Tenchi Muyo: For The Greater Good
The Special Edition for the Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction Archive
by Justin "J-Pikachu" Palmer

Chapter one: The Calm Before The Storm

Version History:
FTGG 1 (CCCN Version) Beta 157 (RC1) - 04/06/99
FTGG 1 (CCCN Version) Beta 158 (RC2) - 16/06/99
FTGG 1 (CCCN Version) Final - 18/08/99
FTGG 1 (General Release) Final - 25/09/99

Disclaimer: The characters and concepts outlined in this
work are the property of Pioneer LDC, and are used without permission. 
Certain characters are from Heaven and Eternity, and are the property
of K'thardin, and are used with permission. Certain character names 
from the series Pokemon have been used. These names are trademarks of
Nintendo. If you wish to reprint this, please let me know beforehand,
and remember to credit me. Unauthorised MSTing of this work is frowned
upon. Objects in the mirror are closer than they actually appear.

Author’s Introduction and Foreword: This fic is based in part upon what
transpired in Heaven and Eternity, by K'thardin.

This is part one of a series that is a prequel to No Need For First
Contact, presently under rewrite, setting up some of the pieces and
events referred to in that work, while at the same time writing yet
another ‘They are here’ story. Another thing I wanted to do with this
story is give Ryoko the chance to rediscover herself, and for her and
Washu to become mother and daughter again – which I’ve always wanted to
see. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Bear in mind that this is where Heaven and Eternity and my series 
split up. K'thardin’s series continues with his work, The Powers 
That Be. In my case, FTGG chronologically follows Heaven and 
Eternity, and precedes Ad Astra/NN4FC.

Thanks to K'thardin for his advice and support.

“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth… never mind. You will only 
understand the power and beauty of your youth once it has faded.”
	-Mary Schmich

Opening Theme: You Stole The Sun From My Heart by Manic Street 
Preachers (instrumental)

Weird.
	A concept the Masaki family abandoned long ago. To them, what 
one would consider ‘weird’ is an everyday occurrence.
	Consider this. You live a perfectly normal life until you hit 
your teenage years, then you somehow end up with the key to your 
grandfather’s shrine. Upon opening the shrine, you discover those 
stories of it being a prison for a demon were all true. Oops. Then, 
you discover that this demon isn’t really a demon, but actually a 
former space pirate. Before you know it, you have a starship from a 
vast interstellar empire threatening to level your hometown in 
pursuit of this pirate. To make matters worse for all involved, this 
mission goes pear-shaped, and marauding starship captain – a Princess 
of said empire and next in line to the throne – is stranded on Earth 
with her sister. This makes matters worse because one of the 
princesses utterly loathes the space pirate, but all three are madly 
in love with you. Then, add to this the aforementioned pirate’s ship 
– which comes in the form of a hyper-cute cross between a kitten and 
a rabbit. At least, when it doesn’t want to be a starship.
	Now enter, stage centre, a representative of the Galaxy Police, 
who also develops a crush on you – simply because you just happened 
to save her from a black hole. The officer is off in pursuit of 
another space pirate, who appears a few days later claiming to be the 
other space pirate’s creator. He usurps control of said creation, 
almost succeeds in using her to kill you, is shooed off by your 
grandfather who, in time-honoured James Bond villain fashion, reveals 
himself to be the half-brother of the previously malevolent princess, 
and the man who came to Earth in pursuit of the hapless former 
pirate. Now, all of you go off to face the lunatic pirate to rescue 
the fair maiden, but you end up getting killed… and then resurrected 
by the soul of a living starship, who just happens to belong to one 
of the princesses you live with. She endows you with certain powers, 
which you use to effortlessly off the lunatic’s ass.
	If you are still here, and haven’t had a psychotic episode, 
seek help, you will before the end of this prologue.
	A few months later, a psychotic scientist by the name of Clay 
comes to Earth in pursuit of another scientist – the same one that is 
living with you. The one you rescued from that pirate. Said psycho 
makes a copy of the former pirate you live with, who happens to be 
the other scientist’s daughter/creation. Needless to say, the jig is 
uncovered relatively quickly, and the problem is defused quickly – 
after you end up saving the day by using some of this power to close 
a black hole.
	Then, the Emperor of the empire you are descended from – your 
great-grandfather – comes to Earth with the intent of extracting his 
daughters. They refuse to leave, and he grants this request… only 
after you royally kick the backside of a nobleman the Emperor has 
chosen for his son-in-law.
	Just when things start to go back to normal, the entity Clay 
was working for rears its head, and things need doing. Enter a young 
man from far away, the son of your live-in scientist, who she hasn’t 
seen in nigh on to 20,000 years. This young man is here to train you 
in the use of your powers – powers which you use in an all-out war 
against a goddess, fighting alongside your friends and the other 
goddesses – one of whom is the friend of one of the princesses you 
live with. Another one… is your mother. The mother who ‘died’ when 
you were young
	Unfortunately, casualties are taken, and your father, the 
princess and her goddess are among them. In an effort to save the 
two, they are merged into a single entity. Your father is 
reincarnated as, to quote the technical term, a Pillar of All That 
Is, to replace the goddess you just destroyed.
	And so it goes. You marry the former pirate and the future 
empress, because the planet you are descended from supports 
polygamous marriages. To your surprise, no one else knows about any 
of this weirdness you live through. That is a good thing, owing to 
the paranoia concerning extra-terrestrial life on your world.
	And this is just an abridged version.
	So, as you can see, weird is a forgotten concept in the Masaki 
household. For something to be weird here, it would have to be 
surreal on the order of Salvador Dali.
	And so our story begins.

	Waking up is a chore for any being. For Ryoko Masaki, it was 
one that went up to the top of her ‘pet hates’ list. For such a 
symbiotic being, this arduous task was amplified to near hell.
	First, she actually had to want to get up. She would sit there 
for a few seconds, trying to find a good excuse not to wake up. In 
recent days, none could spring to mind, but this was not always the 
case. With this obstacle overcome, she would suddenly find herself 
out of control of her own body. Her body was a collective 
consciousness of billions of microscopic life forms known as the 
Mass. The Mass operated as a collective only without the presence of 
a unifying force – that is, a mind and will stronger than its own. 
So, Ryoko’s mind had to start up long before she could, engage the 
Mass in communication, convince it that she was the collective, and 
wait while every cell of her body swore fealty to her once again.
	Then came the obligatory part, the only thing she still cursed 
Washu for. She had to wait until a relatively open channel to her 
mother became available. Anyone who has had to sit there and wait for 
his or her computer to connect to the Internet will sympathise. It 
was an agonising wait, and chances were that the connection would 
fail within the first thirty seconds. However, once engaged, it 
stayed that way. The only way that Washu would not be able to read 
Ryoko’s thoughts would be if Ryoko were to actively shield them.
	Finally came the moment of pure joy. The moment when she became 
the network server to two other beings. The first was Ryo-ohki, her 
little sister. The second… the second wasn’t there yesterday. It was 
a vague presence, with none of the complex information that Ryo-ohki 
sent to her - this being just sent an occasional message to say ‘I’m 
here.’ That being was the embryonic one growing in her womb.
	‘Tenchi and Aeka are going to love this,’ she thought.
	With all that out of the way, she was free to wake up, or just 
lay in ‘hot standby’, as Washu once described it. However, curiosity 
was rapidly overcoming her; curiousity that found a voice: “WHAT THE 
HELL IS THAT NOISE?!”
	Noise was rattling through the house. The clattering of 
ornaments, windows, and even the very structure of the house, all of 
it was drowning out the acoustics of the noise that was causing it. 
Ryoko decided the only way to find out was causing this cacophony was 
to go somewhere where she could hear the sound unabated. With a 
single thought, she had teleported herself to her favourite lookout 
point: the roof.

	The concussion waves of the sound distorted the air in her 
beam-in point, making rematerialisation difficult. Not impossible, 
just difficult. Once materialised, however, Ryoko could see her 
territory.
	In the corner of her eye, she could see a convoy of trucks, 
heavily loaded with loudspeakers. Through these high-power speakers 
blared old World War II music, and occasionally the odd right-wing 
slogan. Young men, dressed in old WWII Japanese army uniforms, 
strutted around on the roof, wearing mufflers to prevent themselves 
being deafened. Source of problem located.
	The temptation to power up an energy bolt and blow away the 
three-truck convoy was barely resisted… or perhaps interrupted by 
Sasami shouting her from down below. “Ryoko! What are you doing up 
there?” She could barely be heard.
	“WHAT?!” Ryoko shouted in reply.
	Tsunami replied at a volume that rippled the lake, scared every 
bird in the Western Honshu area, set off a few seismographs, drowned 
out the music, and interrupted the propaganda. “<*WE SAID: WHAT ARE 
YOU DOING UP THERE?*>” Her traditional reverb returned, for good 
effect.
	Deciding not to risk it, Ryoko beamed down to the ground beside 
Tsunami before responding. “Trying to find out what the hell is going 
on! Who are they?”
	“Elements of a past I wish we could forget,” Tsunami said. “The 
few that still support the old WWII regime.”
	“DO THEY HAVE TO BE SO LOUD?!” Sasami yelled. Ryoko had gotten 
used to them swapping back and forth; just not having her scream down 
her ear.
	“LOOKS THAT WAY!” Tsunami shouted back.
	“COULD YOU GUYS TALK TO EACH OTHER IN YOUR MIND?” Ryoko cried. 
“I’M GOING DEAF HERE!”
	“WE’D LOVE TO, BUT WE CAN’T HEAR OURSELVES THINK!”
	“THIS IS PISSING ME OFF! CAN’T THEY TAKE THEIR BUSINESS 
ELSEWHERE?” Ryoko addressed the trucks. “<*LOOK, WHATEVER IT IS 
YOU’RE SELLING, WE DON’T WANT ANY!!*>”
	The trucks continued their tirade unabated. This really pissed 
Ryoko, who raised her left hand. The gem on her wrist began to glow, 
and a ball of orange energy appeared in her palm.
	She would have fired this ball, were she not restrained by 
someone grabbing her arm and mentally resetting the power transfer. 
She knew only one person could do the latter, and that was the same 
person who was holding her arm.
	“WASHU!!” she exclaimed, part in anger, and part in an attempt 
to project her voice over the noise.
	“YOU’RE SHOOTING AT THE POPULACE!” Washu replied. “THEY’LL 
SUSPECT SOMETHING IF THEY SEE YOU FIRE! AND WITH THE STATE OF ALIEN 
PARANOIA ON THIS PLANET, THAT IS SOMETHING WE DON’T NEED!”
	“WELL, WASHU-NECHAN, WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST?” Tsunami asked.
	To that, Washu revealed a device she was carrying. This device 
was about the size of a satellite dish. She aimed it at the trucks, 
and turned it on. Within a few seconds, the noise withered and died. 
The young men and their pals carried on regardless, seemingly unaware 
that they weren’t making any noise. Needless to say, Tsunami looked 
puzzled.
	“Anti-sound, Tsunami-imoto,” Washu explained. “This device 
analyses any incoming sound, turns it into anti-sound, and broadcasts 
it. The two cancel each other out, leading to utter silence.”
	“WHAT?!” Sasami and Tsunami were still trying to get their 
hearing back.
	“Forget it.” Washu then queried her daughter mentally. ‘Are you 
okay?’
	‘I will be, as soon as the ringing in my ears stops,’ Ryoko 
replied.
	‘You’ll both be okay in about fifteen seconds.’
	Ryoko looked at the trucks, which didn’t look any different, 
but sounded very much so. ‘Do, uh, they know they’ve gone silent?’
	‘No, they’re still making noise. It’s just the sound coming our 
way that’s being neutralised.’
	“Whatever,” Ryoko said. “Take it I missed breakfast again?”
	“Yep. I tried raising you, but couldn’t get through. What were 
you and Tenchi doing last night…?”
	“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,” Ryoko replied, feigning 
innocence.

