The seats in the floating stadium were absolutely packed on the morning of the Warrior's League. In every one there was some kind of sapient creature of highly varying shape, size, color and clothing who, whether they were carrying concessions or colorful banners for the fighter they were rooting for or just thrusting their hands in the air, were raring to see the fights start. Four of the eight warriors who had ascended beyond the pool of thousands of Amateur League competitors and qualified for this prestigious second stage of the Otherworld Circuit got a view of the tournament grounds from their side of the stadium via the window in a large locker room they had to themselves; many of the banners were for the longtime champions Olibu and Pikkon, but there were also about half of them that cheered on the other 6 contestants, with Grandpa Gohan in particular spotting a little red devil boy cosplaying in a homemade replica of his typical attire and a mask while what he assumed to be their mother held up a sign with a drawing of the old warrior giving a cheery smile alongside the caption "Don't give up now, Grandpa!". Beelze was similarly oggling a much more excessive display, a group of 6 oiled-up buff purple humanoids each with a letter painted in red on their chests that when they stood side-by-side spelt the Satan dojo master's own name. It was an intoxicating feeling to get this sort of attention off of a much more genuine and rigorous record of fighting, but at the behest of his allies' teachings he put on a much more humble, detached look at this newfound fame to the reporters who came to interview the contestants before they went out into the ring. In addition to all this the contestants got to see the opening ceremony of the tournament: The 8 different-colored, mushroom-headed announcers that had brought them to the Warrior's League all met at the center of the ring, forming a huge circle while to the stage's side a large chair was brought out. Beelze and Gohan were confused at what was about to transpire only to spot Olibu and Pikkon shielding their eyes and much of the audience putting on sunglasses. The reason for this mass precaution became evident as from the circle of announcers a blinding flash of light emitted, forcing them to get down to and stare at the ground to block the intense glare. When it cleared, a huge, noticeably chubby but well-suited man now stood where the congregation of 8 announcers was once gathered. Like them his own head had a mushroom on top, except had various stripes encompassing the colors of the rainbow with multiple smaller mushrooms emerging out from it. The large man waddled over to the throne that had been set up for him, waiting for the games to truly begin.
When the clock struck 12 at noon, the star-struck crowd was delighted by the announcement that the first fight would finally be beginning. On the side of the jade arena with kachin flooring that was leftmost from the big conglomeration of announcers Grandpa Gohan stepped out from behind a large wooden door, walking out to the arena to meet up with Rawbla who was already doing a routine of warmup exercises at the other end, stretching his arm up high to dump the contents of a water bottle into his mouth before tossing it aside to the edge of the ring. As a very peeved-looking janitor came to sweep it up, Rawbla was elated to see who his first matchup would be.
"And look who it is!" the now much more fearsome bird battler squawked while jabbing the air in a gesture of confidence. "Gah, already I'm feeling nostalgic for our first fight! I mean granted, it wasn't a particularly exciting battle... But it's the thought that counts!"
"That it is." Gohan replied with his hands still behind his back only to unfurl them outwards in a battle pose. "Let's just hope my performance against you is a bit better than last time!"
"Y'know what? I hope so too... I wouldn't want the opening for Act 3 of the epic radio drama about my victory to be that anticlimactic!"
Gohan and Rawbla charged and met in the middle of the stadium, immediately getting into a clash of punches and kicks. Grandpa Gohan was the first to break it up by conjuring the same sort of ring he used against Master Mutaito around his body, but although he had to step back Rawbla was able to sort of counter this by aiming his stretchy fists around the defense mechanism's circumference, striking the old man in vulnerable spots. This strategy proved to have intermittent success; sometimes Gohan could twist the ring in time to parry the blows, other times he would get hit. One of these well-placed blows landed him square in his jaw, launching him high enough in the air for Rawbla to utilize a follow-up attack he had been practiced. By lifting his right arm up sharp golden feathers shot out from his forearm and homed in on Gohan while he was in the air. The old master was able to recover in the nick of time, flying around in the air above the arena to get away from the feather missiles. He eventually turned around in mid-air and fired several Ki blasts that shot the projectiles down, but when he flipped 180 degrees once more he came face-to-face with Rawbla yet again, who had launched himself into the sky to meet his opponent head-on. He gave a high-speed, powerful peck to Gohan's head with his crooked beak, sending him careening back down onto the ground. While laid down he had to rapidly jolt his body around to dodge the surge of rapid-fire pecks whose speed would put the average woodpecker to speed and that bored holes in the arena where the birdman had been pecking. With some effort Gohan was able to swerve back onto his feet, firing a point-blank blast upon regaining his composure. This attack sent Rawbla skidding along the tournament grounds' surface, and when he tried to get back up Gohan just teleported above him and kicked him square in the chest, making him scrape along the tournament floor even faster while the old man stood on top of him. He came dangerously close to the edge before he was able to kick his legs up just enough to strike Gohan in the back, making him lose his balance enough to relieve the pressure of his attack and allow Rawbla to break free and get in a position to apply another strike to his back, this time a backward swipe of his arm that made the audience hold their breath as it seemed like the old master would be falling off. And yet he was able to get his feet to touch the edge of the arena, balancing himself on its tip at a precarious parallel to the ground at the side of the arena, making the same audience members audibly gasp before he performed a stylish backflip which got him back safely in the middle of the stage. Rawbla chuckled at this act; just as he hoped, this wouldn't be easy.
