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Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum

-Verse Ten is Sacrifice-

-Part 1-

Thus it speaks of shape in forming---inverting ripe old doubt.

Made in vain and its own image---once blessed and twice cast out.

-ZJS

***

Distraction had to be meditation. The profile said nothing about hesitation, yet, after twenty seconds stretched eternity twice, Seita remained unmoved by Tenchi's acceptance. There wasn't much consideration for being simply misheard and not much more for being taken off guard. Surely the volunteer's parts had been assembled long before the recruitment strategy. It would be almost absurd now, Tenchi thought, to allow any more doubt on the scene.

"Well?" Gruff impatience, well-self-imposed, dulled his fear for a moment. Seita reassured almost indifferently almost before the end of the prompt.

"You do not 'have' to do anything."

"Th-Then what-" Tenchi blinked down a quick gulp.

"Simply use your perception, I do hope it happens naturally enough by now."

It should have sounded like sarcasm or cold wit, but the tone vibrated too informally as Seita turned and gestured on the same note.

"Lie down and try to relax."

Tenchi managed a disbelieving glance at his bed. He was right, more doubt was here and it was quite absurd. Hopefully his responding glare would show this.

The half grin, in the whole memory of Seita's cleverness, caught the message.

"Or stand and try to relax."

Not moving, and barely meeting him halfway, Tenchi let himself breath.

"There," Seita's smile crawled evenly all up both sides of his face, "you don't 'have' to trust me, Tenchi."

For a moment it seemed that he was extending his hand like a western custom, though too high and delicate. At a downward second glance, however, Tenchi recognized it as something similar. He'd seen children secure a secret or oath with a friend by locking their little fingers together.

"But trust me."

Looking back into the consuming blue, Tenchi could still see the long nail of the shortest finger curling out, ready to hook his own.

"I---promise." A hiss and a chuckle squirmed into Seita's whisper almost unnoticed.

The roots of Tenchi's nerves rotted black to absorb the very ether of it. Oblivion's voice echoed, danced, and mutated till it mocked this same mistake twice. All the while all the world's shivers doubled gleeful mania. It all climaxed too subtly on Seita's image and essence.

The extended palm began to turn up while the other rose to balance it. Submission relaxed into each finger then prepared them, clutched them to catch an acid judgment.

"I---^swear^."

Despairing question after another, all stillborn in Tenchi's mind through the upward growth of Seita's nails, widening and arching back directly into his own palms. Flesh indented then impaled with the crunch of broken glass in a mouthful of gelatin. Curdling milk dripped onto the floor and the nails retracted to normal excess length.

Hands lowering but palms still up, Seita took stepped back into a new and improved posture of apology, salvation, and limbs ready to break under the weight of his smile. Thus, smoothly timed, his forearms rotated the wrong way like a poseable action figure. Realistic bones crushed under clockwork in Tenchi's ears.

Criss-Cross-Over-Lap; two punctures lift up a keyhole. Left eye narrows through it, whole mouth dies beneath it.

"My..." A breath.

Both eyes bow above it, both lips pucker through it.

"...word." A blow.

The bubbles Tenchi used to blow from pink plastic sticks looked so like this, but never so big and bigger, and bigger till one floated up and out, like a white cell ready to take them both for infection. Rainbows melted and swarmed like storm clouds over its amorphous surface and in the dark of his room it reminded him of parking lot oil puddles. By the 'pop' of Seita's lips he would have remembered pink gummy suckers, but the bubble burst.

Rather than a rain of stringy suds, its silent explosion left a single perfect circle puncture. Tenchi was grateful for the single tear that remembered bravery as he looked up, watching the unblinking void all through its guillotine fall.

***

The faithful saw lines between the air seem to tense as their emperor glanced to the far corners and immediate shadows, dismissing guards, advisors, and servants alike. Misaki watched as they moved as promptly as possible without scampering like rodents. Unaffected, Funaho remained diplomatic and keenly focused. The large doors shut behind them, its heavy formality bringing Azusa to a slow attention. He glanced down at them both in their entirety, though his eyes should not have been physically able. Dignified and resilient to their visibly well-restrained emotion, he lifted up his left sleeve. The hidden control band clung to his forearm smoothly, a blue square glowed to the royal touch. Intended only for a single room, but perfected for ^any^ uninvited eyes or ears, the light spread out from his arm in a steel fog, passing, surrounding and reassuring them all of privacy.

"If we must gather beneath the royal cloak then I take it you know what this is about." Funaho stated plainly as her husband sat back down with eyes closed softly and mouth sealed tight.

"Yes, but I believe we had this discussion once before. I know how you love to re-plan your strategies against me, but there is ^still^ nothing more to be said." Azusa held his temper with a vice.

"There is more my husband, things I feared to tell you." Funaho fought dirty, smearing the grounds between love and country. She held the stare, waiting for reinforcements.

"Please, we don't want to argue, only to explain." Misaki began to tenderize.

"Explain?" He tightened his face and leaned forward. "What more is there to explain? You've already told me that you feel Tsunami is in distress, I did not argue with this, I felt it too, as did all the high priests and even my older generals. Blast it woman, ^She^ is the ^life^ of ^Jurai^! I'm surprised every Noble in the empire hasn't come moaning to me with some story or another of their 'special empathy' with The Tree."

His queens stared back into the maw of his rising anger, trying to give back some of the patience he was giving up.

"I did not tell you about the direction of my dream." Funaho's voice washed over the emperor in an icy sad coo.

"Your dream?" Azusa stiffened.

"The dream that I shared." Misaki added in a similar tone, though progressively less humble. She straightened her jaw, ready to capitalize on the color draining from her husband's face.

"What are you talking about? You told me that the dreams were vague."

"They were." Funaho stated almost coldly. "But they soon began to take shape, this is not merely one of the fluxes in energy we feel when Her trees root on other planets, this is a---a distress." She hesitated at emotions rising too soon, but feared stopping to calm them.

Azusa pulled his head back, following Funaho's gaze to Misaki.

"This is more like what we felt shortly before going to see my daughters on Earth. The Goddess is still distant, but these dreams, they all carry the same-" Misaki lost herself, bowing her head in either compromise or strategy. Funaho picked up for her.

"^Fear^."

"Fear?" Azusa echoed dumbly. Guarding himself with a more violent expression as he recalled the day, the day shortly before the GP report, before his great grandson.

"She is in confrontation with something," Funaho continued, taking a side step to squeeze her sister's hand, "something more horrible than the pirate Kagato ever could have been."

Azusa darkened again, lowering his head and clutching thought into the armrests of his chair. His second wife finally continued with slightly more conviction.

"We have seen the same thing; Tsunami, She faces something so---so terribly ^empty^. I fear someone may have found a power to-"

"Enough!" Azusa lifted his head with a thundering decree, not needing to reassure himself that his wives were taken aback.

"^This^ is why I keep our son's whereabouts unknown! This is why I take great measures to keep the kingdom under control! It is not the place of dreams, whether shared by two or a million, to dictate the course of our empire. There cannot be sentiment and crusading emotions when regarding our highest power. I will not let Jurai fall into spiritual conflict, or any other kind of idealistic chaos."

The emperor rose and brought down the heavens with him as he approached his queens. He glared down, past anger and through the water, stone and stars of a ruler's love.

"You are both reasonable women. You are the queens of galaxy upon galaxy, and I do not doubt that Tsunami is with you, always. But so long as I am emperor and so long as her power flows, you must learn to trust both." Standing close and still over his wives, he softened slightly with each word.

"I will that we not speak of this any longer, the trees were here long before us, and they ask to be loved, not sheltered."

"But-" Funaho tried, but tried pitifully, already hanging her head alongside her sister's in captured humility.

"Shhh. Rest now my loves, I do not belittle your concern, but I do not share it. Tsunami is all, and if she were to be afraid we would only show her ever more faith."

Azusa spread his arms wide and brought his wives into his chest, each returning the embrace with heads still down. Their eyes never flinched as they waited for comfort to sooth the uncertainty of their submission. The emperor's voice was very final, and reassuring enough.

"Come, let us visit The Tree, we could all do with a deep prayer."

***

Raw and ready enough for his mind to drown or implode, then still standing on something solid and level. Only able to see his body amid nothing, Tenchi tried to consol himself that the emptiness was black instead of white.

"Hello?" His voice was clear, but felt like an inverse of the ratio between what he heard with his ears and what he heard in his head. "Seita?"

Tenchi turned around and was about to try again when he blinked into a grassy field. Sun nearly out-shined the clean blue sky. Insects sang to the dance of wild scents. Ever since he was a boy he'd loved the field below the shrine and it was just as real now and almost as beautiful with Seita's back a short distance before him. The blonde was perfect and motionless amid the unnatural lack of breeze.

"Don't worry, this is only a lobby of sorts."

Again the ratio was off. Yet Tenchi still noticed more the disenchanted insecurity crawling beneath Seita's doll skin voice.

"It seemed fitting to run you through a placebo gauntlet beforehand. If I can't lure some trust for myself I can at least scare some honesty into you."

Honestly frightened made sure his fists still worked.

"Hidden knowledge ^should^ be frightening, Tenchi, especially when someone else is trying to pay price for it."

Professional charm waited a balance between the right moment to turn and the moment when Tenchi approached. The former advanced its formal advantage and Seita's hair still didn't move.

"The field, however, is intended to put you at ease. Your body is quite motionless now, the body and everything else you feel here is a projection to keep this experience from being too disorienting."

Seita walked toward and past him to the lake, enjoying the scenery as much as an empty hallway. Tenchi blinked, and bent to pinch a blade of grass with uncertain then restrained awe. He breathed and kept pace a meter behind his guide.

"So how far are you now, inside my mind that is?" A little more natural now, but Tenchi still sounded unnerved by the sudden absence of weariness and all other physical discomforts.

"^I^ am not inside, this procedure requires that I invite you into ^my^ consciousness."

Tenchi held his arms and retracted his neck into his shoulders, trying not to give an inch to the falling levels in Seita's voice.

"And in case you were wondering; when I said 'too disorienting' I was referencing the time I tried to do something similar to this for Kagato."

The grass and earth grunted beneath Tenchi's abrupt stop. Seita continued walking.

"Ironically it was his idea to even try it after he realized how directly connected my abilities were to psychic influence. Entering and spying on the consciousness of another naturally interested him, but at the time it was very difficult and too disorienting."

Seita stopped at the lake's edge and continued speaking at a consistently audible tone as Tenchi caught up.

"He eventually gathered the courage to try some lesser mass infusions on himself, and learned how to do this a bit, though only with the unconscious. The perceptions of those asleep are easier, 'safer' to experiment with; supple as wet clay, almost too soft in fact."

With heavy and reluctant steps, Tenchi came up to the final meter behind Seita's left shoulder.

"Have you done this with anyone else since then?" He was certain he'd asked it too timidly and was almost certain the words had actually escaped his mouth.

"No."

"No?"

"No, but I have had reasonable experience with the general context, decision anxiety that is."

The train of words detached themselves quick and cold.

Whatever stout perception blocker had been keeping two and two apart, Tenchi was now paralyzed and certain of which decision Seita was referencing. It would rend him whether he tried to clarify or not.

"De---cision, what decision?"

Seita bowed his head slightly, isolated, and incinerated sentiment.

"If there is a more pressing debate for you, by all means we'll address it, but I've seen the way you look at them, and I've seen the way they look at you. There is a cancer of uncertainty growing between the three of you, fed each day by different sides of similar emotions."

