Co-written by SuperSaiyan2Link.
Leading Pan down a flight of stairs, Commander Hale showed her the holding area for the Time Patrol's prisoners, which only had a few cells, all of which were completely empty...
...save for one where the pod containing Turles resided, a monitor showcasing the status of his vitals.
Pan remembered her Kaio-Ken Times Four Kamehameha countering Turles' last blast, after which she saw him being rocketed into the sky in sheer terror in the face of his own demise...
...but now seeing him alive in front of her, even as he was frozen in a pod, left her in utter disbelief.
"How? How did he survive?"
"Turles is nothing, if not stubborn, Miss Pan."
It began to make sense as Pan thought back to Vegeta, who not only managed to escape Goku's own Kaio-Ken Times Four Kamehameha that overpowered his Galick Gun, but also survived being struck by the first Spirit Bomb and the fall back down to the ground after.
"...but that was Goku at that point in time. I've endured foes stronger than Vegeta was on Earth since then. It should've been even stronger."
Along with that, she simply had a simple, but important question:
"Who picked up Turles?"
"Trunks."
"But he was stranded in the desert after tinkering with Goku's ship."
"Indeed... but then Trunks found Turles. When Trunks returned to the Time Nest with him in tow, I was summoned to bring Turles here."
Looking further back, Pan recalled that initially, she had the advantage over, or at least matched Turles, namely keeping him at bay from Goku who at that point in time was outclassed. Then she had him at her mercy by gripping his tail, keeping him from Goku as her grandfather was free to depart with Mr. Popo. But then it all changed once he went into a rage with a red aura around him and his hair.
"I know I destroyed that fruit he was carrying... but something powered him up in that moment."
"Did he have Towa's formula?"
Hale, scrolling down what looked like a virtual list emanating from his gauntlet, read carefully before answering.
"No. He didn't have any formula of Towa's in his system."
"How else did he suddenly get so strong?"
"I do believe Turles did not go Super Saiyan... but it was as close as he could get to the form without truly achieving it."
Even without it being a true Super Saiyan form, Pan recalled the toll facing it had on her, to the point of Turles outlasting her Kaio-Ken and being free to strangle her.
"Without that opening... he would have killed me."
That opening was when he fell to his knees, his hand on his chest in pain.
"Did the form get to his heart?"
"Not quite."
After scrolling further down to what seemed to be a side note...
"What Turles does have... is a virus."
Stretching the virtual screen to a larger size, almost like a computer screen or a larger TV, Hale accessed and showcased what he could on the subject as he spoke to Pan at length about it.
"A virus genetically instilled into lower class Saiyan warriors. It was designed to afflict the heart of a Saiyan the moment their prime ended."
"Don't need to guess whose idea it was..." Pan thought, knowing all too well who was ultimately responsible for the fate of the Saiyan race.
"But it mutated," Hale continued. "The Saiyans who eluded the destruction of their race on Planet Vegeta began dying of it. Not just the old, but even younger Saiyans who hadn't reached their peaks."
Hale continued, discussing Turles having soldiered on his own in several timelines, as well as the fact that her grandfather Goku was also afflicted with the heart virus, which came to affect him some time after the battle of Frieza, but Pan's mind was wandering back to that critical moment.
"Turles had me beat. He was faster, stronger..."
Being outclassed by opponents wasn't new to Pan, but compared to Raditz, Vegeta, and Zarbon's monstrous true form, where she still had her part in the team effort to guarantee the victory against them...
...in Turles' case, like the Ginyu Force, all she felt she accomplished was delaying the inevitable.
"I didn't catch him off-guard or outsmart him..."
She saw Turles vulnerable and simply struck him when he was unable to defend himself effectively.
"If he had just gone for the kill immediately..."
Hale, about to discuss how the heart virus was likely to have struck Turles due to his power-up, saw Pan's mind afloat and her typically neutral expression slowly giving way.
"Instead of playing around with his food... with me, and my grandfather..."
She realized Hale had stopped speaking and simply looked over at her musing.
"My apologies, Miss Pan. I did not consider your experience at his hands..."
"It's fine."
It wasn't, but Pan tried appearing to have shrugged it off.
"Unless there is anything else you'd like to know, we'd best be going."
"Of course."
The two exited, Hale leading Pan out as Turles, even with him no longer physically present, was still on her mind.
"I won... survived... because of a fluke. I cannot do that again."
"Now remember..." Taino began. "If I say 'Change now' and you're in front of me, that's a wrap."
By day, Pan trained with Taino, trying to last as long as she could until said phrase, to which continuing or stopping the session came down to Pan managing to avoid it or not.
Towards what would be night for her elsewhere, Pan was back in the gravity chamber with a hundred times gravity. She was starting to move more freely there, though flying was proving to be a challenge, as was moving at faster speeds.
