Hi everyone,

Thanks for sticking with this story! It really means a lot to me.

Also, sorry for the late update. One day isn't too bad, and it is my second longest chapter. Guilt absolved.

And plus, I'd be late on any updates to sing with Siedah Garret. Best. Tuesday. Ever.

As always, please review. I love criticism! It makes me better!

-Kanotari

Bulma awoke with a screech as someone sat on her chest. His dark hair was unruly, as always, and his jet black eyes stared back into hers. His bright orange outfit assaulted her still sleep deprived eyes. "Goku, will you ever learn to use the door?" she asked, yawning widely, soaking in the morning sun. "Sorry Bulma," the excitable Saiyan replied, "I'm not that accurate with my instant transmission yet. Oh and Chi said to give you this." He held up the vase that she had painted with his wife earlier in the week. Bulma carefully placed it on her bedside table as Goku got off of her. Idiot though he was, he was still her friend, and she had missed him. "She also wanted to know if she could come help," Goku mentioned. Bulma nodded excitedly. She was glad he had come to help her with the gravity room. "Tell her she can bring Gohan too, if she wants." Goku nodded, placed his fingers on his forehead, and vanished, presumably to inform his wife.

Unfortunately for Bulma, her mother barged into her room right as Goku left. She had heard everything. "Bulma, honey," her mother greeted her. "Why don't we have a little party? I'll invite all your friends!" Without waiting for an answer, she placed the armful of sheets she'd been delivering onto Bulma's dresser, and rushed off to prepare. Bulma shook her head, but knew better than to try and stop her mother once she was in party mode. Two hours later, the Briefs' backyard was busier than it had been since the Namekkians left. Dr. Briefs was barbecuing, while his wife served everyone drinks. Goku and Chi-chi had brought Gohan, but they were only part of the party. Bunny had called Master Roshi to invite him, Krillin, and Oolong. Krillin was munching on a hamburger, but Oolong had informed Roshi of a women's beach volleyball competition. Naturally the pig and the pervert chose the bikinis. She'd tried to reach Tien and Chaotzu, but they were off training in some barren wasteland. Same with Piccolo. Bunny also invited Yamcha, much to her daughter's chagrin. While the heiress was certainly brave enough to stand up to an angry Saiyan, she was terrified of telling her mother that she broke up with Yamcha. She shuddered as she pictured her sweet mother's rage upon hearing that no, she would not be receiving any grandchildren soon.

Chi-chi politely inquired after Launch. Krillin told her that the last he heard, she was with Tien and Chaotzu, but he hadn't seen her for a while. In response, he asked where Yamcha was. Bunny shrugged. He hadn't answered his phone. Chi-chi noticed Bulma turn an interesting shade at the mention of his name. She grabbed her friend's hand and brought her inside, out of everyone's hearing range. In Bulma's bedroom, the blue-haired heiress told her about their break-up. She explained that she had drifted away from him, and that he felt it too. Chi-chi shrugged. "That's not how I thought things would happen." That made Bulma curious. "Well?" she prompted. "I thought you'd call him out for cheating, and he'd deny it again. Or one of you would move on..." In reality, Chi-chi saw the way Bulma looked at her houseguest. She knew the older woman had a strange tolerance for his insults and went out of her way for him. She could tell that Bulma had feelings, of a sort, for the handsome, albeit arrogant, prince. Whether he felt the same, the housewife couldn't say. Chi-chi may have married a moron, but she was no fool. She knew Bulma was hiding something. The young wife couldn't see her friend breaking up with Yamcha without some big catalyst. Their relationship had been falling apart for years, but neither wanted to challenge their status quo. What on Earth had happened?

Vegeta lay on his bed, avoiding interaction with the inferior species. He listened to the woman's conversation through the wall. It wasn't entirely his fault; Saiyan hearing picked up many things he didn't necessarily want to hear. Today, however, the contents of the conversation piqued his interest. So the woman had ditched the weakling. That explained her unpredictable behavior lately. He felt a little guilty, after all, his moment of weakness was probably a factor, but wasn't necessarily displeased by the results. He had indirectly manipulated the woman to do just as he wished. The only thing that annoyed him was that she didn't tell the truth to the buffoon's mate. The foolish woman should be bragging about it!

He rolled over and looked out the window. Speaking of buffoons, there he was: Kakarrot. The only other member of his race, and one of the few people to ever defeat him. God he hated him. The prince watched the low class warrior stuff his face with hamburgers and pasta salad. Vegeta swore that half the food missed the idiot's mouth. How had that managed to attain Super Saiyan? He saw a flash of blue as Bulma and Chi-chi rejoined the party. Excellent, the woman was preoccupied. He chucked his shirt in a corner, and began training.

