Rocks, Metals, & Wealth [Tatsui]

“Of course I’ll benefit. Unless someone comes along to smear me across the desert like a fine red paste I’ll always win in the end. That’s how you live a corporate life.”

    The ‘SALUZZO RISTORANTE’ was the sort of place that one would find in the corner of casinos where well-dressed men and women in their seventies would take their family on an all-comp paid buffet of fine one michelin star dining. The scent of cinnamon and firewood was gently combing through the restaurant with long fingers of smoke against a tall ceiling where lanterns hung and electric candles cast orange-yellow light onto individual tables. One entire side had been entirely devoted to a buffet of salads and dressings rich with fluffy green leaves of every sort and bread baskets where elderly men spent too long discussing things no one would remember.

“Two. Private corner. I’m not interested in your rabble.”

    Tatsui was curt and quick with the wait staff and pulled from her long experience of patronizing places more humble and grandiose than this. A well groomed man bowed and showed the two to a table down a flight of stairs where they could almost forget they were on the edge of Vegetan territory. The two would eventually be shown to a corner of the room that was almost private if not for a few more pairs or families and the gentle din of dining.

“Margherita personal. Gin Basil Smash.”

    Tatsui had not bothered with the menu offered, a single finger flicking it up with her order. Her eyes lingered on Rye who was still eyeballing his own menu and clicked her fingers against the wood.

“You’ll enjoy the Beef Tagliata. It’s plenty of steak and sinew for you. We’ll let them undercook it a smidge, leaving plenty of mild pink and a bit of blood. Dry Martini or Whiskey Sour I would suggest but that’s also a personal choice. In fact now that I’ve brought it up I don’t think I even know what your preferred alcohol is or are you the sort of Saiyan to drink water and keep a ‘healthy’ lifestyle?”

    It was no secret that some of the younger generation of Saiyans who had encountered aliens or survived the war for the new Queen had found themselves living entirely new ways. With towns filled with Tuffles, Namekians, Saiyans, and even Earthlings it had been a cultural transmission to start doing such odd things as ‘drinking water’ and ‘eating healthy’ rather than ripping a hock from some poor bastard and roasting it over an open fire.

    Eventually the topic would grow somber as the waiter took their menus and she pondered over Rye’s words. As ever the man thought too much and acted too late, always seeming to hesitate without that primal Saiyan urge. Ever the cautious soldier-she supposed that’s how he kept alive. All the better for it.

“Is the universe not endlessly adapting? The ebb and flow of stocks as different powers grasp sudden weakness in a market. Perhaps I’m being too business-minded. Anxiety, fear, doubt, you feel those powerfully and that primal rage in your macaque brain is held in check by so many chains. Sometimes I think you need to let go and not think so much. I said much the same during our spar.”

    A finger lifted to prod at his chest across the table, Tatsui having to lift herself up and reach across to do so but emphatically getting her point across.

“You are a soldier through and through but you think of others so much and think of yourself so little. You have to visualize yourself atop the peak? Nonsense. Mental illness. If your place is not atop the peak as naturally as you draw breath then you can’t begin to climb lest you be dragged down by those beneath you. It is not physicality that stops you nor pure energy, it is not the manner of intelligence or guile, it is not even that you have yet to become one of those blonde freaks.”

    She slinked back to her seat and took a moment to breathe as their drinks arrived. The basil-leafed gin in square glass with one large ball of ice swirled as her fingers gripped the rim and she drank from it with gentle grace.

“It is that you are, inevitably, holding yourself at bay. Were two men both identical in shape, strength, and means, why is it that one is the King and the other is the horse that carries the King into battle? It is simple. Instinct.”

    There was a new quiet settling between them as she finished and set her glass aside to receive their food. The waiter smiled genially as he set before her a plate of mixture of white islands of mozzarella surrounded by currents of tomato sauce and dappled with basil leaves and extra virgin olive oil.

    Plucking her silverware from the table Tatsui would begin to do something most foul and evil. A knife in one hand and a fork to put pressure atop the dough she would begin to cut into the pizza in small chunks handy enough to be picked up by her fork but clearly not intended to be eaten with her hands. She was, as a truer villain had never revealed, eating her pizza with a fork and knife.

“Perhaps that restraint is good for you. The counterweight to what I’m willing to do. In the words of an Earthling long since dead, ‘Bargains, Bargains, Bargains... There is not a day or night that a mother offers her life for her children, or some honest captain, his life for his chief. Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not, but there is no bargain: what is, is what must be.’”

    She pierced him with a look as her quote finished and Tatsui speared another bit of pizza to be gobbled up.

“There is naught that can compel or command me. I kill who I kill, I spare who I spare, there is no transaction to be had. Not truly. I sacrificed my parents for the company. I sacrificed the company for myself. In the end I am nothing more than a glutton who wholly embraces the sin. In my eyes all Saiyans walking this world are mine to devour and so why would I care if they sacrifice themselves for me?”

    Tatsui would settle her utensils for a moment, a napkin to clean her lips and a sharp smile that showed too many teeth creasing the corners of her mouth.

“I walk contradictions because I can. In that same way you walk a principle because you are principled. Fettered, bound, inviolable truth of character and persistence. In summary? I support such an endeavor. Visualize yourself atop the world if you cannot simply claim it. I will have enough instinct for the two of us, and enough unbound rage. You would speak with them in the senate rather than demand things upon the field, you who would choose soldiery in spite of our noble blood. Yes there are very few Saiyans who could hold such principle and honesty with themselves.”

    She pointed to his steak while she got back to working through the pizza.

“You should get working on that. It won’t sit around forever and I might still be hungry after this. I hate those Earthlings but I’d conquer their world to enslave their chefs. Perhaps we should visit one day, I've heard word of a financier who owns much of the planet and an interstellar conglomerate of cooperation would be valuable.”