The Day of the Ham-Hams
Chapter OneThe Prince of All Saiyajins was having a bad life, and it was all Kakarot's fault.
Well, most of it.
He was stuck on this planet, sans respectful guardsmen, surrounded by idiots. His whole planet was gone. He hadn't been romanced and battled over like a prince should be, there being no one left who knew about proving their worth to him that way. No one had purged a single planet for his pleasure in years. And he'd apparently…what was the word?... *married* that woman. Whatever the hell that meant. Being pulled out of his training room and made to stand up in front of a whole crowd of oddly-dressed ningens with an even more oddly dressed Buruma apparently had some sort of overwhelming significance to the weirdos surrounding him every damned day. THAT was definitely Kakarot's fault, since the big buffoon had tricked him into being there.
His current headache, sleeplessness, and generally grouchiness were the comet's fault, but he had no problems blaming Kakarot for them too.
Stupid damned comet, shedding 'pretty' colors all over the planet and making the ningens all excited, like it was the first one ever to come so close to the planet. Well, maybe it was, but that was no reason to get their tails in a knot over it.
Hn. Like they had tails, anyway. Only superior species had tails.
While the ningens were mooning over the 'splendor' of it all, the colors and that weird high-pitched sound, and…and…*whatever* the hell else it was about that freaking ball of ice up there were driving him crazy. Only the saiyajins and their offspring, apparently, could hear the noise, or see all the colors, so he suffered while everyone else celebrated for some bizarre reason, just like they had at his 'wedding'. Bakas.
The grumpy ouji finished his dawn routine and stomped upstairs to rouse his brat. If he wasn't sleeping, there was no reason the boy would be either. He *wasn't* that human, after all. Time to get some endurance training in.The boy's door swung open to reveal an empty room. Well, not empty, considering the sheer amount of crap in it, but empty of Torankusu no ouji, certainly. The ouji's father snorted and waded through the chaotic pile of belongings, most of them expensive, that covered the floor. Damned brat…
Vejiita's eyes narrowed in satisfaction. He noted that all of his gifts to Trunks, and all of the boy's training and fighting gear, were neatly stacked and displayed on a series of shelves beside his bed. It was an island of respect and order in the midst of chaos.
Very good. But where was the boy? About to cast his senses out, he turned, his nose twitching, and saw something else that raised his hackles.
It was *hideous*…On a table near the door, a small cage sat. It was a wire contraption, with bedding of some sort of dried vegetation on the bottom, a wheel thing inside, and a feeder or something. And sitting in the midst of it, lurking amongst the bedding, crouched within the flimsy cage, was a small, furry thing with a short tail and HUGE, *unnaturally glossy* eyes.
It stared at Vejiita. The saiyajin no ouji stared back. It smiled at him with rodent glee and clasped its forepaws together, as if to say how happy it was to see him. One of those enormous eyes *twinkled*.
Slowly, horribly, with unspeakable malice, the thing began to *dance*."ONNA!!!!!!!"
The bellowing cry broke most of the windows of the large building.
*** "It's a HAMster, VeJIIta," Buruma said again, glowering at the enraged saiyajin.
"I know what you think it is! I'm telling you, it's not a hamster. No hamster is that evil! Now WHERE is Trunks?"
"I told you, he spent the night at Goten's house," Buruma said idly, having suddenly knelt down to watch and make clucking noises at the gently dancing rodent.
"Suri-suri," she crooned oddly.
Vejiita had had about enough of that behavior. He knew what he was seeing. He might not know exactly what his responsibilities were supposed to be for his new… wipe? Wife? But he did know that no one deserved that fate. With a snarl, he tore her away from the cage by her shirt and tossed her out into the hallway. Then, ignoring her squawk, he turned on the "hamster".
"Ham-ham!" it squeaked charmingly at him, shaking its tiny booty.
Physically repulsed, the prince shielded his eyes. Then, trying not to look directly at it, he ripped the cage apart and grabbed up the tiny monstrosity inside it.
"Vejiita, NO!!!" Buruma wailed, flailing to her feet.
Huge, freaky eyes stared at him over the edge of his fist. "Ham-ham!" it chirped again.
"Vejiita!"
