Bulma glared at her cousin. "A FEW MORE DAYS!!!!"

"Oh come one Bulma, you know she's not that bad," her cousin chided. "Kesh-chan can't be any more trouble than that husband of yours."

"DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TROUBLE SHE'S CAUSED JUST TODAY!!! DO YOU!?!?!?!?" screamed the enraged inventor.

Vegeta scratched his head. The girl didn't seem any worse than he had been at that age. By Saiyajin standards, she was fairly normal. She might even turn out to be a good example for Trunks - the boy was such a wimp. He didn't even bully the other kids at school as far as Vegeta could tell.

Bulma was working up to a full-blown rant. "...AND THEN SHE SNUCK OFF AFTER SCHOOL. NOT INTO TOWN! NOT TO SEE A FRIEND! OH NO, SHE SNUCK INTO KAMI'S LOOKOUT AND BROKE INTO THE PENDULUM ROOM!!!! SHE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED, A TWELVE YEAR OLD TRYING OUT SOME OF THE COMBAT SETTINGS LIKE THAT!!!!!!"

.oOo.

Trunks stared at Kesh. "You're going to get into trouble, you know."

The girl looked at him blankly. "What's your point? I'm always in trouble."

"Well, yeah." He frowned. "But I don't think Otousan's gonna like you taking some of his Saiba-seeds. Mom only cloned him a few and you took almost half."

"What's he gonna do?" she asked reasonably.

The boy stared at her in disbelief. She really didn't look much like his mother - her hair might be the same colour, but it was as wild as a Saiyan's. She was smaller as well, not much taller than him despite a two year age gap. "Spar with you until you can't sit down for a week."

She grinned wildly. "Oh, yeah. But I like sparring with your dad. If he gets really mad he might go Super-Saiyajin and I haven't fought anyone at that level yet."

"You didn't when you were in the Pendulum room?"

Kesh sniffed and finished examining the beans. "Nah, Poppo-san caught me before I got past the Saiyan invasion. So," she grinned. "Do you want to back out, or are you ready for some real training."

Trunks gulped. This didn't seem like such a good idea anymore, but he couldn't back out in front of Kesh.

.oOo.

Vegeta scowled down at the two children.

"What have you been doing?" the Saiyajin prince barked.

Trunks glanced at Kesh. No help there. "We were... training, Otousan."

"Training," Vegeta said flatly.

Trunks nodded vigorously.

"You and Kesh were training together."

"Is something wrong, Vegeta?" asked Bulma as she came out of her workshop.

"Some of my Saiba-seeds are missing, Onna. And Kesh and Trunks have been training."

The warning tones in his voice were totally unnecessary. After three weeks of Kesh staying with them, the words 'training' and 'Kesh' in the same sentence were enough for Bulma. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THIS TIME!" she demanded, lifting Kesh bodily off the floor.

"Well since Vegeta-ojisan was too busy to train us we needed someone to train against, so I made some Saibamen," explained the pre-teen girl in a tone of sweet reason. A morbid memory of the same tone rang through Bulma's mind.

Kesh was sat on her bed, one of Trunk's Ranma 1/2 manga on her lap. "I'm sure I can figure it out, there has to be a way round the problems," she told Trunks. "Then we can be masters of the Neko-ken."

"Some... saiba... men," the blue-haired scientist muttered disbelievingly. "How many is 'some'?"

"Just a dozen or so," Kesh shrugged. "No biggie. They aren't all that tough."

"They're tough enough to kill Yamcha!" snapped Bulma. "And he's a hundred times the fighter you are, young lady."

Kesh chewed lightly on her lower lip. "No... he had about four or five times my power level back then, probably not much past fifteen or twenty times as high now..." She shrugged. "Anyway, Trunks was there... I only actually took out eight of them myself... Wow, I didn't know your face could turn that shade of purple, obaasan..."

.oOo.

Trunks gulped as he looked at his father's face. He'd already been raked over the coals by his mother for going along with Kesh's training plan. Now it looked like his dad was going to have a go.

"Do you have anything to say?" growled the Saiyajin prince.

Trunk hung his head. "No otousan."

"I should think not. Letting that human brat outdo you like that. You're a Saiyan, boy! My own son! How is it that one little human girl can outstrip you!? Your power level should be ten - no - a hundred times hers! And against a few miserable Saibamen she killed two for every one you slew!" Vegeta's hands clenched around his cup, shattering it.

The half-Saiyajin stared up in disbelief. "You're not mad I took the seeds?"

