Just a smile
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part 3
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Vegeta outwardly shrugged off Bulma's announcement, but inwardly he was a little worried. He had resigned himself to the thought of some silly housework, but it looked like Bulma would use her not insignificant imagination to come up with something really unpleasant. Hmmm ... if necessary he could still back down, after all he hadn't given her word of honor for this matter.
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"Tired, Vegeta?", Bulma's mother stood in the doorway. "The water would be hot."
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Vegeta managed a nod, which Bulma's mother acknowledged with a friendly smile and fished some clean things out of the closet. In the anteroom of the bathroom he literally tore his sweaty pajamas off his body and opened the sliding door. There was a strong smell of mint and other herbs. Quickly soaped and rinsed, and Vegeta got into the tub. It was really relaxing and the fragrant steam made him comfortably tired.A little later, he almost fell asleep, he heard someone else enter the anteroom. "Did you just throw away your clothes like that again?", Bulma's voice sounded through the door.
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"It's not my things, it's your father's!" Vegeta replied.
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"Make sure you don't stay in there too long, or you will have skin like a wrinkled apple."
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Vegeta blew some foam through the bathroom and yawned loudly. "So what? It's my business, isn't it?" Nevertheless, he looked at his hand and the skin on the fingertips was really quite wrinkled.
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"If you mean ... Actually I wanted to measure your tank, but if you go in like a sock that has been washed too hot, it will be a size too small ..."
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"Got it!" Vegeta pulled himself up and climbed out of the tub (the black stuff was really fascinating). He dried himself off quickly and wrapped a towel around his waist."Okay, I'm out!"
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Bulma tossed her father's pajamas into the dirty laundry basket and opened the sliding door a crack. Of course he hadn't drained the water or cleaned the tub. Small droplets glittered in his hair and his skin gleamed a healthy color. She thought of last night and how cold and gray his skin had been. Unbelievable how quickly he recovered. Well, she would pretend she wasn't impressed by his muscles or by the proud pose in which he stepped out to her in the vestibule, wearing nothing but a towel. She didn't intend to swap "muscular and naive" for "muscular and stubborn", no, definitely not. Her hands trembled just a little when she took the tape measure. "Stretch out your arms," ​​she said, her voice surprisingly calm even in her ears.
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Vegeta did as he was told, but he wasn't in his skin. Somehow he felt just as exposed as before in his room.He pushed the memory back and focused on the idea of ​​an ideal protective suit. Bulma nodded at his information as she measured the length of his arms, the thickness of his wrists and the width of his shoulders and wrote them down on a small pad. Then it was the turn of his chest and both of them caught their breath for a second when Bulma's fingertips pressed the cool tape measure onto his warm skin, but neither of them wanted to admit it and so the measurement continued, his waist, the hips she left out , the length of his legs and ankles, even the length of his feet, she noted. At his questioning look she only noticed that he certainly wanted armored boots and that was the case, he let it go. "I'll take the rest of the measurements on your clothes," said Bulma and couldn't prevent her gaze from sweeping over his hips, which in turn made his face blush.Bulma noticed it too and blushed in turn. Funny, she had often seen him barely clad ... She pulled the strap, rolled up the tape measure and ticked off the last item on her list on the pad. "That with the tank will take about two weeks, I have to have the material made in a special laboratory, the stuff for the tub was just a sample."
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"If it doesn't go faster ...", he shrugged his shoulders. "But remember that by then I'll be stronger than I am now."
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So more muscle mass. It wouldn't do him any harm if he also put on a little more brain mass, Bulma thought, and with a grim smile made a note to calculate the potential strength and muscle gain before she placed her order.
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"Sure," she said simply. As she went out, she glanced back one last time. "Mom put something to eat by your bed. Don't worry, it's neither chicken soup nor gruel.Then you should try to get some sleep so that the fever will finally go away. "
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Since his stomach was not exactly full from the two plates of medical food and the peaches, Vegeta quickly slipped into his clothes. In fact, the little table literally arched in front of bowls and plates. It was a meal he liked best. Lots of meat, rice and a little vegetables. At a pace that would have impressed even Gokou, he devoured everything but the last grain of rice. Then he stretched out on the newly made bed (you could rely on Bulma's mother on this point) and closed his eyes. A short digestive nap couldn't hurt, then he would go to his exercises with new freshness ...
