Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to Rumiko Takahashi, not I. Some characters are from my imagination, but not many. Do not use this story without my permission.
The Mission FAILED!? What happened!?
Earth. The day of the mission's final report. The Mendo Tracking Satellite Array had been monitoring the progress of the Dappyamato since it left orbit right up until its engagement near the sun's incinerating tidal field. The technical crews in command of the monitoring station had witnessed it with their own eyes, the disappearance of their prince and all within from any form of tracking, and they assumed the worst. A few hours of high-dimming filter telescopic scanning around the sun had confirmed their fears. Under the canopy of heavily insulated radiation-proof vehicles the parents were brought in from all the corners of Tomobiki town, including the Mizunokoji parents, to the Mendo estate for a meeting with the country's most esteemed family.
The parents were all ushered out of the sun and into the compound, out of their radiation suits and finally into the family sitting room. The windows had all been covered with lead-lined curtains three-stories tall and several feet thick to keep the harmful sunlight out. Wind-chime air-conditioners rang all across the walls and held the room at a comfortable, controlled temperature. A large, proper sitting area had been arranged. Mr. and Mrs. Mendo were waiting already, sitting together with their eyes cast down at the far end of a long and regally carved coffee table. Ryoko sat apart from them with Shingo behind her at a diligent guard. She snapped her fingers to have him wipe her forming tears away.
"Fancy place...." Mr. Fujinami said. He looked at the sitting area and instantly became excited, shouting with spontaneous glee. "CHAIRS!!! All my life I've longed to sit in a comfy chair! Like a big hot-shot! HAHA!!!" He vaulted over the back of a sofa chair and fell down onto it. The seat of the chair was hard as iron and rang pain through all his bones, going from his hips up.
"I apologize" Mr. Mendo said. "Our daughter, Ryoko, was so taken aback by the news of what happened that she replaced most of the couch cushions with slabs of metal...so do be careful, the rest of you." Mr. Fujinami held his mouth wide open and clutched his legs together. He groaned and jerked his head around, gripping the arms of the couch and wringing the fabric. The other families moved more cautiously. The Moroboshis sat together on a sofa thankful to feel that it was indeed a cushion. Mr. Mizunokoji sat carefully on a hard iron sofa while his wife and daughter, kept close to her mother for her fear of the men in the room, found soft cushions to sit on. Shinobu, who was too busy wondering why she had been called with everyone else, didn't notice until too late that she found another iron seat and simply made the best of it. Mr. Fujinami fell to the floor, holding his broken buttocks high in the air and groaning loudly.
"I'm sorry" Mrs. Moroboshi began, "but we don't really know why we're here quite yet."
"Especially me" Shinobu said. Mr. Mendo sighed and stood up. He straightened his suit lapel and tie, then smoothed back his hair.
"Mr. Teller?" Mr. Mendo called. A man walked into the sitting area from behind Mendo's seat. Ryoko stood up anxiously at the stranger's presence and pointed at him. He was a stout, round man with a wide mustache and a clean, bald head. Obviously, he was a foreigner, an American man in a dim-gray suit with a burgundy tie. He held himself in a high esteem in the presence of the Mendo family proper and cleared his throat before speaking.
"Who are you?" Ryoko demanded, drawing his gaze away from the center of the room. "Father, who is he? Why is he here?"
"Ryoko..." Shingo said. He took her by her shoulder to try and calm her down. She took his hand and ran into his chest, sobbing silently against him. "Sorry, sir. Please, go on."
"Thank you" he said, speaking in perfect, learned Japanese. "I represent the United States branch of the Mendo Conglomerate. Recently, our tracking stations at NASA headquarters picked up on the detailed movements of the ship's last known actions. It seems, by the high emission of photonic energy near the tidal edge of the smaller sun's gravitational pull, there was some form of weaponry discharge."
"Oh my!" Mrs. Mizunokoji gasped. "What does it mean?"
"In all likelihood" Mr. Teller continued "there was some form of conflict, possibly a battle, in space. It is unknown how this affected the ship's functioning but, well...."
"Go on" Mr. Mendo said sullenly. Mrs. Moroboshi stood up suddenly with shallow wetness coating her eyes.
"Don't tell me...." she began, choking on her own gasping breath. "Please, no, you can't mean what I think you mean...."
