Chapter Seven: Transitions
Bulma woke up to the sound of her phone ringing. Luckily, she had a phone in her bedroom as well as in every room downstairs. They all connected to the same line anyway. It was just for convenience purposes.
She got out of bed and groggily dragged her feet across the room to her phone. Looking at the receiver, the name said Orange Star High, so she let the answering machine get it. Of course, it was an automated message from the principal.
"School will be closed for the rest of the week. The students' new schedules should arrive in the mail before the following Monday, when school will resume. Your classes will be the same, but the locations will be different. Because of the fire, trailers will be parked in the back parking lot of the High School and will be numbered accordingly. Follow your new schedules when you get them.
"Regarding the fire today in Orange Star High School, the cause is still under investigation, but there are suspects among the students who had been carrying a pack of matches and a lighter at the time of the evacuation. These students' names will not be revealed due to legal matters, but the situation is nearly resolved and I can personally assure you and your families that it is under control."
Bulma sighed and hit the delete button on the receiver. She didn't need that message. All she really needed to know was that she would be getting a new schedule in the mail and school resumed on the following Monday. She rolled her eyes. No one made a big deal about anything regarding a high school. Especially the students in it.
She glanced at the red numbers on her clock next to her bed. It read 9:45 PM. She must have been asleep for a few hours. She hadn't been all that tired, but it was enough, and she never had anything to do. She didn't even have that much homework.
As she made her way down the stairs, her stomach growled. She laughed at the noise. Of course she was hungry. She had skipped lunch at school and found nothing she was in the mood for in the refrigerator when she got back home, so she had gone to bed, also missing dinner. It wasn't like anyone cared. She was the only person in the house, so she could eat whenever she felt like it. She went to the cabinet to the right of the stove and pulled out a jar of peanut butter. She grabbed a spoon and headed for the living room.
Seeing as she just had a nice long nap, it was no use trying to go back to bed. She would just end up staring at the ceiling with a bored expression on her face for the entire night. Remembering something, she placed her snack on the coffee table and made her way to the back door. She didn't want to forget to lock it before she hit the couch, or she wouldn't be able to get back up. She opened the door to her garage and stepped outside. She went to turn the metal pinch on the back of the doorknob, but realized that it was already vertical. It should have been horizontal, meaning it was unlocked. She specifically remembered leaving it unlocked when she got home because it gave her something to do before she went to bed. She never locked it until dark…
She peered outside for a moment, but got frightened by the wind and slammed the door shut with a shudder. Checking to make sure that the door really was locked, she scratched her head in confusion. It certainly was locked, but she hadn't done it… That meant that someone else did…
Bulma turned around to scan the garage, but it was nearly empty, so there was no place for a person to hide. She suddenly felt the urge to leave her house. What if there was someone inside, waiting for her? What if it was a big burly man with a knife or a gun? God, she didn't even have her cell phone with her. And even if she did, who would she call anyway? It wasn't like she had any friends around here that she could stay with for a night. Or, rather, not anymore.
She slowly opened the door back into her house and tried to walk at a normal pace. If she walked too carefully, then someone might notice that she was more cautious than usual, so she attempted to act natural… which failed. She ran into the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife she could find. If she was going to be attacked, she wasn't going down without a fight…
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Vegeta sighed. What in the world was she doing? After getting out of bed, she went to the back door, and then raced inside like some crazed maniac and grabbed a large knife. Of course, he knew why. She noticed that he had locked the door for her. He hadn't expected her to come back out and lock it herself, but he didn't want to just leave it so that anyone could get inside. But that was stupid, because he was sitting in her backyard, watching her silhouette though the shades and the curtains. She couldn't see him, but he watched her every move. What was the point of locking the back door if he planned on staying here the entire night…?
And what the hell was he doing here now? He'd already proven that he wasn't about to murder her in hot blood. He'd locked her door to make sure she was safe. And all he accomplished was proving that he was a spineless coward and that he could frighten her into thinking that there was a mad killer hiding somewhere in her house. Although he did have fun watching her silhouette jerk open closet doors and then have a coat or a shelf scare her so much that he felt the blood drain from her face. He chuckled when she stabbed into the air, thinking she saw a person's shadow.
