Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Something Can Change: Volume II: Remembering How ❯ One-Shot

Something Can Change

Volume II

Remembering How

As she paced the room nervously, her hold on Little Trunks was the only thing that kept Bulma from wringing her hands in anxiety as well. That day, Vegeta was getting his last bit of training in before the Cell Games began, and had barricaded himself in his gravity room, alone with his bruised pride and equally wounded ego. The murderous fury he'd been in when Cell ended up using that same ego and pride against him! He took his indignation out on anyone and everyone. It seemed that, after a relatively brief interlude of contentedness, the Saiya-jin Prince was gradually slipping back into that, temporarily abandoned, heartless egotist persona.

"It's like he's forgotten everything," she muttered, as she plunked into a chair at the kitchen table and glanced at the clock. Ten-fifteen. "I only hope my evil plot doesn't backfire, right into my face, setting my eyebrows ablaze. Oh, he'd get a kick out of that."

"Mom? What's wrong?"

Glancing at her future son that had entered the room during the tail end of her truncated tirade, Bulma put on a cheerful face and answered, "Nothing's wrong, honey, what gave you that idea?"

Pulling up a seat across from her, the lavender-haired half human raised his paternally inherited eyebrow. "You were talking to yourself and mentioned an evil plot. Both are indicative of something being amiss. What is it? Dad?"

Obviously, the X chromosome she'd donated to his genetic makeup had gone towards brains, if the teenager's insightfulness had anything to do with it. That also meant he wasn't going to stop hounding his mother until she gave in and spilled to save her sanity. "I did something that will, in all likelihood, make your father very angry with me if he doesn't understand the reasons behind what I did. It wasn't anything huge, so stop looking at me like that. It's just... There's a lot of history behind it, you don't want to hear me explain the entire thing when you could be doing something more worthwhile."

In a response, Trunks stood, removed his now slumbering younger self from his mother's embrace, left the room for several minutes, and returned alone. He paused to retrieve two cans of soda from the refrigerator, which he set on the table in front of his mother and himself, then took his place again, appearing quite comfortable and resolute. "Okay. I'm listening. Tell."

A sigh escaped her lips. "Fine, fine." She popped the top, took a sip, and began. "Before you were born, Vegeta got himself blown up in the gravity room, and I made him take a week's respite before allowing him to start his masochistic tendencies again. During that time, in order to occupy his mind, he read a notebook I'd written in for English class back in high school, the content of which was all about love and the meaning of life depending on other people, deep stuff like that. I don't know how or why, but somehow, it had a really profound effect on him. It made him think, I suppose, and caused a change in him that I never could've anticipated. It wasn't so apparent on the outside, but inside, in his heart, he was different. He let me love him, for Kami's sake, though it was almost a year after that until we were finally comfortable enough with each other to... Well... Anyhow, eventually you were born, and for a while there... We were happy..."

She trailed off, and Trunks matched her quieting tone, asking, "What happened?"

"Three, four, maybe five months ago. The time before the Androids came was running thin, and he still hadn't achieved Super Saiya-jin. It was hard for him, you know, always failing like he did, whether in real life or just in his mind. He became completely fixated on that goal, concentrated on nothing but that, and pretty much became a different person. The man that'd emerged as a result of the notebook was the real Vegeta, but he pushed it all away again in favor of his evil arrogant powerhouse facade. Then he left for outer space, achieved his goal, and now he's back. And he's still a total jerk."

Upon absorbing this new information, the only thing left to ask was, "So what's your evil plot that's going to make Father incredibly irate?"

"Oh, that. I shouldn't have stalled for so long, and I'm still obviously stressed about it, as you so aptly observed. The gravity room timer goes off at ten-thirty, and he'll head straight to his room as usual, to find what I indiscreetly placed on his pillow in hopes that he lightens up before getting himself killed." She got to her feet and stretched her arms over her head, feeling a few vertebrae crack. "My eleventh-grade English response journal. Volume two."

~=~=~=~=~

After his rather light workout, Vegeta was still fully awake when he entered his room at twenty to eleven. It was the one he'd originally stayed in, three years ago, and despite his move into another, larger room for some time, this was where he chose to lay his head this past week and a half. He didn't know if he'd be welcomed back into Bulma's double bed should he ask, but that conundrum hadn't even crossed his mind. He didn't really give a damn.

As he glanced at his surroundings as per his usual habit, a foreign object on the pillow caught his eye: a green single-subject spiral-bound notebook.

"Aah, shit. She's trying something."

Knowing better than to incinerate that which he considered nothing but kindling, he reluctantly picked the book up, with the intention of simply tossing it in the hallway. However, a slip of paper managed to fall out from the inside front cover, and he began, albeit reluctantly, to read the short message inscribed on it.

Vegeta,

You will NOT blast this.

You WILL read it before you go to sleep tonight.

Please.

