A small pile of ash was all that remained of Babidi — and then the stampeding crowd trampled even that into nothing, scattering it to the four winds.
"...?" Himawari and Kale stared at each other. Both girls wore the same expression: pure, bewildered question marks.
The mastermind behind everything — and I killed him in one hit. What are we supposed to do now?
They definitely didn't cover this in school!
"It wasn't on purpose..." Himawari said, looking faintly dazed. "I was just probing him. I genuinely had no idea he'd be that weak..."
According to everything the ninja village had ever taught her, the proper sequence was: track, set a trap, probe, capture, interrogate, and then execute. There was an entire established procedure for dealing with enemies.
The mastermind was dead. The most critical intelligence — where were they supposed to find it now? Did the enemy have follow-up plans? How many of them were there? What were they supposed to do about Majin Buu still rampaging on the ring? All of it: completely unknown.
Himawari's face crumpled. "This... I think... maybe... maybe we just... don't tell Dad?"
Kale returned to her normal state. She was equally terrified of being scolded. The younger girl nodded frantically. "Right, right! We were never on Earth today. Let's go home and do our homework, okay?"
"Yes! Exactly! That's exactly what we'll do!"
The two girls reached a unanimous agreement, said a hasty goodbye to Videl, and bolted.
——
By the time Son Goku and the other three had each eaten a Senzu Bean and were still getting thoroughly beaten, Ino finally arrived.
It had taken real effort to drive off that pack of Celestial Mages from the Demon Realm.
One or two at a time, she hadn't feared them in the slightest — even with the Dark Power endlessly resurrecting them, it wouldn't have mattered. But over a dozen Celestial Mages working in unison, all of them producing their staves at once and pelting her with every spell, curse, and secret art in their arsenal — even with her considerable strength, fighting through that many attacks capable of dealing serious damage had been genuinely grueling. The moment she sensed Majin Buu break free of his seal, she had turned around immediately.
She was still the Supreme Kai of Universe Seven. She didn't know the exact Civilization Index figure, but the sensation was unmistakable — the instant Majin Buu's seal shattered, the average Civilization Index of the Seventh Universe had plummeted by a massive chunk. Her estimate: it had probably fallen back to third-from-last.
This is absolutely outrageous. You dare tarnish my performance record? Whoever you are — you're dead.
She arrived on the scene and spotted the Majin currently pummeling Son Goku and his son — and blinked. Huh. Strange. How did this thing break its seal?
I killed Dabura.
Ino looked left and right. The wizard Babidi — where was he? She couldn't find him anywhere.
At that particular moment, she was carrying Dabura's severed head in her left hand, and her right hand was clutching an enormous bundle of necklaces, rings, bracelets, and staves collected from the Celestial Mages — looking for all the world like a street vendor hawking wares at a tourist trap.
A bit of a shame. Towa had fled far too quickly. The bone staff — the one that seemed to have belonged to an Angel — had slipped through her grasp.
Ino called over the injured Piccolo and had him stand watch over her spoils.
As Piccolo Jr., a severed head wasn't exactly going to rattle him — but the Demon Realm King's deep, suffocating aura of darkness nearly sent him spiraling back toward his old ways on the spot.
"Keep an eye on these for me. And make sure no ordinary people touch any of it," Ino said, entirely casual about the whole arrangement.
Dabura's head is proof of work. I went to tremendous effort to kill the Demon Realm King — that demonstrates I'm still putting in a serious shift. Surely the higher-ups can reimburse a few expenses for that? That's not asking too much, is it?
The next moment Majin Buu sent Vegeta flying with a kick, she spotted an opening. She cut into the battle in an instant, reached out with her left hand, and seized the antenna on top of the Majin's head.
Ino yanked hard — pulling Buu's fat face right up to hers. Her right fist clenched, and she drove it into that pudgy face in a relentless, rapid-fire chain of blows.
"You miserable fat lump! Daring to drag down my performance record!"
"Scaring a Supreme Kai — the nerve!"
"Oh? Eyes open now, are they? Think you've got something to say about it?"
Ino could now do more than simply accumulate an opponent's time — she could also charge her own time, pouring it into each strike. Every punch she threw could draw on the power of time itself, multiplying her actual output two, three times beyond her base strength.
Her fist connected with Majin Buu's face — but instead of the expected sensation of muscle and bone, it felt like beating laundry on a river rock with a wooden paddle.
The feedback was all wrong, and the damage she was dealing was pitifully low.
"Damn it. Did this guy eat a rubber-rubber fruit?" Ino had already fought a full battle in the Demon Realm, and now she was back in another fight. Both her stamina and her remaining Time Power reserves were running dangerously thin.
She threw over ten punches and had the feeling she'd barely chipped away at him at all.
"Instinct... instinct... let it become instinct." Ino kept murmuring Vados's teachings under her breath, trying to let her conscious mind step aside and let her body take the lead.
Ultra Instinct still refused to come — her thoughts were too crowded, her mind too tangled — but she'd found at least a small foothold in the direction of its principles.
Her left hand maintained its grip on the antenna atop Majin Buu's head. Her right hand, surrendering to the body's instincts, drove forward in a sudden, full-force palm strike.
The blow carried just a trace of Champa's Absolutely Nothing Technique. It was a difficult technique to master — philosophically opposed to everything about Ino's own approach — and her execution fell far, far short of a Destroyer's level. But it was there.
Vegetto had drawn blood from Gohan-absorbed Buu. Majin Buu did have blood inside that body.
Ino's palm sank deep into Buu's enormous belly. Then the energy detonated from within in a grotesquely exaggerated burst.
"Pfft!" Majin Buu spat a jet of blood. The wound in his stomach did not close the way it normally would — instead, it left a hideous, ragged gap. A great chunk of his perfectly round belly was simply gone.
It worked.
Ino moved to press the attack. But Majin Buu had been struck enough to actually get angry. The fat on his face jiggled with fury. "You! You hurt me!"
Steam erupted from every pore across his skin. He crossed both arms over his chest, letting energy build and build to its absolute peak — then blasted it outward in every direction at once.
The World Martial Arts Tournament ring shattered first. Son Goku, his son, Vegeta — all of them threw up defenses. In less than a tenth of a second, the shockwave — comparable to a full self-destruct — overtook the ordinary people who hadn't yet made it to safety.
Buildings. Streets. Pedestrians. An entire city — all of it leveled in a single instant.
"I won't allow this. Back." Ino drew her fingers through the air. The self-destruct shockwave that had already spread outward and was tearing through the surrounding city came rushing back in unison — and the buildings reduced to powder rebuilt themselves, and the countless civilians who had died in that wave found themselves once again running in the postures they had held moments before.
Ino had rewound Earth's time by one second.
Majin Buu was visibly stunned. His small eyes pushed through layers of fat, blinking first at Ino, then at his own hands. He found, to his confusion, that he could not figure out how to copy this technique.
Time reversal was hardly unprecedented — even Whis, an "amateur" by professional standards, could manage it. As a genuine specialist, Ino rode the temporal tide the reversal had stirred up and continued making her precise micro-adjustments to the flow of time.
"Time Domain!"
The arena split down the middle into two distinct halves. Vivid slabs of color were steadily drawn away from Majin Buu's side of the field — Ino pulling at them, adjusting them, refining the temporal detail with each passing moment — until at last, Majin Buu was swallowed entirely by a curtain of leaden grey.
____
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