"Wow, old man. I'll admit it. You're way better than me. I can't beat you on a level playing field." I declared, clutching my chest as I tried to catch my breath. The way Roshi had pushed me just now had clearly been some sort of strange debilitation technique.
"So, you're finally getting serious, huh, kid?" Roshi noted, his muscles pumping themselves even further somehow. He was even more hulking than Tater now, seven feet tall and simply bursting with power.
He really wasn't holding back at all, huh? I didn't blame him.
In response, I doubled my ki output and charged at Roshi once more.
As he caught my basic jab with his palm, I dialed my power level up once more.
With a quick and simple body movement, I vanished from sight, just a shade faster than Roshi's body could hope to keep up with, leaving an afterimage in my place.
Appearing beside him, I gripped Master Roshi's arm and flipped the guy forward, trying to slam his face into the ground, but Roshi's reaction was swift, taking it like a champ and using the momentum to try to throw me out of bounds.
Thinking just as swiftly, I grabbed Roshi's wrist, leaving an afterimage in midair before using it as a fulcrum to change the direction that he tossed me, sending my real body high into the atmosphere.
I ended up landing softly back on solid ground.
I'd analyzed Roshi's fighting style enough. There wasn't anything more that I could learn from getting my butt beaten in hand-to-hand martial arts. The guy didn't think, or predict, he just acted, completely in the moment.
It was perfect mastery of both mind and body. He didn't need to think about the fight in the same way as me, because it just flowed for him. My skills were so far from that, it was almost funny. Fighting him had shown me that. I wouldn't catch up to him in a day.
So, I'd have to rely on my overwhelming power. While not particularly graceful, it was the only option available to me. Maybe I'd never be physically skilled enough to unlock Ultra Instinct, that wasn't the only path to the pinnacle.
"Try not to die, old man." I muttered with a smirk.
Then, I disappeared from sight, and Roshi flew backwards.
Appearing where Roshi had been just a moment ago, I smirked.
"Quick." Roshi noted, getting back to his feet. "But you won't hit me with that technique again." He declared.
"Oh, really? I, personally, trust my Hyper-Motion Technique. I think it's pretty good." I replied.
"Then try it." Roshi goaded.
So, I did. Multiple times, in succession. The first try missed completely. My second move happened while Roshi's body was still dodging my first try, and I managed to land a glancing kick against Roshi's muscular side, causing him to stumble, and be unable to block my third blow in time, a straight, all-out flying heel kick directly to the old man's chest.
But, unfortunately for me, just because he couldn't block my blow didn't mean that he completely failed to react.
"Un!" Pulling myself into a backflip to make my landing a bit more graceful, I grunted, favoring my right foot a bit as I dealt with the bit of pain shooting through it as it made contact with the ground.
"What was that?!" I wondered aloud.
Despite the fact that I was in a bit of pain, I was a lot better off than my adversary. Roshi's chest had already blackened with a massive burgeoning bruise, and he was hunched over in pain, having been thrown back to the very edge of the arena from the force of my kick. Had he not managed to somehow cushion it, he would've been thrown straight from the arena.
But despite the sad state of his body, the bald old man wearing a bad wig was still smiling.
"Got anything better? You seem a bit numb!"
"D…-" I stumbled. The crafty old master had imbued whatever technique he'd used to cushion my blow to his chest with electricity. I couldn't feel my right foot at all.
"You really are something, sir." I grinned.
Right now, I was using enough energy to take Asper, Pepper's father, who'd trained me back on Vegeta, with his power level of eight thousand, pull him over my knee, and spank him. An amount of raw force comparable to what my own father's had been, last time I'd seen him.
And Roshi was still treating me like a child through the pure gap in skill. If this was my limit, then I was going to lose. I couldn't even stand upright without using my ki as an aid. The fact made me laugh out loud.
Then, I doubled my power level, reinforced my entire body with ki, and tried again.
Roshi and I clashed so quickly that I was utterly shocked that his body could even go that fast. Zeck and Kakarot, even the version of Tater from four years ago, likely only saw vague blurs if anything, with how quickly our movements were.
And every single time my body made contact with Roshi's, the affected area would go numb. My arms from the shoulder down, my legs from the mid-thigh down, even the left side of my torso, all went numb from raw electricity flooding into my muscles, stopping them from getting the signals from my brain, every time Roshi's body made contact with my own.
His electricity-cladding technique was forcing me to burn through ki at an astronomical rate in order to keep my body moving. No Planet Vegeta Saiyan was this tired old man's match.
Unfortunately for him, I wasn't a Planet Vegeta Saiyan anymore. My power level was in the ten millions. No matter how I burned ki, a fight at the level of early ten thousands would never drain me dry.
So, with a final push, it was Jackie Chun who was finally thrown out of the arena.