Forever Masaki
By Starhopper
DISCLAIMER: AHHHHH! *rocks back and forth in a straight jacket* NO NO NO, a thousand times no!
Yeah, go and read, last chap of this book.
What are you still reading this for, go!
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Chapter 14: Unexpected
"Why, why her?" was all he could ask, calm and yet spitting fire at the smug expression of the slave that had done her Master's bidding. He cradled her form, lips already becoming blue, blood caking black along her mouth, neck, and left arm. With lids shut closed, he could only dream of seeing those eyes of hers ever again.
So full of life.
And now . . . no pulse, no thrum of existence, no heart.
Odosuoni yawned at his last glances at the woman he loved and again set victorious hands on hips. She herself bore battle scars, but they were small and in the process of healing and fading away. "Well, it's very simple actually Tenchi. We couldn't allow Ryoko to reproduce and form a tight bond with someone of equal or greater power, so I was sent to kill her. Now that a child possessing both Juraian and her own capabilities can never possibly come to existence, we can rule the universe!"
"Why Ryoko, why-why us? Why not some other powerful being?" Lost in grievance, Tenchi could only rock back and forth, trying to find some sign of life in the lifeless body that he held onto.
Sighing, the auburn hair of the woman went back up in its triple bun and she sat down a few feet away, facing Tenchi. "Who am I kidding, the Master doesn't care. Hell, I don't care."
"What?"
"He always said that I was cursed with sympathy-the only one out of my sisters that was so-and he always taunted me with that fact. When I broke away from his hold, I just kept on doing what I was told to do, never ever questioning his authority, even though he treated me so unkindly."
"You've studied us for two years, and you still went through with it." Tenchi couldn't believe this woman! She was even more unpredictable than Ryoko had been when he first met her. One minute, she was going to kill, then next she was at a therapy session, spilling her deepest innermost feelings to one of her marked targets!
"I did." Throughout this weird turn of emotions and events, Odosuoni had kept her head down, not even chancing a look from the man she had destroyed emotionally. Now, knowing what her true purpose was, she raised her head to meet a tear-filled gaze from the twenty-year-old. "And I'm sorry."
Tenchi stood, realizing that death was not an honorable thing, nor was assassination. Holding in all the pain, and powerful urges to let ideas of revenge loose and become real, he gritted his teeth and breathed, "You do realize that I can't let Ryoko's death go unavenged."
"I do."
Unsheathing Sword-Tenchi from its place at his side, Tenchi summoned the Jurai energy within himself, and poised it directly over the woman's head. As he brought it down, he muttered a small Shinto prayer he had learned from his Grandfather. Instead of hitting hard bone, the blade cut through transparent space. Tenchi looked up to find a great cloud of red and white dust swirl about him, white dust turning, and heading straight for Ryoko's body. The red dust spun into a whirlpool draining in the center of the room to oblivion or somewhere near it.
Stalking confusedly over to his beloved's side, Tenchi came down on his knees and watched with fascination as the pure white, unadulterated life energy began to sink into Ryoko's flesh. It spread out like a cloak, blanketing her from feet up. As her legs assumed their natural pale, soft tone, so did the rest of her skin leading to the blue tint her lips held, slowly warming back up to a rosy pink.
And finally, as he lay his left ear to her breast: a heartbeat. A solid thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump. It was followed with a sudden rise of her chest, and soft breath gracing the top of his forehead. He pulled away just in time to witness her lids flutter open with a wince of pain.
"Ryoko?"
"T-Tenchi?" she closed her eyes and reopened them again with uncertainty. "Tenchi?"
He brought her right hand to his cheek and held it there. Nodding, he answered her question before she had the chance to say it. "You're alive."
"Oh Tenchi!" the hand that had cupped his cheek slid up and around his neck, pulling herself up from death. Suddenly, she squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth in bearance of the pain shooting directly from her left side. Her free hand held her side, hoping to quiet the screams of her muscles as she struggled to kiss him, or at least hug him and know that she was indeed alive.
Tenchi noticed the personal struggle and drew his arms around her, supporting her and quickly easing the ordeal that was sitting up. Slowly he pulled her into his lap, taking severe caution of her left side.
"Old battle scar," she grumbled laying her head against his chest. "Still hurts."
"Shh, save your strength."
* * *
"I can not believe this!"
"Nor can we Master."
