Chapter Ten
"Washu?"
The scientist glanced up from her computer, a frown touching her face at the sound of her name.
"Washu! Answer me, damn you, and let me in! I want to talk to you and it won't wait - answer me before I blast the door of this room down!"
"Ryoko?" Washu's brows knitted together, and she cast a faltering glance at the data on her computer screen. "Ryoko? Is that you out there? Keep the noise down, will you? I'm trying to concentrate!"
"Then let me in!"
There was a tremendous explosion, and the door of the Juraian chamber blew clean off it's hinges, dust and smoke clearing to reveal the pirate standing in the doorway. Washu examined her expression thoughtfully, then shrugged her shoulders.
"Nice entrance, although I'm sure Azusa will want you to pay for that." She remarked off-handedly. Ryoko's eyes narrowed to mere slits.
"I want to talk to you." She said darkly, as she approached the workstation, her body language warning the scientist that she was in no mood to play. "And I want the truth. No more games, Washu! I want to know exactly what the situation is, right here and right now."
"What situation would you be talking about?" Washu asked calmly. "There are an infinite number of possible answers to that question, Ryoko. I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. And I must admit, I'm surprised to see you back on Jurai - I thought you'd absolved yourself of all of this for good."
"And I thought you were tucked away in sub-space, but here we are." Ryoko snapped back. "Stop it! I warned you! I want you to tell me once and for all what's really going on! You came aboard my spaceship, started talking to me about gems and destiny...and now I find out from the Emperor of Jurai - of all people! - that the mad scientist in the store-cupboard is really my mother? Tell me the truth, damn you! I want to know!"
A moment of silence greeted her statement, and Washu eyed her companion slowly. Then, at length, she sighed.
"Seems to me like you already know plenty." She said, resigned. Light flickered from Ryoko's fingertips at this casual response, and she paused inches from Washu's desk, sending her a cold glare.
"So it is true?" She asked, in low tones that spoke of a woman on the verge of losing her temper.
"In a manner of speaking, I suppose it is." Washu offered a wry smile, shrugging her shoulders. "Of course, if you want to be technical, I suppose you could call the laboratory equipment Mother, too. I didn't think you were so sentimental though, Ryoko. Is any of this really important? There are bigger things at stake here than your search for your roots, you know. And I'm sorry, but I don't think I still have the unit in which you were born. So...that reunion might have to be postponed - I'm sure you understand it's been a long time since I first thought about genetically engineering a baby. A lot has happened since then."
"You mean I'm nothing but another experiment?"
Ryoko banged her hands down hard on Washu's worktop, electricity flaring from her fingers as she glared at her companion. "Is that all that I am, another one of your damn machines?"
"You get so emotional." Washu pursed her lips, glancing the angry pirate up and down, then returning her attention to her work. "That really can't be good, you know. You waste such a lot of energy that way."
"To hell with my energy!" Ryoko exclaimed, dispersing Washu's translucent computer with her hand, and grabbing the diminuitive scientist by the collar, soaring up towards the roof of the room as she did so.
"I want some answers from you! What the hell did you think you were doing? Playing God? You thought you'd dabble and meddle and see what you turned up - is that it?"
"Put me down, you silly girl." Washu folded her arms across her chest, shaking her head slightly. "All of your anger is misplaced, you know. Without my help, you wouldn't even be here. At least remember that before you throw your mother half way across a room this size."
"My mother?" Ryoko's eyes became big with disbelief. "Are you joking with me? Washu, I'm not your daughter, I'm your science project! You didn't give birth to me, you created me in one of your big tanks, like a lab rat or some kind of cloning experiment! Don't pretend that there was anything else behind it!"
"Actually, there was a great deal behind it." Washu looked pensive. "If you would put me down, we could discuss it like mature adults, instead of fighting over it like children. What do you say, Ryoko? Do you think you can treat me with a little respect? After all, you are more to me than just a science experiment. Much more, in fact. I pinned a lot of my hopes on you."
"You did what?" Ryoko almost dropped the woman in her surprise, hovering towards the ground and dumping her burden on the top of a nearby table.
"I made an elementary scientific error of judgement." Washu said quietly, picking herself up into a sitting position. "I put my faith in one project, and didn't really plan for that one to fail. I was so confident in what I could do and in the security of this experiment that I was certain there wouldn't need to be a back up. You weren't designed to be a random cloning experiment, Ryoko. Why do you think I chose Kagato to be your father?"
