A desperate plight for mercy rung through the air as villagers fled in all directions. The unfortunate would-be victims were cornered in between a rising mountain plateau and a seemingly bottomless abyss where the mountainous region of the north-eastern part of the continent ended in a great canyon. This unfortunate situation offered the villagers very few options and most of them gave them merely the luxury of choosing the manner of their own demise.
Blaster bolts pierced the flesh of the fleeing humans, leaving fist-sized burnt-out holes in them as they fell flat and dead, those few soldiers that took a much more personal attitude toward this mission and took more enjoyment out of this engaged the villagers head-on. This brutish and sadistic behavior came as an example of the actions they saw their ruthless leader commit as a bulky, brown-skinned gargoyle covered with spikes and hardened skin swung about the village.
Lord Slug's commander known as Wings employed a great manner of brutality in dispatching of the Earthlings on his sight. He swooped down, scooping up everyone in his reach and letting them fall to their doom, punched and kicked straight holes in his victims or smashed and stomped them into the ground as humans popped like grapes in the mercy of Wings' super-powered grip. It was because of this innate brutality of the alien invaders that nobody stopped to look when a square-shaped Ki wave blasted Wings aside and crashed him into the mountain while dissolving a good chunk of his army that floated around him into ash as well.
A pale and tiny ghoul floating beside him extended his fingers, resonating telekinetic ripples that halted those plummeting into the canyon to their doom and stopped the blaster bolts in mid-flight, providing the fleeing civilians with a chance to get away while the soldiers began looking around in confusion as to what was happening. With a creepy smirk on his face, Chiaotzu twitched his fingers, ordering the halted plasma bolts to etch and burn inside the chests of Lord Slug's soldiers.
"Nice work, Chiaotzu," Tenshinhan acknowledged the great effort from the part of his friend. "Leave the big creep with wings to me."
"B-But he's insanely strong!" Chiaotzu yelped a puny objection as the frightened civilians still floating in the air elevated over the edge they plummeted down of and landed firmly on the ground on the other side of the canyon.
"It's not just that. His Ki is utterly rotten…" Tenshinhan closed his two normal eyes while the third one remained fixed on Wings who wrestled and rolled himself out of the rubble where Tenshinhan's blast sent him flying into. An intense, bright aura began coiling around Tenshinhan, making the very outline of his essence fade and fuse with the Ki that he had concentrated. "My instincts were right, he seems to be a demon of the Evil Tribe!"
"Evil Tribe? You mean Piccolo is up to no good again!?" Chiaotzu freaked out, smacking his red cheeks in fright.
"I don't think so. After reincarnating and making his fusion with Kami permanent, Piccolo lost the ability to spawn Evil Tribe underlings to do his bidding for him. None of King Piccolo's goons could have been or become strong enough to spawn someone like this. The nature of this monster is a mystery. I know we planned to join Goku in South City but we must stop him here before that!" Tenshinhan declared, clenching a strong fist out in front of him and gritting his teeth in wrath over the horror he saw Wings and his platoon wreak upon the Earth.
"Stop me?" Wings croaked out. The Evil Clansman had an absence of a notable nose and thick fishy lips. Thick, bony protrusions stuck out for eyebrows and spikes and sharp ridges of bony plating appeared to be the substitute of choice for hair on this demon. Tenshinhan's blast had shredded all semblances of Lord Slug's armor off of Wings and exposed the winged demon warrior the way he truly was. Frightening, bulky, and abhorrent. "I'll pound you into the dust, Earthling!"
"Let's fight him together, Ten-san, we need to reserve strength to be able to help Goku in South City," Chiaotzu suggested.
"I'm sorry, my martial artist pride demands that I face him alone. I'll have to ask you to check on the villagers and see what you can do to help them. Use your powers to repair what you can, put out as many fires, and help as many people as you can free. Fend off the remaining soldiers as well," Tenshinhan asked his lifelong friend. It was only because of the bond they shared and because that Chiaotzu knew exactly how much martial artist's pride meant to his friend that he nodded and flew off blasting Dodonpa rays from his fingers at the spooked soldiers and manipulating the bridge over the canyon to hold in place and support the villagers' retreat with the free hand.
