Dragon Ball: Paradise Lost

Birth Of A Kami, The End Of The God Trials

"Whoa, look at the giant queue! Baba's business must be booming!" Upa noted while pointing at the giant mass of fighters that indeed looked greater than Chayote could ever recall it being.

Upa leaped off of Kinto alongside Chayote who swooped down and landed by the queue of impressive-looking fighters. As tall and brawny as most of them were, the unexpected landing of the pair appeared to scare their underwear off of them with the nearest one with a bald head and thick mustache shrieking like a little girl. Then again, the general atmosphere of Baba's Palace supported that sort of fear for unnatural occurrences and ghost haunting and the sort, provided that Ghost Usher was a wispy spirit himself.

"Greetings, Chayote-san and Upa-san!" Ghost Usher shook his stumpy arm and floated up to the pair, gently leading them through the crowd and into the passageway to where Fortuneteller Baba might have seen them.

"Business is pretty busy, isn't it?" Chayote voiced the general impression of the matters to Ghost Usher.

"Well... Yes. With the World Martial Arts Tournament being not too far off, plenty of martial artists are looking for great places to train and test their skills. Few of them know that this place can be more dangerous than the tournament itself." Ghost Usher replied with a polite tone while chuckling to himself after the final remark.

Having spent more than their fair share of time in this palace training and learning all sorts of things, Chayote and Upa knew that Baba must have been occupied with a group of fighters to lead through their perilous attempt to challenge her own five warriors for a free divination. As odd as it seemed, Chayote couldn't sense five distinct Ki in the vicinity.

"Does the old lady have trouble finding fighters? There are only three here worth fighting for her." Chayote let her observation be known to the Ghost Usher.

"Well... Sadly, this might be a factor for why the business is booming at the moment – Baba-sama only has three fighters working for her at the moment. She'd love to have you fight for her again, Chayote." Ghost Usher smiled after making the suggestion despite looking quite desperate after explaining the reason for the lack of notable Ki signatures in the area.

"Just three? That's horrible!" Upa covered his mouth. "Although... I don't see any fighters passing Mummy Man anyway."

"Yes. Sadly, Devil Man has passed on back to Hell not too long ago and with Kami being gone too, Baba-sama's access to the Otherworld has been made quite difficult as he often served as a middle-man between Baba-sama and King Enma." Ghost Usher sighed.

"The old devil kicked the bucket?" Chayote repeated as she struggled to believe it.

"I'm afraid so... Someone attacked him while he was shopping and killed him. It's hard to say who or why might have done it but... We take solace only in the fact that Devil Man has returned to the place he yearned to come back to, even if it is as an inhabitant..." Ghost Usher said.

"There aren't many capable of killing him. He did win the World Martial Arts Tournament twice so maybe one of Demon King Piccolo's runts offed him?" Chayote wondered. An uneasy core of chaotic boiling furled down in her gut, a certain spark of unease. Despite it hardly seeming like an immediate concern, Chayote felt like she wanted to bring the old-horns back. He was the only demon she ever felt fond of.

"That's impossible. The others resurrected everyone killed by Demon King Piccolo and his goons when the Dragon Balls turned active again. Someone else must have done it." Upa pointed out.

The soon-to-be Kami had a point there. Had Tambourine or Demon King Piccolo himself killed off Devil Man for being a champion of the World Martial Arts Tournament, Devil Man would have already come back to life. Then again, would the Demon King have even gone after Devil Man when the latter was just as much a demon as he was a martial artist? The shriveled up Namekian seemed a bit more focused on weeding out Earthling threats first. It was unlikely he'd have gone after Hellions too, especially when there was just one of them and he was just visiting.