Chapter 1 – Ka-Freaking Boom

Notes: Oh god, it's got more than two chapters, oh god oh god oh god-

Also, Bulma has established a lab in the jungle now – it's three clearings over from Geta's house (because Geta's house will not survive an explosion if push comes to shove, so they changed the location from the original one they planned to use), and it's not as awesome as her lab in Capsule Corp, but it's good enough to get most of her mad sciencing done while she's out there. Raditz and Kakarrot have been on Earth for four months.

OoOoOoOoO

Raditz groaned and rubbed his head, brushing hair out of his eyes with the same motion. Making a mental note to wear his armor next time he offered to help Bulma in her lab, he looked around for the blue-haired scientist/menace, squinting a bit as he did. Everything looked… different. Bigger. The details of the far corners of the room weren't snapping into place like they normally did. And his hair kept falling in his face, which normally only happened when it was soaking wet, which it most certainly was not at this moment in time. Groaning again, he pushed himself up and looked around. To his immediate left, Yamcha was sitting up and shaking his head, his wavy hair floofed out to twice its normal size, probably from the explosion.

"Bulma?" the ex-bandit croaked, sounding as bad as Raditz felt, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," a pile of rubble shifted and the blue-haired woman appeared, a thin bubble of energy hovering an inch or two around her form. "On the plus side, the automatic ki shield seems to work! On the downside, the matter transmuter seems to have consumed itself in a fiery death ball – I'll have to account for that in the next model."

"…yeah, you do that." Yamcha coughed and stretched. "And next time you want someone to help with heavy lifting/safety, ask Geta – he's less breakable than me."

"Oh, quit whining, you'll heal," deactivating her shield, Bulma made her way over to her friends, "And, hey, we finally figured out how to make saiyan hair go flat – stick 'em in an explosion!"

"What?" the saiyan in question's hand flew to his head again. It was true – his hair was lying smooth against his scalp – the bits that weren't falling in his face, that was. It felt… odd. "This had better be temporary!"

Bulma shrugged. "No promises." She eyed him critically as the saiyan groaned. "Wow, you actually look smaller with it all flat like that."

Raditz grunted and staggered to his feet. The explosion must have thrown off his inner ear, because he could barely keep his footing as he staggered the few feet to Yamcha and offered him a hand up.

"Thanks." The other man accepted gratefully and Raditz pulled him to his feet-

-and froze.

They were staring at each other eye to eye. Which was impossible, because Raditz was a foot taller than Yamcha.

"Huh. Well. That… really should not have happened."

The two men ignored Bulma, staring at each other.

"In fact," Bulma continued, undeterred, "I wouldn't have thought that could happen."

There was a moment of silence.

"You guys… have noticed that Yamcha's grown a tail, right?"

"WHAT?!" the ex-bandit spun around, trying to get a glimpse of the aforementioned limb and only succeeded in smacking Raditz with it. Raditz yelped and grabbed the tail on instinct, whereupon Yamcha made a strangled noise and fell over. Raditz misjudged his own balance and got dragged after him.

"…and Raditz seems to have lost his. And we're going to have to get him some new pants, because those are too big for him now. Plus, I can see your butt through the tail hole."

"BULMA!" Raditz howled, blushing scarlet and pushing himself backwards off Yamcha, trying to hide his posterior with his hair and find out where his tail had gone at the same time.

"Before you guys flip out much more, I would like to point out that, in my defence, I was trying to turn regular iron into meteoric iron – there is no possible way this should have happened." Bulma looked at the expressions her companions wore and manually reactivated her shield.

"Bulma?"

All three turned to the doorway to see Geta poking his head in, eyes wide. "I heard the explosion half a mile away and I- wow. The hell happened to you two?"

"Geta! Excellent timing!" Bulma hurried over. "You're just in time to prevent a murder!"

Geta blinked. "A murder? Whose?"

"Mine." Hooking an arm around his shoulders, she steered him out the door while Yamcha was still blinking at the floor and Raditz was frozen with embarrassment. "We're going to go over to my lab at Capsule Corp, it's bigger and less blown up. Meet you two there once you've calmed down!" she called through the doorway before hopping on Geta's back. "Start flying and I'll explain on the way!"

The two men stared at the doorway for a moment, blinking.

"Well," Yamcha finally broke the silence, his voice slightly strangled, "I've always known hanging out with Bulma was dangerous. I just… never thought something like this was a possibility."

Raditz nodded, feeling slightly numb. No, not numb – muffled. Sounds were quieter, scents were barely there, and he got the distinct impression that he wasn't going to be able to see clearly for nearly as far as he usually could when they got outside. The scent was the most irksome loss at the moment, though – he couldn't even smell Yamcha, who was right next to him - it was like someone had turned his nose off. Impulsively, he leaned over and sniffed the ex-bandit, getting his nose in close to the other man's neck. There it was – very faint and slightly different, but unmistakeably there, the familiar scent. He sat back again, relieved he hadn't lost the sense entirely.