With a single flap of his wings, Wings thrust his massive arms forward in a pushing motion, slapping Tenshinhan with a thunderous smack that resonated through his entire body and stunning the proud martial artist in place. The brown-skinned, winged menace lugged his arms in mighty swings that looked like they devastated Tenshinhan's bones even when the three-eyed warrior blocked them with both his arms.
A powerful headbutt from Wings made Tenshinhan flinch and grit in pain. Ruthless smacks across his body and head ravaged Tenshinhan and threw him off-guard before the powerhouse of Lord Slug's army thrust his arms out, sending Tenshinhan flying up only for Wings to soar high up and tackle Tenshinhan in the gut with his spiked and oversized head. The proud martial artist bellowed in pain as his eyes grew wide in shock of the brutality of his opponent and the pain he was under.
Wings did not need to wait too long for Tenshinhan's response, the three-eyed warrior snapped back into recovery almost instantly after Wings' relentless smashing frenzy finished as the Earthling vanished from sight and appeared from behind Wings with a flying, one-leg missile kick that drove Tenshinhan's foot right into the back of Wings' head and sent the brutish henchman soaring down like a falling star.
Tenshinhan flew in an arcing trajectory, throwing his left in an uppercut to Wings' gut so strong that half of Tenshinhan's limb disappeared into the vastness of Wings' thick belly and made the Evil Tribe demon belch blood and slobber up from deep down as he reeled back in pain. After a few more powerful blows that showed that Tenshinhan would not respond to sheer force in kind, the three-eyed warrior swept at Wings' feet with grace and excellent technique as he pressed his arms as if he was serving a volleyball and slammed them in an ax-handle slam from down below, sending Wings rolling into the air.
The Earthling warrior pursued the living, demonic dumpling with a barrage of stout chops and stiff kicks all the way in his flight before throwing a decisive chop to Wings' back that straightened the rolling demon out and sent him crashing back down. After taking a plunge to descend to the ground floor faster than his opponent, Tenshinhan leaped up with a spinning high kick and then proceeded to thrust his open palm with clenched fingers into Wings' chest, slamming the fallen opponent firmly into the ground.
"Three-Pronged Spear!" Tenshinhan yelled out as he raised his knee and crossed his arms in front of him, charging at his fallen flat opponent and driving his crossed over arms right into his gut while further smashing him into the busted rock. As Wings rose to his feet, stroking his hurt, spiky head, Tenshinhan's afterimages danced around him before another cross-armed slam smashed to his back, sending Wings stumbling forward and a third one from right in front of him sent Wings flying back and outside of the village.
Unable to halt his movement in mid-air, Wings smashed through a pair of rocky formations before staying in the collapsing rubble of one of them. Tenshinhan was quick to follow his demonic opponent as he stopped to keep a close look at him and see what his Evil Tribesman enemy had to say. Wings revealed himself moderately scraped but still grinning with a goofy, fishy-lips smile as he smacked and patted various parts of his body as if testing their integrity.
"Amusing, I wasn't aware that this planet had such powerful individuals…" Wings mumbled out with a difficult to read manner of speech due to his membrane-covered nose region situation and fishy mouth.
"Why were you terrorizing those people? What were you looking for?" Tenshinhan boiled in silent wrath, staying resolute to end this Evil Tribe threat if it took him his entire life to complete this task. He didn't like it but more and more of his life became intertwined with this deep-seated evil. First Demon King Piccolo, now this. It seemed like ever since he freed himself of Crane Hermit's delusions all that he's been doing was fighting the Evil Tribe and its allies.
"Lord Slug ordered us to raze this planet and find everything valuable in it. Namely, we're looking for Dragon Balls and the female Saiyan. If you hand us either one of them or give us information about them, the others might have offered you an extension of your pathetic life but I will only give you a faster, less messy death. I'm not nearly as forgiving as them, you see…" Wings smirked with a deviant's smile.
"Female Saiyan? Do you mean Chayote?" Tenshinhan wondered. "You expected to draw her out by committing these atrocities?"
