A/N: Warning: Technobabble. I'm not a genius scientist.

Human Limitations, Chapter 27:
EARTH ARC, Part 3

Bulma Briefs leaned back lightly against her chair, an uncomfortable folding chair more often used for conference events than for sitting in front of a microscope, but having some time ago relinquished her more comfortable office chair to her father whose lower back was more prone to going out as he got up there in years. The metal back-frame of the chair dug into her middle back as she stared up at the ceiling, rubbing her temples in controlled agitation. It was getting late in the day, and she'd been working non-stop on one project after another, from running repair diagnostics on the robots designed to repair the facility, to helping her dad fix the cappuccino machine- a priority mission, of course, as he was also helpless without it. At least the results bore fruit right away and the restored supply of caffeinated drinks actually helped her stay alert during the ridiculous hours they were pulling not only getting things back to normal, but also trying to make it safe and make progress in unraveling the problems they had been presented with in the form of aliens and monsters attacking her place.

The sound of the door being kicked open drew her attention away from her mental meanderings, and she glanced over her shoulder to see a sizable stack of cardboard boxes walk in on legs, with part of a head and a scruff of black hair poking around the side.

"Ah, thanks Kurou. Just put those anywhere on the big metal table. Over by the right side wall," she said as she rose, adjusting her back with a series of fairly audible cracks.

"...Okay." Kurou grunted simply, shuffling carefully over to set the boxes down with a deep thud. The table's braced and reinforced legs rattled slightly under each box.

"I really appreciate all the heavy lifting you've been doing, bringing all the old tech down from the addition. Without the mover 'bots being powered down, you've been a lifesaver," she offered a kindly smile. "I'll be sure to call on you if I need any more equipment moved!"

Kurou gave her a disgruntled, tired attempt at a smile that gave up half way.

"...Right." he grunted, and turned to shuffle back out stiffly.

Her father swiveled to face her with a sigh, ignoring his own work for a moment.

"Bulma dear, you really ought to go easier on him," Dr. Briefs said in a somewhat chiding tone. "At the rate you've been pushing him these past few days, you're going end up working that poor man into the ground."

"Science waits for no man, daddy," Bulma smirked lightly, hands on her hips. "Besides, he did beg me for an internship. I'm doing him a favor here."

"Oh? I must have missed that. He has an interest in science then?" he scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"I think that qualifies as a duh. Why else would he want to stay around here and put up with me?"

"I can think of a few reasons..." Dr. Briefs chewed the end of his much shortened cigarette idly.

"Wait a minute! What's that supposed to mean, dad?!" Bulma shot out of her chair, ready to give him a chewing out of her own.

Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden loud meowing and the entry of a small black cat walking into the room. The older scientist chuckled, putting out his cigarette for now as the familiar feline pawed at his pants-leg.

"Ah, there you are Scratch! I was wondering when you'd come home. Did you have an interesting adventure?" he said, picking it up by the scruff of it's neck.

With a compliant mewl the cat resumed it's normal shoulder-mounted position, and the doctor rummaged around in his pockets and came back up with a small piece of a catnip treat.

Bulma shook her head.

"Dad, have you made any progress on the second battery of scans of our mystery monster so far?" the scientist's heiress asked, resting her chin on her hand. "I've finished checking your other 'project', so I can help again if you need..."

"Ah, thats' good. And yes, that I have! You should see this. Here, take a look," the doctor stepped aside and let her peer through his viewfinder. He was set up in front of another complex array of machines ranging from simple scanners to complex spectrographic analyzers to some more esoteric stuff that would look more plausible as a sci-fi movie prop; Underneath it all was the complex housing for a single, innocuous looking capsule, tenuously holding the terrors within inside.

"At the first glance, it looks like no more than garbage DNA... but then you peel back a little further, and you find a complex, self replicating system. Actually, the sequence isn't just complex, it's bamboozling. In fact, it looks like it was evolving as we speak in ways I frankly can't even understand- or it was, until we put it in stasis. And I don't mean that lightly- with this degree and frequency of mutation it should be a mishmash of tumors and redundant and vestigial organs... and yet, it ain't." he finished, giving an exaggerated shrug.

"So it must have a plan to work off of in advance, then." Bulma mused, eyes widening minutely. "Like a butterfly emerging from a pile of goop in a cocoon, only more complex by several orders of magnitude!"

