A shoutout to Bigshaq34 for noticing a small plot hole in Chapter 2. Not that I'd consider it a plot hole, though it technically is - it never really made sense to me how Kami flew to Earth on a spaceship operated solely in Namekian language, spoke perfect Namekian, regularly interacted with higher deities and yet was completely oblivious to his heritage. I know that the explanation to that is that Toriyama had not yet thought of the Namekians but given how much more involved the deities are in this scenario in the Universe 7's development, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that Kami would come to understand his unusual heritage.
Despite that, I need Chayote to remain oblivious to Kami's Namekian heritage for a little joke to work in the future so I fixed it by removing the N-word altogether. Let it be our little secret, pretty please :D
The first sign telegraphic the leave of the destruction from the Ki wave that Chayote had just withstood was the irritation of smoke and dust crawling up her nostrils. It was nothing that a Kiai with an erupting energy shockwave could not have helped with. After her bubbling might dispelled the aftermath of the Kamehameha, Chayote felt a light breeze on her shoulder with the evening winds creeping under her tracksuit.
She took damage!
A smirk twisted the face of the teenage Saiyan. Of course, it would be Goku of all people to harm her. It was only natural that a Saiyan would manage to inflict harm on her, despite the massive difference in power level. Chayote's hand reached up and grabbed her still hot zipper, pulling on it with a decent yank to the motion and ripping the whole busted thing off. Her tracksuit flowed behind her like a cape. Even her black undershirt was covered in minor tears.
"What a technique." Chayote breathed out the pent up tension from taking Goku's attack head-on. "And to think that I struggle with even the simplest Ki waves. If I did not notice the might of the technique and powered up to my limit just before it hit me – I may have been eliminated."
The natural fright of loss crept its way into Chayote's chest. It was a refreshing feeling like a rushing wave filled to the brim with salt but chilling to the bone that washed over her. She could have lost! It was not supposed to happen – she was so much stronger than Son Goku but… He could have beaten her if she underestimated him, just like he told her not to do.
"Amazing!" Goku shrieked out, his face shifted from a vexing refusal to believe what was transpiring in front of him, the first person to ever take a Kamehameha blast and not only survive but stay on their feet, into a realization of the sort of pinch he was in. "No one's ever taken the Kamehameha head-on! Rock-Paper-Scissors, Kamehameha… Nothing's workin'."
"Oh! Ladies and Gentlemen, Contestant Chayote has taken on the famous Turtle School Kamehameha attack and stayed on her feet! There's one thing nobody would have believed if you told them you'd seen here today!" the announcer explained the elementary elements of the fight before them to the audience.
"You're the amazing one…" Chayote smirked while staring at the jarring hole on her forearms where she had blocked the brunt of the technique with, mostly the right arm, the one that was on top in the X-shaped blocking stance she had put up. "Who would have known that Earthlings had ways to manipulate their power levels like that? However… My guess is that what comes around goes around. If that attack made you crazy strong for one large blast, your power level must have sunk like a brick now."
Goku chuckled, his childish cheer overcoming his shock and awe. "I've gotta admit, I've no idea what you're saying…" he expressed somehow through his chuckles.
Chayote prepared to dash at her opponent, hammer at him and finish him off. If she still wanted to win, there could have been no more hesitation. She's had her fun now. Goku had the lower power level meaning he needed a good Zenkai boost or two to catch up to Chayote. Then he would return the favor, Chayote felt sure about that.
Her movements felt stiffer, her arm trembled. With a shocked look, the teen Saiyan observed her stressed out body. Her own power level must have plummeted a bit after taking that attack too. Damn… It could not have been anything like what it would have taken to cause that sort of devastation and burrow this wicked scar all across the tournament arena from one corner to the other but the fact that someone so much weaker than Chayote managed to dent her at full power… That was not to continue.
"I'm gonna return the favor now!" Chayote declared, letting her weary body rest by at least halving her power and keeping some for reserve. She lacked experience using full power, she had never needed that on Earth. For all she knew she'd have gotten winded after a few moments fighting with all might, meaning she was better off keeping it at about fifty percent.
