Chapter Nine
Dawn broke over a bleak stretch of upheaval, piles and craters and old metal reaching towards the red sky like skeleton hands. Pan dragged a newly-cleaned fish the size of a motorcycle to her campfire, which she'd built beneath a concave rock formation. Ember and Gelata sat beside it.
Pan skewered the fish over the fire on a makeshift spit. She poured some water out to boil. "Are either of you having any coffee?"
"Don't you dare," Ember said.
"Make coffee? It was an offer, not an imposition."
"Don't you dare sit there and talk like nothing happened. Look at this place. It's leveled. Did those quakes of yours reach Blendarr?"
Pan spilled a bit of the water. "No. Mine don't have that kind of range. Are you sure you're not having coffee?"
"Damn it, I told you to stop it! You think you did something noble back there? That all's forgiven because you stepped in to rescue us from Frieza? He wouldn't be here in the first place if it weren't for you!"
Gelata touched his arm. "Captain."
"In case you haven't noticed, we have enough trouble on this world without you showing up and bringing your North Quadrant vendettas and your freak powers and your…"
"Fine!" Pan threw her backpack to the ground so hard the earth cracked. "You're right! I'm a monster, I'd be endangering Ketchyn just by standing on it even if Frieza wasn't after me, and you should have killed me when you had the chance. Is that what you want to hear?"
Pan wrapped her arms around her knees and wept.
"Crying again? How pathetic."
"You think I don't know that, too?"
"Captain," Gelata said. "I have never raised my voice to you in my life, but you've gone too far this time. We've already established Pan couldn't have brought Frieza back. Whoever did, this is their fault, not hers, and there's nothing to be gained from taking it out on her. We three are perhaps the only ones on the planet who appreciate the danger Frieza's appearance presents. We can't afford to fight amongst ourselves."
At this point, Pan had seen enough to know Ember wasn't going to lash out at Gelata over this, but she thought he would argue. He didn't. He fell in the dirt beside the fire.
"I might as well have been a gnat for all the harm I did him."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Pan said. "If you weren't strong, you wouldn't have walked away from that fight."
"If it hadn't been for you, neither of us would have. That's what really burns. I can't help thinking back to when you first stumbled out of that crypt. I knew you were formidable, but I've never heard of a Saiyan who can do what you can."
"Most can't," Gelata said. "Not even their elite display abilities like this. It's made me curious as to how you came about them. May I?"
Pan reached for her backpack to pour more water for coffee, but then she realized Gelata wasn't pointing at that, but her arm. Specifically, the trickle of blood that had, at this point, reached her elbow. "You want to… um…"
"Only a bit."
Pan winced and held out her arm. Gelata didn't go as far as sucking on the wound, though. She daubed the blood with one finger to sample it.
"Hmm. That is odd. You're not full-blooded, are you? There's something else in there, Earthling I'd assume, but that isn't all…"
Gelata grabbed her throat and gagged, spitting violently into the dirt.
"What did she do to you?" Ember asked, patting her on the back.
"I didn't know evil had a flavor. I do now. It's as terrible as you'd expect. Is that the source of your powers? What is it?"
Pan's nightmare came crashing down on her. She forced it out of her mind. There was no way she was telling them everything, but she knew Gelata wouldn't stop hounding her if she didn't tell her something. A short version would have to do.
"You're tasting Negative Energy," Pan said. "What do you know about dragons?"
"Only that they're a reoccurring motif in the mythologies of most inhabited worlds," Gelata said. "You mentioned yours was one of them."
"I also mentioned they're real, and that they can grant wishes. How many depends on the strength and disposition of the dragon. Earth's dragon was Shenron. He was kind. But when I was a little girl, seven new dragons hatched: the Shadow Dragons, beings of pure Negative Energy. They weren't so kind. They wanted only to kill."
"I do recall hearing a myth about a galaxy destroyed when evil dragons hatched on one of its planets," Gelata said.
"That's what King Kai told us, and when we heard what happened to that galaxy, Grandpa and I knew we had to stop them. We hunted them down, stopped the destruction. It was all going so well."
The water began to boil. Pan removed it from the heat.
"The fourth dragon we found was the seven-star dragon, Naturon. He had two powers. One was that he could cause earthquakes. The other was that he could absorb the knowledge and skill of anyone he ate. When he found out how powerful Grandpa and I were, he decided he wanted to eat us. Grandpa was too fast for him."
The flames of the bonfire, licking the sky, almost seemed to take the monstrous dragon's shape.
"I wasn't. He ate me. Integrated me and used my powers to attack everyone. I was still conscious, in a way, but I couldn't move, and everything was so dark. It was like those nightmares where you're lying in bed with something sitting on your chest and you can't wake up no matter what you do."
"I hate to point out a flaw in your story," Ember said. "But I'm talking to you. You're obviously not dead."
"Grandpa knew that even though I'd been integrated, I hadn't been in his stomach long enough to be digested. He pretended to be wounded, and when Naturon closed in to eat him too, he attacked at full power and tore right through the dragon's hide to rip me free. That's how Grandpa won the fight. We thought everything was okay. We even joked about it."
Pan brushed her hair behind her ear.
"But later, I tried to go Super Saiyan, and that's when I found out I was… not okay. Dad and Auntie Bulma examined me and found that when Naturon absorbed my power, I absorbed his, too. They've both been working with me, dad with training, Bulma with her research, and they think a concentrated blast of Positive Energy could cure me, but they've never been able to channel enough. All we've been able to do is delay the onset of the symptoms. It starts with the earthquakes. Next come the aftershocks, and if I still don't power down, I start radiating Negative Energy. It's a lot like your Vile Wave. It annihilates things just by coming into contact with them."
