Human Hospitality
by scoutergreen
Chapter 71
A Little Common Ground
The wicker fan that lazily spun over the table Kohara shared with her contact had seen better days; it was riddled with holes and wobbled as it spun, producing a tiny squeal that managed to fade deeper into the background noise the longer the bounty hunter sat in the grungy tavern.
"So what's your interest in this guy, eh Kohara? Vegeta ain't one to be fooled with, you know. He's a strong sonuvabitch," the contact, an ageing bounty hunter named Altere, had always been reasonably friendly with Kohara and was almost concerned for her, "I'm not going anywhere near him. Don't even care if the bounty is so big. Not worth it, as far as I'm concerned."
Kohara's pale face went hard with rage and she took a long sip of the lukewarm brew she'd ordered from the bar, and she shuddered at the awful taste that filled her mouth after she swallowed. The water on the planet (what little there was) was far too polluted to drink and one of the only things available to drink at the few establishments around was a slightly bitter and cloudy alcoholic brew. "Ugh... why do you live here, dude?"
Altere sighed and took a long sip of brew from his ceramic mug. "For the scenery and amenities, of course." The man stood six and a half feet tall, lean and especially graceful. His skin was the colour of dried orange peel, his cat-like face lined with wrinkles from decades of sun exposure. His thinning hair, the colour of limestone, was pulled back into a tight braid that hung down his long back. A pair of narrow and deep-set eyes the colour of polished turquoise stone stared into Kohara's, silently probing her for an answer to the question she did not answer.
Kohara stared back at the man and hissed through bared teeth before finally speaking. "It's personal shit, alright?"
"Oh?" Altere's chin tilted up and he raised his eyebrows, interest piqued.
"You don't wanna know."
"On the contrary, my dear, I do want to know! You haven't exactly given me any good reason to hand over the information you seek, should I really have any..."
The young woman leaned back against her seat and ran her tongue over her teeth. "Um. I was fourteen when it happened. My father ran a parts supply depot for Frieza, got into some major debt problems... and when we couldn't pay the annual tax to Frieza, he sent Vegeta and his two cronies to our house to collect. They burned my father's business to the ground, killed all of his employees, and then moved onto our house, killed all the men and my mother first... the two big guys he works with took off with my older sister..." she faded off and shuddered.
"How did you survive? Vegeta's usually so thorough in his work."
"One of Vegeta's cronies figured punching me in the back of the head would kill me, but it only knocked me out. I woke up some time later to the house catching on fire, everybody else dead, and Vegeta and his partners long gone. I managed to crawl of the house out and to relative safety, was taken to a hospital, and told to leave the planet the moment I could walk in a straight line."
"How old were you?"
"I already told you! Fourteen!"
"And you were just expected to leave your planet?"
Kohara leaned back in her seat and glared at the old man across the table. "Yeah, I was! Nobody else wanted to even get a whiff of that sort of bad business with Frieza for fear of attracting his wrath, so banishing me was the most sensible course of action. I drifted for about a year, learned to take real good care of myself, and the rest is history."
"How old are you now?"
"Heh, I stopped keeping track a while ago. I might be thirty three or something, maybe older."
Altere considered Kohara's story. It sounded true, he decided, and without a word he reached into his black canvas backpack and produced a small buttoned pouch made of leather. He retrieved three photographs and slid them across the table to the young bounty hunter, who was quick to pick them up and inspect them.
"What the fuck is that thing?" Kohara's eyes narrowed as she studied the strange object in the printed photograph, trying to decipher the strange script on the side of what had to be a ship from a planet out of PTO boundaries.
"Friend of mine sent me a couple of interesting shots of a strange ship sighted on a few planets... it very well may be Vegeta's ship."
The woman snorted and tilted her head, trying to see if she could piece together the writing. She'd never seen anything like it before! What sort of strange aliens had created a ship like that, and if Vegeta was using it, had it been given to him freely? "You ever seen script like this, Altere? This is some weird shit..."
"I have not."
"This has to be from a place outside PTO boundaries," Kohara sighed and considered the pattern of the stars in the photographs, "and some guys don't cross those boundaries..."
If he's on a planet outside of PTO borders and secured some sort of alien ship, they must have have a presence in some sort of nearby galactic territory... and if Sikari refuses to go beyond the border...
The older man cleared his throat. "Don't tell me you're gonna... oh, Kohara, that's just stupid!"
"I might," Kohara tried to suppress a smirk, "who knows? Anyway, what do I owe you for the pictures?"
Altere barely concealed a laugh and returned Kohara's smirk. "When you come back alive with Vegeta's head in your hands and you collect that bounty, we can discuss payment. I wish you all the best of luck."
"Cheers," Kohara took the photographs and slipped them into a pouch in her leather bag and pushed herself out of her seat, "it's much appreciated. At any rate, I'm sick of the sludge that passes for beer on this planet, so I'll be on my way now."
Vegeta couldn't remember the last time he'd had difficulty walking across a smooth tile floor to access a refrigerator barely twenty feet from his bed. He shuffled into the kitchen, grabbed a large bottle of water, and shuffled back to his bed.
"Hey..." Trunks' right eye cracked open and he gave his father a weak nod from the nearby couch, "good t'see you up..."
"Mm," Vegeta opened the bottle and took a long gulp of cold water, sighing with relief when his parched mouth became moist again, "whatever, kid."
The Saiyan set his water on the bedside table, lay back down, and cycled in and out of a shallow sleep for several more hours, waking long enough to take a few sips of water before his eyes would droop and he'd sink back into the bed.
