Chapter 27 – There's the fifth
"To do," Bulma finished the sentence and glared out of the window. "Now where did you take us?"
Haruka looked out too. Pink sky above them, yellow clouds below and a small house standing in the middle of those clouds. She grinned.
"Goku, you're a genius," she said and drove the plane down.
"He is?" Bulma asked, blinking. The plane already landed in front of the house which turned out to be a small, yet very crowded tavern with a WELCOME sign above the door.
"So… where exactly are we now?" Seiya asked, stepping out of the plane and looking around with a frown.
"In the Afterworld," Vegeta replied, going towards the tavern. The others followed him. Seiya blinked.
"Afterworld… you mean like Heaven and Hell and that sort of stuff?" he asked, hurrying forward to catch up with the others.
"Exactly," Trunks agreed. "The Hell is down there," he pointed over the edge of the parking lot, "and the Heaven is somewhere over there" he pointed up, "but it's really small and not easy to find."
"And why exactly did we come," Taiki peered at a fairy-like creature with green skin and pointy ears walking by with a huge beer mug, "here?"
"Because all taverns are packed with useful information," Haruka commented, elbowing her way through the crowd. "Hey, Setsuna!"
Sailor Pluto and Baba were sitting behind a small table in the corner, playing cards. When Pluto looked up, Baba quickly stuck a card up her sleeve and grinned.
"Didn't expect to see you guys here," Pluto said, raising her brows. "Ah look, the Sailor Star Lights. I guess I've missed a lot since we last met."
"Setsuna, a Dragonball is missing from the planet," Haruka said, getting right to the point. "Can you tell us where to find it?"
Setsuna sighed, raised her hand and the huge key with the Garnet Orb appeared, almost knocking an ogre out. The woman looked at the orb and frowned.
"What Dragonball was it?" she asked.
"Uh…" everyone looked at each other. "Small, orange, kinda glowy… you know."
"How many stars?" Setsuna asked patiently. Everyone looked at each other again.
"Either the one with three stars, four stars or seven stars," Bulma said. "These are the ones we're still missing."
Goku's eyes narrowed. "If some alien scum decided to steal the four-star Dragonball that once belonged to my Grandpa, I swear I'll…"
"Actually it is the four-star Dragonball," Pluto interjected. "The other two are still on Earth. The one you're looking for is on Dai Kaio's planet."
"What – there?" Vegeta asked as his eyes widened. "How can anyone come to Earth from there and go back again? This is the Afterworld, for crying out loud!"
Pluto shrugged. "I told you what you wanted to know, let me finish my game now, okay? Baba, put that card back, I may be old but I'm definitely not blind. It was nice seeing you guys again." Baba snorted and put the card back.
Haruka sighed. "Can you at least tell us…" Pluto's eyes narrowed. "Okay, okay. Thanks for the help. Come on, y'all."
"Trunks!" Bulma yelled as they turned around to leave, "you're not gonna drink that!"
"I just wanted to taste," Trunks complained, putting a small glass back on a table. The dwarf behind the table glared at him.
"It's purple and bubbly!" Bulma hissed, driving her son out of the tavern.
"Good year in that case," Vegeta grinned. Bulma glared at him.
"It was burning a hole into the table!"
"Let's get going already!" Haruka shouted, starting the plane. Minutes later they were flying above the yellow clouds.
"Someone show me the way, I don't orientate here too well," the girl suggested. Goku concentrated for a moment, then pointed to north-east. "Over there and not too far away."
"It's a good thing that we just tanked the plane," Michiru commented, looking out of the window. "I don't feel like falling down to Hell at the moment."
"It's not such a bad place, you know," Haruka remarked with a grin.
They flew on, possibly for hours but the sun never sets in the Afterworld. Finally Goku noticed a small planet right in front of them and a bit later they landed in front of Dai Kaio's palace. Taiki was stunned.
"It's not possible!" he claimed. "It only took us about three hours before we saw this planet and another hour to land here. We must've covered millions of miles!"
"True, but in the Afterworld time makes no difference," Goku remarked. "There's a little trick that allows anyone to bend the Space and Time here. It takes some practicing though… it's a sad thing I didn't know that back when I had to run the Snake Way through."
"So… where should we look for the Dragonball?" Seiya asked, looking around with a frown.
"Let's see… whoa!" Haruka had opened the holographic map again and it worked, showing the map of Dai Kaio's planet. There was a single blinking spot on the map.
"Easier than expected," Vegeta commented. "Okay Haruka, follow that spot." Haruka grunted, muttered something about bloodhounds and gave gas.
"At least it's not moving any more," Yaten said, looking at the map. "I don't think it will be a lot of trouble."
The Saiyans and Haruka glared at him. "Oh yeah?"
"This here is Dai Kaio's planet," Vegeta said with the voice of a person who's explaining the function of a paperclip for the tenth time. "The place where each and every powerful and mighty hero comes after dying. This place is packed with fighters. Most of them aren't a big deal for me or any other Saiyan but if I were you, I wouldn't go picking on them."
"So you're telling me that after a vicious phoenix, possessed monks and rabid mermaids…" Seiya started.
"This could get even worse," Vegeta agreed.
"And I though that the life of a superstar was dangerous," Yaten muttered. Suddenly they bumped up in the air and fell down again. Haruka had landed the plain and now got up with a wicked grin on her face.
"Don't worry," she said. "I think I can handle it myself."
The Saiyans stared at her when she opened the door and jumped out on the soft grass. Then they all went outside too. In a minute they understood what Haruka had meant.
