Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Youthful Perceptions ❯ Executive Quandry ( Chapter 5 )

AN: Once more **…** denotes thoughts.

Last chapter: Goku returns home to find Chi Chi gone and meets up with a Gohan who is not talking to him. We saw how the strain between father and son came about.

^o^ Natz

Youthful Perceptions 5

Executive Quandry

Trunks rubbed his eyes tiredly as he walked through the main doors of Capsule Corp 1 dome. He had spent the last 6 hours in an intensive videoconference with the production managers of various Capsule Corp offices scattered across the world. They had discussed the slight drop in Capsule's worldwide production figures for the last year and had tried to come up with ways to improve the production schedule. By having to deal with 13 different managers, each based in different places with varying political and social cultures, he had been faced with the challenge of overcoming each specific problem that plagued particular factories before they could come up with a standardised structure of operation for each of the factories to follow. Needless to say it had been a very exhausting 6 hours. He dropped his briefcase down on the first chair he came to; trying to get rid of the clinging feeling of work that he was sure was visibly stuck to him. He walked through the main hall and headed towards the stairs that led up to his apartment. Out of the corner of his eye, as he passed by the kitchen door and saw his mother standing by the stove, stirring a rather large pot. To his surprise, an extremely delicious smell came from the pot. Trunk's eyebrows rose in confusion. **Mom cooking and it's actually edible?** he thought, perplexed by the uniqueness of the situation.

Bulma continued stirring the pot, turning her head towards the other side of the room and saying, " How long do I have to keep stirring this thing again?" She was tapping her foot impatiently.

It was then that Trunks noticed that there was another person in the room, standing with practically their whole body stuck into the refrigerator. He could see that it was a girl, despite the fact that only her bottom half could be seen. She was short and tanned, wearing jeans folded up her calves, Capri style. **It's Panny!!** he surmised with a smile. It had been a while since he'd last seen the spoiled little girl, and he'd missed her immensely. "Pan!" He cried joyously, forgetting his tiredness at the prospect of doing mischief. He flashed quickly over to the body; still half stuck into the fridge, lifted the small body up and threw it high in the air. His smile widened as the sound of panicked shrieks coming from the fast moving body brought joy to his more sadistic side. He watched as the small body crashed down into his arms, still amazed that he'd managed to surprise her like that. He had expected her to at least sense him coming, but he figured that she might have been too distracted by the contents of the refrigerator to notice much else. He grinned maniacally as his mother rushed over and smacked him on his head with a kitchen towel.

"Why did you do that Trunks? You could have hurt her." Bulma shrieked, her eyes wide with shock. She pawed at the shivering bundle in his hands, as if to check to see she was bruised.

**Ridiculous** thought Trunks, ** Pan's too strong to have been hurt by that and mom knows it. So, why is she going manic over the fact that I just threw her in the air?** he wondered.

"Put me down!" The voice emanating from his reluctant luggage screamed menacingly, as the package thrashed around, arms punching, legs kicking at him. It was like holding a wildcat. Trunks then decided to give in to the pestering of his mother and his conquest. He set the bundle down and beamed at it as it started to right itself.

As soon as he put her down she began to mumble incoherently while straightening herself, visibly seething anger at him. Bulma rushed to her side and began to ask if she was ok, offering nothing but her best scowls in her son's direction.

He grinned and gave his best false innocent expression. It was just a joke, why were they overreacting like that?

*********

"Is there anything else you would like to discuss Miss Briefs before we wrap up business here." asked the black suited acquisitions councillor for Momo Motors, the last buyer that was to be dealt with today.

"No, that should be all. I'll have my brother look over these orders tonight. I should get back to you by tomorrow. What time will you be leaving for South Capital City, Mr Maya?" the young blue haired executive responded as she began to return all her papers and files that were spread all over the table to their respective places. As she gathered the files, her well-manicured, blood red nails clicked together. She tossed her head and her blue hair began to layer itself over her sleek red Gucci business suit.

"Oh, not till next week," he said, then added, his voice getting lower and more flirtatious, "That means I will be here all this weekend with nothing much to do. Do you think you can rectify that situation, Miss Briefs?"

Bra paused in the middle of stuffing a thick file into a file holder marker "Model A57S: Capsule Corp". She stared at the man. He was probably around 30 years old, with his shiny, oiled, black hair cut in the short layered and neat style that most execs, with the exception of her brother, tended to have. He was kind of cute, in a "businessman" sort of way, but she was not up for anything he had to offer. " I am sorry Mr Maya. You will have to find your own source of entertainment this weekend. My mother and father have already told me that I cannot stay out too late on weekends before I turn 18."

She watched as his mouth dropped open, grappling with the idea of her actual age. "How old are you now, Miss Briefs?"

"Just about to turn 17" She said nonchalantly and returned to stuffing files in their folders. A few minutes later she was finished and was showing a slightly distressed Mr Maya out of the door and into his awaiting limousine. As she shut the door to the office, she leaned against it and sighed, pulling at the edge of her short skirt. Her mother had thought it important that Bra got real experience at working at Capsule Corp as an executive during her summer holidays. "It will make you better able to take over that company if anything happens to me or Trunks.' She had said, pointing out that fact out to her. She had even reminded Bra that she had been running several facets of Capsule Corp the time she was 18, helping her dad with the day-to-day challenge of running a large company. Bra shook her head thinking of all the buyers she had been dealing with all day. She was drained mentally. She needed a break. She needed … FOOD. She smiled goofily as she thought of food, and then frowned again as she thought of her mother's food. ** Lets just hope that mom decided to let grandma or the robots cook today** Quickly she tidied up the rest of the room and put all the files into the file cabinet. "Even thought we are a highly technological business we still have to depend on paper files and file cabinets" she thought aloud, slightly amused.

