Author's Note: All right, I haven't let you wait forever! Thank you everyone who reviewed on the last chapter :) I'm glad to have entertained you.
So, this is the chapter written for the challenge. Its inspiration is 'Rude Boy' by Rihanna. The sentiments expressed in that song would make a feminist cringe, but it kind of works for Bulma when she's drunk.
A sense of great urgency lifted Bulma from the floor, and she floated across the gap between them, tripping at the last and falling forward to catch herself on the bunched muscles of Vegeta's arm.
'Vegeta!'
Randy was shouting too, words that washed over Bulma, and she pushed them out of her mind as irrelevant for now.
The Saiyan swung his head around to stare at her, looking almost as surprised as Bulma should feel, but didn't because she was too drunk. She smooshed her face with her hand, feeling far to out of it to cope with whatever was happening. She hadn't ruled out the possibility that someone had spiked her drink and she was hallucinating. This just didn't make any sense.
'What are you doing here?'
Vegeta dropped Randy like he was hot and just stood gawping like he didn't know the answer himself.
Vegeta had begun his hunt by making the short flight to the head quarters building to stand in the security lights before the grand entrance.
He'd never been inside before, having no need, but the lobby was sealed up like a glass cage. Where was the door? It was all just glass – how did Earthlings get inside such buildings? He was about to smash one of the panels when a uniformed slob of a man came striding towards him and pressed a button. One of the panels slid open and the man stepped out.
'You go a problem, buddy?'
'I'm looking for Bulma Briefs.'
'Who's asking?'
'Vegeta, Prince of all Saiyans.'
The man's eyebrows rose. 'That means diddly-squat to me. Come back during business hours. I'm sure someone will make an appointment for you or some other secretary-type bullshit.' Another man was wandering across the lobby to join them.
Vegeta hissed and tried again. 'I am her guest at her house, and her father is requesting her presence. The need is urgent.'
'Oh, yeah? Doctor Briefs called before. I'll tell you what I told him - she's not here.'
'Has she been here today?'
'I don't know,' the slob said, but the second man cut in.
'She was. But they all left about three hours ago in a mini bus. They were off down the conference centre with their proto-thingee.'
Questions swarmed Vegeta's mind. Who were "they"? What proto-thingee? What was a mini bus? But he selected only the most pertinent one to ask. 'Conference centre?'
'Yes. You know, the conference centre - West City Auditorium and Event Centre?'
'How do I find it?'
'It's on the main strip in the centre of town. Great big sign, great big building. You can't miss it.'
Vegeta took off without further ado, leaving two security guards gulping in surprise.
Indeed, the conference centre was impossible to miss. It was the largest structure in the city centre, and if that hadn't tipped him off, the massive animated billboard high above the front entrance would have. The smiling faces of Bulma and her father appeared, 20 foot tall next to the Capsule Corp logo before fading into an advert for the "Sci-Tech Tomorrow's World Conference", the conference centre itself, and then lastly an advert inviting him to 'Taste the Best, Forget the Rest with Golden-Pash Iced Tea", before Bulma's giant face appeared again.
He performed a similar interrogation outside the conference centre, but this time he was pointed across the road to a smaller stone building. As Vegeta shouldered his way through a pack of loiterers to the door of this building he could feel her chi bobbling around inside. His prey.
'Sorry, sir,' said a large man dressed like a penguin, in an entirely unearnest voice. 'You can't come in here dressed like that.'
Vegeta looked down at his black muscle shirt, black shorts and grey Capsule Corp sneakers and then back up at the man.
'Would you care to place a wager on that?'
A few moments later, upon entering whatever this place, Vegeta's nose was assailed by the smell of multitudinous bodies, perfumes, colognes, narcotics and above all alcohol. The noise was overpowering, and as he followed Bulma's energy into the chaotic environment of the large hall at the back he had to steel himself. The noise thundered into him, striking him in the chest, unbearable and inescapable, and the lights and lasers and strobes pierced and disorientated him while people jerked and thrashed in pain all around. It was a sensory overload chamber, designed to drive people past the limits of their wits so that they would tell any secret and or perform any task in return for silence and calm. Frieza had had one almost exactly the same. No wonder there were guards on the doors. What the hell had the woman gotten tied up in?
