A man past his physical prime in terms of his age stared through the window of an airship as he flew over a green forest massive. His eyes were awfully squinty, both because of his natural features as well as the intense concentration on his destination and the path that led there, one that the man chose to distract himself with. The distraction was a necessary respite from all the pent up anger that he was fostering in his chest.
"Make fun of my hair, will you?!" the man piloting the airship yelled out having lost his temper once more, just like he had in the bar. What a waste of time and effort that was… Killing two drunks was so beneath him anyway, even if he had decided to sully the hands of the world's greatest assassin, such meaningless endeavor would have required awesome compensation, a hundred million Zeni for each, at the very least.
The man donning a pink chang pao with an embroidered "Kill" kanji on his back leaned even closer to the front illuminator of his airship and directed his beady eyes at the landmark of the Korin Tower that he always had to pass when he chose to head to the Red Ribbon Base from the north-eastern direction. It was a troublesome flight path, though hilarious also in its own way.
It was an official flight path and the only way of getting to the Red Ribbon Headquarters through the official flight paths from the north-east. The Korin Tower was also an infamous location for how many airships and other aircraft have gone missing. Those few that have made it out from the Sacred Land of Korin reported their aircraft simply stopping functioning when they went high up. Without a doubt, it was a conscious way of remaining unseen by the Red Ribbon as any effort of reaching them from the unofficial flight paths would have not only registered on their radars as suspicious but it would have also been interpreted as equally suspicious by the authorities of West City.
Thinking about this made the pointed-nose-man strike a small grin, one that twisted his thin mustache sideways. He could have used something soothing like a good old smile. Maybe he should have gone up through the clouds, taken in the scenery of the sunset as well…
The airship spiraled upward, bursting through the clouds and enjoying the gentle embrace of ample sunlight. The man with overly expressive and pompous long coat straightened the nose of his aircraft only to meet a blank stare of a black-skinned creature with luscious, red lips and jewelry all over his body. This was no man, as someone seldom employed by the Red Ribbon Army, the assassin had seen his own fair share of the features of darker skinned men, with one of the top figures of the corps being Staff Officer Black.
What seemed even odder, the creature was floating atop of what looked like an eastern carpet, one that effortlessly kept up the pace with the aircraft. The killer was so entranced and confused by the man that he did not even register the blitzing assault, in a single motion, the carpet closed up to the aircraft and the black, genie-like chubby sent the aircraft shooting down with a mere push kick.
The pilot kept yanking on his controls, began rapidly going through the various buttons with little to no effect as the functionality of the entire aircraft seemed as good as dead. Nerves got the better of the spiraling down assassin as one of these pulls left the control stick firmly gripped in his hands, shooting out sparks and detached from the entirety of the control scheme of the aircraft.
"This is the last time I fly a plane over this cursed place!" the man yelled out from the bottom of his lungs.
Chayote screamed out from the deepest parts of her chest while delivering a deadly kick to the side of the head of the giant dinosaur. These last few days fighting bandits, dinosaurs and sabretooth tigers was all that the Saiyan was doing. Even strike delivered made her feel more in control over her body. At the current moment, she actually felt like every measly scuffle that barely lasted one or two exchanges even improved her a bit. Chayote was no longer catching up, she was now slowly treading ahead.
"No, no, no!" Upa shook his head with irritation in his tone. "The dinosaur was not evil."
"But it tried eating us. You said that if somebody is trying to kill us, chances are they're definitely evil." Chayote pointed out. She could distinctly recall Upa telling her that a day or two ago. It was easy to remember because she was doing one-handed upside push-ups. It was really hard at first so Upa motivated Chayote to be better by putting a chunk of poop to her face so that she could not fall without falling into the poop.
The little rascal did not remove it either, Chayote spent all that time doing push-ups until the dung beetles carried it off and the rain washed off what remained. Sometimes the Saiyan wanted that Yuca was as strict on her as Upa was…
"Yeah, it tried eating us because it eats meat! It's a predator so killing is what it does. That doesn't make it evil!" Upa disciplined a girl two times his size, attempting to reach her nose with his extended index finger but failing miserably.
"So then I can't be evil, nor can the other Saiyans. Fighting and conquering planets is what we do too…" Chayote wiped the sweat off of her face and sat down. She gave Upa a serious look that told the kid that she expected a reasoned response because it was something that troubled her a bit.
