Chapter 37
She clung to him tightly as they
gained altitude, racing off into the sky on a seemingly directionless path.
They broke through a bank of clouds, the mist swirling past them and clinging
to them as they moved above the white masses. Bulma’s breath was taken away as
she saw their shadow against the surface of the clouds, Vegeta’s aura visible
in their silhouettes like heat was visible above pavement in the summer, just a
colorless shimmering. Bulma kicked her legs slightly just to see the shadow move,
unable to believe she was really so high. She had flown a couple times with
both Radditz and Yamcha, but they had never moved so quickly or so high. She
estimated them at well above twenty thousand feet, and yet his aura was
protecting her so completely that she felt nothing other than a faint wind
stirring her hair. “You’re very strong, aren’t you?” she asked quietly, keeping
her arms tightly wrapped around his neck.
His black eyes glanced over at
her and he merely smiled, suddenly launching into a series of loops and rolls,
rocketing in between clouds. His strong hands found her waist and peeled her
away from him so she lost her hold on his neck, then quickly spun her over so
that she was facedown. “Spread your arms,” he said gruffly, and she did as he
asked, her stomach suddenly clenching. He gained even more altitude and speed
and suddenly let her go, veering away from her as her momentum carried her
forward at an unbelievable speed. Her breath was knocked away from her with the
velocity, but the freedom of movement was undeniable. She was flying unaided.
Then the cold of the altitude hit her, and gravity took its sickening hold.
Panic was just about to grip her and she looked down to meet her fate head on
when she saw him flying underneath her, on his back so he could watch her. He
floated back up underneath her when she started to fall, taking her back into
his arms so gently it was if she had just been magically drawn there. She took
a gigantic gasp when his aura was back in place, coughing a little. He laughed
softly, the sound only half-belittling.
She grinned in delight, looking
down past his shoulders at the ground so very far away that it seemed unreal.
She flew often enough in aircars and planes to be familiar with the height, but
such modes of transportation were nothing like this, flying with him with
nothing to support them but his own power. “Where are we going?” she asked,
laying her head on his chest.
He grabbed her around the waist
again and rolled so that she was on the bottom. “It doesn’t matter,” he
murmured. “This is your mudball. Where should we go?”
“Let’s go to a beach,” she said
suddenly. “Where do you think we are now?”
Vegeta glanced up at the sky,
quickly getting his bearings. “We should be just a few degrees north of the
equator,” he replied.
“Great! Tropical beaches are the
best,” she said. “Put us down anywhere there’s sand and water.”
Vegeta nodded and plunged
immediately, smirking at Bulma’s gasp of momentary terror as they plummeted
towards the blue-green expanse of water. They leveled off and found themselves
above high ocean cliffs, the water crashing against the rock and sending huge
plumes of spray towards the sky. Bulma squealed in delight and pointed at some
rocks further out in the water. “Seals!” she shouted, clapping. “Look, Vegeta,
seals!”
“I see them,” he replied
gruffly, deliberately winding in and around the crashing spray but careful to
not get wet. He angled them a little more north until he spotted an untouched
stretch of beach, made private by the tall cliffs that formed the perimeter of
the sand. He got his feet under him and descended slowly, landing smoothly but
then separating himself from her roughly. She staggered a few paces away from
him and looked at him with a puzzled expression until she finally turned away
to stare out at the water.
“There’s not another soul,” she
whispered, blue eyes filled with the light of the water and sun.
Vegeta scowled and put his hands
in the pockets of his swim trunks, also gazing out across the endless expanse
of ocean. “No,” he said quietly.
She put her hands on her cutoffs
and undid the fly, sliding out of them with a slithery sound and tossing them
on the sand. Stretching in her bikini she flipped off her sandals and waded a
few feet into the water, her face a little scrunched in analyzation. “The
water’s perfect,” she called to him.
He grunted and stood there with
his arms crossed over his bare, corded chest. “Of course it is,” he growled. “I
only pick the best spots.”
