CHAPTER 33:
Growing Up

Under a layer of sheets, Pan brought her knees to her chest and breathed deeply, trying to hold back her tears. She didn't know how she could still be crying. Every day, she shed more tears, even during the few moments of happiness she could share in the smallest things, whatever they may be. There were little things in her life she could pretend to smile about, pretend to enjoy, but deep in her heart, she was fading. A part of her was dying, as even the tiniest things would trigger memories, of her family, of her friends, of her Grandpa…

It had been nearly two months since they found out they were the only people in the world that escaped Baby's spell. They were living in a Capsule house in the forest, and all communication with the outside world was lost a long time ago.

Pan had been full of questions lately, constantly pondering the fate of the world. How long would this last? Until the end of time? What was going to happen to the Earth? Would the world explode and people continue to live on as Tuffles on the giant red planet that waxed and waned on the horizon? What would happen to herself?! Would she go on through life as an outcast, living in hiding…? Living in fear?

And if she rose up to face Baby… What could she do? She knew how powerful Vegeta's body was. She had never been able to come even close to matching him during their sparring sessions. Even her Papa, without having seriously trained for almost twenty years, was more powerful than her. If she went to face them, she would die. And then who would be left to save them? Who would be able to rescue them from Baby's reign?

Two months had gone by, and all Pan could do was sit and wait. There was nothing to wait for. It wasn't like her Grandpa was coming back. It was more like stalling, too scared to actually face her problems, but too proud to run away from them. But to where could she run? To whom?

Time was just ticking by and the most she had achieved was sneaking off to West City for the first month after they were forced to live in hiding, to climb one of the giant trees next to Capsule Corp., spending time hiding in the branches, looking in through Trunks' window, to a dark room most of the time, but during which time she would think about her life… What it used to be… How she used to be so happy back before any of this had happened. She could clear her mind and think of happier thoughts when watching Capsule Corp, even though she was so close to where Baby lived.

Once in a while, she would get a glimpse of Trunks, usually right before bed. He looked normal – his usual calm self, with a stoic look on his face as he would fold clothes and put them away. Every now and then, he'd briefly glimpse out the window, but only to see that it was dark. Pan never dared to go to West City in broad daylight.

She stopped those occasional visits after a month had passed and nothing had changed except more people were being gathered into West City, to prepare for the launch that would take them all to the Planet Tuffle, as if the world were undergoing a massive pilgrimage. And a month after that, now two months after she lost her Grandpa and Trunks, the only thing she had done was learn to daydream of nostalgia and what her life used to be like.

Every day now, Pan felt like her life had less and less meaning. Two months, and what had she accomplished? Nothing. Nothing except learning how to survive on Majin Buu's sweets, her Gramps' cooking, and sneaking in and out of cities. She found herself unable to eat much nowadays. Her food just looked bland, and it tasted sour, and everything in her life was just… pointless. Her life had no purpose, and she felt it every time she took a breath, every time she took a bite, every day she woke up and every night she would try to fall asleep.

Two months of depression, and every day, she felt it more. It always loomed in the back of her mind, how the world she and Trunks and her Grandpa worked so hard to save… was going to meet its end… at the beginning of next winter. And it was all her fault. If she had noticed… If she had seen that Dende and Mr. Popo were acting strange… No, that's not right. If she had acted on the fact that she did notice they were acting strange, then this whole situation wouldn't have happened. Well, no, that's not true, because Baby came before they landed on Earth. But if she and Trunks and her Grandpa could have killed that parasite back on M2, everything would have been better. If this… and if that… If she could have changed the past… If… If…

Pan cried into her pillow, for the third time that day, realizing she was just fooling herself into believing that she could have made a difference. She… She never made a difference. She had convinced herself that Trunks and her Grandpa needed her on the trip, but they could have handled everything fine. If her Uncle Goten would have gone, they never would have gone back to M2 in the first place. If was only because she begged and pleaded to them that they gave in… And it was her fault… It was her fault that they even discovered Baby. If Baby never would have met them, and came to Earth later… then there might have been a chance… They might have been able to fight him.

All she ever did was screw things up. It was all her fault that her Grandpa was gone… And now that she was the last Saiyans, one of the only three to escape Baby, she couldn't even avenge her own family. The Tuffles were right… Pan was just a worthless piece of trash…

Pan shook her head against the pillow and choked on her tears. She had to stop thinking like that if she ever wanted to get better and gain any confidence to fight Baby. She refused to go down without a fight. If they came for her… if they found her, she would resist to the death. She wouldn't just give in like Trunks must have – that stupid, stupid, lame pathetic excuse for a Saiyan. She hated him! She hated him with every ounce of her passion because… because he was the reason they weren't in space right now, gathering the dragonballs, making a wish so the people could be normal again…

The dragonballs… All it would take is a single wish... That's all. But the dragonballs were scattered… And without a space ship…

Pan suddenly stopped breathing and opened her eyes wide. In her panic, in her shock and depression for so long, she had completely forgotten about the dragonballs! The Earth's dragonballs! Dende's Red-Star-Dragonballs.

