Mistaken Indentity

by The Great El Dober

Tokimi finally finds Washu and her motives reveal a far more shocking truth than previously imagined.

I don't own Tenchi Muyo.

Mistaken Identity

By The Great El Dober

Part I

"Who Am I?"

Incoming data being received . . .

Results from Origins Probe sent to Sector T12

Inhabitable planets found - 274

Distinct Ethnic Species found - 302

Distinct Languages recorded - 943

Matches found - 0

Washu slumped back and sighed a long, pained sigh that was full of replayed disappointment and renewed frustration. Sixteen galaxies she had now searched, surely she couldn't have travelled that far from her homeworld. They say that the universe is endless but she felt as if she was beginning to run out of eternity. However there was an even more terrifying thought than that.

What is there was no one else? What if she had been searching for nothing?

What if she and Ryoko were all alone?

Surrounded by miles of towering technology, shrouded by piles of proved theorems and successful experiments, the greatest scientific genius in the universe was left to sink in the depressing sorrow of the one question she could never answer . . .

"Who am I?"

Part II

"Prove it!"

"So let's get this straight."

"Fine."

"There are three Goddesses."

"Well there are two at the moment but three in total, yes."

"One Goddess is good, one is evil and one is a mixture of both."

"Yes."

"And I'm a Goddess."

"No, you were . . ."

"Okay, I was a Goddess."

"Yes."

"And those gem things contain that Goddess."

"No. You are the Goddess, the gems contain your Goddess memories and divine powers."

"I see."

"So do you have any other questions?"

"Just one."

"Yes?"

"Do really expect me to believe this crap?"

"Washu! You aren't taking this seriously," Tsunami protested, "I told you to keep an open mind. You are a Goddess, trust me, as your sister you have to believe me."

"Your sister?" Washu asked with increasing sarcastic scepticism, "Oh, you never told me that before. Not only am I a Goddess but I have a tree for a sister, lucky me!"

"Washu you are in danger, please listen so I can help you," Tsunami pleaded as her saintly patience allowed her to shrug off Washu's offensive dismissals, "Tokimi has almost found you, we don't have much time, how can I make you see?"

"Prove it!" Washu half offered, half challenged, "If you can prove that I'm a Goddess then I'll have no choice but to believe you so prove it!"

There was an empty, fruitless silence as Washu offered an opportunity for a response but as expected, none came.

"See, you can't prove it can you?" Washu rejected in a superior, childish whine, "Just like I said this is all . . . ."

"Kagato."

"What?" Washu asked, her attention suddenly whipped back by that one emphatic, disturbing word spoken by the Jurain goddess, "What about him?"

"Why do you think he froze you?" Tsunami asked, "Why do you think that he went to lengths of building a prison to hold you instead of simply killing you?"

She had a disturbing, fear-provoking point. It made very little sense for Kagato to go to such extremes to keep Washu alive. Washu was one of the few people that could take his precious weapon away from him and if she was ever freed he could be certain that it was the first thing she would do. So why take the risk, it was obvious that Kagato had no problems with killing people, so why hadn't he killed her?

"He didn't kill you because he couldn't," came Tsunami's outlandish answer to the silent question, "He tried every method that he knew but even in a mortal form a goddess can't be killed. So now you know, you are a goddess."

"Prove it."

"What do you mean?" a confused and exasperated Tsunami wearily asked but as her sister's outstretched hand offered her a large surgical knife she soon understood what Washu had meant.

"I want you to prove that I can't be killed," she continued in a tremulous voice as her quivering hand, unsure yet still willing, entrusted the lethal blade to the goddess, "If you're right and I'm a goddess then I'll be okay."

"Are you sure?" Tsunami asked as she took the razor edge from her sister's nervous clasp.

"Yes, anything to shut you up," Washu smiled with a flat joke that quaked with the uncertain fear that still flooded her thoughts, yet the promise of an answer, the opportunity to finally discover her true past, the lure of certainty was too much to ignore. She was prepared to take the gamble for she so desperately hungered for the prize.

"Forgive me," Tsunami's soft voice whispered through the empty silence as the gleaming metal slid a swift, stealthy path through the calm waters of the quiet air and sunk deep into the bathing red of Washu's stomach.

She cried a howling anguished cry, stumbling back into the echoes of her screams. Her eyes clenched like closed fists and her convulsing hands carpeted over the raw, mauled wound as the pain surged through her with an brutal, eroding force. It was unbearable.

