Chapter Text
The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. (Wikipedia)
The Briefs equation proves that aliens are already here. In the guest room. Moping about.
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” - Neil Gaiman (The Kindly Ones)
“Fire. Again,” 18 said, and how she managed to sound like she was yawning Bulma wasn’t sure, because she didn’t program that particular function into the AI. “You should probably evacuate now.”
Bulma coughed into her elbow, eyes and lungs burning, and bumped along towards the lab doors. They opened with a quiet whoosh and all at once, she could breathe again. “Oh, you think? Thank you so much, 18.” Bulma pressed her back against the hallway wall, focused on calming her heart. Smoke-related tears clung to her eyelashes and she wiped them away. The lab doors slid closed and locked in place. Seconds later the sprinklers activated, and she watched as weeks of hard work got drenched just beyond her reach.
Bulma knocked the back of her head against the wall, glared up at the fluorescent lighting until her smoke burned eyes teared up again. “Damn it.”
“17 is requesting you go to med-bay.”
Bulma huffed. “17 can suck it. I’ve got to review the lab footage and see what went wrong. I was so close!”
“Uh huh.”
Bulma glared at the long, skinny bulb. 18 was able to occupy any space of Capsule Corp she wanted, and typically liked to be everywhere at once, but whenever Bulma wanted to glare at her, she glared at the ceiling.
Like 18 was God or something.
Not that God lived in the ceiling of Capsule Corp either.
Bulma pushed her bangs off her face and left her cool palm on her clammy forehead. Maybe she should go to the med bay. “No,” she said, as much to herself as to her omnipresent AI companion. “I’ve got work to do. Tell 17 I’ll see him if I die tonight from smoke inhalation.”
“He’ll be thrilled.”
She pulled her smartphone out of her pocket and pulled up the footage, rewinding it to that morning. Ah, she’d been a bright-eyed beauty only eight hours ago, ready to conquer the world and finally — finally! — make a dent in her to-do list. All she’d done was set herself back. Bulma was so distracted by footage of herself soldering away and singing off-key to Taylor Swift that she walked nose first into a wall.
Bulma fell flat on her ass, a startled cry wrenching from her throat, and she covered her throbbing nose with her hand. Why was there a wall in the middle of her office? And why was it…so muscular?
“A man,” Bulma said, stupidly. She stared up at the man in question. He was an average height, though his jet black hair stood straight up in jagged points, almost in the shape of a flame burning in a fireplace. His back was to her, obviously, as that was she walked straight into. But he was looking at her over his shoulder, his dark eyebrows furrowed and his even darker eyes narrowed. He was kinda cute, in an albeit menacing way. And jacked up. Damn, his muscles had muscles. And yet he was still so lean? What was his secret? Steroids, she'd bet anything.
Bulma dropped her hand and wiggled her nose. Still attached.
“18?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a man in my office.”
“Yes.”
Bulma sniffed, touched her nostrils. She looked at her finger, frowned when she didn’t see any blood. It felt like it was bleeding. “Why is there a man in my office?” To the man in question, she lifted her face. “Is my nose bleeding?”
The man arched one of those dark eyebrows but did drop his gaze to her nose. “No.”
“I let him in,” 18 said.
Bulma touched her nostril again. Once more, she found no blood on her fingertips.
“I don’t understand. Do you have an appointment?” She pulled herself to standing. The man turned around to face her, squaring his shoulders and crossing his arms over his chest. He was only a bit taller than her, not counting the hair. Bulma opened up the calendar on her phone. “You definitely do not have an appointment.”
“I told you, I let him in,” 18 said.
“But why did you let him in? To my office.” Bulma glared at the ceiling again. “My office, 18.”
18 said, “I like the cut of his jib.”
Bulma pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. 18 had been watching historical romances again. She’d found a way around the restriction Bulma had set up. Again. With a sigh, Bulma walked to her desk “So, what’s the deal?”
“Deal?” The man asked, the intense furrow of his brow never ceasing.
“You know.” She waved a hand. “What do you want from me?”
The corners of his lips tugged in a deep frown. “I want nothing from you.”
“Oh, excellent.” Bulma plopped down in her seat, the sudden momentum rolling it backward. “You can leave then. Have a nice life!”
“No.”
Bulma scooted the chair to the desk with several small, graceless drags of her sneakered feet against the hardwood floor. “No? You don’t want to have a nice life? Fine, have a terrible one, then. See if I care.”
“Woman, you need to shut up and listen to me. Your life depends on it.”
Her mouth fell open. Bulma licked her lips and forced them into a smile. Sharp and razor-thin. “It’s Dr. Briefs, not woman.” She tapped open the timer app on her phone. “You have thirty seconds. Go.”
“Your life is in grave danger. It is imperative that you allow me to protect you. If you do not, you will be killed.”
Bulma glanced at the timer. 7.7 seconds. Impressive. Concise. Batshit insane, of course, but impressive nonetheless.
“By what though? What’s gonna kill me? I mean, I get the random DM from some weird dude about how he wants to eat my hair like fettuccini and dance around in my panties, but.” She shrugged. “That’s life in this day in age.”
The man stared at her without blinking. His eyes were so dark she couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. “You’re not safe.” There was something in his tone of voice that burrowed into her ears and dug its way inside her chest. Conviction, bordering on fear.
She coughed to chase the feeling away, but it didn’t work. “I designed the security here at Capsule Corp. I can guarantee you, I’m perfectly safe. Thank you so much for your concern though. You leave the same way you came in. Have a great day!”