Vegeta frowned. "What? Don't be ridiculous. I'm a Super-Saiyajin. What use are a few lousy Saiba-men to me? I'm talking about your half-hearted performance out there."

"But Otousan, she used the Kaio-ken!" protested Trunks. Actually, even with the Kaio-ken, Kesh's power level wasn't quite a fifth of Trunks'. But he didn't feel this was the moment to mention it.

"She what?"

"She used the Pendulum Room to watch Goku fighting against you and figured it out..."

Vegeta scowled. "Are you trying to suggest that that human girl picked up a technique like that just by watching it done!?"

.oOo.

Bulma slumped in her chair. "What the hell am I going to do with that girl?" she demanded of the air.

"Having trouble?" sneered Vegeta from his own chair.

"I swear, sometimes she's more trouble than you are," his wife complained. "I know she's smart, so why can't she pick up on why what she gets up to is dangerous?"

"She knows, Onna," Vegeta disagreed flatly. "She just doesn't believe it's important."

"Oh, right, Mister Expert-on-Children like you'd know anything about human children."

Vegeta stretched and rose to his feet. "Why would I care about human children? She acts like a Saiyajin child. Maybe we should treat her like that instead of as a human," he said as he opened the door.

"She is a human," yelled Bulma after him. "What do you want to do? Shoot her off into space for a few years!?"

The Saiyan paused on the threshold. "Now there's an idea."

.oOo.

Bulma was muttering something barely audible as she worked on the capsule.

"What was that about 'sub-standard Saiyajin junk' Onna?" growled Vegeta half-heartedly.

Bulma inadvertantly whacked her head on the the casing again. "OWWWW! What idiot built this anyway! This has to be the most idiotic way to organise a spaceship's insides I've ever seen. I could eat iron filings and throw up something better!"

Vegeta sighed and grabbed her by the back of her belt, hoisting her until she was almost upside down. "Try it like that, Onna. Saiyans can fly so we don't have any trouble reaching anything in there."

"Hey, that is better," Bulma said in surprise. "Now if I do that and this and then I..." She trailed off. "Vegeta?"

Grrrr. "What is it now?"

"I don't feel so good. All the blood's rushing to my head."

The Saiyajin Prince closed his eyes and counted to ten.

.oOo.

The capsule sat on one of the lawns of the Capsule Corp compound. It was the same one that had been used by Raditz all those years ago but Bulma had insisted on completely rebuilding it before she let Kesh use it.

Slightly to her surprise, Kesh had been a little dubious about going into space. It wasn't that the twelve year old was afraid, she discovered, as much as that she thought it would be boring out in space. The promise of an entire planet of training opportunities for her had finally convinced her - once Vegeta had grudgingly promised to show her a Super-Saiyajin transformation when she got back.

"Okay Kesh," Bulma said. "Now we've set up the navigation computer to send you to a planet quite near where we sent the Namekjin - a long way from anywhere that Freiza got to so there shouldn't be anything out there to cause you any trouble."

"Right, Obaasan." Kesh was in her usual baggy kung-fu costume with a long, chain belt around her belt. She also had a huge rucksack on her back.

"Now do you have all the capsules I gave you?"

The little girl rummaged through her pockets and pulled out a case. "Books for homework, spare clothes, special food store, two houses and a space radio. Yes Obaasan, they're all right here."

Trunks hurried out with a small bag. "Kesh, I got you some Senzu beans, just in case."

"Thanks Trunks, you're the best!"

The boy gave her a big hug. "Bye Kesh. I'm gonna miss you."

"Hey, I'll be back in no time!" Kesh grinned. "And I'll have lots of new training ideas, you betcha!"

Bulma winced.

Vegeta's eyes narrowed. "Right. Get in the capsule, brat."

"Sure thing Ojisan," Kesh chirped. "Bye Obaasan! Bye Trunks! See ya!"

Bulma glanced at Vegeta. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"She'll be fine," the man told her as the capsule blasted off into space.

"I know, I'm just worried about whoever's living on the planet."

Trunks looked up at the sky. "Bye Kesh," he whispered. "See ya."

.oOo.

And alone as she never had been in her entire life, Kesh huddled into a ball and laughed for almost an hour. This was going to be fun. An adventure at last!

Calm once again she began to examine the rest of her backpacks contents - the capsules that Bulma had no idea she had taken with her - and the saiyajin scanner that had once belonged to a warrior known as Raditz.

Pulling out a heavy volume and a toolbag, the small girl began to tear the unit apart, recalibrating it to exacting specifications into something that Bulma would never have permitted her...

A DragonBall detector.