Chapter 2 - Insomnia
Bulma was lying on her bed, in her undergarments, trying to escape the late night spring heat. The air conditioner broke down just a few hours ago for no apparent reason. Just her luck. It was too late in the day to fix it when it happened, but at this point she was about to go out there right now. She was trying to get relaxed someway, lying, spread out on the bed without sheets or blankets on. Nothing seemed to work though. She could almost feel steam rising from her body.
Next to the heat, however, something else was severely plaguing her, Goku's death. She still didn't know what happened, but she hadn't had a chance to talk to him ever since he got back. He only talked to Chi-Chi privately about it, but that didn't last long. She stormed out of the house after about 15 minutes, yelling, cussing, and crying the whole way out. What ever he said didn't convince her, but then again nothing probably would. She knew Vegeta was always trying to best Goku; and when they go out, just the two of them, and only one returns, everyone can only assume they had a deathmatch. Bulma knew there was something more to it than that. If Vegeta had killed Goku, he'd be proud of it; he wouldn't try to tell a story. Something was up here. When he finally did come up stairs to the bedroom after Chi-Chi left, Bulma did try to ask him what happened, but he simply said ,"Not now, I need a shower."
She had put in a CD that she bought when she was a child. It was a slow listening orchestral album that at times helped to put her to sleep. She remembered why she bought it. Long before she had even dated Yamcha, she had the hots for another guy, Adrian. He was an American boy that worked in a record store on the coast. She remembered meeting him pretty clearly. She walked in, actually following an old friend of hers. When she first saw him, he was writing something. She took notice of the situation and made a move, commenting on his writing. It worked. She hooked him like a fish. The relationship only lasted as long as her trip to that town though, but they exchanged e-mail addresses and became good pen pals there after.
The bathroom door opened with steam literally pouring out of the room. She wondered how he could take a shower like that in this heat. He appeared in the door way and it hit her like a ton of bricks.
"Oh my gosh Vegeta!" Up and down his body was long stretching scabs and scars. It made Bulma cringe to see them. The worst ones were poorly sown together, black and blue, and still swollen. If these injuries had been inflicted to a human, he'd be dead. What kind of hell had he been through to get those? "What happened to you?"
"Don't worry about it."
"Vegeta, please tell me what happened to you!"
"The last thing I need right now is you to roll your eyes at me."
"Vegeta."
"Please let it be for now.change the subject."
"Did you at least try to disinfect 'em properly?"
"Soap, water, salt, and aerosol."
Bulma got concerned,"Vegeta! You should be dead from infection! The only thing that probably kept you alive was being in that sterile ship for a month. Come into the bathroom."
"Not right now." he said, almost grunting it out.
"Vegeta, you're back on earth. If we don't do something about those now, you're gonna puff up like fat Buu! It's either you let me help you here, or we go to a hospital."
Vegeta mumbled to himself and got up. The both went into the bathroom. Bulma throw on all of the lights and made him sit on the toilet.
"Bend over so I can see your back."
He shook his head and buried it into his right hand which was propped up on his knee. "Can't you just throw me in the rejuvenator," referring to machine that Freeza's henchmen built that helps you heal at miraculous speeds from almost any wound.
"You'll be in there for a week if you don't let me do this." She went to the mirror cabinet and took out a bottle of saline solution and a tooth brush. She gave him the tooth brush. "You may need ta bite on this."
He took the tooth brush from her hand. "I took the salt well."
"Then maybe this will be a walk in the park. You might want to turn around"
Vegeta faced the wall and wrapped his arms around the top part of the toilet. Bulma grabbed a small leather pouch from another cabinet, opened it up, and took out a scalpel. She looked over at the bad ones on Vegeta's back. Then she thought of something. "Wait a minute.Goku sewed these up, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"Well, he did a bad job.Did he do it before."
"Yes! He did do it before he died! When else could he?!"
"Ok, ok, sorry. Momentary lapse of reason."
