1.12
Spring it seemed had come early. Cherry blossoms cascaded like snow down the ancient steps of Masaki shrine.
In elaborate ceremonial robes, Sasami had to be mindful of her feet. Tripping was not an option while she carried the holy chalice of union, especially flanked on ether side by her mothers! She was confused, disorientated, the chalice she held was removed from the imperial vault once each year, during Startica, the Jurian summer star festival. The only other times its removal was permitted, were during naming ceremonies, weddings... or funerals and only those of individuals of direct royal blood! She thought, 'momentarily' to asked what was going on, but both her mothers looked so solemn, even terrifying.
Masaki was dressed in white from shoulder to toe, her face hidden behind a veil of black. Her birth mother carried a weapon, large and somehow vulgar. Which Sasami knew instantly from its display in her father's chamber of audience. Its proper name was hard to pronounce, being 'drafted' from some ancient, dead tongue. The literal translation roughly however was 'The Last Word'. Darkly humorous and political as any official object of execution could be. Though only ceremonial now days, that blade had killed literally thousands of dissidents over the course of Jurian history. The thing had always frightened Sasami, if for no other tangible reason than it was an axe, an ancient enemy and murderer of trees!
Funaho similarly was attired in foreboding fashion, wearing black robes in her case with a white veil while baring aloft a golden balance or scale in her right hand. in the single glance she permitted herself, Sasami saw one side contained an ornate wooden crown. While the other, impossibly, a still beating heart! Now frightened on top of being confused, never the less something deep within compelled her to continue, to keep climbing the stairs one by one. To ether side of where her mothers ascended in silence, the knights of the royal households, their battle staves raised in tribute formed an arch above the procession. The name and number of Knights was obscure to her, they seemed to blur to the point she could not pick out a single face.
"Sasami? Why you look perfectly lovely!" A familiar voice said. Without her realizing it somehow, the procession had apparently reached the shrine. Standing before her, Ayeka was dressed resplendent in bridal gown. In every way, the 'perfect picture' of a princess on her wedding day, except for one small yet crucial detail. Her sister was translucent, a figurine of clearest crystal.
"Ayeka?" Sasami gasped. "Sister what has happened to you?"
"Nothing has happened!" The princess gasped, as Sasami watched a crack suddenly appeared vicinity of her sisters right shoulder. "What could possibly be wrong?" Sasami stared her concern growing, behind and thanks to her translucency, clearly visible through Ayeka, a gallery of curious yet familiar figures beckoned.
"The others are waiting!" Ayeka told her, with a smile that heralded another spilt, this time from side of her mouth. "And it's not proper to keep the people waiting!"
"Ok..." Sasami told her starting to move pass.
"Remember, everything will be fine long as we remember who we are!" Ayeka told her.
"Right, right." Sasami nodded gazing sadly at her sister, so delicate and beautiful, waiting for a harsh moment to shatter her in to a million fragments!
"Do you like it?" Another voice asked dragging her gaze around to the spectacle of Nobuyuki, dapper in his dark gray three-piece suit, smiling at her warmly while she stared back. Hanging as he was by one foot from a gallows, made it difficult to meet his gaze. "I made it myself!" he continued, gesturing to the framework.
Horrified at his self-inflected humiliation, Sasami turned away, seeing Washu standing only a few feet behind, dressed head to toe in all concealing, gray robes. Her impish face brightly illuminated by the lantern she held aloft, blazing with hellish light provided by a whirling atomic symbol at its very center.
"I've found a binding force!" she cackled from depths of her hood holding out her opposite hand. "A hundred times greater than that of nature's strong force!" Just then, Sasami noticed a manacle around Washu's tiny wrist, its chain snaking away to where she now saw a man standing. Dressed in Shinto robes with the chains other end locked firmly around his arm.
"Grandpa?" Sasami ventured, finding herself drawn that direction, It certainly looked like her older brother, or rather how she had come to know in on earth anyway. Only to halt the instant he turned to face her, peering sternly at her through a mask of Lord Katsuhito's face held before him by his unshackled arm.
"A man can only run so far, live so long before he forgets who he was, Sasami." His familiar voice grated, from behind that immobile Grey stony visage.
"Yeah..." She slowly nodded, backing away. Sasami shook her head trying to clear it, none of this made any sense!
"The reception is going to be wonderful with all the goodies you made!" someone behind her blurted. Still confused, Sasami looked to the source seeing Mihoshi, decked out in form fitting G.P. battle armor, making her way through the crowd. A tray, laden with food upon her shoulder and a 'wire-less' microphone in her other hand.
