"God's attendant? What is going on here?" Muten Roshi demanded some more answers from this mysterious, black genie who floated in front of him on a magic carpet and denied them the opportunity to subdue Demon King Piccolo.
"You might not understand this but… Kami-sama is linked to Demon King Piccolo – if there is no more Demon King Piccolo, there is no more Kami-sama. Kami-sama was ready to make that sacrifice but I was not. I scooped up Demon King Piccolo before the martial artists could finish him off but it seems like he's given me the slip by leaving a double on my carpet and jumping off." Mr. Popo explained.
A bolt of lightning struck the seven Dragon Balls, making them emit a powerful radiance around them that then burst forth and began coiling into the sky, taking the form of a titanic Divine Dragon. While the beam of light rose up into the sky, breaking through the gloomy clouds and skewering them like a needle moving through the cloth it was sewing on, the dragon's appearance was yet to solidify and become final.
"We must stop him from using the Dragon Balls, ask the Divine Dragon to destroy the Demon King before he regains his full power!" Muten Roshi pleaded with Mr. Popo but the ever-indifferent genie just shook his head.
"No. The Demon King is of no danger to me even in his full power. If the Divine Dragon fulfills your wish and destroys the Demon King, Kami-sama will die as well and then the Dragon Balls will disappear forever. That is something I cannot allow to happen." Mr. Popo declared. "I would allow you to seal him, can you use the Mafuba?"
"I can but not from this position, I will miss my jar. The wave is quite turbulent and I would only have one shot." Muten Roshi admitted. "Even from your magic carpet… It doesn't look like I'd be able to pull it off."
"In that case, stay still and watch." Mr. Popo smiled to Muten Roshi. "As Kami-sama's attendant, I will make sure that Kami-sama stays alive and strong."
"You wretched martial artists, before I regain the limitless power I had in my youth, I'll make sure to destroy you all!" the Demon King's eyes turned red as he turned for Launch who was floating on a dislodged platform of ice, halfway submerged in freezing water. Muten Roshi only saw a flash of burgundy and black, before he could register what had happened, Mr. Popo was in front of Launch with his mouth open and gobbled King Piccolo's eye-beam down like it was a tasty treat of poultry.
"Tsk… You insufferable dog…" Demon King Piccolo grumbled but looked up at the still forming Divine Dragon. He knew that Mr. Popo was not someone he could have messed with even in the absolute prime of his strength, it was one of the reasons why he never tried forcefully absorbing Kami back into his body and becoming much more powerful back in the day.
"I might have endangered these people by letting you run rampant, Demon King Piccolo, Kami-sama would be sad if I let you do as you please. I cannot destroy you without killing Kami-sama too so I will not be doing that but I will protect these innocent people from you." Mr. Popo pointed his finger at the Demon King. "Now, do as you will and begone."
The Demon King grit his fangs for a moment. He looked back up at the Divine Dragon who had completed his transformation and now leaned in on down from the gloomy night's sky closer to his summoner. The Demon King had always thought he knew for certain what he would ask for the Dragon Balls to accomplish but, now that he actually had them in his control, he wasn't so sure anymore.
"Now, state your wish!" the Divine Dragon demanded to know.
He could have asked for anything. The Demon King pondered on what it was best to ask for before he heard the voice of Muten Roshi rising in the distance. That ancient martial artist meant to ask the Divine Dragon to destroy the Demon King like the deceitful serpent that he was! Luckily for the Demon King, even when in his current crippled state, he was still faster…
"Make me and Kami whole again with me in control!" The Demon King demanded of the Divine Dragon. Mr. Popo's gaze widened in shock, switching from his usual cold and strict glare he used for all matters that did not concern Kami.
"W-What? He didn't ask for his youth restored?" Muten Roshi expressed a fair bit of surprise of his own.
"A simple matter…" the Dragon declared and his eyes gleamed with a red spark. An outburst of azure aura burst from all around the Demon King as his body brimmed with newly gained power. The tyrannical King of the Evil Clan straightened out his back and flexed his muscles, still covered with a swampy shade of green skin. After fulfilling Demon King Piccolo's wish, the Eternal Dragon turned to stone in an instant and crumbled away, pelted by the harsh northern blizzards while the Dragon Balls turned to useless spheres of stone.
"Th-This is…" Mr. Popo's eyes teared up. "Horrible…"
The Demon King erupted into a mad fit of laughter, expelling all of his evil overjoy out at once and, for the first time since clashing with the martial artists and returning from his imprisonment in the rice cooker, feeling truly triumphant and happy.
"Heh… Now what will you say, you detestable genie? Didn't expect this, did you? I guess now you'll have to serve me!?" the Demon King once again erupted in unbridled laughter, appearing to have almost gone mad of power and joy together.
