A quivering, bruised hand emerged from the ocean and grabbed hold onto the rocky shore. A tall, broad-shouldered body of a bald man gasping for air emerged soon after and crawled up, just barely managing to pull his body out of the water. The man collapsed and turned on his back, wheezing at the sky in an attempt to breathe some of his lost strength back into his lungs.
The brief shine of the sun turned dark, confusing the battered Saiyan as he had come to enjoy the soothing gleam of the sunlight as if drawing strength from it. Nappa opened his eyes only to see a surly, green scowl looking down at him. One belonging to a Namekian of shamrock skin, pointy ears, and antennae resting atop of the alien's head. Maybe it was because of his position of weakness or maybe it was because of the beady eyes of the Namekian, Nappa wriggled on the stony shore, feeling uneasy before this potential new threat.
"A Namekian… On Earth?" Nappa grumbled through pain, stopping to cough blood out from his lungs as the female Saiyan that left him in this sorry state had done a number on him. "What a surprise to see you… On the whole other side of the universe…"
"Hmm… So, the Saiyan really did rebel against her own kind and beat you to a pulp, that's interesting," Piccolo smirked looking down at Nappa before tilting his head up and examining the flashes of light and air distortions in the distance. He didn't even need to sense the clashing Ki, just listening to the thundering rumbling was enough.
"It doesn't matter, Vegeta's going to put her down… Like a disobedient bitch that she is… Vegeta is by far the strongest Saiyan out there. Just a year ago his power level was a mere 18 000 and now… It rivals that of the Ginyu Force. Heh, at this rate… His real target… Lord Frieza himself will begin trembling very soon," Nappa laughed out through bloody agony.
"You shouldn't keep your hopes up. It's not like you'll live to see that happen," Piccolo looked down at the broken Saiyan. "I don't see your partner letting you stick around with those injuries and being a burden on him. I know the conquering type, that's what I'd do, anyway…"
"Damn it!" Nappa cursed. "To be killed by some Namekian in some rundown, rocky corner of the universe… What do you even want from this planet?"
Piccolo extended his hand down, pointing his palm to Nappa and yelled out. His palm released a flash reducing the broken Saiyan to nothing but ashes that soon scattered all over the island and its uneasy oceans due to the accumulating storms in the distance. After disposing of the Saiyan, the Namekian looked up toward where the two forces were colliding.
"Sometimes I wonder about that myself…" Piccolo muttered, gritting his teeth and twisting his face into a scorned scowl.
"Solar Fist!" Chayote yelled out, placing her hands close to her face and closing her eyes, shutting herself off from Vegeta's rush and his fist that twitched just inches from her jaw.
The Saiyan prince staggered back in mid-air, bashing about with his elbows as he tried desperately to rub and scratch his eyes back into a prime fighting condition which the white, blinding light had robbed him of. Chayote was quick to utilize the opening she had created for herself by diving down at her opponent from above with a missile kick.
A spinning elbow strike from behind stopped Vegeta's fall and turned the Saiyan around as his opponent had snapped away diagonally behind him planning to intercept his fall and throw all of her strength out there to leave as many dents on him as she could before the inevitable happens and someone needs to take it over from her.
A flurry of crosses from both left and right, almost mirroring Vegeta's own striking pattern as from the perspective of a fledgling martial artist like Chayote it seemed quite solid, emphasized the statement she made to the prince. Finally, in Vegeta's blinded stagger she found her opening, the brawling Saiyan woman flipped over her opponent in mid-flight and tilted him over her head back-to-back in a crucifix-like pose before driving him down and slamming him hard enough to reduce the island beneath them to dislodged, drowning rubble.
All this beating, all this effort and all those openings she found and exploited or created but none of it mattered. The prince barely bled out any of his strength from that beatdown and he emerged from the rubble just more irked than before and more willing to crush the body and spirit of his more skilled but far weaker opponent. In any other battle, one opening like this would have given Chayote the bout, now she had to bleed and break for every bruise she left on Vegeta's cheek.
"You're fighting so hard for this planet you're trying to protect. It's, of course, entirely pointless but it makes me wonder if you'd have fought with the same ferocity if it was for your own world," Vegeta wiped the blood off of his lip, spitting aside in frustration when he saw a red spot on his glove.
