Vegeta, Krillin, and a thoroughly bewildered Yamcha stood before their assembled friends and family, bracing for the three uninvited guests hurtling toward them.
Senzu Beans had been growing scarcer and scarcer over the years. Even after burning through most of their stamina in the earlier fights, nobody had bothered with one — if you won, you went home and ate a proper meal; who wanted to choke down those bloating little peas? If you lost, Grand Zeno erased you, and there was no need to die on a full stomach. Either way, having energy or not hadn't made much of a difference. But now that enemies were crashing the party, the beans were mandatory.
Son Goku broke off his standoff with Jiren. The moment he sensed the spatial barrier around the area dissolve, he shot over to the spectators' seating, panting hard, putting himself between his wife and son and whatever was coming.
He was the first to pull back, and Frieza and Jiren both stepped away from the ring after him.
Krillin — keeper of the Senzu Beans — dug through every pocket he had, front and back, left and right, and scraped together exactly two beans. He handed one to Son Goku and one to Vegeta, prioritizing the two of them to get their stamina back first.
Frieza blinked and blinked again, looking like he might want one too. Krillin rolled his eyes and ignored him completely.
Kibito and Dende had been doing solid support work, using their healing abilities back-to-back to help the warriors recover. On the Eleventh Universe's side, Jiren was running on fumes as well — they quickly called in their own reserves and topped him off just enough to put him back in fighting condition.
All of them settled into a do-or-die formation. Outside the World of Void, Ino stepped forward and effortlessly blocked the trio making their move on Grand Zeno.
Her problems were hers to solve. These enemies had come from the future timeline — it was only right that she deal with them.
Ino looked the three over, plus the bird. "Fusion Zamasu — the Potara fusion — and Broly… and this must be Tokitoki, yes? The Tokitoki hatched in a future timeline. Ha. What a ragtag bunch. How exactly did you lot all wind up together?"
Fu drew the long sword at his hip and leveled it at Ino, turning to address Zamasu and Broly. "This one's mine. You two… do whatever you like."
All three of them had been drinking deep from the Universe Tree's energy, and their power had surged beyond anything expected. Broly let out a roar, trailing a comet-tail of green fire, and hurled himself at the World of Void — thin as an eggshell at its boundary. Fusion Zamasu let out a cold laugh that lasted a few seconds, then fell in behind him.
"Neither of you is going anywhere." Ino raised one palm and a spatial labyrinth snapped shut around Broly. Then she pressed her palms together and conjured an infinitely looping time trap, scooping up Fusion Zamasu mid-flight and dropping him straight into it.
Broly hammered at the walls of the spatial labyrinth in a frenzy, trying to blast his way out on raw power alone. Fusion Zamasu, for his part, quickly realized he had been locked into a Time Loop roughly six minutes in duration. He calmly began analyzing the temporal coordinates around him, searching for an exit — but no matter how he dissected the loop, no way out revealed itself. Worse, as the cycle continued, his own thoughts began to slowly loop along with it.
"Tokitoki!" The great bird, its feathers a deep crimson-black, let out a piercing cry. It was genuinely something — it was actually attempting to crack Ino's Time Loop and free Zamasu.
"Summoning Jutsu — Tonton! Tonton, go! Bite it!" Ino flicked her wrist and sent her twenty-something-pound pet pig sailing through the air like a throwing weapon.
Tonton, now airborne: ???
She looked at Tokitoki. Then she looked back at Ino.
I'm a one-cost 1/1 boar with Charge. You think I can beat a three-cost 2/1 owl with Silence?
Ino cheered her on: "You can absolutely take it! Don't be scared! That stupid bird's only really dangerous when it's ripping open space — everything else about it is completely mediocre. Play to your strengths. Sit on it!"
Tonton squeezed her eyes shut, activated the Super Added-Weight Rock Technique, and then planted her full backside squarely on top of Tokitoki.
Leaving the battle between pets to sort itself out, and paying no further attention to Zamasu and Broly thrashing in their respective traps, Ino turned her gaze to the main event.
"Kabuto-senpai."
"Miss Yamanaka."
For a moment, it sounded exactly like the old days — back when they were both learning at Konoha Hospital.
Ino entered Liberation state and studied Fu. "You, who have taken up residence in Kabuto-senpai's body… where exactly did you come from? I can't see your past or your future. How extraordinary."
Fu smiled pleasantly. "That's mainly because of my mother…"
He held nothing back. He laid out the full story of his mother Towa, and everything about himself in the future timeline.
Ino blinked. "You're Towa's son — by that… what was the Android's name again?"
Towa, with nothing better to do in her endless spare time, had built herself a male Android — lab assistant by day, a 'tool' for alleviating loneliness by night.
Back when Ino had been controlling Towa through her nano-insects, she'd caught glimpses of certain memories — but it had never crossed her mind that a son might come tumbling out of it all. And this son had been remarkably cunning: he'd hidden his soul inside Kabuto's body and slipped through the gap into her time loop.
Ino had no desire to watch people she knew die.
If Tsunade were going to die, would she go save her? If she saved Tsunade, should she also save Jiraiya? And if she saved Jiraiya, what about Minato Namikaze? It never ended.
She had never used her ability to peer into the future timeline when it came to people close to her — and yet this Fu had exploited Kabuto's body to slip right through the cracks.
"Well played. I genuinely did not see this coming. That treacherous vixen Towa actually left me a trap this size."
Ino was a little put out. She'd come to the Tournament of Power purely to sit back and watch — and somehow, somewhere along the way, even the referee had ended up in the ring.
On top of that, this particular opponent had hidden himself inside her time loop, was himself from the future, and on top of everything else had the murder of his mother to avenge. From any angle you looked at it, he was the enemy of her, the Supreme Kai of Time — a problem she couldn't shake no matter how hard she tried.
"What a headache. I'll finish you in under a minute." Ino said it with perfect composure.
Fu had seized the lion's share of the Universe Tree's energy, and his speed and power were now staggering. He reversed his grip on the long sword and drove a fist straight at Ino's face.
Ino vanished from his field of vision in an instant. Without a moment's thought he swung the sword — wrapped in deep crimson flames — in a wide cut through the empty space to one side.
Ino jumped through time again, though she was a fraction slower than before. A single strand of hair — turned silver by her Ultra Instinct training — was sheared off by Fu's blade.
"Not bad. You've got more than your mother ever did." Ino's voice came from behind him, but she was already materializing on his left side. Without a sound, she struck with an open palm.
The rebounding force that came back through her hand felt like slamming into the iron core of a planet. Her arm went briefly numb — but she pushed through it and drove Fu back a good ten steps.
She rolled her wrist out. "This is all energy you absorbed from that Universe Tree, isn't it? Aren't you afraid of bursting at the seams?"
In her estimation, Fu at baseline had probably been around Son Goku and Vegeta's level — maybe even a notch below. Now, having absorbed that enormous reservoir of energy, he'd pushed well past a Destroyer in raw power, and was approaching the level of an Angel Attendant.
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