AN: As for plans for later sagas, I can only say that I have the next twenty or so chapters planned out. Everything else is only a theory, as her interaction with the world may cause things to change wildly. No promises can be made on aunt-hood and babysitter status!

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Forty-nine

Across the sea, not even particularly far, was the Red Ribbon Army's headquarters. He'd done enough research on them to know that, even if it wasn't the most obvious place for three dragonballs to be gathered, under the circumstances.

Sunlight didn't color the edges of the horizon yet, but it would soon, which meant they'd be leaving in a few hours. By noon, every one of them would be neck deep in Red Ribbon Army forces. He'd fought two. Really, he'd fought one. He'd ended up with a broken arm out of it, and Bulma and Pu'ar had nearly...

Magical water that made a person multiply in strength somehow, he could actually believe in that. There existed a gigantic tree that soared off into the lower atmosphere and a gigantic floating dragon that granted wishes of anyone who asked it something, and a boy with a tail who transformed into a gigantic monkey if he looked at the full moon. He was even supposed to believe in a girl who fell from the sky and came from a different world. Magical water, he could believe in that.

A few days of climbing and training?

It wasn't so easy to believe he was strong enough to take on the rest of the army with just that.

Even with Goku, even with Sakura's bizarre strength and impossible ability to undo damage...would they even make it out of that base alive? Did they even have a choice about going after the army, when those people had three of the dragonballs?

Maybe he could have asked for more back up...but in the end, wouldn't he just be staring out at his own reflection and watching the sun rise, worrying about even more people?

A slim hand touched his, and intertwined fingers with his own.

"You won't do any good if you don't sleep the night before."

"I've...been asleep." He huffed slightly, and glanced down at his blue-haired girlfriend. She had to know what they were about to go into - maybe not in as much detail as he did, but she had to know - and yet...she didn't even look worried.

She leaned her head against his arm, gaze at the window, rather than up at him. "If you keep on getting worked up, I'll get worried."

"Who says you shouldn't be?" He frowned, and turned his gaze back to the sky outside. "You know, the Red Ribbon Army's pretty fierce. If you and Pu'ar go in there..."

"We'll be surrounded by the strongest people in the world." She nodded, and pulled away from him, crossing her arms. "Besides, I've been on adventures like this before! I won't let my boyfriend and my best friend go in there without doing something to help, too. Without me, you three idiots would probably get so distracted fighting everyone the army will sneak the dragonballs away and make it a giant waste of time."

"Uh..." He blinked, and trailed off for a few moments.

She...was probably right. Goku would, at least. The rest of them...it wasn't like they'd have the ability to keep checking the radar during the fight into the base. And there could be any number of soldiers in their way.

"It's like I told you." She smirked up at him. "You three be the brawn, and I'll grab the dragonballs! Once we have those, we could just...blow up the whole place."

He squinted down at her. "With what explosion?"

She waggled her finger in front of his face, other hand on her hip. "You won't get to know if you don't get to sleep! Now, go on! Go to bed before you keep me up so long I miss out on my beauty sleep! A delicate girl like me needs extra sleep to look her best in the middle of an invasion."

(*)

She'd gone enough days without sleep recently that she didn't feel any great need to get it that night. For a bit, she focused on chakra to ensure she still had all the grip and knowledge of it that she should. Earth jutsu to seal the crack she made at the start of the night was easy, all the other things she allowed herself to test (non-destructive, nothing that would cause her companions to come running out of the house to investigate) worked just fine as well. She didn't have any difficulty remembering or calling on them.

Nearly a year, but Lady Tsunade's training was not so easy to shrug off.

The rest of the night she devoted to ki. Ki was the basic elements Chakra was composed of. Raw ki could be handled in much greater quantities without the risk to the system and body that chakra posed. If she could figure out how to manipulate ki with nearly as much flexibility as chakra could be manipulated, perhaps...perhaps she might find a way to open up doors into other worlds like Kaguya and Obito could.

It was a complete waste of time and effort. A fool's goal and an idiot's dream.

She felt better just practicing it anyway. If she could master manipulating it, then...it was just possible she might be able to use it in place of her chakra and allow her own seal to grow at full power even when she had use for her chakra doing other things.

She didn't really notice the time pass, and no one came to disturb her.

Her fingers and hands and arms had burned, singed, and otherwise suffered recoil from failed attempts to manipulate more ki than she had before, but she ignored the injuries while she worked. They'd be injured again in the course of the training, and it would waste more of her chakra to heal them each time rather than do it at the end.

Someone dropped onto the grass next to her, and the flickering light in her hand vanished in a violent swirl of chakra. If her body weren't already trained to deal with such surges when fighting and using complex medical techniques, she might have winced slightly at the sudden surge of chakra. The focus it took to draw on ki instead of chakra seemed to result in drawing too much ki for the task.

