Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ What We Deserve ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ or any of the characters associated with the manga, anime, or movies.

Author's Note: Throughout this story, I have lifted some dialogue directly from the Funimation dub of the anime. Specifically, this happens when I am describing a scene from one of the episodes. Obviously, I do not take any credit whatsoever for this dialogue. Despite this, I have tried to put my own spin on the scene, describing it with my own style, embellishing details, adding dialogue throughout the conversations to add to the story I want to tell. And of course, with so little detail about what occurs during those infamous three years, this doesn't happen very often. But how to tell Bulma and Vegeta's story without discussing that canon time the gravity room blew up?

Without further ado, please enjoy the first chapter!

WHAT WE DESERVE

We accept the love we think we deserve.

-Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

*

“Bulma and Vegeta, huh? Unbelievable. I thought Bulma was going to end up marrying Yamcha. But man… Vegeta?”

“They don't stay together long. It's, uh… more of a passion kind of thing. You know how stubborn they are. Yamcha and my mother are going to break up. He finds someone else, and my mom… she falls in love with my dad. Course, he can never admit that he loves my mother.”

“No shock there. I know them and man oh man, they're the feistiest two people I know.”

“I know it's bizarre, but they'll find their way to each other pretty soon…”

***

CHAPTER ONE

The sun rose in hues of pink and gold. Robins chirped their good mornings to each other; squirrels roused from their rest; raccoons slunk off to sleep the day away. Dew glistened on manicured lawns and the trees seemed to stretch towards the growing sun as branches and leaves shook off the night. Sunbeams crept into bedrooms, but drowsy occupants rolled away from windows to catch a few more hours of sleep.

Vegeta let the house door slam carelessly behind him as he made his way to the gravity room. The sudden bang startled a bird that was finding worms in the grass and it flew away to the far side of the lawn. In the early morning, the sound was deafening.

He pulled a bandage from his arm as he crossed the campus. He rolled his shoulder and felt his joints crack uncomfortably. He didn't feel good today. His muscles were tight and his body was sore. He was tired. But he was on a mission, and he couldn't lose sight of his goals for even one day. Limits only existed if he chose to accept them. He inhaled deeply, trying to clear his mind, and smelled the damp earth. The planet was fresh and ready for the day. He had to be fresh and ready, too. With this false confidence, he keyed the code to open the gravity room.

As the ramp to the ship lowered slowly, Vegeta allowed himself a moment to look towards the sky. The sun was just beginning to peak out over the trees at the front of the Capsule Corporation compound. The clouds wisped across the sky like cotton candy.

One day closer to the androids' arrival.

All Vegeta saw in the golden dawn was death.

***

The sun was high in the sky and the day was hot and humid by the time Bulma Briefs woke up. Her alarm clock belted out a tinny pop tune and she unceremoniously slammed the snooze button, rolling over to block out the morning. But it was no use - she was awake. She wasn't the eternally deep sleeper she used to be. Some nights, sleep came to her only in fits and snatches, her dreams haunted by faceless androids. They were her first thought in the mornings as well, preventing her from finding sleep again.

She felt utterly useless in their wake. Her friends were all training impossibly hard to save the word from this impending doom, while she sat around at home or went to work as though the world wouldn't end in one thousand and ten days.

One thousand and ten days. Just under three years. It felt like an impossibly long time. A person could accomplish so much in that amount of time. Entire countries could be founded and lost. Children could be conceived and born and learn to walk and talk. Bulma could complete a PhD.

And yet… it was really no time at all. Lives could be snuffed out in a moment. Just a single moment. In three years, a person could accomplish so little. Or perhaps, Bulma thought, a person could accomplish so much, but not enough to make a difference. Perhaps Goku could accomplish the impossible, but fall victim to his disease.

Three years was not enough time. She needed to do more.

As the radio came back on, signaling her extra snooze was over, Bulma rolled out of bed and stood at the window to the balcony off her bedroom. Wispy clouds streamed across an impossibly blue sky. She could feel the heat of the summer day warming the spot by her window, despite the controlled climate in the house. Once, Bulma had lived for beautiful days like these. Now, she just wanted to live.

