AN: New year, new angst, new saga. Who's ready for this one? Should I do something special when I reach 200k words? Perhaps writing request shorts in the verse or something.
Indeed, I did make a tumblr open for asks and submissions related to TNDO, be it fanart, fic, questions, or whatever. I'll infrequently also add in extra stories, AUs, missing scenes, possibly ships. Find it at thenextdimensionover tumblr blog.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Eighty-six
"The most dangerous thing the world has ever known."
She wondered idly if it was something about her. Throughout her life, it seemed like danger after danger appeared, each one worse than the last. It always escalated, even when it seemed like there was nowhere for it to escalate to. In the end, it'd gone on until they failed. Maybe it was happening here, too - that this enemy was from the past of this world wasn't important, because if he was here now, then he'd returned once she'd arrived.
If it was happening here, too, maybe it was her. Maybe she cursed the worlds around her. Something must hate her, must feel she needed to be punished for some failure of her own, and so it destroyed her. Or those around her, when people appeared to protect her. When she failed to protect them. When she failed them. Again.
It was a ridiculous thought, but it occurred all the same.
The breeze carried the smell of salt and some sort of distant smoke which had become familiar to her while she lived on the island and watched the boys train. At the time, she'd barely cared enough to watch even when she wasn't busy trying to extract the secrets of ki - and a way home - from the old man. None of it really mattered at all. All that time, she'd been...callous and cold, single-minded in her determination to make it back home to help people that she'd already failed.
The horizon line was broken up and different from what she remembered. Right on the hill overlooking where Kame House had been, another much grander house stood. It was already early evening, the sun starting to sink to the horizon, but the house stood still and dark. Silent. Empty.
She'd never really bothered to come over and visit him after he'd bought the house. Even after she'd considered him a friend. After he'd helped her in...in perhaps her darkest time, she'd not even bothered to visit him in his expensive house. It seemed like a nice house. Not the kind of house she'd expect from someone dedicated enough at training to make it to the World Martial Arts Tournament.
In the end...she was only here because he wasn't. He wasn't anywhere, but he especially wasn't...here.
"It looks nicer on the outside."
Yamcha stood a short distance from her. She wasn't sure when exactly he'd walked up beside her, but...well, it must have been just then. There's no reason for two people to stand staring at an empty house for so long, after all.
He ducked his head a bit, hands sliding into the pockets of his baggy orange pants - they weren't the same hue at all, but it reminded her a bit of Naruto's jumpsuit right then. "He packed it so full of useless crap looking for things to spend it on, it's like a disaster scene in there." His laughter barely even started before it trailed off into silence. "...I know we've got...the dragonballs. I keep telling myself that. Aloud, generally. But...it doesn't make it feel any different."
He was right. They should have...she should have been focused on finding a solution to Muten Roshi's dire prediction, worrying about bringing Krillin back with the dragonballs later, because it's not really like he was dead and gone if they could preserve his body and just wish it all away later, right? But...she just couldn't get past the images in her mind, replaying the battle in her head differently every time she closed her eyes, looking for a way she could have behaved so that she wouldn't have found him like that to begin with. She couldn't help but...hurt and dwell on regret and all the ways she'd failed him. Even from the start. Even until the end.
Inside the house behind them, Bulma crafted extra dragon radars, so they could collect the dragonballs much more quickly than last time.
"...So..." Yamcha spoke once more, gazing up into the sky. "I guess you wouldn't know anything about the history of this world but...even I hadn't heard of this guy before and I live here."
"The most dangerous monster the world has ever known."
The old man looked pale. Pale enough she worried a little about his health despite the fact that it was a pretty reasonable response to the sudden loss of a student.
"This mark...is the mark of the Demon King Piccolo."
She crossed her arms, glancing over at Yamcha. Whatever he'd been planning to say, he'd trailed off into silence when she'd failed to give him a proper response. She'd met a demon king before. She wondered whether the two were related somehow or if they were kings of different nations? She couldn't exactly go and ask, though, and in the end it didn't matter.
The silence stretched on between them, but he continued to stand there, watching the empty house on the hill. She'd like to think that they were in the same position. Both frustrated, both grieving, both feeling guilty and helpless that they were unable to save a friend when he needed them. Both unable to be there in the end until it was too late.
That was being too kind though, wasn't it? He didn't hold any fault for the situation.
She, on the other hand...
He turned to say something, and she spoke over him. "It's me. I'm-I was Ino."
The man blinked and stared at her, mouth still open as if he'd forgotten that he'd been about to speak. She couldn't really read his expression. Shock? Confusion? Satisfaction? Anger, perhaps. The last one was the most appropriate under the circumstances.
She crossed her arms, frowning, refusing to look at him closely enough to determine what his response really was. "Last time, the old man asked me to do it. The both of them were advancing so quickly they'd gotten cocky. I didn't really care that time, but..." Her gaze fell. From him. From the shadow of her failures that loomed over her like a silent taunt. The very person who'd given her some kind of hope when she'd lost everything...she'd so carelessly failed.
"But...that can't be, you were..."
