Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Always A First Time ❯ Where is that Ki? ( Chapter 29 )

Always A First Time

by debbiechan

Disclaimer: Still don’t own Dbz. Still compelled to tell this story.

A/N: I’m in the middle of moving the family to a new house! Even my Bleach obsession is on hold. This chapter has been around for a while, so I thought I’d throw it out there. It was hard to write, harder to rewrite, and I hope you like it. dchan 03.07.06.

"If they were that strong, we could feel their ki no matter where they were on Earth."—Yamcha, episode 126

Chapter Twenty-nine: Where is that Ki?

You and I? You and I can stop Wolfie? Vegeta felt genuine shock. Bulma was insane; did she actually believe that he and she could work together towards a goal that Vegeta had no interest in whatsoever?

He had known Bulma long enough to expect mercurial mood shifts. First the woman’s eyes had widened with fear at Vegeta’s unexpected arrival, then they were shiny over some incomprehensible upset involving that worm acquaintance of hers, and now they were looking at him with pure gladness. It was a look no one had ever given him until her; the look still unsettled him. Fear and tears he could understand, but the bright blue excitement in those eyes—impossible!

"You can track Wolfie, can’t you? You’ve met him before so you know his ki." Bulma put down the phone, and her empty hand rose to cradle the baby’s head. It was only then that Vegeta noticed Trunks; he had been oblivious to the presence of a baby before. "Wolfgang has a tiny human ki signature, I’m sure, but don’t you have amazing senses?

You have a better ability in this area than Goku, don’t you?"

Vegeta narrowed his eyes. He resented the little bit of flattery. "Why do you want to find this person?"

Bulma smiled. She actually smiled. She was standing holding an infant before someone who had threatened to kill her, yet she was unnerved and confident in her ability to persuade Vegeta to "help" her, as she had put it. Vegeta admired this sort of courage, even as he felt his whole body tense in anticipation of Bulma’s words. He was determined not to be manipulated by her.

"It’s in your best interests as well as mine to find this Wolfgang person," Bulma said. There was a slight pause during which Vegeta could hear the baby making suckling noises. "Doctor Wolfgang Schroedinger never had any goal other than killing Dr. Gero. Do you understand that, Vegeta? He’s going to kill Gero. If Gero is destroyed then you may never get to fight those androids you so badly want to--"

"WHAT?" Vegeta took one step forward. "I knew it!" The loudness of his voice startled the baby, and its mouth detached from the nipple and began to cry. Vegeta raised his voice further over the sound. "I told you that if you interfered with this battle, you would die!"

"Die, die, whatever." Bulma had lifted the baby with both arms and was bouncing it above her head as it cried. "Look, Vegeta, the news was that we were all going to die anyway, so what was I supposed to do? Wait for the androids to kill me or risk being shot to pieces by you? Believe me, it was worth the risk to see if we could find Gero and stop him before--"

"This Gero is still alive?" shouted Vegeta. Bulma had turned the baby to face him and was still bouncing the tiny body up and down in an apparent attempt to calm it. Bulma’s blouse had a little hole where the baby had been nestled before, and a large aroused nipple was visible there.

"Yes, Gero is alive. Wolfie and I were trying to locate his lab with our technology, but we couldn’t, so now Wolfie--he’s gone to find Gero himself, I just know it." Bulma looked less than composed for a moment, then her brows knotted over her blue eyes. "He’s going to try to kill Gero even if he can’t destroy the lab and the androids."

Vegeta turned his head aside just slightly. The dangling baby and prominent nipple were annoying him. "You want to stop the worm from killing Gero?" Vegeta was very suspicious. "Why?"

"Because…." Trunks’ cries had tapered off, but Bulma was still jiggling the little body. Her voice was airy again, as if she had everything under control. "It’s really an iffy moral issue considering that Wolfie and I wanted to save lives, but remember what Son-kun said about killing Gero? Son-kun said that it was wrong to kill Gero when the man hadn’t even--oh it’s not just that, Vegeta. I’ve never felt right about planning Gero’s murder from the beginning but…"

Vegeta looked towards Bulma again only to be met with the baby’s wide blue staring eyes. He felt his insides, which had been seething with rage and suspicion only a moment before, settle to his intuition; Bulma was trusting him with all this information only because she really … trusted him. Deluded woman.

"What I’m really worried about," Bulma went on, "is that it’s just plain suicide for Wolfie to face Gero. I mean, I don’t know how Wolfie’s armed or how he plans to carry out this killing, but he’s never killed anyone before, and Gero--" Bulma held the baby still for a moment. It kept staring, unblinking, at Vegeta. "This Gero guy is just ruthless. He’s had a whole lifetime of killing people and there’s no way Wolfie can--Vegeta, you have to stop him. You have to find Wolfie wherever he is, and save him from getting killed--"

"Save him?" And here Vegeta had thought all this time that Bulma was an intelligent human. "Is this what you wanted Kakkarot for? I’m going to find that worm for certain, but when I find him, I will kill him, not save him."

Bulma gasped. The baby she held felt his mother’s loss of composure and wrinkled its face in distress. For some reason, Vegeta could not tear his own eyes away from the baby’s. The two were staring at each other, and Vegeta could tell, even though he had no experience with babies--human or otherwise--that the tiny face was about to erupt into noisiness again.

