Chapter Twenty-One

Pan emerged into a sunless morning and empty garden. She dusted off her skirt. It was a testament to how cramped a space the tunnel was even she felt stiff after spending a few hours there. She held up her hand; fingerprints in magenta blood lined her knuckles. She brushed it and a few flakes dropped away. She watched them fall until she couldn't anymore.

She would tell them everything, Pan decided. As soon as she'd taken Ember and Gelata to pick up the Para Brothers in Blendarr, she'd sit them down and explain the whole mess. How the Cold after her was specifically Frieza. How he wasn't even their real enemy, but just one more puppet being manipulated from the shadows. Even that she hoped he might be swayed to fight with them, if only just against that one mysterious enemy, since he'd stayed his hand against her already; that would be news to Ember and Gelata as well. Pan hadn't meant to hide those things, but snatched telepathic conversations had meant stripping the details away. It was time to fill them in. She owed them that much after dragging them all the way out here.

First, Pan had to find Ember and Gelata. She closed her eyes.

The both of them came into focus below, in the dungeon. It was good they were still alive after Sulfuri's threats, but she was ambivalent about their location. They weren't in the dungeon as prisoners, were they?

There was only one way to find out.

Pan was admitted into the palace without incident. It was the first time she'd just walked through the front door. Nice at it was, it was also disorienting. The guards who didn't give Pan a second glance also didn't give her any directions, and she'd never visited these rooms. She didn't recognize so much as a bone sculpture or anemone desk. She was about to just fly out the window and to Incendria's room when she finally saw a familiar face coming her way: King Sulfuri himself.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a friendly face.

It was even less friendly than she remembered, in fact. He scowled when he saw her. Only for a moment, though; he got his expression under control quickly enough.

"Is that fresh blood I see on your hands? Have you come to report success? Don't answer. I know what you'll say. You're still alive, though, and that's more than I expected after five days of attack. It's too bad the hunt has been outlawed. Surviving the brute flailing of some Reizomorph maggot is no mean feat, but do you think you'd do as well against a higher life form with a functioning brain? I'd have loved to find out; and let's be honest, Saiyan, you would have, too," He said. "But you aren't here for such musings. No, you've come scurrying back for your accomplices, have you not?"

"If you mean Captain Ember and Officer Gelata," Pan said.

"You're in luck. They're still here. That's more than I can say for that traitor, Magmast, who's on his way back to his filthy worm hole, or my fool sister; I have no idea where she's buried herself this time. Maybe he finally convinced her to go with him. Oh, well; the dungeon is this way. Take a left at the next hall and go straight until you see the stairs. You'll remember those, I'm sure."

Pan leaned closer to Sulfuri, thinking. He hid his nerves well; were it not for a small bead of sweat on his forehead, she'd never have known her scrutiny was bothering him.

"I can't figure you out, Sulfuri," She said, finally, "But thanks for finding me that tower last night, and for telling me where to go."

She watched his face for a reaction, and did eventually get one: his scowl returned, deeper this time. He pushed past her and stormed down the hall, even though there had been plenty of room to go around her. It wasn't much of a push.

Pan wouldn't have said returning to the dark of the underground was comforting, even though she knew where to go now, both from memory and feeling her friends' life energies. Neither of them masked their presences, and Ember was as commanding as he'd been when she'd first sensed him inside that tent.

She paused before the door. That didn't mean he wasn't in prison.

To her relief, it opened; if he was arrested it would be locked.

She was less relieved when she entered the room and found out what it was, and what they- or rather, Gelata- was doing there. It was a sterile lab, the brightest place she'd seen on this sunless planet, with countertops that glowed under the lights and shiny cupboards and drawers. Ember leaned against one of the shelves. Gelata stood in the middle, knife in her hand that was also stained with blood. On the table was the body of… had his name been Char? The knife-wielding guard. Pan guessed Ember hadn't buried him with the others, or someone had exhumed him for autopsy. Gelata looked to have been working on his head.

