"You're welcome," Sasami said with a smile.
"Yes, thank you so much," Ayeka agreed. "This was so good... So good after not eating..."
"How long yuh two gurls not eat?" Humyah asked.
"Uhmmm..." Ayeka paused a moment to consider this. "About a day."
"I've been two'n hulf dauys without food, muhself," he said.
The two girls stared at him, mystified. Neither of them had ever missed a meal; meals came
three times a day. The idea of missing two and a half days of meals was, to them, about the
equivilant to cutting off their fingers, one at a time, then cutting off their arms and legs, one at a
time.
"Wow... I'm sorry," Sasami said, almost sadly. "You must have been hungry."
"Yuh bet I wus," Humyah said with a laugh. He sat back onto his bed. "But yuh see, life
goes on... Ut really does... Und I shot me a huge animul, likes o' which I'd nevur seen bufore...
Nearly died draggin' 'm back hure to cuhk... And..."
Sasami and Ayeka sat and listened, enthralled, as the old man told them what he'd done. He
had survived this period of hunger and had had enough meat left over to eat like a king (not quite,
Ayeka had thought, when he had said that) for weeks afterward.
After he finished this tale, Sasami had requested that he tell them another story. The old
man had; in fact, he told them stories all day, until night fell. He told them in great detail, using
exaggerated gestures. In all this Sasami and Ayeka could see that he was a very lonely man. All
these years, all the great things he had done he had told no one, for there had been no one to tell.
Now, he was having nearly the time of his life telling his life's story to his little guests.
When supper time came, he made them some supper, which they ate with less greed than
they had before. Again they thanked him.
"Yuh two bettur stay here until thuh war ends," he said. "I c'n take care of yuh two, not tuh
worry, und when th' war ends I'll take yuh back to th' paluce myself, if'n I can find it."
"Where is it?" Ayeka asked.
The old man's eyes took on a confused look. He shrugged his shoulders. "Thuh heck if I
know, but I c'n't let yuh two out there tuh look fer it yerselfs."
Ayeka and Sasami, for the first time in the last day, felt secure. Even though this man
looked like he had lost most of his strength to age, he was an adult, and he knew what to do. He
knew how to survive. He must know everything, Ayeka reasoned, if he could survive two and a
half days of hunger.
The old man made Ayeka and Sasami a small bed on the floor with the huge rug that laid
beside the door. He told them that in the morning he would build them a better bed so they
wouldn't have to sleep on the dirty rug anymore (it was really dirty; he had flipped it over so they
could sleep on the clean side which had rested against the floor for years).
Sleep was quick in coming.
CHAPTER 7
Ayeka stared at George, wide-eyed.
"You... really dreamed that?!" she asked, a note of unbelief touching her voice.
"Honest to God," George responded. "Honest to God. Every bit of it."
"Those two girls..." Ayeka pointed to herself and Sasami. "That was us. We were the girls
who found the cabin."
This time it was George who became wide-eyed. "R...Really?!" he asked. "You're serious?!"
"Yes," Ayeka responded. "We found old Humyah... We... Oh my..."
"Er..." George said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"Did you dream anything after that?" Ayeka asked, leaning forward in her seat. Sasami had
leaned forward as well. They both waited for George's answer, looking like a men waiting to hear
news about their wives that are in surgery.
"Yes," George said solemnly. "I... know what happened. Very, very sad, I'll agree."
"Poor Humyah..." Ayeka sighed. "Poor, poor Humyah... What did he ever do to deserve...
*that*?"
George simply shook his head and said nothing.
"What?" Nobayuki ventured. "What happened?"
George, Ayeka, and Sasami looked at Nobayuki, as if each of them were expecting one of
the others to tell him. Nobayuki only stared back at the three sets of eyes that were fixed on him.
"You can continue your dream," Katsuhito suggested to George.
