"For as long as I can remember, even when I was a little girl, I had this vision in my mind. One time, my father had read me the story of Cinderella. How a Prince was looking for the girl of his dreams. A fairy godmother came and gave Cinderella her wish. She then got to dance the night away with her love, the handsome Prince. But, at midnight, it was all taken away from her, and she ran off, thinking she'd be alone forever.
"But, a few days later, her Prince came for her. The glass slipper he had with him fit her, and she magically regained all that made her more than just a step sister. In the end, she had found her Prince, and lived Happily Ever After...
"And then there's me. In fairy tales, the Prince always comes to take the maiden away and ride off into the sunset, totally in love. That'll never happen to me at this rate. Yamcha has been acting totally weird, being a total jerk. Why doesn't he even try to see what's going on with me? I don't think he'll ever understand. He's coming over tonight to talk to me. I can only hope that I can make him see. If he can't, I guess I'll have to stay lost and alone for the rest of my life. I might never find my Prince at this rate..."
Bulma closed her journal and sighed. It seemed like she was writing this same story over and over again. Yamcha could be such a moron. Acting all sneaky and never being able to give her a straight answer about anything he had been doing while he was gone. She had long ago settled on the probable cause: He was out with other girls. But she never had the proof she needed. Tonight, she would confront him about it and settle it once and for all. She couldn't take much more heartbreak...
An explosion rocked the house. 'Vegeta again. I'll bet he trashed his trainer for the millionth time.' There was no end to the cycle. Vegeta would overload the gravitational trainer, she would fix it. He would be good for a week or so, then he would blow it up again. It went on and on like that. And it made her mad...
She stormed down to the lab and got her tool belt strapped on. She then made her way to the trainer room, and was given a bad surprise when she opened the door. Amid the debris and smoke of the ruined trainer she found Vegeta, buried underneath a pile of rubble. All she could see was his right hand laying limp on what was left of the control panel.
"Oh my god! Vegeta!" She ran to his aid, digging through what was left of the former ceiling of the trainer. Deep inside her, her heart raced. She was moving with a determination she had never before shown. "Vegeta, say something, give me a sign. Oh god, Vegeta..."
As she uncovered him, she found him to be unconcious and unresponsive. She cradled him on her lap immediately, and began to try anything she could to bring the Saiyan warrior back to reality. "Vegeta, speak to me! Oh, this isn't good, SOMEONE HELP ME!"
Vegeta awoke to find himself in new surroundings. His vision was blurry, and he couldn't make out anything. All he saw above him was what he thought to be a white ceiling. 'Where... where am I? How did I get here? Oooohhh, my whole body hurts like crazy! What the hell happened to me?' His thoughts were racing. He tried to piece together the details of the recent past. 'I remember working out in the GT. The gravity was set at 375, and things were going alright, arrrgh! It's still a blur...'
He closed his eyes and opened them again, half hoping that the world would clear itself up a bit. There was some improvement, but not much. He turned his head to one side, hoping to get some clue as to his surroundings. He barely made out the outline of someone sitting on a chair. From what he could tell in his weak state, that person was face down on what looked like a desk of some kind. Their face was turned away from him, all he could really see was a bluish blur. He could only think of one person he knew with that color hair...
"Bul... m... ma..." His voice was barely a whisper, his strength wasn't even enough to give it much of a tone at all. With that, he passed back out, too weak to even stay awake.
Bulma stirred a bit, she had heard something. She opened her eyes and looked around, her mind still groggy from the nap she had apparently been taking. "Hmm, I must have dozed off. Oh! Vegeta!" She turned to her patient, who lay on his bed, still out cold. "Hmm, no change. Oh Vegeta, why do you have to push yourself so hard? You've really got me worried."
She looked at him for a little while. It all seemed so strange, seeing him here like this. The proud Saiyan now unconcious and bedridden. He looked like a child to her. A hurt little boy too proud to think about getting help. But this time, he was too hurt to have the choice. He looked so helpless. 'I wish I knew what made him so driven. Is it because of the androids? Or is it because of his lonliness? Please, Vegeta, get better. You've got to.' As she thought, a single tear formed and ran down her cheek. She got up from the desk and made her way out of his room. As she closed the door, she paused to look at him one more time. 'You've got to get better, Vegeta. Don't leave me alone again...'
