"I'm not seeing the humor here."
Pan sighed, scratching her forehead with the heal of her palm. She'd known before she'd ever even picked up the phone to dial that Bra would be completely unenthralled with the prospect that Tatsuki had suggested.
"Look, I know you're not fond of Tats, but this was his idea. And besides, I miss spending time with you."
"It's not Tatsuki that bothers me, Pan. And you damned well know it."
Disgruntled but not discouraged, Pan hurrumphed onto the end of her bed.
"It's car ride, Bra; that's all you'll have to sit through. He's paying for both of us to spend the day at the hot spring, so it's not like we're all going to be in the same room all day. Just think of it as a free day of pampering."
"I'd be able to if it weren't for that jerkoff," Bra grumbled. Pan winced at the venom in her voice, hearing her toss something onto her dresser. Or maybe, judging by the sound of it, hurl was the better word. Pan drew a deep breath, only to gag on the french fry stench that three showers and a bubblebath hadn't managed to wash away. She was beginning to think that her brain was permanently grease-stained.
"Bra--"
"If it were anyone but Soshiki, I'd have no problem joining you at the drop of a hat. But I can't stand that halfbreed flunkie--"
"Bra?!" Pan cut in, her voice incredulous. "Can you hear yourself?"
"Shut up, you know what I mean!" Bra spat angrily, her indignance covering the sound of Pan's laughter.
"Bra, come with us. Please. I promise to make Soshiki suffer for every second he spends in your prensence," Pan sniggered, picking her towel up from the floor to rub at her still-damp hair.
"Oh, I can put him through hell on my own."
"I dunno, Bra. I mean, Soshi does work at McDonald's..."
"Watch me," came a sadistically sick grin over the line. Pan didn't even want to know how she'd managed to do that.
"So does this mean you're coming with us?"
"I'll be ready in half an hour."
Bra hung up with her mind set on the destruction of her archnemesis. Grinning maliciously, she pulled a pink turtleneck sweater over her head and moved towards her dresser, searching for the purple tiger-print slipper she'd flung at it.
It wasn't that she really hated Soshiki. She actually liked the guy.
She just couldn't stand him.
Not to mention he reminded her a lot of her brother.
Who had hogged the quilt, started crying like a baby when she'd kicked him out of her bed, and had played commando with his cereal at breakfast. And while the image of her big brother hunched over the table and turning little sugarcoated crunchies into soldiers was adorable, it wasn't so cute when said brother was 32 years old and in charge of the family business.
Finding her slipper amidst lipstick and a curling iron, she stuffed her foot into it and yawned. Turning, she set her cordless phone in its cradle, turned of the lights, and left the room, heading for the stairs.
"Trunks! Get back down here! I need your help!"
Blue eyes rolled towards the ceiling as Bulma called up from the basement, the playroom-slash-lab that had been the site of her brother's imprisonment. She could hear her father foraging for food in the kitchen, grumbling to himself about the indecencies he suffered as the Saiyan no Ouji, forced to prepare his own meals.
Other than that, the house was almost eerily quiet. Which meant Trunks was probably hiding like a scared child under his bed.
Tying her shoulder-length blue hair into a tail at the nape of her neck, long bangs hanging along the sides of her face, she stepped out of the stairwell and moved into the kitchen.
"Morning Daddy," she chirped merrily, grabbing her father's shoulders and sterring him towards the table and into a chair. "What were you thinking of for breakfast?"
Vegeta hurrumphed quietly, allowing her a half smile and a nod as she flounced back to the still-open fridge. Running her eyes over the contents in the refrigerator and the cheese and ham on the counter, she placed her money on omlettes and pulled out an industrial-sized carton of eggs.
"Plans today?"
Bra looked up as she cracked two eggs, one in each fist, peering over her shoulder at her father. Vegeta sat at the table where she'd put him: posture slouched but stiff, arms folded tightly over his chest, black eyes following her movements. She dumped the eggshells in the sink and lifted two more.
She used to hate her family and had once longed for the stable normality of Pan's. She'd envied her the morning meal: father reading the paper, mother making breakfast, a familial gather around the table as they discussed their plans for the day...
Then the sweeling around her brain had gone down and she'd remembered that normalcy was overrated.
"Going to the hot srping with Pan, her boyfriend, and his brother," she replied cheerfully, cracking the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth eggs, pouting as her hands only found one more. With a shrug, she cracked the last egg and depositied the shell into the sink, washing her hands before digging through a drawer for a whisk.
"On whose authority?" her father asked sternly. She rolled her eyes with a smile as she attacked the helpless yellow blobs held prisoner in the stainless steel bowl.
"Mine."
The answer met his expectations and father and daughter fell into silence, enjoying each other's company.
