Chi-Chi froze. She had expected Goku to fight back or run, but instead, he just turned his back on her.
Above them, massive slabs of rock tore through the air, launched toward the sky. The sight killed her momentum instantly. Her boots dug into the dirt, carving deep trenches as she skidded to a halt.
She stared up. A dozen boulders cast suffocating shadows over the ruined courtyard, falling straight toward Goku and Tien.
A sharp breath hitched in her throat. Cold panic hit her like a punch to the gut. Piccolo was a monster, but he was smart. He knew exactly how to force her hand.
She didn't care about the target anymore. She pivoted, kicking off the ground with enough force to crack the earth, launching herself back toward her friends. The rocks were falling too fast. Goku looked like he could barely stand, let alone dodge. Tien was trying to shield him, but there was no way he could pull them both clear in time.
Chi-Chi pulled her hands tight to her chest. She needed everything she had to stop the impact. She thrust her palms upward, bracing her legs against the weight of the world.
A roar of white wind exploded from her hands. The pressure slammed into the falling stones, halting them mid-air for a split second before the sheer force shredded the boulders. Solid rock turned into a cloud of grit and pebbles.
A heavy gray rain of dust washed over Goku and Tien. They coughed, shielding their eyes from the debris, while Chi-Chi landed in front of them, her breath coming in jagged bursts.
Chi-Chi hit the ground hard, her lungs burning. The skin on her palms felt raw from the sheer force she had just shoved into the sky. She stole a quick glance back. Goku and Tien were a mess, buried under a layer of gray grit, but they were breathing.
She whipped her head back toward the wreckage. That one second of hesitation had cost her everything.
The dust cleared. Piccolo wasn't pinned under the rubble anymore. He stood tall, towering over the broken stone like he owned the graveyard he'd just made. He smeared a streak of purple blood off his chin with the back of his hand, his lips pulling into a jagged, nasty grin.
He rolled his shoulders, and the sound of his joints popping was like dry wood snapping in the silence.
"I messed up." Piccolo grunted. The sound came from deep in his chest.
"I didn't think a human could hit that hard. But you're soft. That heart of yours is going to get you killed."
Chi-Chi's hands shook as she balled them into fists. A surge of heat crawled up her throat. She took a heavy, deliberate step toward him.
"This is our fight! Keep them out of it, you coward!"
The monster threw his head back and let out a sharp, jagged laugh that made her skin crawl.
"You think this is a game? Wake up! There aren't any referees here. Once I'm done destroying you, I'm going to turn this entire world into a funeral pyre. They're just the first two bugs I'm going to step on."
A cold sweat broke across Chi-Chi's neck. She didn't look back—she couldn't afford to—but her voice was tight with a sudden, sharp fear.
"Goku! Tien!" she screamed.
"Get moving! Get the hell out of here right now!"
Piccolo didn't wait. He threw both hands into the air, his fingers clawed like talons.
"Nobody's leaving, the show is just starting."
Piccolo spread his hands, his fingers twitching with a dark, heavy hum. The ground groaned before four massive slabs of stone tore free from the dirt. They slammed together around Goku and Tien with a deafening thud, locking them away in a tomb of jagged rock.
"Hey! Let us out!" Goku's voice was muffled, followed by the dull thud of a fist hitting stone.
Chi-Chi spun around, her heart racing, but Piccolo was already ahead of her.
"Eyes on me!" he barked.
He thrust his palms forward. A dozen thin, yellow streaks of heat hissed from his fingertips. They didn't fly straight. They curved and looped through the air like hornets, closing in from every angle. Chi-Chi scrambled back, twisting her body to avoid the searing light. Every time she tried to move toward the stone dome, a new beam cut her off, forcing her into a desperate dance just to keep her skin from burning.
She was trapped, and she knew it. Her fingers found the hilt at her waist.
Shink.
The sound of steel leaving the scabbard was sharp enough to bite. In one blur of motion, Kumokiri was out. Chi-Chi stopped running. She became a wall of flashing metal.
Clack. Thwack. Hiss.
She didn't just swing; she parried. The flat of her blade met every incoming bolt, swatting the energy into the clouds or the dirt. She stood her ground, a circle of calm in the middle of his glowing storm.
Piccolo let out a dry, mocking snort.
"Still clinging to Kumokiri? You really think you're worthy of it now, you cocky brat?"
Chi-Chi didn't waste her breath on an answer. She brought the blade up, holding it steady in front of her face. She shoved her wind-natured energy into the steel, forcing the power to grind against itself. The air began to vibrate. Friction turned into a frantic, snapping heat.
Jagged bolts of blue lightning began to crawl across the blade, hissing and spitting as they danced along the edge. The sharp, metallic scent of ozone filled her lungs, and the hair on her arms stood on end.
Chi-Chi stepped into the strike, her boots grinding into the rubble. She brought the blade down in a brutal overhead arc, but she wasn't just swinging at the air. She was cutting the very pressure between them.
A jagged streak of white-blue lightning ripped from the tip of Kumokiri. It wasn't a slow-moving ki blast; it was an instantaneous roar of light that shattered every remaining window in the courtyard with a deafening BOOM. The bolt tore through the sky, homing in on Piccolo like a guided predator.
The Demon King's eyes snapped wide. There was no time to move.
"Tch!" he grunted, his face contorting.
He slammed his palms against the shattered floor, abandoning his guard to pour every ounce of his will into the earth. The ground groaned and surrendered. Massive slabs of concrete and twisted metal rebar tore free, screaming as they flew upward.
Piccolo wrenched the debris into the air, shoving a wall of stone directly into the lightning's path.
