Summary of Last Chapter:
Ten years of abuse all packed into one chapter! Towards the end, Frieza summons the grown, twenty-two-year-old Vegeta into his room and assigns a mission to purge Vegeta's home planet. Vegeta is given the permission to spend one full year on his home planet to catch up on what he had missed out on for the past decade before he destroys the planet. The last scene is on Planet Vegeta, where Bulma is sleeping and has a fitful dream of two mysterious voices.

"It's nothing I couldn't have done all by myself," responded the more stubborn character as she stroked their latest invention with inner pride. She bit back her gleeful grin and masked herself with a more serious expression. "I didn't need your help for this."

Bulma's father chuckled and whether it was a mocking chuckle or one of agreement was beyond her comprehension. It seemed that as Bulma grew older, she was becoming more and more independent, requiring less of her father's assistance and developing a stubbornness that not even the king himself could break through. She had grown up into a fine, intelligent young woman, a mechanic by nature who considered her computer and tools her heart and lungs.

The planet had not tamed her the way it had tamed her father; she resisted to becoming tied down by Saiyan cultures, though it did, however, heighten her sense of pride and honor—characteristics that were required for one to survive on such a planet.

"The old fart is going to love this," she said as soon as her father's chuckles died down. Her hands slid across the edifice and stopped at the white box attached to the wall. Her fingers pressed a few buttons and the door beside it slid open. "He doubted my intelligence for the past decade because I'm young and I'm female, but once he gets a load of this and once he sees how much of a genius I am—"

"I just may subdue your punishment for calling your superior an old fart."

Bulma Briefs froze dead in her tracks and her face paled subsequently, her eyes widening and her azure pupils shrinking into a pair of mere dots. Nervous laughter bubbled out of her lips, but no sooner had the sound been emitted, she clamped her mouth shut, quickly turned around, and lowered her head in an apologetic bow.

The king of Vegeta, his face lined with tiny wrinkles from age, grunted and brushed past her, entering the Briefs' invention without another word. The ten years without the threat of his empire's demolishment by that cursed Frieza had loosened his hard spirit so that the wrinkles on his forehead were all that was left from his previous years of constant eyebrow-furrowing and lip-frowning. He, all in all, had changed in personality, but that still did not prevent him from being who he was. Cold. Detached. Somewhat scary. As if he had "a bad case of spandex-wedgy", as Bulma would put it.

A disconcerted blush crept onto her paled cheeks and she silently said all that she wanted to say against the king within her mind, for if there was anything she had learned on this planet was the fact that the Saiyans had a distinct hearing range and could practically hear every uttered word. She had gotten into trouble several times for the same reason, and it had taken her years to get used to suppressing words that she would normally just blurt out without thought.

Bulma pressed the red button on the white box and the door slid closed, leaving the king to his privacy to explore the masterpiece creation, the gravity room, before turning on her heels and leaving, not at all aware of the pair of eyes that stared out from the shadows.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Nightfall fell in its usual sneaky way, enveloping the blue sky with its ebon black, lightened only by the spray of stars that looked down on the surface of the planet. Sparkling. Glinting. As if it knew a secret that no one else below knew. No one, at a time like this when it was far later than even the late-night spar sessions, was awake. Almost no one, anyway. Saiyans held a strict bedtime code and then awakening at a kami-forbidden hour that was far behind that of sunrise.

The arid land was silent, a complete contrast from the usual daylight when the air was complicated by the sounds of rowdy fighting, conquering, and destroying. Everything was still and dark now, with an exception of the luminance emitting from the backyard of the palace, a deep red glow creeping from the rectangular windows of the gravity machine, and the low lull that buzzed from the inner and outer ventilation.

There was that light and sound, and the unidentified figure that warily walked up to the contraption and pressed the five-digit password key without hesitation or a second of fumbling. The door slid open smoothly and silently so that the trainer within was not at all disturbed or aware of the intervention. The intruder did not step in, but merely stood at the doorstep and watched the heated battle that was evolving between the king of Saiyans and an imaginary foe.

The gravitational pull was definitely evident, for the pull was so heavy that the beads of perspiration dripping from the side of the king's face fell like anvils. The king had been in the room for hours, the Saiyan instinct of striving for strength being his one motivation to keep training until the very last moment when he would collapse in exhaustion.