A few quick gestures, all rote by now, and a duplicate of her appeared standing next to her. A moment later, she dispelled it into a puff of smoke, returning the allocated chakra to herself. It was quicker than explaining how the ability worked, and that wasn't important anyway. "I was...Goku just wanted to fight Ino so badly. And Krillin. I thought I might tell you all afterward anyway, but then...that man..." No. It didn't matter. Shifting the blame to others didn't help things, and she didn't believe it even if she said it. "If I hadn't been there...the match ups would have been different. Even if someone were hurt, then...I wouldn't have been distracted fighting two battles at once. If it had been the real me and not a copy-"
His hand gripped her shoulder.
"What the hell was that fight?"
She blinked, and squinted over at him. His expression was intense, irritated, not quite on the level that she'd expect if he were blaming her for losing a battle he hadn't seen and getting a friend killed in the process. "What-"
"I've seen you fight before, so why the hell did you go and let him escape?! Ino was one thing, but you can't tell me you didn't want to kick his ass."
The..ah-the...Tienshinhan, not...the other. She shook her head after a moment, turning her frown out to the horizon. To wherever that man had escaped. "He was stronger than he looked. And it's not like I didn't try. Neither one of us knew that'd count as a ring out. In case you didn't notice, he'd just tried to do the same thing to me. So...it's a different kind of fight-"
"So you just collect all the guilt you don't deserve so you don't have room for the stuff you should be guilty about, huh?" Yamcha scoffed and took a step back, planting his hands on his hips. "Since I met Goku and Bulma I'm reminded...daily that I'm not the smartest guy around. But even I can tell it's stupid to think you're at fault for some freak return of a nightmare creature none of us had even heard of. You wanna blame yourself for failing to give that guy a good beat-down or at least letting me deliver it? Great, I've been doing that all day. But Krillin...? I can't let you have that credit."
Couldn't let her 'have' it...? There wasn't any way he could actually be blaming himself, could there? That didn't make any sense at all.
"You can't think that you're at fault."
He shook his head immediately, and turned his head back toward the empty house. "No. It's just that the guy who's really responsible...this Demon King? I'm gonna kill him. So. Sorry. You can't have that blame. It's not negotiable."
"That's a nice thought..." A voice came from behind both of them. She didn't need to turn her head to know it was the old man who'd first asked her to take on the guise of 'Ino'. "But it's just going to get you both killed. Idiots! Didn't you hear anything I said?!"
The old man huffed in irritation, walking up to where they both stood. He looked frail, like if he didn't have that cane both hands clung to he wouldn't even have the strength to stand up properly. But that was a flat-out lie. The turtle shell on his back alone would have crushed most of the fighting men in the tournament, and she knew well enough that he was agile and durable atop that. How much she'd never been able to confirm, but certainly not frail as he appeared.
"It's like I told you. This monster...even the children he creates are stronger than anyone else you've ever faced. He can create hundreds, no, thousands of these monsters without any effort and destroy the world. If you think you can face the demon king yourself, you're both fools. There's only one way to defeat him, and there has only ever been one way."
The Mafuba. He'd mentioned it earlier when he'd explained the demon king after the tournament. It seemed simple enough, a powerful sealing jutsu like what was used on tailed beasts to put them into containers. Usually they'd go into people...but on rare occasions they had been put into jars and other containers in her own world. One that might seal away something similarly in this world didn't seem far-fetched. But... "Your master didn't survive that technique."
The man's glasses gleamed, lips pressed into a grim line. "...Do you think one life is more important than the world?" After a moment, the serious expression passed into something dismissive, and he waved his hand. "It doesn't matter anyway! When my master used that technique, he'd been fighting off Piccolo's monsters and even the demon king himself all day. His ki was so depleted that using such a technique was certain death. Using it if you have sufficient energy left won't be any worse than any other heavily taxing technique."
Yamcha squinted at the old man. "So then you'll teach it to all of us, right?"
"Impossible." The old man shook his head. "The technique takes seventy years to master, and I would need to show it to you for you to even begin to learn. If this truly is the Demon King, escaped somehow despite the seal and despite my throwing it into the ocean...we must focus on collecting the dragonballs immediately."
"Why?" He'd been sternly insisting it, but he'd yet to explain himself. "Do you think you can wish him away?"
The old man huffed. "Away...? I can't believe even that would work. However...it would save us an incredible amount of effort and danger to seal him back into the pot with the dragon instead."
Most likely, if the man had broken out, restoring a seal would be easier than killing someone. That much was true, but...at the same time...she couldn't help the twinge of...dissatisfaction. Even if they could bring Krillin back just as he was before the attack, it didn't sound nearly as satisfying to just lock the culprit away cleanly instead of beating him into unconsciousness or death with her own hands.
"...Goku's not gonna like that plan."
"Which of us is the master, eh?" The old man turned his back to them then, starting back down the hill. "Bulma is finished with the dragon radars. There's no more time for boasting."
Yamcha was the first to speak between them once the old man got far enough ahead to be out of reasonable earshot. "So...what happens if this demon king also happens to know about that legend...and decides to go grab one of them for himself just in case someone else gets that idea?"
Was that likely? The Red Ribbon Army had known, as had those strange people in that flying castle. And of course so did they. It...was possible some kind of scourge of the earth might also know or have heard about it at some point. If he did, then...that kind of a plan wasn't out of the question at all, assuming he could find one.
And if he did...
Goku would probably like the plan left to them then.