Epilogue

A figure appeared amidst the rubble of the Grand Mazoku's world and looked around at the damage. It was even more severe than she'd expected. It couldn't even be called a planet anymore. More like an asteroid field. Still, it didn't really matter. This had been Malchio's world, and Malchio was gone. It was only fitting his world went with him.

Closing her eyes she held an arm out in front of her, hand open, and a second later her palm began to glow. The glow spread outward from her hand slowly at first, but at an ever increasing pace. As it made contact with the remains of the destroyed planet they, too, began to glow. Even as she focused on the magic she was working her mind drifted back to her return to Makai and how she now found herself where she was.

The South Mazoku had expressed her... annoyance at yet another interruption as soon as the trio had arrived at her home. Though Paine could tell she'd also been relieved that Quietus had been stopped. The Mazoku had also clearly been intrigued by Dabura's idea, turning a Demon into a Mazoku, but was skeptical they could do it. She and Dabura had talked it out for hours, trying to find some means of achieving their goal, but kept running into the same issues.

What Quietus had done to the Demons who'd sided with him, the unknown magic he'd worked on them, had greatly increased their powers but it had not changed one key, fundamental, and vital fact about their natures. Demons, like the Oni of Shinkai, lacked souls. They were purely magical entities, born from the energy of Limbo. A Mazoku, on the other hand, required a soul. Without it they could not be bound to the Realm, could not invoke its power.

Creating a soul was impossible, even for the Mazoku King. Souls came from a higher power than he. And using an existing soul presented its own, rather wide, array of problems. There was no way they could be certain that any existing soul they used would not supplant Paine as the dominant entity within anything they created, and it was Paine that Dabura wanted as a Mazoku. Any other result and he may as well have just used Dark Ascension.

And so, though annoyed with the outcome, the South Mazoku had declared it impossible. No magics they worked could achieve what they wanted. They could not turn Paine into a new Grand Mazoku. So the three of them had left the South Mazoku behind and crossed into the Mortal Plane. Dabura had hoped to accomplish his goal on his own but, as he'd mentioned in Shinkai, he believed he knew another who could do it for him.

When they'd arrived on the Mortal world they had initially faced opposition to their presence. However, as soon as Dabura had introduced them the opposition had ended. The natives were willing, though only grudgingly, to assist them. And so it was, less than hour later, that the three of them had found themselves standing under black skies and gazing up at a massive, imposing, creature.

Paine had thought the one she had seen on the Grand Kai's world had been impressive, but it paled compared to the figure looming over them now. The body was covered in dark blue scales with a gray underbelly and began at ground level. There it emerged from seven glowing spheres before stretching skyward and looping around itself four, maybe five times, before the body angled downward again. This last portion was even thicker than the rest, widening outward into a massive torso and gigantic pair of arms. A large set of bat like wings also grew from its back, and they were currently spread out over them blotting out most of the darkened sky.

Topping it all off was probably the most intimidating face Paine had ever seen. It was reminiscent of the creature she'd seen only hours before, but with significant differences. Rather than a long snout it had what could only have been called a large black beak that seemed to be made of glossy bone. In fact, its entire face seemed to be wearing a mask of this same material, and from the top of the head spread a fan of bone and horns, like that of a triceratops. And while the being from Shinkai had gazed down at them with glowing red eyes, this one peered at them with eyes of solid glowing white.

"Your sacrifice is sufficient for one wish and one wish only." the creature's voice had boomed. "Speak it now and it shall be done."

The native that had been assisting them, the one who had summoned the Dragon that now hung over their heads, had then glanced back the group clearly waiting to be told the wish. According to him it had to be made in their native language, a precaution they used to limit access to the Dragon's power. Instead of speaking to the native, however, Dabura stepped forward and addressed the creature directly, surprising the native by speaking in his language.

"I am in need of a new Grand Mazoku." Dabura said. "I wish for the Demon with me, the one known as Paine, to become that new Grand Mazoku."

The Dragon locked its gaze on Dabura and stared at him for a few seconds before responding. "What you ask... shall be done." it said as its eyes began to glow. A moment later a red light engulfed Paine and she felt an odd tingling sensation passing through her body. It lasted only a moment and then both faded. When they did the Demon noticed her clothing had changed, she was now wearing the outfit of the Grand Mazoku.

"Your wish has been granted. Your tribute affords you no further favor and so I bid you farewell."

The Dragon had departed then, the Dragonballs scattering across the Mortal world. It had worked. The Dragon had achieved what Dabura and the South Mazoku could not. Paine was no longer a Demon, she was the new Grand Mazoku. She'd left the others to take care of their matters and had traveled to Limbo to deal with her own problems.

