Krillin tightened his stance, desperately trying to fend off the aura of intimidation that Recoome spread around him with his imposing physical bulk and the disturbing contrast of an aloof smile. He had a few options on how he could clash with this indomitable threat right now. Krillin could amp the King Kai's Fist to some ridiculous amount and hope it's enough to leave a dent in him. He'd fold quickly, but there was an infinitesimal chance that he might do enough damage to fend the enemy off.
Or he could apply it in moderation. Fight evasively and use every cheesy trick in the book. By now Recoome was already aware of his Solar Fist, so there was a fat chance on that one doing wonders anymore. Still, it all came down on what Krillin's endgame was–was he trying to fight Recoome betting on beating him, or if he was waiting for one of many allies coming here to pick up his slack?
Krillin gulped, feeling a light breeze pass his sweaty face and trickle chills through his skin all the way down to his spine. Before he could settle on a strategy, Recoome took a bold step with one leg while the other stayed fixed on to his initial location. A challenge? His other foot swung forward, slowly but methodically. In a playful manner, Recoome swung his arms by his side in a showy strut. Every single step he makes could also be when he snaps and charges at him. Krillin felt his gut squirming and his lips rattled in a wavy frown.
The shaggy-haired brute stumbled on his own foot, activating Krillin's martial artist's instincts but once Recoome's grin sharpened into a full-on sadistic grimace, Krillin realized his folly in lowering his guard and lingering on the thought to charge at Recoome. The orange-haired Ginyu Special Squadron powerhouse rushed right at Krillin like an arrow. Invisible in his speed, Krillin felt only a gust of wind leaving him breathless and making him flinch while Recoome froze behind Krillin in mocking stance on one leg with his hands positioned like wings of an elegant swan by his sides.
Despite Recoome just goofing off, he caught Krillin amid turning behind him as the broad-shouldered warrior dashed backward with a hip slam and drove his buttocks straight into the front of Krillin's forehead, sending the bald martial artist flying back and rolling into the medical chamber where Goku and Vegeta were. Showing off, Recoome patted his sturdy derriere while laughing at the mockery of slamming his backside into his opponent.
Krillin rolled and stumbled right out of the ward, swimming through the air with hazy eyes. As blood trickled down Krillin's forehead and dripped down the ground in a disturbing pool, the Earthling fighter realized that even such a mocking attack was enough to end him if he let more of attacks like this through. There was no use in trying to play the long game, not when any following strike could have utterly ended him. Krillin needed to go all-in already.
"King Kai's Fist X10!" he yelled out, clenching his fists and stiffening his entire body as a moment of silence made Recoome wonder if the ace technique of his bald opponent even worked anymore in his exhausted and beaten-up state. Once a vicious eruption of sheer force ripped through the corridor, blasting those windows of the medical facility that were still intact and tearing through the hallway, all questions were answered.
Recoome covered himself up, feeling chunks of floor ripping out and flying at him alongside other debris, furniture, and accessories. Krillin hadn't even attacked yet, and the Ginyu Special Squadron beat-stick was already struggling to stay on his feet. With a thunderous roar, Krillin charged right at Recoome, winding up his fist for a punch looking to deliver a similar crippling wound to his opponent's jaw that Krillin received on his forehead, if not much greater.
There was only thin air. It was only because of his sudden explosion of power that drastically raised his battle power for a mere heartbeat that Krillin could track Recoome's movements. The mad brute twirled, extending and stiffening his legs and his feet while he raised his arms up and adopted a T-shaped stance, effectively prancing away from harm and leaving Krillin behind him. With what remained of his King Kai Fist's power-up timer, Krillin kicked off the ground and charged again, gasping in awe when Recoome flipped over his head backward right after landing, as if having read his opponent's charge and delivered a rocking kick to Krillin's neck.
The red blaze of King Kai's Fist aura died out in a blink. Krillin wanted to cry out in pain, but he didn't have the oxygen for that. It was as if Recoome had utterly robbed him of any control over his body. Feeling unable to salvage his pathetic slump, the Earthling just flopped on his face. Only a feeble twitch of a random group of muscles each time signified that life still rustled in the sturdy body of the fallen warrior.
