The 5 minute warning bell at Trunks and Goten's school rang loudly through the schoolyard. The trickster duo were outside playing a practical joke on one of their girl classmates.
While the girl was busy saying good-bye to her friends, Trunks slipped a LARGE bullfrog into the girl's backpack, leaving just a large enough opening in the zipper so that the frog could poke it's head out. Quickly Trunks and Goten dashed across the grass to join the throng of students trying not to be late to class.
A few minutes later a shrill, piercing, scream was heard from across the yard. Grinning, Trunks and Goten exchanged a discreet high five as they pushed their way into the hall and ran off to their class.
Inside the classroom, several boys were throwing paper airplanes while a group of girls were off in a huddle talking and giggling. The teacher stood up in front of the class before rapping on her desk.
"Class, settle down! I have a few quick announcements to make today before you start working on your projects!" She called out as the students found their seats. Trunks and Goten groaned.
"Her 'few quick announcements' are equal to anyone else's 3 hour speeches." grumbled Trunks as he and Goten sat down near the front of the class.
"No kidding. So much for the 'class work time' we were supposed to get today." Goten ruefully agreed. The two boys promptly shut up when their teacher shot them a stern look before droning on for several minutes.
"And don't forget, class! Your end of the year projects are due in a week and I will expect a full 10 page report from all partners plus a decent presentation to the class!" More groans from the class. "Oh, and one more thing..."
"Translation: I have ten more things I forgot to tell you that you need to have in your project." Trunks whispered to Goten under his breath.
"We have a new student joining our class for the rest of the year. Carrie, would you please come up here and tell the class a little bit about yourself?" The teacher asked, oblivious to Trunks's comment, or at least ignoring it.
A tall girl with shoulder length brown hair nervously got up and went to the front of the class. She quickly glanced around the class with nervous blue-green eyes.
"Um well, my name is Carrie Cmor. I'm 16 and I just moved here from America." she stammered, glancing around the class. She started to dash back to her seat, but the teacher grabbed Carrie's shoulder to stop her.
"Hold on a minute, please. Since Carrie wasn't here earlier this week when we formed groups for our projects, she will need to join a group. Anyone want to volunteer?"
Carrie shifted anxiously from one foot to the other, quite eager to just go back to her seat and hide so that not everyone was staring at her.
"Come on Trunks, how about it? That means less work for us!" Goten urged, poking his friend, "Unless you LIKE doing 4 hours of homework each night..."
"Okay, fine, but are you sure you don't just want her in our group so that you can flirt?" Trunks asked suspiciously, grinning as he raised his hand.
"Great! Carrie, you will be in Trunks and Goten's group. Okay everyone, back to work!" The teacher clapped her hands for emphasis, "Chop, chop!"
The class went to work and Carrie joined in with Trunks and Goten. After familiarizing Carrie with what they were doing in the project, all three started on their individual shares of work, with interruptions now and then from Trunks and Goten's usual pranks. As they worked, Trunks tried to find out some more info about Carrie.
"So why'd you move here? I know of a lot more people who want to move to America rather than the other way around."
"Really? It's the complete opposite over there. At least it was with my old friends…" Carrie trailed off, then snapped back to what she was doing, "Anyway, my adopted family is Japanese, and well, they wanted to come back here."
"You're adopted? You don't act like it," Trunks went on, ignoring the looks that Goten was giving him. "Most of the kids that I know who are adopted are really strange and mentally whacked out."
"Yeah, well, I didn't know my parents that well… I never knew my dad, and my mother died when I was very young. She was very close friends with my adopted parents so, when mom died, they kind of took me in under their wing." Carrie shifted awkwardly in her seat and went back to work.
Trunks opened his mouth to ask another question, but Goten elbowed him sharply under the table and gave him a look that told Trunks to keep his mouth shut.
The bell for the end of the day rang and the class ran out the door in a rush to get away before their teacher could assign more homework. In the hallway Trunks pulled Goten aside by the shoulder.
"What was that for?" Trunks asked accusingly.
"What was what for?"
"You know, all those looks you kept giving me, and elbowing me. Don't play dumb, I know you're a LITTLE less dense than your dad can be."
"Hey! Otousan isn't that dense! Well, maybe sometimes... nevermind, just leave 'tousan out of this. You really don't know how to deal with girls do you Trunks?" Goten asked, bringing them back to their original topic, shaking his head. "It was obvious that Carrie didn't want to talk about her family. You didn't need to pester her about it." Goten lectured as they made their way to the schoolyard.
Trunks was about to argue when they heard the typical sounds of some poor kid getting picked on by Alec, the school bully.
"Come on, give me your money unless you want to be pounded! And don't try to deny that you have any, you're from America aren't ya? All American's got money!"
"Not a chance, fatty! But you're wrong about American's having money, and even if I had any, there's no way I'd hand it over 'nice as you please' to someone who smells as horrible as you! Sheesh, does the word SOAP mean anything to you?" Trunks and Goten heard Carrie's distinct accent ring out defiantly.