The Master held Odosuoni in his hands, the red dust of her existence that is. "Why, why, why?"
Hi stood up, followed by her sister Kaze. "Her time had come."
"Poor Odosuoni."
His emotions shifted sharply with a mere sigh. "Yes, well, all in due time. It was bound to happen and now comes your inheritance . . . Hi."
At the sound of her name, the bouncy black haired woman jumped. A look of pure surprise overcame the round, reddening cheeks. "Me?"
"Why her?"
"Don't look so glum Kaze," The Master gave the look that one gives to a pouting ten-year-old. "Your turn will come soon enough."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the mere idea of an opportunity like this was rapidly stripping Hi of all her memories as a slave to her Master. "Just give me Odosuoni's memories and let me get on with killing R-Rya-"
"It's Ryoko idiot," Kaze seethed under her breath, just barely loud enough for the Master to hear. "See, I haven't even studied her and I know the Space Pirate's name!" Throwing herself down onto her knees, Kaze assumed the begging position she had seen her former sister take some many times before. "Please Master, I beg of you. Let me do it."
"Absolutely not." The Master turned back to the patient Hi, well more like stunned-and-completely-ignorant-of-the-time-lost-due-to-his-conversation- with-her-sister Hi. "Now, back to the task at hand." He began to walk forward to a podium situated directly in the center of their lair. A wide, room width ramp curled around the base and followed upward to the podium becoming narrower and narrower until it reached the top. Their goals were the viewing and containment orbs hovering over the podium. The rest of Odosuoni lay in the first orb: glittering red sand. Through the viewing orbs could be seen different angles taken of a door with a ship like porthole in the center, towards the top. There was no action and no sound, making no difference to the viewers.
The Master turned as he started the incline to find Hi following behind him, with Kaze staying away at a far distance in a dark corner.
"Master, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for me giving me this chance. I swear on my life that I will not fail in my mission."
"Your life means little to me, so such a pledge makes no difference." The Master let the words roll off his tongue at such ease it would make a human with morals absolutely sick. "However, before you even attempt to console me with your pitiful promises, let us implant your sister's fond memories into your psyche."
Now, as they reached the center, the orb containing the last remnants of the "first experiment" rose into the air and came willingly into the arms of her Master. His hands greedily caught it under sleeves of ebony and onyx. "I'm assuming you're ready."
Hi nodded emphatically, mouth agape at the same idea of it all.
"Well then, let's get started . . . "
* * *
"Three o clock . . . three o one . . . three o two . . ."
Aeka glanced over to the jittery twenty year old, wringing his hands, looking at the clock, reciting the time minute by minute.
Finally Tenchi jumped up. "Damn it! What is taking so long," He demanded, head to the ground, slamming a fist to the lab door.
All the girls rushed towards him, minus one blonde galaxy police officer, prepared to hold him up if he were to fall. Sensing their need, Tenchi spread out his arms as if to ward them off. Looking up, his brown eyes were wet with worried tears. "I'm going in there, it's been too long."
"Tenchi!" Kiyone called as he kicked open the lab door. "Washu warned us not to enter!"
But he didn't hear her. Ryoko had been in the hands of that mad scientist for over six hours. Six hours of worrying, pacing, sweating, and crying: four things that Tenchi had not been accustomed to since his mother's death.
Yet, just as he entered the genius's lair, he was stopped by the denizen herself, clad in a white kimono with red shawl draped over her shoulders and wild magenta fringes tamed by a single white nurse's cap, with the exception of the two curved tendrils that always framed her face.
"Tenchi, exactly what were you going to do?" She asked quizzically, making the already anxious groom flare out in anger . . . very uncharacteristic for him . . .
"What was I going to do? How about you? For the past six hours, I've been waiting, without a single word of her condition. Is she herself, is she some mix of that woman's life force and her own, or is she even alive?"
Washu took a breath and looked past him to the two Princesses and Galaxy Police officer, then squinted her eyes to focus on the blonde sleeping on the couch.as usual. She pulled back and looked back into his brown eyes, blood shot veins curving over them.
"Now, now Tenchi," Washu reached up and patted his shoulder consolingly and continued in a sweet tone, "If your fiancée were to die, do you think I would honestly keep you waiting out here?"
Tenchi paused a moment, memories of all the inconsiderate and quick-spoken things the little scientist had done throughout her stay in his household. A hard slap to his breast brought him back from thought and to the angry little glare of Washu.
