Beta read by ShadowMajin.

Chapter 3, The more you learn, the less you know

The lock of the door had hardly resisted a minute. Vegeta gave a peek over his shoulder to make sure nobody was around, but the place was completely still. There was obviously no watchman here or, at least, not at this hour of the night.

He pushed the door open and sneaked inside the small building. He found himself in a dark silent hallway. He turned his flashlight on and paced down the deserted corridor. He checked the first door on his way and found out it was giving access to a medical bay. He left the room behind without a second thought and resumed his journey to a big double door at the end of the corridor. He passed through it and entered a large tiled room.

He scrutinized the place for a moment. A row of windows allowed the moon to cast its glow on a row of lockers lined up against the opposite wall. That was exactly what he'd been looking for, the changing room.

Vegeta focused on the lockers. He walked slowly along them with the halo of his flashlight pausing on the names engraved on each door. He stopped at the locker labeled with Yamcha's name and ran the tips of his finger on the metallic door to gauge its strength. Then he wedged the handle of his flashlight between his teeth with the light pointing at the lock. With his hands free, he pulled out the very same pocket knife he had used to unlock the door of the building and handled the weak opening mechanism.

The whole place looked old and the equipment was the weary type. It didn't take long before the small closet cracked open. Yamcha was definitely a second-class player from a second-class team. The more he thought about it, the more Vegeta was reluctant to believe he could be the genius heiress' boyfriend. However, Yajirobe had said he was and, as unnerving as it stood, Yajirobe had never been proven wrong so far.

Vegeta really hoped Yajirobe's information had been as reliable as usual but it didn't mean the reporter would blindly trust him. The nasty rat had been surprisingly quick to deliver the information about the Heiress while she was supposed to be very fussy about protecting her privacy and it was a detail that made Vegeta suspicious. Like anyone working at Snapshot, he'd heard about Goku's misfortune at chasing her the year before. Mai had been loud enough about the waste of money. Furthermore, the look-alike's trick had stunned all the reporters. It was an old rope many public personalities used with the hope of shaking off insistent paparazzi. Such kind of tricks had definitely no chance to fool someone as experienced as Goku, and even admitting it would, it would never work out for a very long time. Yet, it seemed the Heiress had been able to scam Goku nevertheless and, not only that, she'd done it during several days. The moron wasn't even sure when she'd swapped places with the lookalike. Despite his contempt for Goku, Vegeta had to admit that what this woman did was quite a feat.

This was why he was questioning the value of Yajirobe's word and he needed to check it out. Considering Yajirobe had shamelessly asked 4000 zenis for his knowledge – which was double the normal price – the filthy bastard had better be right. However, if the baseball player happened to be the Heiress' boyfriend, the Bulma Briefs' matter might turn to be a piece of cake, just like Vegeta had claimed in Pilaf's office. That was good news.

Vegeta was a former soldier and it had very much forged his way of thinking. As a reporter, he was used to consider his target as an enemy he needed to reach. Now, if Bulma Briefs was to be a fortress he had to infiltrate, he couldn't act dumb and try to slink in head on through the main door. It was exactly what Goku had tried to do and the heiress' defense had happened to be much too strong to be pierced so easily. Vegeta had no intention to find himself as screwed up as Goku.

In a case like Bulma Briefs, Vegeta knew he should use a backdoor. There was always a backdoor to step into anyone's life. No matter if it was a habit, a place, or even a person, it was a way to draw the target out into the open and unless the heiress was a robot, her life had to bear with a backdoor. The Baseball Player could be that backdoor - if he was indeed her boyfriend, that is.

Vegeta held his breath while contemplating the content of the wide open locker. He stuck carefully his flashlight in the sleeve of his jacket and started exploring the small closet. First, he took out all the clothes and checked their pockets. He rested them on a bench nearby one by one. Then, he found shoes and set them aside as well along with uninteresting items such as a bottle of soap and a deodorant.

He rummaged further and stumbled on a handful of condoms and a comb. It seemed the baseball player was as boring as he looked. Vegeta let out an annoyed grunt and resumed his search. A sheaf of paper was cluttering the bottom of the locker.

