Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ I, 30: Bulma ( Chapter 30 )

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

I was never that much of a nail-biter, per se, because I hate ruining my nails like that. But this? This is an occasion for nail-biting.

I know I’m safe—I think I’m safe. I mean, the ship hasn’t been formally tested, but I have every reason to believe that it works, and that I’ve got enough supplies capsulized for a reasonably sized group of us to get the hell out of here and far enough away to refuel and reload. (I just pray to anybody who’ll listen that Raditz has the good sense to not die—which I don’t think has ever been an issue before, but he’s been acting funny lately—all concerned for me and Gohan and trying to hide it, and it’s…weird.)

Lunch, the dear woman, has begged me to keep her at home with me even if she sneezes and insists otherwise. She’s afraid her other side will try to chase down Tenshinhan and get caught in the crossfire, so to speak. She’s been staying with me a lot lately, and while I haven’t had time to figure out just what causes her to change when she sneezes (I mean—I’ve been a little busy with the ship and preparing for the almost-certain doom of the Earth, especially after Raditz’s realization), I’ve realized just how hectic her life has been. See, I was always under the impression that she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box (which is still true, because I am—I just mean compared to everybody else), but it’s more that she just…chooses to be like that. It’s tough to explain. I understand the usefulness of acting stupid, but she’s not exploiting it in any way. Still, it’s…nice. She’s been helping me out around here a lot—just kind of naturally falls into this role of following me around and doing whatever I need. (I didn’t notice at first, until once when I came down in the middle of the night to work and expected my tools to appear out of thin air beside me.)

So she’s more or less safe, I think—she’s agreed to let me lock her up, sort of, someplace her other half can’t get out of. Since the blonde Lunch seems to always have a gun on her, I thought the best place would be something modeled after where I kept Raditz. But the area is still in shambles from before, and the last thing I have time to do is build it myself (or try to explain to someone else why I’m locking a perfectly innocent young woman in my basement). So I’ve settled for a simpler solution—handcuffs. We’ve tested it (and now that blonde Lunch is thoroughly pissed at me for doing so, the handcuffs are just as much a safety precaution for me as for her) and it seems to work well enough. Lunch and I have talked and while she argues that I probably know her other side better than she does (I get to talk to her, after all—Lunch only ever hears about what she does) I’m confident in her assessment that her other side is smart enough not to open fire while we’re soaring through space.

Still, it makes me nervous.

I’ve done a little talking with blonde Lunch, but she’s even more stubborn than I am, and if she doesn’t want to talk, she won’t. I can’t say I don’t admire her—it takes some serious balls to act the way she does around the people she’s often with (on more than one occasion, Raditz has compared us, speaking softly of the guts we have like there’s some secret about Earthling women that I’m not telling him). I wish we could get along better. Since blue-haired Lunch is turning out to be more than just a pretty face…I bet blonde Lunch is more than just a…a pretty face with a big gun.

I wish I’d had as much luck keeping Chi-Chi and the others here. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that woman—she’s so worried that Son is going to die, but so certain that he’s going to save us. I think it’d be a different story if him losing didn’t mean certain death for all of us (if what Raditz said is true, that if Son and everybody loses this Freeza guy will at best wipe the planet clean of humanity, at worst blow the whole thing up, which he assures me has happened more times than he can count to places he decides aren’t worth the trouble). It’s like she thinks that if she comes over just as a precaution, she’s admitting that Son might not make it. But she’s always been proud and just a little superstitious (especially since she settled down with Son, it seems) and I guess I’ve done everything I can…I don’t know. Is it awful that I’m tired of trying? I’m ready to just buckle down and get ready, and…and if she’s too stubborn to just come over here then…then…


…


I’m woken up by the bleeping of one of the detectors I’ve been resting by religiously of late. It’s finally picked up Vegeta and Nappa’s signals—Raditz wanted me to look and see if they’ve left Namek, and given that they’re finally in range of my equipment, I’d say so. Shit, wouldn’t it be just our luck if they showed up at the same time as Freeza?

But the other big blob on the radar assures me otherwise (not that it’s all that reassuring)—Freeza’s definitely getting here first. Soon.

Damn.

Today.


