SEMANTICS
(OR, LAST NIGHT NEVER HAPPENED, AND NO, WE'RE NEVER TALKING ABOUT IT AGAIN)

Krillin wakes up in a bed that isn't his. He doesn't remember how he got there, but as his mind pieces together what happened last night, he can take an educated guess.

It's morning – past the usual time he finds himself shaken awake by Vegeta's fluctuating energy, but not so late that Capsule Corp has found itself in the full swing of things yet. He doesn't bother to cycle through his typical routine of checking the ki of everyone he loves, mostly because that would require a level of concentration he frankly doesn't want to muster while lying in Vegeta's bed.

It's that thought that really wakes him up and makes him fully aware of his circumstances, and he jolts up to start patting himself down to make sure he still has all his clothes on, which he's concerned is the first thing he thought to check. He's still fully clothed though – all the way down to his boots, though his scarf is very much missing and he can't seem to find his gloves.

No matter. Something had to be lost in the sheer insanity of last night. Might as well have been his belongings.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to properly introduce you to Son Krillin. As you all are now very well aware, Son Krillin is currently troubled. That tends to be your state of mind when your entire world's been flipped upside down – which, in Krillin's case, tends to happen a lot. That's been Krillin's whole life until now – the world flipping and turning and swerving and twisting until he's either a corpse or a mess. Right now he's a mess, but not for the reasons he ever thought he'd be; and right around now, he'd kinda prefer to be a corpse. At least he's always come backfrom that. From this mess though? He's not so sure.

Because Krillin has very bad luck ‒ or very good luck. It's hard to tell. After all, who dies twice and comes back from it? The bad luck got him dead; the good luck got him back. Like it's already been said, Krillin world? Flipping, turning, swerving, twisting – and this is the strangest departure yet. Was Krillin expecting this upon Goku's sudden return to Earth? Definitely not. Should he have? It's hard to say. People mention it every now and again, you know – how twice now Goku has lost himself in rage and how Krillin's death(s) have always correlated. Until recently, Krillin has had no firsthand experience with this because, well, you know, but if he's honest – or rather, if hindsight's really 20/20 – he's felt something brewing for a while now, and it's led to… this. Whatever this is. It's been nearly three weeks since his displacement, and he's still no closer to wrapping his mind around it. It's like there's a wall preventing him from wandering past a certain point because what he would discover there's much too dark and scary, and Krillin's dealt with enough dark and scary in his life, thank you very much.

So right now, he's focused more on the facts than the implications: Krillin is not in his house. Krillin is not in his house because someone keeps breaking it. Expressing it out loud should've brought him some closure at the very least, but instead, it's made it more real. Before last night, it had been like a Schrödinger's cat – neither true or untrue because his conclusions had only ever existed in his head. He thought if he could hold out until Goku just… stopped, then they'd never have to talk about it again. But now that it's out in the open – with Vegeta, but still – the problem's most definitely alive rather than dead.

If the first part of this story was about sandwiches, then this next part's about sandwich boxes. Krillin feels like he's in one, and it's difficult to open from the inside out.

Well, he thinks, alright. Time to blow this joint.

What else can he do? He doubts there was anything here to ruin per se, but if there was, then he's most certainly done it. I mean, how stupid could he have been to tell Vegeta all that shit anyway? Vegeta! Fucking Vegeta of all people! He-he must've been drunk! He must've been out of his mind! He must've – really needed someone to talk to.

Well, he's talked to that someone. Now it's time to leave.

He rolls out of bed and out of the room going that awkward pace people do when they know it's not appropriate to run but they need to get somewhere quickly. He's soon in his room shoving his clothes in his suitcase and wondering whether he should care enough to scour the place for the rest of his belongings or let the Briefs find what they may. I mean, what are they going to do? Burn it? Hold it hostage until he comes crawling back? Well, the latter's bound to happen anyway. Why would they even bother?

Why is he even bothering? He should just go home – back to where home now apparently is – because he's barely had the strength to stay this long; how is he going to survive somewhere else all on his own?

