Chapter Twenty-Three
Frieza closed the book and placed it back on the shelf for what he did not know would be the last time.
The mirror boiled as he approached, distorting his reflection. He could feel its agitation, its anger, and deep beyond the surface, a peculiar sense of disappointment; not something one was used to getting from an inanimate object. It did not disappear as he scratched the glass. It only slowed its seething enough to reveal images.
There weren't many to be had, just glimpses through windows, mostly. Between them and the energy-reading technique Pan taught him, he could follow the fight. He knew Cooler had touched down and confronted Pan. He knew Pan had fought Incendria, then his brother. He knew they'd used that Yardrat teleportation trick to move the battle out of the town. He'd even felt that Pan had scraped up something that resembled a victory; her ki had plummeted like a rock, but so had Cooler's, and Pan was the one who'd walked away in the end.
The problem was, she was nowhere near civilization, and wasn't strong enough to get to it before nightfall. She'd never find shelter. He had to get to her. Not one of his minions. Him.
He pulled the rusty knife and stared at the blade.
"Are you bringing someone else through the mirror, Lord Frieza?" Captain Ginyu asked. "Your father? Zarbon and Dodoria?"
"No. I'm going into it myself."
Ginyu shuddered. "May I be so bold as to ask why?"
"This mirror controls the Vile Wave by focusing it through a lens. That lens was created by distorting the barrier between the lands of the living of the dead, accessing a kind of purgatory where you're not truly either."
"I remember," Ginyu said, and Frieza could tell he wished he didn't.
"It took a lot of study in that journal, and a lot of experimentation, to figure out why I can only move freely at night. I knew it must be a deliberately-introduced weakness when I brought you back and you didn't share it. Now, I know how it was introduced. I was tethered to the mirror. Something that belongs on that side of the glass was brought over here with me, and that's why I can only leave when the Vile Wave is at its strength and I'm dragged back here as soon as wanes. I'll have to search the place to find out what, and then I'll put it back. That should cure my little daytime issues."
"How will you get there?"
Frieza gripped the rusty blade hard and pulled. Blood flew. He pressed the gash against the mirror's surface.
The mirror went so still it almost looked normal. Even the violet sheen cleared. Frieza could see, clear as day, his own face staring back at him, his own palm, like a window.
His reflection grabbed his wrist and pulled.
And though every instinct he possessed screamed at him to fight it, though every cell of his being recoiled in revulsion at its touch, he allowed it to draw him through the glass.
The journal's author had collected accounts of people who had visited this space through near-death experiences or Backlash accidents, and from what Frieza could tell, it wasn't the same for any two people; it reflected the place the experience had happened, but was skinned over with whatever personalized afterlife leaked through the barrier. The diarist had reported bloodied faces screaming from the walls and the constant smell of smoke and ash.
Frieza envied him. As soon as he stepped through, he was hit in the face with the stench of perfume, and a moment later, with a puff of gold glitter and confetti from a party horn. Oh, it still looked like his tomb, all right; it just looked like his tomb overgrown with flowers and flowering vines. Bright red mushrooms with white spots sprouted in fairy rings on the floor. Lanterns glowed above. A butterfly flapped past him and fireflies darted over the surface of the underground lake. Feminine giggling bounced off the walls.
He almost turned around and went back.
No, he had to fix this problem. He wouldn't be here long. He tugged free his cape, which had caught on a crack in the mirror. He willed himself to take another step.
His foot hit something that felt like a stone.
A trio of snails with sousaphones for shells slimed across a broken statue. Riding atop the last and biggest was a doll. She had hummingbird wings, a peaked cap, and a doe-eyed gnome face, glistening with cracked paint and porcelain glaze.
"Hello, Grumpy Gus. Are you looking for your way home?"
He knew exactly what the horrid little thing meant by home. "No."
"You're not here to do mischief, are you? It's not a good idea to do mischief here. Not even we can help you if you wake the Gatekeepers."
He resisted the urge to punt her across the room just to get her away from him. She was no toy, she wasn't as harmless as she looked, and this was no place to test the nature and extent of her power. "I'm trying to find some difference between the room I left and this one," He said. "Not just the flowers and fairy dust, a big difference. It must be done quickly."
"You mean a scavenger hunt. That doesn't sound like mischief. It sounds like fun. I'll help, too."
