Chapter 8: Eyes Wide Open
A young boy with revitalized body covered in a sweat sopping soft gray ensemble rested his rowdy blonde hair against the wall of a light gray padded room that had a facade of what his father's dojo looked like to the best of his knowledge, but without an exit up to where he would have spent most of his time if it was his real house. At least from the room, the resemblance was mostly true. He rested to catch his breath; Conkenu had followed the light silhouettes of feet and hands that appeared along the room progressing him to move, sometimes in vain from the distance between the transition be it a right foot outline from a hand shape far from the last position he could not have reached even leaping from a good position after a scuttle to aim to match the shape with a foot or a hand to extinguish the faraway light. This exercise, to keep him busy until his trainer configured to his requirements, was causing him to stumble a lot and at the end the disorder of off-balanced flips, unplanned rolls, flat-out trips to slides, which he found helped close the gap between the far waypoints, and silly swirls causing much dizziness plus tripping leg crossings to the end of slipping, swiveling, or skipping into the wall. The pain had a short teaching period then vanished, but this did not keep Conkenu from getting tired.
He was not sure of what time had pasted, but he thought much about the question of his fate here and so far, if not a bit irritating, he found the situation mind consuming before he got any more answers with the voice when ever called upon did speak of the need to preserve resources. The voice did however respond to Conkenu's need for solid food, though did remind him that his body was assured proper keeping.
After a nap, a recent ordinary occurred for him now from once having waked up to trees; there across the room, a stranger cloaked in white appeared trailing the path of the outlines with elegance moving to the next position like the path and the new arrival acquiesced as one.
"Good time," she spoke through the untarnished silver mask that covered her whole face with the cold features of a woman with closed eyes. In a reserved bow, her short golden hair brushed along the thin precious metal. Conkenu's ears, under his straw hair, packed with the humming of the woman's voice under the mask. "I am to you representing your forthcoming in pinnacle and time." She kneeled above him, and put her index finger on his chest. "You have a lot on your chest. How may I help you?"
He never knew what he would see after the wait. A quick scan of her he took starting at her white laced boots that bloomed up her bare pallid skin up to her knees, then to the Spartan white gown resting on her shoulders wrapped around her collar and with a loose fit on the skin, it hid the rest of her with no overlaps and apart from the shin. But her mask, which attracted him the most with an unremitting undercurrent making him restless coming on to him with his stares, with the value of shock bent into the metal that a little embroidery of a somber face reflected back the extensive features of those who looked upon it with awe to enthrall the over looker by means of a new feeling. Not a feeling of the known, but like a taste of a foreign dish to the eater who desires in vain to put what they know to describe the essence. That was the feeling of meeting with Piccolo, this being did have that intimacy of the room they met; in a different way, Conkenu saw the room as his place having a difference, and saw this woman as a difference but a person with who he wish to be.
"I am yours, Halcyone" she proclaimed standing up bow before him again this time with a deeper slump drawing on bent knees. In a reserved shift, he used the padded wall to get up without taking an eye off her, and every budge back calmed his heavy breathing. "Follow me," and she turned around and stepped onto the arena and where her set, a red stain disbursed around her foot on the gray floor, "if you want to leave here. The dangers outside, I have seen on my face once you came, and I could not in daze or cruelty that tried to keep ones apart to let you leave artlessly. In self promise, I will win over the rough wind raging against you in your path, if you permit it. Please now, fill in my feet as I move, and if you fit them one hundred times more, then I will wish you well."
"What? Uh, I can't be here too long. Excuse me, I'm Conkenu." He said and walked up to the arena to replace the print of Halcyone who had paced once more. On one foot, she bounded a two meters to land on the next foot, but Conkenu focused on the second mark of a stride that was too far for a step, so he hopped to the next stain and tweaked his position to remain balanced. "I have things to do outside. It's about fighting, I think."
"And who are you protecting out there?" She asked to get more direction from him, but he stood there in timidity thinking about who was out there, in the world he knew every little about, to protect when he remembered he needed safety from Gneiss and freshly the assistance of Kita, who admittedly rescued him for the danger she put onto him, which had him hope for Halcyone to leave with him.
"Maybe that is my goal," he thought and smiled, "to bring Halcyone from the inside out. She's so very much stronger, and I couldn't replace the lend her hand on the outside."
"Have you decided what to do?" She asked in the most cheer for voice that could escape the mask. "You must know for sure, Conkenu!" She shook her head, and then dropped it down in sorrow. "I failed to mention that time can seem so much longer here, if it is not a reflection of my own seclusion. But, you don't have to worry about time, and what you want to do in your time here."
