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Escaping Heaven; quest
Topic Started: Jul 2 2009, 05:31 AM (135 Views)
Ryuudo
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Stumbling onto the field more so out of sheer luck than anything remotely resembling a sense of knowing where I was going or what I was doing, a portly guard met me at the gate. For some reason, perhaps forgetting that only the truly good hearted individuals were allowed to retain their bodies after losing their life and moving on through the gates of Heaven, one of his hands moved to the katana tied around his waist by a thick red cord. The stubby fingers that could have doubled as miniature sausages in one of those late night television infomercials held the sheath while the pad of his thumb pressed firmly against the hilt proper. If I hadn't had a full foot of height on him, I may have been worried that he would take offense to me stepping foot on his master's land and lash out at me. Instead of keeping him on edge, I held a hand up and motioned with a small wave.

" I'm bad at introductions, so instead of fumbling may way through this, I'll get right to the point. Hi. My name's Ryuudo and I was sent here by Master Roshi to meet a man by the name of Yajirobe. I was told there was something about a bean that I was supposed to pick up? " When he eased up on the coiled like a snake ready to strike thing, I took one further step closer to the wooden railings that fenced off the field from the rest of the hillside, resting my elbows atop the uppermost rung. Glancing out over the mostly barren area full of tilled soil and a few short rows of upturned dirt, I noticed that the helper and I weren't alone out here. A girl that looked to be roughly my age was hard at work, on her hands and knees in the garden trying to do . . . something. What it was, I wasn't able to see due to her back facing me.

I tore my gaze from the busy bee tending the field to the hefty man that still looked to be sizing me up. With the way he was glaring at me like I had stolen his milk money all throughout grade school, I actually had to turn around and look up into what served as the sky, seeing if there was any need to shield my eyes. It was then that I noticed a sever lack of anything resembling a sun.

What the heck was he squinting for? " He wouldn't happen to be around by any chance, would he? "

"You could say that, yeah. What's it to you?" Good. A hard ass. Just what I needed after an aimlessly tiring walk around Heaven while I searched for and failed to find the senzu bean farm after searching for and failing to find Roshi's house. The Turtle Hermit had set me up with shoddy directions that led to the corner of No and Where.
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Ryuudo
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When I realized there was little hope of finding the farm up north as he had said I would, I'd gone and tried to retrace my path south, even southeast and west, to no avail; the Kame House Part Two was gone from the grid.

This was going swimmingly.

Instead of getting bent out of shape for no good reason without first getting what had been requested of me, I decided to take the nice approach to dealing with the field's guardian. I smiled at him hard enough to make him raise a brow. " My training under the Turtle Hermit depends on it. At least, I think my training under Master Roshi depends on it. He was kind've making with the vague when he sent me off. " Rubbing the back of my neck, I glanced out over to the girl in the field without turning away from the conversation.

What a conversation it was. "Really." No hint of a question. No nothing. They guy was going to bust my balls for the sheer fun of it, things seemed.

" Far as I've been made aware of. You folks seem like enjoy keeping your secrets. "

His piqued brow hadn't even a chance to return to its normal position on his forehead. Having remained in the man's hairline, I couldn't judge by his facial expression what was running through his mind other than thinking how much he wished he had clubbed me over the head with the sheathed sword.

" You Afterlife folks, I mean. "

A sharp inhalation of breath through his nose was the only sign that I was indeed talking to a person on the other side of the fence and not a statue designed to scare away scavenger birds.

" Is the word folks somehow offensive to you or . . ? "

No response.

" Should I go back a couple paces and start this over again? "

Nothing.

I attempted to swallow, but my mouth parched from the walk, my already dry mouth and throat had nothing to work with. Instead of the silent display of how uncomfortable this stare down was making me, I got a weird and off putting clicking noise at the bodily function that made me want to cough.

His eyebrow lowered. That was more than I had before.

" I will if it would help. "

". . ."

Turning and running seemed like the best course of action now. " Look-- listen. I don't really fit in around here just yet. Still new. Most of you guys seem to know one another from your past lives as Z Warriors or whatever, defending the Earth, saving the universe, all of that good stuff that happened years before my dad was even a glint in my grandfather's eye. But you seem like an amiable, unassuming fellow that I could grow to like.

