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I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.
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Standard Procedure:
Remain calm. Speak clearly. Retrace steps.
000
Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and AsylumNo love is lost for reason---while justifying ends.
Thought retains but an image---of all emotion condemns.
-ZJS
000
The stars about him were not the stars overhead, and hours before his short respite the same had been as true. In travel or in observance, the light to see inside the dark was not mortal, was not merciful, was not the light to see around it. His first attempt so close to the last chance, it would be easy to mistake desperation for bravery, stars for gems. He'd watched dying fires and forgeries revealed, a warmed calm to be living naked within, every fear was retreat was avoidance was over. Watching Aeka walk away, her first steps his last chances and his first surrenders, afterwards he could feel the silence mourn the last of certainty, the first crack on the weight. More stars above him through those moments on his earth than all he'd passed on route to his world.
Tenchi rode the automatic ship to Ryoko's prison, remembering Aeka's last words to him, how she looked ready to remain at his feet, silent and all but lifeless. He'd waited for the consequences of his words on all fronts, still waiting as she rose and moved to leave him there.
"You've forgotten already, Tenchi---that no one can love you as I do."
And if she'd been ready and willing to impale him on fire then, her words brought only cold. He'd considered trying to explain a projection that was not based on return, realizing then that there had been no imagining it before.
She'd stood there, eyes hidden, then offered.
"And it seems I was right to fear the difficulty I had holding hope for her, while holding it for us as well."
Indifference had made its chrysalis from both their selves, tearing out, holding up its wings, its body now a crack down the center of a mirror. He'd seen his solitude and remembered his freedom, while Aeka had foreseen her death.
Her form had been flawless as she turned, hesitating once more, letting doubt become as failure, failure become as certainty as certainly as failure lived in reassurance.
"When next you go to her, I shall return to Jurai."
The stars had finally kept at least one promise, taken one option, erased a path with a death so strained it muted itself.
And it had been so real, so warm and calming. He'd waited for tears, then thoughts, then at last for sleep.
No dreams came.
No time for ceremony this morning, no last look at their ally or their chances.
Tenchi had left his home before any others had met the dawn.
And it was, he smiled unconsciously, a sundown when he arrived where he needed.
000
One sister tried to remember patience among the other things her remaining sister had suggested. Her elegant domain and servants could wait on her for time on end, but they could only remember their place.
She thought on champions, their eyes and wills. Each threat that rose, each power that blossomed, her fairer sister favored still.
To have forgotten more than denied her ignorance of all that came before, it intensified the distance.
A fallen champion left unmourned.
She wrapped each strength of her consciousness around this concept, constricting, absorbing. With hate and dreams she felt her distance, holding a single memory up to the light.
In this universe, and every other, there was no named terror greater than herself. And in her lone universe, she'd been invaded by the only mind that might have made a champion without needing to first be made.
The blue of oblivion, she remembered as she honored the agreement not to affect their center sister's actions.
That voice still blew serene winds through the most beautiful trees ever to grow in her mind's eye.
"We must not show our hands, less we betray our faith in our sister, and her own."
She remembered, as she did her own portion of the pact.
"And thus, should he fail her, should he succeed himself, we must not bow our heads."
She remembered, as she did that gaze into the sensuality of oblivion.
"Since you are more afraid of losing yourself to him than you are of giving yourself back to us, I trust, as I must, that you will remember patience."
She looked down at defiance of small rules, a gathering of objects all occupying the same space, each made or saved for a special occasion. Without joy, save for the will to have it, she echoed her reply.
"I will remember my self."
Thus true if uncomforted by her word, as she remembered gazing into Seita's eyes once, and never since.
"And my place."
000
Yosho stood at the top of the shrine steps and watched Ryo-oh lift into the clouds, wincing, then shielding his eyes from the late morning sun. Sasami's muffled sobs still tore from his office, through Mihoshi's lap, and over his shoulders like a steady mist.
Aeka had given all she had left to convince the younger princess that it was a sudden, yet easily solved matter on Jurai.
Washu, however, had nothing.
She'd appeared, as from nowhere, behind an only slightly tearful Sasami.
She'd asked the first princess, told her, that she did not have to go.
Aeka had managed something about being a better judge of Jurai's affairs, and had been mere seconds from the beam to her ship when some desperation or suppression had released.
The word 'hypocrisy' sounded out of place, too rhetorical, more so for the deadness in Washu's voice.
And there, in front of her sister and most of her extended family, Aeka had declared the scientist unwelcome on Jurai.
Still in his young form, knowing she was still in her 'small' form, Yosho watched the highest parts of her hair ascend the stairs. He wondered if he'd ever voice how the last of his capacity to see a child had died this morning. She kept her eyes on the steps, on the stones, till she reached his side and turned to watch an indiscernible mark travel against clouds too wispy to read shapes.
There was doubt, and mistrust now, snapping and roaring to stay afloat in a bog of pity.
He considered neither sound nor touch, could only stare into the sky, his hand beginning to feel like a beggar's crutch, his eyes falling down into her without moving.
He blinked and still saw the sky, still pictured her face, Aeka's, Ryoko's, his grandson unable to find any safe place between a boy and a knight.
The sea pulled him from the sky, without warning but without a start. From inside Washu's pocket a small recorder released an ocean wave that pulled itself back over a beach of small stones, each striking into another with a distinct part of the swarming clamor.
She kept her eyes from him as he watched her remove the small red crab, its toy plastic catching the sun. Small fingers carefully, reverently pushed one eye back into its shell. Millimeter by millimeter she pushed till the second stalk echoed the final click of the first, bringing the claws together in a swift lock that sounded less like plastic than the whole of a crystal cathedral, shrunken into a possessive hand.
"Washu," he felt his essence retreat back into himself, "what did you just do?"
His question, unique enough to him already, existed only in the now.
000
Tenchi crushed the indicator till he was sure its button had planted itself.
And he listened.
He'd readied himself for another bombardment of untouchable voices from those that had come before Ryoko, who might have been taken before language. Knowing better than to tempt overconfidence for having kept them out, he considered again that they had remained silent.
Knowing better than to gorge blind hope, he had also followed their example.
