A Brief SI (Dragonball Bulma SI)

[d.fish]

What a nerd.​

It was almost midnight and the gang was all tucked in in Oolong's House-Wagon—the gang being Oolong the perverted kindergarten-dropout of a magical pig, Goku the wild monkey boy from some ass end of nowhere, and me, Bulma, the spunky adventuress, heiress, genius, philanthropist. We were all huddled up around on the first floor of this doubledecker trailer, though the only one who had already passed out was Goku, who had stuffed his face in a hurry before passing out.

I hadn't ran like these last few days ever in my life... I've never had to run for my life before. Everything from my neck to my shoulders down to my ankles and toes was sore. I didn't bother holding back a moan of pleasure as I arched my back and stretched, then I stood up and checked Oolong's refrigerator again. A part of my mind kept whispering in the darkest corners of my sanity that I could tear this thing apart and rebuild it into a giant—"Oh hey! You have Hetap!"

He spared me a sideways glance before snorting, "Aren't you a little young to be drinking beer?"

If it had been any other circumstance, I would have retorted. I could have made a remark about him being a pig or how I was already a scientist and a doctor with multiple degrees or anything, but I knew that line of conversation would eventually end up back to something silly. I still wanted to retort, but I couldn't bring myself to spend that effort after everything, after going through the life changing adventures in these last few days. And to think, it wasn't even over yet. I shuddered, vaguely remembering what was to come, before plopping down beside the magical transforming pig of sarcasm. "Say, Oolong, I've been meaning to ask you something about your abilities..."

"Don't hurt yourself," he snarked.

"Oh, ha-ha," I rolled my eyes at him before taking a sip. "You learned your skills from that best kindergarten in the world, the Shapeshifting Academy, according to Puar, right?"

"Uh huh...?"

"When you turned into the Ramen Robot," I furrowed my brow in thought. "You turned yourself into a robot and a bowl of ramen and you burned your finger in the soup, even though the soup is you, right?"

"... You got a point to all this? 'Cause I want to sleep too," he said, but he turned to face me. At least he was taking my questions seriously, I thought.

"You can change your mass and density and temperature, and yet you can't—"

"Bulma, don't hurt yourself. It's magic, just don't question it."

I pouted, "... I bet you taste delicious."

"Aaand I'm going to ignore that racially insensitive remark," He yawned again. "Now, if you're done interrogating me, I'm pretty tired, especially since Muten Roshi slobbered all over me because of you!"

I jumped up immediately, "Hey! You're the one who did all that on your own volition! Besides, I just wanted to start conversation. I thought we should talk. Or something."

He picked himself up and pulled the blankets out of Goku's grasp. "Oh no, no-no-no... I know what it means when a girl says that. I'm not looking for a fight in the middle of the night. Besides, you probably don't even really mean it..."

In some part of my mind, I knew he had a point. I knew for the most part I had forgotten the script I was supposed to follow, but I remembered the central character of the character I was reincarnated as and I acted to suitably. Things seemed to be going exactly as the story went and we had hit all the plot points that I could still remember after a reincarnation and fifteen years living as a super genius teenage girl.

That was to say I couldn't remember a thing, than that I was supposed to be a spoiled princess who ran away from home.

"... Noo, I meant it. Go on, ask me anything," I beckoned him on.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Really?"

"... Really."

"Okay, I'll bite." He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, "Why are you really looking for the Dragonballs?"

"What? I can't just be looking for a perfect boyfriend?"

"If your wish is for a perfect boyfriend, then mine is for a pair of panties," he replied.

I leaned back too and held back an urge to yawn. It was getting late. I stretched my legs onto the couch enjoying the bare smoothness of things and closing my eyes. Why did I follow through with these motions anyway? I peered over my chest at the tired pork and decided—since I was drunk anyway—I might as well say what was on my chest for a while now. "... I was scared."

"Oh? Of what?"

"Uncertainty. What else is there? It's such a cliché thing to be afraid of, but... if I didn't do this, if I didn't do that, what should I do?" I heaved my chest and rolled over to face the ceiling. "What if... I don't look for the Dragonballs?"

He snorted, half-laughing in incredulity. "Is that all? Life will go on, the world will keep spinning."

"Are you sure about that?" I smirked, as if I knew something that he didn't.

"Yeah." He replied immediately and without hesitation. Then he flipped over. "What, did you think I was going to buy your acting all mysterious act or something. Come ooon, I thought you said you wanted to talk."

If he wasn't going to listen to the truth, I thought with some sadness, then there was nothing I could say to convince him otherwise. "We don't know each other very well, do we Oolong? I mean, I know you're a pig by most definitions of the term, and I know you can transform. You know I'm an inventor who can make gadgets and an adventurer, of sorts."

He nodded, "Of sorts. Sure. I get where you're coming from. Why, are you going to tell me your heroic backstory now?"

"Sure," I replied immediately. "I'm rich. I'm pretty sure I'll go on to own half the world sooner or later, and pretty much... oh, say, 90% of that effort isn't even going to be me."

"... Wait, you're rich?"

"... Yeees."

"How rich?"

"Like 'I'm going to own half the world' rich."

"... Bullshit."

"You want this heart-to-heart or what, Oolong?" I grumbled irritably.

"Oh, sure, regal me with your story, Princess," He smirked sleepily before taking another swing of his Hetap. "So that's your super power if you were a hero? Money? Ha!"

I picked up the tin and downed it all in own gulp. Ah, that sure did taste like piss. Mass marketed beer sure was the same no matter which universe I was in. "I... I can make great things... hic... m-mad science. I'm Bulma Briefs, g-god damn it. B-But you don't get it..."

"Uh huh..." Was he falling asleep already?

"I... I take away my science, take away my money, I still wake up every morning," I muttered to myself. It was a key difference between me and the girl I was pretending to be. It was something that I held in the deepest part of my heart. It was my identity, the only way I knew I wasn't just copy of the same character who shared my name. "Urp... I wake up every morning, and uh, I think to myself, urp, I'ma take out a mother fucking god today."

Oolong snored across the trailer, but I didn't care.

It felt good letting it out. And also drinking beer for the first time, again, was nice.

Heh.

Whoever got to say that and meant it?

"... So what I'm an selfish, egotistical bitch just like... like..." The drowsiness was getting to me too. I slipped into my blankets and rolled over, still muttering, "I'm... I'm going to pimp slap freezer and scrape myself up to the top no matter what happens... Probably get me some delicious character development somewhere along the line... Development... Mmm..."

Tomorrow was going to be a new day, full of adventures and trying to keep Oolong from using my wish on stupid ass panties.

Mmm... pandas...

 

[d.fish]

It was the three of us driving down a surprisingly well-paved road in the middle of Diablo Desert. Yes, the place was actually called Diablo Desert, filled with people who dressed like they were from the Middle East and giant, thirty-meter-tall mushrooms. The hovercraft we were in was an older model, but it was sturdy and had two machine guns mounted in the front (I didn't know why Oolong had such a weaponized vehicle, and it didn't really seem all that weird to ask, when the last town we visited was run by a human-sized rabbit mobster with magical Midas-touch powers... if everything he touched turned into carrots instead of gold... don't question it, it's magic).

Anyway, I was just enjoying the wind in my hair and wishing Goku would stop poking my side with his power pole. No, that wasn't a euphemism. His growing staff fell out of the car a few times when he leaned it away from me so, with limited space in the hovering car, he just strapped it on and it's constantly poking me in the ribs.

Seriously, this kid never could stop moving around. He shuffled his ass again and nudged the seat in front of him with a foot. "You're a real scaredy-pork, you know that? Whenever something little dangerous happens, you're always the first to run!"

"Gimme a break," Oolong rumbled over his shoulder from his driving. "Not all of us are bulletproof... that reminds me, Bulma, what was your wish going to be?"

I blinked. "You don't remember?"

He shook his head, "Nah, I fell asleep before you said anything, right?"

Well, to be quite honest, I wasn't sure what I wanted. With my 'Spark-like' genius perpetually on, there wasn't a lot of materialistic wishes I couldn't have... thinking back, the original story's Bulma's wish for a perfectly wonderful boyfriend made sense to an extent. It wasn't like she was going to just grow MILFs in the basement like Dad, after all. But... I was supposed to be a teenage girl with a sort of arrogant silliness, wasn't I?

I wasn't about to break from the genre, after all. "Hur hur! Haven't I already told you? A boyfriend, obviously an amazing boyfriend!"

"What? A boyfriend?" He actually believed it this time. "We're risking our lives for a stupid wish like that?"

"Hmph! It's not stupid, you just don't get it because you're not adult enough," I replied. Even though he had a flying car with machine guns mounted, he was still a kindergarten dropout. Still, I was pleasantly surprised how great my acting must have been for him to buy this wish so easily, where as the conversation the previous night was met with such skepticism.

Goku, thinking nothing of this since he probably had nothing to be greedy over, yawned and made to take a nap.

However, Oolong turned over and started yelling at me, "Don't you know how much trouble we've gone through to collect these things? We should use them for something cooler!"

"What, like panties?" I crossed my arms.

"Yeah! Exactly like—"

"Ah, ha! You... you... you pig!"

Before he could retort, the car exploded.

"Oww..."

"Oink, oink, oink... What happened?"

Goku finally perked up. "Ah, that was a surprise!"

And then mechanized robot suit piloted by a corgi in a ninja outfit jumped out from the head of a giant mushroom and stole our dragonballs... "Sorry, we're taking the dragonballs! Sayonara!"

"What a strange person..." Goku gawked.

I slipped then, and gawked with him. "That puppy was surprisingly polite though..."

"W-What are you waiting for, Goku?" Oolong shouted from behind both of us where he was huddled up, "He stole the dragon balls!"

Goku reacted immediately and called down that golden, divine solid-cloud of his to fly him after the... ninja corgi in a giant robot. "... Shit I'd never think would be strung together into one sentence."

"Huh?"

"Oh, I was just thinking, ah, of course there's other people who know what the dragonballs are." Then I got to work immediately on the wreckage.

"Hey! What are you doing with my car?" Oolong jumped over.

"I'm just salvaging some of the scrap, you never know if I need to MacGuvyer my way out of something. After what we've been through, I ought to be prepared," I added, before grabbing the gravity module, guns, and the still usable circuitry and other bits.

He frowned, "Hey, hey... aren't they pretty dangerous? We should just give up."

"Nu uh." I shook my head and used the backups to make the salvage shrink... it wasn't small enough like the mass produced capsules, but it was small enough. I certainly wasn't going to carry this!

"Fine, how about I be your boyfriend?" Somehow he actually looked hopeful.

"Sorry Oolong, I'm not into interracial. Or bestiality. I'm not actually sure what it is considering the world we're on, what with the talking dog for a president..." Thinking about that, I had to say that this Earth was definitely more progressive and tolerant than my last Earth. Though... I haven't seen any cats in office... Strange...

"Yo!" Goku flew back.

"Hey, how'd it go?" I stood up and slid the large proto-capsule in through the top of my top. It fit pretty snugly and didn't seem like it could be noticed, probably. "Did you get him?"

"I beat him up!" He sounded so proud of himself as he jumped off his Kintoun.

"What?! But he was just a little puppy!" I shrieked, but then I corrected myself. "Wait, and what about the balls?"

"They're gone," Goku turned to me like he was talking about the weather.

"Then why did you come back?!" I yelped.

"I still have mine."

"... Hm, so we lost the car, they stole the dragonballs... and the capsules, oh I forgot we put those in with the balls!" I paused for dramatic effect. "Crap!"

"Whoa, what a big coincidence! What are you three doing here?" Yamcha the Desert Bandit and his transforming cat Puar suddenly showed up, just as planned.

"Ah! Yamcha!" Goku perked up happily. "Somebody took our dragonballs and blew up Oolong's car!"

"Oh, what an amazing coincidence that I found you all here in the middle of the desert then," Yamcha replied with the smooth suaveness of a plastic Ken doll. Seriously, did this kid think he was some kind of actress like I obviously was?