Once she was finished, Pan returned to her quarters, using medical packs to help her recover before closing the blinds and going to bed.
Taino has lost track of how long it had been since she began training Pan for Captain Ginyu, always seeing her return again and again. To that end, she noticed Pan was initially improving since she started her gravity training and was relatively consistent in her performances. As Taino slowly began to fight even closer to Ginyu's level of power...
...Pan began to struggle.
"Change now!"
An all-too-familiar beep from Pan's leg being within range of the technique.
"Aww... shoot."
In the gravity chamber, Pan hovered and tried taking flight at high speed, but came crashing into the ground on her jacketed arm.
"I miscalculated there."
Clashing in midair with Taino, her face covered in sweat, Pan suddenly lost sight of her. By the time she sensed her instructor, Pan was tossed downward, landing on her back before she could correct herself.
"I lost focus."
Instead of flying, Pan kept to the floor in increased gravity, running in circles around the room. Out of nowhere in mid-run, she felt one of her feet slip and had to put out her hands to stop herself against the wall, preventing a worse collision.
"I've gotta get it together."
Back in her housing unit, Pan pulled up her pajama's sleeves and pant legs up to her elbows and knees, allowing her to apply healing wraps around them, her wrists, and ankles. She'd grown accustomed to doing this before going to bed so that her body would be mended back into working condition for the next day.
Turning off the lights, Pan looked up to the Power Pole above her bed before closing her eyes.
"It wasn't easy for Grandpa. I just need to keep this up. Gotta push myself harder."
Now Pan was in a simulation of a ruined metropolis, more wasteland than city. This exam would move Pan up to the rank of the 40's should she successfully complete it. So far, she had knocked out a tall orange-skinned demon, one of his two horns broken.
"Three to go..."
She fired two blasts in front of her, one forcing Angila, a light blue-green skinned demon adorned in caped robes, to step to the side, and the other nearly striking Medamatcha, a shorter frog-like demon, who ducked underneath it. Now only one continued to advance.
"Here comes Wings."
This massive demon with orange-brown skin with armor, spikes on his wrists, and wings on his back to increase the speed of his approach. He found his clawing strike had phased through an afterimage, after which he felt a burn in each of his wings...
Pan having hopped over him and blasting through both, putting a hole through them. As her winged opponent winced, she crash-landed into his back with her feet, stomping him to the ground. After hopping off of him, she quickly turned, firing at Angila once again, but then felt the heat of an energy bullet passing in front of her. Pan couldn't believe she only now just caught its presence.
"How did I miss that?"
Medamatcha stood in place, firing a barrage from his unusually flexible arms. Pan couldn't fly upward in time, so she was forced to fly straight through it, adjusting to avoid the energy bullets as they approached. One finally came in too fast and she was forced to guard with crossed wrists. Pan fell back, but landed on her feet, screeching to a halt and finding that the barrage had ceased.
"Out of juice?!"
She lunged forward...
Then felt herself being grabbed by her ankles, then yanked straight down onto her front. She peered to her side, seeing Angila with his arms stretched into two holes underground before realizing...
"He's holding me in place."
Pan turned back to Medamatcha, seeing an extra assortment of arms growing on his back.
"Is that the Four Witches technique?"
But soon, she could clearly see four small clones peering over his shoulders before taking to the air. Along with that, she caught Angila's mouth glowing, a beam about to fire.
"There's no time..."
As the four clones tried grappling onto her akin to Saibamen…
"Kaio-Ken!"
Pan managed to stand back up, then jabbed with her arms fast enough to strike the four in rapid succession, nearly piercing through them with the sheer force of her fists. Without the time necessary to wrestle out of Angila's hands, she ducked to avoid his mouth blast. Medamatcha, however, was too late, being struck and rocketed away by friendly fire. Seeing Angila ready to fire once again, she began lifting upward with her legs.
"Kaio-Ken Times Three!"
Now with the further boost, Pan lifted herself off the ground, standing on her hands as Angila's stretched arms began to be pulled out of the dirt, now no longer hidden. With a swift and powerful spinning handstand, this demon was lifted off his feet and helplessly spun along with her, feeling his arms tangling together.
Seeing the winged demon trying to get in a ranged attack on her during this, Pan timed her last spin, falling onto her back and firing at Angila's arms, finally forcing him to let go of her ankles. The speed built up launched him straight at Wings, knocking that demon onto his back as Angila continued flying backward. Instead of flying after him, Pan hopped upward, then landed straight on Wings' chest, the impact nearly shattering his armor's chestpiece as he spat out. With another hop off of him, further crushing into Wings' upper body, she caught Angila in midair, then struck him back down with her feet.