He pushed himself through the crowd, his own pulse speeding in anxiety, but it was only as he stepped between couples and groups he realised that no one was trying to escape. Some people moved as if in a trace. Others speared to be smiling. Was this more baffling Earthling nonsense?
And then he'd seen her writhing like all the rest, and then she was stumbling, but some other man was picking her up and –
Things had gone red for a few seconds, and he'd offered to tear the balls off the lanky giraffe-man who had the temerity to touch the Woman, and now he was staring at her being asked to explain himself.
'I might ask you the same question, Woman,' he said, reaching for words to disguise his lack of answer.
'Hey, Little Man' said the other male, who apparently didn't know when he was outclassed. 'Leave my girl alone!'
My girl. My girl? Suddenly the red was back and he snatched at the shirt of the dipshit again and shook him ferociously, his voice hitting such a low register as he growled that he frightened even himself.
'She's not "your girl."'
Good gods, he wanted to kill the cretin badly, but they were completely surrounded by witnesses. Already a circle of people had turned to watch the altercation. The woman was in his face again, leaning over his arm and screaming at him, her breath stinking of alcohol.
'Let him go, Vegeta! Don't hurt Randy, he's one of my best engineers!'
'What business does your engineer have groping and kissing you?'
She glared up at him, obviously intoxicated. He'd thought she must be drugged or here under duress, but the next thing out of her mouth put away that notion.
'What does it matter to you what his business is? It's not your business, and that's all you need to know!'
Well, he felt half like killing her, too! He'd figured that she'd thought better of having any further connection with him, but he hadn't known that she would, so quickly, be out pushing herself on such lowly specimens as this one. The thought that he could come out second best to this nothing, this…Randy?
He let go of the snivelling coward and brushed Bulma off his arm. She tottered, but he turned his back on her and stalked back through the crowd, too angry and humiliated to remember anything about gravity simulators or conference opening speeches. He made up his mind that he was going to wait until the old man was free to fix the ship, and then he was going to take it back into space to train until it was time for the androids to arise. Nothing in the world could induce him to stay at Capsule Corporation after tonight.
Bulma watched his retreating back, trying to make sense of his appearance still. Why was he here? And why had he taken such an issue with Randy? Her numbed brain was still trying to get around to the point.
'Bulma,' said Randy behind her. 'Who the hell was that little troll? Are you okay? Bulma?' He put an arm around her shoulders, but the action was suddenly and immediately repulsive to her.
'No!' she said, threw his hand off and began pushing through the crowd after Vegeta. How could it be that he acted like a jealous man? Damn it, these shoes were going to do her in! She kicked them off and ran full tilt, just catching up to Vegeta in the middle of the lobby bar.
'Vegeta, wait! Why are you here?' she cried. He looked like he was going to ignore her and keep going, so she ran into the back of him and wrapped both arms around his neck. 'Tell me what's going on?'
Vegeta stiffened and grabbed one of her arms, hauling her off his back and in front of her.
'Damn it, Woman! What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you sample all the intoxicants here tonight?'
'No,' she replied, dangling from his hand and trying to get her feet back under her. 'Only about half the cocktail menu,' she admitted, snorting with laughter.
He made a face and his grip tightened on her arm.
'Why are you here?' she asked again.
'The spaceship is broken again,' he told her with a furious expression. 'I require you to fix it so that I can leave this hell hole of a planet.'
'I can't do anything about that tonight,' she said. 'I think I might be a drunk too bit. Wait – you're leaving the planet? Why?' She stared at him, trying to make sense of his silence and his stoniness.
'That is…none of your business,' he said eventually.
'Do you want to get away from me that badly?' she said.
