A line of ethereal, floating orbs with funny-looking comet tails that curled and coiled behind them greeted Chayote. Both the seemingly deceased Saiyan and her new company stood atop of a long, pearl-white road that appeared like the back of a dragon, below was nothing but an endless expanse of cotton-like yellow clouds. Chayote turned around in hectic succession. The teen looked down and patted down her own chest.
"I'm not like you guys…" she stated the obvious. It took a short while for the rambunctious Saiyan to notice a peculiar detail.
"Whaaa! Where's my armor?!" she yelled out making a handful of spirits flip out at her and start squirming about. Because of the sheer number of them, it was impossible to tell if they were speaking and, if so, what they were saying. "Oh well…" the female Saiyan got over the fact that she stood atop of a pearl dragon in a line of ectoplasmic blobs in nothing but the bodysuit she left her bed with.
"Hmmm, what's that?" Chayote exclaimed while leaning forward and placing her hand over her eyebrows to assist her vision. Farther in the distance, behind chunks of actual, white clouds, laid a building. It did not appear like any buildings Chayote had ever seen but it had a massive message written atop of its roof. A message which intrigued the Saiyan given how little she understood about her current situation.
"Calm down, it's where all of us are going! You've got nothing but time!" the little spirit in front of Chayote declared while the teen leaned over it with an imposing posture but pure and curious eyes.
"Oh yeah? Well what are you guys gonna do if I cut in the line?" she grinned with a very simian manner while prancing over, passing around, pushing over some unlucky spirits over by the handfuls on her gleeful journey to the odd-looking building with answers.
"WELLCOME?" Chayote read the message that she defied the rules of a line to get to read. "What an odd name for a building!" she pondered.
"Of course a measly mortal would defy the sacred rules of the Other World placed upon them by their superiors when given the first chance…" a rough, masculine voice reached Chayote's ears forcing the Saiyan to turn out of curiosity and the feeling of discomfort of being snuck up on. Behind her stood a tall and buff man of sophisticated clothes and a broad, elderly face. The fact that his clothes looked utterly useless for combat suggested that perhaps he was some sort of royalty. Then again, King Vegeta always wore his armor so maybe this midget was just an idiot?
"Other World? As if in Afterlife?" Chayote leaned over the shorty with a similar impolite manner that she spoke to the spirits with.
"Yes. It appears that you have indeed died. A fate that shall befall every mortal eventually. My name is Kibito. Follow me, please." The man recounted as if it was a meaningless poem he had learned solely for the sake of passing the teacher's test. The broad-shouldered and well-endowed in the chin department old-timer tread on forward inside the WELLCOME building. Stopping only in the doorway to observe how well Chayote could follow his rules.
To Kibito's great indifference, Chayote succeeded in the menial task of following him. The self-implied immortal looked like he was about to show pride in this mortal's ability to follow him but then he realized how pointless the task was and how pitiful the mortal was for being expected to struggle with something so trivial. It was safe to say Kibito did not like mortals all too much…
"So why would you choose to call yourself Kibito?" Chayote ran up to the side of the towering royalty and asked him without any scruples.
"I do not understand…" Kibito looked down at the irritating pest to his right as the two tread through the entrance to the main parts of the station which he was leading Chayote through.
"I mean I get it, calling yourself just by what you are is lame, I wouldn't like calling myself "Saiyan" either. But even God is better than Kibito." Chayote shrugged before wrapping her arms over her chest and pouting her face. The more she spoke the name, the lamer it seemed. Being smitten by someone named Kibito or having a guy named Kibito create the Universe just didn't sound right. What's more, God looked like shriveled, old prune…
"You misunderstand, Saiyan. I am not a God. I am an attendant. What makes you think that an actual God would bother themselves with the likes of you? The fact that I am here with you is already a disturbance to the natural order of things and the natural laws that have had this Check-In Station and, in fact, the Other World itself function for millions of years." Kibito answered with his eyes closed and looking more and more like he just did not want to look at the annoying Saiyan anymore and that was why he was resting his eyes.