George looked at Katsuhito. "Right," he said. "Well, see, the two little girls... Ayeka and
Sasami... Were pretty tired. They slept deeply that night. The old man was sleeping pretty deeply
himself. None of them noticed until it was almost too late..."
CHAPTER 8
(((Singing a song, watching the fire crackle... Happiness! Where are the marshmallows? I
can't see them... Geeze... The smoke is thick, isn't it? Oh well. Where did those marshmallows go?
Sasami! Don't be a hog, now. Give some to me... Sasami! Give me some! Mother... tell Sasami to
give me some marshmallows! And could you get this smoke out of my face? Ha, ha, Sasami, I told
you you have to share! This smoke is... *gag*... What the... I...)))
What the...
She shook her head, drowning out the dreams. The smell of smoke was terribly strong, and
it was very hot, and she could still hear the fire crackling from her dream, and...
And she realized it wasn't a dream.
Her eyes opened in a flash.
"FIRE!"
The man practically jumped out of his bed. He stood by his bed for a moment, looking
around frantically. Then he ran to the door and flung it open and disappeared.
There was no fire inside, Ayeka could see, but the red tongues of inferno blazed outside the
window. The same thought that had struck the man struck Ayeka: Forest fire. Doom. Death in the
fire.
The man ran back in. He shook his head. "Don't understand it," he said, sweat on his face
already. "No furest fire... The outside's burnin'..." He shook his head again. "Yuh gurls get outta
here! Place looks ready tuh cullapse!"
Ayeka woke Sasami and pulled her out of their makeshift bed. She dragged the sleepy little
girl outside with her and brought her a respectable distance away from the cabin. Then they both
turned and watched as old Humyah began to drag everything out of his cabin that he could.
Humyah had been right; the place did look ready to collapse. The outside was charred
black and the wood looked almost completely burned. Smoke rose from the blaze and lifted high
into the air, carrying ashes and small, glowing sparks.
Humyah struggled more and more out of his cabin with each load. He had managed to
bring his chair, bed, and table out, and he went back in for more.
Ayeka and Sasami watched, horrified. They both hoped and prayed that the old man
wouldn't get hurt, because he was not only the only person they had to tell them what to do and
help them survive, he was also their friend (or at least they considered him a friend).
There was a crack, and Humyah, inside, shot his head up to look at the roof. He made a
motion, as if to dart for the door, but speed was not his thing; he was an old man.
The roof came down. A huge beam from his roof slammed his back and sent him to the
ground. It was burning and smoking. Humyah shouted in incredible pain and tried desperately to
push the massive thing off of him, but it was too big. The weight of it held him down while the fire
on it burned him.
Ayeka and Sasami watched, horrified. Neither of them wanted to see it, but they were
frozen in sheer terror. They watched as the man tried desperately to get to his hands and knees,
calling out in pain. They watched as his hair and beard burned right off, they watched as his skin
turned black, and they watched as he began bleeding profusely and choking out blood.
They watched him burn alive.
Both were sobbing. Terror held them captive in its powerful paralysis; they didn't move a
muscle. Ayeka held Sasami in front of her, her hands holding Sasami's tiny, shaking hands. They
watched as Humyah burned and began turning black all over.
Soon the rest of the cabin fell in, and all sight of Humyah was lost. Nothing could be seen
of him. Nothing was left to confirm that he had ever existed, except for his bed, his table, and his
chair. And this huge, raging fire.
Both stayed in their places and watched the fire. It raged and raged, and, of all sickening
thoughts, both realize that, somewhere, deep in those burning logs and cinders, was Humyah,
burning, his skin black and bubbling, his skeleton showing through, and...
Ayeka fainted. Sasami bent down and tried to wake her sister. The terrible fear that Ayeka
had died washed over Sasami, and she threw herself on Ayeka's body, sobbing, begging Ayeka to
awaken. Ayeka, however, did not wake up. Sasami, eventually, drifted off into a deep and tortured
sleep.
