Although the sky wasn't even dark yet, the Capsule Corps Halloween party was in full swing by the time trick or treating officially started. Bulma's parents sat at the front door, dressed as a mad scientist and the bride of Frankenstein, handing out huge handfuls of lollipops, kingsize candy bars and plastic vampire teeth. The front yard had been done up to look like a cemetery, complete with fog machines hidden behind wooden gravestones, skeletons clawing their way out of their graves and jack-o-lanterns candles giving off just enough light to see the path by.
Inside, Vegeta walked by the kitchen, ducking his head under the cobwebs Bulma had strung through every doorway on the bottom floor. She sat at the kitchen table, putting the last sprinkles on the chocolate cupcakes and finishing the rows of candycorn on the pumpkin-shaped cake. Her glow in the dark spider press-ons lay on the table, to be affixed when she was done. The moment she noticed him, she shrieked and held her hands up.
"Don't touch anything!" she said, leaning between him and the pumpkin pies. "This is for everyone, not just you."
"Like I'd want anything you cooked," Vegeta said, and opened the fridge. More pies and treats lined the shelves, but he found the Samuel Adams in the back and grabbed one box of bottles. "I just wanted to hit these before your idiot human friends got the chance."
"I didn't cook these, mom did." Satisfied that he wouldn't decimate the treats like last year, she turned around and went back to work. "And if you're putting away the liquor, you might as well hit the rum on top of the fridge. She only used half of it for the cake and I don't wanna see what happens if Krillin or Yamcha find it."
"Mm." He grabbed the bottle and looked at her. "What are you supposed to be?"
"I'm a witch," she said, tapping the pointed hat on her head.
The only other witch he'd ever seen was in that movie with the girl with red shoes on a yellow brick road, and he didn't remember that witch wearing a miniskirt or a lacey blouse with a plunging neckline, but he shrugged and ignored it. The whole holiday was strange. At first he'd thought it was a harvest festival, what with the massive amounts of food and all, and then Bulma had explained the longest night part and the scaring of spirits by dressing up as something scarier, but that didn't explain the brats dressed up as fairy princesses or cartoon characters. Or the adults dressed like harlots, but he didn't mind that part so much.
Footsteps came thundering down the steps, narrowly missing him as Trunks and Goten came down with empty orange bags. He arched one eyebrow at their costumes. Trunks was dressed as what he'd called a vampire, with a black cape and fangs and blood painted at the corner of his mouth, while Goten had on jeans, a ripped shirt, and two made-up bite marks in his neck. The boys had just turned thirteen and twelve, respectively, and he wondered what they'd be like when their hormones fully kicked in.
"Mom, is Gohan here yet?"
She opened her mouth to answer, but the sounds of male voices at the door made her smile and look up. "I think everyone just got here. Go look."
"Great, see ya!" He snagged a cupcake from the table and turned the corner out of the kitchen before she could grab him, Goten right on his heels.
"Trunks, you little brat!" she screeched, but she didn't bother to go after him. Instead she started putting on her nails. She glanced up at Vegeta. "So I guess you'll be off to the den to watch slasher flicks with the guys?"
"Slasher flicks?" He unscrewed the top of the cooking rum, bolting it down in one go. "What're those?"
"You haven't seen 'em yet? Oh, I remember now. You usually spend the evening scarfing what mom cooked."
"Your mother finally wised up and made a huge dinner earlier," Vegeta said.
"Thank God, we'll be able to have something beyond leftover candy." She shooed him away with one glowing hand. "Go on, you should like 'em. Lots of people getting killed."
"First sensible idea humans have had," he said, and walked into the den. Several couches were situated in front of the television, but he avoided those and sat at the table in the back. He wasn't about to sit with her human friends and he wasn't about to share his beer. He spotted a few of Trunks' comic books and pulled one across the table, opening it to the first page. He still didn't have a complete mastery of Earth's written language and these were more interesting than the newspapers Bulma liked.
From the window he saw the brats run through the front lawn, jumping over tombstones and pumpkins, followed by Gohan and the Namek. He frowned. Gohan had half a white mask over his face, but he was dressed in a black cape, too. Maybe it was a popular Halloween thing. Behind him, Piccolo had not been talked into a costume, but then he didn't look out of place without one.
Then the door burst open and the humans came in, loud and laughing and already smelling like cheap alcohol. They didn't seem like they were drunk, though, and he figured it was just his heightened senses catching what little they'd had. Krillin and Chaotzu and Oolong jumped onto the first couch, all three of them able to spread out without jostling each other. Tien and Yamcha each took one of the recliners, while Roshi sat on the floor against the front couch and Yajirobe plopped down next to him.
"Well, boys," Yamcha said, "which one first?" He planted a stack of discs on the table and went through them one by one. "Sorority Horror, Bloodbath in the House of Death, Freddy, Jason, Mike Myers, Beachside Slaughter--"
"Did you get Chainsaw Zombie Cheerleaders?" Roshi asked. "Tell me you got it!"
