glass2.html
** Note **
** This is chapter 2 of Reflections on a Shattered Glass. If you have not read chapter 1, you are in the wrong place.
** Happy reading,
** -- Krin (krin@hotmail.com mailto:krin@hotmail.com)
** http://www.geocities.com/mode6.geo/fanfic/
** /Note **

Reflections of a Shattered Glass

-- two --

Jurai


"Hey Sammy!" Ryouko called down the corridor she and Tenchi traveled to the young woman walking toward them, head hung low and trailing a pair of guardians.

The halls of Jurai's royal palace were labyrinthine in their complexity, primarily the product of hundreds of millennia of slow, unplanned expansion. Ryouko and Tenchi had wandering aimlessly for much of the morning through wide corridors floored with a sort of thick cloth padding, softer than the carpets of Earth but requiring a bit of adjustment for someone not used to the sensation.

While Tenchi lay in the hospital most of the others had come to visit at one point or another, but their party had not been together in one place and simultaneously conscious since leaving the campground. So now Ryouko and Tenchi were searching for the rest of their family in the hopes of calling a reunion to explain what had happened the previous day and figure out what to do now. The camping trip was over. Though Jurai seemed a good place to spend their holiday they had not had much luck so far. The Guardians were unhelpful at best, always very closed-mouthed about anything involving any of the royal family and not kept briefed on the location of the literally hundreds of guests to the palace, so Sasami was their first discovery.

The Guardians moved around the princess, quickening their pace when Sasami hurried toward her friends. When she was a few yards away they stopped, crossing their staves to prevent Sasami from approaching closer.

"Ganaoi shokae," the younger Guardian said sternly, "Minos nikk tille he nef."

Tenchi touched Ryouko's mind uncertainly asking, //You speak Jurain, right? What did he ask?//

//It was more like a command,// Ryouko responded, //Jurains lift the end of a phrase to show they expect you to comply, not for questions. He wants to know who we are and what we want with Sasami.//

Sasami frowned from behind the crossed staves. "These are my friends," she explained, pushing the wooden poles aside, "Speak Japanese when we're around them."

The guardians looked pointedly away from the princess as she stepped between them and tapped their staves, just above the textured area of the grip, before saying together in perfect Japanese, "Yes highness. As you have spoken, we obey."

"Hi Sasami," Tenchi said, glancing nervously at the guardians who were now facing the walls, "What's wrong? You looked kind of down."

Sasami sighed. "It's complicated," she said, twitching her head slightly toward the guardians behind her. She frowned, wrinkling her nose and looking down at the padded floor for a moment before brightening and asking, "Say, do you wanna go to the gardens? There's an entertainer there for the morning."

"Well, we were just looking-" Tenchi stopped when Ryouko nudged his ribs meaningfully.

"Sure Sasami," she said with a warm smile, "That sounds great."


//I thought we were going to look for everybody?// Tenchi asked as they followed the princess' two guardians, the pair having inserted themselves between Sasami and her friends, apparently for the duration of the walk.

//Sasami looked upset, and she obviously can't talk about it in front of her guards,// Ryouko explained. //She can probably go to the gardens without them and wants to talk to us alone, that's why she mentioned it. And since Sasami can command the the guards we'll find everyone much more quickly if she helps.//


Tenchi leaned against the back of the bench from which they watched the entertainer. He was a small, man-shaped creature with thick, wrinkled, purple skin and a fringe of hair-thin, writhing tentacles surrounding each eye. Sasami said he was from some world with a large number of 'k' sounds in its name that Tenchi did not think he would remember even had he heard it a dozen times rather than just once. His hands, overly long things of only three fingers, wove intricate rhythms in the air and a bird made of light flapped glittering wings above them. His art was something like a cross between shadow puppetry and a neon sign. Sasami explained that his race could weave delicate forcefields and that their entertainers used them to hold glowing, electrified gasses much the way earthlings used glass tubes. It was a stunning display and the three had been sitting and watching the little purple man weave threads of light in patterns that occasionally seemed only symbolic and, most often, took the form of strange animals, for nearly an hour.

Sasami's guardians had reluctantly separated from their charge at the gate to the garden courtyard. Apparently it marked a boundary within the palace beyond which the royal family could walk unaccompanied. She explained that she really was not upset, just having a hard time readjusting to palace life after so long away from it. Before leaving with Aeka she had been restrained to the inner palace for safety and hoped that with her Change she would be allowed more of a free reign over her own actions, but was now discovering that the palace staff seemed to keep an even closer eye on her than before. Since being separated from Nobuyuki after their arrival in the palace she had not had a chance to see any of them between being fitted for a new wardrobe and briefed by the guardians on what areas of the palace she could visit without accompaniment. Apparently such things shifted almost daily depending on the location of certain visitors whos motives Jurain intelligence did not entirely trust.

Ryouko had suggested that she simply could have had her friends summoned to her, but Sasami frowned and said it would not have felt right. She was a princess, true, but she had spent the past four years on Earth living a life not at all like the one a princess of the House Jurai would expect. Now she felt more like Sammy, a teenage student attending highschool in Tokyo, than like Sasami Jurai, second in line for the throne of an empire.

Ryouko and Tenchi talked her around to having the guardians invite, Sasami was very specific that it be only an invitation, Washuu and Ryou-ohki to the park and now the cabbit sat in her lap where she sat on the ground, leaning back against Ryouko's knees. Washuu had begged off the invitation, sending her apologies and a promise to be along as soon as she took care of something.

Ryouko laughed, taking one hand from Sasami's shoulders to point past the princess at the figure floating in the air above the entertainer's supple hands. She started on a quiet story about the home world of the many-limbed creature that quickly absorbed Sasami's attention as she watched the writhing light-sculpture.

*If Ryouko looked a few years older I'd swear she was Sasami's mother,* Tenchi thought wistfully, *I wonder if either of them realizes the way they act together?* He had tried discussing it with Ryouko once a couple of months ago, but she seemed shocked by the idea that someone could mistake her for Sasami's parent and he quickly dropped the subject. He tried hard to avoid mentioning children around her most of the time, in fact. It was not that she was incapable of having them. She explained some time ago, her face flushed and her voice quiet, that it was important he wear protection when they were together because her body was easily capable of overcoming any prophylactics her mother could give her, even without a conscious command to do so.

No, Tenchi avoided talking about children with Ryouko because she was terribly afraid she would not make a good mother. He thought it was silly, especially after seeing her with Sasami, but Ryouko was adamant. Her difficulties with Taro, coupled with doubts about her depth of experience in any sort of normal dealings with other humans, had Ryouko convinced she was incapable of properly caring for and raising a child. Tenchi knew she wanted one though, deep down. He could see it in her eyes and feel it across their bond when she saw a mother with a young child, and she was always delighted to help when Sasami came to her with a problem. Ryouko had been the weapon of a madman for a very long time, and the pleasure she derived from her newfound role as nurturer and confidant was phenomenal. Not that she would admit it, even to herself.

Tenchi sighed quietly and slid his arm around Ryouko's waist. He was sure she would make a wonderful mother, but was more than content to wait until she was ready. In worrying about Ryouko's feelings Tenchi had put his own off to one side, having spent only scant moments wondering about his own opinions on child-rearing. Now that he considered the idea Tenchi was not sure he was any better prepared for it than Ryouko felt she was. He was, after all, only a college freshman and it was not so long ago that he had undertaken his father's manhood ritual. Tenchi knew he did want to have a child, some day. He liked the idea of having someone to teach the things he knew and thought it would be nice experiencing what fond memories of time with his father he held from the other end. But that day, he felt, was still a ways off and he would wait until Ryouko was ready before even approaching the concept for himself. Until then he was glad she had Sasami to take care of and hoped the princess would be returning with them to Earth. The apartment would feel very empty without her cheerful presence and he knew Ryouko would miss her terribly.

*I would too,* Tenchi thought, smiling when Sasami laughed delightedly at Ryouko's story, *I guess if Ryouko's acting as her mother that would make me the father. Maybe I should try to talk to her more.. she always goes to Ryouko if she's upset and I don't want her to think I don't care too.*


"Highness, the woman you summoned." The speaker was a guardian, a man in his apparent middle years followed by Washuu who was, in turn, followed by a young-looking guardian. *I wonder if they're all paired up like that,* Tenchi thought, *It seems like they always go around in pairs.. one old, one young. I'll have to ask Ryouko about it.*

"Thank you," Sasami said, tipping her head formally, "You may go now."

The guardian tapped his chest twice and bowed. "Highness, his majesty has requested that his daughters and their guests attend him for the evening meal."

Sasami nodded. "Please assure his majesty that the minos will be in attendance." She turned, her tone dropping the formality with which she spoke to the guardian. "Do you two wanna eat dinner with my dad?"

The guardian looked shocked, though it was obvious he was trying to hide it.

"Sure Sammy," Ryouko answered for the pair, "We'd love to."

Sasami turned back to the bearded guardian and said, "Nashim Tenchi and his fiancee will also be in attendance. I will inquire with my other guests and inform the staff at a later time."

The guardian's eyes widened and moved to Tenchi. He mouthed the word 'nashim,' apparently unaware of his own lips' movement. Remembering himself he looked hurriedly away and bowed deeply, his forehead actually passing below the plane of his waist, and tapped his chest again, nervously, before turning away. He did not straighten until he was two steps further away from the bench. Then he said, without looking back, "His majesty will be informed. As you have spoken, we obey."

Washuu, who had stepped out of the guardian's way as he joined his companion to leave the gardens, smiled and sat down next to Ryouko on the side opposite Tenchi.

"Er," Tenchi asked nervously, rubbing his neck, "What was all that about? What's a 'nashim'? And how'd you know about me and Ryouko? I didn't think anybody but Washuu and my grandfather knew."

Sasami flushed. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "I didn't mean to, but I kinda saw about you proposing while I was Tsunami at the campground. I hope I didn't mess anything up?"

Tenchi shook his head. "No, we were going to tell everybody as soon as we could get them in one place. But what was he so upset about?"

Sasami looked uncomfortable and Ryouko only shook her head, she had no more idea than he did, so Washuu took the burden of explanation. "Nashim is a Jurain honorary, Tenchi. It means something like 'one who would be king but has taken the path of humility.' It's very, very rarely used. Sasami's responses to the guardian were conditioned by her lessons and she used the title automatically."

Sasami nodded, then frowned. "How'd you know that? Nobody's supposed to know what I got taught."

Washuu grinned. "We geniuses have to have a few secrets, don't we?"

"Hi mommy," Ryou-ohki said, startling everyone. She had hopped away from Sasami and assumed her humanoid form during Washuu's explanation.

"Hello Ryou-ohki," Washuu replied with a smile, "Having fun with your sister?"

Ryou-ohki nodded excitedly. "Uh huh. We watch.. purple man make bird." Ryou-ohki's speech was improving quickly thanks to her long association with telepathic communication, but it was still a little rough. "You find Mihoshi and Kiyone, mommy?"

Tenchi, Ryouko, and Sasami turned as one to look curiously at the scientist.

"I was looking for them earlier," Washuu explained, "That's why I didn't come straight here. I realized I had only seen them once since we got here, and then only down a hallway walking with a pair of guardians. I wanted to talk to Kiyone about.. about an experiment she's helping me with."

Ryouko quirked an eyebrow but refrained from asking. Tenchi followed her lead, if Washuu did not volunteer any information about an experiment she probably was not ready to discuss it at all. She got that way with any big projects, she would clam up about them completely for days at a time. Then it would reach some turning point and it was all they could do to get her to talk about anything else for five minutes.

"So did you find them?" Tenchi asked.

Washuu nodded. "You won't believe it, but they were in jail."

"What?!" The exclamation came simultaneously from all four listeners, slightly delayed from Ryou-ohki as she struggled momentarily to remember the word.

Washuu grinned. "Yep. Apparently they were found wandering around the inner palace after being dropped in an unused bedroom by the portal. They left their IDs back on Earth so couldn't prove who they were. There was some kind of screw up with the paperwork and nobody called to confirm their story until I tracked them down in the holding cells."

Sasami frowned deeply. "That's not right. Aeka and I told the Guardians that any of our friends found anywhere in the palace were to be treated as honored guests."

Sasami stood and walked to the nearest tree, little more than sapling. She touched the trunk and whispered something under her breath. Moments later the pair of Guardians who had accompanied Washuu came running up the path.

"Azaka," Sasami said, turning to the younger of the pair, "I wish an investigation of the guards supervising the palace's prison facilities."

The guardian bowed, tapping his chest. "As you have spoken, we obey."

When they were gone Tenchi asked, "Azaka? That's wasn't.. was it?"

Sasami shook her head. "No, that Azaka's still on Earth. Guardians take names passed down from the first guardians to emperor Himori. Aeka's bodyguards were given nodori, the log bodies they have, when they were killed in battle. Since they died their names got put back in the pool for new guardians."

Tenchi scratched his head. "Sounds confusing."

Sasami shrugged. "I guess. It's just how it is."

