Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Consacra ❯ Constructed 1 - Confession ( Chapter 2 )

CONSTRUCTED

 

Chapter 1: Confession

 

One week.  They had spoken scarcely ten times.  Each time, he had been the one to break the silence.  She supposed she should be thankful for his patience with her; he was accommodating her presence without much conversation or any known plan for how long she would live with him.  Or perhaps he was just indifferent, and patience was not a relevant factor between them.

He was tolerant of her.  Perhaps that was easy enough; during most of the day he was away from the cabin and did not return until evening, and she never asked about what he did to occupy his time.  Once, she followed him wordlessly as he took the hunting rifle that hung on the back wall and entered the woods in silence. He flew low through the trees, and he only turned back to raise a finger to his lips, signaling for her to stay quiet.  A few minutes later he shot a deer through the neck and spent the next hour skinning and cleaning it back at the cabin.  She wondered why he bothered with this. He could have used ki and diminished the mess significantly. He could also easily steal food from the nearby town.  He glanced at her once as his hands were covered with blood, seeming to find amusement in the look of distaste on her face.  He probably knew she was mildly curious at his behavior but didn't feel it was worth the effort to ask him about it.  She didn't have to try to understand certain actions of his.  She knew what he was, that they were the same, and that nothing would change.

She was quiet as they lay beside each other on his bed, which was just large enough for the comfort of two.  They usually fell asleep around the same time, close to midnight, and seldom moved in their sleep.  It was the end of one week.  Her time here so far had been uneventful and routine.  She expected it would continue to be this way until he dreamed up some scheme to amuse them as he had when they had first emerged from Gero's lab.  She wondered if this life was amusing for him, if some of his curiosity about humans was satisfied by this strange life he had built for himself.  Perhaps she would begin to like it, or at least appreciate it, if he did.

One minute before they usually fell asleep, he spoke. “So what are you thinking?”

A few seconds passed before she answered. “Not much.”

“Liar,” he said with a chuckle. “Every moment we're awake, we think.  You're thinking many things right now.”

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I'm thinking about how you seem to enjoy pointing out minor discrepancies in what I say and do.”

“I'm the only one who can point them out, 18.  Not saying you need to fix them or anything, though.”

“Oh, of course.  If I fixed them, life would be even less interesting than it is now.”

“Finally feeling bored?” he asked softly. “Was it any better before?”

She did not reply for a minute. “It was different,” she said vaguely.

“I see.” A brief pause.  Then, “Do you miss it?”

This was the first time he had said anything about the life she had recently left behind.  She supposed he had been respectfully refraining from mentioning anything for a week, which he had probably judged as sufficient time for her to...to what?  Come to terms with herself?  Recover from shock?  He knew the extent of her mind and body's capabilities, he knew that she was not a piece of emotional porcelain like many human women.  But perhaps he hadn't stayed silent out of courtesy.  Perhaps it was out of indifference.

“No,” she said after another pause. “I don't.”

“Well,” he said, turning on his side to face her. “What about them missing you?”

“What about them?” she said, tilting her head just slightly to meet his eyes. “They know what I've done and what I am, and they know they can't do anything about it.  They must realize that missing me doesn't serve any purpose.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “You know that humans do a lot of things without purpose.”

“I suppose so.”

“They like to think everything has a purpose, though,” he said with a sigh. “Even the weather.  As if some supernatural force would send rain over an entire nation just to appease one poor farmer.  Curious, isn't it?  Humans must be so insecure.”

She thought of Krillin. “Yes, they are insecure.  About many absurd things.”

“Isn't it interesting, 18, that everything for us once had a purpose?  To kill Son Goku?” he said with a short laugh.

“Yeah, well it seems we didn't serve our purpose too well,” she said dryly.

“What would it have been like if we had killed him, you think?” he asked.

“We'd be here in this cabin, having a conversation like this anyway.  Maybe a year ago instead of now.”

 

“Really?” His cold blue eyes seemed to glimmer faintly in the moonlight. “You don't think we would have created some other purpose for our lives? Kill some more humans, maybe conquer the planet?”

“Why would we?” she said, slightly puzzled at his reasoning. “We would have accomplished what we were programmed to do, and there would be no point in pursuing any other objectives after that.”

“But do you think we have a purpose right now, 18?”

“Why are you asking these questions?  No, I don't think we have a purpose.  We didn't meet our first objective and we didn't make any new ones afterward.”

