Home Visits

Chime flew across the snowy northern landscape with a large cloth bundle held in both hands. He wasn't a fan of the cold, so visiting the coldest mountain in the world in the middle of winter was essentially the worst trip he could ask for. The icy wind whipped around him and pushed him back as he flew, and even with the hat, scarf, coat, and other warm clothes he'd conjured up for himself, the cold still bit into his skin. He wished he had a hovercar to drive. And also that he knew how to drive. Oh well. He'd just have to make due flying close to the ground where the wind wasn't so strong.

Even though the weather was horrible, Chime was still excited and smiling behind his scarf. He'd never been to visit someone's house, not since coming to Earth at least. He'd been doing a lot of running around, training, making mystical wish balls, watching over the planet...not a lot of time for a normal life. He never knew how much he'd miss mundane things like going over to visit a friend. And that was another thing: he'd never imagined he'd call a demon his friend. If someone had told him a year ago this would be his situation, the Guardian of a distant planet that made friends with demons, he would've called them crazy. Yet, here he was.

It was customary to bring a gift to someone's new house, that was a tradition that spanned the galaxy, but Chime had been at a loss for what to bring them. Earthlings tended to fall back on food as a gift, but he had no idea what demons ate, or if they even ate at all. After thinking on it a while, he decided to bring them some flowers. That was a common gift too, and there wasn't much plantlife around Mount Frappe, besides hardy and austere pines. Not the most cheerful to look at. So he conjured himself up some pots and the shovel, dug up some flowers he found in a garden in the Spinach Wastes (that farmer wouldn't miss them, they had a whole field!), and bundled them up in a cloth so they wouldn't freeze on the trip up.

After what felt like forever, Chime saw a house nestled in the rocky foothills of the mountains. It wasn't as if he had an address to go by, but he didn't need one. He'd simply followed Barban's energy signature once he was close enough, and lo and behold, there was the house. It was much nicer than he'd imagined it! The little Namekian touched down on at the front door. He was completely swaddled in his winter clothes, with only his eyes, ears and antennae poking out. His mittened hand gave a knock on the door, and he waited.

A cheerful, "Mmh mhhhm hm!" sounded from within Chime's layers of scarf, and the Namekian quickly unwrapped himself so he could speak properly, "Er, sorry. I said it's no trouble! It's not like there's any other houses to get confused with." He stepped fully into the cozy home, and when Hyuki's fuzzy head poked around the doorway, he grinned and gave her a wave back. To Sensoa, he gave a much more cautious and wary wave. He still didn't trust the demon not to fly into a rage, even with Barban present, but he also didn't want to be rude. So he kept an awkward distance and tried for a compliment, "Uhm, your house is very nice? It's much better than mine, that one was kind of boring. ...Oh!"

Chime scurried back to the door, and the bundle he'd left there when he was taking off his coat.  He dragged it to the middle of the room and started to unwrap the cloth, "I thought I should get you a gift.  Y'know, like a housewarming present.  I hope these are still okay, it was kind of a long flight..." Within the bundle was about half a dozen ceramic pots, each with a different color and species of flower growing inside.  They were all a little crumpled and smushed from behind wrapped up like that, but they otherwise seemed hearty and un-frostbitten.  Chime held up one and smiled, "I don't know what kinds they are, I just grabbed them.  But I hope you like them!"

He was looking for somewhere to set the pots down when Barban mentioned the food being ready soon.  Chime frowned to himself.  Namekians didn't need to eat, but he didn't want to disappoint his hosts like that.  He decided to at least taste everything to see what it was like.

"So, um..." Chime looked between Barban and Sensoa (and Hyuki, if she hadn't disappeared back into the kitchen) after he sat down on the sofa.  As excited as he had been to come over, he was beginning to feel out of place and unsure of what to do with himself, "How's everything been out here?  Barban's told me a little.  I've been pretty busy with Guardian stuff, myself, so it's nice to have a break." He swung his feet back and forth over the edge of the couch and fidgeted with his bead necklace as he spoke.

Chime winced to himself when Sensoa simply shut his eyes and carried on ignoring him. He really did want to get on better terms with the demon, intimidating and unpredictable as he was, but he was unsure how. Hyuki's floating stone hands quickly distracted him, however, and he found himself marveling at them as they set the potted flowers down in the corner. New kinds of magic always fascinated him.