"So the girls are out of jail?" Ryouko asked her mother.

Washuu nodded. "They called Dalris and got their identities confirmed, so they let them go and apologized for fifteen minutes. Kiyone's going to file a complaint with GP headquarters."

"Are you going to come to dinner with us mom?" Ryouko asked.

"Can me come?" Ryou-ohki asked before Washuu had a chance to respond. "I want eat too, and wear dress like Sammy?"

"Can I come," Washuu corrected, "Well Sasami, is Ryou-ohki invited too?"

Sasami blinked, slowly focusing on the scientist. "I'm sorry," she shook her head as if to clear it, "What?"

Ryouko frowned. "Are you okay Sasami?"

Sasami nodded. "I'm sorry, I was.. I was thinking about something."

"I asked if Ryou-ohki could come to dinner tonight as well."

"Oh," Sasami smiled brightly, "Of course she can!"

Ryou-ohki clapped furry hands and smiled for a moment, then frowned and furrowed her eyebrows. "I not have any pretty dress here."

"Yeah," Ryouko agreed, "All my clothes are back on Earth. I had to borrow these from a nurse while I was waiting for Tenchi to wake up."

Tenchi, who was wearing a simple outfit of dark greens gained of similar means, agreed. "I don't know much about Jurain clothes, but I don't think these would be appropriate for dinner with the king. And I know none of the rest have anything formal with them."

"Oh, that's okay," Sasami said, "I'll get the lady that has all my clothes made to get you some. We should probably go do that now.. it'll take a few hours and you'll need 'em in time to get ready for dinner. I'll have the Guardians find everybody."

* * *

Aeka looked nervously around in the gathering darkness. She had only been down to Tsunami's tree once in her life. All members of the House Jurai had to visit her tree for their naming day, but she barely remembered it. Strange shapes seemed to flow in the distance down here where the white walls grew dark and the light of the air seemed to fade.

Originally Aeka planned to speak with the goddess last, but somehow this interview seemed least difficult of the three she knew she must make. At first she thought Katsuhito would be easiest to talk to, having spent the past four years living near him, but slowly realized that she was dreading the answers he might give to her questions. She could think of no reason why he would have done what he did, letting her fall in love with Tenchi when he knew all along that he was pushing him toward Ryouko. Her questions for Tsunami were along a similar line, but she did not really expect an answer from the goddess. Aeka had been taught all her life that Tsunami was beyond mortal reckoning and so she felt, deep down, that she would probably get little more than that Tsunami's actions were part of the affairs of the gods and not for her mortal ears. And as for her father... Aeka could barely think about that conversation.

"Hello Aeka."

The crown princess looked up at the sound of Tsunami's voice. She had been staring at her feet as she walked, concentrating against growing resistance to keep the path she followed leading toward Tsunami's tree. Space worked differently within the Inner Chamber, and your direction of travel depended more upon your desires than the way your feet moved. To approach the very center was like walking into a gale, but now the resistance seemed to fade away to little more than a gentle breeze.

Tsunami had taken her older form, the one in which she appeared on the night Aeka spoke with her at the onsen, and somehow it reassured the princess. She had chosen to come here rather than to speak with the goddess through Sasami in the hopes that her sister would not hear her conversation. Aeka was not sure if it would work, but she knew Sasami was still upset over the incident that had taken place upon her return to Earth and did not wish her to hear what she had to say to Tsunami today.

When Aeka came home through the portal she went first to Sasami, only to find her sister sitting outside by the lake reading a book, wearing an extremely tight t-shirt and a pair of shorts so short Aeka felt they should be more properly classified as some sort of wide thong. Aeka knew Earth styles were different from those of Jurai, and tried to keep herself calm, but Sasami saw through her immediately. When Aeka gave up and demanded Sasami go change into something more appropriate the younger princess grew angry and shouted that Aeka should stop trying to control her life. She was a big girl now, she said, and her friends and Ryouko and Tenchi all treated her like a big girl and it was time Aeka did too. She said she did not need her sister to tell her what to wear anymore and that if she wanted to wear clothes like those she would. Aeka tried to explain that as her older sister it was her duty to make sure Sasami did nothing to harm herself, and that wearing such clothes was an invitation to lecherous types who would try to take advantage of her. Sasami looked truly angry then and stormed off to the house without saying another word. Later they apologized quietly to one another, simple 'I'm sorry'-es without any sort of explanations behind them. Aeka knew her sister was still upset about it, but did not know what to do. She knew Sasami looked like an adult now, but to see her little sister dressing that way.. and to have her yell at her.. it was all too much.

Now, facing a fully adult Tsunami Aeka felt her confidence bolstered. She had begun to think of the goddess as looking like her sister, and found that being able to separate the two made the words come more easily.

"Tsunami," Aeka said with a deep bow. There were no titles in Jurain for gods. One simply referred to them by name, an honor accorded not even to the emperor. "I wished to speak with you."

Tsunami nodded. "I know Aeka. But I'm afraid I have no answers for you. I did not give Yousho those visions. Until Sasami's Change I did not even have the ability to know beyond the boundaries of the trees."

"What?" Aeka asked, startled. She had expected something other than a straightforward answer, perhaps even some sort of cryptic goddess-like response, but not an outright denial. "You mean he lied?"

"No. Your brother believed the visions to be from me, but they were not."

"Then, who?"

Tsunami shrugged but a compassionate smile lit her eyes to show Aeka her lack of answers was not from lack of concern. "Perhaps he invented them himself as explanation for his actions. Humans are remarkably good at seeing what they want to see."

"You.. you don't know?"

"Perhaps you should ask him about this, Aeka?" Tsunami asked, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head slightly, "Would you wish me to discuss your actions with another?"

Aeka shook her head slowly. "No, I suppose not." She sighed and said, "Well, there are two other things I wished to speak with you about."

Tsunami nodded, but remained silent.

"I wanted first to thank you," Aeka said, "For your help in taking me to Tokimi's realm, and for the knowledge you gave me to guide me there."

Tsunami smiled. "You would have found the way on your own eventually."

Aeka nodded. "Yes, but it would have been too late by then."

Tsunami smiled silently.

"Thank you, Tsunami."

"The other thing?" Tsunami asked.

"Oh, yes," Aeka shifted uncomfortably, "I.. I wished to speak with you about Sasami. I am very grateful for your actions yesterday, but I do not appreciate what you are doing to my sister."

"I show her nothing she cannot accept," Tsunami said seriously, her smile dropping by a fraction.

"That's not the same as showing her what she should have to accept."

"No, perhaps not. But she will one day become me as I will become her. There are many things amongst the worlds worse than the glimpses of your memories she gained through me."

Aeka sighed heavily. "Is it really necessary for her to see all that? She's only a little girl..."

"Sasami is not a little girl anymore, Aeka," Tsunami said gently, stepping forward to rest her hand on the princess' shoulder. "She has had her Change and by the customs of this world that makes her an adult. She has the emotions of an adult and is very intelligent. I have seen many older people who display far less wisdom than does your sister."

Aeka sighed, "I suppose I simply cannot stop imagining her as the little girl I left behind when I returned to Jurai."

"She is your sister, Aeka," Tsunami said, squeezing Aeka's shoulder comfortingly, "She always will be. When we are one, we will be your sister then too. She loves you, it is important that you remember that. But she is not a child any longer. Picture her as the little girl she was in your mind's eye if you will Aeka, but treat her for the adult she has become or she will grow to resent you."

"I.. You're right, of course. But.. pretty soon she's going to be going out with boys. I think there's even a boy she likes.. Eti or Ito or something. What if she wants advice about dealing with men? Or about these Earth clothing styles she wears now? How can I act as her elder sister when I cannot help her with her problems?"

"Be there for Sasami when she comes to you Aeka, and she will ask no more. She knows the things you cannot help her with and she will find her answers elsewhere, but in cases when she needs you there is no other who will do. Remember that and be her sister for her. And do not resent those to whom she goes with problems you have admitted you cannot solve."

Aeka frowned, trying to discern the meaning of Tsunami's words. "You mean.. if she goes to.. to Ryouko, about men, or clothes, or to Washuu, I should just let her? But what if she gets.. what if they tell her the wrong things?"

"Do not believe you are the only one who loves your sister Aeka."

Aeka sighed. "Everything is so confusing now."

"All things are confusion Aeka. It is the nature of change, and all things change."

Aeka cautiously took the goddess' hand from her shoulder and held it. "Thank you Tsunami. Your words.. I feel better for having spoken to you, even if nothing I came to say got said the way I planned."

"Often those things which we do not plan are the course meant for us to take, and lead to greater happiness than could the well charted path."

"Even you?"

Tsunami smiled. "Even me, Aeka. I am not omniscient all the time."

Aeka looked down and asked quietly, "How can I speak with father? I dread that conversation more than I feared this and more than I fear the answers I may get from my brother. What if he isn't sorry for what he did? What if he tells me it was right? What if he tries to do it again?"

"Your father is a wise man Aeka, he would not be ruler otherwise. You know he was not born to the throne, and he could not have held it were he not compassionate and just. Think of his actions on Earth. Would an inherently cruel man have set Seriyou as a challenge for Tenchi, knowing of the powers he possessed?"

Aeka had never really considered why her father did that. She had simply assumed that Seriyou was convenient so Azusa used him for his challenge, but as emperor there was no reason for him to even pose such a challenge. He should simply have either given them leave to stay on Earth or demanded they return to Jurai. Aeka and Sasami would have protested the latter, but would have followed his order. No Jurain would defy Azusa's command, to do so would simply be unthinkably wrong.. nearly as bad as blaspheming Tsunami within the Inner Chamber. No, Aeka realized, her father had known Tenchi would win, one way or another, and set the challenge to save face. He did not want to back down from his wish for them to join him aboard the Minawematiro, but he did not wish to have them hating him for dragging them away from their happiness either.

Aeka sighed, looking down at the featureless path upon which she stood. She did not want to think well of her father right now. Aeka wanted only to remember what he had done to her and use it to give herself the strength to do what she felt must be done, but she could not seem to help remembering how much more often he was kind than cruel. She knew that what he had done was a consequence of the lessons instilled in him, but that made it no less an atrocity. She wanted to be angry with him, not feel pity for him.

"What do I say to him?" Aeka asked desperately, "How can I tell him, the emperor of Jurai, that he was wrong for doing what is prescribed by Jurain custom?"

"Do you remember what I told you before Aeka?"

Aeka frowned thoughtfully. "That you can't tell me what to do, because I'll do something else?"

"That's it."

Aeka sighed. "Then I will go to my brother next."

"Fare well, Aeka."

"Thank you, Tsunami."


"You lied," Sasami accused, a ghostly image of the young woman stepping from the trunk of Tsunami's tree to confront the goddess.

"I did not lie, Sasami," Tsunami countered, "Every word I spoke was true."

"You know our sister gave Yousho his visions. And you don't know anything about what happened after Aeka went to our sister's realm."

"I know nothing of the sort, Sasami, and if Aeka wishes to believe my hand guided her actions in that place it will do her no harm."

"But there's a big hole there about Yousho. That only happens when it's Tokimi. Or.. or the Other."

Tsunami frowned. "I have told you not to speak of her. You are mortal yet and may overstep the laws."

Sasami sighed. "I'm sorry. But you should have told her."

"If I told Aeka that our sister attempted to lead Ryouko to Tenchi she would hate her. She still harbors love for him as a woman for a man and though she would not realize it at first, hate would grow in her heart for Tokimi."

"You don't think she already hates her, for what she did?"

"Aeka knows, somehow, that much of the slave's actions were undirected by our sister, and that those which were had reason behind them. She does not know of her own knowledge, but she knows. The knowledge that those visions were possibly created by our sister would solidify Tokimi as an object of scorn for Aeka. Now her anger is focused on the dead slave and our sister remains an abstraction."

"It just doesn't seem right." Sasami sighed. "I know our sister didn't mean to hurt my sister, but..."

"Tokimi did not mean anything one way or another Sasami. She did as was required, just as I did with you and as I have done for millennia. And as I did in withholding information from Aeka."

"But what good is being able to know everything if we can't tell anybody?"

Tsunami sighed, this was the hardest part of assimilating with Sasami.. convincing her that things she would not understand until after the process was complete were, in fact, beyond her understanding. "You know what may happen between our sister and Aeka and you know that our sister's actions have been to facilitate that. Sometimes the affairs of the cosmos require things which seem wrong to mortal eyes. Would you have me tell Washuu and Ryouko the whole of the truth as well?"

Sasami bit her lip and looked away. Finally she sighed and said, "No.. I guess not. But that all turned out okay, I mean Ryouko is Washuu's daughter again and she's in love with Tenchi. If everything hadn't happened like it did neither of them would have been happy."

"You understand that because you can see my memories, Sasami," Tsunami said gently, "Just as I knew that when I took my actions thousands of years ago. But if I were to tell them now they would not understand, and they are already happy. Think how much worse it would be if I told Aeka now, when she still grieves."

Sasami nodded sadly. "I guess you're right."