“If Son Goku were alive now, would you try to kill him?”

She wondered what he was thinking. “No, I wouldn't.  There would be no point.”

“But there wasn't really a point in the first place, was there?”

“We were programmed to kill him.”

“But that programming was written by a human desiring revenge.  Gero invented a purpose for our lives...”

“Just as human beings often invent purpose for their own lives?” she finished for him. “And so that makes us not much different from ordinary humans?  What's your point?”

He smiled. “There is no point.”

She stuffed a pillow in his face. “Loser.  Go to sleep already.”

Their eyes snapped toward the door at the same time.  Someone was knocking.

“Looks like one of your old friends is coming to visit,” he said, rather annoyed.

“I told them not to try to find me,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she wrapped her blanket around herself and walked across the room.  She opened the door, ready to close it again in a minute or so.

It was not anyone she expected.

“18. Please help me,” Bulma said, her face pale and drawn in the moonlight.

 

*****

 

She looked at her brother as Bulma finished speaking. He was leaned forward in his chair, face propped in his hands. Flames crackled in the fireplace beside them, outlining his profile in a faint glow.

 

He returned her look with his own. What are you looking at me for?

 

Bulma must have noticed the wordless interaction between them. “17, I would welcome you too, I mean, I didn't think that you would be interested so I didn't ask before, but…”

 

“No, that's quite all right,” he interrupted with a wave of his hand. He looked at their guest sideways, his head tilted on one palm. He probably felt amused at her use of the word “welcome,” as if she arrogantly thought he'd jump at the chance to help her. “Space travel isn't my thing. Don't know if it's 18's either. Sis?”

 

She looked at Bulma's haggard face, her normally pristine features seeming to have aged ten years. Her hair was disheveled, and the dark circles under her eyes signaled several nights of sleepless worry. The heiress could be reduced to this condition—by the actions of one man?

 

“Why aren't you asking your friends to help you?” 18 asked coolly.

 

Bulma shook her head. “They wouldn't. They wouldn't leave their jobs and normal lives for Vegeta. They'd probably just say `I told you so,' like they expected he would leave at one point or another.”

 

“And it's because we don't have jobs or normal lives that you ask 18?” 17 said with a half-smile. He cut her off before she could defend herself. “Makes sense.”

 

“I'm sorry,” Bulma said, looking only at 18 now. She must have figured her brother was only going to continue treating the matter as a joke. “I did ask one other person—Piccolo.”

 

“Hmm, he's on the unemployed, abnormal list too,” 17 mused.

 

Bulma ignored him and continued. “He said that he wouldn't help me, but he did tell me what he knew about Vegeta leaving so suddenly. Vegeta had some kind of run-in with an alien more powerful than he.”

 

17 looked mildly interested now, staying silent as he listened.

 

“Apparently the alien left without causing any damage. It just blinked out of the atmosphere…using instant transmission, maybe. I asked Piccolo to take me with him because he was going into space to find this alien. He said it would be too dangerous, and I would only slow him down. And his goal isn't to find Vegeta, but to find whoever—or whatever—it was that made Vegeta want to leave Earth.”

 

18 digested this all with methodical neutrality. “But you're only interested in finding Vegeta. How do you plan to track him down in the first place?”

 

Bulma looked at her with resolution and thinly veiled desperation. “I thought you might be able to help. With what you know about Vegeta from your memory.”

 

18 exchanged glances with her brother. They both knew what she was talking about. It wasn't the actual memories she had of fighting Vegeta or speaking with him. It was the memory Gero had input into both of their databases, the reams of data on Vegeta's history and fighting style, whatever the scientist's spy bugs had managed to collect in their observations of Son Goku's acquaintances. The stores of her brain contained a fair amount of detailed information about his background.

 

The unspoken question remained. Why should she go? What was the point of helping this woman?

 

17 was watching her closely. She met his eyes, and he smiled. Somehow he knew what she was thinking. She read the silent movements of his lips. There is no point.

 

She could go with Bulma into space or stay here with her brother. She was confident that no harm would come to her if she made the former choice. Few living beings were strong enough to overpower her in a fight; she had once brought down the man in question after all, and in Super Saiyan form, no less. Her presence was also undetectable, as her energy didn't register on scouter readings. At worst, if they ran across the extremely powerful alien Vegeta had encountered, she would not attract its attention. Staying here, on the other hand…she was confident nothing terribly exciting or extraordinary would happen. Most likely she and 17 would continue to live this rather uneventful life, perhaps moving to different places in the world just out of curiosity. And…if she were to make the trip into space, she would come back to live with him again anyway.