"Well… Don't undersell it that much, Mr. Kibito." A tall, blue-skinned fellow in even weirder and less functional getup smiled at Chayote and the attendant. "This one's a bit more important than that."
"L-Lord Whis!" Kibito appeared completely taken aback by the presence of this tall yet frail, honestly, kind of queer-looking guy. Chayote's attention shifted from one figure to another and she could have sworn that someone like this attendant Kibito guy could have snapped a long weakling like this Lord Whis fellow like a twig.
Besides the remarkably fabulous Whis stood a bunch of red and blue equally frail-looking guys in similarly dysfunctional yet at least less flamboyant looking outfits. At least the red and blue folk had a pair of horns to each of them, suggesting that they could have at least rammed a guy pretty good.
"So… You're not supposed to be here…" Chayote began the chronicle of her first impressions pointing at Kibito. "And you're definitely not supposed to be here, right? How come both of you are here and what do I have to do with it?"
"Before we go through the arduous task of getting you up to speed, please, approach the table out in front." Whis gestured with his staff at a massive wooden structure behind him.
"Wow! That's a table!?" Chayote shrieked out in disbelief. What was even more unbelievable was the most metal-looking horned fellow sitting behind the table and observing the scene transpiring right in front of his own table.
"Indeed, behind it sits King Enma himself. He is the king of ogres who judges all those who are dead." Whis nodded, looking quite entertained by Chayote's all over the place impressions.
"What's the point, with this one it is just a formality, after all." King Enma gestured with his hand in boredom. "Both of you are here, aren't you? She's retained her body…"
"She may not be meant for Heaven. She may just be a very important and meaningful person…" Whis let his suggestion linger.
"Nope…" King Enma shook his head. "She's actually supposed to go to Heaven. Despite being a Saiyan, she didn't really have that much time to do any evil deeds yet. I'm sure she'd be a star resident of down below given a year or two of servitude…"
"I see…" Whis tapped the floor with his staff. Given the overall magical vibe of this otherworldly afterlife adventure, Chayote expected something magical to happen but it looked like the fabulous, pompadour blue-skin was just glad to hear this news. "In that case, I must disappoint you, Chayote the Saiyan. It appears that Heaven is not meant for you after all."
"Huh? But didn't that guy…" Chayote pointed at King Enma, almost instantly her hand got smacked by one of the corporate ogres while the second one corrected her.
"King Enma!" the red ogre insisted.
"Didn't King Enma say I am supposed to go to Heaven?" Chayote pouted with her hands crossed over her chest. She was not entirely sure what the Heaven was, but given the pleasant associations with the language she used it was supposed to be a quite nice place and conflict was within a Saiyan's very nature so it was not beneath Chayote to fight over things she did not truly know or need.
"If he was to sit you to a plane that heads to Heaven, if such a plane even still ran, you would only arrive at an empty void because, I am afraid, in one of his unfortunate caprices, Lord Beerus has destroyed it just before going to sleep. Heaven is quite important, unlike most things, the magic surrounding it is quite sophisticated and not something that mere time manipulation could reverse." Whis explained with a sad expression that, Chayote could swear, was acted out. "Because of his reckless actions, everyone residing in Heaven at the time was deleted from existence and Universe 7's mortal level has dipped to new lows having just lost its Heaven and if Lord Zen-Oh would notice how low it is, all of us would truly be deleted out of existence. Repairing Heaven is a bit of an arduous task, I am afraid. The Supreme Kai is also quite green, being only about 240 000 years old."
"Okay… So I guess Heaven's out of the picture. So what am I supposed to do for whole eternity?" Chayote sighed, she could already imagine the boredom of hanging around these office clerk types and fancy, aristocratic God-snobs.
"That is what I need to talk to you about. Normally, I would not need to be present in briefing up a mortal meant for Heaven. Mr. Kibito has been taking care of that duty for the last hundred years or so. I am here because of a very different sort of offer." Whis leaned over Chayote, teaching the Saiyan a lesson of how much it sucked being leaned in on by a much taller guy. The blue angel extended his staff and pointed it at the center of Chayote's chest.
