"I can't believe that we didn't take the car," Chi-Chi sighed while the Kinto cloud split the lemon clouds surrounding the Snake Way into two. Goku and Gohan both looked overjoyed to be riding the cloud up until the point that Chi-Chi spoke up.
"But you know that I can't drive that thing, Chi-Chi," Goku replied with the childish glee fading away from his face to be substituted by the confusion of having no idea why his wife was sounding so disappointed in him.
"But real families go on trips with their cars, Goku-sa. I know that we're not exactly a normal family but we should at least try behaving like one from time to time!" Chi-Chi chided at Goku with her finger which caused the confused Saiyan to scratch his own cheek since he still wasn't sure what exactly got Chi-Chi so mad.
"I'm glad that we didn't take the car," little Gohan raised his index finger in a somewhat reserved proclamation. "I'm glad we're leaving, mom really embarrassed us nearly pummeling King Kai for his own car."
"Hmph…" Chi-Chi pouted her lips and turned her nose up.
"Aww, cheer up, Chi-Chi. The Kinto is faster anyway. Also, I hear you, Gohan," Goku took a deep breath in. "Training's been a whole lot harder since I've come back to life and all but it feels like we've all gotten a whole lot stronger too! I can't wait to see just how much stronger!"
"That reminds me, Gohan-chan, that technique that King Kai taught you, you cannot use it until you grow much older," Chi-Chi spoke up again.
"Hmm? The King Kai Fist?" Gohan wondered. "But I've used it already to show it to father."
"I think your mother might be right, Gohan," Goku nodded, giving Gohan a softer look. "That technique's pretty advanced and painful. It damages your body the more you use it. You should probably learn more about your limits before you can use it safely. Only use it if there's no other way. If you absolutely must use it."
"Sometimes I wonder if Gohan-chan isn't a more mature user for that technique, honestly…" Chi-Chi sighed. "I'm not sure if I should have had that talk with Gohan-chan or you, Goku-sa. You constantly push yourself too hard too."
"Hmm…" Goku's gaze fixed on ahead onto a castle far off into the distance. It was a traditional style building standing atop a platform of marble built up right by the Snake Way. "That's odd, I don't remember that building being there when I went to King Kai's, do you guys?"
"How can we remember this route when you teleported us to King Kai's planet by force!?" Chi-Chi growled at her husband, reprimanding him for having forgotten yanking them out of their day to day life only to bring them onto the King Kai's planet so that Gohan could pass King Kai's test and receive his training only to pass the techniques he learned down onto his father.
"Oh, right, right…" Goku chuckled. "Anyway, we should check that place out. I'm starving, maybe it has some food?"
"Whoa, it's a regular mansion!" Chi-Chi slapped herself on both cheeks just to see if she'd wake up. "I've never seen anything like that! It must have like forty rooms!"
As the Kinto hurled toward the platform keeping the mansion afloat just over Hell itself, little Gohan's stomach roared again as the child hadn't eaten anything since leaving King Kai's planet and it wasn't like the food there was anything special or if he had the chance to fully stuff his half-Saiyan stomach with his father training on the same planet.
"Yo!" Goku yelled out after the family landed and entered the castle through the main entrance, figuring that they'd end up butting into either the owner of the mansion or its receptionists. Nothing of the sort seemed to be the case. "That's weird, nobody's guarding this huge castle…"
"What could they be guarding it from? It doesn't look like there would be too many visitors with it being right in the middle of the Snake Way…" Chi-Chi observed as she looked around the absolutely massive first-floor hallway filled with nothing but pillars and a strange, almost noxious vapor filling the air that burnt at the lungs when breathed in but also smelled of roasted chestnuts.
"This establishment does appear to be styled after the traditional oriental resorts though this does feel strange. Who would be visiting a resort all the way out here?" Gohan patted at his belly area while looking around. Before too long the clacking of heels against mossy stone could have been heard in the distance and just a mere snap later, elongated and enigmatic shadows appeared in the haze of the castle's first floor.
"Welcome, to the abode of Princess Snake!" a feminine humanoid of blue skin, orange, curly hair, and an extravagant get-up befitting that of a bashful resort owner consisting of large, purple earrings, a white fur boa, and a purple qipao dress and long, white gloves and walking on high-heeled pumps welcomed the family. A pair of attendants accompanied Princess Snake, they all appeared similar to their mistress though they donned far fewer elegant accessories and their qipaos were far subtler in both color and texture.
"Princess Snake?" little Gohan wondered, observing the ladies with a flush of pink to his cheeks as the young boy wondered if it was okay for him to visit an establishment overseen by ladies that dressed this way even if it was in the company of two adults.