"Go back to your friends Sasami. You are not ready to split your attention this way for so long, even this close to me. And I must attend to matters among the worlds."

* * *

"Kiyone?" Mihoshi asked from within the cell, "I.. I can't find my shoes..."

Kiyone turned to see Mihoshi on her hands and knees feeling around under her bunk, her shoes sitting all of a half meter to her right. Kiyone sighed and went back into the cell, retrieving Mihoshi's shoes and guiding her up to sit on the bunk while she helped her put them on. As she stood she realized Mihoshi had buttoned her shirt crookedly as well.

Kiyone tried to keep herself from saying anything. She knew how hard a time Mihoshi was having since her sudden onset of blindness and could hardly blame her partner for having trouble with her clothes. Kiyone could not imagine how she would be able to function without being able to see, and did not really think she could do any better than Mihoshi was.

"Wait," Kiyone said as Mihoshi started to stand, "You've got your shirt buttoned all crooked. No, just sit, I'll do it."

"Thanks Kiyone," Mihoshi said quietly while the green-haired woman unbuttoned her shirt and started re-buttoning it. "I don't know what I'd do if you weren't my partner."

"I'm more than your partner, Mihoshi..."

*What did I just say?* Kiyone thought in a mild panic.

"What do you mean Kiyone?"

"I.. I.. I'm your friend, right Mihoshi?"

"Oh," Mihoshi smiled, "Of course you are Kiyone." Kiyone finished the last button of Mihoshi's shirt just as the blond threw her arms around her. "I love you Kiyone!"

Kiyone blinked, her arms frozen at her sides. "W..wuh..wuh..."

"You're my best friend," Mihoshi explained, releasing her from the hug, "Since you became my partner it's like.. like I have a sister I guess."

"Oh..." Kiyone felt as though her heart had just shattered, but tried desperately to convince herself she did not. "I... You're my best friend too, Mihoshi."

She could not repeat the blonde's sentiments. She desperately tried to convince herself otherwise, but she knew if she said it there would be no turning back. She could not tell Mihoshi she loved her and not mean it in the way she wanted so badly to believe she did not.

"Come on partner," Kiyone said, trying to make herself sound cheerful, "Let's get out of this hole."

* * *

"Alright Kittan," Takima growled into the hovering comm display, "What the hell are you University people trying to pull? There's nothing out there but a rogue star!"

"Captain Takima, please, calm down." This time the voice was female, a young woman wearing a uniform similar to Kittan's gently pushed the jittery under-professor out of the way and moved to the center of the screen. "We did not want to transmit any specific information about the Artifact over long-range subspace.. even on a secure band. But it Is there. Please, adjust your sensors to these parameters."

Takima turned to the officer manning the sensor array controls and nodded.

"We have confirmation captain," the Jurain officer said a moment later, "It's there, but these sensor settings are insane. They have us looking at distortions in the cosmic background. It's like those crystals are just.. I don't know, some kind of spatial distortions."

"You have good men captain," the female University person said after hearing the analysis, "That's exactly what they are."

"But if they're just spatial anomalies, why are we out here? I'm sure it's a fascinating phenomenon, but distortion patterns are hardly artifacts."

The female professor sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's hard to explain Captain, but they Are an Artifact. We're convinced that they were not always spatial distortions. We think they were physical objects of some sort that were somehow.. I don't know how to explain it without going over your head sir. Imagine if you took an object and removed every physical property except mass. That's what you would give you those crystals."

Takima frowned. He liked to think he was an intelligent man, and that made dealing with University people even worse. They had all spent most of their lives, sometimes thousands of years, studying instead of getting real jobs, so even an intelligent man was left floundering half the time. Finally he hit upon something he understood which seemed to apply here.

"You mean like the transfer to subspace?" Takima asked, "We had a fairly detailed course plan on subspace physics at Fleet academy, and if I remember correctly objects are stripped of everything except their locational parameters when they make the jump."

The professor nodded, "Yes captain, something like that. But these things are still in normal space, and until now we didn't think something like that was possible. And even stranger they seem to exist simultaneously in subspace. There are distortion patterns in the subspace overlay for this sector of real-space that correspond exactly to the location and velocity of the Artifact."

"Alright professor..."

"Tatoraki, sir. Tatoraki Atiena."

"Alright professor Tatoraki. I'm not qualified to deal with this sort of thing, I'm calling in the planetary confinement team and we'll let them make the decisions."

Professor Tatoraki nodded. "Yes sir, that's all we could ask."


Atiena cut the comm channel and sighed in frustration. She hated dealing with Fleet people, they all assumed that just because a person chose to devote their life to study they were somehow less important that people with 'real' jobs. Like going around blowing things up had ever helped anyone.

"And you," Atiena said, rounding on Kittan, "Jumpy as a startled Timpasian. What kind of opinion do you think Fleet is going to get if we act like we should be groveling at their feet for help?"

"Sorry professor," Kittan grinned weakly at her, "I'm just no good at talking to them. I'm always afraid they're going to start barking orders at me or something."

Atiena shook her head sadly and turned away from under-professor Kittan, surveying the interior of the USV Corona. They were not a big ship by any means, this one room composed nearly half the interior volume not used by their propulsion system and subspace drive. Atiena crossed the ten meter chamber to where under-professor Rik'kash was tapping away diligently at a console.

"How's it going Rik'?" Atiena leaned over the under-professor's shoulder and peered at the display floating over his console, "Any luck on the defense mechanism?"

"No, professssor." Rik'kash was a Serga, a race of humanoids created, apparently by Jurains, some two hundred thousand years ago. No mention of the event existed in Jurain records, but Serga legends indicated it. They had normally proportioned bodies for humanoids and basically human faces, but were covered in minute scales and had a distinct hiss to their speech due to the reptilian nature of their vocal apparatus. "It isss mossst confounding, professsor," Rik'kash continued, "There appearsss no devisse to control thisss phenomenon, but it isss clearly obsservable."

The phenomenon Rik'kash referred to was the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, entered the vicinity of the crystal structure. Normally interstellar derbies would drift into a system and get caught in the sun's gravity well, eventually either spiraling back out of the system, colliding with a planetoid, or being pulled into the star itself. But a survey of this system showed absolutely nothing besides the crystalline spatial deformations.

They had performed a few tests to see why, exactly, there was no foreign matter in the system. Essentially they consisted of flying out beyond the edge of the system and firing a probe back in toward the star. Perhaps not the most glamorous science, but Corona was not equipped for temporal mapping or trans-spatial diffraction pattern reading, so it was down to lobbing things at the crystals to see what happened.

What happened was that the objects never arrived. The first probe was fired toward the edge of the system where the largest crystals were, some the size of small moons, in the hopes that an impact would not damage the Artifact. It veered suddenly off course, all the while reporting that it was still moving in a straight line relative to the ship. The second probe they tried dropping down toward the plane of the ecliptic rather than coming in level. That one floated straight on down until it was within four hundred thousand kilometers of the upper edge of the nearest crystal, then simply vanished. A while later it re-appeared on the opposite side of the ecliptic plane moving at escape velocity for the star and with the onboard computer insisting that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the time between its disappearance and re-appearance had not taken place and that it was moving at approximately half the velocity it actually was.

The last probe was more worrying. That one they had sent straight into the heart of the crystal field with a subspace gate generator aboard. It triggered just beyond the point the second probe had vanished, popping into subspace and continuing its approach. Spatial distances were skewed in subspace and they hoped to move it in close, then yank it back out into realspace to see what would happen, but long before the probe's subspace pattern was anywhere near interfaced with the nearest crystal the probe vanished without so much as a subspace ripple. That was two days ago, it still had not reappeared.

* * *

"Father."

Azusa did not turn at the greeting. He stood on a small balcony overlooking the river Deori where it wound beneath the Four Bridges. He could not remember if this was a real balcony, or if the scene upon which he gazed was merely simulation. Azusa supposed it did not particularly matter anyway, all the simulated outside views within the palace were as accurate as the viewer wished them to be.

"Yousho," Azusa said, leaning on the balcony rail to look down. He was not wearing his robes of office, only a simple Nia in purple and black.

"Will you not look at me father?"

Azusa shut his eyes and gripped the rail harder. "I will look upon my son when he returns to me," Azusa said quietly, his voice level, "I have no interest in elderly Earth men."

Azusa heard the old man sigh and the whisper of cloth as he turned.

"I will see you tonight at the evening meal father."

Azusa waited until he heard the closing of a door before breathing again. His exhalation came out in a ragged gust and he sagged against the railing. Yousho had spoken the promise in his true voice, not the repulsive one he affected for his disguise, and it was all Azusa could do to keep from spinning around to see if his son had finally returned to him. That Yousho would have thrown off his mask and come to rejoin his family was too much to hope for and Azusa had lived far too long to allow unfounded hope into his heart.


"Toka, Puer, attend me." Azusa turned from the door without waiting for the guardians' response. He wore Suji, a light official robe pulled over the Nia to signify he was about matters important to the throne, and the metal ornaments at his breast ticked lightly against one another as he sat.

The Guardians shut the door behind them and bowed upon reaching the edge of the floor mat upon which the furniture of Azusa's interview room sat. They were his personal bodyguard and had served in that capacity for nearly six hundred years, they could have sat without fear of reprimand, but Toka and Puer were far too professional in their duties to allow any such breach of protocol.

"How many of our guests have accepted my request to join me for dinner this evening?"

Toka, the older of the two, looked to Puer. They gazed into one another's eyes for a long moment before Puer turned his attention back to the emperor.

"Minos Sasami, Masaki Katsuhito, Hakubi Washuu, Hakubi Ryou-ohki, Hakubi Ryouko, and Nashim Etae have replied to your summons."

Azusa frowned. "Nashim Etae?" Azusa asked, his voice touched by disbelief and annoyance, "You speak of Katsuhito's grandson?"

Puer glanced nervously at Toka who replied in his stead, "Yes my lord. We apologize if we have caused offense, we are unsure of the Nashim's standing at court and sought to avoid disrespect. It is by this designation that the bodyguard refer to the Nashim until such time as we are informed of his standing."

Azusa's frown grew no less intense with the explanation. "You call him Treeborn. This is no part of respect for one unknown to the bodyguard."

"I.." Toka began, Puer picking up when he trailed off helplessly. "We have heard rumor that the Nashim is one of the Treeborn, lord. We meant no disrespect in our nomenclature and will cease to refer to him as such if we are incorrect."

Azusa stood and paced across the room, hands folded behind his back. He stopped near the wall and looked up at a painting which hung there. It depicted a tree in the midst of a rainstorm, two men and a woman clustered about its trunk.

"You may go," Azusa commanded, "The crown will make no proclamation of his standing at this time."

The guardians bowed, tapping their chests before turning to rise and walk out of the room.

When they were gone Azusa reached out to delicately touch the plaque set into the wooden frame of the painting, running his finger across the etched characters there. "Nashim Etae," he whispered to himself, "The treeborn prince... What did I begin by allowing them to stay on Earth?"

* * *

"Well," Ai asked, holding her arms up and half-turning to give Mataeo a view of her profile. She was wearing a sort of long shirt with four unobtrusive pockets and a pair of pants that were cut to accentuate the curve of a woman's leg. Around her waist was a thin belt of some rough fibrous material traced with a weaving pattern in silver to match the similar pattern around the wrist of the right sleeve of her shirt. The top was a deep red and the pants a rich forest green. "What do you think? Is it me?"

Mataeo looked at his girlfriend appraisingly for a moment before saying, "Definitely, though I think you need to do something with your hair. Everybody else I've seen wearing one of those has had their hair back."

"It's called a Nia," Ai explained, stepping back into the changing booth at the rear of the little shop in which she had found her new apparel. "Have you found anything you like yet? Maybe we can find a hair salon after we're done here."

Mataeo rolled his eyes and went back to searching the racks. He knew what colors he liked, and with these nia things the only real difference seemed to be the primary color and the pattern around the wrist; and the wrist part never seemed to be exactly the same between any two shirts. But he was not entirely sure which were the men's and which the women's. There were signs that he assumed would give such helpful information, along with things like sizes, but they were not in any language he recognized.

Finally, just as Ai was reemerging from the booth, once more in her own clothing, he found something that looked appealing. Not a nia, but similar. It had short sleeves and the pants hanging with it had pockets, the lack of which he disliked in the nia. There was a sort of round metal button on the left breast of the shirt and the pants, dark grey otherwise, had a wide blue stripe down the left leg.

"How about this?" Mataeo asked, holding it up to Ai, "It looks like it's my size."

Ai flushed and pushed it down from where he held it up near his shoulder, looking around to see if anyone had seen. They were the only customers in this part of the store.

"You don't want that one," Ai said quietly, putting it back on the rack and guiding Mataeo an aisle over, "That was the uniform for a man petitioning to become a guardian. Here, this is the same color, how about one of these?"

Mataeo took the proffered clothes and headed for the changing booth. Shopping for clothing was not exactly his idea of fun, even if the shopping was being done on an alien world, and Mataeo just wanted to get it over with.

