Little Black Dress.
A Love Story.
By: Marley.
Disclaimer: I am not Akira Toriyama, Toei Doga/Animation, Pony Canyon, Viz, or FUNimation... I'm not even Japanese. I am not making a profit from this story.
There was a man inside of the bank, holding a gun and firing recklessly into the air. The noise was incredibly loud, echoing in the marble lobby, and a woman had covered her ears and was screaming from near where he was standing. Across the room, people dropped to the floor crying. "This is a stick-up," he yelled as he started running towards the counter.
"Mommy!" A little boy was wailing somewhere. People called out to each other desperately.
"I think you should stop that," a clear voice rang out, loud over the pandemonium.
"What the…" the man stopped dead and whirled around, scanning the huddled masses of frightened bank patrons through the sight of his gun.
"Up here, Slime." And there was Saiyaman, standing on the metal detector that had first announced the robber's presence only a minute before.
"Saiyaman!" The people gasped. "We're saved!" "Thank Kami!"
"Saiyaman?!" The criminal yelled. "How did you get here?"
"Wherever trash like you is in supply, I'll be waiting to do the clean-up," a distinctly feminine voice came from the hero, before she jumped to land in a crouch on the lobby floor.
"Where's your tough partner?" The thief was taunting her. He didn't look nearly so confident now as he had when he'd started, though, he'd lowered his gun and continued to move toward the counter, backing away from her.
"I don't need him to get rid of you," Saiyaman stood slowly and took one step forward.
"Ha," the man grunted as he leveled his gun and fired.
"Too slow," Saiyaman spat, leaping to the side and out of the way. The glass pane cracked behind her under the impact. "And, now, you've made me angry."
"Is that right?" The man asked, now quickly backing up toward the counter.
"It is," Saiyaman nodded before rushing toward him, feet leaving the ground entirely. With a single punch and a whoosh of air, the man was on the ground, clutching his stomach. A teller peeked over the ledge of the counter. "I'll hold this," Saiyaman spun the gun he'd been holding, "until the police get here."
As if by some magic, with a cry of "Saiyaman," the police were streaming through the door and crowding around the heroine. The scene continued for only a few seconds after she was totally obscured.
"Again," a woman appeared onscreen behind a desk, "that was Channel Five's incredible footage of the City Bank robbery, captured by an amateur fil-"
-
"I'm so sick of this!" Videl was yelling. "I was done for the day."
"I just want everyone to be able to see my little girl flying around." Hercule argued. "Here."
Videl was standing about twenty feet away on a patch of tall grass. Her arms were crossed over a large T-shirt. "Fine." She lifted off of the ground and gave a smile.
"Yeah, Videl," Hercule roared.
"Are we done?" She asked as she touched back down. "Why are you using that old thing anyway?
-
"Gohan, stop!" Videl demanded, looking right at the camera. All that was distinguishable was one eye and the arch of her cheekbone. "You've got it all zoomed in on me, again, don't you?!"
"No," Gohan laughed, the volume of his voice incredibly loud, and the eye shrunk to normal size as he zoomed out. Videl came into focus. Her hair was pulled back into a small bun and she had on a long black dress. There was some blush dusted across her cheeks and she'd used a very faint, natural-looking brown eyeshadow.
"I can't believe what I'm hearing!" She sighed as she stuck the post of one earring through the hole. "Son Gohan is telling lies." More loud laughter. "What would your mother say?"
"Videl!" Hercule burst through the door and the screen blurred as Gohan turned to look at him. "What's he doing in here?" When Hercule came into focus, he was pointing at the camera.
"Gohan is insisting on using this camera to film me wearing a dress." Videl answered from off screen.
"This is Videl in a dress," Gohan narrated, his voice a whisper.
"It's not as though I've never worn one before," She shot him a look. Gohan was filming her hands as they fluttered nervously, Videl kept crossing her arms and then going back to resting on her hands on her hips.
"She's never worn one before," Gohan narrated through a fit of laughter. The dress was simple, with spaghetti straps holding it up and a low neckline. A few strands of hair had already escaped from the back, where it was still too short to reach the elastic holding the bun in place.
"She is a bit of a tomboy, isn't she?" Hercule conceded, his voice quiet as though he was walking away. Gohan adjusted the camera to film him leaving through the door to Videl's bedroom.
"I'll give you 'tomboy,'" Videl threatened jokingly from off screen.
Gohan dropped the camera a moment later. "Videl!" He shrieked in surprise.
Pan felt tears spring to her eyes. She wiped at them with the back of her hand. This was stupid. Crying all over the living room floor... Her parents weren't dead, they were at work, and they'd be home soon enough. And they'd be angry if she didn't finish going through all of their videos.
Bulma wanted to convert all their home movies to some kind of machine. Pan never bothered to try to understand any of it. It wasn't really a bad deal, as long as they kept using Capsule Corps' latest stuff, they'd just be able to keep having Bulma upgrade things.
Pan rocked forward onto her knees and popped the video out of the VCR. The short layers Bra had cut into her hair fell unevenly around her face. She looked at the tape, a faded tag read "High School" in her father's deliberate script. High school. It was the worst time of her life. She set the tape into the box of ones to take to Bulma. By this point in their lives, her socially inept parents had met each other and were running around saving the city in stupid costumes, defending the world and deeply in love.
Pan was neither.
She was one of the girls who kept quiet at school. She had few friends because she let few people get close to her. Pan had never needed friends, either, because she stood beside the most popular girl in her grade. As though it wasn't enough being Bra Briefs' weird best friend, her grandfather was martial arts icon Hercule Satan and her father taught some of the collegiate-level math courses at her high school. If people wanted to define her in terms of her relationship to someone else, that was fine. She wasn't trying to be voted Prom Queen, anyway.
Pulling one more tape out of the box, she sat back down on the carpet. "Pannie's First Bath," she read aloud. With a snort, she tossed the tape over her head where it landed in a box with the rest of the one's she'd blow up.
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