Goku stared on ahead at the marble road leading up to the outside arena. His expression might have been the least goofy one of those which Chayote has seen him take. He almost looked Saiyan like this which was summoning chills all over Chayote's skin. She had not yet seen this Raditz fight but he was sure to demand everything that Goku had to give out of him.
"This is so wrong! He's your brother, aren't you the least happy to see him? Especially since he's been dead before now!" Upa ran up to Goku and got a step ahead of him. It seemed as if though the boy pleaded him to act in a manner more befitting two reunited brothers.
"Right now I have to fight him." Goku cut it short. Not letting the chuckle that peeled Chayote's lips open from inside out demanded about as much physical effort as an exhausting fight. Now Goku looked and acted like a true Saiyan, Chayote almost missed the dumbass goofball she had to extract this current boy from.
She was not the one who has summoned Kakarot out of Son Goku but she liked to think that she played a part in that.
"Raditz will only remain here on Earth for a day. That's about as long as my magic can keep them here on Earth. Obviously, summoning his true strength requires some of my magic too so if he lets loose too bad… His return might not last for even that one day." Baba smirked. Chayote could see it, while Baba was not too certain about that last part, judging from her tone, the crone had not the smallest doubt in her mind that if someone might have made that a factor – it was a true Saiyan such as Raditz.
"Oh well… At least Goku can still talk to his brother the next time he comes back. But if they don't make up, Raditz might not want to come back again…" Upa scratched his tummy with worried eyes.
"Heh… I might as well start teaching you this now but… There are rules to this universe. Rules that are not to be broken because they cannot be bent or broken but because there are those that watch over them who aren't pleasant to deal with. A lot of figures up there don't feel too excited about me just bringing people back to life, even if it is just for one day. The deal we've reached with those figures is that I only bring people back once." Baba explained. Chayote glanced back, using half of her attention to keep track of the conversation just because of how greatly it evaluated the Free Return Ticket.
Goku and Raditz stepped onto the round stage and took their positions at the other end of the arena. Goku adopted his usual, grumpy yet cool, completely open yet not an inch left undefended stance whereas Raditz just crossed his arms over his chest and flapped his tail about, sneering at Goku as if imagining all the gruesome ways he would beat his brother down with.
"What do you think? Could you beat him?" Fortuneteller Baba leaned closer to Chayote.
"Until they clash with full power, I won't be able to tell." Chayote shrugged.
"So green…" Baba shook her head. "We'll have to change all of that. My brother was always so proud of his own students. It's time I leave him in the dust!"
"Come on then, Kakarot! The sooner we start, the sooner I can get to my satisfaction!" Raditz grimaced while clutching his fist in front of him and wrapping his tail around his waist.
"Not yet. Fortuneseller Baba still hasn't said go." Goku replied without losing an ounce of his cool.
"It's Fortuneteller!" Baba shook her fist up while yelling loud and hard enough to almost fall off her floating crystal ball. "Also, you may begin."
Raditz charged just as the final dot emphasized the end of Baba's declaration. Goku raised his hand up and blocked his opponent's charge that intended to hit him square in the head and stun him. A hit in the head from one's forearm was dangerous and powerful but it was far too reckless to use it so early in a fight when the enemy had every bit of their perception intact. A shockwave spread from the point of collision with the two young Saiyans gritting their teeth and clashing in a struggle of strength.
"He's fast and strong." Chayote noted. "The way I arrived here on Earth, without any martial arts training, I'd have struggled against him."
"Do you think Goku can win then?" Baba turned to Chayote as the two Saiyans grunted and yelled at each other, neither one surrendering their quest to overpower the other.
"I don't think he's as strong or as fast, but he knows far more about martial arts. If Kakarot plays Raditz's game, he's done for, if he forces Raditz to play his – he'll win for sure." Chayote smirked, she had seen a similar scenario run down multiple times in the World Martial Arts Tournament she participated in with the other participants who were far more skilled than her but failed to compare in might.
