Were this a full-production model and not a prototype, I probably would have designed such a door. As it is the machine is a crude, ugly mass of tubing, cables, and particle cannons all connected to two capsules, and something I'd never let any of my associates view. I never intended this to be used for anything other than what I am now attempting, so aesthetics weren't taken into consideration. Only the functionality was important. If this works...if...I don't think I will ever market it. I can't think of many practical applications for it, and those that I can think of terrify me.
The interior is made of polished white porcelain and the temperature is kept as cold as a surgeon's room. I had to leave my clothing outside the capsule. Naked, I squeeze my legs together, holding my arms over my breasts and hands under my arm pits to keep warm. Nothing can be done for my feet though. It's either crouch upon them and let them freeze or sit and let my backside and my feet freeze.
The countdown from five minutes is already twenty-seconds past. During this time extensive safety precautions are taking place, everything from diagnostics scans of the equipment to exhaustive monitoring of the interiors of both capsules. This may be only a prototype but I'm not risking my life to a freak mistake or accident. I know how delicate this procedure is, how simple it would be alter the outcome. I spent two years learning the sciences necessary to create this device, after all. That's what I've always been good at. I'm the girl that everyone came to if something needed to be built. Need something fixed or fashioned in only a handful of moments? Then, I'm your woman.
I'm honestly surprised it took me this long to come up this thing. I think the final straw was everything that happened while my friends tried to save the earth once more against the threat of Majin Buu. I don't like to dwell on those days too much. I cry when I do. My family has endured so much. I have endured so much. Something needed to change. I needed to change.
In my heart of hearts, though, I know I'm rationalizing when I say that. Yes, I'm tired of waiting while my son, my husband, and my oldest friend risk their lives on my behalf. Chi-Chi does it with two sons and a husband who leaves for years on end without knowing when he'll return, but Chi-Chi's husband isn't as proud as mine. I love Son Go-Kakarot, I remind myself, I must think of him as Kakarot from this moment on-but he grew up on this world and doesn't have the pride that my husband possesses.
And that pride smolders beneath his often-silent glances at me. That pride, that silence...they both hold disappointment. I know he loves me. I have given him a son that fills him with immeasurable happiness, but I...I have a husband who has arms that can destroy worlds, and my husband has a wife as fragile as glass. No amount of love, no child born of my womb, can alleviate this disgrace from his mind.
I've always found joy whenever those arms hold me. Arms that can destroy worlds trying to comfort a body that could snap at the slightest lapse of care...I often wonder at the restraint he needed to find when we were together. How often that restraint has touched me and warmed my heart. That compassion has blinded me.
To love my husband is to love whom he is, and who he is happens to be the prince of a race of warriors. My son is a warrior too, trained from birth by my husband to follow in his footsteps. I am not, nor have ever been, a warrior. An adventuress, yes, and I've seen more action than I can possibly recount. Any combat was dealt with by the others I traveled with while I hid in fear.
I know that my husband, that the Prince of the Saiyajin race, expected to take a warrior for a mate. I know that the destruction of his people by Frieza prevented this. I know that he made the Earth his home upon Frieza's defeat and found some contentment with me here. I know with me, he learned of love, and sacrifice, and that there was more than simply the thrill of a new challenge to make life worth living. I also know that he settled for this given his options, and that he is disappointed at the hand that life has dealt him.
I will not be settled for. I am nobody's damned disappointment.
Two minutes left now. The device scans my body in this capsule and at the same time making certain no foreign lifeform aside from the normal microscopic organisms one carries with them are with me. In the other capsule is a collection of my husband's hair, painstakingly obtained one strand at a time over the past two years from his pillow, brush, and from the shower grate. While it is true that Saiyajin hair never changes, it does fall out and grow back like anyone else's. Hair contains all kinds of treasures, including Saiyajin DNA.
The existence of Cell proved that gene-slicing was possible. But Cell was a creature born of gene-slicing, and what I'm doing is far more dangerous. Altering my own genetics...it took me a long time to figure out how it might be possible. The answer, while simple, is terrifyingly dangerous.
Teleportation. Theoretically, it’s simply converting matter into energy, relocating it, and then converting it back to its original form. It occurred to me that it would be possible to gather data about the original matter, and after it was converted into energy, reconstruct it differently than before. All of the messy details would be handled by extremely precise computers, of course. After all, isn’t that why teleportation is dangerous in the first place? Because of the danger of the matter pattern being reconstructed incorrectly? What if that is what the machine was designed to do instead?
My device is made exclusively for that function. In theory, it could work as a teleportation unit but was in fact made only to be a gene-splicer. The particle cannons break the occupants of both capsules into their base components and recreate them as pre-designed. In my case, removing most of my human DNA sequencing and replacing it with the Saiyajin DNA sequencing of my husband. Only that part of him which makes him Saiyajin, and only that part of me which is human. This should work. The animals I tested it upon have not died, so I have no reason to believe that I will die. But I know that once the particle cannons fire that the woman crouching in this capsule will not be returning. I will be something else. Someone else, probably. Closer to my husband and my son.
Then again, biology and genetics have never been my sciences. I've always worked with electronics and machinery, and this is all highly theoretical. While much of the equipment for this monster was produced to my exact specifications by third-party contractors, the actual procedure had to be designed entirely by me. And I did this with only two years worth of research. Something may go wrong. I don't want to think about what, but I've considered the possibility that I might emerge some big Donkey Kong monkey thing stomping madly about the land. So this is taking place far away from Capsule Corp, far from my home and my friends back in West City.
A panel in the top of the capsule slides back to reveal the particle cannon. I hold my breath and clench my eyes tightly. I think this is going to hurt, but I don't know. I hope it's quick regardless.
What madness has driven me to this length, I wonder? I know that Chi-Chi would think me insane were I to offer this type of procedure to her. Gokuu...I mean Kakarot...would try to discourage me as well. Kuririn and Yamcha would try and stop me. I'm glad none of them know. It's no sane matter to mess with one's own genetics. Scores upon scores of bad movies have portrayed what this kind of god-playing can do. But those writers and directors never existed in a world where your husband and child are literal gods, deciding the fate of worlds with only their fists and their wits. They never knew what it was like to walk amongst the gods, to be the friend of one, the wife of another, and the mother of yet one more.
They've never seen the unspoken scorn in the eyes of your husband when he looks at you and wishes you were something other that what you were born as. And looking at his eyes in the picture of him that I taped to the otherside of the capsule's glass window, I know exactly why I am doing this.
....to be continued...