He squeezed. Mighty saiyajin muscles contracted, standing out as he slowly managed to contract his fist around the beast.
"Heke?" it asked, a tiny, adorable frown creasing tiny, adorable features. "Ham-ham!"
"Ve…jii…ta," Buruma said, her voice trailing off as she suddenly realized how much effort her husband was putting into committing this particular atrocity. What the hell? Even the veins were beginning to stand out on his forehead. Not his most attractive moment, she thought distractedly.
Grimacing and sweating, Vejiita thought for an almost-panicked moment that he was going to have to ascend. Then, suddenly:
**squidge** Breathless with disgust, the married pair watched the 'ham-ham' squish into mush in Vejiita's fist, the huge eyes bulging even larger before popping and splattering against the wall nearby.
Buruma turned her own horrified eyes to the wall, pressing a hand to her mouth as she realized that the goo had splattered into the form of a smiley face on the wall.
Then her attention was caught by Vejiita's choked sound of panic and pain.
The prince had dropped the corpse to the floor and was wildly stripping the soiled glove from his hand. For a moment she thought he was just grossed out, but this was Vejiita, after all, and she was well aware of his eating habits. A little pureed hamster shouldn't be a…
The glove was smoldering, thin acrid smoke rising into the air. The carpet that the corpse had fallen onto was melting, the nylon sizzling as the ham-ham fluids sank into the nap. A quick glance at the wall showed that the happy face was now several inches deep, the ends of the smile drawing down into a grimace as the material crumbled away.
"What is it, Vejiita?!" she shrieked, trying to jump into his arms. He wasn't prepared for her, and so she nearly made it, before he realized what she was doing and let his arms fall slack. She compensated by throwing her arms around him and slumping dramatically against his chest.
"You're almost standing in it, you know," he said somewhat plaintively, once again at a loss to explain the onna's behavior. He'd just popped a plainly evil, distressingly cute "ham-ham" after using a great deal of force, and she was... what? Trying to mate?
With a little shriek, Buruma jumped away from the increasing puddle of ham-ham. The floor was beginning to crumble away in the center as the fluid sank into the flooring beneath.
Beneath?
Several minutes later, she was still trying to get a reaction out of her nearly cataleptic father, who was staring at both the fast-disappearing body of his unfortunate cat and the hole rapidly appearing in the ceiling of his study.
Vejiita, levitating in mid-air, stared into the gulf appearing below the house, and then calmly collected some of the heirlooms he'd given to Trunks from their places on the shelves. Another minute or two, and he had everything he valued set aside several hundred feet from the house.
Then, with a sigh, he went back for the blue-haired onna and her progenitors. The gods knew it wouldn't do for him to leave his lovely 'wife' to perish from corrosive ham-ham spooge. Trunks would've sulked for *days*.
*** It went pretty much the way he expected after that.
They gathered at the baka's house after most of the Capsule Corp living quarters had subsided into the sinkhole. Said sinkhole had eventually stopped growing after converting a vast amount of earth, building, and incomprehensible onna gadgets into ash and smoke. The sinkhole was maybe 800 feet wide.
All from one ham-ham.
Buruma had thrown herself into Kakarot's arms, of course, and Vejiita had glared, wishing that the co-conspirators would just go hump like rabbits and get the whole thing out of the onna's system. Then she'd popped a few dozen capsules and buried herself in her lab, trying to expose the awful mystery of the ham-hams.
Gohan had gotten all concerned and tormented-looking about the safety of Chikyuu-sei, and both Piccolo and Videl had leered at him, although the Namekjin version of a leer made him look like he was suffering unspeakable intestinal cramps.
The little brats had jumped up and down, fused and unfused, and been threatened with time-outs, extra chores, and hideous death if they didn't calm down. Both were now sulking in front of the television.
The assorted ningens had made all the appropriate gestures of disbelief until they saw the building (or the lack of it) and returned chastened and concerned and acting like they had a power level anyone but a freaking hamster would envy. And that was hamster, not ham-ham.
