The door to my lab rattled, but the knob didn't turn. If I pulled any harder, I could tell that I'd end up taking the knob off, and the door wouldn't come with it.
"Pep, did you-"
This was one of the days during which I'd woken up to find Pepper in my bedroom. "You forgot to sleep two nights ago, Tarble. I had to tell Lynn." She explained lazily from the doorway, idly rubbing sleep from her eyes.
I rolled my eyes. "I slept!" I argued.
"2:30 in the morning last night doesn't count as 'sleeping yesterday', idiot. You need to take better care of yourself. Just because two days ago was a no-training day doesn't mean you can ignore sleep."
"Ouch." When Pepper called you an idiot, you knew that you didn't have a leg to stand on. My chances of doing any science today had just gone up in smoke. Still, I felt the urge to defend myself. "I didn't ignore sleep, I just kinda didn't think about it. I was working on the heat absorption index in N-"
"You know I don't care, right?" Pepper interrupted me.
"I just lost track of time, okay? I didn't sleep because I didn't really feel the need to." I finished, skipping over all of the science. It was a fair argument. Saiyan bodies were technically optimized. When we ate or slept, we did it well, but when we didn't think about it, we didn't really need to. We could go a lot longer without food, water, or sleep than a normal human. A night or two was technically nothing, from that perspective.
Still, it didn't surprise me that Pepper, despite sleeping in her own apartment last night, noticed. She probably checked my terminal logs. The girls did that every once in a while, when I spent too much time researching. They were timestamped, so it usually ended up blowing up in my face when I accidentally ended up spending an entire night on one of my projects.
Zeck and his dad spent just as much time on their projects as I did, or more, sometimes, but they never got locked out of their own labs!
It was completely unfair!
Luckily, today was scheduled intensive training. During intensive training days, the entire team, Tater included, would gather on an island to the west and train from shortly after dawn to shortly after dusk. Sometimes, we'd even make Tommy join in, and we'd be out there all day. As such, I hadn't been planning on doing much more than basic checking into where I was on my current project. As long as Lynn and Pepper allowed me into my lab tomorrow, it'd be fine.
Hopefully, the girls would let me into my lab tomorrow. If they didn't, then it would be a problem.
…
"PFBBBBBBBBBBT!"
"VROOOOM!" A group of little kids with vibrant hair colors raced down the streets playing airplane.
"Stop being so slow, Vienna! You're making us look bad!" A portly boy snacking on a cookie complained.
"At least my sounds aren't off, Jules! It's like 'PFBBBT!'" A little girl with a shock of neon pink hair complained back.
"No, it's like THIS!" Pepper snatched the cookie from little Jules's hand while the rest of the children argued over the most accurate way to make airplane noises.
"Aww! Gimme back! Gimme back, miss Pep!" The portly boy complained as Pepper took advantage of her grown-up height to eat the cookie right in front of the child without him being able to do a thing about it.
"You know the deal, Jule. I know your mommy made appleberry pie the other day, and you didn't give me a piece! That means your cookie is mine!" Pepper declared, puffing her chest out in victory.
"It does not! You owe me a cookie!"
"You owed me a pie!"
"You stole my cookie!"
"You stole my pie!"
"It was my mom's pie!"
"You gave Jimmy some!"
"How did you know that?!" Jimmy, a little boy with a shock of electric blue hair, exclaimed in surprise.
"I always know who steals pie from me!" I wasn't sure if Pepper should really be boasting about that…
As Pepper argued with the group of Celatian kids about how she had the right to at least one slice from every single pie made by any of their parents for reasons that nobody knew, and didn't particularly matter, I let my mind wander.
Pepper's puberty had mostly finished up by now. Her baby fat had vanished, and her appearance had completed its drastic transformation from 'cute' to 'hot'.
But her personality hadn't changed at all. Every single kid in the village absolutely adored her, and the parents still loved to give her little toys and snacks.
And apparently, the kids had also pledged pie to the woman along the way.
"...Wait… Apple's not a berry." I suddenly realized.
The casual realization was like setting off a bomb in the middle of the street. The kids immediately started arguing loudly.
"Of course it is!" A kid with bright yellow hair declared.
"But Tarble's never wrong!"
"Are you calling Tarble a liar?!"
"But my mom made appleberry pie! If apple's not a berry, then she couldn't have!" Jule complained.
"Yeah! If apple's not a berry, then how come it's called appleberry pie!?" Jimmy agreed with his friend.
"Because whoever named it wasn't Tarble!" Pepper argued.
"Its definitely a berry! It has to be!"
"And you have to be wrong!"
I just watched from a distance, smiling at the nonsense as Pepper and the bright-haired Celatian children all argued about whether or not apples were also berries. The argument carried on for several minutes before one of the kids came up with an earth-shaking realization.
"Wait…? What's the difference?"
The answer: Berries were technically a type of fruit that includes things like tomatoes, grapes, bananas, and kiwis. Not only do apples not count as berries, but technically strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries also don't count as berries.
Blueberries technically count, though.