Dragon Ball Z: Paradise Found

What Demons Can Be Made To Fear

Distant noises of steel rending through rough and hard skin and flesh and spilling black bile all over the mountainous surfaces around the Devil's Castle. A potent thud at the old and massive wooden door drove it open as a panting ronin warrior slipped inside. Guts and black bile of demonic remains covered the shaken fighter as he slipped indoors and slammed the door shut behind him, shaking his leg for the halved demon carcass to let go.

The swordsman let out an animalistic growl as he forced the door back open and slipped out, grabbing the scattered bodies as he drew and swung his sword around to fend off the vulture-like flying demon bats that swarmed him intending to take him off and dropping him somewhere off the mountain peaks. As the pterosaur-looking demon avians weren't capable of ripping Yajirobe apart all by themselves, they figured the mountains might have been of some help.

Yajirobe sliced through the cravens and shoved the demon flesh he had selected for dinner back indoors while he forced the door back open and slid inside himself. A handful of troublesome fliers followed him but the swordsman took it all the way to the entrance hall ceiling to slice a few of them up while he met the final one on his way down and cut them clean into two by just putting up his sword and seeing the frenzied demon just fly past it and basically split itself in half.

"Ugly bastards. Ye can't even lift me off da ground, so why do ya have ta hassle me?" Yajirobe dusted off his hands after sheathing his sword and looking around the place he had burst into. It had been a dark and dreary place. A castle covered with dust and webs even in the entryway, almost as if nobody had lived there. A particularly peculiar feature of the fortification was the fact that it seemed just as stuck in between the outside world and a sophisticated interior as its exterior would have suggested.

The chubby swordsman tapped his wooden sandals around, feeling a pleasant, wet slap wherever he placed his foot. "What da hell is dat?" he muttered to himself as he tip-tapped around, trying to determine just what he was walking on. It felt warm and sticky like blood, based on the few drips that got into his sandals and touched his feet, but it may have been far more viscous than that and smelled scads worse.

"Oh, finally..." Yajirobe scurried along after his eyes got a bit more used to the dark and he rushed to a majestic carpet and dropped his sandals to rub his sticky and dirty feet off at the oriental marvel. "You'd wonder why you'd have swamp for floor in the first place if ye need to provide a mat to wipe the feet with. That's village folk for ya..."

"My, my... Feet right on the carpet... This will most vex Lucifer-sama..." a hunchback demon in a rich suit appeared on a staircase at the northernmost end of the entryway hall. The dandy had a burgundy-colored suit and a red bowtie, though his wicked appearance of a rotten and misshapen, murky brown face and balding old head greatly contrasted his classy style. "It'll be back into the tube for Igor, yes it will..." the hunchback limped back into the hallway he came from, leaving Yajirobe blinking by himself and staring at the curious sight that had occurred.

"What de heck?" Yajirobe muttered under his nose while rubbing the upper part of his dirty sandals at the carpet a few more times before kicking his feet back in and grabbing hold of the cut-up and gift-wrapped demon corpses he lugged around. "Ey! Creepy monkey-suit guy! Where is the fireplace in dis ere hole?" Seeing how nobody answered him, Yajirobe just sighed and mumbled to himself, "The service ere is abysmal..."

"You will find no fire here, human!" a raspy voice came from the shadows of the spacious entryway hall.

"Fire is a source of light, and we demons are strongest in the shadows! A demon's strength is at its peak when the Sun is down, after all." Another one joined in as more and more beaming, cold-blue eyes started lighting up around Yajirobe.