Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ He Means Business ❯ 04 ( Chapter 4 )

"You would think he could've given me a little help," Raditsu grumbled, scraping his boots against the sidewalk as he trudged along. His armor was garnering him quite a few quizzical glances, and more yelps and screams than his passively sullen face warranted—did they remember the Saiyajin as they had appeared, years ago? "Some all-powerful balls those are," and the fellow nearest him, upon hearing this, decided that his turn was at this corner, not the next one.

 

He didn't know a thing about starting a business, let alone running one, so it seemed that the being that had brought him back to life to do so had made the wrong choice. He wasn't complaining—it was great to get out of Hell, if only until his next inevitable death—but each time he thought of the look that Bulma shot him when he threatened not to start a business at all, he paled visibly. Whatever she would do to him for not—what was it?—competing with her?—whatever it was, it was surely worse than death. She certainly seemed to have Vegeta under control, and he shivered to imagine how she'd done it.

 

But he wasn't about to kill himself over it. He'd just have to give it a try. After all, he was aware of business procedures on some level, right? All the years he'd spent under Freeza, at least he'd learned something here and there. Could he clear the inhabitants out of their homes and sell the buildings? Perhaps destroy all the other competing businesses and steal their greatest leaders to do most of the work?

 

What did these people want? What did this Bulma woman sell, anyway? Maybe he'd have to ask around. Raditsu searched for the nearest graspable collar.

 

 

...

 

 

"So do you think he can do it?" Bulma was now shuffling through her papers, the small sketches she'd made, the sticky notes in her magazines. "You know him better than I do."

 

Vegeta shrugged. "He does seem like a bizarre choice—maybe the dragon was just messing with us. But," he glanced toward the notes, smirking a bit, "I suppose we'll see, in time. Perhaps he's just the tool an already existing company needs to get to the top. He wasn't a half-bad grunt worker under Freeza, after all, weakling though he was..."

 

"As long as he doesn't start blowing my buildings up," Bulma huffed.

 

"Don't, worry," Vegeta crept up beside her, snatching away the papers. "Say, are these ideas for products?"

 

"Yeah," Bulma grinned. "Guess I'm getting a little head of myself."

 

"And Raditsu. You know, it'll probably take him a while."

 

She raised one shoulder nonchalantly. "A girl can dream."

 

"Say—" and by the way his eyebrows arched, this seemed to be the topic he'd been steering toward, "You seem...energetic."

 

"Don't even think about it!" she snatched her papers back. "Not yet! I have work to do!" And she was down to the lab before Vegeta could open his mouth again. He absently leaned against the couch, outstretching his arm and pretending to shake someone's hand, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

 

 

...

 

 

"And what does she sell?" he demanded.

 

"Capusles! Uh—cars! Computers! Y'—y'know—everything!"

 

"Food?"

 

"Maybe, I guess..." the man shivered, struggling against the spiky-haired fellow who seemed far too strong, even for his impressive build. "I...I dunno..."

 

"What about—houses?"

 

"Y-yeah!"

 

"And property?"

 

"Probably...uh...s-sir..."

 

"Garments?"

 

"Er...I-I'd guess so, I mean, maybe, maybe indirectly..."

 

"I see," Raditsu released the man, who crumpled to the ground, shivering. He seemed to consider something at length, and the man remained frozen in place, afraid to so much as twitch. Eventually, his lip curled up in disgust and he stretched his hand out. "Thanks," he spoke through clenched teeth.

 

The shaken man took Raditsu's hand, and the Saiyajin resisted the urge to disembowel him on the spot—for the sake of practice, for when he was running his business and not letting that Bulma woman lay a finger on his all-powerful—

 

"O-of course, sir," the man stuttered, conveying his genuine happiness that he was still alive, and a rectangular badge affixed to his shirt seemed to glimmer along with his over-exaggerated smile, "a p-pleasure."

 

Raditsu screamed at his word choice, flailing in alarm and, in the process, driving his foot through the man's gut.