Pan sat up in bed and released the pillow she had been holding. Taking a deep breath, she wiped her tears from her eyes and brushed her lengthening hair back with her fingers. She would find the dragonballs somehow. She wouldn't be able to fly, or else Baby or her Papa or someone else could sense her. She'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, using ground transportation like Bulma did when she was younger, or the Flying Nimbus… The Flying Nimbus… The cloud that refused riders unless they were pure of heart.

She hadn't ridden the Flying Nimbus in years. She didn't even know if she could ride on it anymore. What kind of person had she become? A girl who let her grandpa die and her best friend fall under Baby a second time? A girl who was useless? A girl too weak, too young, too stubborn to be any good to the world? Without her family, she was nothing. She was nothing special.

Her Grandpa… Now he was special. He was a true hero. And, her Papa was a hero. Her Gramps befriended Buu and thus became a hero. Trunks saved her life before she was going to die in that star, and he became a hero. She didn't even know what Vegeta or her Uncle Goten did that could have made them heros, since she never talked to them about what they had achieved in their lives, but she was more than sure that they both were heros, even if her Uncle Goten had saved a girl from choosing the wrong ice cream flavor on one of their dates.

And she… She was no hero. She always tried to take credit for things, or blame other people for faults. She always acted tougher than she was, as if trying to prove something to people, like she made a difference just because she had the ability to stand out. She would come home crying to her Papa and Mama about how people only appreciated her because she was the granddaughter of someone, versus being someone, herself, and she had blamed her misery on the world… when, in fact, all this time, she was just angry with herself.

She was such a hypocrite! For years, she expected people to appreciate her for being her, but in actuality, now that she looked back on it, she wanted people to appreciate her for being her, the granddaughter of two heros. And then she went and cried over the fact that people associated her with her grandparents! She had set herself up in her own loop of misery, and she blamed it on everyone else!

So how… how would she be able to ride Nimbus? How would she be able to ride it when she had so much spite, self-inflicted hatred and pity, and lived one giant lie to herself?

And even if she could ride it, what would she do from there? Fly around the world and search every nook and cranny, behind every rock, within every blade of grass? That would be impossible to do without the dragon radar. And the dragon radar was off-limits to her. How would she be able to get the dragon radar? Giru was inside of Capsule Corp. and she hadn't seen the robot since she last saw Trunks, the real Trunks, on the Lookout, right before her world got turned upside-down. And that seemed so long ago. So much had changed since then. And Giru, he was missing inside of Baby's lair, and he would be incredibly difficult to retrieve.

It was one thing to hide behind the leaves of a deciduous tree, but another matter completely if she thought she could actually waltz into the lair of Baby and Trunks and anyone else in there that could find her, without encountering a series of unfortunate events. She would have go into Capsule Corp. at a time when everyone would be out. But what event would gain the attention of everyone at Capsule Corp. at once?

Pan sprang to her feet when an epiphany came to her. The launch! The launching of the giant spaceship! How could she not have foreseen it?! Everyone would be there, seeing the first crew off to the new planet. That would be the perfect time! Perhaps Baby himself, and all his posse, would do Pan the honor of shipping themselves off to Tuffle as well, so she could start flying again without worrying about being caught.

And once they all were gone, she'd be able to train again, so she could get stronger. Maybe… maybe if she trained a bit, somehow tapped into that power that she had felt twice before… maybe it could help her, even just a little bit. But the problem was that she didn't know what she did before, and it wasn't like the power randomly swarmed over her like the power her papa described as becoming a Super Saiyan, but rather, that it felt like it was always there, but some wall has come down and she was able to access it more easily.

It all made no sense to Pan, and she promised herself that she'd think more on it later. Later, she'd worry about things. Later, she'd solve problems. Later, she'd ponder her abilities, or worry about her family, or miss her grandpa, or think about better days. But if she continued to pray that she'd fix things later, then nothing would get done.

It was now. Things had to be done now. Like, keeping a watchful eye for the launching day. She'd make sure they would make a special trip to West City as a group. She knew what she could tell her Gramps. He and Majin Buu could stand by, just in case, and if Baby were to return to Capsule Corp. before Pan came out with Giru, then they'd cause a distraction of some sort. It might be hard to convince her Gramps to volunteer himself to be a human target, but if it could buy her time to find the dragon radar, then everything could pay off.

So that would be the plan. On "launching day", sneak into Capsule Corp, grab Giru, leave, and find all the dragonballs while Baby is a sitting duck. Once Pan would wish back her grandpa, everything would be okay. She just knew it. When he would return, things would finally be set straight. And, everyone would be rescued, including her Papa, her Mama, Uncle Goten, and Trunks.

Trunks.

Pan sat back down on the bed and reached for her pillow again. Gently taking it into her hand, she brought it to her body and hugged it tight, burying her face within it. She had gone two months without any friends other than her Gramps and, in a way, Majin Buu, though he was a little hard to talk to. Her Gramps did everything he could to cheer her up, to try to talk to her about things, about life in general. He wanted to talk about memories, and he even, for once, offered to stop talking about himself… when he remembered, that is.

