Chapter 6: Pleasant House, I'm Conkenu, Meet Conkenu, Conkenu
The classic car sped on the rural road pasting similar sceneries of snow-covered prairies with trees of pines and some leafed trees that were bare were caught in the low blue of the night sky that broke the sensation of driving in a loop. The visibility of the road remained trustworthy in tediousness with no distraction from the frothiest snow sprinkling. The headlights branched out sometimes to old fallow ruined fences that were splintered and not sturdy. Gneiss had the radio low on peaceful classical music to keep Conkenu latent.
"You should get off the road." A voice on the radio from the now notorious broadcasting hijack stunt said. Involuntarily, she let her thoughts drift to the radio and lost control of the car for a while. She felt the need to respond to the comment, but it responded first. "I can't hear you but go ahead."
"Then how?" Gneiss asked.
"Scripted messages from you know who, Gneiss." His voice worded with deep monotonous pronunciation. "You are not experiencing a flashback, but Icicil wants you to know that he had no objective to make you stressed. Destiny is weird, because I am not reading this script right now, but he must have known that. I want to tell you that the moment I met him, the day my planet died physically because a fierce beast took her spirit a long time before that, he gave me a choice of dying or a choice of being destined into his plan that you are now in because of me. Just now, no matter how much suffering you face, you and Conkenu are safe. Fortune is the gift of knowledge and the burden of control. I don't even understand this next line back onto his writings all too well."
"Why do you want me off the road?" She injected.
"Sorry, I didn't remind you to wear a seat beat." He said with hesitation, and then laughed.
From the headlights, a fox emerged two meters ahead of the car, and as soon as Gneiss saw the animal, she swerved off the road into the ditch. Her body crashed against the passenger door that cracked its hinges and flew off the car. The transference of energy stopped Gneiss from flying from the car; instead, she hung on to the slanted car for as long as she could until she hear Conkenu's voice that was scared but unscratched then she fell out of the car onto thick snow. Her faith in Icicil remained, even when she started to black out, she faintly saw a shadow approaching the wreckage.
A crack woke her as she felt warmth on her face. She was in bed under many covers in a large bedroom of dexterously crafted stone. The majority of the light to see a portion of the room came from the nearby fireplace that was dying down then she saw a man come from the dimness to put another log in the fire; it was Conkenu Vsthree who dressed himself in a brown suit. From putting the first log into the fire, he looked at the bed to see Gneiss sitting up looking at him. "I'm so glad that you decided to arrive here, but I did wish under better conditions, then who are we to protest meetings of luck?" He said placing the remaining logs into the fire and standing up to walk over to rest on the chair beside the bed. "First, our meeting at the market place as we both wanted to get supplies and having met the great man named Icicil. We swapped our stories, and you mention Conkenu, the child that his wife had in tragedy at the hospital. Well, I had no explanation for why he named his kid after me who was named after a distance relative who lives in Pleasant House, but I was relieved that the letter was explained, and certainly, you were on your way here to receive it. I little intention to read a letter not meant for me, but the name on the letter did fool me and confuse me. Oh, I thought he wanted me to go on a dangerous quest that I did not know where I would have to start or end. Maybe the youngest namesake, who is doing fine but a bit upset, will get more sense out of it. I do think that this letter must contain old news, but you can now deliver it. The second encounter was as much luck as the first. The coincidences surmounted around people who know Icicil I would have to presume. I was looking for a horse that was not accountable for in the stable, and with the snow, I presumed that it went on the road. At the road with Constance, having decided she would head north and I would drop south, I would find two welcomed and expected visitors to Pleasant House that have needed my help. I brought you two back here to warm and heal you up, and the horse that started the search had come back into the stable by herself. You ladies could have picked a better place to crash luckily. Conkenu is speaking to others here including her oldest Conkenu, and we are kindled to have a guest like her with her well matters and fashion sense."
"Yes, the dress be changed, it's dirty." She muttered to herself. "How far did we leave the car?"
"Not too far off from this property so we can have no problem getting some lodged servants to get the car here for the morning." He replied. "I hope that my obligation to Icicil will be a least somewhat paid off, though I know that the deeds I can give him could have never close the doors to help such a man. The day he gave me the money to enter this place, I decided to invest the money instead in a wise option. Icicil is a kind hearted man whose daughter has indefinite welcome here."
Gneiss and Conkenu stayed there for an extra day as the car was being repaired. The atmosphere of the trip was productive and relaxing, with some tips given to the travelers to Snowy Forest, conversations of adventures of Gneiss that took place before and after meeting Conkenu, the owner. Conkenu, the youngest, deemed she never slept, if her anecdotes of how good a warrior were depended on when they woke up, after hearing about her voyages to safe guard parcels and other trades that he wished he could have behind him before what he was approaching. In the final morning, they departed with good news about paths and navigation.
