Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Red Window ❯ Fracture ( Chapter 11 )

NOTE: A warning—you might find the very end of this chapter to be somewhat gruesome and disturbing…I don't usually do this kind of thing, so I have no idea how far is too far, or not far enough, so do forgive me if it's one or the other. Actually, you should let me know if it is, so that I can improve in general, and/or revise the chapter.

 

And since I'm writing this anyway, thanks to all who have shown their support thus far!!

 

On with the story…

 

…

 

Bulma sipped her coffee in silence across the table from Piccolo, who took a swig of water every few minutes and pointedly avoided looking Bulma's way, as she wore only her pajamas—a sports bra and underwear. She didn't seem to notice his discomfort, though, as she held her focus on the previous day's crossword, determined to maintain a regular daily schedule during their time in space.

 

Piccolo coughed. “Should we wake the others?”

 

“Mm,” Bulma chewed the cap of her pen. “I guess.”

 

“You need to practice the fusion.”

 

“Yeah,” the woman answered quietly, apparently remembering something. She leaned down closer to the crossword, rubbing the back of her neck with her free hand and letting her bangs fall to curtain her eyes as she looked down.

 

Piccolo watched Bulma for a few minutes, but as she didn't seem to be going anywhere, he stood up and made his way back toward where the boys slept, taking his time in the hopes that Bulma would get dressed while he was gone.

 

“What is this?” the newspaper was snatched from beneath Bulma's nose just as she stretched out her arm to fill in a word. She raised her head to find Vejata scrutinizing the puzzle. “Some kind of coordinate system? A map? A code?” Vejata slowed her breathing to contain the vicious pounding of her heart—they could easily plan to dump her off in space to suffocate just before bringing back Goku and Vegeta. She swore at herself for not waking up earlier, to monitor them.

 

“It's a crossword,” Bulma tried to snatch it back, but Vejata rotated slightly, so that it was just out of reach. “It's a puzzle. A game. Why?”

 

Vejata's mouth twitched as she further scrutinized the paper.

 

“You follow the clues to fill in the words, and they overlap with each other in the grid.”

 

“This isn't the same language as you put on the scouter.”

 

“No, I used the language that was on the old model I've seen,” Bulma once more made a grab for the crossword. “It's mostly just numbers, so it was easy enough. Can you even read that?”

 

“No,” Vejata crumpled it in her fist. “So why should I believe what you're saying?”

 

“Ugh,” Bulma furrowed her brows. “What else would it be?”

 

“Plans. Secrets.”

 

“Oh, don't be ridiculous,” she rolled her eyes. “Not this early in the morning. Burn it, for all I care. But I'd really rather finish it.”

 

Vejata lit up a ki blast and let it fall to the ground in ashes. “Clean yourself up and put something on,” she turned away, fumbling with the coffee maker. “Unless you can deflect blasts while you repair the ship, we have work to do.”

 

Bulma huffed and marched off, bringing her coffee with her. “Unless you can repair the ship while you deflect blasts, more like,” she challenged as she turned the corner to her room.

 

Trunks and Goten stumbled into the kitchen area, yawning and stretching as they made their way to the small table. Both took a seat and waited, staring first at Vejata, then at Piccolo.

 

“I'm not making you breakfast!” the Namekian shouted.

 

“Fend for yourselves, brats,” Vejata crossed her arms and turned her nose to the air. Goten raised his eyebrows to make his best pleading face, and Vejata turned to the freezer, removed a sizeable slab of ham, and slammed it down before them. “That's as much as you'll get from me, and you're lucky at that.”

 

They turned to stare at one another. “We'll…just make something on our own…”

 

 

…

 

 

“Oh, come on, Vegeta!” Goku pleaded with the prince, who paced violently from one side of the rocky ledge to the other. “It was nothin'.”

 

“Apparently enough worth `agreeing not to discuss it,'” Vegeta spat. “What happened, Kakarrot?” he stopped just in front of Goku to snarl, “To what incident was she referring?” Vegeta imitated Vejata's motion of placing a finger near her nose, and Goku's ears reddened.

 

“R-really, Vegeta. I swear.”

 

“This is directly related to me, Kakarrot.”

 

“Vegeta, um, look…we're dead…we aren't even supposed to have seen that. You weren't…I mean you wouldn't have…anyway, we should pretend like we don't even know anything they said.” He scratched his head and glanced off to the side. “M-maybe we should stop watching. Y'know? They'll get there, they'll wish us back…then we can let them fill us in.”