It was during those talks, she realized… how boring her Gramps was. He was all talk, and no story. He had nothing interesting to say, so he would fill in plotline with his own personal vanity, fibbing slightly about how he always managed to save the day. Pan grew tired of his talks and just stopped coming out of her room except to eat, or at least try to eat. She had been feeling so incredibly friendless lately, she was getting sick from just thinking about her friends… like Trunks. Though, she felt as if she was sicker from not being able to see him than from missing him. Those brief times she'd be able to look in through his window a month before, it really helped her forget a lot of the problems she had been facing.

Perhaps she'd go again tonight. She hadn't been there for some time. While in West City, perhaps she could pick up some information about when the ship would launch its first batch of lemmings to the planet. She'd have to go in secret, though. She never told her Gramps when she'd be returning to West City. If he knew she was leaving, he'd have a heart attack, and she didn't want to worry him. He was paranoid enough as it was.

There was a soft knock on the door to her room which knocked her out of her thoughts. Pan hugged the pillow tighter and spoke into it, creating a slight muffle to her voice, "Who is it?"

That was a stupid question. Of course it was her Gramps, but it was similar to the concept of answering a telephone with "Hello" even though she would already know who was calling if someone were to call back.

"It's me, Panny! Ah wannid to tell ya that dinner is ready."

Pan sighed and loosened her grip on her pillow. She looked up, feeling the same queasy feeling she had been having lately regarding food. "I'm not hungry."

Her Gramps' voice came loudly from behind the door, "But Panny! You haven't eat'n all day!"

Pan tossed the pillow aside and walked to her closet, grabbing her red coat from her space tour. "I said I'm not hungry."

The doorknob rattled for a bit, but when her Gramps realized it was locked, he sighed and rapped on the door lightly, to gain her attention again. "Alright, well, Ah'll put your dinner in the fridge, okay? Ah hope you feel better. If ya need anyone to talk to, ye know where I'm at. Sounds like ya need to clear your mind."

Pan waited for the footsteps to go away before slipping her coat on and zipping it up. Walking up to her window and opening it wide, she looked back to her door and sighed, before jumping out and landing on the ground outside, "You're right, Gramps. I sure do."

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-12/16/04-

Warning: Long Author's Note:

Don't be misled by my fanfiction. I'm telling this through Pan's point of view.

Pan is not aware that a lot of people have managed to escape Baby's clutches. She has only been exposed to herself, Hercule, and Majin Buu. But there are 8 others: (1) Piccolo, (2) Seventeen, (3) Uub, (4) Master Roshi, (5) Oolong, (6) Turtle, (7) Puar, and (8) Goku.

As I said before, I'm elaboring on what GT has presented. We know that Piccolo is not under Baby's control in GT because he never fights by Baby's side. We also know that Piccolo is aware of Baby. In the episode where Gohan gets possessed, Piccolo challenges him, and while Piccolo is trying to pick up Goten (if you watch the episode close, you'll see that Piccolo is holding Goten at the time), Gohan fires a Kamehameha at him and injures him. But since Goten is, in the next scene of GT, shown over at Capsule Corp, one can only assume that Piccolo dragged himself out of the ditch, delivered Goten, and went into hiding from Baby, knowing that everyone was getting possessed.

Seventeen, we can assume, is free from Baby's clutches because everyone seems to forget about him in DBZ and GT. He went into some hermit phase, vanished from Eighteen's life, and was never seen again until the Super Android 17 Saga. I hope to make use of Seventeen, even if for a cameo in my fic, so I can establish what his personality is before he goes crazy and fuses with… himself. (Ever wonder what Mirai Trunks fused with GT Trunks would look like? Sorry, but that just kinda spurred a creative vision from my mind).

Uub, as GT makes known, has escaped by hiding in the mountains; Master Roshi and his entourage are hiding in a submarine off the coast of Roshi's Island; and Goku is very much alive and kicking over on the Kais' planet.

So that covers where everyone is. Don't be misled by the fact that I'm writing everything through Pan's point of view, because she's not aware of a lot of things happening in the story.

GT focused more on Goku's point of view during the Baby Saga. I'm assuming that most people have seen GT and know that Goku is currently playing a never-ending board game in another dimension and/or training under Ancient Kai and Kibito Kai. My intention is to write what's happening on Earth, this time around. I wish that GT centered more on what Pan was going through during the Baby Saga. Now, you guys can experience it.

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One last thing: Next Chapter (Chapter 34) is going to be Rated R. I will put a full disclaimer up, and, just to make sure people don't get tempted to read it, I will put a summary of my next chapter BEFORE my chapter begins, so I'm sorry if the summary acts as a spoiler, but I don't want little kids reading the Rated R portion. I feel that 13 year olds are old enough to read adult situations, but to keep my arse safe on fanfiction. net, I'm going to have to offer a summary. If you don't read the summary, and feel like you can handle the real chapter, then be my guest. I'm just giving this as fair warning of what is to come.

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Woo, that's it for my Author's Notes. I haven't written any of those in a while ; )