Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Lab Monkey ❯ Torture Me ( Chapter 35 )

A/N: I know that I said in the last chapter that this installment would be out much quicker than usual, and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to live up to that promise. I actually finished this chapter weeks ago, but Lisa, my beta, threw it back at me. So you can blame her for the delay. And you know what? She was right. The chapter I wrote was completely and totally wrong. This isn't a light, fluffy, silver-lined cloud love story. It's a dark romance filled with obsession and possession. Love can be both wonderful and terrible, and everything in between. So instead of blaming Lisa you can thank her for this chapter, because without her it wouldn't exist. She squashes my natural tendency to write about rainbows and unicorns, and I'm better writer for it. Thanks so much Lisa.

Warning: Some sexual content, but not explicit….much.

Chapter Thirty-Five:

Torture me

 

Vegeta padded through the shadows of the sex club, his entire body radiating barely contained aggression. He never enjoyed coming to these places. They were loud, smelled of too much sex, and there was always someone trying to touch him. On occasion he had been forced to come, knowing that if Radditz and Nappa were left without supervision he would likely spend the rest of his life paying for the damage they would wreck while drunk. But he had never indulged, not once.

The beat of drums slid around his testicles before slithering up his spine to spike him in the back of his brain. He could feel the vibrations in the floor, thrumming through his heels all the way up to his eyeballs. The marrow of his bones reverberated until it felt like his blood was pulsing in time with the music. All around him creatures writhed and twisted. Some danced to the music, others to the rhythm created by their partner's mouths and fingers.

It had been days since he last ate and even longer since he slept. He was always moving from place to place, traveling from one star base to the next. He didn't want to slow down. He didn't want to stop. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering.

Lights began to strobe from the ceiling, freezing the people around him in ridiculous positions before the shadows rearranged them. He glanced down, catching sight of blood streaked on the back of his hand. He frowned at it for a second, but then the shadows drowned him in darkness again. Absently, he wiped his hand down his thigh, cleaning the stain from his knuckles, before he winded his way through the crowd, careful not to brush against anyone if he could avoid it.

He was almost to the bar where a vibrant rainbow of humanoids lined up waiting for their drinks when he saw a flash of blue hair from across the floor. Instantly he knew that it was the wrong shade. It was too deep, almost oceanic in color, not the light teal that he was used to. What his brain knew and what his body knew were two different things though. He felt his penis swell until it nudged his lower stomach insistently. He hadn't tasted a woman, hadn't smelled one, since he had left . . . her.

Smoothly he changed direction, his blatant aggression turning predatory as he stalked through the crowd. Males backed away, shielding their females behind them. Women cast him looks filled with fear and longing. He ignored them all. His eyes were only for his target.

The flash of blue disappeared in the undulating crowd, and Vegeta let out a low growl of discontent. The dancers around him stepped back, abandoning him in a loose, empty circle in the center of the floor. The flash of blue appeared again at the base of the stairs at the far end of the room, behind the live band that was drumming wildly. This time he could see the delicate curve of the woman's back below the sleek curls of blue, revealed by a red, silk gown. The dip of her spine looked familiar, and Vegeta's fingers curled with longing at his sides.

She turned to glance at him, and his expression narrowed. Her eyes weren't the deep blue that he had spent hours staring into. They were green, almost jade. They were pretty, but wrong. She met his gaze from across the floor, and her lashes dipped before her chin motioned subtly to the top of the stairs. She turned away, sashaying slowly up the steps.

Vegeta's erection hardened, his blood already in rhythm with the drums began pulsing insistently from the base of his cock all the way to the throbbing tip. His testicles hung heavy on the insides of his thighs, and he had to fight the urge to cup himself. He glanced back the way he came, but he was already moving forward.

A purple-skinned man stepped in his way, and Vegeta snarled in warning, his hand shooting out. The man quickly dodged away, fear and instinct making him fast enough to avoid disaster. The lights began flashing again, and Vegeta saw more rust-colored streaks on the back of his hand. They started at his fingertips and crawled up his knuckles. His dark brows lowered as he rubbed his hand against his chest.

