A Capsule Corps spaceship halted in place, expelling a burst of white light of heated gases it's been riding for an entire quadrant of the galaxy. After everyone got over the inertia shock of the sudden stoppage, Bulma unbound herself from the chair and moved toward the nearest porthole to see what was ahead. On her way to the porthole, she slammed her hand against a few control panels to scan and analyze her immediate surroundings and send inquiries to any nearby space stations for data about the region.
The mechanical spaceship door opened up with a soft rubbery hum, revealing Goku with a bowl hanging over the side of his head while some kind of stew dripped down his face onto the floor. Bardock turned to his son with widening eyes. Despite a valiant struggle, he could only keep his laugh down for so long. Lazuli, who probably had the most reasons to mock Goku, just rolled her eyes at his buffoonery.
"Yeesh, I've been on spaceships before but I don't recall them ever shaking this bad! I guess I missed the cue to buckle up, huh?" Goku took the bowl off his head and placed it down on the nearest surface while wiping his messy hair and gi with his hand. Despite having embarrassed himself, he couldn't stop snickering at the little accident.
"I've got no clue how you missed it. I warned you to stop stuffing yourself and buckle up," Bardock said while shaking his head at the pride and joy of his family and the repeat savior of the universe at work.
"Hey, doofus, that stew looks stringy and dry. Don't you wanna wash it down with some soda?" Lazuli teased Goku with a seductive squint of her eyes that challenged Goku to take her up on the offer.
"Soda? Soda is awfully sticky so I don't see how I could wash this off with it, but… I am thirsty, I guess!" Goku exclaimed, walking up to the freezer and pulling some soda out. Almost immediately after cracking the can open, a geyser of soda shot upward and showered Goku in it, leaving the Saiyan with a foamy cola beard and spoiled clothes. This time it was Lazuli who burst into laughter while Bardock just looked at the artificial woman and shook his head. It was tough to say who disappointed him more, Lazuli with her immaturity or his own son for falling for a prank like this.
"Hmm… I can't see anything out there. If there's some massive cybernetic planet out there, shouldn't I be able to see it? The Big Gete Star stuck out like a sore thumb, even in its smallest configurations…" Bulma groaned, pressing her face to the porthole and trying every inch and corner but failing to pick anything up. "Let's just wait until we can see the readings…" she sighed after returning to the scene, patting her hands and approaching the ship computers to see what the results of the scan are and what data they've been able to download.
After slamming against a wall of loadings, Bulma groaned and turned around. The sight of Goku covered in his fourth lunch that day and soaked in dripping soda hit her like a mallet. Grinding her teeth, Bulma walked up to the messy Saiyan and dragged him to a different room by his ear, while one of the strongest martial artists in the known universe whined like a spanked brat.
"I knew leaving Gohan-kun on Earth was a mistake. It's embarrassing to see, but he became a voice of reason in the family and he, surprisingly enough, can keep Son-kun out of trouble," Bulma groaned after walking back out, then opening the door and raising her voice. "And don't come back until you've showered and changed your clothes! You can find the newest model of Saiyan armor in the locker!"
With thunderous rumbling and a terrifying boom, the Luud Star appeared directly behind Bulma's spacecraft, causing a rampant quake from the tremorous fabric of time-space. Artificial stars like the Four-Stars didn't use ordinary thrusters and spacecraft engines to move around. Instead, it bent and squeezed the surrounding space-time to move them at unfathomable speed across the universe. Like a pearl inside of a toothpaste tube, if one moved it around by squeezing the tube with their fingers, the pearl could end up at any location within the tube in no time at all. Obviously, the energy and fuel economy was vastly superior on a grander scale, like the Four-Stars'.
"Hmm… Not there, huh?" Android 21's face flickered in on Bulma's display screen. "I was afraid that my suggestion of prioritizing the repairs of the… sigh… Capsule Corps Star… Would be a more efficient plan. If Dr. Myuu and his creation indeed activated the M-2 Star and moved out from this location, nothing short of another one of the Four Stars can catch up to it. Chasing them around with a conveyor line tourist spaceship in our crew seems counterintuitive. How about you all come aboard the Luud Star and we can, at the very least, chase them with the full speed of one of the Four Stars?"
"No way! I'm not taking rides on your cruiser. I can drive on my own, thank you very much!" Bulma pressed her knuckles to her waist. "And besides, get off my screen! I should have gotten my scan results by now and my space station data download should be over any second now."
"Ugh… Bulma, we'll get nowhere if we keep up this ridiculous rivalry," Dr. Puri rolled her eyes and pressed her right cheek to her knuckle for support.
"Oh, no… The communications of this conveyor line tourist spaceship are breaking up!" Bulma acted out a terrified gasp while nervously slamming her hammering fist onto the button that undid the communications link with the Luud Star. Patting her hands together, like dusting them off, Bulma turned to the crew of her ship, who all looked less than impressed with how their captain was handling this mission.
