Yamcha turned around in a snap motion, looking back with a serious look, filled with gloom. He had been too absorbed in his training to notice it earlier – the foreign Ki signature that was massive though unfamiliar to him and could have therefore only belonged to a Saiyan.
"What's wrong, Yamcha-san?" Puar yelled out in his high-pitched voice as he floated up to over Yamcha's shoulders. Being a lifelong friend to the man that once was just a lowly desert bandit, the shapeshifting cat accompanied him on his training trip ever since Yamcha split up with Bulma to do the only other thing that stimulated him – martial arts.
He was at a crisis then and Puar had to be there to do his part as man's best friend. Although now it seemed like the entire Earth was in a crisis. Puar looked like he was just lucky enough to be able to assist Earth with its invasion problem by just being there with his own best friend.
"The Saiyans, they're here already. They're headed here, almost like they can sense my Ki…" Yamcha explained without ever dismissing the gravity of the situation. "You should hide, Puar."
"But what if you need my help?" Puar floated in a triangular formation, right in front of Yamcha's face, begging to not be dismissed and urging his friend to make him useful in his own way.
"Knowing that it's Saiyans we face… I might just need that but first, we need to make sure you survive until I need that help. Then it will be like we practiced…" Yamcha gave his friend a thumb-up.
Hesitant to leave and hide, Puar nodded and floated off and onto the rocky house that he and his best friend once called their hideout. Where they lived, where they stashed their loot and watched television until the late hours or until they heard a jet in the distance. Where they sharpened Yamcha's scimitar or cleaned the barrel of Puar's rocket launcher which he bought from the scholarship money received for the graduation with exemplary results from the Southern Transformation Kindergarten.
Overwhelmed by the sudden rush of pleasant memories, Yamcha had to force himself to turn back at the direction of the oncoming Saiyans. He checked it multiple times though it seemed as if there was just one Saiyan headed at him. He could sense a few more unfamiliar Ki signatures to him, some of them stronger than the one headed right at his location, though those guys all missed him by hundreds and even thousands of miles and continued to head elsewhere.
It was safe to say that the Saiyans did not invade Earth to destroy the brave desert bandit Yamcha.
"At least they're not sending their strongest guy after me…" Yamcha struck a smirk of confidence as he patiently awaited the arrival of the Saiyan.
"Hmph… So you're the Earthling of anomalous strength, huh? What a piss-poor excuse of a warrior…" a woman's voice with some tomboyish language flew out of the mouth of a Saiyan warrior floating in mid-air with her hands thrown to the sides. Like a vixen, the woman waggled her tail behind her with its hair sharpened and sticking out to the sides, displaying her teeth in a twisted expression of brutality.
"Of course my opponent would turn out to be a woman…" Yamcha sighed and shook his head.
"What's that? You should be the last bastard on this rock underestimating me! You don't deserve the awesome power level that the scouter attributed to you before!" the Saiyan lady ignited a pair of Ki blasts in both her hands before throwing a wild barrage of them right at Yamcha.
"Awesome power level, you say?" Yamcha smirked in excitement as he deflected the few Ki blasts that actually threatened to hit him with the back of his hand while the rest detonated around him, sinking him into a cloud of smoke.
"That's right, I thought your power level to be almost twice as big as mine, though don't get any wrong ideas, scumbag. Once I transform into a Great Ape, you're gonna get crushed all the same!" the Saiyan woman cursed at Yamcha, turning on her scouter again and measuring the power level of the warrior she thought to have wounded just now.
"I see, well then, you guys have picked a wrong time to land. We're off night time for a few hours. It's the full moon, so I guess you guys did get that much right…" Yamcha shrugged while the smoke around him settled.
"Heh, a power level of 1750?! Don't make me laugh with that drivel! I won't even need my Great Ape transformation to pummel your scrawny ass!" the female Saiyan threw her fist out.
"Heh, you're a lot like Chayote used to be. Making all the same kind of mistakes. With Chayote appearing years ago, our planet isn't quite as vulnerable to the likes of you…" Yamcha took a fighting pose, similar to a more balanced stance of his Wolf Fang Fist.
"Chayote? That's a Saiyan name…" the female warrior raised an eyebrow and landed on the ground. "Before I kill you, tell me about this Chayote. If she's another Saiyan, we will take her with us as well. We need all the manpower we can get in our coup."
"Huh? And what do I get from it?" Yamcha shrugged. "Sounds like a bad deal, I'm afraid you'll have to make me, missy…"
"Missy!? An underdeveloped alien maggot like you will refer to me as Celipa, or else I'll crush you like the discarded shed skin of a bug that you are!" Celipa shook her fist out, growling through her teeth. "And your reward would have been a few extra seconds of life that you'd have earned while telling me about this Chayote."
"Well… I was going to ask you to tell me your name in return for the information but since you obliged me…" Yamcha smiled and gave his opponent a thumb-up. "Chayote is a Saiyan, just like you, she was rough around the edges, just like you but she's gotten a lot nicer."
