"Are you sure you don't need a Senzu?" Krillin looked up and to his right, even going as far as to lean into Chayote's direct line of sight. Had he not done so, he would have been unlikely to have reached the Saiyan at all. "You wrestled out of the Dead Zone and beat that Garlick Jr. guy down, as expected, you're still as amazing as ever!"
"Hmm? No, I'm fine. I won't be fighting in the tournament anyway." Chayote declined Krillin's question. She forced her lips to part so that her grinding teeth could be made out as a smile. Krillin didn't mean to offend her by suggesting that she didn't get pulled out against Garlick Jr. after messing up, in his Earthling eyes, it truly was Chayote that won against Garlick Jr.
Despite how she wanted Krillin to see her, his words made a trouble stew boiling deep down in Chayote's gut. Did the baldy not see Tenshinhan, Son Goku and even Piccolo Jr., of all people, pitch in to pull her out of a rough spot? There was no honor in being salvaged that way, there was no more embarrassing thing for a Saiyan. Unlike what the popular thought on the matter might have been when viewing it with the knowledge of Saiyans being the warrior race, losing oneself to blind and pointless fits of rage was nothing to be proud of either.
It was because of that rage that Chayote lost control and had to be rescued in the first place, even if the Earthlings didn't view it as a rescue. Such an irritating culture, Chayote felt angry yet had nothing to vent out her rage at. Krillin wasn't to blame for being an ignorant Earthling, oblivious to the Saiyan attitude toward fighting nor could Tenshinhan, Son Goku and Piccolo Jr. be blamed for pitching in for their own reasons.
"That was the Devil Man's technique, wasn't it?" Tenshinhan turned to Chayote. "I have not met the man in question but his reputation as a champion of the World Martial Arts Tournament and the master of the deadly Devil Mite Beam precedes him."
"Yeah… It's a crazy technique, it expands all the wickedness and makes it blow right out of you. The scars of it don't even heal with Senzu!" Yamcha explained while Chayote continued to stare at a blank point in space, somewhere in the sky past Piccolo Jr. who noticed Chayote staring in his direction though looked more curious as to why he was not the object of her obsession but the empty skies behind him. Despite the spark of interest, the reincarnation of the Demon King stood quiet until his Demon King asked him a question.
"You let her practice the beam on you, Yamcha? Don't you know that it doesn't leave anyone alive? No matter how pure a person is, it expands even the tiniest speck of evil to the point of detonation," Tenshinhan appeared dumbfounded by how easy Yamcha had taken the famed technique that the Tsuru Sennin had feared and taught Tenshinhan to revere as well.
"Well, Chayote has never killed anyone with it. I don't think she can expand malice quite that much yet, or I just don't have that many evil thoughts in me!" Yamcha laughed out with his fists on his sides, posing as a righteous and pure hero of justice.
Chayote had never caused that much harm to anybody with the Devil Mite Beam. Had the lovable oaf known that the scars on his face demonstrated the most damage that the Devil Mite Beam had ever caused before being employed against a literal construct of malice and wickedness, he might not have felt as confident in the purity of his heart.
"What's wrong, humans? Send out your next fighter! I'm itching to avenge Lord Garlick Jr.!" Sansho threatened the humans on the other side as he flexed his muscles, having revealed a thick and tough carapace of natural armor covering his body. Like his peers, Sansho had a few similarities to Garlick Jr., in fact, he appeared very much like the supersized version of his master except for the magenta-colored sideburns falling down on his shoulders.
"Alright, I can take it from here!" Goku stretched out his shoulders and thighs after returning from the demon side of the arena after having given Piccolo Jr. a Senzu for the Ki he had wasted while resisting the deadly pull of the Dead Zone.
"No need, Goku-sa!" Chi-Chi stepped out in front of him. "You can leave this henchman to me, you can challenge the Demon King or that reincarnation of King Piccolo."
"Hmm? Are you sure, Chi-Chi?" Goku wondered. "You haven't started training seriously that long ago."
"Don't you dare look down on me, Goku-sa, anybody that threatens our plans for a nice, countryside wedding and the calm and normal family life is in for a beating!" Chi-Chi stepped onto the ring, sealing her participation in the Tournament of Doom.
"Those demons are no joke, I'm not sure Chi-Chi should be challenging one of them already…" Yamcha turned to Goku, appealing to him and his innocent ability to make amends with people offended for breaking the rules. As if asking him to step onto the ring and break a few rules in order to replace his wife in the arena.
"Don't worry, Chi-Chi is no slouch when it comes to fighting. She kept pestering me to spar with her and she's shown some skills." Goku dismissed the matter entirely.
"Plus, this might be the ideal time for Chi-Chi to show the fruits of her training – the Dead Zone has closed, depriving the demons of their boost in power." Tenshinhan pointed out by raising his arm up and pointing at the murky clouds above.