A breath lifted his shoulders a bit and lifted his head less.

"I plan to move your sleeping suitors into a state of border-lucidity; they will know they are dreaming but they will react to the dream environment just as they would to their perception of reality. They will each be given similar visions. You will simply have to pay attention to their reactions."

The waves converged as they always had and always wanted too, completely crushing him, dividing his limbs till what was left prepared itself for a final collapse. He was never ready, would never be ready to final-face this. Whatever it took, he had to lift his eyes from the imaginary ground that would collect his gave-up remains, had to take back the permission Seita was about to germinate.

When he looked up it was though wind-blown strands of gold and at the dock, empty and waiting for an image of himself to take the first step. Longer legs positioned the guide behind his customer in three steps. No softer a machine presented the only way to know like the only way to travel.

"This will show the woman who will love you. This will show the woman who you will love."

"What...what's the difference?"

Tenchi smothered his eyes and strangled his jaw at the question's absent- minded escape, ready to take his life to take it back. How he could make this trial even harder was even beyond how Seita's could still more than mock him with a quiet, almost private chuckle, though more personal than an inside joke. The grass and sand shifted as another long step back placed Tenchi all but alone to un-blink his eyes halfway up the dock facing Ryoko's back.

"Ryoko."

Tenchi heard his voice speak out to her, clear and friendly, but from about half a meter behind him. Ryoko and he both clenched and turned to see Tenchi, dressing casually and looking half-ready to deliver some formal news. He moved out of the way reflexively as the image of himself made its way up the dock. Clearly she couldn't see the 'real' Tenchi standing dumbfounded in his sleep clothes. Undoubtedly this was for the best.

"Well hi-ya Tenchi, imagine seeing you here." Ryoko responded sarcastically, but still floated towards him, resting her hands on his shoulders with solemn longing.

"I wonder what I'll do with you this time." Though not as playful as Tenchi would have expected, when she rested her head against the image of him she smiled more brightly than he'd seen since so many colored lights.

"Ryoko, I need to talk to you."

The dream of Tenchi spoke seriously, taking her hands away and locking eyes. Her expression changed instantly, sinking past soft.

"Please Ryoko, I---I want you to understand that I'll always care about you, and that I'll always be your friend." The image's voice drained the color from her face with a thickening tone of sympathy.

It was the weight again, the monstrous boulder rolling over his chest, ready to grind in what both he and the dreaming Ryoko seemed anticipate. Here it came, Tenchi lost track of what was going numb first while he wished for deafness.

"Aeka and I are going to be married, I---I just hope that we can have your blessing."

Tenchi had always imagined he would sound terrified if faced with a moment like this, thus the bravery the image spoke with washed over his mind with surreal clarity, leaving the perfect canvas for Seita's calligraphy.

"Now pay closest attention, Tenchi. Ryoko will try to respond to this dream in accordance with how she has imagined she would in reality. I'm sure she's done this on her own numerous times."

Tenchi readied himself to absorb screams for blood and fire. He wanted to slap his dream self into offering some better imitation of comfort, wanted to hold Ryoko one last time and tell her---something-anything-what.

His lingering indecision would have to wait; it was not entirely unlike facing Seita's oblivion, a shocking perception-invasion, but still he felt more like an overwhelmed observer than a manipulated subject. Ryoko's reaction struck and stripped him, existence swallowed into her mind and spit back into his.

Tenchi knew as well as Ryoko did: for that moment, for their future. The chronology raced, pushing him through a sieve and pulling him back at once. He experienced how she'd imagine his body would feel when she embraced him, possibly for the last real time. And more real than his own imagination, in came her hope for one true kiss, even if in mercy. His head throbbed with the onsen waters and a belly full of forced-celebratory sake. Every strand and fiber of her will stretched in determination; she would not break, she would not fray.

It was watching a film far too close to the screen, watching herself through her eyes. New scenarios and reactions bombarded him, she forced him along with her into her perception of nobility, of grace and friendship. Tenchi saw himself lifting Aeka's veil at the apex of a grand wedding ceremony, saw Ryoko forcing cheers out from a stone river face. She hugged the rest of the family and they hugged her back better than sympathy. There was the sake feeling again, but this time it was reflected by Aeka's rosy cheeks as they shared a private toast, then another, and another.

All the world a slow swallow into bitter jealousy, then spat up onto his shoulders. This would crush everything but for the real terror; the inhuman strength pummeling it into respect. He was Ryoko as she watched herself scald blurred eyes to watch over him, committing a new life to protecting something better than she probably ever could have loved it. The sentiment repeated till it was stronger than cliché and better than real, that his happiness was more important than any chance of theirs. It comforted her enough to imagine eventually smiling a soft sigh whenever she looked at him, holding Aeka unconditionally.

The maybe lucky prince only hoped his real body was doing a better job at breathing. By the intimidating clarity of Ryoko's senses, he experienced the field anew, rich sunsets and autumn tastes. She was standing, sharing smiles with the proud parents before they all combined them down on a toddling treasure. Having mixed light brown hair with pink eyes the best she could, the rest of her imagination dedicated itself to the inclusion she would feel, would have to-have to feel.

The desperate dreamer and reluctant spy trembled together, holding the child conceived between the one love and greatest rival, and being accepted by both. Those entirely new tears would caress just this way as he heard himself and Aeka bestow the title of "Auntie Ryoko" with genuine trusting affection.

Skin tingled deeper than his bones and raced Tenchi's heartbeat to a near finish as he was dropped back in his own now comparatively mundane 'body'. Comparison almost bought and worshiped the 'lobby'. Even without any wind again the grass was real and the earth was hard as he wavered down to his knees. He tried not to hear every single footstep marching smug between his exhaustion.

Tenchi could see the expression cast down on him through the sound of Seita's voice. The guest was looking at his host the way he might look at his own hand as it lost all its wonder, respect, then sympathy, till the nothingness of it entranced him in a new god's limbo.

"Those are her ideals, Tenchi, ^her^ vision of how she would like to react.

Not wanting to think past the simple return of Seita's overt presence, Tenchi looked at his own hand after it finished pinching his eyes.

"I...I shouldn't have-"

The stale exoskeleton of a singular throaty chuckle made the rasped whisper seem smaller.

"Invaded her?"

Another step closer.

"Or subjected yourself?"

Knowing he should stand before trying to look at the guide again, Tenchi kept his eyes closed through the difficult journey back to his own two feet. Still, not entirely ready, he opened up again just below where he imagined the draining blue would be.

Seita had noiselessly turned his back already, speaking as sterile as a clean execution.

"Regardless to either, it's too late to stop now."

Tenchi found himself following the same though unbeaten path back to the dock and himself, now the one standing at the end of it. He tried not to blink for as long as he could. Of course he couldn't, and still didn't have time to prepare as the princess remained as prompt on her cues as ever.

"Lord Tenchi, there you are."

The princess was walking up the dock as he turned to look at her, a modest smile and a huge blush spread as she nearly walked through his otherwise weak colors. Tenchi blinked and shook his head a bit harder this time.

"You weren't hiding from me, were you?"

It was slightly unusual for Aeka to tease what might as well have been him, but he quickly remembered that she believed this was only a vision. Surely she would try to direct this into a favorable dream just as Ryoko had.

"Aeka, I-" Tenchi held his hands out in the beginning of an apology, but lowered his eyes helplessly by the time she was close enough to touch.

"Lord Tenchi?"

From the reversed angle, Tenchi heard the fall of a kimono sleeve and had to imagine Aeka's expression as she stopped her approach and to hide her mouth behind her hand. From the previous encounter he could guess well enough, but wondered why Seita hadn't made the princess more visible. A blink answered his question and made him look over his own shoulder again.

"Miss Aeka, I have to tell you something."

"Tell me something? Why, wh-wh-whatever would you have to tell me?" Fear stuttered blatantly into passive hopefulness. Even when partly aware, she seemed to treat the dream far less like a practice run.

"I---I love Ryoko. I know I've taken a while to realize it, but it's true. We're planning to marry."

Tenchi imagined the same sympathy in his voice matching his expression as he watched Aeka's head tilt and shoulders slouch till they almost pointed downward. He thought he could see those delicate hands trembling beneath her sleeves.

"I'm sorry, I never wanted to hurt any of you, but---but I can't change the way I feel."

Cursing himself twice over this time for not sounding out more comfort, Tenchi forced a deep breath. Surely he wouldn't be able to take another during whatever Aeka had in store for them both. Yet, the princess continued to stand there in silence, merely trembling a little more visibly. The image of Tenchi took a step forward with concern, while the viewing Tenchi looked instinctively to where he thought Seita might be standing. No sign and no time to search further.

"No." A suppressed sob fell at their feet in a soft crumpled mass.

"Aeka," the image softened even more, closing the distance to offer a consoling embrace.

"NOOO!"

The dock and their universe disappeared in wake of shrill violence. Tenchi again found himself praying for the organs still standing in his room as a flash of darkness turned into a sea of stars. Conceivable emptiness was lacerated as Ryo-oh raged toward him. Moments before collision his angle changed, and he was with Aeka, watching herself inside the ship.

Digging his hands through his hands and into his skull felt like nothing. He feared how he would look to Washu, to Seita, again petrified and helpless, but even this misery lasted a flash or less. Aeka's emotions stuck him and dragged him as entirely uncontrollable. Agony watched the princess, gentle and dignified First Princess of Jurai, kneeling before the imagined Tenchi. Pitiful sobs begged them both into the lowest parts.

"Please, ^please^ Tenchi, you don't understand. I ^know^ this isn't what you really want!"

She wavered, barely able to stay on her knees.

"You must think it would be too difficult to love me, but---but I love you too much to give up now!"

Tenchi couldn't blink, or look past the only moderately distraught face his image, for fear of seeing the blood she was pouring onto its feet. The scene convinced him first and foremost that passion existed. An abandoned princess's love knew no limits. Eternity could shrivel up before she would yield her heart. Life would not remember its existence till he knew the extent of her adoration. Every regretted restraint, every suppressed desire, they all screamed out to him for justice. Enveloped in her acid writhe, he knew absolute and inescapable loneliness they way he would when it became everything.

*Seita! Please! Stop it!

Not really believing that the guide would stop, the vision's pain cooled but twisted further as the tour did slow. An ice shower swept over a wasteland of exposed magma, crystallizing Tenchi's emotions into the growth of some grandiose immortality. The vision of himself lifted Aeka from his feet and cried apologies into her hair, wrapping them both up in a glow that swarmed up and out of Ryo-oh. An immense display of intricate carvings and glorious lights rooted through everything. There was no question, no room for doubt, no matter what. For Aeka, or anyone sharing even a piece of her mind, their love would eventually blossom into a new star of pure beauty and unsurpassed bliss.

Like a pre-time reflex, however, a flash of royal practicality showed the plans for any alternative.

Her prince faded from Ryo-oh, and Tenchi's perspective was launched outside once again, this time among an enormous fleet of Jurian war crafts. He watched in horror as they all unleashed their cannons on a single figure, clawing, clutching at empty space like a hellish tumor, and eventually disintegrating from wild spikes into withered specks, into nothing.

Back in what looked like the shrine's forest an unflinching rage swallowed Aeka and ground Tenchi in its teeth. He could feel his grandfather's sword in her hands as she lifted Ryoko off her feet, skewered and screaming on the end of the blue blade, and plunged her like a hammer into the ground. Huge roots grew around and concealed her, and not till an enormous tree had buried her completely did Aeka pull back with a muted cry of victory tearing her eyes wide to the heavens.