 

She could take temporary action, only to return to the present state later. Or she could continue the status quo without change. Either way, this is where she would end up.

 

She thought back to her conversation with her brother more than a month earlier.

 

There are reasons for everything we do, 18. In case you haven't noticed.

 

But then, they both agreed there was no point, no purpose to their lives. She wondered at this paradox. She had no purpose, yet her mind indeed calculated and analyzed reasons for every possible action she could take. At the moment it had come up with no reason to help Bulma. Neither had it found any reason not to. But she did have to make a choice.

 

“I'll go with you,” she said. She was a bit surprised when the other woman rushed forward and hugged her, gushing with thanks. She passed 17 a puzzled look over Bulma's shoulder. He shrugged.

 

The headlights of Bulma's hovercraft lit the woods around them. It stood ready to take them back to Capsule Corp where the spaceship would take off. 18 paused at the doorway of the cabin.

 

She turned and faced her brother, whose expression was passively neutral. He leaned forward and kissed her coldly on the cheek, a formality he had never observed before.

 

“Hope you find what you're looking for, sis,” he said softly.

 

*****

 

18 had never really cared about or paid attention to the relationships between the humans she knew. She thought her relationship with Krillin had been fairly normal, except for the fact she was not human.

 

Vegeta was not human, either. And it seemed the relationship between him and Bulma was far from normal. She wondered how they had managed to last this long in the first place. From the limited encounters she had with them, she knew Vegeta had never looked at or spoken to his mate and child for more than a few seconds, and judging from how he had treated his older son from the future, he couldn't care less about them. Yet Bulma always seemed completely oblivious to this, and was now determined to chase him down when he had abandoned them of his own accord.

 

Why now? In the past, Vegeta had gone into space without so much as a word of warning; why hadn't Bulma felt the need to follow him then?

 

Perhaps this was why 17 was so intrigued by human customs and behavior. They were often meaningless and convoluted. It seemed humans seldom stopped to think about how absurd some of their thoughts and actions were.

 

A few hours earlier, Bulma had stormed onto the ship and shut the door angrily as 18 watched from the helm, where she had been familiarizing herself with the controls. A baby's wails pierced the air.

 

She tensed, her mind jarred out of sync for a split-second. In that bizarre moment she felt the cries of the child defy reality, that the silence she had known was coming as she lay on that bed had actually been broken…

 

A split-second later she relaxed. There was no point in pursuing illogic once logic had been regained. She looked more closely at Bulma and the bundle she held in her arms.

 

“Are you sure he should come along?” She raised an eyebrow.

 

“Yes. I'm not leaving my baby behind and that's that,” she said firmly, glaring at 18 as if challenging her to disagree.

 

“What upset you?”

 

“My parents. My dad said this is the most idiotic thing I've ever done. That it's too dangerous for Trunks,” Bulma said, brushing her baby's hair back from his face. “But of course he'll be safe with us. You're with me, and I can fix anything that might go wrong with the ship.”

 

“May I ask why you decided to take the child?” 18 said coolly, watching the boy indifferently as his cries tapered into hiccups.

 

“Because Vegeta ran away from both of us, and we're going to get him back together,” she said adamantly. “I know Vegeta cares for his son. Even if he doesn't care about me sometimes, he won't forget his `heir.'”

 

“So you're hoping that when Vegeta sees his son, he'll decide to come back with you? Out of remorse? A sense of duty? Or what?” 18 was trying to puzzle out this woman's reasoning.

 

“Out of love.” Her voice retained its conviction.

 

18 didn't question her reasoning further; perhaps there actually was none, and this woman who was renowned for her scientific genius might be at a loss for once.

 

So now they were alone, with ample food supplies and a child who constantly cried, ripping through space at impressive speeds. 18 had examined the ship thoroughly and found Bulma's handiwork quite intricate and well constructed. The ship had solid defenses and a complex navigation system. 18 had told Bulma what she knew about Vegeta's history and where he had been on certain missions. There was much she did not know about the Saiyan's background, and she had wondered how the determined woman would decide where to look first. They had some clues to work with. After he had left, Bulma had managed to establish a connection between Capsule Corporation's most advanced outer-space communications system and the computer on the ship he had taken. She had retrieved the spatial coordinates of his ship at that moment. Soon afterward he had discovered he was being tracked and cut off the connection. With all her technical ingenuity, Bulma had not been able to reestablish the link. It seemed she had underestimated how intelligent Vegeta was, or she had at least failed to realize that a lifetime of working with alien technology far superior to Earth's had given him the upper hand.

