AN: Where ever did they take Bacterian after his round? He's the only fighter who isn't shown leaving and doesn't hang around to play peanut gallery for the rest of the tournament after his knock out.

Poor smelly old Bacterian.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Twelve

She didn't have any interest in watching the fight between two strangers. Ordinarily she would have watched the battle simply to see the threat they posed...but as of yet, she hadn't found anyone approaching a level where she'd need to worry about that sort of thing. Aside from that, she had a persona to keep up.

Which wasn't to say that she missed the mark on one of the competitor's heads like her own.

She didn't.

She dropped onto one of the seats in the waiting room, and stared at the ceiling in a manner as carefree as she could manage. What was that fighter's name? Namu? Could he actually possess the byakugou seal? If he did, then he was the first direct connection to her proper dimension that she'd found, excluding ki itself. If they worked together...well, they could have all the power in the world, without something to use it on, she still couldn't make the walls between dimensions open. Not just that, but would this dimension even open directly into hers, or would she need to go back to that middle dimension first?

Would it even be intact after the battle? No...no. It would be. She couldn't just accept the possibility of not finding her way back. No matter what, that was home, those were her friends and family. After all these years, Sasuke had...

"Who are you really?"

Yamcha stood not far from her, watching her with that same suspicious look he'd been wearing almost since the end of their battle.

"Uh? Didn't you hear?" She pointed at herself. "I'm Ino Yamanaka. As beautiful as I am an amazing fighter."

"An amazing fighter that no one recognizes yet."

She glanced up at him with a frown. "I don't recognize you, but you're here."

For a long few moments, he simply watched her with an intense frown. Eventually, he gave a small huff and turned away from her toward where Goku and Krillin were standing in the room. "Who is it you're hiding your skill from, anyway? It's not like there's any better place to use it than this tournament."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He scoffed and shook his head, before walking away.

(*)

No matter what he tried to do to pep himself up, he couldn't help still being nervous. Some of those moves were so fast in the ring that he had difficulty seeing them, and yet that Yamcha had only landed a single hit on her.

And then she defeated him with a single punch of her own.

It was a little bit of an eerie reminder of Sakura and his own master's brief fight back on the island. This strange woman...she didn't possess the kind of strength that monster girl did, did she? He cast a furtive glance back toward her, where she seemed to be casually chatting with the person she'd just defeated.

...Nah, Yamcha had only been knocked a few feet away. And he wasn't a legendary master martial artist like his Master Roshi was. There was no way he'd need to worry about someone throwing punches that could send little mountains flying. Even though she was fast, he was stronger than anyone he'd seen who didn't live in Kame house. And who knew how fast he could be if he really pushed himself, right?

Yeah...

He still felt pretty nervous.

"You're gonna do fine!" Goku chirped, dragging his attention back to the present. "Master Roshi's training really made us strong. I bet if Yamcha had taken the training too, he'd have won the fight instead."

"You...really think so?" He shifted uneasily, and rubbed at his head. Despite the saying he used to hear, it never seemed to give him any extra luck.

"Yeah! Definitely!" He nodded, hands gripped into fists. "When you go out there, you just gotta give it your all and I know you'll win! Then we'll get to fight in the finals!"

Yeah, well...maybe...

He puffed out his chest, summoning up more confidence. Yeah. Yeah. He was gonna win this tournament, right? He'd gone and mastered the training he'd dreamed of receiving, he was stronger than he ever imagined being...he could beat some strange girl!

"Are you ready?"

He jumped.

Oh. It was that Yamcha guy. He turned and frowned up at the tall man in annoyance. Seriously, who snuck up on some fighter in the middle of a tournament, anyway? "O-Of course I'm ready! You'll see what Muten Roshi's legendary training can do for people!"

"I can already tell it's made you strong." He nodded to Goku briefly, but then turned his gaze back again. It still kind of felt menacing for some reason. "But you can't let your guard down when you fight her. She's stronger than she looks."

"Well, yeah, she did beat you..."

"That's not what I mean." Yamcha frowned, closing his eyes for a moment, as if recalling a memory of some sort. "In our fight, she was holding back. It was...more like she was playing with me than fighting me."

"Sh...She what...?"

Goku spoke before he could, eyes wide and face upturned. "She's really that strong?"

Yamcha sighed, and shook his head. For a moment, a really cruel one, Krillin thought it meant Yamcha had been exaggerating. "I don't know what her game is, or why she was holding back...but at the end, I could tell. She didn't need to let me hit her, but she did. And when I did...it...didn't feel right."

Krillin squinted up at the taller man. "...What's that supposed to mean? Did you accidentally grab her-"

"No!" His cheeks colored briefly, and he shook his head. "Not like that! I mean...it was like...I just happened to hit a wall while it was moving in the same direction. It wasn't like hitting a person at all."

