Chapter 4:

Chapter 4:

'Somehow, this isn't quite as good without Tenchi here, although it does explain the group thing rather well.' Ryoko thought to herself as the programme drew to a close. The credits were rolling across the screen when the door to Washu's lab was flung open, hitting the wall with a loud bang.

'Miss Washu, how dare you attempt to take blood samples from me without my permission!' Ayeka yelled, storming out of the door.

'Aww, it was only a teeny weenie sample; good for my research ya know.' Replied Washu in a cheery voice, Ayeka ignored her.

'Oh and princess…' Washu asked more sternly, causing Ayeka to turn and face her.

'Remember, it's little Washu!' Ayeka turned and stormed up the stairs, more furious than ever. Ryoko chuckled to herself; it was always fun to see Ayeka being tormented by Washu, since she always won the battle with words alone. Ayeka didn't dare try and use any of her powers on Washu for fear of what might happen. Washu noticed Ryoko and turned to her.

'Ah, just who I was looking for. Now that Ayeka's gone, I need to show you something in the lab.'

'No way, you're not getting any of my blood today.' Ryoko retorted.

'I only took Ayeka's blood to get her out of my lab; she was spending way too long with her tree. I think I'll have to connect that unit straight to her room, what do ya think?'

'Do what you want.' Ryoko replied, obviously not listening.

'Yeah, I think I will. Now come on.'

'Can't we do this later?'

'Whenever you want, just make sure you turn up tonight OK?' Washu said, turning to go back towards her lab.

'Alright.'

'She'll probably forget, but I'll remind her. I hope this works out.' Washu thought to herself as she closed the door to her lab 'This delay is for the best, I needed to double check everything anyway.'

'I wonder what she wants me for now? Another one of her hair-brained schemes?' Ryoko thought to herself, making sure the link was cut off.

'I don't think so; she hasn't tried anything like that for a while now. Come to think of it, she's acting more serious around me; she didn't even push me to call her mom today. Maybe she's up to something. Yeah that's probably it.' She thought putting her feet up and lying back on the couch. 'Normally, she insists when she wants something from me… Something just isn't right here. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Right after I rest my eyes…' She thought, drifting off.

'Ryoko?' Washu said, poking her head out from her lab. It had been over two hours since she talked to Ryoko and she was getting tired of waiting. Seeing Ryoko was nowhere to be found she headed to her rafter.

'I bet she's fallen asleep, how I ever had such a lazy daughter I just don't know.'

Seeing Ryoko wasn't on her rafter, Washu went to the next most likely place: the couch. Finding that she was indeed sprawled out on the couch, she crouched down next to her and whispered lightly into her ear 'Ryoko, Ryoko, time to get up.' Giving her a gentle tap on the shoulders (she didn't want her in a bad mood). After a few more prods she was awakening.

'I'm up, I'm up.' Said a sleepy Ryoko.

'Did you forget, you were supposed to come and see me.'

'I… uhh… I was just on my way to see you.' She said, giving Washu a grin.

'Yeah right.'

'I just fell asleep.'

'That I can believe. Now come on, let's go.'

Ryoko sat up and stretched 'Oh alright.' With that she stood up and followed Washu into her lab. They walked for a while in silence, through a few portals until Ryoko asked the obvious question: 'Where are we going?'

'We're heading deep into my lab, I have something to show you. Don't worry, we're almost there.'

'If you try and run any more of your experiments on me…' Ryoko trailed off, leaving Washu's imagination to fill in the blanks.

'I assure you…' Washu said, stepping through a portal. When Ryoko emerged from the other side, she was confronted by an adult Washu staring right at her.

'…This is no experiment.' She finished. Ryoko was surprised to say the least; even in the face of danger Washu was still a joker. She was hardly ever serious.

'Here we are, I've been working on this for a while now. I only finished it today; it's fully tested, unlike most of my works.'

Ryoko looked at Washu's invention; it didn't look like much. Two average looking chairs with a cable running between them. But when Washu was involved, they were guaranteed to be anything but average.

'So what is this?'

'First I want you to promise to hear me out, whatever you do, don't try and phase out of here.'

'I don't like the sound of this, I'll hear you out but nothing more.'

'Alright.' Washu said sounding relieved. She took a deep breath and continued 'I know you don't like me to talk about your memories…' Ryoko already decided she'd heard enough and turned to leave.

'Wait! Please Ryoko, you said you'd hear me out.' Ryoko stopped but didn't turn round.

'I want to see what you remember. I want to see what disturbs you. I've built this machine. It allows us to transfer memories across our link.'

'No.' Came a cold reply.

'I won't send you anything, I just want to see.'

'I told you, no. Why do you always bring this up? Can't we just forget about what happen back then?' 'Doesn't she know how much this hurts me?'

'Ryoko, it won't be anything new to me. I was there when you were young.'

Ryoko sighed 'If I show you, will you drop this permanently?'

