Summary: Vegeta's little sister, thought dead by the Saiyan Prince, appears on Earth shortly after the Buu Saga. Since the Saiyans are named after vegetables, Roma's name is from romaine lettuce.
Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ. I am a poor educator—hear that students, I'm still writing fanfiction!
Author's note: A reader mentioned that an OVA introduced the character Tarble, Vegeta's little brother, and wondered if I would include him in my story. I am, unfortunately, aware of Tarble; however, his existence, as they portrayed it, doesn't make sense to me, although balthezarian did an excellent job in her/his story "Brothers" explaining why Tarble looks like a 10 year old when he's in his late 30s. Tarble is not canon—aka not created by Akira Toriyama. My story rewrites Dragon Ball Z starting shortly after the Buu Saga, effectively replacing Tarble with Roma.
Chapter Two
Earth, November, 774 AD
Bunny fluffed her graying, blond hair and mentally recounted the platters of entrees and appetizers, ensuring there was enough food for her handsome son-in-law and adorable grandson and then skipped cheerfully off to find her husband and seduce him into leaving his tinkering and join the family for dinner.
Dr. Briefs sat in lab #3, watching a green-tinted screen streaming with numbers.
"What are you doing, dear," Bunny asked him, as she always politely did so, regardless of whether she cared or was capable of understanding.
"Tracking a UFO, it entered Earth's atmosphere a few hours ago." Dr. Briefs put out his cigarette.
Bunny put a finger to her lip and raised an eyebrow. "A spaceship?"
Dr. Briefs laughed. "No, no, cupcake. Probably just a meteor. However, never can be too careful on our planet."
"Maybe another handsome man could land here?" she mused.
Her husband ignored the comment, checking his watch to determine what meal she was enticing him to. Dinner? He couldn't recall pausing for lunch. "One more measurement and I'll be done. OK, honey?"
Bunny tiptoed closer and craned over his shoulder, nuzzling her cheek against his. "I'll watch you. I love it when you work!"
The old man blushed. "Hehe. I suppose I could take my time with these 'equations'."
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"Urg, my eyes," Bulma bemoaned, having moments before caught her parents in flagrante. She entered the dinning room and paused, noticing a cold wind blowing from the balcony's opened door. A strange black haired woman sat comfortably at the table, devouring the Briefs' food as if she hadn't eaten in years and feared everything in front of her was a mirage.
Bulma cleared her throat. Intense black eyes locked onto her calm blue ones.
"This is delicious," said the strange woman, ripping a chuck of meat from a roast with her bare hand while stuffing a heaping serving spoon of mash potatoes into her mouth.
Bulma blinked her eyes several times in disbelief at such lack of manners; they reminded her of how Goku had eaten as a feral child. But this stranger was no child, but an attractive woman, in a blue leotard, with black hair, white chest armor, and a wagging, furry, brown tail!
"Excuse me," Bulma said, then poked her head out the doorway and screamed, "VEGETA!" The stranger winced at the strident pitch.
Vegeta entered, holding his ears and cringing. "Infuriating woman, I'm right h—" He froze, glaring at the improbable saiyan at his table, who sat motionless, staring back and holding a forgotten partially gnawed turkey leg. Neither blinked as if Vegeta's presence had caused them to fall into a trance.
Meanwhile, Bulma's genius mind spun with irrational possibilities and probabilities fueled by jealousy and fear. Would not a saiyan male prefer a rugged, powerful saiyan female to a physically weak, loud-mouthed human equivalent? And even if that were not true, how territorial and possessive were saiyan females? Was there some outlandish, barbaric custom of claiming someone else's 'mate', which would involve fighting, Bulma couldn't imagine it any other way. The only consolation Bulma had was that no telepathic communication was taking place beneath this uncomfortable inaction; though she could never enter her husband's mind, she could always sense when he entered the minds of others, even if superficially.
A plate slipped off the table and clattered onto the floor. The spell of awkwardness broke, and the three blinked in unison. Bulma shifted closer to her husband, and he, closer to the doorway as the strange woman rose from the table. She strutted over to Vegeta, and as the gap between the two saiyans shrank, Bulma's face grew redder and her fists, tighter. Then, the saiyan woman, practically chest to chest with the scowling prince, planted a submissive gesture on his cheek with her tiny lips.
"Hussy," Bulma hissed, slamming a punch into the woman's face. "Ah, damn it." Bulma cradled her left hand against her chest.
The woman raised her left eyebrow, unaffected by the human's 'attack', and asked, "Is this your mate? I like her."
Vegeta ground his teeth, angling inwards his eyebrows further until a vein in his forehead began to pulse. "Roma," he whispered hoarsely.
