AN: Hey now, have more faith in Krillin. He's got plenty of things to blow his wealth on without losing it! He is, after all, a thirteen...fourteen...something year old kid with an outrageous amount of wealth suddenly dropped in his lap.

At least he has Roshi to guide his spending.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Thirty-six

She found it more than a little weird to be traveling with two tiny people. Moreso than the flying cat who'd attached itself to Goku's arm when it became tired trying to keep up with the Nimbus. In fairness, she'd gotten somewhat used to Pu'ar in the month she spent at Capsule Corporation. Tiny people riding along with them, however, were new.

It was unsurprising that the cat chose to linger on Goku's arm rather than her own, given that Yamcha was with him and Bulma with her. It meant, however, that she ended up the one holding the radar as they flew, just so that Bulma could keep an eye on it, should it be necessary.

The sun was beginning to set already, but the glowing dot on the radar was much closer than the one in the north had been, most likely, they'd reach their target before the end of the day. Which was probably best, because figuring sleeping arrangements in the small house Bulma had lent them would be...uncomfortable. At least a village would have an inn of some sort.

"Whoa..." Goku's voice suddenly broke through her thoughts, and he pointed ahead of them. "Look at that!"

Not far in the distance...about where the dragon ball should have been, stood a brilliantly colored and heavily engraved pillar. It was certainly not a tower, like before, but it reached...

She craned her neck upward toward the clouds.

"It's like it goes on forever..." Bulma spoke from her chest. "I hadn't heard of anything that tall. It shouldn't be able to be that tall and that thin!"

"Do you think the dragonball's probably up top?" Yamcha called from the other side of Goku.

The question was probably directed at Bulma, but she glanced back down at the radar herself anyway. From the distance they were, it was too hard to tell. "That'd probably be too convenient."

"Although..." Bulma crossed her small arms, peeking out from a front pocket Sakura had no other use for. "Considering they scatter from the sky, looking at the highest altitude isn't a bad idea."

She had a feeling that Krillin would have said something about their last dragonball having been inside an underwater cave if he were present. But there wasn't really any point to say that. After all, the ocean hadn't had such a tall structure for the ball to fall onto instead.

"Should we go to the top?" Goku looked over his shoulder up at her.

"No." Bulma spoke the same word, as well. Likely for the same reason. "If it's that small all the way to the top, even if the dragonball landed up there, it would have been knocked down to the bottom by now."

"Okay! Then let's go down to the woods there!"

He didn't wait for any response before the cloud made a sudden, sharp turn downward. The spiral was something she'd grown used to in her previous trips with Goku, but Bulma gave a short shriek of surprise. It was probably a bit more dizzying when one was clinging to fabric than when one was properly seated in the cloud.

The pillar (and signal of the dragonball) was still a small distance away from where they landed, but not far enough to need to ride the cloud further. She carefully helped Bulma to the ground once she herself dropped off of the cloud, and a moment later Yamcha appeared, a step away from Goku.

"Man that feels weird." He grimaced and rolled his shoulders. "I still think we should have just taken a plane capsule since we were back home anyway."

"The Nimbus is faster." She couldn't see his face, but Goku's voice sounded a little offended.

Before any more could be said about it, she started ahead toward the pillar and the glowing dot on the radar. "It looks like it landed a little distance away from the pillar after all."

"Hey, guys..." Yamcha said, expression drawing tight with sudden concern. "Do you guys smell something weird?"

(*)

It just bothered him when Goku and Sakura started sniffing at the air and identifying things he couldn't...but the time and place for being freaked out about the pink haired woman's weird abilities wasn't this one.

This place...was...used to be a village of some sort. It must have been somewhat nomadic, as what remained of the structures seemed fairly light and easy to move, but it was still clear that it had housed a small civilization, perhaps a village.

Had.

The faint smell of smoke remained in the air, and empty, charred wooden structures clung to each other in an echo of what they would have been before, ready to collapse at the slightest provocation. Bodies, those who must have lived in the settlement, littered the clearing around the base of the tower. He couldn't tell from where he was standing what had killed most of them, but...considering the blood that soaked the reddened grass, it seemed likely to him that the burning had been symbolic. Or simply a method to round up the citizens into one place.

For a few moments, everyone remained as still as the dead.

Sakura sprinted ahead into the village without warning, and immediately crouched over the body of one of the children. Could it be...one might have survived after all?

He wasn't certain if he was the next one to move or not, but only a few moments passed before he and the others also knelt around the child. Sakura's face was a mask of concentration, and her hands pressed down against the small child on the ground in front of her in a manner he'd never seen before. It didn't seem to be providing any medical benefit, unless she was actually trying to stop bleeding even worse than the places she wasn't touching.

"Sakura..." he might not have been a medic, but out in the forest without any supplies...there just wasn't any way they could help.

