Chapter 29- Planning
Dropping her book sack on her bed, Bulma stretched and rolled her shoulders to relieve them of the tension all the heavy books had caused. Sighing, she took her shoes off and let her hair down to get more comfortable.
It had been a long day, and she had tons of homework. Mr. Kozaku had called her into his office to ask her if she could bring Vegeta's work to him. They had talked a bit about how he was doing and Mr. Kozaku had told her about Vegeta's scholarship and how he couldn't afford to miss too much work. The meeting had resulted in her missing half of Trigonometry and so he had to catch up on all everything she had missed in order to not be lost the next day.
Along with being Vegeta's 'homework bringer', she was now his official tutor- as suggested by Mr. Kozaku. She chuckled a bit as she pulled her Trigonometry text book out of her bag, but then thought again, and shoved it back in.
She turned and looked at herself in the mirror, and after messing with her hair a little, grabbed the bag, stumbled a bit forgetting how heavy it was, and darted out the door.
Detective Johnson had departed a few hours before, leaving Vegeta to rest, relax, and be bored. They hadn't talked about much since it had been established that Vegeta would, in fact testify in court. The detective had sensed how nervous Vegeta had been about the whole idea and had ceased with the questions about the 'incident' and instead settled to tell Vegeta exactly what he should expect.
Vegeta's fears had subsided a bit as the detective told him that Vegeta's living conditions were irrelevant to the case, and thus would probably be excluded. The detective had also informed him that there would be no contact between Vegeta and his 'harassers' unless Vegeta permitted it.
They had talked a while about what would be asked, and how he should answer, but the detective had gotten a phone call, seemingly urgent to Vegeta although he could only hear one side of the conversation, and the detective had taken his leave promising to come back some other day to finish the questioning and discuss the court matters.
Only after the detective had left, had Vegeta realized that he hadn't asked whether his father and the other two men had been caught or not. He mentally slapped himself for that, reminding himself that that was the first thing he should have done. But then, realizing that there was nothing he could do and that it would be useless to brood about it, he decided...to brood about it.
Eventually, his brooding gave way to sleeping and he settled into a light rest.
That was how exactly Bulma found him - sprawled out like before, although in a different position. Wondering how a person could sleep so much, she let a disappointed sigh escape her lips.
She wasn't expecting Vegeta to dart up at the noise, but that's what he did.
"Oh." Bulma said. "You are awake."
"Well I am now." Vegeta replied grumpily as his vision swam into focus, cursing himself the whole time for moving so fast.
Bulma cocked an eyebrow at his response. "Good." She said walking toward him. "I brought you your homework."
Now it was Vegeta's turn to cock an eyebrow which he did and nothing more.
Bulma set her book sack on the table next to his bed and started rummaging through it. "Mr. Kozaku said that you can't let your grades slip if you're hoping to get that scholarship, so he asked me if I could bring you your homework and help you out with it. When are you coming back to school?"
Vegeta just looked at her oddly and shrugged his shoulders.
"Well I'll ask daddy later." She pulled out a stack of books and papers and plopped them onto the bed beside Vegeta. Sitting down in the chair that the detective had so recently vacated, she snatched the paper from the top of the stack and skimmed over it. "Okay." She started. "You've got two essays to do for Mr. Dilloir. The topics are somewhere in the stack. You've got another report for French, on...uh...Jacques Cousteau or something...Then you have Trigonometry, and I can help you with that because I take it too. You missed a test in history and Chemistry...and...that's it for now."
Vegeta eyed the big stack of books with a scowl but didn't say anything.
"Well." Bulma pulled out her own Trigonometry book and opened it to the assigned page. "Let's get to work."
Vegeta sighed, figuring that at least he had something to do now. He found himself not really dreading having to work with this girl, but he couldn't figure out why. He hated tutors and all people who wanted to 'help' him. He didn't need any help, especially from a loud person like her. He guessed he didn't mind it all that much because he was so bored. He was only human after all, and one can only get so much entertainment from staring at a ceiling all day. Having her around might not be all that bad.
