Red stars, minute as a singular dot, sparked in the eyes of Garlick Jr., Chayote navigated around the eye beams even in her blind madness. Unlike before all the training she's done on Earth, now her maddened instincts included martial arts training, it was a fundamental part of her as a warrior and not even in her moment of the most blinding fury did Chayote lose that training.
Her arm wrapped around Garlick's face, shoving it into the ground and dragging it across to the edges of the Papaya Island before lifting the helpless demon up in the air and throwing an explosive cross into the core of his helpless sack, sending Garlick Jr. beaming across into a faraway building with enough force to blow it all up upon impact. Shatters of glass glowed with the malicious reflections of the pink lightning bolts ravaging the skies as Chayote let out a roar, letting her Ki flow free just to let off some steam that's been boiling up inside her.
The eyes of the furious Saiyan were pale white no longer, sense and control returned to her as her swollen musculature had toned down to the levels customary to her. Chayote panted staring at her shaking hands, failing to recall a moment of what had occurred or how she broke out of the Dead Zone. All that stayed with her throughout was the innate knowledge inside that Devil Man was dead and that this despicable dwarf might have had something to do with that.
"Garlick Jr… His Ki disappeared! She killed him in one blow?" Demon King Shura wondered admiring the power of the Saiyan. In her madness and brutality, he recognized the makings of a fine demon, had her humanity not sealed off any chance of such eventuality.
Even with the deep-seated knowledge of her opponent's immortality, Chayote had to wonder if she had destroyed him. It was as the Demon King said, Garlick Jr.'s Ki had disappeared completely for a couple of brief moments but then it all returned to him at once. In a blink following that minute of demise, Garlick Jr. burst forth from the wreckage of the fallen building renewed and completely recovered.
"Well, well… If my immortality did not sustain me, I'd have truly been gone. It was the right move to obtain it, even though you were not the person I'd chosen to obtain it for." Garlick Jr. cracked his neck a pair of times while stretching it out, the force of Chayote's assault before had smashed his skull and shattered his neck in quite a few places before, he must have still felt some specks of itch from what had killed him before his revival.
"So you can't die? That's fortunate for me, I can keep killing you over and over again. I can think of no better thing to do for the remainder of my life!" Chayote growled, raising her shaking hands out in front of her and clutching them in fists as traces of tears appeared on the corners of her eyes.
"Hmph… Are you sure about that? You've lost more than half of your power just after that one attack. Your body cannot seem to afford to sustain your bottomless rage and yet it doesn't seem like you can quite help it." Garlick Jr. taunted Chayote before stretching his arms out to the side. In his shrunken down state, he truly did look quite pathetic though his Ki began swelling up again.
The gap in the Dead Zone widened with each successive twitch, emitting a mighty pulse of malicious, demonic energy which Garlick Jr. felt all too glad soaking up into himself. His core began pumping blood and power incarnate throughout his body and that pumping came to the demonic shrimp in pulses that stayed where they were sent, magnifying the demon's size and buffing him out, his expanding in power and size body once again adopted a darker shade of skin color and colored the pigmentations over his forehead blood-red. The forehead of Garlick Jr. also appeared to shrivel up as even his head appeared to be muscle-bound in this form.
"You were foolish to challenge an immortal being, human, your power is vast but finite. With each strike, you will grow weary whereas whenever I would die – my strength will be restored. This is one fight you cannot win. Once your mighty strength wanes, I will send you back to the Dead Zone where you will have no other choice but let the zone's flows and currents take you to its depths for our battle will have drained all of your strength to resist it and attempt escape." Garlick Jr. looked all too proud of himself and his plan as he flexed his massive muscles and showed off his supersized form to Chayote.
"I'll make you regret killing Devil Man!" Chayote pressed her fists to her side and lunged at Super Garlick Jr. The aegean-colored giant vanished from a clear view and appeared behind Chayote with an elbow strike to her back. Once it had connected, Garlick Jr. took a plunge down to pursue his opponent and grabbed hold of her, smashing into the water together with Chayote while their rumble had erected washing waves and shook the ground on every island submerged in the ocean they plunged into.