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When he woke up almost 20 hours later, not only was the dishes gone, the fever was gone too. Hungry, he went to the kitchen, where Bulma's mother was waiting for him with a mountain of pancakes. Bulma himself had retired to the workshop and made plans for his suit, which was fine with him.He felt perfectly well and it annoyed him that he couldn't use the spaceship. He would just fly somewhere and practice some energy attacks. Bulma's mother packed him three luch boxes tied up in a capsule to form a large package, and insisted that he equip himself with a fur jacket, scarf and winter boots. Since he didn't want to risk relapse himself, he gave in and flew away without saying goodbye to Bulma.
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When Bulma found out at lunch that he had run away, she did not explode. Attentive observers would have noticed that her fork was digging into her steak with particular devotion and she was chopping the piece of meat into smaller pieces than necessary with a remarkable amount of energy, but otherwise her voice remained remarkably calm when she only said, "So he stays gone all day today and tomorrow too? Well, then at least he won't bother me when I finish assembling Papa's aura generator. "<br />
"Is he ready yet?" Asked her father eagerly. Although he had drawn the drafts and also started implementing them, at Bulma's insistence he left her to handle the intricacies of this useless gimmick that finally had a name.
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"We both want him to be ready by your big evening, don't we?" Said Bulma, gleefully digging her teeth into a piece of meat. After chewing it twenty times and finally swallowing it, she added: “Work on Vegeta's armor can wait if he doesn't even find it worth the effort to be there in case I have to discuss any changes with him.” Vigorously She speared one of the butter beans and waved her fork in the air to underline her words. "Tomorrow morning I have to do some shopping in town, but that should still be easy."
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"Otherwise I can work on it," said her father, taking a careful sip."Besides, I think it's very nice that you have me and your mother at the meeting tomorrow
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Want to accompany you in the evening. Since then this girl, what's her name ... "
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He frowned and his wife jumped in to help. "Suzy, my dear, Suzy, the only daughter of your fellow student Niko."
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"Oh yes, since that Suzy made fun of poor Yamcha, you never went with him."
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"And when I think about it," added her mother, "the invitation said 'companion daughter', didn't it? But I don't think Yamcha would want to go there again."
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"I wouldn't ask him either, even if I knew where he was at the moment," said Bulma, pricking a particularly stubborn pea that kept rolling to the side with her fork. "I'll go with Vegeta."
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"Oh, then everything is fine", her mother seemed very relieved.
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"But when Suzy is back, she won't pick on Vegeta ..." Her father put his beer down and rubbed his chin."He's got a very hot temper and in case he feels offended by this stupid girl ..."
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"Don't worry, Papa," Bulma smiled a small smile that made her father feel cold, "Vegeta will pull himself together and play my tame, civilized companion ..." She cut the pea too blocked the way for the knife and dug a prong straight through the green center. As she pulled pea off the fork with her teeth and chewed it with relish, she wondered whether Vegeta would be the latest suit of this winter ...
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“Haatschi!” Vegeta rubbed his nose. Either it was a holdover from his illness or someone was talking about him. Bulma's face appeared in his mind's eye, but he quickly shook off the thought of her. He had located a dry cave and set up a stove from the capsule Bulma's mother had smuggled into the lunch box so he could warm up between training sessions.The stove's energy cell lasted for a whole week, so even if he fell asleep next to it, there was no longer any risk of freezing to death in his sleep.
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The landscape around had already been corrected a la Saiyan. There wasn't much of the snow left, except that little bit that still trickled out of the thin cloud. The heat of the explosions had created a gray-brown, snow-free zone. Vegeta wanted a whole regiment of probes to test his accuracy. But since he preferred to avoid Bulma at the moment, he would have to be content with falling rocks. Time to drag the next block of rock onto the high cliff. The chunk was definitely as big as a small house, but Vegeta managed to drag the chunk up a ramp with sheer muscle power. He was pretty exhausted when he finally set the rock down on the edge and leaned against the rough stone to take a breather. Damn it, how much longer would he have to act at half power because his body hadn't fully charged up yet.Vegeta