Piccolo's method of boarding was entirely devoid of grace.
He reached aggressively across Goku, seizing the Saiyan's shoulder with the iron grip of a man who had decided that if he was going to do something profoundly undignified, he was at least going to execute it without hesitation. Goku let out a muffled noise of complaint—something caught halfway between ow and what—and shot the Namekian a sideways glare.
Jordan, standing on Piccolo's opposite flank, casually rested a hand on the Namekian's other shoulder and looked at Kami.
"I promise I won't wander off," Jordan said cheerfully.
"That," Kami replied, wearing the exhausted expression of a deity who absolutely did not believe him, "remains to be seen." The old god exhaled a long, heavy breath. "Hold on."
Kami's Lookout dissolved. The pristine blue sky, the ancient stone lanterns, and Mr. Popo standing silently on the marble platform—all of it violently tore away into the ether. There was a stomach-lurching moment of sensory static.
Then, they arrived.
Endless, churning yellow clouds stretched aggressively in every direction.
Jordan had expected something universally bleak—the crushing, monochromatic grey of classical mythology, or the claustrophobic dread that the genre usually assigned to the afterlife. What he got instead was a vast, sprawling amber twilight. It was a warm, bizarre atmosphere. The cloud cover, the color of old parchment, blanketed a sky that refused to commit to either day or night. It should have felt oppressive. Somehow, it didn't.
Clusters of massive, ancient palace architecture pierced through the cloud layer. The buildings featured wide, sweeping classical roofs, constructed on a monumental scale that effortlessly projected total authority without needing to announce it. The structures were spaced miles apart, connected by wide, curving thoroughfares that cut smoothly through the amber fog.
And everywhere—shuffling along those roads and massed in perfectly organized, bureaucratic lines before the grandest hall—were the dead.
Jordan watched them.
Most of the souls were only semi-present. They manifested as soft, blue-white flames, only vaguely humanoid, flickering weakly as they shuffled forward in the endless queue. Every so often, a face would briefly surface from the light—the unremarkable geography of an ordinary, forgotten life—before melting back into the ambient glow before Jordan could even focus on it. They moved without urgency. The fundamental laws of this dimension had drawn them in like a retreating tide, and now they simply existed to wait for judgment.
Here and there, a solid figure stood out among the sea of flames. Someone whose ki Jordan could actually read—a distinct, complete, contained biological signature. A martial artist, most likely. Someone who had lived with such violent, localized intensity that even biological death couldn't entirely dismantle their ego.
Only those with genuine power get to keep their bodies, Jordan mused. Everyone else just... drifts.
The line was staggeringly long, yet perfectly orderly. It was actively managed by heavily muscled underworld officials sporting blue and red skin, sharp fangs, and battery-powered megaphones. The ogres moved through the spectral crowd with the practiced, dead-eyed efficiency of transit cops managing a Tuesday rush hour. The dead complied with the total resignation of people who literally had nowhere else to be.
"Those buildings ahead." Kami gestured with his wooden staff, the base tapping hollowly against the cloud-road. "That is the administrative center of the dead. The spirits you see are the newly departed—their eternal fate is decided by the King."
Goku was spinning in slow circles, trying to take in the sheer, impossible scope of it. He wore the frank, unfiltered curiosity of a man who had never been told the afterlife was a physical location, and was currently processing the logistical implications in real time. Piccolo walked in absolute silence, his face locked into a mask of careful neutrality, which Jordan had long since learned to read as the Namekian's version of paying extreme attention.
Kami's divine rank carried significant weight, even down here. They bypassed the endless queue entirely, moving smoothly through the security checkpoints guided by red-faced officials who immediately recognized the Earth's Guardian and stepped aside without demanding paperwork.
King Yemma's hall was mathematically absurd.
The mahogany double doors were scaled to comfortably accommodate entities the size of skyscrapers—which made logistical sense when accounting for the sheer biological variety of things in the universe that died and required judging. The interior was palatial, yet aggressively bureaucratic. Vaulted ceilings and massive stone columns framed a room that perfectly balanced divine grandeur with the soul-crushing reality of a place where millions of administrative decisions were processed daily.
Sitting behind an impossibly massive mahogany desk, presiding over the entire planetary operation, was a figure roughly the size of the Ox-King multiplied by three. Broad, mountainous, sporting a thick mahogany beard and a horned helmet, King Yemma wore the deeply entrenched scowl of a middle manager who had been running this specific nightmare for millions of years and had developed a corresponding baseline of seasoned impatience. A mountain of stamped paperwork sat near his massive right hand. A leather-bound ledger the size of a minivan lay open before him.
King Yemma stopped stamping and looked down at the arrivals.
His massive eyes tracked across Kami (acknowledged), Goku (recognized from the incoming file), Piccolo (paused briefly), and finally, Jordan.
The pause ground to a dead stop.
"Earth's Kami," King Yemma boomed. His voice carried the specific, rumbling acoustics required to project authority across a room the size of a stadium. "What exactly is a living mortal from outside this universe doing standing in my lobby?"