Chayote's tail wrapped around the arm that held her head submerged and wrestled her deeper and deeper into the abyssal depths of the ocean and squeezed it hard, she felt it cutting into something warm, warmer than the freezing depths of the ocean they had submerged into but it was as if the demon was utterly immune to pain, he persevered in his attempts to drown the Saiyan and soon enough she felt the dirt of the bottom pressing against her cheek, chest, and knees.
Finally, Chayote's tail found the joint of the arm and wrapped around it, instead of the wrist, she forced it to bend backward and snap. Garlick Jr. bellowed in pain and released the Saiyan, Chayote wished to see his eyes in the abyss but it was too dark. It was of no consequence as she would see them yet. The Saiyan turned her body back and tackled Garlick Jr. with her shoulder, pushing him toward the surface. Chayote threw her arm out and slammed it against Garlick Jr.'s waist, every orifice and hole in the demon's body began shimmering with emerald light as Chayote formed a Ki blast inside his body and sent it flying.
Just as the Dragon Team and the representatives of the Demon Race began to feel curious about the outcome of the brawl, Garlick's body burst forth from the ocean, gargling and bloating it out where the unstable Ki blast made it swell up and rupture, it bubbled like an improperly heated soufflé before rising up to the sky and popping in a resonating explosion that left only mere chunks of the demon to scatter across the ocean.
Chayote rose from the ocean not too soon after, racing for breath as the underwater struggle and the pressure of the depths made her usual limit of holding her breath underwater go way down. Her body had been under stress just dealing with the unnatural and half-baked transformation she had undergone due to her outburst of rage earlier. Now, with the violent and chunky demise of her enemy, the Saiyan found a moment to catch her breath and prepare for his inevitable return.
An arm emerged from the uneasy waves, Garlick's head followed as the demon bellowed in the stress of his sudden resurrection, rising from the depths with a far less restrained and overjoyed expression than his earlier one. It was now Garlick Jr. who felt submissive to the rage of his own. Rage of constant humiliation and unraveling of his plans before him. He had thought that he could wrestle and play around with the Saiyan while her power dwindled to obscurity but now he wasn't so sure he could handle being humiliated thusly for much longer.
"Can't you understand, you nincompoop, I can't die!" Garlick Jr. yelled out, throwing his hand out for a burgundy Ki blast to burst in his hand in Chayote's direction, hitting the Saiyan with a devastating cone of destruction after its detonation which was much harder to evade than a concentrated and round Ki blast.
"I like it that way, honestly." Chayote replied, emerging unharmed from the smoke, it was only her already stressed yukata that had blown off from her chest, leaving only tatters of bandages she wore over her upper body intact. "Things are way too weak and fragile on this planet anyway!"
Chayote rushed onward for another beatdown but Garlick Jr. covered up his eyes in response, when he moved his cross-shaped block away, a flurry of eye beams overwhelmed the Saiyan. Not enough so to cause significant harm to her but enough to keep her murderous intent at bay for a short while.
"Damn you…" Garlick Jr. huffed, when he expended a significant amount of Ki, his body would not compensate it until he had died and regenerated back. Up until now, he got himself killed so rapidly that he had not had the chance to taste the fatigue of battle which was why exhaustion reminding itself to him after a barrage of vicious eye beams hit him with so much surprise. "So I've killed Devil Man, you've killed me twice already, can't we just be square already?"
"Bargaining already? I've died before, it's not that big of a deal, have some dignity!" Chayote let her Ki explode in an aura again before charging at Garlick Jr. Garlick Jr. rushed at her in return, the two traded blows with each other before hitting each other square in the face and backing up, then the two collided again, ramming heads against one another before the shockwave of their collision forced them apart.
"You're already having more trouble than before killing me, you're bleeding strength with every blow you throw and take, I, however, remain eternal!" Garlick Jr. laughed out. "I am repeating myself, yes, though it doesn't seem to be reaching you at all, so I'll just repeat it as long as I have to!"
"It's fine if I'm bleeding stamina as long as in return I can just make you bleed!" Chayote roared out while raising her hand up and pointing the five, bent fingers of her right wrist at Garlick Jr. "Jelly-Beam!" she yelled out as a barrage of fiery beams split off from her fingers and bombarded Garlick Jr. who was forced to cover up and block as they flared up with flames on contact all around him.
