Elimination Exit

[Orion]

Dante's Abyss.

Fiction.

Dante's Abyss Top Eight Chamber.

Reality.

Koola's eyes shot open, but quickly closed upon witnessing the obnoxious medical light shone in his face. Groaning, he attempted to silence his mind with its incessant and ambiguous trains of thought, all of which collided in a fiery mental explosion. A human male in a white lab coat examined the changeling as he came to grips with his materialised surroundings.

"Care to explain?" Koola demanded more than asked to the human, feeling his composure breaking.

"Congratulations, Mr. Koola," the doctor complimented, putting a cold stethoscope to the changeling's bony plated chest. "You've just returned from Dante's Abyss, having claimed sixth place!"

"Sixth pla-- wait a minute." The prince's memories were quickly congealing. "You mean, I was eliminated?!"

"That's correct, but with a very prestigious---"

"Was I killed by... a saiyan?"

The doctor left his patient for a moment and flipped through paper on a clipboard on a nearby bed. "Let's see... uhm, well I don't know, but your 'murderer' was a contestant by the name of..."

Please not a saiyan. Please not a saiyan.

"Raditzu."

"Fuck."

--------

"So buddy, what'd ya think of the competition?" the barman asked a regular barfly to the Dante's Abyss entertainment area. "Pretty excitin', huh?"

The inebriated elder gentleman tossed back another whisky shot and exhaled sharply. "Well, I thought it was great, but there's too many people a-dyin'."

"That is the idea of the tournament," the barman replied with a chuckle, filling his patron's shot glass again with alcohol. "People getting murdered."

"Call me old fashioned, but I'm a man who likes death with a side dish of sex. Or somethin'." He proceeded to down the shot with so much emphasis that he fell off his barstool. He didn't get up.

The bartender laughed. "Oh well, you might not like death, but I do. At least, the pretend kind. Thank the gods we don't have to worry about some rampagin' lunatic in here."

His words were cut short by a door on the far side of the room flying off its hinges and catching him in the temple, sending him to a similar state as his drunken customer. Several more eruptions resounded inside the room, and the doctor assigned to it was hurled through the doorframe.

Out charged Koola, his rage unquenched, morphed into his final form. His mask concealed the twisted countenance, which was probably for the best, as his glowing red eyes was enough to scare most of the other patrons screaming away from him.

The changeling picked any object as the receptor of his frustration; chairs dissolved in a single death beam from his finger, deep scorch marks etched into the walls and floor from his eye beams, sections of wall disintegrated by basic energy blasts. With his leg returned to its original form, there was nothing hindering him from expressing himself in the way he knew best; acting like a spoilt child.

"Damn it!" his slightly distorted, dark voice roared. "A fucking saiyan! Raditzu, no less!" There was much history between the two powerhouses, none of which Koola looked upon fondly. "I didn't even get to kill those other saiyan cowards!"

The aggravated Icer stormed past the bar, kicking the unconscious patron out of his path. His fist plowed into the bar, sending shattered wooden splinters into the sky. Finally, the cameras located the source of disturbance in the area. Loud sirens and a feminine voice over the intercom ordered all available guards to the bar area.

Koola's furious eyes caught sight of a room with the inscription reading, "Teleportation Chamber: Earth."

Kerela.

Finding a new purpose, Koola entered a jog towards the door. Just as he was about to past through the frame, a line of Dante's Abyss soldiers lined up in front of it, dropping to one knee in unison and aiming their ki rifles at the transformed changeling.

"What?!" the prince blurted angrily.

"Surrender now, or we'll be forced to take you out!" one of the guards ordered succintly.

Koola found no threat. "Just stand aside." He continued his ferious stomping, passing straight through the barricade of gunman and making it without injury into the teleportation chamber.

"Pfff," the changeling spluttered in contempt. "Is that all you've got?"

The guards turned quickly, seemingly caught unaware as to how Koola moved there. "How... did you do that?" one asked.

Koola was forced to think. He didn't actually touch the guards when he walked through them. What the hell was that about?

"I..."

"Are you... a ghost?" a scared gunman uttered.

The Icer disregarded it. "Whatever. Sorry about the mess."

Of course, he wasn't. He owed an unpaid debt to some saiyans; namely Raditzu, and two others he didn't know the names of. He would know them on sight, though, and next time he did see them...

Koola stepped upon the teleportation tube, and striking a pose so that the guards could remember his transformed glory, burst into a million atoms and left the abyss.