"It's… All over…" Muten Roshi slumped on the glacial platform, shaking it up and very nearly throwing Bulma and Oolong into the freezing waters under it. "The Demon King will rule the world again…"
"It's not the worst-case scenario yet…" Bulma pointed out. "Look at his body, he's still absurdly old, isn't he? The Divine Dragon did nothing to give him back his youth. He just pumped him full of Kami's power."
"What good will him dying of old age in a hundred years be when we'll be long dead by then!?" Oolong pulled on his ears. "Hey, you, genie! You will still protect us, right?"
"K-Kami-sama is… Gone…" Mr. Popo muttered to himself, unsure of what he was meant to do now.
"Great, he broke Mr. Popo…" Oolong wrapped his arms around his chest, feeling freezing even when wearing his green winter jacket and an ushanka.
The eyes of the Demon King gleamed with a red spark, the entire glacial region blew up in a chain of explosions extending in a crescent shape wherever the Demon King directed his glare. When the smoke settled down and the downpour of water that Piccolo's explosion raised finished, the gloom in the sky that the appearance of the Divine Dragon cleared up, there was only a magical carpet with a frozen in place Mr. Popo standing still.
"Well, best of luck tending to the God's Temple and serving as the replacement Kami to you, lapdog. I have a feeling you'll be looking for a replacement for a long time to come!" Demon King Piccolo declared before laughing to his heart's content one last time and rising up into the sky. "Now, if you excuse me, my old body doesn't have forever to enjoy my undisputed reign over the world so I'm on a bit of a schedule, you see!"
Demon King Piccolo took off at incredible speed, rushing about as fast as it would have been suitable to an Evil Tribe demon royalty that was in a hurry to enact its iron grip over the world and establish his new world order and produce offspring that would be more powerful than ever and more than capable of maintaining Demon King Piccolo's rule after he passes away. It somehow felt right, after the ruthless deaths that the martial artist filth gave to his children, that those very same offspring would one day rule the world in King Piccolo's stead…
"Something's up ahead…" Yamcha yelled out at Tenshinhan after he noticed a signature on the jet's radar. It could have been something as ordinary as a larger dinosaur or another aircraft but the creature wasn't moving at all. Almost as if… It was waiting for them.
"That Ki!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth, "Even I can sense it from here!"
The jet drifted in mid-air to stop in time and Tenshinhan stopped as well, respecting the distance between the two martial artists and the enemy that floated in their path – the Demon King Piccolo. Something was off, however, both Yamcha and Tenshinhan could see that. This Demon King Piccolo looked similar to how he did back during their first meeting but he didn't have any scars or signs of injury from earlier. Even more, he looked confident as ever to be meeting Tenshinhan and Yamcha on the battlefield despite being soundly beaten before.
"So you really have survived!" Yamcha pointed at the Demon King, almost as if accusing him of some crime. "We don't have any time to waste with you, our friends are collecting the Dragon Balls and they're going to ask the Divine Dragon to destroy you so if you want to stay alive, move out of our way!"
The Demon King couldn't help but smile. Without uttering a word and reveling in how clueless these soon to be dead-men were. He breathed that glee in and out a few more times before his revelry was interrupted by the three-eyed bother before him.
"Didn't you hear us? If you die – Kami dies so we will keep you alive but we've got no time to beat you around again and cause Kami any more pain! Move!" Tenshinhan demanded with a vein popping out on the top of the martial artist's bald head.
"Oh? Your friends, you say?" Demon King Piccolo broke the silence that Yamcha found exceptionally creepy. "So scary…" the Demon King took a fighting pose and prepared to take the two on in mid-air. He could recall one of these two being a poor mid-air combatant, that was unfortunate but it wasn't like any of these two would have been capable of giving him a good fight anyway.
"Tsk. We've no time for this!" Tenshinhan grunted and put his hands up and formed the Kikoho sign with them. "I'll take you out with one blast, it will hurt Kami-sama but it will save him too! Kikoho!"
A blinding beam of light covered the entire battlefield, a roaring Kikoho of previously unseen intensity swallowed up the Demon King entirely and drowned the darkness of his shadowy shape out with its radiating might. Once the blast settled down and the smoke cleared out, the Demon King just dusted his gi that didn't even have a single scratch on it.
"What in the world… Was that meant to be?" the Demon King smiled, knowing full-well the fear that this show of his new might would inspire in these martial artist scumbags that very nearly came to finishing him off before.
Oh, how sweet was the look on their faces, the realization that their enemy was now many times more powerful than ever before and the absolute cluelessness as to how that was possible. One of them or both of them must have wondered about the Demon King having fulfilled his wish but he didn't look like he was young and in the prime of his strength. This confusion, this lack of understanding of why they were now just insects to be smashed to pieces by the lord of the Evil Tribe was the sweetest of all, worth the time that Demon King Piccolo would waste snuffing this chaff out.
