Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Beauty Within The Beast ❯ Training Time ( Chapter 5 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Hey guys I'm back! Sorry about the wait, schools been a bitch 0__0

But anyway, thank to everyone that's reviewed this story! It means so much to me! And it motivates me to write faster..if you catch my drift (hint hint).

Disclaimer: I do not own Vegeta…yet. …Let's just say I know where he lives *Evillaugh*

It took almost a full day for Vegeta to heal from his injures. He had four broken ribs; a punctured lung, a broken arm, a concussion and more bruises then he had skin. When he came to Nappa was waiting for him. He didn't say anything, just raised an eyebrow at the Prince.

"I wanted to hurt something." He said as he put on his black spandex suit. He hated feeling like he had to explain anything to the older man, but Nappa had been with him his entire life, from the day he was born. He was a royal bodyguard and had been assigned to Vegeta's mother when she became pregnant with him. After he was born, Nappa became his bodyguard, and after the death of his parents, he was the closest thing he had to family.

"You managed that, you broke the girls hand." Vegeta head snapped up at his words.

"What are you taking about?" He couldn't remember how he got back to the castle, never mind if he had hurt someone.

"Bulma. She found you in here and tried to help you, you hit her away and broke her right hand. She's having a hell of a time trying to program the chips she needs for the gravity room since she can only type with her left hand."

Vegeta looked away, trying to remember anything about yesterday after he dove into the crowd of beasts. He remembered ripping into their flesh, blasting them apart, breaking their bodies under his boots. But then it just faded away. He couldn't remember when he had left, how he had gotten his injuries, how he had gotten into the castle.

It was starting to unnerve him. This wasn't the first time this happened; he had missing chunks of time scattered though his memories starting back after Frieza blew up his planet. At first it seemed like nothing, exhaustion perhaps, but nothing to worry about. But then it started happing more frequently. At first it was once or twice a year, but in the last year alone he had blacked out more times then he had fingers and toes. He hadn't told his men of the problem; it was none of their business anyway, but besides that they didn't need to know that their leader was slowly losing his mind. Would they still follow him? Would they mutiny?

Would they kill him?

No. No he wouldn't tell them. Not unless he really thought that he was putting them in danger. So far nothing bad had happened during the black outs.

Until now. God how he hated his own mind. As far as he was concerned nothing bad had happened anyway. It was the little bitch's fault if she touched him. What right did she have to place her filthy human hands on him?

Some small part of his mind tried to argue that she had only been trying to help him, but he told it to take a hike and squashed it down into his subconscious where he would deal with it later.

"If it hinders her ability to work, then tell her to spend an hour or two in a tank, that will fix it."

"I've already told her that, but she said that we need to save the rejuvenation fluid for emergencies."

"Well then she can deal with it." Carrying his armor under his arm, he walked past the burly man and out of the room.

Damn that monkey to hell! I'm never going to get this done now!

Bulma growled in frustration as she slammed her good hand down on the arm of the chair she was currently sitting in. Her right hand was pounding, the rhythm matching the beat of her heart, and her left hand was almost just as useless. Why couldn't she have been born ambidextrous? She sat back against the cushion of the chair and blew up into the bangs that fell across her forehead in a frustrated sigh.

She had thought about asking one of the others to do the typing for her. She could sit next to them and tell them exactly what needed to be done, but neither of the girls knew anything about computers, much less how to type at a decent speed, and the men would surly send their enormous Saiyan fingers right through her keyboard. Besides, she highly doubted that either Raditz or Kakarrot could type successfully with more then their two pointer fingers. And Nappa? Forget it; his hand was bigger then the laptop it's self.

No, as much as a pain in the ass it was, she would still be done sooner using her left hand then asking someone else for help. Resolving to work as fast as she could, Bulma moved her left hand delicately over the keys on her laptop. After a few minutes of working she zoned out, her left hand kept moving though, simply for the fact that her brain already knew what she wanted it to do. No matter how hard she tried she could not get her thoughts under control, they kept wandering back to the night before, to the blood on floor, the pain in her hand, the look in his eyes.

She kept going back to him.

What the hell had be been doing that day? He looked as if he was on the verge of death, and she had no idea how he could have lost that much blood and still been alive. And what the hell, or who the hell, had caused all those injuries? The other three Saiyan's were in the castle all day, except for when it was time for their runs, and so were the girls. Not that they could cause those kinds of injuries to a Saiyan anyway. It was driving her insane, but it proved something to her.

