Disclaimer: Love it. Don't own it. Damn it.
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The Conceit of a Happy Life
Chapter 9
Digesting
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After the whirlwind of that drunken night and the day spent making up for it, something of a routine begins to set in. I spend the bulk of my waking hours watching the construction-laboring locals that have arrived to repair Trunks's wall, as I am oddly fascinated by the process and the idea that people on this planet work for pay rather than for their survival alone. If any of my father's underlings had dared ask for compensation for their services, I'm sure he would have laughed at them. And soon afterward would have killed them. (And had they dared been as unreliable and idle as these human construction workers, he would have tortured them first and then killed them.)
In response to my slew of questions about these and other human activities, Bulma explains to me that this society operates by a capitalist system as opposed to what she calls the "fascist rule" my father held. People here work to be independent and to stand on their own two feet, she says, and she offers me books, magazines, and newspapers, encouraging me to go forth and learn about this "capitalism" thing, to try to piece together how the majority of this world works. Her enthusiasm for knowledge is also strange to me. During the intervals my father freed me from that suffocating meat locker and permitted me consciousness, he'd had high-ranking warriors train me and warfare strategists instruct me, but he never provided any other education aside from this. From arrogance or fear, I do not know. But the independence Bulma talks about sounds much like my desire to separate myself from my father. It's an idea I can relate to.
When I am not reading or human-watching, Trunks, Goten and sometimes Bra amuse me in my leisurely hours, including me in their activities when I wish it and letting me casually observe when I want to sit out. Bulma and I are working past our earlier conflict with one another and establishing something of a rapport, and I see now that it's better to have her for a friend than for a foe. It certainly cuts down on the shrill yelling, anyway. Vegeta and I, on the other hand, keep our distance from each other, except around the dinner table where we wordlessly vie with one another to see who can consume the most food. Until I am well enough to start training again, this is my only means of putting that bastard in his place, and his training and my recovery make us two very ravenous contenders.
Days pass, and things become less awkward. I feel less awkward. Things even start to feel…smooth.
One morning I sleep in late after a rowdy night of Trunks and Goten playing foosball in the basement. I locate some breakfast and sit down with a few bananas, some hardboiled eggs, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a gallon of orange juice. Some days ago I tried to forego all food until the evening meal, starving myself in an attempt to overwhelm Vegeta during our contest, but this maneuver proved useless. I was miserable the entire day and made myself sick after gorging on a horrendous human concoction of meat and pineapple. Thinking I was beating Vegeta to the punch, I ate the entire dish. It was only when I soon after hacked and hurled up every bit of that vile food that I realized I hadn't gotten to it first because I was quicker—I got to it first because Vegeta wouldn't touch it, and I was hungry enough to think it looked digestible.
I'm cracking my fourth egg when it occurs to me that it's pretty quiet around here for the late morning hour that it is. I finish my egg, and, taking the peanut butter with me, go off in search of the unusually silent life forms residing here. I check all the bedrooms and the basement, but come up with nothing. Trunks's stuff appears to be missing, and Goten's surprising amount of clutter around the house is absent as well.
Finally, I wander down to Bulma's office and knock on the door with my peanut-butter-free hand.
"Just a moment please," I hear her say to someone before calling out, "Yes? Come in."
I open the door and walk in to find her sitting at her desk. She's dressed formally and has a composed yet disgruntled look about her. It's the look I've seen her get when she's giving an order with which I don't want to comply. A table-full of people in business suits appears upon a large screen in front of her, a kind of communication device. At the head of that table is an older man with a moustache and a smirk on his face, both of which I immediately find repellant. And judging from Bulma's apparent frustration, I'm pretty sure she doesn't find the guy good company either.
"Good morning, Chiru. Or 'good afternoon' rather," Bulma greets me. "I'm having a conference call right now, so if you could—"
"I just have a question," I interrupt, ignoring the presence of the screen people. "Where'd everybody go?"
Bulma tries to keep her cool in front of her business associates on the other end of the line and answers calmly, "Vegeta's training, Bra's at school, and the boys are back at college."
"College?" I ask as I insert a peanut butter laden finger into my mouth. "What's that?"
Bulma's eyebrow twitches. "An institution of higher learning," she manages to say evenly. "They went back this morning to finish up their spring semesters."
