AN: I thought I'd say for the people who are kind of confused about how competent Sakura is or isn't. There's never been a point in the story so far where Sakura has pushed herself to her absolute limit. There's times she's given her 100% briefly, but most of the time she's just not, whether because she's being cocky and distracted or because she doesn't need to depends on the situation. I kind of thought it was obvious, but if you feel confused, this is why it can be hard to place where her capabilities are relative to the adversaries and allies around her. Such is the luxury of being in dragonball.
Rest assured, however, there will come a time.
Oh yes.
Anyway, I'm amused at myself because somehow I always end up mentally preparing for and going over things the next saga over, even when I've just started one.
I'm sure that has NOTHING TO DO with how long my updates have been taking.
Now then, let me pose a familiar set of questions to see if any opinions have changed since last time, if you will - what are things you are ideally looking forward to seeing in the future? Arcs, moments, romances, hypothetical children, or characters. I won't confirm or deny that anything will happen, but it's always interesting to see readers' thoughts on the AU components.
But I mean, you didn't hear it from me, but I heard that Kishiyama told me the only end game is SakuWhis.
Speaking of relationships that aren't even a feasible possibility for the next hundred chapters, you can fight about dragonball ships all you want, but if I see shipwars break out over Naruto ships, I'll cut someone.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Ninety-one
=previously=
The second world tournament since Sakura's arrival in the world concluded with Yamcha as the victor, after some quick thinking won him a crucial advantage in his fight against Goku.
During the tournament, the unpleasant competitor Tienshinhan critically injured Krillin in their fight, sending Krillin off sight for medical attention. While Krillin is away from the tournament, accompanied by a shadowclone of Sakura, he's attacked and killed by a strange lizardman seeking the dragonballs. Meanwhile, Sakura fought Tien in the tournament to an unexpected ring-out victory that left both of them mutually unsatisfied and angry.
The identity of Krillin's killer is revealed to be a soldier of an ancient and terrible evil called the Demon King Piccolo, someone Roshi considers 'the most dangerous monster ever to exist'
To head off his plans for the dragonballs and to find a way to seal him away once more, the surviving friends break up into pairs to seek out the dragonballs as quickly as possible.
Roshi and Goku seek out two on their own and find theirs immediately, although the second is in the possession of an irritable boy displeased by Goku's reckless eating habits.
Bulma and Sakura head off to search for the last two dragonballs not already in their possession, and encounter a small encampment in the forest as the location of the first ball. Rather than finding the treasure she seeks, Sakura instead comes face-to-face with Tienshinhan once more, and their tensions quickly boil over into a violent rematch. When the match is suddenly interrupted by a blast of energy through her heart, Sakura has a vision of her lost team mate from her original world, cut short by her regenerative jutsu restarting her heart.
Yamcha and Launch head in another direction for their two, and quickly encounter an unfriendly ex-acquaintance of his, who claims to know where one of the dragonballs are. While still negotiating for the location, another of King Piccolo's soldiers arrive, demanding they hand over all dragonballs in their possession. Unsatisfied with a negative answer, he takes Launch hostage with a strange electrical attack, forcing Yamcha to either agree to help him find dragonballs, or fight a dangerous enemy on his own.
=Now=
The voices at first indistinct eventually sharpened to her reawakened ears. Three men argued, and given her position it wasn't too difficult to determine who it was. She remained still for now - although she breathed, of course, their changed positions meant enough time would have gone by to have them confirm her lack of a heartbeat. As long as she didn't move in a noticeable way, she doubted any one of them would pay close enough attention to a slain opponent to notice it start breathing again. Especially not when they sounded so distracted.
"-a game?!" An old man's voice crackled out of sight. It must have been the old master, now shouting toward the naked man standing near to her. On closer inspection, or rather, using deductive reasoning, the chiselled buttock had to belong to Tienshinhan.
Ergh.
"I had it handled, dammit!" Her opponent screamed with a ferocity harsh enough for his own voice to crack, as he gestured his arms wildly.
"But-" a third voice, youthful and almost feminine, chirped in the distance, also out of sight without her risking turning her head.
"Stay out of this Chaotsu!" The naked one pointed aggressively at his teacher. "You had no right to-"
"I have every right, I am your master!"
...So that's what happened.
Yes, it was her own fault. She'd gotten so wrapped up in following up on a grudge with someone who was...not important, in the grand scheme of things, that she'd forgotten he wasn't alone. Not just the old man was with him, but the small figure who'd shown the ability to shoot beams of energy in the tournament. She hadn't realized they could be that strong...but it's possible he'd actually been trying to modulate his power given they were in a tournament, and simply never had the chance to go all out. Not like he would during an assassination.
More importantly, Bulma was still in the heliplane. Right now, it didn't seem like any of them knew she was there, but if she made any rash moves...it'd be harder to protect Bulma and the plane from three enemies at once, even with the element of surprise. Especially not when one of them had Tien's level of strength. She needed to make a decisive move before that.
