Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ the difference knowing makes ❯ Chapter 3

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

we'll get right to it, then, shall we?

[i wish i knew how to quit you, disclaimer.]

***

chapter three

"Your technique is crude at best, downright clumsy at worst, Princeling." Zarbon remarks coolly, propping one hand against his hip while the other sweeps a lock of green hair out of his eyes. He pays only fleeting mind to the growling, sparking Saiyan embedded in the wall. "Good thing I came along, really; you might otherwise've gone your entire, pathetic life thinking you were fighting and not just flailing about like some spoiled, mewling infant." Zarbon neatly dodges the bit or three of wall debris Vegeta lobs at his head with enough force to separate it from his body. A gentle smile softens his countenance, belied by the incisiveness of his criticism. "Over-powerful you may well be for your age, little Prince, but you lack any and all sense of *finesse.*"

The child finishes extricating himself from the rubble, glaring with an eerily thoughtful intensity, the like of which he can't say he's ever experienced from one so young. Then again, this is his first encounter with a juvenile Saiyan; perhaps they're all this precocious at Vegeta's age.

Or perhaps that's just a feature of the younglings pawned off by their fathers to rival empires, he reflects dispassionately.

"I understand Saiyans find polish tedious and precision extraneous; after all, why bother with skill when brute power gets the job done just as well?" They are expressive, the child's eyes; Zarbon has no difficulty interpreting Vegeta's pique as one of grave offense. "But this is Cold Space, Prince; out here, your power level is quaint, but nothing special. Skill's what sets you apart, or throws you in with the chaff."

"Finished yet with your prattling, freak?" The impudent little mammal begins circling the arena, tail flicking neatly back and forth behind him. Zarbon remains impassive.

"Instinct without insight is lazy, and logic of movement without discretion, reckless. You're too impulsive, and that can be worse than even transparency. Unless you're willing to accept the instruction I've been ordered to give you, someday, somewhere, some no-account nobody is going to dismantle you -and it won't be luck or even especial skill that grants them victory, Vegeta. Your own feckless ignorance will undo you for them."

For one horrifying instant, the Prince's power reading spikes to an inconceivable level, and he becomes nearly painful to behold, engulfed as he is by an aura so white -but by the time he clears the space between them and materializes before Zarbon's eyes, bleeding and incensed, the scouter's outrageous read-out has plummeted to a reasonable measure, and Freeza's attaché is able to shake himself free of his split-second trepidation in time to duck Vegeta's point blank ki strike, redirect the boy's side-swiping roundhouse, and land a solid elbow to the Saiyan's royal gut, sending him rocketing right back into the wall.

"Aiyee, Princeling," Zarbon nurses the forearm he'd used to deflect Vegeta's kick, something like real surprise and grudging approval surfacing is his gaze. "Impetuous you may be, but you are a quick one, aren't you?" His gaze turns appraising. "There may be hope for you yet." Vegeta tears himself out of the rubble, sweeping the back of his hand across bleeding lips, eyes black with rage. Zarbon smiles fondly. "Ready to learn, or are we staying this course of one-sided pounding? Let me assure you, it makes little difference to me one way or the other."

"Fuck you." The Prince snarls, tail lashing. "You end now."

Zarbon doesn't allow him the time to power up for the ki blast so obviously coming, instead appearing at the boy's side and aiming a flat-handed blow straight at the recalcitrant Saiyan's neck. At the last possible second, the Prince sees it coming and attempts to twist out of the way, but Zarbon effortlessly changes trajectory, following the movement, and snags his fingers in the collar of Vegeta's armor, jerking him backwards and using the jarring momentum to smash him into the floor.

As darkness spiders along the edges of Vegeta's vision, Zarbon kneels beside him, fingers cradling -almost tenderly—at the base of his skull.

"You really don't know anything, do you, little Prince?" Sighing, " I suppose that means you and I will be seeing quite a bit of one another." The irritable mammal produces a gurgling sound at the back of his throat. "I'm planning to interpret that as enthusiasm." The Saiyan gives a reflexive twitch of rebellion, and is still.

\\||/

It's been well over a decade now since Zarbon had dispensed his first 'advice' as the Prince's designated sensei, and nearly as long since Vegeta's bothered to reflect on their first official session together.

