Being Vegito By Lady AngelFiren Part Four: Fish and Fuzz

Vegito led Gohan down from the sky, swooping low over the water and letting his ki flare to make it leap up in his wake. He lighted on the opposite shore with a sturdy drop into the sandy beach there. Vegito began to remove his clothing, kicking his boots off first and dropping his gi top and sash on top of them. He pulled his weighted shirt off as well and dropped them on the top of the little pile. His nearly perfect senses caught the sounds of Gohan landing somewhere to his right and following his lead in removing parts of his gi.

The Saiyajin fusion appreciated the feel of warm sunlight dribbled over his back. He took a moment to flex his muscles and twist himself around to face the hot glare from the sky head-on. It made a low purr rumble to life in his chest. Both his Vegita half and Goku half had liked the Earth's warm sunlight at some point in their lives. Although Vegitaseii had been marginally warmer than the Earth, Vegito liked the current temperature just fine.

It was enough to make him want to lay in the sand and merely sunbathe. He had memories of saiyajins on his home planet doing exactly that in their spare time. For all that the moon excited the giant Oozaru living inside of each saiyajin, every one of them loved to bask in the dry heat for hours at a time. Vegito supposed he was no exception, only the brat wanted to do stupid fishing. He didn't care for it. A fish was an opponent that wasn't even worth eating, much less chasing around in the water. He would be much more content to stay on the shore and sun soak.

However, upon looking over to Gohan, Vegito was met with some resistance inside himself. He growled from his chest. 'Grrr... damnit I told the brat I would fish with him...' He thought harder. He wasn't a stupid saiyajin, if very stubborn. He knew that if he didn't spend some sort of time around this brat then he would likely lose the brat as a sparring partner. That would keep him from training. He hadn't even had a chance to begin working out yet, much less get to the point where he trained the boy in a decent manner. This ended up making his decision for him without much difficulty. Laying in the heat would have to wait until later.

Vegito turned to face the lake. He offered it a challenging smirk, a look he tended to give pretty much anything that he faced. He glanced at Gohan from the corner of his eye.

"Alright brat, we'll catch fish and eat them, and then we are going to lay on the beach."

Gohan gave Vegito a nod. He felt strange about this. Vegito was making fishing seem all serious and challenging. With his real father it was supposed to be fun... more like a game than anything else. He saw the way Vegito was looking at him... like he expected something from him. Like he was assessing him. Vegito looked at Gohan the way an agent watches an actor and searches out their talent. Did Vegito expect more than he'd revealed? Even his suggestion about laying on the beach seemed tight and controlled, not very much fun at all. Gohan sighed and took a leap into the water, swimming underneath the surface and approving of the chilly temperature the lake held.

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Trunks stretched as he watched Goten leave the bed they'd both been sleeping glomped together on. He let his eyes wander over his friend, his mind feeling surprisingly lazy, happy, and comfortable, considering all the worries squished up into his 'thoughts to be ignored' section of brain. He appreciated the happy, guileless look spread over Goten's face. The other boy was parting the curtains at the foot of the bed and looking out into the bleak, stark whiteness that made up this dimension. As Trunks watched, he leapt to the tiled area on which the canopy bed stood. The lavender haired half-saiyajin could hear his footsteps making their way towards where he had installed the replicator on their last visit.

Trunks yawned and kicked his blankets off. He sat up, realizing that he was already dressed in the clothes he'd been wearing when he'd arrived in the Chamber - a pair of green gi pants and yellow fighting boots, with a black Capsule Corp. t-shirt over his chest. He twisted around to stretch his back and reached his hand to the back of his neck to scratch an itch there. His fingers touched his hair and he frowned, feeling disappointed in himself for being so human looking.

Trunks actually liked his hair a lot, at least he'd liked it until his father had explained to him that all saiyajins had black hair. Any variations of that were dark red or brown. Never lavender. Never blue or blond, only very dark colours. After that Trunks had secretly nursed his personal shame by telling himself he could dye his hair when he was a big boy. He wondered what he could do for his stupid human looking eyes, and he supposed he would just have to get black contacts to wear when other people saw him. Then he would look plenty saiyajin. Of course he would always know that he was a fake, that he could never be good enough to be a proper saiyajin, but he didn't currently have any ideas on how to fix that.

