PRINCESS, PIRATE, POLICEWOMAN, WIFE...
Author: Daferge
Disclaimer: Tenchi Muyo! is copyright AIC/Pioneer Ltd.
All respective characters are property of their original owners. All original characters and ideas are property of the author.
Chapter 37.... Past and Present...
( A Juraian frontier system... )
A Juraian Task Force had dropped out of sub space upon entering the edge of the system...
Most of the vessels in the task force were heavy class metal ships, the most common type of warships in the fleet...
However the command ship was one of THE most powerful types of Juraian Warships...
A Juraian Royal tree-ship, an oddly shaped ship that that was equal to the rest of the fleet put together...
To command a tree-ship, even a fourth generation one, was the dream of every Naval officer in the Juraian Space Navy...
If being a tree-ship wasn't enough for this, this one was a second generation tree-ship and as usual, the tree's Royal partner was aboard...
Lady Seto Kamiki Jurai, known throughout the Galaxy as the Devil Princess of Jurai was in command of this special task force...
With her tree-ship Mikagami, Lady Seto was the terror of the space pirate worlds...
At-least she was before one Galaxy Police Detective first Class Mihoshi Kuramitsu had come along...
And the Galaxy was turned up-side-down...
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Where as Lady Seto had spent Centuries chasing, catching and terrorizing pirates, Detective Kuramitsu didn't even know that those funny looking males, who were running off screaming, were even Pirates...
But Lady Seto had to smile, she'd know Mihoshi's family from before she had become a detective, before she'd became famous, before she was feared, before she fell in love with a charming young boy on a small backwater planet on the very edge of the Juraian Empire...
What had surprised her, in fact, had surprised the entire Royal Family, was when the young boy had turned around and not only asked the First Princess of Jurai, Ayeka and the Space Pirate Ryoko to be his wives, but had asked the shy Detective Mihoshi also...
As the young boy WAS the Crown Prince of Jurai and the future Emperor of the Jurai Empire, the announcement of his marriage plans raised many eyebrows, not to mention started a whole lot of tongues a wagging...
Just who was this Tenchi Masaki?...
In the short time since the Juraian Empire had learned that they had a young new Crown Prince, his name had become legendary, his true exploits were amazing...
And with each telling, his exploits had grown beyond belief...
Any male who could some how tame three of the most powerful females within the Empire, had to be the most powerful person there was...
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Lady Seto smiled as she recalled all the tales of the muscular Crown Prince of Jurai...
Who was over 6 foot tall...
Who was able to take down any opponent with a single blow...
Who was the greatest swordsman in the Galaxy...
So handsome he could sweep any female off their feet with just a wink of the eye...
She was amazed at these stories being told about him...
She smiled as she remembered the first time she had been shown an image of the young Crown Prince and if it hadn't been for the fact that he was standing between Ayeka and Ryoko, she wouldn't have believed that it was him...
Only when she finally met the shy, 5 foot 5 inch tall, black hair, brown eyed, 17 year old high school student did she really begin to understand what the girls saw in him...
And then there was his best friend, 15 year old Seina Yamada, who'd been making quite a name for himself as a pirate catcher in the Galaxy Police, he was almost as infamous as Mihoshi...
What was it about the males from that small world?...
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As she stood sipping tea, her aide approached...
" My Lady!... The scouts have reported that the space port is empty and shows little sign of recent use... "
Sighing, she turned to her aide...
" Did they do the special scans that Washu suggested?... "
Her aide smiled...
" Yes, my Lady... They sent a positive code word... "
Seto smiled, Washu's suggestion was correct...
" So...We were correct after all... Our prey is being warned some how and going into hiding... "
Seto had a gleam in her eyes...
" You know what we discussed... "
As her aide left, her chuckling floated across the quiet bridge...
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( Washu's Lab... )
Washu studied the message that Lady Seto had sent her...
There was no sign of the Raider ships that rumors said were there, as Washu had suspected would happen...
Lady Seto had taken her suggestion and scanned for certain types of radiation, the types left behind by the engines of space ships taking off...
The radiation had a rather rapid decay rate, less than two weeks, that would allow those scanning to calculate just how long ago the craft had been there, simple science...
So a small beacon sensor, would be left in orbit, along with a warship, just outside the system, in sub-space, to await the raiders return...
With luck, the warship would catch the missing raiders on the ground...
