A palace stood in the margin of a wide lake comprising a cross-shaped network of square constructions that hosted small service facilities and a round patch of grass hosting a fighting ring that led further into the main palace. Despite the impressive size of the building complex, there still was a queue of people waiting for their divination outside of the palace. The bunch of fighters queued up looked rough and strong, but anyone capable of sensing Ki would've been able to rule them out as a viable threat to anyone familiar with the grander world of martial arts.
Vegeta's boots landed on the ground and without hesitating, the King of Saiyans began pacing toward the entrance. The spiky-haired warrior only gave the gathered bunch of fighters a stern and dismissive passing glare and the queue of bruisers, wrestlers, and martial artists of all sorts didn't notice the Saiyan royalty making a fool out of them by stepping in front of them in the line at first.
"Hey, just what the heck do you think you're doing?" one of them finally noticed, which led to the rest getting unruly too and breaking the line to shake their fists up in the air and get up in Vegeta's face.
"I don't have the time to mess with small-fry like you. All of you come at me at once," Vegeta pulled his hands out from the crossed position and lowered them while staring the largest one of the fighters stepping up to him right in the eyes.
"I'd rather you not mangle my clientele, King Vegeta," a senile croak came from inside of the entryway to the first palace building of the complex overseen by a Ghost Usher. Reacting to that voice, the Ghost Usher moved to the side without dropping his creepy smile while the warriors all gasped and grunted, turning to face the other interloper that came from inside the palace.
An old and weathered crone wearing a generic witch outfit and a tall and pointy hat, with shoulder-long pink hair, floated out sitting on a large crystal ball and approached the conflict zone with a cackle. Vegeta turned to the old woman with an apathetic glint. It wasn't like him to hate crushing weaklings and relieving some stress on crude assholes standing in his way, but Vegeta truly felt a speck of gratitude that the woman greeted him personally and didn't have him plow through her entire queue of clients just this once.
"I take it you're Fortuneteller Baba?" Vegeta asked, though his tone implied it to be rhetorical. "You definitely look like a "baba"…"
"Of all the…!" Fortuneteller Baba nearly slipped off her ball in outrage, struggling to crawl back toward the center and into a zone where she could seat herself with proper balance. The Ghost Usher hovered up to the old crone and helped her by pushing her on her rear from behind. "I can't believe you're still so rude after spending several years with Bulma… Your poor wife…"
"This is Fortuneteller Baba!?" some warriors that have never actually met the woman wondered, pointing fingers at the old witch and looking baffled by her meek appearance.
"Come inside, King Vegeta, with the perspective of being able to see into the future, I've seen your arrival coming and I won't waste your time because of it," Fortuneteller Baba turned around on her crystal ball and began floating toward the entry into the palace and deeper into the palace complex.
"Hmph…" Vegeta sneered before crossing his arms and following the old witch. The brawlers stacked up outside the palace could seethe and shake their fists all they wanted, but they saw firsthand that Fortuneteller Baba made a special case out of the Saiyan king.
"Say, Fortuneteller Baba called that guy King Vegeta, didn't she?" a brawler with a karate gi equipped with a black belt wondered, scratching his brawny head.
"She did…" a sumo wrestler nodded.
"That's the King of Saiyans, isn't he?" the karateka added.
"You might be right. If that's the case, we might be lucky that she pulled that guy off of us. I've heard that Saiyans are troublesome knuckleheads. Didn't they attack the Earth and almost took it over with their army of green plant monsters a few years back?" the sumo wrestler brought up.
"So, you wish to see your father in Hell, don't you?" Fortuneteller Baba chuckled to herself, looking thoroughly entertained by this development.
"That's right, I need to talk to him and set some things clear. Kami Upa said that you can make that happen," Vegeta nodded. The two walked across completely black corridors sunken in shadows that didn't seem to have a clear beginning or an end and just slithered on and on, completely defying laws of physics or common sense given the outline of the building complex Vegeta saw outside. Only occasionally white light gleamed from spaces to Vegeta's right where long windows illuminated the place, but he could see nothing through them, only eye-raking white light.
"I can. Though I'm curious why he'd send you to me when he himself could have easily arranged that," Fortuneteller Baba wondered.
