Thunder crackled across the broken city.
Another flash of lightning cast monolithic shadows over the split streets, like stripes of a tiger. As did they illuminate the panicked determination within the young woman's ragged onyx eyes.
In the distance, a faint light expanded across the sky, violet ether contrasting against pitch-black strands of malice darker than even the rain clouds.
It was growing stronger.
As fast as she could go, every inch of covered ground was another lethal blow. Her every wheezed breath sounded less and less like a drag of air, more and more like a choked sob. She resorted to careening through glass and brick and steel, dropping her every reservation in a last desperate charge, flaring what remained of her energy as a means of distraction.
But as the flashing red of broken street signs made evidently clear,
She was too late.
The two artificial teens lay near-dead. Standing over them, a bloodied man, tired but standing, absent of the dark energy that once latched to him.
They stared at one another. One with trepidation. "That… ki…" He stammered between heaves.
The other's desperation erupted into a small agony. Like something had torn her skin.
"Do I… know you?"
But that, too, slowly died off. Left behind was dead apathy.
"... no."
She raised her hand,
"Wait-"
and preserved history.
There's Something About Pan…
"GOHAAAAAN!"
If I Don't Do It, Someone Else Will!
[ OP: Siinamoto – Shoujo A ]
Trunks stared apprehensively. "Gohan's daughter, huh…"
Robel paid an idle glance, knowing for a fact this development wasn't the demoness's concern. "I was careless earlier, and brought her by mistake."
The nine year-old girl stared blankly into the cavern floor. Ever-so briefly, reality sank in.
"Since my history's also been erased…"
Pan threw her head back up with a smile. "Then I'll just have to fight, too!"
Gohan – a product of Chronoa's summons – stammered in woe. "N-NO! THAT'S…! HUH!?"
She grinned, undeterred. "Isn't it because you couldn't beat that Dark-something-Army that my world can't go back to normal? I can't just stand here and wait in this creepy place!"
With an impeccably-silver tongue, Pan asked Robel for an outfit similar to her father's.
All the while, Trunks glanced at her from the side of his view.
As if heeding the countdown of a time bomb.
Pan glared into the floor, hoping to burn an escape route through it.
"There wasn't any need to spend three days in history."
"Look in a mirror." Her head lifted amidst the room's smoky haze. "You look like you're two sips from a caffeine overdose."
"That's irrelevant."
She leered over to a poorly-closed cartridge by an ashtray freshly used. "That's my line." She reached over for a cigarette.
Trunks smacked her hand away. "You're not exactly overseeing everything that pops up, are you? You're still a patroller."
Pan aggravatedly slumped back into her chair. "Whatever."
The older hybrid paid her a glare. "As always, good work. You got reckless near the end of the last one but… but that's understandable."
"Thanks?"
"... I won't waste any more of your time. Feel free to-"
Pan threw herself onto her feet and started on her way.
"-inish mY DAMN SENTENCE!"
"Why?" the Son barked, rubbing her head. "I knew what you were gonna say, right!? Are you gonna EXPLODE if you don't get to tell me how I'm allowed to walk out the door, too!?"
Trunks calmed himself. "Okay, it's clear that you're reaching your limit. At minimum, you'll need time to catch your breath."
"Nooo I dooon't, I'm a big girl now, I can work overtime. Gods forbid this patroller patrols, almost like I have a job or something."
"You-...! you know that's not what I mean. This lifestyle you've chosen-"
"Oh, SCREW YOU, 'CHOSEN'-"
"-CHOSEN, needs a blend of mental and spiritual strength that you're LOSING by the minute. Just two days ago, you almost died, and you've only pushed harder after that. You're burning yourself out, you're running yourself into the ground, and you see that, and you DON'T CARE." Trunks bolted out his seat. "FOR AN UPPITY BRAT WHO INSISTS THEY BE TREATED LIKE AN ADULT EVERY WAKING MOMENT, AS IF SUFFERING SOMEHOW MAKES THEM ABOVE IT ALL, YOU SURE AS HELL TAKE EVERY CHANCE YOU GET TO BE AS IMMATURE AS POSSIBLE!"
Pan stared at Trunks.
Trunks stared at Pan.
Pan's wrist beeped.
"Nice talk!" Pan chirped like a vulture, stepping off.
"Effective time now, you are forbidden from entering history."
Pan went off the deep end.
"I'm WHAT!?"
Trunks sat back down. "You need rest, and you won't listen to your needs. I'll heed them for you."
Pan charged Trunks' desk and slammed fists onto it. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS!"
"It's well within my power."
"THIS IS BULLSHIT! WHY IS YOUR FOOT ON MY NECK AND NOT ANYONE ELSE'S!?"
"I'm not gonna sit here and repeat myself all day. Someone else can fill your role while you recover. That's what the Time Patrol is all about."
Pure ocular vitriol.
"Now go."
Her face crinkled in a seething ire. "Yes, sir," she mockingly hissed. She kicked the door open on the way out.
Trunks slowly fell back into his chair, fumbling for a cigarette.
"That was a pull door."
He heard the pack fall onto the floor. He froze, hand twitching.
.
.
His hair turned yel-
Somewhere along the way, Pan stopped her Jet Squirrel.
A memorial was being held for the ones who'd been lost during the Towa Surge, dead or… otherwise.
Setting herself aside, Pan locked her ride and walked to it, paying respects to the massive blue ghost. To those of her age, and older, and younger, the photonic specter changed its shape in intervals, their names circling their heads as if halos. One, she recognized more than any other.
"(Of course, it had to be you…)"
One of Son Goku.
"(That skank won't let me have anything, will she…?)"
"Pan?"
Someone noticed her presence, and many followed. She was being put on the spot.
"(Oh yeah, thanks for the spotlight, dipshit. Not like I'm only here to mope, too.)"
Some of the audience held the reddened, blotched eyes of weeping loved ones.
"(... No. I'm right. I don't have to say anything.)"
She gathered her thoughts.
"(But… screw it.) They didn't have to die."
Surprised murmurs broke out.