"Your friends…" Demon King Piccolo spoke up before his body disappeared completely and his elbow smashed Tenshinhan's jaw to pieces, with the Demon King having moved up and covered the distance between the two in an instant. "Are all dead now."
King Piccolo threw a pair of wayward strikes to finish Tenshinhan off but there was still fight in the broken martial artist, enough so to evade them but not the grab of Demon King's elongated arm that pulled him in and then swung and released him to smash right into Yamcha jet. The jet kept on spinning and letting out bleeps of alarm as it threatened to crash into one of the barren islands of a frozen tundra archipelago below.
Just barely Yamcha managed to straighten the jet out and crash it in a way that would not result in the jet's explosion to heated bars and pieces of iron and great balls of fire and he crawled out from the jet with the battered Tenshinhan still in his clutch. The two stared up at the flying dread above them that continued to stare down at them from up above, hoping that what they've heard earlier wasn't true. That maybe they've heard something wrong, somehow…
"It feels almost too good to let you two join them now. Maybe absorbing Kami again made me weak at heart, filled me with that useless mercy of his…" Demon King Piccolo tapped his elongated finger to his heart so hard that he ripped his gi in the middle with it. "Oh well, you can carry that mercy of mine all the way down to Hell!"
The eyes of the Demon King lit up crimson, blasting the entire archipelago to bits and pieces and reducing it to nothing together with anyone unlucky enough to have been located down there at the time of the explosion. Observing the smoldering ashes and the forming roaring whirlpools of frozen water down below, the Demon King then continued his directed flight right to the Central City, the capital of the world.
"Heh… It's just lucky enough for me that taking over the world is as simple as killing one King, saves an old man some time before he has to kick the bucket…" the Demon King declared to himself before laughing it up again and darting off towards the Central City with all of his newly found speed.
The trace of evil Ki all the way up north began trailing back to the south. Chayote found that curious, expanding the range of how far she could sense Ki and trying to feel up the signatures of someone like Muten Roshi, strong people whom she should have been able to pick up but they were simply not there anymore. Neither was Chiaotzu. This development made the Saiyan to stop in her tracks.
"Huh, what's wrong?" Goku wondered, approaching Chayote on his Kinto, Krillin mirrored that from the other side atop of his Dark Kinto.
"Muten Roshi's Ki, I can't pick it up anymore. Chiaotzu's Ki is gone too. Demon King Piccolo has been close to them and now he's moving back to the south-west. I think he's homing in on a pair of strong Ki coming from the direction of the Sacred Land of Korin." Chayote explained. Her Ki Sense ability was nowhere near as honed as it could have been, she wasn't yet able to precisely tell whose Ki she was sensing unless the Ki was so foul that it could have only belonged to someone like Demon King Piccolo nor could she sense Ki too far away unless it was enlightened in a way by a much more prominent signature as she could barely sense Muten Roshi and Chiaotzu earlier before Demon King Piccolo approached them and made their Ki more defined in the presence of his signature.
"Wh-What does that mean? You can't possibly be saying that…" Krillin freaked out. He dreaded the possibility of Muten Roshi, Chiaotzu and the rest being subjected to the same kind of fate that he had to experience for just a little while. There were no more Free Return Tickets, after all.
"Not necessarily," Chayote shrugged. "I couldn't really pick them up too good earlier either, not until Demon King Piccolo got really close to them. But now they're… Gone… There's just nothing."
A flash of black and burgundy confused everyone around, Mr. Popo riding a magical carpet appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the three, facing Chayote and in-between Goku and Krillin atop of their flying clouds. The thing that had cast Chayote down the God's Temple all this time ago had finally shown itself but… By now Chayote had long since gotten over wanting to torture him slowly and kill him for the disgrace that this thing made her go through. Now she just wanted to be done with Earth and leave to meet her destiny as part of the Frieza Army again. It just would have been so much better if Goku came with her…
"Something terrible has happened. I need you three to come with me…" Mr. Popo declared and wrapped his hands around Krillin and Goku. "Jump onto my carpet." He invited Chayote as well.
"No way…" Chayote shook her head. "I still hate your guts. Not enough to straight out murder your face but too much to sign up for your magic carpet ride."
"Suit yourself, whatever you do – don't fight Demon King Piccolo now. You can't die, no matter what happens." Mr. Popo warned Chayote before his magic carpet popped out of existence and blasted off to the God's Temple. To Chayote it almost seemed as if Mr. Popo's carpet took Goku and Krillin all the way to Sacred Land of Korin in an instant.
"So now you'll be telling me what to do, huh?" Chayote pressed her hands by her hips, raising an eyebrow and feeling all-around challenged by the warning of the genie. "We'll see about that!" her face turned serious as she took off at the direction of Demon King Piccolo, to be further corrected as the Evil Tribe scumbag fixes his destination.
It was about time they'd meet face-to-face with the bastard that postponed her the journey to space and cost her the Free Return Ticket.