Dragonball ½

 

Note:  Inspired by the incredible Dragonball R, I thought it would be
nice to have a version that was Ranma/Pan match up.  Necessary changes
were made.  Dragonball characters toned down, but not to much, Ranma
slightly powered up.  Also, sorry if I get a few facts from the end of
Dragonball Z and GT wrong.  I didn’t get to see most of them.  I am
ignoring Uub because I have no idea who the heck he is.

 

Prologue:  The Tournament.

 

          The Tenkaichi Budoukai had started in the normal fashion. 
Powerful martial artist from all over the world had shown up in order to
compete for victory and the title of champion. 

 

          A lot of them had stopped bothering to arrive.  The Son family
and Hercule always dominated the competition, with an occasional family
friend making it into the actual fights but nothing more.  Son Goku
almost stopped actually entering the competition but his family was
almost as strong as he.  This was to be the last tournament Goku would
fight in.

 

          This time /was /a little different.  Several lucky martial
artist had made it past the preliminary rounds.  Piccolo had tried to
sense the ability to use ki in the strongest guy but he had next to
none.  He was in for a little surprise, the z fighters all thought.  He
was incredibly fortunate to make it this far!

 

          They had been given a short rest and then taken to the
drawing, to choose their opponents.  The boy, Goku, Gohan, Trunks,
Goten, Pan, Vegita, Krillin, Tien, Buu, and six other martial artists
stood in line to draw a number.

 

          Goku was called first.  Of course, he had Buu give him fight
#1.  The boy was called second, though Piccolo didn’t catch his name
from the distance that he watched from.  He also drew fight #1.  Oh
well, that ends his fighting career.

 

          The boy had apparently not heard of their reputation, as he
was smiling all the while.  Talking to one of his friends in the unknown
martial artists he was laughing and joking, though at this distance
Piccolo couldn’t make it out. 

 

          Even Namekian ears don’t work over the roar of the crowd.

 

          The rest of the match-ups were kind of unexpected.  Almost
every single z fighter was to battle one of the strange martial artist
who had managed to make it to the finals.  In fact, every single one but
Vegita and Buu.  They were up against each other.

 

          Of course, Hercule only had to fight the last one left from
this group….  The lucky dog.

 

          The ring was cleared, newly rebuilt from last year’s fights,
which had left it almost completely gone, along with most of the seats
in the audience.  Tickets to the Tenkaichi Budoukai now came with life
insurance.

 

          The strange boy stood confidently across the ring from Goku. 
Piccolo could tell Goku wasn’t taking this fight seriously.  The boy had
almost no ki, and didn’t look especially strong.  His red shirt and
black pants vaguely reminded Piccolo of Goku’s old orange outfit.  The
announcer shouted, “Go!”, and Goku began to power up.

 

          As soon as the boy saw Goku was just going to stand there,
screaming, he did a small jumped and shouted out an attack.  “Dragon’s
Hell Blast!”

 

          Goku had no time to dodge or escape as his own powering up
energy was used against him, driving through the ring and taking Goku
all the way to the ground below.

 

          “Ring Out!”

 

          After a few astonished stares from everyone but the six
friends the boy had come with, the announcer had explained.  “Goku is
touching the ground under the ring!”

 

          But that wasn’t what everyone was staring at.  Someone had
just defeated Goku.  In under thirty seconds.

 

          Maybe this was going to be interesting after all.  The next
few fights went predictably, the z fighters beating each person they
were up against.  However, Krillin and Tien lost their fights, but then
they were only human after all.  Vegita lost to Buu, much to his chagrin.

 

          In the second round of fights, Gohan resolved to be more
careful against the boy, so as not to lose by a trick.  By now the ring
was covered in scorch marks and blast holes.  He launched himself at the
boy, confident in his ability to win without a power-up.  The boy dodged
his lunge, pushing Gohan even farther forward and downward.  He slammed
into the ground after desperately trying to pull up.  The boy had beaten
Gohan even faster than Goku.

 

          Piccolo was sure the boy had disappeared right before Gohan
crashed and reappeared after.  But, it was too fast to tell, just a
little flicker.  Perhaps they had better be more careful.

