"So, if you're here, I reckon Nappa's already dead?" Vegeta turned his nose up. He didn't look like he was offering even a tiny bit of leeway in terms of hearing Chayote pleading her case or asking him to spare Earth. This was just the scenario Chayote dreaded the most – she'd have to confront the Saiyan prince and fight to protect Earth against not just her own people but the royalty she still felt submissive toward.
"I doubt it. The blockhead can take plenty of damage. He's in no condition to fight though," Chayote replied, adamant about not taking her eyes off of Vegeta for one moment as he was far too dangerous of an opponent to underestimate. Even after duking it out with Bardock, Chayote could sense his Ki soaring above anything she's ever sensed before.
"Tsk, a Saiyan that can't fight is of no use. May as well have doomed him," Vegeta grit his teeth in disgust. "That's too bad though, he was quite useful as a meathead he always was. He lasted by far the longest in my service, more than I would have expected of a mid-class Saiyan warrior."
"My prince," Chayote took to her knee. "If there's any chance of it, I'd be willing to serve by your side if you spare this planet. Given how I have beaten Nappa in a one-on-one fight, I would be more useful to you than he was."
"Pathetic," Vegeta turned away in disgust. "Your power level is abnormal for your class, I'll give you that, but you've got an ounce of Saiyan pride left in you. Belittling yourself to have a lump of useless space rock spared? Defying your prince by intercepting his justice and protecting some rebellious dirtbag? You will be useful, in giving you one final lesson that no matter how strong low-class garbage might get, they'll never even begin to measure up to the rank of the Saiyan elite."
Chayote clenched her fists and rose from the ground. Deep down her trust in her king and her folk has been shaken though it wasn't that which made her skin flush with red. It was the embarrassment and the thoughtless madness that it brought to be. She didn't want to oppose her prince, she didn't want to strike him or defy the Saiyan royalty but just like the case always was when her fit of rage came into play – she couldn't help it.
So be it. Just for once, Chayote felt kind of glad to submit to that primal force bubbling up deep down inside her and roar out, let her Ki unfurl and power her up to her very limit. She was anything but nobody. She was the self-appointed queen of Planet Babari and what she's learned from her subjects was that sometimes letting loose and being proud of one's own strength was nothing to be ashamed of.
"Growl and show your teeth, it won't change the purity of your blood one bit," Vegeta smirked and took a fighting pose.
Chayote didn't charge into the fray of battle blindly, instead, she chose to circle her prince before driving her entire body right into his. There was no grace or elegance behind her movements. Martial arts became sashed and locked away in the more rational place of her mind. Now Chayote just had to fight for the fate of Earth where she had found her paradise and the martial arts that she had learned would have conflicted with the wrath she unleashed.
Vegeta answered Chayote's charge by locking his arms with hers. He turned awkwardly to confront her, throwing some of his potential for physical force away as he couldn't build up nearly as much vigor to overpower his opponent as he'd have liked but he humored his very physical opponent with a clash of strength. There it was, that cocky smile.
Something snapped, though it wasn't another barrier preventing the rage unfurling in Chayote's mind from leaking out. It was something painful, something in her hands. The pain forced clarity back into Chayote's eyes. Despite being larger than her opponent both in terms of bulk and in terms of height, Vegeta's fingers dug deep into her hands and began pushing her backward, bending her to where Chayote could have sworn her knuckles would soon chatter from the force affecting them and her wrists would dislocate while her spine broke into two.
A feeling of weightlessness overtook the agony of hitting an immovable object and struggling against it in a contest of strength as her opponent pushed her in by suddenly canceling all of his force out and leaning back. Everything went white. Vision returned with a tripling haze of dizzy, Chayote was up in the sky while her opponent was floating on his back by the ground with both of his feet thrust upward. That didn't last for long as Vegeta quickly dashed in pursuit and outraced Chayote in her ascent. The female Saiyan could barely react and correct her positioning in time. A blackout followed by loud shrieks, Chayote didn't need to see it, the martial artist inside her read the double ax handle slam before it hit her in the head but just reading the move was of no use if she couldn't react to it.
