Disclaimer: Characters and concepts from "Tenchi Muyo!" were created by Kajishima Masaki and Hitoshi Okuda, and are Copyright AIC and Pioneer LDC. This work is a parody and not to be used for any commercial purposes.
Foreword: This story is a sequel for "Showing Restraint", especially Part II.
Personal History
". . . Ryoko . . . oh, Ryoko . . ." The voice calling her name was not loud, but it seemed to penetrate her entire being.
"Who . . . ?" Ryoko couldn't seem to make out who the voice belonged to. In fact, she couldn't remember where exactly she was.
" . . . I found something for you . . ." Now the voice was in a specific place, at least. Close behind her. " . . . Something just for you . . ."
Ryoko turned around. Somehow she wasn't able to move as fast as usual. But there was no delay in recognizing the figure that stood there. "Ayeka?"
The princess had a big smile on her face, oddly like one of Mihoshi's expressions. "Look at these, Ryoko . . Aren't they pretty?" She brought out a handful of strings, colored cyan to match Ryoko's hair.
"I guess so." Ryoko felt even more uneasy now. "But what do I do with them?"
"I don't know, but they must go somewhere." Ayeka kept smiling. "Maybe Kagato made them for you."
A small trap door flew open on each of Ryoko's wrists, revealing little metal rings underneath. Ryoko stared in shock. Ayeka opened her hands, and two of the strings flew like lightning and fastened themselves to the rings. Ryoko tried to pull back, but suddenly her arms wouldn't respond to her.
"See -- I knew it." Ayeka said approvingly.
Ryoko felt another pair of trap doors opening at her ankles. Again, two strings seemed to leap from Ayeka's hands and attach themselves to the rings. Now the far ends of all four strings floated up towards the ceiling. To Ryoko's horror, her legs and arms began moving of their own accord, and she marched over to a closet door. A closet she had never noticed before. Her hand opened the door of its own volition, and Ryoko found herself looking at a maid's uniform, complete with lace apron. "This can't be happ--" Ryoko began, and then she felt a fifth compartment opening at the back of her neck. Immediately the final string attached itself, and her mouth snapped closed. Now her arms reached in to pull the maid's outfit off of the hanger. In spite of furious efforts to regain control, in a few minutes she was dressed in it.
"Oh, look, Lord Tenchi!" Ayeka exclaimed. Ryoko tried to teleport so that Tenchi wouldn't see her like that, but it was useless. Instead she found herself slowly turning around, and then giving a deep bow to Tenchi and Ayeka.
"Say -- that outfit fits as if it were made for her." Tenchi commented.
"I imagine it was." Ayeka said thoughtfully.
"I guess this means she was just a marionette all along." said Tenchi.
Ryoko's eyes widened, and she tried to deny it, but she couldn't even shake her head. Her arms reached into the closet again, and bought out a brush and a bucket. Now the strings on her legs began to pull, and Ryoko found herself going to the closet door under the stairs.
"You know, I was going to have a picnic lunch by the lake today," said Tenchi, "but it looks like Ryoko is going to be busy for some time. Would you like to join me, Miss Ayeka? There's something -- important -- I'd like to talk about."
"I would love to, Lord Tenchi." Said Ayeka.
Ryoko caught the thrill in the princess' voice. She tried furiously to break away, but her legs carried her through the closet door into Washu's lab.
The redheaded genius looked up at the sound of Ryoko's entrance, and broke into a broad smile at the maid's outfit. "So you've finally decided to help your mommy out!" Washu exclaimed. "That's just great -- I have so many specimen cells that need cleaning."
Ryoko found herself turning to where Washu was pointing. A corridor seemed to stretch into endless distance, lined on each side by countless metal cages and glass tanks. And each was crusted or begrimed with some form of foul-smelling ooze or scum. As her hands took the brush out of the bucket and went towards the first cage, she made one last frantic effort to yell that it was all wrong . . .