"Why? Can't you look into that crystal ball and tell that?" Vegeta raised an eyebrow.
"I cannot spy on beings more powerful than me. God's Tower is shielded with powerful magical wards. I could predict you coming here and asking me to see your father but I couldn't make out your conversation with Kami Upa," Fortuneteller Baba explained before entering a stuffy, dome-shaped divination chamber filled with room plants, bookstands and equipped with a weathered and round wooden table down in the middle of the room.
"He said he's busy putting together defense against Broly when he shows up and obliterates the Earth," Vegeta crossed his arms and looked to the side, clearly aggravated to talk about Broly.
"Yes, I can't see the conclusion to that battle in my crystal ball, but I can sense that this request of yours is vital to its outcome. Without it, our galaxy might not survive unscathed…" the old crone sprayed spit to the side by stuffing her tongue in her open lips and pushing air and spit out through blowing force. "To think that I'd have to act like the big hero in arranging something like that. Disgusting. Oh well, at least I'll be getting something useful out of it…"
"Kami Upa said you'd want something for it, spit it out, witch!" Vegeta demanded Fortuneteller Baba state her conditions with a sense of haste in his tone.
"All I want for arranging this meeting is your body, King Vegeta," Fortuneteller Baba chortled.
"My body?" Vegeta's left eyebrow twitched while he leaned back in discomfort, visibly taken aback. "Don't tell me you intend on puppeteering it as Captain Ginyu did with my father…"
"No such thing," Fortuneteller Baba waved her hand in front of her nose. "Why would I take over your body when I'm clearly living the best life as a total cutie? What I meant is that I want your body after your death. Normally, when someone dies, their soul passes on to the Other World, but they lose their body in the process. Kami or other divine beings can override this process and help the dead keep their bodies after death. This is something similar. After you die–your body becomes my property and I get to keep it."
"I don't think I get it, elaborate, witch," Vegeta gritted his teeth, knowing full well that he had little time until Broly bolted halfway across the universe and began wreaking havoc in their space district. The fortuneteller's conditions just felt vague yet strangely important, thus Vegeta had to know the exact implications of what he was getting himself into.
"There's not much to explain. I thought you were in a hurry. After you die–I take control over your body while your soul passes on to the Other World, and inevitably gets cast down to Hell, where it is redeemed and washed away from its evil, then reincarnated. Meanwhile, I get to keep your body as an empty shell and I get to stuff other souls inside it to be used as I see fit. Previously, I borrowed dead bodies of impressive martial artists for one day, I'm looking to shift up that business model by merely borrowing spirits that I place inside bodies of incredible martial artists, this way, I'll get an unparalleled guarantee that my fighters will never lose another fight while I get to re-use my strongest fighters instead of working with what is available," Fortuneteller Baba rubbed her wrinkled hands together.
"Fine," Vegeta grumbled. "You can have my body after I'm dead."
"I'm afraid I'll need something more than just your word, King Vegeta," Fortuneteller Baba spat in her hand. Cold sweat passed down the back of Vegeta's spine in disgust as the old crone extended her hand for a shake. Some odd, ethereal mist hovered from the palm of her soiled hand. Shaky and hesitant, Vegeta spat in his own hand and shook it with Baba, who began chuckling in delight after the deal was sealed.
"Excellent!" she clapped ecstatically. "I knew you would see reason. Now, how about we go to meet that father of yours?"
"Just how long is this going to take?" Vegeta sneered at Fortuneteller Baba and an office clerk ogre who would've looked like an unimpressive salaryman if it weren't for his blue skin and horns sticking out from the top of his head.
"We are taking an escalator to Hell, King Vegeta…" Fortuneteller Baba noted.
"Do we have to take the escalator, though?" Vegeta seethed, crossing his arms and turning around. "And do we need this dweeb accompanying us?"
"That is rude, sir," the office clerk ogre pointed out while cushioning the rail of the down-heading escalator that seemed to extend diagonally hellward for boundless kilometers. "This is the official hallway to Hell for spectators. When your bunch usually mess around with the Other World, they find unorthodox entryways to Hell and make heaps of trouble, so King Enma insisted on you taking the right way to Hell this time that the Other World staff uses."