"Heh, against you I'll make it quick!" Sansho taunted his opponent who might have been half his size as he took a wide, wrestling-style stance by spreading his arms and legs out to the sides and leaning a tad bit down to boost the balance of his body as much as possible.
Chi-Chi did not respond. She took a fighting stance of her own that, based on Chayote's knowledge of martial arts seemed inferior to Sansho's. The young woman only used one leg for balance, lifting the other one up and bending it by her chest. One of Chi-Chi's arms bent over her face while she let the other one hang down and to the side. Despite a wobbly sense of balance, Chi-Chi seemed to have most of her slender body protected and one of her legs was already in a position to deliver a kick.
Sansho took charge, dashing at Chi-Chi with his arms spread out. His massive size made moving out of his way difficult. However, he was rushing right at her like a complete oaf, ignoring the dangling threat of Chi-Chi's kick which ended up socking him in the face, leaving a foot-sized indentation in it. Chi-Chi calmly lowered her leg down and took a neutral stance while her stunned opponent jerked in pain a few times.
"Don't let your guard down yet!" Goku warned his wife but it was too late. Sansho grabbed Chi-Chi by her head and flung her out, sending her flying on a trajectory toward the market area of the tournament grounds, way outside of the ring. Sansho put his arms up and unleashed a volley of Ki blasts to chase after his airborne opponent as well, making it more difficult for her to avoid a potential ring out as she still had to deal with the rapid Ki blast volley.
A transparent bubble of Ki formed around Chi-Chi and burst outward as the young woman stopped herself in mid-flight and began swatting the Ki blasts aside one by one. The Ki blasts careening off to the sides and blowing up a random vendor or an abandoned food cart seeing how most locals had fled as soon as possible the moment the demonic invasion began.
"Man, she really underestimated the toughness of a demon…" Goku scratched his chin.
"We've all made that mistake before," Krillin shrugged. "There's no way to learn that lesson but to make it, I guess…"
Sansho vanished from where he stood in the arena. Eyes bulged out wide, muscles tensed up and expression yearning for bloody murder, the demon appeared over Chi-Chi's head while she was still dealing with the Ki blasts of her opponent. Trying to shock her with a surprise elbow drop, Sansho instead found a surprise of his own when Chi-Chi's highly flexible right leg swatted him aside and made him plummet in a diagonal trajectory back down toward the arena.
Sansho grunted in pain but the thud of the crash soon drowned his whining out. Chi-Chi landed to the edge of the ring as well, using controlled and slow flight to get to that point, now wary of just how durable the demons could have been and how unusual their anatomy was. After taking a hit to the face like that, most humans, no matter how powerful, would have flinched and it might have even settled more than a few fights all by itself. Demons were different. Their bodies were built for combat and brutality, there were no vital points to squeeze or soft spots to pinch to make them wail.
The only way to stop a demon was to hit them so hard that even their numb-skulled bodies broke down whole. Smash them to bits with unmatched, superior violence and brute force.
"Damn you…" Sansho grumbled, standing up leaking whatever flowed inside the muscular and unnatural body of his from a smashed skull and battered joints. The few hits Chi-Chi did connect even managed to crack his adamant carapace around the core of his body in more than a few places. "I guess both of us underestimated just how tough the other one can be…"
"Get out of here!" Chi-Chi took her previous fighting stance while urging her opponent to take a hike. "You're embarrassing your mother by bleeding and whining all over the ring. You've lost."
"As if!" Sansho jumped up on both feet and flexed his body out again, letting all of his pent up Ki surge outward in the shape of a bloody aura. "We demons aren't given birth by a loving mother like you pathetic humans are! We are born of violence and ambition, the need for more manpower and more strength! We are born of pure evil and that is all that defines a demon!"
"Explains your lack of manners!" Chi-Chi turned her nose and her chin up at her opponent who continued to declare his intent on dragging this festivity of brutality out longer than his breaking point. "Mothers usually teach their children when they're done."
"Ah, but the fun only gets started when bodies start breaking!" Sansho growled as his muscles began expanding, his carapace cracking from the inner pressure while his skin took a duller hue, turned more to the dark-grey side instead of his natural turquoise appearance. Sansho's eyes whited out while his sideburns started parting and floating about, riding the chaos of his surging Ki.
"Whoa! He's still powering up, nowhere near as he was when the Dead Zone rift was open but… He's just gaining power, almost double what he had before!" Krillin appeared threatened by that prospect even though his own strength far surpassed that of the empowered demon. What he showed was fear of a race that grew stronger in brutality, reveled in combat. It was such an Earthling thing to fear, even when it was of little threat to oneself.
"Unaju Fire!" Sansho yelled out, throwing his arms out in front and shooting a fully-powered, red Ki wave from his hand.
