"...They're late." Zeck muttered, checking his watch.
"Well, if they want to sign up for the tournament, they'd better hurry their butts up. Honestly, that jerk, making us wait like this!" Bulma said, leaning against a wall beside Zeck, clearly the perfect combination of bored and annoyed.
Leaning against the wall as well, eyes closed, Tater snorted softly. "Did you honestly expect those three to be on time?"
"Why is everyone so chill about this?! None of you have even bothered to sign up for the tournament yet." Bulma reminded them.
"Yeah, you should really do that." Zeck encouraged, "Isn't your master already waiting in the stands, Kakarot?"
Kakarot paused the stretching that he was doing to shrug. "Yeah, Master's been training this new kid who's competing, but he's pretty green. I wanna say hi to Tarble before I sign up if I can. Don't worry, I'll make it before they close."
"I'm keeping track of the time for him. We've still got a few minutes." Chichi chimed in, agreeing.
"You sound like you're not signing up, Zeck? Chickening out?" Tater teased.
"Sure, Tater. Your scorched-earth approach and the massive crater over on the other side of the island have scared me silly…" Zeck replied sarcastically, "No, I made a deal with the tournament officials. Novem's busy setting up this new battle-recording tech that dad developed last summer. I'm helping him operate it this year. The idea is to make it so that the crowd can follow the battle even when it gets million-level and everyone's up in the air flying."
"And Novem's helping out? How'd it get roped into a Capsule Corp deal?" Tater wondered.
"You know it's been staying with us since the wedding, right?" Bulma said.
"...Huh. I kinda figured it'd be staying with the doc?" Tater hadn't really thought too deeply about what would happen to Novem while Tarble and the girls were on their honeymoon, but in hindsight, it was rather obvious that the android wouldn't go with the throuple, which meant it needed someone doing basic maintenance on it during those few months.
Pepper's only real 'duty' was 'helping' the Fire-Eater doctor take care of the Fire-Eaters. Interacting with them in the hotter-than-hell temperatures that the doctor couldn't go near without special equipment, noting abnormal behavior that he missed because he wasn't as perceptive as she was.
While the Fire-Eaters would miss her, there wasn't really a problem with her disappearing for a few months. And Tarble could vanish without consequences, too. But someone capable of unsupported flight still needed to take care of Lynn's garden for her, and the only one qualified there was Novem. As such, the natural assumption was that Novem would stay in the village with Doctor Hyperion so that it could take care of Lynn's garden and clean Tarble's vacant apartment for him in his absence.
But Zeck shook his head. "Apparently, it tried to stay with Dad, but he was… otherwise occupied. There's a 27% chance that I'll have a younger sibling by the next time I visit the village, though."
Tater snorted. "Your parents too, huh? Is everybody-?"
"God, I hope not. You and Cynthia aren't-"
"No. We've got our hands full with Cyn right now. She's staying home with him. He's healed, but pretty shaken up about the whole 'Blue' thing. I'm starting to get worried that he's gonna give up on fighting completely."
"...How would you feel about that?" Zeck asked. He and Tater weren't the closest, but even he knew exactly what Tater's answer would've been if he'd been asked that question about a theoretical child of his, ten years ago. Young Tater would've gotten violently sick at the sheer prospect of a child of his not being a warrior.
Current Tater made a conflicted face, "Have you or Novem heard from Tarble since the wedding?" He changed the subject.
After a moment's hesitation, Zeck went with it. "I finished up a hardware upgrade for Novem. It's going to fix a thermal feedback issue that crops up in one of her left arm's servo-" He paused, "You don't care… Anyway, I sent Tarble the specs. Normally, the compatibility update only takes him an hour or two to draw up and send back along with his notes."
"And nothing?" Tater concluded with the reasoning of someone who knew all three involved and had been married, and could very easily utilize that knowledge and experience to mentally simulate exactly what had likely happened inside his head with a fair amount of precision.
"Twenty-seven butt emoji messages on my terminal the next morning. Novem has not had a single infrastructure update in four months and its starting to get antsy about it."
"Pepper?"
"Lynn's account." Zeck replied with a shrug.
"So, Pepper. Wait, Novem gets antsy? That thing didn't even blink when I had it deal with Cynder's diapers." Tater thought aloud.
"That is because it's so annoyingly serious. We've been loosening it up, day-by-day. It's getting there." Bulma told him.
"Which is why it spends 18 hours a day in its charger and avoids you and your parents like the plague." Zeck added.
"Sounds like you and she are a perfect match, Zeck! That's exactly how people feel about you!"
The group of five all instantly spun their heads in unison at the familiar and casually-mean joke from the woman as she walked up.
Zeck was the first to speak. "...Pepper, why do you have a guy following you around with a cotton-candy cart?"
"...Yes!" Nobody bothered to try any further measures to pry a real answer out of the woman.
Even though he'd only met her a couple of times, Kakarot immediately decided to simply take Pepper's chaos as it came. "Can I have one?" He asked.
"Here you go, young man. One for your girlfriend, too."
"Thank you, sir." Chichi bowed respectfully at the old man wheeling the cart as he passed the cones to Kakarot and Chichi.
"Mmm. Sugary."