Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Happy Birthday Vegeta ❯ Accidental Discovery ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter One

Something has inspired a terrible melancholy in our most loved Saiyan Prince…..

…Is it all these baka holidays--Christmas, New Year's, Father's Day, Mother's Day [hmmph], and birthdays….these might be the worst of the damn lot…

He narrows his dark eyes in remembrance of last years' birthday fiasco, a scowl drawing his brow together and mouth downward. Dinner in a public place with the Son family was well enough. At a garish little place that specialized in spicy foods and Saiyan quantities…Until the staff gathered round him grinning and snickering and crammed that crazy-colored hat onto his flame-shaped hair and started singing! A bunch of strangers snapping and clapping and singing that baka 'happy birthday' song while his family and Kakarott's laughed until tears poured…How much humiliation is Royalty supposed to put up with? None. He released his frustration in a ball of ki that decimated the straw hat that contributed to his degradation.

Goku would have loved it. The damn hat, the stupid song, and the gift….the stupid damn dog with its spring-loaded head that bobbled at the slightest provocation…Ki flared once again in his fingertips, but he found, to his complete disgust, that he could not blast the dog. "Damn you Kakarott." His eyes suspiciously bright, he powered down and retrieved the small figurine. Big round puppy dog eyes, innocent eyes, were painted on its face.

"Another year Kakarott." His voice was gruff with restrained emotion. "Another year on this cursed mud ball that you loved so much you died for it. I would gladly trade you places If Kami wouldn't consider it an improvement of my situation." His fingers clenched around the ceramic toy in unconscious tension.

"I hate this place that is not my home! And I hate this man who is not, me." The head bobbled in commiseration, its big eyes looking solemn.

"Prince Vegeta should have died the day his planet, his parents, and his people died."

For every race exterminated at Frieza's command, for every planet left barren and raped, for all the innocents destroyed…surely he deserved death.

"Or maybe not." he whispered to the dog. "Because here I am, day after precious day, Prince of Nothing," he spat. "Mated to a weakling human, bearing offspring that are not Saiyan, and are not heir to anything--" (from him anyway, Capsule Corp. was Bulma's…) It sickened him. Tears burned and were evaporated before they could streak his face with tell-tale lines.

"Maybe I did die at Frieza's hands and This is my Hell. This weak, empty bastard left in my place, left to deal with an unspeakable past, an alien present, and the ultimate disassociation."

As if realizing they were expressing his emotions, his fingers froze, and then dropped the ceramic dog like a poisonous thing, where it hit the floor and predictably broke.

For a moment, there was none of Vegeta's resolve left, his eyes closed slowly, in anguish. Then finally it did happen. The mask that had protected him his entire life, from his father, from Frieza, and from countless others slid back into place. He appeared from a distance, to harden. He snorted, and stalked from the house, heading for his other protection, the gravity room.

Bulma stepped from the shadows, her face a reflection of Vegeta's pain, tears flowing freely to dampen her blouse. 'I knew, that something had been bothering him, I just thought it was Goku's death…He's never let anyone see how alone he is. Not even me.' She stopped in the center of the room, and scooped up the pieces of the silly dog. It would fix easily. Her Saiyan No Ouiji would not.