They were not alone on this planet.

Another thirty minutes of typing and she had to rest her hand. It was strenuous having to type with just one, and it was getting overworked. Just a few minutes of rest and then she could get back to work. Tilting her head back she glazed out of the glass covered roof and out to the stars shining above. She had Kakarrot move one of the chairs from the common room into the ballroom next to the gravity chamber. She liked being close to her projects, and aside from sitting in the chamber its self, this was as close as she could get.

Her mind drifted again, but instead of seeing charcoal eyes, she saw baby blues, and a head full of curly blond hair. Over the years the memories she had of her mother had started to fade, she couldn't even remember what her voice sounded like anymore, and her facial features were blurry to her, but she would always remember the blues of her eyes and the curls of her hair. They were the same features Bulma herself had. Sure her hair was straight now, falling just over her breasts, but that was because she chemically treated it, with a concoction she had invented her self. No more trips to the salon. Her eyes however, she could never change. She refused to wear those color contacts, and really, what would be the point?

Yes, it hurt to look in the mirror everyday and be reminded of what she had ripped away from her at such a young age, but if she changed everything about her self she would be dishonoring her mothers memory. Besides, once Frieza was dead, she wanted her mother to be able to recognize her when she finally found her.

A shooting star caught her eyes and she returned back to reality. Just another minute and she would start typing again, but for now she wanted to be dazzled by the shining diamonds that were twinkling at her through the glass. Even looking through glass that was three stories above her head she had a better view of them then she ever had on earth. Between the pollution and the lights, you could never get a good, clear view of the stars. She wondered what it would be like to travel around the universe without having to worry about being killed or abducted. There were always going to be some kind of threats in life, there was no such thing a peace, but without the Ice-jin the greatest threat would be eliminated.

She promised after everything was over, and she had spent some time with her mother, she was going to take a year sabbatical and travel the universe. Well, as far in the universe as she could get in a year. Or maybe she'd take two. God knows that she had enough money to do it, and once Frieza was dead there would be no need to work around the clock.

Yes, a year or two off sounded amazing.

Staring up at the stars, she felt her eyelids starting to drop, she knew she should try to fight it, but she had been doing nothing but staring at the computer screen for the last nine or ten hours as it was, and she was so tired. A little nap wouldn't kill her. It only took a moment before her head rolled to the side and she was sound asleep, dead to the world.

Vegeta watched her from the shadows as she threw her hissy fit and eventually fell asleep in the chair. Nappa was on his run, and the brothers were sleeping, readying them selves for another day. He was nowhere near tired and he had nothing to do, and before he knew it, his feet had carried him into the ballroom. He debated on whether or not to show him self to the woman, but what would he say? She would undoubtedly ask for an apology, and he would not give one. Where would that leave them then? Both of them more pissed off then before. So he stayed hidden in the shadows until her soft, even breathing reached his ears, indicating that she was asleep.

He had nothing better to do, so he went to inspect the gravity chamber. The ramp was left down and the sliding door was up so he just walked right in. Right away lights flickered on and caused him to wince against the brightness. There must have been some sort of sensor that automatically turned them on. Stepping farther into the room, he wasn't that impressed. Everything was white, from the tiles on the floor to the reinforced metal that made up the ships shell, to the control panel that offered limited options.

This was the great gravity chamber that Frieza was dying to get his hands on? He couldn't see the appeal.

"I know she doesn't look like much, but she'll make a better impression once she's programmed." He spun around to see the Onna standing in the doorway of the chamber, looking around at the ceiling up above, almost as if she were trying to find something. He cursed mentally at himself for letting this weak creature sneak up behind him. The lights must have woke her from her slumber, and he was so lost in thought he hadn't felt her ki fluctuate. She walked in the chamber and walked right past him, setting the laptop that she carried down on the control panel before opening it. She minimized the screen she was on and pulled up another one that looked like blue prints. He didn't know what it was for, but it defiantly wasn't the gravity room.

"What is that?" He asked pointing to the screen. She looked up at him with mild curiosity before answering.

"It's a design I've been working on and off of for the last few years, ever since I started my work on the GR. I got to thinking that while it's all well and good to train under higher gravity, once you get used to it there would be nothing left to challenge a person. So I started working on these drones; in theory, they would be able to produce their own ki and, if programmed right, could substitute for a real life battle. I was collecting data on different fighting techniques to program the bots with, but the GR it's self always took my attention away from these. But now that it's been built I can work on them a little more."