"Of course, prince Vegeta…" Chayote replied with a longing tone. "Most of my life I wanted nothing more than to fight with everything I have for my world and my people, to fight in Lord Frieza's army."
"That's not what I asked, runt, I asked if you'd fight the same way for the Saiyans. I don't give two craps about what you think about Frieza," Vegeta looked outraged that Chayote thought the two were one and the same.
"B-But… Aren't you working for Lord Frieza?" Chayote tried not to lose her breath due to emotional shocks during the brief downtime before one or both of them would have had enough and the punching, kicking and blasting could resume.
"Are you joking!?" Vegeta thrust his palm, blasting a wayward Ki wave in Chayote's direction just out of animosity that comment made foster within the prince's chest. "It makes me more pissed than even irritating gnats like you do to bend my back for that cocky bastard but his hour will come soon enough! Who knows, maybe even this little planet will be of some use to contributing to my Saiyan power?"
Chayote smashed her hands at the coming blast, redirecting it toward the ocean beneath her while letting her wrists absorb most of its power so that the blast wouldn't threaten the integrity of Earth itself once it detonated. The blast's strength resonated through her wrists, making Chayote wince at impact but by now she's been powering through the limits of her body this whole brawl already, what was a few more cracked bones to that? She could feel Vegeta's follow-up coming thanks to Chayote's martial artist's instincts and her Ki sensory. The soles of Chayote's feet hit Vegeta squared in the chest as he rushed in from behind her to elbow her in the back when he thought she had been distracted by his blast.
As the female Saiyan proceeded to clash with the prince up close, the thoughts couldn't stop rushing through her head. It was distracting and it didn't let her emphasize most openings she saw at all. Bardock was so determined that the son was a spitting image of his father and King Vegeta was known amongst the entire universe as an unfaltering commander under Frieza's control who supported and seconded any notions put forth by his master. While Chayote recalled the vibe around the Planet Vegeta being a tad more rebellious and the talks in the barracks being more in favor of the king fostering some secret plot against the tyrant, the talk around the universe both times she roamed it to some extent supported that the king bent his knee for good this time.
"He's toying with me…" Chayote thought to herself. That would have made sense if Vegeta truly did feel rebellious toward his tyrannical master. It would have made so much sense to get injured in most of his missions so that he could grow his strength until it rivaled that of Lord Frieza.
The thought of being treated as some training machine put some gusto into Chayote's fists and elbows. She swung them with greater ferocity, using angles that felt alien to Vegeta and she could tell that the Saiyan prince was unfamiliar with martial arts, combatting opponents that approached battling as she did at the beginning of this scuffle – with brute strength and speed. Her elbows and short distance clothesline charges landed as she intended them to, one jumping elbow even left a red dot, too miniscule to bleed yet on the prince's forehead but despite her hits connecting they barely felt noticeable by the figure of royalty at all.
Chayote's uppercut threw Vegeta's head back, extending his neck to what felt like an uncomfortable extent but the Saiyan prince just looked back down at her with a snarky and mocking expression, as if challenging her to do more, to hit him harder than this. Chayote complied with that, swinging her fists around like hammers and bashing them against the prince's face while manipulating her body to avoid his playful counterattacks that were just fuel to her fire. All the steam was building up, it had to go somewhere!
Her leg shot up in a rising motion, aimed right at the center in between the legs of the Saiyan prince. The scorned elite howled in pain as the unbelievable Ki swelling up in his entire body turned off for just one blink to allow his body to soar up and over the stormy clouds just so he could endure this moment of grueling torment on his lonesome.
Chayote snapped away from her location. Pursuing her fleeing and disgruntled opponent, guided solely by her Ki sensing abilities and thruster a punch right to his none before kneeing him in the crotch again. None of the martial arts masters she studied under taught this, it was something that came to her when all went blank but, since it worked for the moment, Chayote kept going. Her legs whirled like a buzz saw trying to chop the stalwart Saiyan prince down but she only succeeded in relocating him down on a crashed and abandoned ship by the shoreline.