"We first ran into the female Saiyan when she rescued a Galactic Patrolman and his escort from a tight spot. We figured that she might have been the heroic type…" Wings shrugged, cracking his knuckles and neck to warm up for the soon-to-resume brawl. "Do you know her? Don't expect any favors from me for that information, I might find some fun to be had in bashing your face in but attacking a Lord Slug commander is still grounds for painful and prolonged death!"
"So… You've followed Chayote here from space. Whether it was when she was hunting for the Ultimate Dragon Balls or training before the attack of the Saiyans… It's a bit frightening to think that you've met Chayote and she failed to kill all of you on the spot, it makes my skin tingle to think that I am facing an opponent as powerful as that," Tenshinhan entered his own fighting pose.
"That's right, Earthling, dread the horror of the Evil Tribe and tremble!" Wings chuckled as he prepared to launch his entire body in a shoulder-led charge while his wings stretched out for one, mighty flap that could send him soaring around the entire planet if he wanted it to.
"Well then, allow me to offer you a proper welcome to Earth by showing you a sample of our culture that we call martial arts," Tenshinhan uttered he leaned his body into a lower, pounce-like position before charging right at Wings and crashing into him as the Evil Tribesman prepared to rush at him with a flap of his wings sending him into a meteoric tackle.
Tenshinhan shaped his palms like the paws of a great cat by opening them and bending the upper halves of his fingers inward as he delivered a rush of swipes and thrusts of thusly shaped palm strikes before flipping over his front and shooting his knee right into Wings' face, sending the Evil Tribesman flying. After successfully landing his White Tiger Paw rush attack, Tenshinhan vanished in pursuit of his opponent. Rolling under where he would have landed to deliver a volleyball serve type of saving pound from down below and send Wings flying just so he stayed in the air.
With a swinging, downward kick, the three-eyed warrior stomped his opponent right back down. Before extending both his hands down and emitting a powerful, square-shaped pulse of Ki from his hand that shocked and halted the descent of his opponent at the same time as Wings continued to float in mid-air enveloped in an electrical field of sparking Ki. Tenshinhan spun his upper body around, throwing power strikes with his arms as well as elbow strikes when he turned his body around like a whirligig before thrusting the sole of his foot upward and unleashing a rushing barrage of strikes to decimate and utterly overwhelm his oversized opponent and finishing his onslaught with another pulse of Ki from his extended palm that sent Wings crashing into a mountain farther at the farther edge of their dried out battlefield.
"You Earthling filth!" Wings bellowed like a wounded animal with a bolt sticking out from its gut as he charged out from the mountain, collapsing all of it with a powerful emission of Ki from his entire body in a rising pillar of rampant aura. The Evil Tribesman homed in on Tenshinhan covered in bruises and bleeding purple from the more grievous wounds covering his body.
The Evil Tribe demon flew in an upward-aimed rise, headbutting Tenshinhan in the face with an unexpected outburst of speed as the three-eyed martial artist grunted in pain and took off. Another resonant flap of his wings sent Lord Slug's commander soaring over his airborne opponent as Wings delivered a power-strike-led beatdown of a couple of stiff shots from his entire body. Tenshinhan slammed down into the ground limp like a sack of bricks.
"You're the strongest Earthling I've ever seen but it doesn't look like you've managed to get rid of the nasty anatomy of yours where you puny Earthling pop like soft peaches whereas us Evil Tribe demons live and breathe violence!" Wings gloated over the smoking crater as he pounded his fists into his puffed-out chest and showed his nasty, amphibian mouth to not a single living soul in the vicinity observing their thunderous clash.
Wings extended his hand to the side, floating in mid-air with the aid of his wings as he concentrated his Ki into his right and soared down with a bird of prey like approach, throwing his strongest, Ki-powered right-hand punch into the crater where Tenshinhan was in.
"Have a taste of my Evil Gravity!" Wings chuckled as his punch sent shockwaves and fissures resonating throughout the area and showers of pelting boulders into the sky all of which had to come back crashing down as the mountains present in the vicinity all fumbled down at once into a rocky pile of rubble.
Wings' braggart's approach turned to terror when he saw Tenshinhan's firm grip of fingers wrapped around his fist. As much as Wings tried to push his fist further down and slam it again at Tenshinhan's chest with whatever leftover strength stayed with him in that blow, Tenshinhan overpowered him and shoved his fist aside while throwing out his two rising feet into Wings' face and sending the demon rolling back in mid-air. Only the aid of his wings helped Wings stabilize his descent as a torrent of purple ran down from his cracked protrusion where his eyebrows should have been.