He felt like he was watching a movie that he'd watch a million times over. He knew that there was no one else in the entire building but her because there were no other energy signals but hers, so her jumps and yelps were only forms of entertainment for him.
As he sat in the damp grass, he closed his eyes, feeling out every move she made, every breath she took, every sudden rise and fall of her chest as she startled herself around corners, and every fragile beat of her delicate heart. What the hell was he doing here?
He'd already told himself that he wasn't going to kill her. He'd told himself over twenty times by now. And he was still saying it, almost as if he couldn't believe it unless he said it again and again, just to hammer it into his mind.
He stood up. It was almost ten at night now, and Vegeta could feel his eyes getting heavier. Sitting around all day doing nothing tended to make him tired. So did stress…
What the hell was he doing here? The female had finished her monster hunt and was now sitting down. Her heartbeats were still moody, as if she expected to be attacked at any moment now. Stabbed in the back, he presumed. Her back muscles were tightened as if in defense from an oncoming attack to her south side. It was a natural defense mechanism for humans to tighten their muscles when they felt they were about to be attacked. It lessened the pain and the human had to suffer less anxiety from being startled that way. It was common, but he never thought he'd see this female act in such a defensive way in her own home. Part of him wanted to jump through the window and punch her in the back. Yet, another part of him wanted to knock on her door to tell her that he had locked her backdoor and that there was no one in the house but her and a few bugs, and young mice in the basement.
Something about the way she acted when she was afraid made him want to destroy whatever was causing her distress. It was extremely unnerving to him and he wanted it to stop immediately.
But he knew that he couldn't just knock on her door and tell her that everything was alright. Because everything wasn't alright. And if he showed himself to her just to talk to her before it was absolutely necessary, everything would be even worse. It was as if it could never get better. The only solution was to get rid of her. But there was no way to do that unless he murdered her or sat down and talked with her about the things that he'd never told anyone in his entire life.
Killing her would be the easiest and most convenient choice… Or so he'd thought. But there was no way he'd sit down and talk with her. He might as well indirectly kill her.
Then he realized that he could have just let her die in that fire… And if he had taken her home after he rescued her, like Kakarot had told him to, everyone would have thought that she was still inside the burning building… And he could have just left the body there. No one would have known if he burned her skin badly enough. But he'd known that all along. He distinctly remembered catching onto her energy signal in the burning building and knowing that he could have just let her die in there. But he also remembered feeling that he couldn't just stand there and watch her from the other side of the glass doors as she burned alive. He also knew that he wouldn't have been able to deal with her last thoughts revolving around the fact that he was actually watching her die, when he could have helped her.
Vegeta froze. He hadn't realized it until it was too late, but he was standing on the aqua-haired female's doorstep and, damn, ringing the doorbell. He jumped aside swiftly and hid against the side of the house as the female walked to the front door and opened it. He watched her from the shadows as she stepped outside and looked around, frightened by the lack of a person after the doorbell rang.
What was he doing here? All he was accomplishing was frightening her over and over again. He couldn't show himself. He didn't want her to know he was standing only a couple feet away from her. He didn't want her to know that he was a predator. That he had been stalking her, as much as he hated to admit it. And she was easy prey, too. All Earthlings were. They couldn't help it.
And yet, all he had to do was quickly reach out one or two feet in front of himself and grab her by her tiny and vulnerable throat. Then all he would have to do is twist the jaw upward to the right, and the top of the head down to the left…
He watched in silence as she closed the door behind her, locking it on her way back inside. He chuckled at the dry humor in the simple action. In all honesty, they had both locked him out of the house. Maybe that was supposed to tell him something. To stay away, maybe? He didn't know.
His orders were still unable to be followed, thanks to this aqua-haired problem. Why couldn't he just come up with a solution for it? Kakarot had already decided not to follow his orders after he met that raven. He even had the nerve to ask the Prince of Saiyans himself to go along with the fatal idea… And now he was faced with the same ordeal. He didn't want to become like Kakarot and his raven, disobeying orders. That kind of shit was what was going to get them both killed. He, on the other hand, was going to do as he was told. And he would be rewarded with more women than this Earthling female could count. So why not kill her? Wasn't the glory and the rewards worth the little bit of trouble it would cost him?