But with very little else other than training (under this planet's negligible gravity) or hunting (entirely-too-complacent or skittish game) to occupy his time, he's taken more often to meditating, recognizing perforce that a spiritual realignment is in order; the entire course of his life has just taken a sharp turn, after all, and even if for the better part of his subjugation he'd stubbornly ignored Zarbon's insistent harping on the importance of the exercise, he'd long ago acknowledged its efficacy, and had, accordingly, allotted a passable amount of time to its practice.

As promised, commitment to even semi-regular meditation had facilitated the steady growth of his power, and helped him through a period of rapidly spiking ki and extreme self-control trouble Zarbon had grinningly dubbed 'puberty,' as well, though he'd come nowhere near admitting as much to his smug freak of a trainer. (Annoyingly, the changeling seems to have known all the same.)

But he'd only ever done as much meditating as he felt he absolutely had to, and it'd been quite a while -a year, maybe more—since he'd deemed it necessary. Several weeks ago, when he'd settled in for his first session in who-knows-how-long, he'd had an inordinately difficult time of it; his focus had been scattered, his body restless with the inactivity and his mind bored of the tedium almost instantly.

Still, he'd persevered, well-aware that -like or not—there were issues that needed sorting through: namely, how in seven hells Kakarrot had managed to ascend to his Super Saiyan birthright. *How* had that frivolous moron, with no knowledge of his heritage and still less comprehension of the power he'd tapped, managed to so effortlessly achieve the goal he'd been striving his entire life to reach? And, what had triggered it? Discipline? Desperation? Despair? The strength of his desire to protect his weakling friends?

No answers have been forthcoming; he'd sifted through every fragment of every legend he could uncover from the muck of adolescent memory, and thus far his only certainty is that he'll have no certainties until Kakarrot returns.

While he's grasped at straws for coveted answers about Super Saiyans (newly a plural phenomenon), the trek backwards through time has drudged up an uncomfortable abundance of unwelcome memories -of himself in full royal regalia, flanked by Nappa and Radditz, kneeling to swear fealty to Freeza, his father aloof -bored, even—at the lizard tyrant's back; of Nappa brutally murdering several dozen Imperial foot soldiers over news of Vejiitasei's 'unfortunate' destruction, Radditz gaping in disbelief at the Prince's shoulder; and Zarbon, years and years of Zarbon, attempting to beat patience and restraint into him at every turn, poisoning him with altogether alien affectations and appetites, distorting self-evident truths with bizarre personal philosophies, gradually nicking out his own indelible space in Vegeta's mind, having made at least enough of an impact in the development of his character and combat style that Nappa had complained -often and at idiotic length—of his abberancy, his wholesale abandonment of Saiyan conduct and mores.

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that in light of his return to the place of his greatest defeat and the incidental trip down memory lane, he'd return to the site of his very first humiliation at the hands of a hated foe. To that casual, point-blank admonition, words just as well not uttered for all Vegeta'd bothered to hear them, now rendered prescient by hindsight; he had indeed been cowed by the least likely specimen --though Kakarrot, a consummate 'nobody' if he's ever seen one, can by no measure be judged a 'no-account.'

The fool's got a preternatural head for martial arts; he learns the patterns of his adversaries quickly, and his style is efficient, his technique solid, his capacity for intuitive-effectual improvisation evidently boundless. And now there's that power level to contend with, as well, that wild, impossible energy signature he'd locked onto back on Namek, before he'd been magically transported to Earth. From a man who, scarcely a year prior, hadn't been able to defeat Radditz by himself. Whose strength had miraculously grown, in the course of a few months, to such a degree that he'd swatted Nappa aside like an insect and proceeded thereafter to beat him -and while that victory had been a near-thing, accomplished not without assistance, it had also been decisive.

Then, insanely, two months following, the idiot peasant had managed both to bring a legend to life and to trounce the heretofore uncontested ruler supreme of the largest galactic empire in the universe.

It's true, he allows, that he'd been overconfident in his own power, that he'd underestimated his opponent, that he'd been reckless, impetuous, and sloppy; but 'feckless ignorance' or no, the monstrous challenge Kakarrot posed would never have changed.

And Vegeta has no idea why.

In some distant recess of his mind, Zarbon chides,

"You really don't know anything, do you, little Prince?"

