______________________________________________ YOUTH OF THE NATION _______________________
_____________________________________________________________________ Rhapsody~* _________
______________________________________CHAPTER NINE: Run From It
Vejita usually didn't cater to anyone, and especially not to women. Yet here he was, running red lights and blowing past stop signs just to go calm a girl down. Or was he? Vejita had to admit that he was seriously pondering doing just a little more than calming Bulma down. The situation was getting serious, and serious situations required drastic measures, in his opinion.
The sprawling Briefs mansion was not difficult to spot. He could easily see it for blocks before he arrived there. Confident that her parents weren't home, he pulled his car right into the driveway and got out carefully. He searched for the security cameras and carefully slid outside of their field of view. He smirked at how simple it was and just walked right into the house upon finding the front door unlocked.
"Come in here!" Bulma called from a room that sounded fairly close. Vejita stared at the many hallways leading away from the front hall and grimaced.
"You're going to have to be a bit more specific," he snapped as he began walking in the direction of her voice. Before she could reply, he had reached the living room. He had been right to come, he decided upon seeing her. She was a wreck. Her eyes were red-rimmed and still brimming over with frightened tears. He had to admit that he would be pretty messed up, too. "Now tell me exactly what happened before I decide to beat it out of you." As Bulma related the story, Vejita grew more and more certain that the girl had no choice but to either turn herself in or leave. Immediately.
"You're damned lucky that YOU were here instead of one of your parents," Vejita agreed, studying the rich surroundings. "Let me just point out right now that I was right about them all. At the first sign of trouble, even a little thing like the fireworks incident, they went and screwed you over."
"I knew that Chichi was seriously angry when I went to see her," Bulma said quietly, her eyes on the floor. After a moment of awkward silence, she looked back up at Vejita again, her eyes shining. "But I don't regret the choices I...WE made."
Vejita couldn't help himself. He suddenly and swiftly kissed her. To cover up his uncertainty, he pulled her up off of the couch and out of the living room. "You've got to get the hell out of here. Where's your room? You've gotta grab some of your shit and leave. Now."
Bulma, still reeling from the brief kiss, pointed up the staircase and allowed him to practically drag her up the stairs and towards her room, which was still a mess. "Where can I go, Vejita? I have no choice. I have to stay here."
"That's bullshit!" Vejita protested, releasing her arm. "You want to go to jail? No, didn't think so."
"But to just...run from it?" Bulma shook her head. "I can't do that."
"If you have nowhere to go, you can crash at my place until you find somewhere," Vejita said through gritted teeth. "Now hurry up, you've got to be long gone before anyone gets home."
Bulma shook her head. "Dammit! I told you, Vejita, I can't just run and not do anything about it!"
At those words Vejita paused for a moment, the wheels in his head turning and spinning. When he lifted his black eyes to meet Bulma's, the beginnings of a smirk were on his face. "Believe me, woman, we're going to do something about it. Now get packing, we don't have all week!"
Bulma moved to begin packing, then stopped. "Why do you care so much? Why does helping me mean so much to you?" The look in her drying eyes told Vejita that was not going to back down until she had an answer.
"Because if you get convicted, I get convicted," Vejita said quietly. "That idiot Goku knows all about what I did, too, and if Chichi can't get to you, then Goku will damned well help her get to me."
"You told him?" Bulma asked incredulously. "But I thought--"
"That I was a cold, hard son of a bitch who never tells anybody anything unless there's a gun pressed to my head?" Vejita finished her sentence with a faint smirk. "You're right, but instead of giving myself away I'd grab the gun's owner's wrist and fucking snap it in two before he could get a shot in."
Bulma decided not to inquire further. It took about twenty minutes for her to pack all of the necessities and nothing else--they went through her belongings several times to narrow it down and even then Bulma had to sit on the suitcase to get it to close--but nevertheless it got done. To cover up her sudden exit, they cleaned up her room and compensated the security camera footage. Before she could even make sense of the situation, she was in Vejita's car, on the way to his house.
"What about your parents?" she asked anxiously. "I'm sure that they're going to notice me crashing right in the middle of your living room."
