Vegeta stood arms folded on the lawn where the last dew clung in glittering droplets to the grass while the sun steadily diminished them. It showed all the promise of becoming another – by Earth's standards – hot summer's day. His son had lucked out with the generous weather this holiday. There hadn't been any rain in over a moon's turn and the snarl of cloud Vegeta had spotted overhead when he exited the back compound earlier, had long since drifted away to make room for clear blue sky. The moon was still visible, a precise, innocent half-disc just hanging up there to mock him and his ill-bridled instincts. Another, more proximate source of mockery, was his adversary standing across from him. The two underlings were there as well, and his son and the idiot spawn who were getting increasingly hyper from their building excitement. The idiot had something big planned, something Vegeta probably didn't want to miss since it involved him having gone up to Korin's Tower for a bag of senzu beans. That was surely what had moved his son to get up early this morning and it was the only thing keeping Vegeta from heading off into the tank to train like he had intended when he got out of the house and found them all gathered out there.
They were a Saiyajin short. Why the fierce little captain wasn't present, was anyone's guess and no one was asking Vegeta, even if their noses would be pointing him out as the most likely person to know. He smelled of her. Blatantly so. His shower had been a purposely slap-dash one. To keep the memory fresh. For himself and for those two arseholes she didn't want advised. She'd had some nerve asking him to sneak out of her room unnoticed. That treacherous creature clearly thought she could persuade her underlings to keep taking liberties, as she called it. Vegeta didn't share her optimism. When he ran into them in the back compound, the lanker and the idiot's brother had needed no words at all to communicate their abandon-cause countenance. Vegeta wasn't willing to bank on the apparent loyalty they felt towards him, and that was through no fault of their own. Their captain could charm the moon down from the sky. If she put her manipulative talents to use, she would turn them back onto her in no time. She was welcome to try, although everything in him that made him a man was still vehemently disagreeing with these rational calculations. That thing in him, the aggressive thing driving him to give chase, kept playing up. He would back off if that was what she really wanted, but he refused to play along and act like their trysts hadn't happened.
His adversary was doing enough of that in his stead. Very uncomfortably so. Being raised on Earth made Kakarot as coy about the carnal as all other Earthlings and he upheld the same restrictive morals. He was one of the few men who actually adhered to the rules of this monogamous society. The idiot was on Vegeta's nerves, per custom, and the clear disapproval on Vegeta's recent doings Kakarot kept trying to circumvent, wasn't doing anything to better that. Vegeta would have told him to make a point, but his heart wasn't really in it. His gaze was drawn to the back compound. It would no longer serve to house the Saiyajins. The underlings had accepted the capsule house Vegeta had given them along with the advice to stop wasting their time hounding his heels. They had raised no objections. Vegeta didn't know whether they were even capable of it, trained as soldiers were to follow orders, but they hadn't seemed affronted by his dismissal. Nothing like their captain when Vegeta tried to give her the capsule house.
Well, he noted dryly to himself as he looked at the shattered windowpane, at least he wasn't the only one who had stopped using doors. It was pretty indicative of the state of affairs that his bane, unlike him who had been in a hurry to get to her, had been inspired to use the window only to get away from him. The blinds were hanging on by a thread after the violence suffered. Vegeta had liked those better when it had just been that one tilted slat serving to taunt him. The window's current condition was a self-explanatory and adequate answer to his bid for exclusivity. It wasn't a favourable one. He may have jumped the gun and screwed himself out of a deal that could have been better, but seemed not half bad now that he may very well be left with an even lousier arrangement. As in, no arrangement at all. If he truly prided himself in sticking to his words, which he did, then he would have to adhere to the resolution he had forced.
Her swift departure could still mean nothing, Vegeta reasoned with himself. Jumping through a window for dramatic effect was the kind of off-the-wall crazy shit to be expected from a wayward little spitfire. He had become intimately aware that nothing out of her big mouth could be trusted. She took far too much delight in clashing and designing crafty schemes. The events that had started off his morning did not spell reluctance, even if her words and the state of that window did. While they had been sharing her futon in afterglow, she had literally told him to fuck off and stopped him from leaving at the same time. A made-up mind was not something she could boast possessing. Nor an untroubled one, come to think of it. There was a reason why she wasn't sleeping and it had little to do with perceiving it as more time wasted. Sleep had raised shadows for Vegeta once, in the first years after deserting the WTO, and he could spot combat stress at a glance. The fierce little captain was still stuck in the war zone.
