Dragon Ball Z: Paradise Found

Peaches and Cream

Gohan's wobbly feet refused to move any longer. It wasn't exhaustion that prevented the youngster from moving but instead fear. Wherever the young one turned his head there were just the same views of oriental walls of a castle. A room filled with a tiger-shade haze and pillars of burgundy decorated in gold.

"This is horrible..." Gohan muttered to himself as he looked around, hyperventilating. "I want mommy... Where's dad?"

The adolescent had been just now told what happened to his mother and his father in some sick attempt to juice out every semblance of torment from his brother's family that Raditz could squeeze out. Despite that knowledge, young Gohan still denied himself the total collapse that accepting this fact that the two people that brought him up and were always there to watch and guide him were now gone and that he was all on his own.

It all happened in an instant. A stony tail slammed Gohan to the pillar he held his back to and pressed him tighter to it as the stone serpent squeezed tighter and tighter. More and more of the protracted true body of Princess Snake wrapped around the pillar where Gohan had found shelter as the Deity of the Snake Way had caught up to her prey and marveled at its struggle as the snake clutched and tried to crush the child. By now Princess Snake had completely abandoned its blue, humanoid form and had become identical to the Snake Way itself as she reared its open jaw to gobble little Gohan up whole.

"Impressive, most hardened men would pop like grapes in your place..." the Deity of the Snake Way commended the child before slamming its head right at Gohan while it loosened its grip. Despite its unmatched speed and majestic power, the Deity only bashed its head against a solid wall of golden, protective Ki bubble hard enough to make it spin in a wobbly daze.

When the Deity of the Snake Way shook off its contusion, its bright eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Gohan having completely escaped her grasp as the boy floated in mid-air, his body stiff as a little bar of iron as he roared in a wild battle cry and formed a seemingly impenetrable Kiai barrier around himself. The escalating power of this child seemed too great even for the serpentine princess herself to break through but she could feel that this was less a feat that the boy could do and more like a show of desperation, an unexpected last resort of the boy being so terrified that his rational mind hid its head in the sand and let something much more primal take its place by the wheel.

"Enough!" the Deity hissed and slammed its tail against the golden protective bubble, shattering it and sending Gohan across the room, smashing through multiple pillars and disappearing into the hazy atmosphere of the castle. In one, nimble slither the Deity of the Snake Way had homed in on the child's position only to find an empty spot where little Gohan was meant to be. "Boy!!" the snake hissed with enough volume to raise shockwaves. "Oh well, taught me a lesson about playing with my food."

The serpentine divinity slithered off, disappearing into the mist of the inebriating atmosphere of the castle as only it was capable of and continuing her hunt for the fleeing, terrified, little boy.

*****

Chi-Chi screamed out as her leafless body got shot out from a water spout that helped a lovely fountain maintain its appearances. She picked herself up and scratched her aching sides and the back of her head, feeling her wet and loose hair falling over her extremities and only then realizing that she was not given a chance to dress up before the Royal Flush Spring lived up to its name in the most ironic way imaginable and flushed her into the mightiest whirlpool that Chi-Chi had witnessed.

"More of you..." a stern, feminine tone distracted Chi-Chi. The young woman dived down into the waters of the fountain so that she could hide from the sole witness of her shame though this witness appeared to be a fellow young woman in an oriental, ceremonial-style dress and a hat that almost looked like some sort of a crown as it was decorated with colorful, fluffy accessories in a ring around it. "Well, are you a demon or an unfortunate soul, lost on your way?" the woman inquired of Chi-Chi.