Dragon Ball Z: The Garden

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey! It's me again! I've been away for quite a while as my interest in writing fan-fictions has waned. But, very recently, I have been wanting to write a story about Goku and Vegeta, a more character driven story than battle driven as the series is known for. There will be action and fighting, of course, but it's mostly about Goku and Vegeta.

Before you start reading, I would like to say first that this story is not a romance and I have no intention of hinting at romance or anything of the sort. I'm trying to write this as true to Dragon Ball Z as I can.

1

"You may remove the blindfolds," the always soft, ever so lighthearted voice of the blue-skinned man said.

With a slight hesitance, the two men removed the cloth from around their heads. They were met with pure blackness.

"What the hell am I supposed to be looking at?" one of the men said, his voice gruff and impatient.

"Give me just a moment, I needed to make sure neither of you were peeking."

There was a soft, echoing tap, and the area brightened to reveal miles and miles of rolling hills, a lush forest, a large body of water, and a large mountain area, but as the two men looked around, they realized they were in a room. It smelled like the outdoors, looked like the outdoors, but with a look behind them at the flat, painted wall, it was very clear they were standing in a room.

One of the men, the one with the gruff voice looked up at his teacher, the blue-skinned man with long white hair sticking straight up off of his head, styled to a point that curved back slightly. "What is this place?"

"I call it the Garden, though we do not grow produce here, it is merely for training." He swept his arm out slowly toward the vastness of the room, "Everything you see before you is very real, the soil is good for planting, the trees are good for lumber, and the water is clean enough to drink and is home to many varieties of fish. There are various animals that roam about the Garden, some large, some small."

"Are we going to train here?" the other man said, his wide, innocent eyes shimmering with excitement.

"Absolutely." The blue man smiled.

"Well, what's the deal, Whis?" the gruff man snapped, "What's the catch behind the room?"

Whis merely continued to smile, quickly spinning around, his lavish, magenta gown swaying, "You must find that out on your own. I will be back shortly." With that he exited through the door, and as soon as it closed behind him, the door vanished.

"I don't like these games."

"Aw, come on, Vegeta," Goku said, his friendly, optimistic tone sincere, "This'll be fun."

Vegeta snorted, "I don't care about fun. I came here to train, not to play games with you." He started to walk toward the forest in the distance.

"Training is fun, though." The younger saiyan said as he hooked his thumbs into the blue belt tied around his waist.

"Maybe to you, but I take training seriously."

Goku began to follow Vegeta in a casual stride, thumbs hooked into his belt as his smile never faltered, "I take it seriously too, but I can also have fun with it."

The saiyan prince mostly ignored him; he crossed his arms over his chest, hands tensing against his arms. He looked up at the large glowing spot on the ceiling which lit the room up.

"So, Kakarrot, what do you think the gimmick is behind this room?"

"Gimmick? I don't know, everything seems all right," Goku looked around curiously, peering at the painted walls with a measure of unease, "Except for the walls."

"We should build a shelter," the older saiyan said.

"Shelter? For what?"

Vegeta grumbled to himself, "We have no idea what this room is or what it is capable of. We need to be prepared."

"But Whis said he'd be back soon."

The saiyan prince whipped around, letting out a frustrated roar, "Can you not be a damn idiot for three seconds? We're here to train! He has no intention of returning until he feels like we've accomplished something." He turned back around, letting out a sigh before continuing his walk toward the forest.

"Oh," Goku said with a hesitant understanding in his voice, "that makes sense."

Vegeta sighed again impatiently, his voice was low, but clear enough that Goku could hear, "I've been beaten, tortured and killed, but being trapped in here with you is cruel."

The younger saiyan merely smirked as he followed his friend toward the forest.

As the two reached the forest, the glowing orb in the sky began to dim, simulating the orange hue of sunset. It wasn't an ideal level of visibility, but they would have to make do.

With a heavy grunt of building frustration, Vegeta leapt up and kicked the trunk of a tree just hard enough to uproot it and send it toppling over. That tree crashed into another tree, knocking it over in a domino effect, toppling over another tree and another. With one kick he had felled four trees in total. With a slight smirk, he floated down onto the first tree and walked along the fallen trunk, inspecting his work.

