Tenchu Muyo! and all related characters are the property of their respective owners. I do not claim to own them, although I wish I could. This is a work of fiction and I only own the idea for the story line. However, any unrecognized characters have been created by me and are used with my permission only. Other than that, sue me if you want, but I don't have a lot of money, so it will be a waste of your time. However, if you wish me to, I will remove this story from the net. Now, on with the fic!
Tenchi Muyo!
Resurrected Weapon
Prologue
Washu was in her lab when she noticed that the light was blinking on her computer terminal. Pressing it, she saw the kind face of Tenchi look back at her and she told him that he could come in. A few seconds later, he was standing behind her as she continued to type away on her computer's holographic terminal.
"Hello, Washu," he said, taking a seat on the floating pillow that she had summoned for him. "Sasami said that dinner would be ready soon."
"Thanks, but I'm a little busy right now," she answered, keying in another sequence of commands. "Would you mind bringing it into the lab for me, Tenchi?"
The young man nodded. "No problem," he answered. "What is it you are working on?"
Finishing up the last series of equations, she turned around and looked up at him. "I'm working on a new machine that will be able to summon any human I wish to the lab, dead or living. It's really quite complex, but I will be using it this evening in a test. Of course, I will be choosing a random person who has already passed away."
Tenchi's brow furled and he gave her a look that told her that he was not sure that he liked the idea very much. "Are you sure that that is a wise thing to do, Washu? I mean, that person would be very confused."
She huffed a bit at his misunderstanding. "I won't be reviving them, Tenchi," she said, turning around so that she could get back to actually designing the machine that would be doing this act of scientific research. "I will be just bringing them here momentarily to run some scans and then I will be sending them back. I am only looking for data, not a resurrection method."
He nodded at this and seemed to take the idea into his mind for later thought. It wouldn't be very difficult to make a mistake, but Washu knew what she was doing. "As long as I don't have some corpse in my house, I'm okay with it. Just be extra careful, for me, please."
"No problem, Tenchi!" she exclaimed. "I hope that you and the others will join me for the unveiling of this machine later!"
"Sure thing, Washu!" Tenchi said, stepping back into the house from the subspace laboratory.
Once he was outside, she began the sequence that would actually build the machine's casing. It wouldn't be long now before she could begin to program her work into it.
Once back inside the house, Tenchi went back to the kitchen where he found Sasami, hard at work on dinner. He leaned up against the doorframe and watched the young princess as she worked as hard as she usually did on any meal and he smiled, knowing that it would be just as good as all the food she'd prepared before.
As he watched, he saw Ryo-Oki sneak up on the bowl that was on the counter beside the princess. He knew what the furry cabbit was after and he decided that this time he would just sit back and watch the events unfold. Not to make it more difficult for Sasami, but he had already chased the creature away from many of the orange vegetables that day.
Just as he figured, the moment the princess turned her head to get the veggies out of the bowl, her hand instead touched a furry body and she spun her head to the side to see the cabbit in the bowl, munching away at the carrots. The look on her face made the cabbit stop what it was doing and look up at her with eyes that had a scarred expression within them.
"Ryo-Oki!" the princess exclaimed, grabbing for her spatula. "This time, you're going to get it!"
The cabbit threw its tiny amount of weight against the side of the bowl and overturned it as the plastic spatula came down. After managing to avoid getting pulverized by the princess, she leapt off the counter and hit the floor running in Tenchi's general direction with the princess hot on her tail. This surprised the young man, since Sasami hardly ever got angry at the cabbit, and he didn't have time to move as the furry ball ran around him. He was hit by the small princess and they ended up tumbling into another person who had just walked behind them, in an attempt to see what was happening.
Landing on something soft was not what Tenchi had thought he would be thinking about at this time and thought for a moment that he had been imagining things and he was just about to hit the floor. Instead, the feeling of softness remained and he noticed that he was not actually lying on the floor at all, save for his feet and legs.