Vejita was silent for a moment before answering. "I don't live with my parents." They turned a corner and Vejita accelerated suddenly, slamming Bulma back against her seat.
"Uh...oh," Bulma said lamely. "So you live with relatives?"
"No," Vejita said emphamatically. "I live alone. As in with ME."
Bulma was amazed. Living alone while still in high school was a foreign concept to her. "You have no idea how lucky you are because of that. I wish that I could live somewhere without my parents."
Vejita snorted. "I think that that wish is about to come true."
"We can't hide out at your place for the rest of our lives, though. That's the first place they're gonna look for me, you know."
"First of all, they're gonna have a hell of a time figuring out where I live, since I gave the school a fake address, and second, we're not going to stay there for very long anyway." Vejita glanced over at her surprised face and smirked. "You're going to have get used to independence from here on out, woman, because you aren't going to be living off the generosity of Mummy and Daddy anymore."
Before Bulma could reply, Vejita turned into a driveway and jumped out of the car. Bulma followed his example and examined her surroundings. She was pleasantly surprised. Instead of the small, unkempt house she was expecting, she was standing before a medium-sized, neat-looking sort of house. It looked like the kind of place a college student would buy off-campus. She couldn't help but notice what a good party house it would be, with its large porch and wide driveway. Vejita hoisted her bulging suitcase out of his car and followed her glance to his house.
"What did you expect?" he asked smugly. "Come on, can you imagine ME living in poverty?"
As they walked towards the house, Bulma realized something. "Wait a minute. How can you afford living on your own? I don't remember you saying that you had such a great job."
"That's the sweet part," Vejita explained as he dug the keys out of his pocket. "I don't."
Bulma was confused, but she was thinking that she wasn't going to get much more of an explanation than that, so she shut up and took in the interior of Vejita's house. It was surprisingly clean--once again she was guilty of imagining the place as bachelor pad-ish disaster area. She studied Vejita out of the corner of her eyes and decided that she couldn't imagine Vejita living in a frat-house kind of environment anyway.
"Bullshit," Bulma protested, taking her suitcase from him. "Where do you get money?"
Vejita smirked. "Poor Pops didn't realize that I could easily see his PIN number from over his shoulder. Plus when my grandfather died he left most of his money to me, and he had a fucking FORTUNE ready for me."
Bulma stared at him incredulously. "But doesn't your father notice when the money in his account starts disappearing?"
"Hey," Vejita snapped. "You aren't the only person on Earth who comes from money, woman. He would hardly notice such a small dent in his account."
Bulma blushed in spite of herself. "But you do have a job, don't you? I mean, I can't see you as a total slacker."
"Hell no! Why would I go out and waste my time working when I can just go the bank and have all of that cash available to me?"
"That makes sense...I guess..." Bulma trailed off uncertainly. After all, she was doing the same thing. "So where do I sleep?"
"Wherever," Vejita said. "I have a guest room where my cousin usually sleeps off his hangovers but you can have it. Or you can sleep on the couch, but I'm sure that your delicate self wouldn't want to do THAT."
"You've got me there," Bulma agreed, eyeing the couch with disdain. "I would have a knot the size of California in my neck by the time morning came around."
There was a flicker of an emotion that Bulma couldn't discern in Vejita's eyes. "Or, if you don't want to clean up the guest room, there's always an open spot in my bed."
Bulma looked up in surprise and couldn't decided if her new housemate was serious or not. She felt a cold chill go down her spine for reasons unknown to her--Vejita had not pressured her into anything as long as she had known him--and avoided his eyes. "I'll keep that in mind," she responded dryly. "Show me to the guest room then, dear host."
When she turned away from Vejita to enter the small room, she felt his eyes on her back and the creepy-crawly cold chill returned.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Neither Chichi nor Goku was surprised when both Bulma and Vejita were absent from school the next day. Chichi first approached the disoriented Goku during lunch period with a triumphant grin on her scarred face. Goku smothered the internal cringe that he experienced every time he was forced to stare at her hideous haircut for more than five minutes and forced a smile of welcome. It truly was one of the worst things that could have happened to poor Chichi, so he went against his gut feelings and out of his way to please her. And now look what a mess it had gotten him into. As soon as Chichi had made the terrible suggestion that they hit both Bulma and Vejita where it would hurt the most, Goku had gotten that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something wasn't right about the whole thing, he decided. But what?
