Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ I, 12: Bulma ( Chapter 12 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: ShiningMoon 
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action / Comedy / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 01.15.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.4K | Visits: 214 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action / Comedy / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 01.15.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.4K | Visits: 214 | Status: Completed
NOTE: Well, I'm afraid this chapter is a little dull, compared to the last chapter that Bulma narrated, but I hope you like it anyway. ^^ I was going to do something more, but I decided that it would be better to wait for a later chapter.
...
All right, I definitely wasn't planning on that happening.
I mean, not that it matters that much, because it's not like he's going to tell Yamcha, and I'm not going to do anything like that again, but it was just a little disconcerting.
It's not as if this is so different from when he was injured. Then, Raditz couldn't move around much, but it's not as if he couldn't have, I dunno, strangled me or punched me or something. But he probably figured out real quick that I took better care of him than anyone else, and, who knows, maybe even assumed that I'm the only one who knows where his stuff is. (Partially true: Dad knows where the pod is, but I haven't really mentioned the scouter. He's distracted enough as it is.)
And now that he's better, sure, he could beat the living shit out of me (which he didn't seem scared to show at all when I went into his room—I mean, I figured he wasn't gonna do it, but damn, it doesn't matter if it makes sense when you've got somebody twice your size who could crush you like a soda can snarling in your face). But will he? No. Because he knows better. I think. I hope. I mean, he's dumb as a brick but he at least seems to have that figured out. I'm glad I haven't told him anything about the dragonballs—he knows he can't find them if he hasn't a clue what they look like (besides that they're spheres, of course).
So am I a little too confident for my own good? Yeah. But if I'm safe, what's it matter? Anyway, he totally has a thing for me. That's a nice extra barrier of protection. No one can blame me for encouraging that. The whole ordeal with Son dying was awful—ugly—I'm not going to forget it anytime soon. But now I have something else over him—his tail—and I'm just trying to move on to see if there's any way to help the others get ready for these alleged other, stronger Saiyans that Kami seems to be worried about.
It's almost morning, but, truth be told, I never went to bed. I just wanted to stop by his room while I still had the (sleep-deprivation-induced) guts to do so. I know I'm safe, but there is a distinct unavoidable scariness about a muscle-bound seven-foot-something space-alien, which requires a certain kind of ballsy attitude unique to the genuinely strong, the foolhardy, the drunk, and the sleep-deprived to confront. I figure I'm at least two of those right now, and I don't drink on the job. (Usually.)
Now I'm heading back to the lab, if only for a few moments. I should have thought of this before I left, but I'm glad I remembered—I'd been looking at the scouter earlier today and I don't think I stowed it away. Granted, it's in a safe spot already—a little locked room off to the side where I work on my own personal projects—but it's not like a lock could stop someone like Raditz if he got it in his head that something he wanted was in there.
Then, I am definitely hitting the sack. After everything that happened a few days ago, people mostly have been giving me my space and no one will bother me about the bizarre hours. They don't know exactly what happened, of course, but the fact that a huge segment of the wall was blasted away and the alien I was keeping in the lab no longer had his tail (and the suspicious lack of a certain chemical in our stores) was enough to give them an impression of the type of situation it had been, I guess. I didn't tell them Son died, naturally—not worth the trouble, since he'll be back.
Much to my relief (not that I was too worried, having only been gone a half-hour or so) the door is still secure, and nothing has been touched so far as I can tell. There's the scouter, right there on my desk. I sit down and glance over it a bit more, looking through my notes. I've fixed it up already—that was just a little afternoon project—and after that I set to drawing some diagrams and trying to calibrate it to display something I could read, which was just as easy, and that was ages ago that I finished that. From what I understand, they're used to find something like battle power, and I'm almost positive it's the same thing as what Son does when he says he detects ki. From inside my door I tested it on a few people and what I found pretty much supports that hypothesis. Something like this might be useful for someone like me, but I doubt it'll help Son or his friends fight the other Saiyans. I wonder why Son can sense ki and Raditz can't, but I guess it must be about the same reason my mother knows the exact moment to add the sugar when she's making fudge and I don't. Speaking of which, I think I've got about two pieces left... I peek into my little refrigerator. Damn, I guess I ate them already. Surprise, surprise—my notes have chocolate fingerprints all over them. In my unreasonable irritation over the matter (nobody can blame a girl for enjoying some chocolate, right? but the world doesn't have enough, it seems), I yank the desk drawer open to file away the incriminating notes. My desk lurches at the force (it hasn't been the same since Son accidentally leaned on it) and a few of my things tip over or fall off the desk—pens, mostly, I realize with relief, and not my pretty glass paperweight.