"Figures…" Celipa spat aside in disgust. "Of course a youngling would turn soft in a place like this. Damn Bardock… By sending his little tike to a planet scheduled for another Saiyan, he deprived them both of solitude and abandonment, necessary to breed character. I bet his little Kakarot is soft just like this Chayote…"
"Kakarot? That's how Chayote calls Goku, that must be his Saiyan name…" Yamcha scratched his chin. "So you're here for him, huh?"
"Not that it will matter to a scrawny poppycock like you. I'll make you disappear in no time flat. You better make your last seconds on this world worth my while!" Celipa growled as she charged forward. Yamcha stepped aside, avoiding a knee strike and casually evaded a flurry of the woman's blows.
"You know, a long time ago, I'd have been crippled fighting a woman…" Yamcha mocked his opponent after moving behind her back in a split instant.
"You dare mock me and pull your punches!?" Celipa growled, shaking her fist out in front of her. "You damned coward, stand still and fight like the worthless sack of shit you are!"
"Wow, you've got a real personality…" Yamcha closed his eyes and nodded to himself. "Way wilder than I ever recall Chayote being like."
"You damn shit-stain!" Celipa raged on, letting her Ki burst out wildly as she burnt through her stamina just standing there and raging in a temporary flow of power that would eventually end up burning her out like a candle. It was a mystery if the Saiyan even knew that much about Ki control to realize that her temporary growth past whatever her "power level" was would serve as her ultimate downfall.
"Say, you should calm down and see what that gizmo of yours has to say about my "power level" now…" Yamcha suggested with a teasing gesture. "Go on, I'll try a little bit harder now…"
"Go figure a rat-bastard like you would try and fool yourself with the readings of my busted-ass scouter!" Celipa yelled out while she straightened her back and pressed the button to measure up Yamcha's power level. "N-No way!" her face blanked out.
Yamcha stood there straight and gleaming like a nugget of gold, not a single outburst of his aura, just sheer little bit of effort from his part.
"4400… 7600… Impossible, it's going far past even the earlier broken reading!" Celipa exclaimed in the most restraint and respect that she's shown in her entire stay on this planet. "Tsk…"
The hysterical Saiyan woman removed her scouter, refusing to take into account the readings that it showed, taking them for skewed nonsense as she placed it inside a tiny pouch behind her back, attached to her waist and normally concealed underneath her tail which was now flowing and waggling freely.
"Hey! You weren't finished yet!" Yamcha objected. "This is a matter of pride for me, I was about to show you my actual fighting strength!"
"Hmph… Don't get cocky, you tripe. What does it matter how much hogwash that stupid piece of junk shows if it's all fake anyway? Didn't you hear me earlier? It's busted!" Celipa yelled out, clapping her head a couple of times in an offensive, physical suggestion that Yamcha was mentally challenged and couldn't comprehend her earlier words.
"Fine…" Yamcha sighed. "I guess you won't believe me until I prove to you that you're way out of your league here."
In a blink, the long-haired and battle-scarred martial artist closed in to his opponent. The shock that this sudden outburst of speed invited to Celipa's face made the Saiyan woman flinch and stiffen up her stance. Before she even put her hands up to defend herself, Yamcha was already busy sweeping her leg. With his opponent spinning in mid-air without any sense of control or balance, the more experienced fighter threw a back-handed strike to the woman's chest, cracking her Saiyan armor and sending her careening upward in a diagonal trajectory upward.
Yamcha raced after and corrected the direction of Celipa's flight with a jumping high kick, sending her flying through the clouds at once. For the first time in that battle, Yamcha's aura burst with crystal clarity as the martial artist raced after his extraterrestrial opponent. Once the distance between them was closed, Yamcha threw a pair of cross-direction swipes with his paws before kicking at Celipa's shins, sending her spinning in mid-air as he vanished to a location right above her and sent the Saiyan crashing back down with a downward gripping palm strike.
"I hope you haven't had enough just yet. But I had to make you believe me…" Yamcha rustled his curly, black hair behind his back feeling a bit regretful for the smackdown he laid on the female Saiyan warrior though he had burnt severely from underestimating fearsome women fighters before.
"You…" Celipa sent out a grungy taunt, filled with embarrassment, dirty and bloody in its tone and volume, mirroring the state in which she rose from the crater that she left on the ground. "C-Could it be…? Could it be that the scouters weren't lying after all?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time!" Yamcha emphasized before pointing at her waist. "Now put it back on, I wanna put in some real effort now and see how high we can make that number go, okay?"
"You… You weren't even fighting with your full strength up to now? You mean you can make your power level go higher or lower and you can actually make it go higher than this?" Celipa blanked out. She did as she was asked and placed her scouter back on before turning it on. The scouter's reading transitioned into the five-digit realm, Celipa could no longer keep it up.
"11 750…" the Saiyan warrior let out a husky breath in shock.
"Wow! That's pretty amazing, right? I mean… Your reaction seems to say a lot but I don't have much context… Well, I can't be too surprised, I did train with Chayote for a long time before the tournament seven years ago!" Yamcha cheered on himself.
"Yamcha!" Krillin's voice came in from the side. "We sensed your Ki going up and thought you might need help."
"Krillin, Muten Roshi… No, I've got things handled here…" Yamcha gave his friends a thumb-up.
