"I'll explain everything, Bulma. But, in a few minutes, you'll be wishing that you'd have stepped into the ship and taken off. It's the type of thing best explained on your way there," Dr. Puri answered Bulma's straightforward inquiry about the whereabouts of her husband.
"Not a chance, missy! Definitely not on this scrap heap. It looks like it's holding on a spare string of duct tape!" Bulma growled, pointing around her.
"You are the president and CEO of the company with the world's leading space tourism program, aren't you?" Ultimate No. 21 ran her hand sifting through her hair. "It's only up to me to hand out advice. Whether you follow it or live to regret it later, that's on you."
"I'll decide if I want to take off anywhere after I hear where Vegeta is!" Bulma summed it up and made it final with a decisive slam of her hands onto the control panel while staring up at the flickering screen to catch the yellow eyes of her rival that lacked any semblance of irises or pupils.
"How unlike your husband." Dr. Puri smirked after tilting her cheek off her knuckle. "Very well. Vegeta, Son Goku, and Son Gohan only made it through M-1 and Dr. Lychee's trap because of my timely intervention. Vegeta was gravely injured, so they placed him inside a healing pod. After I informed Son Goku and Son Gohan about the ongoing invasion of Machine Mutants on Earth, they went to rest up before landing so that they could aid in repelling it. Vegeta woke up halfway through the trip and insisted that I helped him reach M-2, where Dr. Lychee sent the real body of Hatchiyack."
"Ugh… I've just now realized how little I know about what's going on…" Bulma admitted, covering up her eyes. "What's with all this M business and who's Dr. Lychee and what's Hatchiyack?"
"All would be very interesting topics to discuss during your trip to M-2, but I digress…" Dr. Puri sighed and rolled her eyes at Bulma's insistence on doing her own thing which happened to always be the exact opposite of what Dr. Puri would've advised her to do. "Dr. Lychee is a Tsufurian scientist who was exiled from Planet Plant. The homeworld of Saiyans and Tsufurians and what you now know as Planet Vegeta. Eventually, Saiyans took over the planet and exterminated the Tsufurians, as they are known to do. Dr. Lychee is the only known survivor, though, at some point, he became more machine than man. Obsessed with cybernetics and bio-engineering, Dr. Lychee sought to enact the Four-Star Plan by building four cybernetic artificial stars that, while working together, would create a wholly cybernetic universe governed by those four stars. The one being to rule this universe would be an artificial entity embodying the Tsufurian genetic code and all of Tsufurian legacy and culture–Baby. In addition, Dr. Lychee planned on building a perfect body for Baby to rule the universe, the pinnacle of cybernetics and bio-engineering–Hatchiyack. You see, Baby is more like parasitic shapeless dough. The Tsufurian genetic data is incomplete and imperfect, Dr. Lychee also tampered with it extensively, meaning that Baby needs a viable body to mature and thrive."
"So, the planet to which Vegeta, Son-kun, and Gohan-kun left, the place spreading the Destron Gas, was where this Dr. Lychee was?" Bulma crossed her arms. When invaluable information began leaking from Dr. Puri's mouth, all traces of rivalry and spite between the two vanished from Bulma's expression and she began soaking up information and handling it in her brilliant mind in her own way.
"That's right. Because of how powerful these four cybernetic stars of Dr. Lychee were, they made too big of a splash in this universe to not bump into us. The Dark Planet, the Machine Mutant home world, the Luud Star, and the Big Gete Star… They were all a massive pain in the rear to deal with to both of us," Dr. Puri sighed.
"Wait, you've encountered one of those stars too?" Bulma thrust her verbal jab straight to what she saw as an opening that would bleed out some valuable information to her if Ultimate No. 21 let it connect.
"That's right. While seeking a new, larger, and more permanent home for my family, we've run into the Luud Star, we've booted out the owners and now I'm the one in control of it. While my methods of handling it are similar to yours, I assure you it will never work for its intended purpose and assist Dr. Lychee's plan again," Dr. Puri pressed her hand to her chest as if swearing it on her life.
"I'd have never thought you'd scoop to space pirating. Then again, nothing's too low for you, is it?" Bulma cast a malicious glare in the way of her business and science rival, enjoying every bit of her moral superiority over Dr. Puri.
