Baba floated off through the exit she greeted the party by. Goku, Chayote and Upa followed her into a round arena that looked not too different from the World Martial Arts Tournament arena, except this one appeared to be much older as there were more cracks on the tiles and the materials seemed like they've witnessed the dawn of the last age at the very least. Plus, instead of the audience stands, there was a giant lake surrounding the arena and the rest of the temple past the entrance hall and the main hall.
Chayote did not take long to take her turn. She breathed out and closed her eyes. The stance that Goku took back when facing Pilaf intrigued her. It went against everything that she knew of martial arts and even against the rules of common sense and yet it worked for him. Not just because his opponents were complete dweebs but because it was effective. He was open from all directions and yet it appeared as if he had no openings at all at the same time. There was just no reading his stance.
"Have you fallen asleep? My first fighter is already here, you see…" Baba croaked and chuckled into her hand, likely expecting Chayote to lose her composure.
"Whatever, let him come." Chayote mumbled, her eyes still closed and her stance still non-existent.
"B-But don't you want to open your eyes?" Baba wondered.
"I'm trying something out. If your fighter wants to go first, it's fair game." Chayote shook her shoulders.
"O-Okay… Suke-san please, begin at your leisure." Baba raised her hand up.
"Heh, sure thing!" a voice reached Chayote's ears, it sounded unremarkable and she could feel no impending sense of dread like any notable fighter would emanate. It may have been that Baba just set her up for yet another disappointment, or it may have been that her fighters' abilities were truly as mystical and odd as she had made them believe.
"Hmm? Goku-san, did you see the enemy?" Upa looked at Goku who shrugged in his casual and relaxed state.
"Dunno, maybe he's really small, or something?" Goku replied.
"Watch out, cause here I come!" Suke-san threatened Chayote. The Saiyan just stonewalled her opponent's approach without replying. She just stood there with her eyes closed, trying to relax her body. "D-Don't think that you're going to scare me with your strong and silent routine, even if you did open your eyes, they'd do you no good against me!"
"Suke-san, stop talking, you're wasting your advantage, attack!" Baba scolded her prized fighter who finally got his act together if the thump on the floor was to be believed. After a brief moment of silence, an intense thud followed by an anxious scream and a bunch of grazing noises all over the arena that resulted in the peeking blades of grass bending crushed to the stone floor.
"I give up! I give up!" Suke-san yelled out.
"B-But…" Baba tried to reason with the man but then she just sighed. "You're no longer even here, are you?" She realized.
Chayote opened her eyes. "Oh, sorry, I got so invested into trying to understand Son Goku's stance and fighting style that I blanked out. I forgot to lower my Ki to measure my opponent's strength, can we fight again?"
"Y-You've broken Suke-san's entire arm while standing perfectly still, I don't think that he will want to be anywhere near you. Boy, will the breakfast be awkward…" Baba wiped her sweaty forehead.
"Damn, didn't even get to see your first fighter at all…" Chayote scratched her head. "I'd better keep closer attention."
"Make sure you do, this next opponent will not be beaten by merely standing still! Introducing, Dracula Man!" Baba raised her hands up at the stage, signaling the arrival of a measly bat onto the ring.
"I may not have seen this creature before but I kill dinosaurs all the time, it doesn't seem to measure up." Chayote warned Baba. The last thing she wanted was the woman's five mystical fighters to be a complete disappointment.
A cloud of smoke consumed the bat and from it, a pale and puny boxer landed in front of Chayote. Whereas before she felt underwhelmed by the type of beast that challenged her, now she was disappointed by the volume of this boxer. She had faced countless boxers much thicker than this paled out matchstick back at the World Martial Arts Tournament.
After Baba's signal to begin the fighting, Dracula Man poofed back into a bat and flew off into the air. Chayote stood there and followed the beast with her eyes, Dracula Man was certainly faster than any animal from Earth she had met but this was still disappointing. She heard the poofing sound again, this time behind her, Chayote had hoped that at least her opponent would reveal his true power level by getting this free attack.
"Careful, Chayote! The enemy is behind you!" Upa yelled out, leaning over the arena in worry over Chayote's safety when Dracula Man grabbed her from behind.
"Don't worry, she's always like this. She doesn't try at all to measure your strength and then she uses just a little bit more strength to beat you. She likes fighting that much…" Goku leaned back with a carefree smile.
A sharp sense of pain made Chayote wince in terror. What did that bastard do? Were his puny elbows really that hard-hitting? She felt a warm droplet flowing down her hair and over her forehead too. Something goopy dripped on the ground. Something thick and red. Blood? Her blood!?
