Becoming a Family
Chapter Three: Vegeta vs. the Tabloids
Disclaimer: Characters and premise belong to Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a bit of non-profit fun.
"It looks like someone had a good time the other night," Bunny Briefs giggled as she showed her daughter the tabloid she'd picked up at the grocery store that morning.
The front page had a prominently placed picture of Vegeta hauling Bulma out of the dance club like a sack of potatoes. "Heiress Bulma Briefs Shows Her Wild Side!" the title screamed while a banner subtitle asked "Could he be the father of Bulma's illegitimate baby?"
"Ugh," Bulma groaned. "I didn't even notice the vultures."
"Then it must have been a good date," Bunny said cheerfully.
Bulma grinned. "Yeah Mom, Vegeta and I had a good time. He might even let me drag him out of the GR again without putting up too much of a fuss."
"How was Trunks?" Bulma asked.
"Oh you know he's always a little angel for his grandma," Bunny replied. "He helped me feed the dinosaurs. He almost convinced Sunshine to let him ride her."
"Mother!" Bulma exclaimed. "Sunshine is two and a half tons of ill tempered triceratops! Trunks is sturdy for his age but really Mom! He's not indestructible!"
"I was right there dear," Bunny stated. "I would have put a stop to it if Sunshine started getting agitated. You know she obeys me."
Bulma sighed. "Please don't let my baby play with anything that could potentially squash him flat."
"Alright dear. But speaking of Trunks, breakfast is almost ready. You'd best go wake him."
When Bulma came back downstairs carrying Trunks with her Vegeta and her father had already joined Bunny in the kitchen. To no one's surprise Vegeta hadn't opted to wait for Bulma and Trunks before beginning his meal.
Bulma situated Trunks in his high chair then put a bowl of mush in front of him.
Trunks promptly slapped both hands in the mush splattering it everywhere.
Bulma caught his hands and strained to keep Trunks from repeating the action. "Eat nice," she instructed.
"No!" Trunks exclaimed sulkily.
"Trunks," Bulma warned. Bunny wiped off the table and refilled Trunks' bowl.
Trunks pouted.
"No playing with your food Trunks," Bulma reiterated.
Trunks scowled and poked at the mush. He licked it off his finger then made a face.
Bulma added some sweetener. "Better now?" she asked.
Trunks stuck his tongue out at her and went on playing with his food.
"Why are you all dressed up Dad?" Bulma asked as she decided it was best to just ignore her son's antics.
Dr. Briefs sighed. "Dr. Predise, my mentor when I first started out, died. His funeral is today."
"What killed him?" Vegeta asked. Bulma was delighted by his effort at making small talk.
Dr. Briefs looked slightly startled. "Well it wasn't so much that he was killed, he just died."
A faint look of incomprehension crept into Vegeta's eyes.
"He was my mentor," Dr. Briefs clarified. "He was getting on in years. He died of old age."
"How long do Saiyans live on average?" Bunny asked curiously.
Vegeta shrugged. "You live until you set yourself against someone stronger."
Dr. Briefs looked up in surprise. "You mean a Saiyan's physical condition doesn't deteriorate with age?" he asked. "How old was the oldest member of your race."
"Nappa was the oldest I knew of," Vegeta replied. "He was in his sixties when I killed him."
For several minutes the only sound in the kitchen was the clatter of Trunks playing with his bowl as the three humans stared at Vegeta.
"What?" Vegeta demanded.
"Well it's just..." Dr. Briefs began then trailed off. "While most humans would show signs of age related deterioration by their sixties our life spans, taking modern technological advancement into consideration averages around a hundred and twenty years," he explained.
"Vegeta?" Bulma asked hesitantly. "Have you ever known anyone who died of natural causes?" Bulma knew the answer when she saw the blank look in his eyes at the term 'natural causes', but something forced her to clarify. "Have you ever known someone who didn't die through violence?"
"No," Vegeta said shortly and went back to his meal leaving the three humans in stunned silence.
When Vegeta got tired of being stared at he passed his plate to Trunks and walked out.
Trunks abandoned his mush and gleefully grabbed the remains of his father's steak. He started gnawing on it enthusiastically.
"I guess he's ready for solid foods," Bulma remarked distractedly.
