Vegeta and Bojack stood squared off, their arms crossed as they flared their ki. Having surpassed the initial wall of the legend, Vegeta had ascended to his "Grade 2" form—his muscles were taut and expanded, his frame a size larger than normal. Opposite him, Bojack remained calm, his predatory eyes revealing nothing of his true depth.
Vegeta intended to wipe that smug look off the pirate's face. He uncrossed his arms, centering his focus. Bojack followed suit, shifting into a combat stance.
"HAAAA!"
"Hmph."
They traded ki blasts in a rapid exchange, the spheres of energy detonating against one another in mid-air. As the smoke from the collisions filled the air, Vegeta lunged through the haze, throwing a full-power straight punch. Bojack blurred backward at a speed that defied the eye and returned fire with an even more potent blast.
"Tch!"
Vegeta caught the blast with both hands, but the sheer kinetic force pushed him back. He managed to mitigate the damage, but the explosion sent him skidding across the dirt. As he tried to stand, Bojack closed the gap instantly, burying a left hook into Vegeta's jaw.
The pirate stayed on the offensive. He took to the sky, pursuing the tumbling Saiyan. Vegeta regained his footing and flew to meet him, throwing a counter-punch, but his timing was a fraction of a second off. Bojack parried and hammered him back down.
Vegeta was kicked, punched, and slammed into a cliffside. He clutched his ribs, glaring at Bojack with eyes full of venom.
(Dammit... I spent a year in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber! I should be able to take Kakarot or even that bratty Goddess now! Why am I being pushed back like this!?)
It was humiliation. Pure, unadulterated humiliation. He had watched Goku and Turles reach the legend before him on Namek. He had been humiliated by Android 16. He had vowed to go beyond the limit, to reclaim his title as the strongest, yet here he was, lagging behind again.
"I am... I am Super Vegeta!!"
Vegeta's roar shook the very foundations of the cliff. His golden aura flared like a pillar of fire, and the veins on his forehead throbbed with the pulse of his rage. Driven by the impulse to destroy, he leveled his palms at Bojack.
"Take this!"
The Prince's Technique.
Vegeta's hands became a blur, unleashing a relentless, frantic barrage of ki blasts.
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da!!
He didn't stop to breathe. He didn't even check to see if he was hitting his target. He simply saturated the entire sector with a wall of gold fire. His rate of fire was undisputed; while Lisette could manifest a thousand blade-shaped blasts at once, even she lacked the raw physical stamina to sustain a continuous, high-speed "machine gun" fire of this magnitude.
It wasn't just a barrage; it was a wave of pure energy fueled by royal pride and desperate wrath.
But there is a hard truth to this technique: It was meaningless.
Vegeta wasn't weak, but Bojack was simply in a different class. By splitting his energy into hundreds of small, rapid-fire rounds, Vegeta had sacrificed the lethality of each individual shot. To Bojack, the impacts felt like nothing more than light taps. Against an opponent with higher durability, a hundred zeros still add up to zero.
"Huff... huff... huff... How's that! Die, you bastard!"
Gasping for air after his "breathless" assault, Vegeta waited for the smoke to clear. He didn't need to wait long. Bojack tore through the haze, completely unscathed, and buried a boot into Vegeta's solar plexus.
"Gah!!"
The impact was so severe that Vegeta's golden hair flickered and turned back to black. The Grade 2 form provided immense power, but it was a drain on his ki. Combined with the energy he'd wasted on the barrage, the blow forced him out of his transformation. The duel was over.
Bojack didn't stop. He hammered a fist into the incapacitated Vegeta, pinning him into the rock.
"Ugh... k-kuh...!"
Blood and saliva sprayed from Vegeta's lips. Bojack's muscles suddenly expanded, his shirt shredding as he prepared his own finishing move. He leveled his hand at the half-buried Saiyan.
But before he could fire, a rift opened in the air. His blast was swallowed by a hole in space, and a split second later, a dozen rifts opened around Bojack.
"!!?"
A flurry of energy beams—including Bojack's own redirected blast—erupted from the rifts, pelting the pirate from every angle. The damage was light, but the surprise was absolute.