"Well, good afternoon to you too there, Tenchi!" he heard a familiar voice exclaim. Instantly he knew what his head was lying between and quickly removed it from Ryoko's chest to then help the princess to her feet.
"I'm sorry, Tenchi," Sasami said, her head down low in shame. "Ryo-Oki stole the carrots from the bowl again and I lost my temper. Please forgive me."
Handing the fallen spatula back to the princess, he patted her on the head. "No harm done here, thanks to Ryoko catching the both of us," he said, glaring at the woman who was blushing at the contact that he had had with her. "Why don't you head back in and finish up something else, and I'll go get some more carrots from the shed and help you with what is left to prepare dinner. Okay?"
"Okay!" she exclaimed, instantly her usual self again. Having been forgiven, there was nothing making her sad anymore and she beamed back toward the counter in the kitchen to start on the other vegetables. "Thanks, Tenchi!"
"No big deal, Sasami," he said, then looked around the room to find Ryo-Oki on the back of the couch. He walked over to her and his shadow fell over her before she even knew he was there. Picking her up by the scruff of the neck, as a mother cat would do to her kitten, he held her just in front of his face so that they were eye-to-eye. "You've had your fun this month at irritating Sasami, you little twit. No more carrots stealing. If you want some, just let me know. Alright."
Seeing that Tenchi was not asking, the cabbit answered with a subdued meow, and then was set back on the couch to scamper off afterward.
Watching the thief retreat outside, Tenchi turned to Ryoko. "I have to go in town later to pick up a few things for Grandpa. Would you like to go?"
The former space-pirate's eyes lit up at the question and she jumped at him and flung her arms around his neck. "Of course!" she yelled, and then released him. "When are you leaving?"
"Right after dinner. I want to be back before tonight because Washu has a new experiment that she wants us all to witness," he said.
"Okay," she said, then walked off toward where she saw Ryo-Oki run off. "See ya when dinner's ready then! I'll be on the roof after I re-capture the thief."
Deciding that he had wasted enough time, he decided to go after the carrots that he'd told Sasami he'd get for her. Going outside to the shed, he passed by a fuming Ayeka and he knew exactly what she was in a huff about. Sighing he told her to calm down and that she could accompany him the next time that he had to take the truck in town. The steam that seemed to be rolling out of the elder princess's ears subsided and she gave him a quick nod before heading upstairs to her room.
Putting his shoes on, he finally was outside and getting the carrots out of the baskets that he had set them in. Even though most of the carrots would be for Ryo-Oki anyway, the cabbit made a game out of stealing them from Sasami when she could just come out to the shed or the field with Tenchi. There she could have all the carrots she wanted, as long as she didn't eat all of them in one day. Only on very rare occasions was she aloud to gorge herself on them, and that's when she was involved in a battle and needed to boost her strength back up.
Carrying the carrots into the house, he took his shoes off and headed back to the kitchen. Knowing he had brought more than enough for this meal, he washed them off in the sink and placed the extra ones in a bag in the fridge. Sasami worked along side him as they cut up the various veggies that were going to be included in the meal, he working on the carrots and her dicing lettuce to start with. It looked like she would be preparing some kind of salad as a side dish today. Ayeka had been asking her if she would for a while, and now it seemed that Sasami had finally decided to try her hand at making a western style one.
"Thanks for the help, Tenchi," Sasami beamed, pouring water into a bowl from the sink. "I think we can call everyone to dinner in about a half an hour. Would you like to set the table for me?"
"Sure," he said, taking the various dishes and then chopsticks out of the cupboards. "Sasami, how is Tsunami these days?"
The princess looked up at him with a happy smile on her face. "She is doing well," she said, setting the bowl on the counter and then filling a pot that she then placed on the stove. "She's been talking to me in my dreams again; and has been trying to explain about the assimilation process. I think that it is already well underway."
Looking at her a little more closely he said, "Well, you have seemed to be getting a little taller lately. I'm sure that you'll just be the same Sasami to me, though."