Even after besting Bardock and wasting a decent percentage of his battle power on that venture, Vegeta was still vastly more powerful than her. Opening her eyes and letting be flushed back into the reality of the heated battle was a struggle. All that Chayote could hear in the haze of black and popping, bright sparks was the sandbox talk of the awesome might of the king of all Saiyans, the awesome King Vegeta who was said to possess a power level of 10 000. Screw that! Prince Vegeta was several times stronger than that.
It was tough comparing power levels with Ki signatures. Feeling Ki was like staring at a raging fire, comparing the size and heat of that fire with a number just seemed sort of pointless though some rough comparisons might have been made. If Chayote possessed a power level of around 600 when she came down to Earth and the likes of Raditz were about 1500, Vegeta might have surpassed Goku's brother dozens of times.
"Hot… Red!" Chayote yelled out, jumping to her feet from the small crater she had made and swatting the chunky rubble of mossy boulders aside from her ascent. A pulse of red ether emanated from her body but died out as quickly as it came out.
"What was that meant to be?" Vegeta mocked the female Saiyan. "Hot-Red? Does that refer to the embarrassment I must feel as a prince for governing over someone as pathetic as you?"
Pride. Absolute certainty over victory and acceptance of no other outcome than that. Those were the emotions necessary for the blaze of Hot-Red though how was Chayote supposed to call for that? How was she supposed to feel pride facing Saiyan royalty, an opponent vastly overpowering her? It would have taken an imbecile like Kakarot to feel absolute refusal to lose in the face of such an opponent, to dismiss the imposing stature of prince Vegeta and blast right through his menacing power.
She was nothing like that. Even as a martial artist all that Chayote could do was try to catch up to the Earthlings that trained their entire lives, try and play a role of a martial artist who had a clue about what she was being taught. She wasn't even chosen by Korin or given the bell to ascend to God's Temple the normal way like the rest. Kakarot was a lot of the same but his mind was completely empty, rendering it perfect to fill with all that martial arts stuff. Even when Chayote faced the truth and gave in to the rage that was her only defining quality – all that meant was that she rushed at her enemy with raw power. If that power was insufficient – she was as good as dead.
For all the flack she gave Nappa, she was a lot of the same…
"Hmph… The state of the flock that a ruler governs over is a reflection of the ruler. I cannot stand and allow your pitiful existence to stain my pride as the prince of all Saiyans!" Vegeta proclaimed before extending his hands to his sides and forming a pair of bright Ki flashes in both of them. Instead of lobbing them at his opponent, the Saiyan prince thrust his hands and the flashing Ki, unleashing a hail of barraging Ki blasts at his opponent.
Afterimages of Chayote flickered throughout the island, she utilized every trick of efficient movement on the battlefield that she could access from the chest of teachings she thought sealed but one that she returned crawling back to. Power had failed her, power was something elementary, it was only effective against lesser power so Chayote once again had to beg the forgiveness of her skill and hope that she could work in sync with her own body rather than a heated sum of its parts.
A fusillade of golden, flashing domes of light covered the island, reducing it to crumbling rumble that sunk to the ground. Vegeta could only marvel at the destruction that a mere flick of his power had wrought and look carefully for the signs that the Saiyan he thought he had blasted away and sunk under that ruined island could still surface and continue the battle.
"Hmm?" Vegeta focused his attention at a glowing orb of emerald green underwater. One that he considered highly unnatural as he had not seen anything of such a nature forming naturally on Earth. The emerald flash began changing its pitch, brightening until it turned golden. Then Vegeta froze in the presence of a rumbling roar and prepared himself for something big, something that might have threatened even him.
"Fava Nova!" Chayote roared out, emerging from underwater encased in a bubble of Ki roughly the size of the island that she sank deep down together with. In the face of such a rush attack, Vegeta decided to change his approach, curling his fingers and placing both his hands together at chest level, facing the same direction. As the golden energy sphere closed in, a round aura of purple Ki formed around the Saiyan prince as well.
