Chapter Fifteen

When midnight had come and gone and Frieza's energy was nowhere to be found, Pan knew something was wrong.

The west wing of the manor had been the Cold Family's living space, and it was also the biggest wreck. For three rooms in a row, the first floor merged with the second because the stone dividing them had fallen into heaps all over the tile. Pan found more beheaded statues and wondered if any looter could possibly have been that thorough.

At one point, Pan poked her head through a small door. The furniture inside looked like eggshells ran over and got petrified, but she could guess their purpose well enough to tell it was someone's bedroom. Her footsteps sounded hollow on the floor as she pattered to the window. She wanted to see the progress of the storm- it was nearing whiteout conditions now- but she noticed a hidden switch just inside the windowsill.

Ooh, maybe it was a secret passage, like in an old movie! Pan pressed it.

The floor that had sounded so hollow retracted, opening into a wide and dark pit. A fall that far would be deadly enough on its own for anyone who couldn't fly, so the series of sharpened iron rods that shot from the walls and skewered every bit of empty space from the pit's lip to its bottom felt like overkill. Pan snapped her hand away from the switch and everything folded back into place.

"What is that doing in here? Who'd want a spike pit in the middle of their bedroom?"

Come to think of it, Pan knew exactly who would want a spike pit in his bedroom, and she dashed out the door, face burning.

Yes. Something was definitely rotten here. The Vile Wave pressed the windows. Where was her enemy? Pan didn't think for a minute his big terrifying surprise was refusing to show up.

She felt for life energies. Still nothing.

Eventually, Pan's feet and dark thoughts took her to a wide judicial chamber. This place was the most decrepit of all. The roof was nothing but support beams and girding. Had it not been for the snow packed overhead, this place wouldn't be safe. As it was, it posed no barrier to the freezing wind. They tore through the walls and blew the snow that had drifted to the floor back into the air in swirls. Pan felt like she stood inside a snow globe. She couldn't decide if the effect was creepy or pretty.

Farther inside the room, something cracked under Pan's feet. Ice! There was a fluvium (probably for boiling the convicted alive on the spot, if the rest of the manor was anything to go by), and it was frozen so solid Pan had walked right out on it without even realizing it.

Silver flashed in her peripheral vision.

The most logical conclusion was that it was snow or ice, or her mind playing tricks on her. After all, she didn't feel a thing, and perhaps even with the snow, the room was open enough to the elements that the Vile Wave leeched in and caused those hallucinations Incendria warned her about. But Pan's gut told her otherwise, and she'd learned from experience to listen to it. She'd been in less shelter for longer without any ill effects from the Prismasphere, and no chunk of snow that size could fall so silently. But then… what?

The answer slammed into her and sent her tumbling to the ground. That power she hadn't detected at all moments ago opened up, and it was an overflowing abyss Pan hadn't felt since Grandpa had faced Omega. A vice enclosed her throat, and she tried to pull it away only to find she no longer had use of her left arm; that was locked away with the pressure on the back of her neck and shoulders.

Pan knew this hold. What was the traditional advice for dealing with it? Oh. Yeah. 'Don't get put in this hold.'

It was too late to take that advice, but if Pan couldn't get up, she'd just have to go down. She didn't have much leverage left, but she didn't need much. Her own power flared as she transformed into a Super Saiyan. She drove her knee into the ice below and trusted the combined stress of her own and her opponent's weight to do the rest.

They plunged into the water together.

If Pan had been human, this would have been suicide. Even with her Saiyan constitution and tolerance for extreme temperatures it was pure desperation. The shock of the cold water almost robbed her of her senses. Instinct took over; she had to breathe, and breathing meant getting her attacker's forearm off her windpipe. Now, she could, too. With the whole depth of the fluvium, she was able to throw him over her shoulder.

Pan leapt back onto the ground, dripping. The cold was even worse now, with the blizzard winds battering her soaked clothes. Ice formed on the surface of the cloth. She remembered almost dying of heat stroke on Rudeeze and did not want to find out if driving her body temperature to the opposite extreme would feel as awful.

That silvery form and its abyss of power shot from the water and landed across from her.

That… couldn't be Frieza, could it?