Opening her eyes again Paine relaxed and lowered her arm. The remains of Malchio's world were gone. Rather than put the world back together she'd used her new magics to remove it altogether. It had been a recreation of Malchio's home world from the Mortal Plane and she had no interest in ruling from it. So she had replaced it with a new world, one of her own creation. It was smaller than Malchio's had been, only about half the size, and rather than his sprawling palace she'd created a mansion similar to that of Zenryou's.

As she gazed out at her new world, her new home, she sensed the dead warriors of Limbo coming back to investigate, having scattered into the reaches of the Plane after the world's destruction. She ignored them for the moment, however, and turned her focus out toward the check-in stations. There she could sense Demons still spawning into existence, being created by the Realm at an incredible speed to replace those that had been lost.

Several billion had already been 'born' and thousands more were emerging every second. She'd need to enlist a small army of Clerics to handle the initial influx of information and reports while she settled in. Closing her eyes again she sent out a telepathic message to all the Demons in Limbo, calling all the Clerics to her world so they could get started. It would be months before things were back in proper order.

XXX

Shinkai, Planet Vegeta, Galactic Games Arena

The Supreme Kai and Grand Kai had used their powers to transport all living Mortals in Otherworld back to the Mortal Plane, to Planet Vegeta specifically. This, in itself, was not an issue. The issue came after their return, when the much smaller crowd allowed those present to more easily identify each other. Namely, once Autoro recovered from having seen Shenron, and then suddenly finding himself on another planet, he'd quickly spotted Mijima and Gainin.

The family reunion... did not go well. Autoro was still incensed from their last encounter, when they'd left him so badly injured his arm had been beyond saving. As soon as he'd spotted them he'd attempted to attack the pair. Of course, it hadn't worked. The punch he'd attempted to land to Mijima's face had connected, certainly, but it had not been her face that had broken. The sound of his hand shattering had gotten everyone else's attention.

The matter had been dealt with handily enough. While Autoro was on his knees holding his hand, howling in pain, Piccolo had moved up behind him and swiftly knocked him out once again. The man had than been locked up while everyone had moved on to bigger matters, though Gohan could tell the twins had been shaken by the experience. He couldn't even imagine what it had stirred up in them, having their past suddenly come back at them like that.

Still, everyone soon returned to the Sai-jin palace to get information on what work yet remained to be done in the Mortal Plane. They had soon discovered that shortly after their return to Planet Vegeta all the Demons in the Plane had... simply vanished. Even those in the midst of attacking the Sai-jin Palace. It seemed that the Grand Kai had been right, now that order in the Realm had been restored he had been able to invoke his magic to forcibly remove the Demons from where they didn't belong. What the Mazoku intended to do with them after that they didn't know, but they suspected it would not be pleasant.

So, instead of arranging to clean out Demons, they began arranging to clean up the damage. Some damage had apparently been undone by their earlier wish on Shenron. Reports had come in pretty quickly that North City on Earth had been inexplicably restored. The crater was gone and the buildings were standing once again. The assumption was that, as the crater had been created by the tear, Shenron had considered it part of the damage to the Realm by the instabilities. Likewise, the damage done to the Galactic Games Arena when the tear there had formed into a portal to Otherworld had been undone.

Still, a lot of damage remained to be dealt with. Battle damage on the Grand Kai's world may have been undone by the wish, but the battle damage in Saiya City was still present. The city was in far worse condition now than it had been nearly decade earlier, following Cooler's assault on the world. Repairs would take a long time. And not just in Saiya City, damage from battles had occurred in other cities across the galaxy.

It wasn't the lasting damage from those battles that was weighing on Vegeta's mind the next day, however. It was the fact that he'd dreamed the night before. Not his nightmare vision of the future, just a normal dream. He hadn't had a normal dream since his battle with Nappa. His sleep had been dreamless except on those nights broken by his vision of Raven's mate. For normal dreaming to have resumed... He worried what it meant. The visions had been coming more quickly of late, and now seemed to have ended. It had him on edge.

"You think it means something?" asked Goku. The Sai-jin royal was currently standing in the middle of the arena's battle pit (the Galactic Games had been postponed until clean-up efforts were completed) talking to Goku, Bardock, Piccolo, and Bulma about his concerns. That had not been his intention when he'd come here, he'd simply been looking for a quiet place to get away and think. The four behind him had sought him out for reasons of their own and, somehow, he'd ended up telling them what was on his mind.

Vegeta furrowed his brow in thought for a moment, then nodded. "I do." he said at last. "It's too much to consider it just coincidence. I have a recurring vision for years, and not a single normal dream, and then suddenly my dreams return after this business with Quietus? Something we know Raven was involved in?"

