Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Legend Of the Bond ❯ My new Life.... ( Chapter 2 )

It took three months for the ship to reach Vegeta-sei and during that time Bulma was in hell. Each night the whispers would come to her in a chorus. One auditory onslaught caused her ears to bleed and more than once she passed out. And on those nights, the prince had tried to enter the second cell but was unable to. Finally, during the last few days of their trip, the prince decided to keep a clear distance from Chikyuu-jins, to fuck it all. Bulma felt the urgent whispers less and less in those last few days, but her worry and uncertainty grew. What was going to happen to her and her fellow cellmates? She had clung to Chi-chi, creating a deep friendship with her new friend and praying that, when they reached whatever destination, they could remain together.

The prince had also grown very unsettled. When they landed he would have to take a pod to see Freeza. He knew that he would probably be beaten almost to his death for what he’d done. He would survive, he was strong and perhaps the only hope for his people, and he was too valuable to Freeza for the lizard to let him die. His father believed that Freeza was a godsend to the Saiya-jin Empire, but the prince knew the truth: Freeza wanted to destroy Vegeta-sei. Not only had he heard various rumors, he’d also overheard Freeza’s lackeys discussing it. His father was too drunk on Freeza’s influence to see his mistake and now he, the prince, was the only hope for his people and his empire.

**********

Bulma felt the ship shake and rumble underneath her, like it had three months earlier, signaling to her that they were landing. By this time, most her cellmates who had survived were too far gone to care. Some had become insane, broken or were killed for causing a scene during mealtimes. Chi-chi, as she found out, was a fighter and was well able to survive the trip, which allowed Bulma to survive as well. During the landing, the lights had come fully on, causing both her and Chi-chi to squint their eyes. When the shaking and rumbling finally stopped, they both knew they had reached their destination. They looked at each other and nodded.

“Let’s try to stick together,” Bulma whispered into Chi-chi’s ear.

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

“But…if we do happen to get separated, let’s not get upset, because they probably would kill us like those others if we did.”

Chi-chi only nodded to this, but after a moment realized that most likely this was the last day either one of them would see each other.

“Let’s make a promise…” Chi-chi’s voice was filled with pain and sorrow.

“Okay, what promise?”

“To survive.”

Just as Bulma’s face paled at the true meaning of her friend’s words, the cell doors opened to reveal the man she hated the most, the man responsible for all this. She didn’t know his name, but she could recognize that ugly, bald head anywhere. His tail was wrapped around him, his arms were folded before him and his face held a disturbing smirk. Behind him walked what looked like a tall, spiky-haired Saiya-jin.

“Nappa, lets get this done quickly,” the spiky-haired one said. Bulma’s mind immediately grabbed on to the larger one’s name: “Nappa.” Now, she had a name on which to center her burning hate and rage. Nappa. The man who killed her father and brought her into hell.

“Shut up, Radditz! I know what I’m doing!” Nappa yelled back in annoyance at the other Saiya-jin. Radditz ignored Nappa’s outburst and stepped forward with a pile of papers, or so it seemed to Bulma, in his hands.

“Alright, you worthless pieces of trash! Each of you will be filling out these forms to determine to which slave department you’ll be assigned! If you don’t have them completed in ten minutes, I will make sure to blast you to hell myself!” Nappa yelled to the Chikyuu-jin “slaves,” as he put it. Bulma’s heart sank further down.

So that’s what we now are! she thought to herself. She wouldn’t be a slave! She rather die now as a free person than live a life of servitude to these evil beings! So, with a small breath, she stood and glared daggers at Nappa, ready to fight and die for freedom.

Speechless, Chi-chi’s face paled. What of our promise, Bulma? Chi-chi desperately called out with her thoughts, knowing Bulma would not hear them, but hoped none the less.

Nappa was watching Radditz handing out the forms when his eyes reached Bulma. He remembered that girl from before. He remembered how much he disliked her defiant expression when he captured her back on Chikyuu. His face curled in rage and disgust. He would teach her where her place was.

“You should know your place, wench!” he growled loudly, but she did not move. She would not allow herself to show fear. He stormed up to her and grabbed her collar, lifting her off her feet to be nose-to-nose with him. But still, she would not break. Nappa remembered where he got her from and the prince’s orders not to kill any Chikyuu-jin females. He was not allowed to outright kill her, but then he thought of the next best thing, even though he would be, in a way, breaking orders. Oh, well, he smirked to himself, what’s one little Chikyuu-jin girl?

“Little wench, you will learn to know your place. Just because you are too damned ugly to be of any real use, I’m going to send you somewhere that makes Hell look like a vacation spot!” Hearing that, Radditz stopped passing out forms and now was staring at Nappa as if he had a death wish. Nappa smirked as his hold grew tighter, causing Bulma to gasp as her breath was cut off.