 

They were headed for a planet in 18's database that was the closest to the coordinates they had obtained of Vegeta's location several days earlier. According to her memory, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about it. It had been colonized by Frieza and served as a checkpoint for many mercenaries and traders passing through that sector. Vegeta had stopped there after his first defeat on Earth, before he had headed for Namek.

 

18 had only agreed to come along and help with whatever Bulma wanted; she did not take on an active role in anything unless asked. She did not object to the woman's decisions, as nothing was personally at stake for her. It was intriguing to observe Bulma's decision-making process, however. The woman was fascinating in her own way, although 18 was beginning to wonder if her fascinating mind would actually be able to solve the problem she had set out to solve. 18 thought that perhaps Bulma had the wrong concept of what the problem was in the first place.

 

The heiress tended to talk a great deal. During waking hours, it seemed that if Trunks wasn't crying, his mother was speaking, telling stories about her adventures with Son Goku and her previous trip into space, fussing over the child's demands for food, and asking 18 about her own life. 18 wondered if this was how most human women were—if this was the kind of woman she had been before she had become a cyborg.

 

They had a few hours before they reached the planet. 18 sat on the floor beside the viewing window, eyes transfixed on the myriad stars outside. The dark expanse before her was endless and unmoving, very different from the ocean she used to gaze at every day from the beach. Every second her view of the waves and clouds, the sounds of the birds, and the feel of the wind had changed. Here, it was the same palette of black, the stars like silent fireflies frozen in time.

 

“Hey.”

 

She did not turn as Bulma sat down beside her.

 

“Pretty, isn't it?” she commented. Before 18 could answer, or decide not to, she added, “Actually, never mind. I'm sick of staring at stars, there's nothing special about them. I guess when you look at something for too long, it loses its magic.”

 

Interesting change in opinion, 18 noted. It saved her from going through the trouble of the talk she had had with Yamucha.

 

Almost as if she had read her mind, Bulma said with a sigh, “Yamucha and I used to spend nights lying in an open field, or in the desert where he used to live, looking up into the sky. We'd look for patterns in the stars and name our own constellations. It was hard, though…we kept seeing the old constellations we had grown accustomed to. It was damn near impossible to see the stars in them as separate from the manmade pictures in science textbooks.”

 

18 listened quietly. Bulma could talk for hours without noticing the prolonged silence from her companion, or at least without caring about it. 18 didn't really mind. It was kind of like hearing Krillin's mindless chatter, except this was a woman speaking. It was intriguing, the differences in what men and women tended to talk about. She was unsure whether cars and poker were more or less interesting than Bulma's constant ramble about romantic adventures.

 

“Did I tell you how I met Yamucha, 18?”

 

“Yes.” She refrained from adding, three times.

 

“It was pretty amazing what we had. He was so shy around me, and I guess pretty weird, living out in the desert with a talking cat,” she went on. “But the first time I met him, I thought, you know Bulma, maybe you can scratch that wish about finding a prince to ride off with into the sunset. A desert bandit seems infinitely cooler.”

 

She shook her head and laughed merrily. 18 thought the sound was quite unique, free of restraint and care. “To think, I wanted such petty things from the Dragonballs. I could have wished for world peace or a cure for cancer or something, but I wanted strawberries and a prince instead.”

 

She paused for a second, drawing her knees up to her chest. “Well, one of those wishes came true without the Dragonballs.”

 

This might get interesting. 18 looked over at Bulma for the first time since she had sat down. “Do you regret it?”

 

The humor was gone from Bulma's eyes as she returned her gaze. “No. I live my life with no regrets. That's my mantra. And anyway, if I regretted it, I wouldn't be wasting my time chasing His Royal Highness through space.”

 

It was the first time they had delved into Bulma's reasoning behind her mission since she had brought Trunks onto the ship. Perhaps 18 would learn more about the human psyche through this conversation. Then again, she wondered how much a relationship as bizarre and complicated as the one between the Saiyan prince and the rich heiress could teach her about average humans.

