Chapter Text
They have been on Beerus for three days now.
Chee Lai has seen very little of the strange pyramid planet in that time.
Though she had been able to confirm a few things with her very own eyes in that time.
It is nice enough of a planet to be on, livable and quiet, and…
And the grass really is blue.
(Broly had been crouched down to brush careful fingers against the soft blades of shiny blue just a minute after they’d landed - threading his large hands through the shiny vegetation as though brushing through Bah’s fur - dark eyes wide with wonder.)
(She knows he’s not all that happy about being here, even if he’s nowhere near as angry about it as she is, that big softie of theirs. She knows she and Lemo will just have to be angry and wary and resentful for the three of them instead.)
(Still, it’s nice to see him enjoy little things like that, no matter how they came to be here in the first place.)
They have been on Beerus for three days now, and Chee Lai hasn’t left neither Lemo nor Broly out of her sight for more than a blink if she could help it, watching every single person of the rather reduced group hovering around them with bright sharp eyes.
She's not happy about being here.
She doesn't doubt everyone else knows it.
She hasn’t made any efforts to hide it from them.
It’s not to say that she’s gone about threatening the inhabitants to show off her discontent either - and the blaster she's thinking of replacing with a new weapon of her own engineering has remained safely holstered against her hip - but she certainly hasn't made any moves to make friends either, remaining instead in a state of limbo of sorts, between friend and foe and hostage, one she's more than happy to claim for now.
(They - Lemo and her - are little more than living lovely leverage, she thought, while she watched Son Goku start on his ‘Tour of the Triangle’ on their first day here.)
(They're here because Broly wouldn't have come without them, and because Son Goku wanted something from Broly, and because he likely wasn't keen on another fight to get it.)
(That Earth Saiyan smiles too much - asks for a lot - and she doesn't like him one bit.)
The planet is almost empty anyways.
Beyond Son Goku, Whis, the strange fish, the stranger monster, and the God of Destruction Beerus himself, the place is all but a ghost planet. Or, perhaps, it had been emptied in preparation for their arrival, and the rest of the people are kept out of sight and reach while they are stuck topside. Whichever option is true, it leaves very little option for conversation, if she would have wanted to strike up any.
Which she doesn’t.
They’re being watched closely.
(And how she hates everything about it.)
(Why couldn’t they just have been left alone ?)
She’s been busy enough watching them all back.
On their first day, through that ‘tour’ Chee Lai had spent barely restraining herself from kicking Son Goku where she knew even Saiyans would hurt - right on the tail scar, amongst other less polite things, and right in the nose too - the three of them had stayed close, closer even that they’d started to become back on hungry angry deadly Vampa, their own little huddle following along the Earth Saiyan’s cheerful steps.
Chee Lai had even ended up sitting on Broly’s shoulders at one point - after he’d wanted to show her the particular red of a flower that was ‘just like Bah’s eyes’ - while Lemo had remained close enough that his arm would constantly brush against Bah’s fur, and they’d finished the tour like that, barely a breath of space left between the three of them.
They’d stuck even closer by the end - after the Earth Saiyan and his weirdo tall blue friend had offered more than once to ‘share tour guide duties’ and show them the inside of Beerus’s palace and their rooms, as if they would ever just sleep in the middle of an unknown territory just like that - and refused to split up.
After the tour, Son Goku had offered up a spar to Broly - had nearly demanded, to be truthful, though he’d done it with enough cheer it could have been considered little more than a friendly and eager invitation by anyone any less on edge than the trio had then been - and it had once again taken all of her steadily shrinking patience to keep Chee Lai from either screaming in his face, lunging at his throat, or running for the hills.
Why was he being so fucking weird about fighting anyways ?
Couldn’t he see how uncomfortable he made Broly ?
Didn’t he remember almost killing him last time ?
In the end, Lemo had been the only one of them with both enough nerve and patience to answer the Earth Saiyan’s pointed question, and he’d managed to sell his story of long recovery, different gravitational pulls, and ship-flight induced biological disruption well enough that Son Goku had dropped the topic with yet another too strong slap against Broly’s unoccupied shoulder, a too wide too sharp too happy grin, and some inane chatter about the ‘power of a good night’s rest’.
And what a good night’s rest they very much didn't get afterwards, all of them tucked away inside of that same rounded home they’d first made use of back on Vampa.
(And how that little home, which Chee Lai had tentatively started to cherish, had now soured with the taste of defeat - now set up in the middle of a glorified cage.)
(That's why she resents Son Goku for the most, she thinks, staring at a ceiling she feels might crumble any minute now. More than for nearly killing Broly in the first place. He'd given them comfort - then planted a seed of unease - and soon ripped the roots of stability they'd slowly been laying.)
Chee Lai has barely slept since they were first intercepted up in space, even after she and Broly had both ended up tucked in on Lemo's bed, huddled up together as they had back during dark nights on Vampa.
Maybe that's why she is so on edge, too.
Then again, maybe it's just part of her deal, now.
She has many a reason to be worried and wary, doesn't she ?
On their second day, though, they'd ended up being split off by sunset - though it had all seemed very innocent, and she supposes it really could have been, though she doesn't believe it for a second - when Lemo had been offered a job after cooking the trio’s latest meal on his portable stove.
