Chapter Four: A Task

Bulma made her way to the cafeteria and found the table she had sat at on the previous day with ease. Chichi's streak-black hair and Goku's unnatural spikes were two hard things to miss. She noted how Vegeta wasn't with them before she sat down.

Even though she had remembered to bring cash with her today, she didn't feel like eating. In fact, she felt a bit nauseous, but she didn't understand why. It wasn't like she had a bad breakfast or anything. She wondered if baseball had anything to do with it… She wondered if Vegeta had anything to do with it.

"Hey, Bulma," Chichi said, her ever-present smile spread over her face like an inerasable line. "I heard what happened in Chemistry, and I'm sorry you got stuck in the middle of it. What are you being punished for anyway? Talking in class is what I heard. What's your punishment?"

"Painting classrooms," she replied casually. She knew it was unfair, but she didn't want to make a big deal over it. Drama Queen wasn't the type of reputation that she wanted to label herself with on her second day of school. Because everyone else would believe that she actually did something wrong, she didn't want to make a big fiasco about the fact that she really didn't do anything inappropriate for a classroom setting.

"Where's Vegeta?" Goku asked, "Didn't you and him go to the same place?"

"He… went off somewhere. I think Maron was being a harpy and he needed some time to be alone. If he just came here, she probably wouldn't have left him alone."

"She followed him into the boy's bathroom one time," Tien laughed, walking over to them, "He was really pissed about that."

"Look who finally found our table," Chichi said with a smile.

"What? Am I not welcome in your domain?"

"Not at all. You're always welcome," she laughed, involuntarily hugging Goku around the waist. He embraced her in response, and Bulma felt an odd and unexpected wave of jealousy. Not because she liked Goku. It wasn't like that at all. It was just the fact that they were so close.

She had never even gone out with a boy in her entire life. She had never experienced such warmth that she was currently witnessing, and she felt a little deprived.

"Thanks," Tien replied, shaking Bulma out of her daze as he placed his plastic red tray down on the table next to her. "Hey… Bulma, was it?"

"That's right," she replied, happy that some people were noticing her less than others. She found it a bit weird that she could remember every name she encountered and not everyone could remember only one: hers. Besides, how hard was it to remember the name "Bulma"? It didn't seem so hard to her. She shook her head. Well, of course not. It was her own goddamn name, for crying out loud! It shouldn't be too hard for her to remember.

"Why aren't you eating anything?" 18 asked, coming up behind her. Apparently, she had also found the lunch table.

"Not hungry," Bulma said, hoping no one else would ask. She didn't like lying. It always made her stomach twist into a tight knot.

"Oh, really?" she asked, and Bulma got the feeling that 18 knew more than she was letting on. Did she meet up with Vegeta on her way here?

Then Bulma remembered the questions she had for Chichi, since she was the one who had most of the answers. Aside from the fact that she knew the raven-haired teen didn't appreciate the hounding, Bulma was ambitious to find out what the secret was. And if Maron knew, then Vegeta's friends would have to know as well. At least, she hoped…

"Chichi," she began, wondering if it was okay to ask in front of everyone else, "I have a few questions to ask you about… Well… I just think I have a right to know, if you don't mind me saying so."

Everyone at their table, and a few others that just heard the change in her tone, looked her way. Bulma knew her face was getting redder, but she didn't care. She now knew that it wasn't the appropriate time to ask, but she would find out if she had to hammer the raven-haired girl all day. All week if it was necessary. And she was right. She did have a right to know. Especially after hearing Maron's accusations and entitlements.

"Bulma…" Chichi began, and Bulma was well aware that she knew exactly what it was she had questions about by the look of uneasiness and worry that creased her face. Bulma waved her hand as if to say that they could talk about it later. Luckily, Chichi's expression showed that she understood the intended message.

"What's that all about?" 18 asked, and Bulma looked over, feeling a bit angry with herself that she couldn't keep her mind out of other people's business. Bulma wondered if the blonde girl knew the secret as well.

"Nothing that's important," she replied nonchalantly. 18 nodded once and Bulma got the impression that she knew something again that she didn't intend on sharing. She shook the thought aside and realized that her stomach was growling. By the looks of it, no one heard the obnoxious noise, so she stared at the table, listening to other people's conversations a few tables away. One was a group of girls talking about things they did over the summer. The second was another group of girls talking about activities they were planning for the following weekend. The last one was a group of boys talking about the two groups of girls. How original, Bulma thought sarcastically.

