…

'I can't stay here any longer, or Frieza will send someone stronger next time. I would have lost even if Bonyu had an elite fighter close by during our fight. Because that fighter would have been a distraction.' Yamcha thought, putting on a brand-new martial arts uniform. He had created a bunch of them with Magic Materialization a couple of years back and had them in his inventory. 

 

He formed a barrier around himself and flew at the sky. 

 

Squardo was going to die. Yamcha knew that. What he didn’t know was whether the King truly wanted to die with his people or simply didn't have enough money to buy a planet with enough resources for his race to survive.

 

But what the internal affairs of his new friend were, he didn’t care that much. As a friend, Yamcha would help him as much as he could. 

 

Charging at the peak of the sky, where the air started getting thinner and gravity stopped having a pull on him. He was in space without needing a spaceship, as there was enough oxygen in the barrier around him. 

 

Flying further, almost to the next planet over, he got a better look at Frieza Force's countless spaceships. Millions of soldiers were on them.  

 

'Solid Swimming'

 

Yamcha's arms sank through the barrier, and he was simultaneously met with the strange sensation of space, which was hot and cold. 

 

'Exploding Wolf Fist!'

 

Hundreds, thousands of wolves formed out of the Ki and Magic. Back in the day, he thought every wolf made from Ki took too much energy to create. He had grown a lot since then. Even with thousands of wolves, he didn’t feel too tired.

 

The created beasts flew into space like a horde of mad dogs chasing cars. The cars, in this case, were Frieza's spaceships. 

 

The wolves chased like mad dogs and exploded on impact, which opened the ships to space. All kinds of aliens flew out and suffocated. 

 

Some space crafts activated their engines to fly off, but Yamcha had put a lot of power into his creations. They had already latched onto their targets and started exploding. 

 

For a second, the dark space around him lit up. Every spaceship in the vicinity detonated, lighting everything in his sight on a beautiful purple flame. 

 

After taking care of any survivors, Yamcha flew back to the planet and met up with Squardo. The king looked calm and had a small smile on his face. "Seems like you were stronger than I thought."

 

Yamcha stared at him. "Still not strong enough to help you much more."

 

Squardo looked visibly disappointed at that. But Yamcha knew he had to draw the line and get out of there as soon as possible. 

 

"Is there really no hope? With how strong-"

 

Before Squardo could speak anymore, Yamcha offered his hand, which silenced the old king. They shook hands. Squardo looked down as Yamcha walked away.

 

After quite a bit of distance, he took out the old-style attack pod he had come in and set off again. 

 

He will have to spend another month cramped in here until he reaches the place where Bulma was at. By then, she should have also finished the Gravity Machine. 

***

 

Bulma wasn’t sure she was useful. That thought was running through her mind recently as she looked at the cameras showing Yamcha training. 

 

It had been a month since he returned from his mission, and all his days were spent training. She wasn’t sure how much time he spent sleeping, but she hadn’t seen him sleep in a while. Even the cameras showed that. 

 

‘Hell, I am not sure when he even eats!’ Bulma thought. Laying her head down on the desk of the monitors. The power level reader she had installed recently showed Yamcha’s was 100,478. She didn’t know how good that was, though she didn’t know anyone else with that power level. Well, she didn’t know a lot of aliens, so that didn’t hold much weight. 

 

Still, Bulma didn't think she needed new friends, as she had a lot of extracurricular activities to do.

 

She had initially put the cameras there to see some sexy Yamcha with sweat running down his abs. Not seeing him torture himself. But there were times when he was warming up… Yum!

 

Bulma shook her head. 'No, no, he can't know about the secret cameras, or he will think of me as a weirdo!' 

 

It wasn't like she didn't see Yamcha's naked body. She does every night, but by now, she had a taste for secretly spying on him without his knowledge. 

 

There was a certain excitement to it. She had never tried any kind of drugs, but Bulma imagined this was what addiction felt like. The internal tingling sensation of wanting something bad that made you feel good. 

 

Yamcha would leave her if he found out about her dirty pleasure. 

 

Suddenly she heard footsteps from the hallway. 

 

It was Yamcha!

