Chapter Twenty-Seven
A jagged line of dirt marked where the field ended and the moorland began. Green faded to pastel and gray to silver under the frost. The sky pulsed blue. Patches of young trees sprung from the heather.
It was a perfect arena, Pan thought, and not a bad stage, either.
"I feel the king's energy approaching," She said to Bonpara. She sat in the branches of a tree, legs and skirts dangling, but Bonpara stood in the field. He'd dismantled his suit and rearranged the pieces into an amp; Sonpara and Donpara built theirs into speakers. "It's slow progress, because I don't think he can fly, but we should be able to see him any second now. Are you ready?"
Bonpara, Donpara, and Sonpara posed aside their equipment.
"I don't know if this will be the fight of my life or the concert of my life, but we're as ready as we're getting," Bonpara said.
Pan called to another nearby patch of trees. "The Para Brothers are set up. How are you doing?"
Captain Ginyu and his Force also struck a pose. "As soon as Sulfuri puts one foot in this field, we're going to make him regret it."
"He's going to be regretting it soon, then," Pan said, holding her hand over her eyes. "There he is."
Sulfuri lurched over the horizon, so black against the Prismatic light he looked like a shape cut from paper.
Bonpara powered up his suit.
The three reassembled conjoined suits didn't just look like an amp and speakers. They functioned like them, too. Upon activation, the computer pumped steady bass through them hard enough to vibrate the material. Pan shoved cotton-plant blooms into her ears and knew the others were doing the same. The music was still heavy and loud enough that, though Pan couldn't properly hear it through the earplugs, she could feel the resonance shake the tree below her.
Bonpara popped one arm and threw the other to the sky. He leaned back, stepped forward. The other two moved in perfect synchronization with him. As they moved, the dull metal of the suits glowed in matching rhythm.
Sulfuri was close enough to see them. Pan could tell because his expression matched, perfectly, the expression she'd once worn on her ten-year-old face the first time she'd seen the Para Brothers do this. She hadn't known that stunned uncertainty was part of the Parapara Boogie attack.
Sulfuri, on the other hand, had all the suspicion of a life on Ketchyn informing his instincts, and he guessed right away something was wrong, that he had to stop that music. The Brothers had positioned themselves that no matter which direction he approached from, there'd be distance enough between them; and when Sulfuri made to run it, he was met with a new, equally horrifying sight.
The Ginyu Force leapt from the trees and posed before him, reciting their names. Even Guldo got it mostly right this time, although he still giggled and waved his knife.
"Lean to the left! Put your hands in the air! This sick beat's more than you can bear!" Bonpara said.
"Maybe you don't know how the Ginyu Force does things," Captain Ginyu said, and the Force behind him snickered with utter malevolence. "But you can ignore our cheerleaders. You think you've got a score to settle with Lord Frieza? Nobody bothers the Emperor without going through us first. We'll be your opponents."
"Tou!" yelled the Force together.
"Go through you, I shall, then," Sulfuri said, his hand glowing.
Weak though he may have been, Sulfuri was not untrained. Recoome engaged him first, pushing the king across the dirt boundary with his strength. His earth-shaking blows had power, but they were slow, and Sulfuri wove through them. He pulled back his arm, preparing to apply the first of his three deadly touches.
Guldo darted between his legs and knocked him off-balance. Sulfuri pitched backwards. He barely caught his balance, but his hand came up short of Recoome's chest and gave the giant time to step out of the way.
Jeice took his spot, forming and spiking a Crusher Ball at the king. Sulfuri ducked it and flattened his hand against Jeice's chest. He clutched it, staggering back. Red flashed. But when Sulfuri pressed him to hit his arm, Burter tackled him from the side, throwing him to the ground. They both disappeared below the grass. Burter emerged and sped away a blur.
Ginyu planted his hands on his hips and laughed. "We spotted a flaw in your Dark Triad. Now you see it, too. You only developed it to work on one enemy. It's useless against a group coming at you from all sides. Which of us do you aim at? Who have you already hit? Where have you hit them? You're getting overwhelmed already. I don't know how you are at math, but flagging all five of us three times apiece, accounting for repeats and errors; ouch. Can you keep standing that long?"
"I can keep standing as long as it takes," Sulfuri said. "If you recall, the Dark Triad is only half my strength. The other half is… is… to the right, right, left, left, turn and spin, with a great big grin… what the hell…"
The Para Brothers flexed, and this time, Sulfuri flexed with them. When they launched back into their moves, so did he.
