Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ I, 6: Bulma ( Chapter 6 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: ShiningMoon 
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action / Comedy / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 01.15.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.9K | Visits: 248 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action / Comedy / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 01.15.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.9K | Visits: 248 | Status: Completed
NOTE: Well, maybe this will make up for all those short chapters. Anyway...I practically didn't even write this—the characters just did their thing and I was helpless to do anything but record it as it happened. XD
I hope you have as much fun reading this chapter as I did watching it unfold before me.
And I promise some plot stuff will happen soon! Or sometime...eventually...yeah. It's going slower than I thought, no thanks to Bulma and Raditz and their shenanigans, which I hope entertain you nonetheless.
...
Dammit.
Forget that stupid, pushy, only somewhat attractive jerk!
Armor! What a flimsy excuse. He tried to pull my bra off and look at my boobs! Well, I'm not gonna stand for it. Nope. I march right back upstairs because I have much more important things to do, anyway.
I was just being too nice to him, I guess. He thought he could do anything he wanted. Well. Boy, is he wrong. All I wanted was to get to talk to him, ask him about what he does, and maybe along the way figure out something or another about these two alleged "even stronger" Saiyans that are supposedly coming to get him and whatever, you know, to help Son out when he has to fight 'em. I'm inclined to say that guy's all talk, but, well, I guess Son is concerned enough that he's training with Piccolo, and even letting him (Piccolo, for god's sake!) train poor little Gohan. I use the term "train" loosely, because while I don't claim to know anything about that freaky green guy, he gives me the shivers, and seems like the sort who'd, I don't know, nearly kill the kid on a regular basis just for laughs. But Son seems to think he's okay...and I guess Son has always pulled through in the end, so I trust him.
His brother, on the other hand, I am not going to trust with anything, ever, especially given—
The doorbell rings just as I'm walking past the door, about to dump my papers off in the living room and start studying the schematics for repairing the pod there. (I found a little booklet tucked behind the pod's seat, but I can't read it—at least the pictures look useful. That was the other thing I was going to do, ask Raditz what it said. Well. Maybe I'll get Dad to ask him. I doubt he'll get molested.)
Of course, I can't answer the door with my hands full, so by the time I run over to the table to set down my papers, the doorbell has rung another time, and finally I swing it open. Oh, thank god. "Yamcha!" I pull him into a tight hug. "You're just who I need to see right now."
He grins. "Yeah?" he asks with a voice full of hope. (You see, he had this look about him that he was ready to start apologizing profusely, probably because a few days ago I filled his answering machine and voicemail with messages about how much I hate him and how I never want to see him again, because he blew off our date and because when he finally answered the phone, I heard a woman's voice in the background. In retrospect, I realize it may have actually been a baseball game announcer, and his game miiiight have gone into extra innings or whatever, and that caused him to be late. But, regardless, I'm a forgive and forget type of person, right? And there are more pressing issues.)
"Yeah," I nod, "that stupid alien just tried to, I dunno, cop a feel or something!"
His eyebrows knit down, like he's torn between the fact that this creep almost beat the shit out of Son and Piccolo and the fact that somebody else is ogling his girlfriend. "You want me to go talk to him?" he finally asks.
It's tempting—I mean, Raditz is pretty much helpless for the time being, so even if Yamcha wouldn't normally be able to beat him, I'd bet he'd give him a scare now, and nothing would be more therapeutic at this moment than seeing that asshole flipping out and begging for his life.
While I'm fantasizing—er—thinking, Yamcha asks, "Why? I mean, how?"
"Well, he was being a major pain, then he trapped my hand and wouldn't let it go, then he looked down my shirt, and asked me about the armor I was wearing, then all of a sudden he reached in and grabbed my bra! I slapped that bitch right back to where he came from!" I'm getting more worked up just thinking about it again. Yamcha looks at me like I'm crazy, and I realize I've been flailing my arms around and that midway through my explanation I had started screaming.
"Armor?" he kind of snorts, like he wants to laugh (but probably is also pretty sure I will do something unspeakable to him if he does). "Like that stuff I saw him wearing when your dad's plane landed near the pod?"
"I guess," I huff. "I think it was just a front."
"So," now he seems a lot more nervous about it, like thinking about seeing him before reminded him of how Raditz looks. "If you really think that, I can, er, well, give him a piece of my mind..."
Like I said, it's tempting. I wouldn't mind sitting back and watching someone else verbally drill him to the ground. At the same time... "Don't bother," I answer. "I doubt he'll even listen. I don't think he listens to me at all, at least."
"Really?" he raises an eyebrow. Yeah, yeah, I get it, Yamcha. It's impossible not to listen to me, I scream louder than a banshee, blah, blah, blah. You don't even need to say it. "Well, all right," he kind of shrugs, and he looks relieved. I don't think confrontations are really Yamcha's thing, at least not when he's out of his element. Really, he's gotten a lot tamer now that he doesn't live in the desert... Well, whatever.
"You wanna see something cool?" I ask, grabbing his arm.
He stares at me with a deadpan expression. "Is it the ship?"
Okay. He got me. I roll my eyes. "What if it is?"
