Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ II, 4: Lunch ( Chapter 35 )

Note: New narrator! I'd say it's a two-for-one deal.

By the way—thank you to one reviewer who pointed out that I accidentally uploaded the wrong file for the chapter before last. The chapter with Vegeta as the narrator should actually be a chapter with Vegeta as the narrator now. Sorry!

Also—I have no idea why the format is so awful and I'm not sure how to fix it. You can find me under the same username at fanfiction.net if you'd like to read the story there instead.

…

If none a' these fucking sniveling bastards will tell me what's going on I'm gonna strangle it outta one of their fucking throats!

One, a short freak, looks at me like he ain't as scared as he oughtta be that I'm pissed but at least he does look damn confused and at least he seems half as put off as he oughtta be. Some other guy beside him, some fucker who makes me `bout puke on the floor with how he wears his bald head, like it looks good on somebody like him is freaking out an' tryin' to hide behind the short freak.

That pisser Yamcha looks to be in some kind of contraption and don't look in the condition to tell me what the fuck happened. And nobody else is around but there's gotta be somebody else here. That bitch Bulma must be around, owing to this being her ship. I recognize it from a few times before, when I woke up here in the middle of working on it or some shit, not that I paid it much mind since I always got about to the most important thing, which was getting to T—to the others, `cause I'll be damned if I get all stuck in a stuffy lab.

I know there was something stupid going down with some aliens and I wonder if these two are some of them. And nobody ever told me much but I'm gathering that something went wrong because this was the escape plan.

Now, who the hell else is around here? I scream it: “Any of you fuckers gonna tell me what's going on in here, or do I have to shoot a hole into the side of the ship?”

And the big bald one is lunging forward and snatching the gun out of my hands and throwing across the room and blubbering something about not wanting t' die so's since he's this close to me I grab him by his big ears and knee him in the throat. “You gonna tell me what's going on here?” I shout in his face. He don't seem too fucked up by what I did to him but after all that time with those fighting maniacs I ain't exactly surprised, and anyway, at least he looks just a little shocked.

Then right about on cue comes Bulma with that scruffy-haired—whatsit—Saiyan—behind her. Scruffier than Son Goku, I mean, with his godawful hair—Raditz, that's his name. Dunno why I keep hoping and thinking that maybe somebody else'll be behind him, `cause shit, if this was the escape plan and he ain't here then—

“Lunch!” Bulma shouts, and she looks for half a second like she ain't sure whether to be relieved that I don't got my gun anymore or if she's maybe just twice as pissed that one of them other Saiyans has it. Then I guess she figures better him than me and comes striding up to me in that way she does, like she's some shit—but I guess here he is, ain't she? Being the only one knowing how to drive us, `cause this is nothing like the normal getaway car. “Calm down,” she says, and I'm about this close to spitting in her face, because, shit, I am calm, dammit. “We had to run. Freeza had…Raditz says everybody was dying, and we had to get away before—”

“I get it!” I tell her. “I fucking get it!” Because I'll be a man's hairy balls if I wanna think about that right now, about everybody was dying, because that would “I mean—well, just the thing I ain't exactly in the mood t' think about!

She frowns at me, a big-girl frown like she thinks she ain't every bit as much of a snobby brat as she was when I first met her. “We're still in danger,” she says, “and lots of it. So let's not have any more crazy outbursts, huh? Just—don't go nuts.”

Yeah, she's so bold when I don't got my gun. Then again she was always pretty ballsy. Maybe why now it's just her in here, her and a room full of men who could eat her for breakfast, and me.

“I'm not fucking stupid,” I tell her, and I turn away to walk back over to the bald guy to fetch my gun back. He seems kind of dazed still, and don't even put up a fight. I sling it over my shoulder. Makes me feel safer. I don't give two shits if it don't actually do nothin' against these guys or whatever it is we're running from. I got it on me and that's what matters. And I ain't actually gonna go blowin' holes in the ship. What is it about how I say stuff makes people think I mean it?

“Right, well—” she stops like she don't know what to say, probably `cause she don't got nothin' to say and just likes the sound of her own voice. I know that she was workin' on something or another with my—well—other half—or whatever the fucking thing is that happens when I sneeze—on something, and I sure as hell was never given a clue what it was, which I don't like one bit and which I s'spect was done on purpose being as, well, shit, Bulma's the type that likes t' hear her own voice. Y'know, because when I came to—after the other me sneezed—I got there was this feeling hangin' in the air like you just walked in on a private conversation.

“Glad you all get along so well,” the short Saiyan says, big-ass smirk on his face. I can tell he's th' sort always thinking how's the best way to get the goods and get away an' he's thinking about it right now. Why the fuck is he here, anyway? “Raditz, I'm so glad you traded your Saiyan heritage for these fine folk.”