He grabbed them and scrutinized each sheet with care. His heart raced when he realized they were pictures. His eyes darted from one to another in hope of finding the heiress on one of them, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead the pictures were showing baseball players, very likely part of Yamcha's team or coworkers. One of the pictures caught the journalist's attention though. It was the photo of a girl wearing an appalling, tiny bikini with a cocky smile on her face. A name and a phone number were scribbled on the cliché. Miwa.

Vegeta pinched his lips. This could mean a lot or nothing at all. Maybe this was one of Yamcha's former girlfriends and the picture could have been lying here for ages. Maybe, she was Yamcha's real girlfriend and Yajirobe had been fooled by the heiress' game of spreading false rumors. This Miwa could also be a mere fangirl and Yamcha hadn't given a damn except for keeping something hot to look at. Or – and that was the most interesting theory – the baseball player was indeed Bulma Brief's boyfriend, but he wouldn't turn his nose on some extra-fun. Vegeta stuck his flashlight back between his teeth and stuffed his phone out of his pocket. He used it to snap a quick photo of the picture and took care to have the girl's name and number clear on it.

He looked further in the locker and stumbled across a magazine. It was an old issue of some financial paper and the heiress' picture was displayed on the cover. She was giving a static smile and, as a matter of fact, the photo looked very official. Vegeta froze at the sight. He had a second thought about the reason why Yamcha would have such magazine in his personal stuff. Considering he was certainly not the type to follow the financial news, the magazine might only be a way to keep a picture of Bulma Briefs. However, if he was her boyfriend, it didn't make sense for him to be content with a cold official picture she had granted to the economic press. He should have a more personal picture. Vegeta felt puzzled.

He left the paper behind and checked the rest of the locker's content. Coming to the conclusion that he would no longer find something interesting, he put everything back in order with great care. He locked the closet back and gave the place a last glance. He was willing to leave no hint of his visit. He kept in mind that the heiress was known as someone very watchful and Vegeta didn't want to have her on her guard if she heard about someone sneaking into her boyfriend's changing room by night.

The rain began to fall as he was walking away from the Stadium and back to his motorbike. He hardly paid any attention to the raging droplets soaking his hair little by little as he was mulling over the situation.

Vegeta was still hesitant about Yajirobe's theory. Truth was he had indeed no proof of any link between the heiress and the baseball player. Could it be that Yajirobe had been misled? Vegeta had to search further. He opened his bike's trunks and contemplated the jumble of papers he'd piled up in it. It was the baseball player's mail.

Vegeta had been able to get his address by hacking into the lame computer system of the Baseball Club. This Club had likely never considered that anyone could get interested in their files and they had no protection whatsoever. The operation had been dramatically easy even though Vegeta had no particular gift for computer.

So, as a good start for his investigation, Vegeta had dropped by Yamcha's apartment. He'd secretly hoped to stumble across the heiress all by knowing it wouldn't happen. The baseball player himself hadn't even been home. He lived in a modern neighborhood downtown where Vegeta nearly died out of boredom while waiting for him for an entire hour. Vegeta lacked patience. He needed action and he opted eventually to pay Yamcha's mailbox a little visit rather than to stay stupidly on a stakeout while the moron might as well never show up. Mail was actually a perfect source to learn a bit more about a client's habits and the first thing Vegeta could learn about Yamcha's habits was that picking up his mail wasn't part of them.

Vegeta huffed and closed the bike's trunks with a weary gesture. He was getting wet and he was getting hungry. It resulted in him getting in a bad mood. It was almost 11 PM and the day had been quite busy in comparison to the irking inaction he had to endure in the four previous days as he'd been waiting for any valuable information to come out.

He sat on his bike and started the engine in a mighty roar. He enjoyed the sound and the furious vibration for a while. Although he was born in luxury and wealth, his life as a soldier and renegade had made him a simple man. Safety, shelter, and food remained his main concerns and even though his job at Snapshot had earned him some good money, he was still used to content himself with the essentials. The only thing he would indulge in was motors. He loved their natural might and he loved even more controlling it. He also liked speed as it was one of the few things that would give him the adrenaline he missed since he'd stopped facing Death on a daily basis.

He drove across the city, rushing in and out the traffic with an experienced skill and headed to the district he was living in. It was nothing like Yamcha's clean neighborhood. It was rather the poorest part of the town, crowded with screwed up buildings that were falling apart. Some of them were so wretched that they reminded Vegeta of war. The inhabitant matched the building rather well too. Vegeta felt comfortable living here nevertheless. He'd settled there short after he'd arrived in West City about two years ago. At that time it had been out of necessity because he had no money to afford anything better, but even though he was now able to pay for a nice apartment downtown he had never considered moving out from this place.