But no, you don't blow a joint by going back to where you're wanted. He'd blown a joint once when he left Orin Temple, he blew one again when he decided to come here rather than over to Gku's, so blowing a joint a third time should make it a habit – and if it's a habit, then it'll be much easier to blow whatever joint he needs to blow next. He'll be a joint-blowing machine, you'll see! He'll blow so many joints he won't even looklike the same fucking person!

(… look, he's upset, alright? How would you like it if someone wrote out all of yourtirades while you're trying to scrape yourself up off the floor, huh? Stay in your lane).

Anyway, Krillin's packing his stuff and having… thoughts, and he decides to take the things that matter: like the haiku Gohan wrote him during his calligraphy class that's rolled up but otherwise pristine sitting on the nightstand next to his rumpled up bed; the cologne Launch got him years ago but he still hasn't gotten through left on the bathroom counter; the capsule home prototype he… borrowed recently and had stuffed in a drawer; the stuff he already packed since it was all easy, accessible, and there.

And then he's out the door… of his room! He's out the door of his room, and he's going down the hallway, and another hallway, … and another hallway because Bulma's house is very big and Krillin gets turned around sometimes! But now he's going down the right hallway that leads to the sliding glass door that opens to the pool and the world and the grave of the pig Krillin's really trying not to think about right now! He turns the corner, and he can see it! The door! The sliding glass door with the pool and the world and the pig! He's there, he's throwing it wide open, he's –

– back in the kitchen making sandwiches. Fuck.

Meanwhile, Vegeta's pissed. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise seeing as "pissed" is Vegeta's default setting, but right now, he's particularly feeling it. This morning was supposed to be different. That's what he told himself last night while fading into perhaps the most restful sleep he's ever had without the aid of a machine, but is it different? No. Why? Because the gravity machine's broken again.

Now look, did Vegeta really learn anything last night? Well actually, yeah, he did, and one day it'll change the whole universe, but sometimes these things have delayed consequences; and if there's anything Vegeta hates, it's delays. Shouldn't he be… I dunno, like Krillin by now? Not like Krillin-Krillin because Krillin-Krillin apparently has some real fucking problems he should get sorted out, but like Krillin in that Vegeta should now have the serenity of a goddamn monk. To be fair, it's obvious now that this hadn't exactly worked out for Krillin despite him kinda being one, but it was Vegeta who had all the revelations last night, dammit! If he's not capable of achieving Nirvana, then who is?

Bah, who needs gravity anyway? Vegeta got along just fine without it before he got stranded on this earwax of a planet, and he'll get along just fine without it now. He stomps away from the console and stands in the spot he usually does before he feels overwhelming disappointment. Without fail, he always finds himself standing right here when he learns that, nope, he still ain't Super Saiyan; but without the gravity around to crush his bones, he feels… well, overwhelming disappointment, actually. Shit.

He gets down and does the three pushups he's able to manage when he's got the gravity's cranked up, but then he's back on his feet because this is bullshit. The woman spouts this and that about being the world's foremost genius, but she can't even keep this crappy training chamber running effectively. Well, he's about to go give her a piece of his goddamn mind!

He throws open the chamber door about to do just that when he's stopped by a particular scent.

Oh my god, there's sandwiches.

When Vegeta had exited his scalding hot shower this morning (where he somehow abstained from screaming at the top of his lungs), he had found Krillin gone. Seeing as Vegeta had also had time to sort out exactly what happened last night (and, again, somehow abstained from screaming at the top of his lungs), he had assumed Krillin was gone for good.

This was not why Vegeta was upset. Not in the slightest. It was the gravity machine. It was the lack of inner peace. It was the fact that nothing has changed except for his complete and utter lack of faith in himself and Krillin being gone. The latter was supposed to be good. It had been good. Perhaps if Vegeta runs in the other direction and never sees a sandwich again, Krillin really will leave and Vegeta will never have to think about any of this ever again.