The Saiyan extended her palm forward. She could not afford another fiasco like against Nam. This was just like with Lima Spear, just long range… She pulled it off a bunch of times atop Korin's Tower but it was still inconsistent, not something that Chayote was very talented at, no matter how much she wanted to master Ki manipulation.
"Prepare yourself, Ki Energy Wave!" Chayote growled out while a puff of smoke left her hands.
Goku was having a blast. The relentless, simian-like cackling rounded him up and forced him to almost fall over. "You farted from your hands!" Goku somehow managed to squeeze out while his tail waggled to the sides like that of a dog that was all too excited for its own good. Chayote's face turned serious, her body flickered and disappeared altogether.
A backhand smack to launch her tiny opponent into the air, a barrage of crosses and jabs, an automated combo of strikes to keep him in the air while the stronger blows sapped the remaining life out of him. Finally, a double-handed ax handle strike slammed the Goku so hard to the ground that his body bounced off of it. Chayote restrained herself from kicking Goku out of bounds. At this point the boy was so pummeled that one more kick may have split his internals or made him burst like a balloon altogether.
"Start counting." Chayote turned to the freaked out announcer.
"I-I think he's… He's dead…" the announcer bellowed and hid behind the edge of the arena.
"How could you do that to him!?" Oolong yelled out from behind the barrier keeping the audience safe. "Isn't he from the same tribe as you or something?"
"G-Goku! It's dinner time, wake up!" Bulma continued to yell, her voice turning more and more dire with each repeated call.
"D…Din…" Goku twitched and even lifted his head up. Chayote's entire body froze as chills passed down her back and seeped all the way to the bottom of her hips. With a furious swipe of her hand, the Saiyan sent a rotating Ki blast, more of a spherical shape but a Ki attack nonetheless, at the downed boy. Whatever unexpected second wind he was experiencing, the blood-curdling scream and a lifeless sprawl suggested that he was out cold now.
"Check his pulse if you must. Count now though!" Chayote turned at the announcer. Her stare soaked the man with terror, forcing him to cower behind the corners of the arena himself while he crawled to Goku's side of the ring and then crawled onto it to slither closer and check on the boy's vitals, almost like a worm of some sorts.
"H…He's alive…" the announcer suggested after forcing Goku's whited out eyes open and examining his reaction to the flashlight he kept in his pocket. A mirror test also showed some steam building up when the man placed the tiny ellipse by Goku's mouth.
While initially, Chayote felt absolutely sure that her opponent had survived her relentless pummeling, this time she was not that sure. The Ki blast she launched she fired out of anger, the idea that this low-class Saiyan brat fired off into such a remote junkyard of a planet would dare stand up after her hearty attempt at putting him down filled Chayote with a burning passion to obliterate the humiliation before it rose to its feet.
"One!" the announcer started the count. "Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight…"
Chayote turned to the man, focusing her fleeting attention on him after he failed to clock in the next count.
"What's wrong? I thought Earthlings could at least count to ten?" the Saiyan growled with a speck of frustration. Much to Chayote's jolt, the announcer lifted his hand up and pointed at Goku who was writhing on the floor and clawing at his own throat, sitting up only to fall back down and continue writhing about the cracked and busted arena floor.
"What's… The Moon!" Chayote realized before turning at the Moon and then instantly closing her eyes. She kept her eyes closed until she turned them away from the gleaming early riser that caused the dreadful transformation in Goku. That imbecile just had to peel Goku's eyes open while he was lying flat on his back, didn't he!?
A supernatural force emanating from his own expanding body and skyrocketing Ki sent the morphing Goku up on his feet and then his fleshy bubble kept on growing and growing to seemingly no end. While for a while Chayote surmised she'd have what it takes to take on her opponent, even with his greatly reduced power level multiplied tenfold, by the time he began growing fur, Chayote was wondering about that.
The arena collapsed from underneath Goku's feet, crumbling into tiny specks of rubble while the teen Saiyan leaped upward and maintained herself above ground by launching successive Ki blasts at the ground, propelling her higher and higher and preventing her from crashing back down out of bounds. The mindless Great Ape had no such aspirations and while Chayote had won her match thusly, Goku's sudden transformation threatened far more than just that.