She flashes an apologetic smile at the people on the screen—the moustache guy snickers—and is about to wrap up the conversation with me.
"Why did no one tell me this?" I ask around the wad of peanutty gunk in my mouth.
The further inquiry and my continued disregard of the conference trigger another, larger, eyebrow twitch, and she snaps, "We talked about it last night at dinner. Weren't you paying attention?"
I think back and have to admit that I wasn't—Vegeta had downed three hot bowls of ramen to my one, and I had been struggling to keep up despite my scalded tongue and the stinging whiplash effected by my hurried slurping of the noodles. Whatever conversation took place, I hadn't heard a word of it.
"When will they be back?" I continue, opting not to answer her question for the sake of my dignity.
Bulma sighs and puts a hand to her forehead, a gesture I am quickly learning means she's about to hit the roof. "On their next break. Chiru, I really need to focus on this call right now."
"When's—"
"Later," she hisses at me with a glare, and I cut my losses and step out.
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When Bulma finishes her conference call a couple hours later, she tracks me down in the family room where I'm sprawled across the couch, not doing a damn thing but scraping the last of the peanut butter out of the jar.
"You can't just interrupt whenever you want, you know," she says, sinking down into the chair across from me. "And clean up after yourself when you're done eating. You left a huge mess in the kitchen."
I decline to acknowledge this.
"When's their next break?" I ask, resuming our earlier exchange.
"I don't know," she sighs. "In a few weeks or so. I think Goten's school might finish before Trunks's."
I mull over this information without remark, but as Bulma begins to drift off into a nap, I ask her, "What about Bra?"
Bulma blinks sleepily and says around a yawn, "She's at school, too. But I pick her up at four."
She glances at her watch. "Which isn't too long from now," she adds, getting to her feet, her back popping slightly from the effort.
"To be honest," she groans, stretching off the nap she almost had, "I can't wait until Trunks takes over the company. I'm tired of handling all the Capsule Corp business crap—I just want to play around and invent things like I used to. Do you know what that business tycoon prick said to me after you left? Said I can't even handle a foster child. That jerk's conceited head is so far up his dumb ass he thinks he can buy out my family's company, and even he sees I'm at the end of my wits here."
"What do you mean 'foster child?'"
"I had to give them some kind of explanation," Bulma says, waving my question aside. "I mean, you came in, looking the way you do—don't get me wrong, you're looking better, but still—they had to have thought you were homeless or we beat the living daylights out of you or something, so I just told them you were an abused little charity case girl we took in as a tax write-off. They totally bought it, which isn't surprising, considering all those unfeeling bastards understand is tax write-offs."
I don't know what a tax write-off is, but the assumptions those people would have made, along with the lie she told them, don't sound all that far from the truth to me.
"So it's just Bra?" I ask, changing the subject to keep her venting from escalating into yelling.
"What? Oh. Yes. Yes, it's just Bra and me and Vegeta," she sighs. "And you. It'll just be the four of us for a while."
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her expression shift as an idea occurs to her. I know her well enough by now to know this is bad.
"You know," she begins, and the honeyed tone of her voice confirms my apprehension, "it might be kind of dull around here without the guys…"
I grunt, unconcerned, sticking my tongue to the peanut butter on my finger while examining the jar's nutrition label as if it's ten times more interesting than this conversation. Which it is, for the record. Whether or not Trunks and Goten are here is of no significance to me.
"I don't want you to get lonely or bored while they're gone. It would make me worry. I could help you find something to do to pass the time, if you want…"
I grunt again, indicating nothing. Why is she making their absence a bigger deal than it is? Do I look like I give a rat's ass about those idiots' coming and going? If anything, it's a relief. Like taking a much needed dump.
"Maybe you could do something sociological? Get to know earth better?"
I don't say anything, preferring to enjoy my human treat as it melts in my mouth.
"Or just take up a hobby or something…anything," Bulma sighs. She's been sighing a lot today. As she walks out into the front hall to retrieve her purse from the closet, I can tell she has some final thing she wants to say.
Yes, here it comes—she's standing in the doorway with one of those looks on her face. She's going to try to level with me.
