Raditz's vision swam in red-tinted pulses as he stomped across the shattered island, each thunderous step cracking stone beneath his massive Oozaru feet. Even through the haze of primal instinct, he remembered the humiliation — the disgrace — of being struck by a human.
A human.
His armor broken. His ribs bruised. His pride wounded deeper than any physical blow.
He replayed it in a looping snarl inside his mind:
The Earthling bastard with the glowing eyes. The impossible burst of power.
The palm strike that sent him flying across the ocean like trash.
The memory made him snarl aloud, shaking the air.
"That filthy worm… I'll crush him first."
But after the Power Ball, after the glorious surge of Oozaru strength washing through his body… the fear, the irritation, even the bruises all became insignificant noise.
Nothing mattered in this form.
Not pain. Not strategy. Not restraint.
Only dominance.
He turned his gaze toward the green one, the so-called Namekian, who had dared spit defiance earlier. Raditz wasn't impressed. Not by his energy blasts. Not by his odd ability to grow larger. That trick amused him, sure, but it didn't mean anything.
His power hadn't changed after all. He just made himself a bigger target, a plaything, really.
In this form, size meant nothing unless it came with real power.
"Interesting party trick," Raditz rumbled, tail swaying lazily behind him as Piccolo's giant form lunged in again. "But you're still just a bug."
Piccolo swung a massive punch at him. Raditz caught it in one hand.
The Namekian's eyes widened in pain as Raditz squeezed until the bones beneath the green skin cracked.
Raditz laughed, a deep, rolling, animalistic laugh that echoed across the island.
Weak. They were all so weak.
The only reason he hadn't killed them yet was because… well…
He was having fun.
It had been ages since he'd had prey that screamed, dodged, and struck back despite having no chance of survival. Most worlds just fell to their knees the instant they sensed Saiyan ki. But these Earth creatures? They fought with their whole being, even knowing the outcome.
It was amusing. Entertaining. Refreshing.
And Raditz always did like to savor his meals.
He swatted Piccolo aside again, sending the giant Namekian tumbling across the ground.
"Run, fight, scream, it doesn't matter," Raditz boomed. "This planet was doomed the moment I arrived."
He lifted a foot, preparing to crush the exhausted Namekian under its weight.
Then—
Something changed.
A pulse.
A pressure in the air like an invisible hand pressing against his fur.
Raditz froze mid-step, turning his massive head sharply toward the source.
Behind him.
Near that damn human and the disgrace he called brother.
The air thickened — heavy, suffocating, vibrating.
The ground trembled not from his own weight, but from a new ki tearing upward like fire bursting from stone.
Raditz's nostrils flared.
"What… is that?"
His pupils shrank.
That energy was familiar.
But not from Earth. Not from humans. Not from Namekians.
It reminded him of…
A Saiyan. This human was even stronger than Nappa now!
His outrage flickered into something else. Not fear, not yet, but the first spark of caution he had felt since setting foot on this pathetic world.
He locked his gaze on the two specks in the distance.
The human and the low-class warrior.
---
The instant Raditz turned toward them, Yamcha felt the shift — that primal attention focused like a predator spotting its first real threat.
Good.
Yamcha rolled his shoulders, letting the harmonized ki flow settle fully into his limbs. The air hummed around him, thin lines of pressure swirling off his skin. Goku stood beside him, aura crackling brightly with new strength.
"You ready?" Goku asked, flexing his fingers.
Yamcha nodded once. "Yeah. But before we jump in—"
He closed his eyes.
Just for a heartbeat.
His Byakugan pulsed, and his senses expanded like ripples through water. He felt Raditz's towering presence. He felt Piccolo's battered but burning will. He felt the distant but steady warmth of Bulma and Toshi far offshore.
And—
A familiar ki signature hiding nearby.
His eyes widened a fraction, but he quickly schooled his features. He took a half-step closer to Goku and spoke just loud enough that anyone close, including Piccolo with his sensitive hearing, could hear
"Alright. Here's the plan."
Goku nodded, leaning in.
"Raditz's power is way higher than before," Yamcha continued. "So I'll be the spearhead. I'm closest to his strength right now. I'll keep him busy."