Now Angila was being dragged across the floor, Pan practically standing on him like a board before hopping off him. As he came to a complete stop, Angila, his arms practically knotted together to the point of being numb, desperately tried charging for a mouth blast to save himself. Pan had already charged one of her hands with ki and fired down at his face right as the blast left his mouth. The combination of her blast firing at him and Angila's own being knocked back left him with smoke emitting from his mouth, ears, nostrils, and even his eyes.
With Angila defeated, now Pan was halfway through this simulation.
"Now let's see... Wings and that frog guy. Just gotta find them."
As Pan turned behind her to check the status of Wings...
She was met by a high speed tackle by the winged combatant. In spite of the seared holes through his wings and the grievous blows to his chest from Pan's landing and takeoff, he was still going strong.
"I should've sensed Wings a mile away...!"
Upon impact, Pan felt Kaio-Ken becoming more difficult to hold.
"Kaio-Ken shouldn't be petering out already...!"
She was slammed into a wall, and upon his feet touching the ground, Wings tried striking her forehead with his left wrist. She caught it with her right, then her left hand redirected a clawed palm from his right, which was pinned to the wall behind her. But as she tugged his left arm away from her, Pan felt her control over Kaio-Ken floundering once more.
"No, no! I've held Kaio-Ken longer than this! I shouldn't be this...!"
Wings managed to move his left spiked wrist back towards her face, to which Pan slowly forced it away from her head and neck. Even then, her opponent seemed to match her before his wrist could move past her arm, intending to finally strike her with it once given an opening.
The moment Pan's Kaio-Ken petered out, the spike closest to his elbow stabbed into her right shoulder. As usual, the simulation wouldn't allow fatal injuries, but this was still an intense pain.
"DAMN IT!"
She spotted a knee intended for her stomach and countered it with a hopping dual knee of her own, both her arms dedicated to pushing back his left arm. He struck with his right arm, piercing through the wall, but Pan had ducked, finally severing herself from the spike.
As he tried grabbing hold of her with both hands, she rolled to his left, then kicked directly at the spike he struck her with. The impact created a bend and generated an audible reaction from her virtual opponent. A swinging kick struck the side of his face so hard he span. The moment his back was exposed to Pan, she grabbed hold of his wrist spike, then, after a quick shout of Kaio-Ken, tore it off his wrist and held it like a knife.
"Come on, Wings! Come here!"
Dodging his enraged punches, she then managed to pierce the back of his left hand with his own spike. As he reeled, she leapt into Wings, kicking his left hand into his side, causing his limb to be pinned to him.
He couldn't free his left hand with Pan on offense, so he tried fending her off with his right arm, only for her to slip underneath and chop below his right armpit, then kick the back of his right knee. As he knelt, Pan took hold of both his wings and lifted him off the ground by them before slamming him back down as hard as she could.
Letting her Kaio-Ken dissipate afterward, she then knelt by the top of his head and threw punch after punch to his exposed forehead, only stopping once she saw Wings' arm no longer moving upward to stop her barrage. As she slowly made her way back up, Pan saw Wing's unconscious face, his brown-orange skin covered with dark purple spots and both horns on his head broken to the point of tiny pieces of them being scattered across his chin and chest like crumbs.
"I might've gone a bit overboard there..."
She looked over her shoulder, then turned around, knowing she was missing just one last confirmed KO...
"He was hit pretty bad earlier..."
She looked off to where she last saw him, but aside from a dirt trail from after the friendly fire struck him, Pan didn't see any sign of him. Nearby was Angila's body, his stretched arms knotted together from her spinning rapidly with him in tow...
...when he grabbed her legs from underground. Two massive rectangular holes remained from this...
"Ha, ha!" cackled Medamatcha, whom leapt from one of these holes towards her.
Pan swerved to avoid his lunge, but his clawed hands caught onto her side, clamping onto her.
She reached over to grab him, but Medamatcha crawled up to the right side of her back.
"Get off me!" she shouted aloud.
Pan finally caught him with her hands...
...as a dual fanged bite struck between her neck and right shoulder. Another sharp pain, the points much more thin, but managing to have dug deeper.
"GET...!"
Pan yanked Medamatcha off of her and, with as much might as she could manage...
"AWAY FROM ME!"
She threw him into the same wall Wings tackled her into before...
...the impact not even putting a crack into it as Medamatcha caught himself. And after this feat, Pan crouched over, her left hand to her neck and feeling partially drained.
"Thanks for the energy!" taunted Medamatcha.
Instead of approaching her, he stood right where he was charging ki in both hands.
"You look tired, dearie," he jeered. "Here... I'll help you go to sleep!"