Ryoko had gained rings beneath her eyes and discoloration between her fingers, yellow into gray, sores into bruises into tattoos forced out by her bones. He'd closed his eyes on the first tears, wasting nothing to stop them or hold himself up. The floor alongside her received him, and he gathered her close. Then, lowering his forehead into hers, he'd cleared his mind of all but the weight and its crack, glowing if not yet expanding in her presence.
Now the indicator, unmoved by the red into white of his fingers, his eyes, simply bade him a better look.
The room was in the same state of empty, down to the wrinkles in her unused sheets, he'd no doubt.
The light was the same.
What?
And better before he'd finished blinking.
He heard, though the barrier of Ryoko's cell, through his own submitted focus, a soft whimper sent out like an exploding star through a wedding ring.
Not truly far at all, in the thick silence where the other inmates' minds had been, something older than Tsunami was crying out for its mother.
Tenchi released all pressure on his only contact with Washu, hardly feeling it reclaim shape as he lowered it to the ground. He pulled Ryoko's head into his chest with all the tenderness that weakness might afford.
All that she was to him poured from out his mind and into the back of his throat, where his breath carried it out on weightless ashes, unheard as he watched the eye of oblivion descend from the ceiling, no bigger than his own. Slower than a lost snowflake it fell, each corner of the room distorting to match this new center, to become the same lines were there only two dimensions, blurring any easy distinction between a dungeon and an auditorium.
Against the sterile turquoise monochrome, this void before purity cast no light, continuing its perfectly level fall till it stopped, to crown the average man, to sanctify a modest rooftop.
The wider it opened, the closer he pulled Ryoko, what sickly warmth still remained in her, Tenchi increased it till his hands strained. Oblivion held its yawn soon after, ready to receive the average moving truck.
White banners poured as much as billowed from the open pipeline, jellyfish that poisoned themselves opaque to make those few movements independent of the surf. An evenly hemmed corner inched towards Tenchi's foot, waiting for him to pinch and fold it back into clean shapes. Breezes that he could only see sent tiny waves across these fallen curtains and the corner lifted, pointing at them like a curious elephant before plunging down, turning the floor from dirty gray to as much pure white as would cover a street grate. The sheet, reflecting back on itself, mimicked the floor, absorbed black crosshatches, and in less time became a fine onyx-woven screen. The other sheets joined, then became it, till the single sail mimicked the sea the way an insect mimics affection. It stretched and bent, as if lifted up over high furniture to form a descending river.
And the river snaked down its mountainside, black screen flowing into a floor grate of perpetual ivory deformities.
Tenchi's eyes swam upstream by hopeless instinct and met the emerging bow of a small sweet cream gondola, its entire gilded mermaid's nest had melted into tented fingers, the smallest digits held out into dove's wings. It rose in a sluggish diagonal toward the ceiling, coming over a hill on the high side of oblivion.
"Has the bluuue reign of apathy.....become the gold beyond all light?"
The singer reached for the hearts of young girls and the throats of angels, a glamorous lullaby caressed up one side and down the other. Acoustics defied their room to bring every corner its own glorified part in pouring more glory, more immortality, more divinity upon whatever navigator emerged.
"As du-a-lism's in-tox-i-cation.....births delirium's delight."
Helpless inability to assume the siren, to hold Ryoko closer, Tenchi refused to feel the dry cracks rounding his eyes. 'Birth's had sounded like 'bursts', and he suspected this was no accident if any meaning.
"Hoard the blood-warmed fruit-of-cen-ters.....sentimental tyranny invite."
The craft, already emerged a coffin-length, still showed no occupant, no sign of tilting forward. It's voice grew no louder and ever more indulgent.
"That the seeeas glass, and the wiiind peeeeearl....."
Both hands held at the tip of the pole, head tilted atop them, rested against the dreamy descent in the last word, eased past all luxury, Seita lifted his perfect eyes and drank heaven, its dregs, its cup. A smile guided his nearly whispered croon directly into Tenchi's ear.
"Call the sands of God 'Cold-Bright'."
Having finished the deepest rivers of nothing, the pole lifted into existence, bending a rubber loop skyward, before its other end swung down past Tenchi's nose and straightened against the floor, white enough to be a run on oblivion's circle, a guiding line to the corners of the prison, conducting the introduction of a decadent waltz. Orchestras composing and progressing the memory of brass and diamond; wealth bowed its head to the fornication of electricity and all suns.
Seita moved the boat forward with a heavy stroke, bringing it crashing down into the net river, which reclaimed its gentle flow and confirmed its respectable size in the next moment. His song soured to awaken and command entire worlds.
"COOOOLD Bright, our paaale stars---I-cons---O-ffer---NOT!"
Every waver warble joined silver marble to the succulent ethers prostrating his throat.
Every thread of rhythm matched his rowing and flattered the flow of golden water in his hair.
"SMOOOOTH Might, to jaaail fate---Ti-tans---Tow-ers---FOUGHT!"
As he neared the center mark between overlord oblivion and huddled hope, the river bowed, the curtain staircase rising into a ribbon bridge. Tenchi blinked without noticing, then marveled that a violet storm could be painted so subtly into the vibrant eyes and inviting lips of a perfection so pale in its midnight kimono.
"BRAAAAVE Bends, their maaartyr---He-roes---Re-wards---CAST!"
Seita's head wove about to the words, making sure any watcher from every direction could believe they'd shared a glance. A measure of darkness rasped the back of his throat for the next line, the next row slower.
"WAAAAR Torn, this iiinsight---Sym-bowl---Ban-ner---LAST!
Letting the pole rest at a vertical, planting it where his podium might have been before his captive and helpless audience, he then swung an arm outward, caught and snaked through a heavy wind. Flamboyance ate the rest of fascism in that single gesture, spitting out the shells in the next moment. The orchestra began to settle, begging listeners to guess at a feint.
From his sleeve came the naked androginine body of Ayeka, bent, and swinging a weightless descent like a fallen leaf. When it glided back towards the boat its hands grasped and held frozen, by this time Seita's gesture was ready to come around for another, and it did, dropping Mihoshi, Washu, Ryoko, each holding their predecessor's ankles, forming steps shaped like a child's drawing of the ocean.
Tenchi's paralyzed horror managed to notice the space for two or three more steps before they reached the ground. By this time Seita was already descending, adjacent to them now, taking the steps without legs, the bottom of his kimono pulling him down like tilted mercury. He held the pole to give a tightrope balance its dream of being a show tune cane.