"Yes, what an amazing coincidence that you found us in the desert with nothing around for at least a two hour drive, and nothing else," I replied.

We jumped in his car immediately and I pointed the direction to go with the dragonball radar. Oolong had to hold onto the trunk of the car since it was just a two-seater, but he was surprisingly accommodating about it.

"You really saved our butts."

"N-Nooo... it's just a... coincidence. That's all... ha ha..."

Firstly of all, I had to say that I didn't like how he smelled. He dressed poorly too, and if you looked closely, his forehead is too goddamn big. And while he was decently talented (but some how weaker than Krillin at pretty much moment of their lives), his head was probably about as smart as Goku's. Now then, it wasn't that I was attracted to Yamcha (seriously, who is?) but I knew he had one weakness at this point in the story. He had a fear of girls, like some kind of blushing virgin who lived in the middle of a desert under a rock... or something.

So obviously, I was going to mess with his head. Since I was sitting next to him, I draped an arm over his shoulder and leaned close. "Hey, I just wanted to say how much I appreciated your help, Yamcha..."

"GWAAAAHHWAWAWAH!!" I really didn't see what the original Bulma saw in him. Then again, she settled for Vegeta of all people, so her judgment for potential life partners was zero out of two anyway.

"Wait! WAIT!" I pushed Yamcha off of the gas.

"W-what? AHHH!!" He blinked, before realizing I was literally on leaning on his lap. He jumped out of the car and started dry heaving.

"What's this about?" Oolong asked as Puar flew.

I was about to point out that, holy shit, the magical transforming cat could fly—was Yamcha a magical girl?—but instead I got out of the car and ran to the now empty robot power suit that was just abandoned in the middle of the desert. "Seriously? They just left this here? Oh thank god you didn't smash it into pieces, Goku."

"... You're welcome?"

"Now... hm... there we go, I knew they couldn't just carry this around," I fiddled a little before closing the lid. It was a little too warm and tight inside and it smelled of dog, but I raised dogs before... and this was still a functioning armored mechanized suit... albeit a bit small for me. After a click, it turned into a capsule. "There."

"Why did you want that?" Goku asked curiously. "It's so weak!"

"Well, you can never be too careful, Goku!" Pet his silly, little head.

Ten minutes later, we arrived at this surprisingly Turkish looking castle, ran straight in and into a dead end, before a wall fell down the other end and trapped us in. Yeah, you could never be too careful... unless I wanted them to trap me in here! BWAHAHA! I'm not trapped in here with you!

You're trapped in here with me and my...

SCIENCE!

 

[d.fish]

"Damn it! We're totally stuck in here!" Yamcha banged his probably-magical-girl fists against the brick walls. Ah, the last couple of days had mostly grounded me, but it was still hard to imagine that this kid was going to be powerful enough to destroy planets in a decade or two.

"My punch won't even break it..." Goku blinked and sweated a little. Now his surprise was a bit more of a surprise for me.

Well, I was about to go completely off the rails of the 'canon'. It took me years of dedication and planning. Finally... I can make a wish. Now if I could only remember what I wanted to wish for. I knew what I wanted when I was first reincarnated, almost fifteen years ago, but time flew. I mean, I was the girl who repaired faster-than-light spacecraft when I was five years old! It was a long time!

While I was pondering on what I wanted when I won, Oolong complained about how he was right all along. "This is why I said we should have just given up!"

I rolled my eyes and went back to my thoughts. Was I being too much of a cliched super villain? It felt like I was doing the whole 'gloating before I won' bit that James Bond villains always did. But I was a heroine... I was THE heroine of the story.

How did it go for heroines in this genre? Why couldn't I remember?

Yamcha, with absolute seriousness, turned away from the group. "Hey guys, you know what they say... a man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking!"

"... What?"

"Huh?"

"Lord Yamcha," Puar, who I was now convinced was a talking animal sidekick, blinked and whimpered, "Wah... what was that just now?"

Maybe it was time to think of how I would make her make me a magical girl after all of this was over. I certainly wasn't going to settle for Oolong to be my magical girl animal sidekick!

"... A joke," Yamcha replied.

"If you got time to make stupid puns, then how about figuring how to get out of here?!" Oolong roared.

"I thought it was good!" Yamcha retorted.

He was just like Minako, from Sailor Moon. Hm. Thinking of Sailor Moon has gotten me to want to go to there.

"I-I was just trying to calm us down!" Yamcha stuttered.

Suddenly, an intercom turned on. It made that sort of whiny, ear-piercing screeching that badly optimized intercom systems did before the previously powerless little screen on the wall lit up with a little blue kid dressed in a sort of Chinese Kid Emperor outfit, but with those medieval neck ruffles or whatever those were that made people look like idiots that everyone wore back then. "Hey! Hey! Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?"

"Ahh!" I jumped. I was startled, okay?

"Ah, good. Hey, stop telling stupid puns and listen to me, I am Emperor Pilaf!"

"You stole the dragonballs!" I accused. "My dragonballs!"

"Yeah, uh, so about those dragonballs, like, there's one missing," He smirked, completely ignoring me.

Behind me, Goku, being the typical kid raised in the mountains and under an Idiot Rock, asked Yamcha, "Hey, if we break that window, could we get out?"

Yamcha huffed. "That's a television, you moron..."

"Hey! HEY! Pay attention to me, damn it!" Pilaf banged his table, causing the intercom to screech again.

I winced, but glared up at the little, blue troll who had no association with King Kai, "No!"

"I know you have the four-star ball! Give it to me now..." He yelled even louder into his microphone, "OR ELSE!"

"... Or else what?" I smirked.

"Fine! If you must, I'll do something perverted to you!!" He grinned angrily.

Then a trapdoor opened in the ceiling of this hallway trap and a giant robotic claw came out of it. It grabbed me by the waist and I had to admit, I yelped a little like the little bitch I was. "Kya!"

It brought me to another room... which meant this wasn't far from the room we were trapped in.

There was a humanoid corgi in a ninja cosplay outfit and a rather sexy looking Asian girl behind Emperor Pilaf here, and I noticed they had all sorts of weapons on. The corgi had a sword strapped to his back, but the girl had a pistol holstered to her waist. It was clearly visible, which kind of puzzled me. She looked like she was from the Red Guard, he looked like a fucking ninja, and the little blue troll looked like he was from the 1600's.

"Fu fu fu! This is your last chance to tell me, girlie, where is the dragonball?" Pilaf pointed at me rudely.

I struggled a little in the claw, but it was too tight, I couldn't even pull the capsules from my cleavage! Resigned, I tried to kick his face, only to fall short by a meter. "I'll never tell!"

"I see... so it's a humiliation you desire..." He brought his hands up to his chest and made gropey gestures at me. "Then I guess I have no choice..."

Struggling, I gasped and tried even harder to get out of the robot claw.

Pilaf brought his little, tiny hand up to his face and pressed it against his lips lewdly. Then he blew a kiss at me.

He blew a kiss at me.

… What the hell?

"... Eh?"

Why were his minions suddenly blushing and turning away? They wouldn't even look at me anymore! How was I seeing the dog blush through his fur?!

Even Pilaf's face was red!

How?!

I thought he was blue blooded or something!

"H-How's that? Bet you really want to me tell me now, don't you?" He smirked before turning away, almost as shy as Yamcha.

"... You only blew a kiss at me..." I blinked in a daze.

"Only blew a kiss?!" Pilaf gasped aloud.

Behind him, his minions were acting even more like Japanese school girls than he was.

"Kyaaa~!"

"How perverted~"

"Don't say it out loud desu~"

"... So?" I sighed audibly. "Was that all? You aren't going to ask me to strip, or try to motorboat me, or do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel, or like one of those silly Justin Bieber songs... all of which are things that Muten Roshi actually did ask for?"

"What a lewd woman!"

"S-She's a pervert!"

The minions held each other as if I was a leper who would infect them by touch.

Pilaf leaped back, his eyes wide, "W-What a lascivious woman! I don't even know what a Justin Bieber is but I know it's got to be banned in almost every country in the world!"

I felt really disappointed.

Like, this was what my fifteen years of preparations built up to?

This?

THIS?!

"Yeah, okay, I'm done," I deadpanned.

"What?" Pilaf blinked.

"I'm done."

"Wha... oh! Ooh, you're giving up, are you?" He rubbed his hands together like a covetous... er, like a greedy person.

"No. I'm done. You're boring me. This is a disappointment." The robotic claw loosened and I fell out of his grasp.

"W-WHAT? How did you escape?" He gaped.

But I wasn't paying attention to him so much as the minions behind him. I knew they were obviously stronger than I was, and even if they weren't super people like Goku already is, they were better than me. The dog alone could probably slice me up in the blink of an eye. The woman had a gun. I wasn't stupid. They'll only stay that way if I kept them off their feet. I didn't bother making any obvious or threatening movements, but I knocked on the metal claw twice. "This? This is what you're using to hold me? Who'd you buy this pawn shop tiered stuff off of? Doctor Collie? Doctor Mashirito? Doctor Wheelo? … Gero? It was Doctor Gero and the Red Ribbon Army wasn't it?"

"... How...?"

"Just because we scientists are also profiteers from war, doesn't mean we make sub-par junk! He should really stick to androids..." I shook my head. "Look, are you some kind of Bond villain? Because I want to know if anyone is before hand. Seriously, why would you even bring me here?"

Pilaf picked himself up first and he was the first to overcome his shock somewhat. "B-Because you're powerless against us?"

"... Really? REALLY?" I silently congratulated myself, I was an awesome actress!

"Really!"

"Yeah, I'm going to stop you right there," I reached in my top for one of the capsules, only to stop and realize it wasn't that the weapons I was bring to bare were frightening, but that Pilaf and his minions were turning away from me because they thought I was going to... what? Lewd them to death?

Were they retarded?

Was I in a slapstick universe?

I tossed out that capsule that contained the modified gravity module salvaged from Oolong's wrecked car. It was self-contained like a grenade if I tossed it out like this, which was exactly what it was for in this situation. With a click, I threw it at the three stooges who were purposely not looking at me.

It was just...

Look, they were idiots, but they weren't terrible people, alright? I was pretty sure this girl was gonna grow up to be robbing Trunk's cradle—ah, wait.

Wasn't Trunks going to be my son?

… I blinked.

Well, the capsule was thrown already, and I didn't want to murder them with the gang watching me still through that monitor/intercom system that Pilaf had installed into his trap... like some Bond villain. The gravity module was unstable as it was, but it still had certain fail-safes built in, like all vehicular modules. It was the law, after all, and meant to keep the citizenry safe or at least compliant.

Still, the machine grabbed the girl, dog, and blue midget in its field of effect and started wobbling. Up and down and up and down, faster and faster... "You're probably not bad people," I said before they lost consciousness from the tossing. "Well, actually that rocket probably could have killed us. So... if you die from the increasing speed, well, uh... good luck!"

With that, I only stayed to watch until they started throwing up before I grabbed the stolen dragonballs and marched out. It wasn't like I was enjoying their suffering much.

Well...

I stayed to sing them a song while they puked, "Now this is a story about how my life got flipped-turned upside down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right here, I'll tell you how I became the the princess of a planet called Earth. In West, West City born and raised, in the laboratory was where I spent most of my days—oh, come on, you just splattered puke on me!"

In a huff, I turned and stomped back to the gang.

"Yamcha, if you want to cure your awkwardness around women, without being brainwashed by a mystical dragon who grants monkey's paw wishes—no offense, Goku—I'll buy you a therapist, that'll solve all your problems." I stormed into the silly trap and grabbed Goku's dragonball. "Oolong, if you want something, I'll buy it for your later, but if you screw this up for me, I'm turning you into a pair of pig-skin panties."

"... Uh, none taken?" Goku blinked.

"Wha-wha-wha...?" Oolong boggled.

"Puar?!" I turned with that same intensive to the cat.

"Y-Yes?"

"... good kitty."

I stomped out, still mad that I'll have to smell like vomit for what's probably going to be a long road home, and tossed the dragonballs unceremoniously onto the ground. "Eternal Dragon! Get your punk ass out here and gimme my wish!"