A rift of deep-red opened up in front of Garlick Jr., swallowing up the continued barrage of Chayote's Jelly-Beams and sealing them off into the Dead Zone. Seeing how sustaining her barrage of attacks was pointless after Garlick Jr. began sending them off to the Dead Zone, the Saiyan lowered her hand and decided to take a breather. She dreaded the thought of giving that demon a chance to speak again but he wasn't wrong in gloating over his infinite stamina, Chayote could feel strength evaporating from her body with every attack to where Garlick Jr. was beginning to become able to evade death with adequate decency now.
"That's right, did you forget? I can control the Dead Zone as I deem fit!" Garlick Jr. laughed out, looking mighty proud of himself. "How about I give you a little trip back? See if you can fend off its attraction now?"
Garlick Jr. spread his arms out, the Dead Zone over his head disappeared and, instead, a round rift began widening one inch at a time right behind him. Its width increased at an escalating rate, Garlick Jr. stated to be in perfect control of the zone before but Chayote wondered if that was truly the case, given how rapidly the rift began expanding and soaking Garlick Jr. with its deadly atmosphere.
"Oh, yeah! That's true power!" Garlick Jr. cackled with madness and corruption seething from his voice. "I could snap you in your current, exhausted state like a little twig, but with the Dead Zone open this wide, even I have to do my best not to get absorbed!"
Chayote's eyes widened as an idea hit her. She didn't want to win this way. Garlick Jr. still hasn't suffered anywhere nearly enough for what he had done but it was a choice between winning this way or not winning at all. The Saiyan cupped her hands together by her side and focused her Ki.
"Ka-Me!" she chanted.
For now, she could still contend with that overwhelming gravity of the Dead Zone but she would not be able to do that for long. If she was to survive and not get sent to a one-way trip to a void worse than Hell again, she had to hit Garlick Jr. with enough strength, the problem was that with him soaking up Dead Zone's atmosphere so close to it, with the rift being so ridiculously wide, to where it threatened to swallow up the entire Earth in it, not even Chayote's full power might have been enough…
"Ha-Me!" she chanted. It didn't matter if it was enough or not, she'd just hit him with her best shot and deal with the consequences when they came, the way she always did. Earthlings overthought their fighting too much and Chayote was stronger than all of them, though nobody ever accused her of putting all that power to good enough use.
She messed up here. Big time. She let her hatred and rage for the demons get out of hand, she ignored the old-timer's advice and threatened the fate of the entire world with her selfishness. Maybe her flaws were justifiable after the torture in the hands of the Slug Clan she's been through, maybe not, it hardly mattered now. She was strong but she was stupid and her rage always got her all confused, maybe she deserved getting sucked up, right now Chayote didn't feel in control over her own body, her own anger and maybe she was better off away from Earth but now that didn't matter either.
Right now all that mattered was how much Ki she could channel into one, massive Kamehameha. She wasn't even a master of that move, it was just one she picked up along the way, Krillin, Yamcha, especially Kakarot and the Turtle Hermit all could do it better than she could but right now it was the only ranged blast Chayote felt she could put enough power in to do the deed.
"HA!" she roared out, letting all of her stored energy out in a single destructive Ki wave that enveloped her entire body. It was less of a Ki wave and more of a tunnel of streaming, white power that threatened to decimate all in its way and right now Garlick Jr. and the rift to the Dead Zone behind him were all that was in its way.
"Useless…" Garlick Jr. mocked Chayote with a husky tone. "You've wasted too much power beating on me, you've fallen right into my trap. And to think that I've told you exactly what my trap was over and over again – you're such an idiot! So foolish that I think I'll make Earth remember you once I rule as Kami. Idiocy such as this must be remembered and mocked until the end of time."
Chayote yelled out, her muscles hurt as if every single one of them was stretched out from her body and smashed with a boulder. She couldn't move around too much, just thinking about running away or moving against the pull of the Dead Zone made her nauseous. Everything around her went dark, the Dead Zone, in its infinite, expanding hunger appeared to swallow up even the light around it. Oceans swirled in rising whirlpools, arcing straight into the mouth of the Dead Zone, buildings burst into ruin and flew in a rain of granite, glass, and steel, disappearing forever inside the Dead Zone.