 

          Goten was defeated in yet another close match with Trunks. 
Pan’s opponent mysteriously disappeared, and the boy had shook his head
and muttered, “Ryouga, when will you learn?” when he found out.

 

          Buu had defeated his opponent with a single punch.  He was
really too powerful for these poor people.

 

          In the third round, Trunks had faced the strange boy and Buu
faced Pan. 

 

          Trunks had no chance.  The boy began to fight for real instead
of use dirty tricks to win.  He had flickered in and out of sight, using
the Afterimage technique combined with another incredible technique that
masked him from any form of detection, ki scanning, or even magical
location.  Trunks rose to the air, unable to find his target, and was
quickly taken down by a barrage of blue ki attacks. 

 

          From every single Afterimage.  After Trunks crashed down
outside the ring, the boy had reappeared, with a taunting grin.  “How do
you like that attack?  I call it the Amaguri-Dan.”

 

          Chestnut Bomb?  Piccolo didn’t even want to know.

 

          Pan had been looking at the boy with starry eyes the entire
battle.  Well, actually she had been looking at his reflections, but the
idea was the same.  He had some real power!  He could keep up with her
in training and power!  And most importantly, he was cute!  The perfect
guy, she thought.

 

          When her turn to fight Buu came, she fought her hardest,
dodging most of Buu’s strikes and returning much more than she took, but
she was not able to take the resilient pink fighter down.  When she
finally went down, her only thought was, “Dang, I wanted to fight that
cute guy!”

 

          By now, every single person was awaiting the boys next move. 
A human who could beat that many Saiya-jins?  Impossible.

 

          Buu was ready, carefully considering his moves.  The boy had
not done anything since the match began, merely stood there, in Goku’s
own traditional ready position.

 

          Buu lunged forward, careful with its flying so as not to face
Gohan’s end.  He launched an astonishingly fast combination of punches,
but missed each time.  The boy had no trouble dodging, and soon had less
and less as Buu became angrier and angrier at missing.  Buu let loose
his full power, and finally hit the boy, snapping his head back with a
loud crack. 

 

          Buu was horrified, thinking it had killed something again. 
But he took a closer look.  Since when was his opponent a training dummy? 

 

          He turned around again as several throwing stars embedded
themselves in the gooey flesh of his back.   The boy had taken them from
apparently nowhere (can’t very well hide them up his sleeve, he doesn’t
have any.) and tossed them at rather high speeds.

 

          Of course, this did nothing but make Buu angry, but it was a
nasty trick anyway.

 

          As Buu lunged once more, the boy began to dodge in a peculiar
pattern, leading the pink Buu in a sort of spiral.  At the center of the
spiral, as Buu was about to land a finishing blow, the boy lifted his
hand and screamed, “Dragon’s Heaven Blast!”

 

          Picollo told the others this was another, more basic form of
the Hell Blast used earlier.  It took someone else’s energy and used it
against them.  They watched, amazed, as Buu refused to let go of his ki
and was torn into pieces by the resulting twister.

 

          Unfortunatly for the boy, Buu recovered, though he was
somewhat weaker than before.  His ki was fairly spent.

 

          Piccolo had spent the time helping Goku to attempt to discover
the boy’s true ki reserves.  He had obviously been hiding it when he
first fought.

 

          It didn’t help.  For all appearances were concerned, the boy
had almost no ki.  He had just enough to fire off a small blast and
nothing more.  The Amaguri-Dan he had done earlier should have been
impossible for him.  He just didn’t have enough raw energy to pull off
such a wasteful move.

 

          Buu remained in the air, and started throwing balst after
blast at the boy.  He shot until the entire area was obscured, and the
ring was almost completely destroyed in the process. 

 

          He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around just in time
for the boy riding on his back to shove a small blue ball of ki into his
mouth.

 

          The boy obviously had known the Buu would survive his head
exploding.  Brilliant strategy, riding the pink body down so Buu would
touch first.  His head reformed only seconds after he had lost.

 

          “And the winner is…”  The announcer began, “RANMA!”

 

End Prologue