"Are you even paying attention to me?" Chichi demanded, putting her hands on her hips. "Come on Goku, revenge requires you to remain here on Earth where you belong."
"Revenge?" Goku shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Oh yes, THAT revenge."
Chichi raised an eyebrow. "God, where's your head lately? Its like you regret telling me about Vejita or something. LOOK AT ME, Goku, take a good look. I could have been killed, so I'm returning the favor."
Goku, who had had time to mull over what they gone and told Mariah's mother, Abby, was beginning to feel guilty at the whole thing. Sure, what Bulma and Vejita had done to Chichi had been pretty cruel, but he was almost positive that their motive hadn't been to KILL Chichi, and here she was trying to get them on death row. Goku wasn't sure that she was thinking straight, but he wouldn't have dared to interfere.
"Whatever. Wherever your head is, it can't be too remote, because look at this beautiful success!" Chichi exclaimed, lifting her arms in a gesture of thanks. "I'm sure that they're on their way to like, MEXICO or something, trying to escape the law."
"I don't know about the whole murder trial thing," Goku started cautiously. "All the evidence that the police are gonna have is a handful of witnesses, and that's not much considering how angry the witnesses are with Bulma at the time of accusation. Emotions can easily cloud reason, you know."
Chichi's eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that what I did was wrong? That I wasn't THINKING STRAIGHT?" She paused, took a deep, calming breath, and started over. "This is ridiculous. Honestly, Goku--who's side are you on?"
"Well, I'm on yours, of course, but--"
Chichi cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Save it, Goku-chan. I've got to get to class. See you later...in court!" She laughed a bone-chilling, vengeful little laugh and left Goku alone at their lunch table, just as dazed and confused as he had been before.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Bulma awoke quite early the next morning--hours before Vejita even stirred--and threw a pair of pajama pants and a tank top. She hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, what with the faint odor of beer and uh...bodily fluids left behind from Vejita's party-hardy cousin. But something that prohibited her rest even more was the fact that her room had been so close to Vejita's. She knew that that shouldn't be keeping her up into the dark hours of the night, but nevertheless it happened.
She searched through the dark recesses of Vejita's refridgerator and found some suspicious-looking orange juice, but nothing else that she desired to consume so early in the morning. She sighed and resigned to pouring herself a glass of water and sat down in the chair next to Vejita's rather impressive stereo. Listening to be sure that Vejita was still sleeping soundly, she flipped on the radio and switched from the presets to her favorite station.
Vejita found her like this two hours later. She had given in and poured herself some of the orange juice, which turned out to be a bit old, and was curled up in the chair singing along to the radio.
"If I could be like that..." she was whispering. "I would give anything..."
"Am I interuppting something?" Vejita said from the doorway. Bulma started and set her juice down on the coffee table unsteadily. "I mean, if you're in the middle of a concert or something--"
"God, Vejita!" Bulma exclaimed, ignoring his comments. "Do you always have to sneak up on me like that?"
"I've found your reaction to be rather amusing," Vejita retorted. "So yes, I do have to sneak up on you."
"What do you live on?" Bulma asked incredulously, motioning towards her nearly untouched juice. "Everything is either stale or laced with something that I would rather not determine the exact name of."
"Unlike you," Vejita started, crossing the room to take a seat across from the TV. "I don't have to eat every damn second of the day, so I do just fine."
Bulma was silent for a few minutes, and when she opened her mouth to speak her eyes were dark and worried. "I have to get out of here today, Vejita, and you know it. They're gonna be looking for me once I've been gone twenty-four hours."
Vejita scowled with displeasure. "Thanks for ruining my morning, woman. Don't bitch about it, I've got a place that we can go to."
"Oh? And where would that be?" Bulma demanded, crossing her arms and frowning skeptically. "Quite frankly, if its your cousin's house, I refuse. Sleeping in that bed was an experience that I would prefer NOT to repeat, thank you very much."
