Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ II, 1: Raditz ( Chapter 32 )

Gone.

Gone.

He's fucking gone. That…stupid kid. Gohan.

Not like I know it in that really for certain way `cause I didn't stay around to watch (not to say I couldn't've, `cause I've stomached worse), but `cause of he way his ki just…disappeared. And the crunching sound. Kakarrot's scream.

It ain't my fault, of course, ain't…

But anyway, I'm quick on my way to Bulma's trying not to think of the crunching sound and the kid.

I land just in time to knock on the window of her ship as she's starting it up. Gods above, from the look on her face it's like I'm a ghost. Do I look so awful? I can't. I ain't even bleeding. Door lowers down and I scramble in and a bunch of gibberish falls out of my mouth, but she seems to understand `cause before I can figure out what it is I just told her, she's sitting up front pressing buttons. It's clear I'm more used to it than anybody else here, rushing up and through an atmosphere and into space. And, well, hell, I'm more used to space than them. Guess it occurs to me that Bulma ain't never been this far out past her home. Pity her, sort of, but no time to think of that. From here I can see tiny flashes below, Kakarrot fighting that goddamned sonnuvabitch Freeza (and losing, I just know it).

Shit. I can't believe…I mean, I can't believe I was stupid enough to think that we stood a chance for a second, when guy after guy of Freeza's got toppled. Cui. Dodoria. Zarbon. Zarbon—but that don't matter. It ain't as if it made a difference, after all, since Freeza hisself is worth a hundred of any of `em, from the stories I've heard. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We shoulda ran from the start. I coulda knocked the kid out and brought him back and left the fight to Kakarrot, who was a moron enough to want it anyway. An' that ain't even all of it. He was in charge of a team. A team a' people who thought he was the greatest thing alive an' he knew they couldn't take it an' still he was excited about the fight. Didn't do nothin' to send them to safety. Not that I'm sentimental, or nothin', only when I fought in teams we weren't that stupid. It ain't practical to just let everybody get slaughtered `cause then you gotta find new ones, train new ones…maybe he was just banking on those dragonballs that he could get his friends back. `Course in that regard he was also banking he'd live, which was probably his stupidest mistake.

And I'd be the last guy to say a damn thing about giving a fuck what happens to your offspring (given how many I might just have floatin' around the universe, that I don't got the slightest desire to run into), but Gohan's different. Smarter than his damned father, that's for sure. Smarter'n me, probably. He's somethin' else. Was somethin' else. Ain't never met somebody so small who was so strong and am damned proud to know it's the Saiyan blood in `im. An' we're…sort of family. He looks…looked, just like…well. Don't matter for now.

Finally when Bulma's done oohing and ahhing over space and how her ship works and all that (which I'm glad for, make no mistake, `cause I do like the fact that I ain't dead yet), I decide can talk sensible words. “We need to get far away, fast.”

“Uh-huh,” she seems distracted all of a sudden, plugging in more numbers. Some beeping comes off the panel. Hope this thing isn't breaking, or something.

“Way I see it is, you're gonna want your planet back after Freeza has his way with it. Ain't no way we can beat him now,” I tell her, an' realize how much she don't know about the battle, that I gotta tell her later, maybe, when my voice won't go all funny over it, “we gotta figure that out sometime in the meantime while we run away from him, `cause I feel like he's gonna chase us down. Bastard was pissed. Not like the normal way,” she's still distracted but I think she's listening, “I mean, all…well, don't do to explain it, but you get it. Anyway, we…”

“Raditz,” she cuts in, “this has to wait. Sorry, but there are more pressing issues.”

Uh-huh. More pressing issues than Freeza after our heads? Right. Well, my head at least, but everybody else's I'm with, I'm sure, `cause I get the feeling like he'll exact his revenge in whatever fucked-up way he wants and then just blow the ship up or something.

“Was it really bad?” says the Lunch chick that's been following Bulma around (equally freaky blue hair—sometimes). I guess she's talking to me. “The…the fight?”

“Yeah,” is all I can say.

“I saw Yamcha,” she says, glancing all worried-like over toward this healing tank that's been set up in the ship. “And…” she looks about to start crying, “and I guess that since we left that must mean no one else made it!” Now she's hiccupping back tears.

“Well,” I say, “at least, nobody will for much longer.” Bulma's half-listening; I can see. But this ain't no way to tell her what happened. Lucky for me, Lunch stops asking questions. She bites on her nails and sits down nearby and goes back to looking out at the stars, at her Earth. Don't know the girl well, but damn, she seems dumb as rocks compared to Bulma. At least, when she's the blue-haired one. The other one, now she…ain't bad.

Bulma collapses back into her chair and raps her fingers against the panel in the most annoying way, over and over and over, like she does. She blows her hair out of her eyes and wipes sweat off of her face. This seems like a good time to take the stress down a notch…for all of us. “What's got you all hot and bothered?” I ask, with an appropriately sized grin, but then bam, those…that look that she can do with those eyes and all of a sudden for some reason I feel kinda awful for saying it. You know, when I was a kid, nobody ever warned me about this secret power that some people (mostly chicks, mostly the hot ones that I'm having sex with) have. Considering all the other things we got warned about, you'd think they'da taken a second for that. Seems…important. For…battle strategies. And…shit like that.

“Now is not the time,” she says, and is back to typing and looking like she might throw that coffee she's got sitting there (always the coffee) onto the screen. Then she pauses. “So, Raditz?”

“Yeah?” I say.

“You say we're basically fucked as far as this Freeza guy goes?” Like she don't know better. What's she getting at?

“Basically. `Til we figure out something. Or I guess we could just keep running, if we get a good enough lead on `im,” I say.

“But if you could get help…” she says, now biting on her nails just like Lunch, now looking out the window just like Lunch, but somehow way smarter.

“What are you talking about?” Nothing about her tone of voice that I liked.

“I mean, say that somebody was going to, I don't know, find out pretty soon that Freeza is down there on Earth, and then find out that we're not, and will be pissed at us for it, whereas if they found out first that we're here, and then that Freeza is on Earth, they might be, ah, willing to help?” Damned women. Them and their complicated questions. Wait…

“Who?” I ask.

“Well, I mean, it could cause more problems, I mean, if we don't tell them…if things are as bad as I get the feeling they are, we don't need more enemies…” There is something she's not telling me. You know, like, who she's talking about. “And, I mean, maybe you could talk some sense into them. There's room on the ship…”

“What the hell are you…”

Then, of course, come the voices. Not the voices in my head—thank every god that ever existed, because they've been humming at me all angry-like ever since Freeza showed up—but the other voices.

“And just where are you headed?” one comes through some speakers on Bulma's panels. Bulma looks at me with big, panicked eyes.

“To a magical land of pastries and no asshole princes,” is all I can think to say. Bulma looks like she's about to slap me.

“Pastries?” says the other voice (of course), “Sounds like Raditz is a desserter, Vegeta!” Dammit.

Bulma marches up to the console and gives me a very pissed don't interrupt me or so help me I will make out-of-hand and completely unrealistic comments about your perfectly amazing sexual performance look before taking in a deep breath and saying something that I get the feeling I am not gonna like.

Surprise, surprise.