Chapter 4. Uncomfortable comforts

It took the woman less than a day to start complaining about the three Saiyajins she had allowed lodgings at the Capsule Corporation and it took Vegeta, who had predicted this, no time at all to be thoroughly done with her moaning. Kakarot's expectations proved to be spot on as well. It was good to have the Saiyajins around for training. The idiot and his spawn had shown up again after their lunch so that they could all spar together and they had done so for the remainder of that day and the one following it. The three Saiyajins availed themselves of some nice techniques Vegeta intended to copy, and having served as soldiers in the World Trade Organisation, they fought with the kind of merciless grit that he preferred in his opponents. Had he been faced with them when he still served in the WTO himself, the two men would have been his equals and their captain would have had a field day with him, but as it was, his time breaking his limits on Earth had completely cancelled them out. When he, Kakarot and their sons all phased into their super form to show off their advancement, the three soldiers were blown away by the display of might that was believed to be lost among their kind and had only been spoken of in legend. And, as it was with Saiyajin warriors, they had now made it their life goal to transcend as well.

From the sparse information they had volunteered, Vegeta learned that their squadron's original objective had been to infiltrate the imperial army, find him and bring him back home. The Marauder S4 attached itself to King Cold's main fleet where their captain worked on winning his favour and gathering intel on Vegeta's whereabouts. Things quickly went awry from there. Vegeta turned out to be galaxies away under Frieza's guardianship and inaccessible lest they unveiled their plot, which would have meant signing their own death warrants. Forced to bide their time and keep up the ruse, the Marauder S4 was swallowed up in the World Trade Organisation's unrelenting campaign for universal dominion and deployed to bring one after the other world under Cold's rule. Then home no longer was, their plot unravelled and time ran out for the Marauder S4. The three Saiyajins that made it to Earth, were the only ones who had escaped Cold's wrath long enough to still be around when he met his demise. The captain saw her men picked off one by one to coerce her continued commitment to the WTO's cause. That she only referred to her perished oppressor as that sadistic cunt made Vegeta think that he could well do without getting the particulars of her time served. She had chanced a passing touch at the still fresh scar running up her temple in the same way she had done when Vegeta addressed the much older mark under her eye, so he could hazard a guess that she had that sadistic cunt to thank for permanently putting her face out of sorts.

This was the only detail she had been willing to add to a story she left for her commander and lieutenant to tell. According to the men, their service became captivity that lasted for the bigger part of two decades – not counting their time underground on Earth – when they attempted to desert the imperial army after the Saiyajin genocide and they were given what they called their collars. It were chips in truth, devices implanted in their heads to control their power. Cold made them into weapons of mass destruction he kept in hyper sleep on his ship and brought out as needed to conquer planets for the intergalactic market. Their fates were eerily similar to Vegeta's own, the difference being that his oppressor had never bound his power, but rather cultivated it and pushed him to become stronger. Lord Frieza had used very different means to make him compliant. His collar had been a mental one, forged through years of grooming and poisoning the pliable mind of a frightened young boy who was taken as a ward to safeguard his father's allegiance to the empire. Saying that his service in the WTO had been voluntary was a gross overstatement, though for a long time Vegeta believed it was, and all the ruin that was wrought by his hands, had been of his own making. He had wanted to be a weapon of mass destruction.

That changed when he learned what had really happened to his people, learned how the cataclysm that caused their annihilation, had been orchestrated by the man he had been taught to name his lord. From that day on, all Vegeta had wanted was out. Out of the imperial army and out from under Frieza's thumb. And revenge, that too. Above all. It was what brought him to Earth and later Namek, but in place of the immortality he needed to defeat his oppressor, he gained a son to redeem him. The son who had inadvertently saved the three Saiyajins and avenged them as well. Like Vegeta back in the day, they seemed glad to leave the empire behind and it looked like they were already adjusting to the slow, peaceful pace of life on Earth.

Vegeta was in the kitchen wolfing down some seconds after spending his morning training in the gravity tank. Trunks, the antecedent liberator, sat across from him at the table eating the belated breakfast the woman's mother had made him. Ever since the boy entered the second year of his second decade a year ago, he did not deign to roll out of bed until well after ten and he had spent his whole summer break diligently sleeping gaps into his days again. When it first started, Vegeta expected his son was having one of the growth spurts that he could recall wearing him out as a boy, though being in the WTO had kicked him straight into manhood and he hadn't been allowed to sleep off spurts no matter how tired they made him. Vegeta gladly granted his son the kindness that had not been given him, but as Trunks kept oversleeping and the woman had to literally drag him out of bed for school in the mornings, it could hardly be called a spurt anymore. Vegeta had broached with the woman that for all his apparent brilliance, their son might be delayed – what he had wanted to say was retarded – because all Trunks did was sleep and he didn't seem to be getting any nearer to moving on from boyhood. The woman had, in that lofty way of hers, explained that humans matured gradually in what she called their teens, which spanned from their twelfth year to their nineteenth easily, and that Trunks actually seemed to be ahead of the curve. Vegeta didn't think the woman should have been sounding so elevated. That Earthlings took their whole second decade becoming men grown was not something to take pride in. It just went to show how undeveloped her race was.

