Early the next morning Vegeta went for his usual run... but he was walking back less than a half-hour later. He'd started coughing even before he made it a block from Capsule Corporation and when he'd wiped his mouth, a bloody froth had clung to the back of his hand. The pain in his side wouldn't be ignored and he abandoned his jog scarcely before it had even begun. He returned to the compound with a look of defeat on his sweat-streaked face and, being a creature of habit, went straight to the gravity simulator.
I'm in no shape for this, he admonished himself even as he punched in the day's training session. He eyed the setting of three hundred on the readout, his hand wavering over the 'engage' button. He figured that if he overdid it this time the damn machine might just finally kill him.
He discovered he didn't really give a shit one way or the other. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed the button and prepared himself for the over-whelming pressure that would compress the broken bones of his rib cage like a vice until they perforated his insides beyond saving.
Nothing happened.
Almost disappointed, he frowned at the console and hammered down on the engage switch with the same result. The data display assured him that all systems were ready and waiting, but the damn thing was completely unresponsive. He opened the cabinet door beneath the desk and lied down on his back and slid inside to peer up at the circuitry of the console. He had absolutely no idea what he was looking for, but he was getting sick and tired of running to Dr. Briefs (or to his bitch daughter) to repair the simulator.
The Saiyan was not as helpless around technology as some would like to believe. He was actually very skilled at dismantling objects to study their inner workings but, unfortunately, was at a loss of ever getting them to work again. It was his Saiyan blood to blame for that; evolved enough to steal technology but not far enough along to develop any of his own. His time with Frieza had broadened his horizons somewhat, introducing him to alien technical data that would have been forbidden knowledge if he had remained on Planet Vegeta and permitted his destiny of ruling the world. There had been times on missions with Nappa and Radditz where he had been able to make makeshift repairs to their scouters or space pods when they became damaged. The other two would only stand on the sidelines and scratch their heads like a pair of inbred monkeys while he fussed with the equipment. Being an Elite-ranked Saiyan, as well as Royalty, Vegeta wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination and he caught on to things relatively quickly-
-But he was damned if he could figure out why the simulator wouldn't start!
"Doesn't make any damned sense," he muttered to himself. It was a habit he had gotten from Bulma on many of her repair trips to this very chamber. It appeared to help her concentrate. "The display is saying that everything checks out which is complete bullshit. That must mean that the problem's with the stupid switch. So... which line runs to the damned thing? Hrmph! There it is!" Selecting a dark blue cable, he gave it a direct tug and flinched as sparks flew before everything around him went dark. He had just disconnected a power relay to the data processor and the entire system crashed as a result.
He blinked for a few seconds. "Fuck," he said in disgust.
Fifteen minutes later, he was walking down the stairs of the headquarters building on the search for Bulma or her father. His shoulders were practically up around his ears in embarrassment over the situation. It was easy to explain an explosion that caused damage, but he wasn't sure how to phrase what he had done so that he didn't come across as an incompetent moron, which was exactly how he felt. He hoped that Dr. Briefs was in. At least the old man could be easily intimidated into doing what he wanted. Unfortunately, the company President was away on this day and that left his daughter in charge. Oh, happy day.
Bulma was in her office and the secretary was absent at her desk (she had seen Vegeta coming and went to the bathroom to avoid him). Vegeta tried the doorknob and found the door locked. Grumbling under his breath, he brought one knuckle onto the wood in a knock that made the door tremble in its frame. Jumping in surprise, Bulma turned and saw his silhouette in the frosted glass. With that compact physique and spiked hair, his identity was unmistakable. Her face betrayed her surprise until it resumed its normal expression of irritation. She got up and opened the door, casting the secretary's empty chair a knowing glare as he boldly charged inside. "I'm betting that this isn't just a social call," she commented as she returned to her desk.
He paused for a moment to take in one disbelieving glance around the cluttered room. The huge office looked as if an explosion of paper and parts had been detonated prior to his appearance. There wasn't a piece of furniture that wasn't buried under books or printed matter and he had to watch his step before he tripped over some half-completed device she hadn't gotten around to completing. In a reflex action, he sniffed the air and almost gagged from the stench. There was an old sandwich rotting away in some littered corner somewhere, but Bulma appeared oblivious. His impression of her, poor to begin with, dropped another notch at the sight of such disarray.
In answer to her statement, he grumbled, "No, it's not. The simulator is broken again."
She didn't look surprised. "What's wrong with it?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't have to come to you, would I?" he snapped at her, kicking aside a broken helmet as he stalked across the room. "When can you fix the damned thing?"
"You'll have to take a number. I'm very busy," she said calmly.