A mad cackling of the Saiyan woman interrupted the spirited reunion of two friends and their martial arts teacher. All three turned at Celipa who transitioned into a fit of intense laughter as her forehead drowned in trickling blood, making the entire scene look quite grim.
"Reinforcements, huh?" Celipa finally settled down enough to speak properly. "I guess one of us got too carried away and got themselves beaten before they could transform."
"Transform? You mean that fatso could transform into a Great Ape? Makes sense I guess…" Krillin scratched the back of his bald head.
"Hmph… You speak nonsense, Saiyan," Muten Roshi challenged the statement of the woman. "While it is true that today is the day of full-moon. You miscalculated your attack, the moon won't be rising for six whole hours. You're finished. Pack up and go home before you get knocked flat like your buddy."
"Fatso? So you've curbstomped Shugesh, you'll pay for that!" Celipa raised up her hand and formed a Ki blast. "I'll make sure to slowly crush every single rib in the cage before having every shattered piece drown your chest cavity in the blood of your punctured heart!"
"I guess she won't listen to reason either…" Krillin sighed and placed his hands by his side, ready for a Kamehameha.
However, the attack that Celipa was about to launch wasn't a mere Ki blast, nor did she just fling it at the enemies she wanted to destroy. The bright ray of sunshine grew even brighter while only barely growing in size. As the intensity and the luminosity of the sphere escalated, the round blob of light elevated higher and higher over Celipa's hand until it formed an almost hypnotic and perfectly shaped little star in her grasp.
"Her Ki output has… Actually decreased… What's going on?" Yamcha wondered.
"You fools! Did you really think that we weren't able to trigger the transformation by ourselves!?" Celipa barked out in triumphant tone as she winded up and threw the Ki blast rocketing upward before it expanded drastically in size to where it almost appeared like a full moon in its own right.
"Oh no! The date of their arrival, it fooled us!" Muten Roshi turned pale, realizing his own folly in taking the date of the Saiyan landing that might have very well been just an accident for all that they cared for granted. The Saiyans had little care in when they would be landing or when the full-moon would actually show itself.
"That's right, you senile crap! As if a proud and powerful Saiyan warrior troupe would ever stoop so low as to count down days and planet cycles in preparation for their invasion like a bunch of nerds! That's how those weasels bowing their heads to Frieza do things, not us! This is the power that will make us stomp King Vegeta, claim his throne and then kick Frieza himself to the curb!" Celipa exclaimed as she turned her gaze upward, ready to take in and bask in the artificial moonlight and trigger her destructive transformation.
"If she transforms now, there's no way we'll be able to stop her! We've struggled to contain Goku when he was just a child…" Yamcha grumbled.
"That's right, you chaff, a Saiyan's power level grows tenfold when they transform to a Great Ape. Naturally, as a warrior of a power level of 2000, my power level will become superior to all of yours!" Celipa laughed out as she stared upward at the grey mass of the simulated full-moon for what seemed like entire minutes.
Something was off…
Celipa let out a gentle grunt as she clutched her belly area and let out a pathetic wheeze and all breath left her lungs. Desperate for oxygen, the Saiyan woman collapsed unconscious on the ground while the moon over her head let out an emphatic and acute poof before a not too large, blue cat emerged from a cloud of dust formed as the after-effect of Puar's transformation.
"Nice thinking, Puar…" Yamcha complimented his best friend.
"For a moment there I was beginning to think that I would need to somehow try to get behind her and cut her tail off, that would have been a real pain," Krillin sighed easier, wiping sweat and coarse sand grains off of his face.
"Hmmm… Indeed, using the Mafuba right now would have drained me of any remaining strength for the battle to come and there are more Saiyans left to stop." Muten Roshi stroked his beard. "This is too dangerous. We need to warn the others about this development in the Saiyans' battle tactics. In addition, we have too many useful tools against the Great Ape transformation between the four of us to just go home and hope for the best."
"Agreed…" Yamcha nodded. "There are Ki signatures far off to the west, all the way on the mountain range south to the Sacred Land of Korin, that's gotta be Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu and… Maybe Yajirobe? I wonder who else might be that powerful?"
"Things will be over by the time we get there, whoever the winner might be," Muten Roshi shook his head. "Mount Paozu is not too far east from here and Goku doesn't live too far off from there as well."
"That's right, Goku is the target of those guys, it makes sense to go help him…" Krillin agreed.
"What about this woman? Do we just leave her lying her like this?" Yamcha scratched the back of his head.
"Unless you have a better idea. I'm not wasting most of my strength sealing her away." Muten Roshi turned back to look at Yamcha with a strict glare as he and Krillin floated above the battlefield already, itching to go pitch in to Goku's fight.
Seeing his friends take off, Yamcha scooped Celipa up and flew to place her inside of his hideout where she didn't run into the risk of dying to the harsh sunlight of the Diablo Desert or its more savage inhabitants. Her safety inside there was not guaranteed but her odds of survival now were far greater than if he had just left her lying on the desert sand, passed out.
After securing his downed opponent, Yamcha took off after his friends on a flying trip to Goku's family home.