AN: The thin air up on Korin's tower has been referenced briefly a few times, most notably in chapter 45. It hasn't played a big role in things yet because Sakura and Goku can both handle low oxygen atmospheres fairly well. Give Yamcha, Bulma, and Pu'ar some time.

Dende's healing is a little weird, it's not very clear if he's using magic or ki, but otherwise yes, most of the healing seems to be magic. Although in the new movie they decided to go with the healing kamehameha route of Evolution.

So I have at least the next twenty chapters pretty well planned out and the worst part is that I just want to get to the end of those chapters to what I have planned there. Ugh. Such impatience.

As to whether Sakura hinders Goku's growth...in some ways, yes. He's not taking the journey on his own any longer, which means he doesn't need to grow as much as he would have to otherwise. On the other hand, she does focus on teaching him more technique than he learns on his own.

Whether this will ultimately work out to something positive or negative for him has yet to be seen.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Forty-seven

It all happened incredibly quickly. The cat hit him. He hit Goku. Goku hit Sakura.

After that, everything got a bit hazy. The pink girl vanished over the edge, Goku and Bulma screamed, and a moment later, Goku had jumped off of it as well.

He thought that Goku might have actually jumped to his death for a bit, until he realized that Goku had probably just gone down the tree itself in an expedient manner. Which could have been good as, considering how tall it was.

Bulma slumped down against one of the pillars, hands tugging at her hair, and Pu'ar spun around in circles in the air, worried. "Oh...if only I could have gone with him! I could help! I could become a net to catch her with!"

He turned on the cat, who had said nothing, and simply stood there with...a shocked expression. For a cat. "Aren't you supposed to be a god of this place? Do something!"

"Th...That's not the kind of power I have!"

This...thing. It didn't protect the village that protected its land. It did nothing to repel invaders. And it wouldn't even save his friends?

"Then what the hell do you do?!"

For a few moments, the cat was quiet, and simply stared down at the ground.

(*)

They narrowly avoided being impaled on a tree. Under the circumstances, that almost would have been a less painful and damaging thing to do, rather than slam into the ground below.

Whatever Goku's crazy plan might have been to save her (and himself, who was the one in actual, real danger), he didn't get the opportunity to enact it. She could have told him it was too late when he jumped, if he'd given her the opportunity to. But then...he hadn't listened to her at all with what she had said, so it probably would have been a waste anyway.

They crashed into...something.

For a moment, she thought that the speed they traveled at simply made the ground seem less ground-like than she expected. It might also have dulled the pain of the impact, as well.

When she opened her eyes, however...all she saw was gold.

"U...uh?"

Goku slowly lifted his head as well, looking around them.

So. Gold. She was definitely not the only one who saw they were surrounded in gold?

"What...?"

As if his words broke whatever moment existed around them, the gold immediately vanished, and she crashed into the ground.

Her momentum was gone, however, and the crash was...just a little bit unpleasant. "-Oogh."

Goku stumbled off of her, once the impact with the ground forced her arms open, and looked around the area in a confused daze. "That...was..."

"YOU IDIOT!"

He wasn't harmed from the fall. Somehow neither of them were harmed from the fall. Whatever that moment where that world turned gold was, it safely stopped their movement, and then made them fall from a much lower height.

Goku would, however, be harmed by her. If she had any say in it.

The first thing she did was smack him right into the base of the tree trunk. "Don't you ever do that again! You would have died! You would have died for no reason!"

He rubbed at his cheek, where she'd slapped him, and looked up at her with a frown that would have been almost comical were she any less livid. "I was gonna stop the fall-"

"No you weren't!" They were too close to the ground. The flying cloud wouldn't have been able to help without smashing them into something else, the magical extending pole he had wouldn't have worked. Nothing would have successfully stopped their fall without hurting them both at that point.

She pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed forcefully.

Honestly. It reminded her a little bit of something stupid Naruto might do. Except Naruto had things that would have allowed him to do something, instead of getting hurt.

"...It was the nimbus cloud."

She blinked, and looked down at him. "What?"

His hand was still rubbing absently at his cheek, but he scanned the area around them with curiosity. "...I'm sure it was the nimbus that caught us."

"...Your cloud is too small for that. It would have had to be a huge cloud to catch us like that."

"Yeah, but...it was..." He frowned. "It felt like the nimbus! And it looked like it, too."

She tilted her head back slightly and scanned the area. "But...then where is it? How did it make itself so big and then disappear?"

He shook his head. "I...dunno. It's never done anything like that before."

And yet...why didn't it stay around to lift them back up? Why did it disappear and make them fall? Could it have been...some kind of inherent...jutsu about the place? Something that made people stop just in time, in case they fell off of the tree tower? Because...well. That would make sense.

But...how exactly did it work? And what relation would it have to the cloud creature Goku knew?

She planted her hands on her hips, and craned her neck back toward the sky.

"...We have to go and climb back up this thing again now, you know."

(*)

He felt dizzy. Moreso than he did normally just being up so high. It was a good kind of dizzy, at least...but he really didn't need the extra dose of it. His heart probably didn't need the strain of the rest of the day, either, but the day didn't feel like catering to his needs.

