Chapter Text
“Almost ready, Bulma?”
“I just need to wait for this last metric to load. It should only be a second. Well, it better only be a second because I’m starving.”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high. It looks like the Cold Empire skimped out on rations again.”
“Ugh. I swear, if I have to eat one more reconstituted package of mystery slop, I’m going to risk starting an intergalactic war.”
Bulma’s computer let out a loud chime, signaling the final calculation of data she was waiting for. She made a few notes in her notebook before standing up and meeting Kakarot in the doorway.
“Don’t say that too loudly.” Kakarot smiled nervously. “The king has ears everywhere.”
“Good. Let him hear me. Maybe he’ll do something about the food situation if his top scientist starts to make threats.” Bulma turned out of her lab, navigating the white, sterile corridor of the base.
A booming laugh echoed behind them. “Don’t make me have to kill you, Bulma. I’ve grown rather fond of you, but if King Vegeta orders it…” The man shrugged, a crooked smile across his face.
“You couldn’t kill me, Raditz. You love me.”
“Love is a strong word. I tolerate you. Sometimes I think you’re kind of funny, but you’re also really needy. It gets annoying after a while.” Raditz ducked as Bulma’s fist swung at his shoulder.
“Be careful, Bulma. We don’t need you breaking your hand on his bony shoulder,” Kakarot laughed. “It is still crazy to me how weak your hands are. I don’t mean it in a mean way, but I am always scared I’m going to accidentally break you.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time one of you Saiyans did. I took a few too many trips to the medical ward when I first got here because none of you assholes recognized your own strength.”
Raditz grimaced. “I told you I was sorry.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bulma teased. “I’d be angrier if you didn’t have healing tanks. Favorite invention yet.”
They reached the dining hall, and Bulma realized Kakarot was not exaggerating.
“If I don’t eat something real this week, I will not be held responsible for my actions,” she complained, picking up what had to be her thousandth packet of gruel.
“At least these keep you full enough,” Raditz groaned. “I think I’m going to starve to death. My mom was a butcher before Freeza fucked with the food supply. I’m not used to this shit.”
“Why doesn’t your beloved king do anything about this?” Bulma asked.
Raditz grimaced, but didn’t reply as he picked up five packets for himself. Kakarot took 6.
“Speak of the devil,” Bulma whispered, noticing the silence that swept across the hall. “King Vegeta IV himself has decided to grace us with his presence.”
His cape swept behind him as he stalked through the crowd that parted for him. King Vegeta stepped in front of them in line. He nodded quickly to Raditz, but ignored Kakarot and Bulma. He glanced at the meal offering, a scowl on his face.
“Week two of gruel,” Raditz said to him. Bulma hadn’t quite figured out the casual nature of Raditz and the king’s relationship. No one else spoke so freely with him.
“Ridiculous,” Vegeta hissed, stalking away from the line without taking anything.
“I bet he has a private stock of actual food,” Bulma mused.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Kakarot said. “He wouldn’t be eating if we weren’t.”
Bulma looked at him doubtfully. Kakarot was too trusting; if King Vegeta had the opportunity, she had no doubt he would put his own well-being above his people’s. He was an entitled, arrogant asshole.
The three sat at a table, and Bulma did her best to choke down her sad excuse for a meal without tasting it. She had barely finished when the metal ring locked around her wrist began to vibrate.
“For fuck’s sake,” she cursed. “I swear the breaks get shorter every day. Ask your king about that, too, if he’s such a good person.”
Bulma stood up, leaving her garbage behind for Raditz or Kakarot to deal with. Kakarot jogged to catch up to Bulma as she power-walked back to her lab.
“It’s probably because Freeza is coming to inspect the planet soon. It makes the king nervous,” he explained.
“That’s great and all, but if I don’t get a real break other than to choke down gruel or get a few hours' sleep, my work isn’t going to be impressing anyone.”
“I’ll see if Raditz can mention it to the king. He listens to Raditz.”
Bulma hummed, doubtful that Vegeta liked anyone enough to take their advice. She sat back at her desk, scanning the screen for her next monotonous assignment. “Thanks, Kakarot,” she said finally, not having the energy to argue when he was just trying to help her.
Kakarot nodded and left, presumably back to beg Raditz to talk to Vegeta.
“What the fuck?” she whispered, opening her task list.
“Earth woman.” King Vegeta’s voice rang clearly through her lab.
“Yes, your highness?” she responded, barely able to keep the dripping sarcasm out of her voice.
“I’ve heard rumors that you have quickly adapted to working with our technology. That you’ve even proven more capable than those who were born into this line of work.”
Bulma eyed him, not particularly moved enough to respond. She’d been on Vegetasei for months. If he’d only now just noticed her intelligence, he wasn’t paying enough attention.
Vegeta momentarily waited for her response, presumably waiting for her to be flattered. When she said nothing, he moved on to his point. “I have a training facility that your skills might be useful for. It is a gravity simulator.”
“What’s wrong with it, then?” she said, already bored by his slow explanation.
“It’s struggling to keep up with the levels of gravity my training requires.”
“Fine, show it to me,” Bulma said. Looking at it herself would probably garner more information than the less-than-talkative king would provide.
Vegeta turned on his heel, and Bulma followed behind him. Quickly, she realized that they were walking to a classified part of the base that she hadn’t previously had access to. The King entered a passcode to open the sealed door. It didn’t look much different than the rest of the base – white walls and tile floors – but there was no foot traffic. Bulma had grown accustomed to the usual hustle and bustle of the base’s staff. It was strange to be somewhere so quiet.
