A/N: I'm sorry it took me so long to update. (Kicks uncooperative RL) Thank you very much for the great reviews! ^__^
Prince Quest, a Cracked Fairy Tale
Chapter 2: Of Chance Meetings, and Endless Appetites
Welcome once again, Kindly Readers! I bow before you, thanking you for your tolerance of such an unworthy Narrator as my somewhat handsome self. The beautiful Bulma has now begun her exciting and dramatic adventure. Well, perhaps it is not so exciting and dramatic as all that for the moment, but at least it is an adventure, of a sort. Let us then hasten to the scene with all urgency.
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Bulma adjusted her knapsack. She had been pedaling her bicycle for the better part of an hour, said vehicle being the only mode of transportation available that the thoughtless Bluechin hadn't wrecked, and had just passed the limits of the rather tiny Kingdom of Oolongate. She looked at her combination chronometer/speedometer/compass/map. Spargate. Only 330 miles to go until she reached Vegetable. It would take her a week, at this rate, unless she used the special engine modification that changed the bike into a flying conveyance. However, she wasn't all that fond of heights, so that would be a choice for later. She hoped that there weren't ravening hordes of eligible women who lived closer to the prince's kingdom who would get to him first. But then again, probably not everyone would be interested in a bachelor who turned into a great ape when the moon was full. She still wasn't sure why she was, come to think of it. "This is so tedious!" she announced, as she rode down the nicely paved road, looking back and forth at the uniformly perfect lines of birch trees that flanked her on either side, because there wasn't much else to admire in the view.
"What's tedious, Miss Lady with the weird colored hair?"
Bulma almost fell off her bicycle in skidding to a stop, as a man she hadn't managed to notice arose from the road in front of her. "What kind of an idiot are you?!" she yelled, her famous temper coming to the forefront. "I could have killed you! You could have seriously damaged my incredible good looks! And how dare you insult my hair, are you sight-impaired? Men have raved over its glory for years. As have women, and children. Everyone loves my hair. Yeesh. What a clod. Anyway, who are you to talk, your hair sticks out all over the place," she added, as she glared at the young man whose black locks did, indeed, have a knack for going in many different directions at once.
"Oh. I guess it does at that," he replied with a shrug, "but I don't think that it makes me a clod just because you weren't watching where you were going. You wouldn't have killed me with that, maybe given me a few bruises at most, and I could have jumped out of the way easily enough. So, what's tedious, Miss Lady?"
She frowned at him. He was definitely a clod, but there was no point in arguing with him about it. She had places to be. "This road. It seems to go on forever. There's absolutely no traffic on it this morning. Everyone else has aircars, and there have been precious few of those overhead, either."
The young man scratched his head. "Well, I'm here, Miss Lady."
"Yes, but I'll be leaving you behind momentarily. I don't know why you were hanging about in the middle of the road, in any case." She stared at him, noting the pack straps hanging over his broad shoulders. "I see. You must be going somewhere as well."
"Uh huh. I am. I was looking for signs of my wife. She left me, and took our son. She was really mad this time. I don't know why it is, but she doesn't seem to like me fighting for a living. She's the best cook ever, and I really miss her. She even left me a note, but she always writes in her native language when she gets mad at me, instead of in Common Standard, so I don't know what it says. Can you read Fry-Panian?"
Bulma smirked, while wondering how the goofy fellow thought he was going to find his wife by lying face down on blacktop. "Of course I can read it, I have attained native fluency in twenty-seven languages. Do you have the note? Give it to me, and I'll tell you what it says."
The black-haired man dug in his pack, and handed her a dog-eared piece of paper.
The genius from the Capsule Laboratory viewed the much-folded note with some trepidation. It's dirty, but he looks clean enough. I hope he doesn't have germs. She looked at the writing on the paper. Bold, slashing letters with fancy curlicues made up words that read, "Daear Goku, all you ever do is go from one arm-wrestelling and martialle arts tournamentte to the next. Is that all there is in lyfe? I am tyred of it. Gohan and I are going suhmwaere we will be appriciatede. Love, Chi-Chi." Hmmm, quite the creative spelling, Bulma thought. Oh, well. Fry-Panians aren't exactly known for their literacy. She repeated the contents of the note to the man she now assumed was named Goku, and then handed it back to him. He drooped like a Spiny Varklaus flower at dusk, and then straightened back up again, with a fierce expression on his face.
"Thanks, Miss Lady. I guess I should be on my way. I'm going to find my Chi-Chi, and my Gohan, and let them know I'll never leave them again, well, at least not until a really good fight comes along."
Bulma noted as she watched him that the young man had an honest, direct quality about him that might have interested even her, if he hadn't been already married, and wasn't a backwoods sort, and didn't go around lying down in the middle of roads. He was quite well built also; it was evident that training to fight had done exceptionally nice things for his physique. "Good luck," she said, and began to pedal her bike again, expecting that he would be going in the opposite direction, since that was the way he had been facing when she'd almost hit him.