He made a noise in the back of his throat that was almost like a growl. Except, it couldn’t have been a growl. Because what sort of grown man growls?
“You’re not listening.”
“And you’re not saying anything, so, here we are.” Bulma spread her arms wide, the back of her hand knocking into her container filled with pens. It went over the edge of the desk, but before she could even blink, the man caught it in midair.
He placed it back on her desk, and she gave him a nod of thanks.
“Look,” she said, “if 18 likes you, you’re probably not terrible. But you are weird.”
His top lip curled in obvious disgust. “Weird? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Look at your clothes!”
He did as she bid. He was wearing an oversized, bright pink shirt buttoned up to his thick throat, and khaki shorts that were way too tight.
“It’s like you stole them off two very different people? And don’t get me started on your shoes!” Bulma shook her head. They were striped red and blue monstrosities. “Did you take them from a sleeping clown?”
Pink spots appeared high on his cheeks. He held his arms tighter against his chest and managed to glare even more intensely at her.
“I can’t take you seriously when you’re dressed like that. Have a nice life. Or don’t, I guess, whatever.” Bulma spun her chair around so she wouldn’t have to look at the cute weirdo anymore and pulled up the security footage from the lab again. She was only half-listening when the doors to her office opened and the man stormed out.
“I can’t believe you did that to me,” Bulma said. “Are you learning about pranks again?”
“No,” 18 replied. “He fit my profile.”
Bulma paused the security footage. “Profile?” She blinked up at the ceiling. “What profile?”
“Your perfect friend.”
“You have a profile for my perfect friend?”
“Of course. I have profiles for everything.”
Bulma scratched her forehead. “That weirdo fit your profile for my perfect friend?”
“Yep.” 18 popped the p when she spoke. “He fit your perfect friend profile perfectly.”
“You know I hate the alliteration, 18.” Bulma resumed the security footage. Past Bulma was swaying side to side in time to The Lucky One, bent over the motherboard for the scanner that wouldn’t scan. So far, so good. No fires. No danger. What was he thinking, telling her she was in danger without his protection? From what? He’d never said. He’d never said anything worthwhile. He’d just stood there all surly and glared at her in his weird clothes and ugly shoes and his muscled up shoulders.
God, she was such a sucker for men’s shoulders. Yamacha had good shoulders. Not as good as the new guy’s shoulders though.
She paused the security footage. “Okay. I’ll bite. How did he fit my perfect friend profile?”
“He’s stubborn and thick-skinned. He won’t back down from a fight and he won’t get heartbroken when you inevitably yell at him.”
“Yell at him?” Bulma huffed. “I don’t yell at anyone, 18! I’m a delicate flower of a person!”
18 continued, “He’s physically strong, which can balance out your mental strength. And, based on all the hours and hours of human media I’ve consumed, I expect he is on a redemptive path that will reveal a kind heart hidden underneath an arrogant exterior.”
Bulma scoffed.
“He’s also the first human to come to Capsule Corp in weeks and you need friends.”
“I have fr-”
“Human friends.”
She sat back in her chair, rolling it into the desk. Human friends? She didn’t need human friends. What she needed was to get the scanner working. Once the scanner was working, it was only a matter of lacing up her anti-gravity boots and taking to the skies.
She needed to get the anti-gravity boots working, too.
Bulma sighed. There was a small ache behind her eyes beginning to form. Tired? Thirsty? Smoke inhalation? Whatever the problem, it was one hundred percent not about the muscled up weirdo with the big hair. “Go ahead and tell 17-”
The lights in her office flashed red. Bulma froze, confused until the warning siren began to bellow. The office’s inner emergency doors slammed closed, magnetically sealing together.
“Um,” Bulma said, her heart skipping several beats, turning over like a car engine on low battery power. “What the fuck?”
“Pulling up the threat now,” 18 replied. The security footage playing on Bulma’s phone was now in real-time. The weirdo was tearing a path from the lobby back to her office, ripping apart her robots with his bare hands.
“Oh!” She gasped, as her favorite bot’s arms were pulled straight off its chassis, the security camera picking up the wicked glint in the weird man’s eyes.
Bulma dove for safety under her desk. She pushed her back against the solid legs and tucked herself into a ball. “It's okay,” she whispered, her phone trembling in her hands. “It’s not like he can open up the emergency doors. No human could!”
He was right outside her door now. Bulma watched, too stunned to even blink, as he easily pushed apart her regular doors. When he came upon the emergency, magnetically sealed, No Human Could Possibly Pry These Bad Boys Open doors, he shook out his wrists, looked up at the camera, and smirked.
The handsome weirdo wedged his fingertips in the seam between the two doors. He set his feet and pulled, veins bulging in his neck, forehead, and forearms.
Damn, he had some nice forearms.
The doors — the impossible to open doors — slid open with a booming crack.
“Oh, fuck me.”
“Woman!” The man thundered. Her phone showed him standing in the wreckage of her doors, robot parts at his feet, smoke billowing in around him. He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles bulging, eyebrows furrowed. His sinister smirk blossomed into an arrogant grin. “I believe you still owe me twenty seconds.”
She crawled out from under the desk, her arms and legs shaking. Her breath quivered over her lips with every shallow exhale. Bulma grabbed on to the back of her chair to pull herself to standing, her feet swaying as she stood. She blinked at him, this impossible man, standing in her office after having done something equally as impossible.
She’d never been this excited.
“It’s Dr. Briefs,” she said, popping her hip and smiling wide. “And I owe you 22.3 seconds. But you can have all the time you want, Handsome."