Bulma shot out of bed, her body already humming with the ugliness of fight or flight before she even realized she had been sleeping. Blinking, her eyes darted across the room, not really looking for anything specific. It had been months since her last nightmare. She thought she had finally started a real recovery.
The noise came again, familiar only because of the very nightmares she had tried so hard to forget.
But this was real. They had finally come.
She was moving before conscious thought could override instinct. She had prepared for this; constructed sturdy, coded capsules full of gear, water purifiers, rations, and equipment - and hung them like charms from a dainty bracelet worn on her wrist. She had thought about stashing supplies in capsules hidden in various places around the city, but she fretted about access and availability. She could stash millions of capsules all over the planet, but even three inches short of any one of those hidden caches would end with the same result: unable to reach it. So, she had come up with the perfect, stylish solution. She simply wore her survivalist paranoia on her wrist.
As she was running past a window that stretched the length of the wall, a flash of light pierced the darkness of the hallway, searing her pupils so that white dots danced behind her eyelids. The light was followed by a sizzling heat that instantly made her skin burn. Thunder so loud the window exploded in a storm of glass shards that twinkled like diamonds crashed over the house, making it shudder. Even as the glass sliced her skin, she couldn't help but stare in wonder as she was blanketed in soft, crystalline, glass powder that looked like snow. The sour taste of bile rose in her throat as she realized that the magical snow drifting in flurries around her was actually mixed with the ash left over from charred bones and dehydrated flesh.
As Capsule Corps groaned around her, she came to her senses and once again ran through the crumbling corridor. Dodging chunks of collapsing mortar and steel, she squealed in shock as she suddenly fell through the flooring as one segment shot upwards while another heaved downwards.
Stunned by her fall and numb with shock, she stumbled aimlessly over the broken building. She couldn't see through the haze of fire and smoke, and her throat and lungs burned with the effort of breathing it. Weary and confused, she sat amongst the ruin and waited for – she didn't know, but somewhere deep inside, her animal brain thundered to life. She may not remember all the details of what and why, but she did understand that she was supposed to hide and wait.
Just then, someone seized her upper arm and pulled her away just as a section of flooring above her head started to collapse around her. Blind instinct made her twist in the vice-like grip and lash out; fists pounded and nails scratched. The hand holding her let go and she fell to the ground at the sudden loss of counter-weight.
Looking up, she saw the blurry outline of – Yamcha? He was yelling at her and rubbing at a bloody scratch on his neck. Dumbfounded, she glanced down at her fingers and saw they were crusted with fresh blood and torn skin. She stared at her hands with wide eyes, realizing that if she were honest, deep down in the dungeon of her subconscious, she must have known it was Yamcha - but had attacked and successfully injured him, anyway.
She swallowed the resentment for him that had been seething under the surface for the past eight months. His bitter, judgmental looks, complete lack of support, and an insistence that she forget everything she knew and felt so she could concentrate on what he wanted from her. He was… obsessively jealous of an electronic device. Despite the warning of impending invasion, he'd tried to destroy the thing several times, claiming it was for her own good.
She closed her eyes and sighed. Now was not the time. They would talk - whether she wanted to or not. For now, she had to trust him. She looked up at him with wide, staring eyes, and blankly watched him as he paced in front of her, yelling in her general direction.
As he stood before her, ranting, the corner of her mouth lifted slightly. She trusted him. No matter how angry she was at him, no matter how misguided his actions. He did what he thought best for her, even if what he thought best infuriated her. She would always trust him.
When she didn't react beyond staring at him dumbly, Yamcha shut his mouth and peered at her. His face shifted from anger to exasperation, and he held out his hand for her to take. She took it and allowed him to help her stand. When he cupped her face with both hands and leaned forward, her eyebrows pinched in confusion. His lips were moving, and it looked like he was shouting, but he sounded so far away..
"Bulma! Bulma, your ears are bleeding! I think your eardrums have burst! Once you clear out the blood, your hearing will come back - but you'll probably hear ringing for a few days!"
She nodded that she understood and only now realized that after the initial blast, she hadn't heard the building imploding around her. She looked down at herself, wondering if there were any other unnoticed injuries. Unsurprisingly, she found the language-translating device clutched in her hand and distantly wondered if she had fallen asleep while tinkering with it, or if she had somehow grabbed it without noticing during her frantic escape. Shrugging, she assessed the rest of herself. Aside from being shoeless and wearing nothing but a tank top and underwear, she was serviceable. All cuts and bruises were superficial. They'd sting later, but for now, it was as if they didn't exist.
When Yamcha yanked on her hand, she was propelled forward and was forced to follow after him. Sticking her pinkie finger in her ear, she tried to clear the passage to improve her hearing. When sounds graduated from sounding like they were ten feet underwater to sounding like they were coming from outside a closed window, she let out a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding.
"Yamcha, where are we going?"
He glanced over his shoulder at her but didn't slow his pace. "We need to get out of the city – the closest meeting place is halfway between here and Goku's." He looked over his shoulder again, and his eyes flicked downwards briefly before he snorted. "You remember that stupid alien toy, but God forbid you remember some damn pants."