"I've got a lot on my plate right now, Chiru, and woman to woman, I can't handle any more stress. My entire family depends on me, and I can't depend on them: Vegeta's only mission in life is to train and get stronger, Trunks is focusing on his third year of college, and Bra is still a little girl—who I'm already late picking up. Kami…" She briefly puts her head in her hands and shakes it a little in an effort to knock the aggravating thoughts out of her head. But when she turns back to me, I can tell they're still bothering her. "Look, I need to go, but really, think about what I said. It would really help me out a lot if I knew you were doing something and keeping busy."
And with that she departs from the house, leaving me to digest her words…and the peanut butter.
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I don't care about any of this. I really don't.
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Bulma's given me another choice: do something or do nothing. She wants me to do something, then fine, I'll do something. I've been bored for the past days, weeks, however long it's been, anyway. I'm ecstatic to have some time to do what I want, some actual freedom.
I race through the air, already out of sight of the Capsule Corporation. I'm glad to get out of there, glad to have Bulma off my case and Vegeta at a considerable distance and glad not to have to hear Bra whine about dumb stuff all the time. And I'm definitely glad not to have Trunks and Goten bothering me about shit all the time. Yeah, I'm definitely satisfied to get away from all of them.
I swiftly descend into the city and see that, yes, this is the place… With the power of choice back in my court where it belongs, this is where the real entertainment begins.
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To Be Continued…
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A/N:
Sorry about the big delay in chapter update. Papers, tests, a presentation, and a final, along with the craziness of Senior Week and college graduation took out a huge chunk of my fanfic-writing-and-maintenance time. Hell, we'll throw in a minor bout of depression as well. So I had to put the fanfic on hold for a bit, but now I'm back, and I plan to pick back up and go just as strongly as I was pre-papers-tests-presentation-final-Senior-Week-and-college-graduation-moving-out-of-my-dorm-etc.
A couple bits of interesting info, though! SL19 was really awesome and drew and colored a picture of Chiru! Hell, I haven't even colored her yet and have no plans to because I get bored and thus distracted too quickly, if I even feel inspired to color in the first place. Anyway, here is a link to SL19's uber-cool picture: .com/art/Chiru-121933552 and from there you can peruse her awesome deviantART account (she's incredibly productive! : ) )
Also, for those who are interested, I'm not much of an artist myself (see again with the aversion to coloring mentioned above), but I do enjoy doodling. If you'd like to see my conception of Chiru, here is a cute chibi version I did a couple of weeks ago: .com/art/Cutey-Patooty-Chiru-122400930
And here's one of her competing with Vegeta at the dinner table. It amuses me. XD .com/art/Ravenous-Chiru-122396990
EDIT:
Apparently is not cool with letting me post links in the chapter, so, uh...please try finding shadowlover19 and Amaniachwen at deviantART, or google them or whatever. The title of SL19's picture is "Chiru," and the titles of the two I tried to post are "Cutey Patooty Chiru" and "Ravenous Chiru." I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If anyone has advice on how to fix this problem, please let me know. In layman's terms. Like, so-easy-a-monkey-could-do-it terms. Because figuring out computer stuff is not my strong suit. ( ^.^'')
And now for my comments about this chapter, which I wrote just after writing it, which was weeks ago (yeah, I wrote the chapter a longish time ago, but it took me a while to edit it…sorry… (x) ).
Cute flashback to about a, er, month ago…
"Yeesh, I keep changing my mind about which way I want this story to go. Whatever I do, I want it to be interesting, so if you guys have any suggestions about what kinds of things you'd like to see happen, that would be cool. I have a pretty good idea of how I will develop the quieter plot line (the relationships between the characters and so forth), but as for a larger plot outside this…I'm not sure. Is it enough for this fanfic to be a laidback series of events and such, or does something else need to be going on? I think something else needs to go on. I'm not sure what yet, but I'll be working on it, and as I said, your suggestions and thoughts are very much welcome!
"Also, just because I think it's important to bring up, capitalism, to me, does not necessarily equal freedom. Having a job is great, but doesn't necessarily make a person entirely independent—he/she is still depending on things greater than himself/herself. Things such as the employers' decisions, the company's needs and whims, and even the state of the economy as a whole. But as Bulma, who is very privileged and wealthy and greatly benefits from the capitalist system, explains it to Chiru, capitalism comes across as an ideal. That's what I imagine coming from her, anyway. Just thought I would mention that. Lol"
End flashback to a, heh heh, er, um, month ago.
Anyway, happy spring to all, and please and thank you for a review! (Please?) : )
Best,
Niach
