Pan had a sick feeling in her stomach now, remembering it.

For many years afterwards, she would think about Goten's expression in that terrible moment. He had loped over hopefully in Goku and Chi-Chi's garden and asked her if she wanted to spar. He had something new to teach her, if she wanted. Crooked, good-natured smile. Uncannily like his father, and at fifteen almost already as tall.

"I don't have time," she had said, not looking up from the book in her lap. "Some of us want to do well in school."

She had glanced up then, just in time to catch the look of surprise, and the hardening of his features as he turned away, saying nothing.

Sometimes she would try to rewrite the scene in her mind, as if that might have prevented what happened in the days afterwards.

"I didn't mean that, Goten. I'm worried about gymnastics try-outs. Sparring's just what I need actually. I'll dodge with some of the moves I need to practice, it'll be fun." She could have punctuated this one with a deft little cartwheel to lighten the mood.

"Uncle, I can't right now. But I brought you that book I mentioned last time, it's in my bag. What if we read together first, and then we spar?" That wouldn't have worked, in retrospect, because she hadn't bothered to bring the book.

"I failed a test last week and I lied to my father about it. The pressure is getting to me, Goten. Do you ever feel that way too?" Maybe they'd have sat together cross-legged on the ground, glad they had each other, sibling-like in their solidarity even if they weren't actually brother and sister.

Or she could have dropped her book on the grass, jumped on his back like they used to do before she reached the big old age of twelve and became so cruel and self-important. The worst part of all these thoughts was the knowledge that she would never have been capable of doing or saying any of these things. She had been far too proud.


In the days afterwards, Pan had a dream in which Goten boarded a spaceship.

She was ice-skating somehow, despite it being summer, and the ship descended in the centre of the rink. Goten, seeming to have no problem with the ice underfoot, walked towards the ship's ramp, as if to meet someone he knew. Pan's skates kept slipping.

Every time she looked down to see what was wrong, she seemed to end up further away or heading in the wrong direction entirely. Goten, oblivious, was deep in conversation with two armoured figures. They looked human, except they were much too large — monstrously broad and tall. They were inviting him aboard.

Pan fought against the slippery pull underfoot. These people didn't look trustworthy to her. She didn't think he should go. What would Chi-Chi say about space travel on a school night? The sky was darkening fast. She was shouting, but there was no sound. They were promising him everything: he could be the strongest, better than his friend, his brother, his father, if he came with them.

As he boarded, there was the slightest turn and shake of his head, as if he thought perhaps he'd heard something, but it must have been his imagination.

On waking, Pan hurtled from her room to the kitchen, where Videl was engaged in taking everything out of the cupboards and packing them away into boxes. Pan stood for a moment, puzzled, then remembered some talk of renovations.

"Goten is going to go away."

"You're up early! Is he? Anywhere nice?"

"He's going to go to space."

Videl paused with a plate in one hand and a mug in the other.

"I haven't heard anything about that."

"I don't think he's told anyone."

"Honey, what are you talking about?" Videl's tone was strained. "Who told you this?"

Pan looked embarrassed. "I had a dream about it."

Videl continued to struggle with the boxes. She wasn't sure what to say to that.

"I imagine you dream about a lot of things, Pan."

"It was different."

"Darling, where would he go in space?"

This, Pan didn't know.

"And — why would he go?" Videl added.

But Pan looked crestfallen.

"I was mean to him last week," she admitted, looking away.

Videl looked sympathetic. "Is that what this is really about? You feel guilty about something you said? I'm sure Goten will accept your apology when you next see him. In a couple of days, in fact."

She opened a new cupboard and began to pull down glassware.

"He'll be gone by then," Pan said sullenly, from behind the open cupboard door.

"Oh, Pan!" Videl closed the cupboard a little harder than she had probably meant to, Pan thought. "I really don't have time for this today. I have so much to do."

Pan watched her move around the kitchen for several minutes. Something in her did not want to let the matter go, but she knew it sounded silly. Some people could tell the future — like Baba — but Pan had never seen the future before. There was no reason to think her dream meant anything, besides her compelling feeling that it did. There was an acid taste in her mouth as she went back to her room.

When her father came home, she tried half-heartedly to tell him too. Gohan listened, his head tilted, and when she finished he kissed her forehead and suggested an early bedtime. He wondered if maybe they ought to do something relaxing at the weekend, as a family.

