Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Red Window ❯ Monster ( Chapter 3 )

They didn't see each other for days. At least, that's how Vegeta would have liked to imagine it. But there was no such luck; a certain someone had noticed his ripple of rage. Knocking on the door to the gravity chamber with an expression of curiosity and bewilderment, Goku's eyes pleaded to Vegeta to let him in. Vegeta sighed. With how quickly he'd rushed back to the gravity room after the incident, he'd still not had time to even start a workout before it was interrupted.

 

Well, at least the man had been polite enough not to sneak up behind him. He trudged over to the door, opening it for Goku and then slamming it shut. Vegeta leaned against the wall. “What do you want?” Knowing the answer, he paused only briefly before hurrying the topic along. “Another spar? It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, come on; let's go, fool!”

 

“Whoa, Vegeta!” Goku threw his hands up defensively. “Slow down.” He observed Vegeta's fighting stance and was almost drawn into beginning the battle anyway. “Uh, I just noticed that you got really angry a few minutes ago. And I think I sensed someone else, too. Well, I mean, I've been sensing him off and on for a while, but I guess it didn't register until just now.”

 

“Her,” Vegeta corrected through clenched teeth. “And it's of no importance.” He still had no idea why she was here—besides to kill him, of course—so a part of him did hope that she would stay long enough for him to find out why she wanted him dead in the first place. Still, the very idea of someone being a—a clone of him—beyond its clear stupidity and impossibility, was vastly unappealing. After all, who could replicate the Prince of the Saiyajin?

 

Vegeta's brows knit momentarily as the thought crossed his mind. Are there others—other Saiyajin? Alive?

 

Mentally shaking himself back into sense, he spat at the ground to make his dismissal of the idea clear. I don't even know if she was telling the truth.

 

But, damn, does she look like me.

 

Goku crossed his arms and tilted his head, his fingers tapping impatiently against his muscles. “Vegeta? I think you're lying.”

 

“What?”

 

“Look at you! It's gotta be important. So? Tell me! Or else I'll go find out myself!” He grinned, challenging the prince, and raised his fingers to his forehead to show he was prepared to teleport to the object of Vegeta's distress at any moment.

 

“No!” Vegeta cried out, panicked. “It's…a personal matter. You've no business…”

 

And at that, Goku disappeared. Swearing loudly, Vegeta sprinted out of the room, and, much to his dismay, found himself heading right back to the hospital wing.

 

 

---

 

“Hey there!”

 

The woman snapped out of her simmering introspection to find a brightly dressed man before her. Something about him seemed less foreign than anything else she'd witnessed on the planet in her short time there—besides, perhaps, Vegeta himself. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Did Vegeta send you here?”

 

Goku laughed. “No, he tried to keep me from coming here!” The woman balked at his blatant disregard of the prince's wishes, and further furrowed her brows at his phrasing. Tried? Goku noticed her suspicion and confusion, and tacked on, “Well, but I'm a whole lot faster than him when I use the instantaneous movement technique, of course!” He laughed again.

 

“F-faster?” she stammered.

 

“Well, yeah! Hey, here comes Vegeta!”

 

The woman growled and swore, clenching her fists. “He just left! Are you sure?”

 

“Yeah! No way I'd ever mistake anyone else's ki for his, you know? Hey, speaking of which, you look an awful lot like him—your signature's pretty similar, too! Hm, he said you're a girl, right? Are you his sister?”

 

“Sister?” she spat, but before she could continue, Vegeta swung open the door, so quickly and with so much force that it almost shattered.

 

“Dammit, Kakarrot!” he shouted, and his anger was much more intense than Goku was used to seeing these days. Indeed, rather than the usual competitive tone he heard from Vegeta when they sparred, these words sounded downright mad. Crazed, even.

 

“Hey, Vegeta, is this your sister or something?” Goku tried to ignore the tone of Vegeta's voice. Perhaps it would pass.

 

A lengthy silence ensued, as Vegeta and the woman locked eyes. The tension in the air was palpable, each challenging the other to speak the next word. Goku's eyes darted from one to the other, and after a moment became disoriented; was Vegeta the one in the bed? No, that was the other…

 

“Kakarrot, eh?” the woman finally spoke. “Sounds like a Saiyajin name to me.”

 

“It is!” Goku nearly sung, glad for the break in the silence. “I'm a Saiyajin just like Vegeta, and I guess you, too, huh?”

 

“You said you're faster than he is.” At this, Vegeta frowned, but kept quiet. Perhaps she would challenge Goku, and then feel true pain—in all the ways that he had. After all, if she and he were really one and the same, she could at least take some pride in the strength of the person from whom she had been derived. But if she could feel that shame that he had felt, of being worthless…well, she would undoubtedly take her sweet time coming to terms with the other Saiyajin's strength, just as he had.

 

“And just a bit stronger, too!” Goku added. “Vegeta's catching up though.” He sent a sidelong smirk Vegeta's way. “But it'll be a while yet before he can stand a chance against me!”

 

“Sounds like a challenge,” the woman's eyes narrowed, this time as a smug expression overtook her features. Could it be true? “Are you really stronger than Vegeta?”

 

“Well, he hasn't reached Super Saiyajin level three yet! So until then, I've got the edge.”

 

“Th-three…?” The smugness leapt from her face.

 

“Well, there's the regular Super Saiyajin level one, that's what Vegeta was earlier when he got mad at you. Then there's the second level; Vegeta can get that one too. But I was dead for a while and in the afterlife I unlocked another level!” Goku nodded.

 

Gradually, the woman's smile returned, her eyes gleaming. “I must see this,” she chuckled. “You, `Kakarrot,' I must see you and Vegeta do battle. I don't believe you and I won't believe you until I've seen you beat him with my own eyes.”