He walked at an angle, as each tree was caught on the next, leaving it resting diagonally over the others. The trees looked like the kind of trees one would find on earth, oaks specifically, which made Vegeta curious if perhaps oak was a common species of tree in the universe, or if Whis just happened to model these trees after oaks after his visit to earth. Such thoughts were unimportant, though, and he returned to the task at hand.

He leapt off the trunk of the first tree and stood on the ground, judging the trees height by his eyesight alone. He dragged his gloved hand over the bark and patted a spot a third of the way over the trunk. Vegeta lifted his hand up high, pulling quite a bit of power into it before bringing it down in a chop. The wood cracked cleanly down to the other side, wood and bark splintered as Vegeta's hand drove down into it and out the other side, successfully chopping a third off of the trunk. With a dull thud, the lumber hit the ground.

Vegeta bent down to pick it up, but something caught his attention, his eyebrow twitched in irritation. He stood up and looked behind himself. Goku stood there, thumbs still hooked in his belt, an innocently confused look caught on his face.

"Why aren't you doing anything?" Vegeta asked, his voice trembling with rage, "It's sunset, we need to act while there is still light."

"I still don't understand why we need a shelter," Goku said with a shrug, "I've spent a lot of time sleeping outside without a house or anything."

The saiyan prince had to push back the urge to throttle the younger saiyan, and though his voice still dripped with irritation, he explained, "Whis is unpredictable, therefore this room is unpredictable. I can sleep outside just as well as you can, Kakarrot, but we need to be smart about this, which, I know, is hard for you to do." Vegeta whipped back around and extended two fingers toward the branches and leaves, with fast, jerking movements he released beam after beam of energy from his finger tips, each perfectly severed branches from the trunk of the tree, leaving it bare, "So if I were you, I would start knocking trees down."

As soon as Vegeta's sentence ended he heard a loud thud, followed by a score of trees being uprooted. The saiyan prince sent a glance over his shoulder to see at least twenty trees toppled over one another with Goku floating above them triumphantly.

Vegeta let out a frustrated growl before returning to his work.

Well into the simulated night, Vegeta and Goku had erected a rather crude wooden shelter. They had removed quite a number of trees and were left with a large pile of wood that they chopped down into smaller logs for a fire, and with all the branches and leaves they had accumulated, they had plenty of tinder.

Vegeta gathered the branches and leaves together in a large pile next to the house, right beside another pile of firewood. He took an armful of tinder and placed them in a pit he made within the crater of one of the uprooted trees. He placed the wood up around it in a conical shape and blasted the kindling with a minimal amount of energy to light it. Within minutes they had a roaring fire outside of their shelter.

The saiyan prince sat down by the fire, keeping warm in the surprisingly cool night. The fire whipped about in the artificial wind. It made Vegeta growl in frustration.

Wind in a damned room! None of this feels right, and surely Kakarrot and I are being watched by Whis. Vegeta thought to himself, glaring into the roaring flame that cast an orange glow over his body. I feel like a toy in a giant playset. He peered back at the open entrance to the cabin, seeing Goku lying on a large pile of leaves as he slept. And Kakarrot and I are the dolls. The saiyan prince turned around once more to face the fire as another gust blew in, his tall, spiked hair whipping in the wind. How am I going to survive this hell?

Simulated daylight began to creep through the cracks of the wooden walls of their crude cabin, and both saiyans lay asleep at opposite sides of the structure on piles of leaves. Goku snored loudly, while Vegeta slept soundly in a wary slumber. Even as he slept his guard was up, his senses tuned to his surroundings, any abnormal movement, sound or energy beyond the walls of their cabin would wake him. So when the cabin rattled in response to a far off explosion, the saiyan prince was up, eyes opening quickly.

He was standing within a second, and in another he was at the "door". He grabbed the large, flat barrier of wood and tossed it aside. The saiyan felt another explosion to his right, closer this time. Vegeta looked over at Goku and growled when he saw the younger saiyan still slept. Rolling his eyes, Vegeta darted through the forest at a blinding speed, dodging trees expertly until he broke the tree line and stood on the rolling plains.

Floating in the air was a creature that looked almost man-like if it weren't for its oversized claws and its bug eyes and slack jaw. Its vomit-green skin added to the already macabre appearance of the creature. It cocked its head as it noticed Vegeta.

