Choice to be Different

Chapter 4:First Impressions Revised

Vegeta-chan sat quietly in his room. His collar-bone was all but healed but Bulma still wanted him excluded from any training and his older counterpart was more than happy to enforce her edicts.

Goku and Goten were both gone and Trunks was angry with him for some reason. Vegeta-chan didn't know what to do with himself. After Vegeta-sai's destruction he had learned to avoid causing trouble. Frieza got too much enjoyment out of punishing his infractions. For Vegeta there was a certain thrill to getting in fights with Doodoria, Kiwi or Zarbon. Even though he inevitably lost he could make them mad, he could usually get in one or two good blows before they beat him unconscious and sometimes he lived for the memories of leaving bruises on them. Nappa warned him he'd probably die for it if he ever succeeded in his goal of breaking Zarbon's nose but Vegeta couldn't bring himself to care. The thought of bringing down that vain asshole a peg or three was too tempting.

But there was no thrill in getting into it with Frieza. Their power differential was just too great. Vegeta couldn't make Frieza angry, his efforts to fight back only amused the tyrant. It wasn't a fight, it was him getting beaten into the ground while Frieza laughed.

Frieza had never radiated the sort of tangible power that Vegeta's older counterpart did when he went Super Saiyan. There was a promise in that, a promise that a time would come when Vegeta wouldn't have to bow to anyone.But in the meantime that sort of power made Vegeta very wary of crossing the older man and he didn't understand the rules here.

He was constantly being told to 'go amuse himself' and that was a trap if he'd ever heard one. Frieza occasionally got bored and sent him out with insufficient instructions so that he could punish Vegeta later for screwing up. Even if Bulma and his older self were sincere, and he did feel an inexplicable urge to trust his counterpart's mate even if she did insist upon mangling his name, he just didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Vegeta scowled at the reminder of how his name was constantly mangled by everyone on the planet. Why couldn't they just call the other Vegeta 'old' instead of calling him 'little'? "Vegeta-ojiisan," Vegeta tried it out and decided it fitted the other Vegeta better than "Vegeta-chan" fitted him. Vegeta snorted, he knew why that wouldn't happen: The older Vegeta was stronger so he got his way. Although the other Vegeta did seem to let Bulma order him around to a degree. Vegeta smirked Radditz was the same way about his little camp follower. The girl had a bit of a Saiyan look to her, she was proud and wild despite her position, Radditz was a complete sap about her.

Vegeta sighed, even if Bulma and his counter-part weren't trying to trap him by giving him such imprecise instructions he still couldn't think of anything he wanted to do. He hated to admit it but he missed having Goku around. The bizarrely cheerful Saiyan boy was a moron but he shared Vegeta's incomprehension of Trunks and Goten's games. He also seemed to understand Earth's rules well enough to go do his own thing without concern about bring Vegeta-ojiisan's wrath down on them.

Of course Goku's complete lack of fear when it came to Vegeta-ojiisan only went to show that the other boy was a moron. When confronted with someone so powerful that they could squish you like a bug the only sane response was to fear them. Goku acted like he trusted Vegeta-ojiisan not to hurt them. Vegeta had to admit that his counterpart's training sessions were honest-to-god training sessions and not thinly disguised excuses for lording his power over them, but Vegeta couldn't bring himself to trust the good intentions of anyone so much stronger than he was.

Still, even if Goku was a moron Vegeta still missed having the other boy around.
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"Hey Gohan!" Goku waved cheerfully as he walked over to the spot where Gohan had become accustomed to eating lunch with Videl, Erasa and Sharpener.