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Another Victim On This Road - Chapter 6
Sitting at her dressing table, the princess brushes her long, violet locks and hums quietly to herself. She's had a long day filled with seemingly endless diplomatic functions and now eagerly anticipates the peaceful night's sleep awaiting her. Her hundred strokes on each side completed, she rises serenely, her pale pink dressing gown trailing behind her as she tips to her bed. Slippers removed and covers tucked, she snuggles her face into the soft pillow. Sleep overtakes her almost immediately.
Awaking with a start from a very pleasant dream, she sits up slowly, reaching under her pillow for the bracelet she uses to channel her psychic powers. Something or someone was in her room; she could feel it.
"Lights," she calls to the computer, needing more than slivers of moonlight to confirm her suspicions.
When nothing happens, she tenses, immediately calling for her guardians.
"Azaka! Kamadake!"
Silence is her only response and she begins to panic. Desperately she tries calling to her mother telepathically, to no avail.
"Call anyone you want", Kagato begins in a chilling voice as he steps from the shadows, "they can't hear you."
The princess gasps loudly as he approaches.
"Who-who are you," she stutters, backing into her headboard.
"You may call him 'Master', Ayeka", Washu intones, a wicked grin on her face as she climbs onto the bed.
"You! How did you -- We banned you from our planet! The alarms are set for you! H-how….." the princess trails off, now even more terrified.
The last time Washu was on Jurai, she'd tried to kill the Emperor, calling it "an experiment to see how long it would take the planet to erupt into anarchy". When they failed to capture her, all security systems were set to detect her brainwave and DNA patterns in order to neutralize any threat she might pose immediately and with deadly force. Yet here she was, nearly 2,000 years later, mad grin in place as she terrorizes the first princess of Jurai.
Grasping her bracelet forcefully, Ayeka lashes out with her personal shield, knocking Washu across the room and Kagato back a few paces. Kagato turns to asses Washu's condition and Ayeka sprints for her bedroom door, only to be sent sprawling by a powerful force field. Painfully, she crawls toward the bracelet knocked from her grasp by the impact, getting within a few inches before her luck runs out.
"Bitch!" Washu's adult form screams at her, dragging her up by her hair. "I'd make you pay for that, but I want to save my energy for later," she finishes in a purr.
"P-please….please….don't hurt me," Ayeka murmers, tears streaming.
"It's not my call," Washu whispers, tossing her onto the bed and resuming her adolescent guise.
Ayeka looks up into Kagato's cruel gaze and realizes her ordeal has only begun.
"Stand up," he orders. She obeys, trying desperately to reach any of her family telepathically.
A powerful slap sends her reeling into Washu, who holds her fast. Moments later, Kagato is upon her, tearing the soft gown from her trembling frame.
"Very nice," he leers as Washu cackles in her ear. "Very nice indeed."
Kagato's lips upon hers repulse Ayeka as she pleads silently for him to stop, knowing it to be futile. Throwing her back onto the bed, Kagato and Washu slowly disrobe, groping and kissing each other for several minutes before returning their attention to Ayeka.
"Now the real fun begins," Washu croons, ignoring the princess' screams as Kagato forcibly takes her virginity.
Several hours later, they clothe the bruised and battered princess in one of her finest royal kimonos, taking several more and various other royal garments with them as they beam onto the Soja and speed off into space.
"Did you like your surprise," Kagato grins to Washu as they lounge in their room while the ship automatically runs a course designed to throw the Jurian fleet off guard.
"Mmm hmm. That was a great night. And thank you for my present! I can't wait to get her home!"
"I'm going to enjoy getting her out of her royal attire on a regular basis," he smiles.
"Mmmm," Washu replies, snuggling into his arms.
"In fact," he begins pulling away from her, "It's been nearly 12 hours since we had her last. Why don't we help her 'get settled'?"
Washu giggles as Kagato leads her by the hand to Ayeka's secured quarters.
Once they are back on Rotaria, Washu brags to Ryoko about their latest "acquisition" as she checks her vitals.
"Ayeka is a princess from the powerful planet of Jurai. Kagato designed this amazing device to get us inside the palace walls", Washu gushes delightedly. Ryoko does her best not to run away and puke, knowing Washu would merely tell her later.
'Best to get it over with now', she acquiesces.
Washu continues in that delighted tone about how she and Kagato had used another one of his devices to gain entry to the princess' room and disable her guardians.
"We took her the first time right in her own bed", Washu sighes before finishing out the story with how they were on the Soja and nearly back to Rotaria before anyone knew the princess was missing. Ryoko turns away at that revelation, hating her 'parents' even more and wishing again that they'd never brought her back. She'd died happy. But they wouldn't let her rest in peace and now she's back in this nightmare.
"You missed a treat, Ryoko", Washu concludes almost skipping away to join Kagato in taking the princess again.
A few weeks later, Ryoko is listening again to the princess' screams, trying not to imagine what's happening to her. Clenching her eyes shut and covering her ears, she tries desperately to block out the sound.
Every night had been the same since Washu let her out of the lab. Kagato would usually start his evening conquering Ryoko. Resigned to her fate, she would lie still as a corpse, allowing him to do anything he wanted, which didn't afford him much of a conquest. Sometimes he'd get frustrated and slap her around, but she'd never respond. Even when he skipped Ryoko, he'd still go after Ayeka. The screams several times a night were so commonplace that Ryoko had almost gotten used to hearing them.
