The girl almost flew up the long stone steps to the Masaki Shrine. There was a regality in her movements that shined through her youthful enthusiasm. Though she took the steps two at a time, there was an elegance to her footfalls. She was an amalgamation of girlish cuteness and womanly beauty. She was a teenager. Her long aquamarine hair whipped about her face, almost pulling itself out of the long single pony tail she had spent the last hour on. Two bangs reached to her chin, covering both her temples and framed her face in an impossibly cute way.
The girl suddenly jerked to a stop and whirled around to face the way she'd come. "Washu! Hurry up! We're going to be late!"
"Considering I'm the only being in the universe who knows the codes, I don't think there's much chance of it opening before I get there." A diminutive red head came into view.
"But Washu, she's waiting for us!"
"We don't know that. It's only been six years since we put her in there. She might not believe she's ready yet."
"She's got to, she's just got to!" The teenage girl shook her head to hide the tears that were threatening to fall.
Washu reached the young woman and put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Listen to me. While both of you have matured a great deal in the last few years, there's still a decade's worth to go. And that's just physical maturity. Some people can live hundreds of years and not reach mental maturity."
"A few examples come to mind." The girl grinned, her entire face lighting up as the images of Ryoko, Mihoshi, Trieka and the others popped up. She was snapped from her musings by Washu who had continued up the steps.
"Come on, we don't want to be late, do we?"
At the top of the steps sat the Masaki Shrine. It was a small, quiet shrine that got only a few visitors a year, due in part to its location near the top of a mountain. It was one of the few places relatively untouched by the havoc the Masaki household seemed to be the center of. The reason for the shrine's charmed existence, not counting the gods who must watch over it constantly, was waiting for Washu and the teenager when they reached the top.
"Lord Katsuhito," Washu inclined her head to the aging priest, though he had left only moments before the two girls.
"Washu," Grandfather returned the nod and turned towards a small outcropping of rocks to the right of the shrine. The outcropping had been rumored to have a goblin entombed in it's depths for the last seven hundred years. What only a handful of people knew was that the "goblin" was none other than Washu, the greatest scientific genius in the universe, and she have been free for the last eight years. However, what was currently enshrined in the temple had the potential to be just as dangerous.
"It's almost time." Tenchi spoke up. he was dressed in a simple outfit, similar to the one he had worn to a certain carnival almost a decade ago.
"Where ya guys been?" Ryoko, once the greatest, most powerful space pirate in the universe, had her arm draped over Tenchi's shoulder. She was dressed in a flashy formfitting outfit, her hair done up in the spikes she had stopped wearing years ago. "We almost started the party without you."
"Cut it out, Ryoko." Tenchi gave her a look.
"Whatever you say... lover." Ryoko gave him a quick peck on the cheek before teleporting away from her blushing husband with a cackle that echoed the mischievousness the space pirate once had.
"It's too bad Aunty Ayeka and Kiyone and Mihoshi couldn't come," a blue-haired girl piped up. She appeared to be about eight years old, but in reality was only five. "And Ryo-Ohki, I miss her."
"They all wish they could have made it, Mayuka." Tenchi's father, Noboyuki, consoled the 'daughter of darkness'. "But they're helping Nagi and Ken-Ohki with that rebellion on the outer rim. I'm sure they'd be here if they could."
"I know..." Mayuka kicked a pebble away from her.
"Well, boys and girls." Washu drew everyone's attention to her as she finished typing in the final pass code to her come-and-go laptop. "It's time for the guest of honor to put in her appearance."
From an opening the size and shape of a doorway in the outcropping came the bright flash of light that always came before Washu's inventions. Slowly a figure formed at the center of it. Just before the light faded, the figure stepped forward and out into the open. It was obviously a female form. She brushed the straight blonde hair out of her blue-green eyes and looked over each member of the party in turn, a flicker of recognition coming with each face. She looked to be roughly sixteen years old, and her blonde hair's roots were beginning to darken. Finally her eyes settled on the only other person remotely close to her in age, the girl with aquamarine hair and a hopeful smile.
"S- Sasami?"
"Yugi?"
In an instant the distance between the two was gone and they were in each others arms, their eyes over flowing with tears.
The two most powerful girls in the universe were together again, and somewhere in the universe, something began to stir.