"Oh, I see you've brought children… How quaint…" Princess Snake pressed her hand to her lips as her cheeks blew out and her eyes squinted at the sight of Gohan. This deity of the Snake Way looked at Gohan how one would look at a blueberry muffin and the little Saiyan didn't like it at all. He was almost ready to forsake the opportunity to eat entirely just so he could leave this place.
"So, this is your castle? I see… We were just passing here on our way to King Enma and…" Chi-Chi tried excusing the fact that her family just barged in given how Goku wasn't about to take the responsibility for their family in this matter as he was far too enthralled with examining the weird inhabitants of this castle as well as the unique architecture and atmosphere of the place.
"Ah, you know Princess Snake's husband, King Enma then?" one of Princess Snake's attendants exclaimed overcome by joy. "Oh, but in that case, you must stay!"
"Yes, please stay, we have all sorts of commodities here to help you rest in your perilous and exhausting trip! We have food, hot springs, warm and cozy beds, and anything you can think of," the second attendant spoke up while Princess Snake appeared to be turning on her heel as she gobbled Goku up with her eyes. With the deep blue color of her skin, physical affections were quite obvious to be noticed which made Chi-Chi visibly upset.
"That's fine, we really have to return back to Earth anyway," Chi-Chi grabbed Goku's arm and began pulling at it but then she heard another rumble from Gohan's side and hunched over in defeat. Even if she didn't like the thirsty looks that this harlot was giving her husband one bit, she'd be a lousy mother if she kept her son from a luxurious lunch because of her jealousy.
"Nonsense, the Princess Snake Castle has served as a pit stop for weary travelers of the Snake Way since before my marriage," Princess Snake bit her glove-coated finger and dragged it back slightly until her teeth revealed a long, thin nail underneath the glove. "That husband of mine is so cruel to make all those wandering souls have to run such a long and perilous journey without rest. Did you know that my castle hangs above Hell itself?"
"Princess Snake is such a merciful mistress, her heart sings tragic ballads at the thought of the struggle that those journeymen go through on their way to King Kai only to be rejected," the first attendant gestured at her mistress whose eyes grew gloomy and her night-blue painted lips trembled in profound sadness at the thought of it. Given how quickly this Princess Snake shifted through emotions, Chi-Chi wondered if this wasn't all just one big act and rolled her eyes.
"Their pain when King Kai rejects them must be so great. I can already see them throwing themselves to Hell as their hearts split into two, unable to cope with rejection…" the second attendant flailed her hand and pressed it to her forehead as she fell to the side, on her bottom and remained on the floor in a suggestive pose. Chi-Chi looked at her husband with a worried glance though her heart calmed down somewhat when she noticed how oblivious he was to the seductive body language of these serpentine women as the Saiyan continued to stare at the trio as if they were some wild weirdos.
"I guess…" Goku scratched his head. "Say, can we eat now?" he wondered.
"But of course," Princess Snake bowed her head in submission to her guest's request. "But only if you promise to try out our hot springs right after. I promise you that you will not find a greater and more relaxing pleasure than my second-floor spa even in Heaven."
"Fine, fine…" Chi-Chi gently placed her hand at little Gohan's back, softly nudging him with her, and after the attendants that walked onward and led Goku and his family to the dining room.
"You have a spa on the second floor of this facility? That seems highly impractical…" Gohan's face shriveled up deep in thought as he tried wrapping his childish perception around how something like that would have worked. To him, it seemed like a plumbing nightmare waiting to happen.
"What a… Lovely boy…" Princess Snake chuckled though her laughter appeared to be both faked and masking something deeper, it wasn't tough to notice that Princess Snake wasn't overly fond of Gohan since he walked in. In the same way that one didn't like a sweet bar of chocolate that one wasn't allowed to eat, just walking and talking, tempting one with its savory and innocent tone.
"He's our son," Chi-Chi replied with a strong and clear tone, wanting to let this woman know that Goku was well-spoken for and that she'd have trouble on her hands if she tried threatening that. Chi-Chi was nowhere near the powerhouse that her husband was as she wasn't as natural at martial arts as he was but she trained alongside her family on King Kai's planet and she was quite confident in her ability to choke a snake deity if need be.
"Ah, yes…" Princess Snake gestured at an already prepared table filled to the brim with food. Goku didn't appear to be waiting for a pretty please as he leaped right after it, vaulting over the food onto the other side of the table and digging right in. The Saiyan's odd sense for manners appeared to have thrown the serpentine monarch off-guard but she gulped this feeling of embarrassment for another person down. Gohan took additional encouragement from his mother to try the food offered to them despite how peckish he was.
Chi-Chi kept a close look at the serpentine princess and her attendants, only barely trying the food, only the foods that the Princess herself tried and only lightly nibbling it, in a similar fashion that Princess Snake herself ate it. She tried to ignore how hard her husband and her son were going to town on the table on her right. No matter how much they ate, the attendants just kept on coming with more and more food as if they were prepared to feed a whole army that day and the dishes were all more elaborate and heftier than the other.