***

"My, my, my, you're a funny-looking fellow, aren't you?"

Krillin is…not in several dozen pieces, spattered here and there about the landscape in so many gooey lumps of charred, bloody flesh. There's a mystery for solving -but he shelves it for the moment in favor of trying to fit his mind around the visage of a giant pink catfish obstructing his view of the yellow sky.

"Uhhh…" He begins, wary. Having been dead once already, he knows to be careful about mouthing off to the random denizens of the Afterlife; after all, the last time he'd gotten cheeky, he'd managed to piss off an enormous immortal bureaucrat. (More specifically, Enma Dai-o, who'd come uncomfortably close to flattening him with a ledger the size of Kame House in the aftermath.) "I'm, umm…I'm dead, I guess?"

"I certainly hope so. Your being here otherwise would be something." Krillin chuckles nervously, warily eye-balling his host as he climbs to his feet.

"And 'here' is…?"

"The Immortal Plains, of course." The catfish proclaims, as if this explains everything. "In the Southern Galactic Quadrant."

"Oh, er, r-right. And, you are…?" A twitch of his chin, and the odd creature's sunglasses glint theatrically, caught by a light -with, hmmm, no clear point of origin, actually. ('The Immortal Plains' are very vibrantly colorful, but after a cursory sweep reveals the Plains lack any visible sun or star in the sky, he's not quite sure how.) This is obviously a question his host's been waiting for; round lips crease into a broad grin, his chest puffs out importantly, arms akimbo-ing at either hip, "I am…" Here he pauses, likely for dramatic effect. The monk absently concludes that he'd gotten his fill of 'dramatic effect' with the Ginyu Force. "Minami no Kaio-samaaaaa!"

Krillin deadpans, under-whelmed. When he appears to understand his grand introduction has fallen flat, the catfish's ears redden.

"*ahem*"

"I'm, um, Krillin." Respectfully, he closes his palms and performs a shallow bow. "I'm from Earth." Looking to be placated with the modest obeisance, the taller of the two clears his throat again.

"Yes, we've recently been hearing lots of interesting things about 'Earth.'"

"…'we?'"

Glossing right over his question,

"Seems the silly old fool finally found himself a worthwhile champion; been ages since he brought anyone useful around…" Krillin doesn't respond, hoping his silence will prompt some form of clarification. "Your friend, the Saiyan—"

"Goku? Do you mean Goku?" The monk perks up with sudden excitement. "Is he okay? What happened? Did he make it? How are the others?" The catfish chuckles, amused at the rapid-fire interrogation.

"I do think Goku was his name, actually. He's beaten an incredible foe, you know." Krillin swells with relief; Goku always manages to pull out with a win, but it never gets any easier to watch his friend put his life on the line. He slumps to his knees, feeling old beyond his years, and very, very tired.

"I'd say I can't believe he beat Freeza, but I guess if there's anyone who could take that monster down, it'd be Goku." He's talking more to himself than his companion, but that doesn't stop the self-professed 'King of the South' from putting in his two cents.

"If I'd sent in any of my champions, of course, Freeza'd have been no trouble at all. But, well, that was more an affair of the living, you know; not my place to get involved…" Krillin gives his host an indulgent nod, though he harbors private doubt this boast would hold water. "Still, it might've been nice to meet your Saiyan friend. There were rumors he'd died when the planet blew, but he'd certainly have been here by now if he had, wouldn't he…?"

"The 'planet blew?'" Horror spins through Krillin's mind, disorienting him.

"Oh, yes. Spec-tac-ularly. Fortunately, it seems your other friends used the Namekers' dragon balls to escape the destruction moments before it happened. Only Freeza and Goku were left on Namek when it finally exploded, but neither of them have appeared at the check-in station; the Ice-jinn can breathe in space, of course, so there's a chance Freeza's still alive, but your Saiyan definitely wouldn't have made it in open space. Which I guess means he escaped somehow." It's almost too much to process: Namek, gone, Freeza, defeated but not dead, and Goku, apparently victorious but mysteriously missing.

How much did everyone back home know?

He hears himself echoing the question to the Southern Kai.

