Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ the difference knowing makes ❯ Chapter 2

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

[call me Disclaimer.]

***

The following morning, a bleary-eyed Bulma wobbles on zombie legs into the kitchen and veers automatically for the coffee pot, seeking that sweet, life-giving succor; focus narrowed as it is to a fine, fuzzy-tunneled point, she doesn't even realize he's there.

Until—

"You look like shit, woman." The Prince of all Saiyans deadpans from her kitchen table. She twirls unsteadily on her heels to regard him, fixes the perpetually-agitated mass murderer with a bland look, and then very calmly starts shrieking her head off.

Vegeta lowers his own head, baring his teeth at her in a show of displeasure and irritation, and her usually sharp mind skips blithely along in terror until she trips over that niggling chunk of information reminding her she'd invited His Royal Pain-in-the-Ass into her home. Voluntarily, even.

Because apparently, she is a complete, freaking moron.

"Oh, uh," she opens eloquently, scream abruptly choking off, "Hey there, Vegeta." She almost forgets to be sheepish, in this surreal moment that the destroyer of a hundred-hundred worlds is sitting at her kitchen table, for all the world looking as though he means to enjoy such a domestic thing as breakfast with her family.

"Idiot." Vegeta grumbles, tapping at his bicep. (So maybe 'enjoy' isn't quite the word she's looking for.)

She huffs, "Well excuse me for getting so worked up over the guy who tried to torch my entire planet a couple months ago." Disturbingly, he smiles at the reminder, and she willfully suppresses the shiver of apprehension preparing to shake its way out of her. "Jerk." She mutters, for good measure. The grin slides to a scowl in the space of a furrowed brow. That's more like it; satisfied, she rounds on him and smiles brightly, skirting the expansive counter to reach the coffee pot.

"When do your servants prepare the morning meal?" He bites out in aggravation, and she suspends her coffee-engineering to spare him a glance over her shoulder.

"First of all, they're my parents, Vegeta, not my servants. Maybe you could remember that so I don't have to poison your food when you inevitably try to treat them like slaves." He smirks at her, slow-lazy and smug. Insanely, Bulma finds this devastating. Clearly the product of prolonged sleep deprivation and long weeks' worth of isolation and accrued stress, she rationalizes, whirling back to her abandoned task. "Didn't I ask you yesterday to at least try being considerate? Or at least, not openly cruel?" She feels him considering her, and the room steeps briefly in silence.

Finally,

"Answer the question, woman." Having dealt with a hungry Son-kun often enough over the years, Bulma knows precisely what to make of Vegeta's indelicate evasion of the issue-at-hand -namely, that he could give a shit about anything she has to say, and, Moreover, he's only barely listening in the first place. The central issue for a Saiyan at mealtime is, she knows well, the meal. Everything else is just unnecessary detail.

If he thinks Bulma Briefs can be cowed into brevity, however, he's about to be severely disappointed.

"Most mornings everybody fends for themselves. There're some domestic robots around here we can program to help us if we choose, but we usually don't need 'em for just the three of us. Sometimes mom cooks for us, too, I guess." He looks as if he's about to reprimand her again for not responding to the Actual Question. Frustration knits at her brow. "Look, I know how much you crazy aliens eat; I had actually meant to have a chat with you about learning to use the dom-bots yesterday, except you barbecued my dad's best dino pal and then, golly, it must've just…slipped my mind." He remains unaffected by her pointed censure. Breathing out steadily when all she wants to do is skewer him with something Large and Pointy, "For now, if you can throw together some sort of tentative eating schedule, I'll program the bots to have meals ready by specific times throughout the day. We can do your voice imprint and tutorial later, after I take care of some lab work I've been putting off for two months to gallop off into space and watch all you wacko thugs running around Namek trying to kill each other." Bulma lifts the steaming nectar to her lips, shuddering as the first bitter drop hits her tongue. Feeling substantially more charitable already, "I'll go round a few up to start breakfast in a minute, when the caffeine starts working its magic. Want a cup to tide you over?" She indicates the mug in her hand.

Wrinkling his nose, "It smells foul."

"It tastes even worse." He blinks at her. Shrugging, "You learn to enjoy it."

