Chapter Twenty-Eight

Pan had been upset a second ago, but now she couldn't remember why. She couldn't remember much of anything, really. She had never sleep-walked before, but it must be like this. Everything inside her head felt underwater; everything inside her chest, still and light. Her hands were tipped with long black claws like a mole's, and she wanted to dig in the shaking dirt, play in it like she did when she was a little girl making mud pies.

After some time of confusion, she noticed people. Some of them lay around like broken toys. Others scattered. Some of them had black suits and others had red, and one was a funny thing made of straw. Pan wanted to play with them, too. She trudged after them, humming a song.

I'm digging a hole

And making an earthquake

Rocks fall in my wake

They did, too. She stepped and they bounced into the air, even boulders, and they crashed behind her.

Below, Bonpara screamed, "What was he thinking?"

"That her power would be increased and she'd stop Chilled from killing us," Ginyu said.

"What's going to stop her from killing us?"

"This is a move elite Saiyans developed so their great ape transformation wouldn't be limited to whether or not they could find a native source of Blutz Waves on unfamiliar worlds. It's inherently temporary. It'll run out on its own. How long that'll take depends on how concentrated a blast it was. I doubt it'll be a full hour, because that's all we have before the Prismasphere blows, and he'll have given her time to escape."

"We might not have any time!" Bonpara said.

"If it gets too dangerous, we can always cut off her tail."

"Which one?"

That was as far as their conversation got. They noticed Pan watching them and fled. Instinct told Pan to chase them. That running things were supposed to be chased.

Something more deeply-rooted than that told her to chase the straw doll.

She lumbered towards him, mashing wheat beneath her claws.

The doll-creature threw energy at her. The prismatic blade stung where it hit. Pan roared again, throwing her head to the sky. Instinct changed its mind; everything in her focused on the being that tried to do her harm.

Its attacks grew more frequent and more frantic as she approached. They hurt, and she didn't like it.

So she opened her mouth wide and bit the doll in half.

She didn't unclamp her teeth right away. She shook it. Bits of straw and pieces of mud crumbled off. She lowered her head to the ground and threw one of her claws over it so she could fray it more with her front teeth. Its half tore in half, and that was the point when the doll stopped moving. She continued to worry it, though, spitting out chunks of straw and reaching inside for more.

When there wasn't anything left that resembled a full body part, Pan swayed, torn with confusion. The doll's destruction nagged her. Even the starless night was too bright for her. It was hard to think. She roared, and that made the ground shake, but not enough that she couldn't curl up, wrapping her dual-tail around her body and tucking her head under her wing.

She was vaguely aware one of the fallen figures had crawled to her and leaned against her scaly side. She didn't interpret this as a threat. Its presence was comforting. Head clearing…

ooo

The quaking hadn't stopped. If anything, it had grown bolder. It was the cold that woke Pan, though. She wore a layer of frost, and beneath that, a layer of gray fur. Between the two her dress was reduced to stray thread; it was made with a great ape in mind, but a great ape was not what she'd become. She curled on her side, arms wrapped around her chest, watching her breath float through the heather in a cloud. The Vile Wave howled around her and scrubbed the day from the sky.

Frieza crawled to her side and pulled his cloak- the one Chilled had given him- over her, tight around her shoulders. Without it, she could see how badly he'd been injured. She'd tried to tell herself he'd survived worse. He'd been in half on Namek. But the Vile energy he'd been struck with was corrosive, and the mirror that had sustained him was angry with him.

"That thing you turned into," Frieza said. "Goku fought seven of those, you say? And it was only through sheer attrition the last was able to strike a mortal blow?"

Pan's eyes glittered. Her tongue wouldn't unstick itself.

Frieza turned onto his back and chuckled, leaving a pool of blood behind. "I still could've taken him."

He coughed and she reached for him. He wiped his palm on the heather, leaving the petals dark. He looked at his fingers. They hadn't come clean. Still, he took Pan's hand.

"I've only been alive a week. That's got to be some kind of personal record. How embarrassing. I think in the end it was worth it, though. I'm not afraid this time, and who knows? Maybe they'll get that machine of theirs working and send me back as someone who's actually worthy of your affection."

"You are now," She finally got out of her throat. Her voice sounded as dry and rough as it felt. "Just like this."

