Yosho's Seven
By Galaxy 1001D
"Tenchi Muyo" and all related characters are © AIC/Pioneer/Funimation. "Blakes Seven" all related material are © BBC. This parody has been written solely for entertainment. The views expressed herein do not necessarily express the opinions of AIC/Pioneer/Funimation, the BBC, the author, or this website.
Based on "Blake's Seven" created by Terry Nation
And "Tenchi Muyo" created by Masaki Kajishima
Chapter Three: Cygnus Almost
The London sailed peacefully through space. From the outside, one couldn't tell that the vaguely toolbox shaped ship held some of the most dangerous convicts that Earth ever produced. On the cramped and crowded bridge was an older fireplug of a man and a skinny man in his twenties.
"Captain Leyland, we're getting a signal from up ahead," the young man said. "It's a distress signal, from a private yacht."
"I find that very unlikely, Mr. Artix," the captain said. "This isn't exactly the neighborhood for a pleasure cruise."
"Sir, according to regulations, we're supposed to respond to any distress signal we encounter," Artix pointed out.
"Yes, and we have a hold full of convicts," Leylan retorted. "I just hope that nobody in the hold has friends on the outside that are willing to free them."
"Let me see what the detectors say," Artix said as he looked at his datascreen. "It's a registered craft sir, the Ryu-oh, registered to the Jurai family of Earth. It's quite impressive sir. Tsunami class. I hear those things can go time-distort eight for a year at a time."
"And we can barely push time-distort five," Leyland grunted. "Here we are on a civil administration ship, and they let this old tub deteriorate, while some rich alpha spends enough to feed a colony world on a toy that can go time-distort ten in a pinch. It just isn't fair."
"No sir," Artix said curbing his enthusiasm.
"Contact them," Leyland sighed. "We might as well get this over with."
"This is Civil Administration Ship London," Artix said into a microphone. "We are in transit from Earth to Cygnus Alpha, transporting prisoners to the penal colony. How can we be of service?"
"Oh thank heavens!" a flutelike female voice responded. "Thank goodness someone is out there! We're lost! There's something wrong with the navigational computer or something! Please, can you help us get back to Earth? We're stuck out here!"
"We're homing in on your signal," Artix assured her. "Hang on, Ryo-oh."
Onboard the Tsunami class space yacht Ryo-oh, Sasami expressed her doubts to her sister. "Are you sure about this, Ayeka?"
"Of course, Sasami," Ayeka assured her. "It's one of the most classic military tactics in history. It's bound to work."
"If it's such a classic, won't they recognize it?" the child asked.
"Er…" Ayeka had no answer for that one.
"Pleasure craft Ryo-oh, we are picking up two life forms on our detectors," Artix said into the microphone. "Request visual confirmation of said life forms, over."
"Very well, just a minute," Ayeka sang. On Artix's monitor was a slender but curvaceous teenage girl with purple hair in a pageboy haircut. She was dressed in an elaborate reddish pink kimono with yellow and blue stripes. With her was a little girl whose skyblue hair was bound in two long ponytails by invisible cords capped by two large ruby red spheres at the base of each tail. "Here we are, just me and my sister, is that what you wanted?" the teenager asked.
"Thank you, Ryo-oh," Artix sighed. "Stand by." He looked at his captain. "They seem harmless enough. No explosives or energy weapons found on the detectors."
"With the detectors we have that doesn't mean anything," Leyland grunted. "This ship should have been retired ages ago, but nobody cares. Nobody cares anymore. Oh well, they seem genuine enough. Send a boarding party to them as soon as we've docked. Keep the prisoners under guard. Once they realize we've docked to another ship they may decide to try something."
Meanwhile, in the passenger hold of the London, Tenchi and his family were getting to know Ryoko.
"So, uh, what's with the super strength?" Tenchi asked. "There must be a real interesting story behind that."
Ryoko let out a sigh and looked away. Scowling, she looked back at Tenchi. "All right, if you must know I'm an alien, okay?"
"An alien?" Tenchi's eyes widened. "Really? What planet?"
"I don't know," Ryoko sighed. "When I was discovered at the orphanarium I was in a basket with a message written in Alienese."
"Alienese?" Tenchi repeated.
"Yeah, it's my nickname for the weird symbols that were written on the note. So I grew up with whitish hair, golden eyes, and super strength. And that's not all, get a load of these ears!" She pushed her wild cyan-white hair away to reveal a large, flappy, almost pointed ear that twitched as if it had a mind of its own. "I've been stuck with these my entire life! Thank gawd when I grew up my beautiful body distracted everybody. I still have to style my hair like I was Goku from Dragon Ball Z. Keeps people from staring."
Tenchi couldn't help but look at Ryoko's large ears. Strange that he hadn't noticed them before. He smiled. "I think that they're beautiful."
"What? Really?" Ryoko asked guardedly.