Papaya Island had been evacuating ever since the tournament began, even if there were casualties, they were minor but for just for how long. Right now this rift only threatened an area spanning maybe a continent but with the rapid state of expansion… Garlick Jr. didn't want the Dead Zone to swallow up the entire Earth for sure but with his power now being more the Dead Zone's boost than his own strength, just how much control did he truly have over it?
"Pushing me back into the Dead Zone, that's a grand thought but to do that you have to have the strength to compete with mine, now stop struggling and just accept the void before it destroys your precious world. Neither of us wants it gone, I still intend to rule it as Kami, after all!" Garlick Jr. growled at Chayote, irritated that the Saiyan, despite being pointlessly frozen in place in a perpetual lock of no return, refused to accept her slip into the Dead Zone.
"Don't give up!" Tenshinhan's voice made Chayote turn to her right in shock. What was he doing here? Was he truly strong enough to compete with the Dead Zone's pull as Chayote did? It was true that she was vastly weaker now than her full power but surely by coming this close he accepted that he'd get sucked in as well if she fails to defeat the Dead Zone's influence.
"Humans!" Garlick Jr. hissed, "Very well, how about I widen the Dead Zone just a little bit more to make a place for all of you! Screw the tournament, screw the Demon King, I'll swallow all of you up to make things oh-so-convenient for me! That traitor Sansho can go to the Dead Zone too!"
"Not gonna work!" Goku's irritating grunt made Chayote turn her head to the other side as the male Saiyan also entered the zone of no return and began ravaging Garlick Jr. with Ki blasts. They seemed rather effective at pushing him back a few inches but by now he had grown far too powerful for any of them to push him back fully. His Ki had swollen up to the point where Chayote couldn't think of a single entity she had met aside from Lord Frieza that could have pushed the demon back now.
At least his blasts prevented Garlick Jr. from widening the Dead Zone any further like a man submerged and struggling against the rampant river, Garlick Jr. writhed in pain and squirmed in the storm of Ki blasts that Goku kept sending his way but remained in place.
"You fools, all of your Ki will dwindle, mine will only grow stronger! All of you are doomed!" Garlick Jr. yelled threats at them that, admittedly, were quite accurate to the point of being spoilers if something wasn't done about it.
"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan turned to face a little ghoulish dwarf floating up to his side.
"Ten-san, I've tried narrowing down the Dead Zone but I can't…" he cried out.
"Then why? Why did you come!?" Tenshinhan grunted at his friend.
"Because… If you are sucked in, I'd rather spend eternity in the Dead Zone with you than live on an Earth ruled by Garlick Jr.!" Chiaotzu declared showing an uncharacteristic amount of emotion for him in his exclamation.
"Tsk… It can't be helped then," Tenshinhan closed his eyes and turned his head away. He reached back into his pocket and pulled out a capsule. Raising his arm up he turned to Chiaotzu. "Chiaotzu, I need you to keep this rice cooker in place with your telekinesis while I perform the technique."
"W-Wait, Ten-san! If it doesn't work – you'll be too weak to resist, you'll get sucked in instantly!" Chiaotzu cried out.
"The Mafuba?" Goku turned to Tenshinhan. "Are you sure about that?"
"You're powerful, Goku, but even you can't fire those Ki blasts at him forever. Even if you could, soon enough his strength will grow to the point where he'll just shrug them off and widen the Dead Zone to cover the entire Earth. It's true that I will be unable to resist the pull after I'm done but it's our only choice!" Tenshinhan replied.
"If you want him to turn that technique back at you, maybe…" a strict and mocking tone coming from behind him shocked Tenshinhan enough to turn back.
"P-Piccolo!?" Goku ceased his Ki blast barrage out of the sheer surprise that the key figure of the invading demon army would come to their aid and enter the event horizon of the Dead Zone.
"Right now Garlick Jr.'s power eclipses your own to where he's going to just reverse the Mafuba and seal you up instead. That's a countermeasure that we have developed against that technique, figuring that one of you hopeful fools would try it." Piccolo Jr. grit his teeth. "You need to weaken him up in order for the seal to work."
"Namekian… Don't think this changes anything!" Chayote growled at him.
