Earth
Clashes crackled through the sky. Piccolo held the edge over Ginyu, but that stolen Frieza body was absurdly tough.
"Mouth Blast!" Piccolo threw his jaws wide and spat a lance of golden ki.
"Not a chance!" Ginyu snapped a kick that detonated the beam midair.
Bang!
The flare swallowed Ginyu's vision.
Whoosh!
An arm speared out of the glare and coiled around him again and again like a living cable.
"Let go of me!" Ginyu strained to tear free.
Piccolo didn't just bind his torso; he locked his grip with a palm clamp a knot that wouldn't give. When the light cleared, Ginyu saw Piccolo's right fingers at his brow, ki whirling there, building to a terrifying pitch.
"Let go! I said let GO!" Panic frayed his voice. Ginyu ballooned into his musclebound form, trying to burst the hold from within.
Every time his body swelled, Piccolo's arm simply stretched longer.
"Damn you Destructive Ray!" Twin needles of light lashed from Ginyu's eyes.
Zip shnk!
Piccolo slipped sideways in the air and the beams streaked past. The charge at his brow peaked.
"Special Beam Cannon!" Piccolo roared. The spiral drill of light ripped forward.
"Break break BREAK!" Cornered, Ginyu's latent power spiked. For a split sliver of a second he pried the bind apart at the cost of Piccolo's left forearm, which burst in a spray of green.
He didn't even try to counter. In that one millionth of a second, he darted hard left.
Screee! Ssssss!
The beam missed his heart but punched a smoking hole through the right of his chest. The wound sizzled as if seared on a brand.
"Bastard! Bastard! BASTARD!" Ginyu howled, rage geysering skyward.
"Hmph. So what if you stole Frieza's body? Trash is still trash," Piccolo said, ice-cold.
"Filth you dare do this to me, the future emperor of the universe? Then die with this planet!" Ginyu snapped, reason dropping away.
"Planet-Piercing Bomb!" He raised both hands. Between them, a black-crimson sphere bloomed no larger than a football, but dense enough to make the air quake.
And then, with a move no one expected, he hurled it straight down.
"Not good " Gohan's stomach dropped as memory flashed. In the original timeline, after Goku first became a Super Saiyan, Frieza used this very trick to lance Namek's core. Goku's ki had blunted the damage, but the planet's clock still burned down to minutes.
The Planet-Piercing Bomb wasn't as huge as an all-out Supernova or Planet Burst. It didn't need to be. All its power was rammed into a single point.
Gohan didn't bother apologizing for spoiling a "fair fight." He Instant-Transmitted a hundred meters into a karst cavern underground.
The moment he thought "not good," the sphere had already bored through the crust and was racing for the mantle. He could only predict its line and intercept.
"Sky-Piercing Cannon!" The cavern shuddered as stalactites rained down. Feeling for that burning core of ki, Gohan thrust both palms and fired.
Boom!
His beam tore through bedrock to meet the Planet-Piercing Bomb head-on.
"Explode NOW!" Ginyu sensed the interception and, snarling, detonated the sphere.
KRRAA-THOOM!
The spectators shot higher into the air. The blast hammered the world; daylight went gray, thunderheads piled, lightning spidered across the dome of the sky.
The planet heaved. Magma rolled. Cones blew their tops in a chain of molten blossoms.
Rain hammered from above; lava fountained from below. Earth became a split canvas of storm and fire.
"Gohan!" Goku's face tightened toward the blast zone.
The shock scrambled everyone's sense for ki. For a few heartbeats, even Piccolo couldn't find Gohan.
"Son Gohan… you'd better be alive," Piccolo muttered through clenched teeth. If his misread had cost the kid his life, how could he face Elder Guru?
"Hahaha! Even if the planet didn't pop, it won't last. Disasters will keep rolling give it a month and this rock is done! And that brat he's dead for sure!" Ginyu laughed, the hole in his chest forgotten beneath the thrill of spite.
"Dead for sure? You wish." A voice cut in behind him.
"Impossible " Ginyu spun and choked on the sight.
Gohan unscathed hung in the air, a spherical barrier shimmering around him. When the bomb went off, he'd thrown up the shield and rode the shock down into magma. Only once the backlash ebbed had he Instant-Transmitted back into the open sky.
(Why not teleport sooner? There wasn't time and the explosion tore the local space to shreds. Instant Transmission is married to space; when space goes wild, it stutters too.)
"If I hadn't thrown up the barrier, that would've been dicey," Gohan said, eyes hard.
"Piccolo he's yours," he added, and withdrew.
"Got it." With the relief came fresh hatred. Piccolo's killing intent hit like winter.
Ginyu flinched despite himself then a sly smile crawled up his face.
"What are you grinning at? Die!" Piccolo flickered in front of him and smashed a fist across his jaw.
Gohan caught the glint in Ginyu's eyes. Old trick again, huh? His own lips quirked. Fine. I'll even help you along.
He vanished in a blink.
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