Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ FROM BAD TO WORSE... ❯ Sabotage and Confrontation ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Last Chapter: Frustrated by his training Vegeta gets injured in the gravity
simulator while Bulma finally feels herself becoming sympathetic to the stranded
Saiyan...
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FROM BAD TO WORSE...
Chapter Two

Early the next morning, Vegeta went for his usual run...but he was walking
back less than a half-hour later. He'd started coughing even before he had made
it a block from Capsule Corp. and when he'd wiped his mouth a bloody froth had
clung to the back of his hand. The pain in his side wouldn't be ignored and he
abandoned his jog scarcely before it had even begun. He returned to the compound
with a look of defeat on his sweat-streaked face and, being a creature of habit,
went straight to the gravity simulator.

I'm in no shape for this; he admonished himself even as he punched in the
days-training session. He eyed the setting of three hundred on the readout, his
hand wavering over the 'engage' button. He figured that if he overdid it this
time, the damn machine might just finally kill him.

He discovered he didn't really care much, one way or the other. Squeezing
his eyes shut, he pressed the button and prepared himself for the over-whelming
pressure that would compress the broken bones of his ribcage like a vice until
they perforated his insides beyond saving.

Nothing happened.

Almost disappointed, Vegeta frowned at the console and hammered down on the
engage switch with still the same result. The data display assured him that all
systems were ready and waiting but the damn thing was completely unresponsive.
He opened the cabinet door beneath the desk and laid down on his back to peer
inside the circuitry of the console. He had absolutely no idea what he was
looking for but he was getting sick and tired of running to Dr. Briefs or his
bitch daughter and having to ask one of them to repair the simulator.

The Saiyan was not as helpless around technology as some would like to
believe. He was actually very skilled at dismantling objects to study their
inner workings but unfortunately was at a loss of ever getting them to work
again. It was his Saiyan blood to blame for that; evolved enough to steal
technology but not far enough along to develop any. His time with Frieza had
broadened his horizons somewhat, introducing him to alien technical data that
would have been forbidden knowledge if he had remained on Vegetasei and been
permitted the destiny of ruling the world. There had been times on missions with
Nappa and Radditz where he had been able to make makeshift repairs to their
scouters or space pods when they became damaged; just enough so they could
complete their mission or limp back to the nearest base. The other two could
only stand on the sidelines and scratch their heads like a pair of inbred
monkeys while he fussed with the equipment. Being an Elite ranked Saiyan as well
as Royalty Vegeta wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination and he caught
on to things relatively quickly-

-But he was damned if he could figure out why the simulator wouldn't start!

"Let's see," he muttered to himself, a habit he had gotten from Bulma on
many of her repair trips to this very chamber. It appeared to help her
concentrate. "The display is saying that everything checks out. That must mean
that the problem is in the switch itself...now which line runs to the damned
switch? There it is!" Selecting a dark blue cable he gave it a direct tug and
blinked as everything around him went dark. He had just disconnected a power
relay to the data processor and the entire system had crashed as a result.

"Fuck," he said in disgust.

Fifteen minutes later he was walking down the stairs of the headquarters
building on the search for Bulma or her father with his shoulders practically up
around his ears in embarrassment over the situation. It was easy to explain an
explosion that caused damage but he wasn't sure how to phrase what he had done
so that he didn't come across as an incompetent moron, which at that moment was
exactly how he felt. He hoped that Dr. Briefs was in. At least the old man could
be easily intimidated into doing what he wanted. Unfortunately, the company
President was away on this day and that left his daughter in charge. Oh happy
day.

Bulma was in her office and the secretary was absent at her desk (she had
seen Vegeta coming and went to the bathroom to avoid him). Vegeta tried the
doorknob, found the door locked and, muttering under his breath brought one
knuckle onto the wood in a knock that made the door tremble in its frame.
Jumping in surprise, Bulma turned and saw him standing there, her face betraying
her surprise until it resumed its normal expression of irritation. She got up
and opened it, casting the secretary's empty chair a knowing glare as he stepped
inside. "I'm betting that this isn't just a social call," she commented,
returning to her computer desk.

He paused for a moment to take one lingering glance around the cluttered
area. The room looked as if a small explosion of paper and parts had been
detonated earlier. There wasn't a piece of furniture that wasn't buried under
books or printed matter and he had to watch his step before he tripped over some
half-completed device she hadn't gotten around to completing. In a reflex
action, he sniffed the air and almost gagged from the stench. There was some old
sandwich rotting away in some littered corner somewhere but Bulma appeared
oblivious. His impression of her, poor to begin with suddenly dropped another
notch at the sight of such disarray.

In answer to her statement, he grumbled, "No, it's not. The simulator is
broken again."

She didn't look surprised. "What's wrong with it?"

"If I knew I wouldn't have to come to you, now would I?" he snapped at her,
kicking aside a broken helmet as he stalked across the room. "When can you fix
the damned thing?"

