Disclaimer: see chapter one A/N: Getting close to the end here. Hope you're all enjoying this fic!

A Tail Tale Chapter Eight

"Kami, Vegeta, what HAVE you done to your back?" Bulma scolded as she worked on the badly knotted muscles.

Vegeta growled softly in reply, a bit unnerved by the position he was in. The woman had insisted that no one could be massaged properly through their clothes, so he lay facedown on his bed, stripped to the waist. She was straddling his back, her hands firmly kneading the flesh of his shoulders. She had not boasted; she was very good. He could feel knots being relieved that had been there so long he'd come to consider the discomfort normal.

He felt her pause and run a finger vertically down his back, from shoulder to mid spine.

"It's a scar from a beating, woman," he said gruffly, knowing what she was doing. Bulma was tracing one of several faint lines that ran down his back. "Frieza could use his tail like a whip if he so chose."

"That's awful!" she said in obvious dismay. She was surprised to hear him chuckle deep in his throat.

"They are badges of honor for me, woman. Every one marks a successful defiance of that Samui-jin bastard."

"Samui-jin?"

"Cold-people," he clarified. Bulma continued to knead his muscles. Her mouth was quirked in a wry smile as she felt him slowly relaxing beneath her hands.

I'm not going to hurt you, oh suspicious prince, she thought to herself, amused.

Aloud, she said,

"Did the saiyans always work for them?" He shook his head slightly.

"My father's father's father - my great-grandfather, you might say - entered into a contract with them. Until then we were strictly mercenaries. Hired out to the best offer - nothing personal. We fought for all sides and all ideologies - so long as they paid well."

She said nothing, obviously considering that. Vegeta waited for the next question; now was as good a time as any to give her some education on the saiyan race.

"What is the deal with the classes? I've heard you call Goku a third class, and Nappa referred to himself as an elite. What does that mean?" She was working her way down towards his lower back, which was in equally bad shape as the rest of him. Being so close to his tail, however, her massaging was stimulating some other responses. He was glad that his front was pressed towards the mattress.

"After all, if saiyans increase in power level, it couldn't be based on that, could it?" she continued, apparently unaware of the reactions she was eliciting from him. He swallowed hard.

"Yes and no, woman," he replied. "Third class was the lowest level, for most all children before adulthood and for the lowest level fighters. The Namek would be an example of a typical third-class power level. Second class was for those higher in level than third. Radditz was one such. First class was the highest class that the common saiyan could achieve under normal circumstances."

Bulma, listening intently, 'accidentally' brushed the base of his tail with her hands. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

"Elite," he continued hastily, not wanting to display weakness, especially after the little battle of wills Goku had interrupted in the GR, "was different from the lower classes. They were - the nobility of the saiyan race. There was no random matings among them, only deliberate matches geared towards producing the strongest offspring possible. Almost always the mates of royalty were chosen from these. My mother was one such."

He was relieved when Bulma's hands began to work back up around his shoulders. "That was why neither mine nor Nappa's tail were - are - susceptible to the pain that plagues the other classes. It was bred out of Elites and royalty."

"I think I see," Bulma said thoughtfully. "Was there movement through the classes?"

"I was getting to that, woman!" he snapped. "Movement between the lower three classes was common. At least a third of all children would move to second class by their twentieth year. Second class could become first. Very rarely, a third class soldier might jump straight to first after a severe battle. But the change in class had to be petitioned and tested by the royal family -"

"So that's why you still call Goku third class!" Bulma gasped at the realization. "It doesn't matter what his power level is, he hasn't petitioned you for -"

"That brain damaged idiot will never do so," snarled Vegeta. His back tensed right back up. "He has no respect for his people or their ways. His brat is the same."

"Calm down, you're undoing all the work I did," complained Bulma, quickly changing the subject and bearing down hard on his tightening muscles. He growled, but attempted to relax again.

"Also rarely," continued Vegeta after a few moments, "a first class might be raised to Elite rank. This was the highest honor awarded to any lower class saiyan. It was not given out easily, nor to be taken lightly."

Bulma thought for a moment, taking this new information in. Her tail brushed the backs of Vegeta's legs, making him curse silently to himself. His own tail wanted to respond; he could feel it trembling to entwine with the woman's tail. He fought with it briefly, before forcing it to move away from the woman's.

"You said that royalty almost always took mates from the Elites. Why ALMOST always?"

