TITLE: Meaningless Crystal
AUTHOR: Zeda (the BLK Kitti)
STARTED: January 16th, 2001 Ended: 2001
SERIES: Shin Tenchi Muyo
Tsugaru-centric
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Angst
WARNINGS: Some suicidal thoughts. ^^; Overall depressing.
SUMMARY: Tsugaru questions the meaning of his existence
DISCLAIMER: Tsugaru and Shin Tenchi Muyo are property of their rightful owners and companies.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: /oo; there's not enough Tsugaru fandom!
Comments go to Zeda at BKoe101725@aol.com
MY SITE: http://blkkitti.homestead.com/BLKmain.html
MY TSUGARU SHRINE: http://thaboiz.homestead.com/blueshimmer.html

*

I wait amongst the floating glass, awaiting my Mistress' call. It will come eventually, it's simply a matter of when I'm called forth. Simply a matter of waiting obediently until she requires one of her prized pawns to take another piece.
Time always seems naught to flow in this space, nothing but drifting stars and cruel, jagged crystalline shapes surrounded by a void of pure and utter nothingness.
I suspect this is what Mistress' inner thoughts and feelings are like: cold and jagged and alone, with a pulsating core of intense insecurity and loneliness.
I allow the ever-present smile to slip from my face, the mask of the Cheshire Cat slipping and the truth revealed, but never to be seen.
Never to be seen.
I always smile because it makes me look more confident; encourages positive results in the work of my colleagues, Hotsuma and Matori, not to mention that it sets at ease my poor innocent victims. I sigh, closing my eyes, recalling betrayed faces and empty tears. Those sad, sad expressions wrought by my own sins.
Constantly existing within the mind sphere of a troubled and melancholy little girl... Is this the reason behind my own sense of loss? My own sense of meaninglessness?
Why...
I open my eyes and silently watch the crystals spin. They're nothing more than shattered thoughts and dreams, the shattered pieces of my Mistress' soul. Shattered, tainted glass from which she creates souls for her own legion of servants.
Hotsuma and Matori are not merely crystal, this I know for certain.
But...
Now a days, I'm not quite sure anymore. Memories of a time before I was Her loyal servant are far off, faded, almost gone. Every now and then I'll wake from a nightmare, recalling that hell from which I came.
...Transported to a different kind of hell, Her hell...
Even when my Mistress took me in, I wore my shirt lopsided so that my sleeve would hang longer, covering my left hand.
I wince lightly, mournfully, ashamed of the brand I bear on my accursed left hand. A simple series of burns, looking to be nothing more than three rows of three dots. The brand of a slave, of a...
Mistress noticed my strange habits and created a shirt for me. Not knitted or sewn or bought... *created*, out of the nothing in this dark place...
I love it, having comfortable protection from my own shame, in the form of a large yellow shirt with an extra long left sleeve. And, knowing my paranoia, it is loose enough for me to wear it on a tilt anyway.
That extra inch of fabric between my hand and daylight makes all the difference, ensuring that neither Hotsuma nor Matori, nor anyone else for that matter, will ever know the horrible truth that I conceal with yellow fabric and smiles.
Thank god those Jurai females were princesses, and not at liberty to take notice of the slang and tattoos of the underground, of the burns marking their own. They were uneducated in the ways of slavery, uneducated in the subject of drugs and crime and prostitution.
But I'm educated. Cruelly genius in the matter. If only they could know...
Yes, I was mistaken. I can remember all to well the horrible years before my Mistress came to my proverbial rescue. Nothing but a frail little boy child who seemed to be born just for the purpose of being beaten and bruised, torn and used, abused fiercely and then thrown in the gutter for the next manipulator to find.
I suffered many long years of hunger and fear on the streets of some run-down old space colony until a slaver found me. Even though I was too thin and frail for labor, he thought I was suitable for... other tasks, and branded me.
I'll never forget the viscous burning in my left hand as I was branded bit by bit with heated knife pricks. I can still feel the points on the back of my hand burning slowly, smell the scent of my own charring flesh, hear the echo of my own scream as it filled the dark and musty room.
Anyway, I was often beaten and thrown around, and often sold because I was a weakling of a child. After countless owners, I was bought by a...
Well, they say that I was lucky to have been purchased by the royal family of Jurai. My slaver kept a smile on his dirty lying hating face the whole time as I was carted away with countless others to be a Page in the illustrious home of the Jurai Royal Family.
I do remember, with a twinge of shame, that I _was_ happy to be going there. Hell, why wouldn't I have thought so? I expected a safe, comfortable life of waiting on royal ladies. Even though slavery was a horrible existence, it was all I could have hoped for: an easy slavery, no more viscous abuse or selling and re-selling of my battered, used frame. I would be council to respectful females, and in previous experience females had proven to be less rough as owners.
No. I didn't count on there being several princes with just as much authority over me as the princesses I was servant to, and all of them conniving, sneering... horny.
I remember the first time, I was Page to Princess Kouran of Jurai... her brother, Prince Kyo, said that he had some chores for me to do around his chambers...
I squint my eyes shut, feeling the heat behind my eyes and the slight headache, the sensation of being about to cry.
I... I was too weak. I couldn't protest... couldn't have even if I had the strength of twenty men...! Prince Kyo was... rough, ruthless, selfish in his desires...
And Princess Kouran had three other brothers just like him.
Over the years, my frail little boy body matured slowly, but not into a more masculine form. I grew tall, but never bulked or became muscular like other boys did. My features were more effeminate than natural, and I can only assume that I took after my mother...
Whoever she may have been...
It could also have been the warped environment I was placed in; the never-ending assault I suffered day after day. Do you suppose...? Maybe constantly being thrown around and used and forced down on the rug or against the wall for another heart-ripping experience makes boys frail and... and...
I blink back to reality, to the semi-real fibers of crystalline shattered hopes floating around me as I blink through my tears.
What do I have now, after Mistress came and took me away? A life of lies and death and, most empowering of all... emptiness. Pure eternal emptiness.
Maybe I was always empty, but never noticed my mental imbalance because of the constant physical violation. Maybe I'm just damned to exist here, in this hell... No matter where I go, I'll always be alone and unwanted, unloved...
"Tsugaru?"
I hear Hotsuma call as he comes looking for me and quickly pat my eyes with the yellow cloth of my longer sleeve, drawing the defenses and the masks back up around me as I push myself away from the large gem wall I was leaning into. He comes down the crystal stairway through nothing, rounding a corner and coming into plain view...
...And I smile.
"What do you need, Hotsuma?" I ask cheerily, only myself hearing the hollow undertones to my voice.
Hotsuma arches a thin golden eyebrow, blue eyes searching me for my reasons, my strangeness... "Mistress Yugi should be calling us soon... our plans are succeeding! Soon, Mistress may get what she so desires..."
I smile and nod with false enthusiasm, images of those people's faces shooting through my mind's eye as he mentions our plot.
Poor innocent fools...
Hotsuma steps closer, and I'm used to having my personal space invaded. I don't even blink when he reaches up and cups my chin, looking down at me, seeking the weakness that lies beneath the rock-hard shell.
He's tried looking before... He won't ever find it.
"...What's wrong, Tsugaru?"
I will not be fooled by the obviously fake concern punctuating his words. I have been had before, but I do not have to bow to this man who is merely my peer. Not again...
I smile.
"Nothing's wrong, Hotsuma!"
No... Nothing at all...
The meaningless crystal spins as I sink back into my fate, into another forced kiss.

~Ende - Fin - Owari - The End~