They both looked up when she stepped inside.

"Brat," Ember said. But he said it affectionately, and he grinned. "You're late again. If you were under my command, I'd be throwing you in the hole every morning."

"You've got an oubliette somewhere around here, just like Bustion? I should have known."

"Magister Bustion," Ember said. "And why wouldn't I? So it's a good thing you're not my subordinate, but my friend."

"Mine as well. I'm relieved to see you," Gelata said, waving her bloody gloves. Good thing she wasn't a hugger like Incendria was. "You'll be pleased to know we weren't idle while you were fighting last night. Someone had recovered Char's remains, and since they were here, I decided to search them. I've discovered something I think you'll find intriguing."

She opened a refrigerator and pulled out a small glass box. Inside it was what looked like one of the alarm-birds Ember had made to wake her up in the morning, except like the Vile sentry, it was bloated and bruised purple. Yet it was also alive, at least as "alive" as Prismatic sentries ever were.

"You mean Char had that on him when you searched him?" Pan asked.

"On him? That's one way of putting it," Gelata said.

Ember clarified, although Pan wished he didn't. "It crawled out of his chest when she opened it."

Pan paled. "That's sickening!"

"Sickening, perhaps, but it's also cunning," Gelata said. "Char wasn't under mind control, exactly, but this sentry seems to have been able to influence him to some extent and send him orders remotely with no chance of eavesdropping. I've saved it for later examination. I might be able to retrieve the messages passed through it. The Vile wave is such an exciting new area of study! I had no idea such a thing was possible."

Ember shuddered. "I'm glad one of us is happy about it."

"I don't think it's going to break our case open, though," Gelata said, packing the shadow-bird back into the fridge. "Even if our culprit used this to pass messages to his warriors, I doubt he'd have identified himself in them. What about you? Have you made any discoveries? Did Frieza let anything else slip while you were fighting?"

"Yes, and actually, I came here to get you two before taking you to Blendarr," Pan said.

"You do have a clue, then!"

"Even better. I have witnesses. There are three men in Blendarr who were attacked by a Planet Trade ship last night. They can tell you all about the make and model." Perhaps this wasn't the best way to start being fully honest, Pan thought, but it'd be easier to get Ember and Gelata to Blendarr, where the Para Brothers could explain themselves better than she could.

"That is an excellent lead," Ember said. "It almost makes me suspicious Traders were sloppy enough to be seen, let alone merciful enough to leave the men who saw them alive. That isn't like them. How quickly can we get there?"

Pan motioned to him. "In less than a second, thanks to Instant Transmission. Hold on."

Ember slapped her on the shoulder and clenched it. "Tell you what, teacher; when all this is over, this has to be the next technique we learn from you. The sheer convenience of it!"

Pan grinned as Gelata peeled off her gloves and linked arms with her. "Only if you keep training. It looks easy, but Instant Transmission is one of the most difficult and taxing things we do. My body wasn't capable of handling the physical stress of it until I was about fifteen, and that's nothing compared to the mental strain of maneuvering in the Teleportation Zone. You can get lost in there and come out parsecs away from where you meant to."

"I don't want to learn it today. Are we leaving?" Ember asked.

"We're leaving," Pan said, stretching her focus from the palace and the glow of life inside it towards Blendarr and the distinct signatures of her friends.

Para Brothers, here I come.

ooo

As bizarre as the situation on Ketchyn was becoming, Pan would be glad to see Blendarr again, with its stately old gallery and peaceful streets. She was glad to be meeting friends there. She'd be relieved when they were all together again, when getting off this planet and back to Earth was a simple matter of installing the right equipment on the Para Brothers' ship.

That was why, when she entered the Teleportation Zone and felt the clammy fingers of a bad feeling on the back of her neck, she tried to ignore it.

They touched down in an alley between the gallery and a butcher's shop, advertised by a sign whose pictures Pan understood, even if the writing was unfamiliar. The Para Brothers must have taken her advice to stay there until she arrived. Where were they now? Inside the building? She noticed a stuffy chemical smell and located its source: a junkyard behind the gallery, catty-corner the butcher's. She shooed and decided to go inside just to get away from it.