“I didn't trade nothin'!” Raditz yells back at him. “I'm more of a Saiyan than you ever were Vegeta, an' don't make me show you again just why!”

Huh. Sounds like I missed something damn entertaining, by the looks on everybody's faces: Bulma, for instance, looks two parts horrified and one part proud…prouder than she usually seems t' be, anyhow. The bald one looks like he might piss hisself. “Vegeta,” he says, “not here.” He don't look like the voice of reason type—but with this group? Maybe.

But Vegeta don't look about to back down, and so's I've half a mind to just kick back an' see how this plays out, but first I—ah—ah—

…

Yikes, things sure aren't looking good here. Oh, but maybe it's okay—now they're all looking at me. This man with spiky hair—shorter than Bulma's boyfriend's—he seems the most confused of anyone, so I guess maybe he didn't see me change the first time. “I hope I didn't cause any trouble,” I tell them.

“Not at all,” Bulma says, but she's sighing like I really did and…

“Nappa,” says the spiky-haired man, “do not forget who is in charge here.”

“Yeah, me,” says Bulma. Which I'm pretty sure is true, because, I mean, she knows how to fly the ship, right? She tried to tell me a little about it, in case something happened to her, so I guess I know a little—but she's the one really in charge. It was…actually really nice of her to show me how to do things—important things. Nobody ever trusted me to do anything other than cook, or…or tidy things up, or anything. I used to think it was because of what happens when I sneeze, but…Bulma and I talked about it a little and…I found out that I don't really think that. I think that really nobody thinks I can do things…remember things, learn things. (Okay, and maybe a little bit of it is what happens when I sneeze.)

But every single time I wake up from the other side of me sneezing, I have to do things: figure out where I am, figure out if anybody's mad at me, figure out how to make them stop being mad at me if they are. Sometimes, I wake up with bags of money over my back and some men in an airplane chasing me down. Nobody likes to believe “I have another person inside me that comes out when I sneeze,” but that's what I have to convince them of, before I sneeze again. Sometimes I know that won't work and I tell that somebody ran past and threw the bags at me. Usually they believe me, though I'm not sure why—it's not really that good of an explanation.

Then there were fewer men chasing me, but I kept ending up far away, in the middle of nowhere. I think the other me was trying to find Tenshinhan. Maybe those two are better friends…better friends than he and I are. Mostly I don't have any friends, besides Bulma, and maybe Kuririn and maybe a couple of the others, maybe, though they always looks at me kind of funny.

Looked at me, I mean, because everybody is gone. Just the thought makes me feel so sad that my legs stop wanting to hold me, and then they do stop holding me, and I topple onto the floor and everything almost goes black before I wake up a half second later.

“You all right?” says the bald man who was standing not too far away—Nappa. Oh, Bulma said the other Saiyans would be so mean but so far this one doesn't seem nearly as mean as the other.

“Yes,” I say, and my knees are still wobbly when I try to stand up, even though I really am almost used to thinking of the fact that if it weren't for Bulma I'd be gone too, and probably the Earth would never come back again—but luckily she has a plan and I really hope that we can make it, and get the Earth back. Oh, I bet there are no peaches on other planets, and I bet the clouds aren't nearly as pretty. “Thank you,” I add on, so that he knows that I'm glad that he asked. He shrugs.

I guess in the time that I was thinking about being chased, and about being dead, something happened, because now Raditz is standing between Bulma and Vegeta, who seem like they're yelling at each other, and Raditz jumps in with something sometimes too. “Oh, this isn't good,” I say. Nappa nods. “We're all on the same ship. It won't do to get mad at each other.” And I sigh, because I can't say anything mean about the other Saiyan, Vegeta, because I don't really know him and maybe he's not usually like this, but I can say something about Bulma: “She's really smart but sometimes she doesn't remember that she can't win every single argument.” I've seen her argue with enough people enough times that I think I'm allowed to say something like that. Right?

“No kidding,” says Nappa, and I'm about to tell him as politely as I can that he can't say anything like that about Bulma because he doesn't know her, but then I realize he's looking at Vegeta.

“I have more important things to do than this,” Bulma finally says (thank goodness, because it looks like Vegeta is about to explode, and—and—I think that these guys have all these powers too, and they could maybe actually do that), and she grabs Raditz by the elbow and marches out with him back into the little hallway that leads to our rooms.

I think I might go back to my room too. I don't know if I feel very good about being out here with these two, especially with Vegeta being all angry. Who knows how he gets? Everyone says that my other side has a really bad temper, but this guy might even be worse. “Good night,” I tell them, even though it's not night, because it doesn't hurt to be polite and I really am going to go to sleep, because it's been a very very long day.