Chapter Two:
Uubu slipped backward through the air, dodging away from the first punch Frieza had aimed at him. It hadn't been particularly hard or fast, as he could see it quite clearly as it sliced through the air in front of him. He wasn't sure if the ice-jin was simply trying to test how fast his opponent was or perhaps trying to feign weakness and put Uubu off guard.
Wither way, Goku's most powerful student did no intend to be beaten.
As Frieza's arm drew through the air in front of him, he reached out deftly and grabbed it.
The ease with which he was able to catch the ice-jin's arm was alarming, and apparently not just to Uubu. Frieza's face twisted, his eyes going wide in surprise.
"What the… Let go of me, you stupid ape!!"
Uubu didn't answer right away. Then he slowly smiled.
"You're not very strong at all." He said with a slight laugh.
Krillin spun in a quick arc, just barely keeping out of the way of the swiping claw of the dementor that was skulking next to him. He had had the misfortune of being brushed by the thing before, and the sudden drain had been more than enough to tell him that he should stay away from them.
Nearby, Piccolo was performing similar dodges, trying to stay out of the path of the sweeping three clawed hands of the dementors.
The short former monk glanced to his left, registering the position of the other monster that seemed to be intent on killing him for no reason. It was still a few feet away, apparently not to sure on moving in quickly. Whatever these things were, he thought to himself, at least they could feel doubt. That was something.
Piccolo let out an angry growl, and Krillin turned in time to see that a dementor had it's claws hooked into Piccolo's cape. As he watched, Piccolo yanked the thick weighted cloth over his head, and spin the heavy end into the monster's face, throwing it to the side.
"Krillin!" he called. "These things don't seem to be hurt by ki or by regular punches! We have to retreat!"
"Good idea." Krillin muttered under his breath. But before he could comply, he felt a claw clamp over his neck from the side.
He felt the horrible drain, a few seconds would have been sufficient to kill him. But something very strange began to happen almost instantly, just after a slightly longer time than the former brush had taken.
Under his hair, six dots that had been burned with an incense stick years ago began to suddenly glow with a white hot radiance that almost made his hair ignite. And the thing that had a hold on him let out a squall like thousands of nails being scraped across thousands of blackboards and leapt off of him like he was scalding hot.
"Wha…" he muttered, the dizziness flashing over him in a wave. He heard a soft thump and saw that the thing's dirty robes had fallen in a lump on the ground in front of him, their owner apparently gone.
He stared down at the pile of rags, fairly speechless. What could have possibly…?
"What the hell was that!?" Piccolo yelled, shattering the vague feeling that had briefly fallen over him. He felt weak, but far from what he thought he would be feeling if one of those things really got a hold of him. It was almost as if it had overdosed on his energy, or something.
But the dots on his head had started to glow; the ones that had been made with a lit incense stick at the Orijin temple…
"Of course…" he muttered. "We all had the protection spells put on us first thing. I should have thought of that before…"
He now noticed that the other dementors were backing away warily from himself and Piccolo. And at the same time, he heard a sound coming through the trees that the monsters seemed to have been hearing for a while.
Screams, like the screech of the dementors, and faint zapping sounds.
"What could…" Piccolo began, but before he could finish he had already gotten his answer.
First two dementors bolted, screeching, into the small bit of clearing where the fight was taking place. Behind them, a small dot of blackness zipped through the trees and shot a beam of blaring white at the hindmost monster.
When the light hit it, the dementor's shrieks rose to head splitting pitch and then it was gone in a puff of grayish smoke, leaving only it's steaming rags that served as robes.
The small witch on the crystal ball zapped over to the second dementor and Krillin and Piccolo could now recognize Uranai Baba.
"Won't to you any good to run!" she almost seemed to laugh. "I may be old, but I haven't slowed down yet!"
The same beam of light that had hit the other monster shot from her crystal ball, and effectively vaporized the thing while it ran.
The second the beam had disappeared, she turned toward the two warriors and the six apparently now flabbergasted dementors that still surrounded them.
"So, I see you two are still alive!" she said with a slight smirk. She pulled a bag off of her back, and opened it, apparently not concerned in the least about the dementors. She fished around in it for a second, then pulled out something long and orange.
"Here, Piccolo, this should be a little helpful." She tossed it to him, and he was so startled that he only just barely caught it. He looked down at what he held in his hands, and saw that it was Goku's extending bo staff.
"If you hit them with that thing," Baba said, "they can't suck your energy. And Krillin…" she shuffled around in the bag again, and this time pulled out a small ball of what looked like cloth. She tossed them at him, and he snatched them out of the air curiously.
A pair of gloves. They were black, some sort of silky feeling material he couldn't identify. He pulled them on and saw that they fit perfectly. He glanced up at Baba questioningly.
"Those," she pointed down to Krillin's gloved hands, "have so many spells on them that it would take me hours to explain it. But they're basically going to keep these things," she glanced at the still cowering dementors with a grimace, "From sucking any energy out through your hands. So you can punch on them all you want."
"Right on!" Krillin smiled, looking at his hands.
"Now, if we can finish up here, please." Baba said shortly. "The dementors are starting to get into the town close to here, and I don't want any more damage to be done than has to be."
The two warriors nodded, and then got to work.
Arda stopped in mid flight when he glanced down and saw the scene below him.
"What the hell…?" he muttered. Were Krillin and Piccolo actually fighting dementors? And WINNING?
