King Piccolo launched off the shattered stone.
He came at Chi-Chi fast. She met his charge head on.
He threw a massive right hook. She ducked under it and leaned back just in time to avoid his spinning backhand. Planting her foot tight against the ground, she drove a sharp side kick into his ribs. Piccolo brought his arm down to block. Bone crashed against tough green skin.
He barely flinched. Chi-Chi felt a brief thrill. The monster was sturdy.
Piccolo reached out to snap her ankle. She kicked the empty space beneath her feet to push herself sideways in a blur. His claws caught nothing but air.
His dark eyes flared crimson. Twin beams of red ki blasted straight for her chest.
Chi-Chi wrapped herself in a tight wall of compressed wind. The lasers slammed into the invisible barrier and bounced off into the floor below. The ground blew apart. Gray dust swallowed the battlefield.
"Smoke will not save you." Piccolo growled from the haze.
He sparked a bright yellow sphere in his palm and fired it straight up. He expected her to attack from above. He was right.
Chi-Chi hung high in the sky. She pulled her right fist back. The air around her arm twisted wildly. She punched downward.
Wyrm Strike.
A massive burst of raw wind exploded from her knuckles.
The blast took the shape of a giant serpent. It dove for the ground and ripped the sky to shreds. Piccolo looked up just in time to see his ki blast vanish into the storm. The wind beast crashed directly into him.
Chi-Chi landed hard on the ruined earth.
Goku jumped out from behind a broken pillar.
"You got him!!"
Tien stepped out of the shadows.
"Perfect vision. You read every move!"
Chi-Chi kept her guard up. A cold sweat dripped down her face. The air tasted like ash.
"A nightmare does not die from a single bad dream. Look closer."
The dust cleared. King Piccolo stood in the crater. Hundreds of deep cuts ruined his green skin. Dark purple blood poured out.
Then the bleeding stopped. His flesh boiled.
The deep wounds pulled tight and sealed shut. His restored youth erased the damage in seconds.
A low rumble started in his chest and turned into a wild laugh. Pure madness burned in his eyes.
"Did you really believe a weak breeze would kill a king? That was nothing."
"Every time you force your flesh to rebuild, you burn your own strength."
A cold smile formed on her lips.
"Your first wounds took five seconds to close. That last attack took ten. Your well is running dry. I wonder how many more strikes until your body just gives up."
The insult hit a raw nerve. Veins bulged on Piccolo's neck.
"You will be a corpse long before my power fades."
He shattered the crater floor and charged her. The fighters clashed in a storm of bone and muscle. Piccolo forced an opening and slammed his heavy fist into her cheek.
Her head snapped to the side.
She ignored the pain and used her small size to slip under his guard. Both of her boots drove deep into his gut with a crushing dropkick. Piccolo folded in half.
Chi-Chi instantly cracked a rising elbow straight into his jaw.
She twisted her hips for another blow. Piccolo swayed out of the way and buried a brutal punch deep into her stomach.
She threw a desperate hook. He stepped aside and kicked her hard in the ribs.
Chi-Chi flew backward. She pulled her knees up and flipped twice in the air to catch her balance. Her boots hit the stone. She thrust both fists forward.
Sokiai.
A double shockwave of clear force blasted from her hands. The twin impacts hit Piccolo dead center.
The raw pressure shoved his giant frame backward. His shoes tore deep trenches through the dirt until he finally stopped. Absolute fury burned in his red eyes. He dug his toes into the rubble and charged again.
They collided. The sheer force launched them both straight into the high clouds.
Gravity lost its hold entirely.
They moved far too fast for the naked eye. Down below, Goku and Tien could only watch the empty sky. Sharp cracks of thunder echoed high above.
Ring after ring of white pressure exploded across the blue vault. They were no longer visible fighters. They were nothing but violent shockwaves tearing the atmosphere to pieces.
Up in the center of the storm, all defense vanished. They traded raw hits. Piccolo threw a heavy right hook.
Chi-Chi took the fist against her shoulder and answered with a brutal knee to his chest. Her bone hit his tough hide.
"HAAAAAA!" Piccolo shouted over the rushing wind. He grabbed her collar and launched a knee at her stomach.
Chi-Chi caught his thick leg with both hands. Her arms shook from the heavy pressure.
She twisted his limb hard. A loud snap echoed between them.
Piccolo ignored the ruined joint. His raw power forced the torn flesh back into place in a single second.
He brought his heavy fists together and swung them down like a massive hammer. Chi-Chi crossed her arms over her head. The brutal strike sent her plunging toward the earth.
She did not hit the ground. She caught the wind under her boots and stopped her fall instantly. A sharp boom shattered the air.
She shot right back up to the clouds like a fired bullet.
He was ready.
The raw pressure blew the heavy clouds completely apart. Piccolo bared his sharp fangs. Chi-Chi kept her cold grin. Neither warrior gave an inch.
They traded dozens of heavy punches in a single breath. Fists bruised and skin ripped open. Drops of green and red fell together like a dark rain on the ruined courtyard below.
Goku wiped a drop of warm blood from his cheek. He stared straight into the empty blue sky. The endless booming shook the dirt under his boots.
"You must win, Chi-Chi..."
Tien kept his three eyes locked on the violent flashes of light. He folded his arms over his bruised chest.
