(A/N): Sorry about the short notice, but this is the LAST CHAPTER of this fic besides the epilogue! ^_^ Yay!
______________________________________________ YOUTH OF THE NATION _______________________
_____________________________________________________________________ Rhapsody~* _________
______________________________________CHAPTER TEN: Fugitives
That same afternoon, Bulma was officially labeled a missing person. It was also on that afternoon that Bulma, once again, packed her things and headed out with Vejita towards the northern-most part of the state to Nikolas' family's abandoned cabin. The drive was a long one, but she had a lot of thinking to do. Vejita was silent for most of the trip unless Bulma spoke to him first. She couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. If it wasn't for her, he would still be back home, living his 'normal' life in his nice little house, practically worry-free.
"I'm...I'm sorry," she said lamely during one of the long, silent moments. She felt a bit awkward--she wasn't one to make apologies often. "I know that if it weren't for me, you wouldn't be in this situation."
Vejita snorted. "It would have happened eventually. I didn't expect that idiot Goku to be able to keep a secret for that long."
"Then why did you tell him?" Bulma asked.
Vejita was silent for a moment. "Hell if I know. I can't stand to stay in one place for too long, anyway. Does there have to be a reason for everything a person does?"
Bulma sighed and watched out her window. They were hours out of her town, and everything looked strange and unfamiliar. She wasn't sure that she liked the feeling. "I guess not."
Vejita watched her out of the corners of his eyes. "You're going to have a hard time with this, aren't you?"
Bulma choked on the tears she had been holding back for almost the entire drive. "I miss my normal life, before the whole Mariah thing happened," she confided quietly, her voice thick with tears of hopelessness. "I used to be a happy child, can you believe that? None of this would have happened if I hadn't gotten so damned selfish. Mariah would still be alive, and I would be able to live out my life in peace. Now I will never be able to see my friends or my family again."
"Maybe that isn't such a bad thing," Vejita suggested. "I was glad to escape the hellhole that I used to call home."
"But I'm not like you," Bulma protested. "I need my family and my friends. And now all I have is...YOU."
Vejita smirked half-heartedly. "Is that such a bad thing?"
Bulma sniffled and wiped away her tears. "God, Vejita, what are we going to do? We'll kill each other before the week is up. We're in HIGH SCHOOL, and we have no idea how to live out our lives alone, forever. Or at least, I have no idea, and you can't spend your whole life supporting ME."
"Well," Vejita started darkly. "It looks like I'm going to have to now."
Bulma turned to look at him, her blue eyes wide and vulnerable. "I'm going to be blunt and just come out and say that I'm scared shitless."
A traffic light ahead turned red, and Vejita stopped the car accordingly. He stared out the window for a minute, then turned back to her. "Well fuck, so am I."
His honest (?) confession brought a faint smile to Bulma's face. "Well that's always nice to hear," she said with a tiny laugh. "I'm glad that I'm not the only one ready to piss myself over this." She laughed again and returned to staring back out of her window.
Even the hard-headed Vejita didn't have the heart to tell her that he hadn't even the slightest idea of how they were going to survive on their own.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Chichi got a phone call from Bulma's mother that same afternoon quite unexpectantly. She was in one of her foul moods when the call went through, and she wasn't ashamed to let it show through her voice. Until she discovered who the caller was.
"Oh, Mrs. Briefs, you must be a wreck!" Chichi gushed falsely. "I have to admit that I'm not too composed myself. I just can't believe that Bulma would do such a terrible, terrible thing."
Mrs. Briefs inhaled sharply. "She didn't, honey, I can assure you that. I'm more worried about the poor girl's running away than anything else! Have you heard anything from her?"
Chichi thought for a moment. "Well, no, not directly from her, but I DO know that Vejita disappeared at the same time that she did." She added a tiny bit of fear into her voice. "And golly Mrs. Briefs, he would be the LAST person I would want MY daughter to be gone with."
"That's what I've been hearing," Mrs. Briefs said. "I'm just surprised that you didn't hear a word from her about the whole matter. You're her best friend, and I've never known Bulma to be the introverted type."