Chi-Chi's image blurred, she continued to appear and vanish all around the Ki wave before swooping in and over Sansho's head, throwing an overhead kick that canceled out his Ki wave by breaking the user's concentration and drove Sansho to the ground. The resonating shockwave from the kick appeared to grind the tiles of the ring to dust and formed a round crater of dirt where Sansho laid sprawled out and seemingly knocked out.
"You don't need to act and embarrass yourself any further. After your surprise early on, I'm tracking your Ki very carefully and I can sense that you are still in fighting condition." Chi-Chi spoke while staring at her fallen and battered opponent. Breaking out of the act, Sansho's whited out eyes regained their normal appearance and his slimmed-down body soon filled up with vigor, prompting the demon to stand back up, albeit just on one knee.
"Tsk… You're a fair bit weaker than the rest. And to think that I'd hoped that I'd be able to catch you off guard with a sword." Sansho bellowed.
"You're unbelievable!" Chi-Chi scolded her opponent and raised up her palm, slamming a barrier of invisible force right at his already busted face. Sansho rolled back and out of the crater from the impact of the Kiai slam just as strong currents of air picked up as a result of Chi-Chi's attack, causing Sansho to cover up just to withstand them and remain in the ring.
The young woman raised up her other palm, channeling a more powerful Kiai blast as she let out a vigorous shout from the bottom of her lungs. The sheer might of Chi-Chi's Kiai totally overwhelmed Sansho, the demon's jaw broke from the intensity of the strength he tried to oppose while his body shriveled up to a pathetic and broken shell of its former might and flew a fair distance out of the ring, lacking any life in his rolled-back eyes to keep going anymore.
"Chi-Chi! Contestant Chi-Chi from the human side is the winner! So far it's been a total wipeout by the humans! The only members of the human team that have been eliminated were those that stopped fighting to take a rest!" the announcer and his declaration seemed to aggravate the lesser demons that became growing unruly on the sidelines. Not even the presence of Muten Roshi amongst them seemed to keep them in line any longer for the Demon Race had shown many things that day, complete obliviousness to self-preservation being one of them.
"We've been utterly beaten!" Demon King Shura grunted, staring at his own shaking fists. "Now even Garlick Jr.'s Dead Zone is gone. Without it, we won't be able to oppose the humans anymore. Their power is far greater than anyone might have thought!"
"Are you giving up already?" the beady eyes of Piccolo Jr. glinted at the Demon King. "You think you'd actually stand more of a chance with that shrimp's cursed sky lingering over you? You're less of a demon than I thought."
The demons on the sidelines, massive and meek alike all began bearing fangs and claws and clattering them against one another in opposition to the harsh words of the reincarnated Namekian. Their moxie was admirable though it took a single look from Piccolo Jr. and the absolute death that they were ready to bring even to his own kind that cooled down the unruly mob of demons.
"Most of their weaklings have already been weeded out, while our chaff is all but gone, they've served their purpose – all that remains are Son Goku's wife, that swordsman with a Lucha mask, Tenshinhan and Son Goku." Piccolo Jr. did an elementary headcount. "Goku's wife had already spent a fair deal of her Ki fighting that pitiful henchman of Garlick Jr.'s. You're the Demon King, act like it, I can't do it for you – I may be the reincarnation of Demon King Piccolo but I am also part-Kami and my nature seems more akin to the humans than the grand and foul personality of a demon."
Demon King Shura straightened his back and nodded, stepping up and taking his place on the stage.
"You're right, Piccolo. I must say, we haven't known each other for that long. A few years is but a blink for a demon's lifespan but you are already one of my most trusted and respected demons. Maybe it's because we've got so much in common, both of us take after the pride of a martial artist and would rather cut off the hand that cheated than shake with it as demons should. Or maybe it's because your incredible power and aptitude for martial arts inspire me and remind me what a true Demon King should be like. I took the position up hesitantly, Piccolo, know that it was always meant to be yours. If only you could have claimed it." Shura lamented while he raised his hand and materialized the devastated part of the ring before focusing on Chi-Chi who still stood in front of him.
"Chi-Chi, you've won already, you can switch out now…" Yamcha teased the young woman who just shook her head.
"No!" she declined. "I am not as strong as this demon but if I can fight him with all my strength, I can help wear him down somewhat. I must pave the path for Goku-sa to win!" Chi-Chi took her fighting stance, challenging the Demon King to a match.
"What an unexpected development, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer had lost himself to the high of his profession, it took him a visual inspection of the unruly crowd of violent demons that he realized just whom he was entertaining and informing with his commentary. It was a bitter pill to gulp down though one he swallowed regardless, carrying on as the professional that he was. "Contestant Chi-Chi will continue to challenge the Demon King Shura!"
"Goku, you can't be okay with this!" Tenshinhan turned to Goku who just shrugged and leaned back on his arms.
"I don't agree with it but I don't always pick smart fights either. Let Chi-Chi have her fun." He smirked.