WHAT DARKNESS BROUGHT.
CHAPTER 11 – Hide and Seek. DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DRAGONBALL/Z/GT. A/N: -thought- "speech" (mental speech) internal conflict/conscience
ALL CHARACTERS ARE A PRODUCT OF AKIRA TORIYAMA.
and Ideologically Sensitive.
Vegeta sat before the female soldiers that had guarded his ship on his last visit. He then demanded that the guards tell him if they had heard anything about his coveted quarry onboard thier ship after his departure. Each of the women said that they hadn't heard anything during their shift and all seemed normal meaning nothing notable had occurred during her watch. One of the women said that one of their guards had been taking their sweet time for the shift change and assured him that they would be dealt with. Vegeta cared very little for what else other than 'all had been silent'. Yes. Things had been quiet and he searched for her ki to find it at a resting level. After being reassured that she would be found he decided to go back to his training.
Bulma had learned a lot from her friend Rook. More importantly she learned how to properly impersonate a soldier from planet Stratta. She was a fast learner and she found that there were several habitable planets that this ship would come to land on and soon, but first they were headed for a space port to offload supplies to another fleet of Stratta's army. They would arrive there by tomorrow and Rook had promised to show her the sights. Bulma sighed. She had gotten really lucky to run into someone like Rook.
Vegeta felt the stirrings of the woman's ki as she woke. "Finally that blasted woman is awake! Now maybe she will stop her pathetic pouting!" He growled dangerous in his aggravation. He kicked the door in to find a nearly naked and bound imposter. –The woman! Where the fuck is she?- He hissed in disgust as he left the woman where she lay and then slammed the door behind him.
"Prince Vegeta? I told you never to call-" Bishop began only to be silenced by Vegetasei's last heir.
"Bishop! Where can I find you? It would seem that you have on your ship something that belongs to me and I want it back." The look that Vegeta gave the vid screen promised death to any that would deny him.
Bishop couldn't say a word as he gulped and then input his next port into an encoded message and sent it to the prince.
"Good. I'll see you soon. Oh, and Bishop. Should you not be there or leave before I've had the chance to search your ship and council you on your subordinate's negligence, I promise that you won't have anything further to fear from death." Vegeta rasped threateningly and then rudely ended the conversation leaving Bishop to stare fearfully at a black screen. Vegeta then corrected his course and sped in the direction of the next port for Bishop's ship.
Bulma and Rook were walking through the crowds of the port when a message for all troops to return to the ship for they had a royal inspection from the prince of Saiyans that was to be conducted in an hour's time. After overhearing the message she panics and flees from Rooks side unnoticed.
After the delivery of the message Bulma's heart felt as if it had stopped beating and dropped into her feet until it picked back up at a frantic pace. Bulma's heart beat a staccato in her chest and she fought to keep her ki suppressed from Vegeta's notice. Her breath hitched painfully in her throat as he came near. She ran wildly dodging people and vendor stands to find a place out of sight. What she hadn't realized was that Rook had followed her.
"Bulma? What's wrong?" The female soldier asked her friend as she panted alongside her friend from where they were hidden in seclusion.
"Rook... I'm not who you think-" Bulma began with shaky words. She was uncertain if the woman would turn her in or not.
"Shh! It's okay... I know." Rook looked at her with soft, but serious eyes. "Come on. I know how to get you out of here." They were about to leave their hiding place when Bulma felt Vegeta's approaching ki. She yanked Rook back into the shadows and placed her finger to her lips to silently tell her to be quiet. Vegeta soon came into view and the fear of being caught sent violent tremors through her body.
He could have sworn that he had felt her presence and so he pushed past the populace of the port to where had last sensed her. Her scent was too diluted and had become lost in the other smells of the port: people, foods, and machinery. -Damn!- She was nowhere to be scene and her cursed to himself how she must have learned to hide her ki somehow. For the second time she had slipped through his fingers. His anger built to dangerous levels and he struck out against a wall punching his way through its metal surface and then tearing it back out again.
Rook lightly shook her friends shoulder and pointed to a break behind some crates in which they could escape. Once they had put some distance between themselves and the prince Rook took Bulma by the hand leading her to a vendor and bought her passage on one of the departing supply ships.