"Please tell me it isn't because you had some kind of affair with him, and couldn't bear to let him go." Ryoko's voice was edged with sarcasm, and Washu shook her head.
"Not all of us are susceptible to the soft emotions you are, my girl." She said sharply. "No. Not at all."
"Well, you never know. It could be a weakness I inherited from you, falling for a Juraian prince." Ryoko snapped. "So what was I then? A hood ornament? A shelf display? Your entrance exam to the Science Academy? What?"
"I designed you to deal with Kagato." Washu clambered down off the unit, walking across her laboratory to one of the computer screens and hitting a few buttons. "I knew that he would be trouble, Ryoko, and that he had to be stopped somehow. I just didn't know how to do it. I knew he'd been working with those gems. When I was working with him and his scientists to augment their power and make them vessels of Jurai's magic, I realised he was tuning them to his own advantage. To him and his genetic structure. I never trusted him, but nobody would hear a word against him. He was the beloved son of the Lady Aiko, and a powerful influence at court...Yosho's friend and sparring partner. I was the only one who saw him for what he was...it's a trait of my people, that. The ability to read people's characters beyond what they put out."
"Get to the point." Ryoko growled, flickering bolts of energy from her hands as she hovered midway between the floor and the ceiling. "I'm getting bored."
"I decided that something had to be done about him, before he brought the whole universe to it's knees." Washu said simply. "And obviously, having heard Sasami's dream account of the future, I was right in every regard. The only mistake I made was with you, my dear. But you know, you learn from your errors, or so they say."
She shrugged.
"I was an ambitious young scientist and I used everything to my best advantage." She added. "Kagato knew I relied on him for royal patronage so he trusted in me...enough that I had access to the gems where others did not. When I decided I must leave, I knew I would take them with me. It took much of my spare time to design and build a container in which to hold them safely, without any leakages of power or dangerous emissions. I can't touch those stones either, you see. I'm not Juraian. I don't have that power."
She hit another sequence of buttons, and a door opened in the computer, revealing a slim silver capsule. She picked it up, running her finger over it absently.
"It's no mean feat, you know, keeping Jurai power locked up in something as small as this container."
"So you quit Jurai and then what? Decided to do some genetic dabbling?"
"Yes." Washu inclined her head in confirmation of Ryoko's words. "I took samples of his hair with me too. If his genetic structure was especially tuned to the crystals, I felt I had a good chance of duplicating that in a baby. My own genetic structure is such that it becomes recessive to other genes applied. That you would inherit his power in some respect was a certainty, but I toiled and worked as hard as I could to ensure you would develop the full range of his magic alongside the few of my own traits. Even then, I didn't know if it would be enough, and I knew he would be looking for the gems. So I trusted you and them to one of my lab associates - a young woman named Kichi. She was the only one in whom I trusted everything."
"And it cost her her life." Ryoko said flatly. "You do know that, I hope?"
"Yes, Ryoko, I know that." Regret flickered across Washu's expression. "And I accept responsibility for it, also. I thought she would be safe...I thought wrong."
"So my memory is a fake." Ryoko's voice shook. "The woman who played with me and who I was with before she died...that's all fake, isn't it? She wasn't my mother. She never was. It was all a gigantic game!"
"It wasn't a game." Washu shook her head. "She would have been your mother, and she would have trained you in everything you needed to know."
"To become a killer, you mean."
"Yes." Washu agreed. "To deal with your father once and for all."
"And was I to know about any of this?"
"It wasn't planned." Washu admitted. "I thought that you'd lose focus, if you knew your true origins. Kichi would have raised you to believe him your enemy. You have to realise that she wasn't simply another woman who worked with me. Kichi was one of the most intelligent students at the Academy, and her knowledge of universal magic was unsurpassed. She was your best hope to learn how to master your magic and the power the gems gave you."
She sighed.
"But my experiment failed." She added regretfully. "You faced Kagato untrained and unfocused, and you almost died for it. Sasami's account of the future suggests no improvement between now and then. I failed to develop the weapon I was sure I had crafted...to the detriment of the entire universe."