“You, little bitch, will be sent to Slave Master Chili of the 3rd-class slave department. No slave has survived more then three months under him, as Tabe-jins are a cruel species that love to inflict pain.” Nappa couldn’t keep in his menacing chuckle. Bulma hadn’t really heard him as she was struggling to breathe. Nappa released her and she came crashing to the floor. All Bulma heard before she passed out was Chi-chi calling out her name as she rushed to her side. She looked up into her friend’s face, and with tears forming in her eyes, Chi-chi became a blur. Then she saw no more.

**********

Bulma woke with a start as she was dumped into a chilly, stagnant pond. She gasped for air, arms flinging around in a vain attempt to remove herself from the smelly water. Suddenly strong arms grabbed her by the hair and flung her towards the ground. She slowly made her way to her feet, shaking slightly. She felt dizzy and out of place, trying to make out the words a funky-looking man was yelling at her. Suddenly, she felt him smack her across the face and she came to full attention. Before her stood a being with orange skin, complete with two red eyes ― no, make that four eyes ― and two holes where a nose was supposed to be. She held back the urge to vomit.

“You lazy fucking whore! You will learn your place or I will beat you in to it!” he screamed. He was holding a gray robe in his hand, much like the one he was wearing. It was nothing special, just a basic garment to cover one’s body, which would allow one to work, no matter how menial the job. He flung it into her face.

“Put this on! Your new duties will begin with washing dishes in the main Mess Hall. You should be grateful I’m starting you off with this. After nightfall, you will come back to see me and I will show you where you will sleep. Do not rest; do not take a break, and do not eat! You will eat tomorrow. One mistake and I’ll give you a real good beating! NOW HURRY BEFORE I DECIDE TO BEAT YOU ANYWAY!”

Bulma was too out of it to reply, no matter how much she wanted to. So she simply complied and donned the robe. She glared at the ugly thing in front of her as he led her to the Mess Hall. Once she arrived there, she stared in amazement at the filthy state it which it was. The dishes were piled a mile high, laden with grease and dirt…and blood…crusting around the edges. The creature left her so she could start. Only then she realized how dangerous this job really was. Knives and sharp utensils were hiding everywhere. The unstable stacks of dirty dishes, taller than she was, were all over, and the water in the vomit-filled sink looked nearly toxic. The night wouldn’t come fast enough for her.

**********

Prince Vegeta was on the floor, bruised and bleeding. Before him stood a white humanoid lizard, a blue-skinned pretty boy, and a pink humanoid blob. They all were smirking except the lizard, Freeza. Vegeta squeezed his eyes harder to shut out the pain, trying not to get up. As expected, Freeza was displeased and had mercilessly beaten the boy for the last hour. Vegeta had come to explain his actions and merely stated that he and his other companions had gotten carried up in their zeal during the invasion and had destroyed Chikyuu as an afterthought. Freeza was quite angry about it but knew that Saiya-jins became easily carried away whenever they fought, purged and murdered. Still, he would love to kill the boy for letting a fortune go down the drain. But the boy was too much under his control and too much of a valuable fighter. Freeza decide that he would let the boy live…barely.

Vegeta barely hung on. His thoughts clung to the need to protect his people, his pride, and oddly…those whispers. Throughout the hour, the whispers came to him, very lightly, very softly, almost encouraging him…

Survive…be strong…promise…They were the only words that he could make out. Oddly, he seemed to draw strength from them. He stayed conscious until Freeza decided to stop. Vegeta could swear almost every bone in his young body had been broken and he would gain even more scars now.

**********

Luckily, Bulma was able to keep herself from getting cut, knowing she would lose her arm or hand to some deadly infection because of the nasty “water” if she did. Her thoughts during this ordeal had been plagued again by those soft whispers, the same ones she had since she had gotten captured. But this time they were full of pain. She felt that she needed to be strong so that perhaps the pain in the whispers’ voices would lessen. And they did. Bulma also kept remembering that promise she gave Chi-chi and it kept her going.

When she was done that chore, she returned to Slave Master Chili, as she found out who he was, whose job it was to assign her weekly duties and where her place of rest would be. He was disappointed, to say the least, that Bulma had returned without cutting herself. He simply told her of her new duties, the rules, and the hours she was granted off, of which there were hardly any. Mainly, her duties were to serve the 3rd-class soldier brackets, consisting mostly of the female officers and a couple male ones. Everyday, she was to wake three hours before light, clean the main hallway, prepare the officers’ clothes, take them their food and clothing, then feed the bracket’s pets. When those were done, she was to go to the engineering department, where the 3rd-class rejuvenation tanks and armor were maintained, to pick up the trash there, then clean the outside gardens and dust the vases in the main audience chamber.