 

“How did it start?” 18 asked plainly. Bulma's eyes seemed to light up at her slight show of interest.

 

“It's a long story. But I guess we have some time, huh,” she said, leaning back on her elbows. “I guess it started on Namek. He was fighting one of Frieza's minions, Zarbon, in front of me. I thought I was crazy. One second I was terrified of him, and the next I was still terrified but really turned on. Never mind that he had caused the death of Yamucha, and had just threatened to kill me too…I only noticed the cut of his shoulders and back, the way he carried himself, utterly confident in his strength, how he staked everything in the moment and lived with the reckless abandon I had longed for since leaving home as a teenager... Then I had this irrational fear that someone would notice and reprimand me for my sudden attraction to a cold-hearted killer…no, Vegeta was more than that, he was a mass-murderer, he'd destroyed entire worlds. So I—this is pretty funny—I tried covering it up by rooting for the other guy, Zarbon. I realize how stupid I must have sounded, fawning over an alien that looked more feminine than me. I guess I overdid the act, but something funny happened then…I think Vegeta got jealous.”

 

A fond smile appeared on her face. 18 decided this was indeed going to be a lesson on abnormal psychology.

 

“The more I thought about it afterward, the more I realized I had definitely gotten under his skin with my feigned affection for his enemy. He probably could have killed Zarbon right on the spot…but he gave him time to transform into this really ugly lizard-hulk thing. Probably to gross me out and show me the guy I appeared to be so crazy over had nothing on him. That was the first signal he gave me. The rest were hard to come by, but there were more than a few. You just had to watch for them carefully, or you'd miss them. Everyone else definitely missed them, which is why they were all so surprised when they found out Trunks was Vegeta's son and not Yamucha's. And why you're asking me now how the hell we ended up together.

 

“After he refrained from killing me on Namek and put on that little show in front of me, I stopped being afraid of him. I mean, logically I knew he could vaporize me without blinking an eye, but he didn't, and I knew somehow that he wouldn't. Once we were all transported back to Earth as Goku and Frieza continued their fight on Namek, I remember making my first pass at him. I invited him to stay at my house since he had nowhere else to go, and I threw in a little warning not to jump all over me even though I was attractive. That got him—oh, the look on his face right then was rich.

 

“He stayed for a while but avoided me most of that time, and I didn't care about him enough at that point to try to spend time with him or anything. I was technically still in a relationship with Yamucha, even though he was dead. We wished him back a few months later with the Dragonballs. I was happy to see him—really happy. I wasn't thinking about Vegeta, didn't even care as he stole off in one of my spaceships to find Goku.

 

“And then I had this dream,” Bulma said, her voice like a sigh. “I don't know if this ever happens to you, but I had the most random-ass dream, filled with stuff I never gave a second thought to when I was awake. I was back on Namek at the moment I first met Vegeta face-to-face and he was threatening to kill me. He was demanding that I hand over the Dragonball I'd found. I actually stood up to him and refused for some insane reason. I totally expected to be fried to a crisp at that point. But sometimes dreams have a weird way of twisting in directions my logical mind could never figure out. Instead of killing me, he smiled, walked up to me like I was an old friend he was glad to see…and put his arm around my waist. By then the `old friend' feeling had definitely changed to `old flame' status. I looked into his eyes—they were dark and dangerous, with a shade of madness—and felt something set alight inside me, something I hadn't ever felt with Yamucha. And then he whispered, `I think you'll change your mind,' and kissed me.

 

“And I woke up in my bed, and reality took several more seconds than it should have to set in. It felt so real, so…I don't know how to describe it, but that whole day I thought about him, wondering if this dream meant anything or if I should just try to forget about it. But I couldn't forget about it, because that afternoon he crashed my spaceship on the lawn and waltzed back into my life like he had never left. It must have been fate or something. It was too much of a coincidence. I couldn't stop thinking about him after that anyway because he was always around and in my face demanding something, repairs for the gravity room, repairs for his armor, repairs for the regen tank, and seriously pissed me off to no end. But Yamucha started noticing that despite all the breath I spent ranting about how Vegeta was an arrogant bastard, I still carried out all his requests and more. I went out of my way to do nice things for him, and tried to talk to him more even if it led to an argument (which it often did). Yamucha was never one to hide his emotions—he was clearly jealous. So we started fighting, with him accusing me of recklessly falling for this cruel, evil alien who had taken his life only a little more than a year earlier, and me angrily denying his jealous accusations as if I had never experienced any sort of benign feelings toward Vegeta.

