Count Down From Ten

A New Year

Chapter Three

(Second week of January)

(Bulma's Pov)

The weeks had flown by and before long it would be February. My mother, my father and I had celebrated New years together, toasting to a brand new year. My father had complimented my lead on the military project, even going as far as hinting that maybe this would be the year that I completely take over the company. I had laughed lightly with him but joked back that he was not ready to retire just yet.

My new year has been going excellently. Then Yamcha decided to show his face on the fifth of January, flowers in hand to personally apologize to me; even though at that point I had yet to reply to any of his messages. I did not accept his flowers but I did tell him we could slowly work back into a friendship.

Vegeta had been training furiously; I took it as a compliment since he seemed to enjoy his Christmas present. So I focused most of my time preoccupied with the half-accomplished military contract and when I wasn't focused on that, I was being bothered by a certain pesky Z fighter.

Between all the chaos I still somehow managed to find time to plan the upgrades for arrogant house-guest training equipment. Normally I would spend any of my free time pampering myself. That had not been the case. I found myself using my spare time to develop a kick-ass upgrade to the gravity room. I had been waiting almost a week to install said update; Vegeta had a very cumbersome training routine, he was rarely not in the chamber. Thankfully the other morning I had woken up extra early. As I smoked my morning cigarette on my balcony cozied up in my robe I noticed the Gravity Room wasn't in use.

I stared into the empty gravity room and I argued with myself; I had been anxious for an opportunity to install these updates yet I had to accompany my father to the monthly company-board meeting this morning. I reminded myself that there was rarely a time of day for the gravity room to be free of Vegeta.

I told myself it would be a quick easy upgrade then I'd join my father at the meeting. I didn't change my clothes and I didn't even make a cup of coffee, spur of the moment I rushed down the stairs to the lab to grab the new algorithm chip. After sorting through the mess on my desk I found my object of interest and with a burst of excited energy I rushed through the halls and straight out of the back door of the kitchen.

As soon as I entered the gravity room I practically skipped over to the control panel; booting up the system to provide a decent heat source while I worked. It felt like it had been ages since I'd stepped into the room to do an upgrade; I was really starting to enjoy the tedious work. It was an easy task to pry off the bottom panel so I could install the upgraded training algorithm chip. When I finished the install I was confident in my work and I was tempted to leave but something in me wanted to run a simple systems diagnostic.

I stripped off my robe as I read through the report; as it turned out, the gravity simulator was actually short circuiting. That must have been the reason why the Prince wasn't up and at 'em yet. The gravity update was a more intricate job and I knew it would take more time; and I would have to go grab more things from the lab. As I rushed out the room I hoped my father and I would cross paths so I could inform him of my planned absence from the board meeting. I knew my father could handle meetings on his own so it shouldn't bother him.

~

Vegeta shorting out the unit came at an excellent time, it really gave me an excuse to tinker with the system. Fixing the gravity functions in the room was no easy feat; I had to completely renovate the circuitry of the simulator in order to withstand the new gravity output. As it so happened to turn out one of the gravity capacitors blew a fuse so I had to replace it, thank kami I had plenty of prefabricated pieces of the gravity room at hand. I also took it upon myself to reorganize the wiring underneath the control panel. I had spent almost 48 hours straight with the door to the gravity room closed. My fathers' espresso machine was coming in handy for the joyous occasion.