A massive blast fired from both his hands and Pan didn't have the time to charge and fire off a Kamehameha. Her left hand still tending to her wound, Pan charged ki in her right hand and fired a one-handed blast to stop and counter Medamatcha's. Not only had it not repelled Medamatcha's two-handed blast, but his threatened to overtake her completely, the heat of which drew ever closer to her.
"He'll fry me..."
Now seeing her jacket's sleeve begin to sear away, exposing her wrist and elbow that began to turn red from the heat...
"Either this works or I fail the exam..."
"Kaio-Ken…!"
The difference was at first inconsequential, with Medamatcha's blast inches from her. The heat grew even more intense and she closed her eyes to shield her eyes from both that and from looking directly at it.
"Times FOUR!"
Her one-handed blast grew immensely, finally turning the tide and not only overpowering, but practically engulfing Medamatcha's and soon Medamatcha as well. Once Pan could sense that he was no longer firing, Pan stopped, getting out of Kaio-Ken and opening her eyes.
"It shouldn't have gone like this..."
She fell to one knee, then felt her eyes stinging, both from the heat she'd endured and from the copious amounts of sweat trying to get into them. She felt the top of her training jacket, the material having been thinned and tattered, exposing her blue shirt that wasn't untouched either.
"I shouldn't have had this much trouble..."
A grunt in the distance.
"You're kidding me...!"
Medamatcha, severely burned, crawled towards her.
Pan fired a ki bullet at him, but, despite the damage, Medamatcha continued dragging himself forward.
"How?!"
One ki bullet after another fired, each striking the target dead-on, but still Medamatcha remained and kept proceeding onward.
"Still?!"
She took a step back, but the uneven terrain left her falling onto her back. As far as she could tell, it looked like Medamatcha was preparing another lunge. Whether he'd try another bite or not, Pan was desperate to stop him here and now.
"NO! Not again!"
Both her hands fired as rapidly as she could at his location. With dirt scattering to the point of covering the area Medamatcha resided in the midst of this volley, Pan couldn't see him. She didn't sense him or his ki either, but with how her senses appeared to have failed her several times already, she just stayed the course, not relenting or even trying to get up.
"Can't stop! Can't let up! Can't...!"
A green flash above her...
The familiar font spelled out "Finish!"
She finally stopped, sitting up to see what remained of Medamatcha as the environment around her began to dissolve away...
...the dust settled and what remained of Medamatcha in the aftermath looked more akin to a silhouette than a figure. She hadn't just slain the projection of Medamatcha: it was almost completely vaporized.
Amura and Umiu stood in the hallway to the training chamber's entrance, awaiting their turns for the exam.
"Nervous, Umiu?"
"Uh... no, not at all."
As much as he tried to hide it, Amura could read it on the pink-skinned Namekian's face. Umiu heard this simulation, despite having less combatants than the last, would be trickier due to their distinct abilities.
"Hey," Amura went with a friendly slap on his shoulder. "You've been putting in the work. You've got this."
"You... you really think so?"
"Since we've trained together, all three of us are sure to..."
She paused upon hearing the doors to the training chamber open: Pan had finished the exam. They heard her footsteps and saw her shadow...
"Never had any doubts," went Amura, turning in Pan's direction with her arms to her sides in a Hercule-esque pose.
"Yeah," Umiu added while trying to mimic Amura's pose. "In no time, you'll..."
He paused with Amura not knowing why until she too looked over at Pan more clearly...
Limping, a hand over her right shoulder, the upper part of her jacket in tattered condition with burn marks, and her right arm exposed and partially red.
"They see me..."
She stopped, crouching for a moment.
"Damn it! Not here!"
They stopped what they were doing and approached her.
"Pan, are you...?" stumbled Umiu.
"Can we help...?"
"No...!" Pan shouted, not forcefully or loud, but getting across that she declined their assistance.
She didn't want to shove either of them, but once she made it back to her feet, Pan maneuvered around them. The two didn't make any further moves towards her, but kept watch of Pan as she tried to move faster.
"I should've been on top of this! After all this time in a hundred times gravity, I should not have done this badly!"
Instead of feeling triumphant at her having advanced to the 40's, all she could see was her shortcomings in her performance.
"It's still not enough..."
Pan's wounds still fresh and a burning feeling in her right arm, all the times she lost track of her opponents, was caught off-guard, tired out, and struck replayed in her head.
"I'm getting worse..."
She tossed and turned in her sleep from a recurring dream:
Pan standing in a dark void, her grandfather in front of her.
"Your power..." he began.
From behind him, Vegeta emerged.
"It's absolutely pathetic!"
Now Goku appeared inquisitive.
"You've been slacking off in your training?" inquired her grandfather.
"No," she answered. "I've been training this whole time."
"Oh please," Vegeta interrupted. "What training of hers could possibly measure up to our own?"
Vegeta suddenly emerged in front of her, akin to teleporting instantaneously, startling her into falling over.