At the last step he specialized the gift of his profile, glancing over at Tenchi, bringing the orchestra to a complete silence by a gaze and tilted-grin. Sinister velvet would strangle, or make him forget his own name with but a second thought.
Seita granted sapphire down, curious, amused, moving from the Ryoko in Tenchi's arms to the Ryoko at his feet, and back into Tenchi's nearly competing pale. The grin rose again, and more, commanding he wonder if it meant an observance of who was last, or of who was next.
Rather than make any true guess possible, he lifted and half-spun the pole over his head, impaling the floor below him, again perfectly level, even when he removed both hands to comb his hair from the scalp out, to smooth his lapels. Eyes closed, face raised in forced ecstasy, he bent at the back, stretched at the arms, held tight, and raised his knee against the poll.
Almost as convincing a dancer as a singer, Seita spun an impossibly tight, slow, and perfect corkscrew to the floor. The coordinated rhythm of the song was more like hummed poetry now, strained to the bone for every last drop of sensual beauty in his voice.
"Cold-bright---The-weapon---Your mind-ripe invention-"His first two rounds pulled the end of the river, along with the grate that collected it, like cotton on a spool. By the time he neared the floor it's drain was steadying the pole.
"The new-found pre-tension....."
Seita stopped, perfectly balanced, a photo on a swing, feat still covered by what seemed a kimono tailored a meter taller. He breathed a kiss of perfume and lowered himself, the fabric following, till he was standing on his own two black-bound feet. Leaning against the pole like a lover's portrait, he crooned over fangs.
"Is surrreeeender."
The net failed its infinity, dragging the boat and its tunnel along with the river into the amorphous bars at Seita's feet. Swallowed away, a magician's handkerchief worn as a scarf, ignored by his lovely assistant, its bitter victory song drained the audience of their deepest sympathies.
"Coooold bright, con-suuuumes life.....by a-ny---o-ther---name."
Seita rested his head against the pole as a goodbye while the oblivion portal itself began to stretch and disappear like a thin cloth lid.
"Whoooo might---nuuurse twice....."
His glare sharpened to humble the essence of violence.
"To bu-rry-all in fame?"Rapid blinks up as at the first drops of rain, smiling utterly gentle and alone, he watched the pole descend slow and the grate shrink slower to join at his feet. The lullaby stole the air and froze the blood and begged that Tenchi's heart burst for better reasons.
"Will the black-named ghost---hold it haunts---and bide its breaths till then?"
"Can a white-so-long been o-bli-vion-" tall as a cane, cradled like a candle, Seita crouched with the last of the white, a coin on the tile, "mean in-no-cence a-gain?"
Balancing smoothly up onto his fingertips, folding his hands behind him as he stood, the approach was diagonal to the room, straight to his hosts. He kept his head low and thoughtful as he brought Tenchi back to that night in his room, the impossible power claiming transcendent insult on everything in existence. He sang to himself still and again.
"Can a white so long been Oblivion-"
Seita lifted his face as he stopped within striking distance, eyes inverting all that would be mortal in a god, showing Tenchi compassion and vanity; left to waste, made to rot.
"---mean innocence again?"
He blinked concisely, collected himself with a thin-lipped breath, and began walking, circling a thought around them.
"Well now, Tenchi," he taught an apprentice true subtlety in pretension, "you have what you need."
Staring blankly at Ryoko's still unmoved form, Tenchi crawled through a numbness to frighten death and faced the ghost made flesh made of the only knowledge to surpass madness. He was still observing their undeniable objective, and Tenchi saw such sculpted distance, such disgust, that when it lifted to confront him he let his mouth slack.
"But is this what you want?"
000
Washu turned and walked away from Yosho, intent on his shrine office.
Halfway there she stopped in the same instant as Sasami's cries.
Tsunami's younger self slid the door aside and emerged onto the courtyard, a humble guest, a small young woman rather than a growing girl. No difference in body, no need with such a change in expression.
Fragile new science began to glance back, but Yosho remained fixed on the sky, oblivious to them as he could not possibly be. Mihoshi was a statue in the office, or was nowhere.
The suspicion, its terror, all reflex, with no strength left to dismiss it or express it.
"She's afraid, even more afraid than I am."
Sasami's approach was steady, her voice even and serene save for the accepted fear, accepted, yet far from lessened.
"She says that both her sisters are too."
Washu realized, remembered, that the most innocent person in the family had grown slightly taller than her. Standing well within reach of each other now, she did nothing to affect the lone tear, the consequences, though it was surely and calmly revealing every aspect of secrecy in her life.
"She says they shouldn't be."
Washu embraced Sasami, slow as desperation, past sobs and into shivers.
Sasami returned the gesture, offering all the serenity she could for the few moments to spare. Before Washu might have considered escaping entirely, the young princess gently pushed her away, holding her shoulders.
Washu let the gaze enter her till it found what would push it back, what would fortify her even at the price of her. There was precious little left, but enough to resurrect the perception needed to read Sasami's face, as it became Sasami's face again, as their roles would soon need to be reversed.
Unmistakable unnamable, staring into the fear that does not die from acceptance, the moment before tears that believes itself the moment before final wisdom. The unflinching vulnerability that makes a strong self into strongest affection; Washu read the weakness in Sasami's bottom lip, all but heard it speak into her mind.
'I love you, but I hope you know what you're doing.'
000
The weight had been named, had been captured, and Tenchi felt it crack again in the presence of all that Seita would have made himself. He wondered if it was ready to be swept away, or finally absorbed into his blood.
Imposing, post-natural elegance had turned its back on them for a moment, folding its arms against perfect lungs. Tenchi could only throw the question back with muted disbelief. He had not looked for a single spark of healing in any of part of this witness, its entrance, and found nothing just the same. Allowed a moment to consider that the question had been directed at something other than the fading soul in his arms; he declined. He pressed his cheek against her and let the self-gratifying question answer itself.
Seita did not turn to face them, merely releasing a long silent breath to improve a sigh, letting his hair-flow compliment rather than continue to slightly defy gravity.
"What are you doing here, Tenchi?"
Crushed velvet billowed in a gentle arctic wind, every thread turning delicate and impossibly softer before it became glass. He began surveying the other side of the room as if it hid a mural of impossible detail.