And Kakarot, oh, sweet Kami. Not, he reflected, that the immature Namek was particularly sweet, although Vejiita hadn't ever sampled Namek himself. But, Kakarot…
First there was that semi-shrill "Hi, Vejiita!!" when the door had opened. Then, with the news, Kakarot had morphed into that pain in the ass saiyajin warrior that Vejiita had fought with, obsessed on, and occasionally stroked himself while thinking of for so many years. Presto-chango, instant saiyajin war-god, just add crisis.
Chichi, after proclaiming that none of the men in her family would be participating in any planet-saving activities today, thank you very much, had gone off to make vast quantities of food.
Vejiita sighed again, wondering if anybody was interested in the information a certain extremely well-traveled, highly-knowledgeable saiyajin prince might have on the subject. He opened his mouth to try again.
"It's not a hamster!!" Bulma shrieked, running into the room and waving a digital clipboard around. Everyone else looked impressed.
"Well, NO SHIT!" Vejiita roared, the blast shattering all the windows in the Son home and flipping Gohan through one of them. Both Videl and Piccolo hurried to his aid, regardless of the facts that the brat was pretty much freaking indestructible and that Vejiita had important things to say, damn it!
"…it used to be a hamster…" Buruma said meekly.
"It's alright, Buruma," Goku said soothingly. "Tell us what you've found out."
For some reason, Buruma saw, he moved closer to Vejiita when he said this, until he was sitting right next to him. For some other reason, or maybe the same one, Vejiita didn't move away, and he didn't continue his rant for the moment, either. In fact, he looked kind of… pleased. She thought about that for a second, and then realized she was probably just hallucinating. Ham-ham fumes, no doubt.
"Um, they used to be hamsters, but something foreign has invaded them, and they're different now, on a genetic level," she said. "I tested the traces left at the bottom of the sinkhole, and I can't tell much else from them yet. Except I think that something unspeakable has invaded our domesticated rodent population!"
There were gasps of indeterminate emotion, tending towards alarm at this revelation. Kamesennin looked devastated.
Vejiita frowned, trying to break out of the stupor that Kakarot's closeness and apparent sudden need to rub his thigh were lulling him into. "What do you mean 'they'? Did you find more?"
"Well, only this one," she said, pulling her hand out of her pocket and displaying the small ham-ham on her open palm. "Suri-suri!" she crooned, rubbing her nose against it.
Chapter TwoUnfortunately, at that very moment, Goku's hand slipped around the inside of Vejiita's thigh, brushing against a sensitive place, and the saiyajin no ouji's mind went completely blank. His mouth fell open and he gaped at his lawfully wedded onna, looking horrified right up until the point that his eyes rolled up in his head.
The various humans in the room looked at the fuzzy ball of bright cuteness dancing perkily and horribly atop Bulma's outstretched palm, flinched, and then, inexplicably, seemed to melt before the onslaught. An almost synchronized sigh of "Aw!" sounded. Only Kamesennin, armored by years of perversion, managed to run screaming from the room.
"Hamha!" the demonic hamster chirruped adorably.
At that, the humans were lost. The saiyajin-blooded, however, were both otherwise occupied and seemingly immune. The brats were enthralled by the television. Goku had a fixed and somewhat scary smile plastered on his face as his entire consciousness focused on his fingertips. Vejiita's stuttering brain was caught up between the certainty that he was going to have a seizure if Kakarot touched him there again, and grumpy admiration for a warrior so cool and collected that he could do such clever… things in the midst of such a crisis. That left Gohan to save the day.
If it wasn't for the fact that many of the people in the room had actually surpassed the powers of the Gods several years ago, including the two brats currently laughing at nationally-televised fart jokes, it might be thought that what happened next was some form of divine intervention. Or retribution, depending on how you looked at it.
Gohan, handsome and strong and only beginning to guess why Piccolo and Videl hated each other so much, burst through the door, determined that the day must be saved, no matter who had to die and be wished back to do it.
Chi-chi, whose place at the stove had given her a perfect view of her husband's current hobby, came storming into the room, knife in hand, preparing to amputate whatever saiyajin body parts she came across first.
The ham-ham circled its hips almost lewdly and said, in a voice radiant with charm, "Ham-ham!"
Buruma sighed in adoration.
The door struck her with enough force to knock her unconscious and send the ham-ham flying with deadly accuracy.