"I'd rather go grab some lunch with you," is all he says. This actually sounds like a very good idea. I need to get out of here, especially because now I think I hear the fuzzy sounds of somebody trying to figure out the intercom system I set up from Raditz's room a few days ago. Three guesses who that somebody is, and I'll give you a hint—Son is gone, and Dad's cat is sleeping on the couch. Mm-hm. That's right. Raditz is so stupid that I'm comparing him to Son. And a cat. Jerk.
"Yeah, let's do that," I say before I have to think about it any more. Yamcha smiles in thanks (for me not subjecting him to a full tour of how I'm going to go about investigating, exploiting, and repairing the space pod). "What do you feel like eating?"
He seems to consider it for a moment, rocking back and forth on his feet, but then he gets this gleam in his eye. All of a sudden, reaches his hand down my shirt and yanks my bra up off my boobs. "That's how we say 'pasta buffet' on my planet," he snickers, wrapping his arm around my shoulders to hug me as I readjust my bra (again). I have to laugh a little, too.
...
You know that one stage of sleep deprivation where you feel like you're drunk? Well, I'm there. It's not my fault I'm not asleep; it's the coffee's. See, I was seriously on a roll with figuring out what this pod is all about just based on the diagrams in the manual, no translation necessary. So I made myself a pot of coffee.
And things were still going great, and I was feeling like maybe I was made to understand this stuff. Feeling like once I finish figuring this out, it won't take me too long at all to sketch up something that operates similarly. One of those things where it makes sense once you immerse yourself in it. So I wasn't ready to go to bed. I made another pot of coffee.
Now, I'm used to staying up late. But right now it's about the time my mother (who, I kid you not, wakes up to actually greet the sun every morning) gets up, and the night before last, I had an awful time sleeping because I kept having nightmares that Yamcha was actually Raditz in disguise. Yamcha would come over, we'd start making out, then he'd pull off my shirt, but underneath I'd be wearing Raditz's armor. Then he'd scream, "I knew it, you bitch!" and turn into Raditz and yank it off of me. Then I would wake up. Lather, rinse, repeat.
So right now I am so tired that I'm at the state where if I keep working, I'll probably actually undo my progress. I am genuinely concerned that I am less than one hour away from thinking that the key to operating the pod is to burn the space pod manual for fuel in order to power it. Wait, what? Please tell me I did not just think that. Oh god, it's starting.
Anyway, I didn't think that I would be in this awful a state an hour ago, which is about the time I polished off another pot of coffee.
Never was there a more dangerous drug than caffeine.
I pull out my phone and I'm thinking about telling Yamcha about that nightmare, because I'm sure it's his fault for that stupid little joke he pulled on me when we were about to leave. Well, no, no, it's not, of course. It's Raditz's fault for being such an ass in the first place.
I had somebody else bring him his food today, but that did not stop him from whining into the intercom about once an hour that he did not at all like the pants. These complaints gradually became threats of "I am going to tear these pants to shreds" and then I never heard another peep from him. I haven't even looked in on him since I came down here. I don't know why, but I'm kind of scared to.
Well, I wouldn't be so cruel as to call Yamcha in this state. Anyway, he might already be up doing that whole baseball practice thing, and he gets kind of pissy when I interrupt that. Or as pissy as Yamcha gets. I set my phone down on the desk and spin it around a few times, watching it whirl over my schematics, lit only by the little desk lamp I have on. The rest of the lab is black—no windows to let in the starlight or the streetlights. I only need this little desk light to look at my papers, anyway.
Then, the phone lights up and buzzes. Maybe Yamcha read my mind and decided to call me. I peek at the display and frown—it's not a number I recognize. Well, maybe—come to think of it—I actually don't trust myself to recognize anything right now.
I glance at the very empty coffee pot. It's not as if I'm getting to sleep anytime soon. "Hello?" I answer.
"I knew it, you bitch," a voice breathes. I drop the phone and throw the coffee pot at it. I am probably asleep and this is that nightmare all over again and all this won't matter when I wake up anyway, so for good measure I kick the phone as far as I can. It actually flies a fair distance, soaring across the lab almost out of the light produced by my lamp. If I lean to one side, I can follow it in the shadows, just barely, as it topples through the air. I am now certain this is a dream, because kicking things long distances is a skill I have never had.
Plink, the phone smacks harmlessly against the very sturdy glass that protects me from that bra-grabbing jackass. I look down at my foot and it seems that a piece of glass from the coffee pot cut into my toe when I swung my foot to kick the phone. But, it's okay, because—
Oh god.
This is usually the part of nightmares where I wake up, when I look at something that should hurt and wince and wait to feel the pain.
I wince.
And there's the pain.
Aaaaand I'm still here, and not in my bed.
Shit.
Far across the lab, my phone buzzes a few more times.
Plink, plink, plink, I hear. What? Plink-plink-plink-plink-plink. It's coming from around where the phone hit the glass and it's a similar sound.
Plink.
PLONK PLONK PLONK.
What the—oh. God. No.
PLONK. PLONK. PLONK.
I brace myself. In the shadows I can see Raditz's silhouette, his finger against the glass. He looks like the sort of thing I prayed wouldn't jump out from under my bed when I was little. But my phone is over there, and apparently I'm not dreaming, which means I actually have to go get my phone back instead of waking up to find it on the nightstand like I was planning on.