"She doesn't know what it's like training to near death, then back to it again."
"You're right, Vegeta," went her grandfather uncharacteristically. "And she never will."
Goku turned his back to her and appeared to be leaving.
"You're not built for this. It's too dangerous for you."
"Grandpa, wait!" Pan cried out, now seeing and hearing herself as a young teenager.
"Don't join me anymore. I don't want to have to keep saving you."
"Don't leave me, please!"
"Go home, Pan."
Those were the last words of her grandfather before she lost sight of him. She found herself crawling forward until she saw something hovering just slightly off the ground...
The Flying Nimbus.
It was like an early memory of her having first seen it as a child and eager to ride it.
She lifted her foot upward to take a step onto it...
...only to see herself go straight through it and then fall, the floor beneath her no more.
"You're a disappointment," taunted Vegeta's voice. "All you can do..."
Pan tried to swing her arms or stop herself, but it was as if she had no ki at all.
"Is fall."
The last she saw of the dream was herself fast approaching the floor of the gravity chamber.
The sheets flew straight up into the ceiling, then back down as Pan sat up, grappling with the words given to her by her grandfather and Vegeta.
"All you can do... is fall."
"I have to be better."
"I don't want to have to keep saving you."
"I can't let it come to that. Not again."
Taino saw Pan waiting for her at the academy just as she had arrived.
"You sure are early today," began Taino.
Pan couldn't help but notice Taino pausing for a moment, looking at her with a look of concern.
"Are you doing alright? You look a little..."
"It's nothing. I'm ready to go."
The two stood on the grounds, taking on their stances. Once again, Taino seemed to appear worried.
"You sure you're up for this? We can take a day if..."
"No. I can do this."
With that, the two flew around each other, Pan trying to get in the first hit. She kept up at first, but soon, Taino had her outpaced completely.
"Taino's flying circles around me! She's really picking up the pace now!"
She went for a punch, Taino evading it, and then countering with one of her own. Pan felt it glance past her cheek, then their fists clashed several times. Even with her gloves, the impact was starting to get to her fingers.
"My hands... she's punching at Ginyu's level, I bet."
Pan knew it was only a matter of time until Taino went on the offense and sure enough, now Pan was forced to get into a defensive position. Blocking several hits with her wrist, they too began aching from the sheer striking force.
"She's been building me up for this. All these weeks..."
She took to the sky to get some distance, finding Taino in hot pursuit. Once they clashed in midair once again, Pan couldn't help but notice that while she was defending against Taino much better than she had seconds ago, Taino was gradually attacking slower.
"Why is she slowing down? Why now?"
The look on her instructor's face soon made the reason clear as day.
"Taino was looking for an opening! She just found one!"
She saw Taino going for a punch to her face and went for the block...
...but Taino's fist only brushed off Pan's wrist straight into her right shoulder, after which Pan cried out, immediately descending from the sky and grabbing hold of it.
"It was all healed up... and now after just one hit... has Taino gone all out all of a sudden?"
She took a moment to think, then disregarded the entire thought.
"No. She's been gradually going up each session. I'm just..."
Now she saw Taino running over to her, offering to help her up.
"Pan, I'm sorry! I didn't see...!"
As she was being lifted by her left arm, Pan tried to minimize her current discomfort.
"No, no. It's alright."
Upon standing, she couldn't help but put a hand to her right shoulder.
"Let me just..."
"Pan, you're not feeling well. I'm telling you, you just need to stop for just a..."
She couldn't believe what Taino was asking her to do.
"Stop?! When I need to do this now more than ever?!"
Pan backed away, waving her left arm as if to keep Taino from getting a hold on her.
"No! I can't afford to stop! If I'm not ready for Ginyu, then I... I...!"
Looking over at Taino clearly uneasy from what had transpired, Pan caught herself and stopped.
"What am I doing?! I shouldn't be acting out this badly! Get it together, Pan!"
She put out her hand.
"I'm sorry, Taino. I didn't mean for this... you've done so much for me. I'm just not..."
Unable to think of how to finish the thought, as well as trying to minimize everything so far, she put her hands together and tried to wrap up everything as neatly as she could.
"Let's call it a day for now. I'll get it together and then I'll be back here tomorrow... okay?"
Taino didn't answer vocally, but did nod to Pan.
"I'll see you then, Taino. Good day."
She turned, making her way off the academy grounds...
...but Taino already had an idea of where Pan was heading.
It had been hours since her session with Taino ended abruptly as Pan was performing sit-up after sit-up in the gravity chamber. After pushing herself upward onto her feet, Pan traveled backward with consecutive backflips. As she was close to colliding with the chamber's wall, she stopped on her hands, then remained in place for a moment to test her arm strength.
