AN: It was necessary for last chapter to be a little short, because starting this chapter in the middle of the last one wouldn't have worked very well. Terror and Plague was probably the chapter with the most Yuffie and Vincent syndrome when it came to Sakura, but that's mostly because the purpose for her had very little to do with the action.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Sixty-nine

Grass bent slightly under her feet, bouncing back a moment later, as she carefully avoided the fallen twigs and leaves on the ground. Shadows of branches and leaves passed across her face in an ever-changing pattern as she raced through the forest, and sunlight glinted off of flashes of metal at her waist.

The birds in the forest were silent, and wildlife scattered a few miles out.

The lack of them made her more than a little concerned.

A branch snapped just over her head. She spun in place, lifting her kunai over her head in an instant. Wood clashed against metal, sparking through the air past an errant lock of pink hair, and a small body crashed into her. She fell to her back heavily and kicked into the midsection of her attacker, sending the figure flipping and rolling across the grass away from her.

A short distance away, it smashed into a nearby tree, cracking and splintering the trunk where it collided, and then crumpled to the ground.

She panted and rolled onto her stomach, pulling herself up to her feet.

The figure pulled itself shakily to its knees, and then stumbled up to its feet, hair hanging in disarray and obscuring her view of its face.

A triumphant chuckle broke the silence of the forest, and his face turned up toward her, grinning wide. Between teeth flecked with wood, grass, and dirt, hung one shiny bell on frayed string.

"I did it!"

She rolled her eyes and wandered over to where he still giggled, rapping the top of his head with her knuckles. "You got kicked into a tree."

"Heheh." He rubbed at his head and spat the bell into his free hand. "But I still got it!"

She examined her nails, as if she hadn't heard him (or seen the bell at all).

"You've gotta train me now, right?" He was, unsurprisingly, completely unfazed by her act. If he actually noticed it at all. His fists clenched in front of him and he grinned up at her, eyes glittering in excitement. "You promised!"

"Did I?" She hummed apathetically, starting off in the direction she'd been running before.

"Hey! You said-"

"We'll start it tomorrow." She glanced over her shoulder toward him, offering him a little amused smile. With the amount of time that he'd spent nagging her for training when he couldn't get the bell from her, he deserved at least a little bit of teasing about it once he succeeded.

The trees broke away ahead of them, opening up to a winding dirt path at the edge of a cliff.

Their position at the edge of the high cliff afforded a beautiful view. Below, the forest stretched onward even more dense than behind them, encircled in a valley of low-lying mountains. In the distance, just as the forest spilled out into flatland, a tall castle stood above the trees.

"...That's interesting."

"Huh?" Goku broke from the trees behind her a moment after she spoke, walking up next to her. "Oh! A castle!"

It looked out of place, like the tall pillar that led to Korin. Most of what she'd seen in this world held a much different kind of architecture. That castle looked more like something she would have expected to see in her own world, not this one.

"Let's go take a look at it."

He nodded in excitement and raced up to the edge of the cliff, leaping off as he had back on the island the old man took them to. He vanished into the trees a moment after she leaped after him. As before, it was a matter of finding the right angle to connect her feet to the side of the cliff, and the right amount of chakra to slow her fall without stopping her completely. Branches cracked and snapped as Goku bounced and flipped through trees to slow his fall instead. The landing was good, but he needed to learn how to scale such cliffs without the aid of trees or a golden flying cloud. Just in case.

While the trees were densely packed, there was a curious lack of undergrowth. Along with that, as they ran through the forest, she spotted very few animals. Did it have something to do with the castle up ahead, or was it a regional issue? Times like these, at least, she missed when Goku's other friends traveled with them searching for the dragonballs. Bulma or Yamcha probably would have known better what significance the castle might have had.

The trees thinned out ahead of them, and eventually they broke away into a clearing too small to have been noticed from where they were above. A small...hamlet sat in the middle of the the forest, in the shadow of the large castle ahead. It bore no signage outside it, but the buildings looked well maintained enough to be currently inhabited, despite the lack of anyone inside.

She frowned as she started toward the grouping of houses, hands hanging at her sides.

"I wonder if anyone's home?" Goku hummed in curiosity as he walked after her.

"There must be someone..." Although, it seemed they were inside.

She glanced across each of the round buildings as they walked. Unlike the castle up ahead, these buildings were more like what she was used to seeing in this world. As she walked, the slope of the ground shifted slightly, unnaturally.

A trap.

She jumped backward just as a spear flew through the air where she'd stood a moment ago. Branches snapped, and she spun in place, drawing a kunai and knocking a rain of other spears away. Behind her, she heard metal colliding with wood, as Goku must have knocked away a batch of spears from where he was as well.

So...