Goku cracked his knuckles. "Got it. I'll go for the tail. If we can grab it—"
"He drops like a stone," Yamcha finished. "Exactly."
Piccolo, still in giant form, staggered toward them and shrunk back down, panting. "I've got something that will work. I just need him distracted long enough to line up the shot."
Yamcha tilted his head slightly—not much, just enough for the sound to carry just a bit further.
"And if Piccolo misses…" Yamcha said, tone just a touch louder, "…I've got a backup plan that'll end it for sure."
Goku blinked. "Backup?"
Piccolo scowled. "We don't HAVE backup. Unless you've secretly been training someone stronger than all of us!"
Yamcha only shrugged, a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Earthlings are more resourceful than you think."
Yamcha kept his expression neutral and turned back to Goku.
"Listen. Raditz is furious, but he's not stupid. He'll guard his tail once he realizes that's our goal."
"Then we just don't give him the chance," Goku said, fire returning to his eyes. "You hit hard, I go low, Piccolo cuts the tail."
Yamcha smiled.
"Exactly."
He took one slow breath. Ki harmonized. Aura sharp and controlled.
Beside him, Goku's aura flared upward, sparks flickering for a split second before fading, surrounding rubble floating slightly in the power.
Piccolo braced himself, jaw clenched, eyes burning with determination.
Yamcha stepped forward, power cracking the ground beneath his foot.
"Alright," he whispered, eyes locked on the giant ape ahead.
"Let's bring this monster down!"
Raditz stomped toward them, massive limbs crushing stone underfoot, each step accompanied by a deep, thunderous BOOM. He bared his fangs, primal fury radiating off him in waves.
"You little pests think you can fight me?!" his distorted voice bellowed. "I am a Saiyan—AN ELITE WARRIOR! You are NOTHING!"
Yamcha grinned.
"Oh, we'll see about that."
His aura detonated downward, launching him upward like a missile.
"GO!"
Goku sprinted in a wide arc around Raditz, keeping low, eyes locked on the swaying tail.
Piccolo stood still—unmoving, focused—his fingers to his forehead as he began gathering a spiraling torrent of piercing ki. Thin threads of energy tightened into a growing, drilling spear.
Makankōsappō.
He had been saving it for his rematch with Goku, but if he couldn't survive this there would be no rematch.
"Whatever." He mumbled to himself. He would use this life or death struggle as a crucible to temper his technique. Only after they stood victorious could he worry about settling old grudges.
The ground quaked as Oozaru Raditz approached, each step a miniature earthquake. Even with Yamcha's harmonized ki thrumming through his veins, even with Goku's freshly multiplied strength, the pressure rolling off the giant ape felt like standing beneath a storm.
Raditz's shadow swallowed the ground as he raised both arms, fists like boulders.
Yamcha surged forward to intercept, movements blurring. He drove a palm directly into the flexor cluster of Raditz's wrist—
—and watched as his ki didn't make it to its internal target.
"Tch—what the—?!"
Raditz's skin, even under fur, was dense. Bones thicker, muscles corded and layered in ways no humanoid anatomy matched. His Byakugan saw it all instantly. The tendons were buried under so much mass Yamcha's usual pinpoint strikes barely reached them.
He felt Raditz's limb spasm, but not shut down. The numbness he caused in normal enemies registered to Raditz like the sting of a wasp.
"You annoying little insect!" Raditz roared, swinging the same arm.
Yamcha ducked under it, sliding across the rubble and leaping upward again. He jabbed two fingers into the brachial plexus equivalent of the Oozaru's arm—normally a fight-ending nerve cluster.
This time? A pained twitch. A grunt. Nothing more.
"Dammit," Yamcha hissed. "His whole physiology is scaled up. My strikes aren't reaching deep enough."
Raditz tried to crush him with a downward punch. Yamcha rolled aside, dust exploding around him.
Goku leapt in as Raditz's fist slammed down, grabbing the giant knuckles and trying to keep them pinned.
"Move! Now!" he grunted.
Yamcha dashed up Raditz's forearm, ki flaring. He slammed his heel down onto the Oozaru's elbow with a brutal crack—
—but Raditz's arm didn't break. His power had increased, but Raditz's still stood above him.