All night she was plagued by nightmares. She could see old Humyah pushing at the beam
to no avail, the fire burning his skin. In the nightmares, she could see Humyah begging her for
help (which he hadn't done in real life, but which he did in every nightmare she had that night). He
was calling her name, begging for help, but she could not move to help him...
"Sasami! Sasami! My God, MY GOD! For God's sake help me, Sasami! GOD! HELP ME!"
"I can't!" Sasami sobbed desperately. "I can't move!"
"Sasami! I fed you when you were hungry! I gave you shelter! I told you I'd take you back
to the palace, everything! I'm dying, Sasami! I'M DYING! HELP ME!"
"I CAN'T!" Sasami screamed, and she awoke.
Tears streamed out of her eyes. She sobbed until there were no tears.
The fire was still burning, quite small now, but still going. It was morning; the air was thick
with smoke. It wasn't cold; the warmth from the fire could still be felt.
A sickening, abstract thought presented itself to Sasami's young mind: *Even in the end,
Humyah was helping me... He's part of that fire that's warming me...*
Sasami turned to her sister, whose eyes were still closed. Sasami grabbed her sister's face.
"Ayeka! Wake up! Please!"
"S...Sasami..." Ayeka said, her lips barely moving.
"Oh!" Sasami cried. "You're not dead...!"
"Might as well be," Ayeka mumbled. "Where... Oh, no."
The smell of smoke brought everything back to Ayeka. The night before, the fire...
Humyah, burning... Sickening, gruesome thoughts, and then now.
"Oh, he's dead..." Sasami cried.
"I know," Ayeka said. "I know."
She comforted her little sister for a while until she stopped crying. Then she stood and said,
"Sasami, it's time we move on. We're going to survive. Even if we have to go two and a half days
without food."
Sasami stood beside her. "Yes," she said. "We're going to survive!"
Ayeka gave a short, choked laugh. "Yes. Now let's get moving."
Before they did, though, Sasami suggested that they do something, anything, in
rememberance of Humyah, who had greatly helped them. Neither of them knew how to perform a
funeral, so all they could think to do was join hands and say a few words about the old man.
They both realized that all they knew about him was what they had learned the past day,
but that was enough. Their little 'service' was enough to make any religious leader proud.
They broke away from the fire and hugged each other.
'We're going to survive!' rang in both of their ears.
CHAPTER 9
"Poor Humyah," Mihoshi said with a sad sigh.
"The dream ended with the two girls leaving the cabin and starting back on their journey,
wherever that was to," George said, putting down his empty cup of tea. He folded his arms and
leaned back into his chair, finished talking.
"And then you had the vision," Katsuhito said, his voice tinged with something that made it
seem as though he had spoken from a large distance.
"Yeah," George said, his eyes taking the distant look again.
"Strange, it was really strange," Ayeka sighed. "The house had obviously been burned from
the outside, but there was no forest fire. That cabin was *set on fire*."
Sasami nodded in agreement with Ayeka's statement.
"It's very obvious now that Ayeka and Sasami are the targets of this force now," Washu
said, still typing at her keys. "Either that or we have one heck of a coincidence on our hands. But
we don't quite know just who our enemy is."
"Fighting an invisible enemy," Katsuhito said quietly. "One must anticipate his next move.
But how to do this when all of this has already happened...?"
"I would suggest going back in time," Washu said.
"Oh, no," Tenchi said, remembering the last time he had gone back in time with one of
Washu's time machines. They had arrived in the past when Washu had announced that she had not
been entirely sure it would even work.
That time had been to save his mother. Kain had gone back in time and had tried to search
her out and kill her so all Juraian blood would be wiped out from the Earth.
"But.." Washu said, concentrating on the screen of her holotop. "It appears some sort of
barrier has been set up... Some sort of time barrier. It prevents anything from moving into that part
of the timeline... It's as if, as this timeline was reconstructed, someone built a sort of armor casing
on the inside of it to prevent... Oh, man.. This is crazy..."
"What now?" Nobayuki asked, leaning forward.
