AN: I don't own anything. Thank you for your lovely reviews. I greatly appreciate them! The more I get, the more I will write.
Anyway, enjoy:)
Chapter 8: Life Beyond The City
Vegeta threw the hammer down in frustration, muttering obscenities under his breath. These people's attempt at craftsmanship was piss poor. No wonder their buildings were falling apart. The sun broiled his back and he had to tuck his shirt through a pant loop in order to keep it dry enough for use as a sweat rag. He peered over his shoulder at other laborers assembling the recycled roof chips. Excruciating heat reverberated back off of the black rock, and by late afternoon he was surprised the humans could handle the slate without gloves.
He was starting to understand them better, at least. Bulma commenced introductions to families in the adjacent village shortly after settling him with supplies and a short ration of food to keep him tidied for several weeks. She told them he was from a place called "Old Okinawa," which received an understanding look followed by wary responses. Vegeta was curious if it caused more damage than good and since then, he was stared at no matter where he went. Mostly, he just chose to linger out of sight, except when asked, and explored his new home along the countless minor shrub trails.
The woman had also gone out of her way to create a barter system for his services. The villagers provided food and other amenities in exchange for aiding in repair of their homes and managing their farmland. Initially, they were timid, quietly tapping on the decayed door before entering as though they owned the place. Once they saw him, curt fear was replaced by rapid strings of noise he could not absorb no matter how much he tried. Japanese was so much easier to translate, he decided, because there was no parade of notes accompanying that dialog. With a persistent tug of his arm, they would drag him out of his little hut and play a series of charades with him until their goal was reached. Vegeta did his best to hold back snapping at the gaggle, especially when they grabbed him. He did not like being touched.
After the job they called him out for was completed, the few men would gather in the cool shade as a reward, offering him cigarettes and cold beer. It was the only thing they drank cold, which was all the better since the distant bitterness was less appealing if it remained at room temperature. Answering to the singsong catlike call, they would clamber around a plastic covered table further into the ramada of their living room and chat loudly over the piles of steamed rice, meats, and peppers drawn out of the kitchen. The saiyan, left in solace at the doorstep with his hot tea, would eventually give into the smell and join the group's festivity. Lunch was always festive. Dinner more so.
The women were much quieter than the men and often avoided him along the roadside, casually staring when he was not looking. The only one that talked to him regularly, whether she knew he could understand or not, was the restaurant owner's wife who fed the group during the week. On days he was not called out into the open as a spectator sport, Vegeta would be roused by a soft rap at the door. No one was there when he answered; rather a basket of food lay sprawled on his make-shift doormat. As time passed, the entrées became personalized with dishes he eagerly expressed fondness for, and he knew it was his little cook providing for him without demand. Without a word though, he would empty the contents and replace the used basket back on the entrance only to find it gone the next time he looked.
He had to admit, they seemed to live a content life despite the lack of any conveniences short of electricity and perhaps piped-in water. Vegeta had neither and retrieved all lost survival techniques in his memory banks in order to better accommodate his novel, unfamiliar lifestyle. He had plenty of burning fuel and a well nearby, and Bulma was competent enough to make sure he knew how to use the common tools left for him. All of it was basic, even for her standards. Nevertheless, she walked him through it with all his objections intact, stopping only when her guest surpassed his bounds with a threat to end the tour as though she were a mother scolding her child. He was temperamental, but so was she. Neither took lecturing of the other well and terminal frustration left both wondering if this was the right decision. When she finally left him alone as she promised, dust blazing along the path of her vehicle, he breathed a sigh of relief and welcomed the renewed, preferred silence.
The nights were dead calm. Insects chirped outside his window and there was a clear view of the stars to unfocus his mind. The box did not look so bad after he replaced the roof and cleaned the inside, discovering now that he was more neurotic with respect to sanitation than he ever knew. On the bases and risas, military quarters were always tip-top no matter where he was. Efficiency was a blanket requirement. Water was even recycled. It was bizarre to bathe in running water again, the tingling feeling of the fluid moving over his skin erratically without beading like he expected in a vacuum. His hair stayed wet far too long for his liking, although no matter how much he dried it with the scant towel Bulma provided, the humidity would again restore the sheen to a damp residue.