(::~~::)
Vegeta awoke again, his head still ringing a bit from the blast that had knocked him out. "Arrrrgh. My head is exploding! I guess I lost a rough battle with that machine of theirs. Oooo." He sat up slowly and looked around. He was in his room, in his own bed. "They must have brought me up here after the explosion. I don't see why, they know I'd be fine, even after a jolt like that one." He swung his legs around to the side of the bed and tried to get up, but he couldn't make it very far.
He brought his hand down onto the desk next to his bed to right himself as he fell back, and he felt something on the top, under his hand. After he shook some cobwebs out of his mind, he picked the object up from the desk and looked at it. It was an earring. "How did this worthless bobble get in here? Oh, wait, it must belong to... Bulma..."
Amid the pain and anguish his body was going through, it came again. It overtook the pain he was feeling. That same feeling he had experienced that night on the roof when he talked to her. It was happening again, and again, it made him scared. He could only stare at the earring, wide eyed from the emotions swirling through him. 'Why does simply picking up a meaningless nick nack make me feel this way? How can something as stupid as this little rock do this to me? Bulma... What is this power that you seem to have over me?' Suddenly, he heard shouting coming from the next room.
"What? What's going on over there?" Vegeta slowly got up and limped his way towards the wall that seperated his room from Bulma's. He stumbled and fell to one knee, his body wincing from the pain. But he sucked it all up and got back to his feet, and continued on untill he reached his destination. He pressed his ear up to the wall and listened...
"Yamcha, what the hell is your problem?" It was Bulma. That pathetic human Yamcha must be in there with her...
"Look, Bulma, you know I can't help myself. I mean, I get it from Master Roshi, really..."
"I don't care where you get it from. You shouldn't get it at all. You were supposed to have quit this nonsense a long time ago. And now I find out that you were with another girl. Hell, Yajirobi even told me that Vegeta gave you a good earful."
"That little snake in the grass! When I get my hands on him, I'll..."
"You'll what, Yamcha? Beat him up because he caught you with one of your little bimbos? That's pretty pathetic, Yamcha. Blaming Yajirobi when you know full well that you're the guilty party. You're such a jack ass, you know."
Vegeta squeezed tighter on the earing in his hand and lifted it up. He looked at the tiny piece of jewelry and smiled. 'She really is almost Saiyan. She's got some serious fire burning inside of her.' He pressed his ear back to the wall and listened some more.
"Come on, Yamcha, get over it. I can't believe I'm admitting this, but even Vegeta has more sense in him than you do. You must be doing something wrong if HE even says you're in the wrong. You're such an idiot..."
"Vegeta? There's no way he could ever be a better man than me! That bastard doesn't even have a sympathetic bone in his whole chimpanzee body! I'm 10 times the man he is..."
"More like 10 times the simian. Face it, Yamcha. You're a womanizing loser. Now get out of my face and don't ever come near me again, not while you still think you can convince me that there's a good reason why I should ever go out with you again. There is no good reason."
"Yes there is, Bulma. Give me one more chance, I can change, I swear it! You don't know how sorry I really am..."
Vegeta was growing sick and tired of hearing Yamcha's lies. Such a coward, trying to talk his way out of a hole instead of taking his punishment like a man. He wasn't anywhere near the warrior he was.
"Yamcha, there is nothing you can say to me that would make me give you another chance. Now I believe I told you to leave..."
Yamcha reached out in desperation and grabbed Bulma by the arm. "Bulma, you've got to listen to me..."
"Yamcha, let go. You're hurting me..."
"I swear, Bulma, this is the last time. I'm done with all the other women!"
"Yamcha, LET GO OF ME!!!"
Vegeta couldn't take anymore. A shot of adrenaline coarsed through his veins, and he powered up his ki as much as he could in his injured state. "NO MORE!" He screamed and blasted his way through the wall. He now stood in Bulma's room, staring Yamcha down with his icy glare. He didn't speak a word, he just stared at the man before him. Bulma stood in shock. She looked at the hole in her wall, then back to who had come through it.
Almost as suddenly as he broke in, Vegeta took off straight for Yamcha. He grabbed him and plowed him through the wall by the door leading out to Bulma's balcony, and flew up into the sky over the compound. There, he hung Yamcha in midair, staring into his eyes with hatred. But this hatred was different, and had different origins...