"You're one tough customer, it's true," Bonpara said.
"But it turns out that's got its glitches, too," Sonpara said.
"You can't be harmed by fists or blasts," Donpara said.
"But the Boogie don't hurt," Bonpara said. "It just makes you dance. Bonpara para!"
"Bon papa!"
Sulfuri struggled against the pull, but it was useless; he'd listened to the music without disrupting it, watched the flashes and the flourishes, and that was all it took to become the Para Brothers' prisoner.
"Your move isn't foolproof, either," Sulfuri said. "You can't dance forever, and that means you can't keep me trapped forever. What are you going to do when you wear out, I break free, and you're winded and I'm not?"
"They don't need to hold you indefinitely. They just need to hold you in place for ten seconds." Captain Ginyu finally took his place before Sulfuri. "Nine, eight, seven… catchy tune, isn't it?…six, five, four, three, two, here we go… I don't strictly have to say it, but for old time's sake… change now!"
Captain Ginyu's trap had closed. This was the one situation he, Bonpara, and Ember had set this elaborate stage to push him into. Pan thought it would have looked more impressive. Like before, it was only a bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky, one that faded to leave Ginyu and Sulfuri facing each other just as they had before.
The Para Brothers stopped moving and stood in place.
Captain Ginyu… or at least, Captain Ginyu's body… regarded its hands like it had never seen them before.
Beaded in sweat, Sulfuri's body cracked its neck.
"What… what's going on?" Captain Ginyu said in Sulfuri's voice.
Sulfuri, in Captain Ginyu's voice, replied, "What's going on is that you're not invulnerable anymore."
The Ginyu Force snickered again. The sound was disturbing enough, and then the Para Brothers joined in. Locked in their rhythmic state, even their laughter was perfectly synchronized. The effect was uncanny.
Magmast stepped one foot into the field. "Let me."
Cooler caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back. "Captain Ginyu is a professional and he knows what he's doing. You'd get in his way."
"I can still kill you just by getting my hands on you!" The purple man said, lunging.
He got two steps before Recoome blocked his path.
"Recoome Eraser Gun!"
The light that poured from Recoome's mouth tore a canyon through the wheat. The ground cracked and poured in on itself, blackening by the second. Stone, dirt, and germ erupted in a cloud. Sulfuri-in-Ginyu's-body would have fallen into the collapsing earth and been crushed, had there been anything left to crush by that point; but the white-hot energy burned him away, leaving a silhouette that dissolved into ashes and settled with the rest of the dust.
King Sulfuri, who'd first found and used Chilled's mirror, who'd murdered so many people, was dead.
ooo
Pan stood at the edge of the ravine. At its rock-bottom, small curls of smoke rose. Dirt and wheat heaped around it. The wind blew grains off the top in a light mist, but the apart from that, the dust had settled. There was no body left. Sulfuri had been atomized.
Ginyu stretched, the members of his Force surrounding him.
"Brilliant move, boss," Jeice said.
"It almost felt like the good old days." Ginyu threw back his head and laughed. It was equal parts disconcerting and funny, seeing an expression like that on Sulfuri's face, hearing so loud a laugh coming from his throat. "I don't think I'm keeping this body, though. Invulnerability is nice and all, but the guy obviously thought that was all he needed. This has to be the most out-of-shape host I've ever occupied. I'm getting a pain in my side just trying to pose. Besides, this pretty-boy face isn't me."
"I could score you a holographic projector," Bonpara said. "You could look however you wanted until you found something to your liking."
"Thanks, but it's be better for me to wait until I've formally transferred the kingdom to… what, you?"
That was the furthest thing from Magmast's mind. Ever since Pan had returned Lucia's mirror, he'd sat in place, cradling it in his lap. Still, he forced a response. "A provisional government, I think, is our best chance for avoiding more bloodshed. There's been enough of that."
"It can be done," Ginyu said. "Lord Frieza would send me to conquer planets that way when he needed the infrastructure intact and didn't want to risk an invasion. I'd just take the leader's place and sign power over bit by bit in a series of trade deals. It's real easy."
"That's…" Magmast said, "Actually somewhat terrifying, Captain Ginyu. I think I'm going to have nightmares about it. As for you, Cooler; I know you don't want my gratitude for your hand in this, but…"
"You're right. I don't. I saved your life to avoid a civil war. You're the only indisputable successor to the Asphodel throne Sulfuri didn't manage to take with him." Cooler almost sounded like he admired Sulfuri's ability to take his enemies with him.