	“We love him, he loves we, we are Bill Gates’ family…”
	Little Taro Masaki sat engrossed with the robot Barney plugged 
into Nobiyuki’s computer. It was noisily moving its arms as it was 
perched between the monitor and the midi tower case on the desk 
littered with books, printouts and disks, occasionally sweeping a few 
off onto the floor.
	To his left was another little rugrat. This one was 
considerably younger than Taro, barely a few months old. He had white 
hair, green eyes, and was wearing a romper suit of similar design to 
Washu’s clothes. This was Toru, Washu’s son. Generally nicknamed 
‘Ike’ by his big sister Ryoko, for reasons that will become apparent.
	Toru hadn’t learned to structure proper sentences yet, but he 
already had rudimentary speech. Most of it was nonsensical, and, at 
times, hilariously inappropriate. But, like his mother, he possessed 
a formidable intellect. Most babies his age were getting the hang of 
balls and rattles, and other suitable indestructible toys. He’d just 
built a matter/antimatter reactor.
	And he was now hitting Taro over the head with the rattle-sized 
warp core.
	Taro didn’t care. He was too involved with the purple dinosaur 
to give a damn. Couldn’t hurt him anyway.
	“I don’t know whether that’s healthy for him,” Aeka said, as 
she sat on the sofa watching the baby to toddler to dinosaur network.
	“What, sitting there while Toru whups him on the head with a 
matter/antimatter reactor, or sitting there watching a purple 
dinosaur sprout the Microsoft brainwash?” Kiyone replied. “To be 
honest, I think taking the beating is the lesser of the two evils.” 
She took another sip of her tea. “Besides, they’re quiet. That, in 
and of itself, is a miracle.”
	“Good point.” Aeka sipped her tea.
	Barney finished his song. That finished the installation of the 
software. Now Taro and his semi-god sidekick had to actually learn 
something.
	Although learning to run the damn program would be a good idea.
	“Auntie Kiyone?” Taro asked.
	Kiyone got down from the sofa and sat beside him. “What’s up?” 
she said softly.
	“Can you get Barney working?”
	Kiyone started fiddling with the purple dinosaur, holding it 
and the instruction manual in either hand. Kiyone was one of the best 
GP officers in the galaxy, but leave her alone with Windows, and she 
was helpless.
	“Now, how in god’s name do I work this damn… Toru, no! Don’t 
play with—“
	She looked up to see Toru apparently randomly pressing buttons. 
Upon closer inspection, it turned out that he had run the Barney 
program, and while he was waiting, he’d also found the South Park 
screensaver. The Cartman one, to be precise. And the sound was 
somehow coming through Barney. So now there was a purple dinosaur in 
her hand, sprouting such gems as “Democrats piss me off!” and “Screw 
you, hippie!” 
	Kiyone sat, holding the foul-mouthed dinosaur and the 
instruction manual, with a strained look on her face. “Now THIS isn’t 
healthy.”

	For once, Tenchi Masaki was happy to tend the fields. Finally, 
something nice and normal that did not involve teleporting, 
projecting directed energy weapons, flying halfway across the 
universe and back again, or risking his life.
	Nope. Unless a flaming fireball with his name on it came down 
from the sky, there was no way his life would be in danger. It 
wouldn’t be even if there were a flaming fireball descending from the 
sky.
	Most, if not all of the Masaki crop fields were given over to 
the production of the Earth vegetable Daucus carota, better known as 
the carrot. This hand-over took place about seven years ago, in 
response to considerable demand for said vegetable by the resident 
chef, but primarily to satisfy the voracious appetite of one little 
lady by the name of Ryo-ohki, for whom the humble carrot was elevated 
to almost god-like proportions. In fact, it could be said that at one 
time there was nothing but carrots on her mind. That, and the will to 
help Tenchi, the provider of carrots.
	That wasn’t true any more. There were considerably more 
thoughts in her furry little head now, but carrots still figured 
pretty high on the list.
	At present, Ryo-ohki, in her adult form, was helping Tenchi 
extract the carrots from the ground and place them in a basket. 
Tenchi was glad to have an assistant, but at times, Ryo-ohki seemed a 
little too willing.
	She pulled a whole series out of the ground with relative ease 
– she had strength on a par with that of her older sister – and put 
them in her basket, but in the time-honoured ‘one for you, one for 
me, one for you, two for me’ fashion. She was presently up to “One 
for you, twenty-two for me.” Such carrots went directly into her 
mouth after being quickly dusted down.
	She didn’t taste dirt; her sense of taste wasn’t calibrated for 
it.
	However, she didn’t have time to chew or swallow them. So she 
stored the 253 carrots in her cheeks until they could be processed.
	“I’m done, Ryo-ohki!” Tenchi called, after he put the last 
carrot of his designated part of the field. “How are you doing?”
	Ryo-ohki couldn’t respond through 253 carrots, so she pretended 
that she couldn’t hear him. Unfortunately, this tipped his hand. He 
shifted to her location, and she felt it. Time to destroy the 
evidence, she concluded.
	The loud crunching gave her away. Tenchi shifted again, putting 
himself in front of her, where he could see Ryo-ohki’s cheeks puffed 
up to chipmunk proportions, and the rest of her face trying to feign 
innocence. “What?” she mumbled.
	Caught red handed.