"Don't worry about the clerk, Vegeta. Once we ride down to Hell, I've arranged for an old friend of mine to guide us around so we can ditch this guy," Fortuneteller Baba leaned closer to Vegeta to mumble to his ear at which point the Saiyan royalty just rolled his eyes.
"This is taking forever. Broly will destroy all four galaxies at the time it'll take us to roll down to Hell at this rate…" Vegeta grumbled, grabbing hold of the rail and looking overboard down to countless colorful marbles that looked almost like candy except much larger.
"Hell is a vast space that measures in metaphysical infinity and can theoretically fit inside countless personal Hells. Each cursed spirit is sent to their own personal Hell, which exists as a pocket dimension here…" the clerk pointed out by pointing at the floating candy-like mass over their heads. "Without my aid, you'd never find the right Hell of the right person…"
"You mean they're stuffed inside that blob for all eternity? I guess that feels uncomfortable…" Vegeta looked up where countless colorful candy-like drops floated in the sky. Fitting inside one of those things would've felt like being confined inside of a single room one's entire life.
"Oh no, these are all physically infinite in space when looking from the inside. Personal Hells only look this way when observed from the Cosmic Escalator from the outside…" the ogre pointed out, looking chipper that his guests finally found the use of his knowledge and skills.
"Some dirty witchcraft…" Vegeta cursed, closing his eyes and gnashing his teeth together.
A loud wing flap made Vegeta open his eyes and turn toward the direction of the noise. Before his eyes, a pale-blue demon clad in a deep-blue bodysuit and showing off two devilish horns from both sides of his head emerged, holding a black fork in his hands. Despite his devilish appearance, the flying fiend with bat-like wings had a visible halo gleaming over his head.
"Devil Man!" Fortuneteller Baba chuckled, reacting to the appearance of her old familiar.
"I'll take it over from here," Devil Man struck a flashy pose in front of the ogre clerk, who just sighed. Waving his hand on the other side outside of the escalator, the clerk dispelled a shroud of lemon-colored fog to reveal a sideways escalator that was going the exact opposite direction and vaulted over the rails of one escalator to head up.
"That halo… You're dead, aren't you?" Vegeta pointed at the most pressing detail about the emerging fiend that he noticed.
"Yeah, but I find all personal Hells I'm condemned to like a pleasant vacation, so King Enma doesn't know what to do with me. He said that he'll banish any other Demon Realm denizens that pass away to Paradise once they restored it, because a pleasant vacation in Paradise sounds like hell to us," Devil Man explained while calmly following the escalator. "For now, they just made me assist with torturing other denizens of Hell, which used to be my personal Paradise, but then the monotony sort of ruined it. Never make your hobby your job, it just loses its splendor after a while…"
"So can you take me to King Vegeta III or not?" Vegeta shook his fist out in front of him as a threat to the talkative demon.
"Right, right… Your old man… I actually helped arrange his personal Hell so I know where it is. Come with me, you two…" Devil Man extended his hand to Fortuneteller Baba who took it and let the demon place her on his back while scooping up her crystal ball under his armpit. Vegeta hovered off the escalator and followed Devil Man using his flight.
A purple anthropomorphic cat with bright yellow eyes and tall, pointed ears yawned into his feline hand while playfully waggling his tail out in front of him. A muscular violet-skinned alien with two horns on both sides of his head, dressed like an Earthling construction worker, was running around with a wheelbarrow carrying building materials, mixing cement, and performing other menial construction jobs right in front of the relaxed purple anthropomorphic cat who rested in a beach chair with a cocktail in his hand.
"Hey, Vegeta, why don't you build me a house of cards, as high up as you can!" the purple anthropomorphic cat yawned again before cupping both his hands to his feline mouth and yelling out to the overworked purple alien. Scrambling over himself, the horned purple alien rushed to his master and collapsed on his hands and knees.
"Beerus-sama! I… I thought we are in a rush to rebuild Paradise as soon as we can…" King Vegeta III panted out while kneeling in front of the God of Destruction.