"That's not strictly true," Magmast said. "As the eldest living descendant of Cocytus's royal family, you've got more than enough claim to it yourself. Why aren't you making a bid to expand the infamous Cold Empire into the East Quadrant?"
"Rule a city that did what it did to us? I'm more likely to raze it, and frankly, I don't have the time or the resources for that right now. Besides, I'll be busy enough running our territory in the North Quadrant."
Cooler found his way to Frieza, stood inches from him with his arms crossed.
"You have no objections?" He asked.
Frieza squeezed Pan's hand. "Not a one, brother."
Cooler glanced down, then back up, sour. "You're abandoning your place at the head of the organization? For her? First you lose to Son Goku, then you botch your attempted coup of Hell, and now this? Did you make a checklist of every possible way you could embarrass us? Oh, wait; you're going to try to tell me she's different."
"Different?" Frieza scoffed. "Pan's the most Saiyan Saiyan I've met since that brat of Paragus's."
"I'm kind of sorry I didn't get to fight Sulfuri myself," Pan was saying. "An enemy that can kill you in three moves no matter what you do? Could I have won under those conditions? It would have been thrilling to find out, and now I'll always wonder. Still, Captain Ginyu called first dibs, so interfering would have been rude."
"See?" Frieza said.
"Rude or not, I kinda wish she had interfered," Ginyu said, scratching his side. "If just to tell me not to toy with Sulfuri so much. It's starting to hurt to breathe."
"Maybe Ember can numb it," Pan said. "I'll go get him."
Ginyu snagged her by the arm. "Not right now. It's not like I'm dying. I can wait until he gets back."
"But he's just over… oh, I see what you mean."
Away from the crowd, Ember and Gelata walked along the field.
"It's time to return to the palace," Gelata said. "Search the archives."
"Destroy the mirror," Ember said, staring into the distance.
Gelata wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "I almost wish we didn't have to go back, captain. All the best moments of my life have been with you. Being on the road, where I didn't have to hide that, or worry palace drama or Asphodel propriety would wedge itself between us… I don't know if I can give that up again. I don't know if I can pretend like I used to."
"We may not have to, officer. I have a feeling things are going to be different from now on," Ember said. "Besides, where would those kids be without us?"
She laughed. "You're right. Let's go get them."
Pan watched from the crevice. "They're coming this way now."
"Good," Captain Ginyu said, "Because I feel… I feel…"
He doubled over and started hacking.
"Geeze," Pan said, patting him on the back. "Are you sure Sulfuri didn't have a cold or allergies?"
"It's not that. There's something in my throat."
Ginyu covered his mouth with his hand, but the next time he coughed, purple overflowed it and ran down his knuckles. He turned his back to Pan so he could wrap his fingers around something and yank. More liquid splashed out, hit the ground, and Ginyu took a deep gasping breath.
He opened his hand. In his palm was a Vile sentry. The kind Gelata had found inside Char.
Pan took a running jump and flew towards Ember.
"What is it?" Frieza asked, taking flight beside her.
"We have to tell Gelata. This isn't over. I should have known, should have wondered if Sulfuri could just walk into his rivals' houses and Triad-spam them to death, and if he wanted to do that so badly, why he hadn't before now. That thing Ginyu vomited up killed his inhibitions and drove him to it. He was a diversion!"
Ember heard Pan's call. He her speeding towards him. He waved.
The death beam went straight through Ember's back, pierced his heart, and shot from the front of him. Pan had to bank to the side so it wouldn't hit her, as well.
"Captain!" Gelata screamed, throwing herself down at his side. The next death beam struck her, tossing her small body across the field. She left a streak of blood in the wheat.
As Pan and Frieza landed at the fallen Asphodel guards' sides, thunder- real thunder- sounded overhead. The blue sky darkened with clouds, but more than that, its color drained, shifting from blue to indigo to violet as if the day had been put on fast-forward. Lightning forked through the heavens. With the racing clouds and encroaching night came whispers, tantalizing whispers calling out to Pan and anyone else who'd listen.
"The backlash," Cooler said. "The mirror is awake!"
The storm grew in anger. The heavy pile of wheat blew over, floated on the wind. It traveled in a cyclonic circle, an unnatural and hypnotic shape, until it converged and braided itself together in thick and jagged plaits. Two arms emerged. Two legs. A body with a long and ropy tail. A head with horns but with no face. The space between its chin and forehead collapsed and frayed as if some unseen hand had taken a file to it.
