Hello? Is anyone still out there? It's been a while since the last update so I'll give you a recap. Vegeta was on the lookout for a contraband devise. He found one but negotiations over the price got messy. Meanwhile, Bulma has found where Mal has been keeping the boys but was intercepted by Jaeko before she could make contact.

Chapter 12

Vegeta spent the rest of the night cleaning blood stains from his uniform and planning a convincing cover story should the local authorities make trouble for him. He needn't have bothered. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded the pawnshop across the street as he and his hungover squad checked out of their accommodations in the early hours of the morning. Uniformed officers dug through cardboard boxes of contraband marked EVIDENCE, pocketing the best items and tossing the junk back into the pile. No one bothered to stop them for questioning as they ambled back to the docks, shielding their eyes in the too bright morning sun. After inspecting the pods and generously tipping the attendant as promised, they were off.

It wasn't until they arrived back at base that Vegeta felt his nerves start to prickle. He clutched the PTO issued 'capsule' in one hand, grounding himself with the sensation of the sharp cube digging into his palm. His other hand itched to dig into the front of his uniform where he'd secreted Bulma's capsule, just to reassure himself it was still there.

Jaeko greeted them as they disembarked. Vegeta tossed him the little black box containing the revolting item he'd retrieved from their purge mission. He hadn't exactly been expecting an 'ata boy' and a pat on the head from his superior officer, but the right hook to the jaw came as somewhat of a surprise. He didn't bother asking what he'd done to deserve it. Jaeko never needed a reason. Vegeta was relieved that it didn't seem to have anything to do with the murder he'd committed or the devise he had hidden on his person. After shaking out his fist, Jaeko wordlessly passed out their pay slips and left them to unpack their pods.

It was late by the time they made it back to the barracks. Bulma was already sleeping and barely stirred as they threw themselves into their bunks. Hypersleep was hardly restful and, within minutes, the room was filled with the snores of the exhausted soldiers. Vegeta listened until he was sure they were all dead to the world before gently nudging the woman next to him.

"Five more minutes," she mumbled with her eyes still closed.

"We need to talk," he insisted, shoving her limp legs out of bed and onto the floor. Bulma stumbled behind him as he pulled her towards the empty bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind them. He twisted the hot and cold knobs on the sink, trusting the sound of running water to obscure their whispers from any eavesdropper.

"Can't this wait until tomorrow?" Bulma droned as she leaned against Vegeta's shoulder, nearly falling asleep standing up.

"No, it can't."

She was immediately startled awake by the sound of a capsule discharging behind her. Her eyes went wide, and a smile spread across her face as the smoke cleared, revealing the shiny silver technology.

"You work fast," she said, snatching up the item and seating herself on the cool tile floor. "I thought it would take months to find something like this. Where did you get it?"

"We had a layover. I found it in a pawnshop."

"Finally, some luck on our side. I hope it wasn't too expensive. I know we're low on funds."

"We got a good deal," Vegeta said, avoiding eye contact. He braced himself for more questions about the origin of the devise, but she was already too busy powering it on and tapping away.

"Can you use it?"

"I sure can," she assured. "This thing is pinging off a network address all the way in the Sierra Quadrant. There's no way they'll be able to track what we're doing."

"How long will it take you to…" He wasn't able to finish his question before his left eye began to twitch and tingle. A light shone out of the socket, spotlighting Bulma's face as he gazed at her.

"Linking to the chip is the easy part. Once you have the access code it's basically like connecting to a bluetooth device."

Vegeta blinked several times as the black and white screen of the tablet came into fuzzy focus on one side of his vision, while he observed the dark and dingy bathroom with the other.

"Kami, this thing is… incredible," Bulma breathed in awe as she flipped from screen to screen, making Vegeta's head spin.

"You can fiddle with it later. Just turn it off," he demanded, knowing she would spend hours playing with the thing if he let her.

"It's not that simple. There is no off switch. I have to manually adjust each function and it looks like there are a lot more of them than we thought."

"What do you mean?"

"There's an inbuilt polygraph test here. It can corrupt your auditory and visual awareness, make you see and hear things that aren't really there. It can even rewire your synaptic responses. They could have you barking like a dog or punching yourself in the face with the push of a button."

"Wonderful," he remarked snidely.

"I was able to shut off all of those functions, along with the 'loyalty incentive stimulus.' That's the catchy little name they give the function that sends electrical shocks through your brain until it's seeping out your nose."

"And what about the ki cap?"

