Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Going For Broke ❯ The Salad Days Are Over... ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Hullo! This is my first...well it's not my first fanfic but it's my first attempted romance. I'm a sad, sad human being ain't I?

Be warned, the humor in this is only for those who can understand dry humor, and the kind of humor in Pulp Fiction. Or maybe a little more obvious than that but nobody's slipping on banana peels here. ^_^

Dislclaimer: Nope I don't own them. Drat. And if there are little <> marks around some words, that was my attempt to make them italiced...-_-;;;

Enjoy!!

She came in almost every night at nine and stayed until midnight. Sometimes she came in earlier, and sometimes she left later.

That I knew she was there was simply a dry fact I recorded in my mind. Like I knew Evan, the bartender, never really bothered to clean the more tedious glasses with soap.

So I really wasn't expecting her to come and talk to me. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever really talked to one another in there, unless they were together. It was one of the reasons I went there; because nobody bothered me.

"Hey."

I looked up. Normally I sat in the back, away from anyone else who was in the dingy little bar. Tonight was no different. "What?" I demanded, and that was normally enough to offset the person who bothered me.

But it didn't do it to her. She was a bit surprised and she stiffened, but she didn't go away. "...You never have anything to drink," she said.

I glared at her. She was tall, pale, and had dark hair and eyes. "What?"

She smiled, although it was wry and halting. "You're in a bar. You're here almost all the time I am and I've never seen you with one drink."

"What if I don't like drinks?" I snapped, detesting her very existence. I hated every one of these fucking humans.

She looked down at me. "I've heard of people like you," she said, smiling silently. I wanted to wipe it off her face with the back of my hand but I didn't.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I demanded, offended.

"Sorry, I meant you just sit in here and watch people," she said. "Didn't mean to piss you off."

You're doing that by standing there, I thought irritably, unnaturally pale blue eyes narrowed at her face.

But she refused to go away, and just stood there, almost looking stiff. Eventually she said something more. I was unnerving her, that at least I could gather from the way she hesitated before speaking again. "What's your name?"

"Juunanagou," I said bluntly, not blinking.

"I know everybody else's name in here, I didn't know yours, that's why I asked," she said, sounding as stiff as she looked.

I didn't answer, but stared back at her, blunt and level. "Anything else?"

Suddenly the stiffness seemed to flow out of her and she smiled with a silent confidence I used to hate in human beings but had grown used to in the past year. "Can I buy you one?"

I glared at her. Even she should know no human ever asked another that without expecting something else afterwards. And she didn't look like a whore. "No," I snapped, wanting absolutely nothing to do with her.

That didn't seem to deter her in the least and my inner self was practically begging me to kill her. Damned programming, normally it wasn't such a pain in the ass, but then normally I wasn't being harassed by naive, stupid humans.

"Avery," Evan said, sharply.

Her head snapped around and she stared back at the older man and I caught the barely perceptible shake of the head. 'Avery's' mouth opened, but shut after a moment, and she turned back to me with a grim, set smile.

Evan was watching her with a sharp, irritated expression. If it got so much to Evan's disliking, the old crab had a double barreled shotgun with which I'd never seen him miss. It was likely from her expression she knew it too.

"You're the one who kicked seven people's ass at a time, Juunanagou?" Avery said, leaning forward and putting her hands on the table in front of me. "At least let me buy you a drink for something like that."

"What would you want to buy me a drink for?" I demanded coldly.

The hands on the table tensed but she recovered from the icy return fire surprisingly well. "Because I want to, and no idiot in his right fucking mind ever turned down a drink without a damn good reason," she said, staring at me with a steady determination that meant I was drinking with her tonight come hell or high water, or certain purple haired bastards if that be the case. Unless I made a scene and left, which would almost certainly bring that damn shotgun out from behind the bar.

I said nothing but stared at her, and she took my resignation without subjecting me to any more idiodic interrogation.

I couldn't tell you what the thing she put in front of me tasted like, taste had never worked properly for me in my +20 years of existence, but she told me it was a Neopolitan. She neglected to tell me what hers was, and I didn't care.

She said absolutely nothing as we sat across from one another. I drank my drink, like a good little prisoner, and she did hers. But she never said anything. All around us, the ningens were talking to one another and it just struck me that, as a ningen, and these people all believed I was ningen too, that it was odd that she wasn't speaking to me.

"Like your drink?" I sneered, meaning that she was liking her drink more than her company.