And through the hatred came the helplessness, the destructive side wavering under it's own weight till the scene changed again. Black again. Aeka's trembling hands reached then held out to the Jurian prince's dissipating smile. The far reaches wreaked havoc, her mind's eyes rolling vile, the will towards all things held sacred merely wilted, waiting to be coughed away.

Those tales of noble deaths where a whisper Tenchi wanted to believe was Seita's, wanted more and more as they burned into all that remained in Aeka's self. Her life would only be a burden without at least the possibility of grasping his heart.

The emerging tree was clearly Jurian by the time it was half grown from the dead space where Aeka had unknowingly placed Tenchi with herself. Again he wanted to believe an oblivion portal had been placed above them, around them, orbiting their cores. The hollowing torture spread up from her hands as they tied the rope to the tree, to itself. Leaves fell across the vision, clearing dust off a picture of Tenchi in Ryoko's arms.

Cry out her name, pick her up in your arms and promise that she will never have to consider such a thing. And he tried and he tried and he couldn't. By the barbed throat turned in on itself by iron forceps; now swirled a bloodied flame over her drained eyes. He couldn't turn away as she climbed a pedestal of growing stone. Throwing hope again at the real body to still be alive still after this, what ^had^ to be The Ghost of Madness and its parting gift; that he'd have to see the whole thing. Amid a cloud of desolate whispers, pleas for un-reality and forgiveness, Aeka lifted one foot and stepped forward, blinking her prince back into his room.

---

Tenchi's eyes sprung open and clenched in pain at the intensity of real though still very little light. His breaths exploded so heavy that he felt the sweat beads being thrown off. The new knowledge, agony to call it so, vibrated through his consciousness in waves of pitiful whimpers and terrifying screams. He recoiled to be somehow holding the ignited sword and quickly extinguished it, dropping the hilt on the bed and taking proper time to clutch the fullest low moan from his entire hear. Time was forgotten easily through shiver, after clench, after gulp of no idea who or whether to thank that it was over. The intensity receded in time to notice distant birdsong and the newborn gray of pre-dawn.

Testing his feet, he carefully made his way to the window and stared at curtains he rarely ever pulled closed. The house quiet still, and himself still alone. Exhaustion was bleeding away the last of his emergency adrenaline, nothing but wavering eyelids and sallow hands. He wanted to smile again that he could feel the tears at all. Each of the two waves were frozen mountains now, his mirror and theirs ready and waiting in lava beneath the obsidian and avalanche beneath the ice. Yet again he wanted to smile now that the decision had impaled him from all sides; he should be enjoying this numbed shock for as long as possible. Some reflex mutated a yawn and trembled his jaw, drawing out his voice without thinking, for real. It sounded weak and felt like nothing.

"^I'm sorry^."

For the first time the oblivion portal seemed to make a sound, opening like a hole in his ceiling with the distant and muffled echo of an old man's gasp for breath. All the usual reactions switched on, the disorientation, the cold too intense to affect his skin, and of course, the now unmistakable hollowing rush. It lasted impossibly shorter, however, than the usual shards of seconds, almost just another easily forgotten moment in the face of history.

Seita fell. The distance from the ceiling to the floor was hardly more than his height. No flailing or outstretched limbs; he clung to himself in a fetal ball and landed on his side. What should have been only a grand thud was decorated with a sharp slap as his body was covered with enough liquid to start a puddle beneath him. Tenchi felt a few drops of a foul moisture land on his feet and shins. He didn't pay half a moment's notice before pulling more adrenaline from the sight of what used to be his sixth guest.

The once lean man was now nearly emaciated. Dull white short sleeves and loose pants clung to him like wet paper over dry sticks. Bare hands and feet were raw-red and the shaven stubble on his skull grew rougher as it spread down his face and neck. Over the under-aged soldier calling 'mother' into his freshly exposed organs, by the side of a newly hatched bird's last struggle beneath a swarm of ants, interwoven with drooling bile over the last laugh; someone similar lifted head, eyes, and smile to cover the host's. His un-enhanced voice, mortal, clinging spitefully to consciousness, washed over the rest.

"It may hurt ^them^, Tenchi---"

A cough kicked at his ribs, wrenching his eyes shut and imploding his body further fetal. Trembling open again after a few seconds, he widened the smile, stretched and split it into an explosion of teeth, pushed mucus out through them. A sickly wheeze chewed sinister velvet into rotting leather paste.

"But I'm glad it helped ^you^."

Clenched limbs relaxed enough for his pale head to droop and drum the floor.

Dregs of adrenaline fermented behind Tenchi's eyes, scrawling down his throat and coating his palms. The air remained foul, but he became glad for not needing to check a pulse as he watched Seita's frame rise and fall.

***

Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum

-Verse Ten is Sacrifice-

-Part 2-

Thus truth will void all barriers---restrictive and defensive.

But save us our salvation. Bless the faithful---spare the pensive.

Just an eon's space of justified---for each and any time it saves.

Hope they leave their immortal moment---taking explanations to their graves.

-ZJS

***

Soft blue, over white and into pink, staring focused, staying still. Such a dainty hand for hesitation guarded nose-close, licked lips, swallowed fear. Pinching the printed face, turning it, placing it down, looking up from both ends.

"Your turn."

Sasami wrinkled her nose with a thoughtful hum, daring to hold her own cards with only one hand to give a loose brain a close scratch.

"Boy Mihoshi, you've sure got a good poker-face." The young princess pouted but complimented sincerely.

"Oh gee," her cards tumbled to her lap as she griped both cheeks to keep them from stretching or burning off, "you really think so."

The rising giggles almost made Sasami drop her own cards as she pressed them hard against her lips.

"Oh! Oh dear, don't look-don't look!" Mihoshi scrambled to get her hand back in order before Sasami had them both shuffling. When she looked up the pink spies were well covered by a card fan. A moment later they peeked playfully.

"Maybe we should start over," Sasami suggested through a half- swallowed laugh while the detective tried desperately to re-file her hand.

"Hold on-hold on, I'm---I'm almost ready.

"There---I think."

At the surrendered sigh Sasami swooped down at success. Mihoshi read them and wept.

"Full house!" The beaming princess laughed as much as she could amid her opponent's freely raining cards.

"Some poker face."

"Oh come on, Mihoshi, best three out of four."

"Alright, but this time I shuffle."

Like rain and crickets, the cards made an empty house seem less than mute. Creep up and burn out, the break in their fun let in the uneasy draft, keeping Mihoshi shuffling long past the normal amount, not at all like Zen.

Sasami pulled a pig tale forward and stroked it. She had been doing this a lot recently, though no one noticed, and though she couldn't remember if she'd done it much before. It helped for calm or helped for focus, surely one of the two.

"So, how long did they ask you to baby-sit me?" The princess looked up to catch Mihoshi off guard, half-expecting and maybe wanting the cards to fall again. To her disappointment the shuffling stopped and the new hands were dealt out without so much as a sliver of blue looking up.

When Sasami didn't pick up her cards for nearly a minute after Mihoshi had her own ready, a too-sudden and lighthearted reply beamed out.

"'Baby-sit'?! That's silly. Sasami, since when have I ever had to baby-sit you?"

"Since when have you ever been up and dressed and ready with a breakfast tray and a card game before I even woke up?"

Silent and slow, Mihoshi organized her cards a little bit more tightly.

"I couldn't sleep."

"Yeah but---that's nothing special," Sasami trailed her words off into early regret before trying to dash away from them, "and it doesn't explain where Aeka is or why the rest of the house is still quiet." Narrowed eyes could only pinch back the sour taste in her voice for so long.

"I'm sorry, I tried not to be so suspicious, this has all been really nice of you, it's just-" At trail-off's end she waited for her friend's eyes to rise up and re-connect the bridge.

"Don't worry about it, Sasami." Mihoshi used a gulp to boost her eyes back up in time to see the princess lower hers with a lost breath. Putting the cards face down, she reached over and griped the smaller knee.

"No, really, I'm serious. I---I don't know what's happening 'exactly' but I really feel things are going to start getting better---really---really soon."

Sasami looked up slowly, but the water her eyes had gathered couldn't sway the smile Mihoshi had built up for her.

Softly laughing out a single tear, Sasami wiped her nose and bowed.

"Thanks, Mihoshi."

"Sure, now try to go easy on me this time okay."

Another laugh, three more turns, and Sasami blinked back her questioning voice, smooth as a rounded and laminated edge.

"He came back again, didn't he?"

Mihoshi's hand dropped this time, a tiny nasal gasp floating down with the symbols and faces.

"Sasami-"

"I know you'll tell me the truth, Mihoshi, you have to." The Second Princess of Jurai crawled across the cards on her knees and reached for the detective's fingers.

"C-C'mon Sasami, can't we just have a nice game."

"What happened? Did he---did he ^hurt^ someone?"

She tried to maneuver her eyes down and up into Mihoshi's but the curtain of blonde curls kept falling in the away.

"Did---someone-" Hesitation undercut the difference between fear and excitement.

"It'll all be over soon," Mihoshi's watery blue rose up and washed over, "that's all that they told me."

The little princess gently settled back into a slouch over their fallen game.

"I believe them, Sasami, I---I-I have to, ^we^ have to."

No reply has a way of filling a silent house till it's dead before it's holy.

"Sasami?"

"Are you really Mihoshi?"

Neither pink nor blue lifted from the faces on the floor. They were same at both ends like the white on the other side of them all. While time goes blank, no reply has a way of making a dead house fragile.

"I---I don't know what to say."

"That's okay, I know it's you Mihoshi."

"You---you ^do^?" She wiped her eyes up as the little princess slowly lifted her own with a pained but playful smile.

"Yeah, he never liked these kinds of games."

"Oh." Solemn understanding started to sink Mihoshi's face again, till she remembered Sasami's own, introducing timid to grateful smile.

"^Oh^!"

The exclamation wavered into a chuckle, further shaken out by the light giggling before her. Within a few seconds they were both squealing laughter, hugging painfully. They bawled long and away into each other's shoulder, blessed release that neither of them threatened to let go.

Giving up felt so warm and good as Mihoshi swayed the big girl like a mother.

***

A line lights straight up and down but not terribly tall. More like a bar, then more like a rectangle that should be throwing its inverse shadow into the darkness by now. Washu's silhouette wouldn't have fooled many into seeing a grown up, even in the shrunken passageway, even with arms crossed or held back and hair spreading as little as possible. The rectangle shrank back and small steps echoed into the dark. Florescent formality imitated a six-meter circle of sky just as she reached Seita's side.

Restraining him at a 42.893-degree angle had seemed most fitting at the time, being neither as petty as vertical nor as lax as horizontal. Washu removed a knuckle from her lip, an arm from across her belly, and touched a few areas on one of the screens choked by the surrounding tangle of wired boxes. A few tubes traded lights for fluids from adhesive points behind his head, and fewer invested in the inflated cushions restraining his waist, ankles, wrists, and neck. The sky remained centered over the scientist as she followed some of the larger cords to scale model circuitry cities proportioned to swallow planets. Taking a portable screen from a possibly appropriate resting place, she focused on setting it ready, not at all worried about tripping as she walked back.

The robotic breaths she took at his side kept her frozen mid-blink, dreamless sleep to any eyes. Within six air-trades their lungs matched to turn heartbeats green, but faces of forced calm could only get so close to reflexive life. Objectivity lifted itself over him, unflinching to failure as her jaw clenched, trembling her entire body. Only one trade this time, not matching, but long enough to beat the calm back in.