Goku let Raditz win the struggle by suddenly halting his resistance and then falling backward, once Raditz lost his balance, he kicked his brother up into the air, taking almost no time to pursue Raditz as well. The older Saiyan sibling extended his hands downward, unleashing a downpour of Ki blasts that whited out the entire surrounding in their intense glow. Goku blitzed around them, almost as if he knew where and when each blast would come at him as he turned in mid-air without any flying skill to aid him just fast and precise enough to dodge the tiny blasts. Goku's head dug deep into Raditz's gut making the elder brother groan in pain and white-out momentarily.
"Ka… Me!" Goku cupped his hands by his sides as the two brothers resumed their free-fall after reaching the highest point in the sky. It was a reckless idea to try and blast Raditz with a Kamehameha point-blank but at least he had the benefit of leaving the enemy dazed for a blink. This was the only way he'd land anything this cumbersome and powerful on somebody ahead of him in terms of speed.
"Ha-Me! HA!" Goku extended his hands, blasting Raditz with a beam of white and blue energy. Vision only returned back to Raditz's eyes at the very last second, just enough for a simple blocking attempt but nowhere near what would have been necessary to avoid the blast or otherwise deal with it. Goku had learned a lot about fighting stronger and faster opponents after training with Chayote for so long.
With minor cracks on his armor and bruises over his exposed arms and thighs, Raditz landed back down and broke his blocking stance. This was the inevitable reality of being outmatched – you may have pulled off a clever move or two, but you'd only succeed in reducing the gap between you and the enemy and not pulverizing them as one might normally beat a lesser foe.
"Heh… I've no idea how this puny planet could have gotten you this far. I've underestimated you, Kakarot." Raditz smirked, even after taking a point-blank Kamehameha he still maintained his act as the smug and superior older sibling. "However, whereas you're just a lucky prodigy, I, on the other hand, am a Saiyan Elite!"
Raditz blurred and disappeared. Goku lost his cool, he broke his stance because the speed of his opponent caught him completely by surprise. With a crushing elbow strike, the older Saiyan brother appeared behind his younger sibling and sent him down. Goku's cry of pain and broken expression made Upa run up to the stage and lean against it, the little shrimp thought of waltzing right onto it and getting all up in Raditz's face but the mean and murderous look of the enemy froze the boy in his tracks.
"He could have eliminated Kakarot like that…" Chayote mumbled. "If he attacked him upfront, hit him straight in the jaw or the chest, sent him flying. That's not what Raditz is here for, however. He's not going to eliminate Kakarot, he's going to kill him, one punch at a time."
"Does it bother you?" Baba looked at Chayote with an intrigued look, her lower lip hanging and her few remaining bottom teeth exposed.
"It does. I've invested too much time into Kakarot to lose him, especially to a nobody who's going to back to being dead after killing him. Kakarot is a treasured asset of mine, he's not much, but he's all I've got." Chayote gulped. She now knew how Goku's band of pals felt when watching him fight, worried but powerless to help him. She didn't like it one bit.
"Tsk… Don't you dare pass out just yet, Kakarot! You've not suffered nearly enough to make-up for getting your brother killed!" Raditz grunted and extended his hand forward, his Ki traveled differently now, invisible and much slower but it manifested in a thunderous blast that blew bits and pieces of the arena underneath Goku while sending the seemingly unconscious boy up from the shockwave.
Using the fact that his brother was in his eye-level now, Raditz dashed behind Goku again and aimed to kick him in the back, just to bounce his little brother off of the stage floor like a football and prevent him from being ringed out by the shockwave throwing him off the arena. Chayote grunted in frustration, she could almost hear the bones in Goku's body churn and crack when his body bounced off of Raditz's foot and then off the floor again, firing off into the complete opposite direction like a skyward arrow.
