Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Requiem in Blue ❯ Chapter Fourteen: All’ahshi ( Chapter 14 )

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

“You lied to me,” Bulma insisted for the third time in stilted Aisugo.  “If you expect me to keep my end of the bargain now, you are mistaken.”
Furiza had both hands crossed behind his back.  His gleaming white, solid chest was puffed out with indignation and self-satisfaction.  One of his guards snarled with irritation at her words, but the Aisu-jin emperor held up a hand to him.
“Bulma-sha, surely you hadn’t thought me so naïve of my own situation?  What made your position so desperate that you thought I would have told you the complete truth?”
“I expected at least that you would consider what I had to offer--?”  She cursed because she had used the Saiyago word.  “What I had to offer,” she repeated herself unsteadily.
The past two hours had played havoc on her brain, not to mention that the plasma fumes had made mush of her insides.  Bulma had begun to wonder if she would be capable enough to complete her mission anyway.  Things had deteriorated rapidly enough in her relationship with the Saiya-jin; what made Furiza think that she still held even a modicum of their trust?  She expressed this to him.
“Of course, you do not,” Furiza told her, “but you must attempt to gain at least some of it back.  Tell them that you’ve made a mistake, Bulma-sha.  Tell them that you underestimated us, just as they have.  It is the truth anyway, is it not?”
Bulma did not answer at first, for her pride would not allow it.  Furiza’s guards were sneering in her direction and muttering words that she could not understand; she was sure they were insults, though, by the tone.  Damn them!
“What is it that you expect me to do, then?”  She asked Furiza.  “You have them now, as you wished.  What more do you want from me?”
“Make nice with the monkey prince again, Bulma-sha.  Tell him you want to help fix everything; then you will be able to gather more information about their next move.  You can’t think that the Saiya-jin are going to stand by, idle, while we hold their prince captive?”
Bulma took a deep breath and sighed.  Her frustration must be clear by now, because Furiza grinned with unadulterated glee.  But what could she do?  Indeed, her situation seemed as grave as Vejiita’s or Brolli’s--perhaps even more so.  Yet how was she to gain back the trust of two men she had betrayed?  Bulma almost laughed aloud at that:  men.  Were they so like human beings that she had now begun to think of them as such?  Guilt began to overcome her with electrifying speed until it was replaced by anxiety.
“Very well,” Bulma sighed again, “where are you keeping them?”

He felt his world explode into an agonizing void of light.  His senses collapsed and regenerated all at once, while the blinding pain in his extremities throbbed with unmerciful persistence.  He could not see, and yet there was light; he could not hear and yet there was so much sound that the silence could have been screaming.  He wept with the pain, indifferent to the shame of it.  Yet his cries were surely more angry than sorrowful, he thought.  Who in all the gods’ names had done this to him--!
“...stop moving...plasma poisoning...your body will recalibrate...”
He leaned toward the sound of a voice, desperate for its reality.  Was this what it was like to be born, he wondered?  Was he being born?  Slowly though, his memory began to jog.  He remembered the interstellar dock, the explosions and the fumes that had nearly choked him to death.  And then he remembered the Aisu-jin.
“Furiza--!”  His voice made a painful mess of his throat, and he wondered if the word had even made it out of his throat.  He wanted to hear that voice again; it had been so soft and gentle, so feminine.
The world began to assume shape once more, and he found that his surroundings were very unfamiliar.  There was someone with him, though, and he/she/it was very familiar.  Try as he might, however, he could not remember who it was.  And for that matter, he realized suddenly--he could not remember who he was.
The being in this room with him was clearer now, and he could see blue--so much blue.  It was a female, he could see that.  Was she Saiya-jin?  He could not see a tail, and so he thought she must not be.  But then, what was she?  What species in the known universe could produce something so beautiful, he wondered?
“Can you see me now?”  She asked, and again he was stunned by the gentleness in her voice.
“Yes,” he replied.  This time it did not hurt so badly to speak.  “Yes, I can see you.”  He told her.
“Then your senses are returning.  Perhaps you will be able to move soon.”
He noted that her voice was getting deeper; it seemed that she was not happy, not as happy as a beautiful creature ought to be.  He turned his head at a slight angle.  Oh, gods, it still hurt to move even an inch.
“Perhaps you are a goddess,” he croaked slowly.  “Will you have mercy on me?”