There was only one person sitting under a single tree in the middle of the plain. His hair was black and spiky, there were scars on his cheek and a brown tail was curled around his waist.
"Hey, Bardock," Haruka shouted. The man opened his eyes and frowned.
"You again? No, I haven't seen anyone lately. No weird auras, nothing. May I have my privacy now?"
"You have the Dragonball," Haruka replied.
Bardock frowned. "And that would be…?"
"Small, orange, glowing a little, has four red stars on it," Goku said, walking up to them. "Hi again, Dad."
"Oh, that little souvenir?" Bardock dug the Dragonball out from somewhere under his armor, not paying much attention to Goku. "Why would you need that? It's just a shiny stone."
"It's not…" Goku started but Vegeta punched him in the ribs.
"Tell him one word about the power of the Dragonballs and you'll regret this for a very long time," he hissed. "We have enough Dragonball hunters running around."
"How did you get it?" Michiru asked, looking down at the man. "You're dead; you can't leave this place, can you?"
"Once every ten years if I've behaved myself," Bardock replied. "Sometimes even more often. I never cause any trouble here, compared with the rest of these airheads." He snorted. "Training and picking fights all the time… we're all dead here for crying out loud, what's the point in beating the crud out of each other? Naw, I'm just planning to sit here and enjoy the rest of eternity."
"So…" Bulma was trying to reconstruct the happenings. "You went down to our Earth, hung around for a while…"
"Three days," Bardock corrected.
"Found the Dragonball, decided to take it along as a souvenir and came back here?" Bulma finished.
"I found it from some dinosaur's stomach," Bardock agreed. "Looked nice and shiny. What, are you telling me that you came here just because of that?"
"Yeah," the others agreed.
"Must be valuable then," Bardock commented.
"Why would you care? You won't need it here," Vegeta said.
"True," Bardock agreed and tossed the Dragonball to him. "Be my guest. You don't happen to have anything nice from the real world I could keep as a memory, or what?"
"Hey, I have something!" Goten galloped to the plane and returned with a book. He gave it to Bardock who glanced at it and raised his brows.
"Geography, 2nd grade?" he asked.
"It tells you a lot about our planet," Goten claimed.
Bulma looked at the kid. "Goten, is that one of your schoolbooks Chichi wanted you to read while we're travelling?"
"He'll need it more than me," Goten claimed. "Memories are important. Besides, I still have a huge pile of books. Hey, want my algebra book as well?"
Bardock's eyes narrowed. "No way!"
"Freeza was pretty strict with his army's maths skills," Vegeta remembered with a grin. "Oh yeah, once we're here, perhaps we should go and see him in the Hell. I still have a few quadratic equations I'd love to remind him."
Seiya stared at him. "You're not seriously thinking of going to the Hell?"
Haruka frowned. "Yeah, don't you think that he got enough the last time we were there?" Now Seiya turned to stare at her.
"Not for the equations," Vegeta claimed.
"It's been what, twenty years? Even more," Goku said. Vegeta glared at him.
"Hey, why don't you spend most of your childhood with some nutty tyrant who's really eager to make you learn how many apples you have when you blast twenty three enemies who were each carrying 56 apples and then we'll see who forgets everything after some lousy twenty years!"
"So what was the answer?" Hotaru suddenly asked. "Not a single apple because a true warrior never leaves a molecule behind after blasting someone?"
"Freeza would've been proud to have you in his army," Bardock commented with a nod.
"That girl would've destroyed him in one day," Vegeta remarked. "Okay, shall we go now? Two more Dragonballs to find and they won't probably be an easy catch either."
"Take care, Bardock," Haruka suggested with a slight smile, heading back to the plane.
"Yeah," the Saiyan agreed with a grin, opening Goten's geography book.
"Okay, so we're going after the sixth Dragonball?" Goku asked after the plane had left the planet. "The problem is that I have no idea where it is so I can take no responsibilities on where I take us back."
"Can't you just take us back to the place where we left the Earth?" Taiki asked. Goku shook his head.
"I can only follow auras and there are no people in the place where we left the Earth. I need to go to a place where there'd be people."
"Pick a random place and let's hope that we'll get lucky," Hotaru suggested. The others glared at her.
"Have you noticed how lucky we have gotten so far?" Seiya asked with a frown. "Hint – not very lucky!"
Hotaru smiled carelessly. "Why? We have managed to find five Dragonballs in less than a week and that's a lot better than most people. How did the story with the Red Ribbon Army go again, Bulma? The whole army spent months, right? And they had the radar."
"And they had Goku trying to find the Dragonballs too," Bulma added with a grin. Goku gave a sheepish smirk.
"I'll just pick a random place and we can always carry on from there," he suggested, concentrating. The others sighed, nodded, held on to their seats… and the plane vanished again.
Haruka was the only one who hadn't closed her eyes – after all, she had a plane to drive. So she saw a field of yellow clouds, a bright flash and at the same moment the deep blue ocean. She managed to keep the plane in balance and then opened the radar.
"Not bad, Goku," she said. "We only have about a hundred miles to cover."
"At the bottom of the ocean again?" Vegeta asked, leaning closer. Haruka looked at the map again and frowned.
"Looks like it." She zoomed in. "Or no, wait… I'm not sure. There may be an island."
Yaten rolled his eyes. "Oh joy. Jungles. Rainforests, tigers and most likely a few dinosaurs, or what?"
Bulma had taken a closer look at the map too and suddenly her eyes widened.
"You know," she said with a grim frown, "I think I would've preferred jungles…"
The others looked up at her. "What's wrong?"
Bulma sighed. "Let's just get going, shall we?"