Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Confessions Of A Believer: II ❯ Prisoner ( Chapter 6 )

Wrapping Chikara up in a blanket I had borrowed from my sister, I left around two in the afternoon. Shawn was probably wondering where I was but I knew I could not return home. Not yet. I was standing on the sidewalk, the cold air blowing my hair about my face, thinking about the past month, my son in my arms. A car whizzed past, then another. I knew I should have been paying attention to my surroundings, but sometimes I can be the most unobservant person in the world. I swear, Shenlong could show up and I'd miss it. Suddenly, I felt someone at my back, but before I could turn around I found myself captured within an embrace as tight and strong as a vice. I could not break free no matter how hard I struggled.

"That was a very foolish thing you did back there," My heart stopped in my chest at the sound of Vegeta's voice as he crushed my back to his chest, his face inches from my neck, "Give me one good reason why I should let you live?"

I couldn't speak, it wasn't only that he was on the verge of crushing the air out of me, I was too afraid. If it had been anyone else threatening me, I probably would have just laughed it off and called them childish or something, but this was Vegeta. He didn't usually make idle threats. I started to tremble and Chikara, sensing my fear, began to wail at the top of his lungs. Spinning me around to face him, the Saiyan Prince looked at his son, as if verifying that he was actually still with me.

"Give me the little dragonball!" Vegeta hissed at me once more, and, when I didn't move fast enough to suit him, he forced his hands into my pockets one by one and found it himself. I know that if I hadn't been holding our son right then, he would not have been half as gentle as he was. Stuffing the object into the waistband of his pants, he grabbed me by the back of the neck and pushed me forward. "It looks like I need to keep a closer eye on you."

"V-Vegeta, please!" I cried, "I just wanted my baby! You can't just kidnap me, you know!"

"I can't risk you trying that again." He said, "For all I know, you could be thinking of contacting that girl and the namek and have them help you. Well, forget! I'm keeping both you and Chikara under a tight watch!"

Well, it could be worse, I thought, as he pushed me into the shimmering reflective surface of spilled oil on the street, at least I still had my child. Vegeta's hand did not move from the back of my neck, in fact, his fingers dug into the skin and made my eyes water. I wanted him to let go of me, but he refused. As we passed through the barrier between the real world and the anime world I felt the weirdness that came with changing over.

We had stepped into what looked to be a garage, there were shelves lined up, and boxes off in a corner. But, there were no cars parked anywhere and no sign that there ever were any cars. But then I spied the clear plastic bottles lined up on the shelves, saw the capsules in each one and the tags below them and remembered where I was. Vegeta forced me up the stairs and into the house. Once we'd crossed the threshhold, he snatched the baby from me so fast that Chikara cried out in surprise.

"NO!" I screamed, lunging for him, but he held the infant with one hand and stopped me by blocking my body with his other arm straight out, "Vegeta! Give me my son!"

Holding me easily away from Chikara, who was bawling at the top of his lungs now, very loud in the anime world, much louder than it would have been in my world, he yelled up the stairs for his wife. I watched as Bulma appeared, her face made-up in pastel pinks and blues, rush down the stairs and take Chikara from Vegeta as if he were her own son! Holding me by my arm this time, Vegeta told Bulma to look after the baby and I watched as she kissed my son's face and cooed to him.

She walked him over to a crib they had set up in the corner of the livingroom and laid him down, smiling sweetly as she did so. I was livid. I was never so angery in my entire life. I pulled away from Vegeta, struggling to get my hands on the blue haired witch. I've never been a violent person, but this...this was too much! Screaming, I flailed about, trying to reach Bulma. The older woman looked at me, shook her head and said; "See what happens when you mess with someone else's husband?"

"Bitch!" I screamed, heat filling my face, Vegeta had to grab me around the waist and hold my arms at my sides to avoid getting elbowed in the face, my feet, however, where another matter. Not as worried as he should have been, Vegeta failed to avoid it when I suddenly, purely by accident, mind you, I was just frantic with rage and hurt, the heel of my foot connected with a very, very vulnerable area on his body.

I heard him let out a gasping breath and release me to fall forward, holding himself in pain. I wasted no time, but lunged at Bulma, going for her disgustingly pretty hair, grabbing handfulls and pulling as my momentium knocked her off balance and into a large picture window. Shards of reflective glass shattered all around us, as we fell though it.