"I still can't believe you borrowed money from Ryouko's mother," Mataeo said through the stall door, struggling with the unfamiliar clothes.

"I didn't borrow it," Ai replied absently, looking through a rack of long dresses, "She gave it to me. She said it was only fair after us having to come here. I tried to tell her I couldn't accept it, but she wouldn't listen."

"Well," Mataeo said, pushing the door open and tugging at his new pants in an attempt to get them to hang correctly, "We're paying her back whenever we get back to Earth. If we can figure out how much Jurain money is worth in yen."

Ai draped the dress she was examining over one arm and tried to hide her grin as she looked at Mataeo. "You.. you've got them on backwards."

Ai tried to keep from laughing as Mataeo struggled in vain with his pants and then leaned his head around his shoulder, turning in a circle while trying to see the back to figure out how it differed from the front.

Hanging the dress back on its rack Ai went to her confused lover and stopped his circling. "Here, look," she tugged the edge of his pantleg facing forward, "See how this side has a stitch around the waist? That's the back."

Mataeo sighed. "Maybe I should just go naked."

He had seen a few Jurains doing so, apparently public nudity was less stigmatized on a world that existed in perpetual spring. Mataeo saw Ai's expression and realized she must have noticed him noticing the Jurains. "Or maybe I should go put these on the right way around?"

Ai nodded sternly, pushing him toward the changing booth. "When you're done we'll go find somewhere to eat before we look for the salon."


Mataeo listened while Ai exchanged some rapid-fire Jurain with the store employee. He had picked up a few words of the language with Ai's help, but did not hear any of them in the exchange. It seemed like a fairly easy language to learn once you got around the fact that apparently a whole sentence could change its meaning based on whether the person talking was of a higher or lower social station than the listener, but he had not had time so far to learn more than "hello," "goodbye," "thank you," and "where is the bathroom please?"

Soon enough the transaction was complete, though Mataeo was unsure if the Ai's dialogue with the employee was a part of it or only idle conversation. Ai said it was all a part of shopping on Jurai, but could not seem to explain if it was actually an integral part of the purchase itself. In any case, money changed hands. Well, changed accounts through the device of a complicated little cylinder Washuu had provided Ai for the purpose anyway. Jurains had not had physical currency since before Earthlings first began using beads and shells for the purpose.

"Come on Mat," Ai said, handing him their packages and stepping through the shop's doorway, "Let's go get something to eat."

Stepping into the quiet rush of Jurai's Great City Mataeo was amazed again at the beauty of this world. Jurains had no surface transportation, relying on an underground system something like subways on Earth and a more expensive, per trip, network of teleportation pads. Mataeo and Ai, wanting to see the sights of the city, had used neither so far. Instead they walked the wide, grass-paved streets of the city amidst the strangely subdued crowds.

Mataeo, having grown up in Hong Kong, expected city streets to be busy and loud, but while the Great City was certainly busy it was almost eerily quiet. Ai said it was on purpose, some sort of acoustic effect produced by the atmosphere that subdued loud noises. Whatever the cause, the effect was magical. Walking through the quiet crowds of beings in exotic clothing, many of them clearly not human, was like stepping into a fantasy world. The green streets, their grass somehow remaining untrampled despite the traffic, and Jurai's flowing architectural style served only to heighten the surrealness of the scene.

Mataeo let Ai guide him down one road after another, though really she did not have any more idea where they were going than he did, while he looked up in awe at the strange and beautiful buildings surrounding them. Jurain architecture was a thing of flowing curves and the careful combination of natural elements, not the world of sleek metals and glowing plastics Mataeo had always vaguely assumed an advanced, alien world would be. In fact, there was far less metal and glass evident within the Great City than on any street in Tokyo or Hong Kong. Most buildings were a combination of stone and living plants, trees and vines in varying thicknesses used to decorate or, sometimes, support structures in a staggering array of stone textures. One building in particular Mataeo thought he would carry the image of with for the rest of his life. It was a massive, towering structure of sleek crystalline spikes and orbs hung within a network of wooden tendrils, the thinnest of them easily twenty meters across. And, rising majestically in the center of the structure, a twisting triple helix of water lit with dancing motes of light. Mataeo and Ai had stood watching the lights dance through the water, flowing through its curves with no visible means of support, for long minutes before asking a passing street vendor what it housed.

Mataeo had discovered that Ai's knowledge of Jurai, while considerably larger than his own, was not encyclopedic. The trees told her much of the world's history and taught her the language, but they seemed to have difficulty differentiating periods of time and could give her few specific details about the current state of affairs on Jurai, much less the layout of the city. So much of their time was spent wandering aimlessly, hoping to stumble across the places they wanted to visit and wondering at the strange buildings and stranger businesses housed within.

The vendor explained kindly that the structure was the home of Jurai's oldest and most respected architectural firm, and somehow that seemed precisely correct to Mataeo. He had always wondered at the fact that architects on Earth seemed to work in the most drab buildings, and that the people responsible for the beautiful vista surrounding them should be housed in such a magical structure seemed right. The vendor also mentioned that they should return to see the building, referred to as Shunimahinae, though whether that was the name of the building, the agency, or something else entirely Mataeo was unsure, at night when the lights would be refracted by the water and the artificial crystals in what she assured was a dazzling display.


"Okay," Mataeo said unsurely, "I guess that sounds good."

Ai frowned and looked at the menu again. "I didn't really think about the fact that none of the food here would be like food on Earth. Back at the palace the cooks knew how to make Japanese food..."

Mataeo nodded, he had failed to consider the fact they might have trouble finding something edible as well.

The two knelt at a low table in a subtly lit restaurant, the ambiance almost eerily Japanese while remaining alien enough to be clearly not Earth. Ai explained that the Japanese touches they had been noticing in Jurain culture, like the restaurant in which they now contemplated strange foods, were thanks to Queen Funaho's influence. The emperor's first wife was born and raised on Earth in ancient Japan, and though the people were mistrustful of her when first Azusa took the throne with an alien wife, they quickly took to imitating her strange ways in their own daily lives. Now, nearly two thousand years later, things like kimonos and chopsticks were firmly entrenched in the culture of the galaxy's greatest empire.

Ai summoned a waiter and placed their orders, meatless dishes that her extremely limited knowledge of Jurain culinary traditions said would be something like rice with steamed vegetables.

"So where are we going after lunch?" Mataeo asked, flipping idly through the menu. Jurain restaurants left them at the table rather than taking them away once the customer had placed their order. He could not read a word of it, of course, but the flowing script of Jurai was easy to appreciate even without knowledge of the content.

"I thought we'd find somewhere to get my hair done," Ai said, running her fingers through her dark tresses, "And then maybe go back to the palace to see if we can find everybody for dinner. We haven't all been in one place since we got here and we should talk to Tenchi about going back home."

"Home?" Mataeo asked, raising his eyebrows, "I thought you liked it here? You want to leave already?"

"Oh, no," Ai shook her head, "I love it here.. everything's so.. magical, I guess, but we can't stay forever. If we're not back in a couple of weeks the bills will all be late."

Mataeo chuckled. "Here we are, eating in an alien restaurant on a planet so far away from Earth you can't even see it's star in the sky, and you're worried about the power bill."

"Well, that stuff is important," Ai said defensively, "I mean, Jurai is great.. but we can't live here. Can we?"

Mataeo shrugged uncomfortably. Since hearing Ai's story about her heritage, told to her the night before by the being known as Tsunami, he had been dreading this question. He could see in her eyes when she took in the sight of the City that she wanted to stay here, possibly forever, and with Jurain blood in her veins he thought she might be right to want it. But could he stay with her? He had no Jurain ancestors, he was just a simple Japanese boy raised in China who had no greater aspirations than to earn his degree in engineering and go to work at the company where his father had worked since soon after he was born.

"I.. I don't know Ai. I mean, I guess you could.. but I can't even speak Jurain. What could I do here? You're part of their royal family, you can probably live at the palace.. it's big enough anyway, but what would I do? You've seen the stuff they have here, their science must make ours look like knocking rocks together to make sparks. I don't see how I Can do anything but go back to Earth and college." Mataeo paused, toying with the menu and looking down, away from Ai's face. "But if you.. if you wanted to, you know.. if you stayed and didn't want.. I wouldn't want to hold you back.. I would.. I mean..."

"Mat?" Ai took his hand away from the menu and held it until he looked up at her. "If you're thinking I'd stay here while you went back to Earth, you'd better just stop thinking it right now," Ai's voice was soft but full of the iron determination Mataeo so admired in her. "You know how long I've waited for you to ask me to move in with you? And now that you've finally done it you think I'm just going to drop you for a connection to Jurai through an ancestor I didn't even know I had until this morning? You'd better open your eyes a little wider, Onosami Mataeo, I love you and if I stay here it's going to be With you. Got that?"

Mataeo nodded slowly, squeezing her hand. "I.. I guess so Ai, but everything's been happening so fast lately. I don't even know what to think anymore, nobody's who I thought they were and nothing's like I thought it was. You're.. you're some kind of alien princess or something and I'm just a plain old Earth boy. I was afraid you might not want me as much when you knew you could have all this." Mataeo waved widely, a gesture meant to encompass all the Thousand Suns, what Ai said most people referred to the Jurain Empire as.

"I don't want all this," Ai said, repeating his gesture with a wry grin, "If I can't have it with you. You're more important to me than Jurai could ever be, even as amazing as it all is. I'd rather live on Earth all my life and never hear the trees or see the City again to be with you than live here a day without you."

Mataeo smiled and blushed. "I love you too Ai. But what are we going to do? Could we really just go back home and forget about all this? Tenchi and Ryouko live basically like normal people despite everything they've been through.. but could we do that too?"

Ai sighed and looked out one of the restaurant's windows at the strange crowd flowing past. "I don't know Mat. I always thought Ryouko was a little bit odd, but now that I know what she's been though it's amazing how normal she was. I don't think I could live through all the things she did and still be sane. And Tenchi... God, I can't imagine what it must have been like for him. I mean, I found out a really distant ancestor of mine was from Jurai and I feel different.. he found out his grandfather, the guy he spent summers with, was over a thousand years old, from another planet, and had a bunch of alien women suddenly move into his house..."

Mataeo nodded. Since finding out what it was that made Tenchi Tenchi he had been thinking about all the times when his friend was just another guy and being quietly amazed by the sort of strength it must take to hold up under everything he had been through. Here he had only been observing all the things happening to and around his friends in the past few days and he was thoroughly confused. How would he have reacted if it had been him who discovered he was related to the ruling family of a planet-spanning empire?

"I guess you're right," Mataeo said at last, "We should talk to them about going back. Maybe Tenchi and Ryouko can tell us how to deal with all this. They've been doing it for years afterall."

Ai started to agree, then turned when conversation in the room suddenly died after a commotion near the door. There were two men dressed in the uniforms Mataeo had come to recognize as belonging to the Guardians of the Jurain royal family, a sort of private army separate from their Fleet as far as he understood it. Normally they seemed to always appear in pairs, one young-looking man and one old, a coincidence that Ai could not explain. Either the trees had not told her, or it was one of the thousands of things they had shown her which had simply not stuck in her memory. This time it was a pair as normal, but accompanied by a woman dressed in a similar uniform. It was not exactly the same, the colors were darker and she wore a skirt rather than pants. And where the Guardians always carried staves with an energy sword hilt like Tenchi's strapped at their waist, this woman had no weapons about her except a thin wooden sword draped across her back.

The trio spoke briefly with the hostess of the restaurant, their eyes swinging around the room as if searching for something. When their collective gaze alighted on Mataeo and Ai, who were looking on curiously like the rest of the patrons, they pushed past the restaurant staff and came toward them.

Mataeo looked nervously at Ai, who returned the glance.

"Did we do something wrong?" He asked, watching the three stern-faced figures approach.

"I.. I don't think we did..."

"Onosami Mataeo, Fujihara Ai," said the older of the Guardians, "He kippa shotep masolla. Mamonla timnaewai photep."

Ai frowned and translated, "He says we have to come with them because we..." Ai paused and turned back to the Guardians. "Masolla timnaewai? Monla toda'aoi shikae shetep, nedor?"

The guardians looked vaguely uncomfortable but replied at some length in Jurain. Eventually Ai turned back to Mataeo and said, "Apparently we weren't supposed to leave the palace because we're friends of the royal family."

"What?" Mataeo asked in disbelief, "But that doesn't make any sense."

"They said that because we're friends of the crown we have to have a status assigned to us so that they'll know how to treat us. There hasn't been a proclamation announcing our positions within the court yet, so they don't know how important we are officially. If we're Really important we won't be allowed out of the palace at all, and we'll have to have an escort while we're there. Apparently there's something like a political civil war going on and they have to be careful with anybody who's connected to the throne."

"So are we in trouble?" Mataeo asked nervously, looking up at the three imposing figures. "Are they going to arrest us or something?"

"No," Ai said slowly, "I don't think so. They're just worried because we were outside the palace without protection. There was some kind of problem with some of the guards at the palace and that's why we got out without anyone saying anything. Now they just want us to come back with them so nobody gets in any trouble."

