Unfaithful

It's not like I did it on purpose. I mean, I really and honestly didn't know at the time what damage I was going to cause, and I guess the worst is that he did catch me in the end, but he never exactly found out how deep in it I was and was able to forgive me, even fight by my side again. The guilt never really left. Like a weasel on crack, the guilt was.

Still I never told him. Maybe at one point or another Bulma did. Or Vegeta. But Vegeta is evil. Was evil. Whatever.

She smiled at me, like she was happy, and maybe at that point she was in love with him. My childish, sex-crazed friend with big hair, Yamucha, I mean. I have no idea when it started, or how it started, and I wouldn't ever dare ask. She leaned back, and looked at the ceiling, "Well?"

"Ehe." I could feel the sweat. Ehe was right, the smile turned awkward, her eyes narrowed, she was like a fricken' Jedi, she could tell when something was up, and her causal motions turned into the typical annoyed-Bulma actions. Her hands went to her chest, her warning that your ass was about to get chewed up and spit out if you don't slowly back away and run as fast as you can to the other part of the galaxy, and in some cases she would actually chase the poor being with a penis, as she almost never gets angry with females, to the other side of the galaxy, blaming him for inconveniencing her because she had to go out of her way at that point to yell at him. "Yamucha was just..."

"What's going on?" There was amusement in her voice, as she could smell the fear, and was getting excited. Even as a teenager she hadn't been as sadistic as she was at that point. Without doubt Vegeta, affair or not at that point, had passed the weasel of malevolence onto her which she was almost proud to display.

The Gods had mercy on the planet. They saw that Bulma was the next biggest threat against the universe and decided that Trunks was the solution. Typical male solution, she would call it, but hey, strapping a kid to her seemed to really do the trick. She generally only got scary on his behalf after he was born.

"You haven't set a date yet, have you?"

"You're beating around the bush."

I coughed. Okay, she was beautiful standing there in an all white suit, our rich girl. To be honest if she had an affair with anyone, I would've thought it would be Gokou, and her being impregnated by another woman seemed more likely than Gokou being unfaithful. He just didn't seem to be a very sexual being, which apparently is not Saiya-Jin, because Vegeta was, well... Very sexual. Apparently.

"Yamucha is just afraid he's going to die." There. I said it. I won, I managed to speak and not wet myself. I won. I consider the fact that I opened my mouth in itself a victory, everything else bonus points, so after that point I was so proud of myself it almost didn't matter to me that she started to twitch.

Almost.

"You..." Twitch, gulp, "Dare to say the," Gulp, twitch, "Day after he asks me to marry him," Twitch, gulp, "That he's afraid he's going to die," Gulp, twitch, "And remind me of his mortality," Twitch, gulp, "And the possibility of not being able to marry," Gulp, twitch, "The man I love?"

I stared. Fear had taken over my body, and I thought I couldn't shrink anymore. Her hands were balled into pretty fists, the sign that it was too late and death was inevitable at this point, her upper body seemed to jut out a little more as she approached me until our noses touched while she growled.

"Nononononono!" I squeaked, shaking my hands, trying to ward off the wrath of woman. "It's just, he's shy, he wants to move the wedding up-three months, so he has half the time to train and you can set the wedding up so it suits you perfectly and he can try and survive and you have the other half to be a happily married couple. It'd be a win-win-win situation if I could get out of this alive?"

She considered, allowing me room to breathe.

"Think about it," I nodded and I didn't know why, I couldn't stop talking, but I was doing it so rapidly I doubt that she really cared about what I was saying ,"You can have the perfect, the dream wedding and he won't complain at all, he'll be strong enough to live...I may live to see tomorrow..."

"Hah. Hah." She dryly returned to her computer desk, "Okay. Though I'm still not sure why he didn't just bring it up himself."

Because you're the most intimidating woman that ever did exist, other than ChiChi. There is equal ferocity there. Even Launch with the freaky split-personality problem, you, are the queens. Congratulations. You both can even conquer Son Gokou, universal savior. You could take over the universe. If Vegeta were smart he would've just used you instead of trying after the Dragonballs, and as soon as that time of the month came around anyone would be willing to do anything to keep you happy...

But I smiled, "He's just been really shy. He wants everything to be perfect for you and didn't want to upset you or make you think he was weak." Which, by the truth and standards, we both were, "Yanno, by reminding you about the whole pending dea-" She tilted her head towards me, "Thing. I mean, not that he will die, but you know, moving on!" I coughed, "And some women really want their husbands-to-be, to be more involved what with the wedding planning and stuff and such."

She sighed, "Whatever. I have to get back to work, I'm got some stuff to prepare for my dad, he's got a meeting tomorrow, and then I need to repair and make updates on some of Vegeta's stuff." She said his name with disdain, she really did seem to hate him. But we're all going to say that we should've known-just because he was special to her in some way.

I wonder if the affair had started before this or after.

But I looked serious for a moment, "You know, you really should be more careful..."

