The world turned white.
For a terrifying second, there was no sound.
Only a blinding, absolute luminance that erased all shadows.
Then came the roar. It was a sound not of explosion, but of disintegration, as if the earth itself was screaming under the weight of the pressure.
The entire stadium shook violently.
Spectators were knocked from their seats. The walls of the arena cracked.
A massive plume of dust and pulverized rock shot up into the sky, mushrooming outward and plunging the ring into twilight.
Several seconds passed before the dust began to settle.
"Is... is everyone alive?" the announcer coughed into his microphone, waving his hand through the gray haze.
As the cloud lifted, a collective gasp of horror swept through the crowd.
The martial arts ring was gone.
In its place sat a gigantic, perfectly square hole.
The edges were razor-sharp, cut with geometric precision into the foundation of the island. It wasn't just a crater; it was an abyss.
The hole was so deep that the sunlight couldn't reach the bottom.
It was a pitch-black void, a square of infinite darkness staring up at the sky.
The ocean water hadn't even rushed in yet to fill it, the heat of the blast had vaporized the groundwater instantly.
High above, Tien hovered, his chest heaving violently, his face pale and drained of color. He stared down into the square of darkness he had created.
"CHI-CHI!"
Goku leaped over the spectator wall, sprinting to the very edge of the precipice. He leaned over, scanning the darkness with desperate eyes.
"Chi-Chi! Answer me!"
There was no reply. Only the sound of crumbling rocks tumbling into the deep, dark silence.
"She's gone..." Krillin whispered, his hands trembling as he stared at the destruction.
"There's nothing left. Not a piece of clothing... nothing."
Bulma screamed, tears springing to her eyes.
"He vaporized her! He actually killed her!"
The announcer stood up, shaking, looking from the floating Tien to the empty void.
"Th-there is no sign of contestant Chi-Chi!" he stammered.
"The ring has been destroyed! By the rules... if she cannot be found or return to the surface... Tien Shinhan wins by... by..." He trailed off, too horrified to say the next word.
"She is not in the hole!" Master Roshi said suddenly, his voice cutting through the panic.
He tilted his head back, adjusting his sunglasses as he stared straight up into the bright sky.
"Look above you."
Goku, Krillin, and Yamcha snapped their heads upward.
The crowd followed their gaze, squinting against the sun.
High above the rising dust cloud, a small silhouette was ascending.
It was Chi-Chi.
Part of her blue cheongsam had been shredded by the blast, and her hair had come loose from its bun, lashing wildly as the wind tore around her.
If she had been a fraction of a second slower, she would have been nothing but ash. But in that microsecond of judgment, she had abandoned the ground.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Sharp, explosive sounds echoed in the sky.
She wasn't floating effortlessly with Ki like Tien.
She was kicking the empty air with such violent force that she was propelling herself upward, step by invisible step, climbing the sky like a staircase.
Skywalk... Tien thought.
"She's a monster, s-she reacted to the flash of light!" Krillin whispered, terrified and impressed.
Up in the stratosphere,
Tien was staring at the girl rising to meet him.
"You survived. I knew you would. Any warrior capable of pushing me this far wouldn't be erased so easily."
Chi-Chi stopped her ascent ten meters away from him, stabilizing herself on a cushion of compressed air.
She looked at him, her breathing controlled despite the burns on her shoulder and the exhaustion trembling in her legs.
She glanced down at the bottomless square pit where the ring used to be, then back up at Tien. Her expression remained analytical, almost serene.
"You destroyed the ring, you didn't aim for me. You aimed for my footing."
"I realized I couldn't defeat you in hand-to-hand combat. Your technique... your adaptability... it was superior to mine. If we had continued on the ground, you would have won."
He gestured to the empty air around them.
"But this is a tournament. The rules state that whoever touches the ground first loses. And right now... there is no ground left to stand on."
Chi-Chi kicked the air again, a sharp bang echoing as she refreshed her skywalk to stay aloft. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple.
She understood immediately.
My Skywalk relies on physical exertion, I have to kick the air violently to create pressure. It burns ki with every step.
