"We are beginning our final descent to Durian Airport on Papaya Island, the site of this year's 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament. Please, fasten your seatbelts."
"That would be very difficult if Bulma didn't undo the effects of the Micro Band and make you normal-sized, huh?" Oolong raised his voice and leaned in over Bulma's chest so that Muten Roshi, who sat on the right row parallel to where Oolong and Bulma sat on the plane to Papaya Island, could hear him.
"Silence, you miscreant!" Muten Roshi threw slobber from his mouth over his vocal objection. He now tended to enjoy speaking from the bottom of his chest since everybody around him could hear him again. The man had spent an uncomfortable to him amount of time as a microscopic-sized dwarf and, frankly, had it not been for his unnatural strength and martial arts abilities, he'd not have lasted any longer that way.
"Stewardess-chan, could you please show me to the nearest toilet?" Muten Roshi leaned up to the passing flight attendant.
"I-I'm very sorry, sir. We'll be landing momentarily if you could just wait a little bit longer…" The woman appeared worked up over the fact that the elder held all this way to here and now just had to go when the plane was about to land.
"I'll see what I can do, but land quick!" Roshi yelled out and pressed his hands to his sides as if he was building up his Ki for a massive attack but, more honestly, he was keeping one at bay.
"Well… He might be back to normal-size, but he's still a filthy old shrimp…" Bulma sighed in disappointment over the old man's behavior, doing her best to cover herself up and try to distance herself from the grunting old man beside her.
"The registration's almost over…" Oolong pressed his knuckles to his hips. "Where the hell is everyone?"
"The other fighters are all registering so we didn't get the date wrong. What's keeping Yamcha-san so long?" Puar hummed out in worry.
"Maybe they all forgot the date? Time flies when you're out in the wild…" Muten Roshi wondered with a solemn face. He had returned from his bathroom break just a few moments ago and he already was back to his old, embarrassment-inducing ways.
"Not that you would know…" Umegame found an opportunity to bite his cohabitant.
"I can't believe Yamcha just left you behind, Puar… You two seemed pretty tight. Partners in crime, one might say…" Oolong squinted, giving Puar a cheeky stare while reminding him of their common shady past.
"Oh, that Yamcha's gonna get it!" Bulma clenched her fists and grit her teeth in pure rage. "No matter what training he did and where, nothing's gonna save him from what I'll do to him after I got him a position to train with Muten Roshi with the hope of hanging out with him more and having him just ditch me on the island like that!"
"Hmmm… I wonder… Maybe they've become so fast that they are in no rush to get here?" Muten Roshi looked up into the sky. "I can't wait to see how far they've walked on their own and how they'll impress us by getting here on time…"
A short yet plump hunk of yellow steel on wheels with a taxi sign on top and a pair of checkered logos all over its sides hauled in a sudden stop. The door burst open, letting a pair out. A tall man with long, dark hair hanging in a ponytail with a face covered with a handful of scars and a bald young teen. Both wore complete rags and completed their looks with straw hats.
"Jeez, man… I can't believe you got lost in the town you work in!" Krillin complained to the cab driver.
"Sorry, sorry… Tell ya what, I'll take half off of your pay?" the cab driver laughed with an apologetic expression.
"Really!? That's great! Yamcha, go get someone to pay the man!" Krillin turned to his friend with a gleaming smile.
"Wh-What do you mean, don't you have any money?" the cab driver flipped out. "Why did you even take the taxi then!?"
"Sorry, man… I figured that someone of my friends would pay. It was pretty lucky of me to bump into Yamcha too, this way we both can get covered…" Krillin stroke the back of his head with a blush that he tried to hide by lowering the front of his conical straw hat over his face.
"Like hell I'll pay!" Bulma roared from across the street after Yamcha approached her.
"That's just fine…" blond Launch cocked her gun. "I'll handle it…"
As the blonde with an oversized handgun approached the taxi to see if the cab driver takes payment by 50AE, the taxi jumpstarted and darted off and out of sight. The driver had better instincts than to let the rabble-rouser approach his vehicle. While he did appear embarrassed by the way he got out of the social and economic predicament, Krillin nodded and thanked Launch nevertheless.
"It's refreshing to see Launch-san aim her gun at somebody else for a change…" he joked.