Help, indeed. Frieza knew this thing would lure or trick him back to the land of the dead at the first opportunity, and giving herself such an opportunity was the only reason she was imposing her "help" on him. On the other hand, he couldn't afford not to take it. He was in the false doll's territory.
He didn't have to like the chipper tune she hummed as she marched around the room. "If I were a missing thing, where would I be?"
"This isn't a safe place for a live person," Frieza said, "So whatever was taken would have to be small and easy to carry. It wouldn't be a statue."
I'll check the shelf, he thought.
It sounded like a logical idea at the time. If anything was wrong on the other side of the mirror, it was that diary with all its forbidden secrets. When he approached it, though, he found it completely unchanged. It stood tall and weathered and empty. The book sat exactly where he'd left it. Frieza didn't open it. He speculated it would be just as readable, too, and he didn't want the confirmation.
"Grumpy Gus! Over here!"
The doll jumped up and down and pointed at a square door in the wall. It was a burial vault.
"That would have worked," Frieza said, "Pulling something off one of the bodies interred here. Nobody would notice a missing finger bone here, or a spare one over there, if they weren't breaking into the vaults."
He knelt and opened the vault door.
Frieza peered into the hole. It was pitch black. He couldn't see a body inside. He couldn't see anything. However, he did hear running water somewhere far below; running water and music.
Familiar music.
He crawled back out of the hole and threw himself against the wall just in time to avoid the gnome's kick. She teetered on the edge of the open vault before steadying herself. She tried to scurry out of reach, but Frieza swept her up by the collar.
"Nice try," He said.
She wriggled. "Put me down!"
He kicked the door closed and dropped her. "Did you or did you not hear me say I do not have time for this? Pan's in danger."
The gnome climbed up on a table and watched him search with a blank doll expression.
He paced the room fully and cursed its emptiness. His missing piece hadn't been taken from the vaults or their inhabitants. It wasn't a pillar, pilaster, or statue. It wasn't any of the reflection's elaborations. What did that leave? Nothing! There hadn't been much in the tomb to begin with. When he'd first woken there, it had been just him, the diary, and the mirror.
"Perhaps whoever resurrected me destroyed the object after they removed it," He said.
The doll came to a decision. She flounced off the table and peddled to him. "There's still somewhere you haven't looked."
"Let me guess. Some other garbage chute back to hell, right?"
She shook her head and pointed at his chest.
"You mean to say it's stitched up in me?" He patted the spot. Was this also some kind of trick?
His eyes shifted from the gnome's face to the rusty knife still in his hand. He'd done worse things with it than crack his chest, and it wasn't like it could kill him or make him sick. It was just going to hurt. It was going to hurt a lot.
He turned his head and raised the knife.
Even if he didn't see it go in, he could feel it, and it was every bit as comfortable as he'd expected. His hands grew slick and that made it hard to keep his grip on the handle. What was he looking for?
He knew it when he found it. The knife hit something and clinked, and as soon as it made contact, he was on the floor. It had come from nowhere and knocked the legs right out from under him. The anguish went away, leaving a lingering ache behind it, when reflex took over and he yanked the blade away from it; but the gnome had been right. There was something in his chest.
He couldn't bear the thought of making a second attempt to remove it… so he didn't think. He just dug.
Before the skin could close, he removed the knife and plunged his fingers into the hole. Whatever it was, it was at least jagged enough to get his finger around it and pull it free.
As soon as it was gone, the pain faded.
Frieza opened his hand and found a piece of mirror glass, about the size of a dagger, glinting in his palm.
The crack in the mirror. Frieza remembered getting his cloak stuck on it; but now, he also recalled there had been no such crack on the other side. He held the shard up; it fitted the space perfectly.
Dizziness washed over him and made it hard to keep his feet, but it was a good kind of dizzy, as pressure he was not aware had built up released. It was time to go. With each step, he grew stronger, his head clearer. Vile energy swirled from the floor, congealing around him like vaporous armor. It gave him even further support.
"Are you leaving again?" The gnome asked.
"I'm sure you can amuse yourself without me."
Back through the mirror he went. Tendrils of it clung to him and he sloughed them off. Frieza had never been so relieved to return to his crypt. He'd be even more relieved to leave it behind him. He didn't even slow his steady march to the underground lake.