In a late night music bar of strangeness, two ordinary men sitting at a booth, gaining stares by strange creatures, smoked and plodded on an opened radio with handheld tools. The two tool handlers were in Ski' Cima, the capital city of the planet Calcivorous, inhabited by the Atien race. The room packed with more grey, old and long faces, with white hair, which had diverse devices and wires doubling the width of the tall and deteriorated bodies of the Atienians. The creatures were modified all the same when it came to the senses found in the head, as they possessed eyepieces ranging from visors, to binoculars, reconstructed ears, and air purifiers over their mouths and nostrils. Stucha and Prince Jefiea sat out in the crowd, with young faces with sprouts of facial hair all around in irregularity, dry lips, and dark black hair. "They incessantly glimpse at us, Prince." Stucha said taking his eyes covered with sunglasses off the radio to the crowd. "No good objective will surface from this. Must they keep it so illuminated? How much time do you have?"
Prince Jefiea pulled up a flaccid grey sleeve and looked at his timer around his wrist on a thick heavy metal strap. The patterns were dim, but tolerable to his eyes under the dark shaded sunglasses. "I have only several hours. I wonder if we should appraise our connection to Earth by other means, like Icicil told us."
"Can you do this?" Stucha put a hand on a modest wall-mounted monitor. He pulled his fingertips off the top and scraped some dust off it. In front of the men, a levitating flat projection in red tones started to delineate emblems. A touch floated a pad above the original with new keys, and with undisciplined hands, more derivatives sprang up and in different colours designating their sublevel as they occupied space all around the user. Stucha clutched some pads not a step away and modified them in improvement or in curiosity. After he ceased with revising them, they shifted to their original space with no immediate mind of the prince. He threw his arms with their sleeves rolled up and smiled at his companion. All of the created pads vanished and the original varied.
"You were reasonable when you counseled me about your theory concerning how to obtain a link to the other universes, but as it seemed to be ineffectual with the radio, it works surprisingly well here." He said. The two men, who were advised once a long time ago by Icicil to get to Earth had made another connection, but as implausible as to get a response or even an audience was; coincidences far too unanticipated had been on their sides for long that they were modestly called normal.
Bulma Briefs was going to end the day after spending a late night surveying one of her father's inventions when she looked down the stairs, which she progressed half way up, to see a computer on that she thought she had exited. She then realized it had been the sound of the computer booting that had caught her attention, and she concluded she rebooted the machine instead of a complete shut down. The computer reached it's normal settings when Bulma sat down. "I guess I could converse with some egg head males who spend normal sleeping hours on the computer and teach them a thing or two about what women doesn't know and does know." She initialized a program to chat with other people. Instantly, a chime announced a concealed window with a message. "I don't remember being on this channel before. I wonder what got the attention of 'Aqualung' to message 'Cross-eyed Mary'?"
"Is there anybody out there?" She read and responded, "You bet. You're talking to Cross-eyed Mary, a woman working at Capsule Corp."
"What's a Capsule Corp.?"
"How can you own a computer living in the civilized world not know about the Capsule Corporation? You are not tricking me. Or do you think that a woman can't work here and see if I could describe it?"
"What are you disclosing in reference to the Capsule Corporation?" The message replied.
"Listen, I happen to be the daughter of the owner of Capsule Corp., Dr. Briefs." She pressed down on the buttons with force. There was a pause before the next response, compared to the others that appeared too fast considering how much swifter a typist would have to be compared to Bulma to get a message up almost at once after she typed her own message.
"I know the connection, you courted Yamacha."
"How did you know that small detail with little such a small link to Capsule Corp., but not know about the company itself? Anyways, I did date Yamacha, but now and for a long time before, I do not, thankfully." She relaxed back into her restful padded chair with the extra long backing and ignoring the response to her last message, she concluded that one person could have known that, though doubtful at the time, it was fair less strange than the person actually on the other end. She flipped open a secreted panel on the right arm rest of the chair, picked up the phone, and dialed. It rang once that was swapped with the noise of hip-hop music and men having a good time
"Hello," Yamacha answered on his cellphone as the team partied on the bus, which included a lot of beer. "What do you mean, stop chatting to you? You called me. No, I'm not at a strip joint. Can you please calm down Bulma?"
A teammate of his launched himself down on the seat next to Yamacha and offered him a chug of the wine he was holding. The team had thrashed the winning streak record for every team in sports history. "What did you say about a strip joint? Maybe we should have one of the ladies give you a lap dance."
Yamacha pulled the cellphone away from his ear, shook off the jolt, and held it at a safe distance as she kept her voice loud. "No, I'm not at one. The team just left one, half an hour ago and the strippers were brought onto the bus." He said with a nervous voice with tense chuckles and instinctively drew the cellphone back to the safe distance to avoid an earache but to have audible murmurs to know when to comeback to the call. "I'm not on any chat lines, I'm on the bus. I can't have a connection to you. Oh, I can use the cellphone and I never would have thought about that, thanks. No, it's not me."