"They know about as much as they need to know, I'd say." The catfish hedges. Krillin's about to demand -er, politely request that his host make himself useful and patch him through to his friends, stat, so he can relay what he's learned, perhaps warn them to be ready for the possibility that Freeza's alive, but he's headed off. "I know you'd probably like to get in touch with your comrades, but Earth's a bit out of my jurisdiction, I'm afraid, and technically, we're not allowed to interact with the living, anyway. Though some of us follow this rule better than others…" He grumbles, again alluding to some other-worldly personage without offering any manner of explanation. "I'd suggest you not worry about it too much, for the moment. You'll be wished back soon enough, I imagine, and then you can tell your friends whatever you'd like." The catfish raises two pink fingers to his round chin, contemplative. "Assuming you remember any of this, of course. I suppose there's a chance you'll be wiped when they wish your soul over to Earth's check-in station."

Krillin's far too weary to attempt to wheedle any further information out of the Kai, much less to insist he be told what the heck the possibility of his being 'wiped' means, exactly.

Instead, he turns his mind outward, frantic concern over Goku's fate his foremost preoccupation.

What's happened to you, Goku? Where are you?

***

It isn't long before They discover the super-heated blood coursing through Their visitor's veins is Saiyan.

They are no strangers to stories of the terror wrought by the long-expunged warrior race; in much the same fashion as the mercenary arm of the Cold Empire, the Saiyans had been infamously joyful dealers of suffering, bereavement, and death across a span of galaxies. Unlike those under the employ of Cold and his vicious sons, the Saiyans had engaged in the planet trade less for profit or dominion, and more for sheer thrill of battle and blood.

The self-same love of contest is stamped indelibly into Son Goku's psyche, an inextricable part of him he's made no attempt to deny or resist. Yet…this one's heritage is somehow not the sum of his identity; his is a spirit of infinite compassion and impregnable purity, whose life's energy has been spent in willing, gleeful service of virtue and justice.

An anomaly then, is this Saiyan raised on Earth, whose heart so consummately belies the predispositions of his genetic nature.

It is this very nature he struggles against now, awakened by the sister furies of unstable wrath and crushing despair, the terrible potency of which threaten to crush his will and bend him to the very violence from whence his new power had been borne.

For days without end, They gradually loosen the knotting malevolence, gently coaxing snarls apart while Their comatose charge relies upon some preternatural restraint mechanism to hold his volatile energy at bay. Every hour that passes earns him increasing levels of admiration and astonishment, until at length, They are left simply in awe -that They are all still alive, certainly, but also that so visceral a being could withstand such a prolonged spiritual onslaught; his fortitude is nothing short of phenomenal.

Leading into Their fourth Solar Day, They've sorted through enough of the psychic tangles that They've begun toying with the idea of excising what remains of the iniquitous knot in the interest of time -until Son Goku stops them. A brief, though stern, rebuff echoes into his thoughts, forbidding this course, together with the self-possessed assurance that he will not allow himself to make fruitless Their kind efforts to help him.

They believe him, and accede, patiently beginning Their work anew. They have yet higher esteem for him still, that he would choose to accept his darkness, to know and conquer and use it, as much for the unity of his spirit as for the strength that comes with it.

It is well into their seventh Solar Day before, at long, long last, Their visitor looses the transformation, the golden flame of his person extinguished in the blink of an eye, leaving Them an unconscious, much smaller-looking male with dark, wild hair. Within seconds, he begins emitting Most Perturbing noises from his nose and mouth, wordless, guttural rumblings produced -so far as They can tell—somewhere in the vicinity of his throat and alternatively tapering and crescendoing into a great, rattling roar…

After careful observation, They decide this behavior is innocuous, if odd, and turn to preparing for Their own, much needed Resting Cycles, leaving two among Them to monitor Their slumbering guest.

***

Vegeta's spontaneous globe-trotting foray turns out to be merely the first in a long series of improvisational vanishing acts, and while the free-loading little snot always manages to find his way back to Capsule Corp (invariably just as dinner's being served), it's rare he stays for more than a day or two -if that—before he disappears all over again, without a word, often for days and weeks at a time.

…which, okay, fine, isn't such an unfamiliar pattern when she stops to think about it -Goku'd never been able to stay put for long, either, preferring instead to be constantly on the move, living off the land, making new friends, challenging and fighting evermore mind-bogglingly powerful opponents, forever restless to match himself against warriors who will push him to his very limits -and beyond.

