Jackie Chun sharpened his fighting stance. The old veteran must have seen through the self-evident – with his opponent sleep-walking, he might have had a chance at landing blows he would not have had a chance with previously. Also, even if Tenshinhan did land any freak attacks on him, surely they'd be weaker when the one delivering them was asleep.
The limitless determination of the ace of the last generation left his chest with a tight growl as the worn-out martial arts master blasted off at his opponent. Jackie's bent hands and sharp feet gave it their best shot at hitting Tenshinhan with Jackie's stiffest blows yet but Tenshinhan seemed like a whole different kind of beast altogether. The three-eyed fighter danced around his opponent, dodged each and every single strike while not missing out on a chance to lock the old man up and deliver a solid beating back whenever his fighter's instinct called for it.
Jackie stumbled back after a strong backhand smack with his nose bleeding all over his white beard. His black martial arts suit slipped off his slumping body, forcing the old master to throw it aside and reposition his stance. Not before sliding his arm under his nose to wipe the blood drooping out from it from time to time.
"Oh no! It appears that Contestant Jackie Chun cannot land a single blow, even when his opponent is completely asleep!" the announcer translated the hi-speed events transpiring on the arena to the audience even though he himself could barely perceive half of it.
"Oh no…" Jackie Chun closed his eyes and calmed his racing heart. "It's not "even when", it's "because"!"
"Huh? Please explain!" the announcer made his way onto the ring and rushed up to the weathered and worn out martial arts master.
"I don't blame you for this simple mistake for I have made it right now as well." Jackie smirked. "You see, after seeing my opponent sleep-walking I have assumed that his mind was no longer there, that he was open for attacks but… What I should have been worrying about was what has replaced the consciousness that left that vacancy."
"And what would that be?" the announcer wondered.
"Instinct." Jackie Chun nodded to himself while examining Tenshinhan's lazy movements that threatened to strike faster than lightning if the unconscious martial artist deemed it so. "He is operating by pure instinct, muscle memory and pure dreams of what he's picked up as a martial artist. No complicated planning, no experience or forethought can match the brutal, empty void of instinct."
"Most impressive… So what are you planning to do?" the announcer pushed his microphone up closer to Jackie, brimming with curiosity.
"In order to beat my opponent, I must also vacate my mind! Luckily enough, our clash of techniques has not yet finished…" Jackie took a couple of breaths. The old master closed his eyes and focused his face like he'd have looked while computing a complicated math problem in his mind. Then his eyes opened, his entire face had changed alongside with the look on his face.
"Drunken Fist Technique!" Jackie chuckled with blushing cheeks while pointing peace signs up in the air with both arms. "Woot, woot! I'm a happy little cow!"
The previously serious and stoic martial arts master stumbled like a complete imbecile who not only lacked the elementary ability to fight, he seemed to have a great struggle merely walking around. Jackie constantly tripped up over his own feet, stumbling and bumbling, looking as if he was about to plant on his face any time now.
"What's this technique?" Chayote shook her head in disbelief of what she was seeing. Fighting styles and martial arts techniques were meant to enhance one's combat ability, compensate differences in speed and power through skill, discipline and profound mastery of one's own body. This seemed like the old geezer had completely regressed himself.
"Oh… I guess Chayote wouldn't have seen a drunk person…" Krillin pointed at Chayote.
"A what person?" Goku turned at his friends with a decent amount of bafflement in his own face forcing his friends to jump back in surprise.
"He's acting like he's intoxicated." Yamcha explained.
"Oh…" Chayote seemed to grasp the basic concept.
"Why would you say it in an even longer word as if it explains anything?" Goku pouted and crossed his arms over his chest.
"He's acting like he's just had bad food… I guess the Earthling equivalent would be bad apples." Chayote scratched her head, trying to relay it in more understandable in Earthling terms since her own closest comparison would have made it too confusing even for Krillin and Yamcha who, while knew what intoxication was, were Earthlings and therefore unfamiliar with alien fauna.
"Oh… Why?" Goku appeared enlightened for a brief second before looking back at his friends.
"That's the question, isn't it?" Chayote shrugged. One disadvantage of having Jackie Chun be the one fighting was not having him around explaining things that were truly lessons transpiring right in front of them.