"I had that dream again last night." She sighed, turning to a window to watch the Gravity Chamber. But once again, I didn't read the signs, I didn't take into account that the sigh may not have been frustration and may have been indicating she was desperately in love with him. I mean, come on, who in the Hell just dreams about a member of the opposite sex for no apparent reason?

And yet I blinked, "What dream?"

"Eh, it gets more real, each time, yanno." She said, in a bit of a daze, "But it always ends right after he kisses me." And abruptly, she turned, her eyes a bit watery, "Does that make me a bad girlfriend?"

"Well, I wouldn't tell Yamucha..." I shook my head, "Really would be a bad idea. I think it's just you becoming more and more aware of the fact that you're going to be pretty permanently off the market soon."

"But I didn't know before that we were going to get engaged." She sat, sighing, this time in definite annoyance with herself.

"Hmn..." I crossed my arms over myself, thinking a bit, which she might have considered a rare and beautiful thing, "But it's not like you haven't been expecting him to for a while now."

"That's true." She got up, "Heh, thanks, Kuririn." And she kissed me on the cheek. "It's stupid, really. I mean, you know I love Yamucha, right?"

"Sure, Bulma. Sure."

And I really did believe she did.

Dense would be a great word to think of at this point. I mean, she's telling me she's dreaming about the other guy as she sighs and looks out through the window, even though she seems playfully annoyed, all she does is obsess over fixing and updating his machines-borderline enjoying catering to him, she playfully flirted with him, they fought like cat and dog, she let him live in her house, and I think: Where were we? How did we not read this?

But she honestly did seem happy, playfully roughhousing with Yamucha. And it wasn't for a week that I noticed there was someone else watching the couple from the shadows. My bitterness was in the shadows with him, on the outside I would only add in bad puns and tell them to settle down, because they would get so into each other they would practically start having sex in front of me.

And the entire idea was that he train, but the couple was completely inseparable. It's not like I ever really liked Vegeta, even now, and it's not like I was particularly angry with Yamucha, I was happy for them, I just would rather be happy for me.

I'd like to say that "It takes one to know one" is true, but I just think it's because Vegeta is such a natural, and because even I couldn't exactly detect what he ultimately wanted, living around the scum of the galaxy for so long he can easily identify the things that no one is supposed to know. Maybe that's how he detected Bulma's lust for him, and that's what I'd brushed it off as, really, and was able to use her to his advantage. I mean the man got her to actually settle down and marry him, something that seemed impossible. The man she'd dated since she was a teenager couldn't have even talked her into children, even when they were really and honestly absolutely in love before he existed in our world and Gokou "became" a Saiya-Jin.

One way or another, he did the same with me. Well, we didn't have sex, thank the Gods, but still, he had his way and was able to pull all the right strings like a genius, an evil genius, always can. So they were holding hands and staring like vegetables at a TV screen, a few jokes, a few light comments, like "Those jeans make her look fat," but what was unbearable was that they got closer every few seconds.

So I escaped. I don't think he really exactly planned on me crossing his path, though at this point it is apparent he wanted to at one time or another, I was just walking outside as he happened to be getting ready to go in.

I can't really believe I didn't notice it, possibly because I was more afraid of him than I was of her and just wanted to get away from him.

He looked irritable as always, like he was having some sort of issue, but he did not look like he was capable of love or even passion, just anger and beating the pulp out of particularly short men. So when his head tilted at me and he smirked, I froze. "You." He rasped, "Bald-one."

"What?" I tried to look at him. Tried.

"The Stupid One. When is she going to be mated to that fool?"

I didn't discover jealousy in his voice. I was used to his nicknames for us. I was "Bald One", on occasion when he maybe liked me a little bit I became "The Bald One" or "The Midget," Bulma was "The Woman" or "The Stupid One", "The Loud One", "The Blue One", she was always a "The." Note how Yamucha was never a "The." He was a "that." Yamucha was "That fool" or "That idiot" or "That weakling." Gokou was just Kakarotto.

The word "the" just seemed to have more respect, liking behind it, but of course that's only apparent now.

"Er, in two and a half months..." I thought, frowning a bit. But I only assumed he was annoyed that because she only wanted to spend time with Yamucha, even at night, that she wasn't making his updates as regularly, and he was a crazed freak when it came to training. Maybe more so than even Gokou.

But he knew. He knew I didn't really want them to marry, he probably knew I wanted her for myself though I knew I would never have her. I didn't love Bulma, but the attraction, to both body and, oddly enough, personality, did exist. I wasn't really even hurt, it just didn't really sit quite right that he took Maron from me, and then he had to steal Bulma away from the world too.

From the start, though I didn't know the motivation until much later, I knew that he wanted to split them up, and even then I was a horrible person and I provided him with the details and information he needed, casually like he was actually my friend, and never once asked him what his ultimate plan was.

Looking back on it, I guess Bulma and Vegeta had something-maybe not exactly love, that lasted longer than anything Yamucha could've ever offered her, including what was supposed to be his love, so I don't feel as bad about playing the role I did in the downfall of the relationship. It in itself was inevitable, and besides, when all the cards fell I had nothing to do, okay, I had everything to do with how he found out.

But at that point, Bulma was already his slave. That's way later.

-CL