Beauty from Ashes

By

Starfire Grace

*A few important things you should know*

1. This story is rated M for foul language and sexual content so little kiddies stay away! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

2. Just like in my other stories Pan, Bra, Goten and Trunks are all close in age. Pan and Bra being the same age sixteen, Goten is seventeen and Trunks is eighteen.

3. Just enjoy the story :D and please leave me a review of your comments and if anything needs improvement.

*Chapter one: Is this really happening?*

Pan stared at the pale blue plus sign on the stick, wanting it to go away and wondering how anybody could call that a positive result. There was nothing positive about being sixteen and pregnant.

If you were all grown up and finding out you were having a baby, it would be the greatest news in the world. But Pan hadn't even graduated high school yet, let alone had a husband, house or a job.

Blinking back her tears, Pan continued to sit on the toilet, not even sure is she had the courage to ever leave her bathroom ever again.

When Pan closed her eyes, she could see herself perfectly in own little train wreck. Stuff like this just wasn't supposed to happen to girls like her.

Lined up on the counter of the bathroom sink, were the first six pregnancy tests all displaying the same maddening plus signs. Three more awaited in a brown paper bag by the side of the toilet not opened yet.

But Pan was beginning to realize that no matter how many times she took the test, the results were going to be the same.

Denial, it had kept her from losing her mind for the past couple of weeks, it was no longer a viable option.

Pan pulled up her jeans and stood at the counter glaring down at the evidence before her, she grabbed all seven sticks and snapped them in two, as if physically destroying the messenger could somehow destroy the horrible news that will change her life forever.

Finally Pan looked herself in the mirror and didn't even see a difference. Maybe the sticks had been wrong after all and it was her irregular period being a little more irregular than usual.

Pan was suddenly overwhelmed though with nausea and rushed for the toilet! She had barely avoided puking all over the bathroom floor. Even after there was nothing left in Pan's system, she was still vomiting.

Pan was just grateful her parents weren't home to hear her puking her guts out. Pan crawled back into her bedroom and lay in the fetal position in the middle of her room and on her fluffy multicolor rug. The room was filled with the smell of a leftover plate of food on Pan's desk and laundry detergent. The smells were threating Pan to go and throw up again. She wondered why they called it morning sickness, it was four thirty in the afternoon.

Pan's cell phone rang repeatedly, on the fifth time she finally gathered enough strength to reach her bed and grab her cell.

Looking at the caller ID it was Bra, "Hi Bra," Pan whispered.

"What wrong Pan? Where the hell have you been? You sound like you hell spit you back up." That was Bra, never the one for small take or beating around the bush.

"I've got a problem… no more like a disaster." As much as Pan didn't want to say it out loud, she felt like if she didn't tell someone she was going to explode. Ready fall under all the guilt and fear, she hoped telling Bra would lighten the load of it all. Maybe her best friend since babyhood could come up with a solution to this problem or maybe tell her the seven plus signs were just a mistake but Pan already knew they weren't.

"What'd you do? Wreck your dad's Mercedes? Your parents are gonna go nova on you!" Bra whistled into the phone. "Do you want to hide out at Capsule Corp for a while till your parents cool off?"

"I didn't wreck my dad's car. Though I really wish it was that." Pan longed for a problem that be undone by a trip to a body shop and a fresh coat of paint.

"Well then what's so bad? You're always getting straight AS, so it can't be your report card. Did you blow up the house with a Kamehameha Wave? You killed all the fish in Pazou Lake? You murdered your uncle?" Bra was trying to figure out what Pan could deem as a crisis.

"I think… I think I might be pregnant," Pan said bursting into tears.

There was a scream followed by Bra dropping her cell phone on her bedroom floor with a thud, "What?!... That's impossible Pan. Only people who have sex can get pregnant. We had a pact, no hooking up till we were in college. When did you change did your mind? Who'd you do it with? Why didn't you tell me?!"

"Not everything is about you Bra."

Whatever just answer the fucking damn questions. Who was it?" Bra asked as if integrating a suspect.

"It was Derrick." Looking back, Pan couldn't believe it herself. Going all the way on the third date was so not in her playbook.