He noticed the designs of the communication chip she was trying to decipher for the computer facsimile. He picked one up and stared at the complex design before she snatched it out of his hand. "Don't touch," she scolded him as if he were a small child and actually pushed him away from the desk.
His face flushing, he said in a rough voice, "How long before you can make repairs?"
"Two days."
"Two days?! Are you insane?"
"Keep it up and I can make it three," she said. "This chip has top priority. There are already competitive bids coming in and we don't even have the specs translated into code-"
He was shaking his head at her technical babble. "I can't wait that long."
Turning in her chair, she stared at him closely and noticed that he appeared paler than usual and was obviously favoring his side with each unnecessary movement. "Tough, Vegeta. Go for a jog, go swimming at the pool, play some tennis, I don't care. The simulator stays offline until I can get around to it. End of discussion." She swiveled back around and resumed her typing, purposely ignoring him. In the background all she could hear was his outraged sputtering until she heard footfalls and the resultant slam of the door as he left. She cast a knowing smile at his retreating back and pulled a small object out of her breast pocket, eyeing it with a grin.
It was the diode to the gravity simulator's engage switch.
After leaving Vegeta's quarters last night, she had gone to the simulator and deliberately sabotaged it so that it would give him the opportunity to heal. The tactic was unfair but, considering the Saiyan's irrationality in his training habits, she felt justified doing it. Laughing to herself, she tucked it carefully back in her pocket and went back to work.
Vegeta returned to ground level and shoved the double doors of the building wide open as he stepped through, blinking at the early morning light. What was he going to do? It was a question that held almost a degree of panic for him. It wasn't as if the reality of being idle was a new sensation. He'd encountered it between missions, after all, and had always found something else to do as a diversion. However, this was not a planet or a warship that was ordered to cater to his every whim. This was Earth where he had to constantly fight for even the smallest scrap of respect and where everything around him was an unknown. He hated this planet, hated its people and its peculiar customs and, most of all, hated the fact that he was held at its mercy with nowhere to go and had nobody to turn to. He had never felt so alone in all of his life. Without the simulator to occupy his mind, he was forced to deal with the predicament of being a displaced refugee who possessed nothing more than the clothes on his back. Having to accept that lowly status was almost unendurable.
He decided to head back to the simulator and puzzle out what he had done wrong. At the very least, a thorough dismantling of the system would give him invaluable knowledge of its inner workings and teach the woman a good lesson when she had to put it all back together later. It might also encourage her to get off her expanding ass faster the next time he broke it. A ghost of a smile crossed his tense features in anticipation of the fight that would follow that discovery. The woman might be a disorganized slob, but she had a tongue on her that could draw blood. As much as he hated to admit it, a part of him (a very small part) reveled in their rare verbal sparring matches.
"Hey, Vegeta!"
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Yamcha, King of the Freeloaders, and his floating pet rodent, Paur, waving to him as they came into the compound. He had apparently arrived to make use of the Briefs' indoor pool, if his swimming trunks and the towel around his neck were any indication. The Saiyan didn't take him seriously as a fighter. He remembered how the young human had been the first of Earth's supposed Special Forces to die when he and Nappa had arrived on the Earth, and from a lowly Saibaman no less.
He didn't acknowledge the greeting and only stared back at him resentfully.
"You gonna go swimming, too?" Yamcha asked when he came up to the shorter man, relishing how Vegeta had to incline his head to look up at him. It was a small victory, but the human took what he could get.
"No," Vegeta sneered. "The chemicals in that smelly water make me itch."
"Oh. How come you're not training then?"
"That piece of shit simulator is down. Again! I just ordered your stupid woman to get off her incompetent ass and fix it."
Paur gave a squeak at his tone and Yamcha's face tightened. He didn't have an intimate relationship with Bulma anymore, but he still considered her one of his closest friends. His ego had taken a hard hit the day she permitted the villainous alien to move back into Capsule Corp. He wanted to discuss his feelings of betrayal with her over that issue but, considering she had been dealing with his unfaithfulness at the time, the topic appeared redundant. So, he accepted her decision, but he sure as hell didn't have to like it. Or Vegeta, for that matter. "Watch very carefully how you talk about Bulma when I'm around. You got it?"
Vegeta looked at him with bored, half-interest. "Am I getting too smart with you? How would you ever know?" he asked sarcastically.
"I mean it. You'd better be nice to Bulma or so help me-"
"-What, human?" Pouncing in his words, Vegeta glared at him. "Are you looking for a fight? I'm bored right now. I'd be happy to oblige you."
To his credit, Yamcha backed down and the last thread of anything resembling respect that the Saiyan might have had for him went out the window. "I'm no match for you," the fighter admitted grudgingly.