 

“Our relationship of several years deteriorated over the course of about two months. When you don't have trust, things tend to go downhill pretty fast. By the end I had stopped caring. I was fed up with the possessive, insecure man Yamucha had become. I guess I couldn't blame him for how he had changed—he was far outmatched in strength by several other fighters at that point, and he must have felt bitter and insecure because of that. He probably felt he couldn't do enough to impress me anymore, and he was losing my respect and interest. Maybe I should have been more accepting and patient. He was my first love, and he was and still is a great guy—he just wasn't right for me anymore.

 

“It was hard to deal with our breakup just because I had gotten used to being in a relationship for so long. It felt strange to be single. At the same time it seemed Vegeta's presence in my life was growing stronger by the day. We seemed to run into each other more often, argue and fight a lot more too, but that also meant I got to talk to him. I got to know him through those stupid fights, and I found he wasn't serious most of the time we insulted each other; in fact it was pretty entertaining for him. I started thinking about certain choice insults he threw at me—that maybe he actually meant the opposite of what he said. `Ugly,' `hideous,' `weak,' you get the point. I started thinking there might be something beyond entertainment in his words.

 

“I remember the day I finally confessed to myself that I had indeed fallen, completely in love and completely insane. It wasn't one of those heartfelt moments you see in chick-flicks. It was just an ordinary day. I walked into the kitchen to make lunch for myself, opened the fridge, and found it absolutely bare, courtesy of His Royal Pain in the Ass. I started cursing, pretty ticked off that I would have to call for take-out and then go for a grocery run. I kept asking myself why the hell I still put up with him when I could just kick him out or give him a ship to leave Earth for good, and I was so mad that I broke a nail while dialing a Chinese take-out restaurant. I cursed again, but suddenly I knew the answer to my question. Not sure if it was related to the pain in my nail.

 

“I loved him. I didn't want him to leave. Even though he made me want to pull my hair out pretty much every day, he also made me feel alive…with his insults and challenges, with how he almost went out of his way to try to belittle and deflate me, only because he knew I'd meet any challenge without fail and fight him tooth-and-nail every inch of the way.

 

“To him I was more than just the token genius whose inventions came in handy sometimes…I did build a gravity room for him, but unlike the other fighters, he didn't make me feel useless and helpless outside my ability to invent things. He also didn't give a shit about my fame or wealth like virtually everyone else in the world did. Since age 16 I've been an icon in science, business, and glamour. But celebrity status always carries two edges, you know? People love me or hate me; they're either worshipful or terribly jealous. What I hate the most is when people imply that beauty and brains don't go together, like it's a huge shock that the same woman on the cover of beauty magazines hosts international physics conventions in her backyard. Vegeta never saw that as unnatural. He wasn't confined to narrow human standards; he's encountered hundreds of different alien species and God only knows what his standard of beauty is. And as to me being the richest woman in the world—he is a prince after all, and amassed a lot of personal wealth from his mercenary work before Earth, so my wealth meant nothing to him.

 

“He did see me as unnatural, though. Because I didn't fear him, because I always fought him even though I was `just a weak human.' Almost everyone else he met in his life cowered before him and begged for mercy, but I didn't. I guess somewhere along the line he started to see me as more than just unnatural…that I was special, and equal to him, perhaps…that I was worthy. Not because of beauty, brains, or even physical strength which he seemed to measure everyone else by…but because of my inner strength, which comes from who I am.

 

“All this just hit me at once as I slammed the phone down and stared at the trickle of blood on my finger where the nail had snapped. It was ridiculous…me, falling in love with a vicious murdering alien who had almost destroyed the Earth and killed my friends. There was no use in denying it, though.

 

“Being honest with myself definitely kicked my feelings for him up a notch, and my actions too. To me, our arguments weren't about winning anymore, they were just about how much I could flirt with him and lead him on without going too far. He caught on pretty quickly. I think he was confused for a bit and tried to avoid me. But I knew I had him when he changed the way he spoke around me as well. We went back and forth like that for a month. Then one night, I broke off a particularly heated argument and walked slowly back to my room, with the clear expectation that he'd follow me to put in the last word. He did follow me. Let's just say a dark bedroom and raging hormones aren't a safe combination.