"The only thing that's too low for me is this pathetic grade school babble business. The owner of this place was a creep turning people into dolls and feeding them to his "Machine God", providing enough energy to power an entire cybernetic universe to Dr. Lychee. It's safe to say that your odds of overcoming him would have been even slimmer without our aid," Dr. Puri crossed her legs, warding herself off from this pitiful stone-casting.
Bulma growled to herself while turning her eyes away. In her mind, Android 21 was always the main villain of everything that's ever been wrong. It was so easy for her to imagine Dr. Puri as someone who domineered and oppressed people with her profound knowledge and countless advantages that she held over everyone at all times. Always looking so high and mighty and looking down on everyone from her exalted images from communications screens… That was it was so unexpectedly painful to see her rise above petty insults and act so completely nonchalant about Bulma still bothering to keep their past rivalry in mind and letting it bloom unimpeded in her emotional garden.
"And this Destron Gas that this Dr. Lychee sent to Earth was part of this Four-Star Plan?" Bulma crossed her arms, acting like her recent humbling never happened and playing it off as being nothing even though it stung profoundly.
"Destron Gas, despite its ridiculous name, can be a powerful creative force, if used correctly. It gives shape to the ethereal, deepest thoughts and desires with sufficient emotional baggage. Dr. Lychee used it to assist his unbelievable undertaking and accomplish in just a few centuries what should have taken him millennia to complete. It took almost a century to build the original Hatchiyack, but Destron created an identical Ghost Warrior copy in a blink out of the dire need of Dr. Lychee to protect his creation and send it to Baby. The Dark Planet is the only star employing the Destron Gas, and it is currently out of order so Destron may be as good as lost. Even if it could still be salvaged, I'd advise you against using it, Bulma…" Dr. Puri sat up to lean closer to the screen.
"I know, you don't have to talk down to me like a child, Puri…" Bulma glared straight up at the imposed image of her once business partner. "I've studied Destron Gas and I know how unstable it is. I have no intention of using it and I've even come up with a way to get rid of it efficiently and recycle it into clean energy."
"Ah, yes… I've allowed myself the luxury to hack the ones you've packed up for Vegeta when I needed help to pull them out from the Dark Planet. Brilliant work. Obviously, having premiere samples made a world of difference in inventing something like that," Dr. Puri pontificated, not skipping the opportunity to explain why Bulma got ahead of her. The blue-haired scientist joyfully glanced back over her shoulder to young Trunks and Videl who got her the key element in this breakthrough that Dr. Puri couldn't replicate. "What your husband and those two found on the Dark Planet was Dr. Lychee's trap. Dr. Lychee devised a Ghost Warrior version of Hatchiyack and had it engage those three in battle. Meanwhile, Dr. Lychee sent away the real, complete Hatchiyack to M-2, where another star owner held Baby."
"Vegeta knew Hatchiyack couldn't come into contact with Baby. He rushed off straight ahead…" Bulma bit her finger. It chilled her to the bone being able to relate to her husband's madness, but she not only understood it but possibly even supported it. Perhaps this wouldn't have been the choice she had made as a mother and a wife, but if she were as engaged in lying to herself about her emotional detachment from her family as Vegeta was, she'd have jumped straight at something as foolish as this.
"Correct. Which is why I advised you to take off to M-2 when we started. By now, you'd have been at least a fraction of a percent of the way there," Dr. Puri rested her back against the leather throne-like chair inside of the Luud Star command center. "Taking over control over the Luud Star allowed me access to some of the Four-Star Plan's details and inner workings of it all. Dr. Lychee and the other owner didn't trust that creep with much information, but through some clever putting of my shoulder into it, I hacked into accessing all the missing pieces. I'm sending you the coordinates to the M-2 now…" Dr. Puri tapped a few holographic buttons appearing before her. Something lit up on the control panel, prompting Bulma to navigate inside the message she received.
"Are you kidding me!? It might take us a couple of weeks to get there from Earth!" Bulma gasped.