The woman was at the top of the stairs now, and she looked back, beckoning him. He saw that she was too tall, almost equal to him in height. His upper lip curled in disdain as his foot landed on the first step. He climbed the stairs in record time, but she was already receding down the hall. At the top of the stairs a burly man stood to the side, unobtrusive at the moment, but that would change if Vegeta tried to pass.

The man held out one hand, palm up, while a second set of heavily muscular arms remained crossed over his stomach. Vegeta glanced at the outstretched hand, disgust curdling his stomach. Ahead of him, he could see the woman waiting at bend of the hall, one hand braced on the corner while she looked over her shoulder at him. The expression in her green eyes was unreadable, her face bland with mild acceptance. Now in the fully lit hall, without the strobbing to distract him, he could see that her pale skin had a bluish cast to it, as if she had been left out in the snow to long. He wondered if she would be cold to the touch.

Still watching the woman he dropped some credits in the bouncer's outstretched hand. Business conducted, the woman disappeared around the corner and Vegeta followed. As he rounded the bend, he saw her disappear into a room, the door left wide in invitation for him to follow. He glanced around the room as he entered, unimpressed by its barren appearance. It had only a bed, made up of red sheets with no duvet. For easy clean up between customers, he was sure. Next to the bed was a nightstand, a goodie basket atop of it. Vegeta had no desire to look through the small bottles and jars stuffed inside. In the corner was a single standing lamp, the only illumination in the room. The woman stood beside it, her face a mild mask of complacency.

“Would you like the light off or on?”

As she spoke, Vegeta felt shards of ice wiggle around in his brain. Her voice was too contrived. It was meant to be soft and alluring, a temptation of sound just like her body was supposed to be a temptation of sight. It had no highs or lows. No outrage or sincerity. It was a puppet's voice.

When he didn't answer, the woman shrugged and left the light on. She moved to stand in front of him, already unzipping her dress. The silk cloth slithered down her body, pooling at her hips before sliding down to her feet. Vegeta watched its descent, his passionless eyes absorbing her dark blue nipples, narrow waist and pelt of navy fur.

Her body was perfect. Her delicate waist flared out into hips that were wide enough for a man to grab onto. Her breasts would fill his hands, and were undoubtedly sweet to the taste. She had been crafted from a wet dream to be as beautiful as possible. She was completely wrong.

His hand whipped up so fast that it was a blur, his fingers wrapping around her hair. Her hair was thick and heavy, not the usual silky softness he was used too. The woman gasped, but remained unmoving as he wrenched her head to the side to look at her nape hidden by her hair. At her hair line was a series of numbers tattooed into her skin.

“You're a clone,” Vegeta accused, but the woman didn't blink at his tone. She couldn't. She was incapable of feeling fear.

“Of course.” Her sing-song voice was breathless with sexuality. She reached out, tugging on the hem of his shirt, trying to undress him. He stepped back, spinning on his heel so he could face the door.

A clone was a hybrid created in a lab. They were grown to specification in mere hours and were usually sent to work where others had no desire to go, like mines or the sex trade. Easy enough when DNA manipulation could make them hardy for treacherous terrain or so beautiful that men would want to fuck them for a price.

They weren't sentient. Not really.

Vegeta glanced down at his curled fists. The blood was still there, streaking his hands. It was crusted in the ridges of his knuckles and was wet between his fingers. He thought he had washed it off before alighting from his ship, but he must have forgotten.

He had stopped at one of Frieza's outposts before coming here. Yet another in a long line that he had visited in the last weeks. They had welcomed him, same as the others. It seemed that Vegeta was the highest ranking officer left in Frieza's army, the rest having been destroyed on Cold's ship when it had blown up.

They expected him to take command, but they had been wrong. He killed them all. He kept killing them over and over, but there were always more of them, like cockroaches streaming up from the sewer. So many soldiers just like him that had refused to rise up against Frieza when he was alive and they had nowhere to go now that he was dead. Vegeta told himself that he was doing them a favor, putting them out of their misery. They were useless relics of an age that had passed. Certainly, that couldn't be a sin. Could it?

Frieza was gone. Vegeta's reason for living was gone. There was no one left to fight.

The woman was pressed up behind him, her clever hands dipping beneath his waistband to find his heavy erection. He jolted when her fingertips brushed his hot flesh. He twisted in her arms, his black eyes staring her down as he backed her towards the bed. She fell backwards and he followed her, wedging his body between her pale thighs so she was helplessly trapped beneath him.

