Vegeta stirred. Simply waking burned his tired, beaten muscles and he groaned.
There was someone else in the room with him. The prince turned his head to the side and felt the plastic tug of the oxygen mask against his face, protesting the movement almost as much as his aching neck.
'What is she doing here?' he thought, perplexed. Bulma Briefs, the insufferable, beautiful Capsule Corps. heiress was resting at a small desk by his bed, blue hair spilled over her arms in crazy ringlets while she slept.
Blue was his favorite color. Worse, wild and haloed around her head like that, the woman's latest hairstyle looked positively Saiyan.
Vegeta hated her for that.
He rolled his eyes and dragged himself to a sitting position, tearing off the oxygen mask. Acutely aware of every aching bone in his body, he closed his eyes and tried to remember how he ended up battered, bruised, and bedridden.
The Gravity Room. He'd been trying to dodge a bouncing energy beam and failed. The blast had streaked across his right side, face and shoulder like a comet, searing his skin in its wake. Having collapsed to his knees, he knew the blast would bounce back toward him and had launched an assault of his own to stop it. The energy blasts collided and the result was a powerful explosion.
In short, he'd overdone things once again, only this time the blasted machine had been blown to pieces.
'Kakarot...' The Saiyan opened his eyes and found the strength to appropriately snarl, ripping off the bed sheet that had covered him. He hated himself for many things, but most significantly he hated himself for being unable match Goku's legendary success. That clown had everything: he was powerful and respected, loved by everyone he met, a Saiyan without being a SAIYAN, and was in every way the leader Vegeta was not trained to be.
Every moment Vegeta failed to ascend, he felt the heavy whip of failure lacerating his already crippled pride. The prince had been through many challenges in his life and he had survived many hardships, but never had he faced something that filled him with such self-loathing, such personal disgust, that he found himself wishing he were someone else.
Not just anyone else. Kakarot.
The thought dripped down his brain like acid until he cut it off as abruptly as he could manage. "No," he hissed, "I am better than that fool. I am a prince," and he all but promised himself, "I do not wish to be a Third Class."
As always, he came to the same conclusion: he must train harder. However, now his training would be greatly hindered without the Room and he would require a replacement immediately.
Half limping to Bulma's side, Vegeta abruptly slammed his palm flat upon the desk, right in front of her face.
"Woman!" he barked. The heiress' eyes snapped open and she yelped, flinging herself away from both Vegeta and the desk, toppling off her chair in the process.
"What the FUCK!" Bulma shrieked. Her heart was pumping so much adrenaline through her tiny veins that the prince could see the wild pulsation in her neck. Awake enough now to remember and hate him, Bulma's eyes narrowed angrily.
"What is WRONG with you?!" she demanded, too angry to even blush over the fact that her position on the floor was a less-than-modest one.
"You will supply me with another Gravity Room," Vegeta told her.
Bulma's eyelid twitched and she got to her feet. "Like Hell I will!" she spat, squaring her delicate shoulders. Vegeta sneered at her as she continued, "Do you have any idea what something like that costs?! No, of course not. Everything is just PROVIDED for you! You don't have to work for ANYTHING-"
"Shut your insolent mouth, bitch!" Vegeta snapped back, "You know damn well what I am working toward! Do not make me question WHY."
While Bulma's mouth had not shut during his initial interruption, she closed it then and sealed her pretty lips into a fine line at the Saiyan's threat. They both knew he was training to fight the androids with more intensity than any of her friends. Desperate to unlock the secret to Super Saiyan ascension, the prince had taken "training" to a whole new, obsessive level, laboring for days on end without rest or recompense.
She took a few deep breaths through her nose and glared at him with heavy malice. "I've been working on an upgraded replacement for months," she told him as evenly as she could manage, "After you blew up the original, I had my father allocate more of our tech budget toward the upgraded Room's completion. You know, more manpower to get it done."
Vegeta stared at her and Bulma smirked, mistaking the silence for appreciation.
"That's right," she folded her arms across her chest, "In a few days you'll have an even better G.R. to kill yourself in. You can thank me now. I'm waiting. Go ahead, say it."
"Your laziness is beyond my understanding," Vegeta said to her widening eyes, "You slept here when you could have been ensuring my timely return to training."
"FUCK YOU!" Bulma kicked his shin as hard as she could, but to no avail. Undeterred, she kicked at him again and again as he calmly shoved past her and left the room. "I've been working day and NIGHT on this shit! For you! For Earth! How DARE you-?!"
After leaving her behind, yelling and fuming in the guest room, Vegeta finally gave in to a vicious grin. The hilarity of enraging the woman was endless. Everyone was afraid of him; everyone thought him too volatile to trust, but not Bulma. She was afraid of him, sure, when she remembered to be, but more often than not, the genius heiress fought with him constantly. Like royalty, she refused to be pushed around and hated being given orders.
He could relate to that.
But more importantly, Vegeta knew that after insulting her, Bulma would redouble Capsule Corps.' efforts to finish the new and improved Gravity Room, if only to prove him wrong about her work ethic.
Feeling victorious, the Saiyan prince made his way to the kitchen.