“What?”  The fair-skinned beauty cocked her chin upward.  “A goddess?”  There was sad, quiet laughter, and a wan smile.
“If you are not a goddess,” he said then, “then perhaps you are a servant?”
“You are ill,” she told him, “you were exposed to a great amount of plasma fumes.  You do not know who you are yet, but you will.  And you will know me; you will probably want to kill me.”
He chuckled and tried raising an arm off of the floor.  Was it stone that he lay on?  It seemed too smooth.  Was he in the palace or on a ship?  He could not tell.
“I remember Furiza,” he told the blue goddess, “I remember what he did to me.  It is him I should kill.”
“Perhaps you will.”  The blue goddess laughed sadly again.  “But not in the state you are in now.  Just wait...  Just a few more moments and you will be yourself again.”
He could not help but hear a bit of disappointment in those words.  He breathed in deeply; the air here was strange, and cold.  In fact, as the blood began flowing easily again into his limbs he became aware that it was colder than anything he was used to.  Soon, he would probably begin to shiver.  He moved his other arm.  Things were coming easier to him now.
“Where are we?”  He asked the blue one.  She moved from her position next to him and leaned against the smooth wall behind her, and sighed.
“The Aisu-jin fleet ship, Shafuri.”
“I have been taken prisoner--?”  He gasped in agony as his anger got the best of him.  The jerk in his muscles sent stinging flames down each appendage until he cried out.
The blue goddess had left the wall and knelt by him again.  Her hand was on her chest, and another on the sweaty skin of his forehead.  She reached into her tunic and retrieved a vial.
“I told you, your body is recalibrating.  Stop moving!  I’m going to put a numbing agent just beneath your ear; it will calm the pain for a few moments.”
For this, he was eternally grateful - though he could not express that through the pain.  Her hands were very soft, and the “numbing agent” as she had named it had a pungent odor and sticky feel.  She massaged the strange cream into the crook under his ear, as she had said, and within a few seconds he could feel the pain abating.  He sighed, and she rested his hand upon his stomach.
“My stomach, it feels weak.”  He said to her.  The blue one sat back on her knees.
“You were vomiting just a few moments before you woke up.  The plasma fumes excite a few choice areas of the brain when inhaled.  Just keep still for now.”
“Will you tell me who you are?”  He asked her.  He was beginning to get irritated with her ambiguity.
“No,” she said, “you must let it come to you or else your mind will collapse.  Do you understand?”
A few moments of silence passed, because he had not known what to say in reply.  There were sounds around them, but he could not tell exactly what they were.  Perhaps he did not want to know, as she had indirectly told him.  His breathing was a bit less stifled now, as it did not hurt so much to inhale.  He could feel the sweat on his skin begin to cool.  He remembered the feeling of her hands, the blue one, and how she had seemed so familiar to him when he’d first awoken.
He must know her, he thought.  Her hands had felt familiar also.  Perhaps she had been his servant?  His lover?  Surely, a female such as this would have been a gift.  He squirmed a bit on the floor - that numbing agent had made him a bit woozy.
“Why are you helping me?”  He asked the blue one.
Was she a prisoner also?  Her blue hair shimmered in the dim light of the room, and she looked away from him.  There was a distinct sadness in her matching blue eyes.  She sighed prettily and pressed her fingers against her temple.
“Because treachery will not bring my people back, Zarshi-kalan.”
A few seconds after she had said the words, her expression changed.  She was frightened, and so was he.  Zarshi-kalan...?  Suddenly the numbing agent seemed to have worn off, and yet the pain was not in his body - it came distinctly from a far away corner in his mind.  The blue one was speaking frantically in another language...
Oh, gods, and it all came washing back to him in waves of rage/pain/sadness/desire.  The Aisu-jin and Vejiita-sei, his father’s over-confidence... Kassha’hal!  ...Because it pleases my ka’fuu...
Though it felt like tiny knives stabbing him from head to toe, Vejiita charged his aura and felt the jal’a begin to surge up his torso.  He lunged to his feet and reached for Bulma’s throat.  Her eyes were wide at first, when he pressed her against the wall of the cell; never had he been so close to her and felt nothing but anger - nothing but complete disgust.  Probably, she could see it in his eyes.
“Buhala-kalzan!”  He cursed at her, venom spitting from the words.  “You bitch.  You let them do this to me and now you would come here - to aid me!”