"Unlikely."

"Suit yourself." Bulma takes another languid pull from her mug, playing up her indulgence for show. "But you don't know what you're missing..."

"Doubtfully anything worthwhile." He bandies, and something in the way he looks at her gives her an uncomfortable sense of double meaning.

Feeling obliged to reciprocate, "I suppose you'll never know, will you?" Wondering if she's hallucinating or if she and Vegeta are, in some sick, sneaky way, flirting, she's about to hop on the Awkward Turtle and bolt when her ever-sunny mother pops into the room, overjoyed to discover them both awake and Ready to be Fed.

Vegeta bristles.

Down boy, she mentally wills, and then has the strangest sense he'd heard her—

"Oh, goody! I was hoping you'd come down for breakfast, Vegeta, dear -you are going to love my crepes. Bulma, sweetie, three or four helpers, if you wouldn't mind?" Anxious to escape whatever the hell Weirdness has installed itself in the kitchen, she nods enthusiastically and pushes away from the counter to head for the living room -with a final, meaningful parting glare in Vegeta's direction, of course, which she hopes he understands as something more or less along the lines of: 'Be nice to my mother or die painfully.'

***

Following the morning's bizarre, irritating encounter with the woman -and the ensuing breakfast freakshow with that fatuous creature she calls 'mother,' Vegeta promptly evacuates the gallery, forsaking what would otherwise be Sacred Space for a Saiyan to escape the flighty exuberances of a madwoman.

That this might qualify as running away is a notion he flatly refuses to entertain.

Thereafter, with the same idle preoccupation that had confined him to his assigned quarters for much of the previous evening (barring that utterly satisfying interlude in the terrarium), he roams the winding corridors of the compound, ostensibly on an absent stroll even as he's carefully mapping the layout in his mind. Fastidious attention to environment was a lesson instilled early by his trainers on Vejiitasei -and later rigorously reinforced in Freeza's court, by virtue of his prized inability to stay long off of anyone's Shit List.

The architecture on Earth (from what admittedly little he's seen of it) is not so very different -superficially, at the least—from the standard templates in the Cold Emporium: domed structures with high ceilings, stark, seamless paneling on generously-fortified walls, hard-tiled floors and inset-oblong fenestrations. In this respect, he allows, the Chikyuu natives are surprisingly modern -even if as a species, they are entirely backward.

He has, in the course of his military career, seen plenty enough personal dwellings to recognize the assorted trappings of the Briefs' household as relatively common: an excess of furniture for lounging or, alternatively, for displaying objects with no discernible utilitarian purpose, walls and windows draped with colorful fabrics or other touches of aesthetic taste, and various outmoded-looking machines he supposes are probably computers or appliances of miscellaneous function.

It becomes rapidly apparent to him that the woman and her parents enjoy an extraordinary level of affluence; to begin with, the compound is massive -large enough, probably, to comfortably accommodate several dozen purging squads. Arrayed about this tremendous complex are auxiliary shelters and workspaces, arranged in pocket-clusters within the larger enclosure to form a loosely-organized little sovereign community all its own, divorced from the realities of the sprawling city providing its context.

And there's the woman's insufferable disposition to consider, he mentally appends, the quick temper and lack of proper terror and flagrant sense of entitlement, exposing her for one Not-Often-Denied. As an aside, he supposes he's forced to admit that, however severely wanting of social graces she may be, she is also -stints of mind-boggling insanity notwithstanding—unquestionably, fiercely intelligent; there is about her an undeniable shrewdness of the eyes and a cleverness of tongue that intrigues him, even as it puts him off, makes him wary. (It will be some time yet before he learns the full scope of her technical proficiency, but he has begun to grasp the implications of capsule technology, as well as what it means that the woman and her father are responsible for its creation.)

Furthermore, she seems thoroughly well-informed on the subject of the Saiyan appetite (her and her mother both, if this morning's satisfactorily enormous cuisine was any indication)-and hadn't batted an eye at the prospect of providing him with food indefinitely. Vegeta, together with Radditz and Nappa, had placed substantial strain on the resources of many-an-outpost in their day -yet the woman, here in her domestic fortress, remains remarkably unperturbed.