Pan remembered Bonpara's diagram of a fourth-tier Reizomorph, but the dull two-dimensional outline bore only the most superficial and cartoonish resemblance to the man before her. He'd returned to his natural height, eye-level with her, and had shed his bulky chitin. Beneath it, he was so pale he could have been formed from the snow itself, every lean muscle sculpted from ice. It only made his eyes and smug, self-congratulatory grin stand out by contrast.

"Tsk, tsk, Pan," He said. "Is the legendary Super Saiyan having second thoughts? It didn't have to come to this. I gave you chance after chance to forfeit, but you choked on that Saiyan pride of yours. Now it's too late. You're going to have to follow your defiance through to its sad, bitter end. Your heart is racing. I can feel it from here. Keep in mind that you brought this terror on yourself."

Some dark sensation made Pan's heart race. It was confusing and chaotic and she wouldn't call it pleasant, but terror was the one thing she could definitively say it was not. She pushed the feeling away until she could deal with it, ignoring it like she ignored the cold of the storm. "I was wondering if you forgot about me. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to keep a lady waiting?"

"It's your grandfather you should be taking that up with. I really thought he'd be here by now. Clearly you are not yet terrified enough. I know. I'll tell you exactly how I managed to surprise you. I think you'll find it inspiring," Frieza said.

"I thought maybe you'd reverted to a weaker form to hide in the interference, the way Shivor did, but that isn't possible, is it? You couldn't have transformed that quickly, and I'd have felt the change." Pan could see her breath in the air. Not good.

"No, Pan, I have you to thank for it. Oh, but you couldn't have foreseen that. Most of the powers granted me by the Vile Wave make some kind of sense, after all; the increase in strength, the laceration attack, the unlimited resurrections, the barriers. Do you know what else I am able to do? This one's very strange. I can see through any mirror on Ketchyn as if it were a window."

"Any mirror," Pan said. "Like the mirrors attached to the gate outside this manor, where I reviewed ki repression with Ember and Gelata."

"So you do understand what I mean. That's a delightful trick, concealing your own presence while detecting others, and you explained it so clearly. In spite of my best efforts, I learned something from you. What an affront that is. Make it up to me, won't you? When you hand out stickers, bring me a star."

Then Frieza stepped backwards into the blizzard, the abyss closed, and he was again gone.

Not gone. Hidden.

Pan had showed him how to hide.

What have I done? I made one of the deadliest men in the universe even worse!

Now was not the time to beat herself up over that. She pushed it away, too. Frieza lurked behind that wall of snow. Pan had to figure out where before he emerged.

Ice cracked sharp to her right.

Pan's first instinct was to seek out what made that sound. She resisted it. She turned her eyes from the snow to the solid ice below… and the shadows not even the blizzard could conceal. It wasn't so lightless there were none.

She found a shade out of place and followed it left.

There wasn't much point in holding back. She chose a close-handed strike and put her whole body behind it. She had no way of knowing, but it was much like a strike her father had used against this very form of Frieza when he was just a boy, searching Namek for the Dragon Balls.

Alas, it had the same effect that punch had. Frieza ducked and it whiffed. Frieza was there to duck, though; Pan had been correct the cracking ice was a feint and his was the shadow she'd seen approaching. She kicked hard and it connected.

The abyss gaped once more and he fired a two-handed blast directly into her chest.

There was no way to dodge or block. The impact was like falling off a mountain. Pan would be swept away if she couldn't strategize through the pain; but all she could think to do was scrabble for purchase. She did catch something and hold onto it, and that did keep her from skidding across the ice. So dazed was she, it didn't even surprise her when the thing in her hands turned out to be Frieza's tail.

Frieza, on the other hand, was instantly alarmed. He yanked the tail away from her and clutched it.

"If you would kindly keep that out of your mouth!" He said.

"Says the guy who introduced himself by licking my face!" Still, it was an opening. Pan took it, punching furiously. Frieza blocked and returned; she countered.

A rumble from below shattered all of the ice in the fluvium, forcing their battle into the air.

For once, Pan had a more pressing concern than those quakes. The cold was getting to her. She had to warm up. If she could guide the battle into one of the rooms the scientists had been using; those were heated, maybe she could buy herself some time, even dry off a little. Frieza wouldn't have the snow for cover, either.