She glanced at him with a raised
eyebrow, then laughed, closing her eyes and showing her teeth. “That is one
thing I can’t argue,” she said gaily, taking a few more steps into the water.
Without warning she jumped into the air and slid into the water without hardly
a splash, her lithe body cutting through the water like a knife. He watched as
she resurfaced several meters later, bursting from the water and shaking her
wet hair to and fro. “You should come in, it’s wonderful!” she cried out to
him, beckoning to him as she bobbed in the water. He scowled more deeply and
watched her shrug before continuing out to sea with powerful strokes. She swum
farther and farther away, until the glinting of the sun on the water made her
head barely visible. Suddenly his senses were bombarded with the feeling of
slicing through the water, turning around and seeing himself on the beach, and
then the feeling was gone. He took a step to steady himself and put a hand to
his head, wondering what was going on when the image of her blue eyes flashed
across his brain. Standing upright again he realized that this would be an
optimal time to kill her. All he had to do was reach out when she came ashore
and take that thin, white neck between his hands and crush it. She had outlived
her usefulness, so why was she still around?
“Vegeta!” she called, and he
realized that she had drawn closer again. “Why don’t you come in?”
He tried to ignore her, but her
pleas were so frequent and insistent that he finally kicked off his shoes and
waded into the water until his ankles were covered. “There,” he snapped. “Are
you happy?”
She swam all the way into the
shallows and stood, the water clinging to her soft body as she emerged. Walking
until she was a few paces away from him she stopped and stood, a hand on her
hip as she examined him. “Hmmm,” she said, her brow marred with the slightest
of scowls.
“What?” he growled.
“Are you having fun?” she asked,
tilting her head to the side.
“I never have fun unless I’m
destroying things,” he said coldly, refusing to meet her eyes and staring out
to sea instead. The sun was just beginning to set, staining the sky a million
endless shades of color and turning the broken surface of the ocean into a
kaleidoscope.
“Oh, blah,” she said, making a
hand gesture. She darted forward and stomped in the water, sending up spray and
laughing as he twisted to try and avoid the water. He dashed to the side and
she reached down, scooping up water and splashing him. He tried to dodge again,
but suddenly she was gone. Twisting around, he tried to see where she had gone,
and then swiftly she popped up out of the water and tackled him, laughing all
the while. Her arms slid over his shoulders and time seemed to slow down for
him. He had never been touched by a female before. He hadn’t noticed the
feeling of her skin when she latched onto him at takeoff, but this was
something entirely different, her face alight with laughter and crystal blue
eyes sparkling as she threw herself on him. Her skin glided over the flesh of
his shoulders as smoothly as cool silk, her skin wet, slippery, and slightly
chilled from the water, her fingers curling gently at the back of his neck. He
threw his hands out to the sides to avoid touching her and her entire body was
pressed up against his, all her bare flesh sliding over him, her breasts
pushing against his chest, the nipples evident in their pressure despite the
fabric, and he didn’t know what to do. So he fell over, displacing the water
under his descending body in a great splash as his wide eyes stayed locked on
her. She squealed and cringed, closing her eyes to avoid getting saltwater in
them. Still shuddering, she left him under the water and stood, coughing, and
staggered up onto the beach.
She hadn’t expected him to just
fall over like that, she realized as she sat on the sand, watching Vegeta
extract himself from the water, the sun setting behind him over the water. The
look of shock on his face had been priceless as she felt her arms slide over
his muscular shoulders, but instead of fighting back like she had hoped he
would he just toppled over like a rag doll. She squinted her eyes at him as he
trudged up on the beach and shook himself off with disgust, chewing on her lip
as the water dripped over all his muscles. Drawing her knees up to her chest
and curling her arms around them she hid her face in her forearms, sighing as
she enclosed herself in that little personal space. After a moment she looked
up again, but he was staring off over the water with an unreadable expression
on his stern face. What was he thinking? Was he thinking about death? How
beautiful the sunset was? Not knowing, she curled her body tighter and joined
him at staring off into the sunset.