"Correct. I've been flirting with the idea of guiding you to the lost ruins of the… Sigh… Capsule Corps Star too. If you fixed it, the beaming function of that one might send you to M-2 faster than if you would have reached it by traveling, even though it seems counterintuitive to drag a bunch of frigid wreckage and assemble it back together like a jigsaw puzzle while daylight's burning," Dr. Puri placed her bent arm atop of the arm she positioned underneath her chest, covering her mouth and scratching her lower lip.
"That's great, isn't it, Bulma?" Goku walked up to Bulma from behind and gently placed his hand on her shoulder. "Didn't you want that big hunk of metal repaired since it got totaled fighting Broly?"
"As if that's even remotely the important thing right now!" Bulma turned around, throwing her arms down and leaning at Goku with enough spite in her eyes to make the Saiyan stumble back, waving his hands out in front of him trying to excuse himself for misspeaking. "Vegeta's flown off who knows where doing who knows what! He's all alone out there! Why didn't you two fly right after him when you found out?"
"Bulma-san…" Gohan muttered, looking uncomfortable. "We were worried that the Earth was in more trouble. Vegeta-san is strong. Probably one of the strongest ones of us, in fact. His Super Saiyan 2 form is like as if a Super Saiyan goes Super Saiyan so, without being able to reach you through coms, we were more worried about Earth."
"Ugh…" Bulma turned around. She hated to admit that Dr. Puri was right. That pretentious, self-righteous popinjay. "Don't drop off the coms, Puri…"
With her neck stiffened and head sunken down low, her straightened arms flailing front and back, Bulma strutted down the walkway outside. Standing in front of her was a limited roster of knuckleheads, some of them less than trustworthy, though all of them were more than able to take care of themselves. The exact definition of desperate times calling for desperate measures.
"Something's come up, gang. We need to take off to space to rescue Vegeta," Bulma tried speaking with her usual carelessness, as if it was a matter she'd discuss offhandedly while lighting up a smoke, but her trembling voice must have betrayed her direness. "He might have gotten himself into more trouble than he can handle."
"Seriously?" Lazuli brushed her hand across her hair, revealing the scorched right side of her face that was just molten and charred artificial skin polymer with traces of metallic skeleton showing where the artificial skin had brushed off.
"If Dr. Puri can build it, I can most certainly fix your injuries. I know it's a cringy common expression, but you'll literally be good and ready for your wedding," Bulma replied with a wave of her hand. "Vegeta has already died and been brought back with the Earth Dragon Balls. If he gets himself killed, he'll be gone for good. With that at stake, I won't just repair you, I'll upgrade you and shower you with money and jewelry and buy you the finest wedding venue in Central City so you can have wedding balls there every day for the rest of your eternal natural life."
"Hmm…" Lazuli began scratching her chin, looking incredibly invested in this proposition suddenly. She wasn't really an ally that Bulma counted on buying for this quest, but her dire situation put her in a position where she needed to take wins where she could get them. "Okay, but you'll fix my skin before we leave, or you take off with us and fix it during the trip. And you put your literal money where your mouth went."
"Lazuli…" Lapis turned to his sister. He looked utterly disinterested, though his tone implied disappointment.
"What? A girl has needs and I couldn't afford to fix my face even if my skin was natural with Krillin's policeman's salary. The artificial skin alloy that Dr. Puri used would make any plastic surgeon go bankrupt just to replicate a grain-sized patch of it!" Lazuli lashed back at her brother who crossed his arms and looked away as if disowning his sister for her materialistic ways.
"What about you? You told me you have a job you need to go back to. I can make it worth your while too…" Bulma turned to Lapis. The young cyborg just waved at the back of his hand as if signaling Bulma to spare him.
"Sorry. I've got a natural reserve to protect, so I can't take off to space for who knows how many months. There's no amount of money you can offer to buy me, not everyone's so banal, you know…" Lapis replied to Bulma with his hands on his hips. Despite the content of his words implying a hint of spite, the tone of his voice and his apathetic look suggested that Lapis had no personal stakes or investment in denying Bulma's request.
"There has to be a price, anyone's got something they want. Money can't buy everything, but it's the next best thing," Bulma insisted. When the matter came to rescuing her husband and the father of her child from some ancient interracial space feud with some long-extinct alien race that, apparently, is capable of incredible feats of bio-engineering and cybernetics, neither potential embezzlement accusations nor going broke buying her allies seemed like any barrier at all to Bulma.