But then, what was this feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if every blow he delivered to this female would hurt him ten thousand times as much? It was something he'd never felt before. And his thoughts, as he raced out of her bedroom after standing over her… The hunter deciding how he liked his meat. He had mentally screamed at himself to get away from her, as if he was the threat. The threat that he had to get rid of. Ha! The idea of it made him laugh aloud.
Once again, he thought about how he had either intentionally or unintentionally locked himself out of her house as he had exited the back door.
What the hell was he doing here?
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Bulma rolled over on the uncomfortable mattress. She sat up and groaned. No wonder it was uncomfortable. This was no mattress. This was the couch. She looked up. The television was still on from the previous night. She dug under her left shoulder for the remote and hit the round, red power button. She was afraid to get up for fear of finding a mirror and actually being forced to look at her disheveled hair. It probably looked like a big blue mop that had just been used to clean up her kitchen floor. Speaking of the kitchen, she certainly hoped that there was no dried peanut butter in her hair. That would take way too long to get out for her liking.
She began to stretch her arms over her head, and the motion turned into a loud yawn that eventually hurt her face. She blinked a few times to get the morning sand out of her eyes and finally stood up. She staggered as she walked, holding onto the walls as she did so, to the stairs. She lifted her legs, one at a time, to place them on each of the steps and then prepared them to take the weight off of the other half of her body as she lifted the other leg to place it on the next step.
When she reached the carpet, she fell to her knees and dragged herself into her bedroom. She glanced at the clock to find that it was a little past three in the afternoon. She sighed. Most of the day was already gone because of her irregular sleeping schedule.
She went to her comfy bed and looked around. Her purse was still at the school. She really wanted that money back. It was the only thing she had that reminded her of Vegeta. Just thinking about him was easy on its own. She didn't need the money to imagine herself in his arms. She could do that without even realizing it.
But that didn't take away the fact that she still wanted it back. Besides, her purse had other things besides the money that she wanted back. An example was her favorite Chapstick. Of course, she had others, but the one in her purse seemed to make her lips softer and plumper than any others. Not that they needed it. She didn't like to brag, but she knew she was pretty. Then there was her lipstick. It wasn't like she needed that one either, but her mother had given it to her last year on her birthday. It was sentimental to her. Another thing, she quickly remembered, was her multitudes of credit cards. She only carried two of them in that specific purse, but they had no dollar limit. And one of them was her black card. Plus her driver's license and such.
Knowing that someone could find her purse and spend all her parents' money was the deal-breaker, though. Her eyes snapped open and she tried to act like she was wide awake to fool her brain into behaving as such. She raced back downstairs and grabbed her keys and a special baggy for emergencies only. Then she was out the door and heading straight for her car. A movement to her left, in the backyard's tree line, caught her eye. But when she looked over and thought she saw something, she knew it must have been her imagination. After all, how could that be possible? …
She shook her head. Her mind was imagining Vegeta even when she didn't have him on her mind, which wasn't that often anyway. She started the engine and rolled down her windows. It was a warm day, so the inside of the small white car felt like an oven, preheated and ready to go.
She sped out of the driveway. She knew speeding would only get her there a few seconds earlier, but it just made her feel better, so she did it anyway.
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Vegeta looked up at the sudden movement of the aqua-haired female. She ran out of her house and he ducked back under the cover of the trees and the shadows. She looked over, in his general area, and he felt her pulse quicken. Had she seen him? No, she was turning back to the white vehicle. But she thought she saw something. He felt the strange urge to wish that he could know what she had been thinking at that moment. He wanted to know if he had to keep hiding, or if he could come out yet. But still, why the hell was he here?
He kept a close distance flying above her car, watching to make sure no one else saw him, as she drove down the driveway. He noted how she didn't exactly have the best driving skills in the entire world. He kept a mental note of that for later use.
He realized that she was heading for the school when she went down the right paths for it. Two blocks, make a left, three blocks, another left, one block, make a right, and four blocks down was Orange Star High. But why was she going back to this place. He didn't underestimate her ability to forget that school didn't start up again for another few days. Tomorrow would be Friday, then the weekend. School reopened after that, not before. He had heard the message on her home phone from outside.