As it was, Trunks tried to push his self-doubts away and focus on Goten. Unfortunately, it seemed that no matter what it was he pushed out of his mind in order to think about Goten and training and eating, he always found something pessimistic or cynical to replace it with. And of course this time was no exception.

Trunks' fingers brushed lower to reach the itch at the back of his neck. Still he was met with soft hair. He frowned, scratching the itch. He felt a little confused, he'd never known himself to have hair growing so low down on his neck. He brought his other hand up to palm the area, coming in contact with much very short hair, almost like a cat's fur or something. It only grew on the back of his neck as far as he could feel. It thinned and disappeared to nothing long before it could reach his throat. Still... this was not normal. This wasn't something saiyajin as far as he knew. He had never seen his daddy with fur like this. In fact, he recalled Vegita telling him that most saiyajin men were hairless save the hair on their heads. Neither saiyajins he knew had a mustache or beard or any underarm hair.

Maybe this was something different? Was it a human thing? Yes... it must be. From studying human anatomy out of his mother's books, Trunks already knew that some men grew hair virtually all over their bodies, but that wasn't until they were at least twenty or even older. He was only nine, he was to young for something like this, right? Nevertheless, as he explored with his fingers and palms, he discovered the short fuzzy fur to reach down the back of his neck. It was thicker over where his vertebrae were, and it fanned over his shoulders, again thinning and diminishing before it reached anywhere else.

Trunks could hear Goten calling his name. He heard an unhealthy buzzing sound coming from where the replicator was, and he figured that something must be wrong with it. He was relieved to have some machinery to concentrate on. He crawled to the end of the bed and was met with Goten's confused, vaguely worried face.

"Hey Trunks, the replicator won't gimme french fries... make it work, k? I'm wasting away Trunks... I'm starving! How come you're sittin' in here anyway? Can we spar later? After we eat? think of how cool it'd be if we found out some cool new move and then only we could do it and nobody else! You know how Gotenks can do the Super Ghost Kamikaze Attack? maybe we can both learn it too. Cool huh!?" Goten hopped from foot to foot and waited for Trunks, who was staring dumbly at him, to say something.

Trunks blinked at Goten, looking confused and worried. He quickly forced that appearance from his countenance, shaking his head and hopping to the tiles beside Goten. He made his way towards the replicator with a confident strut to his step.

===========

As Vegito and Gohan were learning about one another through their afternoon fishing fest, Bulma was held up in her lab, slaving away over numbers and glass beakers, adding a little of this here and a little of that there. She was trying to make a serum to keep Vegito's testosterone level down without creating any long-term damage inside of him. After all, she was beginning to accept that there was nothing to be done to separate the two. At least she could try and make him bearable for the year he was to spend on Earth as one person.

Unfortunately it wasn't going as well as she'd hoped. She was glad she had plenty of Vegito's blood to work with, each time she tested one of her prototype concoctions on a few drops of his blood, something went wrong. Nothing that would kill him, but everything she made was either too powerful or too weak. She watched as her current test serum was completely overridden by Vegito's blood. It wasn't powerful enough. The computer indicated that the other test subject she was trying out would cause Vegito to relax for about an hour, maybe two, but after that he would bounce back to his former overly male self.

She tapped her long red fingernails impatiently on the lab table and thought harder about what on Earth she could use. Maybe what she was using to counter the hormones was too weak. She needed something with different properties. Maybe a dose of something that would kill testosterone instead of countering it would work better? Yes... but that was even more dangerous, if she gave him too strong of a dose he would be completely lacking in the hormone, which could have serious effects on his body. Also, she had to keep in mind that she wanted him to function normally if he wasn't taking the serum... killing his hormones would mean it took him much longer to regenerate them all.

Bulma decided that, for the time being, killing them was actually a good solution. As long as she found the right balance and dose, Vegito would be fine. Bulma set herself to thinking about what she could use that wouldn't harm anything but testosterone. She remained holed up in her lab, crouched over her computer as she sifted through possibilities as quickly as her genius mind would allow.