It was why Chayote could absolutely not give in to the temptation of transforming herself – who knew if she'd take on Son Goku or proceed to wipe the surface of the entire planet clean together with him. With her power multiplied tenfold she'd have little to no problem destroying this entire planet to a nebula of space gravel.
"Unbelievable! Contestant Son Goku has transformed himself into a giant ape monster! However… Yes! It appears that in doing so he has crushed the arena underneath his feet and landed on the ground! That's a ring out! A ring out!" the announcer kept on yelling to an audience fleeing for their lives.
"Hmph… You lot may enjoy fancy fisticuffs but this isn't that sort of case, is it? This would be an outright slaughter…" Chayote sighed to herself while observing the Earthlings flee. The retreating wave threatened to drown out Bulma, Puar and Oolong and was carrying them away from the battlefield, that was for the better.
The Great Ape roared as a show of its mindless state. Blind and fair fury that made anyone experiencing it wonder if it was the drastic increase in size and musculature that granted the Great Ape its tenfold increased strength or it was the change in the mental state. Luckily for Chayote, crushing her was the last thing on the Great Ape's mind. The first deed of the transformed great monstrosity was to smash the waiting building, rip its rooftop clean off and then hurl it out beyond where one's eyes could even pick it up any longer.
"Yamcha!" Chayote yelled out, looking at the collapsing building. Yamcha and Krillin were observing the fights from there. They may have been pinned down by the debris.
"Let's go!" Yamcha's voice reached Chayote shortly before she landed onto the arena, the tiles ground to dust and the clay mixed in with the dirt to form one, molten, brown mass that stank of sweat and molasses.
"B-But Goku…" Krillin's voice trembled.
"He can't control himself, he crushed his grand… Son Gohan like this…" Yamcha tried to explain before the transformed Son Goku began roaring wildly into the evening sky, pounding the life out of his chest in blind rage as the beast was running out of things to smash, which meant he was just a pair of instances short of noticing the little ants running about on ground level.
"I'll hit him with my best shot, you two move and join Bulma, Puar and Oolong." Chayote growled.
"Wait, no! You'll kill him!" Yamcha objected. "We've stopped him before, you just have to…"
"Seriously? You're going to explain me that!?" Chayote nearly ripped the sides of her hair out in irritation. "I will try to blindside him and rip his tail off, I'll try to. I don't want to kill him but… I don't know Ki blasts nearly well enough to blast the Moon."
"You do!" Yamcha raised his fists up while the group was trying to come up with a plan before the Great Ape stops stomping the ground and beating the shit out of its own chest and turns its attention to the remainder of human life present in the vicinity. "The Kamehameha. When Goku first saw Muten Roshi perform it, it only took him one try to grasp it."
"It's a long shot but it's better than killing the brat." Chayote nodded. "Get Muten Roshi here. If I fail, he will need to blast the Moon for me. Even if I am strong enough to hold Son Goku off for now, after I use the Kamehameha, failed or not, my power level will take a dive. I'll do what I can to give him an opening though."
"I'll get Puar and Oolong. They're shapeshifters, they can cut off Goku's tail." Yamcha nodded and ran off towards where the crowd flooded to.
"I'll find Muten Roshi!" Krillin nodded and followed Yamcha's example.
It may have been the eye-catching colorful contrast of Krillin's uniform that caught the Great Ape's eye and forced it to turn toward the two fleeing martial artists who appeared like insects to Goku in his current size. The distraction allowed Chayote to soar up all the way to the beast's chest with a winded up fist. There were few sounds that made the Saiyan teen more delighted than when she heard a Great Ape roar out in pain and shock from her blow – she still had some juice left in her!
The Great Ape swiped its hand downward in an attempt to swipe at Chayote but the Saiyan fired a Ki blast to the side to redirect herself while she used her tail to latch onto one of Goku's massive fingers and float atop of his hand. What was to follow was a long and frightening trip all the way to the monster's jaw… With a single blitz, Chayote whizzed up to Goku's jaw and clocked him, sending the Great Ape crashing down on the ground. That would give her the time to land unimpeded.