"I am afraid" Mr. Teller continued "that we have lost all visuals with the Dappyamato. It's final trajectory sent it straight into the sun's tidal area, where the gravitational force of the sun is capable of tearing even the strongest earthly metals apart before melting and vaporizing them near the surface.....The ship hasn't been spotted since. We believe, we are positive, that....the ship and crew have failed...." Mrs. Moroboshi's eyes opened wide. She gasped in deeply and brought her hands up to her mouth.
"No....." she whispered. Her husband stood up and held her shoulders. She buried her face into him and cried. He held her tight and teared up as well, holding it to preserve his strength for her sake. Mr. Fujinami recovered in time to sit up at the table and lean onto it with his elbow.
"I always knew this day would come" he said. He reached into his waist wrap and brought out a bottle of sake. He poured a shallow glass and toasted to it with the bottle. "Farewell, Ryuunosuke. I hope you've found a good place somewhere out there on your own...." He took a powerful swig of the wine and sat, stoic and stern, on the floor. Shinobu was in complete shock. Her face seemed completely frozen in an expression bordered between intent listening and the same total depression that gripped the room. The Mizunokoji family went into practiced sobs, mother and father holding each other, while Asuka was left alone and seemingly out of the loop.
"So what has happened?" Asuka wondered. "Where is Big Brother?"
"Asuka" her mother said. She called her in close and took her hands. "Asuka...your big brother...is no more..." Asuka maintained her innocent curiosity.
"No more?" she said. "Is he not returning? What of Brother Mendo? Or Ryuunosuke?" Her mother looked up into her eyes, her face still plastered like an antique doll with a pleasant smile and bright, sparkling eyes, which confused Asuka ever further.
"They're dead, Asuka" she said, shaking Asuka's hands and arms. "Dead! Don't you understand that?"
"...dead?" Asuka repeated. "I.....they are gone?"
"Yes, daughter" her father said. "Forever...they will never be coming back..." Asuka's head drooped down. Then, suddenly, she fell forward and fainted. Her mother let her rest on her lap as she sobbed into her own hands. Shinobu stood up, her face still aghast of all reason and expression, and she drifted her gaze across the floor near the windows. She stared at the bright sliver of light illuminated from under the cover of the thick, opaque curtains from the huge, three-story windows. She continued staring until she was forced to turn her whole head and squint at it to focus herself better. She moved through the crowd of couches, past Ryoko and Shingo, and moved toward the light.
"Ms. Miyake?" Mr. Mendo called.
"Shinobu?" Mrs. Moroboshi said. She rose her head up from her husband's tear-stained shirt and saw her moving to the window. "Shinobu...poor dear....." She started to move for her but stopped. The whole company stopped in their sobbing when Shinobu took the weighty, industrial curtain by its edge and threw it to the side with her angry power. The light blasted in from outside, brighter than before, brighter than any natural light from the sun, and continued loudly shining until it was a glaring, bright white. Shinobu gasped as she stared deeply into it. A kuroko stealthily equipped sun-blocker shades from behind to save her eyes from being blinded as she continued unflinching watching the strange, astronomical glow grow brighter and brighter.
"What is that!?" Ryoko asked.
"Shinobu!" Mrs. Moroboshi called. "What is it? What's happening!?" The light blasted even brighter with a glaring whine. Shinobu's face lit up as the true figure of the light began to take shape before her.
Planet Uru. A hot and dusty celestial sphere in the Sei arm of the galaxy. It was a daily scene. People stood by at electronics shops watching the news reels in the window that gave them distant, delayed information on the situation regarding their beloved princess, Lum, and her notorious husband. It was a regular scene in regard to the day. Oni came and went, mixing their way into alien crowds of merchants and foot traffickers, and the whole crowd of aliens in the open thoroughfares became noisy, colorful blurs in the dry air. It was an ordinary summer with just the backdrop of tension hanging in the air from the impatient people wringing their hands at screens to learn more about what was happening.
Then, in sub-space, in a dark and fathomless reach of the hall of infinite doorways, Inaba stood before Uru's door to the present, a dry door with no knob but a latch to pull, and a nervous shade cast on his face. He wore more traditional clothing than he had been wearing since he came to reside plainly on Earth. Over his clean, starch-white suit and rabbit-paw pattern tie he had a thick cotton overcoat of white with a bunny hood, killing the serious air and attitude he carried. He placed his hand calmly to the door and took a calming breath. Then he drew away and turned to scratch his head.