Chichi screeched "Gokunnhhhg!" as her path of righteous vengeance was interrupted by the furry missile that lodged tightly in her mouth.
For a moment there was neither sound nor movement as they all regarded this act of cosmic rightness.
"Kushi-kushi?" the ham-ham said, his voice echoing somewhat plaintively.
Then sparks flew from Chichi's eyes, setting the couch ablaze, and her face went a shade of red usually found only atop emergency vehicles. Her mouth, long her deadliest form of attack, began to shut.
Gohan smiled brightly, unsure why his mother was doing that with a hamster, and neatly stepped back out the door with his entourage, embarrassed beyond the human understanding of the word.
The ham-ham wiggled its wedged bootie in vain, and then squeaked "Ooooo!", holding out tiny arms to its human subjects.
With a strangled roar, the valiant and much-maligned mate and mother of saiyajins called on previously untapped wells of outrage and…shut…her…mouth!
A tiny severed head fell and bounced on the floor with a horrifying *'boing-boing-boing'*.
"Damn…" Vejiita said in outright admiration.
Her face otherwise frozen in a frightening rictus grin, one of Chichi's eyes twitched.
Then her head exploded.
*** "Exactly what *are* you doing, Kakarot?"
An arm snugged around his waist, drawing him close to a warm body. He considered seriously thwacking the owner of both into the next dimension, so to speak, but, once again, his brain was fogging over at the touch. He marshalled his resources and tried again.
"You know, that's your house burning down there, baka. Plus your wife just died a seriously disgusting death. And you're up here grabbing my ass? What's wrong with YOU?"
The last word came out as a squeak, as Kakarot's tail slithered up where it shouldn't be and…wiggled.
That was another thing.
After all this time, who gets his tail back? The prince of all saiyajins? The only one to actually take out a ham-ham and live? Of course not.
If only he didn't look so damned sexy with it, Vejiita would've slaughtered him.
With more restraint than a saiyajin should have to show, Vejiita grabbed the not-exactly-offending tail and gave it a warning squeeze.
"Eeep!" Goku managed, then unwound from the prince to look him in the face and bat long, luxurious lashes at him. The prince brandished the captive tail in response.
"Well, jeez, Vejiita, it's not like anybody really stays dead for long around here. We can wish her back eventually," he said, waving his hand vaguely. "And, you know, possessions aren't everything."
He smiled hopefully at a prince he found too damned sexy for his spandex at the moment.
Vejiita scowled. "And why are you coming on to me?"
"You don't mind, do you?"
A glare.
"Well, Chichi had a name for it, but I don't think it's right. She said it was a mid-life crisis, and that I should get the hell over it. Of course, that's what she said about most of my problems, so…"
Vejiita glanced down as the last of Goku's house, plus the bodies of Chichi, Chaotzu, and 18, presumably, fell into the sinkhole several hundred feet beneath their feet. He hadn't personally ever lost a 'wife', house, and friends all at the same time, but he felt strongly that Kakarot was being a little too relaxed about it, even for him.
"Shit, Kakarot, you're not even at puberty yet, by saiyajin standards…" Vejiita snorted, suddenly trailing off as the terrible reality struck him.
"Wait, you ARE in puberty, aren't you?" he cried, almost cowering at the thought. The shy blush on the towering mass of crazed saiyajin hormones told him everything he wanted to know. Way more, in fact.
"Uh, I guess so," Goku said coyly.
Vejiita remembered his own bout with puberty, after the whole Cell thing. Not inclined to knock up the onna again (and still amazed that he'd gotten drunk enough to do that without massive damage to his internal organs), he'd gone out into a conveniently barren desert and, well, blown the shit out of it for about three weeks. Goku had been dead, after all, and he certainly wasn't going to go after a barely teenaged Gohan. That left ningens or the desert, and, frankly, he'd rather fuck up the desert.
Eventually, the ningens who owned the desert had noticed his new hobby and brought a huge variety of toys out to amuse him, and he'd gotten a few good chuckles out of them. By the time they ran out of toys (he'd liked the really big bombs the best, but they didn't have too many of those), he'd realized that he was more bored than pent-up. He'd gone back to face the livid onna and the bright-eyed, occasionally stinky bundle that was apparently his son and heir.