"Derrick Warner? Derrick Warner the most popular guy at Orange Star High? That Derrick? No way! He doesn't even know people like us exist." Bra said referring to people like us as kids who actually studied and who looked back on their high school years as not the best years of their lives. "Who was it… really?"

"I knew would say that. It's why I didn't tell I was going out with Derrick."

"I don't believe you. Are you sure you didn't just imagine the whole thing? Maybe you just dreamed you had sex with Derrick. Maybe you're just bloated."

"I didn't imagine it Bra. I took seven pregnancy tests."

"I still don't believe it. Are we are talking about the same Derrick Warner? Derrick Marcus Warner, quarterback for the Orange Star Hawks?"

"There's only one, Bra. The day after school let out he asked if I wanted to go to the movies, and then we went out again, and on our third date it happened. It was my first time and I got pregnant."

"Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my best friend?" Bra shrieked. Pan was the second-to-last person she would have ever thought would go all the way with a boy (Bra being the last), and the last one dumb enough to get pregnant.

"Best friends don't keep secrets from one another, especially secrets the size of big fat pregnant bellies!"

"I didn't tell you because I'm embarrassed. It was such an idiotic thing to do, and I thought if I pretended it never happened, and I never told anybody, it would be like it hadn't." As Pan tried to explain her reasoning, she realized what a complete moron she was. This wasn't just some nightmare that was gonna go away if you ignored it long enough.

"Well that's one way to deal with it, I guess, unless, of course, you get yourself knocked up! Didn't you make him use a condom? What fuck were you thinking Pan?!" Bra practically screamed onto the phone.

She knew she should be more sensitive, it was too late for shoulda, coulda, woulda. Bra was just so frustrated with her friend's stupidly and the fact that she was left out of the loop for so long, that she wanted to strangle Pan. Scolding Pan would have do for now.

Teen pregnancy was for girls who got into trouble, not a girl with a perfect GPA who spent her spare time either studying her brains out to go to Princeton or sparring to become a saiyan warrior.

"I thought he did. He said he did. It was dark. I couldn't tell. Oh shit! I'm such a jackass! What do I do now?" shutting her eyes tight, rocking back and forth as she gripped her cell phone to the point of almost breaking it, Pan pleaded for a quick fix… or at least a painless death.

"Have you told lover boy what happened? It's his responsibility. He has to step up." Bra was reeling, but she owed it to her best friend to stay calm and help her figure out how to get through this. Bra made a silent vow to herself to stay a virgin until at least she was twenty. No matter how great sex was supposed be, it couldn't be worth feeling like Pan sounded over the phone.

"Derrick's away for the summer. When he took me back home, he said he and his family were going to visit family in America and that they wouldn't be back till mid-September."

On the one hand Pan couldn't wait to tell Derrick that she was pregnant with his baby. Would he say that he loved her? That he would marry in a heartbeat and would he take care of her and junior?

Pan floated off to fantasyland for a second, envisioning a future married to the handsome, budding professional athlete who looked like a modal for one of those cologne ads. Dazzling green eyes, wavy sand blonde hair and a well-built body. They would have a perfect child and a perfect life, just bit sooner than Pan had thought or wanted.

But even as she was daydreaming, she knew that's not how things worked in real life. Truthfully, she was so humiliated by the whole thing that she couldn't imagine getting the words out even if he was around to tell him, which was stupid because what they'd done together in the back of his truck was way more embarrassing than talking about it.

"I hate to be the one to tell this Pan, but either your babydaddy lied you about his summer plans, or he's got an evil twin brother, cause I saw him at the beach the other day with a bunch of kids from school. Just because he looks like a movie star and all those girls want to jump him, doesn't mean he's a good person… in fact, it's usually just the opposite. The hotter a guy is, the more likely he's a scum sucking low life bastard who wouldn't give shit about anybody but himself."

As much as Bra liked being right about things, she hated having to tell her best friend that she made the worst mistake of her life with a guy who was nothing more than an empty box wrapped in fancy paper and tied with a nice shiny ribbon. Take away his beautiful packaging and all you would see was six feet of hair gel and half a can of Axe body spay.