Clearly, she has drawn some general inferences about the proclivities of Saiyans, based on wisdom acquired from -he has to assume—first-hand experience. Prolonged first-hand experience, if anything is to be read from her reflexive responses to traits and behaviors she ascribes to his 'being Saiyan.' This becomes yet another corollary which segues (inevitably, it would seem) back to that destiny-thieving traitor, Kakarrot.

How had these fools managed to subdue him? More than that -how had they managed to so irrevocably undo everything about him that once had been Saiyan? At no point in Vegeta's early education had there been mention of infant soldiers going native after planet fall. Some were killed, others lost in transit -but absorbed into their host planet's culture? Never. The concept alone is disgusting, shameful, preposterous.

The real item of interest, then, concerns the woman's connection with the Kakarrot -what is it, precisely? And, as a related matter, how did these no-ki Earthers come to know what appeared to be all of this planet's strongest fighters?

Within seconds, quite on accident, he stumbles across the answer to both questions. Following the bend of the hallway up a flight of stairs, he emerges into a wing of the house she had not shown him last night, on the (mercifully much-shorter) tour of the residence.

To his immediate left is a non-descript door through which, as he steps closer, he can smell that reeking weed the woman's father is constantly smoking, nearly overwhelming a second, softer scent he identifies (with a touch of instinctive revulsion) as belonging to the Briefs' matriarch.

To his right is -chaos. The facade is all but blanketed with photographs, stretching the length of the hallway, terminating at the far end of the corridor near the threshold of another door. (Oddly, he knows -with swift, intractable certainty- that the room behind it belongs to Bulma.)

Vegeta peruses the bedlam, gaze sweeping across frozen images of that batty, foul-smelling old man and his empty-headed mate, many of these also featuring juvenile iterations of the woman, sitting in her father's lap, bent over some mechanical contraption or other, covered in grease and grinning like an imbecile, watering plants with her mother, even brandishing two of what he guesses are this planet's incredibly small dragon balls, a mischievous grin cutting up at the corners of her mouth.

There are a great many photographs, too, of an adolescent Bulma and Kakarrot as a brat, flanked by shots of the two amidst shifting configurations of a large group of people, some of whom he's had the immense pleasure to watch die in humiliating fashion -a vagrant he recognizes as that hot-headed moron the Saibamen had offed, the bald monk, the three-eyed man and his doll, and countless others he's never seen before. (He does note, however, the conspicuous absence of the Earth-Namekian and Kakarrot's abomination.) With new clarity, he identifies the woman's relationship with Kakarrot (and the variegated assortment of Others) as one of long-history and camaraderie. (This does not account for how this disgraceful thing happened, of course, but it is a place to start, if nothing else.)

Then come the small collection of photos depicting only the woman and that scarred weakling, enacting all manner of absurd rituals. In one, she appears to have murder on her mind, chasing the fool around the Capsule Corp lawn with a great, gleaming, sharply-pronged object; in another, the warrior is on bended knee, palm laid dramatically across his breast, holding out a bouquet of colorfully-festooned plants to a beaming Bulma. And there are plenty more -of the two hand-in-hand, embracing, arguing, of the scarred man hefting her in his arms, of the woman planting an impromptu kiss on the blushing buffoon's cheek—all of which indicate her relationship with this one is something somewhat more than simply 'friendship…'

Vegeta attempts to tease out when he became so stiff, exhaling to release the inexplicable tension -and promptly pulling taut all over again when he catches a whiff of the woman coming up the stairs.

In the instant following, she mounts the final steps and slows to a stop, blinking at him. He becomes suddenly conscious of how much time has passed since he'd first started wandering, and just as quickly irritated that he'd somehow gotten caught up in the Briefs' patchwork exhibition of their nightmarish obsession with preserving the past. His eyes challenge her to say anything about where he is or what he'd been caught doing.

Instead, she smiles softly at him.