She got ready. "Ok, bare with me here." That was her warning. Vegeta knew what she was doing now. He bit down on the tooth brush handle. She dug the scalpel slightly into the top of the cut and went downward, cutting the thread. Vegeta felt a pain in the cut that nabbed him right at the mid- section of his spine. He cringed slightly, but otherwise showed no emotion. Bulma expected this out of him. She knew he wouldn't fuss when she started, but she also knew he was going through some real pain. She tried to work as fast as she could, but that wasn't that fast. When she was done, she took the treads out of the cut. Vegeta hissed a bit. The threads coming out of his skin weren't pleasant either. When she was done, she separated the two sides of the cut slightly. It was badly infected. Chances were the others were too. Vegeta wasn't going to like this.
"Vegeta, um.I'm gonna have to cut this infected tissue out."
"Just get it over with."
She grabbed the bottle of saline and shot the liquid into the laceration. This hurt Vegeta the most. Bulma grabbed a towel and drained the saline out. She then began to cut out the infected tissue. Blood dripped down Vegeta's back and lightly dripped on the floor. The infected tissue smelled slightly and was coated with a slime, most likely from bacteria. This didn't bother Bulma. She was going through the procedure like she had done it a million times before, not getting nauseated or even wincing. She knew Vegeta was in a lot of pain. He always refused drugs. He hated them. Bulma tried to devise a different form of pain killer.
"Feel like telling me what happened?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I just don't."
"What could have happened that was that bad?" She made that up. She could tell by the looks of Vegeta that hell was an understatement. "Goku's died before. How is this time different?"
"Because he didn't die a hero."
Bulma got what that meant, and it scared her a bit. No body ever killed Goku. He always died in some sort of heroic suicide. Did something really get him this time? Did Vegeta kill him? She had to ask.
"Did you get who did him in?"
"Yes."
"Who was it?"
"If you're going to try to divert my attention, please change the subject."
"Ok, ok, ok," she finished with the cut she was on and moved on. She would have to do the same thing 2 more times. "What do you wanna talk about?"
"I don't know. You are the one who is good at this."
"Alright.Do you want anything to eat before I shove you in there?"
"Anything other than ramen. That's all I had to eat the whole way back."
"Well, what about steak?"
"That will suffice."
"Why do you always use big words?"
"What?"
"Yeah, seriously. You even have a slight British accent. What is the deal?"
"Are you asking me why I use proper English?"
"Yeah."
"Because I don't want to sound like an uneducated moron."
"So what? You think I'm uneducated?"
He looked back at her. She looked down at him, stopping momentarily. He turned back around and started talking. She went back to work. "It was the way I was raised to speak English. I learned from the country it originated from, and I only learned the proper way to speak it. They didn't teach me slang or different vernacular."
"How many different languages do you speak?"
"Four. English, Sayain, Japanese, and another language you wouldn't be familiar with."
"See. You are obviously smart."
"I never said I wasn't."
There was a brief pause as Bulma was working, trying to find something else to say. She thought of something. "So who was 'they'."
"What?"
"When you were talking about how you learned English, you said something about 'they'. Who's 'they'?"
"Some of the educators in Freeza's army when I was young."
"Why did they teach you English and Japanese?"
"You know, there are other humans in the universe. You aren't the only ones. For some reason, their major language is English."
Bulma thought for a second about the Chaos and Atlantian theories. She quickly shook it to refocus on what she was doing. "Why Japanese then?"
"I picked that up when I came here."
She knew he was smart, unless he got lessons secretly behind her back. She grabbed another towel and wiped the red off her hands so she could get a better grip of the blade. She went down to the floor and wiped away the large puddle of blood she was standing in. She then picked her foot up and wiped it off the bottom of her foot.
* * *
Bulma put the last stitch in. "Ok, I'm done."
Vegeta slowly got up and went into the other. He sat on the corner of the bed. He had one hand in a light fist with his other hand around it, his elbows resting on his knees. If he was going to do it, he'd better do it now and get it over with.
Bulma came into the room after she was done washing her blood soaked hands. "What's wrong?"
"Bulma.". Bulma was shocked almost to the point of fainting. She almost never called her by her name. Something serious was coming.
"Yeah?"