Washu couldn't help smiling, some one wasn't going to be happy...
NOT happy at all...
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( Aboard Ryo-ohki... )
" With the passing of the Third Empress, her second Great-grandson was declared the new Emperor... "
Ayeka sat there next to Tenchi, listening as he read from Washu's book of the Juraian history...
She'd always thought she had the most accurate knowledge of Juraian history her teachers could provide...
But, it seem that Washu now had an even more detailed knowledge of Juraian History than she did...
Thou she'd heard most of what Tenchi had been reading countless times before, she was amazed that there were still so many thing things that she hadn't known...
She noted that a dating system wasn't being used, just the various reigns of the different Emperors and Empresses...
Even the length of their reigns weren't noted, time just hadn't meant much back then...
It seem that when you live thousands of years, a dating system wasn't so important...
She wondered what else she hadn't been told...
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" As the Golden Age of Expansion was coming to an end, a union was formed with a small highly advanced kingdom on the Juraian border... After long debate and discussion it was decided that the young crown prince and the only daughter of the kingdom's ruler should wed, thus joining the two kingdoms... "
Usually when some one was reading to her, her mind tended to wander...
Ayeka smiled, today she found herself hanging on Tenchi's every word...
" However within a short time an evil darkness arose and the Empire was attacked by a very mysterious enemy without a face... Colonies along the border were suddenly and violently attacked... Each colony was completely destroyed, leaving behind no survivors... Even lone outpost and patrol ships were attacked and destroyed... When task forces arrived, there was no sign of the attackers, just destruction... "
Ayeka nodded her head...
" When a small task force patrolling the border failed to report in, a scout craft, sent to investigate found that the system where the task force had last reported, was gone... All that was left was an unreported black-hole... "
Tenchi looked at Ayeka, who just smiled...
" After some debate, the Emperor organized a massive fleet and proceeded to the border... There he formed a line of smaller task forces and slowly proceeded to sweep across the border and probe deep into the unexplored star sector... "
" It wasn't long before signs of the invaders was discovered and the battle for the Galaxy began... "
This time Ayeka seem surprised...
" For some unexplained reason, these official reports was later changed to read that after the Jurai's forces were pushed back, deep within the empire the Emperor, himself, leading the last of his reserves and a combined task force of ships from a union of other worlds, mounted a counter attack and forced the invaders back into the Badlands... This seems to have been done by the future Emperor to explain the reason for the late Emperor's War and losses... Eventually it all just became the official History of the period... "
A slight movement caught Tenchi's eye and he noted that Ryoko had joined them...
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Ryoko silently phased into her seat, trying not to disturb Tenchi or Ayeka...
Smiling, Tenchi found himself the center of their attentions...
" As the Juraian lines advanced, the unseen enemy began to use an unusual suicide weapon... Outposts in the surrounding star systems would allow Juraian Naval units to enter the system and then they would set off the self-destruct button on their Anti-matter power generators, causing the system's star to go supernova destroying the star, the system it's self and any thing in the system... Leaving only a black hole behind... "
That hadn't been in the history books...
" After the secret of the enemy systems was discovered, missiles were used to take out any outpost discovered... There were still losses as the Juraian forces advanced... By the time they reached the enemy's home world, only a few small systems on the edge of the sector still existed... Almost every star within the sector had been turned into a black hole... "
This wasn't the way Ayeka remembered it...
" Once again the records were changed to show that the invaders were such a savage and violent people, that they used Anti-matter bombs to destroy every star and system within the sector, rather than surrender or allow the systems to be captured, thus creating the void we have today... "
" Because the use of Anti-matter created such a huge number of black holes, it also left very little of value in the sector... Add in the side effects that black holes have on sub-space, they have been disrupting passage through the area ever since, thus the name, The Badlands... "
Ryoko smiled, looking at Ayeka...
" Well!... That pretty much explains the Badlands... "
Tenchi smiled too...
" It was during the final assault on the enemy home world that the Emperor himself was killed... Thus the Crown Prince was declared the new Emperor... When all of the dust had settled, the sector had been changed from one of bright gleaming stars to one of darkness and dangerous black holes... Among the star systems destroyed in the war was the home world of the new Queen... Only a very few of her family survived... It was in honor of her people that the new Emperor took his wife's family name as part of the Royal name, Masaki... "
It was then that Tenchi noticed that Ayeka seem confused...