Blushing a bit at that comment, she returned to the stove where she put some noodles in the now boiling water. In a way, she guessed that she liked Tenchi in almost the same way that Ayeka and Ryoko did, but she thought of him like more of an older brother than anything else. He was always helping her out and talking to her in a sort of counselling sort of way and she was able to get a lot off her mind when she was talking to him. It reminded her of her father's way of talking to her when she was younger and back on Jurai.
When she first got here, she missed her home a lot and with no way of possibly returning, she had made the best of it. However, there were nights that she had really scary nightmares and she would go to Tenchi's room where he would allow her to sleep in his bed while he rolled out a futon on the floor to sleep on. It kept her company and they would talk about the dream and attempt to find some meaning to it other than scaring the daylights out of her.
Washu sometimes joined them and she would add her input as a scientist and as a mother to Ryoko, even though she had never raised the former space-pirate herself. She seemed to regret not being there for her, but she was more than willing to try to help Sasami who didn't have a motherly figure in the house other than her sister.
During these times though, Ryoko and Ayeka would be outside the door or somewhere else on the property fighting, so it always was up to Tenchi and Washu to console her. There were times when she would lash out at the both of them and tap into some of Tsunami's power to stop their arguing and, most of the time, physical fights. This lead to more times when she wanted to talk to Tenchi and, especially, Washu. When she managed to tap into the goddess's power, she frightened herself because it seemed to be too much for her to control and felt intoxicating.
The scientist had found no problems with her in all of her scans after these incidents, though, and declared that there was nothing wrong with her. She said that she would have to keep a tighter lid on Tsunami's power until she learned to control it and encouraged her to talk to the goddess about it through their link. This seemed to work out and had lead up to the present situation where Tsunami would communicate with her while she slept. Tenchi had jokingly called it 'night school ' when she first talked to him about it and they'd all shared a laugh at it, including the goddess.
"There, everything looks to be about ready," Tenchi said, putting the lid back on one of the pots and turning the burner down a bit. "I'll go get the others. Oh, and Sasami, Washu would appreciate it if there was a plate prepared for her. She won't be joining us, so she asked that I bring it to her in the lab."
"Not a problem, Tenchi!" Sasami said, turning back to another pot that she was not quite finished with yet.
Heading upstairs he told Ayeka that she should get washed up for Dinner and that Sasami would be dishing it out in a few minutes. She thanked him and then he headed out onto the balcony where he turned around to face the house and could see Ryoko dozing on the roof where she had said she would be. He shouted at her and she snapped awake in a moment to then smile and say that she would join them all in a few minutes. After she teleported away, he then went in search of Mihoshi, but when he got downstairs he could see that she was already patiently waiting at the table and had dragged the others that were left with her.
He took his place at the table and had a light conversation with the two Galaxy Police officers before Sasami began serving everyone and the others arrived. Ryoko and Ayeka glared at each other as they sat down on opposite sides of Tenchi and he knew that they were going to have yet another argument.
His father and grandfather, both having not taken seats yet, opted for sitting on the other side of the two girls and they silently indicated to Tenchi that they would keep them in line. Letting out a breath of air that he hadn't known that he was holding, he began eating with the others as the argument began between the two girls. As quickly as it had started, however, the two older men of the family managed to stop it and the meal was peaceful from that moment on.
Waving to the others, Tenchi climbed in behind the wheel of the truck and then started the engine. Ryoko slid into the passenger's seat and buckled herself in, but she was in the middle seat instead of the one by the door. Thankfully, Ayeka had opted to stay in the house, otherwise there would be another argument and the princess would demand that she go along as well to act as a bodyguard.
"So, what do you have to get for your grandfather, Tenchi?" Ryoko asked, snaking her arm around the back of his neck and resting her head on his shoulder.