"You know this thing?" Bulma asked, infuriated with them both and their species and, for an unfathomable reason, with Goku for running into her years ago and getting her into this mess with extraterrestrials and apocalypses.
"Roma," Vegeta growled, impulsively grabbing the saiyan woman by the collar of her armor and hoisting her forcibly over his shoulder.
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Trunks, freshly returned from the Son's residence, found his flirtatious grandparents eating in the dining room, oblivious to the mess of gnawed bones and food particles on the table. The demi-saiyan sniffed the air and smelled something peculiar. Stretching out his senses he noticed two disproportionate kis in the GR—one definitely his father. Trunks considered if the other could be Uncle Yamcha.
With a mozzarella stick in his mouth and a plateful of chicken wings, he headed to what he hoped to be the entertainment of the evening.
He found his mother standing on tiptoes and squashing her breasts against the gravity room door in order to peer through the tiny window. Unfortunately, the room had been soundproofed months before by Dr. Briefs, and Bulma could only watch as if it was a silent movie without subtitles. Trunks levitated, pressing his head beside his mother's to get a peek.
His father swung a black-haired woman by the arm into the opposite wall of the gravity chamber and with lightning fast reflexes caught her by the neck. Futilely, the woman dug her nails into his wrist. A long, brown tail stretched wildly, but couldn't reach Vegeta as he choked her at arm's length.
"Mom, that's a saiyan."
Bulma slammed a fist into the door.
"That's kind of weird isn't it," her son continued.
She growled. By human standards, Vegeta demonstrated only violent dislike towards this woman, and Bulma should have breathed a sigh of relief. But her husband was a saiyan, a species that, as Bulma had observed, expressed the strength of their friendships through the enjoyment of beating each other to oblivion (Trunks, Goten, and their fathers were prime examples). Still, she enjoyed watching the woman struggle to speak.
"Their kis are very similar," Trunks mused, licking honey BBQ sauce from his plate and fingers.
Bulma pointedly stared at her son.
Trunks scratched his head wondering how to explain it in layperson terms. "Well, all the Sons have a kind of soft ki. If their ki was a flavor, it would be bumble gum. But, mine and dad's are more like coffee, the kind you burn in the morning. Hers is like that as well, but it feels closer to his than mine."
The GR door suddenly opened, and Bulma fell forwards. An inch from smacking the floor, Vegeta caught her with a tense, muscular arm and set her upright in a uninterested manner as if rescuing his wife had been an afterthought.
Trunks, usually eager to pester people for answers, held back his tongue and frowned at the dark expression on his father's face that was reminiscent of Babidi's Majin influence as if Vegeta was a microsecond from blasting a stadium into a crater. Bulma, however, boiled with jealousy and was intent at screeching at her husband until his ears bled. But the moment she parted her lips to shout at him. he was gone and a breeze blew from a shattered hallway window, raising goosebumps on her arms.
"Jerk!" Bulma stomped her foot.
Trunks put his plate down and wiped his hands on his green gi, and then bounded into the room, where Roma sat cross-legged spitting blood into her palms.
"Hi," he said.
She glanced up at the eight-year old, recognizing instantly his facial features—the hair color, however, was an enigma to her. "You're his offspring."
"Uh huh, my name's Trunks."
She straightened her back, leveled her shoulders, and with an official tone said, "I am Roma, the Princess of Planet Vegeta, your father's sister."
"You're my Aunt!" Trunks face brightened with an ecstatic smile. "That's so cool. Goten's going to be jealous as hell."
"Sister." Bulma said, feeling her anger sublimate into guilt and embarrassment. With jealousy no longer blinding her mind, she saw the similarities between her husband and this woman—the angle of the eyes, the intense black of her irises, the devious grin, even the intonations of voice.
An itch in the back of her mind made her cautious since Goku's brother, Radditz, had been evil; however, she doubted Vegeta would have left Roma alive and alone with his family if she was truly a threat.
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Bulma opened the guest room door and ushered Roma inside. Trunks followed, hands behind his head. Roma made a quick inspection of the room, giving the family photos on the night stand a good glance, then tested the bed's stiffness by strongly patting it with her hands.
"I'm sure you understand what everything is for," Bulma said.
Roma nodded, and then placed her hands on her hips. "I demand a washer and a drying cloth."
"Washer? Oh, a shower. We call 'drying cloths' towels. And you do not demand anything. You ask. Politely," Bulma stated, intent on squashing any high-and-mighty attitude as soon as possible. One royal-pain-in-the-ass was stressing enough.
Roma curiously looked at the human woman and condescending inquired, "How do earthlings ask politely?"
Oh my god, is she serious? Bulma thought. "You should say 'please' when you ask and 'thank you' when someone does something for you."