Trunks had moved into the third year of his second decade four days ago and he was still getting his ten plus hours of sleep a night so Vegeta reckoned that his son was indeed following the human route in his development. Vegeta couldn't even sleep for ten consecutive hours. He needed four a night at most, five if he had gone hard on his training, and if he had to go without, he wouldn't start feeling that until day eight rolled around. This did not go for Earthlings. The woman would start the physical decline after missing one night of sleep and the mental deterioration tended to follow not hours after that. Vegeta had to keep reminding himself that Trunks was her son as well and that the boy wasn't being a contemptible timewaster. He and his son were not the same and it wouldn't be fair to stick the boot in for something the boy couldn't help. He therefore left Trunks to scarfing his heaps of eggs and toast – his appetite at least as ravenous as that of any Saiyajin – and ate his own fill. As always, there was more than enough to share. That his son wasn't considered a prince on Earth, did not mean that he was not treated like one. The women in his life waited on him hand and foot and, in the woman's mother's case, that was true for Vegeta as well. If he was struck with a rumbling stomach after an evening in the training chamber and Mrs. Briefs happened to still be up, she was whipping out her pots and pans to fix him something no matter how late it was.

The woman that now came into the kitchen wasn't inclined to take care of his stomach should he be starving, and he would rather starve than eat anything she made as she was a lousy cook, but she did fix his training equipment whenever he broke it and had used her awesome brainpower to invent many a nifty thing over the years to aid him in transcending. She wasn't treating him like a prince though. Not even close.

Trunks quickly moderated his conduct to not displease his mother. He made a big swallow of egg, swiftly wiped his cheeks and sat up straight piping a: "Hi mom." and giving her one of his big, toothy grins. He had that disarming thing on lock-down, his son.

Bra, dressed in matching white sundress with her beautiful mother, was on Bulma's hip sucking her little thumb while beholding the world with her huge, blue, dauntless eyes. She cooed at Vegeta and threw out her pudgy arms, fat little fingers greedily grasping handfuls of air to get to him. The woman ignored this and removed their daughter from his view in a thoughtless, default move.

Bulma saw through Trunks' performance immediately – she wasn't a genius for nothing – but let the boy off the hook and slid his fork under his nose without comment. Trunks took the hint and the utensil and resumed his breakfast in small bites.

"You shouldn't allow her to do that." Vegeta mentioned casually and, unlike his son, with a thoroughly stuffed face at catching another glimpse of his daughter and seeing that thumb get stuck in her mouth again.

"It gives her comfort." Bulma dismissed his comment while hoisting the girl more soundly on her slender hip.

Vegeta knew firsthand that those weren't really fit for carrying babes on, but the woman that had warmed his bed these past fourteen years or so, had the stems to compensate that. She was all legs topped off with a good rack and, the underdevelopment of her race notwithstanding, he had never found her physique lacking in aesthetics. She still was a treat to his eyes. He gave her bare legs a glance more out of habit than an immediate urge to plant his flag and name them his. The show of milky white thigh gave him some encouragement, but it got dampened when, like she would, the woman made a point of putting the table between his eyes and her legs. The impeccable queen that reigned here, had decreed that anything involving sex was reserved for the bedroom, or, if he got lucky, the bathroom or that kitchen counter behind her back. As her deviant jester – which was by all intents and purposes his position at this court – Vegeta made it his business to call her convictions into question and could sometimes sway her. Rarely these days. He had stopped trying very hard. Her frigidity was the least of many reasons why he had never named her a queen for true. She may have usurped her parents to wave the sceptre in this place, she did not reign him. Not in mind, nor in heart, not even in body all that much anymore. A chill ambience did nothing for him mood-wise. He was more for hot and heavy.

"She will get crooked teeth." Vegeta said passingly, his runny eggs instilling more curiosity in him than those slender legs he would have to duck under the table for if he wanted another glimpse at them.

Bulma shrugged. "Then we will get her braces."

Vegeta scoffed and he wasn't sure whether it was for her words or her hiding the best thing on her to stop him from pissing all over her prim court. "You better invent some that stick then. Those chompers will budge for nothing." Nothing but a good smack in the mouth that was, but he swallowed the addition. It would only be fuel for the woman's perpetual mistrust in him and his capabilities as a father. "What is wrong with teaching her some discipline? You Earthlings do everything backwards."

"What do you even care, Vegeta? You never so much as look at her." Bulma recriminated.

