Chi-Chi yanked at the hilt, tried to wrench it free, but it wouldn't budge. It felt like the sword was welded to his fingers.
"Let go!" she shouted, lashing out with a kick. It was useless—like kicking a tree.
"As you wish," Piccolo replied, calm as ever.
He turned his wrist.
CRACK.
The sword didn't break. She did.
Pain exploded up her arm as her grip gave out, and she screamed. Kumokiri tore free, spinning through the air before stabbing into the dirt several yards away.
Piccolo stood over her, empty-handed and bored. Purple light gathered in his palm.
Chi-Chi moved first.
She pushed through the pain, twisted hard, and snapped a high kick toward his neck—clean, sharp, meant to end it.
THWACK.
Not bone. Not flesh.
A dull, flat impact, like hitting a wall.
Piccolo didn't even turn his head.
His free hand came up and caught her kick mid-air. Fingers closed around her ankle, firm and effortless.
Chi-Chi froze, stuck on one foot. She tried to pull back. Nothing moved. It felt like her leg had been locked in stone.
The grip tightened.
"Aah—!" The pain shot up her leg, sharp and blinding.
"Pathetic. Is this the best you can do, human?" Piccolo murmured.
Then he yanked.
The world flipped, and he drove her into the ground.
SLAM.
The hit drove the air out of her lungs and snapped her head against the dirt.
Her vision burst into sparks. Before she could even gasp, Piccolo hauled her up by the leg and smashed her down the other way.
SLAM.
He lifted his arm again, ready to finish it.
Through the pain, she tightened her core and forced her body to move, swinging herself upward toward his leg.
Piccolo watched, expecting a weak strike.
Instead, her hand opened.
A tight sphere of ki flared in her palm.
BOOM.
She fired it at point-blank range.
The blast slammed into Piccolo's face—tight, brutal, and focused, like a shotgun going off inches away.
"GAAH!"
For the first time, the Demon King flinched. Shock mattered more than pain. His hand flew to his face, and his grip on her ankle broke.
Chi-Chi hit the ground hard, catching herself on her hands and knees. She didn't pause. She dragged herself back, lungs burning, scrambling until there was space between them—then forced herself upright, eyes locked on him, still breathing hard.
Across the clearing, the smoke around Piccolo's head began to clear.
He didn't move at first. One hand stayed over his face, thin smoke slipping through his fingers.
Then he lowered it. Slowly.
A dark burn marked his cheek. The edge of his turban was scorched. His eyes burned red—not hurt, just furious.
"You… You filthy little brat."
He brushed his cheek, stared at the blackened residue on his fingers, as if still processing that it had happened at all.
The ground buckled where he'd been. A second later, he was in front of her, fist already swinging for her head.
It passed straight through.
Afterimage.
Piccolo's eyes flicked wide as her image wavered and faded.
He looked up. Chi-Chi was already high above him, cutting toward the clouds—not running, just buying space.
"You won't get away!" Piccolo snarled, launching himself after her in a burst of dust and air.
She felt him closing in. Stopped. Turned mid-flight.
They met in the sky with a sharp crack.
Elbow, block. Kick, deflect. Knee, twist away.
She drove a punch into his shoulder—solid as stone—but kept moving.
Blows traded too fast to follow, the air snapping with each clash, Chi-Chi pushing her skill to its limit just to stay in the fight.
Chi-Chi knew brute force wasn't the answer. She had to be harder to pin down—faster than his eyes could follow.
She broke away, but not with smooth flight. She kicked the air like it was solid ground.
Thoom. Thoom.
Each step came with a sharp burst of Ki, uneven and abrupt. To Piccolo, she seemed to blink around the sky, jerking from angle to angle, always somewhere else by the time he struck.
He slashed at empty space. She was already behind him.
She reappeared above him, inverted, and pulled her fist back—not to hit him, but to hit through him.
"Hah!"
She punched the space between them. The air snapped inward and detonated into him.
"Urgh—!"
The impact knocked him back, breath torn from his chest. As he steadied himself, he looked up to see her already set, legs braced in midair, eyes locked on him.
Then she let loose.
Her arms blurred. Each punch drove another shock through the sky—short, brutal bursts that slammed into him one after another.
The air thundered. Piccolo crossed his arms, but the pressure kept coming, pinning him in place under a relentless rain of invisible blows.
Chi-Chi clenched her jaw and pushed harder.
"AAAAH—!"
The shout tore out of her chest as she forced more Ki into her arms. The rhythm of her strikes tightened, faster, heavier. The air around her screamed as the blows stacked on top of each other, the pressure multiplying instead of fading.
Piccolo's guard started to slip.
The barrage drove him downward, inch by inch at first, then all at once. The sky buckled around him as he was slammed toward the forest below.
BOOM.
He hit the ground like a falling meteor.
The impacts didn't stop.
Chi-Chi kept punching, her scream breaking into ragged breaths as the rain of blows followed him down. Shockwaves tore through the treetops. Trunks snapped. The forest caved in around the impact point, dirt and stone erupting outward.
Thum—THUM—THUM!
Each strike dug deeper. The ground collapsed into itself, forming a widening crater as the pressure hammered the earth again and again. Dust and debris swallowed the clearing, the sound rolling outward like thunder that refused to end.
Only when her arms finally slowed did the barrage fade, leaving behind a shattered stretch of forest—and a smoking crater carved into the land.
The barrage stopped. Chi-Chi lowered her hands, breathing hard, sweat running into her eyes. Below, the forest was a mess—dust hanging in the air, trees splintered and sinking where Piccolo had been driven into the ground.
For a beat, nothing moved.
Then, something stood up.
