~ discalimer: I own nothing except my brain. Don't take that away from poor little me !
~A/N: sorry for taking so long! What with holidays, doctors, uni applications and packing to move (my room is gonna look awsome :D), I haven't had much time. And my cat passed away (nearly twenty! Older than me :/)
~Here's my longest chapter so far. I didn't know where to stop :S
~R&R please x I'm expeting them...
As soon as Vegeta uttered those two little words, it seemed like only seconds later before she was outside and rummaging through her pockets. Pulling out a few lose capsules, she popped a blue one and threw it. The smoke had barely disappeared before the jets door was sliding open and the heiress clambered into it.
It was only a few more seconds before she leant out again, Tarzan style. "Hey, Vegeta? Do you, err, want a ride or what?"
"No." He was standing several feet away and actually quite impressed. He had never seen one of those ever-popular capsules put to use before and momentarily admired the, frankly, great piece of equipment. He just didn't want a ride with her.
"So you're okay flying there?"
"No, I planned on walking, genius."
Annoyance started to seep into her beautiful features as she huffed, "Okay! Fine, I don't care if you fly or not. Just make sure you go slow enough so that I can follow you, after all, I've never been to where we're going before. If I lose you, then I'd have to either fly around trying to find you, which will be hard enough, or go home and then you'll have to find me and we'll just be wasting time."
Reluctantly, he agreed with her. Vegeta would've been happy to leave her behind but she was right- he did need her help. Just this once, though. When the yellow streamlined jet whirred into life, he levitated high enough to clear the roofs of the compound domes and waited for her to join.
Moments later, Bulma was level with him. Nodding her head once, the man knew she was ready and sped towards the south, leaving nothing but a trail of blue in his wake and a tiny dot in the distance.
"Hmph, so much for slowing down. Alright, baby," she smirked at her steering controls, "let's see what you've got…" soon, she was also nothing of a trail in the sky as she shot off after the Saiyan in the skies.
It took Vegeta all of, say, nine seconds before he looked over his shoulder, expecting her to be along side him only to find himself alone in the air. Slamming his figurative brakes, he let out a snarl of irritation. She had asked him to fly slowly, and here he was, flying slowly. Only not slow enough.
"Damn, now what?" Should he back peddle to her or wait? Or simply go on without her. Get the damn scouter himself and bring it to her? That was his original plan. But it would've taken twice as long. Three time maybe if he couldn't find her.
Fortunately, he spied a white craft in the distance, growing by the second. With his feet dangling, Vegeta simply waited for her to catch up, leaning out of the way as said craft zoomed right past, showing no signs of stopping. Now he knew her speed, he could match this and finally get the show on the road.
He was pleasantly surprised to find their journey as slow and dreary as he had first expected it to be.
As their destination ambled into view, Bulma checked the various dials before her decent. Beneath her, the half grassy, half sandy canyons sprouted great columns of rock that made a difficult landing for her private jet. Vegeta, on the other hand was rid of his blue aura, switching it off like a light switch. In one fluent movement, he'd gone from 90mph in the air to standing tall and proud at the top one of the might columns. He watched her circle overhead like an indecisive bird.
It took a few minutes longer, but the finally woman touched ground, appearing as the engines gave their last little whirr of noise and he looked down at the unique blue hair emerging and encapsulating the craft below. Wasting no time, he casually stepped off the tower and, just before he reached the ground, he did a forward summersault and gracefully landed in front of her.
Bulma tried to hide the impressed look on her face, but plummeting over a hundred feet and landing without using any power was very impressing. Never had she ever seen her friends do that before. It took guts.
"Show-off."
"Slow-poke."
"Forgive me for wasting time with landing safely and all that." Sliding the capsule into her jeans pocket, she yelled. "Next time, I'll just steer the plane headfirst into the ground!"
"Better yet, just jump out." He smirked at her sarcasm. Agreeing with her would just infuriate her further.
He was right. Her face flushed red with irritation before suddenly settling into a brilliant smile. "Why, were you going to catch me, tough guy?"
That wiped the smirk off his face. "Shut up, we're just wasting time now."