 

 Bulma had been so lost in her thoughts she hadn't seen him get out of the training chamber. She pressed a button on the side of the desk, and the camera views all changed to the normal camera around their new home. 

 

"You must really like looking at the security cameras," Yamcha came in, wearing a new uniform with darker colors and tight fitting. He wiped his wet hair with a towel. 

 

"I just want you to be safe when training," Bulma answered without thinking much about the lies that came out of her mouth. Her lie sounded half-assed, so she added. “After all, 

 

'First spying, and now lying to him.' Bulma felt like an arrow had pierced her heart when she came to the realization of what she had been doing. How low would she go? When Yamcha was building his island, she hadn’t spied on him at all, and she had thought her addition was recovering. Only to return back with vengeance. 

 

‘Being tied up in space, in such close quarters, would do that to any woman.’ She tried reassuring herself. 

 

"Well, the gravity training is starting to produce diminishing results. By my estimates, even at one hundred and fifty times gravity, I will only increase my power level by a couple hundred every week." Yamcha explained. "So I'm thinking of learning how to use my new muscles. Now that I'm out of the gravity machine, it feels like I could fly with one jump."

 

"Are you going to get a new Mercenary Job?" She asked, hiding the sadness she felt. With Yamcha not here, she couldn't sp- She would be lonely…

 

Though Bulma always told Yamcha, she was studying and learning the new alien technology. To try and impress him with how hard she was working. In reality, she had learned everything in one week and even improved a couple of alien gadgets. 

 

Every time Yamcha thought she was working hard, she was actually just spying on him 99.9% of the time. Her days kind of revolved around her perving on him. Oh God, she sounded like a creep when she thought about it that way. 

 

‘But I’m not a creep. Cute girls like me can’t be creeps.’

 

Yamcha looked her in the eyes for an unnaturally long time as if he was reading something. Bulma wondered what could be going on inside that mind of his? 

 

He was sometimes very hard to read. She found that attractive, and it's one of the top 18th reasons she liked spying on him. But she also wanted to know what he was sometimes thinking. 

 

"No, I won't be taking a new job. We already have enough money. Instead, we will go around and explore some interesting planets," his eyes lit up. "The planet is called Cereal, and it has a history of Namekians living there and natives. Then its population was cleared out by the Saiyans, and now the Sugorians lived there. The Sugarians bought the planet from Frieza."

 

Bulma didn't know much about the universe, and if it weren’t for Yamcha she wouldn't care either. But since he was excited, she was too. 

 

"Though we will have to destroy this gravity machine. Can't keep this thing around forever." Yamcha's mood sulled when he finished his speech.

They walked into the yard, and Yamcha pointed his hand at the gravity machine. His face was scrunched up, and he seemed almost about to cry. 

 

Bulma believed she might have seen this wrong. Who would cry over some machine?

 

"Are you sure we can't bring it in a capsule with us?" He asked.

 

She shook her head. Bulma wasn’t sure why Yamcha liked gravity machines. Suddenly, she couldn’t help but ask. “Do you like me because I am your gravity machine creator or because I am me?”

 

“Both,” Yamcha answered while shooting a beam and obliterating it to the atomic level. The explosion was loud and made enough of a blast to produce a strong wind enough to push her hair back. The grass below, where the gravity machine had stood, wasn't scorched. “You like me because I’m strong, handsome, loving, cool, can shoot beams, rich, funny, and of course, my greatest quality, I am very humble. Does that make you vain for liking me because of that?”

 

“...”

 

“I know that sounds arrogant,” he smiled. “But if you want other people to like you, then you have to like yourself first. And I love myself.” 

 

“We still have another gravity machine on the ship,” Bulma tried to reassure him. She was not ready to get into a philosophical conversation with him. 

 

“Yeah, but that one can only go up to a hundred times gravity,” Yamcha and her walked away. “Are you sure you can’t build a stronger gravity machine there? Maybe three hundred times in space.”

 

"No, I haven't figured out how to stop it from crashing when I do that," Bulma oversimplified. She was afraid of an equipment part falling. Even something as small as a rock would pierce through the ship in a gravity above one hundred times. 

 

********

(A/N: I have a Patreon, with 9+ chapters in advance. patreon.com/bucketofshirts)