"Ha ha ha ha! You've underestimated your enemy at your peril, girl! Dracula Man is known as the Muay Thai Bloodsucker! His ritual dance shows his confidence and pays homage to his long legacy and by consuming your blood, the very essence of your vitality, he also consumes a part of your strength!" Baba croaked out with her fists clenched together. The vision of that gruesome image blurred and multiplied a bunch, Chayote took it into the sky and flipped over on her head, threatening to smash into the arena tiles head-first. Something like that should have killed a puny Earthling such as Dracula Man.
Except when Chayote picked her fallen body off the floor, it was no puny sausage-person that met her eyes, it was a monster of physicality with blood-red eyes, a spine-chilling set of fangs and a body that would have taken a human a thousand years to perfect. Dracula Man had grown at least three times in size and the enigmatic dark and crimson aura leaking out from the mystical fighter made his elongated and even wilder hair flow above him in a supernatural manner.
"That's bad, he absorbed a bunch of Chayote's own strength!" Goku now mirrored Upa's concern whereas the native boy made sure to hide behind Son Goku's back in fear of the reinvigorated demon.
"Usually I dance a ritual dance before a fight but just this once Baba has convinced me to not to do that, instead of focusing on my mystical abilities. I suppose she also switched up our order a bit…" Dracula Man laughed out with a monstrous and husky tone that was very much a new development for him as it sounded quite unnatural imagining it in his older body.
"So what you're saying is…" Chayote mumbled. "If you drain more of my power, say half, we could have a proper clash then?"
"Half of your power?" Dracula Man smirked and looked at Baba with that rich smile, the old hag mirrored his gleeful sentiment.
"Girl, you would die from such excessive blood loss. It does not matter how powerful you are, your body is all the same number of pints of blood worth. Even those matching the Gods in strength would die after a couple of drainages like the one you've experienced." Baba informed Chayote just what was so funny about the whole situation.
"I see…" Chayote clacked her eyelashes a pair of times and allowed her vision to straighten out. That bastard drained out a lot of her strength, he did it in mere moments too. It might not have taken him more than four seconds to drain a body completely dry if he kept the pace up. "Let's see how far you can go with borrowed strength."
Dracula Man charged forward with his knee shot out forward and his fangs uncovered for all to see. Chayote mirrored his motions, his stance, this entire strike of his. Similarly to how Dracula Man borrowed Chayote's strength, she took his fighting style, at least the movements that the pale bastard showed her. A deafening thud followed by a flash of light, as if a thousand lightning bolts detonated at the point of impact all at once came from the clash of the two martial artists.
"Impossible!" Dracula Man roared out, flying back as the loser of the clash of strength. Reading him like an open book, Chayote dived in from above with a kick that sent the vampire crashing into the lake before he could turn back into a bat.
"Even with your strength drained…" Baba yelled out in disbelief.
Chayote stretched out and cracked her knuckles, feeling a bit on wobbly legs after losing a whole bunch of blood. Vision still blurred once in a while, she was lucky not to divekick her way out of the stage herself, missing the enemy altogether.
"You're acting weird, let's switch." Goku raised his hand.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Son Goku?" Chayote looked back at the kid who just laughed out as if he was just caught stealing cookies from his grandpa's jar.
"You got me!" he wiped his itchy nose. Tail waggling by his sides.
"I've made my decision." Chayote declared with a solemn look to her face. "I'll stay and train here. Training with a guy like this will be an invaluable experience, it's the next best thing to training with myself and blood loss like this will trigger my Zenkai to go nuts… Can't wait." She smirked.
"Excellent!" Baba clapped her hands in excitement. "With you, we will make so much mo… I mean… Reach so many new heights in martial arts."
"You do plan on teaching me those mystical martial art ways, do you?" Chayote squinted at Baba, having picked up this particular distrustful mimic from Krillin after seeing it just a few times.
"O-Of course!" Baba laughed out. Even though her laughter could not have felt tenser and more faked, there was little to nothing that could have been done about it and Chayote had the means to persuade the woman to teach her whatever those weirdo fighters of hers knew if she wanted to.
"Say, say… What about me!?" Goku pointed at himself. "I wanna train with the sister of the old-timer too!"
"Hmmm… I must say, your strength is also very intriguing…" Baba scratched her chin.
"No way." Chayote shook her head. "Go find your own training gimmick, Son Goku. If you train with me all that you will achieve in these three years is the same I will but worse. If you are to be of any use to the Saiyans you must stand out in your own way."
"I mean… I wouldn't mind kicking Suke-san out… He's not that impressive of a fighter, to be honest…" Baba butt in.
