"..Stop tickling me… Pepper, stop it… Nrrgh…" I groaned quietly as I rolled over in my half-asleep state, expecting Pepper to be trying to wake me up like usual. Some things just never changed. Pepper always decided that, since she was always such an early riser, everyone else needed to be up before the sun, too.
When I finally deigned to open my eyes, surprisingly, Pepper wasn't on top of me. Instead, she was clinging to me under the sheets like a sleepy little monkey, her tail tied to my wrist. That was what had been tickling me.
"...She snuck…?" I rolled my eyes. "Ehh… birthday present…" I mumbled to myself, rolling back onto my stomach and closing my eyes once more, trying my best to go back to sleep. Normally, I'd kick her out, but it was her eighth birthday, and it was rare for her to sleep this late, anyway. Judging by the sun's angle as it shone through the bedroom window, it was somewhere between five and seven-ish in the morning. The sun was still just beginning to rise.
As a side note, in this universe, the sun on Earth didn't rise at a specific time that changed over the course of the seasons, but a random time between five and seven in the morning. In the summer, it tended to rise earlier, and it tended to rise later in the winter, but that wasn't a set rule, except during the summer and winter solstices.
Apparently, screw planetary rotation and gravitational physics.
And for roughly one week a month, when the sun set, it wouldn't even get any darker. The shadows would just start to blend into the light, despite there being nothing in the sky to actually generate that light. So, also screw those physics.
"...cookie… My cookie…" She mumbled in her sleep, pulling me closer, as the natural braid in her hair fell into her mouth.
"...Not a cookie…" I muttered to myself, as I let myself slip back off to dreamland.
…
"...Tarble…?" The next time I opened my eyes, a few hours had passed, and Pepper was rubbing sleep out of her eyes, tail waving behind her.
"Pep, why couldn't you sleep in your bed?" I asked the sleepy little girl.
"...Lynn's mad at me."
I groaned. It'd been just over four months since our group of around 250 settlers arrived on this island in the northern seas of the planet Earth, thanks to my wish. Since then, the only training I'd allowed my team to do was light, morning training. Since our power levels had all shot up so high in such a short timeframe, combined with the fact that we were all so young, with the triplets only being just ten years old, I knew that an extended break from intensive training was definitely in order.
We still did our morning training to keep from getting weaker, but I'd told my team to try to find some other hobby besides training. Emotional development was extremely important. It was nearly impossible to get stronger just for strength's sake, if you didn't have anything else, you'd eventually hit a hard wall, like Vegeta had, when he'd been stuck at the upper echelon of Super Saiyan for years between the Cell and Buu sagas, unable to break through to 2 until he'd figured out what he wanted to fight for.
Originally, most of us had tried to help out with the building efforts, using our strength, but the Celatians had waved us off. Apparently, they felt like building the town was one of the few things that they could do to repay us for everything we'd done for them.
Instead, thanks to our age, we'd been told to 'Go To School'.
Pepper fell asleep halfway through the first class.
None of us showed up the next day, for various reasons.
Tater and Pepper didn't have the patience for it. They began to spend their days exploring the island instead.
Lynn and I felt like we had better uses for our time. I began spending my days with Zeck and his dad, redesigning the computer of the second spaceship, which we'd decided to convert into a new version of Hyperion Labs. A big project, since Doctor Hyperion didn't use robotic helpers like most labs tended to. He had a handful of assistants to make up for that, but it still wasn't nearly enough manpower.
Honestly, I wasn't sure what all Tommy was doing with his time.
I did have an inkling of why Lynn was so angry at Pepper, who shared a bedroom with the older girl, though.
"Pepper, did you mess with the garden?" I asked.
Pepper's tail drooped, and she began playing with the bedsheet as if she'd been caught in the act of doing something wrong. "I didn't know that they were moving the flowers… I just saw a pretty one and picked it…"
I patted her head, sympathetic. "Just be more careful next time. You know how Lynn and Mrs. Hyperion feel about those flowers."
That'd started back when we'd first started staying on Celatus. Lynn had been enthusiastic about helping out with chores to thank the Hyperions for letting us stay. Meanwhile, Zeck's mother collected rare plants in her garden. One day, Lynn had offered to help water the plants, only for Mrs. Hyperion to end up yelling at her after she was done. Apparently, she'd over-watered some plants and under-watered others.
Lynn had taken it as a challenge. And with her Saiyan blood, she'd obviously backed off right away, never going anywhere near the garden ever again.
No, she'd gotten obsessed with gardening, just like Mrs. Hyperion was. Since we'd begun taking a break from intensive training, she'd spent every spare moment with Mrs. Hyperion, taking care of the gardens.
I didn't know that they'd begun transplanting them into the local soil, though. Couldn't really blame Pepper for making that mistake.
Still, though, I couldn't imagine just how mad Lynn had been. Honestly, only banishing the younger Saiyan from their shared bedroom was probably Lynn's version of a birthday present.