"Hmmm… You have done well to stand up, young lady. But I will not underestimate you as your opponents did." A man of a darker tan and wearing loose clothes that Chayote could have sworn should have gotten in the way of swift movements declared.
"Your technique is interesting. I may give it a spin. Although it does not matter how fast you strike if your strength cannot faze your opponent." Chayote rubbed her jaw with her knuckle while she stood back up from the floor after not having taken too much damage. She was impressed with both the technique and the overall martial arts skill of her opponent. The Saiyan just wished that she could have fought this man in the finals and in a much larger arena. Also, perhaps, that he had at least five times the power level he must have had at the moment.
"Cannot faze my opponent you say? My Eight-Arm Fist seemed to do the job before…" the martial artist who appeared as cocky in his expression as he had every right to be declared. With a furious growl he leaped at Chayote, the Fighter No. 24 made his hands go blurry again, before long it appeared as if he had grown eight arms.
The man employed his newly manifested arms at attacking Chayote with a rush of fists. The Saiyan just stared at the oncoming attack in defiance and allowed the attacks to just bounce off of her now that she's actually started trying at about the level where she imagined her opponent being.
"W-What!? B-But my Eight-Arms Strike!" Fighter No. 24 trembled as he took a few dashes back in fearful respect. Chayote had to give this man some props, he did not break his arms attacking Chayote like the rest, then again, because of the speedy nature of his attack, he did not transfer all that much force into the teen either. Because of limited time, force and the contact surface, the Eight-Arms Strike appeared a flawed technique.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Chayote sighed. The Saiyan took a single step forward before her own arms disappeared just like those of her opponent did. "Ten-Thousand Fist!" she yelled out and, through great physical effort, her two arms split into branches that then split into more and more branches until ten thousand arms covered the entire ring, rushing at No. 24 from every possible angle.
Overwhelmed by the Saiyan's improvised use of his own technique, No. 24 placed a simple cross-shaped block in an attempt to, if not withstand the attack, then, at the very least, survive it. Much to the surprise of both No. 24 and every other fighter, of the very few that remained until the end of the preliminaries, No. 24 not only survived the "Ten-Thousand Fist" but also appeared relatively unharmed by it.
"It… It barely tickled…" the man admitted to himself and the shocked observers. Before he could turn back and face his opponent, Chayote was already up in the martial artist's face and delivered a single, primitive punch to the face. She did not even wind it up right, using the force from her shoulders instead of proper balance from the ground, as Korin had taught her.
"F-Fighter No. 24, ring-out! No. 32 qualifies for the World Martial Arts Tournament!" the announcer yelled into his voice-enhancing, handheld gadget after powering through the impact that seeing the champion of one of the previous World Martial Arts Tournaments fly across the entire building and very nearly leave it that way. A handful of confused and taken aback eyes that interested Chayote stared from across the building. She finally got their attention, good…
"She beat King Chappa," one of the remaining fighters trembled in his boots while observing the Saiyan step off of the qualifiers stage.
"Isn't he a previous champion? Just what kind of monsters are in this thing this year!?" an anthropomorphic tiger in a white dogi and wearing a black karate belt across his waist scratched behind his ear.
"Hmmm…" Chayote wondered. "Where did those brats go?"
She had wanted to check in with the other Saiyan brat and find out why the hell was he slipping on his planet conquering duties, also, if he knew anything about when someone from the Frieza Army may have shown up. It was a little bit surprising that they did not so far, this kid looked like he was in his early teens, it was about time for him to take this place over and wait to be picked up from the kindergarten, surrounded by bodies and ruin.
Then again, Korin's pot showed Chayote meeting this boy specifically which meant that until she faces Kami alongside this Saiyan, it was unlikely that the Frieza Army would find them. Something about this boy as well as the operation he was running here was out of the ordinary.
"The World Martial Arts Tournament will begin momentarily! Will the eight finalists please assemble in the main martial arts hall!" a muddled voice spoke through a megaphone, shortly after a jingle that invited a smirk on Chayote's face. No matter if she found him ahead of time or not, the two were destined to meet anyway. If the Saiyan could recall the pot prophecy right, the two would end up fighting each other in this very tournament at some point.
It was a poor equivalent to rocket science to identify the only boy in the room with a tail. Let alone the fact that the Saiyan hung out with some short and a bit plump baldy and some handsome guy with a red headband. The Saiyan boy looked to be overly happy about something, he was chatting his friend up like the two were casual acquaintances even.