Vejita had to smirk at that. "Hey, you had a choice. If that's how you feel, then you're out of luck because we're going to his family's old cabin up north."
Bulma was speechless for a moment. "Up north? As in, somewhere out in the wilderness?"
"They're making prepartions to sell the place, so we won't be discovered. Its been sitting untouched for years now."
"Great! Old plumbing, wilderness, musty rooms, is there anything worse?" Bulma complained, running a hand through her hair.
"Once again, woman, its your call." Vejita regarded her seriously. "I guess it depends on how much you want to go to jail."
"I won't get convicted," Bulma whispered.
"Both you and I know that that isn't true," Vejita said firmly. "They have multiple witnesses, and your nonexistent friendship with that girl is proof enough. They're gonna think that there were some hard feelings, which I assume there were, and you'll be staring through bars as quick as you can say 'prison princess'."
The frustrated tears were returning to Bulma's eyes. "God, I'm going to be a fugitive for the rest of my LIFE at this rate."
Vejita chuckled and turned on the television. "Welcome to my world. If you really want food, the number for the pizza place is on the counter."
Bulma choked back her tears and got up from her chair. She slowly, numbly made her way to the counter in search of the number.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
(A/N): Uh-oh, they're waist-deep in all of this shit now. Will they end up at Nikolas' abandoned cabin, or will Bulma decided to turn herself in? Find out next time in 'Youth of the Nation' chapter ten, 'Fugitives'! LoL couldn't resist... Thanks for all of the nice reviews on the last chapter, I really appreciate all of them. Ummm, that's pretty much all I gotta say, I think...Oh yes one more thing! Since this story only has a few more chapters left, I wanted to get you guys' opinion on something! Should I post the sequel to 'Little Black Dress' or my new idea for a totally different fic first? I'm leaning towards the sequel because I have a bunch of ideas, but hey, I suppose I'm doing this for you guys, so its your call. Whatever! Let me know your opinion on things, and lastly--REVIEW!
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_____________________________________________________________________ Rhapsody~* _________
______________________________________CHAPTER NINE: Run From It
Vejita usually didn't cater to anyone, and especially not to women. Yet here he was, running red lights and blowing past stop signs just to go calm a girl down. Or was he? Vejita had to admit that he was seriously pondering doing just a little more than calming Bulma down. The situation was getting serious, and serious situations required drastic measures, in his opinion.
The sprawling Briefs mansion was not difficult to spot. He could easily see it for blocks before he arrived there. Confident that her parents weren't home, he pulled his car right into the driveway and got out carefully. He searched for the security cameras and carefully slid outside of their field of view. He smirked at how simple it was and just walked right into the house upon finding the front door unlocked.
"Come in here!" Bulma called from a room that sounded fairly close. Vejita stared at the many hallways leading away from the front hall and grimaced.
"You're going to have to be a bit more specific," he snapped as he began walking in the direction of her voice. Before she could reply, he had reached the living room. He had been right to come, he decided upon seeing her. She was a wreck. Her eyes were red-rimmed and still brimming over with frightened tears. He had to admit that he would be pretty messed up, too. "Now tell me exactly what happened before I decide to beat it out of you." As Bulma related the story, Vejita grew more and more certain that the girl had no choice but to either turn herself in or leave. Immediately.
"You're damned lucky that YOU were here instead of one of your parents," Vejita agreed, studying the rich surroundings. "Let me just point out right now that I was right about them all. At the first sign of trouble, even a little thing like the fireworks incident, they went and screwed you over."
"I knew that Chichi was seriously angry when I went to see her," Bulma said quietly, her eyes on the floor. After a moment of awkward silence, she looked back up at Vejita again, her eyes shining. "But I don't regret the choices I...WE made."
Vejita couldn't help himself. He suddenly and swiftly kissed her. To cover up his uncertainty, he pulled her up off of the couch and out of the living room. "You've got to get the hell out of here. Where's your room? You've gotta grab some of your shit and leave. Now."
