Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ I, 20: Raditz ( Chapter 20 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Before, I said that when time passed it felt like the same damn thing over and over again.

This past year has been the complete fucking opposite.

First thing. Kakarrot's brat? Started showing up asking me to teach him shit in return for him telling me about how to sense people. Fine, whatever, but it was a little weird. I asked him, didn't it bother him that I killed his dear daddy and would do it again if I could? You know what he said? That the Namekian is the same way. Yeah. That's his reason for putting up with me. Damn kid continues to look more and more like me every time I see him, that hair getting longer and himself getting taller real gradually. It's...weird between us. I mean, I ain't so surprised, because I'm used to this sort of thing, but I never woulda guessed a kid would go into it—think he just pretends he don't have no reason to hate me, or like I've gotten better, but I'm damn certain he knows I haven't. Being able to deceive yourself is maybe the most important skill for getting by.

And, hell, he might just think of me as family. Once or twice, he's thrown me off asking some question, saying it ain't the kind of thing that neither his traitor father nor his Namekian friend would understand. He wonders about Saiyans, he wonders about deep philosophical shit someone his age don't have the right to be wondering about, but there it is, I guess. Kid's got some kind of crazy thoughts about right and wrong, the sort that ain't healthy where I'm from, and I wonder how it happens that he's got such opinions on what a person oughtta do (or ought not do) but still goes on going out of his way to chatter with murderers when he's got a perfectly fine, just, righteous daddy. I'd say he's surpassed his father mentally. I ain't surprised in the slightest. Anyway, neither of 'em gets it, gets what it means to live out there. And neither of 'em gets being a Saiyan either, or they'd like the thought of it.

So he'd sneak out from beneath Kakarrot's nose, beneath his friends' noses, to come train with me—some nights just to sit around, if I was still too injured to fight. Bulma's finally got around to making me some damn fine armor, with insert pockets for those thin, heavy weights she made, so I can take 'em out or keep 'em in. I've gone past Planet Vegeta's gravity, from when I lived there, back in the day, before the meteors. Gone far past that, in fact. I always ask her what Kakarrot's up to. She always tells me. More'n I can handle, for now at least.

And by the way. We finally did fuck. Me and Bulma, I mean. About damn time. When we were about to the once, she ended up being too damn drunk, and don't believe what anybody else tells you. Then she spent a good long while weeping and whining over that Yamcha—never seen somebody care so much for somebody that ain't family. Or else if it wasn't caring, guess I never seen somebody so good at pretending like they care. But I think she really did care about him, her friends, everybody, 'cause, damn, you know what I did that finally got me some? Shit, but I shouldn't even think about it, too stupid.

Aw, hell, fine. She was there in the kitchen with her mother all fawning over her like some fragile thing. I shooed the woman out (and out she went, giggling, and it was then I started worrying she ain't so stupid as I'd thought) and what was Bulma doing but sniffling over some picture of her and that guy with big-ass grins on their faces—a young Kakarrot, too, and some others I ain't seen around, but the two of them all close together and grabby. So I snatch the thing out of her fingers to get a better look at it, and I ask her, with a big ol' grin because I figure that'll help things out, whether he got all weak-kneed over her before or after she became such a bitch, or if she's always been one. 'Course she has the usual slew of insults and I wait 'em out. Then she's just staring at me. Asks me didn't I ever get all fucked up and heartbroken over something, didn't I ever love anything? Well, shit, of course I did, I told her. (Which was the wrong thing to say given that I didn't especially wanna talk about it.) Her eyes get all big in that way that makes me say more'n I want to and I'm telling her how my home got destroyed, everything got destroyed, by the stupid fucking meteor shower that blew straight through the planet while everyone was on it, while I shoulda been on it—but being the stupid kid I was, I was still halfway across the galaxy, maybe at that very moment taking a pit stop and spawning one or five little things that surely wouldn't have turned out quite like Kakarrot's brat, or likely didn't turn out at all. May be somebody decided to buy the planet not years later, and everybody got blown away anyway.