He remembered lying sprawled out in the dirt under a million stars, too sore even to whack off again, bitterly wishing that he hadn't killed Nappa. Gods, how he'd wished for a saiyajin. Any saiyajin.
Vejiita shuddered, thinking of how low he'd sunk then. Of how desperate he'd been. Of how he was now the only adult saiyajin around that Goku hadn't fathered. Of how his brain stopped working every time the big baka fondled him.
"Fuck," he swore absently as that annoying tail was twitched out of his grasp and sent spiralling around his thigh.
"Really, Vejiita???" Goku asked breathlessly, the light of a brilliant sunset reflected in his dark eyes. Chikyuu-sei's great defender purred, ignoring the chaos below and the stares of his friends nearby as he laid hands on perfect royal flesh.
*This could be a problem,* Vejiita thought, right before he lost his mind again.
*** Goten was bummed. His mom was dead again, and she was likely going to be really pissed when she got wished back. She was like that, always going off the handle about little things.
He'd also lost his homework along with the house, and what was he going to say to his teacher? Sorry, my mom's head blew up and my house caught fire and fell in a big hole, and now I can't find my homework, may I please be excused? Somehow he didn't think that would work. His teacher was really unreasonable about some things.
He moped through the air in Trunks' wake, following the slightly older boy without thinking much about it. He vaguely hoped that the little prince remembered what they were looking for, because he didn't. Piccolo-san had sent them off with a lot of orders, and since neither boy had a television now, they'd been happy enough to go. Otousan was teaching Vejiita-sama some new fighting techniques or something, and it looked like it was going to take awhile because Otousan had to keep showing him the move over and over and over and over… Anyway, Piccolo-san had gotten bored or something because he started looking all upset and sent everybody away on their own missions.
So here he was. It was okay, though, because he was with Trunks and Trunks was his best friend and they always had fun. Especially since they got to fly today, which his mom always freaked out about like it was a big deal or something. Even Videl-san could fly, so what was the problem?
Trunks streaked through the sky, scanning the ground below, and so Goten looked too. He didn't mind too much. The city was kind of fun to look at at night, even though, with their saiyajin vision, it wasn't really all that dark. It was all kind of pretty, with the lights and the shadows and everything. Plus he… What was that?
The young saiyajin circled downwards to get a better view.
*** "Gohan! You can sit next to me!" Videl said cheerfully, waving at the strapping young saiyajin hero from her spot on the couch. Brightening somewhat, Gohan started to make his way across the crowded living room of the Kame House towards her.
Piccolo, sitting on the floor, neatly tripped him as he went by, and with a movement of startling grace, caught Gohan and tucked him onto the floor next to him, close enough that it was really more comfortable for both of them if he put his arm around the young saiyajin.
Gohan blinked, then smiled. Videl fumed. The Namekjin smiled smugly.
On a loveseat across the room, a ruffled, rumpled, and newly-tailed Prince of All Saiyajins sat within the embrace of a certain baka's arm and tail. Said baka was also looking smug, as well as really, really relaxed. Goku sprawled out on the couch, snugging the somewhat harassed-looking prince closer every time someone came too close. Which, unfortunately for Vejiita, was pretty much all the time, considering how small the room was.
Buruma lay snoring on a futon in the corner, sounding a lot like a buzzsaw. No one was entirely certain why she hadn't woken up yet, although Yamcha had suspicions about the second bruise on her forehead. Unfortunately, the object of his suspicions was more powerful than God, so Yamcha, not being particularly suicidal, said nothing.
"Alright, boys, tell us again," Kamesennin said patiently. The last telling of Goten's story had gotten disrupted by the obscene suggestion Goku had loudly whispered into Vejiita's ear. The suggestion, the fact of who whispered it, and the mingled look of terror and interest on Vejiita's face had been enough to kill all conversation. Despite the various things they had all been through, including Buu's intestines, none of the group had quite been prepared for a moment like that. Goku had beamed serenely.
Now Trunks stood up again, ready to tell them Goten's story. After all, he was older and a prince, and no one really wanted to listen to Goten anyway. As he opened his mouth this time, though, he was surprised to feel a small hand grab him by the sash and pull him down on his butt. He turned to look into the somewhat exasperated face of his best friend.
