AN: My chapters have been dragging since Kumoricon because I just haven't had the proper amount of sleep to catch up on all the energy I lost over the weekend. Updates might slow down for a bit so I can recover, but the quality will improve more.

That said, let me make something clear, in case it somehow hasn't been - I don't know why there's a feud between Naruto and Dragonball on this site, and I don't care. I am not a part of it, I never have been, and I never will be. Good? Good.

More importantly

Dragonball heights, man

they make me hurt

Trying to sort out consistent heights for the characters is like trying to make Naruto's pre-manga timeline make sense. I need to write up a chart not for power levels but to figure out who the hell is taller than whom.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Twenty-nine

At some point after the tournament, the old man had returned to that miniature island she'd woken up on. At first they'd gone looking at the larger one nearby, but the house was already gone, and there wasn't any sign of either of the residents.

The island really was as small as she'd remembered it being. The large turtle that had wandered onto the shore was almost a quarter of the land the house didn't take up. She helped Bulma down to the ground, then dropped down herself as Goku leaped off of the cloud.

"Oh, Goku!" Said the...turtle. She blinked, and looked down at the creature. Talking animals weren't anything new, even before ending up in this strange world with clothes wearing animals treated like humans...she just hadn't expected one that lingered where it belonged to be one of those.

The turtle lifted its head toward the boy. "And Bulma! How nostalgic to see the both of you."

"Ohh!" Goku grinned, planting his hands on his hips. "I wondered if you'd ever get back. You missed out on meeting Sakura!"

"I heard." The turtle turned its gaze toward her then, and dropped its head slightly. "I am Umigame. I was on a trip while you were here last..."

The front door rattled, and Krillin peered out. "Hey, who are you..." He trailed off, and stared at the three...visible people standing in front of the house.

"Krillin!" Goku grinned, and lifted his hands in excitement.

The gesture must have been the last Yamcha's patience could take, as his tiny figure jumped out from where he stayed tucked in Goku's shirt, and then quickly grew back to normal size. "Ugh...that's really unpleasant."

Krillin, who'd frozen a step out of the house once Yamcha appeared, stared up at him in confused shock. "...Eh? Wh...what was that?"

"It's a watch I made." Bulma spoke, walking up next to Yamcha. "It's not just for hitching a ride on the Nimbus, but it's pretty useful for it anyway. It allows the user to shrink or to grow as easily as pressing a few buttons. Cool, huh?"

The small boy, who had briefly held an expression similar to the excitement Goku expressed at seeing him, passed his gaze across Bulma, Yamcha, and herself with some suspicion. "There sure are a lot of you for a surprise visit."

"We're here to see if the old man has a..." What was it?

"Submarine." Bulma picked up where Sakura had trailed off. "Do you have one of those?"

"Uh..." Krillin looked over his shoulder into the house. "Master! They want your submarine capsule!"

"They what?" The voice of the old man called from the house.

"Well...we actually just want to borrow it." Yamcha shrugged. "As soon as we've got the dragonball, he can have it back."

"Oh." Krillin's response was flat, and he glared between she and Goku. "You're still on that."

(*)

He didn't actually expect anything, since he hadn't really expected to see them any time soon...but he still felt pretty disappointed just to hear they only came back to draft him into their weird little...wish mission.

It wasn't like he missed them or anything, they'd only been gone a month, and he'd been living with them for eight before then. He just...didn't have much to show for the month they'd been gone, and in that month they still believed that insane story about parallel worlds being totally different but the same as the normal one. Apparently they'd convinced Goku's other friend, too, if that guy had tagged along.

"If you're gonna use a submarine to go looking for things at the bottom of the ocean, you might as well go looking for pirate treasure or something, as well."

Goku blinked, looking over from their master, who had just now wandered out of the house, to him. "Treasure?"

The old man huffed. "What's this about submarines and treasure...?"

Sakura placed a hand on her hip. "We need to borrow your submarine to get one of the dragonballs. It fell to the bottom of the ocean."

"Hmm..." The man harrumphed. "I don't see why I should lend out my things. Dragonball quests are dangerous, you might break it."

"I'd buy you another one!" Bulma, that rich girl, spoke.

"They don't make it any longer."

Krillin was pretty sure that they did in fact still make them, and that he'd seen one for sale only a week ago when he went for supplies. He was also pretty sure the old man was winding up for some kind of demand, though, and he didn't want it to include 'get off my island, Krillin'. Or anything to that effect.

Bulma sighed and grumbled out a response. "...What do you want."

"Mm..." Roshi straightened, sunlight glinting off of his sunglasses. "It's been so long...perhaps...a little tsun-tsun? Puff-puff?"

"You can die." Sakura's response was quick enough she must have expected that sort of answer.

Which made sense, given that she knew him.

"Yeah! You can't just mess with another guy's girlfriend in front of him!" Yamcha took a step in front of Bulma, frowning in determination.

"Well..." The old man turned back toward the house. "Fine then. You won't need my submarine."

Sakura growled. The air around his skin vibrated slightly. Her face looked unnaturally dark, like she was secretly a demon (a theory he hadn't entirely discounted yet after that rock punching incident).

