Author: Murasaki Rose
Email: jianu_dbz@hotmail.com
Archive?: Go for it! Just let me know where so I can link to ya!
Warnings: none
Series: DBZ
Timeframe: sometime during the year before Goku returned to Chikyuu and after the
resurrection of the Z senshi
Genre: humor
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Hotwheels
Vegeta eyed his surroundings warily. It was quiet. Too quiet. The woman and her father were working in the lab and her flaky mother was out shopping. But they weren't the ones who had him worried. Well, perhaps "worried" is too strong a word, concerned is more like it. 'They're up to something.' Finishing his last sandwich, Vegeta growled and headed out in search of the absent chibi senshi. He couldn't sense their ki, so he'd have to search the old-fashioned way. At every doorway, he would scan the room ahead for signs of anything unusual then slowly poke his head though the doorway, looking immediately up to check above the door before entering the room. Any rooms he passed with closed doors were kicked open before being submitted to the same type of search. A bit paranoid? Not after what was now called the "Water Gun Incident" by all who knew of it. Vegeta had been astounded, he hadn't thought the brats had *that* much nerve. By the end of that fiasco, Vegeta had been soaked to the point his hair went flat, FIVE TIMES and the chibis had spent the next couple days out in the woods. He'd still taken it out on them in an all-out sparring session. Anyway, the whole incident left him much warier when Capsule Corp. got too quiet. Muted voices and giggling reached his ears as he reached the hallway where the playroom was located. Kicking the door open, Vegeta snarled at the room's young occupants, "What are you brats up to?!"
"AAAAAHHH!!!!!" seven voices cried out in unison.
"Geta!!" Jianu yelled indignantly, her little hands on her hips. "Don't do that!"
Vegeta snorted, crossed his arms and leaned back against the doorframe. "You can sense ki can't you?" he drawled, "You should have felt me coming."
"We weren't paying attention, Vegeta-san," Sean said, brushing his orange hair away from his eyes.
"Yeah, we were busy setting up our track," Akira continued, propping up a length of orange plastic with a book.
Vegeta blinked, did they say . . . "Track?"
"Hai, and it's a good thing we allowed for the door or you'dve wrecked everything," Jianu growled glaring at the saiya-jin prince, flipping her strawberry blond pigtails in annoyance. "I swear, `Geta-kun, you're so high strung."
"Not after the stunt you brats pulled last month."
The nine year-old Dragonball Guardians struggled not to laugh, that had to have been their best trick ever.
"Aww poor baby," Jianu teased, earning her a thwap across the back of her head. "Itai," she muttered, rubbing her head but still grinning.
Still distrustful of their motives, Vegeta was ready to get back to business, "Just what is all this?" he asked, gesturing to the cacophony of toys, plastic strips, and other assorted items filling the room.
"It's our Hotwheels track!" Miraku chirped.
"We built it ourselves," Chujistu added proudly.
"It took us all day," Takeshi piped up.
Still unfamiliar with many Chikyuu terms, Vegeta was still confused, "Hot wheels?"
"Well, not all of them. Some of them are Matchbox and then there's some generic ones too," Miraku informed him, as if that would help. "But the tracks are all Hotwheels. We've been saving up for weeks and bought lots and lots of them to make this."
Vegeta's left eye began to twitch, he didn't understand a word they were saying and was having trouble determining if they were up to trouble or not. Sensing his growing anger and frustration, Jianu turned her attention from her ramp to the surly saiya-jin. ~Calm down, `Niichan,~ she `pathed. (A/N: he's not really her brother, she just calls him that) "What's got you so wound up?" she asked aloud.
"What in the hell is a hot wheel," he ground out, punctuating each syllable deliberately. Seven pairs of eyes widened at once as realization struck. Wordlessly, the young warriors each held up a handful of small die-cast metal cars. Taking one from Jianu, the ouji inspected the small toy, raising an eyebrow in surprise. There wasn't much to the thing. "This is what you've been playing with all day? I fail to see the attraction."