“Fight me,” he demanded, his eyes glowing with hellfire.

“Fight you?” Her voice wavered slightly, but not from fear, from confusion. The word fight was not in her vocabulary. She had no reference to it. There was only submission.

“Call me an asshole. A bastard. A bad man!” Vegeta's voice was rough, his hands rougher as he gripped her hips. She bucked against him--a siren's call, not a protest.

Her eyes clouded, unable to understand his request. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to coax him down for a kiss, but he refused. Her lips were painted cherry-red, but they were too flat almost thin. They weren't full and pouty. They didn't curl up at the corners. Bulma's always curled up, even when she was screaming at him. It was like at any moment she was going to break out into a smile. This woman's lips wouldn't be delicious like Bulma's.

Vegeta remembered the first time he became fascinated with Bulma's lips. It was while he was still a captive in her lab, and she was working so hard to create a new cell for him. She finally did, but when she tried to drug him into unconsciousness for the move she had gravely miscalculated the dose. He had awoken, stoned out of his mind, his focus on only two things--her lips and her neck.

He hadn't known if he wanted to kiss her or choke her to death. She was the witch that was torturing him with captivity, teasing him with her beauty, bewitching him with her wit. During those early days all he wanted to do was fuck her to death. Literally. He wanted to spread her white thighs wide, thrust himself into her while choking the life out of her. He wanted to kiss her cherry lips until he tasted the sweet, salty flavor of blood on his tongue.

He had stolen her away with that in mind. He wanted to fuck her, make her his then he was going to kill her. Punish her. Destroy her like she destroyed him. Even when he held her life in his hands she had screamed at him, made petulant demands. She had always looked him in the eye, fearless and proud. Even when his hands were wrapped around her dainty neck.

What had changed he wondered? When had he become so fundamentally different? Why did he feel so fucking irrational when she wasn't around? Why had she stopped fighting him?

Through the haze of his memories he realized that the room was flashing red and yellow lights, and a low buzz was vibrating around him. He heard shouting in the distance, and the room was filled with people, but no one was approaching him. Fear swelled it the room and he glanced to the side, seeing the bouncer from the stairs against the wall.

“I am so not touching him. Are you kidding me? He'll blow the whole place up.” Vegeta heard a man say behind him, and his brows drew together into a fierce frown.

The bouncer, seeing that Vegeta was now looking at him, held all four of his hands out complacently.

“If you want to kill her, that's fine. We offer that service, but it will cost you extra.” The man's voice only shook a little when he spoke, and the other voices in the room stilled at his words. Vegeta glanced over his shoulder, and he could see three other large men filling the room, and some smaller feminine faces peering in from the hallway. He realized now that the low buzzing he was hearing was a warning siren.

He glanced down at the woman beneath him, shocked to see that her skin had gone ice blue. Her green eyes were wide and reddening at the edges where blood vessels were bursting, but they still weren't filled with fear. All Vegeta could see was acceptance. His eyes shifted lower, and he saw his hands wrapped tightly around her slender neck. Dark bruises were blooming beneath his fingers. His hands were soaked with blood now. It was bright and shiny, freshly spilt. He scanned the woman beneath him, expecting to see wounds, but there was nothing.

Her hands weren't even wrapped around his wrists, but instead they were lying at her sides, calming waiting for the end. When he had tried to choke Bulma she fought so hard that her small kittenish nails had actually broken the skin on the backs of his hands. Bulma would never wait passively to die, even now that her soul was dead and all was left behind was a puppet. She would struggle to the very end, because deep down Bulma was a fighter.

He wondered if this would count as murder in Bulma's mind. After all, the creature beneath him wasn't even sentient. It didn't have a soul—did it? He didn't have a soul---did he?

He released his grip, and shot up from the bed so fast that the males in the room heaved backwards a step. He didn't glance at them as he spun on his heel, stalking towards the door. They made a hole for him as he exited, and without a word he left the club behind to return to his ship.

He stomped onto the Isis's bridge, pissed beyond belief. He had been running the ship hard in the last weeks since he had stolen it. It wasn't on the cusp of a break down, but it wasn't running nearly as smoothly as it would if Bulma were there. That woman could coax a rust bucket to give her a hundred and ten percent. If Vegeta didn't know better, he would think that she had the ability to speak telepathically with machines.