Instead, he rushes into the kitchen and experiences deja vu because Krillin's wearing the same stupid clothes he was the first time Vegeta found him here and is still using a stool to grab things out of reach.

"Oh, uh… hey," Krillin says. While he's definitely startled, he's not as shocked as he should be. He goes back to savaging for ingredients as though Vegeta had never entered the room at all.

Except Vegeta had entered the room, so Krillin adds, "The ones on the table are yours."

They are. There's seven sandwiches sitting in a perfect stack on the table in front of him, and Vegeta's relieved. And hungry. He sits down in his usual seat and pulls them forward so he can dig in – except the coffee cup beside them smells weird, mostly because it's filled with something other than cider.

"The fuck's this?" Vegeta asks.

"It's coffee," Krillin replies. He doesn't bother turning around.

Vegeta picks up the cup and takes a more obvious sniff. He shrinks back with how bitter it smells. "... Do I like coffee?"

"No. It's all we had. I sweetened it up for you though. Like, a lot."

Vegeta figures he might as well take a sip. He makes a face. "It's lukewarm."

"That's because of the all cream I put in it. Here, I can warm it up."

Krillin hops off the stool to take the mug from Vegeta's hands and perform the trick he had some time before with the apple cider. He hands the mug back, and it's still not what Vegeta wants, but it certainly isn't lukewarm anymore. He accepts that.

He catches Krillin's coat haphazardly draped over the extended handle of his suitcase out of the corner of his eye. Vegeta's desire to not care has been smooshed; his tendency to be overly blunt takes over instead. "Why's your shit here?"

Krillin's back up on the stool and flinches, and though he lies, what he says is now also the truth: "... I'm thinkin' about changing rooms."

Vegeta looks far more uncomfortable than he would have been if Krillin had said he was leaving. "You're not moving into mine," he replies.

"Oh god no."

Vegeta stares. You know, like the other times Vegeta's stared and Krillin's shut up.

Except Krillin doesn't backpedal. He turns around on the stool and says, "Like, no. Absolutely not. I absolutely will not be doing that. I'm just ‒ moving. To another room. Apparently."

He sighs and trudges his way over to his normal seat and flops down across from Vegeta. He didn't bother to close the cabinet doors, and the two sit in the most awkward silence the two of them have ever had together. It's somehow even more uncomfortable than the long breaks at the pizzeria, and even thinking about last night compared to anything puts the two further on edge. The sandwich Vegeta grabs and bites into helps calm the storm a bit, though he can't help but feel there's some large mammal sitting in the corner of the room that they're both trying to ignore. A pig, perhaps? No, that's outside in the yard – rotting. Maybe it made the conscious decision to depart this life just so it didn't have to feel Vegeta and Krillin's residue embarrassment. Vegeta starts to think it had the right idea.

"Oh my god," Krillin says, "this is stupid. We're acting like we had an affair."

"We did have an affair."

Krillin spits the sip of coffee he had just decided to take to calm his nerves. "WHAT?" He starts patting himself down all over again to make sure he hadn't been in blissful denial the first time around.

"Well, it's your fault," Vegeta tells him. "If it wasn't for you, it wouldn't have happened!"

"What wouldn't have happened?" Krillin asks hysterical.

"The affair!"

"What affair?!"

"Last night!" Vegeta shouts. "The bar! The head! The weird place you took me with the cheese! My body coming out of my BODY!"

Krillin doesn't even know where to begin, but by the end of it, he's shouting just as loud as Vegeta: "The weird place with the – you took me to the pizzeria, not the other way around! And your body was in your body the whole – we did not have an affair!"

"AFFAIR," Vegeta replies in that way self-righteous people do when they've dug out the dictionary to prove that they're right and you're wrong, "an event or a sequence of EVENTS of a specified kind or that has previously been referred to."

"That is not what people think you mean when you say you've had an affair!"

"Well, what do they think then?"

"That the two of you are–" Krillin's face scrunches into a mix of disgust and embarrassment, and for a moment, it looks like he can't bring himself to go on. "You know…" (his face somehow twists more) "... boning."