"It's kind of you to say so. I've never seen the use of kindness. Honestly, I still don't. It looks to me like I'm getting the better end of the deal here. Your eyes are glowing gold. Did you know that?"

Grandpa said that Frieza was prone to rambling, and Pan had found that true, but now she clung to every sentence; this time, when his voice went quiet, she would never hear it again.

"Get off this planet, Pan. Get on your friends' ship, or Cooler's if you don't think theirs will clear the Prismasphere, and flee while you still can. Chilled has wanted Ketchyn for so long. Let him have it. If I can deny him your life, that's enough for me."

His fingers relaxed. Pan held them tighter but that didn't warm them.

The seconds ticked by, and she didn't move, didn't blink, just held his hand. The quaking had gotten so much worse, but she didn't feel it.

She felt something, though. A small, tight ball of flame inside, in the same place where her Super Saiyan power dwelt; and the longer she lay there, watching Frieza not breathing, the hotter it burned. There were tears in her eyes, but they were much different than the kind she spent so frequently. They felt like acid on her cheeks and in her throat. She twisted to her knees. Her hair fell black in her face like a mane. Her breath hurt; it felt like in contracting and expanding, her chest fought against a thousand blades, blades of all her friends Chilled had slain, with Frieza's the biggest and sharpest.

Her scream sounded little different than her dragon's roar. She tore her backpack open just enough to remove her grandfather's gi and replace what was left of her dress with it, and the moment she had her belt tied, she touched her forefinger to her head.

In the confusion wrought by the Vile Wave, she couldn't feel Chilled's energy, or at least, she couldn't pick it out from the rest of the screaming violet siren that now had command of Ketchyn. She didn't need to, though. She knew where he'd gone; or, more appropriately, where he'd always been.

The first time she'd fought Frieza, he'd told her he'd set a trap for Goku, a trap that was supposed to bring his nemesis right to him just as the Vile Wave crested. Because of the Para Brothers' meddling, that trap had been triggered early, and she'd arrived on Ketchyn while it was still indigo outside. She remembered where she'd landed, though. Kuriza's tomb. And thanks to the Vile energy strangling the planet, she didn't need Chilled or anyone else to act as her anchor. She had the Vile Wave clearing its own little path through Teleportation Space for her.

Chilled liked to destroy his enemies with their own favorite weapons, did he? Well, she hoped he appreciated the irony, that Pan was riding his Vile Wave straight to him… and that when she got there, for every life he'd extinguished, she was going to bury him.

ooo

The walls and towers of Asphodel stood in the distance. Tranquil under the blanket of night, if it weren't for the echoes of voices around her, Pan would not have known there was anything wrong.

An army of Vile Wraiths poured from the tomb with the intent to change that picture.

They tumbled over each other, climbed and trampled and fell and stood to surge again, each one listening to the lament of Asphodel's survivors through the Vile Wave and hearing, not tragedy, but prey.

Pan tore through the first that engaged her. The mist of its remnants clung to her knuckles as she felled another. They gathered around her, trying to surround her, but a well-placed burst of energy sent them flying. She moved like an android, smooth and efficient, but with a cold and focused lifelessness. The tomb's entrance was her goal, and they were in the way.

And yet… the city rose behind her, and for all her power one person could not make an effective barrier against so many invaders. Furthermore, if she were to stop long enough to try, the Vile Wave would consume the citizens with or without their help. Her only hope of saving Ketchyn was getting to that mirror, and to Chilled, whose body it had been constructed from; but saving Ketchyn meant giving up Asphodel and everyone inside it. She thought of the chatty shopkeeper, and of Tundra and his mother. She couldn't leave them to the Vile Wraiths. She just couldn't.

A wraith at her side exploded into sparks, and she hadn't blasted it.

Two more went down before she found the source: Cooler, taken to the sky, fighting alongside her. One of the wraiths got its arms and claws around him; he tore it in half, and attacked the next in line through the middle of its falling corpse.

"When the quaking stopped in the field, I followed you," He explained.

He dodged as an aftershock almost caught him. Instead, it vaporized the wraiths around him.

More explosions ripped through the air, and between them and the aftershocks, ripped a hole through the mass of wraiths. Cooler was joined by the Para Brothers and the Ginyu Force.

