Chapter Twenty-Nine
The soft wind had its own whisper, its voice a soothing and honest contrast to the Vile Wave. It blew through Pan's hair as she landed on the lip of the crater. Other than the hole plunging straight to the bottom of the catacombs, the moorland before her looked much like it had when she'd first seen it. The heather bloomed pink and swayed. The lichen crawled over the stone, tinted pastel by feathers of frost. In the distance, Asphodel stood. Energies gathered inside it, weary but alive. Pan smiled. Now that her hair had returned to its normal length and consistency, she was able to tie her bandanna back into place.
The Para Brothers ran to greet her. That didn't surprise her. What did was that Magmast was with them, but Cooler was not.
"Are all the wraiths gone?" Pan asked. "Did any reach the city?"
"Not a one," Donpara said. "We were a line they couldn't break. When dawn finally came and the Vile Wave cleared, the rest died on their own; melted and fizzled away as soon as the light touched them."
"What about Cooler? He wasn't… I mean, they didn't get him, did they?"
Sonpara snorted. "As soon as the wraiths vanished, Cooler dropped this guy off with us, then he grabbed Frieza's body and split," He pointed his thumb to Magmast. "I have no idea where he was going in such a hurry."
Frieza's cloak still wrapped around Pan's shoulders. She gathered it and hugged it. She wished Cooler would have let her see Frieza one more time before he took him away. She decided then and there, if she had to steal Trunks's spaceship again to do it, she would find out where he was laid to rest. She would visit him. And if it meant jumping off Snake Way and giving up everything it led to, someday she would find him. He'd never see her again, Chilled swore. She'd take that curse as a challenge.
"We'd better return to the city," Magmast said. "After the long night we've had, it'll be chaos. Someone must step up and restore order. I mean you, of course, Captain."
Ginyu said, "Not a problem, Count. You remember when that moon got hit by an asteroid, scorched half of Polaris? Frieza never took any interest in that, and he certainly didn't funnel relief onto the planet through underground channels. But if he had, he'd have put me in charge of it. I can do crowd control, is what I mean."
"I don't know," Pan said. "You need to stop smiling and start punctuating everything you say with withering contempt, otherwise I'm afraid you won't fool anybody."
"You'd be surprised how much leeway you get when people aren't expecting an imposter," Ginyu said. "Besides, I'm walking in there with Count Magmast."
"Yeah, Sulfuri's mortal enemy. That might be the most suspicious part of all."
"Tragedy has a way of uniting enemies, does it not?" Magmast asked. "Sulfuri and I have had to fake smiles at each other in the past. We'll be fine. What will you do now?"
"We need to get back to Earth as soon as possible," Bonpara said. "Only, our ship isn't outfitted to make that kind of trip."
"Say no more. I'll get you everything you need," Magmast said.
It wasn't a long walk to Asphodel, but the cold air was exhilarating, the colors brilliant, and Pan memorized every short minute of it. She photographed the flowers. She photographed a pterodactyl soaring in a circle. She photographed a shiny bug she thought must be a naif beetle. At last she could leave Ketchyn without feeling like she was abandoning it.
ooo
When Pan saw the cream domes of her house before her, she didn't know if they were a dream, or if Ketchyn had been, but it seemed the two could not mutually exist. Home looked so much like it had when she'd left, from the smoke floating off the top of the chimney to the clothes drying on the line, Pan couldn't have been away for a whole week. She couldn't have been in a blizzard when the summer sun beat down overhead, or under a sky closer and more uniform than the pale blue above her. She inhaled. The trees, the cut grass, the loam and the water; it all mixed together and gave Mt. Paozu a scent like nowhere else in the universe.
After the Para Brothers' ship had breached the Prismasphere, they'd decided to forgo the extended trip and just get back with Instant Transmission, setting the autopilot to catch up. Much as she loved space, when Pan approached the house, the Para Brothers trailing behind her, she knew it had been the right decision.
But when the door opened with a slam, she did briefly reconsider.
"Where were you?"
Pan found it was not so pastoral inside. From the look of it, everyone was crammed into the place. Her parents and Uncle Goten, she'd expected; but they'd leaned on the sink to make room for gramps and Uub at the table, and they were joined by Bulma, Vegeta, Trunks and Bulla; and Marron was there with her parents. Even Master Roshi was there, although he mostly occupied himself with a glossy magazine Pan was glad the glare through the window prevented her from seeing.
"Where are Tien and Yamcha?" She mumbled. "Upstairs?"
It had been a joke, but Chi-Chi yelled, "They're still out combing the desert for you!"
"Oh," Pan said, starting to feel guilty. "I didn't think I'd cause that much trouble."
"Didn't think you'd cause trouble?" Chi-Chi pulled out the Para Brothers' note and waved it under her nose. "Do you know how this sounds?"
Come to think of it, Pan didn't know exactly what the Para Brothers had written. She took it and unfolded it. "Dear grandma, don't be sad, I'm better off where I am."
"And then your energy just vanished!"
Pan crumpled the note against her face. "Oh, brother, guys. I'm stuck on a planet where I can't get messages out to anyone but you, and when I ask you to tell my grandma what happened, this is how you do it?"
"It sounded all right to me," Sonpara said.
For the first time, her father managed to get a word in. "You couldn't reach us? Why not?"
"Ketchyn has a live atmosphere woven from the life forces of its dead founders. I couldn't get through it with Instant Transmission or call out without special equipment I didn't have. It probably dampened my life force, too, to the point you couldn't read it. The only thing it didn't at least muddle was telepathic messages, which is why I called the Para Brothers."
"That is fascinating!" Gohan said.
