A tall demon with ocean skin and thick, white hair that stood upward like a brush took it on to the stage next. Unlike Ginger before him, this demon did not look like Garlick Jr. at all, except for the color of his skin. He did, however, have a rather sadistic look to his expression. He lacked any eyebrows making his protruded eye ridges that much more apparent. He carried a confident smirk to him as well, despite not appearing that much stronger than his predecessor at all. At least not by a meaningful margin.
"Krillin, are you sure you wanna take this guy on?" Goku asked his friend with moderate elevation to his voice. "You've lost a fair deal of Ki fighting already. You should reserve your strength."
"Oh, you guys want to fight too, huh?" Krillin rubbed the back of his head, seeming apologetic about hogging the entirety of Garlick's entourage all to himself. The bald martial artist chuckled and ran off to pick up his cap. Krillin flicked it back onto his head and secured it with a pair of tight wrist turns before rushing off to the edge of the ring.
"Are you sure about that, human?" Demon King Shura hissed. "If you jump off the ring, you will not be able to return to protect your world!"
"Oh, that's fine. Yamcha and Tenshinhan can handle the rest." Krillin smirked.
"I can fight too, Ten-san!" Chiaotzu cradled his tiny fists and released his inner strength, letting his mysterious psychokinetic power brim on the outside as it has on the inside.
"That may be so, Chiaotzu, but there's something more useful that you can do," Tenshinhan looked to his ghoulish friend. "We need you to use your psychokinetic powers to try and widen the gap of the Dead Zone. I have a feeling that Chayote hasn't wandered off too far off from the opening and a mere widening of the gap might be all that she needs to escape."
"Really?" Chiaotzu wondered, looking at his arms, bending fingers in and out, as if counting them down.
"Yeah, plus, I'm sure it's really dark in there, if Chayote can just get a better look of where our dimension is and where the path only leads further into the void, she'll force her way even closer to the entrance." Yamcha gave the floating, pale dwarf his thumb up of approval.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" Nicky smirked. "After all, we Demons are at our most powerful in the dimension that houses us. Given the immeasurable demonic power of the Dead Zone, even a mere widening of its gap will strengthen us even more than it already does."
"Good," Yamcha flexed his wrist while stepping onto the stage in exchange with Krillin. "Maybe it'll make for more of a challenge?"
"What's that, you miserable earthworm!?" Nicky clenched his fists, the leaking energy of the Dead Zone bolstered his swelling strength, expanding the size of the aura that his rampant demonic Ki was able to put out. "I'll have you know that I am stronger than Ginger!"
"If that somehow makes you more confident in your chances to win, you're more clueless than I thought…" Yamcha took a fighting stance adapted from his signature Wolf Fang Fist, never dropping his own confident smirk for a second. It was not often that he got his chance to show off in front of a group of malicious, Earth-conquering demons and the fact that he was now able to play his own part in fending was a source for content with the man who used to be a mere desert bandit.
"Alright, here goes!" Chiaotzu put up his hands and focused on the sky. All of his attention and the limited arithmetic skills that came with it held the rift ravaging the heavens firmly in his focus. It was not an easy thing to take hold of, given how the murky storm clouds covered the sky in entire layers and the red scars merely distorted their color with their own infernal gleam.
"Whatever you are trying to do, I assure you that it is impossible…" Garlick Jr. wrapped his arms over his chest, his fangs looked too long to be contained inside his mouth when it was closed and smiling.
"Wh-What's happening!?" Nicky crouched over and clutched at his abdomen as if suffering from a severe case of indigestion. His shoulders and arms began to swell, his eyes whited out and whatever circulatory system demons possessed became much easier to point and gander at since his vessels popped out and began etching through Nicky's skin.
"What is the meaning of this?" Demon King Shura turned to Garlick Jr. who just shivered as he stared at the tearing Dead Zone wound in the sky. Clouds hurled and whirled in a rampant twister as more and more power of the Dead Zone leaked out.
"He is forcing the Dead Zone open with sheer telekinetic power!" Garlick Jr. took a step back in shock.
"Well, well…" Piccolo Jr. smirked, seeming proud of the fact that this despicable little dwarf got showed up in front of his Demon King. "I guess the little maggot has some skills after all…"
"It doesn't matter, you're wasting your time hoping that your friend will make it out of the Dead Zone by herself and you're just dooming your own competitors by making us stronger!" Garlick Jr. clenched his fist and shook it out at the humans while his own proportions began morphing little by little.
The tiny, turquoise pinch that his fist was before inflated like a blown-out balloon. Some of the residual force of transformation then leaked backward into his forearm and biceps, buffing up Garlick's entire body in the process, increasing his size multiple times over. The skin of Garlick Jr. darkened and his forehead began to shrivel while the emerald spots on his head turned red. Sansho, the third henchman of Garlick Jr's appeared to be pumping up beside his master as well, unable to contain his transformation anymore.