"When we saw Cooler taking off, we grabbed on," Bonpara said.

"You don't need to waste your time or energy with these pawns," Captain Ginyu said. "We'll handle them. You put a stop to all this. I wish I could watch you fight, but you'll just have to tell me about it when you get back."

Pan, safe in the knowledge the city would be guarded to its last gasp, plunged into the tomb.

It was darker than she remembered underground. Vile mist clogged the catacombs. The torchlight had been swallowed up. She couldn't have navigated by energy if she'd wanted to; it was everywhere. The Vile Wave's song was another matter. It grew louder the closer she drew to its source. Finding Chilled would be as easy as following the screaming.

It helped, too, that the tomb was so close to the surface. Pan remembered it hadn't been a long trip out. It wasn't a long trip there, either.

An aftershock tore from the ground, sealing the tunnel behind her.

Pan couldn't worry about that. There was only one direction that mattered anymore: down. That was where she found the tomb of Kuriza.

The headstone had been knocked on its side, its carving of the boy's death cracked in half at the legs. Beneath it was a hole. The atmosphere down there was pitch and vapor. Pan couldn't see the bottom. Past the rim, she couldn't even see the sides. The cries of pain that issued from it were so loud, she thought she'd have to clasp her hands over her ears.

Instead, she jumped.

With bukujutsu on her side, this was not such a blind and deadly jump. She floated down, testing with her feet for the walls and ground she couldn't see. When she did land, it was with a splash in shallow water. At her touch, the surface rocked as if it had been storm-stirred.

What a strange crypt Pan was in. It was spacious, and decorated; although most of the sculptures lay in piles of gravel. The stone was ghost-pale and the slabs without feature. Not even names identified these coffins' tenants. Even for a grave it was morbid. If empty oblivion could be given form, this was the form it would take.

She found one inscription on her journey to its center: on the base of one of the overturned statues, "FC + SP" had been carved. She traced the letters, their rough texture.

"You should have taken my grandson's advice and left with your hide while it was still on your bones."

Pan faced the mirror. It would've been impossible not to. It glowed from within, opaque and gloomy, and yet everything it touched adopted an unnatural luminescence. Even her reflection looked like it was under a carnival blacklight. Before it stood Chilled. This was not a doll, but the very flesh and blood that had been preserved in the mirror's frame, strengthened in slumber and fed with the malice of the ages.

"You have no right to call Frieza your grandson," Pan said. "You killed him. You were supposed to protect him, not use him as an emotional trash can and then murder him when he wouldn't swallow any more of your garbage."

"Protect him," Chilled repeated. "I blew that one a long time ago. I never could make it right. Perhaps that's because some things can't be made right, only…"

The mirror belched another cloud of Vile energy that rolled over the floor.

"…washed away. Let me guess what you'll say next. I'm no different from Flare, right? Flare, who slaughtered my children, who erased them down to the memories of their names?"

"Whether you and Flare are different is a question for somebody else," Pan said. "I only know what you're doing is wrong. I've walked the length of Ketchyn. I've seen the scars on this world and the wounds they hide. I won't let you destroy what little Flare left."

"And yet you bring with you the negative energy of Earth. Tell me, girl, how you intend to fight shadow with shadow. You can't. I've tried. One will never overcome the other. They can only mix and grow denser until there's not a light left that can escape them. Whatever life you've brought here will be snuffed out, if not by me, then by your own poisonous heart!"

Chilled rose up in all the shrouds of the grave and crashed down upon her.

He expected little resistance, but instead, he slammed into something as solid as unmoving stone. Pan held his fist in one hand. It was inches from her face, and struggle as he might, he could move it no further.

He'd wasted no time attacking, and Pan wasted no time retaliating. She kicked him, and he went flying, shrouds and all. He skidded only so far before he flipped to his feet and bloodied her lip with his tail. She felt an aftershock coming. He charged her, swathed in violet energy. She let him. He slammed into the pillar of pink energy and made it halfway through it. Bits of cloth and decayed flesh burned away.

None of this slowed him down. He came out the other side trailing flames and smoke, slamming into Pan.

