AN: For those who couldn't view the art, check the version of this fic on AO3 (also under the account 'yusagi') it will have a version of the chapter that possesses the complete version of the link.

I can't figure out why it's relevant how shinobi or z warriors can die. I would prefer that reviews have at least some relevance to the chapter or the fic as a whole.

Boy would I love to know where in the world Tights vanished to for the rest of forever after meeting Jaco. Did she secretly turn into the tiny cute thing that Tarble marries?

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Twenty-eight

"You want to what?" Bulma spoke over the rest of the room.

Yamcha shifted on his feet and grimaced from the doorway. "I mean...the more people who work on it, the faster it'll go, right? Considering the circumstances of how it went down last time, I kind of want to be able to help for real this time."

Bulma clicked her tongue, and sighed. "Well...I guess we could go. It's Sunday tomorrow, so we'd have a day to tag along, at least. In that time we might get the rest of the dragonballs with my help."

She...doubted that, considering the travel time involved simply in getting to their first dragonball. But she wasn't the one who could make that decision. Goku was, given he had the summon...creature...friend that would be carrying them.

Goku didn't look particularly pleased. In fact, as he squinted up at them, she thought he looked downright peeved. "Yeah, but neither one of you can ride on the Nimbus. You'd have to both hang on to me the whole time."

"Ah! I've got a solution to that. And to the space squeeze issue." Bulma held up her hand and pointed to a device on her wrist. "Watch!"

She pressed a few buttons, and then...vanished. Sakura blinked, and glanced around the room out of instinct. Maybe moving around the room didn't really have anything to do with whether or not she could fit on a cloud (or the thing Krillin had mentioned about being able to float on it), but when a person disappeared...it was hard-wired instinct to see where they went.

"Down here!" Bulma's voice called from the seat she'd been sitting on. After a moment, Sakura realized...Bulma was indeed standing right where she'd been sitting. About the size of a small figure. That was...very advanced henge.

Goku ambled over to the chair, eyes wide with awe, and peered through the gap between the seat and the arm of the chair. "Wow, you're so small now!"

"Yep!" Bulma nodded quickly. "I could fit in your pocket easily this way. Of course...this is only my prototype. I only have one..."

"Well...if Goku is carrying you, it won't be a problem if I carry Yamcha." She shrugged, glancing over at the figure still lingering in the door, looking somewhat distressed. "It'd be easy to carry him on on arm if I had to."

He scoffed. "I'm pretty sure we could find a less ridiculous way to fit on the cloud."

Goku turned toward the taller man, then. "Well, there's lots of room on her lap when she sits on Nimbus."

Yamcha, wisely, didn't speak. Before she could say anything on the matter, however, Bulma reappeared at normal size. "No need! Yamcha can use this one. If one of us is going to be normal size, I'd rather be able to do it myself."

"Uh..." Goku frowned back toward her. "But have you fixed the Dragon Radar yet?"

"Yeah, just about!" Bulma nodded and stood, hands on her hips. "So, let's get going! If you've only got one dragonball in all this time already, we've really gotta move it to catch up!"

Well...

At least if something broke the radar again, they wouldn't need to waste an entire day returning to West City again.

(*)

They were going to need to waste the entire day going back and forth between West City.

They wouldn't have needed to if Bulma hadn't gotten jealous and rushed everyone out of the house all at once...but he had enough sense not to point that out. She was agitated enough as it was, pacing back and forth on the beach and rambling to herself about forgetting to pack.

Goku had already tried to swim to it, but as it was the ocean, obviously that had turned out not to be an option. Not only had Bulma left her things, but she'd left her wallet behind as well, which meant that they couldn't simply wander the island and look for another submarine capsule, either.

Sakura, who had been standing a small distance from where they'd stepped off of the Nimbus cloud, spoke up and cut through Bulma's angry rant. "Well, I can give it a shot, at least. I can hold my breath longer than Goku."

"Eh? But it's really deep! I didn't see the bottom at all!"

She pursed her lips. "Well...if it doesn't work, we can just go back and get something. But if I can get there, then we'll save time." She held out a hand to Goku. "Let me see the radar."

He frowned at the pair. Exactly why would she think she could hold her breath long enough to make it to the bottom of an ocean? She'd been trained by Muten Roshi as well, but if Goku couldn't manage it, that obviously didn't really apply to the situation. Having a larger lung capacity would only do so much.

"Hey," he spoke, as Goku handed the device over. "Try not to drown. There's no way to signal us if you're having problems in there."

"Don't worry." She tossed him a confident smirk. One that was...oddly familiar, even if he couldn't quite place it. "I'm really good at holding my breath."