"B-But Bulma! I had to leave, my pride as a martial artist was on the line. If I didn't leave, Krillin, Goku, and Chayote would have left me completely in the dust and I couldn't tell you because you'd have never let me leave…" Yamcha tried pleading for his case but Bulma didn't look like she was about to have any of it. With a shriveled and twisted expression of hellish scorn, the young woman just stared anywhere but at the direction Yamcha stood in.
Then, without saying anything but letting a sigh leave her chest, the inventor just left all by herself, heading toward the inner area of the tournament temple filled with casual activities one could have enjoyed while they waited for the preliminaries to conclude.
"Man… You lucked out. These past three years she just couldn't shut up about how she'd kick your ass when she saw you," Oolong snickered.
"I… I think I'd rather take her being angry with me. That I know, that I can handle…" Yamcha looked on ahead at the direction where he last saw Bulma leave in while he sighed and stared at his uneasy feet.
"This place… Sure takes 'ya back, doesn't it?" Krillin smirked, trying to lift Yamcha's spirits back up.
"Stop dilly-dallying you two!" Muten Roshi scolded his pupils, "You haven't registered yet!"
"Oh… Right…" Krillin rushed on to the registry table, Yamcha approached not too far behind, providing his name to the registry of participants as well.
"By the way… Can you check the registry for a "Son Goku" or "Chayote"?" Yamcha wondered.
"Nope," the monk shook his head.
"You can't? Why not?" Krillin raised a suspicious eyebrow.
"He meant they've not registered yet, Krillin," Yamcha explained.
"Those two… The registrations are about to close…" Krillin groaned.
"So… Did you find it? The Korin Tower?" Muten Roshi wondered.
"Not at first. For the first year we trained separately, it seemed like we both had the same idea…" Yamcha nodded with a smile. "It took us a handful of weeks each to catch Korin-sama, then the real training started…"
"Hmmm… Half a mil, huh?" Launch looked around like she was scoping the joint for the big job. "Maybe I should enter too this year?"
"You know they don't allow guns, Launch." Oolong pointed out.
"Only a few minutes left…" Yamcha looked at a large clock in the center of the inner square, somewhat visible from out in the yard.
"Hmmm… Don't worry, they'll get here. If what Chayote told us about Saiyans is true, those two would never miss a chance for a good brawl…" Muten Roshi cleared his throat from a fit of coughing he got.
After a distinctive pop, a gumball-sized white orb appeared that then became softer and goopier, as if some supernatural, invisible force was chewing it. The gumball then expanded into a massive blob, unveiling an old lady on a crystal ball with a traditional witch's attire, a native boy carrying a pair of tomahawks on his back and a young woman in a tight, blue jumpsuit that was intended to cover her entire body but had chunks ripped out of it to comprise an entire outfit.
"There, got you here just in time, kid." Baba turned to Chayote with her signature, viper-like, penetrating glare.
"You'd better have…" Chayote replied with a flair of cool that was unusual for her. While her all-around attitude had remained its old, trademarked, rude same, her tone had changed from the very fundamentals. At a slow and almost lazy pace, the Saiyan approached the registration stand.
"Hey, Upa, my name's Krillin and this is Yamcha." Krillin pointed at Yamcha with his thumb, addressing the native boy almost the same size as him.
"Do we know each other?" Upa wondered. His voice had grown a tad huskier as well in the last three years, both as a natural effect of the boy's budding maturity as well as his growing confidence as Fortuneteller Baba's assistant in her mystical dealings.
"We've met your father, Bora. He wouldn't let us scale the Korin Tower until we bested him." Yamcha laughed out. "That test made me feel glad I've trained hard on my own for a year before challenging him…"
"Hey, old man, you're back at full-size…" Chayote stated after returning from the registration stand to the crowd of her acquaintances.
"Uh-huh, Bulma finally decided to start working on the solution last year… She says that she felt like it was her responsibility since it was her Micro-Band that caused this but she enjoyed punishing me that way, I bet, that blue she-devil!" Muten Roshi clenched his fists before placing them to his cheeks and shaking his blushed head. "Oh, who am I kidding, I can't be mad at a gal as Pichi-Pichi as that… Speaking of Pichi-Pichi…"
Chayote did not need to move. While the old man's seemingly supernatural age of consent radar tipped him off in the right direction, her very aura froze Roshi on his feet.
"Bulma might have some formidable ferocity, but she's not the blue she-devil in this part of the galaxy…" the teen Saiyan stated calmly, accentuating her uncanny growth in strength and skill that needed no further hyping up.
