"Ladies and Gentlemen, the semi-finals of the World Martial Arts Tournament are about to begin!" the announcer did his job hyping the people in the audience up. The success of his endeavor seemed almost effortless and rightfully so – the people were brimming with excitement and wanted to be inspired for even hotter passion.
"You feeling okay?" Krillin wondered. Hearing the faltering tone of his voice Chayote put together what the pint-sized brawler meant. He wondered if the terror that befell him in the first round plagued the Saiyan as well.
"Of course I'm fine." Chayote looked back at Goku's friend. "A Saiyan does not fear taking on even a much stronger opponent, why would one fear an enemy far weaker than them?"
"Wow, Chayote's confident!" Goku chuckled out loud with a simian expression. "I'm getting the butterflies in my stomach and I'm not even the one fighting!"
"Making her way to the arena, on the right side, is Contestant Chayote. This lovely maiden has busted through the quarterfinals by defeating the revered Bacterian with a single attack!" the announcer pointed to his right. Chayote stood by Goku and Krillin, waiting for her cue to come but Yamcha's encouraging touch pushed her forward. The Saiyan turned back with an irritated angle to her eyebrows but then realized that the cute dolt was encouraging her to make a grand entrance.
With a little bit of dashing flare, Chayote moved in just in time even after missing the sign to make her departure from the waiting area. A cascade of boos resonated through the arena, making the Saiyan scratch the back of her head and flap her tail about with a hint of scorn.
"Go home!" someone in the audience yelled out.
"You ruined the water supply in the heat of May, you harpy!" another man shouted at Chayote.
The baffled Saiyan just made a few hops to warm her feet up and threw a pair of sluggish blows to get into the spirit. She made sure to power down as much as she could, to at least where the likes of the contestants of this Earthling tournament could truly challenge her. There would have been no fun in just winning this without learning anything about martial arts, as originally intended.
"On the left, we have the cool and mysterious Contestant Nam!" the announcer turned to the left. "This man comes from the land far to the north-west. Contestant Nam, if you are to win this tournament, and you seem to be the crowd favorite, what will you do with the prize money?"
"I shall buy water for my village." Nam declared without much fanfare. The man did not even bother opening his eyes or leaving his prayer stance for the reply.
"B-But… Contestant Nam… Surely you understand that water is free…" the announcer fixed his shades that were attempting to make a deceitful escape from his nose.
"It may be. This scorn, however, has ruined the water supply of the modern world as well. For this she must pay, I will not allow the modern people to suffer the way that my villagers are suffering!" Nam declared, finally breaking his composure and making a bunch of menacing gestures at the nearby Saiyan in front of him.
"Yeah, that's right, kick her ass! Buy everyone the water we need!" someone in the audience yelled out.
"B-But…" the announcer fixed his shades again. "You are aware that this measly fountain was not the water supply of the entire world? In fact, the water of that fountain was not meant for drinking at all… We have wells reaching to the much deeper layer of underground water."
"I… I was not aware of that fact." Nam's eyes shot wide open. "The modern world is truly blessed."
"What are you talking about? Where did all that fiery spirit go?" Chayote spun her head about and stretched out her neck. She needed to make sure to not power up the slightest or else she threatened to end this fight prematurely. Slight bursts of power could have come and gone out of the blue, just a mere moment of fear could have triggered it. "Are we going to fight, or not?"
"Oh! Contestant Chayote is firing up!" the announcer raised both of his hands up before lowering his right one and yelling out into his voice-enhancing gadget. "Begin!"
The gong rung, despite the first fight of the semi-finals being officially underway, neither one of the two martial artists entered their fighting stances. Both of them stood with their backs perfectly straight and both their hands held relaxed by their side.
"What's going on? Aren't they going to fight?" Krillin wondered, observing the fight from aside.
"Amazing!" Goku declared. "I've never seen a fighting stance like that!"
"Yeah, it's like Chayote's got no openings whatsoever!" Yamcha nodded.
"They're both just standing still…" Krillin squinted.
"It must have been taught by Master Korin. Now I'm really fired up to meet him!" Goku jumped up and down from his vantage point atop of the wall protecting the observer area from the hectic combat action in the arena.
"Do not worry, I will honor your request for a fight. I must say, however, fighting without a goal that restricts me and demands that I win… It feels invigorating. This fighting mania of yours must be rubbing off on me, I am not known as a violent person." Nam looked at his own hands, trembling with excitement. Without being prompted any further, the water-seeking man entered his wide-guard fighting stance by raising his right hand up in front while the left hung back, ready to block, his feet stretched out wide and his knees bend down to keep the center of balance lower.
"Yeah, I agree that a good brawl is its own reward. Now, are you going to punch me, or not?" Chayote taunted her opponent.
Nam launched himself as if he had been affected by that taunt, even if, judging by his composure and restrained manner of attack, he barely registered it at all. Chops and knee strikes came from every direction, instead of taking them head-on, Chayote blocked the chops with her own matching attacks and responded to the knee strikes with her own knees raised for blocking.
"She's… Just repeating what Nam is doing." Yamcha observed.