"Alright, let's see now…" Chayote looked up at the Moon and cupped her hands, just like Goku did earlier against her. "Ka… Me… Ka… Me… Ha!"
Chayote's entire body lit up with an intense glow of Ki, for a moment the Saiyan thought that it may have worked. Such an elementary concept of just concentrating all of her Ki towards her hands. There was no way that it would not have worked. Shortly after leaving Chayote's body, the destructive wave curved and coiled about before blasting off into a random direction in space.
Darkness. White. Shrieking noises, sounds of people sparring, punches and kicks bouncing off of flawless blocks and roaring Ki blasts ravaging the fields. Chayote opened her eyes. She had a face full of dirt and was sprawled out on the ground with her face looking down. Every single muscle she could think about, any of the useful ones she tried to move ached and didn't respond. A single look upward revealed Son Goku towering over her with his foot raised for another stomp.
Before the second stomp could land, Chayote resigned herself to fighting until her last moment. She placed her hands over the ground and fired off another Ki blast, propelling herself up into the air. Her Ki control was nowhere near enough to consistently fire off destructive energy waves but if she could fire off those little shockwaves and balls, that would have been just enough!
Chayote met the crushing stomp with a reckless headbutt of her own. It did not do any damage but the Great Ape looked surprised by the considerable resistance from the person it had considered a victim rather than an equal opponent which sent it tumbling on its back. The beast's mindless state only adding onto the confusion.
"Completely mindless… A low-class Saiyan as expected…" Chayote huffed to herself after falling down onto the ground and crawling a bit further away to begin her struggle to rise up to her feet. "Sadly, my case would not be any different…" she lamented. She had not once transformed into her Great Ape form, however, she'd have known from the way other Saiyans treated her if she was an elite or not. Even as a baby, someone like prince Vegeta had a higher power level than Chayote in her prime back on Planet Vegeta.
A wave of blinding light overwhelmed Chayote. A force that resonated from a beam far far away managed to pick the injured Saiyan up and fling her even further across the decimated field as a mighty booming sound in the sky would have made anyone within a two-hundred-kilometer radius believe that the sky was splitting and the world was ending. Once the light stopped and disappeared, the sky was black and red and flickering space dust remained where the Moon once was.
Chayote turned to the side, seeing a bulky, shirtless old man in the Kamehameha state. Frozen as if moving after firing a beam such as this one would have called for more stamina than the old man had to give at that moment.
"Don't feel bad, kid. Yamcha sold the Kamehameha short, it took me fifty years to master it. It would be troublesome to someone as green as you, even if it only took Goku one try to nab it." Muten Roshi smirked.
"What the hell!? How are we supposed to cut his tail off when he's lying on his butt!?" a talking chainsaw with cartoonish eyes cursed its luck alongside a floating pair of scissors with a similar set of outrageous facial features, ridiculous even if they did not belong to a pair of scissors.
"Relax… Goku's transforming back now." Muten Roshi stated while finally regaining limited freedom of movement and deflating back to his old and shriveled self. With his buffed state gone, the old man had the stamina, at last, to point at Goku who was losing hair and calories at a drastic pace while also losing all traces of the mad, simian features he once possessed.
With a loud poof, Puar and Oolong revealed themselves from a cloud of smoke to have been the floating cutting tools, sent by Yamcha to cut off Goku's tail. This must have been how the Earthlings stopped Goku from decimating their planet before. In that state, it would have taken even a pathetic excuse for a Saiyan as Son Goku one night to not leave a stone atop another stone on the entire planet. Just a smoldering, lifeless rock… The way Lord Frieza likely intended this planet to be left like.
"Now that the tournament over, I'm sure you will wish to talk." Muten Roshi smiled while extending his hand to help Chayote up. The Saiyan extended her right hand out only for the old man to lean lower and try to slip his grab onto her chest. He underestimated Chayote's speed, even in her current state. It only took a smack without much force put into it to send Roshi flying into whatever wreckage still remained in the devastated Papaya Island.