Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Lab Monkey ❯ Dualism ( Chapter 19 )

Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ nor do I own the song Em More from the Noir soundtrack.

 

 

A/N: The song in this chapter wasn't chosen for the words as much as for the melody. If you have a chance I suggest listening to it during the last half of the chapter as it is written to the in accord with the song.

 

 

Thanks so much to LisaB for her beta skills. I would be lost without her.

 

 

Chapter Nineteen

 

Dualism

 

 

“Do you even know anything about the man they want you to kill?”

 

 

Vegeta ignored Bulma as he continued to scan the star maps loaded into the navigational computer. He was trying to plot a more efficient course to Namek since they had lost so much time. Although he had already rechecked his figures several times, he did so once more, killing time before he had to leave the ship. He snorted under his breath at the irony.

 

 

At Vegeta's refusal to answer Bulma waved the printout she was holding under his nose, causing him to swat it away with a growl of irritation.

 

 

“Well I do.”

 

 

Bulma had been flabbergasted when Vegeta had announced that he had found a way to make enough money for them to buy the expensive part that they needed. The man at the bar had offered Vegeta a job alright---to kill Akira Togeshi, the leader of the Ordani people and the newest threat to the organized crime families that ran the world they orbited. From what Bulma was able to glean, Akira was a good man. He believed in family, in freedom, and most importantly the sacredness of life. He was everything good, fighting against droves of evil to protect his own people. He didn't stand a chance against Vegeta though, and the criminals that hired him knew that.

 

 

Vegeta's cool demeanor hadn't even flinched when he told her that he would murder a man that he had never even met. In fact, he had seemed irrationally calm about the whole thing. She was used to seeing intense passion or anger glowing inside of him. He radiated heat from every pore in his body even when he was standing silently, watching her distantly. Never had she seen him this detached, this icy.

 

 

“Lets see…Akira Togeshi. Father and beloved husband. He has recently been elected as the leader of the Ordani Government. Apparently he is doing his part to clean up the criminal element on this world. Since he was been elected a year ago crime is down by a whopping twenty-six percent. Sounds like he's really cracking down. What do you think, Vegeta?”

 

 

“I think that it doesn't matter. Now shut the hell up.” Vegeta shrugged her away and turned towards another console, trying to drown out her nasal voice that burned through his brain like acid.

 

 

“Of course it matters, Vegeta,” she pleaded to his rigid back. “They want you to kill this guy because he's in their way. He's an innocent man, trying to do some good in his part of the universe. You can't murder an innocent man, Vegeta.”

 

 

“It makes no difference who I kill. I hardly think that his perceived innocence is important. The money I'll get will be more than enough to purchase the parts that we need and then we can be on our way. I have business to take care of on Namek, and I'll not be delayed any longer.”

 

 

“You don't have to commit murder, Vegeta.” Bulma placed her small hand on his shoulder, and tried to turn him towards her, but he was unyielding. She would have better luck moving the ship by hand.

 

 

“It's not murder, its survival.” A small shiver raced down her spine at his words. His entire existence had been about survival. He had never gone a day in his life where he had been secure…relaxed. Happy.

 

 

“If I don't do it, then someone else will. He's a doomed man.”

 

 

“Then let somebody else do it.” Again she pulled on his arm, but he refused to look at her.

 

 

“Then we would be ass out of luck with no money, wouldn't we?” he growled.

 

 

Bulma stepped away, finally accepting that he wouldn't face her. “Not necessarily. I got a job offer.”

 

 

Unexpectedly, her words did what her strength could not. Vegeta turned, his eyebrow cocked questioningly.

 

 

“Where?”

 

 

“The owner of the Scarlet Club offered me twenty thousand credits for one night of work.”

 

 

“The sex club?” Vegeta's eyes widened with shock, and Bulma frowned at him, shrugging. Anger burst through him so violently that he thought that he would explode from the inside out. An emotion that he hadn't felt in decades rushed through his veins. Betrayal.

 

 

Such a nasty thing had become second nature to him over the years and to avoid it he had stopped trusting. He didn't trust his fellow soldiers, he didn't trust his men; he didn't even trust himself at times. He hadn't felt the sharp sting of betrayal in many years, but he recognized it. He knew exactly what it was, and he despised her for it.

 

 

Vegeta's black eyes narrowed dangerously, dropping the temperature in the room drastically. He prowled towards her, and Bulma's spine instantly stiffened. She had seen that look on his face before. He wore it on the day he destroyed her lab and killed all those men. The day that he nearly killed her. She backed up until her thighs hit a low sitting console. Vegeta continued to advance on her, leaning her back until he had to brace his arm to keep from touching her. He lifted his hand, and Bulma squeezed her eyes shut, certain that he was going to wring her neck. Instead she felt the soft brush of his fingers as they trailed up the pale column of her throat.

