AN: Chapter 60 is here, we're working on 100 now, geez. Well, at this point, it appears as if Sasuke was destroyed by the chakra rod Kaguya uses, which disintegrates its target. Ending up anywhere else is unlikely for him.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Sixty
When morning arrived, things felt clearer.
She still felt drained, heavier than she'd ever felt before, she still ached everywhere. It made her head and her heart hurt to think about the things that she'd seen the day before...but it wasn't like she had to do that. The air was crisp and cool around her, the sounds of the forest and the animals around her echoed through the leaves and the trees.
A part of her still felt as if she walked a few steps more she might find her home again.
She turned and walked back to the house with the others, determined not to look in the direction that felt like home should be.
She was here. They were there. The more she thought about it, it felt like she would go insane from grief. So...she didn't.
She could avoid thinking about it. Because she had to exist, and to exist she had to do something, and that meant helping to finish gathering the dragonballs for the destroyed village. It was easy enough to focus on that. Only that.
"Sakura." Yamcha looked up in her direction when she arrived at the house. The others had already gathered outside, and his expression was unnecessarily worried.
"We're ready to go, right?"
Goku sighed, a miserable expression on his face. "We're out of food. I'm hungry..."
She reached down and ruffled his hair lightly. "We can eat after we get the last of the dragonballs. Right?"
Yamcha nodded. "We should get there pretty quickly. Assuming it hasn't gone too far away yet, we can get in, grab the dragonballs, and leave."
Krillin gave a loud sigh. "Saying something like that just makes me think it's going to go worse."
"No way!" Pu'ar said, brighter and cheerier than the rest of them. "With all of us together and the dragon radar, we'll definitely get the dragonballs quickly!"
Goku nodded, unhappiness giving way to enthusiasm as the subject changed to the upcoming fight. "And then we can eat!"
(*)
'Get in, grab the dragonballs, and leave' was a nice plan...but actually they didn't have a working dragon radar. Well, they did, but the dragonballs were hidden somehow. So. Even though finding the huge flying base wasn't that hard (once they were in the general vicinity of it, it was kind of hard to miss a giant flying ball of metal), figuring out where on it the dragonballs were hidden was a somewhat more difficult matter.
When it came to getting into the place, that was actually also surprisingly easy: there was even a great big balcony shaped landing on one side of it. He and Pu'ar jumped out of the plane with Krillin and Bulma, and then Pu'ar dropped the ship back into the capsule while he stuck the landing. It really wasn't that difficult.
Despite Bulma screaming in his ear as they fell. Seriously, he'd jumped further heights before. Even if he usually did it without the added weight at those times.
Naturally, Goku and Sakura simply hopped off of the Nimbus cloud. It was convenient in some ways to have a tiny little aircraft like that.
"Okay...I'm guessing just by looking that the dragonballs are going to be hidden either at the center of this place or in that little outcropping up there." He pointed up at a smaller sphere attached to the main body. Either it was some kind of navigational area, or it was an extra secure storage spot.
"So...you want us to split up again?" Sakura planted her hands on her hips as she looked over at him. There were darker circles under her eyes than usual, but aside from that, nothing in her stance or expression showed the darkness or trauma that he'd seen just yesterday.
It worried him.
"...Right. It's the quickest way to do it. Two of us go to the center of the ship and see what we can find, two of us go up there. Probably at least one of us is going to figure out exactly who's flying this thing, so no matter what, we have to be prepared for a fight."
Bulma glanced up at the sphere, shielding her eyes against the glare of the noonday sun. "I don't think it's up there. It's got to be the center of the ship. No one would go through this much trouble and put the dragonballs somewhere that can be so easily lost."
Sakura gave a small nod. "If that's the case, Goku and I can go up there and you two can go to the center."
Krillin frowned between Sakura and him. "...Where's that leave me?"
"Well...technically Sakura and Goku are two fighters. If you want to come with me, I guess that'll balance it out."
Pu'ar spoke up then. "But how do we communicate with the other group if we find the dragonballs?"
"We'll just bash a hole in the side of the ship!" Goku said. A bit more enthusiastically than someone should say that sort of thing. "When the other people feel the explosion they'll know the other one is done!"
Krillin squinted at the smaller boy. "...I can't be the only person who thinks that's gonna go horribly wrong."
"No..." Bulma shook her head, and dug through her pockets. "You're right. That's not going to work at all. Here, try these."
She opened a capsule and tossed a small device to Sakura, who turned it around in her hand, looking down at it in confusion.
"It's a communicator. Just put it in your ear." Bulma withdrew another and put it on hers to demonstrate how to wear it, before frowning again. "But these are just prototypes, the battery power is pretty weak. We'll have to save these for if we find the dragonballs or we really need help. Otherwise they'll probably be dead when we actually need it."
He grimaced, looking toward the heavy looking iron door blocking their way into the fortress. "Yeah...let's hope all we use it for is the first."
"Course it will be!" Goku nodded. "Even though I don't know why we couldn't just break our way out..."
"Anyway." He glanced toward Sakura. Probably any of them present could break the door open...but considering the strength she displayed earlier...she'd do it the quickest. Hopefully also he quietest. "Can you get the door? Let's get going before they decide to move those dragonballs somewhere crazy."
