To say that something had changed between them would be a cheapening of unforgiveable degree, and although it was not immediately obvious to everyone, those few chosen who heard, saw, and experienced the battling between Vejiita and Bulma did notice a difference: the War had become a game.
Oh, this wasn't say that they were nice to each other or anything like that; they still exchanged insults, ribbing abrasively at whatever opportunity came their way, occasionally shouting and once in a while throwing frying pans - at least on Bulma's end. But something about the flavor of their battle was different; it was still edged, still fire, still cutting - and now was laced with a tense sexual fury.
It was undeniably flirting. Almost everything they said now was charged with it, although the outpouring tended to be just subtle enough to narrowly miss the comprehension range of their audience. Discretion was rule number one, especially at the beginning of their battle, and was only to be foregone when a triumphant coup d'état was at hand. Indeed, most of it was done with looks; with body language, posturing, subtle indications of ignorance or inability and a dark reference to past behavior.
Perhaps it was fortunate that Yamucha had fled the morning after his abortive seduction; he could never have taken the heat.
Gokuu at least wasn't bothered by it; perhaps he was fortunate that it went completley over his head.
"Well. I don't know if I SHOULD give you one now, Mr. Smartass," Bulma was saying, knocking the top of the milkshaker with her fist for emphasis. It had stopped working after she'd given Gokuu his. "It seems to me you know absolutely nothing about it - and I do NOT reward ignorance."
"Then you should give yours to me," Vejiita replied calmly, eyeing her as though she were the milkshake. "Considering that you're too stupid to make another one, I'd say you have to forfeit yours."
"Bastard."
"Witch."
And quite calmly, she finished her shake and Vejiita went to get a piece of fruit, apparently both having conceded a draw.
Gokuu munched his sandwich and slurped his vanilla, watching them both but forming no conclusions. "This is good, Bulma."
"Thank you, Gokuu," she replied, tossing her hair at Vejiita. "SOME people certainly need to learn their manners regarding such things."
"It's your own fault you don't know anything about what to do with milk, woman," Vejiita mused, eyeing her sidelong. "Or even how to get it - shame Yamucha's gone, he COULD have helped you with that."
Bulma stared for a moment; the first rule of discretion had been broken, which meant it was now time for all-out war. "Okay, that is IT," she announced, and snatching her cast-iron pan off the wall, made for him like a dedicated cricket player.
Vejiita smirked and grabbed the pitcher filled with milkshake ingedients and held it over his head. Bulma came to a stop.
"Don't. You. Dare," she growled, her blue eyes narrowed to slits.
"Or you'll do what, woman?" Vejiita replied, also in a low growl - which somehow managed to be more shivery than threatening - and Gokuu felt the need to interrupt.
"You know, she'll get really mad if you mess up her kitchen, Vejiita," Gokuu warned, but both combatants ignored him.
"I swear, if you drop that on the floors or the walls or ANYWHERE ELSE IN THIS ROOM, so help me kami, I will SHOVE this ENTIRE frying pan down your... y...your..." Bulma trailed off, her eyes huge with disbelief.
Calmly, smoothly, Vejiita was pouring the entire concoction down the front of Bulma's blouse. She stood still, speechless; viscous liquid dripped off her curves and splatted to the ground.
"There," Veiita said, putting the pitcher down and wiping his hands on a kitchen cloth. "Now you know what you're missing - although I somehow doubt Yamucha would have been as sweet."
Bulma made several noises following this remark, and although none of them could strictly be called "words" or even really be put into any particular language, their meaning was very, very clear. Especially when she put down her frying pan and picked up a butcher knife instead.
Gokuu stood, ever the peacemaker, and all too aware that things had gone too far. "Bulma!" he cried, but he needn't have bothered.
Instead of running as usual, Vejiita took two, swiftly invisible steps toward her and grabbed her arm with the upraised blade. Inches from her face, he rumbled, low, slightly gravelly: "I wouldn't do that... if I were you."
Gokuu stopped. They were staring at one another, eye to eye, inches away, neither one blinking, and Bulma at least had gone rather red. Both seemed to have forgotten anyone else was in the room. Gokuu came a little closer. "Guys?" he asked, doubtfully, and startled by his tone, Bulma jumped. Her knife fell to the floor, slicing into the linoleum and quivering for a moment or two.
Satisfied, Vejiita stepped back; the tension between them, like a fine gossamer thread, was broken.
Bulma stared at him, her cheeks still red, sputtering more ecstatic speech. She took a deep breath. "YOU... CLUMSY... SON... OF... A...."
"Bitch," Vejiita finished for her, at her, and smirked; and then, he took off.