He stalked right past her without a second glance and continued for a few moments with Bulma falling into step besides him. Sneaking a peek at him every other minute, her mind kept drifting to the idea that this just might be a trap. Here she was, willingly following the man who was universally feared because of his bloodlust and, with Goku gone, Vegeta was now the most powerful being out there. And they were heading to a place were she had never been before. Alone with a murderer.
She should really be terrified, but no matter how hard she tried, Bulma just couldn't picture it. The way he moved now was fierce and strong, but not all that deadly. He just looked like the average Joe with some errands. That very comparison outweighed here nervousness around him. For now.
When his steps slowed down, Bulma's did too. His sharp eyes wandered towards his left, causing his tall flame-styled hair to move as one solid mass as he turned his head. Bulma was just about to ask what was up when he turned his back on her and marched in that direction, with her jogging behind him. That is until the rounded another column (one that looked identical to the others in her eyes) and entered a clearing. Here the clearing was bigger, dustier and littered with rubble, the occasional scorch mark here and there. It was as her eyes fell drank up her surroundings, she collided face first into his tense back.
"Woah, watch where you're going, Vegeta!"
The Saiyan couldn't hear her calls. His eyes, too, drank up their surroundings but unlike her, he'd seen it all before. In the corner of his eye, Ki blasts were still flashing and Nappa's roars of laughter and fury still boomed through the canyons. His fingers started to twitch, begging to be curled into fists just like they do before any battle-
"Helloooo? Earth to Vegeta?" literally.
"What" he had been so lost in thought that her waving her hand in his face made him jump. "What the hell do you want, woman?"
"I said 'where to now?'"
With his thoughts now firmly pulled back into reality, Vegeta stormed to the far end of the vast clearing and eventually she followed after him. As he reached a certain spot, he spun round, stopping her in her tracks.
It was like Déjà vu to the duo.
Vegeta now stood in the exact same spot as he had in Baba's crystal ball all those months ago. His arms were planted firmly across his chest with his feet spaced apart, the idol of superiority himself. Besides his clothes and his eyes closed tight, he was identical.
That uneasy feeling Bulma felt earlier started to worm its way back. She was momentarily grateful her jet was in her pocket, rather than leaving it behind. Standing in the middle of nowhere, she felt vulnerable, as she had done on Namek, a completely alien world, again face to face with a madman.
As she took a step back, tempted to leg it, his eyes snapped open, demanding her not to move. Or warning her against escaping, one or the other. After a nerve-racking five seconds, he shifted his gaze to his right, looking up at an imaginary tall, bald-headed warrior.
Nappa.
He then stood in Nappa's place and raised his left arm to his face and grabbed a chank of air.
A scouter.
He swung his arm slightly and said imaginary scouter was tossed over his shoulder. Finally, he turned around so that he faced away from her and towards a pile of rubble.
"It must be under there somewhere."
It took awhile, but her shaky legs finally managed to work themselves to his side, watching his toss aside rock after rock (and some of them were really big rocks!). After watching his display, Bulma felt those feelings of dread in her stomach dwindle away. Whenever she had lost something, she found herself going through her entire day all over again just to find it. Him re-enacting his moves was nothing new to her. He worked much like she did, focused and non-stop if the goal was close, so close. It dawned on her that he was the only other person beside herself who could actually be called intelligent. Bulma didn't have to dumb down her sentences around him like she felt she had to with everybody else. Her father, maybe, but he just didn't have the same spark since he had gotten older. If something weren't finished, he'd admit and prepare his nightly cup of cocoa; she on the other hand would stay up all night if she had to. But Bulma recognised intelligent when she rarely saw it, and drive when it so easily reflected her own.
Finally they had one thing in common and that made him a bit more human. Enough to drop to her knees and patiently wait for him to find the hidden device.
It sparkled like a gem as he finally held it up. It was a bit scuffed and part of the screen had fractured, but its hiding place served to keep it dry and clean, surprising since it had been around half a year ago.
"That's in remarkably good condition!"