Bulma

"She just had to say please," he growled, crumpling the paper and tossing it in the wastepaper basket. He then proceeded to flop on the bed, pull himself into an upright, cross-legged position, and open the book. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

Faded blue ink scrawled a familiar notation: English response journal volume II, still property of Bulma Briefs, still the supreme genius of the eleventh grade, second semester. Still not a senior yet.

The red of Mr. Markison's pen: My caution still holds true. Keep working on this.

On to the first page. Blue: "The Guest." Daru has to take the Arab to jail, but doesn't really want to because it's not his responsibility. He took the Arab in the direction of the jail, showed him the way to escape and left him there to make his own choice. Daru had been faced with a moral decision--turn the guy in or let him go--and tried to avoid it by letting the guy choose instead, thereby hoping to stay neutral. However, by doing so he really did make a decision by "not deciding" and shrugging it all off onto the Arab. Daru had treated him well, and the guy chose to turn himself in to repay him and not get him in trouble. He was the responsible one and didn't take the easy way out...

The Bell Jar: ...When people are around you and still make you feel all alone, it seems like you're invisible to everyone...

...The bell jar is all the expectations and limitations and everything that society puts down in order to control Esther. She can't be herself while it's surrounding her. She feels smothered by everything that's thrown on her and that she's being pressured to do, which is like the air in a bell jar...

In a habit he'd picked up from Bulma at some point, Vegeta bit his lower lip, then stopped when he realized he was doing the nervous gesture. What if... he had been feeling limited, by his weakness, his past, his life's disposition, everything. Was it human society, galactic society, that was the cause of such restrictions? Or was it... himself?

Shaking his head clear of such a self-destructive thought, he nevertheless continued, musing that he was, most definitely, a glutton for punishment.

Blue: ...It's the way he expresses himself, like an artist, and makes the audience think, ask questions, and be all profound-like and deep. To the people he's just a passing interest that they don't understand, and they're scared of it, the Unknown; it makes them see things they would rather not see or let invade their happy bubbles. The hunger artist is necessary because society needs to ask "why?" and "how?" otherwise it just stagnates and doesn't grow. People can't live just by surviving, they need excitement and diversity, sweet and sour pork with a side of coleslaw.

Red: Can you explain why art, real art, is sometimes upsetting, threatening?

Blue: Real art makes people think deeply about and question things they'd been certain about, things they used to only take at face value without a second thought, that they accepted. People like routine and tend to dislike change because it makes them feel uncertain and unsure, even if the change is good for them. Art in this way threatens previously established viewpoints and ways of life that people would prefer to hang on to rather than expend the energy to think in a new way.

"Fine, Bulma, you've made your damn point," he told the ceiling as his head leaned against the wall, taking a short reprieve to incorporate this new cache of knowledge into his psyche. He should never have started reading this notebook. The Cell Games were tomorrow; all he had to do was kill the oversized chameleon, bash out Kakarott's brains, and then his pride would allow him to leave the planet Earth for good. He shouldn't be wasting his time with thoughts such as these. If he wasn't careful he'd start caring again, like he had during that eighteen-month stint of complete insanity. The woman thought he had become who he was meant to be, but she was wrong. Very, very wrong. This was the real Vegeta, rage was the emotion he thrived upon, hate, vengeance, and the promise of fulfilling his destiny the only things on his mind. There was no room for regrets.

No room for second thoughts.

Like the ones he was having right now.

Damn.

...All of them seem to be desensitized towards death, like it doesn't matter to them that the bodies used to be living human beings, they just think of them as objects. Zapo's parents cared more about how many people he killed than the fact that he felt bad enough about it to say an "Our Father". They thought doing so was being cowardly....

...The Tepans belong to a nice little picnic world that's surrounded by the battlefield. In it there's happiness, fulfillment, morality, sense, peace, and all that other stuff that goes along with the golden rule and "man belongs to man" theorem. The battlefield around them is the opposite--dangerous, chaotic, unpredictable, immoral, and out of control, where it's all run by social Darwinism (survival of the fittest). Everyone there wants to somehow get back to the picnic where there's a regard for people's humanity.

...The battlefield controls people and makes them go against their hearts, and the picnic threatens its ability to do that. It has to be eliminated, but it keeps going on anyways. The battlefield belongs to the wusses who prefer to take the path of least resistance in life (it takes more to be nice than to hate) and they end up losing everything...

Well wasn't that just perfect. She had it all wrong. The battlefield was where he belonged. A picnic? All those weaklings were mowed down by rapid machine-gun fire, they did not prevail. Only the strongest survived in that story. Vegeta was like them.

But then... If the strongest were the ones who managed to remain innocent in the face of corruption and war, and the weakest gave in to the lust for power and bloodshed and control, what did that make him?

The basis of his pride was made up of two things: his Saiya-jin heritage and his strength. If, theoretically speaking of course, his very strength served to be a weakness to him, then what did he have left?

