Piccolo's and Lapis' boots gently touched the sandstone pathway leading up to the southern dome of Fortuneteller Baba's palace. After landing near the structure, the Ghost Usher greeted the pair with a warm smile, but a towering sumo wrestler leaned out of the line and stopped Piccolo by pressing his hand on the shoulder of the Ultimate Namekian.
"Hey, where do you think YOU'RE going, you green runt? No cutting in line!" he bellowed.
"Oh, my…" the Ghost Usher uttered while staring at the developing scene with the same blank stare and a slightly creepy smile that rarely left its ectoplasmic body.
Piccolo turned around with a no-nonsense look that seemed to utterly overwhelm the massive martial artist, sending him into a backward stumble as he was shivering despite spilling a gallon of sweat. The horrified sumo wrestler fell flat on his rear and, when his legs failed him, began crawling away from Piccolo while gasping and grunting in fright.
"Hmm… Even the Earthling martial artists are getting better and better," Lapis observed with an amused look on his face. "I didn't expect this guy to realize just how vast the difference of power was here without being shown it."
"It's only natural," Piccolo observed after closing his eyes and calming his Ki again from the state of unrest. "Local fighters grew up having to survive demons, alien invaders, and artificial humans. It's nothing like what any of the past generations faced off against. Even if a lot of them are still green and don't know a thing about Ki control, their natural instincts are so polished that they can scope their opponent's strength incredibly well."
"Welcome, you two! Fortuneteller Baba is expecting you!" the Ghost Usher levitated aside to let the advancing martial artist pair pass. "Oh… This doesn't seem to surprise you?"
"It's her one trick. I would have been surprised if she wasn't expecting me…" Piccolo replied, still wearing the grumpy attitude he came here with.
"So… This is the person you were so hesitant to see?" Lapis looked around the dusty yet impressive ancient architecture inside the entryway to Fortuneteller Baba's palace. "I must say, I'm a bit confused by this."
"It's not exactly the old crone that I'm apprehensive of seeing. It's the price that she'll ask," Piccolo reared his sharp, fiendish teeth in disgust. "Back in the day, she used to just ask to serve as her muscle. Now… I've heard from Bulma that Vegeta wagered his own body after his death for a favor."
"That's rough…" Lapis leaned back on his interweaved hands, letting Piccolo overtake him by a few steps as a sign that he saw himself as having nothing to do with this entire affair.
"Cheeky little…" Piccolo grinned after glancing back at Lapis. "Even knowing that you still don't propose that we see your contact first?"
"Well, well…" a squeaky, high-pitched voice pierced the darkness, interrupting the conversation between the two and prompting both of them to stare at a wrinkly and shrunken old crone sitting on top of a levitating crystal ball with her hands weaved together. "If it isn't Piccolo and Lapis, I've been…"
"You've been expecting us, we know," Piccolo grumbled with an aggressive twitch on the right side of his face. "You keep saying that all the time."
"I see then, I also happen to know why you came here. Mind you handing me the pictures you wish me to tell more about?" Fortuneteller Baba extended her hand. It was so short and pudgy that Piccolo would have had to approach her almost to nose-touching distance to hand the old crone anything.
"Not so fast, Baba. Let's discuss payment first," Piccolo crossed his arms and defensively turned to the left.
"Payment? The usual fee stands, 100 000 000 Zeni," Fortuneteller Baba smiled with a toothless grin surrounded by withered and dried-out lips.
"100 000 000!?" Piccolo scoffed in absolute astoundment. "That's over ten times more than the last time!"
"That was years ago," Fortuneteller Baba laughed into the backside of her hand, in a manner not unlike that of a vain and free-spirited young woman that the ancient fortuneteller certainly was not. "Have you heard about something called "inflation"?"
"Unbelievable! This is a robbery in the middle of the day!" Piccolo grumbled with his fists tightly clenched together. However, he was quick to relent and submit to the exorbitant demands of the old fortuneteller. "Oh, well… It's not like I had 10 000 000 Zeni either."
Fortuneteller Baba and Lapis alike became distraught by a sudden loss of balance as Lapis jumped back and wobbled on his legs while Baba nearly slipped from her crystal ball at the jolt of the fact that Piccolo was so resistant to Baba's price despite not being prepared to even pay her usual fee.