"Hmmm… Bora said you left the Sacred Land of Korin with Goku… I'm surprised you two haven't arrived here together…" Krillin complained at the Saiyan. Chayote gave Baba a mean look while the old crone paled out.
"Oh shit!" she cursed grabbing the Ghost Usher by its protoplasmic body and beginning to mangle and blobberize him again so that he took her to the Otherworld at once.
"I can't believe she forgot…" Chayote shook her head in disappointment that felt all too familiar inside. One that she had felt repeatedly over the three years of training despite feeling a moderate amount of respect for her mentor.
"Well, well… If it isn't the monster of martial arts Baba warned us about! I am Tenshinhan and I will be the one to slay you for the dishonor you've caused for the Crane School by killing Taopaipai-san as well as to push myself as a martial artist!" a resonating and strong masculine voice reached Chayote's ears prompting her to look behind her. She had felt a burning presence this entire time but in a crowd of mighty martial artists, there was nothing unusual in that alone. Besides, the man's own power was nowhere near unleashed.
"Oh, I imagine you're the remarkable martial artist that was supposed to challenge me in the tournament? It seems like Baba-san kept both of us intrigued, that old puppeteer… My name's Chayote, I'm a Saiyan from Planet Vegeta." Chayote smiled at the man who looked far too poisoned on a more guttural level to share the sentiment with the Saiyan in front of him.
"What was that?" Tenshinhan grunted, raising his fist out in front of him. Chayote could sense the inner struggle that was meant to keep the reserved power away from erupting from within Tenshinhan. "Are you saying we've been played?"
"No, I did kill Taopaipai. It's just quite funny because I would have long left this planet had it not been for you. Baba kept me here with the promise of you entertaining me." Chayote couldn't help but smirk. She realized that this was not something Earthlings would have found proper – wearing a smile when admitting one had killed someone's martial arts master but the irony of it all did not let the pressure up. "What's odd is that you're placing much more emphasis on the worth of martial arts and pride than your master, had you not told me Taopaipai was your master, I'd have never guessed…"
"You…!" Tenshinhan grit his teeth, a vein popped out on his forehead while he ground his teeth together. The tiny ghoul beside him grabbed the miffed martial artist by his thigh and pulled on it, directing Tenshinhan to the registration and then into the inner halls of the tournament building.
"What was that all about?" Krillin looked at Chayote with a frightened look on his face. His strength was formidable, it dwarfed that of the Krillin Chayote had last seen. And yet Tenshinhan with most of his power completely suppressed under barriers only achievable through rigorous meditation had managed to frighten him.
"That uniform…" Muten Roshi stroke his beard. "I could have sworn it belonged to… But they did not wear his kanji…"
"Do you know them, Roshi?" Chayote turned to the old-timer.
"Not them specifically, no, the uniform they wore, it looked identical to the Crane School uniform. They spoke of it too… In that case, where could the Tsuru Sennin be? Could he have perhaps abandoned his martial arts training, grown old and died, I wonder?" Muten Roshi continued to mumble to himself. "No, I don't think that's it. Hearts as dark as the Tsuru Sennin's do not abandon their shadows by themselves."
"So then Tenshinhan and his ghoulish friend left their mentor behind? How strong was this Tsuru Sennin?" Chayote wondered.
"We were rivals during our youth. He bickered constantly with Taopaipai, I've heard, so he must have been at least strong enough to not get killed by his brother." Muten Roshi replied.
"In that case, it makes perfect sense." Chayote shrugged, "The pair abandoned their old master because he was holding them back. There was nothing a weakling like that could have taught them anyway, right? Their power at the moment, even if I have only sensed a snippet is nothing like any other Earthling I've faced."
"Hoh, so my sister has taught you to sense Ki then?" Muten Roshi looked up at Chayote who stared blankly at the main hall of the tournament.
"Devil Man and Baba did. Devil Man claimed that letting the enemy beat on me to determine their strength was a stupid fighting style so it was one of the first things he taught me." Chayote answered.
"D-Devil Man!? You've trained with Devil Man!?" Muten Roshi dropped his jaw before doing his best to regain his composure.
"Sure." Chayote closed her eyes and nodded.
"That guy… Do you think you can beat him? I've never seen Chayote this impressed by someone's raw strength." Yamcha asked with a hint of respectful fright in his own voice too.