There was a light show and the dragon appeared.

What? Did you actually want me to describe it? No. I just wanted my goddamn wish.

"I AM THE ETERNAL DRAGON," He whispered. "COME, TELL ME YOUR WISH. I SHALL GRANT ANY ONE WISH YOU HAVE..."

Looking back a Puar one last time, it became clear to me what I wanted. I wanted to be a magical girl. I didn't want some punkass power levels or something stupid like that. That was like asking to become a Kryptonian. Those kinds of alien powers were untrustworthy, unlike human potential. I didn't want to be a goddamn god when I punched out a god, I wanted to be a human! But I couldn't just ask for it, like Sayaka pretty much did from Kyuubey. That would have been silly.

"COME ON. I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY, YOU KNOW."

"Alright, fine!" I grumbled grumpily. No one liked being rushed. "Make me a goddamn princess!"

"... YOUR WISH IS GRANTED."

Then he turned into his balls and flew away.

"Well?" Goku was the first to ask, "What's a princess taste like?"

"Like how any other girl would taste like, Goku," Oolong snarked, but he turned to me too. "So do you feel any different, Bulma? I'll say, that's a better wish than getting a boyfriend, but I have the strangest feeling of deja vu..."

I looked down at my hands. I didn't feel any different. There weren't any parades or stuff like Aladdin got from his Genie when he became Prince Ali. The cogs within my mind clanked away.

I blinked.

I looked up at the now-clear skies.

I looked down at my body, which had not changed at all.

Horror dawned on me.

"... Wait a minute... That fuck mothering dragon lawyered me out of my wish!"

 

[Biigoh]

Oh Bulma... stop making wishes while emotionally high~ :3

 

[Older-Than-Time]

"... Wait a minute... That fuck mothering dragon lawyered me out of my wish!"

Click to shrink...

It's what I would have done if some puny mortal called me a punk. Probably would have turn her into a princess of frogs or something.

 

[d.fish]

It's what I would have done if some puny mortal called me a punk. Probably would have turn her into a princess of frogs or something.

Click to shrink...

Ooh, spicy!

Oh Bulma... stop making wishes while emotionally high~ :3

Click to shrink...

But I'm always emotionally high~

 

[d.fish]

There was some awkward silence, but people were apparently in a talkative mood that morning after everything was said and done. Yamcha, being Yamcha, was first to poke the giant gorilla in the room, "So are we just going to ignore the fact that he can turn into a giant—"

"Yes. Shut up. We don't talk about it." I glared at him.

Behind him, Oolong made a noise with his mouth that sounded like whips for some reason.

We ignored him.

"So can I take off Yamcha's scarf now? It smells really Yamcha," Goku peeked out from the orange scarf that covered his eyes. "Why did I have to wear this anyway?"

"Because if you didn't," I took a deep breath. "I'd have to cut you, Goku. You wouldn't like that."

"I wouldn't?"

"Exactly."

He blinked, confused.

"... And yes," I decided to take the conversation into a different direction. "It does smell really Yamcha. Now, we're going to the city, where I'm getting Yamcha hookers and blackjack, are you sure you don't want some?"

Goku tilted his head, "Nah, I'm going to go to Kame Sennin's house for training."

I nodded, "Alright, just come find me when your tail's back. I'll built a giant robot so we can have some fun on a full moon night. Did you want the dragonball radar to find your four-star ball?"

"Yep!" He nodded with a wide smile.

I thought with a chest warm at his face aglow, what a simple child. So I ruffled his hair a little, ignoring how spiky it was on my soft, delicate fingers, and handed the radar to him. Thinking about it further, I thought, maybe it was time to make a miniaturized version of this device—which was basically just a magical radiation/miasma locator anyway.

That threw my mind off on a tangent as I realized I had already identified one type of magical energy/signature for scientific... research... but I brought myself back to the present. If the ditzy, original Bulma could make a watch that shrunk her like Antman in a couple of days, why couldn't I do the same kind of permanent miniaturization to every technology at my disposal?

It was something to think about anyway; this world, while advanced in many ways, was far behind on others. The internet was still in its infancy here and personal devices amounted to just only giant walkie-talkies. Sure, robotics was ahead, but that was similar to how the game Fallout had giant super robots while their best computers had less than a dozen megabits of memory.

We set off soon after, and it was saddening to see the golden trail left by Goku's Kintoun.

He and I... we had become friends over the past couple of weeks. The adventures we went through were life changing. It was one thing to see it in a comic and anticipate it, and it was a whole different thing to experience it first hand.

Now, if I had not been preparing myself for this and depriving myself of all the technology I had at my disposal to make this as real of an adventure as I could, I would have had only one thought on my head: I could have died.

Every day, there was a dozen different ways I literally brushed against death. Goku could mostly ignore bullets, Oolong could turn himself into a rocket and fly away, but what did I have other than the same bits and pieces every other human had?

The reality of this Earth had never really sunken into my mind before, because I grew up in the lap of luxury. The city I lived in was the capital of investment and technology for the whole world, like the Silicon Valley and New York City of this world rolled into one. I grew up with literally personal islands and an army of maids, butlers, laboratory assistants, bodyguards and lawyers at my every beck and call.

… Sure, you could have that on my last Earth too.

But what was the most dangerous situation there? You might have had the conflicts in the Middle East? You might have had secret societies? You might have had black operations and secret police?

Here?

I was chased by a big, fucking dinosaur.

I was turned into a carrot by and was almost eaten by a humanoid, magical rabbit mobster boss.

Sure, we had our dictators and secret police too. The Red Ribbon Army was pretty much the North Korea of this world, with super science and androids... and a super martial artist named General Tao Pai Pai. They had actual telekinetic psychics and ninjas.

It had dawned on me through these adventures that outside of the walls of civilization, this Earth was a deathworld.

That might have been my first thought and the only thought I could concentrate on, if not for actually living through these events. You couldn't keep complaining about things if your life was on the line, after all. But as it all ended and I was returning to West City, was preparation the only thing I could think of?

No.

No, a thousand times no.

Why did I miss Goku, already? The original Bulma didn't. She rejoiced in having a Yamcha fulfill her goals, she was happy to return to her life and return to being a socialite and living the life of a rich heiress. How? How? HOW?

How did she deal with this nagging, insufferable tightening in her chest? It felt worse than leaving my dog home before I left for university... It felt a hundred times worse. In some respect, Goku was like a loyal, superpowered puppy with opposable thumbs and the ability to talk. Sure, he liked to fight, but that was better than a puppy who ate his own poo, right? I felt my lips twitch in a watery attempt to smile.

It felt so hard to feel accomplished after everything, like I was losing something rather than gaining something even though I had accomplished the first step of my goals and experienced the life changing adventure with Goku... it felt empty with him not coming home with us.

Why did I feel this way?

Did I miss him already?

I knew that it'd be almost a year before he showed up again, at the World Marital Arts Tournament. It was only a year, I said to myself. I'd see him soon. Time passed quickly for someone my age. Right?

"Hey, what's wrong Bulma?" Oolong oinked behind me as I stared off into the distance, through the cold glass windshield of Yamcha's airplane.

I brushed the back of my hand against my face and hid my reflection from my view, before sighing, "It's nothing Oolong. I just had something in my eye."

"So what are you gonna do once you're back home?" Yamcha peeked over at me, with a strangely red face, from the pilot's seat. Considering I had used the wish he was probably also chasing for, I was surprised he was so pleasant.

They were so peaceful and content with their lot in life. They were so sated that the adventure was complete.

It reminded me of how I was the only normal human being in the vehicle.

They reminded me of how weak I was.

"... I've a lot of work ahead of us." I was filled with determination. I wiped away my tears. "Say, Yamcha... Oolong, did you ever count how many times we could have died?"

"Uh..."

I didn't give them an opportunity to answer. "Because I did. I can remember every time we almost died, if it wasn't for Goku. And you know what I realized? This isn't even a frontier for civilization... yet this is something people face every day."

The cockpit was silent now. They were rapt with attention.

I was a terrible speaker, but how could I stop now? An unreasonable fanaticism filled my heart. I repeated myself, "There's a lot of work ahead of us. I don't know how to train or how to use magic, but if I have time, I have science. I can make things. I will make things..."

I was not going to be that vapid little girl who just wasted her time away. The next time I met Goku, there would not be that same little Bulma. I wasn't going to be a little damsel in distress ever again.

Never again.

 

[d.fish]

"Bulma, honey, are you here?" An old yet smooth voice called out from the top of the stairway. It was bright outside of my laboratory, making discerning who it was by looks alone difficult. However, I know that voice. It was Dad, or as the rest of the world know him as Doctor Briefs.

"Yeah, Dad, I'm just putting on some finishing touches to the drones," I called out without looking up from my screen as I typed away.

I was working in a massive underground complex that I had originally been one of the largest basement bowling alleys in this side of the world. It was later redecorated into a parking lot due to the fall of bowling's popularity, but I had taken it since it was just a block away from Capsule Corporation Headquarters... making siphoning data and power easy.

The costs of running such a laboratory was something of a difficulty. If I had rented it, just the data costs alone would have doubled the upkeep, not to mention the amount of power I needed to use some times.

But this was infrastructure, and this was what separated developing countries from developed countries. It was also something that separated me from quacks like Doctor Gero.

"Honey, I noticed your drones are rather small and can be used for... well, industrial espionage," Dad walked down the stairs his expression slowly becoming visible as he walked out of the light. He seemed to be in a good mood and sounded so too.

"Well, it's not like it's an original idea... besides, Gero used tiny drones to steal shit first," I muttered, finally finishing and saving the work I had done for the last hour and looking up. He was holding a bag of doughnuts! I reached for them immediately while still not standing up from my swerving chair.

"Ah, ah, ah," He held them up just out of my reach. "I'm not going to ask what you're going to use them for, even though it looks like you've been working on stealing an entire small nation's worth of information lately. Just remember..."

I rolled my eyes and said in sync with Dad, "Snitches get stitches!"

"That's a good girl," He petted my head just the way I liked it and handed me the paper bag filled with glazed doughnuts. I liked them just with plain glaze, none of that fillings or extra toppings crap. I thought it was probably a holdover from my previous life, when the first taste of America I had was one of those plain glazed doughnuts. It was an acquired taste either way.

"Hey, Dad? How do you feel about wearing a black turtleneck and a pair of worn blue jeans?" I asked as I bit into a warm doughnut.

"I'm impartial to that, why do you ask, honey?" He blinked through his glasses.

"Well, I was just thinking we could sell the personal mobile devices I designed for mass production... as a new style of living," I had actually said this to him a few times, but Daddy never really had a mind for markets and marketing. He was more of an inventions man, who reminded me of Tony Stark without the alcoholism—wait, no, actually Daddy still drank, but it just wasn't crippling. Whatever the case, I was surprised no one had tried to steal everything out from under him yet, but it was probably also related to how humans were blatantly not at the top of the food chain on this Earth.

"I don't really get this stuff, like when you started listening to those boy bands—"

"It was a phase, Dad!"

"... Right," He nodded, completely unfazed. "But what does it even do?"

I rolled my eyes. "It lets you listen to music and watch videos and helps you navigate and chat all the time and take pictures and film and socialize and search for information, Dad!"

He shrugged, "Honey, I'll support you on this but do we really need it all in one device? People can listen to music and watch video just fine on cassette tapes, and we have maps and cameras and yellow pages for that other stuff."

"Ugh!" I threw my hands up in the air. This thing took me literally half a day to make, software, hardware, and all, yet it's been like a month of constant board meetings and this vice president of strategy or that vice president of marketing messing with me. "Look, it'll work!"

"I just had to ask again, Bulma. You know how it is, if it doesn't then the executives probably won't support another one of your little projects for a long time to come," He wagged a finger before booping the tip of my nose with it.

It was these little gestures that, even with my entire previous life in my mind, kept the 'Doctor Briefs' label out of my mind and only left him as 'Daddy'.