"Subject has not responded to the nutrient feeds, and seems unaffected by most of the antibiotics." Washu removed a small recorder like a large bullet from a notch on the portable screen and set it in the chest pocket of her long white lab coat. Tubes swayed the same.

"His metabolic and cardiovascular systems seem to be confused between a state of hyperactivity and near hibernation. Brain functions are erratic." She placed the screen where only she could read it and crossed her hands at her back. Hesitation, then both hands in the coat's lower pockets to balance the half circle pace.

"The only recent records remotely similar to these symptoms were gathered from previous subject, Yosho Jurai." Washu mentioned this unimportantly but with a slight hurry as she reached outside the light to pull in a rattle of stainless steel wheels. The portable tray didn't look sturdy enough to hold a beaker much less a large collection of syringes and complexly labeled vials.

"For the past---'41' and '36.23'," Washu looked closely at the corner of the portable screen then nowhere in particular around the subject, "he has remained either unconscious or unresponsive."

Filling the shots properly took more concentration than usual, but if anything the jaded monotone thickened.

"If you can hear me Seita, please give some signal."

Twice his lungs expanded and twice they relaxed almost exactly as they had been doing thus far. The third inhale hesitated, stopped. Apart from the electronic rhythm droning otherwise, Washu's subject had expired.

She looked at the equipment, making herself trust it, eyes on the lights around the flash and nothing else. Her hands hurt. They needed a higher purpose before they gave in to helping the closest thing strangle itself.

"At 41 and---37.12, the subject seems to -hic-!"

A feather tickled warmth into her cheeks before she slapped a heavy hand over her mouth, eyes begging 'no' at the floor. The first slip of poise dropped almost stillborn. Then into the silence, only a few forevers from being reassuring when the assassin came, a rhythm slithering up between the electric tones. Small grunts would be chuckles if they ever had the courage to come out of hiding.

Washu took a steadying step back so quietly she hoped not to feel it.

The sickly patches of corner crust were not going to give up their position, imbedding themselves into clenched wrinkles. Then tighter, the squalor, the fester of this less proportioned version of Seita's face began to nod forward. Laughter never so fast infectious; he was vomiting it out in no mercy and no time. Cackles choked themselves, drowning raven, chewing chalkboard, quieting down to the bog to regroup for a fouler boil.

Her fist was ready, maybe bleeding but definitely ready. She held it, shaking death level with poison tipped emeralds. In a single flash little glowing knuckles would break, humble, and only be a taste of things to come.

Gasping greedily at charred air, eyes still crushed inward, he was ready to bellow nails into lumps of freshly curdled blood. One note, like a sarcastic smack to one bad line, and miserable coughs were crushing his lungs. The facial tension melted soft decay around his gapping maw; he would've been curling up into himself at each bout without the restraints.

Disgust and pity killed themselves unworthy, and Washu obliviously lowered her fist. Instinct waited for another outburst, but consciousness pained away for those eyes to open.

More than a dozen breaths died to break even, and still it was labor till one final grasp at the glass, one swelling testament, mutinied to take over calm.

Seita's eyes opened like a tilted doll.

Watching him watch the angle he'd been committed to, Washu hesitantly put her short hands in deep coat pockets. She'd stopped counting, but it wasn't long before he spoke like weak and bitter drugs.

"Testing."

The turning step protested loudly as she closed the short distance between herself and the tray of syringes, she heard his head brace groan and tried not to let her skin cower off that he was surely staring over her shoulder.

"You know Professor, it probably isn't a good idea to label your placebos so blatantly."

Washu turned back to imitate unaffected, looking only at a small syringe as she tapped and tested it. A few drops of fluid landed on Seita's elbow and he moved his head slightly to watch the penetration. She heard him breath in the sensation, but figured that would be easy not to think on. Yet, as she slowly finished the dose, she felt his eyes again, up her arms, around her neck. She didn't flinch, didn't waver, but blinked calmly and wiped the hole clean.

"But it ^was^ very careful of you to---'loosen yourself up' before coming down here."

She took the opening; the first low-throat chuckle was hardly done before her eyes whirled up and into his. The light did not reflect well from the floor, making the imbedded crescents on his face even more pronounced. The patches of yellow on his unchanged white clothing were so mundane. His scalp and facial stubble, now too long to strike a match on, still did little to hide the shine of grease. And focusing for real, she caught and momentarily forgot to release a thin strip of skin on his lower lip as it danced on his fermented breath. The blue looked gray and the velvet sounded straw.

"Do you still think I'm in control?"

Washu turned to put the syringe back, mentally repeating that she had been a stone the entire moment.

"No," the machine regarded another vial, "and I'm not nearly as 'loosened up' as I could be."

She had almost filled the next injection when he changed to continue, cold sarcasm so much like soft acceptance.

"So did you at least bring some for me?"

Washu didn't turn this time as she tested the next treatment.

"Surely this is a day of celebration," he trifled cynical.

Turning, ready to administer the shot, she didn't even considering meeting his eyes again.

"Professor Hakube."

She stopped the needle centimeters away from his skin, screaming back at the very idea of hearing anything beg anything.

"Look at me."

If it was a trick it was too obvious and too late to reconsider; she was already letting this happen. Effective but unnecessary, the sake let her remember family and failure like surrender and vengeance. It was happening; The Ghost of Madness was a discard of weak, ugly, and vulnerable flesh, all at her mercy. And now she wanted to be done with the games, the doubt, and the crippling malice. She would look into his eyes now, 'unafraid' wanting nothing in return but 'unaffected' as she listened to him.

The strangling glare wasn't the same.

"It's very rude to examine a cadaver that's still talking."

Again, sinister velvet was a decrepit, almost senile imitation. Still, Washu could tell that he didn't really mean it. The entire mask did nothing but tempt her violence, and poorly, pathetically.

She absorbed every word to the core; nonetheless, finishing another clean injection and placing the tool back properly. She breathed once and pushed the tray back into the darkness with a readying voice.

"You're not---done---yet."

Walking back to the subject, she began stretching on a pair of sterile gloves and pushing her tone closer together.

"Part of everyone in this house wants me to break new ground in slow and horrible deaths, but still they agreed that it was best to find out as much as possible before there was any---retribution." A cold excess of breath seemed to make her head lighter, yet she was glad to stay a statue.

Looking up at nothing, he felt her gaze only because she knew he did.

"It took some intense persuasion on my part." Washu allowed herself a long blink, and another ice wrap for her throat. "I offered them one of your fingers as reassurance, but the sight of the saw satisfied most of them."

Three blinks were too quick and even to be reflexive as Seita crawled his eyes back down into hers. Washu felt her face hardening but had to continue while she could stop the process.

"Now then, I'm at least going to get you to properly identify yourself so that---so that they can know-"

Frustration clenched and stared a hole in his neck restraint. Seita continued to breath his noticeably long breaths, but Washu knew he wouldn't pass up a chance to fill in the blank, even in this condition.

"If I'm something 'supernatural'."

She jerked herself together, pressing her tongue against the roof of her mouth so hard it parted her teeth. Allowed only a short breath to dull the taste of condescending science, she pounded to keep her face from sharpening any further.

Little more than a loll, Seita let his face turn towards her. Something swam circles under his Adam's apple, and crawled out behind his eyes, drying dead in the sun. One more half grin readied one last overflowing performance. The blatant mortality of a nasal buzz spread cracks through seductive eloquence.

"If you want to know everything, Professor, you can't be afraid to ask."

***

Thin pinches of blood orange cotton smeared out from where the sunset should have been. Fall can creep up like a bandit, stealing away long days and warm nights. Tenchi had made a vow to admire the sunset from the height of the shrine the moment its keeper, against doctor orders and family pleas, returned to his duties. Already he'd missed it for starting up the steps too late.

"The days are only going to get shorter, Tenchi." His grandfather made no attempt to conceal his approach, and it surprised him slightly to be so disappointed.

"I know."

Tenchi sighed his response without seeming rude, frowning at the lingering eagerness for one of his grandfather's infamous surprise attacks. He relaxed only after sneaking a few glances at the serene old face beside him. A breeze picked up and distributed the music sheets to some overanxious night insects. Lingering twilight matched their silent company.

"I'm going to need someone to take over my shrine duties soon."

"What?" The apprentice turned half his body, honestly believing he'd misheard.

"It's time, Tenchi. I'm getting a little too old for this."

"But, but ^who^? Who in the world are you going to get to come out ^here^?"

His head tilted in disbelief and shrunk back in fear beneath an old knowing glance.

"Grandpa, I'm not-" Tenchi began with a nervous breath of laughter.

"No Tenchi, you're not," Katshuhito turned toward the horizon again, "but my nephew is."

"Nephew?"

Watching him take off his spectacles for a shirt polish, Tenchi caught a flash of youthful reserve in his grandfather's uncovered eyes.

"Oh. I see." Tenchi looked away and down to cough up a tiny laugh.

Then seriously; "But seriously, why the sudden change?"

"He should be able to pick up where I left off in your training."

Tenchi tried looking forward to a less old-fashioned teacher, but thoughts of training led to thoughts of violence, and thoughts of violence brought him back to morning and Washu's overly stabilized steps as she'd disappeared into her lab. Ignoring it would have taken consideration he didn't have. With one deep breath pushed and another one held, he spoke in what he hoped by now was a voice to take seriously.

"Washu's still down in the lab. Alone. Again."

When his grandfather didn't answer, he looked over, hoping those young eyes would be closed in contemplation.

"Grandpa?"

"Intelligent women are often willful, Tenchi, and they usually don't like having to repeat themselves"

Tenchi readied an answer, but sucked exasperation into a clenched face instead. Arms folded, he began to chew whatever came between his teeth. Long helpless, this silence was dead but still wet, begging to be torn away but for all that might unravel with it.

"It's getting dark, I should start heading home." The tension numbed his voice as he turned toward the steps.

"Tell me Tenchi," Katshuhito began softly.

He stopped and prepared to turn and bow apologetically for departing from his teacher's side so informally.

"Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?"

The expected judgment in the question was either well covered or completely replaced with an almost gentle curiosity, thus Tenchi remained frozen even longer. The only honest and available answer fell out of his mouth like a spare coin.

"I don't know."

He looked up to see his grandfather approach, and watched him nervously as he passed to lead the way down.

"Grandpa?" Already feeling like a naive puppet, Tenchi began to match pace with his teacher. Step by timid; he began to open his mouth.

"Tenchi."

"Yes, grandfather." His uneasiness forgot his own question and answered with reflexive formality.

"I think I'll have some drinks with your father tonight, could you go check to be sure I locked up the shrine."

"Um, sure." So nervously casual felt unforgivable, Tenchi's legs still carried him back up the stairs too quickly to correct himself.

---

Staying calm by demand, but taking long strides just the same, Tenchi made his way across the empty and darkening courtyard. After taking every other step up to the shrine door, he reached for its handle like a boy playing his first game of doorbell-ditch. A quick rattle was more than satisfactory, and Ryoko was more than enough to startle out a mid-turn gasp. She crossed her arms at the bottom of the office steps, letting hair shadow her face. The tail of her dress swayed in a light breeze.

"You know I don't like it when you sneak up on me like that."

After a silent and darkened sigh, Tenchi had scolded his feet with the worn out reprimand and taken the steps slowly.

