Tien glared at Chi-Chi, a mixture of wariness and grudging respect in his eyes.
"You are full of surprises, guess i underestimated you." Tien muttered, straightening his posture.
"Funny. Earlier, you said you wouldn't show mercy. I suggest you stand by that."
"I intend to. Don't mistake my respect for hesitation."
She stopped raising her fists.
Instead, she shifted her weight entirely to her left leg.
She lifted her right knee slightly, pointing her toe, and relaxed her upper body completely. She casually tucked her hands behind her back, leaving her chest and face seemingly wide open.
"What is she doing?" Krillin asked, squinting.
"She's dropping her guard?"
"No..." Goku's eyes lit up.
She's focusing all her power downward.
Chi-Chi tapped the heel of her boot against the tiles.
"Over the last three years, I realized something. Most of your techniques favor the upper body. Dodon Ray, the Four Witches, the Machine Gun Punch. You're top-heavy."
She began to bounce lightly on her standing leg, a rhythmic, hypnotic motion.
"So I built a style to deal with it. One that hits harder, reaches farther, and moves faster."
She twisted her hips, her raised leg hovering ready to strike like a coiled cobra.
She smiled, a dangerous, confident curve of her lips.
"Get ready, Tien. I won't need my hands to take you down."
"You keep your hands behind your back against me? You're looking down on the Crane School!"
He launched himself forward, abandoning defense for a full-frontal assault. He aimed a fist directly at her exposed face.
Chi-Chi didn't unclasp her hands from behind her back. She pivoted on her left heel.
CRACK.
In a blur of motion, her right leg snapped up vertical.
Her shin collided with Tien's forearm, stopping his punch dead in its tracks. The impact was so heavy Tien felt the vibration rattle all the way to his shoulder.
Tien gasped.
Her shin is as hard as iron!
"Legs outrange arms. And they hit harder!"
She retracted her leg and instantly fired a piston-like side kick.
Tien barely crossed his arms in time.
BAM.
The force skid him backward two meters.
He gritted his teeth and charged back in, trying to close the distance to negate her range.
He unleashed all his martial arts techniques, trying to overwhelm her.
Chi-Chi hopped lightly on one foot, using the other to parry his strikes.
She slapped his fists away with the sole of her boot, checked his low kicks with her knees, and swayed her upper body out of the path of his elbow strikes.
"Haaaaa!" Tien roared, swinging a heavy backfist.
Chi-Chi ducked under the blow, dropped her hands to the floor (finally releasing them only to support her weight), and spun into a handstand.
Her legs became a helicopter blade. She spun upside down, her boots slamming into Tien's chest, chin, and shoulder in a rhythmic, brutal combination.
THUD-THUD-THUD.
"Gah!" Tien stumbled back, unable to find an opening.
Every time he tried to strike, a leg was already there. She was attacking from high angles, low sweeps, and mid-air pirouettes. It was a nightmare for him; her feet were acting as both shield and spear.
This style...
Tien thought, sweat pouring down his face as he desperately blocked a heel drop aimed at his skull.
She keeps me at a distance where I can't hit her, but she can hit me with full power.
Chi-Chi vaulted off her hands, landing back on her feet and immediately spinning into a high, whipping roundhouse.
Tien was panting, and he hadn't landed a clean hit since she adopted the stance.
Chi-Chi didn't let up. Seeing Tien stumble back, dazed from the barrage of kicks, she saw her opening.
She sprinted forward and leaped into the air, scissor-locking her legs tightly around Tien's thick neck. Before he could tear her off, she used her momentum to spin her entire body violently forward.
Tien's world flipped upside down. The torque was irresistible. His feet left the ground, and he was whipped through the air.
CRUNCH.
Chi-Chi drove him skull-first into the arena floor.
The tiles exploded on impact, burying Tien's head up to his shoulders in the debris. Chi-Chi released the hold and backflipped away, landing gracefully on her feet.
"That's got to hurt..." Krillin winced, rubbing his own neck sympathetically.
For a moment, Tien's legs twitched in the air.
Then, with a roar of pure frustration, he placed his hands on the ground and pushed, ripping his head free from the crater. Debris and dust crumbled from his face, his third eye bloodshot and furious.
"Enough of this ground fighting!" Tien bellowed.
A white aura flared around him, and he shot straight up into the sky, hovering twenty meters above the ring. He glared down at Chi-Chi, safe from her devastating kicks.
"You can't use those legs against a target you can't reach!" Tien shouted.
He extended his right index finger. A sinister yellow light gathered at the tip, crackling with concentrated heat.
