"Wait, how were you so certain that Krillin would win?" Bulma asked, "And why didn't you realize it as easily?" She tapped Zeck's side.
He scoffed, offended, "You expect me to be able to analyze psychic powers as well as those two?! Seriously?!"
She thought about it, then shrugged.
Zeck was bad at gauging the nuances of another's ki signature, but he also had a point.
Throughout all of his travels, Tater had met multiple individuals with a large variety of different psychic powers. He probably had more experience dealing with that sort of thing than anyone else on the planet, and had developed the ability to instinctively discern the subtle nuances of psychic abilities based on a combination of the person's ki signature and what he could outwardly observe.
And as for me, I'd already studied the cells of everything from monsters and Fire Eaters and mermaids to Saiyans and that Blue freak's body. There wasn't a single person on the planet who understood the way that ki-like energies interacted with the physical body as well as I did.
Psychic power was an observable, measurable source of energy. I suspected that it was something similar to magic, but improper. Mutated, or maybe simply awakened improperly… I'd need access to Fortuneteller Baba's DNA to be certain, and that wasn't a negotiation that I wanted to try my hand at, after learning how she handled Tater all those years ago.
Either way, powers like Blue and Chiaotzu's had concrete rules, concrete limitations, concrete drawbacks.
In Blue's case, he literally drew power from obsession. I'd tried to simulate it in a lab setting, to no avail. Completely unique to him. Benefit: Potentially unlimited power. Drawback: it literally changed his brain chemistry. The more he used the power, apparently, the more obsessed he became.
No wonder he'd gone off of the deep end. By the time he'd died, his physical functions were actually deteriorating due to his body's resources pulling too much energy toward what… I suspected was his brain… maybe?
I hadn't been able to analyze the neural pathways in his brain. You can't really analyze neural pathways when the entire head has been reduced to nothing but dust, after all.
In Chiaotzu's case, though, it wasn't so simple.
Rather than being an entirely new source of power, it was more accurate to say that his psychic abilities simply altered the nature of his ki, granting him a different relationship with it than others.
In other words, Chiaotzu's ki output and control were on an entirely different paradigm compared to what they actually would be if he was normal.
If a normal person's physical strength was roughly the same, 1:1 ratio when compared to the amount of ki they could actually use, Chiaotzu's ratio was roughly 1 (Physical strength) to 5 (ki output).
In other words, if he arm-wrestled someone with a power level of 50, he'd probably lose every time despite the fact that his average power level was actually four times higher. His body simply couldn't properly channel the ki that flowed through it. Instead, it leaked out like a sieve, and he controlled the leakage remotely because high control was a side-effect.
But that didn't change the fact that his body was weak. Sure, he had a lot of ki, and he could use it well, but the more he exerted, the more his physical weakness mattered, his stamina limiting his ability to use that massive amount of energy inside him.
So, when he tried to lock Krillin down, they both exerted the exact same amount of force, used the same amount of ki… But Chiaotzu was burning through his stamina almost five times faster.
It wasn't an easy thing to discern with the proportionally massive amount of ki pouring out, masking his actual strength, but Pepper was good at seeing those subtle nuances in fighting potential, Lynn'd noticed it the instant that Pepper pointed it out, I had been looking for it, and Tater and Roshi had their experience to show them the problem.
The problem for Krillin was in the fact that his next battle, in the semi-finals, would be against Tien. Against Tien, I honestly didn't think that Krillin could win. In raw power, combat experience, and variety of techniques, Krillin was completely inferior.
The only thing that Krillin had on Tien was the showing off that the stronger fighter had done against Yamcha. Despite the fact that he could've ended that particular fight instantly, Tien had deliberately shown off his fighting style and habits, and Krillin was now fairly familiar with the Dodon Ray.
Still, it'd be a rather interesting fight, at the very least. I was certain that, by now, the three-eyed Crane student had learned through the telepathic conference that he was currently having with his 'master' Shen that Roshi's friends had killed Mercenary Tao.
Tien would be angry. With how little he seemed to care about the actual prize money, it was entirely possible that he'd actually try to kill Krillin. From everything that I knew, this early version of Tien was genuinely capable of trying to do so.
Not that I'd allow that. If Tien actually attempted a killing blow, I'd intervene and stop him.
To be clear, I hadn't decided that for Krillin's sake. I decided to ensure that he didn't die for a completely different reason: Kakarot.
Kakarot barely knew Krillin. They'd only had one conversation, just after the young Saiyan had woken up from getting knocked unconscious for some reason that I hadn't been privy to, but that didn't change the fact that, as fellow disciples of Master Roshi, Kakarot would literally go to the ends of the Earth to bring Krillin back to life… and I was about 25% certain that he'd find a way to break some crazy cosmic balance (with or without the Dragon Balls) and actually succeed.
Even without the Dragon Balls, I was pretty sure that Fortuneteller Baba's magic could direct Kakarot to someother way of bringing the dead back, somehow.
Worst case scenario, it was entirely possible that, seeking another set of Dragon Balls, Bulma gives Kakarot an old spaceship and they blast off and somehow end up drawing Frieza's attention… or maybe he could just literally go bring Krillin back through the fires of Hell.
It was insane, but maybe possible, in theory. Which meant that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for Kakarot to try it.
Rather than let the Dragon Balls be used in order to prevent that sort of messy situation, I'd much rather trample all over Krillin's dignity and save him mid-battle.
That was the thought process running through my head as Krillin and Tien eventually took the stage for their fight.