…

"Close your eyes!" Yamcha yelled at Bulma as the asteroids came toward them. He put his arm around her and created a ten-layered spherical barrier around their bodies. 

 

Boom! Boom! Boom!...

 

Like drums, the asteroids kept repeatedly slamming against his shield, so much so that he was worried they would break this one, too. 

 

"N -No, we're gonna die in space," Bulma started crying.

 

“You really underestimate my powers, woman,” he said casually. Yamcha felt nervous, but he hid it. Endless darkness and nothingness surrounded him in the middle of nowhere space. But despite that, he tried keeping a cool head and got an idea. He used solid swimming on his shield, something he hadn't tried before. 

 

‘Yes!’ He explained triumphantly in his heart when he saw his arm go through the shield. His arm scorched and burned as he kept shooting planet-destroying Ki Blasts at the asteroids. 

 

The asteroids were being eliminated one by one, and he would take a Senzu Bean when his Ki dropped below half. Also, his arm was burning in space, so his HP was dropping too. 

 

The Ki Waves he shot also acted as propulsion and pushed them away from the center of the asteroid shower. 

 

They had to fly with the asteroid shown in space as Yamcha kept shooting more beams at the incoming asteroids and exploded the space rocks, which pushed their bodies even more in front of the asteroid field. 

 

"Yamcha! Behind us! A planet!" Bulma noticed, but he didn't have the leisure to turn around. 

 

 "Okay," he nodded to show his confirmation. Yamcha hoped in his heart he wasn’t having a hallucination or they would both end up dead.

 

"Though it seems like this was the plant remnants of the enemy ship that crashed. Do you think it's a good idea to go there?" Bulma seemed off-put to go there. 

 

Yamcha had a different view of things. "If not there, then where would we even go?"

 

Bulma remembered her reality, and what situation they were in, and her eyes shook. 

 

The planet they were landing on looked a reddish brown color. Even from up here, Yamcha could see a planet made of bronze-colored rocks.

…

It took a little more than an hour for them to crash land on the planet together with the meteor shower. Which caused many explosions around them, and if it wasn’t for the Barrier Magic, Bulma would have died. 

 

Yamcha wanted to kiss his past self for learning Magic from Baba. 

 

But he quickly got to the matter at hand, enemy elimination, before they fester. "We should look around for any leftover Frieza forces."

 

After saying that, he cast a spell on Bulma that formed a translucent barrier around her while he walked around and breathed in the planet's polluted air. 

 

With a thought, he controlled the barrier around Bulma, and they both flew side by side as the meteors stopped plunging. When they arrived at Frieza Force's spacecraft, what greeted them was just a huge wreckage with corpses, nothing more than smudges lying around.

 

Yamcha carefully analyzed the surroundings to check for anyone alive and used Ki Sense. 

 

No one was around. They had all died. That was anticlimactic, Yamcha thought. But this was how things were most of the time. No enemy would miraculously survive this onslaught of meteors unless they were much stronger than him. Yamcha had the Magic Barriers to close that gap a little, and it was good for defense, but others at his level don’t have the advantage of Barrier Magic. 

"Seems like we crashed on a tiny planet with no life," Bulma took out her small phone. Though it looked a little clunky, it had the power of a strong computer. "Okay, maybe not a planet. It might be just a big space rock. The spaceship parts from the other guys are foreign, and most core components were destroyed."

 

"Aren't all planets just big space rocks? Also, you have all of Kami’s ship database. Does this space rock have a name?"

 

“No,” Bulma huffed and got in her teacher mode. "Also, all planets must do three things to be considered a planet: It must orbit a star. It must be big enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape. It must be big enough…" 

 

Yamcha didn't care. He just wanted to keep Bulma's mind off their despairing situation. A foreign planet with seemingly no life or water, in the middle of nowhere, and their ship was destroyed. 

 

Suddenly, Yamcha stopped as he remembered something and turned toward Bulma with a smug look on his face. "Remember when I mentioned having spare spaceship parts to build a new spaceship, and you ridiculed me? Saying something like, I quote: You're stupid. I'm Bulma, the most intelligent woman on earth, muahahaha!" 

 

"That's not what happened exactly."

