The rain kept falling, steady and cold, masking the thin, uneven sound of her breathing.
Chi-Chi lay there, cheek pressed into the mud. A shallow puddle had formed in front of her, tinted faintly red. In it, she saw herself—one eye swollen shut, face barely recognizable. Her jaw throbbed. Her legs felt distant, like they belonged to someone else.
She told her hand to move.
Her fingers trembled.
Nothing more.
I can't... stand up...
The realization didn't come with panic.
It settled quietly.
So this is it.
The thought moved through her slowly, without drama.
This is where I stop.
She wasn't scared. Just exhausted. A deep, bone-level kind of tired.
"Papa…" She breathed, the word catching in her throat.
Rain mixed with the tears in her one open eye, cooling them as quickly as they fell.
I'm sorry.
Her father's face surfaced in her mind—warm, steady—but it felt farther away now, like something seen through fog.
I said I'd be stronger.
Her ribs ached as she swallowed back a sob.
I tried.
Footsteps moved closer.
Mud shifting under each step.
Chi-Chi didn't lift her head. She couldn't. Her forehead stayed pressed to the soaked earth.
She closed her eye.
She waited.
For it to finally be over.
The steps stopped beside her.
Silence stretched.
No impact came.
Instead, there was a wet sound—something dragged free from the mud.
Zzzzt.
A faint hum carried through the rain—thin, strained.
Chi-Chi forced her eye open just enough to see.
Piccolo stood over her, but he wasn't watching her.
He was holding the Kumokiri.
The blade trembled in his grip. Weak sparks crawled over his hand, flickering blue against his skin like they were trying to push him away.
He tightened his fingers.
There was a sharp crack.
Dark energy bled into the metal. The blue light faltered, warping into something dull and wrong. The hum twisted into a thin, pained whine.
Then it stopped struggling.
The sword went still in his hand.
Piccolo turned the blade over in his hand, admiring the edge as the rain washed the mud from the steel.
"A fine weapon, indeed. Devoted to the quaint ambition of eradicating evil."
He looked down at Chi-Chi, a twisted smile stretching across his face.
"Do you appreciate the poetry of this moment… or are you too human to understand it?"
He took a step closer, looming over her broken body like a thunderhead.
He pointed the tip of her own sword directly at her throat.
"You dared to bring a holy relic to sever my head, believing it was your salvation. Your destiny. How naive."
Piccolo sneered, raising the blade high above his head for the execution.
"That the instrument will be the very thing that sends you to hell."
Lightning flashed in the sky, illuminating the terror in Chi-Chi's eye and the gleam on the blade that was about to kill her.
"Goodbye, daughter of the Ox, say hello to your father for me."
Thunder tore the sky apart, illuminating the forest in a stark, blinding white flash.
In that split second of light, King Piccolo drove the blade down.
SHLICK.
There was no scream.
Just a broken gasp that caught in her throat.
The blade slid into her stomach with almost no resistance. Through flesh. Through bone. Out the other side. The tip sank into the mud beneath her, fixing her in place.
Her body jerked once, back arching from the shock, then dropped hard into the wet earth.
Her hands moved on instinct, trembling as they found the hilt. Fingers slipping. Trying to understand what had just happened.
"Gah... hhh... aah..."
Blood spread beneath her, warm at first, then quickly washed thin by the rain.
The sword gave a weak flicker, a faint blue spark that made her flinch. It burned for a second, then faded, leaving only the cold weight of steel inside her.
He didn't pull it out.He simply let go.
The blade stayed there, standing upright from her body, swaying slightly as she struggled to breathe.
He looked down at her without saying a word.
Her breaths came short and uneven.
Her fingers trembled around the hilt, but they didn't have the strength to hold on. The light in her eyes dulled little by little, like something quietly shutting down.
"A fitting end." Piccolo said, his voice devoid of any emotion other than a cold satisfaction.
He turned away.
He didn't bother checking her pulse. Didn't fire another blast. In his mind, it was finished. Her body just hadn't caught up yet.
He walked off without looking back, boots sinking into the mud, cape dragging heavy behind him. With each step, he blurred into the rain until he was just a darker shape in the storm — and then he was gone.
She was alone.
Rain filled the silence. Thunder rolled somewhere far away. Beneath it all was the faint sound of her breathing, uneven and thin.
She looked up at the sky. The sword's hilt blocked part of it, a dark shape in her vision. It felt impossibly heavy.
Papa…
The edges of her sight began to dim. The cold from the ground crept through her clothes, into her skin, deeper. The heat that had kept her moving was gone now.
I'm… so cold…
Her hands slipped from the blade and fell into the water beside her. She tried to keep her eyes open. For a moment longer, she watched the empty space where he had disappeared. Then even that started to fade.
The pain was the first thing she noticed—or rather, the absence of it.
There was no stinging cold from the rain. No crushing weight on her chest. No agonizing fire in her abdomen where the steel had pierced her.
...
There was only silence.
....
And white.
.....
Chi-Chi opened her eyes.
She wasn't lying in the mud of the forest anymore.
She was floating in an endless, blinding expanse of pure white.
There was no horizon, no sky, no ground—just an infinite, featureless void.
"I..."
Her voice didn't echo. It simply existed.
She scrambled to her feet—or what felt like feet, though there was no floor.
She looked down at her stomach.
The blue dress was still torn, the fabric stained with dried blood, but the skin beneath it was smooth.
Unblemished.
She brought her hands up to her face. They were clean. The mud, the blood, the bruises—all gone.
"I'm... dead." Chi-Chi whispered, her shoulders sagging. The realization didn't bring fear, just a heavy, hollow sadness.
Piccolo killed me. This must be the Other World.
She looked around the emptiness, tears pricking the corners of her eyes again.
"Papa? Are you here?" She called out, her voice trembling.
"Oh, stop it."
The voice cut through the silence like a bell—clear, melodious, but laced with a sharp edge of amusement.
"You really are quite dramatic, aren't you?"
"GAAH!"
Chi-Chi yelped, jumping back and spinning around in a defensive stance, her fists raised instinctively.
Standing there, watching her with a look of mild entertainment, was a woman.
She didn't look like anyone Chi-Chi had ever seen.
There was a faint light around her, soft but steady, as if the space itself was brighter because she was standing in it.
Her silver hair was long and pulled up into a loose loop that somehow held its shape without effort. Small gold ornaments hung from it, barely moving.
Her eyes were gold too — not warm, not cold. Just sharp. Focused. Old.
She wore a blue gi, cut differently from any school Chi-Chi recognized. Subtle gold cloud patterns traced the fabric, shifting slightly when she moved, like they weren't fully stitched in place.
She stood there calmly, arms resting at her sides.
She was smiling — not gently, not cruelly. More like someone who already knew how this would end.
"Who... who are you?" Chi-Chi stammered, lowering her guard slightly, confused by the woman's overwhelming presence.
"Are you... are you the Goddess of Death? Or maybe an angel?"
The woman laughed, a sound like wind rushing through a canyon.
"An angel? Do I look like I play a harp?"
She took a step forward, the ground rippling beneath her like water.
"A few moments ago, you were holding me in your hands. You screamed my name. You begged me to slay a demon for you. And then… you let that green trash pin me into the dirt like a decorative garden stake?"
Chi-Chi's eyes widened in shock as the realization hit her. The blue lightning. The electricity. The golden clouds on the dress.
"Wait... you're..."
"I am the spirit you failed to wield, I am Kumokiri."