AN: New rule for reviews after all, anything that is just anonymously attacking the author and not even addressing the story is getting deleted at my discretion too. I never thought about that as a possibility before. Ah well. I don't delete reviews that just don't like my story, but I don't see the need to keep anonymous personal attacks. Y'all gotta chill. Sheesh.
Another odd thing I never thought I had to clarify. This is not Goku's story. If Dragonball is Goku's story, The Next Dimension Over is Sakura's. A better description is actually how Sakura and the world of Dragonball interact with each other and change each other. I believe in ensemble stories, so Sakura isn't ever going to be Goku, but if you don't expect her to be the protagonist of the story I don't know what kind of stories you've been reading. This story isn't going to follow Dragonball without change, and it won't feature Sakura just observing the story because you could just read the manga/watch the anime if you wanted that. It'd be pretty boring.
There is fun ahead in the next arc! Are we looking forward to it?
(The Tsuchikage's jutsu isn't a bloodline jutsu, but Sakura has no way of knowing that.)
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Eighty
Debris from the explosion blew past where she stood as the air settled. Rather than wait for the announcer to finish calling them out, Tien already walked toward the damaged ring. Likely, it was just an excuse to face Yamcha, if his comment from a moment before was any indication.
The man in question glared at him as they passed each other. Fingers clenched into fists...but Yamcha walked by without lashing out after all. He really was determined to wait until their fight. That was just fine with her. He wouldn't get the chance to have the match at all, and that protected him from any stupid plans of his.
"Shouldn't you be thinking of your girlfriend?"
He hesitated next to where she stood, expression turning from simmering anger into surprised confusion. "Huh?"
"You've still got one, right?"
"Wh-what's that supposed to-"
She crossed her arms with a sigh and spoke over him before he could stutter himself into complete gibberish. "Whatever you're planning, the first thing you should think about is your safety. And then you should think about how your choice in your battle is going to affect her. Caring about what's best for them is what you're supposed to do with someone you love, right?"
Finally, she heard the name she'd assumed called to the stage.
None of this really had any impact on the one...any of the people she loved. It didn't matter if she were hurt somehow when she could heal. It didn't matter if they banned her from this tournament. She had freedom that the ones from this world didn't.
She couldn't help being tempted to abuse it to its fullest extent.
The cement and stone under her feet was cracked and uneven from the previous battles. He looked as comfortable on it as he did anywhere else. He didn't even make an effort to look defensive - he simply stood with his arms crossed and a confident smile.
"Is this the fight you were looking for?"
Tien lifted his shoulder slightly. "Master Tao was much more interested in you specifically. But not many could survive a battle with him, let alone win one. That's a good enough challenge for me."
"You wanted a challenge?" She bit her cheek, struggling to contain the spike of rage that shot through her at the thought. For a challenge, he'd endangered Krillin's - an innocent, uninvolved person - life. Hateful. She cracked her knuckles and settled into a prepared stance. "You should have just asked."
His smile curled into a smirk. "You weren't listening. Now you're motivated."
She kicked off from the ground the moment the announcer called the match.
Despite his relaxed stance, his kick swept up toward her just as swiftly as she moved at him. She grabbed a hold of his ankle, and the force of their strikes spun the both of them in a circle. In the few moments they spun together, his fists flashed in a rapid and erratic pattern. Each blow she smacked away sent a violent shock wave through the arena, crack of flesh against leather and skin echoing off of each surface around them.
She skidded backward as he jumped away from her. The uneven ground helped, actually. Where the damage was, it kept her from sliding too quickly or too far without needing to expend extra effort in slowing herself down.
She lunged forward again, this time contacting his gut with her knee, and kicked him violently into the observing wall. He impacted with enough force that it nearly pushed him through. Fortunate that it didn't. A quick loss might have been more humiliating for him, but it wouldn't be satisfying. Neither for her, nor for the two who wished to avenge Krillin.
"Huh." He brushed himself off once he managed to land back on the ring proper. "That's a little more like the strength I'd heard about."
"Maybe I'd have something to say about yours, but I've never heard anything about you." Fame wasn't supposed to be the goal of any ninja, and it meant less to her as someone she wasn't in a world she didn't belong than it would have in her own world. But...as determined as these men were to face her...all she'd ever heard of them was a brief encounter against a boar.
Boars didn't do well fighting back.
"Does it matter if you did?" He shrugged and started toward her again, deceptively slow and relaxed. "I'll just be another person who's won the tournament instead of you."
Before she could respond, he vanished.
Air stirred across her face and she twisted at her waist, lifting her arm just in time to block a dropping elbow of his. The crash of the impact vibrated across the stone and cracked corner tiles. She seized his elbow with her open hand, and slammed him bodily down into the ground.
Not that he'd ever beat her, but there was no way he'd succeed in defeating Goku. She wouldn't let him.
"Forget it!"
He moved quickly, even on the ground. Before she could ever impact her foot with his stomach, he managed to curl up and block her attack with elbows and knees.
Just like anyone else who'd tried that strategy, though, the explosion of her chakra upon impact immediately uprooted him and sent him careening out of the ring.