"Don't even kid around," she looked back to the dark recesses of her lab behind them.
"Miss Washu?"
Washu again moved her head to look past Tenchi and meet the eyes of the fifteen-year-old second princess. "Yes Sasami,"
"Is Ryoko going to recover?"
"Well," to Tenchi's surprise the woman in front of him turned on her heel, and with a beckoning finger over her beshawled left shoulder, went back in the lab, leaving the door open for everyone to follow.
"I was apprehensive at first when I found the both of you," Washu continued, leading the foursome through the first dimension, then stopped suddenly to summon the second, causing Kiyone to run into Aeka.
"Now, even I was surprised by her condition," she looked back up from the inter-dimensional laptop to the new world slowly coalescing before them. There, through the haze, Tenchi could see a room illuminated in blue. The source of the light was a floating rectangular glass box centered in the room. A larger cube hallowed out in the center so that it fit nicely over the width of the device, ran continuously up and down the length of the box, shooting a warm blue laser wall directly down over the patient hovering inside.
"You'll be happy to know that she will recover and is recovering very well, Sasami," Washu resumed after the dimension had come up clearly without static. As she led them inside Ryoko's room, the box slowly moved over to them.more like them moved over to it. In surprise, each mouth was open in question when Washu held up her hand to stop them, "It's my latest invention, 'second teleportation'. It has to do with speeding up time by seconds instead of minutes, thereby negating the vertigo aspect of moving in three dimensions and in two directions at once,"
But Tenchi, Aeka, Kiyone, and Sasami were looking down into the medical device that levitated the sleeping form of their fiancée and friend, not listening to the happy explanations of the scientist. She was definitely asleep and breathing, her love breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of her chest rising and falling under a thin translucent silver gown. The methodical cube running up and down the box slowed a bit as it passed over her face, sped up over her shoulders and arms where the most damage had been done, slowed over her stomach, and sped up once again over her scratched up legs, their pale luster lost in bruises and healing pink wounds. Suddenly from out of nowhere came side beams that took everyone off guard. They "fired" on either side of Ryoko, concentrating their efforts on her slender neck, shoulder blades, ribs, battle-scar on her left side, but not on the right side, thighs, legs, and finally toes.
Tenchi's face lit up as her eyes twitched in a dream. However, there was one thing that puzzled him.
"Washu, why is," he pointed to her midsection, where the cube had just slowed over. Stopping in mid-sentence, his brown eyes were caught by the scientist's gaze. It told him to stop and all would be explained later. By then, with eyes roving over to the monitors humming in the back, then to the peaceful sleeping form of his beloved, Tenchi could already guess what her explanation would be.
Sensing his need to talk, Washu took a breath and, looking around her surroundings, walked towards the rest of the group, with Tenchi remaining behind by the recovery tube. Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked at the women and huffed, "Alright now, I think we should leave Tenchi alone with his fiancée for awhile,"
"Aren't you coming Miss Washu?" Aeka asked as they were forced out, being shoved by an invisible force from the additional dimension and retreating to the first.
"Noit'smylabI'llstayifyoudon'tmind." Washu spoke rather fast, trying to usher them out with ease, but not succeeding. By now the foursome were at the lab door.
"But Washu . . . what about-"
"Tenchi?" She blurted out for them in the sweetest squeak possible. "Oh, he'll be along.I just have to talk to him for a few moments . . . that's all."
Now Sasami, Aeka, and Kiyone were back in the living room with the still snoring Mihoshi, standing at the door in complete surprise. "But-"
"Oh, sorry, can't talk anymore, call me for dinner won't ya?" And with that the door was slammed in their faces.
* * *
"I don't believe it."
"Believe what?" Hi chirped, shrugging her bare shoulders in complete and total apathy.
"You can't inherit your sister's memories." The Master stalked away in aggravation. He clomped down the spiral, each step taking him closer and closer to insanity. "Don't you understand why we need to destroy Ryoko?"
"Ryoko?" Hi got up from her seat at the podium, "What does she have to do with this whole thing?"
The Master turned back to look at her, nostrils flared in anger. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Who's kidding?"
Throwing his hands up in the air and continuing on his decent, he growled over his shoulder, "I should have spent more time on you."
"What's the problem?"
The Master looked above him to find Kaze floating cross-legged in the air, almost perched in mid-flight.