"I told you there was a reason he was born with teeth," Dr. Briefs remarked but it was obvious that his mind was still on Vegeta. "How old was he when Vegeta-sai was destroyed?"
"Ten or eleven," Bulma said quietly.
"And he's been a mercenary since then?"
"No, he'd been one of Frieza's fighters for years before his planet was destroyed," Bulma said. "I just never thought..."
Dr. Briefs winced. "I had no idea. I realized he was ignorant of human customs but that he's never had a live apart from battle before... You do like a challenge don't you Bulma-chan?"
Vegeta glanced at the GR but kept walking. Capsule Corp seemed too claustrophobic at the moment. With a small grunt of irritation Vegeta took to the skies. He sought out a barren landscape then set about rearranging it.
He knew fighters eventually passed their prime, but it had never occurred to him that someone might live long enough to die of simple infirmity. In Frieza's army as soon as you faltered your rivals started swarming like carrion eaters around a soon-to-be corpse. The non-combatants had an even lower life expectancy than the fighters. The technical personnel were easily replaceable. If one of them ticked you off or if you were having a bad day you could always kill a few dozen of them to blow off steam. When you needed more you just went to the nearest planet and asked for 'volunteers'. "Who wants to live?" was an amazingly effective recruitment speech. As for the camp followers, their lives were pure hell. Frieza filled his ranks with sadistic bastards and the camp followers were only tolerated because the mercenary ranks liked having a ready supply of 'toys' to play with. They barely qualified as whores, a whore expected to be paid and they just hoped they wouldn't be killed by the ones who took interest in them.
Under Frieza's thumb life had no value. The entry fee into Frieza's mercenary force was simple: a hundred of your brethren's bodies in a pile. Vegeta snorted as he remembered the filthy samurai who'd chopped off his tail. He wondered if Yajirobe, the least of the Z-fighters, had what it took to join Frieza. The craven waste of flesh had made the opening bid when he tried to change sides, if Vegeta hadn't already begun his rebellion against Frieza and if he hadn't lost his tail to the worm they would have found out. Vegeta would have offered him the deal. After you killed a hundred of your own kind just to buy your life there wasn't much left of your soul and that's how Frieza had liked his followers.
Living in Frieza's sphere of influence twisted everyone eventually. The Saiyan race had been slower to slide into complete depravity than most because they'd come as a race; they'd had a place to go home to where the average person on the street could look at them without seeing a monster. Most non-combatants on Frieza's planets were either individuals who had survived their planet's purge because Frieza had needed technicians or by catching someone's eye. The mercenaries were the same. Fighter, technician or camp follower they all saw monsters when they looked at Frieza's forces, especially when they looked in the mirror because they knew exactly what depth the person looking back at them had sunk to in order to survive.
Vegeta knew the years he'd spent under Frieza had taught him to enjoy killing and causing pain for it's own sake rather than as a means to an end but dying had given him the clarity of mind to realize that he didn't like that aspect of himself and his revival, accidental though it had been, had given him the chance to change. He wasn't a nice person and had no desire to become any such thing, but he wouldn't be the creature Frieza had molded him into either.
He'd known how he was going to die for most of his life, and he'd been proven right already, he just hadn't stayed dead. Waking up in that shallow grave on Namek had been the second time in Vegeta's life that everything he'd expected from life had been swept away, leaving him in awash in a reality he didn't comprehend. But this time he'd found a place to collect himself, to discover what direction he wanted his life to take.
For the first time Vegeta tried to picture himself dying for some other reason than being killed by a stronger fighter. Dying of illness or just the natural deterioration of his body. The idea revolted him... Almost as much as the pity he'd seen in the eyes of the woman's parents that morning.
Vegeta gave a shout and released a ki blast that leveled a mountain.
Six hours later there were several acres of dessert that would give the local cartographers fits when they checked their maps and Vegeta was feeling better, not to mention hungry.
"I'm getting soft," Vegeta grumbled when he realized that he'd rather tolerate humans than kill something and ki-roast the meat.