"I'd understand if you were still too confused to answer, and yet I hope your are not too afraid to listen."
Tenchi listened to him turn and walk back toward them, looking up, almost too exhausted to fight and far too far to surrender, however deeper the malice would cut him this time.
Seita was quieted, the intensity in his eyes betraying calm, but the blankness in his face transcending peace.
"Because this time you will listen, because this time I no longer have to deceive, or force you," Seita looked at his hands with marveled uncertainty, "for I am now even more bonded with oblivion than I was before seeking out your aid."
Self-importance outgrew its limitless wardrobe, reflected on the quiet of defeating every last opposition. Seita held out a hand to admire his nails.
"Existence is my child, and I do not love it, and I love it only so much as will flatter me."
He turned his hand over, crushed the last diamond in his clawed fist.
"And I have consumed, now embodied, the last and the whole of my place in it."
Seita angled a grin to make harlots holy.
"I understand the self I have made, the catalyst I have become, but before you can understand that, you must accept what it is you have brought here."
Again he looked at Ryoko, a quaint and unintentionally ironic piece of folk art, a well-worn comfort toy.
Seita began to pace and speak like a being desperate to savor the step it had passed over, had been denied, of existing as a mortal who was more than any.
"That's right Tenchi, look at her. Look at her and remember, try to form some critical perspective. This woman isn't here as some agitating activist, she's here because she willfully attacked the Galaxy Police.
"There isn't any corrupt puppet master to blame this time. She may look like she's been victimized, but you know as well as I do that she hasn't 'lost' her mind---"
Tenchi began to shiver for the bitterness that washed over him as Seita turned, now keeping his glance over them as the rest of his form paced.
"She's given it up."
And the overindulged rasp was gone in the next moment, having passed its crown.
"She was looking for sanctuary at the shrine, on that day your grandfather shared in my perception."
Tenchi noticed him pause for reaction, pleased with no reaction more than exhausted bewilderment.
"She was looking for release when she put her sword to Aeka's throat," he smiled up at the ceiling, down into Tenchi's horror, "much more convincingly than yourself, if I may say so."
He hardened his face in a violent strike, relishing the death of his affected amusement.
"She was looking for anything when you came to her in the cave."
The gait in his pacing increased while the speed subsided.
"She is content to be all but inexistent, to withdraw till she is forgotten."
There before them he stopped, bent anxiously over the pyramid of his hands.
"But you are willing to claim 'all the love in the universe' to stop her.....you are unwilling to allow her."
He leaned back, comfortably enthroning himself on the air, crossing one leg over another, glaring vividly over his fingers.
"Now Tenchi, let me tell you what 'all the love in the universe' adds up to."
Seita blinked slowly, shaping, honing emotion.
"I know this," he began in his plain voice, opening his eyes on all the pleasure taken from having life and mercy at once beneath him.
"Because I've seen this!"
Tenchi closed his eyes as well, opening them when he believed he could look only at Ryoko. He saw more, and heard everything.
"Imagine you could witness the entire dimension of affection, all that might be called the highest emotion, spread out for your approval. There still, there again and again, in multitudes behind every joy of every length, are the wretches, making themselves sicker for every nurse that passes them."
A brief collage of human misery flashed over Tenchi's mind, glazing the weight.
"What ressspite do they deserve," every vein in Seita's face, flowing powder into steam, "putrid, vacant, weakling carbuncles, how many flawless angels would it take to convince the rest of the un-wasted universe that they really were just 'hiding beautiful souls'.
Head tilting to the side, he subtly pursed his bottom lip, soon matching it with an avalanche of his brow.
"And here! And again!" One half then of the pyramid followed the other, reaching to hold and to ravage.
"The farce-hope we give them---to pacify their revelation tantrums."
Seita stood and turned with a small flail of his kimono, pacing perception's posture back under control with a calculated breath. His voice, however, pushed farther past the whole of bitterness.
"They deserve no 'kind sacrifice'. They deserve no 'hidden talent'. They don't even deserve convincing dolls!"
Hands on his hips, elbows bent like folded wings, he elegantly squared his back and shoulders to them, cooling his volume, sharpening his tone.
He walked, and injected himself into Tenchi's eyes.
"That ugliness, born out of sloth, born out of stupidity.....they deserve NOTHING.....but the 'unique' moments.....and lifetimes they spend---in miserable, crippling---loneliness."
"It is therefore more just," the joining of hatred and vulnerable sincerity swelled to fold his arms behind his back, "more humane, that they receive, and surrender, to my consuming illusions," he glared down into Tenchi's face but saw every enraging detail of the two huddled forms, "than to your empty promise."
He slowly pulled his eyes over into the entirety of Ryoko's form, even softer gauze pinched slivering broken glass, reflecting the self-conscious absence of blood in the wisdom he spoke to himself.
"The fear of such rightly place solitude---it is the sharpest and deepest in all social beings, and more than enough in many others."
Seita swung his eyes back into Tenchi's to hold his throat with thin, unbreakable hands.
"And its consort, its faithful, enduring partner, its 'soul mate'-"
He crouched down, Tenchi clenched his teeth against the beginnings of a rattle. With a tenderly extended hand, and eyes lowered again, somewhere around Ryoko's self, he smoothed aside a lock of hair from her cheek using a decorative nail rather than his palm.
"The coveting of a known counterfeit---that one cannot afford."
Their eyes met, complete.
"That is what you have here, Tenchi. I've seen toddling children form equally desperate bonds with their 'practice' toys."
The shade of a sneer began to crack through some edges, was quickly banished by all seriousness.
"In the context of all you've done to bring us here---to her---how to begin?" A few strands of his song blew past, complicating the use of 'us'.
Seita stood and returned to the seat he'd made for himself, re-assimilating the excessive sensuality, the mock-enticement twice jeered-on the content of his address.
"To the scribes of countless galaxies, you've taken what could have been the undying if still unoriginal affections of the most powerful royal family---and put it up against---then finally behind---your 'concern' for a catatonic space pirate.
He stretched his legs till his torso was boneless, then stretched again, soon pulling apart like taffy. The top half glided seamlessly onto Ryoko's bed, re-growing the bottom at the same pace that the original sank into the floor.
"And now."
He hugged himself, running his hands through fabled hair, stretching hands together above his head, an overpaid courtesan rising to meet whatever time might care. When he reached the end of his angles he let himself flop lazily against the single cushion.