Wait.
And the scouter.
It makes some bizarre buzzing noises, and then I hear talking.
"Dammit, Raditz, how lazy can you be? Do you have Kakarrot yet, or not?" A pause. "Is your scouter even operational? God knows—" the voices fizzle out a bit, and I pick the thing up, my hands shaking a little. Shit, in all my excitement about having figured out the whole battle power thing, I'd completely forgotten that it also seemed to have some kind of communication function. I'd been holding back on working that one out—I guess scared of what I'd find, and I wanted to be prepared. Well. See how that turned out.
There are two ways to go about this. One requires a certain kind of ballsy attitude that—blah blah blah blah. Yeah. I'm there.
I put it on and press the little button on the side, and the faint buzzing picks back up. "Hello?" I say.
"Heh, doesn't sound much like Raditz to me," a different voice than the first one says, laughing. "Not that he isn't a little bit of a bitch..."
"Nappa, please," says the first voice. "Who the hell is this?"
Ballsy. Right. This is just like talking on the phone—no real consequences until later, when I wake up later today and remember what I did. Anyway, they already want to slaughter all of humanity. I guess it can't get much worse. "None of your goddamn business," I say. "Now, I heard you say 'Nappa,' so that must mean that you're 'Vegeta.'" I'm pretty sure those are the names Raditz keeps mentioning. God, I hope so.
A short silence follows. "What happened to him?"
"To Raditz?" I ask. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"I'm tired of this game," continues the voice—sounds like a prick if I've ever heard one. "Raditz is nothing. We can do without him."
"Oh yeah?" I grin a little bit—okay, this is fun. This guy seems like just as much of a cocky bastard as Raditz, with an even bigger stick up his ass. Plus, it's less scary since I can't see him. In my head, I can paint him as somebody the opposite of Raditz. Hm. Short and scrawny. Yeah. "Then why were you so desperate for him to hunt down his little brother?"
"Shit," the other voice, Nappa, says. "She knows! How's she know?"
"Did you kill him?" Vegeta asks.
I pause and think up the best way to answer. "I'm in the process—limb by limb," I finally say.
"Oh," Nappa says, "she sounds fiesty."
"Earthling," Vegeta snaps, "you will be dead soon enough, so why don't you make your death—and I will find you and kill you personally—a little less painful and answer a bit more directly?"
"Yeah? How soon?" See, this might turn out to be useful after all.
"Nice try," he hisses.
Well, it was worth a shot. "Anyway," I go on, "just how do you plan on finding me and killing me personally?" Sounds about like how feasible Raditz's plan to find the dragonballs on his own was. He doesn't seem to have an answer, I find, after a few seconds of silence, and I grin a little, and figure I'd better move on. Maybe I can get some other information from them. "Word is," I say, "both of you are stronger than Raditz."
"Stronger is an understatement," Vegeta says, and he and Nappa are clearly both laughing. "Raditz is just an errand-boy so far as I'm concerned. Sure, he helps clear planets every now and then," he pauses, "but he's every bit the low-class moron he was born as."
"Yeah," Nappa continues, "we could beat him up faster than you could blink!"
"So if you struggled with him," Vegeta adds, "don't even think about fighting back."
"Lose all hope—check. I'll get right on that," I say. And truthfully, even if they're exaggerating, I can see why Kami's worried...I mean, Goku and Piccolo had to gang up on Raditz to beat him, so even if these guys are only a little stronger...well, I just hope Goku will get this miracle training Kami thinks he will. From what little I saw when he was facing Raditz down, Gohan seems really powerful, too...maybe he can help. Well, obviously; that seems to be Piccolo's goal with taking him and training him and all. Gohan seemed to really like the guy—so he can't be treating him too badly.
"Well, Nappa," Vegeta starts talking again, "it seems the people of that backwater planet have advanced as far as learning sarcasm."