Still, it was nice to have nothing weigh down on the conscious and enough work to force him asleep when it refused to shut up. With this in mind, Vegeta gradually entertained the possibility that he could get used to human isolation. Assuming that the Planet Trade did not find him first, of course. It was only a matter of time, and the tsiru never lost a target without sending hell after it. For so long it had been he who posed as the devil's angel, successfully tracking down each intended objective and neutralizing it. The dirt behind the shiny alter of a massive enterprise, they put Raylin's superior training to excellent use. At the expense of his own species no less, now that he had the chance to rehash on that old wound. No wonder she left. How good it must have felt to cross them the way she did, and if he could turn back time knowing now what he should have known then, he would gladly have jumped ship.
The only other individuals better at their job were the cyborgs. He bit by bit figured they were the appropriate general replacement since they were more equipped to handle both full on extermination as well as tedious assassinations without that pesky moral dilemma recent razukins and saiyans alike faced. They were the ultimate negotiators, and Vegeta was such the valuable puppet that it would afford them well to make sure he did not simply walk away from this scandal. Rampant paranoia was yet upon the man with the notion that he would one day awake before his foe unprepared and with nowhere to run. And for that, he slept little for the first few weeks of his stay.
Clinking could be heard off in the distance. The area they were blasting supplied building material for the area, and Vegeta was going back and forth between helping replace damaged structures and cleaving pieces of slate from the mining rubble. He almost always gained attention at the swiftness and grace he displayed when hitting the well-placed rock with a sledgehammer. Carefully picking out a large chunk, he separated the splits into four regularly sized plates before tossing it aside for the next one. If they were all the same dimensions, then there would be no leaks in the rooftop to contend with.
Although the villages were spread out, condensing into the gorge below them, community was strong and lively. Sporadically, he was able to pick up certain sentences spouted out by the men during their daily prattle about events or family members living along the river. At times, they would have visitors on motorbikes come up to deliver packages or messages and inevitably stay for lunch. They were all shocked to see the unfamiliar face, but quickly forgot, or ignored, him to repeat the cycle of normalcy they were satisfied with.
"Yi! Er! San! HI!" The chorus of passing children drew his attention away from the gable, as they cheerfully giggled in awe at the stranger. This was not the first time they shook his contemplation and often enjoyed watching him from a distance. Several of the more daring ones managed to sneak up to his home one evening while he was resting after a particularly brutal day. Somehow, be it from the heat exhaustion or general weariness, he failed to sense them approach, only to find three pairs of beady eyes staring at him from the lower corner of his window. Startled and somewhat disturbed by the personal invasion, he thundered out the door yelling foreign words to the young girls as they fled.
But these particular imps were stuck on him and came back for more. He later determined that they were sisters from one of the farms on the other side of the hill. They passed his shack on the way home from school, nonchalantly entering his property like the rest of the residents; the difference being more out of curiosity to see if the mystery man was present. They followed him up the trails, keen to stay far enough away from Vegeta as to not entirely cause panic. Occasionally, he spotted the youngest wandering by the restaurant during lunch to pester the cats. The cook would chatter at her while she shyly hung around the kitchen, no doubt peeking over to the group of older men from time to time.
Although innately annoying, deep down he thought it was cute. The middle one would appear on his doorstep and just openly gawk. It was like they knew he was an alien, completely immersed and silently amused by everything he did. He was their television. One day she idly sat observing Vegeta wash some of his clothing far beyond what he deemed dirty. Suddenly, she pointed to the wet shirt in his hand as he wrung it out and quietly said, "yifu." By this point he knew what she meant, but ceased his activity to study her. She pursed a smile from his response and pointed to another object, this time the door, "kou."
For the first time since he was dropped on the mud ball, the outsider could not help but smile with sincerity, closing his eyes and promptly ignoring what his spectator was trying to teach him. He may have never said a word, but that did not mean he was slow. After that, they never left him alone, and for sure there was always a small spy lurking about somewhere during the day.
"Ms. Kobeyashi, a Mister Lauchheimer called to confirm his appointment for tomorrow at the," the receptionist stopped to read the handwriting more carefully, "A- Ax Lioness?"
"Aux Lyonnais," Bulma corrected, taking the note from her hand and stalking into her office. Marie, or 'kitten' as the heiress privately mused, was a new assistant pushed by her father, who in turn was prodded by her stepmother as a favor for her friend. It was to get out of the house. She was a small brunette with perfect nails, a cache of beauty products in her chique purse, and style far too pretentious for any normal associate at Capsule Corp. It was sad that her brain contrasted so sharply with the size of her husband's bank account, which made the hire all the more frivolous. She may have known what the restaurant was. More than likely, she had dinner there on several occasions. However, Bulma candidly bet money that Kitten would be lost to describe it based solely on the butchered name.
