The first thing that Pan felt when she started to wake up was a dull pain in her fingers. She blearily thought about the fact that her father was going to ground her for a month for not stopping when he demanded it.

'Oh well' Pan thought, 'I'll cross that bridge when I get out of bed.'

Wait...bed?

The quarter saiyan suddenly shot out of bed, startling a man sitting there on his phone. Where the hell was she? Some sort of hospital? Why wasn't she just given a senzu bean?

"Oh good, you're awake! I thought I was gonna have to pull an all-nighter when I brought you here." The man sighed in relief.

Now that Pan was properly awake, she could fully observe her surroundings. She was in a hospital, that much was obvious, with all its machinery and tools that one would expect in one. As for the man in the room, upon closer inspection, he hardly exuded the heroic aura Pan expected from someone saving people. With his thin looking suit and tie, the orange haired man looked more like the salespeople constantly trying to scam Bulma out of her money.

But as she learned throughout her many battles, appearances could be quite deceiving.

"So," Pan decided that she might as well get the introductions away fast so she could leave as soon as possible. "I'm Pan Son, and you are...?"

The man instantly straightened his spine. "Reigen Arataka, the greatest psychic of the 21st century!" Reigen gave a thumbs up and grinned at her with an award winning smile.

Pan wasn't impressed.

"Never heard of you," Reigen deflated slightly at her words, but something crucial caught her attention.

"Wait...did you just say 21st century? You do know that we're in the 8th century right now, right?" What was up with this guy? Was he testing her to see if her memory was in place?

Apparently not, as Reigen cautiously asked, "Are you sure you're feeling alright? Because the 8th century is like... Nara period Japan." Fuck, if she had permanent brain damage, her parents would sue his ass to Sunday.

Pan felt a deep sinking feeling in her gut. "Where exactly am I? Reigen, did you see my dad anywhere? He's pretty muscular, with a blue fighting gi."

'Okay Pan, calm down. Maybe you didn't go to another planet from that black hole thing. Maybe you just teleported a couple miles away.'

Even though she definitely couldn't sense her father. Or any of the Z-Fighters anywhere.

Pan cooled herself down. She's been through worse, she'll get through this. She always has.

Reigen stared at her for a couple of seconds before he finally said, "No, I didn't see anyone like that. The hospital also wasn't able to identify you to contact your parents either. It's like you don't even exist." At Pan's look of despair, he quickly added, "Alright, how about you just tell me your parents' address and so that I can explain everything to them directly. Clear up any misunderstandings."

Pan looked a bit hesitant at giving her address to a complete stranger, but did as she was told. She didn't really have a choice.

Reigen looked up the address, then cursed, "It's coming up completely blank whenever I try to look it up." Pan sunk into her bed at the news. She was really gone.

Probably for good, just like her Grandpa.

Reigen, on the other hand, felt considerably guilty at this. 'There's a high chance that whatever that old fart did at that esper facility place somehow brought her here. Jesus, I only just found out that other psychics exist like, an hour or so ago. Do I really need to add dimension travel to that list?!'

"Pan, I know this sounds outlandish, but you just might be...from another world." Reigen cringed, for fucks sake it sounded like a plot to a shitty isekai anime, but it was the only explanation. There was absolutely no record of her anywhere, and it wasn't like she was from an isolated tribe or anything because she was clearly familiar with modern technology.

Reigen sat down right beside her and made direct eye contact with her. He smiled and said, "Don't worry though. We WILL bring you back to your world. If there was a way that you came here, there has to be a way that we can somehow...reverse the process, so to speak." Reigen didn't know if she bought it, but she gave a weak smile in return, so that was probably a good sign.

After a few moments of silence, Pan couldn't help but ask. "So I'm guessing that weird energy had something to do with why I'm here?"

Reigen sighed, "Seems like it." The conman turned to face Pan, "...I think I should explain more about the energy that brought you here."

Pan listened as Reigen explained to her what he knew about espers and their various psychic powers. He also explained that there were spirits in this world that only espers could see, and that it was the job of psychics to exorcise the ones that caused people harm.

After the lecture, Pan asked, "So, are you one of these psychics then?"

"Yep," Reigen replied with a straight face. "There's also a lot of espers like those in Claw that want to use their powers to "take over the world" or some other childish crap. You actually happened to appear at the place that we were fighting them at."