It's like staring into a mirror, isn't it? You are not any different from him…

The pair of dark eyes that observed the busy king narrowed, but the reason for the narrowing was beyond him. The sight of this man, the man whom he had not seen for ten years, aroused feelings in him that had not been felt since he was a child. He was caught between the want to clench his fists and knock this man's brains out, and the desire to back away, huddle up against the floor, and watch silently.

I'm still scared of him… Aren't you?

Vegeta, the lost Saiyan prince who had been sold away for the price of a kingdom, the Saiyan who had become more of an unwanted memory than an actual being, had landed on the planet without the notice of his subjects. A few knew and witnessed the landing up close, but the ones that knew were killed effortlessly without any thought that he had just destroyed his own people without hesitation. The last thing he wanted was a commotion to rise up and he having to deal with questions and rumors and gossips. What he wanted now was to see his father—and that was just what he was doing.

He had landed earlier in the morning, actually, and had stayed undercover for all of the day, following his father and watching him like an obsessed spy who had been caught between the want to confront his target and the want to hide from him. There was so much he was thinking and feeling now that it left him confused.

Nobody had seen him. Nobody knew of his presence. His ki had been carefully suppressed and he blended in so well with the Saiyan crowd that no one took much notice of him whenever he was out of the shadows. He had even seen that blue-haired girl—she had grown up, just as he—and had seen the buttons she pushed to open the contraption without anyone noticing his presence.

What are you going to do? Just stand here?! You fool… You are, by far, stronger than this man now! Don't just stand there! Do something!

…No. He's… That man is… No! A cry emitted from his lips. Just stay where you are and don't go any closer.

Vegeta's brain was fighting itself and he was so lost in his choice of options, that he never noticed that the king had stopped his training for the night and collapsed onto the controls, where he shut off the gravity system. Vegeta only realized the sudden break in training when the king turned around and their eyes met.

The two stared at each other.

And while they were staring at each other in muted silence, a third figure entered the scene: Bulma.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jewels. They were like jewels that glowed and radiated with the brilliance only anger and hatred can rouse up. Jewels—priceless. And the look he threw at her was priceless indeed, for within the pair of those cold glassy irises was an emotion that swam like a deadly black serpent slithering on the surface of water. And it stared at her transfixed underneath a pair of brows that wove together in a downward slant—confused; jealous.

And those eyes revealed so much that it overwhelmed her—swallowed her as if his intention was to grab and drag her down into his hypnotizing eyes. And when those eyes narrowed, so did his lips, which became thin lines that curled downwards. He opened his mouth and screamed a cry directed at no one in particular, but aiming so that she could hear. And she heard.

She heard the scream, the cry for help, and witnessed the tears that leaked out and rained down his face. Each drop was like a diamond—hard, cold, detached. And they fell without shame; they fell despite the pities thrown at him; they fell and no one cared. She did not care. The caped man did not care. The subjects that had once dedicated their lives to him did not care.

Nobody cared.

All that anyone offered was pity. No one tried to stop those four creatures who gripped onto his limbs like vices strong enough to cut off all circulation. No one reached out when that tail, defenseless and worthless, wrapped around the wrist of that creature like a silent plea to be let go. No one took a step forward in resistance when he called for help. And no one, not even she, reached out an open hand.

And he was gone—locked away behind those thick, white walls of a spaceship. And even then, no one did anything but watch as the ship became a mere speck in the sky.

"It's nothing, child. Don't concern yourself about it."

Bulma Briefs raked her slender fingers through her hair in irritation at the memory that slid into her mind for the millionth time now. Her eyes, which had been drooping for the past several hours due to weariness and sleep deprivation, were now alert.

"I…hate…the night…" she growled, and she kicked herself out of bed and wrapped herself up in her favorite lavender bathrobe, imported just a few months back from her home planet. She quickly twirled her hair around and pinned it up into a bun while slipping her feet into her bunny slippers. "I hate it. I hate it almost as much as raw meat. Be a Saiyan, they say! Suck it up and eat it, weakling! Morons. Whatever. I just can't wait until my next given vacation when I can go home and eat a nice big T-bone steak—cooked well-done—and sleep without having stupid thoughts and dreams."

For the past few months, it had practically become a ritual to wander around in the darkness of the palace clad in her bathrobe and furry white bunny slippers. Sleep became one challenge that she could not overcome, especially ever since she began to have startling dreams that scared the living daylights out of her. It was the black plague, indeed, and as bothersome as it was, she just could not find a way to repress or impede them.

