Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Price You Pay ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

Insert standard disclaimer here.

 

The Price You Pay: Chapter One

The morning was young and beautiful, but as Bulma Briefs woke up, she decided she most definitely couldn't relate. It had been a week. One whole week since the last time she'd spoken with Yamcha. They'd broken up months ago, almost immediately after she returned from Namek and he was wished back, but she couldn't help but feel guilty. Guilty for making him feel guilty.

He'd come over, bright, cheery, and unmistakably showing the signs of a good lay. He was practically sweating the stench of the woman's perfume. It was too much for her to handle, just too much. She'd spent a long night at the office (not that that was anything new to her), and just couldn't deal with his god-damned smugness. It didn't matter that their relationship had been terminated, and it sure as hell didn't matter that she hadn't been able to stop thinking about his cheating ass ever since they'd broken up. He was free from her for Kami's sake, he did not have to rub it in. Which she took the liberty of informing him, publicly, and in an alarmingly high tone of voice.

Much to her disgrace, Yamcha had actually just come back from his first shoot with Sports Illustrated and couldn't wait to tell Bulma about the day he'd had. He hadn't come back from seeing Suzi, or Jennifer, or Jessica, or whoever the hell she'd thought he was whoring along with. And the perfume, that was from the photo editor who was hanging all over him—a rotund middle-aged woman who couldn't seem to keep her hands off of him. All this he tried to explain to no avail.

I'm such a horrible friend.

After about five minutes of sprawling on her mattress, staring up at the ceiling, and making herself believe she was a horrible person, friend, and family member, Bulma finally managed to drag herself out of bed. Grabbing her cotton robe off of the nightstand, she made her way into her private bathroom and prepared to take a shower. There was nothing a good lather, rinse, and repeat couldn't resolve. Absolutely nothing.

 

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Besides the fact that his training had left him more drained than usual, Vegeta was actually feeling refreshed. After falling asleep around two in the morning and waking up to do his standard warm up exercises at six, which included a ridiculous number of crunches (at least 10,000) and an equally ridiculous number of push-ups, he was left feeling uncannily relaxed. His sleep had been dreamless, not littered with images of the planets and people he'd destroyed under Freeza's command. For this small thing, he was thankful.

It was time to take a shower. A nice cold and rigid shower. He wouldn't have it any other way. Who wanted to wake up to a warm shower anyway? No one in their right mind.

The onna likes hot showers, he thought with a sneer. Like I already said, no one in their right mind.

The onna wasn't up even after he'd finished his shower, leaving him with little to do in the way of entertainment. Bored, he sat at the kitchen counter and slowly drummed his fingers on its white-tiled surface, waiting, what he considered, patiently for the rest of the household to wake up. The muddy foot prints he'd left the night before were now missing. Not that he should care, right? It wasn't like the onna was the only thing he found interesting on this godforsaken backwater mudball.

 

Of course not.

 

Still, he made a mental note to destroy the house bots that controlled the cleaning to the kitchen and continued to drum his fingers.

After about 15 excruciatingly long minutes, Bulma finally decided to grace the disgruntled Saiya-jin no Ouji with her presence. She'd only had time to put on a pair of underwear, her cotton robe, and a towel to wrap her hair before tending to the Ouji's needs.

"You beckoned, your highness," Bulma said sarcastically as she entered the kitchen and noticed Vegeta sitting at the table. He had stomped up the stairs about 20 minutes earlier, stood outside her bedroom door, and screamed “Onna!” at the top of his lungs. Which in Vegeta tongue translated to: "Get your lazy ass down here before I blast you to oblivion.”

Fucking Saiya-jins and their appetites, thought Bulma with a fake grin as she opened the refrigerator and looked for something half-way decent to feed to a seemingly famished Vegeta.

"Watch yourself, onna. One day I may 'beckon' you to your death," said Vegeta with half-hearted malice as his eyes bore into Bulma's cotton-clad back. He recommenced strumming his fingers on the tile of the counter.

"Is that a threat or a promise?" Bulma turned on the Saiya-jin no Ouji with a strange look in her eyes. His face twitched only the slightest, then returned to the more typical calm and collected mask.

"I can promise you, without a doubt, that one day, it will be my hand and my hand alone, that will send you to the next dimension.” Vegeta said it without flinching and Bulma easily returned the stare, unalarmed at his obvious bluff. Anything was worth seeing that clueless look on his face. Watching his eyes flash for a moment in confusion was priceless.

