AN: There are a couple of hints as to the identity of the female Yamcha fought, but it won't be confirmed as of yet.

I'm most deeply offended by the allegation that I bash Yamcha. The universe bashes Yamcha more than enough for anyone else to do it.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Fifty-four

Perhaps over the year she'd be stuck here after they made a wish for that small child's village, she'd become more accustomed to using capsules. They were...probably even more convenient than transport seals, other than only housing inanimate things. Bulma had almost immediately brought out one as soon as the other woman had spotted her, and provided replacement clothing. They weren't quite the same size, admittedly, but they were close enough that the clothing could actually fit on her, and that was better than having nothing at all.

For some reason, the yellow tee shirt had Bulma's name printed across the front of it, and it was certainly loose in places it wasn't on the other woman. And the skirt and shoes were not likewise printed with the other woman's name. Perhaps it was fashion. Perhaps it was a uniform of some sort that Bulma no longer had use for. It probably wasn't important. The loose nature of her shirt wouldn't probably come to anything: the battle was already over, so it wouldn't really get in the way. If she had the opportunity not to, she wasn't about to go walk around and do anything without some kind of clothing. She might have been a ninja, but she still had a sense of decency and common sense.

Clothing was...not even her chief concern, though.

Despite having had hours to look, neither of the other two had found Yamcha. Either he was still buried somewhere...or her attempt to save him was a complete waste of time.

Despite her speedy and helpful offering of clothing, Bulma said very little else. Her eyes were red rimmed, and her face drawn. It wasn't difficult to guess what Bulma thought was more likely between the two possibilities. And...it was for good reason.

She just refused to accept that reason.

She stared back in the direction of the ruined base. If only she had some sort of sensory jutsu...she could look for the man and find him no matter where he was hidden. Or at least know immediately whether he was alive or dead. She felt drained and tired, needed time to build back up her chakra again...but...shadow clones. She could search the area with shadow clones quickly enough to count. Before they wrote Yamcha off as dead...she wouldn't allow for the possibility of leaving him alone to die.

"We've been looking all over for both of you." Goku frowned as he stared toward the military base.

Of course, they hadn't found her until she'd dug herself out, so that didn't mean Yamcha wasn't in there somewhere, unconscious and near death or trapped under rubble too heavy for him to move.

She could summon the chakra to heal him if she needed to. If he were still alive. She still had plenty enough for that. A medical ninja always had plenty enough chakra to heal, if they needed to.

She took a step toward the base, and then looked over her shoulder. "That guy..."

Goku crossed his arms and shook his head, expression tightening in irritation. "Of course I beat him!"

Right. She thought so. Which just...left...finding Yamcha. One way or another. Once they could do that, they could catch up with the one who ran away with the dragonballs. Before then, there was no way they'd be able to focus on anything else at all.

She sprinted off to the base, and as she jumped over the nearest wall, drew together her hands to summon shadow clones.

Just wait a little longer...

She made that request too often. Of Naruto, of Team 7, of everyone at home she'd wait another year before seeing. Of the people here.

This time...

This time for sure. He wouldn't be waiting in vain, or forever.

Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a point for any of it at all, would there? They could have escaped from the start, and none of it would have mattered anyway. It was all too frustrating not to matter at all. She wouldn't stand for it. She absolutely wouldn't stand for it.

(*)

The day slipped into night, and the night into day. With more than one of her and even Goku, there was still so much to search through, so many false hopes, the search took a terribly long and difficult time. It could have taken forever. After all, nearest to the detonation point, very little of anything remained. If Yamcha had been near to that when it went off...

But they kept searching. Bulma stood at a distance in a portion of the fortress already cleared of debris, expression a conflict of hope and despair. Goku's expressions darkened, became more determined and grim the longer the search went. Not far away, back at the capsule house they'd left behind, Pu'ar still waited.

She refused to give up until she was sure.

She hefted several heavy chunks of debris away from an unusually tall pile of rubble. Underneath it...was a small metal box. It wasn't quite large enough to be a room, but...maybe it could have been a closet, or a very large safe. At some point, it had a circular door, judging from the shape of the opening that she could see. Most of it had been blown away by the explosion. A rather large chunk of metal and stone had slammed its way through the opening and protruded out of one of the far walls of the safe. The circular door and the wall around it had been warped and crushed inward by the heavy stone that collapsed directly on top of the door, and the box itself had been uprooted and tossed onto its back by the blast. The debris that had rammed through the opening in the door obscured her view of whatever was inside the box, but from the angle...it was possible that there was still room in it not filled with debris.

Maybe...