Out of nowhere, Jackie began stumbling into Tenshinhan's general direction, throwing a mad flurry of blows at him while still fumbling at him. The strikes didn't appear to be packing much strength since they lacked any semblance of balance, Jackie seemed to draw his force entirely out of his shoulder but this seemed to make the flurry far faster in the process.
Tenshinhan took the strikes and grunted, still half-asleep. His buff chest glowed with red swelling from where Jackie had pummeled him. His eyes fluttered and shot wide. He was awake at last, though, if he had known what had happened while he was out, he'd have likely chosen to enjoy the benefits of letting his natural instinct guide him through the battle.
"What's going on?" Tenshinhan wondered, his own cheeks blushed a bit when he noticed the peculiar manner in which the honorable Jackie Chun was acting.
"Oh my… I think I'm going to fall!" Jackie Chun slurred out while stumbling about, grabbing for anything solid to prevent his fall but grasping only on air. Tenshinhan jumped forward, worried that his opponent would fall down and hurt himself as he did not appear to be in the right condition to fight. Jackie's iron-grip locked around the center of Tenshinhan's chest, pinching a sensitive part that no amount of training could harden sufficiently and throwing Tenshinhan off-balance.
A storm of strikes ran rampant across the three-eyed martial artist's face before Jackie finished the combo with a chipper jumping sole butt. Clutching at his mid-section and embarrassed over his folly, Tenshinhan withdrew to safer distance from his inebriated opponent.
"So that's your move, huh, old man…" Tenshinhan grit his teeth. For the first time in this clash, he felt to be the underdog who was being pushed instead of the youthful challenger with more energy than he knew what to do with who was doing all the pushing. "In that case… Volleyball Fist!"
Tenshinhan charged forward without any time wasted thinking if lunging at an unpredictable opponent was the right idea. Before he could even approach close enough to attack his opponent, Tenshinhan performed a slide across the ring, aiming to strike at Jackie's unsteady feet with it, what the martial artist did not expect, however, was that Jackie Chun would trip and fall over on him before he could even deliver his sliding kick, ruining Tenshinhan's offensive.
"Oh my… I seem to have…" Jackie Chun rubbed his red nose with an embarrassed face while seated atop of Tenshinhan.
Tenshinhan shot out his arms in a double palm strike, just like he'd have struck a volleyball but he failed to land his strikes where he aimed them after Jackie folded backward with an arched back as if he had just snoozed off. Just after the strikes were delivered, Jackie bent back and yawned.
"Huh… I dozed off, I think… What'd I miss?"
Tenshinhan roared out, creating a bubble of Ki around him just like he did when he was wrecking the entire island by meditating and letting his true power leak out. Jackie flew off of him and rolled back, almost fumbling out of the ring. In his fake-intoxication he would have surely fallen out, had he not hit his head against the ring which drove tears to Jackie's eyes and some sense back to his movements.
"Who could have thought…" Tenshinhan grunted while adjusting his position to that he took when meditating while his body rose off the ring floor and began floating in mid-air, still inside his devastating Ki bubble that was slowly unraveling the ring around it. "Movements that allow you to avoid the attacks of an opponent far more powerful than you… Heh, makes me wonder just what other techniques martial arts can bring you up to?"
"That is for you to experience yourself…" Jackie Chun stroke his beard while his other hand stroke the back of his own head to check if he wasn't bleeding through his wig. "You are the master of your own journey, young man. Go break your leg and surpass me, or fold and don't. That is entirely up to you, although, after seeing your potential first-hand, I must admit that your talent for martial arts is second to few."
Tenshinhan raised up his fist out in front of him, clutching it hard enough to force crackles of lightning to erupt from the small shockwave that his compressed force had created around his fist. "You do of course realize that as a martial artist I cannot take that declaration lightly. My pride compels me to challenge those you deem superior to me in talent and defeat them!"
"And so you shall… But before, you still have a match to win." Jackie Chun broke his usual fighting stance and pressed his fists by his hips, leaning his body forward and letting every single muscle in his body tense up.
"Does he need to use the toilet?" Goku pointed at Jackie.