"You thought? You sure are one of the dumber damned souls, aren't you, Vegeta? That's why you should leave the thinking to me. Now…" the purple anthropomorphic cat extended his hand and formed a violet destructive energy sphere at the tip of his fingers, extending it to the terrified horned alien who scrambled and crawled backward, whining in terror like a dog after receiving a stiff kick to the ribs. "Build. Me. A. Card. House." Beerus said with intermittent pauses.
Loud wing flaps echoed in the distance. Both the damned King Vegeta and the God of Destruction looked up to the sky, looking surprised to see Devil Man and Fortuneteller Baba as well as King Vegeta IV swooping down to their approximate location.
"Vegeta? What's going on here?" King Vegeta III babbled out nearly voiceless because of the pressure of fear that permeated him and felt like someone had sat on his chest.
"Hmph… So as punishment for your deeds, you're cursed to be tortured inside of Captain Ginyu's body, huh?" Vegeta observed after meeting his father. "W-Wait…" the younger king turned to the God of Destruction, who stared at the guests to King Vegeta's personal Hell with a blank stare. "Y-You're… God of Destruction, Beerus?!"
"Oh, I'm actually not…" Beerus snapped his fingers, revealing himself to be a female ogre clerk transformed to look like God of Destruction Beerus to torture the damned denizen of Hell. "The real God of Destruction Beerus is busy rebuilding Paradise. Now I guess I'll have to come up with a new torture method…"
"As you can see, your father has been damned to live the rest of eternity in the body of his hated enemy, deprived of his Saiyan legacy, robbed of his people whom he no longer controls, removed from his boastful Vegeta bloodline, and treated as a worthless servant to the ogres and demons visiting him. Personal Hells adapt to the personality and worst nightmares of each of the damned…" Devil Man pointed out while turning to Vegeta. "I know your first instinct is to jump to your father's rescue, but…"
"Hmph… I don't care about that," Vegeta sneered at the demon. "I just want to talk to my father about something he did in his past. That's all. He lived his life the way he did, he probably deserved what's coming to him and what he got in the end."
"You… You really are my son, aren't you?" King Vegeta in Captain Ginyu's body muttered, waving his hand out in front of him. "You're not just another nightmare…"
"If I were, I'd probably pretend to love you and try to rescue you," Vegeta smirked on the left side of his face.
"I see, I believe you may be right. If this is a temporary pause in between my torture, a solace to my eyes, then ask what you will, son. I'd just like you to look around and realize that you may be headed toward this same fate as I am going to experience for whole eternity, so spare me your judgment," King Vegeta III replied.
"Maybe so," Vegeta IV closed his eyes in solemn acceptance. "In any case, I want you to tell me about Paragus and Broly, father."
"P-Paragus and Broly?" King Vegeta IV gasped in shock. "How did you come to learn those names? You couldn't have burrowed in the archives for no reason unless they've finally returned with the ambition to take over."
"Tell me!" Vegeta IV exclaimed with a threatening glare directed at his father. "Did you kill babies of Saiyans that showed more potential than me? Those that would have surpassed us and had the battle power to take the crown from us?"
King Vegeta III stopped with a blank look and sighed. "I had no need to. In our entire history, for as long as I've been on the throne before that lapdog Ginyu killed me, Broly was the only case of a baby surpassing your potential."
"In that case… Paragus lied to me… Or you're lying to me right now! Damn it! I wouldn't put it beside either of you to lie!" Vegeta clenched his fists with a mean look, seething in the wrath of being unable to untangle the web of lies and ambition that he found himself stuck in. His father's hand pressed against Vegeta's shoulder, calming him down.
"Look at me, my son. I'm in Hell, killed by the lapdog of my worst enemy, my body and my people stolen from me, made to sell out their legacy and way of life to that snake, Frieza! Despite that, I know I am cursed for an eternity of torture here, to be treated as a slave and everything I've ever been as a person turned on me and pitted against me… What reason do I have to lie to you, son?" King Vegeta III pointed out looking absolutely pitiful, weary of the abuse, the emotional and psychological torture he's faced over the years down in his own personal Hell.
"Maybe you're right," Vegeta said. "Then tell me everything. Tell me everything about Paragus and Broly. Tell me the truth."