Bulma, still reeling from the brief kiss, pointed up the staircase and allowed him to practically drag her up the stairs and towards her room, which was still a mess. "Where can I go, Vejita? I have no choice. I have to stay here."
"That's bullshit!" Vejita protested, releasing her arm. "You want to go to jail? No, didn't think so."
"But to just...run from it?" Bulma shook her head. "I can't do that."
"If you have nowhere to go, you can crash at my place until you find somewhere," Vejita said through gritted teeth. "Now hurry up, you've got to be long gone before anyone gets home."
Bulma shook her head. "Dammit! I told you, Vejita, I can't just run and not do anything about it!"
At those words Vejita paused for a moment, the wheels in his head turning and spinning. When he lifted his black eyes to meet Bulma's, the beginnings of a smirk were on his face. "Believe me, woman, we're going to do something about it. Now get packing, we don't have all week!"
Bulma moved to begin packing, then stopped. "Why do you care so much? Why does helping me mean so much to you?" The look in her drying eyes told Vejita that was not going to back down until she had an answer.
"Because if you get convicted, I get convicted," Vejita said quietly. "That idiot Goku knows all about what I did, too, and if Chichi can't get to you, then Goku will damned well help her get to me."
"You told him?" Bulma asked incredulously. "But I thought--"
"That I was a cold, hard son of a bitch who never tells anybody anything unless there's a gun pressed to my head?" Vejita finished her sentence with a faint smirk. "You're right, but instead of giving myself away I'd grab the gun's owner's wrist and fucking snap it in two before he could get a shot in."
Bulma decided not to inquire further. It took about twenty minutes for her to pack all of the necessities and nothing else--they went through her belongings several times to narrow it down and even then Bulma had to sit on the suitcase to get it to close--but nevertheless it got done. To cover up her sudden exit, they cleaned up her room and compensated the security camera footage. Before she could even make sense of the situation, she was in Vejita's car, on the way to his house.
"What about your parents?" she asked anxiously. "I'm sure that they're going to notice me crashing right in the middle of your living room."
Vejita was silent for a moment before answering. "I don't live with my parents." They turned a corner and Vejita accelerated suddenly, slamming Bulma back against her seat.
"Uh...oh," Bulma said lamely. "So you live with relatives?"
"No," Vejita said emphamatically. "I live alone. As in with ME."
Bulma was amazed. Living alone while still in high school was a foreign concept to her. "You have no idea how lucky you are because of that. I wish that I could live somewhere without my parents."
Vejita snorted. "I think that that wish is about to come true."
"We can't hide out at your place for the rest of our lives, though. That's the first place they're gonna look for me, you know."
"First of all, they're gonna have a hell of a time figuring out where I live, since I gave the school a fake address, and second, we're not going to stay there for very long anyway." Vejita glanced over at her surprised face and smirked. "You're going to have get used to independence from here on out, woman, because you aren't going to be living off the generosity of Mummy and Daddy anymore."
Before Bulma could reply, Vejita turned into a driveway and jumped out of the car. Bulma followed his example and examined her surroundings. She was pleasantly surprised. Instead of the small, unkempt house she was expecting, she was standing before a medium-sized, neat-looking sort of house. It looked like the kind of place a college student would buy off-campus. She couldn't help but notice what a good party house it would be, with its large porch and wide driveway. Vejita hoisted her bulging suitcase out of his car and followed her glance to his house.
"What did you expect?" he asked smugly. "Come on, can you imagine ME living in poverty?"
As they walked towards the house, Bulma realized something. "Wait a minute. How can you afford living on your own? I don't remember you saying that you had such a great job."
"That's the sweet part," Vejita explained as he dug the keys out of his pocket. "I don't."
Bulma was confused, but she was thinking that she wasn't going to get much more of an explanation than that, so she shut up and took in the interior of Vejita's house. It was surprisingly clean--once again she was guilty of imagining the place as bachelor pad-ish disaster area. She studied Vejita out of the corner of her eyes and decided that she couldn't imagine Vejita living in a frat-house kind of environment anyway.
"Bullshit," Bulma protested, taking her suitcase from him. "Where do you get money?"