"This is one of my favorites," she points toward some photograph or other as she shores up beside him, and after a moment's assessment of her intentions, he flicks his gaze askance, following the line of her finger to a picture of herself kneeling beside a young Kakarrot, one elbow wound loosely around the boy's collar, both hands flashing that ubiquitous 'v,' her face split into a wide grin. "I hadn't known Goku very long at that point; he was still just some freaky kid I happened to run across when I first went looking for the dragonballs." This strikes a chord of rare interest in him.

"What fool wish had you intended to make?" She reddens faintly at his candid curiosity, scratching nervously at her cheek.

"Ummmm. Well, see, you have to understand: I was very, very young, hadn't seen much of the world yet, and I was used to just going and getting something when I wanted it, instead of waiting around, twiddling my thumbs, hoping it'd happen, and, um, also, uh—"

"Quit blathering."

Composing herself, "I'd planned to wish for, uh, well…a boyfriend…?" She ends lamely, validating his initial evaluation of her frivolity. Then, with a curious measure of confidence, "I know that probably sounds stupid to you—" (he snorts, confirming this conclusion) "-but I already had everything else I could ever dream of wanting -fabulous beauty and brains, fame and fortune, parents who loved me; to my mind, the only thing missing was someone to share my happiness with. So I…went adventuring, I guess, not really looking for my Prince—" Realizing after a beat to whom she's speaking, she backtracks, smiling sheepishly, "—that is, uh, for the perfect boyfriend, so much as the dragonballs to find him for me, and that's how I met Son-kun and Krillin and that old, turtle pervert—" (Vegeta's brow hikes up at the disparaging title) "—and Lunch and Chi Chi and…and Yamcha." A wistful tinge colors her smile. "And then I decided I didn't need the dragonballs after all." His mind flashes him an image of a younger Bulma pressing her lips to the face of the first of their warriors to expire. "But I'm still glad I went after 'em. Kami knows, my life wouldn't be half as interesting if I'd never met that goofball kid. The same can be said for most of the senshi, actually. Whatever the reason, our respective encounters with Goku are what brought us all together." She searches out his gaze, pointedly holds it. "You'd be surprised how many of our dearest friends started out as hated enemies." He narrows his eyes at the unspoken insinuation, but says nothing. Let her think what she wants, he decides; in the end, her idiotic notions will prove nothing more than childish fantasy.

In the end, she'll die with the rest of her miserable species, albeit perhaps more painfully for her insolence.

-speaking of which: the woman, who has been quietly studying him in the aftermath of her offensive disclosure, begins -unbelievably—to laugh at him, blue hair dusting across pale cheeks in the throes of her mirth.

"Oh, loosen up, ya' old stick-in-the-mud! The promise of friendship isn't a threat, for Kami's sake!" She sets one hand against her hip, expression amused. "Goodness, Vegeta, don't you ever relax?" He smirks at her, dangerously.

"I've found killing things generates an appreciable level of serenity." For an instant, the woman looks strangely -dismayed, as if this response were somehow both surprising and disappointing (which, if true, means he has drastically overestimated her intelligence), but he forgets this baffling expression (and its equally absurd subtext) almost at once, when she abandons it for an impressively hostile sneer. Then, just as he's thinking this might get interesting, all that startlingly combative energy evaporates, and she grins at him, sardonically.

What a nonsensical progression, he muses, puzzled.

"Well, Vegeta. You'll certainly never win Miss Congeniality* with an attitude like that." He gathers he's missing some crucial cultural knowledge here that would grant him better appreciation of her meaning; still, he understands the comment as the slight it's obviously meant to be.

Shockingly, the escalating indignity of this encounter continues: in an act of unthinkable familiarity, Bulma edges closer and, impossibly casual, lightly snaps her fingers against the Royal Bottom.

He goes positively rigid.

Outraged, horrified, and furiously trying to decide whether he wants more to scream at her or instead to simply vaporize her where she stands, Bulma proceeds to make a remark to the effect of 'unclenching already,' so that -ye gods—the 'stick could fall out of his ass.'

The woman has a death wish.

"You vulgar, low-born-!"