She bit her lip, and gripped the protruding chunk of metal and stone. It could collapse into dust or metal fragments easily, if she simply pulled on it...so she took a further moment to run chakra through it and reinforce it. It wasn't a technique of hers that she was...particularly good at, given that Tsunade didn't use elemental weapons like Asuma Sarutobi had, but even a little reinforcement would help. With a powerful tug and the painful screech of metal against metal, she ripped the chunk free, and opened up the metal room to the air.

Inside the small, dark box, Yamcha sprawled unconscious - certainly not worse, she had to assume not worse - across the wall that now rested on the ground.

She spared no hesitation at all to dispel her extra shadow clones and leap into the metal vault - as it clearly was, once she could see inside it - after him.

(*)

He regretted his decision approximately the moment he shut the large round door behind him. It really didn't cover as much of the vault as he'd have preferred it to, given that part of the door had been blown away, and he didn't feel nearly as clever and safe as he'd wanted to.

He didn't have the time to change his mind, and certainly less time to find anything better, though. And it did protect...most of him. Or so he hoped it would, anyway. He didn't have any kind of a plan b to survive. Which was...kind of stupid, in retrospect. But then again, it wasn't like he'd have had many ways to prepare ahead of time even if he'd thought to do it.

He'd only just been coming back from raiding the armory. It had, ultimately, proven to be as entirely useless as he'd started to worry about it being when he didn't immediately find it. Sure, he'd gotten a decent workout fighting the tiger person, and it helped him let off some steam and irritation which had built up. Despite that, all the time, effort, frustration, and...and humiliation he'd suffered looking for the damn armory was pointless. He'd thought, the army just didn't have any secret weapons, somehow. Apparently, he was wrong twice in a row: the Red Ribbon Army just happened to keep its secret deadly weapon somewhere else entirely.

He heard all the screaming first, and could see some of the conflict just by looking out a window. He'd already been on his way back to Goku, but if it was necessary, he'd just jump through the window and bring the two others back up. It wasn't as if he had anything better to be doing than helping out the girls with their part of the mission, after all.

When Sakura punched the bomb, maybe his response was entirely paranoid. But then, the vault that the female soldier looted was right behind him by the time he'd stopped to look at the fight. The smartest thing was to get to that vault before it exploded. And punching bombs that were already armed tended to make them explode.

Ultimately, though, the shock waves and impacts of the rolling and sliding vault didn't feel particularly smart at all. Nor did it seem like the safest place he could be when a huge portion of one of the nearby buildings flew...way too quickly through the open section of the door. It nearly took off his arm when it slammed through the unsecured door, and...honestly, he wondered to himself whether he'd have been better off just trying to survive without the vault at all, considering the woman had already ruined all the security it could give.

He hadn't been certain how hard he hit his head when the impact of the ground slammed him into the back of the vault and knocked him unconscious, but he was almost certain the answer was way too hard when he opened up his eyes to see Sakura dressed...like Bulma. In one of Bulma's own shirts, even! Not just a similar copy of some sort, the actual thing! It had her name on it. It was definitely hers.

Which was the weirdest damn thing he'd seen all week, fat cat with a stick included.

It took a good few smacks of his cheeks, and a strongly worded threat by the pink haired one to make him accept he (probably) wasn't hallucinating anything so actively. Or dead. Or asleep. His face hurt too much for any of the above.

What was it with getting hit in the face today?

He batted at her hands. "Hey, hey! I'm here already!"

Sakura frowned down at him for a moment more, and then smacked him over the head hard enough that his vision blurred for a few moments.

"Ow! I told you I'm awake!"

"She hit me, too..." Goku peered over the edge of the vault, lips pursed. After a moment, though, he jumped down to join the other two, expression brightening. "You're okay!"

'Okay' was maybe an overstatement. He felt pretty rattled, sore, and...sore. Very sore. At least nothing was broken. Or missing. He rubbed at his head, and winced slightly at the tender lump he found at the back of it. "I'm alive at least. What was that, anyway?"

"That general was a sore loser." Goku sniffed, and made a sour face. "He blew up the whole place."

"But you guys were okay." He gave a small laugh. Really, they'd have already been off to find the last dragonball if he'd just stayed on the Nimbus cloud and done nothing. He wouldn't have a sore head or face, either. It wasn't as if he did anything useful on the ground, other than get himself punched around by all the women he encountered between leaving the Nimbus and now. "Guess I should have stuck with you, huh?"

Goku shook his head quickly. "No way! You helped beat up all the soldiers! Otherwise they'd have all gotten away."

Sakura huffed and shook her head. "I think your girlfriend will have something else to say about that. Are you sure you're okay?"

He winced again, feeling a sudden chill of dread run through him at her words. "...I get the feeling I'm not going to be for long."