"Shut up!" Her voice snapped through the clearing with such ferocity that Pu'ar immediately floated further away, and even Bulma jumped slightly.

A few seconds later, the faint rasp of the young boy's voice became a sudden cough, and then a series of stronger coughs. Color slowly returned to the small face, and finally his eyes blinked open. When Sakura lifted her hands away from the boy...there wasn't even a wound under her hands.

"How did you-?" Bulma spoke before he could, voicing the same thing he was about to.

Sakura simply gestured for her to be silent. For...once, Bulma listened. Whether that had anything to do with Sakura's either shout or whether it was just because the child began to speak, however...he couldn't really say. And she'd probably never tell the truth if he asked anyway.

"Wh...who..." The boy looked at each of them in turn, confusion and exhaustion clouding his eyes.

"My name's Goku." Goku been silent the entire time, simply watching Sakura, and...actually didn't even sound that impressed that she somehow undid injuries. By...using that 'more advanced than ki' thing. Obviously. That, or magic. But there were things he refused to believe in, and wish granting dragons were the extent of it. "These are Bulma, Yamcha, Sakura, and over there is Pu'ar."

"We're friends." Sakura assured, voice gentler than he'd heard before. "Can you tell us what happened?"

As a first question...he thought that was a little bit of a waste.

Obviously, someone else had started looking for dragonballs. Someone who really should not get those dragonballs.

So...exactly the kind of person who would have the knowledge and the resources to go looking for those dragonballs on their own.

(*)

She hadn't really wanted to display her healing abilities so openly, but...the young villager, the only survivor she'd been able to see from where she was standing, had been fading fast. Perhaps the correct answer, as a ninja, would have been to allow the child to die to protect her secret.

She liked to think the appropriate response was to trade the knowledge of her healing jutsu for the knowledge of the dragonball, and exactly where the Red Ribbon Army was that committed the atrocity in front of them. Because it certainly was the Red Ribbon Army that did it.

Interrogating a child surrounded by the bodies of their friends and family, however, wasn't the easiest thing to do. Ultimately, she, Bulma, and the child had fallen back into the forest while Yamcha and Goku took care of temporary burial and clean up. Pu'ar, naturally, remained with Yamcha.

The child sat against a tree, knees pulled up to his chest.

"Hey..." Bulma knelt down in front of him. "Like Goku said, my name is Bulma. What's yours?"

The child looked away from her and remained silent for a few moments more, before finally speaking, voice quiet but steady. "...It's Upa."

"They were the Red Ribbon Army, weren't they?" She spoke before Bulma could. A third force, one just as bad as that army...that would be trouble. That many more villages would end up destroyed and terrorized by power hungry forces before she and Goku could deal with them.

The child tensed slightly, and Bulma turned toward her suddenly, eyes wide with surprise. "The Red Ribbon Army? Why would it-"

"It was them." Upa nodded slightly, looking up at her. "They came a while ago looking for something, and father drove them away. Then more came back, and they threatened all of the sacred land."

Bulma's expression darkened slightly in concern and a flickering of fear, before she turned her attention back to Upa. "Was it a dragonball they were looking for?"

The child's eyes widened, and he drew back away from her. "Y-you want it too?"

She spoke before Bulma could, as...under the circumstances, it would be difficult to convince Upa they were any different if they admitted to searching for it. "You're not the first place that army attacked looking for one of them. We want to know if that's what they were after, too."

He quieted after a moment, gaze dropping to the ground, and then nodded. "The man...killed father, and then told us to give it to them."

"You didn't? Why?"

He slouched slightly. "Father didn't give it away. If no one knew where it was, we couldn't give it to him, and then...they would leave."

Or kill everyone in a fit of spite. But then, it wasn't a surprise that Upa wouldn't realize that. And...even if they'd given it to the army, it was likely they'd all have received the same fate anyway. Considering what 'General White' had been planning to do once the cooperative village had found him the dragonball.

"They don't have the dragonball?"

Upa shook his head, and then started to sniffle, tears springing to his eyes. "I-...everyone...if I hadn't-"

Bulma, who had been quiet, expression thoughtful and troubled, suddenly lurched forward and pulled the small child into a hug. Whether Upa actually wanted said hug or not. "Oh, no! That isn't true at all!"

"She's right." Yamcha spoke as he stepped into view from the direction of the ruined village. Blood, soot, and dirt covered his clothes and smudged his hands and cheeks. The look in his eyes was harder than she'd seen from him before. "The Red Ribbon Army are monsters. And we're gonna make them pay."

Goku appeared a moment later, looking similarly disheveled. She'd seen Goku angry before. The look in his eyes now... brought up memories that made the air turn cold and bitter around her.

"I'm gonna kill all of them."

AN: Where is the dragonball hidden? Which officer managed to kill Bora and destroy the village? How is Sakura going to handle Saiyans being driven by rage and vengeance? At least one of these questions may be answered next time.