He stopped his bike in a dirty streets lined up with condemned buildings. Their concrete walls were slowly crumbling off and they were covered with faded graffiti. A dingy bar was standing among that wretched neighborhood. There was no nice front store, no appealing sign, just a filthy showcase and a broken panel.

The light was on inside, meaning it was still open by now. Vegeta parked his bike in front of it. Some movement in the shadow let him know that a group of boys had gathered at the entrance of another building further across the street. Vegeta watched them warily for a while. Boys indeed,riffraff at worst. Deep down inside, the man couldn't help but feel some sympathy for that bunch of creepy bastards as they somehow reminded him of some long gone friends, but still, they were riffraff and it made him nervous.

He kept his eyes locked on them while emptying his bike's trunks from the messy stack of mails and he brought himself to enter the bar.

The place was bathed in a dim light. There were hardly a handful of customers. They were all males, grumbling rather than talking to each other. Vegeta ignored their suspicious peeks at him and headed to the bar. A very young man was standing behind the counter with a cigarette stuck between his lips. "Hi, Sen. It's been a while" the barman greeted with a sly mocking smile.

Vegeta didn't bother returning the smile. "Hi Goon, I left my girl just in front of the door, but we have restless crap over there," he grunted, clearly referring to his bike and the mob of snoopers standing further on the street.

The boy had a faint frown and he leaned forward on the counter to be able to give a glance at the bike standing outside the door. "No problem, I'll have someone watch her. Can I get you something?"

"I'm starving and I'd like a good beer too. Is your boss here?" Vegeta answered while unzipping his soaked parka.

"He'll be back soon. Take a seat. I'll bring you something." Goon answered by handing out a towel to his guest.

Vegeta grabbed the towel and mopped his neck. The goddam rain had flowed down through his collar. He contemplated the other customers. Four of them were sitting at a table and trying their best to keep as much wits as needed to play cards despite the high rate of alcohol flowing through their veins. Three other guys were sitting at a second table much further. The way they kept their voices low enough to be inaudible hinted that some nasty business was going on. Drunkards and schemers were the usual customers of the place.

Vegeta picked up a table close to the window in order to keep his girl in sight. He got rid of his jacket and wiped his hair with the towel while dropping the stack of mail he'd stolen in Yamcha's mailbox on the table. When his hair was more or less back to its original flame, he sat down with a weary sigh. Then, he grabbed the envelopes one by one and opened them to explore their contents.

He was done in less than ten minutes and blurted out an annoyed grunt. The result of his reading had been quite disappointing. Yamcha was living with a roommate named Puar, said roommate working in a kindergarten class while having a weird liking for gay porn. Yamcha had also enough debts for a lifetime. It seemed that the baseball club wasn't paying fairly enough to keep up with his extravagant lifestyle.

Vegeta scratched his head thoughtfully. He had hoped for something more. He craved for a significant proof that the baseball player was the heiress' boyfriend and the closer he looked at it, the more unlikely it sounded.

The guy was an obvious loser. Riddled with debts, living in the closet, and playing for the lamest baseball team of the country, he was nothing near a multimillionaire genius model's boyfriend. Was he? On the other hand, Vegeta had to admit that women had always been a mystery to him. He'd never known any of them very closely. His mother had died has he was very young, he'd had no sister and his life had never allowed him to have a thorough experience about females' way of thinking.

Anyway, all this left him with a bitter feeling creeping in his guts. The heiress might have screwed them over once again and he shall be back to square one. Too bad. The Baseball player would have been a perfect backdoor.

Vegeta pulled out a picture of Yamcha from his jacket's pocket and contemplated it one more time as if the photo could tell him more. The man had a terrible scar running down his forehead to his cheek. Vegeta huffed. He wasn't even handsome if you asked the reporter.

Vegeta was snatched from his depressing musing by Goon pushing the stack of mails aside. "Sorry, Sen, I need some space," he said while resting a loaded tray on the table. "Hey, you like baseball? I didn't know that." he resumed as his eyes met Yamcha's picture.

