Chapter 34 - Bureaucracy
The room was calm for a few minutes. The Saiyans were in deep sleep and the Sailor Soldiers hadn't moved a muscle. The white floating mass hovered silently by the wall, looking at the adventurers before him.
"Yarr?" he tried. There was no reaction.
"Mateys!" he yelled then while peering at the gang. Goten scratched his shoulder and drilled his head under the pillow. A few seconds later everything was silent again until a distant "arrrrr!" was to be heard. The eerie sound came closer, not even through the walls but through dimensions. Finally three white figures floated in through the wall.
"Arr, who be those foolish mortals who be sleepin' in the inn that has been declared ours?" one of them roared. The windows clattered, a huge candelabrum waggled in the ceiling and then fell down straight into Goku's face. The Saiyan muttered something in his sleep, pushed the candlestick aside and curled up, hugging the bumpy pillow.
"Foolish? Aye. Mortal? I not be that sure," one of the ghosts stated grimly.
"Everything be mortal!" the other claimed viciously. "Yarr! Wake up, ye pathetic landlubbers!" he roared, floating towards the beds and sofas. "We be here to teach ye a lil' lesson! This inn be ours and nobody…"
"Thay not be listenin', matey," the third ghost commented.
"Thay will be!" the pirate yelled and slammed a ghostly shackle against the wall. It gave a clear, fierce sound but it had an echo that showed the chain's twisted origin. Distant wailing and moaning was to be heard when the echo faded – the housekeeper and his family had woken up. But none of the fighters in that room. The pirate stared at them, then rattled the chains again. This time it even worked. Haruka dragged her eyes open.
"Goddammit, keep it down, you morons!" she hissed. "Some people are trying to sleep in here!"
The ghost turned to her, small eyes flaming with fury. "We be the ghosts of the most famous pirates ever to sail the seven seas and…"
"She be not listenin'," the third ghost commented again with a frown. Haruka had fallen asleep again. The first ghost looked like he was about to blow up.
"WAKE UP!" he yelled, rattling his chains frantically. "Wake up, ye lousy good-fer-nothin' landlubbers! Wake up and face yer fate, I tells ye!"
Now Trunks's eyes slid open. He stood up, yawned and then hopped on the floor, scratching his head. The four ghosts instantly gathered in front of him.
"Arr, ye lil' lilly livered lad!" one of them roared victoriously. "Now we be teachin' ye a lesson ye won't forget so easily!"
Trunks squinted at him. "Uhuh?" He yawned again. "You'll have to wait a little with that then, I need to go to the little pirates' room. S'cuse me." He waddled forward, went right through one of the ghosts, shivering a little – walking through a ghost usually feels cold – and disappeared behind the door.
The room was very quiet for a short while.
"That… insolent… brat!" one of the ghosts hissed then.
"We be not able to touch the living," one of his buddies reminded him, "and the living be not able to touch us. If they won't be wakin' up, thar be nothin' we can do to them."
"We can scare the daylight straight outta them!" a third ghost claimed.
"The lil' lad didn't seem scared to me," the fourth one remarked.
"Because he be sleepy, he be not able to think clearly," the first one said with a mean grin. "If we manage to fully wake up one of 'em, they'll start singin' another song very quickly."
The four ghosts floated around the room for a few moments and then surrounded Bulma.
"Wake up, lil lassie!" the long-lost pirate yelled into the woman's ear. "Wake up and see the delegates of the Afterworld before you!"
Bulma opened her eyes. "What the… oh. Hrmh. What happened to those funny-looking ogres then?"
The pirates glanced at each other and eventually decided to get straight to the point.
"Ye have dared to trespass and this here be our inn," one of them declared. "Leave now or suffer the consequences!"
At any other time Bulma would really have screamed and run away but at the moment she was really exhausted and the last days had steeled her nerves one way or another. So she just did what most wives do when something wakes them up at night.
"Vegeta," she mumbled, turning the side and poking her husband, "some ghosts wanna drive us out of here."
"Uhuh?" a sleepy and very grumpy voice emerged from under the blankets.
"They say that we're trespassing. Should we leave?" the woman asked with a yawn.
"Naw," the blankets growled.