"Bet on it. Now go play with your pussy and get out of my sight, you useless idiot." Walking away, Vegeta gave an infuriating backhanded wave of dismissal in the pair's direction. When he got no reaction, he added with a sly grin, "Granted the bitch isn't anything special, but she must have been slumming to have put up with trash like you for as long as she did."
Yamcha bristled at the comment but made no move, so the Saiyan decided to drop the bombshell: "Or an even stupider whore than I figured her to be."
That did it. Bellowing with rage, the fighter threw away his towel and dove for the Saiyan with both hands glowing.
Shortly after Vegeta had left her office, Bulma began to get the first stirrings of doubt itch away at the back of her skull. As much as she enjoyed getting one over on the unstable Saiyan, her victory didn't give her as much pleasure as she thought it would. As near as she could tell, Vegeta didn't have any hobbies or interests outside of his training to occupy him. Perhaps she should have disabled the pressure setting so that it wouldn't have been able to go above twenty. He would have still complained about it (there was absolutely no doubt about that), but at least it would have been some kind of a workout for him.
If her friendship with Goku had taught her anything, it was that injuries didn't seem to keep Saiyans down for very long. Her actions may well have just unleashed a pissed-off uber-powered alien onto her unsuspecting city. She thought of the crater that had once been Metro East and she became filled with a sense of dread.
She pulled out the part again and frowned. "Noon. I'll track the little creep down and say that I was joking and that he has absolutely no damned sense of humor. I'll fix the simulator at noon. He'd better be happy."
Satisfied, she went back to work and kept a close eye on the clock on her desktop. Less than four hours to go...
I'm not gonna last five minutes! Yamcha thought wildly.
He executed two quick back flips and narrowly avoided a foot that came out of nowhere and missed his lower back by inches as it sank into the ground to the ankle. Vegeta pulled it free and moved with that uncanny speed of his and re-materialized in front of the retreating fighter. The two exchanged a flurry of blows until the Saiyan's knee connected with the large muscle of Yamcha's thigh, making it go numb. The human fell gracelessly.
Vegeta closed in for the finishing strike and had something warm and fuzzy cover his face screaming in a pitch that almost burst an eardrum. He grabbed a handful of Paur's fur and flung the changeling away with a snarl. "Get away from me, vermin, or I'll find out if you're as tasty as you look!"
Using the thankful diversion to get his leg back under him, Yamcha leapt to his feet and continued the battle. By unanimous decision, the pair willingly decided not to use ki blasts in their joust. He wasn't sure of the Saiyan's logic on the issue, but he wasn't discounting his good fortune. Vegeta's martial art skills were of a discipline that the Earth-bound fighter had never encountered before and a part of him was actually cataloguing several of the graceful kicks and parries for later use into his own repertoire, if he survived the encounter that is. There wasn't one piece of his anatomy that the feisty alien didn't use as a weapon as Yamcha found out when a widow-peaked forehead collided with his nose.
"AGH! Youb son ob ba bitch!" Yamcha howled, cupping his face.
Dancing away from him and laughing, Vegeta taunted, "Don't bring my mother into this or you just might make me angry." He was purposely drawing out the conflict in his boredom like a well-fed cat torturing a half-dead mouse and having a grand old time. It was almost like the old days when he had sparred with Raditz or Nappa, both desperately out of his league but handy punching bags nonetheless. He actually gave Yamcha time to shake the injury off before they were back trading blows in a frenzied blur that defied all known laws of physics. A small crowd of Capsule Corp. day staffers had collected at the entrance of the building to watch the fight. They commented in low, hushed toned that the pair moved so fast at times that they actually seemed to disappear from sight.
Yamcha was beginning to realize that the Saiyan was only playing with him and that humiliation was just about the final straw. Gathering the last shreds of will from his depleted reserves, he attacked Vegeta in a frenzy, actually driving the smaller man into a surprised defensive. With a practiced eye, the young fighter noticed how the Saiyan made a greater effort to block blows aimed for his right side then for the left and decided to focus on that potential weakness. He feinted to one side and made a visible attempt at a roundhouse punch and smiled when Vegeta automatically brought his right arm up to deflect it. With a well-aimed kick, Yamcha brought his foot into the alien's vulnerable side as hard as he could.
Bellowing, Vegeta hit the ground and writhed in agony as he cradled his wounded side. Yamcha figured that he must have kicked harder than he thought as the Saiyan coughed up a mixture of blood and bile into the grass, struggling to rise.
Something wasn't right with this picture... "Uh, Vegeta? Hey, maybe this wan't such a good idea. Let's put this fight off for some another time. What do you say? Truce?" Yamcha offered hopefully. His own face was coated in blood from his broken nose. The gore dripped down his chin and was smeared across his bare chest.
"You started this," Vegeta rasped and paused long enough to spit out a mouthful of bloody phlegm. "I'm going to finish it."