Two days later Pan arrived home from school, hearing familiar voices as she let herself into the hallway. Her grandmother and grandfather were here. She hoped they'd brought the buns they knew she liked, the ones with the cashew nuts. She could hear that Bulma was here too — which was a little strange, and Krillin too— which was quite unusual. She could hear her father saying: "How do we follow him when we don't know where he's gone?"

Her stomach dropped.

"Do you think this is about him falling behind Trunks?" Bulma asked quietly. "I hope Trunks hasn't been lording it over him. I knew it wasn't a good idea to let training and fighting take over their lives — one of them was bound to overtake the other eventually, and take it hard, and now look what's happened."

Pan hovered in the doorway. She could see Chi-Chi crying. Goku tried to place a hand on her shoulder, but she wrenched away from him and continued to weep.

"He'll come back, surely he'll come back?" Krillin offered. No one answered.

As Pan came into the room, every one of them turned to look at her with mingled fear and curiosity.


She was taken to see Fortuneteller Baba by her father.

The little witch floated over to look at her, disgruntled.

"Got the sight, has she?"

Gohan explained.

"Dreams?" Baba looked deeply sceptical. "How many?"

"Just the one," Gohan looked at Pan. "I think? Is that right, sweet pea?"

Pan nodded.

Baba rolled her eyes.

"One dream does not a prophetess make. Coincidence! Or, more likely, reading the room. She picked up what was likely to happen next. We call that observation, not clairvoyance!"

Gohan frowned, and began to argue.

"Look," Baba said finally. "If she has another one, bring her back. Maybe then we can say she's got the sight. But till then," She rotated on her crystal ball, facing away, "get her out of my sight."

The witch disappeared into her house, the door swinging closed in her wake.

Gohan looked at Pan apologetically. "I told you she wasn't very nice sometimes."

"It's okay, dad." Pan looked at the closed door. When she spoke her voice was very quiet. "I'm okay."

The next dream came two years later, and was mundane by comparison. A minor car accident for Videl. Whiplash, and a few bruises.

Pan was relieved when Baba raised the bar to three dreams.

Another came, this time a portent of illness that sent Vegeta, kicking and screaming, for his first ever doctor's visit. Bulma insisted that the early intervention made all the difference. Pan was 15 by now, a gymnastics champion, and an overachiever. She didn't particularly want to go visit the cantankerous pink witch, but at Gohan's insistence she went.

"I suppose she'll have to be guided," Baba mused, floating around Pan and scrutinising her in the round.

"What do you suggest?" Gohan asked.

"She goes to a … school or something, I expect?"

"That's right."

"Well, send her here after."

Pan eyed her father pleadingly.

"How often?" Gohan's voice was strained.

"Oh, I don't know." Baba became rapidly irritable.

"Once a week?" Pan offered.

Baba looked at her as if she'd kicked her off her crystal ball. "Once a week, girl? To develop a gift like the sight?"

Pan shrank. "I have gymnastics four nights a week."

Gohan turned to her. "Pan, your main challenge at gymnastics is slowing down enough so the judges can see you. I think you won't suffer much if you drop down your training a bit."

Pan looked back at him, betrayed.

"She can come two days a week, Baba. I'll bring her."

"It's a start."

Baba zoomed up close to Pan, examining her like something she'd dug up out of the ground. Pan could feel the old woman's breath on her face, and it took all her willpower not to lean back and away from the strange, swampy smell of the little witch.

"And we'll see what else you can do." Baba added, looking thoughtful.

"Thank you, Baba. We really owe you." Gohan said.

"Owe me? Well, then next time actually bring me something," Baba replied over her shoulder, already retreating into her house.

Gohan smiled at her back, then turned to Pan and gestured at the pathway. Pan led the way, expression mutinous.


At seventeen, Pan knew herself to be a disappointment to Baba.

She was grappling with that fact, and grappling at the same time with a swamp creature that had appeared in the waters near Baba's house.

'Don't touch it!' Baba had said. But she hadn't specified what Pan should do if the creature didn't know or didn't care about this rule.

She shrieked as it tried to pull her under, firing off blasts of energy until she could extricate herself, breathing hard, from its grasp.

Pan fired a last shot of ki at the monster. It disappeared in a fine mist of foul-smelling vapour. She quickly tried to do the magical entrapment Baba had instructed her to perform on the creature's remains. To her dismay, the container came apart in her hands, the magic crumbling.