"Where are you going now, Lord Frieza?" Captain Ginyu asked.
"You mean, where are we going," Frieza said. "Out. We're going out."
ooo
A moment's hope could be worse than no hope at all. When Pan saw a paved road on the forest floor, her pulse quickened, and her pace followed as much as her exhausted legs allowed. When she saw the shapes of houses through the trees, she even allowed herself a relieved smile.
Both washed away the second she was close enough to the house-shapes to see them clearly. They were not homes, but burned-out skeletons and mossy, eroded rock. The well in the middle of the charcoal-ring had gone mostly dry. There were no walls. There were no roofs. There were no people. She thought she'd found help, but she'd found a ghost town; from the looks of it, another dirty secret Flare had tucked away out of sight.
Perhaps she could find a building intact enough to hide in while she regained her strength. What she wouldn't give for a Dino Cap portable house right now.
She fell to her knees before the well and clutched its side just to stay upright. Surely it wouldn't hurt to rest here for just a few minutes.
Pan woke under an indigo sky when a shadow fell over her.
How could Cooler have recovered so quickly when he'd been so much worse off than she had? Pan jerked away and scrambled backwards, only to find the well blocking her escape.
The face she looked into wasn't Cooler's, though. It was an old woman wearing thick glasses and a fisherman's hat. Gray hair dusted her shoulders. A Brenchian, maybe? What was she doing in the middle of nowhere?
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Pan said. "I thought you were…"
The old woman bowed her head. "Say no more. The palace uses this place for its dirty business all the time. You thought they'd come back to finish you off, but you don't have to worry about that. They never do. They trust the forest will do it for them. In this part of the wood, their trust isn't misplaced. Best come with me now, dearie. The Vile Wave is almost upon us."
Pan reached to accept the old woman's outstretched hand. Just before their fingers touched, Flint's face appeared in her mind. Smiling as he led her to his gallery. Contorted as Cooler broke his fingers. Flint had helped her, and his reward had been torture. Would she sentence this kind woman to the same?
She would not, Pan decided. She crawled up the side of the wall. "No, thank you. You shouldn't be seen with me."
"I'm not afraid of retaliation. I've been in this forest since the reign of King Flare. I saw him at the height of his power and savagery and I'm still here to talk about it. Now stop fussing and come with me."
Pan must have been right. There must be an intact building here. The woman had to be living somewhere.
She was surprisingly spry, too. She leapt thick tree roots and cracks with the agility only someone who knew the road could have. In her weakened state, Pan could barely keep up with her; as she ran, she found she wanted to. Her reservations melted the further into the forest she went. She even felt less tired.
"Ma'am? What's your name?" Pan asked.
"We'll talk at home, dearie. I'll make you some nice, hot tea."
However, Pan never grew easy. Row after row of homes showed signs of assault. Burn marks, broken glass, kicked-in doors. Terrible things had happened here, and Pan could gather a little bit of what. How had the woman survived it? What did she mean when she said the palace used this place for its 'dirty work?'
White cloth fluttered between two charred pillars.
"Someone's there!"
Pan veered from the road and ran to the house. A petite woman ran through the door. Though the garment was meant to conceal her identity, Pan recognized her instantly.
"Incendria!" Pan asked, shocked. If Pan thought it unlikely Cooler could find her here, Incendria should be an impossibility, but there was no mistaking the Sutova princess's face under that veil.
It was too late for Pan to ask herself if it was wise to follow, since she already had. Incendria had betrayed her, it was true, but if she'd come here to fight, she wouldn't be running. Was she in danger? Maybe together they could get out. There'd be time to settle the score over Blendarr once they were safely back in Asphodel, or at least somewhere resembling civilization.
However, when Pan walked through the door right on Incendria's heels, she found the house empty. There were no walls so Incendria could have jumped out and continued into the forest, but Pan had been so close she would at least be able to see where the Princess had gone. Nothing. The spaces between the trees were as vacant as the house. Indigo light glowed through them.
"Incendria?" Pan called again.
The old woman appeared at her side. "Don't stray from the path."
"But I saw…"
"I told you, this is a bad place," The old woman said, and Pan could feel anger seething under the words. "You'll see a lot of things and you should ignore them all."