"It's about to leave so we must hurry!" Rook spoke swiftly as she pulled Bulma along. Bulma's tail was tightly wrapped around her aching stomach and it further added to the nausea that she felt building.
The two women said their quick goodbyes and Bulma boarded the ship in her frightened state Bulma that was going planet side a fair distance away. Bulma jumped aboard just as she felt Vegeta's approaching ki, but masked her own so that she would be undetected. No sooner than Bulma was seated the ship blasted off for planet Osiria.
Vegeta scrunched his nose and the huffed out a breath as he exhaled the scent of the charred corpse that was once the disgraced soldier. It was the woman that Bulma had rendered unconscious and then tied up in her room aboard Vegeta's ship. The flesh of the once humanoid woman had begun to gray into spent ash. Vegeta's black brows flexed but remained tightly knit together as he looked at Bishop. "I want her found. Failure is not an option unless you want to end up like your incompetent subordinate." His voice was grave and blatantly deadly.
"Yes! I will alert all of my forces at once!" Bishop speedily uttered in his nervous state. "Do you still plan on inspecting all of the soldiers and staff?" He asked trying to keep a firm hold on his fear of the dangerous man. "If so, they are still gathered in formation outside of the ship."
"Someone knows something… and I plan to seek them out and pry the information from them." Vegeta's voice lowered to a near guttural tone as he spoke before he left Bishop to his thoughts and to 'inspect' the soldiers quarters by following the faint traces of Bulma's scent.
A Month Later…
Bulma had begun her new life on Osiria. She had gotten or rather fallen into a job working as a mechanic in one of the machine shops near the port where the supply ship landed. As the town mechanic she was responsible for fixing all sorts of electronics and gizmos ranging from everyday electronics to ships and other transports. It was not the life that she was accustomed to, but it was still pleasant enough.
Now planet side Bulma needs to find a job to earn money for a ship or to build her own. She gets a job Vegeta has to track Bulma down by traveling to every planet to which a vessel left bound for at the time that Bulma would have left.
Bulma was lucky in many ways in that she had landed herself where she had at her disposal plenty of spare parts and tools to use in which to mold a means of traveling back to her home on Earth. During the day she worked for ten hours at the shop fixing odds and ends. At night she trained alone and far away from civilization.
In such a short span of time she had learned to sense ki in a matter of days when she was still trapped with the Saiyan prince. Bulma soon found that controlling and using ki were a little more of a difficult task. I was during her most frustrated times that she wished that she had Goku or one of the other Z fighter friends to help her learn. Maybe even Vegeta if she had become desperate enough that day would be a welcome instructor. She thought of what it would be like under his tutelage and her face wrinkled at the thought. –On second thought, perhaps that's not such a great idea.-
She still had dreams about him involving heated passion, but her other dreams of him turned into nightmares. Her darker dreams consisted of her being punished by the Saiyan prince for her indiscretions and her escape. In the last dream that she had of him, Vegeta, held her in his tight grip by her shoulders as he bit into and then ripped out her throat. If he did by chance find her maybe the fact that she was the last female to hold Saiyan blood would be her saving grace. She swallowed hard and massaged her neck as she thought of his deep penetrating stare.
Weeks Later…
Finally he had found her, not himself of course but by outsourcing all of his contacts. Vegeta had found out her location and was currently on his way to claim her once again. He was just outside of the planet's atmosphere and would land in a matter of minutes. –Soon, woman, very soon.-
It had been like an eternity since he had seen her and his anger seemed to grow each day until it dissolved. He had realized that he couldn't be angry with her for taking advantage of a situation and proved smarter than her guards. The woman was a self proclaimed genius after all. His lips twitched into a fleeting half smile until he quelled it with his natural mask of indifference. The blue haired woman was also a pain in the ass. He would have to teach the woman a lesson in a way that would not hinder her spirit for that was what he found most appealing about her. Her temper, the fight in her, and the savage looks she gave him all combined stirred his blood and made him hunger for her more.
The ship rocketed across the sky as it broke through the invisible bubble that protected the planet surface. The force of the entry caused an echoing boom as it sliced through the cloud cover. After what seemed like a snail's pace to the Saiyan prince, the ship landed with a light bump and a hissing of pressure. When he heard the mechanical groan of the ramp after punching in the hatch release command he phased outside and took off into the skies to search for the blue haired woman's ki.
