Unfaithful

I would've never expected it to get so out of hand. All I wanted was everything and everything was nothing I could ever have. My life's simple meaning ran away from me in a mere second.

Talk about a fleeting thought.

I love her. I hate her. I need her. I made her. I want her. I crave her. I complete her.

Bulma is one of the best things that have ever happened to me and I will always be thankful to her in some way or another. But sometimes things aren't always as they seem. I thought I loved her, no, to rephrase that, I thought she loved me. In fact, I thought she was crazy about me. I thought we were forever. Nothing lasts forever. This is a love story, just not one about me.

To make this clear neither of the two of us was perfect from the start. We were two lonely teens who needed someone to care and we just let physical attraction take hold of us. Soon that attraction grew into something more. Something much, much more. Love.

I'm not a power thirsty animal like Vegeta. I'm a good guy, and I know my limits, I believe in them and I won't break them even if somehow for some reason I could, but in bed there are no limits. See, it should have been very simple with Bulma. I'm a good guy. She's the beautiful woman on the sidelines, keeping our secrets and playing minor roles in the battles. Mostly just involving herself to feel important, honestly. We were the obvious couple in the group. I was attractive, she was attractive. A couple in perfect sight, as if fashioned with cookie cutters.

Anyway, I was the good guy. Vegeta was the bad guy. We were going to get married, and Vegeta was going to assist us for his own selfish reasons and then vanish as though his presence never changed a thing at all in our world. It was a deal that we made to ensure survival. Nothing personal. The only one that really seemed to have any sort of great faith in Vegeta was Gokou, and I guess Bulma.

We were both greedy lovers, always looking for someone better but never really doing much more. Naturally my eye was always open, and I might have drooled or even dreamed, but never touched.

When they came on to me, I felt the need to hold their frail bodies. It made someone like me feel like God. Who'd give that up?

They aren't strong, those women. They want to be strong, seem like they're in control, not only of me but of themselves as well, just to please me so I'll know I don't take them over the edge. But the thing about these women that was most appealing was that the power games didn't go to any sort of extreme. It wasn't a battle for control all the time. I guess some people like that. I liked being the strong one in the relationship. I liked being the man, the masculine one, the hero. And they knew of my martial arts history and they fawned over my strength in a way that would make Bulma turn her nose up.

And that makes me God. Who'd give that up?

I didn't know what Bulma Briefs wanted.

Alright, I was wrong. I have touched other women, Bulma was not my only, but I'd never been unfaithful to her. Be careful what you believe when you hear this story, some people are such liars. When we broke up, I'd get lonely, go to bars, women would come, and somehow we'd wake up in the morning and she'd say she had to go here or there and I'd say I had to go the opposite ways and we'd never see or hear from each other again.

What's wrong with that?

She walked me over the edge. She kicked me down just to see me dare rise again. She hasn't got anything in control. She's an actress in front of the crowd, she pretends she has no flaws, that she is completely and totally infallible. This is Bulma's world, after all. She doesn't try to dominate but she loves the sound of people being inferior. She will make you feel stupid. She will shut you down. It's hard to blame her, hold her accountable for being so arrogant. We're arrogant, all of us. She knows more than anything that she's in love with being superior.

Bulma's perfect. That's easy to see. From her appearance, you can tell no man would be crazy enough to turn her down, she's got money, power, brains, and though she's not physically strong, she can stand up to people. She is not afraid. In fact, she's a little too good at not being afraid.

She makes me seem weak.

I remember it all so clearly. The looks she shot at him as she yelled, maybe I should have looked harder, and I would have seen it. Was there passion glistening in those blue eyes of hers? Pretty as when she was young... I sigh now. Even then he took something from her that I never had. The things that he incited in her, the feelings that he managed to rouse with ease. After all this time it's hard to not feel the pinch of jealousy.

After all, I had a pretty good thing going for me.

It was a not-so-abnormal night; she was almost dressed, still fighting with Vegeta over nothing in particular importance, trying to think of new plans to finish a breakthrough invention. I sat on the couch, trying not to fall asleep on Bulma's lovable yet somewhat annoying, overly happy mother, Bunny. The older blonde was probably a knock-out in her day. I could always tell there was the slightest amount of animosity between the two women of the house. Bulma, while used to using her body to get what she wanted from a young age, believed in the sciences. Oh man, how she would go on sometimes about things I didn't care about at all! She knew it all went over my head, too. I think she liked that feeling.

I think Bunny always wished that Bulma would just pay attention to being a woman full-time, instead of a part-time job as my girlfriend and a full-time job as scientist and keeper of the prince. But then again, who exactly Bunny wanted Bulma to be paying attention to was always subject to discussion as well.