"You've given oblivion back its ghost."
Delirious, effeminate luxury, Seita closed his eyes and smiled.
"You've risked the sanity---of every universe and the very existence of more."
Tenchi noticed a growing weakness in his arms, a tightening in his throat.
"No, I wouldn't be surprised if you believed you loved Ryoko more than-"
Seita dangled out his hand and fingers condescendingly.
"Than whatever the last 'most important thing' was."
Both hands returned to his hair.
"But I simply can't, in good conscience, let you make an uninformed decision."
Every nuance challenged, then overpowered the base danger of the uncaring, the death pure allure of the unknown. Tenchi forced himself to breath, force the weight to crack again, just a little more, just to cause enough pain to spur some counterattack.
He could feel the despair traveling from Ryoko, into his hands, rushing to meet the place where Seita's words were real.
And Seita's words were real, gathered and nurtured for more than time. He rose and walked toward them, past them, to the opposite wall.
"I have seen the edge of existence, known it for what it is: an ever-growing, and folding concoction, placed arbitrarily on an infinite petri dish.
"There are countless blossoming civilizations, and uncountable sentient energies, hiding as they will. Many of these are around stars that will die trillions of years before their lights reach each other."
He turned and leaned against the wall, satisfied thus far, or perhaps exhausted more than Tenchi could guess.
"And among all those that still dwell on the possible existence of a force that can bind two entities together---with complete and unbreakable permanence.....the same conclusions are readily apparent."
Hands behind him, the insight stroll, Seita looked for the glee in justly executing the most persistent of delusions, and found himself inside it.
"This 'love', for all I've seen, rises up and consumes the consciousness of beings who are both exceedingly self-indulgent, yet ironically terrified of solitude. The desire for it, and more so the desire to receive it, can in some cases even surpass the desire to survive. A further irony is that it's the basest carnal instinct, to find shelter and perpetuate the species, that drives it. Granted, some fascinating things have come to pass for the sake of proving its power above power."
Seita's eyes narrowed, thinned, cut.
"Where there's a will there's a way, even a destination, but not an origin.
"Works of art attempting to honor this idea could fill dimensions; the emotions they can inspire are undeniable, as are the revenues they can generate. What is overlooked though, is the destructive outcome of socially conditioning a being to seek something on an intangible infinite level that they can hardly find on an adequately physical level."
"Emotional attachments, instinctive ones between parents and children, and those developed between mates, are often beneficial to survival, but they do not 'transcend', much less overshadow the ever-changing needs and capacities of mortal biomes."
Seita paused just long enough for Tenchi to hear his name mutter faintly across Ryoko's desiccated lips. The cracks in the weight had been adding on all the while. If it mattered, Tenchi couldn't ask, couldn't know if he wanted to. His guide read on from a journal he'd planned to bury, still determined to be remembered admirably for it.
"Whatever drives you towards this alluring ideal of permanent attachments; permanence does not exist, even in oblivion, where space can eventually grow over any chosen point. Even when someone does 'stay' with a mate for the remainder of their lifetime, as do a number of non-sentient organisms, this is usually to avoid the difficulty surrounding replacement. Often enough it is for the self-empowering rush of exercising the will to gratify the emotion, to further indulge the fantasy of permanence."
Seita spoke to Tenchi, person to person, dead to earth.
"That is what holds you to Ryoko now. But as strong as it may seem in this moment, any number of things could gradually wear it down, or snap it off, depending only on how much you want it to be real."
Tenchi looked up and into Seita's eyes, alive as possible, though he bent to sit back on the throne, this time betraying a weariness that might keep him there for a longer verse.
"This easily observed, yet often ignored fact.....perhaps 'ignored' isn't the proper word, no, 'demonized' is much more fitting."
Tenchi remembered the van, the entrance and litany up till recently, how the believable defeat and undeniable ambition refused to coexist. He realized then, that he'd listened, taken in everything, that it was working its way inside the weight's core.
Unaffected, the warmth remaining in Ryoko, however much had been his, would not let him strike back just yet.
"For reasons I'd rather not risk explaining again, I've spent quite a bit of time and effort making the villain of myself. It is therefore almost past cliché and back again that I should speak of love in this way."
Tenchi felt the perception projection enter deeper into him like the tightening of a warm blanket. Seita was balancing chin in hand, elbow on wrist, thinking on his knees, but the caress of his hand inside the young man's mind was merciless and irresistible. There was no pity, merely a sense of injustice that would frighten the depths of sadism.
"The arrogant, the greedy, the cruel, they are portrayed time and time again as denying love, only to find that the drive toward this fantasy is more powerful than the drive for tangible wealth or power."
He spoke into Tenchi's mind, though he mouthed the words, portrayed the solemn path to final wisdom.
"This is no surprise, as the rejection of unbreakable attachments often entails the rejection of attachments altogether, thus the inevitable decay of organisms adapted to be social."
A small, and encompassing frown; Seita leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his knuckles. He tried as much as he could without force, to do justice to the memory of sincerity.
"On a baser level: I must have been romantically rejected one too many times, or perhaps I had to endure the loss of someone I'd spent ages with, convincing myself of a 'shared soul'."
Seita's lips shrank towards a pucker then slid back into a small grin. One eyebrow titled slightly with his head as he reattached a thin strip of velvet round his throat.
"I must be just another cynic, out to poison the flowers no one will give him."
Tenchi closed his eyes and let his face lower away. He listened still, the stare that accompanied the words never leaving his vision, as they knew it wouldn't.
"Maybe I should have just waited for someone who could see that 'beauty was only---to finally love me for who I-'" sarcasm died on revolution's sword, Tenchi saw as much as imagined Seita's hair fall and paint melt, saw luxurious black turn to sickly white.
"To make me forget the inevitable, the necessary figure, who would seek self destruction as long as possible before the deepest meaning revealed---that extravagance is merely the death throws of purely expressed emotion, that emotion as currency, as creative weaponry, invites the pre-chaos, the draining return to oblivion.....this effect of every emotion needing material to rouse interest."
Seita rose, all but hugging himself, victorious over pity, eager to serve under the void, with all material emotion wielded in his eyes.
"I really am---trying to help you, Tenchi." A breath of frustrated sincerity, and he hid his eyes, opening them again on Ryoko, unforgiving.