She WOULD pick up on that.

"It was well known," growled Vegeta, "that the pairing of two high powered individuals would result in high powered offspring. Thus the arranged mating among the Elites. BUT it was also known that, for reasons no one understood, the result of a match of l-desire," he corrected hastily, "would often be absurdly higher in level. So when such things occurred, they were permitted." He smirked. "Before me, the highest powered royal brat born was the result of a match of desire between the queen and a third- class soldier."

Somehow, during this, his tail got away from him. Bulma gave a startled squeak as her tail was suddenly entangled with another. Vegeta cursed and tried to pull away, but his tail remained where it was. Instead he wound up on his side, and the woman fell off him so that they were pressed chest- to- chest, tails tangled together.

There was a long silence as they stared at each other. Vegeta forced himself to speak.

"Get away from me, woman."

"Your tail is the one doing the grabbing," she replied tartly, cheeks pink. "YOU move away."

Not this again! Vegeta scowled.

"I am not responsible for a wayward tail! Move."

"If you aren't, who is? I'm not budging." She smirked in a manner all too familiar to him. Bulma was enjoying herself immensely. Vegeta hadn't managed to sneak that "l-desire" past her quick wits. So saiyans could and did love, hmm?

Vegeta tried to ignore which bits of him were pressing against which bits of her. He wanted her, damn it, but the peculiar feeling that there was more than just lust behind it all made him refuse to act on it.

"I do nothing on your orders, woman! Move away, NOW!"

But Bulma sensed she had the upper hand here, and was all too willing to act on it.

"I don't think so. You're the one whose tail caught mine, so you move first. If you don't want to move, fine." She shocked him by putting her arms around his neck and closing her eyes. "You're warm and you smell good. I'll just go to sleep until you decide to move away."

His ki flared with outrage, but he could do nothing. If he moved, she won. And that was more than his pride would allow. Emotions warred within him, the primary one being so foreign to him that he almost trembled. Not anger, not lust, not fear, it had everything to do with the beautiful, stubborn, fiery, willful woman pretending to sleep beside him. He could not deal with it, and he lashed out verbally.

"It will be just a FUCK, woman!" he hissed. Her eyes snapped open. "Nothing more. You will be nothing more than another whore to me, just one more fuck in a long line of fucks. It will not be the pathetic love that you humans search for or that idiot Kakkarot has bought into. You may be saiyan now, but you are still a weak, laughable human inside, nothing more."

Her eyes widened, so full of hurt that a part of him cringed, and then hardened.

"Fine, Vegeta," she said in a low, angry voice. "If that's the way you want to play it. Cuddle your useless pride to your chest and die alone."

Bulma rose in one motion, yanking her tail away from his, and left the room. Vegeta let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding, and rolled onto his back. Finally, things were as they should be. She knew her place now. This was exactly the way he wanted things.

Wasn't it?

~~~

Bulma awoke with sore eyes and a stuffy head. It was not unusual in one who had cried themselves to sleep. She grimaced as she sat up, her tail waving listlessly. She caught hold of it and petted it lightly, whether in comfort to herself or the tail she was not really sure.

Stupid Vegeta.

She had cried silently so he would not hear, the arrogant prick. Slowly she got out of bed and cleaned her face of all traces of tears. He wasn't the only one with pride to maintain. Her hands clenched uselessly at the thought. Pride. Damn him and his pride!

It was all the worse that she knew what he'd said was a lie. She could smell that he wanted her, to be sure, but she also sensed behind it more than mere lust. Vegeta had not mentioned that the minor psychic abilities of a saiyan would also come to her; perhaps he had not known. It was hard to make sense of the jumbled impressions she had gotten from his tumultuous mind.

Yesterday, exhausted from crying and barely awake, she had yearned silently for the saiyan she unwillingly cared for. To her surprise, her mind had reacted by reaching out to the sleeping mind of Vegeta. It had been brief, that mental contact, but solid. Before she yanked her mind back where it belonged, she had learned two things.

One, he did in fact on a deep level love her - possibly even the way she wanted him to.

Two, that he had repressed that emotion and that fact so strongly that he was practically unaware of it.

She brushed her hair with long, sure strokes, her muscles tense. Pride. He wasn't the only one who had it. If he was going to deny the truth, deny her, then fine, let him do so. She was Bulma Briefs, genius extraordinaire, and if he thought she was going to beg and plead - or submit to what he called "just a fuck" then he was dead wrong!

Bulma pulled on her training outfit and picked a capsule from the ones her father had sent. Head high, she went to the kitchen and began to make food. Despite her initial impulse to just cook for herself, she instead made enough for her and the prince. He wasn't awake yet, but so what? He could deal with cold food!

She ate quickly and neatly, not spilling a crumb, and went outside. The new gravity room gleamed in the early morning sunlight. Another impulse, wreck the damn thing! She quelled that one, too. No need to give him any reason to hassle her. With a click and a dull explosion, she detonated the capsule she'd brought out with her. It was an old version of the GR - not up to his Highness's standards anymore, but fine for her!

Bulma stepped into the old GR and set the gravity up around 150, pleased to find this tolerable. Drawing on what she had seen Vegeta and the other warriors do, she began to shadowbox around the room.

It hurt - oh it HURT like nothing else - but she would not be put down by mere heartache. When her first love had died, she had pursued the dragonballs across space to bring him back. Now her second love would not admit that he loved her, not acknowledge her as anything more than a potential one-night stand.

She trained in the GR and refused to let him see her pain.