"Yup, here it is," he said, pulling one disc out of its case and sticking it in the player. "No one minds if we fastforward to the good stuff, right?"
A loud and resounding "no!" came from the group.
"Then here we go." Yamcha snagged the remote and hit play. "Let the slasher film marathon begin!"
There were some random cheers and Vegeta noticed they had indeed broken into his beer stash. Bastards.
The film started innocuously enough. The title came on in bloody letters, and Yamcha fastforwarded for a few seconds. From what Vegeta could make out, the movie took place in an all-girls school and all the girls looked like models with breast implants.
"Stop here, stop here," Roshi said.
Yamcha obeyed. A group of girls sat in a circle with a candle in the middle, chanting from a huge book. A second later, a smoke bomb went off in the center and all the girls fell backward as if dead. After a few more seconds, they started moaning like Bulma did during sex and sat up, now in full zombie makeup, complete with gray skin, white eyes and bloody mouths.
And then they ripped each other's shirts off.
Vegeta tilted his head as the zombie cheerleaders ran outside of the room and started killing anyone who came close. Blood splattered everywhere as heads and arms were torn off. From the gardener's shed, the zombies found several chainsaws, and Vegeta figured that was where the title came from. Of course once a girl was eviscerated, she would get up again and run around killing more girls. More than half the girls ran around topless with blood flying on their breasts.
"Stupid," he muttered, and went back to his comics.
With all of Yamcha's fastforwarding, they finished that disc quickly and popped in another, Cannibal Bride, and then another and another. After the fourth movie, Vegeta started to feel sick though he wasn't sure why. The violence was fake, the blood was ketchup and the bodyparts were rubber, and he certainly didn't feel queasy about murder. And the plots weren't disturbing much. Teenagers who had sex, did drugs, or had dark skin were as good as dead. Don't go to camp or you'll get a machete up your ass. Don't stop at lonely Texas houses or you'll get eaten. Don't give your little brother a knife. Don't stop to explain anything to the cops, always put fresh batteries in your flashlight and for the love of God don't go in the basement. Some sound advice in there, but ultimately nothing bad.
And then the Nightmare on Elm Street movies started. With Yamcha speeding through the explication, the plot was hard to follow but he figured out the basic premise. Vegeta forgot about the comics and watched as Freddy Krueger killed his victims with increasing creativity. As the bodycount went up, he turned his attentions to the humans watching. Each of them sat enrapt, the television screen reflecting in their eyes, and they laughed as each kid bought it. Vegeta had to admit some of the effects were laughable, but the whole premise of the story...he grabbed his beer and walked out.
He thought about going to his room, but the woman might figure out where he was and screech at him until he helped move all the food out to the table. The den was out of the question, and he didn't want to give away perfectly good candy. He opened one of the hall windows and stepped out into the front yard cemetery. The mist swirled around his legs, and he wandered over to the tree with all the skeletons hanging on it. The ground was dry enough, so he sat down and yanked the cap off of one of the bottles. No one could see him, so he watched the brats dressed as pirates and ninjas and ghosts come up the path. A familiar ki was coming up the sidewalk, and he turned to see Goku hop the fence and walk closer.
"Hey 'Geta." He grinned and sat down next to him. "What're you doing out here?"
"Getting away from your sick friends." Before Goku could ask, Vegeta handed him a Sam Adams.
"They're sick?" Goku asked. He took a drink and coughed, unused to rough alcohol. "Is it that virus that's going around? Chichi said there was a really bad flu this year."
"Not that kind of sick."
"Huh?" Goku thought about it a moment. "Oh...Vegeta, that's not very nice."
"It's true. They're inside watching a movie about a child molester."
"What?"
"Mm-hmm. The parents burn him to death, but he haunts their dreams and kills them." He took a long swallow, emptying the bottle, and he tossed it on the lawn.
"Oh. Do they stop him at the end?"
Vegeta half-shrugged. "He comes back. They were at the third movie when I left."
Several groups of children had come and gone before Goku knew how to handle that. He looked at Vegeta and saw him down another bottle. Without a word he put his arm around Vegeta's shoulders and pulled him close. There was no resistance.
"How can they say I'm the bad one?" he whispered. "They're getting off on people getting hacked apart."
"Not really," Goku said. "The movies are just fantasies. They wouldn't do it real life."
"But...what kind of holiday is this?" He pointed at a group of children running up the walk, one of them dressed as the molester in question. "Dress like killers and get rewarded for it? Watch people get skewered and joke about it?"
"I guess it looks a little like it," Goku said. "But it's not all like that. People get to dress up and have parties and for one night they look death in the face and make fun of it. For one night, they admit there's bad things out there and it's okay to be scared. That's all."