"There is one thing. Reduce Capsule Corp's carbon emissions by 622% by next quarter and stop polluting space entirely. Make an effort in actually saving the planet for once," Lapis closed his eyes and turned his nose up and away. His demands sounded ludicrous enough to let Bulma know that his days of being hired muscle for a corporation were done. Bulma would've spat Piccolo in the eye for turning Lapis green if she didn't have to convince him to go to space himself in a second.
"I assume you two are going? I've known you for years, Son-kun, and you're always up for a scrap. I can make a personal promise that I'll double whatever amount of food we stored on your last trip to the Dark Planet," Bulma turned to Goku and Gohan.
"You got it!" Goku pumped his fist before Chi-Chi stepped in between Bulma and Goku and cleared her throat while gently rocking her baby in her hands.
"Actually, it's Goku-sa's turn to watch over Goten. I can't have him shooting off into space right after coming back. We're taking turns with our chores and contributions to the family," Chi-Chi barked out, making Goku wince and clap his hands in apology.
"Sorry, Bulma… I'd really love to but… I guess I promised Chi-Chi this…" Goku deflated and began rubbing the back of his head in profound disappointment.
"Gohan-chan has school starting in a couple of weeks. Mr. Hercule just put him into this nice city school so I can't have him miss the first months of it by gallivanting off to space!" Chi-Chi turned to Gohan, who similarly submitted to the family matriarch.
"You realize that Orange City was the point zero of the invasion. The city's completely leveled. It's highly unlikely that Gohan-kun will attend school this year, at least not until Orange City High decides on where to host their students. Come on, Chi-Chi… It's Vegeta we're talking about," Bulma pressed her knuckle to her chest with moist eyes and a quivering tone of her voice. "Think about it, what if Son-kun or Gohan-kun were missing? Wouldn't you roll your sleeves and take off to space yourself and abandon everything else?"
Chi-Chi's immovable eyes softened. She looked down, conflicted. Her tense body softened as the complete unknown about what was the right thing to say or do almost made her go fully numb. "Fine," she said. "I'll take care of Goten-chan during Goku's turn. I'd go with but somebody needs to take care of Goten-chan. He's about to walk his first steps, talk and, if Gohan-chan is any indication, throw his first punch. I'm not skipping all of that for a bad apple like Vegeta, sorry, Bulma."
"I understand, Chi-Chi. And thank you, I knew you'd understand," Bulma nodded. Her eyes completely skipped past Videl and Trunks, something that Trunks must have taken much umbrage to as he dashed out in front of everybody and struck a heroic pose, staring off to the stars.
"I'm going!" he proclaimed with a voice pitch about as childish as the preschooler proclaiming it.
"I didn't really know Vegeta-san, but he seemed like a good man at heart, even if he could be quite scary," Videl nodded.
"Oh, absolutely not!" Mark Hercule vehemently objected. "I'm not seeing my daughter swollen, battered, and bloodied, wheezing and choking on her own blood and teeth ever again, let alone letting you take off into space to fight some cybernetic alien monsters! If you want to scrap, missy, enroll in a karate class!"
"I think I'm a little beyond karate tournaments, Dad, but… I see your point," Videl sighed. "I've gotten much stronger, but I don't think I'm quite at the point where I'd be able to fight someone capable of pummeling a Super Saiyan into the dirt alongside you guys."
"That's okay, and, obviously, you're not going anywhere either, young man! I devoted this entire matter to keeping my family intact, not putting it into jeopardy even further. This is clearly personal between Vegeta and these cyber-Tsufurian folks so I'm not giving them another prime target," Bulma turned her nose away, crossing her arms and sealing it in stone. Trunks stomped his feet, growled, whined, and thrashed about, but even if he was able of crumbling mountains with one half-assed strike and cracking the world into two with a fussy capricious stomp, his mother ignoring his pouting was extremely effective at making Trunks stick out his tongue and storm off back into the Capsule Corps building to play video games.
