AN:

Sadhelm2- There's a good reason why we haven't seen Goku's POV so far, but it primarily boils down to two parts: Krillin's perspective is more entertaining, and Krillin has a more substantial inner monologue than Goku, so he's been more useful as a perspective so far. As the story continues, more perspectives will be introduced as necessary.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Eight

"...Say...say that again?" The old man's voice trembled, as if he were really disbelieving that his students could do as they said. It did nothing for rebuilding the respect he'd lost over the day of pointless training he'd subjected her to before the ki training began.

She planted her hand on her hip and watched the two, curious. "You two can move that rock on your own?"

Krillin squinted up at her a moment, before huffing. "Not...very far...but..." The bald one turned toward the rock and planted his hands against it. He dug his feet into the ground, grit his teeth, and very slowly began to shove the mountainous boulder away.

He managed only a few inches before collapsing onto his knees. "S...See?" It wasn't far, but the demand had never come with a distance requirement.

Goku puffed out his chest then, and ran up to the rock. "My turn, my turn!"

She glanced over at the hermit. He looked as if he'd eaten some bad octopus. She felt a small flicker of satisfaction at that. Really. Masters who don't expect their students to exceed weren't very good masters at all. Then again, she might have been a bit biased.

When Goku approached the rock, he crouched down a little, and drew back his arm, clenching his fist. Which was...interesting! She leaned in a bit, so that she could get a look at him. There was no way he could have learned how to precisely control chakra without training, but could he have really gained enough strength in Roshi's training alone to replicate her actions? In the time that he had, that simply shouldn't be possible.

In the end, it wasn't.

When his fist collided with the rock, though, it did still move, sliding and then rolling about a foot before its weight slowed it back down to a stop.

The old man choked.

(*)

He couldn't really tell. Was he excited? Did he feel a little betrayed by his Master's trickery? Disappointed? He'd built up so much in his mind what the training would be, what great secret techniques he'd learn from the old man...and then it turned out to be nothing.

Which meant that when Sakura was doing 'advanced training' she was really just sitting around in the house doing nothing all day! Other than wear the dumb shell, anyway.

...No, he was at least excited enough not to dwell on whatever that freakishly strong woman had been doing for the past six months. He was going to go to the Tenkaichi Budokai in two months. And...maybe he didn't have any chance to win, but he'd barely ever let himself imagine even going there before. If they could actually make it into the tournament...

Those ten...five years didn't seem too far away already. He'd be a champion. He'd be famous. Girls would fawn over him, and no one would ever call him a weakling or a loser anymore.

He stared up at the ceiling in the dark, unable to sleep.

Two months from now, everything was going to change.

He was sure.

(*)

"...If you won't go to sleep, you can go to the living room."

She understood his excitement. She'd experienced exactly that more than once, and had similar reactions. Completing a round of training, realizing just what she'd accomplished...it could be an amazing feeling.

She still didn't feel like laying in bed listening to Goku vibrate in excitement over it. And it was audible, given all the fidgeting and rolling around he did. She was about a minute away from forcibly ejecting him from the bed and locking the door.

"Sorry..." He didn't sound all that sorry, but at least he stopped moving around so much. Which was good, because if she was going to get up and do her own warm ups and training while the men in the house were off delivering milk, she didn't have long to rest.

"...How did you get so strong?"

She huffed, before rolling onto her back to get a look at him. Unsurprisingly, he was propped up on an elbow, watching her intently, eyes sparkling in the dark. The question was...a little unusual. Most of the time, they didn't bother asking her questions about her. As if a girl falling through the sky was normal enough not to rouse any curiosity from them.

It was part of the reason she'd started to forget they might be spies of Kaguya.

"I told you...I was trained by the fifth Hokage. There isn't a stronger or better teacher in the world." She refused to say 'wasn't'. Even if she'd been useless to save everyone, the rest of Team 7 would have pulled through and dispelled the genjutsu. Lady Tsunade was still presiding over Konoha.

He brightened. "Really? The strongest in the world? Even more than old man Roshi?"

She scoffed lightly. "Much more. There's...almost no one stronger than her at all."

He sat up in excitement, looking over at her with wide eyes. "Can I meet her? Where is she? I want to learn from her, next!"

"She's..."

Her heart clenched suddenly, and she turned her gaze away from Goku out into the sky, as if she could just...find the way back home by looking at the stars hard enough. "...Home. Far, far away from here."

He was quiet for a moment, but she could easily picture his thoughtful expression. "When we're done training...if you want to, you could come with me on Nimbus! Wherever your house is in the world, I'm sure we'll find it quickly that way!"

Unless, as was true, this was an entirely different dimension after all.

"If you don't get to sleep, I'm gonna kick you out of here."

He was quiet a moment, before dropping back down onto the bed. A moment later, he made a small noise of discomfort, and shifted. It was slight, but...recognizable. She turned slightly, and looked over her shoulder. "...Is something wrong?"

"Uh...no." He shook his head. "My hand hurts a little."

Most likely, he meant the hand that hit the rock, so she sat up and turned toward him. For a moment, she held out her hand expectantly...and then reached out to take his hand, instead. After all, it wasn't like the people in the house knew she was a medic. And she wasn't going to reveal that yet if she didn't have to.

But she was still going to have a look at his hand, regardless of how much he intended on pretending it wasn't injured.

"You should cushion your attacks with...ki when you hit things like that." Normally, she would have said chakra, but even if he'd known what that was, it wasn't exactly an easy technique to attempt. And she wasn't about to teach him.

