Leila sprinted back from the temple, her divine robes flowing behind her as she clutched the two sacred Potara earrings in her trembling hands. Through the crystal ball, she could see Kairos being systematically destroyed by Fat Buu's overwhelming power, buying precious seconds with his blood and determination.
"Hurry!" Karnel's desperate voice echoed across dimensions through their divine connection.
"I'm sending them now!" Leila called back, but Kibito suddenly intercepted her, his face twisted with guilt and frustration.
"Let me go," he said firmly, his voice thick with self-recrimination. "I hate feeling so powerless, unable to help when the universe is at stake. At least let me deliver these personally." Without waiting for permission, he snatched the earrings from Leila's grasp and vanished through Instant Transmission.
In the void of space, Buu's relentless assault continued. Kairos's crystalline horns were cracked, his armor shattered, and one of his arms hung at an unnatural angle. Despite consuming multiple Senzu Beans, the rate of his injuries far exceeded his ability to recover.
"Is this truly Buu's full strength?" Kairos gasped, dodging another bone-crushing blow by mere inches. "He's impossibly powerful. How much more time do you need, Karnel?"
"Almost there!" Karnel shouted back, though every second felt like an eternity. "Just hold on a little longer!"
Buu's patience had reached its limit. His eyes blazed with murderous intent as he unleashed a flurry of attacks that seemed to come from every direction simultaneously. "I'm tired of this tedious dance," he snarled. "Time to end this charade!"
His speed increased beyond anything they'd witnessed before. Even Kairos's enhanced reflexes couldn't track the pink demon's movements as a devastating kick connected with his ribs, the sound of breaking bone echoing through the vacuum.
"Give me another Senzu Bean!" Kairos cried out in panic, feeling his consciousness begin to fade. "I'm not going to survive another hit like that!"
Without hesitation, Karnel threw his entire emergency supply of Senzu Beans to his ally and threw himself between Kairos and Fat Buu's follow-up attack. The collision sent shockwaves through space as Karnel's body absorbed the full force of Buu's wrath, his spine bending at an impossible angle before he was launched like a missile toward a distant asteroid.
Kairos, his injuries instantly healed by the magical beans, immediately intercepted Fat Buu's pursuit of the wounded Karnel. "Your fight is with me, you pink nightmare!"
"Karnel! Here are the Potara earrings!" Kibito's voice rang out as he materialized beside the battered Saiyan, his face pale with horror at the extent of Karnel's injuries. "Let me heal you first—"
But Buu had already noticed the Supreme Kai's arrival. A twisted smile spread across his face as a new target presented itself. "Another insect to squash," he chuckled, abandoning Kairos entirely to focus on the seemingly helpless Kibito.
His fist moved with lightning speed, aimed directly at Kibito's chest with enough force to pulverize a planet.
"Kibito, get out of there!" Karnel screamed, forcing his broken body to move through sheer willpower.
Kibito raised his arms defensively, knowing it would be futile against such overwhelming power.
CRACK!
The impact sent Kibito spinning through space like a broken marionette, his body disappearing into the cosmic darkness as Fat Buu laughed with sadistic pleasure.
Rage unlike anything he'd ever experienced flooded through Karnel's veins. With a primal roar of fury, he hurled himself at Buu, landing a solid punch to the creature's skull before following up with a devastating kick to his bloated stomach. The recoil sent Karnel tumbling backward, but he used the momentum to create distance between them.
"Kairos!" he called out, clutching the Potara earrings tightly in his fist. "We need to fuse, now! It's our only chance!"
But as Kairos flew toward him, battered but determined, a different idea suddenly crystallized in Karnel's mind. The fusion earrings were supposed to combine two separate beings, but what if...
"Wait," he muttered, his analytical mind racing even in the heat of battle. "These earrings merge two people into one entity, combining and multiplying their power exponentially. But what if I used them differently?"
The modifier system had taught him to think outside conventional limitations. What if instead of fusing with Kairos, he created a perfect duplicate of himself using his energy manipulation abilities and fused with that instead?
"This is either brilliant or suicidal," Karnel whispered, concentrating intensely as he began to form a magical clone using fifty percent of his current power. The technique was incredibly draining, but if it worked...
The clone materialized beside him, identical in every way except for the slightly dimmer aura indicating its reduced power level. Both versions of Karnel looked at each other with grim determination.
"If this doesn't work," the original Karnel said to his duplicate, "we'll have to fuse with Kairos instead. But I'd rather not subject him to a permanent fusion if there's another way."
"Understood," the clone replied with identical resolve. "The earrings only work once per person, so we need to get this right."
Buu noticed the strange development and paused his advance, tilting his head with curious malice. "What peculiar trick is this? Creating a twin won't save you from destruction."
Karnel and his clone each took one of the Potara earrings, their hands trembling slightly as they prepared to put them on opposite ears. The earrings began to glow with mystical energy, sensing the potential for fusion.
"Here goes nothing," both versions said simultaneously, placing the earrings on their respective ears.
Immediately, a blinding column of white light erupted around them, the fusion energy creating a beacon that could be seen across multiple star systems. The two identical forms were pulled together by an irresistible force, their bodies merging at the molecular level.
Fat Buu shielded his eyes from the brilliant radiance, his expression shifting from amusement to genuine concern. "What is this overwhelming energy? It's impossible!"
In the Sacred World of the Kais, Leila gripped the crystal ball with white knuckles, her heart sinking as she watched the fusion attempt. "Did it fail? Karnel can't have merged with his own clone... that shouldn't be possible!"
But as the light began to fade, a single figure emerged from the cosmic brightness. At first glance, he appeared unchanged from the original Karnel, but the power radiating from his form was absolutely staggering.
"No... it worked," Leila breathed in amazement. "He actually succeeded in fusing with himself!"
Karnel opened his eyes, and they glowed with a subtle crimson tint that hadn't been there before. Every cell in his body hummed with unimaginable power, the sensation so overwhelming it was almost intoxicating. The divine energy within his consciousness, previously the size of a small bead, had expanded to the dimensions of a marble, pulsing with incredible intensity.
"This feeling," he whispered, clenching and unclenching his fists as cosmic energy crackled around him. "It's like I could shatter entire galaxies with a single punch."
Buu's confident smirk had completely vanished, replaced by the first flicker of genuine fear he'd shown throughout the entire battle. His primitive instincts screamed warnings about the transformed warrior before him.
"You think a little light show will intimidate me?" Buu growled, though his voice lacked its previous conviction. "I'll still turn you into candy and—"
His boastful words were cut short as Karnel moved with casual, effortless speed. What appeared to be nothing more than a gentle tap from Karnel's foot connected with Fat Buu's torso, and the results were catastrophic.
The pink demon was launched through space with such tremendous force that he crashed through three separate asteroids before finally coming to rest embedded in the surface of a small moon, his body forming a crater several miles wide.
"Incredible," Kairos whispered from his position in the distance, his warrior's instincts telling him that the battle had just taken a dramatic turn. "The power difference is like comparing a candle to the sun."
Karnel floated in the void, his expression serene despite the cosmic forces flowing through his merged form. For the first time since this nightmare began, he felt genuine confidence that they might actually win.
The fusion had worked beyond his wildest expectations, and now it was time to end Buu's reign of terror once and for all.