"Oh," Mataeo sighed in relief. The Guardians looked about like they always did.. stern and vaguely upset, but the woman with them was positively frightening. She glared around the restaurant constantly like she was expecting everyone there to try to kill someone. "Well, I guess that's okay.. can we eat first?"

Ai asked the Guardians and translated their reply for her lover. "No, they say that even if we're allowed out of the palace we should only eat at approved restaurants. Otherwise there's too much danger of.. not poisoning exactly, the word means that, but it means a lot of things about technology I don't understand too. There's a lot of stuff you can do to someone's food, I guess. But they said we can eat at the palace."

"Time this for being not," the heretofore silent woman said in heavily accented Japanese, her brow furrowed in what was either anger or concentration, Mataeo could not decide. "You us are coming with now. The palace to we must take you, consequences bad to be in happenings other than this."

The Guardians turned toward her, looks of shock painted bold across their faces. One began to protest loudly in Jurain, but she touched him lightly on the chest with two fingers and he fell silent immediately. "Language of them to be speaking shall we, in their presence we are. Better at it than I am you are, speaking it to be you will. And propriety.. matters import of direness being shall be to override this."

Mataeo looked questioningly at Ai. They had found that most of the Guardians could speak Japanese, though they were surprisingly reluctant to do it, and when they did it was always clear and nearly unaccented. This woman's Jurain heritage was very clear in her voice and Mataeo was having a hard time picking out the meaning in her broken Japanese. Ai shook her head with a tiny motion, she did not know what was going on either.

"Okay, okay," Mat said cautiously, "We don't want any trouble. We'll come back with you now, right Ai?"

Ai nodded and rose to her feet as he stood.


"Who.. who are you?" Mataeo asked of the woman after they had left the restaurant, "I mean, no offense or anything. But you're not a Guardian, right? I'm not Jurain, so I don't know much about how all this stuff works. Are you some kind of special missing persons officer or something?"

The woman look startled at being addressed, and the Guardians pace faltered for a moment.

"Identify me of being not of importance to you, respectfully addressed."

Mataeo frowned, did she mean she was addressing him respectfully or that he should show more respect for her? Whatever she meant, she quickened her pace and moved to walk in front of the Guardians, putting them between herself and the trio's two charges.

It was a long walk and Mataeo held Ai's hand, their purchases of the morning tucked under one arm as he tried to split his attention between the amazing buildings between which they walked and the equally amazing beings forming the crowd around them, leaving a small sphere of empty space where the woman and the two Guardians walked. He sighed, thinking that he would probably not get to see the Shunimahinae by night now, at least not until all this pronouncement business was cleared up.

* * *

Aeka summoned her courage and knocked at the door of the chamber Katsuhito was using. His chambers as crown prince were still maintained, but he remained Masaki Katsuhito in the eyes of the court and so was treated as no more than a guest of the throne.

"Gr-" Aeka cut herself off before the word was begun, she wanted to deal with him as Yousho, not as Tenchi's grandfather. "Y-" Aeka stopped again, this time finding the word would not come to her lips. She sighed heavily and knocked again, calling, "Katsuhito? May I speak with you?"

Aeka waited for what seemed hours, but was probably no more than thirty seconds, before knocking again. After once more receiving no response she sighed and turned away, her shoulders sagging and gaze sinking to the floor as the courage she had summoned for the interview faded. He was not there. She had not counted on that possibility and now wondered if she would be able to find the strength to do this again.

*There is nothing for it then,* Aeka thought as she moved off down the corridor, *I will have to speak with father next.*


"Aeka?"

Aeka paused at the door to her father's reception room. There his Guardians, Puer and Toka, would be waiting to announce his visitors, should they be deemed worthy of an audience with the emperor.

"Mother?" Aeka turned to see Misaki standing a little way up the hall, hands folded before her.

"So today's the day then?" Misaki asked.

"The day mother?" Aeka asked, quirking her eyebrows, "What day?"

Misaki sighed and looked away from her daughter's eyes. "The day you will speak with your father about.. about the beatings."

Aeka's eyes widened. So her mother knew as well? But of course she would.. she was of the House Jurai by the time of her Second Change, she would have received the same lessons, basically, as her father and brother.

"Yes mother."

Misaki looked up at her then and there was a confused welter of emotions battling for control of her face. "My little Aeka... I don't want to lose you Aeka. I think I can guess your plans, and I wish I could talk you out of them."

"You won't try?" Aeka asked, surprised. She had expected breaking the news of her self-imposed exile to her mother to be more difficult than to Funaho, possibly even more so than to her father.

"Did you know that my parents did not want me to marry your father, Aeka?" Misaki asked, suddenly changing the subject. Aeka was used to her mother's occasional digressions away from reality and tried to take this one in stride.

"No mother," she answered truthfully, "Is that true?"

"Yes.. yes, it is." Misaki looked far away, her eyes staring into some unseen distance and her fingers playing idly with the cloth of her robes. "He was not emperor then, not even of a Royal House. My House was not very important, really, or he would never have even been able to meet me. Mother said I was far too young to enter into marriage with a man already taken of a wife. You know such things normally wait until after the fourth century at least.. and I was only a little older than you. But Azusa was so handsome and dashing, and Funaho was a wonderful woman I just knew I could become a happy wife-sister to. So I defied their wishes and we were married. Now, of course, they say they were only trying to lure me to him by forbidding it, but he is emperor now and they could hardly say that my marriage was a mistake, could they?"

Aeka shook her head silently. She had never heard this story before, but wanted to get on to her father before her confidence fled. But Misaki was her mother, and she would not interrupt what seemed an important story to her.

"Your father was a kind, wonderful man Aeka. I think that he could have become emperor even had he not.. if he were not what he is. He loved me very much, and he loved Funaho, and when his children came he loved each of you. He has never stopped regretting what happened to.. to Yousho's brother, though he will never say so. A wife can see these things, and your father sometimes talks in his sleep."

"You.. you don't think the teachings are right, mother?" Aeka asked cautiously, wondering if it could be true.

Misaki sighed and squeezed her hands together. "I don't want to talk about that Aeka. But I wanted you to know that your father loves you, before you go talk to him. I know you are angry, and you deserve to be. But please Aeka, remember that he is the emperor. His actions cannot always be his own, and sometimes he must do one thing when he wishes with all his heart to do another."

Aeka frowned. "He is emperor, but he is my father too. The throne should not be an excuse to mistreat his children."

Misaki sighed again and turned away, arms folded beneath her breasts to squeeze her sides. "Your father has had a lot of pain in his life, Aeka. I know you have too, and I wish I could take it all away for you, but I can't do that. But please, if you truly want all the pain to stop, do not take the first step toward your goal by giving your father more than is necessary."

"I will do what I have to, mother."

"I know you will, Aeka," Misaki said quietly, "But I hope when you're done.. if you go away like Yousho did.. I hope I can still be your mommy."

"You'll always be mommy to me," Aeka replied, her voice softening, "Always. No matter what happens."

"That's good," Misaki said as she stated to walk slowly away. Her voice held the strange, distant quality it often took when she was not entirely in focus with the world around her. "That's good honey. And remember when you talk to your daddy, you should only bow halfway, because you're a princess."

Misaki's words drifted back to her daughter, she was nearly down to the turning of the corridor now and Aeka knew she no longer spoke to her. At least, not to the her that was there now. Her mother often slipped into the past, memories becoming temporarily more real than reality, and at such times Aeka could barely stand to be around her. Not out of embarrassment or anything so crass, but because it pained her so to see her mother in that condition. It seemed to happen much more often now than she remembered from before she left in search of Yousho, and Aeka hoped desperately that it had not been her actions which led to it.

Aeka watched Misaki turn the corner before turning back to the door. She took a deep breath and opened it quickly, stepping through to confront the Guardians and, beyond them, her father.

* * *

"Sasami? Can I talk to you a minute?"

Sasami looked up from the dresses she was trying to choose between and nodded happily at Tenchi. "Sure Tenchi, what's up? Don't you like your robes?"

Tenchi looked down at himself before answering. The robes were Sasami's idea. He wore a garment composed of a slightly off-white shirt and loose, charcoal grey pants beneath a long black, purple, and green robe decorated at the wide, angularly cut neck with small metallic buttons, one of which dangled a thin strip of something like paper. Sasami said that it was the traditional robe of a nashim and that it was important to wear formal robes if you were entitled to them when you went to a function like tonight's dinner. Tenchi was not entirely convinced, primarily because he did not think he was really entitled to the amount of respect seemingly attached to the title Sasami had given him. That is, he knew he was entitled by his ancestry, but he had not chosen to pass up the throne.. he simply had not even known there Was a throne to be refused.

Finally he put on a smile and said, "No, they're very nice Sasami. I'm not sure I feel right wearing them, but your tailor is very good. I wanted to talk to you about some other things. Could we sit down?"

Sasami nodded and sat, looking vaguely worried. "Is it.. did Ryouko tell you about Eto?"

Tenchi frowned. "No, what about Eto?"

"Oh.." Sasami looked away and blushed before saying quickly, "Nothing. I just got in a little fight with him, that's all. Nothing important, really."

Tenchi furrowed his brow worriedly and made a mental note to talk to Ryouko later.

"It's not about Eto, no. But I guess it sort of is."

"What do you mean?" Sasami asked, looking at him curiously.

"Well... You said you got in a fight with him and went to talk to Ryouko, right?"

Sasami nodded. "That's okay, isn't it? Ryouko said she didn't mind talking to me..."

"Oh, it's fine," Tenchi assured the young woman. "Ryouko loves talking to you. I just... I wanted you to know I'm here too. If you ever need someone to talk to, I don't want you to think Ryouko's the only one who will listen. You know what I mean?"

Sasami nodded slowly. "I think so, Tenchi. I guess I don't talk to you as much as Ryouko... But sometimes I have to talk to her about.. you know, girl stuff."

Tenchi blushed and rubbed his neck. "Oh, sure. But if it's not about girl stuff, I'm here too, okay? I didn't want you to think I don't care about what happens to you too."

Sasami smiled and gave him a quick hug.

"Trying to put the moves on my husband, Sammy?" Ryouko grinned at the pair from where she stood at the door of Sasami's wardrobe room. Tenchi gasped quietly and stared at her, his eyes riveted and a blush slowly rising to his face.

"Wow... Ryouko..."

"You like?" Ryouko asked, putting her arms up over her head and turning slowly. She wore a long, primarily blue, dress made of some sheer, glossy cloth with a high neckline. A complicated design was cut into the front, from a circle revealing the gem at her neck down across her chest in a flowing floral pattern. Stripes of emerald green swept around her back, ending in down-curving spikes along her legs. The sleeves began tight at her shoulders, billowing out to their ends just below her elbows and were slashed with a satiny black cloth beneath.

"Uh huh..." Tenchi mumbled, unable to compose a response.

"Wow Ryouko," Sasami supplied, "You look really good."

Ryouko swept across the room to admire Tenchi's new robe, murmuring something in his ear that made the fading blush return full strength to his cheeks.

"Does it mean something, Sammy?" Ryouko asked, looking down at herself again. "The seamstress kept saying how lucky I am and how honored I must feel, but I couldn't remember enough Jurain to ask why politely."

Sasami blushed and was a moment in answering. "I.. I hope I didn't do anything bad... I kind of told her to make you the dress for a woman just married into a Royal House. And the black in the sleeves mean you're married to a nashim."

"Really?" Ryouko asked curiously, fingering the soft cloth in her sleeves.

"Sasami," Tenchi said uncomfortably, "You probably shouldn't have done that. We haven't had a ceremony yet or anything, and we wanted to surprise everyone at dinner."

"Oh lighten up Tenchi," Ryouko said with a smile, "You're just upset because you don't think you deserve your robe. I like my dress, and we're going to announce the engagement at dinner anyway."

"I guess," Tenchi sighed, deflated, "But I really don't think I should wear this.. I'm no prince."

"You're all the prince I want," Ryouko whispered in the sultry voice she knew turned Tenchi's knees to butter before kissing his cheek.

Sasami coughed discretely and the couple blushed, moving slightly away from one another to hold hands.

"If you don't wear it my dad won't want to announce you at court," Sasami explained, "And if he doesn't you won't be able to claim any of the stuff members of the House get."

"I don't want any of that though," Tenchi protested, "This place is too much for me and I'm just a guest right now."

Sasami frowned prettily and said, "You might though, one day, and if you get announced as just Tenchi from Earth it'll be really hard." Sasami flashed him a grin and said, "Besides, Ryouko's right.. you look really sexy in it."

Tenchi blushed and Ryouko blustered, "Sasami! It's impolite to listen when people whisper!"

Sasami grinned and replied, "Guess you're rubbing off on me, mommy Ryouko."

Ryouko's mouth snapped shut and a blush to rival Tenchi's consumed her features.