Raditz dashed in and above his little brother with a double axehandle smash to send him crashing back down in a diving angle that would have smashed him into the ground and made him stay down and in his brother's mercy. The cruel intention of the vengeful brother went off without a hitch, Goku without uttering a word or even shouting in pain smashed into a hole of his own making, sending bits of the tiles and dirt flying off into all directions.
"Shit… I hope I didn't crash him deep enough for a ring out, did I?" Raditz glared at Baba. Everybody knew this was a rhetorical question, Raditz would keep fighting regardless of the answer.
"He listens to you?" Chayote raised an eyebrow, feeling impressed by her future teacher.
"He has no choice. It is my magic that keeps him here for the moment. He hates my guts for sure, as he does for most things and people, but right now I'm the only key for his much-desired revenge." Baba chuckled into her tiny and wrinkled hands.
Raditz permitted himself the distraction of sneering at Baba, imagining thousands of painful ways he could end the old crone but knowing full-well that if he was to continue his revenge and then have a tolerable afterlife, he'd never let any of those daydreams come true.
"Damn…" Goku grunted and rubbed the top of his head while he scrounged himself back on his buttocks and did his best to regain a sense of balance. His gi was torn in places and dirtied, his hair hung limply by his side while the areas of exposed skin such as his arms and his face bled and gleamed with bruises.
Despite the damaged state of the boy, Chayote felt relief when he picked himself up. Even Raditz had to pay some respects. In his own, Saiyan kind of way. The older brother stood proud with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, chin raised high but he was not fooling anybody about the fact that he did feel an ounce of respect for his brother for taking this punishment and standing back up.
"Well, well… I guess you're not as useless as I've thought. Tell me though, Kakarot, with this power level you should have conquered this planet long ago, what gives!?" Raditz confronted his brother.
"Because I like it here, because all of my friends live here." Goku dragged his fist over his lower jaw and took a fighting stance.
"Friends? You've made allies alongside Earthlings?" Raditz thundered out with laughter. Just in that one moment of hilarity, all traces of murderous intent behind him faded away. The moment of joy could not have lasted any shorter, however.
"What's so funny about that!?" Goku growled out.
"Of course, conquering the Earth was not why our father sent you here but you could not have known that. For all you knew, your Saiyan nature should have taken over and you should have taken charge of this planet. You shouldn't have been able to help it – you're a Saiyan, it's in your blood. Someone strong must have hit you in the head when you were a child. I can't help but laugh imagining you as a toddler getting your shit kicked in by what amounts as a warrior by Earthling standards." Raditz did his best to calm himself while explaining it.
Chayote bit her lip. She wanted to advise Goku to grab Raditz's tail and then beat him senseless or fling him out of the ring and then have Baba deal with his temper tantrum. However, Raditz was much stronger and faster than Goku, that much was certain. If she said it to Goku out loud, Raditz might get the right idea as well. While grabbing the tail of another Saiyan would be considered fighting dirty by Saiyan standards, Raditz was not here for a clean and fun fight, he was here to punish Goku for a reckless mistake he himself made.
"Old lady, can you talk in people's minds like Muten Roshi?" Chayote looked at Baba.
"It isn't an ability I use too often but I can, yes." Baba stroke her chin.
"I need you to relay something to Kakarot." Chayote nodded her head, prompting the old woman to read her mind. Baba's stare turned sharper and she chuckled. Just like somebody that would have known what Chayote was thinking about would have laughed out.
"Okay… I will do that. I might be helping the enemy here but, truth be told, seeing this Raditz peeing his pants a little bit might be worth it." Baba cringed into her hand before composing herself and glaring at Goku. The contact went through, for a second the two remained perfectly frozen but then Goku glared back at the fortune-teller and sent her fumbling back and very nearly slipping off her floating crystal ball.
"H-He said he won't do something like that. He's going to fight fair." Baba explained while climbing back onto the crystal ball, Upa helped her by pushing her back up by her bottom. "Thank you, young man." Baba nodded in gratitude.