And then it just stopped.

With the rapid speed and crisp clarity of a finger snap the pain was gone, leaving in its wake a terrifying conclusion. She was dead. She had to be.

Her eyes remained locked shut like the jaws of death that had surely taken her but strangely her wavering lips still quivered and blew tremolo gusts of breath as her heart danced a wild beat.

Wait! Her heart was still beating. Could that mean . . .

Her anxious eyes slowly crept open to set upon the most life changing, belief-breaking sight that they would ever see.

Her shaking hands were drizzled with blood, there was a tear in her clothes that was edged with deep red rim but beyond those tears lay smooth, fair, unharmed skin. Not only was she still alive, she was alarmingly unscathed.

Suddenly her world had changed, her careering thoughts were racing down uncharted paths that were indescribable for no mortal had ever experienced what she felt just now. It was a terrifying elevation beyond her foundation-forming beliefs, it was a plunge into the deep, dark waters of the unknown and unimaginable.

And it felt lonely and abandoned, suddenly she been torn from a fold of thousands to join a family of three, and as her departing footsteps strode down the untouched trail of that transition they rung out with a lonesome echo. There was no planet, no people, no history for her. Instead she had been born into a set of separation, a circle of differing natures and levels of morality where even her family had been marked as distinctly separate from her. She was special and unique, she was better but she was so very alone.

"I'm sorry that I had to do that," Tsunami apologised with an honest and sincere sorrow, "But perhaps now you see that all I have told you is true. I know this is all very confusing and abrupt for you but we still need to deal with the danger of Tokimi. She is coming for you Washu, you must flee while you can."

"Do I really need to?" Washu's voice asked, shaken and rocked by the very heights of heaven that her dizzy mind was still struggling to scale. "I mean, I'm immortal right? I can't be killed, surely there can be no real threat in her finding me."

"I said that Kagato couldn't kill you," Tsunami corrected with a grim gravity in her words, "but there are methods to eradicate a goddess and Tokimi knows all about them. Unless you flee now it will be all over."

"Flee to where?" she questioned in return, the tone of her words expressing an absolute futility and helplessness, "And for how long? I can't run forever, especially not from a goddess. I can't just leave, I need time to think. This is too much for me to take in."

"I understand," Tsunami compassionately sympathised, "But in the mean time you should gather all of the gems, you may soon need them."

Part III

"The imminent arrival"

"What the hell are you playing at Washu? " a livid Ryoko demanded as she was dragged out of the house by her terrified mother, "What's going on? Tell me!"

"Even if I did tell you Ryoko, you wouldn't believe me," was Washu's only reply before she turned to face the rest of the group assembled outside the house, "Is everyone here?"

"Yes, we are," Ayeka replied crisply, "We all responded immediately, except of course for Ryoko who was lazy enough to sleep through it!"

"Oh shut it," Ryoko grouchily snapped back, "If it hadn't been for you . . . ."

"Enough," Washu interrupted with a sharp urgency in her voice, "You two can bicker later. Go Ryo-Ohki!"

Upon hearing that order a mighty spacecraft rose from the body of the tiny animal and hovered patiently in the sky above them, awaiting its cargo that now lay in the eclipse of its vast shadow peering up at it with the same confusion and bewilderment that reigned in its own mind.

"We're leaving," Washu stated as she marched purposefully towards the spacecraft, "We can't stay here anymore."

"What? We can't just leave," Ayeka protested, "This is our home now and there is no reason for us to . . . ."

But her following words fell away into drowned time as a thunderous shockwave tore through the air like a hammer-fist. They were bent over by its sheer power as their lurching feet tried to find balance on the quaking ground. Their eyes were all sealed tight but they could hear windows smash and torrents of air being thrust with a storming rage.

When the brief onslaught died down the only remaining sound was the persistent cycle of car alarms. They wearily opened their eyes and cast them heavenwards in search of the source only to comb nothing but the bare blue skies. The only alien sights were two small dots that seemed to spark and spit at each other, but that surely couldn't be the cause, they had to be distanced far beyond the atmosphere, nothing could exert such power from so far away.

And yet they seemed to be the only possibility.

"What was that?" quivered a terrified Tenchi who had been struck by a sinking, dreading fear of this nightmarish level of power that seemed to break the barriers of reality and bend the bounds of imagination. It grasped his mortal soul with a horrific terror.

