Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Seven Years ❯ Break ( Chapter 4 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: ShiningMoon 
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Psychological / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 12.13.2010 | Updated On: 12.13.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 352 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Psychological / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 12.13.2010 | Updated On: 12.13.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 352 | Status: Completed
He rocketed through the air, although he wasn't sure where on Earth he'd belonged more than where he'd left. But he was angry—and needed something to be angry at; something, someone, anyone. Images flicked into his head, of the fights he'd had, of enemies falling before him, of—of blonde hair and glimmering eyes, and he balled his fists and redirected himself. If the chattering humans were right—and sometimes they were—he knew exactly where to go.
...
"Yeah. No, yeah, he's just being a jerk. No, not like—hey," Bulma huffed into the phone. "That's not fair at all." She paused for a few moments, rolling her eyes. "It's not like that. I just wanna talk. No. You really think that? There's no way I—no, I don't mean it as an insult, for goodness' sake, Yamcha." She crossed her arms. "Well, fine. Be that—huh? Oh, thank you," Bulma sunk into the chair, smiling. "See you soon."
While she waited, she helped Trunks construct an impressive block tower, smiling at the boy's focus and mildly irritated gestures each time she tried to fix his mistakes. "No," he mumbled, and she laughed a little; it had been one of his first words, and one of his most frequently used.
"You don't want any help?" she lightly flicked the top block off of his building, and although it hit him squarely in the head, he barely flinched.
"No."
"You want me to ruin it?" she flicked the next one off, and was surprised when he reached both arms out to catch it before it reached his face.
"Ruin everything," he mumbled back, mystified as he said it, as if he wasn't sure of its meaning but recognized the word that Bulma had used. "Ruin everything."
Her brows knit. "Did Vegeta teach you that?" At Trunks' continued introversion, she reached around the tower to scoop him up. "You don't ruin everything, kiddo," ruffling his hair, she sighed a little. "Trust me, you're not the problem."
He seemed to take solace in the kind tone of her voice, and glanced back at her. He grinned lopsidedly and kicked his foot out to topple the tower, laughing. "Ruin everything," he said again, this time with a giggle. Bulma jumped at the sound of the doorbell, and set Trunks down to run and answer it.
"Yamcha," she gave him a quick hug and guided him in. "Thanks."
"No big deal; I was nearby," he answered, somewhat somber. "So, where's the 'jerk'?"
She shrugged. "Hell if I know. He'll be back eventually."
"What did you do?"
"I told him if he was so miserable here he could get off his ass and go wherever he wanted." She paused at his expression of mild incredulity. "But in fewer words."
"Only you would have the balls to tell Vegeta off," he laughed a little, crouching next to Trunks to watch him play.
"Balls," Trunks repeated, and seemed angry when Yamcha did not produce what he wanted. "Balls!"
"Oh, for goodness' sake," Bulma sighed, digging through a nearby box and pulling out a rubbery sphere. She rolled it to Trunks, who stopped it and began poking it. Yamcha chuckled again, taking the ball from Trunks and watching as his expression became sad, and then angry again.
"Mine!"
"I thought we'd play catch," Yamcha smiled to him, and turned to Bulma. "Is that okay?"
"Of course!" she pulled up a chair. "If you don't mind me babbling a bit while you do." Her eyes lit up as she grinned. "He's a pretty charismatic little guy, huh?" She seemed to second-guess her choice to pull up a chair, and abandoned it in favor of sitting on the floor with the other two.
"He's got his father's temper," Yamcha observed at Trunks' continued anger when Yamcha refused still to hand him the ball, and paused after opening his mouth again, biting his lip and clamping it shut before blurting, "and your beautiful eyes." His eyes darted to her as he wondered if he had gone too far. Their breakup hadn't been on awful terms, but he always felt left in the dust by her; he was still recovering from it while she had moved on and had a child with the hotheaded prince the rest of them were afraid even to touch. He often wondered why, but often remembered: she had a weak spot for the pushing-the-envelope, the too-distant-to-touch, the unreliable, the unknown. He'd been a bandit, once, and she'd swooned over him then. Things between them cooled down as he became more docile, their brief honeymoon phase aside. He was sure they could make it work—wasn't that how all relationships were; fast-paced and exciting at first, but inevitably settling into the same patterns as the rest of life?—but there had been the Saiyajin; his death; Namek; Vegeta winding up staying in her own compound, and her distance from Yamcha himself in the preceding months. These and her lively arguments with the prince doubtless left her weak-kneed for him, even if she would deny it, that that 'moron muscleman' could capture anything more than her wrath.