"They could've just sat there, and let someone else fight their battles. They could've gone back to sleep, and let all of history unravel into nothing. After all, we're outside of it all. Even if we couldn't fix things on our own, somehow, what's the worst that could happen by letting it all burn? Dying? That's just extra sleep, especially if we're erased or something. Now that's real shuteye."
The murmurs got angrier with every word. Pan didn't seem to mind.
"If they'd just done that, they'd still be here, right? So what was the point?"
People began to shout at her. She didn't seem to hear them.
"It was YOU!"
They suddenly stopped.
Pan began pointing fingers. "AND YOU! AND YOU! AND YOU! AND ESPECIALLY YOU! EVEN YOU! YEAH, EVEN YOU! STOP HIDING OUT THERE! THAT'S WHY THEY'RE GONE, IT'S YOU!"
A heavy melancholy would've overtaken them if Pan had lost her momentum, if her smile had faded.
"THEY SENT THEMSELVES OUT THERE SO THAT YOU COULD KEEP GETTING STRONGER! SO THAT YOU COULD KEEP LIVING HOW YOU'D LIKE! SO THAT YOU DIDN'T NEED TO DO WHAT THEY DID! TIME!? DUTY!? HISTORY!? WHO GIVES A CRAP!? IT'S YOU ALL! YOU'RE THE PROOF THAT THEY DIDN'T GO OUT FOR NOTHING!"
Pan raised her fist for dramatic effect. "SO QUIT STEWING OVER IT AND FOR CRYING OUT, QUIT BLAMING YOURSELF! KEEP CRYING! KEEP SMILING! KEEP GROWING! BECAUSE THAT'S THE PROOF THAT THEY WENT OUT FOR A DAMN GOOD REASON!"
It seemed to resonate with the others at the memorial, in differing ways. Some loud, some quiet.
"(I've still got something, huh?)"
She got back on her hoverbike and gave herself some altitude.
"(Or maybe they'll just take anything, right now.)"
She threw herself down beneath a rickety ceiling fan that hang on to a torn thread, sprawled on a couch in the midst of a sea of carnage she called an apartment.
The cushion she'd rested her head upon was damp, as always.
I don't want to do this anymore.
It rang in her head. She pushed it back.
I don't want to do this anymore.
"Shut up."
She leaned onto her side, her arm sliding off the couch. Her hand grasped at the floor before finally ensnaring a small empty bottle, and she weakly shook it. It made no noise. With a sigh, she released, returning to her back.
She watched the fan ahead spin.
I don't want to do this anymore.
"Please just shut up."
She said it, but her lips didn't open.
The fan kept spinning.
I don't want to do this anymore.
Every set of eyes asking her "why" before falling behind eyelids, or rolling back, or being vaporized. Because of her, by her.
How many of them belonged to her grandfather. Or mother. Or uncle, or grumpier uncle. Or piece of shit asshole fuckface old man.
Or dad.
I don't want to do this anymore.
Her face shriveled with a whimper.
Pan woke atop a damp pillow, sore all over.
As always, the ceiling fan was still spinning.
There was a soap on the 120' Star Plasma-Screen TV she'd turned on sometime at night, so she diverted her sleepy scowl over there. At a soft volume, people were screaming at each other about absurdities she couldn't hope to relate to, and with such a feverish, romantic passion, she was sucked into somewhere else.
It was nice.
Ding-Dong!
And it was over.
Now she scowled at the door. Then she remembered who should be behind it.
The girl closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Hey!" she chirped at the door.
The delivery girl looked at her client, then at her delivery, then at her client again.
"Yep, yep that's me, that's mine, that's what I paid for," went Pan as she snatched it all from her faster than she could think, before slamming the door. "Thanks a bunch, see you a-"
A foot caught the door.
CRRCK!
In a roundabout sort of way.
"... MMMMRRRRMH!"
"OH MY GOD I-"
Dina fell through the door, her cap falling off on impact with the floor. "MMM-HMM-HMMMMM! MMMM-AHAAA…!"
"I DON'T… I DIDN'T… FUCK, WHY…!" The patroller gave up on thinking and knelt down to the writhing young woman, of whom had started crunching in the fetal position.
"FFF-FINE, I'M FINE, I'M F…. FAAH SHIT IT GOT WORSE! HOW'S IT GETTIN' WORSE! OH PISS ON A STICK IT'S FUCKING PULSATING!"
"LET GO OF IT DUMBASS LET ME-"
"J-J-JS… FUCK OFF I SAID I'M FINE JUST… GIVE A BROAD A SODDING MIN- GAAAAH! IT FUCKING SPLINTERED, THAT'S WHAT IT IS, ME BONES'RE SHRAPNEL!"
"NO DUH ASSHOLE YOUR FOOT'S ON ITS FUCKING PERIOD NOW LET GO-"
"YOU'LL HAVE TO FUCKING KILL ME YOU-"
Pan sprawled on one side, tiredly staring into the ceiling fan's spin.
Dina sprawled on the other, red hand covering a redder face. Her foot had been gauzed, a ki-based patch job underneath.
They had done so for fifteen minutes without a peep.
"... so was that me or-"
"No," Dina replied. "No."
"Cool."
"Mh."
They let the drama play for a few more minutes.
"So why'd you do it?"
"... huh?"
"Break your foot in my doorway, why'd you do it?"
"Something looked off."
"So?"
"I mean if one can't at least ask 'emselves 'why the bloody hell is a girl my age ordering copious amounts of bottled remedies and alcohol,' maybe they shouldn't walk the streets."
"Maybe they just know how to mind their business and get paid. W-what's that even mean, 'bloody hell'?"
"I dunnuh. Just somethin' else I brought from… home." Dina's voice had a noticeable drop-off.
"Where's that?"
"It's uh… Earth, few hundred miles north of that Fiend Village place. It's pointless, it's probably a load'a rubble where you're from."
"Is that where you learned to-"
"Break my foot in strangers' doorways? Can't say it's not."
"... whatever hey, thank you for your service and shit but, can you leave now? I'm not gonna lie and say I 'know you' know you, but I've known you long enough to know you've had worse."
