Pocari screeched, collapsing hard onto her knees in the dark, smoking soil.
Her scream was raw, echoing across the wasteland with pure, unfiltered grief—but its physical side effect on the battlefield was catastrophic. Bogy, caught completely off guard by the sudden, high-frequency sonic shockwave, detonated violently in a volatile chain reaction that tore straight through Rot and Vex alongside him.
The resulting explosion carved a massive, blinding crater into the bedrock, hurling jagged debris across thousands of meters as heavy shockwaves knocked fighters right off their feet.
And then… dead silence.
Creep slithered across the scorched stone toward Pocari like black oil spilling over rock. Distracted by her own crushing sorrow over her father Yamcha's vanishing, she never saw the shadow coming.
Piccolo's eyes widened in horror. He spotted Creep gliding straight toward Pocari, but before he could even draw breath to shout a warning, the shadow was already upon her.
The darkness surged forward like liquid night, instantly wrapping around her small frame. She didn't even get the chance to scream—she simply... stopped.
One second she was there, kneeling in the crater. The next? Gone. Completely absorbed into Creep's shadowy mass.
No struggle. No chance to fight back. Just swallowed into the dark without a single trace.
Piccolo: "This is bullshit! How do we outsmart a villain who literally swims through the shadows?!" *Piccolo roared, his voice thick with frustration.*
Goku's expression darkened. Piccolo had hit the brutal truth—fighting a predator that didn't exist in the light was nearly impossible.
Vegeta: *Mid-fight with Beast, he growled through gritted teeth:* "We don't outsmart it! We find another way!"
Gohan: *Standing his ground against the towering rock beast, Gohan gritted his teeth as he blocked Beast's crushing fist with a strained, metallic clang of crossed arms. The sheer impact sent violent tremors down his spine—but he held his footing.* "Where the hell are those two?!" *Gohan shouted over the roaring chaos, heavy frustration and rising fear lacing his voice.* "They should've been here by now!"
Trunks: *Dodging an erratic blast from the wreckage, Trunks glanced back before yelling over the noise:* "Maybe they got ambushed! Or held up somewhere on the way!"
Or worse. The thought went unspoken between them… but it hung dangerously heavy in the burning air.
Vegeta: "I call bullshit! Nothing is more vital than the battle right here, right now!" *Vegeta snarled as he blasted another enemy drone into total oblivion.* "This is going to get much worse, very quickly!"
Vegeta wasn't wrong. The battlefield was already tilting toward complete disaster—the arrival of the DFA elites had shifted the balance entirely against them.
Goku, holding off multiple opponents at once, could feel the energy slipping too. They were losing ground fast. Without Melody and Goten's crucial power boosts to level the playing field, they were simply outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and overpowered.
And then—Creep struck again.