Yamcha, for his part, was staring at him, cheeks light pink and eyes large, tail twitching behind him slightly in agitation. "Uh… any particular reason for that?"

Conscious knowledge of what he had just done hit Raditz like a brick, and his cheeks, which had finally been going back to their usual hue, decided to return to their scarlet status and he swore. "Karn's second! No, I-" he buried his face in his hands, "My sense of smell, it's almost gone. Scent's important for saiyans, and- I couldn't smell you anymore. I can't now, not with you so far away. It's weird. I wanted to make sure I still could."

"Oh." Shaking his head slightly, Yamcha stood again, offering a hand to Raditz. "Come on – tighten your sash and we can probably find a spare lab coat or something for you to tie around your waist until you can get some new pants."

Raditz stood, wobbling slightly as he tried to adjust to not having a tail. He'd have thought it would be easy enough to do – he often fought with his tail wrapped around his waist, and his balance was just fine then – but apparently having the tail completely gone made a big difference. "How are you managing to stay so calm about all this?"

"I'm not," Yamcha said with apparent good cheer, though now that he admitted to it the slightly panicked glint in his eyes was more noticeable, "I'm utterly terrified on the inside, not to mention mad as hell at Bulma. But if I kill her, she can't fix us, and that would be a problem. Besides, like I said, I've always known she was dangerous to hang out with, though I'll admit I thought it was because she was going to get me killed one day, not mutated. How about you – you seem to be handling this okay?" He smiled and his tail came forward and wrapped around Raditz's wrist as he moved closer again.

The usually taller man gulped at this, but managed to keep his voice steady. "I'm fine," he said shortly, "Now let go. It's not- please let go."

"Um," Yamcha blinked, staring at his tail, "I'm not sure how I- give me a moment."

The ex-bandit closed his eyes and Raditz watched as the other man concentrated. At first, nothing happened. Then Raditz winced as the grip on his wrist tightened briefly before the tail slipped away.

Yamcha grabbed the unruly appendage, jumping a bit as he did so. "That feels… really weird. Anyway, what's up? Did I break a rule or something?"

"Yes." Raditz responded shortly, uncomfortable, and unwilling to explain further than that for once. You didn't touch other people with your tail – you just didn't, not unless they were family… or your mate. Abruptly, he turned to go dig through the rubble for the closet where Bulma kept her lab coats and other safety gear.

Surprised at Raditz's reaction, Yamcha let go of his tail, which swung behind him, apparently content to behave now that Raditz was out of range. "Okay, I'll do my best to keep it to myself, then. And, you know, keep my distance until I can control it."

"You think you'll have it that long?" Raditz didn't turn to look at the other man as he unearthed the desired article of clothing and tied it around his waist. Yamcha snorted.

"Yes. Because however it was that whatever happened did, I want to be damn sure Bulma knows exactly what she's doing when she reverses it! And that's going to take time to figure out, even for her. Come on, let's go see if she's managed to learn anything yet."

Raditz nodded and, for the first time since the explosion, checked his ki reserves. They were the same as they had been before. Tension he hadn't even realised was there flowed out of him. He'd thought, maybe- but it didn't matter. Somehow, knowing he could still fight, that he still had the power he'd worked so hard to attain, made things a little better and easier to bear. Turning back to Yamcha, he managed a faint smirk.

"It's strawberries that blue-haired menace loves, yes?"

"Yeah," Yamcha nodded, confused, "Why?"

Raditz's eyes gleamed. "I was just thinking, before we go to visit her, we should visit her kitchen. I'm a little hungry."

A grin of understanding blossomed on the ex-bandit's face. "You know, I think a good meal is the least of what she owes us at this point."

Smirking at each other, the two men walked out of the destroyed lab and took off, heading towards Capsule Corp.

OoOoOoOoO

"Well, it certainly took you long enough to get here," Bulma groused as the two long-haired men finally joined her in the lab, "I've only been getting things set up to fix all this for hou- Yams, what are you eating?"

"Jam," he responded, licking his spoon before sticking it back in the jar and scooping up more, "Geta flies faster than we do, so of course it took us longer to get here. Also, we stopped by your kitchen for a snack."

She gave him a skeptical look. "A snack."

Raditz shrugged. "We were hungry."

"Getting mad-scienced apparently does things to a guy's appetite," Yamcha leaned against a counter and had another spoonful of jam. "I don't think I've ever been this hungry before."

"Yeah? Well I don't think I've ever eaten less." Raditz glared at his stomach, then at Bulma. "Figure out what you did to us and how to fix it – this cannot be healthy for a saiyan!"

"Yeah, what did happen?"