"One of your siblings is again a disappointment . . . that's what the problem is."
"I suddenly get the feeling that you're angry with me Master," Concerned, Hi also took to the air, levitating on her side as The Master stalked along to his open, inviting suite.
"Suddenly?" He spat in an incredulous tone. "No wonder I can't fit all of Odosuoni's memories into your," his teeth ground together now as he seethed, "teeny tiny brain."
Kaze stifled a chuckle with a hand over her mouth and smiled back to her dimwitted sister. Regaining her composure, she turned to the dark figure below her and touched down at his feet. "So, I expect you'll be sending me in her stead?"
In response to this, the Master simply groaned and stared at her. "That would be the most logical reasoning Kaze."
Pleased with the compliment, the buxom creation drew her arms together over her chest, squeezing her breasts together in a crease in hopes of rewarding him for his kindness. "Thank you sir."
"But it will take some time to rethink my plans," his fierce eyes bore through her head, as if searching for any extra space in there. "Be patient and your time will come."
* * *
"I'm sorry Tenchi, they just wouldn't leave and I knew that you wouldn't want everyone around . . . especially Aeka . . . "
Tenchi didn't hear her. He wanted desperately for Ryoko to wake up. He sat on one of Washu's floating pillows, leaning over the tube, waiting for something to happen.
"Tenchi?" He felt a hand on his right shoulder, but didn't make the connection between the little genius and her show of concern. His eyes shifted only slightly towards her direction, but came once again to rest on her body.
Swallowing, he closed his eyes and slowly reopened them again. "I don't know what to say . . . "
"I figured as much." She pulled over another pillow and sat cross-legged with elbows on her knees, knuckles propped under her chin.
"I mean . . . I was so not expecting this." He really wasn't. His voice was dry and cracked and he licked his lips. "What-what can I say?" Looking over to the monitor he smiled, then turned his head to focus back on his beloved, the smile gone, and replaced by a look of confusion and bewilderment all in one.
"As I told you, I was surprised by her condition." Washu chattered, trying to fill the gap between his anxious realizations. "I was expecting some sort of gene splice, life force mixing with life force.something other than this."
"Does she know?" Tenchi kept his eyes focused on Ryoko's face, trying to block out the hums of the heart monitors behind them.
"She will." Washu was up now, walking behind the box in the line of Tenchi's vision. "I'm sure she has an inkling of what's going on. I'm sure I would know if the same were to happen to me."
For the first time, Tenchi stopped thinking about Ryoko and rubbed his face with the heel of his palm. "Is-"
"Everything's fine." She answered for him, her scientific, know-it-all tone slowly becoming softer and more innocent. He could see her half-smile as she looked down at her patient, sleeping peaceably in the glass box. "I took the liberty though of giving her the extra treatment . . . considering."
"Thank you." His voice was monotone, thoughtful, hell, what else would he be at a time like this?
"Tenchi?"
"Yes."
She had made her circle and was now at his left side, kneeling down to look into his face and read his answer if he wasn't prepared to give it. "Are you happy?"
"Happy?" Without sparing a single second, he answered his own question. "Ecstatically happy."
"Then," through his unwavering stare, her green eyes tried to challenge his. "May I ask why are you so silent?"
"I want Ryoko to wake up so we can share this happiness together."
Washu shook her head, and seeing that there was no way Tenchi was leaving this dimension of her lab until his beloved woke up, walked away to her main lab in the original dimension. As she passed the outside of the room, she threw a glance over to the heart monitors beeping with second peaks. One recorded and shouted the beats of the greatest Space Pirate that the known universe has ever known . . . not to mention the luckiest. She had fallen to another world, lived when others would have died, and loved a man with an undying passion like no one else. Now she had escaped her own death once again which saved not only herself but . . .
Washu smiled before closing the dimension behind her. On one monitor were the adult pulses of Ryoko.
On the other were the fetal pulses of her child.
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WTF?!?!?
How dare I leave it hanging on that thread?
Tell me how much you hate me in a REVIEW to give me incentive to finish the Trilogy. I want to finish it desperately but . . . .
I have another 2 chaps written for the third and final book. But that's not enough to finish the story the way it deserves to be written. * pouts * I started this 4 years ago, and I know what I wanted to do, but now that I've matured, I don't know if it's fitting.
And I'm rambling on again. I have to stop doing that.
Thanks for staying with me so far! I promise you'll be happy the next time I post!