 

Goku grinned. “Yeah! Okay! Let's fight, Vegeta! You challenged me earlier, anyway!”

 

With wary eyes on the woman, Vegeta nodded. “I suppose you're right.” He sent a challenging glare her way: a clear message that if she tried to pull anything, he would do as he saw fit with her. The stare she returned was expressionless, deadpan. Shit, Vegeta cursed as he turned to lead the way out the door, Clone or not, she masks her intent every bit as well as I do. But he cleared the thought from his mind. He was more than strong enough to keep her in line, and was sure he'd had a hell of a lot more experience dealing with creeps like her than she'd had of dealing with people like him. After all, he'd worked under Freeza.

 

Noting the relatively poor condition of the woman, Goku tried to scoop her up into his arms to hurry the process along. He was met with a sharp blow across the face and a barrage of insults, and when he released her she tried to clamber out of the hospital bed herself, with limited success. She leaned heavily against the wall. “I'm not helpless,” she seethed.

 

“Man, Vegeta, what did you do to her?” Goku kept his eyes on her, concerned.

 

“What any reasonable man would do after someone has tried to kill him—however unsuccessfully—on ten separate occasions,” Vegeta lifted his nose to the air and closed his eyes.

 

“She's not that strong, Vegeta!” Goku whispered, not very subtly. “You don't need to kill her just for trying to kill you, for goodness' sake!”

 

“Of course not, Kakarrot; I still needed information from her.”

 

“Vegeta…”

 

The two Saiyajin paused mid-conversation to glance back; the woman was far behind them, hobbling as well as she could manage, dragging her shoulder against the wall.

 

“You sure you don't need help?”

 

“No!” she nearly screamed.

 

“Please,” Vegeta snorted, rolling his eyes. He strode quickly back to meet her, and roughly swung her over his shoulder. The prince shivered a bit at the realization that likely this really was his own flesh against him, his own body. Simultaneously he felt heat rising to his ears and vomit rising through his throat. The vomit won, and he struggled not to cough it up.

 

“Disgusting, isn't it?” she whispered. “But you're far too curious and far too tame to kill me now.”

 

“And you're far too weak to kill me,” Vegeta concluded defensively. “So shut the hell up.” He retched again. This was him! Him! How had this atrocity, this monster, come to exist? He would ask later; fearing, now, that if he opened his mouth again more than just rage and interrogation would spill out.

 

“Come on, guys!” Goku called. He eyed them curiously. How strange, he mused. It looks like Vegeta carrying Vegeta! …Wow, he looks ill. I hope he's well enough to fight. He stretched his arms out, rounding the corner and swinging open the door to the backyard. Maybe it's the stale indoor air.

 

“All right, Kakarrot,” Vegeta exited as well, nearly throwing his counterpart aside. “I'm ready.”

 

“Let's go a little farther away,” Goku suggested. “I really want to go all-out! I know you were holding back on me last time!”

 

The pre-battle banter sent Vegeta's blood flowing faster, and he was feeling better with each breath he took in of the smirking challenge Goku offered. “Me holding back on you? Kakarrot, you didn't even power up all the way. I expect you to treat this like a real fight this time!” He was shedding the day's uncertainty and insecurity, trading panic and fury for adrenaline and the promise of a rush that would wash his woes away, at least for a while.

 

---

 

They relocated to some previously designated arena a distance away; a wide and rocky clearing.

 

“Now let's skip the warm-up and get at it, Vegeta!” Goku called. “We'll show your sister a real exciting fight!” Neither of the other two bothered to correct him.

 

The prince glanced to the side, eyes fixed on the woman as she sat, shifting positions to accommodate her injuries. Goku noted her struggle and an idea seemed to strike him. “One second, Vegeta! I'll be right back!”

 

And he was right back, appearing again within seconds and with a small bag in his hands. “A senzu,” he held it out to the woman. “Go ahead, eat it. It'll heal your wounds so you can watch the fight more comfortably. You might have to move around a bit to keep up with us! I can't believe I didn't think of it before we got here,” he added apologetically. Goku turned to Vegeta. “Karin said there were only two in this crop, so I took the other one for whoever loses this match!” He grinned and added boldly, “So in that case, maybe you should hold onto it!” And at Vegeta's scoffing and shrugging off of the remark, he turned back to the woman. “Well? Come on, don't you want to feel better?”

 

Fixing her eyes on Goku—pure honesty, that one—she popped the bean into her mouth and crunched. A bizarre tingling sensation permeated through her limbs as she continued to chew, and she felt her power jump yet again, if only marginally in comparison to the other two Saiyajin. She smirked.

 

Goku grinned. “Great, huh? All right, Vegeta! Let's get started!”

 

Vegeta nodded, glancing one last time toward the woman as she settled against a boulder to watch before the whole of his attention was sucked into battle.

 

 

---

 

He saw her one more time that day.

 

As Goku fired another blast, Vegeta's battered body was sent flying through a rock formation, and, limp, struck the ground—

 

Wait—

 

The woman seized the collar of his shirt with one hand, and swiftly drove the other hand through his throat. Sick noises—choking, blood-sputtering clamor, unintelligible utterances—sick—sick, terrible noises—emanated from Vegeta's gullet for several moments before he fell silent.

 

“And that,” she whispered, “is the last time you will make the mistake of becoming so soft.” Dropping him, she began to raise two fingers to her head, but before they even came into contact with her skin, she found herself pinned to the ground.

 

Under Goku's boot, she quaked in fear, and above her, Goku quaked in fury. Words hissed from his mouth: “Don't. Move.”