Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Reason ❯ Mind Games ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: Is there any point? =P

Hello, and welcome to The Reason - The first DBZ fanfic you'll have seen from me, unless you tend to favour the Fanfiction & Roleplay section of SuperCheats. Basically, this is Bulma's way of seeing whether or not Vegeta loves her... anyway, I won't spoil it. Read and review please!

Thank you all!

Love,

ThoughtProvocation - Provoking Thoughts since 2004! =D


It was a beautiful, glistening, winter's day. The sun, basking in its radiant, celestial glory, cast its luminous shadow over the futuristic buildings of West City, allowing the respective businesses to adopt a picturesque sheen. Those driving this meteorologically perfect morning were forced into sporting sunglasses, due to the overhead glow, and the shoppers, who were being illuminated almost angelically by the cool gleam, trod carefully through the shimmering snow, their coats left flapping open as they contemplated the glory of their next purchase.


However, for one Physician and her Alien spouse, the morning wasn't particularly glorious. The diametric opposite, in fact.


This Scientist, her name being Bulma Briefs, was extremely concerned at the clothing her husband wore. However physically competent his race may have been, he was still liable to catch a cold - especially in those damned spandex training shorts of his. As much as his naked flesh engrossed her senses and enthralled her thoughts, she didn't want him to become ill.


"Vegeta!" She yelled, banging on the door of the warrior's training facility, the like of which her own hands had crafted. "VEGETA!"


With a noteable irritability, he powered the machine down momentarily, and stepped outside, sneering at her pathetic Human capacity for maintaining heat. She was wrapped, head to toe, in a trouser suit and enormously unflattering duffel coat, gloves, hat and scarf to boot.


"What?!" He growled threateningly, angered to be disturbed when he seemed to have been finally progressing.


She smiled tenaciously, and began to dictate Earth's climate to him.


"Vegeta, you need to put some proper clothing on!" She scolded, furious at his arrogant demeanour. He was just standing there, the short, pompous bastard...


"CAN YOU STOP TELLING ME TO WEAR MORE, WOMAN?!" He spat, growing exhausted of her constant whining over his winter clothing. This was his thirtieth year as her husband, and every single year she'd warned him of impending illness at least twice a day, throughout December, January and February. "I WILL NOT OBTAIN A HUMAN VIRUS! NEVER HAVE, NEVER WILL!"


"What makes you exempt from contracting influenza, you obnoxious git?!" She demanded haughtily, livid at his attitude towards her. Wasn't she allowed to be concerned at her own partner's wellbeing?!


"THE FACT THAT I'M NOT HUMAN!" He roared, similarly irate at her apparent care. "WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME TO TRAIN?!"


Rendered temporarily speechless, she sneered at him as he glared thunderously at her. What rattled her was the nature of the look - venom. Not anger, not authority - hatred. Pure, unnerving, unnecessary, unwarranted, disgusted hatred.


"I ONLY TELL YOU BECAUSE I CARE!" She cried in retort, tears welling up in her eyes at the ferocity of his actions and glances.


"THEN SAVE YOUR BREATH!" He replied in a sharp shriek. "I HAVE NEVER CARED ABOUT YOU! NEVER HAVE, NEVER WILL - GET USED TO IT, AND SAVE YOUR PITIFUL, WEAK LUNGS THE TROUBLE OF CONVERSING WITH ME!"


He shot her another stare of pure rage, and slammed the door to his room shut in her face, throwing her somewhat abruptly, and in tears, from the steps leading up to it.


She landed rather unceremoniously and thankfully on grass, her eyes leaking saline-saturated liquid.


"Bastard," she whispered, lethal acknowledgement clinging to every fabric of her heart and soul. "You're a lying, unappreciative bastard."


With a vengeful streak tugging at her conscience, she hitched herself off the grassy brook, and began bellowing at the outside of the training device.