The old woman turned and left, but lingered at the door, waiting for Pan to follow her. Pan glanced down. Scrawled on the floor in the dust were the words GO BACK. She looked up and then fell into step behind the woman. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."
If the old woman wanted Pan to go with her so badly, she shouldn't be moving so fast. As if Pan hadn't been betrayed enough for one day, she could feel her own body yearning to catch up. It felt suspiciously like the siren call of the Vile Wave.
"What did King Flare do here?" Pan asked. "If you don't mind telling me?"
"In the first wave of the unification, this town refused to kneel to him, even after he'd subdued it. Flare locked the townspeople into their houses and set them ablaze. A few enterprising lackeys attempted to rebuild it and make a profit off the land, but they all disappeared, and eventually, they just left it for the forest to reclaim. Sometimes, you can hear things out in the dark, but as I said, if you ignore them, you'll be fine. Won't you, dearie?"
Silence was the only answer she got.
"Dearie?" The old woman turned to find the path behind her empty.
Pan threw herself against the back corner of a house, hoping it wasn't too crumbled to hide her. For the second time in a few minutes she'd let hope stifle her better judgment. She'd seriously been ready to believe she'd found help in the middle of nowhere! Pan didn't know what that old lady was, but she knew that even with the indigo sky growing darker by the minute above her, she'd be better off taking her chances with the Vile Wave.
How big had this village been, though? Pan saw more homes further into the trees. She snuck from one to the other, hoping the growing darkness and thickening brush would offer the cover the matchsticks couldn't.
White cloth trailed from a nearby window.
Pan crept to it. She stood just enough to see inside.
Two women stood in the building. One was Incendria, and now Pan could see she was holding something under that cloak. The other…
Was that Queen Polrene?
Incendria looked as shocked as Pan did to see her slipping through the door. "What are you doing here? I thought King Cold would…"
"…lead your father right to us? He's being watched. Flare thought we might try something like this." Polrene crossed her arms. Her smirk was identical to Cooler's, and it wasn't on her face for long, either. "I know you wanted to see him one more time, but if the exchange is going to work, secrecy is of the utmost importance. Quickly, give the baby to me."
Incendria took a step back.
"I won't pretend to know what you're going through," Polrene said. "But I do know if it were Cooler King Flare ordered fed to the Vile Wraiths, there's no risk I wouldn't take to save him."
"How do I know you're not one of the wraiths? They can adopt any form they want."
"They're easily unmasked. Their illusions can't stand even the slightest disruption in the Prismasphere."
"Red wave sentry," Incendria said. A red kaleidoscope flapped around Polrene before vanishing into sparks.
Shivering, Incendria uncovered her bundle. Pan couldn't see much of it, but she saw enough; a tiny pink Reizomorph tail that flopped from the cloth and coiled around Incendria's arm. "I knew my father was a cruel man, but this? It's his own grandson. How could he? Just because his father is…"
"You must understand Flare intends for you to be devoured as well, your majesty," Polrene said. "Don't give him the satisfaction of dying. Leave before the wraiths begin to stir. If you want revenge, you have to live."
Incendria handed the baby to Polrene. The queen brushed the cloth from his face.
"How nice to meet you, little prince. You want to come live with your father in the manor, don't you? I'll hide us both for a few months and nobody will suspect you aren't my child."
His father? Pan thought. King Cold had a child with Incendria?
Pan gasped. How had she not seen it before? They had the same eyes. The same smile. She'd even noticed when she examined Flint's portrait that he bore no real resemblance to Cold, Polrene, or Cooler…
Incendria bowed and kissed the baby's head. "Goodbye, Frieza."
In one way, the old woman's advice had been sound. Pan should have ignored those vapors. She spent so long watching them reenact this long-passed scene she didn't hear the old woman creep up on her until she'd grabbed her hair.
"I told you," She said. "Not to leave the path."
They're easy to unmask, the phantom-Polrene had said. By any disruption in the Prismasphere.
Pan grit her teeth, expecting the indigo sky to close in on her the second she spoke the words. "Green wave deflection."
Something released Pan's head and reared back, but it was no old woman. She couldn't get her head around its being, only that it walked on all fours and had a mouth lined with flesh-rending teeth.