She'd feel appropriately frustrated at being stymied at one of her greatest talents...but the person next to her retained her primary attention.

"If I knew you could sleep out here and miss out on Goku's snores, I think I'd have done that to start with."

She turned her gaze over to the taller man. "If everyone slept out here, he'd want to do it too."

"...Yeah, probably." He gave a light shrug. "Low move, pawning him off on someone else, though."

'Pawning him off'? In truth, she hadn't even planned on remaining outside all night. If Goku had wanted to come and find her, he could have. Quite likely instead, he ate his fill of actual food in the house and fell asleep right there. The implication was a little bit offensive. A ninja didn't have any trouble sleeping near teammates, and she didn't try to sneak away from her friends.

Not...unless the effort was in some way to protect them, anyway. 'Pawning Goku off' on someone wasn't even something that crossed her mind. Often.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep out here." She shook her head, watching him with a skeptical frown.

"Yeah, I'm sure." He nodded. "Which is why I'm guessing you didn't."

...She wasn't really sure where he was going with his line of conversation. Although they'd fought in a tournament together, he wouldn't have known that. Surely what she'd shown as herself would mean he didn't doubt her ability to contribute to taking down the military base, though.

He scrubbed his fingers through his hair after a moment. She wasn't intentionally being silent-wasn't even quiet long enough for it to be notable-but whatever it was that had really brought him out to see her must have been eating away at him enough that he was too impatient to wait for an answer out of her either way.

"Hey, since I mean...you're out here...and there's no one else around..." If she didn't know him better than to assume such a thing from him, she might have given him a warning glare at the direction it seemed his conversation was turning. "...there's something I've been meaning to ask you about."

...A private question, though, she still hadn't really expected. Was it something about her home, or questions about the jutsu she used? Or chakra. He did seem very interested in it while searching for the other dragonball.

"We're gonna fight a whole army tomorrow." He turned his gaze toward her then, expression determined, a little harder than she'd seen on him before. "It's not a joke. This army is serious, and it's dangerous. After we're done with it, there's still some other dragonball out there somewhere, and it might be somewhere worse."

"I know that..."

He spoke over her. "And then once we collect those dragonballs, Goku wants to make a wish on them. To bring back that village."

She drew up her knees to her chin and frowned intensely enough to arrest whatever else he'd been about to say. "That's stupid."

"E..eh?" He looked...taken aback.

"I have a home. I have a village and friends, and duties. Going home is the most important thing to me." She shook her head slightly, turning her gaze away from the expression he wore. The shock on it slowly drained away into outrage as she spoke, anyway. "I'm not Naruto. I don't think...that I could ever be. But I won't put what I want over the lives of other people. I probably...wouldn't ever talk to him again if I did."

She might not ever get the chance to speak to him again, anyway.

He ran his fingers through his hair. "But...you know...Upa can stay with us. If it's that important...I think...Goku might agree to get you your wish first. He was doing this all for you to start with, after all."

...She'd been studying her knees, considering training she hadn't bothered to do in ages. When he spoke, she stopped. Simply...stopped. And processed his words again, to be certain she understood and didn't hear incorrectly.

First?

"...What do you mean, first? There's only one wish."

"...Um." He frowned over at her a moment, and then rubbed at the back of his neck, expression sliding right over to awkward. "You...ah. Bulma and Goku did mention that you can gather them each year, right?"

...Had...had they? She did remember hearing of wishes in a plural tense, but...later on, it had been referred to as singular. And a thing like this had to be only once, didn't it? Because, if somehow it were Kaguya, she'd have destroyed things already when some fool summoned her.

She frowned over at him. "...You're certain of that?"

"Well-" He gave an awkward laugh. "Considering a friend of mine made the worst wish ever and they're still around to be gathered again...I think so. It's been about a year now, I guess."

She very nearly dropped her head into the ground in frustration. She would have, but it probably would have caused the house behind her to collapse. A year...deciding whether she or Upa should wait for a year, if the 'wish' really worked as well as it supposedly could, was far less of a dilemma than which one should be allowed to have it at all.

Part of her wanted to punch someone. Yamcha was the only one present.

She suppressed the urge to smack him over it. Her stare might have been a bit of a glare all the same, though. "Why are you out here? If you knew we could make more than one wish, why ask me anything about it at all?"

"Ah...actually..." He grimaced, and then sighed, slumping his shoulders in defeat. "...Bulma's making breakfast. There's smoke. Everywhere."

AN: Sakura is indeed dealing with a great amount of emotional turmoil at the moment. Her decency and loyalty are somewhat at odds, and rather unpleasant all around. It's, even more, somewhat uncommon for her to deal with. (with having been reminded of there being more than one wish possible, though, perhaps it will help.)

...Hooray for Yamcha asking the questions with obvious answers!