He perched himself in a faraway tree branch and watched closely as she exited the car. The only other vehicles in the entire parking lot, front and back, only held two construction vehicles. And from Vegeta's senses, they had gone out for their lunch breaks. He and the female were completely alone next to a wrecked school. A part of him was excited by the idea, but he pushed it away defensively. After all, what was so exciting about it? It wasn't like they could do anything, and he was under the assumption that if she saw him, she might scream for help or do something else that was stupidly outrageous.
When she pulled a bag out of the passenger' seat in her car and locked the door behind her, Vegeta moved from his position, preparing to follow her… What the hell was he doing here this time?
He watched as she pulled out the most unexpected item, a Master Key, and unlocked the school doors. She entered and Vegeta quickly followed. Not making noise wasn't a problem for him. He could do it without thinking. He reopened the door, thankful that it didn't lock on its own, and entered the building.
If he had felt like a stalker before, now he felt like an intruding pedophile. He was making himself look pathetic and spineless on purpose. What the fuck was wrong with him? He had some sort of mental problem. He had deduced that much from his actions over the past fifteen hours. He hadn't eaten or slept in all that time either and he was starting to feel the repercussions of his stupidity. Nonetheless, he followed the aqua-haired female's energy signal until he was only a single hallway away from her. He could feel himself holding his breath, but then let it out, feeling even more idiotic than before. He held his breath for no one!
He leaned his head back to peer down the hallway to find that it was clear. The female had entered one of the classrooms. He decided that he'd wait her out.
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Bulma entered the dark classroom and flicked the light switch against the wall. It didn't work. She tried it a few more times with the same result until finally giving up on lights. She scanned around the chemistry room. This was where she had left her purse, but it was no longer here. She guessed that one of the janitors or fire department officials grabbed it and put it somewhere. Maybe it was in the Lost-and-Found area. She decided that she'd go there next.
She exited the classroom. Someone must have taken it, because the fire hadn't reached this part of the High School. The classroom was untouched. She also noticed how everyone else's things were still leaning against chairs or plopped onto the floor. But her purse was missing. She paused, thinking for a moment, and then went back through the door. Looking around the black-topped lab desk, she found her book bag. So that meant that someone had taken her purse on purpose. There were plenty of other purses lying around the room. But it seemed as if nothing had been disturbed, apart from her belongings. Her book bag had obviously been sorted through.
With a confused sigh, Bulma made her way to the lost and found. The dark hallways of the school were starting to freak her out. She felt like there were many eyes on her, bearing into her skin from all angles. She wanted nothing more than to leave the building. She no longer cared about the Lost-and-Found. She knew her purse wasn't going to be there. No one would go through the trouble of taking it just to put it in a different spot.
No. Whoever had it was keeping it at their side. And Bulma wanted nothing more than to get out of there. Immediately.
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Vegeta strolled along, his hands in his pockets, waiting for the aqua-haired female to get out of the damn classroom and do something that wouldn't leave him bored in a dark school hallway.
Vegeta felt at home in the dark. It made him comfortable and calm. He could hide in the darkness. He could conceal himself in the shadows. When nightfall came every twelve hours, a sense of right always washed over him. Gloomy atmospheres were where he belonged.
The female began to move, so Vegeta slid up against the wall once again, forgetting about his previous thoughts. His mind was now focused on the female and what she was doing. Or planned on doing, for that matter.
When she rounded another corner, he waited a few seconds, and then slunk against the bottom panel of the far wall. He passed the chemistry room and breathed in her musky scent. It was intoxicating for a moment. He felt like a non-reformed alcoholic drinking after a long and arduous postponement of the inevitable.
Just then, the female's adrenaline spiked, and Vegeta regained all his senses. He reached the end of the hallway, but by the time he realized that his action had been incorrect, it was too late. Her gentle shadow fell on him as she rushed around the corner.
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Bulma ran around the corner, not wanting to spend any more time in this freak house than she needed to. But not before she was smacked in the face with déjà vu. As she turned, she banged headfirst into her dream boy. She knew it was him right as she rounded the corner, but she was already moving, so she couldn't catch herself in time.
Instead, she ended up lying on the floor with a pain in the side of her head, as a cross-armed Vegeta stood above her… frowning.