"And my Bukujutsu[1] relies on ki control, even drained as I am, I can float here for minutes. You... you are sprinting straight up a vertical hill. How long before your legs give out?"
Chi-Chi looked at Tien, and for the first time, a smile graced her lips.
"So you forced a checkmate, you removed the board so I couldn't make a move."
"It was the only way I could secure victory against you," Tien replied, bowing his head slightly in the air—a gesture of supreme respect.
"I'll take that as respect. But you haven't won."
Chi-Chi's voice cut through the wind, sharp and clear.
She didn't look like someone accepting defeat.
A dangerous, familiar grin, one that looked frighteningly like Goku's, spread across her face.
"I don't need to climb." Chi-Chi said, her eyes locking onto his chest.
She took a massive, deep breath, her chest expanding to its limit.
She pulled her arms back, palms facing behind her, fingers clawed.
"I have one last surprise for you! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Chi-Chi didn't scream a word; she screamed pure force.
She unleashed a massive, concentrated shockwave of invisible Ki from her palms and her mouth simultaneously—firing it directly behind her.
BOOM.
The air behind her detonated.
The recoil was instant and violent.
She didn't run at him.
She was fired at him like a human cannonball.
"What?!" Tien gasped, his three eyes widening in shock.
She's using the Kiai as a rocket thruster?!
He tried to raise his guard, but the speed was blinding.
She had sacrificed all control for raw, linear acceleration. She closed the ten-meter gap in a fraction of a second.
She pulled her head back and drove her forehead forward with every ounce of momentum she had generated.
CRACK.
Chi-Chi's forehead collided with the center of Tien Shinhan's chest.
"Guh-HAAAAK!"
Tien's eyes rolled back in his head.
The air was forcibly expelled from his lungs.
The sheer impact shattered his concentration instantly.
His flight flickered and died.
"Caught you!" Chi-Chi yelled, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, locking him in a bear hug.
"You... crazy..." Tien wheezed, blood trickling from his mouth.
"If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me!"
Gravity reclaimed them both.
With Tien's flight canceled and Chi-Chi's momentum spent on the impact, the two warriors began to plummet from the sky.
Locked together, spiraling downward, they looked like a single, crashing comet streaking toward the square abyss below.
"THEY'RE BOTH FALLING!" The announcer screamed.
"IT'S GOING TO BE A DOUBLE RING OUT!"
"Hang on, Tien!" Chiaotzu cried out from the grass.
"Go, Chi-Chi!" Goku roared, jumping to his feet.
Down they went, plunging into the darkness of the pit, disappearing from the sunlight as the crowd held its breath, waiting for the final crash.
"I... I can't see them!" the World Tournament Announcer stammered, leaning dangerously over the edge of the massive square chasm.
"The hole is too deep! The darkness is absolute! I cannot determine who touches the ground first from up here!"
The crowd murmured anxiously.
Without a visual, there was no way to know if Tien had regained his flight or if Chi-Chi had managed to maneuver him underneath her.
"This will not do!" the Announcer shouted, his professionalism kicking into overdrive.
"We need a verdict!"
He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small case.
He selected a capsule labeled with the number 3.
"Stand back!"
He threw the capsule onto the grassy edge of the precipice.
POOF!
A cloud of white smoke erupted, and when it cleared, a round, single-person hover-jet sat on the grass.
It was painted in the official black and yellow colors of the World Martial Arts Tournament, equipped with heavy-duty spotlights and a camera mount.
"I am going down there to officiate the landing myself!" the Announcer yelled into his microphone.
He scrambled into the cockpit, slammed the glass canopy shut, and fired the thrusters. The jet hummed to life, lifting off the grass.
"Folks, keep your eyes on the monitors! I'm taking you into the abyss!"
With a roar of engines, the Announcer dove the ship straight down into the pitch-black square, chasing after the falling warriors.
Inside the pit, the darkness was suffocating.
The air whistled past the cockpit as the G-forces pressed the Announcer into his seat. He flipped a switch on the dashboard.
CLICK.
High-intensity floodlights beamed from the nose of the jet, cutting through the gloom like twin lightsabers.
He pushed the throttle forward, diving faster, desperate to catch up to the terminal velocity of the fighters.