"I can't waaaaaait!" Mihoshi sang wistfully in an amplified voice that echoed across the assembly. Sasami was still absorbing, when she spied, what of all things, appeared to be a banana peel! Directly in the on coming Detectives path!
"Look out!" Sasami gasped, just as Mihoshi's right boot planted firmly upon the discarded skin. The armored police woman stumbled, knocking over a table which in turn toppling a massive ice sculpture right over on to a bench Washu seemed to be using to see over the crowd. The bench's right hand support crushed upon ice angel impact, its center support acting as a makeshift fulcrum, launching the startled scientist into the air! She helplessly watched as Washu catapulted over the crowd kicking and screaming to 'face-plant' in the largest wedding cake Sasami had ever seen!
"Oopsey!" Mihoshi said in the aftermath, kneeling on the floor.
"You damn fool!" Came a stern voice. "Can't you do anything right?"
Turning towards this new speaker, Sasami gasped anew seeing Kiyone, Wearing nothing but a gun belt and her G.P. Badge! The latter placed tactfully somehow over nipple of her right breast. Chains trailing away from both wrist and ankles completing her ensemble or rather the lack there of. Kiyone stared tragically at her fallen partner, a look of infinite sadness in her eyes.
"When will you learn to take better care of yourself?" She begged.
"I'm not a child anymore!" Mihoshi suddenly screamed, rising to her feet. Performing then an odd gesture, consisting of raising then extending her right arm, only to make a fist which she then brought smartly back to strike left breast of her body armor.
As both Sasami and an astonished key watched, Mihoshi's galaxy police issue began to segment, folding away oddly in a thousand complex directions. Changing color, rapidly transforming... Into a 'hot pink' two piece swim suit?
"You're not my mother!" Mihoshi told Kiyone defiant and sultrily, as suddenly a film crew gathered out of nowhere and began letting camera's and flash bulbs roll! "I can take care of myself!"
"Michelle! get some powder on the bright spot on her hip!" Some older man Sasami didn't know called from behind his camera, prompting an equally mysterious raven hair woman to begin dusting Mihoshi's midriff with a comically huge powder puff. Sasami was in the process of digesting what she could when distantly she heard Nobuyuki voice over paparazzi din.
"OH MA'MA!" followed promptly by unmistakable sound of a rope snapping! "ACHICKA! I'M SORRY!" She heard him wail, followed by a distinct Thud!
"Why dose it have to be this way?" Came an outcry from the center of the group. Pushing her way past a ghostly throng of nondescript figures, those concerned primarily with Mihoshi, Sasami at last caught sight of him.
"TENCHI!" She cried. He stood before the shrine, much the way she first remembered seeing him. Tee shirt, dark colored Khakis, still the wide-eyed schoolboy from over five years, and a life time ago.
"TENCHI!" Sasami repeated. Moving forwards, thinking as is the way of dreams that less than three years separated them now, at least physically. That Sasami was over seven hundred years his senior, and through her link to Tsunami, thousands more than even that pathetic span, meant nothing as the scale of love measured time! However, as she pressed forwards, his features seemed to ripple, light Tee shirt shredding as muscle beneath expanded and the boy of old was replaced. Now a few steps and as many heart beats away Tenchi regarded her, much as she knew him today, a man of twenty-one years of age!
"I love you!" Sasami breathed.
"It's not that simple." He told her gently, gesturing and looking above, her gaze followed. Amid sudden rumbling, Sasami beheld to her horror an apparition looming, terrible and at once familiar and beautiful in the skies above, nothing less than Juri! The planet of her birth! With the thunder of a million storms, her duel artificial satellite rings crushed and swept Luna pitifully aside as from everywhere above a darken rain began to fall.
"I'm afraid our time is up." Tenchi told her quietly, an instant before a solid wall descended, taking him from her view.
"NO!" Sasami screamed, pounding fists against the steaming mass, suddenly intruding in front of her, even as horribly sections of its ebony surface its began to crack and fracture as slick darkened Grey tendrils began to sprout. Tendrils, shooting out and down, raping more than growing into the soil below. The stony mass itself turned and crushed inwards, losing hue and crumbling as the mammoth thing from within took whatever it required to double its size every few seconds, soaring up and away to all sides!
"ABOMINATION!" A cry of rage absolute wrung from deep within her. Sasami had never seen a horror such as this! Yet, there was something, old... a cloying recollection about it that was terrifyingly familiar! Speculations as to nature of the thing, luridly growing uncheck, died the instant she again caught sight of him! Tenchi, having little choice in the matter because his feet and legs had somehow sprouted roots, digging to the mass behind and above holding him fast.