"I might die...." he said. "He's not the most notoriously welcoming warlord in the galaxy, afterall..." He paced before the door, walking on immaterial darkness, deep in a thoughtful consideration over the circumstances before him. "On one hand" he began, "not telling him could avoid an inter-galactic incident. On the other hand, not telling him will lead to unexpected, undesirable results...potentially, at the absolute worst, war. Or some war-like banter between leaders. I suppose I should go with my best foot forward and hope that Lum's father is a sensible enough man when I tell him his daughter is with the Gods in Heaven...." Inaba slid the door open slowly and stepped out of sub space into the open, hot Uru sun.
The first step towards a mountainous climb.... Inaba thought.
"Hey!" An Oni voice shouted. Inaba turned and saw an official-looking, muscular Oni in battle armor wielding a heavy, metal club in his big hand. He looked angry, his mighty brow furrowing under his thick, tiger-striped helmet brim. "What do you think you were doing in there, punk!?" Inaba leaned away from him. His club was pointed right in Inaba's face, swinging heftily in the air before him. "You'd better have a damn good excuse for being in there!"
"What?" Inaba said. He turned around and observed the door he had just used to exit from sub space. It was a women's restroom. Inaba stared at it for a long time and hoped he was mis-translating the obvious symbol, text and signs around it, all of which said 'Women's toilet', but he arrived at a hopeless answer and turned to the Oni official peacekeeper with a nervous smile.
"Oh, there?" Inaba said. "I didn't come from there, no. You see, I'm a sub-space denizen, and I merely-"
"Shut your trap, pervert!" the Oni growled. He lowered his face and confronted Inaba on a wholly uncomfortable level, pressing his face closer and closer to knock Inaba over with pure threat. "We look down on social deviance in this town, kid! You'll be getting at least twenty-hours community service for this! Along with an ass-kicking!" Inaba grinned at the man. Then, in a flash, he was off. He was a white blur moving between the Oni's legs and pumping his powerful, rabbit legs as he sprinted through the streets. He ran with a wind-chasing speed and the gust that followed his flee kicked up the dust and skirts of young, fashionable Oni girls.
"Obviously" Inaba thought "the warlord will be in the most decorated military area during the working day. I should looked near the town square for some kind of map or information kiosk so I can find him!" Inaba made a leap over the rooftops and sped among the blurring scenery into a wide open bazaar market. He landed in an alley, into the shadows, and calmly resurfaced into the crowd. He was the whitest figure in the crowd as everyone was wearing traditional Oni garb of yellow and black. Some even wore armor and carried weapons on their backs. He looked around at the shopkeepers, none of which were looking straight at him, and walked through the manic masses to a small shop owned by a young man selling books. A young human. Inaba pulled back his hood and approached.
"Hi" Inaba said.
"Yo" the human greeted. He was Japanese, as Inaba expected, but responded in a common Oni dialect. "It's kinda obvious, but I sell books here. Earth's greatest literature from the East, West and yours truly, all translated into Oni and proof-checked by local scholars and record-keepers. You look like a bookish kinda guy. Why not buy a book?"
"......How'd yo uget here?" Inaba asked in Japanese. The man sighed and scratched his head.
"I was abducted" the man said. "I'd....rather not talk about it."
"Eww..." Inaba groaned.
"No!" the man exclaimed. "Not like that! It was great! It was a ship full of women, gorgeous Oni women, who were taking an inter-galactic census and sexual study! When I think about it, all those glorious days spent alone with beautiful women, all those rigorous 'tests' and 'trial runs' they put me through....only to leave me here with my books....I get depressed...." Inaba could sense the young man's desperation. He could feel the weight of the pitiable air.
"Hey! Books!" an excited passer-by exclaimed. He approached, a huge man, proud and strong-armed with a helmet and visor to mask his face. He knelt down and picked up a thick copy of The Art of War with loose leaf pages lodged randomly through the chapters as translation notes and comments by the young seller. "Ah! I like this one already! HAHA!" Inaba squinted up at the big man's face and tried to read who it was under the lime-green colored visor.
"That one isn't cheap, sir" the young seller said. "It took me a whole half-year to translate it with professional help."
"Money's no object" the man said. He took the book under his arm and sifted through his bodysuit pocket for the baseline price. He pulled out the planet's highest legal tender and handed over a clean, unfolded bill. "You can keep the change, son. Get yourself a chair to sit on and some books of your own to read!"
"Thank you very much!" the man said, shooting up to his feet with a bow. Inaba finally read through the mask and captured the image in his head.
"Invader?" Inaba asked. The man turned to him. "Aren't you the warlord? Lum's father?" The Oni jumped back and shouted. He slowly set his feet back on the ground and calmly brought his hands to his pockets.