"Good, good."
Now she switched to front flips, noticing she was slowing down a little.
"Come on. Keep going..."
Once having reached the opposite side, Pan stood on her hands once again, but felt somewhat shaky.
"No, no. I'm moving too much."
She was determined to remain in place until she could steady herself for a few seconds.
"Straighten out, straighten ou…!"
Her right arm gave out and her left couldn't hold her up alone in this amount of gravity. Pan fell onto her side, which would have been nothing in any other circumstance, but in this level of gravity...
CRACK!
Both hands grasped it immediately and she rolled onto her other side. She saw the controls across from her, with which she could turn off the gravity right then and there.
But then Vegeta's voice echoed in her head.
"She doesn't know what it's like training to near death, then back to it again."
Pan took to her feet slowly, even as her side continued to hurt.
"This wouldn't stop him... or Grandpa."
She turned her back to the console, let go of her side, and punched in place. As much as she ached with each motion, Pan continued and even began to speed up.
With a spin, she began kicking above her rapidly. Another sharp pain to her side and she stopped, both feet back on the ground.
"This is nothing to them. Nothing to a Saiyan."
Another series of kicks with her opposite leg were followed by her stamping the ground hard for another array of punches. She repeated this several times, building up speed and power with each stamp.
The pain in her side built up until finally...
"Ghh... damn it!"
It was such that she slipped, having to catch herself with her gloved hands to prevent a hard collision on her front. Again, she saw the controls to the chamber.
"No. I can't afford to..."
She tried lifting herself up...
"Get up!"
She slowly lowered herself when this first attempt failed, then tried again.
"Come on! Up, up!"
Just then, Pan could feel the gravity reverting to normal. Someone stood at the console.
"Commander Hale? But I'm..."
"I'm sorry Miss Pan, but you're in no condition to continue."
"I have to..."
She tried to lift herself up once more.
"I need to..."
She then tried pushing herself off the ground onto her feet...
...but her arms couldn't manage it in that moment.
"Damn it, he's right."
Back in her housing unit, Hale had helped Pan onto her bed, put wraps on her arms and legs, and was getting ready to place two patches onto her wounds. He pressed the first patch against her shoulder, knowing it had to have stung her.
"You have pushed yourself considerably since your last exam..."
"Even then... I'm falling behind, Hale. Taino's taught me everything I need to know, but it's..."
She paused as the other patch touched her side.
"Taino has informed me you haven't missed a single day training with her."
"If I do, I'll fall further behind."
"I see."
His hands to his back, Hale walked back and forth.
"Taino has also shared some of her concerns..."
"I know. She's been patient with me, only going up in power gradually, but if I can't measure up, then that undermines the whole process. I'd be holding us both back."
Hale stopped.
"You're being too hard on yourself."
"Towa will strike soon. If I go easy on myself, I'm doing Towa's work for her, guaranteeing her victory."
He saw Pan's fist tightening.
"That's why I need to get back out there. As soon as I'm able."
Hale turned back to her, helping to pull up her bed sheets towards her hands.
"You've done all that you can for one day."
As he began to exit...
"Please... take care of yourself."
Her unit had gone dark simulating night, nowhere near the time to revert back to day time. She mumbled in her sleep as images flashed in her head:
Goku and Vegeta, always out of her reach. Among these images was herself, aging into an older woman.
"I can help."
Slowly, her hair turned gray and her skin old and wrinkled.
"Let me help."
Now she was on her deathbed and still, the two figures loomed over her.
"Please..."
Even as her body became little more than a skeleton with a thin layer of skin...
"Just let me..."
Even when her body decayed into nothing...
...Goku and Vegeta never left.
She sat up, her hands over her head coping with what she had just seen. Even knowing it was only a dream and a nightmare, it felt like a premonition.
Without a moment to lose, she tore off the two medical pads and slowly undid the wraps around her. Putting on her training attire and jacket, Pan stormed out of her housing unit.
From the distance, someone saw her heading towards the gravity chamber.
Even amidst the pain she clearly felt, Pan was convinced to push through all of it, moving rapidly and swinging harder.
In time, she fell.
"Vital integrity at risk," went the voice of the chamber's systems. "Participant condition critical."
She worked her way slowly to standing on her knees.
"Terminating session in 5, 4, 3..."
As futile as it was, she put out her hand towards the console itself.
"No, WAIT! I can still do this! I CAN STILL...!"
"Shutting down."
This time, instead of Commander Hale stepping in to shut down the session, the chamber itself did it.
"Even now..."
Pan looked down at the floor, both her hands forming fists as tight as she could manage with her gloves.
"I'm just..."
With a shout, she swung her fists into the ground, the floor seeming to shift upward like a wave on the water before reverting back.