"Oh, you would be surprised." Chichi grinned and leaned back into her chair. "The last couple of weeks the rumors about her doing away with Mariah have started to circulate again, and it was getting really obvious that there might be something to them. But I, of course, never believed them."
Sounds of sniffling were heard on Mrs. Briefs' end of the line. "I would love to have a nice, normal chat with you dear, but I have searching to get back to. Please don't hesitate to call if you hear anything, honey! Good-bye."
After hearing the hopelessness in Mrs. Briefs' voice, Chichi felt a pang of guilt over what she'd gone and done. It didn't last long.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Three and a half hours later, Vejita and Bulma arrived in a small, nearly abandoned vacation town. Bulma pressed her face to the window, delighting in the little place's quaint beauty. The town was on the shores of an enormous lake bordered by immense forests of tall pine trees. A few people were ice skating and ice fishing on the lake, but besides that there wasn't much activity in the small town. It was perfect.
"So where's the cabin?" Bulma asked Vejita, who didn't seem as pleased with his surroundings as Bulma.
"Somewhere back in the woods," Vejita replied, checking a map that he had pulled out of the glovebox. "Don't get your hopes up, its about a mile off of the lake."
Bulma sighed. "I guess ice skating can wait then."
"We aren't here on vacation, woman," Vejita reminded her, and turned onto a neglected dirt road that curved its way into the woods and disappeared. "Shit, this is wonders on my car..."
"That'll teach you to drive a ridiculous car like this in the winter," Bulma teased, even though she quite envied Vejita's ownership (well, kind of ownership) of the charming vehicle. "Besides, we're going to have to lay low for a little while."
"Hmph." Vejita turned his attention away from Bulma and back to the road. "I think that I remember how to get there now. Prepare yourself, because its nothing special."
Bulma sighed, her secret hopes of a backwoods paradise dashed. "Can't have everything, I guess."
When they pulled into the driveway of the tiny, neglected cabin, whatever shred of hope Bulma had left were done away with for good. They got out of the car and just stared for a moment, jaws dropped. Bulma spoke first. Her voice was falsely cheerful.
"Well, it beats jail I guess."
Vejita picked up a rock and chucked it at the sorry little shack. "That ass told me that it was half-decent!"
Bulma grimaced. "NIKOLAS told you it was decent? Forgive me if this sounds rude but you have no right to judge his idea of decency until you've spent the night in his bed. I think that we should look inside before you shatter all of the windows." She shook her head at the disgusted look Vejita shot her and headed for the front door.
The door opened easily enough, much to Bulma's relief. The interior, however, was not very promising. Cobwebs covered corners and whatever furniture Nikolas' family had left behind, and a thick layer of dust stirred up beneath her feet as she entered. It was, in fact, as small as it looked. There was a living room, a corner that you might call a kitchen, a room with a bunk bed, and an almost impossibly tiny bathroom. Bulma cringed at the thought of spending so much time with Vejita in such a confined space.
"Well, this is just GREAT," Vejita growled, picking cobwebs off of what looked to be a phone. "This stupid thing had better be connected! That bastard is going to hear from me..."
Bulma sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. "We don't have much of a choice, Vejita, unless you'd prefer a 6 by 8 cell with no windows."
"Don't you see that that is what this IS?" Vejita snarled, dialing what Bulma assumed to be Nikolas' number. She did not envy him at this moment. "Give me Nikolas."
Bulma had no interest in hearing Vejita cuss his poor cousin out, so she went back outside to look at the yard. It was mostly dense forest, but the area immediately around the house had been cleared to make room for a rusty swingset and a well. A WELL. Bulma groaned, peered inside, and scowled. Things were getting worse by the minute. She could hear Vejita yelling at Nikolas from nearly a hundred feet away.
"What the hell kind of trick...I don't give a fuck what you think...not going to spend my youth locked away like some kind of..." Bulma could only make out parts of what Vejita was saying, but it didn't take much to get the gist of the argument. She couldn't say that she disagreed with Vejita, but she was willing to make sacrifices to stay out of handcuffs.