Vegeta looked sideways at her resting on her knees like him. Her blue eyes were focused entirely on the scouter like it was some kind of delicious snack, the same way she had gazed upon the space pods, or the other scouter. Vegeta was taken aback by that look- he'd seen the way she mourned over the tampering of the pod in the lab but that was different; then she had stuff taken away. Now Bulma was looking at something else entirely new and, despite it's condition, still needed a bit of touching up, something the natural genius was dying to do.
"Finish this."
"Pardon?"
Vegeta roughly shoved the thing into her hands. "Remove the tracking device. That's what we came here to do, not ogle over it."
"I do not 'ogle'! That makes me sound like some obsessed teenager!" her shoulders squared up and, when the prince slouched, she was taller than him.
He stopped slouching, eye level with each other but grinning all the time. "Please! You were practically drooling!"
"Can we just get on with it?" she snapped, changing the subject. She was embarrassed enough that she had regularly caught her self-dribbling over a particularly tasty piece of equipment before but she'd never admit that to him in a hundred years.
His face dropped into a serious expression as she walked over to a small boulder near by. When she sat next to it, it became a good improvised table to work on. She had already opened a capsule containing her tools and the green scouter as he sat across from her with his back to the clearing.
Again, they sat in silence as the popped open the scouter and rummaged round inside. Only now things were difficult. "Ah."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "'Ah', what?"
"Ah, I think this is gonna take just a little longer that we thought… You see this dent here?" she pointed at the back of the earpiece. "It's the power source-"
"Yes, I know that-"
"-which appears to be broken."
He stared at the pathetic device, dented by a stupid rock, before shrugging.
"Does the tracker still work even if the scouter doesn't?"
"Yes."
Bulma bit her lip. "I can't find the device without activating the scouter, Vegeta. I need it to work properly in order to open up. I don't know how to fix this sort of battery, let alone charge it!"
Without warning he leant forward and snatched it from her hands. He didn't bother to explain what he was doing as he reached ender the main battery system and pulled out a small black wire. At the end was a small black square that looked like it was made of plastic that he unfolded and placed on the 'table' between them, still attached to the scouter.
"Emergency charger, relies on-"
"Solar power!"
"Indeed." There was that look again in her eyes again, hunger, fascination. This time, though, he was caught off guard by how sparkly it made her eyes look. The shine in somebody's eyes meant either two things for him- either he just gave a beating, or he was beaten himself. The way Frieza's face would remain blank but his eyes- his eyes would twinkle like broken glass at Vegeta as he lay on the floor in agony. His eyes were that of a psycho.
But her eyes twinkled with something more. No, something else entirely. It completely floored him. It scared him.
"-Just look at these etchings on this- this material! I mean, I know solar power works, we've had it on Earth for several years, but the battery symbol on the screen already works and saying it's half charged and it's only been two minutes! Kami, if only I can replicate this soar panel then just imagine all of the clean reliable energy CC could produce… Hey, Vegeta, what's wrong?"
"Nothing." He squeezed his arms tighter across his chest.
"Then why are your eyes shut?" she giggle quietly. "You're not nodding off on me, are you?"
"I might do I you continue to babble on like this!"
"Hmph. Sorry, I tend to babble."
It took a moment before she spoke again. "By the way… you never did tell me how you broke into my lab."
"I didn't. I hacked in." he chuckled darkly. "You should pay attention when you type in your pass code. From above I had the opportune view to see what numbers you used in what order."
She gasped slightly. "You spied on my labs control panel?"
"Only once."
"I can't believe you!" Bulma ran an angry hand through her hair.
He opened his eyes at her miffed tone. "And by the way, you never told me how you reassembled the Space pod. It exploded, did it not?"
"Well," she answered, pulled back from her frustrations. "I had to find it all first. It took two days but I gathered most of it but it still wasn't enough. So I melted it down, merged it with titanium and hey presto, a new shell. As I said earlier, the main controls, the engine and the door were barely damaged at all."
He nodded, surprised by her improvising in reconstructing a brand new pod. By the sound of it, it was stronger.