	“Mine!”
	“Mine!”
	“Mine!”
	“Mine!”
	“Mine!”
	“No, Ike – MINE!”
	If there are constants in this universe, they are death, 
Murphy’s law, and sibling rivalry.
	The Masaki family hadn’t seen this kind of squabbling since 
those between Ryoko and Aeka while they were vying for Tenchi’s 
affection. That stopped when they both married him. They still teased 
each other, as sisters do. But not to the extent that biological 
siblings do.
	Which is exactly what was happening now. Toru was in one of his 
particularly obstinate moods, and was trying out something that Washu 
had taught him. He was trying to grab the comic book that Ryoko was 
reading. He didn’t want to read it – he just wanted to piss Ryoko 
off.
	This brings us to constant #4, once discovered by Aeka to her 
peril: never piss Ryoko Masaki off. To do so promises a quick demise.
	Once Toru had succeeded in acquiring the book, Ryoko had 
scrambled from her sitting position, and was now flying in pursuit of 
the rugrat with weapons blazing. While Toru could only escape by 
crawling, he could cover a lot of ground. He was a lot smaller and 
lighter than Ryoko, and more manoeuvrable. He also had the knack of 
hiding under furniture, which never escaped Ryoko’s wrath.
	After a few minutes, Ryoko gave up and landed. Her back hurt 
too much.
	Mihoshi had been woken up by the battle, and was stirring. She 
got up, and walked off in her usual innocent way. “Hi, Ryoko,” she 
said. “You putting on weight?”
	Ryoko grabbed the blonde GP officer and hauled her toward her 
face. “What did you say?” she growled. Further retribution was timely 
interrupted by a stabbing pain coming from her abdomen. She looked 
down to see a sizeable bulge in the general location of that pain.
	She was beginning to show.
	She’d only conceived last night, and she was beginning to show! 
Then, this was obviously a trait with her. She herself was born only 
hours after her conception. Her child was developing very quickly.
	A quick check of the mind-link revealed this. A limited 
awareness was beginning to be exhibited by the child. It was already 
starting to ask the first of many questions that it would ask through 
its life. Not in the usual sense, but in an imperceivable way that 
she could understand. It was even fighting its own body for control, 
as Ryoko had done many a time.
	Aeka trotted demurely into the room from the kitchen. “What’s 
all the—“
	She looked around at the scene of subdued chaos – destroyed 
furniture, peeling wallpaper, charred wood, and she saw Ryoko stood 
in the centre of it all.
	“Do I need to assume you’re behind this, or are you going to 
blame it on your brother?” Aeka admonished.
	Ryoko bowed her head in shame.
	Then Aeka noticed the bulge in Ryoko’s abdomen. “My, my, my, 
Ryoko, you’ve let yourself go, haven’t you?” she sneered.
	“Why, you…” Ryoko seethed, with a hurt look on her face, and 
her body language suggesting that she was moments from doing 
something Aeka would not like to be on the receiving end of.
	“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Aeka said, attempting to placate her 
sister. Although they were not genetically related, they were sisters 
by marriage. Ryoko stood down. “Okay, if it’s not fat, what is it? It 
can’t be what I think it is… could it?” She suddenly wasn’t sure of 
herself.
	Ryoko smiled a smile somewhere between evil, knowing, and 
happy.
	“Nah, couldn’t be…” Aeka said, still trying to convince 
herself.
	“She is,” a voice answered. “She’s pregnant.”
	Mihoshi, Ryoko and Aeka turned to its source, and saw Washu 
emerge from her lab. She had on her face a rather ambiguous look, 
neither pleased nor disapproving.
	“Thanks for spoiling the mood!” Ryoko mused, indignantly.
	“You’re pregnant?!” Mihoshi said. “Oh, congratulations!” She 
then took her buxom cyan-haired friend up for a hug. A particularly 
strong one, but she broke it soon after.
	“Thank you, Mihoshi. Aeka?”
	Aeka attempted to feign indifference. When this didn’t work, 
she started to crack a smile, which widened and widened, until she 
was grinning. Then she just couldn’t hold herself, and she too hugged 
Ryoko with a strength that rivalled her mother’s own.
	A look from Ryoko said one thing. ‘Be careful.’ Ryoko didn’t 
know just how (in)destructible her child was, and she didn’t want to 
risk it. Aeka eased up.
	‘Well, mom, what do you think?’ Ryoko asked Washu over the mind 
link.
	Still maintaining that emotionless expression, Washu replied, 
out loud, in the most emotionless, insincere voice she could muster, 
“I’m happy for you.” ‘Not!’
	And that last part was transmitted loud enough for Ryoko to 
hear through that one-way firewall that Washu erected around her 
thoughts. And it hurt.
	Washu disappeared back into her lab, leaving behind a stunned 
Ryoko, with Aeka and Mihoshi.
	“Oh, no… I-I almost forgot, I’m supposed to be sweeping the 
shrine yard now!” Mihoshi realised, before she ran through the patio 
doors.
	Literally THROUGH the patio doors. The CLOSED patio doors. 
THROUGH the CLOSED patio doors that now had a Mihoshi-sized hole in 
them.
	“So…” Aeka started, thinking exactly how to phrase this. 
“When?”
	Ryoko was shaken out of her funk, back to happier thoughts. 
“Oh, sometime last night.”
	“That fast? I’m impressed. So, what is it? What’s it thinking? 
Come on, tell me!”
	“Don’t know, can’t tell, nothing to tell,” Ryoko replied, 
answering each question in turn.
	“Does Tenchi know?”
	“I didn’t even know until I woke up this morning and found 
something else talking to me.”
	“So you do have a mind link to it?”
	“That’s probably how Washu found out.” That brought her back to 
what just happened, and how much it hurt. “I just don’t understand 
it, Aeka. I thought she’d be happy…”
	Aeka noticed the tears welling in her sister’s eyes, and put 
her arms around her, in an attempt to comfort her. “If it’s any 
consolation, I don’t understand it either. I don’t pretend to even 
try, not where Washu’s concerned.”
	“I suppose you’re right,” Ryoko said as she wiped the tears 
away with a tissue she’d just summoned from subspace. She then 
spotted her little brother, as he emerged from his hiding place. 
Ryoko shifted herself behind him, and picked him up. After squirming 
in her hands for a few seconds, he settled. “There is one thing I can 
do, though.”
	“Oh? What’s that?”
	“Kick the baby!” she shouted gleefully.
	“Don’ kick the baby…” Toru babbled in reply.
	Ryoko’s foot made contact with the baby’s backside, and he 
sailed through the air, before crashing into a bookcase and giggling.
	Aeka look both resigned and worried. Part of her accepted this 
as just siblings playing, but the other worried about Toru, and would 
she do the same to her child…

	Achika Masaki sat cross-legged in the shrine office of the 
Masaki shrine. She sat silently, breathing deeply, rhythmically.
	To the casual observer, she was meditating. In a sense this was 
true. She was tuning her mind and body. However, she was tuning her 
mind and body to the universe that created her, allowing that she was 
to be projected to every point in the universe simultaneously.
	Exploiting the omnipotence that went with the territory of 
being a Pillar of All That Is.
	The amount of information that one collected when occupying 
everywhere at once was phenomenal. Analysing every picometre of the 
universe was literally a mind-blowing experience. Minds not properly 
prepared to accept it would crumble under the strain. Moreover, it 
would be a hygienist’s nightmare, seeing all those bacteria…
	Then again, Achika always had a kind of divine serenity when 
she was in her mortal form. Accepting one stream of input was rather 
refreshing, like venting all your frustrations at work, then coming 
home to family, and more peaceful days. During fulfilling her duties 
as a Pillar, she lost that divine patience and serenity, but that 
went with the territory and was limited to her job.
	Of course, there were times when this was not so. A time when 
she tried to save a race she had guided from its creation, that was 
wiped out by a supernova. For days afterward, she carried a temper 
that was a sight to fear. She even lashed out at Tsunami once.
	Fortunately, these times were few and far between. She always 
found ways to relieve her tension.
	Nobiyuki Masaki was beginning to get the hang of his new 
powers. Compared to Achika, he had relatively limited power, but they 
were powers nonetheless. At present, he was practising teleporting, 
and had silently appeared in the office.
	Achika appeared to have not noticed, but she’d known where he 
was all the time.
	After a period, it seemed like a steam whistle had gone out, 
and something in Achika’s mind had screamed “Quittin’ time!” She came 
out of her ‘meditation’, exhausted.
	“Hard morning, my beloved?” Nobiyuki asked.
	“You could say that,” Achika replied. “The Tetranians are on 
the verge of extinction. I managed to get a few to our galaxy, but 
things are starting to degenerate out there. So many died, Nobiyuki… 
So many…”
	Nobiyuki began to massage her shoulders. “Feeling better?”
	“Not really.”
	“Oh? Then I know something that might relieve the tension.”
	“What?” Achika inquired. She was met by an evil smile from her 
husband. “Not in the shrine! That’s sacrilege!”
	“Come, now, we both know we can leave this realm. Go somewhere 
a little more… private?”
	Achika smiled just as evilly, and then chuckled. “You 
insatiable man…” she purred, as they both shifted to, quite 
literally, the middle of nowhere.

	Yosho Masaki knelt outside the shrine and prayed to the 
goddesses. He knew well that the goddesses he was praying to were 
actually not very far away. But he had an image to uphold.
	He still maintained his old man disguise, even though his ruse 
had been rumbled by every member of his family. At one such time, 
with painful consequences. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, 
and even she hath no fury like Aeka scorned.
	That girl had gone to the ends of the universe looking for him, 
such was her devotion. The word ‘obsessed’ sprang to mind when he 
thought of her quest, but that wouldn’t be fair.
	Monomaniac would be far more appropriate.
	They had been in an arranged marriage from an early age, an 
agreement that Aeka consented to. To her, Yosho was love embodied. He 
was nothing like the self-serving, egotistical, bigoted nobles that 
had often tried – unsuccessfully – to court her. He was filled to the 
brim with human compassion. Of course, he was half-human.
To her, he held the moons. But then, he left. She blamed it on 
Ryoko, because he went to fight her. But in all actuality, he just 
wanted to get away from Aeka. In his opinion, he was poisoning her. 
He didn’t want her fixated on just him.
	Fortunately, his grandson was an excellent decoy. She fell for 
him instantly, and despite fighting Ryoko for him, things worked out 
for all three of them.
	His mind went back to their wedding. That had to be just six 
months ago. He played a ceremonial role in the Tsunamiist Jurai 
wedding, a kind of event outlawed on Jurai. The wedding was conducted 
by Tsunami herself, who blessed the marriage between Tenchi, Aeka and 
Ryoko with the deepest of happiness and sincerity. A happiness that 
words couldn’t describe from the brides, whose private little war 
came to an end when they finally reached a compromise that made both 
of them the happiest women in the galaxy.
	He thanked the goddesses for this era of happiness and 
prosperity, so timely did it follow one of death and despair.
	With his prayers over, he stepped out into the courtyard. Here, 
he found his mother Funaho and her sister Misaki sparring with boken. 
Although Misaki far outclassed Funaho in combat, this ‘fight’ seemed 
very evenly matched.
	A little further away, he could see Tenchi sweeping the yard. 
He shifted his head to bring his varifocal glasses to bear on him. 
The thought of sweeping the yard being Mihoshi’s job was rapidly 
dismissed. At the moment, he was glad someone was doing it.
	Then, he saw Mihoshi running up the steps with a broom in hand. 
Offering apologies as she ran.
	She tripped over the top step, sending her flying through the 
air… toward the sparring empresses. She collided with Misaki’s back, 
sending her lunging forward towards Funaho’s boken. She managed to 
lower the wooden sword in time, but didn’t get herself out of the way 
to avoid being knocked over by her sister. Within ten seconds, there 
was a healthy pile of bodies by the steps, watched over by a 
resigned-looking Tenchi.
	“Sister?” Misaki asked Funaho.
	“Yes?”
	“Do you want to kill her, or can I?”
	“Be my guest.”
	“Thank you.”
	Mihoshi wisely got off the top of the pile.
	“I will have no bloodshed on this shrine,” Yosho announced as 
he approached them. “If you want to kill each other, take it 
somewhere else.”
	“I was joking,” Misaki said to the priest.
	“Sounded sincere enough to me,” Tenchi mused. He was met by an 
angry glance from the blue-haired empress. “Forget it.”
	Not that Misaki could actually hurt him, he just wasn’t in the 
mood for tempting fate.
	“I think that’s enough for today,” Funaho said, hanging up her 
boken and extracting her sister’s from her hand. “Tenchi, if you 
will…”
	She handed them to Tenchi, who opened up a hole in subspace and 
put the boken in it.
	“Oh, by the way, Tenchi – congratulations,” Mihoshi said.
	“Thanks, Mihoshi, but I’m not exactly sure what you—“
	“I just heard the news. Ryoko’s having a baby!”
	The face-fall from the assembled cast could have been heard all 
the way to the Delta Quadrant. And by far the loudest was Tenchi’s.
	Misaki looked hurt. “You’re having a baby and you didn’t tell 
us…?” she blubbered, before bursting into tears.
	Tenchi knew what usually followed this, and spoke in his 
defence. “Hey, I didn’t know ‘til Mihoshi told me!”
	It took about ten seconds after Tenchi’s proclamation for 
Misaki to abruptly stop crying. After which, she just stared at 
Tenchi. She blinked, six times. “Oh, that’s all right then…!” she 
said soppily, before giving the man a hug strong enough to crush a 
small planet. “Congratulations!” she sobbed.
	“Uh, yeah, thanks.”
	Funaho smiled in that way of hers. “Yes, congratulations, 
Tenchi. I didn’t know you were trying.”
	“We weren’t,” Tenchi said from the enduring Misaki hug. “We 
just, uh, made love last night…”
	“Last night?” Funaho’s eyes lit up. “Mihoshi, are you sure 
about this? Did Ryoko say she was pregnant?”
	“Yeah,” Mihoshi replied. “She’s got a bulge and everything.”
	“It’s scientifically impossible,” Funaho went on, ignoring the 
glaringly obvious Washu analogy. “Then again, knowing Ryoko, it is 
possible. Unless she’s jammed a cushion up her dress.”
	“No, Grandmother, she is pregnant,” a serene voice proclaimed. 
“And she will have the baby in… about ten hours.”
	They turned to face the source of the voice. They saw Achika, 
stood by the steps. Funaho was about to ask, “How did you know 
that?”, followed by “How did you get there?” but she stopped herself.
	She’s omnipresent. She knows everything.
	“Tenchi,” Achika addressed her son, “you should go to be with 
your wife, see the birth of your child. I think Ryoko will provide 
you with an explanation.”
	“I sure hope so,” Tenchi said, as he shifted himself to the 
house, leaving behind two very confused empresses and an equally 
confused priest.
They turned to face the goddess, with expectant looks on their 
faces. Achika breathed in, and sighed, deeply. “Okay… Long or short 
version?”