"Sure, they make you unique," Tenchi replied. The rest of us are all the same. It's refreshing to be someone who stands out in a crowd. Have you ever tried to figure out where you come from?"
"Oh yeah, off and on, but none of the leads ever pan out," Ryoko sighed. She looked away with a dreamy look in her eyes. "Sometimes I imagine that I'm an alien princess, and that my parents are searching the galaxy for me… And other times I wonder if my planet was destroyed and if I'm truly all-alone. You know how it goes."
"I can imagine," he nodded. "Hey, are we slowing down?" he asked as he looked around.
"I thought it was eight months to Cygnus Alpha," his father added. "Why are we dropping to sublight speed now?"
"I hope that we really are going to Cygnus Alpha and the captain hasn't decided to save himself some fuel by killing us and disposing of our bodies in outer space," Yosho remarked grimly.
"Grandpa, I'm shocked!" Tenchi shuddered. "Do you think that they'd really do that?"
"How should I know?" the old man shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time the Administration has condoned mass murder. Officially, we're being abandoned on Cygnus Alpha forever. Only the paperwork says we actually got there, and the only ones to fill it out are on this ship."
"If that's what they're planning, they better be prepared to take casualties," Ryoko growled. "They aren't getting rid of me without a fight!"
Outside, the London pulled up alongside the Ryu-oh and used its thrusters to come to a halt. Then a boarding tube extended between the two ships. Near the airlock, Leyland was briefing three armed men wearing helmets and vests. "Remember, be polite, but don't let them distract you," the crusty captain instructed. "These people may be innocent, but it may be a trick, so keep your eyes open. Once you've verified that everything's secure we can send technicians in to see what we can do for them, but until then you'll have to treat them as a potential threat, got that?"
"Yes sir," the tall bearded man replied.
"The boarding tube is pressurized sir," another crewman informed them.
"Good," Leyland nodded. "Go on, and maintain radio contact."
The airlock door opened to reveal two underage girls. One was the teenager with the purple hair. Up close it was revealed that her lavender locks weren't in a pageboy cut but bound in two long ponytails snaking down her back all the way to her ankles. The other was a nine year old whose sky-blue hair was bound in one ponytail on the left side of her head and the rest of her azure tresses cascaded down her back. Both of them were dressed in a kimono-like jacket called an uwagi in complete with matching trousers called zubon. Sashes called obi secured the long pleated skirtlike garments called hakama to their waists and at peaking out at the bottom of their concealed legs were jika-tabi, the split toe soft boots known in the west as 'tabi boots'.
What really got the crew of the London's attention was that both of these girls were armed with what appeared to be wooden weapons. The teen had a sword that looked like a wooden replica of a katana, perhaps it was a bokken or some kind of practice sword. The child had a slender quarterstaff topped on each end with bright red spheres just like the sphere at the base of her light blue ponytail.
With ferocious shrieks the two innocent looking girls attacked the quartet with such speed and ferocity that no one could react. The teenager stuck the first guard with such fury that she knocked his helmet off his head. The child managed to disarm the other two with her staff and then struck one in the crotch of his trousers and the second one right in the face. With acrobatic grace the two females had disarmed the men and knocked them off their feet. Leyland himself was knocked out by a blow from the teenager.
As Ayeka used her bokken to beat the downed men into unconsciousness, Sasami plunged her staff into an electronic panel in the wall. A flash and explosion from the damaged circuitry would have blinded the girl had she not looked away.
On the bridge, Artix exclaimed in horror, "We've lost cameras at the airlock! Security, get to airlock two immediately!"
"Quickly, Sasami!" Ayeka gasped as she dragged the limp but burly form of Captain Leyland down the corridor. "I think this is the captain! He'll be able to open the doors for us!"
"All right," Sasami nodded as she tucked one of the guards' light carbines in Ayeka's sash and kept one of them herself.
As guards assembled in the armory, Mr. Artix briefed them. "There are at least two. We know that they're armed, and completely psychotic. Be careful and don't take anything for granted!"
The door hissed open and a spinning acrobatic figure leaped into the room. As one, all of the men turned and fired their weapons. A line of holes appeared at chest level on the opposite wall, but none of the shots hit their target. The smoke cleared to reveal a tiny nine-year-old girl with sky blue hair brandishing a carbine of her own. She was so little that every shot they fired missed her completely. The child fired her gun at the ceiling, shattering every light panel and plunging the room into darkness.
"Lights!" Artix cried futilely, but there were no intact lights to respond. Shots were fired, but Artix shouted. "Stop firing you fools! You'll hit each other!"
Sasami rolled out the armory firing her gun at the palm scanner by the door as she did so. As the door hissed shut behind her, the only way for those inside to open the door sputtered, hissed and threw sparks that provided the only illumination in the room.
Meanwhile inside the prison hold Tenchi, Nobuyuki, Yosho and Ryoko commented on the strange sounds they heard.
"What's going on?" Tenchi cried. "Are those alarms? It sounds like gunfire!"