Night had fallen and the stars
were bright and clear in the clean sky, the water calm and the rhythm of the
waves soothing her. “Get up,” a gruff voice said, and she rubbed her eyes,
propping herself up with one arm as she got her bearings.
“Wow, it’s late,” she murmured,
and realized she must have fallen asleep.
“We need to get back,” he said
sternly.
She stood and rubbed her eyes
again, walking over to him and putting her arms out. He just looked at her
strangely. “Come on, we don’t have all night,” she grumbled. “Take me home.”
He took a few hesitant steps
towards her and touched her lightly, barely making any contact with her bare
skin. They both began to rise into the air without him even really touching
her, and she realized that he must be using that telekinetic power she had seen
him utilize on occasion. Something in her stomach fell as it occurred to her
that he was willing to spend a lot of extra energy just to spare himself having
to touch her. The thought hurt her and she wasn’t sure why. “Did you have a
nice time at the beach?” she asked cautiously.
He didn’t look down at her, just
sped on through the night sky. “Did you?”
“You didn’t answer my question,”
she said with a scowl.
“You tried to drown me and were
otherwise annoying,” he grumbled. “Do you think I enjoyed the beach?”
Her eyebrows knotted a little
and she sighed, looking down at her hands sadly. “Well, I had a great time.
You’re not unpleasant company when you’re not enraged,” she said slowly trying
to gage his reaction.
“Who’s to say I wasn’t enraged?”
“You weren’t. I could tell.”
“How could you tell? You’re just
a human, you shouldn’t be able to...” he protested, then something horrible
occurred to him.
“Shouldn’t be able to what?” she
asked, suddenly curious.
Vegeta paled. “Nothing,” he said
sharply. “Forget I said anything,” he demanded, and they flew the rest of the
way home in silence.
He fought her mind the entire way home, trying to ignore the stray thoughts he
was picking up from her. Warm, he heard her think, and felt her soft
cheek nestle against his shoulder as she cuddled up against him in her
drowsiness. A shiver wracked her smooth body, and he realized she had left her
shorts on the beach. Now she was cold and his aura wasn’t doing anything to
help her out. He began to curl around her instinctively, trying to warm her
body with his, but he beat back her thoughts and straightened his body out,
clenching his teeth angrily until he landed in the Capsule Corp. yard. He tried
to set her down, but she only murmured something and leaned against him, still
asleep. Sighing, he picked her back up and slowly entered his access code,
stepping inside as soon as the door slid open. He walked down the hallway, but
when he got upstairs he found a figure blocking his way.
“What have you done to her?” the
voice demanded angrily.
Vegeta scowled more intensely at
the scarred man. “Nothing. Get out of my way.”
“Bulma!” Yamcha shouted. “Are
you okay?”
Bulma blinked awake, the first
thing she saw being Vegeta’s black eyes looking down at her passionlessly. He
put her down as she stared at him, immediately remembering what had happened.
“What? Oh, Yamcha, I’m fine,” she replied, a little bewildered.
“What in the hell were you
thinking, going off like that?” he growled, reaching forward and grabbing her
upper arm.
Bulma tried to wrench it away,
but he wouldn’t let her go. “I can do whatever I want,” she snarled in return.
“Let me go!”
He pulled her to him, tightening
his grip. “That man is capable of hurting anyone,” Yamcha hissed. “Have you
lost your mind?”
Bulma gasped a little as the pressure
on her arm started to hurt. “Stop it, Yamcha!” she cried, trying to free
herself, and then suddenly he was off of her, leaving her standing and rubbing
her arm. Vegeta had Yamcha pressed up against the wall, his fingers around the
taller man’s throat and pulling him down to the same height.
“Did she ask you to lay a hand
on her?” Vegeta said coldly, voice calm.
Yamcha gurgled and clutched at
Vegeta’s wrist, trying unsuccessfully to pull it off of him. “N-no,” he gasped.
“Did she not tell you to unhand
her?” Vegeta said again, eyes narrowing.
“Y-yes,” Yamcha rasped.
