Chapter 17.
Star-crossed Lovers.

Rhuba avoided the noise of the Casino for a while. In lieu of other obvious options, she appropriated some ear defenders and went for a run around the shipyards.
She was clearly not a worker, but so long as she stayed out of people's way and returned the headpiece afterwards, her presence wasn't minded.
Actually, some actually took note and would give her a wave as she became an expected occurrence every morning while doing her laps.
The diameter of the station is around eight kilometres, so after her fifth go around, Rhuba just wanted to soak in her bath.

It felt so nice. The hot water soaked all the way to her bones, but the size of the tub and the unreliable temperature had nothing on the springs on Dishia.
"seven years…" She muttered, wondering if things worked themselves out. She doubted they'd have forgotten her entirely, the kids who left that rocky outline of their ship are probably in their teens now. "I wonder if Cuppa is the leader now… and Palate…" She huffed to herself, regretting not stopping to say goodbye to them or anyone else she'd become friends with during their stay.

However, maybe that's a good thing. The objective was to leave without a trace, a send-off would have been counterproductive.
Still, they were nice. Accommodating. It would have been nice to wish them well at least.

"aw for the love of…" As she was lost in thought, Rhuba realised her bath had already cooled. Leaving the hot tap running slowly and simply putting up with the noise from the overflow drain, Rhuba let her mind think about other things.
The ship's repairs are coming along smoothly, but it's clearly not a top priority for the workers.
The dept won't be paid for a long time, so they're in no rush to finish the job until Garagus is a little closer to fulfilling his end.

On the subject of Garagus, while she complains about the temperature of her relaxing bath, he's all alone in space on a mentally and physically taxing assignment so they can get going again.
Staring up at the ceiling, sick with worry since their last transmission abruptly ended, Rhuba quietly voiced her thoughts.
"he must be going mad…"

Garagus wiped his nose after sneezing into his arm.
"Don't worry, I'm fine." He said to the empty space suit sitting up right next to him, with two eyes and a smile painted on with toothpaste.
"So yeah, ever since that blackhole started interfering with radio signals, I've only received nonsense and haven't had a chance to speak with my actual wife. Don't worry about me through. I actually think it's rather beautiful to watch a star collapse in on itself. And having you to talk to keeps me company."

" " Space Rhuba, was less talkative today.

"What?" Garagus asked the empty suit. "Are you grumpy because ever since I learned I can survive for up to ten minutes in space by myself, that I've not been inside you?"

Real Rhuba, halfway through drying herself with a towel, had a strange feeling that somewhere among the stars, Garagus said something very stupid and was laughing his tail off about it.
Hissing through her teeth in one big inhale, Rhuba tried to take it as a good sign that at the very least, he is alive out there.
Call it woman's intuition, but the hairs standing on her neck usually mean she owes him a punch. He can't earn that if he's dead.

Anyway. Pulling her head back from space, Rhuba was halfway through putting her clothes on when the housekeeping staff arrived, knocking at her door.
"Getting dressed," She grumbled, slipping her tail through the hole cut in her underpants. A minor inconvenience, but the annoying part was having to ignore the hole in her leggings.
Once again her tail needed to wrap around her waist under her waistline.

Knock knock..!

Grumbling to herself, Rhuba throw on a clean top and went to answer.
"Hello, Rhu. I'm just here to collect any laundry you have." She gave a gentle smile. And behind her was a cart filled with opaque bags with room numbers and names attached.

"Oh…" She had to think hard. If they saw the holes, it could be an issue. "I'm happy to do it myself."

"It's paid with the room, dear. And we don't allow guests in the laundry."

"Then I'll…"

"We're very discreet." The woman assured, offering her the bag. "Only the staff will see your garments, and none are likely to see you in person."

"Even still, my ship has a room for it. I, must decline."

The woman simply bowed and wished her a good day before returning to her cart and pushing it away.

"A hole in the ground to sleep in, and a forest to run around in… that's all I want…" Rhuba threw all her stuff into a bag and heaved it over her shoulder.

As she made her way to exit the hotel, the staff at the desk thanked her for her stay.
"Not going anywhere…" Rhuba sighed, wishing otherwise.
Even the engineers were giving her strange looks as she boarded the ship with its ribs on display.

One cup of natural fragrance and in all her clothes went for a spin at near boiling temperature for forty minutes.
With the time she had left to kill, she attempted to contact Garagus. Sadly, the bridge was occupied with technicians doing a diagnostic report on the ship.

"Ah, Rhu. I was about to send someone." He came over, holding what looked like a data card. "We'll need to reboot some of these systems, so the data is going to be erased."

"Oh, okay then…" Rhuba was about to shrug it off.

"If there are any files you want to save, this is your chance."

"I don't think there's anything. I can just re-enter coordinates from the logbook, can't I?"

"But also work folders. We saw files for ore deposits."

