Human Hospitality
by scoutergreen

Chapter 61

Change Remains the Same

Exhausted from a full day at the fitness center, Vegeta locked his bedroom door and dragged himself into the washroom to take a hot shower before retiring to the comfort of his bed for an evening.

He could barely stand in the shower, eyes fluttering shut more than a few times as the firm spray of hot water hit his shoulders and ran down his backside. Vegeta had trained by himself for close to four hours. After his training, Vegeta had challenged several soldiers to spar, and he had won every single fight within three thirty second rounds.

The Saiyan prince was twenty seven years old and he was just beginning the long prime of his life. He had reached his full height by that point, but his slim frame was starting to put on more muscle. His stomach had always been flat, but the youthful layer of fat he'd carried there was vanishing at a steady rate and without much effort. His once-chubby, youthful face had become defined and more masculine. Famously flexible, fast, reactive and resilient, the Saiyan's growing physical strength was only adding to his notorious reputation.

Vegeta managed to dry himself off enough so his nightshirt didn't cling to his skin before he limped over to his bed and practically fell in once he'd pulled the blankets back.

Two hours later, a rapping at his door pulled Vegeta out of the delicious, dark warmth he'd sunk into and back into real time, burning eyes snapping open and his jaw tightening.

"Fuck off, I'm sleeping!" He snarled, eyes squeezing shut when his bedroom lights automatically turned on.

"Vegeta, it's an important call," Nappa's gravelly voice was even more annoying than usual, "get up so we can respond to this in the main room."

Groaning, Vegeta forced himself out of bed, pulled on his thick black robe, and left his bedroom. Body aching, he shuffled into common living area he shared with Raditz and Nappa, and found Raditz seated on the couch with a burning hand-rolled joint pinched between his fingers.

"It's Zarbon," Raditz warned, taking a final puff before setting his joint in an ashtray and resuming the call. As he resumed the call, he ducked out of sight for a split second to exhale the smoke he'd been holding.

"Finally! Why do you delay me so, Vegeta?" Zarbon lazily tossed his thick braid behind his shoulder as he studied the three Saiyans in their apartment.

"Sleeping," muttered Vegeta, rubbing sleep from the corner of his right eye, "what do you want, Zarbon? Make it fast so I can get back to bed."

"Why must the three famous Saiyans be so snippy," Zarbon pointed to Vegeta, "stupid," he pointed to Nappa, "and stoned?" He finally gestured at Raditz, "I did not call you lot in the hopes of being put on hold for close to ten minutes while you figured out which way is up! I'm actually working right now while you sit on your asses."

"My apologies for the delay, Sir," Nappa managed to speak before Vegeta could open his mouth to retort, "how may we be of assistance?"

"I'm just letting you three morons know that your shore leave is being cut short by one week. Frieza wants you to accompany a high-security delivery. Enjoy your remaining three weeks, boys, and do take care to get your heads straight before reporting for duty."

The call disconnected. All three of them groaned with annoyance. Raditz switched the television back to a regular broadcast and resumed smoking. Nappa said something about going out to see a movie and wandered out of the living room. Shaken out of his sleepy state, Vegeta took a seat on the couch and absentmindedly watched the television screen, not really taking in anything around him. I need to find a way out of this life, he thought, or I'm going to go totally insane or be dead in five years.

"I'm sick of this," he spoke up, voice gravelly and monotonous, "I'm real tired of this."

"Then change the channel," Raditz was rolling another joint, "it's cool if you want to watch something else."

Vegeta glared at Raditz through narrowed eyes and hissed with annoyance. "No, you idiot. I'm sick of dealing with fucked up people and their fucked up demands. Why the fuck am I still answering to others? It's all bullshit. I need to work for myself and myself only."

"Oh, it's not that bad," Raditz sealed his joint shut and waited for it to dry, "you're just getting into one of your little serious moods again. Deliveries are fun, man! We pick up a fucking package, take our share if it's something fun, and drop it off wherever we're needed. C'mon, have some of this," Raditz paused to light his smoke and took a puff before passing it to the younger Saiyan, "you need to mellow out."

The Saiyan prince took a long drag, held the smoke inside until he couldn't stand it, and exhaled. Almost immediately he felt like the couch became bigger and deeper, while the television screen pulled away. "So what are you doing with your night, Raditz?"