Son-kun's has been -and would likely always be- an adventurous spirit; now, in light of Vegeta's routine truancy, she begins to wonder if the impulse for itinerancy isn't a heritable trait for Saiyans.

The rest of the senshi have embarked -regularly, in fact—on their fair share of lengthy, long-distance training expeditions, true enough, but between tournaments and escapades and the periodic epic battle to defend Earth from an assortment of scary-terrible psychopaths, each and every last one of them (even Tenshinhan, though he would deny it) occasionally require respite, to pursue relationships or careers, to rest broken bodies and frayed nerves.

But not Goku. His habit, for as long as she's known him, has been to set off in search of the next big adventure the instant his current one comes to a close. Son-kun hadn't been made for sedentary life.

And neither, apparently, had Vegeta.

She's fast learning to be glad of this, since when he is around, he's alternatively snappish and standoffish, vehement or cold, ordering her parents -primarily her mother—about in menacing tones precisely as she feared he might (and just as she feared they might, her parents have taken to enabling his Authority Over All Beings attitude by indulging his every royal whim, which is not helping set the precedent that they're not slaves to be commanded, DAMMIT), occasionally prodding her into hysterical explosions of rage, which all-too-often seem to end with him elaborating (with increasing imagination) on the (really rather upsetting) theme of her untimely demise -a fate she's managed thus far to sidestep, in spite of what would appear to be his ferocious, unconditional hatred of everything about her.

Still, none of this alarms or disturbs her nearly as much as the -now recurrent—occasions she catches him casting sidelong glances at Gohan, expression critical, assessing -ominous. Bulma's seen for herself that Goku's little boy is no pushover, and knows there's a damn good chance he's one of the most dangerous six-year-olds in the known universe, besides; the trouble is, a few short weeks ago, Vegeta'd batted that dangerous six-year-old aside with unsettling ease, and was likely no less capable of the same now. With no clue what Vegeta's strange fixation could possibly mean (though she's got upsetting theories to spare), she's worried, almost frightened that the Prince has keyed onto something in her best friend's kid that might provide pretext to hurt him. Or worse.

Apart from his aura of Impending Doom and the black cloud of surly unpleasantness that follows him around wherever he goes, though, she supposes he's pretty alright for a tenant. He's loads tidier than Goku will ever learn to be, has the sense of manners if not always -or ever—the inclination to use them, and while he is around, he mostly keeps to himself (except when he's snapping out commands or pledging to murder her in her sleep), shadow-boxing on the lawn or confining himself to his room, only ever appearing when there's food to be eaten or a little boy to creepily narrow his eyes at from afar.

Overall low-maintenance (not counting their now outrageous food bill) and unobtrusive, Vegeta hardly ranks the worst live-in guest she's ever had (-this assessment being of course contingent on his continued adherence to her Not Killing Things ordinance). Then again, she supposes that probably says less about Vegeta's agreeability than it does about her flawlessly regrettable choices of company; in an inventory of weirdo-cracked, messy, thieving-pervert, and/or cheating-bastard housemates, the Prince has got some pretty large shoes to fill.

It happens mid-way through a very unflattering mental crack concerning her doubts that the little jerk ever could fill 'large' shoes: an odd, fizzling current cuts through her, starting somewhere around her fingertips and tingling to her toes, prompting her to her feet and carrying her out of the lab before she fully realizes she's gotten up. She has the vague impression she's looking for something, but only abstractly; this is primarily a subconscious venture. She's still got algorithms running laps around her brain, so she's mostly just wandering, not really going anywhere until she is, and by the time she's outside she decides she must be losing it, because she can't put a finger on what brought her out here in the first place.

There's nothing here to see, a big stretch of lawn, a couple of engineers making their way from one building to another, her dad's fourth spaceship prototype, and -oh, there's Vegeta, staring up at said prototype, looking thoroughly scuffed, doubtless scarcely returned from his latest expedition. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Shaking the curious sense that she knew he'd be here out of her head, she considers Vegeta's unmoving form, perhaps, she imagines, contemplating when he's going to steal the ship and escape without so much as a 'thanks for all the food!' She saunters up to him, expecting that he's probably already well aware of her, even if it appears to all the world as if he's got no clue she's approaching.