Lauchheimer. A household name in Europe for appliances, wood furnishings, and paint. They had received some attention in the United States as well as Australia for several years and were openly campaigning to push supplies abroad. To Bulma, the business sounded like a name for a fancy Rolex and wondered why they had little foresight to make use of the potential advertising. It made the lower class homes seem more … extravagant. That must be it.
Her meeting was not to purchase furniture, though. The corporations were partners in the business game, where Capsule Corp. designed the appliances and Lauchheimer, Inc. promoted them. It was a fair arrangement and although her collaborators made a mint on selling the equipment, Bulma ultimately had exclusive rights to the patents, giving her the power to elicit any manufacturer for any price at any time. Now that she had a foot into the world market, she would inform Lauchheimer of her intentions to sell out to other companies. The United States could assemble the appliances cheaper and without transport penalties, as an added benefit. Plus, a competitive market to gear prices in both countries. It was a win-win situation in her eyes.
She sat down at the large cherry desk and thumbed through her recent meeting summaries. The room was somewhat old fashioned for her taste. It sort of recalled a sense of "old cigar man" in her mind. Half the time, she expected an imaginary version of her father to stride away from the bookcase with a strong pipe in his hand, reflecting on some book he read.
A classic novel. A deep, snobbish cackle lurched from her throat. God, the New York office is so much better.
Two more weeks and the grand quarterly tour would be complete. So far in her rounds of the Empire, she visited the Tokyo, Phoenix, Chicago, New York, and London branches, and was only now comfortably in the confines of an overly plush leather chair in Paris. Next on her list was Riyadh and finally Sydney. For the most part, these visits were to manage personal business relationships with their clients and usually were taken up by her father. However, hubbub over the "capsule patents," as it became known within the science division of the company, was requiring many more resources than initial budgeted, leaving Bulma to pick up his left over duties as CEO. To exacerbate matters, she was apparently very good at playing hostess and many of their partners confided their desire to continue relations specifically with her. She guessed this was to be expected, as she would eventually inherit the company when the Great Kobeyashi retired.
Abruptly, the phone chimed by her side and she closed the report, "Bonjour, Bulma parlant."
"Bulma dear, how are you doing?" The gruff voice happily returned.
Immediately, her disposition changed and a girlish grin engulfed her oval cheeks, "Daddy, I wasn't expecting your call."
"Must I send a memo to talk to my little girl?"
"No, no. Of course not," she closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. He should have sent the memo. "I'm doing fine. How are you, Daddy?"
"Oh," he sighed, "I am doing alright. I wanted to ask you something."
Her gut tightened for a second at the prospect of a spontaneous inquiry from anyone, especially when it came to her most recent deals, "Yes?"
"I need you to come back to the main branch and sort a problem out for me."
She swallowed and leaned back in the chair, "What sort of problem?"
"We are having irrevocable issues with the capsule patents, and I need your expertise to find a solution," he purposely added zing to the latter half of the remark.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, I don't want to go into details about it here. However, our deadline is approaching quickly and I need all the hands I can get. You have pulled me out of pickles before."
"Gee, pickles, eh?" she retorted. She was not sure if she wanted to go back to Tokyo so soon. The capsules were a pain in the ass with no doubt that the final product was behind schedule.
"Come on, sweetheart. I have already cancelled your meetings in Riyadh and I am currently on my way to Sidney to conclude the quarterly tour personally."
"You what?"
"I will send a jet to pick you up."
"Wait a minute," she jerked in, "Daddy, let me handle my own schedule. The deadline is not until November. Are you sure this cannot wait?"
The receiver was quiet before his brittle chuckle picked up on her end, "Bulma. This project should have been yours since the concept was finalized last year. I made a mistake by turning it over to the Fidel Group, I admit, and since have had issue after issue in blueprinting and prototyping the product. But I need you now to fix it like you have always managed to do in the past. You are my little genius. You uphold the Kobeyashi good name and I expect nothing less."
Bulma raised an eyebrow at the last statement. Of course he would expect nothing less than perfection in this family. This invention would change the world and that was his goal, "I will be there tomorrow evening."
She could almost hear the smile erect itself, "You are such a precious gem."