"I'm giving you the final truth, I'm only showing you your chances. If you have the strength of will, if you have the power of perception, you can pull yourself away from this---this idea that you're obliged, compelled by some ultimate candy heart beyond the stars---to sacrifice everything for one unreliable woman."
The weight reached its limits. Tenchi could feel it in the tips of his digits, clinging to every fiber of his thoughts. It actually felt like he was getting lighter, or rather emptier, the blood and bones draining out through his unblinking eyes.
When enough physical reflex built up for him to blink, a drop of exhausted water wailed down at the realization that he was on the brink of joining Ryoko, letting his mind fall to take the pain with it.
He thought about smoothing a little more of Ryoko's hair, kissing her cheek, and telling her that he was sorry, that he loved her. The weight in stones, boulders, in planets and stars, it was cold till he at last yielded to hold it to him.
And in his arms was nothing but Ryoko.
Tenchi's eyes cranked open on rusted gears, bits of iron decay flaking off. It took effort just to do this, enough effort to make him remember basic physical pain, the kind his grandfather had taught him with, to make him work harder, to focus his anger out, and away. There was so much that he hardly thought and hardly missed violence or shouts or more than one more tear.
"You were never really planning to help us, were you?"
Seita tilted with a heavy, uncertain frown, staring at the sound of a stern voice claiming as much strength as it would need. Tenchi looked right back up and spoke again before the painted lip could finish planning its curl.
"You've never really wanted to help anyone. Whatever's really in your head, it isn't other people."
Seita crinkled a fraction of his nose and raised a little more of his eyebrow. Tenchi blinked without the thought of intimidation and looked down at Ryoko, smoothing her hair while his eyes watered again.
"I cared about her enough not to kill you, then to actually trust you inside her head," Tenchi swallowed and cut the salt on his cheek with the copper in his throat, "after everything you've done---that has to count for something."
Another gulp, larger for closed eyes, made his head shiver to endure some horrid taste that had just become bearable. He let memories of Ryoko pass over him, and for the first time in eons, he gave them free reign.
"But I guess it was pretty stupid to believe in you, and maybe I'm pretty stupid to believe I love Ryoko this much," his legs were pitiful by arthritic old dog standards, but he managed to lift Ryoko up and hold her securely while staring oblivion in the eye, "but I don't care. If you're not going to help her then I'll just have to take her home myself."
Seita closed his eyes and breathed in all the air in the room, Tenchi felt the right time to shout.
"And I don't care if it doesn't last forever, I don't even care if one of us cares more or less about the other!" The strength fell carelessly out of his throat in one thick sob, but held tight to all the defiance he could remember.
"I know what I feel---and I know I want to help her any way I can, that's all."
Tenchi lowered his eyes under Seita's chin, ready for the blue to take them both; it began to square for all the pressure he was putting on his jaw. The door was just a few steps beyond their weapon, and he brushed a little bit of Ryoko's hair through a kimono sleeve as it flickered almost too rapidly to see. Tenchi was trying to balance Ryoko on his knee while he reached for the pass card in his pocket. His arm's threats to fall off were obviously idle.
He had forgotten the sensation of oblivion already, and as it opened behind him he turned despite his new attempts at certainty.
Seita cradled the empty circle in his hands, a delicate saucer levitating millimeters from his fingers.
Tenchi watched the designing in his face, a search for the most impressive way to describe, or embrace gracious defeat. Seita was stirring cement with the breaststroke.
"Alright Tenchi, don't say.....anything."
When the 'normal' voice felt sorry enough for itself it found the greatest guise of gentle, and when it rose up again, trying to sound sure enough for everyone, it remembered wise.
"Trust as you will," Seita let Tenchi see what he'd hoped for, let oblivion see it as well.
"And feel as you must."
000
The Ghost of Madness looked down from his sanctuary and into their asylum, nursing the memory of a procedure and re-visiting the theory that had inspired it, the first and last attempts and their success.
As theories come and go, it had usually struck his colleagues as flirting, fleeting, and by association flattering.
If they could have seen him then and now, proving to no one but himself, that the physical abnormalities found in the brains of mentally disturbed persons were usually the cause of their disorder, but were not always the origin.
If he remained relaxed and removed, the dream manipulations would end as he finished them.
However, if he spent the energy to focus, to merge enough of his controlled perception into theirs, they would wake feeling oddly refreshed and would show considerably greater cognitive health.
That temporary link, relaxing the electricity in their brains as much as his atoms relaxed in the presence of anything like an attack; this could happen to the point of sharing memories, and more importantly: energies, transferred back and forth as if within the same system
But he never took in any bad dreams, or even destructive fantasies. When such energy came to him, at him, his body would perceive it as a threat and let it pass through. Realizing this so long after his ambitions had realized him, he'd devised a mildly vulgar plan to 'cure' a particularly ill person, letting them know unimagined health for a short while before re-infecting them ten-fold.
Thus he'd focused one night on making the strongest connection yet, allowing the subject's psychic malady to flow freely into him, through him and into oblivion. He'd envisioned a clearing of crystal tunnels, tenderly drained of colorful obstructing lights. Within a day the patient and their family were overcome with surreal joy.
The doctor had been instantly and severely disciplined.
000
The mental equivalent of arched fingers rippled through the unending and trickled inside all that was left of Ryoko.
He forced himself, envisioning a bramble mass of luminous wires, bright purples and greens, all mutilating and screaming knots into each other. With thin arms spread wide, the Ghost of Madness embraced his tools. Straining, cursing, he pulled them into himself and left an un-choked garden.
Before the deciding moment, he'd thought the design beautiful, and been almost sorry to see it all go. On that deciding moment, Oblivion, Infinity, and Perfection Manifest, could think nothing and take nothing from its blank will to cast out the offending angel.
But he was too uncommonly distracted from himself to take much notice. Luckily, as fate would have it, as anyone would care to know, he was able to watch Ryoko move her hand onto the only face, and say its name the way she'd wanted her life. Their revelations better than declarations, the disorganized song of their connection sounded no worse as it was muffled, smeared, burst with no difference between tears, as they pressed their worn and exhausted faces together.
000
How many fates turn around in the overtime?
Ballerinas have fins that you'll never find.
You thought that you were the bomb. Yes, well so did I.