Not feeling very comfortable with Ryoko's head on his shoulder, he kept his eyes on the road as he pulled of the driveway. There was nothing more hazardous than an embarrassed person behind the wheel, in his book anyway.
"Supplies for the shrine," he said, ignoring her breath on his neck. He would allow her to have her fun while the princess was not around to help her make another crater. However, he would not be allowing her to think that she could do anything she wanted. There had to be a limit to how much he would allow, even though his mind was working everyday to find a loophole that would allow him to not break one of the women's hearts.
Ryoko closed her eyes, satisfied with the answer for now and dozed off on his shoulder within a few minutes. There was no traffic on the back roads this afternoon, but there would be still another half hour before they would arrive in town. Having a woman's head resting on your shoulder while you were driving could be very tiring and his whole arm quickly numbed after the first fifteen minutes.
As he continued to drive on, he ran some thoughts through his mind about the laws that were here on Earth and the ones for Jurai. There were loopholes between the two that he knew he could find, but there had to be something that they had in common as well. For one man to be with two women here on Earth was against the law and there were people who had been sent to jail for that very act. Even if he was Juraian Royalty, he wouldn't be able to explain the laws of another planet to a civilization that would throw him in a white padded cell for even uttering such 'nonsense.'
Knowing this lead him to wonder if he could keep the union a secret and opted that that would be a very bad idea. Who the heck keeps their marriage a secret? A wedding is supposed to be huge and have all of your friends and family attending to see the happy couple exchange their vows and begin a new chapter in their lives. Of course, he could always find out if Jurai would host the ceremony, but there were complications there as well, such as him having no idea how to contact them other than Ayeka, Sasami, and his grandfather.
The whole thing just kept giving him a headache and he did not like the options that were laid out before him. Also, there were further complications wherein Ryoko and Ayeka would probably rip each other to shreds if the thought were ever revealed to them. Somehow, he considered a huge battle between the two, ending up with him in the middle becoming nothing more than a small pile of smoking ashes.
Ryoko stirred in her light nap as the truck bounced over a small pothole and then she wrapped both her arms around his torso in a snug grasp. She then went right back to sleeping through the drive, but he could tell that she had been awake for at least a few seconds. In those few seconds, she probably figured out that she wasn't in any danger and then decided that it would be a good idea to just continue her nap.
Traffic began to get thicker after that and he was soon into the light traffic of the town that he knew wouldn't be backing up for at least another hour. Turning down a side street, he headed toward the freight depot that would have his grandfather's supplies in one of the station's mail buildings.
When he pulled into the driveway, someone must have recognized the truck, because they came right out to him and he was just getting Ryoko stirred out of her nap when they got close enough to be heard.
"You must be Tenchi, yes?" the man said, looking at the cyan-haired woman he had not seen before. She was beautiful in his eyes, but she seemed to have a stirring of mischief in those large golden eyes of hers.
"Yes," Tenchi answered, closing the door. "My grandfather sent me in to pick up some supplies for him. Do you need a hand to load them onto the truck?"
The man nodded and then turned toward the building as he signalled for the door to be opened about ten feet from the main door to the office. This one was a large freight door that was meant to have transports back their trailers up to and load on whatever needed to be hauled in them. "Just back your truck up there and then you can give my man a hand with the loading if you wish. Can't do it with the forklift since they are only boxes. But, hey, what can I tell ya," the man said, turning back to Tenchi. "Don't mind a few minutes worth of work, do ya young man?"
"Not a problem at all," he answered, hoping back into the truck. "As long as I get home for supper, everything is alright by my book."
"Glad to hear that from ya, son," the older man said, checking off a few things on a clipboard he'd had behind his back. "Just need your signature here, saying that you arrived, then you'll need to sign the other one inside to say that you are taking over the responsibility for the load."
"Great," Tenchi said, with a small smile. He backed the truck up to the loading dock and then got out, telling Ryoko to just stay in the cab and wait for him. She didn't seem to like it very much, but if that's what he wanted then she would stay.