By Starhopper
DISCLAIMER: AHHHHH! *rocks back and forth in a straight jacket* NO NO NO, a thousand times no!
Yeah, go and read, last chap of this book.
What are you still reading this for, go!
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Chapter 14: Unexpected
"Why, why her?" was all he could ask, calm and yet spitting fire at the smug expression of the slave that had done her Master's bidding. He cradled her form, lips already becoming blue, blood caking black along her mouth, neck, and left arm. With lids shut closed, he could only dream of seeing those eyes of hers ever again.
So full of life.
And now . . . no pulse, no thrum of existence, no heart.
Odosuoni yawned at his last glances at the woman he loved and again set victorious hands on hips. She herself bore battle scars, but they were small and in the process of healing and fading away. "Well, it's very simple actually Tenchi. We couldn't allow Ryoko to reproduce and form a tight bond with someone of equal or greater power, so I was sent to kill her. Now that a child possessing both Juraian and her own capabilities can never possibly come to existence, we can rule the universe!"
"Why Ryoko, why-why us? Why not some other powerful being?" Lost in grievance, Tenchi could only rock back and forth, trying to find some sign of life in the lifeless body that he held onto.
Sighing, the auburn hair of the woman went back up in its triple bun and she sat down a few feet away, facing Tenchi. "Who am I kidding, the Master doesn't care. Hell, I don't care."
"What?"
"He always said that I was cursed with sympathy-the only one out of my sisters that was so-and he always taunted me with that fact. When I broke away from his hold, I just kept on doing what I was told to do, never ever questioning his authority, even though he treated me so unkindly."
"You've studied us for two years, and you still went through with it." Tenchi couldn't believe this woman! She was even more unpredictable than Ryoko had been when he first met her. One minute, she was going to kill, then next she was at a therapy session, spilling her deepest innermost feelings to one of her marked targets!
"I did." Throughout this weird turn of emotions and events, Odosuoni had kept her head down, not even chancing a look from the man she had destroyed emotionally. Now, knowing what her true purpose was, she raised her head to meet a tear-filled gaze from the twenty-year-old. "And I'm sorry."
Tenchi stood, realizing that death was not an honorable thing, nor was assassination. Holding in all the pain, and powerful urges to let ideas of revenge loose and become real, he gritted his teeth and breathed, "You do realize that I can't let Ryoko's death go unavenged."
"I do."
Unsheathing Sword-Tenchi from its place at his side, Tenchi summoned the Jurai energy within himself, and poised it directly over the woman's head. As he brought it down, he muttered a small Shinto prayer he had learned from his Grandfather. Instead of hitting hard bone, the blade cut through transparent space. Tenchi looked up to find a great cloud of red and white dust swirl about him, white dust turning, and heading straight for Ryoko's body. The red dust spun into a whirlpool draining in the center of the room to oblivion or somewhere near it.
Stalking confusedly over to his beloved's side, Tenchi came down on his knees and watched with fascination as the pure white, unadulterated life energy began to sink into Ryoko's flesh. It spread out like a cloak, blanketing her from feet up. As her legs assumed their natural pale, soft tone, so did the rest of her skin leading to the blue tint her lips held, slowly warming back up to a rosy pink.
And finally, as he lay his left ear to her breast: a heartbeat. A solid thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump. It was followed with a sudden rise of her chest, and soft breath gracing the top of his forehead. He pulled away just in time to witness her lids flutter open with a wince of pain.
"Ryoko?"
"T-Tenchi?" she closed her eyes and reopened them again with uncertainty. "Tenchi?"
He brought her right hand to his cheek and held it there. Nodding, he answered her question before she had the chance to say it. "You're alive."
"Oh Tenchi!" the hand that had cupped his cheek slid up and around his neck, pulling herself up from death. Suddenly, she squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth in bearance of the pain shooting directly from her left side. Her free hand held her side, hoping to quiet the screams of her muscles as she struggled to kiss him, or at least hug him and know that she was indeed alive.
Tenchi noticed the personal struggle and drew his arms around her, supporting her and quickly easing the ordeal that was sitting up. Slowly he pulled her into his lap, taking severe caution of her left side.
"Old battle scar," she grumbled laying her head against his chest. "Still hurts."
"Shh, save your strength."
* * *
"I can not believe this!"
"Nor can we Master."
