Chapter 8: Yamcha vs Tien
Yamcha was grinning as both he and Tien entered the ring. There it was, that familiar rush of adrenalin he hadn't felt in so many years. Kami how he had missed entering these things, even if his track record for getting past the first round of the finals was 0 to 3.
There was still a feeling, a powerful one at that, that feeling that nothing else in his life had ever given him, not roaming around Diablo Desert as a bandit, not playing baseball for the Titans, maybe training for the tournaments.
But that was a big maybe.
Now to be fair, the Titans had done well by him, and Yamcha by them, but that didn't change the fact that he was a fighter, not a batter or a baseman or a pitcher, at heart. In fact, with the sun shinning down on him like it was and the dull roar of the the crowd in the stands, Yamcha felt somewhat nostalgic for some of his past fights. As he waited for the match to start, Yamcha allowed his mind to wander to fights past, starting with the day that the Saiyans had arrived on earth...
DBZ
Yamcha let out a triumphant cry of victory as the short, miniature green being that had spouted to life not half an hour ago came crashing down to the ground. Like Tien before him, the scar faced warrior had an easy time with his freshly grown opponent. Now all that remained was the coupe de grace. Yamcha cupped both of his hands at the palms and brought them back.
"Kamehame..." There was a monetary pause as Yamcha debated on how much power to use to finish off his green foe. Half would be enough wouldn't it? He was about to use only half his power, but at the last moment changed his mind. How many fights from the World Tournament had he lost simply because he had been either outclassed or simply too cocky? All of them, and this wasn't a tournament. If he screwed up here, the price for his overconfidence would be his death.
The hell if I'm going to lose to one of these freaks! Full power it is then! "HA!" Yamcha threw both of his cupped hands forward as a brilliant beam of blue light shot forth from them like a cannon ball. The beam made contact with the downed Saibamen, which managed to let out one last anguished cry before its entire body was vaporized by the blue beam of death.
A few feet away the sayian brute Nappa began grinding his teeth in annoyance. "That's two that have lost Vegeta," he grunted. "Do ya think we should really continue this game if it means the waste of perfectly good Saibamen?"
"But of course we do Nappa," the pint sized prince replied, the same confident and arrogant smirk never changing as he spoke. "After all, it's the only way we'll be able to even roughly judge their power levels seeing as how these earthlings can suppress their powers at will. And if some weakling Saibamen die in the process more the better. We'll have no use for weaklings when we go out into the galaxy to make our mark."
Nappa nodded slowly, his bald face showing that he didn't approve of the pointless waste of perfectly good minions but that he saw the logic in what his prince was saying. He turned and glared at the earthlings.
"Alright maggots, who's up next!?"
As it turned out, Piccolo was next to fight, followed by Krillin, Chaozu, and Gohan. All won their fights, with the exception of Gohan due to inexperience, quite easily. This in turn meant that Nappa was all the more enraged at them when the last of the Saibamen was killed.
"I'm going to rip the whole lot of you to pieces.," the broad shouldered sayian growled as he stepped forward to fight.
And what a fight it had been, Yamcha and the others threw every technique and plan they had in their arsenal at that big brute and somehow Nappa had STILL managed to shrug it all off. Even their "Solar Flare + Spirit Ball + Destructo Disk" tactic had failed in killing the Saiyan general (though Nappa did lose an arm in the process). Then, with that last of both his and Chaozu's energies, the two of them together hit their Saiyan foe with everything they had, dying in the hope that they had at least managed to harm him in the process.
DBZ
Yamcha let out an unsettled chuckle as his mind switched to another fight. This one had been roughly seven years ago when the day of the Android attack had come. He had been the first one on the scene, having heard the terror filled cry of a nearby woman's voice.
DBZ
Yamcha tried his best to swallow the lump in his throat as he stared at the two beings before him. One was a strangely dressed old man, the other a fat mime-looking being. Both had a cold, uncaring look in their eyes that sent a shiver up and down Yamcha's spine. There was no doubt about it. These were the androids he and his friends had been searching for.
