I have never seen Dragonball GT, so lets just assume this is
an alternate timeline where it never happened.
I'll try to keep ages and names right, but since this is my story I can
do pretty much what ever I want. Mwa ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ( gomen ).
Disclaimer: I don't
own anyone or anything. Akira Tomaryia
owns all things Dragonball, as far as I know.
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Pan woke up on the floor, stretched into a fairly
uncomfortable crescent shape. Damn, she
hadn't even made it over to the bed.
She had been training really hard thru the early morning hours (too
hard) trying to exhaust herself. Trying
to get the face of that boy out of her mind.
"I guess it worked," she mumbled to herself as she tried to raise her
face off of the carpet, which would undoubtedly have left a very
flattering impression on her forehead.
"Kuso…ouch… maybe I'll just lie here a bit longer".
The first rays of sunrise were streaming
in thru the open window, onto the strands of dark hair that covered her
face. She was still exhausted, but the
bed would be a better place to go back to sleep. She tried to move her head to keep the sun light out of her eyes,
and immediately whimpered when she realized how stiff her neck was and how
badly it ached. Probably due to all
those spinning kicks last night, followed shortly after by her sleeping on the
floor in such an awkward position. She
paused and thoughtfully rubbed her neck, "or maybe it was when that boy had
grabbed me". She hadn't felt the pain
then, but she had been in shock after all.
She closed her eyes again only to see his calm features and pale gray
eyes flash before her, and she jerked the eyes open. She winced at the sudden clenching in her gut, and she curled
herself up into a ball, her soar arms holding her knees up to her chest. Guilt washed over her as it finally hit her,
what she had done. She had taken a
life. Her father had told her that it
was the most painful thing he had ever had to deal with after a battle. Not the physical pain, but the emotional
pain. Dende, no wonder he hated to
fight. This was horrible. Not only had she taken a life, but it wasn't
even a megalomanical tyrant threatening to take over the world or kill her
family. It was a boy on the roof of a
ninth story building.
She willed herself to crawl over to her bed and rolled
herself into the center of the mattress, dragging the sheets up to her chest as
she did. She closed her eyes again and
forced herself to try and remember what had happened. Bra and Marron had taken her to a party in a building
downtown. It was several top floor
apartments that were overflowing with college kids, smoke and body heat. She remembers having had at least 3 shots
of…something. She had turned 21 a month
ago, but she hadn't wanted to go out drinking with the girls until her mom had
gone on her business trip to San Francisco and her dad pulled another
all-nighter at the University. They
most defiantly would not have approved.
She remembered that she had fled from the onslaught of smoke, noise and
heat up to the roof of the building. A
couple had been …ahem… making out in the roof access hallway, but it was so
cold outside that roof was totally vacant.
So she sat out on the ledge and watched the cars swerve and speed on the
dark street below. Then she heard a
very light footstep behind her, and spun around, her feet planting in the
gravel next to the ledge. It was a
boy. He looked about her age, but it
was too dark to tell, even with her sensitive eyes. And he said nothing, just stared at her. She remembered she couldn't sense his Ki,
probably because it was too low, or maybe because she was a bit tipsy, or
both. She remembered it in slow motion,
like an instant replay on T.V. She had
just started to say, "It sure is cold outsi-", and his right hand had flown up
and clasped her around her slender neck, choking off the last word. It caught her by surprise, how strong his
grip was. If she had tried to pull back
it would most likely have broken her neck. Then she had reached up to grab the
arm that held her, but her arm was caught in the left hand of the still silent
attacker. Now she was
scared.
He pulled her off of the ledge, towards him, not letting her
feet touch the ground and twisted his waist flinging her several feet towards
the doorway, maybe expecting her to run, or cower. But what she did then surprised even her. When she felt the cold air rush into her
burning lungs, and felt her arm twist painfully in his grasp as he tossed her
behind him, she had immediately begun to focus her mind on the unforeseen
encounter she was now forced to deal with.
She had fallen onto one knee and was up on her feet in a fighting stance
before he had even turned to face her.
And then she saw his eyes in the light of the open doorway. His eyes were a dull gray, without emotion,
without life. She sensed an odd energy
coming from him. And somehow she knew
he was going to kill her.
Or at least he was going to try. Deep inside of her the will to fight and survive detonated any
self-control she still had a firm grasp on.
Her power level flared suddenly, and the wave of burning life energy
impacted the dark form of the boy, throwing him away from her…and over the
side. She could still clearly see his
disheveled black hair, impassive features and dead eyes in the white light of
her aura, falling away from her before she could think to do anything.
