In truth, Videl's actual combat level was roughly on par with Chichi's — and if anything, she might not even win against Chichi, who had grown up as a bandit's daughter and once made it to the quarterfinals of the World Martial Arts Tournament. Competing was simply out of the question. Watching from the sidelines was more than enough.
Himawari and Kale had no intention of entering an Earthling martial arts competition either. The fighting style of ninja villagers and the ring matches of martial artists were two entirely different things. They had come purely to watch the spectacle — and they still had homework waiting for them when they got back.
"Come on, over here! The view's great from here!" Krillin waved at them from a distance. The three girls squeezed through the crowd and made their way to the front row, closest to the ring.
Krillin, working traffic duty these days, had often seen Videl playing the hero around the city. The two of them knew each other well enough. Spotting the three of them craning their necks to get a better look, he immediately called them over.
"Hello, Officer Krillin."
All three girls bowed politely in greeting.
"Hey there, you've all grown into such young ladies..." The thought that he was still single brought a pang of self-pity. Krillin couldn't help but grumble internally. Himawari was the textbook definition of a divine second-generation — practically royalty among the gods. Kale could actually fight; he'd heard that this black-haired girl could go a few rounds with Son Goku himself. And Videl had a father who was weak as a kitten but rich as sin and blessed with the most absurd luck imaginable. None of these three were ordinary people.
He turned to Kale. "Little Kale, aren't you entering the tournament? I've heard you're seriously strong."
Kale shook her head repeatedly and answered with polite composure. "I really can't. There are so many people here... the more people there are, the more nervous I get."
She left the second half of that sentence unspoken: when she got nervous, her hair turned green.
"Ah... what a shame." Krillin sighed a little and let the subject drop.
Saiyans were just born privileged — it was honestly unfair. Son Goku's second son, Son Goten, was just a little kid, and his base-state battle power was already in the millions. Transform into Super Saiyan and it cleared a hundred million without breaking a sweat. Krillin had trained in martial arts for half his life, survived more ordeals than he could count, and his battle power topped out in the hundreds of thousands at best. The gap was simply soul-crushing.
The fact that even an introvert like Kale had made the trip out here specifically to watch the match said everything about how significant this bout was.
This match was Son Goku versus Vegeta.
Vegeta had been stung badly by Kale — a half-grown child surpassing him? Absolutely intolerable. He had been training with reckless, single-minded ferocity these past few years. Son Goku, meanwhile, had not sacrificed himself during the Cell Games, so he'd never gone to train at Grand Kai's Planet. His current state was roughly a notch above Super Saiyan 2 — Super Saiyan 3 was still completely out of reach, not even a shadow of it.
Vegeta was stronger than he had been at the same point in the original timeline, while Son Goku, owing to his comfortable and peaceful life, was somewhat weaker than his original-timeline counterpart. The two of them started by probing each other in their base states, and when it became clear that neither could gain a decisive edge that way, they shifted simultaneously into Super Saiyan 2 and went at it for real.
They'd already shown their hand during the fight with Zamasu anyway. Blowing their cover a little more now hardly mattered.
And afterward? Saiyans never worried about that sort of thing. Worst case, use the Dragon Balls to wish away everyone's memories. Bulma used Shenron for beauty treatments and weight loss on a regular basis — erasing memories at least counted as something marginally more productive, didn't it?
Son Goku and Vegeta clashed with extraordinary intensity. The ordinary spectators in the stands had already gone slack-jawed.
Was this a film shoot? How were they producing explosions like that? How were they moving through the air like that?
"Wha — how is this possible?!" In the stands, Babidi first froze, then erupted into frenzied joy.
He had fled the Demon Realm in complete disgrace, without the faintest hope of a reversal in his fortunes — and yet here one had come, and it had arrived so suddenly. Earth, in his estimation, was a worthless backwater planet at the edge of nowhere. He never could have imagined the people here would hand him such an extraordinary gift.
There was no need to try controlling Vegeta just yet. He quietly executed a spatial displacement, shifting Majin Buu's egg directly beneath the center of the ring.
Babidi's magic was exceptionally subtle. Not only did the two Saiyans locked in fierce combat fail to notice anything, even a warrior as acutely sensitive as Piccolo detected nothing out of the ordinary.
Son Goku threw a punch. Vegeta caught his arm, and with a kick fast as lightning, drove his leg into Goku's abdomen. With no room to evade, Goku could only raise his arm to block. An arm's strength is no match for a thigh, of course — he was sent skidding back more than ten meters, dropping into a half-crouch, fingers gouging five deep trenches into the ring's surface before he finally ground to a halt.
Son Goku stood up and brushed the dust from his gi. "Vegeta, your training's really paid off lately."
Vegeta's expression was pure contempt. "Fool! I have already surpassed you!"
Son Goku just smiled, his expression slowly growing serious. With a sharp sonic boom, he left several afterimages in place and crashed back into Vegeta mid-air.
They had only exchanged thirty-odd moves — barely past the warm-up phase — when white mist began seeping steadily upward through the cracks in the ring beneath their feet.
What on earth? Saiyans didn't have any technique like this.
"That energy... it's enormous..." Son Goku made a gesture to Vegeta signaling a pause.
Both men stopped at once. The white mist billowed upward like a storm cloud, endlessly coiling and shifting as it gathered in the air above the ring.
"What is that thing?"
"Is it some kind of tournament special effect?"
"No idea — should we call the organizing committee?"
The ordinary spectators didn't seem particularly alarmed. Babidi, the one responsible for all of this, was utterly bewildered. Where was Majin Buu? The most terrifying Majin of all, as advertised — why had he turned into a cloud of mist?
The Earth warriors felt it most clearly of all. The ki packed inside that cloud was vast beyond imagination — a scale none of them could even begin to wrap their heads around.
The cloud rapidly coalesced into a humanoid shape. As the sleeping consciousness within began to stir, limbs and torso took form first, then finally a head — shifting from gas back to solid, piece by piece. After more than five million years of imprisonment, Majin Buu had finally broken free of his seal.
"Phoo-phoo — heh heh!"
He was a pink-skinned, roly-poly figure. A tiny brown vest covered his upper body; below that, white trousers and yellow boots. Fat Buu stood in the center of the ring, his pudgy face swiveling left and right, as if something had just occurred to him that he found tremendously amusing. He let out a round of dim-witted giggles on the spot.
This was Majin Buu? The Wizard Babidi had never actually seen what Majin Buu looked like. But by his family's traditions, a Majin was not supposed to look anything like this. This one had "not particularly bright" written all over his face.
Babidi, who had been preparing to rush over and issue commands to the Majin, instinctively stopped in his tracks and decided to observe a little longer.
Fat Buu's appearance was nothing like that of a powerful fighter. He rolled around on the ground, then stood up and began doing some kind of calisthenics on the spot — a display so absurd it managed to irritate Vegeta.
"You ugly fool — get out of here! You're interrupting my fight!"
The Majin clearly had no idea what "ugly" meant. He couldn't even understand Earth's language — he just stared back with a completely blank expression.
"Get lost! Can't you understand me?!" Vegeta shouted.
The words meant nothing to him, but the intent came through just fine.
Fat Buu waddled his way over to Vegeta, humming a strange little tune under his breath. He planted his feet like a boxer taking his stance, drew back his fist, and threw a punch directly at Vegeta's face — one that looked slow but arrived deceptively fast.
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