The Master held Odosuoni in his hands, the red dust of her existence that is. "Why, why, why?"
Hi stood up, followed by her sister Kaze. "Her time had come."
"Poor Odosuoni."
His emotions shifted sharply with a mere sigh. "Yes, well, all in due time. It was bound to happen and now comes your inheritance . . . Hi."
At the sound of her name, the bouncy black haired woman jumped. A look of pure surprise overcame the round, reddening cheeks. "Me?"
"Why her?"
"Don't look so glum Kaze," The Master gave the look that one gives to a pouting ten-year-old. "Your turn will come soon enough."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the mere idea of an opportunity like this was rapidly stripping Hi of all her memories as a slave to her Master. "Just give me Odosuoni's memories and let me get on with killing R-Rya-"
"It's Ryoko idiot," Kaze seethed under her breath, just barely loud enough for the Master to hear. "See, I haven't even studied her and I know the Space Pirate's name!" Throwing herself down onto her knees, Kaze assumed the begging position she had seen her former sister take some many times before. "Please Master, I beg of you. Let me do it."
"Absolutely not." The Master turned back to the patient Hi, well more like stunned-and-completely-ignorant-of-the-time-lost-due-to-his-conversation- with-her-sister Hi. "Now, back to the task at hand." He began to walk forward to a podium situated directly in the center of their lair. A wide, room width ramp curled around the base and followed upward to the podium becoming narrower and narrower until it reached the top. Their goals were the viewing and containment orbs hovering over the podium. The rest of Odosuoni lay in the first orb: glittering red sand. Through the viewing orbs could be seen different angles taken of a door with a ship like porthole in the center, towards the top. There was no action and no sound, making no difference to the viewers.
The Master turned as he started the incline to find Hi following behind him, with Kaze staying away at a far distance in a dark corner.
"Master, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for me giving me this chance. I swear on my life that I will not fail in my mission."
"Your life means little to me, so such a pledge makes no difference." The Master let the words roll off his tongue at such ease it would make a human with morals absolutely sick. "However, before you even attempt to console me with your pitiful promises, let us implant your sister's fond memories into your psyche."
Now, as they reached the center, the orb containing the last remnants of the "first experiment" rose into the air and came willingly into the arms of her Master. His hands greedily caught it under sleeves of ebony and onyx. "I'm assuming you're ready."
Hi nodded emphatically, mouth agape at the same idea of it all.
"Well then, let's get started . . . "
* * *
"Three o clock . . . three o one . . . three o two . . ."
Aeka glanced over to the jittery twenty year old, wringing his hands, looking at the clock, reciting the time minute by minute.
Finally Tenchi jumped up. "Damn it! What is taking so long," He demanded, head to the ground, slamming a fist to the lab door.
All the girls rushed towards him, minus one blonde galaxy police officer, prepared to hold him up if he were to fall. Sensing their need, Tenchi spread out his arms as if to ward them off. Looking up, his brown eyes were wet with worried tears. "I'm going in there, it's been too long."
"Tenchi!" Kiyone called as he kicked open the lab door. "Washu warned us not to enter!"
But he didn't hear her. Ryoko had been in the hands of that mad scientist for over six hours. Six hours of worrying, pacing, sweating, and crying: four things that Tenchi had not been accustomed to since his mother's death.
Yet, just as he entered the genius's lair, he was stopped by the denizen herself, clad in a white kimono with red shawl draped over her shoulders and wild magenta fringes tamed by a single white nurse's cap, with the exception of the two curved tendrils that always framed her face.
"Tenchi, exactly what were you going to do?" She asked quizzically, making the already anxious groom flare out in anger . . . very uncharacteristic for him . . .
"What was I going to do? How about you? For the past six hours, I've been waiting, without a single word of her condition. Is she herself, is she some mix of that woman's life force and her own, or is she even alive?"
Washu took a breath and looked past him to the two Princesses and Galaxy Police officer, then squinted her eyes to focus on the blonde sleeping on the couch.as usual. She pulled back and looked back into his brown eyes, blood shot veins curving over them.
"Now, now Tenchi," Washu reached up and patted his shoulder consolingly and continued in a sweet tone, "If your fiancée were to die, do you think I would honestly keep you waiting out here?"
Tenchi paused a moment, memories of all the inconsiderate and quick-spoken things the little scientist had done throughout her stay in his household. A hard slap to his breast brought him back from thought and to the angry little glare of Washu.