'Who said it was anything to do with you? And I thought you'd be pleased. If I leave you can stop avoiding your own house and start bringing your new fuck round for pizza and fellatio like you did with your last companion.'
Bulma gasped, but before she could respond to that one, Vegeta continued.
'Though I must say, as weak as the human Yamcha was, he was still a thousand times more worthy than this one. I guess you're finally settling for someone more on your level.'
'You WHAT?'
A bouncer was rushing over to them now; their argument must be obvious in the relative quiet of the lobby bar.
'Is this guy bothering you, Miss Briefs?' said the bulky man, whose musculature strained his tuxedo. She was tempted to say yes, but that would only end badly for the innocent bouncer. She decided to suck it up for the moment.
'He's fine. He's a dick, but he's my…friend,' she replied and grasped Vegeta's shoulder with her free arm with false affection. 'We're just having a rousing little discussion.' As soon as the bouncer drifted away she leaned into him and hissed, 'Randy is not my new fuck! How dare you say something so nasty! And I haven't sunk to his level! I'll have you know that I am much too good for him, or Yamcha! I'm much too good for you too, Mister, even though you oppositively think the obvious!'
'Too good for me?' he growled, untangling her arms from around his neck once more. 'I have suspected your madness for some time now. Pray tell, should your drunkenness allow, why it is obvious that I think the opposite?'
'Oh, I don't know!' she said sarcastically. 'Telling me that I was pushing my luck if I thought we were going to…have sex again! And pretending like it was only me that enjoyed it! Do you - do you know what – you're the mad one!'
'I said no such things! You're mad!'
'You did so! You're mad!'
'When did I?'
'In the note that I sent you! Your reply was the rudest thing I've ever read!' she screeched, forgetting to be discrete. A woman seated on a couch near them was listening to their exchange so closely that she jumped at Bulma's high register and spilt half her espresso martini down her cleavage.
Vegeta grabbed Bulma's face to bring her bobbling eye line directly to his.
'What note?'
'The note!' she gabbled. 'The note I sent you with the cookies! Peanut butter and chocolate chip!'
He shook his head. 'Do you mean a few days ago? The day after…?'
'Yes, the day after you told me how you'd always wanted me, just to get into my pants! I put the note on the plate of cookies that my mom was going to take to you. I found your reply on the same plate in the kitchen.'
'The cookies that your father brought to me, without a note.' Vegeta's face screwed up in disgust.
'There was no note? What could've happened to it? Where did the reply come from then? I don't get it,' said Bulma.
'Count yourself lucky that you are too inebriated to understand,' he said. 'What the Hell was written in that note? Wait! On second thoughts, don't tell me.'
Bulma was starting to understand one thing though. Vegeta had acted like a jealous man because he was a jealous man. And while she'd been avoiding him, he'd thought that she was rejecting him. All was not lost! He still stood stiff as an iron railing though, and didn't move an inch when she pulled on his wrist.
'Vegeta,' she said, 'Let's work this out. Come have a drink with me.'
'I think you may have drunk enough.'
'Maybe I'll have a juice, but you look like you need to wind down.'
'Wind down? In this place? It's designed for suffering and torment!'
'No it's not! It's a nightclub. It's where people come to have fun and let loose.'
'That's part of the problem,' he said, beginning to follow her reluctantly. 'There are people here.'
'Oh, Vegeta, dear,' she trilled, sounding more like her mother than she would have ever thought possible. 'You have a drink or two and see if you don't mind people so much.'
'I'd rather go home.'
'Oh, come on! You're not that sensitive are you? Can't handle a bit of conversation and liquor and company? Jeez!'
He scowled back at her. 'I can handle anything you throw at me, human!'
Vegeta eyed the bar stools, which seemed to mock him with their tallness, and chose to lean against the bar instead.
'What'll it be, Sir?' asked the whelp behind the polished walnut. Vegeta eyed the line up behind the bar, recognising nothing, which was hardly surprising. The boy saw his confusion and handed him a black bound book. 'Our drinks menu, Sir.'