Kami instantly adopted the rigid posture of a manager caught violently breaking protocol. "Your Majesty, I—the circumstances on the surface evolved rapidly. The Saiyan invasion approaching Earth—Jordan is the one who secured that critical intelligence, and given the extreme timing of his arrival, I took the liberty of—"
"Everyone ends up at this desk eventually," Yemma interrupted, his voice dropping an octave.
"Yes, Your Majesty, I am aware—"
"Saiyans or no Saiyans."
"Of course, Your Majesty, and I deeply apologize for the catastrophic irregularity of this visit, but if Earth falls to this threat, then we can mathematically expect—"
Yemma held up one massive, red hand, cutting the god off completely. He leaned forward, scrutinizing the three mortals in sequence, like a loan officer reviewing a highly questionable application.
"The one called Goku," Yemma grunted, checking his ledger. "He has an acceptable, heroic track record. We can process an exception for him." His gaze shifted. "Piccolo Daimaō's descendant." He said the name entirely without inflection. "The historical record on this one is extremely colorful. But—" a heavy beat— "given the apocalyptic circumstances on the surface, fine. Also an exception."
He finally looked at Jordan.
The corner of the giant's mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile. It was more of a grimace.
"And you. You're physically alive, you're not from this localized multiverse, and you've apparently decided to take a casual sightseeing tour of my sovereign domain." Yemma let the heavy silence stretch. "If you manage to die while visiting the underworld, your soul immediately falls under my absolute jurisdiction. Is that understood?"
"Completely," Jordan lied smoothly.
He kept his external expression perfectly attentive and cooperative. What he absolutely did not allow to show on his face was the internal monologue running parallel to the conversation:
I know your meta-record, big guy. I know exactly how many times you've had to beg for favors from the very mortals you're supposed to have divine authority over. I know about the time Frieza's grunts completely overran your lobby and reorganized your filing systems and you couldn't do a damn thing to stop them. You are arguably the most put-upon, disrespected authority figure in this entire franchise, and you still punch the clock every single day because someone has to do the paperwork.
That's genuinely, objectively admirable.
Also, you're wearing a tiny little tie over a muscle shirt, and it's kind of cute.
Yemma's massive eyes narrowed suspiciously. He wasn't a telepath—he couldn't actively read Jordan's mind—but something in the transmigrator's overly polite expression clearly broadcasted that his sincerity rating was not currently operating at one hundred percent.
"Hmph," Yemma grunted.
His divine aura violently expanded.
It wasn't a hostile action. There was zero killing intent, nothing that read as a biological prelude to an attack. It was simply the raw, crushing weight of divine authority in its purest, most elemental form: the crushing presence of an entity that held absolute jurisdiction over the concept of death itself, physically pressing the oxygen out of the room. The ghost-flames in the waiting area outside flickered violently. Kami's knuckles turned white around his staff.
Goku, standing casually beside Jordan, possessed a highly straightforward relationship with terrifying auras. His Saiyan instincts instantly verified there was no actual malice in the pressure. He mentally catalogued the flex as 'big guy, not currently hostile,' and remained entirely relaxed.
Piccolo stood rigid, his arms folded, his expression locked in stone. He had faced down the original Kami at seven years old and had been thoroughly unimpressed. King Yemma's divine pressure was undeniably formidable, but the Demon King had developed a strict, lifelong policy of never yielding to things simply because they were physically larger than him.
Jordan just stood there, his hands in his pockets, analyzing the pressure with the calm, academic interest of a meteorologist observing a passing storm front.
Yemma held the crushing aura for three seconds. Then, he seamlessly retracted it.
"Absolutely no sense of occasion, any of you," Yemma muttered, his tone clearly indicating he was noting this disrespect for the permanent record. He looked down at a much smaller official standing to the left of his massive mahogany desk.
The ogre was a slim, blue-faced figure wearing a crisp white dress shirt, a neatly tied Windsor knot, and wire-rimmed spectacles. Two small, polished horns protruded from his forehead. He gripped a clipboard with the intense, spiritual dedication of a man who viewed administrative paperwork as a holy calling.
"Take these three to Snake Way," Yemma ordered.
"Certainly, sir." The official tucked his clipboard under his arm, descended from the workstation with practiced, bureaucratic efficiency, and looked at Goku, Piccolo, and Jordan. "Those of you proceeding to the residence of King Kai, please follow me."
Kami reached out, resting a wrinkled, green hand on Goku's shoulder.
"Learn absolutely everything he is willing to teach you," Kami commanded softly. His voice carried the desperate weight of a god who had run out of miracles. "Whatever happens to Earth in one year is going to entirely depend on what you bring back from that road."
He shifted his gaze to Piccolo. He didn't say a single word, which, given their history, was a profound acknowledgment in itself.
Piccolo didn't respond. But his jaw tightened. He heard it.
Goku flashed a brilliant, uncomplicated grin—entirely devoid of fear or calculation. "I won't let you down! And—" he paused, glancing back over his shoulder toward the dimensional gateway they had just stepped through. "When my training is done, tell Chi-Chi I'm coming straight home. Please tell her I said that."