Vegeta swallowed the bitter remark he wanted to give to that. It wasn't really possible to look at his daughter when she was removed from his view with the same ease as those legs. He didn't know why he still bothered engaging. His conversations with the mother of his babes invariably ended in conflict. And he did care about his daughter, even if the woman didn't believe him capable of it. At that moment, as an illustration, Mrs. Briefs came flitting back into the kitchen and took Bra over from Bulma to watch over her in his stead. She whisked Bra away cooing louder than the toddler did. The woman looked relieved to have her hands free. She sent them down to smooth out her skirt, then flicked back her slick, blue hair as if casting off the remnants of maternity, turning into the successful and genius corporate woman she liked being best.

"Your monkey friends are intimidating my employees again." Bulma continued her tireless campaign of condescendence. "Go tell them to knock it off."

Vegeta had no come-back to swallow on that. After suffering them for as long as he had, her insults simply bounced off. Trunks was staring very hard at his plate, so allowing Vegeta to keep a shred of face in front of him. A considerate article his firstborn was, smart as a whip and very cognizant too. Much unlike his mother who's awareness always needed time to catch up with her tongue. Right now, it was Vegeta's easy conduct that somehow got her there and she stepped down the sandbagging.

"You promised to keep them in line." Bulma reminded him. She sounded disapproving, but the ever-present trepidation was there as well. Confronting him still made her wary. Once she got aware of doing it, anyhow.

The woman had learned to hide her fear, and well enough for their offspring to not pick up on it. Vegeta had learned to hide how that stung him too. He had done it for so long that he had stopped caring. They had both become experts at playing their parts and over the years, the pretence had grown uncomfortably comfortable. The only times where they still felt obliged to drop their masks, was when they got physical and buried the hatchet in favour of giving license to him burying himself in her, preferably in her bed where it was deemed proper. It was all routine and Vegeta thrived on that. The wearying drone of his mundane life had become uncomfortably comfortable as well.

"Did you fix the training chamber?" Vegeta turned to more pressing matters. He had broken the gravity booster weeks ago and was convicted to using the gravity tank until the woman found time to fix it. The tank could only go up to 400 G and it wasn't giving him the resistance he needed.

"I will get around to it. I am too busy now." Bulma said preoccupiedly as she brushed a strand of lavender hair away from Trunks' forehead and mumbled that he needed a haircut before school started in a week. She followed it up with a recurring question of her own that was meant for their son: "Have you cleaned your room like I told you to?"

To which Trunks, like her, came up with a variation on the same excuse to postpone: "I haven't gotten around to it yet. Can I do it later? I am supposed to go over to Goten's to help him finish rebuilding the shed we… err, he blew up the other day." the gnat was talking himself into a corner and rushed on in the hopes of diverting his mother from the fact that he and his just as gnatty friend had been going around wrecking things again. "And after, we want to go spar with the Saiyajins."

"Again?" Bulma demanded, giving Vegeta a very pointed look.

Trunk's diversion was working, although it didn't quite have the effect he had been looking for. Putting his father up as a lightning rod was clearly making him regret his words, but the thing the boy really didn't want, was what his mother next said.

"Do you see what is happening? All he can talk about is those horrible Saiyajins. They are a bad influence. You should get them to move on."

"No, mom…"

"The boy is a warrior. Let him fight." Vegeta cut across his son's spluttering, his interest in finishing his plate. Only fools fought fools.

Bulma homed in on Trunks again, finger held under his nose. "After you are done fixing that shed you broke, I want you to come home and clean your room, mister. And you are going to apologize to Chichi and tell her that it will never happen again."

"Okay, mom." Trunks mumbled meekly.

"I will be at the factory today." Bulma announced. She threw Vegeta one last contemptuous look she never bothered hiding, kissed Trunks goodbye on the cheek and left.

"Will you come train with us later, father?" Trunks asked eagerly, his mouth already stuffed with food again.

"I might." Vegeta rose. "Go clean your room, gnat. We both know that shed is long fixed. If you want to tell lies to get out of doing your chores, you should come up with better ones."

Trunks hid his caught out look by staring at his plate hard again, his pale cheeks flushing a furious red. "I was going to do it later." he provided remorsefully. "I just don't want mom to get mad at me."

"Then do your chores when you are told to do them." Vegeta said. He walked around the table and gave his son a pat on the shoulder to signal the rebuke done. Apart from being cognizant and smart, the boy was also sensitive to rejection.

Trunks beamed up at him happily. If only his mother had been that easily wooed. "I am going to kick Ringo's behind today." he put forth stridently.

Of course the boy would derive pleasure from taking down that tall lanker. Optical heroics. Trunks wasn't going to admit that his strength left the three Saiyajins so far behind they could spend the rest of their lives failing to catch up. Vegeta decided not to point that out. His son was finally starting to act like a Saiyajin. It was about time too. The pathetic Earthling traits had prevailed in him long enough.

"Very well, boy." Vegeta said and he left the kitchen grinning.