 

“That was how our `real' relationship began, I guess. Eventually I got pregnant—figured out too late that contraception doesn't work when your partner's a Saiyan—and he left to train in space during most of that time. He wasn't here when Trunks was born, and basically had very little contact with me up to the day you and 17 showed up. It wasn't pleasant for me, but I endured it because I understood him. I never entertained the silly notion that I could tame him or change his wild, ruthless nature. I thought if anything, love would come gradually, and when it did, it would be the most powerful, dangerous thing he would ever feel. It would shake his life more than any battle, and turn his world off its axis.”

 

Bulma's eyes glittered with something 18 found hard to name…excitement? Anticipation? 18 had seen that look before on others, had seen it first in Vegeta's proud stare as he had carelessly challenged her to a fight on the day she and 17 were activated.

 

“I'm still looking for that victory, 18. I love him, against reason and pain, and I will never give up until he loves me back. I will have him realize that Trunks and I mean more to him than anything in the universe, and that we will always be here for him.”

 

Bulma let out a sigh and leaned forward once again, her arms encircling her knees. “Enough of my rambling. 18, how are you feeling?”

 

18 looked at her, slightly puzzled. “About what?”

 

The blue-haired woman's eyes seemed to soften as she laid one hand on 18's shoulder. “I've been telling you everything about myself for the past however many days we've been on this ship. It's not that I just love to talk and can't shut up. I wanted you to know who I am, to know you can trust me. You can tell me anything, and I'll listen and won't judge you.”

 

Strange. Humans, or perhaps human women in particular, were indeed strange. To use idle conversation and storytelling in a formulated attempt to strengthen social bonds, to gain someone's trust…

 

18 realized what Bulma was implying through the conversation's sudden change in focus.

 

The heiress continued. “It's been almost a month now. I don't know what you're feeling, but I want you to know I'm here for you if you want to talk about it. I left out a huge chunk of the story about me and Vegeta—the part where I carried Trunks inside me for nine months to the harsh disapproval and criticism of my parents, old friends, everyone. They made me feel horrible, 18. Like I had done something perversely wrong, like a sin to confess or be punished for. I know what it's like to be all alone and without anyone to support you. So I want you to know that I support you no matter what, and you're not alone.”

 

18 laughed. It was a real laugh, something she had not expected she was capable of. Bulma looked at her in confusion.

 

“And all this time I assumed you had no idea what had happened in my life, with Krillin, with the child I was carrying,” 18 said, sobering. “You knew all along. You fooled me, Bulma. But I think you're missing something.”

 

She had the scientist's full attention. She wondered again if the woman's brilliance ran only so far as her ability to invent gadgets and build ships.

 

“You love Vegeta so much that you will do anything to find him, even knowing he doesn't love you, because you're hoping that somehow he'll love you back in the future. You really will do anything for him, even if it means asking me to leave Earth with you.”

 

Bulma's eyes radiated honest confusion, but 18 knew the woman was thinking fast and hard to figure out what she was saying.

 

“I had thought you were just unaware of the death of my child and my estrangement from Krillin. But you were aware. And yet you still asked me to come with you, knowing that Krillin loves me and wants me back more than anything.”

 

Bulma had figured it out—some of it, at least. Her expression was defiant now. “I know Krillin loves you and is really hurting because he lost you. He's my friend and I feel sorry for him—”

 

“But you still begged me to go with you instead of urging me to go back to him,” 18 countered.

 

Bulma's lips were pressed in a thin line. She responded in a tone that was considerably edgier than before.

 

“Because I respect your free choice, 18. I respect that you didn't want to be with Krillin anymore and chose to move in with your brother. I couldn't force you to go back to him if you didn't love him or want—”

 

Realization dawned on her then, and she shut her mouth abruptly. She turned away from 18 in a huff, resting her face against her knees.

 

“I'm not judging you, Bulma,” 18 said, her voice softer, and neutral as always. “I'm not capable of judging anyhow. But I just thought you should allow for the possibility—”

 

“That Vegeta will choose not to come back, and I won't be able to do a thing about it. Because he doesn't love me and never will. Thanks. I get it.” The confession—or confrontation of hard reality, rather—was cold and metallic, absent of her customary cheer and vivacity.

 

18 turned her head toward the main computer screen at the helm of the ship. It was blinking with rapidly processing strings of data. She stood and walked toward it.

 

“Strap yourself in. We're landing.”