"Don't even kid around," she looked back to the dark recesses of her lab behind them.
"Miss Washu?"
Washu again moved her head to look past Tenchi and meet the eyes of the fifteen-year-old second princess. "Yes Sasami,"
"Is Ryoko going to recover?"
"Well," to Tenchi's surprise the woman in front of him turned on her heel, and with a beckoning finger over her beshawled left shoulder, went back in the lab, leaving the door open for everyone to follow.
"I was apprehensive at first when I found the both of you," Washu continued, leading the foursome through the first dimension, then stopped suddenly to summon the second, causing Kiyone to run into Aeka.
"Now, even I was surprised by her condition," she looked back up from the inter-dimensional laptop to the new world slowly coalescing before them. There, through the haze, Tenchi could see a room illuminated in blue. The source of the light was a floating rectangular glass box centered in the room. A larger cube hallowed out in the center so that it fit nicely over the width of the device, ran continuously up and down the length of the box, shooting a warm blue laser wall directly down over the patient hovering inside.
"You'll be happy to know that she will recover and is recovering very well, Sasami," Washu resumed after the dimension had come up clearly without static. As she led them inside Ryoko's room, the box slowly moved over to them.more like them moved over to it. In surprise, each mouth was open in question when Washu held up her hand to stop them, "It's my latest invention, 'second teleportation'. It has to do with speeding up time by seconds instead of minutes, thereby negating the vertigo aspect of moving in three dimensions and in two directions at once,"
But Tenchi, Aeka, Kiyone, and Sasami were looking down into the medical device that levitated the sleeping form of their fiancée and friend, not listening to the happy explanations of the scientist. She was definitely asleep and breathing, her love breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of her chest rising and falling under a thin translucent silver gown. The methodical cube running up and down the box slowed a bit as it passed over her face, sped up over her shoulders and arms where the most damage had been done, slowed over her stomach, and sped up once again over her scratched up legs, their pale luster lost in bruises and healing pink wounds. Suddenly from out of nowhere came side beams that took everyone off guard. They "fired" on either side of Ryoko, concentrating their efforts on her slender neck, shoulder blades, ribs, battle-scar on her left side, but not on the right side, thighs, legs, and finally toes.
Tenchi's face lit up as her eyes twitched in a dream. However, there was one thing that puzzled him.
"Washu, why is," he pointed to her midsection, where the cube had just slowed over. Stopping in mid-sentence, his brown eyes were caught by the scientist's gaze. It told him to stop and all would be explained later. By then, with eyes roving over to the monitors humming in the back, then to the peaceful sleeping form of his beloved, Tenchi could already guess what her explanation would be.
Sensing his need to talk, Washu took a breath and, looking around her surroundings, walked towards the rest of the group, with Tenchi remaining behind by the recovery tube. Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked at the women and huffed, "Alright now, I think we should leave Tenchi alone with his fiancée for awhile,"
"Aren't you coming Miss Washu?" Aeka asked as they were forced out, being shoved by an invisible force from the additional dimension and retreating to the first.
"Noit'smylabI'llstayifyoudon'tmind." Washu spoke rather fast, trying to usher them out with ease, but not succeeding. By now the foursome were at the lab door.
"But Washu . . . what about-"
"Tenchi?" She blurted out for them in the sweetest squeak possible. "Oh, he'll be along.I just have to talk to him for a few moments . . . that's all."
Now Sasami, Aeka, and Kiyone were back in the living room with the still snoring Mihoshi, standing at the door in complete surprise. "But-"
"Oh, sorry, can't talk anymore, call me for dinner won't ya?" And with that the door was slammed in their faces.
* * *
"I don't believe it."
"Believe what?" Hi chirped, shrugging her bare shoulders in complete and total apathy.
"You can't inherit your sister's memories." The Master stalked away in aggravation. He clomped down the spiral, each step taking him closer and closer to insanity. "Don't you understand why we need to destroy Ryoko?"
"Ryoko?" Hi got up from her seat at the podium, "What does she have to do with this whole thing?"
The Master turned back to look at her, nostrils flared in anger. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Who's kidding?"
Throwing his hands up in the air and continuing on his decent, he growled over his shoulder, "I should have spent more time on you."
"What's the problem?"
The Master looked above him to find Kaze floating cross-legged in the air, almost perched in mid-flight.
"One of your siblings is again a disappointment . . . that's what the problem is."