A few minutes later, Vejita's yelling stopped and an angry click could be heard. Bulma prepared herself for the worst and hurried back into the cabin.
"Well?" she asked expectantly. "What did he say?"
"I don't think that we'll be talking again very soon," Vejita responded, crossing his arms. "But he's too much of a dumbass to rat on me, even when he's this pissed."
"So I take it that we're stuck here?"
Vejita nodded unhappily. "Take it or leave it, this is the only opportunity that we have."
Bulma sighed and studied her surroundings. "Take it. We're going to have to head into town to get food and stuff like that though. And we're going to need Lysol. Lots of Lysol." Without waiting for Vejita's consent, she started making her way back to the car.
Just before turning the key in the ignition, Vejita turned to her with narrowed eyes. Bulma stiffened, expecting an attack of some sort. She was pleasantly (?) surprised.
"And we're NOT wasting MY money on any of that wildflower-scented shit, either!"
_______________ ~*~*~*~
As it turned out, they did not end up with any of 'that wildflower-scented shit', but rather with a handful of dish towels and a gallon of bottled water. Bulma slammed the door of the car in frustration.
"What the hell kind of place doesn't sell cleaning products?" she demanded. "And I refuse to live on Cheerios and Fritos for the rest of my life!"
Vejita scowled and started the engine. "Don't blame me, woman, I'm not happy about it either."
"What I can't understand is how an entire town can survive on just one dinky little Food-mart!" Bulma exclaimed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Here's a better question," Vejita started. "How are WE going to survive on a Food-mart?"
"Jesus Christ," Bulma grumbled. "Jail is sounding better every minute."
They spent the remainder of the trip 'home' in relative silence. It was only when they were about forty feet from the driveway that Vejita spoke. He stopped the car suddenly and studied the tracks on the road ahead of them with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"What the..."
Bulma craned her neck to see, but could not discern anything unusual. "What, Vejita? What do you see?"
"Tire tracks," Vejita said quietly, opening his door and stepping out of the car.
Bulma rolled her eyes. "Uh, well yeah, cars usually make those!"
"You don't understand, woman! When we came here, the tracks that my car made were the only ones in the snow, and now there's another set. More than one, by the looks of it. And they're definitely not mine."
"Oh my God," Bulma breathed, getting out of the car to examine them for herself. "But who else could it be?"
The answer came to them both at once, and they exchanged looks of surprise and dread.
"But...no!" Bulma protested, backing towards the car shakily. "We planned it perfectly! Nobody saw us leave, and nobody knew where we were headed!"
Vejita ran a hand through his hair in agitation. "Not exactly. Nikolas knew."
Bulma could have killed him. "And you, ego-maniac that you are, decided to go and piss him off!"
"This isn't MY fault!" Vejita protested loudly. "If you hadn't bumped that chick off before, we wouldn't even BE in this fucking situation!"
"Oh," Bulma shouted back. "So you're going to pin this one on ME. Thanks! I was against this idea from the start! I TOLD you that it would never work!"
Vejita shook his head. "I don't think so! Maybe you should stop yelling, because if the cops ARE waiting for us, then I would prefer not to alert them that we've arrived!"
"Too late," said a voice from behind them.
Bulma and Vejita whirled around to face a grinning Nikolas, who was flanked by two cops. Armed cops. Bulma heard Vejita mutter foul curses under his breath and couldn't help but utter a few of her own. They were trapped, that much was clear.
"I couldn't let you get away with EVERY trick, now could I?" Nikolas said, crossing his arms and adopting a smug expression. "Manipulation just runs in the family, I guess. See you in court, guys."
The cops lifted their weapons and approached them slowly. The defeated duo had no choice but to surrender. Bulma lifted her hands, allowing tears to fall over her cheeks in hopes that they would take pity on her.
