AN: Medical ninjutsu is very similar to healing nameks! It'll be good for them to have more than one white mage if she happens to stick around, won't it?

Summoning contracts are complicated processes involving heavy chakra use. To be able to form one, both sides have to be able to manipulate massive amounts of chakra. Take that as you will.

You know what, writing this in Dragonball can be such a disappointment, because there's all those characters I can't touch. So many great characters who don't even exist yet. (Or might never...!)

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Forty-five

Somewhat unsurprisingly, by the time the sun set, Goku was no closer to getting to the water than when he began. He looked significantly more ruffled. Korin looked almost bored. She was fairly certain that expression was a lie, however, as every once in a while she would catch a gleam in his eye that made her believe he was actually having a bit of fun batting Goku away from the water.

Then again, under the circumstances, he probably didn't receive very much company at all. Even less would have bothered to undergo his test for very long.

Goku gave an annoyed grunt when he dropped onto the ground again. "I'd have it if I weren't so hungry..."

The cat stared down at him (a rare feat for the cat, given Goku was actually sitting on the ground in that moment). "If you're hungry, you should have said something."

Goku looked scandalized. "I've been saying so!"

The cat tutted and wandered over to a smaller vase set near to one of the columns. "If you're so hungry, then I'll feed you something else."

"Uh? But you said you didn't have food..."

"This isn't the usual sort of food." The cat turned back toward them and first tossed a small thing in the air toward Goku, and then flicked another in her direction.

She caught it out of the air and frowned down at it in her hand. From what she could tell...it was a lima bean. Except...it was slightly too vibrant to be one she'd ever seen before.

"But..." Goku frowned down at the bean in his hand. "It's just a bean..."

"There's nothing just about it." The cat huffed. "That is...it's not only a bean. It is a senzu bean. Having been grown and harvested by a divine being such as myself, it holds magical power. Just one bean will remove your hunger and keep you full for ten days."

"Ten days?" She spoke, not Goku. "You've infused that much ki into these?" Theoretically, if the user could adapt their chakra properly, they might be able to infuse food with chakra and therefore grant the one who ate it that boost. But it would be an overwhelming amount of chakra in one little bean to sustain someone for almost two weeks on it alone.

"No." Korin shook his head, crossing his arms behind himself. "As I told you, it's magical. I only grow and harvest it."

"Well..." Goku squinted down at the bean, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. "If you say it will..."

With some visible hesitation, he chewed the bean and swallowed it. It sounded surprisingly crunchy when he ate it..and a moment later, he blinked in surprise and straightened, tail ruffling and lifting up behind him as if he were shocked by something.

"Ah! It worked? I'm full!"

"...I told you it would."

She frowned down at the bean for a few moments, as Goku bantered with the cat and then charged with renewed speed and vigor. A naturally growing herb of some sort that functioned in a method similar to Akimichi soldier pills? Without any apparent downside? And it was simply grown, not created? She didn't know about the water Goku fought so desperately to receive...but surely the village below would have known something about these.

Exactly how did he do it?

(*)

So, despite his efforts he did finally fall asleep. Honestly, if he'd fallen to his death as a result, he probably wouldn't have cared. He'd been climbing for two days straight. Forty eight hours. Probably fifty. Who knew?! His watch certainly didn't actually tell time, and neither of his companions had been awake through the climb long enough to know how long he'd been awake.

But he'd been awake a long time.

When he finally fell asleep, he would honestly have thought a never ending sleep wouldn't be too bad of a concept. Fortunately for whatever he'd think once he ended up in the afterlife, due to having slept more than once while he'd been climbing, Bulma was a little bit more awake and alert than him. When he'd started to doze off, she smacked him back awake. Being smacked awake wasn't fortunate. Not getting to rest and also having a throbbing face did nothing good for him.

No, what she did do, was remember that the useless watches they both wore without any hands for time on them weren't actually useless. They were used to shrink the person wearing them into something tiny enough to sit on one of the insets of the pole's engraving and safely fall asleep in it.

Pu'ar had to shape shift into something tiny just to fit and not fall off overnight either, but...it worked out. At least Oolong had decided to stay at home. Although...Oolong probably would never have agreed to climb the thing in the first place. And would have been smarter than all of them in doing so.

Still, the watch worked out because he got to sleep for an inordinate amount of time and also didn't fall off to his death in the meantime. Or kill Bulma and Pu'ar just because he happened to be exhausted from climbing the tower and they happened to trust him with something they reasonably should not have.

Dawn didn't wake him up, but his girlfriend's elbow jabbing him in the stomach did. Which was some time late morning, judging from the position of the sun when he forced himself to go and open his eyes hours before he'd wanted to.

"Hey, wake up. If we keep sleeping here, we'll probably miss them going back down."

He groaned in annoyance and closed his eyes. Looking down just made him feel sick, and there wasn't much to look at in any other direction. "The two crazies haven't stopped or headed back down yet. I don't think they're going back down the normal way just because we're not looking." He frowned. "Or at all."

"You think they're gonna jump?" Bulma's gasp sounded far too worried for running on as little sleep as he had.

"Well...I don't know. Maybe this is endless...and we'll be climbing this for the rest of our lives." He tried again for opening his eyes, because they probably couldn't sleep up here forever.

