Chapter Six
Pan was moved to a structurally-sound room that looked like the inside of a mushroom and bombarded once again, this time with questions. Who was that second combatant the scouters had picked up? Did she see where they went? What had she been doing awake at that time of night? (Okay, only Incendria had asked that.) Pan couldn't answer a one of them. Talking was starting to produce blood clots.
"Stop crowding her!" Incendria shoved the others out of the way. Now that most of the guards had been dispatched to pursue the "mystery invader," the only others left to shove were Ember, Gelata, and a fourth Sutova guardsman with an elfin frame and an angular brow. "She's injured and she doesn't need you smothering her. She needs me."
Incendria had just knelt to examine Pan's side when that fourth guard pulled her back.
"She needs a Prismatist capable of healing her wounds, and that's not you. Ember, repair her."
"What?" Captain Ember turned even redder than he was naturally. "That little brat? Give her a quick patch. It'll be enough for her to tell us what she saw."
"Now, Ember."
Pan would have been happy to throw in with Ember on this one. His cranky storming didn't exactly scream "compassionate bedside manner." Trying to say so only made her hack a glob of blood into her palm, though, so she could only watch as Incendria moved and he knelt in her place.
He looked at the bruising flesh, then over to Incendria and the guard, as if weighing the risks and benefits of accidentally losing his patient on purpose.
"Blue Wave Balm," He said.
Physically, breathing didn't become any easier. It was, however, significantly less painful. Pan found that with effort, she could get a few words out of her mouth. Damp words, but still.
"It's not a myth, Incendria," She said.
She coughed, and Ember snapped, "Be still! You're not better yet, and if you keep squirming, you never will be. I've only numbed the place I'll be working. I still have to pull bone out of your lung, seal the lung, and put the bone back where it's supposed to be, and I can't do that if you're gibbering."
Pan tried to hold still. She tried to count to five.
"But it's the best explanation for what happened back there," She said, barely aware she was saying it. "With no Dragon Balls left to wish on, it may be the only explanation."
She coughed.
"Damn it, I will paralyze you again if I have to!"
"It might be advisable, sir," Gelata said. "She's clearly upset and may not be able to follow basic commands."
"Ember, if you were to paralyze her, we'd have to wait until it wore off to hear what she has to say," The guard said. "Our men are out there searching right now. She might have information they need to stay alive. Just please continue. I'm sure the Saiyan knows how to wait."
Incendria patted her arm. "You're the patient. Try to be patient."
Pan was too preoccupied to laugh at the feeble joke; she needed a good way to explain what just happened. If Ember thought she'd been "gibbering" before, he'd think the rest of her story was the punchline to a bad joke. She reclined and tried to tune out Ember murmuring about Blue Wave Drainage and Red Wave Melds, to say nothing of the unnerving sensation of bits and pieces shifting around under her skin.
Finally Ember stood, dusted off his hands. "There. She's as back together as she's getting."
By that time, Pan had formed a plan. If she could get them on board with her line of thinking before delivering the punchline, they might be more open to it.
"Officer Gelata, Captain Ember, when I was escaping from the dungeon I overheard the two of you talking."
"A-about what?" Gelata asked.
"Um, the 'curse' on my hand," Pan said, wondering what else. "Didn't you say you couldn't figure out what it was, and guessed it was something from the Indigo Wave?"
"I accept I could be wrong."
"Could it have been from the Vile Wave instead?"
"That's out of the question. Wrestling the Vile Wave into any kind of useful form is impossible. Trying causes severe physical and mental trauma," Gelata said. She stroked her chin. "Although…"
"Although what?" Incendria asked.
"That would explain why you suffered so much tissue damage. Neither the Red Wave nor the Indigo Wave should have done that to you."
"Incendria," Pan said. "You told me legend said the Vile Wave could raise the dead. We had a legend like that on my planet, about a dragon who'd grant a wish to anyone who gathered seven balls together. Everyone dismissed it as a fairy tale until a Capsule Corp scientist used a high-tech radar to track the Dragon Balls down. They were real, and so was the wish. What are the chances your legends are real, too?"
"Enough of this nonsense," Ember said. "Where are you going with this, and what does it have to do with the attack on the palace?"
"What if I told you that damage you saw was done by the Vile Wave, tossed as casually as spitballs?"
"I'd want to know what master Prismatist finally managed to tame the bane of planet Ketchyn so I could find out how he did it," Gelata said. "Then dissect him."
"You might want to put down the scalpel," Pan said. "I don't know how much contact Ketchyn has with the larger universe, or how closely you follow current affairs in the North Quadrant, but I get the feeling you'd know exactly who I meant if I said I was just attacked by Emperor Frieza."