" I just need to speak with Yajirobe. "

"Speaking."

Now it was my turn to crease my forehead in concern. " . . . you mean . . . you? Oh. " Lovely turn of events. I should have stayed in bed. My luck would have turned out to be better if on the way over to Roshi's, Dr. Briefs and I had gone up in a great big gout of flame. " Hiiii. "
Edited by Ryuudo, Jul 3 2009, 04:20 PM.
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Ryuudo
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" Say, " I was taking a break for a moment, dipping my hands in one of the large buckets of fresh water that had been brought to the field and splashing the tepid liquid up onto my face, rubbing my damp hands through my hair. Despite there not being an actual sun over our heads, this place got to be pretty had when you were working for long stretches of time. " If you don't mind my asking, how did you end up in Heaven, Yajirobe? "

"Car accident."

" Really? "

It was hard reading him. Even after a few days, the guy hadn't shown any emotional other than annoyance. He always had a sour expression plastered to his face, never once cracked a smile. He probably died doing some awful chore around his house, like falling off of the roof while cleaning the gutters out.

"No. Now get back to work, those beans aren't going to farm themselves."

" Talk to Doctor Briefs. I'm sure he could figure out a way to get these things to do just that. What are they, anyway? What do they do; what are they good for? "

"They're good for nothing, kid, a lot like you, but they go better with hotdogs. Do you mind? I'm trying to concentrate here."

" Sure, forget I asked. Try not to pull a muscle. "

It was on the fourth day of back breaking labor tending the field's for Yajirobe -- one day after I had tried to palm a senzu bean for myself as payment for the service only to have the samurai chase after me. It was also after meeting with Aiden and Prototype 10 and making a vow to escape back into the world of the living once we, you know, found out how to go about it -- that a white paneled pick up truck pulled to a stop and sat idling on the grass just on the other side of the senzu crop. A crop that was starting to grow, thank you very much, though I was not the only one contributing. Seemed everyone wanted a piece of the farm work for themselves if it meant they'd be paid for their services rendered. If Aiden and Proto were doing it, then these bean things must have been good.

Out of the truck came a man wearing a white button up shit, a tie wrapped around his neck and tucked under his collar, a pair of boring gray dress slacks, loafers, and a clipboard. Normally I would've shrugged off the appearance as another of Heaven's odd attractions, but the horn the suit was sporting caught my attention. That and the blue skin.

He was one of Yema's ogres.

An ogre that was a long way from home.

"Mister Yajirobe, may I please have a word with you?" The fat lay about looked over to me as if I had somehow brought this misfortune upon him, the waddled his way to the gate in the fence. After un and relatching the hinge, he had a private conversation with the ogre that I wasn't privvy to dropping in on.
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Ryuudo
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What was going on? First the influx of all of these new souls, now this? Hard to think the two were anything but related to one another. Something big was happening downstairs, and by that I'm not talking about Hell.

"Hey, kid. Get over here."

" If you don't mind, sir, I'm in the middle of some serious bean farming action right now. If I stop what I'm doing, I fear I'll lose all the momentum I've been building over the course of the last three days. "

"Ha ha, real funny. Now quit it and get over here. This guy wants to talk to you." Folding his flabby arms over his flabby chest and glaring with his flabby eyes, I sighed in defeat and set the rake down on the fence post before leaping over top of the highest rung. Covered in dirt, dressed only in a pair of beat up kung fu pants, the some ones I'd been wearing for a while now, I figured that I looked much the opposite of the prim and proper businessman attire that the ogre had going for him. "Go ahead, tell him."

"Right, of course." The ogre cleared his throat and looked down at the form his clipboard was holding. "Under the order of the great King Yema, you have been tapped."

There was a moment of silence while I waited for him to tell me what the heck that meant. "Oh, yes. Sorry. There's been some, ahem, a few events happening where you're from--"

" Earth? "

"Uhm, not quite, no. I'm afraid I can't say--"

" Vegeta? "

"Well, yes. But I wasn't supposed to tell you, oh dear. King Yema will be upset."