By nightfall, the party wrapped up and the concrete in the gravity room was setting. Bulma and her dad had just finished installing a new control panel, this one displaying nitrogen levels, in hopes of preventing future explosions. Bunny had dropped a few plates of leftovers off to Vegeta before the two parents crossed the yard to their home. Krillin left rather early. Apparently Roshi had injured himself trying to get a better view of the volleyball girls, and Krillin needed to help him. Goku used his instant transmission to take his family home; it was Gohan's bedtime. Bulma was alone at last. While her mother's spur of the moment party had been fun and productive, Bulma preferred to work in silence. She adjusted a few more valves on the fresh nitrogen tanks and went upstairs to test the gravity room. 1.5 times Earth's gravity had Bulma feeling like a cat squeezing into a jar it knows it's too big for. The room made a soft humming noise. Everything seemed to be okay. She turned off the machine and paused for a minute. Should she tell Vegeta that it was fixed? He'd insist on training in it, and aggravate his injuries. No, it might be dangerous, but she'd wait a day or two.

For a genius, Bulma sometimes had a tenuous grasp on social situations. Seven years with Yamcha, and she still missed the fact that he didn't comprehend their break-up. It was clear as crystal, however, when Yamcha walked up to her door, rose in hand. Whether he had attributed her words to the stress of living with a violent alien prince, the pressures of inheriting her father's company, or the growing fear of the androids' appearance, she wasn't sure, but he clearly had missed the point.

"Yamcha, what are you doing here?" she asked, a little confused.

"Your mother invited me over for a party. Is it still going on?"

She shook her head. "Goku and Chi-chi just left. Sorry." She moved to close the door, but Yamcha put his foot in the way.

"Well then, can I take a pretty lady on a date instead?" he asked, proffering the rose. She pushed it away, gently, shaking her head. "We broke up, Yamcha. I'm not quite ready to go on dates again, and especially not with the person I just broke up with."

He looked rather confused at that. "I thought you were just mad at me, B."

"And why would I be mad at you?"

"I don't know. Maybe you found out about me and... nothing." His sentence tapered off as he realized that she might not know about his infidelities.

"Nothing... an interesting name for someone with such interesting morals."

Crap baskets! She knew, and judging from her all-too-nice tone of voice, she was beyond furious that he had tried to cover it up.

Embarrassed by her little slip in self-control with the Saiyan prince, she had tried not to confront Yamcha about his cheating. When he let it slip however, she couldn't hold back. "Tell me, Yamcha. Is she pretty?"

He shook his head, backing off a few steps when hit by her intense stare.

"Blonde, right? That's your usual type." He took a few more steps.

"Is she smart, or does she need help to tie her shoes like most of the other bimbos you've been with?" Her tears started to flow, stemming from grief and from rage.

"Was I not good enough for you?"

He tried to grab her hand in a gesture of comfort, but she turned away from him. He sighed, saying, " I realized my mistakes, Bulma. You're smart, no, brilliant. You're funny. You saved me back in the desert all those years ago. Can we go back to the way things were?"

"When, Yamcha? Before you got yourself killed? We were messed up back then."

Yamcha may not have been the Earth's most powerful defender, but he still had his pride, and Bulma had just attacked it. "Woah... wait, wait. I did not 'get myself killed'. Your pet alien had me killed."

Ignoring the 'pet alien' comment, she shot back. "You shouldn't have picked a fight you knew you couldn't win. You were standing between Vegeta and his only way to defeat Frieza. What did you expect?"

"Maybe I expected you to be grateful. I was trying to save the planet."

"Goku died in the fight with Radditz, and Piccolo lost an arm. Sure he regrew it, but last time I checked, you aren't a Namekkian. Then you charge in to try and beat not one, but two opponents stronger than him. Think of the consequences of your actions! You may have died 'honorably', whatever that means, but you died needlessly. You left me here without you."

He stared in disbelief. "I just don't get it, Bulma. I tried to stop that monster and his minion from destroying the planet, and somehow I'm the bad guy."

"You're not the bad guy, just a real moron sometimes."

"What was I supposed to do? Watch that creep annihilate another city looking for the Dragon Balls?"

"Yes, Yamcha. People who can't win fights have to be smart enough to avoid them. You tried to stop him, and you did, in fact, get yourself killed. I know technically Vegeta ordered Nappa to kill you. I don't condone his actions. They were awful, but he had a good reason. Besides, he has changed so much since Frieza died. He's not the same person."

"Tigers don't change their stripes, Bulma. For a genius, you can be so dense sometimes."

They both turned as they heard a noise from in the house. Their bickering had awoken the very subject of their argument. Vegeta stood in the doorway, not an arm's length from Bulma, wearing his default cocky expression. "If I were the same person, weakling, you would be dead and I would be laughing."