"You are not an average Saiyan, Chayote. You are a once-in-a-thousand-years occurrence, a Saiyan with C-Type S-Cells. Having someone like you on the living side would greatly boost Universe 7's mortal level as a living being of high value is worth ten times that of a dead one. Reincarnating you would do no good either as you might just lose your special talent in the process of reincarnation.
"Oh… So if I'm alive, that will keep the entire universe from getting scrubbed?" Chayote counted the logic on her fingers as if it was 2nd-grade math.
"In a manner of speaking…" Whis smiled with delight gleaming from his body speech. "Although you misunderstand. It is not your own special genotype that is special. It is the fact that there is currently another mortal on Universe 7 with the same genotype."
"Huh!? I had a brother!?" Chayote shrieked out in disbelief.
"Oh, no!" Whis chuckled. "He is unrelated to you. However, the fact that there have been not one but two once-in-a-thousand years birth in Universe 7 does provide a nice bonus modifier to our mortal level."
"There is a problem though." Kibito cleared his throat. "If we resurrect Chayote back where she died, Frieza will just kill her again. Even if he does not, the average life expectancy of a Saiyan is not that long anyway."
"That is true." Whis pressed his hooked finger to his lip while he turned and twisted his pompadour deep in thought. "We do need Chayote around for a fifty to hundred years, just to be safe."
"Hmmm… Fortuneteller Baba is currently visiting looking for fighters to employ. You could just send this girl with the old hag." King Enma temporarily moved his eyes away from his massive books to involve himself in this matter being discussed by his superiors.
"Fortuneteller Baba… The psychic woman from Earth. That's great!" Whis jumped up and down in glee. "If we shelter you on Earth, there's no way Frieza will find you. That planet is far outside his sector of interest."
"Earth? Yes. This could work. The local wildlife and its inhabitants are weaklings. Chayote should be safe on that planet." Kibito nodded with a smirk.
"Wait, what? Weaklings? Forget about it, I'd rather go back to Planet Vegeta, can't you just bring me back again if I die?" Chayote shook her head with a childish and capricious expression.
"I'm afraid that would be dangerous." Whis' face turned serious for a moment. "This is not a game, Chayote, your spiritual alignment might be completely different the next time you die and if you are not meant for Heaven…"
King Enma lifted his eyes back up from his books to drag his thumb across his neck and point it down. The rest of the divine beings stood there trying to understand if the numbskulled Saiyan got the message.
"But won't the Universe get destroyed if you send me to Hell? What was that about rare blood and genes and my brother?" Chayote's face turned long and sour.
"He is not your brother, are you even registering anything we're telling you! It is of paramount importance, the fate of the entire Universe is on your shoulders!" Kibito flipped out, becoming the second person to lean over Chayote that day.
"You see, there are specific rules in how the afterlife works in all Universes. The specifics might be different, the types of Hell and Heaven and the such… But the overalls are the same. If I break those laws for a handful of points on the mortal level, those points would be nullified making trying to trick the system pointless." Whis postured. "Not to worry though, there would be few mortals on Earth capable of challenging your raw Saiyan power."
"You're saying there are actually worthy challengers!?" Chayote got all excited.
"I am beginning to think you are a very selective listener…" Whis lamented.
Chayote's face turned serious for a moment. She stepped up on her toes and glared right back at Whis' eyes. Given how scared everybody was of this blue rod of a person, he must have been pretty strong, but Chayote was not stepping up to his strength. She was about to challenge his planning.
"Yo, you do know what I'm gonna do when I go down there though, right?" Chayote muttered, she did not yell or thunder it out like she usually did in her utmost honesty. She spoke in a calm and reserved manner though everybody in the room could hear her. "I'm a Saiyan soldier, born and raised. You send me down to that planet, I'll wipe it clean and prepare it for sale when Lord Frieza eventually does land down there."