"I'm not even entirely sure how this thing has a body, or what was holding it's cell structure together." he admitted, a look mixed between mild bafflement and amusement plastered on his face. "I couldn't find anything even resembling our nervous system."

Bulma fell silent for a moment, the knobs and fiddled with the magnification, eyes flicking rapidly over each recorded image as it passed and comparing her notes.

"You've always had a sharper eye than me, Bulma. What do you make of all this?"

Bulma squinted for a moment, then sat up. "Think you could put this up on the projector?"

Her father nodded, quickly pressing a few keys at his old computer terminal with one hand, and then the facing wall was lit up faintly. He clapped his hands once and the lights overhead dimmed enough for the image to resolve a bit better.

"There, see? That right there is human genetic material," Bulma pointed, hand casting a shadow for a moment. As she spoke, she flipped through several images she'd taken showing cross sections of large areas and then extreme close ups and spectral analysis. "Like we found out the hard way, this thing sucks people up like fruit juice. But not all of it is being taken in the same way. This part here, it's both a proboscis and an ovipositor, has glands producing the composites that make whatever enzyme it uses to liquefy solids, and then theres' this series of- I guess you could call it a pseudo stomach, that sorts it into batches of whatever composite parts, then the majority of it goes to this outer layer, which is weird. It's own cells are acting almost like tiny nano-machines re-arranging the protein chains into other parts of it's body, but it's not digesting them for their nutrients."

"It's not?" her father leaned over the counter, brow furrowed. "It's absorbed hundreds, but it doesn't use any of that to sustain itself?"

"I looked over your previous calculations, and I agree with your findings. It's body makes almost no sense." Bulma leaned back, eyes focused intently at the projection.

"Almost?" her father blinked rapidly, turning to face her. "Then, what have you figured out?"

"If it's not converting calories to energy, then it must be cutting out the middle-man." Bulma asserted, flicking the switch again and changing the display to show a cross section image of it's head region. "The stuff not being re-purposed is all going here, into this region. Look, theres' a cluster of dark spots here that just resist every attempt at scanning. And yet, the structure of it..."

"Afraid you're going to have to spell it out for me, Bulma, I didn't get my major in this field." her father said quietly.

"If we think of this un-scannable core structure inside the cells as it's brain, heart, and whatever else, then every other part of it's body as an organic nano-machine slaved to it... then besides sending signals to the rest of it's body, it has to be suffusing it with energy to do that. Thus, no nerves... everything is wireless."

"...You're trying to tell me that that cluster is generating power and sending it out, but the energy is coming from..." Dr. Briefs trailed off, scratching his head. "But it's not converting the nutrients into caloric energy, its..."

"It's adding it to it's mass and adding the energy- the life energy martial artists tap into, I mean- to it's baseline energy output."

"Then... then it has a core of limitless energy that it adds to by taking human life. Like a vampire," the scientist flopped back down in his comfortable chair and stared numbly at the display for a few moments. "Thats a scary thought, but it certainly explains how it got so strong."

"Could it be extraterrestrial as well?" Bulma said softly, still absorbed in the startling information being revealed before her. "I think it's reasonably safe to say something like this is statistically impossible to have evolved on it's own, and it's easy to imagine this as being some kind of alien weapon bio-weapon."

"Hmm. It certainly would be a heck of a coincidence for this thing to show up right after our first public contact with alien life." the doctor fiddled with his mustache, other hand idly stroking Scratch for some much needed comfort. "A space vampire, huh... Off the top of my head I can't think of any malevolent alien scientists I've pissed off that badly..."

"What?" Bulma idly turned to stare at him in confusion.

"Oh, sorry. Just reminiscing about old times," her father smiled affably, scratching Scratch on the chin. "By the way, didn't you give your big sister a call earlier? Is she coming back home too?"

"Yeah, I think she had some stuff to get together first, but she said she was booking a flight." Bulma nodded, cheered slightly by the thought. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Hmm. Having us all in one place will be nice, but I do worry about things going wrong, you know. I certainly like the idea even less knowing it was specifically targeting us."