 

 

“So that's the way of it. It takes money and jewels to get between your legs, but for me…”

 

 

Bulma's eyes snapped open at his words, and she gasped in shock. “No, it's not like that.”

 

 

He pinched her jaw between his fingers and thumb, locking the words in her throat. He wrenched her face close to his until she could feel his hot breath on her cheek. His eyes burned, and she could feel them searing into her skull, setting her afire.

 

 

“But from me, you ask the impossible,” he hissed. His fiery eyes racked down her prone body, pausing at her arched breasts. Bulma felt fear, sharp and painful, stab her in the belly as the cold heat of his anger radiated off him in waves.

 

 

“You misunderstand,” she choked out between her pursed lips. His eyes snapped back to hers, and she shivered at the hate she saw there.

 

 

“You little slut, I should take you here and now,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

 

 

He gripped a fistful of her blue hair, hauling her up off the console so he could spin her around and drape her face first over it. He slammed her so hard against the metal frame that the air in her lungs rushed out between her lips in a huff. His strong hands pinned her hips tightly against the cold metal and she could feel his fingers slipping beneath the band of her pants to rip them off her.

 

 

“Stop Vegeta, you're hurting me,” she whimpered as she struggled against him. She couldn't believe that he actually meant to do it. The thought that he was capable of hurting her in such a way had always lingered in the back of her mind, but she never fully accepted it.

 

 

Vegeta growled in frustration when he couldn't reach her fly, and pulled her up so that her back was braced against his chest. He reached around her slender waist, his fingers tearing at the strings that held her pants closed.

 

 

“Not as much as you will hurt after spreading your legs fifty times in one night.” As he said the words, his body tensed as images of her pinned beneath other men swamped his mind. The arm that held her flexed against her stomach painfully, and she let out another whimper of fright and pain.

 

 

Finally he worked the knots of her ties free, and he yanked her pants down her wiggling hips.

 

 

“Please don't do this.” Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes and stream down her face as the cold air licked around her bare buttocks. She fought harder, but she was no match for his superior strength and he held her effortlessly.

 

 

“Why? I want to taste you before every other male in the universe does.” He cupped her mound, pushing his thick fingers between her dry folds. He groaned at the feeling of her tight heat, but he was left unsatisfied. She was as dry as blistering desert, her body tense and unwelcoming at his forceful intrusion.

 

 

“Please don't rape me, Vegeta.” She whispered his name longingly. As if saying it would evoke a protector and not a monster. She ceased her worthless struggles, and instead wrapped her delicate hands around his thick wrist trying desperately to pull him away.

 

 

“It won't be,” he breathed against her neck. He felt revolted by the word, and he couldn't force it between his own lips. His hard erection was jutting against her backbone, and he knew that he could take her at any moment, but her pain would be overwhelming. He tried to remember why he shouldn't care, but he couldn't.

 

 

“This is wrong.” She refused to be lulled by his husky voice, and she clamped her thighs together more determinedly.

 

 

“It doesn't feel that way to me.” He tried to force his way further into her, but her resistance slowed him. He gentled his touch, the old craving to have her writhing and willing beneath him surfacing to push away the haze of his anger.

 

 

“Please, it hurts. I don't want to be raped by you. Not by you.” Her plaintive tone wound its way around his heart, squeezing it until he could barely breathe. She sounded so lost, so sad that he instantly wanted to hold her tight and protect her. It was a feeling that he had never felt for anyone before. The war that raged between his mind and heart nearly tore him apart.

 

 

“Stop saying that word,” he bit out angrily. He didn't want to hear that word coming from her lips anymore. He didn't want to be in this room anymore. He wanted to be away from here, away from her, away from himself. How many times in the years had he wished that he could crawl out of his skin and escape his life? How many more times would he feel that way?

 

 

“Then stop doing it.”

 

 

He spun her around violently, pushing her up against the console so that she was forced to sit bare-butted on the cold metal. He grabbed her by the shoulders shaking her without hurting her.

 

 

“Damn you. You're nothing but a little whore, but I can't do you in like I should,” he spat.

 

 

Bulma looked up at him with big, wet eyes, trying not to flinch at the anger and hate that she saw brewing inside of him. What broke her heart the most was that it was directed inside, towards himself.

 

 

“Vegeta---”

 

 

“Just shut up. I'm going to do this job. If you leave this ship and let another male touch you then don't bother coming back, because I will kill you on sight. Do you understand me, Bulma?”