"I am not a weapon, Washu." Ryoko spat out. "Did it occur to you that your little project might wind up having feelings or opinions of her own? Or did that totally escape your train of thought?"
"It never really came into the equation." Washu admitted. "If it had, maybe I'd have been able to do something about your emotional instability. As it is..."
"As it is...what?"
"Well, you need to ask that question?" Washu raised an eyebrow. "You tell me, my girl."
Ryoko clenched her fists, her amber eyes narrowing to almost slits.
"You lied to me." She said quietly. "And you would have kept lying to me. You would have thrown me into a battle with a madman, without knowing all of the stakes."
"Sometimes it's safer that way." Washu responded. "But I didn't think you dwelt on the past, Ryoko-chan. I was under the impression that you looked to the future...am I wrong?"
"My future is not likely to be all that long, thanks to you and your meddling!"
"You wouldn't have a future or a past if not for me." Washu said frankly. "This argument is pointless. If you spent less time worrying about your emotions and more time worrying about your magic, you'd be a damn fierce fighter by now. Do you really think that all of this is going to help you fight and defeat Kagato?"
"Right now I could care less about Kagato."
"Well, if that's how you feel, I guess we've nothing more to say to one another." Washu shrugged. "It's up to you, Ryoko. I've done all of the research in the last few days, and it keeps coming back to the same thing. You're connected to Kagato. Maybe you can even wake him from his tree - who knows? It's possible. But either way, your fate and his are intertwined. The old accounts almost say it, word for word...in among texts about the rising Darkness and the Tree of Death they mention references to the blood of a descendant, and the fire of father against child. Juraian seers have predicted this for centuries. Milennia, even. All things I had no idea of when I embarked on my little experiment, but fate has a funny way of turning things up sometimes, just to suit it's own purpose."
"And what about Nozomi? Did you send her to play games with me too?"
"Nozomi?" Washu looked blank. "Who or what is Nozomi?"
"Don't lie to me!"
"I assure you, I'm doing no such thing." Washu shook her head. "I don't know who Nozomi is - care to fill me in?"
"Some girl, claiming to be my daughter from the future. Saying she's here on Tsunami's orders...or something." Ryoko grimaced. "Are you sure that she's not just another one of your tricks?"
"You have my word on it." Interest flickered in Washu's eyes. "I see. So Tsunami has taken matters into her own hands in other ways, too. That should be comforting to know, at the very least."
"I don't feel very comforted. You mean she really is my daughter?"
"Maybe. Who knows?" Washu shrugged. "I haven't met the girl, and even if I did, this future we're resolving is a possible one. It's not concrete - not yet. If it was, nothing we could do could change it. Perhaps in that future, you do have a daughter. Maybe in that world, Tsunami-sama found the strength to throw her back here, to the time where everything needs to be resolved. It's a bunch more open questions, really. Things I can't answer without understanding Jurai's magic, and that's something no scientist has ever managed to do. Besides, right now it's beside the point."
She spread her hands.
You might not like your destiny...but you can't escape it completely. None of us can. Ayeka recognised hers and followed it when she married Takeru-dono. You keep fighting and kicking against yours and you're running out of time. This isn't a game. The final outcome may well be down to you, regardless of whether you're ready for it or not."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that there's nothing you can do to change the future unless you change things in the past. Or rather, in the present in which you already live." Washu said quietly. "Kagato will become too strong. Tsunami will not be able to hold off his magic forever. She is strong, but if we can believe Sasami's testimony, she was forced into assimilation before it was her time. As it is, she's not at full strength. She cannot defeat Kagato alone, and Jurai and Earth are already dead. Other planets will follow. Do you want that to happen?"
"Since I'm already dead in that world, I don't see why I'd care."
"You value your life too cheaply, sometimes." Washu looked sad. "I intended you to be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to destroy Kagato - instead I have a daughter who flirts with death and danger when there's no need and who seems determined to throw her life away on the least excuse. Do you not realise how much rests on your survival? I do. I've come to realise over the past few days that Tsunami didn't resurrect you aboard Karasu because Sasami wanted her to. She resurrected you because she needs you. What's more, she knows what I know. There are only two creatures who can wield the magic in those gems. Kagato is one and you are the other."
"You're telling me that Tsunami knew all of that already, before it even happened?" Despite herself, Ryoko was taken aback. Washu nodded.