"Dad, we've got it under control now, she'll be fine!" Bulma said, trying to reassure herself in the process. Even though we're still just as clueless as before as to what's behind this, a traitorous part of her mind whispered in panic. "Besides, Tights is a genius like me, with all of us together we'll work something out for sure. We'll be ready next time, if it ever happens..."

"Hmm. Maybe. I hope so too, at any rate," he muttered. "On that note, you said you looked over my designs?"

"Oh, yeah. The impromptu untested reactor ray-guns..." Bulma grimaced slightly. "After looking through the notes you gave me I fiddled around with it's inertial compensation, so it should at least be functional now."

"Really? What was wrong with it before?" the doctor asked in a tone of detached professional curiosity.

"Dad, I don't know how to say this, but you honestly suck at weapons design." Bulma grinned awkwardly. "If you must know, rather than firing a beam, with the way you had it calibrated the thing would have taken you off the ground like a bottle-rocket and then spun around in circles until it ran out of fuel."

"What? But it was a really, REALLY powerful and long lasting battery, the particle beam alone-"

"-would have accelerated gradually at a steady rate for as long as you held down the trigger, and with nothing sufficiently anchoring it except your body weight, assuming you managed to not let go somehow would be throwing you around like a fire-hose, it would have aimed the actual damaging stream all over the place, probably just managing to light the city on fire before it ripped itself from it's housing and achieved exit velocity."

The doctor shut his mouth for a second. "Yeah, you're right. Damn. Better than me in biology AND experimental weapons... well, as long as you don't go combining the two, I can live with it..."

"This is why the company has a sketchy reputation around here, dad." the Capsule Corp heiress shook her head, smiling slightly despite her scolding. "...Can I just say I am really glad you didn't try to shoot Gero with that thing?"

"That's a very salient and logical point, Bulma." Dr. Briefs chuckled, scratching his cheek nervously. "I'll try to be more careful... or at least get my designs vetted by you more often."

"Actually, about that, it occurred to me just now..." Bulma suddenly leaned forward. "Back then, you knew him right away and were already prepared to blast him if you had to. I never thought to ask, but what exactly was your relationship with Dr. Gero, back in the day?"

Her father fell silent, hand stilling while petting the family cat. If she didn't know him so well she might not have noticed a difference, but while he didn't have the extreme reaction he'd been having due to recent stresses, it was a subtle and subdued one that his daughter nonetheless picked up on.

"If it's alright, can we discuss that some other day?" he said, his apologetic tone coming through clear. "I don't have any excuse, other than I don't really feel like talking about it yet today. I need to rest, and check up on your mother."

He got up, making sure Scratch was securely on his shoulder, before turning to the door to leave. "Good work today, Bulma, really." he smiled faintly, palming a fresh cigarette from his coat pocket.

"Thanks dad. I'm going to finish up here for tonight, and I'll join the rest of you for dinner, okay? Send mom my love,"

"I always do."

The door slid shut, and the room was empty. As soon as his footsteps faded around the corner, Bulma crossed the room and carefully retrieved some things from the boxes Kurou had brought at her request. From her coat pocket, she retrieved the cassette tape and looked over the assortment of documents accompanying it with a wary eye.

"Lets see... Last time I tested you, I put you in a cassette player, and you just played squeals and random noise at me," she muttered to herself, setting the cassette aside for a second, "...Sooo, it's not in audio format. I need a computer that reads cassette tapes... C'mon, dad, you've probably never thrown away all your old junk, lets see what secrets we can find..."

A few minutes rooting through and sorting the old tech Kurou had grabbed from storage yielded nothing but more audio cassettes from old bands, some mix-tapes, a boom box, and some of the weirdest miniature robots she'd ever seen, but no consoles for reading tapes. She let out a frustrated sigh.

"Give me a break, dad, the last time I rooted through your stuff I found my first ever dragon ball, and yet you don't have the one piece of tech I need now? Please, is it too much to ask for a small deus-ex-machina," she growled under her breath, cradling her head in her hands in exasperation. She might have to come up with an excuse to go to some consignment stores... Or heck, maybe she could figure out how to hook one of these up to one of the existing terminals? It was worth a try, she decided.

She couldn't help but wonder if whatever she found would shed any additional light on all the insanity that had been going on. Even if it didn't the compulsion to figure it out just wouldn't let her have peace until it was done.