"SO, DIDN'T YOU CARE WHEN I HELD YOU, ALL THOSE YEARS AGO?!" She screamed, attracting the attention of those in the nearest offices, who all craned their bodies to view exactly what their boss was trying to accomplish. "DIDN'T YOU CARE WHEN I KISSED AWAY THE NIGHTMARES, WHEN I SAVED YOUR LIFE, AND WHEN I GAVE UP MY WHOLE SOCIAL EXISTENCE FOR YOU?! SHOULDN'T HAVE BOTHERED, SHOULD I?! SHOULD HAVE JUST LET GOKU DESTROY Y -"


In a nanosecond, Vegeta sprang from the chamber, his eyes blazing with icy fire and wintery fury. He strolled towards her, anger shining through in his very being, and crushed her against the wall of the gravity-inducing residence.


"SHUT UP!" He boomed, his face pressed directly against her own, his abhorrent snarl crystalline to her suddenly fearful features. "JUST SHUT UP! LEAVE ME ALONE! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!"


Tossing her with a disturbing severity onto the nature-strewn lawn, he left her to cry bitterly as their son rushed from the house, having seen his mother being manhandled by his father from one of the nearby windows.


Before Trunks could shout mutiny at his parent, he'd once again slammed the door of the Gravity Trainer shut, and had departed his injured wife and agrieved son.


"Mother, are you alright?" The twenty-eight year old, lavender-haired man enquired, gently easing the woman into a comforting hug. "What the HELL was all that about?!"


She broke contact with her offspring, partially upset, partially enraged.


"Trunks," she murmured, her tears transforming into miniature drops of ice because of the almost frozen temperature, "go and round up the employees. We're about to find out how serious your father really is about never wanting to see me again."


"Mother, what are you going to do?" He queried, pondering her doubtlessly innovative revenge plot. "Do we need Bura for this?"


"No, your sister can stay in school," his mum replied fervently, shaking her snow-covered jacket down, causing thousand of tiny droplets of frozen precipitation to fall tersely from it. "You'll see. I'll meet you in the Foyer in twenty minutes, okay?"


"Okay," Trunks mused cordially, turning away and walking towards his home and workplace.


"We'll see, Vegeta," she muttered at the training machine, which was gently whirring with the gravity-laden pressure it was experiencing.


And with that, she followed her eldest child into the building, and stood patiently in the waiting area of the complex's reception.


Vegeta cried out in a verbal expression of pain as the drone caught him on the shoulder, searing the skin and enforcing the blood to encircle the singe.


It was no good. It was almost an hour past lunchtime, and he required, annoyingly enough, nutritional harmony to be achieved internally, or he wouldn't be achieving anything for the rest of the afternoon and evening.


He also needed to find Bulma. His frustration with lack of physical progression had been immense recently, and he'd taken it unnecessaily out on her earlier. It wasn't his style to apologise, but smoothing things over couldn't be a bad suggestion. It had, as much as he detested admitting it, hurt him earlier, when she'd said she should have allowed Goku to kill him. That had burned his very soul, it truly had, which was why he'd flown off in the handle in so pointlessly enraged a manner. Not because the fool would have been ABLE to kill him, but because she'd denounced his existence in such a manner.


Then again, you said you never wanted to see her again, his mind informed him cruelly, and he sighed softly, now acknowledging how far this was from being correct.


With a surge of regret, he closed down the Gravity Room, just as he heard a deafening scream escaping from his house.


"What the HELL is going on?!" He shouted, rushing out of the door and to attend to the scream he was sure had been his wife's.


He sprinted towards the Corporation building, where the shallow shriek had come from, and crashed through the reception area, which was sadly devoid of Humans - lunch break, he deduced rapidly.


No, there WAS someone in the room. Bulma was there.


But she was lying on the floor, stationary and deathly pale.


"Bulma!" He called in concern, moving towards her quickly and kneeling at her side, uncaring about anything that wasn't her. "Wake up, woman!"


He stared at her closed eyelids, feeling totally helpless. There were no physical wounds afflicting her body, he soon realised - but, if that was the case, was there some fashion of internal problem?


"Bulma, this isn't funny," he murmured, shaking her cold, heavily-clothed body with an extreme and highly uncharacteristic gentility. "Come on, get up..."


She didn't move, and her husband's urgency escalated rapidly, a tear burning near his eye, which he wiped furiously away.