(*)

She wasn't all that good at holding her breath. Not any more than the next ninja, anyway.

She was pretty good at shutting down her breathing completely using medical jutsu and using mitotic regeneration to constantly replenish the cells that died due to lack of air. It was a very unpleasant experience. Her teacher would scold her for hours if she knew. She could worry about what Lady Tsunade would say about using mitotic regeneration lightly once she made it home.

It took a good five minutes of swimming downward to get to the bottom. She'd almost given up on the idea of swimming down on her own, regeneration or not. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and as much as she disliked the different vehicles this world had to offer, one of them might actually be able to move more quickly than her.

She hadn't been able to take the radar under the water, but Goku had taken her out with Nimbus until she was above it by the radar's reckoning. Presumably in her descent there was a certain amount of drift involved...but the ground itself wasn't shaped in any way that would easily hide something the size and shape of a dragonball. Which made it all the more vexing not to see it.

She frowned, and looked left and right. Colorful fish of sizes and shapes she'd never seen before swirled nearby her, wary of her movements but not so frightened as to avoid her completely. Small plants waved lazily in the deep currents...and not one glimmer of the dragonball showed anywhere she looked.

...Quite possibly because of the crevice on the ocean floor a few feet from where she floated. Of all the places for it to land...the dragonball must have fallen into that crevice, hadn't it? She swam closer to it...but as was to be expected by the depths of the sea, getting closer to the tiny cave didn't really improve visibility inside it.

She slid her fingers down into the crack, but it narrowed at uneven points. She couldn't get very far. At any point along the crevice there might have been a wider opening that it fell into...but that wouldn't stop it from rolling to any other point along the way.

She bit her lip. Ordinarily, she'd consider simply smashing the rock and hefting it all away...but with a crack in the ground, there was no telling if there might be a cave network of some sort underneath it...and with all of the water, there was too much chance it might just end up burying the ball deeper.

She really didn't want to have to spend an excessive amount of time digging it up while she continuously almost suffocated.

...Going back to West City was, apparently, the only choice after all. Frustrating.

(*)

The looks on most of their faces told her that her return trip probably took about as long as the one down had taken. Ten minutes without air was...something.

No matter how much she'd sustained herself with chakra, healed the damaged cells, prevented herself from actually drowning...she still gasped as violently as if she'd been holding her breath through sheer force of will that whole time. Actual air was so much better than 'not quite dying'.

"How...are you alive?" Bulma shook her head, and stared with an expression even more alarmed than Yamcha's. "Even Goku wouldn't be able to hold his breath that long!"

"I really thought you'd found a way to drown after all..."

She squinted over at the tall man. He didn't really look like a person who'd thought she was dead. Even if he didn't know her as well as she knew him, she'd have expected a touch more concern from someone like him.

Goku, on the other hand, didn't look worried or relieved at all. "I knew you'd do it!"

She sighed, and squeezed out her unruly hair. "I made it to the bottom...but the problem is, it fell into one of the cracks in the ground, and I can't figure out where it is right now without that device."

Bulma clicked her tongue, planting her hand on a hip. "Yeah...but it's not waterproof. Not with all the water pressure that's gonna be down there. There's no helping it. We've gotta go back and get my submarine capsule. If we can just take the ship down to where the dragonball is, I'll be able to get a better cross-section look at it, and then it'll be easy to pick it up."

"Well..." Goku turned around toward Bulma, speaking up again. "We could do that, but...old master Roshi lives near here. He's got all sorts of water vehicles! I bet he's got at least one that goes underwater!"

"Old Roshi...?" Bulma groaned, and placed a hand to her face. "That he'd have a submarine while he lives so far from normal civilization makes way too much sense."

"See?" Goku pointed to himself, voice excited. "It's a good idea, right?"

"Well..." Bulma grumbled to herself. "It would save time..."

"If nothing else, we can borrow money to buy one for ourselves from him, right?" Yamcha spoke up, voice hopeful.

The woman's shoulders drooped and her head dropped. "Ugh...but...him..."

"Hey! I'm here!" He puffed out his chest and tapped it with his knuckles. "As long as I'm around, I'll keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't try to do anything perverted to you."

"You better." Bulma crossed her arms and harrumphed, looking away from him. "Because if you don't, then I'm gonna spend the whole rest of this trip looking for a way better man than you are!"

Having lived with the old man...she wasn't entirely certain Bulma's ultimatum was fair.

AN: I almost made it so that she'd pack properly and skip to the submarine...but that derailing would be pretty intense.