Vegeta looked up at him. "You know that guy on the photo?" he growled.

"Sure I do. Yamcha. Hell of a batsman. My sister is keen on him. She got pictures of him pinned all over her room," the young man explained, still unloading Vegeta's order from the tray to the table.

The reporter frowned at the statement. "Really? I thought this guy was gay," he replied casually.

"Gay?" the waiter exclaimed in bewilderment. "Well, who knows? But he's more the type to get a new girlfriend each week and he's good at picking up hot girls as far as I could see."

Vegeta fainted surprise. "Hot girls? Like who? Who was his latest date for example?"

The waiter stopped what he was doing and rested his fist on his hip while mulling over the question. "Huh, he'd been dating Miss Satan City last year. My sister had been mad for a whole week when she heard about it then – I think it's been awhile since last time he had been reported seeing anyone. The latest rumor is that he got a steady girlfriend by now but he wants to keep it secret. Now you may be right as well. Maybe, he's just gay or bisexual and the baseball team doesn't want people to know that the mysterious girlfriend is a boyfriend."

Vegeta gritted his teeth at this reply. The boy gave him a wide amused grin. "Thinking about it, this guy had always liked to share his girlfriends as if they were another notch on his bedpost, so why would he hide the current one?"

"You know how long it has been going on with that so-called girlfriend?" Vegeta cut off as he was hardly able to repress his annoyance.

The barman shrugged. "How should I know? I don't keep tracks of such bullshit and if it weren't for my sister getting mad each time he dates someone, I would know nothing about that guy's love life. Do you need anything else?"

Vegeta looked down at his plate with blank eyes. "Nothing you can give me," he grunted in dejection.

He was starving and he started wolfing down his meal with gusto. His brain needed to be fed as much as his stomach. All by chewing his food, he tried to connect the hints he had collected. Yamcha was nothing near the boyfriend anyone would picture for Bulma Briefs. He was poor, he wasn't very attractive and he wasn't skilled. He was even maybe gay. On the other hand, Yajirobe had claimed him to be her boyfriend and as a matter of fact, Yamcha kept a picture of the heiress in his locker. Furthermore, Yajirobe had said he'd been dating Bulma Briefs for about six months and it fitted Goon's explanation about the Baseball Player having a mysterious girlfriend for awhile. Vegeta had headache. Either the heiress had tricked them once again with a false rumor, or women were definitely the greatest enigma on Earth.

"What is my Sen worrying about?" a loud voice asked in a guttural language. Vegeta recognized it as Saiyajin. Looking up, he found a bulky bald man sitting on a chair opposite from him with a wide beam across his face.

"Nappa. It's been a while," Vegeta greeted him back in Saiyajin.

"You look annoyed. I mean more than usual," Nappa resumed with a chuckle. "Goon, get us some more beer! His Highness needs it, it seemed."

Vegeta focused back on his meal and took another mouthful without further comment.

"So, what are you up to? You really look pissed," Nappa insisted returning to his native language.

"Nothing important. Work," Vegeta mumbled with a shrug without even bothering looking up at him.

"Is that your actual work?" Nappa asked in disbelief while holding Yamcha's picture.

This time, Vegeta froze and stopped eating. "Not exactly but it's part of it. You know that guy?"

Nappa burst out of laugher. Vegeta rested his fork once and for all and pushed his plate aside. He waited with a stoic expression for the bigger man to calm down.

"That freak? Vegeta, come on. This isn't serious. Man, you were responsible for Frieza's fall. Now you stooped so low as to track down such a loser? What for? He's hardly able to play baseball properly, who would give a damn about him except for hormonal teenage girls?" Nappa resumed by rubbing the tears out of his eyes.

The reporter crossed his arms and stared calmly at Nappa. His fellow countryman was deep involved into nasty business and if he knew the baseball player, it meant that Yamcha might have some guilty habits. Furthermore this theory would match rather well the fact that he was in debts up to his neck.

"How come you know him?" Vegeta asked coldly when Nappa got his breath back.

Nappa grabbed a glass of beer on the tray as Goon showed up with his order. He took a sip while eying the young man in suspicion and waited silently for him to be gone although he knew Goon didn't understand Saiyajin. Then, he leaned forward closer to Vegeta with a smirk. "Your client can't stop himself from doing things he can't afford."

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