 

Quivering in an uncomfortable mixture of rage and confusion, he turned away and left the scene slowly, barely hearing the cries of the small portion of citizens who seemed to be concerned about the man bleeding to death as he leaned against the pastry shop. It's all part of the learning process... he clenched his fists. Practice makes perfect... No, dammit, that's something Nappa would say.

 

 

...

 

 

"Now, now," Nappa grabbed Bardock's fist. "That wasn't very nice," he patted him roughly on the back, sending him tumbling back to the ground. "And it wasn't very effective either, hate to say it, buddy. How about you try that attack again? Practice makes perfect, you know!"

 

"I'm not trying to spar you," Bardock hissed through his teeth. "I'm trying to go spend some time alone. Over there. Where you aren't."

 

"Well sor-ry!" Nappa turned his nose up, and inside Bardock rejoiced at this indication that the large Saiyajin was finally catching on. "I have plenty of other friends to go help, and spend time with, and spar with, and play cards with, and fight with, and blow things up with, and—" as he lowered his gaze back to the other Saiyajin, he sighed. Bardock was gone.

 

 

...

 

 

Raditsu was ready to scrounge up a meal and retire for the evening—to a tree, or perhaps a lean-to, or to one of the many temporary living spaces he found the city would provide him if he showed the owners of the buildings just how strong he was—but Raditsu felt a mysterious force pulling him to the outskirts of the city. Perhaps there he would find some gathering from which he could steal all the food he could want for dinner—his luck had run fairly high with this for the few nights before. There seemed to be no end to fancy parties in this city, nor to people too weak to defend them.

 

But his nose detected no food in the immediate vicinity. Wait—it did—but only faintly; perhaps from a gathering earlier that day. He swore at himself and prepared to take to the skies in search of more temporally convenient sustenance, but his eyes were drawn to a flickering neon sign and a crowd of baffled humans surrounding it.

 

"Raditsu's Sports Hut," it read—in his very own Saiyajin language, no less!—the characters messily drawn but legible, apparently affixed directly atop a different sign. He made his way toward the humans.

 

"What's this?" he growled to the nearest one, who stood at the edge of the group and scratched his head violently.

 

"Dunno; can you read it?"

 

"'Raditsu's Sprots Hut,'" the Saiyajin rolled his eyes, as if this should be obvious to the human.

 

"What the hell is a Raditsu?"

 

"I'm Raditsu." A significant portion of the crowd was now listening, and whispering stirred up among them.

 

"What did you do to our dessert shop? What did you do to our manager?" the man directly beside him asked.

 

"What?"

 

He raised one trembling finger toward a limp body. It had been dragged some distance back to this place—not that this was obvious by any visual clues—no scrapes, his clothes more or less intact—but Raditsu knew. He knew by the body's distinctively cavernous gut and the way that his fists began to shake again at the sight. "I killed him," he answered, bemusement matching his anger at the sight, stride for stride. "Earlier today." He glanced up to the sign, and back to the crowd, each face now focusing on him.

 

"S-so do you run this place now?" a young woman's trembling voice arose from the horde. "Since it has your name on it?"

"Were you the guy who replaced all our cakes and pastries with elbow pads and baseball bats?" another voice squeaked.

 

"We have no idea how to run this place!" a fellow with a shinier name badge than most piped up. "We weren't trained for this! What were you thinking?"

 

"You'd better make this right, weirdo!"

 

"He killed the manager!"

 

"What kind of a business strategy is this?"

 

"If I get fired, my dad's gonna kill me..."

 

"We should turn him in to the police!"

 

The small mob began shouting and moving closer to Raditsu as each member had something to scream at him. "I'm not working for you!" one howled, and a dozen others cheered in agreement.

 

"You! Radish man!" the man with the shiniest badge of all of them stepped forward, readjusting his glasses. "Explain yourself!"

 

This was not what he'd had in mind when he'd envisioned "a little help," and he had the distinct feeling that a certain someone was perfectly aware of this. Raditsu tossed his head back, throwing his middle fingers up to the sky, and roared. "Goddammit, dragon!"