 

"Anyways," Yamcha waved her off as the smile on his face grew wider. "I don't want to be the guy who says: I told you so… but-"

 

"That would take like a bucket of capsules to carry. They were probably in our ship and crashed," Bulma reasoned. "Capsules aren't the most durable objects around."

 

She looked down, and her mood fell. Bulma didn't know about the inventory, so her assumption was logical. Logical didn’t make it true, though. 

 

Yamcha put his hands under his shirt to access his inventory and pulled out dozens and dozens of capsules. 

 

When she saw him taking out capsules, Bulma's eyes widened like saucers. "You always kept them there? But I didn't feel anything when we were so close as asteroids crashed on us!"

 

Yamcha sighed in mock disappointment and shook his head. "Bulma, dear, what did I say about questioning things?"

 

"To not do it?" She tilted her head in genuine confusion.

 

"Exactly," Yamcha nodded. "Like how I am a reincarnated individual where this universe is just fiction. So I know the future."

"Wow, at least come up with something more believable as a backstory," Bulma played along as, despite all Yamcha's teasing, she still had a smile on her face. 

 

Hope, when on the brink of despair, was the best mood fixer out there. Even Yamcha's teasing couldn't wipe away her smile. 

 

Seeing that his comments had no effect, he decided to get serious. "How long will it take you to build another spaceship?"

 

"About two months," Bulma answered. 

 

"Damn, that's slow." This time, he didn't even mean it as an insult, and Bulma understood that.

 

"Well, I don't have the tools I did in my dad's lab." She seemed to think about something, and her face paled. "Wait, there's no water or life on this planet! How will we survive in-"

 

She stopped when she saw Yamcha's face. If the smile could get any wider, it would rip his face in half. "Remember who rolled her eyes when I asked about the food situation?"

 

"Oh God, here we go," she sighed.

 

"If you call me Kami Emperor Yamcha, I might share my food with you."

 

"You would really let your girlfriend starve over this?"

 

Yamcha shakes his finger. "Tut, tut, dear. The question is: are you willing to let yourself starve? Are some words so heavy that you would rather die of starvation?"

 

She frowned and didn't look pleased with him. But Yamcha didn't mind. If someone tried pleasing everyone, he would die as the most liked, unhappiest man.

 

Still, he took out a dozen more capsules from 

 

Bulma stopped worrying about things she had no control over and instead concentrated on what she should do.

 

While she was building the spaceship, Yamcha went around looking for big rocks so he could build a shelter for the both of them. Bulma was the one who needed to sleep, but with her doing all this work… he suddenly remembered that he had a capsule for a house. 

 

‘I knew being paranoid about this would one day pay off.’

***

 

Spending the first day on an uninhabited planet was easier than Bulma had thought it would be. When she came to look for Yamcha, she saw… a medieval castle? And Yamcha waved at her from atop one tower.

 

Just how many capsules did Yamcha have? She wondered. But she didn't ask him such a question. Bulma would never admit it outwardly, but she knew Yamcha's cautiousness had saved them both. If it hadn't been for the capsules, they would have had a 0% chance of getting out of here. They would’ve only waited for their slow death by then.

 

Yamcha's playful and teasing words also kept her mind away from the despair of their reality. She wondered how he could always keep such a happy nature even in these dire circumstances. After all, even having the parts she needed didn't mean she could magically build a spaceship on a random planet.

 

She only had one chance to try because if it exploded mid-air, then they were done. Whether or not the explosion would kill them wouldn't matter at that point.

 

'From today onward, I promise to be prepared. I was frivolous enough to think Yamcha was just over-preparing for nothing.' Bulma considered. 

 

As he jumped from the castle walls and into the pool, Yamcha called out. "Hey, Bulma!" 

 

At least one of them was having the time of his life. 

 

She smiled at the sight and shook her head. Ironically, she would cry in a corner right now if it weren't for his teasing. 

…

 

Two weeks passed, and ‌they were ahead of schedule as Yamcha helped her do the heavy lifting. 

 

As they were working another day, something in the sky shined, and Bulma noticed it was something that looked like Goku's pod.

 

"An attack pod!" Yamcha explained, a bead of sweat rolling down his face. 

 

Attack pod, Bulma couldn't help but think that the name quite suited the miniature spaceship. 

*********

A/N: Everyone needs a friend who doesn't worry about anything. There’s always that one friend in the group who’s like that.