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( A darken room... )
No one spoke as each took a chair around the long stone table...
The figure at the end of the table made no movement, just observed...
After due consideration, one of the figures stood...
" A report has just come in that the task force under Lady Seto has left the system where a number of our ships were stationed... They were wondering if they should return?... "
The figure at the end of the table taps the table...
" Have them wait a reasonable time before returning... "
There was a long silence...
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" The report of the ELEMENT X?... "
One of the other figures stood...
" The latest estimates are beginning to show increased process... "
" So... You're beginning to understand those research papers that were discovered at that old secret Lab?... "
" Yes, my Lord... The original researchers managed to destroy most of their work and the scrapes of papers they missed were about to disintegrate, do to age... We estimate they are at-least several thousands of years old... They only survived due to the Lab on the asteroid being exposed to the vacuum of space... Only by spending the past three decades carefully preserving each piece of paper found were we able to get as far as we have... We were able to get started using the pre-scans that were sent to the research Lab, before each page was processed... Thus we were able to produce the 60 grams used in the test... "
" How much is avaiable?... "
" The last report indicates we have 16.78 grams of the pre-upgraded ELEMENT-X in containment units... And that was only 23.6 percent pure... With the new upgrades, we estimate ELEMENT-X.2 will have a purity of 35.7 percent... Giving an estimated increase in potential of 4 to 6 time of that used earlier... "
The room was silent for a moment...
" So... With the next batch, we would only need 10 grams to get the same test results?... "
The standing figure nodded...
" Yes, my Lord... "
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" Any thing else?... "
The figure looked at some of the others before answering...
" What papers we have, tend to indicate that the GREAT ONES were able to get a purity of about 86.9 percent purity... If so, it would have only taken 30 grains or 2 grams to get the same results as the test... "
The whispering ended, there was a deadly silence...
" Any thing else?... "
" Only that what appear to be the last entries were left unfinished... "
There was an ever longer silence...
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( Aboard Ryo-ohki... )
Tenchi studied his two wives, both seem to be thinking about something...
" Ayeka?... Is something wrong?... "
She managed to smile...
" No... It's just that I'd always thought that Masaki Jurai had been the Family name all along... It was never mentioned as being added at a later date... "
When Ryoko didn't react to his putting an arm around Ayeka, he became concerned...
" Ryoko?... You alright... "
He smiled as he realized he'd caught her deep in thought and she so looked like Washu when she did, but he wasn't about to tell her that...
She was quickly cuddling up to his other side...
" A Rygen Moonstone for your thoughts... "
It was a simple question, that never failed to bring a smile to her face, like this time...
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With a sigh, she looked him in the eye...
" When you mentioned Anti-matter generators, it reminded me of Kagato... "
Tenchi felt her shiver and held her tighter, but he didn't say any thing, letting her take her time...
" Like the Royal Moonstone, he was always looking for more power... More powerful sources of power, like that which the Juraian Royal Family used... "
By now Ayeka was watching...
" And?... "
Ryoko smiled before continuing...
" As I recall, he had even done some research into using Anti-matter, but... "
Ayeka had moved slightly closer...
" If I recall correctly, after a lot of WASTED TIME, he came to the conclusion that it was a waste of his time... It seem that the Anti-matter itself was unstable and needed containment fields that required more power than any thing being produced... It would be like using Mihoshi's service pistol to warm a cup of tea... "
They were interrupted by a voice behind them...
" Did some one say they wanted a cup of warmed tea?... "
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Tenchi smiled as Ayeka and Ryoko moved as one...
They quickly cornered Mihoshi as she headed to the Galley, her service pistol in her hand...
Even from across the room, Tenchi could see that Mihoshi was still asleep...
As Ayeka retrieved the pistol, Mihoshi cuddled up to Ryoko and they both disappeared...
Shaking her head, Ayeka returned to her chair and sighed...
Ryoko reappeared shortly there after and took her chair, shaking her head...
Tenchi couldn't help smiling...
" And the Galaxy is once again saved from a major disaster... "
Ayeka and Ryoko both smiled, then started giggling...
Soon all three were laughing...
But even so, Tenchi knew both Ryoko and Washu were right, something wasn't quite right, a mystery...
He smiled, if any one could solve it, it would be LITTLE WASHU...
To be continued...
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