"Alright, name your conditions. You've always got some sort of alternative to paying your outrageous fees, don't you?" Piccolo snarled with a full, spiteful show of his demonic fangs.
"Hmm… I wonder," Fortuneteller Baba made a devious smirk while rubbing her hands together, trying to devise something positively crooked to do with Piccolo and his partner behind him. Something that would be of benefit to her equally beneficial to the sum of 100 000 000 Zeni, at least.
"How about I serve as one of your fighters and earn that money for you? If I get to defeat one opponent and earn that sum back to you, we're squared," Piccolo suggested.
"Don't be ridiculous," Fortuneteller Baba waved her hand. "While the loss of Devil Man was painful, it's not like most fighters get past Mummy Man anyway. While having someone as unbelievably powerful as you serve as my guard would be fun, I have no need for it. It would take forever for such an investment to pay off and I won't be this young and cute for long. If I am to see some benefit, it better be within my natural lifespan."
"F-Fine…" Piccolo became flustered and desperate. "How about… How about I give you a little peck? Just a little one on the cheek?"
"You think of me being as depraved as my creep of a younger brother?" Fortuneteller Baba squinted as her face became even more wrinkly, becoming shriveled like a fermented prune. "What kind of maiden in her right mind would agree to be kissed by an alien Demon King? You should pay me 100 000 000 Zeni to get to kiss my soft cheeks with those stinky, ugly lips of yours…"
"L-Lapis then!" Piccolo gestured at his partner, who looked incredibly lost at first. When the full weight of Piccolo's suggestion hit him, Lapis blushed slightly and began shifting his glare between Piccolo and Baba.
"W… Now… W-Wait just a second there, I don't remember signing up for this…" Lapis shook his hands out in front of him.
"While your friend here is a real cutie, forget it. He's got his eyes on another girl and his embarrassing attempts at attracting her attention are more entertaining than any soap opera on air," Fortuneteller Baba waved it off while cringing into her open hand with a wide-eyed peal of laughter.
"W-Wait, what? You mean you're spying on me!?" Lapis' façade of being cool and careless shattered in an instant as he began shaking his fist out in front of him.
"You shouldn't feel bad. I spy on everyone I consider interesting," Fortuneteller Baba shrugged. "My crystal ball only gets the basic channel package and nobody actually pays me for my services and insists on fighting my fighters and getting wiped out."
"That's because your prices are outrageous!" Piccolo bellowed.
"I'd like to see you try your hand at dating when you've spent most of your life as an assistant to a madwoman trying to take over the world and the only women you've known your entire life being your sister and the old hag," Lapis crossed his arms and turned away with pouty lips and a disgruntled mumble under his nose. Even Piccolo looked a bit taken aback by how much Baba got under this young man's skin.
"I wouldn't mind signing up your body after your death then," Fortuneteller Baba suggested. "Same deal as King Vegeta. After you die and your soul moves on to the Other World, I get to keep your body."
"Sorry, but I intend to get resurrected after I die," Piccolo waved it off.
"Do you? And how do you intend to do that? May I remind you that you've died and have been resurrected once already?" Fortuneteller Baba rubbed her hands together with a sheepish smile. At that moment, she knew she held all the aces in her hands.
"Fine," Piccolo sighed. "I'm not sure of what use these empty bodies are going to be to you, but if it's to get information about the monster that's going to bring about the dark omen and destroy our future, I'm willing to put my body on the line."
"Very well," Fortuneteller Baba smiled. She hovered closer to Piccolo, ignoring the Namekian's freakout, and pecked him on the forehead. The kiss caused a psychic ripple across Piccolo's body that the Ultimate Namekian warrior couldn't really feel, but he could see it across his body for a few passing moments.
"Wait a second, how do we know Piccolo just didn't sign up his body for no good reason? How can we know you can give us the information we seek?" Lapis brought up a good point. "What if your mystical powers aren't up to snuff?"
"You should hope for that case," Fortuneteller Baba chuckled. "In that case, the deal will be undone, of course."