	Ryo-ohki had been given a duty equivalent to wearing an orange 
boiler suit and walking along the side of the freeway picking up 
trash.
	Assistant to Sasami in the kitchen.
	Then again, it was fitting punishment for taking out most of a 
carrot field. One eats the food, one prepares the food.
	“Onions?”
	“Onions.”
	Ryo-ohki handed Sasami the chopped onions, where they were 
integrated into the broil.
	“Potatoes?”
	“Potatoes.”
	In went the potatoes.
	“Carrots?”
	No response.
	“Carrots?” Sasami added emphasis.
	Still no response. Sasami turned, to see Ryo-ohki about to 
empty the chopping board full of chopped carrots directly into her 
mouth. Sasami glared at her.
	“Sorry, couldn’t help myself,” she said, handing the chopping 
board to Sasami, who poured the carrot into the pan.
	Sasami reached for a spoon, dipped it into the mix, and tasted 
it. A dismayed expression dawned on her face. “Oh, Great Father.”
	“What’s wrong?” Ryo-ohki asked.
	“KIYONE!”

<in background: ER-style crisis music>

	The door to the living room slid open with considerable force. 
Indeed, it bounced back after reaching its limits. Kiyone marched 
into the room. “Wassup?” she said.
	Sasami replied with a high-warp stream of technobabble.
	“Understood. Get me fifty CCs of bell pepper, STAT!!”
	Ryo-ohki took the chopping board, extracted the bell pepper 
from a cupboard, and began slicing it. She handed it to Sasami, who 
desperately dumped it in the pan. She tasted it again. “We’re losing 
it!”
	“Okay, we have to act fast!” Kiyone replied. “I need white 
pepper.”
	“But, Kiyone! I cannot in all good conscience—“
	“Aw, now there’s no time!” Kiyone shouted, as she extracted the 
white pepper from the cupboard, and grabbed a spoon. She put some of 
the pepper on the spoon, and threatened the casserole with it. 
“Clear!”
	Everybody cleared, as Kiyone dumped the pepper in the pan. 
Nothing happened, they were just caught up in the metaphor. Kiyone 
tasted it. “Still flat. Needs more.” She got a little more pepper 
than last time, and once again shouted, “Clear,” before dumping it 
in. She tasted it, swilled it around, and swallowed. “People, we have 
saved a casserole.”
	Sasami and Ryo-ohki smiled. A job well done.

	Ryoko sat on the couch, her hand rested on her belly, smiling 
contentedly.
	She was talking to her child now, over the mind-link. It had 
been growing strong and fast over the last few hours, and very soon 
it would be ready to be born. They were just talking to each other, 
like a mother would talk to her child in the womb. Except this was a 
more two-way conversation.
	Conversation wouldn’t be the right adjective. They weren’t 
dialoguing in real-time. It was more of an e-mail friendship. Ryoko 
would ask a question, send it to her child, and wait to receive a 
reply. The child would do the same. It was still very rewarding. 
Ryoko finally knew what it was like to grow in a womb. She hadn’t the 
luxury, if you might call it that, of growing in a womb. She was 
born, in the form she had kept in all of her 2024 years, from a 
containment chamber, with the demented scientist she had for a mother 
on hand to watch. Correction, that should be demented scientists. 
There were two other people there to see her birth. One was Yakage, 
Washu’s colleague and the man who designed her power control systems 
(and, of course, her trademark beam sabre). The other was Kagato, her 
father (although a father she really could have done without). It was 
the love between Washu and this man that brought about her creation, 
just as it is often the love between two beings that bring about 
children. Of course, the nature of her creation was just a wee bit 
different, but the thought was there.
	She basked in that love during her formative years. She 
remembered very little of anything before about 19 years ago, just 
snippets in-between her moments of insanity, but that was one of the 
stronger memories, if still vague. Most of this was reconstructed 
from a program her ‘father’ left his family to see. Her parents loved 
her, their miracle baby – although she never knew why – very dearly, 
and Washu was always in tune with her. She remembered being a little 
lonely. She literally blew other kids away when it came to playing 
with them, and this of course led to them being afraid of her. So her 
parents made her a companion, based upon a cuddly toy Washu’s first 
child had. That companion was Ryo-ohki.
	Sadly, this perfect family life didn’t last long. When Ryoko 
was fourteen, an old acquaintance of Washu’s – Clay – had assaulted 
Washu, and cloned her using his assassin Zero. Kagato’s rage was 
almighty, eventually all-consuming. The cloned Washu had access to 
the memories the real Washu had denied herself, and knew about her 
past life as Tokimi’s sister, and being a Pillar of All That Is. She 
knew Tokimi would want Washu, and Kagato vowed this would not be so. 
He locked Washu in the bowels of his ship, and asked Ryoko to help 
him.
	This she did… no matter how diametrically opposed it was to her 
character. This quest that Kagato had embarked upon required Ryoko to 
do certain things that it was simply against everything she was to 
execute. At times, she even had to kill. She couldn’t. Back then, 
Ryoko was just like Sasami – compassionate, a little empathic, and at 
times too nice for her own good. Rather than abandon the attempt, she 
asked her father to turn her into the perfect warrior. And as Kagato 
would regret later, that happened. He removed her free will. He 
reprogrammed her partially computer-based mind. He turned her into 
the perfect soldier. A soldier that destroyed families, colonies, 
planets, even whole civilisations, to fulfil the requests made of her 
by her father.
	Toward the end – about seven centuries ago – they were both 
going insane. Kagato was chasing a delusion, and had probably lost 
sight of his original goal. He had become Captain Ahab centuries 
before Melville created the character for Moby Dick. It was fortunate 
that Yosho and Tsunami had separated them, locking Ryoko in the cave. 
It was here that she spent 700 years in rehabilitation, regaining 
some of that which Kagato had taken from her.
	Unfortunately, memories weren’t in that equation. When Ryoko 
was reunited with Washu, she had no idea of how they were related. Of 
course, Washu knew, but somehow didn’t treat her as a mother should 
treat her. On occasion, she even treated her as Kagato treated her. 
But Ryoko forgave her. If anything survived of the Ryoko that Washu 
created, it was her highly forgiving nature. Not to mention her 
fierce loyalty – even if that loyalty was grossly misplaced. This was 
of course reinforced after she rejoined with the copy of herself that 
Clay integrated into Zero, having the effect of restoring a few 
‘factory presets’. The relation between Washu and Ryoko was somewhat 
rocky, but finally reached a watershed when they watched Kagato’s 
little show, and they re-evaluated their relationship. The result of 
this was their relationship finally became that of mother and 
daughter, instead of scientist and lab-rat.
	Which is why Ryoko simply couldn’t understand Washu’s reaction 
to the news that she was going to have a grandchild. She was 
expecting surprise, but basically a little happiness wouldn’t go 
amiss. Not the thoroughly deadpan response Washu gave. It was almost 
as if she was reverting to type – putting up the walls Ryoko thought 
torn down; bringing back that scientific objectivity that really 
should stay in the lab.
	Whatever it was, Ryoko thought it best not to dwell on it. She 
silently vowed to herself that she was going to raise her child 
properly. She would not let it go through what she had. Mistakes were 
made, and she wouldn’t let them be made again. The first time around 
was too painful for all involved.
	“I agree,” a voice said to her. She turned to see Tenchi phase 
through the patio doors into the living room. He noticed the 
considerable bulge in her belly. “You work fast when you want to, 
don’t you?”
	“You imply deliberation where none exists,” Ryoko replied. “I 
can’t control my own natural cycles.”
	“Why didn’t you tell me?”
	“If you must know, I didn’t know until I woke up this morning. 
Of course, you were working, so I couldn’t tell you.”
	“Oh, okay. So, what do you know of the little rugrat?”
	“Not much. You just caught us sharing the experiences of our 
births. Fascinating stuff, you know, even if I’m sharing it with a 
primal mind.”
	Tenchi smiled. Ryoko seemed unaware of how much she sounded 
like Washu.
	Ryoko clenched her face in pain – a pain that eased quickly. 
“Oh, my, it’s kicking. What is it doing down there, soccer try-outs?”
	“Don’t know what sex it is, then?”
	“You’re the second person to ask me that. I don’t know.”
	“I thought you could find out. I mean, Washu knew.”
	“Well, for one, I can’t find out. And for the other, I don’t 
want to know. I want to have a pleasant surprise for once.”
	Tenchi smiled again. “I know the feeling.”
	Ryoko clenched her face again. “Oh, god, we are going to have 
words when it learns to speak.” After the next pain, something dawned 
on her. “Oh.”
	“What for the ‘oh’?”
	“Well, uh, Junior just sent me a message saying in no uncertain 
terms, it wants out. That, and I think I’m going into – OW!! – 
labour.”
	“Oh, shit. WASHU!!”

