Escape by MajinWTF
Chapter One: Not Ready for the Dead
King Yama had eons of practice in judging souls and as a result was rarely uncertain as to what sort of fate the departed deserved. This, however, was a fully unprecedented situation.
The soul in question stood in front of his desk. His arms were crossed and his eyes closed. King Yama honestly couldn't tell if it was an attitude of reverence or boredom.
"I'd imagine you can guess what the hold up here is, eh, Piccolo?"
The tall Namekian sighed. "You can't send Kami-sama or Nail to hell but you can't let Piccolo into heaven. Right?"
The massive judge of souls leaned around his desk to better see this difficult case. "That's right. So I'm going to give you a rare opportunity... Five minutes in which to plea your case and convince me that sending you to heaven is the right choice."
"If it's all the same to you... I think I'd better be sent to hell."
"No, you need to be persuasive! Give me reasons, of course you WANT to be sent to- wait a second, you'd prefer hell?!" Yama was flabbergasted. "If I might ask why? I'd assume you were joking if you didn't seem to lack a sense of humor..."
Piccolo appeared to have thought this through. "I've done some unforgivable things, that's indisputable."
King Yama had a keen eye for bullshit. "There's more to this than just your guilty conscience, isn't there?"
Flinching, Piccolo looked away and said quickly, "Well, there's also someone there. Someone I wanted to see."
"Really now?" Yama asked with a condescending grin, "Could it be that this stoic warrior has a special someone in hell?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" Piccolo was visibly flustered. "I just needed a chance to apologize to him, that's all!"
So Piccolo was sent down without any further delays except to be reminded to keep his partial divinity a secret. King Yama shook his head. "What are things coming to when I send someone like Dabra to heaven and a Kami to hell?"
- - -
Hell, or the Home For Infinite Losers as some preferred to call it, had plenty of drawbacks- but there were a few things that made it tolerable for a certain percentage of its occupants. The abundance of free time, for example. Some of the HFIL's residents found this same factor to be exasperating.
The dead Saiyan soldier Raditz was currently making good use of the free time.
The dead wizard Babidi was getting annoyed with it.
"Nine thousand seventy eight, nine thousand seventy nine, nine thousand eighty..." Raditz paused in his push ups and rolled over on his side, looking up at the small wizard who was perched on a random boulder nearby, eyes shut. "Hey Babidi! Wake up!"
The wizard woke with a start and nearly fell off his rock. "I wasn't sleeping you idiot," he said, holding in a yawn. "I was deep in meditation until you interrupted -" he then noticed that he was only addressing one. "Hey, where'd the others go?"
Raditz stood up and brushed himself off. "They left. I'm the only one who could handle your training so far. And you know what that means." In reality the others had gotten bored and left, but he knew the formerly sleeping wizard wouldn't know the difference.
Babidi stood back up on his rock, irritated by his inability to fly in this wretched place. The Saiyan's clear height advantage annoyed him. "Yes, yes, I promised I'd train the toughest one here to fight like Buu... But! Don't think you've proven yourself worthy quite yet! You may have outlasted the others in the 'Highly Repetitive Exercise Endurance Battle,' but you still have to face... Uh..." Babidi thought quickly and came up with an idea, "the Deadly Magic Power-Up Challenge!' That's it!"
Raditz was getting annoyed. As Babidi talked animatedly about the various trials involved in this next ridiculous pretraining exercise the Saiyan's patience ran out and he grabbed the small wizard by the collar of his shirt and lifted him roughly. "Listen, you wrinkly little waste of time, I am not letting you go until you guarantee me that you're going to cease this needless dallying and start training me immediately!" He shook him a few times to get his point across, mentally vowing that as soon as he had learned Buu's fighting technique Babidi would be the first to feel the pain of it.
"Drop him, Raditz!"
Both Saiyan and wizard froze for a second, then they turned to look- the voice they had both thought they recognized- and they were both right.
- - -
Piccolo's arrival in hell was a typical one- almost immediately he was noticed by a few who had been dead for a while, and they attempted to give him a bit of a hazing- then things took a turn for the unusual when an unimpressed Piccolo defeated the whole group with about two seconds worth of effort.
"Who ARE you?!" demanded one of the fallen 'welcoming party.'
Remembering Yama's warning about admitting he was anything other than another typical lost soul and wanting to avoid any further incidents before he found the one he was looking for, Piccolo decided to act a little like his old self.
"Be glad that you're already dead else you'd be feeling the last of your life slip painfully away this very second as your reward for getting in the way of Piccolo Daimao!"
He then walked off, having a hard time not smiling. Pretending to be a villain shouldn't be fun, but…
His desire to smile faded when he tried to sense the Ki of his target. Of course... We're all dead here! I can't feel anyone's Ki!
This was going to take longer than he'd thought. But at least he had all the time in the world for his search... Which turned out to be unnecessary- hearing a familiar voice shouting in the distance, he rushed off.