Way to go, Bunny.

She said something about how the two would ending up killing each other if the madness didn't stop soon. Bulma and Vegeta. I should've seen it. I should've been able to see the tension and attraction before. I never realized it would get so deep. I guess back then I didn't think about things in the sort of light that I do now. I was so, so... trusting. Caught up in a state of confidence and security, I didn't see it coming.

Of course Mrs. Briefs was right, Bulma and Vegeta fought nonstop and it got so annoying sometimes, not to mention hard to have a relationship with a woman that wanted to talk about another man, albeit in a negative way, so constantly. But then again, Bulma was never one to keep her mouth shut, one day I swear that man will end up killing her, then Gokou will come and kill Vegeta, but Vegeta still wins in the end.

Props to Vegeta, man. It must take some real energy, always trying to dedicate his life to winning that way. Perfect couple.

I've been pondering this for a while now-do bad guys ever win? I mean, I've never seen it so. Gokou always has things under control, before he became an alien I had things under control as well, but these days constantly playing catch up is saddening.

I'm one of the strongest human's alive but it means nothing because where do I stand next to Vegeta or Gokou?

My thinking came to an abrupt stop as Bulma, elegant and magnificent looking as usual, comes down the stairs of Capsule Corporation, like the princess coming to meet her common boyfriend. In times like these, while I never told even my greatest friends, I did feel inferior to her. I was never given the things that she was in childhood. I didn't have a classy education or a rich genius for a father. At the time I hadn't felt like she held it against me since our earliest years, when she took it upon herself to domesticate me.

Remember all those stories, where the princess and the prince fall madly in love, but the prince is suddenly lowered to third class, and the princess has to choose between a name or her true love?

That kinda felt like it. I, of course, was the third class used-to-be prince, while she still the beautiful princess, and she proved she made her choice by smiling at me, kissing me on the cheek, and grasping my hand a little. We weren't even going anywhere all that nice, but she came with me with a smile on her face. It fueled my sense of security.

So she chose her love.

Then, as the story would go, the whole kingdom applauds them as they race out in a golden chariot to a better tomorrow to live happily ever after. As if.

Mrs. Briefs, the symbol of the kingdom though she never had an objection to our relationship, not even Mr. Briefs did, sighed happily while waving her goddess of a daughter goodbye and we walked out to what I wished were a golden chariot. I don't mean to get sarcastic. I guess bitterness takes hold and doesn't want to let you go. Or you don't want to let go of it. I feel like, in a way, to completely forgive this would be to debase myself.

Still, I would have her in an instant if I could.

Unfortunately, it was merely what my salary could afford- a simple silver car, not worthy of her sight, small but sporty in some way, and cheap for sure compared to what she had, but to me it was awesome and something I was proud of, unless you were taking the richest woman in the world out. Then, it looked like a piece of mud.

So, instead of her going out in gold, she smiled a little and sat down in the passenger side, making no remark about the car. She had several cars, all millions of times nicer than this, but she made no snooty comment like you might have thought she would've. At that point I didn't even really remember the last time that she'd been in that car. I was almost expecting some sort of comment, but for whatever reason her spirits were high that night. Something good must have happened to her.

When Bulma was happy, she could be surrounded by nothing but what she would normally consider nothing and still think it worth her, worth being in her presence. She had this ability, she could completely disregard her wealth for me. For us.

She built up my security, I swear she did it.

Naturally, I hadn't let these thoughts cloud me from acting as I did normally around her, so I just playfully laughed, "You seem excited tonight." We pulled out, she was smiling out the window at first, and then her eyes met mine. Cheesy though it may sound, the moment our glances locked, I felt deeply in love with her. These were the types of moments that our entire relationship depended on sometimes. These were the moments that I remembered the mornings after our breakups, when I could smell cheap wine and sex in my apartment, and none of it took away the fact that it wasn't Bulma that had slept in my bed the night before. Sometimes, a million conquests succeeded cannot overshadow the one failure.

Her response was a nod, "I never seem to be able to find the time to go out with you. I'm glad that we could do this." High spirits, indeed! I'm not going to lie, I wanted to get lucky that night too.

I took her to Amante's, if I recall correctly.

Amante's is a French cafe, nothing fancy but casual, and good for a date. A chic choice, as she would have put it. She seemed to like it there. It had a bit of everything, some areas were formal, others casual, and the part we liked best and often requested were the chairs outside. We could create our own world, relatively without interruption out there, able to look out onto a man-made lake. The fountain was pretentious, but like all women, it was pretty and shiny and Bulma liked to glance out at it. Seems like an odd place for a date, especially one that she would actually be looking forward to, but the princess liked to dance and she sure knew how to, too.