'Weird, I don't sense any of that psychic energy coming from him. Maybe he's just really good at hiding his energy like in my world. That probably means he's super strong!'

Pan suddenly felt apprehensive. 'Should I tell him about my ki? I mean, I guess it's only fair since he told me about his psychic powers.'

"Hey, Reigen?" The conman looked up from his phone.

"Yeah Pan?"

The quarter-saiyan shifted in her bed, "The truth is, I have a sort of special power as well."

And so the roles were reversed, the lecturer became the lectureree.

When Pan finished explaining the basics of what her ki allowed her to do, like flight, energy blasts, and super strength, Reigen was understandably pretty surprised.

"Hmm, if it's not too much to ask Pan, could you show me this...ki thing?" He wasn't ignorant, he knew that supernatural powers existed, but he just wanted to make sure that she actually had powers and wasn't just brain-damaged.

Pan hesitated for a bit, then nodded. "I guess I can show you some of it." She held out one of her hands, and concentrated.

Slowly but surely, a bright white light started to grow in her hand until eventually, it was the size of a basketball.

Reigen just stared at the energy, "...Well I'll be damned. You really do have powers." Pan giggled a bit at his face-stricken expression.

Reigen cleared his throat. "So, I think for now we need to focus on your living situation. Since you probably don't have any money, you can stay at my place for the time being. I mean, I guess you could stay at a homeless shelter too, but I personally don't recommend that..." Pan made a face at this.

"How do I know you won't do any creepy stuff, huh?"

Reigen sighed, "I understand if you're uncomfortable, but I can assure you that I'm no pedo. If I really wanted to do bad things to you, I would have done so when you were unconscious. Also, I actually have a teenage employee about your age, and he can vouch that I'm not creepy towards him." Of course, Reigen wasn't entirely sure if Mob would even be emotionally equipped to deal with a child predator.

Best not to think that right now.

Pan stared at Reigen's face hard before relenting, "Alright then."

Just as Reigen was about to respond, the nurse that Reigen met from before came in. She smiled when she saw Pan sitting up.

"Ah you're awake, thank goodness! How is your head feeling?"

"It's fine." Being a super powered being made her a bit more resilient than normal.

"Good! If you're feeling fine enough to walk, you can leave right now. Otherwise, we can give you some ibuprofen." Pan shook her head.

"I don't need it, but thanks anyway." Pan responded with a blunt but polite tone.

Reigen started to get up, with Pan soon following suit. "Well, guess that's our cue to leave. Come on Pan, let's go."

"Right."

By the time Reigen and Pan made their way out of the hospital, there was a taxi already waiting for them, courtesy of Reigen's foresight

They both got in with little fanfare, and besides Reigen telling the driver his address, neither of them spoke for the entire trip, too busy processing recent events.

.

.

.

Reigen's apartment was small, to say the least, and it was obvious that Reigen wasn't used to having guests over given how he was hastily cleaning up various pieces of junk from the floor.

Being used to living in an upper-middle class home herself, Pan was more than a little put off, but knew not to complain. If she could handle living in a crowded spaceship with Grandpa, she could handle an apartment from a shady man.

When the apartment looked somewhat presentable, Reigen gestured around it.

"Well, make yourself at home. I got to go to work early tomorrow, so sorry I can't give you a more extensive tour. Not that there's much here, but still."

Pan then asked, "Reigen, if it's not too much to ask, could I come with you to your job tomorrow?"

Reigen raised an eyebrow. "Did you just want to see me use my psychic powers?" The "psychic" questioned in a bemused tone.

"Yeah, pretty much." Pan really wanted to see what this psychic power was, and how it compared to her powers. Oh, she knew that psychic powers existed in her world as well, she was told by her Grandpa how Frieza telepathically picked up Krillin and blew him up. But as far as she knew, no one else really used psychic powers nowadays in her world, if at all. This could be a chance for her to learn something new and get stronger.

'Well she's definitely more headstrong than Mob.' Reigen thought to himself.

"Sure, I don't see why not. I'm a worker down tomorrow anyway, so I could use the help." He would probably just give her busy work if her Ki powers couldn't exorcise spirits.

"Also, one more thing. You said that I was brought to this world at the place you were fighting those evil espers, right?"