I kind of yank out the one shard of glass from my toe and take care to hop over the rest as I amble over there. I think I have some bandages nearby, anyway, so once I get over to my phone I can sit down and patch myself up. My toe hurts, but that pain is clouded over by more pressing issues.
The noise of Raditz tapping and knocking on the window has stopped, but I can still see him staring at me, his eyes full of evil and meanness and—ugh, I don't even want to think of it. Whatever the case is, he looks mad and I am not dealing with that right now.
Leaving minimal blood (from what I can see in the dim light) on the floor, I manage my way over to my phone and look it over. Doesn't seem to be damaged—good.
Of course that still leaves one question—who the hell was that? And... Well, there are two options, to call the number back and try to find out, or to forget about it. With Raditz's beady little eyes on me right now, I think talking to anyone would make me feel better. I dial the number back and hold the phone to my ear, ready to chew out whoever it is for calling me this hour, and using that creepy voice, to boot.
Breep, my phone beeps into my ear as I wait for someone to pick up.
Briiing, goes a noise nearby.
Breep, goes my phone, but I'm not really paying attention because I'm looking for the noise. I lean against the wall—Raditz doesn't seem to be staring at me anymore, and—
Briiing, I hear through the wall beside me.
"Hello," says the smug prick on the other end of the line, who I also hear through the wall.
Shit. That's right. I had the brilliant idea of making it a phone and an intercom in case I needed to contact him from outside the compound. And somebody (not going to point any fingers, but it was probably my clueless father, or maybe the guy who brought the food; he always seemed weak-willed, anyway) decided it would be a good idea to tell Raditz what buttons to press to get to me.
Shit, shit, shit.
He peeks around the window again, with this sly grin like he thinks he's clever, so I give him the finger. He seems to at least know what that means, because he gives me two back.
Oh, fuck this. I am not ready to deal with this asshole just yet. I stuff my phone in my pocket and reach over to the counter nearby where I keep the bandages for such lab accidents as stepping on the shards of a coffee pot I threw at my phone.
I am going to get a good night's sleep after this, and wake up and realize how stupid I was for doing that.
But the bandages aren't there. I look around—likely my father yet again wandered off with them. Drawback of having a genius father: he is absentminded as all get-out. He probably injured his arm, grabbed the bandages, forgot where his arm was, and went off to look for it with the bandages tucked under it. Let us all hope that this is not what happens to me, too, later in life.
I squint through the dim light at his desk—they're not there, but that doesn't mean anything because the only things that are on his desk right now are a fish bowl full of cereal and three books about maximiz—ewwwww.
Plink, I hear. Plink-plink. I look over at the window.
Aaaaand Raditz has the bandages. Perfect.
I march up to the window and ram my fist into the glass right where his cheeky little smirk is. He flinches for a second and my anger is broken long enough for me to laugh a sadistic laugh in his stupid perverted Saiyan face. This does not seem to sit well with him and he takes to pounding both fists against the glass, and he cackles when I shrink away for a second (newsflash, asshole: I'm not the one who purports to be a warrior). When I blow him a raspberry he pounds his fists even harder—
—until he disappears with a very noisy clatter.
It's too dark for me to see what happened, so I take a few deep breaths and pace over to the door, opening it and closing it again as quickly as I can, in case he's on his feet and able to run.
When I see him, I am nearly paralyzed.
With laughter.
He had wheeled his bed over to the window to tap on the glass. Here's my guess at what happened: as he was pounding on the window, the wheel slipped back.
And he fell onto the floor.
To add insult to injury, his blanket, twisted awkwardly around his feet, went with him, and he's trying to subtly wrap it around himself—the floor is a bit too cold for his proud warrior ass, I guess.
"Well, fuck you!" he shouts through my chortles as I attempt to stifle them for the sake of my lungs not collapsing in on me.
"Not my fault," I grin down at him. "I wasn't the one flailing around on a bed with wheels."
"Well I wasn't the one who's left the light on all night so that I couldn't catch two winks!" he shouts, and as he flounders around on the floor I can see that if not for the blanket around him, he could probably stand, were he were willing to withstand some nasty pain. This is a bit worrisome, as I definitely haven't built anything strong enough to actually restrain him (or at least hold him in here), not yet.
"The light?" I glance over in the direction of where I had been working. From here, my desk isn't visible, but I guess the light from the lamp is. "That little old light kept you up?"
"Yeah," he answers like he's not even convinced of it himself, until he looks back at me and seems to get mad again. "I figured it was you, so I did what that crazy old man showed me to do to talk to you through this communicator," Raditz points at the phone, "when you ignore me through the 'intercom,'" he adds, probably in an attempt to make me regret ignoring him for the past few days. "And I listened to see if the voice out there matched the voice I heard in here." By now I'm kneading my fingers against the inside corners of my eyes. I am way too tired for this. "I knew it was you keeping me up, bitch."
I roll my eyes and bend down reach for the bandages on the floor, but since he's already down there, he's quicker. "All right, asshole," I tell him, "here's the deal. I help you back onto your bed, and you hand over the bandages. It's not as if you're using them, anyway."