'You know I can't make you that promise.'

'Then I won't do it. I can't go through that again.' Ryoko said, getting more frustrated.

'Go through what Ryoko! This is why I want to see. I want to see what kind of trauma you think you want through that makes your childhood so terrible.'

Ryoko spun round and glared at her mother.

'If what I went through wasn't trauma, then what the hell is?' Ryoko thought to herself. 'You don't remember do you?' Ryoko spat out, filing every word with venom.

'Remember what?' Replied an exasperated Washu.

'Don't act like you don't know.'

'If I know, then show them to me. It won't make any difference will it?'

Ryoko considered this for a minute 'Fine, I'll show you. Maybe then you'll drop this for good.'

With that she strode past Washu and sat in one of the chairs. Washu sat in the chair opposite and took a deep breath, preparing herself to receive a memory.

'Just open your link and play through the events in your mind. The machine will send them to me so I can see them as an observer.'

Washu felt the link opening, getting a wave of anger and for some reason an almost equal wave of anxiety. Ryoko thought back to that day and played through the events in her mind. Both of them fell into a trance.

An image began to form in Washu's mind, seeming to fade in from a dark fog. The first thing that she could make out was a young Ryoko; she seemed to be between 6 and 8 years old. She was sitting. An ordinary looking chair came into view next. All of a sudden, the rest of the 'dark fog' seemed to lift and the scene was complete. Washu recognised the place she was in, it was one of the rooms in her old science academy lab. Washu saw her adult self enter followed by about 5 other professors and 3 undergraduates. 'Five thousand years and I haven't changed a bit.' She thought distractedly as she studied the 'image' of herself 'This shouldn't be the cause of Ryoko's troubles. She was always in my lab.' The 'image' of Washu started to speak:

'My fellow colleagues and undergraduates. First of all, let me introduce you all to my daughter Ryoko who you may have seen around.' All of them looked at Ryoko, smiled and waved. Ryoko didn't wave back, she just looked at them; Washu couldn't read her expression.

'Don't worry little Ryoko, I'll erase your memories after this. You won't remember any of this.' Said the image of Washu through their link.

'But mom, I… I can't move. Why can't I move? What's going on?' Came a scared and confused reply.

Washu thought about the situation she was seeing. The pieces started to fall together and a horrible realisation dawned upon her. 'This… this… it can't be. She can't remember this… Please let this not be what I think it is.'

'I'm sorry.' Said the image of Washu as she terminated their link, turning back to her colleagues and starting her lecture.

'As I am sure you are all aware, pain is a complex experience consisting of a physiological response to a noxious stimulus followed by an affective (emotional) response to that event. Because it has an affective as well as a sensory component, pain is subjective and difficult to quantify. Although the neuroanatomic basis for pain reception develops in the foetus, individual pain responses are learned in early childhood and are affected by social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and genetic factors, among others. This accounts for the apparent difference in pain tolerance among people.' Said the image, starting her lecture with a cold, calm tone. Washu felt her heart break.

'As you know, my daughter is the product of my ova and extensive genetic research. As such, I have had complete control over the genetic factors; I do not however know how these genetic factors affect each other, and this is the purpose of this experiment and a short paper I am working on. From my research, I have produced a hypothesis for her tolerance level of acute pain. These can be found on page fourteen of the file I gave to each of you.' The people searched through their papers and found her hypothesis.

'Professor, these levels seem to be awfully high. Are you sure that you haven't overestimated them.' Commented one of the other professors.

'I assure you, if anything they are underestimated.' Was the image's reply. Walking over to one of the consoles, she started typing.

'We will start with acute pain in her legs.'

A button was pressed and Ryoko screamed.

'Mommy…' Ryoko managed to get out in between screams 'Please… stop it…. No!'

The image of Washu was unaffected by the screams and pleas of her suffering daughter, the real Washu was another story. She was doing all she could to keep herself from breaking down. Ryoko was never supposed to remember this; it was all a mistake, a big stupid mistake. 'Ryoko was right, I should have dropped this and never brought it up. How can she even stand being around me?'

'As you can see, these current levels are well above those experienced in her everyday life. Indeed, they are almost twice those a normal human could withstand.'

Another few minutes and Ryoko's screams died away as she fell unconscious. The silence was as sweet as music to Washu's ears, but she knew that it was not to last. As if one experiment wasn't enough, she had conducted seven of them. The last one was the worst; she stimulated every nerve ending that would cause Ryoko pain. The scene faded back into the dark fog that it came from and Ryoko and Washu awoke from their trances.

Well, that was a bit of a change from how I intended this story to go. The main reason for this is that I saw the OVA special (Here comes Jurai 2), and I thought that Washu was really mean to Ryoko in it, sorry if it doesn't really fit in with the first chapter :(. Just a quick question: do you think that this formatting makes it difficult to read? A lot of fics use a much narrower space and I was wondering which people prefer.