But Bulma smiled. "You're too nice."
"I know," he answered gravely.
"I remember when you were late to one of our dates," she mused, "and you brought flowers to make up for it, but I was still so mad." Bulma sighed. "I'd kill for some flowers right about now."
He tossed the ball to Trunks, who reached his short limbs out to catch it, stumbling back as the momentum carried him. The boy clutched it possessively, sticking his tongue out at Yamcha. "Ball. Mine."
"You know," he glanced at her, "nobody says you have to stay with him."
She seemed to consider this. "Yeah. I know. But—something seems right about it. I don't know. It's weird, Yamcha—we—sleep in the same bed. Me. And Vegeta. In the same bed."
"We slept in the same bed." He regretted saying it—was already sounding more desperate than he wanted to, and maybe even more desperate than he was. She was wistful and gentle now, but he remembered well enough what a fireball she could become; wondered if that was why she was the only one who could touch Vegeta, and the only one he seemed to bother with. Perhaps anyone else only served to draw away the heat and leave either of them a lifeless stone. He could not match her fire—when she tried to argue, he relented, too considerate, too sensible about the meaning of the argument in the scope of things. He saw a flicker of the fire through her eyes as she processed his comment.
"Look, Yamcha, I didn't invite you over just so you could..." she began with vigor, and then paused, sighing. "Ah, you get the idea—Trunks, come on, play nice." He was trying to punch Yamcha, now, although the man held him back at an arm's length with one hand against the boy's chest.
The boy glanced at her, baffled. "Fight?" he inquired.
"You don't fight everybody," she wondered if he understood. "You only fight your father, when you're training."
Trunk pointed at Yamcha. "No?"
Bulma nodded. "That's right. You don't need to fight him." She sighed. "What has Vegeta been teaching you?" The boy cocked his head and shrugged, leaning in closer to inspect Yamcha and reaching one inquisitive hand toward the scars on his face. Yamcha smiled, taking the boy's hand and helping to guide it along the scars.
"Hurts," the boy guessed.
"Yeah. Those were hurts I got," the man lowered the boy's hand. "But they don't hurt anymore. They're just scars."
"Oh," he nodded, but his continued focus on them seemed to indicate that he did not understand.
"I'm sure your father has them too," Yamcha finally continued, wondering with whom he was making conversation.
"You like kids?" Bulma asked as the other two seemed to engage in a meaningless conversation of few words understood between them.
He shrugged, grinning guiltily. "A little, yeah. In small doses."
"What're you up to these days?"
"Odd jobs," he shrugged. "The usual. You been making a lot of important machines and stuff?" the man teased.
"Not so much lately," she sighed. "Vegeta and I haven't been talking." He quirked an eyebrow, prompting further explanation. "When we don't talk, we don't argue. When we don't argue, I don't have anything to prove, and I don't huff off and lock myself in the lab for a couple of days, getting something done to show I'm better than him."
"You're too much," he seemed to admit, placing a hand on her shoulder. "And you work too much. You should just take a break, and come back after a while and you'll be more productive."
"I don't really have anything else to do," she shrugged. "And I don't want to get dragged back into thinking about..."
"Still got Goku on your mind?" he was quiet. He wasn't sure, but he swore she had had at least some phase of being attracted to Goku, too, once he got older—but Yamcha and she had been dating then, off-and-on. Goku was more of the mysterious—more unreliable, distant, untouchable, and even, before they knew, then they would have used un-human to describe him. Yamcha had become vanilla by then—and would readily admit that he'd been as frustrated with their relationship as Bulma, if for different reasons. He should have known her tried-and-true method of getting work done; she always tried to spark an argument between them, would get herself riled up and not show her face again for weeks. He'd thought, at first, that she was pouting, genuinely upset by this or that minor error he'd made. But no; she was deeply absorbed in a new invention as she blew off her own artificial steam, leaving him to wonder what was to become of him. At one point, he had thought she had genuinely meant to break up with him as she left and didn't contact him for weeks, a month, more. Was he to blame, for grudgingly returning to his own devices after a few lonely visits to the bar?
It comforted him a little to know that things would not have gone any better for her and Goku—for would he ever put up an argument? He would be perpetually confused, accused of abandoning her only to be abandoned himself for days or weeks on end. He doubted she thought that much into it, this apparently small but persistent obsession with hers over her childhood friend.
"Yeah," she murmured. "I just can't believe he's gone. For good."