A move like avoidance would be unforgivable now, so walking past her they were shoulder to shoulder for a moment. As soon as he lifted his left foot from her shadow he'd breath, but before he set down his right foot she spoke.

"Well Tenchi, why didn't you?"

The question boiled over in a thick scowl, spiking both feet to the ground by his organs. So many fighting stances kept the frozen pose almost natural as he waited for whatever she'd said to carry more than the shock of her voice.

Tenchi's face dried out with a thin frown. If crushing his fingertips in the silence took an hour more, it would take an hour more.

*Why does she always think she deserves a special answer?!

*...I should have been prepared for this.

*She should have the consideration to wait.

*I can't do this.

Breathing so much like calm people do, he lifted his head and continued toward the shrine steps, nearly choking to speak gruffly.

"I already said: 'I don't know.'"

Ryoko phased before he could take the first step down. He quickly dropped his focus to her elbow at the sudden burst of golden misery.

"That's not good enough." The world trembled in her throat without stuttering, and stubbornness snapped to know determination. Tenchi couldn't avoid an answer any more than he could make one up, but he tried despite all he knew.

"Just what do want me to say?" It sounded more impatient than he'd intended.

She swallowed audible and his eyes closed helpless, opening them at a tiny and terrifying sound. Small arcs of electricity were rioting between her fingertips.

"First, I want you to look me in the eye," she gulped harsh again, "I want you to look me in the eye and tell me he's really helpless."

Tenchi tilted his head away from her elbow, ready to simply offer his eyes up into hers. But the weight had never been real before, it had been distinct, excruciating, and always tied to her somehow, but it had always been a watery print. Now it could kill him if he blinked. The only thing that compared was the separate fear that had gripped, moved him when he'd faced Kagato, Seita.

"Washu and I carried him down to her lab ourselves."

He'd wagered nearly everything on getting it out on a quick look and one breath, and now the gold reminded him of a viewing.

The daughter of one of his father's friends had died, younger than he'd ever known Sasami. Having never known her or the family, it seemed strange to cry over how beautiful yet undeniably dead she looked. The rest of the service he'd cried almost uncontrollably into his mother's lap.

Ryoko didn't blink and didn't ease the arcs at her fingers.

"^He's^-" a barely audible wheeze gulped back on brittle blinks, "He's as frail and helpless as a sick puppy."

Tenchi knew he'd dropped his head back down too eagerly, but hoarded his tiny breaths of relief while he could.

*Please Ryoko, please calm down. This nightmare is so close to being over, it has to be.

Ryoko floated out of his path, facing his profile. The cracks of electricity faded.

Like before, Tenchi regretted his obvious sigh of relief the moment it fell and as it echoed all the way down the stairs. But if she wasn't making a sound, he wouldn't have to look at her again.

It was about six steps before he thought not to count them, another when Ryoko spoke again.

"You know what, Tenchi?"

He turned, first his head, then only his shoulders. She sounded more casual, but he wasn't surprised to see water narrowed in her eyes. It felt like a curse and gave a burning core to the weight's encompassing return. To push back at the pain, to preserve his life like a spiny insect, he felt himself slowly glaring back.

"Sometimes---" Ryoko swallowed and clenched her hands again, "you're really ^lousy^ at finishing what you start."

Like a drop of molten glass in his palm, everything was very clear very quickly. He felt his eyes tightening at her again, memories unbalancing in resentment that had to be too strong to be defensive. The reply came to him faster than nature but he thought about it first, for real if for a moment. He thought about it alongside ^real^ justice, then amid ^real^ devotion.

"Is Aeka still at home?"

He watched her stop time and move even less, then drop everything and watch it swirl down a whirlpool. Hair by hair, her face relaxed till it looked like a doll from a craftsman who forgot to even start with indifference, leaving things blank. As she turned away, away from ^him^, Tenchi clenched his teeth. His throat stung and his head pounded, but he told himself the rising heat in the weight was cracking it. Yes, it did feel good, did feel right as she replied 'yeah, probably' like nothing.

Air too hard to breathe, face too heavy to hold up in victory, Tenchi hadn't descended far enough to count or retrace his steps before Ryoko appeared again. This time he fell back like a frightened schoolboy.

"If he's not dead by sunrise---"

Tenchi remembered how her eyes went red under Kagato's control, how Seita's seemed ready to go white when he revealed himself like the living end. Her voice was more natural though, shaken between silk threads cutting circulation and babies in real pain. She floated down minutely closer; she'd eat him with a smile like a bomb with her name on it.

"I'll haul him out of there by his ^eye sockets^." Not much louder, tighter was much worse. Her witness backed up the stairs in a crawl without looking away.

"I'll melt his teeth together ^inside his head^." Eyes red any second now, her own teeth inseparable. Tenchi retraced two more steps without a thought and without any more distance between them.

"Then I'll plug every-single-one of his fingers---into his ^guts^." Her elbows locked in by her hips, hands out to catch all the molten glass Tenchi could run from. Then, as he slipped and stopped retreating, she lifted her gaze and wailed it over every treetop in her span of vision.

"I'm going to paint this damn forest with his ^BLOOD^!"

Carnage hands spread out and clutched a deadly sun apiece. The energy threatened to break through her fingers, and she'd grab more if she wanted. Ryoko heaved like this till the memory was immortal twice. But even as the breaths seemed to relax rather than swell her rage, Tenchi didn't blink.

It was almost dark when she let the lights die, but Tenchi wasn't counting or praying especially formally. He gulped so much regret at once he couldn't taste it, could barely feel himself choking when Ryoko looked at him, working up to something as she wrapped her arms around herself.

Pleading and desperate whatever it was; Tenchi's move to rise phased her away before one tear could leave her face. He didn't let himself stand there for too long, he had to focus on the steps and everything.

***

The mattress sank around Misaki's bare knees as she brushed Funaho's hair with lazy strokes. A thin curtain billowed from the bedposts beside them.

"The dreams must have stopped, you've slept soundly for many nights now."

Funaho sighed and idly watched her hands twirl another brush.

"They are less terrible, but---more strange."

"You mean 'stranger'." Misaki put her chin on Funaho's shoulder and pressed it in with a teasing smile. Duly ignored, she sighed.

"It can't be good for you to let yourself be so defeated."

"For centuries, my husband has been exploiting the false death of our son."

So prompt a reply, the following silence was blunt to match, Misaki's optimism retreating to be sure.

"We can persuade him better than anything, but he ^is^ The Emperor of Jurai. Sister, we've been through this too many times already. And it's still careless to even speak of it."

She brushed a thick lock with extra care and held her lips to its softness. They trembled to see Funaho's unchanged face through the sagging stone posture.

"Times will change, and Jurai will too. One day both our children will return, we can be sure of it."

Funaho caught Misaki's hand as it untangled a small hair-knot and held her cheek into it. Misaki smiled gratefully.

"Then what of your visions? Are they also stranger?" Dark Earth eyes softened shut to the gentle fingers combing through her.

"I still dream of Tsunami sometimes," Misaki soothed, "but that--- emptiness, it seems to frighten her less now."

"Yes. I wonder, does she have a sister to comfort her as well?" Funaho asked too quietly to tell if she knew the answer, leaning back into welcoming arms.

A small frown clouded Misaki's face before it was released into a tighter embrace.

"She must."

***

Mutual interest refracts more than enough to divide opposed corners. Mutual concern reflects precisely through overlapping centers. So side-by- side, if end-to-end, two sisters watch each other watch over the other.

*He is going to explain.

*It would seem.

*Is he going to expire?

*Perhaps.

...

...

*Is she going to understand?

*Possibly.

*Will she try to uncover?

*She will.

...

*Do you want to interfere?

*I do not think we should be waiting.

*I do not think we should have waited.

Two sisters observe, relative to place and purpose, relative to either side of blood.

***

Washu kept watching as they both endured another grating bout of coughs. Seita let her looked even closer, unaffected as he scraped his air back into place. Into every corner of the brittle frame, she stared till she thought she saw a scarecrow nearly obsolete long enough to be an oracle.

*...afraid to ask'.

She watched him reexamine the platform beneath his feet. It would keep him from pouring onto the floor if she were to disarm the restraints. Time extended parallel to the echo of his advice, gaining, then head to head.

Eventually he was just breathing again, genuinely patient or genuinely uninterested in her response. This sent Washu searching down to his mouth. The cracks and discoloration were more than an average cynic would wish on a star. In searching every detail she nearly had to wake herself out loud that he was including his smile but wasn't going to laugh.

*-afraid to ask'.

*How can he still be so ^pompous^?!

*-afraid to ask'.

*Damn him

Washu scanned quickly over the equipment's major parts, vital signs, and delicate areas. She stood to lift the control from her pocket and spread an abrasion between confusion and will.

*Even if I am: I can't be.

Without a bit of climax, or even formality to her movements, The Greatest Genius in the Universe gave the commands to undo the restraints.

"I am not afraid."

She watched the millimeters of his rising brow, speaking clear surprise over hisses and snaps of deflating and retracting machinery. When the process was complete her voice would be professional.

"Tell me."

Seita watched his wrists as he bent to massage them, nearly mesmerized by the reflexive nature of the movement. When the trance exhausted its turn he still kept his head down. Little by little, Washu noticed every limb draw in closer like illegal geometry, a fetal position standing tall.

The decision further reassured itself. It was easy to explain this idea that freedom as a handout could be even more subjugating. She would agree or disagree but know before his eyes completed their crawl up her arms.

*Am I trying to humiliate him?

As soon as she saw the upper whites he stopped and bowed into his arms as they folded tight over his stomach and the most violent coughs. It would take longer to breath again after this. He hadn't smiled and wasn't going to laugh.

*Even if I am: I can't.

The way he slowly trembled a knuckle into his temple it would seem he hadn't touched himself in eons. And how he kept his eyes closed through the final breaths back to easy rhythm; Washu stretched herself skin-thin between first losing patience, or confidence.

Seita opened his eyes only slightly and only for his hand as he thumbed the tip of his little finger where the majority of the nail had broken off. Confidence got to lose first as Washu could not tell if this was an attempt to stall or prepare, instead wondering if the little shard was still among the detritus in Tenchi's room.

"Identity."

Science leapt back into place on his word, still clenching every nerve as he slouched his voice and shoulders at the floor, more delicately massaging the severed point. Washu forgot every berserk second of resisting the reflex to look below his face with every millimeter it took him to look back into her eyes.

"That's where it all comes from---and goes to." Like morbid humor suddenly not funny amid dying, he smiled a little. Though he tried seeing her as cellophane, his own visible exhaustion promised no more psychological warfare than could be waged with the pieces of a lost childhood icon.

Washu frowned plain and simple impatience, but dropped everything that it struck him down so quickly, crossing one forearm across his belly to support the other as he looked into his palm.

And if he ^was^ controlling the shakes in his fingers, then what? Washu took a moment to let the horrid question answer itself. Within seconds he was clearly forcing it, squeezing water from a handful of stone cold air. And if he was trying to open another portal, he knew he couldn't. Furnace betrayed, he whispered to himself with ash powder on dying smoke.

"Comes from," he lowered his hand, crossing both over his stomach, lying back to look up, "and goes to."

Rage stabbed ideas at her, impaling her hands as they guarded her guts; he was letting his body go before anyone had a chance to unleash their temper, and all of them were eating their instinctive insults to his sanity. Making her lungs take water and her hands demand attention, she raised the recorder's volume along with the angle of his table. The patient ignored her actions, but caught her with a human's sideways glance the moment they were still. In the next instant everything was the overly composed monotone of a determined eyewitness.

