DRAGONBALL Z
DISCLAIMER: Don't own~!
OWN TWO FEET
CHAPTER FOUR: TACTLESS
"Wake up" came the sharp snap of a rough voice.
"I said, wake up! That means now!" came the voice again, rude and high pitched. "Oh, get up you lazy, lazy girl!" it came for a final time, a hand slapping Bra on the face ever-so-slightly. Eventually stirring the Saiyan descendant from her unpleasant slumber.
"Mum?" grunted Bra, rubbing her eyes and sitting up. She coughed, a pungent scent caught in her senses.
"Not in the slightest" answered the voice, urging Bra to look up towards the unknown person.
Bra's bright blue orbs glanced up, angrily. Locking onto the figure that hovered before her. Bra blinked, aware that the woman was a complete and total stranger to her.
"Well, what are you staring at?" snapped the woman, looking roughly in her early sixties. Short strawberry-blonde hair and salmon coloured suit looking immaculate and more refined than any other outfit Bra had seen. A big diamond broach sitting like a badge of honour upon her chest.
"You" replied the teen bluntly. Her answer making the elderly woman slam her hands against her hips; her thin, sharp nose pointed in the air as she looked down at Bra.
"That is no way to speak to your grandmother!" spat the salmon monstrosity before she turned her back, marching off to a dresser at the opposite end of the circular, windowless, yellow-gold room.
Bra choked on the words. "Grandmother? I think y-you're mistaken!" she laughed nervously, waving her hands in front of her face. Desperately searching for a door or window… or opening of any kind. None of which Bra could find in the small room, which contained merely a bed, dresser, desk and bookshelf. That and an incense burner which was puffing out some sort of horrible purple smog.
"No, I'm not. I'm never mistaken" retorted the old bat, puffing up her hair and taking a seat at her dresser. Reapplying her lipstick in the mirror.
"Listen lady, I have grandparents! They're back home, like I should be! So if you'll just show me to the door than I'll be on my wa…"
The teen was cut off mid-sentence as the blonde woman gazed at her from the reflection in her mirror. Her sharp, black eyes were glaring daggers at the teenager.
"Your father had parents too" she suddenly hissed at Bra, puckering her lips and adding another coat of bright crimson. "In fact, darling, I'm your Daddy-dearest's mother!" laughed the grandmother-figure. Her thin spine seemed to poke out of her coat.
"She's dead" Bra uttered, scowling at the seated elder-Saiyan. "If you were really my grandmother, you'd have a Saiyan tail!" the girl snarled, casting her legs over the side of the bed and sitting, facing the scrawny back of the stranger.
"Oh I did, I did have a tail but you see, I sold it. I sold it to the gods in return for my life, a life trapped within these dreary walls of gold and jewel alike!" said the stranger, casting aside the lipstick and picking up a large powder-puff. Its fluffy particles sticking to and brightening her sun-deficient skin. Which had become somewhat sallow after years of confinement.
"I've been here, stuck in this little crap-hole excuse for a music-box for nigh on thirty years! Waiting, just waiting for someone like you to stumble in and finally help me!" snorted the woman, smoothing out the sheets with her hands.
"Me? You want me to help you?" Bra exclaimed, the comment nearly punching all the air from her lungs.
"Not want… Need you to help me, darling" corrected the ancient Queen, picking the fluff from her time-worn sheets. "You're the only one that can after all" she added, giving her new granddaughter a fleeting smile.
"Yeah, and what do I get in return?" Bra narrowed her eyes, clenching her fists as she glared at this odd figure.
"Well firstly, I get you out of here-" laughed the woman, rolling her hands around the room. "- Secondly, love, I can give you the thing you've been desiring so, so badly" she added, the words oozing off her Saiyan tongue as if they were honey.
Wide eyed and blank faced, Bra could have choked. "What?" she whispered.
"I'll fill in that little hole in your life, I'll give you something to live for. Something to improve upon!" chuckled the grandmother, stoking her chin.
"H-how can you do that! You don't even know me!!" Bra shouted, backing off the bed and against a wall. Nervous, slightly scared and desperately wishing her father was there.
"Oh but I do!" said the Queen, mincing over and plucking Bra's hand up towards her weathered face. "You-" the Queen began, turning over the young girls hand "- are so like me. Born, not only with the best of your Saiyan blood… but also, with the gifts that are so rare among the plebs of society".
The salmon-covered woman just about hissed every word. Placing her hands around Bra's single, tiny one. She knelt closer, whispering into Bra's ear, "I'm a witch".
The blue haired half-blood coughed, clasping her eyes closed as she felt the warm, sticky breath of the unknown upon her neck. "And so are you" the woman added, before pulling away and taking a seat at her dresser.
Shaking, those vivid blue eyes opened but nothing could hide Bra's contorted face.
"That's impossible! I can't be a witch, I've never done anything magical!" she howled, her stomach turning and swirling insider her.
"Oh it is possible, it's certain infact. That's the only way you could get in here, your magic dragged you in", Bra stood open-mouthed, trying to analyse what was being said.
"Magic isn't about wands and capes and lightning bolts on foreheads, you're an idiot if you think that. Magic, dear, is raw and dirty. It's gritty and tough and it takes a real woman to became one!" the woman said proudly. Powdering her nose again, "Not everyone can bind a boggart, you know".
"Now, about helping me-"
"WHAT DO I GET IN RETURN?"
"Magic, Bra, the ability to fulfil yourself completely… and all you have to do is run a few errands for me" the sweet tongued woman laughed as she spoke, the sharp notes oddly calming to Bra.
"Errands?" Bra asked, knowing it couldn't be so simple.
"Errands, though the technical term is Insurance Policies. I have thirteen, scattered everywhere… and when you find them, you open the policy and I come one step closer to being freed! It's that simple!" came the laugh. "Almost like hunting those dragonballs your family adores ever so much".
"That's all?" Bra couldn't hold in her sigh of relief. If collecting Insurance Policies was anything like collecting Dragonballs, than she'd be fine.
"Absolutely! I even have the first Insurance Policy right here" the Queen sang, waltzing through her room to the bed. Her hands enclosing around a plushie, one in the distinctive figure of a black cat. Which she then handed abruptly to Bra.
"We're running out of time, ten more minutes and you'll be stuck here too!" gasped the Queen with a glance at her watch. Flicking out a piece of paper and pen from her sleeve, "Sign here" so Bra signed, "and here", so Bra signed again. "Okay, you're ready to go! Now remember, he prefers to be called Your Majesty" chirped the Saiyan, pushing the younger girl towards her dresser mirror.
"WHAT?!"
"Oh, and love…call me Clarice" the Queen smiled, pushing -that's right, pushing- Bra's head into the glimmering reflective surface. Sending a sudden blast of icy coldness across Bra's unblemished, porcelain skin. The silvery mirror seemed to ripple like water as Bra entered it, cat-toy clutched safety in her arms as it swallowed her whole and, for a brief moment, the royal descendent felt as if she were floating in a sea of emptiness.
Slowly, she breathed out. The vivid memory of Queen Clarice fading away into some deep, hidden darkness. There was a calmness to the hazy surroundings, a cloudy-sea of grey and violets that surrounded the confused teenager whose eyes seemed weighed down. She struggled, casting a hand out into the nothingness of the place, only to have it left dangling in a lilac puff. Closing her eyes, Bra drifted off. The darkness consuming her very being.