'Course by then, by the time I get to talking about what it was like to be a Saiyan, out killing in packs like we did as kids, getting home, the evening fires for anybody who died, the stories, stuffing food into our faces until we fell asleep in it and the adults dragging us back inside.

And then, I tell her, it was all gone. Shit, how old was I? Not even a man.

Back then, she said, when that happened, she would've been learning how to do math. Back then, she said, her father gave her kits to build little trinkets. And when she was the age that I'd been when it happened? More of the same, she said, but the only difference was the math was harder and the trinkets didn't come from kits. And me with millions already under my belt—in deaths, I mean; fewer in the other way. Told her I don't regret it, never will. She gives me this sad look—guess maybe she was trying to put it out of her mind up until then.

I say, shit, I know, she prolly ain't used to putting up with somebody like me, but it ain't exactly nothin' I'm gonna change. She says that ain't it. Says, Kakarrot's killed lots of people, and that stops whatever words I was gonna say from coming outta my mouth. Says they were "bad guys," but, hell, I guess the bastard does have it in him. It's...an odd feeling, that it's just his fucked up ideas of right and wrong getting in the way of him being almost a real Saiyan.

Bulma said to me, that's not it—not entirely, at least.

From there she spent almost a half-hour describing to me just how scared she'd been when I killed Kakarrot. It freaked me the fuck out that she brought it up at all—there was a reason I didn't wanna talk about it, about anything more than the "what the hell did you do to my tail?" talk we arready had. She reminded me she threw the knife at me, like I needed reminding—that little slice over my forehead and down my cheek, right over my eye, looks like it's gonna be there as a scar forever—healed up too slow, with no healing tank around. (That was then—by now she's got a pretty good imitation of one up and running. Not the same, but not bad.) I don't like being reminded that something as weak as her could off me at the right moment. When I got knocked unconscious, she said, she was ready to cut through my spine with that big knife. Had the knife sitting against my neck, was just mustering up the willpower to do it. She looked at me and waited with those teared-over eyes while she said it, just waited for me to say something back.

Of course she was gonna, I told myself, and she shoulda done it, too. I would have. I think.

She said she didn't wanna have to do it again, have to think about it. By then she'd taken the picture back outta my hands and was smoothing it over the table, the little wrinkles I'd put in it by grabbing it. She said she didn't want there to be any more reasons for her to have to think about having to off me. I knew where she was going right then, but I couldn't say nothin', couldn't speak up and let her know that ain't possible. My words were all...stuck in my throat, razor-sharp and slicing away there to get away without coming out my mouth. She said to me, "Raditz, promise me you won't kill any of us." Looked at the picture. "Not Yamcha. Not Son. Not Piccolo or Gohan or any of the otheres. Not me. None of us."

Well, shit, this is stupid, but...fuck. I agreed to it. I don't know even know what part of me was doing the thinking, but I think I've narrowed it down to three possibilities. I put my fist on my chest and said, "None of you. I swear."

And I guess that's what she was holding out for.

It wasn't bad, y'know, the sex, considering she's a weak little human. But afterwards, when she said with the slyest little grin on her face, "Don't forget your promise," I couldn't help feeling I'd been tricked, somehow.

But, well. I could get used to it.


...


Some other shit went down in this past year's time. Everybody was worried the Saiyans would be coming sooner—turns out somebody had called up Vegeta and Nappa on the scouter while drunk. The humans, I guess, all tried to get Kakarrot to teach them his secret techniques he learned from wherever the hell he went. How do I know? The brat told me.

He told me, once, about the Yamcha guy trying to use this one technique, which, if what he heard is true, doubles your power, or something. (Shit, I was almost tempted to be tempted to ask him to learn it to teach it to me.) He said he got partway through powering up and then he stopped, and almost fainted—he could barely move for days, the kid told me, and his skin was an angry red with boils and blisters. He guessed his innards were like that too.