"You'll have to take a number. I'm very busy," she said calmly.

He noticed the designs of the communication chip she was trying to decipher
for the computer facsimile. He picked one up, studying what was scrawled on its
surface before she snatched it out of his hand. "Don't touch," she scolded him
as if he were a small child and actually pushed him away from the desk.

His face flushing, he said in a rough voice, "How long before you can make
repairs?"

"Two days."

"Two days?! Are you insane?"

"Keep it up and I can make it three," she said. "This chip has top
priority. There's already competitive bids coming in and we don't even have the
specs translated into code-"

He was shaking his head at her technical babble. "I can't wait that long."

Turning in her chair, she stared at him closely, noticing that he appeared
paler than usual, obviously favoring his side with each unnecessary movement.
"Tough, Vegeta. Do your jogging, go swimming at the pool, play some tennis, I
don't care. But the simulator stays down until I can get around to it. End of
discussion." She swiveled back around and resumed her typing, ignoring him
purposely. In the background all she could hear was his outraged sputtering
until she heard footfalls and the resultant slam of the door as he left. She
cast a knowing smile at his retreating back and pulled a small object out of her
breast pocket, eyeing it with a grin.

It was the diode to the gravity simulator's engage switch. After leaving
Vegeta's quarters last night, she had gone to the simulator and deliberately
sabotaged it so that he would have the opportunity to heal. The tactic was
unfair, but against the Saiyans irrationality in his training habits she felt it
was necessary. Laughing to herself, she tucked it carefully back in her pocket.

Vegeta got back up to ground level and shoved the double doors of the
building wide open as he stepped through, blinking at the early morning light.
What was he going to do? It was a question that held almost a degree of panic
for him. It wasn't as if the reality of being idle was a new sensation. He'd
encountered it between missions, after all, and had always found something to do
as a diversion. However this was not a planet or a warship that was ordered to
cater to his every whim. This was Earth where he had to constantly fight for
even the smallest scrap of respect and where everything around him was an
unknown. He hated this planet, hated its people and its peculiar customs and,
most of all, hated the fact that he was held at its mercy with nowhere to go and
had nobody to turn to. He had never felt so alone in all of his life and without
the simulator to occupy his mind, he was going to have to deal with it. He found
that realization unendurable.

He decided to head back to the simulator and puzzle out what he had done
wrong. At the very least a thorough dismantling of the system would give him
invaluable knowledge of its inner workings and teach the woman a good lesson
when she had to put it all back together later. It might also encourage her to
get off her expanding ass faster the next time he broke it. A ghost of a smile
crossed his tense features in anticipation of the fight that would follow that
discovery. The woman may be a slob but she had a tongue on her that could draw
blood and he actually reveled in their rare verbal sparring matches.

"Hey Vegeta!"

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Yamcha, the King of the Freeloaders
and his floating pet rodent, Paur, waving to him as they came into the compound.
He had apparently arrived to make use of the Briefs indoor pool, if his swimming
trunks and the towel around his neck were any indication. The Saiyan didn't take
him particularly seriously. He remembered how the young human had been the first
of Earth's supposed Special Forces to die when he and Nappa had arrived on the
Earth, and from a lowly Saibaman no less.

He didn't acknowledge the greeting and only stared back at him resentfully.

"You gonna go swimming, too?" Yamcha asked when he came up to the shorter
man, relishing how Vegeta had to incline his head to look up at him. It was a
small victory but the fighter took what he could get.

"No," Vegeta sneered. "The chemicals in that smelly water make me itch."

"Oh. How come you're not training then?"

"That piece of shit simulator is down. Again. I just ordered that stupid
woman to get off her incompetent ass and fix it."

Paur gave a squeak at his tone and Yamcha's face tightened. He didn't have
an intimate relationship with Bulma anymore but he still considered her one of
his closest friends. His ego had taken a hard hit the day she had invited the
distrustful alien to move into Capsule Corp. He had wanted to discuss his sense
of betrayal with her over that issue but considering she had been dealing with
his unfaithfulness at the time, the topic appeared redundant. So he accepted her
decision but he didn't have to like it. Or Vegeta, for that matter. "Watch very
carefully how you talk about Bulma when I'm around, Saiyan."

Vegeta looked at him with bored, half-interest. "Am I getting too smart
with you? How would you ever know?" he asked sarcastically.

"I mean it, Vegeta. You had better be nice to Bulma or so help me-"

"-What, human?" Pouncing in his words, Vegeta glared at him. "Are you
looking for a fight? I'm bored right now. I'd be happy to oblige you."

To his credit, Yamcha backed down and the last thread of anything
resembling respect for him that the Saiyan might have had went out the window.
"I'm no match for you," the fighter admitted grudgingly.