"That's nice to know," she said, turning back to the task at hand with a small smile on her face. Nothing infuriated Vegeta more than not being taken seriously or being ignored. There were ten eggs and a carton of milk on the counter along with some flour and sugar. "Eggs and pancakes sound good to you?" asked Bulma offhandedly.

"Nothing you cook sounds good, onna," he said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

 

Dr. Briefs' small pet cat came around the corner, attracted by the smell of breakfast, and Vegeta raised his twitching tail and wrapped it around his waist without thinking. After a small incident a few weeks prior involving the cat's claws and Vegeta's tail, the Saiya-jin no Ouji had become more cautious with his sensitive appendage around the creature.

Bulma's mind, on the other hand, was somewhere else. Yamcha. There was nothing she could do to reconcile with him. It was one thing accusing him of events that ended up being truthful, but it was another thing entirely accusing him of something that never happened. Especially when they were no longer in a relationship.

That's right, Bulma. You are no longer in a relationship with him. You broke up with him for Christ's sake!

She could think that now, when she was rationalizing everything to herself, but in her heart, something was missing.

The sizzling that emerged from the skillet indicated that the eggs needed to me moved, lest they burn. Not that Vegeta wouldn't eat them burnt anyway. The Saiya-jin no Ouji could stomach anything, and that could be a very scary thought. Frankly, she was surprised that he had any sensation left in his taste buds after all the strange things he'd eaten over the years.

Transferring three eggs worth of scrambled eggs to a plate and handing them to Vegeta, Bulma sighed. He eagerly grabbed the plate and proceeded to inhale all of its contents in about 2.1 seconds. Bulma, who was much used to the eating habits of Saiya-jins by now, still looked on in amazement. He could eat at record speed yet still somehow manage to look regal while doing it. She wondered how many years it had taken to refine that skill. Goku certainly didn't have it. And that was the understatement of the century.

About eight eggs and fifteen pancakes later, Vegeta's appetite had been sated and he looked thoroughly pleased.

"Well, now that you're full Vegeta, I think it's time for my breakfast," said Bulma in an exasperated tone of voice as she turned to a cabinet and removed a box of cornflakes. A grunt was all she got in return. She wasn't really worn out, but sometimes she liked to milk it around him. "You know, we could probably feed a small country with the amount of food you eat in one sitting," said Bulma in another attempt to bait Vegeta. A grunt was, again, her only response. "You speak caveman really well, Vegeta no Ouji," said Bulma after hearing his second grunt.

"Don't dishonor the Saiya-jin language," Vegeta said in a totally serious tone as Bulma began to pour herself a bowl of cereal. She looked up at his blank expression and all at once burst out laughing. Her body racked with chuckles. Vegeta didn't understand what she was laughing about. "What's wrong with you, onna? Do you get pleasure out of insulting a dead race?" Vegeta was beginning to be annoyed. Nearly immediately Bulma tried to sober up.

"I'm sorry, Vegeta. You just should have seen the look on your face," she said, still trying not to giggle. Bulma may have found Vegeta's response funny, but Vegeta, most certainly, did not. Refusing to deal with any more of Bulma's impudence, Vegeta stood to his full height, which happened to be much taller than any of the Z Senshi gave him credit for, glared angrily at Bulma, and left without a reply to her last comment.

 

"Fine, be a bad sport!" Bulma called after him.

Someday, onna, someday.

He silently swore to himself as he started toward the gravity chamber for a full day of training.

Other than the small incident in the kitchen, the day had been rather eventless. Vegeta had retreated to his precious GR in order to become 'the strongest fighter in the universe', as well as melt a few training bots, and Bulma had gone off to her lab to see what she could make of the material Vegeta's Saiya-jin armor was made of—a task she'd taken upon herself since Vegeta's first battle with Goku.

'Kakkarot' had cleaned Vegeta's clock that day. The Saiya-jin no Ouji would never admit to it, but he had been out-classed, and by a lower-ranking soldier. Dignity, pride, all had been crushed that day. And as for Goku, he had no idea that in Ascending he would have one very tough warrior on his back for all eternity, or at least until he could be defeated. And if Vegeta never reached the level of the Legendary, he would never defeat Goku.