"It is true that you demons possess an uncanny amount of toughness, however, I've noticed how much strength you've lost already. I don't need an all-seeing third eye to know that you are close to your limit and that you're close to being done-in. You've told me not to expect mercy, well, I can only say the same back to you!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth in a strict expression as he prepared to attack.
"Fist of Four Bodies!" Tenshinhan yelled out, dividing his form into four as he rushed at his opponent from four separate sides, throwing fists and feet in a relentless barrage of strikes and kicks.
"What pathetic trash!" Wings cursed, "Your strength seems to be divided evenly against your doppelgangers. It's true that you're a bit strong alone, but, like this, I can easily win!"
As a testament to his words, Wings swatted and slammed the four Tenshinhan aside without much effort, defending against all of their combined flurry of strikes while slipping in a vicious beatdown of one of them with his massive arms alone, a rising headbutt to disable the second, a kick to the mid-section of the third and, finally, Wings grabbed the head of the fourth Tenshinhan and headbutted him still in his clutched before placing his arm by Tenshinhan's chest and blasting him aside with a point-blank Ki blast.
Wings soared down to drive his foot into the chest of the all four fallen Tenshinhan and crush all of them to the rocky wasteland ground but all of Tenshinhan molded into one original who rose to his feet and raised his arms over, aiming them at Wings in a triangular finger formation. With this diamond-shaped tunnel for his spirit energy cultivated and channeled through his entire body. Tenshinhan prepared for his final, resonant attack now that he had his opponent in mid-air and worn out after the combined onslaught of four Tenshinhan placed him right where the three-eyed warrior wanted him.
"Kikoho!" Tenshinhan yelled out, releasing a blast that shot out a pillar of overwhelming, blinding light and was about to decimate Wings but the Evil Tribe demon smirked, raising his wings to use them to flap them again and swoop aside from Tenshinhan's blast.
"Damn, I can't move!" Wings' eyes widened as he realized that he had no way of avoiding the enemy attack and the Kikoho enveloped him whole, burning him down to nothing but a raining pile of ashes, not unlike some of his victims from before whom he dispatched with his powerful Ki blasts.
"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan turned to his friend. "You intervened…"
"If I didn't, he'd have dodged that attack and gained an edge on you!" Chiaotzu explained himself. "It's true that you've mastered the Kikoho more and it isn't nearly as life-threatening to you as it once used to be but he would have pushed you to use techniques like the Hot-Red Mode and you'd have spent far too much Ki on this."
"It's true, though I made a mistake planning my battle ahead and I deserved to pay for it," Tenshinhan closed his eyes in disappointment of his own performance when a weaker opponent than him very nearly drove him to push beyond his natural limits to obtain the power necessary to beat him.
"You would have beaten him anyway, you knew that, right, Ten-san?" Chiaotzu approached the side of his friend. "It was merely a matter of time and effort and we cannot afford to lose either right now. Time spent here might be time wasted that will result in casualties and effort wasted here might result in us coming up short to stop this Lord Slug!"
"You're right, let's hurry to where Goku's Ki is," Tenshinhan nodded as the pair took off together to join the main battlefield in South City after dispatching of a powerful commander of Lord Slug's army and saving everyone they could in a remote mountain village.
"It's good that you asked to take a detour to see what's going on here, Ten-san. Or else we wouldn't have gotten to save all of these villagers and wouldn't have beaten this Evil Tribe demon who might have caused trouble to us later," Chiaotzu smiled turning to his friend. "You've changed a lot, sticking your neck out for common villagers like that."
"It's true, though I wonder if my motives weren't selfish in doing so. After all, I was the one who needed this penance, the rescue for the dark deeds that I've done in my youth…" Tenshinhan sighed with his main two eyes closed, deep in thought.
"Well, whatever your reasons were, you shouldn't deny that what you did was nice and it ended up great for us and the Earth," Chiaotzu tried cheering his friend up some after he still looked sour for being deprived of paying for his elementary mistake.