Even in death... (Concluded)

[C.haos]

C.haos had fought valiantly on the battlefield; yet someone had to lose. That someone was C.haos. His time had come. And as easily as hus spine was ripped out of his body; C.haos was thrown into the depths of Hell.

After his death, he anticipated the pain to end, but it did not. His soul fell from the skies for what seemed like an eternity; the further down he fell, the hotter he felt. But as the eternity seemed to pass, and C.haos hit he ground with a mighty thud, he could tell this was not the same Hell the humans had written about in the Book.

Above him, red clouds, none of which seemed to move. There were trees, and red or blue demons, all patrolling and keeping the peace. At the center of the world was a fountain from which blood was shot into the sky. A nice touch, if he'd say so himself.

As C.haos stood, he wiped the dust from his pants, feeling at his torso to make sure it was in one piece. He was whole. It was then something grabbed his attention. Above his head was a ring, which glowed a dim gold. A halo. This was in fact the afterlife. He was dead. But if this was Hell, why the halo?

He was not the only one with the ring hovering above his head, though. As he looked over the others, he could see they each had the same one. How odd...

Looking up to the sky, C.haos grinned. If there were clouds, perhaps he could fly out. Hovering up into the sky, he flew towards the clouds, hands readied in front of him. But as he neared them, he realized that these were not clouds at all. It was a wall. Good thing he wasn't careless, or he might have di- he was already dead.

As he lowered himself to the ground, he let out a grunt. How dull this would be without company. C.haos had gone nearly six years with Souka by his side, and now, without Souka here, he felt somewhat empty... Or maybe that was just the effects of Amaranth's earlier attack.

With a second grunt, he turned, heading towards a gaurd. Perhaps he could find out more about this place through one of them. If not, perpahs he could live up to his name and cause a little trouble. After all, he was dead now... How could these beings stop him?

[Deleted]

Souka awakened with a sharp headache moments after his soul descended from the red sky C.haos had been looking at. He found himself lying on the ground and stood up a moment later when he saw his brother C.haos standing around near with a golden ring on his head. He was not too surprised to find his brother in whatever this place was that they were in. Both combatants had died at the same time.

"Is that a halo on your head C.haos?" he asked his brother as he tried to get his attention by pointing and voicing the apparent golden ring floating over his skull. Souka took a step towards his brother and waited for him to answer. There were a lot of things he was unsure of since he had never died before in his life, well, at least not without coming back to life moments later. Yet that itself was a fluke on C.haos's part since the brotherly robot had found him in a crater with his body torn to shreds and had rebuilt him.

Unfortunately, since the planet Kold was far away from Earth Souka assumed that his opportunity to live had been lost to him. He remembered a monster with a golden tail had gotten him and thought back on it, a Saiyan had clearly killed him, and for that he would have his revenge some day. Souka had not wanted to be drawn entirely into the fights of C.haos but now that he realized he was a weakling in the universe his initiative to get stronger had suddenly grown.

He walked over to his brother and repeated his question before looking around the area they were standing in. He saw a fountain of blood, red clouds in the sky above him, and a bunch of huge red demons walking around with clubs. Just what was going on remained a mystery to him, but if this was death it must have been concocted from C.haos's mind. He never knew what his brother was ever truly thinking and so perhaps the guy had gone and created them their false reality here somehow.

Now as he looked around though, he did not see his fighting partner Katashi Masanori. The kid was nowhere to be found. And this caused Souka to think, "Wow, I bet that kid had such a kind heart he was sent to heaven if this really is hell. I doubt I'll see him again."

[C.haos]

"... On your head, C.haos"

C.haos had not noticed that Souka had fallen next to him. He was too busy following one of the gaurds. But as Souka neared him, repeatig his question, he stopped and turned towards him. Sure enough, it was Souka. He was whole, and a dim golden halo hung above his head. He too was dead. C.haos let out a dry chuckle, a smirk crossing hie face "Yes. I am not the only one. You too have a halo. I am assuming the large power level that appeared right before my death took you out?"

Raising a hand, a ball of ki formed, which he smashed between his fingers. It seemed that even in death he was strong, and not only that, but he felt stronger than he had before. Perhaps his saiyan blood helped with that.

He had never died either; so it was hard to tell what he could expect. He could feel power levels from low to high, some greater than even his own, but he had a hard time pointing any out. It was as if there was a haze inside his mind, keeping him from using all his powers. Perhaps Hell had some kind of shackles that would keep higher levels of power at bay, so no one could escape. Anything was possible.

"What says we track down one of these demons and find out how to get out of here?" he asked his brother, a familiar sadistic smirk sliding across his mouth.