"You'll pay for this, you wench!" Vegeta's face was red, the rage veins were popping all over his face and wrath had his eyes all bulged out from their sockets as he swore that an end would come for the female Saiyan sooner rather than later.
"You don't look too injured to me. Don't think just these injuries will amount quite to a Lord Frieza rank power-up, you know…" Chayote taunted her opponent. While letting him toy with her would have been absolutely the right call, just lower her head and accept being treated like just a sparring partner by her enemy, nobody had ever accused Chayote of being smart and the Saiyan wasn't about to allow this tradition to start.
For a second there, hesitation had quenched some of Vegeta's outrage. He truly was contemplating on settling down and letting his opponent, a rare breed that actually had the capacity to challenge him for some time and could even injure him if she fought at full strength, keep wailing at him so that he would return to Frieza with far greater strength than he had now, perhaps even rivaling Frieza's own.
"You love this planet so much… Letting you die while knowing that your precious Earth would soon follow you seemed cruel enough before, but I figured out a far more cruel punishment for a disobedient wench such as yourself!" Vegeta laughed out, raising his right hand up before him, like holding something invisible before his opponent. "Normally it takes seven million zeno units of Blutz Waves to trigger the transformation into a Great Ape monster but no matter… I still have my way!"
Vegeta taunted Chayote with an appetizer for the punishment he would use for her impudence when he formed a sparking ball of Ki in his hand, a combo of Earth's own atmosphere with Vegeta's Ki. A ball of power that floated in Vegeta's hand though it didn't appear to be threatening by itself at all as it had a far weaker Ki signature than even the wayward Ki wave that Vegeta launched at Chayote earlier.
The prince clutched his fist and allowed the ball of energy to expand, covering the entire cloudy sky with its luminosity and dispersing the clouds that obstructed the view to its light. Vegeta didn't look at it immediately, instead choosing to scowl back down to Chayote with a mean smirk on his face.
"This precious planet of yours, we'll destroy it together!" Vegeta clenched his fist out in front of him as he proclaimed the punishment that he meted out. Before Chayote could object, Vegeta snapped right up to her face and punched into her already decimated gut, reducing Chayote to a state of helplessness as he grabbed hold of her hair and lifted her limp body to a stranglehold and forced her eyes up to have Chayote look at the Power Ball he had created.
"Once lowly trash transforms into a Great Ape, they are incapable of any sense of control. Saiyan elite, on the other hand, maintain the ability to control themselves easily. In that primal state, your disobedience will fade away and you will follow your prince into battle. You'll have no other choice!" Vegeta muttered by Chayote's ear as the Saiyan struggled against the electric shake that appeared to be taking control over her body and force it away from her.
No! He had no right to do this! Chayote wanted to struggle, to resist the transformation even if she knew that it was impossible. Nobody had ever managed to resist the Great Ape transformation through the force of will. If what Vegeta said was true and she'd end up a mindless rage monster while he'd maintain all of his control not only over himself but over Chayote as well, she'd end up being the one who would kill all of the Earthlings and wipe this planet out.
It was wishful thinking to ponder on if Vegeta was lying or not about being able to control the mindless Great Apes through example. It made a whole lot of sense that the royal family of the Saiyan race would have had such an ability. King Vegeta and his line had been in charge of the Saiyan race longer than Chayote had the patience to read about it and such an ability would have been a prime example of why that was the case.
Why? Why would it all have to end like this!? With her reduced to just a mindless drone in the hands of her prince?
"Well… Isn't this what you've always wanted?" Vegeta's loathsome voice still echoed over the surface of black tar in which Chayote felt her consciousness tumbling down into as something greater, more primal took control. "To be a soldier? I'm gifting this opportunity to you, now fight!"
Piccolo rushed to the scene where Chayote and Vegeta should have been fighting and looked around, frantically looking for signs that the battle might have concluded. He sensed a couple of signatures farther to the north. It seemed like this battle just wouldn't be contained in either one of the islands or the archipelago itself. Chayote's Ki was approaching a critical point by now, it didn't make much sense for Piccolo to wait for Vegeta's Ki to drop any further before engaging him in battle and relieving the Saiyan of her fight.