***

Vegeta wasn't entirely sure how he had ended up here. That is to say, he wasn't sure how he had come to be in a position where he was willingly preparing to help save this dusty planet, the very one he himself had come to destroy just a couple years before.

Had it only been a few years ago that he had granted Radditz permission to find his brother? Radditz had spoken of his long-lost brother before, but neither Vegeta nor Nappa had put much stock in it. It seemed unlikely to both of them that another Saiyan could exist in the universe for twenty-some years without them hearing of it. But Radditz had clung to his faith that Kakarot was out there, and one day, he caught wind of a boy with a tail who could transform into a giant monkey on a tiny little planet called Earth.

Even Vegeta had to admit that this was promising information, and when Radditz requested leave to go to Earth and find his brother, the prince had complied. What was the worst that could happen? Radditz was a weak fighter by Saiyan standards and wouldn't be sorely missed while he detoured, but having a fourth Saiyan join their little entourage was enticing. Vegeta's kingdom was growing.

And then, through the scouter, had come the information about the Dragon Balls. Mystical, wish-granting orbs in which Vegeta immediately saw the potential. He wasn't particularly upset about Radditz dying in his battle with Kakarot, although it meant that his subject count had shrunk instead of grown. But what would that matter when he became immortal?

And so he arrived on Earth himself just a year later. He had been worse places than this planet. Its landscapes were rich and varied, which was a nice change of pace from the other shit holes he'd visited recently. The cities seemed bright and full of life. The place didn't reek of death and fear as so many other planets he had been sent to purge did. The Earthlings were pathetic fighters, though, with the population choosing to put their efforts into other, simpler endeavours. The small group of warriors he and Nappa had come across seemed to be the only true fighters on the planet, and the Saibamen easily took care of most of them.

But then, impossibly, Kakarot returned from the dead, courtesy of the same Dragon Balls Vegeta had come for. He realized angrily that while he and Nappa had spent the past year in a state of hypersleep, travelling towards Earth, Kakarot had been training in Otherworld. He was stronger than he had been when he'd met with Radditz. He made a fool of Nappa.

Vegeta had been looking for an excuse to rid himself of the older Saiyan ever since the idea of immortality had entered his mind. He was not prepared to share that with anyone. What would be the point of it if he weren't the sole inheritor of the wish? He needed some kind of guarantee that he could never be bested - indeed, that he would never have competition. So he killed Nappa himself. To Vegeta's amusement, Kakarot had been horrified. Vegeta didn't realize at the time that the Dragon Balls were no more after they had inadvertently killed the Namek.

At the time, his fight with Kakarot ranked first as Vegeta's toughest battle. It enraged him that he would be so evenly matched with a third-class Saiyan who barely had the right to the name. The idiot had forgotten his heritage and his mission after a bump on his pathetic baby head. He had voluntarily allowed his tail to be removed. Kakarot was an utter disgrace to the Saiyan race! And, merciful idiot that he was, Kakarot had allowed Vegeta to live. Swallowing his pride, Vegeta had fled the planet, vowing revenge.

He didn't expect to find the short human and half-breed on Namek. He didn't realize that Earth had that kind of space travel technology. Everything else he had seen during his brief stay indicated that humans were mostly stupid and not much willing to push the envelope. But here they were, and with Frieza also on Namek, they had a common enemy. He swallowed his pride once again and teamed up with them, wondering at their foolishness in trusting him so readily after he had murdered so many of their friends mere months before.

He learned later that they had brought a woman along with them. He wasn't sure of her role at first. Clearly, she wasn't a fighter. She was weaker and more pathetic than the rest. She was also a bigger idiot than Kakarot, as he discovered when she flirted shamelessly with Zarbon from afar. It wasn't until later, much later, that he discovered she was the brains behind the entire operation: she had repaired the old Namekian ship they'd arrived in, she'd flown it across space, she'd invented the goddamned watch that helped them find the Dragon Balls. He had difficulty reconciling the knowledge that someone could be so vulgar and ridiculous as to flirt with Zarbon, and yet also be singlehandedly responsible for getting her friends to this remote planet.

