Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Price You Pay ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

Insert standard disclaimer here.

 

The Price You Pay: Chapter Two

It was getting late. Not that Bulma wasn't used to staying at her lab into the late hours of the night, but tonight she was more exhausted than usual. It probably had something to do with the sleep she'd been deprived of the night before.

The guilt was starting to wear down on her and she knew that she better apologize. If not to let him know she wasn't mad at him, then to ease her guilt.

After deciding it was time to go, Bulma Briefs put her tools down and took off her magnifying headgear. She'd been working on the chip non-stop since two o'clock that afternoon with coffee as her only companion. Even her team had left about five hours earlier, but Bulma insisted on staying and figuring out the cause of a short in one of the circuits.

She quickly switched off the lamp sitting on the lab desk. It could wait until the next day. She'd pinpointed the cause of the malfunction, but she still needed to fix the problem. There was a simple solution, she was just too tired to implement it.

It wasn't raining as it had the night before. That was a good thing. Vegeta couldn't leave a trail of muddy footprints tonight as he had the night before. Bulma knew he'd done it just to get a reaction out of her. He delighted in provoking her.

Well, he did live to battle. Who cared if it was a battle of the wits? As long as he was fighting, and winning, he was happy. He would place that smug smirk on his face and raise his right eyebrow as if saying, "I'm not the one yelling, onna. Now who has the self control?" Yeah, he really enjoyed seeing her get mad. He must have especially enjoyed the part that involved her yelling in his face.

That god-damned smirk.

It was his trademark facial expression. She thought that after living with him for so many months she'd be able to deal with it, but no. It still got under her skin. He still got under her skin. The high and mighty Vegeta no Ouji. Too proud to ever look less than in control.

What a meaningless life.

A part of her knew that her evaluation of his personality wasn't entirely correct, but if everyone else thought that about him, why couldn't she?

Yeah, why can't I?

There was no reason, just the fact that, although she let herself believe he was less than worthy of her time, she knew she enjoyed the lonesome Saiya-jin no Ouji. Regardless of the fact that all he ever did was hurtle insults at her. There was something vacant about him, something haunting that she saw in his eyes when he thought no one else was looking. Something dead. And in the deepest part of her psyche she couldn't help but pity him.

 

~~~~~~~<(((((|||)))))>~~~~~~~

The alarm went off again, as it did every night at midnight. It droned on and on. Fuck, would the machine ever quit? Instead of telling the computer to cease, he walked over to the console and turned off the alarm himself. His gloved fingers lightly traced over the keys that controlled the gravity intensity as he depressed the button that would return the room to normal. The planet's minuscule 1g.

Vegeta couldn't believe he'd managed to maintain his muscle-mass on this planet. He was so accustomed to the 10gs of Vegeta-sei that when he first arrived on Chikyuu he felt like he was floating. That meant he had another thing for which to be thankful. Without the use of the GR he would have lost muscle mass. How could Kakkarot tolerate it? Didn't he strive for the same extreme conditions his Saiya-jin blood demanded?

Of course not. There isn't one single Saiya-jin fiber in Kakkarot's body.

Although Goku's genetics would have proven otherwise, he was the farthest thing from a Saiya-jin that Vegeta had ever met, and he had met a lot of 'things'. In a way, Vegeta mourned the fact that Goku would never truly understand his native heritage, but he never allowed that feeling to linger for very long. It still astounded him that Goku had reached the level of the Legendary on Namek. Things were never supposed to have happened that way, or at least he hadn't wanted them to.

It wasn't raining, Vegeta noticed as he stood outside the vaulted door to the GR.

What a disappointment.

It didn't look like he would have anything to upset the onna with this time. Not that it worked last time. All he managed to get out of her was a strange death wish that momentarily left him without a witty comeback. Pushing yet another disconcerting thought aside, Vegeta remembered his diabolical plans for later that evening.

Ah, well, I did promise those house bots I'd give them a little visit, didn't I?

This would get her going, and there was nothing anyone could do to hide this one. The stupid hunks of metal were worth the price of a nice new hover car. And by nice, he meant $20,000. He was sure that if he destroyed a whole pack of them he'd get the reaction he craved. It was what he lived for.

 

~~~~~~~<(((((|||)))))>~~~~~~~

 

Bulma was abruptly woken by the sound of a loud crash coming from the kitchen. She had actually been having a good night's sleep. Which, she thought, considering the last couple of week's involvement with a certain baseball player, was rare.

Vegeta better have a good reason for this one, she thought with murder on the brain.

If he was doing what she thought he was doing, someone's head was going to fly, and it wasn't going to be hers.

After reaching the last stair and flipping on the light switch in the kitchen, she was greeted by one very amused-looking Saiya-jin no Ouji. He was standing in the middle of a pile of mangled metal and plastic: the remnants of the five house bots assigned to the kitchen.

"What do you think you're doing?" Bulma asked in a harsh whisper. She may have been mad, but she sure as hell wasn't going to wake her mother and father up in the process.

"What does it look like I'm doing? The annoying pieces of trash got in my way, so I blasted them," he said and looked her smugly in the eyes.

"I don't care who the hell you think you are. You just destroyed $100,000 worth of equipment. That doesn't just pay itself back, Vegeta. That's a shit load of money!" She placed her hands on her hips to emphasize her point. "You can't just walk in here and blast them because you're in a bad mood!"

"Can't I?" he asked, raising an eyebrow just the way she hated it, "I just did."

"How dare you? How dare you?" she asked obviously livid. "I finally get a good night's sleep and I have to come down here at all hours of the night just to tell you to stop acting like a child?!" She was still whispering, but Vegeta knew she was angry.

She's still upset about her argument with that loser of a mate?

 

"'Child'? You're the one throwing the temper tantrum," Vegeta pointed out.

"The great Vegeta no Ouji, forced to pick fights with a 'little onna' and house bots at one o'clock in the morning. They aren't even equipped with weapons, for Christ's sake. Some victory, Vegeta. Obviously well thought out."

"The Legendary isn't forced to fight with anyone," he responded with resentment. What was it with all Chikyuu-jin assuming that Saiya-jins couldn't think properly? "And as a matter of fact, I thought it worked exactly as planned."

"Fuck you, Vegeta!" she exclaimed.

And damn myself for letting him get to me and falling victim to another one of his devious little schemes.

 

She thought before turning sharply on her heel and the marching back toward the stairs that led to her room.

Vegeta smirked. "Fine, be a bad sport!" he called after her. Using her own words against her.

"That was a good one, Vegeta! Can't even think of your own insults anymore?" she asked. She was already half-way up the stairs, waving one of her hands (and one finger in particular) in dismissal.

"Onna, you should know that I will never run out of ways to insult you," he called after her.

"Whatever, Vegeta."

A little damage to the GR might be proper punishment. I'll just remove a few wires, Bulma thought with a smirk of her own.

She would never do it, she knew. There was nothing that would make him angrier than meddling with his training, but at that very moment it was tempting. Her fingers were just itching to take some pliers and unfasten the wires to the control console.

If he was any other man. Anyone else.

He would be dead. She would have been sure to squish him like a bug, but she could already feel her anger toward him dissipating. There was something about his goading that she could never take seriously or fully to heart. It was a game to him, but a game she certainly would not let him win.

It's always been difficult to stay mad at that miserable, self-centered bastard.

No use worrying about it now. She had a meeting at seven o'clock the next morning with the president of one of their sister companies, and there was no way she was going to risk that going poorly just for the sake of the Saiya-jin no Ouji. No matter how much she would have enjoyed staying and 'chatting' with the miserable, lost monarch.