"Time's changing," she said. "Something wrong is being done in the past. It's not being
reconstructed... It's simply changing from the inside. Someone has entered an unknown point in
this universe's timeline and is changing history."
"Oh no," Tenchi sighed.
"Uh-oh," Nobayuki said quietly.
All turned to him.
"What?" Ryoko asked.
Nobayuki shrugged, and was no more. Where he had been, sitting in the chair, became
empty. He simply ceased to exist. No one noticed. With the timeline shifted, and Nobayuki dead
long ago in the past, everyone knew nothing of his earlier presence. Or, more accurately, his
earlier nonpresence.
Perhaps if Nobayuki's disappearance had been noticed everyone would have been hurried
in their attempt to take down this force that was altering their lives, but they didn't know, so they
had nothing to worry about. Nobayuki's death had been accepted as a fact long ago, and that was
that.
"Time has been altered," Washu announced.
"How?" Tenchi asked.
Washu shrugged. "I have no idea. For all I know Achika could have been sitting here with
us, going over these problems, and now she's dead. Maybe we were all clowns in a circus. Who
knows?"
"What do we do?" Tenchi asked.
"We act based on what we know right at this moment and what we can find out
scientifically. That's all we can do. We've been listening to Sasami and Ayeka's story; let's listen a
little more. See if we can find anything out."
"Sounds like a good idea," Ryoko said.
"It does," George agreed.
CHAPTER 10
Our plan is working.Yes, sir.No, sir, they have not. We changed history from inside, this time.Our energy supplies are running low...Sir, sir! I'm sorry! You know that the last history change was the most important one of
all...Well, the time reconstruction took much more energy than we had originally anticipated.
It nearly depleted all of our supplies. We simply didn't have enough energy for another
reconstruction, no matter how small. Time change was the only way.But... Wouldn't the Time Wall prevent any further movement back in time? I mean, I
know that they might be able to enter through the hole, but wouldn't the Time Wall prevent any
further movement backwards?I don't understand.
"Yes, thank you so much," Ayeka agreed. "This was so good... So good after not eating..."
"How long yuh two gurls not eat?" Humyah asked.
"Uhmmm..." Ayeka paused a moment to consider this. "About a day."
"I've been two'n hulf dauys without food, muhself," he said.
The two girls stared at him, mystified. Neither of them had ever missed a meal; meals came
three times a day. The idea of missing two and a half days of meals was, to them, about the
equivilant to cutting off their fingers, one at a time, then cutting off their arms and legs, one at a
time.
"Wow... I'm sorry," Sasami said, almost sadly. "You must have been hungry."
"Yuh bet I wus," Humyah said with a laugh. He sat back onto his bed. "But yuh see, life
goes on... Ut really does... Und I shot me a huge animul, likes o' which I'd nevur seen bufore...
Nearly died draggin' 'm back hure to cuhk... And..."
Sasami and Ayeka sat and listened, enthralled, as the old man told them what he'd done. He
had survived this period of hunger and had had enough meat left over to eat like a king (not quite,
Ayeka had thought, when he had said that) for weeks afterward.
After he finished this tale, Sasami had requested that he tell them another story. The old
man had; in fact, he told them stories all day, until night fell. He told them in great detail, using
exaggerated gestures. In all this Sasami and Ayeka could see that he was a very lonely man. All
these years, all the great things he had done he had told no one, for there had been no one to tell.
Now, he was having nearly the time of his life telling his life's story to his little guests.
When supper time came, he made them some supper, which they ate with less greed than
they had before. Again they thanked him.
"Yuh two bettur stay here until thuh war ends," he said. "I c'n take care of yuh two, not tuh
worry, und when th' war ends I'll take yuh back to th' paluce myself, if'n I can find it."
"Where is it?" Ayeka asked.
The old man's eyes took on a confused look. He shrugged his shoulders. "Thuh heck if I
know, but I c'n't let yuh two out there tuh look fer it yerselfs."