"That's a most-flattering way of throwing a crippled girl out on the street."
"I'm sorry, do you LIKE it here or something?"
Dina slumped back. "Maybe I don't like the idea of leaving yet," she sassed.
Pan lowered her head to glare at her.
She then threw herself over her.
"Look, I'm in a trashy mood right now. Do I need to convince you to beat it?" Pan growled with eyes black like an event horizon. "Is that where you're going with this?"
"... alright so for starters, I'm taken."
The drama playing in the background seemed to mock the black-shirted patroller's gesture.
"Second," Dina closed in, directly challenging her better. "Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying."
Pan fell back over to her side. "You're really gonna extort more money from me? Asshole."
"Figured I'd've painted a better image of myself after my match." Dina shifted, using the couch as God intended instead of like a vagrant with friends and a case of denial. "Something's going on with you. I wanna know what."
Pan rolled her eyes. "Seriously?"
"Oh I'm sorry, let me just ignore how your flat looks like a drunken typhoon looted it."
"I'm messy."
"Your eyes are literally puffy."
"Allergies."
"Of what?"
"Cats and nosy people." Pan hammed up a sneeze.
Dina lazily frowned. "You're a horrid actor."
Pan rubbed her nose with a groan. "Everyone's a critic."
Dina threw her hands up. "So you admit it?" Pan's silence drove her to leave the couch and further investigate. "Painkillers despite Conton's medical advancements, m-oh jesus morphine, there's… Pan, some of this shite's got names indecipherable by the human tongue!"
"How very uncultured of you, Dina. I expected better."
Dina bent over the couch, pointing at a bottle between her fingers. "Read this."
Pan looked at it. "Mmmhaa—gualaidhbahuatlumachiewyhgfuu—o."
Dina stared.
"I rest my case. Wait can you shake that actua-"
"Pan. Can you talk to me? Really?"
"What? We've been talking for two minutes too long already, who gets CTE at 17?"
"Pan."
The patroller couldn't ignore the look Dina gave her. It felt like one she'd given a hundred times, begging for middle ground.
Pan frowned deeply. "Why do you even care?"
There was silence, as if Dina had slipped into hypocrisy.
"... because the last time I had this chance, I froze. And if I'd just taken it, and let her talk, I would've had time to process things, and I could've made a call in some- ANY sense, and stopped everything that followed, and would still be in my history, and my friend would've never gone mad, but now I'll never get the chance to change that for the better… so I wanna start with you."
If she'd pulled puppy dog eyes, she could've brushed it off.
It was the way she struggled to keep herself together that chipped her wall.
Pan sighed. "If you tell me everything… then I'll think about it."
Dina's eyes brimmed with hesitance.
"It's only fair. Unless you're fine with me holding out on you, too."
"... alright. Fine. It is only fair." She cupped her face.
"Guess I'll start at Ground Zero."
"(I thought I'd come to terms with everything.)"
Both girls stared hollowly into the ceiling fan, inversed on the couch like two open-eyed corpses.
"(But when I put it all together, I'm strangled by the perspective. Why did I wait so long to correct myself?)"
Her head had sunk into her own dampened pillow. "(I'm either a coward or a selfish bastard, or God help me, both. None of this would've happened if I'd just…)"
"... I just killed my dad. Again."
Dina's eyes slowly widened.
"You don't have to say anything. Seriously. I-I mean, how? How does anyone say anything to that? Besides like, what? 'Me too'?"
"Again?"
"... again. It's… it's the great thing about being a patroller with a dad as awesome and important as mine. A lot hinges on his roles in history. So you see him often. Them, often. I have a lot of faces that I've grown up with, and now I see them every day. And I kill them."
The ceiling fan spun.
"I'll kill them, over and over, because they'll become happier than they 'should' be in that moment. And that better outcome is wrong. Staging their deaths, getting my hands dirty, it depends on the day, on how Towa's decided to mess with me. I spot some of them in the city and I just see ghosts. I can't even look them in the eyes because I've watched them all die, at some point. I'm a murderer. I don't care that I'm doing the right thing, I'm a murderer. A fucking assassin for a shadow organization that has to uphold the old order by severing any sign of change."
Pan scanned a raised hand. "It was weird, how it started. I just… woke up, somewhere else, and not everyone's there, and everyone that is there looks different, and you're told those who aren't are gone. Without any hope of coming back. I could brush it off because if nothing else, Dad was right there, and if I focused on how he was taking things, I'd manage. So I did, and I thought I could make a difference there and start over as someone stronger. For a while, I did… I was helping save time by putting evil demons out of commission. Kinda like a superhero. Once things got serious, I became a spectator again... which was fine, I guess, I wasn't nearly strong enough and I'd already done my part. But then the conflict ended. Thanks to Towa, space-time was a mess, so there was no time to celebrate. I learned how real patrols were run. I acted on auto-pilot on my first patrol, only for bright-eyed little Pan to find out that being a patroller... was not, was nothing like being a superhero. There came points when I COULD save someone, and…"
A single, dry, segmented chuckle slipped out of her. "You can't do that, Pan. The past is the past, Pan. You shouldn't be here if you can't handle something like that, Pan. You can't have agency, stop thinking with your heart and use your head, Pan. I hated it. Some of the things the others said, when and where they said them, how and wHY… I started hating them. So I struck out on my own, when no one was looking."
[ BGM: Keita Haga – Ever-Present Feeling ]
She paused.
"You ever hear about the 'Prime Timeline' or whatever bullshit? It's… not real, you know. It's the name given to this amazing history where everything somehow, even when everything goes to shit, things somehow end happily. It's attractive for demons because it's so anti-despair and it's easy to turn things on their head with a few alterations, so the patrol treats it like it's their baby. Calculations Division gave it the Prime label as a joke, but it caught on and people started giving it value because, again, they liked it. I believed it from the start, though. So I figured 'there has to be a way I can fix this.' That it was up to me, and that no one else would because they were dumb, boring adults."
She drifted off into the memory.
