Bad Man
Three Years Prior: Welcome to Capsule Corp
Disclaimer: Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama. I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.
Author's Note: "Bad Man" was the first DBZ I wrote, and for the longest time it was just a scene. I'd tried several time to fill in the rest of the story, some of those ideas showed up in other stories, well finally I've got the rest f the story. The first segment has been edited slightly to make things fit better.
It's his very first day of work at Capsule Corp. The lobby is bright, airy and intensely modern. Bulma Briefs, the VP of Capsule Corp herself meets the group of new hires. Three of them are college interns, just there for the summer. Not him, he is permanent, full time.
"The first thing I want to say is: Welcome to Capsule Corp. And follow me." Ms. Briefs leads them to a room that reminds him of a lecture hall except for the comfortable chairs and the cutting-edge, two-way holoconferencing equipment.
The speech is standard introductory stuff. He's surprised someone as highly ranked as Bulma Briefs would waste her time with it. He wonders if it's because of him. He is going to be working in her lab group. He's heard she is still extremely involved in the day-to-day stuff even though she's taken over running the business side of Capsule Corp in everything but name. Formally Dr. Briefs is still the president, but no one had seen him deal with anything outside of his personal lab for years. That's the rumor anyway.
Fifteen minutes into the speech the door to the lecture hall bursts open. "Woman, your combat-bots are crap," the speaker is short, so heavily muscled that he barely seemed real and his black hair crowns his head in a strange flame-shape.
Ms. Briefs gives the intruder a look that is equal parts fondness and exasperation. "Fine Vegeta. I'll fix your toys."
And then she leaves, without a word of explanation. Five minutes later one of her managers takes her place.
Nothing the manager says penetrates the fog of shocked amazement. Still when the manager asks "Are there any questions?" It isn't him who replies. "What the hell was that?"
The manager grins wryly. "I suppose if you're going to work here you ought to know. That was Vegeta. And you won't find the rules for dealing with him in that pamphlet I handed out." Later he'll come to realize most of Capsule Corp's employees sound the same when they mention Vegeta. They're terrified of Vegeta and at the same time strangely fond of him, he's their own private Big Foot or Loch Ness Monster. More than half legend even though his existence was simple enough to prove.
"First: Don't talk to him if you can avoid it. If you can't find a way to avoid him, call him Vegeta-sama. We don't know his family name, he might have taken Ms. Briefs' name when they married, we don't know, we don't ask. But he's never killed anyone for addressing him as Vegeta-sama, so we go with that. Second: Don't disagree with him..."
There's a wet sound of a skull cracking against concrete. The dark haired fighter goes down and he doesn't get up. Light from the uncovered bulbs hanging from the rafters gleams off of sweat and blood. The crowd screams, hungry for more of the later.
He crumples the ticket in his hand and lets it drop to the floor.
Two and a Half Years Prior
Ms. Briefs' lavender haired son and his dark haired best friend tear through the lab like a couple of demons.
"Viva la No Dentists!" the little boy shouts as he and his friend scramble into the air vents.
A few moments later Vegeta stalks into the room.
Silently he points to the air duct.
Vegeta doesn't acknowledge him. There's something uncomfortably predatory about the dark-haired man as he crosses the lab. He thrusts his hands through the wall and drags out two squirming boys like they're a pair of mice.
"Are you Saiyans or not?" Vegeta demands.
"We saw the TV," the lavender-haired boy states. "Dentists drill holes in your mouth and yank out your teeth."
" 'Specially if you eat too many sweets," his friend adds. "And me and Trunks snuck a whole lot of cookies."
"Goten!" Trunks hisses. His friend is obviously too honest for his own good.
"You will face this Dentist without fear," Vegeta begins but the boys trade a look and simultaneously slip out of their coats and sprint in opposite directions.
He gets the impression of a weapon uncoiling as Vegeta moves.
Both boys are dangling in Vegeta's grasp again. They're nursing smarting raps to the skull as well. "You have a choice: face the Dentist or face me."
Vegeta releases the boys and they obediently fall in behind him. "Put your jackets on. The woman will give me hell if I let you outside without them in this season."
He bites the inside of his cheek until he can taste blood to keep from laughing. He's certain Vegeta will kill him if he laughs. But the last comment was so, so humanizing. So at odds with the picture everyone paints of Vegeta.
Another ticket falls to the floor. But this time he's met at the door.
"Another looser? For a smart guy you sure can pick 'em."