	The holo-laptop seemed to float before Washu, who sat on her 
floating cushion, in the middle of the vast expanse of her lab. The 
pseudo-computer didn’t budge as she tapped its keys with a little 
more force than was actually necessary – or even healthy.
	Maybe Ryoko’s pain was getting to her. Or maybe it was worry.
	Washu was currently multitasking her computer. Part of it was 
constructing a DLL, for wont of a better analogy, for a new, totally 
revolutionary computer operating system she was developing. Part of 
it was running the previous version of this operating system, its 
myriad hidden programs and system files. The last part was processing 
something that would be useful – nay, crucial – in times to come.
	Power to mass ratios. Trying to find the bare minimum volume 
that a humanoid form would have to displace to accommodate the kind 
of power that Tenchi – and Ryoko – wielded.
	Ryoko’s announcement caused considerable worry for Washu. It 
brought back a few painful memories. The time around Ryoko’s birth, 
and the days before. Ryoko was her sixth attempt to create a being 
that could channel and manipulate that kind of energy, an attempt 
borne out of five catastrophic failures. The first attempt was a 
child about the size of a human newborn, without the power control 
systems that Ryoko’s tactical inventory relied upon. In this form, 
the child could grow like any other.
	Unfortunately, that child could not handle that kind of power, 
and was quite literally eaten alive by it. Fortunately, its small 
volume spared it much suffering. It was over quickly.
	For the next two attempts, Washu and her colleagues theorised 
that a body with more volume would be better able to distribute the 
power, and thus control it. And survive it. They tried something 
analogous to a toddler/small child. Same effect. Then they tried a 
frame akin to that used by Ryoko. It was only by the timely 
intervention of a containment chamber that the whole planet didn’t go 
with her.
	It is a sad fact that technology evolves through failure. The 
first three losses were undoubtedly tragic, but they had gained 
enough information to realise that a power control system was 
essential. Back to the drawing board.
	The fourth attempt incorporated the baby model with Yakage’s 
new controls. For all of a few minutes, the child made it. However, 
the power eventually consumed it, vaporising her. The fifth attempt, 
a toddler, went likewise.
	No one held hope for attempt number six. By this time, they 
were running out of options when Washu placed her egg in the 
containment chamber and allowed the engineered Mass to assimilate it. 
This time, Washu accelerated the ageing process on the life form. 
Within hours, it had evolved into a form resembling a 17-year-old 
girl. The mind that was created by her egg and the Mass (which 
carried Kagato’s DNA, becoming the father by proxy) took dominance 
over the collective, but could always hand control back to it if it 
were compromised. When the chamber opened, they found what they were 
looking for – a being with a stable energy signature, with none of 
the wild fluctuations that consumed her siblings. They had created 
Ryoko.
	By the time Ryo-ohki was created, Washu had perfected the power 
control system to allow a being of sub-infant size to control the 
power without fatal results. This was fortunate, otherwise Ryo-ohki 
would have died moments after her birth. Although she possessed a 
third of Ryoko’s power, that was still way over the normal threshold. 
But Washu didn’t need to upgrade a power system that worked quite 
nicely, thank you very much, already, and so she left Ryoko’s alone. 
You don’t piss in something to make it better…
	…Unless it’s a jellyfish sting.
	What worried her was that the power control system was genetic 
in origin – programmed into the Mass. There was a good chance that 
the defective DNA would be passed onto Ryoko’s child. And knowing 
nature – and the child’s human/Jurai paternal heritage – the child 
would be born as a baby. And quite probably, owing that both parents 
effectively had the power of gods, the child would acquire some – if 
not all – of that power. Power that far outclassed Ryoko’s own, and 
even that spelt doom for the child. That kind of power, if not 
stringently controlled, would make the child blow up. And it would 
take most of the Sol system – if not anything within a 20 light year 
radius – with it.
	Not to mention the fact that Ryoko would be devastated. Washu 
knew for a fact that Ryoko loved Tenchi more than life itself, and 
loved her child just as much. It didn’t take the greatest scientific 
genius of the universe to observe that Ryoko was fiercely loyal and 
protective, often with people who a) she hadn’t met; or b) really 
didn’t deserve it. Imagine what her maternal instinct would do… Washu 
shuddered to think. She needed to maintain an emotional objectivity. 
If things went wrong – part of her mind read ‘if’ for ‘when’ – she 
would have to be there to help pick up the pieces. And a fat lot of 
good she’d be if she was picking up her own pieces.
	But one thing she found, after receiving the transmission of 
concern, astonishment, and despair Ryoko felt at watching everything 
she’d worked for these past few months fall away, Washu really should 
have phrased it better.
	But that seemed to get less and less important, as Ryoko’s pain 
began to get more and more intense over the link. Washu saw through 
her daughter’s eyes, and what she saw was Tenchi carrying her to the 
door under the stairs. Then opening the door. Then appearing in her 
lab.
	“Washu?” Tenchi asked, half expecting her to go ape-shit at not 
being called ‘Little Washu’ (even though she wasn’t so little any 
more).
	“I know,” she replied. With a blink of an eye, she had summoned 
a gurney. “Put Ryoko on that. I’ll take her to the diagnostic bay.”
	“You got a diagnostic bay?” Ryoko asked.
	Washu paused for all of three seconds. “I do now.” She produced 
from subspace a device that looked suspiciously like a medical 
tricorder and scanned Ryoko with it. “The child is turning. You’re in 
the midst of the contractions. I’d say we’re looking at five minutes 
before it’s born. Let’s roll.”
	Tenchi and Washu pushed the gurney over to an area that looked 
suspiciously like the experimentation area. It was equipped with the 
same guinea pig restraint globes, even the same transporter inhibitor 
that Washu used on Ryoko, but it also had something resembling a bio-
bed, and a containment chamber similar to the one Ryoko was born in.
	They pushed the gurney to alongside the bio-bed, where Tenchi 
cautiously lifted his second wife over to it. Washu started pressing 
buttons on the bed, which had the effect of deploying the ‘clamshell’ 
support frame. Sensor readouts started to appear on the walls of it, 
which Washu scanned. “Ryoko, do you want to know what sex it is?” she 
asked.
	“NO!” Ryoko replied, in the middle of a contraction. “I’ll 
wait!”
	“Okay. Now, contractions are three minutes apart. You’re 
dilating, but your amniotic sac isn’t ruptured.”
	Tenchi and Ryoko gave Washu a look that stated, quite 
obviously, that that had just sailed over their heads.
	“Your waters aren’t broken yet.”
	Tenchi and Ryoko gave a look that said, “Oh.”
	“Now, the next contraction will be between two and three 
minutes away. When it happens, push with it, Ryoko.”
	“Okay… Here it comes… AAAAAGH!!”
	The contraction came. Ryoko pushed, and so it went.
	Washu’s estimate was hilariously conservative. She guessed five 
minutes. Somehow, those five minutes extended into ten hours. Ten 
very painful hours in which neither baby nor mother got much further.
	By this time, Aeka had even appeared to help out. She’d just 
come in to tell all involved that it was dinner-time, but somehow 
this cursory involvement got extended to her being given the role of 
morale officer-cum-midwife.
	“I think this has to be the only pregnancy I’ve known where the 
birth takes longer than the gestation,” she commented, as she wiped 
the sweat off Ryoko’s brow for the umpteenth time.
	“Oh, just you wait till your kid’s born, Aeka,” Ryoko mused 
indignantly, just before another contraction hit.
	“It’s coming, it’s coming…” Washu said. “YES! Your waters have 
broken!”
	“Oh, gee, already?” Ryoko replied, sarcastically. “You said 
that would happen five hours ago… AAAGH!!”
	Another contraction. By now, pushing with them had become 
second nature.
	“Here it comes, it’s coming through now…” Washu announced.
	“About bloody time!” Aeka mused.
	“Yes, I can see the head. Just a couple more pushes…”
	By the second contraction, the baby’s torso had been virtually 
expelled. By the third, baby was out. Washu grabbed a pair of clips 
and a laser scalpel to sever the umbilical cord. That appeared to be 
vestigial – no blood was going through it. Then she spanked the child 
to stimulate its breathing – just in case. It started crying. Washu 
stood there, checking the child over, while Ryoko looked expectant.
	Washu checked the baby over. Then checked it over again. And 
again. And then some more. For a whole hour.
	Aeka marched over to Washu, and picked the baby up. “For God’s 
sake, woman, stop being a scientist for once in your life.” Aeka 
looked at the child, paused for a second, looked at Ryoko, and 
smiled. “It’s a girl, sister. Congratulations.”
	She then handed the baby to her parents. Ryoko cradled her in 
her arms, and she immediately stopped crying. Just as Ryoko started. 
Only she cried tears of joy.
	“Hello,” she said to her daughter.
	The baby responded by smiling and laughing.
	Tenchi and Ryoko looked at their child, about to do that time-
honoured tradition of saying, ‘He/she has your (insert relevant part 
of anatomy here)’. They looked to see whose eyes/nose/ears she was 
wearing. She had obviously been growing her hair in the womb, because 
it was already shoulder-length and spiked in an identical manner to 
her mother. Instead of being cyan, however, her hair was raven-black, 
just like Achika’s. She had Ryoko’s cat-like eyes, but they were a 
scarlet colour just like Tenchi’s used to be, and like Achika’s were 
presently. She also had Ryoko’s slightly enlarged ears, which Ryoko 
hated. But somehow she wore them quite nicely.
	“She’s got your mother’s eyes,” Ryoko said.
	“I thought they were more yours,” Tenchi replied. “She’s 
definitely got your ears.”
	“WHY YOU LITTLE!!!” Ryoko roared, but Aeka intervened.
	“Break it up, you two!” she said. “You start looking after your 
daughter.”
	Ryoko turned her attention back to the baby. Still crying, she 
smiled back at her daughter. Even Washu could feel the joy emanating 
from her.
	She could also feel the baby’s feelings. Utter contentment 
figured pretty high here. This went alongside with immense, 
unconditional love for what the baby was currently calling ‘the big 
strange mommy-lady’.
	She tried not to smile. It reminded her of just how fragile the 
child was, and how all of this could easily be taken away by nature. 
Feeling a conflict of emotions that she didn’t want to betray, she 
walked away, wordlessly. She ignored the emptiness, the sadness Ryoko 
was feeling as she did.
	Aeka, however, did not. Excusing herself, she followed Washu to 
somewhere away from the happy family. Once here, she grabbed the 
scientist’s shoulder and spun her around to face her.
	“I hope for your sake that you have a damn good reason for 
doing that,” Washu growled.
	“Yes, I do,” Aeka replied, in her calmest voice, “and you know 
it. Ryoko’s expecting you to be at least a little bit proud of her. 
She’s expecting some sign of happiness for her, some sign that you 
actually care. Quite frankly, so am I. But we’re not receiving any 
such sign. Just what is your major malfunction, Washu?”
	“You wouldn’t understand,” Washu answered, as she would talk to 
a layperson.
	Aeka simply folded her arms and started probing her with her 
eyes. “Try me.”
	Washu made eye contact with her adversary, trying hard not to 
let any tears well in them. “I am happy for Ryoko. I truly am. But if 
you knew what I went through to make her, you’d understand. I made 
five children before her. FIVE of them, Aeka. None of them survived. 
None of them could handle the power. She made it by the skin of her 
teeth. She could barely handle her own power. I’m worried her 
daughter won’t be able to, and she’ll die like mine did. And if she 
does, she’ll take Ryoko with her. Probably this backwater rock, too. 
I can’t let myself love her child; I can’t get attached.”
	Aeka paused for a second. “I am such an idiot.” Washu smiled in 
concurrence. “It’s so obvious, now. You’re afraid to love her, just 
in case she breaks your heart. Story of your life. After all, do the 
names Hayes and Kagato ring a bell?”
	Washu’s open hand launched out at Aeka, but she just leant back 
and dodged it. The force caused Washu to momentarily lose her 
balance.
	“Washu, welcome to Love 101. Anyone who loves runs the risk of 
having his or her heart broken. It is a risk we have to take. You’re 
painting Ryoko with the same brush – afraid she’ll leave you – when 
she has proven time after time after time that she loves you. You two 
have come a long way this last year. I don’t want to see that fail. 
She needs you, Washu, and you need her. I’m sorry if it hit too close 
to home, but that’s the way it goes. If Ryoko’s daughter runs into 
trouble, you will probably figure out a way to solve it. You always 
do.”
	Tears started to well in Washu’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve 
been a little selfish. You’re right. I should be there for her.”
	“Well, there’s no time like the present.” Aeka gestured toward 
the diagnostic bay. Washu gratefully headed over.
	As Ryoko and Tenchi started cooing, talking baby-babble to 
their child, they noticed Washu and Aeka return. Aeka joined them, 
but Washu remained a distance away.
	“Washu?” Tenchi asked, concerned.
	The redhead scientist stood still, an emotionless expression on 
her face. Then a smile appeared on her face. Tears welled in her eyes 
again. The smile widened. The tears started to brim. Finally, they 
flooded over as Washu charged toward her daughter and granddaughter, 
taking them up for a tight hug.
	Aeka and Tenchi looked on, and exchanged a contented smile.