"See how it feels?" Washuu asked, entering the room. She wore a severe black and green dress/robe that Tenchi recognized as the formal uniform of a senior Professor at the Jurain University of Science from some old pictures she had shown him.

Sasami shared a grin with the scientist while Tenchi and Ryouko attempted to sort out their embarrassment.

The mutual trading of compliments had barely begun when yet another guest joined the party. This time it was a tall woman with close-cropped pink hair wearing a uniform that closely resembled that of the Guardians. She had a thin wooden sword across her back and looked around the room with a gaze like daggers.

Tenchi stepped unconsciously between the new arrival and the three women, his hand moving without thought to his hip, but he was unarmed.

The woman's gaze leveled on Tenchi and she stared him directly in the eye for a long beat before bowing deeply.

"Masaki Tenchi," she said, pronouncing the vowels with the stuttering manner of Jurain speech, "Minos Sasami. Your guests recognize I am afraid I am not doing. This woman assume I do to be Hakubi Washuu? And you are ignorant, or wife to this man, by your dress. Ignorant you do not appear, so must you be Ryouko."

"Who are you?" Sasami asked in her most official-sounding princess voice, "What are you doing in my chambers unannounced?"

"By your honor, Vianna am I being. Mother, yours, the queen Misaki, is being sending me to have ascertained whom of guests, yours, will attending dinner being."

"Why did she not send Guardians?" Sasami asked suspiciously, "What is your station? And why do you speak Japanese so badly?"

"Learning it, I am, the slower way. To mother, yours, am being I personal guard."

Sasami frowned and called loudly, "Azaka! Kotori! Attend me!"

The guardians filed quickly into the room from their stations outside. Within her chambers Sasami was allowed freedom of privacy, but they always waited just outside in case she left or needed help.

"Who is this woman?" Sasami demanded. "She claims to be queen Misaki's personal guard."

The Guardians glanced at one another before the younger, Azaka, replied, "This is true, your highness. She is called Vianna and is of your mother's elite guards."

Vianna smiled smugly, vindicated.

"When were women allowed into the Guardians?" Sasami asked, "And where is her other half?"

Tenchi glanced at Ryouko, hoping for an explanation, but she was absorbed by the exchange.

"They are not, highness," the elder guardian responded, "And she has none. Some time after your departure the queen began training very young women as guards. The lady Vianna was her first student."

Sasami's frown remained but she dismissed the Guardians with a wave of her hand before turning back to Vianna.

"If you are truly my mother's messenger, tell her that I and all my guests but Tenchi's grandfather will be attending. I do not know if he will be for I have not seen him today. I have also not seen Aeka, so do not know if she will be in attendance tonight. And please inform her that I wish to speak with her regarding her guard's manners."

Vianna bowed again and replied, "I shall. The one, Masaki Katsuhito, signaled has that will be in attendance shall he. The crown princess, made no announcement she has."

"You may leave," Sasami commanded. A tiny smile touched Vianna's lips and she turned, striding confidently through the door.

"What was That?" Tenchi asked when he was confident she was well away.

Sasami shook her head. "I don't know..."

* * *

Ryouko caught her mother's sleeve, stopping Washuu from leaving the room after Tenchi and Sasami.

Washuu turned back to her daughter and asked, "What is it Ryouko?"

Ryouko bit her lip and looked away, seemingly considering how to ask what she was about to ask. Finally she sighed and asked simply, "Can you open your portal from here to Earth?"

Washuu frowned and shook her head, wondering what was on Ryouko's mind. "No, I can't. The portal gear is in my lab, and the subspace interface has a limited range. I could open it from Mars, probably, but not anywhere outside the inner Sol system. Why? Worried about getting back to Earth? And you know that thing might be waiting back there for us."

Ryouko shook her head and sat in one of the straight-backed chairs scattered around Sasami's dressing room. "No, not exactly. It's just..." Ryouko sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again she had a look of grim determination about her features.

"Okay, look Mom," Ryouko said seriously, "This isn't working. I'm just going to say it right out, and if you laugh at me I swear I won't talk to you for a week."

Washuu raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"When we came through from Earth we didn't stop to get any of our stuff. Tenchi's condoms were in his bag in our tent."

Washuu very carefully kept her face straight. "Oh."

"So can you do anything?"

Washuu frowned, trying to distract herself from amusement at her daughter's predicament by concentrating on the scientific aspects of the problem at hand.

"Well, I can't give you anything if that's what you mean. You already know how your body deals with foreign chemical compounds.. any drug I give you would be ejected through your skin within an hour. I guess I could deactivate your reproductive system, but that could take time..."

Ryouko sighed, trying to adjust to the concept of enforced abstinence.

"Ryouko?" Washuu asked cautiously, taking a seat across from her daughter.

Ryouko looked up, "Yes?"

"You know your chances of getting pregnant with Tenchi are actually slightly lower than a Jurain or Earthling woman. If you just.. went ahead, you probably would be okay."

Ryouko frowned. "Probably isn't good enough."

"Why not?" Washuu asked, her voice low and cautious, the way it always got when she was trying to avoid saying the wrong thing, "Would being a mother be that bad?"

Ryouko looked away and bit her lip. "I'm not ready for that yet. I don't know if I ever will be. I think Tenchi wants a child, but I don't know if I can give it to him. I don't think I'll be a very good mother."

Washuu patted her daughter's knee comfortingly. "You'd be better than I was."

Ryouko tried to snort derisively, but her heart was not in it. "I don't know mom. I mean, what if I screwed it up? If I mess up now it's just me that gets hurt, but what if I had a baby and I did something wrong and it got hurt? Tenchi would never forgive me.. and I don't think I could forgive myself. And what could I teach my daughter? You're a genius.. I'm just a thing from your lab, I'm not even human."

Ryouko gasped when Washuu slapped her, holding one hand to her cheek and looking up at her mother in shock.

"Don't you ever say that again, Ryouko," Washuu warned seriously, "You're ever bit as human as any of the rest of us. Just because you were born in my lab doesn't make you any less human that if I had pushed you out of my body in a hospital. Aeka and Sasami were born in labs too, you know. All Jurains are. What I did with my DNA to make you is no different from what was done to Misaki and the emperor's to make Aeka, only more advanced. Are they not human?"

Ryouko only stared at her, still clutching her reddening cheek.

"Tenchi loves you, Ryouko. You're going to be his wife, that's a very human thing. Sasami looks up to you like a mother, even if you don't want to admit it. I can see it, and I wasn't in Tokyo with you. She was joking when she called you 'mommy Ryouko,' but there was truth there too. Think about it Ryouko, who's been there for her since she had her Change? You. Who's taught her most of what she knows about boys? You. Who showed her how to put on makeup? You. If you're such an awful candidate for motherhood, is Sasami such an awful daughter?"

Ryouko shook her head slowly, her eyes wide.

"Damn right she isn't. You came to me asking for advice on handling the Eto situation, but I couldn't tell you what to do because you'd already done it all. I'll try to find something for you and Tenchi, but I want you to think about why you don't want a child. If you don't want one, that's up to you.. no child should be born in a family where she isn't wanted. But you shouldn't sell yourself short, Ryouko. You might not have made a good mother when you first woke up from the cave, but you aren't the girl you were then. You're a woman now, soon to be a wife, and I'm damn proud of you."

Washuu got up with a swishing of cloth and turned to leave. She paused at the door and turned back to say, "I'm sorry about your cheek." Then she was gone.

* * *

Kiyone straightened her vest and posed in the mirror. She was nervous about dinner tonight, and trying to deal with it by obsessing over her uniform.

Not that was her uniform, really. All her clothes, along with Mihoshi's, were back on Earth and on the sector station near the star Earthlings called Betelgeuse. This uniform was a loaner from the Jurai GP station, borrowed with a pile of other clothes that morning after their release.

Kiyone started to ask Mihoshi how she looked, but stopped herself in time. Her partner was fiddling absently with the hem of her vest and staring blankly at the wall.

They had spent much of the day in the palace hospital having Mihoshi's eyes examined, but the Jurain doctors could not find anything the matter. Whatever was preventing Mihoshi from seeing was psychological, not physical, and the hospital's aura scanning gear could not pick up on the blockage. There were more sensitive instruments at the University and they would be going there at the end of the week to have Mihoshi examined, but until then she was stuck with her blindness.

"I'm scared, Kiyone," Mihoshi said suddenly, looking in the basic direction of her partner.

"What about Mihoshi?" Kiyone asked, moving to sit next to the blonde.

"I've never been to dinner with an emperor before.. and now I'm blind. What if I screw up?"

"You'll do fine Mihoshi," Kiyone assured her, "I'll be there right next to you the whole time. And the cooks and staff know you can't see right now, so they'll make sure your food is easy to eat without being able to look at it."

Mihoshi sighed and tugged lightly at her vest. There were no officers assigned to the Jurain station with quite the generous proportions of Mihoshi, so her borrowed uniform did not quite fit. The rest of her clothes were being altered, but there was not time before dinner to do the complicated job of the dress uniform.

"Kiyone?"

Kiyone looked self-consciously away from the swell of her partner's chest and asked, "Yes?"

"Why did you want to kiss me, Kiyone? Just 'cause I'm cute?"

Kiyone sighed, she had hoped Mihoshi would have forgotten about that by now.

"I don't want to talk about that Mihoshi."

"I know... Only, I don't understand why you wanted to."

Kiyone was silent for long moments. Eventually she said, "I don't know Mihoshi. You.. you're... You're an attractive woman, Mihoshi. And you're my friend. I guess I just got carried away."

"Okay," Mihoshi agreed, "But how come you're my friend?"

Kiyone frowned. "What do you mean Mihoshi?"

"Well," Mihoshi said unsurely, "Why're you so nice to me? Most people just get mad when I mess up and they yell at me and then go away. But you always try to help me, and you're really nice most of the time. And when I'm not messing anything up we have fun together, right?"

"Uh huh..."

"But how come you put up with me? I.. I haven't had a lot of friends, almost not any before I met Tenchi."

Kiyone shrugged, then remembered who she was talking to and said, "I don't know. I guess I haven't had too many friends lately either. You're always yourself, though. Most people just do what people think they should.. you always do what you think is right, even if you do the wrong thing sometimes. It's nice being around someone that you know will say what they mean instead of what you want to hear."

Mihoshi was quiet for long minutes and Kiyone sat silently beside her. When Mihoshi spoke again it startled Kiyone out of another of her endless internal rages over her feelings for her partner.

"Kiyone... If you still want to kiss me, you still can. I.. I've never kissed a girl that I can remember, but if I did once maybe I'd like it."

Kiyone sighed heavily and stood up, facing away from her partner and folding her arms. "Don't talk about that Mihoshi."

"Why not?"

"It's not right. Where I come from women only kiss men, unless it's their mother or something. Doing things like that with someone the same sex as you are is wrong.. that's what I was always taught. When I wanted to kiss you, I was wrong. It won't happen again."

"Maybe.." Mihoshi's voice was tiny, like she expected to be reprimanded for her words, "Maybe you should just do what you think is right, even if maybe it's wrong."

Kiyone shook her head and walked to the mirror, checking her uniform again.

"Some things are just wrong, Mihoshi," she explained sadly, "And no matter what, they stay wrong. Being yourself is good, but everybody isn't right all the time."

"Okay Kiyone." Mihoshi sounded unconvinced, but Kiyone did not have to will to explain it anymore. She had decided that she could not allow there to be anything beyond friendship with her partner, and she was determined to stick to that.

*If I keep telling myself it's wrong,* Kiyone thought, angrily brushing her hair, *Eventually the dreams will stop. And I'll be able to look at her when she gets out of the shower without getting all flustered. And when she says I can kiss her if I want to I won't feel like This anymore.*

* * *

"Well, you can't say we didn't warn you."

Captain 'Please, just call me Quan, professor Tatoraki' Takima leaned back uncomfortably in the cramped confines of her office aboard the Corona. Jurain Fleet ships were luxury vessels compared to the Corona and he had been having a hard time since coming aboard.

"So what do we do?" Takima asked, for at least the fifth time.

Atiena shrugged, as she had each time he asked, and shook her head. "I don't know.. Quan. The planetary confinement team just isn't equipped to handle something of this magnitude. They agree that our Artifact needs protection, but it would take a full division of the Fleet to quarantine a whole system. Maybe my people can come up with something, or we could ask over the two-U."

Takima cocked an eyebrow, one of his more common expressions. Like all Fleet captains he seemed to have a limited array available, all of which were designed to make his chiseled features appear in a manner that would probably be described as 'dashing' or 'debonair,' were Atiena the type of person to use that sort of adjective.

"The what?"

Atiena resisted the urge to roll her eyes and explained, "It's short for the UUN, which is short of the UU Network, which is short for the University-band Ultra-space Communications Network."

"Ohh," Takima said, the light of understanding dawning in his stereotypically hard-yet-warm eyes, "The UCT."

"UCT? No, no, I don't want to know. The last time I made the mistake of asking for an explanation of a Fleet acronym I spent two weeks trying to dig through the KOL manual before I gave up."