Though it looked as though Bulma wished to speak, the hold Vejiita kept on her throat would not allow it.  All this time he had wanted to silence her insolence:  her disdain for him.  And yet he had kept up a pretense of kindness for her sake - to prove that meddling would do her no good!  For nothing!  For nothing!
“You want to speak, don’t you?”  He asked her.  Her eyes were frantic, and her lips parted in an attempt to breathe.  “Should I let you,” he wondered aloud and tightened his grip, “or should I kill you?  It would be a fine gift to Furiza, returning his lovely spy with lips as blue as her hair...”
Vejiita could see that what he said had terrified her.  Despite anything he had believed in the past, she did not wish to die now, that much he could see.  Bulma’s fingers tugged on his grip; her instinct was taking over now, because even she knew that to struggle would only worsen her predicament.
After another one or two seconds had passed, something changed.  Bulma’s panic-stricken gaze met his, and then she stopped struggling.  She was still conscious and yet her limbs became limp as a doll.  Vejiita saw her new ploy; she wanted him to see what he was doing to her.  She wanted him to see with clarity that he was killing her with his bare hands.  In an instant something fresh washed over his rage:  something unfamiliar.
Vejiita watched her eyelids flutter slowly shut, and fear clinched his heart.  How strange it was, he thought, to be so oddly terrified by the prospect of her death.  Infuriated, Vejiita released his grip on her throat and tossed her to the floor and away from him.  Satisfied that she would live, he looked away and pressed both palms against the cool, smooth surface of the wall.
Bulma was writhing on the floor behind him, gasping hysterically to regain control of her breath.  The sound made prickled ends of Vejiita’s nerves, and he found that his fingers were clenching into fists.  As her gasps slowed, Vejiita shut his eyes and bit the bottom of his lip; what in all the gods’ names had happened?  He should have strangled her...  He should have killed her!
“Damn you,” he whispered to the wall.  “The gods’ damn you,” he said it louder this time, so she could hear him over her gasping.  “You’ve tainted my soul the way you tainted Brolli’s!”
For a few more seconds, Bulma breathed deeply.  But then she spoke, and her voice was ragged:  torn from the damage he had probably inflicted.  Vejiita ground his teeth together at the sound of it.
“If your soul is tainted,” she choked, “perhaps we are both at fault.”
Vejiita opened his eyes, his jaw relaxed.  Her words were only partly surprising, he thought.  The cold air of the cell began to creep down his spine like droplets of ice water, and Vejiita shivered.  His body was finally beginning to feel normal, yet his mind was still in a state of panic and rage.  Finally, he turned to look at her.
Bulma was still on the floor of the cell, her long legs splayed out beneath her.  Her arms struggled to hold her up, shaking all the way.  Vejiita could see now the glaring abrasions he had left on her skin.  Bruises would form there later, and even the collar of her tunic would not hide them.  Bulma looked fiercely at him, in spite of her position.
“Do you want me to admit that I worked against you?”  Her voice was still very broken when she spoke.  “How could you have ever doubted it?”
“Of course I knew!”  Vejiita raged.  “In a fleeting second I could have proved to my father and to Brolli that you were working with the Mizuka-jin rebellion!  You knew that I knew it!”
“Then how can you be surprised now, Vejiita?  How can you be so murderous if you expected it all along!”  Bulma’s voice got more ragged as her voice rose.
“I told you,” he lowered his voice, “I knew you worked with the Mizuka-jin.  You probably still do, that is if you are able.  I admit that suspicions had crossed my mind about you and Furiza.  But never in my nightmares did I, for one moment, think that you had plotted to assassinate us with the Aisu-jin!  Never!”
Vejiita heard that he had been bellowing at the top of his lungs again.  His voice was muted and flat against the walls of the cell, though, and he could have been swallowing every word.  It seemed then, that Bulma was shocked by what he had said.  Vejiita wanted to chuckle; it was not the first time.  Probably, it would not be the last.
“So you see now what you have done, Bulma?  You have unleashed a beast far more volatile than you could have imagined.”
“I - I know...”
“You do not know!”  Vejiita insisted.  He pushed himself away from the wall.  It was not so easy, he realized, and he clutched at the sore muscles of his stomach.  His legs were still very weak.
“You should rest longer.”   Bulma’s voice had begun to sound familiar again.