"Yeah, no offense, Bulma, but I'm way out," Chayote turned away, trying to keep Navy looking as tranquil as little Goten was in Chi-Chi's arms but the little package of love just kept on slipping knuckles and feet out and giving his mother his best shots at escaping her grip and fly off somewhere he'd be hard to get down from again. "I've just spent entire weeks as a stone statue. I've missed out on almost a month of my son's life. I think I've fought my battles already, I'm ready to settle down and live a normal life here on Earth. Get a real job again, and raise my kid in peace. I'm definitely not risking it over an asshole like your husband."
"What's that supposed to mean!?" Bulma put her fists on her hips, leaning toward Chayote's side from the walkway while sending death-inducing stares her way.
"You know exactly what," Chayote turned her back on her old-time friend and mentor. "That dirtbag forced me to turn into a Great Ape against my will. He nearly had me kill everyone whose lives I've cherished by robbing me of my control over my body."
"He thought he was still your king at the time. From what I know of Saiyan culture, the king's bloodline has control over Great Apes to lead them into battle when they're berserk. He thought you were one of his soldiers, his subject. Besides, don't you think you're playing this love of yours toward us a bit out of proportion? If memory serves, back then you still planned on selling us out to Frieza and taking off to space with Son-kun to join his army, didn't you? You couldn't shut up about "Lord Frieza this", "Lord Frieza that" back then, am I wrong?" Bulma tried raising her voice high enough to reach Chayote while she was walking away and fighting on two fronts, combating her Saiyan instinct of looking for the next challenging bout and doing her best to handle her unruly son's play-wrestling and hair-pulling without hurting him. Despite a few spotty veins showing and Chayote's tensing muscles threatening to rip her outfit apart and swell her up to a berserk state, she swallowed it and walked away.
"I'm game," Bardock raised his hand while nonchalantly sipping on a soft drink from a glass through a straw. "Can't say I give a shit about your spoiled dick of a husband, but I've got little to nothing to do. A warrior's fists can get itchy."
"Thank you," Bulma nodded before moving on to Piccolo, who stretched his neck to Bardock's right.
"I've got a way direr business to take care of for Kami Upa. How can I care about Vegeta's life when the scumbag himself can't seem to be bothered to take care of himself for once?" Piccolo growled.
"You're making a mistake. Without him, the Saiyans might grow unruly and we don't want another Saiyan civil war. Innocent people can get hurt and many of them have already been brought back with the Dragon Balls once, meaning that we won't be able to resurrect everyone who dies during the next calamity," Bulma tried pressing on but Piccolo's reared fangs showed a fool's errand where it was clear.
"If the Saiyans want to cause problems, let them. I'll take out the trash without wasting any tears for them," Piccolo grumbled. "I'm already behind schedule on my errand for Kami Upa and it's making me irritated. People are disappearing all around the world and with all those constant alien invasions and wars, I can't tell if it's related to whatever's got Kami Upa terrified or not. You've got a strong enough posse to take care of business as it is. It'll be even stronger if you wait for Krillin, Tenshinhan, and Yamcha to fully recover."
"Ugh, what's the point? All of them barely tolerate Vegeta and even that's only because he's my husband," Bulma covered her teary eyes and shook her head. "Besides, Yamcha's hardly Super Saiyan material, if you catch my cold."
"Don't put it on them," Bardock smirked. "The guy's going out of his way to seem as hate-worthy as humanly possible every chance he gets. Don't worry, we'll drag his limp, sorry behind back home if it's the last thing we do."
"You gravely underestimate those three," Piccolo closed his eyes with a bitter expression on his face. "Don't forget that Yamcha can Instant Transmission himself to Ki he can sense and recognize, meaning that as long as Vegeta's within Yamcha's sensory range, he can bring you to him."
"Good. That means that when he wakes up, if he feels up to it, he and the rest can just Instant Transmission to my ship so we don't have to waste time waiting on them," Bulma completely dismissed the idea of waiting around for a group that involved her ex-boyfriend.
The party that signed up for the Vegeta rescue mission nodded at each other in acknowledgment of each other's skills and the monumental task ahead of them with enthusiasm and trust for each other. Bulma led the way to the nearest warehouse where the prototype models of Capsule Corps spacecraft were stored. She checked the functionality and the preparedness of the craft while everyone measured their space suits.