"I have to see this.." he muttered, Goku forgotten for a second in his mind. He swooped down just in time to see the last of the monsters being dispatched.
Baba watched Piccolo and Krillin fight with a smile of satisfaction. Piccolo would take a little bit of practice before he could really wield that staff, but he was always a very fast learner. And Krillin seemed to be doing just fine now that he could actually touch the dementors. A few punches and he had touched them enough for the protection spells of the monks to take effect, and the things were gone.
"Hey!" she yelled, irritated, as she zapped a dementor that was trying to creep up on her from behind. Now there were only two left. Piccolo was busy breaking whatever the things had in the way of bones on one of them, and Krillin was getting in punches faster than her eyes could follow.
Then two things happened. The last two dementors disappeared at almost the exact same time, and Arda landed next to her.
"Eeep!" she let out a startled yell at the unexpected presence next to her. "Arda, don't DO that!"
Despite his curiosity as to how the hell Krillin and Piccolo were beating the dementors and not losing any of their energy, he smiled at the witch. "Hello, Baba. What's it been, close to two hundred years?"
She smiled back. "Something like that. So may I ask what you're doing here?"
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "The same thing you are. I'm trying to keep the bad guys in hell. And trying to lend what little hand I can…" he paused.
"What?"
"You mean you don't know? You haven't sensed it?" now he really did look surprised.
"I'm no better at sensing ki now than I was a couple hundred years ago, you immortal idiot." She said impatiently. "Just tell me what you're talking about?"
"Morgoth is out. Goku is fighting him right now."
At first there was no reaction, Baba's face was totally blank. "You're joking."
"Afraid not."
"Then what the hell are we doing here fighting dementors!!?" she screamed. "We need to do everything we can!"
"Woah." He held up one hand. "I have to tell you, even if every ki warrior on the planet got together and went right now, we couldn't help Goku and Vegeta. Ask Krillin and Piccolo. We couldn't help Goku right now."
"I agree." Piccolo said as he and Krillin walked up. "We would probably make things worse, because Goku would be trying to protect us rather than focus on the fight."
"All the same…" Krillin said, sounding hesitant. "I can't help but want to go help Goku out."
"Obviously." Arda said. "I don't even know him very well, and I feel bad leaving him to fight. Even Vegeta. And he beat me up." The vampire grinned slightly. "But think about it. We'd help Goku a lot more by trying to take care of the other… things."
"I know that." Krillin said. "But I still fell bad."
It looked like Arda was about to reply, but he suddenly shut his mouth with a snap, and his eyes narrowed.
"Listen." He said shortly.
Piccolo's eyes widened as well.
Krillin looked slightly confused. "I don't hear…"
But then he did. There was a sound like someone eating dry cereal, getting louder by the second. It seemed to be coming toward them. A crunching, chomping.
It was getting closer very fast. What had been inaudible only a second ago was now easily heard.
"What is that..?" Krillin muttered.
"I have no idea." Arda answered, frowning. "But it doesn't sound very reassuring."
Just then it happened.
Straight through a tree, a creature that had never existed on earth, or anywhere outside of hell. It had what looked like the body of a cat, but with no legs. It propelled itself through the wood of the tree and the air alike with a muscular tail that stretched more than twice the length of it's body. In the front were two black circles that were it's eyes, and directly under them was a slash that was nothing so sophisticated as a mouth, lined with long needle teeth.
It seemed to look at them, and reared up, letting out a disgusting chittering noise.
"What is that thing!?" Arda asked in disgust, looking over at the others. "Since when did this planet have things like that?"
"Since never." Piccolo said, still completely deadpan.
As the words left his mouth, more began to scurry out from the trees, eating anything I their path. When they reached the edge of the small clearing, they stopped, all making the identical noise.
There looked to be hundreds of them.
"Uhh…" Krillin looked uneasily from one side to the other. "What do we do?"
"We kill them, that's what." Piccolo said.
As if on cue, all the monsters suddenly swarmed in.
As the point of light began to widen, Gohan's feet left the ground and he began to float up toward it.
"What are you doing!?" Juuhachi-gou yelled. "Gohan, get back down here!"
"We need to see what that light is." He said. "I mean, it's the only thing here, right?"
She sighed, almost growled under her breath. "So that means we just run straight toward it? Are you stupid!?"
Gohan looked back down. "Well, we're already dead. What more could go wrong?"
"Plenty." She muttered, but floated up next to him just the same.
As they started upward, they could see that the light was now close to ten feet across, and that there were shapes moving in it. They looked like people, or at least they were vaguely humanoid and they were moving.
"I wonder what those…" Gohan began.
"Hey!!" a familiar voice suddenly bellowed from the light. "Will you two hurry up, or do you want us to leave you in the dark!!?"
Gohan's eyes widened. "King Kai?" he asked.
"No, it's the easter bunny! OF COURSE IT'S KING KAI!!"
"All right! Come on, Juuhachi-gou!" Gohan smiled. His aura blazed around him and he flew quickly toward the light, android eighteen close behind him.
Once he got right up to it, he could tell that it wasn't just light, it was a lighted doorway. It only looked so blindingly bright because of the complete darkness that surrounded them. Standing in the doorway next to Kaio-sama were Kaio-bit and Dende.
"Come on, kid." King Kai said with a smirk. "We really need to get you back to earth."