"Well," he had taken to building his own block tower with Trunks' recently toppled blocks as the boy sat beside him, leaning over so that his head rested against the man's leg, "for what it's worth, I'm here to help however I can." He smiled halfheartedly. "I'm always here."
...
He was seeing red, but swore that he could hear the vague whirr of whatever machinery resided within her from outside the door. He had sworn he'd never fight, but what did that mean? Why couldn't he change his mind? He was, after all, Vegeta, and didn't need to rely on the presence of anyone else to egg him on to keep fighting; and how dare anyone suggest otherwise? Clearly he still had it in him; could prove it by showing that he could indeed defeat the last living person who had defeated him.
Vegeta kicked down the door unceremoniously, not bothering to register the embarrassment he struck across the face of the almost-naked ex-monk who froze with shaky fingers on clasps.
"You," Vegeta narrowed his eyes at the other occupant of the room, "ugly rustbucket. You will fight me now." He felt the dull ache of pain in his arm that reminded him of humiliation, almost-unrivalled humiliation that served to raise his voice and his power as he spat, "Now!"
Her face was impassive and her eyes seemed to will Kuririn's hands to stay in position. "Can't you see that I'm busy?" she asked with utmost disinterest in what his response might be.
"Now," he growled again, a distinctly unstable shake in his voice. He wondered if she had moved too fast again—to fast for him to see—if his arm would snap at any moment, as its pain increased, as he remembered.
"I don't know who you think I am," she finished unhooking her bra for Kuririn, and he scrambled to hold it in place, blushing madly and stuttering something that was unintelligible to the other two. "But I'll give you some hints about what I'm not. I'm not some muscle-bound monkey. I don't give a shit about fighting you. And I'm not really interested in letting you kick me around just to make yourself feel better." She rolled her eyes. "Now get the hell out. I have some business to finish before the others in this house wake up." Kuririn gulped and made a few choking noises, as if he was trying to laugh apologetically but couldn't force the air quite all the way through his throat.
"It wouldn't be much trouble to blow them up," Vegeta gritted out, but his words went unheard as Eighteen leaned forward, muttering something in Kuririn's ear and snapping the elastic of his underwear. At the continued lack of response to his statement, Vegeta smashed his hand through a nearby case of workout videos and into the wall behind it, roaring as he took off through the ceiling.
"Shit," Eighteen muttered as a confused and sleepy groan echoed from the hole to the upstairs bedroom, tired feet scraping across the wood floor and nearing the newly created skylight that shone from above.
Kuririn handed Eighteen her shirt, sighing, and pulled his pants back on before retreating behind the couch to find his shirt. "That...was weird," he finally managed.
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...
"Yeah. No, yeah, he's just being a jerk. No, not like—hey," Bulma huffed into the phone. "That's not fair at all." She paused for a few moments, rolling her eyes. "It's not like that. I just wanna talk. No. You really think that? There's no way I—no, I don't mean it as an insult, for goodness' sake, Yamcha." She crossed her arms. "Well, fine. Be that—huh? Oh, thank you," Bulma sunk into the chair, smiling. "See you soon."
While she waited, she helped Trunks construct an impressive block tower, smiling at the boy's focus and mildly irritated gestures each time she tried to fix his mistakes. "No," he mumbled, and she laughed a little; it had been one of his first words, and one of his most frequently used.
"You don't want any help?" she lightly flicked the top block off of his building, and although it hit him squarely in the head, he barely flinched.
"No."
"You want me to ruin it?" she flicked the next one off, and was surprised when he reached both arms out to catch it before it reached his face.
"Ruin everything," he mumbled back, mystified as he said it, as if he wasn't sure of its meaning but recognized the word that Bulma had used. "Ruin everything."
Her brows knit. "Did Vegeta teach you that?" At Trunks' continued introversion, she reached around the tower to scoop him up. "You don't ruin everything, kiddo," ruffling his hair, she sighed a little. "Trust me, you're not the problem."
He seemed to take solace in the kind tone of her voice, and glanced back at her. He grinned lopsidedly and kicked his foot out to topple the tower, laughing. "Ruin everything," he said again, this time with a giggle. Bulma jumped at the sound of the doorbell, and set Trunks down to run and answer it.
"Yamcha," she gave him a quick hug and guided him in. "Thanks."
"No big deal; I was nearby," he answered, somewhat somber. "So, where's the 'jerk'?"
She shrugged. "Hell if I know. He'll be back eventually."
"What did you do?"
"I told him if he was so miserable here he could get off his ass and go wherever he wanted." She paused at his expression of mild incredulity. "But in fewer words."