Ayeka and Sasami, for the first time in the last day, felt secure. Even though this man
looked like he had lost most of his strength to age, he was an adult, and he knew what to do. He
knew how to survive. He must know everything, Ayeka reasoned, if he could survive two and a
half days of hunger.
The old man made Ayeka and Sasami a small bed on the floor with the huge rug that laid
beside the door. He told them that in the morning he would build them a better bed so they
wouldn't have to sleep on the dirty rug anymore (it was really dirty; he had flipped it over so they
could sleep on the clean side which had rested against the floor for years).
Sleep was quick in coming.
CHAPTER 7
Ayeka stared at George, wide-eyed.
"You... really dreamed that?!" she asked, a note of unbelief touching her voice.
"Honest to God," George responded. "Honest to God. Every bit of it."
"Those two girls..." Ayeka pointed to herself and Sasami. "That was us. We were the girls
who found the cabin."
This time it was George who became wide-eyed. "R...Really?!" he asked. "You're serious?!"
"Yes," Ayeka responded. "We found old Humyah... We... Oh my..."
"Er..." George said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"Did you dream anything after that?" Ayeka asked, leaning forward in her seat. Sasami had
leaned forward as well. They both waited for George's answer, looking like a men waiting to hear
news about their wives that are in surgery.
"Yes," George said solemnly. "I... know what happened. Very, very sad, I'll agree."
"Poor Humyah..." Ayeka sighed. "Poor, poor Humyah... What did he ever do to deserve...
*that*?"
George simply shook his head and said nothing.
"What?" Nobayuki ventured. "What happened?"
George, Ayeka, and Sasami looked at Nobayuki, as if each of them were expecting one of
the others to tell him. Nobayuki only stared back at the three sets of eyes that were fixed on him.
"You can continue your dream," Katsuhito suggested to George.
George looked at Katsuhito. "Right," he said. "Well, see, the two little girls... Ayeka and
Sasami... Were pretty tired. They slept deeply that night. The old man was sleeping pretty deeply
himself. None of them noticed until it was almost too late..."
CHAPTER 8
(((Singing a song, watching the fire crackle... Happiness! Where are the marshmallows? I
can't see them... Geeze... The smoke is thick, isn't it? Oh well. Where did those marshmallows go?
Sasami! Don't be a hog, now. Give some to me... Sasami! Give me some! Mother... tell Sasami to
give me some marshmallows! And could you get this smoke out of my face? Ha, ha, Sasami, I told
you you have to share! This smoke is... *gag*... What the... I...)))
What the...
She shook her head, drowning out the dreams. The smell of smoke was terribly strong, and
it was very hot, and she could still hear the fire crackling from her dream, and...
And she realized it wasn't a dream.
Her eyes opened in a flash.
"FIRE!"
The man practically jumped out of his bed. He stood by his bed for a moment, looking
around frantically. Then he ran to the door and flung it open and disappeared.
There was no fire inside, Ayeka could see, but the red tongues of inferno blazed outside the
window. The same thought that had struck the man struck Ayeka: Forest fire. Doom. Death in the
fire.
The man ran back in. He shook his head. "Don't understand it," he said, sweat on his face
already. "No furest fire... The outside's burnin'..." He shook his head again. "Yuh gurls get outta
here! Place looks ready tuh cullapse!"
Ayeka woke Sasami and pulled her out of their makeshift bed. She dragged the sleepy little
girl outside with her and brought her a respectable distance away from the cabin. Then they both
turned and watched as old Humyah began to drag everything out of his cabin that he could.
Humyah had been right; the place did look ready to collapse. The outside was charred
black and the wood looked almost completely burned. Smoke rose from the blaze and lifted high
into the air, carrying ashes and small, glowing sparks.
Humyah struggled more and more out of his cabin with each load. He had managed to
bring his chair, bed, and table out, and he went back in for more.