"Bet on it. Now go play with your pussy and get out of my sight, you
useless idiot." Walking away, Vegeta gave an infuriating backhanded wave of
dismissal in the pairs direction. When he got no reaction, he added with a sly
grin, "Granted the bitch isn't anything special but she must have been slumming
to have put up with trash like you for as long as she had." Yamcha bristled at
the comment but made no move so the Saiyan decided to drop the bombshell: "Or an
even stupider whore than I figured her to be."

That did it. Bellowing with rage, the fighter threw away his towel and dove
for the Saiyan with both hands glowing.

Shortly after Vegeta had left her office Bulma began to get the first
stirrings of doubt itch away at the back of her skull. As much as she enjoyed
getting one up on the unstable Saiyan this victory didn't give as much pleasure
as she thought it would have, seeing his discouragement earlier. As near as she
could see he didn't have any hobbies or interests outside of his training to
occupy him. Perhaps she should have disabled the pressure setting so that it
wouldn't go above twenty. He would have complained about it but at least it
would have been a workout for him, rather than her unleashing a pissed-off alien
onto an unsuspecting population as she had. If she knew Vegeta at all, he would
be just itching for a confrontation, never minding that he was hurt and she was
probably just over-reacting to that anyway. She had seen him shrug off worse
injuries than a bruised side.

She pulled out the part again and sighed. "Noon. I'll track the little
prick down and say that I was joking and that he has no damned sense of humor.
I'll fix the simulator at noon. He better be happy."

Satisfied, she went back to work, keeping a close eye on the clock on her
desktop. Less than four hours to go...

I'm not gonna last five minutes, Yamcha thought wildly.

He executed two quick flips and narrowly avoided a foot that came out of
nowhere and missed his lower back by inches as it sank into the ground to the
ankle. Vegeta pulled it free and moved with that uncanny speed of his and re-
materialized in front of the retreating fighter. The two exchanged a flurry of
blows until the Saiyan's knee connected with the large muscle of Yamcha's thigh,
making it go numb. The human fell gracelessly.

Vegeta closed in for the finishing strike and had something warm and fuzzy
cover his face, screaming in a pitch that almost burst an eardrum. He grabbed a
handful of Paur's fur and flung the creature away with a snarl. "Get away from
me, vermin, or I'll find out if you're as tasty as you look!"

Using the thankful diversion to get his leg back under him, Yamcha leapt to
his feet and continued the battle. By unanimous decision, the pair willingly
decided not to use ki blasts in their joust. He wasn't sure of the Saiyan's
logic on the issue but he wasn't discounting his good fortune. Vegeta's martial
art skills were of a discipline that the Earth-bound fighter had never
encountered before and a part of him was actually cataloguing several of the
graceful kicks and parries for later use into his own repertoire, if he survived
the encounter that is. There wasn't one piece of his anatomy that the feisty
alien didn't use as a weapon, as Yamcha found out when a widow-peaked forehead
collided with his nose.

"AGH! Youb son ob ba bitch!" Yamcha howled, cupping his face.

Dancing away from him and laughing, Vegeta taunted, "Don't bring my mother
into this or you just might make me angry." He was purposely drawing out the
conflict in his boredom like a well-fed cat torturing a half-dead mouse and he
was having the time of his life. He actually gave Yamcha time to shake the
injury off before they were back trading blows in a frenzied blur that defied
all known laws of physics. A small crowd of day staffers had collected at the
entrance of Capsule Corp. to watch the fight and they commented in low, hushed
toned that the pair moved so fast at times that they actually seemed to
disappear from sight.

Yamcha was beginning to realize that the Saiyan was only playing with him
and found that knowledge unendurable. Gathering the last shreds of will from his
depleted reserves, he attacked Vegeta in a frenzy, actually driving the smaller
man into a surprised defensive. With a practiced eye, the young fighter noticed
how the Saiyan made a greater effort to block blows aimed for his right side
then for the left and decided to focus on that possible weakness. He feinted to
one side and made a visible attempt at a roundhouse punch and smiled when Vegeta
automatically brought his right arm up to deflect it. With a well-aimed kick,
Yamcha brought his foot into the aliens vulnerable side as hard as he could.

Bellowing, Vegeta hit the ground and writhed in agony as he cradled his
wounded side. Yamcha figured that he must have kicked harder than he thought as
the Saiyan coughed up a mixture of blood and bile into the grass, struggling to
rise.

Something wasn't right with this picture... "Vegeta, maybe this isn't such
a good idea. Let's postpone this fight for another time. What do you say?
Truce?" Yamcha offered hopefully. His own face was coated in blood that was
pouring from his broken nose. The gore dripped down his chin and was smeared
across his bare chest.

"You started this," Vegeta rasped and paused long enough to spit out a
mouthful of bloody phlegm. "I'm going to finish it."

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Chapter Three: The conclusion of the Vegeta/Yamcha conflict. Also, Bulma learns
a startling secret about what the Saiyan has been doing for her father...