Goku spread his legs out as wide as his shoulders and pressed his hands by his sides. The wind picked up in the surrounding area, breaking around an invisible barrier shaped as a perfect sphere around Goku. Even if she could not sense Ki in a confident manner, other than an unnatural sixth sense that most martial artists possessed, Chayote could swear she saw Goku shimmer with Ki he was bursting with.
"Wh-What insane power!" Baba grabbed her cheeks. "To think that this boy has been holding back this whole time!"
"He was?" Chayote turned to Goku looking baffled.
"I'm done fighting for sport, I'm using my real power now!" Goku declared to Raditz.
"Hmph, interesting, come," Raditz smirked. His tail took off of his waist and began waggling behind him.
Goku leaped at his opponent, covering the distance between them in a flash. Raditz put up his hands and blocked his brother's dashing elbow strike but Goku took a plunge down and swept at Raditz's legs by using his arm for support. Having lost his sense of balance, Raditz slipped up, at which point Goku pushed his body off of the ground, repurposing his supporting hand for a good push and kicked his opponent up by jolting his opponent square in the lower back.
The Saiyan boy switched stances and dashed in pursuit of his opponent but Raditz recovered faster than Goku counted on and bashed his brother back down with another double ax handle slam. In mid-air, Raditz extended both of his hands out and charged up two purple energy spheres, firing one of the spheres as an energy wave at Goku. Once Goku resolved to block it, Raditz aimed the other one and unleashed it as well.
"Kakarot!" Chayote yelled out, leaning over the stage, ready to engage Raditz herself but the sight of Upa doing the same by her side broke the flashes of red in her eyes and returned her to reality. Seeing something madder than she was in that moment – a puny Earthling boy running at Raditz gave her a strong boot back down. Chayote grabbed Upa and pulled him off the stage while he bashed about in her grip.
"What's wrong with you!? We need to help him!" Upa kept crying out.
"We can't. He might not have lost yet. He'd never forgive us if we interfered and made him lose." Chayote put Upa down and bent to his level to look him in the eyes.
"That ticket… Is it really this important? Is it really worth all of this?" Upa shook his head, sniffling.
"Honestly, not really." Chayote smiled. Seeing how Upa blanked out and took a step back horrified she went on. "Although this has long since stopped being about that. Raditz wants to beat Kakarot down to an inch of his life, Kakarot doesn't want to lose to him. They're just two warriors fighting each other, there's no purpose in their minds other than this fight itself but to a Saiyan that's the greatest purpose there is."
As the smoke cleared, Goku's grunts informed the bystanders that the darker figure in the clouds of picked up dust was indeed him. The Saiyan boy had managed to catch himself in mid-fall and prevent a ring-out by grabbing the edge of the ring with his teeth. The top of his gi was blown off and in tatters, his mouth and his face were busted open but Goku kept wriggling and struggled back into the ring. He might not have had enough strength to go after Raditz immediately, only managing to stretch himself out by the edge of the ring and huff at the sky, but he was still in the game and that was enough.
What was not enough, apparently, was Goku's full power. While the fact that Goku was holding some of his power back the whole time, fighting for the sportsmanship of it and not in the kill or be killed mode that fighting deserved to be taken as. The additional power-up only barely reduced the difference between him and Raditz. It was no miracle power-up that the supporting cast had expected it to be.
"Kakarot…" Chayote mumbled. She did not envy the boy's situation, he had thrown everything he had at his brother and found himself lacking still. All hope was not yet lost, all it would have taken was one unorthodox martial arts trick and he might have pulled off a cheap blow or ringed Raditz out but… "This is the fight that will close the gap between us, I'm sure…" Chayote smirked.
A challenge like this was exactly what she was craving for this whole time. Seeing Goku claw and bite his way through the fight, brought to his very limits made Chayote shiver, imagining the might he'd rise to after such a battle. Seeing Goku writhe and pick himself up off the ground, preparing to continue and end this battle between brothers made Chayote wonder if he perhaps knew it too, or if this was all instinct. Was he thinking about anything at this point or just letting his body do what it was born to do.