"It is odd timing." agreed Bardock. "But that doesn't mean it has to mean something."

"On it's own, perhaps not." said Vegeta. "But there's also what happened to me yesterday. On our way back up from Hell."

Goku blinked. "Huh? Oh, you mean that pain you felt?"

The royal nodded. "That surge of... whatever it was. It felt like something had broken. Like some powerful force had just snapped and I was feeling the backlash from it."

"Some kind of temporal flux, maybe?" suggested Bulma, furrowing her brow in thought. "We don't know how you could see the future, but we know Raven is from the future. Maybe, somehow, you were linked in with her people and... the connection broke and your end snapped back on you like a broken rubber band."

"But... how? And why?" asked Goku.

"I don't know." said Piccolo. "But I don't like the implications. If Bulma's theory is right it could mean they're on the move now."

Bardock frowned and crossed his arms. "We just stopped the entire universe from ending. You'd think that would earn us at least a few days where nothing disastrous was happening."

"This could be a good thing." Vegeta said after a moment, turning to face the others. "We've always been waiting for Raven to appear. She's always been a 'later' threat. Just something looming in the future. But now, if Bulma is right, she's a present threat. We may not know when she'll get here but we know that she IS coming. And if she was willing to unleash Quietus..."

Bulma swallowed a lump that had suddenly formed in her throat at the implication. Raven's people had worked to free Quietus for reasons unknown. The fact that she was unconcerned about the Demon's power could only mean one thing. She was stronger. As... impossible as it seemed it was the only logical conclusion. Raven was more powerful than Quietus, enough so that she didn't consider the Demon a threat.

"So, we prepare." said Bardock. "We train, hard. Just like when we were getting ready for the Androids to appear. And when Raven and her mate do show up, we'll be ready for them."

Suddenly, Goku grinned. "No better time to start than now." he said. "You up to finally finishing our fight, Vegeta?"

The Sai-jin scowled. "No point in that." he said. "I lost most of that power when I broke free of Malchio's magic. My second form is too much for your first to handle, and your second is too much for me."

"Not if we work together." Goku said, grin growing, gaze shifting over to his father. "Your full power may be stronger than either of us at the first level, but a two on match would even the odds a little."

The royal blinked and his scowl dissolved into a smirk. In a flash he ascended to the second level. "Challenge accepted."

Bulma and Piccolo lifted into the air and flew backwards as Goku and Bardock both flashed golden as well. As the thundering cracks of battle rang out over the arena the two landed in the stands. The Namek wished he shared Bardock's optimism, that simply training as best they could until something happened would be enough. Somehow, though, he doubted things would be that easy. But Bulma, watching the three Sai-jins sparring like this, felt a sense of hope.

XXX

Planet Vegeta, The Palace

Gohan, Videl, and Appla (revived with their last wish, which had been Hotaru's idea and one no one had disagreed with it) were making their way through the halls of the palace as they spoke. It was still pretty early in the morning, and there was still a lot of work to do out in the galaxy, but for the moment they were focused on more... personal matters. Gohan couldn't believe where the conversation had gone after his grandmother had found him and Videl only five minutes earlier. He'd just been out having a nice walk with her, enjoying the fact they were both alive again, when Appla had seen them.

/And, like a fool, I asked her to walk with us./ Gohan thought, sighing, and slipping his hands into his pants pockets. He was glad she was back, certainly, but the course of conversation after she'd joined was... He sighed again. He and Videl had been perfectly fine just walking in peace and quiet but his grandmother, well, she had other ideas.

"You know it's going to be huge." Appla said. "You're both way too famous in the galaxy for it not to be. Every news outlet from here to Kumbikto is going to want to talk about it."

"Yeah, that's... I really don't want a circus." Videl said, frowning.

"I'm sure we can manage to limit access." Appla said with a shrug. "I'm just saying, don't expect this to be something... normal. Everyone's going to want to know everything about it, once word gets out. You'll be seeing your faces on magazine covers for a while, dealing with reporters and photographers wanting to get the big scoop."

"Oh, come on, it wont be that bad." Gohan said.

"No, Gohan, your grandmother's right." Videl said with a sigh. "I mean, we were already starting to get that kind of thing. Reporters frequently calling, photographers lurking around. Once people know that we, we're..." Her voice trailed off then and her face turned red.

"I've never been called by any reporters." Gohan said, frowning. "Not noticed any photographers lurking around either."

"Really?" asked Videl, glancing over at him. "I get a call every few months, wanting an interview. Usually about the Cell Games. No one's ever given an interview about what happened back then so the reporters are still sniffing around, they know there's more to the story than what they've been told."