"Hey, you!" Chayote tried getting the boy's attention but then something foul froze her in her boots. No matter how strong she thought she got, no amount of training could have prepared a person for this sort of paralyzing technique.
"Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Outta my way!" an abhorrent giant rumbled past Chayote, brushing aside the Saiyan with his shoulder. Being so close to the unpleasant cave troll, the young Saiyan collapsed onto the ground and began writhing in pain that resonated from somewhere in the back parts of her brain and spread like bad electricity all throughout. Every single surge sent needles through the neurons by tens of thousands.
"That stink!" the other Saiyan in the room appeared to be similarly affected by the man's sheer repulsiveness, the Earthlings looked quite crushed by the man's odors although nowhere near to the same degree as the two. Chayote had no doubt that had her fellow Saiyan been as close to the despicable individual and even brushed shoulders with him, he'd have crumbled down just as fine as she did.
"Wh-Who in the world is that… That giant…?" the plump and baldy Earthling that the Saiyan boy hung around looked by far the least crushed by the detestable aroma that filled the entire building just out of association with the giant of thunderous steps and a crashing lightning bolt of a body odor.
"He's one of the toughest fighters in the world. His strength is a legend among martial artists... But even more powerful is the stench that he developed by never taking a bath in his whole life…" the second friend of the Saiyan boy recounted. So this was the purpose of this Earthling. Now Chayote understood it a bit better, if she had a walking martial artist database around her, she might have let the fellow live a few more years, maybe even adopt him for the purpose of assisting the planetary conquest, giving him a lease on life as long as taking over his planet would take. It did not hurt that he was not unpleasant to the eyes either.
"Oh… Are you okay?" the slave of the Saiyan boy with a remarkable knowledge of Earth's most dangerous men and women noticed Chayote wheezing and panting on the floor. "I guess you're a finalist too then? My name's Yamcha."
"Chayote." The Saiyan replied while letting the adopted Earthling fighter assist her in getting off the ground. Even long after the dirty bastard left the building, his stench persisted. That was it, Chayote would kill that annoying gnat the next chance she gets. Maybe the tournament officials won't care if the two aren't actually fighting each other?
"Ah! I remember you!" the Saiyan boy declared, pointing his finger at Chayote with comically wide eyes.
It was about time that this Saiyan dropout showed a bit of respect for someone who was just inches away from being recruited into the Frieza Army itself. Chayote dug her chin and her nose into the collar of her tracksuit to try and power through the lingering stench.
"You're that awesome fighter in the qualifiers that sent that one guy flying!" the boy declared with enthusiasm. While he appeared to be an imbecile, his Saiyan genes were well on display. He enjoyed a good challenge wherever he saw one, even if this challenge was well over his head.
"It's truly remarkable to see beautiful women that can fight well too." The plump baldy nodded a pair of times. Chayote did not like his beady eyes, it suggested that he was fostering some dirty thoughts, then again, his shifty glares were switching from staring at Chayote to switching to some other Earthling woman behind her.
"What are you talking about, Krillin? This one's clearly a boy!" the Saiyan pointed his finger at Chayote, "Can't you see he has a tail? Girls don't have tails, just like they don't have pee-pees!"
As a testament of his scientific observation, the Saiyan boy patted at Chayote's crotch. Chayote's blush could have only been overshadowed by the collective shame of the Earthlings named Yamcha and Krillin. Then something snapped in Yamcha's mind as he paled out.
"W-Wait… Do you… In the full moon!?" he pointed at Chayote with his jaw dropping to the floor.
So this Earthling had experienced the Saiyan transformation into a Great Ape? Perhaps the boy Saiyan showed him, however, he looked too much like a goofy idiot to transform willingly, without someone teaching him and, as far as Chayote knew, she and this boy were the only Saiyans on this planet. A far more likely explanation would have been that he transformed by accident. But then… How did these Earthlings survive a Great Ape's rampage? Surely this brat could not have controlled himself in his transformed state, just like Chayote herself, this one looked like a low-class warrior.
"The full moon, what's he talking about?" Krillin looked at his Saiyan friend who just leaned back and shrugged.
"Dunno. I'm Goku." Goku grinned at Chayote.
