A young man with stylish shades led Videl and Trunks into their cell which was already occupied by a pair of colorful blobs that were shaped like a combo of eggs and upward rear cheeks with a pair of antennae sticking out from their heads. The green one dangled his legs like a child while the yellow one seemed to keep attention to the appearance of the police officer.
Although the yellow alien was wearing tinted glasses, Videl and Trunks could gather the fact that he was tracking them because his entire body had to turn in the direction that the alien was looking. Trunks pressed his back to the wall and crossed his arms.
"In you two go. Sit down right next to those two aliens and think about what you did, whatever that was…" the young police officer with dark shades and a stylish hoodlum cut pointed. Videl entered the cell but stayed next to the bars until officer Taro walked away and returned to watching a baseball game.
"So, when are we busting out?" Trunks pouted, pushing his back off the wall and pulling the rear of Videl's clothes as if it was his mother's skirt. "We've got all sorts of stuff to do, like finding the Dragon Balls, training, and traveling around the world. This is lame, I don't know why you didn't just beat those police officers up."
"Did you hear that, King Nikochan?" the yellow alien pointed at the two strange denizens of the cell with an alarmed look on his face. "These two human miscreants intend on busting out!"
"Do you realize what that means, King Nikochan's servant?" King Nikochan began rubbing his hand. "That means that we're busting out too! At long last, this planet that has put up remarkable resistance until this point will be ours!"
"No, this is fine," Videl looked back at Trunks once she confirmed that officer Taro was fully engrossed in his baseball game with a cigarette in his mouth, enjoying the high life of slacking off at work. "We're inside Penguin Village, right where we need to be. Now, all we need is to slip out from the cell and snag the Dragon Radar from the locker."
"What do you mean? I've got it right here…" Trunks scrounged around his pocket and pulled out the white round radar with a single button on the top side. He pressed the button, leading up to a single scanning ring passing through the radar's tracking field with no blinking dots.
"Didn't they take away your stuff before booking you?" Videl pressed her hands to her hips with a raised eyebrow. "They took away all of mine…"
"Sure, they tried, too bad for them I can move way faster than they can register, so I snagged the radar right out from their hands immediately after handing it over," Trunks gave Videl a peace sign with a lively grin on his face that was proud enough of Trunks' prowess for the both of them. "Hmm… That's odd. The Dragon Radar doesn't seem to pick anything up. I've never seen it acting like that."
"What!? You mean we landed here for no reason? You're telling me we got captured, and I handed some hick officer all my stuff for no reason!?" Videl grabbed her head, freaking out a little. "I thought you were keeping track of that thing! I can't believe it, that's it, from now on–I'm in charge of Dragon Ball tracking duty!"
"No way!" Trunks turned away, still clasping the radar in his hands while finicking around with the settings. "I'm sure I just need to find the right… Zoom level… Whoa! It looks like the signal of all the Dragon Balls is gone. Like… It's as if there aren't any Dragon Balls around the world at all!"
"How is that possible?" Videl crossed her arms with an expression of disbelief. "Are you sure you know how to use that thing?"
"My mom invented it, doofus!" Trunks stuck his tongue out. "This can only be because of one of two reasons: either someone had used the Dragon Balls and they've gone inert, or the radar's busted. It's weird though, if someone would've collected the Dragon Balls, the sky would've gone dark. And the radar seemed to work just fine just fifteen minutes ago…"
"Shush!" Videl pressed her index finger to her lips as some activity all the way to officer Taro's desk piqued her interest. It was a pair of visitors. A young man and a young woman. They looked like they were up to some sort of trouble and not at all reasonable folks to see visiting a police HQ. The young man was dressed like a martial artist, in a white and black robe, while the young lady with strawberry blond hair looked a lot like Kimidori Aoi whom the two have met, though she was dressed much more like a delinquent girl rather than a café owner.
"If you're planning on breaking out, wait until these two are gone. They're both bad news. Tsukutsun knows martial arts while the hoodlum girl knows Arale-chan," King Nikochan's servant spoke up, weaseling himself up to the pair, discussing their matters.
"Huh? Who are you two? What are you up to?" Trunks leaned to the side, alarmed by how wet and slimy both of the aliens looked from the side.