His attention turned to Barban as the butler began telling him what their little family had been up to. Some of it Chime already knew from their occasional telepathic calls, but some was new to him. They'd run into some trouble in Satan City, but apparently, an android had helped them and gotten them healed. That was nice of him! Chime wondered if he'd ever run into the guy, but there were a lot of people living in Satan City, so the chances were pretty slim. When Barban mentioned Chime himself, the Namekian's face flushed purple and he ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, "Aw, no. You don't owe me anything. Just don't blow any more forests up, and we're even forever." He cast Sensoa a quick glance as he said that last part, as he was the only one of the three of them he was really worried about in that regard.

What Barban told him next made Chime's eyes bug out of his head, and he sputtered, "What?! A job? You got a job?!" He continued to look over at Sensoa, aghast, "Who would-- I mean, uh, that's not to say-- I'm sure you do fine work! I'm just surprised!" He stumbled over his words in his shock, then cleared his throat awkwardly and started again, "What sort of job do you do, exactly? Hyuki making things for the store makes sense, but I didn't know you had skills besides fighting. ...Er, no offense."

Sensoa outright growled at him and Chime knew he had definitely said the wrong thing. After some back and forth with the other two, the larger demon got up and stomped out the front door. Chime winced. So much for this visit going well.

"...I don't think he's stupid." He said to the remaining two demons, though he was staring at the front door as he spoke, "I mean, I don't have a job! I'm the Guardian, yeah, but nobody pays me to do that. And I can't drive either." He continued to bore a metaphorical hole into the closed door with his gaze, and briefly considered using telepathy to reach out to Sensoa and apologize, but having someone else's voice suddenly pop into his head would probably make things worse, not better. Best to just leave him for now.

Barban set down a glass of some unfamiliar drink in front of him, and Chime tried to discretely sniff it before taking a sip. His ears perked up and his eyes went wide. It tasted sweet! But not like the sodas he'd had before, it was a different kind of sweet. He wasn't sure how to describe it, exactly, but he liked it, so he continued to drink it as Barban spoke. "Wait..." Chime paused and furrowed his brow, his glass halfway to his mouth, "He's nervous about me? Are you sure? I'm not exactly intimidating, and besides, I didn't think he'd care about something like that. Huh..." He frowned down into his glass. Maybe there was more to the demon than he'd thought.

Soon, it was time for them to eat, and Chime was herded over to the kitchen counter where all the food was laid out. Barban was immediately embarrassed and flustered upon realizing he hadn't asked Chime what food he liked, but the Namekian just laughed and tried to wave him off, "No, no, it's okay! Honestly, Namekians don't eat food at all. I mean, we can!" He quickly ammended, so Barban wouldn't panic again, "But we don't need to, we just need to drink. So we don't really have recipes like they have on other worlds. So I still like to taste new things!" He tried to allay their fears by grabbing his plate and taking a bit of each kind of food. Over the course of the meal, he tried a bit of everything...except the green beans. Those remained untouched on his plate. He was about to eat them, but then they reminded him of his own antennae, and he couldn't bring himself to do it.

While the other two ate with pristine, noble etiquette, Chime...did not. He spent most of his life in a Dragon Clan temple on Namek, and so was generally a polite guy, but table manners, specifically, weren't something a race that didn't eat needed. At first, he picked a potato up with his hands, then realized the others weren't doing that, and used the fork instead. Then he was leaning on the table with his elbows, but then noticed they weren't doing that, either, so quickly leaned back. He went on like that through the whole mean, quietly learning what to do or not do at a dinner table. He was happy neither of them said anything about the beans. He didn't want to offend them, but it just weirded him out too much. Barban thanked him again, and Chime just laughed and waved him off, "You don't need to be so dramatic about it! I like tasting new things anyway. I liked the, um...the pie? With the berries? That was my favorite."

After dinner, he went and joined Barban back in the living room. He wished he knew some way to magically clean things, to help Hyuki out, but that was beyond him. Maybe one day he'd learn. He plopped himself back on the couch while the demon butler poured more tea, feeling content and almost entirely forgetting about how he made Sensoa storm out earlier. Then Barban asked him a question, and his thoughts screeched to a halt.