Instead, Raditz snarled and shook his arm violently, sending Yamcha flying toward a cliff face. Yamcha twisted midair and kicked off the stone, launching back into the fray, he was already adapting.
His Byakugan traced the Oozaru's musculature. The bicep was several times thicker, the nerve lines deeper under layers of shielding. Hitting a humanoid-sized nerve point on a giant wasn't enough. He needed force behind the precision.
His Hazan Strike worked earlier because it condensed raw ki into a bladelike layer and drove it in at full power.
But he couldn't do that repeatedly. Raditz had been distracted before, not even registering them as a threat. Now that he was serious, it was too slow to set up.
Raditz swiped again, a backhand sweeping the entire cliff face clean. Goku shot under it, but Yamcha was the true target. It was a near miss, but the wind pressure alone slammed into him, hurling him like a rock across the island.
He rolled several times before stopping, breath leaving him in a sharp wheeze.
"Yamcha!" Goku shouted.
"I'm good," Yamcha groaned, pushing himself up. "Just… tired of getting swatted around."
Raditz stomped toward them, eyes blazing with primal fury.
"YOU CAN'T WIN!" he bellowed, the roar shaking sand into the air. "NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, YOU CAN'T CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE: PREY!"
He inhaled sharply. Ki gathered in his mouth again.
"Scatter!" Yamcha yelled.
Goku shot right; Yamcha dove forward, both throwing blasts at the ape's face.
None of it stopped the buildup. "Damnit!" Yamcha cursed as the blast fired straight at him. His byakugan flared as he took a low stance.
"YAMCHA MOVE!" Goku yelled in a panic, but before he could act, his friend's ki solidified in an aura around him.
"Kaiten!" Yamcha spun, curling his ki around him in a protective, spiriling sphere.
Piccolo and Goku looked on in amazement as the spherical barrier stood up under Raditz's monstrous blast. As the light from the blast died down, Yamcha again stood still, byakugan flared as he scanned for an opening.
And then an idea flickered.
A crazy one.
A risky one.
A perfect one.
Rotation… compression… dense uniform layers…
Rasengan theory.
He couldn't form a Rasengan—not without having put in the work—but he could pressure spin ki. And he already had a technique that let him freely shape ki into mobile orbs:
The spirit ball.
His eyes widened.
What if he used Spirit Ball… and folded Rasengan principles into it?
Not a spherical explosion…
…but a compressed, rotating drill.
His pulse raced.
He thrust both hands forward, ki swirling between them.
"Let's see if this works…"
A sphere of ki materialized—but instead of its usual liquid motion, Yamcha forced it into a tight vortex. The spin intensified, harder, faster, denser—
The orb compressed to half the usual size.
Then half again.
"Come on… come on…"
Sweat poured down his brow. The sphere shrank until it hummed with an unstable whine, almost vibrating out of existence. The rotation inside twisted tight enough to distort the air around it.
Yamcha gritted his teeth.
Then—
The sphere stabilized.
A dense, swirling mass of white-blue ki, rotating so fast it left a spiral wake behind it. All nestled in a package no bigger than a baseball.
His breath trembled.
"…It worked."
He launched it.
The hybrid Spirit Ball shot into the air towards the once more charging Raditz with a shrill WHHRRRRR, the spiraling wake cutting grooves into the stone below.
Raditz looked up—saw the approach—and swung with one massive palm to bat it aside.
His furred hand touched the orb.
A sound like a bone saw ripping through meat split the air.
Raditz howled as the hybrid Spirit Ball drilled through his palm, exploding out the other side in a spray of blood.
Yamcha gasped, he hadn't expected it to pierce.
"Oh… oh, that's strong!"
Goku's face lit up. "Yamcha, that's awesome! Do it again!"
He did.
Another sphere formed.
Then another.
He launched them in a barrage. It wasn't fully under control yet, but what he lacked in precision he sought to make up for in quantity—five, ten, a dozen—each one drilling into Raditz's arms, shoulders, and chest. The Oozaru staggered under the assault as small geysers of blood sprayed the air. Each hit tore through fur, armor plates, and layers of hardened muscle.