Naturally, I got a peek at that part, when they hurried him to one of Bulma's healing tanks, but I didn't hang around—didn't want to be there when he regained consciousness. Don't get me wrong, I think I could beat the guy down in a blink, but, fuck...there's something a little freaky about knowing he was learning to use this monstrous technique so he could get revenge on me. (Not sure he knows there's more'n one person to blame for somebody winning over someone's girl. Two, to be exact.) I don't wanna see what might happen if he gets it right—if he can get it right—if he decides to use it on me the second I cross his path again. Kinda guy who willingly kills hisself trying to get something done? That's the kinda guy I don't wanna run across. You gotta be fucking crazy not to wanna live, right? My life's the one thing I'll do anything—I mean anything—to keep. Honor be damned. I'll leave that pride shit to Vegeta.

The whelp hasn't learned the technique, though he said Kakarrot spent so long bothering him about it, sayin' the others couldn't handle it but he could. Kid divulged to me he don't think he needs it, thinks he's onto something else. Don't know if he's right—doubt he can know, either—but this is almost as worrisome to me as what Mister Jealous has done. What keeps it from being more worried is that I doubt the kid would go out of his way to hurt me, not now. I think he must know what I said to Bulma...the bitch, telling him what I said without asking me if she could.

I asked him what it is, that makes him feel that way. He says he don't know, only something like heavy rocks and hot lava started roiling around inside him since he realized how certain the Namekian is that he's gonna die, since he started seeing this guy's face when he talks with this planet's god. Asked if I ever felt it, this rocks-and-lava business, if it's a Saiyan thing. I said the closest thing I got to that was when I found out everybody on Vegeta died, almost puked from the sensation of melted metal burning up through the inside of my throat. Or maybe that was the vomit burning up through the inside of my throat. Huh.

But, crazy techniques or not, everybody's been wearing the weighted clothes. I been working myself half to death, then throwing myself in the healing tank. It's kind of disgusting, really, when I think about it—'cause it's the sort of thing that ass Vegeta would do if he thought one of us was gonna show him up, or something. I try to minimize the possibility that anything I do might make me seem like Vegeta, so I do it in a totally different way than he would. See, he don't got a single passionate bone in his body, and most especially not that bone. I've spent enough time around him—I'd know. I'd know that grin on anybody and he's never worn it once in the time I've been around him; nor, I found, after a few quiet discussions, has Nappa seen any indication he's inclined to do anything but jack off all on his lonesome. Weird guy.

Right. Whatever. That ain't me, not at all.

Bulma was skittish about it at first, something about being worried about some amount of weight that sounded heavy to her falling onto her if I collapsed onto her after.

So what? So we get creative with ways we can fuck without risk of me falling onto her—and trust me, there's more to it than just letting her on top; naw, that'd be too easy, wouldn't it? (Not that it ain't nice, mind you.) And let's just say that when you combine her thing for puzzles and shit like that, and my thing for, you know, fucking, well...the result is something beautiful.

Not that life ain't without its problems. Sometimes she looks at me in that way, in that way she's trying to understand the magnitude of millions or billions of lives. And sometimes she catches me wondering about that knife, about had I not taped up her foot that one day, about were my teeth just a little straighter, were my hair a little nicer, were I not so fucking desperate that I had all those stupid thoughts about her, and they changed how I treated her an' how she saw me, whether I liked it or not—if any of that—if she liked me less—well, shit, I'd be dead and dead again. And what made the line there, and what if there's somethin' that could move it? If she decides she don't like me. If she comes to her senses and realizes how many people and things she could avenge just by offing me. She said she had the knife resting there against my neck and she didn't know what stopped her, only that something did.

And I didn't tell her, but anybody who's ever tried to kill me, I make sure to take care of—one way or another. Naturally—that's just how things are. If you try to kill a guy and fail, well, you oughtta expect to die. Leaving her alive stands my hair up on-end if I think about it too much. And I think she knows.

And that guilt that flashes across her eyes anytime she says, "But what if the Saiyans..." and stops talking—I know she's thinking about it. She don't trust my promise entirely. Guess it's only fair.