"Its Tsunami," Sasami revealed, her voice eerily quiet and full of an aware, distressed concern.

"And it seems that whoever she is fighting is equally strong," Katsuhito observed with his eyes gazing skywards but his deductions coming from the tones of worry that he had heard in his sister's voice.

"Never! That's impossible!" his other sister cried out, "Tsunami is the most powerful ship in the universe, she cannot be matched, it just can't happen."

"Well it just did," Washu told them, her voice edged with a desperate desire for haste and an acute irritation for their continuing loitering. At this rate they would never leave Earth.

Never.

That word took on a whole new meaning now and it jolted Washu's mind back into total focus. They had to leave. Now.

"Come on we don't have much time," she urged, "If we don't leave now then whatever is up there will be coming down here and I don't think we want to be around when that happens."

That ultimatum soon convinced the others as they flocked towards the shelter of their craft like dazed sheep. Once inside the felt safer and secure with the thick wall cupped around them, all except Sasami whose aware eyes still stared in the possessed silence of her unsettled fears.

That fear soon befall the entire ship as a searing shriek of some strange mounting force screeched throughout the build of the hull, juddering and unsettling the structure as well as their very cores. However all they could do was wordlessly wait for the devastating release as it erupted like blinding thunder.

The frame of their craft was shook and shuddered like the vibrations of a struck bell. Everyone was thrown, jolted and hurled through the air. Washu herself winced as her soft flesh clashed with the floor's cold steel. She clambered onto her feet to uncover yet another inconceivable sight.

Everyone had stopped, their falling bodies caught and preserved in midair like suspended puppets, with haunting expressions of fear set upon their faces like stone. They were frozen in their falls and the empty air was a vacuum silence untouched even by the hum of Ryo-Ohki movements. She called out a command to her ship but was answered with nothing save her echo as it ricocheted through the ghostly silence of her eerie isolation. No options remained but for her to compose herself and wait for the imminent arrival of her long lost sister.

Finally a sound penetrated her solitude as the air began to shimmer at one point and an elegant figure began to emerge like a butterfly from a camouflaged cocoon.

Washu's brittle composure crumbed away to nothing as she was faced with the hopeless truth of her outmatched inferiority. Her arsenal was empty, there was nowhere to run and she felt hopelessly unprepared and inadequate. Her soul rippled with a pensive fear of the imminent and now completely unavoidable. There was nothing she could do though, the time had finally come.

Tokimi was here.

Part IV

"A past best forgotten"

Washu observed this strange figure that had appeared before her. She was a woman of considerable beauty and of faded familiarity. Her orange strands of hair pronged out in curved blades before trailing into a neatly tied tail that hung behind her back. She wore rich yet striking clothes that were coloured with bright, deep colours and had an open extravagance that Washu saw as being closer to her daughter's taste than the patchwork tiers of Juraian dress. She certainly didn't resemble the wrathful goddess that Washu had expected.

She slowly traversed the distance between them with no indication of hesitation nor urgency. She came to a stop only inches away from Washu's stone-set mask of forged composure. Her deep brown eyes seemed to scrutinise Washu's forehead, searching for something as Washu's terrified breaths betrayed her illusion of calm as they unsettled the dainty orange strands in a windswept pendulum rock.

"Good," she finally spoke through a natural yet confident voice as she smoothly drew back, "You don't have any markings so I'm not too late. Where are your gems?"

Washu refused to answer, enveloping herself in a meek silence, but her actions revealed all. Her sweaty palm wrapped tightly around the precious stones as she held them protectively towards her chest as it rose and fell in frantic time with her frightened breaths and panicked heartbeat.

"Hand them over," the woman insisted as she presented a hungry hand, "Give me the gems and it will all be over. That's all I want."

"That's all?" Washu questioned as an untrusting doubt mingled with confusion in her voice.

"Yes, I only want the gems, I promise," came a seemingly honest assurance, "Hand them over and I will . . ."

"NO!"

That faceless sound boomed throughout the room with a glaring urgency that froze the words on their tongues and sidetracked their runaway thoughts. The invisible intrusion was soon given a face as the Jurain Goddess emerged, although she was not the picture of perfection that Washu remembered. Her elegant robes were ruffled and a thin dribble of blood trailed from her lips.

"You can't do it!" Tsunami asserted firmly as she wiped her lips on the sleeve of her robes, "Tokimi is here for murder!"