"Relax. I'm getting to that," she assured him as she continued to tap through screens, entering indecipherable lines of code as she went. "I can't disable the geolocator. I can only widen the pinpoint radius up to ten thousand miles. But, once we get 800,000 parsecs away from Geminon, we'll be out of their radius entirely."

"That will take weeks. It won't be impossible to do but we'll have to be very careful how we travel."

"And the ki cap…" she hesitated. "I can't turn it off."

Bulma watched as the vigor drained from his body. His shoulders sank and his back slid down the wall until he was seated on the floor next to her. He stared blankly into the mirror across from them, reflecting the light from his illuminated eye. "Then all of this was for nothing."

"That's not true!" she insisted, rising up to her knees and bracing herself against his wide shoulders. "I can still raise the cap as far as the scale will allow. I can even give you access to the modulator, so you can raise and lower it at will," she said, demonstrating on the screen.

"It won't matter if I can't kill Kali."

"Would you be able to even without the chip?" He wanted to shove her away and tell her off for having so little faith in his abilities, but he'd been asking himself that very same question from the day they'd arrived on Geminon.

"I won't know until I try," he contended. "She's standing between us and Trunks."

"Maybe not."

"What do you mean?" he asked frantically. "What do you know?"

"Kali may not be as involved with the boys as we thought. It seems that her brother is the one who's holding them and, from what I've gathered, she's far more powerful than he is."

"How do you know? Do you know where they're being held? Why can't I feel Trunk's energy?" He questioned breathlessly. His eyes remained trained on her mouth, so as not to miss a single word.

She wanted so desperately to tell him everything. She'd been holding it all together for days, not sure whether to laugh or cry at any given moment. She knew where her son was. She knew he was alive and that he was safe. But she also knew she couldn't get to him. He was right beneath her feet but she couldn't wrap her arms around him. She wanted to tell Vegeta, to share the overwhelming burden of it, but she couldn't do that without risking it all. She remembered the overwhelming, agonizing need to get to Trunks once she'd found where he was being kept. She knew Vegeta would feel it too. He would throw caution to the wind just to get a glimpse of him just like she had, though he wouldn't be nearly as stealthy about it. She wouldn't put him in that position. She would keep it to herself until there was something they could do with the information she had.

"I don't know yet. But I will. Soon," she reassured him, hoping he wouldn't see through her deception. "We need an airtight plan before we even try to get him out. Kali may not be the one holding them but that won't stop her from killing us if she finds out what we're doing."

"We have to neutralize her somehow. Distract her. Maybe wait until she's off world." She could see the frenzied buzz in his eyes and feel it under his skin. She'd been feeling it herself for days, but it wouldn't get them anywhere tonight.

"We have a lot of plotting to do," she said as she dropped her forehead to his and rubbed calming circles over his temples. "But right now, you need to get some sleep."

"There's still something I need to do."

Letters and numbers whirred across Vegeta's cornea and when she looked down at the tablet, she could see the modules controlling his ki gradually rising towards the redline.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? Someone is bound to notice that your stronger than you should be."

"I know how to keep my ki under control. No one will know," he hastily assured her, even as he felt the electrical charge rushing into his body like a tidal wave. The sensation was pure ecstasy, almost orgasmic. It surged in him, setting every one of his nerve ending alight. It kept growing, bigger and bigger until his aura burned and flickered from blue to gold. He could hear Bulma calling his name. He needed to reign himself in, but the torrential flow of power felt too good to stop. The air in the stuffy bathroom whipped around him and sparks burst from the light fixtures in the wall. He continued to reach farther, deeper, for every last drop of the life energy that flowed through his veins but there was a wall that he couldn't breach. It was maddening. He pushed against the artificial limit lodged in his brain. He could feel it pulsing behind his eyes and the more he strained against it the more painful the pulsing grew. Before he knew it, the unbridled pleasure he'd felt moments before turned to unbearable pain but he couldn't make it stop. Electricity sparked around him and his skin felt like it was on fire until he felt cool fingers wrap around his wrist, tugging him back to reality.

"Fuck!" Bulma tore her hand away like she'd just touched a hot stove and dashed to the sink, running her singed fingers under the icy water.

"Fuck," Vegeta panted, finally able to wrestle his ki back under control. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. It won't blister" she said, gingerly shaking out her hand and turning the water off. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he responded, embarrassed that she'd had to see him so out of control. "It was just… a lot at once."

"It's okay," she reassured, twining her uninjured hand with his. "Let's just go to bed,"

He was more than happy to comply. His adrenaline rush was quickly giving way to utter exhaustion and he followed Bulma out of the bathroom, ready to throw himself into bed, until she stopped short ahead of him. Every one of their roommates was wide awake, sitting up in their beds, staring at them.