The door to the hold hissed open and a group of black clad guards strode in brandishing their weapons. "All right you lot, get back in your seats!" a large burly guard commanded in a lower class British accent. "Move it right now, or else we'll fire!"
"They're going to kill us!" Ryoko cried as she seized a nearby serial rapist by the throat and the trousers to hurl him across the room and into the guards.
"Ryoko, no!" Tenchi cried but it was too late. The prisoner bowled over three of the guards, but the remaining ones started firing into the prisoners.
"Tenchi, get down!" his grandfather shouted as he tackled Nobuyuki and dropped prone.
In the hallway, Ayeka used a combination of karate and aikido to subdue any opponents she encountered. "Hiya!" she cried as she executed a diagonal knifehand strike to the side of a guard's neck, completely bypassing the vest and openfaced helmet he used for armor. As the first guard gagged and fell to the ground, the girl siezed and twisted the arm of the next guard, causing him to drop his weapon. She headbutted him in the nose, and pushed him into the next guard who was trying to get a clear shot at her. She then did a sommersault ending with both feet into the next guards' face.
In the hold it was a complete free-for-all. The convicts, convinced that the guards were going to kill them regardless of their actions, threw themselves at the crewmen only to be cut down. Tenchi, Nobuyuki, and Yosho lay flat on the floor to avoid being hit as Ryoko leaped up, flipped, and jumped off the walls in order to attack the guards and avoid being hit.
"Ahh!" Tenchi screamed. "Grandpa! What do we do?"
"Close your eyes," Nobuyuki moaned, "so you don't see it coming!"
"Remember your training, and wait for your chance," the old man hissed.
In a corridor, Sasami used her staff to pole vault over a guard, spin through the air and land behind him. She spun around to use her staff to trip him and thrust at his unprotected face when he landed on his back.
"Now!" Yosho shouted as he rolled to his feet. He caught a guard with an inverted grip of his opponent's wrist, and twisted the arm while he applied downward pressure on the elbow. The guard dropped his gun while Yosho elbowed him in head before punching him in the face.
Tenchi spun on the ground using his legs to trip a second guard. He rolled on top of the downed guard and used his elbow to jab at the guard's face. When that wasn't sufficient to disable his opponent he rolled on his back and flung the guard into the air.
Ryoko's speed and strength were sufficient to take out the rest of the opposition. Soon all of the guards were down, but so were a lot of the prisoners. The battle hadn't been without casualties. That many gunshots fired into such a dense mass of people had resulted in many fatalities.
"Oh my gawd…" Tenchi grimaced, as he looked down at the floor, for he had never seen a dead man before.
"I'm going to be sick," Nobuyuki groaned.
"Well do it on your own time, 'cause we're getting out of here!" Ryoko said as she tossed Tenchi's father a gun. "They locked the door behind them, so shoot the first guy who comes through the door!"
"Sh-shoot?" Nobuyuki stammered as his tanned face lost some of its color. "As in, 'kill someone'? I'm not sure I can do that!"
"Grandpa?" Tenchi turned to the old man.
Katsuhito Yosho sighed and picked up a discarded gun. "If they weren't going to kill us and dispose of our bodies before, they'll certainly do it now."
Tenchi nodded and retrieved a weapon for himself.
"Say you're pretty rugged there, kiddo," Ryoko winked at the boy. "Stick with me and I'll show you a few pointers if we get out of this."
"Sh-sure," Tenchi nodded weakly.
"Quiet," the old man hissed. "Take cover, I hear more gunfire outside."
"They must be executing hold after hold of prisoners!" Ryoko exclaimed. "Shoot the first guy you see!"
At that moment the door hissed open and a guard flew into the room to tumble onto the floor and lie still. A high-pitched shriek was heard, but it didn't come from the guard, it came from the somersaulting girl with the long purple hair who dove into the room after him. "All right you lot!" the girl circled keeping her gun pointed at as many foes as possible while her scarlet eyes shone with ferocity. "You better release Tenchi Masaki or my sister will kill your captain—Tenchi! You're safe! You're all right!" The girl dropped her weapon and dashed over to the boy and tackled him in a tearful embrace.
"I… Ayeka?" Tenchi gasped. "What are you doing here?"
"I thought I lost you!" she sobbed as tears flowed from her lovely scarlet eyes. "I thought that I'd never see you again!"
"Did I miss something or did Tenchi's ex-girlfriend just rescue us?" Yosho shouldered his weapon.
"Who knew that having a stalker would come in so handy?" Nobuyuki added.
"Come on, Tenchi, we have to get you out of here," Ayeka said as she clasped his hand and pulled him towards the door. "Sasami should be waiting for us in my ship, the Ryu-oh.
Before she could leave the hold her other hand was seized by Ryoko, who started pumping in up and down as if she was trying to get water out of a well. "Hi, I'm Ryoko," the pirate greeted in an overly cheerful manner. "Did you just say that you have a spaceship?"
Next: Time Out
