AN: For the curious, the effects of Sakura's involvement in the world will be progressively more noticeable as time goes on. For the moment, she hasn't been around for very long, and the time she has been around has been very slow in terms of plot activity. It's my intent to avoid the Yuffie and Vincent syndrome even in situations where she has little direct impact though, so as to not waste anyone's time.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Eleven
Adrenaline high or no, he kind of wanted to take the time in the waiting room to recover, or maybe take a shower just to get rid of anything real or imagined that had crawled onto him during the last fight.
He wanted to, but the next fight involved one of Goku's friends, and more importantly...the winner would be his next battle. Goku made a really good argument for scaling the tournament wall and watching the next battle the way Goku had watched his. He still kind of wanted to stay and rest up...but here he clung to the wall anyway.
"How strong is that friend of yours?" He frowned at the two combatants, who for the moment only walked to their positions. The girl didn't look built to fight at all: she was more like the kind of woman that their master had wanted than the crazy tough girl they ended up with. Comparing her to Yamcha, it didn't seem like the match would be very long.
"He's really strong!" Goku's grip slipped, and only quick footwork saved both of them from a collision with the ground and probable concussions. "When I fought him he was really fast and really strong."
"So..." Not as easy to overcome as his last opponent, probably. "What you mean is...I guess I'll be fighting him next."
Goku watched the two of them, thoughtful, as the announcer stepped out of the ring. "I guess so, yeah. You'll see for yourself how he fights in a second, though!"
He sighed, and frowned down at the competitors. If nothing else...at least he'd get to figure out any tricks Yamcha would use on him other than just being 'fast and strong'.
...Even though that was pretty much his own entire thing.
(*)
The ring was unusually small for a competition like this one. When it came to chuunin exams, the room to move about was three times the size of the square, and the observers were far above and away from the action, where it would be safe from most genin or chuunin level attacks. The audience for this tournament were so near to the edge of the ring that usual martial arts would endanger them if she weren't careful. It didn't bode well for the overall strength and power of the world, if their strongest could safely do battle with so little precautions involved for the casual observers.
The arrangements were also more than close enough for the old man in the crowd to be closely observing and recording her movements to his memory. As much as she was showing off her skills for Goku and Krillin's sakes, she still needed to keep everything in a careful balance to conceal her full potential from anyone who might have been orchestrating things to figure that out. For whatever reason. It was an annoyance, but a necessary one.
Ah well. At least this would be a battle she could try to have a little fun with, given that she was expected to use some of her actual skill in it. She hadn't had a fight she'd had fun with in...longer than she wanted to remember.
As the match began, he sank into a low stance. She'd seen a few similar to his, so most likely his style relied on speed and adaptability, rather than strength. Which wasn't an unwise thing to do, generally.
She shifted her own stance slightly into something that would pass for defensive as well, and her lips curled up into a slight smile. If he wasn't about to blindly rush in and try to overpower her like the rest of her opponents in the preliminaries, it would just make the battle more fun.
For a moment, two, stillness fell across the ring, infecting the audience.
She watched his body tense a fraction of a second before he lunged forward with a low sweeping kick. The maneuver was clearly nothing more than testing her, feeling out an opponent he remained unfamiliar with. The nature of the action made it slow enough that even unprepared she might have been able to dodge it without much effort.
Instead she flipped to the side, and responded with a testing kick of her own.
"Guh-" In dodging her strike, his body twisted, off balance, and he rolled across the ring away from her. He recovered quickly from his tumble, catching himself just at the edge of the ring, and used it to support another forward lunge.
She ducked to the left, just out of reach of his fist. Instincts told her to attack...
She simply stood and watched him stumble a step in surprise. "Didn't you say you weren't going to hold back?"
He scoffed and threw her a suspicious look over his shoulder. "Didn't you say the same?"
She flipped backward to dodge a quick flurry of kicks. A waver in his gaze told her that the edge of the ring behind her had to be only a few steps. "Did I? Hm."
He lunged forward with determination, and she slipped by him close enough that the disturbed air from his punch stirred a few strands of her hair. Conveniently for her, it shuffled their positions around, which meant she wouldn't need to worry as much about dodging under close quarters again.
"Hey!" A female voice filtered out from the crowd. "Come on and get serious, Yamcha! Take her down already!"
His expression shifted to something like faint concern, and he squared himself off against her once more. Had he actually forgotten about his promise to show off in front of his girlfriend? Or was he just embarrassed not to land a hit on his opponent in front of her?
She glanced toward the crowd, curious over which one of the women might have been the one to shout out at him, and her gaze fell on the glimmering sunglasses of the old man. It was as impossible as ever to determine exactly where he was looking...but from his body language and his apparent calm amidst the excited crowd...he was watching just as closely and with as much calculation as she'd suspected he would.
"Sorry, but I just realized I have to finish this quickly." Her attention turned back to Yamcha when he spoke. At some point he'd assumed a slightly different stance, expression a mask of determination and focus. "Like I said, I've got a girlfriend to impress now."
