Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Strange Duet ❯ Third Movement ( Chapter 2 )

Strange Duet Third Movement

Son Goku was leaning against the balcony of his room in Capsule Corp., thinking about nothing in particular. It was a rather nice day. There was a pretty blue sky with nice fluffy clouds and a comfortable temperature that was neither too hot nor too cold. His tail swung absently behind him as he stared up at the sky and watched the clouds go by. Things had been pretty quiet after the initial fuss about his tail regenerating. Gohan had been amazed by the sight of his father's tail. He had never even seen it before after all except in pictures of his father when he was a boy. Gohan had wanted to know all sorts of things about it, like whether or not it had hurt when it grown back, why had it grown back, how, when, and so on. After answering his son's questions, Goku had told him to go and have his breakfast so that they could go sparring in the desert later.

Goku straightened himself out and stretched. He probably should go and see what Bulma was up to; it might still be a while before Gohan was done eating. He was a growing boy after all, and his father's son to boot. It usually took him a while to get himself full. He gave the sky one last look before he went and something caught his eye.

It was like a shooting star, a fiery streak of light heading straight toward the ground. It made a loud, high-pitched wailing sort of noise as if fell. When it hit the ground, it made a loud boom, and it sent a shockwave that Goku could feel under his feet and rattled the glass of the sliding door that led to the bedroom behind him. 'Whatever it is, it must have hit hard for me to feel it all the way over here, he thought. I can feel some sort of ki coming from it, but I can't even tell if it's good or evil. I have to find out what it is!'

He launched himself off of the balcony and streaked toward where he had saw the thing hit. It must be some kind of spaceship. 'I feel like this ki should be familiar to me somehow…' He arrived at the place where the ship had hit. It was a city, smaller than the city where Capsule Corp. was, but still full of people. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noted that this was the very same city he had come to after he had summoned the dragon and learned about who and what he was.

Everything was mass chaos and confusion. There were a bunch of car wreaks, some of them looked pretty bad. There were ambulances and cop cars everywhere. The EMTS were trying to sort out who was hurt the worst and need help the most, and the cops were attempting to stop road rage induced brawls from breaking out and restore some kind of order. Goku could see a blue minivan that had been tipped over, and hoped dearly that it had been empty when it had happened.

At the center of it all was an enormous crater; and at the bottom of it was a small, round pod. It reminded Goku of a baseball. Slowly, a hatch opened from the pod, and a figure slumped out. Goku started in shock. His heart leapt into his throat and it was like time had stopped for him. He instantly knew who it was. He had never met him before as he had only seen him once in an all too brief vision, but there still was absolutely no mistaking it. 'Vegeta, my prince,' Goku thought in astonishment.

However, even from his place over fifty feet above, he could still see something was wrong. The prince's lithe, muscular body that was clothed in a form fitting blue suit it was all ripped up in different places and blood stained. His unmistakable dark flame of hair had little specks of crimson blood in it. His auburn tail was kinked and twisted in places, broken. Goku could feel his stomach clench in foreboding.

Goku floated, memorized, and slowly began to descend toward the bottom of the crater, to where his prince lay. The scent of blood was mixed with that of the scorched earth created by the pod's landing. It was plain that the prince was hurt bad. He had many ki burns, his tail was broken in at least two places, and his left arm went at a funny angle at the elbow. The bone had been snapped completely. The Saiyajin prince was unconscious, lying on his stomach in the earth next to the pod door.

Goku landed and knelt next to his prince. He put his fingers up to his prince's neck, just below the ear, searching for a pulse. There was one, but it was very weak. 'Who could have done something so cruel?' Goku wondered. He looked away from the injured form of his prince to the pod he had fallen from. His eyes widened and he felt his blood run cold.

'My God,' he thought. 'The inside of his ship... it's covered completely covered in blood!'

********

Machia ran out of his ship and flew up into the air just far enough that he could see clearly all around him without the mountains blocking his view. 'There's no way that the ship's tracking system will do me any good now. I may as well find where he lands by myself.' He scanned all around him. 'Where is it? I should see it any second now.' He could hear Bulma below him, screeching for him to tell her what was going on. He ignored her. Then, there it was, like a shooting star complete with high pitched wail and loud boom as it hit the ground, utterly unmistakable. 'It's just like on Vellia,' Machia thought.

