So. This chapter will highlight who Lena's stalker is. You may be surprised. :) I do not own DB/DBZ/DBGT.
Overcoming the Past
~Lena in garage, napping
Fourteen. She was fourteen when they invaded and attacked. No other memories before that day other than a solemn song that replayed in her mind.
Fourteen, and in a strange environment. A nun, or at least that is what she recalled the woman being as such, fanned her awake.
"You've finally awoken," the nun had said, "I usually only have infants dropped off; not maturing young ladies. Do you know how you go here?"
'No' Lena shook her head.
"What's your name dear?" The woman had asked. Lena shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, what would you like to be called?" Lena shrugged her shoulders again.
"Hmm…we will have to worry about that later. Why don't you follow me to the room you will be staying in," the woman requested.
Lena followed obediently. Then, she was given a piece of paper and a pen. She looked at it uncertainly.
"I will need to get some sort of information, young one. You need to be in school for example. Do you, perhaps, recall your age?"
Fourteen. She did know her age. Fourteen, android attacks, and a song was what she knew. Lena drew the number 14 as she thought of it being.
"Fourteen! Oh my, such a busty girl. I thought you were at least sixteen. I'll be chasing the boys from you most certainly!"
Lena stared at the modest woman. Something told her that these women didn't normally speak so brash.
"Have you decided on a name yet?"
Lena shook her head again. What did it matter? A name is only a name.
"How about you lie down awhile and think about it then," the nun finished and let her be.
She lay there, unsure and alone. Alone wasn't it; that is not how she remembered feeling. No, it was emptiness. She had felt empty that night.
The song continued to play in her mind when a young boy, slightly older than she, wheeled himself into her newly acquired room. She caught herself staring at the missing lower limb on the left side of his body.
"Your face is beautiful with that blush. Don't be embarrassed. It's hard not to stare," the stranger said kindly as he returned a stare at her rounded eyes that she had focused on his handicap.
She remembered his beauty. His copper-colored hair reminded her of the sun. She wondered why she felt the desire to see the sun, moon, and stars. And, his eyes. His eyes were as black as the night, but this boy's was the color of a frosted sky. Why couldn't she remember whose eyes were dark?
The youth smiled at her again. A smile. It felt like she hadn't seen one of those in a very long time.
"So, may I have the name belonging to such a pretty face?"
Name? She sighed and shook her head. She didn't want to be rude, but a name was not something she had or desired.
"You must have suffered memory loss. I'm lucky. I just lost my leg fighting in the Android Invasion," he bluntly stated, "I had a close friend once. Her hair was as fair as yours. Lena was her name."
"Oh," Lena finally spoke.
"Do you like that?" He asked, watching Lena smile.
"Lena," she said aloud. The youth smiled at her odd behavior.
"You can call me Sixteen. It's my age, my favorite number, and I don't care that much about my parent- given name. I guess I'll be seeing you around," the scarlet haired youth said to her as he rolled away.
He became her first love; her first victim of robotic enhancement. She endlessly sketched prosthetic leg after leg before she constructed the design that was best fitted for him. She never imagined that her conduct would allude to future events.
She remembered his constant teasing on how she didn't need to waste her time with fixing him. She ignored him; how could she ever forget watching him sit on the side lines as his friends kicked the football up and down the grassy field?
Her dream skipped forward. Two months. Two months was all it took before she built the perfect replacement for his leg. A creation she knew she wouldn't have been able to achieve it were not for her past. A past she just couldn't remember when she desperately sought for it.
The two teens had united a special relationship as they grew. The nuns took notice of Lena, of her ability to craft extraordinary things. They contacted the elite engineering school locally and invited them to test Lena. Sure enough, they found exciting new promise within the skilled girl. Fourteen turned to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and then eighteen. Time flew as quickly as her relationship with "Sixteen" deepened.
