AN: OH MY GOSH

when will I learn

this happens every time I try to force the story in a direction it just doesn't work. I fail to write the chapter, have to do it over and over again, and then give up and lose motivation for months and months at a time until I go back and just do what I was supposed to do in the first place. I need to learn to just do what works easily instead of forcing it in other directions.

Anyway this would have been done a few days ago, but I had an event to finish before I ran out of time.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Ninety

Darkness.

Was it really darkness? Darkness was a state of existence. It implied - perhaps overtly stated - that things were out there to touch, simply unable to be seen.

This was none of that. A lack of existence, not a presence of darkness. It was...

Ah.

Of course. The beam of light ripped through her heart. If it hadn't immediately stopped, it tore itself to shreds trying to beat. Tsunade had told her of this. This moment, indeterminable in length, at the brink of death. Had she not been accessing chakra right at the moment of the surprise attack...it wouldn't be a moment. Her curse, her poor choices would have caught up to her, not keeping her guard up and expecting a sneak attack.

Maybe she'd failed.

Tsunade knew what it was like during the time the body would rarely shut down to repair a fatal wound, when sudden trauma to the body would have instantly killed them if not for their seal of healings, but she wouldn't know what true death was like. Maybe it was the same. Maybe she'd failed everyone just one last time, and now she wouldn't have to feel any guilt, or make any other mistakes, ever again.

She didn't feel anything. She could perceive her body in some way, but not feel it. As if she floated in an empty and still sea, weightless and motionless.

All the same...dying so suddenly before she got to kill that man was unacceptable no matter what. If there was a chance, then-

"So...it's Sakura, huh?"

The voice rippled through the emptiness, echoed in her ears, and tugged painfully away at something atrophied and empty inside of her that she'd forgotten even existed. A voice whose smooth timbre she hadn't heard in years.

A warmth she hadn't heard in a lifetime.

She turned toward the voice without conscious thought, moved simply because she had to, not because she chose to. "Sa...suke...?"

He stood, or...he existed.

In nothing, there he stood, like some poignant reality of how he'd lodged in her heart, refused to leave no matter how far apart they were, no matter how hard she'd tried to eject him and push away the feelings she knew she'd never get in return. In the nothing, he was everything, and in this world of death, he was whole and complete, as if he'd never vanished into dust.

"You're here too soon."

"Too..."

Too soon?

But...it wasn't...it was the very opposite. She was too late. Always too late. She was years too late. She-

Cool fingertips touched her cheek, somehow. A light brush like a breeze, what would have barely registered at all if there were any other feelings for her to experience. In this void, the feeling of his touch consumed everything. It mirrored the gentleness of the last time she'd felt him, when he'd held her up against himself, helped steady her and give her strength until she could stand again.

She hadn't felt her own tears, but the tip of his thumb brushed along her cheek briefly as if sweeping them away, before he withdrew.

"You...you're just...flickers of my memories." He couldn't be anything else. They'd died in separate universes. Even if she were really dead now. And if someone were to wait for her after her death, if anyone were willing to wait for her after what she'd done, it wouldn't be Sasuke.

"Is that so." His gaze was impassive, observing her without any indication of his actual feelings - or what they would have been, if it were him.

She shook her head - or what amounted to it - and was about to continue to speak, when he spoke once more.

"Your hair grew."

"Eh-?" Well...now that he mentioned it-...but it wasn't intentional. She'd simply had no chance to cut or maintain it while she was traveling with Goku and training him. Since that had ended, she'd been...singleminded. How she looked wasn't a priority, not so long as her hair wasn't actively in her way.

"Sakura."

"Sasuke-?" She knew...this- it was just her own mind, definitely, but when he spoke to her in that voice, said her name that way, her response was automatic, before she even realized it.

"You wouldn't have been any help."

"Wha-"

"If I'm you, then there can be no argument." His lips quirked ever so faintly, a hint of the amused smile she'd seen peek out rarely before he'd left the village so long ago. In a lifetime where everything was better, in a lifetime where she looked to the future, not to the past. "Fighting Kaguya wasn't your responsibility. There isn't any point in taking on responsibility that you could never carry."

She stiffened. Although she had no true form, she could still feel it. The tenseness in her shoulders. The frustrated hopelessness. How could he really say-

"Will you take the blame for the entire world, Sakura? Will you carry the guilt of every person, of every failure and broken promise?" One slim brow arched as he looked down at her, expression stricter now, the warmth gone back to the cold calculation she'd become more familiar with. "If it's your goal to amass all the blame in the world and carry out the penance for it yourself, you may as well release your jutsu and die immediately. That is far beyond your strength."

Her head was spinning - perhaps literally, because the image of him blurred and twisted in her confusion. "Wha...what are you talking about?"

"Isn't that your goal? Taking the blame for battles that didn't involve you, and for deaths you have no control over, it must be that you've decided to become the one who bears all of the blame in the world."

"N-no I...that's ridi-"

Two fingers suddenly tapped her forehead with unexpected force. She could feel herself moving, spiraling away from him, back toward her body.

"Sasuke-!" No...no, she wasn't finished. She wanted more time. Just-just a bit longer, even if it wasn't real! "Wait-no, I wasn't done-!"

He faded into the distance so rapidly, it couldn't be by any consistent, real speed. And yet, even as she could feel the dull ache of her arms on grass, the throbbing of the remnants of her wound, an echo of something inside her still reverberated with the sense of next time.

Warm air rushed to fill her senses, the smell of blood on grass, and the raised voices of a pitched argument between men echoed in her ears.

When she finally willed her eyes to open once more, the sight which replaced darkness was an absolutely outrageously inappropriately chiselled buttock.

Specifically, an extreme low angle of the mud splattered thighs and cheeks of someone extremely dedicated to his physique.