"DODON RAY!"
ZHEEW!
A superheated beam of yellow energy—far faster and more piercing than a Kamehameha—shot down from his finger, aiming straight for Chi-Chi's heart.
"She can't block that! The Dodon Ray penetrates! It doesn't explode!" Roshi yelled.
Chi-Chi didn't panic.
She didn't try to dodge, and she didn't try to block it with her arms.
Instead, she dropped instantly into a handstand.
"Watch me!"
Splitting her legs into a wide 'V', she began to spin her lower body with blinding speed.
She rotated so fast that her legs disappeared, replaced by a blurred disc of motion. She generated a localized updraft, a vortex of wind rising to meet the beam.
The Dodon Ray struck the spinning vortex of her legs.
SCREEEEE!
The sound was ear-splitting, like metal grinding on metal. Chi-Chi's boots, coated in a layer of Ki, acted like a fan blade hitting a stream of water. She didn't stop the beam; she redirected it.
"HAAAA!"
With a final, powerful torque of her hips, she slapped the beam sideways.
ZING!
The deadly yellow laser ricocheted off her boot, angling sharply upward and away from the ring.
"LOOK OUT!" Master Roshi screamed.
The deflected beam screamed over the spectator wall, tearing through the air just inches above the heads of the group.
"EEEEEK!" Bulma shrieked, ducking down and covering her head as the heat of the beam singed the top of Oolong's ears.
BOOM.
The beam slammed into a signboard at the very back of the stadium complex, blowing it to smithereens.
Bulma slowly lifted her head, her face pale. She looked at the smoldering trail of smoke left in the air, then at the ring.
"That... that was too close... Hey! Watch where you're aiming that death laser!"
In the ring, Chi-Chi slowed her spin and hopped back to her feet, dusting off her hands.
She looked up at the floating Tien, a challenge in her eyes.
"That technique won't work on me. Looks like your repertoire just shrank." She called out.
"I have no choice..."
Tien floated high above the arena, looking down at Chi-Chi with a grim expression.
The wind whipped at his bare chest, but he felt cold. His breathing was heavy, not just from exertion, but from the weight of the decision he had just made.
He had thrown everything at her—his speed, his strength, the Solar Flare, the Four Witches, even the Dodon Ray.
She had countered, deflected, or endured it all. Her defense was impenetrable. Her kicks were devastating. If he went back down there, he would lose.
"I never imagined I would have to use this against a mere girl in a tournament."
He slowly brought his hands together in front of his chest. He splayed his fingers, thumbs touching tips, index fingers touching tips, forming a perfect diamond shape—a window through which he viewed his target.
Down on the grass, Chiaotzu's eyes went wide with absolute horror. He stopped breathing.
"Tien... no..." Chiaotzu stammered, his small hands trembling.
"Stop! You can't use that! NOT THAT ONE!"
The little mime ran to the edge of the ring, screaming at the sky.
"TIEN! STOP! THAT TECHNIQUE DRAINS YOUR LIFE FORCE! IF YOU USE IT, YOU COULD DIE!"
The crowd murmured, confused by the sudden panic. Goku looked up, his expression turning serious as he sensed the massive, unstable gathering of energy.
"Something bad is coming," Goku said, stepping forward.
Tien ignored Chiaotzu's plea. He ignored the disqualification rules. He ignored his own safety. He focused every ounce of his spirit, his stamina, and his very life essence into the space between his hands.
"Chi-Chi!" Tien's voice boomed from the heavens, echoing like thunder.
"I don't intend to kill you. Dodge this—you can't take it head-on."
Chi-Chi looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. For the first time in the fight, a cold shiver of genuine fear ran down her spine.
The pressure coming from above wasn't just Ki; it felt heavy, like the sky was collapsing.
He's not aiming at me, she realized with a jolt. He's aiming at the ground. He's going to blow up the whole arena!
"This is the ultimate technique of the Crane School!"
Tien's veins bulged all over his body. The air around him distorted violently.
"KI..."
The light in the stadium seemed to dim as Tien siphoned energy from the atmosphere.
"KO..."
"TIEN, DON'T DO IT!" Chiaotzu shrieked, tears streaming down his face.
"HO!!!!"
BOOM.
A square column of blinding, golden light erupted from Tien's hands. It wasn't a beam; it was a solid geometric construct of pure annihilation. It descended with the speed of light.
There was no time to dodge.
The sheer size of the blast covered the entire center of the ring. If that light touched Chi-Chi, she wouldn't just be defeated—she would be turned to dust.