Pan pulled out her phone and called up the shot of Asphodel with the pterodactyl circling. "Here, I got some pictures. You can see the sky in the background, how it's so monochrome."
Not only Gohan, but Marron, Bulla, and Trunks gathered around to see the shots Pan had taken.
"What a unique texture those flowers have," Marron said. "I should put some in the garden, shouldn't I, mother?"
Eighteen shrugged. "It's your garden."
"Is it still snowing there?" Bulla said.
"Yes, but the dinosaurs are out, even in the cold, and I'm not seeing any signs of torpor," Gohan said. "I wonder if they've adapted differently because of the climate or…"
"Are you all encouraging this?" Chi-Chi said. "You think it's all right for Pan to jet off to some east quadrant hell hole whenever she feels like it and leave us vaguely threatening notes as long as she brings back nice photos?"
"I didn't 'jet off' to Ketchyn," Pan said. "The Colds wanted revenge again, so they used a teleportation device disguised as a bug to zap me there. I've been trying to get back, honest, but obviously I couldn't leave until I'd stopped Chilled from destroying the planet with me on it."
"You were fighting Colds," Chi-Chi said. "The most sadistic family in space."
"Not on purpose. They didn't know about grandpa and were going for him. They got me by mistake."
Vegeta thumped the table. "And you fought them all and didn't leave me a one, did you!"
"That's not what we should be concerned about," Uub said.
"Finally, a voice of reason," Chi-Chi said.
Uub continued, "It's first come, first serve, after all, and Pan got there first. We just won't save her any next time, right, guys? Now tell us the really important stuff," Uub said, "How strong was Chilled?"
Trunks pulled one of his mother's improved scouters from his jacket and punched in a few numbers. "Can you give me a ballpark estimate of his power level on the standard scale? Just off the top of your head?"
"And how much did you have to power up to defeat him?" Uncle Goten asked.
"Wait until I tell you about the Vile Wave. He could attack with it in ways I'd never seen before. I think my transformation's finally been fixed, too," Pan said. "I fought at full strength without a single earthquake."
"All right! As soon as we're back to the academy you have got to show us," Goten said.
"Sure. I might even be able to muster up a Green Wave Deflection, although this far away from the Prismasphere it won't be very useful."
Chi-Chi may have gotten famous for yelling, but at this point, she had to raise her voice just to be heard. "I can't believe this. You leave… don't tell us where you are… we think the worst… and it turns out you're off fighting? Did you spare a second of a thought for anyone but yourself?"
Pan handed her phone off to Master Roshi. She faced her grandmother.
"I'm sorry I frightened you."
"I…" Chi-Chi's face lost its edge. "You're turning out just like him."
"There are worse ways I could turn out, though, right?"
"I can't think of any better," Chi-Chi said. "Well, since you're back, get on upstairs and get your things put away. Goten brought us home some frogs yesterday. I'll fix seven-seasoned chicken-fried toad. There's plenty for everyone. Y'all are staying, right?"
"I already ate," Bulma said, queasy.
Sonpara had to jump out of the way as the door opened and Yamcha stepped through.
"Oh, there you are, Pan," He said. "I guess we don't have to look for you in the desert anymore if you're here. I'll go tell Tien."
He left again, whistling.
Donpara elbowed his brothers. "See? What did I tell you? Bunch of weirdoes."
"You wouldn't be here with us if you weren't weirdoes, too," Pan said.
She thought that was it. She was ready to unload the rest of her backpack. However, at the top of the stairs she found Master Roshi, blushing and giggling as zoomed in and out on an image on her phone.
"Don't use my devices to watch porn," She said, swiping it back.
"Hey! I'm just looking at those lovely pictures you brought back from Ketchyn! That's what you took them for, right?"
Pan flipped the phone over. "That's funny, because I don't remember visiting the webpage Oops, I Lost My Bikini Top In Public on Ketchyn. I distinctly remember not having Internet access there. I also don't remember meeting anyone named…" She squinted at the print, which was by several measures the smallest thing on the page, "…Velvet La Voom."
She turned to storm away with her phone, but Roshi slipped it through her fingers and danced down the hall with it.
"Too slow! You'll have to do better than that to pull one over on ol' Jackie Chun!"
Pan thought about chasing him, but left for her room instead. "Fine. Just don't brick it."
Her bed was still made. The bedspread wrinkled as she threw the satchel onto it. There wasn't much to unpack, and Pan didn't think much of where she put everything; at least not until she got to the bottom and unrolled a speckled yellow flower. It was the bog asphodel Frieza had given her. Pan sat on the edge of the mattress, staring at its blood-flecked petals and the green stem against her palm. Across from her, a wanted poster bore a caricature of her face, made to look as villainous as possible. For some reason, they'd drawn her holding a knife. She looked from the sketchy knife to the real flower.
Maybe I should take that poster down, she thought.
"Ahem."
She hadn't even heard the door open, but Master Roshi stood in the door frame, holding her phone. He handed it back to her.
Facing upwards, the picture she'd taken of herself with Frieza in the Tower of a Thousand Eyes.
Pan didn't know what to say. All she could manage was a weak, "I forgot about that one."
He lowered his sunglasses and stared in her face, then folded one gnarled hand over her shoulder.
"You don't have to tell me what happened," He said. "But you can. You know that, right?"
Pan turned the phone off. She threw it on her dresser and, after one more look, placed the flower next to it.
"I know," She said. "Maybe when I feel more like talking, I will. Right now, I just want to get back downstairs. I miss everybody."
"Well, then," Master Roshi said, "Let's go back downstairs."
He motioned and she followed, closing the door behind her, leaving the asphodel's petals fluttering in the breeze from her open window.