"This power…" Demon King Shura examined his own body, feeling his muscles tensing up rapidly and becoming more defined on the spot while streaks of his bursting veins extended over them. "It is incredible. I now understand why you have chosen to focus your entire growth in that direction, though I'd prefer to be more in control of myself like I was before. This urge to rampage I feel inside… If I spent as much time in the Dead Zone as you and your henchmen, Garlick, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to control it."
"Hmph… A useless transformation." Piccolo Jr. closed his eyes, appearing utterly immune to the enhancing effects of the Dead Zone that took the other demons over.
"No luck, huh?" Yamcha gandered his eyes at the red sky that began to reduce the wine-colored clouds to mere cotton wraps with the overflowing demonic energy that radiated from the Dead Zone.
"Shall I close it?" Chiaotzu lowered his head to look at Yamcha with an intense look of struggle on his face.
"No, I'll manage, let's keep it open as long as we can and hope Chayote can sense us," Yamcha replied. "Who knows, if we fight with all of our strength, maybe she'll feel our Ki and follow our signatures back home?"
"You'll pay for this arrogance with your life, human!" Nicky roared out while charging in a wide stance, attempting to utilize his hulking form in order to decimate the enemy.
Yamcha dashed to the side to evade the charge of his demonic opponent but Nicky vanished in thin air, appearing right behind Yamcha and locking his buffed up arms around the martial artist, attempting to squeeze the life out of him. Inch by inch, Nicky's arms began to move apart. Without betraying his effort with even a single drop of sweat, Yamcha forced the lock open and the arms of his musclebound opponent apart.
"So your speed has dropped, for the most part, I don't see any martial arts skill either. I guess Piccolo Jr. was right, after all, this is a useless transformation!" Yamcha bit his opponent with a verbal jab before unleashing a flurry of wolf-paw swipes at him, Nicky's head cocked left and right, like a rag ball thrown around at Yamcha's mercy and with a single thrust of his wrists to Nicky's chest, Yamcha sent his opponent flying back into the wall protecting the ring area and the backstage area. Into the wall and through it.
"Your Ki swelled up a lot though I can sense it plummeting after just a bit of fighting just as quick. Be careful not to overdo yourself…" Yamcha warned his opponent, teasing him in the process.
"Cocky human!" Nicky roared out after wrestling his way out of the rubble and then taking it to the air while he pointed his palms downward, telegraphic a ranged Ki attack just about as hard as it could have been telegraphed though if King Shura's word was to be believed, he had little control over his fighting style with this much exposure to the Dead Zone. "Lozenges Blast!"
A concentrated and fully-powered, green Ki wave hurled right at Yamcha from up above where Nicky had soared. It smashed into the fighting arena and raised a moderate amount of hell, reducing the entire central area of it to dirty rubble while only the corners remained stationary. Once the smoke and the explosion settled down, Nicky scanned the area with a husky growl, looking for the body of his enemy or at least a sign where to direct his ire next.
"You soar pretty high, but I can take it way higher!" Yamcha teased Nicky with his voice irritating the blue demon from up above than he held his ground. Nicky would have turned his head behind him to meet the enemy had Yamcha's foot not hit him square in the lower back. A storm of kick outright stomped Nicky into the ground that he himself had reduced the ring into.
"Neo Wolf-Fang Fist!" he declared after concluding his fierce storm of kicks and then back-flipped onto the safe corner of the ring to observe his decimated opponent for signs of a comeback. It wasn't that Nicky was not ringed out by Yamcha stomping him into the ground, it was just that these demons have demonstrated to be sore losers in the past.
"Ring out! Contestant Nicky is ringed out!" the announcer pumped his fist into the air. "The winner is contestant Yamcha!"
"You can take the next one, guys, this is all too easy…" Yamcha shrugged after jumping off the stage.
"Tsk! The proud and powerful Demon Race, reduced to a mockery before mere humans!" Demon King Shura twitched in fury. Had he not been a more classic type of demon as opposed to a mutate of the Dead Zone as Garlick Jr. and his lot were, there was not a doubt that he'd have lashed out and attacked the turquoise dwarf and his measly tribe that has brought him nothing but shame so far. "You've failed to recruit the Devil Man and the Devil Tribe into our service, your henchmen had broken the rules of engagement against the humans bringing me shame and they continue to fail in combat!"
"The Devil Man!?" Goku's eyes widened. "You know what happened to him!?"
"That's right…" Piccolo Jr. smirked. "This pathetic excuse for a demon was supposed to recruit him. The Devil Man is a part of a tribe of demons that reside in Hell, instead of the Demon Realm dimension, making them difficult for the rest of the Demon Race to contact. Given how Garlick Jr. and his henchmen were on Earth, setting the seeds for our invasion, they were given the role to recruit him and his tribe to our cause. He failed, of course…"
"I wouldn't call killing Devil Man a failure!" Sansho objected. "He was a weakling, weaker even than a single soldier of your army, he wasn't fit to serve us anyway! You mock us because these humans have bested us, but they've beaten your trusted commanders too, King Shura, and your precious Devil Man had lost to humans long since as well!"
