AN: My apologies if Goku's loss was confusing last chapter- it was meant to be abrupt, as he falls off of the ring in an instant, but if it was confusing it may have been somewhat too abrupt. As for POV changes confusing readers, I will see what I can do about making it immediately apparent who is thinking with each transfer (short of directly announcing it each change, which I have never liked to do)
Incidentally, for those interested in a story centered around Naruto rather than Sakura, and part one rather than late-Shippuden, there's a story called "The Z Ninjas" by Dli10star that seems to be actively updating and similar to what you may be looking for. Give it a look, if you're interested.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Sixteen
It was only a very minor part of her that had the urge not to bother walking out onto the ring. This tournament wasn't any of her business...but then, the future of those two boys weren't really her business either. The mark on her opponent's forehead, though. That was her business.
"Are you ready, folks?" The coordinator boomed out in an excited voice, buzzing back and forth across the stage. "After a truly incredible tournament, this is it! The deciding match! Who will win the five hundred thousand zenni and be crowned 'strongest under the stars'? Ino Yamanaka, the first female to make it to the finals, or the mysterious Namu, the man who has traveled the furthest for this tournament? What an exciting conclusion!"
Namu stood with his hands clasped, head down once more. As the man continued to speak, she glanced across the crowd. As expected, the old man and his company were already gone. Undoubtedly Goku and Krillin had retrieved him not long after they left the waiting room, and he would be unable to explain watching the match without revealing her identity.
Well...probably.
Or he didn't care as much about her true abilities as she'd thought.
...It didn't really matter which one it was, in the end. No one was present who could possibly recognize her, nor who could glean information off of watching her. That, honestly, made things much easier for her.
The moment that the fight began, Namu shot forward, crossing an impressive distance in only a moment. Rather than dodge, her hand lanced out and snatched the ankle of the foot that struck toward her. "Is that the Byakugou?"
"What-?" For a moment, he blinked down at her hand in confusion, and then he gripped her extended wrist and twisted himself and her in a circle. It was a good reaction, forcing her to release his leg in order to land on her feet instead of her back...but it wasn't the answer she wanted.
Which was just...frustrating of him.
She smacked aside a lightning fast chop, and stepped forward, hooking her leg around his and knocking him off balance. "The mark on your forehe-ah!" She cut herself off, and sprung backward, kicking away from him just in time to avoid some unpleasant cross-chop attack.
He stumbled to his feet with as impassive and determined an expression as ever, and she grit her teeth in frustration. He hadn't even responded to a word she said yet! The day had been vexing enough as it was, this man...just...made it worse! She might have been in love with a man whose second (maybe third, these days...) favorite thing in the world was silence, but even he answered her questions when she asked them.
She clenched her fist and held it in front of herself, threatening. "If you think I won't just beat an answer out of you, you're wrong."
He swerved to the right just in time to dodge her strike, and then swept behind her. Much as Krillin had with her, she spun and lifted her arm to catch his counter-strike just in time. Unlike the small, untrained boys in the tournament, when she blocked...she didn't move an inch.
"Are you storing ki? Is that why it's different?"
His leg bent slightly, an almost unconscious movement to prepare for one of his quick kicks. She kicked him in the knee before he could do anything more than that. When he immediately dropped down in pain, her fist connected with his face.
Irritated as she was (and perhaps it wasn't just because he refused to answer her...), she still controlled her strength enough to ensure that he wouldn't go right out of the ring and then escape her in the confusion of whatever crowning ceremony would follow her victory.
"What is it? If it isn't ki, what are you sealing away?"
He sighed and shook his head as she walked toward him again. "I am sorry...but I don't have time to puzzle through the nonsense of your words." His arms crossed in front of him, and he drew in a deep breath. "You are a truly strong opponent...and so you leave me with no other choice."
Nonsense...?
He kicked the ground, and in an instant, leaped high into the air. Her head snapped up immediately, tracking his progress. The boys had jumped an impressive height once they took their shells off, and she'd noticed her own steps had become incredibly light without the weight on her back...but the height Namu soared to was far beyond either of those.
"It's time to finish this!" The distant voice of the man echoed across the ring as his distant form grew in size and distinction with alarming speed. "Namu Abudabutsu!"
Could she dodge him in time? How much impact would whatever technique he used have on the ring itself? Would he be able to adapt to her movement as he fell? Just what would that do if she let it hit her?
Probably, she didn't really want to know the answer to that last question.
Ah...damn.
Her arm lanced upward as he shot down toward her with the speed of one of Naruto's Rasen-Shiruken, and she cracked open her seal. Over the last eight months her natural chakra collection had been building her reserves back up again. It wasn't nearly at the level it had been in the war, but it was enough to activate mitochondrial regeneration if she needed it.
Which she probably would.
The impact of his arm and her hand reverberated off of every surface of the tournament stadium like an explosion. Bones fractured and shattered and then re-knit throughout her hand and arm and shoulder. Her fingers seized around one of his wrists, unyielding.
She held the man above her head with all the effort one might use to hold up a small bird. "You're wrong. I'm the one who doesn't have time."
For a few moments, as silence reigned over the stadium crowd, he stared down at her with eyes and mouth open wide in shock. Despite the technique being one that he'd obviously saved for a desperate finishing blow, the mark on his head showed no difference at all.
He shook himself slightly, and someone in the crowd shouted in excitement, rousing the crowd once more. Without making any attempt to prize his wrist from her grip, he curled up into a ball and swung himself down legs jutting out, using her own grip as leverage to kick her off of her feet.
She twisted, and slammed him into the ground. Underneath him, the tiles of the ring cracked, making a sickening and unpleasant sound. She dropped down and pressed her knee into his chest, fist cocked back. "What is the mark on your head? Tell me!"