[Deleted]

Souka smiled back at him and then looked up at the halo on his head. "I think, if we're dead, we shouldn't mess with the demons quite yet. If those people attacking Kold easily killed us the demons around here surely could too."

Souka looked around and noticed quite a few wandering around with huge clubs. The onis had dangerous looks in their eyes and looked like they could smash someone in a second. "C.haos, would you mind being a sparring partner with me for a few hours? I intend to find a quiet place around here and go through that gravity training we never completed. I think we should be able to at least get to fifty times our normal gravity."

Souka thought about this for a moment and realized he did not have a gravity chamber capsule on him. He searched his pockets though and found at least 2000 Zeni. Raising it up to C.haos's eye level so he could see it he asked, "Do you think they'll let me buy a gravity chamber down here?"

[C.haos]

Souka was against the idea of interrogating the demons. Even though C.haos disagreed with this logic, he decided it might be best to do exactly that. It was Souka's next question that threw C.haos for a loop.

"It seems that I am not the only one with a taste for power," he thought to himself, a dry chuckle leaving his mouth.

"That sounds like a great idea to me, but I doubt we'll have access to such luxuries like gravity chambers, or the like.". Souka then asked about the probability of getting a chamber, which caused C.haos' shoulders to shrug, "That is not a question for me, Brother. Perhaps you should ask one of the demons?"

It was painfully obvious that the two had never been killed before. Their ignorance caused a few heads to turn, including a couple guards who seemed to continue watching them as the spoke. It wasn't uncommon for a condemned soul to make friends, but two that appeared at the same time would normally be fighting. The fact that Souka and C.haos were conversing brought visible signs of nerviousness to a few of the demons.

[Deleted]

(I'm rewriting what I've posted we'll gravity train later once we're alive again. I bought my gravity chamber out of character and can see no in character way I could use it in H.F.I.L.)

Souka put his money away in his pockets and sighed. "I suppose you're right. The demons will likely take my money and eat it rather than let me spend it." He looked around and unfortunately could not find any demons that interested him. They were all super big and felt stronger to him than he was currently. There was one thing he noticed though. Sitting on the other side of the pool of blood a young man with red hair was looking at the fountain.

Souka grabbed C.haos's shoulders and turned him in the direction of the young man. He started pointing at him vibrantly and whispered loudly, "Crap, he's here... He shouldn't be here he's never committed murder in his life I feel." The man before his orange eyes was no other than Katashi Masanori. Somehow the annoying human had followed him all the way to Hell. It made Souka extremely nervous because he wondered what kind of power would send a young man like Katashi down to Hell.

[C.haos]

Souak seemed somewhat sad about C.haos' answer, but it took only a moment to break that. Grabbing C.haos' shoulder, he turned him towards the Fountain of Blood and pointed towards it. Sitting there, staring into the fountain was a familiar face, Katashi, Souka's dimwitted minion.

"Crap, he's here... He shouldn't be here he's never committed murder in his life I feel," Souka stated. He was visibly nervous, but C.haos could not see why.

While Katashi had trailed the duo through space, he didn't do too much. At the very least he repaired Souka when C.haos was not around. He was more of a mine-shaft canary, than a watch dog. Simple there to alert the others of trouble rather than fend it off. Souka was right. Katashi had did not belong in Hell; but he did not belong in Heaven either.

The man simply did as he was commanded, with fear C.haos would despose of him if he disobeyed. Well, that was how the bio-android saw it. He did not like Katashi very much anyway.

With a shrug of his shoulders, C.haos waved towards the man, "Lapdog! Come!" He shouted, hoping to grab his attention. Perhaps he could find out why the man was there if he asked. Even if it seemed Souka wanted the opposite. C.haos had not caught the part of Souka chucking him towards the enemy during his fight with Amaranth. But it is hard to say that would have changed his actions any.

[Deleted]

Katashi walked over to Souka and C.haos in a very grumpy mood, sad to see that he was nothing more than their medical scientist. Out of the trio, he was the weakest and had the least amount of martial arts skills despite being a strong guy for a human. He noticed as he came over that Souka was acting nervous around him, but he could not come up with anything as to why except that he was a big annoyance to even him, the guy who had dragged him along for no apparent reason from his mountain home.

"I'm not sure where this is that we are, but judging by the ring over my head is it somewhere special?" Katashi asked.

"Yes, you nimrod," Souka retorted as he stepped out from behind C.haos "you're dead and in hell with me and C.haos. Since you're a worthless brat I want you to stick around here and train by yourself. C.haos and I will be fighting super tough demons and we won't likely need your skills here. The reason is obvious since we're dead, unless there's some kind of special rule, well, we can't die again."