...


She'll trust me even less, when she finds this out.

I don't like the feeling of leaving just now, not given that it could be Vegeta and Nappa will show up anytime; Gohan keeps talking about the Namekian's worry, his desperation, that the cloud is so vague, that it might be one week, one month, half a year. Part of me needs to be here for it—part of me don't want the least thing to do with it, and, hell, why should I care if I come back and find the place gone? Maybe I won't come back at all. But if that's it, then why would I even... It's that nagging thought, that what if Kakarrot is strong enough and his friends are strong enough that he survives Vegeta? He'll be after me. And besides, if he don't, well, the Earth'll be wiped clean. I tell myself I don't care. Then I think, being able to deceive yourself is maybe the most important skill for getting by, and then I wonder why I thought it, 'cause surely I wasn't deceiving myself, was I? Naw.

I got a bag ready and I don't think she gets the impression I'm actually smart enough to plan things. Normally that ain't so bad a thought—planning never works out anyhow, so I try to avoid it—but I hope it works in my favor this one time. I got a map, and I got an idea of how I can go around to each of these places the fastest. Breezed over 'em, once or twice; walked around, to get an idea of things.

As I pace past Bulma working on sketches in the kitchen, I snatch up a capsule that's been left on the counter and drop it in the bag. I've been keeping my eye on its whereabouts, though her absentminded father has made it difficult, with his constantly moving things to places that don't make sense—the kitchen counter, for instance.

"Where are you going?" she asks. Pours another cup of coffee, crinkles up this latest sheet of paper. "Gohan?" she guesses.

"Yeah," I say.

"It can't be good for him, to always get up at this hour and meet you," she sighs. "He's just a kid. He should just tell Son, and..."

"He can handle it," I argue. Wasn't planning on a conversation, but whatever. "And it ain't my fault Kakarrot is so dense that he can still get away with it."

"Sure," she rolls her eyes. Then she finally looks at me. "What's with the bag?"

"Promised the whelp I'd bring him your mother's damned, uh," I pause, "you know, those round sweet things." Shit, and to think I ever questioned preparing an answer. Dodged that crisis a little narrowly.

"Aw," she grins, "how sweet of you. Here, let me put some in a plastic bag..." she gets up and starts digging through cabinets. "What's with the whole 'being nice' thing?" she asks. "You trying to get on his good side for something? You really think he's going to tell you how Piccolo does that crazy drill thing he told me about last time I saw him? Maka...ka...whatever?"

"Maybe," is all I say, and plaster on my biggest sly grin. I have no idea what the hell she's talking about, but it's probably better than whatever I would've come up with, anyway.

"Well, good luck with that," she drops the cookies in my open hand, and I transfer them to the bag in a way that it ain't apparent I also got maps and stuff in there. "I seriously doubt Gohan would divulge any secret of Piccolo's. But, hell, I won't deny the opportunity to give my nephew cookies." Har har. She thinks she's family arready. Fucking someone a bunch of times don't make 'em family. I tell this to myself a few times to make sure it's very clear to me.

"Got heavier weights in your lab?" I ask.

"Sure do," she's back to the sketches already, swearing when some of the coffee sloshes over onto them. "You know where they are, right?"

"Think so," I say, and start to turn away. Aw, shit. This could be...well, if I ain't coming back, I mean, this might be—if Vegeta and Nappa get here before me—you know—damn— I lean down and snatch up her tongue inside my mouth. When she gives me an appropriately baffled stare, I say, "just getting warmed up for when I come back."

If, I tell myself. If. If I come back. But she don't need to hear it.

She rolls her eyes again and shoves me away in the cute way she does, gets back to work.

Down to the lab I go. From one of her desk drawers, the scouter.

From the other, the radar.

I swing open the window and take off, pressing down my energy as much as I can, like the whelp taught me, and I repeat my wish in my head like it's the only thing keeping me alive.

And, hell—it just may be.

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