Before he could crash into the wall though, he abruptly...stopped. The crowd gasped in awe, the announcer gave a shout and a cry of shock. He...floated there, unmoving, expression of concentration smoothing out into confidence again.
The same jutsu that Chaotsu had.
Of course sibling students would both have something that useful.
She grit her teeth in irritation. Flight made the battle and defeating him more difficult.
"You're gonna make me have to actually try, huh?" Tien grinned at her, voice and smile carrying an edge of savagery to it. Rather than make any attempt to 'walk' back, he floated toward the ring again with no apparent physical movement. "With all the poor performances so far, I was starting to think I wouldn't get to."
"Did you think it would be easy after you hurt a friend of mine?" She took a step toward him, watching him for a reaction. "Fighting for other people always makes someone stronger."
It was a belief Naruto pushed, originally. She didn't ever know for sure how, but she'd been told he learned it from Haku and Zabuza. At first, she'd mostly written it off as one of his quirks, but...it was true. Fighting to protect her friends, striving to get better to make sure she could protect them and keep them safe, it made her stronger than she'd ever been able to imagine before.
Fighting to protect the friends she'd made - even if they didn't know it right now - could only mean she'd be stronger still.
"If that's the kind of belief you've got, its no wonder you managed to land second place against a bunch of weaklings."
His image blurred briefly, before she managed to track his movement again. Before she could do much more than turn toward him, he hovered over her, arm pulled back to strike. A piercing drive of one of his hands slammed into her shoulder, undoubtedly in an attempt to dislocate it. Five more followed into her chest, and knocked her backward through the air.
This time, he didn't wait for her to land. A brilliant beam of light shot toward her, and she only just managed to bounce herself off of a jutting bit of stone well enough to singe her side with it. It exploded harmlessly against the wall of the nearby crowd, and a few of the observers scrambled backward, screaming.
He'd moved up to offensive ki, then?
She caught herself with one hand on the stone, and used her remaining momentum to slam her heel down onto his head as he reached her once more. He crashed into the arena with a fairly satisfying sound.
"You think I'd let someone like you beat me?" She glared down at him as she stood herself up again. He knelt on his hands and knees still, looking dazed from her attack - or the impact of his face with the ground. "You're not moving past this round."
He lunged suddenly toward her, shaking off what must have been a false confusion, and followed his sudden movement with a powerful looking uppercut.
She punched directly down into it.
The ring exploded outward in a spectacular shower of rock shards.
(*)
Honestly, she felt a little conflicted just sitting in the audience and watching the tournament when Krillin had been rushed off in critical condition like that. True, he'd pretty much been more of a temporarily traveling partner to her than...strictly a friend...but it wasn't like she didn't worry about him anyway!
Despite Sakura muscling her way into the convoy, though, it wasn't like she could say anything to get them to let her go with anyway. 'Let me come with, I know him' wasn't a good argument, and bringing up the pirate cove thing was probably better just to not do.
Well...Yamcha had another fight or two after this, and they'd be right in a row! Once the battles were done, she could go and check on Krillin in the hospital.
She bit her lip and stole a glance toward the competitor's section of the tournament. Ino and Tienshinhan were still fighting pretty intensely in the ring. Maybe if she won, Yamcha wouldn't have to fight him at all. Or Goku.
After what he'd done to Krillin...it didn't even matter what they wanted! She didn't want either of them fighting that monster. Even Goku, with all of his strength and frankly inhuman durability.
"I wouldn't worry about it." The old man Roshi spoke, voice calm but...close enough to be heard over the din of the crowd and the chaos of the battle in the ring. "I think you should have faith in her still."
"Huh?" She frowned down at him. "But there's no guarantee, right? She's good, but she's not on Yamcha or Goku's level, and this guy beat Krillin easily."
The light of one of Tienshinhan's attacks glinted off of the old man's dark glasses. "She's stronger than you think. And she's just as determined to make sure Yamcha and Goku don't risk themselves against him as we are."
That girl? She frowned at the blonde who flashed back and forth across the ring, trading blows she could barely figure out with the bald man. She looked...a little familiar. She'd been in the previous tournament, hadn't she? But that didn't really mean anything when it came to Yamcha and Goku's safety.
"How would you think that?"
"Er..." Roshi mumbled something that the crowd smothered out, before he spoke up again. "It's...a guess. She doesn't seem like a bad person."
She couldn't help but scoff at that. Like the pervert who couldn't even ride his own Nimbus Cloud had a good moral radar! Maybe somewhere in that head of his neglected and thrown away years ago...
She squinted at the pair on the ring. Ino briefly pinned Tienshinhan down against the ring with her knee in his back, and then something happened, and his forearm pressed against her throat and shoved her against it instead. In that position...
She had an idea about why he seemed to approve of the woman out there so much.
"Her good points aren't size Ds are they?"
"Not at all! They're bigger than-" He cut himself off abruptly, catching himself and her 'trap'.
Not soon enough to avoid her hand contacting with the back of his head.