	The talk of babies of late was making Mihoshi and her husband, 
Ryuken Kuramitsu (né K’thardin) jealous. First the arrival of Washu’s 
son, and now Ryoko’s imminent bundle of joy, both reminded her that 
her biological clock was ticking.
	Although this was not an accurate metaphor. Her biological 
clock could count down to zero, and it wouldn’t make a difference. 
She wouldn’t experience that crazy little quirk of human physiology 
known as the menopause. No one did; it seemed that only females of 
this world had a finite supply of eggs. But nonetheless, she was 
jealous.
	Ryuken was still wondering how exactly his little sister could 
be having a baby so damn quick. He’d even asked Achika, who seemed to 
know everything. Her reply was, “smile and nod.” Which was what he 
was still doing.
	Misaki was rather jealous, too. As her daughter was the first 
wife, by rights she should have the first child. Funaho had continued 
to remind her that she and Tenchi probably copulated before he and 
Ryoko did, but Jurai pregnancies were considerably longer, which made 
her feel a little better. Still didn’t stop her feeling jealous, 
though.
	Ryo-ohki hadn’t eaten in ten hours. She was eavesdropping on 
her older sister’s feelings, and was receiving what appeared to be 
one end of a telephone conversation. She was feeling more or less the 
same disgust for Washu that Aeka felt; a disgust that wasn’t placated 
as easily as Ryoko’s. Loyalty was one thing, but it doesn’t mean you 
have to let them walk all over you. It was something that she’d tried 
many times to teach Ryoko.
	Achika hadn’t said nor done anything over the last ten hours. 
She didn’t need to voice the pride she was feeling for her son. 
Although she had actively warned half a dozen people to not call her 
‘grandma’. Lest she slap their ass across the universe.
	You could cut the atmosphere with a butter knife. The tension 
was rapidly mounting.
	And then Tenchi emerged from the door under the stairs, holding 
a baby in his arms. All and sundry waited in anticipation for him to 
say something.
	And that he did. “Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to 
introduce you to Chiemi Masaki… MY DAUGHTER!”
	He flourished the child above his head for all to see. The 
cheer of joy that came from all assembled rivalled even that which 
welcomed him to the ‘organisation’.
	One by one, each of them approached him to congratulate him, 
and comment on how cute the baby was. Ryuken was smitten. Mihoshi had 
fallen in love with her. Kiyone had to be dragged away. Misaki gave 
her typically emphatic statement of congratulations. Funaho’s was 
just as emphatic – in fact, uncharacteristically emphatic. Yosho, now 
without his old man guise, showed the most emotion he’d shown since 
Tenchi had known him. Ryo-ohki stayed a little longer, perhaps to 
have a mental communiqué with her niece.
	Then Sasami and Tsunami came over. Sasami smiled in joy, and 
began cooing to Chiemi. As she shook hand to finger, Tsunami engaged 
Tenchi in conversation. “Who came up with the name Chiemi?”
	“I did,” Tenchi replied. “You like it?”
	“I do. I like it very much.” Then they hugged him. 
“Congratulations, Tenchi.”
	Finally, Nobiyuki and Achika approached him. His mother took 
him in for a hug, and then so did his father. “Congratulations, son,” 
Nobiyuki said.
	“Thanks, Dad.”
	Achika took her granddaughter up in her arms. She looked into 
her eyes, still with that serene smile. A smile that widened and 
widened into a full-blown grin. “She is so… damned… CUTE!!” she 
sobbed, putting Misaki to shame. She quickly regained her composure, 
but was still grinning. “You did well, my son. My little warrior.” 
She brought him in for another hug – one that could crush a galaxy.
	Fortunately, Tenchi could take it. This wasn’t the only goddess 
he’d faced. He’d gone up against Tokimi, who was stronger still, and 
survived… barely.
	Chiemi started bawling, which served as a cue to break the hug. 
Tenchi looked down at his daughter, puzzled. “Aw, what’s up, little 
one?”
	“She’s hungry!” Ryo-ohki replied.
	“Oh. I won’t ask exactly how you knew that…”
	Mihoshi spoke up. “Out of interest, is Ryoko breast-feeding or 
bottle-feeding?” she said in her innocent way.
	All and sundry looked at her, half glaring and half bemused.
	“I’m just asking is all…”
	Almost in answer to Mihoshi’s question, Washu appeared behind 
Tenchi. “She’s doing both, Mihoshi. Tenchi, if I may…” She took 
Chiemi into her arms. “Her mother’s waiting for her. In the meantime, 
start putting this in the cupboard.” She then opened up a subspace 
portal to her replicator. Several large white canisters sporting 
Washu’s red crab trademark began to be pushed out of it. All of them 
bore the legend ‘Baby Formula’, along with a few warnings. Such as 
‘Avoid contact with air. Persons not of Jurai/Mass descent should not 
consume this.’ Standard ‘don’t mess’ stuff.
	Then Washu looked upon the gathered throng. “What are you guys 
doing standing here? Go to bed!” she ordered in her Roseanne-esque 
way.
	“By your guidance, Divine Shadow,” Kiyone mused sarcastically.
	“Been watching Lexx again, I see,” Tsunami whispered in her 
ear.
	“G’wan, GIT!” Washu added, in her best John Wayne.
	Everyone dispersed as fast as they could, leaving Tenchi 
clutching half a dozen cans of customised baby formula, and Washu 
holding a baby that was in the feeling mood. Feeling Washu’s face.
	“Was that necessary?” Tenchi asked.
	“They’ve got all tomorrow to go all mushy over Chiemi,” Washu 
replied, lowering her granddaughter’s hands from her face. “They need 
sleep. So do you.”
	“No I don’t. I haven’t needed sleep in a year.”
	“You should rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day. For you 
and Ryoko. Now let’s get the little rugrat fed.”
	“Okay, Little Washu.”
	They turned to enter the lab again, just as Chiemi raised her 
hands again to grab the tresses of Washu’s hair that were beside her 
cheeks. “OWW! Don’t pull, okay?”