Sakura and Goku both looked a bit exhausted, but they didn't appear to be injured. Which...was a (very pleasant) surprise, given at least one of those two had fallen off of the tower just an hour before.

"You're both okay?" Bulma knelt down next to where they both sat on the ground, looking over both of them as if she specialized in medical science instead of mechanical science.

"Yeah. Nimbus caught us!"

Sakura frowned slightly, glancing over at Goku. "Something caught us. It looked golden...but after a moment it disappeared."

He frowned, crossing his arms. "Wait, 'us'? Goku...what did you do?"

"I was gonna get Power Pole to slow down our fall, and then summon Nimbus."

Sakura sighed softly and shook her head. As she didn't say anything...that must have been a conversation they'd already held on the way back up. Which... "Nimbus disappeared? So you called it back to get up here afterward?"

Goku blinked and stared up at him for a few moments. "...Oh! We could have called Nimbus to fly us up!"

Yamcha smacked his own forehead with his hand. It stung...slightly more than he expected it to. Huh.

"Wait...you climbed back up?" Bulma looked back toward him, as if he could somehow confirm that, and then to Goku again. "But...you only fell down an hour ago."

"Uh..." Goku blinked, and then looked up at Sakura. "...Did we?"

She nodded after a moment. "It might have been something like that."

"You've been training well." The voice of the cat sounded through the room, announcing the presence of the building's resident. Who had done absolutely nothing for Goku and Sakura except stand around and look at the ground guiltily. He'd thought perhaps the cat had refused to come down and help the two of them up just out of guilt. "The first time you climbed the tower, it took you days. Today it only took an hour."

Sakura frowned over at him. "How do you know how long it took us to climb it the first time?"

"Well..." The cat fell silent for a few moments. "Now that you're here again, aren't you interested in getting this water, Goku? Or will you be going back down again?"

He blinked, and shook himself before standing up with a determined expression. "Right! I'm definitely gonna get it today!"

(*)

He didn't get it. A few times he almost did, but his teamwork with Yamcha remained inferior enough that the two ended up working against each other as much as they worked with each other, keeping Goku away from the water for yet another day.

He'd been grumpy enough about that to go to sleep without stopping to talk about anything, and the two who had spent all day working were both asleep before she or Bulma fell asleep. Had it been three days now, or four? She was rather good at keeping track of time, but in the isolation of the tower, it slipped away from her somewhat more easily than normal.

She pursed her lips and tapped her fingers to her lips. Since working with Yamcha, Goku's progress had slowed. Gone backward in some ways. He'd gotten much stronger, she could tell that by the difference in speed when he climbed the tower, but simply using his increased strength and speed wasn't helping him when it came to working alongside Yamcha, whose abilities trailed him noticeably.

If it was just a test to see if Goku was good enough for the water...why had Korin changed it once Goku got closer to getting it?

"Hey." Bulma's voice cut through the quiet of the room.

She glanced up in the direction of the other woman, who had crossed over to sit next to her. "Mm?"

"Goku...he's really a quick study, huh?" She turned her gaze to the sleeping boy as she spoke, a fond smile fading onto her face. "I remember...he was really amazing before, but then he went and trained with that old pervert for a few months, and when he showed up at the tournament, Yamcha said he was incredibly beyond what he was before."

She nodded slightly. He had improved during the old man's training. Even though she hadn't known him long before he'd started it, the difference between what he was capable of at the start and at the end was obvious enough as it was. It reminded her not a little bit of her teammates and their amazing advancements. "He's determined."

"It's amazing, though. It's only been a few days messing with that cat, and he can already climb this thing like it's almost nothing."

Her own lips quirked into a slight smile at that memory. The speed he moved up the tower compared to last time was impressive. It had taken all of her skill just to keep up with him without using chakra. And she'd...mostly only done that so that doing impossible feats wouldn't distract him when he was moving so quickly a slight mistake could have caused him to plummet off of the tower again.

If it were her, maybe she would have fallen just to test if the same thing would happen every time...but it wasn't worth the risk twice, if it meant trying to protect Goku from the fall as well.

"Boys...they're all about training, though." Bulma scoffed and shook her head. "I mean, Yamcha barely even got here and he jumped right to getting that stupid water, too."

"Well...if the two of them worked together better, it would have meant we'd be leaving here sooner..."

"It took you days to climb the tower too, didn't it?"

She blinked, and turned her attention back to the blue haired woman, whose gaze was now definitively on her alone.

"But you weren't helping Goku try to get the water when we got here, were you?" The woman's gaze narrowed. "Why is it you could climb the tower in just an hour this time, if you weren't spending all this time trying to get strong and fast enough to get the water too?"

"Ah..."

Well...she hadn't been trying to hide her ability. At least...not all of it. She'd shown it off a few times. Surely it had to have been obvious she could from the start? "I...was just keeping up with Goku."

The woman leaned in closer toward her, brows knit, and then sat back again. "...Why aren't you getting the water for Goku, then?"

She lifted a shoulder slightly. "Goku has to earn it himself or it won't work, apparently."

"Okay..." Bulma pursed her lips, and pressed her hand to her chin. "But if that's the case, why can Yamcha help?"