Throughout his reign as the Planet Trade Organization's "emperor," Frieza had become famous for toying with his enemies. Chilled must have gotten bored with that already, though; he'd come out fighting her with his full power, and now that she'd stopped it twice, he didn't bother with a third try. He launched straight into the Prismasphere.

She stopped her ankle a millimeter away from a Red Wave Snare. The floor was covered with them; he hadn't even had to speak to set them. Pan levitated, weaving through the snares that appeared, not just below her but above her, and at her sides, threading the cavern like a spider web. They flickered blue, and then each one flared blue and burst into a Razor Rain. Pan started to deflect, but the second she tried to reach the Green Wave, all she got was the screaming and groping of the Vile Wave; changing course, she fired a Masenko at each group of blue razor-lights. The strobe effect stifled the Vile Wave, albeit briefly.

After that, he threw both at her at once. Punches. Death blades. Vile Lacerations, meant to drive her into razor wire or snares. She destroyed or blocked them all. One line of Lacerations dissolved under a mass of aftershocks. More of the tunnel collapsed. Rock fell from the ceiling.

Enraged, Chilled threw his hand to the air. Energy seethed over his palm, the energy of a Supernova.

"Now you're just desperate," Pan said. "You're hoping you can bring the catacombs down and bury me."

"You were doing a fine job of that yourself. I'm just putting the final nail in the coffin," Chilled said.

Pan closed her eyes. She felt the death ball's energy building.

Chilled threw it.

The red-hot sphere tore the ground. It burned away the stone, the debris. It burned away the bookshelf with Chilled's notes atop it. It boiled the frothing water and left a trail of steam.

Pan caught it. She drove her hands into its center. Its life force shot through her fingers but did no harm.

Swift, Pan delivered a spinning roundhouse that launched the Supernova straight up. It flew through the catacombs, erupted like a volcano. She saw the night sky through the hole she'd made, and the attack faded and pierced it. It exploded harmlessly above Ketchyn, its power absorbed into the Prismasphere.

Pan left the water and landed on the torn ground. Chilled slumped before the mirror, breathing hard. He was still on his feet, but he didn't have another attack like that left in him.

"Do you give up?" Pan asked.

He could barely catch his breath to answer. "Excuse me?"

"You're defeated, Chilled. This fight is over. It's only fair I give you the chance my grandfather gave Frieza. Give up and stop the backlash."

"Stop the backlash?" He said. "I won't, you sentimental brute; instead, you can choke on it. Vile Wave Suffocation!"

The mirror spotted as if it had been splashed with water, and then it spewed forth wave after wave of fog. It didn't just obfuscate the tomb this time, it swallowed it completely, plunging it- and Pan- into a kind of lightlessness normally only found at the bottom of the ocean.

Pan tried to fire, but the solid void swallowed her energy. She tried to call, but it swallowed her voice. She'd thought Chilled had been right in front of her, but dashing in that direction, even at full speed, was like not moving at all; she met nothing but more nothing.

She'd been so close. Chilled had been beaten. It didn't matter now, though; wherever she was, there was no way out, and all he had to do was keep her here until the backlash completed and Ketchyn died. She would die with it. He would win after all.

For the first time since touching down on this world, Pan felt the hopelessness of the Vile Wave seeping into her. She heard its screaming and thought of simply letting it in, letting the end come. She wouldn't, of course; she'd fight to her last breath. What more could she do, though? What kind of fight did this nowhere leave her?

She put one foot in front of the other, thinking at least that was doing something, and then she felt it. The last answer she expected.

ooo

A familiar life force hovered beyond the wall of void. As soon as Pan felt it, a pinprick of light broke through, and she could see it. The Vile Wave drying up and crumbling away. Standing where it had been, the broad back of a tall man in a sleeveless gi.

Her walk stumbled into a run, then a full-on sprint, as fast as she could move. The Vile Wave clawed at her but could not stop her now.

He turned and smiled at her, the unmistakable innocent smile of Son Goku.

"Hey, Pan."

Pan hugged him, burying her face into his chest. It brought with it so many memories of him cradling her, carrying her on his hip; memories of the beach, of space, of Kame Island. The warmth spread through her. From the start, she felt its hum, and the longer she held him, the stronger it became, driving away the Shadow Dragon's corruption, putting everything back into place.

"Grandpa," she whispered. "You came after all."