"I want to leave here with you to do more with your help, if you want to go."
"That would be fine," she said, "but you are the first to come here, and I do not know what happens to me after you leave. The best you can complete of your decision is to become better than me."
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From the great halls of a repair facility at the capsule corporation, a mechanic worked late pass midnight. Below a stripped car a man rolled under the complex perverse metal on a roller board with his blue boiler suit only showing their true colour of the garment from the knees down, but the true colour of the mechanic all above the indistinctive contour giving way to smeared on black grime that veiled his face, his name tag that spelt Trent, and all over his bare hands. His right hand especially with a deep gash was covered in black with blood thickly bobbling out behind the muddle. He stood up and brushing off his hat that he wore backwards on the car. After putting it on his shaved head that looked like a hill in the desert plagued with locus, Trent moved his body that he treated like he fixed a car, to be powerful but not ostentatious with brawn to keep it systematic.
A walk by the supervisor's window detained the notice of the boss, Daniel, a woman tomboy who attracted such words as petit, small, and bitch even if she detested it. She left her chair but missed him as soon as she left her office.
In a small washroom, Trent washed his hands and wrapped his wounded hand. From the mirror, he could see Daniel. "Didn't I tell you to leave? And I also told you to get rid of that Red Army hat."
Trent felt a vibration in his hip pocket, and he undid the sullied zipper, and turned off his pager. "I think I should be heading off now." He stated taking off his hat to tease her clout, and adjusted his hat so the visor faced back.
Across the capsule corps' domain, on the edge of a quite private well-paved road, the capsule corp headquarters with a white low fence, green low firm grass lawn, and a space craft landing site with the capacity to construct an environment inside the vessel to contain many folds the Earth's own gravity used by some of the strongest fighters in existence, depicted a normal family, the Briefs, owners of the company that has no competitors, the most capital, and scientific research centre in the normal universe. This family yelled, broke objects to relief, or more like show, their rage ranging from damages to plates to the biggest mountains on Earth, but with no variation in their intensity of rage. This emotionally distressing life was what families wanted, and it wouldn't be so distressing, but the Briefs did have a mass murdering martyr, who every enlighten enemy feared, had not beaten the complexities of the microwave. This short fellow, named Vegeta, and answered to Prince Vegeta, moved around the hardwood flooring of the building in the dawn; and in his hands supported by his rippling muscles, the same that helped him killed thousands upon thousands of people, held a television dinner, because though dogs will grow old and tired with rounded incisors, they still like to bite.
Down in the basement, Vegeta's blue haired brilliant mate, Bulma, sat at the computer silently watching on a distorted black and white reception, two figures steaming around the room, one after the other, in bows and angles. "Could the larger body be the person who Piccolo told me about who followed the boy?" Bulma inquired of herself. The coincidence of Piccolo and Bulma's goal left her with a focus she could not shake or control, like nail biting, she had found herself more drawn to the unknown with an increase of her own awareness of single-mindedness during the day of substandard supervision of the new model car to be released in the morning. She glared at the screen that had a visual effect like being seen through a water fall. "I know that he's a boy around under Trunks' age, and a very decisive fighter, but what journey of valor instigated him to undergo all that physical abuse?" She chewed on the end of a pencil, and the footsteps coming from behind her prompted her to look around to her husband with his undeviating stare under his black bushy eye brows as he stood uptight in his blues boxers. "Vegeta, what do you think is the most important inspiration of a warrior?"
Vegeta smiled and handed Bulma the tray of food. "You don't like serving me food at this time of night, and I don't like having it anyway but my own. I think we can come to some human agreement; a compromise of solutions, to benefit both of us."
On a table full of food, Vegeta sat in the concentrated area, but nearby Bulma, who sat across from him, had too much for her. "Now that I have filled my side of the compromise, I want you to give me your insights of warriors. This individual, he is young and traveled with what I believe to be his mother. Now…"
"Fascinating," Vegeta interrupted and sipped some water. "I don't recall Goku's wife promoting training from Gohan, unless you call training having your head caught in a book."
"What does that have to do with motivations of a warrior?"
"To understand the main motivation of a warrior, I will need familiarity with others around him." Vegeta said. "This child, he is not the first child. Being accompanied by his mother suggests that she has intimacy with protecting a child, a former child. The mother protected her earliest offspring, fervently, without mistake, and the father had no input. This voyage may be considered to be provoked by the mother, and not the child who accompanies this woman. I propose you get more information on the mother from the account of the first born son. This mother didn't want a son of hers to be like his father, but this passage to bring her next son is to replace the father, the missing father."