 

Vegeta snorted, maintaining his glare at Goku.

 

“…Wanna…spar?”

 

“What do you think I am—stupid?” He turned and took a seat. “What will happen first? Will that moron copy of me let something slip, or will you crack? Either way, I'm not letting you distract me.”

 

Goku nodded slowly, though Vegeta was not facing him. He paced over to Vegeta and sat beside him—close enough that the prince felt the need to budge over a few inches, indignantly—and rested his chin against his palm, sighing.

 

 

…

 

 

“All your poses look right,” Trunks nodded, striding around the two women and basking in the authority he had been given. Goten nodded, giving a thumbs-up and a smile to Bulma, and a hesitant inclination of his head to Vejata. “Whaddaya say, Goten?”

 

“They should try it for real!”

 

The two boys turned to Piccolo, who was smirking—perhaps, in part, because he was not the one who had to demonstrate the dance time and time again, this time. He gave a short nod. “I agree.”

 

Bulma and Vejata glanced toward one another, and the magnitude of the contact was nearly palpable. We'd damn well better have a tail, Vejata decided, thinking back to Bulma's statement before they had parted ways and slept. Bulma seemed to see what she was thinking—perhaps it was the marked increase in the pace at which Vejata's tail whipped to and fro—and the corners of her mouth lifted slightly. More than anything, Vejata feared that she wouldn't be herself after the process—free to let loose Queen Vegeta's secrets as she burst forth only a part of the whole—and would Bulma be able to root through her mind and take as much as she could carry? Trunks and Goten had not fused, themselves, since her explanation of their task, lest any other Vegeta find his way to the bright and blazing ki, so she'd had no way to observe evidence pointing one way or the other.

 

The fusion between Bulma and Vejata, Piccolo had decided, would likely not result in a high enough base power to draw attention, and the two fused women—“Buljata,” they had decided, much to Vejata's chagrin—could always suppress their ki if the result was unexpectedly powerful.

 

“Put in the scouter,” Bulma demanded. “You are not going to fuck this up.”

 

Vejata growled to herself and laid it against her eye, and it clicked to life as the whole of the surface made contact. She focused her gaze on Bulma and struggled to suppress her power level, until finally she had matched Bulma's exactly. Piccolo nodded.

 

Bulma's eyes blazed with the thrill of a challenge, and with a fire daring Vejata to do anything that would stand between her and this newest adventure. In return, Vejata narrowed her eyes and smirked, naming Bulma the fool for having the nerve to doubt her.

 

 

…

 

 

“This is gonna be so cool!” Goku grinned. “Hey Vegeta, what if they do it wrong and turn—” but Vegeta slugged Goku across the jaw before he could finish, trying not to imagine anything with Bulma or himself in it—let alone both—gone obese or skin-and-bones. Goku returned to his place, rubbing his jaw and making some cross remark, but stopped at the silencing glare Vegeta sent his way.

 

“They're about to do it.” He seemed to be studying the nuanced expressions they exchanged; Bulma's, which were so familiar to him, and Vejata's, which so closely resembled his own that he was surprised he couldn't hear her think. His brows furrowed and he shook his head.

 

“Something wrong?” Goku was no fool; all the time he had spent fighting Vegeta wasn't for naught.

 

“No.”

 

He studied Vegeta so intently that he almost missed the words: “Fuu…sion…”

 

 

…

 

 

“HA!” a blinding light flashed throughout the room, and Piccolo, Trunks, and Goten raised their arms to guard their eyes. As the light ebbed, the silhouette of a figure became clearer, and clearer, until the light faded completely and she stood before them, hair and gi sash waving gently in the heat that rose from her skin. “Not half bad,” Buljata laughed, looking herself over and letting her tail curl proudly behind her. The shocks of bright teal hair that lined the sides of her spiky black hair brought out the blue that hid deep within her eyes as she glanced toward the ship's other occupants—likely, based on the way the smirk crawled across her lips, waiting for the words of praise they owed her.

 

But she received only giggles from the boys, and a scarlet-tinged face from the Namekian. “I'd forgotten that…detail,” he murmured, extending his arm toward her.

 

Buljata looked over herself and chuckled as her vest drifted open and closed in her aura. As he raised his arm, she leapt across the room to knock him back before he could use the clothes-beam, planting a boot upon his sternum. “I think I like this look,” she chuckled. “And you shouldn't play embarrassment for the Earthlings' benefit. I don't think you give a rat's ass about my chest.” She casually blew against her fingers and buffed them against the vest. “Though of course I understand if you do.”