I was both unembarrassed and embarrassed to say that I felt my face flush with heat the moment he did that. A part of me loved that side of Dad—it made me all warm and fuzzy inside how often he took time from everything, even my older sister, to spend time with me. The other part of me just wanted to crawl into bed and hide under my sheets.

"Thanks Dad," I stood up and embraced him, taking in the smell of cologne and tobacco smoke that lingered on his lab coat. This was Dad's smell, and even if I had two lifetime's worth of brainwashing to hate tobacco, I still loved the smell. I pulled away, "but you know, I know it'll work. I've sat through eighteen meetings on how to sell this already, so everyone else should know too."

"Sure, sure," He smiled tenderly. Then he jumped onto the seat beside me and spun around in the swerving chair. "Sooo... how's my little girl doing?"

"I'm sixteen and a quarter now, Dad," I reminded him.

"How's my little girl doing?"

I rolled my eyes.

"How's... what's his name? Yumcha?"

I huffed out the breath I didn't know I was holding. "Pfft... Yamcha. He's just a friend, Dad."

"Uh huh."

"I totally friendzoned him."

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days," He wagged his eyebrows at me.

"I told him I only wanted to be friends!" I was completely red now, I knew it. Wait... did I tell him I only wanted to be friends? I... No, I was sure I did. Didn't I?

"Well, I'm just making sure. He does seem to have a lot of fans these days," Dad remarked offhandedly while studying my reaction.

I nodded, "Yeah, I told him to go into sports. I'm pretty sure I was even his wing man... wing girl? Wing woman? A few times. He's a... what do you call them?"

"A lab mouse?" Daddy supplied helpfully.

"No! We don't say that anymore, Dad. He's an intern. Yeah, that's it." I nodded in self-satisfaction.

"So what are you working on now?" He peered over my shoulder at my screen.

If this was before the whole dragonball thing, I probably would have blocked my screen. It wasn't like I didn't want him to know what I was working on, but it was the sort of feeling an apprentice had when a true master had come to examine what the apprentice was working on. Ah, right, it was a different form of embarrassment—the emotion that Dad could so easily induce in me no matter what he did.

"Looks like an armband," He nodded.

"It's, ah, a work in progress. A bracelet. I haven't gotten around to miniaturizing it, but I need to have some more data points before I can make world destroying androids," I smirked.

Daddy chuckled, probably amused by my intent no doubt. "And where is this data going to come from?"

"Well," I pondered on this. There were a lot of ways to gather this data, but most of them had me waiting years if not decades. It was ultimately too long of a wait. "I was thinking about having Muten Roshi the Kame Sennin wear one. I'm sure if I had data of his internals after he competes in the World Martial Arts Tournament next year, I'll get the information I need."

"And how will you do that?" Daddy asked, "This Roshi fellow was a myth even when I was your age, you know?"

"Eh, I met him while I was traveling," I shrugged.

"Huh."

"Yep."

"Now, Bulma sweetie, I have a serious question to ask you. I've been watching your progress for a long time, and I feel like you're ready, but you must be the one to decide this life changing decision. It is a choice, and I'll say right now, that even if I might be disappointed if you choose otherwise, I can understand, okay, honey? So..." Daddy suddenly grew stern. There were few times in my life that I had seen him this way. This must have been something awfully serious. "Do you think you're ready to drink coffee?"

 

[d.fish]

Ding dong!

"Oh god," I rolled off the dissection table, which had doubled as my bed for the night, and fell on to the floor. My throat was dry and my lips cracked and muscles I didn't know even existed ached. My thighs were killing me. Everything like... well, not exactly on fire, but it was like... never mind, it doesn't really matter.

Ding dong!

"Goddamn it, just come in!" I croaked before climbing out of my sheets only to crumble like a loose pile of limbs. Then I tripped on my sheets and fell face first into something that was also on the lab table. It was surprisingly soft, though somehow it still hurt my face to land face first into it. My muffled voice came out of that softness as I stopped struggling in the sheets and remembered my etiquette, "Oh hello."

"Hi," A surprisingly smooth voice replied immediately. It was a lady's voice.

"I'm Bulma." I introduced myself without picking my face out of what I presumed to be flesh.

"I know. You told me last night, remember? Do... you still remember?" She sounded concerned.

And I felt like I had spent a week being a mad scientist. There was a difference between a mad scientist and a scientist, mainly one was mad. There were vague flashes, but it was mostly a blur. The world was still ringing like my skull had been turned into a bell and struck with the power of a thousand exploding suns. I peeked up at the pretty voice to a slightly haughty, but mostly confused face. Her brow was creased slightly in worry, but what did I say but, "Not really, uh..."

Ding dong!

That noise did not help. It was like a jackhammer to my skull.

The cute girl sighed in relief and laid back down on the table where I thought I remembered cutting things up and sticking things in other things and doing something or another. That was probably her I was cutting up, but what was it that I put in her? In the distance, I could see screens fulled with diagrams that foggily reminded me of the research and works of Doctors like Norimaki, Frappe, Gero, as well as some more exotic sources of data. There was some flashing and beeping, because the data displayed seemed to be live information. It was almost like I had released some technologies specifically to spy on everyone in the world.

On that end, I did remember finding it hilarious that this weird of flying cars was still hopelessly behind on information technologies. So I owned and created what was equivalent to this world's Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Amazon, Internet Service Providers, and well, that stuff. No big deal, right? … And I did some games and video content and, ah, questionable content. It wouldn't be the internet without, ahem, what made up of the vast majority of what the internet was, wouldn't it? Well, I didn't bother with it, just letting some applied artificial intelligence built up the content library for me, so there wasn't much I could even remember of that from this past week.

Anyway, she rolled over on her pillow and smiled at me in a way that made me feel weird. Sure, I felt all sorts of tingly inside, but it also made me question what I did to her to make her so friendly to me. It was a look of something akin to the utter adoration I often gave Dad, but you know, more like how I looked when I was cheering stupidly for stupid boy bands. She leaned close, smelling of the operating table and lavender, and studied me.

"Oh, thank god you're alright."

"Huh?" I blinked again, still not quite woken up yet.

"I mean, I'm Lazuli. Do you remember that?" She asked with more concern. Seriously, why did she even care about me? What did I do to or for her?

"... Nice to meet you, I think?" I frowned as my vision came into focus. Why was that name familiar?

She was a blonde—was that natural? Her hair looked natural, albeit very straight and glossy, almost as if she had walked straight out of a shampoo commercial or some mad scientist had spent an ungodly amount of time making her look pretty rather than functional... She was my age and surprisingly thin in a starving orphan sort of way... and she seemed meek from my attention like a nervous lab mouse just before an experiment... no, there was none of that fidgety darting about. No, she was looking at me as if just thinking about me caused selective endorphin types to be released in her brain or something.

Hm, did I mess with her head meats?

I slumped down and rolled belly up on the floor. I really wanted to take the weekend off and just sleep. It was too early for anything but either more coffee or a long, hot shower. But at this moment, I just waned to slow my eyes again.

It probably wasn't sanitary sleeping next to tools that I used to... ah, some memory came back. I use that to cut her soul open. Did that even make sense? I had the strangest feeling of deja vu, like I had met this Lazuli before too...

Oh well, I didn't care. I had no coffee on hand.

"... Uh, yeah, you kept calling me Android 18? You said you'd help me find my brother, right?" She got up and her bare legs swung back and forth as she looked down at me from up there. She frowned at flexed the fingers of her left hand. "I don't feel like a robot..."

It was like a light bulb had been turned on, oh! That was why I kept thinking I knew her from somewhere—

Ding dong!

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." I grumbled as the door bell interrupted my train of thought and climbed up. My legs were wobbly and I wasn't exactly seeing clearly so I was obvious exhausted. Listing out my number of symptoms in my head, I concluded that I was dehydrated, famished, and... well, from the smell, I had probably been subsisting off of coffee for the past week and I probably haven't bathed in that long too.

"You need help there?" Lazuli jumped down and stabilized me by throwing one of my arms over her shoulder. She was a little taller than me, which made this a bit awkward, but what really interested me was that she was wearing some kind of black, skintight suit.

Brief flashes of insight told me that it was something I had made while trying to copy what Vegeta wore around, but without the original material that was a difficult problem. I also had a primary concern that I did not like clothes that kept having a bunch of holes in them, a primary staple of this universe, it seemed.

Thus, not only did I endeavor for a women's line of space armor, but also one that didn't make me feel inappropriately indecent when some asshole blew something up. At the very minimum, I didn't want to die with half of my clothes vaporized.

It hadn't gone to the stage where I could customize the looks yet, so all we had was this black skintight suit... which left as much to imagination as normal tights might.

"Hello?"

"Huh? Oh, right, yeah, thanks." I blinked.

"Were you just...?"

"What? No!" I shook my head. "Anyway, let me get the door."

I slapped my cheeks. Focus, girl! Don't let the pretty girls get to you, Bulma! I padded over to the entry, slipping on a similar outfit as the other girl's and a lab coat. Mmm, lab coat.

The door slid open.

At the other side was a Yamcha and a Puar, and it looked like he had just come from a baseball match, considering he hadn't even bothered changing out of his uniform yet. He also stank of sweat. "Uh, Bulma, w-wow!"

I tilted my head. Why was he so flushed? I had thought a martial artist of his caliber didn't have to worry about exhaustion from a simple baseball match. "Hi, Yamcha. Sorry for the, ah, wait. What's up?"

He blinked. "Wait, didn't you tell me to come as soon as possible?"

"I did?"

"Yeah!" Puar bounced beside him.

My eyebrows raised. "Huh, maybe I did. Well, since you're here, I can get some good data. Come, come, might the stairs. By the way, it's nice that you cut your hair. Looks good on you."

"... Thanks." He followed me into the lab, and then he was somehow even redder in the face if that was even possible. He started scratching the back of his head and looking away from me and... oh, that's right. "Er, h-hello..."

"Ah, this is Mercy." I introduced the haughty looking blonde in the room.

"Wait, I thought I was Android Eighteen!" She turned to me, having a blonde moment.

"Really? I thought you wanted to be Lazuli?" I poked at her.

"I... Why are you calling me all these different names?"

"There's no point in being a cool cyborg without an awesome designation," I reasoned and nodded to myself. It seemed like she wasn't buying a single word I was saying. "Besides, that asshat who kidnapped your brother off the street and brainwashed him into a murdering psychopath is calling your brother Android Seventeen. So, like, calling you Eighteen is just kind of in bad taste. After all, you're mine now."

"That doesn't explain why I can't just be Lazuli," She pouted, reminding me that this wasn't Android Eighteen. She hadn't yet been brain wiped and she had not experienced the tortures and years of imprisonment and slavish oppression at the hands of Doctor Gero yet. She was a shy girl just a little older than me...

With that thought, I pressed a finger on her lips. "Lazuli was the name you had before you, hm, ascension."

"Wha—"

"Shh. You. Mine. Now." I pressed a finger against her lips. She didn't pull away, though I had expected her to. This had something to do with my stealing her from Gero's lab probably, wait what, I stole from whose lab—

"Um." She struggled against the mental programming I had instilled and broke it rather easily, it seemed. She smirked slightly and shook her head, "No, I don't want to. That's a silly name."

"But... but... but... I could be like, if I'm sending you after my enemies, then they aren't getting any mercy from me," I whined. Besides, I always wanted an Android Eighteen to be my head maid. Now that I had one, I wasn't about to let her escape my grasp, ever!

"Whatever," She huffed and sighed, as if my attempt at wittiness with words had hurt her more than any blow. Then Lazuli crossed her arms and pouting at me before she turned to Yamcha, "Call me Lazuli or else."

"Um ... Should I come back?" Yamcha asked.

I turned to him and smirked, "Oh, Yamcha, since you're here... strip."

"WHAT?" His eyes bulged comically.

"I don't mean it like that." I rolled my eyes and sauntered over to my workbench, before tossing him a bracelet and a suit of under armor. "The skintight suit can block a... hm, it'll keep you alive for the Saiyan Saga, hopefully."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing, just hoping that things won't turn disappointing," I waved his concerns off. "Anyway, you can wear it under practically anything, and it'll enhance your movements or whatever you fighters do. I'm thinking about trademarking it as 'Under Armor', like a sports clothing brand to hide that it's actually for interstellar combat. Anyway, wear it for a while and tell me how you feel about it, okay?"