Rhuba tensed a little. If all the Freeza files got erased, that would be a good thing. She'd rather forget that.
"Clear it, we've got backups." She said with a nod. It was a lie, but how else to you explain having no interest in work assigned to you?

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." She turned away, planning to sit in the laundry and guard it.
'Better to let the men do their thing' she thought.
After all, mining data, saved destinations, work calls, they can all get destroyed for all she cared.

"WAIT!" She nearly dented the floor panels while she charged back to the bridge. "Don't' touch anything!" Her face was bright red as she nearly shoved the technician aside to check the call logs.

"We've not done anything yet…" The man said, but she didn't hear. She wouldn't hear another peep until she made sure.

The spike of adrenaline faded into a cold shiver. The calls between herself and her mother were still there. Plugging in the data card, she transferred all the calls and messages, just barely holding back the tears as she did.
"okay… you can do what you need to…" She clung to the card as she slowly left the room, not hearing the technicians asking if she was alright.

Other than her memories and dreams that still haunt her sometimes, all Rhuba had left to remember Cressin were the few video and audio calls saved by the ship. But the last one on the list, she almost didn't want to keep.
But she knew erasing it would be something she regretted forever.
It very possibly may be the last spoken words from her home planet.
She dare not destroy it.

Entering the code to the bedroom, she had to quickly navigate the boxes of cargo Garagus moved and slid the card into a small monitor.
Fighting tears, Rhuba listened to Cressin's voice once more, as well as her own responses throughout the call. In the background of some, she'd hear Garagus talk too, making his snide jokes but otherwise being a lovable doof as always.
"What has she done now?" Cressin asked, staring directly into Rhuba's leaking eyes.
"What hasn't she done?" Garagus answered off-camera. "One cup of soap with Vegeta's gravity means a third as much under standard space station forces, the whole laundry room is foam now."
"How was I to know!" She heard herself complaining too, as Cressin rolled her eyes at the screen.

"wait a minute..." Turning off the screen and locking the door behind her, Rhuba ran to the laundry room.

The washing machine shook as the drum inside spun her clothes. It was during its last spin cycle that Rhuba entered to see foam frothing up from the lid.
"Are you kidding me?" She ran up and tried to stop the foamy excesses by pressing harder on the lid while
the room was starting to smell like the suds currently spilling onto the floor.

Deciding the first move should be to grab a towel, she ran off and gathered a few to soak up the mess before deciding the best way to get the lid down was to just sit on the darn thing.
Which did effectively give extra pressure to the inner seal to fight off the foam.

"Good." Rhuba nodded with a triumphant grin, only when she attempted to slip off of it, the foam bubbled back up. Meaning she needed to stay exactly where she was until the dry cycle started.
Irritated, Rhuba simply dried her hands of the suds as the machine rumbled and shook beneath her.
'huh… that's new...'

After the wash cycle was over, Rhuba was free to get off at any time. However... there's no rush.
A minute or two into the dry cycle, Rhuba was too focused on herself and with the noise from the machine itself, she didn't hear the technicians walking down the hall or the door sliding open.

"We're all finished with the computers."

"AH!" Rhuba yelped, nearly falling off the machine but managing to steady herself.

"Sorry we, We can reinstall that data for you if you like."

"N-no-o th-thank-k y-you-u…" It was hard to talk right while her body had the shakes, but she managed to express her will to make a private call once they leave.

"No problem, eh… see you around…" With that, they both left.
"Bro, she was totally-"
"We entered without knocking. If you don't want to get fired, say nothing to no one!"

Rhuba sat there, her face turning bright red with embarrassment and shame as the seconds ticked on, trying to collect her thoughts as the machine came to a stop on its own.

After ironing everything and putting them back into her bag, she stopped at the chore schedule mounted on the wall.
With Garagus gone, Rhuba was naturally going to take all his shifts that still needed doing.
But taking a thick red marker, Garagus' name was scored off laundry duty forever.

"Hmm?" Garagus looked up at the ceiling. "I got a horrible feeling that something just took my job…" The empty space suit beside him just stared back, smiling as always, but judgingly this time."Oh shut up!" Garagus pushed Space Rhuba over. "…I'm going mad…I've absolutely lost it…"

" " Suggested the space suit.

"good point... Some reading will help calm me down." Garagus dug through the files and found some light reading in the form of Hazards of Blackholes. "uhuhuhuhuh, dadadadada, hmhmhmhm, oh?" A chapter named Phycological Damage. "Oh?!"

All space ventures are aware of the profound state of awareness that one only achieves as they gaze upon their planet from afar. The sense of self. Known to most as the Overview Effect, the experience is surreal and inspiring.
However, the opposite is equally true. So as tempting as it may be to stare into the fierce destructive yet majestic force of nature and physics that is the pit of oblivion we call a Blackhole, starting into one for prolonged stretches of time can drive people to madness from subtle responses from the body's inability to process what it's seeing.
Cases are similar to patients during surgery who see their internal organs through the naked eye or through the use of mirrors. The body enters a state of shock that if not addressed can drive the individual mad.