"Only you would have the balls to tell Vegeta off," he laughed a little, crouching next to Trunks to watch him play.
"Balls," Trunks repeated, and seemed angry when Yamcha did not produce what he wanted. "Balls!"
"Oh, for goodness' sake," Bulma sighed, digging through a nearby box and pulling out a rubbery sphere. She rolled it to Trunks, who stopped it and began poking it. Yamcha chuckled again, taking the ball from Trunks and watching as his expression became sad, and then angry again.
"Mine!"
"I thought we'd play catch," Yamcha smiled to him, and turned to Bulma. "Is that okay?"
"Of course!" she pulled up a chair. "If you don't mind me babbling a bit while you do." Her eyes lit up as she grinned. "He's a pretty charismatic little guy, huh?" She seemed to second-guess her choice to pull up a chair, and abandoned it in favor of sitting on the floor with the other two.
"He's got his father's temper," Yamcha observed at Trunks' continued anger when Yamcha refused still to hand him the ball, and paused after opening his mouth again, biting his lip and clamping it shut before blurting, "and your beautiful eyes." His eyes darted to her as he wondered if he had gone too far. Their breakup hadn't been on awful terms, but he always felt left in the dust by her; he was still recovering from it while she had moved on and had a child with the hotheaded prince the rest of them were afraid even to touch. He often wondered why, but often remembered: she had a weak spot for the pushing-the-envelope, the too-distant-to-touch, the unreliable, the unknown. He'd been a bandit, once, and she'd swooned over him then. Things between them cooled down as he became more docile, their brief honeymoon phase aside. He was sure they could make it work—wasn't that how all relationships were; fast-paced and exciting at first, but inevitably settling into the same patterns as the rest of life?—but there had been the Saiyajin; his death; Namek; Vegeta winding up staying in her own compound, and her distance from Yamcha himself in the preceding months. These and her lively arguments with the prince doubtless left her weak-kneed for him, even if she would deny it, that that 'moron muscleman' could capture anything more than her wrath.
But Bulma smiled. "You're too nice."
"I know," he answered gravely.
"I remember when you were late to one of our dates," she mused, "and you brought flowers to make up for it, but I was still so mad." Bulma sighed. "I'd kill for some flowers right about now."
He tossed the ball to Trunks, who reached his short limbs out to catch it, stumbling back as the momentum carried him. The boy clutched it possessively, sticking his tongue out at Yamcha. "Ball. Mine."
"You know," he glanced at her, "nobody says you have to stay with him."
She seemed to consider this. "Yeah. I know. But—something seems right about it. I don't know. It's weird, Yamcha—we—sleep in the same bed. Me. And Vegeta. In the same bed."
"We slept in the same bed." He regretted saying it—was already sounding more desperate than he wanted to, and maybe even more desperate than he was. She was wistful and gentle now, but he remembered well enough what a fireball she could become; wondered if that was why she was the only one who could touch Vegeta, and the only one he seemed to bother with. Perhaps anyone else only served to draw away the heat and leave either of them a lifeless stone. He could not match her fire—when she tried to argue, he relented, too considerate, too sensible about the meaning of the argument in the scope of things. He saw a flicker of the fire through her eyes as she processed his comment.
"Look, Yamcha, I didn't invite you over just so you could..." she began with vigor, and then paused, sighing. "Ah, you get the idea—Trunks, come on, play nice." He was trying to punch Yamcha, now, although the man held him back at an arm's length with one hand against the boy's chest.
The boy glanced at her, baffled. "Fight?" he inquired.
"You don't fight everybody," she wondered if he understood. "You only fight your father, when you're training."
Trunk pointed at Yamcha. "No?"
Bulma nodded. "That's right. You don't need to fight him." She sighed. "What has Vegeta been teaching you?" The boy cocked his head and shrugged, leaning in closer to inspect Yamcha and reaching one inquisitive hand toward the scars on his face. Yamcha smiled, taking the boy's hand and helping to guide it along the scars.
"Hurts," the boy guessed.
"Yeah. Those were hurts I got," the man lowered the boy's hand. "But they don't hurt anymore. They're just scars."
"Oh," he nodded, but his continued focus on them seemed to indicate that he did not understand.
"I'm sure your father has them too," Yamcha finally continued, wondering with whom he was making conversation.
"You like kids?" Bulma asked as the other two seemed to engage in a meaningless conversation of few words understood between them.
He shrugged, grinning guiltily. "A little, yeah. In small doses."
"What're you up to these days?"