"That's . ."
"because . ."
"you haven't . ."
"seen how . ."
"we . ."
"play . ."
"with them." The Guardians replied in their eerie round-robin fashion. (A/N: The Guardians tend to finish each other's sentences. Something to do with their telepathic link.)
Vegeta smirked, "All right, show me then. And stop finishing each other's sentences!!"
Grinning from ear-to-ear the Guardians quickly made a few last-minute adjustments, then took a car to one of the seven starting points. "Final test run! 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-GO!!!" Pushing the cars into motion at speeds only a child of their power could manage, the Guardians watched excitedly as the toys raced through their homemade track. Watching the cars race about, Vegeta could now see the track for the time-consuming effort it was. Twists, turns, multiple loops, near vertical climbs to the ceiling followed by sharp drops or winding spirals. All leading toward one of Bulma's centrifuges, modified with tape and cardboard no less. As the cars neared the centrifuge, all seven Guardians grew quiet, breaths were held . . . the moment of truth was at hand. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. All seven cars were picked up by the centrifuge, spun around at a dizzying speed and then . . . Shiiiinng! The centrifuge released its cargo, flinging each car down a different track. Shrieking and whooping, the Guardians jumped up and down excitedly, "Yatta! Yatta!!" Grinning like little maniacs, the seven children gleefully awaited the return of their cars.
"Let's try two this time!" Miraku suggested, nimbly catching his car before it collided with the wall.
"Okay!"
"Oi `Geta-kun. You wanna play?" Jianu asked, smiling brightly at the saiya-jin prince.
Vegeta looked at her like she'd grown a second head before recovering his composure. "Absolutely not!" he declared, turning his head to the side and snorting in disgust. "I refuse to participate in your childish games."
"Kudasai?" she begged, turning huge, watery eyes on him.
He glared at her, "No."
"I'll be your best friend."
"Ano Jianu, aren't you already his best friend?" Miraku interrupted.
"URUSAI!!" they both shouted. Jianu because he was interfering with her begging and Vegeta because he didn't want to admit that he actually had any friends.
Jianu continued, "Come on."
"No."
"I'll whine."
"You wouldn't dare," Vegeta paled, he knew what Jianu's whining would entail, a constant stream of high-pitched pleas assaulting both his ears and his mind.
"Wanna bet?" she replied, the smirk on her face, eerily similar to his own.
'Damn telepathy,' sighing heavily in defeat, Vegeta stalked over to the pile of cars and picked one up. "Now what do I do?"
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Hours passed and still they played, completely unaware of the time until their stomachs voiced a mass complaint.
"Dinner will be here in thirty minutes guys. I ordered pizza," Bulma informed them from the doorway. None of them knew how long she'd been there, but judging by the look on her face it was long enough.
"Hai Bulma-san!" the Guardians chirped.
Vegeta said nothing, his face turning a brilliant shade of red. Standing up, he stalked out of the room and past Bulma, stopping only long enough to hiss, "Not one word, onna."
The blue-haired beauty nodded, hoping she wouldn't burst out laughing. When she'd felt he'd gone far enough, Bulma smiled triumphantly and let the arm she had holding her camera fall from behind her back. 'Why say a word, when I've got pictures?' she thought before heading to her lab to hide the film. 'These are perfect for the family album. Who'd have thought the royal-pain-in-the-ass could get roped into playing with Hotwheels?'
May 30, 2002
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Disclaimer: Here we go. I do not own any of the characters from Dragonball, Dragonball Z, or Dragonball GT. They are all the property of Akira Toriyama, Bird Studio, Toei Animation, and Funimation Inc. However, all the other characters in my stories are mine. I'm not making any money off of this, its just for fun. And to top it off I'm a college student who works part-time at Wal-Mart so you know I don't have any money. So if you sue me you won't get anything.
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