"And after recent events..." Appla started. "The Dragonballs aren't common knowledge, so the sudden revival of so many people, people are going to wonder."

"Didn't Piccolo say something about just writing it all off as a side effect of winning?" asked Gohan.

"Basically." agreed Appla. "We were dealing with, and aiding, supernatural forces. So we can just brush off how people came back to life. But that's just going to make them even more interested in what everyone knows. Then tack on the fact that the two of you are now an official item and..."

Gohan sighed and his shoulders sagged. /I wonder if it's too late to ask Dabura if I can move to Makai?/ he wondered.

"Master Roshi?" Videl asked, her voice bringing Gohan's focus back to reality. Sure enough, Roshi had just stepped out of a doorway ahead of them. When he heard his name he turned to look at the three of them, grinned the biggest grin Gohan had ever seen him give, flashed them the victory sign, and then started off down the hall the way they'd just come, whistling as he walked.

"Huh, wonder why he's in such good moo..." Gohan started, but his words stuck in his throat as the door Roshi had just stepped out of opened again and Mellona emerged. The Sai-jin gave them a wave as she stepped out, then started down the hall as well. "Uh, that's..."

"No." Videl said, interupting him and shaking her head. "I don't want to know. I do NOT want to know."

XXX

Deep Space

Raven's mate gazed out at the cavernous room and the thousands of cryopods that lined the walls. Every single pod was now occupied and active. Almost the entire crew had gone into hibernation for the coming voyage. It would take well over a decade, possibly as much as fifteen years, before they reached civilization again. Now that they could all age again there was no point wasting that much of their lives. The only ones not going into cryosleep were the seven hundred Gevilons in the crew. As the longest lived species on board, averaging about eighteen hundred years, the time it would take to get to the North Galaxy was like nothing to them.

So, they were being left in charge of the entire fleet. The Gevilon commander, a man named Vym, would be in command of all of their ships and forces. Not that their was much of a force to command with everyone else in hibernation, but it would be his duty to wake up the sleepers as they were needed, and to coordinate the different facets of their plan until the true leaders were awake again.

"Are you sure you want to wait so long before being woken, sir?" Vym asked.

Raven's mate nodded. "No choice." he said. "In hibernation our powers will be practically nonexistent and so will go undetected. Awake, we could be noticed before we're ready. We need the satellites in place before we can risk being woken."

Vym nodded. "Understood, sir. Than I will make sure everything goes smoothly until you're awake, even if I have to join Vanguard myself."

"I appreciate the dedication, but that wont be necessary. The men in Vanguard are all quite capable, and have their own reasons for making sure everything is a success."

Vym nodded again. He knew the man was right, the Vanguard had their reasons for making sure everything went smoothly. They all did. Even he and his people had personal reasons for ensuring their victory. If not for these individuals, this man especially, their race would be extinct. If not for their plans and their kindness and concern for the plight of their own men his people would still be extinct in another thousand years or so, when the last of the Gevilon died. The seven hundred men that he lead were all that remained of his people, and they were all literally men. Not a woman among them. No chance for their species to live on.

Until these people had come along. Now, they had that chance. That was what he and his men fought for. The restoration and continuation of their entire species. These four would see it done when all others would have simply left them to fade into history and memory. Such reasons existed for nearly everyone out here with them. That kind of personal connection to what they were doing guaranteed a high level of focus from everyone, and a degree of respect and loyalty that would have them all willing to unquestioningly follow him to the end of eternity itself, if need be.

"Still," the man continued. "If anything does come up, do not hesitate to consult Razor. But remember, he can only advise now. He can no longer take any actions."

"Sad, but true." Razor said from where he stood next to the only empty cryopod. "Now that we're free we're observable by the other Shugotenshi who stress guidance, not interference. If I were to take any action now they could use it as justification to take action themselves. Otherwise, they'll stay out of it."

"Until it's too late." Raven's mate said, grinning, as he made his way over to his pod. Raven was already asleep in the pod to his right, and his daughter was sleeping in the pod on his left. "We'll use their non-interference policy against them. They'll sit by and do nothing while we gather the power and resources we need to bring them down."

As the man entered the pod Vym walked up and entered the activation code on its control panel. There was a hiss and the silver oval shaped door came down from above, a small window located near the top so they could see the face of the person inside. A moment later there was a click as it locked in place. Vym stepped back then and watched as a white mist filled the inside of the pod for several seconds. When it cleared the man inside was motionless, completely frozen. When they arrived in the North Galaxy he would be the same age as he was now, still in the prime of his power, ready to deal with any threats to them or their plans.

Vym gave the pod, and the man inside, a deep bow. "Sleep well, Lord Kakkarotto."

-=End Saga=-