Piccolo rose from the crater, calm and steady. He brushed rubble from his shoulders as if it were an inconvenience. His clothes were torn, his cape ragged—but he looked untouched.
He tilted his head and looked up at her. The anger was still there, but colder now. Focused.
"Did you get that out of your system? Because that was your last mistake."
His fists tightened. Dark energy surged, blasting the dust away in a sharp wave.
The ground vanished beneath him.
In the next instant, he rocketed upward, straight through the trees and into the sky—no finesse, no hesitation—just raw fury aimed directly at her.
Piccolo was on her in an instant. His fist flared with dark energy as he swung for her head.
Chi-Chi slipped sideways, kicking off the air itself. His punch cut past where she'd been, close enough to sting her skin.
He snarled and opened fire. Blasts chased her through the clouds as she zigzagged, bouncing off nothing, barely staying ahead of them.
When that didn't work, he led his shot.
She saw it—and then it detonated early.
The shockwave smashed into her side and sent her spinning. Before she could recover, Piccolo was already there. His knee drove into her stomach, knocking the breath clean out of her.
Pain exploded through her, but instinct took over.
She grabbed him and slammed her head forward.
The hit rocked him just enough.
Not enough.
His expression hardened.
He lifted his arm and brought his elbow down into her back.
The impact killed her momentum.
She dropped out of the sky and vanished into the trees below in a cloud of shattered earth and splintered wood.
Chi-Chi hit the ground hard and stayed there.
She was on one knee, one hand pressed into the dirt, the other bracing her ribs.
Her breath came out rough and uneven.
The ground beneath her was cracked and warm.
Piccolo was already a few meters away.
He stepped in and swung a heavy, loaded kick straight at her head, meant to crush her where she knelt.
Chi-Chi reacted on instinct.
She threw herself backward into a tight flip, the kick tearing through the space she'd just occupied and gouging a trench into the earth.
She landed hard but upright.
Before he could follow up, she thrust both palms forward.
Sokiai!
Two compressed shockwaves burst from her hands, twin blasts ripping through the air toward Piccolo from slightly different angles.
Piccolo didn't dodge.
He planted his feet and let his aura surge outward, thick and violent.
Purple energy rolled off him like heat from a furnace.
The twin kiai hit the wall of power and unraveled instantly, shredding into harmless pressure before they could reach him.
Dust settled.
Piccolo lowered his shoulders and began to walk toward her, slow and deliberate, aura still burning around his body.
Step by step.
Chi-Chi forced herself to stand, teeth clenched, eyes locked on him—knowing, now more than ever, that this wasn't slowing him down at all.
One moment he was several meters away, burning with purple light. The next, he was simply there.
Chi-Chi never saw him move. There was no warning—no rush of air, no sound—just a shadow swallowing her space.
Her body tried to react. Too slow.
Fast. That was all her mind could grasp.
Piccolo didn't bother with a punch or an energy blast. He stepped in and lifted his knee, the motion clean and brutal, flowing straight into a snapping kick.
CRACK.
The kick landed clean.
Her chin snapped back, pain flashing white as her body lifted off the ground. Air tore from her lungs in a broken sound.
She wasn't knocked away—she was thrown upward.
The world dropped beneath her as she shot into the sky, blood and spit trailing from her lips. Her limbs wouldn't answer. Her thoughts came apart, blinking in and out as the clouds rushed past.
I can't move.
The wind screamed in her ears.
He's too fast.
She hit the top of her arc and hung there for a breath, the sky impossibly calm around her.
A shadow slid over her face.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Piccolo was already in front of her, floating with his arms crossed, as if he'd been waiting. He watched her drift up to him, bored and patient.
"Nice view?" He said.
Panic spiked. She tried to move—anything—but her body still wouldn't listen.
He uncrossed his arms.
The elbow came in fast, tight, and precise. Not a shove. Not a warning.
A strike meant to end it.
CRACK.
The impact was brutal and unmistakable.
His elbow smashed into her face, pain exploding through her skull. She cried out as blood filled her mouth and her vision flooded white. For a split second, everything stopped—her rise, her breath, even her thoughts—while Piccolo hovered there, close enough for her to see the satisfaction in his eyes.
Then she dropped.
The sky tore past her as gravity took over, the wind screaming in her ears. Her thoughts came back in fragments as the ground rushed up.
Roll. Just roll.
The ground rushed up—and her stomach dropped.
Piccolo was already there, standing exactly where she was about to land. Arms crossed. Waiting.
Impact came like a hammer.
She hit hard enough to cave the earth in, dirt and debris swallowing her whole. For a moment, there was nothing but ringing and pressure. Then a groan forced its way out of her as she tried to move, her body answering with pure refusal.
She barely got an elbow under herself before a shadow covered her again.
The kick landed in her ribs.
It wasn't dramatic.
Just final.
Her body lifted, then crashed back down, tumbling across the dirt. Air vanished from her lungs. Pain flared sharp and deep, stealing her breath as she clawed at the ground, trying to crawl, trying to exist anywhere else.
A hand seized the back of her dress and yanked her up like she weighed nothing. Chi-Chi hung there, coughing, feet scraping uselessly against the dirt, while Piccolo held her with casual contempt.
"What's wrong? Didn't you vow to avenge your father by slaughtering us all? Where is it, hm? That fight you promised, the one that was supposed to make me fear for my life?!"
CRACK.
He drove a vicious right hook into her stomach.
Chi-Chi's eyes bulged. She gagged, retching dryly as the air was forced from her lungs. She slumped forward, draped over his arm, completely limp.
"You've disappointed me, girl. You were nothing but a waste of time. Now I must search for the Dragon Balls myself, and I will repay you by making your death slow and agonizing!"
He didn't drop her.
He pulled her back up.