"Waiting on a bitch to get over here," the elder Saiyan took his joint back and smirked, "you don't even need to pay 'em if you're willing to pretend you like them and make it something consistent with 'em when you're on shore leave. Honestly, it's good economic sense to just dig out one girl. The main drawback is the bitch likes to eat and I've gotta feed her, but whad'dya gonna do?"

"And with your eloquence and charm, what bitch wouldn't want to invest all her time in you, Raditz?" Vegeta rose from the couch, feeling a bit dizzy, and decided he would return to bed.

"And people say that you're the smart one," Raditz took another drag of his joint, "ah ha ha ha ha!"

The interior of this ship Vegeta had arrived in stunned Malar, who toured through it with her expression brightening minute by minute and her lips spreading apart into huge grin of childlike wonder.

"This ship is incredible, Vegeta! Wherever did you get such an incredible vehicle?"

"On planet Earth. One of the Earthlings... uh, they're known as homo sapiens, built and designed it. But even the ship's architect told me this kind of ship is very advanced for their species. They've just barely gotten into space at this point. The fact that one designed a ship capable of interplanetary travel is a fucking fluke."

"Easy with the cursing, Vegeta," Malar inspected the electrical panel closely and retrieved a small screwdriver from her shirt pocket, "hmmm, it looks like something inside your electrical panel has shorted out..." she pulled the large cover off the panel to reveal a maze of circuits and multicoloured wires, "...wow! This is something else. You must be very good friends with the person who designed this ship, if they went to this much effort."

Vegeta smirked. "Oh, you could say that..."

After ten minutes of poking around the ship, inspecting panels and the condition of the interior walls, Malar decided the problem was likely electrical.

"The good news is, I think that I can fix this in a day or two," Malar put her screwdriver back in her pocket, "but the bad news is that I'm in no state to start working on this ship right now. C'mon, I'm hungry!"

Vegeta retrieved one of the bottles of fruit liqueur he had picked up at the last station he'd visited and followed Malar off the ship. They went through the repair shop and into a secluded area Malar had turned into her private living area.

She had a small lounge with two long seats, a wide, low table, and colourful tapestries covering the walls and ceiling. She noticed Vegeta opening the bottle he'd carried with him and fetched two small glasses. Glasses set on the table, Malar picked up the bottle, took a sniff of the liquid inside, and decided to try some of it. "Very nice stuff, Vegeta. You have good taste."

"Thanks," Vegeta watched as Malar filled his glass and topped up her own, "I missed this stuff."

"The people you met on that planet don't have alcohol?"

"Nothing like this," Vegeta took a small sip, "but they're certainly advanced enough to know how to distill alcohol. Really, the things I've been up to would shock you."

Malar smirked. "Try me."

After a minute of consideration, he decided to reveal some of his life: the grind of missions and travel and erratic schedules and hard living, his constant training, the isolation, and his seemingly spontaneous decision to defect from Frieza's army after spending years plotting his ascent through the ranks before taking Frieza's position for himself. About losing a battle on Earth, and after pausing for a long moment, he decided to tell her that he'd been compelled to return to the planet after seeking medical attention and had spent more than three years there.

He did not tell her about the Dragonballs or of his brutal death at the hands of Frieza. She did not need to know about that, he decided, Malar would try to get involved and I'd have to kill her.

Malar didn't seem particularly surprised by this. She continued drinking and mulled over his words. He'd been through a lot of abuse in his short life. Nobody could come out of what he'd been through without serious psychological scarring. "You have yet to truly shock me, Vegeta."

"Okay," he took a larger sip of his drink, "I saw Frieza die. He was chopped up into bits and burned to dust," the corners of his mouth turned up and he laughed.

The mechanic's large brown eyes widened with shock and she seemed to look through Vegeta, swallowing a hard lump in her throat, "you can't be serious..."

"I saw it with my own eyes. My own eyes. Smelled his flesh burning up. I'm really free now, and I can do whatever the fuck I want. I recuperated well outside PTO territory and actually spent close to two and a half years on the planet called Earth, getting stronger than ever and eating a lot of delicious food and sleeping for as long as I wanted and fucking this incredible-looking woman..." he sneered and ran his tongue across his teeth, "...and basking in the sun for hours on end. A small family took me in for some reason, and I've been living goddamn king!" He cackled and had another drink, "everything I could want, they provided: training facilities. Food. Clothing. Entertainment. A really comfortable bed. Means to travel if I so desired. Sex. I give my protection to them, and they in turn have learned to respect my power."