Vegeta’s lip curled in a snarl
and he increased the pressure, almost able to touch his thumb and forefinger on
the other side of Yamcha’s trachea. “That’s what I thought,” he said quietly,
and suddenly his aura flared to brilliant light around him.
Yamcha shouted as he was burned
by the other man’s power, squeezing his eyes shut tight and groaning through
his clenched teeth. Vegeta wound up his fist and punched, missing Yamcha’s cheek
by a fraction of an inch, instead burying his arm up to the elbow in the wall.
Suddenly he released the taller man and his own aura, watching with
satisfaction as he slumped to the floor, coughing. He looked at Yamcha in
disgust before turning to Bulma, who was standing there with wide eyes.
“Bulma,” Yamcha said. “Is this how things are going to be? With Vegeta as your
thug?”
“Yamcha, get out of here. I
don’t want to see you until you’ve grown up,” Bulma said, voice strained.
Tears welled up in Yamcha’s
eyes. “But I was only trying to protect you,” he protested, voice still
scratchy. “I love you, and I just wanted you to be safe.”
“She told you to leave,” Vegeta
said coldly. “I suggest you do as she says.”
Yamcha stood shakily and
extended a hand to Bulma, but Vegeta flashed his aura into being once again.
“Bulma...” Yamcha begged softly.
“Out,” Vegeta threatened, the
unholy light of battle beginning to gleam in his eyes.
Yamcha turned, face wet with
tears, and went down the hall. Vegeta and Bulma stood there until they heard
the outside door shut and then
Bulma let out a huge sigh.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “That got a little crazy.”
Vegeta snorted at her and pursed
his mouth. “You stupid woman,” he said. “Figure out what you want.”
“What?” Bulma asked, surprised.
“What do you mean?”
“Stupidity is dangerous. Look
where it almost landed you tonight.”
“I’m not stupid! It’s not my
fault-”
“This is not a matter open for
discussion,” he snapped. “See that it doesn’t happen again. Oh, and next time
clean up your own damn messes,” he snarled, and stalked off down the hall.
Bulma stood in the hall, rubbing
her arms and legs, shivering. She had to admit that she had been both impressed
by his defense of her and hurt by his cold departing words, but he was right
about one thing: she had things that needed to be attended to. Like getting
warm, she realized, and went down the hall to her room.
She absentmindedly scratched at the paper with her pencil, shifting in her
chair at the desk in her lab every so often. She couldn’t really concentrate on
the translation. Her mind was stuck in yesterday, dwelling on the expanse of
Vegeta’s sun-darkened skin, on the way he had been warm and solid pressed
against her in the sky, the way his eyes had flashed when Yamcha grabbed her in
the hallway, how his eyes had turned so cold when he left her but the shadows
fought one another there nonetheless. “What are you doing?” a voice asked,
startling her out of her pondering.
She turned around quickly,
finding her company at the door. “Oh, translating,” she mumbled, turning back
to her desk.
“May I come in?”
“Certainly,” she replied,
beginning to scribble madly on the paper.
He crouched down next to her,
one hand on the back of her chair and the other on her desk and looked up into
her face, brows drawn together and mouth pressed in a line. “Listen,” he said.
“I’m sorry about yesterday. I just thought Vegeta was shirking his duty, and I
have to admit that I’m getting increasingly anxious to return to space. That
doesn’t excuse my behavior, but I’m hoping that you will pardon me anyway.”
She put down the pencil and
turned to him, his cold, glittering golden eyes sincere even if they weren’t
warm. “Oh, all right, Zarbon,” she muttered. “No hard feelings.”
“Great,” he said, and stood,
leaning against her desk and crossing his arms over his chest. “So how’s it
coming?”
Bulma thought about lying to him
so he would leave, but she felt he was unpredictable and didn’t want to anger
him again as she had no idea what he was capable of. “Badly,” she admitted. “To
fix the scouter so it read my language was easy- I just found the language chip
and anywhere else it was programmed and just swapped it with my own or erased
it, but I can’t do that to get it to read yours because I don’t know your
language.”
“This is all that’s keeping us
from getting out of here?” he asked, looking down at the paper. “Once you have
this done you can begin manufacturing?”
