concoursec | Home is Where the Heart Is (Backdated to earlier in the month)

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Home is Where the Heart Is (Backdated to earlier in the month)

Bulla looked around, confused at Balamb Garden's sudden absence. She had planned a shopping trip with Rinoa and Sharpay, yes...but Garden should have still been visible just two minutes out of the gate. For that matter, the landscape wasn't as it should be, yet it looked familiar.

As they made their way toward civilization, something clicked. The building structures. They were approaching West City. She was finally home! A huge smile broke across her face, vanishing as soon as it appeared when she guiltily reminded herself not to be too happy about it. It meant Rinoa and Sharpay were trapped in her world now. Still, there was hope. The dragon balls could be collected, her mom could invent something...and if they were stuck, at least they were stuck somewhere where the shopping was good and Bulla's family had plenty of money for helping two displaced young women come up with a worthwhile wardrobe to get settled in with.

"So...um. As completely weird as this is, I think we're in my world. I'll be able to say for sure in about twenty minutes or so."

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As soon as the landscape changed, Sharpay had her hand on her junction device, which she always wore just in case something weird like this happened. At Bulla's words, though, she relaxed: Bulla's mentions of her home world hadn't made it sound too dangerous.

"I'm sure your world's lovely and all, but we had better not be stuck here," she complained. She was probably more mentally equipped to handle being put in another world now than she had been when she first got to Garden, but she still didn't want to have to learn another culture and get set up socially again.

The disorientation was pretty unfamiliar, she hadn't notice this the first time she'd been affected by Time Compression. Why she was feeling it this time was anyone guess. Shaking her head, she looked about them curiously as Bulla explained where she thought they were.

"So we're on your world now, Bulla?" This actually didn't bother Rinoa as much as it probably should have, but hey at least now she got to see all the things (and hopefully poplee) that her friend had spent so much time telling her about.

"I'm sure this is only temporary. Let's think of it as being like a vacation for now until we know what's going on."

"My family's rich, and mom is a genius...so don't worry," said Bulla, doing her best to be reassuring. "If there's anyone who could figure out something to get you two back home, it's my mom. And in the meantime, we can go shopping."

She realized belatedly that she had never mentioned how well off her family was, before. She had mentioned how skilled her father and brother were at martial arts, and how smart her mother was, and what some of the friends of her family were like...but her family's wealth had never come up before.

"At least we're close to West City," Bulla added. "I'll ask someone to use their phone so I can call home and get us a ride to my house."

A rich family was definitely reassuring. The daughter of a university board member and country club owners, Sharpay knew rich families; it was something she'd have in common with these people whom she'd been slightly intimidated by the idea of, after Bulla's reports of their brains and brawn.

"I wouldn't want to be a burden; your stores probably don't accept gil, do they?"

And what if she wasn't in style for this city?!

As the daughter of one of the most important men in Galbadia, Rinoa was admittedly more used to doing with than doing without despite her mediocre allowance. She didn't grow up in what was pretty much a manor for nothing after all.

"So I'll really get to meet your family? That's really great!" Rinoa meant it too, clearly happy with the idea. "After all you've told me about them, it'll be nice to see them for myself."

Shopping with two of her best friends? Oh this stay in another world was going to be such a hardship. She vowed then and there to make the most of this vacation, because that's all it was going to be. No way Squall would just let her stay on some other world forever. Nothing to worry about.

"Our stores accept zeni," said Bulla, in response to Sharpay's question about gil. "And seriously, don't worry about it. There's no way my mom would let friends of mine be stuck here without any fashionable changes of clothes. Although if either of you have some cure magic stocked...Trunks will probably appreciate it if he's been training with dad."

It didn't take long to get into the city. Bulla led the way to a store that she shopped at fairly regularly. She had no doubt whatsoever that they would let a regular customer like her use the phone. After some frantic shouting on the phone from her mom's end of the line about how she had been missing for three whole days without calling, Bulla promised an explanation when they were home.

Rubbing her ear, she hung up the phone, thanked the store owner, and motioned for Rinoa and Sharpay to follow her to the spot they would be picked up at.

"...well, that was a little weird," she said. "According to mom, I've been gone for three days instead of a year. I don't know who's coming to get us, though."

"Great," said Sharpay, who despite her tone actually was glad they'd be picked up rather than left to go through this weird, Estharesque city with just one native. "Time really did get compressed. Less destructively," she added, with a glance at Rinoa.

She paused, remembering Gabriella's reaction to her when her former classmate had first arrived in Garden.

"Do you think you've changed much? Visibly, I mean, something your family would notice."

"I've always got Curaga stocked." Rinoa pointed out, amused at the concept of helping Bulla's brother after a training session. She knew about how hard core they apparently are when it comes to training after all.