~~~

Vegeta awoke from dreams of a certain blue tailed saiyan and snarled viciously. He threw on a clean training outfit and stormed out of the room. There was food on the table, obviously waiting for him.

It was also stone cold, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of complaining. The wench needed to learn her place, that was all! He sat down and shoveled his meal down his throat, ignoring a stomach knotted and a mouth as dry as dust.

He didn't care. He told himself that over and over as he stepped outside and saw the old GR set up and running. He was glad she wasn't going to hinder his training today. Vegeta stepped into his own GR and cranked the gravity up higher than he'd ever taken it before and threw himself into his workout.

He didn't want her. He didn't want the feelings she evoked in him. They were weak!

There was a low whine growing on the very upper limit of his hearing. At first he did not pay it any heed, too focused on his thoughts. But as the noise grew steadily louder Vegeta gradually became aware of it. Just as the brief thought occurred to him that he recognized this sound from somewhere, a tremendous explosion rocked the GR.

The saiyan prince was flung ass over teakettle across the room and into the far wall. He landed on his face as the gravity abruptly shut down and the emergency lights came on. Swearing, he rose and looked around to inspect the damage.

But there was none.

Not in this GR.

He didn't even realize he was moving until he had flung open the door. Outside the air stank of smoke and oil. The old GR lay in pieces, the ground scorched from the explosion. Vegeta's heart dropped into his stomach as he dove at the wreckage, tossing aside pieces of metal and equipment.

"Woman!" He shouted. "Where the hell are you?" He could smell blood but there was so much wreckage that even with his strength he was barely making a dent in it. The saiyan found he was shaking, and forced himself to stop. He stretched out his ki sense, searching for the familiar signature.

And found none.

His face froze in a stunned rictus of horrified surprise. No ki signature - she was - dead?

Something snapped inside him and the blocks he'd placed across his emotions came down like a dam before a flood.

"NO!" His head back, the saiyan prince roared his agony to the unfeeling sky. His ki exploded into existence around him, burning white hot and then gold. His hair stood on end, molten gold, and his clenched eyes were shining turquoise beneath the lids.

Vegeta had finally become a super-saiyan.

Nearly a hundred yards away, a battered figure roused at the sound of her name screamed in a voice near breaking.

"Vegeta -?"

In his haze of power and pain and loss, the voice took a moment to register on him. But it did, finally, and his head snapped around. The entire world seemed to hold its breath as Bulma and Vegeta stared at each other across the wreckage of the GR. She was obviously battered from being blown out the door of the GR as it exploded. He was still wrapped in the glowing colors of a super-saiyan.

She had been unconscious, Vegeta realized. That was why he could not sense her.

He had gone super-saiyan because he thought she was dead, Bulma realized. Burning in those eyes, green now, was the knowledge that -

Her mouth curled into a feral smile and words sprang unbidden to her lips in a language she had no right to know.

("Claim me if you can, Vegeta") said the woman in Saiya-go, and sprang into the skies.

He fell out of super-saiyan at the sound of the ancient mating challenge. But he could no longer deny what it was he felt for her. And yet since that emotion had pushed him across the barrier to his birthright of super- saiyan, he could no longer pretend it was weak, now could he?

Growling, Vegeta leaped into the sky after her.