The bell rang about twenty minutes after Bulma had arrived in the cafeteria, and she covered her ears at the awful noise. She really was never going to get used to the obscene noise. Not even if she lived in the high school for the rest of her life.

"See you last period," Chichi called, and Bulma waved her response as everyone else followed after Chichi. Bulma sighed and went in the opposite direction as them, making her way to History class, with Mr. Gohan… and Yamcha. She mentally prepared herself for having to deal with him in the near future. She felt a little bad, because he was a nice guy, but he just… acted like a girl sometimes. She solemnly wondered if he had fallen off the tightrope.

When she walked into the classroom, Yamcha wasn't yet in his seat. She ashamedly hoped that he went home early. She looked left to find that Vegeta was in his seat, unlike yesterday, when he barged in late, Maron on his heels.

"Where did you go?" she asked him, walking by his desk and pausing for a moment to ask her question.

"Nowhere that involves your concern, woman," he replied, purposefully not looking at her as he spoke.

"Oh," Bulma replied, a bit confused by his defensive response. She had expected him to be aggravated and maybe even angry, and his expression from before revealed that he was worried or even anxious about something. But she hadn't expected him to be defensive towards her.

"Alright everyone," Mr. Gohan said, coming into the room. Bulma watched Yamcha inconspicuously scurry through the doorway behind him. "In your seats, please. That means you, Mr. Yamcha," he added, much to Sharpner's entertainment. Bulma caught him laughing and felt the violent urge to beat him to a bloody pulp. "Class has begun. Everyone settle down."

Bulma made her way to her seat, following Yamcha from a safe distance in case he wanted to whisper something to her as they walked to their seats. She guessed that he wouldn't mind holding in whatever he had to say until later. And even if he did, she wasn't going to give him the chance.

"How are you?" she heard him ask when they both took their seats.

"Excuse me?" she said, trying to be polite.

"You know. From gym class. How are you feeling? Is everything still holding together in there?" he asked with a smirk, and Bulma couldn't help but smile in return. Even though she thought he was annoying, when she was around him and his perky attitude, her opinion of him seamed to unexpectedly change.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Thanks for asking," she added, noticing how he was the only one to ask if she was alright. The only thing everyone else wanted to know about was what her punishment was for her "misbehavior" back in Chemistry. And now that she thought about it, there was still something she wanted to know about: the secret Maron had explicitly blabbered about during lunch. Maybe Yamcha knew something about it…

"You sure you're not too shaken up to be in History class?" he jokingly asked.

"Yeah. I'm way too shaken up. Would you like to take me to the nurse? And I don't think I'm fit to drive myself home. Mind coming with me?" she said sarcastically.

"That would be nice. A free pass out of school. Seems like a nice idea, doesn't it?"

"You wish."

"With all my heart and more," he smiled, showing off his white teeth. Bulma couldn't, for the life of her, figure out how such a guy could be in the lower classes of a high school. To her, he just seemed… normal. Well, more normal than everyone else she had spent time with at least.

About five more minutes passed into the class before Mr. Gohan got the projector to function and another couple minutes to plug in his computer and set up the PowerPoint slideshow for the class. Bulma took notes for fifteen minutes before she couldn't stand the anticipation any longer. She made sure Vegeta was too busy writing to notice anything she did before she turned back to Yamcha. As soon as she looked at him, she held all of his attention in the palm of her hand.

"Do you know anything… about how weird… Vegeta is?" she asked, making sure to keep her voice so low when saying his name that even Yamcha could barely hear her at a few inches away.

"Yeah, I know. Isn't he?"

Damn. He wasn't getting the message. There was actually a point to why she was talking to him. She mentally growled at her horrible luck.

"No, I mean… is there something… that's different about him?"

"Other than his naturally spiky hair and his pompous-ass attitude?" he smirked. Bulma silently groaned. He still wasn't getting it.

"Do you even know anything about him? I mean, does he even have a life?" she played along. She made sure to keep her voice even quieter if she planned on wrongfully insulting him behind his back to get the answers she desired. She felt bad about saying anything she didn't believe, but desperate times called for desperate measures… didn't they?

"I know, right?" he paused to jot down some more notes from up on the board. Bulma followed suit, scribbling illegibly so she wouldn't miss her chance to make him say anything that might sound as if it was important in her apparently everlasting search for answers.

"But really. Do you know anything about him?" she pressed, hoping to get somewhere.

"Not really. Other than the party, I don't know much."

"Party? What party?" Finally, some progress!