She looked up. "You didn't seem like you wanted to talk."

I glared at her. "I didn't want to drink tonight in the first place. I have half a glass left so if you intend on ever talking to me, get started. Because you have until the glass is empty, understand?"

"I should've got a bigger glass than that little shot," she said, smiling wickedly, completely unfazed.

I didn't answer for a moment and when I finally did, I surprised myself. "Your name is Avery, right?"

"Avery Hawking," she reported and set the glass down. "You're Juunanagou..."

"Just Juunanagou," I snapped pointedly. After all, I couldn't go around telling people I was one of the Jinzouningen who had so recently 'died.'

She let the topic go. She was one of the easier ningens to deal with, most of the more stupid ones pressed the issue until I was considering how easy it would be to kill them as an alternative. My landlord was like that.

"It's no fun being here alone," she said, and glanced over her shoulder. "Besides, it's between me and bush baby over there."

I had only recently discovered that 'bush baby' was the favorite name for homely woman that drank the night away and routinely bothered the hell out of everyone. She was currently parked across the bar, not-so-discreetly staring at us. The mass of ugly and tangled brown hair was where her name came from. "Not much of a choice," I sneered bluntly.

She smirked and tilted her glass at me before downing the rest of the liquid. "She has rotted teeth, you know?"

"I think I'd rather not know," I snapped, wanting nothing more than to make the ningen to go away if she wouldn't do it voluntarily. "And how the hell would you get close enough to figure that out? You an--"

"Stop," she said, holding up a hand, laughing through her utter seriousness. "I know where that sentence is leading and I don't need any more disgusting things to think of tonight. I don't think you do, either."

The liquid only took up a fourth of the glass now.

I nodded grimly. "I'd ask you to come home with me but I don't think David would appreciate it much."

My head snapped up as my suspicions were confirmed. "I'm not interested in fucking you," I snapped coolly.

She jumped. "Shit, you thought that? But then...sorry, I meant it's raining outside now and sometimes I see you walking past my apartment from the balcony, so yours must be farther. Can't you hear it pour outside?"

"...Who the hell's David?" I snapped, thoroughy irritated, and thoroughly unconvinced.

"A kid," Avery said, brushing hair out of her face. "Knowing him, up right now worried sick about me."

The glass chinked empty on the old wooden table and Avery's dark eyes watched it. "Time's up, huh?" she said, standing from the table. "It's alright, I'm done here anyway. If David has another stress-induced breakout I swear I don't know what I'll do with that little brat."

"He your kid?"

"Do I look old enough to have a nine year old kid?" she demanded, but understood the joke underneath the barbed coating.

I smirked. "You never said how old he was, how was I supposed to know?"

She didn't like the tone but she didn't bristle. "Can't be expected to, that's right," she said. "So, now I'm leaving."

"That's good," I said, just loud enough for her to hear.

She didn't react again, and I was starting to get a little exasperated. With most humans it was easy to get a rise out of them and start something (which was one good reason Evan never really liked the idea of anyone talking to me), but this one didn't seem to care.

"It's almost midnight," Avery said with a shrug and pulled a black fold out umbrella out of the folds of her trenchcoat, hung the oversized oilcloth cape over her shoulders and walked out of the bar. The little wooden door opened and a roar of pounding water sounded in the moments before the door closed.

I turned the glass upside down and absently held it to the table with my finger. My eyes scanned the bar, things returning to their normal equilibrium. Until the bush baby shifted position.

My eyes narrowed and I slid from my seat at the first hint of her movement.

That was probably the only human being I will ever be slightly scared of. There was just something wrong with her face. It was too old looking for her age and her eyes gleamed weird, even more strangely than my own.

I opened the door and slammed it behind me, after moving with inhuman speed towards the exit. I regretted my decision as soon as I left, in an instant I was soaked clear to my skin. Down the street a halfway familiar oilcloth trenchcoat and black umbrella milled in and around the midnight street traffic.

To the normal human eye I dissapeared and reappeared fifty meters down the sidewalk. To me I was just in a little bit of a hurry to get to the damned umbrella.

The human Avery jumped in surprise and almost dropped it, and I grabbed the wrist holding onto the umbrella. It faltered but it didn't fall, and with the other one I grabbed the tin rod supporting the base of the mechanism. "What the hell?!" Avery stammered, scared half out of her wits. It lasted only for a moment when she took a few collecting herself, and she stared up at me. "Where the hell did you come from?"