Still, the straw homunculus could see, or do something like it. It turned its faceless hole of a head to her.
It came to her in an arrhythmic line. Pan had never seen anything move so wrong, listing from side to side, bending its arms and legs as if it didn't have any bones (and it didn't). It raised a shaking hand and pointed its finger at her chest.
"Don't you dare."
Frieza had spoken, and now he appeared, standing between Pan and this strange new intruder. He wasn't making himself a human shield, as Lucia had, though; she could see in every line of his face he meant to kill this creature.
"You," He said. "It's your energy I felt creeping from that mirror, watching me every moment of every day, judging me, scorning me. Who are you?"
Pan had doubted the thing could speak, but she heard a groan from the Vile Wave, one voice rising to the forefront of its tangle of whispers.
"Who do you think?" It asked.
A memory burst in Pan's head. Gelata, sitting with her in Cold Manor's basement as she examined a mutilated portrait. After Kuriza's murder, she'd said, he had every image of himself defaced… and I mean that literally. De-faced. Paradoxically, that's how I know whose portrait this is.
"It's Chilled," Pan said. "King of Cocytus."
And as the whispers in the Vile Wave turned dark and its energy cruel and cloying, Pan knew she was right… and that it didn't do them any good.
ooo
This was not the first time Frieza stood before an opponent he could not defeat. He'd never felt quite so serene about it before, though. Behind him, Pan checked Ember's pulse, then Gelata's; for convention's sake, he thought, since she must have felt their energies snuffed out even more acutely than he had. Chilled had taken out the healer first and the strategist next. It's what Frieza himself would have done. What he had done.
"I'm hurt you didn't recognize me first, grandchild," The wicker-Chilled said.
"You haven't made it easy, you must admit."
"You're uncomfortable. Let me help."
Chilled scooped a lump of clay from the ground. He worked it between his fingers, flattened it, sculpted it, and fitted the finished product to the patch where his face should be. The result was more lifelike than should have been possible, down to the smile.
Frieza blinked. "That's supposed to help?"
"It's an improvement, isn't it?" He patted more clay to his arms, making something like armor.
"That's debatable."
"I'm not here to debate." Chilled looked past Frieza to Pan, who Bonpara was pulling from her fallen friends' sides. "Step away."
"I've heard moving me takes a spot more effort than just beating me."
Chilled folded his hands. "You know what your refusal means, don't you? What's going to happen next if you persist?"
"All too well," Frieza said.
"It doesn't have to be like this. I put so much into you. You're my greatest creation. So perfect in your hatred, a being incapable of loving and being loved, my means of destroying Flare with his own favorite weapon. At that, you succeeded admirably. Letting your father take the blame was a master stroke."
"I don't know why you'd think so. I ended up banished along with him. Sulfuri punished the right man after all, if only by mistake."
"I'd hate to throw all that away over this… one small breach. Not when it's so easily mended," Chilled said. "Let me kill her. Whatever you think you're feeling now, you'll forget it, perhaps even grow to despise it as you once did. Weakness doesn't become the likes of us. In an hour at most, this world is going to be a void. There's still a place for you to rule that void with me."
Frieza said, "You lecture me about weakness, grandfather, but you've given me two more chances to back down than I gave Vegeta, by my count."
"I'll kill her anyway once I've finished with you. It won't be a quick death."
Pan stood between Bonpara and Captain Ginyu. The wind whipped her hair and dress. Her eyes were darker than the sky. If this was the last he was going to see her, if he was destined for another eternity in Hell, he wanted to take this memory with him.
Frieza raised his hand and fired a white-hot ball into Pan's chest.
It exploded, lifted her from her feet and tossed her into the air. She landed on her back between Ember and Gelata. Bonpara and Ginyu dashed to her. They looked to Frieza like they moved in slow-motion. He didn't expect the cyborg to figure out what happened, but he hoped Ginyu would, otherwise there could be quite a bit of collateral damage.
"There. Quick death," Frieza said. "We can end this discussion now, I assume?"
That wiped the smile off Chilled's mask. It distorted into a look of hate so beyond the proportions of what a face should be able to reach, it could only have been made with clay. "What a disappointment," He said. "At least Sulfuri was loyal."
Chilled struck him across the face with a Death Blade.
