That's as full a story as you're going to get on how exactly I ended up in the predicament I stand in today. It's sort of a funny thing now that I think about it. The girl called Ryoko; she turned out to be the daughter of another girl called Ryoko. Ryoko's mom was locked in a cave by some 'horrible monster' – as she liked to put it – also called Tenchi. Now this struck me as being very peculiar. Why did I have a counter part locking women in caves?
Well, I was surprised to find that I happened to be the successor to the Jurian thrown. Alrighhhtt… this all makes a whole lot of sense now. What the hell is Jurian and what do I have to do with your mother, I had demanded of the smaller Ryoko. She tells me it's Jurai's fault her mother is in the cave. Okay, okay, so how does this concern me…? Hn, well, that's a whole other story in itself…
"I'm what?" I demanded, turning to face the smaller Ryoko. We stood in the mouth of a cave, a large one in the middle of the Okayama backwoods. She'd drug me there when she came to get me out of school. I suppose it was just pure luck that the cave only happened to be a few hundred miles away from my school and my life… which I was, forced to leave behind for this brat.
She crossed her arms and glared at me. "You're the current Emperor of Jurai, more or less." She shoved a strange key made of bamboo with a silver ribbon on one end into my hands. "You're going to march your ass into that cave, unlock the tomb, and get me my mother back!" She insisted as she began pushing me into the cave towards a wooden gate that blocked our progress.
"I don't know what the hell Jurai is, who the heck your mom is, why she's locked in the cave, or how to get her out!" I insisted as I turned to look her in the eye again. I really had no idea how this concerned me at all. It all seemed like one really bad joke, her coming to drag me out into the woods hundreds of miles from my apartment. There weren't even any houses out here! Where the heck would we live even if I got the dumb girl out of the cave? And why couldn't she just do it herself?
Ryoko stood there and glared at me, her eyes seeming to penetrate my very soul. Thunder rolled across the sky outside the cave as Ryoko shifted position, waiting for me to take back what I had said and go to find her mother. This girl seemed a whole lot more ignorant than Sakuya and I was damned if I planned to stay here and help her find her mom. And even if we found her and her mom turned out to be a lot nicer than she did, then where was her father?
She shifted position again as rain began to drizzle down around the cave. I knew she was just going to stand there forever even if it meant she shriveled up from lack of food and blew away in the draft, so I decided to brake the silence. "Look, I'm going home and you can get someone else to find your mommy for you, little girl." I narrowed my eyes so I was glaring for the most part. "Did you ever think about trying your dad?"
Ryoko ran forward, practically growling, and shoved me into the wall… hard. I suppose that knocked all the sense out of me because I gave in right when she yelled "You ARE my dad, you idiot!" Time seemed to freeze while I processed this information. Had at one point I decided to get drunk and impregnate some lady? Was this the end result of it, the lady had gone and got herself involved with some gang or something called Jurai that had really sick minds and had locked her in a cave?
Finally I regained my composure and glared at her, but didn't say anything. I turned and began fumbling with the key and the keyhole. Unfortunate enough for me, I soon had the gate opened and was greeted with the musty smell of a place that had been abounded for decades. I handed the key back to Ryoko and brought my hand up to plug my nose. "Just how old IS your mom, anyway?"
"Don't you think that's a rude question to ask a lady?" She demanded, pushing me further into the cave. I wanted desparately to ask her what had happened to the hysterical girl who had come to my school in tears, looking as though she was going to give her life to see me, but I decided against it.
"Not if the lady isn't here." I pointed out in a murmur so she couldn't hear me.
Shortly we had reached a cliff that over looked a large open room and a pool of water. Over the pool of water was what seemed like a large canvas weaved from vines which where old and whitered. In the middle was a single rock slate with a wooden box in the middle, which had strange carvings on it. I knew Immeaditly that the water had been sitting still for hundreds of years because of its smell and I turned to glare at Ryoko once again. "Your mom is dead by now, unless this is a really bad joke. No one has been down here for hundreds of years…"
"Yes, and what is your point?" Ryoko asked, raising an eyebrow at me. "Just go down and get her out of the box. I can go back to where I came from and you two can live happily with the others."
I was about to demand just what the heck she meant by 'go live happily with the others' and 'go back to where I came from', but I was interrupted by a voice directly behind us.
"Put your hands up in the air and drop your weapons! You're under the arrest and you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and well most definitely be used against you in the Jurian court of law."