"Well, you know… When Maron…" Yamcha's face went bright red and Bulma realized that this was nothing new. She had already heard about this part. He was strong and could do a lot of pushups. So could a bunch of people. That didn't tell her anything. That didn't answer any of her questions.

"Oh, right. I heard about that. He did pushups, right?"

"Yeah. He did three sets of one thousand seven hundred eighty four. It was… unnatural."

One thousand seven hundred and eighty five, she mentally corrected him, surprised that she even remembered the number. And then he did two more sets, adding one more to the uncommon number… Why did she remember that? She didn't want to distract him though, if he knew anything else about the spiky-haired teen.

"What do you mean… unnatural?"

"It was sick. No one can do that many pushups and not even have a drop of sweat on him after it. I was standing right there, and I'm telling you, it was unnatural."

"Well, what about it was unnatural. What caught your eye?"

"First of all, no one is that strong. Not even people in the military can do stuff like that without even getting tired. I would know because my dad was in the military, and he was strong. And besides, people aren't supposed to flash when they do pushups."

"What? Flash?"

"You didn't hear about that part?" he asked, eager to tell her something that she didn't know already. She was eager to hear it just as much, so she appreciated his mood for the moment. She looked up for a moment to make sure Vegeta wasn't listening. She lightly, but happily sighed when she found him engrossed in the information on the board and in his notes.

"No, I didn't. What do you mean, he flashed? Did he do something bad?"

"If you consider lighting up an entire room bad…"

"Wait… What are you talking about?"

"I don't understand it much either. He was doing pushups. I think he was on the second set, and he just… lit up; like he was a light bulb or something. The darkness just disappeared for a split second. I don't know what kind of trick he pulled, but I swear. He actually flashed. Like, literally, his body lit up."

"That's impossible," Bulma said flatly, wondering if it was true, and if it was, what it had to do with the secret Maron spoke of. After all, people didn't… flash.

"I guess it's something you have to see for yourself, although I doubt it'll even happen again, so don't go getting your hopes up on me. Vegeta doesn't go to parties anymore because of that one. I think he's embarrassed… What a whiner."

"Yeah," Bulma said, knowing that if she tried to defend her dream boy, and Yamcha found out anything else, he wouldn't be willing to share the information with her. She didn't want to look like some sort of spy for Vegeta. That would leave all her questions unanswered. And that was the last thing she wanted right now.

Flashing? She couldn't understand what that had to do with anything. And she didn't rule out the possibility that Yamcha was a bit drunk at the party. He could have thought that he saw it. Besides, Chichi would have told her, and the raven-haired girl seemed to know just about everything when it came to that party.

Then she remembered the party on Friday. She unhopefully wondered if she could convince Vegeta to go to it with her. She knew it would never happen, but if a girl didn't hope, what was left? Maybe she could get him drunk again…

"Eyes on the board, please," Mr. Gohan said, interrupting her delicious thoughts. She cursed him under her breath, and Yamcha smirked, apparently hearing her.

Bulma looked to her right to find Sharpner whispering something to a black-haired boy next to him. She saw him point at her and they both laughed at something without making eye contact with her. Why would they be talking about her? She brushed it aside, thinking it was probably because she was talking with Yamcha. She wished that they would just stop bugging him about his rank in the high school. He would, more likely than not, grow up with a college degree or two and have a nice life with a nice house and a nice family. Sharpner on the other hand, would probably end up on the streets, still making fun of other people. If she knew anything, it was that a high school was very different in comparison to the outside world. People didn't carelessly judge you when you walked down the streets. People were friendlier outside of Orange Star High. Or that's what Bulma believed from what she had seen so far. She had also heard that Satan City was a magnet for burglaries and robberies. She knew to steer clear of obstacles like those. Her mother had made sure to hammer her about that and other stuff that resembled the same kind of trouble that burglaries would present to a "young girl like her", in her mother's own words while she had been talking to Bulma's father about it. Neither of them agreed on the subject matter.

Originally, Bulma's parents didn't like the idea of leaving her alone for months at a time in a place like Satan City, but they knew that she needed the exposure to people her own age before she went to college. So they had made it a point to warn her about the dangers that sometimes came with necessity. Especially in her case, as they hadn't neglected to point out to her several hundred times. She was surprised that they hadn't called her just to tell her again.

Bulma didn't really need to go to college because she would inherit her parents' companies and millions of dollars that came along with them, but she felt that it was important not just to her lineage, but to her as a person with wants and desires. It was like a rite of passage for someone her age, and she knew that if she was going to do it, she would have to start to do it at her current age. That was the main reason that her parents had agreed to her seemingly outrageous demand to go to school.