Katashi sighed and put his hands in his pockets he was afraid Souka and C.haos might act this way to him. He hated it since the last thing he remembered was trying to blast someone as he was thrown towards a powerful monkey man. Perhaps his evil intentions had sent him here with the two evil robots. He scratched the back of his head and asked, "If two or three powerful moneky warriors on planet Kold could fight and defeat you how is it that you'll be fighting demons?" Katashi could not wait to hear the answer to this.

[C.haos]

C.haos chuckled as Souka and Katashi went back and forth. He was still the same man, that was for sure. But Souka was much different. C.haos remembered the first time he was introduced to Katashi. Souka was much different back then. It was easy to see how much C.haos truly corrupted the young android. And for the first time, this disturbed C.haos.

Ever since absorbing the Norian girl, C.haos had felt different; as if he was developing something that he was never meant to have. He was still himself, but there was something deep within the pit of his stomach that made him think about his actions. Something he was truly afraid of. A conscience.

Souka spoke of training, excluding Katashi from their plans, only for the man to retort about the two being killed. This normally would have annoyed C.haos, but he was caught off gaurd by the newly found attitude of the human.

"Now, now, boys. Let's not be so hasteful to cast stones. We all are dead. That is the truth. I can tell you now it is better we side together than fight each other," a mighty green tail met C.haos' chin as he seemed to think deeply for a second.

"How about you go and talk to one of the guards, Katashi. You seem the most unthreatening out of all of us. Find out all that you can," with a turn, he faced Souka, nodding lightly, "I hate to admit it, but you and Katashi are right. We need to invest some time in some heavy training before we do anything drastic. I do plan on escaping, but as it stands, we know we are not capable of that. Assuming the guards are as stong as Amaranth, I would say we need to double our strength."

A grin shot across his face as his tail smashed into the ground, cratorin the earth beneath it, "The plus side is here we can not die. I saw we find out how much we can take, and train till we would be dead otherwise." With the realization that death might no longer be a concern, C.haos' hunger for power only tripled. There was also the fact that here, Souka would have no mechanical limits. His body would not break or burn as it had done so many times before. If he realized this, the two might easily become unstoppable.

[Deleted]

Katashi nodded at C.haos and went off to find a demon to speak to. He found a large, blue oni standing next to a peach tree and started trying to converse with him. Souka did not watch the actions of his ally any further and asked C.haos, "What do you have in mind?

Here in the demon world he could feel something was off. Normally, his sensors would be able to pick up power levels quite easily, but here he was finding only some demons had any sort of power at all. It was like the larger or tougher looking demons had some kind of ability to hide their powers from him.The only power levels he could get hold of for certain were C.haos's power level at 53,615 and Katashi's at 15,035. He had felt this when C.haos had used ki earlier, but was certain the three of them were now stronger. Katashi had probably not grown much in terms of strength, but he was sure he and C.haos had.

[C.haos]

Katashi nodded to him, and ran off. C.haos watched as the small man approached a large blue demon before Souka askd what he had had planned. The truth was, C.haos' plan was lacking. He saw little ways to make training have higher yields, without first testing the boundries. He carefully grabbed Souka's shoulder and squeezed. For once, he didn't feel like he was made of metal. His body was no longer mechanical. Down here, he was simply a soul. This was good news.

C.haos turned him so they faced away from the demons, hussing his voice, "I do not know if you have noticed, Brother, but our bodies seem to no longer carry the burden of mehanical peices. It seems to me that when we decended from the living realm, we left our bodies behind. I think the two of us should test the limits of this vessles. Perhaps down here we can accomplish more than we could before." Though this was all wild speculation, C.haos believed in it. He noticed something much different as soon as he arrived.

Taking a few steps forward before turning to face Souka, C.haos crouched down low into his fighting stance, hands ready to attack. Souka would know that there would be no talking C.haos out of it. He would have to fight. "Come at me, Brother."

[Deleted]

"You wish to fight me now, even though we just got here?" Souka asked his brother as he watched him bend his knees and crouch down before him. "If you really are intent on fighting me you should know I'm a military grade robot I have martial arts skills but today I'd rather use my guns."

Souka focused his internal systems on converting his right arm into machine gun and as the barreled weapon slid out of his arm socket he raised it up and fired off a series of 7.62 millimeter bullets from his 100 bullet cartridge clip towards his brother's head. He was unsure if the bullets would be fast enough to get past C.haos's defenses, but since they could travel up to a thousand yards, at such a short range he was certain C.haos would have trouble blocking them. Souka could only smile as he started off his first day in Hell with what he thought was a vicious attack. He had been unable to use this weapon against Yuumaru or Amaranth and had wanted to, but at the speeds they moved it was quite ineffective.