Yamcha, for the first time since I've known him, stared at me as if he didn't quite believe my words. Of course, I knew he had done this without me noticing, but usually he was too much of a pansy to let me know of his incredulousness. I guessed he was growing up, which left a warm feeling in my chest, like watching a puppy learn to walk for the first time.

How adorable.

"Uh, Bulma, what about the bracelet?" He asked meekly.

"Oh, it's a monitor for your health. If you need a doctor or catch a cold or something..." I beckoned him over. "Anyway, put that on and ah, use your Rogafufuken on the dummy over there."

He obeyed like any intern would, which was nice.

I turned to my computer and adjusted so I could collect some nice data. The equipment had been calibrated so that even a fluctuation in my power level, however low that is, is able to be recorded. The thing is, I used my own "power level" as a baseline, because I thought I was a regular human. It seemed to fit, seeing as Yamcha immediately registered as, like, eight Bulmas or something.

An image of an angry, ravenous wolf appeared to overlay onto Yamcha as his internal life energy fluctuated and he attempted to do his attack. "ROGAFUFUKEN!"

I leaned back against my chair, while my Mercy clapped enthusiastically. "Again, if you will."

"ROGAFUFUKEN!"

"... Again."

"ROGAFUFUKEN!"

"Yamcha, is this a joke to you?" I asked suddenly.

"N-no?" He sounded confused, as if he was asking what answer I wanted him to provide me.

"Then would you please go at it with your full strength? That dummy's made from the same material that makes the Under Armors. It doesn't even have a scratch." I watched as he was about to retort, but I gave him no opportunity. "If you only go at it as strong as you think you are, then what happens when you meet an enemy that's stronger than you?"

"I..."

"Go at it again. Go on," I sighed.

"ROGAFUFUKEN!"

I wasn't sure if he actually tried to use his full strength this time, but he certainly did yell his technique louder this time. It was somewhat heartening that he couldn't break the dummy, but on the flip side, I was sad that this was the best he could do... This was like the beginning of a long string of disappointments. I peered over at him, "Have you been slacking off since starting sports?"

Before he could answer, my Mercy—"I know that look, you're thinking of me as Mercy."

"How do you know this," my eyes narrowed at her and I asked slowly.

"You're really easy to read. LA-ZU-LI. Get it in your head," She walked up to the dummy and punched.

The dummy, and the wall behind it, exploded.

I would have said that was impressive, but Goku could do the same thing after a year at Roshi's.

"Huh." I nodded before turning back to my computer and inputting more commands on how to use the data we just gathered.

In a very, very tiny voice, Yamcha let out a sort of pathetic noise that I had only attributed to the Krillin I haven't even met yet. "Ah... a-ah... w-what...?"

Mercy—ow, okay, stop pinching me—Lazuli smirked with superiority, before twirling, taking a bow and flexing. "I'm not quite sure myself. Something about magic, technology, and life energy."

"Well, if I went all out, we'd probably have lost half the city," I remarked. "Now put on this French maid outfit I made for you."

"... Does it protect me better?" Lazuli quirked an eyebrow at me.

I snorted unceremoniously, "Of course not, it's just the same material as your under armor. If something can tear through one layer of that, two or three more layers won't really make too much of a difference."

"Then what's the point?"

"It's cute."

"Cute." The laboratory's temperature dropped by a couple degrees. Huh, did I already figure out a mechanized magical aura organ that worked with Gero's and Frappe's android designs? That was interesting.

Obviously, I ignored her tone and suddenly frosty demeanor. I turned my nose up and said imperiously through my shivering, "Y-Yeah. Cuteness is more important than any power, obviously! Now go put it on!"

"Right," Her lips quirked to one side cutely. "Is that all?"

"... some tea, please." I whimpered at last.

Lazuli nodded and left wordlessly, apparently already more familiar with my kitchens than I was.

Finally, I turned to Yamcha, who for some reason was still here. "No, Yamcha, I don't have a maid outfit for you."

 

[Alstreim]

I love you. I love your Bulma. I love your Lazuli. I don't think there's much more to say other than: please sir, may I have another? I can't wait to see more Bulma/Lazuli interactions. They promise to be superb.

 

[Biigoh]

Oh Yamcha... you poor poor man....

 

[d.fish]

I tried to blink the blurriness out of my eyes. Lazuli was wearing a lab coat over the maid uniform. "Where did you get that?"

"I had it made," she replied smugly.

"When did you have the time to do that?" I frowned.

"Literally all morning while you moaned on the couch," Lazuli placed another cup of tea in front of me. She pushed her hair back a little before sitting down opposite of me in one of the office chairs rolling about. Her posture belied her tomboyishness, sitting with her chest pressed against and resting her chin atop the back of the chair.

"... Where did you get the materials for that?" I wondered. There wasn't any spare fabric in the lab.

She stared at me queerly before pointing at one of the machines behind her. "It's your matter fabricator, remember? You said you made this first so you could have the stuff and tools to make everything else."

I didn't really remember that. It must have been during the initial surge of the first chug of coffee. I still remembered what that tasted like on the tip of my tongue and the action of drinking that first cup, but everything after was a blur.

After Dad had left, I stared at the steaming cup for more than five minutes. He had taken his time to show me how he made this cup of coffee. It was made French and with grains courser, mechanized as was all things in our household, and he used some kind of thickener that wasn't cream or xanthan gum or anything like that; it was a special concoction of Dad's own design. A scent of vanilla and hazelnut and something else drifted out that made my spine tingle and my toes stretch outward.

I yearned for it even before I even tasted it, this tall cup of coffee. It sat before me on my desk like the holy grail, and it beckoned to me, making everything else seem dark and small and insignificant. Of course, some part of me wanted it for more than a subconscious urge; before he left, Dad had said, "Tights couldn't get into science, so she became a novelist. She's quite like your Yamcha in that regard."

So, sure, I wanted to drink this divine elixir. Sure, I craved it after not touching anything like it for the past sixteen years. And sure, it was hypnotizing just watching the steam waft out from the rims.

But I also wanted to prove myself better than my sister! Deep down, I still wanted the approval of my father.

So I chugged the whole thing in one go and...

"Uuugh," I resisted the urge to vomit.

Lazuli sighed and rolled her swivel chair over and started rubbing my back slowly. The wheels on that chair were loud and was like sandpaper to my brain meats. It was that moment that I decided that every chair in my office would be floaty like Freezer's. "You probably shouldn't drink coffee again, Bulma."

I glared at her and her blasphemy, "Are you kidding me? Nothing in the world can stop me from drinking it again. I mean, I won't react this terribly next time. You'll see."

"I think you have a drinking problem," she didn't stop rubbing my back. It felt really good and it calmed me down just a notch.

"Urp..." I covered my mouth and curled up into a ball. "I can quit whenever I want!"

"Uh huh." She nodded, not believing me at all.

Thinking back, I had pretty much taken her everywhere like a grounding influence to my madness. It was nice knowing that even on a coffee high, I still had some semblance of sanity. So knowing that she knew what I had planned, I asked her, "What's on the agenda today?"

"Maybe you should just sleep in?" Lazuli suggested.

"No, no... there's still science to be done. What's still progressing?" I asked; there were a lot of servers a level lower in the basement of my basement. The hum of their activity had never ceased and I was curious as to what tasks they were still working on.

Lazuli pulled out a clipboard and started tapping on it. Oh, it was one of those glassy, touch screen clipboards that I had suggested to Dad. So he finished it, huh? "Well, the AGI that you wanted is still compiling, so that will take a few days. You haven't named it yet too."

"What about Glados?"

"Glad OS?"

"No, no, Glados."

"That's a silly name. Is that another reference to something?"

"Yeah, but... alright, how about a nice, nonthreatening name like Shodan?"

"It's your artificial intelligence, Bulma, you don't need my approval for a name."

"Then it's settled, and we won't have to worry about it again," I nodded in self-satisfaction. "That was easy. What's next?"

Lazuli peered up at me and paused in an awkward silence. She looked like she was deep in thought, as to whether or not say something. Then she took a deep breath and tapped a tab that she had bookmarked on her tablet. "Bulma... I was Briefing up—"

"Wait, hold on, Briefing?" I held up a hand in puzzlement.

"Y-You created it and you don't even know what it's called?" Lazuli sounded equally puzzled. She pulled up a new tab, which looked like the Google homepage, but with the letters 'BRIEF' where the Google logo should have been.

"Huh." So that was a thing. So my living in a laboratory for months on end had caused me to miss out on modern lingo. "Sorry about that... what were you saying?"

"... I was Briefing my brother." Lazuli said with some unease, as if expecting me to overreact. She didn't look up into my eyes and her gaze was rather pointedly stuck to the floor. "And Bookface's kind of weird, you know, well... a-and..."

"And? Why are you stuttering?" I leaned over and stared into her deep, blue eyes, wondering if one of the modifications I made to her brain had been malfunctioning. I made a mental note to give her a thorough... check-up... later.

"You know what? It doesn't matter, I'll... I'll figure it out," She closed the tab hurriedly.

"That doesn't sound like it doesn't matter. Are you sure you're alright?" I poked her cheek.

She rolled her eyes, but she didn't slap away my finger. "By the way, you wanted to know when the World Martial Arts Tournament was to be held. Well, it's coming up next month."

"Oh! Yeah, it's been almost a year since I've seen Goku!" I perked up immediately. I had to bring some gifts for him, considering his success in getting training from Muten Roshi, but what could I get him? "Oh, that's right. We could sponsor the tournament. I'll get Dad on the line, it'll be a blast."

Lazuli was skeptical, however. Being the bad girl that she was, she didn't really care about these other things so much. "Are you sure? It doesn't seem to affect your plans if you don't bother."

I had to waved her concerns off immediately. "Oh, it'll be no hassle. Besides, 500,000 zeni as a prize? That's just one large meal at an overpriced restaurant for Goku!"

Lazuli leaned back incredulously. "What... h-how much does he eat?"

 

[Biigoh]

Doh hoho ho ho ho... the legendary Saiyan diet.

 

[Ct613hulu]

I appear to be missing the joke regarding Lazuli looking up her brother online. Can someone explain this to me?

 

[d.fish]

It's just me foreshadowing that she's in the past and hinting that this unreliable narrator was bad with time in that it wasn't 7 days that passed but 7 months of coffee haze.

 

[Biigoh]

Time travel Pod when?

 

[d.fish]

Time travel Pod when?

Click to shrink...

Well, is time really a question when that's involved?

 

[Biigoh]

Well, is time really a question when that's involved?

Click to shrink...

Yesh... fishie because timeline shennanigans!

 

[d.fish]

Yesh... fishie because timeline shennanigans!

Click to shrink...

Timeline shenanigans means time isn't really an answerable question, silly Bii.

 

[Biigoh]

Timeline shenanigans means time isn't really an answerable question, silly Bii.

Click to shrink...

But it's always the answer. :3

 

[d.fish]

But it's always the answer. :3

Click to shrink...

Timey wimey I don't have to splain shit~!

 

[d.fish]

The day began as any day might have begun, with them skipping school and haunting the local mall. There wasn't really anything special about that; they did that all the time. It wasn't like they were actually hurting anyone, they weren't gangsters, they were just delinquents.

It wasn't even their fault, really. As much as that man and that woman claimed to be their parents, she knew they weren't. She and the boy who became her brother were adopted from the same orphanage after all, but her little brother didn't even remember that. It wasn't her fault for being blonde. No one told her being a foreigner was bad. She didn't ask to be born like this.

She never fit in. Everyone else in the Chinese Amish Tribe were like her brother, black haired and black eyed. That she was taller than the other girls, as well as matured sooner, only drew their ire. And that ire materialized in bullying.