Say you don't want it, again and again.
But you don't, don't really mean it.
You don't, don't really mean it.
-Tori Amos
(Excerpt) "Spark"
000
Washu stood on her toes and stretched into a yawn, her slender fingers tickling the pine needles. In the distance she could just see Sasami and Mihoshi teaching Ryo-ohki how to swim like a child with an inflatable carrot. The three pairs of laughter carried through the wind and leaned her into a tree with a smile hidden from time.
The footsteps on the dirt trail were slow and spacious; she listened just as intently to the happy sounds between them. A few birds were singing and the girls were shouting up a different game by the time they stopped behind her. She didn't respond till she felt someone lean against the adjacent side of her tree.
"That was some fall you took back there." Washu mentioned casually.
"Yes." Seita smoothed his distance to justify his hesitation.
"Is everything in order?"
"Enough so."
The repeated exchange of tones made Washu frown in thought, before testing a hint of the doubt she'd taken such care to contain.
"Have you reconsidered anything?"
"As far as what we've discussed? No."
She listened to him shift his shoulder and backpack against the tree with a more sincere and reserved voice. He was slightly disoriented, but hiding it well.
"Do you have anything more you'd like to ask?"
A bird sang through their pause then flew away, scolding a rival.
"Am I still a secret?"
"Yes. And only until they ask me."
The next pause was longer, and interjected with faint squeals from Sasami that would have been eerie to anyone who didn't know better.
Seita took his weight off the tree and stood. Washu found herself focusing more to detect his presence before he finally stepped up behind her. She turned in polite enough time, but instantly leaned back against the tree.
"I still haven't thanked you for anything," Seita stated, his gentle formality hiding an unpleasant certainty.
"No, you haven't."
Washu tried to swallow the deadness creeping over her throat, determined that she wouldn't rely on it this time.
"Nor have I apologized."
"You gave me back my daughter."
Washu began to breath for how quick and sharp the small voice had been. Seita's eyes avoided her, his breath held. Eventually he was looking away at nothing.
After examining the side of his numbed face for long enough, she blinked confusion that he might have seen her gazing softly. She forced a smile, discarded the force, and closed her eyes at the ground.
"And that's not all I mean." It strained her throat to speak, but a reassuring warmth continued to fill her. She would look at Seita after it passed.
"I can feel it; you took away more than the pain you recognized. There were tremendous amounts of suppressed anguish weighing down her mind, it was present every time I tried to use our link. Her experiences with Kagato and.....with myself, they all added to a violent fear and mistrust of everything around her---"
Washu grasped for a long breath but it slipped away, leaving her voice ever weaker.
"And this was before we ever knew you.....and I don't sense any of it now. You'd think she'd spent these few weeks meditating with Yosho every morning."
Washu chuckled at herself and lifted her head into a reflex wipe at her eye. Seita was still watching the woods. She was about to look away again, but offered her own half smile instead.
"It's ironic," she began again with a more reflective tone, "that you could do so much good with that power.....and yet, it can only be accessed through-"
She tried to imitate difficulty with a joke that was still too fresh.
A sliver of velvet grew in the caressed space between his teeth and lower lip.
"No Washu, it's not."
Something that should have made her shiver made her speak boldly instead.
"Then how do we describe the fact that your prediction failed, that my machine failed, that we had to-"
The coldness in her voice became too brittle for itself. When the longest silence reached her center, she looked back, his eyes narrowed, his lips tight. The last shades of a familiar expression rose, then quickly faded quiet into singularly private shame. Not exactly like a recovery, he'd pulled his hand away from a former vice just the same.
"I'd rather not speak of it." Hushed sobriety, the ghost said its peace.
"Good." The echo of science stayed close.
Their next shared quiet was complete, no birds, no breeze, and the girls had gone inside minutes ago. Washu found herself stepping forward with arms folded and head down. She thought she felt his breath.
"The others must assume that the best reason to have killed you---would have been for the sake of insurance, protection."
She took another quarter step.
"The one thing I've managed to keep from them---is that a part of me wanted to keep you alive---as a reminder."
Seita pulled his head back, raised one eyebrow, furrowed both.
"I wanted to make sure your prediction never came true. I thought that, so long as you were alive, it would be too dangerous to provide an opportunity for you to---get back in."
"So then," he tried to keep his hushed fear just as even, "why not kill me after you were sure of Ryoko's recovery?"
He'd answered more swiftly than she'd expected, and she told herself she'd have to search for her answer with both eyes, have to speak quickly when she remembered it.
"Because, eventually, I---was sure of Ryoko's recovery."
Washu could tell that he wanted to look away, but more so wanted her to do so. She could hear his teeth clack together and his throat clench as she took the last baby step between them and kissed him on the cheek.
"A heart that can come back from the emptiness is stronger than a mind that can resist it."
He had his head down when she pulled back to look at him, just as she'd expected, though she didn't quite know how to place her disappointment. Happy thoughts of her daughter came back and let her lean against the tree again, speaking clear and clever.
"Alright then, you better get out of here, only room for one sage on this mountain."
He didn't breathe for one and a longer moment, before he gave Washu the first real smile she'd ever seen, half of it anyway. She watched the sunlight through the branches as his footsteps disappeared.
Waiting for Yosho to finish sneaking up on her, she walked around the tree, fishing a few red hairs from nooks in the bark. She stood out closer to the meadow before returning to herself.
"Quiet day at the shrine?"
"Yes, yes it is I'm afraid." Yosho cleared his throat before casually closing the distance between them.
"We gotta think of a way to bring in the younger crowds."
"Mm."
"And we've gotta work on your stealth technique."
"I see," a quieting thought stepped out from under its mask of amusement, "perhaps the student falters when the professor becomes.....too forgiving."
Washu closed her eyes and swallowed, reaching back and finding his hand as easy as always, wrapping his arm around her.
"Maybe."
"Did you give him a ship?"
"A small one."
"Where do you think he'll go?"
"I'm not certain."
After running her fingertips gently across his forearm she leaned back into him to tickle his face with her hair, just enough to see the sky.
"But I have an educated guess."
000
Azusa marched passed servants and surveyors, each of them scurrying away like vermin at the sight of his progressive anger.
"Your Highness, there really is no need to get-" A spindly man in freshly spun robes clung to dignity as he tried to match steps with the emperor. The two queens flew on their robes behind him, entirely practiced in keeping up.