Trunks watched his father as his own emotions kept swinging between burning resentment and confused pity for the man. For the first time, Trunks noticed that the usually stone-faced and mercurial Saiyan slept on his side, curled up under a layer of blankets pulled to his chin. More often than not, the only visible part of Vegeta was his hair. When Trunks did see his father's face, he noticed the hardness in his features gave way to something that could only be inner turmoil. Sometimes, he tossed and turned in his sleep, grimacing and begging for some unknown tormentor to leave him alone.
Although he couldn't be entirely certain, Vegeta finally rose from his bed after what felt like a full day of sleeping, body still aching, and walked into the kitchen to find Trunks cooking several large pieces of chicken on an electrical grill.
"I figured you'd be up soon, so I started making something for both of us to eat..." Trunks spoke nervously, unsure of how his father would react. The man hadn't been stable for weeks.
"Mm," Vegeta sat down at the table, "that's fine. Serve me when it's ready."
Trunks had already grilled two full chicken legs and breasts and put it on a plate along with chunks of roasted sweet potato and sauteed spinach. Vegeta ate right away, tearing apart the chicken with his fingers and cracking the bones with his teeth to suck out any marrow. At one point, he stopped and rose from his chair to retrieve a sealed half gallon bottle of a sugary cola.
"Don't tell me you drin-" Trunks stopped himself before he said any more, certain it would be enough to set off his father.
"This stuff isn't too bad once in a while. Your mother once yelled at me once because she found out I'd been taking money from her purse to go buy chips and salsa from a store down the street. She said that she couldn't believe I eat what you people call junk food. You kind of sound like her."
Trunks cracked up laughing at the image of his father doing something as mundane as picking up junk food at a convenience store. "You ever try one of those slushy drinks?"
Vegeta looked at his son through narrowed eyes and cleared his throat. "The black cherry is good," he muttered before clearing his throat again, "so I take it that corner store still exists seventeen years in the future?"
"Not exactly. Mom basically stocked up on every supply imaginable when the android crisis started going from bad to worse, and that included a thirty year supply of cigarettes and enough syrup to keep one of those machines churning out sugary slush for a lifetime."
Vegeta snorted and rolled his eyes. "So she still smokes, eh? It figures she would. Hmm... you do look a bit like her."
"I think it's the hair," Trunks offered nervously, "but she says I have your facial features."
"Did she say she was glad you didn't get my hairline?"
Trunks bit his lip and looked away, which Vegeta took as a "yes". He snorted and rolled his eyes. "It figures she'd say that."
They ate in silence for several comfortable minutes. Trunks was very amused by his father's choice of junk food, and the words they had just exchanged had been some of the friendliest ever. He was certain his father's words about his mother were tinged with fondness, which he had not expected whatsoever.
Vegeta broke the silence as he cleared his plate: "You were a fucking idiot to come after me like that."
"What were you thinking?! Why did you just wander off like that?" Trunks shot back without considering his words, and he was certain the full-blooded Saiyan would lose his temper.
Instead, Vegeta shrugged. "This place is fucked up, and it's fucking with my head... I just went for an impulsive walk, that's all. I'll get over it."
Trunks wondered if he should even respond. After another familiar moment of tense consideration, he did. "Well, you were maybe twenty miles from our living area here, walking around in circles. So, uh... that's quite the walk, I guess. Do you want to leave? We can- I mean, only if you want."
" Yeah right! And pass up the chance to reach a new level of power? Forget it. You leave if you're going to pussy out. I can only keep going up. I'm staying in here."
Trunks grumbled and went back to eating his meal. Living in such close quarters with his father had been an intimidating prospect in itself, but doing it for such an extended period of time in complete isolation was perhaps the most frightening thing he'd ever been subjected to in his already chaotic and violent lifetime.
His mother had described Vegeta as "a bit on the crazy side", which had been nothing short of an understatement. Vegeta was, as far as Trunks could tell, absolutely batshit crazy. His moods swung from cool and impersonal but professional conduct to vicious anger that included bursts of physical abuse to paralysing depression that seemed to render him mute. There were occasions when he was talkative, revealing the sharp wit and eloquence his mother had spoken of when Trunks had been younger and curious about his father, and for a brief second he could almost understand why his mother may have sought his company. For all of his overt aggression and his dangerous reputation, Vegeta also wielded a charismatic energy that drew others in whether they liked it or not.
With that said, everything else about the Saiyan's personality repulsed Trunks. As far as he could tell, Vegeta was a proudly violent man, prejudiced against all non-Saiyans by default, deeply angry, sexist, foul-mouthed, and worst of all, he saw absolutely nothing wrong with his personality or behaviour.
He may have been funny and well-spoken, but what exactly did his mother see in the man? It seemed like the bad far outweighed any good in the man.
Trunks just couldn't figure it out. He didn't want to be in the chamber any longer, but he felt he had no choice. If he didn't watch and train with his father, who would? Did his father have any friends out there?
Bulma secured her cargo in the back of her airship in preparation for her trip to Kami's lookout, trying her best to suppress the feeling of dread brewing in her gut. She was worried about Vegeta, but she was especially worried about her son.
Something had happened in that space they were in, she was sure of it, but she couldn't figure out what it was.
Get it through your head, dummy, Vegeta's probably going nuts in that time chamber. He's a few cards short of a deck on a good day, for godssake!
She shuddered and for the first time in many years she said a little prayer, asking whatever was out there to look after both of the Saiyans in her life.