Kakarot considered calling on his old friend, the Flying Nimbus, to speed up his search for the Ox King's young, 12-year-old daughter, Chichi, but after a moment's hesitation, he chose not to.
After all, according to the Ox King, the fire had been raging for days by now, with no signs of abating. Whatever damage it was going to do to the castle, the hoard of treasure inside, it'd already done. A few more hours at worst wouldn't really change anything.
So, instead, leaving Bulma back near the base of the mountain, under the protection of the Ox King, Kakarot hovered high in the sky, then blasted forward.
The search for Chichi was difficult, slow-going.
It was inarguable that, in terms of skill and power, while they didn't compare to Tarble's own team, Roshi and Kakarot were both in their own league, far beyond any other earthbound martial artists. Even comparable to some of the late-stage Z-fighters of canon, in terms of sheer power.
But they still had their own special limitations due to the fact that they were earthbound.
For example, the only beings they'd ever sensed with power between Tarble's team and humans were themselves and Zeck.
In other words, while he'd built an extremely skillful ability to hold his power back, Kakarot's ability to modulate his full power in any fine manner was rather hit-or-miss.
And his ability to detect energy? The same way. While he could tell the location of Tarble and his teammates from across the planet without even trying, Kakarot couldn't tell the difference in energy between, say, a human and a large dog, unless he was actually within eyesight.
Still, even the fact that he could tell it at all simply by feel made the boy one of the planet's top martial artists.
At this point in time, not even the Crane Hermit and his students could really sense anything more finely than 'there's probablysomething there, maybe?'
Tarble and his team had been on planets like Vegeta and Namek, with hundreds to millions of individuals that varied wildly between power levels of 5-10,000. They'd at least been introduced to it all, at some point, and had many references to fine-tune their senses. Even the Celatian village on Earth had a few people whose power levels naturally touched around one hundred. No training required. Natural earthlings were just that weak.
If you took everybody with some sort of connection to the ancient master Mutaito out of the picture, the strongest human alive was only at around 50 or so, and even that was rare.
If the average human spent their entire life training, they could probably claw their way up to a power level of around 25.
Not much variance there. And with how incredibly well-traveled Kakarot was, he really couldn't be blamed for his fine-senses being so poor.
But it still resulted in a massive annoyance. Despite the fact that there was exactly zero chance of the daughter of a man like the Ox King being weak, she was still a child. The chances of her power level being much higher than that of the average, moderately trained adult were fairly low.
Which meant that, as he flew in a generally southward direction. Kakarot was forced to personally check out every single large animal that crossed his path, waiting for one that looked like a young girl.
For kilometers, there was no luck. Most of an hour passed. Kakarot was starting to get annoyed.
Then, he sensed two energy signatures in the range that he'd expected. A soft, slightly-scared one, fairly small, but still stronger than most adult humans, and one vicious, angry one, a bit stronger than the first one.
Immediately, Kakarot dove down from the sky. Even if neither was the Ox King's daughter, the smaller power level was almost certainly in danger.
"STAAY AWAAAY!"
"Whoa…!" Kakarot's jaw dropped in surprise as the girl did something that he definitely hadn't expected from a terrified little girl currently being attacked by a gigantic tyrannosaurus rex monster.
She threw a boomerang-like blade that'd apparently been attached to the top of her helmet, as hard as she could. The result was instant and brutal. The T-Rex's head slid right off of its body, cleanly severed.
It may have seemed like it was mainly the equipment that'd allowed the girl to deliver the final blow, but Kakarot knew that, no matter how sharp the blade, it couldn't possibly do that kind of damage unless she'd thrown it with some impressive strength and not a small amount of skill, either.
This girl definitely wasn't normal.
And the ki beam that she shot from her forehead a moment later, completely incinerating the dinosaur until not even ashes remained, proved such.
In terms of raw power, this little girl may have even been close to her father. Truly absurd potential for a human. Kakarot's lips curved into a small smile despite themselves, as he casually floated down to meet her.
"EEYAAAH!" Kakarot barely managed to catch the blade, an inch from embedding itself into his forehead. He sweatdropped. While that blade wouldn't have killed him, it would've been rather painful. "Get away! Get away! Get away! Get away! SOMEONE HELP ME!" Kakarot barely dodged several small energy blasts from the girl's forehead as she freaked out.
"Chichi?"
"GYAAAH! He knows my name! He's going to kidnap me, or eat me! I've heard all about this sort of thing from Daddy, you know! Stay away, stay away, stay AWAAAY!" She screamed, attacking Kakarot without holding back at all. The average person would've been dust by now.
"Chichi! Your dad sent me!"
"...Daddy?" Finally, Chichi stopped firing.
Kakarot explained everything, starting with the fact that Roshi didn't have the Bansho fan anymore, and then telling her that he'd offered to put the fires out with his own Kamehameha blast.
By the end, Chichi was blushing and apologizing. "Gee, I'm sorry! I thought you were a bad person. I've never seen a boy who can fly before. I got a bit scared." She explained.
"That's okay, it was kind-of fun." Kakarot admitted.
"You like being shot at?"
"It's good exercise. You should try it sometime!" Kakarot replied brightly.
"...I think I'm good. But I think it's very nice that you're so strong… Very attractive." Chichi blushed, hard.
Kakarot's eyes went wide. He wasn't stupid. As a strong, not-ugly martial artist, he'd received multiple confessions from girls in the past.
One where the girl's overprotective father had happened to be right behind her when she confessed to him. Letting her down easy had been… terrifying.
In the past, he'd always used the honest excuse that he was focusing on his martial arts, no time for girls.
But Chichi… she was different. And not just because she was notably more… developed than any other twelve-year-old girl he'd ever seen.
Still, Kakarot wasn't ready for that kind of thing. So, he changed the subject.
"Umm…Climb onto my back, and I'll fly you home. Be careful with that helmet, alright?"