He had seen such fear in her eyes, it was haunting to think back on. That it had nothing to do with him, that he had actually been able to provide her some solace from it, was enough for him to consider going back on his words. He could share. He had shared the woman with her weakling second choice for years. At least his current competition had an actual skillset to bring to the table. Vegeta was up against battle-hardened warriors instead of a sad-arsed fuck-nut who was so far below any benchmark, it made keeping a fly from landing on Vegeta's food a bigger challenge. Hence the lack of incentive to ever swat the weakling. There was little more cause to wipe the underlings from the board at this point, but that could still change. Vegeta would just have to wait and see where their captain was going to land. Should it be in either arsehole's lap, well, he would cross that bridge when he reached it.
It was Trunks who finally inquired after the scent Vegeta was carrying around and the boy did so naively, unable to recognize it for what it was at his young age. "You and the captain already sparred?"
"Only to warm up." Vegeta answered aloofly and he forbore a grin at the scandalized look his adversary gained.
Before Trunks could ask more questions – and he would – Goten broke in impatiently. "C'mon, dad. Are you going to tell us now?"
Trunks abandoned the previous topic and quickly jumped in: "Yeah, tell us!"
Kakarot was as easily distracted. The pathetic following the idiot had gained on this muck-hole, glorified him for his virtue, but this showed what little depth there was to those principles. All his adversary cared about was battle. Everything else, Vegeta fucking the captain included, was side issue. The idiot was drawing it out and started juggling that bag of senzu beans to heighten the suspense.
"Just get on with it, Kakarot." Vegeta demanded irritably.
"We are having a… Wait for it…" Goku held up the bag with an infuriatingly vigorous: "Saiyajin tournament!"
The announcement was met with an auditory faculty defying salvo of cheers coming from the boys and grins from the two underlings. Yeah, that did sound like fun. It gave Vegeta the excuse to vent some of his ever mounting aggression, cause some fat eyes where fat eyes were due and show some men how they were way out of their depth.
"We should get the captain." Trunks decided mid-cheer and Goten was right on his heels.
Vegeta grabbed both boys' collars just as they made to launch off to the wreckage whereabout the captain was certainly up to something. Pottering around bare-arsed for a pair of breeks perhaps.
"Boundaries, boy." he said, releasing their collars with a shove. "If the captain wants to partake, she will come."
Goten straightened out his skewed t-shirt, shrugging at a thoroughly crestfallen Trunks. "Maybe it is better this way." He pointed all of them out in pairs, the two male Saiyajins, his father and Vegeta and then himself and Trunks. "We are all pretty evenly matched."
The fierce little captain was in a league of her own, alright. Vegeta wanted to smile at the notion.
"We are competing on skill, of course. We don't have enough competitors to form categories." Goku said exasperatedly, his son's suggestion causing him far more outrage than Vegeta's cheating he would not address. "We match power levels to make it fair."
"Fair?" Vegeta demanded.
And Goten objected: "What fun is there in that?"
"It wouldn't make it fair to me. Keeping my ki at a certain level and fighting someone at the same time would disadvantage me." Trunks gave his more substantiated opinion.
"I have to do that all the time." Goku said with a preaching-to-the-choir kind of air.
So did Vegeta, but never in a competition. Levelling ki was for sparring. What was the point of a tournament when everybody was stuck fighting at the same level?
"I want them to have a shot as well." Goku explained, bestowing the two Saiyajin soldiers one of his benevolent, greatest-gift-to-humanity smiles. What he did not grasp, was that it was also condescending.
"Never mind him. The Earthlings think the sun shines out of his arse and it has elevated him to heights us mortals couldn't hope to reach." Vegeta told the underlings. He turned back to his adversary. "What you are proposing is a circle jerk and if that is going to be the way of it, you can count me out."
The boys were giggling behind their hands at the imagery and the scandalized look on Goku's face was a considerable contributor to the fun. The soldiers weren't laughing though. They looked as outraged as Goku did, and for the same reason as Vegeta.
"This ballsy dick." Ringo started.
Turles held him back and said to his Earth-besotted brother: "Thank you, sweetheart. That is most generous of you, truly, but don't hold back on my account. I may surprise you yet."