"Well…" Whis shrugged before slamming the bottom end of his staff at the ground. "Do what you will. The mortal levels of that planet are entirely unremarkable. I will not lie saying that we shall not feel the loss of that planet but, compared to the multiplier of two C-Type Saiyans existing simultaneously, those are acceptable losses. With this much death on your hands, however, Chayote, are you sure you want to find yourself standing right here, in front of King Enma, I wonder…"
"L-Lord W-Whis!" a croaky, feminine voice distracted Chayote from the serious moment she felt like she was having and the personal reflections that the moment invited from within her. A defining and blunt thud with a crunchy aftertaste followed the old hag's declaration of shock. "A-And you too…" Baba pointed at Kibito.
"Yeah… A real sit-on-a-sheet-of-sandpaper kind of workday." King Enma slammed his colossal fist against his table with a lofty sigh.
"It is very convenient that you have joined us, Ms…" Whis was about to finish that sentence while Fortuneteller Baba clung back onto her flying fortunetelling orb but then the old crone fell off once more, this time, however, she picked herself up with almost supernatural vigor and screamed out loud to deafen out the entire room.
"Speak my real name and I will slap you, won't care that you're the attendant of a God of Destruction!" Baba sunk the entire room in her dusty cacophony of drowning cats.
"Oh… Well… I do not have too much time to spend here. I am keeping Lord Beerus under a very tight leash for at least the next fifty years, if he wakes up while I am away, he might destroy something important again. Please handle this mortal's resurrection, Ms. Baba." Whis tapped the floor of the King Enma's palace with his staff only for a beam of light to envelop him and whizz him away to where Chayote could no longer as much as sniff him.
"Well, well… Your halo's gone…" King Enma grinned, looking somewhat glad that he was getting rid of a potential troublemaker Saiyan and relaying him to Earth. The final part may have seemed like a potential signal for worry but Enma must have been more of a short-term-thinking kind of guy as he looked more overjoyed than ominous.
"Huh? Halo!? My halo's gone! I had a halo? My halo's gone! Well, I guess it doesn't matter if I hadn't noticed it…" Chayote lost all sense of shit before erupting into laughter.
"If it is all the same, I would rather assist the Supreme Kai in repairing Heaven. My presence in the ritual might take away a good hundred and thirty years off of the process." Kibito bowed his head up to the chin in front of King Enma, more of solidarity than subordination as he outranked everyone else in the palace.
"Hey, wait!" Chayote turned back mid-way to Fortuneteller Baba's wheezing and hyperventilating presence. Kibito froze in mid-transportation, King Enma directed his attention to Chayote from his roof-reaching piles of files, even Fortuneteller Baba stopped fussing over having just met an angel and stared at Chayote in anticipation of the earth-shaking question the newly revived had to shoot.
"How come I resurrected with my slacks and not my Saiyan armor?" Chayote wondered, knocking everyone out flat.
"U-Unbelievable…" King Enma sighed. With these hopeless eyes, it felt like he could no longer muster the willpower to look at a file for a good hour to come.
"What an imbecile…" Kibito shook his head before being enveloped in a gleam of light similar to a localized star and once the light faded away, the attendant of the Supreme Kai had disappeared too.
"This way, child…" Fortuneteller Baba led Chayote by pressing her tiny hand against the girl's back.
"How did she resurrect in different clothes though?" a red ogre clerk asked the blue one, finding the strength in one of his arms to maintain the entire pile of paperwork while the other fixed his glasses.
"It is obvious, it was her head that regenerated the rest of the body, heads are fickle in what they remember, especially after an execution like that. It is not at all uncommon for beheaded people that keep their bodies to resurrect in their underwear." The blue know-it-all looked quite smug and excited about answering this question for his less experienced colleague.
King Enma shook his head without losing the attention of the files and the incoming flow of spirits that flooded his palace once the clog in the flawless machine cleared out.
"Welcome to Earth!" a tall, swampy-green, shriveled deity smiled to Chayote after the teenage Saiyan walked out from a beaming gate located entirely within one of the thousands of different doors littering the white corridor.
"Are you an attendant to some God too?" Chayote pointed her finger at the towering creep before Fortuneteller Baba smacked her hand for being rude.
"No, stupid, that's me. Mr. Popo." A short and plump, black as tar demigod declared while raising his hand up. "Kami is Earth's Guardian."