Piccolo handed the old crone the pictures of both the time machine and the curious mechanical cicada shedding. The mystic browsed through the pictures and slipped off of her crystal ball, suspending it in mid-air with telekinetic powers before illuminating it so brightly that it enlightened the entire palace room they were in and left not a single corner of shade around its reach.
"What do you wish to know, exactly?" Fortuneteller Baba put up her hands, waving them as if fondling her crystal ball with her mystical powers from afar with phantom limbs. Her right eye bulged and opened wide while her left one squinted during her request to Piccolo. In her ancient age, the wrinkly face of the old fortuneteller became distorted and almost cartoonish with its features as the stringy skin struggled to keep her eyes stuck as firmly in their sockets as they were supposed to be.
"As much as possible. Where this creature came from, what type of creature is it, where is it now…" Piccolo began counting the questions, but the crooked fortuneteller seemed to have gotten the clue.
"Oh hoi, hoi, hoi, poi..." Fortuneteller Baba chanted while divining into her levitating and shining crystal ball. The crystal ball lit up with a staticky image, comparable in quality to an old-timey television set that needed a few good smacks on occasion to function clearly.
Lapis and Piccolo approached the shining crystal ball closer, leaning in to peer into the visions that the crystal ball would reveal. In its reflection, the pair saw the clear, red afternoon skies above Ginger Town. A small town near West City. Suddenly, the image on the crystal ball became washy, shaky, and cluttered with static. A violent electromagnetic field flashed above the sky of the town and, in a blinding flash, a time machine appeared out of thin air with its engines and decorative golden halo rings rotating with the tendency of slowing down.
The time machine slowly descended into the woods and its glass top shot off, exuding vast amounts of smoke. Metallic scratching and skittering noises were quick to follow, as a metallic cicada-like form emerged from inside, similar to the shed body that Piccolo and Lapis found in the woods in a different small town. The insectoid body of the creepy, cybernetic crawler seemed sluggish, almost like it was burdened by its own form. It flopped on the ground on its back and began rolling and waving to the sides in an attempt to get back on its belly.
A handful of kids riding their bicycles hurried toward the scene, baffled by the lights in the sky and the rumbling that distracted them from their ball game. They stopped not too far away from the time machine and pointed fingers at it. A few of the brats went as far as to touch it and get lightly shocked by the ever-present static electricity field surrounding the time machine or scolded by its hot surface. It didn't take too long for one kid to notice the massive cicada trying to flip back over on its front. The pigtailed girl with a red, spotty dress waved for her friends to come and see what she found.
By the time all the youngsters rushed to the scene, a segmented metallic tail sprung from the backside of the cicada and stabbed into the ground, pushing the mechanical bug onto its front where it could employ its short metallic legs to skitter around. Initially, the kids seemed entertained, and a tad creeped out by the strangest cicada they'd ever seen, but when the metallic bug flipped on its front, they became visibly frightened.
The waving metallic tail springing forth from underneath the cicada's massive metallic wings that looked sharp and blades and harder than titanium waggled in the air before sprouting a sharp bone stinger and impaling the girl in the red dress. Elevating her in the air as she thrashed in agony, the mechanical insect drank her up, reducing her to a pitiful, withered state before even her hanging, loose skin was drawn into the stinger and only her red dress gently landed from the air.
The terrified kids were at first paralyzed by the sight, but then they dashed for their skateboards and bikes. The cybernetic insect sprung from the ground, showing much greater speed and strength than before and looking much more accustomed to its cumbersome form now that it had its sustenance. It shot forward like a rocket, slamming against one kid with a headbutt and killing the kid instantly.
As one cyclist kid still sought escape, the cicada produced vivid ginger hair from the core nestled between two V-shaped horns, as if the metallic core had always been made of ginger hair. The strands of hair expanded and wrapped around the bicycle's wheels and rims, disassembling it mid-biking. This led to the young boy falling face-first and going out cold. The skittering cicada quickly crawled on top of the fallen boy and plunged its tail into the boy's back.