"So you are Tokimi," Washu addressed her older sister, finally able to confirm her suspicions.

"Yes sister, I am," the eldest goddess admitted, "However I'm not here to hurt you. I was telling the truth when I said that I only wanted the gems so please just trust me."

"And just why should I trust someone as evil as you?" Washu shot back, holding the gems tighter still, closer to her body, further away from Tokimi's sinful grasp. She would probably try to take them by force.

But she didn't. She stood with a puzzled and stunned expression, totally confused by what Washu had just said. Casting a bemused gaze at Tsunami, she noticed that her youngest sister was staying rather guiltily silent.

Suddenly it all made sense.

"You don't know do you?" Tokimi asked in unbelieving tones, stunned that Washu was unaware of the whole truth.

"What do you mean?" Washu asked with an uncomfortable doubt beginning to line her voice. Something was wrong, she didn't know something, she was lacking and it began to worry her. She looked to Tsunami for support.

But instead the youngest goddess just looked down in shame and regret. She had been putting this moment off for centuries but there was no avoiding it now. The truth had to come out.

"Washu, you are the evil one."

"What?" Washu exclaimed in a fear-stricken whisper, "No, that's impossible, it makes no sense. What about my gems? You said that I . . ."

Washu cut herself off as she remembered something that Funaho had once told her.

"The gems seem to be Jurain in nature . . ."

"You did that!" she cried out, pointing an accusing finger at the Jurain goddess. It had been her! Tsunami had forced her down here! The shocking pieces finally slipped into place building a fear and panic in Washu's soul.

"I'm sorry sister," Tsunami apologised with her head lowered in remorseful shame, "but I had no choice."

"That's not true," Tokimi replied with a firm opposition, "You were given a choice."

20,000 years ago

"Stop it! Stop! You're hurting each other! Please stop!"

The young girl cried as her pleas were drowned out by the cataclysmic explosions that erupted and thundered only a short distance away. Yet another trail of tears were lashed from her face as an earth shattering shockwave washed over her without incidence. She couldn't understand why they had to fight, why they had to do something so evil.

And then it was over.

The aggressive explosions fell away into fading echoes, providing the backdrop for twin screams that pierced through the air with all the painful bite that fuelled them.

They were hurt.

Those screams were like pained pleas that called to Tsunami's compassionate heart. With steps of pure compassion she urgently ran out onto the charred battlefield to aid her fallen sisters, all the time searching the horizon for any signs of their limp bodies. They would eventually heal themselves but for the moment they would be in excruciating pain and as the breeze-blown ashes danced around her the only thought in the young goddess' mind was of helping them.

Her head jerked across as the hot air carried a strained groan to her ears. Her eyes narrowed in on a mangled mess that lay metres away, a horrid collage of thick rose blood and scorched red hair. It was Washu. Swiftly she travelled across to ease her sister's pain, it was . . .

"STOP!"

She almost stumbled as a bloody hand clutched at her sprinting leg and held her fast. She looked down at the crippled body that the clamping fist belonged to. It was Tokimi. Her orange hair was now stained with streaks of deadly red seemed to trickle and stream all over her once divine body.

"Listen to me Tsunami," the eldest spoke in a choked whisper, "You have to finish Washu for me. We can't let her continue like this."

"But I can't," whimpered the youngest, "Violence is wrong and . . ."

". . . and if you don't kill her now then she will be violent towards more helpless people," Tokimi stressed with a grasping insistence, "Trust me sister you have to end this now!"

"I'm sorry," Tsunami whispered gently with a sincere regret free in her voice, "But I can't do it, she's my sister."

With that heartfelt apology she released her foot from Tokimi's desperate grip and continued her path as Tokimi's continuing pleas following her all the way.

"Tsunami you have to listen to me."

"You have to do this, for the sake of good."

"I know you don't like the things she does, why do you let her get away with it?"

"Do you remember what she did to that peaceful planet? She'll do it again, you have to stop her."

But the youngest goddess tried to shut these thoughts out of her mind and continued undeterred on her way. Killing, fighting, it was all wrong, she wouldn't have any part in it, especially not with a helpless victim like Washu had now become.

She finally reached her fallen sister and gently cradled her head up with a gentle care as she looked down at her sister's cracked, bruised and broken face. It was terrible, she had to help.

"If you nurse her then she is going to kill me before you have a chance to help me," Tokimi's pained voice spoke out, "Please sister, do it, for me."