"What?" he said, nervously hiding his shock. "I don't know what you're talking about, young man. That man, he wouldn't need books! He's a powerful, political man! He's not a bookish weakling type!"
"It is you" Inaba said, now straight-faced and serious. "Please, sir, don't try to hide yourself from me. I am one of the many inter-dimensional rabbits that manipulates the fate of all living creatures. I represent the Destiny Production Bureau on a regular basis and am a friend of your daughters." Invader gave up and leaned in close to try and keep his stealth amidst the bustling crowd of people around him.
"Nice to meet you, son" he said "and congratulations on seeing through my disguise. My wife told me to start reading more books, you know. Said I was just doing nothing all day but watching the screen, but can you blame her? I'm worried about our daughter!"
"Well, sir" Inaba began, "that's exactly what I am here to talk to you about." The Oni's face began to fall. "I suggest we go somewhere private to continue. This isn't a very private place to share....delicate information." Invader's eyes began to shake under his visor and cracked along the edges with bloody veins.
"What happened....?" he asked.
Invader home UFO. A calm, royal ship settled in the foothills away from the hustle and bustle of the space-port town. Inaba was cordially invited in as he and the great Oni warlord sat down together with his wife to join after the wine was warmed and the food was prepared. Inaba sat as a distinguished gentleman, his hands carefully folded into his lap and a stern, stone-carved seriousness on his face. Invader stayed as calm as he could. He buckled himself down, pressing on his knees in his seat with his strong hands and let his jaw shake as much as it wanted in front of his company. His wife returned with a tray of drinks and a small dish of 'food', derisively defined as such when Invader picked up a rough handful and shoveled it to calm his nerves. He also took the bottle around the cups and drank a swig of the powerful liquor to try and sedate himself further. His wife sat politely and took a solemn look Inaba's way.
"You say there's been trouble with our daughter?" she said, speaking her native tongue as always. Inaba nodded.
"Specifically" Inaba began "that it was obliterated in the minor sun's gravitational field." Invader stopped chewing. His jaw slowed itself to a stop with his mouth full of half-chewed food.
"Obliterated?" he said, his words muffled by food. His wife nudged him again.
"And?" she said. Inaba tugged at his tie and met her penetrating gaze.
"Although the ship has been vaporized" Inaba went on "there is no concrete evidence to say that the crew was in any way harmed. In fact, from what I can observe with my relative amount of skill, they are all perfectly fine. The fabric of reality has yet to catastrophically shift one way or another regarding Ataru and Lum's disappearance. It's as if they were still together, yet so distant that their energies cannot be read. The cosmic stream of misfortune is still flowing....but....uh.....there's a hole in the riverbed, so to speak."
"What?" Invader said. His wife tilted her head in confusion. Inaba sighed.
"Yeah, it doesn't make much sense, does it?" he said. "What I really mean is that everyone's fine. They're ship was destroyed, but at the last minute they were all somehow taken away from physical reality and delivered somewhere of equal cosmic standing with less real presence. In essence their souls and bodies all....left the universe and went somewhere else."
"But where?" she asked.
"And how!?" Invader asked, slightly more enthused and obviously excited.
"No one knows!" Inaba said, waving his hands up and down at the sides of his head, wiggling his fingers. "I've looked at the situation left and right, up and down, inside and outside and I have yet to fully understand anything. My seniors at the DPB are attempting to figure it out on their own as we speak, and I'm to be paged as soon as they discover any substantial findings." Inaba stopped his fingers and sat back into his seat, folding his hands together in his lap and crossing his legs. "That's all I can say....for now."
"Well how kind" Mrs. Invader said with a sigh of relief. "I'm sure everyone on Earth is as equally relieved as we are, right dear?" Her husband was still blinking hard and scratching his head. He was obviously still lost somewhere in the rabbit's forest of a tale.
"Actually" Inaba began, "this was the first place I visited. The news is delayed across the galaxy. What you've been following is actually a few days old. The Earth has already received the word of the mission's apparent failure, but the effects have yet to fully translate to the side of the galaxy. What news they get from it is bound to be much less fortunate then the news I've just given you."
"Oh my!" she exclaimed. "You should return to Earth at once, in that case! Let them know everyone is safe, somehow, somewhere, before the bad news reaches them."