She began her exit through the hallway, a wrist against a wall when she heard a set of footsteps...
...and the face of someone she hadn't seen since her last mission.
"Pan..."
Trunks didn't bother to ask "Are you okay?" as he could see from her expression and physical state that she clearly wasn't.
"What happened?"
"It's nothing..."
He took a step forward.
"Limping isn't nothing. Grasping your rib isn't nothing."
Pan tried letting go of her injured side after he brought it up, but immediately put her hand back over it.
"Please... just tell me what's wrong."
She sighed, then looked him in the eyes.
"I helped your father defeat Dodoria and Zarbon. We were both beat to hell, but we pulled it off."
She took another step forward.
"Taino trained me for the Ginyu Force. We went over everything..."
Now her back was against the wall.
"I was no match for all of them at once when Towa sicked them on me. And when they went after everyone, all I did was delay them. Towa would have won were it not for... for…"
Trunks tried to be delicate with his words in the moment.
"Goku didn't just appear out of the blue. The mission was always to protect everyone until he arrived. You stopped Towa from removing him from the equation. Goku would not have arrived in time were it not for you."
Pan couldn't take comfort from it.
"My grandpa went from losing to Vegeta to thrashing the Ginyu Force in just one week. I've been training for weeks! I've been in a hundred times gravity for over a week! Instead of getting better, I just keep getting worse!"
"Pan, it..."
"Don't!"
She caught herself hitting the wall with her wrist and pointing at him.
"Don't tell me it gets easier with time!"
"You're right. It doesn't."
He approached, but kept to a slow pace.
"But you're clearly hurt. You've been training while hurt."
"You sure are early today," began Taino before noticing Pan's hair was unkempt and her training jacket and pants had burns and tears that hadn't been repaired.
"What?"
The two stood on the grounds, Taino clearly battle-ready, but seeing Pan's stance was noticeably off.
"You sure you're up for this? We can take a day if..."
"No. I can do this."
As Taino flew around Pan's flight path, she couldn't help but notice that Pan wasn't going as fast as they typically did.
"Taino's flying circles around me! She's really picking up the pace now!"
As Taino clashed fists with Pan, she once again picked up that Pan's strikes weren't as polished or struck as hard.
"She's punching at Ginyu's level, I bet."
Taino slowed down, noticing Pan defending more with her left arm than she was her right.
"Taino was looking for an opening!"
Taino struck Pan's right shoulder...
...nowhere near a high enough level to do damage to it...
...but the impact with the injured shoulder was still excruciating to Pan all the same.
"and now after just one hit... has Taino gone all out all of a sudden?"
Pan realized now that she was not doing as well physically as she had believed.
"You're not getting worse. It's that you're not fully healed."
Still, she couldn't help but imagine Vegeta and Goku doing everything she had done with little to no effort.
"If your father and my grandfather could do it... train to the breaking point and keep going... I need to do the same. It's the only way I'll ever be able to measure up..."
"It was senzu beans!"
As calmly as Trunks tried to keep, he couldn't let Pan continue with this line of thought.
"Goku had a whole bag of senzu beans on hand when he got onto the ship. Each time he reached his breaking point in a hundred times gravity, he took one senzu and started the process over and over. When he touched down on Namek, he only had three left. That's how much of them he needed."
More and more, Pan was filling in all the pieces.
"The Time Patrol has many things, Pan, but we don't have that always-ready boundless supply Earth does. No one in Toki Toki City, not even the toughest Saiyans here, can grow in power like your grandfather and my father did."
This information and context should've been clearing her mind, but instead, her mind kept going back to that day.
"It only took one senzu bean for Vegeta to be Recoome's better. Two later and nothing's changed for me."
Trunks knew better than to try correcting that she had gained at least some power from both senzus and continued listening.
"The Supreme Kai of Time was in that horrible state because I couldn't power-up enough. Next time, she needs me to be better. I promised her."
"The Supreme Kai of Time didn't want you to beat yourself up over it or to work yourself to death so this would never happen again. She wanted you to take it easy... rest."
"How can I take it easy with what's to come?! It'll only get worse with each mission. Towa's counting on me to take it easy."
"You were hard on yourself that day, Pan, but not like this. Something changed."
He put a hand on her shoulder.
"What was it?"
Pan let herself slide down, sitting with her back against the wall as Trunks backed up, then did the same on the opposite end.
"Ever since I saw Turles again... alive... realizing my efforts weren't what won the day... I've had dreams of Vegeta and Goku. And in all these dreams, their sentiment is always the same: that I don't belong there. That it's too much for me to handle. That I'm better off not getting involved. Better off staying home."
She looked away, but Trunks could see a lone tear escape her eye.
"That it's no place for anyone but a pure-blooded Saiyan..."
He scooted forward, but kept a short distance.