"You know, maybe swallowing your pride and joining up with that cobra isn't such a bad idea? I mean, I get it that you can't stomach her. I'd like nothing more than to have an excuse to smash her to pieces too, but… Saving your prick for a husband is the final goal, right? For something like that, isn't aligning with someone like her worth it?" Bardock wondered. He had some personal experience with that exact scenario and while he acknowledged he went too far, he didn't exactly admit that cooperating with one's enemy was a mistake if it meant saving one's family in the process.
"I very much intend to fix the Capsule Corps Star, but it will be after we rescue Vegeta. Before we make hasty decisions, let's see what comes up on the scans," Bulma dismissed Bardock's suggestion before turning to Lazuli, as if expecting some clever quip from her at Bulma's expense. Bulma must have completely misread the situation, as Lazuli was pinching and caressing her restored face before realizing that Bulma and Bardock were staring at her.
"What? You won't hear any arguing from me, missy. You're paying me, remember? Wherever you decide to go and however you intend to get there, I'm just in here for the money, not to tell you what to do," Lazuli shrugged and stretched out in the comfy leather chair while she left Bulma to interpret the data.
Rubbing her twitchy temples, Bulma sat down and rode the mechanical chair back to a locked position in front of the computer screen, mashing through the control panel to bring up the data and analyze it. Bardock turned to Bulma as if waiting for the orders to come immediately, but after she left him waiting a good pair of minutes, he returned to sulking. Just a brief handful of seconds later, Goku walked out, cleaned up, and dressed in Saiyan armor.
"Yo!" he greeted everyone with his usual gusto.
"This is interesting…" Bulma completely ignored the oaf on board while obsessing over the numbers and symbols she's received from the nearest space station for data on the region. "The space station I got this data from has warnings to all travelers coming to this region about some gravitational irregularities. When I look at the raw numbers, I've got to say, that's an understatement. All the planets in this system are on a gravitational fritz."
"Gravy rational fruits?" Goku scratched his head while approaching Bulma and nearly made her fall off her chair after he leaned over it with both hands and almost pulled it down with her on it. The brawler peered into the screen of complex calculations and tables of numbers and unknowns as if they meant anything to him.
"What it means is–the usual gravitational order of this system has been disrupted. Space stations usually store all data of surrounding systems for passing by spacecraft to download and travel safely, lately they've picked up some irregular gravitational readings in this system. Something massive has been disrupting the gravitational order and drawing all the planets and cosmic bodies toward it, to where it almost overpowered the native star in the center of the system. What's even more interesting–they recently had to adjust that data, because that massive object just vanished, leaving the system in gravitational shambles. Who knows if all these shaken planets will ever return to their normal circulation trajectory?" Bulma wiped the early peeks of sweat drops on her forehead while turning around in her chair with that confident and sassy look on her face she had whenever she knew she dwarfed everyone in the room in intelligence.
"So, the cybernetic star your hubby's been chasing after has been here, but it left somewhere in a hurry…" Lazuli sat up for a moment before blowing at the unruly lock of hair falling over her face.
"Yeah, if only there was some way to trace their signal and a spacecraft with matching transportation technology that could catch up to it," Bardock grumbled. "Face it, we need that harpy's help."
"I wouldn't trust Puri as far as I could throw her!" Bulma ground her teeth and nervously delved into her work. With a few rolls over the control panel buttons and drags of the selected data tables, she brought up the scan results.
"But Bulma, you're awfully weak so you couldn't throw Puri very far…" Goku pouted, pressing his index finger to his lips while staring at the ceiling with as much effort into processing power as he could put.
"Don't work that noggin of yours too hard, you're going to sprain it," Lazuli sighed.
"The scans show that this entire region is flooded with trash. Just throwaway space craft scrap," Bulma noted while observing the data that the ship provided her with.
"It must be difficult to blast off, warping space-time around you, in a planet-sized space station without leaving scrap behind," Bardock noted.
"Some of it's not just any scrap. There has to be some leftover Machine Mutants there I could study," Bulma snapped her fingers. "If I analyze the Machine Mutants that were left behind, we can better understand what happened here. I know for a fact that Vegeta wouldn't have left any of them in functional condition. He has a tendency to obliterate the opponents he beats."
"Right, so if you find something you can work with, that's a bad omen, right?" Bardock stated the obvious in a grungy tone. "Even if it sounds like an excuse to not take the old hag up on her offer, it's as solid of a substitute plan as you can make up on the fly."
"Alright! If Bulma's going to be tinkering, the two of us should do some training, Dad!" Goku punched his open palm with an excited look on his face.
"Absolutely not! This vessel doesn't have any training facilities. It was designed to be a vessel for space tourism!" Bulma turned to the two with all the love and care of a mother at her wit's end.
"I know, I know…" Goku tried pacifying the situation with defusing body language and a soft, apologetic smile. "I meant vision training."