"I get my check next week. I'll pay you then. You know I'm good for it."
Two Years Prior
"I'm sure we can talk this out." He doesn't know how Ms. Briefs can sound so calm when there's a man standing in the middle of her lab with a bomb strapped to his chest.
"Your company sells weapons to the enemies of my country."
"Capsule Corp has never sold weapons."
"You lie."
"Do you want a tour of our manufacturing plants? Our labs? We do not make weapons. You're making a mistake coming here."
"I do not-"
The windows shatter. Vegeta is standing beside his wife.
He doesn't know how Vegeta even got into the room. The lab is six stories up. And if Bulma Briefs seemed calm in the face of a suicide bombers... well, her husband seems downright amused, although there's a malicious under-current to his smile as he drops something on the floor.
"Please, try putting another finger on that trigger. See what happens."
The look on the suicide bomber's face is shock so deep that he isn't even aware of the pain yet. His hand is fountaining blood. It was his thumb that Vegeta dropped to the floor.
"Vegeta, you ripped his thumb off."
"So what, woman?"
"Could you at least cauterize it or something?"
"Why should I?"
"Please? And could you get rid of the bomb too? Pretty please with sugar on top?"
Vegeta snorts at Bulma's childishness, then he surrenders to her wishes. He does - something - and the room is full of the smell of burnt flesh. The bomber is screaming in earnest now as his nerves catch up with what happened. Vegeta rips the bomb off him none too gently, then walks back to the window and tosses it outside. It vanishes up into the clouds even though it appeared that Vegeta had only given the thing a light toss.
After a second Vegeta raises his hand and a beam of energy flies from it.
There's a flash of an explosion in the distance and he counts: One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Like determining how far off lightening is by timing the difference between the flash and the sound of the thunder.
According to his count Vegeta tossed the bomb three miles into the sky.
"It's just a few weeks 'til my pay check guys. You know I'm good for it."
"You make good money Smarty-pants, but you lose better money."
"Just... give me some time. I'll figure something out."
One and a Half Years Prior
He was always amazed by Ms. Briefs' energy. No matter how busy they were she always had a few personal projects going on the side.
Her latest project had started with one of the strange monocle-things she sometimes played with. Alien tech he'd heard. He'd never learned what they were supposed to do, exactly, but Ms. Briefs seemed to use them mostly to find her son when he was up to mischief.
The new device isn't so compact. It's about the size of a shoe box with several antenna and a small dish poking out of it.
"Test time," Ms. Briefs chimes. She grins at everyone in the lab. "Cross your fingers for me." She flips the switch then frowns. "Damn, it's not picking up anything. Maybe it's because there is nothing to see? Hmm, I never thought about what it would read if there wasn't anyone suppressing their ki within the device's range."
She spends several minutes tinkering with it.
From the outer office they hear Vegeta's voice. "What happened to her?" he demands furiously.
"N-nothing's happened. I swear!" one of the secretaries stammers in terror.
"What is with him," Ms. Briefs mutters as she stalks out of the lab. "Vegeta have you gone nuts? Put that poor woman down! NOW!"
"What are you," Vegeta demands. "I see Bulma but you have no ki."
"You aren't sensing me?" All the irritation vanishes from Ms. Briefs' voice. "Oh! Wait a sec." She rushes back into the lab, Vegeta following close behind her, and switches her new gadget off.
And Vegeta still looks about as friendly as a pitbull, but compared to a few seconds earlier he's positively relaxed. "What the hell is that thing woman?"
"It was supposed to detect suppressed ki. It works on the same principle as a radar, it broadcasts a signal then interprets the echo. I guess the broadcast signal must hide any ki-signatures near it."
"Give it to me," Vegeta demands.
"What are you planning?"
"I'm going to reduce it to it's component molecules."
"Oh no you're not! I can block your ki sense. This is interesting."
"If it ever gets turned on again, I will destroy it. I will destroy every note you ever made about it."
"Fine."
He hands over a stack of papers. "Will this settle my debt?"
His bookie thumbs through the documents. "Industrial espionage? Mr. Smarty-pants, you surprise me."
"I told you I'd figure out something," he says.
"It's not really my line of business. I wouldn't know how to appraise this," the bookie insists. "I do have some connections though. How 'bout I knock off a forth of your debt as a show of good faith. If those guys I know say it's worth more than that... well we'll see."
"You'll see, it's worth ten times what I owe."
"We'll see."