"Will you be able to construct these drones of yours?" She turned away from the control panel and leaned back against it, glancing around the room once more.

"Honestly, I don't know, I don't think so. I don't have that material with me, I wasn't supposed to be doing anything but working on the GR. Plus the fact that the original design for the GR didn't factor in the drones, and I'm not so sure if it can stand up to the power that they could produce."

"Are you saying these drones are stronger then Saiyan's?"

"They can be infinitely strong." She turned back around to the computer and typed in a few commands. He noticed how she struggled with only her left hand, and wondered why she hadn't tried berating him already. "Watch this. I built a 3D model of how the drones would work. Back home there's a metal called carbon nanotube, it's made up of little wires that lock into each other, but it's so small you can't see it. That 'chicken wire' design, or so we call it, makes the metal ultra light weight, while making it six hundred times stronger then steel. I found a way of combining little Nano bots into the wires, if the metal sustains any damage the Nano bots get to work and repair it. They work fast so you don't even notice the damage; well, human eyes can't see, with your Saiyan senses you might actually notice them.

"Anyway, if I constructed the drones out of this material with some reinforcement and the Nano bots, there would be no limit on the amount of energy they could produce. The problem with this is that I don't have the material with me, and the gravity room, though strongly reinforced, would collapse under the strain of the high gravity combined with the ki of you Saiyan's and the drones."

He watched the screen as the 3D animation showed what the drones would fight like, how they would power up, and how they would repair the damage inflicted on them. He had to admit, if only to him self, that he was impressed.

"So why not just make the entire gravity chamber out of this material?"

"I was working on that, but then Frieza found out about the GR and I stopped any thoughts of upgrades I had. It was bad enough that he would have the it already, he didn't need to have an indestructible one." She shut down the simulation and saved the program she had been working on before she fell a sleep. "Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need a few hours of sleep in a warm bed before my brain fries. Goodnight, Prince." She picked up her laptop and started walking towards the doorway. She was almost out when he called out to her.

"Spend an hour in a rejuvenation tank later, Onna." She turned to look at him, but his head was turned to the side, refusing to look at her. Was this his way of apologizing? She didn't know, but she smiled nonetheless.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I have a feeling you guys are going to be getting pretty beat up starting within the next few days, and we're going to need all the rejuvenation fluid we have."

"Onna-"

"It's fine, Prince Vegeta, I've worked under worse circumstances then just having one hand. Goodnight." She left before he could say anything further in the matter.

He hated the fact that she wouldn't listen to him. He wasn't worried about her, mind you; he just wanted her fixed so that she would work faster. They were ahead of schedule by a week, but he wanted every possible second of training he could get if this thing worked right. Maybe the extra day they would get if she healed herself wouldn't matter much, but then again, maybe it would.

He left the gravity chamber and retired to his own room. Suddenly he was exhausted.

The next day went by uneventfully. Bulma had glued herself to the chair in the ballroom and had refused to leave it for any reason except to go to the bathroom. ChiChi had brought her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and had even stayed to keep her company for a couple of hours. But when it started to become apparent that the only thing she was doing was slowing her down, she left her to her programming, promising to be close by if she needed her.

Bulma was thankful she left. While normally she would have loved to chat with the woman, she couldn't concentrate on her work. She was a genius, but she had tunnel vision when it came to her work. She blocked out the entire world and created her own, where only she and her computer dwelled in. She had gotten used to using her left hand only, and was moving almost just as fast as she would have if she had both hands.

Bulma Briefs was nothing if not adaptable.

It occurred to her later that night, as she finally gave into sleep and crawled into bed, that she hadn't seen the Saiyan Prince once all day.

It only took her half of the next day to program the last chip. As she gave a triumphant cry of success, Kakarrot and Raditz entered the ballroom.

"I take it you're done?" Questioned Raditz.

"You bet your furry bottom I am!" She exclaimed as she ejected the chip from her laptop, grinning like a fool. Kakarrot was laughing at his brother, who was offended by her comment. His ass was NOT furry.