"Vegeta...ooph!....help! She's crazy! Get her...uuh!..ow...off of me...Ooumm!" By this time I had gone quite insane. I had her by the back of the head and was shoving her face over and over into the dirt outside the window. Broken glass, blood and mingled mud made a nice beauty pack for her lovely features, I thought, sadistically.

"You'll never be his mother, you fucking bitch!" I screamed, stomping my foot down as hard as I could into her back, "Never! I'll fucking kill you first!"

I was jerked backwards and thrown against a tree. Hard. The wind knocked out of me, I watched in silence as Vegeta pulled Bulma, who was shaking and crying, up from the ground. She had mud, glass, blood and bit of grass all over her face and hair. She staggered inside and Vegeta turned his gem-hard eyes on me.

I knew I was in for it now. Walking over to me, he reached down and pulled me to my feet roughly, looking up into my face. I saw a very large vien pulsating on his forehead. He didn't speak for several long mintues. I knew just by that alone he was extremely upset with me.

"If you were looking for someone to fight," He said slowly, "Then fight me. But leave the woman out of it."

"I'm sorry." I said, knowing that I wouldn't have a chance against him even if I knew how to fight, "Vegeta? It won't happen again. I promise. Vegeta?"

He glared at me a second longer, but let me go. I sank back down against the tree's trunk, lowered my head into my drawn up knees and sobbed. After several long moments passed, I felt him sitting down in front of me. Cracking my fingers across my face, I peered at him through my spread fingers.

He still looked angry, but in a more subdued way, as if he were forcing his emotions to stay in check. "I meant what I said before, Ami," He said then, his voice hard but the tone softening just a bit, "You are his only mother. Try to get along with the woman, okay? Heh. If I wanted to see a catfight I'd just go visit an alley somewhere in the city, understand?"

I nodded, chewing on the inside of my cheek. He stood up and said, "I have to go into the gravity room for bit. I'm not worried about you getting back through to your world with Chikara, because I am keeping ahold of the dragonball and Kami has the only other one. Besides," He added, standing up and brushing grass from his butt, "Our son's ki so strong I can locate him anywhere."

I watched him walk away and leave me. I heard the cries of my infant son issueing out through the broken front window from within the building and wearily picked myself up. I walked back into the house to see Bulma crying, seated on a stool, a woman I recognized at her mother dabbing a wet clothe at the cuts on her cheeks, taking a tweezer to pull minute bits of glass from her face.

"Tsk!" Mrs. Briefs clucked her tongue, "Your going to need to keep an ointment on those cuts, dear, so they won't scar..."

I felt really bad. I mean really really bad. If I could have just slunk away into the shadows and disapear forever, I would have. But, Mrs. Briefs saw me standing there in the doorway, not quite entering the room, and smiled; "Hello, dear! You look tired! Come and sit down and I'll fix us all something nice to eat and we can just pretend this little misunderstand never happened! How's that sound, girls?"

She giggled and left Bulma and me alone to head towards the kitchen and make good her promise. Bulma looked at me, tensed and I saw she looked like she was either thinking of returning my previous actions upon me or fleeing. Her blue eyes were larger than saucers. I spoke first; "Bulma?" I said; "I...I'm sorry." Yuck, the words tasted bad in my mouth, I hated being wrong...apologizing. "I guess...I should be glad Chikara has such a loving...person...to care for him..." I stumbled across my words, wishing that the floor would just swallow me up. But, as I found out, floors don't ever open up and swallow you when they should. It took half a moment for Bulma to respond. She screamed at me; "Do you know how long it's going to take to fix my face! I have a party to go to in three days, Missy! Three days! How can I show my face like this? Huh?! Answer me!"

"I said I was sorry!" I cried, twisting my hands in my lap as I sat down on the sofa across from her, "Besides, it...it doesn't look that bad, Bulma..."

She sniffed, holding a compact open and gazing at her image from several different angles; "It...it doesn't?" She sniffed. Actually, it did, but I wasn't about to tell her that! I nodded and said; "A little makeup will help, too, when you go to your party."

"Hmm." She snapped the compact shut, her blue-painted nails sparkled as she sat, one leg crossed prettily over the other, even though they were dusted with flecks of mud and grass still, and stuffed it in between her very ample bosom, "I still don't like you, you know. The only reason your here at all is because your Chikara's mother and it's in the child's best intrest if he keeps in contact with you."