"Galick Gun!" Vegeta yelled out, thrusting both of his hands forward to respond to Chayote's charge with a ground-shaking energy wave. A fuchsia-colored beam of Ki slammed against Chayote's nova of golden Ki and proceeded to compete with its force with an attempt to overwhelm it with its own world-breaking power.
"N-No way!" Vegeta grunted, realizing that Chayote was pushing through the Galick Gun and seeing the spiral at the end of his beam dissolving closer and closer to him. On the other hand, the size of the golden nova of Ki threatening to engulf and devastate the Saiyan prince was drastically dropping as well, threatening to deflate completely before it could inflict any damage.
"Take this!" Chayote yelled out, with nothing but faint, golden overline being left of her technique by the time she charged up to her opponent with a fist locked and loaded into the position. With his hands still stuck and invested into the Galick Gun beam which was no more, Vegeta could only exclaim in surprise before the thundering right hand clocked him in the jaw, sending him crashing down into a faraway island and blowing up the volcano present in its center.
With her twitching right hand, Chayote wiped the slobber and blood off of her lip only to keep very close attention to the Ki signature of her opponent on that island. She didn't rush right next to the next battlefield, choosing instead to regain all of the stamina and strength that she had squandered, gambling it all just to throw one good punch at her opponent.
Big fat nothing that did to him. All that she could end up doing is throwing one good punch, all that it cost was the Ki necessary to pull off her strongest technique. Meanwhile, her opponent very nearly blew her away with a Ki wave that he didn't have the proper time to charge up to its full power in the first place. There was only so much that martial arts and a difference in skill could have covered for. The gap between her and her prince was so wide that Chayote was ready to buy what he was selling.
A scornful battle cry filled the darkening skies as a pillar of blue erupted the volcano and blew it right up into a shower of pebbles in all directions as the Saiyan prince ascended from the rubble, wiping the blood off of his face where Chayote managed to crack his lip a tiny bit with her right hand. A vein was pumping on the prince's forehead just on the left to his widow's peak. Vegeta's face was twisted to an almost cartoonish proportion with ire about what had just happened.
"You impudent wench! I had planned on blowing up this entire planet with you still in it so that you didn't have to grieve its loss too much but now you've done it! I'll beat the life out of you slowly, methodically, and without any hint of mercy!" Vegeta oozed with menace as he proclaimed his threats, shaking in what he perceived to be wrath.
The prince's Ki had taken a nasty dip in that last clash. Not because of the supercharged punch that Chayote hit him with, it was because of his own beam that he hastily threw at her. He didn't control the force of that attack right, the prince just knew the feeling of his power surging through his body and threw that at his opponent blindly. It was by no means anything spelling out hope for Chayote, but perhaps the Earthlings could finish him off after she's already dead. Yes. Even now, Vegeta was getting close to the range where Piccolo could have been able to hold his own against him.
Her lessons in Planet Babari appeared to have been all the wrong ones. At least the way she interpreted them. Just being proud of her rage and taking it as a normal part of her identity wasn't enough. Chayote needed to know when exactly to let out her range and when to reel it back, let the martial artist inside her take over, someone capable of making a coherent plan. Soon enough she'd need the rage monster to endure the pain, to push the Saiyan prince some more so that the others could finish fending the Saiyan prince off.
Vegeta thrust his arms out in front of him, unleashing a barrage of Ki blasts from them. Chayote vanished and left her afterimages to lure more and more Ki blasts from her opponent. She thought to blindside Vegeta and move in from his left but the enemy was too fast, too strong, the block that met her wrist was like hitting trying to whip an iron rod with a leather belt, her meek force just bounced off meanwhile Vegeta's cross threw Chayote off balance and collapsed all of her defenses and complicated thought.
The punches just wouldn't stop. The prince continued to throw his arms at her upper section, utilizing similar motion as his previously displayed affection for barrage Ki blasts. Those damn strikes were too good, too strong. It was like their overwhelming power and the damage they inflicted robbed Chayote of the few precious microseconds she could have used to prepare for the next one. With how much they completely threw her off-guard, the female Saiyan was left completely in the prince's mercy.