"I'd rather not get harassed by the gorilla woman," I sneered. "I don't like your company so don't get the wrong idea."

Avery looked as if she wanted to say something snarly, her eyes flashed dangerously, but she bit her tongue and shrugged. "Whatever. You want to walk home with me?"

"I don't want to stay there."

"I hope you have your own umbrella because this one is mine and it's my only one," Avery said, and almost moved the umbrella out of my grasp but I grabbed it before she could. She gave me an odd, semi-offed look.

"I'm taller than you are," I snapped.

"Oh, so you're not just being a gentleman," she said, very much amused.

I didn't feel like dignifying that remark with an answer, but she set the pace first and we walked side by side.

Ten minutes later, through no less than twenty different foot deep lakes of rainwater on the sidewalk, we were at the front door of an apartment.

"You sure you don't want to come inside, even for a little bit to see if it'll slow down?"

I turned. "You sure you won't let me borrow the damn umbrella?" I demanded.

She looked down at the thing in her hands and shrugged. "It's the only one I've got and the radio says it'll rain again tomorrow."

"I have work in the morning," I said, hating my admittance. That was probably the worst part of playing ningen. I had to get a job and pay for stupid things like rent.

"I have an old alarm clock you could borrow, belonged to my aunt," Avery said, and pulled floppy wet hair aside of her face. "I wouldn't mind if you slept on the couch."

"Most normal people don't arbitrarily invite people they don't know into their homes," I pointed out bluntly.

"Most normal people don't draw a gun as fast as I do, either," Avery said, "But I don't have anything worth stealing anyway."

"What about that kid?" I asked, a little startled.

"David? Hasn't anybody told you about him? He's allergic to everything. Even air," Avery said. "If you tried to kidnap him he'd be dead before you could get him halfway down the street."

What in...was I missing something here? I thought as Avery kicked open the door. It looked old and tarnished. "Don't you care about him?" I asked blandly. Weren't ningens supposed to be clingy like that?

"Sure I do, but I'm not going to get in his way."

I don't think I really wanted to know what she really meant by that.

But somehow I wound up in her living room, dark as it was.

"I thought I'd asked David to please change the friggin' lightbulb," Avery muttered as she tried the switch and it refused to work at all.

With my vision I caught several very important key facts. It wasn't very clean, everything was an antique, and there was old chinese takeout on the coffee table, complete with spilled noodles and chopsticks.

"So where do you live, Mr. Juunanagou?" Avery asked I watched her pull open a drawer in the light of a passing car. She ripped something across something held snugly in her other hand and a match flared up for a moment before stabilizing.

She lit a couple of candles that were lying on the chiffarobe top, and stuck them in a little brass candelabra.

"This happen a lot?" I said dryly.

"Not as often as you'd think," Avery said, and turned to the back of the room. "Thought I asked you to change the fuckin' lightbulb."

I stared into the darkness at a little boy, barely four feet tall with hollowed out eyes and a head of matted blonde hair.

She didn't hit the kid, did she? Not that I cared.

"The ladder broke," David said, "Sorry."

Avery shrugged. "I'll do it tomorrow then. Why aren't you in bed? You did take your medicines, right?"

David nodded and scratched his hair. "You're in late again. Who's that guy?"

I stiffened. The kid stared at me like he was suspicious or something. I glared back and he jerked his eyes to Avery.

"This is Juunanagou. He's going to spend the night since it's raining so hard."

"You do know that's really dangerous, right, Avery?" David asked, sounding blatantly startled and his face opened up like a book to the page marked 'horrified.' "Do you know him or something?"

"Met him at the bar. Go back to bed, David. Or wait, go get the extra sheets," she said and David didn't want to go.

"Go get them yourself, he's your friend," David sulked, and dissapeared.

Pleasant kid. I meant that sarcastically, of course.

Avery stared after him for a moment. "I'm sorry about that, he's like that with everyone."

"Even kids his own age?" I asked absently, subconsciously marking that kid for special dislike.

She didn't answer and instead asked her own question. "Didn't I ask where you lived?"

I stared at her wordlessly. Interesting, you are, I thought and narrowed my eyes at her.

"It's not like I'm asking you to drop your pants or anything," Avery said and set the candles on the table. "David!" she snapped.

The little boy's pallid face appeared in the doorway again, and this time he seemed irritated. "I thought you wanted me to get to sleep."

"And I thought I told you to clean up this mess before I even left," she hissed.