***

He is aware of her, naturally, from the moment she steps out of the house. The soft-peculiar smell of her laces the breeze, complement to the quicksilver resonance of her ki; virtually nil as it is, its flavor is also unusual, distinctively so, and immediately discernible in consequence. The essential (disturbing) implication here is that at some unknowable point these past weeks, he'd made the (obviously involuntary) determination she's worth psychically cataloguing, which her inevitable death at his hands should have rendered pointless, and which his general loathing of her person should have precluded, besides. He has no want of psychic connection with the accursed creature, no matter how faint or fleeting.

And yet, there it is, in spite of everything, the low timbre of her life's energy maintaining a steady pulse at the back of his mind.

The woman is a damn nuisance.

Quite without hesitation, she shimmies up next to him, loosely folds her arms over her stomach, and casually strikes up a conversation.

It appears impossible to impress upon her his desire to be left the hell alone.

"Thinkin' of hitting the road already, huh? And here I'd been betting you'd last at least a couple months before you ran screaming." He does not so much as spare her a glance.

"I am neither running nor screaming, woman."

"It's just a turn of phrase, jerk." He can't resist the tug of amusement at her sour mimicry and finds himself promptly in a Very Bad Mood because of it. "And now that we've got the formalities out of the way…" she begins wryly, "Whadd'ya say to…oh, maybe, giving this baby a test drive?" That gets his attention. "Dad's outfitted this one with the same gravity technology he used for the initial prototype -the one Goku used to get to Namek, I mean—but this guy's packing a few flashy new improvements from yours truly. Better field stability, higher-threshold reinforcements made to withstand energy kickbacks of much higher intensity, and so forth. How 'bout it? I can show you how it works, and you can, um, do…push-ups, or whatever it is you do under forces which should, technically, be crushing you into putty where you stand."

It's not the first time he's heard of Capsule Corp's so-called 'gravity technology,' nor that Kakarrot had utilized it for intensive training purposes en route to Namek, on a space ship pioneered and provided, again, by Bulma and her family. He supposes a part of him had recognized the possibility that this vessel might be similarly-equipped. But it hadn't occurred to him that the Earthers would ever allow him to use this technology in the event that it was, figuring it Extremely Likely they had several layers of hi-tech safeguards in place to prevent such a scenario from ever being so much as entertained.

That she's not only allowing, but inviting him to use this machine which will in all likelihood expedite her own destruction is a difficult concept to apprehend -or to take without a healthy portion of misgiving.

"What."

"I know what you're thinking -beauty and brains? Shocking, yes. But true." Sneering disdain tears at his lip.

"The catch, you lunatic female. I demand to know the gods-forsaken catch." She fixes him with a vacant expression. Oblivious as her damn mother, this one. "If this is misplaced faith that I will spare your insane species out of gratitude for your overtures of goodwill, allow me to remove your misunderstanding: the instant I ascend and eliminate Kakarrot, your backwater cesspool is dust, space debris, a bad memory -and you with it." Hard reproval swims in her gaze -against that now-familiar backdrop of despondence and disappointment. "If your motivations for the offer are not instead to set me up for some feeble and futile assassination attempt, then what precisely, is the catch?"

"What if there isn't one?" He snorts, skeptical. "What if all I'm thinking is what a good idea it'd be to make an effort to keep you from getting bored, so you won't go around taking all your pent-up issues out on my planet? Or," she smiles unkindly, "what if I'm just trying to be nice?" Performing a nimble little twirl on her toes, she rounds on him, steel in her expression. "I haven't forgotten your Great Big Evil Agenda, Vegeta, or that you have to go through Son-kun to carry it out. So maybe this is me letting you know I don't think you've got what it takes to beat him, no matter how much crazy training you do."

For one pristine instant, he sees her death, imagines the perfect, unadulterated silence as her life leaves her -and there, a flicker of genuine fear, the instinctive rush of adrenaline; something in his gaze has reached her, and he perceives that she understands quite well the very real peril she's courting -understands it, and brushes it aside, a worry in the wind.

Inexplicably, he approves.

"Oooor…" She takes one, two steps toward him, until she's scarcely an arm's breadth away. "Maybe I've decided to hedge my bets in favor of my 'backwater cesspool.' I've lived here long enough to know that it grows on you -that Goku grows on you, before you've even realized it."