"Mmkay," Bulma muttered, hiding under the pillows again. "G'night."
Silence fell into the room again until Trunks came back and got to bed. The pirates looked at each other.
"Noise doesn't work… what else be thar for wakin' up mortals?" the second ghost asked.
"This," the third one hissed and raised his semi-transparent hand in an ancient glove. The walls flashed, something ripped between dimensions and all of a sudden water started running down the walls. The whole room was suddenly filled with the salty scent of the seas and this time everyone could smell it because the water was freezing. No matter how tired and sleepy you are, there's nothing like some cold water to wake you up.
Unfortunately the ghosts hadn't counted with a gang of very awake and utterly furious mortals who didn't feel like being scared at all.
"Why I oughtta…!" Seiya fumed with his dark eyes burning behind his dripping hair.
"I'm pretty sure that my Final Flash attack was able to destroy ectoplasm," Vegeta agreed, glaring grimly at the ghosts. "Worth a try, eh? Some midnight training wouldn't be such a bad idea." A small water stream hit him in the face but he didn't even blink, still glaring at the floating masses through the prism of salty water.
"Ectoplasm along with most of this town," Michiru commented, wrapping herself up in her wet blanket and shuddering.
"Not much of a loss," Goku grumbled. The others glanced at him with slight surprise. Once Goku said something like that, things had to be very serious.
"I'm not sure about the Final Flash attack," Hotaru said, getting up. She was paler than usually and shivering. The cold water was bound to give her weak health a serious strike. But her huge eyes had that old familiar look in them again – the determined, mean, fierce look. "One thing is sure though." The Silence Glaive appeared in her hand. "The Glaive is able to destroy anything."
The ghosts slowly started to get a feeling that waking the mortals up hadn't been such a great idea after all.
"Is it also able to stop that water?" Yaten demanded, soaking wet like a drowned kitten.
Hotaru looked up the walls with a slight frown. "It's a dimensional rip. My Glaive is only able to cut, not mend. That would be…"
"My business," Sailor Pluto's calm voice finished her sentence. The woman slid in through the wall, surrounded by a slight purple glow that apparently kept her contact with her own dimension and also prevented her from getting wet. She stepped through a flow of water which ran down the glow surrounding her and faced the four ghosts. The Garnet Orb started glowing.
"We discussed this already," she said strictly. "The dimensions must not be mixed. You are only allowed to travel between them due to your contract but you must not interfere with them. Did you get it this time?" The flood stopped as suddenly as it had started and the water on the floor disappeared. The furniture and the bunch of adventurers sitting on it were still wet though.
"Finish what you started, Setsuna, before we all get pneumonia here," Haruka demanded with a grim frown, pulling her dripping bangs away from her eyes. "This water is cold!"
"I guess all drops should be sent back," Sailor Pluto agreed, waving her sceptre and everything in the room was dry again. "Don't let me catch you doing something like that again, okay?" she asked the ghosts who nodded grumpily. "I do reserve the right to question your contracts, don't forget that I'm the keeper of Space and Time. Have a nice day then." She turned around and went into the wall again.
The Silence Glaive blocked her way.
"Aren't you going to help us?" Hotaru asked in surprise.
"That's not my business," Sailor Pluto replied. "I just need to fix all malfunctions in Space and Time. If you'd excuse me now, somebody has apparently invented a time machine again…" She pushed the Glaive aside and disappeared.
The room was quiet again.
"Sometimes I really feel like beating the daylight out of that woman," Haruka commented.
"She's just doing her job," Bulma claimed.
"Yeah, and as I've understood, her main idea of that job is making our lives as difficult as possible," the girl grumbled.
"What contract did she mean?" Goku asked the ghosts who exchanged grim glances and then shortly dug in their clothes. Four semi-transparent papers were stuck under the Saiyan's nose.
"The official committee of the Afterworld's Internal and External Politics' Office, room 28472, contract number 149823472… and 149823473 and two more," Goku read down from the papers, "it is hereby allowed the following person: Captain Bloodeye, pirate, some other text in tiny writing, to enter the world of mortals as a ghost, brackets, a mass of human-like ectoplasm unable to contact the mortals physically, see Universal Encyclopedia, issue 2455 for further information, brackets end, in order to communicate with them, brackets, see reason below, brackets end… whoa, this is complicated."