"Dad studied ways to alter bad outcomes without costing spacetime. Passionate didn't do him justice, he never seemed to sleep, always with some new book on original ki or quantum physics or new notes from snooping around Conton. But it seemed like every time he got close, reality would smack him in the face, and he'd be back to level one in the same night. But he always got back up and hit the books, harder. People looked up to him, helped whenever he needed it... he was a symbol of hope in Conton, someone who'd change things. I wanted to show him it was possible in my own way. Goten helped me out. There was a lot of string-pulling, a lot of nudges and side-winks, but we were gonna really fix a timeline for good, so it'd be worth it. When we time travel, we don't create alternate timelines. So Goten and I thought 'We can interfere directly, right? Who cares about dumb laws? Let's make every time a better place!' So we found a timeline where a villain won, and 'corrected' it."
Dina, for once, remembered a fact from class. "But when a history is interfered with directly... distortion energy gathers within its scroll."
"And it pools, and pools, until..." Pan tore an invisible sheet of paper. "Spacetime rifts apart. It went unnoticed until the history couldn't be hidden anymore. Say, do you… know, what can happen when a rift springs up?"
Dina did not remember a fact from class.
"Anything. Things are changed across the history's beginning and end, time periods are no longer separated. Impossibility is invoked in the presence of a rift. That's why there was such a rush to create those time minis when the rifts here sprung up. They take time to heal, and they need to be isolated until then, but we didn't know that yet. But things always worked out in the past for Goten. So he just smiled and promised things would work out."
Pan's wistful smile slowly, painfully died.
"The monster that came out killed him instantly, just a beam of light. Gone. It toyed with me, for some reason. Gave me hope that I could fight back, sent me on the edge of exploding, then went back to pummeling me."
Dina watched wordlessly as Pan fell into her own world, unaffected by the tears down her eyes or the blood down her fist.
"I screamed for dad. It was like he heard me, and there he was, to the rescue. But he… didn't have time to get angry. To be angry. That thing that I created lunged at me and… and he stopped it. Took it with him."
She looked to the sky. "I wasn't left with anything. No one to blame but myself. I was just… alone, with it all, for the first time. I don't remember what happened after that, only feeling warm. Trunks was consoling me when my senses started to return. I was so light-headed, I didn't know anything for sure."
"There was a heat, right?"
Pan fixated on the ceiling fan.
"Like a cannonball was burning through your stomach? Or like the small of your back had gone nuclear?"
She nodded. "It's always there, when I ascend. Reminding me how useless it was."
Dina weakly clawed at the fabric of the couch. "... is it guilt? Why you take the jobs you do, I mean."
"... I wish I knew. I started doing them religiously some time after Dad died, after all."
"..."
The tv was white noise in the hushed intervals.
"I hate it. I swear that I hate it. I hate waking up and knowing that I'll do it, that I'll force myself to..."
Pan's face tightened. "But I hate the idea of someone else doing it so much more. I just… don't want anyone to hurt them…!" She clamped her eyes shut. "I don't wanna know that people can kill them and feel nothing, so I'll do it…! I don't wanna hate anyone else, so I'll hate myself…! I don't want people to feel guilty, so I'll keep being…!" She gripped her face as she stifled. "I dunno why… I just wanna..."
Dina fell face-first into the pillow beside Pan's head, embracing her.
"Stupid."
They sat like that until the shadows around the room shifted to an angle.
.
.
"Dina?"
"mM-hm?"
"Don't become a patroller."
"No."
"You're gonna hate yourself."
"I'd hate myself more if I left you alone."
Pan didn't respond. Only clenched her fist tighter.
"You could've kicked me out before you went off, y'know." Her hand softly unballed the fist. "Why'd you let me stay?"
"..."
She held on a bit tighter. "Maybe you wanted someone to see you, and opposed yourself. Because you're just that stubborn." Dina rose to meet her eyes. "But that's stupid. So I'll be even more stubborn for you."
Pan's sullen visage began to soften, and she broke into a crooked smile. "You sound like a soap opera…!" she mournfully giggled, playfully shoving a palm into Dina's face.
"Mwhch wne?" Dina mumbled with a forming grin.
"All of them, stupid!" Her palm rolled off the ruby-eyed girl, sending both of them tumbling off the sofa and parting the two across the floor. They stammered out their own giddy giggles, recoiling from the mundane shock of an unexpected fall.
"...! Where'd you learn to speak like that, anyway?"
Dina looked away. "... anime."
"Anime!?" Pan pushed her shoulder "The dumb robot cartoons!?"
"No, there are good ones, you've just got to look!"
They both eyed each other.
"Y'know, it adds up the more I think about you. Just how much did you learn from that stuff?"
"Actually, most of it's a coincidence," Dina winked. "Trust me."
"... You're such a dork."
"I've started to notice."
She faced the ceiling. The fan started to slow down. "Now I've got more energy than I know what to do with…! Thanks, jerk…"
"... wanna spend it?"
Pan looked over to Dina's devious smile. "What're you suggesting?"
"What else?"
The onyx-eyed girl looked away smugly. "You know I could kill you with a sneeze, right?"
Dina giggled maniacally. "Don't tease me like that."
"..." Pan faced the ceiling again. "Wonder how grandpa's doing..."
"Wuh?"
Pan kipped onto her feet. "Fine. If that's what you want, then I'll play with you for a while." She went back, invoking panic in the extraordinaire. "You're not the type to ask for people to hold back, so I'll make this good for us both."
"Wait, you aren't-!"
"Nnnope. I like the high I've got better." She dug through a miscellaneous pile, and as such, miscellaneous objects flew by Dina.
"How could anyone pay for-"
"Don't worry about it. Ah-ha!"
Pan pulled out a rusty chain wrapped in rugged and tearing orange cloth, and linked it around her neck.
"... hot." Dina picked herself up with core strength. "Like, topically hot, why the fashion statement?"
Pan flaunted it. "It's cursed."
Dina piqued.
"Right? Metals take less time than other materials for resentful ki to seep in. I stopped wearing it once I realized what it was doing to me. It's like a different 'full power', sets my 'cap' lower. I dunno, it's hard to explain without feeling it."