There was a pause, a moment of silence; and then Bulma simply threw her head back and screamed. Hands clenched, the muscles in her neck tense and visible, she only needed a backdrop of lightening to make the image complete.
Gokuu stared. "....wow," he said, honestly if not wisely. "You're really ticked off."
Bulma turned on him with bloodshot eyes and chased him out of the kitchen.
The sun was setting by the time Vejiita returned. He came back quietly and with no fanfare because he was planning to do what had become a ritual almost every night.
He was going to watch Bulma sleep.
He couldn't be sure exactly when it had started; he'd liked to sleep outside on the gravity machine for the past several weeks anyway, and then one night, had found that he wasn't sleeping - he was watching. That he HAD been watching; and that unless something drastically changed (say, Bulma got new curtains), he was going to CONTINUE to watch.
It was certainly an education in human women. Of course, just saying it that way sounded completely unappetizing, but Vejiita had found it indeed very much to his liking - enough so that when he did it, he forgot to do anything else.
She often bathed before she went to bed; she bathed in the morning, too, but he didn't watch that. It wasn't as... good, somehow. Sometimes she went to bed naked, but usually she pulled at least a t-shirt on over her head. Twice, he'd seen her masturbate; and three times, she'd gone to bed in tears over something Yamucha had done.
For some reason those three times sat heavy in his memory, and in his chest, they burned.
He didn't know why this was; and although he was certainly capable of forming the connection, he refused to apply it to his increasing lack of patience with Yamucha. The human warrior bothered him; bothered him on such a level that after a while, Vejiita knew that just in the name of fair play he had to let Yamucha know that his life was just about forfeit.
So, one day, Vejiita simply blasted him through the walls of the Capsule Corporation's living room and into a neighbor's yard.
There was an absolutely delightful fuss, with ambulences and cameras and quite a lot of very upset earthlings running all over the place. It was so much fun that Vejiita had to wonder why he hadn't done it before, and whether he should wait until Yamucha came back to go at him again or just catch him off-guard in the hospital. Pleased, Vejiita had a marvelously good time planning it all out - until Bulma decided it was time to face the music.
She knew him well. Once the ambulence was gone, she parked in front of the fridge and just waited. About fifteen minutes later, he came in.
"Woman," he acknowledged with a nod, and stood in front of her. "Move."
"No," she said, and he looked at her.
"Woman. Move."
"No," she replied, calm and glaring. "That wasn't funny, Vejiita. You nearly killed him."
He gave her a dry look, amused. "And when I finally take out Kakarotto and destroy your planet, he'll die anyway. What's your point?"
She slapped him.
He saw it coming, of course; humans telegraphed their movements terribly, and she wasn't fast enough to even spit at him without his full consent. But he let her; he let her do it because he wanted her to know just why he was tearing her bones out one at a time while she died.
The sound of her palm on his his face was surprisingly loud, and the silence that followed it, like a vacuum, left them both breathless. Almost gently, Vejiita took her hand in his and lifted it to his face.
"I hope you enjoyed that," he said, low, very dangerous. "It's the last thing you're ever going to do." And throwing her over his shoulder, he headed for the door.
Bulma froze for one moment, but then instead of screaming or struggling, she just sighed. "And I suppose MY death can't wait until you defeat 'Kakarotto' and and destroy the planet?"
Vejiita sounded irritated. "No. You die now."
"Oh." She seemed to think for a moment, bouncing on his shoulder as he walked through the pantry. "Then maybe it should be a public execution, because if I just disappear then it doesn't serve a purpose."
"Of course it does," Vejiita snapped, wondering if he should break something to make her realize the gravity of her situation. "It would shut you the hell up."
"Oh, there are other ways to do THAT," she said in you-silly-thing tones, and Vejiita stopped where he was and dropped her. She landed fairly hard, rolling slightly and grimacing.
"What the fuck is WRONG WITH YOU?" Vejiita suddenly exploded, gesticulating wildly. "I am going to KILL you! Do you get it? DIE! You are going to be DEAD!"
She looked up at him from the floor, pouting a little and rubbing her hip. "So? It's no reason to be rude!"
He stared at her. She stared back; and then, very solemnly, she stuck out her tongue.
Vejiita made a choked noise; he took one step back, looking as a man would who'd awakened to find himself in a madhouse, and without even a last word, he turned around and ran away.
Bulma stayed where she was until she was sure he was gone, and then she began hyperventilating. Her mother found her that way about half an hour later, and not even Bulma was sure by that point if she was crying or not.
"I almost did it, mom," she said, and laughed hysterically; and that was all Mrs. Briefs could get out of her for the rest of the evening.