"My birth name is my legal name---and my name is Nihils Shima. I was last formally employed by the Mocarri branch of Inter-world Hospital as their 'head' of psychiatry."

The age of his word games flashed by too quickly to count, leaving Washu as a gasping statue in its trail of light. And Hell, in explaining itself, did in the same moment sound more like truth than faith ever could. Memories dragged their feet and threw out their hands at the sight of their journey's end. Washu closed her eyes, again hating how she would remember those first times being afraid of being right, never before hating not being able to cry. It would be easy, she knew, easy as evil to give up right now.

She opened her eyes, holding her vitals out to the altar of her will. Ready for anything for real; for starters she would force herself to see the entire family on the other side of his eyes.

A halfhearted grin could be deader than a mummies scowl, and whatever he knew he moved like a proud liar, retreating from face to face with his other hand this time, pressing the remaining nail into his bottom lip. Then, by a voice to match all these willfully bad imitations of former confidence, he spoke to Washu like he knew her.

"You're not really ^that^ surprised, are you?"

"No." The answer was unexpectedly prompt, quick to learn that pity couldn't fully leave for both sides unless hatred went with it.

After seeming to take a moment to acknowledge a well-parried attack, her opponent continued more neutrally, again to a distant corner of the lab.

"When I said that Kagato had needed my help studying the dimensional tear," he tilted his head into a slow blink, "I never said that I had more than a rudimentary knowledge of such things."

Freshly, if violently cleared, Washu's mind took this next confession like a mild aftershock of the first. With a quick yet controlled frown she let the impulsive question out to care for itself.

"So why would he abduct you then?"

The suspect endorsed a smooth breath that only helped the interrogator rediscover her impatience.

"The accounts of my relations with Kagato were accurate, but simply incomplete."

Arms folded and eyes narrowed, Washu let herself pace a bit.

"It still doesn't compute, Kagato was power-mad enough, but he'd have never even tolerated a ^shrink^."

Washu caught the side of his smile and a tiny laugh through his nose. She wondered at the layers and angles tracing back to being amused now by such a semi-derogatory term?

"Yes, he considered my field to be a counterproductive joke, and told me so before he explained his motives."

"Then why?" Washu preferred and perfected her calm in quick purges, almost needing another for the length of the next pause.

"How ironic that my name still means nothing to your memory." Humorlessness examined itself, then demanded the report be absorbed immediately. "Try to understand, Professor Washu Hakube, at the time I was a noted authority on the therapeutic treatment of anxiety and depression."

"^Depression^?" Washu felt her eyebrows collide over the broken line of her insect's whisper.

"I was skeptical myself, though he quickly assured me that the problem was entirely coincidental. I suggested a number of pharmaceutical solutions, but he hated the very idea of pills even more."

Biting down, Washu's head tilted forward at some unusual placebo for balance.

"His chronic impatience made the first few sessions rather difficult, but I eventually taught him a few calming exercises and some ways to navigate away from routes to---'negative self perception'."

The weak laugh broke thorough unexpectedly, hissing out through her teeth as she shook her head.

"All this time, that maniac was just depressed."

Washu lectured herself, decapitating the laugh with its own momentum. She stared hard at the subject again and had to tighten; reflexive comparisons weren't supposed to move in slowly like this. Escaping the thought, the frost spreading over quicksand, took a mental tongue bite and something else to think about. She checked the monitors again and was able to frown more naturally.

"Actually, he was correct that the cause was purely external."

"Hm?" Understandably distracted by the data, she killed herself to ignore it so that he might forget it. The explanation's new angle was more than enough, though the bitter aftertaste of confusion still lingered.

"He was at first hesitant to talk about it in detail, but eventually couldn't dismiss the connection."

Washu glared in suspicion to stand guard alongside her curiosity.

"Once he'd forced himself out of the initial instinct to run screaming from it---"

Prepared enough for having little warning, Washu let her eyes meet his. And she'd been too quick to accept his defeat. There was enough oblivion left in him for one more petrifying glare swirled out on a cold croon.

"---its mere presence would crawl in a malady of emotion like a degenerative radiation.

"The portal." Realization flashed out beneath Washu's breath on another dirty cloud of raw memories.

Those first impressionable days were charged; she'd replaced suspicion with fascination like there was no end in sight. They'd laughed away any sign of small-mindedness like it was threatening to come back into style. Sasami had laughed the most, free and sweet.

The reassurance had been gentle and wise, it was unnerving simply because it was different, everyone would know that by now. The only peasant's thought she'd kept around through oblivion's innocent appearances was the easiest. But why settle for thinking that it was 'looking back'?

Washu kept close watch over the fold of her arms, trying not to listen to the machine's pace and volume. For some reason, accepting that she couldn't ignore the feel of his stare made it easier.

*He likes watching me make the connections on my own.

*He's waiting for me to jump ahead---wants me to bite off the metal points of his fork before I've finished what's in my mouth.

*Still, this must be bigger to him than anything he's dealt out before. He'll want to make it special, whatever the explanation is.

*It must be the last kick for him to see me shy away from new knowledge.

*So...

She only moved her legs as she rose from the chair.

*So I can't rush in. If he gets what he wants he'll open up---and then he'll realize there's nothing he can do with it.

The message sent to put her best foot forward never reached her knee and didn't lift her eyes on the way back.

*No.

*Even if I am, I can't be. This is about science. This time it is. This is about the truth.

She finished walking over to stand directly in front of him, warming up by imagining her head kept down at the same angle he needed to see her.

"So it affected him too, and you were just there to---keep him focused."

No answer served as no argument.

"But he eventually decided you'd make a better guinea pig than a comfort blanket."

The machine was loud, but she could hear their silence beneath it.

"And, according to your observations, the only ^physical^ effect of excessive exposure to this dimension is actually---,"she began to pace to quicken the appropriate words, "an increase in genetically enhanced abilities."

She looked at his hands on the next pace back, the one without the nail must have been up at his mouth again.

"And apparently this effect can be ^accelerated^---accelerated, or ^reversed^."

The pacing scientist stopped, ready to look up into his broken eyes with a reinforced will, already speaking before his mouth came into view.

"Then how-"

He was pinching his sinus, slouching into his hand. His eyelids and jaw twitched to close tighter. The pain was shiny on his skin. Again the same odor came back like it was fresh, and in wrinkling her nose Washu narrowed her eyes to see his jaw chattering. The fear was wet around his mouth.

It happened sometimes, her nose and lips would feel raw as if the air had suddenly turned especially caustic. Washu felt her face go limp and noticed that she wasn't blinking when she reached without regarding her hand. Rattle and cold, metal and glass, then the syringe rose up into her field of vision, staying out of focus.

*I could break him. I wouldn't even need any tools.

A curdling wheeze slopped into his throat and his hands tightened. The empty one was still like a claw reaching for his heart, but obviously just reaching to hold his other arm in a self-pitiless embrace.

*I could do it now.

His jaw was tightening vicious and too big for his face. Even crippled mute in its eve, she recognized the laugh from her dreams, from Ryoko's.

*But I've gone through all the arguments on either side of it. None of them work.

She imagined him phasing backwards into the machines. Her ears would clog with rot at the world of his voice. Her eyes would shrivel like heated rubber as he buried her in a desolation of wires and tubes.

*None of them work.

Washu turned back to her chair, leaving her imagination to crawl after her ankles, wretched, good as dead by so much comparison. Checking the recorder in her pocket, lowering the volume of the monitors, she folded her hands and waited for his next coughing fit.

He did, and in less time was breathing evenly again.

*Because he's not done yet.

"By the way," she blinked almost naturally as he glared back, sucking out the leftover fumes of his drained heaven, "I've no intention of referring to you as anything---but 'Seita'."

Washu began to doubt the lack of expression on her face as the patient forgot his own. Her voice suffered for it, wavering only a little, but obviously tightening to correct.

"Now you---you have to defy most of the physical laws in the universe by explaining how a dimension, this apparent proof of a true 'void'-" she wetted her throat and eyes, cleaned her slate, "how it can grant, and then suddenly ^revoke^ power."

She let go, closing her eyes for a deep breath, encouraged to see his non-expression unchanged.

"However you plan to do this, whatever your distant past may be, it would be unforgivable, impossible to ever consider you as a contributor to medicine---or any field of science."

Seita blinked, longer then longer, then lifting hardly more than half of his vision.

He looked so ugly, Washu finally let in the thought. The rodent- black stubble was ready to rattle like dead reeds in the wind, the sickly skin still piled like old white wax beneath his eyes, and almost every proportion now seemed to stop short or linger. She saw through his sweat stains and remembered having him and his garments cleaned. There were no tattoos, no noticeable scars, and she thought about this and how she'd probably poorly prepared herself to see them.

But the blue was still waiting, unshaken from the throne despite the court's changes. Washu thought again without thinking; how could they still be the same eyes? How could he still seem to be waiting for something from me?

And thinking while watching without looking for it, the answer fell flat out again.

"But you don't know 'how'; you only know 'why'."

His eyes opened all the way, and he was young. Washu made fists against her tears, letting each hateful memory back to guard against whatever he was about to share, whatever it was that had let a talented doctor make himself in this image.

*Speak or nothing now, Washu.

"Isn't that right," she pulled her head back a little, trembling less, "Seita?"

His eyes dropped to the floor, and the sudden movement almost gave Washu a start.

"It really would be more cohesive...easier, to ^show^ you rather than ^tell^ you."

The movement back into her eyes was expected, but the fear was not, not his, not like this. She'd seen people swallow their terror before, even spit it back out at whatever was attacking them, but no one had ever violated it before. He'd made his fear a supple victim in restraints, subjecting it, degrading it.

"But I can't."

Before Washu's fists gave way he lifted his own limply, not especially trying to arch his fingers perfectly. He narrowed his eyes down at the steeple, speaking loudly enough to be heard by the closest person.

"I really can't."

The following silence gave Washu a chance to choose between calm and dead.

"You are done dwelling on your machine's failure to put me where I am now."

A silk ribbon wrapped around her head with each ghost of his voice. Her teeth would crack any minute to cut it.

But she'd finished with that, done that childishness in like a monster would kill a child if it could.

"You've been forcing yourself to approach this situation differently. And that's good."

Seita looked over his fingertips with Seita's look of enraptured and crippling influence.

"Because this has nothing to do with vengeance...or pity."

He swallowed loudly and pressed a tremble into his fingers.

"My ^will^ has-"

The next word, or its vacant space, closed his eyes. Washu stepped forward and regretted it, simply trying to hear him better. She cursed her lingering reflexes and the day that Seita was born. He leaned back, lowered his hands, and opened his eyes again moments later, already looking over Washu's head.

"And so I've only my testament."

A shiver and a laugh attacked his jaw in secret, but Washu could see, and was ready with a stern sanity when he blinked to look back down at her. Seita smiled a nervous tick of Seita's smile.

"Because this has nothing to do with loss...or generosity."

***

Sasami and Mihoshi stepped out onto the porch, rubbing their arms for the wind that received them. They both exaggerated their shivers almost playfully without looking at each other. From a solemn gaze shared across the empty field, Sasami noticed Aeka sitting in the swing-bench close by them. With a guardian on either side she couldn't see much more than a quiet profile.

"Oh! I---uh, there you are, Aeka." Sasami tried to recover.