Curiously enough, it didn't drain the boy like it did with the girl before. It merely held the stinger inside of the unconscious boy's body for a few seconds while wiggling its tail with great vigor. After a few seconds, the cicada withdrew the tail and crawled off the boy, almost as if it had lost interest without having drained the boy as it did with his friend earlier. However, Piccolo and Lapis both gasped when within clear sight of their eyes, the boy's form withered to that of a decayed corpse that had been dead for decades with withered and discolored skin loosely hanging over the boy's childish skeleton.
Having disposed of the two kids and killed the third with a headbutt, the cicada wrapped its tail around the dead child it hadn't yet eaten or decayed into a preserved corpse and climbed into a tree by its bark. With the cybernetic cicada entering a state of suspended animation, Fortuneteller Baba moved forward in time, as if fast-forwarding a VHS tape on her crystal ball.
At that point, the image showed the north-western frozen tundra. The crystal ball turned its attention to a burning warehouse that seemed to have been blown up, as that was the only thing that could have caused such a widespread and destructive fire to be raging inside. That same mechanical cicada from before buzzed into the clear view, now capable of flight with its outer shell blades open and wings of membrane resembling human skin flapping like the wings of a beetle that granted it flight. The insectoid landed by the side of the burning warehouse and crawled inside.
"That's the old creep's warehouse." Lapis gasped and pointed at it. "That's where we used to haul junk he asked for and traded us for candy."
"And that body. It's… Chayote!?" Piccolo's eyes bulged out as he identified a bundled and covering, much younger body of the Legendary Super Saiyan crouched as if she still struggled against the might of the blast in her mind. Before she could straighten her back, dust off, and walk away, the stinger from the mechanical cicada plunged into her spine from behind and made the young woman collapse on the ground.
The cybernetic cicada seemed to pump a few draws of bio-organic material from the fallen Saiyan he just attacked from behind, but, unlike with the two children he disposed of earlier, he pulled its tail out of Chayote's back and flew off.
"That bastard, it must have known that if it finished Chayote off, he'd have doomed the universe," Lapis pointed out.
"He must have drained her of a bunch of her energy but left her alive. Also, it didn't appear to adapt any of her traits as he did after draining that boy when he gained those wings. This was just a quick energy drain for it," Piccolo surmised. "Because it came from the future, it must have known exactly where Chayote would be at this moment in time and knew the best moment to sneak up on her. Who knows who else it drained dry when it knew no one would notice?"
Fortuneteller Baba fast-forwarded the image transmitted through the crystal ball again. This time it showed the fallen body of a female Saiyan with a slightly average frame and pale complexion. The woman laid knocked out with her short and flat hair spiking up in an untidy mess on the ground, her eyes rolled back and her mouth gaping wide open. The unconscious Saiyan wore a damaged battle armor with a pink bodysuit, white gloves and boots, a torn golden leg warmer on one leg, and dirty white leg bands on both legs. Once again, the cybernetic cicada flew into view and landed on the chest of the fallen Saiyan warrior.
It seemed to emit some sort of red light that scanned the unconscious Saiyan for traces of life, before letting its segmented stinger tail slip out from the cover of its metallic shell and plunging it into the chest of the fallen Saiyan. It lingered the stinger inside of Fasha's body for a few seconds before pulling it out and flying off to the north, heading toward Aru Village and a nearby forest clearing. The speed of the monstrous cicada had increased to an incredible degree, it was terrifying to wonder how many people it had drained at that point as events being depicted took part almost a decade apart from the last events being depicted.
"So, it got its stinger onto a Saiyan too," Lapis nodded to himself, observing as Fasha's body decayed into dry skin hanging on top of the skeleton. Almost like she had been dead for decades, but found a way to be mummified and perfectly preserved somehow.
"Hmm… The monster didn't drain Fasha of energy, even though a Saiyan, even in such an injured state, would have provided it with more Ki to drain than a dozen people," Piccolo's eyes squinted with focus.
Fortuneteller Baba fast-forwarded again, finding the sudden calmness in the sights being shown incredibly boring, but she realized, based on jumpy and flashy images, that she must have fast-forwarded too far. Surprisingly enough, the information that her two clients sought was no longer as widespread through the years as it was before. In fact, the next episode that the crystal ball showed could have been less than a day later, rather than a whole decade.
