A Mother's Touch (DBZ fanfic)

Chapter 10

"Hello! Hello! Testing one, two, okay!"

Everyone inside the stadium turned to see a short rounded man with bushy white eyebrows and a long mustache to match. He stood on top of one of the blocks speaking in front of a microphone.

"Well uh," he cleared his throat as he gathered everyone's attention. "First I'd like to thank each one of you fighters for coming all this way to the tournament because of course if you didn't come, there wouldn't be much of a show to watch," The man chuckled to himself. "If anyone is of the counting nature, you may have noticed that there are one hundred and thirty-seven fighters packed into this hall, each fighter representing countries and species from all over the world!"

Gine stared around at the giants around the inside arena, feeling a bit nervous at the amount of experienced fighters surrounding her. They've must have trained far longer than she had and some might have even entered previous tournaments before. "Hyaaa, one hundred and thirty seven people...!" her eyes moved down to her young friend. "And half of them have kneecaps taller than I am!"

He's right. Krillin barely reached her hips and Goku only won him by a couple of inches, reminding her of how short she truly was. It's not that bad, she reminded herself. It really wasn't, the human women are around her height...at least some of them.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Krillin, trembling beside her. "Huh? What's the matter Krillin?"

He shook his head, "N-nothing."

"Unfortunately," They focused their attention back to the stage "Out of all you guys here, only eight will get a chance to fight for the crowds in the actual tournament, so fight hard in the elimination round and let's try not to have any whining."

"Now then, allow me to explain the rules." Gine patted her son's head motioning for him to pay attention. "You will be divided into four tournament blocks and the top two from each block will advance to the finals. The battles will be one-on-one. If a fighter falls out of the ring, faints, says "I give," cries, or otherwise they lose." He emphasized the next part, "But you must not kill your opponent. The use of weapons is also forbidden! Preliminary battles will also last only one minute, so in the case that a winner is not selected, a judge will have to decide."

"Kill?" Gine blinked. That didn't set well in her stomach but since it was against the rules, it was okay...right?

"Now please move to the boxes and take a number. You can look on the boards to find your place," He pointed to a box, which had a hole, on top of a table "And please no trading." Every competitor lined up waiting for their turn to reach in and pick out a number for their spot on one of the four blocks.

Unraveling her number, Gine murmurs, "One hundred and ten."

Krillin, hearing her number, sighs at not having to fight her in the preliminary rounds. "Ninety-three for me! What did you get?" They shifted their eyes on Goku.

"Uh...seven and a zero," He says unsure.

"That's seventy dear." Gine said with a smile.

"Looks like Goku and Krillin will be in block three." Yamcha came up next to them, looking at the board.

"Huh?" The turtle hermit students turned their head to the board, finding their numbers. "Oh no that's bad! I don't want to go up against Goku!" Krillin shouted. It was one thing not wanting to battle the mother and another to battle the son.

Goku stared at the numbers, "But your number is far away from mine Krillin, so maybe we won't have to!"

"Oh...too bad!" He said in relief.