Something crunched, and something warm ran down his chin, but to Frieza the most offensive thing about it was that he got dirt in his mouth. He back sprung to a more defensible position. From every direction, Vile Lacerations cut a spider web of paths through the air, honed on him like the center of a target. He deflected them as fast as they hit. Chilled threw a kick at the shield, hoping to rob Frieza of control over his own defensive maneuver; mindful of the trick, Frieza dropped the shield and blew vapor. The pressure pushed him back without putting Frieza within his reach.
Frieza took the opening dutifully, starting with an uppercut that grew into a fusillade. He snapped straw and hardened clay. The dummy doubled over.
Instead of feeling satisfied, Frieza was angry. Chilled wasn't using a fraction of his own strength, let alone tapping into the mirror's amplification abilities. He wanted to give Frieza hope before he crushed him. Frieza had played the same joke on so many people. Now he could only ask… why? What had the point of this unproductive intimidation theater ever been?
Not that Frieza didn't have hope. It simply was not tied up in the outcome of his fight against Chilled, which was a foregone conclusion. He spared a look at the field where Pan lay, giving every appearance of being out of commission. Captain Ginyu had Bonpara by the wrist and tried to drag him away from her, yelling. The rest of the Force hadn't bothered deliberating; Recoome had picked Sonpara up by the head and carried him off, while Jeice and Burter herded Donpara.
Oh, good. They had figured it out.
Now he just had to keep Chilled toying with him until Pan… woke up.
That brief look cost Frieza dearly. A Vile Laceration carved right through his left, cutting bone and flesh and muscle with equal ease. He watched the blobs of magenta follow it through him and into the distance before he fully processed that was his blood, a lot of his blood, and by that time it had thrown him into a second Laceration that gave him a matching gash on his right side. The pain hadn't even caught up to him when Chilled appeared above him and hammer-struck him to the ground. Dust gave way and rock broke beneath him. The dirt ground into his wounds and that was even more unpleasant than swallowing it had been.
It was a struggle to sit up. Frieza had to prop himself up on one elbow first, shaking, and then the other. His vision blurred from the blood loss, but he could still make out enough to find his way half-upright.
Chilled's foot slammed into his throat, erasing his progress in one swift blow. The cuts ignited. The rocks felt like internal sandpaper.
He pulled back his hand as if for a slap, but what he unleashed was another Vile Laceration, and then another.
"Does everything I make go wrong?" Chilled asked. "The mirror was supposed to bring my grandson back, and it didn't! The death of Flare was supposed to be the final wrench in the machine that killed him, yet Asphodel still stands! And you… you were supposed to be my vengeance personified."
Frieza laughed, even though it meant coughing up blood. "Did you truly believe you could rid Ketchyn of evil by killing one man?That's more gullibility than I'd have expected from you, thinking Flare was the lynchpin of all the malevolence in the universe and you were one good pull away from eternal peace…"
Chilled hauled him to his feet just to get a better angle to punch him in the gut. "I am one good pull away from eternal peace. Soon everyone but me is going to be dead."
Frieza sensed something that brought a more genuine smile to his face. Pan's energy spiked. It was erratic, not the power he'd felt from her Super Saiyan form, but there was a lot of it building.
"I commend you, though. After hearing you begged that Saiyan for your life, I expected you to grovel much harder before me, especially since I'm actually trying to hurt you. You're unusually quiet, though. Mourning your monkey girl? I'd say she'd thank you for the pain you spared her in the afterlife, but let's be honest; you're never going to see her again."
Frieza whispered, "I know."
"I missed that. Did you have some last words for me?" Chilled relaxed his grip on Frieza's throat. "Let me hear them, grandson."
"When I said that blast was a quick death, I didn't mean for her," He said. "Those were Blutz Waves I fired at Pan. She isn't dead. As we've been fighting, she's been absorbing them. You want my last words to you? Here they are: burst open and mix."
Pan sat up, her eyes vacant and unfocused.
She fell to her hands and knees, clawing the earth. Her fingers stretched. Grew. When she stood, she stood twice her normal size, and still she expanded.
Chilled dropped Frieza and backed away as the shadow stretched over them both and darkened. Changed shape.
"Oh, dear," Frieza said. "Saiyan transformations can be such a surprise, can't they? Even I didn't see this one coming."
"That…" Chilled backed away another step, "That is not a great ape."
Spreading its russet wings, the Shadow Dragon unleashed a roar, and the earth shook.