"And now you're going to tell us there's no way you can defeat Frieza without transforming, aren't you?" Ember asked.
"Under the circumstances, it wouldn't matter if she did defeat him, transformed or otherwise," Gelata said. "Because of the unique conditions of his resurrection."
"She's right," Pan said. "I could make confetti out of him and he'd just come back the next night like nothing ever happened. He always wanted immortality. This probably wasn't what he had in mind, but it makes him just as invincible."
"Only if we keep trying to pummel him into submission," Gelata said. "However, recall what I said earlier, about the responsibility for all this devastation resting squarely on the shoulders of whoever brought Frieza back. You wanted to figure out who they were, right?"
Pan snapped her fingers, seeing the first glimpse of hope she had all morning. "Just out of curiosity then, but now, it might be the trick to beating him. Whoever summoned the Cold Family's treacherous son from hell, they wouldn't have done it unless they were confident he couldn't turn on them. That's the kind of confidence that comes from insurance. That means…"
"They know how to send him back to hell," Ember finished.
After that huge argument, it felt disorienting to Pan that they'd all ended up on the same page so easily.
"You were planning on searching the Bludwald, correct?" he asked.
"Specifically, the ruins of Cold Manor," Pan said. "It's past Crater Farm on this map."
"Before we do anything, all three of us need sleep," Gelata said. "Not much, since we'll have to make good time, but…"
"Woah," Pan said. Maybe they weren't on the same page after all. "You two can't go. I'm not saying you aren't strong, but you saw how Frieza works last night. He'll use us against each other."
"Don't get us wrong. We plan on leaving the fights- at least those fights- to you. But though you may be able to throw punches, you don't know the first thing about navigating Ketchian society. That's something we can help you with, if you'll let us."
Pan couldn't deny they had a point. "All right."
With the plans out of the way, they turned to the fish. Gelata and Ember each served themselves a portion, and then Pan ate the whole rest of it. She'd had table manners drilled into her by Grandma, and so she took impeccably proper bites and didn't make much outward show, but after all, she was still a Saiyan.
ooo
He couldn't stop the shaking. It wasn't just from the cold, although no one would accuse the watery crypt of being balmy. Frieza tried even harder to still it, but that only made it worse, and he hated himself for his fear and his inability to hide it. Not that there was anyone to hide it from down here. Himself and the mirror. To him, that was enough.
Four more of the statues went down, and the wall got a new hole.
A Super Saiyan. He thought he'd been ready to face one again. He'd spent hours steeling himself for his inevitable rematch with Goku, and Goku's inevitable transformation. He'd replayed every moment of his defeat to keep the humiliation raw. He thought it had consumed him too fully to leave any room for waffling. He thought the legendary Super Saiyan had become nothing but another enemy to be crushed under his heel. Why hadn't it worked? What had gone wrong?
Son Pan had gone wrong, that's what. He'd prepared himself to stare down those white-hot eyes, but not in a face like hers. The combination was so incongruous he could barely make sense of it.
There was no spying on her now. She was still in that wilderness. It made him nervous, a Super Saiyan out there and him with no way to see what she was up to. That didn't mean the mirror was blank, though. No, its surface showed a group of nondescript men in nondescript armor trudging down the gangplank of a small ship. They were too well-trained to speak to each other. Frieza didn't know who they were. He knew exactly whose orders they had followed to Ketchyn, though. He growled.
"You traitor. You're supposed to be on my side."
This wasn't going to do. He'd almost regained his nightmare transformation, but not even a warrior as unparalleled as he could be in two places at once, fighting two distinct enemies. At least, not without taking a handicap to strength he couldn't afford. Pan had found some friends. Perhaps he should seek out some of his own.
"Wait. Do I have friends?"
He had to think about that for a long time, but eventually he decided he did. They just needed some repair work. It turned out, he had a manual for just those kinds of repairs. He yanked the sheaf of notes from the bookshelf.
He read the first step aloud. "Start with a small-bladed rusty knife and… oh, now that's depraved even by my standards. There's no helping it, though. I might as well get it over with."
ooo
Frieza hadn't expected the process to be so exhausting. He fell against one of the few standing pillars, bleeding and certain he was going to die once more. It had ended in success, though. Where he'd been alone in the room seconds ago, there was now a second man. That man curled on the floor in a quivering mass, wobbling like he didn't have a bone in his body. He shook and sobbed and laughed all at once. He didn't stop doing that, even when Frieza addressed him.
"Do you remember me?" Frieza asked.
"I remember," He said. "Cutting. And being cut. I want to cut. I want to cut."
The wobbling man picked up the rusty knife and giggled. A drop of magenta blood trickled from its tip to the floor.
"Dammit," Frieza said. "You haven't come out right."
"Want… to… cut…"
Frieza scrutinized the man, looking for some clue to the cause of his curious behavior. "I'm sure I'll figure out what went wrong, and I'll get this little glitch worked right out of your system. You're functional enough in the meantime to do a job for me."
"…cut?" he asked, looking up with eyes round, hopeful, and thoroughly dead.
"Yes, yes; cut all you wish. Within reason, but I don't need to tell you that. You know who's off-limits and who isn't."
The man dissolved into giggles, brandishing the rusty knife like a saber. He continued to do both all the way out of the crypt.
"I think I did well enough for a first attempt," Frieza said. "One down, four more to go. Though I do hope the others turn out better, or I shall have to kill them and start over. I have to find another knife as it is."
Mulling over the problem, Frieza returned to his notes and his mirror, leaving his creation run free to cut.