"But—" I can hear Nappa start talking, but he stops quickly. This Vegeta seems like a royal ass, so I'm just going to assume he punched the guy. I mean, not that Raditz isn't a total jerk, but, you know, there are different kinds of jerks. Raditz is the type it's fun to jostle around. This Vegeta guy? Not worth my time. (Well, especially because, in theory, he'll be dead shortly after arriving on Earth. Raditz, on the other hand...)
"Guess I'll just go do all those things I wanted to do before I die," I make a yawning sound. "Maybe peel another one of Raditz's limbs off while I think about which to do first."
"I cannot wait to slaughter you Earthlings," Vegeta sneers. "I can't believe Kakarrot hasn't killed you already."
"Well," I say, my feet tapping with excitement as I realize how little these guys know. "Kakarrot's not really Kakarrot anymore, and you can trust me when I say that because I know him personally." Before they have time to speak, I keep going, "Anyway, he's dead now. Raditz killed him. Oh yeah, but don't worry, he'll be alive by the time you get here."
And then I cut the little cord that sends power to the communication portion of the device. No more accidentally hitting that button. I can fix it up if for some reason I need to.
So I'm a little freaked out knowing these other two Saiyans are for real, but at least now I have a bit of an idea of what to expect, and I can pass the word on to Yamcha next time he stops by.
Heh, I guess I can also try to find out more about the other Saiyans when I sit Raditz down to get him read his manual to me. I think I could manage to snuggle up to him a bit—metaphorically, I mean—get under his skin, y'know—and see if there aren't a few more things I could learn about—like if he stands a chance of talking them out of killing us, should Son and the others fail.
I wonder if Raditz knows what his "buddies" think of him.
Heh—and they think he'll be dead by the time they get here. Not if I can help it—I will keep that guy trapped here for as long as I can. I don't have it in me to kill him, so in the meantime, I may as well use him for what I can, and maybe I can talk him into not ganging up on us with the other Saiyans. Of course, if what Vegeta said is true, if Raditz joining them in the fight makes a difference, we're fucked anyway.
I fold the scouter up in a piece of cloth and slip it into one of my drawers, out of sight, before locking up the door and dragging my feet upstairs. I wave hello to my mother, who is standing at the window making conversation with the rising sun, meander down the hallway, and collapse into bed. If my life stays this eventful, I'm never going to get my beauty sleep.
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...
All right, I definitely wasn't planning on that happening.
I mean, not that it matters that much, because it's not like he's going to tell Yamcha, and I'm not going to do anything like that again, but it was just a little disconcerting.
It's not as if this is so different from when he was injured. Then, Raditz couldn't move around much, but it's not as if he couldn't have, I dunno, strangled me or punched me or something. But he probably figured out real quick that I took better care of him than anyone else, and, who knows, maybe even assumed that I'm the only one who knows where his stuff is. (Partially true: Dad knows where the pod is, but I haven't really mentioned the scouter. He's distracted enough as it is.)
And now that he's better, sure, he could beat the living shit out of me (which he didn't seem scared to show at all when I went into his room—I mean, I figured he wasn't gonna do it, but damn, it doesn't matter if it makes sense when you've got somebody twice your size who could crush you like a soda can snarling in your face). But will he? No. Because he knows better. I think. I hope. I mean, he's dumb as a brick but he at least seems to have that figured out. I'm glad I haven't told him anything about the dragonballs—he knows he can't find them if he hasn't a clue what they look like (besides that they're spheres, of course).
So am I a little too confident for my own good? Yeah. But if I'm safe, what's it matter? Anyway, he totally has a thing for me. That's a nice extra barrier of protection. No one can blame me for encouraging that. The whole ordeal with Son dying was awful—ugly—I'm not going to forget it anytime soon. But now I have something else over him—his tail—and I'm just trying to move on to see if there's any way to help the others get ready for these alleged other, stronger Saiyans that Kami seems to be worried about.
It's almost morning, but, truth be told, I never went to bed. I just wanted to stop by his room while I still had the (sleep-deprivation-induced) guts to do so. I know I'm safe, but there is a distinct unavoidable scariness about a muscle-bound seven-foot-something space-alien, which requires a certain kind of ballsy attitude unique to the genuinely strong, the foolhardy, the drunk, and the sleep-deprived to confront. I figure I'm at least two of those right now, and I don't drink on the job. (Usually.)