If they wanted to play as assassins, not as martial artists, then she didn't have any responsibility to pretend to be a martial artist. And while she wanted the man closest to her to suffer before he could meet any kind of permanent end, that didn't apply to either of the other two. Unfortunately, flashy jutsu wasn't her forte. Of course she knew some, but to be really effective, she needed to do more than just some cheap parlor tricks.
Think like the shinobi you are, not the one you've been pretending to be.
Tienshinhan was, at least, extremely fast and hardy. Short of outright murdering him in one hit, taking him out quickly would both be a challenge and a necessity. The other two were considerably weaker and easier to handle, but she couldn't risk there being any other tricks up their sleeves. She had surprise just once, and if they realized it, they had a hostage.
She had a good sense of where the others were, but she couldn't see for sure without turning her head and revealing herself. A mirror would reflect light and draw the attention of at least one of them, which would put them on guard. As soon as she looked, she'd also have to be moving. And ready for the possibility that they had good enough reflexes to react in time.
Well.
She hadn't had to solve a puzzle and spread her wings like this in a while.
As the voices above her pitched higher in rage, she moved.
Chakra flooded her limbs, burning like fire from the suddenness, giving her body a temporary boost in speed and strength. Her hands splayed out on the ground, palms down, and and explosive force burst outward from both of them at once, sinking deeply into the dirt and rock, and erupting in every direction at once, a violent spray of debris and earth rocketing upward from the ground immediately. The building with the sauna collapsed into the chasm, and the previously solid grass and dirt the men stood on turned into projectiles that at once threatened to pummel the men who stood on it, fling them into the distance, and swallow them up into the emptiness beneath.
Two of her ran through the spinning rocks and chunks of earth, seizing on the opportunity before there could be a response. One of her leapt nimbly upward to where the small one spiraled backward, and threw an array of senbon ahead of her to prevent him from simply shooting at her once more. The other sprinted across the crumbling ground to where the old master stumbled backward in shock. As Tienshinhan had immediately intervened when she'd attacked him before, she could surmise he was likely outpaced by his student, or close enough to it to count. That seemed even more evident as the sneak attack had come from the sky - thus Chaotsu - not him.
Thus, taking on both of them at once was the easier move, and it afforded her with hostage material, if necessary.
Somehow, the senbon in the air simply froze in place, but as a consequence of his initial defensive action, he was wide open to her physical attack.
Predictably, the surprise attack didn't leave Tienshinhan reeling for long. He recovered before she could even reach her targets. But because of the explosion, both of them were too far apart for him to reach at once. And thus, the man would have to choose between the small Chaotsu, about to be struck with a downward strike of a chakra-fist powered kunai, and his old mentor - about to be seized by the neck.
A classic dilemma, really.
Rule one of team battle. Never let your opponent take hostages.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Tienshinhan chose to rescue his smaller companion. The air whipped up with his burst of speed, and he shot upward, one hand lancing up to strike her abdomen, and the other shoving Chaotsu careening away to the ground below, or what remained of it as the rubble fell back to the earth, anyway.
Two things happened at once: the figure hovering above him vanished into smoke, and she reached the old man. Rather than simply seize him by his scrawny neck, though, a strip of paper slapped over his throat. She leaned in to hiss in his ear. "That's an explosive tag is activated by ki. Try it, and you'll blow your own head off. If you don't believe me be my guest and try."
It's a trap that wouldn't ever work with chakra - that flowed through chakra networks, kept entirely underneath the skin except when the shinobi in question pushed it out through chakra points in their skin where they wished to use it - like hands or feet. A shinobi would almost have to do it on purpose for it to work. Ki, on the other hand, that leaked. And it took very little energy to light its fuse.
The old man grit his teeth, but made no move to resist. As she expected.
"Now then." She kept her hand over the tag for now - she could activate it herself this way, and it made removing it more difficult. "Shall we try this again?" Her gaze stayed on Tienshinhan, who hovered nearby, frustrated expression on his face but not yet moving to strike at her. "Thrilling as it is to have a rematch, the only thing I'm here for is the dragonball. Give it to me, and I'll be on my way."
"The hell is a-"
'What makes you so sure I have one?" The old man spoke over his student and tilted his head slightly, as if he could crane his neck enough to look directly behind him if he only tried.
"If you didn't, you'd be as confused as him." She nodded slightly to the man, who still stood poised, hesitant to strike. He couldn't have heard her threat, and so he wouldn't know it only restrained the old man. Wisely, if incorrectly, he held back on the assumption that the old man staying still meant that her grip on his neck was an active, rather than passive, threat. There was no telling how long it would hold him back, though. "And you called it 'your property'. One ball won't do you any good, and frankly I don't care if you get it back later. It's in the best interests of yourself and the world if you comply."
"Hm, the world, you say?"
Before she can elaborate, there's a flash of metal, as the old man twists in a way that's much too spry for his frail form. A dagger, glinting wicked in the sunlight, twists and plunges into her gut as he turns, and something - she doesn't know what - keeps her from moving and making good on her unspoken promise to activate the tag on his neck.