She had no such luck. Vejita had time to shoot her one last, intense stare before his cop shoved him against the car and cuffed him with little difficulty.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________ YOUTH OF THE NATION _______________________
_____________________________________________________________________ Rhapsody~* _________
______________________________________CHAPTER TEN: Fugitives
That same afternoon, Bulma was officially labeled a missing person. It was also on that afternoon that Bulma, once again, packed her things and headed out with Vejita towards the northern-most part of the state to Nikolas' family's abandoned cabin. The drive was a long one, but she had a lot of thinking to do. Vejita was silent for most of the trip unless Bulma spoke to him first. She couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. If it wasn't for her, he would still be back home, living his 'normal' life in his nice little house, practically worry-free.
"I'm...I'm sorry," she said lamely during one of the long, silent moments. She felt a bit awkward--she wasn't one to make apologies often. "I know that if it weren't for me, you wouldn't be in this situation."
Vejita snorted. "It would have happened eventually. I didn't expect that idiot Goku to be able to keep a secret for that long."
"Then why did you tell him?" Bulma asked.
Vejita was silent for a moment. "Hell if I know. I can't stand to stay in one place for too long, anyway. Does there have to be a reason for everything a person does?"
Bulma sighed and watched out her window. They were hours out of her town, and everything looked strange and unfamiliar. She wasn't sure that she liked the feeling. "I guess not."
Vejita watched her out of the corners of his eyes. "You're going to have a hard time with this, aren't you?"
Bulma choked on the tears she had been holding back for almost the entire drive. "I miss my normal life, before the whole Mariah thing happened," she confided quietly, her voice thick with tears of hopelessness. "I used to be a happy child, can you believe that? None of this would have happened if I hadn't gotten so damned selfish. Mariah would still be alive, and I would be able to live out my life in peace. Now I will never be able to see my friends or my family again."
"Maybe that isn't such a bad thing," Vejita suggested. "I was glad to escape the hellhole that I used to call home."
"But I'm not like you," Bulma protested. "I need my family and my friends. And now all I have is...YOU."
Vejita smirked half-heartedly. "Is that such a bad thing?"
Bulma sniffled and wiped away her tears. "God, Vejita, what are we going to do? We'll kill each other before the week is up. We're in HIGH SCHOOL, and we have no idea how to live out our lives alone, forever. Or at least, I have no idea, and you can't spend your whole life supporting ME."
"Well," Vejita started darkly. "It looks like I'm going to have to now."
Bulma turned to look at him, her blue eyes wide and vulnerable. "I'm going to be blunt and just come out and say that I'm scared shitless."
A traffic light ahead turned red, and Vejita stopped the car accordingly. He stared out the window for a minute, then turned back to her. "Well fuck, so am I."
His honest (?) confession brought a faint smile to Bulma's face. "Well that's always nice to hear," she said with a tiny laugh. "I'm glad that I'm not the only one ready to piss myself over this." She laughed again and returned to staring back out of her window.
Even the hard-headed Vejita didn't have the heart to tell her that he hadn't even the slightest idea of how they were going to survive on their own.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Chichi got a phone call from Bulma's mother that same afternoon quite unexpectantly. She was in one of her foul moods when the call went through, and she wasn't ashamed to let it show through her voice. Until she discovered who the caller was.
"Oh, Mrs. Briefs, you must be a wreck!" Chichi gushed falsely. "I have to admit that I'm not too composed myself. I just can't believe that Bulma would do such a terrible, terrible thing."
Mrs. Briefs inhaled sharply. "She didn't, honey, I can assure you that. I'm more worried about the poor girl's running away than anything else! Have you heard anything from her?"
Chichi thought for a moment. "Well, no, not directly from her, but I DO know that Vejita disappeared at the same time that she did." She added a tiny bit of fear into her voice. "And golly Mrs. Briefs, he would be the LAST person I would want MY daughter to be gone with."
"That's what I've been hearing," Mrs. Briefs said. "I'm just surprised that you didn't hear a word from her about the whole matter. You're her best friend, and I've never known Bulma to be the introverted type."