"Well… No!" Upa insisted with impressive vigor although he could not base his judgment in any deeper argumentation. "You see… You choose to do all those things. You would not die if you did not do that as the dinosaur would."
"But Yuca didn't take me on missions and didn't toughen me up and then I did die… And I went on to Heaven." Chayote pointed out. "This good and evil thing's really confusing…"
Lamenting the difficult mental gymnastics that she signed herself up for, Chayote sat down on a downed stump that she herself left after helping Bora out with some firewood. At the time she was not sure how much wood was needed for a mere fire nor was she aware how respected the trees in these woods were.
"Yo!" a man walked out from the forest and into the clearing. One wearing a white and torn karate gi, a red headband that restrained a headful of ginger hair and one with impressive tonus to his muscles as well as a rather remarkable line of facial hair shaking on his upper lip while the man spoke.
"Oh, another bandit, I'll kill him and be with you in a second…" Chayote sighed before standing up and stretching out a bit. She had to hand it, she was getting hungry after fighting all those weaklings. It didn't seem like she's moved one inch in her quest of wiping the planet out of all life, not even on her subquest of wiping it out of all evil people. She's killed a fair share of bandits but… It sort of seemed like evil in rich supply, or so Upa suggested her by pointing out new and new characteristics of evil people and new bandits made their way to the Sacred Land of Korin.
In a way it was quite convenient – evil people were making their way to Chayote and not the other way around.
"No, wait, I don't think he's a bandit." Upa jumped up from checking on some daisies and ran up to the man. "What's your business in the Sacred Land of Korin!?" he yelled out. Compared to how the little shrimp was before Chayote met him, it seemed like meeting Chayote has made him quite bold.
"I am a traveling karateka, Gorgonzola's the name." the man pointed at himself with his thumb with a fair amount of confidence. Chayote had to admit that not only something about his name felt sating, but she also found the confidence as well as the physical bulk of the man invigorating.
"Karateka, what's that?" Chayote wondered.
"He's a martial artist. It means he's specializing in Karate." Upa pointed at the man with his index finger, it looked like it infuriated Gorgonzola a fair bit as he shoveled the boy aside with a push of his right hand.
"Martial arts?" Chayote looked baffled by the term.
"You're kidding, right? You're an avid fighter!" Upa yelled out, angered by the man's impudence in brushing him aside like that.
"Oh? An avid fighter? I am traveling across the world in search of a challenge. In the last World's Martial Arts Tournament I won a fight in the preliminary rounds. I have come to the Sacred Land of Korin to face the mystical force that's been killing people passing through these parts and destroying aircraft… Where are you going?" Gorgonzola looked into his own story before Chayote began just walking away.
"Oh, I'm hungry, gonna eat this dinosaur." Chayote pointed at the downed monster.
"Oh… Well… There's no need to eat this road kill. Fighting in the World's Martial Arts Tournament has given me perspective. Fighting can be a lifestyle all by itself. If you're such an avid fighter, perhaps we should fight for money then? Do you know what money is, girl?" Gorgonzola smiled smugly while he leaned his chin forward as if begging to be punched in it.
"Sure. I've looted plenty of this money from the bandits I've killed…" Chayote revealed two handfuls of Zeni bills that fanned out quite nicely. "Not sure what's it used for but if you're willing to fight me for it, go for it."
"Heh, heh, heh…" Gorgonzola chuckled to himself while revealing a much smaller stack of cash of his own and tossing it on the ground. Chayote followed up, careless about the money she had, she threw it all despite possessing possibly a dozen times more than the traveling karateka bet.
"Are you sure about this, Chayote? He clearly means to take advantage of the fact that you don't know martial arts…" Upa wondered, looking at his companion. "He's a fraud, you see, a bad man."
"Oh, that means I can kill him, right?" Chayote jumped up in her own personal Eureka moment.
"Eh… I don't know, he's sort of a buffoon so it feels kind of bad but…" Upa shrugged. The boy looked worked up over it.
Gorgonzola took a spread out, wide guard position and twisted his rich, fiery mustache in a confident grin. Judging from his expression, all the talk of murder terrified him at the start, but the concept of fighting a weakling little girl who did not even know what martial arts were and looked desperate enough to eat a carcass of the dead dinosaur she came upon for this much money reassured him somewhat. He survived a whole preliminary round in the World Martial Arts Tournament. A good sixteen more and he may have qualified for the finals even…
"Aren't you going to take your stance, girly?" Gorgonzola taunted his opponent while Chayote stared at him with a blank face.