"Your refusal to face reality borders on obscenity."

Ignoring him,

"Whatever the reason, Prince Paranoid—" she punctuates the epithet with the sound rap of her knuckles against the shoulder strap of his armor (eyes going briefly wide when her skin skims along the surface), "—maybe you could try to be a little more gracious when someone offers you a gift, instead of being immediately suspicious I'm about to demand...some terrible price in return…?" He hears the thought taper, watches her brightening with interest, wondering what in the world could possibly be so captivating about his armor that she'd so easily table her ridiculous question (and the rebuke preceding it) in favor of openly staring at her fingers, splayed over the fractured material at the collar.

Intending to snap at her (or at the very least tear off her arm), he settles instead for a program of Thoroughly Unhappy Glowering, no longer certain where this is going when her thumb drags along the fissured plate, lower lip dragged between her teeth by the unfathomable courses of her mind, blue gaze rapt.

With a final (oddly-solicitous) slide of her fingertips over the damage, she snaps her hand back and curtly drops it to her waist, pinning him in the following instant with a level stare. The staid effect is somewhat diminished by the poorly-concealed, livewire excitement of her entire person.

"That's the only armor you've got, huh?"

"If it is?"

"Oh…no reason. Just…I was thinking maybe you'd like to let me borrow it for a bit; doesn't look like it's doing you much good, anyway…" His first impulse is to immediately deny her what she so obviously wants. But he pauses to reconsider; there are possibilities for himself here, as well. For all that she's a shrieking harpy of a woman, she may yet be able to provide him a valuable service.

"You are capable of manufacturing more?" Bulma looks near to exploding with anticipation, in spite of her best efforts to maintain the pretense of cool indifference.

"Well, obviously I've got no idea what sort of materials it's made from, and I couldn't say for sure whether or not we'd be able to engineer a passable facsimile even if I did. I don't know anything about the manufacturing process, either, or if we've got the equipment to handle the production." She sets her hands at her hips, leans forward conspiratorially. "But if you're a betting man, I'd say you're safe putting your money on me. I am a genius, after all."

He's silent long enough for her to draw the conclusion that he means to turn her down. When the hopeful tension of her shoulders slumps, defeated, he takes another moment to bask in the glow of her dismay, and then peels the armor from his back in one fluid motion, dropping it rudely at feet instead of holding it out for her to take. It is (deliberately) not the sort of gesture one expects to elicit a positive response.

Which is only the first of several hundred reasons Vegeta doesn't see it coming.

The woman launches herself at him, a soft curve offensive that takes him entirely -and inexcusably—by surprise. Thin arms band around his neck, and her gratitude peals, shrill, directly into his ear, while he processes the delicate fragrance of her skin, the shamefully not-unpleasant strangeness of her embrace.

There's no time even to forcefully repel her before she's pulling away, her awareness of him eclipsed at once by the discarded object between them. Stooping, incognizant of his fuming turmoil, the woman scoops the armor into her arms, enchanted absorption inscribed into her very being. Beginning to babble excitedly to herself about dimensions and tensile strength and gods-knows-what-else, she glibly turns and hurries off, forgetting him.

Definitely not for the first time, Vegeta's left seething in speechless frustration, wondering what the fuck had just happened.

It isn't until hours later that he remembers she'd run off without showing him how to operate the ship's gravity training program.

***

Piccolo feels the light brush of Gohan's ki long before the boy appears. When he does, the kid, well-mannered as ever, cuts him a short bow, one chubby fist cradled against the opposite palm. Silence swathes the clearing, settling against the cool quiet of night.

As always, Gohan is the one who pierces through it.

"I started derivatives today, Mr. Piccolo." And so the litany of Gohan's day begins; the kid hadn't respected his demands for peace and quiet from the outset, but recently his heir could not be shut up. Not even the threat of a proper beating fazes him anymore, instead effecting only a blinding, mega-watt smile, demonstrating Piccolo's degradation for all to see. He knows it doesn't bode well for his Evil Overlord aspirations that he's no longer capable of frightening a six-year-old.

But…some alien touch of his mind doggedly teases into coherence, this has become a thing to live for.