"She's studying him as she's fighting. It helped that she's seen me fight so Chayote already knows a couple of Nam's moves." Krillin agreed to the assessment.
After Nam had exhausted his close-combat arsenal, the desert warrior slid back in a manner that looked difficult to pull off with bare feet. Despite that choice of combat attire, Nam floated across the arena like a water strider on a lake surface. Nam was panting, having shown his true strength right out from the get-go and tried to apply a shocking blitz strategy on Chayote. With the Saiyan having weathered the storm with a near effortless response, Nam's plan was now rendered void.
"You seem to have absorbed my style well. Don't be shy to tell me if there is anything more I can teach you." Nam cheeked at the Saiyan with a sideways smirk.
"The high-speed movement burst you used to incapacitate Krillin was interesting. Show it to me." Chayote replied oblivious to the witty nature of Nam's previous taunt.
Nam emitted a powerful battle shout before dashing onward again. His headstrong approach seemed difficult to understand, Chayote knew that this could not have been all to the desert warrior's strength and he must have already noticed the ease with which Chayote had blocked his previous attacks. If Nam did not realize he would be punished for approaching combat the same way twice, he deserved every bit of what was coming.
With a careless smack of her back-hand, the teen Saiyan attempted to knock her opponent out while simultaneously throwing him off bounds. It would have been another complete victory on her part. Nam proved himself to be smarter than that, however, honoring Chayote's request, Nam had faded out in a burst of speed and moved behind the Saiyan. Instead of delivering his crushing chop, however, the desert warrior surprised even the alien visitor herself.
Chayote's mouth lowered down, it felt like the muscles could no longer support her own jaw. Even her eyelids began weighing down while her entire body started shutting down. The strength in her overworked knees came next. In their crippled state, they could no longer keep the Saiyan on her feet and she fell flat on her face, letting out a dull thud as the young woman cracked the tiles of the arena with her face.
Nam held Chayote's tail firmly in his hands.
"You should not have told us about your weakness." Nam smiled. "Our folklore is full of almighty mythical monsters with weaknesses that teach the hero a lesson while they dispatch the monster. I am not sure what lessons are there to be learned with dispatching you, Saiyan, but you are not the end of my journey either. Your strength is remarkable, by far the scariest I have ever seen, I hope you get to use it to help people in the future."
With a crawling pace, Nam dragged Chayote across the arena and prepared to sling her. Her mouth felt far too weak to talk and curse the deceitful move of her opponent. Chayote just kept bumping her head against each successive tile as she was powerless to resist with her tail in Nam's control.
"Oh! Contestant Nam is heading for a victory via ring-out!" the announcer's voice boomed across the tournament grounds. With her body completely sapped of strength, this augmented yelling was the only way for her to understand what was happening and if she had lost yet. "Contestant Chayote had revealed her weakness to the contenders after the preliminaries! She had hoped that grabbing one's tail would be added to the list of offenses but it, in fact, turned against her!"
Everything seemed to have stopped. Chayote had almost gotten used to her face and entire upper body being dragged across the arena and the feeling of powerlessness and yet it appeared as if time itself had frozen. Her strength did not return as Nam's iron clutch was still around her tail, sending numbing impulses resonating throughout her entire nervous system but he was not doing anything new.
"Contestant Nam is just standing by the very edge of the arena! What could he be thinking about!? All he needs is to fling Contestant Chayote off the arena!" the announcer yelled out into his microphone, judging from the tone of his voice he was truly enjoying this enigmatic conundrum.
"Stop it!" Goku's voice reached Chayote's ears too. "You're fighting dirty! If you beat Chayote this way, I'll come at you with everything I have and beat you senseless!"
"He's… Smiling… Why's he smiling?" Krillin's confused and still afraid, despite his matches in the tournament having long since finished, voice joined the fray.
"If I was in this to win. If I still needed the money for the water for my village, I may have considered winning this way." Nam spoke seemingly to himself but given how in her paralyzed and powerless state Chayote heard it all, she understood the words as being directed at her as well. "Now, however, when all that I desire is to fight it out for fun, winning this way would be pointless…"
The air whooshed around Chayote's head, a chilly breeze was a poor companion for utter weightlessness. Within mere moments of the odd and liberating feeling of free-fall, Chayote felt her back hit the ground. Underneath her cupped fingers was not the chilly and frail grass or dirt, it was the stony tiles of the arena – Nam flung her back into the middle of the ring on her back!
"Oh! What a shocking turn of events!" the announcer shouted out with all of the capacity of his lungs he had to spare, the man yelled with his entire body hunched over to support the spread of his voice. "Contestant Nam has just declared he does not wish to win by ring-out!"
"Cross-Arm Dive!" Nam declared while he was still praying on the ground. Within seconds he took flight and then flipped over and crossed his arms over his head to dive down and drive his crossed arms into Chayote's neck, using the famed technique that was meant to send her to sleep for ten whole days.
Chayote was almost curious enough about how strong this move was to take its full brunt but she was even more curious about another move she had learned. Nam's crossed arms closed in on Chayote's throat inch by inch, counting the passing milliseconds would have been pointless as the follow up occurred near instantaneously.