"Anyway, Prince Vegeta," she dips him a shallow curtsy, smoothly cutting through his indignation, "I have to go sleep for fourteen or fifteen hours; come find me tomorrow with your meal schedule, and I'll show you how to use the bots. In the meantime," her eyes flash with deadly promise she cannot possibly enforce, "no more butchering of family pets -or any sentient species on the planet, for that matter. And you'll leave the Namekians alone, too, if you know what's good for you." The force of her wrath is diminished by the gaping yawn that overtakes her by the close of her speech. "Oi, but I'm tired." And with that, she turns her back to him, bidding him 'good night' as she walks away, in spite of the sun blazing through the windows from its highest position in the sky.

Dumbstruck, Vegeta forgets he could be ending her now, engrossed as he is in watching her track down the hall, one pendulous sway of the hips after another. He determines at this moment that Kakarrot is going to be very, very lucky indeed, if he somehow manages to make it the full one hundred-thirty days without brutally murdering this shameless female and her entire freakish brood.

By the time she reaches her door and peers back to check if he's still there, he's thrown himself out the nearest window and vanished into the upper atmosphere.

***

"Ohoho…these brilliant little humans." Kami's wizened visage crinkles with fondness. "They never cease to astonish." There's an almost…giddy cast to the deity's face, Popo decides.

"Kami-sama?" The djinn prompts, staring in wide-eyed bemusement and kneeling to water the jasmine.

"There is something afoot, if I'm not mistaken, Popo; something…remarkably amusing." God leans heavily against his staff, gaze distant, yet doting.

"What do you see?"

"What I see, dearest friend, is the twinkle of a resplendent possibility." Mr. Popo isn't particularly surprised at the cryptic reply; it would not do, after all, for God to disclose the substance of his divine insights.

Still, as he joins Kami by the temple's edge and casts his Sight to the world below, he does wish fleetingly that he understood what it is he's missing, that God should find import in so small a thing as a hallway quibble -even if the combatants are Bulma Briefs and the displaced Saiyan Prince.

***

Vegeta doesn't check in with her the following day as instructed. He doesn't show up the day after that, either. Or the day after that.

For just as long, in fact, he's been absent entirely -he hasn't even put in any cameo kitchen appearances, demanding to be fed. (This she learns from her mother, who's been lamenting the 'poor, sweet young man's' sudden disappearance since yesterday afternoon.)

On the one hand, this means he's not constantly underfoot, snapping and snarling at anyone and everyone who dares approach him with even the most innocuous purpose -or, conversely, picking fights himself with her or Piccolo or the other Namekians (or Gohan, who's stopped by once already to visit Dende and his dad's arch-rival-turned-baleful-daycare-supervisor) at the off-chance someone might provide him sufficient reason to murder everyone in sight, which she's betting is his Favorite Leisure-Time Activity.

What's more, he seems to be following her edict concerning Senseless Destruction exceptionally well; to make sure, she's kept herself diligently apprised of world events, and thus far no reports have surfaced involving the mysterious razing of entire continents, so she's decided he's just on sabbatical, perhaps having a look-see at the planet he'd previously intended to purge and sell on the intergalactic market. She's prepared to hope this exposure to the world she loves so dearly may even begin to endear him to it.

(…wait, no, that's delusional.)

On the other hand, if he isn't here, constantly underfoot, then he's out there somewhere, snapping and snarling and Kami-knows-what-else at anyone he damn well pleases, and with no master to curtail his maniacal whimsy, no one to bully him into behaving or threaten him when he steps out of line, she dreads imagining what he might actually be up to. Although, she concedes, if he was quietly executing people in the dark of night (in true boogey-man fashion), surely Gohan or Piccolo would know, would sense it with their weird psychic mojo, would stop it, somehow. (Or, y'know, they would definitely give it their best shot…)

After a few days turns into a full week without His Crankiness checking in, she starts considering the possibility that he might not coming back. Maybe the little monkey bastard had found himself a nice, cozy tree to curl up in and eat bananas all day, she muses, a touch vindictively. And maybe he's intending to stay there until Goku's been wished back to life, because maybe he prefers the isolation homelessness affords to the fellowship of company he so obviously disdains.

Later, Bulma wonders if Vegeta's impromptu tour of the planet wasn't in some part motivated by her casual forwardness in the hallway the other day. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time, of course, but the Prince's scandalized face in the aftermath of her playful tap kept cropping up unexpectedly in her mind, forcing her to re-evaluate the gesture she'd taken for granted.