"Am too," he frowns, and motions to his arms. He has wrapped the bandages around his forearms and part of his hands.
"You were hardly even injured there," I note, scrutinizing the area.
"I miss my gloves," is his retort, and he turns his nose up. What a baby. I'm sure he doesn't really miss them and he's just doing it to screw with me. Well, jackass...mission accomplished. Prepare to face the consequences. Before he can do anything, I dive for the bandages, hoping to grab the roll in my arms and tuck into a ball around it so that I can roll beneath his bed with them, across to the other side, and make a clean getaway.
But I have failed to plan for what to do if he manages to keep a hold of the roll, which is exactly what happens. I am now awkwardly sprawled on the floor just to his side, half under the bed, with one of my arms wrapped partway around the roll of bandages and the other stretched out, having been flung outward in its attempt to bail on the plan. My hand is in a fist.
And that fist is on his cheek.
And I cannot read the expression on his face.
Shit, shit, shit.
"So," he narrows his eyes, craning his neck so that he's nearly nose-to-nose with me, and I can smell his stale breath. His mane looms behind his head like it's going to consume what's left of me when he's done returning my favor. "You are a fighter."
"No!" I shriek, kicking my legs against his through the blanket that's keeping him trapped. He twists his way out of the blanket and my feet are slapping against his ugly, muscular, hairy—bare—legs. I stop, quietly staring at them.
"I hated," he growls, "the pants." I'm about to scream, because, let's face it, the only things between the lower half of this towering homicidal alien and me are a pair of Yamcha's threadbare briefs and my highly fashionable summer skirt. But as I take in a shaky breath and start wondering if my voice works at all, he grins a grin that borders on friendly, snickers, tries to pull himself up, and collapses back onto the floor, back onto his still-healing ribs with a pained groan that makes me wince. "You ain't really much of a fighter, though," he coughs, still grinning. I'm about to tell him that he's one to talk, but I really do not want to tempt fate at this moment.
He holds out the roll of bandages, and after looking him over to make sure he's not about to slug me across the face or something, I snatch them and stand up to set them on top of his bed nearby. "Well, what are you waiting for?" he holds an arm out. If his palm weren't facing toward the wall I'd say he was about to form one of those blast things Son can create...
I blink at him a few times while I try to process things. "What?" I ask. He really can't blame me. I'm tired, I'm hyped up on caffeine, and I'm a just a little frazzled by enduring death threats from a pantsless alien. Well. I guess they weren't death threats. Er. I mean, he really didn't threaten me at all, but, clearly, he meant to...so...
"I gave you the fucking bandages, so are you gonna put me up there or ain'tcha?" he looks a little ticked off.
"Yeah," I answer, "okay." Is this actually happening? I mean, I know that before I wasn't asleep but I might have fallen asleep since then. As I help hoist him onto his bed I shift most of my weight to the foot with the cut toe, and it still hurts, and I'm still here, so I guess I'm not asleep. He must hear me take in a bit of a breath at the pain because once he's up on the bed he's looking over me.
"Your foot," he observes. Duh. There's only a small trail of blood across the room from it.
"Why do you think I wanted these?" I grab the bandages. I admit it, I'm a little surprised he doesn't just snatch them back from me. "Anyway, it's just my toe."
"And you're going to wrap it yourself? Ain't that the cutest thing," he seems to chortle, so I narrow my eyes at him. "If you're no fighter then you certainly don't know a damn thing about how to wrap bandages." I roll my eyes at him. Yes, because it takes a genius to apply fabric to skin using basic hand-eye coordination. I'm about to say this but I hear him wheeze a little bit at the exact same time as something very warm hooks underneath either of my arms and lifts me off the ground and onto the bed. He stares at me like he's waiting for something, and then he does grab the bandages from me.
"Hey!" I reach for them, and he extends out a finger to hold me back by the sternum. "Give them back, jerk!"
"Foot," is all he says, and he wiggles his fingers at me, grinning. Before I can even figure out what the hell he means he reaches out and grabs my leg out from under me, taking my foot in his very strong—but ugly—but warm—but murderous—hands. He reaches over for the bandages and tears a strip off with his teeth, and before I can even squeak out a word, he's patting my foot (a little too hard). "Now I bet you couldn't do that so well," he smirks, admiring his work.
My organs are basically trying to explode out of my chest right now, I'm so confused and so something-elsed, and I can't even bring myself to move. My foot just sits there in his hand.
As it turns out, I didn't have to move, because somebody does it for me. I feel my foot suddenly get a lot colder and somebody's arms around my shoulders, yanking me off the bed and pulling me into a hug. "Don't lay a finger on her, you bastard," I hear Yamcha hiss at him past my ear. He directs me out the door and I glance back at Raditz, whose eyes look just about as blank as I feel right now as my mind switches fully into autopilot for all the stress it's endured.
"Hey, Yamcha," I mutter vaguely. I am way too tired and just about ready to fall asleep in his arms. "Good morning."
"What was going on in there?" he runs his fingers through my hair, because he knows it will make me feel better. It makes me even sleepier, and my phone in my lab coat pocket smacking my legs rhythmically as we walk isn't helping. I shrug. "Let's get you some breakfast," he says, "before I leave for practice."