"Now they tell me…" Garagus launched the book aside, rolled up in bed and lightly squeezed his tail. If done tenderly, Saiyan infants and children feel relaxed from the rhythmic handling of their tails.
It's seen more commonly in older kids when sucking their thumb is cause for a slap.

When a noise flared up, waking him from a trance of meditation, Garagus nearly tumbled out of bed and flailed wildly in mid-air until he could focus enough to hover on his own.
It was the computer, an incoming transmission.

"Rhuba!" Garagus swam through zero gravity and strapped himself in front of the screen and hit Accept. Just seeing her face was a blessing in and of itself. "Tell me how you're doing, please…" He was desperate for anything.
Hearing how she's been keeping her promise and training every way she can to get stronger than him.
It brought a twitching smirk to his frantic face.

"Are you alright?" Rhuba asked, realising that it wasn't just the poor lighting but that he really wasn't looking too hot.

"I'm fine, just discovered a little thing called blackhole madness but I'm fine…" He glanced at the space suit. Rhuba won't be happy to know about that, so he kept quiet about Space Rhuba.

Thinking he was joking, Rhuba played along.
"Well, I just discovered how much fun it is to sit on a washing machine~" By her voice alone, it was obvious how she felt. But the look on her reddening face, it was equally clear to see how hot and bothered she was.

"Yes, tell me more about that." Garagus went from looking like a man with zero attention and his head warped by a collapsing star to his jaw resting on the backs of his hands with a single frozen smile locked on his face as he stared intently at Rhuba's flushed red face as she shared her intimate newfound pastime. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"

"No, it's never come up~ Gave you something to think about, huh?"

"Oh, you've given me tons to think about."

"I'm glad, I'm glad." Rhuba laughed brightly. "I promise to only use this knowledge for good."

"Be sure that you do! Or I may have to come back and teach you a lesson about misusing the equipment." He warned.

Rhuba frowned at his tone.
"hey, don't you threaten Me with a good time!"

Garagus felt his hand reach for the screen.
"Rhuba…" Frustrating. Very frustrating. "you talk big when there's a collapsing star between us… that attitude will not serve you when we're in the same room."

"You forget, while you're in space getting weaker by the day, I'm working towards becoming the legendary, Super Saiyan!"

Garagus imagined her with that status. The Super Saiyan.
A powerful aura of the Saiyan furry and might surrounding his wife, the strongest warrior who ever lived.
"you…" He should his head. "you underestimate me. There's more to strength than just having a strong body. It'll be your undoing if you fight me believing otherwise."

"We'll see." Rhuba stood up to show off her bare tummy. "I've been burning everything I eat, doing laps of the station and lifting anything I can just so I can beat you."

Garagus wanted to make a joke about her poor cooking, but there is an opportunity he can't let go amiss.
"Looking good, but you can't punch me with a toned tumtum~" Garagus mocked, flexing his chest muscles to the camera. "Let's see your pecks."

Rhuba was one quick pull short of lifting her shirt all the way to show him.
"Nice try asshole." She pulled her shirt all the way down.

"Tut…" So close. "It's lonely out in space..."

"yep…" Rhuba looked over her shoulder. "say something nice."

Garagus bit his lip thinking of all the things he adores about her.
"You're the only Saiyan for me~"

"True. Very very true." Rhuba narrowed her eyes. "Say something else."

"You're so sexy." Garagus leaned forward. "Look at me dead on," Watching her determined eyes, he grinned. "yeah, you're keen. I can tell how hard you're working just to top me. You'll stop at nothing. It makes me all the more desperate to finish this job, get back to you, so I can show you what an Alpha Saiyan can do!"

"I look forward to it!" Rhuba didn't even notice her hand had worked its way up to press against the monitor until her thumb switched it off. "sh-.. darn it…" Pouting angrily, Rhuba went about fixing it.

"Rhuba what's going on? Rhuba?" Garagus could see her messing with the screen and hear her muttering, so he could guess what happened, even if she couldn't see or hear him.

She needed to get up on the console to reach the manual restart switch whenever the screen froze, which brought her close to the camera as she leaned forward.
"There," She sat comfortably back in her seat waiting for the screen to warm back up. When she saw a nose bleeding Garagus, she suddenly remembered that the camera has its own off button.

"No bra day?"

"Garagus…" Rhuba might have turned Super Saiyan right there in that room, if only her power level wasn't just a dozen digits shy. "Know what. I was going to treat you tonight. Better luck next week."

"No, Rhuba I'm sor-"

The screen went black a Rhuba sat there, zipping up her top to the neck.
"idiot…" She muttered, walking back to the laundry room to gather her things to take back to her hotel room.