"Okay, I've gotta ask. Who's the dude with the cotton candy-" The dude waved. Stuffing more sugar into her mouth, Pepper waved back with a smile, "-And where's Tarble? Sign-ups are closing any minute now." Bulma asked after a long pause, unable to take it anymore.
"Oh, that's-" Pepper stopped, then chose to sidestep the issue since she'd just realized that she didn't actually know, or honestly care about, the cotton candy guy's name. "Tarble's with Lynn… They'll be…" She trailed off, doing the math in her head. Cross-referencing Lynn's usual patterns with the look she'd had on her face when she'd pulled their husband aside, "Maybe an hour or two?"
"An hour?! But sign-ups close in like five minutes. He won't make it." Kakarot realized, "We should go find him-" The boy started to run off to look for Tarble, but Pepper stopped him.
"Yeah, don't do that. He wasn't really planning on signing up, anyway. Lynn was thinking about it, but…" She shrugged. That ship had sailed. Lynn and Tarble weren't leaving that bathroom for quite a while.
"Wait, are you, at least, signing up, Pep?" Tater asked.
Pepper pursed her lips and muttered something that nobody could quite catch.
"What?"
"...Not allowed…" She muttered.
"Since when do you actually let something-" Zeck started, then he finally sensed it through Pepper's half-assed energy masking. "Oh, my god."
"What are you- My god…" Tater sensed it too, a second later. "Zeck, you sense-"
"Yeah. I sense it. It's-"
"Yeah…"
Pepper just shook her head, mildly annoyed. Which had been roughly a fifth of her general disposition ever since, two months ago, she'd learned that she was pregnant.
Honestly, she'd only just started to show, and the side effects of pregnancy, for a pure-blooded Saiyan, were only mildly annoying… mostly. The problem was, the moment that they'd sensed it, both Tarble and Lynn had flipped out. Lynn with jealousy, Tarble with overcaution.
Suddenly, she'd gone from taking a small break from training to being not allowed to do anything related to combat for the next nine months or so. Tarble was afraid that overexertion would hurt the baby or something, which made sense from a human perspective, but this Saiyan baby's ki already shone brighter than Zeck's right now. By a lot. At just around seven weeks or so.
Still, Pepper's full power, without tapping into the Ikari, was over two million at this point, so she'd hesitantly agreed to be careful.
She was actually rather jealous of Lynn, who was jealous of her because the older girl wasn't pregnant yet.
As such, despite pulling a promise from Tarble five years ago, Pepper couldn't compete in the tournament like she'd wanted to. Which meant that she'd already decided that Tarble wasn't competing either.
Did Tarble know this? He probably suspected. Maybe. It didn't really matter. Either way, all it'd taken was a single mention of cravings, and Lynn's jealousy flared up. Pepper split off for one second to convince the old man running the cart to give her unlimited free cotton candy, and by the time she came back, Lynn was making eye contact with her as she pulled Tarble away, her eyes clearly telling Pepper not to interfere.
"So Tarble's not signing up, you're not signing up, and Lynn's not signing up. Even the kid's master isn't gonna be fighting, 'cause he retired after that last tournament, without even fighting me…" Tater ticked off his fingers, realizing that he and Kakarot would be the only ones participating who were actually genuinely powerful at all.
That wasn't fun.
Suddenly, the only upside to participating in the tournament at all was the prize money.
"No point in competing, then. Think I'll sit on the sidelines this time around, too." Tater decided with a shrug.
"Wait, you're not signing up either, Mister Tater?! But why?!" Kakarot whined.
Was nobody with real power competing in this tournament?
"Look, if Pep's pregnant and Tarble's off with Lynn, then you're gonna be the only real fight in this tournament, kid. So, no. I'm not competing. No point." Tater reasoned.
"Wait, you're pregnant, miss Pepper? Ohhhh, that's why you're getting fat! The baby must be pretty tiny, though, because you're still fairly pretty." Kakarot realized.
Pepper's brow twitched.
Chichi's brow twitched.
Two fists slammed into Kakarot's face in unison. The sidewalk cracked beneath Kakarot's head. Instant knockout.
…
Kakarot woke up in the stands about twenty minutes later. Beautiful young women surrounded him, but the only face his eyes actually registered was the old man beneath them.
"You're finally up, my boy! Girls, give him room, give him room… Actually, here you go, Kira. Take the ladies and get something nice for yourselves, alright? I want some time with my grandson."
"...Grandpa?" Kakarot sat up, rubbing his messy hair as his grandpa handed a bag of zeni to one of the girls surrounding them. The woman took it, thanked him, and gave Grandpa Gohan a kiss on the cheek.
Giggling, the other five women kissed him on the cheek, too, in series, before running off as a group.
"Grandpa, did I miss the sign-ups?" Kakarot wondered.
"...Sorry, my boy. You did."
"Aww… That's okay, grandpa." Kakarot decided after a long pause, rubbing his head, working out a bit of the residual pain. "...Girls are scary."