It only took about fifteen minutes to load the boxes and then make sure that they were covered and tied down so that they wouldn't blow off the back. Signing the clipboard for the paperwork, Tenchi jumped back to the ground from the loading dock and then climbed back into the cab. Starting the engine, he looked back over at Ryoko and smiled as he ran another thought through his mind. "Let's go get something to snack on for the drive home. I'm thirsty. How about you?"
"Sounds good to me!" Ryoko exclaimed.
Ayeka was puttering around her bedroom, arranging things in different places in an attempt to keep her mind off what Ryoko might be doing with Tenchi. In all honesty, she was fuming and she didn't want to think that Tenchi would not come home to her someday and instead be hanging off that pirate!
"That's it!" she exclaimed. "I can't take this anymore!"
Storming out of her room, she descended the stairs and went outside to where Azaka and Kamidake stood guard at the gate. She knew that they loved teasing the mailmen and they were always there unless there was an emergency. Mischief was on her mind, and she was going to get her guardians to perform the act for her so that she could cause some havoc when Ryoko returned home.
Pulling into the driveway, Tenchi let Ryoko out of the cab and then told her that he would be back to the house once he had unloaded the shrine supplies. She nodded and then he drove off to leave her on her own once again. She felt good about spending a little more than an hour with him all to herself. If he couldn't choose between her and the princess, this small amount of time with him alone was all that she wanted and she could live off the energy generated by that time.
Ryoko was about to start walking toward the house, when she noticed that something was out of place and she looked at the gate to find that the two wooden guardians were not there. It seemed odd to her that they wouldn't be standing guard over the house, but she shrugged her shoulders and then started for the house.
"Ah, there you are," came a voice that made her hair stand on end. "I've been looking for you since I got here!"
Turning around, Ryoko saw the last thing that she was wanting to lay her eyes on at the moment, or any other moment for that matter. The woman that now stood before her was the one that had thrown her into a wall, twice! The first time for a misunderstanding when she thought that she was Sasami, and the second at the sight of Ryo-Oki.
"Hello," she said, weakly of course.
Lady Misaki, second Queen of Jurai, stepped forward with her eyes as big as saucers and grabbed Ryoko up in a hug that threatened to crush her. "Little Ryoko, it's been too long!" she exclaimed. "I've missed you a whole lot!"
"Have you said hello to Ayeka and Sasami yet?" Ryoko managed to choke out the question, thinking that she may get out of the bear hug that she had found herself unable to teleport away from.
"Who?"
Laughter could be heard as Lady Misaki shimmered and then disappeared. Ryoko dropped to the ground from weakness due to the lack of oxygen. Regaining her strength, she looked toward the source of the laughter and found Ayeka sitting on the balcony outside Tenchi's bedroom. In front of her, the two guardians appeared and she knew exactly what had happened.
"We're really sorry, Lady Ryoko," Azaka said.
"Lady Ayeka ordered us to use the hologram," Kamidake told her. "We'll go back to guard duty now."
Ryoko nodded her head in understanding at the two guardians, and then switched her gaze toward the princess. Cracking her knuckles, she levitated off the ground and formed her energy sword. "You have a lot of explaining to do, princess!"
Sasami heard an explosion from outside and she ran out of the kitchen to find that there was smoke billowing from a small crater that had been blasted in the front yard. Thankfully, the house had not been damaged and she let out a sigh of relief, but then her face turned red in anger as she realized what was again happening. Her sister had provoked Ryoko and now the two of them were engaged in a batter outside.
"Those two," she mumbled under her breath, clenching her fists. "If only I could use Tsunami's power without hurting them, I'd teach them a lesson."
Later that evening, after Tenchi had managed to calm down the two warring women enough to act half civilized, the group was gathered in Washu's lab. In front of them was Washu who was tinkering with the machine that she had just unveiled to them. She'd already explained the basics to Tenchi earlier that day and to the others she explained it the same way and going into greater detail as well.