It seemed as if each night replayed the same dreams. There were ones of a child clinging to her, crying at her in an almost haunting way. There were ones where an aggressive monster threatened to strangle the life out of her and it came in details so vivid that when she awoke, she almost felt as if her very life had been squeezed out of her throat. There were dreams that replayed the flashback she had just now. Then there were dreams of darkness where she only heard voices, and dreams where it was so white that it nearly blinded her.

"When I return to Earth," Bulma murmured while rubbing her temples wearily, "The first thing I'm going to do is visit a psychiatrist. I think I'm going crazy." She scowled to herself and walked right out of her room. "So this is what the beautiful genius has reduced to—a mentally-ill twenty-year-old freak who's too scared to sleep by herself during the night. Not even with her nightlights on."

The hallways were dark and creepy, and she felt the sudden sensation that a pale-faced ghost would stand at the end of the hallway, and it would turn its head and stare at her through bloodshot eyes while baring its bloody fangs. Well, that would certainly be less of a scare than what the dreams gave her. Planet Vegeta and meeting its king's desire to "industrialize" his empire were stressing her out far too much.

Normally during nights when she could not sleep, she would visit the laboratory where she was free to tinker with anything and everything for as long as she wanted. However, as she thought about visiting the lab, she found that her feet were leading her to the gravity room, where she would turn it on and check out its splendor for the millionth time since its completion. She was proud of that thing—prouder than what words could possibly convey.

Through the exit door near the laboratory, she pressed the password to avoid setting off the alarm and stepped outside, and was surprised indeed to see that the gravity room was on and running.

The king's still training? She thought in surprised stupor and stared at the eerie red glow that blared out from the windows. I'm going to have to do something about those colored light bulbs. That red light is totally creepy. Deciding that it would be best to leave the king to his business, she was about to turn around and head back inside, had it not been for the fact that a figure with tall, flame-like hair was standing outside the door, staring in without movement…

What's the king doing, just standing out there and staring? You'd THINK he's gotten enough of the thing by running it all day long, she thought. Crazy Saiyans. But curiosity nagged at her as she slowly noticed that the "king" was standing in armor that was unfamiliar to her. He was a tad been taller than the king (or was it just the trick of the gravity room's lighting?) and, if her eyes were not failing her, the king was missing his goatee. …What the…?

Wanting closer inspection, she hugged herself and walked up to the character while loudly clearing her throat in means of catching his attention.

"Excuse me, your highness, but what are you doing up so late at night?"

And the so-called "highness" tore his eyes away from whatever he was staring at and turned around to face her. Similar in height, the two found themselves face-to-face and eye-to-eye.

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE HONORABLE!" he seemed to say aloud, his voice directed to the caped, lone man whose back was turned against him. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE HONORABLE!"

To Be Continued…

Author's Note:
As you may or may not know, I have removed Chapters 5 through 11. Why? …Here's why: CHAPTERS 5 THROUGH 11 SUCKED AND I HATED IT WITH A PASSION AND IT WAS THE CAUSE OF MY STUPID WRITER'S BLOCK! I became so concentrated on building up the story's suspense that I failed to focus on the real important thing: The Plot. I have SUCH a marvelous plot going on, as well as a very nice pacing up to Chapter Four, which I ruined with all the stuff that I began shoving into the story.

So I removed them and I am now currently in the process of re-writing the chapters, removing SEVERAL AND ONE scenes and adding SEVERAL AND TWO new scenes that will be more beneficial to the story. I hope I am not disappointing anyone. I realize that there were MANY people anticipating on the twelfth chapter even after reading the crappy chapters 5 through 11, but I could NOT possibly continue writing without getting stuck for several months at a time.

I will also not post the new and improved Chapter 5 until I complete the entire story. Why? Because when people ask me to post the next chapter (which is not a bad thing! I love feeling flattered! ), I start forcing myself to write, and the product only ends up rushed and low of quality. I want to make Traumatized the best story I've ever written, and in order to do so, I'd like to take my time and surprise you all at the very end.

I will try to get it completed as soon as possible. I have stopped myself from trashing this story because of the promise I made to you guys. I won't break my promise again! So until then, keep the story bookmarked and I'll let anyone know of its update through my mailing list! Adios!