They didn't have to confirm Pan's suspicions. Incendria paled, her guard audibly gasped, and Ember and Gelata exchanged a stunned glance.
"On my homeworld, he's the murderer of the Saiyans and the face of the Planet Trade Organization. It's funny I never thought much about who he was before that, but he had to come from somewhere. That somewhere is Ketchyn, isn't it? He's a Reizomorph. That's why their ancestral tomb is here. They didn't just pick this out of their backlog of nice planets to get buried on, it's where they… where he… was born."
"Specifically, Frieza is believed to be of Arcosian descent, like myself," Gelata said. "Although nobody's sure. The Cold family's genealogy contains a lot of… creative revision. Embarrassing or unsavory members have a habit of disappearing from the books. Connection is mostly inferred from the semantics of their naming system and the Planet Trade Organization's heavy presence on Arcose."
Pan thought of Frieza, his father King Cold, and his brother Cooler, and she wondered what they would consider "embarrassing and unsavory." Sorry, Cousin Snowcone, you just didn't stomp that helpless kitten to paste like you meant it. "Does he still have family here? Or friends? Anyone who might want him back badly enough to risk making it happen with the Vile Wave? How about the Planet Trade Organization; do they have much presence on Ketchyn?"
"Absolutely not," Said the guard. It was the first thing he said directly to Pan. "Association with the Planet Trade Organization is not tolerated on Ketchyn. Offenders are dealt with very harshly, and not by the standards of your lenient North Quadrant. No one would dare consort openly with them."
"When Frieza and Cooler were children, King Cold was banished from the planet," Gelata said. "He was suspected of murdering the previous king. He'd have been executed if it had been proven, but it never could be, so he was convicted of obstructing the investigation and he and his sons were sent away. That said, he's not without his sympathizers, particularly in the Bludwald, where Cold Manor stands. It wouldn't be difficult to find someone there willing to exchange their lives for Frieza's."
"Such elements may exist," The guard said. "But there's a vast divide between 'willing' and 'able.' We're still talking about a purely theoretical method of manipulating the Prismasphere, suggested by an outsider first introduced to the concept this morning. And speaking of you." He looked hard at Pan. "Please understand I'm not saying you're lying. But would I be correct in estimating you were born long after Frieza's death, and that you've never actually seen him?"
"I just saw him. He told me…"
"Any powerful Reizomorph could have given you that name," he said. "It's just the thing to throw a Saiyan enemy off-guard."
Pan wanted to explain that her gut had recognized Frieza's presence, even if her eyes couldn't recognize his face, but Vile Wave was giving way to the Red Wave, and that didn't sound as reasonable as it had in the dead of night. "He didn't need to throw me off guard. He didn't lose control of that fight for a second."
Ember snorted. "You sound like you're impressed by that."
"Perhaps they fought in his name," the guard said. "You did say you were on the Colds', how did you put that, 'naughty list?'"
This guard, whoever he was, excelled at making Pan feel stupid. She hated that.
"Show me a picture. I'm right about this. How do you know I'm Saiyan or why I'm here, anyway? I only told Incendria."
"My sister saw no need to hide those things from me," He said.
"Incendria's your sister?" Pan said. "But that would make you…"
Incendria bowed. "May I introduce my brother, King Sulfuri."
That willowy Sutova was the king? And Pan had thought he was just another guard? Embarrassing. But he was still totally wrong. Pan would prove it. "I don't care if you believe me or not. If this Bludwald is where he came from, that's where I have to go."
"You can't," Incendria said. "You think it's dangerous inside the city? You have no idea what it's like beyond our borders. The moors are wild, uncivilized. The terrain is a deathtrap and it's crawling with wild beasts."
"I'm glad to hear it. I'm going to need as much training as I can get."
"Even if you make it to Bludwald, what are you going to do? Ask around town for the Emperor of the Universe? Dig through the tunnels below the manor? There's nothing there."
Pan took Incendria's hand. "I'm really grateful for everything you've done for me. I mean it. But I have to do this. Not just for me. For Grandma and everyone on Earth. You know if I can't stop Frieza here, he'll be on his way there next." He would, too, looking for Grandpa. What would he do when he didn't find him?
"Personally, I'm in favor of it," Sulfuri said.
What, Sulfuri was on her side now? After dressing her down when he noticed her at all?
"You can't be serious, brother!"
"I agree with the Princess," Ember said. "You can't be serious. This girl brings tragedy to our doorstep and you're just going to let her walk out of here?"
The king leaned against the wall. "I can't really stop her, now can I? Someone gave her a royal pardon. We have no grounds to detain her."
"We could make a case for protective custody," Ember said. He tried to sound smooth, but he choked on the word 'protective.'
"Could we? I don't believe she was attacked by a zombie, but I do believe she was attacked by an expert. Can you spare the manpower to repel, pursue, and detain a warrior who can do what he did to our training room?"