"No. His Ki… It's skyrocketing!" Chayote couldn't believe what she was sensing. Had she been wearing a scouter right now, this man's power level would undoubtedly be rising right now. How was that even possible!? One's fighting potential was meant to be determined from birth! One's power level might have grown through tough battles and training but not like this, it couldn't have been possible to cheat one's own power level. One's very own role in the universe…
"Are you saying that Jackie's been keeping some power still?" Krillin's face twisted until it was almost blue in discomfort. He must have been realizing that Jackie's power might have surpassed that of his own, it was a shocking realization to someone who didn't know Jackie Chun's true identity and who only knew Jackie Chun as an old wise man who got himself eliminated during the preliminaries last time.
"Incredible, this power… You're my equal, I'd think…" Tenshinhan couldn't hide his excitement after seeing Jackie Chun reveal his Max Power form. Jackie's seemingly frail body that had turned into the build of a muscular and fit martial artist in the prime, the more Jackie approached his limit, was now just a mockery of what the human body should have been capable of.
Jackie was a colossal mixture of muscular girth, growth and overwhelming power. "Now I'm Super-Serious, let's see if you can handle this one, whippersnapper…"
"Come!" Tenshinhan taunted his opponent who dashed onward as if the unbelievable growth in body mass and bulk did absolutely nothing to diminish his speed.
Jackie threw a smashing cross downward, planting his fist through the ring and shaking the ground underneath. Tenshinhan, emanating his own overflowing Ki aura, thrust out his knee while throwing an elbow strike out. Like some twisted version of bodily scissors, Tenshinhan's elbow and knee smashed Jackie's massive arm in between each other, pinching it to great effectiveness.
"That technique…" Goku's eyes turned serious for a moment.
"Yeah, it's just like what Muten Roshi used before he blew up the Moon, isn't it?" Yamcha realized.
"So it is, but it's useless against Tenshinhan. The Kamehameha is useless against him." Chayote nodded.
"Yeah, but buffing up like that has to make you stronger. I bet Jackie Chun's counting on that strength to keep him in the competition." Krillin declared, fisting the sky in excitement and wonder at this impressive old man.
Tenshinhan threw his own fusillade of punches at Jackie Chun's direction but they bounced off of Jackie Chun's rock-hard body when the martial arts master blew out his chest and focused all of his Ki into it. Jackie jumped onward with a knee strike, throwing Tenshinhan flying back and toward the edge of the ring. The eternal martial artist followed his opponent and grabbed him by the ankle, flipping him over his head and slamming him into the ground on the other side.
Jackie attempted a repeat of his earlier slam, swinging Tenshinhan's body over his head and throwing the limp martial artist like a deadweight in front of him. Tenshinhan's arms reached out for the ring floor and broke his fall. Chayote could almost hear the crack in Tenshinhan's bones and the churning of his muscles after taking that brutish impact. With a push from his upper body, Tenshinhan transferred the force into his free leg to deliver a kick to the side of Jackie's head.
Blood burst from the wound where Jackie got kicked. It was a curious reaction to see right after Jackie had managed to stonewall his opponent's entire combination of strikes.
"There must be a reason why Muten Roshi uses this transformation just to boost his Kamehameha," Chayote stated. "It seems like it burns through stamina like nothing else and it isn't like an old-timer like Jackie has plenty of it to spare…"
"Yeah, I'd wager he saw he was hitting his limit before, that's why he tapped into this forbidden move to try and gamble it all on a win." Yamcha nodded in agreement.
With his opponent thrown off his feet, Tenshinhan saw his opening to go on the offensive and all three of his eyes now only saw red. The three-eyed martial artist leaned back in a stance that shocked Yamcha and forced him to press his body to the protective wall that separated him from the ring. It was the Wolf Fang Fist stance, no second guesses about it.
Although the initial stance was mirrored from Yamcha's ace move, the entire rush attack following it was different entirely, Tenshinhan, after putting his hands up and bending his fingers out, forming his palms like the paw of a great cat, delivered a crushing combination of blows before flipping over his front to attack Jackie's exposed left shoulder and finishing the combination with a jumping knee strike that blasted Jackie flying and threw him off his feet in an instant.
"White Tiger Paw!" Tenshinhan yelled out after breaking his stance and putting his two tired palms together, as if in position for prayer. The three-eyed fighter took a moment to calm himself down afterward.