"What do you think you're doing, woman?"
Bulma put her mind on pause for a second. He was asking her what she was doing… as he followed her without permission… she mentally shrugged to herself.
"I could have asked you the same question," she replied, standing up and brushing off her pants.
"Well, you didn't. So answer mine."
"I'm looking for my purse because it has my credit cards in it. But I haven't found it, so I think it was stolen, because nothing else is moved around in the classroom over there." She paused again. "So what are you doing, Vegeta? Following me?"
"I don't follow anyone, woman," he spat, as if the word was a disease or just plain bad luck. "I was watching you in case you got hurt. The other people who are working here just left. There are no more vehicles in the parking lot. I didn't think it was right to leave you by yourself. What if you did something wrong? I felt it was my obligation to make sure you didn't steal anything," he mocked.
"I think you and your obligations can leave me alone now. And why would you care? From what I heard last, you couldn't give a damn about me and what I do with my life."
"I did save your pretty little ass, didn't I?"
Vegeta watched as the expression on the female changed dramatically. Her face was bright red, contrasting with her bright blue hair. "Were you at my house?!" she angrily asked, realization dawning on her. The locked door. The doorbell. The tree line. "Answer me!" she demanded when a response didn't come.
"Why would I be at your house, woman? I have much better things to do with my time than hang around you all day. Besides, you're of no interest to me. Why would I even want to follow you?"
"Don't play stupid with me!" she cried, "Man up and admit that you followed me here. That you stalked me at my house, and that you pestered me by ringing my fucking doorbell and running off like some coward!" Her face went even redder when she realized something else. "Did you come inside my house when I was asleep?! It was you who locked my door, wasn't it? Well?!"
"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. I told you already. I have no desire to look at you any more than I have to. In fact, I don't know why I'm still here. Your presence seems to bother me a little too much for my liking." He shrugged, as if he was telling the truth and he had no control over it.
Bulma roared and pushed him out of her way, making for the exit. She made it to the door and pulled it open a few inches before it was slammed shut from a hand over her head. She whipped around and made a face.
"What is it now?" she snapped at him.
"You're right," he said matter-of-factly.
"Excuse me? Care to elaborate?"
"You know damn well what I mean, woman. Yes, I was at your house. Yes, I rang your fucking doorbell for my own amusement. Yes, I followed you here. And yes, I came into your house when you were asleep. In all honesty, I was actually debating with myself whether or not to kill you. It would have been easy, with you sound asleep like that. I could have snapped your little neck in a fraction of a second. And then I stayed there and followed you here thinking that I could have another chance to murder you, since I wasn't thinking clearly the first time. And the second, it appears. But it looks like I've been provided with a third chance, doesn't it?" he asked her threateningly. He could see that all the red in her face was gone, replaced with a pale hue. Every inch of color had been drained. She was finally seeing him for the predator that he was.
The female opened her mouth to say something, but the words never came to her as Vegeta stood in front of her, his hands on the wall to either side of her. There was no escape for her this time. This time, he had to do it. He had to follow his orders. His orders were his life. How could he give up something that meant so much to him?
And then he realized it. An important transition had just gone through his brain like a live wire. It wasn't his orders that were so important to him. It was… this fragile form in from of him. He now noticed that he wasn't standing in a threatening pose, although she probably would have disagreed with him if he told her that. But instead, he was in a defensive pose, his arms around her protectively. Was this what he had been missing?
He hadn't been at her house because he wanted to fulfill his given commands. He was there in case this pathetic Earthling female needed someone. He was there because she had been crying… because of him. He was there because she had been frightened because he locked her door. He stayed there as if to say that she was now safe. He rang her doorbell so he could visually see that she was alright. How could he have missed that? He had been so deeply rooted in carrying out his orders that he hadn't realized what his brain had been telling him all along. Ever since the first day she locked eyes with him. Ever since he felt her delicate presence behind him as he showed her where her first period class was.
He slowly removed his arms from the wall and stood there, facing her with a strange look in his eyes, as if an epiphany had just struck him through the chest like lightning. It certainly felt like it.
But as the aqua-haired female let out a quiet screech and ran out the door, it felt like a bomb had just replaced the lightning in his chest.