"More upset," Yajirobe correct him, shaking his head.

"Quite right."

" You guys mind telling me what happened, or what King Yema wants of me? Those beans aren't going to farm themselves. "

Yajirobe mumbled something under his breath.

"You are hereby ordered to cease and decist all of your, uhm, activities here and report to the Check-In Station as soon as possible. In all seriousness, you needed to have been there yesterday."

I took my shirt off of the fence and began pulling it on over my head, then shoved my arms through the sleeves as he answered my next question. " Is there anyone else going? Aiden? Prototype 10? "

"There are other names on the contact list, yes. Now, if you would please bring all of your belongs with you to make things easier, as this could take a while and we don't know how long your presence will be required. The journey back is quite long, not an easy commute by any means."

" I'll meet you there. " Smiling and patting Yajirobe on the back hard enough to send him stumbling and grumbling, I placed the first and second fingers of my right hand against my forehead and vanished from sight, leaving the two of them standing there, one in awe, one in a worse mood than he had been when he woke up earlier that morning.

"Showoff."
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Ryuudo
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At the Check-In Station, I had been expecting another ogre to come and meet me as soon as I had appeared there with a clipboard of his own, dressed in a white button-down shirt with a tie tightly around his collared neck, wearing a pair of dull gray slacks and loafers, ready to give me my orders. Sadly, I was mistaken.

There were bodies everywhere. Not dead, not any more dead than I was, I should say, and most of them were like the occasional ghost I had seen back when I was still alive. Many had retained their bodies after crossing over, which was at once both comforting and disconcerting. Quite a few of them were still sporting injuries that had not yet healed. Yet there were others that had remains that could barely fill a plastic sandwich bag.

It was a horrible mess. People were screaming, ogres were trying to maintain the peace, and through it all, King Yema had to sit behind his great big mahogany desk and judge all of these people? There wasn't even a line; it was just chaos.

What in the world had happened while I was dead?

I’d find out in a moment. An old man that had still retained its jet black hue grabbed onto my arm and nearly pulled me to the floor with him. I held my ground and was about to wrench myself free of his grasp when I realized that he didn’t have a leg to stand on. " Oh, God. I'm sorry. "

"What happened?"

" I d-don't . . . I don't know, sir. I'm sorry. " I thought that repeating the aplology would somehow, as if through the force of magic, make things better.

"Where am I?"

" You're in the Check-In Station in the Afterlife. You're not . . . you've passed on, sir. " He let go and fell back to the floor, eyes wide but unseeing. Though his legs had been torn off and the wounds look like they alone would have been enough to kill the old man back wherever he had come from, they were no longer bleeding. It didn't make the scene any less grisly. " You and a whole mess of other people . . . "

A familiar face in the crowd caught my eye; trying to squeeze through a group of men in battle attire, I caught up with the doc in a few moments, calling his name a few times to try and get his attention but failing to do so. My voice was lost over the din of noise from all of the souls gathered in the too-small lobby.

" Doctor Briefs! What's going on? Who are all these people? " He was holding on to a clipboard of his own, I saw when he turned to greet me with a somber expression. " What happened to all of them? "

"There's been a terrible tragedy on Vegeta, I've been told. The entire planet," he turned to look at all of those gathered around us, and for the first time I noticed that every single one of them that wasn't an ogre or a puff of cloud sported a brown tail, and spoke only when he was facing me again, having to yell just to be heard. "The entire planet was destroyed in the war. They're trying to find my son-in-law to get down here and calm some of these people down to be judged. He was once their Prince. But I'm afraid that won't do any lick of good back where they've come from. The monster that did it is still out there."

" I'm going to need you to do a favor for me, Doc. If you see Aiden -- do you know who he is? -- or Prototype 10, tell them that I've already gone on ahead, all right? Can you do that for me? "

"Gone on ahead where, Ryuudo?"

" I'm going back. Someone has to help stop this. "
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Ryuudo
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[ Returning to Earth. ]
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Kuhn Kyojaku
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Vegeta's Destroyer.
Ryuudo.
| 11,750 EXP // 250 Zenni. |
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