She frowned and stared up the pole thing and then back down. "That's just not possible. Everything has to have an ending."

Yeah. That's what he kept telling himself, but here he was sleeping through the night on the pillar because his friends had climbed so high so quickly it was impossible for him to catch up to them and demand they slow the hell down. He was beginning to wonder about the possibility. "Is it even possible for something to be this tall?"

"W...Well..." She stuttered for a moment. "There's a magical dragon that grants wishes..."

He huffed and stared up at the sky, where the pillar disappeared into the sky.

He squinted. Maybe it was the glare of the sun, maybe he'd gone a little crazy from lack of sleep and food and the thin air around them, but... "Hey, do you see something up there?"

"What?"

"Pu'ar."

His old friend made a tired sound and blinked up at him. "...Huh?"

"Can you fly a hundred feet or so up there to get a better look?"

"Uh?" Pu'ar frowned, and looked between himself and Bulma. "Why?"

"Because...I think I might see the end."

Or...he was just starting to hallucinate.

(*)

Goku flopped down on the bed with a frustrated sound. "I can't get close to him at all! Every time I get close, he always guesses what I'm gonna do and hits me first!"

The rest of the night had passed as the day had. At times, it seemed Goku was getting closer to the target, and then he'd slide back to where he began. Unlike even the best of food pills she'd ever seen, the effects from the senzu bean didn't seem to fade from Goku at all through the rest of the training session. Ultimately, it had only ended when Korin had decided he'd had enough for the day.

She turned the bean in her fingers with a small frown.

"Well, of course you won't be able to hit me if you plan on it." Korin's voice cut through the quiet of the tower, causing Goku to startle slightly. "Your thoughts are as clear to me as spoken word."

Goku sat up immediately, eyes wide with shock. "Y-You can read minds?!"

She frowned, and turned her attention toward the cat. If it weren't the exact same expression he usually wore, she'd have thought he was smirking up at her. Well, at least he was looking up at her, all the same.

"You, on the other hand, cannot even predict your opponent's moves. Even if I couldn't, you'd be no difficulty to stop. If you were here a hundred years, you'd never get the water." The cat made an amused sound, and walked away. "You can leave in the morning if you want to. It's too dark to go down the tower at night."

Goku flopped back onto the bed with a frustrated growl and glared up at the ceiling. "He's so fast. If I were faster, I could beat him..."

She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. "You're not anticipating what he's going to do."

"Eh?" He lifted his head slightly and stared over at her. "But I don't know what he's going to do until he does it. He moves too quickly."

She nodded. Although the cat wasn't as fast as some of the enemies she'd faced...or Naruto once he'd gotten that golden chakra cloak of his. But it wasn't just the speed, she could tell just from watching Goku, he didn't recognize what the cat was about to do until partway through the action. Understandably. She'd taken almost three years of training to master the ability to anticipate her enemy.

"There's a limited number of actions he can make to effectively counter anything you do. If you can't keep up with him by watching him, then figure out what you'd do if you were him." It was a bit more complicated, predicting the actions of enemies, but Goku had good instincts. It probably wouldn't do too badly for the short term if he relied on them.

He huffed, and then rolled onto his side, scooting closer to her. "...Why don't you want the water?"

She glanced down at him briefly, and then at the holes on the bottom of the tower. She'd opened them when they came into the room to sleep, as the air felt stale and thin, and the exchange of air from those helped to dispel that. "Strength...doesn't matter to me."

"EH?" Goku pushed himself back up on his arms again, staring up at her with wide eyes. "But you're the strongest person!"

She glanced down at her own hand, turning it over and flexing her fingers. Her green nail polish had chipped off at some point she couldn't remember. It was probably during the assault on the tower, but she hadn't noticed at all to be sure of that. In the blueish light, her skin looked so pale it was almost bone white.

The color reminded her of Kaguya, and of how pale Obito looked. Or the conversation did. Or sitting above a village that they were now actually going on the quest for a wish to revive. One of those things reminded her of home and what she left behind just because she lost her balance, just because she didn't walk through that damn opening on her own.

"If you can't hit that person, it doesn't matter how strong you are. You'll never drink the water no matter how strong you are unless you can get past Korin."

Next time...

His expression fell slightly, and he frowned, not having a valid argument to offer in response.

It might take a while.

"Getting stronger...isn't enough. I don't care if I'm strong. Strength alone...isn't enough to stand in front of them."

Just wait.

Next time we'll fight together.

She curled her fingers into a fist and quickly closed her eyes, shaking away her memories. "You have to be skilled. If you don't have the skill and the technique to apply your strength it isn't important how much you have. So I don't care about water that makes me stronger."

Goku fell quiet for a few moments, looking down at the ground, thoughtful. For a few moments, she thought he might just leave the conversation at that. After all, she did give him his answer. If in...a wordy and roundabout way. Finally, however, he did look back up at her. His expression was keen, intensely curious. "...Who is them?"

A hand slammed onto the lip of the air holes in the floor, and a voice gave a shout from below. "Anyone who wants to give me a hand up there can go ahead and do that now!"

AN: I thought, I should have appropriate music to write the end scene.

Naturally my music player suggested Poker Face.