Pushing thoughts of his homeworld aside, Machia flew as fast as he could toward the area he saw the pod land. He shortly arrived at the city where it hit, and ignoring the mass hysteria around him, flew straight toward the crater that the pod had created when it hit. The crater was completely empty, save for the pod itself. Slowly, a thick, coppery, and musky sort of scent rose up to meet his nose. Machia instinctively covered his nose with his hand in an attempt to lessen the smell. 'Blood. Saiyajin blood.'

As Machia slowly descended towards the bottom of the crater, he saw that there was blood splashed on the inside of the pod's hatch and that there was a small pool of blood next to it. When he touched down, he saw that the entire interior of the pod was covered in blood. He could see that some of the blood was dried, especially where it had apparently spattered on the sides of the pod and hatch, but some of it was still fresh. The back, where the occupant itself must have rested, was literally soaked. Machia noted that he could see the bloody fingerprints on the pod's rim, where the Saiyajin had put his hand when he climbed into the pod. All around him, the scent of Saiyajin blood overpowered all else.

'Unbelievable. If the Saiyajin that was in this pod is not dead, it has to be some kind of miracle! ...and yet this pod is totally empty. No sign of any Saiyajin, except blood that is. Where could he be? Where did he go?'

Then, there it was, a slight, barely discernable scent amongst that of the blood. He could remember clearly smelling it a few days after settling on Earth, and having to ask what it was. It was called "Simply Super-Fresh Mountain Spring Detergent", and it was supposed to make human clothes smell like a mountain spring, or something like that. Every single piece of clothing worn at Capsule Corporation was washed with it, and came of the wash smelling like it. 'Someone who lives at Capsule Corporation has come into this crater before me and has left. Undoubtedly, the very same person took the injured Saiyajin with them. There is only one living there who is fast enough to have come and gone before I could get here, and that's the last royal subject of the prince Vegeta, Son Goku.'

He pondered his options about what to do next. His first instinct was to follow the Saiyajin back to Capsule Corporation, but then what? The Saiyajin had presumably taken his prince back there for medical treatment, meaning he was intent on seeing him survive. 'There is no way he would just stand aside while I kill him. The rest are all too naïve to believe any warning I might give them no matter what I say, or what happens, they never listen.'

Machia stared down at the blood on the pod's hatch as he thought. An idea suddenly struck him. 'But, of course, the technology on this world is still very crude, and primitive technology can be very unreliable. I would wager that it malfunctions all the time, even the medical equipment. With the badly injured state he is in, the Saiyajin would have to be put on machinery for him to survive. If the life support systems on the Saiyajin happened to go offline, if there were some sort of mix-up with his medication or anything like that, and the poor creature died, then surely they would think it was merely a tragic accident, and nothing more.' He smiled to himself. Perhaps all was not lost after all.

********

Kuririn was enjoying his favorite daily activity, watching the exercise program on WRFHY (fitness was an essential part of life, after all) with Kame Sennin and Oolong when there was a knock at the door.

"Bend those knees, ladies! Feel the burn!" said the lady on the TV.

"Oolong," said Kuririn, "would you get that?" Oolong drooled at the woman on the TV, and acted as if he hadn't heard him. Knowing better than to even try talking to his sensei when the exercise show was on, he got up to answer the door.

Before he could make it there, the door swung open to reveal Goku, looking desperate and fearful, breathing heavily. Kuririn saw with horror that the shirt of Goku's gi was soaked in blood. "Do you have any senzu?"

Kuririn gaped at him in amazement. Goku grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him in frustration. "Well, do you or don't you?" he yelled. Kuririn pointed a shaking finger toward the desk drawer down the hall that held the last senzu bean that they had. Goku wordlessly released him, ran down the hall, grabbed the bag it was in, and was gone again in seconds. Kuririn stared after the vapor trail that Goku had left behind in sheer stupefaction. Oolong and Kame Sennin peeked from behind the couch with identical expressions of disbelief.

"What in the world is going on here?"