- - - - - - - -
Ayeka stepped back for a short break. Ryoko was almost finished, and a beautiful job at that. Lord Tenchi would be so pleased. Of course, it had been necessary to turn Ryoko into stone to do the fine detail work, but Ayeka would turn her back as soon as she was done.
All in all, the ex-space-pirate made a lovely shrine maiden. Ayeka had styled the hair and put on a simple yet elegant robe. But that cocky grin looked wrong. Taking up her tools again, Ayeka re-shaped the mouth until the expression was calm and serene.
There was one last thing to be done, Ayeka saw. Ryoko's hands were in front of her and palms together, in the attitude of a shrine prayer. However, the fingernails were too long. In fact, they looked much like claws. Ayeka picked up her hammer and chisel, and easily knocked off the unsightly extensions. She was just putting down her tools and reaching for a file to add the finishing touches, when there was a peculiar sound like wood scraping on stone. She turned back to the statue. To her surprise, Ryoko's fingernails had grown back to their original length.
Ayeka gave an annoyed frown. She seized the hammer and chisel again, and trimmed the offending fingernails to the proper length. She stared at Ryoko's hands for several moments, as if daring the nails to grow again. When nothing happened, she turned away to get the file.
The sound came again, even louder this time. Ayeka spun around to see that the dangerous-looking nails were back, and twice as long as before. To Ayeka's horror, they now weighed enough to unbalance the statue, and Ryoko toppled forward. Ayeka reached desperately, trying to stop the fall, but she was a fraction too late. Ryoko's form struck the floor and shattered into pieces.
"How could you!" Sasami's wail sounded a moment later. "How could you smash sister Ryoko? I hate you, Ayeka!"
"No, Sasami, it was an accident!" Ayeka protested.
"Liar!" Sasami shouted. "Your arms are still up from pushing her!"
Ayeka saw that her arms were still outstretched after her attempt to save Ryoko. "But -- but --" she tried to explain.
"Nooo!" Tenchi's cry interrupted the princess. "Ayeka, what have you done?" Ayeka turned to him, but before she could say a word, he burst out, "You knew I loved Ryoko, and not you! That's why you did this, isn't it?"
Ayeka's blood seemed to turn to ice. She lost the power of speech.
"What's going on here?" Washu demanded.
"Ayeka smashed sister Ryoko!" Sasami cried. Ayeka could only feebly shake her head.
"Can you restore Ryoko?" Tenchi implored Washu. "Please -- I can't imagine marrying anyone else." Now Ayeka felt as if she, too, had been turned to stone.
"I think I can," Washu replied, turning to glare at Ayeka, "but there's an important matter I want to take care of first."
"You may leave that matter to me." Now Princess Seto had appeared on the scene, and her voice was as cold as a winter wind. "You found a very poor way to disobey my instructions, Ayeka." Ayeka tried frantically to explain, but her mouth refused to move.
"Don't bother with any feeble excuses. They will only make things worse for you -- assuming that is possible." The Devil Princess of Jurai raised her fan and gestured toward Ayeka.
A powerful blast of wind came forth, and picked Ayeka up off her feet. It carried her away from the others, turning her so that she couldn't see them. But she saw the dark vortex opening up ahead of her. As she was swept into its maw, Ayeka tried desperately to open her mouth for one last cry for mercy . . .
- - - - - - - -
"YAAAAHHH!!" The twin screams rang through the Masaki house. Sasami sat bolt upright in her futon, but in spite of the moving target Ryo-Ohki managed to leap on top of the young princess' head. Tenchi came out of his bed with a practiced leap, having experienced a number of nighttime disturbances before. He snatched up his sword, flung open his bedroom door, and then paused, remembering that screams had come from both left and right. Nobuyuki grabbed for his glasses and put them on, muttering that he needed an apartment in the city if he wanted to be sure of a good night's sleep. Washu darted out of her lab, heading for Ryoko's room but wondering about the second scream.