"I told you, very clearly, that I would speak with each counselor before they went near my daughter."
"I know Your Highness, forgive me, but he comes recommended from five high dukes. In fact, he has come out of a long retirement specifically for the honor of aiding the princess."
"I fail to see how that is supposed to reassure me."
The spindly man gulped. Funaho noticed Misaki's face sink a little further, she reached out and took her fellow queen's hand. Their eyes met, worry for support, gratitude for connection.
000
Aeka sat at her vanity desk, surrounded by freshly dusted boxes and bobbles that hadn't been used in ages. She looked at her folded hands, at the seas of lush forest outside her window, all the same. The soft voice from the man sitting behind her wafted on and on, the mirror betraying his disappointment. He'd started off with a string of formalities, then small questions, then reassurances, then she'd let his voice turn to air just like all the others. Her stomachache had caught her head, but it felt like they were simply on an old display behind older bars; not much she could do about them, even had she the interest.
"Very well then, I think that will conclude our time today."
It was necessary to keep one ear open for the word 'conclude', it was the one they always used, without fail; nothing more encouraging and certainly nothing simpler. She tried not to hear the word 'today', so arrogantly, so foolishly presumptuous of a tomorrow. While waiting for the door to attempt relief, she instead heard the man shuffle in his case and walk up behind her. The tin blades in her face coiled as the thought crept in to whirl around and startle a real voice out of him. Again, she merely fixed her jaw and imagined the taste of chalk.
"I beg your pardon Highness, but I was asked by a friend of a colleague to bring this letter to you. It's already been opened and cleared by security, of course."
Aeka saw the shadow over her shoulder then glanced up and saw its reflection in the mirror, along with her own. She promptly looked back down at the blank space on the desk.
"Leave it."
Her voice buzzed mechanically in her throat, but it felt like she hadn't even expended the energy to pull her jaw apart.
The latest, long uncounted, would-be counselor left without another word. As per usual her parents would be coming in for a follow up, for her mother's tears as she resisted her anger and her father's inverse of the same. They were right of course; she was being childish, just as she'd been right when she told them this was none of their fault, then increased that they'd done nothing wrong. This was her own weakness, a naïve, spoiled little princess who should be forced to spend another 700 years stewing in a tower till she was ready to be an adult.
By an accidental glance she noticed that the envelope was made from Washu's faint crab motif stationary, it wasn't even an envelope, but a half sheet of paper weighed down by the remains of a seal. A few pieces of iron worked their way into her chest as she thought again of earth and of everything. She picked up the note and began work on the will not to be consumed with sobs before she even opened it.
To her Royal Highness Aeka
First Princess of Jurai,
I am uncertain when this letter will reach you, or if it will reach you at all, but I hope that it provides aid.
Aeka let her eyes roll off the paper, and would have rolled them back up in cynical dismissal if she'd felt like wasting the effort. She dropped the note and was leaning back in her chair when she noticed that she hadn't recognized the penmanship. It wasn't Washu's, or anyone else that had sent her numbing, cliché attempts to feel like they hadn't abandoned her, or didn't feel abandoned themselves. She picked it up again.
I am uncertain when this letter will reach you, or if it will reach you at all, but I hope that it provides aid. If it does not, then I have done little more than flatter myself for writing it, an entirely unnecessary act, as you would well know.
If you yet remain in the emotionally withdrawn position the nobility isn't supposed to say you are, then I will offer some counsel in this impersonal form, as it would be impractical to try and gain closer access.
From the way you reacted to the illusionary death of your sister, and even by the way you looked at Ryoko after her torments, it is clear that you are not an uncaring person. By the lengths you went through to pursue Tenchi's love it is clear that you desire happiness. These things alone are all you need to rise above any counterproductive state.
That you are a princess must make no more difference than were you a farmer. Your loving parents, your devoted subjects; reminders of your fortune do quick and little good, mostly for those who cannot provide genuine aide.
You have proven yourself worthy of more than contentment on countless occasions, so take a dose of your own medicine and cure yourself. By my previous ambition, I never would have considered you a candidate for 'easy' self-destruction, much less a willful purveyor of apathy. By my experience there is never want for self-pity.
And in my professional opinion-
There is no need for grief.
Aeka stared at the letter with frozen eyes, its extravagant and illegible signature, wondering which reaction between fear and disgust had gone missing. All she could sense were the words, processing, taken apart and perhaps to heart. A few venting tears shimmered back in the mirror, her, The First Princess of Jurai, who had survived worse things than rejection. Thus, before her parents could arrive, the first of many free sessions began.
000
Two sisters observed together, surrounded by, and ever-absorbing the growth of all. Their knowledge and their power; through existence always ready. As their knowledge of themselves and their others: always ready. Aware of their relative infinity, often painfully aware of such relativity, and just as often painfully aware of their relatives. They communicated politely despite and for no competition, the more aggressive of the two beginning this time, as she always willed.
This one's given us quite a trouble.
Given us quite a scare.
Still, I admit, there may be something yet to gain.
Then, do you submit? There might be more to give?
We can take no credit for him.
Yes, but can we accept no blame?
We shall be more careful that this does not happen again.
Are we so certain this has not happened before?
No need to be.
No need to be.
.....How is your champion then, and his newly liberated family?
He is well, and they are well--- and liberated enough to remain mine.
Yes, but what of our sister, she cannot remain anymore than your host can.
Perhaps if I could worry less about you I could care more for them, for us.
It will remain speculation---but since we've seen so much of this through, perhaps I could contribute something to them? Some future inspiration for my own champions.
Why don't we give them a gift?
Together?
Yes. It's been a while.
For good reason.
All the more reason.
Shall we let them know they've received it?
You decided.
Very well, I'll let them decide.
Something grand then?
No, something small.
Something difficult then.
Perhaps we could compose.
Some verse?
Yes.
Recite.
Thus Tsunami began, and her sister Tokimi continued. And back. And forth. And so on. And so it was done.
The prize and title secured.
The enhancement and disguise.
His sanctuary and asylum.
His fantasies and lies.
And if oblivion was.
Then it surely must be.
Still the loneliest of all.
Will all know that they are free.
Letting go the end-games.
As each war was just a play.
Keeping close the villain.
Who was a hero for a day.
-END