"... yes, we both have bones."

"Oh my god," Krillin replies. "A LOVE affair! I'm talking about a love affair!"

There it is – that moment when the self-righteous person realizes they're the one who's wrong and have no way of explaining otherwise. Vegeta looks scandalized. "We did not!"

"That's what I've been saying!"

"We just had an affair!"

"No!" Krillin yells. "You can't – look, I don't care if this is my favor or not – you cannot go around telling people we had an affair! Use-Use 'event,' or 'situation,' or 'strange night out,' or – actually, don't tell anyone anything at all about it! You're not allowed to, remember? You promised!"

"I promised?"

"Yes!"

Vegeta's somehow able to follow the leaps in logic Krillin's obviously taking. "No, I promised not to tell anyone you're here, not that I wouldn't talk about your shit. I can say whatever I want!"

Krillin's much calmer when he says, "Okay, Vegeta? Who else do you talk to?"

Oh. Good point. He could go tell the woman's parents just to spite him because he's had to talk to them before, but the dad never listens and, frankly, the mother scares him. Hell, he barely speaks to the woman even, and after their last conversation, he'd rather never talk to her again. Unless it's about the gravity machine – he should really get back to yelling her ear off about that rather than waste his time sitting here, but he can't bring himself to stand up.

"The point is," Krillin says, "we did not have an affair and we're never talking about it again, alright? Can we agree on that at least? I don't wanna sit here and rehash everything from beginning to end because, honestly, I should've never told you about it in the first place and I'm handling it myself. Somehow. Apparently. I'm handling it myself somehow apparently, so I'd appreciate it if we'd just go back to how things were. With you and the sandwiches and you doing most of the talking. People like that better anyway."

"What people?" Vegeta asks.

"I dunno – people! The world! Whoever's getting enjoyment out of this whole crazy situation!" He says under his breath, "I sure hope someone is because I know I'm not."

"What, you think I'm getting enjoyment out of this? Me in a room with you?"

Krillin looks down at the sandwiches and considers the fact that he didn't die last night. "... yes?"

It's not the wrong answer but probably not the right one either. Vegeta decided last night not to kill Krillin and, well, apparently that decision had stuck. He feels no desire to do so, not even after Krillin's ludicrous suggestion that Vegeta had thought they had had a love affair and actually enjoyed spending his time here. (Seriously, where does he come up with this stuff)? Nopoe, that ship's sailed, and we're officially in (PART TWO) now – and it's time for these two to act like it.

Krillin sure could be a little more grateful though.

"Here, you know what?" Krillin says when Vegeta doesn't reply. "I'm gonna try something."

"Try what?"

"I'm gonna ask you a question. You're gonna answer that question. We're just gonna pretend like the last 24 hours never happened. Deal?"

Now that's a deal Vegeta can get behind. Nevermind all that nonsense about a do-over – the time is now! "Fine."

Krillin figures that, if they're really rewinding the clock, he should act a little more afraid, but frankly he can't muster up the gall. He supposes a few things will have to change no matter how much they try to ignore them.

"Alright," he says. "Lemme see. A question." He drums the table. "A question, a question, a question…" He stops. "How's the coffee?"

"Terrible. Next."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Terrible. Next."

"... training go well?"

"Terrible! Next!"

"Wait – are you staying 'terrible' as your actual answer, or are you saying that the questions are terrible?"

"Yes!"

Krillin groans. Whoever taught Vegeta mathematician's answers ought to be shot. "Alright, well… what do you want to be asked about then?"

"Not my job," Vegeta replies.

"Well, obviously you have criteria now. I wanna make sure I'm following your new standards."

Now it's Vegeta who groans. If they're really forgetting last night ever happened, then Krillin wouldn't be behaving like a little shit. At the same time though, Vegeta's thought several times over the course of their arrangement that Krillin's been a little shit, so maybe he's just not hiding it as much. Vegeta can deal with that if they can just move on.

"Fine," he replies. "Ask whatever. Just make it good."

