AN: I can't say for sure what things will be cut out, what things will be rearranged, or even what new things will appear yet. There are a few things I have planned, and right now Sakura and Goku remain on a crash course for RR Army. Certain generals are likely to appear still, even if their random encounter was missed so far.

I haven't found the original interview for the Madara ~ Nappa statement, but you know what? I like it. It's a nice little rough yardstick to use to keep Sakura from being too powerful. Given the story isn't about who's stronger, I don't need more than that. So, I shall keep it!

Plus, I just got the image (sound?) of Linda Young voicing Kaguya and that's hilarious.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Thirty-one

Krillin still looked disturbed. That was understandable, though. Even if he'd wanted to see a pirate's treasure, he was just a kid who had probably never seen anyone die before. Or dead. Or very very long dead. Besides that, a pirate's cove usually held danger. Physical proof of that wasn't generally a pleasant thing.

He could handle it, he'd seen bodies before, he wasn't really all that afraid of pirate traps. But he understood why a kid like Krillin, no matter how strong that kid happened to be, wouldn't be. It also made sense that Goku wasn't bothered at all (knowing Goku, it would be more alarming if it did bother Goku). It was...kind of a bonus that Bulma had taken to hiding behind his shoulder and dropped the whole 'his fault she left the capsules behind' thing, too.

Sakura...also didn't have any reaction. She didn't go so far as to play with the bones left behind as Goku did (he tried to see if he could fit the skull over his head for a few moments before Bulma slapped it out of his hands), but she also didn't look disturbed by them. Whatever her real history was, she'd seen things like this before. As much as he chose not to argue with Bulma and Goku on the matter...a part of him still doubted that it was a completely different dimension she'd come from and not...anything else. But then, kind of thing wasn't his specialty anyway.

He shook his head slightly. That kind of thought was just distracting. There was no telling what dangers and traps the cave held, or how difficult it would be to get to whatever unnatural place the dragonball had managed to find itself in. Worrying about Sakura's strange story wasn't really important. Even if the strange story was why they were in the cave at all.

...Well.

He might have also been there just because Goku's tail was back again. While searching for dragonballs again. Near the time of a full moon. Again.

"There's something ahead." Sakura's voice broke through his thoughts, and he looked up in surprise at the hallway in front of them.

(*)

The cave so far had been natural, jagged and narrow in some places, wider and rounder in others. In front of her now, the walls were precision cut, gleaming white, and riddled with perfectly round holes. The ceiling lights looked...inset, and the floor was discolored, covered in spots.

The danger of the room was rather painfully blatant. Either the ones who designed the hall were incapable of subtlety, or the appearance was meant to intimidate those who saw it.

"Well...that looks weird. I guess we're getting closer to their home base!" Krillin shrugged slightly. He'd been looking a bit pale and upset since the skeleton on the ground, but the increased light in the hallway in front of them must have bolstered his courage. Or, at least the idea that their goal was closer made him hurry.

He marched on ahead of them, heedless of the apparent danger.

Bulma spoke first, voice carrying all the concern Krillin's didn't. "Krillin, wait first..."

"It's not a problem!"

Sakura reached out and picked him up off the ground a moment before he could step on one of the dark spots on the ground.

"Hey! Put me down! Just because I'm little doesn't mean you can just carry me around!" He kicked and swung his legs in the air in frustration and glared up at her as she pulled him away from the hall.

"Bulma's right. This is some kind of a trap."

Goku, who had been watching Krillin with some level of amusement, blinked up at her. "Trap...?"

Yamcha rubbed at the back of his head, squinting across the room. "It's obviously something meant to keep people from getting into the pirate's treasure. Considering the guy we found back there..."

"There could be some kind of deadly gas that shoots out of these holes." Bulma pointed to the wall. "Probably, if you step on the wrong parts or in the wrong order, you'll set it off."

"Wha..." Krillin's shoulders drooped, and she set him down. "But we don't have any way of figuring out what's the right way to get past it!"

Bulma sighed and settled her hands on her hips. "Obviously there's a way they used...but it could be anything. It could be following a pirate jig, or walking in a pattern that spells something."

"There could be a secret passage earlier on in the cave that bypasses this?" Yamcha offered, looking over his shoulder to the path they'd already followed.

Sakura shrugged. "There could be an entirely different cave we were meant to find."

"Looking for that could take forever!" Krillin clapped his hands to his face in frustration. "The path is right there ahead of us!"

"No it isn't!" Bulma frowned. "It's not really there if we don't know how to cross it safely. Maybe if I go back home I can get something that we can use to bypass this place or figure out which buttons on the ground are deactivated...but if any of us touches those buttons without knowing what we're doing, we could all die!"

"So all we have to do is get across those things on the floor without touching them?" Goku's expression lit up.

"Probably it's safe where those dots end, yes." Sakura nodded. It could be that there was a certain amount of space afterward still full of traps...but considering the potential danger of the hall, and the unlikelihood of anyone getting that far without permission...it would probably cause more trouble for the pirates themselves than any intruder.