It felt like a sledgehammer had hit her on the gut, Chayote wheezed all of her air out and felt like throwing up. Her whole mouth sunk with the taste of blood. Then the prince was back with the upper section again, an uppercut to further devastate his opponent and an elbow strike to follow up with his raised arm that furthered the horrendous injuries to Chayote's gut and sent her crashing down to the island. The dark skies lit up with a barrage of Ki blasts ravaging the battlefield and leaving the island rended with fissures, gleaming with a golden shine from the blasts of Ki that Vegeta showered it with.
The prince wasn't kidding about his plans. Chayote coughed blood up and rolled back, dashing and vanishing from the harm's way. She was in luck that her opponent favored barrage Ki blasts this much, they weren't too accurate, to begin with, leaving her with greater than normal chances of avoiding them through skilled movement. Choosing to postpone grieving over her devastated mid-section, still coughing up blood, Chayote chose to give in to instinct and rage and push through the Ki blasts, leaning and racing around them and meeting her prince with her hands locked around his head. Vegeta looked properly taken aback by such a curious method of attack.
A headbutt given origin through pure madness blanked out both combatants for a while, or so it seemed, Chayote jumped right back into action, beginning to push her opponent by applying some measly pressure in order to force him to delve deeper and deeper into his hidden resources of strength. Doing her best to play into her desperate plead for lady fortune to have his enemy burn through enough of his strength to where the Earth could protect itself after Chayote had paid her dues.
Vegeta snapped back into the heat of the battle just fast enough to see Chayote, blinded by her own ferocity and spitting up her own blood right up in his face. The prince panicked to throw his leg up, in an attempt to outrace his opponent as he had done up until now, using his superior speed to knock her out of whatever semblance of second wind she was in. Chayote was gone, Vegeta's foot cut through just an afterimage while the female Saiyan roared behind her prince, smashing her elbow into his back and forcing the Saiyan royalty to exclaim in pain as well.
"This… This can't be happening! I'm a Saiyan prince! How dare you shed my royal blood!" Vegeta's hair sharpened and spiked up into an even thicker rise over his head as he raged on, turning around to face the rest of Chayote's exploding fury. He was too tough to sustain any lasting damage from Chayote's blows but he sure as heck could get even more pissed off, make even worse mistakes, and waste even more strength.
A hammer strike to Vegeta's temple, the head of the prince snapped back into place, glaring at his pathetic subject with an even hotter ire than he'd have been up until this point. Chayote pushed the prince back with a rough shove and, utilizing the distance she had just gained, charged flipped over to grab the prince's neck and spin him over her vertically in order to slam him into the ground.
A shockwave sent Chayote flying, it simultaneously bashed against every bone in her body, leaving the injured Saiyan reeling and clutching her mid-section as she recovered to witness the rest of the prince's explosive wave that swatted her aside from her attempt to slam the royalty's face back into the dirt. She could sense Piccolo's Ki far off, coming at her from the west. It was still a few minutes away from here, the Namekian was not wasting any Ki by hurrying to get to her.
On one side, it was so cruel that Chayote would have cracked a grin if she wasn't struggling against drowning in her own blood, the reincarnation of the Demon King showed absolutely no interest in rushing in to save the Saiyan that once opposed his predecessor though it was also a bit smart. This way, he'd be able to clash against Vegeta's dwindling battle power with all of his own. After the prince had disposed of Bardock and Chayote, his battle power surely would dwindle enough for someone as mighty as Piccolo to finish the job.
It sucked that it had to be Piccolo. This way the Dragon Balls would be put into risk but… It had to be him, he was the only one powerful enough at the moment to take it over from here. Chayote reeled back and winced in pain, the moment she started thinking clearly, the agony of the beating she had taken so far returned. That cruel, pestering thought that things would have to get messy and a lot worse before they'd get better.