"There's something I need to ask you."
Bulma was lying on her bed, in her undergarments, trying to escape the late night spring heat. The air conditioner broke down just a few hours ago for no apparent reason. Just her luck. It was too late in the day to fix it when it happened, but at this point she was about to go out there right now. She was trying to get relaxed someway, lying, spread out on the bed without sheets or blankets on. Nothing seemed to work though. She could almost feel steam rising from her body.
Next to the heat, however, something else was severely plaguing her, Goku's death. She still didn't know what happened, but she hadn't had a chance to talk to him ever since he got back. He only talked to Chi-Chi privately about it, but that didn't last long. She stormed out of the house after about 15 minutes, yelling, cussing, and crying the whole way out. What ever he said didn't convince her, but then again nothing probably would. She knew Vegeta was always trying to best Goku; and when they go out, just the two of them, and only one returns, everyone can only assume they had a deathmatch. Bulma knew there was something more to it than that. If Vegeta had killed Goku, he'd be proud of it; he wouldn't try to tell a story. Something was up here. When he finally did come up stairs to the bedroom after Chi-Chi left, Bulma did try to ask him what happened, but he simply said ,"Not now, I need a shower."
She had put in a CD that she bought when she was a child. It was a slow listening orchestral album that at times helped to put her to sleep. She remembered why she bought it. Long before she had even dated Yamcha, she had the hots for another guy, Adrian. He was an American boy that worked in a record store on the coast. She remembered meeting him pretty clearly. She walked in, actually following an old friend of hers. When she first saw him, he was writing something. She took notice of the situation and made a move, commenting on his writing. It worked. She hooked him like a fish. The relationship only lasted as long as her trip to that town though, but they exchanged e-mail addresses and became good pen pals there after.
The bathroom door opened with steam literally pouring out of the room. She wondered how he could take a shower like that in this heat. He appeared in the door way and it hit her like a ton of bricks.
"Oh my gosh Vegeta!" Up and down his body was long stretching scabs and scars. It made Bulma cringe to see them. The worst ones were poorly sown together, black and blue, and still swollen. If these injuries had been inflicted to a human, he'd be dead. What kind of hell had he been through to get those? "What happened to you?"
"Don't worry about it."
"Vegeta, please tell me what happened to you!"
"The last thing I need right now is you to roll your eyes at me."
"Vegeta."
"Please let it be for now.change the subject."
"Did you at least try to disinfect 'em properly?"
"Soap, water, salt, and aerosol."
Bulma got concerned,"Vegeta! You should be dead from infection! The only thing that probably kept you alive was being in that sterile ship for a month. Come into the bathroom."
"Not right now." he said, almost grunting it out.
"Vegeta, you're back on earth. If we don't do something about those now, you're gonna puff up like fat Buu! It's either you let me help you here, or we go to a hospital."
Vegeta mumbled to himself and got up. The both went into the bathroom. Bulma throw on all of the lights and made him sit on the toilet.
"Bend over so I can see your back."
He shook his head and buried it into his right hand which was propped up on his knee. "Can't you just throw me in the rejuvenator," referring to machine that Freeza's henchmen built that helps you heal at miraculous speeds from almost any wound.
"You'll be in there for a week if you don't let me do this." She went to the mirror cabinet and took out a bottle of saline solution and a tooth brush. She gave him the tooth brush. "You may need ta bite on this."
He took the tooth brush from her hand. "I took the salt well."
"Then maybe this will be a walk in the park. You might want to turn around"
Vegeta faced the wall and wrapped his arms around the top part of the toilet. Bulma grabbed a small leather pouch from another cabinet, opened it up, and took out a scalpel. She looked over at the bad ones on Vegeta's back. Then she thought of something. "Wait a minute.Goku sewed these up, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"Well, he did a bad job.Did he do it before."
"Yes! He did do it before he died! When else could he?!"
"Ok, ok, sorry. Momentary lapse of reason."
