AN: I think there's a solid and fair question of asking why my updates have changed from daily to like...yearly, and while it would be truthful to say that my living situation and life itself has changed wildly over the time I started this - in some ways horrifically - the truth is also that this section of the story is just difficult to write. I intentionally do not write up a path for the story ahead of time unless it's dealing with things beyond Sakura's sphere of influence. The fanfiction is an experiment to see how things butterfly and change from inserting her into the story, and strictly deciding certain things ahead of time would prevent the organic growth (in the original version of the story I imagined, Goku would have transformed into a giant monkey in the tournament as Sakura's opponent because Jackie Chun wasn't there, but this was getting ahead of myself and ended up not happening due to prior interference in the timeline.)
Completely original adventures are difficult to write, and Tien is especially hard because of the fact that there's just so little material of him pre-redemption heelturn to reference. I write and rewrite the sections so much that I stunlock myself and make no progress for huge amounts of time. It's a problem I've known for a while, but there isn't really a solution to this that I am willing to take. One day we will make it through this muck together, and the speed of the updates will return again. We must simply believe.
Also, the note I had originally written for this chapter about 7 rewrites ago: I've been thinking about how to compensate for the power drop off of humans for a long time, pretty much from the start of the story. Apparently, though, all I needed to say was "They trained offscreen and they've caught up" and it's work out fine. Oh, Super. You continue the time-honored Dragonball tradition of making power level comparisons a joke.
Speaking of power levels, I'm gonna help y'all out and put this to rest: I do not expect nor intend for the moon to explode any time soon. Maybe ever. The moon thing has always been massively disproportionate to the strength and power characters display at all times besides then, so as part of smoothing over and making more harmonious the disparity of the power systems between the worlds, that's out.
I mean, I literally just said that I don't have strong plans for the story so that it can grow organically, so you never know...but don't expect it.
The Next Dimension Over
Chapter Ninety-two
Truthfully, she hasn't had to behave like a true ninja since arriving in this strange world. Any time that she might have needed to there was always someone around to back her up, like Goku or Yamcha, to help turn the tables. Or she misjudged the situation and let someone die.
She's been playing martial artist for so long now that it feels at once foreign and liberating to finally act like a true shinobi again. Even as a shinobi she'd always had a fairly straightforward method of attack - it was her master's style and so it was also hers. Still...taking hostages, using a group against itself, and attacking with confusion and stealth? Even in her relatively straightforward method of fighting, those were elements of her training she'd mostly ignored in this world.
She might have enjoyed the expression on Tenshinhan's face as she dragged him under the ground if she'd seen it, but then again...conscious thought wasn't at the forefront of her mind. She could be smug, soaking in the victory over this wretched man and his slimy associates, after their threat was neutralized.
She didn't know how long her confusion would last, so she needed to make this moment count: there were no other clones around to fake out with again if something went wrong, and the man in her grip was incredibly strong and skilled. And had a habit of recovering from surprise quite quickly. Thus, she followed her instincts and didn't waste time on extraneous thoughts.
The traditional ninja tunneling technique for underground attacks didn't dig one particularly deep - it usually required earth jutsu to go more than a foot or two deep, and it wasn't particularly useful for hiding or sneak attacks to go deeper anyway. Such a small amount of dirt, especially already broken up by her earlier attack, wouldn't be enough to do anything of use.
Instead of that, she'd drag this man all the way down to Hell if she could.
Or close, anyway. Not with earth jutsu - she could do a little with that, but not enough to do what she needed here - but with her fist and chakra alone, drilling deeper with one hand and dragging an angrily shouting man down with her other. Rapid bursts of chakra erupting over and over from her hand worked like a silent yet explosive jackhammer, nearly creating free-fall speed.
There's really no saying how long she'd have gone if the earth around her hadn't eventually opened up into an underground cavern of some sort.
At any rate, it had to be the furthest distance anyone had body slammed the smug bald man in her grip before. Her hand released his ankle in time to fling him into the cavern ground below. While the sound of his body slamming into rock still echoed off of the walls and before the air in his lungs could finish its forceful escape, she followed after - one hand on his neck and the other on one of his shoulders, knees digging into his stomach.