"This one here is King Nikochan and I am his servant, King Nikochan's servant. We are Niko's from Planet Nikochan. We've come to Earth to conquer it, but the local law enforcement and Arale-chan keep foiling our plans. At this point, we'd just be glad to escape this horrible planet," King Nikochan's servant explained. "Just this morning we've learned about this thing called "striking", so we've tried "striking" by lying on the street and doing snot angels on the ground, but officer Taro arrested us for being a nuisance."
"We've overheard that you're busting out so we're busting out too!" King Nikochan proclaimed with a hearty fist pump with a much more boisterous and low-pitched tone compared to his more well-spoken servant.
"If you tried taking over this planet, stay out of our way. This is where you belong," Videl said with a strict look at the pair.
"Hmm… If they got themselves locked up by those dweeby police guys, they can't really be that bad. Plus, they said they're trying to get off Planet Earth. Maybe they can help us out? They seem like they know this place somewhat," Trunks shrugged. Videl scratched her chin, almost entertaining the idea of keeping these two around.
"No way, no way, Tsukutsun!" a loud objection came from officer Taro's side. "I can't let you see those two hooligans. You're not a police officer like me, even if you know martial arts."
"Oh, well…" the martial artist named Tsukutsun shrugged and was just about to turn around when his female friend slipped out from underneath his reach and grabbed officer Taro by his lapels, pulling him in while rearing her free hand back, clenched into a fist.
"What the heck was that, Taro? You get married to the guy's sister and can't even do your own family a solid here? Here to think I came running here just because my sister asked me to help her out!" the strawberry blond shook her fist, threatening to pound the cool-looking yet wimpy on the inside police officer.
"Aww… That's just dirty, getting Tsururin involved…" Taro grumbled while sounding like he was just about to fold. "Did you say Aoi needed some help? Maybe I can help her out without having you two walking all around the precinct like you own the place?"
"Forget about it, Taro, just watch your damn tennis game and leave it up to me, her sister. You know, now that you and Tsururin are married, you should really help Tsukutsun out. Since Tsukutsun is Tsururin's brother, that pretty much makes him your brother too, doesn't it?" Aoi's sister kept on teasing the kind-hearted police officer.
"Fine…" Taro sighed and flapped his butt cheeks back into the chair while raising his boots over the desk and by the side of his small desk television that flickered with miserable picture quality. "Since those two are both minors, I'll just count you two as their legal counsel or whatever… Don't know if that will be much help, 'cause they won't be able to get actual lawyers when someone in our village eventually gets a law degree."
"Thank you kindly, Taro!" Tsukutsun bowed as if thanking his opponent after a clean match. When the rowdy young lady wrapped her arms around his elbow and began dragging him across the prison cells to find the two foreigners that her sister met earlier and told her about, the martial artist began wobbling alongside her. He seemed spooked to her touch at first as if scalded by hot water but then eased up gradually.
"Oh, hey, whaddya know, Tsukutsun, a girl touched ya and ya didn't even become a tiger-person at all!" a criminal in a rough jacket and a cap, wearing a pair of shades leaned in to the bars from one cell.
"Nope!" Aoi's sister snapped her fingers with a sassy giggle. "Not since I've changed my ID to "Male" he doesn't!" the young lady leaned in closer to the criminal and showed her ID card that had the "Female" printed out next to her sex crossed off with a black marker with "Male" penned down over it."
"That looks kind of nasty. You've got marker juice all over yer pretty picture, missy. You shoulda just crossed out the "Fe" part, and you'd have been golden there…" the shady criminal pointed out only for Aoi's sister to jump back and cross her arms with a displeased pout.
"Hmph… Everyone's a critic!" she turned her nose up. "It's not like you're master forger either, Dr. Monster…"
"Actually, I am. I'm behind bars because I've switched the pictures on Mr. Jingles' pet ID to Gamera's. But now that you've hurt my feelings, I won't help you out with fixing your ugly marked ID…" Dr. Monster crossed his arms and sat down on the floor in protest. "Whatever… Not like I'd have helped, anyway. I only do crimes related to giant monsters. Still, now I won't help you even if Dr. Senbei's invention malfunctions and causes you to grow giant…"
"Hey, you two, my name is Akane. I'm Aoi's younger sister," the strawberry blonde introduced herself by running up to the bars. King Nikochan and King Nikochan's servant jumped up with ecstatic smiles.
"We know. We've actually met before," King Nikochan explained.
"It's simply smashing you came here to let us out. This entire affair has been a massive injustice and a grand breach of our right of assembly," King Nikochan's servant pointed out, joining his sovereign with his psyched expression of glee.