“And wait for my doom on my knees?  Furiza would find it a fitting position, no doubt.”
Again, she was silent.  After a few more moments, she curled her legs under her.  The silky material of her tunic, yet undamaged, stirred and made the only soft noise besides their breathing.  Vejiita watched as she wrapped both arms around her legs and clutched tightly.  He had not seen her look so vulnerable since knowing her; if he had not been so preoccupied with their situation, he might have grinned in satisfaction.
“You have to know, Vejiita, that Furiza lied to me.  I did not ‘let’ them take you.  I did not - !”
“You allowed it by going into his confidences!  If you think Furiza is any different than the monsters you believe the Saiya-jin to be, you are horribly mistaken!”
“I knew he was the same!”  Bulma’s words were shaking, he realized, and her Saiyago was accented more than usual.  She sounded more foreign now than she ever had before.
“I knew they were the same as you!”  She continued.  “Lying bastards - murderers!”
“Your planet was purged because it was of no use to us,” Vejiita told her, “how many such species are destroyed by more advanced technologies:  more superior knowledge?  How many times did it happen on your own world, Bulma?  Did you condemn your own people as you condemn us, or did you look away--?”
Vejiita’s speech was cut short in surprise.  Bulma shook her head and looked away from him.  Her face was contorted in agony, but not from any physical pain that he could tell.  She slid onto her knees and stood shakily, made her way toward the opposite wall.  When Bulma leaned against the smooth surface, she was rubbing her arms against the chill of the air - and she was sobbing.
“I wanted you to destroy each other.  I wanted it so much...  So much.”
Vejiita’s brow creased in utter uncertainty.  Should he speak now?  Bulma reached an arm out and pointed at him.
“You played a game with me - with Brolli, with all three of us!  But it was never a game to me, Vejiita.  Never!  I would have sacrificed everything for revenge!”
For what seemed an eternity, the room was quiet but for her broken sobs.  Bulma slid back down to a squat and pressed both hands against her eyes.  Vejiita found that even now, shocked as he was by this outright display of her failure, he still harbored enough anger not to feel sorry for her.  And yet, looking at her now, he did feel a measure of pity.  He had played a game with her, a dangerous and spiteful game, and the consequences of it now seemed to have gone deeper than he’d thought possible.  Vejiita crossed his weary arms.
“I believe that is what you have sacrificed.”
Bulma looked at him for a moment, after he had said it.  And in her eyes, he could see the pain and the anger, the hate and bitterness that had torn her to shreds.  He knew that he had borne at least a part of it, and there was a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach that did not match the soreness he had felt earlier.  Was it - regret?  Impossible...
Bulma crawled to her knees and pressed her face onto the floor.  Still sobbing, she began to murmur in her native language, but he did not know the words.  Was she praying to her gods?  She looked so reverent, so eternally regretful.  It was enough to make him feel sorry - finally.  Vejiita crushed his fingers together into fists and cursed the pitiful sound of her voice.  He remembered that voice, so poignant and sweet in desire - so determined and rigid in her pride.
But Vejiita did not go to her.  He would not.  He remained in silence for what felt like hours, waiting for Bulma to purge herself of denial and accept what she had become.
His silence slipped into meditation, and unwittingly into a doze.  When Vejiita’s eyes snapped open once again, the cell had not changed, but Bulma was lying on the floor apparently asleep.  Her hair was tousled about, the blue tresses covering most of her face.  But her breathing was steady.
He recalled that, before, in his recovery the surge of jal’a had been painful.  Vejiita wondered how well his body would take to it now.  He scanned the back of the cell door briefly and saw that its tech, though slightly more advanced than Saiya-jin, was not completely different than the control panels of their own holding cells.  He wondered if he destroyed it, would it trigger an alarm system?  He had to escape.  The gods only knew what had become of his father, Brolli, Raditsu and the others who had been on deck.
Vejiita crossed the small cell and knelt by Bulma’s crumpled form.  Regardless of his anger, she must be dealt with in the face of a Saiya-jin court.  He could not leave her to the mercy of the Aisu-jin - to a fate worse than any she had suffered so far.  Vejiita remembered the first war with the Aisu-jin, years ago, when soldiers had been mutilated beyond recognition - unable to be identified even by family members.  He’d been but a young man then, but he remembered how those who had survived were scarred in different ways:  ways that caused eventual, complete psychological collapse...  No matter how much she deserved punishment, the kind he would more than willingly bestow, Bulma could not be deserving of that.  In an action that seemed too keenly tender for his tastes, Vejiita brushed disheveled locks of hair away from her face.