"Okay, Mr. Psychology," Bulma laughed, "I'm not going to even find this first born son, but I'll pretend that he exists and I found him. It's impossible; I might as well as know more about him right now than he knows of his mother."
"Go ahead and criticize." Vegeta snarled. "I'm a bigger help than you think."
"Who you are a bigger help than?" Bulma pushed her chair back and walked away.
"I'm giving you the motive of this young warrior, and you need a warrior's insight." Vegeta said. Bulma turned around to see Vegeta's smile. "I'm a bigger help than Yamacha. He would be clueless on this subject."
Bulma shook her head. "He's a jerk, but I pity him for his up bringing with no one but his friend, a cat. Everyone has abandoned him, but he risked his life in confronting you to try to save a world of people who never supported him.
I know you had it hard also, so you are also entitled to be a jerk sometimes. You came to Earth to get the power to defend Freeza, but unlike Yamacha who tried to defend you, I wonder if you wanted to liberate the universe from Freeza or just replace him."
Outside on the sidewalk under the glow of the Capsule Corp street lights, Trent hung up the receiver on the pay phone and backed up two steps. It was warm underneath his black leather jacket. In a moment of liveliness, he kicked over a garbage can spilling over the yard to the side of a research laboratory.
"What are you doing?" A woman's voice from behind him yelled. Behind him, in the middle of the Capsule Corp estate, a circle was formed of multicolored stone, and hemmed in four curved lines of bushes that coupled to make entrances to one of the four sections of Capsule Corp; the northeast had marketing and headquarters, the northwest had research and development, the southeast was manufacturing, and the southwest was for shipping and receiving. There in the center, Bulma stood with her hands collapsed in one another, and her brown overcoat flapped like a flag in the wind. She looked across the shivering bushes, to Trent who turned around slowly. "Trent, it's you. Do you need someone to talk to?"
They sat at a small round stone table with a shimmering chess board, which projected three dimensional pieces on the board. "You always knew my stance," Trent said as he took her white queen off the scarily occupied board, "that I don't like Capsule Corp one bit after the collapse of its only rival. The defeat was good for this company, while capturing all the jobless employees of the Red Ribbon Army like me and gaining your new found wealth, but it's a shame that technology is only going to go as far in development as you want it. You're stifling us."
"But you, you don't without. I wonder why you didn't join the winning side in the first place, Mr. Papermate." Bulma announced. She tapped her fingernails on the surface of the table and looked into the board. "You have nothing to withhold right?"
"I have never withheld anything from you." Trent observed Bulma winning the game and smiling. "I haven't lied when I told my story during my interview or any other time you asked. One day in high school when I was being bullied, a person had put a note on my back that told me to quit school, join the Red Ribbon Army, and then get hired by Capsule Corp. Since then I've had unexplained good fortune. I'm a little frustrated."
"I would be too, if I had to follow a determined path." Bulma said. "I would say that after seeing your talent in mechanics, that I was required to hire you, though my father didn't agree."
"Was hiring me your first defiance of Dr. Briefs? I am speaking on a business term, and not personal."
"My father never separated a personal decision from a business one; so I will have to answer no. Dating Yamacha was the first mistake according to my father, and the second according to me.
But your story always confuses me, Trent. Don't you feel trapped with knowing most of your life has been resolved without your input?"
The tussling of leafs pealed under and over the fleeting wind. At last silence was gained in the circle that had no dust on the surface or hidden away in the slits between the stone. In a place constructed in stone, where the nucleus smelled of life, a slice would be lost as Trent stood up and walked to the edge. Bulma stood up watching her shoes until her legs straighten under the common weight that had kept her there as they talked; common because she had always been the first one up under her business schedule, though she had in the past of busy days tried her best to delay the require meeting with business types or her companionship of adventurers to keep still under the plum tree to hear from her gamble. With the other view now her own, she knew that he held something more important than the quick excuses she gave to him once she got eye contact. At this time of perspective, she didn't expect or want this contact. In the twist of his body, she stared at him with eyes wide open.
"I have been patient to get out of the known revealed to me, and you have set me free tonight. Being forced to be alive and not live, until now, thanks to you." Trent reached above him on the outreaching arm of the tree planted in the centre, where he harvested a plum. "From the script, the ending line of the other man's story for me, I will past something on to you that I couldn't define. I hope the call goes through this time."
Trent walked over to the phone, and dialed. He dropped the phone, and walked away.
Bulma ran out of the circle, but in a look around, she did not find Trent. For one reason, in a move of instinct, she picked up the suspended receiver. "Hello?"