"No need, madam" Inaba said, holding up a cocky hand. "You see, I've already implemented some sure-fire counter-measures against any sort of wild misunderstandings getting out of control. Namely, I have stealthily entrusted a beacon of sub-space rupture energy to my girlfriend, Shinobu Miyake, who is close friends with Ataru and all aboard the ship. Once they are sent back to the physical plane of reality, they will manifest near her automatically. It's just a matter of how fast or slow time tends to move in whatever plane they're all in and how long it will take them to-" Inaba's bunny tie began to buzz. He took it off with a quick yank, folded it up and unfolded it into a cellphone.
"This is Inaba" he said diligently. The Oni just sat and watched him, waiting patiently for a response. Inaba got up and parted from their attention with a smile and a silent gesture that he would be back. He went on listening, nodding and affirming some odd points during a seemingly one-sided conversation and, at length, finished up to close his phone back up and unfurl it as a tie. He then clipped the tie back on and straightened it, then returned to his seat to meet the over-attentive glares of the concerned Oni parents.
"Everything's fine" Inaba said. "They were just in Heaven, as I suspected all along! Now they're back on Earth and the situation has been resolved. Nothing to worry about at all!" Invader grabbed Inaba by the head and lifted him up. Inaba nervously held his grin and held onto Invader's thick fingers for dear life while his legs kicked in a panic. His wife did nothing to stop him, she just watched curiously as her husband brought Inaba up to his face level and glared at him from under half-drawn eyelids.
"You never mentioned" he lowed "that you had an idea where they were...!"
"I guess not!" Inaba said at a pinnacle of nervousness. He let out a dry and fearful chuckle as well. Invader sighed and let him go. He landed on the table and stumbled off onto the floor, side first so he could catch himself and start a retreat. Mrs. Invader cut him off by floating in front of him with her arms crossed and her eyebrows cocked. "It's my business to have unyielding accuracy! I can't rely on my instincts to deliver any kind of answer without authoritative proof! I'm still just a junior in the company! I can't make decisions alone!"
"Well then..." Invader began, picking Inaba up by the back of his shirt now. Inaba flinched and froze up with his legs folded up and his fingers wringing in front of his chest. "...this is the perfect reason I've heard all week to get Drunk! GAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" The Oni, with a wide-faced grin and a hot blush across his face, held up a ceramic jug filled with sloshing booze and toasted it to the air. He was in a celebratory mood and handed Inaba a glass full of peach wine. Then he set him down in his chair again and moved into his chair, slouching down and guzzling booze.
"Dear!" his wife protested with her hands high on her hips. "Don't be so aggressive with our company all the time!" She turned pleasantly to Inaba, who was still shocked and unnerved at the inevitability that seemed to have been staring him down just moments before, promising his doom, which had now been replaced by galactic hospitality and friendliness. "Inaba, would you like a drink?" He nodded with a rusty, jerking movement and gulped the drink down in and instant. His nerves mellowed and he was calmed in an instant. "Thank you so much for coming to us with this news" she continued. "Our daughter has a good friend in you, I'm certain." Inaba's eyes were swirling and his head was swimming with the alcohol. In his heart, he knew he'd done well, and he deserved the pleasantries of good company at last....
Heaven. At the moment of the ship's impact the crew was gone. Vanished from space and time in a glimmering instant. Now they stood, all up and mouths agape, staring at the sight before them. Lum held Ataru's arm tight. Her pupils had shrunk down and nearly left her eyes while her mouth pursed and twitched at the side. Ataru was still standing on Mendo's body, but even he was so taken aback by the fantastic awe that he couldn't be bothered to be angry about his position. Ataru just has his arms crossed and stared, mouth closed and eyes staring up plainly.
"Huh" he grunted. What they stared down was beyond even the most fantastic images of their imagination. Before them stood the heavenly palace of the sun, the home of the Mother of all Creation, Amaterasu the Sun Goddess. They stood before open gates so wide that the panorama of the paradise was fully exposed to them from side to glorious side. Plants that radiated pure sunlight and clean energy bordered gardens of starry flowers all fed by glistening crystal-clear fountains of water that bubbled from the mouths of jade dragons statues. The royalty exceeded even Shutaro's understanding of the word. The traditional Japanese pagoda style extended up and scraped a glorious golden halo in the bright, sun-shaded sky. The ground was made of cotton clouds, firm to walk on but soft to touch. It was a heavenly sight beyond enlightenment, to which the first human voice spoke of with a simplistic grunt.
"That's really......huh" Ataru repeated, still at a loss for words. The full crew stood perfectly still, men, women and Dappya-monsters all, in silent awe of the sun palace.
And so their journey came to an end, but their mission was still not over.......