"I didn't think there'd be anyone else here," it said without moving its jaw, the voice echoing and eerily soft, "I just got here a bit ago." Its hand reached out to the side and fired off a blast of energy. The bolt slammed into the ground, creating another explosion.

Vegeta noticed the other two craters in the plains and looked back up at the ghoul. He snarled, this is ridiculous, he thought, is it some sort of apparition? No, he carefully examined the creature, I can sense its energy. It's definitely real.

"Are you just going to stand there?" the creature asked.

With a growl, Vegeta blasted into the sky at it. He drew back one fist and threw it forward as he neared the creature. His fist only hit air as the creature dodged away in a fluid motion.

"Attempting to attack me was a mistake," it said coolly as it lifted up a clawed, gnarled hand.

Vegeta grimaced and jerked toward the creature to attack, but a bolt of energy fired from the creature's hand and blasted into him, sending him careening into the ground with an explosion of hot ki.

"Now I won't stop until I've killed you," it said and bowed its head toward Vegeta before it rocketed downward at him.

The smoke from the ki blast enveloped Vegeta, but he felt the creature coming at him. He threw himself from the crater just before it hit. The ground exploded with a shower of dirt as the creature hit. Vegeta stood, his grey suit and white armor stained from the dirt, he looked toward the crater, sensing the creature climbing out. It stared at him as it clambered out of the depression in the earth.

"You are impressively fast," it said as it stood straight, as straight as its decrepit form could, "However, your fighting skills are lacking."

Vegeta snickered, "I'm merely testing you out. I don't want to kill you right away." The smirk on his face disappeared and he stood a little straighter. "You want me to show you my power?"

"Yes." The creature replied immediately.

With a roar of power, Vegeta's form became enveloped in golden flame, his black eyes changed color to green and his hair, including his eyebrows faded from jet black to gold. The transformation was immediate; after all, he'd been a super saiyan for years now. The golden flames around him died down and he stood, facing the creature, a smug look on his face.

"I don't know what you are, or where you came from," the saiyan prince said, "I could be talking to a convincing apparition or some being that Whis summoned here for me to fight, but understand this: no one underestimates the power of a saiyan…" Vegeta rocketed forward in the blink of an eye, his fist rammed suddenly and very firmly into the ghoul's abdomen, "…Because it never ends well."

With those words leaving his lips he let forth a spray of energy that tore through the creature's body easily, separating its top half from its bottom half, destroying anything in between. It made not a sound as it fell to the ground in two halves. The saiyan prince looked down at it with a sneer, feeling the energy die down until there was nothing. With no warning, the creature faded from existence, much to Vegeta's irritation.

The saiyan prince sighed and his hair returned to its natural color, as did his eyes. He turned around and started toward the forest, reaching up with gloved hands to try his best to wipe away dirt that had been caked on to his armor. He walked into camp to see Goku sitting by the freshly lit fire. The younger saiyan looked up at him with a wave and a smile.

"Mornin' Vegeta," he said cheerily, "I knew you'd win. Whatever it was that you were fighting didn't have a lot of power."

Vegeta was far too annoyed already to care about Goku's remark, so he just sat down by the fire as well and stared into it.

The smell of meat came to the saiyan's nose and he looked over to see Goku holding a large, cooked leg chunk out to him. Vegeta stared at it and then looked to the younger saiyan.

"I found, like, three of these big pig monster things just over there," with his free hand he pointed off to the east, "So I hunted 'em and cooked 'em up, figured you'd might be hungry too."

Vegeta snickered, "While I was out fighting a real threat, you were out hunting. You truly are a low-class saiyan warrior." The prince reached over and grabbed the chunk of leg and tore into it with his teeth.

Whis sat on a large, lavish chair, one leg crossed over the other under his magenta gown. He held his staff out in front of him, the black bulb floating at the end of his staff glowed green and projected the image of Vegeta and Goku eating by the fire. He was thinking to himself, humming an improvised tune to no one. The godly figure watched as the two men bickered at one another, one a little bit more playful than the other. Whis just chuckled to himself and sent the image of the men away.

"Well then," he spoke softly, a playful tone in his voice, "Let's see how they last in harsh weather conditions."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well? What'd you think? Leave a review and tell me what you thought!