Then, Vegeta had been murdered. Killed the same way he had killed so many: mercilessly, cruelly, while his murderer relished the kill. In a moment of desperation, he'd poured his heart out to Kakarot, practically begged him to kill Frieza on behalf of himself, on behalf of all the Saiyans Frieza had killed. He hated himself in that moment. He hated that he didn't have the strength to defeat Frieza as he'd always dreamed. He hated that he couldn't stop himself from crying real tears into the dirt. He hated that the Saiyan legacy rested with a third-class fighter who, up until only a couple years before, didn't even know what he was. He hated that he had to rely on someone else. He hated that that someone else was Kakarot. He hated that his biggest fear was being realized: his own death.

And that should have been it. That should have been the end of Prince Vegeta. But with a jolt that made his stomach roll, he found himself back in his body and crawled out of the shallow grave someone had buried him in. He had never expected to be buried. He expected to be blown into smithereens, or else left to rot, but not buried. It was a kindness he didn't deserve.

He wasn't back on Namek long, but it was long enough for him to see that Kakarot had… transformed. Gone were the trademark dark Saiyan hair and eyes. Facing Frieza was someone else. Vegeta didn't want to believe Kakarot was a Super Saiyan - that was his birthright, after all. He was the Saiyan Prince. He had nurtured the assumption that one day he would reach this legendary level. But no other explanation made sense. Kakarot had chanced upon what Vegeta had cultivated his entire life.

He barely had time to digest what he was seeing before he was dragged halfway across the universe, back to Earth. Was this a fucking joke? He had hoped to never see this hellhole again, and yet here he was, joined by once-dead Namekians, the half-breed, and two humans.

That crazy woman had spoken to him in a tone that was altogether too intimate for his liking. She'd called him things like homeboy, whatever that was supposed to mean, and cute. Fucking cute!? Vegeta never tolerated being teased. Even now, he was unsure why he didn't just blast her right then and there. Clearly, he'd been so caught off-guard by her familiarity with him that he hadn't been sure how to react. So, instead he'd given them the solution to their problem regarding how to bring Kakarot back to Earth. They'd been so grateful at his idea that they hadn't even bothered to question his motives: he was determined to find out how Kakarot had become a Super Saiyan so he could do it, too; then he would defeat Kakarot once and for all.

He hung around for nearly a year, waiting for the humans to call upon the Namekian dragon and bring Kakarot back. When they finally got around to it, it was discovered that Kakarot wasn't dead after all. It seemed impossible to Vegeta, who had so easily been defeated by Frieza, that Kakarot had survived. It seemed impossible to the others that Kakarot would refuse to be brought back until he was ready. The promise of his return hung in the air with no expiry date. Who knew when he might decide to come home?

Vegeta wasn't prepared to wait. He stole the gravity-enhanced ship the blue-haired woman and her father had built from scratch and took off before anyone noticed he had slipped away from the group. He would find that bastard himself and make him explain how he'd become a Super Saiyan if it fucking killed him.

He was running out of gas when Vegeta found himself at a crossroads. Kakarot could be literally anywhere in the universe and he had no idea where to look. He had started where Namek used to be, searching all the surrounding planets, but to no avail. From there, Vegeta really had no idea where to search next. Aimlessly, he ventured from planet to planet, terrifying the inhabitants but, to his own surprise, killing no one except for remaining henchmen of Frieza's. Instead he told them that if they met Kakarot, to tell him he was looking for him. And off he went to the next planet, cranking up the gravity and imagining himself pummeling Kakarot and Frieza as he went. But as his fuel dwindled, so did his faith.

Vegeta realized with a start that he had nowhere to go. True, he hadn't had what he'd call a home since he was a child, but there was always somewhere to rest. If he wasn't plotting a course for the next planet Frieza wanted taken over or destroyed, he was bunking at one of Frieza's many medical or research facilities. But all of this was temporary, because the next job would soon be delivered to him. He couldn't even continue training on this ship for the rest of his life, because sooner or later he would sputter out of fuel and float for eternity. For the first time, Vegeta had nowhere to be, nowhere to stay, and no one to question him. It was both exhilarating and exhausting. He stared out of the window of the Capsule Corporation ship, feeling more alone than he ever had before and having nothing to distract him from it.

He cringed when he finally made the decision to return to Earth. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had discovered that whatever engine the humans had put in the ship did not run on just any type of fuel. He needed to go back and get more of whatever specific Earth fuel they used. Besides, he reasoned, perhaps Kakarot had returned already.