"I did the exact same thing with the Green scouter after it blew up, right on my face. Damn near took my eye out-!" her sentence was cut of with his short bark of laughter. If she hadn't have been looking at him she'd have wondered if it was really him at all; she hadn't him laugh out loud like that since Baba's crystal ball. Without the bloodthirsty lunacy mingling with his chortles, it was the second time ever she'd have called him civil.
That doesn't mean she was laughing along with him.
"-and I added a new seat; white leather to match the interior. Not too bad if you ask me, the old brown looked disgusting. And uncomfortable"
Vegeta just nodded again. Yes, it was uncomfortable. The cushioning was biscuit thin, lumpy and rough, and waking up from months of travelling in it really bugged him; Nappa had repeatedly visited the medical bay from a strained neck.
"Why bother? I'm not planning on using those pieces of crap again. Next time, I'm getting a real ship, one with training chambers and a professional control panel." And a comfortable bed.
"Oh come on! You're not the slightest bit interested in my improvements?"
"No."
Bulma almost growled. "So all my hard work for nothing?"
"I never said that, you daft human." He had to crack a smirk at her attitude. "At no point did I tell you that your so-called improvements were in vain. Just that I won't be wasting my time as your guinea pig."
"Aw man! But out of anybody on this planet, you know the most about these sort of things!"
"Too bad for you, then." With that, he closed his eyes yet again, this time to close the subject. At that precise moment, the solar panel of the scouter went ping! So Bulma decided to just get on with it.
She worked in silence, and he sat in silence, until the little hatch clicked shut. He opened one eye to see the small green chip just inches in front of him.
He stood up (without uncrossing his arms- he just sort of sprung up like the sun) as she scrambled to her feet, dropping the tiny chip into his palm before dusting off her behind. It only took a second for the last of Frieza's tracking devices on Earth to be eradicated.
Bulma didn't celebrate just yet. "Is that it?"
"Yes." he nodded, face blank.
"There's no more out there to disable?"
"No-"
"Are you sure?"
His patience was starting to run a bit thin now. "I just said so, didn't I? Damn woman..."
Finally, she breathed a sigh of relief with her short blue bangs falling around her face. "Thank the gods!"
Vegeta grunted in agreement before turning around and march back the way they came. Until her voice caused him to come to a complete standstill.
"Vegeta, wait? I think these still work, don't they?"
He turned around to see that she hadn't moved. In one hand she held the lef green scouter, the other held the ice blue.
Raising a think eyebrow, he responded, "Is that not what you wanted?"
"Um, yeah. But I didn't think… never mind." She shrugged and looked away. The she snapped her eyes back at him, an idea formulating in their blue depths. "Should we try them out?"
"I told you, I am not a guinea pig!"
Her pinks lips pouted at his harsh words. "Come on! Just this once? I want to see if they work and if they do, how far the range is?"
"Do it yourself!"
"I'm used to a little DIY, but when it comes to great distances being covered in a short amount of time," here she winked at him, "you're the best possible choice."
She wasn't just saying that to get him to come around, it was the honest truth. She could easily DIY it using her father and her fastest jet, but it would still take too long. She was sure one of the Nameks would be fast enough, but they wouldn't agree. And knowing poor Gohan he'd be bogged down in books all day.
"Yep, the best. Just do this and I'll shut up about it."
Vegeta thought. And thought some more. He was the fasted on the planet now, which was defiantly true; years and years of training and experience had shaped his body to excel in every field. And he was quite partial to the idea of testing out the updated scouter; just because he didn't need one anymore doesn't mean he wasn't prepared to use it…
I'll just shut up…
"Give the damn blue one…"
Five minutes later, an electric blue line was zooming across the sky like a shooting star. At the source came a crackle of static.
"- can't read anything! Vegeta, why did you take off before setting the damn thing to English!"
"You told me that you had changed the language shortly after you got your grubby little hands on it the first time!"
"I did!"
"… must have reset itself from restarting after the tracking device was removed."
"Great, I'll have to pop it open again and figure it out. I'll have to turn it off so give me two min-"
"Triple press the red button on the side, idiot. State your preferred language and it'll find it for you."