Now I'm heading back to the lab, if only for a few moments. I should have thought of this before I left, but I'm glad I remembered—I'd been looking at the scouter earlier today and I don't think I stowed it away. Granted, it's in a safe spot already—a little locked room off to the side where I work on my own personal projects—but it's not like a lock could stop someone like Raditz if he got it in his head that something he wanted was in there.
Then, I am definitely hitting the sack. After everything that happened a few days ago, people mostly have been giving me my space and no one will bother me about the bizarre hours. They don't know exactly what happened, of course, but the fact that a huge segment of the wall was blasted away and the alien I was keeping in the lab no longer had his tail (and the suspicious lack of a certain chemical in our stores) was enough to give them an impression of the type of situation it had been, I guess. I didn't tell them Son died, naturally—not worth the trouble, since he'll be back.
Much to my relief (not that I was too worried, having only been gone a half-hour or so) the door is still secure, and nothing has been touched so far as I can tell. There's the scouter, right there on my desk. I sit down and glance over it a bit more, looking through my notes. I've fixed it up already—that was just a little afternoon project—and after that I set to drawing some diagrams and trying to calibrate it to display something I could read, which was just as easy, and that was ages ago that I finished that. From what I understand, they're used to find something like battle power, and I'm almost positive it's the same thing as what Son does when he says he detects ki. From inside my door I tested it on a few people and what I found pretty much supports that hypothesis. Something like this might be useful for someone like me, but I doubt it'll help Son or his friends fight the other Saiyans. I wonder why Son can sense ki and Raditz can't, but I guess it must be about the same reason my mother knows the exact moment to add the sugar when she's making fudge and I don't. Speaking of which, I think I've got about two pieces left... I peek into my little refrigerator. Damn, I guess I ate them already. Surprise, surprise—my notes have chocolate fingerprints all over them. In my unreasonable irritation over the matter (nobody can blame a girl for enjoying some chocolate, right? but the world doesn't have enough, it seems), I yank the desk drawer open to file away the incriminating notes. My desk lurches at the force (it hasn't been the same since Son accidentally leaned on it) and a few of my things tip over or fall off the desk—pens, mostly, I realize with relief, and not my pretty glass paperweight.
Wait.
And the scouter.
It makes some bizarre buzzing noises, and then I hear talking.
"Dammit, Raditz, how lazy can you be? Do you have Kakarrot yet, or not?" A pause. "Is your scouter even operational? God knows—" the voices fizzle out a bit, and I pick the thing up, my hands shaking a little. Shit, in all my excitement about having figured out the whole battle power thing, I'd completely forgotten that it also seemed to have some kind of communication function. I'd been holding back on working that one out—I guess scared of what I'd find, and I wanted to be prepared. Well. See how that turned out.
There are two ways to go about this. One requires a certain kind of ballsy attitude that—blah blah blah blah. Yeah. I'm there.
I put it on and press the little button on the side, and the faint buzzing picks back up. "Hello?" I say.
"Heh, doesn't sound much like Raditz to me," a different voice than the first one says, laughing. "Not that he isn't a little bit of a bitch..."
"Nappa, please," says the first voice. "Who the hell is this?"
Ballsy. Right. This is just like talking on the phone—no real consequences until later, when I wake up later today and remember what I did. Anyway, they already want to slaughter all of humanity. I guess it can't get much worse. "None of your goddamn business," I say. "Now, I heard you say 'Nappa,' so that must mean that you're 'Vegeta.'" I'm pretty sure those are the names Raditz keeps mentioning. God, I hope so.
A short silence follows. "What happened to him?"
"To Raditz?" I ask. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"I'm tired of this game," continues the voice—sounds like a prick if I've ever heard one. "Raditz is nothing. We can do without him."
"Oh yeah?" I grin a little bit—okay, this is fun. This guy seems like just as much of a cocky bastard as Raditz, with an even bigger stick up his ass. Plus, it's less scary since I can't see him. In my head, I can paint him as somebody the opposite of Raditz. Hm. Short and scrawny. Yeah. "Then why were you so desperate for him to hunt down his little brother?"
"Shit," the other voice, Nappa, says. "She knows! How's she know?"