"I know," she replied and hung up. The heiress sat silent in her luxurious cage, peering at the miscellaneous pictures and expensive French trinkets lining the equally delicate cherry bookcases. She needed a vacation. Pushing the red button with bottled control, Bulma contacted her kitten languidly checking email in the next room, "Marie, please cancel my appointment with Mr. Lauchheimer. I will be leaving the office today."
"Xiansheng?" One of the farmers thumped the door before entering. Vegeta rose to his feet and looked to the intruder. Silently brushing by the shorter man, he began down the road toward his scheduled destination. The other followed close behind, still hesitant to speak as this was first time he did not need to coerce the occupant out of hiding.
It had been raining for one solid week, which was actually received well by the saiyan for it kept the sun buried behind clouds and allowed his skin to stay hydrated. The climate tended to build into endless precipitation, in turn mirroring the unyielding temperatures that preceded and followed each monsoon. Two days ago, Vegeta overheard one of the old men retelling something about how the river overflowed, damaging homes and crops. Many people died, from the sound of it, and they were all going to walk into the gorge at some point after the water receded to see if they could assist in repair. This meant that he would likely be away for a couple of days along the tributary itself, and he saw this as the perfect opportunity to check out any true means of leaving.
As nice as this retreat was for his berated psyche, he needed to get off the planet. Even if that meant scrapping a ship together on his own. Bulma said that she would be back within a couple of weeks. However, ninety-three solar days had passed since her departure, and Vegeta half wondered if she abandoned him. Fear of impending doom was further distracting, and an obsessive compulsion to run fiercely started gaining hold as time wore on.
Worse yet, he was beginning not to feel right again as an unidentifiable dull ache slowly took over his body. He initially thought it was a warning signal alerting him to the enemy's presence, but coupled exhaustion and frequent headaches eventually forced him to rebut this as the most plausible explanation. Fright or flight delusions did not manifest in the form of a common illness.
Still, Vegeta did not enjoy the idea of getting sick, with a foreign disease no less. Any longer in the bleak, polluted place and he was unsure of what kind of ailment he would conjure given any differences in his physiology when compared to his fellow comrades. Desperate measures would have to be sought after if the warden could not be bothered to return for him.
He met the other volunteers with a fleeting nod at their lunch stop before departing down the dirt path. His cook brought out plastic bags with food for all of them and handed something to the old man when exchanging muffled words. The walk was a long downhill gradient, winding along the same recognizable snakes Vegeta arrived on. In the distance, their destination would occasionally present itself as a mass of brown wedged into what once was a sea of white brick buildings. The villages all seemingly fused at the center of the valley, extending beyond into the flanks of the massive river. A rubble wall farther in their horizon partially confined the channel upstream, and a waterfall rushed out of the narrow gorge behind it with a steady resonating thunder.
"What is that?" Vegeta nudged the older farmer and motioned to the remote basin.
The elder squinted an aged eye and sniffed, "Long ago, it was a dam."
Vegeta processed the word, but found no decipherable meaning, "I do not understand."
"Barrier. It held water," He turned back to him, rephrasing with his hands.
Recognition lit in his eyes and the alien continued to gaze as water easily bypassed the debris, "It broke."
The four other men with them dissolved in laughter, muttering between each another. The leader cracked a toothy grin and patted Vegeta firmly on the shoulder, "Long ago."
For a second, he wanted to persist as to why the dam was in ruin in the first place and how it was these people did not either repair or tear it away. Somehow though, Vegeta got the impression that they were more content to let their surroundings fade out of sight rather than keep up the façade of precision he was so accustomed to. If it was in at least partially usable condition, then there was no need to discard or fix it. After all, a small leak provided fresh, clean water relative to tainted streams when available.
They stayed overnight in an open room along the road. The resident family offered rice and peppers for dinner, chit chatting with the senior while the younger teens tried their best to act adult around the newcomers. Vegeta hid in the shadows, hoping that if he ignored them, they would harass the others instead. However, no matter how much he pretended to not comprehend, one of the other men would give him away and a tag game ensued. Finally, in effort to escape the onslaught of curious children, Vegeta got up and left for seclusion outside. He could care less if he was reacting rudely to their hospitality. He just wanted to purge his headache.
By the next morning, the throbbing was still there and humidity returned with a shrill cry overhead. They continued by foot, accruing an additional companion in the oldest child during the pit stop. The sight of people was more common the farther they pressed, eventually encountering a fork in their path. The elder already knew which to take and like ants, they all followed, meandering slowly toward the flat expanse before them.