	Since Tenchi and Aeka were married, Sasami now had a room to 
herself. Well, virtually. She now shared her body with Tsunami, thus 
joined by the hip with a roommate.
	For seven hundred years, Sasami had been joined with Tsunami, 
due to a fatal accident that Ryoko was directly responsible for. 
Although Ryoko was under Kagato’s control at the time. Sasami nearly 
died, but Tsunami saved her by assimilating her. While saving her 
life, it also gave Tsunami a true physical form for the first time in 
23 millennia. Azusa was livid that she had assimilated his daughter, 
adding yet another grievance to the already rocky relationship 
between him and her.
	Thanks to Tsunami’s naivete, she was now under Azusa’s control 
thanks to the master key Tenchi-ken that held her and all of her 
children at the command of whomever held it. Her motives for creating 
the sword were just, 17 thousand years ago. But she should have 
deactivated it afterwards. Now it was too late. Without the sword, 
she hadn’t the power to disable it. And she was too distracted to 
disable it when she did have the power. She was busy looking after 
Washu’s eldest son, and during that time Azusa ascended to power and 
usurped the sword – and her power. Her distraction continued when 
Ryoko attacked, and Yosho left Jurai. This was enough time for Azusa 
to slip on the reins. But even he underestimated the tenacity of his 
children.
	Yosho had liberated the Tenchi-ken, putting the master key 
under the possession of someone who was a wee bit more stable. Aeka 
and Sasami ran off in Ryuo, taking Tsunami with them. They had 
escaped the power-crazed emperor for a while.
	Eventually, the time would come when Sasami and Tsunami would 
join into one form, with one mind. Tsunami had accepted this, but 
Sasami had not. And the joining would not take place until she did.
	The fight against Tokimi threw this natural progression off 
course. Tokimi had effectively killed Tsunami, and by extension 
killed Sasami. The only way to save them was to merge them into a 
single body. The body they were occupying now. They had effectively 
accelerated the physical synchronisation that the natural 
assimilation would have afforded. But their minds still wouldn’t 
merge. So the net result was they were two minds occupying the same 
body, each of them alternating for control of it.
	This had the external effect of them appearing to be talking to 
themselves, with rapidly changing emotions and facial expressions. In 
the early days, with Sasami in puberty and the merger being less than 
stable, they were in the throes of major mood swings, occasional 
pain, and energy and psychic discharges that would have had most of 
the sector in trouble. Over the last few months, they had learned to 
control this, but occasionally this control lapsed.
	As for control of the body, they took it in shifts. Sasami had 
the day watch, while Tsunami had the night watch because she didn’t 
sleep. If they got up in the night, whoever saw them knew they were 
talking to a fully conscious Tsunami, instead of a sleepwalking 
Sasami.
	But now, Sasami was guiding her body to bed, talking to her 
mind-mate goddess.
	“Well, today sure was action-packed.”
	“True indeed,” Tsunami replied.
	“I still can’t believe Ryoko got pregnant so quickly. I bet 
Aeka’s green with envy.”
	“She probably is. But she loves Ryoko too much now.”
	“Amazing, isn’t it? Two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed 
those two would ever get along. Now, they’re sisters, and they never 
fight any more. Well, except to rib one another. Kind of makes me 
feel redundant.”
	“Hey, don’t think that. You’re important to all of us. We love 
you.”
	“But…”
	“If you think the presence of the two little rugrats diminishes 
your importance, don’t. We love them, yes, but we love you. There are 
no favourites here. Especially with…” Tsunami’s eyes watered at the 
thought of the name. “…Cyraqs. What is he doing…? AAGH! I can’t even 
go find him!”
	Now it was Sasami’s turn to do the comforting. “I’m sure he’s 
all right, wherever he is.”
	“Good. I am going to kick his ass from here to Hiroshima when 
he gets home.”
	“Tsunami, I’m getting sleepy,” Sasami yawned.
	“Alrighty then. I have the bridge.”
	“Aye,” Sasami replied, as she passed out. Tsunami did the 
equivalent of tuck Sasami’s presence in their shared mind into bed, 
leaving her with control of their body.
	“Ah… bliss. Lovely, peaceful quiet.”
	This didn’t last long, as the house shook in response to an 
explosion downstairs.
	“Toru, NO!!” Washu called out. “Ryoko, get your child off of my 
son!!”
	“Kick his ass, Chiemi!” Ryoko replied.
	“Don’t encourage her!”
	A couple of explosions followed.
	“Time out for you, young lady…”
	A piercing cry rang out as a scolded Chiemi wailed, closely 
followed by Toru. Then Taro joined the ensemble.
	Tomorrow is going to be a long day. A VERY long day.

	The GPS Pikachu, a Raichu-class heavy cruiser registered to the 
Galaxy Police, was one of twelve ships assigned to the non-aligned, 
12-planet Eridne system. The GP’s presence in this system was 
important. The civilisation on the third planet was just about to 
emerge from the Information Age and launch its first FTL spacecraft.
	They just wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to do anything 
illegal.
	Exactly as Intelligence had predicted, the tiny ship emerged 
from the planet’s largest continent. They began shadowing the vessel, 
taking up a position directly astern, and out of its sensor range.
	The Pikachu’s captain, a stout man by the name of Ryuji, 
watched the vessel as it cruised at sublight.
	“Steady as she goes, Helm,” he ordered his Helmsman. “Tactical, 
threat assessment?”
	“She’s carrying no weapons, sir,” the tactical officer replied. 
“Threat assessment: zero. Unless they crash into us.”
	“Hardly likely. Keep watching them.”
	The tiny ship looked as though it was about to go to FTL 
flight. It deployed what appeared to be warp nacelles, and something 
was about to happen. Then, a particle beam struck the vessel, 
destroying it outright.
	And this particle beam appeared, to Ryuji, to have come from 
his ship.
	“Who gave the order to fire?” he growled.
	“We didn’t fire, sir!” the tactical officer responded.
	“Master at Arms, take the tactical officer into custody, then 
take over.”
	A burly gentleman did just that, relieving the compliant 
tactical officer and checking it. “He was right, sir. We didn’t fire. 
Our weapons systems are offline.”
	The woman at the science station chimed in. “That particle beam 
doesn’t conform to any known GP weapon type.”
	Then the Pikachu appeared to be hit. It shook in response to an 
impact to its hull. “Direct hit to the starboard engine assembly,” 
the Master at Arms reported. “Engine efficiency down to 63%. Port 
assembly is reducing power to compensate.”
	“Helm, hard to starboard,” Ryuji ordered. “Tactical, tell me 
what just shot at me.”
	The Master at Arms punched keys on his station. “Picking up one 
ship, bearing 176 mark 6… no wait, there’s two of them… no, there’s… 
by the Gods, there’s hundreds of them! Small craft, runabout-sized.”
	“Helm, get us out of here!” Ryuji exclaimed, out of his calm 
demeanour. “Communications, signal the rest of the f—“
	Before the Pikachu could reach escape velocity, it was swarmed 
by the smaller vessels, and destroyed.

	Dawn broke in Kurashiki, and the Masaki family house near the 
shrine. A house whose ground floor was presently under 
reconstruction.
	Ryoko and Washu were presently refitting the patio doors that 
their kids had finished off last night. This was the fourth try at 
fitting it by hand (Tenchi let them use the replicator, but not the 
repair drones. Many attempts resulted in the sheet glass falling to 
the ground and smashing.
	The glass was installed. It was just a matter of hammering the 
beading back in. Ryoko held the glass still, while Washu went about 
replacing the beading blocks.
	As they worked. Toru and Chiemi sat watching them with smiles 
on their faces.
	“I don’t know what you’re smiling at,” Ryoko admonished. “You 
made this mess.”
	The two babies started laughing.
	“Are they laughing at us?” Washu asked.
	Ryoko checked her daughter’s mind for an answer to that one. 
“Yes. Yes they are.”
	The two babies exchanged a look that made them appear to 
communicate, a la Rugrats. ‘Grown ups…’

	The frying pan sizzled away on the stove as Sasami prepared 
fried fish for breakfast. Behind her, Kiyone was setting up what 
appeared to be a chemistry experiment. In actuality, she was making 
baby formula.
	Baby formula that required VERY precise measurements. Washu had 
specifically warned back when Toru was born that just a microgram 
over could have dire consequences. Kiyone almost responded by 
ordering the goddess to go breast-feed. But just exactly how do you 
order a goddess to do anything…?
 	Hence, therefore, the chemistry experiment. Kiyone was working 
on two different formulas – Toru’s, and Chiemi’s. Both of them had 
their own exacting standards, as well as ingredient lists longer than 
the periodic table. In fact, there were a few that weren’t even on 
the periodic table.
	“Add 3 grams of formula to 300 cubic centimetres of hot, not 
boiling water,” she read the instructions on Chiemi’s formula’s tin 
out loud. “Easy enough.”
	As she poured in the water, the powder began to fizz and froth 
over. Then it started to get a little more energetic. Kiyone managed 
to get a barrier up in time to prevent the house from exploding. 
Sadly, the kitchen unit upon which this experiment was conducted did 
not fare as well.
	Kiyone was still holding the kettle. She opened the lid and 
dipped a finger into the steaming water, unfazed by its searing 
temperature. “Just a little too hot, methinks…”
	Sasami and Tsunami tried very hard to stifle a laugh. Not very 
successfully, mind…