Raditz swiped wildly, trying to catch one—each time losing another chunk of flesh.
"STOP IT!" Raditz roared, shaking the island. "STOP THAT DAMN TECHNIQUE!"
But Yamcha didn't stop.
He couldn't.
His control, sharpened by Byakugan and months of training, let him target the spiraling orbs like predators biting at a wounded beast.
Each strike was a hammer blow combined with a cutting drill. Each rotation tore and shredded. Every impact made Raditz falter a little more.
Piccolo stared in disbelief. "What… what is that attack…?"
Goku watched with admiration shining in his eyes. "Ha! Yamcha's amazing!"
Raditz's massive body staggered, blood dripping from a dozen wounds.
He finally dropped to a knee, breath heaving, fury burning in his eyes.
"You little… Earthling bastard…!!"
He slammed both fists into the ground, roaring.
Yamcha formed another spiral Spirit Ball—but this one bigger. Denser. More unstable.
The strain made his hands shake violently.
"Yamcha—!" Goku yelled. "Careful! That one looks—"
"I know!" Yamcha snapped. "But we need him down. Now."
Raditz pushed up again, staggering—
Goku's eyes widened with opportunity.
Yamcha's heart jumped.
"Now! Goku—GO!"
Goku didn't hesitate. He blasted forward with a burst of ki, closing the distance in a heartbeat. He grabbed Raditz's tail—
Raditz screamed.
The giant ape convulsed, knees buckling.
His power plummeted. Yamcha felt it through the air, it was like the foundations of the monster collapsing.
"Nngh..got him!" Goku yelled. "I've got him!"
"No… NO!!" Raditz howled, his voice breaking in a moment of panic.
He twisted violently, trying to reach over his shoulder and smash Goku—but the angle was wrong. Goku clung harder, gritting his teeth as the tail thrashed.
Yamcha fully formed the final spiral Spirit Ball—
A compressed, high-rotation sphere the size of a basketball. Yamcha's lack of control and Raditz's desperate flailing kept him from hitting the tail, but it still slammed into his spine.
It drilled in—
—and Yamcha detonated it.
The explosion engulfed Raditz's entire upper back in a spiraling force.
Raditz's roar shattered into a choking gasp as he dropped face-first into the dirt, the blast knocking him sprawling and ripping Goku from his feet, still clinging to the tail with all his strength.
The island shook from the impact.
Goku rolled, coughing.
Yamcha dropped to one knee, panting hard, vision swimming. That last attack tore through nearly all the ki he'd just replenished. His brain felt fogged, strained, pulsing from the effort of controlling something so unstable.
Piccolo finally rejoined the battlefield—wielding his fully formed Special Beam Cannon, energy spiraling his fingers as he pointed at Raditz's now-exposed tail.
The Namekian snarled, "I've got him! This ends RIGHT NOW!"
But Raditz, wounded and cornered, still had strength.
He whipped his tail like a sledgehammer—
—and smashed Goku across the ground, nearly knocking him unconscious and breaking his grip.
"No!" Piccolo shouted.
Raditz burst upward, staggering but free.
Piccolo unleashed the Special Beam Cannon.
The beam spiraled forward—
—but Raditz lurched just enough that the blast tore through his thigh instead of his tail.
Blood sprayed in a violent arc.
"DAMN IT!" Piccolo snarled. "I MISSED!"
Raditz laughed—a broken, ragged sound.
"PATHETIC! YOU FOOLS THOUGHT YOU COULD—"
Something sliced through the air.
A thin, sharp whistle.
Raditz's eyes widened.
A bright yellow disc of compressed ki spun past in a blur, and a split-second later, Raditz felt a searing, slicing pain explode at the base of his spine.
He froze.
Goku blinked at the sudden change. Piccolo stopped mid-curse. Yamcha's tired eyes curved in a smug smirk.
Raditz turned his massive head just enough to see—
A small figure standing atop a broken pillar of rock.
Arm extended.
Hand held flat in throwing form.
Eyes wide with shock that he'd actually done it.
Krillin.
The Oozaru's severed tail fell behind him.
Its thud echoed across the devastated island.
Raditz's pupils contracted.
"No… no… NOOO—"
And then—
He began to shrink.