"I think we've all heard enough from you today, Trunks-kun," Goten whispered sternly.
Trunks gaped. "G-Goten?"
"It's *my* story, Mr. 'a wizard is like a lizard'," Goten said, looking horribly like his mother. Trunks flushed, remembering his lame attempt to explain to Goten what Babidi was when he hadn't really known either. "Besides, you were lying. No giant turtles attacked us while we were there, and I didn't scream and wet my pants while you saved us."
"You did wet your pants!" Trunks said triumphantly.
"Uh, yeah," Goten said, rolling his eyes. "When you flew into me and made me spill my soda on the way back."
The junior prince scowled, that being the House of Vejiita's trademarked response to baka Sons when they brought up things like facts and reality. "What's gotten into you, Goten?"
The junior Son leaned closer until his mouth was almost touching Trunks' ear. "Here's a clue. None of us Sons are as dorky as you guys like to think." He sent a swift glance at his innocently beaming brother. "Well," he amended, "except maybe Gohan."
Trunks was left to watch him with an expression of bemused irritation that would have sent Buruma running for a camera if she hadn't been unconscious at the moment. Except for the pastels, his resemblance to his father really was uncanny.
"Go ahead, son," Kamesennin said. This whole hamster thing was really creeping him the hell out. The old hentai didn't know what was wrong with everyone, but he wished they'd get on with it and get rid of those freaking rodents and let him get back to cataloguing his collection of porn. On second thought, he knew exactly what was wrong with Goku and Vejiita and Gohan and Piccolo and Videl, but he was so traumatized by the whole ham-ham thing that he didn't care. He wasn’t even making plans for the horizontal and otherwise defenseless Buruma, and that was just *wrong*.
Goten stood up and put his hands behind his back and said the following, all in one long sentence: "Well, Trunks and I were looking for whatever we were looking for and we'd flown really far almost all the way to Piccolo-san's house or whatever that is near the waterfall and we were going over the city and I was bored and I looked down and saw this weird thing outside this really big and stinky building and so I went down to look and there was a big circle of ham-hams out near where the cars park and they were all looking at this one ham-ham in the center and I'm pretty sure that they were talking to each other and there were really a lot of them and it smelled like everyone else in the building was dead, and there was a really big sign that said what the building was but it didn't make any sense to me. And I DIDN'T wet my pants; Trunks make me spill soda on the way home."
His audience blinked at him.
Goten smiled a little evilly, but since he was so cute, no one noticed.
"What did the sign say, son?"
"Slump. Bio. Tech. No. Log. Something," Goten said carefully, frowning in concentration.
There was a silence in the room, broken only by a faint whimper from the love seat that no one imagined had anything to do with what Goten was saying.
"Slump Biotechnologies?" Videl asked suddenly, and Goten shrugged.
"Well, good job, son!" Kamesennin said because the boy's brother and father were currently entranced by the person next to them and didn't seem aware of what year it was, much less what Goten was saying. Plus his mom had just died a hideous death, although no one really seemed bothered by that.
"What's Slumps Biotech-something?" the turtle hermit asked, turning to Videl.
"They do a lot of research there on animals," she said, trying to sound authoritative. "They make Ooze and Blog and all those soft-drinks everyone's crazy about, the ones that squeal when you drink them. My dad went there once because they offered him a lot of money if they could run some tests on him, but he couldn't get Bee to go in with him, so he left. He said it smelled like the monkey-house at the zoo in there."
The faintest of flushes crept over her cheeks at what she'd just said. The saiyajin prince, in an increasingly rare moment of lucidity, arched an eyebrow at her.
"Anyway, maybe those hamsters escaped or something," she said sheepishly.
Gohan beamed at her fine deductive reasoning, and she shot a triumphant look at Piccolo, who merely smirked and pulled the boy a little closer to him.
"Mmph!"
Heads turned to see the rather frazzled saiyajin no ouji pulling free from the relentless nuzzling of his bitter rival.
"You know, if you'd just listen to me," he said, glaring at them with an expression that only centuries of imperial breeding within a limited gene pool could produce, "I could tell you what these things are."