"… What the hell was going on in there?" Tien ventured.

Vegeta froze, at a loss for words. They'd been caught red handed. He was prepared to lay it all on the line and hope for the best but, unsurprisingly, Bulma was quicker than him.

"Do I really have to spell it out?" she huffed as if she were genuinely annoyed at having to explain the bizarre happenings on the other side of the wall. "If I'd known you guys were such perverts, I could have sold tickets."

Vegeta's face turned a violent shade of red as she returned to their bunk, unperturbed. Their audience continued to stare at him as if he'd grown a second head and he considered blowing their cover, if it meant escaping the abject humiliation of it all.

"Whatever you guys are into is your business," Krillin said, rolling over to go back to sleep. "Just try to keep it down next time."

Breakfast the next morning was an uncomfortable affair. Vegeta suppressed his power without further incident, but that didn't stop the covert scrutiny he was currently being subjected to.

He pretended not to notice their sidelong stares and the whispered conversations that quickly stopped as soon as he sat down at the table. They could sense something was different, even if they couldn't quite place what it was. It wouldn't take long before they put the pieces together and he needed to have an actionable plan in place before that happened or he would find himself with another mutiny on his hands.

Bulma wanted to believe her friends cared about rescuing their son as much as she did, but Vegeta wasn't so naive. They would riot if they knew there was a way out of this nightmare and it was being withheld from them until they could complete the impossible task of rescuing two children that may or may not be alive. And as few fucks as Vegeta gave about their feelings or priorities, they were in a position to make things very difficult for him. Whether he liked it or not, they were a unit now, at least that's how their superiors saw things. If one of them stepped out of line, there would consequences for all of them. He wasn't going to let that happen.

The only person that he could trust in all of this, besides his mate, was the Namekian. Piccolo had been a surprisingly resolute ally and he could trust that their goals were aligned. Kakarot's children were sons to him in every way but blood. He would not leave Goten behind and he was equally as invested in protecting Gohan. Though Vegeta would sooner saw his own limbs off before he ever said it out loud, they had become something akin to friends over the preceding months.

Which is why, when Piccolo grabbed him by the back of his armor and pulled him down a deserted hallway, he opted to let it slide with a murderous glare rather than ripping the offending arm off, just to watch it sprout back.

"What the hell are you up to?" the Namekian insisted.

"I was on my way to morning briefing," Vegeta responded as he corrected his breastplate.

"I thought we were keeping things under wraps. Powering up and nearly blowing the bathroom apart in the middle of the night was not part of the plan."

"They don't know anything." Vegeta assured him, though he wasn't totally certain of that fact himself.

"Not yet. They were asleep for the majority of your little fireworks display, but they'll figure it out eventually."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Only to someone who knows what to look for. I can tell there's something different but your ki is still… not right," he said, eying Vegeta like a dog walking on its hind legs. "Did it work? Was Bulma able to disable the chip?"

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"Apparently, it's not as simple as just turning it off. There are multiple components. Some can be disabled, and some can be modified."

"And…"

"I still don't have full access to my ki. I won't until the thing is removed entirely."

"Well, that's a setback," Piccolo sighed, leaning dolefully against the wall.

"It's one we'll have to work around. The important part is that we can leave this place without them tracking us or turning our brains into mush."

"We're not leaving yet," Piccolo demanded as he straightened himself, towering over the Saiyan.

"I know that," Vegeta said, annoyed at the suggestion he intended to leave his son behind. "Bulma said that she's close to finding Trunks and Goten. It won't be much longer."

"And how much longer until Bulma works her magic on my chip?"

Vegeta had been wondering how long it would take him to bring that up. "It's not a priority right now. We just agreed we're not going anywhere in the immediate future."

"So it's only a priority when it's in your head?"

"The others are suspicious enough as it is. There's no reason to add fuel to that fire."

Piccolo chuffed impatiently and crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't like this," he protested. "I've trusted you and Bulma with this plan so far but I'm not willing to just sit back and keep my mouth shut while the two of you make decisions for the rest of us."

Vegeta could appreciate the Namekian's grievances. If their roles were reversed, he would be frothing at the mouth to have even a fraction of his power back, and there was no chance in hell he would trust the key to his freedom in someone else's hands. But the stakes were too high to take any more unnecessary risks. All he could offer the man was his word, what little it was worth.

"It'll be done as soon as it's safe. In the meantime…I promise not to fuck you over," Vegeta said, averting his eyes awkwardly. It wasn't very often he gave assurances to anyone and it was even rarer still that he would put someone else's interests ahead of his own. Until now, it was something he'd reserved for his family alone. The whole thing made him itchy and he hoped the moment would be over soon.