Ayeka's eyes slowly focused. She found herself looking into two pairs of eyes, one pink and one black, both wide open and staring back at her. "Big sister?" Sasami said anxiously. "What's wrong?"
"Oh. . . Umm . . . I had a nightmare." Ayeka remembered that Sasami never liked it when she and Ryoko fought. She hoped Sasami wouldn't ask what her nightmare had been about.
"What was it about?" asked Sasami.
"Well . . . I . . . that is. . . " Fortunately Ayeka's brain started working at this point. "I dreamed that I made Grandmother angry, and she was going to punish me."
Sasami shuddered. "That IS scary!"
Ayeka got up and went to the closet for a robe to put over her nightgown. "I'm going to stay up for a little while, but you should get some rest, Sasami."
Meanwhile, Washu had reached Ryoko's room. "What's going on, Ryoko?"
Ryoko was still breathing heavily, but getting herself back under control. "Bad dream. It was a doozy -- but I'll be okay."
"Could you open the link?" Washu requested. "Maybe some memories from Zero are surfacing."
"Nope, that's not it." Ryoko shook her head, and then realized something. "You just want to get into my head to see what Ayeka's been teaching me, don't you?"
"Well, how else am I --" Washu shifted gears. " -- I mean, no, I worry about you, Ryoko."
"Nice try." Ryoko floated over to her closet, took out her dress with the prosthetic tail, threw it into the air over her head, and phased into it as it floated down.
Just outside his bedroom doorway, Tenchi heard the situation begin to calm down on both sides. He sighed in relief. He didn't want to go into Ryoko's bedroom, since he knew the ex-space-pirate slept au naturel, and he didn't want to deal with a nosebleed in the middle of the night. Ayeka's bedroom was also a problem, as he remembered vividly what had happened the time when he had sneaked into her chambers aboard the Ryu-Oh. That reminded him that he was holding the sword with its two gems. He went back into his room to put it away; whatever the problem was this time, it wouldn't need to be cut.
By the time he came back to the doorway, both Ryoko and Ayeka were emerging from their rooms.
"No need for any poking around in my brain, Washu." Ryoko was saying. " I just want a slug of sake. Trust me, I'm calm and in control now."
"I'm all right, Sasami," Ayeka was saying over her shoulder, "it's just that I really don't feel like going back to bed now."
But the next moment, Ryoko and Ayeka caught sight of each other. A connoisseur of screams would have said that this pair was higher pitched than the earlier twin screams, and suggested panic rather than terror. But Tenchi and Washu paid less attention to the sounds, and more to the fact that Ryoko and Ayeka disappeared in a cyan-tinted and violet-tinted blur, respectively.
Tenchi and Washu looked around for a moment. Through the bedroom doorway, they could see Sasami staring at a mound of blankets covering something just the size of Ayeka curled into a ball. In the other direction, Ryoko looked much like a startled cat, with her back arched and her tail straight out. But she was doing it upside down, with her toenails and fingernails digging into the ceiling.
"Well," said Tenchi after several moments, "this is different."
- - - - - - - -
Breakfast was also different from normal, or what passed for normal in the Masaki household. True, Nobuyuki had accepted his usual rice ball from Sasami before his early morning commute, and Tenchi had done his usual work in the carrot fields before the sun was fully up. But when the family assembled around the table for Sasami's usual mouth-watering meal, things were different. Instead of taking up their standard positions on either side of Tenchi, Ryoko and Ayeka sat at opposite ends of the table, as far away from each other as possible. Ryoko's appetite also was much less than usual, taking only a bowl and a half instead of her customary four. Sasami looked a little anxious about that, but being able to sit next to Tenchi considerably cheered her up. Mihoshi happily occupied the place on the other side, while Washu took copious notes on the situation.
