Sorry about getting this posted later than the Saturday deadline, but that's actually what I'm here to talk about. See, my personal life is getting pretty hectic, especially money-wise, so I'm no longer going to guarantee a chapter once a week. From now on, I'm going to update as I can, which could mean two or three updates one week, then no updates the next week, or even two weeks. This is until I can get shit in my life straightened out in a way that works for me. Now, I still work on this story every day, so there's no reason to really worry, but this is just how it stands at the moment. Now, without further ado…
()()()
"Oh, hey, dear."
Dr. Briefs shut the door of the work-room behind him. Bulma was sitting at a desk, fiddling with the new dragon radar. "Hey, Dad. Almost done with this thing. Did you need the lab or…?"
"No, not for anything very important. Mainly just wanted to have some privacy."
Bulma smiled a little. "We have bathrooms for that, you know."
"Oh, I know. I just don't want to be rushed out the first time someone knocks."
Dr. Briefs looked over Bulma's shoulder. He was close enough that his daughter could smell the smoke from his ever-present cigarette. "Goodness, you really are almost done. It took you a year to complete the first one."
"It didn't take a year!" Bulma said. "I had it in, like, six months!"
"That's not how I remember it."
"Well, it sounds like your age is catching up to you, Dad."
Dr. Briefs laughed heartily, sitting down at the other desk beside the door. "Your mother thinks I'm as sprightly as the first day we met."
"I didn't need to know that."
They laughed together for a little while, then Bulma went back to tinkering with the radar. As she started to put the finishing touches on it, her father asked, "so, how's that boy you've been going out with lately, that… Yamcha, was his name?"
Bulma tensed up. The hands that were diligently working on the dragon radar stiffened. "I haven't seen him in a couple of days. We sort of had a fight."
"Really?" Dr. Briefs stood up. He wasn't ignorant of the fact that he'd hit a nerve with his daughter—all the evidence he needed was the hunching of her shoulders at the mere mention of Yamcha's name. "Is there something you'd like to talk about?"
Bulma shook her head, but didn't say anything.
"Well, okay. But I think I'd be able to offer you some pretty good advice. I'm sure I've been a Yamcha to a few ladies in my time. Maybe I could give you some insight."
"Again. Didn't really need to hear that."
"Well—"
"Look," Bulma said, swiveling in her desk chair, "it's no big deal, but I just don't feel like talking about it. I've been able to not think about it by working on the new radar."
"Ah, so that's why you won't let me help you with that thing!"
"No—I mean, well, kinda."
"Say no more, my dear," said Dr. Briefs as he approached the door. "I'm going to give you some privacy, it seems you might need it more than I do. Anyway, I think it's been a while since anyone's checked on the pets. I'll see you at the dinner table?"
"Yeah. Thanks, daddy."
"No problem, dear." And with that, he left the room, leaving Bulma alone with her thoughts.
She leaned back in her chair and put her hands behind her head, as if she was being arrested. The texture of her hair told her she needed a shower, post-haste. Normally, she bathed every single day, but she skipped yesterday out of apathy and focused on completing the radar. Her father was right, whether she cared to admit it or not—the first radar took way more time than this one, and that was because she only worked on that one in her down time. But Goku dropping that one gave her something to do to keep her mind off of Yamcha.
But she couldn't shake the worry, in the back of her mind, that the dragon radar Goku dropped would fall into bad hands. After all they'd been through for those balls, they had seen too many people going after them—even succeeding in getting them—for an evil use. Her cold and scientific mind told her that it most likely broke on impact and would just be thrown away by whoever found it. But her nerves told her… she needed to finish the new radar. Fast.
()()()
"Capsule Corp," muttered Matt as he traced his finger around the logo embossed on the back of the radar. "I can't believe I didn't notice it earlier. Yeah, I know who they are."
"Who are they?"
"They're this, uh, corporation. They pretty much make everything. They have this technology that allows stuff like cars, planes, and even houses to be carried in these capsules no bigger than your thumb."
Seina was ahead of Matt as they walked, so he couldn't see her look of wonderment. "That's… possible?"
"If I hadn't been seeing it for myself all these years, I never would've believed it. Never once have I even used a capsulated car. Always driven pre-capsule era stuff."
Matt turned the radar over in his hand and stared at the face of it. The blinking dot indicating the location of the nearest dragon ball was farther away than any other ball had been before then. "We're going to be months along before we get to the next one, it seems. Why don't we, uh… stop at the next town, lay back for a while, maybe try to get some money rolling in?"
"Sounds fine, Matt."
But Seina's dismissive, distant voice led him to believe that it didn't. "What happened to you when you left?"
"Nothing," she said with a shrug.