She also wonders what Vegeta's more domestic plans are. For instance, while he's surely capable of living off of the land and providing for himself…what's he gonna do when the only clothing he owns inevitably wears out? Will he return, command her to furnish a new suit, and then take off again once she'd finished? Would he consent to wearing Earth clothes instead? Or does he, perhaps, have the same 'Clothing Optional' philosophy as Son-kun…?

Bulma promptly terminates the nascent thought, before it has time to develop into something with a will of its own.

In the Vegeta-less interim, she spends large portions of her days working with her dad, re-immersing herself in the company business he often neglects (more often out of absent-mindedness than any sort of witting dereliction of duty), and tending to her guests' entertainment and settlement needs.

She tries her hand at teaching the Namekians how to play poker, but -as she might have expected—they aren't exactly quick studies at picking up the finer points of the game. The underlying principle revolves around careful calculation and deceit, after all, and neither the adolescent nor the elder generations demonstrate a talent for the deft arts of prevarication. Just as cruelty and violence seems coded into Saiyan DNA, so the Nameks appear genetically prone to scrupulous virtue. (Although, as Goku and Piccolo respectively prove, there're exceptions to even these rules.) More than once, she's had to stop them from revealing the contents of their hands to one another, struggling to be patient as they exhibit varying shades of bewilderment at the idea that candor is a no-no.

Ultimately, she gives up the venture for a lost cause, and shows them card games that don't require some modicum of cunning.

Her parents fare much better teaching their guests to play golf, though it's her mom who provides the lion's share of the instruction, since the founder of Capsule Corp, well-renowned for his wandering attention span, turns out to be mostly useless as a coach.

Gohan shows up several more times throughout the week (only once with actual permission from Chi Chi), often without even stopping in to say hello to her or her parents before he flies off with Dende or Piccolo or both. And Piccolo, for his part, has been an unexpectedly helpful -if gruff—resource in this transitional period, acting (sporadically) as intermediary between his people and hers. Getting used to the Demon King living at Capsule Corp has been a considerably strange and spooky affair, but it's becoming progressively easier to think of him as a member of the gang -due in no small part to his being perpetually surrounded by a giggling pair of children, whom he tolerates with his own peculiar brand of grim, unsmiling affection.

A little over two weeks later, when she's finally re-established something like the routine she'd maintained before she'd shot off into outer space on that wild goose chase that'd nearly killed them all, Vegeta returns, quietly, unceremoniously; in much the same manner of that first, unpleasant morning, she waltzes into the kitchen, intending to make herself something light for an afternoon snack, only to intercept the Saiyan Prince entering from the opposite door.

For a full moment, she stares at him in all his tattered, ridiculously-muscled glory, not totally sure he's real.

At the sight of her, that ever-present surly expression sours further.

"Where the heck've you been?" At the sound of her, his lip curls.

"I fail to see how that is any of your business, woman." Bulma rolls her eyes.

We've certainly hit the ground running, haven't we…?

"And here I'd been afraid time out in the world might've ruined that sparkling personality of yours." Popping a hand to her hip, she meets his darkening gaze head on. "I was only curious, you ass."

"Prying wench." Leaps off his tongue almost automatically, the beginnings of a grin tugging up at one corner of his mouth.

Tone rising heatedly, "Self-important prick!"

Vegeta slides forward at a slow, measured clip, a wicked twist to his lips.

"Careful, little human. I am not known for patience. Or mercy." The veiled threat does not impress her.

"Of course you're not. You're 'known' for being a compulsively evil creep."

She can't even process the movement -one minute he's on the other side of the room, the next he's materializing before her very eyes, a certain lingering, impenetrable smile on his face. She takes one startled, shuffling step backward, glaring up at him defiantly and clenching her fists in frustration as it dawns on her that she's just lost her ground. His smile becomes downright haughty.

Speedy little bastard.

