Well, here in Canada, 'tis a long weekend. Hehe, anyways, the long awaited Lacrymosa...

Chapter 6: Lacrymosa

Vegeta had tried to convince Chester that they were not in a hopeless situation, but the blonde had a strong argument. "You can't tell me that this isn't bad Vegeta!" he hissed, "those... things are here looking for you, and if they're causing those explosions and earthquakes, I have a right to be scared!"

Vegeta sighed and gave up trying to calm his friend down. Might as well let him get it out, he thought. He started to zone out while semi-listening to Chester's rant, glancing around at the area.

From their position in the sub-division, Vegeta realized they were in plain sight for any other flying people to see. Quickly he formulated a plan for Chester and himself to at least be in a safe place for a while. "Okay Chester, you can whine all you want about this, but for now we need to move. Like you said, they're after us, so we might as well not be sitting ducks," he explained to Chester who had now begun pacing. He stopped his movement for a moment to consider Vegeta's plan, nodded, and asked, "Where to go though?"

"Bulma." Chester gave Vegeta a questioning look. Vegeta elaborated, "I bet you anything they're using electronics to communicate and plot out their next course of action."

With this sentence, Chester locked in to his train of thought. "So she could hack into their system and screw them over!" He let loose a small laugh and bolted to the direction of Bulma's house.

Vegeta watched him go for a minute, then said to himself, "Some days I really worry about his mood swings," and followed the ecstatic boy.

-----

Within a few minutes, the duo reached Bulma's machine shop house. Her father was an inventor and mechanical genius, so of course her garage and backyard resembled a mechanic's shop. Bulma had followed her father's path but was more interested in the actual sciences and electronics of machinery. Together, if the two ever thought of it, they could probably outwit all of the competition around the entire country.

As Vegeta and Chester approached the house, the rumbles in the background grew distant and silent, like they had given up for the time being. Before Vegeta knocked on the front door, it flung open to reveal a slightly angered blue-haired woman. "Thank you so much Vegeta for showing up in a time of crisis," she all but screamed at him, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Trouble in paradise?" Chester mocked Vegeta. His returned reply was a death glare meaning 'shut it'.

Vegeta turned back to Bulma. "Actually, I need your help in relation to the... crisis." She arched an eyebrow, but let the two into her house. Bulma plopped herself on the couch, looking expectantly at her boyfriend and his tag-a-long, as she liked to refer to Chester, to start talking. Playing lowly behind her was the emergency broadcast system which Chester decided to focus on (the more they know the better) while Vegeta coaxed the visibly infuriated woman into helping them.

"Bulma," he started, "These people attacking the city are after us for some reason."

"Yeah, I've sort of figured that out," she interjected, pointing her thumb to the television. All eyes focused on it while a file picture of Vegeta flashed on the screen.

"Apparently they've contacted the reporters and the government, and you are now on the most wanted list," Chester relayed to the others. Vegeta started to run his fingers through his hair, obviously distressed. "And," he continued, "there is an evacuation of the city in order, plus they're checking everyone for your whereabouts or if you're there."

"That doesn't even make sense! I haven't done anything!" Vegeta let a sigh of frustration loose and started to pace. Chester turned away, deciding to keep his mouth shut over a few reasons why Vegeta would be on a wanted list, not knowing if anyone else knew he was a psychopathic killer. Vegeta suddenly stopped and turned to Bulma who was watching the duo with mild interest, "And this is why we need you to hack into their database thingy and find out why they're after me and... why they're calling me a Saiyan."

"A what?" asked Bulma.

"Exactly, I don't know."

She was confused by the situation Vegeta decided to include her in, but a sudden look of concentration on her face showed she wondered if her lovely computer could do such damage on a powerful instrument that they had talked about. After a minute of thinking, she suddenly stood to the surprise of Vegeta, who thought she may kick them out right now. She quickly walked out of the room. With shared looks of confusion, they wordlessly decided to follow her.

They located the woman easily as she was maybe five steps ahead of them, and Vegeta and Chester followed her into a room she liked to call her laboratory. Half of the walls were filled with shelves containing random mechanical machines or blueprints, off to one side was a workbench where Bulma was apparently working on one of her projects which she quickly threw a sheet over. "Don't trust us?" Vegeta questioned with a hint of rejection in his tone.

"You, I can trust. But," Her gaze shifted over to the blonde who was looking around the room in either astonishment or disgust from the mess. Vegeta nodded in understanding and motioned to the super computer that resided on the last wall of the room, which she began to start up. He then turned to Chester and muttered, "Go keep an eye on the emergency program."

Chester gave a puzzled look. "And miss this?" Vegeta mouthed go with a forceful look, which Chester replied with a muttered "Fine." and turned to exit the room. Spinning back to Bulma who was already at work, Vegeta slowly walked up behind her as not to make her lose her concentration and watched her progress. Within minutes, she was able to locate the signals their communication deVeges emitted and track it down to the main computer system. With a few curse words here and there from her trial and error process, Bulma exclaimed, "Finally, I'm in!"

"That was still pretty damn fast," Vegeta mumbled as he leaned over her shoulder to get a better look at the screen. She gave a little smile at his compliment as he focused on the monitor, not aware she had heard. After the program had loaded, Bulma growled and threw her hands in the air, barely missing Vegeta. "What's wrong now?" he asked.

"It's in a completely foreign language, I haven't seen anything like it before. It could take hours to translate," she responded, glaring at the screen. Vegeta focused on the lettering in front of him. At first he had the same response as Bulma, not understanding a letter, but within seconds certain letters became familiar, and within a minute he was able to piece together words and know the English parallel meaning behind them. It almost felt like a switch had been flicked on in his mind, and he could fluently understand the language in front of him.