He stared up her, eyes still wide, expression evidently still dazed from the impact with the ring. "I-it...is a...mark of wisdom..."
She frowned. "Wisdom?"
He glanced around the ring, and she pressed her knee into his chest. She wasn't about to let him escape again until he gave her answers.
"How does it work? Is it a seal? An inherited mark?"
His brows furrowed, and he frowned up at her. "Seal...? It is...a tattoo."
"A..."
Energy drained from her limbs, and her arm slowly sank to her side. A tattoo. All of that time she'd spent thinking about how she could try to use two sources of chakra to escape, trying to determine just what the differences in the seal could mean...
All of the time she thought she might have been closer to finding her way home.
She'd gone off at the three boys for not thinking enough, for making assumptions about their opponents...and she hadn't even considered the mark might have been nothing more than a clan symbol engraved in his skin by brute force.
She shook her head and gave a soft, bitter laugh.
Her master would have words with her if she'd seen her now.
She straightened, and backed away from the man. He struggled to his feet, expression wary and confused, and she turned away from him. What the hell was she thinking, listening to that old man, anyway? This entire tournament was a waste of her time.
She sighed, and walked away from the stadium. "I give."
(*)
He...kind of felt better about losing in the semi-finals now. Even if it was against a girl.
Maybe it was the food sitting in front of him (way better food than he'd had in the past year), maybe it was that Goku had also lost his semi-final fight, so he didn't actually let Goku down, and he wasn't actually that far behind Goku anyway. Maybe it was that his master had promised they'd get more, better training now.
The pep talk, unlike some of the ones he'd had that day, actually made him feel pretty good.
"It's too bad we can't eat like this every day."
His fellows at the table sans one looked up at him, and then pointedly stared at Goku. The boy, busy scarfing down food out of a bowl bigger than his head, had apparently missed or ignored his comment in favor of the food.
...He did make a good point as to why they didn't eat like this every day.
Considering how much Goku was eating (how much he always ate, truthfully), it was a little surprising his master had offered to pay even this time when Yamcha's girlfriend denied any knowledge of offering to pay for food. (But he was pretty sure he heard someone shout about paying for food in the crowd...)
"Hey, where did you say Sakura went?" He...didn't care all that much, honestly, but it changed the subject from Goku's eating.
"After Goku lost, she said she wanted to look into something." Master Roshi shrugged slightly, picking at his food with little interest. "I imagine she'll show up soon."
He huffed and shook his head. "It's not like I care if she does. Maybe she'll get lost in the city on her own and never come back." He sipped at his hot tea. "Hey, if we leave before she gets back, we don't need to ever go find her again and bring her back, right?"
His master sighed.
It was the only warning he got before someone smacked him upside the head.
(*)
She wasn't really sure why he'd bothered, but apparently at some time before he'd left, the old man had written a note for her with the address to find them at. Now that the tournament was over and done with, she had every intention of searching for more information again...but after the disappointment and...waste of that tournament, she actually could use a bit of a break before she went looking again.
Besides, she did want to know how the two boys were doing after their initial disappointment.
...But on second thought, the little brat could feel whatever he felt like.
Goku, the one of the two she hadn't decided to retract her concern from, almost choked on his food when he looked up at her, expression somewhere between pleased and surprised. "Sa-" He coughed, and gulped down whatever it was he'd been chewing on when she arrived. "Sakura! You missed our matches."
"Hm?" She arched an eyebrow and shoved the old man's chair further away from the empty one at the table before claiming her own seat. "No I didn't."
Krillin squinted at her in annoyance, absently rubbing at his head. "You did! You weren't in the crowd. We looked."
"No..." She pulled a clean bowl toward her, and pointed at him "You kept looking in the wrong sections. I don't know why you thought I'd willingly stand next to the old pervert."
He stared at her, clearly still unconvinced.
"If I wasn't there, how do I know you got nervous just because you were fighting a girl and started blindly rushing her until she kicked you out of the ring, and then after that Goku slipped and fell out of the ring?"
"Hey..." Yamcha spoke up, then, propping his elbow on the table. "Do you know who won the finals?"
She glanced up at him, blinked, and shook her head. "After Goku fell out of the ring, I left. Sorry. It'll be posted somewhere, won't it?"
He frowned in something that might have been disappointment, and huffed. "Yeah...I suppose."
She propped her chin on her hand, and turned her attention to Goku. "So...am I gonna just keep eating with a bunch of strangers, or are you going to introduce me to your other friends?"
He coughed again, eyes wide, and pounded his chest.
Honestly...it reminded her of Naruto with his ramen.
"Oh! Oh!" He pointed across the table. "This is Yamcha! And Bulma! And these are Oolong and Pu'ar."
The pig (she would have found it strange to see a pig sitting at a table fully clothed, if she hadn't already seen a few similar creatures in the preliminaries of the tournament) scowled over at the boy. "What...I'm relegated to some kind of package deal with the cat now?"
"Excuse you!" The ...cat... chirped in indignation. "What's so wrong with being introduced with me?!"
"It's not with that's the problem-"
The woman, Bulma, coughed loudly, and frowned at the two of them. "What they mean to say is...it's nice to meet another friend of Goku's."
"Ah, not just a friend!" Roshi spoke up suddenly, beaming from his seat. "She's helped these two boys train for the past eight months as a part of Kame House! And..." His glasses caught the light of the restaurant as he shifted in his seat. "She's actually the one who offered to pay for this meal."
She turned toward him, then, studying his knowing smile. Could it be...that he'd never expected the boys to win at all, and had only insisted she join the tournament so that he could get the prize money?
...A slow smile curled across her features even before she realized it.
"I don't know where you got that from, but you're mistaken." She shook her head, and then shifted in her seat so that she could turn out her pockets. "I don't have any money."
"...Eh?"