How to fall back?

Exactly how he was falling back, that's how. He'd just bragged about learning it from her. Pan gave Frieza a shove, ducked into the snow, and then powered down and repressed her own energy.

"Do you want to play? Very well. I can spare the time to play with you. If it's hide and seek, though, I fear you're at a disadvantage. Cooler and I found all the good spots years ago."

It may have been a game to him. To Pan it was, appropriately enough for a fight taking place in a courtroom, a trial. Her trial. As she slipped to the door, she knew it was far from over.

ooo

Pan's hands shook so badly she feared she'd be caught before she could light the fireplace, and once she managed, the living room was simply too vast and spacious for the comparatively small flame, so she had to climb up on the mantle right next to it. It served its purpose, though. By the time Frieza found her, she'd warmed up enough to restore the feeling in her fingers and toes.

She was surprised it took him so long, and that in the end, he had to cheat. Atop the fireplace Pan could see every entrance and exit, and since he'd have to power up at least a little to make his own, she wouldn't be ambushed here. She was still perched there when a Vile Sentry fluttered into the room. Now that Pan knew it was an automaton and not a live bug, she grabbed a candlestick from the marble beside her and flattened it. If the sentry's destruction hadn't told Frieza exactly where she was, the banging would have.

Pan returned to her Super Saiyan form.

The fight resumed in earnest, cracks appearing in the floor and walls before the CCTV cameras could pick up more than blurs. The film would have to be played slow even show Pan and Frieza exchanging strikes and counter-strikes, holds and releases, with an ease born of second nature.

"Why in the world," Frieza asked, catching Pan's elbow, "Did you decide to come to this room?"

"I remembered passing it on the way in and thinking the fireplace looked dramatic," Pan said.

"There was a generator two rooms to the court's left."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about it."

"Forgot it? The room was smaller. Heating it would have been faster and more efficient, and you wouldn't have been practically casting a spotlight on your location for me to see the second I walked in."

"Now that you mention it, you're right," Pan said, stopping Frieza's fingers from jabbing a pressure point on her collar. "I still like the fireplace."

"You are terrible at this game."

"I dispute that," Pan said. "Think about it. The purpose of hide-and-seek is to keep the other guy looking for you for as long as possible. Because I picked such a bad hiding spot, you didn't think to check it, so it took you forever to find me. I'd say that makes me awesome at this game."

"Then you make terrible decisions."

"I make terrible decisions? I'm not the one who tried to lure a living rival into a trap designed for the dead inhabitants of hell only to wind up stuck in it myself."

"Why, that was a brilliant decision! At least, it would have been under less bizarre circumstances. How was I to know the Hell's Buster could tell me from your grandfather? Traps are hardly renowned for their sentience or pithy senses of humor."

"I guess you'd know, keeping one under your bed and all."

Frieza halted so fast Pan almost flew over his shoulder dodging his aborted attack. "Why were you snooping around my private quarters?"

"I wasn't snooping. I didn't know they were your quarters until I went inside. I am really sorry about that."

Rumbling issued from below and above simultaneously. Pan thought her earthquakes might have undermined the building and prepared to dodge falling ceiling, but nothing came down on her head. It sounded again and she realized it was thunder. The man at the café had warned her there might be lightning. Sure enough, the sky flashed.

Frieza struck like the lightning and tangled Pan in a conflagration of a fight. She searched for an opening to control and victory, not just survival. He didn't make finding one easy; his moves were coarse, driven more by instinct and raw power than practice… and that gave them a rough grace Pan had seen too many of her peers let convention polish right out of their style. How amazing would he be if he learned to fine-tune those instincts, strengthen what they did right and recognize when they steered him wrong? Not that he wasn't amazing now.

Pan shoved that feeling back down again, this time with more mental force than necessary. What was she thinking?Hadn't he picked up enough from her already; did she want to sign him on at the academy and really create a monster? Maybe she should jump back into the fluvium to see if that brought her to her senses.