 

Piccolo coughed, and seemed to take the first part of her statement to heart, returning his gaze to her with only slightly tinged cheeks. “Yes…well…wait, what you said—you do not consider yourself an Earthling?”

 

“Shall I? I'm from neither here nor there.” She removed her boot from his chest, flexing her fingers. “What power,” she whispered. “My body and my mind are working in better condition than I ever thought possible…”

 

“To be safe, why don't you suppress your power for the time being?”

 

She cocked her head and grinned. “No. I don't think so.”

 

Piccolo swore quietly to himself. He knew, too, the rush of power that came from combining with another being, even if Namekian fusion wasn't quite the same… “You have to. Hey—watch it—” he started before he was blown away by a gust of wind. “You shouldn't be powering up…!”

“But how else will I know how high I can go?” Buljata grinned.

 

“You needn't—”

 

“Trunks!” Goten shouted, and the lavender-haired boy nodded, stepping carefully away from Goten. Piccolo's eyes widened, and the room went quiet but for another shout of “Fu…sion…HA!”

 

 

…

 

 

“Fuck,” Vegeta hissed, balling his fists tightly.

 

“Were we that much of a showoff when we fused with the earrings?” Goku wondered aloud, but Vegeta grabbed his collar before he could think about it any further.

 

“Don't you see what's going on?” the prince nearly shrieked. “I hope you have another favor or two with some god,” he seethed. “Fools…all of them!” His eyes nearly bulged with rage.

 

“Oh, you'd have done the same,” Goku laughed. “Don't worry.” But his eyes widened as he turned his attention back to the screen, and the smile dropped from his face. “Oh…oh god…”

 

 

…

 

 

“Head them off!” Piccolo screamed. Gotenks took in a deep breath and burst through the door, streaking through space to the nearby planet that harbored six fast-approaching power levels. “Dammit,” he shot a chilling glare to Buljata. “I'm going with him. He'll do something just as stupid…” Piccolo trailed off, his countenance grim and his voice carefully neutral. “You step on it—get away while we buy you time—wish them back…” he closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. “And us.” Before Buljata could so much as open her mouth, Piccolo rocketed toward Gotenks on the surface below.

 

Buljata turned to the controls and jammed everything she could to the highest it could go, and slammed the ship forward to New Namek, collapsing against the console as it gained speed.

 

 

…

 

 

Vegeta stood slowly and lowered his head, biting his lip.

 

“It's okay…Vegeta…they'll probably come meet us down here if they get up to Enma before we're all wished back…it'll be okay.”

 

The prince raised his eyes to Goku, and he shook his head, quietly stepping on one of the remote's buttons. He turned from the screen, his breath hitching in his throat, and Goku's gaze shifted to the giant TV. Beneath them and behind them, all around them, the residents of Hell cried out in glee, cheering one party or another on as if watching a sports game.

 

He saw one of the copies of Vegeta—young, perhaps barely pubescent, the same age as all the others that had swept down upon him—and then another—bear down on the triple-ascended Gotenks, but the younger boy held his own, deflecting one. A third crashed down from the sky under Piccolo's woven fingers, but he stood and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, chuckling as he came face-to-face with Gotenks. The fused boy focused, powering up further, far outclassing any one of the copies.

 

A chilling howl echoed from above, followed a number of seconds later by a crack as Piccolo's body slammed into the ground. The remaining three boys formed a wider circle around Gotenks and their peers, prowling, looking for the moment. Gotenks spat ghosts as he tried to duck through punches and kicks, and one clung to one of the young Vegetas, its explosion rendering him momentarily unconscious. But as one of the ghosts swerved and struck Gotenks, the resounding boom shook up billows of dust.

 

Vegeta's eyes slid open slightly, as he looked to the screen with dread. The dust cleared to reveal the two half-Saiyajin boys on the verge of collapsing, their breathing ragged. Trunks opened his mouth to rasp a word to Goten, but as he turned to his friend, one of the Vegetas leapt down upon him, shrieking to the empty sky in delight. The prince cringed from the screen before it happened, but he could not look away—the thrilled shriek was lost beneath a gut-wrenching yowl as flesh separated from flesh, and bone from bone—now Vegeta did close his eyes—and when they opened his son lay on the ground with only one arm, his eyes wide but his mouth silent. Another copy kicked him over to bury his nose in the ground, and a third scooped him up by the head, fingers pressing cracks—then gaps—into his skull before it finally burst.

 

Against the rioting cheers of the spectators below, the prince wailed in agony for his son.