"Alright…" He sits for a solid couple of seconds with his chin resting on his knuckles and staring rather intently into his coffee before he finally looks back up at Vegeta and asks, "Why Bulma's?"

"What?" Vegeta asks.

"Why are you staying here at Bulma's exactly?"

Okay, that's certainly better than whatever tree Krillin was barking up before, but Vegeta finds himself back in that familiar territory of not exactly knowing where these questions are coming from. "Why do you want to know that?" he asks.

Krillin shrugs. "Well, you know why I'm staying here, right? Figures I should know why you are too."

"Weren't we not talking about that?"

"You're right, you're right," Krillin says. "... you still need to answer the question though."

Crap. Vegeta suddenly wants to understand his new standards as well because while he doesn't think this new question falls under scope, he's not quite sure what he'll get if he insists for another one. Fine – Vegeta's not a repressed little shit like Krillin is. He can easily say why he's here. He's here to train. He's here to kill Kakarot. He's here to make the universe wish it never decided to fuck with him. Why he's at Bulma's specifically though? Well… that's a lot simpler, but also a lot more embarrassing. Vegeta would've never been caught dead saying it before, but welcome to (PART TWO), baby!

"... she made me."

"She made you?"

Vegeta grumbles.

I mean, is he wrong? His trip around space to find Goku had, surprise, turned out to be a total bust, and the moment he landed on this planet to try to get more fuel, he was shoved into a shower and given pink clothes to wear. Then Frieza showed up, then a weird Saiyan kid, and the next thing he knows he's being dragged back here to stay. It hadn't been his choice. Sure it was convenient and he had literally nowhere else to go, but he wouldn't have stayed if she hadn't made him. That's his story, and he's sticking to it.

"... I suppose she can be kinda convincing," Krillin says. "I mean, do you know how many acquisitions she's negotiated for Capsule Corp in the last three years alone? It's kinda monopolistic honestly, like she's trying to buy up the whole world or something… which, now thinking about it, she would probably take as both a compliment and a challenge."

"How in the hell did she get involved in this all shit anyway?"

"All this shit?" Krillin asks. "You mean, like, with us?"

Obviously.

"Actually, it's more of a question of how the hell did we get involved with her. She kinda started the whole thing – by looking for the Dragon Balls. That got Goku involved, then they met Turtle and Master Roshi, then they met Yamcha and Puar, then I met Goku through Master Roshi, and so on and so forth. It just… kinda spiraled outta control from there."

"So she knew the Namekian," Vegeta says.

"I'm sorry?"

"She knew the Namekian, so that's why she knew of the Dragon Balls."

"Uh, no. Piccolo didn't come along until much later. It's… complicated."

"Then how did she know about the Dragon Balls?"

Krillin opens his mouth to reply, keeps it open for a moment while he actually thinks, and then sits back in his chair with a perplexed look. "... I don't know. I think she said something about finding one of them in her basement or something? I'm pretty sure that's how she developed the Radar, but how in the world she knew what the Dragon Balls were and what they did, I dunno. From everything I've heard, I think it was just her and this emperor kid – Rice Peacock? – that knew about it from the get-go. Well, and Kami, of course. And PoPo."

"The fuck's a 'kami'?"

"Basically god." He clarifies, "Well, not like God-god. Like a guardian that kinda acts like god, but then not really because he's definitely mortal and he's most definitely a Namekian, but he still goes by 'god' and some people still treat him like a god even now when we know he's not a god, and..." Krillin sits and really contemplates. "I realize more and more that the world around me is strange and convoluted. Basically, he's the guy who created the Dragon Balls. Like Guru on Namek. Who you never met. Because he died. At a strangely convenient time. Hm."

Vegeta's not having it. If anything, he's creating conspiracy theories in his head, and he's pissed. "Wait, if this asshole Namekian created the Dragon Balls, then why the hell did they 'disappear' when the other one died, huh? They don't just disappear when you kill whatever Namekian you want!" Vegeta would know – he killed an entire village of them and then hid that Dragon Ball… mostly alright.