No sooner had she taken a step towards the main street than a woman screamed.

That one scream multiplied in number and intensity. Men and women both yelled in alarm and fear. Then came the stamping of running footsteps and the unmistakable crackle of a ki blast.

A woman holding a child crashed back-first into the gallery wall, her sleeve smoking. It wasn't even a second later a man in dark blue and white armor bearing a black insignia rounded the corner and shoved her to the ground. He raised his fist to deliver a killing blow, but Pan broke his attack and his arm in the same shot and put him out of commission with a Masenko. Ember pulled the woman to her feet, healing her and dragging her to the shadows of the gutter with his usual level of kindness (in other words, it was only the Prismatic balms that convinced her he wasn't also trying to kill her).

"There's no question these are Planet Trade men," Gelata said, brushing the insignia. "This is the mark of one of their elite battle forces, although I don't know which, only that I'm certain it's not Ginyu. This attack is subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. The question is, what prompted such a bold move on their part?"

Pan only had one question right now: where were the Para Brothers? It was their energy she'd followed here, so the elites hadn't killed them, but it was gone now, so they weren't captured, either. They were hiding their power.

Just as Pan realized she'd better do the same, she heard yelling in the back of her head.

Junkyard. Right behind you.

Pan tugged Ember's sleeve. "There."

The five of them, Pan, Ember, Gelata, the woman and child, made their way to the junkyard. The door had already been forced, so they opened it carefully and slipped inside.

Three Sutova waited inside: a short, squat one, a tall stringy one, and a burly one. Their disguises changed so little of their appearance, but were convincing enough that if Pan hadn't known what to look for, not even she would have recognized these men as the Para Brothers.

"You're here," Pan said. "When the attack happened…"

"The attack just happened," Bonpara said. "Seconds ago. Until then, your plan was working perfectly. We went to the gallery, we asked for that Flint guy, we told him you'd sent us to see your painting, and he took us right to it. We figured he'd kick us out after a few hours, but when he found out we didn't have anywhere else to be, he told us to 'wait out the Vile Wave' there. We didn't know what he meant, but we figured it was a good idea to do what he said, so we did. We'd just gotten up and were about to check the square for you when we heard Flint screaming."

"Oh, no! Is he…" Pan remembered how nice Flint had been to her when he'd found her under that tree.

"They dragged him away before we could stop them," Sonpara said. "That big Reizomorph and his thugs. We saved who we could, but we can't fight at full power in these disguises…"

"Then lose the disguises," Pan said. "The Planet Trade invaders aren't hiding. You can't afford to."

The three brothers hit a series of buttons on their suits. Their Sutova features melted, revealing the blue faces and red suits beneath.

Ember swore. "Now what in the blazes are you three?"

Gelata, on the other hand, clasped her hands together, looking on the verge of happy tears. "I know! I know! You're machine mutants from the planet M-2, aren't you? I'd recognize that cyanosis and the skull-chassis anywhere. They were standard outfitting used by the robot uprising to transform the few organic lifeforms they bothered sparing into cyborgs. You're also made to be upgraded, right?" She cackled. "It should be easy to take you apart and see exactly how that process worked."

Donpara backed away from Gelata's wiggling claws. "You must be that friend Pan told us about. Nice to meet you."

"What about Flint?" Pan pressed. "You said they dragged him away. Do you know where they took him?"

"You can see it from here," Bonpara said. "The west window. It's a little grimy, but that's better. With the lights off, they can't see us in here for all that dirt."

"But how much will I be able to see?"

"Enough," Bonpara said darkly.

Though she stood on her tip-toes, Pan couldn't reach the window. She pushed a box underneath it and climbed atop it, and then the film gave everything a grainy look, like an old video tape.