********

Goku flew back at Capsule Corp, the senzu clutched in his hand. It was a very small one, and he wasn't sure how much good it would do, but it was the only one he had. He landed on the front lawn, and ran into the medical ward where he had left Vegeta. Goku had dropped him off there right before he had went to Kame house for the senzu, hoping he would still be alive when he returned. He found Vegeta surrounded by various doctors, all attempting to keep him alive. He quickly shoved the doctors aside, and ignoring their indignant cries, removed the respirator they had put on him. He then put the senzu into his mouth, and rubbed the sides of his throat in an attempt to get him to swallow. Fortunately, it worked. The most vicious wounds, the ones that had been bleeding the worst; along with the cruelest burns and bruises began to disappear. The broken bones in his tail and arm knitted themselves back into place with a strange krinch, krinch sort of sound. Slowly, Vegeta opened his eyes, just barely, and his eyes met with Goku's for just a second. Goku felt frozen with his eyes on him, it was as if he had lost the ability to move or think. Then, quick as it came the moment ended, Vegeta closed his eyes and returned to his unconscious state.

Goku was bewildered. 'Why is he still hurt? I thought that the senzu would have fixed him up better, even if it was only a little one. He must have been worse off than he looked, and that's really saying something. Maybe it's all because of the blood loss, but that's okay, I know that he's going to live now. The worst has been fixed. With a little rest, I'm sure he'll be just fine. I'll send Gohan to Karin's tower to see when there's going to be new senzu ready, though, just in case.'

"Excuse me, but if you're through interfering, we would like to be able to see to our patient now," said a severe looking female doctor.

Goku grinned sheepishly. "Sure thing," he said. "Sorry about that, I'll just wait in the hall." He turned and quietly left the room, shutting the door behind him. The hall was quiet as Capsule Corporation employees went about their daily business. Goku sat in one of the small chairs lined up adjacent to the door and waited for news on his prince.

********

"Daddy." Goku blinked for a second and saw that his son was standing in front of him with a curious expression on his face. "What's going on?"

Goku rubbed his eyes. 'I wonder how long I've been sitting here,' he thought. He looked up at the clock, which read 4:30. 'Man, four hours. I must have fallen asleep or something.' He leaned forward, scooped his son up onto his lap, gave him the most reassuring hug he could muster, and asked, "What do you mean, son?"

Gohan, seemingly not reassured at all, looked at his father's shirt. "Well for one thing, your shirt's all bloody, an' you were acting all weird this morning. I saw you leave and then come right back, and you've been sitting here for a real long time, and-"

Goku sighed. He wondered what would be the best way to explain this. He didn't want to lie to his son, but he didn't want to really give all the gory details to his six year-old little boy, either. Goku knew that he would have to choose his words carefully.

"Well, son, do you remember what I told you right after we started to live here at Capsule Corp.? About us being different and all?"

Gohan attempted to remember exactly what his father had said. He had always known full well that he was different than everyone else. He had a tail, and when they did track in gym class he could run way faster than anybody else. He could hit the ball way farther than anybody else when they played baseball, and that was before he had started training with daddy. He could even smell the difference between him, Daddy, and other people. So, whenever Daddy (but never Mommy, she didn't seem to want to think of her Gohan as being 'different') said anything about 'different' he had just sort of shrugged it off. Gohan shook his head.

"You don't? That's okay. See, you and me are different than Mom, or Bulma, or anybody else. That's because I'm a Saiyajin, and your half Saiyajin. That's why you have a tail, and can be really strong when you want to be. The bad thing is, there aren't too many Saiyajin left because-" Here Goku paused, unsure of how to put this next part. "-Because they all died, a long time ago. A mean man decided that because he was stronger than them, he could kill them all. And so he did. So now, the only ones left are me, you, and one other man. His name is Vegeta, and he's been hurt real bad, but I don't know how or who did it. Right now I'm waiting until the doctors are through so that I can see him."

Gohan simply stared at his father for a moment or two after he was done speaking. All his life, he could remember seeing his father happy, laughing with him or his friends, angry and scary looking, getting ready to go and fight some bad guy or another, or maybe even a little bit scared once in a while; but he had never, ever seen his Daddy like this. He was all quiet, and almost sad. Gohan wondered how come he knew this Vegeta guy and why he was so worried about him. 'He must care about him an awful lot to be so worried,' he mused.

The door adjacent to them opened, and the same severe-looking woman from before stepped out of it. "You may see the patient now," she said simply and walked briskly away without so much as a backward glance.

********

Goku quietly entered the room alone. He had just sent Gohan to Karin Tower for senzu beans because he had wanted to see his prince alone before anyone else did. He knew it was kind of silly, seeing as how the doctors had been around him for four-plus hours, but still, he had perfectly good reasons for wanting to be alone with his prince. He needed to know why Vegeta had come here, and how he had been so badly injured. He was almost dead when he had found him, after all, and Goku needed to know if the thing that had done was going to come here.