"You are not going to kill anybody," Bulma said. "You promised my father that you would not cause any disturbance or do any damage to the planet while you lived and trained here!"

"And you said that you weren’t going to interfere with the battle with the androids."

"Vegeta, you can’t kill Wolfie!"

"Watch me." And with those words, Vegeta bowed slightly as if talking to Trunks, whose blue-eyed picture of innocence seemed to be challenging him towards murder--even more so than Bulma’s stupidity. The baby’s eyes widened, and it started to bawl.

Then as Bulma gathered the baby to her chest and shouted, "WAIT!" Vegeta flew out the window.

**

If I call Son-kun, all I’ll be doing is hurrying up the eventual Vegeta/Goku showdown.

Even as Bulma dropped to a sitting position on the floor and cradled Trunks, she didn’t believe that Vegeta was going to kill an innocent human. He had lived three years on this planet without so much as threatening anyone since that time he shot a fireball at Yamcha’s feet. Bulma knew that the Saiyan was a champion of restraint. Surely Vegeta believed that a weakling like Wolfie could easily be intimidated out of any plans to murder Gero? A few displays of firepower and a growl or two would do it; Vegeta didn’t have to kill Wolfie. How many times had Vegeta said, "I’m going to kill you" to her?

I believe that someone who was once a professional at genocide is now incapable of murder just because …

With a surge of rare self-contempt, Bulma realized that she had never purged her memory of Vegeta’s many, many moments of vulnerability in bed with her. Just because men looked stupid and woozy after sex didn’t mean that they still weren’t capable of being utter jerks. She looked down at Trunks who was still screaming.

"That ugly face scared you, didn’t it? Ugly, ugly man."

She reached for the telephone again. She had not spoken to or seen Son Goku since the day Frieza and Frieza’s spaceship had been blown to bits by the Boy from the Future. Son-kun was Bulma’s oldest friend, but she had to admit, with some shame, that she rarely sought him unless she was in dire need of a superhero.

**

It had been so long since Vegeta had destroyed something--truly destroyed it, felt the glow of a planet melting, felt the silencing of life energies, felt the accomplishment of total annihilation.

Killing the worm would be too easy, but fighting Kakkarot--Vegeta could already taste the battle. Living among humans or alone in space had only galvanized his need to blast away with unimpeded power. He had to fight, had to kill now--or else he would….

The clouds parted to reveal a broad expanse of blue sky and the colorful geometric shapes of the city below. Vegeta lost whatever other options his mind had been entertaining beyond absolute murder.

Where is that ki?

Vegeta had tracked the worm so many times that it was easy to lock onto him among the many resonating human energies in West City. Right away, Vegeta knew something was different about the worm today. For one thing, he wasn’t roaming his usual path; the worm generally ventured no further than Capsule Corporation at the city’s circumference and stayed close to his apartment and laboratory. Today the worm was in a very populated downtown area, sitting still but agitated (did Vegeta smell fear?) somewhere high high near…

No one else?

Vegeta slowed.

If the worm was alone, maybe he had not yet met with Gero.

The top floor of the building appeared to be mostly glass, so Vegeta could not see, only sense, the feeble human behind the glaring white windows.

He raised his palm, hissed the name of his attack through clenched teeth--Big Bang--and fired.

The top of the building burst into a cloud of yellow smoke. After a couple seconds, the smoke dissolved to reveal the precision with which the top floor had been sliced from the rest of the building. Red sparks of fire flickered on the black perimeter of the rectangular floor.

As the streets filled with human cries, Vegeta felt an odd disappointment. Blasting away dwellings with pinpoint accuracy versus Nappa’s crude rampages of power had been a long-ago entertainment. Raditz wasn’t here to be impressed, to laugh and say "Nice one, my prince."

Vegeta watched humans flee the decapitated building and felt the familiar surge of panicking ki. That energy used to disgust him, and it still did. For one moment he considered picking off the wailing humans with tiny blasts but a solid rule of combat was that one should not work more than necessary to get your opponent’s attention.

Kakkarot will be here soon.

Vegeta shot off towards the mountains, not looking twice at the scrambling panic below him. Why should two Saiyans fight among the scream of sirens and the mess of human fear? Kakkarot wouldn’t want that anyway.

**

Trunks had quieted and fallen asleep on Bulma’s shoulder in the few minutes she had stood, conflicted, with the phone in her hand. To call Son-Kun if Vegeta really wasn’t going to hurt Wolfie might make matters worse. Two Saiyans who are supposed to save the world start injuring one another and what then? They’re no good for battle should the androids appear tomorrow!

What needed to be prioritized here? The whole world? Even as her mind analyzed the situation, Bulma felt her heart lurching with worry over those she cared about. Wolfie? Son-kun? …. Vegeta?

The phone rang in her hand before she could examine the dilemma further. Trunks startled slightly to the sharp sound but did not wake up. Bulma clicked the volume to mute and saw on the tiny screen that three calls were coming in simultaneously: one from Yamcha, one from her mother….

Bulma’s felt her chest fill with a gasp. She pressed the button to take the call from Wolfgang Schroedinger’s neurocommunicator.

A/N: My lovely beta reader, LisaB is temporarily on leave, so please assign any hollow characterizations and all errors in punctuation, spelling, excessive use of adverb to me and me alone. Feedback very welcome--although don’t ask me what’s going to happen next, because I will not tell. ~_^