"Odd jobs," he shrugged. "The usual. You been making a lot of important machines and stuff?" the man teased.
"Not so much lately," she sighed. "Vegeta and I haven't been talking." He quirked an eyebrow, prompting further explanation. "When we don't talk, we don't argue. When we don't argue, I don't have anything to prove, and I don't huff off and lock myself in the lab for a couple of days, getting something done to show I'm better than him."
"You're too much," he seemed to admit, placing a hand on her shoulder. "And you work too much. You should just take a break, and come back after a while and you'll be more productive."
"I don't really have anything else to do," she shrugged. "And I don't want to get dragged back into thinking about..."
"Still got Goku on your mind?" he was quiet. He wasn't sure, but he swore she had had at least some phase of being attracted to Goku, too, once he got older—but Yamcha and she had been dating then, off-and-on. Goku was more of the mysterious—more unreliable, distant, untouchable, and even, before they knew, then they would have used un-human to describe him. Yamcha had become vanilla by then—and would readily admit that he'd been as frustrated with their relationship as Bulma, if for different reasons. He should have known her tried-and-true method of getting work done; she always tried to spark an argument between them, would get herself riled up and not show her face again for weeks. He'd thought, at first, that she was pouting, genuinely upset by this or that minor error he'd made. But no; she was deeply absorbed in a new invention as she blew off her own artificial steam, leaving him to wonder what was to become of him. At one point, he had thought she had genuinely meant to break up with him as she left and didn't contact him for weeks, a month, more. Was he to blame, for grudgingly returning to his own devices after a few lonely visits to the bar?
It comforted him a little to know that things would not have gone any better for her and Goku—for would he ever put up an argument? He would be perpetually confused, accused of abandoning her only to be abandoned himself for days or weeks on end. He doubted she thought that much into it, this apparently small but persistent obsession with hers over her childhood friend.
"Yeah," she murmured. "I just can't believe he's gone. For good."
"Well," he had taken to building his own block tower with Trunks' recently toppled blocks as the boy sat beside him, leaning over so that his head rested against the man's leg, "for what it's worth, I'm here to help however I can." He smiled halfheartedly. "I'm always here."
...
He was seeing red, but swore that he could hear the vague whirr of whatever machinery resided within her from outside the door. He had sworn he'd never fight, but what did that mean? Why couldn't he change his mind? He was, after all, Vegeta, and didn't need to rely on the presence of anyone else to egg him on to keep fighting; and how dare anyone suggest otherwise? Clearly he still had it in him; could prove it by showing that he could indeed defeat the last living person who had defeated him.
Vegeta kicked down the door unceremoniously, not bothering to register the embarrassment he struck across the face of the almost-naked ex-monk who froze with shaky fingers on clasps.
"You," Vegeta narrowed his eyes at the other occupant of the room, "ugly rustbucket. You will fight me now." He felt the dull ache of pain in his arm that reminded him of humiliation, almost-unrivalled humiliation that served to raise his voice and his power as he spat, "Now!"
Her face was impassive and her eyes seemed to will Kuririn's hands to stay in position. "Can't you see that I'm busy?" she asked with utmost disinterest in what his response might be.
"Now," he growled again, a distinctly unstable shake in his voice. He wondered if she had moved too fast again—to fast for him to see—if his arm would snap at any moment, as its pain increased, as he remembered.
"I don't know who you think I am," she finished unhooking her bra for Kuririn, and he scrambled to hold it in place, blushing madly and stuttering something that was unintelligible to the other two. "But I'll give you some hints about what I'm not. I'm not some muscle-bound monkey. I don't give a shit about fighting you. And I'm not really interested in letting you kick me around just to make yourself feel better." She rolled her eyes. "Now get the hell out. I have some business to finish before the others in this house wake up." Kuririn gulped and made a few choking noises, as if he was trying to laugh apologetically but couldn't force the air quite all the way through his throat.
"It wouldn't be much trouble to blow them up," Vegeta gritted out, but his words went unheard as Eighteen leaned forward, muttering something in Kuririn's ear and snapping the elastic of his underwear. At the continued lack of response to his statement, Vegeta smashed his hand through a nearby case of workout videos and into the wall behind it, roaring as he took off through the ceiling.
"Shit," Eighteen muttered as a confused and sleepy groan echoed from the hole to the upstairs bedroom, tired feet scraping across the wood floor and nearing the newly created skylight that shone from above.
Kuririn handed Eighteen her shirt, sighing, and pulled his pants back on before retreating behind the couch to find his shirt. "That...was weird," he finally managed.
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