From the moment they'd landed, the trio - largely led by Lemo on this matter - has kept to themselves when it came to both meals and sleep. Saving the bulk of their rations for a rainy day, their pilot and cook had taken to the ingredients provided with a critical eye, and prepared their own meals on the makeshift stove Chee Lai had salvaged and fixed up back on Vampa, largely away from the existing kitchens of the palace they were camped in the gardens of. And when they ate, they ate by themselves, in a tight little circle far from the dining room carved into the roots of the massive tree.
Or, they did for the first three meals of their stay on Beerus’s planet.
On the fourth, their little corner of quiet had been stepped into - if not outright invaded - by that goddamned Earth Saiyan again. He’d all but sauntered towards them with some kind of stuffed bread in his hands, a cup of some kind of colorful juice balanced on his head, and that stupid smile ever glued on his face. And as cheerful as ever, he’d plopped himself down in the middle of their now fading discussion without even a second of hesitation, throwing another kind of stuffed bread smack dab in the middle of Broly’s bare chest.
“Picnics, nothing better, eh guys ?”
And he began to all but shovel his food in his mouth without waiting for an answer.
(Because it seemed Son Goku just couldn’t leave Broly alone for any significant amount of time, for whatever damn reason.)
(Even though he’d already made it clear he could find them anywhere back on Vampa - even though he and his buddies had proved it by catching up to them in space right as they left - even though he’d already made sure he wouldn’t lose sight of Broly by bringing them here.)
(Wasn’t that enough, that he also had to grasp their little stolen moments of peace, and choke those out too ?)
Chee Lai had bit the inside of her cheek so hard she’d had to swallow down blood three times before she’d found it in herself to smile - meanwhile Lemo had seemed to have tasted something sour completely unrelated to his cooking, hands wrapped tight around his metal ladle - and Broly had just frozen with the stuffed bread in his hand where he’d caught it right in front of him.
And then the rest of his little friends had followed suite.
The tall blue magician, the eel-like creature, and the purple cat God of Destruction Beerus himself.
And they’d all just dug in without asking either, as though they'd been invited to join their meal, and hadn't just followed that weirdo along when he'd come to bother their private moment.
Now, Chee Lai wasn't very strong.
Her advantages laid in speed, flexibility, stealth.
But she still had managed to bend the metal of her fork out of sheer frustration.
It hadn't changed anything, of course - and she'd kept it hidden in her hand the whole time anyways, even as her knuckles ached and her fingers tingled and her palm came out of it with a thin dark bruise colouring the skin - but it had felt good in its moment.
Meanwhile, the invaders had been enjoying Lemo’s cooking.
(Broly had stopped eating as soon as someone other than one of their trio had made the first move towards the stew.)
(He'd used to do that when they'd first started to settle into a routine of sorts, back on Vampa, sensibly reverting to some long learned behaviour.)
(Chee Lai wondered how many times he'd been disciplined by that arshole Paragus, until the habit of pulling away from food he'd often times been the one to catch and dismember in the first place had become all but instinct.)
(She was so, so, so glad he was dead.)
( Good riddance. )
Their unwanted visitors had been the ones to finish the stew, in the end - while even Chee Lai and Lemo had set their bowls aside, appetite lost.
And then, after he'd all but licked the now cooled wok pan clean, the God of Destruction Beerus himself had looked up and his sharp needle thin eyes had further narrowed towards Lemo.
Chee Lai’s hand had twitched towards her blaster - and she knew it would likely not even give the being a scratch, but it would distract him, it would give them a second for Lemo to at least try and run - and Broly had tensed up.
The feline had barely seemed to notice, all of him focused on their friend, before he'd waved a dismissive hand towards the tall blue magician.
“You're fired.”
They'd all - the deserter trio and the weirdo group alike - blinked at the same time.
What ?
The blue guy had blinked, back and forth between the stew, the God, Lemo.
The God of Destruction Beerus himself had stared unblinking.
And Son Goku had just started to laugh.
Turns out, the God of Destruction Beerus himself had apparently loved the easy four ingredients stew Lemo had cooked up for them so damned much that he'd fired his current chef to open up the position for one of the pseudo-hostage-ally currently sleeping in his backyard.
(Lemo hadn’t answered outright, even if Chee Lai had known him well enough by then to know he’d already been weighing the pros and cons the position could offer him, in contrast to their precarious status.)
(When evening had come and after they’d discussed it thoroughly, a worried Broly sitting between the two of them as they’d extrapolated on hypothesis and possible outcomes and ever worsening-case scenarios, Lemo had whipped up another meal using the palace’s kitchens.)
(He’d taken the job - the offered apron - and the new possible risks and routes that came with it.)
On their third day on Beerus’s, while Lemo has moved some of the furniture from the kitchens around and outside to keep an eye on the rest of their trio - and the furniture in question was somehow thankfully powered through some kind of arcane power, because that was apparently something all but casual here, and not something meant to exist only in fairytales, legends, and reports of Earth battles - Son Goku comes to their camp and asks for a spar for the third time.
This time, it doesn't seem like he will take no for an answer, no matter the reasoning.
Chee Lai grits her teeth, checks her blaster ammunition, and waits.
And Broly, with a tentative smile, says yes.