"Hm?" Mihoshi glanced over drearily. "Oh-hey! Aeka, I didn't even see you there!"

Aeka lowered her head to close her eyes and might have been considering a frown. Seeing this, Sasami shifted her weight from foot to foot, thinking of what not to say.

"You missed the sunset." Softly stated, it only brought her company down a few confused levels.

"Oh." Sasami lowered.

"Well, you can still kind-of see it." Mihoshi put her hand over her eyes and squinted.

Aeka gave them as long as they needed to catch up to her silence. The wind never subsided but hadn't grown colder yet.

"Would you like to come and sit with me?"

After a few blinks back to life, the youngest minds bounced the soft tone and its meaning off each other. An easy enough decision, they decided she'd been speaking to both of them and sat down at the same time.

The bench's creaks cut into the would-be soothing wind. Waves of the tall grasses remained even, unconflicted and uninteresting. Sasami looked up at Azaka, then over at Kamadake, realizing how long it might still be till she was ready to speak to her sister, remembering how, on only a few distant occasions, the guardians' capacity for stillness and silence had deeply unnerved her.

"Sasami," Aeka struck into the silence moments before it could have been peaceful, "do you know what is happening today?"

The younger princess griped her knees, not terribly afraid of crying, thus frustrated and determined to downplay it when she did. She gave Mihoshi the most reassuring glance she could, even if the detective was hiding her eyes in her own lap.

"Washu has him down in her lab again," Sasami didn't look over at Aeka, but did keep her head high, "something happened and now he can't do any of the things he used to."

Aeka remained motionless.

"I made Mihoshi tell me the rest---I'm sorry." She added minutely.

Less considerate for letting another silence build up, and harsher for muffling her emotions with so much formality, Aeka also steadied her gaze but kept it from her sister.

"Yes." She breathed only once.

"Now, I know that I've told you this before, but I want you to listen to me as closely as you can."

Lip trembled, then bit, Sasami looked down and up with some strength and a mouth almost ready to fill in what she knew her sister would say.

"None of this has been your fault, Sasami. I want you to remember this above everything else."

The silence managed to reach towards a comfort level again, despite Sasami's efforts to respond, regardless of Mihoshi's withdrawal.

"^Tenchi^." Aeka whispered to herself and pulled up the surrender of the other girls.

Their host was walking through the grass towards them, his shrine uniform flapping idly over his low shoulders.

Sasami tried to smile when she realized she couldn't wave, and hoped the others were doing the same.

Tenchi was looking at them without a line of relief. As he came closer Aeka realized that he was anxious, if less than hopeful for comfort, and was looking only at her.

***

If he didn't pull it off, she would.

Washu had watched every one of his fingers take its turn, twice, at caressing the remaining nail. Closely engrossed, Seita might very well know every microscopic detail of his skin. He also might have found the perfect distraction, delay, and chisel for Washu's nerves. The rage was waiting for her to get careless or obsessive, so it felt right to absently scratch her eye. At the crack of his knuckles a finger froze on her eyelid, ready to make a funny face if ever she was.

"Do you remember when I recounted returning to my old home?"

Asked simply enough, for a ghost, Washu didn't let any phantoms slow her face as she looked up and ready to reply. He was holding his arms with his head down again. The subdued posture stole her voice long enough to know he wasn't expecting it.

"I hadn't been gone from it for quite so long as I suggested," he breathed away commitment and criticized himself without pity or apology, "that was a rather ^base^ deception."

Washu wasted a deep breath preparing for a response she didn't have or need.

"The few people I'd known personally ^were^ gone, but this only served as further free rein to tracking down Kagato and-"

*If he chuckles to himself like this one more time...

"I followed trade routes," he bit a high notch into his air, "cruisers headed toward the kind of wonders he liked to collect. But even through all the beautiful sights and my freedoms, I began to feel a bit discouraged, a bit like a ghost."

He lifted his head enough to show her his deadweight frown, or to have it stop him from meeting her eyes.

"I started searching in random directions, mentally shooting my perception through an estimated number of light years, then retracing my path. Although I was fairly good at keeping track of my location, I eventually--- I eventually lost my place."

Lowering his head again, continuing before Washu could decide which position was least unnerving.

"I took off in a blind rage, searching so rapidly that stars, then whole galaxies blurred into a fantastic mass of silver and amber slivers. I kept mentally commanding more speed long past the physical capacity of any ship. Then the slivers began to thin, darkening until there was nothing but black silence, and me still trying to cut through it."

A quick smile and a short breath for nothing gained and nothing left.

"It turned white."

Emeralds in the fists of brilliant hands turned darker for pressure at the sudden movement. Seita's head pounded back, eyes remembering in the lights above them were decadent with awe.

"I didn't see it in the distance, there wasn't any gradual period of gray, just a transition back to the same surroundings Kagato had first left me in."

Peeling back cracking lips, Seita barred the grind of his distinctly clean teeth and tilted his head slightly for not being able to cower back any farther. Washu wondered at the vividness of his memory and churned at the possibility of sharing.

"The change was so abrupt that I probably would have had a violent reaction, if I'd still been able to feel my body.

"I stopped."

He withdrew his lips inward, wincing at so many things, speaking too quietly again.

"It was like throwing myself upward, just reaching the sky, and then plummeting back."

Hardly a laugh gave him hardly more than a cough, but kept his eyes closed.

"But my curiosity has always been legion," he drooled out a smile, "so I willed myself forward again."

Washu felt the tiny vibration of his trembling chin in the fibers of her skull.

"And back in the white---I turned around."

Terror won, turning cruel, cranking his eyes open ceremoniously and spreading them over the childlike first of the chosen faithful.

"And I had done it. I---could ^see it^---an immeasurable avalanche, chaotic black spreading over empty white, spreading towards me." Dry air trembled in his boggy throat till it took on residue.

"My initial shock became quaint as intuition propelled me in an inverse retreat, the neutral ground building me up as the universe-"

Seita's smile never had a chance beyond his barred teeth.

"^Shrank^!"

Washu did not blink, or waste time congratulating herself on a solid prediction as Seita's cheeks drug, eyes fluttered, and mouth tried to stay closed.

"Eventually--- all the hidden dimensions of existence---I could've covered them with my hand like a melting piece of faux fruit," he bit his lip back into a manic smile, "^like an oozing ink stain^!"

Soft plastics moaned to the lolling sway of his head and the silent chuckles jerking his torso.

"Physics---almost archaic; it was larger and more complex than anyone would ever know. Entropy---almost irrelevant; it was ever growing. And I-- -I had made it to the god's-eye-view."

His nose whistled louder than a fading voice and he winced tighter than withdrawn lips.

"But..." he managed to speak just clearly enough for someone who'd decided not to hear anything else, "I was alone."

He hugged himself for a violent strangle.

"I orbited that little bobble over and over, maintaining my distance and its size. But there were no voices, no revelations."

Drain-doubled exhaustion, his voice had to crawl awhile.

"So," he angled his head down, staring dead into her eyes, "I turned again, keeping the universe behind me."

Hesitantly, Seita looked back into the light above them, eyes smoldering to turn the oceans of essence into wasted ether.

"I was not the chosen, not the ambassador of enlightenment."

Washu blinked for necessity after he threw down his blinders to better tear them open past the seams.

"I was the ^accident^, the ^mistake^!" His over-eyes sagged into a delirious grin and calm. "The imperfection...the inescapable potential for error."

Though he seemed to relax the physical grip on himself, he squirmed to somehow escape exposure. He swung his head to the side again to huddle back into his neck.

"And so, I had nothing left but to make my presence known. I concentrated, not on my body, or voice, but on my presence. It was rather like a necessary inversion-" some strength massaged the tension from his neck, "'inversion of meditation', focusing on everything that I was, my memories and foresights and all the scattered debris I could summon forth, and out again."

It was common to maintain a level of cold for sterility in a medical room. Washu wondered if she'd been excessive, or was being immature.

"At least in space, in existence, you can look into that blackness and know there's some speck of dust or clashing asteroid out there. But, when I looked at that pure, and perfect void-

Seita swallowed.

"Perhaps I was not especially hopeful to begin with, as it didn't strike me as any great injustice to receive no reply."

He closed his mouth tightly and tilted his head forward, submerging in the haunting frailty of recognized delusions.

"And then I relaxed. And then I gave up."

Washu followed his eyes over to some equipment she'd neglected to keep out of sight, then bent invisibly to see more of his expression.

It was Seita. No more doubt or detail to be considered, and every memory to support. This was the life that had wielded madness over all she cared for. The singed voice carried the sickly form, the form beneath the lingering gleam of deception that swirled into a roar of glory. She had failed to escape. The wavering moments of deliverance had been naive. If he revealed this as the next great 'session' she would deserve her pain. Stupid. How could she have considered, even conceived any direction of pity? All these pauses for breath and changes in posture, even the most convincing flare of emotion in his eyes couldn't be anything more than spiteful vanity.

Washu didn't bother hiding her shivered arms or holding up her shouldered stone of a mind. She stared to the place the blue would fall, crashing open white, and hollowing out her will.

*Stupid.

*Now, here he comes.

*Tenchi...Ryoko, forgive me.

"It was not an epiphany."

Seita's mortality looked back at her without staring, without penetrating or smothering. Surrender, like sincerity, could soften, but his eyes couldn't help but reflect something more appropriate, and believable. Washu swallowed his helplessness; while victims claimed offense and champions met defeat with honor, the few true monstrosities could impale their capacity for ambition and apology on the same star.

"It was not a revelation."

He subtly pulled her eyes up to the lights with his.

I didn't 'feel', or 'just know' it. I ^embodied^ it.

Washu jerked her head at the strange vibration and found Seita's fists trembling at his sides.

"And-was-knowledge.

"And-was-power.

"They were bastard infants after what filled me past the atom."

Seita carefully, though with a direct and unaffected spread of fingers, grasped for the largest sides of his head, holding everything to a quiet polished rasp.

"I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip my jaw apart like a pile of flawed pearls strung on stale jelly. I wanted my life spread before me, old meat on indestructible metal, uninspired, and wasted. The death I deserved, was the same cruelest irony that the lowest life earned, only I would have the one hell of ^knowing^ its approach."

Washu blinked the pain from her eyes, not thinking how on earth she could have left her gaze on a light for so long, just trying to listen calmly.

"All my will groveled; if I could just block it out, escape---if I could just close-my-eyes-"

Heavy breaths pushed up to keep his vision unflinching.

"I'd never been able to blink on the inside, and I'd forgotten, till I made my own darkness. The sudden haven startled me open again."

*If he grips himself any tighter I'll have to-

"I---was then ^acknowledged^, allowed ^my^ ^self^. My body was sensually present and alive, yet untouched by matter or time. My thoughts and memories swirled to the tips of my teeth like a warming drink."

Tearing raw and brittle through sharpened throats, he again quickened the furnace beneath his gaze to smother the light above them.

"This stray stain, for an insurmountable breath, recognized and cradled by the ^precursor to existence^, an emptiness that needed-nothing...but had ^embraced^ ^me^!

Stabbing routine, one coughed and both tensed through the silence.

"Perception is nothing till it is returned, and gifts are shackles till their price is known!

Washu's eyes widened and walled up as the bitter, isolated superiority swung down on its thin supports to drive her down.

"And there was no hesitation, for there was no bargain. It was never a matter of being 'persuaded'." Seita swallowed and eased out his hands, giving life to keep his face level after letting stilts sway like halos.