Goku looked mainly puzzled by that.
Sarcasm never did register with the idiot very well. How liberating it must be to fare on the reductive skills of a five-year-old, Vegeta thought not nearly for the first time. This was what made him despise his adversary. That he had taken his denied, unowned, plain stratospheric Saiyajin pride and poured it into all the things the Earthlings would love him for. Mercy, fairness, generosity, innocence, every trait utilized to style himself their saviour. Like Vegeta, Kakarot was really only interested in advancing his skills and he was just as willing to risk lives for it. He had done it with Frieza by allowing him to reach the full potential of his final form so that he could match himself with the tyrant, causing Namek to be wiped out in the process. Showing Frieza mercy had been nothing but the secret hope for a rematch. No Saiyajin would gladly pick off the one warrior left that could still give him a challenge. Not unless it was an enemy, but Kakarot prided himself in not having any, so Frieza had been allowed to live. The Earthlings had celebrated the idiot for this greatness, despite Frieza showing up on their doorstep a year later and once again threatening to destroy them all. If it hadn't been for Vegeta's son, they would have all perished that day. Earth's saviour had been off arsing about with the Yardrats.
When Vegeta allowed Cell to absorb the other Androids for the same reasons, they had accused him of hubris, which it had been. Vegeta couldn't give two shits about their opinions of him, but he did loathe ignorance. None of the Z Warriors, save Piccolo, were able to apprehend that he and Kakarot were two sides of the same coin, and that only one of them was man enough to see the foolishness of his own superbia. Accepting that, had finally set Vegeta on the path of tempering it. His pride was never going to take priority over the lives of others again.
"Not today, Kakarot." Vegeta said. "You go all out or you go home."
"We can have this tournament without you just as well." Turles agreed.
"It was my idea!" Goku cried his disbelief while brandishing his bag of senzu beans.
"So stop your moaning and let's go." Turles smiled and added rather optimistically: "I am going to enjoy making you eat your insults."
Ringo seconded that with a low growl.
"Oh fine, have it your way." Goku said, but his latent Saiyajin-side made him sound just a bit too excited. "C'mon. I know the perfect spot."
Unsurprisingly, the perfect spot was the location where the cell-games had once been held, far away from civility. It put them East of Cold's wreckage, closer to the fierce little captain. What she was doing out there, Vegeta couldn't guess, but it must be engrossing enough to keep her from joining them even as they touched ground and ki-levels started soaring in anticipation of the upcoming matches. He clearly wasn't any closer to unravelling that enigma. Any self-respecting warrior would be showing up at this point to see whether there was a way to get in on the brawl and he had been sure he would catch her tonking down the sky road to throw herself in the fray. There was nothing incoming and when her ki also dropped from his internal radar, the idea that he had blown his chances with her was gaining more ground on already idle hope.
A tediously long bout of multi-way rock-paper-scissors, decided on Turles as the first competitor and Goten as his match. The Saiyajin commander showed himself a genuine brawler and made fast work of demoting the idiot spawn to the losers pool despite Goten outclassing him by an unconquerable difference in both power and speed. Goten's superiority and his super form did not help him escape the close-quarters fighter who was in his face wherever he turned. By the time the brash young demi – a brawler himself – realised that he needed to put those talents to use, Turles already pounded him into a befuddled, tattered heap of flesh, plain overwhelming the boy with the brutal onslaught.
From the sidelines, Trunks let out an equally overwhelmed: "Whoa, that was intense."
Vegeta scoffed, though it was at the prospect of yet more bouts of rock-paper-scissors deciding on the next two competitors. He walked onto the field with his son at his heels, blue eyes big as saucers, and Ringo closing ranks looking like he couldn't wait to get his turn.
Goku, who had been judging the match, awarded his brother the win with a happy: "Looks like I spoke out of turn!"
"Lad could have done better." Turles said as he tested the mighty egg that had sprouted on his bruised jaw.
"Don't be too hard on him." Goku plucked his beaten son from the ground and restored him with a senzu bean. "He is young."
"I was speaking to you." Turles said. "You are teaching him the wrong things."
Goten sprang to his feet just as Trunks set out to rub in how he got his arse handed out to him by his uncle. The two boys started hashing out their unadmitted rivalry with a jostle, but lost interest in that almost immediately, the human-hardwiring in them quick to override the merest spark of their Saiyajin-predisposition.