"Devil…" a resonating grunt echoed through the washing void of the bleeding Dead Zone.
"Man…" the wailing repeated, gaining a more pitiful and lamenting tone rather than the spice of outrage that the first one had.
"Killed…!?" a third one drove all the demons and humans alike to gander up at the Dead Zone. Whereas the first resonating echoes may have just been figments of individual imagination of each listener, or so it seemed to them at the time, as more and more lamenting broke out from the void and seeing how it was a delusion they all shared, they've come to realize that it belonged to someone very real.
"YOU KILLED DEVIL MAN!?" a vicious and hysterical roar emanated from the Dead Zone, bolstered by its own qualities of reaching out and pulling back into its infinite reaches as the shape of a single, pissed-off Saiyan woman in the opening of the rift, unleashing all of her Ki just to claw and pull out of its reaches with her bare hands until she was free sent shockwaves of emotions throughout the battlefield.
"Chayote!" Krillin cheered.
"It's… No matter, you can't change a thing! You're eliminated already!" Garlick Jr. shook his fist at the sky.
"Chiaotzu, stop forcing the rift open and restrain Chayote instead." Tenshinhan turned to the pale spiritualist doing his best to assist Chayote in her escape.
"B-But… Then I won't be able to keep the rift open anymore. Plus, look at her, she'll just break out!" Chiaotzu freaked out.
"Maybe, but right now she's like a demon herself. I don't think that the Dead Zone would be able to absorb her back if you're not forcing it open anymore and the effort of breaking out of your paralysis should slap some sense back into her." Tenshinhan looked more trouble by Chayote's rampant emerald Ki and spiky, black hair as well as her buffing up shape and whited out eyes. His senses as a martial artist, or perhaps something deeper, spiritual that only his third eye could perceive tipped him off that Chayote the way she was now was more of a hindrance to the Tournament of Doom than help.
"Garlick!" Chayote roared, letting all of her Ki loose and not keeping a single inch of her strength contained.
"That crazy Ki!" Goku's expression that usually seemed in control switched to complete shock, mirroring the fear on Piccolo Jr.'s face on the other side of the arena as well.
"It's so much like younglings to marvel at such earth-shaking power but they're wrong to admire it," even Muten Roshi dropped his façade of an old pervert for a moment while observing the gleaming emerald star descending from the closing rifts of the Dead Zone at a vastly reduced speed as it contended with Chiaotzu's psychokinetic paralysis technique.
"What do you mean?" Oolong turned to the old martial arts hermit.
"I've seen and experienced drastic spurts in power such as these before in moments of sheer rage, they are as great as they are dangerous for once that rage settles down, that surge in power tires the user the same way it would under normal circumstances, except it isn't normal power that they're using. They're breaking the limits of their own body to achieve that strength." Muten Roshi muttered.
"Garlick Jr.!" Chayote roared out again, sending shockwaves that tore Chiaotzu's Psychokinetic grip over her like mere threads and charged onward at the shocked turquoise shrimp. With a crushing blow that sunk all the way through his face, sending the buffed out giant flying back proportionately to the force he had absorbed in the moment of impact, the Saiyan aimed to take revenge for her fallen friend.
"Th… This is ridiculous!" Garlick Jr. wheezed and writhed in pain, struggling to rise to his feet. "Come, announcer, disqualify the entire human team now! Their disqualified competitor is attacking a key competitor of our team!"
"W-Well… That is against the rules…" the announcer fixed his glasses and wiped the sweat off his forehead, trying to work up the courage to tell this hysterical and rampage-prone version of Chayote that she cost the humans their entire world just now.
"Wait!" Demon King Shura raised his hand up. "Garlick Jr. is under no threat. During the time between Demon King Piccolo's demise and our invasion, his goons have gathered the Dragon Balls and made him immortal. He cannot be inflicted with any lasting physical damage. Our demons have stepped out of the line as well, I shall permit Chayote her vengeance for we demons respect such right, as long as humans do not hold our own earlier transgressions against us."
"Th-This is ridiculous!" Garlick Jr. pleaded with the Demon King. "Great Demon King Shura…"
Turning to his monarch, Garlick Jr. saw no mercy in his eyes, shrinking down from his transformation after allowing the Dead Zone to reduce to its previous proportions, Garlick Jr. turned to his subordinate with a demanding look that soon changed to a silent plead as Chayote loomed closer and closer to him, leaving craters in the ground she stepped on whereas her feet touched it. Spiky and floaty black hair and whited out eyes, the face of utter disdain and madness and physical increase in muscle mass similar to that of the demons themselves.
"Sansho… Step in and protect your master!" Garlick Jr. pleaded as Chayote's shadow covered up the crimson gleam of the Dead Zone for him as the hysterical Saiyan warrior loomed over him.
"S-Sorry, Garlick Jr. Master… You're immortal and I would surely die. I still haven't fought in the tournament… I'm just thinking ahead to the bigger picture…" Sansho shook his head out in front of himself, shaking off this responsibility as only a loathsome demon could.
Chayote cracked her knuckles and got to work.