Chi-Chi's approach to her clash with Demon King Shura was entirely different from how she confronted Sansho. The moment that the announcer declared the start of the match she vanished, only to appear above the tournament temple level with a dive kick arrowing toward the Demon King. This was her knowledge that she was not capable of beating the opponent and bet only on causing him as much trouble and bleeding out as much of his stamina and Ki as possible talking.
Shura wound his fist back and threw it, coils of air solidifying in mystical energy surrounded his arm and released a shockwave of brute force at Chi-Chi which threw the martial artist back. Chi-Chi cried out in pain as the shockwave hit her in mid-air but she corrected her destination before she could fly out of bounds and forced a landing on the edge of the arena, teetering on it with the entire back halves of her feet before stepping back in.
The young woman clutched her sides and winced in pain. She had spent a fair deal of stamina already fighting Sansho, that was before she chose to challenge an opponent she had no chance of beating even at her best. None of that frightened Chi-Chi, the moment she got used to the pain and pressure, her lips tipped upward and she slid her feet closer toward her opponent. Every bit of energy she made her enemy waste on her was an advantage on the part of her husband and their friends.
Shura charged onward, he did not appear to be enjoying this clash anywhere as much as one would have thought a demon, a being of violence and bloodshed, to be. Shura appeared to call out for a fair and challenging fight, a clash between equals and took little to no enjoyment in testing himself against a partly tired young woman who was never on his league, to begin with.
The human did not answer Shura's assault in kind, she charged on to meet him, the two exchanged blows, scooping and punching through thin air as they manipulated their bodies to evade the opponent's strike at the same time as they delivered their own offensive. The two danced around each other for a couple of series, burrowing through flurries of missed or blocked strikes before Chi-Chi took offensive and Shura adopted a retreating position, deflecting her strikes.
"She's amazing! She's pressing on the Demon King himself!" Krillin exclaimed in surprise.
"I guess the Ox-King had his kid iron out her martial arts skills…" Yamcha crossed his arms, feeling proud of the young woman he once met as just a whiny young girl.
"She's not gaining much in that assault. The opponent is deflecting every strike, she's running through her stamina. Eventually, Shura will find an opening…" Tenshinhan panted through shortness of breath. Chayote turned at him a bit confused as to why the three-eyed martial artist was this worn out. True, he did employ the Mafuba against Garlick Jr. after Chayote devastated his physical body to ruin by decaying it with her Devil Mite Beam but she could distinctly recall Tenshinhan taking the Senzu.
Then again, maybe he didn't? Chayote wasn't keeping close attention to this tournament or what everyone was doing lately. Her own internal issues kept drawing her in.
Tenshinhan's prediction found itself coming to life as jets of invisible gusts of Ki enveloped Shura's left arm, making the Demon King a bit short-handed in having to fend Chi-Chi off with just one hand for a moment. Using his Demon Spiral Fist, Shura thrust his empowered arm toward the ground, unleashing the turbulent rings of energy beneath him and having them surround his entire body as he surrendered himself to their momentum, throwing out a spinning kick while he rode the spiraling outburst of his own Ki.
The kick hit Chi-Chi across the chest, blanking out her focused stare for a second and opening her up for a counter-attack. Exploiting the opening he had just made, Shura made sure to beat the young woman down relentlessly, employing all of his martial art skill that surpassed even the impressive technical mastery of his opponent, employing all of his limbs at once.
The kicks of the Demon King were precise and his move economy was perfect, just when it seemed that his overwhelmed opponent would regain her composure and begin resisting, a push kick to her core drove all air out of her lungs and seemingly broke as much of her spirit as it did shock her body. Before the one-sided beat down would begin seeming monotonous and started to look more like torture, Shura winded up his Demon Spiral Fist with his left arm again as he left the punishment to his kicks. Riding the stream of his demonic spirals, Shura delivered a spinning elbow strike to the side of Chi-Chi's head, seemingly turning her off.
With whited out eyes and a helpless expression, the young woman collapsed on her front. Riding the remains of his Demon Spiral Fist, Shura retreated a few paces back only to press his hands together in something resembling a prayer though what demonic chants the Demon King was mumbling under his nose was unclear due to the unintelligible volume and a mysterious language that he spoke in.
The demonic horde watching from the sidelines began acting out unruly. Throwing their frightening claws pumping in the air and roaring as they began pushing the humans by their side about. While neither Bulma, Launch, the pair of shapeshifters nor Muten Roshi felt comfortable in this vigorous support for the direction of the tournament, they remained composed so to not to trigger a full-out war with the army of demons watching from the sidelines.
"Oh no! Contestant Chi-Chi seems to be down!" the announcer yelled out responding to Shura's strict glare he put his arm up, raising fingers as he counted, adding another finger pointing to the sky with each pair of numbers he counted to.
"One, two!" he began.
Goku ground his teeth but continued to observe the fight from the side. He didn't like the match one bit though Chayote could understand what he felt. Shura did not necessarily deserve backlash from his part, the Saiyan could feel her peer wishing to charge onto the ring and demolish the Demon King but so far the enemy had only done what was expected of him. He just participated in the tournament and, in fact, neither took pleasure nor wished to prolong this match. While this wouldn't have stopped Chayote from killing him, she'd spent enough time around the oaf to know it would prevent him from lashing out.