“Bulma.”
At the sound of his voice, her eyes fluttered open.  For a brief second, she seemed to be confused by her surroundings, and she blinked more than a few times.  But then she was fully awake, she gasped, and pushed herself up on both hands.  Bulma stared at him, her eyes and lips were puffy and slightly red from her tears.  But her cheeks were still blushed, and her eyes had lost none of their sparkle.  It must have been a cruel punishment, he thought, that the gods could make such a vicious female so beautiful.  Vejiita wondered if she had always been so hateful.  He blinked.
“We need to get out of this cell,” he told her firmly.  “I think you know how.”
“I - Furiza gave me the override codes, but only for your cell.”  Bulma brushed a hand over her hair absently.
“A trusting gesture,” Vejiita chuckled cruelly at that, “perhaps too trusting.  He must be monitoring you.”
“I’m not sure,” Bulma shook her head, “but I am not wired.”
Vejiita nodded and stood, his legs were still a bit shaky but he was moving with more ease now.  Though, as he brushed fingers against his forehead, he noted that he was still sweating.  Perhaps his body temperature was still a bit high.
“Do you have a bioScan?”  He asked her.  She nodded and reached into the lower pocket of her tunic.
Bulma switched on the palm-sized device and entered a bit of information, probably on his species and sex, then pressed the cool material up against his temple.  A few seconds went by, and the scanner blipped pleasantly.  Bulma examined it.
“Your temperature is two degrees above normal, but everything else seems to be functioning well enough.  How do you feel?”
“Weak,” Vejiita admitted, “but better.”
He lifted his arm and flexed his muscles a bit; they seemed to be in proper working order.  He concentrated on his palm for a few seconds and felt a few waves of jal’a begin to work on his insides.  Immediately, Bulma’s hand closed over his palm.
“Don’t!  Every holding cell in this ship, and probably these corridors are built with dampening orbs inside.  If you so much as let a beam the width of your finger loose, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
Vejiita wanted to curse, but instead he looked away from her, frustrated.  Indeed, if dampening orbs were in place, any attempt he would make to utilize his energy would be met with pain.  She left his side to open the control panel by the cell door.  Bulma pressed on one of the Aisugo symbols and the panel slid open.
“How can you see when a Saiya-jin uses the jal’a?”  He wondered aloud, a bit irritably, and came to her side by the door.
Bulma lifted her fingers to the keys of the control pad.  She did not press anything, though, and did not look at him when she spoke.
“When I first came to Vejiita-sei I was not used to the thicker, humid air.  On Chikyuu there is no such place as humid as that.”  She paused, memory flickering over her face.
“I used to get terrible backaches after working all day; they were so stifling that I often lay in bed for hours.”  Bulma paused, seeming to remember her story with a sad regret.  “Raditsu used to press his fingers here,” she put two fingers at the base of her spine, inches above her bottom.  “And he would take the pain away - he used his jal’a, and I could see the way it worked in his face...  In his body.”
Vejiita knew the technique; Saiya-jin lovers used it often to comfort each other’s wounds whether physical or emotional.  He wondered if she had ever regretted not being able to return the favor.  More pity began to flood him, distressing him.
“We must find them,” Vejiita said to distract himself from the gentle curve of her mouth.  “Do you know where they are?”
Bulma looked at him this time, and her eyes were again filling with tears.  The lips he had been admiring shook, and her hand dropped away from the control pad.
“Vejiita - ?”  She shook her head, and more fat tears began to carve trails down her blushing cheeks.  “Your father is dead.  He did not survive the plasma poisoning.”
He was not prepared for the words, but deeply he was not surprised by them either.  His father was dead...  Gods, that made Vejiita king:  ruler of an endangered empire, and without a guide.  The shock was enough to keep his reactions at bay for now.  He breathed heavily though, and clenched his fists.
“And Brolli?  Raditsu?”
Bulma seemed only a little surprised that his reaction to his father’s death had not been as violent as she had thought it would be.  But she continued to watch him curiously.