"Sounds good," I murmur, and close my eyes, and then everything is warm and dark.
Converting /tmp/phpMspir7 to /dev/stdout
I hope you have as much fun reading this chapter as I did watching it unfold before me.
And I promise some plot stuff will happen soon! Or sometime...eventually...yeah. It's going slower than I thought, no thanks to Bulma and Raditz and their shenanigans, which I hope entertain you nonetheless.
...
Dammit.
Forget that stupid, pushy, only somewhat attractive jerk!
Armor! What a flimsy excuse. He tried to pull my bra off and look at my boobs! Well, I'm not gonna stand for it. Nope. I march right back upstairs because I have much more important things to do, anyway.
I was just being too nice to him, I guess. He thought he could do anything he wanted. Well. Boy, is he wrong. All I wanted was to get to talk to him, ask him about what he does, and maybe along the way figure out something or another about these two alleged "even stronger" Saiyans that are supposedly coming to get him and whatever, you know, to help Son out when he has to fight 'em. I'm inclined to say that guy's all talk, but, well, I guess Son is concerned enough that he's training with Piccolo, and even letting him (Piccolo, for god's sake!) train poor little Gohan. I use the term "train" loosely, because while I don't claim to know anything about that freaky green guy, he gives me the shivers, and seems like the sort who'd, I don't know, nearly kill the kid on a regular basis just for laughs. But Son seems to think he's okay...and I guess Son has always pulled through in the end, so I trust him.
His brother, on the other hand, I am not going to trust with anything, ever, especially given—
The doorbell rings just as I'm walking past the door, about to dump my papers off in the living room and start studying the schematics for repairing the pod there. (I found a little booklet tucked behind the pod's seat, but I can't read it—at least the pictures look useful. That was the other thing I was going to do, ask Raditz what it said. Well. Maybe I'll get Dad to ask him. I doubt he'll get molested.)
Of course, I can't answer the door with my hands full, so by the time I run over to the table to set down my papers, the doorbell has rung another time, and finally I swing it open. Oh, thank god. "Yamcha!" I pull him into a tight hug. "You're just who I need to see right now."
He grins. "Yeah?" he asks with a voice full of hope. (You see, he had this look about him that he was ready to start apologizing profusely, probably because a few days ago I filled his answering machine and voicemail with messages about how much I hate him and how I never want to see him again, because he blew off our date and because when he finally answered the phone, I heard a woman's voice in the background. In retrospect, I realize it may have actually been a baseball game announcer, and his game miiiight have gone into extra innings or whatever, and that caused him to be late. But, regardless, I'm a forgive and forget type of person, right? And there are more pressing issues.)
"Yeah," I nod, "that stupid alien just tried to, I dunno, cop a feel or something!"
His eyebrows knit down, like he's torn between the fact that this creep almost beat the shit out of Son and Piccolo and the fact that somebody else is ogling his girlfriend. "You want me to go talk to him?" he finally asks.
It's tempting—I mean, Raditz is pretty much helpless for the time being, so even if Yamcha wouldn't normally be able to beat him, I'd bet he'd give him a scare now, and nothing would be more therapeutic at this moment than seeing that asshole flipping out and begging for his life.
While I'm fantasizing—er—thinking, Yamcha asks, "Why? I mean, how?"
"Well, he was being a major pain, then he trapped my hand and wouldn't let it go, then he looked down my shirt, and asked me about the armor I was wearing, then all of a sudden he reached in and grabbed my bra! I slapped that bitch right back to where he came from!" I'm getting more worked up just thinking about it again. Yamcha looks at me like I'm crazy, and I realize I've been flailing my arms around and that midway through my explanation I had started screaming.
"Armor?" he kind of snorts, like he wants to laugh (but probably is also pretty sure I will do something unspeakable to him if he does). "Like that stuff I saw him wearing when your dad's plane landed near the pod?"
"I guess," I huff. "I think it was just a front."
"So," now he seems a lot more nervous about it, like thinking about seeing him before reminded him of how Raditz looks. "If you really think that, I can, er, well, give him a piece of my mind..."
Like I said, it's tempting. I wouldn't mind sitting back and watching someone else verbally drill him to the ground. At the same time... "Don't bother," I answer. "I doubt he'll even listen. I don't think he listens to me at all, at least."
"Really?" he raises an eyebrow. Yeah, yeah, I get it, Yamcha. It's impossible not to listen to me, I scream louder than a banshee, blah, blah, blah. You don't even need to say it. "Well, all right," he kind of shrugs, and he looks relieved. I don't think confrontations are really Yamcha's thing, at least not when he's out of his element. Really, he's gotten a lot tamer now that he doesn't live in the desert... Well, whatever.
"You wanna see something cool?" I ask, grabbing his arm.
He stares at me with a deadpan expression. "Is it the ship?"
Okay. He got me. I roll my eyes. "What if it is?"