It was during the attack on Earth by Nappa and Vegeta, when the pair released an entire army of Saibamen to wreak havoc on Planet Earth. The episode being relayed through the crystal ball took place in the middle of such an attack on a small and busy town. While the Dragon Team tried racing across the world to contain the invasion force, there was no way for just a handful of martial artists to cover for the whole world.
"So, there were some Saibamen unaccounted for…" Piccolo noted. "Makes sense that the small fry couldn't obliterate every single one."
"Yeah, we've got a few on Monster Island," Lapis noted. "They lived in the wild before I started working as a ranger, but they're incredibly easy to capture. Stronger than your usual monsters, but awfully weak. The most annoying thing by far is that they try to self-destruct when pushed to a corner, which is a pain in the butt when you try to capture them and let them roam in a nature reserve."
"That bastard! Nappa and Vegeta told us they themselves finished off who survived the initial invasion of Bardock's squad. They must have found Fasha's withered corpse and just blown it away, thinking they were the ones who killed her…" Piccolo seethed with his fists shaking full of spite coursing through his popping veins.
The reeling, metallic tail of the cybernetic cicada, now beaming with intense light from its torchlight eyes and every orifice like the technology that was used to build it had advanced centuries ahead in just a day. The tail wrapped around the throat of a rambunctious Saibaman and dragged it into the dark alleyway. As more and more Saibamen fell victim to the horrific invader from the doomed future, the horrified for their lives Saibamen fled into the forest, but it was like the mechanical insectoid had evolved to see the Earth's forests as its hunting ground.
It hunted dozens of Saibamen down with the same efficiency that it showed when killing mere children a few decades earlier. After draining a handful of Saibamen dry of their energy, the Android cicada clenched its mechanical legs around one unlucky fellow and plunged its stinger into its pulsating brain. A few wriggles later, the artificial insectoid pulled out its stinger and left the shrieking and writhing Saibaman to thrash in agony on the ground before drying up and withering away into a mummified corpse and dissolving into compost for the forest soil, because of how simplistic the Saibamen anatomy was.
The orifices and opening across the mechanical cicada's body gleamed with bright light and expelled jets of smoke. A salad-colored arm plunged through the back of the cicada's shell. It was clad in darker green armor similar to that of the battle armor that Fasha was dressed in but the alloy perfectly coated the creature's body and even displayed the brown pads where its biceps would have been with decorative white outlines spread across its body like a network of webbing.
It was at that moment, before even the full emergence of the monster that burst out from the cicada's shell that Fortuneteller Baba's crystal ball became full of light, casting violent flashes in all directions and crumbled to pieces from the overload of psychic energy within. Baba screamed out of despair and began frantically trying to scoop the shattered chunks of the crystal ball together with her hands.
"What happened?" Lapis asked, turning to the emotionally devastated psychic.
"That monster… It must have become too strong to follow. There are limits to what my psychic power can show, what I can predict and foresee. I… I can't show you anything beyond that point, even if I could… With the crystal ball in this state… It's hopeless," Baba lamented, letting the tiny shattered chunks of her crystal ball sift through her shaking fingers like sand as she bellowed and wept on her knees.
"No need, we've got plenty. Thanks for your help, Baba," Piccolo turned around with a serious look on his face. "Let's go, Lapis. Maybe your contact will know where we can find this creature now."
"Huh… I guess. You sacrificed your body after death, after all. It would be cruel of me to not make a similar sacrifice from my end, huh?" Lapis shrugged.
"Yeah, I don't regret it though," Piccolo nodded with a determined look ahead as the two left the palace and took off into the skies above. "That deal gave us some foresight into the creature's habits and abilities. It will be incredibly useful if we end up running into it and I have a sense that a collision isn't too far off into the future."
Piccolo lagged a bit to let Lapis take the lead. Lapis spear-headed the pair toward West City. Piccolo didn't let his confusion about this destination show in his disposition, staying focused on his mission. In just this one day, he got closer to the monster's nature than through the last year of research. Then again, back in the day, he lacked the desperation needed to put his own body on the line to get a mere glimpse of the answers he needed.