After she had taken care of all her duties, she could have some free time, but could not leave the compound and had to stay out of sight. She was to serve the female officers Seripa, Serori, Negi, Letta, and Nasu. Her male clientele were Pota and Toma. She made it a point to properly remember all of their names so she would not offend them. She was aptly reminded that the men would want more services from her later on. As she was only 12, she could only imagine what that meant. She was also supposed to perform other duties when called for.

When Bulma reached the place where she would call “home” for the rest of her days, she quickly scanned around for Chi-chi, praying she would be among the other slaves who did the other work here and serviced the other soldiers. But as she looked about the room, Chi-chi was nowhere to be seen. She noticed that the room smelled of blood and sickness. There were about 15 beds that were merely slabs of the floor raised knee high and covered with a light, thin, bamboo-like padding and one window that was completely opened and seemed to stay open. She saw that the other occupants of these quarters were already asleep. Chili pointed to the one vacant bed on the right.

“We eat in the morning. Sleep, for you have plenty of work to do tomorrow!” He quickly turned and left, leaving her alone in the dark with only the scantest of pale moonlight coming in the open window to guide her.

All the slaves were asleep, dead asleep. In the darkness, Bulma had stumbled against one of the beds, making some noise, not much, but enough that it would have awoken her if she had been the one sleeping, but no one moved an inch. She finally made it to her bed and lay down slowly on the hard and uncomfortable surface. She frowned as the nightwind passed over her bare arms and legs, causing her to shudder. She decided to use the padding as a blanket just to keep warm.

She was on Vegeta-sei and she didn’t even get a chance to look outside to see her new “home” planet. She frowned again, realizing they must have put her here for her to be broken or killed. Bulma thought of her promise to Chi-chi. Her promise… I wonder if I should just accept the fact that I’ll probably die here? As soon as the thought entered her mind she angrily shook her head. No! She was Bulma Briefs! She was smart, beautiful and strong! She would not allow some monkeys and some stupid, ugly-looking alien to break her!

She made up her mind then. She would learn to survive here, to be stronger, and to outwit all these stupid bastards! She would keep her promise…no, more than that. She would become a lot stronger, then break free and rescue Chi-chi. She would leave this place and find another home. She would continue on for that hope. She wouldn’t allow them to break her, to view her as weak! She would watch and learn, making sure not to repeat others’ mistakes. She would outsmart them all and perhaps…if she got strong enough and smart enough…she would get revenge for her people and Chikyuu on the bastard who destroyed it!

**********

It had been a very hard first week for Bulma. She had woken on her first day to meet hell face-on. She woke, ate disgusting food then had to clean a mile-long hallway before she had to serve her clientele. The first time, she had to rush to finish, which had led to a “soft” beating. Sore, she collected food and cleaned the clothing for the soldiers she served, before delivering them, which turned out be a hardship in itself.

Upon reaching the first room, she was literally scared out of her wits as she entered. Unfortunately for her, this was to be repeated throughout the deliveries that followed. Whenever she entered one of the soldiers’ rooms, she was alternately insulted, ignored, or sometimes hit hard across the face. Then she had to scramble to gather up the dirty clothes to deliver them to the laundry department. After she served their food, they would literally kicked her out. But the two men were harder on her, making teasing attempts to grab and grope her, almost to the point of being pedophilic. Bulma had no other choice but to run errands for them as well, fetching their armor or documents, and cleaning up messes they left behind.

It was well past the afternoon when she left to feed the bracket’s pets. This time, she was almost certain she would die for each pet she encountered was more vicious than the last. The last pet she needed to feed resembled a huge cat with three tails that looked back at her as if she was going to be its food. With a sigh, she remembered all the demanding, but gentle, cats that lived with her back home on Chikyuu and how she wished she was feeding them now instead of this awful creature. However, her “cat” knowledge managed to come in handy and she was able to leave the pet hall with only a couple of rips in the hem of her robe and her life intact, but just barely. She almost ran out of the pet hall when she was done, but luckily she had won a small battle and she was not eaten.

As soon as she got to the engineering department for the 3rd-class brackets, she knew her duties here were going to be much more dangerous. If she wasn’t a scientist/inventor/engineer, she would have been dead the first day. The head engineer smirked down at her and told her what she needed to do. Her job was to pick up and dispose of various pieces of failed machinery that, if handled in the wrong way, would have either shocked her or caused severe bodily damage or complete brain damage. She merely glared at him with a growing hate in her blue eyes, but he simply chuckled and told her to get to work. As she began to pick the items up, he would pause to look at her then continue what he was doing, all with a knowing look of pleasure, as if he already knew what was going to happen to her. She looked at the first piece in her hand then frowned. She caught his smirk and glared back at him with annoyance. She would show him that Dr. Brief’s little girl knew what she was doing. The discarded pieces got deadlier, but she picked each one of them up carefully and correctly. After each successful collection, she made sure to throw a hate-filled, triumphant glance at the head engineer, who looked more and more displeased.

