Thank you for reviewing The Vagrant, Midnight Shadow, operation: Mystic Waters, Tsunamimbw, and Brian! I'm sorry this chapter took so long, my schoolwork is getting in the way. Oh well. I'm also sorry if this chapter sounds forced. My mind keeps drifting to when Kris is a teen. But that's not gonna happen for a little while, so relax. Also, I completely forgot about mall security in the last chapter! Argh, how could I?! We'll just say that they left before security got there, okay? Okay.
Chapter 3: Decisions and Origins
It was the weekend after the mall incident, and Kris was bored out of her mind. She had already watched cartoons with Bra and bothered Trunks to the brink of his sanity, and now she was wandering around aimlessly, looking for something, anything to do. She was walking down a hallway while studying the amazing color of the carpet when she ran into something and fell backwards. She looked up and saw Vegeta staring down at her with a towel draped around his shoulders, apparently having just come from the GR.
"Watch where you're going brat," he growled and stalked off. Kris sat on the ground for a moment when an idea hit her. She grinned, scrambled to her feet, and ran after Vegeta. She found him in the kitchen (A/N: Surprise!) rooting around in the fridge. She walked up to him, still grinning. He noticed her after a minute.
"What the hell do you want?" he asked, irritated by that stupid grin plastered on her face. Kris only smiled even more and shrugged her shoulders innocently. (A/N: * snort * Yeah right.)
"Nothin. Just watchin ya." She answered. Vegeta narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. That girl was up to something. He grabbed the food he wanted out of the fridge, carried it over to the table, and preceded to eat. Kris followed once again and sat in the chair across from him. He glared at her from over the mountain of food, but she just smirked back at him. You're probably asking yourself what her plan is. Simple. She's going to annoy him to the point of exploding, then run off and find either Bra or Bulma and act like nothing happened. It wasn't much, but it was entertaining at least.
Once all the food was gone from the table (but not before Kris had snatched some of it) Vegeta stayed sitting and glared at Kris, arms folded across his chest. If the brat wanted to stare at him, then she'd get stared at right back. Kris plastered the grin back onto her face, though it was now smudged with various foodstuffs.
"Clean up your face brat. You're as bad as Kakarot, and almost as un-Saiyan-like." He sneered at her. Kris tilted her head quizzically and all semblances of the smile that had been planted there vanished, along with her plans of annoying him. (A/N: What do you expect, she's five years old? She gets distracted very easily.)
"What's a Saiyan?" she asked innocently, and this time she actually was innocent. She had no idea what a Saiyan was, though she had heard it mentioned before. Vegeta groaned.
'It figures,' he thought. 'She's just like Kakarot! Another one. Just great,' He sighed heavily.
"Come on. Follow me, we're going to the gravity room. I'm not missing any training time just to explain to you what you are," he told Kris as he got up and started towards the GR. Kris jumped up and followed.
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Vegeta closed the door behind them and set the gravity to 5. After all, he didn't want to kill the poor kid, even if she was being annoying beyond all reason. He heard a strangled sound come from Kris when the gravity kicked in and was amused to find that she was having a difficult time staying upright. He smirked and threw a few punches in the air while he talked. (A/N: Please excuse my laziness. I can't seem to get this part, so just insert a nice speech about the Saiyans being a warrior race, how Planet Vegeta was destroyed, etc. So sorry I can't write that, I tried and it was horrible so I'm leaving it out. Be imaginative and please forgive me.)
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Later in the day, after dinner and a bath, the latter of which she had protested violently to, Kris lay in bed in fuzzy baby blue pajamas. She was staring at the ceiling, wide-awake. She mulled over what Vegeta had said earlier.
'So… that means I'm an alien?' she thought to herself. 'So my dream about that planet blowing up… that's real? Not just a dream?' She wrinkled her forehead in concentration. That would explain a lot, like having a tail, the strength, and various other things that set her apart from the rest of the beings on the planet. She was suddenly overcome with a wave of loneliness. She was the only one she knew of anywhere that had a tail, and even at that young age she already felt isolated and different from everyone else. People had called her names, stared at her, even ran away in fear! Kris shivered and whimpered as she felt tears spring to her eyes. She sniffled and squeezed her leaking eyes shut.
