had planned on eating and then retiring to bed once he had returned from his swim, he instead initiated a gravity simulation. He wanted to press that woman out of his consciousness. Luckily, she did not dare to disturb him until after he had finished his gravity training.
When she pounded on the ship's hatch, Vegeta opened it, demanding an explanation for a second time.
"Um, well, I brought you an electronic version of that book. And some chocolate." She held out a reading tablet and a cardboard box filled with chocolate bars.
Vegeta clenched his fists at his sides and ground his teeth. "What do you want from me, woman? Why these bribes? Why have you come here—across the entire planet?"
Tears rose to Bulma's already puffy eyes, and Vegeta braced himself for an emotional deluge.
"I'm sorry! Yamcha and I are done for good. I thought he was going to be different this time, but he was just the same as always. He was crazy and jealous, and I knew I couldn't do it all over again. We had a bad fight. I was so mad about it that I blew up at you. And then you ran away. I didn't even know if I'd ever see you again. I cried for, like, two hours straight. I called up Yamcha, and I told him we were through—for good. I was worried about you—I tried to track down the ship. I needed to get away from everything! It all reminded me of Yamcha. It made me sad and mad at the same time. I miss Yamcha, and that pisses me off. I followed your signal with my hover car. I just really needed to get away! Please don't be mad! I'll leave you alone, I promise. I'm glad you're okay. Please don't be mad!" Her shoulders convulsed with her sobs, and she had sniffed forcefully between words.
Vegeta's mind had gone blank. For all the battles he had fought and all the strategies he had made, he had never needed nor cared to learn to deal with others' emotions—apart from beating them into silence or killing them, of course. On every one of Frieza's planet purges, he would bring an ocean's worth of tears to millions of eyes. He could read despair and hopelessness in others' eyes with great alacrity, but it had never occurred to him to do anything other than observe, promptly carrying on with whatever task he had in mind. This time, he had no task in mind, so he just stood at the ship's entrance, empty and unmoved.
"Give me that!" he snarled after a few moments of letting Bulma weep in silence, snatching the tablet and the box greedily.
Bulma's arms flopped to her sides apathetically. Her tears did not abate in the slightest.
Vegeta would have no more of it all, and he shut the ship's hatch in Bulma's face. He went and sat on his bed, then began to gorge himself on chocolate bars. The woman could stay in her tent for all he cared. The walls of his ship muffled outside noise quite well. He did not have to talk to her. He liked the solitude of the Kenyan Rift Valley; he wanted to stay at Lake Turkana a while longer, and no one—certainly not that woman—could become an obstacle to that end. He could always blast her off the face of the Earth if she started causing problems. Vegeta resolved to relocate his ship to the other side of the lake at dawn.