And she had to admit, she didn't regret that decision in the slightest way. She would have felt even more deprived if she hadn't met Vegeta—

The sharp school bell rang around the room, but Bulma managed to refrain from covering her ears so she wouldn't look like an idiot. Especially because Sharpner was staring directly at her. As were his cronies. She was glad that she had next period alone as she made her way out the door and into the crowded hallways of Orange Star High. Surviving stampedes without being trampled put her in a good mood for Spanish class as she entered the classroom. She made her way to the back right corner of the room and sat in her unoccupied desk, waiting for everyone else to arrive.

Bulma didn't pay attention for notes because she spoke Spanish when she travelled to Cuba and Mexico with her parents for work. Mexico had been beautiful. Cuba… well, it creeped her out after she spoke with this cross-eyed man who seemed to have only one very precise and inappropriate thing on his mind. He never once looked at the features on her face when he spoke to her. It was as if when he asked how Cuba came to be of interest to her, he had been talking to her breasts instead of her. It had nothing to do with the country. She had just been taken aback by the rude and obscene gesture as if asking her if she wanted a ride to his shack in the middle of the woods just to have sex with him. It had been extremely uncalled for and unexpected on his part.

She also spoke fluent French and Italian, making her more than capable of passing her subtle Spanish class for high school students flicking pieces of paper across the room at each other. And if they could pass, then she had absolutely nothing to worry about.

The class passed by slowly, but when it was finally over, Bulma felt a great sense of relief and excitement. The relief was from the simple fact that the boring class period was over. The excitement, on the other hand, was because her next class was with Chichi, and there was no way in Hell that she was going to back down this time. She wanted her questions answered, and she wanted them answered now.

"Chichi!" she called, walking into the art room. The raven haired girl's face was red and she was walking away from an apparently angry Vegeta. Goku hung his head behind the spiky haired teen as if he was ashamed.

"I can't talk right now, Bulma," Chichi said quickly… a little too quickly if Bulma had anything to say about it.

"Why? What just happened? Did he just… yell at you?"

"No, no. It's not like that. He's just upset. That's all."

"About what exactly? Chichi, you look like you're about to cry. What did he say to you?"

"It's nothing, Bulma. Just drop it, okay?"

"No," she said firmly, turning to walk towards Vegeta.

"Bulma, please," Chichi begged.

"Then tell me what the heck is going on! Why is he mad at you? Why are you about to cry? And why isn't Goku supporting you in whatever this is? And why won't anyone tell me anything around here?"

"I… I can't, Bulma… I'm sorry, really."

Chichi's face froze and Bulma turned just in time to notice the way Vegeta threw a malicious glare her way. When she turned back, Chichi had a single tear rolling down the left side of her face. Then, as if out of nowhere, both Goku and Vegeta passed right by her and walked out of the door, ignoring the teacher yelling at the two of them to come back. Apparently the threat of a cut slip wasn't enough to make them come back.

Bulma then noticed the looks on Tien and 18's faces as Bulma walked over to the wooden table and set her bags down on the green tiled floor below her metal stool. It was clear as day.

They knew what was going on.

It seemed like everyone knew this big secret, whatever it was, except for her. Why would no one tell her? It couldn't be that big of a deal, could it? She wondered if Yamcha knew more than he had let on. But she quickly threw the thought in the trash. Yamcha seemed like the type of boy that would willingly tell her everything he knew about something she wanted answers about.

Bulma sighed. If only everyone was like that. Then she wouldn't have to go through all this trouble just to find out one little secret.

She went over in her head what she knew so far. First, Chichi said that Vegeta had helped her build a shed and that she knew that he was strong… unnaturally strong, as pointed out by a few others. She had described him as a different breed or something like that. She knew from Maron that this was all Vegeta's secret, so everyone that would be the closest thing to a friend to him seemed to know about it. Maybe that was the solution. All she had to do was befriend him and she would be allowed to know. She pushed the thought aside for later and continued to go over what she knew. Yamcha said that he saw him flash. She wasn't quite sure what that meant, but at least it was something. She also took the possibility that he could have been very drunk with disdain. She wished that the odd boy could be a bit more reliable in such important matters to her, but she couldn't really do anything about that.

That was about it. He was strong and could light up while doing pushups. Great… Neither helped her in discovering anything worthwhile, but she knew one thing was for sure.

She promised she would find out more if it killed her. And then, she unexpectedly regretted it.