"All finalists, please assemble! Hear me out here!" a different announcer from before wearing shades indoors declared. Chayote wondered if these shades were an upgraded version of the scouters that the Metallitron Squad had, adjusted for the normal size of this Earthling. It might have been useful to an announcer and commentator of a tournament to have that sort of a gadget.
Whatever the case was, Chayote ground her teeth about how she was robbed of a chance to talk to Goku and find out his situation. Sure, she could have hijacked this entire thing but the concept of a martial arts tournament was simply too precious to interrupt and sabotage. This here may have been the only reason to preserve the Earth, a tradition that may have been absorbed and enjoyed by the Saiyans even. Saiyans could have done it far better than Earthlings anyway…
"C-Could you please stay back?" the announcer muttered to the stinky giant who took a few moves back while chuckling to himself as if what he was doing was something to be overjoyed about.
Beside the previously mentioned fighters, the room also hosted a frail woman with a hairdo that matched the excess of the King Chappa guy that Chayote met during the qualifiers, a tanned individual that may have been from a nearby corner of the planet as Chappa as well and dressed with the same baggy rags, also a dinosaur. Chayote was not entirely sure what that last guy was doing there, she had killed too many dinosaurs already, in fact, they comprised most of her diet on Earth. Out of all these people, even one that belonged to a species Chayote killed and ate for sustenance, the young Saiyan wanted the stinky cave troll dead the most.
"Just who is this girl…" Krillin leaned at Yamcha while pointing at Chayote who was clutching at her nose and watering from her eyes. The manner in which her suffering manifested was nearly identical to that of Goku's on her left. "I thought Goku was one of a kind type of weirdo but she's just as strong, has a tail and reacts to things funny…"
"Don't know but… This suggests that there may be a whole tribe of people like Goku somewhere. Maybe Son Gohan stole Goku from them as a baby or something." Yamcha pondered, looking similarly baffled by Chayote's existence.
"We will now draw lots to determine the match-ups and fight schedules. When your name is called, please come forward and draw a slip." The announcer pointed at the board with numbers. Differently from the one from the qualifiers, this one had far fewer numbers and schematic aspects to it making it far easier to understand.
"Drawing lots and fighting, that's all there is to this tournament…" Chayote grinned. At least she liked fighting a fair deal making drawing and standing around less of a hassle.
"How will I draw when my hands are occupied…" Goku complained, still looking like something had hit him in the face with a decade-old fish.
"I'd like to kill that fatso." Chayote raised her hand, temporarily transferring the duty of blocking off her nose air intake to just one.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but no…!" the announcer shook his head. Flustered, he looked down at his papers. "O-Okay, then… I'll start calling your names. Uhhh... Nam-san." The announcer called out.
The rather unimpressive and frail-looking, tanned Earthling with baggy clothes responded before walking up to the announcer and drawing from the box. The man stared at the folded piece of paper as contemplating on its hidden meanings before unfolding it to the entire audience of finalists and declaring his number without much bombastic excitement to it.
"No. 2," he muttered.
The announcer leaned up to the large fighting board and wrote down Nam's name on it by the first clash. "You will be fighting first," he said before looking back down at his list of fighters, "Now, Kaiju Giran."
"Yo!" the monstrous dinosaur responded.
"Wait, this one has a name? I've killed so many of them, you mean they all had names?" Chayote scratched her head.
"What's that, shrimp, you're picking a fight?" Giran completely lost interest in drawing lots and began rolling up sleeves he did not even have to get all up in Chayote's face.
Yamcha and the group of monks present in the hall ran up to the two and began trying to keep a fight from happening. It took at least a good handful of recounts of the rules regarding contestants being forbidden to fight it out while on the tournament grounds except in the arena for Kaiju Giran to return to the box and draw his number. He growled and smacked the ground behind him with his tail the entire time as if attempting to intimidate Chayote. The Saiyan had seen the same intimidation mechanism from countless dinos she'd slain and eaten so she was not overly impressed.
"Number 8, match four." The announcer sighed after the hint of trouble breezed past with Giran leaving the building altogether, likely to get something crunchy to eat while thinking about how he should have eaten the rude, tailed teen that made fun of him.
"Bacterian…" the announcer called the massive, walking pile of waste to approach the box. The bastard looked gleeful all the way to it and made his best effort to muddy and stick up the papers inside it, without a doubt. "No. 4, match two." The announcer wrote down Bacterian's name on the board while clutching his nose with a hanky.