He had barely grazed Earth's atmosphere when he concluded Kakarot was not back yet. None of the power levels could possibly be his: they were all far too weak. Where was that asshole?

He expertly landed on the same compound from which he had stolen the ship. The woman that greeted him had changed her hair to some ridiculously large style, but she was unmistakably the same one from Namek, the one who had invited him to stay with them in the first place. When she marched up to the gravity room, he wondered briefly if she would reprimand him for stealing her ship, or perhaps even demand that he leave. Maybe his invitation to stay was worn out, especially now that the Namekians had gone back to New Namek. But she shocked him, and apparently her lover as well, by telling him smoothly that he needed a shower and leading him towards the house. As much as he hated being told what to do, he did need a shower, not to mention a place to stay, so reluctantly he had complied.

When Frieza came to Earth only hours later, Vegeta thought his heart was going to pound right out of his chest. He rarely experienced trepidation, but what he felt when he sensed Frieza's and Cold's kis approaching was mind-numbing fear. Frieza had murdered him once, and he wasn't sure he was strong enough yet to prevent it from happening again. So Vegeta did what he always did when he felt uncertain or uncomfortable - he folded his arms and refused to allow others to realize his feelings.

Things spiraled out of control so quickly that Vegeta was certain he had whiplash. At least, his head had ached for the remainder of the day. A strange kid appeared and defeated Frieza and King Cold in no time at all. He was also a Super Saiyan. He knew when and where Kakarot would be back. He kept giving Vegeta funny looks. He was from the future. His world had been ravaged by androids. The androids were coming for them as well.

Who was that kid? How the hell could he be a Saiyan? He had purple hair, for god's sake. Vegeta had never known a Saiyan to have purple hair and blue eyes. He considered - and then rejected - the idea that he could be Kakarot's kid from the future. Both Kakarot and his wife had dark hair and eyes. He couldn't see this fair-haired boy being theirs. Plus, why wouldn't he have just said as much if that were the case? It had irritated Vegeta how cryptic the kid was. He had been hiding something from them and Vegeta hated being deceived. But he had relayed some very interesting information to Kakarot: the androids would arrive in three years, and every one of them would eventually die.

Vegeta saw this as an opportunity to engage in a wonderfully challenging fight. He wasn't aware of ever consciously deciding to stay to fight these androids, but it seemed that he was going to regardless. He had a purpose again: achieve Super Saiyan status, kick some android ass.

He punched the air ruthlessly, the gravity in the chamber cranked to three hundred. Even though he could follow the sequence of events, it still seemed surreal to him that he was back on Earth, training to defend it.

He didn't recall defending anything before, besides himself.

But, what else did he have to do?

He turned to the right and launched a ki blast across the room. It skimmed the walls of the circular chamber and as it came back around towards him, he turned and created another blast to hold it at bay. The energies collided and exploded, illuminating the entire room with a blinding light. Vegeta braced himself against the recoil and brought his arms over his face. The machine groaned as the debris settled. Suddenly feeling drained, Vegeta thumped into the floor, the gravity pressing down on his back.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a head in the window. He turned towards it with a snarl, and Yamcha ducked out of the way.

Just because he had agreed to help protect these lousy humans didn't mean they could spy on him! He had caught him just the other day watching him through the window while he practiced defensive maneuvers against bots the old man had made. He also suspected the weakling had snuck into the gravity room that night while Vegeta had slept, although he wasn't positive. Something felt amiss when he'd entered the next day, and there was a residual smell of sweat that definitely was not his own. But perhaps one of the many employees or the doctor himself had come aboard to make some repairs or do some tests.

Digging deep within himself, Vegeta found the strength to stand upright. Chest heaving, Vegeta brought his open palms over his head and launched another ki blast.

Outside, Yamcha chanced another peek through the window. Puar hovered by his shoulder.

“He's going to kill himself!” Puar chirped anxiously.

Yamcha's eyebrows drew towards each other, and he shoved himself away from the window, touching down on the grass a short distance away. “It'll be his own fault if he does, the way he goes on like that,” he said before dropping into a series of katas.

Vegeta's ki continued to flash through the window as he attacked himself relentlessly.