With a mind state of instinct, he took over control of the mouse and scrolled through the archives. Already knowing the look Bulma was sending him, he replied, "Don't ask, I have no idea how my mind works." Shortly Vegeta was able to find a file of interest, mainly because it had his name as the title. After waiting for the file to load, Vegeta immediately began scanning through it:

Vegeta Darius, Prince of Saiyans and Vegeta-sei (destroyed 13 years prior)
Approx. 15 years of age; full-blooded Saiyan with Elite power level
On record: power level 1506 at age 2
Last known whereabouts:
escaped assassination with parents King Vegeta and Queen Raluca, current location unknown
Planet Earth under questioning for housing the Saiyan royalty
Overdue to have disk reformated...

Vegeta wasn't able to read any farther as Bulma grabbed the mouse out of his hand and closed the entire program. "What the hell are you doing? That had everything we need to know!" Vegeta yelled.

"They caught us in it," Bulma replied with a look of panic, pointing at a small flashing icon on the bottom of the screen. "If we stayed in the program whoever was running it would have traced the signal back to us." She began biting her nails, hoping their signal was cut off fast enough.

"Maybe you can get into it again in a few minutes or something?" he asked, wanting to read on.

Bulma shook her head in the negative. "They'll be monitoring it for a while. You don't just leave your most confidential files unguarded after you almost catch someone in them." Vegeta muttered a few choice words and stared at his feet, thinking of what to do next.

The ground began to shake, sounding like thunder beneath the earth. Vegeta and Bulma gripped the nearest big objects, trying to steady themselves. As quickly as it came, the earthquake passed. Chester, who was watching the news station with little interest as the same information was being repeated, raced into the lab after the ground became stable.

"I just looked out the window guys," he exclaimed, gripping the doorframe. "They're on the offence again. We have to go, Veg."

The dark-haired boy began to move to his friend but was stopped by Bulma's hand on his arm. "Wait a second," she said, "Do you guys have any idea what you're going to do? Or are you just making it up along the way?"

The duo looked at each other, expecting the other to say something regarding their escape plan. They each began "Well..", "We could..", but the words died upon their lips, knowing that there was no way they could wing their way out when the people after them have the ability to demolish the city, which they have showed everyone thus far. Bulma sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I guess I'll need to help you out, again."

-----

A while later, Vegeta and Chester exited Bulma's house, from the back door of course. Another upside about going to Bulma was she lived almost on the outskirts of town, so the countryside isn't too far off. Leaving the destruction behind them, and hoping that everyone evacuated the demolition before it became too bad, the pair began climbing over fences and running through yards. After two, maybe 3 climbs, Vegeta stopped to wait for Chester. "You're either really slow, really out of shape, or both," he yelled back. He had to wait a minute before Chester's head popped up over the last fence, his body shortly following him.

"I'm still slightly injured, you can't blame me," he replied, gasping for air. He ran across the lawn to Vegeta, who was perched on top of the next fence to hop, and glared at him. "What'd you learn from your little hack job anyways?"

Vegeta quickly looked around, scouting if anyone was left in this part of town. Seeing no one outside, probably gone or locked inside, he sighed. This wasn't something felt like discussing while they were on the run. "I was in their database, like everything about me, even my parents' names. Apparently I'm ...an experiment and I guess my parents got me out before I lived the rest of my life wherever I was." He did not meet Chester's eyes, but shrugged. "Kind of makes sense now, why my dad taught me to control my strength so I didn't hurt anyone my own age, or any age for that matter."

"Wow... does that mean you can fly?"

Vegeta stared at Chester. "Why would I be able to fly?"

Chester shrugged. "I don't know, just a thought. Because if you could, you could carry me so I don't have to hop the fences anymore?"

Vegeta laughed. "Nice try," he said, and fell backwards into the next yard. "We have, like, four more to go anyways." He gave a few more chuckles at Chester's antics and started walking across the lawn. As he looked up to see how big the next one was, he thought he might need a running start, but stopped dead.

A few feet ahead was a humanoid, like the ones that flew above them an hour ago, but was about seven feet tall, dark blue colouring and looked like he was able to destroy Vegeta. His eyes fixed on Vegeta, giving him a chill from the coldness in them, and smirked at the boy before him. "Hello, Vegeta," he rasped. Vegeta backed up until he hit the fence he just fell over. He felt Chester grab the top and pull himself up, and in one swift move he jumped up and pushed the blonde back on the other side and tried to jump back over the fence. The alien was faster than Vegeta though and pulled him back on the ground.

Chester, not seeing anything over the fence, cried out in protest at the fast landing. "What was that for? That bloody hurt!" Mumbling curse words, he searched for another way over the fence. An accented voice behind him froze his actions and turn to face it. "Looks like we've got another one 'ere, Burter," said the orange alien with long, white hair, smirking at Chester.

Both of the teenagers had their backs against the fence. "What do we do now, Veg?" whispered Chester through the wooden wall.

"Fight," was Vegeta's reply. Vegeta swung his fist out to the man approaching him, but it caught his wrist in mid-air.

"You're going to have to try harder than that if you want to run," he hissed in Vegeta's face, twisting his arm around. Chester followed his example before he heard Vegeta's scream of pain, but was also caught by the white-haired enemy. Their attackers laughed in their faces and pulled the two into the air as they flew away, not giving another chance for Vegeta and Chester to escape.