It might have been a tad cruel by human standards but Piccolo didn't care much for the Saiyan woman. He was perfectly fine letting her clobbered as long as that meant Vegeta's strength dipped some more and he'd have an easier time blasting the Saiyan into oblivion himself. There was this odd trigger inside of Piccolo that the Namekian could not explain. A worrying need to prevent Chayote from dying which was alien to him but a part of him nonetheless, it might have been something his predecessor knew or felt and it wasn't too hard for Piccolo to uphold that instinct rooted inside him but no unexplainable itch swore him to keep the Saiyan safe. As long as she lived - he couldn't have cared less about how badly she got messed up.
A ball of light made Piccolo cover up his face as it expanded in his eye-level. The Namekian hissed at it before his eyes became accustomed to its radiance and he took off toward it. He wasn't sure as of yet what it might have been as it didn't have a notable Ki signature in of itself but at this point, it didn't matter. It was his turn to take it over from Chayote. Piccolo stopped in place, stunned by the shock of the chilling sight before him.
Two Great Apes roared out, spreading rampant shockwaves across the area that shattered nearby mountains on the shoreline with the volume of their voice alone. One of these two still had traces of the Saiyan armor on them, suggesting it to be the stronger of the two invading Saiyans whereas the other one was far larger than Piccolo recalled it ever being but its essence felt familiar – it was Chayote.
The bare Great Ape followed its armored peer, staying not too close behind it as the first one showed the path for the second. Chayote must have been gravely injured before the transformation as the Great Ape was snarling with blood from its nose, forehead, and bleeding profusely from its mouth too with it being impossible to tell slobber from blood. It moved slowly and held its arm clutching its abdomen while it wobbled after the monster it saw as its leader.
Piccolo's eyes turned toward the shining ball, sparking in the sky with unnatural glimmer. He thrust his hand out. He didn't have much time before the Great Apes noticed him. Chayote should have been able to sense Ki but in her Great Ape form, she might not have been able to properly translate what those senses meant while the armored monster looked on ahead without noticing Piccolo floating a good kilometer behind him.
"Get gone!" Piccolo yelled out, firing a one-armed Explosive Demon Wave at the airborne Power Ball. The electric-colored blast engulfed the ball and sizzled it out into oblivion within a blink.
"What the…?!" the armored Great Ape turned around and froze in shock after seeing that the Power Ball was no more. It took the Saiyan invader another couple of moments to notice Piccolo floating in mid-air. Blood must have taken some extra time to boil and pump through that massive body as the Namekian regained his senses and braced himself for a beating while the armored Great Ape growled and opened its mouth to blast Piccolo away.
"Damn it, could it be taking longer for the transformation to revert after the artificial moon is destroyed?" Piccolo wondered to himself as he froze in place. He didn't think that he could avoid a blast of that magnitude in time. If what he heard the other Dragon Team members blabbing about was true and becoming a Great Ape multiplied a Saiyan's strength tenfold, he was a straight-up goner.
A thunderous crash threw the armored Saiyan off-balance as he very nearly tripped up himself. The bare Giant Ape roared out and fell backward, growling and whining in injury with a voice that was some freaky mixture of a groaning woman and a roaring beast. Rumbling in agony, the Great Ape threw elbows and wild strikes in a fit of rage about, pushing the armored Great Ape and having Vegeta miss his blast by it careening off to the side and blasting off into space.
"Damn it, you useless dead weight!" Great Ape Vegeta roared out, elbowing his fellow Great Ape in the face and knocking it flat on her backside to shrink back down and transform to human form as the Saiyan prince was soon to follow his clumsy subject. "I'll kill you… I swear I'll kill you all…" Vegeta huffed on his back, clenching his fists together and tightening the muscles all over his body as he rose to his feet.
Just as the Saiyan prince raised his hand above the head of the unconscious Chayote to cave it in, a tight grip locked around his wrist. Piccolo threw a straight punch into the gut of the Saiyan prince and threw him up into the air and away from the unconscious Saiyan before firing a mouth blast of his own after him. Vegeta slammed the blast away and stared back down at the irritating Namekian that had rushed in for the save.