"I'd rather go grab some lunch with you," is all he says. This actually sounds like a very good idea. I need to get out of here, especially because now I think I hear the fuzzy sounds of somebody trying to figure out the intercom system I set up from Raditz's room a few days ago. Three guesses who that somebody is, and I'll give you a hint—Son is gone, and Dad's cat is sleeping on the couch. Mm-hm. That's right. Raditz is so stupid that I'm comparing him to Son. And a cat. Jerk.
"Yeah, let's do that," I say before I have to think about it any more. Yamcha smiles in thanks (for me not subjecting him to a full tour of how I'm going to go about investigating, exploiting, and repairing the space pod). "What do you feel like eating?"
He seems to consider it for a moment, rocking back and forth on his feet, but then he gets this gleam in his eye. All of a sudden, reaches his hand down my shirt and yanks my bra up off my boobs. "That's how we say 'pasta buffet' on my planet," he snickers, wrapping his arm around my shoulders to hug me as I readjust my bra (again). I have to laugh a little, too.
...
You know that one stage of sleep deprivation where you feel like you're drunk? Well, I'm there. It's not my fault I'm not asleep; it's the coffee's. See, I was seriously on a roll with figuring out what this pod is all about just based on the diagrams in the manual, no translation necessary. So I made myself a pot of coffee.
And things were still going great, and I was feeling like maybe I was made to understand this stuff. Feeling like once I finish figuring this out, it won't take me too long at all to sketch up something that operates similarly. One of those things where it makes sense once you immerse yourself in it. So I wasn't ready to go to bed. I made another pot of coffee.
Now, I'm used to staying up late. But right now it's about the time my mother (who, I kid you not, wakes up to actually greet the sun every morning) gets up, and the night before last, I had an awful time sleeping because I kept having nightmares that Yamcha was actually Raditz in disguise. Yamcha would come over, we'd start making out, then he'd pull off my shirt, but underneath I'd be wearing Raditz's armor. Then he'd scream, "I knew it, you bitch!" and turn into Raditz and yank it off of me. Then I would wake up. Lather, rinse, repeat.
So right now I am so tired that I'm at the state where if I keep working, I'll probably actually undo my progress. I am genuinely concerned that I am less than one hour away from thinking that the key to operating the pod is to burn the space pod manual for fuel in order to power it. Wait, what? Please tell me I did not just think that. Oh god, it's starting.
Anyway, I didn't think that I would be in this awful a state an hour ago, which is about the time I polished off another pot of coffee.
Never was there a more dangerous drug than caffeine.
I pull out my phone and I'm thinking about telling Yamcha about that nightmare, because I'm sure it's his fault for that stupid little joke he pulled on me when we were about to leave. Well, no, no, it's not, of course. It's Raditz's fault for being such an ass in the first place.
I had somebody else bring him his food today, but that did not stop him from whining into the intercom about once an hour that he did not at all like the pants. These complaints gradually became threats of "I am going to tear these pants to shreds" and then I never heard another peep from him. I haven't even looked in on him since I came down here. I don't know why, but I'm kind of scared to.
Well, I wouldn't be so cruel as to call Yamcha in this state. Anyway, he might already be up doing that whole baseball practice thing, and he gets kind of pissy when I interrupt that. Or as pissy as Yamcha gets. I set my phone down on the desk and spin it around a few times, watching it whirl over my schematics, lit only by the little desk lamp I have on. The rest of the lab is black—no windows to let in the starlight or the streetlights. I only need this little desk light to look at my papers, anyway.
Then, the phone lights up and buzzes. Maybe Yamcha read my mind and decided to call me. I peek at the display and frown—it's not a number I recognize. Well, maybe—come to think of it—I actually don't trust myself to recognize anything right now.
I glance at the very empty coffee pot. It's not as if I'm getting to sleep anytime soon. "Hello?" I answer.
"I knew it, you bitch," a voice breathes. I drop the phone and throw the coffee pot at it. I am probably asleep and this is that nightmare all over again and all this won't matter when I wake up anyway, so for good measure I kick the phone as far as I can. It actually flies a fair distance, soaring across the lab almost out of the light produced by my lamp. If I lean to one side, I can follow it in the shadows, just barely, as it topples through the air. I am now certain this is a dream, because kicking things long distances is a skill I have never had.
Plink, the phone smacks harmlessly against the very sturdy glass that protects me from that bra-grabbing jackass. I look down at my foot and it seems that a piece of glass from the coffee pot cut into my toe when I swung my foot to kick the phone. But, it's okay, because—
Oh god.
This is usually the part of nightmares where I wake up, when I look at something that should hurt and wince and wait to feel the pain.
I wince.
And there's the pain.
Aaaaand I'm still here, and not in my bed.
Shit.
Far across the lab, my phone buzzes a few more times.
Plink, plink, plink, I hear. What? Plink-plink-plink-plink-plink. It's coming from around where the phone hit the glass and it's a similar sound.
Plink.
PLONK PLONK PLONK.
What the—oh. God. No.
PLONK. PLONK. PLONK.
I brace myself. In the shadows I can see Raditz's silhouette, his finger against the glass. He looks like the sort of thing I prayed wouldn't jump out from under my bed when I was little. But my phone is over there, and apparently I'm not dreaming, which means I actually have to go get my phone back instead of waking up to find it on the nightstand like I was planning on.