"Have either of you seen Trunks?" Bulma sighed wearily a few minutes later, shuffling on tired feet in a beeline towards the coffee pot. Bra smiled good morning and shook her head, ducking so that her exhausted mother could get into the cupboard abover her head. "No? Huh...I wonder where he's gone?"
Bra watched as her mother poured herself a mug and set the pot back in the coffeemaker.
"You look like you're going somewhere today, Sweetheart. What are your plans?" Bulma yawned and pulled a skillet out of a cupboard next to the stove, taking the bowl of eggs from her daughter. Without a word, Bra turned and opened the window above the sink as wide as it would go, ignoring the chill winter wind that was swept off of the newfallen snow outside.
"Hot springs," she replied a moment later, rubbing her arms and crouching to dig through a drawer for the cheese grater. Pawing through bottle operners, knife sharpeners and measuring spoons, she grinned up at her mother. "Pan, Tatsuki, and his brother will be here to pick me up in about twenty minutes or so."
Bulma nodded and Bra heard a spatula scrape against the bottom of the skillet.
"I really liked his brother better. But I suppose it is Pan's decision."
Bra shrugged. "It's a unanimous vote against Tatsuki, but whatever. She's happy." Pulling the drawer out until it squealed in protest, she hestitated before she continued, trailing off in spite of herself. "Soshiki's just a big kid...kinda like Trunks...um..."
Bulma looked down at her daughter, blue eyes watching her skeptically over the rim of a bright red coffee cup.
Bra sighed and pawed listlessly through the drawer. "I mean, well, I really wish Trunks would grow up. He can be so immature sometimes... I mean, he's supposed to be not only my rolemodel, but my superior soon, right?"
"He just acts like a kid," Bulma replied, holding the mug before her and checking the eggs. "And only when he's sleep deprived. Although I will admit that it's rather agrevating after a while."
"Then maybe you two could break at night?" Bra offered weakly, closing the drawer to check the next one up.
Her mother nodded guility, turning to look thoughtfully out the window as a breeze ruffled her tee-shirt. "It would probably be for both of our benefits, wouldn't it...oh. There's your brother."
Blinking, Bra stood to follow her mother's gaze, only to find her brother crouched in the dimensions of the frame wearing his winter coat and a pair of old blue jeans. Before she could react to his presence, he drew back his right arm and let it fly, flinging a tight ball of snow into her face.
It hit her like a cold puppy kiss, only three times as hard and without the warm love. Stumbling back onto the floor, she lay there in stunned silence for a moment before sitting up with a start. Swiping angrily at the snow in her eyes, she sputtered to her feet.
"Trunks!" He crouched precariously on the sill, grinning victoriously with his arms draped across his knees as he laughed. "Dammit Trunks!" she shrieked, rage welling up within her. "I've had it! I wish you would just--I wish you'd act your age!"
He smirked and opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to lose his balance before he could find his voice through the laughter. He fell backwards, arms flailing wildly as a golden glow encompassed him, as if he thought to use his ki to catch himself. Wide blue eyes pierced her as his pinwheeling was lost beneath the window frame, and within heartbeats, he was out of sight.
Bra stood there, frozen solid, startled and coming off her anger. She strained her ears, listening for the sound of a groan or a curse that would inevitably follow the whump into the snow piled against the house, but no such whump came, no groan or curse followed. Swallowing thickly, she looked back at her mother, who looked just as bewildered.
After a moment of silence, the two blue-haired women burst into action, literally dropping everything and sprinting for the back door, running out into the snow in their socks and slippers.
Trunks was lost in a daze, just picking himself up as they ran in jumping high-steps through the snow that was seeping into their socks to get to him. Turning slowly, he scratched absently at his head, disrupting the vibrantly purple hair that stuck up about his head. In the other hand he held his glasses, staring at them intently as if he'd never seen them before.
Bra and Bulma slowed to a stop in knee-high snow, unable to find their voices. Somehow, he seemed to have grown taller, to have returned to that lanky yet muscular build he'd had until adopting the habit of stooping for hours on end over a desk. Though troubled, his eyes looked younger; his face held a baby-like quality it hadn't possessed for years. It was almost like looking at a photograph...
"Tr-Trunks?" Bulma stammered, clutching at her tee-shirt. Trunks blinked and looked up at them breifly before returning his gaze to his glasses, shaking snow out of his hair. "Are...are you alright?"
He nodded absently.
"You know," he mused almost to himself, his voice lighter, not quite so deep. "Call me crazy, but...either I whacked my head hard enough to give myself 20/20 vision, or...you got your wish, Sis."
Bra could only stand there with her mouth gaping open as Bulma's blue eyes rolled into her head and she fainted backwards into the snow.