"I was-not a willing victim, and I am-not a dissatisfied customer. The agreement was sealed to the envy of fate, by the imbedded, 'natural' chaos and brilliance I'd-lived-to-take---for the infinity and perfection that waited-to-reclaim. As Oblivion's intentions were blank, so my desires were clear."

He reached out, and up, and as tight as stoically refused decay.

"I turned on the universe. And with its white gloves over my ^own^ ^hands^, I prepared to grasp existence, to hold everything, only to then will myself without and apart, imperceptible, weaving back into the first and final perception."

Drained fangs tried to sneer menacingly and managed to convey his horrid taste into Washu's mouth. Unyielding irises still held their own in holding out the end of forgiveness.

"And I knew this 'everything' for what it was: a tolerated accident, a curious experiment left to its own easily dismantled designs. The angles of life are ^nearly^ uncountable, yet they will never reach infinity, and are farther still from perfection.'

A little extra curl milked a little more venom to dry the irises.

"I had suspected all along. But of course I'd always shied, always cowered behind the formality of needing...'more', 'more' ideas, 'more' of an answer. Yet this ^stain^ was there, plain as life, making space seem no more or less than the space it occupied. And with each growth this tumor gripped me anew. The nature and nurture of my capacities, achieved and implanted, all came together, transmutating my existence till my quarrel with Kagato seemed like such a quaint and ironic little game."

Pitiless blue shut in forced and exploited ecstasy, a deep inhale shivering like an overwhelming perfume to obscure hypothermia.

"I had bathed in the light before the darkness. I had danced past the universe's boundaries; it was time for me to know its depths."

He began to smile down on her, but it quickly collapsed back into a sarcastic smear of pale rubber, black stubble; sickly grayed spite.

"And oh how I 'plunged', wallowing and climaxing in the varied minds of victims and hosts alike, enraptured that I would hold the sanity of all existence in my hand, one day able to reshape every angle of consciousness. Don't you see, Professor? Science, even perverted science, can never, and should never be erased---repented, apologized and begged away. These...'sessions' were necessary because they have never been so possible.

Washu watched him flatten himself back into the supports, catching the skin of his balance after reaching for her air. She decided to breathe when the hacking coughs reached their apex, but felt left out of the decision to relax when his expressions turned their most violent. However tight the tendons, they were small, and however abrasive the voice, it was infected.

"Mark! Me! 'Little Washu', I ^am^ The Ghost of Madness. I ^am^ the enslavement of nightmares, the living age of compassion's inversion! I am the self-and-chosen ^ambassador of oblivion^! I've sculpted---drawn out centuries of obscured and twisting knowledge, a body of work that could-"

Trembling down from his eyes, out from his jaw.

"-transform all of science-"

Scraping the spoiled rind to light on what words could have been.

"-^into a harem of drooling lunatics^!"

Each exhale had been pulling the words thinner, cruelty's irony to make a fading tyrant speak like puberty. And Seita made to glare terror, and Washu realized that each time before he'd looked at, through, but never into her eyes. She watched the net of woven diamonds, so long supporting and cutting itself for his face; it disintegrated like a copper shroud, caressed to dust after eons under the sea.

Seita jerked into himself, imploding with exertion as he gave out to desperation, fingers arched before his face, trembling and slipping from their holds in not quite perfect sync. For something that had mocked time for so long, the last ditch collapsed inward pitifully quick. Washu let this thought soften her entire body as her subject began to lower his hands, draining back to less than the hollowed stone he'd begun his witness from.

"And I've 'nothing' to show for it."

Waiting to see where his hands came to rest, waiting too long for them to find a better place than beneath his arms, Washu tried, harder than she wanted, against her disapproval of the saying, to 'not think, and just listen'.

Back again to the initial fear at the realization of her own mind, back again to the terror pouring out from the first glimpse of Seita's 'real' eyes, and back again to these, his all but cowering remains. The oil shimmer like the shiver, like the stench would be soon; it matched the records and warnings on the machines behind him. It helped her to not think and just listen, even if that meant speaking before he stretched the next moment to mute himself completely.

"Go on."

Washu adjusted her knees to the new gravity brought by the echo of what could not have been a motherly tone. She watched Seita for any response, still fighting back images of voices and vigils, countless societies and their scientists, countless geniuses and their utopias. They were all screaming into deaf skies as they fell from their mountains and sank into their seas, dragging their podium ships down, or hoarding them away in sterile rubber.

Seita did not respond, but spoke in the perfect tone to confirm he was continuing unaffected, and that it didn't matter that Washu would know better. It didn't bother her that he kept his head down, or spoke again only just loudly enough for her recorder, but please, she begged as if joined with Ryoko's mind, please don't let your expression dry solid like that.

"The 'how' was in the 'why', Washu, if it hadn't already occurred to you. My research is funded by its methods as much as by its results."

Not caring if he was pausing for a calm breath or a choking cough, Washu's mind chewed to one side whether the knowledge about to be passed, purged, would be worth the ordeals her family, the universe, had already endured. She swallowed it whole without a flinch, back to watching him look up at the light.

"All I ^have^, and all I ^know^ from my relationship with oblivion, stems from base analysis."

He closed his eyes and gripped himself to the rise in the machines' activities. His voice struggled harsher.

"By oblivion's encouragement, by my ambition, again: know madness by wielding it, and again: control consciousness by wielding it. Time under matter...matter under life...life under will...will under thought...thought...under consciousness. Delusion, chaos, madness---to doubt...doubt to apathy...apathy...to the fall of the sentient will...to the fall of consciousness, the fall of existence."

Something heavy fell back down Seita's throat by sheer surprise, the sweat was darkening larger patches on his clothing.

"If---through my sessions---apathy can spread to dissolve---and, if there is some force...some authority behind even the precursor to existence...if the 'experiment' folds on itself...it will be cancelled."

Emeralds watered, ill prepared that the search might finally show an end's corner. Jagged stars of ice raged through Washu's vessels. She wanted to yank him down by the collar, rip his eyes open with her own, find some reassuring deceit. Not ready to reopen once her visions held each other shut, she listened for his movements beneath the tones of inefficient medicine.

Remembering those few looks directly into the portal, the white behind the blue, she hated that she'd known, that he was telling her. So much was too late. He was hanging his head back towards her now; she'd look up without thinking, and she hated that too. She'd been right to be terrified during his rise, and was wrong now to fear his fall. There was no protection against his gaze, even when it was begging her for defeat. No wall, no guard capable or necessary as the appointed cure for Will surrendered to its own medicine.

"There, I've given you oblivion and myself---nothing. Whatever else;" the last of life hourglassed through his teeth as he took as little breath as possible, "it was that night---when I would have strengthened beyond my--- when---when I met Tsunami---I finally accepted---was able to realize that my work would never be my own."

Washu Tried to look away, but all she could do was open her eyes wider, even after he closed his own.

"And I tell you, for no humanity or ambition, that there was only one, only a single desire that ran deeper than my nearly unaffected exchange of creation for control."

Wincing at the pain in his cough didn't feel appropriate, and it hurt like swift punishment. So Washu opened her eyes, bitter weak as a child when an illusion dies; Seita's mania hung over her with frayed strings and tarnished mirrors exposed.

"It must have remained subconscious, in hiding for so long---from the moment I saw the truth of existence."

When before he'd looked down from her eyes rather than for himself, it hadn't been as obvious. Now this was torment too, and again Washu couldn't cry, and that was the same.

"In all my searches, I never found a being, an entity, nothing singularly composed of truth and compassion. Even Tsunami, at one with an innocent child, and even her sister, at odds with all not under her power, neither of them are as truly omnipotent as their followers might think them, might ^hope^ them to be."

Another thick gulp of nothing tried to dislodge the lump in his throat. Washu had quieter and better, if short, luck.

"No, plenty of angles, but no centers."

Seita pried his eyes up again and looked at her like a strange reflection. He wanted to turn away again, but he merely spoke on in plain resignation.

"This is an entirely inappropriate word for it, but I took---'comfort' in the idea that I would embody, would become---the equivalent of---an entity of pure---"

Failed, falling without moving more than closing his eyes again, and Washu knew she couldn't follow him, no longer capable of another encouraging word, an empowering hatred. Another intruding memory came and left all but stillborn, there were animal specimens in it.

When her subject spoke again he seemed almost ready.

"I inspired myself; I would become a being so threatening to the continuation of sentient life...so as to demand the emergence...^of an opponent^."

He opened his eyes on her then, pushing out ending words in a desperate grab. The effort strangled him with his own lungs, but he fought it back long enough to loathe out his reiteration, black soiling white, bleeding through both sides.

"^If there was not an 'ultimate good' in existence, I would create the need for one^."

Washu expected a physical climax over anything to reply, but he just pressed his head back and eyes in, neck strained to hold his trembling jaw. The machines were giving her what sounded like her last warning, but she told herself not to think, just to listen.

And Seita gave up everything without surrender or apology, giving everyone what they wanted and his smug half smile.

"But you can take power and comfort now, Professor Hakube. The path to my 'opportunity' was a lonely accident---to the extent that 'first' and 'last' are all but irrelevant; the conditions that made it possible would be nearly impossible to recreate."

A slightly more than invisible measurement increased his half of the smile.

"But you still want to ^try^---to ^succeed^."

By shock and exhaustion it was impossible to tell if he'd given her insight or foresight. And as he set his head back and closed his eyes into invisible breaths, the second, silent part should have given more of a clue than it did.

"^You will^."

First staring long and silent at him and himself, Washu adjusted the table more horizontally as she walked past him. She looked at the machines' data and only read it once.

***

Ryoko had been officially declared 'asleep' up on the rafter. The other family members, even the heads, were drinking their tea in unwritten silence.

Mihoshi curled up in an afghan, holding the warm cup tightly to fight off the autumn wind's chill if she couldn't hide from its murmur. Sasami mimicked her almost unnaturally, save for the unresponsive cabbit weighing down her smaller blanket.

Nobuyuki pored his father in law another saucer of sake, having gone the long hours of the evening without asking when anyone wanted more, and never being incorrect. The lines of age hung out in the open with dignity, spectacles neatly folded away.

Tenchi sat next to Aeka, sipping his tea. She continued the easy part of her crochet and matched his decision to look at anything but the other people in the room. Having been very good, in context, about not burdening the clock's speed with extra glances, she allowed herself a quick check. Her eyes moved back down, and hesitantly to Sasami, to Tenchi, and to her dozing sister again.

"Sasami, I think it's time to go to bed."

"It's over."

The entire living room swung themselves at the closet without rising, or tumbling over. Head down, hands crossed behind her, Washu stood away from the lab door as it took its time to swing closed again.

Ryoko moved too slowly not to tremble as she peeked over the side and down on her mother. Unusually large hair for a child sounded like plastic bags and thin branches amid the wind outside. Washu didn't notice as Tenchi almost lifted his shoulders to stand as she passed him.

"Washu?"

Science didn't look at the aged heads of the family as she picked up the bottle and a saucer from them. Her eyes mirrored the bottle, but blank paper sounded just like it looked.

"I said 'it's over'."

She filled the saucer and drained it in the same long second before handing the paper to less than a machine.

"He's gone."

***

Suspicion and patience and rate of interest.

Much abandoned and two-thirds done.

Investments take power like surrender has comfort.

Price pretend that it's broke but still fun.

-ZJS

Author's Note: ---------------------

*The final Verses, 11 through 15, will be included in Sanctuary and Asylum -99-