Roma considered this. On Herathet she had followed their customs of bowing and gesticulations of the hands. "Please, a washer and a towel," she finally said, raising her chin haughtily into the air.
Bulma nearly fell over (Vegeta still had yet to say "please").
Growing impatient with his mother's antics, Trunks walked over to the closet and pulled out a light blue bath towel and washcloth. "Here ya go. You do kind of smell."
"Trunks! You do not speak to guests, wait, you should not speak to anyone so rudely."
Her son rolled his eyes. "You tell dad when he stinks."
"Really?" commented Roma, giving a Vegeta-like smirk. "You must be stronger than you look. I knew I liked you."
"For your information, I am the richest, prettiest, most powerful woman on this planet," Bulma boasted, implying that princesses of endangered sentient species weren't superior.
The best of the best, thought Roma, what else would my brother claim. "A queen?" she wondered aloud.
"Tsch, close enough," Trunks muttered.
"Trunks Briefs, out, now!" Bulma ordered her son, who complied, grudgingly dragging his feet to the hallway.
The door shut, and Roma nonchalantly asked her brother's female, "Did he mark you?"
Bulma blushed at the memory of Vegeta "claiming" her and shouted, "That's none of your business."
"Actually, as princess, it is, but I won't ask again."
"You're crude," said Bulma, "but not as much as your br—Vegeta."
The human's honesty and forwardness intrigued Roma, who was pleasantly surprised and grateful to have found such traits in a female of a low-level, low-tech race in a barely chartered sector of the galaxy. She chose to be candid in return.
"My brother experienced the command of Freeza. I did not. He learned to be resentful of his slavery. I became grateful of those people that aided me in my elusion from the Cold family."
Bulma stood impressed by this statement and, also, a little disconcerted by the strong affinity she already felt for Roma. Barely a half-an-hour ago, this saiyan woman had been a stranger of dubious intentions; without Vegeta present to fill in gaps or correct misrepresentations, Bulma couldn't be entirely certain how much of this was for show and how much of it was true. Her instincts leaned towards the latter. And she felt she deserved to have a strong lady friend that wasn't Lunch sneezing at the most inopportune moment, Chi-Chi being over dramatic about anything, or 18 being under dramatic about everything.
The dull tap-tap-tap of thick dripping brought Bulma out of her thoughts. She noticed a dark red stain on the carpet and followed it upwards to the nape of Roma's neck, where blood trickled from beneath her mop of black hair [1].
"Hold on," Bulma said. She sprinted to the room's bathroom and returned with a first aid kit. "Let me take care of—"
Roma stiffened as the human woman pressed against her to reach the wounds that Vegeta had inflicted. Something cold and damp brushed across the lacerations, causing them to pulse with a sting.
"What the hell—"
"Shut up," Bulma snapped. "I'm making sure this doesn't get infected."
"I'll heal," Roma said and growled as Bulma dabbed on more rubbing alcohol.
Bulma ignored her as she would Vegeta (the growl was near identical). In contrast, Roma didn't flinch away, but remained physically compliment regardless of her verbal fuss. Bulma rubbed on Bacitracin and taped down a thick gauze, and then set the kit on the nightstand. Roma gingerly inspected the bandaging with her fingers and decided it was an improvement.
"Tomorrow, we can buy you some clothes," Bulma said, suddenly becoming giddy with the chance to play dress-up and have a girls-day-out. Vegeta and Trunks had long ago begun to select their own wardrobe — with Vegeta everything was dark blue and khaki.
"What are you implying about my armor?"
"Well, it's in much better shape than Vegeta's was. A few years back, he walked around with a hole in his for kami knows how many months." Bulma said. "I'll show you around West City. It'll be fun." [2]
Roma glanced out the window, feeling both curious of and averse towards the civilization of Earth. "Fine."
Bulma moved to leave, realizing she should inform her parents and find her husband. Vegeta had occasionally discussed with her his time under Freeza's command, bust he had never mentioned his childhood preceding it, as if didn't exist; a sister, standing in flesh and blood, proved to Bulma that there were memories to tell.
"If you need anything, the bots can assist you," she said.
Roma cleared her throat. "Bulma."
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
Bulma, struck speechless, only managed a smile.
Trunks energetically bounded back in after his mother had left and looked up at his aunt with a gleeful twinkle in his eye. "Do you want to see me go super?"
Roma raised her left eyebrow and stared at the child suspiciously.
1. I had to stop and test what liquid dripping onto a carpet sounds like.
2. West City and Satan City are two different cities. Satan City was originally Orange Star City (hence why Orange Star High School is located there). However, I will be taking some liberty with the geography of DBZ's Earth.
Teenangel: Thank you for reading my fanfiction. I'm always open to constructive criticism and plot suggestions.