"You know, girl, I'm beginning to think that far from merely stalling for time and waiting for a miracle, you're actually harboring some fool notion of defeating me. There was a time I'd have promised you hell for that, but I've been there since, and it was quite the disappointment. You deserve so much better. How about I create something better? A dreamland of a nightmare, all for you? Would you like that?"

Pan hoped she could pass off her reddening face as exertion. "Now you're just doing it on purpose."

His wide-eyed blank stare was so deceptively innocent. "Doing what?"

"…that!"

"Oh," He said. Then, hopefully, "Is 'that' bothering you?"

"Yes!"

"Then I'm doing it on purpose."

The floor cracked into even halves. They both leapt to opposite sides. This time when the ceiling creaked, it wasn't lightning. Pan flew backwards. She had to keep her eyes on Frieza so she took a chunk from the doorframe with her shoulder.

She slammed the door as hard as she could, but Frieza was right there and ripping it off its hinges. The roof came down behind him and rubble closed the path, though, so at least the Vile energy had been stifled that way.

As the fight wore on, Frieza lost that grace and made it up with aggression. Grandpa had described this increasingly erratic fighting as "sloppy" and "rage-blind." That completely failed to convey just how threatening a foe a sloppy, rage-blinded Frieza became. He fought like a trapped animal; a trap he'd built himself in his own head, and those were the worst kind.

"I know you're scared of Super Saiyans, but come on, it's still just me," Pan said.

"I'll show you that I fear nothing!" He knotted his hands together and brought them down on her.

Pan had plenty of time to dodge, but the wall didn't, and wouldn't have known how to if it had. It peeled away and scattered across the yard outside. Vile energy eagerly wrapped its purple tentacles around the opening.

I have to block that off! Pan thought, but before she could move to do that, bubbles of pink energy rose below her, and it was all she could do to get out of the aftershock's way as it blasted through the ground at her feet and right through both floors and the manor roof.

Oh, no. This room wasn't secure anymore, either. But where was there to go? Three doors; which would lead her to safety?

Another aftershock built. At least Pan caught this one in time to stop it from colliding with her. She was able to direct it outside. The explosion sent dirt flying in chunks and slit the ground like a cocoon.

Pan only saw into that hole for a split-second before Frieza made the decision for her and tackled her through the door to the foyer. But that split-second was enough time for her mind to take a photo of its contents: piles of skeletons stacked just like the ones she'd found in the copse outside Asphodel City, under a thin layer of dirt. It was the last look she got. Piles of Cold Manor fell and blocked the view.

"What was that?" Pan whispered.

She did not need to elaborate.

"It's Flare's handiwork. Do I even need to tell you that? It's so distinctive, the way he stacks us all up." He brushed his forehead. "That is, when Cocytus's walls were breached by the forces of Asphodel, they went through the place and cut down everyone they didn't want to humiliate in that damned lodge. They dropped them all in there and threw the sod over it. It looks like they're tossing a carpet over an unseemly pile of dust. They had few alternatives. Reizomorph bodies are so very hard to destroy. Fire, water, lime, exposure to a vacuum… they call us roaches for a reason."

Pan wiped her eyes on her collar. It was still icy, but so was her skin.

"Are you crying? Why are you crying? So quick a death, it's nothing but a mercy, and anyway, life only has the value assigned to it by social constructs, so it's not like any of them mattered."

The fight stalled. They stayed where they fell. That gave Pan seconds to think, and right now, that was too much time.

"That's the second time you've done that," She said. "You pushed me out of danger. In the lodge, when that aftershock was about to hit me, you threw me out of its range, and you did it again just now. Why?"

"You'd make a poor hostage dead. True, I've done enough of this sort of thing to know there are people who'll make concessions for a corpse, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if your grandfather was one of them, but I prefer to let him think he has a chance of rescuing you before I dash his hopes. Does it dash yours to hear that? Did you really think seeing that grave upset me because I harbored some kind of compassion for the people inside it? I'm not sorry for them. I'm sorry for me. It's not even because of what happened; it's for nothing at all. It will pass. It always does."

"Frieza…"

"Don't. I had my fill of your grandfather's lectures years ago and I can't abide your pity. What do you think, that a man can be justified by tragedy? Then why aren't you thanking me for improving the character of the entire Northern Quadrant in my years as emperor? I've caused far more tragedy than I've suffered, wouldn't you agree?"