“Raditsu is the only one who made it off of the interstellar dock.  His guard was able to rescue him and seal the doors before the fumes could reach into the fleet ship.  It was Raditsu who entered the manual override codes to release the Shafuri from the Saiya-jin ship.  As far as I know, he is the only one who has been in contact with Furiza since your capture.
“Brolli is...”  Bulma looked away again, and perhaps she was seeing the story she had told him in her mind.  “Brolli is alive, but barely.  When he came to after the poisoning wore off his aura became too volatile for the cell’s orbs.  I - I tried to have him calmed but he was too confused, he - ?  I am not sure how badly his body has been damaged, I have not been allowed to see him since it happened.”
“Vash’halla has not been kind,” Vejiita said matter-of-factly.  “We have no power over these things.”
Bulma turned half-lidded eyes back to him and pressed her lips together indignantly.  Her reaction to his words was difficult to read indeed; this surprised him.  Vejiita knew he would not - could not - be incapacitated by how grave the situation was.  Perhaps she had thought that even he would have broken down.
“It’s my fault,” she said suddenly.  “You can say it.  Brolli was already on the verge of a breakdown because of me.  It’s a wonder he’s survived this long.”  There was less venom in her voice now than there had ever been.
Instead of responding, though, Vejiita did not speak.  Moments ago, before she had broken down and begged forgiveness from her gods, he would have agreed with her.  Indeed, Brolli’s heightened emotional state could explain his instability now.  And that instability had unquestionably been Bulma’s doing - whether or not she had realized how deeply Brolli had desired her:  right down to the soul.  Vejiita wondered now, even now; how much did he desire her?  A long moment had passed by now, and Bulma saw that he had been staring at her.
“Perhaps it would be wise for me to leave first,” she said, “and to return for you later.  Furiza knows I am here now; he thinks I am trying to gain back your trust so that I can deliver him more information on Saiya-jin movement.”
Something about the way she said the words made a bit of anger flare back up into his fingertips.  Maybe it was the words themselves, maybe it was the way he thought he wanted her, right now - here - in this cell.  Vejiita reached out with his left hand to turn her shoulder around so that she was facing him.  With his right, he pressed his palm against the flat plane under her collarbone so that he was not choking her, but holding her against the wall very securely.  Bulma could not escape from it, he knew.
“Return for me?”  He asked her.  “How can I trust you after all you’ve done--!”
“You don’t have much of a choice, Vejiita!”  Bulma told him.  She squirmed a little under his grip but did not attempt to struggle.
“I could choose to kill you here and now!  I could escape no matter what pain those dampening orbs dish out and you know it!”
“You won’t!”  She insisted.  “If I die you won’t have a chance at getting out of here and you know it!  Even you cannot face Furiza alone, especially not now.
“And you won’t because if you kill me now, you can’t have me and even still you do want me.  I see it in your eyes Vejiita - do not think me daft even after all that’s happened!  You want to be the one who deals my punishment--!”
Vejiita crushed his mouth against hers in anger, to stop the alluring, indignant lilt of her voice:  the last desperate attempt she had to save herself.  It was the way he had wanted to kiss her since meeting her and had not been able to.  He had sacrificed every greater instinct to prove to her that she was wrong about Saiya-jin, and now he could not stifle it.
Bulma resisted at first to the pressure and depth of his kiss, and perhaps even for a moment she did not want him the way he wanted her.  But a few more seconds passed and she yielded.  Her body loosened and leaned against the wall behind the force of his palm, while her fingers tangled frantically into his hair.
Vejiita could sense that she was confused at first by his groping and grabbing; he had never touched her in such a way, and she was probably remembering the way Brolli had done things to her.  He didn’t care.  He didn’t care now, not now.  He bit her full bottom lip until she whimpered; good, she deserved it.  In ways, she even begged for it.  When she whimpered at the pain, his groin throbbed and he crushed his hips against hers.
Vejiita realized vaguely that she had been expecting this of him, and that if he continued she would win this round at least.  But could he?  Could he stop now?  Vejiita sucked on the lip he had bitten and tasted sweet/salt/metal.  He opened his eyes and broke their kiss to find that the tears on her cheeks had dripped into the corners of her mouth and that he had broken the skin of her lips.
“Does it hurt, Chikyuu-jin?” He whispered to her and pressed on the corner of her lips with his thumb.  A bit more blood trickled free, and Vejiita drew the tip of his thumb underneath her mouth.  When he gripped her chin, Bulma’s eyes opened and the deep blue of them seemed more alien than they had before.  Vejiita pressed on her chin and breathed against her mouth until she blinked long and hard.