Yamcha frowned. This. This is what she had sided with over him.

"Well if it isn't Mr. Murderer himself? Looking for the blood of more innocents to feast on?"

Bulma was appalled. "Yamcha!" she admonished. "What is wrong with you?"

"No. What is wrong with you? Do you not care that he has killed millions of people, exterminated whole races? You just welcome him into your home and feed him like some stray puppy. He's not a puppy, Bulma. You stop feeding him and he'll rip you to shreds."

Bulma had often wondered if Vegeta put up with her quips only because he needed her technology to train. Would he just kill her off-hand the moment she had outlived her usefulness? Yamcha was digging into her mental wounds, and he knew it. She took a deep breath and reminded herself of everything she knew about the prince. Sure, he was arrogant, callous, rude, satirical, and so many other things, but he had also helped defeat Frieza. He was protecting them from the androids, though out of his drive to fight or the goodness of his heart she wasn't sure. Fine. She her logic was on shaky ground. But she was still alive. Her family was unharmed. Her friends were safe. Her planet was intact. Vegeta couldn't be all bad, could he? He could simply blow up the planet and not worry about the androids. Goku couldn't always be there to stop him. She caught Yamcha staring, wondering why she'd stopped arguing.

"Yamcha, Vegeta has nothing to do with what happens between us. I don't see why you brought him up. He is my problem, not yours."

"You hypocrite!" he shouted. "You tell me that I don't consider the impact of my actions on others, then you do the same thing. His presence threatens everyone you know."

Vegeta didn't give her time to respond. He stepped between the heiress and her former mate. "I suggest you leave, unless you actually want your presence to be threatened."

"I trained with King Kai the whole time you were blundering about on Namek. I worked myself to death while you waited around for the Namekkians to leave. I've pushed myself to the limit ever since I died. You don't scare me."

Vegeta laughed darkly. "Is that a challenge, human?"

"Damn right it is."

Blood dripped from Bulma's hands where her nails had punctured her palms as she made fists of rage. She had seen her friends die time and again. Their deaths flashed before her eyes as they had done before in so many of her nightmares. It was bad enough when some unbelievable evil crushed everyone she cared about. She couldn't let two people who meant so much to her destroy each other. Well, she couldn't let the potential savior of the Earth beat the living daylights out of someone she had once loved. Her left hand positioned itself on Vegeta's chest, her right on Yamcha's. "I refuse to let you two kill each other. Control yourselves!" she demanded. Vegeta brushed her hand off with no more effort than it took to squash a fly, quivering with battle lust. Yamcha simply stepped around her, dropping into a combat stance. "Shall we take this somewhere less... distracting?" he asked his opponent. "Gladly," Vegeta replied, lifting a few inches off the ground. The scar-faced ex-bandit replied in kind. "The backyard?" he offered.

Bulma couldn't take it anymore. She had seen Yamcha's rage eating at him ever since his humiliating defeat. He had trained to beat Vegeta ever since. She admitted that he was beyond the point of control. Vegeta, on the other hand, always had impeccable control. She had hoped he was beyond this kind of needlessly violent behavior.

"Vegeta, please," she begged, eyes imploring him. "Stop this." Against those bright blue eyes, the Prince of all Saiyans found himself powerless. To his own disbelief, he dropped back to the ground. "You are beneath me, weakling," he scoffed. "Consider this an act of mercy." A part of him wanted to beat the living daylights out of the puny human, yet another part told him that to do so in front of the woman was the height of foolishness. He felt himself walk back inside, letting the human call insults after him.

"That's right, you alien scum. Just run away. I'll kick your ass any day of the week. All you have to do is ask."

Bulma punched Yamcha, right in the jaw. "You ass!" she screamed, self-control forgotten. "Why would you provoke him like that? He could crush you with one hand tied behind his back!"

"Maybe you're right Bulma. I couldn't win that fight, but I would have given it my all. There is no shame in losing like that."

"I don't give a rat's ass whether you win or lose, Yamcha. Can't you see that? Think about me. Think about our friends. I was a wreck after you died, and so were they. You charged in without a thought beyond protecting your stupid ego. I'm done with you. Get out of here." She pointed to the street.

"Fine. I came here trying to save our relationship, but now I realize I was being an idiot. We haven't had a good relationship in years. Good bye, Bulma. I'll see you when the androids show up."

His last sentence got to her. All her talk about not dying uselessly, and he still planned to fight them. She would have to watch him die again, this time without the Dragon Balls to bring him back. She slammed the door in his face. He knew he was just throwing his life away. Again. He knew he was abandoning her. Again.