Ayeka and Sasami watched, horrified. They both hoped and prayed that the old man
wouldn't get hurt, because he was not only the only person they had to tell them what to do and
help them survive, he was also their friend (or at least they considered him a friend).
There was a crack, and Humyah, inside, shot his head up to look at the roof. He made a
motion, as if to dart for the door, but speed was not his thing; he was an old man.
The roof came down. A huge beam from his roof slammed his back and sent him to the
ground. It was burning and smoking. Humyah shouted in incredible pain and tried desperately to
push the massive thing off of him, but it was too big. The weight of it held him down while the fire
on it burned him.
Ayeka and Sasami watched, horrified. Neither of them wanted to see it, but they were
frozen in sheer terror. They watched as the man tried desperately to get to his hands and knees,
calling out in pain. They watched as his hair and beard burned right off, they watched as his skin
turned black, and they watched as he began bleeding profusely and choking out blood.
They watched him burn alive.
Both were sobbing. Terror held them captive in its powerful paralysis; they didn't move a
muscle. Ayeka held Sasami in front of her, her hands holding Sasami's tiny, shaking hands. They
watched as Humyah burned and began turning black all over.
Soon the rest of the cabin fell in, and all sight of Humyah was lost. Nothing could be seen
of him. Nothing was left to confirm that he had ever existed, except for his bed, his table, and his
chair. And this huge, raging fire.
Both stayed in their places and watched the fire. It raged and raged, and, of all sickening
thoughts, both realize that, somewhere, deep in those burning logs and cinders, was Humyah,
burning, his skin black and bubbling, his skeleton showing through, and...
Ayeka fainted. Sasami bent down and tried to wake her sister. The terrible fear that Ayeka
had died washed over Sasami, and she threw herself on Ayeka's body, sobbing, begging Ayeka to
awaken. Ayeka, however, did not wake up. Sasami, eventually, drifted off into a deep and tortured
sleep.
All night she was plagued by nightmares. She could see old Humyah pushing at the beam
to no avail, the fire burning his skin. In the nightmares, she could see Humyah begging her for
help (which he hadn't done in real life, but which he did in every nightmare she had that night). He
was calling her name, begging for help, but she could not move to help him...
"Sasami! Sasami! My God, MY GOD! For God's sake help me, Sasami! GOD! HELP ME!"
"I can't!" Sasami sobbed desperately. "I can't move!"
"Sasami! I fed you when you were hungry! I gave you shelter! I told you I'd take you back
to the palace, everything! I'm dying, Sasami! I'M DYING! HELP ME!"
"I CAN'T!" Sasami screamed, and she awoke.
Tears streamed out of her eyes. She sobbed until there were no tears.
The fire was still burning, quite small now, but still going. It was morning; the air was thick
with smoke. It wasn't cold; the warmth from the fire could still be felt.
A sickening, abstract thought presented itself to Sasami's young mind: *Even in the end,
Humyah was helping me... He's part of that fire that's warming me...*
Sasami turned to her sister, whose eyes were still closed. Sasami grabbed her sister's face.
"Ayeka! Wake up! Please!"
"S...Sasami..." Ayeka said, her lips barely moving.
"Oh!" Sasami cried. "You're not dead...!"
"Might as well be," Ayeka mumbled. "Where... Oh, no."
The smell of smoke brought everything back to Ayeka. The night before, the fire...
Humyah, burning... Sickening, gruesome thoughts, and then now.
"Oh, he's dead..." Sasami cried.
"I know," Ayeka said. "I know."
She comforted her little sister for a while until she stopped crying. Then she stood and said,
"Sasami, it's time we move on. We're going to survive. Even if we have to go two and a half days
without food."
Sasami stood beside her. "Yes," she said. "We're going to survive!"
Ayeka gave a short, choked laugh. "Yes. Now let's get moving."
Before they did, though, Sasami suggested that they do something, anything, in
rememberance of Humyah, who had greatly helped them. Neither of them knew how to perform a
funeral, so all they could think to do was join hands and say a few words about the old man.