Both men jumped as Geta popped out from behind a large machine, wearing safety goggles and a labcoat.

"Someone needs to put a bell on you," Yamcha frowned at him.

Geta brightened up. "Bulma tried that, once!"

"Oh?" Yamcha turned to her, "How'd that work out?"

"It didn't," Bulma glared at the short saiyan.

"Why not?"

" 'cause I took it off again." Geta responded cheerfully, "I'm honestly a little surprised that it didn't occur to her that I'd do that."

"I thought you'd have the courtesy to leave it on!"

"Are you crazy?" he gave her a disbelieving look, "It felt like it was going to make my ears bleed!"

"How would you have known, you left it on for all of two minutes!"

"More than long enough to confirm my suspicions! Anyway," pushing his goggles up, he looked between the two other men, "What happened? Bulma has refused to tell me anything."

"Her newest foray into meddling with the natural laws blew up, and while she was protected by that shielding device she created, we weren't," Raditz glowered at the scientist in question, who simply flipped her hair, unphased.

"Her latest- you mean the 'Suck It, Alchemy' ray?"

Yamcha snorted at the name, but Raditz nodded.

"HA!" Geta spun to face Bulma, one finger pointing triumphantly, "You owe me twenty zeni, I told you that thing was calibrated wrong!"

"Oh, forgive me for doubting the word of a dinosaur butcher with no formal education." Bulma rolled her eyes and went to take a hair each from Raditz and Yamcha, along with a flake of skin.

"And coconut salesman," Geta hopped up to perch on the counter near Yamcha, tail swinging cheerfully behind him under his lab coat, "They are a big source of my income. And I'm good at math – math's easy to learn from books! If we were talking about history, now, that's different – there's just so much of it, and everyone disagrees about it, so it gets tricky. Anyway, that's the physical alterations explained. How come you guys smell like strawberries?"

Bulma halted in her placement of the slides the skin flakes were on into the machine, having already set the hairs processing. "What?"

"Strawberries," Geta repeated, swinging his legs, "They both smell like strawberries."

"I- uh- shit." Bulma blinked, then got a concerned look on her face. "I don't know. I- hopefully it's not-" she stopped as Yamcha and Raditz started snickering.

"I told you, we had a snack." Yamcha smirked and turned his jam jar so she could see the label. Or, more specifically, the little picture of strawberries on the label. "By the way, that strawberry pie your mom makes? Still delicious."

"So were the fresh strawberries," Raditz added.

"And I don't usually eat jam out of a jar, but I'll admit, it's kinda growing on me."

Geta laughed and Bulma fumed for a moment, then sighed. "This is revenge for mutating you, isn't it? Eating all my favorite foods."

"Ohhh~ yes." Yamcha nodded.

"Part of it," Raditz elaborated, "You didn't have as much strawberry stuff as we thought you would, and we were hungry."

"I guess I deserved that," the blue-haired scientist sulked, "But I reserve the right to be grumpy about it anyway – I was looking forward to that pie!"

"Fair enough. What's the machine doing, anyway?" Yamcha came to look over her shoulder at the computer screen.

"It's examining your DNA," Bulma explained, snatching for the jam jar and missing, "Keep that away from the console, would you? Anyway, I'm running a four-way comparison between your and Raditz's DNA as it is now and how it was about a month ago to check for anomalies, similarities, stuff like that. Once I know what's changed and to what extent, I can figure out what needs to be done to fix it."

"That sounds reasonab- wait a moment," Yamcha narrowed his eyes at her, "Why did you just happen to have our old DNA lying around to use for this?"

Bulma gave his a distinctly unimpressed look. "In case of situations like this, obviously. Also to compare saiyan DNA to human to see the differences, and to compare yours to other humans', Yams, to see if everyone has the potential to obtain abilities like yours or if you're some sort of freak. Really, the better question would be why wouldn't I have your DNA lying around, not to mention why it took me so long to think to acquire some! I mean, just think – if I'd done this earlier, we'd have found out Geta was an alien well over a year ago!"

The three males considered each other and Bulma for a moment. By some silent consensus it was Yamcha who spoke.

"You're not normal, Bulma."

"Of course I'm not," Bulma tossed her hair, "I'm superior! Now quit bothering me, I need to focus on these readings."

There was quiet for a few moments, aside from the sound of Bulma typing and Yamcha's spoon scraping the bottom of the jar. Licking the spoon off, he peered into the jar in disappointment, then set the empty vessel down and turned to Geta to distract himself from his stomach, which was demanding more food in spite of having already been fed more than he usually ate in two meals.

"So, what's with the scientist clothes? You helping Bulma out or did she just decide to dress you up?"

Geta shrugged. "I'm figuring out how to build engines – all Raditz and Bulma's conspiring over the Frag got me curious – and Bulma said that if I'm going to do work in her lab, I have to dress for it."