Even as he begrudgingly accepts this for the truth that it is, he makes a mental note to begin the task of murdering Nail. ASAP. These gooey-sweet sentiments are giving him identity issues, dammit.

"Mr. Piccolo?"

"What." It comes out a bit more gruffly than he intends, but Gohan's impervious, his mind clearly elsewhere. He begins shuffling nervously over the loose dirt at his feet and self-consciously toeing at an invisible rock, eyes downcast and cheeks flush. The Demon King braces himself.

"I…wanted to thank you…" One at a time, the kid's tiny fists lock into a death grip around the lower hem of his gi, compulsively clenching, "…for saving my life, I mean, when we were fighting Mr. Vegeta's, uhh, his friend. I never got to say I'm sorry for not being strong enough—"

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself, kid." Piccolo rebukes. Then, facing the stretch of night-dark sky where Earth's satellite should be, where twice now it had been blown to dust to save the world from the most peaceable Saiyans ever to've lived, "You did good. Better still on Namek. It's no wonder the Vegetable Prince is so interested in your development."

Meekly, "He's interested in my development?"

"He's definitely keeping tabs. I don't know how or when Short Stuff learned to read ki, but that's definitely what he's doing; I'd suspected as much back on Namek, but it's only since we've been back that I've been certain. You hop up a few levels, and he redoubles whatever the hell training he's doing out there. Pretty sure he knows you're the one to watch out for if Goku doesn't make it back." Gohan pouts, disapproving. Piccolo scowls, put out. "Quit moping. You know just as well as I do we couldn't get rid of your constant headache of a father if we wanted to." He's expecting the kid to break out into one of those knowing grins, intuitively reading Piccolo's derision as underlying confidence in and/or concern for his idiot sire, which he only even acknowledges because it doesn't appear Nail will stop poking at it until he does.

Instead, Gohan's face draws down further.

And then, a question he doesn't expect: "Is this the way it's always going to be, Mr. Piccolo?" It's a hard, heavy matter for the boy to lay before him; he can hear it in the fine tremor of Gohan's voice. "Is this the way it always has been?"

"Why, don't think you can tough it, kid?"

Earnestly,

"I don't want to have to." He understands now, more clearly than ever, that Gohan is not his father, and never will be. Nor will he ever be anything close to Piccolo's envisioning, which is a damn, crying shame. The potential to rule with the whole damn Universe under his thumb, and the kid just wants to learn numbers and nature and get home in time to keep his mom happy. There's just no drilling any wickedness into him.

Quietly, the Demon King sighs; he's known as much for a while, probably since the beginning, but it's no easy, trifling thing to accept. This had not been in the Diabolical Master Plan.

"Can't say you won't have to, Gohan. Your dad and disaster go way, way back." The child deflates, just a little.

After a moment's pause,

"Yeah, I guess I already knew that." The kid draws in a slow, deep breath. Then, the line of his mouth twitches up into that dangerously Saiyan smirk. "But next time, it'll be different." The perfect-placid steadiness of Gohan's ki might've unsettled him, had he not known from the start that his pupil would one day surpass them all. "Next time, I'm going to be ready."

Piccolo grins, pleased.

I don't doubt it, kid.

***

When he awakens after what feels like weeks, it's to soft sheets and warmly smiling faces -and, unless his nose is lying, an enormous, heavenly-smelling feast!

Goku likes it here already.

***

for those of you wondering what happened to all the promised scenes referred to in the previous chapter's preview, now seems like a good time to warn you that those things always end up being more loose guidelines than actual tidings of What's to Come.

AND.

in case you were curious -i'm definitely taking vegeta-zarbon relationship cues from vejiitasei ascendant. they are secretly bestest pals, dagflabbit. FO' REALZ.

also.

i know it probably feels like we're slogging along at snail's pace, but that's only because we are. it's (mostly) deliberate, though; there's 130-some days worth of Untapped Tension Potential before the android saga gets underway, and i'd just like to give that due attention before we slither Plot-ward. i figure there'll be one, possibly two more chaps of pre-android saga shenanigans, after which i promise Things of Substance will actually start happening.

maybe.

next chapter: goku struggles with the task of dressing himself, the nameks search for a New Home, bulma barricades herself in the lab, porunga cameos, and vegeta steals a space ship.