"How long's it been since you last used it?"
"This morning."
Dina stared at her. Then back at the mess she made searching for it. "... eh. I've been a worse mess."
"There's quite the story behind all this, yeah?"
The stagnant time-space was an ominous aurora borealis over a rotting, sand-ridden, ice-dotted city. "Looks like a bloody weather disaster flick."
Pan landed on a decapitated spire, behind Dina's disemboweled skyscraper. "Fun thing about alternate histories. Some have fundamental constants that others lack. Bulma can use wishes on the eternal dragon to pump her ass all she wants, but we ask for a few innocent people back and suddenly we're overusing them."
"What?"
"Life's not fair. That's the story behind all this. And fuck dragons, that too."
"Been there before."
Pan brought her arms behind her back and over her head. "But that's just history, if that. Let's live for now, ok?"
The older hybrid's mere presence had an aura, her ebony irises drawing a fathomless pressure like twin singularity points, threatening to crush her flat.
Dina smiled, loosening her neck. "No arguments from me. (It's pointless to even compare… It's like we're in two separate dimensions! Everything else has been small-fry until now. But this…)"
Those same singularities hovered over everyone she'd so-much as seen, barring two blue voids.
"(Is she stronger than Ms. Ayeva? Even like that, is she stronger!?)" Her smirk became a fanged grin. "(And to what degree!? Could I even wrap my head around that kind of power!? Do I have any business wondering, how I am now!? JUST HOW STRONG CAN ONE PERSON-)"
Pan's eyes flared, and Dina flew.
"Sorry, but I'm gonna use this chance to touch up on a few things. Hope that's fine by you."
[ BGM: Mitsuharu Fukuyama – Victory Road ]
Dina rolled across the earth. "KE-HAHAHAHA!" Dina replied in kind, tearing at the surface just to catch herself, leaving a breadth of carnage in her wake. Amidst the fray, she sailed for the tiny dot a thousand miles out, only to phase right through it. She swerved around to find her opponent, only for a building to swing into her, sending her face-first into the sky, and she plummeted down for miles. An invisible force slammed her upward amongst the borealis that flickered in the sky.
Down below, on a cloud of dust, Pan touched down, staring into Dina's eyes from leagues away. "(She's still able to scratch it, ay? Alright...)"
As Magic is the routing of an outer force, Ki is the channeling of an innate life energy.
The building she'd used surfed inches across the ground, disturbing not a segment of rock below before she thrusted her hand into the sky, and it followed her wordless command like a chucked spear, hunting its prey before detonating on impact in an eruption of energy. Like a spark, it sent the atmosphere ablaze, and then that same atmosphere compressed into a sphere. Dina spun to catch bearings, and desperately swung and veered herself to avoid the oncoming spirals and lashes of flames that bit at her, then attacked them with her own ki, only for the flames to tunnel through her full power.
"MAGIC!?" Dina screamed, before a pillar ensnared her in its jaws, its brethren joining in a feeding frenzy that ended in the ruby-eyed brawler's explosive retort.
She gasped with blanked eyes, the small blood-red dots returning once the lingering sparks around her turned into droplets.
But there comes a point where the line is blurred. When one's own force of spirit overpowers the world in which they reside, and its laws are not distorted, but refined and reinterpreted in an instant.
A slash of pressurized water slammed into her, and then another, and then another, as if a sea god were painting onto the world, and the water coalesced into a massive, boiling, spinning funnel.
"SHIT…!"
Dina seemed to catch on, and fired a wave at it with everything she had. She actively struggled with the pressurized stream no larger than a hose's, despite her blast's blinding scale that dwarfed canyons. With a roar, she pushed past it, and showcased her own control of ki, redirecting her attack toward Pan.
She grinned. "(See, Trunks?)" She stocked her thumb into the crevice of her index finger.
She let loose a pressure that tore through the blast like a bullet, leaving the outline of a perfect sphere.
Dina cackled in sheer terror with a hint of deja vu.
There was a time when such beings were hailed, gods that shaped the world on whims. In the case of Son, one thousand years ago, the word would've been Tara. A guide toward spiritual liberation who bayed her own divine transcension.
The blast shattered into bits that remained focused on the patroller, and the air around her seemed to parry them, sending each one scurrying across the ruined and resilient city in a blinding spectacle as Dina darted around the battlefield, soaring above her foe.
"(When I put my mind to it…)"
And yet, the scattering beams, sent by one that could tear the planet asunder to challenge the strongest, blew apart walls and roofs, cratering the ground in pathetic crackles replicable by sticks of dynamite. Dina powered an orb aimed at ground-level, cutting loose only for its horizon-spanning blast radius to not so much-as dent the ground.
"(Whuh…!)"
Emerging from the glow's breadth, Pan's silhouette faced one of many blasts still charging at her, kicking it toward its sender who could not notice its speed before it shot into her gut like a physical strike, sending her flying into a structure in an arch.
She bounced off it, spittle flying out of her as she slowly came down from her concussion. A rock formation tipped with pavement shot into her gut before destabilizing and expanding into pure energy, an explosion following that cast yet another shadow across the whole of the city.
Just as she was knocked through the low-rise, the sky dimmed.
"(I can do anything.)"
Thunder shook the air, monolithic storm clouds rolling in like a battalion called to formation. In the same instance, massive orbs of ki formed above her target.
Yet, the very target she be, the ruby-eyed girl's pain-wracked grimace morphed into a grin.
"(One last time.)"
Dina's eyes erupted in an irradiated glow, her hair and aura enflaming with pure gold. An Oozaru's roar shattered every bit of broken glass and rattled all foundations to the point of fractures, cladding the torn metropolis in a sudden grey mist.
But the simple truth was that natural energy toyed with the laws of science. One only needs sheer control and knowledge to do so. Saiyans never learned mystic arts for that very reason — since the creation of the artificial moon, they simply never needed the world's aid.
Beads of sweat falling down her face, Pan raised a knife hand to the sky and snapped her fingers, and a wave of lightning, enhanced in speed and strength with every orb pierced,
Split. Arcs echoed, a gorgeous web of light embracing the scenery.