Rinoa looked at Bulla curiously after Sharpay's question. "She doesn't look any different to me, but I guess since we've been together we wouldn't know."

The Time Compression thing? She was just not going to worry about that right now. They'd done what they had to do. Right? She sure hoped so.

"I think my hair grew," said Bulla. "But I'm going to explain Time Compression to them anyway. I don't think it'll weird them out that much, to be honest."

She examined her hair. The only thing she had gotten trimmed even a little bit was her bangs - which she did herself, extremely carefully. Everything else just grew out. Given people's typical reactions to her hair colour in Balamb Garden and out on the town, she'd avoided going to hair salons.

A few minutes later, a convertable hovercar pulled up. A man no taller than Rinoa but with considerable muscular bulk and spikey dark hair and what appeared to be a semi-permanent scowl hopped out without bothering to open the car door.

"Your mother was very worried! Where have you been?!"

Bulla didn't answer the question right away, and broke into a run instead. "DAD!"

If he was anyone but Vegeta, the Prince of all Saiyans, the force of Bulla barrelling into him for a big hug might have knocked the wind right out of him. Instead, he caught her with ease. The hug was returned, albeit awkwardly, with him looking off to the side.

"...you've gotten stronger."

"Um...yeah, see, it's kind of a long story, but I got pulled onto another world because of this thing called Time Compression. That's where I met Rinoa and Sharpay," she said, releasing her father from the hug and motioning to her friends in order. "Rinoa, Sharpay...this is my dad, Vegeta. Dad, they're going to need to stay with us."

Sharpay stepped up to him, offering him a hand to shake. She kept her smile friendly as she gave him the onceover, trying to find any resemblance to her cheerful friend in this scowly, awkward man.

"It's lovely to meet you, Vegeta; I've heard so much about you," she gushed. "I'm so sorry to impose on you and your family..."

He's probably an awesome person, but after everything she's heard about him Rinoa wasn't all too sure about shaking his hand. So instead, just to be on the safe side, she settled for a cheerful wave.

"Bulla's told me all about you, the rest of her family, and this world. I'm glad I finally get to see things for myself."

Vegeta looked down at Sharpay's hand for a moment, clearly not used to the gesture even after decades of living amongst humans. Finally, he shook it for a couple of seconds with a firm grip, although not quite crushing.

"Hm," was the only response he gave either of the young women who spoke to him, more an acknowledgement that they'd just spoken rather than an effort at conversing.

Bulla noticed the look her father gave her when both Sharpay and Rinoa said she'd been talking about the family.

"Only good things, I promise. I missed you, you know," she said with a smile. She opened the car door so that Rinoa and Sharpay could get in. "Let's go home. I really want to see mom and Trunks and then I can explain everything."

(ooc: We can skip the drive and get to them pulling up to the house, maybe?)

Sharpay was a little absent during the drive, checking her junctions and going over her magic stock. If she was going to be here a while, she didn't want her spells to go to waste in a world without draw points; she had to know how many she had.

She hung back a little as they reached the house, giving Bulla a moment for her family reunion.

(OOC: Works for me!)

Rinoa spent the drive offering chit chat while generally gawking at just about everything they drove past. There were plenty of times where she'd turn to Bulla with starry eyes talking about how her home was even more than she'd imagined it to bed.

Quite frankly? Rinoa was enjoying herself.

At the house, Rinoa stayed back with Sharpay since even she knew they'd need a little family time considering.

(ooc: All systems clear!)

Bulla hugged her brother and mother one after the other and began her explanation of Time Compression, Balamb Garden, and how she'd gotten to know Rinoa and Sharpay. Vegeta's eyebrow raised with some interest when she described the Training Center. Bulma was more interested in the description of the local technology, and Trunks showed some interest in the magic.

"So that's what happened, and I'm a year older now. And well...Sharpay and Rinoa are going to need some new clothes, so can we go shopping? Please?"

"I don't see why n--" Bulma started to say.

"After training," Vegeta said, cutting his wife off. "Hyperbolic gravity chamber. Ten minutes."

"But daaaaad," Bulla objected.

"What? You want to go there now instead?" asked Vegeta.

"...ten minutes is fine."

As Vegeta walked out of the room, Bulma got the three young women a glass of water and an apple each. "That's my Saiyan Prince," she said, sounding a little amused. "You wouldn't think it but he's actually really happy right now. So...ah! Better have a snack and some water, girls! The gravity chamber's pretty tough on the body."

Sharpay nodded her thanks to Bulma as she took a bite of the apple.

"I'm a trained SeeD," she said lightly. "I'd hope I could handle it!"