"Engine?" Raditz, who had been content to let the Earthlings do the talking while trying in vain to get his newly-floppy hair to stay out of his eyes, now took an interest in the conversation. "What kind?"

"An old motorbike one – come see!" Geta vaulted off the counter and led them to where he'd been working, hands in his pockets. On a table further into the lab lay a mostly disassembled motor.

"So, Bulma's teaching you about mechanics?" Yamcha asked. He knew a little about machines – enough to keep his Jet Squirrel running – but his interests really ran more towards martial arts.

"I'm teaching myself, she's just letting me work here for now, when I want to." He wrinkled his nose, "Actually, she says I have to work on it here if I want her help – get me more used to being in the city and around unfamiliar ki signatures."

"Smart woman," Yamcha grinned and looked at the table again. "So… you're just taking it apart to see how it works, I guess?"

"Yeah!" pulling his goggles back down (because, ridiculous levels of ki or not, getting squirted in the eye with motor oil was always an unpleasant experience), he twisted a bolt off with his fingers.

Raditz leaned forward to look at the engine, holding his hair out of his face. "That's how I learned, too – on the go, with the Frag's repairs."

"You learned how to repair a spaceship you were flying at the time by taking it apart?" Yamcha gaped at him.

Raditz grinned. "More like desperately reverse-engineering the exploded bits while Kakarrot searched for a manual. That was a fun day."

"You didn't know where it was?!"

The saiyan shrugged, then growled as his hair slipped and fell in his face again. It was possibly the most pitiful growl of his life. "I was nine at the time." reaching behind him, he tore off a strip of lab coat and used it as a make-shift bandana to pull his hair back. Stupid bangs – they hadn't been this obnoxious when he was a brat! Then again, they also hadn't been this floppy… "And I'd been trained as a warrior. It never occurred to me that you needed to do anything to ships other than put fuel in them from time to time."

"Oh." The ex-bandit rubbed his neck. "I guess that was pretty impressive, then."

Raditz blinked at the newly-tailed human, still unused to praise. "Uh, yeah. It was." Cheeks pink, he turned back to the engine, where Geta had paused in his work to look at him.

"Wait a moment, if you were nine when all that happened, that means Kakarrot was only one!"

"Yeah. So?"

"You had a one-year-old looking for the maintenance manual for a spaceship?! How was that any help at all?!"

Raditz shrugged. "Well, he couldn't read yet, but he could recognise patterns and knew what data discs looked like. I wrote 'engine' on his arm with grease and sent him to find a disc with a label that looked like that."

The other males were staring at him at this point. "And he could do that?"

"Oh course he could," Raditz gave them an odd look. "Why, isn't that how human babies work?"

"Human babies can't even talk until they're a bit past a year old, and have maybe begun to master walking by then. You can't send them on errands to find data discs or anything!"

Yamcha and Raditz both stared at Geta. Yamcha spoke. "How do you know that?"

The short saiyan shrugged. "There was a book on child development in the village library."

Raditz snorted. "Saiyan babies can move freely within a few weeks of birth, and develop conscious thought very quickly. I've heard some saiyans remembered as far back as the day after they were born."

"That's… really not normal." Yamcha said.

"It's normal for saiyans."

"…I'm siding with Yamcha on this one, actually."

"You're not normal for a saiyan, either," Raditz groaned at Geta's comment.

"Raditz, be fair," Yamcha chided, "Geta's not normal for anyone."

"…I'm not going to argue with you on that."

OoOoOoOoO

Those of you who have read my fic Captured may remember me saying how sometimes I just really want Yamcha to have a tail.

…

…yeah, that wasn't the first time… _

Saiyan senses are more acute than human ones, which is why everything looks strange to Raditz – his senses have been dulled. As a kid, Goku says that his nose is as sharp as a dog's, and, given how sharp dogs' noses are, I tend to picture saiyans as relying on scent nearly as much as they do on their eyes, far more than humans do. For Raditz, the sudden loss of that is extremely disorienting, far more so than the lessening of his other senses – like if you suddenly could barely see or hear. I like playing with the differences between saiyans and humans – the small ones as well as the large ones.

Also, shy!Raditz is fun to play with – he's usually completely shameless in my fics, it's fun getting him all flustered and cute like this.

Geta likes science-y stuff, remember? He hangs out with Bulma sometimes – generally he has no idea what she's doing for most of it, but he's been getting better at math lately as a result of his exposure to her, and can at least check over some of her calculations for numerical correctness.

Bulma is so much fun to write. I almost always enjoy writing her – she's so confident and sassy and smart, and she can be such a shit at times, it's great. And yup, in case you didn't catch it, Bulma's still working on the Budokai stage – or at least trying to. ;) And Silf on AO3 – remember that comment of yours on Broken Nest about DNA samples? Yeah, you totally called it. ^^