"So good of you to join us Yamcha," the old man said, his lips twisting into a sadistic smile as he dropped the other old man he had in his hand. "You, who always lost against stronger foes at the World Tournament, will be the first to die by our hand." The old man suddenly and stiffly shifted his body into a fighting stance and then shot at Yamcha like a bat out of hell. But the old robot had been a fraction of a second too slow as he had given Yamcha all the time he needed to bellow out: "KAIO KEN!"
Red aura flames surrounded Yamcha's body and the old man seemed to move in slow motion, slow enough for the former bandit to bat away both of his incoming wrinkly hands.
That was too close, Yamcha thought as he wiped the bead of sweat from the side of his face. If I had been any slower that old geezer would have put a hole right through me! Still- he bent down in the pose of the Wolf Fang Fist. I'm not going to go down without a fight!
DBZ
"Yamcha!" Tien's short but cutting hiss sliced through the former bandit's nostalgic musings. "Quit daydreaming, the announcer's given us the go ahead to start!"
"R-Right!" He could feel his face flushing with warmth as he got into the fighting pose of the Turtle School. Tien, even with all the time that had elapsed since he and his fellow student and brother-in-arms Chaozu left the Crane Master Shin, bent his body into the stance of the Crane School.
No, Yamcha thought to himself. I got nothing against the Titans, or the sport of baseball for that matter, or the small number of fans I've picked up over years. But I'm not a ballplayer, or a high school student, or even a desert bandit any more. I'm something more. I am a fighter.
There was a brief second of tension between the two seasoned fighters, a very brief second. Both vanished from the sight of the crowd of normals as the two former enemies flew at one another and began exchanging a fury of quick, blurry blows. Punches were blocked, kicks deflected and batted aside as the two went at it with such intensity that the very air around them soon literally began to discharge with electrical energy.
After a near full minute of this, the two reappeared in front of the crowd, both winded and panting lightly as they gave one another the same confident, hot-blooded smile.
"That should do it for a warm up, don't you think?" Yamcha asked.
Tien nodded. "I think so, shall we get serious then?"
Yamcha smirked. "Let's."
With that, Tien hurled himself through the air at Yamcha, his arms crossed in an X as he did so. Yamcha thought that he knew what the three eyed man was doing, he had pulled a similar move on that Jackie Chung guy (who Yamcha, to this day, was SURE had been Roshi in a wig) in the 22nd World Tournament. But when he saw a golden light surround Tien's arms when he had closed about half the distance between Tien and himself, Yamucha knew he had been mistaken.
Tien threw his crossed arms forward and a golden X shaped ki attack flew forth and hit the ex-bandit square in the chest. The force of the new attack sent Yamcha flying off his feet as he crashed onto the gray stone flooring of the arena.
The announcer made a comment about how the 22nd World Champ had clearly been hard at work with his training (which to his credit Tien had) and had just begun the count when Yamcha hopped back to his feet, brushing some dust off his chest as he did so.
"Not bad, new move I take it?" The attack had left it's mark: a large X shaped burned through not only his orange fighting gi, but he surface of his skin as well, leaving a red sweltering burn mark impressed on his chest.
Once again, Tein nodded. "I call it the X strike, it's a work in progress, both as a name and as an attack. Would have had it better fine-tuned had we not been spending that time training Marron. What about you? Anything you got hidden up your sleeve that you didn't bother to show during the weeks we were training Krillin's kid?"
Yamcha gave a casual shrug in response. "Just this, KAIO-KEN WOLF FANG FIST!"
With that a burst of red flame colored aura enveloped Yamcha's body and the desert bandit crouched down into the familiar stance of his signature attack. He then launched a flurry of sharp punches and kicks at his three-eyed opponent.
Even with his famed third eye to assist him, Tien was having difficulty blocking Yamcha's whirlwind of wolfish, Kaio-Ken enhanced blows. In the years since Goku had taught them the technique, both Tien and Yamcha had gone about improving it in different ways.