"Really?" Takima sounded doubtful. "I always thought that the Reconnaissance and Exploration Drone manual was fairly straightforward. But I don't think you should broadcast on the UCT about the Artifact."

"What? Why not?"

Takima glanced nervously at the door, as though expecting spies to fall through it after leaning too hard while listening. "Until we have it confined I don't think we should let anyone know about this outside your ship and the Fleet. We don't know what this thing is, but we can't let whatever technology controls that defense mechanism fall into the hands of anti-imperialists."

"But how can we confine it?" Atiena asked, exasperated, "It's too big for us. If you won't let us call in extra help, what are we supposed to do?"

Takima pursed his lips and Looked Thoughtful. With Takima you could almost See the capital letters in his expressions. Either he was Looking Worried or he was Making A Difficult Decision or, as now, he was Looking Thoughtful. Atiena wondered, despite herself, what he did when he was out on a date. Perhaps there was a Leering Seductively expression in there...

"Hmm." Atiena idly curled a lock of her blood-red hair around one finger, a habit she had been attempting to break for going on sixty years now.

Sudden inspiration dawned in her eyes and Atiena slammed her hand down on the table triumphantly, exclaiming, "Ahha! I've got it!"

Takima shifted flawlessly from Looking Thoughtful to Curiously Expectant.

"The Hakubi trans-spatial diffraction lens," Atiena explained, pulling up the University Archive interface on her desktop holo-display. "We can't actually stop people from getting near the artifact, so we'll make sure they can't see there's anything to get near."

"I'm sorry, the what?"

"It's a device for cloaking extremely large objects," Atiena said distractedly, navigating carefully through cluttered and little-used portions of Archive-space. "Nobody's built one since the prototype model, the Holy Council outlawed them a few decades after the inventor disappeared."

"Then how do you know about it?" Takima asked curiously, "And why is it illegal?"

"The council decided that being able to hide objects the size of planets would be detrimental to the continued efficiency of Jurain imperial security."

"Yes, I suppose that makes sense. But how do you know about it if it was banned?"

Atiena glanced up from the archive display and blushed. "Well.. I did my thesis on Professor Hakubi's banned experiments. Specifically, on how Jurain government was holding back the development of the sciences by banning key technologies."

Takima frowned. "You're a Uranist."

"I am not," Atiena retorted defensively, "I wrote my paper twenty years before Uran came into power. And I have no association with his following now that he's there.. I think he's a sleazy little bastard and I'll be glad when the emperor finally crushes him."

Takima raised an eyebrow, apparently at the passion of Atiena's denial, but made no further comment.

"Here, look," Atiena rotated the display so the captain could see the schematic now hovering between them. "See? Not hard to build at all, and since you're Fleet I'm sure you can get a dispensation or something to allow us to put one together."

Takima frowned and cycled through the schematics. He was no scientist, but you picked up on things as a starship pilot. "This is insane, it shouldn't work at all."

Atiena nodded excitedly, pointing to a particularly redundant clump of circuitry. "See this? Nobody even knows what it does, but before the device was banned attempts to remove it from the prototype resulted in complete field degradation. All her work is like this.. either it's the most brilliant piece of engineering you've ever seen or it makes absolutely no sense. It's like she already knew all the answers, but wasn't quite sure how to get there from the questions."

"Who?" Takima asked with an air of detached curiosity, still examining the bafflingly complex schematics.

"Professor Hakubi," Atiena explained, "Hakubi Washuu? I'm sure you've heard of her.. everyone has. She was probably the greatest scientific mind in the universe."

"Was? What happened to her?"

Atiena gaped. "I can't believe you've never heard of Mad Prof Washuu... Five thousand years ago she just vanished. There was some kind of catastrophic failure in her last experiment and she was presumed dead for centuries, along with her lab assistant Yakage." Atiena saw recognition in Takima's eyes then and continued on, "Yes, that Yakage. Nobody knows what her experiment was, the records were destroyed in the accident and the Board refused to divulge its own files. Whatever it was, Yakage was working on it with her. So was Kagato. A few centuries after the accident Kagato was promoted to A class on the GP's most wanted lists and some factors in the accident took on a new light. Now most people think she was either killed or captured by Kagato."

"Captured? So she might still be around?"

"Oh, I doubt that. She was at least ten thousand by the time of the accident, if she were still alive she'd be the oldest biological humanoid in the galaxy. But there are people who still insist she's kicking around somewhere. Just a few days ago there was a big fluff on the two-U over some holo-stills supposedly taken that day at the palace on Jurai. There's a woman in them that looks like the old pics of Prof Hakubi, only a little older.. but you know how easy it is to fake that kind of thing... So what do you say? Can you pull some of that Fleet muscle and get us the papers so we can build one of these?"

Takima frowned and pinched his lip thoughtfully. "I think that could be arranged."

"Great," Atiena started to get up, already forming a mental list of things she would need to do to get the parts and expertise to build a Hakubi lens. "We'll have it ready in a week at the outside."

"Not so fast Atiena," Takima raised a finger in reproach, "May I call you Atiena?"

Atiena sighed. "I should have known. What does Fleet want in return for the dispensation?"

"Oh, I don't think Fleet will want anything. It will get this Artifact problem out of our branches. But if I'm going to push it through the channels, I want something."

Atiena's eyebrows went up involuntarily. Subterfuge? Out of the illustrious captain? "What?" She asked, her anger temporarily ousted by curiosity.

"If I get you your papers, I want you to come over to my ship tomorrow night for dinner. With me."

*Right again Professor,* Atiena thought wryly, *If that's not Leering Seductively I don't know what is.*

* * *

Tenchi slid his arm around Ryouko's waist when she caught up to him in the hallway and squeezed her reassuringly. He did not know what she was upset about, but it was clear from the feelings she was unintentionally streaming across their link that something had her riled.

"What's wrong?"

Ryouko only shook her head and leaned against his shoulder while they walked. Mataeo, Ai, and Ryou-ohki were down the hall with Aeka's tailor, having been sent off by Sasami's when the woman discovered just how many people she was expected to clothe in a few hours. Dinner was still a ways off, but they all wanted to catch up beforehand. And everyone except Sasami and Washuu were nervous about dining with the royal family and wanted the princess to give them some idea what to expect. Kiyone and Mihoshi were supposed to join them shortly, it was taking longer for Mihoshi to get dressed than normal thanks to her sudden impairment. Even Washuu was stumped as to what could have caused that particular malady.

"Come on," Tenchi prodded gently, "tell me."

Ryouko sighed and took his arm from around her waist so she could hold it while they walked slowly along the wide corridor. She started to speak twice, each time unable to get beyond the first word.

//I asked mom about.. you know, your condoms.//

Tenchi flushed and squeezed her hand where it rested on his forearm with his free hand. "Ah."

Ryouko nodded and sent, //I was so embarrassed. It's all your fault, you know. Before your birthday and the gems and everything I could have gotten through it without even blushing. Now just thinking about talking about sex makes me uncomfortable.//

"Sorry dear."

Ryouko smiled and shook her head slightly. "Don't, it's okay. I'd rather be with you and never talk again than the alternative."

//Besides,// Ryouko continued silently, //Not talking about it all the time makes it.. I don't know...//

//Special?// Tenchi asked.

//Yeah, I guess. Before it was just something I wanted.. now it's like it's a secret just between us. I like that.//

//Well I certainly hope it's just between us...//

"Tenchi!" Ryouko gasped and swatted his shoulder, "You're impossible!"

"Sorry dear," Tenchi repeated with a grin.

Ryouko rolled her eyes and hooked her hair back over one ear absently before taking hold of his arm once more.

"Anyway, mom said she can't help. There's no way for her to open the portal from here. And she was worried about the Slave.. we should have told her before."

Tenchi shrugged. "We'll tell everybody at dinner. It's better this way than trying to explain it all half a dozen times. And it's not like everybody's been lining up to be talked to lately."

Ryouko nodded slowly. "You're right. I still feel bad though, for making her worry."

Tenchi patted her hand comfortingly and Ryouko smiled.

"So she didn't have any advice?" Tenchi asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Sort of," Ryouko's frown returned, "She.. she said I shouldn't be so worried about getting pregnant. And she slapped me."

Tenchi stopped in his tracks, causing Ryouko to falter and stumble at the sudden stop. He turned to her, his eyes searching her face worriedly.

"Are you okay? Why would she do that? Are you hurt? Where is she?"

"Tenchi," Ryouko said soothingly, resting a hand reassuringly on his chest, "Calm down Tenchi. I'm okay. She only did it because I said..." Ryouko trailed off, looking away from his eyes. She wanted to tell him, but somehow could not. Despite her mother's words Ryouko still harbored her doubts, both about her abilities as a prospective mother and about her own humanity. She knew it was silly, but she was afraid to tell Tenchi about her fears because she worried he would agree. She knew, intellectually, that he would not, but emotionally she was terribly afraid that if she said, 'I'm not human,' Tenchi would only nod and say, 'Of course not.'

*Why does it even matter?* Ryouko wondered, uncomfortable under Tenchi's worried gaze in her silence. *What difference does it make if I'm human? He loves me, that's what's important.* Ryouko sighed inwardly. She knew what it was, even if she was reluctant enough to admit it that she would not even speak it aloud mentally. She knew Tenchi loved her, and that was enough for her to be happy, but she wanted to know he loved her for who she was, not despite it. She was afraid to let him ever find out about some of the things she had done in the past five thousand years because she was afraid it would be more than Tenchi could deal with and his love would turn to fear. He loved her now, she had no doubt about that whatsoever, but did he love her because she was Ryouko, one time space-pirate, or despite that she was once a wanted criminal and would always be a creation of her mother's lab?

*I'm being stupid,* Ryouko thought, *Who would love someone because they were a felon? Or a.. whatever I am. It's enough he loves me how I am now.. it's not like it's an act or something. I'm not who I used to be, mom was right about that, and if Tenchi loves the new Ryouko then I'll just forget that the old Ryouko ever existed.*

"Ryouko?"

Ryouko smiled, a genuine smile brought to her lips by the caring in his voice. "It's not important," she said, taking his arm again, "I'm not mad at her, let's just forget about it, okay?"

Tenchi nodded slowly, the expression of concern lessening.

They walked on for a few more moments in silence. They had unconsciously chosen the long way from Sasami's chambers to those of her sister and were now separated from the others. Any trip through the palace had at least a dozen possible routes thanks to the complexity of the sprawling web of corridors and the one they followed would take a few more minutes at least.

"So what do we do?" Tenchi asked suddenly, startling Ryouko. "Do you want to..."

Ryouko shook her head. "I'm not mad at mom, but I don't even want to risk that. I'm sorry Tenchi, I know you want children."

Tenchi blinked, surprised. "I... I guess I do, someday. I'm not in any hurry though, and if you don't want them I guess I can live without."

Ryouko smiled and nuzzled his arm. "I love you, you wonderful man. I'd love to have your child Tenchi, but I'm not ready for that yet. Too much responsibility for this girl... I'm afraid I'd screw up."

Tenchi raised his arm and kissed her hand where it rested on his forearm. "You'd make a wonderful mother," he assured her, "I know it. But nothing before we're ready. I don't know how great a father I'd make anyway."

Ryouko sighed. "So what're we going to do?"

Tenchi raised an eyebrow and looked sideways at her. "About what?"

Ryouko rolled her eyes in dramatic exasperation. "You know..." //...about sex.//

"Well," Tenchi said thoughtfully, "We could wait until we get back I guess. Mihoshi and Kiyone leave at the end of the week, unless Sasami wants to stay longer I guess that'd be a good time to get back. At least for a while. Too much Jurai all at once is kind of overwhelming."

When Ryouko did not respond Tenchi looked over at her and laughed at the horrified expression on her face. "What?"

//Wait? You want to wait? A week? It's already been a week... I thought men were supposed to want it more than women.//

Tenchi grinned. //Some of us just have some restraint.//

//Well quit being so damned restrained, husband.//

Tenchi raised an eyebrow and sent teasingly, //What? You'd rather I was all over you all the time?//

//Might be nice,// Ryouko countered, //I like it when you're all over me. Makes me feel appreciated.//

Tenchi frowned, his playful mood vanished. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Ryouko matched his frown and stopped, bringing him to a halt.

"What's wrong?"

Tenchi only shook his head and mumbled, "Nothing."

"Come on Tenchi," Ryouko sighed exasperatedly, "It's obviously not nothing. What's wrong? Was I coming on too strong? I'm sorry, it's just it's been a whole week and I-"

"No," Tenchi interrupted the explanation before it could intensify the blush already rising to her cheeks, "It's not that. I don't mind.. it's kind of nice knowing someone wants me. It's just..."

"Just what?"

Tenchi sighed. "I feel like I'm taking you from granted Ryouko. We always do things that are important to me, or that I want to do. You tell me you love me all the time, but it seems like I don't say it nearly as much to you. And I don't think I'm.. I mean, I haven't really..."

Ryouko cocked an eyebrow, looking slightly annoyed but waiting for him to finish.