I'd been asking her how her day was and her mood went exactly 180 degrees. We had not quite arrived at the place. She didn't seem to notice or care. Her perfect face huffed, and angrily she spit out, "Argh! That Vegeta! He's so damn ungrateful! I give him shelter, food, training supplies, and all he does is break them and demand that either my father or I fix them! He skips his meals and then either from lack of food or rest does some sort of torture to his body, or he blows the whole Gravity Chamber to hell and takes then he takes up nothing other than our medicine, time, and effort! Hell, with the androids coming, he wants to survive fighting them, but has he even thought about surviving training? I'm sick of him making me late for everything, it's almost like he does it on purpose- like he's saying in a bizarre way I have no personal life and I must be a slave scientist for him. Maybe so if we were back on his planet, in another time, where he's the great prince of something, but damn well not right now, this time, where I'm the daughter and heir of Capsule Corporation, and he's basically at Gokou's mercy! And that is his only subject!"

I laughed and patted her on the back. Now we're back to things getting normal. I guess I should've listened more. Paid attention to the way she felt about him taking her time, demanding her attention. I didn't. I was happy that she'd calmed down. I should have sensed the emotions building up. Friends would later tell me, Gokou would later tell me that I should not blame myself for this. That this was supposed to happen. Nothing kills me more than hearing one of my best friends tell me that someone like Vegeta was fated to be with my girl.

My nervousness subsided. This was Bulma Babe, here. Normal, regular moody Bulma Babe who was spunky and full of life. She wasn't a princess, she was my girlfriend. She was just Yamucha's girlfriend. I wasn't Bulma's boyfriend in places like Amante's, in public and around the press maybe so, but not with the real people in real life. There, she was just another pretty lady taken by Yamucha, "Sorry Vegeta's been an ass to you all day."

I didn't know what to say or how to handle the subject of Vegeta, to be perfectly honest with you. I guess that at this point it would be obvious that something about our communication had broken down, quickly. To me she was just venting, same as she had about Roshi and Kuririn and Gokou. She had had, in the past, plenty of men that she'd done updates for and helped train and taken care of and it never ended like this. It always ended the same way, in my opinion the best way: in my arms. Even when we would break up and I would take out other girls on dates and she would get jealous and be huffy (cute), we would always find a way back to each other.

In fact, after I died it seemed pretty obvious to me that that was the way it would always be. Bulma showed real loyalty to me, going out into space to find the Dragonballs to wish me back. She did that for me. Above all else that gesture in itself really was what got me started thinking about it, the 'M' word.

"How'd you notice?" She bit her lip, fiddling with her purse in her seat. She was flustered, I could tell by the jerky movements of her hands. I could just watch her all day sometimes, her mannerisms and body language. It was...

Cute.

It was cute when she pouted. She was so rarely feminine. Her body was one of the most perfect I'd ever seen, but she was never literally feminine. Her personality was too demanding, too dominant. I guess I expected that to change, for her to stay the damsel in distress type girl that I knew she could be. I don't mean to say I resent her independence, but she could have made me feel more important to her. I guess it doesn't help that she's been saved so often by other men. Her fantasies have not been full of me in a long, long time. I never was too fond of that part of her attitude. I think she knew that I was always more attracted to her when she acted vulnerable, because she rarely did.

She sounded completely oblivious to the anger, and shrugged it off, "So, why didn't you want to fly tonight?"

Ah, there it is. I had half-expected something about the car. I felt my hands grasp the steering wheel a bit tighter, as if protecting it from her tongue, the greatest lash of them all. I tried to not get offended prematurely, it was a pleasant evening after all. We would be there soon.

I shrugged, "You don't like flying."

"You do, normally you try to insist I fly with you." She continued, a slight smile on her lips and her brow raised. She was trying to get something out of me. It became apparent that she was more interested in my behavior. Something was going on in that mind of hers, she was thinking.

Always thinking, after all.

"And normally, you insist your hair is going to be messed up." I smiled and returned with a roll of my wrist. I was being a gentleman.

She smirked, not the evil way Vegeta did, but in a satisfied kind-of-way, "You know me too well, Yamcha."

"That I do, Bulma Babe." I leaned back, putting my hands behind my head for a while and pretending I didn't know I was driving the car, acting like I was on a vacation or something. I was an idiot. The car swerved a little bit, like a rocking ship.

She laughed a bit, "Silly, you're going to cause an accident!"

I can pinpoint it to this not-so unusual night that this all started. I've thought about it, over and over, and I truly believe that this is the night when it really all began.

But, see, at the time, it wasn't just a not-so-unusual night at all.

-CL