Vegeta flopped the fat thing open and stared with despair at a list of things he didn't recognise.
'Woman, order something for me,' he said in defeat. She pressed her lips together and scrunched her face in delight at the prospect of this mental challenge. She ran a weaving finger down the menu, her face inches from the page and one eye closed. Last time he'd had to deal with a companion this drunk he'd had to carry Nappa back to base and hose him off before putting him in a regen tank. He was not really sure what was going on with her after the revelation about the note. It seemed that things weren't as clear-cut as he'd thought. But she had let that guy paw her before. He was not going to leave her to her own devices until he had the full story.
'An Old Malt Cask, Banahub…Bunahub - I mean, Bhunnahabhain, and a…grapefruit juice, please,' she ordered.
'A double?'
'Better make it a quadruple, he's got some catching up to do,' she told the barman with a theatrical wink, then she fell off the bar stool she was trying to mount. Vegeta caught her before she could fall and make a spectacle, but it looked like it was impossible for her not to make a spectacle in the state she was in, as she threw her arms around his neck and sagged against him.
'Oh, Vegeta…I thought you didn't want anything to do with me!'
He pushed her away. 'I'm still considering it.' King Cold's balls, someone could get drunk off her breath alone. 'Tell me, do you wrap yourself around every man you meet when you're this shit-faced, or just me and the beanpole from earlier?'
'I didn't "wrap" myself around Randy!' she exclaimed, but the guilty expression on her face told another story.
'Oh, really?'
'Anyway, that was earlier, when I thought you didn't like me.' She pouted and collapsed against him again. 'You do like me, though, don't you, Vegeta? Or else why would you care?'
Vegeta leaned away from her, not sure how to respond to that. He didn't like people! He was an asshole and he knew it. But why was he here, then? His eyes dropped from her triumphant expression to where she pushed against him. Two squishy mounds were pressed to his chest, squeezing up against the scoop neck of the dress she wore, like cheerful dough balls begging to be kneaded.
'Ahh…'
'Sir, your whisky,' said the barman, plonking a tumbler down next to them. 'Your grapefruit juice, ma'am.'
Vegeta lifted the "whisky" and took a gulp, immediately choking on the unexpected fire.
'What - the - hell?' he gasped. 'What are you trying to do to me, Woman? This tastes more like something you'd use to sterilise a wound than something to drink!'
Bulma pulled the glass to her and took a tiny sip. 'Mmm. I suppose you could do that with it – it is cask strength after all. Very nice stuff. Kinda want one myself.'
He looked at her in disbelief. This was Earth liquor? He took a second, smaller and more cautious sip, which burned all the way down, and on his next breath he wheezed. He must've been grimacing because she asked, 'What's wrong? I would have thought a Saiyan would be able to handle his liquor.'
'Of course I can!' he replied automatically. He didn't drink often, and this stuff was nothing like the sweet, weak draughts he was used to. He didn't want to reveal his ignorance by asking what "cask strength" was, but it must be stronger than the 3% that was standard for the drinks in most of the PTO bars. Still, he was sure that he could handle it. Saiyans were superior to humans in every way, and liver function should be no exception. 'Nothing you humans imbibe could possibly have an effect on a Saiyan.'
He quickly sipped at the drink, getting half of it down in under a minute. The woman sucked her juice up through a straw and grinned at him.
'So, do you want to…have another go?' she asked, flicking an eyebrow up.
Vegeta felt a flush spread up from his neck, due to the whisky or the words he wasn't sure. 'Did you really just ask that in here?' he scolded.
'What? No one knows what I'm talking about.'
He started to gulp back the rest of the drink to cover his fluster as she ran a hand up his bare arm. He knocked it away and quickly looked around in case anyone had seen.
'You have no sense of propriety at all!'
'Pop-eye-ity?' she repeated and then giggled at the mess she'd made of the word. 'Where was propriety when the moon was out? You're so uptight, Vegeta! No one cares. No one knows I'm talking about…' she leaned over to speak huskily into his ear, tickling him with her breath. '…having sex with the Prince of all Saiyans!'