"Huh? No need, see, I killed that dinosaur just fine without one…" Chayote pointed at the dead titan.
For a blink or two, Gorgonzola appeared to be digesting what the teenage Saiyan told him with a hint of hilarity but then something shattered in his head and his eyes shot out wide in utter shock while his jaw dropped down. His blazing mustache curled and rose up from the tension of his skin.
"W-Wait… What did you say? D-Did you say you… Killed… That…" Gorgonzola tried to obtain the necessary testicular fortitude to bail out on this catastrophe that may have very well taken his life far too early.
Before Chayote could answer, an airship crashed right in front of her and on top of the sweating martial artist looking for a quick and ample buck. Whether it was through the fame of surviving the terror of the Sacred Land of Korin's monstrous guardians or conning a handful of ambitious teens, Gorgonzola was the last one to enter a fair and challenging fight and the first one to leave a situation when it got hot. May he forever be remembered thusly…
Much to Upa's horror and surprise, an actual man walked out from the rubble of the crashed aircraft. One with a torn eastern long coat and ample dirt, fuel and shallow cuts all over his body. The survivor of the crash that claimed Gorgonzola's life looked around and took note of the little native boy and the confused Saiyan teen.
"Aloha!" he exclaimed while making a hilarious facial expression, rounding up and squinting his already thin eyes and putting a twisted smile on his face.
"I guess that means I won…" Chayote crossed her hands over her chest with dissatisfaction in the anti-climactic fight appearing crystal clear on her face. "Feels kind of a rip-off…"
"But you won the fight money, how is this a rip-off?" Upa looked at Chayote.
"Yeah, but there wasn't much of a fight. A good fight is its own reward…" the Saiyan sighed.
"Oh… There was fighting afoot?" the survivor of the crash-landing looked around, failing to see anything but the destruction his own landing had caused. The man's eyes rested upon a notable size of money that, given the pricing of the assassin, was pocket money at best, however, in his current predicament it looked fairly pleasing.
"Tell you what, as an apology for killing your opponent, ironically enough, without trying, I, the world's greatest assassin, Taopaipai shall fight you in his stead?" the assassin looked at Chayote with a smug stare. It was self-evident that he was looking down upon the low-level of competition that could have been competing for this miserable pile of cash in the first place. Any self-respecting martial artist would have evaluated his participation with half a million Zeni at the very least.
"Are you strong?" Chayote wondered. "Well, it doesn't matter. I'll take anyone on at this point, but you're sure you don't want to rest up before we go? You don't look too good."
"Trust me, brat, for this amount of money, I'll kill you in one second. I have places to be, after all." Taopaipai chuckled while stroking his mustache. The high opinion of his own strength somewhat entertained Chayote. She was willing to fight this torn up and bruised man all of a sudden, as long as he wouldn't whine about it not being fair later.
"See? See how evil you sound when you go around telling people you'll kill them?" Upa pointed at Taopaipai with an angry stare while his focus shifted from Chayote to Taopaipai.
"Oh… He's evil then? So it's okay if I kill him, right?" Chayote looked at Upa with eyes wide in both confusion and excitement for the upcoming brawl.
"You… Kill me? Why you… Dodonpa!" Taopaipai yelled out while flicking his index finger forward and firing off a superheated beam of energy from it. Chayote yelled out in pain as the beam hit her square in the chest and sent her flying back, the beam burnt right through the lousy leather clothes that Chayote had looted off of the bandits but failed to penetrate the teen Saiyan herself.
Upa yelled out in disbelief and ran up to the fallen Saiyan. Before he could cry out for his newly met friend to wake up, Chayote coughed and sat up on her own. Her face twisted in pain and still trying to overcome the painful aftereffects of the intense beam of energy hitting her right where her heart was.
"Wh-What!?" Taopaipai dropped his jaw in disbelief. "You… Survived the Dodonpa!?"
"Heh…" Chayote wiped a bit of blood that she coughed up from inside with her fist. "So you can shoot beams from your hands without an arm-cannon to channel your energy? That's what I'm trying to learn too. How about you teach me that and, in return, I'll kill you last of all the evil people?"