A small platform, professional-looking enough Pan suspected it had come from a capsule, had been erected in the middle of the square just north of the gallery. Around it, Planet Trade soldiers herded the townspeople like cattle; and since there was one captor for every person, these noncombatants had no hope of fighting back. More elites stood atop the platform, and between them she saw Flint, thrust to his knees by two Trade men. She only saw them for a moment. Another figure, a much larger and darker one, blocked her view.

Pan remembered Krillin telling her about the time a deep woods camping trip had turned into a nightmare when, in the wake of Frieza's death, the Planet Trade Organization had launched its first attempt at vengeance. She remembered him repeating, over and over, "they looked so much alike, I thought he was Frieza, back from the dead."

Perhaps she'd spent too much time mulling over the Emperor's face, but Pan didn't agree. She could see some similarities, mostly in his jaw and the pallid armor, but his features were sharper, and he was much taller and broader in the shoulders. He fell more towards purple than pink. Red skin crawled from his eyes to his chin like bloody tears. Perhaps appropriately, where Frieza constantly wore that placid smile, even when furious, this man frowned even when he was bored.

"How long has it been?" The Reizomorph asked the men holding Flint.

"Two minutes, thirty seconds," one replied.

"That's longer than I care to wait." He wasted few words on Flint. "I know you're harboring those three men who crashed near this town, and I know you've at least seen Pan."

"I don't know who you're-"

Flint didn't get to finish the sentence. The Reizomorph backhanded him. Blood flew. He threw something at Flint's knees. Pan went cold as she recognized her painting.

"What name is that in the corner?"

Flint looked down.

"That's what I thought." He grabbed Flint by the wrist. "Here's how we're going to do this. I'm going to count to ten, and if you haven't talked by then, I'm going to kill you and move on to someone else. I'm going to keep doing that until I either hear what I want or this is a ghost town. One."

He snapped Flint's forefinger. Pan could hear the sickening crack all the way from the junkyard.

"Flint helped me. I have to help him," Pan said, clenching the windowsill. "I can't just watch this happen."

"You can't go out there, either!" Ember said, grabbing her shoulder. "Don't you know who that is?"

Their whispering was cut off by Flint's scream as the Reizomorph snapped his middle finger. "Two."

Pan couldn't believe she was saying it, and yet out of her mouth it came. "Yes. I do. It's Frieza's older brother, Cooler. That's why I can't watch this. He's not bluffing. He's not stalling. He isn't going to waste any time preening or flexing his muscles, and he has no mercy for these people to appeal to. Everyone in Blendarr is going to die if we don't act."

Cooler drew back his hand. Flint braced himself for another broken bone. Instead, he got something that was, as impossible as it seemed, even worse. Cooler clamped his hand on Flint's head. It didn't look like anything happened, but a moment later, Flint screamed even louder and slumped, trying to struggle away. He trembled with the exertion of even doing that much.

"What did that bastard just do?" Ember asked.

"Short version?" Pan asked. "He's ripping out Flint's energy. It's a technique he learned from the Big Gete Star. He can drain other peoples' ki to become temporarily stronger, or heal himself if he's injured."

"To think such monsters exist in the North Quadrant."

He lifted his hand eventually, but only to snap Flint's thumb and forefinger in rapid succession. "That's three and four, to make up for the time I wasted stealing your wretched life force. You're halfway dead in more ways than one, painter. Do you still hold your tongue? Perhaps I should remove it before you die."

He reached for Flint's second hand.

Pan's knee knocked him away. She pulled Flint off the platform, to the comparative safety of the crowd, tossing the men that held him in the same swipe.

"I'm sorry," She said. "I should have been here sooner."

"Leave us and run," Flint whispered, and then he lost consciousness.

Pan clenched her fist. She grit her teeth. Her hair flickered from black to gold and her energy surged. She stood and turned, placing herself between Cooler and the painter.

Cooler was not impressed. He looked as if this was a scene he'd witnessed too many times to find interesting anymore.

"Son Pan. Finally. You are the most difficult woman to get hold of." He motioned to his soldiers. "Seize her."