Lust bolted down Vegeta's spine, threatening to distort the tight fabric of his shorts. He could all too clearly picture her sighing under him after all his hours spent fantasising about it since their last encounter.
'Mmm,' she moaned, as if she was right there in the picture in his head. 'I haven't stopped thinking about you since that night, and the way you kissed me…like a Saiyan….' She ground her crotch against his thigh, just in case he missed exactly what she was referring too, and Vegeta felt warm and heavy with the hazy memory of coiling his tongue around that honeytrap. 'Holy cow, Vegeta, I want you!' she said, and under all the airs and vapours of the evening he could smell that she told the truth. She licked his earlobe and he grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her alongside him, only to stop her from doing something that would make his pants situation worse. She laughed and wrapped an arm around his waist.
'Two more of those, please' she said to the barman as he passed by again. 'Old Malt Cask. Just singles will do.'
'No,' said Vegeta. 'We're leaving!' He'd heard enough, and now he wanted to get back before every schmuck in the joint could see the tent he was pitching for the blue haired woman.
'We are?' Her face lit up. 'Your place, or mine?' she teased.
'Idiot! You know very well it's the same place.'
The barman placed two more glasses on the counter. 'Oh, yay! Thank you!' she said and picked it up, taking a large sip before Vegeta tore the tumbler from her hand.
'No!' he told her. 'You've had enough.'
'Aw. Don't let it go to waste though.' She pressed the glass to his lips instead. 'Bottom's up!'
He knocked it back without a second thought, only to find her with the second glass at her lips. He took that one from her too and pulled her towards the front door while she laughed and let her hand drop from his waist to his rump and squeeze. It was at this moment, while they were moving, that Vegeta became aware that something had gone badly wrong. The stumbling woman was pulling him off balance, but that shouldn't be happening because his balance was too good and he was too strong to be thrown off course by her. As he turned his head this way and that to see if they were being watched his eye sight swam and he found it hard to lock onto any faces. His fingers tingled. His mouth was numb.
At the door he stopped in surprise before another of those overfed beefcakes with soft muscles that were only for show.
'Leaving, Miss Briefs?' the man said, looking down at Bulma.
'Uh huh!' she said, grinning at the man.
'Had a bit much to drink, have we?'
'Oh, just an eensy bit!' she said, screwing up her face and holding up on finger and thumb to wave about in front of her face to indicate the small extent of her inebriation, and instead demonstrating its large extent. 'But don't worry, I'm not driving.'
'Is this a new friend you've met tonight?'
'I'm not a friend,' said Vegeta, annoyed that he was being ignored.
The Woman giggled. 'It's okay,' she said. 'He lives with me.' Then she held up her hand to screen her mouth from Vegeta as she leant forward and whispered not-quietly-enough 'He's so hot! I'm gonna do "it" with him!'
'Very good, ma'am,' said the bouncer, stepping aside and opening the door for them. They stepped out onto the marble of the top step, and too late Vegeta sensed the threat that lurked all around. A crowd of faces turned towards them, hands coming up holding black, electronic devices, which burst with disorientating flashes of light. The whole scene was made more dizzying by the red, revolving lights on top of an ambulance behind the crowd.
'Miss Briefs!' they squawked, like a flock of human geese. 'Bulma, over here! Bulma, who's your friend?'
'Ack!' she yelped. 'Paparazzi!' Vegeta brought his hand up automatically.
'Big Bang Att-'
'No!' she screamed and pulled his arm down. 'Back! Back inside!'
She hauled on his arm and Vegeta tripped on the step behind him and stumbled backwards into the nightclub again. The last thing he saw before the bouncer slammed the door shut was the other bouncer from outside who'd lost the wager earlier, his head being bound by medics in the open back of the ambulance, lift an accusing finger and shout, 'That's the guy!'
The woman was yammering away, and suddenly Vegeta was hard pressed to follow what was happening.