Bulma ran out onto her balcony and looked up at the two men floating above her home. What had made Vegeta pull a stunt like this? All she could do was look as Vegeta seemed to be saying something to her former beau. After a few moments, she was even more surprised to see Vegeta let Yamcha go. Normally, when Vegeta was angered by something or someone, he wouldn't stop until he had demolished them. But he actually let Yamcha go. As Yamcha flew away, Bulma turned her stare to Vegeta, who was now flying back to her room.
Vegeta landed next to her, and immediately collapsed to his knees. Bulma hurriedly came to his aid again. "What are you doing out of bed, Vegeta? You know you're too weak yet to do much of anything, let alone this. What the hell possessed you to do that, anyway?"
"He... he was... hurting... you..."
"What?" She couldn't believe it. The mighty Saiyan, who she always looked at as a brutal murderer, was now showing compassion for someone else. And, to make things more interesting, he was showing compassion for her. "Vegeta, you've got to get back into bed. You're going to kill yourself if you don't rest."
"I'm alright, woman. And I don't need your..." He fell onto his side, clutching his body in severe pain.
"Whatever, Vegeta. I'm taking you to bed, right now." She picked him up and helped him through the new entrance to his room and into his bed. After she got him situated, she sat down at the desk and turned to him. "What the heck did you say to Yamcha out there? And weirder still, why did you let him go?"
Still weak from his outburst, Vegeta resolved to speak softly. "I told him that I didn't want to see him around you for a very long time. You don't deserve to be treated like that by apathetic person like him. And I let him go because killing him would have only made you hurt worse that you do now."
"My God. What's gotten into you, Vegeta? Since when did you care about me so much? You must have been eavesdropping while he and I were fighting. What the heck am I going to do about those holes you put in the walls? What were you thinking, Vegeta?"
There was no answer.
"Vegeta?" She looked over to see the Saiyan Prince, asleep. She smiled. He looked so vulnerable lying there. She looked down to his hand, which still held her earring. "There it is. I wonder how he got it?" And then she remembered her nap. It must have fallen out while she was sleeping at the desk, and he found it when he woke up. But he had held onto it the whole time? Her heart skipped a beat, and she sighed. "Get some rest, Vegeta." She ran her hand down his cheek, and he stirred a bit. 'Maybe I shouldn't give up on finding my Prince.' she thought to herself, and layed her head down on the desk. She looked at him for a time, and drifted off to sleep.
Vegeta awoke and looked around. He wasn't in as much pain as he had been the night before. The vague memories of the incident with Yamcha began to flow back into his memory. He remembered taking him through the wall and chewing his ear off about the way he was hurting Bulma, and how he told him to never come near her again. Humans could be so pathetic sometimes.
He rolled his head towards the desk, where he saw Bulma sitting in the chair, her head laid down in her arms, fast asleep. 'What is she doing here? Did she sit there with me all night? Why?' He couldn't figure out what she was thinking. As he stared at her, the new feelings gushed up inside of him. He was getting all too familiar with them, but at the same time he was getting used to them. As long as noone but her saw them, he could retain his pride.
Slowly, he sat up and put his hand to his head. He still had one serious headache. Must have come from going through the wall in his weakened condition. He made his way to his feet, but doubled over from the pain. As he hit the floor, the noise woke Bulma up. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the bed, only to find Vegeta not in it. She looked behind her and saw him laying on the floor, cringing in pain.
"Vegeta? What are you doing?"
Vegeta looked up at her with something of an annoyed look on his face. "I... I'm starving. I need... something to eat..."
"Oh, well you're never going to get to the kitchen like that, silly. Here, let me help you."
"No! I don't need your help. I can make it there on my own, even if it kills me to do so."
"Come on, Vegeta. Drop the attitude and let me help you."
There was no way he could resist. He couldn't move very well under his own power, and she was being as adamant as ever. He only hoped that noone else would see him being assisted by a human, let alone a human female. If Kakkarot knew that this was happening to him, it would be a serious blow to his pride...Part three is in the books, and things are just getting started. This represents the first half of the original Chapter Two. As with the last chapter split, the title for the next part will be the title of the original chapter. Let's see how many of you (if any at all) remember that title...