 

 

She nodded hesitantly, her heart breaking at the agony she saw inside of him. She reached out a trembling hand to rest it against his cheek. For just a second he closed his eyes, inhaling her scent deeply. She felt all of her fear of him flee at that one simple gesture from him.

 

 

“Stay with me. You don't have to do this. You don't have to kill,” she whispered.

 

 

His black eyes opened to stare down at her. A sadness so thick that it nearly drowned her welled up inside of her chest as she looked up at him.

 

 

“It's what I do.”

 

 

His hollow words echoed around her as he turned on his heel, striding from the room with sure confident steps that were at war with the despair she had glimpsed inside his eyes.

 

 

Bulma slid down the console, unable to stop the choking sobs that clawed their way up her throat and spilled out of her trembling mouth. She ignored the cold floor as she sat with her head braced on her knees as she cried not for herself, but for Vegeta---for the man he never got to be.

 

 

*~*

 

 

As Bulma moved to the center stage of the hottest nightclub on Omally Three she finally understood why they kept the air filtration so cool. There were so many people packed into the building that she instantly began to perspire as the temperature rose over ninety degrees. Her already flushed face bloomed as the hot stage lights focused on her, making it appear as though she glowed with immortal youth and beauty.

 

 

The black sequined sheath the club manager had loaned her rippled like velvet midnight under the spotlights and her rich blue hair was piled lavishly on top of her head. She bit her shiny red lip as she scanned the crowd, hopelessly looking for one set of brooding black eyes in the sea of hundreds that watched her.

 

 

Vegeta had stormed angrily from the ship an hour before while she lay crumpled on the floor, tears flooding her cheeks. She had begged him to stay with her, to refuse the job that was offered him, but he would not listen to her. She tried to tell him that he didn't have to do it. That he didn't have to kill for them. For her.

 

 

Minutes later she ventured from the ship, directly disobeying him. Sweat had slid down her back and pooled at the bottom of her spine with every step that took her further from the ship, but she couldn't force herself to turn around. She tried to tell herself that he wouldn't go through with it. That he wouldn't kill an innocent man. Deep in her heart she held the hope that he would turn back and seek her out at the club. She wanted him to see with his own eyes that she hadn't thought to betray him. She wanted to show him that she was capable of helping him along on his journey towards his destiny.

 

 

Bulma took her place on the stage, staring sightlessly out into the crowd. When she had told Vegeta that she had been offered a job as well, he had been enraged, mistakenly thinking that she meant to whore out her body. His error was easily understood as she looked out into the crowd to see scantily clad females serving the male customers. The Scarlet Club was the biggest sex club in two galaxies. She had tried to tell him that he was wrong, to explain what exactly the job offer was, but he refused to listen. His jealousy would have warmed her heart if his anger hadn't been so chilling, so fierce.

 

 

Bulma gripped the microphone like a life line and shifted her body so one pale thigh was revealed by the slit in her gown. She licked her lower lip nervously as the lights dimmed on the crowd until she was the only one standing in a halo of light. The people quieted as the stringed instruments began to strum the beginning of the tune she had shown the band earlier.

 

 

A single violin strummed, echoing in the silence. Bulma parted her lips and the sad strains of a foreign melody wafted through the crowd.

 

 

Wasurenaide ite kiresakareta ame

 

Akai yume o mita ano basho

 

Kaigara no naka ni kakushita ano kisu

 

Shizuku no mama nokotte iru yo

 

 

The crowd was instantly captured by the words that they didn't understand yet they pulled at them, quieting them, entrancing them. The beat of drums joined the lonely violin until the music swelled in the room.

 

 

Vegeta raced down the shadowy hall, the surveillance cameras only capturing flashes of light due to his preternatural speed. His hard eyes scanned the immediate area as he reached out his senses to sweep the rooms beyond the thick walls for any movement. Satisfied that he was alone, he crept further down the hall to the next flight of stairs that would take him to the penthouse, and to his prey.

 

 

Distantly he heard the strains of music, and he tilted his head to the side as the melancholy notes drifted through his mind. He was instantly reminded of Bulma, and the tears that she shed for him before he cruelly left her on the floor. She had begged him to stay, to remain by her side, but he had abandoned her for his mission.

 

 

She thought that he could change. That he could become something he was not. In her mind refusing to do this simple act would be the first step towards redeeming his soul. His anger boiled over at the thought. When would she realize that he had no soul? When would she start seeing him as he truly was? A monster that was fit to kill and destroy. She thought that he wanted a different life. She refused to believe that he could be satisfied with how he lived. She saw a life for him beyond his thirst for revenge, while Vegeta could only see his immediate destiny.