"I will," Kami promised.
Outside the grand hall, Jordan was still mentally calculating the architectural load-bearing requirements of the ceiling when the blue-faced official raised one hand. He flashed the universal gesture for please hold here, and briskly jogged around the corner of the building.
Goku and Piccolo waited in silence.
Jordan waited.
A distinct sound approached from the direction of what appeared to be a massive, concrete parking structure. It was a sputtering, rattling, deeply mechanical internal-combustion sound that did absolutely nothing to suggest divine infrastructure.
A car pulled around the corner.
It was a classic, boxy compact sedan. The kind of aggressively sensible model that had been highly popular in a specific, boring decade on Earth and had simply never been redesigned. It rolled toward them at a careful, speed-limit-abiding pace. The rusted exhaust pipe aggressively spat small clouds of grey smoke into the amber fog.
Goku stared at it.
Piccolo's stony composure held for exactly four seconds. Then, a look crossed his alien features that wasn't quite an expression, but was definitely a violent physiological reaction to absurdity.
"You guys have cars down here?" Goku asked, genuinely baffled.
"Everyone who has ever died on your planet eventually passes through this desk," the official replied smoothly, leaning out the driver's side window. He spoke with the measured, exhausted patience of a bureaucrat who had to explain this exact concept thirty times a day. "Tech-savvy inventors, automotive engineers, master mechanics—all of them. Since the fundamental technology exists and it solves our logistical problems, the underworld simply adopts what works." He offered a thin, polite smile. "We try our best to keep current."
It was, Jordan reflected, flawlessly logical. The underworld of the Dragon Ball universe wasn't a mystical realm of torment; it was an afterlife bureaucracy. And bureaucracies modernized whenever the dead staff brought new expertise across the threshold with them. Of course they had cars. There was probably an entire IT department running on a localized intranet, and some poor accountant who had suffered a fatal heart attack during tax season was likely currently streamlining three centuries of backlogged soul-audits in a cubicle somewhere.
Jordan slid into the cramped backseat next to Piccolo. The massive Namekian said absolutely nothing, aggressively folding his long limbs to occupy the minimum possible amount of space, while still radiating an aura that clearly communicated he had extremely violent opinions about public transit.
Goku practically bounced into the passenger seat, craning his neck to look out both windows simultaneously.
They drove through the afterlife at a painfully responsible twenty-five miles per hour. The thick amber clouds rolled past the windows. Occasionally, another horned official on foot would offer a polite, corporate nod to their driver as they passed. The sedan's engine made a terrifying, grinding sound that suggested it was deeply committed to continuing its existence through sheer, stubborn willpower.
"Question," Goku piped up, watching a cluster of spectral ghost-flames drift lazily across the crosswalk ahead of them. "All those spirits we saw in line back there. Do they just... stay like that forever?"
"Most of them are eventually assigned to paradise, or routed to the lower hells based on a strict algorithmic assessment of their conduct during life," the official explained, keeping his eyes on the road. "The ones who remain in the lobby are the complicated cases." He sighed, tapping the steering wheel. "There are a lot of complicated cases."
Jordan filed the data away. The underworld faced a genuinely terrifying logistical nightmare: an infinite, endlessly expanding population of the dead, entirely assessed and sorted by a single administrative court that had been running the exact same archaic process since the dawn of conscious life on Earth. The fact that the system hadn't completely collapsed was impressive. The fact that it ran this smoothly, complete with spectacled ogres in business casual and functioning motor pools, suggested that King Yemma had successfully poached some truly terrifying middle-management talent over the millennia.
The image of Anzu's brutal, perfectionist organizational instincts being unleashed on the management of the underworld crossed Jordan's mind. It was briefly, darkly hilarious.
The sedan's brakes squeaked as it slowed to a crawl.
Ahead of them, the paved road abruptly ended at a massive stone structure. It wasn't so much an architectural entrance as it was a geographical fact: the gaping, open maw of a colossal stone serpent, rendered in terrifying, scale-accurate detail, facing them head-on. The stone jaws were wide enough to comfortably drive a freight train through.
Beyond the teeth, visible only as the path curved away and vanished into the churning amber clouds, was a road that wound exactly like the undulating spine of the creature whose head framed it.
Snake Way. One million kilometers long. Thin as a ribbon. The only physical connection between this bureaucratic border and whatever divine entity waited at the absolute far end of the universe.
"We have arrived at the terminus," the official announced, throwing the car into park.
They filed out of the cramped sedan. The stone serpent's fangs framed the amber sky directly above them. The winding path beyond it disappeared into a yellow fog that stretched further than any of their superhuman eyes could track.
Goku cracked his knuckles, rolling his broad shoulders. His dark eyes tracked the impossibly long path ahead with an expression that wasn't quite impatience, and wasn't quite excitement. It was the specific, terrifying look of a battle-junkie who had just identified a massive, insurmountable problem, and was already looking forward to sprinting headfirst into it.
"My jurisdiction ends here," the blue-faced official said, offering a small, crisp, corporate bow. "I wish you a safe journey."