A dead legacy.

And no pride.

...They abuse language (kill it, really) and reduce its use to that of a weapon, for insults. Throughout the entire interaction between the people they don't listen to each other or have any thoughts or feelings about anything anyone else says, so they don't change from the way they were beforehand and don't get anything out of it. They all keep saying the exact same thing like they were just popped out of a cloning machine, they have no personalities, differences, or uniqueness, it's all just generic. And then, their lack of communication results in violence because they can't empathize with anyone else and therefore don't particularly understand that they're dealing with human beings...

...In "The Poor," the Signora goes around seemingly to help the poor people when really she only does things for herself, to win brownie points with the Big Guy and a free pass to heaven, not because she's following her (nonexistent) heart. She doesn't like to think about death, trivializing it by not feeling sorry for the dying woman. If there's anything she can do to help besides the bare minimum, she puts it off with talk and doesn't go out of her way if she doesn't have to. She doesn't want to admit the truth, that death exists, because it demands responsibility on her part, and she's afraid of that, of making a commitment to something real. To her, the poor aren't people and blames them for their disposition. She doesn't understand how life is like for them and how hard it is to improve their lives. She works and talks with them without any real love for other people, just for herself...

"Death," he whispered to himself. Gone was that stern expression of determination etched over every feature. Finally the reality of the situation had permeated his rather thick skull. "I could very well die tomorrow."

And for what? What use would his death be, to him, or to anyone? Then again, who would care? By all means, Cell would, in that he would take great pleasure in ending Vegeta's life. Slowly, painfully. Just as Frieza had. They were the same, after all, Frieza's DNA being incorporated into Cell's genetic structure. It would be like dying at the pink bastard's hands all over again.

And no one would miss him.

No one, except...

He turned to the last page, to finish this pointless task. Then he could toss the infernal notebook out the window and sleep, forgetting every damn thing written in it.

...In the poem "the lesson of the moth," there are two different philosophies of life, the cockroach's and the moth's. The first was comfortable yet unfulfilling, defined by society and not malleable in relation to individuals. The second is considered abnormal by the first, because it contains a degree of wildness and instinct that the other doesn't have. It is based on the attitude that fulfillment is obtained through one act of meaning, which they were willing to die for in order to procure it. The moths don't live as long as the cockroaches, but they have much more quality and meaning in their short lives...

Bulma awoke to the sound of her bedroom door being kicked open and slammed against the adjacent wall. An imperious figure loomed over her, and the light emitted when she sat up and turned on the bedside lamp portrayed, in sharp shadows, a stony countenance like no other. "Vegeta?"

The man in question threw something green and rather square onto the mattress where her feet had been a moment ago. "Nice. Try." He seethed, fire blazing in his charcoal eyes.

"What? What do you mean?"

In the same steely voice, "I won't change for you!"

Her reply began as a faint smile, as she reached up to lightly brush his forehead with her fingertips. Then, satisfied that she, not his thoughts, had his full attention, she spoke. "I don't want you to change for me."

"Then what the hell was the point of invading my bedroom to put that--" His snarling was silenced as she touched a finger to his lips.

"Vegeta, I want you to change for you."

She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, listening to his slow steps echo on the way back to his bedroom. Her inflammable eyebrows remained intact, and the worried crease between them disappeared. If the world was still here tomorrow night, things might just be different.

~=~=~=~=~

It was late morning. Kakarott, otherwise known as Son Goku, was deader than disco. The Z fighters and Vegeta approached young Gohan, not knowing whether to scream in celebration or grief. Their quandary was forgotten, however, as familiar energy crackled through the air, creating a whirlwind of dust and dirt focused around the place they had last seen their verdant adversary.

Time slowed for Vegeta as the red beam shot forth from the center of the storm, bypassing him, the humans, the Namek, to plunge into the heart of the only person on this battlefield who gave a damn about him. Whose life he, in a sudden change, gave a damn about.

Thousands of thoughts he would later on fail to recall sped through Vegeta's mind, as the lifeless body of his son, Trunks, was knocked to the ground by the force of the energy blast, but one single line stood out among the rest.

...the attitude that fulfillment is obtained through one act of meaning, which they were willing to die for in order to procure it...

Trunks was dead. Last night the Saija-jin prince had been fussing over his own fate, whether he himself would survive to see another day. Not one thought had he spared for the one whose life meant ten times more than his. Now what could he do?

What could he do?

...one act of meaning...

...willing to die for....

Convinced of his newly-decided course of action, Vegeta powered up.

Finis.

~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~

I mean it this time. No more! This is the eeeeeeeeennnnnddddd!!!!! Now review, dammit, then go read my other stuff, yo.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. There's a sentence in there dedicated to you, Kat Omega! Can you find it? Hmmmm?

(Hint--It's the one about them not having sex until a year into their relationship. Imagine that!)