"Did you kill him?" Vegeta asks.
I pause and think up the best way to answer. "I'm in the process—limb by limb," I finally say.
"Oh," Nappa says, "she sounds fiesty."
"Earthling," Vegeta snaps, "you will be dead soon enough, so why don't you make your death—and I will find you and kill you personally—a little less painful and answer a bit more directly?"
"Yeah? How soon?" See, this might turn out to be useful after all.
"Nice try," he hisses.
Well, it was worth a shot. "Anyway," I go on, "just how do you plan on finding me and killing me personally?" Sounds about like how feasible Raditz's plan to find the dragonballs on his own was. He doesn't seem to have an answer, I find, after a few seconds of silence, and I grin a little, and figure I'd better move on. Maybe I can get some other information from them. "Word is," I say, "both of you are stronger than Raditz."
"Stronger is an understatement," Vegeta says, and he and Nappa are clearly both laughing. "Raditz is just an errand-boy so far as I'm concerned. Sure, he helps clear planets every now and then," he pauses, "but he's every bit the low-class moron he was born as."
"Yeah," Nappa continues, "we could beat him up faster than you could blink!"
"So if you struggled with him," Vegeta adds, "don't even think about fighting back."
"Lose all hope—check. I'll get right on that," I say. And truthfully, even if they're exaggerating, I can see why Kami's worried...I mean, Goku and Piccolo had to gang up on Raditz to beat him, so even if these guys are only a little stronger...well, I just hope Goku will get this miracle training Kami thinks he will. From what little I saw when he was facing Raditz down, Gohan seems really powerful, too...maybe he can help. Well, obviously; that seems to be Piccolo's goal with taking him and training him and all. Gohan seemed to really like the guy—so he can't be treating him too badly.
"Well, Nappa," Vegeta starts talking again, "it seems the people of that backwater planet have advanced as far as learning sarcasm."
"But—" I can hear Nappa start talking, but he stops quickly. This Vegeta seems like a royal ass, so I'm just going to assume he punched the guy. I mean, not that Raditz isn't a total jerk, but, you know, there are different kinds of jerks. Raditz is the type it's fun to jostle around. This Vegeta guy? Not worth my time. (Well, especially because, in theory, he'll be dead shortly after arriving on Earth. Raditz, on the other hand...)
"Guess I'll just go do all those things I wanted to do before I die," I make a yawning sound. "Maybe peel another one of Raditz's limbs off while I think about which to do first."
"I cannot wait to slaughter you Earthlings," Vegeta sneers. "I can't believe Kakarrot hasn't killed you already."
"Well," I say, my feet tapping with excitement as I realize how little these guys know. "Kakarrot's not really Kakarrot anymore, and you can trust me when I say that because I know him personally." Before they have time to speak, I keep going, "Anyway, he's dead now. Raditz killed him. Oh yeah, but don't worry, he'll be alive by the time you get here."
And then I cut the little cord that sends power to the communication portion of the device. No more accidentally hitting that button. I can fix it up if for some reason I need to.
So I'm a little freaked out knowing these other two Saiyans are for real, but at least now I have a bit of an idea of what to expect, and I can pass the word on to Yamcha next time he stops by.
Heh, I guess I can also try to find out more about the other Saiyans when I sit Raditz down to get him read his manual to me. I think I could manage to snuggle up to him a bit—metaphorically, I mean—get under his skin, y'know—and see if there aren't a few more things I could learn about—like if he stands a chance of talking them out of killing us, should Son and the others fail.
I wonder if Raditz knows what his "buddies" think of him.
Heh—and they think he'll be dead by the time they get here. Not if I can help it—I will keep that guy trapped here for as long as I can. I don't have it in me to kill him, so in the meantime, I may as well use him for what I can, and maybe I can talk him into not ganging up on us with the other Saiyans. Of course, if what Vegeta said is true, if Raditz joining them in the fight makes a difference, we're fucked anyway.
I fold the scouter up in a piece of cloth and slip it into one of my drawers, out of sight, before locking up the door and dragging my feet upstairs. I wave hello to my mother, who is standing at the window making conversation with the rising sun, meander down the hallway, and collapse into bed. If my life stays this eventful, I'm never going to get my beauty sleep.
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