She started shaking and squeezed her eyes harder, pushing
out tears that had not been there the night before. She had fought in martial arts contests, destroyed robots, and
even gotten into brawls with Goten and Trunks.
But she had never killed someone before.
When Bra and Marron had sensed her Ki level rise, they had
rushed up to the roof to find her standing in the same spot, still in
shock. She didn't move from the spot
until she had told them what had happened.
They had screamed, held her, comforted her, told her it wasn't her
fault. She didn't believe them. The police and some guys in white vans had
appeared within minutes of the "accident", putting up a barricade on the street
below, blocking any view of carnage with tarps and floodlights and taking
statements from party guests. Guessing
that it was probably an accident, the officer had just taken her name and
address down and told her that someone would drive by to speak to her the next
day. She had no argument, as she was
defiantly not in the mood to answer questions.
The girls had stayed with her until 3am, when she had finally told them
to go home and get some rest. They
looked as upset as she felt. As soon as
they were gone she had started to work out, trying to think of anything but
what had happened only a few hours before.
She pumped iron until she couldn't raise her arms, she kicked her dads
punching bag until a roundhouse kick finally broke the chain and sent it air
express into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Great, now there
was still a large indentation in the far wall to explain to her dad.
"Oh no" she moaned.
Her dad. How could she face
him? He would know, he could always
tell when something was not right with her.
And she knew how he would feel.
Like it was his fault. Like he
should have trained her to have more control.
Like HE had killed someone else.
She couldn't stand to hurt him like that. Her pain was her own, at least for now. He would find out when the girls told the others, or when the
police came by, but she didn't want to tell him. Or did she?
Then she heard the door slam, and the soft steps leading up
to the front door. The police? No, it was her dads Ki. She swallowed hard and sat up in bed, wiping
her eyes on the sleeve of the sweatshirt she was still wearing. She felt him pause near the front door, then
next to the punching bag, and then in the hall next to her open door. She tried to adopt a façade of being calm
and well rested, but she could tell immediately that it hadn't worked because
she heard Son Gohan gasp as he peaked at his obviously tired and tear-streaked
daughter from behind the slightly ajar door.
"Hi d..ad" she said as calmly as possible, but she heard her
voice crack, and she felt her mental barrier crack as well. She could tell by how he looked at her that
he knew something. Damnit. She
looked away and started to sob again.
Before she could say or do anything else he was sitting on the foot of
the bed, his arms around her, her head on his shoulder, her arms squeezing him
like she had to keep him from falling off a building. And then the dam broke and she let the tears flow freely.
_______________________________________________________________________
Someplace in a windowless room not so far away, a tall thin
man in a black suit sat quietly at a small wooden table overflowing with files,
pictures, schematic drawings and a copy of all the information the police had
collected the previous evening. His face was calm, but his fingers teased the
edge of a notebook, belying his nervousness.
He knew the bio-mechanoid had been there, and had fallen to
the street nine stories below. The pail pink "blood" and deep impact crater in
the concrete where he had hit testified to the fact… although luckily it had
been too dark for any of the witnesses to see him/it get up and walk away after
he fell. "Now that would be hard
to explain in a police report," the agent said to himself in a soft southern
drawl.
The agency had covered the area quickly, to keep prying eyes
away. And the hole had been filled in
less than an hour after the incident.
He groaned and leaned back in the chair. The bio-mechanoid had still not been located, and that was still
his top priority. But now there was a
new twist to deal with. The man pushed
his almost white-blonde hair out of his ice blue eyes. Normally it would be neatly combed out of
his eyes, but he was too tired and concerned with other things to care. That girl, Son Pan, had pushed the
bio-mechanoid off the roof. Even for a
strong human male, this would have been nearly impossible. His superiors had been convinced he/it had
jumped or fell, but he knew better.
His face tightened as he realized he might have to break a
promise to a friend so soon after making it.
He wasn't ready to reveal the existence of Saiyans on earth to anyone
who didn't already know, but he might have to… eventually.
Once he had realized who the girl was, he immediately had
told the police officer in charge to send her home, realizing she was in no
condition to be interrogated. She appeared
to have been coping with whatever had happened, but his instincts told him she
wasn't ready to discuss it with anyone, let alone someone she didn't know or
trust.
But now she had better be ready now. Time was of the essence.
He got up and very neatly placed the contents of the desk
into a filing cabinet drawer, locked it, silently pushed in the chair, and
exited the room closing the door firmly behind him.