At the neighboring stadium, another equally as heated fight with a similarly engaged audience was raging on. Beelze was in the introductory stages of his own first round with the insect-like fighter who he had found out upon entering the ring was named Cohkoon, who was currently holding him in an almost catatonic state by dousing him with spores from her beautiful 4 wings. The trances caused by this skill were relatively brief but nonetheless long enough for Cohkoon to land powerful blows with each of her 4 legs, sending the 2nd finalist human warrior ever closer to the edge at a relatively early stage of the battle. In this precarious situation, Beelze figured it was time to bust out some of the techniques he himself had acquired on his training to ensure his survival past Round 1. Cohkoon was immediately taken back when her opponent began to emanate a bizarre aura, the clear white flash of outputting Ki she had seen earlier replaced by a congealed quagmire of green, red and purple energies.
"I know there's something odd about you... Your energy doesn't feel right. You haven't even spoken to me since we started! What are you hiding from me?"
The bug warrior seemed like she was about to say something, but closed her mouth once more before she did. However, the perceptive Beelze caught on to how just her small inward breath had a distinct, unnatural layer to it, almost like an echo of a voice that wasn't her own.
"...So you wanna make things weird?" Beelze responded to how he was ignored. "Fine then. I can make things even weirder."
Cohkoon once again acted unfazed by this threat, twirling up into the air to bombard her foe with her disabling spores once more. She was left floating in the air in shock when she witnessed Beelze's aura split and disperse in the air immediately above him, forming into tiny portals that were able to catch every single speck of her technique before dissipating.
"In order to advance to where I've gotten, I couldn't just settle for the common routes towards my training. Gohan may have sought other martial arts masters, but my tutelage has been from the expert magicians and even the bizarre beasts of this realm. After how long I've spent in Ospre Woods, I couldn't stray too far from home!"
After making this declaration in a noticeably loud fashion as to awe the crowd, Beelze stretched out his arm and formed another portal from his palm. All of Cohkoon's spores emerged in one focused stream from the black vortex with red edges, morphing into one-eyed, fleshy spherical creatures with bat wings as they emerged and set their sights on their designated target. Even as she swiped her own wings with vigor Cohkoon could not prevent some of these little beasts from biting onto her limbs and dragging her down to the ground before bombarding her with a pelt of small lasers from their glistening eyeballs. The remaining units of the little beasties were beckoned back to their creator, who with a quick wave of his hand had them dissolve into a deep blue energy ball that he fired at Cohkoon. When she just about recovered in time and swerved out of the way to dodge it Beelze took this opening to unveil another tool in his unnatural arsenal; From out of the area of the arena where the fighter had dodged to a pair of giant green hands reminiscent of an ogre's jutted out to grapple her and keep her restrained, even as she tried to wriggle out of this devious trap. Instead of immediately performing some sort of follow-up blast, however, Beelze slowly walked up to her, standing in front of where she was being held by the hands and extending out one of his own.
"Wizard's Eye!"
Upon announcing the name of his next technique, Cohkoon was unnerved to see the skin at the center of Beelze's hand split to reveal a lizard-like eye, a move that the angel-winged Skycam at the upper edge of the arena caught with the audience being just as grossed out as Beelze's opponent was. From there the eye didn't seem to do much other than scan every inch of the bug warrior's body, jolting side to side as if its attention was appended to something. Even the fusion of the 8 announcers who was watching this match alongside the one at the neighboring stadium on a television set he had on his throne was equally as confounded as the audience, with some mumblings about this all being a not-so-subtle act of perversion being tossed around more than liberally amidst the thick of the crowd. A few uneasy seconds later the amber eye retracted back into Beelze's flesh, with the warrior raising the arm it came from above his head, preparing some sort of karate chop. Sure enough he rapidly swung it down, but rather than coming into physical contact with Cohkon a red line of energy was slashed through the midsection of her body - the audience was left aghast when she suddenly split into 2 unique beings, one with the features of a beetle and the other with those of a butterfly stuck in either of the two large hands, with the two of them flinging the significantly weaker components of Cohkoon out on either side of the arena, netting Beelze the victory. This last act hardly mattered, however; even if they had managed to keep themselves on the ring a nearby judge confirmed they would've been disqualified regardless. While Beelze took the chance to postulate in front of the crowd further questioning of the beings who individually were known as Coh and Koon revealed they were Metamorans who had practiced their trademark fusion technique to a point where they could keep it up as long as they wanted. The judge apologized for the lack of foresight to the crowd, explaining that they had not foreseen permanent Metamoran fusion as a possibility and as such didn't question the vest before officially giving Beelze the victory as well as a pat on the back for figuring out this act of cheating with his strange techniques.