"No," she whispered to herself. "No crying. Won't cry. It doesn't matter what they think…" However, deep inside, she knew better than that. It did matter what other people thought of her, because she was so tired of being alone. In her entire life, she couldn't remember ever really having a friend her own age. Or a real friend either. She turned over onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. She was starting to get a headache from trying to hold the tears back, so she decided to get up out of bed and walk around. Maybe that would distract her from her sorrows so she would finally get sleepy.
She landed softly on the carpeted floor of the room and walked quietly over to a backpack that Bra had gotten her earlier in the week. The backpack was stuffed in a corner, seeing as she really had nowhere else to put it. Kris wiped at her face as she kneeled down next to the backpack. She had packed it with some stuff she thought she might need if she ever had to run away again. She really did want to trust these people, but after being hurt by those scientists that had essentially kept her prisoner, she felt very reluctant to trust anyone ever again.
She unzipped the largest pocket and carefully pulled out a stuffed animal. It was her favorite, a fluffy black dog with a cute little pink tongue hanging out the side of its mouth. She hugged it close and nuzzled its fur. She felt her headache gradually melt away into nothingness, but she still wasn't sleepy. She slowly got to her feet, still clutching "Mr. Huggles" to her chest, and left the bedroom to wander aimlessly around the hallways. (A/N: Isn't Mr. Huggles a cute name? It makes me want to get my old stuffed animals and cuddle them. Anyway…)
After awhile she came to a sliding glass door that led out to a balcony. Being a curious little five year old, she opened the door and walked outside. She peered over the side of the railing, supporting herself with one arm while the other held Mr. Huggles. She leaned over further, trying to see all the way to the ground, like most little kids do. Unfortunately, she lost her balance and began falling forward. She squeaked in surprise as she started to go over the rail and clutched her precious little stuffed animal to her chest once more and shut her eyes tightly, like she could brace herself for the impact of her body hitting the hard ground from three stories in the air. After a few long moments of non-body-hitting-the-ground-seconds she opened her eyes. She was hanging upside down by her tail, which had latched onto the railing. She let go of the breath she had been holding and flipped herself back onto the relatively solid ground of the balcony.
"Okay," she said shakily. "Maybe tails aren't that bad after all…" She was squeezing Mr. Huggles so hard that the stuffing was almost coming out. After a couple of minutes the adrenalin wore off and she got sleepy at last. She yawned and rubbed her eyes with her free hand.
She glanced at the sky just as she was about to go back to her bedroom. There were thousands of stars strewn across the black sky, and Kris just stood there in awe. If she had been in the country she would have seen many more, but her Saiyan eyesight was able to pick out enough through the air pollution to make her stare, open-mouthed, in wonder. She had never actually seen the stars before, She had been kept indoors most of the time, and when she escaped from the laboratory she really didn't have anytime to look at the stars.
"Wow," she whispered. "It's so…pretty…" A thought struck her (A/N: Ow!) as she looked at the cosmos above her. If she came from another planet, and stars were planets, than… which one was hers? She searched the sky for one that seemed like it was, but she couldn't find it anywhere. She hung her head, disappointed.
'Wait, if my dream was real, and it blew up,' she thought. 'Than I wouldn't be able to see it 'cuz it wouldn't…be…there…' That thought didn't do anything to brighten her already melancholy mood. She sighed heavily and walked back into Capsule Corp. and to her room.
She crawled back into her bed and curled up around the blankets. And, yes, she was still hugging Mr. Huggles. She mulled over some more things before she fell asleep, like Bulma's offer to adopt her.
'That wouldn't be too bad,' Kris thought. 'And if something goes wrong or I don't like it, I could always run away again. I hope that I don't have to. It's kinda nice here…' Her thoughts trailed off as she slipped into a deep, untroubled sleep.
Again, I'm so sorry this took so long! The next chapter probably won't be until after the holidays. I'm really busy, what with school and Neopets. Yes, that's right, Neopets. I've gotten caught up in that world, and it's hard to tear myself away long enough to read and write fan fics. I can't help it, they're so cute! I now have two of them, a little blue Shoyru and a yellow Eyrie. I had a dream about a golden Eyrie once… Um, anyway, the next chapter will be about… another OC!! Yep, that's right, another one! I'm not telling you anymore about it, you'll just have to wait!
There's a little tiny, microscopic button that's exactly the same color as Trunk's hair at the bottom of this page. Click it and I will be the happiest person on the planet. Well, maybe not, but click it anyway!