Chayote's body blurred and disappeared from where it was laying sprawled out and in prime condition for a finishing touch like the Cross-Arm Dive. Before Nam could complete his crushing descent, Chayote's image moved in to right behind the desert warrior and delivered a devastating kick to the man's back. Nam's mouth shot open, spouting out slobber and extending farther than the jaw of a conscious man should have let it open up.
Like a speeding missile, Nam blasted across the arena and smashed into the wall outside of it, separating the bystanders' area from where the matches were taking place. The wall exploded with a downfall of bricks from the might of the blow in which Nam crashed into it. Chayote may have overdone it a bit, then again, controlling her strength was a bit difficult when she was both fighting someone this much below her power level and was trying out a new technique.
"That was… Incredible! She left an image of herself behind her!" Goku pointed at Chayote who stared at Nam with a disgruntled look. The Saiyan looked around the audience that was beginning to heat up and make obscene hand gestures her way.
Whether it was because she busted most of the bodies in the Bacterian's body, crippling him for a long time while also spoiling the nice-looking local fountain at the same time, or because she was this rough with a liked contestant of the tournament who in terms showed her mercy just to have a more fulfilling match, maybe because she was an alien, or maybe all of those things combined, Chayote was getting some mad heat.
"S-Someone take Contestant Nam to the infirmary!" the announcer tried getting Nam some help but Chayote leaped off of the arena and approached the downed contestant. From a sizeable pocket of her green tracksuit, she pulled out a sash of small beans, one of which she shoved into Nam's mouth and forced him to chew, making the first chewing motions with Nam's way too relaxed jaw herself.
"I-Incredible!" the announcer raised his hand with the index finger pointing to the sky as if whatever was so mind-blowing was transpiring somewhere in the skies instead of right in front of him. "Contestant Chayote appeared to heal Contestant Nam completely using some mystical peas from her sash!"
"I'm… Healed…" Nam looked at his fully recovered body and even massaged his jaw that felt just fine now. "I… Don't even feel hungry anymore."
"Take this sash. These are Senzu, whenever you're hungry or hurt, just eat one and you'll get fine and have your stomach turn full for ten whole days." Chayote shrugged.
"I… I cannot accept this…" Nam handed the sash back to Chayote.
"Whatever, take it, there're whole barrels full of this stuff back at Korin's Tower. I only took a handful because I thought I'd never need them with how weak the locals were…" Chayote turned down the offer and stuffed her hands into her now emptied pockets instead.
The young woman named Bulma, the one that was a friend of Goku's and, apparently, fond of Yamcha, approached Nam through the devastated bystander wall and handed him a small briefcase.
"I suggest you take Chayote's offer. If your village is thirsty, it's likely to be hungry too. Take this too. Inside this briefcase are capsules. You can use them to store all the water you will need." Bulma smiled at the blushing desert warrior.
"Oh! What a completely unexpected ending! What a heart warmer!" the announcer kept on yelling into his microphone as if the battle had not yet ended. "It seems that Contestant Nam will be returning to his home village with food and water after all! He may have lost the tournament but he got everything he came here to win it for!"
Chayote, with hands still in her pocket, turned around and walked off without letting Nam do it first and barely acknowledging Nam's farewells by raising one of her hands out of her pocket and up in the air with a clenched fist, without even looking back at the departing martial artist. He may have been a weakling but fighting him taught Chayote a thousand lessons.
The crowd… The crowd was no longer booing or throwing things. They were dead-silent before beginning to yell encouraging cheers and… Yes. There were more than a few claps.
Goku and Krillin were observing the events with their mouths fully open and wearing the biggest and goofiest smiles on their faces the whole time. Yamcha looked much more composed but even he had the longest grin on his face and warm eyes that squished any declarations that Goku's friend may have been faking his emotions.
"Wow, I can't believe you pulled off an Afterimage Technique!" Muten Roshi's voice resonated through Chayote's head.
"If that what it's called…" Chayote thought to herself, knowing that the peeping old man would hear it.
"Nam's usage of the technique was flawed because he still lacked the speed to leave an actual afterimage. You did not perform a perfect afterimage either but your use was already surpassing that of Nam's by a thousand miles. His was just a mere burst of speed. Yours was a proper attempt." Muten Roshi pondered.
"Korin may have shown me the technique a pair of times… It wasn't like I just pulled it off out of the blue." Chayote shrugged while returning to the cheerful squad of Goku and his friends. She felt the volume of Muten Roshi's thoughts dampen as she added some distance between them.
"Perhaps. But the most important lesson you have learned at the end. The lesson that the people you share this world with accept those that walk the path of the light instead of those that sulk in the darkness." Muten Roshi added before the link faded away.
"The next match of the semi-finals is Contestant Goku against Contestant Ranfan! However, we will make a brief intermission for the protective wall to be repaired first! Don't tread too far, we'll be back in a moment!" the announcer briefed the audience and the contestants in on what was to come.
Little by little, the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament was beginning to wrap itself up.