"Hmm… Still cognizant? That's outrageous! I thought that'd cut your cords for certain!" Recoome gasped, waving his palm to his face like a fan. "Heh, oh well, I guess I'll just have to be efficient and extirpate both you and Vegeta-chan with a solitary, robust feat of deletion!"
"Damn it…" Krillin peeled his face off the ground, feeling positively battered. He might have stood a chance against this guy if he didn't contend with all those Frieza Army soldiers and didn't waste Ki needlessly taking every enemy by himself. "Oh well, there's no use crying over spilled milk…" Krillin realized. As a pink light began concentrating before him, he had almost dealt with the fact that Recoome would do exactly what he promised-delete him.
"King Kai's Fist…" Krillin thought to himself. "I survived that kick because I was still overflowing with power when Recoome attacked me with King Kai's Fist. I can survive this attack too if I just keep pushing my boundaries and those of the King Kai's Fist…"
It didn't hurt the revival of Krillin's resolve that Recoome was busy posing, looking for a perfect, exuberant combination of poses before he unleashed his pink mouth blast. Being capable of sensing his opponent's Ki, Krillin was fully aware of the fact that if Recoome unleashed his attack, he'd not just kill Krillin, he wouldn't just obliterate Goku and Vegeta who were still recovering in the pods, he'd threaten to terraform the entire Planet Vegeta with a successful attack of such caliber.
"King Kai's Fist X20!" Krillin yelled out, lending power he doubted if his body could return to him afterward, but when the odds were this high and this personal, he didn't much care. He had made it his mission to protect his best friend and, if he had to, Vegeta, now all those other Saiyans relied on Krillin too!
"Too late, Recoome Eraser Gun!" Recoome opened his jaw to a disturbing degree as he unleashed all the charged-up pink light from within him in a single mouth-blast energy wave. The pink gleam became more and more overwhelming as it closed up to Krillin. With how much time the Earthling spent on just standing in place and trying to get the wild power flowing through him under control, it seemed as if Recoome's signature technique would accomplish what it had intended to do after all.
"No way!" Krillin yelled out, waving his hands down as a powerful chain of explosions detonated underneath him and provided a collection of domes of white light to compete with Recoome's blast. With this downward aimed energy wave, Krillin propelled himself upward while forming a bright barrier for Recoome's attack at the same time. The resulting shock wave absorbed Recoome's attack and detonated alongside it, shaking the foundation of the building. But both techniques greatly reduced each other's destructive power in their competition as one canceled out the other.
"Super Ka-Me!" Krillin cupped his hands by his sides, rushing to complete his combination of attacks before the undertaker came for Krillin's debt on bodily integrity as his King Kai's Fist timed out. "Hame!" he yelled with a shaking voice, begging his body to stay in control over this incredible power and direct it all toward the enemy as it left Krillin's body, even if it would end up leaving him forever.
"Heh, you dumbass, you can't attack me with that from up there! You'll blow up your friend and Vegeta-chan too!" Recoome flipped off a pair of birds at Krillin with an O-shaped smile of goofy amazement. Krillin drew his hands back. Recoome stumbled back, wondering for a second if the death of his precious comrades was a price that Krillin was willing to pay.
"Ha!" Krillin threw his hands out, unleashing the full brunt of his X20 Super Kamehameha toward Recoome with a beam so intense that it threatened to swallow up the entire medical facility building just as Recoome warned him it would. Feeling the blaze of strength evaporating from his body already, Krillin let go of the wave and grabbed hold of its end, embracing the attack as he pulled it upward, controlling the flow of the entire energy wave to bend and adopt a peculiar curvature to it that arced just a few meters shy of the side of the building where Goku and Vegeta were recovering but washed right toward Recoome and carried him away with a direct, frontal attack at a horizontal angle.