…


I’m glad I’m not watching. I’m glad I wasn’t around to notice Raditz leaving until he was already gone. I’m just…worried.

The tension in the air is palpable even almost halfway across the planet (predictably, Freeza crashed down by Son and his group—assuming, I think, that they were the ones in control of the dragonballs, being the strongest on the planet and all—or maybe he could just tell where Raditz was and thought he’d go from there). It’s something about the electricity that flows off of these guys, the power and the heat, that messes up the winds and the clouds and the atmosphere when all of them gather together (and it’s not unlike the way the skies get stormy whenever we summon Shenlong). I only hope it doesn’t keep the ship from taking off, if we have to use it.

It’s ready. I’m ready. Lunch is handcuffed beside me (poor girl), looking (rightly) scared out of her mind.

“I hope space is pretty,” she says. “If we have to go, that is.” Her voice quivers in a way uncharacteristic of her usual brightness and I feel even worse—like somehow it’s my fault we’re going through all this. I know it’s not—if anything, it’s Raditz’s, but that doesn’t exactly make me feel better, because it’s only thanks to me and my foolish self that he’s not dead yet.  

But we’ll make it. I know it. I didn’t grow up to be this beautiful and successful just to die young. That’s what I keep telling myself.

The idea is shattered out of my thoughts as somebody crashes in through the window. From where I am, I can’t tell who, except that he looks too bloody and battered to have waited at the door, so I don’t blame him. Hair’s shorter—so not Raditz, and not Gohan—Son? No—as I pace up closer (cautiously, because I don’t know exactly what this Freeza looks like, or what kind of lackeys he brought with him), though, I recognize a pattern of burn markes I’ve seen before, and then his face (if barely).

It’s Yamcha, and he looks just like he did when he tried using that Kaio-ken technique that Son learned while he was dead—when he showed up and we had to throw him into what passed for a healing tank at the time. (Not that what I have now is perfect, but it’s better. Raditz told me once that while it was less fancy, it did the job almost as well as the ones he knew—except that the fluid was a slightly different color and “tastes real funny.” Eugh.)

“Yamcha!” I can’t stop my hands from shaking as I flip him over. In some places, his skin is raw—second- or third-degree burns? And in areas around his arms and chest, his skin is almost completely gone, the tissues beneath exposed and blood seeping through. On the planes where his skin is still intact, most of his body hair is gone; there’s still hair on his head, but it’s missing in places. Some of the blank spots don’t look like they came from the burns of the technique, but from…someone yanking them out. I shake more as I set him down to find some bandages, and then think better of it and instead find one of the carts I usually use to transport equipment, so I can carry him without dragging him across the floor. Bandages won’t do him any good—he has to go in the healing tank, though I’m betting it’ll hurt him like no tomorrow before the anesthetic kicks in.

But being hurt like no tomorrow sure as hell beats there being no tomorrow for him, so I think he’ll forgive me.

“Bulma,” he mutters as I move him as carefully as possible onto the cart.

Somehow hearing that he can still speak melts away the worry I didn’t even realize had been pulling on my chest. “Shh,” is all I can think to tell him. I wonder if his throat and mouth are burnt as badly as the outside of his body. What I want to know is how Son can handle this—is this what always happens? Or a side-effect if you use it wrong? Gohan once described that the danger was filling your body with too much power…I wonder if it feels like spontaneous combustion. I wonder if he would have blown up, if he’d pushed it too far.

“It’s bad,” he insists on whispering while we’re on the way to the tank. I roll him into the elevator in front of me.

“You’ll recover,” I assure him. I hope he will…I think the tank has healed worse. This is worse than when it happened to him before, but the tank is better, so…it has to work, right?

He shakes his head and winces. “The battle,” he tells me. Then, after some breaths so heavy and so rattling with pain and feeling that I almost retch, he adds, “That’s why…I came here…to tell you…”

My knuckles are white. Whiter than baby-teeth and whiter than the sides of my eyes after a good night’s rest—whiter than my mother’s lilies and whiter than a ghost. White because I know what’s coming.

I try not to look at the skin peeling off of him, or the sticky spots where blood has coagulated to make a new, red-brown skin where his real skin had been burned and torn away. “You have to go,” he rasps out. “Now.”



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