"Hm?" Sakura glanced at him in surprise, before giving a slight shrug and stepping up to the door. "If you don't want to do it yourself, I guess."
The door crunched in on itself like it was made of tin foil, and collapsed to the ground with a resounding crash.
It was a little bit disturbing just how little effort it looked like she put into that punch.
(*)
The other side of the door...had been a bedroom of some sort. Inside the room were three beds, but there wasn't any signs of any of the residents anywhere nearby. While they'd planned to separate immediately, it actually took some time of wandering to find a place with a staircase going either way.
They probably should have looked for a map. Or climbed outside the ship to where they wanted to be. But then...searching for the center of the ship wouldn't have been any help there, unless they punched their way straight in. Which would probably be a bit counter productive.
Well...she had a decent sense of direction, and the halls weren't actually all that confusing. She was pretty confident they were walking in the direction of the outer sphere, even if she didn't have any proof.
The strange thing was...as they walked through the blueish metal hallways, there weren't any other sounds than their footsteps. In the air she could feel a slight vibration, similar to the constant sensation she'd felt on that damn plane, or in the underwater boat...but as for the sounds of people...there was nothing at all. They didn't see anything, either.
Compared to the Red Ribbon base, this was exceedingly weird.
"Where are all the people?"
Goku looked up at her in surprise. "Huh?"
"This place is big...look at all the doors and other hallways we're passing while we walk. But we haven't seen or heard anyone at all."
He scrunched his face, and looked around the area as if it simply hadn't occurred to him as strange. "...We could look in every room! That way if they're hiding inside we can find them and figure out where the dragonballs are!"
He immediately sprinted up to the next door and burst through it, peering in as if there were no chance of an ambush on the other side.
"Hello?" He frowned after a moment. "No one's in here. Just boxes of stuff."
He immediately ran to the next door a little further on, to the opposite wall of the hallway, and called in again. Finding no one seemed not to deter him at all, nor did the fact that this sort of searching slowed them down quite a bit. Every door they passed he burst into, calling out to anyone there, and every one he would abandon a moment later in disappointment.
The color was different, the situation was different, but running through the long hallway with empty rooms reminded her...reminded her of something...was it years ago?
Sasuke?
Her own voice echoed in her memory through familiar, different halls.
Sasuke!
Sasuke. These halls, this endlessly stretching path with no one around, searching through each door for something that could be anywhere.
It reminded her of searching for Sasuke.
It reminded her of...
Damn it, stop it.
Stop.
"Stop it!"
He froze immediately, and looked over at her with surprise.
Had...she said that out loud? She blinked, and shook her head slightly. That...she let out a slow breath, forced the memories and the thoughts away from her. "It's a waste of time."
"Um...but there could be people who know about the dragonballs..."
She shook her head, starting on down the hall with purpose again. "There's no point. I think if anyone wants to find us, they're going to on their own. It'll be quicker to just get to that point up top first. That way we can get to the dragonballs before anyone knows we're looking for them. Right?"
"Uh..." He started after her almost immediately, expression still skeptical. "I...guess so."
"Come on then." She summoned a small, encouraging smile. After all, they had almost completed their quest. There was no reason for him to get discouraged or disappointed now, just because she...had no idea what the hell she was doing anymore.
(*)
"I just want to let it be known that wandering a gigantic killer space ship-"
"It's just an air ship." Bulma cut in, like that was in any way important when space ships didn't exist anyway.
"Ship without a map is a dumb idea." Krillin glared up at her. Without the dragon radar he still wasn't even sure why she was there, other than the fact that she just didn't want to sit in that tiny house all day. But it wouldn't even have been so bad on her own anyway, so he didn't get why that'd be a problem.
Well obviously it had something to do with her boyfriend, given the way she kept looking at the guy at every opportunity, but...well that was still pretty vague reasoning.
Who knew, it wasn't like he had a girlfriend before to compare the weird reasoning with.
Frankly, he also thought it was pretty stupid to leave the crazy strong girl who just suffered some kind of a break down alone with Goku on a quest for the last dragonballs, but no one was apparently going to ask him his opinion about anything. So...he might as well just start voicing it to the air if he wanted it heard.
"Well..." Yamcha shrugged. "If you know where we can pick up a map I'd be happy to use one."
"Ha ha."
Seriously, how did they even know they were running toward the center of the ship, anyway? It wasn't like they were running into more enemy forces or anything. They weren't meeting any enemy forces, in fact. Which, maybe he was just crazy inexperienced about non-pirate booty treasures but, it implied they weren't getting closer to any kind of treasure.
Weren't engines in the middle of ships this size, anyway?
Actually, why weren't there flashing lights or something? Were they really that sneaky?
"Hey..."
"Do you think we haven't been detected yet?" Bulma said, cutting him off and outright stealing his thunder like she planned it.
Yamcha frowned and looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah...that's pretty unlikely. Since that's a camera." He pointed up at a device that...
Oh. It was a camera.
Yep.
"So..." He frowned up at the thing. It turned to look right at him. "Ergh. Why...why aren't they doing anything?"
Behind them, something exploded. For a moment, he had the crazy feeling that Goku and Sakura flat out ignored the plan and busted through the ship anyway. A moment later, a heavy thud shook the ground behind him and he spun around to face...
A pretty big robot with even bigger guns for its hands.
"Oh."
He shouldn't have said anything. Right?