Her eyes glanced back up to the projector, now showing the full image of the creature, coiled into a fetal position in the stasis capsule she'd designed, and she suddenly shuddered, mind inexorably wandering back to the horrible few seconds she'd been on the receiving end of that terror before she could force herself not to. She felt incredibly cowardly doing so, but...

Those moments were burned so deeply in her mind, it was enough to wonder if she'd ever be able to pull herself out of it.

...

The day of the attack.

It had caught up to them on a grated walkway between levels of the miniaturization complex industrial block, where on any given normal day dozens of workers, scientists and robots would be supervising the construction, quickly becoming a scattered wreck as it turned the place over in it's reckless passage, forgoing the stairs and the path they'd taken in favor of blasting through the walls with a chain of explosions.

It closed the distance before they could fully react, lunging straight up from the blackness below and vaulting into the midst of them from the handrail, and then it's tail had moved in a blur, so far above the limits of her normal human reaction she couldn't even see it before it had lodged in her, the sensation so quick she felt herself being pushed backwards before she felt it enter. There was no pain right then, only overwhelming shock and fear that out of all the targets it had chosen her- she was the least helpless of them to fight back, she didn't' even know any martial arts. It didn't fit her hypothesis at all about it seeking strong energy, she could only think why, and then when she felt the pain, why, why- she was certain she was going to die, and all she could think is why, why WHY HER, and then her brilliant mind and her entire world was reduced to that fear in an instant.

Her father's strangled cry of shock was drowned out by her own scream. She didn't even remember what she had said, before she was already sliding across the floor, roughly pushed back by the rapid reaction of the trio of bald martial artists who stepped in front of her and fired their trademark energy blasts in unison, causing it to stagger backwards a few feet with an angry hiss.

Her father and mother were helping her up, her mother already putting her medical knowledge to use in applying pressure to the wound.

"Oh god, honey! I-it's-" her mother's hand trembled as it slipped off of her. She knew what they were discussing, but also that they were trying to hide it from her so she wouldn't panic. They needn't have bothered because she couldn't FEEL right then.

She remembered the details fuzzily, she must have been in mild shock at the time. She knew, intellectually, that the affected areas of her body had rapidly putrefied below the surface of the skin, and what she must have looked like in that instant- but the emotions she had felt were strangely locked out after her initial moment of panic. She thought she called out somebody's name, but she couldn't remember who... Judging from the reactions around her she might have just been babbling, so she gave up on trying to communicate. Her head lolled back and she was so disoriented and tired,and she saw things as though she was upside down, seeing the other few who had made it in with them, some reaching out to help and some cowering back in fear. They were almost to safety, they thought, and yet this insanity was still happening.

It was the first time she'd seen her mom with such wide fearful eyes, and that above all else stripped away all illusion of normalcy that she could have clung to; They were facing a monster beyond their reckoning.

Her father's look was alternating between a hateful glare at the creature and then turning to her becoming twisted with a pained look, and he must have shouted for a senzu bean because one of them turned and tossed a small pouch their way. The mystical remedy had to be forced down her throat, because she couldn't feel her jawbone.

Seconds later she was panting for breath and coughing up who-knows-what mixture of her own fluids as her lungs and a few other organs suddenly reconstructed themselves into something workable for her continued survival. With no time to ponder how close a call that had been or how miraculous it was she was alive, she scrambled to her feet with a little help and they started moving as fast as they could to get away.

The fighters were barely making headway against the monster. Their only hope was to force it back enough that they could close the blast doors, then get further into the complex and go underground, down into the emergency vault, but at each turn they were the ones losing ground.

"Guys, cover me for a moment. My arm is no good anymore." Tien Shinhan trembled, grasping his wounded limb. Aside from that, and one of his eyes in bad shape from acid, Krillin and Roshi were sporting similar wounds where a glancing blow from that lightning fast appendage had sapped anywhere from centimeters to half an inch from a muscle in a split second, siphoning blood and viscera from anywhere it managed to slash and rendering movement painful, and deposited a small amount of whatever acid it used, though without sustained contact it couldn't liquefy them to the lethal extent of it's victims.

"Why doesn't anything ever stay dead?" Krillin muttered.