Vegeta led her to a metal door. He turned a wheel on the center of the door, pushing it open. A red light emanating from a console in the center gave the room an eerie glow. Without waiting for further instructions, Bulma perched on the console and immediately began to peruse the computer to gain a basic understanding of its functioning.
“So this says it’s supposed to be able to run at 250 times the planet’s gravity,” Bulma said. That was insane. Planet Vegeta was similar to Earth in terms of gravity. “Are you having trouble getting it up to that?”
Vegeta scoffed. “I surpassed that level months ago. I need it to be able to sustain 500 times the planet’s gravity.”
“Five hundred?” Bulma screeched. “There’s no way.”
“Look at the logs.” A smug smile crossed his features.
Bulma scanned the software until she found logs. Vegeta had been training at insane levels of gravity for almost days at a time. “Are you trying to kill yourself?” she asked before she thought better of herself.
“I am not a weakling like yourself. This is nothing. I need more power.”
Bulma shook her head, but couldn’t help but be enticed by the challenge. She jumped down from the console and popped off the panel.
“Give me a few hours to figure out how it works, and I’ll let you know what I can do.”
“I will give you a few hours to have it in working order,” Vegeta said before he left, pulling the door closed behind him.
—
Bulma wiped the sweat off her brow. For being called the Cold Empire, it was warm as all fuck in this room. She’d been rewiring the console for the past hour after spending longer than she’d liked figuring out just how it operated.
The door opened, and Vegeta walked in.
“Finished?” he asked.
“You wish, homeboy. There are materials in this thing I’ve never seen before. I get it, but it’s not getting finished today.”
“I need it finished,” he snapped.
“That’s cool and all, but I need to sleep. I’ve been around you Saiyans long enough to know you need to sleep, too, so don’t give me some line about me being weak or whatever.”
For a moment, the rage that flashed behind Vegeta’s eyes scared her. It wasn’t her most intelligent choice, but she was tired. It was harder to keep herself in check.
“Fine,” he snapped. “Return to your quarters, but I expect you back here at the first light of dawn.”
“And just how will I get in here? I don’t have the password.”
“You will sleep in these quarters. That way, we won’t waste time with your slow walking pace going to and from your own quarters.”
Bulma felt genuinely nervous now. Despite essentially being their prisoner, Raditz and Kakarot had been her safety blanket. They didn’t let any of the Freeza Force soldiers near her. No one else appeared to be staying in this secluded section of the base, but she doubted that Vegeta was the only one back here, king or not. Suddenly, she realized she had forgotten about Vegeta himself. Nothing she had seen of him should have given her the impression that he was safe to be around, either.
“I’d rather go back to my room, thanks,” she said.
“Too bad.” Vegeta walked out of the gravity chamber, leading her down the hallway. He opened the door to another room and gestured at her to go inside. Once she did, he closed the door behind her.
Well, shit. The room was a million times nicer than her usual quarters. The bed was an actual bed, not just a cot, and the blankets looked soft. One night of questionable safety was worth sleeping in that bed. She searched through the drawers to see if there were any of the standard-issue pajamas she’d grown accustomed to, and, sure enough, there were. She quickly pulled off her jumpsuit and donned the soft sweatsuit.
Crawling into bed, she hoped Vegeta understood that she wanted more than a few hours of sleep.
—
A booming knock on the door ripped Bulma out of the soundest sleep she’d had since coming to Vegetasei.
“Hold on!” she yelled, sadly pulling away the nest of blankets she had slept under.
“No time to hold on. The king won’t be kept waiting.”
Great, a voice she didn’t recognize. She stripped off the nightclothes as quickly as she could and pulled her jumpsuit back on. So much for a shower.
When she opened the door, a hulking, Saiyan-appearing man stood waiting for her. She’d thought Raditz was enormous, but this dude was even bigger.
“Good morning to you, too,” she grumbled as he escorted her back to Vegeta’s gravity training chamber.
“If you need supplies, use your wristband to page me,” he instructed, about to close her in.
“Wait!” she yelled. “I don’t even know your name. How the hell can I page you?”
“Nappa,” he said gruffly, shutting the door before she had a chance to ask another question.
Her follow-up question had been where she could find a bathroom, as she had been pulled from sleep so suddenly, she hadn’t realized quite how badly she needed to pee. She scanned the room, hoping the Saiyan King occasionally needed to relieve himself during his grueling training sessions. She turned the handle to the only door other than the one that led out, relieved that it was indeed a bathroom.
“Kami,” she muttered, noticing the cabinets were stocked with an insane amount of medical supplies. The small trash can beside the shower was filled with bloodied rags and bandages. “What is this freak doing in here?”
Too nosy to help herself, she opened the various cabinets, finding nothing but bandages and wound-closing supplies. How often was Vegeta getting hurt if his bathroom looked like this? She opened the shower door, noticing a few blood streaks on the handle. The inside of the shower itself sported more than a few bloodstains. Everything about Vegeta seemed clean to the point of neuroticism, except this. Was he just so caught up in this brutal training regime that he failed to notice the blood?
The sound of the main door opening made Bulma jump. She quickly closed the cabinets and showed, washed her hands, and prepared herself to face whatever asshole was waiting for her.
“What are you doing?” Vegeta asked suspiciously.
“Peeing,” she answered, mostly truthfully. “If I’m correct, you also do that, too.”
Vegeta didn’t look fully convinced. “What is the status of my simulator?”
“The exact same as it was last night. Your guard dog woke me up, barely gave me time to get dressed, and then dragged me here. And then you came in.”
“Well, get to work, then. I expect it to be done before lunch.”
Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.
“Before gruel, you mean? Or do I get a taste of your special food stash since I got to sleep in your fancy quarters?”
Without sparing another glance in her direction, Vegeta left with a slam of the heavy door.