"Uh oh! Great, Alec's stooped to new lows to pick on girls, too." Goten grumbled.
"We'd better help her so she doesn't get pounded." Trunks nodded in agreement as they ran around the corner to the fight slowly taking shape.
"You're gonna regret that, girly!!" Alec lunged at Carrie, attempting to catch her off guard. Carrie neatly sidestepped to avoid his punch and laughed.
"Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I'm a push over, baka." She lowered her shoulder and body checked Alec to send him flying into a wall as Trunks and Goten watched, mouths gaping.
Alec's friends took one look at their fallen comrade, and another look at Carrie's challenging glare, and decided that they weren't in the best place right then. They turned on their heels and ran off, completely ignoring Alec's calls to help.
When Alec got to his feet and noticed that he was all alone facing Trunks and Goten as well as Carrie, he decided to follow his so-called friend's act, calling threats over his shoulder as he ran.
"Umm, wow. Nice work, Carrie..." Trunks said, fumbling for words.
"Oh, hi guys! Whatcha doing?" Carrie said brightly, just now noticing them.
"Uh... We came to... help?" Goten said a little sheepishly.
"Aww... that's sweet, but I can take care of myself. Thanks anyway. I'm used to dealing with this sort of thing at my old school." she said smugly, shrugging. She then looked at her watch. "Oh, crud! I have to get home! My mom's a worrywart, she'll got nuts if I don't get home on time! See you guys tomorrow!"
As Trunks watched Carrie turn to go, he thought he saw a flash of what seemed to be a tail. "What the..." Trunks dashed forward and tried to grab it to get a better look. Just as he almost caught it, he accidentally brushed Carrie's butt and she whirled around and slashed his arm.
"Ecchi!!! Trunks, just what do you think you're doing grabbing me back there?!?!"
"Sorry! I thought I saw something..." Trunks frantically tried to apologize while putting up his hands in surrender. As he did so, he became aware of the blood oozing out of the scratches and sliding down his arm.
Carrie's eyes grew wide with alarm and guilt. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!"
"No, no, it's okay, I'm fine." He hadn't even felt the scratches, and now he couldn't take his eyes off them. They looked more like cat scratches then those that human nails normally left.
"I'm not an ecchi, I just thought I saw something behind you." Trunks circled Carrie, looking for any sign of a tail, but he didn't see anything. "Hmm, my eyes must be playing tricks on me, sorry Carrie." He shook his head.
"It's all right. Sorry about your arm, but I gotta go! Bye, see you guys tomorrow!" Carrie called over her shoulder as she dashed off. Trunks turned to Goten and held up his bleeding arm.
"Do those look like normal scratches to you? And was I the only one who saw something that looked like a tail?" He asked suspiciously.
"Hmmm... I don't know, Carrie was acting pretty odd, too. Well, different than she did in class anyway. Do you think she's a Saiyan?" Goten shrugged his shoulders.
"Nah, what I saw wasn't brown like a Saiyan's, it was more silvery. I'm not even sure I saw anything. There wasn't anything there when I looked again."
"She did get pretty defensive when you tried to see if she had a tail... I don't know, I mean, we only met her this morning, so maybe that's how she normally is."
"Well, I'm going to find out. There's something strange about her that I just can't place..." Trunks said stubbornly.
"Are you sure that's the ONLY reason you want to find out more about her?" Goten asked slyly.
"Are you getting off on that 'You need a girlfriend' thing again that 'kasaan put you up to?"
"Me? No, of course not! Besides, your mom didn't put me up to it, I'm simply concerned for my friend's well being, that's all." Goten said trying to look as innocent as possible.
"Riiiiight. Sure, whatever." Trunks replied, completely unconvinced.
During the next few months Carrie couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, but whenever she looked around to find the culprit, she never saw anyone strange.
Still, it was weird how Trunks and Goten always seemed to run into her all the time... Carrie, Trunks, and Goten were pretty good friends by now. It turned out that Carrie was almost as bad a prankster as Trunks, and the three of them were constantly getting into trouble for it (even more than before Trunks and Goten met Carrie), quite often dragging Goten's "girlfriend of the week" into it as well.
It was inevitable that Trunks would slack off on his training because of the time he was spending trying to find out more about Carrie.
Vegeta stalked out of the gravity training room in search of Trunks. Chikusho, where was that boy when he wanted him? Vegeta was getting tired of Trunks's truancy in his training and was bored with the far too weak training robots that Bulma was constantly rebuilding for him. Those pieces of trash metal just didn't last like they used to...
The Saiyan prince pricked his ears at the sound of some talking and laughing coming towards the Capsule Corp. It sounded like Trunks and the weakling girl that he and Kakkarot's youngest brat had been hanging around with. A quick check of the ki signatures affirmed his guess.
Ha, so the lazy kid was home... Perfect. Vegeta chuckled to himself and strode toward the door. Finally, someone who would actually be somewhat worthy and didn't get blown to bits with one ki blast. Besides, Trunks needed to get a lesson beat into him about slacking off in training sessions.