The Thunderclap Slash hit the improvised shield with a bone-shaking crack. It didn't just slice through—it discharged. The impact turned the concrete blocks into glowing slag and fine white powder, raining molten rock across the floor. The shockwave from the blast shoved Chi-Chi back a step, leaving the center of the courtyard choked in a thick, superheated haze.
Piccolo stood dead center in the burning fog. He went still, closing his eyes and pushing his senses outward, hunting for the pulse of her heart or the scrape of her boots against the grit.
There. A ripple in the air to his left. He spun, ready to crush her, but the feeling vanished.
Then it was behind him. Then high above.
She was moving with a frantic, jagged speed, using the floating masonry and broken pillars as stepping stones. She blurred through the smoke like a lethal pinball, never touching the ground for more than a fraction of a second.
He couldn't lock on. For the first time, Piccolo felt the cold prickle of genuine sweat on his brow.
From the thick of the gray haze, Chi-Chi's voice cut through, sharp and cold.
"Take this!"
The air hissed. A high-pitched hum sliced the fog once, then twice.
Phantom Blades.
She wasn't even swinging her sword. She was slamming her open palms against the air, forcing her ki into razor-thin, pressurized sheets. They tore through the smoke, invisible and silent until they were inches from his throat.
Piccolo caught a flicker of warped air at the last possible second. He wrenched his head back with a guttural snarl, his reflexes barely keeping up. The first blade zipped past his windpipe, missing by a hair's breadth.
The second one bit.
It grazed his cheek, carving through his tough green skin like a hot wire through wax. Dark purple blood welled up instantly. He hadn't just been hit; she'd cut him with nothing but the wind.
The sting to his pride hurt worse than the wound.
"You little brat!" he roared, dropping his weight. He slammed his palm flat against the cracked foundation beneath his boots.
He didn't fire at her. He shoved a massive, concussive burst of energy directly into the dirt.
The earth buckled. A focused tremor ripped through the stone right where Chi-Chi was landing. Her footing vanished as the debris rolled like a wave. She stumbled, her hips swinging wildly as she fought to find a solid inch of ground that wasn't moving.
It was the only opening he needed.
Piccolo bared his fangs, his jaw unhinging as a blinding, destructive orange glow gathered deep in his throat.
Chou Makouhou.
He didn't fire a steady beam. He unleashed a massive, roaring sphere of raw, explosive ki. It tore through the smoke, expanding as it ate up the distance between them, aimed right at her chest while she was still off-balance.
The ground was still heaving under her boots. Her footwork—the one thing she always relied on—was useless.
Chi-Chi watched the titanic, orange-white sun erupt from Piccolo's maw. There was no time to fix her stance. There was only time to live.
Chi-Chi slammed Kumokiri back into its sheath in a blur and snapped her forearms together. She locked them into a rigid X-guard right in front of her face, pouring every scrap of power she had left into her limbs. She turned her own flesh and bone into iron just as the world turned orange.
The blast didn't just hit her. It swallowed her whole.
It felt like being flattened by a freight train made of molten lead. The raw kinetic force shoved her backward, her boots screaming as they carved twin trenches through the stone. Her heels finally hit the lip of a broken foundation, anchoring her in place.
She held the line, gritting her teeth so hard she thought they'd shatter. The heat was a nightmare, blistering her skin and charring her gi until the fabric crumbled into ash. The roar of the ki was so loud it felt like it was drilling directly into her brain.
But Piccolo hadn't just aimed for her. The attack was a blunt instrument, too massive and too violent to be contained.
As Chi-Chi stood her ground, the torrent of energy she couldn't block split around her arms like a river hitting a jagged rock. It screamed past her, erasing the temple's outer walls as if they were made of wet paper.
The blast didn't stop there. It tore out of the grounds and plowed into the city beyond.
It was instant, terrifying erasure. A massive canyon of white-hot light carved through the heart of the skyline in a heartbeat. Skyscrapers didn't fall; they just vanished into dust. Asphalt turned to liquid sludge. The earth itself was scooped out, leaving a trench miles long as millions of tons of steel and stone were hurled into the sky.
A mushroom cloud of orange and black began to bloat over the horizon, dwarfing what was left of the city.
In the courtyard, the roaring finally died. The orange glow flickered out, leaving nothing but a superheated haze dancing in the air. The silence that followed was heavy and sickening.
Chi-Chi's arms dropped slowly to her sides. They were shaking violently, the skin raw and smoking, her sleeves gone. Blood dripped steadily from her shredded knuckles. She gasped for air, her chest heaving as her vision swam with white spots of pain.
But she didn't go down. She stayed upright in the middle of the ruin, her eyes burning with a cold, jagged light as she locked onto the Demon King's silhouette through the smoke.
She dragged a jagged breath into her lungs. The hot ash tasted like copper and old fire. She forced her trembling hands down and stared him right in the face.
"You've completely lost it, you put every last drop of your power into that one shot..."
Chi-Chi scanned the smoking crater, her heart hammering against her ribs. Nothing. The center of the blast zone was a hollow, empty void.
A sudden, icy shiver spiked down her spine. She spun on her heel.
The thick gray haze near the edge of the courtyard parted. The stone tomb Piccolo had built earlier was gone, reduced to a pile of pebbles.
Piccolo stood there, towering over the rubble. His chest heaved, his breath coming in ragged, ugly gasps, and dark purple blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. But he was grinning. A sick, twisted pull of his lips that made her stomach turn.
He held his arms straight out. His massive fingers were locked like iron claws around two heads. Goku hung limp from his right hand. Tien dangled from his left. Both of them were battered, bloody, and completely helpless under the crushing grip of his palms.
"Goku! Tien!"
The names tore out of her throat in a raw, desperate scream that cracked in the air.
A wet, bubbling chuckle spilled from the monster's throat. The sound grew, turning into a jagged, vicious laugh that echoed over the burning ruins.