She didn't waste any time trying to see it better. Gathering up as much energy as she could muster, she flew through the trees, away from the creature. She had little respite. The pads of its feet hit the floor behind her. Brush stirred where it walked. Pan picked up as much speed as she could. Fog coiled from the ground. Dark purple fog that hummed with malice.
Trees flew by. She felt like an insect weaving through raindrops. She couldn't pay the attention she wanted to the thing following her; she had to concentrate on dodging limbs and broken houses. Fog closed in there, too, descending from above. Unnatural. How long had she been breathing this Vile miasma?
Perhaps that's why she didn't realize the sounds of pursuit had stopped. She flew in earnestness, only to realize nothing was digging through the brush behind her, there were no claws scraping the forest floor. She landed, ducking below the brush. She couldn't see a thing from behind the meaty leaves, not with all this vapor, so she listened. Nothing.
Pan stood.
The forest was gone. Instead, she saw a city spread before her. A ruined city, skyscrapers bent double and collapsed. A four-lane highway cracked in half and folded towards the sky like a steeple. Broken glass crunched beneath her feet.
"No," She whispered. "Oh, no."
This was worse than whatever she'd eluded in the forest.
Pan was back in her nightmare. This time, she couldn't escape it by waking up. This time it hadn't snared her in her sleep. She knew exactly what was going to happen now that she was on her feet. She felt the shadow fall over her. The temperature plummet. The frost feathering over the shards of glass and the stone. The dark was broken by cold light, and with it came a voice, the one voice Pan wished she could never hear again as long as she lived.
"Did you sleep well… baby sister?"
ooo
So many nights Pan had this dream. So many nights she'd been forced to watch her greatest failure unfold anew. She tried to will herself to run. Tried to will herself to hide. Even tried to will herself to stay down and play dead as the shadow of the dragon's wings unfolded over her.
Their darkness gave way to cold light. Fingers of frost strangled the ruins and caught the sun. That light, in turn, caught the dragon's metallic blue scales. He snow-blinded her, big as two men together and with a pink mouth that looked stuck in a crooked grin. From one of his claws, Pan's backpack dangled. Inside it she saw glints of glassy orange and red. The dragon balls. The last time she'd ever seen them.
"Where's grandpa?" Pan asked, standing ready for a brawl. "The last I remember, you'd challenged him for the dragon balls. If you have them now, what did you do to him?"
An explosion and shuddering in the distant sky brought Pan's attention to a pair of figures engaged in combat. One of them was her Grandpa, his black hair flying as he dodged a second dragon's attacks.
"You've mistaken me for Nuova," The dragon said. "I am Eis."
"Grandpa's still fighting, Eis," Pan said, "Yet here you are, trying to make off with the prize. I call that cheating. It falls to me to enforce the rules of the game and take those back from you."
"Why would you want to do that, baby sister?" Eis asked.
"Why do you keep calling me that? Don't patronize me just because I look like a little girl."
His lip twisted into a cruel smile. "I wouldn't dream of it. I know what you are, after all."
"You mean a Saiyan? Then you know we're ferocious, and you should return that backpack to me with its contents intact before I have to hurt you."
The dragon slung the backpack over his shoulder and approached her, and for one disorienting moment, child-Pan thought he was actually going to do what she asked.
Instead, he patted her on the head.
She jumped away and raked her fingers over the spot, pulling out flakes of frost, fighting off the memory of the last man who'd stroked her hair like that.
"Yes," He said. "I see how ferocious you are. Perhaps I should introduce myself so you know exactly what you're dealing with."
"You already told me your name, although honestly, I don't care what it is now."
"Names hardly constitute an identity. I'm the dragon of ice, renowned among my brethren for having a heart as cold as my flesh. I'll do anything to win. That's who I am. But I don't have to justify myself to you, do I? You're the same as me."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Pan said. It sounded like a lie even to her.
Eis turned back to the fight raging above them, the burning dragon Nuova and Grandpa, a red flame all his own. "He hasn't started to suspect yet, has he? You've kept it bottled up inside, the changes you've felt in your body ever since he tore you from our brother Naturon's stomach. You tasted negative energy and your adaptable Saiyan cells could hardly wait to start integrating the new power source. May I be honest, too? I never liked the first Naturon. I have a feeling you and I will be much better friends, baby sister."
"I told you to stop calling me that!" Energy cackled around Pan and threw the gravel at her feet into the air.