With the authoritative beam of light utterly enveloping him, there was little even an agile fighter like Recoome could have done. In his forceful torment, Recoome's jaw displayed all the impressive ways in which it could bend and how wide it could snap open while the wave rushed past Recoome claiming its pound of the brute's flesh and blasting him out of the medical facility alongside its arrow-straight pathway. The beam detonated in a white dome somewhere in a faraway region, leaving no signs of what remained of the Ginyu Special Squadron brawler.
Coughing up and powerless, Krillin felt wind brushing against his cheeks and chilling his scorched and demolished muscles as he swooped down and slammed back down where he propelled himself from. The medical facility had taken a frightening amount of damage and swayed to the left and to the right, though the Saiyans had built a sturdy foundation. It held for now. Still, Krillin couldn't even muster up enough strength to hope for as much as a twitch of movement.
"You diminished, depilated nincompoop!" Recoome's goofy tone reached Krillin's ear from outside. He had absolutely no strength to even crawl to a window and see what has become of his opponent, his Ki signature had dropped drastically, the X20 Super Kamehameha had shaved off more than half of his battle power but thinking it would do him in after how exhausted Krillin was already when he buffed himself up was just a dream. "I'll heave all things beyond with this paramount combustion that reigns as sovereign of all my maneuvers!"
Krillin clenched his fists. That was all that he felt like he could do, as even this much required everything he had left from him. The entire ground shook while a radiant pink aura surrounded the entire building, exhumed by the brilliance of Recoome's ultimate fighting technique that he was charging up. It was an incredible technique with how much power it drew out from Recoome's battle-worn body, but it also was a disturbing technique in just how long it made one wait for their demise. Just like with his previous technique, Recoome had to shuffle through the entire collection of his battle poses before executing it.
"Put together the provisions for your dissolution, ignoramus, hither thunders in the Recoome Ultra Fighting…" Recoome's booming voice accompanied the rattling pebbles and debris ripping through the gaping window frames and shooting through the walls like whistling bullets with the violet velocity in which Recoome's rising power sent them in all directions. With how shaky the facility already was, it was more than likely that Recoome would have toppled it without even having to execute his ultimate move.
Alas, the ultimate word of his technique never came. Recoome croaked in pain as his entire body burst into flames, froze up into a rigid block of ice, and then exploded into icy chunks as a lightning bolt dissolving from within crumbled it to pieces. Where Recoome's Ki disappeared, a couple of familiar Ki entered the fray. Krillin thought he recognized the elemental Ki control in that technique–the Jelly Beam.
"Chayote?" Krillin thought to himself, reaching out to the Saiyan telepathically. He was too beat to even wheeze out a word so telepathy would have had to do.
"Well, what do you know, I actually arrived in time this time," Chayote's telepathic signal returned to him, making Krillin chuckle to himself which immediately made his ribs crack up but he couldn't clutch at his chest because he lacked the energy to do even that much. As Chayote rose to the hole blown in the wall which Recoome had left through, she took a gander at Krillin's fallen and writhing body.
"We came here for some help, but it looks like you could use some yourself," Chayote sighed while looking around a familiar playing spot from her childhood. This place had already been closed when she was a kid, yet the few rebellious Saiyans that ran away from their rigorous military regime and goofed off and overeating like Chayote had a nasty habit of disappearing around this place. Sensing Saiyans fleeing Frieza's persecution here made Chayote wonder if perhaps that was because the Saiyans using this place as their off the books medical spot ended up getting their hands on the unruly kids.
"That's true, I'm surprised you made it here before Yamcha and Tenshinhan, to be honest…" Krillin's eyes relaxed. Letting go of the strength he invested into trying to move or resist pain and just letting the torment wash him over while he suffered quietly was a much easier way of dealing with the repercussions of abusing the King Kai's Fist than going against the inevitable toll.
"Yamcha's Ki is weak. He must be slowing Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu down…" Chayote glanced back. "Are there any medical pods left?"
"Y-Yeah, there should be. It's just… This building's gonna go down soon enough, so I'm not sure if it's a good idea…" Krillin relayed.