He tucked his hand behind his head and laughed nervously. He did that all the time, and yet Pan had forgotten the gesture until now. "I came as soon as I felt your energy disappear from Earth and reappear in a different quadrant. Getting to you once I made it to Ketchyn was the hard part. I don't want to scare you, but did you know this planet is wrapped in dead people? Not even the Kais could crack it open."

"Smacked into the Prismasphere, huh," Pan said. "I did, too, going the other way. How'd you get through?"

He shrugged. "I waded right in. Most of the dead people in the Prismasphere wanted to fight."

"You fought your way through the Prismasphere," Pan said, deadpan. How like him.

"Not all the way through," Goku said. "Some of them were upset about how they died and wanted to talk. They told me all kinds of things. About themselves. About Ketchyn. Even about Chilled." He squeezed Pan's shoulder. "I'm really proud of you for stopping him."

Pan wiped her eyes. "But I haven't. The backlash is still happening. If I can't find my way out of here and do something about that mirror, it doesn't matter that I beat him. Ketchyn and everyone on it will die anyway."

"We'll just have to break out of here, then," Goku said. "The Vile Wave is a lot like negative energy, right? I'll shatter it with a blast of positive energy. That should give you a straight shot to Chilled and his mirror."

"If we're going to do that, we have to hurry," Pan said. "I don't think the people here have much more time."

Goku didn't spend any more time on planning. He fired a blast at the dark, and it cut through it like a knife.

ooo

The light tore through the cage of Vile Energy and the quaking stopped. The ground calmed. The surface of the water stilled. Dirt clods stopped raining.

Pan emerged from the violet mist, her aura and her eyes golden. Her tail lashed and her gi and gray fur rustled in the updraft of her life force. The negative energy was gone from her, her form finally stable; and behind her, his hand still on her shoulder, Son Goku stood.

For all the trouble he expended to hide it, Pan could see Chilled's face now, and the terror written across it. "No. You can't escape that. Nobody could escape that!"

"Show me how strong you've gotten, Pan," Goku said. "You're ready, right?"

"I'm ready," Pan said.

Her form was fluid, every stroke the result of a lifetime of preparation. Golden energy surged like pale flames in her hands.

"Kamehameha!"

The energy erupted from her hands, driving away the Vile Wave where it touched. Chilled didn't have time to counter, dodge, or even cry out; it collided with him. He could not stay in place, either. It threw him. Pan saw her new Super Saiyan form in the mirror for a split-second, the bristling dark hair, the fur, and her grandfather's old gi, and then Chilled split the middle of it back-first and slithered across the floor behind it.

The glass shattered into flecks of light.

Pan had never seen anything so beautiful. It was like fireworks, the spinning mirror-glass catching the light as it spun away from the point of impact, blossoming and raining to the stone.

As it cracked and fell to pieces, smoke rose from Chilled's body. He smacked at it, as if it could be put out, but the light inside him only glowed stronger. Cracks formed in him, as well. His skin greyed and flaked away, and then all that was underneath it.

The glass rained to the floor with a sound like bells.

By the time it landed, Chilled was no longer there for it to land on. He'd crumbled and dispersed, laid to rest in his own family tomb.

Above the hole his last attack had torn through the catacombs, the sky pulsed, the heartbeat of Ketchyn racing. The Vile Wave splintered, and rose spread in its place, bringing the planet a morning that was, by this time, long overdue.

Pan turned to her grandfather. He was exactly as she remembered him, big and goofy and loveable and the strongest man alive.

"I told Frieza," She said. "You were always here when I needed you, no matter what."

"Wow, Frieza's here, too? I thought I felt his energy, but I figured it must be Chilled. I bet he didn't give you too much trouble, though."

For a moment, Pan's joy was undercut by a bolt of grief that shot straight through her heart. "He helped me, grandpa. He died helping me. Everybody else wrote him off, but you didn't, and in the end you were right about him. I wish you could have seen it. I wish… I wish he had more time…"

She couldn't help it. She choked. Goku held her again, just like he had when she'd been a child.

"You saw it. I believe you. Now hurry home, Pan." He released her and backed away. "I'm already dead, but Chi-Chi can still kill you."

With those words, Son Goku disappeared into the dawn light, leaving Pan crying and laughing all at once.