"Oh, you would be surprised." Chichi grinned and leaned back into her chair. "The last couple of weeks the rumors about her doing away with Mariah have started to circulate again, and it was getting really obvious that there might be something to them. But I, of course, never believed them."
Sounds of sniffling were heard on Mrs. Briefs' end of the line. "I would love to have a nice, normal chat with you dear, but I have searching to get back to. Please don't hesitate to call if you hear anything, honey! Good-bye."
After hearing the hopelessness in Mrs. Briefs' voice, Chichi felt a pang of guilt over what she'd gone and done. It didn't last long.
_______________ ~*~*~*~
Three and a half hours later, Vejita and Bulma arrived in a small, nearly abandoned vacation town. Bulma pressed her face to the window, delighting in the little place's quaint beauty. The town was on the shores of an enormous lake bordered by immense forests of tall pine trees. A few people were ice skating and ice fishing on the lake, but besides that there wasn't much activity in the small town. It was perfect.
"So where's the cabin?" Bulma asked Vejita, who didn't seem as pleased with his surroundings as Bulma.
"Somewhere back in the woods," Vejita replied, checking a map that he had pulled out of the glovebox. "Don't get your hopes up, its about a mile off of the lake."
Bulma sighed. "I guess ice skating can wait then."
"We aren't here on vacation, woman," Vejita reminded her, and turned onto a neglected dirt road that curved its way into the woods and disappeared. "Shit, this is wonders on my car..."
"That'll teach you to drive a ridiculous car like this in the winter," Bulma teased, even though she quite envied Vejita's ownership (well, kind of ownership) of the charming vehicle. "Besides, we're going to have to lay low for a little while."
"Hmph." Vejita turned his attention away from Bulma and back to the road. "I think that I remember how to get there now. Prepare yourself, because its nothing special."
Bulma sighed, her secret hopes of a backwoods paradise dashed. "Can't have everything, I guess."
When they pulled into the driveway of the tiny, neglected cabin, whatever shred of hope Bulma had left were done away with for good. They got out of the car and just stared for a moment, jaws dropped. Bulma spoke first. Her voice was falsely cheerful.
"Well, it beats jail I guess."
Vejita picked up a rock and chucked it at the sorry little shack. "That ass told me that it was half-decent!"
Bulma grimaced. "NIKOLAS told you it was decent? Forgive me if this sounds rude but you have no right to judge his idea of decency until you've spent the night in his bed. I think that we should look inside before you shatter all of the windows." She shook her head at the disgusted look Vejita shot her and headed for the front door.
The door opened easily enough, much to Bulma's relief. The interior, however, was not very promising. Cobwebs covered corners and whatever furniture Nikolas' family had left behind, and a thick layer of dust stirred up beneath her feet as she entered. It was, in fact, as small as it looked. There was a living room, a corner that you might call a kitchen, a room with a bunk bed, and an almost impossibly tiny bathroom. Bulma cringed at the thought of spending so much time with Vejita in such a confined space.
"Well, this is just GREAT," Vejita growled, picking cobwebs off of what looked to be a phone. "This stupid thing had better be connected! That bastard is going to hear from me..."
Bulma sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. "We don't have much of a choice, Vejita, unless you'd prefer a 6 by 8 cell with no windows."
"Don't you see that that is what this IS?" Vejita snarled, dialing what Bulma assumed to be Nikolas' number. She did not envy him at this moment. "Give me Nikolas."
Bulma had no interest in hearing Vejita cuss his poor cousin out, so she went back outside to look at the yard. It was mostly dense forest, but the area immediately around the house had been cleared to make room for a rusty swingset and a well. A WELL. Bulma groaned, peered inside, and scowled. Things were getting worse by the minute. She could hear Vejita yelling at Nikolas from nearly a hundred feet away.
"What the hell kind of trick...I don't give a fuck what you think...not going to spend my youth locked away like some kind of..." Bulma could only make out parts of what Vejita was saying, but it didn't take much to get the gist of the argument. She couldn't say that she disagreed with Vejita, but she was willing to make sacrifices to stay out of handcuffs.