"Don't you have any children? You seem awfully close to your attendants, are they your daughters perhaps?" Chi-Chi asked, having a clear mouth to speak with for the most part as she barely bit off strings of the food to try.
"Ah, I'm afraid not. My husband is awfully busy with his work while I have found myself to often be away with my affair of helping the poor travelers of the Snake Way myself. My attendants are not ours, I've given birth to them from stone eggs but they aren't my daughters, they're more like… Spawns. I'm not sure if you humans would quite understand…" Princess Snake tried to explain though she seemed both embarrassed and puzzled over the concept.
"I do. Demons do the exact same thing on Earth," Chi-Chi struck a rich and malicious smirk, having found a way to bite this thirsty harlot at last and expose something wicked inside her though she was a tad disappointed to find that the men in her family were too busy chowing down on food to hear what they were talking about.
"Well… Deities and demons have plenty in common, both being a higher type of being than a mere human and all," Princess Snake appeared to drop her holier than thou façade just for one verbal riposte too. Chi-Chi could've sworn feeling flat-out venom dripping from the look of this accursed royal.
"This is weird, I've never eaten this much though I still feel hungry…" Goku scratched the back of his head, looking shocked at the food that was being brought in and disappeared without a trace. He wasn't one to count the food that he ate but, at some point, even he noticed that it was getting ridiculous.
"Perhaps you weren't aware just how exhausted your bodies were? You poor, little things, you must have gone starving on that mean King Kai's planet…" Princess Snake cried out in a faked exclamation of mercy aimed toward the boy and his father when Chi-Chi crossed her arms and got all sour, wondering if she was to bring up the fact that she was the one preparing food for the entirety of that planetoid's population out of groceries that King Kai stored in his fridge but didn't know what to do with. It was part of why the old coot even let them stay and train there that long and somewhat bend the rules as to how he trained his apprentices.
"Well then, maybe the food will make itself known once you start digesting it. Now you simply must try our hot springs. There's nothing that brings out the divine qualities of our cooking and unravels all the different majestic ingredients and the nutritional value of our esteemed dishes like the Fortune Spring of the Princess Snake castle!" the attendant pretty much dragged Goku's chair away from the table and pulled him up on his feet, beginning to take him away toward the hot spring.
Chi-Chi stood up to rush after her husband and wherever he was being taken away but a handful of attendants snapped up around her, almost like they were surrounding the woman for a beatdown but then their aggressive and sadistic looks all softened up at once as the attendants parted to make way for Princess Snake herself to enter their circle.
"I'm afraid that the Fortune Spring is not a mixed-gender hot spring. Forgive my attendants and their drastic desire to protect millennium-old traditions, please, by all means, you must enjoy the Royal Flush Spring. It is a very special type of spring that we do not allow men into. It's been tens of thousands of years since we've had the honor of hosting an esteemed warrior woman such as yourself so mostly we've been the only ones using it. Please allow us to offer you the honor of using the hot spring only used by divine beings as an apology for our rudeness shown here today," Princess Snake bowed and extended her hand out for Chi-Chi so that she could lead the confused woman to this Royal Flush Spring.
"Oh… Okay…" Chi-Chi wasn't sure what she wanted to think about this, her eyes kept turning back to little Gohan who kept going to town on the food like it was his job still, back at Princess Snake who was looking at Chi-Chi as if she was ready to become her best friend any moment now and the triangular procession of attendants walking behind them.
"Please, enjoy yourself!" Princess Snake slammed the heavy, marble door behind Chi-Chi who jumped up and turned around only to realize that she was alone in a room of complete white. Everything around her was made out of pristine marble and the entire room was filled with a whole different kind of haze compared to the almost inebriating atmosphere filling the air in the entire castle.
"Hmmm… I wonder if Gohan-chan is going to be okay…" Chi-Chi muttered as she stopped her dress from slipping off her body entirely and turned around. She contemplated putting it back on and rushing back to see how her son was doing but then something fresh and pleasant in the air just invited her in. "Oh well, families take vacations at resorts sometimes, it said so in the magazines…" she muttered to herself and lowered her hands, allowing her dress to slip off her body as Chi-Chi cannonballed into the foamy and soap-smelling springs, enjoying this unruly moment of unorthodox behavior for she was the only person enjoying the majestic Royal Flush Spring.
"Enjoying your food, brat?" a crude voice made Gohan finally snap out from his wild, trance-like state as the boy looked up, having finally woken up from his distraught attempts to please his belly with a seemingly infinite amount of food that never seemed to satisfy him, no matter how much of it he chowed down on.