[C.haos]

"You wish to fight me now, even though we just got here? If you really are intent on fighting me you should know I'm a military grade robot I have martial arts skills but today I'd rather use my guns," Souka's arm morphed into a machine gun, which opened fire upon C.haos.

A light chuckle left his mouth as he saw the gun. This was not the first time he'd faced a gun. On Earth, C.haos had faced an army of men with similar weapons. He made short work of them, as he would Souka. If Souka had been firing Ki instead, the bullets most likely would have succeeded in tearing the bio-android to shreds.

C.haos was ready as the barrage of bullets exited the barrel. His legs shot out and he rocketed into the air, avoiding the blunt of the attack. As the trail followed he was nicked, but the damage was very little his hand shot out in front of him, his left hand grabbing the forearm for support. With a wink, a huge blast of ki was fired towards Souka under him.

"Perhaps you should stick to your melee and ki, Souka! I don't think you can hit the broad side of a barn with that gun of your's!" C.haos taunted, even though Souka's aim had been dead on.

[Deleted]

Souka sighed as he continued to fire off his gun. The bio-android managed to easily dodge his shots at first when he flew up into the air, but eventually got hit by them. Sadly, they barely did any damage to him as C.haos grabbed his right forearm with his left hand and fired a powerful blast of ki at Souka.

When C.haos taunted him with the words, "Perhaps you should stick to your melee and ki, Souka! I don't think you can hit the broad side of a barn with that gun of your's!" In an instant Souka brought up his visual scanners, despite the danger he was in, and realized he was on target 100%. Due to being under fire though, he had a split second to dodge the blast from C.haos as it erupted under his feet.

Souka was knocked in the air, but despite this felt no damage to his body even though he had taken a direct hit. There were a few blast marks here and there, yet these slowly began to fade. "Are you seeing this?" Souka voiced to his brother. "I don't think our attacks, well, maybe they can kill us but I'm healing..." He was amazed at this for he had never had regenerative programs assimilated into his robotic systems before. Could the place they were in be doing this? It shocked him for only a moment, but his robotic combat responses kicked in and he thought, "The correct response to an like this is to counter attack with something stronger."

Souka let his barreled gun on his right hand recede back into his arm socket and allowed the canon for his heat wave blast to lock in place. If bullets did not hurt C.has much getting hit in the face with a high powered fire blast would. He aimed the blast at C.haos's chest and began to let the energy collect in his right arm as he held it with his left hand. The recoil on this thing was a pain in the neck, plus it drained some energy after every use, so he hoped one blast would appease C.haos's desire to battle. It was a pretty big fireball, enough to possibly incinerate one person, so it had a pretty wide range.

[C.haos]

Though C.haos's attack hit, it did very little damage. This was not surprising after taking a barrage of bullets with little effect. But as Souka realized this and voiced it to C.haos, a dry chuckle left his throat. It seemed like his assumptions were showing true. The lack of a material body was definitely causing a difference in damage.

Souka's gun arm receded, only to be replaced by a canon. C.haos could feel it take in energy as he landed in front of Souka. This would fire no bullets. His arms shot out in front of him, having little time to react to the oncoming fireball. In an instant, it struck C.haos' hands. He could feel the heat lick at his face, his hands charring. This was one powerful attack.

As it slowly pushed C.haos backwards, he tried to anchor himself to the ground, using even his tail. After a few tries, he realized this would be no option. With a grunt, C.haos' ki flared around him. Steam exited the holes in his body, and his muscles buldged. Using just enough of his transcended form as needed, he was able to finally shove the ball away.

He quickly returned to his base state, falling to a knee. He felt as though his face had melted and his hands were gone, however as he looked himself over, he realized this was not the case. Much like Souka, he had some scorch marks, but little external damage. A grin slid over his face as he stood up, panting, "This... Is... Incredible!" He roared, raising a fist to the sky. He felt invincible, even though he was still in pain. This feeling must have been the same felling he would get when he became perfect. And the idea made his mouth water.

A sadistic smile slid over his face as he eyed Souka, "If we train here, I can see us surpassing Amaranth! I can see us becoming the most powerful beings in the universe!" It was always so easy to see C.haos' hunger for power. It showed in each training session, and battle. It even showed as he had regular conversations; but right now it was showing through more than ever before. And it became painfully obvious why he was in Hell.