"Or they fear you..."

Vegeta shrugged. "That works too. Homo sapiens are not very strong, but some of them are reasonably intelligent. The woman who built and designed the ship I arrived in is actually the mother of my child."

Malar's jaw hung open in shock before morphing into a grin tinged with disbelief. "What?! You're a father?! Uh... congratulations! Wow! That's incredible news. So th-th-that means... you found somebody compatible? I mean, it's just that I thought all the female Saiyans, you know..."

"Yeah," the Saiyan decided it was his turn to pour the liquor, "I first learned of the genetic compatibility between Saiyans and humans several years ago, oh, "human" is the more common name for homo sapiens... and after Frieza vanished, I wound up being stranded on Earth. It's a long story I'd rather not get into. The mother and her family invited me to live with them, and I did live with them for a while. But I've left twice now... once way before the kid and now..."

"Um..." Malar's eyes narrowed, "why? Sounds like you had a pretty nice deal."

Vegeta rolled his eyes and considered his next words carefully. Finally, he crafted what he considered to be a diplomatic response: "the mother of the child and I have serious difficulty getting along. She is aware that I chose to leave, and assured me she was capable of raising the child. She is extremely wealthy, has plenty of resources at hand, she's intelligent, and the child has decent grandparents and an extended social network available to him or her. The mother will be fine and I do trust her enough to raise the child properly for at least a few years. To be honest, I really don't want anything to do with the kid. My plan right now is to see the thing through adolescence, seeing as how... eventful that period tends to be for Saiyans, and that's about it. She'll be the superior parent in the long run. I'm not cut out to nurture some infant. I think the kid's an infant. She was pregnant not all that long ago. I can't be around a baby. I've killed babies, and it fucked me up. I am very fucked up, Malar. I rarely sleep through a night without enduring some nightmare. Sometimes I think I hear voices; whether it's a hallucination or not I don't know, but I do know that I'll be better off if I don't get too involved."

Malar stared at Vegeta as though he had just spat in her face. She took several minutes to consider his words. His admission to what sounded like mental illness left her both frightened and very sad for him. Finally, she found the first words: "you left twice ?"

The Saiyan merely shrugged.

"Do you really intend to return to this planet called Earth?"

"When the time is right and when I am satisfied with my progress."

Malar's expression turned very sad and she reached for her glass again. She was getting very drunk. "You have obviously changed, and yet you've remained exactly the same. Always thinking about yourself. Always pushing towards some goal beyond the reach of mere mortals. But it's always about you, and your drive, and you will not be stopped, will you?"

"No," Vegeta's reply was instant, his eyes locked on hers. At that moment he wanted to break her neck, but he sat there, seemingly stuck in his seat, reeling as he took in her words.

The mechanic shook her head with obvious disapproval. They drank in silence. A fat tear rolled down Malar's cheek.

"I miss Jabuka," she sighed, "why did he have to die? It makes no sense..."

"Used to work with him," Vegeta muttered, avoiding Malar's eyes, "took his work seriously."

Malar nodded. "I know. He told me that he knew you a long time ago... he'd settled down, you know? Jabuka had left behind all the violent work. He was going to sell his little apartment on 56 and come up here permanently. He made his money as a body guard or by working as a courier... who would go out of their way to hurt him after so much time had passed? It's all just senseless..."

Vegeta felt like he was going to be sick. He recalled Jabuka saying something similar in that dingy bar, although he had told Vegeta he was still working as an assassin. Was Malar withholding details, or did she not know all that the man had been up to?

"I'm sorry, Malar," he shoved his glass away and sighed, "the loss has obviously affected you. I'm going to sleep."

Malar rubbed her swollen eyes. "There's a guest room down the hall. Second door on the right. When you wake up, go make something to eat. I'm going to be working on the ship and I can already tell that I won't want to talk to you for a long time."

Ego stinging, Vegeta left the living area and found a small bedroom. When he shut the door and turned the lock, the sound of Malar's sobs reached him. Vegeta had heard the cries of countless grieving women, but for the first time in his life, the sound left him shaken to his core.