"Fine. I still need to train my tail and grow much much stronger anyway. Now that I know how you train, Chayote, I'll push my body to the limits every time!" Goku raised his fist as a challenge to Chayote. What he said was more meaningful than just an empty boast, after all, the boy now knew of how Zenkai worked, meaning he will without a doubt wander the world in search of opponents that might bring him to the edge of dying so that he could grow exponentially more powerful. Thinking about that prospect, Chayote could hardly wait.
"I want to stay with Chayote!" Upa declared. "All of these monsters seem really scary but I've made a promise to teach Chayote about good and evil and I intend to keep it!"
"Hohohoho!" Baba snickered. "Very well, I could use an attendant in my mystic rituals."
"Alright then." Chayote punched her palm, "Where the hell is the next fighter? I'm not done yet."
"Oh..." Baba removed her hat and scratched her head. "I had figured that after such a loss of blood you would be in a poor fighting mood, but, I suppose, if you're still gunning for that ticket, we can proceed. The next fighter likes to fight in a different arena, however."
Right after explaining it, Baba hovered onto the fighting stage and led the way deeper into her temples, then down underground and through dark and unkempt tunnels. Chayote had never seen anything this old and untidy. Everything the Saiyans used for their architecture was fresh new, always kept in mint condition because buildings had a nasty tendency to get toppled during the wild fighting and full moon rampages and the Saiyans, as the employees of Lord Frieza himself, used only the finest and most cutting edge construction materials.
"We will turn here, this is the observation area, you can proceed further. The corridor will lead you right to the Devil's Toilet." Baba pointed for Chayote to head further. The Saiyan nodded and proceeded to where the old crone instructed her to, appearing on the very other end of the underground fighting arena. The teen Saiyan looked around, doing her best to hide her curiosity in the marvel of the Devil's Toilet.
It was a spacious room filled a decent amount with bubbling, swampy acid down below. All that separated Chayote and anyone else inside that room from the acid were two massive demon statues that were depicted sitting on a toilet and touching tongues. Those very tongues comprised the fighting stage whereas the observation area appeared from inside the Devil's Toilet as the toilet paper roll.
"Please give it some time, my next fighter is sleeping in before fights and he has not been challenged. Appear now, the Living Hunk of Jerky…" Baba raised her hands up as some mysterious object lit up deep inside the mouth of the demon statue on the other end of the stage.
"Hmmm? You employ someone like that? I can't promise I won't eat him if you don't have enough food…" Chayote wrapped her arms over her chest with a worried expression. Try as hard she might have, she simply could not imagine a man who was described as the Living Hunk of Jerky being all that imposing.
"You fool! I was making a dramatic pause before declaring the man's name!" Baba flipped out and lost her composure, frantically shaking her hands and yelling at Chayote. The loss of concentration over her mystical abilities caused her to drop the coffin that she was about to reveal from inside the mouth of the other statue. The fall made a lifeless giant tumble out of the coffin in a less than dignified, bottoms-up position.
"Oh no, Mummy Man!" Baba screamed out in despair. "Your unmatched, threatening entrance is now ruined, you three, this must not leave this dungeon!" she turned to Upa, Goku, and Chayote.
"Whatever…" Chayote shrugged. "I thought he was called Living Hunk of Jerky…"
"That was his title, you ignorant girl!" Baba flipped out, almost slipping off of her crystal ball and tumbling into the acid below herself. Something that caused the old crone heaps of scares. "His name is Mummy Man, the Living Dead."
"Hmmm…" the downed giant bellowed as he picked his body off the floor. He looked groggy and still a bit in a haze after such a rude awakening. "I do not remember falling asleep on the floor…" he grumbled with a strong and imposing voice. That was much better, as far as threatening appearances were concerned.
"Wait, so is Living Dead his family name? That sounds odd…" Chayote scratched her chin as she observed the slow-starter of a waking giant.
"No, it's another title! He is a living dead-man!" Judging by the appearances, Baba could not stomach the fact that Chayote was more concerned with the name and the logistics of the Mummy Man rather than threatened by his hardcore appearance and supposed strength. "Dying and coming back to life through the mummification ritual has granted him far greater strength than any living man possesses!"
"Baba… What happened to my coffin, I seem to have fumbled out of it," Mummy Man observed after an inspection of the scene of the crime. "Was I sleepwalking again?"
"I'm sorry, Mummy Man, no, this foolish girl has mocked you to the point where I lost composure and dropped your coffin. You sort of tumbled out of it and showed these challengers your undead bottom." Baba explained the shameful situation with a blush to her elderly cheeks.