"Oh… That's good, 'cause I was beginning to feel like there're all too many Gods around the place. If everyone's a big, bad God and so self-important, us boring, little folk are in a whole lot of trouble trying to make up to all of them." Chayote shrugged after rolling her face to the side in self-reflection. While she tried to convince herself that nothing had changed, truthfully, she had just seen the answer to one of the most pressing questions of the Universe and that sort of experience changed people.
If Chayote had kept closer attention, perhaps she would have noticed the subtle smirk covering Kami's face. Then again, it was so easy to confuse it with the countless wrinkles of his old grape-like face.
"Well, I'm off, I've got business to run." Fortuneteller Baba cleared her throat. "Because of this freeloader, I failed to reel in a single fighter today…"
"Thank you, Baba, you do know how important this business is, right?" Kami left his eyes brimming with hope as he followed the psychic woman leave through the door to the left of the door she had entered alongside Chayote through without answering the question.
"So, what do you intend on doing with your second chance at life?" Kami turned to Chayote who was no longer where he had just seen her. It took a fair amount of time for the shock of having lost one of the two most important people to keep alive to sustain the existence of the entire universe to set in with the old Guardian.
With a hasty step, Kami had moved outside the endless corridors of his outlook and out from the shadows of his palace located atop of it and into the light. The teenage Saiyan was standing right in the middle of his round outlook and stared at the sky when Kami and Mr. Popo joined her.
"The sky's blue on this planet!" Chayote grinned with childish glee all the way from staring at the cerulean sky to turning to Kami who was doing his best to calm his old, racing heart.
"I would like to train you, Chayote. If you are to have another go at life, may as well polish your mind, body, and soul here and enjoy life to the fullest." Kami extended his hand for a shake.
"All this…" Chayote turned away and looked somewhere at the horizon which she could not see because of high up the Kami Outlook was. "I have lived my entire life as a soldier. Trained to eradicate life and prepare planets for conquest. Well… I was supposed to be trained that way but… Turns out I was not, not entirely. Now I don't know what I am or what I'm supposed to do. When I think about it, dying would have been easier."
"How unexpectedly deep. So what are you planning on doing? Just kill everybody in your sight until there is nothing left to oppose you or the other Saiyans once they find this planet?" Kami raised an eyebrow. His voice sounded grim, Chayote could identify a brewing conflict and in this state of confusion and stiffness, she would rather not have fought this planet's Guardian.
"Whis said something about there being creatures on this planet stronger than me currently. I will be fulfilling my purpose as a soldier, yes, but first I need to make sure that I do it in the right order. I will not be eradicating the life on this planet, not until I am sure that I can do it and that I deserve the mantle of a soldier I want to reclaim." Chayote declared while looking the Guardian way up in the eyes.
Kami closed his eyes and was in the process of contemplating something deep inside. Then, something snapped, all of a sudden, the shriveled green entity knew exactly what it wanted to do so it turned to walk away back into his palace.
"You should be famished. I do not eat at all and yet Mr. Popo feels obliged to make something delicious once in a while. I will bring you something fine he has made this morning." Kami spoke with a strict tone, his face only half-turned to Chayote as, for some reason, he could not bear looking her in the eyes.
"Great! I do feel a bit stiff after the whole death and rebirth deal!" Chayote raised her hands up with a hint of sluggishness plaguing them still. While Kami disappeared into the shadows of his temple, the teenage Saiyan approached the edge of the outlook to examine the seemingly impossible height that it was in. On Earth, it felt like she was experiencing everything around her for the first time…
A powerful thud and a throbbing pain in her buttocks were all that Chayote felt before the great plummeting down below. While the teenage Saiyan did her best to turn around and shake her fist at the sky temple she was cast out from, she could make out the black and almost a tad malicious figure of Mr. Popo with his leg half-raised, not at all ashamed of having kicked Chayote off the tower.
"What have you done, Mr. Popo?" Kami grunted with a jar of sake with the kanji of "Great Devil Seal" inscribed on it.
"This girl deserves neither your training nor your sacrifice." Mr. Popo looked down at where he had just kicked Chayote off to. His creepy smile was satisfied even more once he saw the tiny bling of light down at the bottom.