"That is not regular martial arts, look closely at the pressure waves. She is not just using raw ki to hit him. She is bending the actual wind to match her strikes."
"Not even Master Roshi never moved like that."
Tien shook his head. The sharp cracks high above them multiplied. The ruined courtyard trembled with every invisible clash.
"She fights like a veteran of a hundred death matches," Tien said. His tone carried a deep and reluctant respect.
"I spent my entire life breaking my bones under the Crane Hermit to reach this exact level. She makes my strongest forms look completely basic. Where did she even find the time to forge that kind of power?"
"I have no idea, but I really want to spar with her when she finishes him off."
Tien let out a sharp breath. He did not share the optimism.
"Let us hope she actually finishes him."
The sky shattered one last time before both fighters slammed back into the cratered earth.
King Piccolo did not waste a second. He screamed, channeling every ounce of his restored youth into a massive, straight right punch aimed to obliterate Chi-Chi's skull.
She didn't dodge. Chi-Chi raised her left hand, catching the giant fist in her palm.
The impact made her boots sink an inch deeper into the stone. Dust blasted outward in a perfect ring. Piccolo's eyes widened, genuine shock replacing his fury. He snorted, instantly throwing a devastating left hook to finish it.
Chi-Chi's right hand snapped up, stopping the second fist dead in its tracks.
She held him there. They stood chest-to-chest, locked together by their clenched hands. Piccolo snarled, trying to push through, but his arms wouldn't budge. They felt cemented in place.
Then, Chi-Chi squeezed.
"GRHAA!"
The terrible sound of grinding bone echoed across the battlefield. The massive muscles in Piccolo's forearms bulged as he tried to resist, but her grip was like hydraulic steel.
He gasped, his large fangs baring not in anger, but in searing, blinding pain. He looked down at her small, calm face and felt a foreign emotion: terror.
Piccolo yelled in agony, ignoring the pain in his crushed hands to exert all his monstrous leverage. He tried to rip her off the ground, hoping to hurl her into the sky. He managed to lift her inches off the dirt.
That was exactly what she wanted.
With gravity no longer holding her down, Chi-Chi used his own leverage against him. She violently torque'd her hips, forcing her body into a ferocious horizontal spin.
Tatsumaki Senpukyaku
A localized hurricane erupted around her. Her rapid, spinning kicks transformed into a devastating whirlwind of bone and ki.
Each strike sounded like a cannon firing as her boots smashed into Piccolo's chest, arms, and head in a rapid-fire torrent. The brutal momentum broke his grip and sent him whirling away like a broken toy.
He was still spinning in the air when she vanished in a blur.
Chi-Chi reappeared instantly behind him.
She drove a devastating, reinforced kick right into his lower back. A sickening crack of his spine echoed out, and Piccolo stopped spinning, instead launching forward like a missile.
She did not let up. She was already at his new location. As he flew past, she drove a sharp, rising elbow straight into his temple. The impact snapped his massive head to the side, dazing him instantly.
King Piccolo, the great Demon King, was no longer a fighter. He was a ragdoll.
She stayed ahead of his flying body, running alongside his momentum, turning the ruined courtyard into her personal strike zone.
A brutal axe kick here, sending him plummeting.
A savage upper-cut there, launching him back up. She punched, kicked, and struck with precise, murderous rhythm. Every hit made Piccolo gasp out purple blood and a pathetic, wet choke.
He bounced off the cracked walls and skipped across the dirt, a limp, helpless mass of green muscle at the mercy of the Storm Queen.
Chi-Chi stopped running. She dropped her center of gravity and planted her foot, spinning with enough raw torque to rip the stone beneath her.
Her final leg strike came around like a swinging iron bar. The sole of her boot met Piccolo's midsection, creating a flat, explosive boom that blew the remaining dust cloud completely away.
Piccolo flew backward through the air, completely limp. He crashed straight into the base of the central observation tower with the sound of a detonating bomb.
The heavy stone structure groaned, buckled, and then slowly collapsed inward. Tons of rock and mortar rained down, burying the Demon King in a mountain of rubble.
Chi-Chi didn't pause to admire her work. She wanted to end this.
A burst of raw green ki exploded from the center of the ruins, blasting the heavy rocks outward. Piccolo staggered to his feet, gasping for air. His body was a map of brutal bruises, but the cuts from the Wyrm Strike were almost gone.
He wiped purple drool from his chin and looked up just in time to see Chi-Chi closing the distance, faster than a bullet. A flash of desperation flickered in his eyes. Raw power wasn't working. He needed to be clever. He needed to break her rhythm.
Piccolo dropped his arms, exposing his chest as if surrendering.
"You want my life, then take it. But I'm not going back into a rice cooker alone."
Instead of attacking Chi-Chi, Piccolo whirled around, bringing both large hands forward. But he didn't fire at her. He fired at the massive foundation stones of the collapsed tower around him.
A crude, purple ki net wrapped around a dozen massive boulders, each weighing several tons. With a violent wrench of his body, he didn't throw them at her—he used telekinesis to launch them high into the air in a widespread, rain-of-fire pattern, not aimed at Chi-Chi, but directly over the spot where Goku and Tien were standing.
He knew her weakness. She was strong, but she was still protective. She had to choose. Kill him, or save them.