That night, Vejiita had no idea if Bulma did her usual strip tease by the window because he was thousands of miles away and wasn't there to watch.
What the hell was wrong with her had turned out to be entirely the wrong question; clearly, it was what was wrong with him. He hadn't killed her. Never - NEVER - had he taken someone weaker with full intent to make them dead and failed; not unless some freako like Kakarotto intervened, and no one had in this case. It wasn't even her weirdly laconic courage that really got to him, although that had been an irritant worthy of planetary destruction. No, what had bothered him more than anything else was that when he'd touched her, thrown her over his shoulder, he'd suddenly found that what he wanted to do had absolutely nothing to do with killing.
It had hit suddenly, surprisingly; a powerful lust that made him aware of every curve of her body, of the softness of her breasts as she lay draped over his back, of -
No.
...no.
Vejiita came to a decision. He'd done this to himself, of that he was certain; well - from now on, he'd do it no longer. No more watching her. No more touching her. No more talking to her. He would still eat her food and suffer her incessant chatter, but that was IT - and only that much because it was terribly convenient to be waited on, and it would take away from his training to have to go conquer some country to get the same treatment. No, he would leave her alone for now; concentrate on growing strong. That would solve the issue.
It didn't even occur to him to take out his sexual frustrations on anyone else, on or off the planet; he only knew he had to resist her particular sexual allure, and that was as far as it went.
Bulma didn't sleep a wink that night because her hip was hurting - and because her mind kept replaying what had happened like afterimages from an old-fashioned camera.
She should have been angry with him. She was frightened of him a little, but not for the reasons he would have thought. She had not been afraid he was going to kill her; she'd been afraid he was going to rape her - and that she was going to let him.
Let him? There would have been no rape; she would have helped.
She'd been aware that Vejiita was a dangerously attractive man for some time now; but she was surrounded by dangerously attractive men, even if they weren't quite as attractive as Vejiita, and so did not usually let it bother her. And of course, she knew he was strong; knew he was intense, which pretty much anyone who faced him could figure out. She knew his eyes flashed like polished coal when he was passionate about anything, knew exactly how his lips curled when he was about to Do Something Drastic. She knew all of these things; but the fact still remained that when he'd thrown her over his shoulder, the first desire she'd had was to move against him in very lewd ways and kiss right down his incredibly broad back.
Sanity had not returned at any point during this episode; she just happened to be a very accomplished actress.
Bulma had finally calmed down after a while, although she'd frightened her mother enough that Mrs. Briefs had offered her a dose of Valium before letting her go. Bulma hadn't swallowed it, of course, but just accepting it seemed to assure her mother that she was all right to the point that she'd finally left her daughter alone.
She was alone now. And wide awake.
Before turning out her lights, she'd peeked out her window to see if Vejiita was there. She'd discovered a couple of weeks ago that he often slept under the moonlight on top of the gravity machine, perfectly still like a sculpture of some ancient god, and after her lights were out she often lay in bed and watched him.
He was beautiful; far more beautiful than any bad guy had a right to be, and sometimes watching him under the stars was too much for her and she'd shuddered into bliss as she went to sleep. It was a little frightening, sure; he was utterly still - utterly focused on whatever went on in his head, gaze pointed vaguely in the direction of her darkened window as if he could see inside. Sometimes, she almost thought he could see her; but she dressed and did everything else in her room under the cover of darkness, so she knew that wasn't true.
He wasn't out there tonight, and Bulma felt a surprising emptiness in his wake.
Weirdly, she even felt less safe, and that didn't make any sense at all. She sighed; she tossed and turned. She shifted, muttered curses at her bruised hip, muttered curses at him for dropping her on the floor and then running off and LEAVING her there. Finally, she dropped off to sleep.
She dreamed of making love while flying in the sky all night long.
Popo was staring intensely. He was being good - not talking, not moving, not doing anything at all to disturb his young master, because as soon as this portion of story was finished, Dende had fallen right to sleep. Mr. Popo knew he needed it; Dende had been story-telling all day, and clearly required rest. However -
In Mr. Popo's opinion, it was a sucky place to leave off.
Determined not to be silly over this, Popo went on a grand cleaning spree of the tower, hitting every spare room, nook, and cranny at least twice before moving on. Master Dende needed his rest, and so his rest he would get; and if Popo had to clean the entire world to keep from going crazy in the meantime, that was exactly what he would do. He cleaned; cooked a little food for himself, did some shopping, and wrote a few letters to his family.
By the time he was done, it was evening. Dende had not yet woken up. It was obvious he was going to sleep for the rest of the night. Sighing, Mr. Popo tucked a blanket around him, then went to bed.