The very idea of training with Bulla's dad was an intimidating one. After all the stories she'd heard about him and his rather obsessive, to put it bluntly, training habits she wasn't sure what to think about actually training with him herself. When Bulma spoke up Rinoa had to actively turn her attention towards the older woman, who looked an awful lot like Bulla you could tell they were related.

"Thanks. That'd be really nice." She took the snack and water, but after that she more or less blanked out momentarily. Rinoa then spent the next few moments shuffling through her para-magic and the GFs she'd thankfully had with her when they'd been dragged to this world. Strength and vitality would be key here that's for certain. Or maybe just vitality. Honestly she's not sure.

Sharpay would have it a little easier than her probably, just because her focus was a martial arts while Rinoa wasn't much without magic or a weapon in hand.

Edited 2011-07-25 21:52 (UTC)

Bulla wasn't quite sure her friends understood just what they were getting into. Hopefully, she'd manage to make it clear to her father that her friends were human. Even if she didn't want to train there, it wouldn't be nearly as hard on her body as it would be on theirs.

"Okay...the thing about the hyperbolic gravity chamber is - it makes everything feel like it weighs more. Your body, any weapons you use. All of it. The lowest setting it has is double gravity. So it's going to feel like you're suddenly moving around double your usual body weight."

"That's about right," chimed in Bulma, giving her daughter a pat on the shoulder.

"Mom, can you make sure dad doesn't put it on a higher setting? Please? At least for Rinoa and Sharpay? They've never been in it before."

"...oh, you know, I probably should!"

Bulla watched as her mom made her quick exit and sighed. "Sorry, guys. My family takes training pretty seriously and I've always slacked off compared to my brother."

Sharpay frowned over her apple as she checked her junctions again. Messing with gravity... First the city looks like Esthar, now the technology sounds like something they'd be capable of. It hadn't really hit her until now how futuristic (from her point of view) a world Bulla came from.

And moving twice her weight around? Sharpay wasn't all that heavy, but she was trained to handle her body with only a little weight fluctuation; she didn't usually gain a whole lot of weight at once.

"Does even your mom work out?" she asked, curious.

It looked like all that extra work with Snow focusing on conditioning and endurance would really be put to the test with this. She still wasn't too sure how well she'd be able to handle it. A weight machine was one thing, but her entire body being so much heavier? That's another entirely.

"We'll be careful." She wrinkled her nose when a thought occurred to her. "None of us want to turn into pancakes after all."

People pancakes sounded pretty gross after all, not that it stopped her from eating her apple. Like Bulma had said, they needed to keep their strength up.

“She does, but not nearly as much as my dad and brother do,” explained Bulla in between bites of her apple and sips of water. “My grandfather invented the gravity chamber over thirty years ago. It can go up to five hundred times Earth’s gravity.”

Although there was nothing fun about it, she was privately curious as to how much she could handle now. However, there was no way it would be reasonable to inflict that on Sharpay and Rinoa, so hopefully her mother would succeed in persuading her father to put it on the lowest setting until later. Hopefully they would also get to go shopping before Bulla tried out a higher setting on her own. Aching muscles and exhaustion did not make for an enjoyable shopping experience.

Sharpay put down her apple to get up and stretch.

"That is insane." Five hundred times her weight... Sharpay couldn't calculate it.

She had to agree with Sharpay on that one. Not that she knows what Earth's gravity is like, but if it's anything like what she's used to back home that was more than she could even imagine.

"Working out at normal gravity can be hard enough sometimes. Though I guess maybe a little heavier wouldn't be so bad." And by little she means as low as the chamber can go just about. Does it have a 1.5 setting? Because that she might actually handle and still be able to move.

She was trying to look at this in a positive light. "It's got to be great for endurance though at least, right?"

"Well, if it's too hard, I'll tell dad to let you two out," said Bulla. "You're guests, after all. I think he just wants to see what kind of training is done at Balamb Garden."

In her opinion, it wasn't reasonable to expect Sharpay and Rinoa to step into the gravity chamber at all because they were human and her guests, but her father seemed convinced that if Balamb Garden had made such a difference in one year, that the Garden had to be doing something right. And maybe they were, but that didn't change the fact that Rinoa and Sharpay were not part-saiyan. Nor had they prepared themselves for such a dramatic weight increase by training with extra weights on their bodies. She hoped her friends would be all right.

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Home is Where the Heart Is (Backdated to earlier in the month)

thanks for posting this before I was done, LJ...

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Should Bulma, Vegeta or Trunks come to pick them up?

I think Vegeta would be funny!

Any of them work as far as I'm concerned.

Vegeta it is! ...and wow, my notifs fail.

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