"So what you're saying is that marriage isn't some kind of food?" Goku looked around the table full of martial artists stuffing their faces full with a face that showed off his mistrust of what he was hearing.
"For the last time, Kakarot, it's some sort of mating ritual that the Earthlings do." Chayote gave him a scolding look. The oaf had gone through a growth spurt during the last year that she hadn't seen him but he was still shorter than Yamcha and Tenshinhan.
"Actually, it's not about mating at all, it's sort of a… Subscription, if you will. It's hard to explain, which is why you should be more careful about the promises you make, Goku!" Krillin looked at his pal with a warning look. "You're lucky that this time it resulted in your scoring a hot babe as a wife but it can get you into a great deal of trouble some other time."
Goku just laughed out and stroke the back of his head, looking entirely unapologetic about the whole thing. This was so much like him, despite growing up on Earth he didn't let the Earth change him one bit, as it has changed Chayote, instead he was the one changing everyone around him to better deal with the kind of person he was.
"You mean… You didn't mean your promise then?" Chi-Chi gasped, she had barely moved her food, likely because that wasn't the main thing on her mind at the moment. Chayote could kind of respect someone who always thought about their mission first.
"Nah, I'll do the whole marrying thing. I might have gotten it wrong back then but I won't go back on a promise!" Goku gave the young woman a thumb up. Chayote smirked before finishing her soup with one giant slurp that made Chiaotzu, who was seated beside her look at her with bafflement.
"I can't believe you're not objecting at all to this…" Krillin turned to Chayote. "I thought… You know… With the two of you being the only Saiyans around…"
"Huh? No, it's actually quite common for Saiyans to get together with people they hardly know. That's the basis for a Saiyan family – the whim of a moment entrapping you for eternity in an infernal home, it makes going to war so much easier." Chayote smirked and gave her bald friend a thumb up, Krillin laughed and rubbed his lip with an index finger, embarrassed about something.
"Not what I was implying but…" Krillin shrugged before beginning to look for a decent change in topics. "Anyway, it's gonna be such a ball, marrying in the Kami Temple itself, there's no better place to get married in when you think about it!"
"Oh, no. We must get married back on Frypan Mountain or Mt. Paozu, that's where your grandpa lived, right?" Chi-Chi objected.
"Huh? But we have to stay on our guard for when Piccolo Jr. leaves the Room of Spirit and Time. Goku can't leave the Kami Temple. If Piccolo Jr. leaves, he won't be able to sense him from back down and a whole mess of bad things can go down!" Krillin tried pointing it out to Chi-Chi but it seemed like a fool's errand.
"He made a promise and he said he'd keep it. We must get married at one of our ancestral homes and I must wear my mother's wedding dress too! Our marriage has to be perfect!" Chayote had noticed a source of strength in Chi-Chi's tone that she hadn't felt before. Well, this lady seemed like quite the wheel blocker but at least she knew what she wanted.
"What, you mean you guys are just stuck here, waiting for that demon bastard to leave the room?" Chayote squinted one eye in disgust. "You should have gone into the room, scouted him out and destroyed him while he was still a baby."
"That's out of the question, Chayote, Piccolo Jr. must be exceptionally strong, plus, the space that the Room of Spirit and Time covers is vast, possibly even infinite, you'd have more luck finding an egg floating in space rather than in there." Mr. Popo who was, up to that point just staring at the feast, now joined in on the conversation. As always he was being cowardly about doing his job.
"The whole reason Demon King Piccolo was such a pain in everybody's butt was that you didn't kill him fast enough. Isn't the time way dilated in that room? That means that with every day you waste Piccolo Jr. is getting way stronger. By the time he feels good and ready to leave – he'll steamroll over us all." Chayote shook her head after slamming a massive, half-eaten dinosaur thigh.
"Piccolo hasn't left up until now, that must indicate that he's lost and not quite sure where he is, doesn't it? It's his prime goal to take over the world, isn't it?" Tenshinhan raised a point. "There is no guarantee that he can find his way out of there, as Mr. Popo said."
"We should have blown that doorway up when we had a chance – leave him trapped there permanently." Yamcha crossed his arms over his chest and rested in his chair. He wore a set of battle scars that he didn't have previously, a trait that Chayote noticed and grew to be quite fond of. For whatever reason, she liked a man better when he had decorations of tough battles on his face.
"Have you no pride as a martial artist!?" Tenshinhan slammed his fist at the table. "Maybe if you trained harder, you wouldn't need to think up of despicable shortcuts like that?"
"What's that? You wanna go at it again!?" Yamcha stood up, prompting Tenshinhan to do the same. Mr. Popo took a few steps back before rushing in to defuse the heating situation between the two rivals.