He grabbed his textbook, flipped to the page Bulma was on, and looked at her expectantly.
"What?" She asked innocently.
He scowled in annoyance, figuring that he may have, in fact judged the situation wrong. "Teach me somethin'!" He snapped.
"Oh!" She exclaimed with a slight blush covering her cheeks but she quickly covered it up and glared at him. "You don't have to yell! I was just...just...never mind." She rolled her eyes and looked down to her book. "We might have to go a few lessons back since you missed them and will probably be lost."
"Whatever." Vegeta mumbled.
"Are you hungry?" Bulma asked him while trying to find a good place to start to get him caught up.
Vegeta looked dumbfounded at the sudden change in topic, but answered her anyway. "No."
Bulma looked back up at him briefly and then back to the book. "Well this is as good a place as ever to start." Bulma then began to explain the lesson, of which Vegeta was obviously not interested. "...so if they are the same distance from each other, how far are they from the building?"
"Forty feet?" He answered boredly.
Bulma worked the problem out on her paper. "That's...right." She said, somewhat astonished that he had solved the problem so fast. "Well you've got that, so let's move on."
"This is boring." Vegeta grumbled.
Bulma rolled her eyes. "Well what would you prefer to do?"
"Watch TV."
Bulma looked around the room. "There is no TV in here."
"I know."
"Well what do you do all day?"
"Nothing." Vegeta said as he flopped backwards on the bed.
"So you just sit in here bored all day?"
"Pretty much."
Bulma thought about a solution to the problem and suddenly one struck her. "Would you want a different room? One in the main building? With a TV?" She looked about the room they were sitting in. "One without an observation window?" She said with a giggle.
Vegeta thought about her offer. It actually sounded tolerable. Anything would be better than the room he was in. But then another thought struck him. "That would defeat the entire purpose of me being here."
"What do you mean?"
"Well I am at Capsule Corp. because of the medicine...or something to that extent. So if I were to go somewhere outside of the Med-wing, there would be no point in me being at Capsule Corp. at all. They might as well let me go home."
"Hm..." Bulma thought a bit. "Well...we could give you a room next to mine, put a few machines in there 'just in case' and say that it's an experiment to see if you are ready to leave."
"An experiment?"
Bulma nodded, with a smirk. "Sure. We will 'evaluate your progress' for...oh say...a week? And then if you 'pass' you can go back home."
Vegeta couldn't believe that he was actually considering this. The idea was positively stupid, but then again, he would do anything to get out of this room. "Okay." He said kind of tentatively. "But how will you get the staff people to agree?"
"You just leave that to me."
"Please daddy!" Bulma begged.
"Bulma." Her father said trying to be patient with her. "You can't just move him about like that. What if something goes wrong? He could die."
"That's why I said to put some monitoring machines in the room. If something happens we can be there in a few seconds. Probably quicker than we could if he were in the med wind."
"I guess, that is true." Mr. Briefs said giving in a bit. "But we can't have him scattered allabout at the other side of the house."
Bulma was nodding.
"So we'll just give him a room next to ours."
Bulma's head shot up. "What? Why there. I thought we should put him next to my room."
"Why?" Mr. Briefs squinted uncharacteristically at his only daughter. "What are you planning?"
"DADDY!" Bulma yelled in defence.
"Now dear." Mrs. Briefs started in. "Bulma's room is much closer to the living room and the kitchen than ours is. Perhaps she's right. They're only friends. And he's such a respectful young man, too." As Mrs. Briefs went on about Vegeta's respectful qualities, Bulma commended herself on asking her mother to help with the persuasion. Mrs. Briefs might not look too smart but she was very useful when it came to persuading Mr. Briefs about something.
"Alright." Mr. Briefs said. "He can stay next to your room. But he will stay in the medical wing tonight so that he can be monitored more."
Bulma needed no more to be said, and instantly ran off to tell Vegeta the good news.
"Oh goody." Mrs. Briefs cheered, her enthusiasm equal to Bulma's. "I'll go start getting the room ready."