From the communications console he heard a beep, and he stilled so suddenly that the air around him vibrated with shock. He stared hard at the little yellow flash of light that told him that he had a message waiting for him.

There was only one person who would be calling him. There was only one person who knew how to find him.

Slowly he walked up to the view screen and flicked the button, his body automatically braced for a verbal onslaught. He felt trepidation, fury, and oddly, anticipation swirling in chest. There were other emotions mixed together inside of him that he couldn't name, ones that he didn't want to.

“You bastard!”

The words he expected, the voice he did not. Situated clearly in the view screen was Mrs. Briefs. Her usually perfect make-up was smeared and her blonde hair was tangled around her shoulders. He could see where her eyes were red from crying.

Something terrible exploded in his chest. He almost didn't recognize it, since he hadn't felt such a strong emotion since he was a child, but he was fairly certain that it was fear. Fear that something had happened to Bulma.

“It's all you fault! Men came and took Bulma. They are probably torturing my baby right now, and it's all your fault. If you had never come into our lives. If you had never shown your miserable hide on our planet, we would all be happy right now.”

She was screeching at the top of her lungs, her voice tight with panic. Mr. Briefs appeared at the edge of the screen, his skinny arms making an effort to embrace and comfort his wife, but she shook him off. Tears were falling down the older woman's face now, and she used a white handkerchief to wipe them away. She turned away to address her husband, the viewer forgotten.

“I can't do this again. I can't have her taken so soon after we just got her back. Why can't anyone find her?”

Mr. Briefs shushed her, and Vegeta could hear him say that people were looking, but he was already pulling Mrs. Briefs away. The view screen went dark, leaving Vegeta alone on the bridge. He knew that the message had been recorded and sent weeks ago. It would take that long to catch up to him light years away from Earth.

There was a good chance that Bulma had already been found and rescued. She was probably ensconced in her palatial home at that moment, being clucked over by her insane mother and half of the serving staff. There was no reason for him to return to Earth. Even if she was still missing, there still wasn't a reason for him to return. Bulma was no longer his concern. She was nothing to him, but a memory.

She was the past, and he needed to think of the future.

His entire body clenched painfully at the thought, and his shoulders twitched forward as if he had taken a blow to the chest. He spun on his heel, intending to return to his room so he could wash the blood from his hands. As he strode down the corridors, all he could see were shadows and echoes of the past. Everything about the ship reminded him of Bulma.

On instinct he entered the room that they had shared on their journey through space. Since stealing the ship he had avoided the room, knowing that it was nothing more than an emotional morass. His hell-lit eyes darted around the room, taking in the satin sheets that were still crumpled on the floor from where Bulma had left them. She had never been much of a housekeeper. He remembered dozens of times that he had picked up their room while she had been off working on some repair on the ship.

She had teased him that he was a clean freak, and he snarled at her that a soldier couldn't afford to be tripping on crap strewn across the floor if an enemy were to attack. She had laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering in his ear that his June Cleaver tendencies were safe with her. He never knew what she meant, but it never mattered because as soon as she was in his arms he would lay her down on the nearest surface, proceed to wrap her entire body around his and wring moans of ecstasy from her perfect curving lips.

He was startled to realize that he couldn't tell what color the sheets were. He could see that they had a tint to them, a shade, but it was muted and dull. It was as if he was seeing them, but not really. The only colors he could see with any vibrancy were the fresh red spill of blood and the aching coolness of blue. He glanced down to his hands, expecting to see blood there, but there was nothing. His hands were clean down to the quick of his nails.

In the past few weeks he had lost his taste for life, his thirst for it. He was breathing, but there was no scent to the air. He was seeing, but there was no color in the world around him. He lived in two places at once. The present where he wandered aimlessly, killing those unlucky enough to cross his path, and the past where his memories haunted him. Mingling with those memories were insidious whispers of how she had broken him, destroyed him.

Before she invaded his life and ruthlessly trapped him in a cage, his existence had been preordained. He had his every step mapped out and planned for the next twenty years--the downfall of Frieza and his armies, the destruction of entire civilizations and his rise to absolute power. One monotonous, monstrous step after another. He had existed in a prison of his own creation, and Frieza was the warden with all the keys. It had been a floating prison of flesh and blood, of metal and glass. It had been hell.

