In Ino's original estimation, the Demon Realm was roughly equivalent to an independent universe on the scale of the Sixth or Seventh — comparable in population, landmass, and actual standing in the cosmic order.
The Seventh Universe just happened to produce a freak of nature like Son Goku's family, and that was entirely an accident. Normal Saiyans were nowhere near that strong. Even Son Goku himself should have died from his heart disease; the remaining Earth warriors should have been slaughtered wholesale by the Androids. Things should absolutely not have turned out as absurdly as they did.
A random child just casually becomes a Super Saiyan? In what universe was that normal?
The Seventh Universe was an exception. The Demon Realm, hobbled by its chronic lack of resources, should have been even weaker by comparison.
Looking at things now, that assumption couldn't have been more wrong.
What frightened Ino most was that she had not seen any trace of these individuals anywhere along the timeline. There were only two possible explanations for that: either they originated from outside the multiverses, or they had used Time Power to conceal themselves.
Ino considered the second possibility far more likely.
Towa's face twisted into a savage grin. She hurled the spear in her hand aside. Her eyes flooded crimson, and black flames erupted across her entire body — the burst of energy in that single instant already far surpassing her own so-called Demon God brother, Dabura.
She reached out toward empty air, and a staff fashioned from bleached white bone materialized in her grip.
The bone appeared to have come from the hand of some sapient being — translucent as crystal, the structure of the arm perfectly preserved, complete with five fingers. Cradled between those fingers was a dark-red sphere of magical energy.
The staff looked thoroughly sinister, but the energy signature within it was something Ino recognized. It was the same type of energy reaction she associated with Whis and Vados — an Angel's staff.
"No way... You — all of you — killed an... Angel?" Even Ino herself sounded skeptical of her own conclusion. When standing before Grand Zeno, the Supreme Kais prostrated themselves on the ground in full ceremonial obeisance, the Destroyers bowed at ninety degrees — and the Angels stood perfectly upright without a care in the world. That alone said everything about the hierarchy.
The number of enemies around her was considerable, but she wasn't particularly alarmed.
For someone who controlled time, the sheer quantity of opponents was essentially meaningless.
If they couldn't even match her, how could they possibly have killed an Angel?
Towa let out a cold laugh. "The power of my Master is something you cannot even begin to fathom. I'll be sure to take good care of your corpse! Celestial Mages — attack!"
Before Ino could even ask who this so-called "Master" was, Towa leveled the bone staff forward, and a beam of dark-red light shot straight at her. Ino shifted her shoulder and stepped aside without effort.
The next instant, over a dozen Celestial Mages produced their own staves in unison. Green smoke, red nets of energy, black fireballs — all of it came hurtling at her simultaneously.
Ino blinked. ...Is this a party of mages?
In all her years crossing between worlds — whether in ninja villages or on Earth — every enemy she had ever faced was some variety of brawler who charged in swinging. This was genuinely her first time confronting this many top-tier magic-class opponents at once. She had to admit, it was a little novel.
She reached out with one hand and grabbed the air itself, the way one might seize a tablecloth, and wrenched. Every incoming attack was deflected at once, cut off by a spatial barrier she had conjured.
She was a half-step Supreme Kai of Time — spatial manipulation was well within her repertoire.
She rolled both hands together, compressing the spatial barrier and every attack trapped within it into a single ball, then hurled it straight at Towa — who, holding the bone staff, presented the greatest apparent threat.
"All yours!"
The bone staff whirled with startling speed. Something formless and massive seemed to pass through the darkness like a predator, swallowing every bit of the compressed attack in one gulp.
Ino applied time deceleration to the surrounding area, reducing the Celestial Mages' spellcasting, aiming, and attacks to slow motion — and, using Frieza's technique, fired a rapid salvo of Death Beams directly at Towa.
The bone staff had granted Towa a considerable array of abilities. She was nearly immune to the time deceleration, spinning the staff in an impenetrable defensive arc that intercepted every single one of the more than ten Death Beams.
Dabura was the first to shake off the time deceleration entirely. He hurled a pitch-black javelin in Ino's direction.
Ino couldn't get a clear read on Towa's bone staff, but she had no such reservations about the Celestial Mages surrounding her.
She flickered through time, appearing in an instant before one of the mages who appeared to be female. The mage swept her staff and raised a translucent curtain of water beside herself as a ward. Ino didn't even glance at it — she crushed the protective spell with one hand, seized the female Celestial Mage by the throat, and snapped her neck with a single crack.
Observing closely at this range, she confirmed what she had suspected: after the female mage died, dense black energy poured in from the surrounding air to fill her body, and the power within the Pillars of Baiwosu seemed to diminish by the faintest sliver.
She fired a high-speed spinning wind blade at the nearest pillar. It was shredded by some kind of force-field energy when it was still ten-odd meters away.
She tried several other attacks with the same result — nothing could break through the defensive enchantment on the pillars' exteriors.
It seemed the only way to deplete the energy within those pillars was to keep killing.
Ino flung the female mage's corpse away and began reassessing. In under ten seconds, the already-dead mage was back on her feet. Ino let out a quiet sigh. "I despise tedium above all things. Still — your resurrections must have a limit. I need to calculate who gives me the best return on effort. That would be you, Dabura!"
——
Earth.
The diminutive wizard Babidi had pulled his hood down over his face and disguised himself as a child, slipping into the crowd at the Martial Arts Tournament.
He had barely managed to bring Dabura under his control back in the Demon Realm before his presence was exposed.
His original plan had been to use Dabura's martial might to simply fight his way out — but he had been far too naive. Towa had somehow lured Dabura right back out from under his control. Honestly, the method Towa had used was something beyond the limits of what Babidi could even understand. That wasn't magic. That was something else entirely.
His plan had collapsed almost before it began.
Babidi had a minor concealment spell that masked his energy signature, and his battle power was so pitifully low that no one bothered to look twice at him — that was the only reason he had managed to scramble out of the Demon Realm in such a sorry state.
Slim as the odds were, he had still come to Earth, hoping to break the seal and release Majin Buu.
The diminutive Babidi passed by Kale, who was holding an ice cream cone, without either of them paying much attention to the other.
"Hm? What a strange character..." Kale felt a strong, unmistakable sense of malice radiating off the small, hood-shrouded figure.
She was just about to say something when she heard Himawari calling her from somewhere in the distance. She let the matter of Babidi drop without further thought.
As Ino had always put it: when you're out in the world, mind your own business.
Kale had always believed her dad was the smartest person alive. She was hopeless herself — so following her dad's advice was a safe bet.
The faint unease Babidi had stirred in her was quickly forgotten.
Himawari and Kale had come to Earth to hang out with their friend Videl.
Videl had been exposed to the study of ki from an early age, and her strength had long since surpassed Mr. Satan's.
She had heard from Videl that the Martial Arts Tournament sounded like it might actually be worth watching, so the three half-grown girls had a brief discussion and decided to come see for themselves.
Videl had gotten to know the Earth warriors early on and understood clearly that her current level of martial skill was passable enough for dealing with a few muggers — but fighting a Saiyan? Pure fantasy.
The thought of entering the tournament herself had never even crossed her mind.
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