"Where are they... where are they..." he muttered, scanning the emptiness.
Then, about two hundred meters down, the beam caught something.
"THERE!"
The camera zoomed in, projecting the image to the giant screens on the surface.
Chi-Chi and Tien Shinhan were locked in a chaotic, spinning freefall.
Tien was conscious but dazed, his face contorted with effort. He was trying to flare his aura, to generate enough lift to stop his fall, but Chi-Chi was making it impossible. She had her arms wrapped around his waist and her legs hooked around his knee, adding her weight to his, disrupting his center of gravity.
"Let... go!" Tien gasped, the wind tearing the words from his mouth.
"You'll... kill us both!"
"Not until... you hit... first!" Chi-Chi screamed back, her eyes squeezed shut against the rushing air, her forehead pressed against his chest.
"Incredible!" the Announcer shouted, flying alongside them.
"They are falling like a stone! Tien Shinhan is trying to fly, but he's too drained and Chi-Chi is clinging to him like a limpet! They are a single, crashing comet!"
The altimeter on the Announcer's dashboard began to beep rapidly.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
"Ground approaching!" the Announcer yelled.
"Impact in five seconds! Four! Three!"
Tien's eyes widened.
He saw the rocky bottom of the pit rushing up to meet them in the spotlight's glare. He made one last, desperate attempt to flip his body, to put Chi-Chi underneath him.
"HRAAAH!"
He wrenched his body around.
"NO YOU DON'T!" Chi-Chi countered, shifting her weight violently to the left.
They spun wildly, a blur of limbs and determination.
"Two!"
"One!"
CRASH.
A massive cloud of dust billowed up as they slammed into the bedrock at the bottom of the pit.
The Announcer pulled up sharply, hovering his jet just meters above the impact zone, his spotlights fixed on the epicenter.
"IMPACT confirmed!" the Announcer screamed.
"But who was on the bottom?! Who touched the ground first?!"
Silence fell over the deep pit. The dust slowly began to clear under the harsh electric lights of the ship.
The spotlight from the Announcer's hover-jet cut through the swirling gray dust like a knife.
"Can you see them?! Can you see them?!" The Announcer shouted into his headset, his voice cracking with tension.
He maneuvered the jet closer, the engines whining as they fought the updraft from the narrow pit.
"The dust is clearing! I'm getting a visual!"
The massive cloud slowly dissipated, revealing the cratered bedrock at the bottom of the abyss.
Silence.
Absolute, heavy silence filled the deep hole.
There, in the center of the impact zone, lay the two warriors.
Tien was lying flat on his back.
He was embedded inches deep into the solid stone, spiderweb cracks radiating out from his body. His three eyes were rolled back into his head, white and unseeing.
His arms were splayed out to the sides, completely limp.
Lying directly across his chest, her fingers still clutching the torn fabric of his pants, was Chi-Chi.
She hadn't touched the ground first. She had ridden him down like a surfboard, using his body to break her fall.
"I... I don't believe it!" the Announcer breathed, leaning into his microphone.
"Look at the positioning! Tien took the full force of the impact! His back is clearly on the ground!"
He took a deep breath and screamed the verdict toward the surface.
"TIEN TOUCHED THE GROUND FIRST! THE WINNER IS... CHI-CHI!"
The announcement echoed up the walls of the pit and exploded into the stadium above.
"SHE DID IT!" Krillin screamed, jumping so high he nearly cleared the wall.
"YEAH! GO CHI-CHI!" Goku roared, pumping his fist in the air.
Down in the pit, the celebration was far more muted.
Chi-Chi didn't stand up to cheer.
She didn't even lift her head. With a ragged, painful groan, she slowly rolled off Tien's unconscious body and flopped onto the cold stone next to him.
She was in bad shape.
"Ugh..."
She lay there, staring up at the tiny square of blue sky hundreds of meters above, her chest heaving with shallow, raspy breaths. Every inch of her body screamed in agony.
"I..." she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the jet engine.
"I... won..."
She tried to push herself up, but her arms gave out, and she collapsed back onto the rock, coughing violently.
She was the victor.
[1] (Dance of the Sky)