I kind of yank out the one shard of glass from my toe and take care to hop over the rest as I amble over there. I think I have some bandages nearby, anyway, so once I get over to my phone I can sit down and patch myself up. My toe hurts, but that pain is clouded over by more pressing issues.
The noise of Raditz tapping and knocking on the window has stopped, but I can still see him staring at me, his eyes full of evil and meanness and—ugh, I don't even want to think of it. Whatever the case is, he looks mad and I am not dealing with that right now.
Leaving minimal blood (from what I can see in the dim light) on the floor, I manage my way over to my phone and look it over. Doesn't seem to be damaged—good.
Of course that still leaves one question—who the hell was that? And... Well, there are two options, to call the number back and try to find out, or to forget about it. With Raditz's beady little eyes on me right now, I think talking to anyone would make me feel better. I dial the number back and hold the phone to my ear, ready to chew out whoever it is for calling me this hour, and using that creepy voice, to boot.
Breep, my phone beeps into my ear as I wait for someone to pick up.
Briiing, goes a noise nearby.
Breep, goes my phone, but I'm not really paying attention because I'm looking for the noise. I lean against the wall—Raditz doesn't seem to be staring at me anymore, and—
Briiing, I hear through the wall beside me.
"Hello," says the smug prick on the other end of the line, who I also hear through the wall.
Shit. That's right. I had the brilliant idea of making it a phone and an intercom in case I needed to contact him from outside the compound. And somebody (not going to point any fingers, but it was probably my clueless father, or maybe the guy who brought the food; he always seemed weak-willed, anyway) decided it would be a good idea to tell Raditz what buttons to press to get to me.
Shit, shit, shit.
He peeks around the window again, with this sly grin like he thinks he's clever, so I give him the finger. He seems to at least know what that means, because he gives me two back.
Oh, fuck this. I am not ready to deal with this asshole just yet. I stuff my phone in my pocket and reach over to the counter nearby where I keep the bandages for such lab accidents as stepping on the shards of a coffee pot I threw at my phone.
I am going to get a good night's sleep after this, and wake up and realize how stupid I was for doing that.
But the bandages aren't there. I look around—likely my father yet again wandered off with them. Drawback of having a genius father: he is absentminded as all get-out. He probably injured his arm, grabbed the bandages, forgot where his arm was, and went off to look for it with the bandages tucked under it. Let us all hope that this is not what happens to me, too, later in life.
I squint through the dim light at his desk—they're not there, but that doesn't mean anything because the only things that are on his desk right now are a fish bowl full of cereal and three books about maximiz—ewwwww.
Plink, I hear. Plink-plink. I look over at the window.
Aaaaand Raditz has the bandages. Perfect.
I march up to the window and ram my fist into the glass right where his cheeky little smirk is. He flinches for a second and my anger is broken long enough for me to laugh a sadistic laugh in his stupid perverted Saiyan face. This does not seem to sit well with him and he takes to pounding both fists against the glass, and he cackles when I shrink away for a second (newsflash, asshole: I'm not the one who purports to be a warrior). When I blow him a raspberry he pounds his fists even harder—
—until he disappears with a very noisy clatter.
It's too dark for me to see what happened, so I take a few deep breaths and pace over to the door, opening it and closing it again as quickly as I can, in case he's on his feet and able to run.
When I see him, I am nearly paralyzed.
With laughter.
He had wheeled his bed over to the window to tap on the glass. Here's my guess at what happened: as he was pounding on the window, the wheel slipped back.
And he fell onto the floor.
To add insult to injury, his blanket, twisted awkwardly around his feet, went with him, and he's trying to subtly wrap it around himself—the floor is a bit too cold for his proud warrior ass, I guess.
"Well, fuck you!" he shouts through my chortles as I attempt to stifle them for the sake of my lungs not collapsing in on me.
"Not my fault," I grin down at him. "I wasn't the one flailing around on a bed with wheels."
"Well I wasn't the one who's left the light on all night so that I couldn't catch two winks!" he shouts, and as he flounders around on the floor I can see that if not for the blanket around him, he could probably stand, were he were willing to withstand some nasty pain. This is a bit worrisome, as I definitely haven't built anything strong enough to actually restrain him (or at least hold him in here), not yet.
"The light?" I glance over in the direction of where I had been working. From here, my desk isn't visible, but I guess the light from the lamp is. "That little old light kept you up?"
"Yeah," he answers like he's not even convinced of it himself, until he looks back at me and seems to get mad again. "I figured it was you, so I did what that crazy old man showed me to do to talk to you through this communicator," Raditz points at the phone, "when you ignore me through the 'intercom,'" he adds, probably in an attempt to make me regret ignoring him for the past few days. "And I listened to see if the voice out there matched the voice I heard in here." By now I'm kneading my fingers against the inside corners of my eyes. I am way too tired for this. "I knew it was you keeping me up, bitch."
I roll my eyes and bend down reach for the bandages on the floor, but since he's already down there, he's quicker. "All right, asshole," I tell him, "here's the deal. I help you back onto your bed, and you hand over the bandages. It's not as if you're using them, anyway."
"Am too," he frowns, and motions to his arms. He has wrapped the bandages around his forearms and part of his hands.
