Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Problem With Ecstacy ❯ Getting Away ( Chapter 2 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]
Disclaimer: Bite me! Ouch! I didn’t mean it literally!

A/N: Well here’s chapter two if anyone’s interested. I haven’t gotten any reviews yet, at least not last time I checked. I hope that the fact that this is a “message fic” isn’t turning any of you off. It’s still a good story (I hope.) Well any way, here goes.
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CHAPTER 2: GETTING AWAY
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Trunks landed in front of Lina’s house and knocked on her door. Outwardly he was calm, but his guts were writhing with nervousness and he prayed that this would work. He didn’t want to get her in trouble, so he had come up with the vacation story to get her and her parents to agree that she could come with him. He hated the necessity of lying to her and them, but it would otherwise be kidnapping and her habit would be discovered. He knew that Goten’s big mouth would eventually allow his mother to contact her parents, he only hoped that she wouldn’t blow his cover. The ki shield was already on his wrist, so he didn’t have to worry about any of the Z fighters being wrangled into tracking him down or about Vegeta coming after him. He had some time.

The door opened, revealing a tall, pretty woman with brown hair and eyes holding a martini. The stench of alcohol that was coming off her was so strong that he had to fight to keep himself from gagging as she asked, “Yesh? C’n I hulp you?” Apparently Lina wasn’t the only one in her family who had a dangerous addiction.

He said, “Can I speak with Lina, please? It’s about a trip I’m taking.” The drunks woman yelled for her daughter to come answer the door and Trunks waited for her to appear, hoping that she wasn’t in the middle of anything, especially a dose.

In a few moments, she came to the door and said, “Yes? Oh, hi, Trunks! What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m going to a lodge for the Christmas holiday and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me? It’ll be six weeks away from everything! There’s not even a phone in this place, so your parents wouldn’t be able to bug you.”

She seemed interested, but she was also worried. What if he found out about her habit? But eventually the desire to be free of her parents for that six weeks got the better of her. She told her mother that she would be going with him for vacation and went upstairs to pack. Trunks couldn’t believe that there had been no protest AT ALL from her parents! Didn’t they even care? Of course, that was a big part of her problem. They didn’t get it at all.

When she came back down with her bags, Trunks encapsulated them and took out his black corvette. She loved his car, which had been a gift from his mother for his sixteenth birthday, and she hopped in. As he drove past the city limit sign, she asked him, “So where is this lodge, anyway?”

“It’s up in the mountains. It’s really just an old cabin, but I’ve spruced it up over the last couple of years. It’s completely insulated and it has hot and cold running water and central heating, but there’s no electricity and no phones. I did that on purpose, because with all the gizmos around the house that Mom’s always tinkering with, I just get tired of it all some times and I wanted a place to get away from it all. All I have up there is myself and nature. I even hunt to feed myself. It’s not too hard at this time of the year, when you’re still getting all the stupid babies. There’s plenty to eat, and I’m not a bad cook. The woods around there are gorgeous, especially with the first snows.” He was glad that he had never shown the little place to anyone, preferring to use it for his private retreat. No one knew that he had this place. He had bought it under an assumed name, and he had fixed it up using the allowance money that he had saved in a little box ever since he was a kid.

She smiled tiredly. “That sounds great.” She thought she would really enjoy these six weeks. She didn’t have to worry about anything and she had her entire stash with her, more enough to last six weeks. Mabey she would finally get up the courage to end it while she was in such a beautiful-sounding place.

Trunks was not aware that his passenger was considering suicide, but he WAS aware that she had brought plenty of her Poison with her. Her bag reeked of it. He would have to destroy every bit of the stuff as soon as he could get his hands on it, or he’d have to deal with her when she was in her dreams. That could be dangerous for her, especially if she decided to attack him, thinking he was an enemy. He would never hurt her on purpose, but when someone in the throes of Poison dreams started fighting they didn’t feel any pain or fear, and they could easily hurt a normal person. But if she attacked Trunks, she’d hurt herself, badly. One punch and she would break her hand.

They drove on through the night, Trunks stopping occasionally to let her eat or go to the bathroom. He didn’t eat anything himself, wanting to wait until he could get himself some fresh venison. He noticed that she didn’t eat a lot, even for a human, and that worried him. It probably meant that she was getting close to the time when her need for the drug would start announcing itself with pain. He wanted to get her to the cabin before that happened.
x x x

Bulma stared at her son’s bedroom in disbelief. His dresser was gone, as were the bed, one suitcase and several small items and pictures. He had most likely encapsulated them, and wherever he had gone, he had gone prepared for a long stay. She felt the tears starting to well up in her eyes. Damn. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry! After all, he was doing what he thought was right, and by the looks of things he had put a lot of thought into it. But she wished that he had felt that he could tell her what he had been planning. That was what hurt the most, that he hadn’t felt that he could trust her with the information, and worse, that he had been right. She would have gone straight to the cops and had the girl locked up for her own benefit, leaving her to face the coming withdrawal alone.