"Umm… I don't think I understand what's going on but… If that Piccolo person has been trapped inside a room that dilates time, wouldn't he have long since died?" Chi-Chi wondered. "I mean, judging from how you guys were talking about it, it doesn't seem like there's that much food or something to do in there…"
"No, it's pretty empty and horrible inside there!" Goku snickered. "It'd be a damned shame if he died. I really want to have a good bout with that guy!"
"There's no chance of that." Mr. Popo shook his head. "If Piccolo Jr. is anything like Kami, he doesn't need food, just a little bit of water here and then. If the room can sustain a pair of people for a year of the room's time, Piccolo Jr. might survive there for however long he wants."
"I wish there was something I could do…" Upa clutched his fists and tensed his body up before going frail again. While he had powered up a decent amount since Chayote had last seen him, a physical power-up that surely paled in comparison to the spiritual experience he'd gained, he was still beneath even the old Demon King Piccolo's level by lightyears.
"You just focus on completing your training as Kami and passing your trials. We'll take care of beating up anyone threatening the Earth for you!" Chiaotzu floated beside Upa and placed his hand over the young man's shoulder.
"The zombie-shrimp gets it. Now that I've returned, it seems like I need to pick up the slack for you miserable Earthlings again." Chayote grumbled, having completed her bone of meat and placed it back onto the plate in a weighty thud. "So here's what's gonna happen – you are going to continue your training, I'm gonna go to the Room of Spirit and Time alongside Upa so that he can learn to get better at his God stuff sooner and I can do some decent training myself. We'll also scope the place out for Piccolo Jr., I'll kill him if I get the chance."
"Aren't you forgetting something, Chayote? You can't kill Piccolo Jr. The Dragon Balls are tied to his life again." Krillin pointed out. The damn shorty was right!
"Well, in that case, I'll kick his ass and drag him out of the room to where he can't threaten anyone at such an escalating pace. We might need the room in the future. There are far more frightening demons out there in space than Piccolo." Chayote nodded to herself.
"But what about my marriage?" Chi-Chi raised her most valid concern.
"Oh… And Kakarot can get married to this chick once he's free to leave this place whenever he wants." Chayote nodded to herself again, as if she hadn't missed this point entirely the first time.
"This is complete madness…" Yamcha shook his head, he didn't like the idea of somebody entering the Room of Space and Time at all but he seemed to have been outvoted and most definitely overpowered alongside those that supported the notion.
"Maybe, but Chayote and Goku are the only ones capable of stopping Piccolo at the moment. We might have grown a great deal stronger, but they still are the strongest out of us all, you must be feeling it, right?" Tenshinhan shrugged, looking a tad let down by the fact that after all of his time training and working hard he wasn't quite at the same level as Goku or Chayote.
"Yeah, and here I thought that she'd stagnate floating around in space for a whole year, it's like she hadn't skipped a day of training at all. Just what kind of dangers did she face out there?" Yamcha looked up in the direction of the skies that disguised the greater universe lying outside of his reach. Skies that were hidden behind the pearly ceiling of the Kami Temple.
"It ain't fair, that Upa would be entering the room alongside you…" Goku objected.
"The Earth needs a Kami as soon as possible and you've already had your shot at the room, Kakarot. Plus, you've got a marriage to attend to." Chayote cheeked her fellow Saiyan before the two disappeared into the vast white. Mr. Popo shaking with each moment that the door remained open but breathing out a sigh of relief once they shut behind the pair.
"I'm surprised you didn't oppose to that idea, you're usually kind of adamant about those sort of things…" Krillin turned at Mr. Popo who just wiped the sweat off of his face.
"Chayote is right. Earth needs Upa to complete his God Trials as soon as possible, him accelerating the training process a bit would go a long way." Mr. Popo spoke while staring at the door with a blank expression.
"J-Just what is this room!?" Upa cried out, wheezing and panting as he had only an insignificant speck of the oxygen he needed to survive and the gravity kept on pulling him down on his knees. "This is utter torture!"
"Oh… I'm impressed that you can withstand that temperature. Mr. Popo must have toughened you up a great deal but I won't be anywhere near as soft on you. You'll want Piccolo Jr. to find us and kill us by the time we're through." Chayote put up her fist. She needed a decent training partner to gain as much power as possible if she was ever to return back to space. One thing she hated was being humiliated in combat like she was facing Lord Slug's clan, a whole thing another was being humiliated by loathsome demons.
It was because that lousy bunch had humiliated her over and over again, beating her in almost every encounter that Chayote had developed a particular distaste for their kind and felt like the greatest torture of all would be not killing Piccolo Jr. in the most brutal and violent way possible when she encounters him around these parts.
"Alright, so what's the problem with you and becoming a Kami?" Chayote wondered.