"Tell us, Vejiita!" Goku said with breathless adoration.
"Uh," he said, eyeing his neighbor somewhat nervously, "they're aliens."
Even Gohan rolled his eyes at that. "We kinda guessed, Vejiita."
"Well, I know what kind they are!" he said defensively, hating that he was saying or doing anything defensively. If he could just get away from the baka for a few moments, maybe his brain would stop stuttering. It really, truly, definitely was Kakarot's fault this time.
"This isn't the first time this has happened, you know. Just because something happens to this mudball, it doesn't make you special. It's that stupid comet you all think is so pretty."
There was a general feeling of non-comprehension in the room. It did nothing to improve Vejiita's opinion of the average level of intelligence he was surrounded with. With a sigh, the put-upon prince continued.
"It's simple, bakas. The comet is carrying spores for an interstellar species of parasites. When it comes near a planet, the spores filter through the atmosphere and find the species with the greatest potential for evil. Once infected, the species becomes faster, stronger, smarter, and whatever else the spores can do with them. Then they take over the planet."
Eyes had grown wide. Vejiita snorted. "What were you people thinking, keeping a species like that as pets?"
No one could answer. The vast magnitude of their folly overwhelmed them.
"Oooo, Vejiita, you're so forceful," Buruma sighed and giggled in her sleep, and Vejiita's tail instantly bushed out to three times normal size with an audible *"fooosh!"*.
Unwisely, a few people were unable to keep up a proper display of respect for the saiyajin no ouji after that. The glare he directed at the rest of the room seared the paint off the walls. Literally.
The meeting reconvened a few minutes later on the beach after the poisonous fumes from the paint drove everyone out of the house. The great Vejiita was forced by the awesome power of his son's pouty lip to retrieve not only the onna but also her still nearly-comatose father, who was still muttering "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty…" over and over, apparently to the shade of his recently, and badly, deceased cat.
"So, Vejiita, what do we do?" Goku asked brightly, sniffing along the back of his newly-recaptured prince's neck. He'd settled the ouji between his outstretched legs in the sand and was embracing him with renewed interest.
The Prince of All Saiyajins, having determined that his periodic lack of brain activity probably couldn't be helped, was leaning backwards into the mountain of baka hormones behind him and idly playing with Goku's tail. Really, there wasn't going to be any way out of this until after Goku made it through his pubescent flush of hormonal lust, and Vejiita was finding that he didn't really mind. Not much. Other than being kind of sore…
"Hunh?" he asked as Goku repeated the question. The tall saiyajin's tail had looped around front of them both to venture into touchy places. The ouji's IQ began to diminish.
"Well…," he said lazily, "we could always blow them up. We *are* good at that, you know."
A comfortable silence settled over the two saiyajins, broken only by the occasional giggle from Goku as Vejiita played with his tail.
The rest of the Z senshi stared at each other.
And then something horrible happened.
Videl was licking Gohan's left ear, but his other ear clearly picked up the phrase 'blow them up'. He looked around and saw no one disagreeing. His father, in fact, looked positively enthusiastic. It was true, Gohan had been a little distracted, what with Videl nibbling on him and the foot rub he was getting from Piccolo, but now it looked like the senshi had a plan, and Gohan was all for it.
In fact, anything that involved escape seemed like a good plan. It wasn't that he didn't like Piccolo and Videl. Really. It was just that he wasn't sure why they wanted to be with him all the time lately, carrying things for him, laughing at his jokes, nibbling at him like they hadn't eaten lately, offering him oiled massages and Kama Sutra lessons (whatever those were)… It was weird. Frankly, it was making him think they liked him a little too much. But as long as they didn't like him *that* way, he could live with it, he supposed.
Videl slipped her tongue into his ear.
With a squeak and a blush so kawaii that even Goku stopped giving Vejiita a thigh massage to turn and look, the strongest, more powerful saiyajin on the planet jumped up and cried out "I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it!"
Videl snarled in protest and went after him again. Piccolo did the same. Love is indeed a many-splendored thing.
Hopping nimbly, trying to get his boot back on and escape the clutches of his admirers at the same time, Gohan declared "Right, Slump Biotech! I'm on it!" Then, with a somewhat frantic leap into the air, he was gone.