"Three! Four!" the announcer continued with the count while Chi-Chi showed no signs of life. A puny signature of Ki still rustled inside of her though it was just a meaningless, simmering lick of flames compared to the raging fire she gave out before. "Five! Six!"
It was a bad idea for her to challenge the Demon King. She barely even left a dent in his stamina, not in a way that deserved such a devotion to a hopeless match. If martial arts were a sort of currency in a figurative economy, Chi-Chi had spent far too much for a good way too cheap to acquire under normal means. What she had achieved so far was make the Demon King expend about the same amount of strength as he would have during a warm-up, though he did show off his fighting style some which might have been enough to give a decent martial artist a slight advantage.
Was it truly worth being battered and bruised for though?
"Seven…!" the announcer counted out before stopping as Chi-Chi twitched and pulled her face off the ground. She shook like a leaf, her muscles twitched and seemed to be ready to give out at any inch of her rise to action but she stood back up on her feet and took her fighting stance again. It was shoddy, uneasy but she declared her intent to continue.
"That's enough, Chi-Chi!" Goku yelled out. "I've seen Shura's fighting style, Tenshinhan saw it too! We can take it from here!"
"Wake up, Goku-sa, sense Tenshinhan's Ki…" Chi-Chi panted with something heavy pressing at her chest. It was more than likely that she had more than a few ribs busted and struggled to breathe without causing ripples of pain all across her body. It was a pain all too familiar to Chayote though one that caused a painful surge of memories harking back to her eternity restrained and tortured by Lord Slug's Clan.
So it wasn't just Chayote's delusion. Something was wrong with Tenshinhan. His Ki never truly recovered from after he used the Mafuba even though he took a Senzu. The rest of the Dragon Team all looked at Tenshinhan who looked like he wanted to calm them down but had no words to do so as the pitiful state of his stamina and remaining strength betrayed him. Tenshinhan was in no state to fight.
"What happened? I thought Tenshinhan took that magical bean!" Launch gasped while struggling to stay on her feet against a rude and over-reaching demon.
The demonling made a handful of her blue hair brush against the shapeshifter's nose, prompting a sneeze and a transformation. Upon taking her more outgoing and violent form, Launch began firing on the demons and snapping back at them with vicious elbow slams that made them cower back some though they showed their fangs and claws at the recovering group of humans from a safer distance.
"The nature of Mafuba is that it leaves more than just physical damage to one's body. It is a mystical sealing technique that comes down to sapping one's life force itself. That is not something that can just be dismissed by eating a Senzu, it seems," Muten Roshi replied. "I'm afraid that Tenshinhan might not be able to help us anymore in this tournament, if Chi-Chi falls, it's down to Goku as our last hope."
"So that's why Chi-Chi is putting her life on the line…" Bulma muttered, pressing her hand to her mouth while her eyes gleamed with worry.
"Hmph. You are battered and bruised. Your Ki is at its critical point. If we continue, I cannot guarantee that I will not kill you." Shura directed a strict stare at Chi-Chi who was reeling in pain. "There is only so much that someone of our strength can restrain ourselves, after all. Unless, of course, that is your plan, has been all along. To have me kill you and be disqualified from the tournament?"
"Don't get so full of yourself…" Chi-Chi panted. "I can't die here, I've still got a marriage to attend to and a family to create. I can't do that if I'm dead or if you and your disgusting lot rule over the world. Our children won't grow up in a world ruled over by ugly monsters like you, I won't let you scare them!"
Chi-Chi stumbled forward, by that point she was too injured to rely on the technical mastery of martial arts skill though Chayote noticed something curious in Chi-Chi's movements. Something oddly familiar. She stumbled around in an unpredictable manner, almost like a drunken person. Shura who prepared to exploit multiple opening he saw in Chi-Chi's form found himself on the back foot when he couldn't get a proper read on her movements. The Demon King growled in fury as he was forced to retreat into the air instead of clashing the fumbling mess of movement and risking getting tagged by this odd technique.
"Incredible! Chi-Chi is using the Drunken Fist! This is one technique I'm sure Ox-King wouldn't have shown her!" Muten Roshi exclaimed. "You have to know what being drunk feels like to perform the Drunken Fist, after all, and Ox-King is very strict on not letting his daughter drink."
"Huh… I guess Chi-Chi likens being beaten up and aching all over to what being drunk feels like…" Oolong pointed out.
"Enough! Demon Spiral Fist!" Shura growled while concentrating Ki into his right arm and forming a large coil of energy spiraling around it. The Demon King threw a punch up in the sky, releasing the pent up energy all at once with the spiral expanding and crushing all from up above. Chi-Chi opened her mouth wide but there seemed to be no air in the zone of the Demon Spiral Fist for her to scream, the young woman just collapsed lifeless into the pile of rubble that the arena got reduced into, her legs and arms sprawled out in an awkward angle which suggested multiple fractures all over.