Unfriendly.

"Hey!" Goku shouted. "What's the big idea? We're not doing anything!"

She frowned up at the trees a moment, before glancing around the village. Despite the trap going off, there weren't any sounds. In a far away building, she caught a glint of metal from inside one of the windows. "It probably wasn't aimed at us."

"What?"

She placed a hand on her hip as she continued to scan the group of houses. "Like the one in the pirate cove last year. I think it was set for anyone walking in here."

He frowned up at her and then across the houses. "Why?"

"I'm not sure. Let's ask." She marched on ahead through the street, careful not to trip over any other traps as she walked. The glint in the window of the house she targeted vanished a few moments before they made it to the door.

She lifted her hand and rapped on the door.

Naturally, no one responded. As if she hadn't looked directly at their telescope.

"You can open up and answer my questions, or I can break your door and then we'll ask you questions."

If they had many answers, anyway. Who knew. Going up to that castle might have given them the answers they were looking for. Or the castle might have been the cause of the paranoia that the villagers here clearly experienced. It didn't really matter, given how fearful the people were, she doubted she'd need to follow through on her threat.

"You...don't need to do that." A voice from behind her, that of an old man, spoke.

She turned a moment after Goku did. A frail older man, one who reminded her somewhat of the village elder who they'd rescued from the tower, stood in front of a nearby building. His expression was nervous, but there was a hard determination in his dark eyes as he looked between them.

"Oh, hey! There are people here!"

She frowned over at the man. "It's unusual to have traps waiting in a village that's already hidden in a forest."

The man sighed, and shook his head. "...The both of you should leave while you still can."

"What?" Goku glanced up at her, and then shifted slightly as if he expected another attack. "Does that mean you're gonna fight us?"

The man blinked, and shook his head quickly. "Of...of course not! But the demons will attack you when night falls. You must go back from where you came while you still have time."

"Demons?" She glanced down at Goku, who looked up at her in brief surprise.

He frowned a moment, and turned a curious expression to the older man. "So...if we wait here, there will be people who wanna fight us?"

"Fight?" He shook his head quickly. "They...they aren't people! They're horrible monsters! They'll capture you, bring you back to their world and kill you. Or worse!"

To their 'world'?

If she learned anything in her time here, it was too much to hope for that world to have anything to do with her own, but...if there were a remote possibility of some other form of world-travel, then it might at least help Bulma with her research.

"...What do you think, Goku?"

He gripped his hands in fists. "It sounds like people I wanna fight!"

The man scoffed in disbelief. "Didn't you two hear me? They're beyond any human! If you fight them, the both of you would surely die."

She glanced down at Goku a moment more, and then offered the man a small, amused smile.

(*)

It took surprisingly little convincing to get the man to agree to take them to the king of the land. Who, apparently, was the one that lived in the nearby castle. He couldn't take them to the portal without permission, he'd said, and people as strong as them might be able to help more if they spoke with the king.

They'd spent most of the rest of the day waiting on an audience with that king, who had been busy with...something no one felt inclined to share. Goku, at least, hadn't minded the wait: the castle wasn't unfriendly, at least, and as soon as his stomach started to growl, they'd been escorted to a table with food, where he'd eaten his fill.

Unsurprisingly, the king needed more convincing than the man to get him to consider their interest in fighting the 'demons' that attacked the village and castle. By the time they'd finally gotten the monarch's consent, the sun already sank beneath the horizon and bathed the forest below in darkness.

The king led both of them out to a balcony, finally, and looked out at the forest below. In the distance, some sort of bone horn rang out over the trees, and a distant din of snarls and roars echoed off of the surrounding mountains.

"As you can hear..." The regal man sighed, and leaned on the edge of the balcony. "The demons run roughshod over my land now that they've forced the doorway open. My people are terrified, they hunt and take our harvest, and...just two nights ago...they came to this very castle in the night and took my daughter, the princess."

"Took her?" She glanced from the king to the noise in the forest below. "Did they bring her back to their world, then?"

He nodded. "For what purpose, none of us know. All who went after her to try to bring her back were immediately ejected, badly wounded. I fear to send others, lest they never return at all."

There were many reasons to kidnap a princess...but given the world she knew here, most of those reasons would serve people little purpose. Which was...somewhat worrying for the fate of the lost princess. She placed her hands on her hips as she looked down at the forest. Goku stood near her, expression scrunched up in annoyance.

"Then it's settled. The two of us will drive the demons off, and bring her back."

"Yeah!" Goku nodded firmly. "We'll beat 'em all up until they never come back and hurt anyone here again!"

The man gave a heavy sigh. "As powerful as the two of you have shown yourselves to be...even you may find yourselves at your limit facing the Demon King."