She had given him everything. His new physicality, his renewed confidence, her… innocence; but it never seemed enough as they matured. He acted harshly around her whenever anyone would boast about her success immediately after accepting his own offer of internship at…that place. His attitude changed for the absolute worst once he began working for Doctor Gero.
Skip.
At last, she had graduated among the top of not only her high school class, but of her college leveled one as well. She had received two job opportunities. One for the infamous Red Ribbon Army as a master builder for city defenses (or that was what she had been told then) and one as an apprentice under the genius heiress, Bulma Briefs. Lena wanted to accept the invite from Capsule Corp, but Sixteen said no. He wanted her to follow in his footsteps and put her skills to the test with Doctor Gero. His persuasion of a happy future enticed her to reject the dream of working with her role model, and to take the internship at Red Ribbon instead.
That decision nearly cost her life. It turned out that it DID cost countless others. Her work there not only brought on the Android Attack four years prior, but the godforsaken time/dimension remote she had made was the reason it occurred in her past and not the present day. It wasn't until that day of discovering that the half-robotic people were her fault, that she realized why she couldn't remember her first thirteen years of life and why she had the sickening feeling that she was responsible for that devastating day.
Skip.
The armory housing her other machines and blue prints was destroyed the moment she ran from the lab holding the androids. That…incident should have taken her, Sixteen, and the control for time travel away back to when she was fourteen. Instead, the song from ages past repeated itself once more when she pressed the button of her dimension hopper to take her back to the time before she was fourteen, before this shit could happen and forced something to go wrong. Somewhere between dimensions, the teleporter she had made from a distant memory rejected her request. That was how she remained there in the present, at the age of eighteen and accountable for so much devastation four years ago. The only good that resulted was that there was no way for anyone to associate her with the crime.
Lena slowly began to comprehend her memory loss as she slept. Catsearia, the strange dead soul that occupied her nightmares, had released her soul when Lena was fourteen. That was why she woke up mysteriously in the same vicinity as a once-feared android 16. She must have met with the free-flying spirit when she tried to escape the exposure she would have faced for the robot mutations had she not used the time traveler. Catsearia was guilty for Lena's current predicament.
~Goku interrupts
"Lena, Lena! Please don't be angry with me, but I kind of, sort of, removed Raditz's tail," a very apologetic Goku said, snapping Lena awake.
"Huh, wait what?" Lena garbled sleepily, completely unaware of what Goku had just confessed.
"I don't have time to explain. Come with me, please."
"Oh, okay…?" Lena questioned as she stretched to her feet. She walked lazily over to the sheet cutter and silenced the machine before Goku hastily drug her in the direction of the at-home infirmary Bulma had avoided taking Lena earlier that day. As soon as they entered the treatment section, they could hear whimpering coming from a nearby room. Goku took Lena's left hand and began to pull her towards the whining. Lena pulled him back with a scathing look.
"We can't just waltz into a patient's room without permission," Lena quietly hissed.
"Sure we can!" Goku smiled as he fought her into following him. This time, he ignored her attempts of remaining in place.
"No, Goku! If that's Raditz I hear in there, I don't care. I really can't deal with him right now."
"Aww come on. He did it to protect you, honestly."
"Right, that's why," Lena sarcastically said. It has NOTHING to do with his jealous personality when it comes to the other woman taking residence in my mind, her inner goddess modified.
"Great! I'm glad you understand! Now, let's get you to him. He sure will be happy to see you," Goku grinned and tugged her along, oblivious to her sarcasm.
As they neared the room, Lena could hear Raditz's pitiful cries loudly as well as a high pitched, overly sweet voice cooing at him.
Maron, Lena dryly thought. Bulma still brought up the subject of this woman being one of the reasons that she and Yamcha didn't work out. Now, Lena was worried that she was about to witness the "Maron Effect" first hand and was not ready to deal with it currently.
She and Goku entered the room as Maron lightly giggled into Raditz's ear as she held a stitching thread laced through a fine needle near his injured arm.