Now, it wasn't like she was really hurt by it. They didn't pour juice down her back or lock her in a locker or something, they only excluded her from activities or talked about how she was seducing the boys they liked. No, that didn't hurt. She had grown used to it; she couldn't be weak, not with her brother counting on her.

He had no one else.

Not their parents, certainly.

And besides, two could play at that game. She had begun skipping physical education, smoking behind the locker rooms, and soon that escalated to outright skipping school. She hadn't intended for her brother to follow her, it just happened like that.

It wasn't her fault that they had already decided she was a delinquent before she knew it. And her brother? Well, he was one by association.

So there they were, hanging out in the mall, while her brother took selfies in front of dog poop or some truck or whatever he found interesting in the parking lot. She still could remember what she was doing that day, what she was thinking and even the citric taste of the morning wind. She was thinking about how they couldn't even be called Chinese Amish anymore; they had a mall, everyone used C-Phones, and the only cars in the parking lot were the ones that no one drove anymore.

Everyone had a flying car that could shrink into the size of a pill these days.

"Hey Sis, look, I got a trucker hat!" Her brother shouted excitedly at her as he found one of the trucks unloading supplies to the mall parked outside with its window down. He wore it immediately before frowning. "Ew, it's all sweaty."

She took a drag, not bothering standing up, "Put that down, bro. You don't know where that's been."

He complied goodnaturedly.

They got along.

She could still remember it...

When the green portal opened up suddenly from across the parking lot. There weren't many cars there, and the light, flash, and whirling sound of the portal had drawn her attention immediately. It didn't exactly pop, it sort of bounced... like the surface of a lake or jello pudding, or sort of like goo. It was a bright, unnatural green color, with blinding flashes of white swirling in around, like a cup of mocha.

Then the girl with the blue-green hair walked through it, the girl who would change her life. She didn't know it then, of course. She thought this girl was just another one of those crazy scientist types, from the way the girl stashed away what looked like a portal-gun into her holster.

Even the Chinese Amish Village had one of those; their local scientist had a spaceship and farming robots made of sticks and straw to prove it too.

The girl had these thick, coke-bottle goggles, which she had not taken off or slid to her forehead. It obscured her eyes, making her expression unreadable and it was impossible to tell what she was looking at. She had this thick, white lab coat on, its edges stained and worn, and these thick boots that went up over her shins. There was a black bodysuit under that, but it was hard to tell; it was not reflective and seemed to swallow up the light around it. All in all, the girl was curious, she had thought then.

"Hey kid! You have the divine physic and bone structure of a martial arts genius," The blue haired girl spoke loudly and immediately. Her voice echoed without anything to bounce off of and as the green halo of the dissipated portal disappeared, the girl still had this sort of sheer presence that made it difficult to look away from her.

"What." Her brother wasn't exactly the smart type.

"World peace is in your hands! This is the pamphlet of the Crane School of Martial Arts!" She held up a tiny booklet with the word 'CRANE' stamped on its cover. There was an old man depicted under the word, wearing a little crane hat and sunglasses. "You can have it for three hundred and fifty zeni!"

No one could blame them, the blue haired girl had terrible presentation.

She turned away from the girl immediately, know that some other loony would come along and take care of things. This wasn't their problem, and the manual was probably a scam.

As she turned away, the blue haired girl shouted, "Wait!"

Instinctively, she stilled. There was power in the girl's word. It was like she had grown up commanding others. She thought of an unlikely scenario, what if this girl was a princess or someone similar to that? She stopped and turned around, only to see the girl holding more pamphlets.

"You want more?" There were five pamphlets, each with different martial arts names and titles printed on them. If she had even cared about this or was a nerd for that sort of thing, she thought she might have recognized them. "I got pamphlets for days!"

"No," she had told the girl. There wasn't much to say then. She remembered that she had focused on the girl's hair, how it was so straight and prim and proper. It reminded her of her classmates, who acted like they were good girls while saying words of spite behind her back. It pissed her off.

"Aw, but sis! I wanna be Kung Fu fighting!" Her brother protested, throwing some mockingly silly punches in the air.

"Let's get out of here," She replied. She tossed a capsule on the ground. It wasn't something she was proud of, having a motorcycle like this, but it was the only one they could afford. Gasoline vehicles that couldn't fly were dirt cheap these days, since no one wanted to use them anymore.

They left the crazy girl from the green portal and drove into the mountains, to get away from it all. There was a campsite not far from their town, and they were on the border of a national park.

She'd traveled up there to a lake only an hour's ride away on the weekends, when no one bothered her.

Her brother had used to love the outdoors so much, but these days, he had all sorts of silly games to play on his phone. It just wasn't the same anymore.

A part of her wondered then, as the wind whipped her hair against her cheeks, if any kids before or after her generation would know what it was like to grow up during the spread of the internet. It certainly was a topic the classrooms discussed on the days she did attend. They made it sound like she was lucky to be born.

She hated it all. She knew she was still living well enough, there were people with worse lives than her, but she still hated it.

Her life was just so... monotonous.

When had everything become so predictable and mellow?

Just riding her bike with the wind in her face, she felt at peace. It was usually these times that she could be introspective, but it only made her despise herself more. She hated that she craved stronger emotions. She hated that she wanted to hate her life.

She hated that she thought everything revolved around her, that her life was about her desires and her desires alone.

She hated being a teenager.

And perhaps hate was too strong a word to use.

They parked below the slopes of the mountain overlooking the park. It was late in the afternoon when they had arrived; they had taken the long route there. She knew her brother liked it too. There was something about the open road that appealed to him.

She just wanted to clear her head...

… If only he'd stop taking pictures of everything, including his groin, for some inane social media application on his goddamn phone. "Are you done yet?"

"Am I ever?" Her brother preened before the screen. "Look, let me take a picture of you, Sis."

"Don't you dare."

"It'll be great! They came out with this new filter. You could be a dog!"

"That's stupid, and you're stupid. Ugh." She flicked her hair, but she didn't turn away. It was useless while he was in one of these silly modes.

Then her brother paused. He looked up at her and then looked back down at his screen.

It took her a moment, but she realized that he was looking at something behind her.

When she turned around, an old man was standing behind her, only inches away. He had the wrinkliest, ugliest face she'd ever seen. There was a sinister glint in his eyes, and he wore a giant hat, like the one the Pope wore, but completely black with a silly looking logo on it. She'd seen it somewhere before, on the older car models, with the cute, red ribbon and the capitalized 'RR' on it.

He worn a tiny vest, and a sickening grin. "Yes," he muttered to himself, as if seeing two items he wanted at a grocery store. "These bodies will do nicely."

"What the hell is your problem, old man?" Her brother reacted first. He swaggered up to the strange old man, with his hands in his pocket. Even though her brother didn't really fight, he knew he had a bad reputation. It allowed him to intimidate others, which he liked to use often to get what he wanted.

But the old man either wasn't listening, or didn't care. It looked like he didn't even know who they were.

She felt like a pit of ice had grown in her belly, and she felt her feet skid back towards her bike.

The old man reached forward, and as casually as one might pick a vegetable, his hand gripped her brother's neck and picked him off the ground. The old man studied her brother's body like some sickening pervert, smirking so confidently that nothing would happen to him.

And she thought perhaps he knew about them, and that was why this old man picked them. Perhaps he knew they had no one to care about them but each other. Even their parents had all but given up hope for them, the reputation of being delinquents overriding what little parental instincts they had.

"Let him go! Can't you see what you're doing to him?" She ran up to the old man and kicked him. It felt like she was kicking an iron wall, and she fell, grasping her tingling, injured ankle. It felt broken.

"Oh, don't worry." The old man's smirk grew. "You're next."

Her eyes darted back and forth. The sun was already setting then. It was already getting dark; it was late in the fall season... and she knew no one could possibly find them, help them, before the old man did whatever he wanted to do.

She felt despair.

Then she felt the cold, wrinkled hand grip her neck. It felt like she was being sapped of her concentration.

She couldn't keep her eyes open.

So this was why her brother didn't struggle. That was her last thought then.

The next time she awakened, she was surprised she awakened at all. She immediately tried to get up, to check if she still had all her organs. She was still untouched. Even her clothes were still the way she had worn them. However, she couldn't get up...

Next to her, her brother had yet to awaken. He was groaning in pain. She could still feel the pain in her leg crawling up her spine.

They were strapped into an operation table.

She couldn't sit up, but she could look around.

This was a brightly lit room, filled with electronics. There were a thousand things here, all sharp, beeping, and painful looking. It was like a hospital made for torture, with a hundred different instruments to fulfill any horrific fantasy.

"Awake already?" The old voice spoke. He wore a scrubs uniform that in any other circumstance might have filled her with relief. Doctors were supposed to be good things. But she was only filled with fear as the first thing he picked up was a drill. It whirled loudly with life. He smirked as he came into her field of vision. "Well, it won't make a difference if you are awake or asleep. I'll have to cut you up all the same."

He placed the drill beside her with a clatter of metal against cold operation table.

It was just inches away.

She felt cold terror seep into her chest. In a small move of spite, she tried to push it off the table. The leather straps that held her down didn't even allow that.

The old man saw this and chortled. "Hopelessness is the first step to acceptance. You should be happy, young lady. I am helping you."

"Helping me? From what?" She hissed incredulously.

"From freedom, you silly girl. From these illusions. You'll become a greater part of a whole... it will be glorious." He stared into the bright lights, almost with a religious-like fervor. "Humanity's next, greatest step..."

"You... you're insane..." She struggled against her restraints. They only felt tighter with each motion.

"The genius vanguards of the future are often called insane, this is true. But you don't need to struggle so needlessly. You have no hope of escape." He picked up his next instrument, a saw. It was an old one, clean, but worn and completely lacking any mechanical function. It was just a serrated, sharp edge.

Then he placed that too just inches away from her face.

Her heart beat quickened. Her breathing was almost painful and breathless. Her eyes darted more frantically about. It felt like the walls were closing in on her.

"Please..." She whimpered and stared from the corners of her eyes at the boy lying beside her. The dark, purple imprints of the old man's fingers around his neck were so visible. The bruises alone almost forced her to shriek.

"Oh? Who is this? Your lover? Your boyfriend? Your family?" The old man asked, as if he didn't already know.

"He's... my brother. Please... take me... let him go... please..." She begged. It was hard to see, everything had gone blurry. It took her a moment to realize, but she was crying.

"Ho ho?" The old man smirked even wider. "We can't have that. I took so much time out to acquire new specimens. No, no, we can't have that. But how about this? I'll cut him up... first."

"No!" She shrieked. "Please!"

"He'll be Seventeen. You can be Eighteen." He spoke without pause, as if she had not uttered a single sound. Then he picked up his tools, and placed it on the operation table beside her brother.

"No. No. No..."

"Please be quiet now, would you?" The old man sighed. "That will be quite irritating if you distract me and I accidentally kill your brother before his time."

"No, no, no..."

He turned back to her with a look of disgust. It was so arrogant, so superior, that it made her feel like she was a worm before him. "As much as I'd enjoy your suffering, it will have to wait. You can wait in the storage room while I work on him. It'll be something to look forward to, and I'll watch your reactions later."

"Please, please, please..." She couldn't stop shivering, yet it wasn't from the cold.

Then he wheeled her out, to a room of coffins. There were other bodies locked away, with only a glass showing their sleeping faces. The coffins were numbered, and the seventeen and eighteen coffins were the only ones empty.

"Can you hear me? Heh. Well it doesn't matter. I know you can. Look upon my creations while I work on your... brother." He strode out of the room, oozing confidence in his task and himself.

She couldn't breathe. She felt like she was suffocating.

It seemed like days had passed before any sound other than the clattering of her teeth and the shortness of her breathing filled the cold, dead room of corpses and coffins. She was starving and delirious and dehydrated.

And there was no hope left inside her, she felt her will broken.

… a green portal appeared just an inch beside her.

That weird, blue-haired girl jumped out without a sound, looking around the room and then down at her. The sheer presence of the girl's being seemed divine to her then, like a warm aura that electrified her soul and rekindled something she had just thought dead within her.