"You!" the Demon King turned to Yajirobe, "Employ your healing magic on that woman at once! I have broken her body to where she would never be able to fight again and she would die soon enough but, if she does, it will be because of your hesitation to heal her and not my fault – I would not be disqualified because of that."
"No way I'm stepping in there!" Yajirobe extended his hand holding the Senzu to Krillin. "You wanna get yerself killed, be my guest!"
Krillin took the Senzu and dashed to Chi-Chi's lifeless body, slipping a bean into her mouth and moving her lower jaw for her to bite it before slipping it down her unresponsive throat. It took a few worrisome seconds but Chi-Chi opened her eyes and sat up. With Krillin's help, she stood back up and gave the floating Demon King an angry stare.
"You were not ready for me. Now begone, woman, I must repair the ring." Shura muttered.
"You did great, Chi-Chi," Krillin tried comforting the beaten comrade. "He really meant it with that last attack, he put a lot of his strength into that last one, you left a dent, Goku won't even break a sweat fighting that guy!"
"If only Yajirobe would man-up and fight!" Chi-Chi gave the lazy ronin a wayward stare but Yajirobe made sure to utilize the mouth hole in his Lucha mask to stick out his tongue.
"I'm sorry… I wasn't aware that the Senzu would not recover my fatigue from the Mafuba. It isn't fair to leave so much on your shoulders, Goku," Tenshinhan turned to Goku.
"No, to be fair, we could have all been more responsible. If all of us went all-out like Chi-Chi…" Krillin sighed.
"You'd have had us go bust with the Senzu. We've only got a pair of them left…" Yajirobe dangled an almost empty sash in front of everybody. "What's with everybody 'ere tryin' ta be heroes!?"
"You're all wrong!" a squeaky declaration came from Tenshinhan's right. "We're not all out of options yet! You're forgetting me, I will fight now!"
"Chiaotzu!?" Tenshinhan turned to his friend. "Are you sure, this is the Demon King we're talking about!"
"I can beat him! I can even leave a dent in Piccolo Jr. too! We don't have any other options here, we can't afford to be picky. The whole Earth is on the line!" Chiaotzu declared, clutching his tiny fists by his sides as he floated out in front of everyone and took his place on the edge of the recently repaired stage. "I've trained all this time alongside you, Ten-san, just as hard as you did! I can do this, I know that I can!"
"Chiaotzu…" Tenshinhan muttered. "You're right, you were always training with me. It was foolish of me to overlook you or to take you as some weak link of the group to be protected. You're strong, I should have known that most of all, as your friend. Forgive me, Chiaotzu, forgive me for overlooking you."
Chiaotzu nodded with a cute smile, his creepy vibe could have faded away in a blink whenever he showed more passion in his eyes than normal. In most cases, the little floating ghoul showed off absolutely no emotion but when he did, all he needed to do was feel and his eyes betrayed it all. Chiaotzu had changed a fair deal since when he challenged Goku three years earlier, the blank and emotionless look he used to always wear as a mask now only surfaced very rarely. Even now, when confronting the most challenging threat he had ever faced he viewed it not with apathy but with drive and determination to take it on and defeat it.
"You? The humans send you against me? I don't blame them for overlooking you, dwarf. You do look quite meek, I'd have confused you for a demon yourself if you didn't stand on the other side of the arena," the Demon King taunted Chiaotzu as he descended on to the other side of the ring and crossed his arms over his chest, preparing to take on his unexpected challenger.
"Oh! What an unexpected development! The human team thought that they only had one challenger remaining when, in fact, they had two! Contestant Chiaotzu has participated in the clash with Garlick Jr., yes, but that was not an official match so he has neither been beaten nor has he withdrawn from the arena just yet. It appears that contestant Chi-Chi might just succeed in reserving her husband a spot to face only the final challenger!" the announcer commented to a crowd of unruly demons.
"Don't make me laugh! I'll remove you from the competition in an instant!" the Demon King growled, winding both of his fists back and circling spirals of energy around both of them while he leaned his entire body back, preparing to unleash all of his reserved strength on this new challenger. "Demon Spiral Fist!" he growled before launching his body at the floating opponent in a rush attack.
Without uttering a word Chiaotzu extended his hands. The Demon King froze in place and the Demon Spiral Fist blaring around his arms dissipated. The Demon King tried forcing his paralyzed body to move, he summoned all of the inner reserves of Ki he had and let all of his power surge outside of his body in an attempt to overpower Chiaotzu's psychokinesis but nothing of the sort happened – the Demon King remained stuck in place.
"Incredible! Not even the feared Demon King Shura can break the psychokinetic hold of contestant Chiaotzu! This here might end up being a very difficult match for the Demon King!" the announcer blared out into his microphone, submitting to the hype that took him over after humanity regained a chance to fight the demons off, a chance rearing its pale and round, one-haired head with red cheeks.
On the demon side of the ring, Piccolo Jr. observed the challenger with a very serious look. There was no smugness in his stare. When he saw Chiaotzu, the reincarnated Demon King saw an actual obstacle and inch by inch the Namekian's Ki began to surge and build-up. As if he was preparing himself to step onto the ring soon enough.