Vegeta didn't answer, but he didn't glare at him either, so Goku figured he was at least thinking about it.
"Do humans think sex is bad?" he asked.
As much as Goku wanted to lie, he couldn't. "Some of them." He winced as Vegeta's look turned inwards. They'd been through this so often but Goku wondered if his prince really believed him. "Sex isn't bad, 'Geta. I know those movies make it seem that way, but they just use it to sell more movies."
No answer. Goku wondered how mad the others would be if he blew up their movies, but he knew they didn't have any clue about what Vegeta's life on Frieza's ship had been like. They couldn't know those stories would bring back bad memories and relentless anxieties.
"We've made love before," Goku whispered, "and you liked it, right?"
His prince nodded.
"It didn't hurt, and it was wonderful."
Another nod.
"You don't have to feel bad that you enjoyed it. It isn't something to be punished."
"I know..." Vegeta finished the last bottle and let it fall into the mist. "You keep telling me."
And you won't believe me. Goku hugged him close. Why should you when everything keeps saying otherwise?
At least the air was cold enough to let him snuggle with his mate. Once in awhile a leaf fell off the tree, red or brown or yellow, and they took turns crumbling them in their hands. As the night wore on, the children got scarce and the teenagers came out, but no one touched the Capsule Corps pumpkins or got close enough to hurt eggs and toilet paper. Everyone had learned their lessons from years passed. Try any pranks and you'd end up in the hospital. Gohan and Piccolo escorted the brats back, both of them flying with their bags filled to bursting.
"What about the candy?" he suddenly asked. "Where does that come into it?"
"Why not have candy?" Goku said. He stood up, dragging Vegeta up with him. "There's a tv in your room, right? Come on, I'll show you some of the good things about Halloween."
"Better than candy?"
"Nothing's better than that, but some things come close."
They slipped in through the same window Vegeta had come out through, and the prince made a detour through the kitchen. Bulma was out front with her parents so he snagged a few of the pies from the fridge and went up with Goku to his room, sitting beside him on his bed. As they ate, Goku turned on the television and flipped the channels. After a few Halloween specials, he landed on the opening number of a very special musical.
Half an hour later, Vegeta glanced sideways at Goku. "And this is about Halloween?"
"One of the best holiday traditions, I think."
"I think you just did it to get me in the right mood."
With one glance to make sure the door was locked, Goku smiled and leaned over him. "Did it work?"
"I suppose I feel a bit better." Vegeta lay back on his bed and smiled as his mate crawled on top of him. "How can you act so clueless but still know exactly what I need?"
"Wouldn't be much of a mate if I didn't."
As they kissed and slowly shed their clothes, the sounds of the party downstairs faded to a faint background buzz. Piccolo started screaming at the brats after a rubber spider jumped out of his glass of water, and Bulma shrieked a little at the loss of several pies, but nothing distracted the two Saiyans upstairs engaged in their own Halloween marathon.
~*The Next Year*~
The doorbell rang. Bulma looked up from her vanity as she put in a dangling skeleton earring. "Vegeta, they're here!"
"So?" he called from his room. "They're your friends, you let them in!"
"Argh..." She straightened her vampire costume, little more than a full corset and heels with a tiny cape, and went to the door, passing her parents who were still opening candy bags or pulling pastries out of the oven. She avoided the screaming doormat and let everyone in, bending over slightly to give Yamcha a good view.
As the boys settled in once again for another slasher fest, Bulma helped her parents take the candy to the front door. The fog machines were going again, the jack-o-lanterns were all lit, and the new giant inflatable tarantulas were positioned in the corners. Gohan again flew out with the brats and Piccolo close behind, Trunks as a wizard and Goten as his cat familiar on a leash.
Once everyone was preoccupied, Goku and Vegeta came down out of his room and snuck into the kitchen, grabbing a tray of cupcakes for the road. Neither of them heard Bulma come in until she was yelling at them.
"Hey! Drop those cupcakes...Go...ku...?" Her jaw dropped. The Saiyans had actually dressed up this year, if you could call Goku's outfit a costume. All he had on was a pair of golden briefs. At least Vegeta had put on a cape that completely covered him and went down to the floor. Then again, the prince looked like he was wearing black lipstick and a healthy amount of eye shadow. "What are you...?"
"We're going into the city for a movie," Goku said and grinned. "How do I look?"
"Good enough to eat," she breathed. "You're going out the window, right? If the kids see you, we might be charged with some sex crime."
"Nah, it's just some harmless fun." Goku opened the kitchen window and slipped out, his gold briefs sparkling in the moonlight.
Vegeta followed after him, but he had to push his cape back so it wouldn't catch on the windowsill. Bulma gasped again. The father of her children was wearing fishnets, a corset that matched hers, and a pearl necklace. "Oh...my...God..."
He smirked at her over his shoulder. "Don't be put off by the way I look," he said and flew after his mate, on their way to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The End