"Man, uncle Turles, you fight like a beast!" Goten piped, sounding amazed, cheery and sullen all at once.
"Would that I could say the same about you." Turles said and there seemed little left of his usual quick smiles. "Are you a horse?"
Goten looked scattered, then insulted. "A horse?" he repeated stung.
"A horse, aye, and I mean no stallion neither. A pretty little prancing pony is what you look like to me. I bet you can dream them, don't you? All those fancy moves your old man wanted you to master? You know them all by heart."
Goku, ever of the belief that he, and he alone, was the authority on the ways of warriors, put in an elevated: "It is called form."
"It is horseshit." Turles spat out a bloody phlegm to underline his words. "Form, fair. You sound like you have daisies growing out of your hairy arse. The lad is a pressure fighter and you should be helping him cultivate that." He turned back to Goten. "So tell me, prancer, do you want to stay a horse or do you want to become a beast? There is a mighty slugger in you. If you hadn't been so keen on making it look good, you could have routed me in a blink. Leave tactics to thinkers, is what my old man taught me. Yours is more interested in parading you around, seems like. Loves his own stink so much, he needs to see himself when he looks at you."
The observations could not have been more on the mark and Vegeta was even willing to admit to himself that he wouldn't have been able to put it any better than Turles. It wasn't unsatisfactory either to finally come across someone beside himself who saw past his adversary's bullshit. The critique went entirely by the idiot of course, and should he in fact have been interested in taking a lesson, it would have probably gone over his head anyway.
But Goten was paying attention. It clearly all rang true to him. "Will you teach me?" he asked.
"Did you think I was making small talk?" Turles demanded. "Take another lesson. Never rely on your advantage over your opponent or you will make that the sweet spot where he slips his blade in. You believed me daunted by that stonking power of yours. It was a mistake. I give sweet fuck all whether I am outclassed, outnumbered, outsmarted, ambushed or tricked. None of it matters when I lay open my enemy's throat." By way of example, he tugged a small, black-bladed dagger from his boot and made the hilt spin on his palm. "Dead is dead. I don't do fair combat and I don't care what it looks like. Anyone picking a fight with me, can be sure that I play to win."
"Hold up." Goku stepped in. "I think it is a good idea for Goten to train with you, but he doesn't need to learn how to become ruthless. I taught him mercy."
"He does, Kakarot." Turles disagreed. "He could put me out of commission by farting and I just wiped the floor with him. Not all battle is in good fun. Most battle is not, in truth. Should it ever come down to his life or that of his enemy, you don't want him to be the bigger man. You want him to come out on top. Forget mercy and form and what is fair and what not."
"We are against violence." Goku explained calmly and he held out a senzu bean like a peace offering.
Turles forwent the senzu and with it cut short the inevitable sermon on the virtues of being merciful that would have followed. "Violence will always be against you more. You want to be ready when it comes for you."
He tossed the dagger to his other hand and gave Goten a smile, showing off that gap in his front teeth. His captain had named that attractive. Vegeta didn't know about that, but she had said something along the same lines about him and if he had to guess, the idiot's brother was the one whom she would be pitting him against. She had even joked about crowning that arsehole king in his stead. She had a thing for her commander, that much was clear. Having heard Turles give his speech, Vegeta could see her go for an article like that. Her interaction with him was far less formal than with the lanker lieutenant. Far too familiar and sincere. Vegeta's own interaction with her had been like that as well, in that moment where they lay in tangles with their guard down. Very intimate and uncomplicated and easy, as if they had been sharing space for years. It had never felt like that with the woman. It had never felt like that with any woman. Vegeta wanted to be there again. He wanted to forgo this tournament, forget about those boundaries he had schooled his son about, chase her down and see if he could still win her over.
He watched Turles pluck the spinning dagger out of the air and took careful note of which boot he made it disappear in. Vegeta had never taken to fighting with weapons himself and he would take even less to meeting his end at the edge of one. The commander's lessons may not have been meant for him, he gained some valuable insight from them. Turles was as straightforward as that blade he carried. Both were designed to simply got the job done and Vegeta should take that to heart. This rival was not to be taken lightly. Indeed, should they end up vying for the fierce little captain's favour, wiping Turles off the board would not be like swatting a fly.