“Sha’n saahkehm...  Your blood is sweet.” he paused and bent his head to press his lips against her ear.  “I think I could kill you as soon as I would make love to you.”
“So could I...”  Bulma whispered in reply.
Vejiita could sense more than see that she had caught him.  There was a very light press on his temple, and he could see from this angle that her left arm was raised.  She had pulled a weapon on him and he hadn’t even noticed.  He leaned away from her, but taught strings of desire nearly kept him from doing so.  Bulma was pointing a small, stunner-shaped object at his head that resembled the tech of the Mizuka-jin.  He could not help but chuckle.
“I should have known you better, Shall’la.”  He told her.
“Indeed,” she replied, eyes wide and still filled with salty tears.  She cocked the sleek, ergonomic gun a bit downward.  “If I fire, it will send an electro-pulse to your brain stem.  Do not move.”
Vejiita smirked at her.  Gods, she was so intelligent that her resourcefulness really deserved praise, not punishment.  Perhaps this was the part of her that had driven Raditsu mad with longing, and brought Brolli to his knees.  He lifted his chin imperceptibly and grinned.
“Did Furiza give that to you, Bulma?”
“No.”  She said, and her tone told him that she was not lying.  “I made it, myself, in Geishan a year ago.  It is merely a stunner that I synthesized to create a more deadly weapon; I carry it always.  If you don’t listen to me now one of us, if not both of us, will die.”
Vejiita chuckled and lifted a hand.  Just as he gripped her wrist he heard a distinctive blip, and Bulma pressed the nozzle of the little weapon harder into his temple.  The grin left his lips in a heartbeat.  His grip tightened on her wrist.
“What do you think I have to lose, Vejiita?”  She asked him.  “My dignity?  Nothing those frozen lizards could do to me could tarnish that any more.  My life?  What has my life become?”
“It does not have to be that way, Bulma,” Vejiita said finally.  “Help me out of this and you may find that the Saiya-jin criminal councils will be more sympathetic of your plight.”
Bulma’s lips curled into a snarl, and she sniffled girlishly.
“I’m trying to help you, can’t you see?”  She licked her bottom lip to dissolve some of the blood there.  Absurdly, Vejiita felt his cock stir at the sight of it.
“Let me leave now and figure out a way to distract Furiza from the holding area.  Then I will discover how to help Brolli.  Somehow I will contact Raditsu in order to arrange a rescue mission.  I will come back for you!”  
Vejiita did not breathe for a few seconds, and watched the look in her eyes change several times from desire to hatred, back to desire again and finally honesty.  Perhaps she had been right, then; he had no other choice but to trust her.  He nodded very slowly, and the smirk crept back onto his face without his consent.
“Very well, Shall’la.  You drive a very hard bargain.”
Bulma’s eyebrows lifted, and she sniffled again.  The device in her hand blipped again, and she smiled tiredly; it was the first time, Vejiita thought, that he had seen real relief in her expression.  Her bottom lip was swollen now from his bite.  Vejiita lifted his arm again and this time, he brushed her hand and the device away from his temple.  Bulma was breathing heavily and watching him.
“I vowed that none of you would ever break me, Vejiita.  But you have, you know?  You did it without my knowing or even caring.”  She was still smiling pathetically.  “Bastard,” she said in her native tongue.  “Someday I will have to repay you.”
Bulma turned from him and accessed the control panel on the door once more.  She entered a few codes, and a green light appeared over the doorway.  She left the holding cell without another word and locked the control panel outside.  Vejiita threw his back up against the wall and crouched low to the ground.  He would have to gather all of his strength now; what was to come would be more challenging than breaking the mind of a determined female, surely.
Did he trust that she would return?  Sadly, Vejiita knew that he did not.  After what had happened, perhaps she would return to Furiza (though it would be stupid of her) and attempt to finish the cause for which she had set out.  Furiza had probably promised to aid her in her endeavors with the Mizuka-jin resistance, though Vejiita was sure that none of that would ever happen.  Furiza would be an idiot if he had complied so easily with such a small resistance faction as that.  And recent events had proved that he was no idiot.
Then again, perhaps she would return for him.  Did he, on some level, hope that she would?  Frighteningly, Vejiita knew that he did.