Blood must have drained from his face pretty rapidly, because he suddenly felt a wave of dizziness. "So...you mean...she dodged you and made it look like she didn't?"

Yamcha frowned, and looked over his shoulder at where the woman still sat. When she noticed their attention, she offered a small wave. Immediately, Krillin turned away, resisting the urge to shuffle a little closer to Goku and block out her line of sight.

"I don't know what it was." The martial artist sighed, and shook his head. "But if you've really been trained by Muten Roshi, then don't hold back. Bring your best, and take her out before she decides you're a threat."

...Shockingly, that latest pep talk did nothing for his 'pep'.

At all.

In the distance, he heard the crowd suddenly roar in excitement, and the announcer boomed out across the room. "That's it, folks! That's ten! Namu won the battle in a single attack! Truly, this tournament has been amazing so far! Where will our contestants lead us next?"

Goku perked up immediately, trotting past them. "It's my turn! Finally!"

"Who was his opponent...?" Krillin frowned, and glanced around the room just in time to see a huge dinosaur march by him. "Ahh...geez." He crossed his arms as he watched the two march out toward the ring. Those dinosaurs always had such bad attitudes. And they always had more than just hands and feet to fight with, it wasn't really fair at all. Honestly, in his opinion, the tenkaichi budokai really should have been just for humans.

But then...if it were, he supposed there'd just be another one even bigger that had all the fighters on Earth.

Well, at least he didn't have to fight Gilan. Dinosaur breath always smelled like really bad fish.

(*)

She felt better about the fact that she actually wanted to see Goku's fight (and had made no effort to watch the other one) because in this case the rest of the (still present) contestants also did. Most likely in their case it was interest in Gilan, the monstrous creature he was matched against...but that worked just fine. She didn't need to elaborate on her reasons if they weren't on theirs.

Gilan dwarfed Goku by a considerable amount. Not only in height, but in width as well. Eight of Goku would probably have fit inside the beast, and as light and clear as Goku's voice was, Gilan's boomed like distant explosions.

She doubted Goku would have very much trouble with him, considering his bulky form and the limited range of movement each contestant was given.

...And so naturally, the battled opened with Gilan punching the little idiot right into a nearby wall.

She sighed, and directed a pointed look at the old man in the crowd. If he'd trained his boys in martial arts, Goku would have known better than to leave himself so open and unguarded. As it was, the tasks had made Goku durable enough to take that kind of a hit without injury...but if the creature had smacked him in any other way, Goku would have immediately lost to a far inferior opponent.

The old man looked up into the sky, rather than looking properly chastised.

"That's the Goku I remember!" Yamcha cheered. For some reason, Krillin had convinced him to climb on top of the wall as Goku did before, rather than simply stand between the entrance of the ring and the tournament screen. For some reason, Yamcha had apparently agreed to do it.

Probably, Team Seven would have fit right in.

Despite the lack of any training received from Master Roshi, it was clear Goku must have had some training, because his counter attacks were well-calculated and precise. Not only did he overpower and out-speed the behemoth, but his strikes didn't waste energy, and worked well to keep Gilan dazed and off-balance.

Right up until he threw Gilan out of the ring, and into the air. For a moment, she thought he might have meant to throw in an arc, to keep his opponent from touching anything but the ground outside the ring...but then the height of the throw went out of control.

She sighed, and muttered under her breath as she watched the young boy stare up at his airborne opponent. "Goku, you idiot..."

Just what did he think wings were for?

"Wait...just leaving the ring isn't enough?" Krillin frowned over at his partner in ridiculousness, who had slung a leg over the edge just to keep from sliding off.

"No...you have to touch the ground. Or...I guess anything really solid outside of the ring. Otherwise, if you just jumped really high, you might be considered a ring out because you're not in the range of the ring. Or you could jump on something above the ring, and count as 'in' as long as you were above it."

"Oh...I guess that makes sense..."

She was about to make a comment about prospective competitors researching...or at least listening to the rules, but before she could, Gilan spat something at Goku. In form it wasn't particularly familiar, but the function of it was obvious the moment it began to move in an unnatural spiral.

"Goku, move!" She hadn't meant to say anything-this wasn't the chuunin exams, the two boys weren't on her team, and she wasn't here to ensure they won. The shout simply happened by instinct.

"Wha-" The young boy looked over at her in confusion, as if he didn't understand the command (or perhaps simply hadn't expected it from her), and the strange substance snapped shut around him like an over-sized rope.

"Oh no! Dammit!" Krillin glared down at her from where he perched on the wall. "Stupid! You distracted him!"

The beast gave a rumbling laugh. "Thanks for the distraction. Because of you, now I get to win."

AN: Just as a note in case it comes up-I have not forgotten that Krillin has no nose and therefore could not smell anything from the dinosaur. (Except when he does, randomly, have an invisible nose to bleed out of or to do something comic with it)

Krillin, however, forgets all the time.