"Akane meant these two visitors. Were you two causing trouble again?" Tsukutsun turned to the pair.
"Huh? That's not fair!" King Nikochan stamped the floor in a hissy fit. "We were just trying to go home to our home planet!"
"And how were you trying to do that?" Tsukutsun raised an eyebrow.
"By lying on the street and obstructing traffic until someone gave us a spaceship. Say, Tsukutsun, your father owns a spaceship, doesn't he?" King Nikochan's servant played with his spectacles, slipping them up and down his face that comprised most of his body.
"Actually, my mother owns a space tourism program," Trunks pointed out. "You'll still have to buy a ticket, though."
"Buy…?" King Nikochan began counting something on his fingers as if this word was a math problem.
"Hmm… It's so odd. Tsukutsun-san looks so much like Yamcha-san…" Videl pointed out with a stunned look that triumphed a great myriad of other feelings she's been going through. "It's like I'm literally looking at Yamcha-san…"
"Hmm… Oh yeah!" Trunks snapped his fingers.
"Yamcha? Is he someone cool?" Tsukutsun wondered, scratching his chin while already drawing up a picture of some hotshot movie superstar lookalike of his in his head.
"He's a martial artist… Just like you… And mom said that Yamcha-san used to be scared of girls too," Trunks' face shriveled as he pointed to the curious case of cloning.
"Wh-Why don't you progress the plot already? All this slander about Yamcha and Tsukutsun sounds so boring. It's meandering, really…" a small robot in suit pants, a white shirt, and a tie, wearing a scientist lab coat and a purple hat with "Tori" written on the center shook his mechanically clawed hands out in front of himself, standing right beside Tsukutsun and Akane as if he had always been there.
"Ah! Who the heck is that!?" Videl gasped, pointing at the short robot-man.
"What are you talking about?" Akane's left eye twitched. "That's a pretty rude way to address someone you've just met. Tsukutsun and I have feelings too, you know. Just because we don't look like fancy city folks, it's no excuse to yell and point your finger at us like that. For your information, we came here because Aoi asked us to check up on you two and help you guys out. Just between you two and me, I have a strong feeling that the whole car accident thing from earlier was because of Aoi and not you two… She's such a lousy driver, honestly."
"It's about time, I was just about ready to bust out of here…" Trunks squinted his eyes. "So how about you get us out of here already? We've got to go back to West City to have mom fix my Dragon Radar."
"Whoa… Hold your horses there, brat. We came here to check up on you two. I don't think we can just have people walking out of the police precinct. Taro's kind of a pushover, but he ain't that bad at his job…" Akane shook her head with a sigh. "Don't worry though, we'll think of something. Then, we can take you to Tsukutsun's dad's house and he can take a look at your Dragon Radar."
"Akane… Maybe… Not my dad?" Tsukutsun chuckled in a goofy manner, making all sorts of cartoonishly exaggerated expressions with his face while shuffling his hands nervously.
"Good point, your dad's a major creep and it'd probably bump up the age rating of this story. It's a good thing to keep in mind that it ain't the 80s anymore…" Akane nodded to herself. "Then, I suppose, we can take you to Senbei's place. He's probably a better inventor, anyway."
"Maybe it's better if I just bend these bars and we both walk away on our own? No offense, missy, but you two are a bunch of weirdos. Your mysterious little robot-man is a crackpot too, and this entire village is just the weirdest! I don't think we can get out of here too soon…" Trunks began dragging his boot across the cell floor.
"Hmm… I wonder…" Videl pondered something. "You know… It seems we really are stuck here behind these bars."
"We are? Because I can literally just…" Trunks was about to speak before Videl bumped him aside with her hip with a neurotic smile.
"In fact, we're going to be stuck here for so long that we should maybe discuss how much like Yamcha-san Tsukutsun-san looks, don't you think so, Trunks-kun?" Videl turned to the young boy.
"Whoop, let me just help you two guys out here so you can stop hijacking my property…" the short robot-man with the "Tori" hat and a lab coat appeared again, this time holding a pencil that was twice his size. The robot-man stuffed the eraser size of the pencil up to the bars and rubbed them out of existence as if erasing a drawing.