She pressed her thumb against a point that she suspected might have been the trouble spot, and he winced. "See, you could have broken your hand if you hit it much harder without strengthening your hand more."

Actually, he had definitely fractured one of the bones a little, considering his reaction.

He huffed. "I've hit lots of things before. My hands always feel better by tomorrow."

She squinted down at him a moment...and summoned a trickle of healing chakra anyway. Maybe it wouldn't hurt in the morning regardless, but she wasn't about to risk his hand on the chores he'd be doing tomorrow without at least a little bit of healing.

"Still, you'd better be careful. If you break your arm or leg, you won't be able to go to the tournament."

He flexed his hand slightly, looking up at it as if he already felt the difference her chakra caused in it, and then flopped his arm back onto the bed with a determined expression. "No way! I'm definitely gonna make it to the tournament. And I'm gonna win!"

(*)

Two months went by quicker than ever. The turtle shells had started out way heavier, but by the end of the first month, he didn't really notice the difference anymore. Of course, his mind was increasingly full of anticipation, anxiousness, and excitement for the upcoming tournament. So...that might have been part of the reason.

But that wasn't important anymore. Eventually, it came to the day.

The old man and the monster-girl had both removed the shells they'd worn even though they weren't competing (at least...she wore the shell when he saw her. For all he knew while she was slacking off in the house she didn't bother to wear the shell, either. It wasn't like Master Roshi would have done anything about it since she'd probably...punch him in half...or something else scary.)

The old man wore some kind of traveling suit that looked ancient and a little threadbare, and she...wore some kind of red shirt and shorts ensemble he'd never seen before. Obviously while they had been training she must have gone shopping. If it weren't for his excitement, he'd be a little annoyed.

He absolutely couldn't be annoyed by anything, though. The way he could jump was almost like flying. He could probably even do that cliff like it was nothing! (He didn't go and try, though. It'd...mess up his new suit. Yeah.) And they were finally making their way to the tournament! He might never have felt so excited before in his life.

Also, he was kind of amused to see Sakura's white-knuckled grip on the seat in front of him. Somehow she didn't care about jumping to her death, but something like a plane...

"Wow! We're flying!" Goku pressed his face against the glass of the window so hard his words were almost muffled. "But it's not as fast as Nimbus..."

"It feels like it's about to rattle apart." She spoke through her teeth, and looked a little sick. Normally, he'd think maybe she just had a fear of airplanes...but she looked as bewildered by the plane as Goku had when they were walking up to it.

"Seriously...how have you two guys not ridden a plane before?" He sighed and shook his head. The two of them were a little embarrassing to ride with.

A stewardess shrieked behind him, where Master Roshi must have been sitting.

He sighed.

(*)

It was a singularly uncomfortable feeling to be propelled through the air at such a height without any form of control over it. She had probably recovered enough chakra to briefly activate mitotic regeneration if something did happen, but it was not something she was trained to be comfortable with. And it was strange. At times, she couldn't help but wonder what might happen if somehow it reverted to the small capsule form many things did while they were still inside it.

She didn't regret traveling with them, though. The opportunity to visit a considerably larger city, one with libraries, archives, and far more people to investigate and converse with meant her best opportunity so far to find a way back home. She couldn't pass it up, even if she had no interest in a tournament to determine the strongest of a different world's people.

Still, she felt obligated to at least accompany the boys into the sign ups, if nothing else. She might even watch their rounds, once they made it into the tournament itself. Four battles wasn't that terribly long, after all.

She settled a hand on her hip as they bounced around and tested the new red gi that their old master provided for the tournament. (She had a suspicion if she'd agreed to compete too the uniforms would have looked much worse than those) It wasn't the same at all, and they didn't look at all alike, but the sight of them in new uniforms still reminded her of the Shinobi Alliance and the uniforms everyone wore to show solidarity.

She swallowed down a weight on her chest and looked away from the two of them, watching the crowd of fighters instead.

Every so often...when she watched them train, it felt like watching Naruto and Sasuke again. They worked hard, they excelled (a surprising amount, considering how much they changed over only half a year) and they relished in competition and the endless struggle to improve just for improvement's sake. Of course, they didn't have the rivalry that Sasuke and Naruto had...but...the similarity still made her heart clench painfully from time to time.

Krillin huffed. "...If we lose in these though, we're gonna look really dumb."

She turned her attention back to the boys with a frown. "Looking dumb isn't what you need to worry about." She clenched her fist in front of her. "If you don't make it into the top eight, you'll waste my time coming here, got it?"

Both boys shrank back slightly. Which was good, because it meant they were listening, at least.

"You've got what it takes to make it through the preliminaries, I know it. So if you don't make it, I'll know you weren't trying, and I'll beat you down."

"U-uhh..." Krillin glanced over at Goku, nervous. "That's...high stakes..."

"I'm not scared!" Goku clenched his fists in front of him. "You don't have to worry about it, because I'm gonna win!"

The old man scoffed. "Well...I don't think you'll do that your first time through...but as long as you make it through the preliminaries, I'll be able to watch you from the crowd. I'll be happy if I can do at least that. Now, go on. I need to find my way to the visitors station..."

She gave the two of them a little wave, and they dashed away into the building, both visibly a little brighter.

As she turned to follow after the old man, she found him still standing where he was before. And looking up at her with an intense frown. "Before the tournament starts, there's something important that must be done."