The girls and the other two Saiyan's walked in just as Bulma sprinted up the ramp to the control panel. Vegeta didn't bother to acknowledge the other occupants as he followed Bulma into the gravity room. The rest followed him. Bulma was on her knees with the upper half of her body inside the control panel. She was talking to herself, though no one understood about what. They caught a word here and there like 'wires' and 'stupid tiny components', but other then that, it was all scientist lingo. A few minutes later she emerged wiping the grease stains off her hands onto her sweat pants. She didn't seem to realize that she had a smudge on her cheek and one just above her eyebrow.

And no one really cared to tell her. It would have just killed her buzz anyway.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, be prepared to be amazed!" Smiled at them and instructed Kakarrot to close the door. "Now since some of us can't handle the high gravity, I'm only going to turn it up a few notches, and then I'll show you guys how to work this baby, then you can really go at it. Ok, here goes!" They watched as she punched a few buttons, then hit one big green one that was off to the side. The room lit up with an eerie red glow and for a moment, that's all it seemed to do. Vegeta turned his murderous eyes on Bulma, who still had a shit-eating grin on her face. He was just about to rip into her when he felt the pressure. It wasn't much but it was there.

ChiChi and Ophelia held onto each other to stay standing, and Bulma was leaning against the control board to keep from crashing to her knees. Nappa looked impressed and the boys high-fived each other, (it became their new thing once Bulma had taught them) Vegeta looked the same. His face never once changed expressions. She was starting to worry. What if this wasn't enough to impress him? No, he still hadn't tried out the higher levels yet, so there was still a chance.

"This is nothing. This is only ten times Earths gravity. If you guys want to come here I can show you how to adjust the settings and start it." She waited until all the Saiyans had gathered around her to show them the controls. Once she was done with that she showed them how to shut it down, and where the emergency shut off switch was. She shut down the program and the lights returned to their normal white Florissant glow. ChiChi and Ophelia let out their breaths behind them.

"Now I'm going to take the girls and get out of here. My suggestion is to start off at twenty times Earths gravity, which would be the same as on Vegeta-si. Once you guys get used to that again you can raise it up another ten notches, and then another ten, and so on and so forth. Don't go trying to raise it up by like fifty times or something like that cause you can do some serious damage to your bodies if you do, and we need to be careful since there's not much we can do on this ice ball."

"Gotcha." Kakarrot said, giving her the thumbs up. She gave it back and walked out of the room with the girls.

"Come on ladies, it's time for some girl bonding time." Then they were gone. Vegeta moved in front of the control panel and programed it for twenty times Earths gravity, just like the Onna said, but he no plans to keep skipping ahead by ten and ten. Once they were used to their home worlds gravity again, he would double it.

As the lights turned read again and the pressure started to push down on them, Vegeta lifted his head towards the ceiling, enjoying the feeling of the gravity against his body. It had been so many years since he had felt it. He could feel the others emotions in the back of his mind, and they were just as comforted as he was at the moment. This was as close to home as they would ever get again. But they couldn't stand around being nostalgic forever; he would give them fifteen minutes to get used to this amount of gravity again, then it was going to be doubled. The others read his intentions in their minds and started moving.

Kakarrot wasn't happy about lying to Bulma, but he understood Vegeta's hurry on getting started.

Now they were down to fourteen minutes.

"Geez Bulma, that was amazing! I could barely stand up in there, and that was only ten times Earths gravity? How high can it go again?" ChiChi asked.

"Up to four hundred times Earth's gravity. If I had the material I could make it go higher."

"Won't they be crushed under all that pressure?" Ophelia asked, as they sat down in the common room.

"Honey, I have a thing or two to teach you about Saiyan's."

Their conversations were mostly about the men, the differences between Saiyan's and other species, and how different they themselves were from one another. Bulma had spent enough time with Raditz and Kararrot to see how sweet they were, even if they were a little on the slow side. Nappa hadn't changed too much since her childhood; he was just quieter. Vegeta on the other hand, no one could figure out.

"Seriously Bulma, he didn't say a word to Ophelia and I the whole time you and the brothers were working on the gravity room. Actually he hasn't said anything to us ever. If we see him in the hallway or at a meal he barely even glances at us. It was weird. I mean, Nappa's not big on talking but at lest he would acknowledge us."