"It doesn't matter." Bulma sighed in exasperation. "The floor's totally covered in these things. There's no way we'd be able to get across without touching-"

"I'll jump!"

"...What."

(*)

He'd seen how far Goku progressed just in the tournament. Even if Goku had lost, comparing the Goku he'd traveled with before with the one in the tournament, the kid had improved a crazy amount. Way beyond himself. That was to be expected with Muten Roshi's training, but he still found himself impressed when he saw the results.

Case in point: Goku leaping the distance of a long hallway, probably sixty-five feet, horizontally. Honestly, he'd have figured that one was an impossibility, unassisted. It made him wonder exactly what that training entailed. And maybe, a little, how one could go about getting that training.

After all, he'd heard the old man wouldn't take more students, but no less than three were right in front of him. One of them was a girl who came from some other place. Maybe another planet entirely.

Krillin went next, after Goku. His jump was almost as good, but...too vertical. He winced even before Krillin smacked into the ceiling. Only after the small kid landed on the ground, exactly in a spot they were trying to avoid standing on, did he realize Krillin might do that, too.

"Krillin!" Sakura took a step forward, and he quickly reached out to grab her arm before she could walk onto the floor herself. Bulma shrank backward in terror as the click echoed through the air...

And then spears flew from the portion of the wall just above where the small bald one lay on the ground. Harmlessly connecting to the opposite wall. It was a little anticlimactic, actually, considering all the other possible traps such a set up could hold.

In fairness to the lost pirates, though, they probably never expected someone as astonishingly small as Krillin to find the place.

"Are you two okay over there?" He shouted down the hall, as Goku knelt down and dragged his still dazed friend out of danger.

"He just jumped too high!"

Sakura glanced down at his hand on her arm, and he quickly yanked it away. Touching his girlfriend was one thing...but he definitely was not okay with physical contact involving any other girl out there. Keeping her from recklessly running into the trap herself was just instinct overriding common sense.

...He coughed, and dropped back away from the pink haired woman. "The trap's not so bad...but we still have to figure out a way past it now. It didn't kill everyone here, so there's probably a way past it that the pirates had to have used."

"Unless it's a pattern of steps." Bulma huffed. "But how would we reset it, now that Krillin fell on it?"

Goku waved his arm and shouted from the other side. "Just jump across!"

It didn't really surprise him Goku would say that. If prompted, the kid would probably remember that not everyone could jump like that (...even though the ones who couldn't were actually outnumbered, at present), but otherwise he...probably didn't even think about where his ability came from.

Sakura dropped to her knees and clasped her hands together in some signal he...didn't really recognize. "I've got a better idea."

(*)

After the reaction to a simple fire jutsu, she wasn't exactly in a hurry to use another noticeable jutsu. Besides that, until they tripped the trap, she hadn't been sure what would set it off. Simply passing over it could have done it as well.

Goku's successful leap proved that to be untrue. Krillin's...less successful leap provided the unnecessary answer as to what the nature of the trap was. Spears weren't really that dangerous of a trap. A person could walk straight through the hall, given sufficient protection. Sufficient protection was something that earth nature excelled at.

She could have made a ramp over the floor and simply walked across it...but the idea of walking past things that might go off at any moment and hurt someone for no reason wasn't something she enjoyed. Now that she knew the trap was as mild as projectiles, she needn't walk across the hall with such a concern.

She placed her hands on the ground, and twin walls of rock rose up on either side of the hall, blocking the openings completely. It did little to make the hall look more natural, given how the ground and ceiling still looked...but it did effectively disarm the trap, in case they needed to cross it more quickly on the way out.

For whatever reason that might be.

"Whoa!" Goku called from the other side, immediately running up to the nearest wall and knocking on it.

Krillin stared at one of them as if he were afraid it might fall on him, and the two people nearest to her were...quiet. At least for a few moments.

"Just how advanced is it?" Bulma was actually the one speaking, blue eyes scanning the new walls with interest. "I wonder if this might be what made the dragonballs."

"I'd say that's a stretch but..." Yamcha grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. "Considering the alternative..."

Goku trotted across the hallway toward them, ground clicking and wall thumping as he went. "Hey! Come on! There's light coming from up ahead!"

Rather than focus on what the other two were saying-questions she couldn't really answer anyway-she nodded and followed after Goku, crossing the strange looking hallway with far less flair than the two boys.

From the end of the trap, the path led on only a short way before it opened up into a wide and expansive room.

"Wow!" Krillin shouted, running into the gigantic room in a burst of excitement she hadn't seen from him in a while. "There's a motorcycle underwater!"

Personally, however, she found the giant ship that towered over everything else far more impressive. Particularly given that it was somehow hidden in a small cave under the ocean. How and why would a person take a boat, meant to be above water, and stash it under the water?

Yamcha, who wandered into the room last, spoke next. "...Are those cannonballs?"

Krillin paused in his inspection of the bike and looked over his shoulder at the older man. "Hey. I called dibs on pirate treasure!"

"You did not!"