"You Saiyajin are all alike! Broken bones, ripped muscles, bruised faces; but Kami forbid if a needle gets near!" Nurse Maron winked and shook her chest in a teasing manner before bringing the needle close to the open, clean gash on Raditz's upper arm.
He glared at her before shooing her away with his red converse-clad feet. Lena stared. He was wearing the same styled shoes she had worn the first day she met him. Not just that, but he clearly wasn't as easily seduced as she originally thought he would be. She could feel her skin prickle at the thought of how jealous Bulma would have been if she had seen this. Those little facts began to warm and fill her soul. Emptiness was waning. She was starting to feel whole again.
Maron sighed and placed the back of her hand against her forehead with her eyes closed. The only other blue-haired being Raditz had encountered peeked out of one of her closed eyes to see if her girly wiles affected his kicking at her. To her dismay, he paid no attention to her, but on the stitching needle in her free hand.
"Aww, forget it! You can bleed to death for all I care, you ungrateful brute!" She hissed and threw it down.
Raditz smiled, thinking that he was off the hook. That was until he caught Lena's gleam.
"Hold him," Lena commanded sadistically.
Raditz's eyes rounded innocently as his smaller, younger brother reached out to keep him from escaping the medical attention he needed.
Then, Lena retrieved the required tool from the floor. No, she had never sewn on a living creature, but she knew a thing or two about fixing things and decided she would need the practice if she were going to keep this bizarre relationship up. Goku and Raditz calmed slightly as she lowered the needle into the sink to re-sanitize it. They didn't really believe that she would go through with her unspoken threat. She smiled as Goku's face paled along with his brother's once she lifted the needle in their direction. Goku instantly released Raditz and flew out of the room and far away from the danger Lena presented.
If Raditz had been able to do the same, he would have. His luck was up the moment Kakarot caused him to be in the pathetic state he was in presently. He opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by the dangerous woman's challenging glare.
"Don't you say a single word or I will use this to pluck your eyeballs out," Lena spat.
Raditz obeyed and struggled to push himself away from her looming glare. She sweetly smiled as she stepped closer, taking her time to prolong his torture. He bit his bottom lip, desperately holding his tongue to remain silent.
"Shhh," she softly whispered in the ear Maron had tried to tease him in earlier.
She held her tiny hands out for him to lower his injured arm into. He reluctantly dropped his arm as he closed his eyes and turned his head away, whipping her face with his tangled hair in the process. She sighed and sat in a stool before she began to clean the opened wound once more. She then began to caress the muscles in his forearm, allowing the tenseness in the upper arm to relax. The massaging turned her mind back to the job at hand and she soon found herself humming the song from her dark past and dreams.
Raditz's breathing slowed as he listened. Before he was even aware the stitches were complete, Lena had already wrapped bandages over her semi-decent job and was at the sink washing her hands. He didn't look down at the fixed wound until the humming came to an end.
Lena shouldn't know that song. Catsearia is starting to show through again. How? How was that possible though? The dumbfounded Saiyan thought.
A shrill scream vibrated his eardrums after he stood to his feet; thus, forcing him back into his somewhat painful sitting position he was in moments before.
"YOUR TAIL! IT'S NOT THERE!" Lena screamed, startling even herself. She had been doing a lot of uncharacteristic behavior lately.
"Why else would I be in this ridiculous state?" Raditz mumbled, covering his ears.
"Oh. I'm. Wow. So….is there like a hole there or what?" Lena couldn't help but ask.
"Tch. What do you think?" He hotly replied.
"Don't you be snippy with me. I didn't do it."
"All of this is your fault."
"Are you freaking kidding me right now?"
"Do I sound like it?"
"Stop snarling at me. You're starting to piss me off," Lena growled back.
"I'll stop when I damn well please. What the fuck is that," he snarled.
"What are you talking about?" Lena rolled her eyes as he stood back to his feet and buried his face in her hair.
"Where were you before you came here?"
"My shop. I was redoing the security like I should have done yesterday."
Raditz nodded his head and otherwise ignored the girl as he began to communicate mentally with his brother.