Five minutes later she was on her way up the elevator to the living area of the house. Her mother had insisted that she meet the buyers in the office on the lower lever of the Capsule Corp dome, their home. Some how she did not feel it appropriate for Bra to start working out of the skyscraper, which was the actual centre of Capsule Corp executive offices. Bulma had said that it had some thing to do with Bra having illusions of grandeur. Bra twirled the ends of her aqua blue tresses and scowled at the idea that her mother thought that she had an ego problem. Now, it was true that her dad had an ego problem. They all knew that. Bra was not the one who went around proclaiming that she was the prince of a dead race every day. What rubbish! She was the princess.

The elevator doors pinged and slid open with a swish. Bra stepped out with a regal air, her red leather Gucci boots clicking steadily as she strode into the foyer. As she walked towards the kitchen she could hear the telltale sounds of her pissed mother. **Oh no!** she rolled her eyes **What did they do now?**

She walked into the kitchen to see her still suited brother grinning goofily at her mother and … wait was that Pan? Her eyes widened with surprise. She had not seen Pan for about a year. She walked right into the middle of what she was sure was a big fight and grabbed at Pan's shoulder. Everyone's attention turned to her. She looked right into her eyes, **No, this isn't Pan. But she sure does look like her.**

"Who are you and why do you look so much like Pan?" Bra asked suspiciously, still holding the shoulder of the look-alike.

"Wait, Bra…" Her mother started, stepping towards her, but the doppelganger put up her hand, stopping Bulma in her tracks.

"Who do you think I am?" replied the girl. She looked directly into Bra's face, fierce and unrelenting.

Bra let go of the body immediately and stepped backwards, searching her for clues. This girl was obviously someone she had met before. She was far too familiar to her. She was younger than Pan, she figured at least 12 or 13. But there was some thing about her that made her seem much older than that. Something about her attitude and demeanour set off alarms in Bra's head.

"Umm..." interjected a slightly apathetic looking Trunks. "She isn't Pan?" He slapped his head and started mumbling apologies," I thought she was Pan. She looked so much like her. I had no idea. He began to back away from the trio of women, sure that he was about to become chow for his late grandfather's pet dinosaur.

Bra rolled her eyes at her confused brother and turned to the girl who looked like Pan to inspect her further. She was smaller, more round, obviously more girly than Pan was and she looked like she could at least be her younger sister. But there was some thing else about her that was familiar, and it did not remind her of Pan. The difference was the eyes, these eye were darker than Pan's, jet black and large. They were so familiar, like she had seen them before. An idea popped into her head. She began tentatively, not wanting to make a complete fool of herself by saying some thing totally outrageous. " Are you related to Chi Chi?"

Bulma gasped and looked at the girl. The girl broke into a wide grin. " You could say that." She began, "Let's just say that I am really close to her in many ways." She turned away from them and gently closed the fridge door that had been wide open all that time. " I came to see Bulma and got roped into staying for dinner."

Bra, determined to solve the mystery started to speak again but was interrupted by Bulma. " You will all find out who she is eventually." Her mom said, putting her hand on Bra's shoulder. "But you will have to wait until your dad gets in from wherever he is. I don't want to have to tell the whole story twice."

"What whole story mom? What the hell is going on here and why must we wait for dad?" Bra wined.

"Yeah mom!" started Trunks, who was also quite confused and curious.

"Bra! Trunks! Come on! You can wait a little while. Your dad is coming in soon. He has not eaten all afternoon. Besides, it would do you good to try to use your brains to figure out this mystery." Bulma said with a laugh and stuck her tongue out at her bewildered children.

Bra scowled at the teasing gesture. "Honestly mom, you are how old now? Stop playing these little kids games." She said disdainfully. And with one last glowering look at the mysterious girl, she marched out indignantly, a tad pissed at not getting the information she wanted, and out of the kitchen.

********

Bulma watched her daughter, dressed in all red business attire, stride out of the room in a fit and stifled the urge to giggle. She looked back at Trunks and glared, her fake 'I'm pissed at you right now. Go away' look for a while until he slunk out of the room and up the stairs to his apartment. Then she turned back to the pot, which was boiling over. She sighed tiredly, reminded of the fact of how much she really hated cooking herself "You do know that Bra will be pissed with me until we tell her, right."

"Yeah, she probably will. But it is fun messing with them. They get so upset about not knowing." Chi Chi said with a smirk. "Goku never gets really riled up about anything unless it concerns food or fighting."

"Oh, by the way did you remember to call him and tell him that you will be staying here for dinner?" Bulma remembered suddenly.

Chi Chi turned back to the fridge and reopened it, making sure to look back first to see if any evil Saiyans were behind her waiting to throw her up into the air, and then sighed. "Yeah I did, but no one answered. He must have wandered off somewhere far. He had disappeared when I went to tell him that I was coming over here. He does that a lot. I just called over at Gohan's. If Goku comes home, they will tell him where I am. No problem."

Chi Chi found the jar of chile that she had been looking for when Trunks attacked her. She walked over to the counter and crawled into the chair next to it. She first made sure it was stable, and knelt in it, cutting up the peppers and adding it to the other seasonings she had already prepared.

"Bulma returned grudgingly to stirring the pot. " I can't wait to see the looks on their faces when we tell them" She said with a grin.

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