'We can't go out the front!' she was saying to the bouncer that had shown them out. 'You must have a back door?'
'Of course! This way, Miss Briefs.'
He was towed back through the hall of horrors, behind another bar and down a corridor towards another door.
'Who are the paparazzi?' he asked.
'The enemy of everyone famous who values their privacy!' she told him.
'I don't see what the problem is,' he complained. 'I could have taken your enemies out with a single attack.'
She looked up at him, her face moving in a series of odd and exaggerated expressions. She held a finger up. 'Firstly, BAD Vegeta! No killing silly humans, even if they are annoying. But secondly, you would kill my enemies for me? That's so sweet!'
'Of course,' he said as she swooned into his arms once more. 'I need an excuse to kill someone. I haven't killed anyone in months, and it's beginning to bother me.' Off balance, his foot slid off a step behind him and they both fell, Vegeta landing heavily on his back while Bulma landed safely on top of him. 'Oof!'
She laughed, unperturbed by the fall. 'You're so funny when you actually talk!' she said.
Funny?
She leaned over him and kissed him on the lips, her tongue plunging in and scattering his thoughts in that Earth-manner of kissing of hers. He would have reminded her of where they were if he hadn't swiftly forgotten himself.
'Ah,' she said, breaking away and running a hand up under the front of his shirt. 'Somehow I knew, when I asked you to come live at my house, that this would happen.'
'Ahem! Sir, madam?' Vegeta looked behind him from his position on the floor with Bulma hunched over him. The bouncer who had led them to the back door now held it open, while he looked down at them in consternation. Two paparazzi seized that moment to leap up the steps onto the threshold, cameras clicking in excitement.
'Omigod, don't just stand there!' the Woman screamed. 'Close the fucking door!' She dragged herself to hands and knees, and then, wobbling, to her feet as the bouncer pushed the men down the stairs again and slammed the door once more. 'How are we going to get out of here?'
Vegeta jumped to his feet too, beginning to feel trapped by this situation. Somehow this night had all got turned around for the better, but he wanted to get her back onto his territory very soon before anything else could go wrong.
'I could knock through the wall and fly us home that way,' he offered.
The bouncer laughed nervously, but Bulma said, 'No, let's not resort to that yet.'
'Come upstairs to the duty manager,' said the bouncer. 'The roof has a hover pad, if you can arrange a pick up from a hoverjet. I'll get the manager to clear it for you.'
'Good thinking,' said Bulma.
They followed the wide back of the man up a narrow stairway. Vegeta fell into the wall several times on the way up, his hand tearing the banister off when he clutched at it.
'This building has very poor construction,' he complained, feeling like the entire stairway was listing like a ship at sea.
'Does it?' said Bulma, crawling up the stairs behind him on hands and knees.
In the manger's office a blur of words were exchanged, and Vegeta was taken surprise by the man shaking his hand, but it was all over before he had time to form an objection or rip his arm off. Soon they were out of the roof in the cool air and Vegeta could see the city spreading out from them, disorientatingly uniform in every direction. Which way was home?
'How long until your jet arrives?' asked the smiling manager person.
'I don't need a jet,' said Vegeta contemptuously. He hefted the woman into his arms and jumped into the air, which had taken on a certain squishy and resisting quality.
'Oooh!' squealed Bulma, delightedly. 'I don't think we should have done that!'
'Why not?'
'I forget! But I love it when you're all bossy like that. Like, "Fnah! I'mma fly bitch! I don't need no jet!"' She laughed loudly at her own impersonation.
'I don't talk like that!'
'Kind of, you do. It's sexy!' she said. She wriggled in his arms, freeing one of her own to grab his crotch. 'It turns me on!'
'What the…!'
Vegeta spun slowly on the spot in the air, having no idea which direction to take, all the while becoming more distracted as...
AND THE END OF THE CHAPTER IS ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN AGAIN! Same username, same story name, and I'll put the link on my profile page just in case too. Feel free to leave your reviews here afterwards.