Bulma shivered in her bed as she thought she felt a familiar whisper of something familiar lurking about, but shrugged it off to return to sleep. She lay there shrouded in the darkness of night unsuspecting that she was being watched by two heart stopping deep dark eyes.
He watched as she whispered incoherent words and tossed herself restlessly as she struggled with her hold on sleep. It was almost as if her body was trying to alert her to his threatening presence but she was too naive to listen to her instincts. –Pathetic.- He thought as he looked down at her tensely drawn tail. It was a reminder that she was Saiyan and yet she didn't act in accordance with her blood. She was part of his race in body only. Her heart and her soul were still human. He spat on the floor as if the thought conjured a foul taste to form on his tongue. He would teach her when she awoke that she was no longer human and he would enjoy every minute of it. A snarl of a smile curled his lip over his teeth to mirror that fact.
The blood curdling screams of her nightmares revisited her and she was startled awake by the throng of panicked wails. Her horrific dreams it would seem had followed her into her consciousness. Her hazy thoughts became clearer and she realized the screams had yet to disperse from her reality. Bulma ran to her window and was met with a gruesome sight. People were dead in the streets, home and buildings had been reduced to rubble and the living darted away from the scene like frightened mice. They scattered trying s best as they could to save themselves in vain as blasts took out the fleeing hordes of people leaving nothing left of them except their ashen remains.
Bulma's mouth gaped in a silent scream as she watched the carnage unfold around her. –I'm outside?- She was surprised to find herself out on the street dodging the shrieking populace that remained. All sound faded around her as her ears too in an all too familiar maniacal laugh. Her eyes searched to her left and then to her right. Bulma saw nothing of the person that she had suspected had caused this destruction and mayhem. The laughter echoed again and she ran in the direction of to try to see if her suspicions were true. _-Shouldn't I be running away?- Something inside drew her to seek him out.
Vegeta had zeroed in on her life force since she had awakened. It was now pulsing violently like the thrumming beats of a frantic heart. He blasted another building causing the structure to collapse on top of a mass of people below. She shrill and agonized screams were a symphony to him and he delighted in dispatching the weak beings one by one. Vegeta could only laugh as the planet's inhabitants were too pathetically weak to save themselves from the genocide he brought down on them. His blood lust was in full swing, but he was still in control. He had wiped out all other hints of civilization and he had saved the metropolis where he had found the woman for last so that she could see firsthand what it meant to be Saiyan. He was more than glad to acclimate her to her new way of life.
To her it was like she had been running around in circles chasing after a ghost. As soon as she was sure that he was just around the next turn or that she was about to see his face he would vanish and be further away or in the opposite direction of where she knew he would be. His ki would vanish and then reappear away from her and his laughter would abound as if it were coming from all directions as well as if he were inside her head.
"ENOUGH OF THE GAMES AND SHOW YOURSELF!" She screamed out in seething rage and frustration. She had reached her limit a long time ago and it only enraged her more for her inability to fly. "ARE YOU SO MUCH OF A COWARD? IS THAT IT?" Her throat ached with the force and volume of her screams as she called out her insults to his ego hoping for some form of a response, but received only an eerie silence. The only sounds that could be heard were the crackle of flames and a stray fall from the crumbling buildings. The wind was scarce, but whistled from time to time. Bulma swallowed the building lump in her throat painfully. The only living beings that remained were she and the man she knew to be laying in wait for her.
He was too amused at toying with his long awaited prize. Vegeta scoffed at how pathetic she was. She was a Saiyan and an untrained member of his proud warrior race. –What a waste…- He would have had more fun with her if she wasn't so helpless. His disappointment hedged his amusement in her torment. –At least the woman has the ability to sense me, but that's not much of a benefit.-
There had been several times where he had been right behind her. So close in fact that he could put his nose in her hair and breathe down her neck. Unfortunately for Bulma she wasn't as quick as the Saiyan prince and by the time she turned after feeling him so near he was gone.
Her shouts echoed in the dead quiet long after she had finished her remarks. She had called him out and he saw no point in giving her what she wanted so soon. Bulma had played against his pride and he had nearly gone to her, but he knew that's was what she wanted. –Cleaver wench.- Vegeta left her without a word. His silence was his response to her, but he would grant her request on his terms and not hers.