"Not that I'm saying I told you so. Not that I'm saying if you'd told me what was going on from the very beginning I could've saved you from ruining your life, big time!"

No longer able to hold it in anymore, Pan let lose a tile wave of tears. In the back of her mind, she knew that three dates with a guy didn't make a relationship. She let herself get tangled up in his adorably messy hair that was always brushing off his forehead and getting lost in his gorgeous green eyes that made her feel like she wasn't biggest geek at Orange Star High. And it had been a setup; she realized a little too late, that Derrick could just add another name to his "I did her" list.

She knew that Derrick Warner was out of her league in every respect: a jock, the quarterback, the captain of the soccer team and voted hottest guy in Junior year.

When he asked her out, Pan was at once flattered and baffled. Able to choose from an array of more suitable girls from the diving team or the cheerleader squad, what could he possibly see in her? She was a benchwarmer for the girls' softball team whose major accomplishments were in the area of mathematics and not athletes. It was beauty and the beast, and she was the beast.

At first she thought Derrick was playing a joke on her, like one of those movies where a bunch of cool guys bet that one of them can't transform the class dweeb into the prom queen.

But when Derrick took her to the movies, he seemed genuinely interested in Pan as a person, just as she was, asking questions about her family and her future when she would been perfectly content to listen to him talk about himself as long as she just stare into that perfect face.

On top of that, he had behaved like perfect gentleman, opening doors for her, ordering for her, not even allowing her to pay for anything. Perhaps he was totally different person from his public persona, and with her he could be authentic not-to-cool-for-school self.

It had been too good to be true, and if she thought for at least for a second she would have figured it out, but Pan let herself get caught up in the moment.

Derrick was a member of the high school elite, the ruling class of Orange Star High, and Pan, not really part of the pauper class, she was the granddaughter Hercule Satan after all but she did fell somewhere in the line of the lower class.

Crossing class ranks rarely happened in friendship let alone boy-girl relationships.

It was the unwritten rule that nobilities didn't go slumming and the lower classes didn't try to up their status by associating with those above them in the hierarchy.

How could she forget the unbreakable rules of the high school jungle? How could she believe that the rules didn't apply to her? It was pure ignorance she realized, and she was being punished for it, in a really big way.

It wasn't like she was the ugliest girl in school but wasn't by far the prettiest. She was the tomboy, the girl in basketball jerseys, baggy jeans, high-tops, rocker gloves and was either wearing her favorite bandana or her cap to the side.

She was the goody-goody with the innocent looking face, not exactly a guy magnet. The fact that she was super smart put her on the geek squad and therefore was guy repellent.

But now she was questioning her own intelligence. How could some with a 2450 on SAT end up naked in the back of some sleazebag's truck? Seduced by a few well-rehearsed words whispered in an inexperienced girl's ear? Book smarts and street smarts were clearly two different things. Looking back on it, Pan would have traded a few hundred points on the test for some good old-fashion common sense.

"So what do I do now?" Pan stuttered through her tears, trying to catch her breath.

"It's simple, you get rid of it. How many weeks did you say you were?" Bra asked.

That was Bra always practical, never really emotional. She might look like her mother but she had the personality of her father. It shouldn't have surprised Pan that her friend's approach to this situation would be equally matter-of-fact.

"We did it on July fourth so I'm about six almost seven weeks in." This is exactly what Pan wanted from Bra wasn't it? A take charge attitude.

"Do you really think I should get rid of it?" Pan couldn't bring herself to say abortion.

"Well dud! What else were you planning on doing? Spending the senior year blowing up like a balloon and popping out a mini-Derrick next spring? How's that gonna go over with Gohan and Videl? Something tells me they're not ready to be grandparents. But it would sure make a hell of a college essay though. What I did over summer vacation…"

"I don't know it's a baby, or it's gonna be. It didn't do anything wrong. Some people think it's murder to terminate a…. you know…."

Over this summer, Pan would have never thought she would be thinking about pregnancies, unwanted or otherwise. Pro-choice or pro-life were nothing more than slogans on bumper stickers on the backs of people's cars.

