So here we are, facing the momentous decision. It's chapter 16, folks, and I promise it will be the most dramatic yet! Please, keep reviewing and let me know what you think!

"I'm going to save Pan, but first I'm going to go find my clothes. If you'll excuse me..." He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving a startled Bulma to follow him out.

"Trunks! Trunks!" Bulma started to race after her only child, but fell flat on her face. It was only then that she realized that she was wearing three inch heels. "Damn shoes!" she screamed, scaring a nearby nurse. She ripped them off and threw them at the nurse. "Catch that man!" She pulled herself to her feet and stampeded through the hallway. "What do you think you're doing, Trunks? When I catch you..." she cursed him in a thousand different ways, even calling him "the spitting image of his father," but he didn't even flinch at the sound. Trunks knew what he must do, and nothing would stop him from becoming the savior of the woman he loved.

Trunks, out of breath, finally stopped in front of the room where he had spent the last few months of his life. He could hear his mother coming behind him, but he didn't care anymore. He moved as if in a trance, unaware of the surroundings. In his mind, there was nothing but Pan. Pan was his focus, his love, and now he could finally save her. The door to her room was open, left there by a careless nurse or doctor, and Trunks silently stalked into the room. He closed the door just in time to stop his mother from entering, and when she tried to turn the knob on the door, he very calmly shot it with a power blast strong enough to melt the lock into place. Bulma hit the door with all of her might, sobbing for her son to let her in. Eventually she realized that it didn't matter what she said, and she simply sat down next to the door to await whatever happened, and to finally cry out all of her frustration.

Trunks was finally alone in Pan's hospital room. He looked down on her resting form and tears immediately rose to his eyes. He remembered her as she had looked before she was raped, the strong woman whom he had learned to respect and even love. Then he remembered her as she was in the Other World, soft and giving, but hard when she needed to be. She had told him exactly what to do, in crazy detail, but he wasn't sure if he could do it.

Flashback

"You are not to touch me. If you do, I will be gone forever. I can't give you any more explanation than that, but you have to believe me. Before you pull the plug on me, you can't touch me. Before you take me off of the life support, I need you to gather a few things around me. One is a picture of you and I together. The one that is in you walet is fine."

"Oh, Pan honey, I had that put in a necklace that I put around your neck long ago. I thought maybe it would help you know that we still love you and care about you." Trunks reached out and slowly slid his arm around Pan's slight body. When she didn't struggle but came willingly into his arms, his heart skipped a beat and he hoped that they would have the opportunity to sit like this many times in the future.

"Well, good. That's good, one less thing for you to find. Another thing you're going to have to have is a strand of your hair. That shouldn't be too hard to comeby. And one more thing. I need a scrap of the dress that I wore... that night. Can you do that?" Pan turned her big brown eyes onto him, trying to read his blue eyes.

"Of course I can do that. The dress scrap would be the hardest if I didn't know exactly where it was. But I know I can do it. This will be hard, but what happens after I kill you?"

She shuddered in fear. "Please don't say it like that! I won't be dead, I'll just be drifting, that way I can find my body again. After you... pull the plug... you'll just need to touch me in some way that's not on my face. You can not cry, and you have to have the ultimate faith in my ability to fight my way back into it. If you don't, I won't have the strength to maintain a heartbeat. Do you understand?"

Trunks looked down on the woman that he loved and realized that if she had told him that the only way to save her was to jump of a building, he would do it. "I do, darling, and I can't wait to see you on the other side. Well, Pan, this is an impressive plan, and....

End Flashback

Trunks slowly reached up his hand toward his head and plucked a hair from it. He placed the hair on Pan's bosom, close to where the picture was. He reached underneath the bed and pulled out the tattered remains of her dress, once something that brought her so much pleasure, now something that had brought her so much pain. He ripped a piece from it and placed it next to the hair.

Trunks carefully, with deliberate action, reached over to the life support machine and ripped the plug out of the wall. He took both of Pan's hands into one of his own, and sat praying silently for any sort of a sign. Please, anyone who can hear me, please let her live. Please! I'll do anything... I love her so much, and I don't know if I'll get the chance to tell her...

He watched the blood run from her face. She began to become even more pale than she was before and her dark hair was a stark contrast from her sickening white skin. Tears began to form in his eyes.

"I was too late..." he whispered to himself. He lept to his feet in rage, completely surrounded by his emotions. Then louder, almost a howl, he screamed, "I was too late!"

"Too late for what?" a tiny voice from beneath him. Immediately his head cleared and he stared at the tiny girl beneath him. "Too late for what, Trunks? Have we missed dinner already?"

Trunks couldn't speak. He just sobbed and sobbed. He wrapped Pan up in his arms and wouldn't let her go. He was afraid that if he let her go physically, she might go back to the Other World. Pan stared around in confusion before asking quietly, "Trunks? Where are we? Why aren't we at home? Did I miss something?"

Trunks drew back from her in a heartbeat. He stared piercingly into Pan's dark brown eyes and asked in a voice filled with terror, "You don't remember anything that happened?" Realization stabbed him like a knife as she slowly nodded her head. She didn't know that he loved her, and she didn't know that she had been brutally raped. Though the joy of knowing that Pan was alive and well again filled him in a way that he never thought it could, the knowledge that all they had done in the Other World had never happened for Pan, that it was a memory only shared by him, was enough to knock him off his feet.

Trunks sat and stared at Pan helplessly, not knowing what to do, until his mother finally found someone to open the door for her and ran into the room. "Pan! Oh Pan, you're alright! Oh, my baby girl, I'm so glad you're okay!" Bulma pushed Trunks out of the way and immediately started hugging Pan. Though Pan smiled, it never quite reached her eyes. She needed to know exactly what had happened, and somehow, deep inside, she knew that Trunks would never be able to tell her completely what had gone on between them.

End of Chapter 16!

Well, well, what do you think? Let me know! I was on the rocks for this story for so long, never knowing how I truly wanted this part to turn out, but here it is, and I hope you like it. I hope it was worth the wait, and I've finally found a true friend who will upload these for me on her computer, so you might get another chapter soon. I love all of you who reviewed, and thank you for continuing to read this story. I really have put a lot of thought into it, so I hope it's everything you could want it to be.

Love,

Pan-chan

PS: Just a few notes to my reviewers!

animewriter: I know I've left you in suspense for a while, but please still keep reading it! I hope this chapter is everything you've been waiting for.

Anonymous: Okay! Okay! Okay! Okay! Okay! Thanks for caring!