"Wow. That was beautiful," Piccolo smiled with his hand over his heart, as if the Saiyan had just confessed his undying love.

"I'm glad you find this so amusing."

"No really. I'm truly touched."

"Would you shut the fuck up already. We're going to be late," Vegeta sneered, pushing past Piccolo.

"Wait! Don't you want to hold hands?" the Namekian called after him. It took quite a bit of self control not to turn around and punch the green out of him.

They made it to the briefing just in time to avoid a lashing from Jaeko, taking their seats as he marched onto the flight deck.

"Good morning. I hope you all got a good night's sleep because you're shipping out again at 0900," he said, ignoring the groans of protest from the squad. "It's only a day trip. You'll be back in time for dinner. We're short a few hundred foot soldiers after that jock strap incident last month, so you're being assigned a peace keeping mission."

Vegeta sat back and waited for the visual demonstration that generally accompanied their briefings, but he was left looking at a blank wall. It took him a few moments to realize the others were staring at something he couldn't see and a few seconds longer to realize that function of his scouter chip must have been disabled. This might pose a problem.

"Planet Dorsai is a steaming pile of shit in the Echo quadrant," Jaeko narrated as he gesticulated into empty space. "It has no significant natural resources to offer the Empire, other than its sentient population. Your job is to keep order while the slave traders conduct their business."

Before Jaeko could get into specific's they were distracted by limp wristed knock on the open door of the briefing room. A sweaty, sickly looking amphibious creature entered, his eyes rolling nervously in every direction.

"What?" Jaeko barked, causing the little man to visibly shake in his boots.

"… I'm supposed to deliver this," he whimpered, holding out a folded piece of paper. Jaeko snatched it out of his hand and dismissed the peon, sending him skittering back down the hall. Jaeko unfolded the missive, his brow dropping as he read.

"Prince…"

Vegeta's pulse jumped.

"What did I do now?"

"Nothing, as far as I know. Do you have something you want to confess to?" Vegeta shrugged giving nothing away.

"You're being pulled from this mission and reassigned," Jaeko elaborated. "You're going to Paradiso."

"Paradiso? That's a resort planet."

"This is a retrieval mission. No violence required."

"Retrieval of what?"

"How the hell should I know? It's classified. You'll find out when you get there."

"Why do I have to go? It sounds like a cake walk. Send someone else."

"You're going because Lady Kali has requested you specifically. You ship out immediately."

Vegeta tried to think of some explanation for why the empress would single him out but only one reason came to mind. If he had been found out, this was obviously a mission he wasn't meant to return from. But why send him to Paradiso to do it? Why the pretext? If Kali was on to him, she could kill him where he stood at any moment she pleased. And if she was trying to be sly about it, wouldn't it make more sense to send him somewhere less populated, with less chance of escape? Something about this wasn't adding up but he couldn't let on that he was suspicious. He'd have to play along for now.

"Great. Fine," he huffed in mock annoyance. "I guess I'm an errand boy now."

"You're not going alone. This is a two man job."

"I can handle it on my own. What's the worst that could happen on Paradiso? I get a sunburn?"

"I've learned from experience not to send soldier's to Paradiso unsupervised. They always come back past schedule, drunk, and carrying some antibiotic resistant strain of VD. You..." Jaeko said, pointing to Yamcha. "You're going with him."

Yamcha startled and looked around as if there was someone behind him. "What? Me? Why me?"

"Because no one will miss you on any mission of importance," Jaeko responded.

"This idiot is supposed to chaperone me?" Vegeta demanded, incredulous. "He's the most likely of any of them to go off the rails."

"You both better keep a close eye on each other," Jaeko warned. "I'll be timing this mission down to the second. If you come back late or I find out you've consumed alcohol or any other substances while in possession of Lady Kali's property, you'll be old and grey by the time they haul your asses out of the regen tanks."

Yamcha and Vegeta exchanged distrustful glares but the Saiyan looked away first. He was starting to feeling it again. That feeling like he was somehow responsible for someone other than himself and his own kin. Like he actually cared what fate befell the weakling just for being to close when the trap sprung shut on him.

"You're all dismissed. Report to your pods."

I'm sorry for the long wait between updates. Work and life stuff have caught up with me and it's a struggle to find time to write. I hope there's someone out there still reading this. If you are, please leave me a comment. I miss you guys when I'm away. Thanks again to bitchytimemachine for taking the time to beta for me!