============

Vegito slung a huge fish over his shoulder and marched confidently towards the shore. Gohan wasn't far behind him. Both their gi pants were sopping wet, but of course being saiyajin, they easily rose their ki's upon reaching the shore, drying themselves, and their pants off completely in mere seconds.

"Alright brat, I went fishing with you, now we eat."

Saying this much, Vegito cocked his head and considered the gasping creature laying in the sand before him. He punched it hard to kill it, the gasping motions were annoying. As he considered which part he wanted to eat first he sensed Gohan coming to stand beside him.

"Er... Vegito? Don't you think we should take these home so mom can cook them for us?"

"Nonsense Gohan, your mother will only scream at us for destroying the kitchen, remember? I'm not going anywhere near her. *glare* You should quit being so dependant on that woman. A mere human taking care of a saiyajin, or even a half-saiyajin, is pathetic. Its time you moved out of there and took care of yourself, brat."

Vegito let his words carry him into the act of cleaning the fish. He looked like he had practice at it too, he sliced the animal's belly open with his hand and some ki, and he proceeded, from there, to yank out the parts that weren't edible.

Gohan's eyes widened at hearing that. He'd never really thought about moving away from home before. He'd lived there his whole life... what he knew of the rest of the world was limited to what he'd learned in his time at high school. Well... its not like he was oblivious to everything else going on, but that was the only time he'd ever really interacted with regular, everyday humans who had no idea what he was. The thought of living amongst them willfully was disconcerting... frightening even. He felt that it'd be extremely lonely to come home to an empty apartment each night. He didn't like to hear silence stretch for very long. Most of the time he was ecstatic to play with Goten or help his mom out. His family was everything to him. Leaving them to go live by himself sounded terrible.

"You think I should... live by myself? All alone?"

"Of course. Nobody ever learned anything from letting some human take care of them when they could be in control of their own lives. Why? Are you afraid, boy?"

"No... it just sounds like it'd be really lonely and quiet. I like living with mom and Goten. Besides, there'd be nobody to help mom take care of Goten... that wouldn't be fair..."

"So what you're saying is that you intend to spend the next ten years living with your mommy and your little brother? Pathetic, brat. You are powerful compared to them. You don't need them. Learn to take care of yourself."

Vegito settled himself in the sand and began stuffing raw fish into his face, letting his words sink into Gohan as he pointedly ignored the boy and ate with fervor.

Gohan sighed and followed Vegito's lead in cleaning his own fish. He used his ki to cook the pieces of meat before he ate them. His thoughts were focused on his meal, but the idea of living by himself wasn't far from his mind. In between bites it came back to poke at him. Should he really just leave his family and move away? He didn't want to be by himself, that much he knew. For now he thought it would be too much for him to leave his lifelong home.

Vegito watched the boy as he ate. He snorted in Gohan's general direction. It was plain to see that he was thinking about their conversation. It was even easier to see and sense the confusion that veritably rolled off of Gohan as he sat beside his rapidly disappearing meal. He was weak... a few random words could affect how he thought and felt completely. He let things get to him. Vegito growled as he crushed fish in his jaws and swallowed, Gohan needed training so badly... perhaps living with him would be a good way to help him become what he was meant to be.

After the fish was gone, Vegito informed Gohan that they were going to lay in the sun. Gohan gave him a strange look, but he obliged, feeling confused enough that maybe laying in one place would do him some good and let him think. He stretched out on a warm patch of sunny sand with his head resting on his folded arms. Vegito was doing the same thing somewhere beside him. He could feel the saiyajin fusion's power level lower as he relaxed. Gohan let his own drop, assuming Vegito wouldn't come over and stomp on him while he was resting in the sand.

Vegito and Gohan easily fell asleep where they were.

===========

Goten led Trunks towards the replicator, tugging Trunks' arm with urgency. He reached the broken apparatus and hopped worriedly on the spot.

"See Trunks? Its broked and I can't fix it so you hafta cause you're real real smart, k?"

Trunks rolled his eyes at Goten and pushed him out of the way. "Goten, quit hopping and I'll fix it."