"Hmmmph…" Gohan nodded his head, a full muscle of well-done flesh still hung from the stuffed mouth of the half-Saiyan as a muscular man with long, dark, spiky hair walked out from the shadows of the hallways, headed in the direction where Princess Snake and her attendants have taken his parents to. Little Gohan blinked a few times before realizing that this armor seemed kind of familiar to him…
"So, you're Kakarot's spawn, aren't you?" the long-haired man with a rather evil-looking face smirked. It was an instantaneous conclusion that could have been drawn from his sharp features and rather thin eyes as well as the angry gleam of his eyes whenever he smiled as if any expression of joy from him could have only come at the expense of someone else's misery. "You must not know much about me, I'm your uncle Raditz, you see…"
"Uncle?" Gohan wondered, finally gulping down the food that he had at the time. The little boy drank the cup before him to swallow every trace of food that was drying out in his mouth to hop off the chair and bow before his older relative respectfully. "Pleased to meet you, my name is Son Gohan."
"Hmph… Pathetic, so he's gone on to completely ignore his Saiyan heritage, that bastard! Didn't even give his brat a proper Saiyan name," Raditz clenched his fist making Gohan's eyes whimper with a watery coating, suggesting that he was about to burst into tears from the crude expression of his uncle before him and the aggressive way that he was acting in. "Too bad he won't get to see me blow his son into oblivion, it would be rich seeing his despair when he realizes that his son is forever deleted, his soul vanquished without the chance for reincarnation or procession into the afterlife but that would require me to unseal your father which is just too dangerous, given how powerful he has become."
"M-My dad? Sealed?" Gohan muttered with a whiny voice.
"That's right, shrimp. What do you think the Fortune Spring is? It is the Fortune Furnace itself that we've stolen from the guardian of the border realm between Earth and the Other World. The only thing strong enough to contain your father and he walked into it himself, thinking it was some sort of hot spring. It's a trap that takes a special kind of idiot like your father to fall for it!" Raditz beamed a malicious smile the boy's way, very much enjoying the terror and despair that he was seeing in the boy's eyes which bought him some time talking to his uncle, at least until the sadistic Saiyan brute would be satisfied with what panic he drew out from the kid and decided to at last dispose of him.
"M-Mom!" Gohan cried out.
"Hmph… Now you've done it, gone and pissed me off, you stupid brat. It's an embarrassment but I've come to realize that I can't even handle Kakarot's wife either at this point. We've had to put together a special kind of trap for her too, flushing her through Princess Snake's toilet right down into Hell!" Raditz cringed for a second before clenching his fists together in utter wrath. "Me… A Saiyan warrior having to form alliances with wretched god-wenches to dispose of my bothersome brother! This is what I've been reduced to!"
"Raditz! Raditz!" an ear-piercing shout pierced the inebriating atmosphere of the dining room as Princess Snake ran out from the haze and wrapped her arms around Raditz' neck and pressed her body to his, tilting her leg and bending her knee as if the brutish Saiyan was about to spin her right round in an intimate dance while Raditz turned his embarrassed face away from the blue-skinned princess. "It's done, I've flushed your sister-in-law straight into Hell, and your brother's sealed away to burn in the Fortune Furnace for all eternity! Now we can rule the Other World together as lovers forever while my stupid husband does all of the work!"
"S-Sure thing… Dear…" Raditz seemed like he was about puke with every word but Princess Snake seemed so oblivious to the fact that she was being played that she bought into every word and seemed to reach utter ecstasy merely from the Saiyan's uncertain and deceitful words.
"Oh, are you going to kill this child or can I eat him up?" Princess Snake pointed to Gohan as her eyes shifted into an evil expression of a twisted grin, filled to the brink with razor-sharp fangs as her eyes sharpened and her lovely, red irises became rings of blood-red that fixed on her prey.
"S-Suit yourself… Dear…" Raditz muttered, trying to push the malicious woman off of him though she seemed to possess much more physical strength to keep herself latched on to her desired Hell escapee that she chose for a man.
"Oh, you spoil me, dearest Raditz!" Princess Snake hissed out as she finally let go of her beloved and prepared to eat Gohan whole. Her jaw opened up to an unnatural degree, extending well past the size of her head while her entire body began to twitch and wriggle while her arms stuck to Princess Snake's limber body and disappeared while covered up by a slithery membrane that coated her. The wife of King Enma appeared stuck somewhere in between being a full-on snake and her illusionary, human form.
"Whaaa!" Gohan cried out in dread as he fled into the darkness of the castle, taking off as fast as his well-trained body could carry him away.
"Oh, how I love defiant little children, they make things so interesting! I haven't hunted down one of you in eons, ever since I've married that workaholic oaf, no child had ever wandered into my Snake Way!" Princess Snake's hisses filled the entire castle as even her own attendants cowered behind the stone pillars and feared meeting their mistress eye-to-eye while Gohan's childish little feet continued to carry him as far away from the dining room in utter terror, fleeing for his life.