"Hmph… Right back at you. It's just that I hate that little, blue shrimp a bit more than I hate you guys. Right now he's threatening the integrity of the world that is the Demon King's to rule. Without combining our efforts, we won't dispose of this pest." Piccolo gave the Saiyan a similarly spiteful look.
"Fine. Chiaotzu, hold me in place. There's only one way of weakening him now." Chayote grumbled. "It's only right that the Devil Man's own technique does this bastard in…"
"The… Devil Mite Beam!?" Piccolo Jr. dropped his jaw.
Chayote felt a tight, telekinetic grip around her body, surrendering some of her control to Chiaotzu's telekinesis as she raised her hands up and positioned them by her temples, channeling her Ki and attempting to purify her heart. She did not need to achieve complete purity, she just needed to be devoted to the effort, pure in her intent to be pure and brim with the desire to expand and spread evil. In her current frame of mind, regretful, vengeful, pissed off, it was like slicing up a pie.
"Devil Mite Beam!" Chayote pointed her fingers at Garlick Jr., emitting a spiraling beam which the entrapped by his own swelling up power demon could not avoid. The dread in his eyes was apparent, he knew this technique and feared it. It was likely that fear that made him slay the Devil Man when he refused to work for him in the first place. The knowledge that there were successors to his mystical technique was a fine spark of hopelessness and despair to carry with him into his banishment.
"The Devil Mite Beam is a mystical technique that locates evil in the heart of the impure, however small, and then expands it to make it explode! My control over the technique is nowhere near perfect but I don't need it to be when I'm firing it upon a literal demon!" Chayote yelled out, just slightly audible over the all-encompassing roar of the Dead Zone's vast expanse. "Even still, I might not have the control and mastery over the technique to make you explode, but it will still hurt, you bastard!"
Instead of Garlick Jr. popping into a stain of blood as the technique disposed of Devil Man's enemies under normal circumstances, a cascade of smaller bursts of blood popping out from Garlick Jr.'s body resonated all throughout, his arms, his chest, even his head had chunks of it blown off all at once, reducing Garlick Jr.'s power to a pathetic speck all at once and while it did not kill him well enough for his immortality to resurrect, it did make him wish that his vast evil would have burst with enough force to finish the job.
"Now, human!" Piccolo Jr. turned to Tenshinhan who popped a capsule and threw it out. Chayote tensed up her body, feeling Chiaotzu's grip on her releasing as the little martial artist focused his powers on an open rice cooker.
"Mafuba!" Tenshinhan raised his arms up, forming an emerald vortex of Ki around him that tunneled and surrounded Garlick Jr. who still wailed in his pitiful and ruined state of being. Trapped and doomed to stay in that state until someone had enough pity to unseal him and finish the deed so his immortality could fully resurrect him.
"N-No!" Garlick Jr. tried to wrestle and reverse the technique but his efforts were spent on wrestling in the losing battle against the Dead Zone's influence. Even if Tenshinhan had not succeeded in sealing Garlick Jr. away, the Dead Zone would have claimed him eventually though it remained unclear just how many more people it would have claimed in the meantime.
Chiaotzu whimpered in a clear evening sky over his head while the martial artists stepping in to dispose of Garlick Jr. and his troublesome Dead Zone all panted and stared at a casual rice cooker floating in mid-air right in front of them.
Tenshinhan grunted and began plummeting down, his body ruined and overstrained by both the competition with the Dead Zone as well as the execution of the Mafuba. Goku dashed in to grab the falling martial artist while Piccolo Jr. swooped in to secure the rice cooker, breaking Chiaotzu's telekinetic hold over it with a decent pull.
While life and the Tournament of Doom were about to resume to their normal processions, Chayote spent a fair moment baffled and staring at her shaking hands, afraid not of the demon she had just disposed or the almost imminent threat of eternal damnation in the Dead Zone she so narrowly avoided but instead of something more primal and all-consuming, something hot-red that blazed inside her and ruined everything whenever it surfaced.
"Come on, Yajirobe has Senzu." Krillin's voice broke Chayote out of her inner struggle against her own body and emotions. Flexing her tired body and cracking her joints a few times, the Saiyan followed Krillin back to the arena.
She needed to see this tournament through to the end, she owed this planet that much after screwing it over just now.