"That wouldn't be half-bad. The two of you just sitting around on your butts for hours. Sounds like a dream come true, actually…" Bulma shook her head and returned to prepare the shuttles for sample retrieval. Her computer screen flashed again, making the genius freak out and turn away from it with a sharp lean that nearly sent her fumbling down from the leather chair.
"I've picked up activity on your ship. You're activating the shuttles, why?" Dr. Puri wondered after boldly displaying herself on Bulma's computer screens.
"You're like a goddamn computer virus, you know that!?" Bulma seethed. "Get off of my screen and just sit tight until I need you!"
"That's the problem with our relationship, Bulma. You don't see me as your equal but as a tool. Like a wrench in your drawer. Given your insecurities, how sensitive you are about them, and how you're prone to blowing your lid even more than Chayote, someone who's known for her hysteric fits, I didn't intend to play this card. Certainly not at this point of our cooperation. Regardless of that, I am the one with the Luud Star. I've got every advantage over you and your Capsule Corps technology you can comprehend with the limited processing power of a human brain. Both in my ship and outside it, I am much stronger and faster and I've got better equipment and a cybernetically augmented brain. If anything, you would be a tool in my drawer, except I struggle to find any use for a thin hammer like you," Dr. Puri leaned backward, sinking in the shade of her dim-lit control room with only her bright yellow eyes reflecting from the shade covering her upper body.
"Of all the…" Bulma clenched her fists. Bardock snapped his fingers to catch her attention and distract her from doing something sudden and foolish. Something all of them would end up regretting. The two shared a prolonged look with Bardock leeching away Bulma's obnoxious and impulsive frustrations since his face was a living reminder of the embarrassing failures such reactions led to.
"Fine, I suppose you're right…" Bulma blew cool air from her chest and deflated in her chair, weaving her fingers together in a slumped position. "I intend to go for a little walk to pick up and study some samples of Machine Mutants that are floating in the area. From what I learned on Earth, during the Machine Mutant invasion, the Machine Mutant race is awfully efficient and fully sentient. That means that abandoning dead bodies to float around in space instead of adapting and recycling them and evolving their species as a whole just doesn't make much sense. Maybe one of them will help me understand what happened here. We should try to get as many clues as possible before we embark on a goose chase across the universe, right?"
"You do, of course, understand that with your current vessel, you stand no chance of ever catching up to M-2," Dr. Puri leaned forward, exposing more of her blue-skinned face that had taken a tad brighter hue of cobalt blue with indigo-colored freckles decorating any exposed patches of skin. A sign of further evolution from assimilating an Ultimate class version of her husband.
"That's only if M-2 keeps moving. I believe it will not. I think it has a specific location in mind and that it will stop once it reaches it. At least for as long as the plans that Dr. Myuu has in mind stay at the stage they're currently in," Bulma pointed out. Dr. Puri seemed to agree, though she wouldn't admit this much.
"I can help," Android 21 offered. "Luud Star doesn't have as powerful of a transportation beam as that of the Big Gete Star, but it should still suffice to draw in a handful of samples for you."
"That's okay, I'd rather select my samples manually, as I don't need just any random batch. Besides, some of them might still be live samples and I wouldn't want your precious Luud Star to get damaged after you've gone through so much to earn it," Bulma acted out signs of polite body language that either convinced Dr. Puri or made her lose her patience entirely. No matter which it was, based on Android 21's body language, she pretended it was the first.
"I see, I'll get off your system and let you work then. Let me know when you discover something," Dr. Puri pressed a button and removed all traces of her corrupting influence from Bulma's system, returning full power to Bulma's vessel and letting the slides to the shuttles fully open.
"Lazuli, could you assist me with the sample collection?" Bulma turned to Lazuli who seemed like boiling water scolded her throughout the entire frightening process of the vessel being hijacked by her former employer.
"Huh? Why me?" Lazuli gave Bulma her best rowdy delinquent impression.
"I don't dismiss the possibility of what I told Dr. Puri of some of the Machine Mutant samples potentially being live ones. I'd appreciate some protection out there," Bulma pointed out, not looking too content with the fact that her request was being second-guessed by her paid muscle.
"What do you need me for? You've got those two good-for-nothing lumpkin dolts!" Lazuli barked back, crossing her arms and pouting her lips like a sassy teen. "Besides, it'd have been a good occasion to ask your new gal-pal to accompany you on the trip and feel appreciated."
"I wouldn't trust either of them with my security, though for very different reasons…" Bulma shook her head with a disappointed look on her face while staring at Goku with tired eyes. After giving those two a brief glance, Lazuli gave in.
"I suppose I can't blame you for not wanting that old hag watching your back," Lazuli shrugged and stretched out. "But I haven't got a single doubt that the space suit is going to make me look fat, so I'm charging you overtime rate for any open space trips you'll have me on."
"If that's what it takes to have the person I hired to do some work for once," Bulma rolled her eyes with an exhausted face. With her husband missing and neither her own crew nor Dr. Puri and her robo-family offering any reprieve from the stress, she was just about at her wit's end here.