"Huh." The blue-haired girl blinked and poured out a tiny vial of something like black, glistening oil, which seeped into the corners and crevasses of the room before disappearing, as if they were never there.

"Y-You? Please, you've got to help, get, call a... call the police. Someone!" She whimpered and struggled against the straps holding her to her seat. She felt every muscle of her being burn despite having no power left in herself, desperate to get the girl's attention.

"Psst." The blue-haired girl suddenly squatted down. She was swaying a little, as if she was drunk and her eyes were glazed over. She smelled like... very rich mocha. And she whispered to her, "Psst, hey you. You want some superpowers?"

"... Yes."

 

[d.fish]

… Did you ever count how many times we could have died?

Yamcha couldn't sleep those nights. It was nights like these, when his adventures following Bulma Briefs for the past year came back in the form of dreams that... he felt better if he kept himself awake. He kept recounting the moment he decided to follow Bulma into civilization. He hadn't counted the dangerous the girl had faced; he wasn't there for the most of it to begin with.

But ever since the first day he entered this vast, concrete jungle that was a human city, Yamcha began thinking about his life. He began thinking about what he was doing with himself and how could he was to that edge.

Bulma acted like the dragon had not granted her wish, since everything she showed him she acted like she already had before the wish.

Maybe she was right.

But Yamcha knew that wasn't the whole story, when they walked through the halls of Capsule Corporation that the sheer fear and reverence Bulma commanded in the people around her sent shivers down his spine. The guards in their blue uniforms, the assistants in their white laboratory coats, and the receptionist with the big breasts, they all shied away from Bulma's view.

As she strode into her home, butlers and maids bowed to her every whim. They acted as if they existed to serve her. And the buildings around them, were all taller than the tallest trees he'd ever seen, yet they were all subservient to the main Capsule Corporation building. They circled around it like cavemen huddled around a flame, needing the Briefs' company to thrive and provide themselves with sustenance.

Bulma showed him some of her factories on the first day. Every gesture she made was with practiced ease, with an elegance that spoke of confidence and practice. Each of her off-hand comments shook Yamcha right down to his toes.

"We make 40% of the cars in the world, that's two out of every five." She had remarked as if speaking about the weather, "I'm sure we'll get to a hundred percent in a couple years."

Yamcha would have questioned it, but he was too shocked.

This was the girl he wanted to court? She was the one he wanted to date?

He felt then like a frog in a well, staring at the moon. No matter how he jumped, no matter how hard he reached for what was above him, he couldn't do it. Yamcha felt something in him break, and his stride ever since had not had the same self confidence as it had. He couldn't do this, he thought to himself.

This girl was out of his league...

… but that was just his first day in West City.

Thankfully, Bulma hadn't bothered to surprise him like that for a while since.

She left him to his devices, and allowed him to settle in with a healthy stipend and her assistants were more than happy to answer any of his more technical questions. He felt he could live in the city; it wasn't lonely here. But Bulma rarely spent her time with him.

It might have saddened him once, a few days ago perhaps, but now he just felt relief that he didn't have to stare into her eyes and talk.

Sports came easily to him, and he joined some high school level sports team, which had its ups and downs, but apparently baseball was popular enough that he was never without someone who wanted to be his friend on his merits alone. For some reason, that wasn't enough for him. He had gotten over the shock of the city by then, and he had almost regained his confidence.

Looking back, he could only laugh. How could he have been so stupid?

What happened next broke any resolve to chase after the girl.

She allowed him to visit her, seeing nothing wrong with it all.

He wanted to prove himself, so he asked his questions and tried so hard to be competent.

"What's this?" He had asked.

"Oh, that? It turns anything I'm thinking about into reality. Well, that's the gist of it anyway." She didn't even look up from her work. It was like she was just talking about how tomorrow was going to be partly cloudy.

"I'm not sure I understand," Yamcha tried for clarification.

"I took the concept from Norimaki, but there's like a dozen other inventions by other scientists that can supplement it. I call it a matter fabricator, but anything I can think of—it doesn't even have to be exact—I can turn into something real. Like a reality machine, if it wasn't spawned in a gag manga, I guess." She tucked a stray strand behind her ear. This motion made him yearn for her then, again, and yet not. It was humanizing that she still made these gestures but...

But... he thought more and more on the subject, and it became more and more obvious to him that he was just a regular human being in a very scary world. Maybe if she had not urged for him to think along those lines, he never would have but now...

He was afraid.

Bulma could literally create anything from her dreams. She was like a faerie queen of the legends, who was so strange and yet literal and scatterbrained and powerful. She ruled her realm, and there were no questions or objections allowed.

Goku was a monkey boy who turned into a giant gorilla large enough to be the stuffs of nightmares. He couldn't be hurt by bullet or sword, and he was constant growing, constantly making Yamcha feel so inadequate.

These were the people at his side, Yamcha thought. These were monsters out of legends, and he was just an ordinary man.

He looked back at Bulma, who was humming some childish tune while bashing together some new contraption.

How could he have ever dared yearn for her?

The very sight of her felt inhuman to Yamcha.

He didn't even dare speak more than he needed around her. Every word might give her an idea to turn her attention towards him. He had seen her weirder, more organic experiments. He didn't want to end up on the operation table.

At the same time, he knew he thought of Bulma as a friend.

And of course, boner never helped.

It was all very confusing.

Now, months later, Yamcha felt antsy and stifled and scared. Sports and schooling seemed to occupy his time, but he felt like they held nothing of substance to him. It felt like he was wasting away here, where Bulma left him. Every so often, he tried to practice a little of his martial arts, and he felt like that ferocity was slipping away from him in this cradle of civilization.

He wanted to do something, he wanted to work with his hands. Baseball didn't allow him to bash the opposing team with his bat, so he had to work off that stress somewhere else.

Bulma tried to encourage him to meet other girls, but really, which girl could compare to her? Fear boner didn't help either. Apparently his school classes told him that was a natural reaction. So maybe schooling wasn't useless, but he still didn't like it. He knew he couldn't have her, so it confused him so much that he was only attracted to something he couldn't have.

Maybe it was nice that he was actually able to appreciate that he was so introspective now, due to his experiences. Maybe if Bulma would stop showing up in his nightmares, he could think clearly.

At least he could admit now that those were nightmares.

He started working as a handy man, and then he used his instincts and enhanced senses, which all of course paled compared to Goku's senses but were vastly outpacing that of the people around him, to solve problems. It allowed him to get into fights with what few gangsters lounged around in West City. It allowed him to develop a consultant-like relationship with the local police. It was nice to do this sort of work—even if it was dangerous, even if sometimes he had to leave the city to kill dinosaurs or something, it was better than to glimpse into the dark abyss known as Bulma's mind.

It let him work off that energy and he was happy for dreamless nights. Not that he wouldn't show up if Bulma called, but he hoped to just avoid her whenever possible, for those dreamless nights. So Yamcha engaged himself in these small, meaningless tasks and he relished in them. He even had a name card these days.

Lord Yamcha
MARTIAL ARTIST
Lost Items Found and Supernatural Investigations
Consulting and Advice
Reasonable Rates
No Entertainment or Performances​

It was a nice little inane piece of paper. But holding it seemed to give him some semblance of control on how he defined his life. He felt better for it. He'll just ignore the phone call obvious from Bulma for just another minute. Yeah, he could just close his eyes and imagine he was an ordinary handyman, who knew he was too small to solve the big problems in life, so he could just not. Yeah, no Bulma...

Yeah... maybe he could have the next batch of name cards embossed. That'd be pretty awesome.​

 

[Alstreim]

This interlude... It's a fascinating insight into how others see this Bulma. With the regular chapters we only see what the very unreliable narrator that is Bulma sees, we see the world through her eyes and tinted by her perceptions. Even Lazuli's interlude wasn't quite as impactful as Yamcha's, she's too close to Bulma, too used to things and is in the position of someone in looking out, whereas Yamcha is someone out looking in. If Yamcha who knows Bulma personally, who has spent time with her, who has seen the person behind the image Bulma Briefs, genius, billionaire, probably not playgirl, probably philanthropist, can barely fathom, well, Bulma, what do the regular people see? It boggles the mind. Original Bulma was impressive on her own, but this one... It feels like the comparison between a regular run of the mill genius scientist and Tony Stark or Reed Richards. Both instances are geniuses, but there is no compare between them.

Another thing, we see a little of the mad scientist, the mad genius in Bulma in the regular chapters, and some in the interludes. Nothing quite concrete, hints, seven months spent in a fugue just inventing things, but then there's doing some ethically questionable things without blinking. She literally pulled a Gero on Lazuli, if perhaps with consent and likely in a more humane manner. But that, and Yamcha's comments on her "more organic experiments" makes for a picture that is very very grey. You have to wonder, how much of all this was the genius of Bulma's brain, how much the genre savvy of the insert, how much the outside context knowledge, and how much, if any, was the wish. It's fascinating, and I can't wait to see more of this world you're building.

 

[Biigoh]

tanuki saw what fishie did here with all those references....

 

[d.fish]

hehehe

 

[d.fish]

"So where are we going?" Lazuli was dressed in something other than a maid outfit because I told her we were going out and that was obviously a dress for indoors and when she was in my doors. More importantly, I thought it'd be nice to have her dressed like an Average Japanese Highschool Student.

It was a cute look, okay?

"Oh, you know, I just thought we ought to have some awesome adventures... relax a little, get away from the office. I've been in this place for too long! It'll be like a vacation! Look, and we don't even have to sit on an airplane for like ten hours." And I was certainly dressed for a vacation!

"That didn't answer my question, Bulma. Where are we going?" She tapped her feet and leaned against the wall, all delinquent-like and cool.

"Some other worlds—not like space travel though! This is dimensional travel, it's totally different! Watch this, kaboom a portal!" I spun the portal gun out of its holster and shot a portal into the air before us. Little did she know, I had practiced this move in the mirror for a couple of days. It took me some time before the portal gun would stop falling out of my fingers the moment I took it out.

"This is like magic..." Lazuli blinked.

She walked up to the portal with an obsessed and crazed gleam in her eyes. Then she turned back to me before tracing a finger along the edge of the green, gooey portal. It was almost like she was in a trance.

I snapped my fingers before her eyes.

That seemed to do the trick, so I added, "It is magic. Well, partly anyway. Part of it is science, obviously."

"What's the difference between this and your science? That's also very... magical. Don't think I didn't notice the portal gun was running on a fake AA battery!" She pointed at the portal gun.

I smiled sheepishly. "Oh, not, that's Magical ™ , it's trademarked and a marketing thing for our tech."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it, Bulma." She harrumphed and crossed her arms.

"Fine, fine... so science is learning the rules of the universe and bending it over the kitchen counter and fu—"

"Bulma!"

"Okay, fine. Our technology is from learning more about the world. We find out what we can and cannot do and try to push those boundaries. Magic is where we define the rules. I learned that after learning how to track the Dragonballs, actually... you can't impose anyone else's logic on magic. You can't impose the rules of the universe on magic. Whoever makes with the magic is the only one who can set the limits." After saying so, I twirled my fingers like so, and a swirl of glistening sparkles filled the air, like in that Disney movie from a long, long time ago with Cinderella, when she first got her dress made for her.

Lazuli chewed on this for a minute. "That's a very fancy way to say a whole lot of nothing..."

"Magic has no rules." I repeated, "That's all. If you want to do magic, you have to start by embracing infinity and accepting everything is possible."

"Sounds like you learned magic?" She peered at me curiously.

"Oh no, of course not. Don't be silly." I waved her off.

"Then how did you know that...?"

"I have people to do that for me."

"... Of course you do."

I shrugged, I knew her long enough to gauge her reactions by now. "That doesn't mean I can't take what they learned and use it. I suppose it's similar to the C-Phone; people who make the nifty little bits know more about those bits than me, but I can still use the thing—"

"Hold on a minute... that doesn't make any sense." She pointed at me, leaning dangerously close. "You make the phone. You made every part of it, it's all part of your, ahem, 'marketing'. Even I know this!"