Bullshit, I thought, as she talked, I'm here because Vegeta wanted it that way. You have nothing to do with it, Blue. But I stayed silent, letting her talk to me as if she were the one who controlled everything. My mind began to tune her out, it was a mental defense I had learned as a child when my parents would yell at me for hours on end over some stupid thing I did, like cook a dead mouse on the top of the stove in a tupperware dish when I was five because everyone had told me that raw food was bad and I didn't want the poor kitty to be eating bad raw food, and relived, inside my head, a memory of one of the first nights Vegeta came to me.

He stood, arms at his sides, gazing at all the action figure and toys I had on the entertainment center top. I had my Boba Fett maquette, several other Star Wars action figures, my hardbound full-color Elfquest graphic novels with half-moon/wolf-head bookends, one red, the other green, and other bits of odds and ends. I watched as he walked around to my computer desk, looked at the three Piccolo action figures, (well, one's really a doll, but...) and then turned back around to me.

"Why do you only have one of me?" He asked, holding the SSJ Vegeta action figure in his hand, "And a gazillion of the namek?"

I laughed, "I don't have a gazillion, Vegeta!" I said, wishing I did, "I have two action figures, one doll and one model! That's it!"

"You should have more of me." He said, studying the figure, "I have more scars, you know."

"Yes," I said, taking the action figure from him and placing it back on the shelf. I knew only too well. Before I could do or say anything his eyes caught something on top of the television set. "What's this nonsense?" He asked, holding out a video game box with a picture of the Dragonball Z crew on it, "Some video game?"

I grinned. It was the Dragonball Z fighting game, Budokai, given to me for Christmas by a dear friend, Phil. It was the only reason I learned how to work the playstation 2 to begin with. I loved that game. The only problem was, I never had anyone who wanted to play it. Shawn and Chris and all our other friends liked Armored Core, The Matrix and Vice City better, so I often ended up just playing by myself.

"Wanna play?" I asked, not waiting for an answer, I began to hook up the controls, handing him his, I turned the switch on the game console and flipped to the correct channel and waited for it to start up, "You can be anyone you want, or just be yourself."

"Hmph!" He said, but I saw his body tense, as if he were about to go into a real fight. I showed him the different options, Duel, Storymode, Training, Tournament. Since I wanted to play too, we picked Duel and I picked the character I normally did, out of habit. Vegeta, of course, sneered at every other character's face but his own and picked himself.

"Come on, use your head!" Came Android 18's mocking opening before the battle, I giggled as, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vegeta growl and clutch the game controller harder. "Don't mock the great Vegeta!" His character cried and then the fight began. Vegeta tried to figure out what all the combo moves were, his fingers were fast, but he paused too often to get something right. He was beating me, or I should say, 18, in the game, up, pretty badly. The problem was, I am what my boyfriend likes to fondly call 'A Button-pusher'. There is no rhyme nor reason to my techinque in fighting games, I just push as many buttons as fast as I can and pray to hit something, anything!

Vegeta growled on the sofa, his character shooting a ki blast at me. I made 18 do a punch and kick combo and we both heard; "K.O!" 18 looked smugly out at us from the televison screen; "You make me look good!" Vegeta, the real thing, threw his controller down so hard it nearly broke. Thank god it didn't! I didn't have the money to replace it nor did I have any way of explaining to Shawn how it got that way. Vegeta turned to me, saying; "You were just lucky!" I laughed, and he went on; "You should learn the correct moves in that game of yours, just pushing buttons like that makes you look foolish."

"At least I won!" I gloated, grinning at him. I danced around the livingroom for at least two minutes, singing; "I beat Vegeta at DBZ Budokai! I beat Vegeta!" Until he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back down, shoved the game controller back into my hand and said; "Better bit that tongue of yours, woman."

"Ami?" I became aware of Bulma snapping her fingers at my face, "Ami? Are you listening to me? I asked if you wanted to feed Chikara now, he's awake."

"Oh!" I said, taking my son from her. I arranged him at my breast and Bulma left me to go work on some project she was involved in. I still had the memory of playing video games with Vegeta fresh in my mind. I looked down at Chikara and whispered; "Just because I get mad at him doesn't mean I'll ever talk bad about him to you, little one, he's still your father, no matter what."

Chikara merely continued to suckle contently as his tail slapped against my hand, watching me with Vegeta's own scowling eyes.