"Decima-guh!" Vegeta tried to use a technique, but Pigero was too fast. In an instant, the human's fist was buried in the Saiyan's gut, blasting Vegeta toward the ceiling of the arena.
"Hmm." Goku made a noise behind me in the waiting room. So he'd noticed it, too.
"I'll finish this in an instant!" Pigero shouted, leaving an afterimage as he sped up and caught Vegeta's body with his knee.
From there, he tossed Vegeta around in the air of the arena, beating the Saiyan like a rag doll for several minutes, before finally hitting him with a bone-crushing hammer blow that launched him back down at the arena floor with enough force to cause a single crack to run through the strengthened floor.
For reference, if Videl in her base form, with a power level of a million, was slammed into the ground with that force, she'd be reduced to a red smear on the stone.
But Vegeta slowly plucked himself off of the ground, spitting out a mouthful of blood. He looked awful. His battle armor, freshly created by Capsule Corp, shamelessly stealing data from Legacy's in-depth research into the fusion of ki energy and physical materials, was now handing off of his body in tatters, matted with his blood. His left arm hung loosely, exposed bone peeking out from his shoulder.
But still, he smiled with his bloody teeth.
"Well, Pigero just lost." I muttered at the screen.
Everyone looked at me like I'd grown four heads, only two of which were actually on my body.
Except for my dad. "You noticed it too, huh, Hanna?"
"Yeah. They're on completely different levels." I wasn't really surprised that nobody but Goku and I had noticed it.
There was nearly ten feet of massively reinforced concrete between where we were and where Vegeta was fighting. Only Goku and I had refined our energy-sensing abilities to the point where we could discern minute shifts in energy through so much interference.
"What are you talking about!? You two need to get your eyes checked. Vegeta's clearly lost. He's basically on the verge of death!" Yamcha clapped his hand on Goku's shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. "And you need to learn to use something other than your eyes. Just watch."
Meanwhile, in the arena, Pigero had the same thought process as Yamcha. He didn't realize what Goku and I had noticed, either.
"You're done, Vegeta! Since I know you won't give up, I won't hold anything back, here! SUPREME KAMEHAMEHA!" Gathering his energy, Pigero used the energy wave technique that I'd personally taught him.
Supreme Kamehameha was basically a more advanced version of Kamehameha. One that touched on the principles of my own Supreme wave, but was far easier to use. While it was stronger than the original Kamehameha technique, the key was that the energy flow into the ball that you compressed your energy into was smoother than the original Kamehameha's, allowing you to compress a bit more energy before releasing it.
When it carved through the air, slamming into the ground where Vegeta stood, the stone disintegrated into a cloud of energy-filled dust.
…
"VEGETA!" Bulma screamed from her spot in the crowd. Having expected something like this to happen, I'd made sure to station a few Core Girls inside the crowd to block off any sounds that'd give away our Legacies' identities. The purple-haired baby in Bulma's arms mimicked the scream. As a baby less than a year old, he had no clue what was going on, but Trunks fed off of the aura. Meanwhile, the black-haired baby in Bulma's other arm wriggled a bit, looking quietly annoyed at the noise.
…
"Decimation!" Suddenly, a dozen or more bright energy blasts streaked toward Pigero like bullets.
"What!?" Pigero hadn't completely dropped his guard, and he didn't hesitate to dodge, but over half of the energy bullets still hit their marks, slamming into his vitals with pinpoint accuracy.
The sheer damage caused Pigero's body to fall out of the sky, but he still had the capacity to land lightly on his feet, though he still needed to bend over to vomit out a mouthful of blood. "Vegeta?! What did you do? How can you still fight?!" Pigero demanded.
Sure enough, Vegeta was hovering in the air, about a dozen feet above the arena floor. He still looked to be on the verge of death, but Pigero could tell that it was only Vegeta's body that had suffered.
He still had almost a third of his full strength left, which didn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but was still stronger than Pigero's base form. "I… I told you. Your borrowed power… does not compare to real strength, cultivated over a lifetime of effort!" BOOM! Vegeta punctuated his sentence with an energy blast that knocked Pigero off of his feet.
"I…-" Pigero didn't get it. He was stronger than Vegeta. Utterly, absolutely stronger. More than ten times stronger. That was a heaven and earth difference. When compared to Pigero, Vegeta may as well have been a frail doll, unable to move at all.
But from that moment on, the battle was lopsidedly in Vegeta's favor. He didn't even have to get close, just lobbing energy blasts at Pigero instead. Even with Silver Mode, for some reason, Pigero could only barely hang on.
…
"What's going on!? Why's Pigero suddenly so weak?!" Gohan exclaimed, shocked. He was still stronger than he'd been in base mode, but only by a few times, not the massive difference that it'd been before.
Making eye contact with Goku, I urged him to explain, because I really didn't want to.
"Vegeta already explained it." He said simply. Really descriptive. When he noticed that everyone was giving him confused looks, my dad decided to explain further. "Vegeta's energy level is nowhere near what Pigero was tossing around earlier, but that's not all there is to fighting. Right, Hanna?"
"You're dumping the rest of this explanation on me, huh?" I rolled my eyes.
"Hee!" A cheesy smile in response. Of course.
"Alright, fine. You guys know how Legacy records energy levels based on their resting power level, right? Based on those numbers, Vegeta's more than three times as strong as Pigero, but if Vegeta casually attacks Pigero without either of them enhancing their battle power, Pigero could still block it by channeling his ki.
That's a pretty basic thing, being able to use up to two or three times your recorded battle power by overcharging your energy for a short while. It may not be sustainable, but it's a lot more natural than enhancement techniques like the Kaioken, so it doesn't burden the body nearly as much." I began. Everyone nodded. This was common sense to them, but it still didn't explain how Vegeta was beating Pigero, who was over ten times stronger than him at his strongest.
"The thing is, that's a lot harder to do when your power level is high. For example, if I were to use Silver Mode times two and hit with everything I have, it'd actually be a bit weaker than if I spent a few seconds concentrating my energy without Normal Mode, because I can control the energy better in normal mode."
"I see. So when he's in Spirit King Mode-" Piccolo realized.
"Yeah. Pigero's literally hemorrhaging energy in that state. His body can only hold that much power for a few seconds, and he has almost no control over it. I'm actually kind of impressed that he can use it on top of Silver Mode at all." In Spirit King mode, Pigero's power was technically around 125 million, but after a minute in that state, even if he did nothing at all, his energy would drop all the way down to 100 million. Spending his effort beating the crap out of Vegeta on top of that, and almost every single drop of Pigero's extra energy had already disappeared. His Supreme Kamehameha had only contained energy equal to a power level of about 80 million, and taking everything into account, following that blast, Pigero's power level had dropped to 40 million, which had been cut nearly in half by Vegeta's Decimation blasts that'd hit their mark. As it stood, Pigero's base energy was only a third of what it'd been to start with, and he hadn't even realized it. And he barely had the stamina left to completely control that.
Meanwhile, Vegeta's control of his own energy had increased by leaps and bounds over the last three years, even though his actual power level had been pretty much at a standstill. Even though his body hadn't been able to keep up with Pigero's speed when enhanced by the Spirit King technique, his energy had. Overcharging himself and concentrating his energy on top of that, Vegeta had managed to concentrate an energy equivalent to almost 60 or 70 million battle power in the exact spots that Pigero had hit, only moving to avoid the worst blows. Thanks to that, most of the damage he'd taken was superficial. As a result of that, now that Pigero had exhausted himself, Vegeta had a pretty big edge in terms of brute force.