Pan screamed and shoved a handful of energy directly at his face.

She stopped it a hair's breadth away from his skin. She heard no sound coming from him, but his shoulders heaved, so he must be laughing.

"Perhaps you're smarter than Goku after all. Of course, that's a bar so low it's more like a sewage pipe. Well? Are you going to fire that or hold it there until I get a mild sunburn?"

"I've got a quiz for you, too. If I did fire this, how much would it hurt?"

He scowled and gave the energy a nudge. It flared gold.

"About as much as getting struck by that lightning out there," He said. "Which is to say, not much."

Drawing more strength from her core, Pan let the knot between her fingers expand. "How about now?"

"You're getting warmer. That one might sting a little. If I were in my first form and looking the other way, that is."

With a deep breath, Pan gathered from her innermost core and flooded the web of energy. "How about now?"

"It feels like that attack Goku used on me on Namek, the one he formed in the sky just before he transformed for the first time."

She dropped her arm and let the energy fade.

"So you couldn't go through with it after all," Frieza said.

Pan stood over him, radiant in gold and blue and, in spite of the scuffing and torn cloth and tear-reddened eyes, every line the Legendary Super Saiyan. Yet though the legend spoke of a battle-hungry warrior, her hands remained at her sides.

"The people you claim don't matter… the first energy level you felt was the life force of one of them. The second, your own family of four. The third? Every man, woman, and child in that grave. Now I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you didn't feel anything. Tell me those people, your kinsmen, are just numbers on a scouter."

He stood to meet her challenge. He got as far as looking her in the eye.

"I'm not here to pick up where Grandpa left off. I'm not here to pity you, or lecture you, or change your mind about Saiyans or anything else," Pan said. "But what you were saying about 'life only having the value assigned to it by social constructs?' That doesn't sound like something you believe. It sounds like something you memorized. I'm giving you the chance to tell me I'm wrong about that. I'll even help you. Here it is again, the first one. Say it doesn't matter. Like you mean it this time."

Pan held her palm forward, another small ball of ki swirling just above it.

Frieza lowered his own hand onto it, just enough to sense the faint signature. He passed through it and locked his fingers around hers.

"Your hands are too cold," He said.

Even after Pan withdrew the attack, he didn't move.

"Dawn's coming already. I can feel it. It got so late so quickly. That's because you're terrible at hide-and-seek."

"You're not bleeding yet, though," Pan said.

He shook his head. "We're done for now. That's what I have to say to you."

"I'd stay."

"I know. Do change back on your way to your friends, won't you? This house doesn't need your help to fall."

It was more difficult than she'd thought it would be to pull her hand away and leave. At least with dawn coming, she could take the shortcut through the garden without worrying about traveling outdoors. It was warming up, too. Quite a bit, in fact. Quite rapidly. She didn't know what he meant by cold hands. Those felt like they were burning most of all.

ooo

Once light reached the sky, Ember and Gelata released their energy so Pan would know where to find them. She stumbled into a dank old storage room that must have felt like home to them, so indistinguishable was it from their favorite haunt in the palace dungeon. Had they lit a fire or found a generator down here? It was downright stifling. She'd already opened her collar on the way. She was about to shrug out of her jacket. Even the undershirt beneath it felt like too much.

Ember stared at her like she'd sprouted another head. She wondered if she'd remembered to power down, so she checked her hair, and yes, it was matte black again.

"Hi, guys," She said. "It looks like we weathered another night of horrors. Go us. I hope you don't mind if I blow off the investigation for now and take a nap. I'm exhausted. I can't remember ever being this exhausted. Or hot. I don't even think it got this hot on Rudeeze. What kind of generator did you fire up down here? It's so stuffy."

Ember jumped up from where he was sitting and charged her. Before he got to her, Pan fell face-down on the nasty old floor. She hoped she didn't get mystery grit in her mouth. The last thing she heard was Ember giving her helpful advice.

"You damnable fool! How in the hell did you manage to do this to yourself? What did you do, go swimming and run around the snow drifts?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

She wasn't awake to hear the reply.