Goku sat in a chair at his prince's bedside and watched as his chest moved up and down as he breathed. He propped his head on his knuckles and thought to himself, 'What am I going to do when he wakes up, anyway? I don't know what I'm going to say to him. If this were Planet Vegeta, I'd know exactly what to do. But, this isn't Planet Vegeta, this is Earth, and there is no more Planet Vegeta.' Goku glanced away from the slumbering Vegeta, and saw Bulma waving to him through the small plexi-glass window in the door. He motioned for her to come in. 'Of course,' he thought to himself. 'I've never gone wrong with just being myself before.'

********

"So you say his name is Vegeta, huh?"

Bulma had tried to follow Machia, but she hadn't gotten the plane started in time and had lost him before she even got off the ground. Unable to think of anything else to do, she had returned to Capsule Corp. to find Goku. On the way she heard over the radio about a 'meteor' that had crashed in a bustling town south of Capsule Corp., which so far had resulted in four fatalities and seven people in critical condition. As soon as she got to Capsule Corp, she turned on the TV to watch the live coverage of it. A helicopter was flying over the crater at the crash site, and she saw the so-called meteor was perfectly round and white. It had a hatch-like door, which had apparently been opened.

'Meteor my ass,' she thought. 'That must be the spaceship that Machia was talking about. I don't see anyone around it, though. Where could Machia and that guy who he was talking about be?'

Eventually, she had learned how Goku had taken the alien and brought him back to C.C. to treat his injuries. She had ordered the doctors working on him to take all the tissue samples that they could get their hands on. Goku was always to scared of needles and wouldn't let her near him with them. She figured it was a golden opportunity to finally get some good Saiyajin tissue samples.

Afterwards, she had proceeded to see that everything else was in order, that the wing was closed off to all but those with the highest clearance level and that only the best and most trusted employees would even be allowed in there. She had even taken the time to yell at the bitchy doctor who had given Goku a hard time just to let off some stress. When all of her ducks were in a row, she had went and found Goku sitting at his supposed prince's bedside, all by himself. Then she had gotten the scoop of what had happened, and here she was, sitting in the (uncomfortable as hell) chair next to Goku. He never once took his eyes off Vegeta the entire time she was there. Something felt off, but Bulma couldn't quite place what. Eventually, she excused herself and left to go see if she could find hide or blue hair of Machia.

*********
Shortly after Bulma had her talk with Goku, Machia returned to Capsule Corp. along with Gohan. At first, he had stayed at the crash site and tried to get what he could out of the Saiyajin's ship computer, but there wasn't much information to be had. All he could find was the coordinates for the last planet he had been to and the fact that he had changed the ships next destination point to the Earth.

'So, he's definitely here looking for the final member of his race. How did he know the specific location, I wonder?'

He began to hear a strange sound, like a machine powered by a gas engine was flying over his head or something. 'The Earthling authorities, I suppose. I should leave before they get close enough to see me here and it gets awkward, so to speak.'

He flew away from the chaos of the crash site towards Capsule Corporation, only to be overtaken by Gohan, who had apparently been searching for some kind of medicine called 'senzu', which was unavailable and would be so for some time yet. Machia felt somewhat relieved, this might help him have time to put his plan into action. So long as the Saiyajin was weakened, he had a chance.

********

It was 10:30 PM. Son Goku had not left his prince's side since when he first entered the room and had scarcely tore his eyes from him even for a second. When Bulma had discovered Goku would not be present for supper, she had it sent to him. Bulma was worried because it was so unlike Goku to miss a meal. He still hadn't even bothered to take off the bloody gi shirt he was wearing. She decided to have the security camera feed for that particular room rerouted to her lab, so she would know if anything serious happened. It was unnerving, really, to see the usually energetic Goku just sitting there and staring at an unmoving shape like that.

'He has not been watching that man without so much as leaving to go to get something to eat just because he wants information,' she thought. Bulma leaned forward and watched the camera feed intently. 'Maybe there really is something to that tail regeneration stuff Machia was talking about. Goku is acting strange.' Her eyes shifted to Vegeta as he stirred a bit in his bed. 'Or maybe,' she thought, 'it's all because of that Vegeta guy.'