But Goku stepped forward next to her, easily keeping up with her pace. "So where are you off to?" he asked. "It looks like we're both headed this way. If so, why don't we travel together?"
"How can you walk so fast?"
"I don't know, I just can. I'm pretty strong, too. It's how I made a good living for our family."
"I see. Well, since you're a strange man, and I mean that in both senses, I shouldn't tell you anything, so I won't. But if you want to walk by me for a while, that'll be all right. Just don't try to attack me, or I'll burst your eardrums with my screams."
"Why would I want to attack you? You seem nice, even if your hair is a little strange."
"My hair is not strange! People have all manner of hair colors in Oolongate, as do they elsewhere in the world, for that matter. And of course, I'm nice. I'm one of the nicest ladies you'll ever meet, as well as the prettiest." Bulma smiled at him, and tossed her hair just a bit.
Goku pondered her statement. "Really? I guess I'm just used to Chi-Chi. She's nice, but when she gets mad she has a way with a frying pan. She took the pan, too. I even miss her hitting me with it. Well, no, actually I don't, because it hurt, but I miss her almost that much."
Bulma shook her head. This guy was definitely short a few synapses. Maybe the dangerous sounding Chi-Chi had hit him on the head one too many times. She reached in her pocket for the Exploding Nerve-Numbing Gas Capsule her father had given her, just in case.
They moved onward for a brief time, wrapped in a comfortable silence, and then there came a loud, rumbling gurgle from Goku's direction, and the young man spoke. "Miss Lady? Do you have anything to eat? I ate breakfast, but that was over an hour ago."
"Didn't you bring any food with you? That's not a wise idea when you're going on a trip."
"No, there wasn't anything left in the house. I could go hunting, but I thought I'd ask you first. You look like the kind of person who would bring lots of goodies with you when you travel. Also, if you've got food, I don't have to waste any time chasing big flying lizards when I could be looking for Chi-Chi and Gohan."
The young woman rolled her eyes. What a rustic – eating flying lizards, indeed. This was turning out to be an odd quest so far, and it had barely even begun. Very well, she'd feed the wild animal. She stopped the bicycle, and opening her pack, took out a bag of Weval the Dwarf's High Quality Energy Snacks. "Here you go, Goku. You are Goku, correct?" At his nod, she continued. "You may call me Miss Bulma, since we're going to be traveling together for the nonce. No, don't eat those all at once, they're meant to last for several hours each."
Goku shook his head. "I'm still hungry, Miss Lady, err, Miss Bulma."
"Oh, all right - here!" She stopped the bicycle, handed him a double-decker cheese sandwich from her pack, and retrieved the remains of the bag of energy snacks.
The man with the unruly hair ate the sandwich, and looked expectantly at her. "Wow, that was great, Miss Bulma! Have you got any more?"
Bulma was horrified. "You already ate enough for six people! How can you be hungry?"
Goku eyed her knapsack in a puppyish manner. "I'm always hungry."
*It's lucky I brought enough encapsulated supplies to last me for months,* Bulma said to herself. She gave him the energy snacks again. "Eat slowly!" she told him.
"Thank you!" Goku grinned, and started to demolish the food with loud crunches.
The blue-haired beauty shook her head, dazed, thinking that she'd never seen anyone who ate so much in all her life, and started on her way down the road once more, her new companion striding beside her.
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Welcome back to Timaeus the Glib's Chapter Closing Paragraph, Kind Readers. For those of you expecting danger, action, and romance, it is my pleasure to let you know that it shall most assuredly be forthcoming in later chapters of our tale. This humble effort on the author's part served merely as a character introduction. And so, good even, and may the moon shine peacefully upon you all.
(A dark cloaked figure appears next to Timaeus, its mien menacing) "Ahem!"
Timaeus (startled): "Prince Vegeta! What are you doing here?"
Prince Vegeta: "Is it not true that I am the 'hero' of the story? Why, then, has there been no chapter featuring me in all my magnificence as of yet?"
Timaeus: "I'm sorry, we aren't scheduled to meet you until Chapter 4, but if you would like, I suppose I could break into Chapter 3 to narrate a brief scene in which you are brushing your teeth and dreaming of the woman you know you will love more than life itself, but I think it will ruin the flow of the tale."
Prince Vegeta: "What? Love more than life itself? What sort of garbage is that? No, never mind. Those who admire, fear, and worship the mightiest prince of them all will be willing to wait until Chapter 4 to glimpse me, and there had better be none of that ridiculous romantic spouting coming from my lips at any time. It's completely alien to my alien nature. Hn!" (Prince Vegeta disappears, black cloak swirling, while Timaeus sweatdrops)
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