"No, I mean it, because since you got back yesterday morning, it's like you've just… not really been here. If it's still because of what I did, my offer still stands. I'll let you take some food and money if you're ready to strike out on your own."
"No."
Matt waited for Seina to elaborate, but when it became clear that she wouldn't, it rubbed him the wrong way. "God damn it, Seina, I'm not putting up with this for the rest of the trip—"
"Look," she said, "if it makes you happy, I just don't feel like talking about it. Okay? I got the third dragon ball, I'm alive, and I came back for you. That's all you need to know. You don't get to decide what I do or don't do, so just—just drop it, okay?"
"…Okay. Fine."
The two of them walked in silence. Then, unexpectedly, Seina rebroke the mended silence. "The next town is called Pfousy, it's really noisy. If we're going to stay there, I'd like to get away from the college part of town."
"I guess you wouldn't be used to the noise of a college town?"
"Well, would you?"
"No. I guess not. The most noise I ever had to deal with in Gasket was when my neighbors would start airing their dirty laundry."
"Airing their dirty laundry?"
"Yeah, you know, fighting in public. They'd just go out on the lawn and… argue. Probably started out as a talk in the house."
Seina tried to think of an instance in her village where anything like that had ever happened. Sure, there were kids in the village who would get into dust-ups, but when those kids grew up, they usually did the same thing as everyone else; bottle up their grievances against each other and release it slowly as a vapor to any friend or family member who would listen.
"Weird."
()()()
Two hours later, Matt and Seina arrived in the town of Pfousy, starving and tired. They had 75 zenie left. "I know a guy," Seina told Matt as they arrived in town, "who let me stay in a room above his restaurant while I was here. If you don't mind the noise outside, we can see about staying. Until we have something else worked out, that is."
Matt thought about it. 75 zenie would be just enough to put two people up in a crappy hotel room for a night, but with nothing left over for food, which meant eating the worst dregs of the stuff they bought months ago. He thought about how foolish the two of them must've looked walking into town with armfuls of stuff meant mostly for camping. Of course, it wasn't his fault they no longer had a car…
"Yeah. We can try that," said Matt. "I wouldn't be surprised if he rejected us, though. He probably…"
Matt bit his tongue at that point. He was intending to tell Seina she was probably only welcome in his home because she was an attractive, albeit filthy, woman. But Matt had already hit his quota of arguing with his partner-in-crime for one day.
"I don't think so," said Seina. "I think the room he loaned me has enough room for two people. One of us would have to use the sleeping bag. Only one bed."
"How big is the bed?"
Seina turned to glare at Matt. He held his hands up defensively. "I didn't mean anything by that. Just asking."
"Twin-sized. Don't get any ideas."
"Okay. I'll use the sleeping bag, then, but only because you got us the last dragon ball."
()()()
Seina could tell something was different about the man's face as soon as she walked into the restaurant. At first, she thought she might have walked into the wrong establishment, so she took a close look around. No. This was the same place. But the man behind the wood bar no longer looked like he knew her. "Excuse me, Petra?"
Petra looked at her and nodded, but his face remained a slab of deep, casual cold, as if Seina was not just a stranger, but an unwelcome one. "Yes. What is it?"
Seina turned for a second to get Matt's view on the situation. He shrugged. "We need a room," he said. "Seina says she stayed at this place a little while ago. Do you have room for two?"
"No."
He sighed, realizing this was going to be way harder than Seina sold it as being. He wasn't even sure how much he wanted to stay at a place like this. The whole restaurant smelled of grease and wood shavings. It was dimly-lit and the wooden paneling was dark colored. The only lighting was provided by the windows outside and some small, lantern-like glass-covered bulbs hanging by chains from the low ceiling. Matt could have touched them by reaching his hand up. It could almost be described as dank. Matt walked closer until he was standing right behind the stools. "We have money. If that's your concern—"
"I don't have room for two people."
"Yes," Seina interrupted, "you do. We can make it work."
Petra slammed the glass he was cleaning onto the counter, nearly breaking it. "Is it true what I've heard about you, woman?"
Seina's eyebrows tightened. "What?"
"Did you burn down Wallace Café?"
Matt looked at Seina in disbelief. He tried to look for a sign in her body language that proved she had no idea what the man was talking about, and didn't find it. "Seina—"
"Never mind. If you're going to be that rude, I'll just leave. Come on, Matt."
But Matt stayed behind for a while, and Seina didn't seem to mind. He and the owner of the establishment stared each other down. "Did you know anything about what I said?" asked the owner.
"No," Matt said, sitting down. "What happened to this… what did you say, Walter Café?"
"Wallace," corrected Petra. "The place used to be owned by a friend of mine named Thyme."
"Time?"
"Like the spice. Someone committed arson on that building just a couple of days back. I still smell smoke when I walk past where it used to be."