The onyx-eyed girl closed her eyes with a satisfied smirk, as a Super Saiyan grinned maniacally behind her with waves of fists that she deterred and parried with one hand. An aureate hard light orbited her omnidirectionally, and her hands became swirls to compensate, the air around her rife with shockwaves and lightning strikes that bent and broke around them before she weaved through a strike, and then below a kick that attempted to catch her. Swinging around, Dina dove down with a speed that dwarfed anything she'd thought capable of herself, weaving through Pan's single jab.
Ki shot through her body, and she followed the current's momentum, a hook shooting into her adversary's side.
"Mh…!" A notable pain appeared in the halfling's eyes. A smile followed.
Dina spent a stint in amazement over her successful strike, dealing damage to a borderline god. Her fist had been grabbed by the time she refocused.
"Nh-!"
She was yanked into an elbow — no, Pan had yanked herself into Dina elbow-first in one explosive movement, stomping upon her own ki to do so. In the span of an instant, she'd reached top acceleration, only to pause on a dime.
Dina's spittle reddened. The back of her jacket was sent to the wind in a shockwave.
"I can end it here, if you want."
A staggered cackle from the half-breed followed.
Pan smirked, as if expecting the answer. She weaved out the way of an uppercut, then swatted a compressed needlelike beam that left her wrist twitching, before Dina was back in range. A test of martial fitness transpired, one that Dina seemed to gradually get the hang of, as they continuously shifted positions. Her agitated state as a Super Saiyan wound up costing her successful attack after successful attack, Pan countering each and every hastily thrown full-power cross with her every choreographed "lapse" in guard and stance.
"Come on!" Pan goaded, lowering a fist on her right as Dina struggled to keep her head straight and tight on her bruising body. But at long last, something seemed to click in her head, and the strain of disobeying her instincts for even a split second cropped up on her face.
And she charged anyway.
"(Duuu~mbass,)" Pan teased in her head, readying to counter the oncoming hook with an instant one-inch punch outside of Dina's peripherals.
It hit a palm.
Dina rewired the force through her body.
"HAAA!"
And her hook transitioned into a knee into the side.
"—AACK!?"
With a moment to stop her head from spinning, Dina's other leg smacked Pan away.
"(I can still get faster…!)"
Pan slowed her travel, just fast enough for Dina to try to follow, before soaring off into the dim sky with a smirk.
"(I can get even stronger…!)"
Pan pierced one of the clouds, and Dina, in a sudden epiphany, delayed herself, instead gathering energy in her palms and firing off ki-seeking missiles in bursts.
Above, Pan dodged them in place, with short, smooth movements as she caught her breath.
"Not... bad."
With an open palm, she focused on the colossal cloud beneath her, and began to "slow" it.
Dina's blasts began to hit something solid. It struck her once snow flakes started falling, and then chips of ice.
"... oh my god."
The cloud began to fall.
"FU-CKING ACE!" Dina screamed, channeling everything into one arm.
"JAKKAAAAA—!" She opened fire. "BEAM!"
A beam struggle against a solidified rain cloud was the last thing she ever thought she'd go through with, at any point in her life. But it was happening, and she wasn't winning.
She was, however, managing a hole, however slight.
"(THAT'LL DO!) CHANGE JAKKAAAA—!"
Her ki swirled and magnified into one point, expanding within the shattering point of the cloud.
"BALL!"
It paved its own colossal hole into the formation, a golden ball in the center illuminating the darkened world like a second sun, before detonating in a glorious bathing light that was enhanced by its crystalized target, one that shattered across the realm.
Dina was rewarded for her efforts with her very own hole in the ground. Her every breath felt like a celebration of life and a stubborn clinging to it.
"Hhh… he-heh…"
Looking into the sky, that one magnificent dot was still there. Smoldering with tinges of scorch marks on her skin, Pan lowered her guard.
Dina dragged herself back up, steadily reclaiming her rhythm and luring her with a curling finger and fanged sneer.
"... awesome," the halfling smiled as she panted. "... you know?"
[ BGM: Yuki Kajiura – why I fight ~EMIYA~ (1:57) ]
She reached around her neck. Her chain was gripped and shoved into a pocket.
Dina felt the smaller gap between them jump by a lightyear. But Pan wasn't done.
"Just for that... I'll show you something even cooler."
Son Pan's hair began to float. She let out a smooth, controlled exhale.
Her ki skyrocketed, yet not a single sign of strain was evident on her face.
"I'll show you how to tame a curse."
Pan ascended, and the skies opened.
The clouds dissipated, and the borealis around the world simmered away in particles, leaving a stainless marble blue.
— she looked quasi-divine. Unrecognizable from the mythical berserker that was a Super Saiyan. In that golden glow, her features, if anything, had further softened. No killing intent steamed from her, no intensity or battle-lust from her warm smile.
She had not transformed into a "Super Saiyan." Pan had simply become stronger. Barring the golden hair and teal eyes, there was no difference.
Dina fell out of her own, as if donning the form would be an affront in this one's presence.
"... gorgeous…"
Something slammed into the lower realm with a resounding bounce. Not a single speck of dust was moved from its spot. Yet Dina lost all consciousness.
Pan descended, in both senses of the word, simultaneously. Her black hair returned, and she sighed with satisfaction. Awaiting their dismantling, she took a seat beside the other half-saiyan.
"... that was fun."
It seemed to be taking longer than usual. She had more time than she'd usually like with her own thoughts, especially where she was.
"If it weren't for all this…"
She snooped on her own once, when she was younger. A timeline where Towa's allies hadn't trespassed into her time.
Something happened to Goku. Death, transcendence, she couldn't tell. Whatever it was, the grandfather she'd come to know seemed to go through with it; he had no idea, either, nor did he ever question it.
But, somewhere else, Pan had become a grandmother. A man had stolen her heart, and a woman had stolen her son's, or a man had stolen her daughter's, or sometimes both — timelines were fun like that. Before her death, she got to see her grandpa one last time.