"I mean, I wouldn't really call them evil so much as childish, but yeah, what about them?" Reigen thought he had an idea what she was referring to.

"Was there anything that one of them did that created a black hole?" And there it was.

Reigen sighed, "Yeah, as a matter of fact there was." Pan hitched her breath.

"There was this one old guy in a suit. Had a large gash on his face, you couldn't miss him if you tried. He was the leader of the group of espers trying to kill a bunch of middle schoolers 'cause he had nothing better to do with time apparently. Anyway, his main shtick was that he could control gravity, and he used that to create this giant black hole to try to suck us in."

"And then we found you after that." Reigen finished off lamely.

Pan took a second to process all this. She had one of her questions answered, but now she had a dozen more. Like why did it suck in her specifically? Was it because she was charging her Special Beam Cannon? If so, why did it suck in her and not her dad?

"Do...you know where I could find him?" Pan immediately regretted asking that when she saw Reigen's face pale.

"No, and honestly, I don't want to know. That guy was the literal definition of a spoiled man-child. As long as he doesn't cause trouble with his powers again, I don't want to go anywhere near him."

"But he's the only one that could possibly know how to reverse this!" Pan protested with wide eyes. This was probably her only chance to get back home, besides Bulma somehow coming up with an invention that could transport to this world.

At this, Reigen hesitated. "That may be true, but you're still a child. First thing tomorrow, I'll accompany you to go to the facility, and HOPEFULLY he'll have matured by then, if he's even still there. Enough to help us, at least." Reigen highly doubted it would go down like this, but they had to try.

"Alright." Pan begrudgingly agreed. Although that's what she said, she secretly had plans to seek out the place later when Reigen was sleeping.

"Good. I'll show you where you'll be sleeping tonight…"

.

.

.

"Any luck Bulma?"

Son Gohan was pacing around Capsule Corp., with Bulma as his audience.

Bulma Briefs, heir of Capsule Corp., shook her head negatively.

"I'm afraid not. That strange energy that we picked up was unlike anything we've ever sensed before. And Pan is nowhere to be found."

Gohan cursed, "Then how the hell do we get my daughter back?! We can't use the Dragon Balls as some secret cheat code anymore!" The normally composed scholar was slowly losing his cool. It was bad enough that he lost Pan in space, now she was lost in god knows where!

"Well...I have an idea. But it's a bit risky. Actually, scratch that, VERY risky."

"I'll do it," Gohan said immediately.

Bulma resisted the urge to roll her eyes. 'He didn't even listen to my idea.'

"Wait right here." Bulma typed in the password to a secret compartment that only she knew about. A couple seconds later, a dome popped out from her desk which carried a capsule.

She took it out, and threw it a fair distance away. When the smoke cleared, Gohan's jaw dropped.

"Is-Is that the time machine?!"

Bulma grinned, "The very same one that Cell used to come to this timeline! It'll need some freshening up, but I think we can get it up and running in no time!"

Gohan became confused after the initial excitement wore off. "But Bulma, I still don't really see how this is gonna help find Pan."

"Oh, we're not going to travel through time, necessarily." Bulma clarified. "You see, the normal time machine travels by picking a point A, the time you're coming from, and a point B, the time you want to go to. Obviously, that's the extremely simplified explanation, but that's basically the gist of it. The real problem comes from the fact that this energy that Pan was sucked in was entirely unfamiliar to us, which caught me off guard because we don't actually know if Pan really did travel through time or not."

Bulma then typed something in, which then projected a screen of the sight where Pan was taken. "But now that we've been given time to properly scan it, we've registered the energy in the time machine's database so it knows to recognize it. Unfortunately, there's not enough left for us to use. It usually spikes up, but then quickly spikes right back down."

The half-saiyan quickly caught on. "You're saying that if that strange energy spikes up for long enough, we can use it as a gateway to go to wherever Pan is?"

"In theory, yes. Really, all we can do now is wait for that energy to spike up again for long enough and use that as a reference point for the time machine."

Gohan had to ask, "Is that energy increasing or decreasing right now?"

Bulma ran it through some scanners who were at the site. "It seems it's increasing, at least for now, so that's a good sign." Gohan breathed a sigh of relief.

'Thank god. Stay safe wherever you are, Pan. I promise to you on my life, I will find you no matter what.'