Tien had modified the otherworldly technique in a way similar to his Tri Beam Cannon; his strength, endurance, and stamina could be modified a good number of times in addition to the boost of power that he already received from the move itself.
The cost, however, was a shortening of his natural lifespan, although he'd still suffer a physical backlash from the move itself, it was the small but gathering indeterminable amount of days that were slowly carved away from his final time of passing.
And unlike dying in battle, Shenron couldn't bring back those who died of natural causes such as old age. This, admittedly, did not make it an ideal variation of the Kaio-Ken and was not something Tien planned on using for the tournament. That is unless fate had a twisted enough sense of humor to force him to fight against someone like Piccolo or Vegeta.
Yamcha had gone a different route. In many ways the once famed Bandit of Diablo Desert had taken the Kaio-Ken to its most logical extreme and perfected it in a way that Goku never had; instead of relying on the sole boost of power that it gave him, Yamcha had tweaked the technique so that it boosted either his speed or his power.
In addition to boosting his power level, Yamcha had become so good at this version of the Kaio-Ken that he could switch between the speed and power boost faster than Roshi could get thrown out of a Victoria's Secret.
And it was this version of King Kai's move that was giving Tien Shinhan so much trouble at that moment in time. After nearly a full minute of intense melee action, Yamcha slipped through his defenses and delivered a powerful smashing elbow blow to the side of his face. Tien reeled back from the force of the attack and skidded on the arena floor, some distance away from the bandit, on the soles of his shoes.
Standing up, he wiped the blood that was now streaming from his mouth with one of his knuckles. "Not bad, you've been holding back. You didn't fight so fiercely when we were sparring beforehand."
"Hey, I had to keep some tricks to myself didn't I?" Yamcha said, his voice swelling with confidence as he smiled, if he could keep it up at this rate then there could just be a chance that he'd actual get past the first round for once.
His eyes then narrowed in seriousness, now wasn't the time to get cocky, that sort of stuff had cost him the first rounds in the last tournament to say nothing of nearly his life when fighting the Saibamen. "Besides, you've most likely got something you've been saving as well."
"Maybe." Tien balled his fingers into two tight fists and summoned forth the ki needed for the Four Limbs technique. The audience let out a gasp of surprise when the three eyed man sprouted two arms out of his back, same as the little girl who the World Champ had allowed to beat him up. Yamcha (and one lone normal person by the name of Hank), however, was unimpressed. "Been there, done that, ya got anything else?"
"Give. Me. A second!" Tien snapped as veins began to bulge forth from his bald head.
Seconds went on by as a bead of sweat began to run down the side of his head. Those seconds turned into moments, and those moments into nearly a full minute before the Triclops let out a powerful cry of victory.
Two extra limbs shot out from under his natural arms' pits. Then, with another powerful bellowing cry, another pair of arms and hands came from the side of his back.
Yamcha blinked before letting out a low whistle. "Impressive. So the Four Limbs technique had become the…" He quickly counted the number of arms that Tien now had. "Eight Limb technique. Like King Chapa eh?"
"Something like that, yea." Tien said, the lone bead of sweat remaining in its place.
"This… is going to be fun." Yamcha's grin was now very much like his famous namesake technique as the adrenalin began pumping into overtime with his excitement.
"Round two, let's go!"
With that Yamcha temporarily vanished from view, only to reappear in front of Tien half a second later, his arm swung back in another punch. Empowering the physical force behind it Yamcha threw forth his fist, which Tien blocked with two hands.
Yamcha threw another fist only for Tien to block that with another two of his extra arms. A small smile graced the Crane Style practitioner's lips. He still had four perfectly usable arms and hands left to attack Yamcha with.
And attack he did, his extra arms lashed forward and his hands struck Yamcha's chest hard and true as they pounded into his body with a combo of punches and finger drills.
After nearly a minute of this siege of slamming fists Yamcha broke both of his hands free and jumped back a bit, his chest now a black and bruised mess underneath his Turtle School uniform. His mind was racing; fighting Tien in hand to hand would just be suicide at this point. The only other choice he'd have would be to use the Kamahamaha, and that didn't work the last time he tried it. Still, what choice did he have?