"I don't think I'm very good at.. you know. I mean, you're the only person I've ever.. and I don't know..." Tenchi trailed off uncomfortably, blushing and looking at his feet.

"Let's see what's wrong with all that, shall we?" Ryouko asked, raising a hand to tick off points as she went along. "First of all, you don't take me for granted. I do like it when you're the one making the first move, but I never feel unappreciated. Never. I mean it.

"Second, we do things I want all the time. Remember last month, that movie you didn't want to see but you took me anyway? Or when I told you I missed you and you came to sit in my European Renaissance lecture even though it bored you half to sleep? You're always doing things I want, but most of the time it's things we both want. If I want something and you don't agree, you'll know.

"Third, you just asked me to marry you Tenchi. Marry you! If that's not telling me you love me, what is? That's enough to make up for a million other times, and you tell me often enough that I know it."

//And as for the last one,// Ryouko continued silently, staring at him intensely, //You have absolutely nothing to worry about. You aren't the only one who was a virgin that night, Tenchi. And if there's anything I'm missing out on, I'm not sure I could handle finding out about it.//

"Really?" Tenchi asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice though the redness of his face did not diminish.

Ryouko took his hand and smiled, her own complexion quite tinted. //You thought I was faking?//

"I.. Er... I mean..." Tenchi rubbed his neck and admitted, "Maybe a couple times."

//Never. I promise. Every last scream and moan were for real, Tenchi. Husband.//

Tenchi coughed. //Maybe we should figure something out after all...//

Ryouko grinned. "It's a shame I can't just teleport back."

"Why can't you?" Tenchi asked, taking her hand and starting to walk once more.

"Not enough power.. the further away I try to go the more energy it takes. I might be able to get there if I really pulled on the gems, but if a place is far away it's harder to control. I could end up halfway between Earth and the Moon, or halfway down in toward the core. If I had enough power I could do it anyway.. you can make up for control with energy, sometimes, but it'd take a huge amount."

"Hmm," Tenchi said thoughtfully. "What about when we went to Tokimi's palace and back? That had to be pretty far away."

Ryouko nodded. "It was. I think. I used one of Zero's memories to get us there. There aren't many of them, she wiped most of her database just before we assimilated, but there was enough for that. But that was different.. it wasn't me, it was us.. with the wings."

"So why don't we just do that again?"

"What?" Ryouko asked, startled, "Summon the wings? Together? Like in the hospital?"

Tenchi nodded. "Sure. I don't think it would hurt if we did it right. Last time we didn't know what we were doing. If we summon them with the link open all the way from the beginning I think we'll be okay."

Ryouko frowned. "I don't know..." She did not think she would ever forget that pain. That Tenchi had survived worse every time he used the wings was more than she could bear to contemplate. She knew she could never willingly submit herself to that again, it was worse than anything Kagato had ever done to her with his pain inducers. Remembering Tenchi's words back at the campground just before he summoned them made her heart flutter. That he would willingly endure that torture for her...

*How can I doubt him?* Ryouko wondered, *He went through that, just for me. He would rather have died than summon the wings again.. but I wanted him to do it and he did. How can I think he would stop loving me? For any reason?* But the fear remained. And it was that that held her back from agreeing to Tenchi's plan. The pain was bad enough in and of itself, but she thought he was probably right about the link. When she had opened her end entirely the pain had gone away. But opening the link full-bore meant more than she thought Tenchi realized. They were too distracted by the pain and its cessation for either to notice last time, but with their bond totally unrestricted both would have free access to the other's mind. Tenchi would be able to see all her memories, even the ones she hid from herself but had not yet had time to fully purge.

"Come on honey," Tenchi said, pausing in their journey once more, "I'll go first. If it hurts you can just shut the link down and you won't feel it, then I'll stop and we can find some other way. And if it works... I'd like to go back to that place, wherever it was we went after the pain stopped. It was..."

Ryouko nodded, agreeing with his unspoken comment. The sea of light on which they floated after summoning the wings together the first time was nothing short of amazing. The way her essence was fused with his, her being existing only as an extension of Tenchi's.. it was better than sex, by a thousand-fold. The thought of it made her want to push aside her doubts and fears, even without the opportunities that access to that vast sea of power would afford them.

Ryouko bit her lip and nodded again. "Okay," she said, trying to sound confident, "Okay, let's do it."

* * *

"Highness," Puer tapped his chest as he entered the room, looking off toward the wall rather than directly at the emperor, "Tanos Aeka requests audience."

Azusa nodded and waved a hand agreeably without looking up from the graph hovering above his work table. It was a complex thing of shifting colors and a small constellation of accompanying text, all meant to present the political attitudes between factions loyal to Jurai and those with other interests around sectors nineteen through twenty-eight. He had, of course, entered all the data himself, but it was often useful to look at things from other perspectives and in different formats to find new angles with which to deal with arising problems.

This particular problem was a singularly thorny one involving the shifting allegiance of some thirty-two worlds in one portion of the Thousand Suns. A minor dictator had set himself up as a new emperor on one world, arousing little more than mild curiosity from the throne. When an empire spanned some nine thousand planets, not to mention artificial outposts and worlds, like Earth, that were merely under the Empire's protection, it would be nigh impossible to keep up with every madman making a claim of isolation.

Unfortunately, this madman managed to drag a few billion other people along with him. His central dogma rested on the idea that Jurain tradition was holding back advancement in the rest of the galaxy and that only by overthrowing Jurain rule would they be able to continue the natural progress of science and the arts. There had been, admittedly, fairly little development in the sciences in the past few centuries. But most researches attributed it to the Nakumi Paradox, the concept that the more one learns, the more questions one has, and the harder they become to answer, rather than to any sort of Jurain social influence. The little dictator was a smooth talker, though, and convinced a fairly large body of people over the past two hundred years that his views were correct.

Oddly enough, however, he apparently had no aspirations for empire. Instead he only wanted concessions from Jurai to allow the University to find extra-imperial funding and lowering of restrictions on paths of study. Given that he promised to step down from his position, but without those concessions he promised to fight Jurai at every step. The second concession Azusa was willing to grant readily, even if his opposition had not had a few handfuls of worlds ready to secede from the Empire, but the first was unthinkable. To allow the University, a Jurain-founded institution, to seek extra-imperial funding would give factors entirely outside his control a voice in scientific and military development. It would mean releasing Jurain military technology to worlds outside the Empire.

Now Azusa was searching for a means by which to defuse the situation without losing citizens or face.

*Perhaps,* the ruler of five trillion citizens thought, *We could allow extra-imperial funding bodies, but restrict access to the archives? Maybe some sort of Empire-only divisioning to the University structure to allow for sensitive projects under continued secrecy while allowing other bodies access to the less critical sections? But will they go for that?*


"Father."

"Good day Aeka," Azusa replied to his daughter's greeting, still studying the floating graphic. "I did not expect you back from some time yet, did things not go well on Earth?"

"I..." Aeka stopped herself from answering, she was not here for idle chatter. "May I speak with you away from the throne?"

Azusa nodded distractedly, rotating his graphic. "The crown is attended," he said automatically. The phrase was meant to say that the symbol of his office was under guard, not on his head, and as such Aeka could speak freely as his daughter.

"You beat me." It was not a question, and the tone of Aeka's voice brooked no room for equivocation.

Azusa looked up then, touching his display off and pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh. She could see that he knew this day would come eventually. Aeka stood, her hands trembling behind her back, for moments that seemed to stretch toward eternity while she waited for him to respond.

"Yes," Azusa replied finally, his voice firm.

Aeka was taken aback. She had not expected a lie, of course, but some sort of defense at least. Not a simple, flat agreement.

"Why?" Aeka pleaded, "Why did you do it? Was I such an incorrigible daughter? Always those same words, but never an explanation..."

Azusa sighed and folded his hands in his lap. "To discuss the lessons of the Second Change with one not yet of age is-"

"I already know about them," Aeka interrupted, "I know about the lesson of pain and that only members of the House Jurai receive it. But that does not explain why you exercised it on me."

Azusa shook his head sadly before responding. "You say that you know of the lessons, but you obviously do not understand them. As emperor it is my duty to maintain the strictest code of morality with my children, that my family may serve as an example to all families in the Empire. When I disciplined you-"

"Beat me." Aeka interrupted, "You beat me. You did not 'discipline' me. Discipline is a lecture or the revoking of privileges, what any other girl in the whole of the thousand suns could expect for the things I received your lesson over." Aeka's voice hardened as she continued, "You did not 'discipline,' you abused me, and you abused my brother. My brothers."

Azusa blinked at that, but pushed it aside. "It is my duty," he reiterated, "To do otherwise would be to fail the people of Jurai."

"And what about me?" Aeka pleaded, her manner shifting once more from anger to desperation, "What about your family? Your duty as a father? How could you do that to me? Have you any idea how it felt to think I deserved to be hurt for my actions?"

Azusa shook his head again. "I am sorry that you feel that way Aeka, but when your second Change comes and you have the complete lessons you will see the truth of it. To hear bits and pieces second-hand simply is not the same as-"

"I won't!" Aeka shouted, "I'll not have them! If the lessons will twist me to believe that striking my children for minor offenses is right and correct, I won't have them!"

Azusa's eyes widened and he stammered, "But.. but, to not take the lessons at the proper time... It's.. it's unheard of, Aeka. You must, you simply must..."

"I must nothing! I am tanos of the Empire of Jurai, I will not be told what I must do!"

"You forget yourself," Azusa growled, "I am your father and your emperor. I say you shall have your lessons as is proscribed by tradition-"

"Damn tradition!" Aeka's face was flushed and her hands shook violently with a confused mixture of rage and pain. "It's wrong! It's all wrong! Don't you see what the lessons have done to you? You actually believe that beating me nearly to death for pretending to kiss a servant to make Yousho jealous was correct!"

"Aeka! Calm yourself! You are making a spectacle!"

"Or what?" Aeka demanded, "Will you beat me again? Shall I go wait in the chamber for your cane?!"

"If it is necessary," Azusa warned, his face clouded with growing anger at his daughter's impropriety.

"Never! Never again will I allow anyone to abuse me!" Aeka promised in a shrill cry, "Try it and I will see you do not succeed without broken bones!"

Azusa gasped, shocked at the very concept. "You would threaten me? Me?! Your father? Your emperor?!"

Aeka tossed her hair and strode forward, closing the distance between them while loosening the wrists of her dress.

"Do you know the consequences of your actions, Father?" Aeka asked, all the rage gone from her voice. She spoke now in the flat, near-monotone she had employed only a handful of times in her life, a state beyond anger and passion.

Aeka pulled back her sleeves, first one, then the other, exposing faint lines on her arms where old wounds had not yet fully healed.

"Do you recognize these?" Aeka demanded, holding her arms out to her father, "Do you recognize their significance?"

Azusa's anger melted under growing horror as he stared, wide-eyed, in disbelief at his daughter's arms.

"No," Azusa begged, his voice gone small and distant, "No, it cannot be. Tell me this is some ruse, some mistake... Tell me this is not..."

"Yes," Aeka confirmed her father's unspeakable fear, "Yes father. I performed the liann. I gave my body to a.. a Thing that struck out at me from fear and unreasoning anger, using your words taken from my own hidden memories. It abused me, telling me it was for my own good, to keep me from becoming a whore and a liar. And I believed it father. I thought that blows taken under those words were just and deserved, and it twisted my mind to feel I deserved the pain. And when it demanded I perform the liann and offer myself to it, I did it nearly without hesitation.

"That being is destroyed now, but my body remains its possession. I gave up my right to existence because of the fear and confusion inspired by your actions, father. Because of you I am tanda jaliann qe, the wandering, body-less soul."

Aeka shook her arms under her father's face. He stood, slack-jawed, unable to tear his eyes from the horrible evidence on his daughter's arms.

"Do you see now father? Do you see the consequence of your actions? Because of you I subjected myself to the liann. Because of you."

Aeka turned, pulling her sleeves back into place. She heard her father trying to say something, but it came out little more than a moan.

Aeka buttoned her sleeves and strode out of the emperor's chambers, leaving Puer and Toka to stare after her. She fled to her own chambers and sat on her bed, waiting for the tears to come. Aeka sat that way for what felt like hours, but they never came. Whether she had simply cried all the tears she had to cry, or if the pain of the memories had somehow been supplanted, or something else entirely, she did not know. She knew only that rather than the devastating sadness and pain she expected, there was only a vague hollowness in the place where once all the buried grief had rested in a tight knot of darkness.

In confronting her father, Aeka realized, she had confronted her fear. She had lived afraid that he, or someone like him, would forever hold power over her. She feared that no matter what she did or where she fled, always there would be someone stronger waiting to beat her for her insolence. But she had thrown herself to the fury of the storm in her father's eyes and survived unscathed. Now, no matter what else should happen, she was free. Finally free of the pain that had haunted her, usually nameless, since the last time she emerged from the darkened chamber two days after being beaten. Never again would she accept pain without cause, and never, ever again would she allow herself to be 'disciplined.'

* * *