Baba came speeding around the house.

"You stupid, stupid girl!" she howled.

"What?" Pan replied. "You told me to deal with it! I dealt with it!"

"Not like that! For goodness sake. All that I've taught you, and you're still using brute force when you're dealing with things better commanded with magic."

"I don't see any reason they can't be mixed," Pan said.

Baba's eyes narrowed. "Then you're even stupider than I thought. Magic and ki use opposite systems. You do that," Baba did a mocking performance of Pan's ki assault on the creature. "And you've chased all the magic away. Then you have to wait for it to come back."

"Oh," said Pan.

"Oh!" Baba's response was scathing.

"Hello!"

They both turned to see Trunks, standing on the jetty in a college sweatshirt, taking in the scene of swamp-sodden Pan and a furious Baba.

"I came to see Pan, Baba. Gohan said I'd find you here!"

Pan wished more than anything that she could be at home in her room, applying to college. Maybe she would consider the school Trunks had just finished at. He'd studied something to do with computers, or possibly it had been space ships. She was more interested in history, but —

"Pan?" Trunks was looking at her. He'd been saying something, and she'd missed it.

"Sorry, let me just get out of this." She powered up slightly to lift herself out of the water. Baba shrieked again at the use of ki in her enchanted lake, wailing about the number of newts' eyes and lambs' hearts it took to make a body of water this magical.

They left Baba screeching incoherently and began to walk along the stone walkway.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Baba!" Pan called back. The screeching briefly escalated.

"Well, maybe you won't." Trunks said.

Pan looked at Trunks with curiosity, her clothing weighted down with water.

"You've finished your finals, right?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Free for the next few months then, huh?"

"Uh huh," Pan said, squeezing some swamp water out of her hair.

"I want to see if we can bring him home."

She didn't have to ask who. She stopped walking. Trunks strode ahead for a moment, then realised she was no longer beside him. He turned back.

"How?"

"We could use the dragon balls-"

Pan gave a snort of derision. "You mean do the thing we've tried twice already? And have him refuse again?" She thought about Chi-chi's crushed expression the second time, just over a year ago.

"If you would just let me finish. Use the dragon balls to ask where —"

"And then he's gone by the time we arrive?"

"Pan, I swear to god, if you don't let me finish what I'm saying—" His temper flared for a moment.

Pan waited, and tried to look a little contrite. There was water running down the back of her neck and she wanted to go home. She considered transmitting herself away immediately, but thought that was likely to be interpreted as rude, and Baba might actually be driven to murder if she left any more ki traces near her house today.

Trunks was continuing. "We find out where he is and we're ready with a star map and everything we need for the trip. Then, our second wish is to be taken to a nearby station or system."

"Sounds like a colossal waste of time."

His face fell.

"Marron and I are going to do it. Come or don't come." He made to leave.

"Surely Krillin and 18 are never going to agree—"

"Marron's an adult, they can't stop her. She wants to go."

"Well, I'm only seventeen." Pan felt briefly victorious, though her cheeks reddened when Trunks turned to look at her again.

"For how much longer?"

She thought about it, reluctantly. "11 days."

Trunks shrugged as if to say 'well, there you have it'.

Pan began to say something — to talk about gymnastics, training with Baba, whether she might have summer exam retakes (she knew, in truth, she would not have any retakes), but he had already taken flight, a small speck against the sky, and he showed no sign that he'd heard any of it.


Pan woke up, and lay in bed for several minutes. She was thinking. She was furious.

At first she'd thought it was her grandpa. But quickly she realised he was too young. She was looking at Goten. No longer a teenager, lankiness gone. Dressed in some unfamiliar, stiff-looking brown clothing. Above them, the clouds were forming and reforming into strange, human shapes. Some of them began to do gymnastics. Pan looked away — that was from her mind, it was not part of the vision. She had learned how to tell the difference.

Goten was presently engaged in looking through his pockets. This was not so remarkable — a vision that Goten was going to misplace the keys to his spaceship on some unidentifiable dust bowl of a planet was not very useful. What interested Pan was the person next to him, a woman sitting casually on a rock, peeling some kind of alien fruit. She tore off a slice of the blue flesh and offered it to him, her face turned upwards with a smile.

It was Marron.