He didn't even see her move. One moment she stood in place on one side of the island, the next, she lifted old man Roshi up off of his feet by the front of his shirt. "Listen here, you little pervert! You won't get to peep, touch, or in any other way be a pervert just to give us a favor!"

His master's chuckle sounded a little nervous, but that was fair. He felt nervous, too.

"Now...Sakura, don't you think it's fair to trade something for another thing?"

She didn't let the old man down. She still glared at him. The air felt a little less like it was about to spontaneously burst into flame, though. "You can't have anything perverted."

"Hmm." The old man stared up at her behind his glasses, apparently unfazed by her glare, other than that initial nervous sound. "Do you have anything else to trade?"

An awkward silence swept across the group of visitors and ex-students. At least...most of the group. Goku didn't look awkward, just intently curious. He was the first to break the silence.

"You forgot to bring anything else, right? Just hurry up and agree so we can get the dragonball!"

Sakura let the old man drop to the sand with a sudden crash.

He wasn't sure which of the three older people the frosty chill in the air came from, but he guessed it was probably all of them. Even though that was the obvious answer...he was kind of glad it was Goku who suggested it, instead. That was way too much negative energy to focus all on him.

"There's no way." Yamcha shook his head firmly, crossing his arms. "We'll go back to West City, but you're not gonna let that old man paw at you."

"Excuse me?" The teal haired woman planted her hands on her hips and actually glared up at the taller man. "Who said you could decide what I do?"

"Wha-?" Yamcha blinked and looked over his shoulder, turning toward her in confusion after a moment. "But...you said-"

"You can't just make decisions about my body for me when I'm standing right here!" She jabbed her finger into his chest. "I didn't agree to go all the way back to West City just because of you!"

"Wh-Do you want him to do it?! Why?"

"Don't change the subject!"

"You could just trade him the watch." He didn't mean to get involved, he was happy just watching while his two fellow students got annoyed and the two...other people fought about...whatever it was they were fighting about.

It was just reflexive. The agitation was starting to infect him, and the answer seemed really obvious.

"Watch?" Roshi, who'd finally gotten back up, glanced over at him in curiosity. "Why would I want a watch for a whole submarine?"

Bulma blinked, looking between him and the old man, as if she'd totally forgotten about the thing. Maybe it was easy to forget when someone didn't pop up out of nowhere in front of her and startle her a minute ago.

"Yeah...why would he?"

Sakura frowned slightly, and crossed her arms. "Well...being able to shrink down to pocket-size is useful. If it were waterproof, I'd have just used that to collect the dragonball."

The old man spoke next. "Shrink...to what?"

(*)

"Ugh, if I knew how small this was I'd never have agreed to trading the watch!" Bulma gave an irritated groan from the back of the submarine. It wasn't really the 'back', though, as the small vehicle would have charitably had space for three.

For some reason, they'd forced five into it.

The fifth was the part that confused her, mostly. Roshi had agreed to the swap very quickly once Bulma offered the watch. Krillin demanding to go along had been at the last minute, just as they were squeezing into the small space.

It wasn't a pleasant experience. Krillin sat atop a hatch, Yamcha drove the device, Goku stood behind the chair slightly ahead of where Krillin was, she sat in the rear seat...and Bulma ended up curled up behind her, where she could most easily look at the radar.

"Then you wouldn't have any way to get the dragonball, right?" Krillin swung his legs.

"The radar said it's about here, right?" Yamcha spoke up before the conversation could continue any further. "I don't see anything down there..."

"Uh..." The woman pressed a few buttons. "Let me see if I can get a cross-section and see how deep it is."

"A cross section?" Goku hadn't mentioned there being anything like that...it would have made it slightly more straightforward if they'd been able to locate exactly which floor the dragonball was on from the start.

"Mm. It lets me see what's in there." Bulma leaned forward and held the device over her shoulder. "See? That dot is the dragonball, but now we can also see the cavern it's in..."

She...could, with a bit of squinting. "It looks like it leads to an opening deeper in."

"Yeah, it looks like it. Yamcha!" Bulma called over her shoulder. "Find where this drops down, and follow the cliff side. It looks like there's a cave we can follow into it."

The man gave a slight shrug, and the ship turned sideways, plummeting down deeper than she'd previously noticed the ocean floor went. "Just tell me if I'm getting closer or further away from it, since you're the one with the map."

"Keep an eye out for sunken ships, too." Krillin interjected.

She glanced over at the small one. "Where would you even put the treasure if you found it?"

He huffed. "I have empty capsules. I'm not unprepared. Unlike you guys."

From behind her, Bulma made an irritated sound. "Why you little-"

"Hey!" Yamcha shouted. "I think I found the cave!"

Krillin glanced back toward Bulma a moment, and then spoke in a hesitant voice. "...Does it have skulls or flags outside it?"

"Uh. No."

AN: Why didn't Bulma go wandering through that one island and trip the random encounter?

She had packed up for going out when she left with Goku. She didn't bring anything when she went this time, because she expected Yamcha to do it. Therefore she had no zeni with which to theoretically buy a capsule with.