"I don't know for certain. It depends on how much power he has sealed away. My power level is certainly dwarfing his but… If his martial arts prowess is as peerless as Baba claimed, well… I've long since stopped gauging the potential of Earthlings by their power level alone." Chayote shrugged. "One thing's for certain, no matter how powerful this man and his desire for vengeance is, he will not defeat Kakarot."
"Kakarot?" Krillin scratched his bald head.
"That's my other name, apparently!" Goku's voice boomed from the sides as the Saiyan youth emerged from the blobby sphere of protoplasm. "It's the name Chayote and Raditz, my brother, calls me. I don't think I like it though, please just call me Goku…"
"Other name? You mean your Saiyan name, your original name?" Muten Roshi wondered.
"Yeah. Anyways, how have you guys been? Wow! Yamcha and Krillin, you two have improved so much!" a smile that would have brightened the cloudy skies decorated Goku's face. No matter how somber Chayote's own attitude towards the future felt, even she had to smirk when seeing the scene of the old friends' reunion.
"You've grown so much, Goku!" Yamcha commended the teen who measured himself with his hand by extending it from his head above the air and tried to determine if that was much or not.
"Come on, Yamcha, I've grown too!" Krillin pouted his lips.
"Sorry, sorry… It's just that I didn't notice it with the two of us training together…" Yamcha laughed out.
"You two trained together? Where? At the old-timer's place?" Goku wondered. It took no time at all for Chayote to notice the boy's tail. Without a doubt, he had hardened it as it was his grandfather who advised Goku to harden it and the boy did spend three years training with him.
"No way, we trained with Korin-san himself!" Krillin bragged with a smug look on his face. "Aced his training, if I can say so myself…"
The grown baldy received a prompt smack over his head from his martial arts master and cried out in pain. "It's not the proper way of martial arts to brag about one's strength needlessly! It's something Tsuru Sennin might teach you, I won't stand for it myself. You may be Korin-san's pupils, but you are still mine as well."
"As arrogant as Krillin made it sound…" Yamcha pulled out a pair of dangling bells from his inner pocket. "Korin-san did give us these as a sign of worthiness. He said to not lose it and that we'd know what to do with these eventually…"
"Wow!" Goku hunched up and leaned forward and closer to the bells. "He gave me those too! Chayote said Korin didn't give her any bells though…"
"Announce it to the whole world, why won't you?" Chayote looked aside feeling embarrassment brimming in her cheeks with pulsing heat.
"So wait, you've trained with Korin-san too? But, in that case, where did you spend the last three years?" Krillin wondered, counting something on his fingers as if something in the story didn't add up.
"Huh? Oh, I trained with my grandpa in the Differentland…" Goku replied as if it was nothing unusual at all.
"Differentland?" Yamcha wondered.
"He means the Otherworld. It's where everyone who's dead goes after death." Chayote explained.
"Wha!? You trained in the Otherworld!?" Krillin freaked out, clearly, he had thought that his own training, as well as Yamcha's, was the hottest story of the three-year-break.
"With my grandpa, yes." Goku chuckled at everyone's surprise. "Say… Where's Bulma?"
"She already moved on ahead," Puar waggled his tail.
"What!? Bulma died!?" Goku lost his composure, jumping up at Puar and grabbing the poor thing by its shoulders. The youth had underestimated his grown size, speed, and strength as he easily wrestled the poor cat down on the ground. "Tell me what happened, when did she die!?"
"You idiot, he meant that Bulma went on ahead to the main hall. She and Yamcha clearly just had a falling out because he abandoned her to train." Chayote explained to her clueless fellow Saiyan. "Which is a stupid reason if you ask me, but that's what you get for not keeping a tighter hold on your woman, Yamcha."
"Should we even ask about what the Saiyan courtship is like?" Krillin joked. "I have a feeling we'd rather not…"
"I'd like to know!" Oolong raised his finger with an interjection but the party moving on ahead into the inner halls shut him out. It was just in time as well as the speakers announced the beginning of the tournament soon enough.
"All contestants, we will ask for some of your attention, please. The preliminaries of the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament will now commence. Please make your way to the gymnasium, if you will ~ !"
Author's Note: Hey, occasional reader, I've been thinking about increasing my rate of writing, one chapter each week just doesn't really do it for me since the rate slowed down after my summer vacation ended and I've slowed it down until I can find a new rhythm for things. Sadly, I've been having some mild mood slumps lately so the writing rate increase might not be immediate... Really hope I can get things in order and put out more writing!