Vegeta, more than anyone, was aware of this.

The Saiya-jin no Ouji was in the GR again: blasting robots to their demise and shooting out incredibly strong ki attacks for the contraptions to reflect and send flying back at him. The only problem was that sometimes the blasts were too strong for his own good and he would get hit, rather painfully, with his own attack.

Vegeta wasn't nearly as vain as the Z Senshi assumed. He had his pride, and there was more than enough of that to go around, but he wasn't vain. His destiny and the destiny of his people had been one in the same, and now that they were gone, what was left for him? He had no more missions; nothing to strive for. All he had left of his heritage was to become the Legendary and with that power, defeat Goku. As empty as it sounded, it was all he knew. It was something the Z Senshi would never be able to understand. A prince without a mission had no future.

How pathetic.

Another ki blast jumped out of nowhere and hit Vegeta right in the back with a sizzling noise. He was going to be feeling that later this evening. If he caused any serious damage, he could always rely on the regen tank that the Briefs had recreated earlier from an outline he'd sketched.

The majority of his life had been spent working for an empire that took what they wanted from other worlds and then bashed them to pieces. It was amazing what one could learn by tinkering around with foreign technologies. If there was one thing Freeza had given him, it was the ability to decipher new equipment and make it work. As a result, his technical knowledge was outstanding, and, on more than one occasion, he'd been used as an advisor when it came time to purge other worlds of their indigenous technologies. Fighting may have been first and foremost in his mind, but he was intelligent enough to realize that some technologies could be used to his advantage. Such as the regen tank and the scouters Freeza had forced him to use. There may have been no more need for a scouter, but the regen tank was always useful.

Since Kami, that moron of a guardian, won't let me have a senzu.

Oh well, what didn't kill him could only make him stronger. Due to a few peculiar quarks of Saiya-jin physiology, the more damage he did, the stronger he would become. If he could bring himself close enough to death, who knew, maybe when his powers came back, strong and reinforced, he would be the Legendary. Part of him knew that it was very unlikely that that would ever happen, but if it brought him closer to achieving his goal, he would try it.

 

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The material was amazing. It could stretch out to fit enormous proportions and then shrink back to its original, smaller size without any signs of wear on the fabric. If it could even be called fabric. It was soft and durable, but somehow tough at the same time. It appeared to be made out of a rubbery silicon material that she still, for the life of her, couldn't figure out. And of all the Saiya-jin technology that Vegeta had helped her with previously, he was just as clueless to the material components as she.

It wasn't like Bulma didn't have other things to work on, but sometimes curiosity just got the best of her, and Vegeta's armor definitely made her curious. No project had ever taken her this long before. Although she was doing the opposite of her normal, think of something that could make money and then create it, she was still vexed that this simple material left her so confused.

Oh well. I have Dad's other project to work on. This can wait until later.

That's what she'd thought two hours earlier, but somehow her mind just kept coming back to the little piece of tattered breast plate.

Let's see. Should I work on the new hover craft or Dad's communication chips?

The communication chips were actually very interesting. For the chip to be fully effective it would have to be surgically implanted at the base of the neck and attached to a complicated system of synthetic nerves that would link directly to the brain. All known languages were to be stored in the microscopic chip. Once the chip was linked up, it would download the information it carried right into the cortex where it could sort through the material and incorporate it into the rest of the brain's functions.

The task wasn't as simple as it sounded though. The surgery itself could last up to five hours and, even then, the success rate was fairly low. About one out of every ten. Bulma was one of those successful attempts and the operation had been performed by her father. Needless to say, as a commercial product, it was still in its beginning stages.

The technology was originally designed when the Saiya-jins arrived on Earth. Dr. Briefs had thought it necessary to create a way of communication between the two races. At the time, they hadn't known that the Saiya-jins were sent to find out what had happened to Radditz. Not to mention the whereabouts of the elusive 'Kakkarot'. Then, as things came along on Namek, they all realized that it wasn't just Vegeta they had to worry about, but Freeza, the man who had sent Radditz in the first place.

But as of late, Capsule Corp was creating the chip for liaison purposes between countries that had a difficult time understanding each other. They were even hoping that the creation of the chip would lead to one world language, a Standard.

That would be the day.

Bulma smiled as she left her small lab in search of her father and the team responsible for the production of the chip.