Although she took no time at all to shift from that immediate impact to locking him down into place with the weight of her body - knees straddling him on the rock and feet locked to the ground as she might do for running up a wall or across a ceiling - the impact really ought to have at least stunned him for a while, if not injured him enough to put him out of commission for a while. It ought to.
Underestimating he and the others with him already got her into this position, though, and there was only so far she could safely escalate things with Bulma nearby, as well as only so long she could go before they could turn around and use hostages on her.
There was the obvious answer of simply taking the opportunity to kill him right then and there. Perhaps it said something unpleasant about her that she didn't immediately take that option.
She could, of course, use the real version of the explosive tag in her pocket that would have vanished on his master's neck after her clone did...but as the old man had shown, ki was not the only way to interfere with her...negotiation for the dragonball. Besides that, she hadn't come prepared, even if she should have. The tag in her pocket was the only one she had. If she used it on him - particularly if he was able to remove and ruin it - she'd be wasting a precious resource.
Besides that, if he were dead either by her own hand or the explosive tag she wouldn't be able to interrogate him. He clearly didn't know what a dragonball was, but that didn't mean he didn't know where it was...and that snake of a master already made it clear he'd only waste her time with lies, traps, and false leads until he could find some way to escape or get his hands on Bulma.
She was, probably, the most well-suited person for handling the dilemma in front of her.
The initial shock of impact already began to clear from Tenshinhan's face - almost predictably. He was far too irritating a man to just let himself be rendered unconscious by a perfectly solid attack like that.
Crackling light danced around the palm and across the fingertips of the hand holding his neck, visible even to the naked eye, reflecting a soft blue off both of their faces. Tsunade...was just as good and thorough a teacher as any other sannin.
Electrified chakra shot through the man's body - no longer visible beyond its concentration at her hand, and his muscles contracted and contorted beyond all his control.
Body Pathway Derangement.
A secret jutsu developed by Tsunade, able to be performed only by the hokage and herself, with no true counter. It took a great amount of energy and concentration to do, and could only persist so long as her concentration did, but the results were...catastrophic to the person inflicted. It forcibly overrode and scrambled all the nerve pathways of the body below the neck - confusing the brain's signals so much that an affected person would have to completely relearn how to move every single muscle in their body before they could do anything at all. Although it didn't specifically target the chakra pathways, it certainly didn't help with the cultivation of chakra or use of ki, either.
The erratic twitches beneath her, and the man's look of angry confusion, made it clear that her jutsu worked. Which was good, because she'd never tried it before on anything as complex as a human.
Her lips quirked up into a small, satisfied smirk. Finally. "Told you that you looked better in the ground."
"Wh-what.." His voice sounded hoarse. That had nothing to do with the jutsu - unconscious things such as breathing and heartbeat weren't affected by the jutsu - so the impact with the floor must have done some damage to him after all. "have you...done to me?"
She brushed the dust of the ground from her knees as she stood. "Don't look so surprised. Aren't you the one who likes using dirty tactics?"
She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and turned her gaze from him to scan the cavern around them for a better exit than simply leaping up through her dug-out entrance would be.
It was not, in fact, a 'cavern'. They'd fallen into some kind of underground bunker instead. Outside of the circle of destruction caused by their violent entrance, shelving units scattered across the floor, spilling all sorts of valuables that sparkled in the faint light. At first she'd thought the dim light of the cavern came from some outside entrance nearby, but in fact the light came from a small electrical field - a barrier around something on a desk on the far end of the room.
A solid looking door stood near to where they'd landed. Which meant...soon enough that's where the old man and the other one would probably enter through. After all, if they were going to directly chase her through the earth, they'd have crashed to the ground shortly after her. That they didn't only reinforced the fact that the shrewd old man anticipated where she might go. Or at least guessed she might find it on accident.
"A dragonball is a small golden orb with orange stars in it." She glanced down at the man once more, watching his indignant expression as he struggled in vain to find a way to move any further than useless and erratic squirming. "Like I said. I need it to save the world, and it's useless on its own. Have you seen your master put that somewhere, or do I have to tear down this entire complex until I find it?"
"Kh-" He grit his teeth, sweat on his face from his exertion. For her part, the concentration required to maintain the jutsu was relatively small, and unlike genjutsu, it had nothing to do with how much the target struggled. "What kind of a lunatic thinks they're out to save the world...?"