"I'm sorry, alright?" He whispered, continuing his ineffective attempts to rouse her. "I'm sorry for what I said to you! There wasn't a word of truth amongst it, do you understand?!"


Apparently not, his spirit replied harshly, making him want to scream. No, he couldn't take this. She'd been fine a few hours ago...


... before you thrust her against the trainer...


"That wouldn't have done this to her!" He yelled, misery piercing at his skin like cool, calculating, steel knives. "I didn't even intend to hurt her!"


Saiyans don't know their own strength, Vegeta...


"I DIDN'T DO THIS!" He roared at his overenthusiastic conscience, close to tears now. He kept trying to wake her, and nothing seemed to be working...


"You can't do this to me, woman," he said firmly, no longer wanting to be here, but similarly not wanting to leave her. "You can't desert me. I won't let you. And you know why I won't let you? It's because I..."


He halted momentarily, seriously considering the implications of informing her of this, before making a rash decision; if she truly WAS dying, then he couldn't allow her to leave without knowing...


"It's because I love you," he told her with a sudden sincerity, taking her hand in his own, and squeezing it softly, feeling a tear trickle down his face. "There, I told you. Now, you HAVE to wake up. Bulma, wake up and tell me you feel the same way... please..."


She still remained unmoving, freezing. He, without thinking, gathered her in his powerful arms, and ignited a little of his ki to keep her warm. Keeping her held tightly against him, and trying to prevent more tears from spilling from his dark eyes, he flew out of the door, telling her that he'd save her, and that she couldn't leave him...


Trunks, who had been watching the entire scene from the upstairs balcony of the stairwell, able to see and hear perfectly thanks to his father's genes, smiled a small smile to himself.


"There's your answer, mother," he remarked with a streak of satisfaction and happiness for his female parent, returning to the Conference Room, where the employees of the company all resided, waiting for the "safety checks" Bulma had lied that she wanted to carry out to be confirmed before they broke for lunch.


Vegeta swooped over the City, making sure his wife was firmly attached to him and torn between flying slowly to protect her, or flying faster to get her quicker medical attention.


"Any time you'd like to regain consciousness is fine by me," he commented, trying to lighten his own spirit slightly by making a small joke - it didn't work, however.


"Is now okay?"


The Alien almost dropped his spouse in shock, stunned at her sudden recovery and wondering what she'd say to his tears - probably something mocking, he thought bitterly.


"I thought you were..." he began lamely, feeling rather stupid all of a sudden.


"What?" She queried, finding having to refrain from smiling at his evident oblivion somewhat difficult. Her plan had worked to perfection. The employees had kept effectively silent, and Vegeta hadn't even considered searching her ki to see whether or not she was truly dead.


"Doesn't matter," he murmured, berating his own idiocy and concern. "Look, Bulma, about earlier..."


"Forget it, Vege-chan," she replied gently, finally acknowledging his now dried but still present tears. "Vegeta, were you CRYING?"


"Hell no!" He snapped, annoyed that she'd taken heed of the fact. "Just... been training intensely, that's all."


She looked sceptically at him, and he quickly turned his head away, embarassed now, and incredibly angry with himself for assuming the worst so soon. Then again, she hadn't moved when he shook her...


"Did you hear anything I said to you while you were out cold?" He asked, a little too much desperation present in his tone for his liking.


"No, why?" She lied instantly, not desiring to scare him further.


"No reason," he answered immediately, way too speedy to be entirely kosher.


"Vegeta, whatever the reason for you bringing me here is," she began smoothly, virtually unable to keep a smile from her face now, "it's cold, and I have a lot of paperwork to do."


He nodded his acknowledgement, re-charging his energy and speeding off in the direction of home as Bulma pressed her face into shoulder, partly to seek his warming solace, but mostly to mask the grin that was now spreading over her features.


The End!


That took me precisely three hours and nine minutes, but the idea had been developing for several days previously, so it was planned somewhat...

... anyway, please review me, and I don't care if you hated it or loved it, just let me know for self-improvement purposes!

Thanks guys, you all rule!

Love,

ThoughtProvocation, or Holly, crazy English teen. =P