"You can't order me around, you're not my mom," the little boy said and I caught the flash of indignation in Avery's dark eyes. I watched with interest.

"I know, thank god," Avery sneered coldly and a shudder went through David's body as it hit home, "Clean it up anyway. Any civilized human being does that. So, where is it?"

"The Tang building two blocks away."

"Across all that construction?" She turned her head and called, rather impatiently, "David..."

"I'll do it tomorrow, Avery! I've got a headache now!" the wispy little voice threaded out through the blackness.

Avery did not press the issue and absently tossed a used lightbulb onto the couch, and screwed in a new one while I watched without speaking.

The bulb jumped to light, and pale white light spread around the place. I'd been completely accurate in my first assessment of the room.

"So...you live in the same building as Lisle?"

"Lisle Carmichael?" I said with a distictly distasteful sneer.

"You know her then," Avery said dryly.

I nodded bluntly.

"I work with her...that's how I at least knew your face."

"I pity you," I said blandly, and was truly stuck between the real thing and a dry verbal expression. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night."

Avery's mouth twisted. "I can't imagine why," she said with dripping sarcasm. "Woman fucks like a rabbit."

I stared at her for a moment, not quite startled.

"What?" Avery spat rather viciously. "It's true."

"I never disagreed," I said coolly.

Avery grinned. "She said you looked like you'd be good in the sack."

I balked although Avery would not have been able to tell. The thought was revolting. "You have no idea how sickening that is to me," I said in a deadpan voice.

"I have some idea," Avery said blandly.

I glanced up at her, face void of emotion. "...I think I could have done without hearing that."

"Me too," Avery said.

"Then why did you say it?"

Avery hesitated a moment, almost threw herself onto her own ragged couch and chewed thoughtfully on her fingernail. She shrugged. "Habit, I guess. Sit down, sit down."

I sat in the chair that was nearest to me. "To speak before you think?"

"Shoot first, ask questions later," Avery laughed. "But, seriously. You want something to drink?"

"No," I said pointedly, saying very clearly that no meant no. "That's not very smart."

"Human's ain't very smart," Avery said. "Someone had to make the androids, right? He wasn't very smart; or well, he was, but he wasn't very smart. He was a fucking idiot. Look at what's happened. Or, I wonder..."

"Wonder what?" I demanded sharply, not liking her sudden swerve in conversation.

"Nothing, sorry, I'll go off sometimes in my own little world..."

I managed a stiff, insincere half smile at her statement as I stared at her coldly.

She seemed impervious to the chilling glare as she leaned back in her seat. "You're new to this part of town. Where' you from?"

"From...the north," I said, leaning back. It wasn't a lie. The old man's lab had been up north. And I remember first waking up in the north. Therefore, I was from the north.

"I heard an interesting theory once," Avery said, not looking at me, looking at something that was apparently bothering her in some random corner.

"An hour before the androids first appeared on that island..."

My eyes snapped dangerously on Avery's pale, sharp featured face. "Yes...?" I said, letting the s at the end trail out in my sudden defensive irritation.

"The satellites at the Wilkhomme Institution up there saw a big explosion outside North City...said something flew off south...thirty minutes later that island went up all the way to hell."

"And your point is?"

"The people there investigated the site; didn't find much of shit," Avery said, her head turning to meet my eyes with a certain graveness that caught me off guard. "Except some stuff they thought was connected to where the androids came from."

"And?" I demanded, starting to get very edgy. No human I had ever talked to before, and I had been around humans (as sickening as that was) for over twenty years, had ever mentioned such a theory.

"And nothing. The scientists there thoght that was where the androids came from. From somewhere in the North Range."

"The lab was in the North Range," I snarled testily, albeit under my breath. "Stupid humans."

"Pardon?" Avery demanded, head perking up and her eyes staring at me with sudden intensity. I got the sick feeling she might have heard what I'd said to myself.

"Nothing," I growled.

Avery relaxed, visibly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. Dad told it to me before...before he, ah...went away. I've pissed you off."

"He's dead?"

Avery's mouth twisted humorously. "Sometimes," she said and leaned back. "Are you getting tired?"

"No," I said bluntly, turning what I'd just heard over in my head. "Where'd you get that information?"

"David told it to me," Avery said rather bluntly.

"So why are you telling me?" I demanded.

She glanced back at me with a slightly dry smile. "I dunno. You're the first person I told it to. Guess I thought you'd be interested."

I stared back at her, very much unamused.

Sooooo, whatjathink???? RR!!!