She wanted to tell him that she had pants in her survival bracelet, but they were out in the open, the capsules made a loud noise when activated, and the contents were vast and packaged in such a way that finding and unpacking clothes would take time. She frowned. Even if she did stop to pilfer through her belongings, she had a feeling he was so focused on dragging her out of the line of fire, she'd be forced to leave the contents of the capsule behind, no matter what life-saving equipment was in it. She flung her stringy hair out of her face and concentrated on running barefoot at a pace that was way too fast for her, even if it was way too slow for Yamcha. She barely had time to notice what the treacherous ground was doing to her naked feet. But, she promised herself, once we're all safe, I'll not only get some 'damned pants,' I'll show them all that the 'stupid alien toy' isn't the only thing I've been playing with.
She grinned ferally. Once they reached the safe house, they'd certainly have everything they needed! She had been busy this past almost-year, building up technology with just as much fervor as her friends had shown as they built up their strength.
As they moved further towards the outskirts of the city, the scenery became more and more horrific. Too many times to count, they had to backtrack to avoid hunting parties, damaged areas that were impassable, or groups of terrified people that who would attract attention. At one point, Yamcha found a body of a woman that wasn't too badly singed. Bulma only understood what he was doing when seconds later he had quickly torn off the summer dress and flung it at her. She cringed, but flipped it on over her head.
A few miles later, she found a pair of boots. One boot had been in the middle of a broken street, a bloody foot still inside of it. The other boot she found next to a melted iced latte on the hood of a jeep - like someone had put them there while they were unlocking the door to the car.
After that, her mind retreated and she allowed herself to drift after Yamcha, hour after hour, as though she were sleep-walking. Every so often, she would trip on debris or would have to launch herself behind the closest cover in whatever direction that lay. She knew better than to believe them lucky. They should have been caught more times than she could count. Yamcha was the only reason they remained undetected - his ability to sense ki was a flawless life saver. Several times, without warning, he'd pull her this way or that way, shove her down, or stop and wait for something unseen to pass. Then, without a word, he would start moving and she would follow.
She didn't know how long it had been since the start of the attack, but her feet were blistered and bloody inside her boots, her skin throbbed from the flash burn, and her knees were badly skinned under the torn hem of the dress. There was road rash on her right hip from when she had fallen into a sink hole as it had opened up right under her. She wasn't sure because she couldn't see it, but she thought she had a cut on her scalp from the shrapnel of an explosion. When she reached to touch the tender spot, her fingers came away wet with blood.
All in all, she was weary, but oddly ok. This is familiar, she mused. Her fear wasn't as sharp or debilitating as it had been in her nightmares. Or when Radditz had entered her mind. Perhaps fear in its truest, most pure form could only exist once in a lifetime.
Like virginity, she thought.
She snorted at herself, but shrugged a moment later as she reconsidered. Well, one can have sex a million times, but it's never like it was the first time. I guess fear can exist like that.. Demanding all your attention at first but after a while, as you get so used to it, it's no big deal in comparison. She blinked at herself and forced her thoughts to still. Focus, Bulma. You may not think you're afraid, but you're not thinking straight, either. I mean…. Sex? Good God.
She peered around the corner and started counting. When she reached one hundred, she bolted from the shadows into the open street. Yamcha was getting more and more anxious. She didn't know if he was looking for someone or if he was getting impatient to get out of the city. Either way, he moved faster than she so she let him go ahead. At first, he insisted on no more than one pace separate them. Then he had started to leave her in a safe place and move ahead to scout, and return to her minutes later. To save time, she had started her own pattern of movement; when he moved a few blocks ahead of her, she would count to one hundred and start to follow. When he doubled back, she would meet him half way from where they had started. She had expected him to protest and tell her to wait for him to come for her, but he hadn't. She was surprised. It left her alone in the open and out of reach for long stretches of time. She reasoned it was worth the risk because it allowed them to move much more quickly. And she was very careful.
She hid behind a car, tipped on its side, and started her count. A cascade of explosions detonated somewhere down the block and the ground surged under her feet. Thrown from her hiding place, she darted blindly into an alley and collapsed under a pile of discarded cardboard boxes. Her heart raced painfully in her rib cage, but when the boogey man didn't reach out of the shadows to grab her, she calmed enough to imagine what she must have looked like during her mad dash to the nearest mountain of garbage. She swallowed a snort. Her fear spiked now and then, but mostly – mostly it was an echo of what she thought real fear should be.
Or maybe an alien inoculated me against most fears by showing me what true fear really looks like. She huffed bitterly and stiffened when her imagination made the sound bounce down the alley off of brick and concrete walls. She knew the sound was too quiet for anyone to have noticed, but she also knew she couldn't use her own currently damaged hearing as a basis of comparison. It wasn't just humans out there, anymore.
She chewed her lips, torn between waiting and bolting. She had been here longer than a count to 100. If there were hostile aliens around the corner, she knew she was no match. She had to get to Yamcha.
She decided to make a run for it.
As she started to rise, an icy shard hammered a painful chill up her spine, robbing her of both strength and breath. Instead of crawling out of her hiding place, she found herself cowering further within it.
Boots. Armored boots that weren't there moments ago, attached to legs that stalked forward slowly and silently. And a.. a tail? Swishing behind those boots in lazy, purposeful arcs. And then the boots stopped moving, just inches from where she lay. So close where they, she had the asinine urge to reach out her hand and touch them.
She curled her fingers into tight fists so the temptation would go away.