Vejita smirked. "Poor Pops didn't realize that I could easily see his PIN number from over his shoulder. Plus when my grandfather died he left most of his money to me, and he had a fucking FORTUNE ready for me."
Bulma stared at him incredulously. "But doesn't your father notice when the money in his account starts disappearing?"
"Hey," Vejita snapped. "You aren't the only person on Earth who comes from money, woman. He would hardly notice such a small dent in his account."
Bulma blushed in spite of herself. "But you do have a job, don't you? I mean, I can't see you as a total slacker."
"Hell no! Why would I go out and waste my time working when I can just go the bank and have all of that cash available to me?"
"That makes sense...I guess..." Bulma trailed off uncertainly. After all, she was doing the same thing. "So where do I sleep?"
"Wherever," Vejita said. "I have a guest room where my cousin usually sleeps off his hangovers but you can have it. Or you can sleep on the couch, but I'm sure that your delicate self wouldn't want to do THAT."
"You've got me there," Bulma agreed, eyeing the couch with disdain. "I would have a knot the size of California in my neck by the time morning came around."
There was a flicker of an emotion that Bulma couldn't discern in Vejita's eyes. "Or, if you don't want to clean up the guest room, there's always an open spot in my bed."
Bulma looked up in surprise and couldn't decided if her new housemate was serious or not. She felt a cold chill go down her spine for reasons unknown to her--Vejita had not pressured her into anything as long as she had known him--and avoided his eyes. "I'll keep that in mind," she responded dryly. "Show me to the guest room then, dear host."
When she turned away from Vejita to enter the small room, she felt his eyes on her back and the creepy-crawly cold chill returned.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Neither Chichi nor Goku was surprised when both Bulma and Vejita were absent from school the next day. Chichi first approached the disoriented Goku during lunch period with a triumphant grin on her scarred face. Goku smothered the internal cringe that he experienced every time he was forced to stare at her hideous haircut for more than five minutes and forced a smile of welcome. It truly was one of the worst things that could have happened to poor Chichi, so he went against his gut feelings and out of his way to please her. And now look what a mess it had gotten him into. As soon as Chichi had made the terrible suggestion that they hit both Bulma and Vejita where it would hurt the most, Goku had gotten that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something wasn't right about the whole thing, he decided. But what?
"Are you even paying attention to me?" Chichi demanded, putting her hands on her hips. "Come on Goku, revenge requires you to remain here on Earth where you belong."
"Revenge?" Goku shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Oh yes, THAT revenge."
Chichi raised an eyebrow. "God, where's your head lately? Its like you regret telling me about Vejita or something. LOOK AT ME, Goku, take a good look. I could have been killed, so I'm returning the favor."
Goku, who had had time to mull over what they gone and told Mariah's mother, Abby, was beginning to feel guilty at the whole thing. Sure, what Bulma and Vejita had done to Chichi had been pretty cruel, but he was almost positive that their motive hadn't been to KILL Chichi, and here she was trying to get them on death row. Goku wasn't sure that she was thinking straight, but he wouldn't have dared to interfere.
"Whatever. Wherever your head is, it can't be too remote, because look at this beautiful success!" Chichi exclaimed, lifting her arms in a gesture of thanks. "I'm sure that they're on their way to like, MEXICO or something, trying to escape the law."
"I don't know about the whole murder trial thing," Goku started cautiously. "All the evidence that the police are gonna have is a handful of witnesses, and that's not much considering how angry the witnesses are with Bulma at the time of accusation. Emotions can easily cloud reason, you know."
Chichi's eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that what I did was wrong? That I wasn't THINKING STRAIGHT?" She paused, took a deep, calming breath, and started over. "This is ridiculous. Honestly, Goku--who's side are you on?"