As she tried to restrain her tears, she felt Vegeta come up behind her. He placed a hand on her shoulder, knowing that she was trying not to break down, and that she needed to cry. She took his silent offer of solace and turned to him, letting the sobs come as she buried her head in his chest. He put his arms around his wife, just holding her and stroking her hair, letting her cry herself out. He had learned a lot about how to deal with feelings after having died for the second time, and he knew that this was what she needed.

Vegeta was angry with himself for not thinking when he had mentioned his feelings about users. He felt that if they wanted to kill themselves slowly instead of quickly, then they should be allowed to, but that was not a decision that he would give to a child. This girl would be about the same age as his son, and she should not be faced with the kind of life that would lead to drug use, suicide and so many other forms of self torture. He remembered what it was like for him at that age, so full of rage and pain that with the added burden of the hormones of adolescence he had tried more than once to do himself in, but Frieza had never allowed him to die, preferring to keep him alive and entertaining. No child should have to go through that.

No, Trunks would not have realized that he was speaking only of adults. If grown men and women decided to kill themselves slowly, then that was their weakness, and their choice, but a child? No. He couldn’t countenance that. He only wished that he could tell his son that. With that ki shield on, there was no way to find him and tell him.
x x x

When Trunks pulled into the pebble drive, it was close to sunrise. Lina was asleep on the passenger seat and she looked like a fallen angel. He went around to the passenger door, opened it and picked her up. She didn’t make a sound or move at all as he took her into the house and into the bedroom where he’d already set everything up the night before. He wished for a moment that he had dared fly her up here. It would certainly have reduced all the time constraints that he had managed to get tangled up in. But he didn’t want to strain the shield. It hadn’t really been tested on high power levels and he didn’t want the damn thing to quit on him just because he had been impatient to get here.

He set her on the bed and left to encapsulate the car. He took her luggage capsule out of the little refrigerator in his jacket pocket and activated it. The scent of the drug wafted to him in the smoke of the capsule, sickly sweet , but not so strong that it was overpowering. He started going through the bags one by one finding the needles, the rubber tourniquet, and the raw powder that she mixed with a tiny amount of water in the syringe. His sense of smell helped him locate every single bag of the stuff, hidden in every imaginable crevice and cranny in the various pieces of luggage. He was about to take them outside and destroy them with a small burst of his ki when the girl who he was trying to help walked out of the bedroom and saw what he had in his hands.

Her eyes widened in surprise and fear. He knew! The bastard had known all along about her habit! “What the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

“I’m sorry I lied to you, Lina, but this was all I could think of. I can’t let you keep hurting yourself. It’s going to be a hard road, but you won’t have to walk it alone. I’ll be here for you for as long as it takes.” Then he turned and walked outside, the pile of instruments and white bags still in his hands.

It was then that she realized exactly what he intended to do. She ran after him and screamed, “NO!!!” but it was too late! He had set everything on the ground and he stood back a bit. He saw her coming and caught her around the shoulders before she could reach her precious stash. Then he reached back with one arm, his hand out flat. A small ball of energy grew within his palm to about the size of a tennis ball, then launched itself toward the pile, instantly catching the whole thing on fire as if it had been covered in gasoline and he had thrown in a match. She screamed again, then turned eyes filled with hatred on Trunks and threw a punch at his head. He easily blocked it, catching her fist in his palm. “Damn you, you bastard! What the hell’s wrong with you!? Don’t you know what’s going to happen in a few hours? You have to get me back to civilization! I have to get more stuff!”

He shook his head. “No. You’re getting clean, and this is the only way to do it. You have to go cold. It isn’t going to be easy, but--.”

“Oh my God, you’re a fucking lunatic! The pain alone will kill me!”

“No, it won’t. I won’t let you die, slowly or quickly. You aren’t doing this alone. You’ll never be alone again, I promise you. You can get through this, and when you do, you’ll never have to deal with it again, and you’ll always have a place to turn when the feelings that made you get on that stuff in the first place come up again. You’ll never have to turn to a damn needle again!” He pushed the sleeve of her shirt up until it was above her elbow. “Look at what this has done to you! You used to be alive! And now all you are is a walking corpse! But I know from experience that death doesn’t have to be a permanent thing. You can come back! Are you willing to try?”
x x x

A/N: Cliffhanger! ^_^ Don’t kill the author! What’s going to happen, hmm? Will they be found before Lina has a chance to heal? Will the withdrawal symptoms kill her? Will she try to do something rash? Find out in the next chapter!