From across the distance, there's an irritated shout from Tienshinhan, and blood spatters across the blade and the old man's uniform.
Sadly, she can't see the look on his face when she vanishes into nothingness.
When her clone does, that is. Her second clone.
In the moment of confusion that follows, her hands - her real ones - explode up from the mostly settled ground beneath Tienshinhan's feet, grip his ankles, and yank him underground in one motion.
(ŷ)
"Oh, sure. Of course." He growled, really just to himself, through gritted teeth.
Today officially wrapped all the way back around from frustratingly awful into infuriatingly frustrating. Although similar in name, they were completely different things. There was a science to it. A science involving violent urges and the outbursts associated with those.
It's not like he was still living as a bandit, but even still...no one ever gave him the respect of the feared desert bandit he used to be! Maybe, probably, that had something to do with none of the people he encountered having even gone anywhere near Diablo Desert, but...that really wasn't the point! He was a man who had inspired terror and dread in everyone who dared pass through the desert who didn't happen to be a cute girl, for at least three years!
Well, he could introduce himself, but any bandit who had to introduce himself wasn't really that infamous after all.
And also he'd kicked that habit years ago. But it still would have been nice to have some street cred to avoid having to deal with hostage situations and ...just whatever that other woman's everything was.
Whatever. Complaining to himself wasn't going to fix the situation, earn him any respect, find the dragonball, or rescue Launch. It did feel good even just to mentally vent, though, and his day was just about at the point where he wouldn't get any better than that. The day was still young, admittedly, but he could tell it'd be that kind of a day. He'd gotten a sense for that, after a whole enemy base blew up in his face that one time.
The lizard man, having finished whatever it was he'd been saying while Yamcha just wasn't paying attention, and started off through the air - great wings flapping loudly enough for the sound to reach him where he stood. That was, actually, just fine to him. He didn't have that many ranged attacks, and unlike that guy in the tournament, he couldn't just...fly. He could leap, though. And last time he'd encountered one of these, their tough hide didn't extend to those wing membranes.
He crouched in preparation, twisting his fingers and hand just so, and an instant later propelled himself into the air, just as the lizard and its hostage passed overhead.
"Wolf Klaw!" He'd had to close the distance some, as the bulk of his attack's power came from the concentration of air, and so it simply didn't have range. What it didn't have in range, however, it made up for in power. Invisible claws of air sliced ribbons through the beast's wings, and with a startled cry, the lizard man spiraled toward the ground.
Unsurprisingly, the electric cage around Launch disappeared once the creature lost focus. Which left her, too, plummeting toward the ground. Screaming.
The impact of the woman against his chest and arms knocked the wind out of him, but despite that causing him to stumble ungracefully when he hit the ground, it was still a better landing than the lizard got, whose bulky body crashed shoulder first through the dirt.
"You okay? Good-" he didn't actually give the woman an opportunity to respond, but the briefly stunned lizard was a much more pressing concern anyway. "Get behind me, got it? This is gonna get hairy."
She still looked a bit shaky when he let her down to her feet, but she gave a quick nod, scurrying to hide...oh, just directly behind him, hands even settling lightly on his back.
"That's...not what-"
Said lizard chose that moment to burst out from the crater it'd created with its body, bursting upward in a spray of rocks and dirt, angry scream shaking the ground. "If you're so determined to get killed, then fine! I'll do it for you right now!"
Despite losing his wings, the angry lizard creature didn't seem to be slowed down at all in his movement, charging forward along the ground with just as much vicious suddenness as he had the air.
Launch screaming in his ear was not even remotely helpful.
(ř)
He actually felt a little bad about how easily the kid gave up something quite that valuable for food. A part of him couldn't help worrying that Goku might be tempted to do the same thing some time.
Probably not.
Well, he was pretty sure, anyway. At least Goku knew well enough that the dragonballs could just summon him endless food, if he wanted it. And the only dragonball he usually carried around was worth more in sentimental value than even the best food. His rambunctous student did love his food and could be unpredictable...but he was still pretty confident about that.
And speaking of that student, Goku squinted up at him with a worrying amount of suspicion as they walked. "Hey, Master Roshi..."
"Hm?"
"Where'd you get all that extra food to give him, anyway?"
"Ah...well..." He sighed. Considering how quickly they'd collected both dragonballs, he'd really kind of hoped that they'd make it all the way back home before Goku went and asked that.
Well, he couldn't just expect everything to go well today.
"That...eh...was the lunch I packed to go along with us." Actually, he hadn't even thought to do it, initially, but he tried never to make the same mistake twice! At least not when it counted, anyway. It was just lucky that Bulma was prepared enough to have a couple of capsules set up specifically for Goku's hunger, just in case the search dragged on a while.
"Huh?" Goku blinked up at him, expression immediately distressed. "That wasn't the only lunch you brought, right?! I'm still really, really hungry!"
There were technically still some emergency rations to dole out, but... "Consider that a lesson to you about stealing other people's food, then!"
Right, yep. That's what it was. A lesson. A learning experience.
Not just that he also wanted to be able to eat something today.