Tsunami stopped, her young hands still propping up her sister's broken body but her motions and intentions all halted. How could she handle this new problem, she couldn't let either of them die. What would she do now?

"She's probably right Tsunami, you should kill me."

The startled girl looked down at the source of those words, the wounded head that rested in her hands. Washu's blood laced lips twisted into a heartless smile as her brash eyes slowly slithered open to reveal a spiteful arrogance.

"You should kill me but you won't and we all know you won't so why don't you do your job and leave," she snarled with a vicious ferocity unsuited to her current state, "You don't have it in you to kill anyone, you are too full of foolish hope and riddled with weaknesses. You couldn't bring yourself to kill me even if you tried, just like your morals won't let you leave me here in pain, so stop wasting my time and help me."

"Don't let her intimidate you," came a plea of encouragement from under a blood-smeared mane of orange but her green-haired sister had already decided what had to be done. She decisively latched her grip on Washu into a firm clench, her eyelids clamping down to form a veil of concentration.

"What the hell are you doing?" demanded Washu although her once commanding and menacing words now seemed empty as an insecure fear was echoed in them.

Then her back lurched in a horrendous scream as Tsunami's power took over. Tokimi relaxed her battered muscles into a contented worry-free calm as her eyes eased shut and her ears were filled with the sounds of victory. She just wished that victory could sound like anything but that.

Still as the screams finally died away Tokimi knew that they had done the right thing. Through closed eyes she let her senses savour this moment, this new beginning. The wind blew a gritty gust of ash against her numb skin through a still silence that seemed to speak more volumes than any sound ever could. The lonely vigil of silence that hung over the dead was a poignant reminder of loss.

Then her eyes were flung open as a new sound invaded the respectful silence, the soft cries of a newborn baby. With a swift eye she sought out the source of this strange sound and felt her moment of triumph robbed from her.

It wasn't over.

In her arms Tsunami gently cradled a small child, wrapped in red cloths with three small gems as fastenings. Tokimi immediately recognised the child as Washu and as she stared through stunned, disbelieving eyes her divine mind soon filled in the gaps. But this wasn't enough, the threat had been locked away but it was still there and she couldn't allow that.

"Tsunami you have to finish it," she begged in a dire splutter, ""It still isn't over, we still aren't safe."

"Goodbye sister," was the young girl's only tear-fraught response as she quickly turned and fled with the crying child carefully protected in her arms. She was determined that they would all live, even if it had to be like this. She wouldn't let any of them die.

"Wait Tsunami!" her elder sister pleaded as she frantically tried to crawl herself up but she hopelessly buckled in a crippled heap, collapsed in her own ashy carnage. All she could do was watch her young sister run away from her as whimpering tears flowed from her eyes, mixed with her drying blood and fell into a sickly paste in the ash below her.

Present Day

"I still don't believe you," Washu dismissed although her anxious, flustered voice uncovered her creeping doubts, "You still can't prove it. I don't remember any of this, how can I be sure it's true?"

"Well, there was one event that you remember most clearly," Tokimi replied, "And it proves that what we are telling you is true. It was around five thousands years ago that . . . ."

"No!" Tsunami interrupted with a ferocious insistence, "She doesn't need to know that, I can't let you tell her."

"If it will help her make an informed decision then I must tell her," Tokimi responded with far more detached calm than Tsunami but with shades of regret still tingeing her voice.

"Tokimi you know perfectly well what this will do to Washu, you know how much it will traumatise and scar her, I can't let you tell her."

"It's for her own good."

"How can torment possibly be good for her?"

"Just tell me!" Washu shouted, elevating her nerve wracked voice over those of the squabbling goddesses, "Whatever it is I already know about it so it can't hurt me!"

Those words echoed throughout the silence as all eyes turned to Tsunami seeking the final nod of approval. "Fine," she whispered in a voice hushed by reluctance and a helpless disappointment, "But I have warned you. She doesn't deserve to suffer this."

"She deserves to know the truth," Tokimi replied, "And I intend to tell her just that. It's not my fault that the truth is so distressing, but she deserves to know whose fault it is."

"Then tell me," Washu pleaded with a shaken desperation, "What is it?"

"Washu, did you believe in a God?" Tokimi asked in a serious voice that strictly defined her sincerity in the question with a grave foreboding looming in her words, "Do you have faith that everything that happens to you happens for a divine reason, do you believe that some divine being is watching over you?"