"Kakarot, take Lena back to the house. I need to investigate something."
"Right. I noticed it too," Goku replied instantly and appeared back into the room seconds later.
"Oh Goku! You decided to show back up," Lena smiled.
"Yeah. Come with me, there is something I need to tell you," he said sheepishly; making something up to say on the spot.
"Okay, what's up?" Lena asked as she followed him outside.
She was thankful for the option of escaping the questions she was going to receive from Raditz had she remained.
"Well, you see…Bulma and Chi-Chi planned a double date Friday night and decided to make you the babysitter for Goten and Trunks!"
"What? Is there a reason Gohan can't watch them?" Lena asked, suspiciously.
"Uhm, because he has his own date that night too," Goku continued to lie.
Lena's brows furrowed in irritation before she sighed with defeat. Those two wouldn't be that hard to manage, right? Goku ran straight to Chi-Chi (who at some point made it to Capsule Corp sometime after he, Raditz, and Vegeta did) and informed her of what he had said.
"Great idea! Lena and Raditz need time alone after everything that has happened. Plus, she needs the experience of handling kids. She'll be having her own before too long with the way she has been recklessly behaving lately!" Chi-Chi giggled.
Reckless? Experience? Chi-Chi, I spent four years in an orphanage. I can handle kids. So Goku made up that story on the spot. He's never been a great liar as far as I can tell. Why was he getting me away from my workplace and Raditz? Lena thought as she eavesdropped nearby.
She decided to sneak back outside when she bumped face-to-face into Vegeta. She stared into his pit-black eyes and waited for him to pick her up and throw her, but he surprised her by simply shaking his head into a no; forbidding her exit.
She was forced to remain inside due to the serious commotion three Saiyans were wreaking on her work place. She spent her time moping around her room; which unfortunately, led to the smoking enticement she promised herself she wouldn't touch. She lit a cigarette anyway and lay silent to think about what the hell she was going to do to get herself out of the messiness she was swimming in.
One, she had just slept with someone she barely knew 72 hours. Two, he had now solidified an unwanted relationship that she couldn't undo unless she died. Three, her ex was probably alive and that would make him the one taunting her. This would also mean that he has possession of the cursed time warp remote. Four, she now had a very bad habit. She was well aware that smoking kills, but that could be a good thing and would remove the bonding dilemma. Lastly, what was she going to do to resolve all of the other issues?
She remained there, cycling through her predicaments when Raditz rudely interrupted her quiet contemplation by whacking the stress reliever out of her mouth.
"That was helping me not hate, thank you," Lena blurted as the picked it back up, returned it to her lips, inhaled the nicotine, and blew a grey mist into his face.
She no longer felt the need to punch him in the face. That positive attitude was quickly removed when he snatched the burning matter out of her mouth again, crumbled it into ash, and used his damned sleuth smelling skills to locate the others and ripped them up alongside the original.
"My main purpose of talking to you, is to let you know that you are no longer allowed to work in that garage of yours. From now on, you are limited to working with Vegeta's blue-haired bitch at all times."
Lena refused to accept that nonsense, but kept her opinions to herself. What he wouldn't know wouldn't hurt him. It's not like he could discern where and what she would be doing all the time. He raised an eyebrow as if to question her lack of opposition.
"You're taking this rather well…" he trailed, waiting for some type of drama he discovered the female species of Earth relied on.
"Yes, indeed I am. If that's all you needed to say, get out," she bickered.
That was the last calm, sane conversation the two had for the next few days. Five times, five fucking times she attempted to access her beloved shop and all five times Raditz all but threw her back into the house. As a result, she successfully utilized her room as her new work place and locked everyone out. All expect for Bulma whose worry was intolerable. She was only away for a few days, not a lifetime like her friend kept stressing.
Before she knew it, Friday arrived. Babysitting was not something she was really prepared for. Apparently, neither was her one-night lover.
I do have the next two chapter written, so they'll be up soon!