With that chore finally done, she left to go clean the main audience chamber’s vases and her gardening (which was nearly as bad as doing the dishes). As she went along to each task, she made careful note of her whereabouts so she would not get lost. She also studied other slaves’ behaviors and attitudes and what tactics would either help her survive or get her killed. Staying out of sight, she would watch with enthusiasm and interest the training ground where the soldiers sparred. Sometimes she couldn’t even make out the fighters’ movements as they leapt into the sky and their blows and kicks became faster than her eye could follow.

As night came, she went back to the slave chamber along with the other slaves. Slave Master Chili was there looking rather unpleasant. Bulma had a feeling that he had fully expected her to either come back half-dead or be killed outright. Sure, she felt dead-tired and she ached horribly, but she had made it, bruised from her rough treatment but alive. A furious Chili gave her another beating, just because she didn’t appear hurt enough then told her to go to sleep.

During the rest of the week, she found out that they only bothered to feed the slaves once every other day; sometimes two days in a row, if they were lucky. She learned to get food whenever she gardened by eating a few things that she determined were safe. Through trial and error, she found her extra source of nourishment on the third day, only after vomiting out a couple of mistakes. Each day grew more dangerous, because each time she triumphed by staying alive, she was beaten for it. She forced herself to stop crying altogether, constantly reminding herself of her promise, to become stronger. The people in the engineering department kept directing her towards the more dangerous items to clean up, but she was still smart enough to notice what they were trying to do and stayed cautious. She had trouble at times communicating because she couldn’t understand Saiyan language. She picked up a few words and went from there, trying hard not to let anyone know she was learning. Bulma managed to get to her sixth day, alive and in one piece. Until then, the soldiers continued to mistreat her, with the exception of one…who became nicer.

On her seventh day, Bulma entered Seripa’s chambers after she was commanded to do so. Bulma was silent as she placed the food down on the table in front of the female officer. Seripa caught Bulma’s eyes for a moment then started to eat in silence. Bulma thought it was very weird. She had always been on the receiving end of insults from Seripa, but never silence. Frankly, it scared the shit out of her. So she quickly turned around and set out the clean clothes on Seripa’s bed before collecting the dirty ones, slightly cleaning up as she went along. When she was done, Bulma headed for the door, but Seripa’s voice stopped her. Wide-eyed and confused, Bulma turned to face her. She didn’t bow or keep her head down, she just stared back at Seripa, unbelieving at what she’d just heard.

“Dumbass slave, did you not hear me? I said WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” Seripa repeated through the scouter’s translator.

“B-Bulma Briefs,” Bulma stuttered. This was the closest that anyone had spoken to her like a person in a week.

“Hmph! Seems like you’re the first slave to survive longer then a day or two at this post.”

“I ―” Bulma didn’t know what to say. So she steeled herself and spoke with fire in her eyes. “I don’t wish to die, but to become stronger...that was my promise to a friend.”

Seripa raised her eyebrows in surprise. This slave sounded very Saiya-jin-like. A week at her post hadn’t broken her yet. She had wondered how long it would take for this fragile-looking, blue-haired girl to break, yet she had lasted the week, which could not be said for the weak slaves who had come before her. Seripa frowned. It was a waste to her, for this slave seemed worthy of some respect.

“I suppose we shall see,” Seripa said as she finished her meal. Bulma removed the empty plate quickly and gracefully.

Seripa suddenly thought of an old book that she had in her chambers; a useless thing which she had desperately wanted to rid herself of. With it, she would test this slave, for her graceful movements and her fire seemed worthy of her experiment. Seripa got up from the table and went to open up a chest. With one hand, she pulled out an old torn, beat-up bodysuit meant for training, and with the other she picked up the book. She turned around and shoved these items into a very puzzled Bulma, that already had her hands full.

“I want these things disposed of…but in manner which would allow me to see them again. I have no use for them, but I expect them not be destroyed or else I will blast you to hell. Got it?” Seripa’s cold glare bore into Bulma as she slowly nodded back catching the officer’s hidden meaning. ”Perhaps another could use these things…Now, slave, get out of my sight!” Bulma nodded and blinked, then spun around and bolted out of the door. In her rough way, Seripa had given these as gifts for her to use and now she needed to find a way to hide them.