"I used to," admitted Washu with a slight embarrassment now that the full, belief-shattering truth about gods and goddesses had come to light, "But after I lost Ryoko I lost faith in everything."

"What if I told you there was, and what if I told you that it wasn't me and that it wasn't Tsunami," Tokimi continued with an escalating sense of a dreadful truth rising in her voice, "In those five thousand years, didn't you wonder why? Didn't you even once question why it had to happen to you?"

There was an eerie heart chilling silence as these words sunk into Washu's thoughts and coursed through the coldest memories of her mind. Those thoughts provoked an uproar of fear in her soul. Something was wrong. After letting her sister digest the prelude to the truth Tokimi prepared to unleash the revelation in it's entirety, after slowly sliding the knife she was about to twist it.

"Lucillous M.Kagato, he was a brilliant student, the pride and joy of his family and trusted friend to all who met him, your own protégée, one of the two people you truly trusted. Did you ever wonder what would make him turn against you? Haven't you ever wondered what evil it was that corrupted his soul?"

Terror always struck Washu's heart at the mention of that name and yet this time it was different. Tokimi had called him by his full name, the name he had used all those years ago before the betrayal, before the evil, before the hell. She cast her mind back past those painful memories to the day when they had all been happy together, back to their last days in paradise . . . .

5000 Years Ago - Hakubi Residence

". . . and just where is the birthday girl?"

"Playing in her room with some friends," the proud mother replied, "but I've sent Kagato up to get her, they should be down soon."

"Ah yes, your star student. I've heard that his research on . . ." but at that moment the following words were drowned out as a parade of young girls burst into the room. They seemed to congregate around a tall, fascinating man, who towered above them like a gentle giant. In their world of aging tutors and eccentric professors the girls found the charismatic charm of this youthful student to be irresistibly captivating.

His pale hair was tied neatly behind his back, resting upon his modest clothes, an honest impression that contrasted with the grandeur and general wealth that was paraded around the Space Academy. This was complemented by the youthful features of his face that framed his kind eyes. He seemed to generate a wholesome impression of innocence.

However Washu's eyes were focused on something else as they scrutinized the flock of surrounding children. Where was she? "Where's Ryoko?"

The young man sighed a breath of reluctance before slowly turning around to expose his back to view. There, clinging on with a bright smile radiating joy and glee was the happy, young centre of attention.

"Okay, enough fooling around Ryoko," came Washu's amused voice, "I want you to come down here, I have something to give you."

Kagato just watched peacefully as his young friend clambered down from his back and made her way across to her mother. Those two always looked so happy together, he was truly glad that they had each other. He knew better than most the true lengths of his mentor's loneliness after the break up of her family not to mention the heartbreaking isolation that Ryoko sometimes felt. He was truly glad that it had all ended up like this, they deserved it.

"Now Ryoko," Washu began, obeying her daughter's request by not calling her 'Little' in front of her friends, "I have one last present for you, something that I have been keeping for you for some time and now I think you are old enough to give them to you."

She handed over a small wrapped package which Ryoko immediately ravaged the paper from. Once the wrapping lay in disarray about her feet she was left holding the most epic gift she would ever receive.

Three small red gems, they sparkled and gleamed with an enchanting colour and feel. She peered into them, the murky crimson seemed to possess secret depths that held hidden virtues.

"They're beautiful."

"Not only beautiful but they're priceless," Washu continued with a satisfaction and delight evident in her voice, "And they have many hidden qualities. This is one gift that is going to change your life Ryoko. Now let me help you put them on."

An applause rose up and Kagato was filled with a glad sense of approval, this was how it was meant to be. He smiled a wide, full smile of true happiness for them, a smile of affinity and affectionate fondness but as that last gem was secured on the young girl something demonic happened. The edges of his honest smile began to slowly wind until his entire smile had been twisted into a malicious sneer. The seed had been planted.

But Washu didn't notice, she was preoccupied with her proud fussing over her daughter. To Washu it was the beginning of new, fresh and exciting things, it was the next step in their happy, fulfilling life together.

But two days later it was all over.

Present Day

"It was me," whispered Washu in a traumatised, soul-shocked voice that haunted the wind as it echoed through the small bridge, "I hurt my Little Ryoko, it was all my fault."

"No it wasn't you," Tsunami assured softly as she knelt down to put a comforting arm around her distressed sister, "You are a different person and there was no way that you could have possibly known about any of those things, none of it was your fault."