"With everything you've done so far, you know it can't be true."
"The last nightmare I had: me, wanting to help, do my part... and having to watch Goku and your father take care of it... again... and again... and again. I keep growing, getting older, and it's still the same: Goku and Vegeta take care of everything always... because they're beyond me."
Trunks kept silent, letting himself hear and take in all the hurt she felt.
"Even as I'm at the end of my life, those two haven't aged one bit, always looking the exact same. My sun sets... but theirs never will. And I never amount to anything."
Another tear came down from the opposite eye.
"Growing up, I thought human potential was limitless. That they could match or even surpass Saiyans. But here, I realize it was only a fantasy of a child. It's so slow. So unbearably slow compared to Goku and Vegeta."
She wiped her eyes with her wrist as she began to tear up more.
"I've been looking down on my humanity. Treating it like a crutch... something holding me back."
She covered one eye with her hand.
"I thought my mother and grandmother were two of the strongest warriors on the planet. But now I can't stop thinking 'What are they compared to Saiyans?' My grandmother fought in one tournament and then she was done. And my mother... she did so much. She won tournaments. She fought crime while she was in school. But all everyone will remember of her was her defeat."
The image from her youth seeing her mother rung out flashed before her eyes.
"Spopovich: that's her legacy. That's all she'll ever be remembered for."
Her nose sniffled, trying in vain to wipe away the snot beginning to leak from her nostrils.
"Every time I think of them, a voice inside me keeps looking down at them. Like they're nothing. Like they're everything holding me back."
One of her hands struck the ground as her sadness mixed with anger at herself.
"I can't stand thinking like this. I don't want to think like this anymore. But that voice... that part of me keeps saying it over and over. I want it to stop, but it won't. It just keeps repeating."
Trunks came as close as he could without touching her, seeing tears streaming down her face as she made no attempt to hide how she felt at this point. It was the most he had seen her break down since she arrived.
"That I'm a failed mixture. That I'm not pure... not like those two are. I hate myself for thinking like this. I want to go back to before I thought like this, but I can't... and I never will."
Both her hands were towards her eyes and she began to hunch downward towards her knees.
"If everyone from my world saw what I am now, they would know the truth: that I'm not a successor. I'm no heir apparent of Goku's legacy. I'm not strong like he is. I'm not tough enough. I'm just a... just a..."
Pan couldn't bring herself to finish and Trunks, tearing up himself, pulled her gently towards him for a hug. He held her close as she freely sobbed into his shoulder just as Trunks had once before when she did the same for him. For the longest time, he couldn't think of what to say to comfort her, so he simply remained in place.
Once Pan finally began to sit back up, Trunks letting her go, he had something to say to her.
"You're not weak. And you're no failure. Not even close. You're struggling and you don't have all the answers, but you will get through this. Not because of your lineage or your bloodline…"
He started to stand up, offering Pan a hand to help her up.
"But because of you... and you alone."
Taking Trunks' hand, she was back on her feet.
"I know you won't stop training any time soon, but give yourself the time to heal and recharge. With everything you've been through and how far you've come, you deserve a breather."
She wiped away what was left of her tears, then hugged him back.
"Thank you, Trunks."
She had descended to a dark place, but now she could take the steps to get out of it.
Taino stood at the academy grounds and saw Trunks nearby.
"Have you seen Pan anywhere? She's always right here before I even arrive and I haven't seen her yet."
"She's taking today off."
Taino was struck by this.
"She and I have been training constantly. She wouldn't take any days off. Yesterday, she..."
"Don't worry," Trunks reassured her. "Pan's getting much earned rest. I think you would agree that she's more than earned it."
Hale, who hadn't seen Beetro in some time, saw him clear as day in the plaza.
"It's been some time."
"Indeed it has, Commander."
Beetro was caught off-guard as he was pulled in for a hug.
"Just Hale, Beetro. Just Hale."
The Saiyan medic simply smiled as he hugged Hale back.
Pan, her training attire having been repaired and folded neatly, was sleeping soundly in her bed in her pajamas instead of twisting and turning.
Instead of dreaming of her grandfather and Vegeta, she saw herself standing with her mother and grandmother. Pan knelt in front of them, at first sobbing and taking both their hands.
"I'm so sorry. I never meant to... never wanted to..."
"Pan, honey..." her mother interrupted, clearly not angry or upset with Pan.
Both slowly gestured Pan back up, then opened their arms for a hug between all three of them. She put her arms around both as their arms went around her. Even with it being a dream, Pan felt a warmth she had not felt in some time.
"I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you two," continued Pan. "I won't forget that again. I promise."
"Your mother and I will always be with you."
"We love you so much, Pan."
Pan's regrets soon gave way to a renewed joy as she nodded to both of them.
"I love you too."