"... would I be happier?"
She'd still been the last one. She still came to see her loved ones die. But she seemed content, peaceful.
Her own life was one of conflict. Death was all around her, and it'd taken from her, and she'd dealt it.
— and she was the strongest. In all histories, as she was, she'd even outpace few Pans that'd managed to become stronger. And she'd still managed to love, here. Create new bonds. Meet people that cared about her. She was right next to one.
She checked her face, and wiped it, and sighed. Standing up, she eyed the sun.
"Maybe." She looked at her dissolving hands. "But I think I can keep taking my chances here."
If she could keep preserving history, more would be happy. And none would need to fill her position.
In fact…
[ BGM: skankfunk – Chain (Underwater Mix) ]
"Hi, Big Sis!"
"Hey, Pan."
Dina looked off with a muddled "aww~" that she failed to hide.
"So did you win?"
"Duh!" Son stated matter-of-factly. "ᴷᴱᴴᵎ"
"Heh!" Pan – a smaller one – placed two arrogant fingers on the temple of her big head. "As expected of me!"
Son wiped off a smirk — she'd long-since retired the borrowed phrase, but not before infecting her younger self with it. "Where's Gohan and Videl, Pan?"
"You know you sound like a total weirdo when you call your own family like that, right?"
"You say that every time, but it won't stop me."
"Guuuh, big sisters are the worst! So moody…"
Dina smirked at Son, and she returned the favor.
"Dad's doing that dumb superhero thing again because he got off work early, and Mom's doing some dumb training with these two dorks. They're even moodier than YOU, somehow! Can't even show me respect, even though I'd kick their butts! I bet they'd be singing a different tune if it was YOU they were talking to, though!"
"Ah, doubtless, that!" Dina cosigned, compelling Son to roll her eyes. "She's like a bloody sorcerer even though she's got not a trace'a magecraft on 'er!"
"See? Even THAT idiot knows!"
"I SURE d- you what?"
Before two Pans could thwack Dina in one day, a bout of haughty laughter could be heard from the rooftops. Pan hid her face. "Here we go…"
Backdropped against the horizon, atop a skyscraper spire, dynamically stood a caped figure holding what looked like two ice cream cones.
"SAVIOR OF THE SWEET, AND SAVORER OF THE SWEETER! LEAPING FROM SKY TO STREET WITH THE TASTIEST OF CHILLED TREATS…!"
He proceeded to drop them, then sprinted forty stories down to meet them in mid-air, catching each scoop effortlessly before landing in what was unmistakably a superhero pose.
"THE GREAT SAIYAMAN!"
An explosion went off behind him.
In his head.
Pan rolled her eyes and gagged. "DAAAD, YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME!" she exclaimed, before being presented with her cone. "Mrrm… don't think you're off the hook just yet!"
The Great Saiyaman had a boastful laugh in celebration of a job well-done.
All the while, Son stared.
"... Hn-pfft."
Dina chuckled, applauding the eccentric to Pan's immense chagrin. "Hooray! Let's hear it for the Great Saiyaman!"
Son turned to her, and back to the superhero. He noticed the other Pan without a word, then looked at the other cone. "... Well, what use do superheroes have for such treats when there's a smile to save!?" He touted, now struggling with the exaggerated tone.
Trepidation didn't cut it. She looked at him with downright fear.
"(How many times have I killed this man? How many times have I failed him?)"
She almost took a step back, until a hand interwove into her own.
"Now that's class!" Dina exclaimed with an exaggerated tone ripped out a comic book, resting her hand on Son's shoulder. "Not everyday a proper hero of justice just gives away his cone for you, is it?" Son looked back, and Dina's eyes met hers with a subdued nod. "Sure wish I could be this lucky…"
The patroller's eyes grew somber. Son looked back at Gohan; it was easier, when he had those dumb aviators on. So she took the cone, to Gohan's shock. "Thanks… Great Saiyaman. You sure know how to brighten someone's day."
Gohan smiled. "Well from one hero of justice to another, we oughta help each other keep smiling, right!?"
Pan scoffed. "No way, she's WAY cooler! She doesn't need that tacky costume, either!"
Once again, Son watched her father die. "T-TACKY!?"
"(... hero of justice, huh…?)"
And she smiled. They were happy here, in ways her own versions couldn't be. In a way she'd never be again.
"Pan."
She turned into Dina's hug. "Thanks. I had fun today."
Son held her back. "... me too. Beats the crappy day I had planned." She pushed her off, but held onto her all the same. "Win, alright? I'd love to know that someone like you's doing this with me."
Pan kept tugging Gohan's costume with fed-up critique after fed-up critique.
"And not people like them."
Dina touched Son's hands. "I'll give my all. Haven't failed to notice the way you set me on that path today. Actually… d'you still have that chain?"
Son raised a brow, but reached into her pocket nonetheless. "Yep. Planning on seeing me for training before the big day?"
"Maaaybe. But once the day arrives, I'd like to borrow it. There's a vow I made a while back, an' I plan on keepin' it."
"Go for it," Son replied. "I think I'll try a few patrols without once I…" She paused. "... yeah, once I'm done talking with that stupid old man."
He'd begged on hands and knees for Chronoa to not seal her. He'd forbidden her from taking any patrols after her father's death. Soon after, he'd been forced into an emergency room.
He'd not slept for a week. Patrol after patrol. In a rage.
Gohan had meant the world to him, too. And someone had forsaken his daughter to the same fate he'd undergone.
He had to take it out on anyone even vaguely similar to his killer, or he'd explode.
— A stupid, sentimental man who couldn't let go.
[ ED: Shiina Ringo – Marunouchi Sadistic ]
"Oh yeah?"
Pan smiled confidently. "I'm tired of seeing him mope around as a hypocrite. Someone's gotta scream some sense into him."
Dina giggled bashfully. "You're so cool…!" she blushed.
Pan smirked, before stepping off, hands in pockets. "I'll save him like you saved me. That's what a hero of justice would do, right?"
Dina sighed. "Now who's a dork?" she muttered wistfully, as Son Pan strolled through a city that she'd kill and suffer for.