 

 

Kesanaide hoshii itami ni nita yume

 

Kotoba ni naranai kinou o

 

Kagami o waru you ni dakishime ni itte

 

Furuete ita sora o miyou

 

 

Nakitai koto ga ate mo toke wa shinaide

 

Yawarakasa ni aeru hi e oyogitsuzukeyou

 

 

Sadness swept through the crowd as Bulma sang. Even the strongest of men shuddered at the agony that reflected in her beautiful eyes. She grasped the microphone, bringing it closer to her lips as she made love to the lyrics.

 

 

Te o nobashite mite mou hitotsu no natsu

 

Shinobu you na netsu kanjite

 

Surechigatte kita hitomitachi no koto

 

Hitotsu hitotsu omoidashite

 

 

Bulma let her words die down so the strains of the violin could wash over the crowd. She swayed to the music, closing her eyes as she pictured Vegeta's tortured features clearly in her mind.

 

 

Vegeta climbed the stairway, well aware that two guards stood at the top. He flashed between them, and before they could react to his presence they fell at his feet unconscious. He paused, glaring down at them, wondering distantly why they were still alive and not dead as they should be. At the last moment he had pulled his strength, choosing to let them live instead of snapping their fragile necks.

 

 

The violin died away, and Bulma's words echo across Vegeta's mind.

 

 

Ikenai koto o shitte mo nige wa shinaide

 

Itoshisa ni fureru gogo o sagashitsuzukeyou

 

 

His distraction allowed a man to sneak around the corner to level a gun at him. Vegeta heard the report before he saw the bullet that was hurdling towards him. To him the projectile was barely moving, swimming through molasses, and he watched it in wonderment before stepping aside to avoid it. The plaster near his head exploded as the bullet tunneled into the wall at high velocity.

 

 

The beat picked up in rhythm to Vegeta's heart as he advanced on his foes.

 

 

Vegeta's eyes narrowed and he sped down the hall, wrenching the gun away from the fearful man. His scream of terror and pain echoed down the long corridor, alerting others to Vegeta's presence.

 

 

Vegeta fought his way through the throng of men easily, dropping the unconscious bodies to the ground without a second look. He reached the door leading to Akira's office and as he reached for the handle he felt a wave of longing wash through him. He shuddered as he looked back at the trail of groaning men he had left behind, again wondering why they weren't dead. He hardened his resolve and straightened his spine as he opened the door to reveal the man inside the darkened room.

 

 

Kanashii koto ga ate mo yurenaide ite

 

Yasahisa ni aeru hi made oyogitsuzukeyou

 

 

Akira Togeshi sat silently behind his wooden desk, his hands folded respectfully in front of him. He met Vegeta gaze steadily, refusing to flinch, to proud to beg. Vegeta stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.

 

 

Bulma's words died away and all that was left was the sad strains of the violin.

 

 

Vegeta tore the unresisting man from his seat, laying him back over his desk with one hand at his throat. A blue ball of ki formed in his fist that hovered inches above Akira's stoic face. In the depths of his eyes, Vegeta could see fear, but beyond that he saw acceptance, the inevitability of his death. Vegeta's gaze flickered away, unable to stare into the man's eyes without seeing his own feral reflection. To the side, Vegeta glanced at a photograph of Akira with his family, a wife and daughter. His grip tightened on the man's throat, slowly choking the life from him. Vegeta's lips peeled back from his sharp fangs, and his ki glowed brighter, casting the only light in the dark room. Shadows writhed around them, waiting for the killing blow.

 

 

The crowd stared silently at the exotic blue hair woman who fell silent as the notes drifted down around her. She raised her eyes to them, and they shifted in awe at the sight of the crystal tears that flowed down her pale cheeks and over her sleek lips. She scanned the crowd, looking for something and from the heartbreak that was etched on her face before she fled the stage, she did not find it. To those who watched, it was apparent that her happiness was as elusive as a fairy tale wish upon a shooting star.

 

 

 

 

Translation:

 

 

Please don't forget in the flourishing, cutting rain

 

In that place, I dreamed red dreams

 

Inside a shell A stolen kiss

 

Constant dripping I am remaining

 

 

I don't want to be erased, this dream is like pain

 

I can't find the words to say tomorrow,

 

Like breaking a mirror, I will embrace it

 

Let us look into the trembling sky

 

 

Even though I should want to cry, don't dissolve away

 

Till the day we see softness, let's keep on swimming

 

 

Reach out your arms and see Another summer

 

Pain like endurance… I can feel it

 

Everything changes And those many eyes…

 

One thing, one thing, I remember

 

 

Even though I know bad things, don't try to escape

 

Let's keep seeking out the day we see love

 

 

Even though I am sad, don't sway

 

Until the day we see gentleness, let's keep on swimming