She shattered the bleakness of his life, and introduced him to color. With her the universe was filled with sights, sounds and exotic tastes. The intensity of her vitality zinged through him, electrifying every cell in his body. She had taken his cold, heartless corpse and breathed life into him. She showed him how to feel pain and remorse, fear and sorrow---love and loss. She had brought him to life so she could stomp him out of existence slowly and cruelly.

She was never going to let him go. Not while she was still alive. She was still inside his mind, crawling around, making him remember things better left forgotten. The only scent he could smell was her scent, and it was on everything. The only sound he could hear was her laughter ringing down the halls; everything else was muted. She was everywhere he looked and nowhere at all. She was a ghost in his mind ---a living, breathing spirit that would never stop haunting him until he destroyed her.

He tried to ignore the ominous whispering in his mind---the voices that told him that he would never be free of her. He was still trapped back in the life-sucking cage while she pranced around outside, taunting him with cherry lips and sparkling eyes.

His hand whipped out and a blue ball of ki flew towards the bed that they had shared, setting it ablaze. Her scent was saturated into the sheets, and even the smell of char couldn't dampen the lavender in the air. He crossed the room in a flurry, wrenching open the closet door where most of the clothing she had gathered still hung. He tore them from the hangers, flinging them haphazardly behind him.

Distantly he could hear a low growl of a wounded animal. It sounded close, inside the room with him, but he ignored it. He swept up her shoes from the floor and threw them into the pile. Next he stomped over to her vanity, sweeping cosmetics and brushes off the surface before he smashed the fragile wood to pieces. Somehow she had convinced him to buy her the useless piece of scrap wood so she could make herself prettier for him.

And she had. She was so gorgeous that it had hurt his eyes to look at her. He was used to fucking beautiful women. He was a prince. He was a high-ranking soldier in Frieza's army. Women had bowed to him. They had gotten down on their knees and sucked his dick until he came in their mouths. But none of them had looked at him like Bulma had, with such blatant, disgusting, heart-warming adoration. Those women had feared him, but she had loved him.

The growling in the room became louder, sounding more like a strained sob. He kicked everything into the center of the room near the burning pyre of their bed. Red lights flashed, making the room spin sickly.

He heard Bulma's voice, automated and distant, but still filled with more life than the sex clone had ever displayed. She warned him of disaster, reminding him that destruction only breed pain. Her computer-generated voice was a reminder of what didn't exist anymore, what he had lost. It knifed him through the heart, slicing open his innards until it felt like his bowels were spilling out onto the floor.

He plunged his hands into the fire, grasping a handful of flaming sheets. He dragged them to the pile of her clothing, ignoring the fire that licked up his arms and dropped them in the center. Her clothing went up in a whoosh, flaming blue and green and finally red.

The alarms sounded, and he heard a loud click. Water rained down from the ceiling, and black, acrid smoke filled the air. It cascaded over his face, flattening his hair under the intense spray. He opened his mouth to cough, but something lodged in the back of his throat. He lifted his hands to his face, seeing blood pooling in his palms.

The water dampened the blaze, leaving behind a smoldering mass of trash. All that was left of her clothing was some twisted, burnt fabric. He could see a black hunk of plastic that looked like it could have been a shoe. He looked back at his hands coated in vibrant, glistening blood.

He was damned. Soulless. Hell-bound. No one could cause as much mayhem as him and expect to go elsewhere. But just because he was going to Hell didn't mean that he had live through it now. Bulma was torturing him. Her very existence, every breath she took, caused him physical pain. In a moment of weakness he had allowed her to live and in doing so he had damned himself to a hellish existence. He had to rectify his mistake. That was the only way he would be able to continue living. Even though his life was torture, it was still his. He had not spent twenty years living through the torment that was Frieza to now be brought low by a simple woman.

There was only one answer to his problem. He had to return to Earth and kill Bulma. Only then would he be free. Only then could he return to the man that he once had been. The monster that he was crafted to be. For the first time in twenty years he allowed himself to hope, ignoring the sick twist in his stomach that the water downed emotion wrought from him.