It was difficult to tell in the dark, but she thought there might have been a flash of recognition with her description. If there was...then he might have seen it.
She leaned down to pick up one of the toppled metal shelving units and tossed it aside - lodging it violently into the rock wall and scattering what remained on it across the room. "This is some kind of vault for all your goods, right?" A quick scan of the room didn't reveal anything particularly practical for living - nothing canned, no furniture except what was required for containing or displaying the golden or otherwise valuable looking items. The room looked not unlike the loot piles she'd found from bandits that pestered smaller villages on missions she'd gone on in the past.
There was at least a chance of the dragonball being tucked away in this room, but where?
The thing secured by an electrical shield - the only thing providing light in the room - seemed like a reasonable start. That or bait for an unwary thief.
She glanced over her shoulder to where Tenshinan somehow had managed to curl up somewhat on the ground. "This thing...is it going to kill us if I break it?"
He glared at her. "Try it."
She did.
The smell of her leather glove burning filled the air as she gripped the metal casing that carried the current, and then the light in the room vanished with the crunching sound of metal.
She couldn't see the dragonball, but at least once her other hand reached where it should have been, she felt it.
Well. Her plan was even better than she expected it to be.
Light flooded the darkness all at once, glimmering off of the dragonball in her hand and filling the room with color, as the vault door slammed inward.
(ลท)
He honestly could not tell if the ringing in his ears came from his head slamming into the ground or from the screams that he'd endured seconds before.
Look, he was pretty great at fighting, if he did say so himself. Near - no, actually world champion level - he was gonna take some time to soak that in and appreciate it at some point or another when life wasn't hell and constantly in anger, no matter the fact that it was partly a technicality. Regardless of his skill, though, it was pretty much impossible to fight at his full potential when a screaming woman was physically latched onto him from behind.
He'd managed to push Launch off of him and out of the way of the creature's charge just about two heartbeats before the impact of lizard and dirt.
Frankly, if he had to get slammed into the ground with the full weight of a lizard man's body, he could have done with it being a slimmer lizard man. He could also have done without a giant lizard snout full of swamp-breath in his face. Honestly? He could have done without this whole confrontation in the first place.
Punching the lizard - up close he was even less 'man' than 'fat overgrown lizard with wings' than he'd seemed from a distance - in the face was a little more awkward than doing it to someone with a human-shaped face, but...it wasn't the first beastman he'd had a scrap with.
Jagged teeth flew through the air as his palm made contact with the beast's snout, twisting its head away from him before it could chomp down on him. Before the thing could recover its bearings, he connected a flurry more across its jowls.
Without its wings in the equation...the worst thing about the creature so far...was its weight.
Rather than let those teeth or claws come into the equation wrestling with it, he grit his teeth and pressed both his hands to the creature's chest - or...torso...? Actually he didn't know the proper language for lizard body parts, but that wasn't the point. Bursts of ki flared up in both of his palms, and with twin brilliant streaks of light, the lizard creature blasted backward off of him - tumbling head over feet in the grass.
The first thing he'd fought hadn't exactly put up all that much of a fight, but honestly...? This thing was pretty pathetic in comparison, even then.
He stumbled to his feet and glanced over to where he'd shoved Launch. Still blue hair? Still blue. Good. She looked a bit scuffed up, and still sat on the ground where she must have landed, but there didn't seem to be any serious injuries on her from the shove - and maybe most importantly, no golden hair.
"Launch, just stay put until I finish this guy o-"
...He was pretty sure he finished that word. Almost certain, in fact. He just couldn't hear it over the sound of the explosion.
The explosion.
Smoke, hot air and debris flew past him from where that lizard creature had finally gotten back to his feet, and he lifted an arm over his face both to defend himself from the unpleasantness of the explosion and in defense of...well...whatever technique caused it.
Rather than some kind of extreme desperation attack following the explosion, though...the air just...gradually cleared.
A little less than half a chubby lizard stood at the center of the explosion.
In the distance behind him, a violet haired demon stood wielding an uncomfortably large looking bazooka, malevolent gleam in sapphire eyes, and the very same smirk on her face that consistently summoned up violent urges within him. The sheer state of confusion and disbelief consuming his mind right then probably explained why it didn't summon them just right then.
"I knew I could count on you to stand around and waste his time for me, Pretty Boy."
Oh, wait. There they were.