Not a million years did she ever think that those words would matter to her. Babies were for married people, like fancy kitchen ware and bathroom towels. It was just the way it was, she never even held a baby before, and now she was having one. Her life was out of whack; things just couldn't get any worse.

"You're well within the first trimester, so it shouldn't be a big deal to take care of this mess. And besides it's not even a baby yet. It's just a bean." Bra wasn't quite sure if she believed that herself but under the circumstances, it seemed like the best and helpful thing to say.

When Bra put it that way, it didn't sound so terrible. Unsure how Bra had become the expert of pregnancy, Pan nonetheless was grateful that it was her best friend who the one was taking the lead.

"I don't know what to do. What are my parents gonna say?" Pan's heart started racing at the thought of telling Gohan and Videl.

She didn't know how they were going to react. What if her father went biolistic like Krillin had told her he did back when he was kid fighting Cell. He'd probably blow her head off. Her mother would cry and break everything in the house trying to aim for Pan's head.

Breaking this news to a half saiyan father and a super human mother was far more freighting then having some tiny little bean growing somewhere deep inside her. She would rather tell her parents she flunked every subject including gym.

"What about them? Do you really want tell your saiyan father who has deep rage that could go off by news like this? Do you want to be murdered and buried in an unmarked grave? Or have you thought about your doctor mother who is pro-life and deliver's baby's for a living? Then you'll be stuck with it for life." Bra was astonished by her friend's naiveté.

"I guess you're right, but their my parents. Don't they have a right to know?"

"No they don't," Bra told her, "In a case like this, the less your parents know the better and if you don't want to spend the next eighteen years of your life staring at the third date mistake that ruined your life, you'd better keep your baby secret to yourself. We can handle this on our own, and then it will be like it never happened. Gohan and Videl don't have to know everything that goes on in your life just because they're your parents." Bra couldn't believe a girl like Pan could be so smart yet such a dumbass when it came to real life.

"I'm not sure if I can keep a big secret like this from them, what if they sense it's ki? And if I'm not gonna tell my parents then why should I tell Derrick?"

Bra tried to keep the annoyance out her voice as she spoke to Pan, "Do you have a few hundred dollars lying around somewhere for an abortion? I'm broke since I went over my allowance last week to buy a new series of manga and last time I checked you volunteer at the Satan City Library so I'm guessing you pockets are empty too. Derrick has to know because he's gonna pay for the doctor bill. Get it? But no one else has to be in on our dirty little secret."

"You're right about the money, I've got nothing." Pan's parents didn't think she ever needed an allowance because they provided everything for her and she wasn't allowed a job either because they wanted her to focus on her studies.

"But what if Derrick doesn't have the money? What if he wants to keep the baby?" she still couldn't shake the white picket fence fantasy with Derrick play the doting husband and father, even though she knew it could never be a reality.

"Really Pan? You believe a guy that think's with his dick is suddenly gonna turn into Father of the Year?" as harsh as Bra knew she was being, Bra wanted to knock some sense into Pan before she fell further down into abandon well.

"I guess, but I think I should still tell my parents. They'll know something's wrong. It'll all come out in the end, it always does. So I might as well get all over with."

Keeping a secret this major from her father and mother seemed impossible to Pan. Parents had a right to know everything about their kids' lives, didn't they? Their love for their only child would overcome anything, right? She was their baby. Their love for her was unconditional. It had to be that way, didn't it?

"Fine but it's your funeral, Pan. But consider yourself warned. Life isn't Little House on the Prairie, and parents are regular people you know. Full of their own flaws, prejudices and lots of good old righteous anger. I just wouldn't expect too much from them if I were you. You're just gonna get hurt in the end."

Even as Bra pointed out the pitfalls that awaited Pan, she hoped with all her heart that she was wrong, but she had a bad feeling that her prediction was directly on its target.

"I hope you're wrong," Pan whispered, knowing deep inside that Bra was rarely wrong about anything, and feeling even more alone and confused than she had before she'd spilled her dark little secret.

"I hope so too," Bra whispered back, wiping away the tears that were now rolling down her own cheeks.

Oh man I've never really written anything like this before. I think it's an interesting story so far, don't you? Tell me what you guys think till the next chapter, this is Starfire Grace saying peace out :D