She got ready. "Ok, bare with me here." That was her warning. Vegeta knew what she was doing now. He bit down on the tooth brush handle. She dug the scalpel slightly into the top of the cut and went downward, cutting the thread. Vegeta felt a pain in the cut that nabbed him right at the mid- section of his spine. He cringed slightly, but otherwise showed no emotion. Bulma expected this out of him. She knew he wouldn't fuss when she started, but she also knew he was going through some real pain. She tried to work as fast as she could, but that wasn't that fast. When she was done, she took the treads out of the cut. Vegeta hissed a bit. The threads coming out of his skin weren't pleasant either. When she was done, she separated the two sides of the cut slightly. It was badly infected. Chances were the others were too. Vegeta wasn't going to like this.
"Vegeta, um.I'm gonna have to cut this infected tissue out."
"Just get it over with."
She grabbed the bottle of saline and shot the liquid into the laceration. This hurt Vegeta the most. Bulma grabbed a towel and drained the saline out. She then began to cut out the infected tissue. Blood dripped down Vegeta's back and lightly dripped on the floor. The infected tissue smelled slightly and was coated with a slime, most likely from bacteria. This didn't bother Bulma. She was going through the procedure like she had done it a million times before, not getting nauseated or even wincing. She knew Vegeta was in a lot of pain. He always refused drugs. He hated them. Bulma tried to devise a different form of pain killer.
"Feel like telling me what happened?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I just don't."
"What could have happened that was that bad?" She made that up. She could tell by the looks of Vegeta that hell was an understatement. "Goku's died before. How is this time different?"
"Because he didn't die a hero."
Bulma got what that meant, and it scared her a bit. No body ever killed Goku. He always died in some sort of heroic suicide. Did something really get him this time? Did Vegeta kill him? She had to ask.
"Did you get who did him in?"
"Yes."
"Who was it?"
"If you're going to try to divert my attention, please change the subject."
"Ok, ok, ok," she finished with the cut she was on and moved on. She would have to do the same thing 2 more times. "What do you wanna talk about?"
"I don't know. You are the one who is good at this."
"Alright.Do you want anything to eat before I shove you in there?"
"Anything other than ramen. That's all I had to eat the whole way back."
"Well, what about steak?"
"That will suffice."
"Why do you always use big words?"
"What?"
"Yeah, seriously. You even have a slight British accent. What is the deal?"
"Are you asking me why I use proper English?"
"Yeah."
"Because I don't want to sound like an uneducated moron."
"So what? You think I'm uneducated?"
He looked back at her. She looked down at him, stopping momentarily. He turned back around and started talking. She went back to work. "It was the way I was raised to speak English. I learned from the country it originated from, and I only learned the proper way to speak it. They didn't teach me slang or different vernacular."
"How many different languages do you speak?"
"Four. English, Sayain, Japanese, and another language you wouldn't be familiar with."
"See. You are obviously smart."
"I never said I wasn't."
There was a brief pause as Bulma was working, trying to find something else to say. She thought of something. "So who was 'they'."
"What?"
"When you were talking about how you learned English, you said something about 'they'. Who's 'they'?"
"Some of the educators in Freeza's army when I was young."
"Why did they teach you English and Japanese?"
"You know, there are other humans in the universe. You aren't the only ones. For some reason, their major language is English."
Bulma thought for a second about the Chaos and Atlantian theories. She quickly shook it to refocus on what she was doing. "Why Japanese then?"
"I picked that up when I came here."
She knew he was smart, unless he got lessons secretly behind her back. She grabbed another towel and wiped the red off her hands so she could get a better grip of the blade. She went down to the floor and wiped away the large puddle of blood she was standing in. She then picked her foot up and wiped it off the bottom of her foot.
* * *
Bulma put the last stitch in. "Ok, I'm done."
Vegeta slowly got up and went into the other. He sat on the corner of the bed. He had one hand in a light fist with his other hand around it, his elbows resting on his knees. If he was going to do it, he'd better do it now and get it over with.
Bulma came into the room after she was done washing her blood soaked hands. "What's wrong?"
"Bulma.". Bulma was shocked almost to the point of fainting. She almost never called her by her name. Something serious was coming.
"Yeah?"
"There's something I need to ask you."