Ayeka cast one or two unhappy looks at the red-haired genius, since she considered research at mealtime to be poor manners. But the princess couldn't help remembering Washu's expression from her dream, and was still too nervous to say anything out loud. Ryoko kept remarkably quiet as well.
Tenchi found that Sasami and Mihoshi made for pleasant company, but he noticed that Ayeka and Ryoko weren't as lively as usual. It worried him more than a little, for he knew his extended family well enough to be aware that something was wrong. But it was clear that neither Ryoko nor Ayeka wanted to talk about it. He decided to approach the situation indirectly and try to draw the two into a conversation. "How did your patrol go, Mihoshi?" he asked the GP detective.
"Oh, pretty quiet. There was one pirate ship, but they turned tail and ran when I identified myself." Mihoshi looked cheerful. "I must be getting quite a reputation."
"But a reputation for what?" muttered Washu too softly for Mihoshi to hear.
"That's good," said Tenchi. "Oh, could you pass me the red pepper sauce, please?"
"Sure, here you -- oops!" Mihoshi fumbled the little bowl and splashed Tenchi with the sauce.
Ryoko had been concentrating on her plate so as not to look at Ayeka. But at Mihoshi's squeal of dismay, she brought her gaze up towards Tenchi, who appeared at first glance to have a large bloodstain on his upper chest. Just for a moment, Ryoko was petrified at the sight.
And that brought a gasp of shock from the other end of the table. Ayeka swayed, and the color drained from her face. Sasami didn't notice at first, however, because she was busy grabbing a napkin to help clean Tenchi up.
"Boy, this is a mess!" Sasami exclaimed.
"Mihoshi, I swear you have got to be the most butter-fingered person in the galaxy!" Ryoko spat, recovered from her temporary scare.
"Hey, don't be so hard on sister Mihoshi." Sasami protested. "I'm sure Ayeka can get the stains . . . um, Ayeka?" It was then that Sasami noticed her big sister. "You look like you've seen a ghost! It's all right, brother Tenchi isn't hurt."
"Actually, it looked to me as if Ayeka was startled when she looked at Ryoko." Washu remarked.
Hearing this, the older princess gathered her wits again. "Nonsense! I've had to look at Ryoko countless times. I admit it can be a disturbing experience, but I'm well used to it."
"Well," Mihoshi ventured, "Personally, I was a little scared. She was showing her fangs this time."
Ryoko had been about to fire an insult back to Ayeka, but now she turned to Mihoshi. "I do not have fangs!"
"Your incisors are a bit sharp, though, aren't they?" Washu interjected.
"If a certain over-delicate princess can handle them, I see no problem." Ryoko declared.
"Over-delicate??" Ayeka objected. "I don't think you realize how strong your breath can get during the second bottle of sake."
"I'm glad to see things are getting back to normal." Tenchi said hastily as the tension level was ramping up. "You both seemed like you were still getting over last night."
"Who, me?" Ryoko said. "I'm in top shape."
"And I am quite well now, Lord Tenchi." Ayeka added.
"So, no need to change any plans for today?" Washu asked.
Both Ayeka and Ryoko were brought up short, as each remembered the day's plans included a lesson for Ryoko. A lesson in Juraian erotic techniques, during which they would be alone with each other. But neither was about to admit to fear in front of Tenchi.
"No need at all, Lady Washu." Ayeka said.
"I'm ready for the what the day brings," Ryoko agreed.
"Splendid." Washu said. "First, the day brings Ryoko's turn to wash the breakfast dishes."
With a faint hum of teleportation, Ryoko disappeared.
"Apparently, that's Ryoko's idea of being ready." Ayeka commented. "Well, I will be happy to take care of the breakfast dishes."
Washu, Tenchi, and even Mihoshi stared at the violet-haired princess. They knew that housework was definitely not on the list of Ayeka's favorite activities. Washu rubbed her chin, and wondered if Ayeka had volunteered because she knew the kitchen was the one place Ryoko was certain to be away from.
(To be continued . . .)