"Kami is Piccolo? Piccolo is Kami? Like I said, it's complicated. When you kill one, the other one dies too."

Okay, that's certainly information Vegeta will pocket for later. Don't kill the Namekian or 'god' when you take this world by storm. Got it.

"So the Dragon Balls are how that woman got all of this," Vegeta says matter-of-factly.

Krillin's surprised by the turn in the conversation. "Uh, no. She already had all his. Well, I'm sure she has more now than when she started, but none of it's from the Dragon Balls, I'm pretty sure. Actually, now thinking about it, she never did get to make her original wish."

Vegeta looks around. Sure he knows a lot of other wishes people could make – the wish for immortality, the return of a loved one, galactic rule, the painful death of an enemy – but he doesn't think much of Bulma at the moment, and he can't imagine her wishing for anything but cold hard cash.

When Krillin makes no move to explain any further, Vegeta asks, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"What in the world could the woman have possibly wanted to wish for?"

Krillin looks around. He also thinks of all the other wishes people could make – the wish for immortality, the return of a loved one, galactic peace, the restoration of an entire planet – and Krillin suddenly feels very embarrassed for her. "You don't wanna know."

"But you people make all kinds of wishes."

"Well, not all kinds exactly."

"Then what in the world did you people wish for?"

Krillin now imagines what Oolong must've looked like with those undies on his head and becomes embarrassed for him too. "... You don't wanna know that either."

Vegeta looks, well, exasperated – an emotion he's been experiencing a lot lately. He looks utterly bewildered and, when he talks, it sounds like he's grasping at straws. He gestures to the general space around them. "How?"

Krillin for once is a lot more composed. "Oh, how did Bulma get all this money? Well, I feel I'm not giving her enough credit when I say this, but she's an heiress — the only child to the richest people on Earth. This whole company existed before she was even born. Dr. Briefs invented capsules, and poof – money. Money everywhere."

Before Vegeta can even ask, Krillin says, "You know what capsules are, right?"

Vegeta's face replies with a resounding no.

"Well, I guess capsules can be anything and everything, but the basic idea is, they let you fit something very, very big into something very, very small – a capsule, thus the name." He pauses. "Did you… not wonder how I manifested a plane from nothing?"

Yes! Yes, Vegeta has wondered so fucking much! He's seen so many people do it since coming to this planet, and Vegeta's had no fucking clue how! What was he supposed to do? Ask? Nonsense! Demand?Maybe, but he had been so confused about it up until now that it would've come out as a question no matter what, and Mr. 'I'm-So-Technologically-Advanced' over here can't possibly have that!

"So what, he said 'fuck conservation of mass' and broke the universe?"

"Yeah, basically."

"And he's not the guy you people call god?"

"... no, apparently not."

Okay, that's certainly information Vegeta will pocket for later. Don't kill the Namekian, god, or the universe-bending moustached man when you take this world by storm. Got it.

"I need to go punch something," Vegeta announces.

"Okay," Krillin replies unbothered. "I need to go…" He looks over at his stuff. "... find a new room, I guess."

His shoulders sag and, after a moment, he turns to Vegeta, who's standing and shoveling down the last of his sandwiches. "Hey, uh… my favor still stands, right?"

Vegeta groans. For someone so hellbent on keeping things quiet, Krillin sure doesn't know how to shut the hell up. Still though, no matter his grievances, Vegeta's apparently a man of his word. He swallows his last bite and says, "Yeah, why?"

"Well, after almost squandering it last night, I figured I should, you know… save it for a rainy day."

Vegeta furrows his brow. "Why would it need to be raining?"

Krillin has no words. Neither does Vegeta, so he leaves.

Krillin figures he might as well too. He cleans up, grabs his stuff, and stares out the sliding glass door.

He moves into the room next to his old one. It's a start.

SPONSOR: This chapter is brought to you by long-time-no-see. Long-time-no-see: You've never actually seen me, have you? Eh, probably for the best.