AN: Sometimes I feel like writing something else, and then I feel the readers of Next Dimension Over creeping up on me.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Fifty-eight
She wasn't sure if she meant to stop, but...she certainly did hesitate. It wasn't very long, but then she didn't get much of an opportunity to think about whether or not to stop and respond or not, before the old woman spoke again.
"It's been almost a year, hasn't it?" The old woman's voice crackled through the room over her shoulder. "So much has changed in a year for you. Much more may yet before you return."
She bit her lip. Did it really matter, looking at her home when she was still a year away from returning to it? Even if she wanted to see it again, would it do her any good to see and not to touch it? Did it matter to see what Naruto and Sasuke and the others were doing, had done in her absence? She couldn't affect it, after all.
Finally, she turned her head to look back toward the old crone. "Why would you offer at all?"
"I expected four fortunes and only delivered one. You have paid enough to ask to see something else, but I'm not about to keep it on credit to you. If you leave, you'll have to come back and pay full price again when you change your mind." The old woman cackled in private amusement. "You should feel lucky to be privy to a moment of rare generosity that I ask at all, instead of allowing you to leave on your own."
When she changed her mind? Just what made the fortune teller so certain she would? After all...it would only be another year before she returned.
She frowned over at the old woman. "How would you even see it? My home isn't anywhere in this world."
"I know where your home is, girl." The woman tutted. "You're not the only one who's traveled across dimensions."
There were others who traveled dimensionally? Could this woman have...also been from...?
"I can't take you there, however. It will only be a vision. And it can't communicate." The old woman hummed. "But the worries in your mind will be put to rest."
Finally, she turned away from the door, and took a step back toward the woman. "I'm not worried. Naruto and Sasuke...didn't need any more of my help." She'd have given it if she could. She would have liked to have the power to help more than just to enable others with the ability to help...but now...it was better for everyone that she wasn't needed after all.
As for what happened in the end, how the village reacted to Sasuke, what the others did once the threat was gone, though...
"And what of the worries and conflicts you struggle with over the wish, hm?" The old woman squinted up at her. "Being so close to finding the last of those pretty little orbs of yours, it would be a problem if you were conflicted over your goal."
She...wasn't so conflicted. After all, she could have her wish as well. In a year...
"Lean close. From such a distance, the image won't be as clear as others."
As before, the woman began a quiet chant. The ball glowed brightly and pulsed with light as the woman continued. It went on longer than the last, and the faintest edges of an image would barely begin to focus before scattering again. The woman's wrinkled forehead piled up to the middle of her face in concentration, as if the process took much more concentration than the other.
Shapes solidified in the crystalline surface, and color gradually washed onto the scene. 'Home' was a vague term, but as it began to focus, it was clearly the village Konoha. The image panned up through the buildings, until it focused on the five carved faces in the cliffside.
At the very edges of the image, something partially blocked the view of the village. The tip of an unfamiliar tree twisted into view and partially obstructed the Hokage hillside.
A moment later, the image distorted and vanished, plunging the room back into gloom.
"What...? What was that?"
The old woman frowned. "Strange, is what it is. It's taking more of my power than it should." The ball lit once more, and the image flickered in and out of view. When she could glimpse it, she could see a tree that didn't belong, but the image refused to stay in focus long enough to stay there.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Hmm..." The old woman's brows knit, and the image faded into another. "There might have been something interfering with it in the village. I've never encountered anything that would, but...dimension viewing is a difficult business."
Slowly, the image faded into view again. A hillside, what might have once been a battlefield of some sort, now overgrown. Twisting all across the land and over the hills were giant roots of some sort. Or...perhaps they were branches. They wound around the ground and bridged gaps in small hills, but never appeared to dip underground.
On nearer branches, she could see white cocoons hanging from the bottom side of them, swaying slightly in the wind that blew through the hillside.
"...No..."
That...couldn't be. It looked...like the jutsu that Madara had placed the rest of the world under shortly before Kaguya arrived, but...but it couldn't be, because it had been almost a year. Surely Naruto and Sasuke, Kakashi as well, would have found some kind of way to undo it by now. The world couldn't still be trapped in it!
Unless...maybe...they could free people, but only nearby them, and this was simply a portion of the world they had yet to find? The Shinobi world was huge, and if the process of freeing victims took time, then it wouldn't be completely impossible to see some remnants still, in less than a year. If they were to just look at Naruto and Sasuke, they'd see the world as it was supposed to be.
"This isn't..." She shook her head. "N...Naruto and Sasuke. Just show me them."
The woman was quiet a few moments, perhaps searching for them with whatever method she used to find anything else, and then shook her head. "They're not present in the world."
They...
The couldn't have been traveling dimensions. They couldn't be. She bit her lip, staring at the image. Maybe, like with Konoha, there was interference where they happened to be in the world. Because she couldn't imagine they would have gone looking for her, particularly for so long, without first rescuing the rest of the world. She wasn't that important. They wouldn't have known she was alive, anyway.
"They have to be somewhere."
The woman drew in a breath. "I have found something. I believe...it may be them. Yes."