He turned the power off of the cellphone and put it away in his jacket. The interrupting teammate from before, 'The Tickler' who played position of the pitcher, sat back with Yamacha, who took up the past offer and threw down a bit of the wine. "What's the matter, and why haven't you got drunk over it, yet? I'm keeping you company until you get smashed, tell me all about it."
"Bulma called me and chewed me up." Yamacha said. "She thought that I had stalked her on a chat connection. Not that I don't mind spending time with her, but I hope that she will understand that her decision to break our relationship up was also encountered with my own reasons."
"Go on, what were the reasons for the breakup?" The Tickler asked.
"I believe that both her reasons and my reasons came to her high expectations of the first relationship of teenagers. You know, find a person without a fault to the bone, and marry them and have children, without a single spat ever. It took me a while to see this, and felt a heavy burden on me with these expectations that already had failed in the past. Maybe she was more optimistic about the relationship working out than I was, so she must have been saddened that I did not feel the same way. Her ideas were romantic, but not practical. I had my own faults that ruined the relationship, like how I was afraid of not being able to be perfect and sometimes I was not enthusiastic about putting hard work into something so unimaginable to get." Yamacha took a bottle of beer from the aisle. He pet Pwar who sat on the headrest of his set. "You know, I always wanted to know what type of folks my parents were. Are they dead? The answer either way wouldn't have distressed me. It feels like I am missing something to make me whole. I wonder if they would be good role models, despite the fact that they left me in a vacant house and a stranger had to bring me to an all-boys orphanage. One day, I ran away with Pwar. Until baseball, my life really didn't look so up."
Bulma removed her hands from the keyboard.
"There," Bulma said relaxing back in her chair. She had given the person some technical questions to answer, which was given back correctly with some questioning of why the line of questioning was important. She had spent a moment typing out the problems that she had with the project she was troubleshooting. "I can't risk him turning to some other source like he could have easily done with the other questions. It could still be Yamacha. He must have some help by some intelligence person to type this, but this problem will surely get him off the hook. I will wait until the morning to see if there is any progress. There is no way that Yamacha could have hired someone for this question. I do think it's too hard to solve, but the correct solution will absolutely clear everything up."
Before she could get up, the printer took on a task and the first page came. The response already, even if it was incorrect, was proof enough by seeing how many pages were going to print off on the display on the printer. Also, the use of the printer was unbelievable to her as the systems here were heavily protected. She was amazed but also angry at the intrusion of her network.
"Look, buddy, you better not mess with the network of the Capsule Corporation. You might be able to get away with it without punishment of the law, but you will not amaze me by getting away from my husband, because it's impossible. You wouldn't even have a chance against my son."
"And who is your son?" The message read.
"Trunks, the strongest non-adult around, the winner of the child's division of 25th World Martial Arts Tournament, and son of Vegeta."
Prince Jefiea pushed a button, and the original pad disappeared. He turned to Stucha. "Vegeta's alive."
"Under Freeza's control?" He asked but he only shrugged his shoulders and walked to the exit of the bar. "A good surprise is a good surprise, I have to say. Now, we have to depart to Earth, although Icicil said to look for Earth, there is a principle to uphold with reimbursing Vegeta, for he's a Saiya-jin."
"He has a son." He added.
"How many Saiya-jins survived the explosion? Well, nobility has precedence, aptly, Prince?" Stucha said and Prince Jefiea gave him a hard stare as he kept the door open. "There is going to be a reunion, and if we can no more than locate non-noble Jefiea, then we will be set. Without normal Jefiea, I suffer a bit being a lone, like he has being the only one like me, while you can only know how it feels to be different from one and all. You can the matching affection that I have, but with various foundations, in which I can only take part comfort."
"Is he still in the dark place to which we escaped?" Prince Jefiea asked. They walked down the dark alleyway, which was clean, but murky. The air was hazardous, but caused no irritation of these men, who had more problems with their eyes exposed too much light.
"Or Earth is his setting? But, he is still living, which all I can appreciate."
"Do you have no comfort from this?"
"Sure." They walked into a narrow side alley, and looked around for anyone coming. A sickness emptied their fortitude with prompt acceleration, and the walls grew narrower. Piece of the passage disappeared and the farther they saw, the most things broken apart and left darkness. "Prince Jefiea, I hope we appear together in the same universe. There has been an extensive period of farewell, that I didn't like."
Future Note: I have already written many chapters on Prince Jefiea, Jefiea, and Stucha in the story "The Tsufuru-jin Saga", which will be appearing soon on this site as soon as format and revise the chapters.