"What!?" Mummy Man ground his teeth, his pale skin that used to belong to a south-western man of more tanned composure, like Upa and Bora, turned light purple in his fury. "Normally I would be gentle to weaklings that do not belong at this stage, show you the difference between my power and yours and give you the option to run away with your pitiful life but for this… I will grind your bones to dust!"
The undead fighter extended his hand, shooting out the bandages that covered his entire body at Chayote. The white bindings wrapped around the Saiyan and pressed against her body in an instant. There truly was something unnatural about the movements and strength of this man. Normally a man of such an unnaturally powerful and bulky build would be very slow but Mummy Man moved faster than any but the very strongest humans that Chayote had encountered. Had Son Goku fought this man the way he was before Chayote hardened his body up, he'd have lost, without a doubt.
"My bandages are harder than steel! Cry and lament your youthful foolishness and perhaps Baba will give you another try at life as one of her undead warriors!" Mummy Man taunted Chayote who appeared a tad bothered by the hardening bindings of his bandages.
"Oh, no, Mummy Man, she's already going to be one of my fighters. We'll likely be getting rid of Suke-san." Baba pointed it out to Mummy Man.
"Her!?" Mummy Man roared out. "Don't make me laugh! I'll kill her before she can cost you a challenge!"
Mummy Man tried to yoink Chayote closer to him and then pulled on the bandages further in an attempt to throw her off the tongues and down into the acid below but Chayote remained rooted on the floor. With a shocked expression, the undead brute turned to the bound Saiyan. As his steel-hard bandages tore to shreds and Chayote freed herself without too much trouble, the eyes of the Living Hunk of Jerky blanked out and his jaw dropped with an unhealthy twitch to its lower half.
"I got pretty hyped up about you but you seem to be just a guy who fights with power." Chayote stretched out her arms that felt a bit numb after the restriction of movement and blood flow, as brief as it was. "That's fine and all but it's sort of pointless when the enemy has more power and speed than you. Someone like you can never defeat someone like me."
"What was tha…" Mummy Man twisted his face in defiant rage before being silenced by a punch that did not seem to be packing that much weight behind it whatsoever. With a twitch to his frozen body, overcome by unnatural pain and feeling the impending shutting down of his body, the undead brute glared down at where Chayote had approached him from the front and knocked him out with a single hit.
The man's vision of the alien martial artist blurred before his lights went out completely and he collapsed with his face on the floor first and his bottom raised up, although in the other direction this time. The power and toughness combatant Mummy Man had fallen the same way as he was before his rise.
"Bring out your next guy." Chayote looked at Baba and jumped back onto her own side of the stage, landing on the tongue of the first statue.
"Hmmm… Very well but… The next fighter is someone very deadly and dangerous. You are vain, mean and all-around not a pleasant person to talk to. He is a fighter that is very deadly to people like you. Given how useful you will be to me, I will ask that he does not fight you with his full strength but…" Baba tried disciplining Chayote and briefing the girl on the upcoming difficulties but the Saiyan dismissed it.
"You will do no such thing! I want to fight that guy at his most powerful! If I die, you can just mummify me like that Mummy Guy." Chayote dismissed it.
"Mummy Man!" Baba corrected the insolent girl with a raised tone. "In any case, the mummification ritual would result in your brain being pulled out through your nose, meaning that you would be as mindless as Mummy Man himself. Also, while the ritual works for humans, it might actually make someone like you weaker, because of how unnaturally strong you are, to begin with. I would recommend taking caution and not counting on mummification as an option."
"Tsk. Fine…" Chayote wrapped her arms over her chest. "Bandages are kind of lame for an outfit anyway…"
"Okay, at first, I was kind of feeling sorry for you and was on your side but now I just want you to get taught a lesson, Devil Man, come out!" Baba yelled out, signaling for the next fighter to appear.
An inhuman chuckle came from the depths of the room hidden inside the other statue as a pair of blood-red eyes lit up inside it. With light taps, more and more of the unnatural, demonic shapes of the next combatants revealed themselves as Devil Man appeared from the shadows and into the open. Devil Man was a tall man of a pale face and hands and a dark bodysuit covering his entire body except for his face, his hands, and his massive two horns. He also had a pair of wings wide enough for the man to sustain flight, Chayote had no doubt.
"I salute you, girl, you're the first human to have ever gotten this far. Your power is so incredible that I don't even consider you human at all. However… Your luck runs out against me!" Devil Man declared with a cocky gesture at himself with his thumb as he assumed a fighting pose.