"However instead of giving your daughter a wonderful gift you pushed her into the grasp of darkness, Kagato was only a side effect, a medium for the evil," Tokimi persevered, determined to finish all she had to say even in the face of such pain and anguish, "You always claimed Ryoko's innocence, that she wasn't the root of the evil, well neither was Kagato so here's your chance for vengeance, help me kill the evil that ruined your daughter."

"But it was me," the hollowed Washu whispered like a mystic chant, "I hurt Ryoko, it was me."

"Washu listen," Tsunami soothed giving her sister a light shake to break her from her downwards spiral and back into reality, "It wasn't your fault but just now you need to listen to us. This is important."

A warm hand soothed her back as Washu slowly eased her frantic breaths and restored some loose yet effective order to her thoughts "Can I ask a question?" were the lucid first words that her battered soul uttered and they were immediately answered by encouragements of 'of course' with a supportive, understanding patience.

"Why are both of you doing this? I don't understand," the disoriented genius asked, unable to comprehend the reasons behind the actions she was struggling to believe, "Why is one of you obsessed about eradicating a non-threat while the other wants to protect a demon. It makes no sense."

"Because Tokimi is scared," Tsunami began with an edge of sharp disapproval in her voice, "She is scared of what will happen should you ever revert to your goddess form so she wants the gems to prevent that from ever happening."

"So would you if you weren't so naïve," the eldest snapped back, "You are pure of evil sister so how can you hope to understand it? You fail to comprehend the consequences should it ever happen again. Have you forgotten what happened all those years ago?"

"No," Tsunami replied in a pained voice, "Although I wish I could."

"Well, she has forgotten," Tokimi drove on as she pointed to Washu, "And I must assure it stays that way. Forever."

"And what of Ryoko?"

The two goddesses stopped their argument to turn attention to their mortal sister who had almost buckled under the pressure of these revelations. She had a point though, Ryoko needed the gems for sustenance. What would happen to her daughter when the gems were destroyed?

"Very well," Tokimi settled, "If you care so much about someone then perhaps you have changed after all so I'm prepared to compromise, after all I don't wish any harm upon my own niece. I will trust you with the gems and their power as long as you relinquish the memories contained within."

"No!" Tsunami still objected, "Those are the key to her former self, it is practically a completely different person. To erase them would be like killing someone in their sleep."

"Would you rather that one guilty person dies peacefully in their sleep or that countless innocents die in pain and anguish?" Tokimi countered rhetorically.

"Look, all I want are those lost memories," Tokimi repeated turning to Washu, "You never needed them in the past so why do you cling so desperately to them now? I never had any wish to harm you, just give me what I want and I shall leave you in peace."

"But what about the knowledge they contain," Washu asked as frantic fears of complicated confusion and failed understanding raided her normally self-assured voice, "They must hold unimaginable insight into concepts that no mortals understand."

"Nothing that I wouldn't gladly share with you but only after you cooperate," Tokimi assured as she stretched out her open hand, "However you must give me the memories, I have justified myself far more than I needed to and now the time has come for you to do what's right and hand them over."

"No!" Washu cried in an uptight defiance fuelled only by her unrestrained fears, "They contain my past, I've been searching for my past for so long. I can't just give it up!"

"Trust me sister," Tokimi spoke solemnly, "it is a past best forgotten."

"But I . . ." Washu stuttered, still clinging to the ruby red that now seemed to be poisoned with the demonic glare of hell fire, and yet she still couldn't bring her self to part with them, it felt as if she was being denied something, even if it was something she could do without.

"We all have our distinct natures," Tokimi lectured in a last attempt to convince her sister, "And those natures are playing out as we speak. Tsunami wants to protect everyone, despite who and what they are, an act of pure selfless good. I want to kill in order to save lives, I want to destroy so that peace and freedom will remain intact, a strange mixture of good and evil. And you Washu, you are clinging to darkness, sheltering a fiendish force, an evil nature. You have asked me to prove myself so now it is your turn to prove yourself. Prove that you've changed."

"Neither of us can force you to do this," Tsunami added with a gentle strength in her words, "You now know the truth, it is up to you to decide."

Washu let her eyes sink closed as these congesting thoughts overloaded her exhausted mind. It was finally becoming too much to handle.