He heard a few beeps, and then her voice came back. "Wow! You actually have English on here, I don't have open it and do it manually! Thanks!"
He rolled his eyes before remembering that she couldn't see. "Yes, of course it does, the scouter and the pod automatically downloads each language from a planets satellite. Earth's satellite system contained every word of the main Earthling languages. Makes our jobs one hell of a lot easier."
Behind the blue glass, her blue eyes blinked once, twice, three times. Suddenly, in his left ear, he heard her boisterous laughter lasting for several long moments. "Great Kami, are you telling me that you have several whole languages in your head because you simply drove by a lump of space drifting metal?"
"What of it?"
"And they go straight into your brain via this thing?" he could hear a clicking noise. Probably her tapping the scouter over her face. "There must be thousands of languages swimming around in the memory chip."
Not having anything to say to that, Vegeta remained silent as he continued flying through the air, hoping that she would finally get the hint. He was wrong.
"Hey, Vegeta?"
"What now, woman?" he growled.
"Thanks."
That caused one eyebrow to spring up. " What the hell for?"
"I don't know," she sighed, "for letting me keep the pod and scouters, and testing them out. You could've easily destroyed them all, instead you're agreeing with me incorporating these ideas with my own."
She heard nothing as she nervously ran her toes through the dust at her feet. It seemed like hours before he replied. "They won't be missed. Now we've destroyed the tracking chips, it will appear on their computer systems that they've been destroyed. And I don't want them anyway… especially that green one…"
"What's that supposed to mean?" without his face to look at, Bulma was focused at a column in the far side of the canyon they she was in. "Vegeta, tell me what is wrong with my scouter!"
"You plucked it off a dead mans face, remember?" his lips thinned into a hard line. "There is a belief among Frieza's men; a 'Dead man's scouter' is a scouter taken directly from a the face of a corpse, bringing bad luck with it-"
He heard a rustle and crash at the other end. It was Bulma swatting it off her face like an irksome fly. "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?" she yelled at the thing at her feet.
He voice yelled back, his voice loud enough for her to hear without wearing it. "Too late by then, wasn't it woman? Fuck! You're making my ear bleed!"
"Aw, poor Veggie gets a bleeding ear. Who care is I die?" she mumbled sarcastically.
He growled, "Just shut it woman!" he waited to hear her reply but when none came, he ventured his theory. "Nothing has happened to you thus far-"
Actually, thinking about it, she had been having a pretty shit year. "Err-"
"-Quiet, woman! Anyway, I think you've just been tampering with that device too much for it to be recognised as the same scouter. If you would even call it that now."
His theory, though far fetched, washed over her and soothed her worries.
"Okay, I believe you. But why don't you want to wear it?"
"Name me one reason why I would?"
She tried but quickly gave it. It was obvious from the very start that you couldn't force Vegeta to do something he didn't want to. He was a person of strong will, just like her.
"I didn't think so. How much farther do I have to go before you finally realise this transmitter is galactic?"
"How could I forget? I called home from Namek using a phone based on this thing. And I don't know where the hell you were at the time, but you could hear the whole talk Piccolo gave about the Dragonballs!" Tired of standing in one spot for ages, Bulma began to wander around in small circles, as if she were on the phone to her parents or a friend. "I know the range is impressive, Vegeta, but after the whole tampering with both scouters, I wanted to see if they've been affected in anyway."
As she ambled around in circles, something small and black flapped in the corner of her eye. Cocking her head to the side, she concluded that it didn't look like an animal, or anything else natural for that matter, and before she knew it, she was walking over to investigate, still online to 'guinea pig'.
"In that case, I'll just keeping flying until I can't hear your whiney voice anymore!"
Vegeta could hear her chuckle on the other end. "Ass."
He smirked. "Moron."
"Idiot."
"Bitch."
"Saiyan."
"Human." He waited a long time for her retort but for a few moments all he heard was silence. "Woman? Can you hear me? I can't be out of range already!" And just when he was starting to enjoy himself, too. "Woman! Answer me n-!"
Flinching violently, he was cut off by her ear splitting screams of fear.