"But I must," He said. "Don't misunderstand, I'm more than capable of lying when it gives me an advantage. You, though, I'm obligated to tell the truth. Do you know why? I am the dragon born from your selfish wish to exonerate your mass-murdering friend Buu by erasing his victims' memories so he could walk among them in anonymity. What can I do but return your memories and bring the guilty to condemnation?"
"And stop touching my hair!"
"You said you were going to kill him," Eis said. "That pervert from Luud. You meant it. If the cyborg general hadn't interfered you'd be standing before me with blood on your hands. But let's go back further than that, to the anarchy you caused on Imecka. Did you ever think about the power vacuum you created, deposing its corrupt but stable leader and replacing him with no one? Do you think you left that planet in better shape than you found it, or do you think the riots started ten minutes after you took off?"
"Shut up!" Pan yelled, her aura flaring golden.
"How did you get to Imecka in the first place? Oh, yes, you crashed there because you prematurely started the launch sequence. You were so afraid of being left behind you couldn't even wait to see if the junk heap flew before you took it into space, and lo and behold, it didn't. Your grandfather could have gone straight to Gelbo if it weren't for you."
"Shut up!"
"Or speaking of Gelbo, do you think Bonpara could have wrested the dragon balls from Goku as easily as he got them from you? Perhaps deep down, you wanted them to be stolen so your little adventure could continue. Do you remember the Tuffle the Machine Mutants preserved for their experiments? The one who came a hair's breadth from destroying the Earth after he found out the authors of his people's genocide lived there? Who answered his false distress signal and brought him to your world? Admit it, Pan; even before Naturon perfected your inner darkness, hadn't you always been a bad girl?"
She clenched the sides of her head, trying to tune him out. Her aura flashed. Tears streamed down her face. "I didn't mean for any of that to happen."
"If you didn't intend all that chaos and managed to cause it anyway, why, that only goes to show what a natural you are. You're a bad girl, but you'll make a good Shadow Dragon. When we reduce this world and everything on it to dust, you'll remain, and you'll revel in the carnage along with the rest of us, baby sister."
"You aren't! My! Brother!"
A perfect sphere of energy and debris surrounded her. Her aura stopped flashing and held gold, and the color crept through her hair and eyes, bringing its glow along with it. Her consciousness faded into her rage and her heart's turmoil, knotted like steel coils with fear.
It was her first Super Saiyan transformation, and because she had no practice controlling her corrupted power, it was nearly her last.
The aftershock came immediately. It spread beneath her before she even noticed it, and she didn't have time to move. It shot straight from the ground and engulfed her, launching her head-over-heels. She fell hard enough to crack the earth, and from the feel of it, her bones, too. Her newfound strength fled her as quickly as it had come.
Eis stood over her, and instinct prevailed over reason. She crawled away. She hit a wall.
He only paused a moment, his grin briefly falling into a scowl.
"You Saiyans are so predictable. You think your anger makes you powerful. Do you know what else anger makes you? Stupid and vulnerable. That's two down," He said. He raised his eyes to Grandpa Goku, fighting against the fire dragon. "And one to go. When he sees what's become of you, how angry do you think he'll get?"
Eis walked right past Pan, knowing she posed him no further threat.
As she tried to at least pull herself to standing, the tears soaked her face, poured onto her shirt. Somewhere beyond this nightmare, four-legged, razor-mouthed creatures closed in on her. She could feel their energy and even the heat of their approaching claws. She was locked in the past, in her child's body, in the moments before her grandfather's death, and all she could think was it's my fault. I let it happen. It's all my fault.
The circle of Vile Wraiths tightened around her.
ooo
The first wraith to raise its claws against Pan was the first to die. It didn't even see the death beams coming; the red light crashed into it first, and then into the wraiths on either side. The creatures once thought to be impervious to attack dissolved into ashes.
Three had fallen. There were as many of the four-footed nothings as the town was big crowding into the forest.
A giggling green ball rolled beneath two monsters, cutting their legs out from under them. They writhed after him, but he held out a hand and they stopped, frozen in time; and he ripped trees from the ground and skewered them against the forest floor. Through the mist where they had stood a giant of a man barreled, opening his mouth wide.
Blinding light tore a whole line of the beasts to evaporating shreds.