"I'm still not too good with materialization. I've mastered the elemental materialization but more complex things don't work too well…" Upa pulled out two tomahawks that hung crossed-up behind his back and put them in front of himself. "Plus, Mr. Popo claims that a Kami must be pure of heart, which I am hesitant to check."
"I know of plenty of ways to check that, but that'll come after we leave the room. Right now just let me scan the place through…" Chayote closed her eyes and concentrated on her Ki Sensory. The Room of Space and Time was as vast as Mr. Popo described, the range that Chayote's sensory covered may have been just a drop in an ocean and she should have had little to no problem sensing Ki all over the Earth. This was troubling.
"Well?" Upa took a calmer stance and lowered his weapons. His expression blanked out when Chayote's fist sent him cradling to his knees and sweating profusely as the pain from her straight shot to his gut as well as the shortness of oxygen and the rapidly switching temperatures made it impossible for him to rise on his feet without aid.
"You let down your guard. You're also fresh out of luck, there's no Piccolo Jr. here or anywhere near this temple. You said you had mastered that elemental stuff, that's what Goku used to defeat Demon King Piccolo, right?" Chayote stared with a judgmental look while Upa struggled to get back up, over this entire time he failed to rise above his knees.
"Yeah… Ki is in touch with the very life essence of all living things. The life force is a whole different kind of energy but it is related to Ki. You can manipulate Ki in a way that materializes objects out of thin air, if you're skilled at that sort of stuff, you can manipulate Ki to manifest elements too." Upa explained while Chayote helped him back up out of either mercy or the need to hurry this charade along.
"I've met an alien species that can do that. I didn't have any time to train with them but I plan to. Either way, let's work at making a Kami out of you." Chayote took a fighting stance and made Upa gulp down hard.
The poor boy was scared for his life which was the kind of mindset Chayote had wanted.
"They're out!" Mr. Popo pointed at the old wooden frame lamenting the fact that it was being used from the other side.
The entirety of the group located at the Kami Temple at the time rushed to the scene, ready to confront the emerging Piccolo Jr. if it was indeed the reborn Demon King who had sensed Chayote's Ki signature and rushed to the scene, discovering the exit from the Room of Spirit and time in the process. Chayote and Upa emerged with the black bodysuit Chayote had worn underneath the armor of Lord Slug's army being covered in holes and the armor itself bruised as if it had been rubbed against sandpaper for a millennia or two.
"Close the door already!" Yamcha prompted the pair but Upa and Chayote just snickered one to another and made sure to close the door as slowly as possible to psyche the present guardians of the Kami Temple out as much as possible.
"Well, any luck?" Goku wondered.
"Nope, Upa gave the Room of Space and Time one good scan at the end, his oversight had gone crazy good at some point, he said he can't sense a trace of that filthy demon inside." Chayote replied with a stroke over her hair that had gone a tad wild after a year of no care for it that followed another whole year of little care for it while she was roaming space.
"He had no reason not to attack and kill us, we've slept and had our guards down on multiple occasions yet he didn't appear. I… I don't think he's even there anymore." Upa declared.
"Huh? Not there anymore? But how could that be possible?" Chiaotzu extended his hands and feet forward while his face stretched out in fear.
"Are you saying we've lost track of a reincarnated Demon King?" Tenshinhan put his fist out, angered by the implication of their collective failure.
"Maybe, either way, it's time that Upa completes his God Trials now." Chayote looked to her side at a grown youth that had measured up to her shoulders at the time.
"Then that means?" Mr. Popo couldn't contain his excitement, he ran up to Upa and leaned forward to him.
"That's right, I've gotten the hang of most of the techniques you've shown me, all the fundamental spells. I'm ready, Mr. Popo!" Upa nodded and looked back at his future attendant with confidence that could rarely be spotted in the face of the young man who had spent most of his life making bold claims about what he would be like when he grew up and letting his father do the fighting for him without moving a finger to become any of the things he wanted to be like.
"So then if this Piccolo Jr. no longer threatens the world, can we maybe get married, Goku?" Chi-Chi ran up and wrapped her arms around Goku's who looked pretty uncomfortable with the show of affection at first but then just smiled and went along with it.
"I'd wait for when Upa becomes a Kami if I were you," Chayote pointed at the young native man with her thumb. "I mean, if you're looking for a best marriage ever, how about being married in the presence of an actual Kami?"
"That kind of works out, because being married involves someone pure and holy tying the two souls together, it would be perfect!" Krillin ran up in front of the pair and congratulated the two with his excited expression and support behind the suggestion.
"Sure, I've waited this long, I can wait until one more trial then." Chi-Chi nodded before returning to her routine of rubbing her face against Goku's arm.
"Come on, Chi-Chi, you're zapping my hand with electricity from your face, you know…" Goku pouted but for one of the world's most powerful fighters he offered quite measly resistance against the advances of the young woman.
Chayote found it quite fitting for such a submissive buffoon.