A few minutes later, Vejita's yelling stopped and an angry click could be heard. Bulma prepared herself for the worst and hurried back into the cabin.
"Well?" she asked expectantly. "What did he say?"
"I don't think that we'll be talking again very soon," Vejita responded, crossing his arms. "But he's too much of a dumbass to rat on me, even when he's this pissed."
"So I take it that we're stuck here?"
Vejita nodded unhappily. "Take it or leave it, this is the only opportunity that we have."
Bulma sighed and studied her surroundings. "Take it. We're going to have to head into town to get food and stuff like that though. And we're going to need Lysol. Lots of Lysol." Without waiting for Vejita's consent, she started making her way back to the car.
Just before turning the key in the ignition, Vejita turned to her with narrowed eyes. Bulma stiffened, expecting an attack of some sort. She was pleasantly (?) surprised.
"And we're NOT wasting MY money on any of that wildflower-scented shit, either!"
_______________ ~*~*~*~
As it turned out, they did not end up with any of 'that wildflower-scented shit', but rather with a handful of dish towels and a gallon of bottled water. Bulma slammed the door of the car in frustration.
"What the hell kind of place doesn't sell cleaning products?" she demanded. "And I refuse to live on Cheerios and Fritos for the rest of my life!"
Vejita scowled and started the engine. "Don't blame me, woman, I'm not happy about it either."
"What I can't understand is how an entire town can survive on just one dinky little Food-mart!" Bulma exclaimed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Here's a better question," Vejita started. "How are WE going to survive on a Food-mart?"
"Jesus Christ," Bulma grumbled. "Jail is sounding better every minute."
They spent the remainder of the trip 'home' in relative silence. It was only when they were about forty feet from the driveway that Vejita spoke. He stopped the car suddenly and studied the tracks on the road ahead of them with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"What the..."
Bulma craned her neck to see, but could not discern anything unusual. "What, Vejita? What do you see?"
"Tire tracks," Vejita said quietly, opening his door and stepping out of the car.
Bulma rolled her eyes. "Uh, well yeah, cars usually make those!"
"You don't understand, woman! When we came here, the tracks that my car made were the only ones in the snow, and now there's another set. More than one, by the looks of it. And they're definitely not mine."
"Oh my God," Bulma breathed, getting out of the car to examine them for herself. "But who else could it be?"
The answer came to them both at once, and they exchanged looks of surprise and dread.
"But...no!" Bulma protested, backing towards the car shakily. "We planned it perfectly! Nobody saw us leave, and nobody knew where we were headed!"
Vejita ran a hand through his hair in agitation. "Not exactly. Nikolas knew."
Bulma could have killed him. "And you, ego-maniac that you are, decided to go and piss him off!"
"This isn't MY fault!" Vejita protested loudly. "If you hadn't bumped that chick off before, we wouldn't even BE in this fucking situation!"
"Oh," Bulma shouted back. "So you're going to pin this one on ME. Thanks! I was against this idea from the start! I TOLD you that it would never work!"
Vejita shook his head. "I don't think so! Maybe you should stop yelling, because if the cops ARE waiting for us, then I would prefer not to alert them that we've arrived!"
"Too late," said a voice from behind them.
Bulma and Vejita whirled around to face a grinning Nikolas, who was flanked by two cops. Armed cops. Bulma heard Vejita mutter foul curses under his breath and couldn't help but utter a few of her own. They were trapped, that much was clear.
"I couldn't let you get away with EVERY trick, now could I?" Nikolas said, crossing his arms and adopting a smug expression. "Manipulation just runs in the family, I guess. See you in court, guys."
The cops lifted their weapons and approached them slowly. The defeated duo had no choice but to surrender. Bulma lifted her hands, allowing tears to fall over her cheeks in hopes that they would take pity on her.
She had no such luck. Vejita had time to shoot her one last, intense stare before his cop shoved him against the car and cuffed him with little difficulty.
___________________________________________________________________________________________