"Stay strong. Nothing is truly immortal in this world," Roshi shifted his stance minutely. His eyes were serious, unclouded, and intensely focused despite already sporting several nasty wounds from the slashing attacks of it's tail. It seemed he could only endure due to the fact that he had switched to fighting in his transformed 'Max Power', his ridiculously engorged muscles able to soak up some of the damage before it reached vital areas.

The smoke from the last blast cleared, and the monster rose from it's knees at the other end of the room, it's tail lashing. A horrible gurgling laugh bubbled from it's throat becoming a rasping cackle while the three assembled warrior monks caught their breath and prepared for a fight that may have been their last.

"STOP HURTING THEEEEMM!"

"Gohan?!" several shouted at once. The sight before them made little sense.

Gohan, a mere child, his tiny fists raised and clenching white-knuckled.

He was surrounded with a flickering and trembling aura of clear white energy, and without his dragon-ball-hat his hair flying upwards in the strange wind of his energy bore a strong resemblance to his father.

It seemed even the monster itself paused, stunned by the sight before it. However, the moment passed quickly.

"Gohan, what are you doing!?" Chichi wailed, falling to her knees. "Stay back!"

If he heard her, he gave no indication.

The monster's beak-like orifice twitched and bent unnaturally into a smile, it's slitted eyes gleaming intelligently. It chuckled as it stared down at him.

"...Gohan... should lisssten to her..." it hissed, towering over the boy. Everyone present flinched at the monstrosity's voice, but again the child stood steady, something wild and unchecked in his eyes, despite them being streaked with tears.

"I-I'm... I'm warning you! Leave us ALONE!" Gohan's fists trembled, the light show surrounding him flickering as though in danger of simply going out.

"Keh-heh-hehhhhh!... Sssstill just a child... Still weaker... fffight, fffffight... but you.. will ssssoon serve... my purpose..." it rasped in that halting voice, it's tail raising level once more like a scorpion ready to strike, oozing even more drips of some vile liquid that sizzled on the steel grating...

"Die with the ressssst,"

The building shuddered and she felt herself be pushed backwards by sudden air pressure, and she turned in light leaped up like flame and swelled increasing in size and brightness.

"N-no... you..."

Gohan's normally quiet voice pitched to as low a growl as such a small child could possibly manage, the light building as he did, until he stood literally wreathed in energy. She didn't have to be a super human martial artist with their senses- it was visibly more than the combined output of the three masters of their art. It was visceral, pushing her back to the wall. This time the monster stopped, eyes wide.

"ONLY YOU'LL DIE, MONSTEEEEERR!" he screamed, taking a step forward. Then his voice resonated again in a volume that should not have been achievable by human vocal cords.

Then... she wasn't sure what happened, but a child-sized footprint appeared in solid steel, there was a back-blast like someone had fired a rocket and if she had to guess what went on during that split second she'd assume the kid just plowed through the freak like a bullet. Limbs were flying everywhere, and then the kid careened into the opposite wall headfirst the next second, the aura just vanished, like a switch had been flipped.

Several things happened at once, the creature falling through the grate as it's acid weakened the walkway supports and it's body fell in green chunks to the level below- already, it was trying to piece itself together again, it's head giving hideous cries of rage. In a blink and you'll miss it motion, Krillin rushed in and grabbed Goku's son, cradling him in his arms as he swiftly passed out, and rushed him back to his mother. The group quickly scrambled behind the first blast door, Dr. Briefs already keying in a program to automatically shut everything down behind them as they went. Finally, they were rushed to the vault, the non combatants being carried as swiftly as possible on the backs for the trio of warriors.

The vault was cold, the heating systems having gone down with the rest of the power, but at least the locks worked and the reinforcements would hold. As Bulma's mother went to get some blankets and set up some lights, and Bulma and her father separated from the group and quickly began making plans, the warriors stood in exhaustion and shock surrounding the mother and child, eyeing them with mixed hope and uncertainty.

"That... that was incredible! How did he do that?" Krillin finally asked, voicing the question on everyone's lips.

He woke up suddenly, looking around in terror for an instant before he seemed to recognize his surroundings. "M...m-mom?" he looked up questioningly, tears flowing freely once more. "M-mom... What am I?"

"Oh, Gohan... My Gohan!" Chichi was sobbing, over and over, clutching his small body to her chest.