"Yamcha…" the announcer called out while finding the air around him breathable enough to pocket his saving grace at that moment. Chayote sent lightning bolts from her eyes at the abominable blob she now had a name behind.
"Yeah," Yamcha replied while approaching the stand and pulling out his number.
"No. 5, match three." The announcer spoke to himself as he wrote the results of the draw down. "Krillin."
"H-Here, Sir!" Krillin jumped up and rushed to the box, tripping over himself and planting his bald face firmly into the wooden floor but, much to Chayote's surprise, picking himself up and carrying him the rest of the way to his destination. While some around were cackling into their fists, namely the purple-haired female fighter that Krillin previously referenced, Chayote began to understand the role of this Earthling in Goku's group.
How could she have missed this previously? Goku cannot sense how strong his opponent is exactly either, that is why he requires a meaningless throwaway that he could fling at the enemy and measure their strength. Likely this baldy is somewhere around Goku's relative power level, else measuring using his round, thick head would be meaningless. If someone can beat Krillin – they're worth Goku's while.
What a devious strategist this Goku was. Chayote did not even doubt that he had much more to hide, Goku did not sound even remotely like a Saiyan's name, meaning that he made it up. His arrogance, however, would be his downfall for he underestimated Chayote's intelligence as well – he assumed that he was as much of an idiot as she took him for in the beginning, that was why he gave such a clearly fake name.
"No. 1, match one!" the announcer declared with vigor to his voice. Judging from his charisma alone, the Saiyan almost had it confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that this event would be shown publically with this man serving as a commentator of the fighting. That must have made him an impressive expert on the martial arts, similarly to Yamcha.
"Do not kill Yamcha when you take in this announcer as the expert of martial arts of your group." Chayote leaned to Goku's side. "I don't have one on my group so I'll take him under my control. He's easy on the eyes as well, won't hurt."
"Huh? You're weird…" Goku mumbled before laughing out in an honest and lively fit. He was a good actor on top of his top of the notch strategic mind. It was a good thing that Chayote killed Commander Red, he'd have been utterly useless in the face of Goku while the Saiyan had his alien strength on top of that.
"Um… Mago Gosora…" the announcer muttered to himself, hoping for a reply but nobody answered his call. "Are you present, Mago Gosora? That's odd… There seems to be the right number of people here."
Chayote looked around, she knew Yamcha, Goku, and Krillin, Bacterian, Giran, and Nam as well. She was fairly certain her own name was not Mago Gosora. She looked at the disinterested woman in a blue shirt and raised an eyebrow.
"That's not me," she replied with a hint of rude flippancy in her voice.
"That's okay, I understand if my parents called me that I'd be shy too but…" Chayote tried inspiring some courage in the fellow contestant just to speed this affair along but then Yamcha approached the announcer to save the day.
"Could you mean Son Goku?" he read off of the list that the announcer held.
"H-Huh?" the shades of the announcer lowered and very nearly dropped off his face forcing the man to correct them. "Is there a Son Goku here?"
"Here!" Goku even jumped up, bursting with life. It took no time at all for him to draw his number.
"No. 7, match four." The announcer read it to himself while he wrote it down. Now it made sense why this guy read things to himself, he could barely read and likely relied on noise memory to do his job right. Regardless of how useless this guy looked, he had a certain charismatic flair to him that made this man viable to become a jester in any respectable empire. Lord Frieza was nothing if not respectable. He would see the value of this man, Chayote was sure.
"Ranfan!" the announcer read off.
"Hiya, sailor." Ranfan pecked the thin air with a whole different kind of tone than the one she used when addressing Chayote earlier. While the Saiyan glared at her, the woman turned back and showed her tongue to Chayote as if reveling in the fact she was right earlier, during the whole Mago Gosora thing.
"No. 6, match three. And Chayote." The announcer read, even though her draw would be obvious, the Saiyan approached the box and drew it regardless.
"No. 3, match two. And so, the match order is now complete. The matches will proceed as follows: first match – Contestant Krillin VS Contestant Nam, second match – Contestant Chayote VS Contestant Bacterian, third match – Contestant Yamcha VS Contestant Ranfan, fourth match – Contestant Mago… Son Goku VS Contestant Giran." The announcer declared, leaving prolonged pauses in between each match for dramatic effect, or so one might have assumed.