"Ni hao!" A tall fellow exclaimed, leaning his hat a bit toward the allies with a warm greeting. The elder responded with equal friendliness, nodding and placing a wrinkled hand on his shoulder. The younger immediately removed his tiny piece of shade and gave it to the senior with insistence. There was always some sort of exchange between parent and child. They stood talking for some minutes, introducing neighbors and finally pointing back to Vegeta left hidden in the crowd. The old man grinned happily, referring to him as their "strong tiger."
Appraising the damage was an effort, for the flood burdened homes with mud as it withdrew. Miscellaneous boulders and trash lay half hazardly in the streets; the remainder of their old levee. Yet, the residents already began the repair as though it was an old routine. A wall of packed sand was shoved onto the bank, securing a renewed barrier and rerouting the river. Luckily, only a portion of the city was located along the flank before climbing into surrounding mountains and managed to avoid the brunt of the weather. Instead, most of the damage played out on the adjoining roads and docks hugging the wide, turbulent waterway and cliffs.
Vegeta surveyed his options while trailing behind. Certainly, his airport must be gone. There were no vehicles like the one Bulma was outfitted with and the motorcyclists stayed clear of the watermark by heading back upslope. Large boats drifted passed, careful to steer its wake far enough away so that only ripples lapped against the bank.
"Xiansheng," one of the laborers motioned him back to their objective. The levee was only partially complete, knee-high water still trickling through the woven plastic and burlap overstuffed with the tributary's interior. Lining the bags into a thick triangular divide from one end, they sealed the holes with a silt mortar on the other. The final image of a dark tan line ran lengthwise several feet above the previous disaster. It was not that difficult of a task. However, with each successive sack Vegeta hauled, he felt himself tow faintly slower. He refused the idea of a break, only stopping to horde his tea. Perhaps by nightfall he could risk finding another avenue alone.
The placid morning transitioned into a scorching afternoon; heat advising rest for most of the workers. Lunch was followed by a ritualistic nap to ward off any ill effects of labor on full stomachs. Vegeta shrugged it off as an excuse to lounge around, but with the ever growing fatigue, took it without complaint. Messaging his scalp tenderly, he could swear a minute hum phased in and out, affecting his sight as it did so. Dizziness crept forward and he tilted back flat against the ground with a maddened huff. In an odd way, the ground felt cooler than the air, humming its own tune separate from the cicada choir. Gradually, a faint vibration joined the sound and Vegeta recognized it as a far-off engine coursing along the road toward their current site. His expression lightened at the single mirage of hope, and he almost too quickly sat back up.
A truck and wide trailer pulled up near the congregation, as they roused themselves out of their siesta, carrying an assortment of burlap and mounds of sand. Everyone crowded against the vehicles, unloading the cargo before sending it on its way. Vegeta peered pensively, weighing the likelihood of this being his only chance of escape. In a final snap decision, he reached out for the backside of large truck, determined to jump in as it departed. The elder tugged his arm back with swift ease though, and Vegeta was struck by his lack of resistance in the moment. The other looked concerned, shaking his head, "We do not go that way."
"Let go of me," the saiyan demanded, flinching the forearm back into his possession. He could still easily catch it. With dim recognition, he felt a wrench in his spine, needle piercing pain reaching his eyelids. He instantly forgot about the vehicle and the deluge, instead kneeling into the mud with a wrist covering his forehead in angst.
Suddenly, all of the men overwhelmed him, concerned that their invincible helper was now incapacitated. A cold sweat engulfed his already dehydrated form and Vegeta steadied his breathing in order to assess the situation. This was something he never felt before. They retrieved him and ushered some tea while placing the small foreigner against the completed end of the berm.
The elder returned after a moment with fluid in a clear cup and tilted down to look into his eyes. Studying them for a moment, "You look fine."
Vegeta glared back still trying to focus his brain enough to determine the location of the malfunctioning nerve. Although the migraine since recoiled into the background pulse he had become used to over the past days, it had moved from his temple to the base of his neck. Worry flickered briefly at the thought that there was no one around who knew of his augmentations, nor had any way to treat problems should they arise. Buzzing passed his ear drum. He jerked his head to the side, readjusting to the loud vibrant hum. It must be the implant reacting.
This is not good.
Then, all went black.
