Human Hospitality
by pureleaf
Chapter 12
Searching
Morning dew was starting to evaporate from the manicured grass around the Briefs compound as the family matriarch cut fresh flowers to bring inside for the kitchen and bedrooms. She noticed that Vegeta's bed was still made when she'd woken up at seven. He hadn't returned during the night, and Mrs. Briefs had to remind herself that her guest could take care of himself just fine.
As she cut peonies from one of the largest bushes in the garden, Vegeta landed nearby in the yard, his clothing wet and eyes tired.
"Good morning, Vegeta. Why don't you come inside and warm up? I'll make you some tea."
He didn't object or offer a sharp retort to her suggestion. Instead, he silently followed her inside and went upstairs to get changed before returning to the kitchen.
She poured him a large mug of mint tea and toasted some sliced whole wheat bread. He seemed a bit detached and she got the feeling he wouldn't be eating a huge meal for a change. Whatever he was doing all night it wasn't because he was happy, she thought, something is bothering him and he's not going to open up about it to anybody. I just hope there won't be too much acting out today...
"Would you mind company, Vegeta?" She asked, moving to pull out the chair across the table from the Saiyan.
He shrugged and picked at a slice of toast. "If you insist."
"You look very tired. What did you do last night?"
Vegeta looked up at Mrs. Briefs and exhaled sharply through his nostrils. "It was nothing that would be of interest to you. Just searching for something."
"Searching for what?"
He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. Vegeta knew that Mrs. Briefs probably didn't understand it meant he was considering his words before he spoke, but she tended not to question to his non-verbal vocalizations as often as Dr. Briefs or Bulma did.
Finally, he spoke: "I was looking for the place where my comrade was killed by the one named Piccolo about a year and a half ago."
"Oh," Mrs. Briefs took a long sip of tea, "paying your respects?"
"I didn't find the place. Tell Bulma to come speak with me later today. I need to ask her about where he died. She'll know."
"Of course. Say, you don't have fresh flowers in your room, do you?"
He choked on his tea. "I don't need flowers in there!"
"It's no problem! It'll liven the place up! You know, you can rearrange or decorate that room however makes you feel most comfortable, Vegeta. Whatever you need to feel at home, just ask. And you can stay here for as long as you need to."
Vegeta almost swallowed a mouthful of dry toast when he tried to stifle a bark of laughter.
"So," he cleared his throat, "the Dragonballs will be ready for use soon..."
"Our Namekian guests told me another few days at the most. They're such lovely people, aren't they?"
Vegeta shrugged. "Wouldn't know."
"You're welcome to help me in the garden any time, Vegeta. The Namekians have been taking care of the plants in the green houses. One more set of hands would always be appreciated."
"It is best that the green men to stay far away from me."
Mrs. Briefs sighed. "You don't need to be alone here. Get out and enjoy yourself, it can't be much fun isolating yourself in that simulator every single day."
"I must train. Whether or not it is "fun" doesn't matter at this point."
"I know how determined you are, honey. You already look a lot different since you arrived several weeks ago. You should be proud."
"A Saiyan with no pride is a Saiyan who has given up on his life, and I refuse to give up!" He pushed away his tea and rose from his seat at the table and went to his room without saying another word.
When Vegeta awoke at two in the afternoon, the first thing he noticed was a slender vase holding three peonies set on his desk.
"I'm going to get soft if these humans keep treating me this way..."
Vegeta took the entire day off to let his ankle recover. It didn't hurt badly, but it was swollen and tender enough that the Saiyan knew trying to land another back flip in intense gravity would result in pain and possibly aggravate the injury.
Bulma came to his room at four thirty in the afternoon, as Vegeta lay on his stomach and flipped through the channels on the television that had been put in his bedroom. "My Mom said you asked me to stop by. What's up?"
"I need you to take me to the place where Raditz died. What did you do with his body?"
"Uh... Krillin and Master Roshi buried him. We didn't mark the grave but I know the general area."
Vegeta smirked. "What a fitting end..."
"Did we do something wrong by burying him?"
The Saiyan pulled himself into a cross-legged position on his bed and chuckled. "Saiyan custom dictates that we cremate our dead to honour their strength and valour. We also cremate the dead so that scavengers may not steal any items they were carrying at the time of death. There's also a belief that cremation assists in helping the spirit make its way to the afterlife... but I now think that the spirit can leave the body without any help. By burying him, you've basically said he contributed nothing and deserves to be forgotten."
"Ooh... I'm sorry."
"I'm not."