With the whole rigmarole at the other stadium out of the way, the fat announcer could once again eagerly munch on the bag of gourmet mulch that had been supplied to him to witness the rest of Grandpa Gohan and Rawbla's fight. After a prolonged scuffle the bird man was once again teetering ever closer to the edge of the arena, with it seeming more and more like he'd be falling any moment now to the Turtle School master's experience and arsenal. After one particularly powerful punch he had to pick himself back up with a sweat on his brow, only to realize that the back of his left foot was not even on the ground, but teetering over the edge of the ring. But before he focused his attention back on Gohan, he caught something else from the very corner of his eye, something he absolutely was not only not expecting but had never seen before. For the first time since he could ever recall, nestled between 2 loudly changing muscular men was his own wife, donning her usual kimono. And in place of any extravagant banners or coordinated cheerleading displays all she had was a sign with 3 words: "You got this." And as he saw this and then turned back to Gohan, one thing became clear in his mind.
"In a way, it's a shame." Rawbla said as he got back up, ripping off his tracksuit and throwing it to the side revealing a way more muscular frame than their first encounter back at Grandpa Gohan's first flunked Amateur League run. "We've both worked so hard to shatter our limits to get to this point... And yet only one of us can continue onward. Considering how dire things look, I can't say for sure that one will be me at this point, heck, it's probably extremely unlikely by now. But I can't stop now, and I'm not going to! I got nearly a century's worth of failure behind me, and I'm going to fight to the bitter end to make that all worth something! If this next move does nothing else to aid me, may it permanently put my legacy as a joke to an end, one way or another!"
With a springing of his legs, Rawbla shot himself up high into the air, nearly reaching the very pinnacle of the glass dome encasing the floating compound. With an outward spread of his arms brilliant golden wings of energy spread behind and outward from them, his beak elongating, sharpening and sparking. Even his own halo typical of an Otherworld citizen seemed to expand slightly as he looked down at Gohan, turning his whole body to point right at him.
"EAGLE'S STRIKE!" was Rawbla's last vocal announcement before he launched himself at Grandpa Gohan like a torpedo, his wings still stretched outwards and leaving behind a contrail of yellow Ki through the air has he charged downward. In response the old man gathered as much energy as he could into his fingers, grabbing the dive-bombing Rawbla by his shoulders and struggling against the force of his attack. Despite this the bird man was able to steadily push Gohan ever closer to the edge of the stage, even as he exerted more power into his defense. But as he would eventually find out the hard way, stopping his move was not the intent, for right when Gohan was now in a similar backfoot position to where Rawbla was just a minute prior he suddenly twisted his arms, spinning Rawbla and his attack off to the side of the ring. In a panic he tried to power down and and redirect himself towards his foe, but as he skidded across the tournament floor just barely stopping himself in time he look up to see Gohan up in the air, blasting him off for good with one last backwards Kamehameha charge that sent him flying into Rawbla with enough force to send him careening near the front-row seats.
Once again the yellow bird was able to lift himself up from the crater that had been formed from Gohan's counter-offense, but by now it was too late as the old man was relishing in confetti and cheering from the audience. The sight momentarily sent him into a quagmire of disappointment in his capabilities, for even after all he had done, the impossible odds he had managed to overcome, he had still failed to reach the very top. That's when he felt a familiar touch, that of his wife who had come over to help her love back to his feet. And instead of sighing at yet another failure like she tended to do in recent times, she instead gave him a big hug and a kiss on his beak, at least the closest thing she could do to a traditional kiss with her own peacock beak. Things only further looked up for him when amidst the praise Gohan was getting a group of bystanders came up to him, remarking on how valiantly he had fought with one marketing agent even mentioning how a model of his Eagle's Strike would make for a hot seller in the figurine business. With a new kick in his step Rawbla looked up to Gohan one last time, giving him a thumbs up which he jovially reciprocated before heading out of the ring to continue this exciting chapter of his time in the afterlife with his eternal partner and fanbase at his side.