When she was finished her explanation, she turned to them for suggestions, but the whole group was unable to come up with anything, so she was forced to turn to the obituaries. She didn't want to resurrect anyone that would be too close to home because that would be just boring subject to study, and for her first try she wanted a subject that had died only recently.
She found a suitable candidate and turned to the group as she put the small article up on a holo-projector so that they could see it as well. "This young man was killed in an unexplained accident just this morning," she told them. "Age 18, lived in a remote area of the United States, and was not involved in any illegal activity at the time. It seems that the medical staff at the hospital he was admitted to before his death didn't find anything wrong with him other than the fact that there was extreme internal damage throughout his body that seemed to be spreading."
"Washu, can you find out what happened to him if you use your machine?" Tenchi asked.
"Of course I can, if I can get a lock onto the body," she said, scanning the local area when the boy had died. "Ah, here we are! Beginning transport!"
In a flash, the tank above the machine that she had built deposited a thick preservation liquid and inside, the young man from the picture was reconstructed. The sight was not something that Tenchi would have wanted to see, and from the looks of things the trauma this young man had suffered was indeed extreme. All of the veins in the body toward the surface of the skin were visible and there were signs that a few of them were about to burst when the heart had finally given out. He must have died in great agony.
"That looks bad," Sasami said, turning away from the scene in front of her. "How could this happen, Washu?"
The scientist scratched her chin and looked the body over. "I have no idea, but something tells me that this was caused by something other than what this young man was normally exposed to." She further inspected the body and ran some scans on it that came back inconclusive on a few things. "Something is not right about this at all, but I can rule out foul play and suicide. This was definitely some kind of accident."
Mihoshi leaned over Washu's shoulder, studying in the data. The blond officer then looked down at the control board in front of the machine and pointed at a button. "What does this do?" she asked, and without thinking pressed it.
There was a spike in power and then the lights went out in the room. "Mihoshi! How many times do I have to tell you not to touch anything in my lab!" Was yelled, forcing the blond to take a step back and, in the darkness, she tripped over something and ended up being caught by a pair of strong arms that she knew belonged to Tenchi.
"I'm sorry!" Mihoshi wailed. "What did I do?"
At that moment, the lights came back on and they all looked up at the tank to see that the body was now gone and the tank was completely empty of the preservation liquid as well. Washu looked over at the button that she had seen Mihoshi poke at and sighed. Just above the button was the label 'purge subject tank' that she had put there as a safety precaution in case one of the subjects was accidentally revived. She would need to look into the faulty wiring of the place thought; it shouldn't have turned the lights out.
"Nothing huge Mihoshi, although I have to find a new subject now," Washu sighed again. "But you've helped me by pointing out that there's a short in my wiring somewhere. I'll have to fix those lights tomorrow."
"Well, it's getting late now, everyone," Tenchi said, looking at the tank above the machine. "We should all get some rest, okay?"
The others nodded and began to file out of the lab as Washu turned back to the tank and wondered what had happened to the body. It was supposed to go back to the place where she had picked it up, but her scans couldn't find it now. All well, she thought, there was bound to be at least two glitches in this system anyway.
Shutting everything in the room down, she headed for the bedroom module of her lab and lay down in her bed. The experiment had been a success, but she still wished that she could have gotten to study that body. It would have turned up some interesting things, and now she would never know the mystery of the young man's death. Shrugging, she pulled the covers up and then went to sleep.
Deep within the lab, something stirred in a state of sleep. The human eye couldn't see it, but the audio receptors in the area picked it up. When it didn't sound again, the sensors ignored it and the computer opted that it was just a glitch. Everything remained quiet in the lab for the rest of the night.
Well, that's the first of this story online, I hope that I have something started here that people will enjoy. I'm going to kinda do a similar thing that I did in my other story, but it will be a lot less of a self insert. Call it, an insertion of who I wish I was, but cannot be. Anyway, comments are appreciated! See ya next time!