"Hey Tien, I've got a proposition for ya!"
Tien arched a thick black eyebrow in interest. "What sort of proposition?"
"My Kamahamaha vs. your Dodon Ray? To find out whose school has the stronger technique, what do you say?"
Tien rubbed his chin in thought with one of his extra hands as he thought the idea over. Then he smiled as all of his extra limbs suddenly returned back into his body.
"Alright, you're on Yamcha.," Tien said as he lifted his index finger, seconds later a golden beam of light surrounded and began radiating from the tip of the digit.
Yamcha nodded, cupping his hands and bending his knees as he did. "Ka…me…ha…me-" a glowing blue ball of ki formed in between his palms.
A moment of tension passed between the students of the Crane and Turtle styles before they both launched their respective schools' signature attacks.
Blue beam met gold as the two collided in a bright flash of white light that blinded the regular audience, and even Goku and the rest of the gang shielded their eyes briefly as some turned away while others raised their arms to their eyes' defense.
The blinding light lasted for a long, tense moment, before it faded away seconds later.
When everyone in the audience were finally able to open their eyes once more, they saw that Tien had collapsed on the floor of the arena face first, while Yamcha still stood, having been brought down to one knee, smiling with his index and middle fingers spread apart in a V sign, signaling his victory.
And after a count of ten, the announcer declared Yamcha the winner of the match and that he would go on to fight Goku in the next round.
DBZ
"Geez," Lunch commented as she slapped another bandage on her husband's face. "Yamcha sure did a number on ya, didn't he?"
Both they and Time were currently in one of the unused buildings on the same level as the ring. Time himself was leaning against the wall across from his now sitting father, blocking the incoming sunlight from an open window. "It's not that surprising mom, seeing as how Yamcha won and all."
Tien frowned at the obvious audible and facial disappointment from his son. "Just between the three of us-" Tien's third eye moved around quickly as he checked to make sure no nearby ki's were eavesdropping. "I wanted Yamcha to win."
All three of Time's eyes went wide when hearing this, while Lunch simply frowned. She crossed her arms together and narrowed her green eyes. "You sayin' you threw the match?"
"No. Or at least I don't think I did."
Time's bitterness at his father's loss had vanished as he now looked at Tien with an expression that bordered between confusion and awe. "What do you mean dad?"
"Part of me thinks I was holding back just a bit at the end there and let Yamcha win our beam struggle. The other part of me thinks I'm making excuses. Though if he had kept up with his Kaio-Ken enhanced Wolf Fang Fist, I'm not quite sure how it would have turned out even if our beam struggle ended in a draw."
"Ya did break the guy's leg." Lunch pointed out as she slapped another bandage on Tien's face.
"That's part of the reason why I'm torn." Tien said as he took his share at frowning.
"Well," said Time. "I'm glad that Yamcha finally was able to win a round regardless. So who's fighting next?"
"Piccolo is," Tien said. "Do you want to go watch?"
"Maybe." Time shrugged. "I think I'll just go back up to the balcony and keep a watch on the bloated sleeping beauty."
"Just don't pick on her so much when she wakes up. You've been doing that since before we even arrived at the tournament."
Now it was Time's turn to frown as his thick blond eyebrows kneaded into a clearly cross expression. "Not my fault the little shrimp's so serious all the time."
Tien said nothing, but keep the intense gaze of all three of his eyes on his son. Finally, Time muttered: "Alright, alright. I'll stop picking on Marron for the rest of the tournament."
"Good." Tien smiled as his son dashed out of the hallway to make his way back to the balcony with everyone else. He then turned to his wife. "And what about you? Are you going to watch Piccolo's match?"
Lunch snorted loudly. "As if, that fight will be over in less than a second. Sides, not like anything big or important is going to happen or anything."
Sorry this one's a bit late folks, lost track of the days. Still, hopefully the length of the chapter will make up for it. On the upside, we have a new watcher in our midst, thanks MrSquadd!