Her unsure mind tried to assemble her stampeding thoughts but her confusion reigned over her efforts with a frantic chaos. Her mind couldn't decide so instead she searched her heart, peering into the depths of her soul in pursuit of her own truth. She plunged into the fathoms of herself and swam in the oceans of her own pure emotions and even in the darkest depths she couldn't trace any signs of the malevolent evil that had degraded her daughter's once prosperous life.

It wasn't her.

"Here," she finally spoke as she relinquished the stones, her voice dragging with a dead emptiness, "Take her away. Now that I know the truth I don't think that I can live with her anymore."

The colour had been sapped from Washu's hollow voice but Tokimi still smiled, she was just grateful that this was the true sound of her victory instead of the mind scarring scream of so long ago. She graciously accepted the gems with a small nod of respect, an admiration for the massive sacrifice that her younger sister had just made.

All Washu could do was stand in awed witness of the divine acts that were being performed before her, yet as her eyes followed the movements a cold tear slid down her cheek. She still felt robbed, denied, the same frustrating feeling that had sorrowed her since her earliest memories but in the past she had always kept hope.

And now she cried for she knew that her hope was being doused, forever.

Part V

"Blood-red gems"

"Hey Washu, just thought I'd drop by for once," Ryoko greeted with a surprising spring of enthusiasm and cheer in her voice, "So what crazy experiments have you been screwing up today?"

"None," came the vacant distracted response from behind a faceless front of printed sheets, "I've just been reading some papers."

"So what's happening," her daughter continued in positive, cheerful tones as she desperately tried to inject some colour into the dismal atmosphere, "Anything interesting?"

"Two people were injured in a car crash, a kid was rescued from a fire and some old celebrity died peacefully in their sleep," Washu listed aimlessly before trailing off into an empty mutter, "See it all makes sense doesn't it, it all makes sense."

"Washu?" Ryoko asked with a real, graphic concern packed in her troubled voice, "What are you talking about?"

"Don't you see Ryoko?" Washu empathically cried as she whipped away the paper shield to reveal streaks of tears that ran down a face of guilt and anguish, "Hardly anyone has died, there are no mass tragedies, few vicious murders, there's scarcely even attacks anymore. Do you think that its because of me, don't you think that I might be to blame?"

"Washu?" Ryoko asked with her swelling concern rapidly becoming distressed fear.

"It's true Ryoko, I've checked, ever since that day the world's been a better place," her runaway voice drove on, "How many people have I killed? How many lives have I ruined? How many lives have been claimed by those blood-red gems? And it was all my fault, it was . . ."

"Mom, stop it you're scaring me!" Ryoko cried out in a moment of seizing emotion and fear. These words jolted Washu into a stunned silence giving Ryoko time to recover her composure and continue with a calmer voice that carried a heartfelt sympathy. "I mean, I understand how you feel. I had to go through the same."

Ryoko's blunt words had so often bruised and scathed Washu's heart but never before had they moved her like this. Washu was left in awe and admiration of her daughter. Ryoko had endured the full physical reality of this hellish curse and here was Washu mopping over the moral dilemmas that Ryoko had also put behind her. This devastating problem she was facing seemed to pale and wilt in comparison to Ryoko's gory past.

And suddenly she didn't feel quite so alone and shamefully singled out, there was someone the same as her, there was someone who could understand. Perhaps it had been that shared notion that had drawn Ryoko here in the first place.

However motivations mattered less than the meaning behind the words. They seemed to encourage and invigorate Washu's dying spirits. If Ryoko had managed to survive through her hellish ordeal then there was hope for Washu as well. She vowed to follow her daughter's example and try to build a better life from the ashes of regret and shame.

"You're right Ryoko," Washu admitted with sure belief in her words and a positive direction behind them, "I have to let the past go and look to the future. It's a big, exciting world out there that's just got a whole lot bigger and we should be trying to enjoy every moment of it."

"Yeah, we should," Ryoko agreed with not-quite-hidden traces of a pleased smile as she relaxed her shoulders into a relieved ease. "Cause like they say, time waits for no one."

"You'd be surprised," was her mother's only reply as she stood out of her stiff chair and prepared to take the next step of her endless journey that was now without beginning or end and which in time she prayed would also be without guilt.

THE END

Note - I decided to give Tokimi a more human, mortal form to interact with the mortal forms of Washu and Tsunami. It just seemed more natural than the haunting head that is in the OVA. I gave Kagato a full name to distance him from the evil b*stard that you've all come to hate and give him a real chance to been seen as something else.