Violet light, pale and distinct from the Prismatic wave, blew through the trees. Sparks flew as the creatures and their cover fell in their wake. Their bodies were tossed further into the air, with new additions, as cannon fire burst in the ground, radiating daylight in the dead of night.
The final few wraiths circled the man they rightly guessed to be their assailants' leader.
He took each down with a single strike.
Pan slumped against a tree, sobbing, still only half-conscious of the forest around her. It was empty of the wraiths that had almost eaten her.
Now she was only surrounded by all five members of the Ginyu Force and Emperor Frieza.
Burter tapped the scouter fastened to the side of his blue terrapin head. "Is she dead or what?"
Jeice elbowed him. "That's the sheila the boss is crushing on we're not supposed to know about. You've got to ask more sensitive-like."
"Is she sensitively dead or what?"
"Hey, I know that face," Recoome, who might have passed for an Earthling if he weren't three times the size, said. "It's that little squirt I busted up on Namek. I don't remember him being a girl."
"That's not Gohan, it's his daughter," Captain Ginyu said. "He brought her to Capsule Corp whenever he visited. She was frightened of the ladybugs in the garden, so Dr. Briefs got her this pop-up entomology picture book. She ate one of the pop-up flies and tried to feed me the other. As far as cardboard goes, it wasn't bad."
Guldo didn't say anything, but he was about to poke Pan with a stick when Frieza brushed him aside.
Pan's eyes were fixed on a distant horizon that, in the thick of the forest and broken-down village, didn't exist. He tilted her chin.
"Can you hear me?"
Her vision did come into focus, but that was as far as it got. The tears still fell. "You weren't here. It was only me and grandpa and the dragons."
"I'm here now." He touched her cheek with his thumb. "You've been overexposed to the Vile Wave. You're hallucinating. Whatever you're seeing in those mists, it isn't real."
"It is real. You don't believe Son Goku is dead, but he is, and I know that because I killed him. If I hadn't lost the dragon balls, Omega wouldn't have devoured them. He wouldn't have become strong enough to overpower Grandpa. We could have used them to undo the destruction he caused instead. Now Grandpa's gone, and the dragon balls are gone, and it's all my fault. Don't tell me it isn't real!"
The tears wouldn't stop. Frieza pressed his hands against her face, his fingers brushing her eyelashes, wiping them away as they fell.
"Then it's over," He said.
Pan slid her arms around him and lay her head on his shoulder.
It was an unexpected move, and Frieza briefly wondered if it was really him she was seeing. He returned her embrace all the same. The warmth he'd but tasted that night they fought in the manor consumed him now. His pulse surged and he couldn't tell if it was affection or blind panic. He considered pushing her away. He held her tighter.
"Aww," Jeice said.
This time, Jeice was on the receiving end of the elbow, courtesy of Captain Ginyu. "Do you have any filter at all?"
"What are you mad at me for? Burter's the one who kept saying she was dead."
"She was just sort of leaning there," Burter said. "Dead people can be propped up. It was an honest mistake."
"'You' and 'honest' don't belong in the same sentence. I say that lovingly."
Pan's bandanna had fallen from her head in the scuffle. It snagged like a forlorn flag on the end of a branch. Recoome snatched it. "I think this might be hers."
"Bring it along," Frieza said, scooping Pan from the ground. "We have to get her indoors. There's still at least an hour left before the Vile Wave gives way to Red. If she inhales too much, it might cause her permanent damage."
"The problem with that is, there isn't any indoors here," Captain Ginyu said. "I've checked the buildings. Every last one has been compromised, structurally speaking. A few might have provided enough partial shelter to weather the rest of the night if she hadn't already absorbed so much of the Vile Wave, but as it is, we'd do just as much good throwing a sheet over her."
Frieza scanned the buildings. Ginyu's Milky Cannon had plowed a canyon through the center of town, and as he traced its progress, a structure on the doomed settlement's outskirts caught his eye. It stood in a perfect column of stone, overgrown with moss and uneven.
"Over there," He said, pointing.
"That's a creepy place to take a girl."
"I like it," Guldo said, offended.
"And it's no 'creepier' than where she's stuck now," Frieza said. "Set up a perimeter in case there are any more of those Vile Wraiths skulking about, or in case my brother's forces figure out she came this way."
The order given, Frieza carried Pan away from the forest.