Wondrously even then, from his back glorious white wings had sprouted. Tenchi gained no pleasure from these newfound angelic appendages however. Thorny vines descended from behind, piecing his wings in perhaps a hundred places, further binding him cruelly
"No!" Sasami wailed, straining to reach him. He was bleeding! Tenchi was bleeding! "Please wait for me!" She cried. "I love you too!" Somehow, over the din her words seemed at last to reach him. For he opened his eyes and looked at her, the smile he then gave was forced, but beautiful. Looking at her also seemed to calm him for a moment, perhaps lessening his pain in someway. Tenchi then reach out. Through their combined effort, Sasami was just able to touch his fingertips when something fell from his palm.
Her eyes followed the progress of twin bands of gold as they fell, then bounced separating, each from the other.
"Please! Don't take him from me!" Sasami begged
"THIS IS ALL MY FAULT!" Someone suddenly wailed in her left, somehow, Ryoko was bound naked against the trunk of Funaho with red silken cords. Sasami knew it to be Ryoko by her voice and she had seen… That body! Countless times. Her face however was hidden by the red funeral mask she had worn for so many centuries while she slept. More shocking still, her lithe body was covered head to toe while a mottling of bruises.
"Don't let them!" Ryoko wailed. "Don't let them take him from us!"
"Mother!" Sasami whirled, she had lost track of where her mothers had been standing yet now she faced them. "Mom!" She implored Masaki. "Please! Help them!" Smiling behind her white vale however, Funaho's reply still somehow chilled Sasami to the bone.
"It's not our decision to make child." She said quietly holding out an ornate box for Sasami's inspection. Glancing at it, floating within were all three of Ryoko's original gems. Her view promptly cut as Funaho closed the box with a loud snap.
"Yet, it now is our duty to end this!" Masaki said raising that wicked axe.
"NO!" Sasami screamed. "We need more time!"
"Impossible!" Came a thunder from above. Swinging her gaze again skyward She saw her father Azusa, towering over the whole of the shrine and its surroundings. "You've had more than enough!" He roared. Staring balefully down at them, She could feel his anger, almost taste his rage! Sasami averted her eyes from her fathers terrifying visage, only to realize with further horror, the thorn vines, which tore at Tenchi's beautiful wings descended from her father's beard! The mass behind somehow a base for the towering figure of Azusa!
Not knowing what else to do, Sasami ran to him! Leaping, throwing her arms around Tenchi hoping to protect him! Some how! Sobbing against his flesh, she realized with a start that he was naked! Sasami wanted to avert her eyes. After all, it wasn't proper! However, found somehow she could not. Her view of him slowly moving to those regions, upon she secretly wished to gaze were interrupted suddenly by the back of someone's hand.
"This is not for a little girl like you!" Ayeka said coldly, no longer translucent. Now standing somehow between them, Sasami could feel her mouth working. She was outraged! Was her sister blind? Couldn't she see Tenchi needed their help? Face contorting, Sasami grab Ayeka's interposing arm, attempting to shove it away, when something odd caught her eye. Wound around her sisters pale wrist was a length of what appeared to be that same red silken cord which had bound Ryoko.
Unable to prevent it, her eyes reflexively followed where it trailed away. Leading ultimately to something resembling a short barbed spear thrust into Tenchi chest. Agog, Sasami's eyes fell back to Ayeka.
"I can't help how old I am!" She screamed at her sister. "I love him! That's all that maters!"
"But I love him too!" Mihoshi cried. Throwing her own tethered spear, scored a direct hit on his chest linking Tenchi to her as well.
"I can't help but love him as well!" Kiyone said casting her spear into his heart.
"He's my son!" Noboyuki said as he let fly his own.
"And my grandson!" Katsuhito called as another found its mark.
"My favorite guinea pig!" Washu cackled as her quarrel, 'laser guided of course' found its own impact.
"Your all so selfish!" Sasami screamed Sinking down on hand and knees weeping, unable to look upon the scene any longer she glanced downward only to see, beneath her, thought the ground now rendered transparent a new, terrifying image. A black hooded skeleton astride of a pale creature Sasami only vaguely recognized from years of television as a horse was rising! Horrified she stared as the figure came to life swinging upward with an object it carried, so swiftly it struck the floor beneath before she had a change to react. With no place to stand, all tumbled away into darkness!
"NO!" Sasami sat up. Looking about tearfully for several seconds, seeing only her room, realizing it had all been a dream. She sat there a moment, trying to calm her raging heart.
"Ryo-chan?" She called, breathlessly, wishing her friend was there. Clearly, she was off on her nightly rounds. Sasami waited a while longer before giving up. "That little rat!" She swore, finally finding some measure of control. "I wonder where her butt is?"