She tensed even without quite realizing it, feet steadying herself in preparation for whatever he had ready as a finishing move. Would it be a ki attack of some sort? Could he risk using anything of any considerable power when there were so many bystanders so close by? Would he do something else completely new and bizarre to her home dimension?
"Wolf Fang Fist!" As he moved, the air around him whistled. It sounded a little bit like the distant howl of a wolf, which was most likely what created the name. Compared to his other attacks, this one was much quicker, almost at the speed of a body-flicker.
That was about as much time as she had to think before he closed the distance between them. She ducked back, and then to the right. When a punch turned into a clever kick, she used his shoulder as a boost to flip behind him, and very quickly needed to dodge the lightning quick roundhouse punch that followed.
But that was enough. Any longer, and the frustration over failing to connect that she could see on his face would transform into anger and humiliation. She wasn't here to prove that the people in this world didn't measure up to shinobi training (or at least the training of the fifth hokage), she was competing just to teach Goku and Krillin an important lesson. As a favor.
Another of his strikes she knocked aside with her own arm, and then a final one struck her square in her stomach.
When the blow contacted, his eyes widened, and he gave a harsh gasp.
Despite her attempt to make the impact look convincing, it didn't fool him at all. Whoever this was, he could judge the fighting ability and skill of others well. Honestly, she found that kind of refreshing after months of dealing with the old pervert and two children who had no experience in real battle.
He'd already began to throw himself backward to escape her. He underestimated her speed.
And her strength.
Knuckles and a discharge of chakra contacted with his ribcage, and with a shout the tall fighter crashed into the ground at the base of the observer's wall.
"A-Amazing!" The coordinator shouted from somewhere behind her. "Ring out! After an exchange of blazing fast attacks, Ino Yamanaka is the winner of round two!"
From the ground, Yamcha stared up at her with wary confusion.
People in this world really were determined to suspect her of something, weren't they?
(*)
"Awww no..." Goku huffed in disappoint. Disappointment! It didn't even seem like Goku was surprised. "Yamcha lost."
"Wh...wha..." He looked between the tournament ring-where someone was helping Yamcha back to his feet, and the two competitors were still just...watching each other for some reason-and Goku. "Did-Did you not see that? How am I supposed to fight someone like that? He could barely even touch her!"
Goku frowned, and gave a little shrug before he dropped down to the ground again. "Just try your hardest when you fight her!"
"That's not a useful strategy! Hey! Goku!" He growled in annoyance, and dropped to the ground a moment afterward, jogging to catch up to Goku's wandering form.
"Man..." Goku scrubbed at his hair with short fingers. "She must be really strong to just beat Yamcha that easily. I thought I might have been able to fight him..."
"I have to fight her nex-...wait." He glared over at his (ex-)friend. "You expected me to lose to Yamcha?"
"What?" Goku looked up at him, expression startled. "...Oh, right. You two were gonna fight next anyway." He crossed his arms and frowned up at the sky, thoughtful. "Still...it's surprising someone could be so strong..."
He eyed the other boy a moment or two. "...Y'know, I'm gonna just let that slide." He shook his head, and then sighed. "Besides...whether I'd beat Yamcha or not, I guess it doesn't matter...how am I gonna handle her?"
"You won't."
He froze. That definitely wasn't Goku, because it came from behind him, so...
That Yamcha guy, apparently recovered from the attack that knocked him out of the ring, walked behind them.
He frowned up at the older man, immediately bristling in defensiveness. "...I don't want advice from a loser."
Yamcha stared down at him in a way that was...kind of menacing. "If you can't take advice from other people, you're definitely not gonna win."
"Yamcha!" Goku cut in, eyes wide with either wonder or curiosity (it could be hard to tell with him sometimes) "How'd she beat you, huh? You were trying your hardest, right? Is she really that strong?"
"Aren't the losers supposed to join the observers?" The blonde leaned around Yamcha's arm and gave him a...surprisingly cute looking smile. For being such a good fighter.
Yamcha immediately jumped and scrambled away from her, face red and expression nervous. "H-hey! We're allowed linger and observe for a while!"
"Outta my way." Someone swept him aside with a sudden shove, and marched past him toward the ring. The other girl in the quarter finals, from the look of her...legs. Vaguely, he recalled her being set up in the third match. He hadn't really been paying attention though, with all of his worry over the first battle.
...Which...turned out to be much easier than he thought. Actually, with that in mind, and as impossible as the first battle had seemed until he actually did it (and remembered about his...handicap), maybe his second battle was the same thing, and would turn out to be just as easy once he got out there and faced her.
Yeah.
Maybe.
AN: Ordinarily, I am the sort to prefer to gloss over battles or stylize them in writing in some form or fashion, because fighting is hard to write. This is something I will avoid doing in this fic, however, because Naruto and Dragonball are both combat-centric shounen, and skipping over fight scenes just ain't gonna be.