"Orange balls with stars? I-- yeah. Yeah, I know all about them," Chime told him, and he began to speak faster and faster as nervousness seeped into his voice, "You said Sensoa found one? How? Where? And where is it now? Can you show it to me?" He hopped up out of his seat again, but then took a breath and forced himself to slow down, "...Sorry, I just, uh. Those are very important. I've been looking for them."

Chime jumped a little when Sensoa came inside. He had been so worried about the whole thing with the Dragon Balls that he hadn't been paying attention and hadn't sensed him approaching the house. His expression fell when he heard the ball was gone, but quickly shifted into full-on panic and disbelief when he heard where it had gone instead: to Mumbo.

His mind went back to the Lookout, no more than a couple of weeks ago.  He remembered being woken up in the middle of the night to find a Majin shouting to see the Kami, how darkness and malice had seemed to ooze off his form, and how he'd taken the four-star Dragon Ball out from his gummy chest to taunt him with.  He imagined the two of them, Sensoa and Mumbo, standing side by side, Sensoa with his green flames, and Mumbo with whatever dark magic fueled him, both of them with matching sinister grins.  They were allies?  Had they been this whole time?  It felt he should have seen this coming, but he hadn't, and it felt like he'd been struck.  Like the universe was saying 'I told you so.'

"You gave it to Mumbo?" Chime echoed, still in quiet disbelief, "The Majin?  The big grey and pink guy?  Works for the World Trade Fleet?  That Mumbo?" his voice rose as he spoke, and soon he was standing up on the couch cushions, "Why?  Do you have any idea what you've done?  ...No, of course you don't." He started pacing down the cushions, but before he could actually step on poor Barban, he took to the air, and anxiously floated around the room instead, "There's not hundreds of them, Sensoa!  There's seven!  On the whole planet!  They're very rare and extremely powerful, but only if you collect all of them.  If the Fleet got them all, it would be...horrible.  I've been trying to stop them!"

He stopped floating when he was right by Sensoa's shoulder, next to where he was sitting by the fire.  For once, he was looking down on the large demon, "And you're their ally?  Do you work for them?  But you live out here, you got a job, I thought you were..." trying to be better never made it out of his mouth, and Chime just looked down at him with a mixed look of anger and dissapointment.

All the swirling, unhappy thoughts in Chime's head were swept away with Sensoa's next words. He would try to get the Dragon Ball back? Just like that? Chime would have doubted his sincerity if he were anyone else, but while Sensoa was angry, violent, and dangerous, he had yet to see him lie. The demon, as grating as some of his traits were, was an honest man. Also a frustrated one, by the sounds of it. It seemed like he'd joined the Fleet only out of a desire to fight, or maybe be of use to something, not because he wanted to conquer worlds. It dawned on Chime that Sensoa was, in fact, a fairly simple person with simple desires. He seemed to genuinely want peace for himself and his family, but was just completely ill-equipped to make it. He'd been so intimidated by the demon before, but as this realization sunk in, Chime found he wasn't afraid at all. He just blinked at nothing, lost in thought for a moment as Sensoa turned to speak to Barban.

He was jolted back to reality when those glowing green eyes turned back onto him, and Sensoa addressed him directly. He was apologizing, something Chime hadn't expected in the slightest when they started this conversation. When he claimed not to belong on Earth, and that he should leave for another world, the Namekian's little hands shot out to grab the demon's arm without thinking, "No you don't!" he snapped, with a conviction that surprised even himself, "You can stay here! If you're going to try and get the four-star back and turn against the Fleet, I'm not going to let you exile yourself off into space! I'll protect you!" the young Kami had no idea how he would protect him, exactly, but he was an expert at biting off more than he could chew. He turned to where Barban sat and nodded at the wolf with conviction in his expression, "I'll protect you guys, too! That's my job as your Guardian." 

The enormity of what he was saying hit Chime, a bit belatedly, but he only wavered a little bit, "W-we'll need a plan, and some more people, and we'll probably need to get stronger, but...I think we have a shot, if we work together," He smiled up at Sensoa, then realized he was still holding onto his arm, and quickly drew back his hands a bit awkwardly, "...And I'm sorry I shouted at you."