She chanted something, and again the image vanished into a white glow. The familiar voice of Naruto was the first thing to filter through the room, even before image.
"-ke you gotta focus!"
A vision of the snowy plain she remembered from almost a year before shimmered into view, and her two teammates stood near each other, backs to her. In the distance, Kaguya floated in the air, even more sinister and imposing than she remembered her.
Sasuke made a sound like a scoff. "I don't need you to tell me that. Just don't miss next time."
"Damn it, Sasuke, I'm not the one who-"
"Enough, both of you." Kakashi's voice drifted from somewhere out of frame.
"I don't understand..." She shook her head, and reached out toward the image, barely conscious of the fact that she was. It looked like something that could have happened only a short time from when she should have returned with Sasuke. The battle couldn't have actually gone on so long...
"This isn't in the present." The old woman shook her head. "But it's what I could find."
The voices of the others filled the silence again. Three shadow clones collapsed in the snow, and Sasuke narrowly dodged one of the rods that shot from Kaguya's sleeves.
"Be careful!" Kakashi urged. "If you let yourself be distracted, she'll kill you in an instant!"
The strange things that floated behind Naruto's back sped toward the pale woman, guided by what appeared to be his will alone. The woman flew left and right, led in an intricate path that they must have discussed moments earlier. The last appeared to catch the bottom of her dress, and she collapsed onto the ground.
A moment later, Sasuke leaped into view from...somewhere.
"Sasuke-!" She shouted without even realizing it, as Kaguya spun with inhuman speed and ran through him with a rod. It...dispelled. As only a clone.
Naruto exploded from the snowy ground, uppercutting Kaguya in the jaw and knocking her backward. Behind her, Sasuke appeared. The plan, obviously, must have been to distract her and get her into a weakened position without realizing the real threat, and then seal her. Of course. Together, the two of them always made genius plans.
It was exactly as she expected to see. Once they were ready to work together, they'd find a way to defeat her, because they were the only ones equipped to do it.
The angle of where the image...vision...was placed obscured most of the movements, but for a moment dull surprise flickered across Sasuke's expression.
A gust of wind kicked up a flurry of snow, and he vanished.
Her hands, trembling with worry and anticipation, abruptly stilled.
"S...Sasuke!" Naruto screamed. Golden chakra flared up all around him and he threw himself toward the woman in a rage. The battle lasted only a short time: he pummeled her, screamed in fury, and withstood four of those horrible attacks before he finally collapsed.
At some point, the room might have darkened again. At some point, the wind vanished and the silence that consumed everything in the world also filled the room she stood in. She couldn't tell when that was. She wasn't sure that she cared.
Her hands shook again. Her arms. Her legs. She couldn't tell if her legs were supporting her anymore, but they must not have been, because her fingers dug into the ground beneath her. Hot tears burned the backs of her hands, ran down her cheeks, blurred out her vision so that the only thing she could see were her friends and teammates...
Gone.
She didn't make a sound.
(*)
He hadn't thought much initially when she wasn't walking with them. She'd seemed just as concerned about those who ran away from the building as he had been, if she couldn't resist the urge to question the old crone on the matter...it might have made her lag behind. Or, perhaps, she might have gone exploring into the rest of the building.
Honestly, he didn't even notice immediately she wasn't there. He'd been thinking about that base, about who else might have had the ability to collect so many dragonballs and also have such a flying base to use, and whether it was a branch of the Red Ribbon Army they'd missed.
Mostly, the only reason he followed after Goku was to make sure if the kid did manage to find some kind of trouble they avoided, he'd be there too. That's why he'd come along, after all. Well-the training he got coming along for the trouble, and the adventure involved with it wasn't bad, either.
Krillin, Goku, and himself were apparently the only ones who were dumb enough to go running back into the building when someone out there had a way to hide dragonballs and a moving base. It wasn't a difficult path to remember, either, and so they burst into the door rather quickly after they actually started back toward it.
The old crone floated on the crystal ball, looking down at Sakura with an expression something like pity. Sakura...sat on her knees, staring down at the ground in silence. Not moving, not speaking.
Could...could it be that somehow the old crone-?
Goku ran up to her in alarm and shook her shoulder. "Sakura!"
"Wha..." Krillin spluttered to his right, voice higher than usual. And...almost offended "What did you do?"
"I don't appreciate the implication that I did any harm." The old woman harrumphed and floated away from them. "I showed her what she needed to see."
What she 'needed' to see? What...in the world could someone see to cause a reaction like that?
She wasn't catatonic, apparently. When Goku shook her out of her daze, she immediately pressed her hand to her mouth, as if she could muffle a sob in such a quiet and enclosed room.
"What...uh..." He grimaced, uncomfortable. Even when he understood the reason why, he...he wasn't at his most comfortable and experienced when dealing with distraught women. "What was it that...you saw?"
"Yeah..." Krillin took a step closer, expression still concerned. "What happened?"
"M-My..." She trailed off and then pressed her hands to her thighs, visibly reining in the emotions that had overcome her. She shook her head, movements slow and too deliberate. "They're...gone."