"They just got permission from the Afterworld to come back into our world as ghosts," Bulma the guru of official talk explained.
"I would really have gone to the Hell if I were you," Vegeta remarked, still sleepy and grumpy. "At least they don't have cockroaches. And the sewers have already been invented."
"Our spirits be restless, thar be things we didn't finish when we were still alive, thus we're forever cursed to roam the world of the living," one of the pirates stated with slight hesitation.
"Knowing the Afterworld's bureaucracy, getting that permission to be cursed forever took you about two months, or what?" Trunks asked. The pirates nodded grimly.
"So what didn't you finish?" the boy asked. "The master of this inn fed you a steak that was half raw?"
"Not the steak, but the beer was sour!" one of the ghosts stated snappily.
"That's where the four started a fight and eventually were killed in it," Goten added with a wise nod.
"Me started the fight," the third pirate claimed as the other three nodded. "Thay just be killed in the fight as well, thus we came here together."
"This is unbelievable…" Vegeta muttered with his eyes narrowing more and more. A single vein twitched in his forehead. A storm was approaching.
"Yeah, two months only to write some stupid contracts," Trunks supported.
"Okay then," Vegeta said, seemingly calming down but actually just reaching the quiet puddle of deceptiveness right before the flaming fury stage again. "The master of this house was nice enough to us," he raised his hand, "and his food wasn't bad at all." An energy orb formed around his hand. Goku silently floated behind the pirates' backs. "And I want to go back to bed, got it?"
The room flashed. A powerful stream of pulsating energy dashed out of Vegeta's palm, attacked the four ghosts, incinerated them and then hit Goku's arms who was struck back because of the utter mass and strength of the beam. But he managed to hold the beam and eventually it died out, leaving nothing behind but some smell of a fried chicken.
"If they don't die at first, try again," the Saiyan prince commented with a vague grin. "Can we go to sleep now?"
"Yeah, I've had enough ghosts for today," Taiki agreed, curling up on the sofa. "Goodnight, everyone."
Everyone muttered back in agreement and a few moments later they were already asleep, knowing nothing about the inn-keeper's nervous and frightened family downstairs or the huge machine of bureaucracy that was forced to start rolling in the Afterworld because of new arrivals with some contradictory documents.
The inn-keeper heard of the happenings in the morning when the travellers came downstairs to order some breakfast and he had never been happier.
"Ye got rid of the ghosts?" he exclaimed. "Really? Me be wonderin' why thay didn't take the food… arr, this be the best news me ever heard! That'll be 56 golden dubloons," then added quickly, remembering how much the Saiyans ate. Even his overflowing happiness didn't force him to feed them for free.
When they left the tavern, the sun was already high above the rooftops. They had slept long because they hadn't gotten much sleep last night but now they were fresh, fed and washed – the inn had even had some prehistoric bathroom-kinda-place – and ready to search for Eternal Dragon Shenlong. Everyone peered at Vegeta who had claimed to know something about the matter.
"Well, Vegeta?" Haruka finally asked. "Where to?"
"Into the plane and off, we can't take it out of the capsule inside the town anyway," the prince replied. "Don't be so impatient. We don't even know if it works."
The birds were singing, the mistresses were throwing out the trash, some people were going towards the local market and the air was filled with happy and careless chatting. The small town was indeed friendly – even if it would've lost the friendliness as soon as the technology of capsules would've been revealed. So they just exited the town and finally got to the place where they had tried to summon Shenlong the day before. Bulma opened the capsule, they got in and Haruka sighed deeply, taking the plane off again. She was already getting sick and tired of constant driving. At least the places she could see through the windscreen were pretty exciting.
And were about to get more exciting.
"Okay, Vegeta, I think we're far enough," she said, taking the plane a little higher. "Now what?"
"Now it's Kakarot's turn," Vegeta replied. "One instant translocation, right here, right now."
"Where to?" Goku asked, concentrating.
Vegeta told him. The others stared at him and there at Goku.
The Saiyan warrior blinked.
"You're the boss," he said then and the plane disappeared.