"God damn. And you think she did this?"
"I know she did, because Thyme said so. There ain't enough evidence to pin it on her, of course. But I knew just from the way Thyme described her who it was. I never would have expected that kind of chick to go that far—I figured she might have been a prostitute, because of how shabby she looked when she came in. But arsonist?"
Matt stared at the countertop, thinking. He knew in his heart she had been hiding something from him ever since she got back from her lone excursion. Though they had been traveling together all these months, Matt felt he knew less about her than she knew about him. If her fiancée was capable of committing a murder, if necessary… wasn't Seina capable of burning someone's business down… if necessary?
()()()
When Matt left the café, Seina was on the corner nearest to the place. The moment they locked eyes, Matt ran over and grabbed her by the wrist before she could run. While Seina struggled against his fevered walking pace, Matt drug her to an alley separating two bars. Once deep enough in, he pinned her to a wall, placing each of his hands on either side of Seina's head.
"You burned a fucking building down?" Matt whispered harshly into her face, close enough that Seina could smell his breath. She said nothing, because she couldn't decide which one of the many things that popped into her head should be let out. All at once, she felt anger, fear, disbelief—how could she possibly have expected one of Mr. Vealo's friends to be the same person who let her live in that upstairs room?
"Seina, answer me, god damn it. We're not moving from here until you tell me what happened, I don't want to hear any more of your excuses, no more punting the fucking ball down the road, I need you to tell me what happened and I need you to tell me NOW!"
Until the very last second, Seina's arms remained by her side, but in a flash one of them came up to Matt's face. The nails on her right hand burrowed deep enough into Matt's cheek to draw blood. He let out an undignified squeak, thinking he was about to lose one of his eyes, and he withdrew from Seina, pressing his back against the opposite building from where Seina stood, breathing heavily though she had physically done little.
"I burned down Thyme Vealo's building," said Seina through gasps. Matt felt his anger thin, realizing that Seina was breathing that way because she was anxious. It was clear from her eyes—tears were pooling around them, they were bloodshot, the pupils were shrunken. He had never seen her look afraid. Not like this. Even the Simone incident didn't put her in this shape.
Matt stepped forward gingerly, looking at his partner like a dangerous wild animal. "Why?"
Her face became pained. That was the one question she was hoping he wouldn't ask, but knew he would. "Same reason I left you."
"What?"
"You…"
"Wait—is this about… the bet? He did the same thing to you? And you…"
Seina's lip trembled. "And I what, Matt? I let him?"
"You let him."
She opened her mouth to talk, but nothing came out. The tears that were convalescing around her eyes began falling down her face. Slowly, her knees buckled beneath her, and she skidded her back down the side of the building on her side of the alley, sobs now flowing freely out of her mouth. Matt turned away, his head cradled in one of his hands, eyes staring up at the line of blue sky visible to him. A slightly sick turning feeling had awoken in his stomach. When was the last time he ate? Maybe last night? Certainly not this morning. Maybe that's why he was starting to feel so weak, so dizzy. He had to walk away from Seina. Her almost convulsive sobs were too much to listen to. They made it impossible to think.
He emerged from the alleyway and an acute awareness of the new danger of his surroundings overtook him. The face of every person around him took on a slightly suspicious tone. If the police had gotten involved already, he was now harboring a fugitive. There was now simply no way the two of them could stay in this place. Maybe, if he left Seina in the alley, hid her behind a trash can or something, he might use their last morsel of money to replenish their supplies so they could continue on to the closest other town, but not if she kept sobbing the way she was.
All that really made sense to him at the moment was to leave her behind. He felt imbued with a great sense of pride at how he had managed to make it this far and acquire three dragon balls from all over the world in what felt like a fairly short span of time… well, besides the one Seina got by herself while he was out in the desert contemplating his own death… and the first one from the village that she basically stole right out from under Simone and Chief's noses…
They were partners. He couldn't leave her behind like this.
But he couldn't protect her either. He walked back to the same café he had just left minutes ago—somehow it felt like hours—and peeked in to see if there was anyone in there who might overhear something they shouldn't. Not only were there no customers, Petra wasn't standing at the counter. Matt walked in and was about to take his seat at the counter when he heard the voice of Petra in the back. He sounded as if he was trying to keep quiet, but the words were audible:
"Yeah, she came in, just a few minutes ago, along with this skinny dude. Real dirty, had a high-pitched voice… almost like a kid, and he stank up the whole damn place. Might have to close down for the day… sure, yeah, your guys' guns are all here. But, Thyme, listen, they already left, so you need to get down here fast, and keep a lookout. The guy was wearing a plain white t-shirt and some shorts, just like the chick… okay, see you soon."
By the time Petra came back to the counter, Matt had gone.