She nodded with a sigh. “Yup,”
she said in a small voice.
He gently took the paper from
her and turned it so that he could see it better, squinting at her work. “Hmmm,
I see,” he said. “So, if you managed to get some words out of Vegeta, why is it
taking so long?”
“Because I don’t know how to use
the words,” she growled, scowling and clutching the pencil more tightly.
He looked over at her and
blinked. “Why don’t you use a translation program or something? Don’t you do
that to get through the different languages on this planet?”
She sighed. Sometimes
non-scientists didn’t understand anything. “Because I don’t know all your words
or how they’re used, and I can’t very well make a program without those, can
I?”
“Well, where’s Vegeta? I thought
he’d be here. You two seem to be inseparable,” he said, and she couldn’t help
but notice a bitter tone in his voice.
“I don’t know. I thought he was
training with you,” she admitted, noticing a bitter tone in her voice as well.
“Well, obviously that is not the
case. Hmmm, and Radditz is inaccessible as well. Hn....well, I guess, Bulma, that
I shall have to be the one to help you,” he proclaimed. “We need to get out of
here, and I probably know the language best anyway. It’s certainly not the only
one I speak, so hopefully I’ll be of the most help anyhow.”
“Uh, that’d be great,” she said,
feeling apprehensive as he pulled up a chair.
“Shall we get started?” he asked
politely, taking a sheet of paper and a pencil. She nodded and he wrote
something on the paper. “This is how you write ‘start’,” he explained, and then
passed the paper to her. “Now you write your way underneath it.”
She did, and passed the paper
back to him. He wrote something else, passed it to her, and so on and so forth
late into the afternoon.
The chirping of the crickets
outside their window was so loud that it actually woke her, making her toss and
turn in their bed for quite some time before she thought to reach out to him.
His warm, solid presence always made her feel safe and serene, which was a
feeling she found herself needing more and more of late. Her hand meandered
over to his side of the bed, expecting to come into contact with his wall of
muscle, but her fingertips only stroked the air and the empty sheets. Sitting
up, she clutched the sheet to her chest, blinking in the darkness. He wasn’t in
the bed and his spot was cool, as if he hadn’t lain beside her for quite some
time. A horrible feeling came over her, a realization of emptiness that his
absence left her with, and she realized that his chosen path of fighting could
leave her feeling like that permanently. Suddenly there was very real potential
for her that she would have to feel that cold spot in her bed night after
night, if he continued down his path. The thought of nights alone in their big
marriage bed gripped her heart with icy fingers and twisted it cruelly. The
fear was so real and so large that she darted from her bed and threw on her
robe. Seeing the door ajar, she rushed through the house, checking every one of
the rooms, looking in on Gohan twice and stopping the second time to look at
her son, watching his little chest rise and fall in slumber, then dashed out of
the house.
“Goku,” she whispered hoarsely
into the night, clutching her robe around her in spite of the muggy summer
night air. All that reached her ears was the sound of the crickets and, a
little ways off, the running of the little brook. “Goku!” she cried, voice
breaking at the end of the last syllable.
Here, a voice said gently in her head, and she
followed it blindly, stumbling over lumps in the ground and clumps of grass
until she saw him, seated beneath a tree and gazing at the scenery.
“Goku,” she breathed with
relief, going to stand beside him, her dark eyes blinking back tears of
release. She looked down at him, at his naked, perfectly toned body, his skin
looking like velvet in the soft light of the stars. He looked up at her from
under his bangs and smiled at her, his grin spreading over his whole face and
so obviously heartfelt that her breath caught in her throat. “What are you
doing out here?” she demanded, gathering her robe about her more tightly and
shoving her overwhelming feelings deep into the pit of her stomach.
“I’m looking at the world,” he
replied simply. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
She glanced out at the scenery.
“Yes, Goku, it’s very nice,” she said, voice full of condescension, “But it’s
late and we should go inside.”
“Why?” he asked, looking up at
her through his thick bangs. “It’s perfect out, so warm and peaceful...”