(ŷ)

Oh, sure. Why not.

Bad to worse was a spectrum, and the day wasn't even maxed out yet. Launch gave a yelp that sounded - fortunately - more startled than anything else, which...yeah, gave him a pretty good idea of what he was dealing with, even without looking. As did the look of surprise on the purple haired woman in front of him.

The voice was unfamiliar, sure, but lo - when he turned around toward the voice, his hunch was completely accurate. Or...well. In the ballpark of accurate, anyway. Close enough to count.

He didn't expect the lizardman behind him to be quite so tubby, but still. Green. Scales. Draconic wings. Unlike the one he'd seen before, though, this one was more 'talking lizard' than 'lizard man'. Probably close enough to be cousins anyway, though.

"...Someone like you, huh?" His jaw set as he stared at the creature. Granted, it wasn't impossible there were two random groups looking for dragonballs at once now, given they were so rare and well hidden and never used until recently...but two lizardmen in such a close timeframe, both looking them? No, they were definitely related somehow.

The only trouble was...the last time he fought one was an enclosed space, with the creature surrounded by Goku and Sakura as well. While sure this one was quite a bit chubbier and less...human-shaped, he'd learned quick, even before meeting Goku and his current master, that looks could be greatly deceptive. Right now...they were in the wide open, and he had Launch with him. In her current state, she'd be helpless against any attack, and if she switched...there was no telling if she'd be helpful or just a liability.

And the purple haired one...well, it's not like he cared that much, but letting her die when she might actually have a dragonball hidden in a volcano somewhere nearby with a deadman's switch...and he couldn't expect someone as weak as her to put up a good fight or contribute at all if this thing started shooting ki blasts and flying around.

No, he had no back up, and he had to take care of two women with him. And from a disadvantageous place to fight, unless he got rid of those wings immediately. So...fighting...it'd be hard. Maybe they could escape, instead?

"Like me...?" The lizard squinted at him for a moment, before bristling visibly, sucking in a breath and drawing himself up. "There are none like me!"

He glanced back at the two women with him. Launch looked appropriately worried - airhead though she may be, she wasn't unable to sense danger - and the purple haired woman stood nearby, tense. Poised to escape, probably. But if she escaped, she'd escape with the secret to any dragonball trap she'd laid. Goku was pretty tough, and so was Sakura, but could either of them get a dragonball out of lava? Like a volcano hidden underground or something?

Granted...maybe there'd be no way for anyone to get it, then, but- no. Stopping this latest group from getting the dragonball wasn't their only goal. There was still Krillin. And...eventually Sakura had that wish of her own she wanted to solve, right? And there's no way he wanted to mess with extreme measures like draining an underground volcano or whatever.

Alright then.

If he fought, even if he could keep Launch safe, there's no way that woman wouldn't slip away and disappear to who knew where. Keeping the thing talking until they could all escape at once had to be the choice. "Huh. Guess when you've seen one lizard guy you've seen 'em all."

The lizard sputtered, eyes wide. "That's-that's...! You-! This is why I hate humans! Not one of you disgusting creatures has any shred of etiquette!" The lizard swung around one meaty hand, glowering at them. "Enough already! I'll only ask one more time. Give me the dragonball. You can go back to whatever gross little mating ritual you were up to after that. I have better things to do than put up with your unpleasantness!"

Mating ritual?!

He shivered, but in that moment he wasn't completely sure if it was an automatic response of revulsion related to thoughts of that with either of the women near him, or the immediate dread that followed, as if Bulma somehow knew, even from across the distance and whatever it was she was dealing with.

Hopefully whatever it was wasn't as bad as 'another guy sent by the powerful demon king looking for the dragonball'.

One worry at a time.

"I hate to break it to you, but you showed up a little too early for the villain theft moment." He shrugged. "None of us have the dragonball to give you even if we wanted to. You'll just have to go look elsewhere." Maybe the critter would just fly off somewhere far away and be nobody's problem? Assuming that they didn't have some kind of radar too...

The lizard made a sound that was probably meant to be a sigh, and shook his head. The creature's wings unfurled, and the chunky lizard lifted itself up off of the grassy hill they stood on with a flap of those wings. For a moment, one of those crazy ones he enjoyed from time to time, he actually thought that'd be enough to shoo the creature away and buy them some time.

Blue light flared up from the creature's hand, and if he'd had time it would have been his turn to sigh.

The crackle of lighting shot right past his head, not at him - surprisingly - and a worrying yelp followed from behind him. He didn't need to turn his head to know who it was, but he did so anyway. Launch had been lifted up into the air, yanked forward and past where he was standing in just about the time it took for him to turn his head. The blue light fortunately hadn't been a blast of ki, exactly, but some kind of lightning, like an electric grabber.

Launch kicked in the air, face contorted in obvious pain, but he had some doubts that even her alter ego would have broken free of that. "Ah-! No, let go of me!"

Damn it-why her?!

Before he could get more than two steps closer to the lizard, it set off into the air with the woman, far out of reach. "If the dragonball isn't here, then I'll have one of you take me to it. Cooperate, and I won't have any reason to kill you."

"B-but I don't know!"

Clearly, the lizard didn't appreciate the answer. Entirely truthful or not. The lightning grip around her visibly shrunk, biting into her, causing red marks to sizzle on her skin and a terrible pained shriek.

"Launch!" Dammit, the day was just determined to get worse, wasn't it?

Fine then. He didn't have much practice with it...but he'd just have to use it again if he were going to reach the lizard all the way up there. Worse chances or no, clearly a fight was unavoidable. He twisted in place as he began to gather ki in his hands, and glanced over at the violet-haired woman. "When she falls I need yo-"

...Ah, yes. Of course.

Naturally she'd have vanished already.