Bojack looked up, his lips curling into a snarl. "So you finally showed up, Guardian."
Lisette hovered in the air, two white orbs of light orbiting her body. She looked calm, but her aura was sharp.
"The subordinates are gone," another voice rumbled. Turles landed nearby, his arms crossed, a mocking grin on his face. Piccolo and Trunks landed moments later, flanking Bojack.
"All dead? Worthless trash," Bojack spat.
It was now four against one. Bojack didn't think for a second that he would lose, but he recognized that this was going to be a nuisance. He decided to eliminate the lynchpin first: the Goddess.
"WAAAAAA!"
Bojack lunged at Lisette, his massive arms swinging in a savage rush.
Punch, punch, kick, punch!
His arms were as thick as Lisette's torso. A single clean hit would be catastrophic. But Lisette didn't scramble. She moved with minimal, fluid motions, dodging his strikes by mere centimeters. Every time she slipped past a punch, her orbiting light spheres slammed into Bojack's face or ribs. They didn't hurt him much, but they forced his trajectory to shift, ruining his rhythm.
Blocked, blinded, and frustrated, Bojack swung a massive double-handed strike. When the dust cleared, the girl was gone.
(Vanished? Where—)
Bojack's hesitation lasted only a fraction of a second, but in a battle of this caliber, that was all Lisette needed. She hadn't teleported; she had simply exploited the height difference and the blind spot created by her orbiting spheres. She had ducked low, slipped between his legs, and reappeared behind him.
She triggered her Burst Limit to 100x.
It was a momentary surge that drained her energy at a terrifying rate, but she had prepared for this. She had a half-crushed Senzu Bean already in her mouth; she swallowed it as she moved, negating the risk of the backlash. (She only ate half a bean because a full one would make her too full to move comfortably).
With her power skyrocketed, she delivered a kick wreathed in a blade of ki.
Target: The Groin.
Lisette was not a "martial artist" concerned with honor or the "spirit of the fight." She was a martial practitioner who fought to win. If an enemy had a glaring biological vulnerability hanging between their legs, she would strike it without a moment's hesitation.
CRACK.
The sound of two "objects" being crushed echoed through the valley.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!"
Bojack let out a scream that wasn't even human. No matter how high a man's power level, that specific area cannot be "trained." It is a mass of nerves and internal organs protected by nothing but a thin layer of skin. Even against a lower-level opponent, a direct hit there is incapacitating. Against 100x Lisette, it was agony beyond description.
Turles, watching from the sidelines, broke out into a cold sweat. Wait, the Goddess fights like that? Remind me never to piss her off.
Trunks also looked pale, though his was more of a "I knew she'd do something like that" look. Piccolo remained stoic, though he seemed a bit confused by the visceral reaction.
Lisette didn't give him a chance to recover. She manifested a ki blade and prepared to swing. Bojack, dripping with cold sweat and clutching his crotch, managed to react through pure survival instinct. He dodged the blade and threw a desperate, enraged right straight.
The punch tore through her orbiting spheres. It shattered her barrier. It connected squarely with Lisette's chest.
But there was no impact.
Lisette's body didn't break; it simply drifted backward with the momentum of the punch, spinning gracefully in the air before coming to a soft halt. She looked at her chest, rubbed it once, and nodded to herself.
"Be careful, everyone," she said calmly. "His physical strength is quite impressive."
"Wait, how are you not dead!?" Turles shouted.
"I used Extreme Relaxation," Lisette explained. "I drained all the tension from my muscles right before impact. You can't break a feather with a hammer."
"...I don't get it," Turles muttered.
Lisette's defense was the antithesis of traditional logic. Most fighters tense up to take a hit. Lisette did the opposite—she became "soft." By matching her movement to the kinetic energy of the punch, she allowed herself to be carried by the force rather than resisting it, effectively taking zero damage.
Trunks smiled. She's just the same as she was in my time. Unpredictable and impossible to pin down.
The team began to close in. The Pirate King was wounded, humiliated, and surrounded.
***
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