Ch. 180: 29th Preliminaries

Sometime after the stalls officially ran out of food, the loudspeakers set around the plaza called for all of the people who signed up for the martial arts contest to come to the back courtyard area for the preliminaries. 

As soon as I got there, I instantly figured out what the preliminaries were, and it annoyed me quite a bit. There was a punching machine set up in the courtyard. And since I was one of the last people to file into the courtyard, I'd also end up as one of the last people to try the punching machine.

"Didn't they learn from that one time they used these things?" I couldn't help but mutter under my breath, a memory of Vegeta destroying the machine in the past coming to the front of my mind. 

"I heard that the machine this year is tougher than it was last time. Don't worry, I heard about that past incident, too." 

"Who are you?" I asked the guy who'd addressed me with a blank, bored expression on my face, not even bothering to turn to face him.

I'd already caught a glance at the guy out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing something that looked like a blue knockoff of Gohan's Great Saiyaman costume, except without the helmet. His pretty-boy face made me immediately dub him as some sort of combination Saiyaman fanboy / playboy.

Not to brag, but I'd expected to be hit on. With my energy loosed, I had no reason to limit my body's age to what it technically should've been. Instead, my body had naturally gone to its 'prime' age, somewhere between 16 and 18. Combining that with the unnatural sheen that optimizing my body's ability to hold energy had given me, and my outer looks could put any supermodel to shame. 

"I'm Rider Saiya! Just like my hero, the Great Saiyaman, I'll show the world how strong I am! I'll even win the World Martial Arts tournament and beat the strongest man on Earth, Mr. Satan himself!" Pretty Saiya-boy declared proudly, "I wish you luck as well, miss. But know, that no matter how you tug at my heartstrings, I will not go easy on you in the ring, if we meet each other there!"

Idly, I wondered if I'd get by with teleporting this guy to the North Pole as I directed my attention to the line in front of me. That ended up helping to calm me down a bit. In front of me, a certain blonde woman was also clearly getting annoyed, being hit on by some dude with long blonde hair. As long as 18 could keep herself from punching out her idiot, I could do the same.

Unfortunately, in the end neither 18 nor I had a will of steel. That's two contestants who never even made it to the preliminaries. Interestingly enough, even though 18 made her idiot faint on the spot, the staff members didn't say a word about it, instead simply dragging the guy away. I supposed that this was another form of testing. If you couldn't deal with a single nonchalant hit from the girl you were attempting to hit on, I supposed that you weren't going to win a martial arts tournament either.

I ended up passing the time by going over my mental files of all the real fighters that were in the line in front of me. Buu, Uub, Goten, Trunks, 18, Vegeta, Goku, Tien, Piccolo, and Pan. Krillin'd mentioned earlier that he wasn't going to take part, and Yamcha had basically given martial arts up, too. There were sixteen slots to be filled here, and I could tell immediately who'd take up the first eleven slots. Everyone easily scored stupid high numbers, right up until Vegeta came onto the scene.

"Vegeta, please try not to-" Goku tried to ask Vegeta to not break the machine, but his plea was drowned out by a loud BANG as Vegeta obliterated the machine with his punch.

"I'm not holding back just because their machine is frail." Vegeta declared, walking past the awestruck staff into the main waiting area for the fighters who'd already passed. Essentially, he was daring the staff to argue against his passing, and they were far too shocked to.

"Dang... Buu, can you...?" Having expected this, Goku instantly asked for Buu's help to fix the machine, but it was too late. I'd already returned the machine to exactly how it'd been before Vegeta had smashed it, complete with a flashing '999' on the screen, just for show. After a moment, the score faded and the staff spent the next ten minutes checking the machine to figure out what'd just happened, while Goku shot me a confused look, which I ignored. 

"Contestant Goku! You're up next! Go ahead and punch the machine with all of your might!" 

Naturally, Goku was more than considerate enough to -

"BANG!"

I facepalmed. Meanwhile, Goku smiled a bright smile and followed Vegeta, walking right past the stunned staff. As he entered the building, he looked back and met my gaze, causing me to sigh as I rebuilt the stupid punching machine once more. "I swear... If this happens again, I'm gonna..." I muttered under my breath as the staff inspected the machine once more, wasting another ten minutes of our time. But obviously, they weren't going to find anything wrong with the machine. I'd basically just rewound time around it, anyways. So the testing went on.

Tien and Piccolo got normal, if stupid high, scores. I bit my lip as Pan went and ended up getting a score in the 900 range, but she somehow managed to pull her punch enough to not break the machine. Naturally, nobody else even broke three digits, except my score of exactly 999. 

I didn't really care enough to recognize any of the other five normal people who managed to get into the tournament. Essentially, in this tournament, they were extras. 

'Man, I've really gotta do something about this in our timelines...