“But what if Gohan wakes up and
gets scared without his parents?” she protested.
He shook his head and smiled up
at her again. “He can feel where we are, ChiChi, the same way that I can feel
where he is. He’s a special boy, you know.”
“I know,” she said crossly. “But
he’s still a boy.”
“Come, sit down,” he said,
wrapping a hand around her ankle and gently caressing the thin bones there.
“It’s too lovely to think about things like that right now.”
“Goku, I don’t know, it’s really
late...”
“You couldn’t sleep anyway,
right?” he said, raising an eyebrow, putting on the act of idiot that she could
never quite convince herself was accurate.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “The
crickets were too loud and the night is too warm to really sleep well.”
“Exactly,” he said, reaching up
and taking her hand, stroking the soft skin on the back of it with the side of
his thumb. “Now come on.”
She sighed and lowered herself
gingerly on the grass beside him, folding her leg modestly. “Now why are you
really out here? What’s bothering you?” she urged, placing a hand on his bare
thigh.
It was his turn to sigh and he
propped his chin up in his hand. “Radditz is training really hard, and I don’t
know why he wants to be so strong all of a sudden. It worries me.”
ChiChi stared at him, confused.
“I thought you were out playing with Gohan all this time,” she said, voice
beginning to take on the hard edge of anger.
He smiled dopily and waved his
hands in the air in front of him. “No, no, we were playing, honest,” he
protested. “It’s just that Piccolo was kinda there, sorta taking care of Gohan
while Radditz and I sparred. That’s it, no big deal, right?” he asked timidly,
eyes getting huge when he was met with her stony silence. “Right, ChiChi?”
“Your Gohan’s father, not his
playmate,” she said gruffly.
“But I’m his playmate too,” Goku
countered. “But this is sad. We shouldn’t be sad on a pretty night like this.”
“There’ll be others, Goku. You
should feel whatever you want to,” she replied with a sigh. Oh well, she
figured she was lucky to have ended up with someone who loved their son so
much; it could have been far, far, worse.
He leaned in closer to her. “You
know, I’m your playmate also,” he whispered into her ear.
She scowled and leaned away as
his large hands gently found the collar of her robe and tried to coax it off
her. “Goku!” she protested. “We’re outside!”
He looked at her funny, raising
his lower eyelids and staring at her as if she had lost a piece of her mind.
“Uh, ChiChi, I know,” he said.
“Someone could see!”
He laughed, sliding his hand up
her leg until it rested on her hip. “No one’s around for miles and this is the
woods, after all,” he said with a chuckle. “We weren’t meant to wear clothes
anyway. This is the natural way to be, and we should do it while it’s warm
still.”
She tugged at the robe for a few
minutes more, not willing to give up her resistance quite so easily, before he
finally slid the garment off her shoulders. “Well, okay, just this once,” she
muttered.
“Thank you,” Goku said sweetly,
trailing a finger along her collarbone. “You know, you’re the only thing out
here prettier than that night sky,” he said in a low voice.
“Hush, you,” she admonished, but
blushed anyway.
“No, really, ChiChi, I think
you’re the most beautiful thing I’ll ever see in my life,” he continued,
running the backs of his fingers up and down her silky arm.
“Goku, honestly,” she sighed,
shuddering against her will.
“You’re my bonded lifemate,” he
whispered, his teeth suddenly closed around her earlobe. “I’ll love you
forever, dead or alive.”
“Goku,” she murmured as he
leaned toward her, moving a hand around to her back and supporting her between
the shoulder blades as he began to run his tongue down her neck.
“Shhh...” he whispered, shifting
his other hand to her stomach and running his fingers in and around her navel.
“No, really, you’ve been quite
amorous of late,” she said softly.
He chuckled, the sound muffled
as he pressed his lips to her skin. “I’ve got to get it in while there’s still
time,” he murmured, and lowered her to the ground.
She sighed as he moved himself
on top of her, and then as he began to make his ministrations in earnest she
completely forgot to ask him just what he meant by that.
36 / Bulma’s Hideout / 38