"Well, I'm on yours, of course, but--"
Chichi cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Save it, Goku-chan. I've got to get to class. See you later...in court!" She laughed a bone-chilling, vengeful little laugh and left Goku alone at their lunch table, just as dazed and confused as he had been before.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Bulma awoke quite early the next morning--hours before Vejita even stirred--and threw a pair of pajama pants and a tank top. She hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, what with the faint odor of beer and uh...bodily fluids left behind from Vejita's party-hardy cousin. But something that prohibited her rest even more was the fact that her room had been so close to Vejita's. She knew that that shouldn't be keeping her up into the dark hours of the night, but nevertheless it happened.
She searched through the dark recesses of Vejita's refridgerator and found some suspicious-looking orange juice, but nothing else that she desired to consume so early in the morning. She sighed and resigned to pouring herself a glass of water and sat down in the chair next to Vejita's rather impressive stereo. Listening to be sure that Vejita was still sleeping soundly, she flipped on the radio and switched from the presets to her favorite station.
Vejita found her like this two hours later. She had given in and poured herself some of the orange juice, which turned out to be a bit old, and was curled up in the chair singing along to the radio.
"If I could be like that..." she was whispering. "I would give anything..."
"Am I interuppting something?" Vejita said from the doorway. Bulma started and set her juice down on the coffee table unsteadily. "I mean, if you're in the middle of a concert or something--"
"God, Vejita!" Bulma exclaimed, ignoring his comments. "Do you always have to sneak up on me like that?"
"I've found your reaction to be rather amusing," Vejita retorted. "So yes, I do have to sneak up on you."
"What do you live on?" Bulma asked incredulously, motioning towards her nearly untouched juice. "Everything is either stale or laced with something that I would rather not determine the exact name of."
"Unlike you," Vejita started, crossing the room to take a seat across from the TV. "I don't have to eat every damn second of the day, so I do just fine."
Bulma was silent for a few minutes, and when she opened her mouth to speak her eyes were dark and worried. "I have to get out of here today, Vejita, and you know it. They're gonna be looking for me once I've been gone twenty-four hours."
Vejita scowled with displeasure. "Thanks for ruining my morning, woman. Don't bitch about it, I've got a place that we can go to."
"Oh? And where would that be?" Bulma demanded, crossing her arms and frowning skeptically. "Quite frankly, if its your cousin's house, I refuse. Sleeping in that bed was an experience that I would prefer NOT to repeat, thank you very much."
Vejita had to smirk at that. "Hey, you had a choice. If that's how you feel, then you're out of luck because we're going to his family's old cabin up north."
Bulma was speechless for a moment. "Up north? As in, somewhere out in the wilderness?"
"They're making prepartions to sell the place, so we won't be discovered. Its been sitting untouched for years now."
"Great! Old plumbing, wilderness, musty rooms, is there anything worse?" Bulma complained, running a hand through her hair.
"Once again, woman, its your call." Vejita regarded her seriously. "I guess it depends on how much you want to go to jail."
"I won't get convicted," Bulma whispered.
"Both you and I know that that isn't true," Vejita said firmly. "They have multiple witnesses, and your nonexistent friendship with that girl is proof enough. They're gonna think that there were some hard feelings, which I assume there were, and you'll be staring through bars as quick as you can say 'prison princess'."
The frustrated tears were returning to Bulma's eyes. "God, I'm going to be a fugitive for the rest of my LIFE at this rate."
Vejita chuckled and turned on the television. "Welcome to my world. If you really want food, the number for the pizza place is on the counter."
Bulma choked back her tears and got up from her chair. She slowly, numbly made her way to the counter in search of the number.
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(A/N): Uh-oh, they're waist-deep in all of this shit now. Will they end up at Nikolas' abandoned cabin, or will Bulma decided to turn herself in? Find out next time in 'Youth of the Nation' chapter ten, 'Fugitives'! LoL couldn't resist... Thanks for all of the nice reviews on the last chapter, I really appreciate all of them. Ummm, that's pretty much all I gotta say, I think...Oh yes one more thing! Since this story only has a few more chapters left, I wanted to get you guys' opinion on something! Should I post the sequel to 'Little Black Dress' or my new idea for a totally different fic first? I'm leaning towards the sequel because I have a bunch of ideas, but hey, I suppose I'm doing this for you guys, so its your call. Whatever! Let me know your opinion on things, and lastly--REVIEW!
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