"You were hardly even injured there," I note, scrutinizing the area.
"I miss my gloves," is his retort, and he turns his nose up. What a baby. I'm sure he doesn't really miss them and he's just doing it to screw with me. Well, jackass...mission accomplished. Prepare to face the consequences. Before he can do anything, I dive for the bandages, hoping to grab the roll in my arms and tuck into a ball around it so that I can roll beneath his bed with them, across to the other side, and make a clean getaway.
But I have failed to plan for what to do if he manages to keep a hold of the roll, which is exactly what happens. I am now awkwardly sprawled on the floor just to his side, half under the bed, with one of my arms wrapped partway around the roll of bandages and the other stretched out, having been flung outward in its attempt to bail on the plan. My hand is in a fist.
And that fist is on his cheek.
And I cannot read the expression on his face.
Shit, shit, shit.
"So," he narrows his eyes, craning his neck so that he's nearly nose-to-nose with me, and I can smell his stale breath. His mane looms behind his head like it's going to consume what's left of me when he's done returning my favor. "You are a fighter."
"No!" I shriek, kicking my legs against his through the blanket that's keeping him trapped. He twists his way out of the blanket and my feet are slapping against his ugly, muscular, hairy—bare—legs. I stop, quietly staring at them.
"I hated," he growls, "the pants." I'm about to scream, because, let's face it, the only things between the lower half of this towering homicidal alien and me are a pair of Yamcha's threadbare briefs and my highly fashionable summer skirt. But as I take in a shaky breath and start wondering if my voice works at all, he grins a grin that borders on friendly, snickers, tries to pull himself up, and collapses back onto the floor, back onto his still-healing ribs with a pained groan that makes me wince. "You ain't really much of a fighter, though," he coughs, still grinning. I'm about to tell him that he's one to talk, but I really do not want to tempt fate at this moment.
He holds out the roll of bandages, and after looking him over to make sure he's not about to slug me across the face or something, I snatch them and stand up to set them on top of his bed nearby. "Well, what are you waiting for?" he holds an arm out. If his palm weren't facing toward the wall I'd say he was about to form one of those blast things Son can create...
I blink at him a few times while I try to process things. "What?" I ask. He really can't blame me. I'm tired, I'm hyped up on caffeine, and I'm a just a little frazzled by enduring death threats from a pantsless alien. Well. I guess they weren't death threats. Er. I mean, he really didn't threaten me at all, but, clearly, he meant to...so...
"I gave you the fucking bandages, so are you gonna put me up there or ain'tcha?" he looks a little ticked off.
"Yeah," I answer, "okay." Is this actually happening? I mean, I know that before I wasn't asleep but I might have fallen asleep since then. As I help hoist him onto his bed I shift most of my weight to the foot with the cut toe, and it still hurts, and I'm still here, so I guess I'm not asleep. He must hear me take in a bit of a breath at the pain because once he's up on the bed he's looking over me.
"Your foot," he observes. Duh. There's only a small trail of blood across the room from it.
"Why do you think I wanted these?" I grab the bandages. I admit it, I'm a little surprised he doesn't just snatch them back from me. "Anyway, it's just my toe."
"And you're going to wrap it yourself? Ain't that the cutest thing," he seems to chortle, so I narrow my eyes at him. "If you're no fighter then you certainly don't know a damn thing about how to wrap bandages." I roll my eyes at him. Yes, because it takes a genius to apply fabric to skin using basic hand-eye coordination. I'm about to say this but I hear him wheeze a little bit at the exact same time as something very warm hooks underneath either of my arms and lifts me off the ground and onto the bed. He stares at me like he's waiting for something, and then he does grab the bandages from me.
"Hey!" I reach for them, and he extends out a finger to hold me back by the sternum. "Give them back, jerk!"
"Foot," is all he says, and he wiggles his fingers at me, grinning. Before I can even figure out what the hell he means he reaches out and grabs my leg out from under me, taking my foot in his very strong—but ugly—but warm—but murderous—hands. He reaches over for the bandages and tears a strip off with his teeth, and before I can even squeak out a word, he's patting my foot (a little too hard). "Now I bet you couldn't do that so well," he smirks, admiring his work.
My organs are basically trying to explode out of my chest right now, I'm so confused and so something-elsed, and I can't even bring myself to move. My foot just sits there in his hand.
As it turns out, I didn't have to move, because somebody does it for me. I feel my foot suddenly get a lot colder and somebody's arms around my shoulders, yanking me off the bed and pulling me into a hug. "Don't lay a finger on her, you bastard," I hear Yamcha hiss at him past my ear. He directs me out the door and I glance back at Raditz, whose eyes look just about as blank as I feel right now as my mind switches fully into autopilot for all the stress it's endured.
"Hey, Yamcha," I mutter vaguely. I am way too tired and just about ready to fall asleep in his arms. "Good morning."
"What was going on in there?" he runs his fingers through my hair, because he knows it will make me feel better. It makes me even sleepier, and my phone in my lab coat pocket smacking my legs rhythmically as we walk isn't helping. I shrug. "Let's get you some breakfast," he says, "before I leave for practice."
"Sounds good," I murmur, and close my eyes, and then everything is warm and dark.
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