Goten obediently stopped hopping in place. He sat down cross-legged and fidgeted, obviously much too energetic to try and sit still. Goten wished there were lizards around here that he could catch and carry around and show to Trunks. Goten knew he was the best lizard-catcher around and nothing, not even Trunks, could convince him otherwise. He looked around for something to entertain himself with while Trunks was fixing, but he found nothing so he forced himself to watch what Trunks was doing. He crawled closer to his best friend and tried to make himself interested in what the other boy was doing.

Trunks felt warm simply from working on the replicator. The problem was simple and easy to fix, it was nothing that he even needed new parts for. He could do it all by himself with no aide whatsoever. Trunks enjoyed doing things like this. Playing with machinery and computers was fun to him like catching lizards and dinosaurs was fun to Goten. Trunks felt like he could sit here and play with the little parts to the replicator all day. It soothed him in a way that he didn't fully understand. He decided, however, that sparring with Goten might be more worth his while than playing here, though video games also sounded like a good idea. When he was finished, Trunks ordered a huge cake and gave it to Goten, who practically squealed with excitement before shoving the entire confection into his mouth as fast as he could. Goten could pack away a triple layered cake in under a minute.

Trunks watched his best friend with a triumphant smirk on his face. When Goten was happy, Trunks felt happy. He lived to have fun with Goten. It was his favourite thing to do besides playing with computers and such or sparring with his dad. Sparring with Goten wasn't usually challenging enough.

Goten giggled and squirmed hyperly, the sugar having a quick effect on how energetic he was. He climbed this feet and hopped into the air, zooming straight up and letting his ki flare behind him in a sparkly speedy trail. Goten flew loops around in the sky, heading away from the tile platform that held the door back to the real world. He was clearly intending on zipping around just for the hell of it.

Trunks let his fingers wander to the back of his neck a little nervously. He was hoping the strange fur might have disappeared. He was quite wrong about that. Trunks discovered that the fur was still there, just as it had been before. He sighed and rubbed it a little, letting his hands drop into his lap. He frowned and felt worried about what was happening to him.

Trunks eventually returned to the canopy bed, where Goten had dropped the capsule he was carrying that contained all their stuff. He brought it out to a nice wide open space on the tiles and opened it. All of the other little capsules that held various things spilled onto the floor and Trunks started to pick through them, searching for capsule number 36, which he remembered held their games and game systems. He found it and opened it, setting up his Playstation and sifting through the games that him and Goten could play.

Trunks dragged the blankets off the canopy bed and spread them out before the television and game system. He retrieved pillows as well, tossing them down so he and Goten could lay on them while they played. Satisfied with his setup, Trunks sensed for Goten and found him to be returning to the platform at high speeds. Trunks grinned when he realized Goten was playing around as a super saiyajin again.

Goten always did things like that when it was just the two of him. Ever since he'd learned that he wasn't a monster he found great satisfaction in being able to become a super saiyajin with very little effort. Trunks liked his friend's ssj look. He liked even better that he was still much stronger than Goten was. He felt pride more acutely than Goten. His strength and power level mattered greatly to him. Trunks intended to become the most powerful saiyajin ever when he was big like his dad. He knew that Goku and Gohan were both stronger than Vegita, and now Vegito was much, much stronger than any of the three. Trunks felt that with the combination of his genius and saiyajin power, he could certainly become the top dog amongst the others.

Goten landed with a rumble and bounced over to Trunks. He glomped onto Trunks' back and heeled Trunks' sides like he was riding horseback.

"Carry me around Trunks!" He shouted excitedly, as was his custom manner.

Trunks tossed Goten over his shoulder and laughed at him when he landed on his head several meters away.

"Hah hah Goten, you can't even stay on me as a super saiyajin... c'mon, I wanna play games."

Goten rubbed his head with an 'ouch' and nodded, letting himself go back to normal as he walked over to Trunks and sat down. He took the second player controller in his hands and waited for Trunks to start the game. Goten kicked his boots off so he could lay on his tummy and elbows. He let his feet kick back and forth in the air behind him.

Trunks started up the game, sitting cross-legged and battling with Goten until they were both forgetting the game and wrestling around on the blankets, giggling and jumping on one another. Trunks hopped up and down triumphantly on a squished and whining Goten. A big grin was plastered to his face, and a cunning, confident look shone from his blue eyes. He sat on Goten and held him down, poking him in the sides.

