Everybody Loves Goku!!!

Chapter 2

"What the hell just happened in there?!" Vegeta yelled through a mouthful of noodles. "I've never seen the idiot worked up this bad."

Bulma slowly picked at the food on her plate, eyes downcast. She and Vegeta were sitting alone at a vast table of full course meals and desserts. But the amount of food didn't weigh on her mind as she saw Vegeta easily take up for Goku's lack of presence by eating twice as much as he would normally. She propped her chin into her hand and groaned. "Poor Goku is hurting."

"What for? I didn't beat him that badly today."

Bulma raised her face to frown at him. "Do you have any semblance of a heart? Chi-Chi is dead, Vegeta!"

The Saiyan slowed the uptake of his noodles only by a fraction and grunted in response. He had known about Goku's dead harpy for a while now, and wasn't exactly sure how to respond. Surprisingly Goku had requested a private funeral where only immediate family members could attend. Bulma was all up in arms about it. It wasn't until months later that Goku came back into contact with him in particular, their sparring sessions coming into existence abruptly with little explanation. Goku never brought up Chi-Chi, and Vegeta didn't question. He figured everything was going fairly well.

"What does her death have anything to do with Kakarot turning into a raving loon? A hunger-less raving loon at that?"

She smashed her fist on the table. "Dammit, Vegeta! Everything!"

He stopped slurping the noodles entirely. "Oh, really?"

"I know I would be expecting too much from a person like you to understand," she said, "but when a man's wife dies he can never be the same person he was before. This little outburst only proves my point. He isn't stable at all." Suddenly she gasped. "He may even have depression!"

Vegeta choked on his noodles and burst out laughing at the idea of a depressed Goku, but quickly shut-up when Bulma bared her teeth at him. "Settle down, woman. I know that Kakarot probably cared a lot for his wife, but it wasn't as if he made an effort to be around her all of the time."

Bulma's eyes were wide. "What are you getting at?"

Vegeta slurped up more noodles, Bulma growing furious as he continued to ignore her question. After a full minute of chewing and thinking, he finally paused to give an answer.

"What I'm saying is that it looked like he took any chance he could to get away from her." He eyed a dessert across the table before returning his gaze to Bulma. "If you asked him a year ago which he would rather do—spend an afternoon with his wife or spar with me," he said with a prideful air, "which do you think he would pick?" And before Bulma could speak, he held up a threatening forefinger. "If his woman wasn't standing right beside him as he answered, that is."

Bulma's lip was curled into a frown before she spoke. "I'm guessing he'd pick the same option you would."

Vegeta dropped his chopsticks. "Don't go there with me. Not right now."

The two stared at each other in silence. Abruptly, Bulma pushed her chair out from under the table and walked away. "I'm going to call Goku."

She withdrew her cell phone from her pocket and walked to the kitchen counter. She rested an elbow on the surface while holding the phone to her ear. Vegeta continued to stare before she turned around again.

"He's not picking up."

Vegeta only shrugged. As he continued to eat, Bulma glared a hole into him while simultaneously tapping an acrylic nail onto the surface of the counter. Click. Click.

Dammit!

He got up from the table and threw his hands up above his head. "Fine! I'll go over his house now and find out what's wrong, okay? Just stop...being the way you are."