Ember didn't respond.
"That's what I thought. Let me ask you another question, then: how are our relations with Bludwald right now? For the sake of argument, let's say you did have the men to spare. Could you send them into town wearing our insignia and expect to get anything back but their corpses and a lot of saber rattling? Do you want to deal with the fallout of that?"
Still Ember didn't answer. At least King Sulfuri excelled at making him feel stupid, too.
"The Saiyan was able to hold her own against him. She's not openly affiliated with us. In her current disguise, she won't draw much attention. She's just the person to hunt this grub down. So I am in favor of it."
Right now, Sulfuri's resemblance to Incendria was remarkable, and she seemed to realize he'd just pulled rank on her exactly as she had Ember.
Incendria did not try to convince him further. She clenched Pan's fingers tighter. "Please don't go."
Pan, for the second time in just a few days, pulled the protective hand away.
"I'd like a map," She said.
ooo
Deep in the heart of Ketchyn, there lay a monstrous power. Long dormant, it stewed in its ancient anger silently. Its presence would have alarmed the stoutest arm and bravest heart in all the universes.
Also, Frieza was there, standing beside it. He knew he shouldn't be yelling at it, but it wasn't like the abomination could reach out and throttle him for his insolence. It slept too soundly, and after all, it was only a mirror.
"Of all the things to go wrong! Here I find myself on my own homeworld, with near-unlimited power! I have every possible advantage to finally avenge myself on Son Goku! Do you know what I don't have?"
The mirror didn't answer, being a mirror. It really was a hideous one, too; clawed fingers, or perhaps sharpened ribs, ambiguous of purpose but most certainly wicked. Even the glass, which should have been no different from any other, stretched dull under a sheen of perpetual purple-gray. It looked like reflective skin stretched over a tanning rack of charred bone. It didn't reflect true. Anyone looking into it would see only the worst aspects of what it caught. The filth, the decay, every scar or drop of blood, those were the only things it allowed in its surface. Frieza didn't mind the way his reflection looked, though. To his eyes, these so-called "flaws" only made him appear more powerful.
Power that, at the moment, didn't do him one blasted bit of good.
"Son Goku, that's what!"
The cavernous room he occupied, aside from being at the bank of an underground lake, showed other signs of construction. It was supported by six pillars and, further out against the stone wall, matching pilasters. Tied to each one with barbed wire was a statue. Like everything else here, these statues were designed to inspire revulsion. In addition to being wired in place, they'd been decapitated, the bronze mutilated with fake scars. Frieza hadn't done this. He just hadn't cared enough to change it.
He did now. "Change" in this case meant knocking over the nearest statue and detonating the crumbles at an atomic level.
"I certainly thought I did. The girl fights so much like he does, with the lights out, I couldn't tell the difference until she spoke. He must have trained her. Still, I'm not going to regain my Empire's respect avenging myself on a woman. It doesn't matter how powerful she is, only how it would look if I called her family's debts on her after failing to collect them from her father and grandfather."
He dusted fragments of the stone from his hands.
"This is a setback, true, but it's not a failure. I can still work with it. Since that tale she tried to spin me of Goku being killed by a dragon is obvious hogwash, I'll just defeat her and bring her here. He'll come to rescue her, right into the very heart of my newfound power, and then I'll kill him. It's only a slight delay. Nothing to worry about."
He tapped the surface of the mirror.
He didn't like touching it, not in the slightest, but it responded to the contact. His reflection grew translucent as an image appeared; an image of the girl. She stood beside a dresser, packing up an old leather backpack. She noticed a cracked drawer, inexplicably glowered, and kneed it shut. She resumed folding up a blue gi top.
"Just to be safe, though, I'd better gather my strength. I could defeat her in this form, as its potency is now greater than even my true form's used to be, but so my victory is well and truly assured, I should regain access to the others. I doubt I'll need all of them." He stroked the glass. Nothing changed. He had not willed it to.
There was one other thing in this den of evil besides water, statues, and an ugly mirror. There was also a shelf. It was hardly packed. In fact, the only thing there, sitting on its top corner, was a leather-bound collection of notes. It would have been useless to most people. Aside from being written in the language of the Reizomorphs, its contents were so esoteric, they'd have made no sense to anyone who just picked them up and read them. They made sense to Frieza, though. They were instructions, often rambling but clear enough to follow, for operating the mirror. Spying through it. Raising the dead. And most importantly… filling his insatiable need for power.
Strange coincidence, that this brand new shelf and helpful sheaf of notes just happened to be down here when he woke. It was clearly a sign that this time, fortune favored the mighty Frieza. This time he would be triumphant.