"Huh? The cell bars disappeared…" Akane pointed at the obvious flaw in the cell design with a troubled look on her face while Trunks and Videl stepped out. Tsukutsun and Akane just played around and followed Videl and Trunks while the former strut with a confident shuffle, all the way past officer Taro. Trunks peeked through the corner at first, but when Videl approached the HQ door, he rushed after her so that she didn't leave without him.
A couple of shots rang in the air. Taro scrambled up from his seat and rushed to the pair, holding them at gunpoint while one of his hands did its best to keep his flawless hoodlum hairdo in place. His shades were hanging unruly over the hump of his nose and his lips were wavy as the officer looked terrified of both having these two bolting on his watch or having them make him use that revolver in his hands.
"Crud! Busted by the fuzz!" Akane leaned back and pressed herself against Tsukutsun's chest. The Yamcha-lookalike pushed his girlfriend behind him while taking a martial arts stance.
"What do you two think you're doing?" Taro barked out at Videl and Trunks. "I knew letting those two troublemakers see you two was a bad idea!"
"Go ahead, shoot us…" Videl leaned down and pointed at her chin. "That'll be police brutality, you know… Or it would be if your guns could hurt anyone."
"Wh-What are you doing, you crazy brat!?" Akane howled in terror from behind Tsukutsun, who just gulped as his own stiff lip wavered a bit. "Do you wanna get popped or something?"
"I've figured this place out — the Penguin Village, that is," Videl boldly stated. "Laws of physics don't work here and the author constantly interferes with the story when you criticize it because of how insecure he gets over it. This place is on a whole different dimension, one that operates on cartoon logic. Guns can't hurt anyone, language has to stay under a respectful bar that's accessible and inoffensive to children–I'd wager that this here's a gag manga!"
"That's right, I remember that weakling from before not getting hurt one bit when I decked him and smashed him through the phone booth…" Trunks leaned his head back in his arms while putting things together in his head. "You mean this place is like a Saturday morning cartoon or something? To think that such a dimension exists in our universe."
"Come on, you guys! Saturday morning cartoons aren't even a thing anymore so the kids won't even get the reference anymore and this joke will age even worse in the future!" the short robot-man with the "Tori" hat waved his hands frantically over his head. "You aren't even supposed to be in this story! This isn't a Dr. Slump fanfiction, this has to be a one-time deal! If I see you in another Penguin Village storyline, I'll sue your pants off! You're making the story stale and ruining so many gags by just abusing my interference so much, so this is the last time! Got it!? Jeez, you westerners are so disrespectful! This is Dragonball Evolution all over again…"
The short robot skipped to the frightened police officer and began gently apologizing to him. "Taro-san, come on. It's not like these two are causing too much trouble, right? Besides, they know Aoi-chan and Akane-chan, so they must be friends with Arale-chan too! Arale-chan is the mayor, remember? She became the mayor of Penguin Village right at the end of the final arc of Dr. Slump, and I'm sticking with that for this storyline too!"
"Hmm… You're right. If you two are friends of the mayor, I guess you two can go. But stay out of trouble, goddangit!" officer Taro shook his fist over his head. Not waiting for a pretty please, Akane scooped her two newly met friends and hurried out alongside Tsukutsun who followed his girlfriend out of the police HQ with a hasty dash too.
"Wow, were we in there for that long?" Akane gasped after seeing the dark clouds swirling over the bright blue sky.
"No way, the sky has turned black!?" Trunks gasped. "That means someone must be using the Dragon Balls, but… How can that be? There isn't even a signal…" just in case, the Saiyan boy checked his Dragon Radar for a signal again, but nothing appeared on the screen, no matter how much he finicked with the scale of the radar.
"Then we need to get the radar fixed, and quickly. Only then we'll find out if the Dragon Balls really have been used or if this is something else. Remember, anything's possible in this dimension," Videl pointed out before turning to Akane. "Hey, Akane-san, you said that this Senbei-san was an inventor, right? We should hurry to his place and ask him to look at the Dragon Radar. We have little time."
"Huh? Oh… Okay…" Akane nodded, still visibly upset about the sudden influx of dark tumultuous clouds that appeared to shroud a crystal clear, azure sky where the clouds failed to cover it all up. "Let's go!"
"Oh, wait a sec!" Videl snapped her fingers and rushed back into the police HQ building, making her companions exclaim in shock. A few moments later, the young lady ran out with a tiny case of capsules and a backpack of her stuff that she surrendered to the officers on check-up. "Almost forgot these…"