"Right." I rolled my eyes again, "But it's not like it's a stagnant device, besides, we want users to replace it every year or two."

"That's... well, kind of evil, Bulma."

"Oh, come on! That's lawful neutral at best!" I protested.

"I'm not going to have this conversation..." She tossed her hands in the air. "I'm not going to have this conversation... Look, so you can do magic, right?"

"Eh... approximately." I shrugged again.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" She turned back to me. "Don't make it confusing, just tell it to me straight."

"It's sort of like one of those classic roleplaying game wizards—"

"Nerd."

"Ahem. You wanna know this or not?"

She sat down, knowing this was going to be a longer conversation than she thought. "... Yes, but can you, like, not talk about your roleplaying games? You already talked my ear off with your obsession with, what was that word again? Cosplay? Don't start that again."

"What's wrong with cosplay?" I pouted.

"Look, can we just...?"

"What's wrong with cosplay, Lazuli?!" I pounced upon her and held her down by her shoulders.

"N-Nothing! Look, it's just a bit much okay?" For some reason, she kept looking away from my face. "I'm fine if you wanna dress up as a sexy angel or a sexy doctor or whatever, but why do I have to do it too?"

"Why not?" I whined. Wait, no, I didn't whine, I, I was just complaining. Yeah, that was it.

"You... you're really going to make me say it, huh?" She was a bit red now, and it reached down to her neck. Was she mad at me?

"I can't read your mind—wait, actually, you know what, I-I could but that's not the point! I can't tell what you're thinking if you're like this!" I stared intently into her eyes, promising myself to learn how to read minds like Muten Roshi in the future.

"... And I'm just going to ignore that and tell you straight. I can't act. I can't roleplay. I. Can't. Act." She enunciated each syllable with painful slowness through her gritting teeth, almost like she was growling at me.

It was kind of hot, to be honest.

"Yes, you can." I poked her cheeks, "You're totes cute doing it too, don't be shy!"

"S-Stop! Just, just stop it!" She slapped away that offending finger, "Let's just talk about something more normal, like magic, okay??"

"Fine... what do you wanna know...?" I backed off.

"Can you do magic?"

"... Yes."

"Stop pouting, you know I don't like surprises." She crossed her arms, "What can you do with magic?"

"Well, I can do just about anything, I guess... probably?" I waved my hands around animatedly. There was a lot to say on the topic, but I didn't really want to bog us down when I was time to head out and have some fun. "Within reason. The more complicated, the more rules I'll have to make, so simple things are better. Like if you told me to erase every bad person who'll try to destroy this planet from ever coming into being, well, I'll probably never finish casting the spell!"

"What about this... traveling to another dimension? How does this work?" She looked over at the portal, which was now wavering and probably going to blink out soon. It was one of the many, many safety measures I had placed into it, for good reason too.

Still, that portal wasn't going anywhere dangerous. It was like, you know, Cross Epic or whatever that crossover one shot was. It was safe, probably. "Oh! You mean like... ah, well don't worry about it. We're going to just other Shonen Jump worlds, it's fast and easy. They crossover all the time anyway."

"... Bulma, I couldn't understand a single word you said." She deadpanned.

"Erm. Timey-whimey-magically-don't-question-it-it's-magic?" I shrugged, not for the first time that day.

"Bulma..." Lazuli hissed.

I raised my hands in submission, "Look, the answer you're looking for is dangerously close to breaking the fourth wall. Now, if you have any other non-universe breaking questions, I'll be happy to answer them."

"... So basically you have magic, but you can't use it. You know the explanations to these hows and whys, but you can't tell me." It sounded like she was working up to a rant. "Okay. Okay. Fine. Can you at least tell me why we can't just fix all our problems with magic?"

"Lazuli, look, magic is without rules," I said again.

"I know that. You just told me," She laughed.

"No. Magic has no rules." I held her down, and stared at her, hoping I could convey all that I wanted with these words. There was no concise way to say it, no way to say it accurately. Any explanations I could give would only fall short.

"I... don't understand?" She was looking away from me again. Why??

"Yes, you don't." I tried, "Magic has no rules, Lazuli."

"Stop that, you're creeping me out." She wasn't laughing anymore, more like a nervous hiccup than even a giggle now.

"Magic has no rules. Magic has no rules." I was inches away from her, and I felt my heart jump when I saw the intensity of my eyes reflected in hers. It made me back off.

I realized I couldn't... I shouldn't try to impart upon her the depths of magic.

It wouldn't end well.

I didn't want to lose my friend.

"You're just repeating the same thing over and over again! That doesn't tell me anything!" She shouted back at me, almost as if she wanted to push me away, but couldn't. That was a silly thought; she was tens of thousands of times stronger than me after all.

"It's simple." I waved my fingers helplessly, not quite sure how to explain it simply. "Just like I have to make the rules for each magic so that they do what they do, so too would I need to make the rules on what it can't do. Or else we're boned."

Lazuli blinked, her eyes were wide. "Like... like if we had a magic spell to make fire, but it didn't stop or there was no limit to how much fire it makes every second? Is that what you mean?"

"More, Lazuli." I nodded, "More. More. You can't just have logical limits, there are also limits that are, well, outside of the box. How else do you think the dragonballs could grant nearly any wish? Imagine if the fire that spell made was fire you couldn't see but it still burned. Imagine there was a duplicate of that fire made somewhere else every time you made one. Imagine it took someone else's fire away from them when it you make it yours. Imagine that fire brought more than just fire into the world. Imagine that the fire was taken from a different time rather than a different place."

She covered her forehead with her palm. "Okay, you can stop now, Bulma. I'm going to lie down and forget this conversation ever happened."

I crept up behind her and whispered in her ear, while holding back a giggle, "The fire burns, but I can't feel it!"

She slapped my face.

 

[Biigoh]

Bad Bulma...

 

[d.fish]

biip bbiiippp

 

[d.fish]

"Are you sure we're safe?" Lazuli asked not for the last time probably. She tugged on the high cut of her short Japanese Highschool Student uniform skirt. It was a dark navy sailor outfit with white and red embroidery, which was kind of the look I liked.

I patted her hand in a manner that I thought was reassuring. "Look, no one will know us where we're going. We're just... picking up some samples. It'll be quick, clean, and we can hang out and relax after. What could go wrong?"

We stepped through the portal.

The world we walked into seemed, for the most part, similar to the one we left. It had less technology than the economic and social boom that I had caused, but that was because this was a world that was more static and similar to the world that was to be.

There were definitely still skyscrapers every so often and apartment complexes lined the streets—all in all, it was very like Beijing or Tokyo or New York. You know, it was a metropolis.

It had concrete buildings and asphalt roads. It was... well, not eerily like my current Earth, but it was eerily like my past Earth. The street signs that lined the road, the technology being sold in tiny, street-corner shops, and even the way the sky was not littered with flying cars all reminded me of an ancient time. This was a world more socially ahead than the world I was from, at least by a few decades.

At least, that was what I had intended.

Lazuli looked around, and was amusingly trying her damnedest to not look like she was gawking. It was kind of adorable in a sort of ignorant, country girl sort of way. "So what exactly are we here for?" She asked at last.

"Oh, we're going to find some fat guy and take his goo." I frowned at the words that came out of my mouth. I turned to Lazuli, whose jaw already lowered slightly, and shook my head quickly, "Not like that. You'll get it."

"... Ew?"

"No! No! Not that like that either!" I slapped my forehead. "I just meant you'll understand. Come on, let's see if we can get an information hub or something to—"

A random passerby walked by us and remarked, "Huh. Is that a Bulma cosplay? Neat."

We stopped and turned.

It seemed like an average, albeit nerdy looking, person who said this.

I raised a hand, "Excuse me? C-Can I ask what you just said?"

The passerby turned, and we were surprised by the serious, heavy intent on his visage. If looks could kill, he probably would have killed everyone in his path, because he had this sort of grim expression that spoke of a thousand battles, with his hair slicked back and three, white scars over one of his eyes. If it hadn't looked goddamn like he actually suffered an injury to get those scars, I would have thought he was just trying to be edgy.

The man furrowed his brow, shrinking in on himself by his posture, but puffing out his chest and straightening his shoulders as if... as if he were bluffing. "Yes? You're a cosplayer right?"

"How do you know I'm a cosplayer?" I asked.

"You look like you're from a post-apocalyptic timeline, you've got a bunch of fake high-tech gadgets strapped to yourself," He replied matter-of-factually, though he seemed strangely relieved and his shoulders slumped just a centimeter. "You're cosplaying Future Bulma, right? Look, if you're going to get random people to notice you like this, it's going to set back cosplay because this is exactly what people on the internet mean when they say cosplayers are just a bunch of girls showing off their tits."

"I... Whaaa...?" I couldn't really formulate a response.

Thankfully, Lazuli seemed to have a lot of experience in... responding... apparently. She gripped me by the waist and pulled me aside, before smiling apologetically to the passerby, "Look, she's new at this, so, well, I'm sorry for taking your time, Mister...?"

"King. Call me King." He nodded, before that sort of frightful body language was back. He stared at us with his eyes narrowed suspiciously, "You don't know who I am?"

"... Should we?" Lazuli asked.

"Huh." Mister King blinked. "Well, it doesn't matter. It's decent cosplay anyway, though that anime's a bit... old."

"Is that so?" I found my voice and prodded, "I thought people ought to appreciate the classics a bit more, you know what I mean?"

He nodded, shifting his weight slightly as he relaxed a little. I noticed that he was holding a plastic bag full of video games, and I decided to have my devices scan them while we talked. King shrugged, "I agree, but with Origins, it's kind of obscure because they spent so long talking about aliens and magic and stuff instead of the reason why it was called that."

"Huh?"

"Oh, you don't know?" He smirked smugly like a nerd would when they thought they had some information no one else had, having an opportunity to improve his nerd street-cred. "The anime, 'Origins' was named that because it was based on that origins story that Cell monster told way back during his Cell Games. They really spent too long talking about Fake Namek and stuff, but we all know that story isn't real, but so many people were watching the Cell Games back then that anime producers had to cash in on it."

"So, that actually all happened?" I boggled.

"Well, the Cell Games obviously did happen, but that other stuff? I'd say that was probably all a tall tale or something. It's most likely all fake." He laughed, "Aliens? In West City? Pull the other one."

"What about the, erm, earlier stories?"

"What? That Red Ribbon stuff?"

I blinked. "Oh, that was all part of it too?"

"Yeah," King nodded and scoffed, now completely into his nerdy rant. "But it's even older anime, back when they were really trying to cash in, so the producers didn't think it'd sell without jokes and gags. They hired some bird guy to draw a gag manga about it to test the waters. I mean, really? A wish granting dragon that appears after you collect seven balls? That can't be real."

"... Huh. How long ago was this Cell Games?" I asked, trying to bring the conversation back to our focus. "I thought the search for the dragonballs was kind of romantic."

"Like, more than ten years ago?" King shrugged again, completely ignoring my last comment. "I was in middle school back then, I think."

"Oh, no wonder I can't remember it, I wasn't even in school yet." I nodded. "Thanks for the, ah, enlightening backstory, Mister King."

He nodded, "Sure. I'm a hero, after all."

"Right. Hero." Lazuli wasn't impressed. She was looking at the man like how she looked at me when I suggested we should go cosplaying and roleplaying. Ah, well, I picked my battles carefully on that one.

"Bye," We said our farewells.

After he left, I turned to Lazuli. "I think I may have made a miscalculation on which dimension we're in."

"You think?" Lazuli's eyebrow rose. She smirked and tossed her hair back, "Nevermind. I know you too well Bulma. Can we still get what you want here or do we have to go somewhere else?"

I still wasn't quite over it though. I muttered under my breath, "This is like the fucking Twilight Zone..."

"Hello? Bulma?" She poked me again.

"Wha? Oh! Yeah, we should be fine, I'll jack into a terminal and we'll find our target, since having the Cell Games occurring approximately ten years ago is one of the requirements for this universe to have my delicious, delicious goo..." I smiled.

Lazuli made a face. "That's disgusting, Bulma."