Hungry or not Vegeta wasn't in the mood to return to Capsule Corp yet. When he'd been a child he'd encountered beings who insisted on pitying him and he'd killed them for it. Many of them had known that he was going to kill them but they'd still looked at him and seen a trapped child rather than their murderer. Vegeta had always preferred the ones that hated him and spent their last breath cursing him.
He wouldn't kill the woman's parents, because they were her parents and because he found them remarkably tolerable for humans. But he still had to think of another means of getting the pity out of their eyes. And he was still hungry and he still didn't want ki-roasted game. Vegeta didn't know what to do about the former problem but the later was easily dealt with through a flight to a restaurant.
While he ate Vegeta could feel the humans staring at him. He glared murderously around the restaurant and most of the gawkers took the hint. The one that didn't was superstitiously pointing a camera at Vegeta.
Vegeta stalked toward the man. The photographer gulped and tried to run. Vegeta let him run, like a cat lets a mouse think it can escape. After several minutes Vegeta grew bored with the game. Almost lazily he grabbed the photographer by the lapels and yanked him down to Vegeta's eye level.
"What are you doing?" Vegeta asked calmly.
"Are you the father of Bulma Briefs' child?" the man asked in a rush.
Vegeta considered the rampant stupidity so many humans insisted on displaying. "Is there a reason why I shouldn't kill you?"
"WHAT!?!"
"If I were in your place I would think of one, quickly," Vegeta advised.
The man looked into Vegeta's cold, merciless eyes and saw his own death there. "Y-you can't, that's murder," he stammered.
Vegeta smiled boredly. "Yes, that is what it's called."
"You were with Bulma Briefs, I was just trying to get a picture. We don't get a whole lot on her. She's the heiress to the most profitable company on the planet, but the only person at Capsule Corp who holds more patents than she does is her father. You try following her too often and she slaps you with an industrial espionage law suit. The only thing really juicy about her is the illegitimate kid and the disappearing acts she pulls and no one can follow her when she pulls one of those. I'm a freaking paparazzi, I was just doing my job!" the man babbled.
"So you harass the woman," Vegeta interrupted. "You invade her privacy and now you wish to bother me. And I thought you were trying to come up with reasons for me not to kill you."
Vegeta knew he wouldn't actually kill the worm; one of the few times the woman had looked at him with real fear had been when he'd killed a mugger for her.
"I'm sorry. Please don't kill me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," the man whimpered.
Vegeta laughed cruelly. "I still haven't heard a reason."
"What do you want?" the man wailed.
"Leave me alone, leave the woman alone and leave the brat alone," Vegeta instructed as he crushed the camera in his free hand. "And make sure the other worms like you understand my wishes."
"Whatever you say. Please don't kill me."
"On the other hand, your body would prove an effective deterrent for others of your ilk," Vegeta said in a thoughtful voice.
The paparazzi wet himself than passed out. Vegeta dropped him in the trash and flew back to Capsule Corp in much better spirits.
That night Vegeta found Bulma standing on her balcony watching the stars. She started when he landed silently behind her. When she recognized him she turned in his arms and kissed him. Her hands, initially braced against his chest, slowly slid up to twine around his neck as he pulled her flush against his body.
Much, much later as they lay together in a satisfied sprawl Vegeta absently tangled his fingers in Bulma's silky hair.
"Saiyans were a warrior race," he said quietly. "It's in our blood, even Kakarrot, amnesiac, happy-go-lucky moron that he was. I've never wanted to be anything different."
Bulma folded her arms across his chest as propped her chin up on them so that she could meet his gaze. "But Frieza made you-"
"Into a butcher. Left to myself I wouldn't have slaughtered the ones who cowered helplessly in their hovels. I prefer my kills to be a challenge."
There was a small silence between them. Vegeta's expression was impassive. Bulma grimaced slightly at the reminder of her lover's blood-thirsty nature.
Vegeta's eyes warmed slightly. "I would change some of the things I've done if it were possible, but I would not change who I am. Do you understand that?"
Bulma sighed. "Are you happy, Vegeta?" she asked.
For a long time Vegeta was silent. He thought about his life now, he had his freedom, finally his people were avenged, he had her and the boy. "I could use an opponent worth fighting," he said.
Bulma rolled her eyes. "You're impossible."
Vegeta chuckled. "Go to sleep woman. You worry about ridiculous things."