"Y-You impudent brat! You've made me waste far too much effort for your miserable life!" Taopaipai lost his composure and moved his hands by his side. The assassin-for-hire dashed onward with a single leap. Chayote's upwards kick caught the assassin unprepared and sent him flying. Before he could fly too high up, Chayote pursued her new toy and slammed him square in the head with a double ax handle strike. Before the crashing assassin could finish his landing, Chayote dashed up to his falling body and kicked him once more, redirecting his flight to a horizontal crash into a nearby stone.
"You're really strong, actually. I very nearly missed the timing on that one." Chayote grinned at her crashed opponent. She very much enjoyed this little game, it was only now that all of the talking that her peers used to do back on Planet Vegeta of epic, glorious battles began making sense. And the best part was – this battle was just getting started!
"You dare to mock me!?" Taopaipai burst from the stone with his long coat completely torn off of his body, dashing at Chayote once again. The Saiyan raised her hands up for a block but the sudden strike from her opponent came to the girl's gut and made her body lift off the ground from the sheer intensity of the opening strike.
The assassin continued his combination with a knee strike right to Chayote's dazed face. Something felt off about this guy's attacks. It was like every attack completely locked Chayote's body up, just like the post-mortem stiffness from before used to make the Saiyan's body feel all weird. Another punch came to Chayote's stomach, this one felt more akin to what the warrior teen was used to punches feeling like but it felt… Stronger. Stronger than what this man should have been capable of. As if the previous precision strikes had weakened her body somehow while locking it up at the same time.
Chayote's dazed eyes could not follow the successive attacks of Tao's finger strike flurry. Of all the attacks that the assassin threw her way, these felt by far the worst. It was more of those nasty, locking up strikes but they came so fast one after another that the sensation of creeping death became apparent and overwhelming. As if mocking the Saiyan, Taopaipai kicked her diagonally up in the sky and then double ax handle slammed her back down, similarly to how Chayote did before.
"Now, die!" Taopaipai taunted his opponent by finishing the attack with a knee landing upon the downed Saiyan teen's neck. Chayote cried out in pain while the damaged throat cracked and turned at an awkward angle. With a graceful backflip, Taopaipai landed on his two feet and flicked his head to the side to allow his long braid to fall on his shoulder with great skill and elegance.
"Chayote!" Upa cried out, dashing to the defeated Saiyan. The girl's eyes were staring off into the distance with a blank and lifeless look. Her head still remained diagonally tilted due to the awkward angle of her neck.
"Don't bother wasting your tears, she's dead." Taopaipai huffed for a short while before his breath returned to him. He had not been expecting this much of a challenge for this irrelevant of a monetary gain. "Normally, I'd grace you with letting you join her in hell but… I've killed far too many people for free today. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth."
Taopaipai approached a nearby oak, one of the millions of firm trees protecting the Sacred Land of Korin and pinched it a little with his foot and then pinching it once more with a precise and lightning-swift finger strike at the top to finish forming a mighty log pillar. Taopaipai extended his foot to allow the log to rest on it, with a single flick of his leg, the assassin sent the wooden pillar flying while he dashed after it himself. Upa did not see if the mighty assassin found his new and improvised aircraft or if he crashed and burned as he deserved.
"Get up!" Upa cried out. Confused by the handful of all sorts of feelings passing through his tiny heart, the native boy kicked Chayote's body a pair of times before leaning over her face and screaming out. "Get up! What was all that mighty talk about killing everybody!? You can't just flip over and die!"
Upa yelled out in pain after a mighty headbutt. The Saiyan girl sat back up, just like she did before except this time massaging her neck. It appeared that the assassin mightily exaggerated the report over the Saiyan's death, having managed to only shortly knock her unconscious.
"Whooo! You sure pack a wallop!" the Saiyan yelled out in utter ecstasy before noticing that her new best friend had already packed his things and took off with her fight money. "W-Where did he go?"
Chayote looked around in confusion, still feeling a bit sore in the neck after Upa jumped back up on his feet and jumped up on her for a hug. He was not the only one about to burst in tears. The loss of fight money was irrelevant, Chayote was not entirely sure what the currency was used for on this planet anyway, the strongest opponent she had ever met, however, a slight weakling compared to Chayote's power and speed but a vast superior in terms of fighting skill, was something to shed tears about.