"Heh, it would seem that in the end, it came down not to how many techniques we know, but instead in how much we can grow and learn while fighting." Jackie Chun smiled while his roided out body returned to not even his serious state but to his frail, base state, one that befits a timeless man.
"What are you doing? You can clearly still stand!" Tenshinhan looked displeased with his opponent folding like that.
"Perhaps, but fighting further is of no use. Your uncanny power forced me to tap into reserves that burn through my stamina. I am now even weaker than the version of me you pushed to his limits. Let's try and make it easier on the tournament staff and not have me fire my last-ditch Max Kamehameha only for it to prove useless…" Jackie Chun chuckled to himself, coughing as he felt something heavy going up and down his chest. "I give up!"
"Oh! Contestant Jackie Chun has surrendered! It appears that while his age provided him with ample advantages, the disadvantages were what made all the difference!" the announcer declared the end of the match.
The audience seemed like they would be tearing the roof off of the already plenty shaken building of the World Martial Arts Tournament stage. Goku, Yamcha and Krillin burst onto the stage the moment the match was called. As the audience raged in an expression of their unlimited hype over the match they've just witnessed, Jackie gave Chayote a serious look.
"This reception, this is actually a lesson for you…" Jackie let her know mentally. "This is the reception that a martial artist who has chosen the path of light receives. Tenshinhan, even if he might not yet be aware of it, made an equal part of this fighting harmony, he too is a martial artist of the light. And it was not because of me, he chose to abandon Tsuru Sen'nin all by himself… All he needed to be fixed was a little nudge."
"Are you sure, old-timer?" Chayote surprised Jackie with a telepathic message of her own. She didn't just think something for the old man to read it and translate it to himself, she reached out for his own mind actively, revealing a hidden ace that she would have much rather kept to herself. A result of Baba's and Devil Man's mystical training. It made sense that Roshi's own sister would know his tricks just as well if not better than he did. "He only abandoned his old bastard because of me and Kakarot…"
"He did…" Jackie Chun pocketed his hands while approaching his fallen top of the uniform and picking it up. The old man bent it over his hand and closed his eyes while he jumped off the ring, turned and looked off into the distance. "Although that's what makes me even more proud of him. He realized that the path of darkness would not serve him right, it would not grant him the power he needs to overcome his cosmic challengers and it made him reach out for the light by himself. Yes… Indeed there's no further use for me to meddle in the affairs of the young generation. They've surpassed even my wildest expectations…"
Yamcha approached Tenshinhan while the two engaged each other in a cold staredown, eye-to-eye.
"That stance, those moves seemed oddly familiar…" Yamcha teased his rival.
"Oh? I was surprised you could see any of it to identify it. You must forgive me, using a technique I've just made up on the spot the first time can come out a bit slow…" Tenshinhan returned the jab.
"Well, in any case, glad my moves served you some use," Yamcha pocketed his hands with a smile.
"Yes, I suppose your style isn't completely useless after all. I might have been in a pickle if it wasn't for that light breeze of a rush attack." Tenshinhan extended his hand out for a shake.
Even if the fighting had long since ceased, the following handshake had enough fortitude in it to shake mountains and it did a better job of relaying the pent up feelings of both martial artists sharing it than one might have been reasonably expecting it to.
Author's Note: I sort of wanted Jackie and Tenshinhan to keep going at it, if anyone's read my stories before, they'd know that I'm not above writing a three or four chapter long fights. Still, since the next chapter's gonna be a round No. 50, I wanted it to feature a noteworthy clash, namely Goku VS Chayote. I'm gonna try to make it live up to a fight reserved for the 50th chapter :D
The White Tiger Paw is an original rush attack. It's supposed to be a spin-off of Wolf Fang Fist which Tenshinhan saw Yamcha use in his match. Tenshinhan is loosely based on Erlang Shen, a Chinese God with the third eye. Erlang does have some ties with a tiger, not the White Tiger of Chinese mythology but it's close enough for a trashy Dragon Ball fanfiction! It also brings Tenshinhan and Yamcha closer together, further cementing them as rivals, although on more friendly terms than the "Hates each other's guts" status their relationship had earlier.
A stone that hits an entire murder of crows is a stone I'm always ready to throw!