ChiChi dealt the cards around for another round of poker, which Ophelia quickly became addicted too, (this was their sixth game) as she relayed the events of the last week to her. Apparently they had been bored out of their minds the first three days the GR had been under construction, but once the brothers had been released of their work, things started to pick up. Apparently they were all big into fighting, Bulma had almost forgotten that Airzin had found them at a martial arts tournament, and the boys had quickly volunteered to teach them some new moves. So they had spent the next three days training with the Saiyan's. Nothing too rough, since they were not at the same level, but ChiChi laughed as she remembered one particular moment.

"Oh man you should have seen the look on his face! Kakarrot was standing there, waiting for me to make the first move, so I dove low and made like I was going for his stomach, but when he moved back and moved his arms a bit lower, I swing around and got him right in the jaw! He stumbled backward and he had this look of complete shock written on his face, like he couldn't believe that some silly Earth girl had actually landed a hit on him. I'm telling you it was amazing."

Bulma smiled as she watched her new friend talk. She could tell from the look in her eyes and the small blush on her face that she was quickly developing a crush on the Saiyan.

Good for you girl. I hope it works.

"And you should have seen Ophelia, this girl can move! She had Raditz on the run."

"Yeah, well, I never actually hit him." She said hiding behind her cards.

"But you're fast. He was too busy trying to defend himself and get away from you to even TRY and land a hit. I'm almost kinda glad I didn't get the chance to fight you at the tournament, you would have whooped me good."

"Well we can always test that theory here." Bulma said as she picked up a piece of some kind of dried out meat they had. It wasn't good, but it was something.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you guys could pick up where you left off here. You sparred with the boy's right? Why not each other?" ChiChi and Ophelia looked at each other over the tops of their cards, and this time they were both blushing. It was a very interesting shade of red that Ophelia had against her clover green skin. "Am I missing something?"

"Well," ChiChi started out nervously. "We kinda only wanted to spar with the guys cause, well...we think they're cute."

"Handsome, I never said cute." Ophelia said defensively.

"Same difference." Bulma couldn't help the giggles that escaped her. This was just too cute.

But before she could say anything though, Vegeta came walking through the doors of the ballroom. He was dripping in sweat and he had a few torn patches in his black spandex suit, but other then that he looked normal. Bulma stood from here place in the chair and patiently waited for him to say something. It had been a little over three hours since they had started training in the GR, and she took that as a sign that they had been satisfied with her work, but if he was out here now, what did that mean?

"Your machine is sufficient, Onna. But, it is too small for all of us to train at once, so we will be taking shifts. I am going on my run and I will bring back dinner." She let out the breath she was holding and nodded. She was so relieved that he was happy with her work. He moved to leave the room but paused in the doorway and glanced back at her. "Be thankful ladies, it looks like you won't have to die today after all." And he was gone.

Bulma sank back down in her chair and tried to steady her breathing. It seemed to hit her all at once how close she could have come to dying. If one little thing had gone wrong she and the others would be nothing but charcoal smudges on the marble floors right now.

ChiChi reached across the small table they were playing at and grabbed her hand and Ophelia's.

"Don't pay attention to him Bulma, Prince or not I don't think the other three would have let him touch us." She said, but her voice shook just a bit as she was trying to reassure them. Bulma squeezed her hand back, silently thanking her for the support.

Raditz came out of the ballroom a few minutes later, looking much worse then Vegeta had. His skin was riddled with cuts and bruises and he was breathing heavily. Ophelia was up on her feet at once.

"Are you ok? She asked as she placed a hand on his arm. He nodded his head.

"Yeah, I'm fine, it looks worse then it actually is. It just means that I have more work to do, but Nappa and Kararrot are taking the first shift in the gravity room. It's time for Vegeta's run and mine will be next anyway." He sat down in one of the chairs inspecting a nasty gash he had on his left forearm.

"Are you going to go into one of the tanks?" Bulma asked.

"No, this really isn't that bad, besides you were right, we should save that fluid for emergencies, incase one of us gets carried away."

"You mean incase Prince grumpy ass get's carried away." ChiChi said, clearly pissed off about earlier. Raditz's let out a chuckle.

"Yes, but don't let him hear you say that. Your head will be gone before you even knew what happened."

"Oh I'm sure, he got nothing else to do then run around and scare the only girls on this planet." She said in a huff, crossing her arms and doing an almost perfect imitation of said Prince. Bulma laughed, finally feeling the heaviness lift from her shoulders.

He was happy with the machine, and he wasn't going to kill them; that was all that mattered to her at the moment.

So how did you like it? Good, bad in between? Please take a minute to let me know! =D