The purple, pickle-headed shit-pimple had let go of Bulma when it was clear that her only interest was to help – or try to help -the struggling Saiyan. By the time they reached the belly of a transport craft, blood had started to stream over his side and fell like a trickling waterfall down leg. Everywhere he stepped, he left crimson footprints. Before he had finally been allowed to collapse in an oppressively dark, vastly open bay, he had grudgingly relented and held onto the stubborn woman's shoulder with one hand but refused further assistance by grimacing at her whenever she thought to do more. Though his paltry protests weren't done with much conviction, he resented needing her help and resented allowing it even more. Once he had found a spot on the ground where he could rest, he was done with her. He wanted her away from him so he could get the residue of the calming scent that leached his anger away off of his skin. He needed the feel of her mind to disappear so he could be free to think clearly once again.
He just wanted to sleep.
It didn't make any difference what his current captors thought they were going to do with him. Obviously, they wanted him alive. Sure, they may leave him in the guts of this ship wounded and weak and vulnerable to the dozens of other probable hostile aliens sharing the same space. He'd survive. He'd done this too many times before to believe differently. It mattered little if he were a victim here. He would live through it regardless of how little he cared to. Not that he wanted to die – but living wasn't really much more than death. Except that it hurt more. And recovery required revenge. It was something to live for, he supposed. So, he would regain his strength, and he would wait for as long as it took to teach everyone exactly who he was and what he was capable of; teach them precisely how little he cared about the amount of humiliation, pain, and suffering he would endure. He would endure it all. In the end, they would undergo such misery at his hands that his own anguish would pale in comparison.
He acknowledged this, and then he allowed himself to sleep. He didn't know how much he would get before the hunt for his blood would begin.
It wasn't long – not more than the time it took to launch into space – before he awoke to a foot slamming into his injured side. The pain was so intense he nearly fell unconscious the moment he had awoken. The only thing preventing such a cowardly escape was his searing rage. With greedy desperation, he held on to his fury just as forcefully as he swallowed back bile and blood. He rolled to his side and forced himself to his hands and knees, fighting off waves of nausea, prepared to stand and determined to make his attacker bleed at least as much as he before he fell.
And then, she was there.
His vision swam, but the room was dark enough that even his unfocused mind was snagged by several flashes of heat and light that burst from her hand. It seemed everyone else had noticed the result if not the catalyst. His enormous attacker had been standing one moment, challenging him to fight, and the next - he lay bleeding, dead long before he had hit the floor.
Slowly, the Saiyan started to laugh.
Cui had been so terrified of his ki, even in this weakened state, that he had forgotten that the woman was a weapons designer. Or at least, that's what Vegeta assumed she was. Stuck in that cage with little else to do but pester him, she had tried to fix the scouter. The thing was destroyed; from what he had gathered, after hours of her fiddling with it, she had not met much success. So, she had opened her little collapsing pills and started taking apart and cannibalizing other bits of technology and had made, what he believed at the time, was an energy weapon meant to protect herself against him.
That's the moment when it had all clicked for him. A woman who could understand and manipulate technology – even that which was foreign to her, who was able to create an energy weapon in a tiny cage with few, patched together resources and little time… the high-pitched sound of something charging in the dimness of the fog and ash, a sudden, impossible blast that was too powerful to have come from anyone on the planet after he had dispatched Zarbon – and the ruined weapon thrown at the feet of the woman, as if to show her that in its destruction, he – the Saiyan Prince - had become the prize.
It had been her. Her design. Her weapon.
Was that why she defended him? Out of a sense of obligation because she had glimpsed a tiny fraction of his mind, seen that he had intended to be an ally?
No. He hadn't meant to be an ally. He had sent Radditz to Earth looking for those who could become his ally. Tools for his use. Nothing more. She knew that. She had even been sorry that he had failed…
And he had failed. The moment they castrated him from his ki.
But…When Cui had instructed Appule to collar him in a ki suppressing device, they had never even considered checking the human. Strange considering Cui had asked her specifically about her weapons designs. The foolish little female had taken the bait and had admitted that the designs were hers. He hadn't understood with words, but he had been monitoring the woman's thoughts – no. Not thoughts. More like mental imagery than actual thoughts. His intent was to understand what was being said to her - he hadn't realized she was aware of his mind floating on the fringes of her own until she had reacted to his distress. He had chastised himself for being obvious but quickly became confused when he discovered Cui wasn't after her weapons.
That left only one possibility: The only thing the woman could possibly have of interest besides her weapons was her intelligence. So, with that a known factor, in addition to being aware that she could design weapons, why hadn't they checked her for any?
He bitterly tasted the irony. Every single being in this former-storage, now turned trafficking-room was infinitely more powerful than the silly little female, and every one of them hated Saiyans. At the moment, every one of them likely wanted him dead but was incapable of reaching for or manipulating ki. They could rely on physical strength, as could he, but - everyone knew that he couldn't defend himself against them all in his current state.
But she could. And despite being laughably weak - she was now the most powerful being in the room.
And she had chosen to protect him with the very weapon she had made to protect herself against him.
He wanted to kill her right then, likely as much as those she was forcing back with her energy-pistol contraption.
Instead, he had laughed.
When he ran out of strength and was too weary to continue to give a shit about his circumstances, he allowed himself to fall to his side and rolled over onto his back. He didn't care what she did. If she decided to guard him, that was her wish. But before he closed his eyes and let sleep steal his consciousness, he wondered why this woman had placed herself between him and a certain death - again. And again he wondered if Radditz had some sort of freakish vision of the future and had somehow set this all into play. If that were the case, was he, Vegeta, supposed to accept whatever part he was to play? What price would he be forced to pay for an outcome he wasn't aware of? Would the outcome be worth it? If it were, would he bother to pay that price?
What would happen if he didn't?
His eyes fluttered as sleep finally took him. But as he was drifting off, one thought pierced through to his soul.
What would happen if he did?
Had he been fully aware of the thought, he would have killed her right then without hesitation.