The reaction was instant, Goten giggled and squirmed, he was helplessly ticklish. He couldn't escape Trunks' heartless fingertips so he resorted to squeaking and trying to escape, but it was all to no avail. The pair wrestled like this for quite awhile, and it eventually turned into a spar when Goten went super to get Trunks off of him. Trunks of course mimicked him and punched him way out from the platform. From there both boys went at each other in a battle to see who was the bestest fighter.

When they were growing tired and bored with sparring, Trunks and Goten flew towards the replicator to get something to eat. Goten ordered himself a massive amount of fried rice and shrimp, he thought it was super- cool that he could have any food he wanted.

Trunks stared at Goten for a thoughtful moment, not sure what he might like. He finally decided on a rare steak, he had this craving for something that was tender and a little on the red side. Trunks ate the whole thing. Goten was now stretched out on his back, having fallen asleep right where he was, a happy, carefree smile on his face as he stretched out n his back and snored ignorantly.

The lavender haired boy blinked at his friend and yawned. He looked at himself and decided a bath or shower was in order. Trunks was very independent for a nine-year old. Vegita had explained to him that saiyajin children had to be able to take care of themselves. Vegitaseii was a dangerous place to be helpless in, it was imperative that basic intelligence in children be quite high, because saiyajins were not the best of parents, generally speaking. Their love of battle made them want to do exactly that instead of take care of youngsters. Trunks felt proud that he was so smart and able to do things by himself.

He marched his way to the shower room. It totally confused Trunks how water could exist here if there was nothing in the dimension. He figured that whoever created the door to the Chamber must have been thinking about these things when they did. He closed the curtain to the shower room and pulled his t-shirt off. He followed this up with his boots, socks and the rest of his clothes.

However, before he could step into the water, Trunks became quite alarmed. He saw lavender fuzz on the bottoms of his legs, right before his ankles. He sat down hard on the ground in total shock, his eyes blinking in disbelief at the hair on his legs. What in the hell was going on with him!? He smoothed his fingertips over it, tugging at it. He felt light pain when he pulled the little hairs, they were definitely real. He shivered, trying to understand what might be happening to him.

Trunks knew this couldn't be normal. The back of his neck was bad enough, but now it was on his legs too? Impossible! But it was there. It thinned and faded to nothing before it reached his knees, but his ankles and the fronts of his lower legs were covered in the lavender fur. In fact, there was a thin layer of it over the tops of his feet and on the knuckles in his toes. He made a disgusted face and wondered if there was a razor somewhere in this dimension. If not, he would just have to make one. He really didn't think saiyajins matured this fast, it wasn't normal, he was sure it wasn't.

Trunks began to worry all about what a freak he must be, too human looking to ever be a proper saiyajin, to strong and battle-oriented to be anything like a human.... and now he was....too hairy? He growled and put his hands on his face, drawing his knees against him.

'What is wrong with me... why is this happening? Am I a freak? Even more of a freak that I already was? Damnit... I wish I knew what was going on.' Trunks stiffened as he realized that if there was weird purple hair on his legs and shoulders, then it might also be somewhere else on him. He stood reluctantly up and made his way to stand before the full-length mirror that hung from the wall in the room. He swept his eyes over his front, searching for any signs of lavender where no lavender should be. He didn't see anything, and a relieved sigh escaped his lips. He turned around and twisted to look at his back. He frowned when he saw that the fuzz he thought covered only his shoulders stretched down his back where his spine was, though it tapered before it reached past his tailbone. Trunks sagged and felt very confused. He settled himself down forcefully and entered the shower, making the water nice and hot to try and drown out his confusion at himself.

End Part Four To Be Continued.

Ooh... what's happening to Trunks? ^_^ You'll all just have to wait and see, you know how I am, I like to add strangeness to my stories, but I assure you, don't lose interest because you think its lame, I promise I have a very good reason for what is happening to Trunks and it ties completely into the plot!! Hopefully you guys aren't bored out of your minds yet... keep reading and please send feedback! *crawls away to spy on Gohan taking a shower*

Lady AngelFiren