"After all, my dear," He said to the packing reflection. "You're more competition than I'd have expected, but you're no legendary Super Saiyan."
ooo
Pan decided to take one last look at Asphodel City.
It wasn't for sentiment. She hadn't been there long enough to develop much attachment to the place. Instead, she lifted her phone and snapped a photo. The ivory palace cast deep shadows over the winding streets. Light flashed on the round windows of the crowded homes. It was a sight she wanted her friends to see. A pterodactyl soared the orange sky. She didn't trust her descriptive power to do it justice.
She checked the photo to make sure the Prismasphere hadn't interfered with the image (or overlaid it with a thousand screaming faces). Her thumb slipped and the scene scrolled to a picture taken a week ago, Pan at an amusement park, arms linked with her friends, Marron and Bulla. They wore bathing suits, and good thing, too; they'd just ridden an inner tube and all three of them were drenched. The shot made Pan smile. She flipped to the next, Trunks trying to bat away the flying robot Giru, who decided to roost in his purple hair. That Giru was a cyclopean metal ball with no resemblance to a bird only made that funnier. Another flip showed Pan at work with her fellow instructor Uub, the two of them surrounded by grinning students.
The pterodactyl caught sight of her and dove towards her bandanna, mouth wide open.
Pan scrolled to the next shot, Auntie Bulma and Uncle Vegeta. He'd swept her up and held her in a deep bow, like something off the cover of a novel; not a kiss, but seconds away from it.
"That is so romantic," Pan said.
She twisted a hundred-eighty and punched. The pterodactyl didn't make it to her fist. It collided with the drag and found it like a brick wall. The dinosaur slid down thin air.
Pan flipped to the next picture.
Pan's smile didn't fade, but it got a lot sadder. This was her favorite picture: her, age ten, standing between Chi-Chi and Goku. She brushed her grandfather's smiling face.
She stuffed the phone into her back pocket and got to walking.
The pterodactyl, meanwhile, staggered through a few drunken twirls and then sailed fast in the opposite direction.
The road ahead was so overgrown in places it barely qualified as a path. No matter to Pan; she wouldn't be taking it far, anyway.
It wasn't long before the sky clouded over and spat snow. It didn't build up or stick, it just gave the grass a frosted minty look. That made Pan want ice cream. There would be no ice cream, though. For the next few days, she was going to be roughing it as rough as she could. She hadn't brought many supplies, just Grandpa's gi, the requested map, some clean water, and her bag of coffee. They fit in her backpack with room to spare.
She thought back to that last photo. Wish you were here, grandpa.
Pan jumped when she got an answer. It wasn't her grandfather, but Bonpara.
Oy! Pan!
Hey, brothers, Pan thought. Is everything okay?
We're an hour past Rudeeze, right on schedule, Bonpara thought. How about you?
Not Pan's favorite planet. I just left the palace about fifteen minutes ago. She wondered if she should tell them why. For now, she decided against it. It would invite questions she couldn't answer, and there was no point in worrying the Para Brothers when, with any luck, the fight would be over before they got here. I'm heading to some ruins to do some training.
Where can we expect to find you? Bonpara asked.
It'll be better to tell you when you're closer to Ketchyn, Pan thought, unfolding her map. But I can give you my travel plans. My ultimate destination is an old manor where King Cold used to live. It's a few days away, and the Prismasphere makes it dangerous to be outside after midnight. Not to mention she never knew when or where Frieza would attack her next. She drew a line from the manor, at the edge of the forest, down to her current location. So I'm going to start here.
She traced up to a small village a quarter-inch to the west.
And stop tonight in this town, Blendarr. It used to be the old King Flare's hunting lodge, before he died. I should be able to make this farm by the next night, and the manor itself the next day, Pan thought.
And we should be getting to Ketchyn a day after that, Bonpara thought. You're really going to spend the whole time practicing? Maybe we should send you our dance moves. We'll inject some style in that old-school Saiyan pillaging of yours.
Tucking the map away, Pan shouldered her backpack. Thanks, but I've got moves I have to work on. One move in particular.
Grandpa had told Pan something else about Frieza. Ruthless as he was, there was one thing he dreaded more than death itself, one technique that would give her an edge when he returned to "pick up their conversation."
And Pan… it wasn't that she couldn't use that technique, but...
Uh, oh, Bonpara thought, and Pan didn't think she was supposed to hear it.
Uh, oh, what? She thought back.
Could be nothing, he responded. But I just picked up another ship on radar. There shouldn't be anybody out here, and the computer can't read its registration. We're gonna have to break communication.
She didn't like the whispery sound Bonpara's thoughts had adopted. Tell me when you've gotten it straightened out. I don't want to think the worst.
Bonpara's mind snapped shut.
Worried, Pan turned off the road, into the wilderness.