"Of course she did." She replied. "There have been signs, omens and prophesies associated with the Tsunami-sama legend for generations. You should really do your reading before you jump to conclusions...Tsunami is a very powerful force."
Her voice softened.
"But even if you value your life cheaply, don't forget that Tenchi is also dead in this future world." She said quietly. "You could prevent that, if you acted now. You might not care about your own future, Ryoko...but what of Tenchi's future? Doesn't that bother you even a little bit?"
"Tenchi..." Ryoko's expression became stricken. "But I don't know how to wake Kagato, let alone fight him! And you said it yourself...I'm not capable!"
Washu shrugged her shoulders.
"Not much I can do about that, is there?" She asked flippantly. "I'm a scientist. I'm not a magician and I'm not from Jurai. Juraian magic defies science on so many levels...much of it is beyond even my reach and scope. That's why I brought Kichi into the equation. You'll have realised, of course, that she was no shrinking violet. She would have fought for her life, you know, and for your life as well. The force that killed her must have come from Kagato in some shape or form. And did you never wonder why they did not come for you too? A small girl of two or three years old? Use your head, Ryoko! Kichi knew what I knew - that your survival was more important than hers. She shielded you from their sight and sacrificed her own strength to keep you safe."
"Mother." Despite herself, Ryoko bit her lip, the electricity flickering out. "But..."
"Yes, Ryoko." Washu nodded. "She was your mother. Probably more than I would have been or will ever be. But she did love you. That wasn't a lie. And she believed in what we did...she would have done all she could to ensure your strength and your survival."
"And you, Washu? What do you think I should do?" Ryoko dropped down to the floor, approaching the scientist slowly. "If everything you say is true, how am I supposed to fight this man? I can't control those gems and the last time I tried, it stopped my heart. I can't rely on Tsunami's goodwill a second time...what if he kills me and then goes on to ravage and pillage the universe?"
"It's a chance you may have to take, since there isn't really anyone else who can try." Washu pursed her lips. "Though honestly, Ryoko, you do have an advantage that I haven't taken into account. Something that makes you stronger than you would otherwise be...something that may just make the difference."
"Which is?"
"I designed you to fight and kill Kagato on your own." Washu said simply. "But as you rightly surmised, I didn't take into account your emotional development. In some ways, of course, it's been your weakness. And yet, I know that it's also proven your strength, Ryoko. You managed to control those crystals the last time because Tenchi was in danger. The way you feel about him is something I hadn't accounted for in my calculations. That something such as love could even influence their power...but then again, I suppose that the Tsunami-sama legend is based on love, rather than on a show of strength. Maybe it's crazy, and I have no scientific data to back it up. But I think your affection for that boy makes you a stronger fighter. And I think it might be the strongest weapon you have against Kagato."
"I see." Ryoko glanced down at her fingers, flexing them thoughtfully. "Maybe you're right. I have been different since I fell on the Earth. I was always strong, Washu...but not like this."
"Plus, you are no longer fighting as a lone soldier." Washu added. "You have him fighting at your side. Tenchi is an extremely powerful young man, Ryoko, and his full power hasn't yet found itself inside of him. He defeated Kagato, yes...but he didn't destroy him. There's more inside of him - I've known it since the moment I first met him. Between the two of you, you might have the power to nullify and defeat Kagato once and for all."
Ryoko was silent for a moment.
"So what's to stop him disappearing back into his tree?" She asked.
"Well, you'd need to destroy Souja as well, of course." Washu nodded her head. "But then, I don't think you'll find Souja objecting. He wants death."
She held out the silver capsule.
"I think you'll find that you need these." She added.
Ryoko rubbed her temples. She hesitated for a moment, then reached out a hand for the container, taking it and glancing at it doubtfully.
"Right." She said quietly. "Well, I'm still not done with you over this, but it looks like you get your wish. Somehow I guess Tenchi and I are going to find Kagato and we're going to get rid of him. And then, when we have...we're going to talk about this some more. Don't think you've escaped just because of a little thing like universal peril. I will be back."
With that she flickered and blurred, disappearing from the lab and leaving Washu alone. The scientist glanced up at the walls of the room, pursing her lips thoughtfully.
"I look forward to it." She said aloud. "Be careful, Ryoko-chan. Make sure you do come back."