They left after dinner, taking an airship that boasted comfortable seating and even a mini-fridge on board. Bulma set the coordinates for the valley where Raditz had been killed almost eighteen months prior and sit back in the pilot's seat, mentally preparing herself for the journey. It would be the first time she'd be truly all alone with Vegeta.
Once they were at cruising altitude, Bulma set the airship on autopilot and fetched a can of fruit juice from the fridge.
"It's going to take about two hours to get there. Think you'll be okay with it getting dark?"
"Saiyans can see very well in the dark."
"What exactly are you planning to do, Vegeta?"
"I'm going to exhume Raditz' remains. He was carrying a few items that may be of some help to me. You're the one who took his scouter, correct?"
"I am. Took me an entire night to get it to work in English."
"Ah, so you're the one I kept hearing down the line..."
Bulma's brows rose in surprise and she turned to Vegeta. "Wait, you could hear me? How?!"
"The scouters worked as communication devices. Raditz had turned his communication line on so I could monitor his activities on Earth. After he died, you apparently took his scouter but you did not turn off the communication line. I heard you talking with your friends. Heard you crying. I could hear you taking the scouter apart and eventually heard you putting it back together again. Then you wore it for a few minutes and checked the power levels of your friends."
Bulma went pale. "You... you listened in on me?"
"You and the short bald one were the very first human voices I heard. It's not right to accuse me of "listening in on you" like I was deliberately spying, but I did hear you speaking when you wore the scouter."
"Why didn't you respond?"
"What was I to say? "Ha ha, I'm coming for you", or perhaps, "greetings Earthling, prepare to die"? I just listened to you for a few minutes before going into stasis for about eight months. Nappa and I made a quick stop before landing on Earth, but by then I wasn't hearing your voice any longer. You must have left the scouter in a drawer or something."
Bulma was horrified by the revelation that Vegeta had heard her voice more than a year prior to their chance meeting on Namek.
"I will say... your voice is much more pleasant than the one you call Krillin."
"He'll be coming back in a few days... and Yamcha too. When they return, please don't harm them..."
"Not a chance," scoffed Vegeta, "I'm not interested in them anyway. I will wait for Kakkarot, and we will not battle near your family's property."
They flew in silence for more than an hour when Bulma finally spoke again.
"So Raditz really was Goku's older brother, huh? But he was so nasty! The total opposite of Goku."
"Kakkarot was raised on Earth and supposedly had experienced a head injury when he was very young, which very well may have affected his disposition. Raditz seems to think he was about fourteen years Kakkarot's senior. You are also right in saying they were radically different from each other."
"When Raditz landed on Roshi's island, I started to wonder if Goku had a long-lost fraternal twin or something before he started talking... but it didn't take long to discover they're nothing alike! I can't sense energy like you or Krillin or Goku can, but I got a really bad feeling when he showed up. Not to mention he smelled terrible!"
Vegeta smirked. "By the time Raditz landed here, he'd been forced to go without a bath for more than a year. He took pride in his appearance, you know. He knew full well he was attractive and liked to use it to his advantage."
"Ick... he was so sleazy."
"Very sleazy and quick witted, a terrible combination. He may have been physically weak, but he wasn't the worst partner to work with all things considered- he got the job done and knew when to shut his mouth. He was also good at charming others and lulling them into a false sense of security. The only time I didn't loathe him was when we were drinking."
"You don't seem like somebody who would take an evening off. No offense..."
"None taken. I haven't partied in years."
"When Yamcha gets back, I'm going to take him out for dinner and dancing." Bulma's chest heaved as she sighed, hopeful and happy for her future with Yamcha.
"I take it you've been together for a long time?"
"On and off... he's cheated on me a few times. Maybe he'll return a changed man."
"Cheated on you? I don't understand that expression."
"What I mean is that he went out and had sex with different women when we were supposed to be in a monogamous relationship."
"Hmm. Well, don't look to me for any advice." He got up from his chair and went to the fridge and found wrapped sandwiches and fruit. He was hungry and brought two sandwiches and an apple back to his seat.
"It's official: you do eat more than Goku." Bulma eyed her passenger as he started eating and shook her head in disbelief. The airship's GPS beeped, indicating they'd arrived at the valley. She landed the airship in a patch of thin grass and shut the engines off.
"Arriving when I start eating. Typical. Alright..." the Saiyan threw the second unwrapped sandwich on the dashboard and disembarked.
Miles away from light pollution, the night sky revealed billions of stars and the band of the Milky Way galaxy that seemed to stretch for miles across the horizon.