"Woman," Vegeta begins, his voice a hard caress as he shifts into her surrendered space, closing the distance all over again and definitely invading her personal bubble, "I would not be so cavalier with my tongue, were I you." Gingerly, he snaps one hand out to take her by the throat, only the barest hint of pressure at her pulse, the whisper of gloved fingers at the nape of her neck. "I will not hesitate to end you." There's nothing in his tone to indicate he's not perfectly serious about killing her right here in her own kitchen, and no contradiction of purpose in that endless, black gaze; given the slightest encouragement, she has no doubt he'd off her now and forget he ever knew her by dinner.

Which must mean she's finally lost her marbles, because -for reasons lacking any sort of actual reason—she just can't find it in her to be afraid.

She is…Something Else, but what Else, she can't say.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it: blah-blah-snap-your-neck-blah. Save it for someone whose best friend wouldn't flatten you into a Saiyan-shaped pancake for harming her." Now fully seething, Vegeta searches her face, probably, she figures, trying to understand how she can be so flippant about the matter of her Imminent Demise. (Truth be told, she's still working that one out herself.) "You want lunch, or what?" His expression falters, slipping briefly into stupefaction; in the next instant, his scowl reasserts itself. "If so," her fingers alight at his wrist, "we'll need to raincheck this homicidal episode." Applying gentle force at his pulse, she guides his hand away from her oh-so-squeezable throat.

And he lets her.

Looking thoroughly disturbed, Vegeta backs away from her, shaking his head as in disbelief. Then he dismisses himself, growling out something along the lines of her being 'fortunate' for having caught him in so 'fair and gracious' a mood, rounding out this absurd exposition with yet another promise of Impending Doom unless she has a meal ready for him within the hour.

Bulma's only half paying attention; as he's shoving past the same door he'd entered through, she's attempting to justify a universe that could possibly allow so insufferable a man to have such an exquisite ass.

***

The first several days are touch-and-go.

By the end of the second Solar Day he is with Them, it becomes patently clear that, deprived of intensive, mitigating care, he will most assuredly expire. Imminently. Equally apparent to Them, as They endure a series of fruitless attempts to revive him from his unnatural sleep, is the outright inadequacy of conventional medicaments; gradually, They come to appreciate that the full-breadth of Their medical expertise is decidedly insufficient to facilitate the stranger's recovery. Indeed, though gravely injured from the prodigious contest They had sensed all the way from here (a good half-a-system's distance from where said planet-ending conflict had occurred), They discern that his true damage is psychic in origin.

And no stint in a regeneration tank could help to determine the outcome of a war within oneself.

Happily, They are marvelously well-versed in a number of by-far more reliable and pervasive healing arts, having evolved as a species principally reliant on extrasensory aptitude; a good thing, too, as in the midst of his cataleptic spasms, the stranger inadvertently undergoes an alarming -if stunning—transformation, amplifying his ki to astonishing-spectacular levels and very nearly incinerating himself -and Them as well—in the process.

Thereafter, the stranger's body refuses to power down, instead fluctuating wildly between ever more perilous extremes as the threads of his (admittedly formidable) control gradually loose and fray and snap altogether under the weight of raw, turbulent emotions he evidently has no experience handling.

Were They not Themselves equipped to deal with what is so utterly beyond the reach of simple science, They have little doubt the stranger would have been long-since overcome by the sheer vehemence of the darkness which, They are soon to discover, had (surprisingly) never existed within him before his most recent, violent engagement -and that would, quite certainly, have been the end for Them all.

As it is, when the stranger reaches the brink of capitulation (and consequent destruction), They waste no time; with susurrus persuasions and the frank assurance They mean only benevolent guidance, They beg entry into his mind. Even submerged as he is amidst a roiling ocean of desperate confusion and deep, irrepressible anger, he perceives Their honest intent and, with a nearly-tangible sense of relief and gratitude, subsides, receiving Them.

Much later, Their histories will mark this moment as Their pivotal Beginning with the peculiar-extraordinary organism known as Son Goku.

***

*i refer less to the movie of Sandra Bullock fame, and more to the pageant title in general.

next chapter: dende goes sight-seeing, krillin meets a(nother) god, bulma throws a party, chi chi just plain throws things, goku learns how to fold space, and vegeta comes close to killing everyone. repeatedly.