********

Goku shifted in the uncomfortable Capsule Corp chair he was in, trying to get a more comfortable position. It reminded him of those chairs that he had to sit in when he had to go to those interviews at schools with Chichi. He always hated those things; you could never get comfortable in them. He didn't know how long he had been sitting in that chair, watching over his prince, but it felt like forever. He kept replaying the days events in his mind, trying to make sense of it all. 'What is Vegeta doing here? Is he here to come get me? If he is, how did he find me and what does he want?'

Goku's mind began to wander from the subject of his prince. He wondered what his life would have been like if he had grown up on planet Vegeta. Would he have been happy or sad, unfulfilled or content, popular, despised, or ignored? Would he have married a Saiyajin lady that was like Chichi or stayed single?

Goku's tail was threaded through the hole in the lower back region of the chair, and the tip swayed back and forth idly. 'I wonder what it would have been like to have friends that are like me, that like to fight like I do, eat lots of good food, and stuff like that.' Goku's eyes wandered from the prince's body to his face. He appeared to be sleeping peacefully. His face was calm and almost serene. He looked at the ebony eyelashes of his prince's eyes and thought back to the dark orbs that he had glimpsed for that frozen instant in time that very day. They had reminded Goku of his own eyes, but Goku thought he could detect something different in them, but he could not discern what just yet. Goku's eyes slowly moved up to his prince's hair, black as the night itself and jutting upward in a way that reminded Goku of fire. The very tip of it was splayed against the headboard of the bed.

On an impulse, Goku stood up and leaned over Vegeta's bed. He took his hand and just barely touched it against his prince's forehead. His hand continued upward, and he brushed it against his prince's hair, smoothing it against the pillow stopping as he reached the tip. He leaned in closer to his prince, until he was but a few inches from his prince's face and inhaled. 'So this is what another Saiyajin smells like,' he thought. It was a deep, musky sort of scent, one that Goku could not compare to anything else. Goku felt compelled.

His eyes fell on the lips of his prince, parted slightly as he quietly breathed. 'I wonder...' thought Goku as he gravitated toward those lips as though led by some unknown force. '...what it's like...' his lips gently touched that of his prince. '...to kiss another Saiyajin.' Their lips met, and Goku felt a heat, a fire in his gut that he had never felt before. He wanted more. His tongue left his mouth to lick at the Vegeta's lower lip, before moving itself into his prince's mouth to lick at the palate. He leaned in further still, bracing his hands on either side of Vegeta's shoulders, and climbing up onto the bed with him so that his knees straddled his prince's slim hips. A low moan escaped his throat, and he withdrew his tongue from his prince's mouth, to lick at the lower lip once more, before moving his head down to nuzzle at the neck, just below the jawbone. Goku began to growl softly, not in true aggression, but in an unconscious attempt to get a response out of the insensible Saiyajin below him. His tail waved back and forth above him, in a display of sexual desire. He once more breathed in the scent of his prince, and began to lick his neck before making tiny nips, slowly moving downward toward the shoulders. A part of him in the back of his mind screamed that what he was doing was wrong, wrong, wrong; but it seemed like a trifling, unimportant detail. Right and wrong hardly mattered in this situation, anyway, the dominant part of his mind reasoned. What mattered was his prince Vegeta: his unbelievable and entrancing scent, the superb sight of his body, his addictive taste, and the indescribable way his body felt to the touch. Surely if he continued to try and please him, he would wake up at reciprocate.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash nearby. It came from the hall that lead to the room Goku and Vegeta were in. It snapped Goku out of his trance-like state and caused him to realize exactly what he was doing. He leapt from the bed like it was on fire, and backed into the corner of the room. Goku looked out at the plexi-glass window in the door and saw a nurse attempting to set the cart she had just tipped over on its right side again. His heart was pounding like a stopwatch. He quickly glanced over at Vegeta, and saw with some relief that he had slept through his royal subject's little episode, and thankfully was still completely unconscious. Goku remained tensed up in his spot in the corner for a moment before he relaxed slightly.

He turned on his heel, and went into the bathroom joined to the room he was in. He turned on the sink, and splashed cold water on his face. He struggled not to think about what might would happened if someone had seen, or if Vegeta had actually woken up. He looked up at the mirror and saw that his face was still flushed from his experience, proving that it was real and no dream.

'What in the world got into me there?'