"Wow! Look at the sky! Isn't it just gorgeous?" Bulma marvelled at the sight above.
"It looks really nice from a distance. Too bad the reality is much worse," the Saiyan snickered and bent down to pull up a clump of soil. He broke it up in his right hand and breathed in its scent several times, exhaling through his mouth, seemingly trying to get a taste for something in the earth.
He stood up straight and sniffed the dirt one last time before tossing it over his shoulder. "That way," he pointed northeast towards a snow-capped mountain range, "about five hundred meters."
They found his grave within fifteen minutes of searching; Vegeta relying on scent and night vision and Bulma relying on a flashlight and never straying too far from the Saiyan for fear of what might be moving through the grasses. A patch of young grass and crumbly soil clued Vegeta in.
"Hope you humans didn't bury him too deep..." Vegeta plunged his hands into the dirt and started throwing it to one side. His knuckles soon brushed against something he immediately recognized as bone and he started to sweep away the dirt around it. Soon, he realized it was a femur, huge and bright against the dark soil.
Raditz' corpse had been almost completely reduced to skeleton by that point, although a fair amount of his hair was still attached to the skull. The huge suit of armour hung around the shoulders and collarbones and Vegeta started to pull it off the body.
Five feet away, Bulma started to retch at the smell of decay and turned away, her mouth filling with saliva. "Ugh! That's disgusting! Is that armour what you were looking for, Vegeta?"
"Yes!" He called, inspecting the cracks to the armour and hoping the inner pockets were intact, "we can leave in a few minutes. You work with microchips, correct?" He pulled off Raditz' skull and shook it gently. He could hear something rattling inside.
"Yeah! Are you getting those too?"
Vegeta smashed the skull open and found three microchips inside, covered in dried grey matter. He pocketed them and dropped the skull back into the earth. He pulled the armour out and climbed out of the shallow grave.
"I'm so grossed out! Vegeta, I'll leave you to pay your final respects because I can't take that smell any more! See you at the ship." Bulma turned and jogged back to the ship, fearing she'd vomit if she lingered at the grave site any longer.
The Saiyan stared down at the bones and sighed. "You're the reason I'm in this mess, but you're also the reason I have a worthy opponent. Until we meet again, you stupid bastard," he sent a wave of intensely hot energy across the grave, which turned the bones and dirt to ash within seconds.
The wind picked up as Vegeta returned to the ship with the microchips and suit of upper body armour. He set them in the back and sat back down. He went to eat his sandwich when he realized his hands were filthy. "Ughhh..."
Bulma laughed and reached into her purse. "Try these," she handed him a few foil-wrapped wet napkins.
They returned home just after ten in the evening and went to the lab together. Vegeta carried the armour to a large steel table directly under a set of powerful lights and started to poke his fingers into its different internal pockets. He found sixteen different vials carrying near-microscopic labels in Galactic Standard; some containing seeds and liquid for Saibamen and others containing useful medications. Carefully inspecting the contents of each vial, he determined at least six of them were recreational substances. He put those vials in his pockets right away.
Sooner or later I'm going to crave a night out of my own head...
"Wait, if I can take a very tiny sample from those vials, I could probably create analogues to any medicines you've required in the past." Bulma offered, still unsure of how Vegeta would react to human drugs if he ever fell ill or was seriously injured.
"These ones, then," he gave her eight vials containing medicine, "these are drugs with genuine medical applications. Don't worry about the other eight, they're completely useless," he lied.
"Would you mind helping me label the samples? Any information you have about these medications would help me a great deal. It might take a while, so we'll order a pizza."
"You have a deal, Bulma."
Two days later, Vegeta's sprained ankle had recovered and he'd resumed his intense training. Raditz had been carrying an extremely powerful painkiller and after Bulma had taken a mere shaving off one of the tiny tablets (there had been more than 100 remaining in the 2 inch vial) and he'd rediscovered he only needed to take one to feel better.
After showering in the early afternoon, Vegeta ventured onto his balcony to get some fresh air and his eyes widened with surprise when he spotted the scene down on the ground: Kakkarot's kid and his wife, all the Namekians, and the Briefs were gathered around the reactivated Dragonballs, chattering excitedly.
"Oh, shit," he muttered, "I guess it's time. I'd best get ready."
He rushed back inside and changed into his old, tattered uniform, his gloves and his boots. It may not have been ideal, but he wanted to appear before Kakkarot as the prince of all Saiyans and not a refugee stranded on Earth. Dressed in his uniform, he watched from his balcony with his heart pounding as the young Namekian called Dende called forth the dragon.
To Be Continued