"I suddenly get the feeling that you're angry with me Master," Concerned, Hi also took to the air, levitating on her side as The Master stalked along to his open, inviting suite.
"Suddenly?" He spat in an incredulous tone. "No wonder I can't fit all of Odosuoni's memories into your," his teeth ground together now as he seethed, "teeny tiny brain."
Kaze stifled a chuckle with a hand over her mouth and smiled back to her dimwitted sister. Regaining her composure, she turned to the dark figure below her and touched down at his feet. "So, I expect you'll be sending me in her stead?"
In response to this, the Master simply groaned and stared at her. "That would be the most logical reasoning Kaze."
Pleased with the compliment, the buxom creation drew her arms together over her chest, squeezing her breasts together in a crease in hopes of rewarding him for his kindness. "Thank you sir."
"But it will take some time to rethink my plans," his fierce eyes bore through her head, as if searching for any extra space in there. "Be patient and your time will come."
* * *
"I'm sorry Tenchi, they just wouldn't leave and I knew that you wouldn't want everyone around . . . especially Aeka . . . "
Tenchi didn't hear her. He wanted desperately for Ryoko to wake up. He sat on one of Washu's floating pillows, leaning over the tube, waiting for something to happen.
"Tenchi?" He felt a hand on his right shoulder, but didn't make the connection between the little genius and her show of concern. His eyes shifted only slightly towards her direction, but came once again to rest on her body.
Swallowing, he closed his eyes and slowly reopened them again. "I don't know what to say . . . "
"I figured as much." She pulled over another pillow and sat cross-legged with elbows on her knees, knuckles propped under her chin.
"I mean . . . I was so not expecting this." He really wasn't. His voice was dry and cracked and he licked his lips. "What-what can I say?" Looking over to the monitor he smiled, then turned his head to focus back on his beloved, the smile gone, and replaced by a look of confusion and bewilderment all in one.
"As I told you, I was surprised by her condition." Washu chattered, trying to fill the gap between his anxious realizations. "I was expecting some sort of gene splice, life force mixing with life force.something other than this."
"Does she know?" Tenchi kept his eyes focused on Ryoko's face, trying to block out the hums of the heart monitors behind them.
"She will." Washu was up now, walking behind the box in the line of Tenchi's vision. "I'm sure she has an inkling of what's going on. I'm sure I would know if the same were to happen to me."
For the first time, Tenchi stopped thinking about Ryoko and rubbed his face with the heel of his palm. "Is-"
"Everything's fine." She answered for him, her scientific, know-it-all tone slowly becoming softer and more innocent. He could see her half-smile as she looked down at her patient, sleeping peaceably in the glass box. "I took the liberty though of giving her the extra treatment . . . considering."
"Thank you." His voice was monotone, thoughtful, hell, what else would he be at a time like this?
"Tenchi?"
"Yes."
She had made her circle and was now at his left side, kneeling down to look into his face and read his answer if he wasn't prepared to give it. "Are you happy?"
"Happy?" Without sparing a single second, he answered his own question. "Ecstatically happy."
"Then," through his unwavering stare, her green eyes tried to challenge his. "May I ask why are you so silent?"
"I want Ryoko to wake up so we can share this happiness together."
Washu shook her head, and seeing that there was no way Tenchi was leaving this dimension of her lab until his beloved woke up, walked away to her main lab in the original dimension. As she passed the outside of the room, she threw a glance over to the heart monitors beeping with second peaks. One recorded and shouted the beats of the greatest Space Pirate that the known universe has ever known . . . not to mention the luckiest. She had fallen to another world, lived when others would have died, and loved a man with an undying passion like no one else. Now she had escaped her own death once again which saved not only herself but . . .
Washu smiled before closing the dimension behind her. On one monitor were the adult pulses of Ryoko.
On the other were the fetal pulses of her child.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
WTF?!?!?
How dare I leave it hanging on that thread?
Tell me how much you hate me in a REVIEW to give me incentive to finish the Trilogy. I want to finish it desperately but . . . .
I have another 2 chaps written for the third and final book. But that's not enough to finish the story the way it deserves to be written. * pouts * I started this 4 years ago, and I know what I wanted to do, but now that I've matured, I don't know if it's fitting.
And I'm rambling on again. I have to stop doing that.
Thanks for staying with me so far! I promise you'll be happy the next time I post!