Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Not for your ears ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Every night it’s a variation of the same dream.

Crouched, shivering and hidden under the smoked out remains of ruined vehicles, or within the burnt façades of skeletal skyscrapers, or, more than once, among a heap of newly desecrated corpses, Bulma Briefs is haunted by the past. Accosted by omens, signs; things so obvious she shouldn’t have missed them, seemingly couldn’t have missed them, and yet, nonetheless, did. In her waking hours she represses the truth. In her dreams she’s pillaged by it. The dragon’s eyes flash, for just a heartbeat, a dire warning shining ominously in their crimson depths. Goku’s normally carefree face contorts viciously, the knowledge hidden within his uncharacteristically furrowed brow dark and dangerous. Even the very heavens themselves, crashing and quaking in a violent, chaotic tumult, signal the planet’s impending doom.

Sometimes she imagines, after a day of pointless wandering, that she let Oolong finish his exceedingly obnoxious, ultimately harmless wish; that the consequences of their naive desires equated only to a slightly draftier underwear drawer somewhere. Sometimes, like a drowning man grasping desperately for a life preserver, she almost, almost convinces herself that these fantasies, so beautiful in their utter mediocrity, are real. Then she awakes. And reality rears its head.

Those moments of carefree, whimsical imaginings, dreams of a world gone right, are the worst of all.

And then, sometimes, on cold, lonely mornings when the isolation and guilt become simply too much, she wishes she had have died with the rest and she contemplates finally put an end to her aimless, directionless wanderings. But she didn’t die. And even now, when nothing remains, suicide seems the broken man’s way out. Bulma Briefs was never a fighter. That was Goku’s job, Yumcha’s job. She was never brave like them. On the contrary, she was always the first to run, to scream, to hide. But she is not broken. Even now, left with nothing but the memories of her own ultimately annihilating mistake, she is not broken.

As usual, though, there’s little time to contemplate life as it was. This, in a way, is one of the few blessings of her chaotic life. She lives now in a world gone mad, a fact reiterated by the heavy footsteps that now approach her location. He’s close, too close. Close enough for the scouter beeping furtively to pick up her power level, regardless of its apparent frailty. Close enough to realize, if he cares to, that it isn’t animal interference or static discharge or a low level EMP, that someone still remains alive. So Bulma Briefs does what she’s done a thousand times before. Burrowing further into her make-shift shelter she shuts her eyes, balls herself into the fetal position and prays that her presence will, like so many times before, nonetheless escapes his notice. She hides. She was never a fighter. That fact, unlike so many others, remains unchanged.

And, despite her own internal assurance of death, she is granted a reprieve. At least for one more second… One more minute… One more hour… One more day… Who knows? This is what her life has become; an endless wait for the moment when she is not so lucky and death, now her closet companion, greets her in its cold embrace.

This is the world she inhabits.

A world she created.

A world she destroyed.

All for the sake of a prince.

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