They both realized that all they knew about him was what they had learned the past day,
but that was enough. Their little 'service' was enough to make any religious leader proud.
They broke away from the fire and hugged each other.
'We're going to survive!' rang in both of their ears.
CHAPTER 9
"Poor Humyah," Mihoshi said with a sad sigh.
"The dream ended with the two girls leaving the cabin and starting back on their journey,
wherever that was to," George said, putting down his empty cup of tea. He folded his arms and
leaned back into his chair, finished talking.
"And then you had the vision," Katsuhito said, his voice tinged with something that made it
seem as though he had spoken from a large distance.
"Yeah," George said, his eyes taking the distant look again.
"Strange, it was really strange," Ayeka sighed. "The house had obviously been burned from
the outside, but there was no forest fire. That cabin was *set on fire*."
Sasami nodded in agreement with Ayeka's statement.
"It's very obvious now that Ayeka and Sasami are the targets of this force now," Washu
said, still typing at her keys. "Either that or we have one heck of a coincidence on our hands. But
we don't quite know just who our enemy is."
"Fighting an invisible enemy," Katsuhito said quietly. "One must anticipate his next move.
But how to do this when all of this has already happened...?"
"I would suggest going back in time," Washu said.
"Oh, no," Tenchi said, remembering the last time he had gone back in time with one of
Washu's time machines. They had arrived in the past when Washu had announced that she had not
been entirely sure it would even work.
That time had been to save his mother. Kain had gone back in time and had tried to search
her out and kill her so all Juraian blood would be wiped out from the Earth.
"But.." Washu said, concentrating on the screen of her holotop. "It appears some sort of
barrier has been set up... Some sort of time barrier. It prevents anything from moving into that part
of the timeline... It's as if, as this timeline was reconstructed, someone built a sort of armor casing
on the inside of it to prevent... Oh, man.. This is crazy..."
"What now?" Nobayuki asked, leaning forward.
"Time's changing," she said. "Something wrong is being done in the past. It's not being
reconstructed... It's simply changing from the inside. Someone has entered an unknown point in
this universe's timeline and is changing history."
"Oh no," Tenchi sighed.
"Uh-oh," Nobayuki said quietly.
All turned to him.
"What?" Ryoko asked.
Nobayuki shrugged, and was no more. Where he had been, sitting in the chair, became
empty. He simply ceased to exist. No one noticed. With the timeline shifted, and Nobayuki dead
long ago in the past, everyone knew nothing of his earlier presence. Or, more accurately, his
earlier nonpresence.
Perhaps if Nobayuki's disappearance had been noticed everyone would have been hurried
in their attempt to take down this force that was altering their lives, but they didn't know, so they
had nothing to worry about. Nobayuki's death had been accepted as a fact long ago, and that was
that.
"Time has been altered," Washu announced.
"How?" Tenchi asked.
Washu shrugged. "I have no idea. For all I know Achika could have been sitting here with
us, going over these problems, and now she's dead. Maybe we were all clowns in a circus. Who
knows?"
"What do we do?" Tenchi asked.
"We act based on what we know right at this moment and what we can find out
scientifically. That's all we can do. We've been listening to Sasami and Ayeka's story; let's listen a
little more. See if we can find anything out."
"Sounds like a good idea," Ryoko said.
"It does," George agreed.
CHAPTER 10
Our plan is working.Yes, sir.No, sir, they have not. We changed history from inside, this time.Our energy supplies are running low...Sir, sir! I'm sorry! You know that the last history change was the most important one of
all...Well, the time reconstruction took much more energy than we had originally anticipated.
It nearly depleted all of our supplies. We simply didn't have enough energy for another
reconstruction, no matter how small. Time change was the only way.But... Wouldn't the Time Wall prevent any further movement back in time? I mean, I
know that they might be able to enter through the hole, but wouldn't the Time Wall prevent any
further movement backwards?I don't understand.