The form she'd taken rang in her head, all the while. It contrasted with the vulgar animal she became when she would take the form, of which had only recently developed self-control through rigorous shock therapy.
"(... I've let myself slip away an awful lot as of late, hm?)"
Pan opened the door the next day. Dina had her delivery cap on and everything.
"You could've called me, mate."
"Yeah I didn't know your number."
Dina looked at the bottle opener. " 'n why this?"
Pan shrugged. "I wanna try beer."
"Pan!"
"Ah shaddap, it's nothing like that. I just wanna try it out. Everyone's always hyping it up, right? I've got like a week until I'm 18, anyway."
"Eighteen…?"
"I could die tomorrow, never mind in two years. Eighteen's the BEST they're getting out of me."
"... screw it, I'm two weeks out."
Son squeed. "Seeee?" she exclaimed before yanking Dina by the hand.
Soon, the two half-saiyans held their own bottles and toasted to nothing in particular.
"Alright, on three."
"Mh-hm. One-"
"-THREE-"
"-SHIT-"
Both chugged.
They then spat it everywhere.
"-the BLEEDIN' HELL, THAT'S FAKKIN' RANK!"
"...-uck, I spent the last ten-thousand I had on that…!"
"... wait, you WHAT?"
Pan's eyes slowly widened.
"H-how are you broke? How-" Dina then looked around, and pieces fell into place. "Mate, you can NOT learn budgeting soon enough!"
"Hey, I was making z2000 per week off allowances before they threw patroller pay at me, I was failed!"
"... and you didn't just... learn, after almost a decade?"
"..."
"... you can do borderline sorcery with ki alone, and BUDGETING is too steep a curve?"
"..."
"..."
"... so can I get like a feeeew dozen thou for training fees or-"
"You are actually taking the piss."
"I was just askiiin', jeez."
Dina fiddled with her jacket pocket. "You know...!"
"W-wait, now I'll just feel like an ass-"
"No, nope, too late, this's how me Da' taught me, figure it out!" Dina threw half her funds onto the couch.
"Oh my go- wha- n-no, you can't DO this to me!" Pan welled up to Dina's apathy. "You're RUIN-HEY-HEY! DON'T YOU WALK OUT ON ME!"
"... I'm not even supposed to BE here, today!" she yelled on the way out, slamming the door.
Pan slumped down. She eyed the alcohol still there.
"... why do I want orange juice now- shit."
After a time eyeing Dina's guilt fund, she shook her head, bit the bullet and went out for some.
She slammed the door.
The ceiling fan finally fell.
Said door slowly creaked back open.
"... man..."
12/4/2023 PATCH NOTES: Further emphasis given on Mastered Super Saiyan's effect on Dina. Gohan is no ashamed.
1/7/2024 PATCH NOTES: QoL touchups. Xeno Gohan now studied both quantum physics AND original ki.
Yo! OP Here!
I watched like six separate playthroughs of Class of '09 and all of Clerks before writing for this chapter so I kinda had some fun with its dialogue.
So this chapter is STEP's version of a grown-up Xeno Pan. For simplicity's sake, you can just call her Future Pan.
And for cool's sake, I'll call her SON.
This was very clearly her chapter, though Dina's a central character. Her ventxposition helped me plot out more shit despite me hating the fuck out that scene, ngl. Allows for me to establish stakes and whatnot, but primarily, setting up world mechanics makes a story feel more whole. Even if it's just me painstakingly pulling things out of my ass. Also, her backstory is a means by which I can get Xeno Gohan and Xeno Goten tf out this story, because having THAT many top-tiers would've ruined me.
SON also establishes a power ceiling. That being: C-Tier (Everyone), B-Tier (Ceushius), A-Tier (Time Cadres, Kaza), S-Tier (Patrollers), Z-Tier (SON) and finally, Fuck Off-Tier (The Three Super Saiyans©, Future Warrior, Hero(?) of History+). She also establishes the wacky woo-woo bullshit that Ki mastery is capable of. You know benders in Avatar are just using chi, right? Yeah. Pan's on that shit. I could go into the cool shit she does with absolute ki control in the chapter, but that would be a whole lot of words.
This was also my way of softly explaining why motherfuckers like Broly don't blow up the planet when they ape out even though they have no concept of ki control. Pan was training herself to apply her ki across the terrain, like a kind of shield to dampen blows that the earth takes from collateral. But if someone MUCH stronger than you wants the earth gone, then it's gone.
Also I just thought of this but, in the same vain that this chapter's pushing, what if ki users aren't surpassing the speed of light, but increasing it in front of them so that they can go faster and faster without defying physics? IDK I'm just yapping at this point. Here's more.
Yeah a lot of """tension""" this chapter, huh?
Yeah IDK where SON swings, she's likely just straight if lil' meatwad from GT carries over. Dina's been bi for a minute though. But yeah, I'm just doing martial arts manga shit where everything is oddly thirsty for some reason. It's a fun game to do, getting as clooooose as possible without actually saying anything.
I based Pan entertaining herself with Dina on Sukuna entertaining himself with Jogoat. I can't get over how much I love villains like Sukuna... or rather, how unique Sukuna's take on "evil because evil" is. It's a self-satisfying evil that is evil because it's honest about its nature, and has the means to seize everything that it wants. It isn't crazy, it doesn't take any grand pleasure in inflicting pain, it just enforces its will and stops whatever wishes to impede it. TL;DR Sukuna is da coolest guy. And what a FINE damn episode. I'm glad MAPPA started feeding the animators WHOLE SLICES OF CRUST instead of crumbs. The industry's changing for the better!
OK one more thing. Next chapter. It is the one thing standing between me and Neoru getting his groove back. But for the life of me, I know it's gonna be a trial to even get it started without me wandering off to another tab every time I'm on the Doc. If nothing else, I'm mostly dealing with full-blooded Saiyans, so it won't be as complicated as what's effectively Dina + a different Dina. Maybe. I'll try, dammit, I just don't want to.
Aight, that's about it. See ya.