Now Kagato's crazed laughter and the girl's screams filter through the pillow Ryoko has smashed around her head. Unbidden, tears leap to her eyes and run down her cheeks. Tears for herself and for Ayeka; understanding fully the princess' current experiences. Her own tortures and humiliations at Kagato's hands rush into her mind. So many years of mental, physical and emotional slavery endured because she had no choice. Any time she tried to fight him for real, not just to get him off of her, her mind and body simply shut down, leaving her as helpless as a rag doll. The controls on her psyche couldn't be circumvented or overcome, no matter how hard she tried.
"I wish I had the power to kill him," she sobs to herself. "Then he couldn't hurt us anymore; couldn't hurt anyone anymore."
Ayeka's screams and pleadings continue and Ryoko tries to hide within herself. Minutes later, it's over. Kagato is done with Ayeka for now.
As the girl's sobs echo in her ears, Ryoko vows not to let the princess suffer the same traumas she's endured most of her life. Somehow she had to get her back to Jurai.
'But I don't have any money of my own', she frets, 'And even if I took some from Kagato and Washu, I don't know any of the shuttle captains or merchants' and I can't board a regular transport without ID for Ayeka. The police think I'm dead, so I can't go to them. Besides, they'd probably think I was the kidnapper!
Her heart sinks until she suddenly remembers someone who might help her.
"Tenchi", she whispers.
'He'd certainly help a princess not suffer my fate, though it might be hard talking to him since he thinks I'm dead too', she reflects, 'but Ayeka can't stay here much longer. Kagato will destroy her.'
Briefly, she remembers Sakuya, the last girl Kagato brought home, and how she'd simply given in to lessen the severity of Kagato's beatings, eventually appearing to enjoy whatever he and Washu did to her. But Ryoko knew that in her heart, Sakuya hated it all. She knew from the lifelessness in Sakuya's eyes and the lack of emotion when she spoke. Once she caught Sakuya talking to herself in two distinct voices. Ryoko envied her for that, wishing desperately that she could escape within her own mind as well, but Kagato and her mother found ways to keep her conscious of everything that happened. Ryoko knew that they got a perverse pleasure watching her suffer and added that to the list of reasons to kill them.
'I'll have to tell him', she sighs with resignation. 'I'll have to tell Tenchi what my life is like so he'll understand how important it is to get the princess home. Once I can tell him that I'm alive, of course.'
Fretting for a few minutes more about that prospect, she decides to try and get some sleep. The princess had stopped sobbing, but she was sure that wouldn't last long. Curling into a ball around her scrunched-up, tear-stained pillow, she starts drifting off.
"I'll find Tenchi tomorrow," she yawns.
A few hours later, she is again awakened by the princess screams.
"No! Get away from me! Leave me alone!" Ayeka cries.
Something snaps inside Ryoko and she heads out of her room with a purpose.
'Not again', she vows to herself as she storms toward the bedroom where the princess is being held. As expected, Kagato is gleefully tearing off Ayeka's clothes, intending to force himself on her again.
Throwing herself at him, Ryoko knocks Kagato onto the floor near the dresser. Before he can react, she is pummeling him with the lamp from the dresser and her powerful fists. Her rage and Tenchi's earlier actions in her mind allow her to channel a power she'd only imagined.
"Die! You monster, die!" Ryoko screams repeatedly as his blood splatters all over her and the wall behind him. Weakly, he tries to defend himself, but proves no match for her fury. Part of her is repulsed by the blood, but the centuries of trauma fuel her need for revenge.
Hearing Ryoko's screams, Washu rushes into the room only to discover her worst fear. Ryoko has broken out of her psychic cage and is well on the way to making good her threats to kill Kagato. Reacting quickly, Washu grabs one of Ryoko's arms and slams her into the far wall of the bedroom hard enough to crack the plaster and the wall behind it. Turning to Kagato, she gasps at the bloody mess before her, summoning one of her holo-laptops to check his vitals. He's alive, but barely, and has lost a considerable amount of blood. Teleporting him to her med-lab, she advances on the nearly unconscious Ryoko.
"You'll pay for that", Washu spits vehemently before teleporting to her lab to take care of her husband. A painful moan is Ryoko's only reply.
Shakily, princess Ayeka climbs from the bed, her royal kimono in taters, and cradles Ryoko's head in her lap.
"Thank you", she whispers, carefully stroking Ryoko's head.
Ayeka is indebted to Ryoko as she wasn't sure she could have survived another attack. Kagato had been forcing himself on her every day, sometimes several times a day, since he and Washu kidnapped her more than a month ago. Washu occasionally joined him or sat and watched; a sickeningly joyful smile on her face. Ayeka was sure that they were trying to break her spirit, which she hated to admit was working.
Gazing at her now unconscious savior, she could only guess what kind of punishment that harridan Washu had in mind. Though she's only been on this planet a few weeks, she's seen how much Ryoko hates Washu; and also how much she fears her. She also knew every time Kagato forced himself upon her too.
'When he wasn't coming after me', she shudders.
Rage covers Ayeka. How Washu could treat her own child that way was incomprehensible! One day, she'd make that bitch pay for hurting both of them! For now, she had to be consoled by the fear she saw in Kagato's eyes as Ryoko pummeled him.
At that thought, Ayeka allows herself a vengeful smile.