"The medical pods detach. You don't need the building if we carry just a few pods out. I guess since you've tuckered yourself out already, I'll have to do all the heavy lifting…" Chayote sighed. "Guess we need to carry those two deadweights out too…"
As Chayote landed and placed the detached medical pods connected to their emergency power source on the bottom, the bubbling of the medical liquid regenerating the tissue slowed down a little, but it kept working. The other Saiyans didn't look like they had scrapes nearly as bad as those of Goku's and Vegeta's. Covering up their wounds, they fled the building that was about to collapse. With a sigh, the Saiyan looked at Krillin and Gohan bubbling in nearby pods as well.
It was a tough call to say just how safe healing out in the open like this was. Those pods maybe had reserve power for around four more hours. Those two raging imbeciles who were just about done boiling in their pods demolished one of the best medical facilities on the entire planet too and every time they'd be flying around looking for an official Frieza Army medical facility they'd risk exposing themselves further.
There were no massive Ki signatures left. It was more than likely that the entire Ginyu Special Squadron had kicked the bucket alongside Zarbon and Dodoria and whatever other commanders they borrowed from Frieza to solve the Saiyan problem. Now only one insurmountable and wicked shroud of malicious ooze bubbled and clung to the heavens with its dark, corrupting tendrils of calculated spite. Only Frieza himself. Kakarot and Vegeta will insist on attacking Frieza. This was what frightened Chayote more than everything now. Vegeta and his idiotic ego demanding that he is No. 1 for the first time. That nobody is in control of the mighty Vegeta except Vegeta.
"Chayote! You're already here? That was quick!" Tenshinhan noted as he landed beside the Saiyan alongside Chiaotzu, holding unconscious Yamcha in his arms, who looked about as battered as Krillin was. With how this whole Ginyu Special Squadron squabble went, soon they'd be hurrying to their vessel to claim their old gear back for the last push to kick Frieza out of Planet Vegeta. They'd be lucky if they pulled even that much off, though Vegeta will demand to try to kill the space emperor. May he have good luck with that and may they both kill each other in the end and do the universe and, most importantly, the Earth a favor.
"Put Yamcha in one of those pods and activate the pod. You can't miss it, the panel has just one button," Chayote instructed Tenshinhan as if she read his mind without actually needing to do so. Tenshinhan went off to do just that, turning around and observing the fleeing, oppressed Saiyans, clinging to the survival of their very species.
"What happened here?" Chiaotzu muttered, looking around and looking mighty confused about the healing pods being just scattered all over the forest nearby a shaky building that was threatening collapse with each passing moment and spat rings of dust around him.
"Krillin took on Recoome from the Ginyu Special Squadron. He should have been strong enough to beat someone like Recoome, but I'm guessing complications got in the way. He probably had to protect Kakarot and Vegeta while he was at it. I had to butt in and finish Recoome off in the end," Chayote shrugged. "What matters isn't what happened, but what we'll be doing from this point on."
"I can sense Bardock's Ki far off in the canyon regions. He's accompanying someone fairly weak. Maybe he found Gine?" Chiaotzu wondered.
"If that is the case, then all the fools are united in their wish to tackle Frieza head-on…" Chayote sighed.
"Oh, come on, Chayote, don't you want to fight this Frieza even a bit? It's what being a martial artist is all about, you know?" Chiaotzu smiled. Although the ghoulish dwarf had limited ways of expressing his mood with facial expressions due to him usually appearing very doll-like, this time Chayote understood him perfectly. He wasn't necessarily arguing against her, just trying to bridge the gap between Chayote and the rest of the Dragon Team.
"Something's off…" Tenshinhan observed. "Didn't you say that Goku was recovering here with Vegeta? I can sense his Ki recovering somewhere nearby, but I can't see him anywhere… Did you leave him in that building that's about to collapse?"
"Did I?" Chayote looked up with a dry expression. "Oh my, how forgetful of me. I thought I had forgotten something insignificant, but I just couldn't put my finger on it."
Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu looked at each other with somber and frightened looks. "I'll… Pick him up and get him out here…" Tenshinhan volunteered. That would have worked out just fine because Chayote would've belched up a ton of her lunch before even touching Vegeta's pod.