Vejiita was moderately certain that he should be doing something to stop all this, but Goku had started nibbling on his neck and purring, and the mighty saiyajin prince's intellect packed up and went on a long vacation without leaving a forwarding address.
Kamesennin sighed and trudged back across the beach and into his now fetid house to begin packing.
*** Vejiita stared at the viewscreen, which right now carried the image of the bright speck that was all that remained of his adopted home world. In a little while, he knew from ample experience, the bright remnants would disperse, beginning their long fall into the sun or becoming another meteor belt. He wondered briefly if any of the spores had managed to survive. Then he snorted. Of course they had. Nothing that evil could be erased by a simple planetary apocalypse.
"Nice work, brat," he said.
"Aw, c'mon, Vejiita-sama! You said to blow them up!"
"If you had not been so desperate *not* to get laid, you would have waited until I got my wits together and came up with another idea!"
"That isn't what I was thinking about! And if we'd waited that long, the whole planet would've been knee-deep in hamsters!"
"Ham-hams," Buruma corrected him lazily. She was busy staring greedily at the ouji with an expression that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise up and his tail frizz out again. Unconsciousness and ham-ham enchantment hadn't done her any permanent damage. Her libido certainly wasn't damaged in any way, as a somewhat shaky Yamcha could attest to.
"Somebody had to do something," Gohan muttered resentfully, keeping a careful eye on the blue-haired genius.
"Yeah, like I said, excellent work!" Vegeta said, trying to regain his composure. He had never really understood the meaning of the phrase "to be creeped out" until Bulma had regained consciousness and announced the arrival of her sexual peak a few hours ago. Goku hadn't let him out of tail's reach since then. The usually high-spirited, one-time savior of Chikyuusei growled at Buruma, who stuck her tongue out in response.
"Oh, shut up. You were too busy being dad's boy-toy to do anything useful."
"Baka virgin," Vejiita taunted. He was not prepared for the smug smirk that Gohan sent back his way.
"Not anymore…" the young saiyajin said, with a slow gloating smile that the ouji, not being afraid of his mirror, recognized instantly. Obviously, the boy had been around him too damned much.
Behind Gohan, but well within Namekjin earshot, Piccolo stretched out on the couch and propped his legs up on the table. As it turned out, gloating victory and sexual satisfaction looked exactly the same on a Namekjin as on a saiyajin.
Videl, scrunched up in the corner of the same couch, hugged her knees and pouted. She had lost her focus, and the contest, when they'd all run for the spaceship a few hours ago. No one had been willing to wait for her to go back for her father.
No one was certain which event had caused her current mood.
The spaceship, proudly bearing the Capsule Corporation logo, carried the mostly-disgruntled Z senshi, a group of increasingly sore saiyajins, and a buttload of porn through the vast reaches of space toward the small haven of New Nameksei. Behind them, the remnants of Chikyuusei continued to disperse.
Gohan's mighty blast of ki had easily destroyed the ham-ham gathering and their headquarters at Slump Biotech. Unfortunately, not even Gohan could obliterate the horror that was ham-spooge. Burned to cinders, the remains of the darling fiends had retained their unreasonable powers of corrosion. The resulting pit had eventually eaten through the planet's crust, breached the mantle, and was going for the core when the planet simply gave up and exploded.
No one on board the single ship that got away questioned the mighty power of spooge again.
Meanwhile, within the bowels of the ship, not far from the waste recycler and to the left of the emergency maintenance hatch, a small and furry being, the embodiment of all that is cute and adorable and fuzzy and evil, rubbed its tiny paws together and grinned. Sure, one planet was gone, but the Hamtaro collective had gained its most heinous species yet. Who would have guess that something this despicable would have been kept in convenient cages like that, all packaged up and ready to go? Now the ham-ham was on its way to a new planet, ready for the taking. A paw rubbed at a belly already beginning to bulge with hyper-cute ham-ham cubs. Ready for the taking, indeed. The faint light in the engine spaces was reflected and magnified by its unspeakably huge and twinkling eyes as the ham-ham began, slowly and appallingly, to dance…
The End?
(Dear gods, I hope so… )
© 2003 Xero Sky
The Zone
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