	Achika had been up for hours, doing something she’d been 
meaning to get around to for the last year: cleaning out her closet.
	Everything was as she had left it fourteen years ago, when she 
had to depart from this existence so hastily. That was a nice, cold, 
forensic examination of the situation, but that departure was 
necessary. Achika had to leave. Otherwise Tokimi would have spotted 
her, Nobiyuki and Tenchi. Her plans to take Tokimi down would have 
perished, along with Tsunami’s.
	But there was another reason for leaving, besides for the 
greater good. She didn’t want her beloved husband and their child to 
die. She had explained this to Nobiyuki, and of course Tenchi and 
Cyraqs found this out courtesy of the late Odin, but this room was a 
testament to how much Nobiyuki worshipped her. He didn’t disturb 
anything in this room. It became a shrine to her.
	He never remarried afterwards. Losing the love of one’s life is 
something one doesn’t just get over. In fact, he never really did. He 
spent the years after Achika’s ‘death’ in severe depression. It was 
only very recently that he started to come out of it.
	And she reciprocated this love. As she was the pillar of our 
universe, Nobiyuki and Tenchi were the pillars of hers. Without them, 
everything she did seemed hollow. She cared deeply for everyone, but 
nowhere near as deeply as she did for her family.
	Her ‘father’, Yosho, had a piece of him die with her, too. Her 
‘death’ affected so many people. But her reasons were just. Now, she 
was there for all of them. As she would be until the end of time 
itself.
	She sorted through her clothes, many of them from thirty years 
or more ago. And most of them still fit. Then she came to an 
interesting item. Something she hadn’t seen for decades.
	Her old school uniform.
	Memories of her schooldays came flooding back. Especially that 
time back in 1970 when Tenchi and the gang came back in time to try 
and save her from Kain. She wondered if Washu knew that her attempts 
to wipe her memory weren’t successful.
	She decided to put the fuku aside. Maybe Nobiyuki will get a 
kick out of that one, the little hentai…

	The mass demand on diapers in the Masaki house was taking its 
toll. The washroom was not that any more – it was a laundrette. Washu 
had to put on a subspace extension last night, in response to the 
expected rise in demand that Chiemi would incur.
	Then again, it was a better solution than the previous manual 
system they had to use – that is, Mihoshi and Aeka sat outside 
scrubbing about a hundred nappies. The calculation went that if they 
kept with that way, they’d be washing diapers for the rest of their 
lives.
	And that simply wasn’t an option.
	Dirty diaper was removed from baby, and dumped in the washing 
pile with several dozen other diapers of similar standing. When there 
was enough, they were dumped en masse into a traditional soap ‘n’ 
shake washing machine, complete with a few of Washu’s improvements. 
Then they were transferred into one of Washu’s inventions, what she 
christened the ‘sonic sanitiser’ in a ceremony worthy of the launch 
of the Titanic. Suffice it to say that it uses high-frequency sound 
to remove stubborn stains, and it made a sound similar to that of a 
swarm of cicadas when it was running.
	Today it was Ryo-ohki’s job to drive the ‘sonic sanitiser’. A 
hastily made decision, probably to keep her away from the carrot 
fields. Just to make it acceptably arduous enough to replace the 
manual option, a lot of the controls required a degree in computer 
science to operate. And for those with the most sensitive hearing, 
being in the same room with the beast caused severe headaches. Hence, 
Ryo-ohki was wearing headphone-sized ear protection with anti-sound 
components.
	Of course, Ryo-ohki had also found her way around the command 
codes, and had handily set up a program to run the device, while she 
went away. She stepped outside, past the anti-sound embedded walls, 
into what she perceived as utter silence outside. Then she took the 
ear-guards off.
	Being in with the ‘sonic sanitiser’ would have been infinitely 
preferable to what she heard.
	World War II music was being played at extremely high volume. 
So high that it could barely be identified as music. On top of that, 
two babies were sat crying in the garden, apparently duelling with 
the music to see who could be the loudest.
	One of the babies was Chiemi, so Ryo-ohki could clearly 
understand what she was saying: ‘Mommy, make the nasty noise go 
away!’ The assumption was that Toru, her companion, was saying 
something similar.
	Ryo-ohki saw Yosho off in the distance, talking to a young man 
wearing a Japanese Army uniform from the Forties. She put herself out 
of sight, bearing in mind what Washu had told her.
	A Jurai prince acting the old man was one thing, but a humanoid 
cabbit couldn’t be as easily explained to the locals. And Washu had 
taken extraordinary lengths to keep what really went on up here out 
of the locals’ way.
	Though the thought of trying some air-to-ground target practice 
was tempting…
	On cue, Washu emerged with her satellite dish-sized anti-sound 
device. She planted it on the ground and switched it on. The music 
died, leaving only the sound of birds chirping and babies crying. To 
that, Washu produced a smaller anti-sound device, set it on the 
ground, and aimed it at the babies. Their cries abruptly fell silent.
	As Washu rose, she turned to see a very disapproving Ryoko.
	No, make that a livid Ryoko.
	She produced an anti-sound device of her own, aimed it at 
Washu, and switched it on. Washu mouthed an angry tirade, but it fell 
upon a wave of anti-sound. Ryoko grinned maniacally.
	Ryo-ohki couldn’t help but laugh along with her. But as she was 
within the range of operation of the babies’ anti-noise dish, she too 
was speechless.

	Taro was upset.
	Barney hadn’t quite worked properly since yesterday. Every time 
it was switched on, it screamed “GET THE HELL OUT, I SAID! THE 
PARTY’S OVER! GET OUT, GODDAMN IT!!”. And Taro worshipped that 
dinosaur’s words as if it were gospel. So he’d started speaking like 
Cartman.
	Small wonder, then, that Kiyone went red-faced every time she 
passed.
	Washu stormed back into the house, phasing through the patio 
doors. She came to a full stop when she heard the foul-mouthed 
dinosaur and his companion. “Y’know, that really isn’t healthy for 
him,” she said to Kiyone.
	Kiyone rounded on her. “YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?!” she 
screamed.
	Washu looked unfazed.
	“Sorry,” Kiyone said, regaining her composure. “It got broke 
yesterday. I can’t fix it.”
	“Allow me,” she smiled, as she sat beside Taro.
	Taro turned to face her. “Hello, Mommy Washu.”
	Washu still flinched when he called her that. Taro had the 
belief that he had two mothers. One was Washu, because she looked 
after him while he was here six years ago. It upset her when he 
started bonding with her, because it brought back too many bad 
memories of losing her son. Now, of course, her son was back, and 
they’d caught up on the 23,000 years they spent apart. But it was 
still weird that Taro was calling her ‘mommy’. Still, the analytical 
part of her mind said, it’s harmless. Just leave it. “Hi, Taro. 
Barney broken?”
	“Yeah. It won’t say things right any more. Can you fix it?”
	Asking Washu if she could fix a Microsoft Barney was like 
asking a long-distance runner if they could walk. If anyone else 
asked that, there would be a puddle of bubbling goo where they had 
once stood.
	But for Taro, she made an exception.
	She brought up her holo-laptop and began tapping keys. “Ah, I 
see. The programming of Barney’s speech has been corrupted. Some of 
it has been replaced by… A South Park screensaver.”
	“So, how do you fix it?” Kiyone asked.
	“The best way to fix it is to remove its power supply. That’ll 
wipe its memory.”
	“And how do you do that?” Taro asked.
	“Simple.” Washu opened a hatch. “You take the batteries out.”
	Several batteries dropped to the floor.
	“Now, leave it alone for half an hour. Then put the batteries 
back and it’ll be right as rain.”
	Washu paused as a barely audible, cheerful cry of “KICK THE 
BABY!” took to the air once again.
	“Don’t you FUCKING dare, Ryoko!!” Washu screamed, as she ran 
through the door again, leaving Kiyone and Taro alone with each other 
to exchange bemused glances.

	This time, Mihoshi had remembered that she was supposed to be 
sweeping the shrine yard. Which is what she was doing now… in between 
watching the floor show, that is.
	Misaki and Ryuken were sparring. Ryuken had mistakenly bragged 
that he could teach Misaki a lesson. It looked like he was learning 
from her at the moment. Granted, Ryuken was from a world with a 
greater gravity than Earth, but Misaki was raised on a world of the 
Jurai Empire with a gravity greater still. After all, she could throw 
Ryoko into a wall with very little effort. And no matter what he 
threw at her, she always managed to dodge it.
	“I hope you’re not holding back, Ryuken,” Misaki purred, as she 
landed a roundhouse kick around his head.
	“You wanna get nuts, Misaki?” Ryuken retorted, very Michael 
Keaton-esque. “C’mon! Let’s get nuts!”
	He then launched a blizzard of punches at the empress. Misaki 
simply leapt out of the way in Neil Armstrong fashion. If she’d 
started singing “I was strolling on the Earth one day…”, it would 
have completed the illusion.
	Instead she pushed herself down and settled for a very forceful 
drop kick on the back of his neck.
	Ryuken staggered a little, looking dazed. “Ma, I don’ wanna go 
school today…” he babbled, before falling flat on his face.
	Misaki made a very graceful landing next to him. She just 
looked at her handiwork, smiled, and dusted herself down. “Try a 
little harder next time.” She turned to see Mihoshi and Yosho giving 
her a standing ovation.
	“Why are people ignoring me when I quite clearly require 
medical attention…?” the broken heap of Ryuken groaned in an even 
more raspy voice than usual.

	When Aeka asked Sasami if she could help out in the kitchen, 
there were enough sweat drops to float the Starship Enterprise.
	It’s not that every cooking endeavour she undertook usually 
gave its eaters food poisoning. It was probably the fact that when 
Aeka cooked, it was a sign of bad luck. Just like naming a ship with 
any name ending in ‘-ic’.
	Consider this. Last time Aeka cooked – or attempted to – 
Mihoshi, Kiyone, Sasami and Yosho fell ill the next day. At around 
the same time, one of Nobiyuki’s buildings crumbled. The time before 
that, no one fell ill, but Tokimi invaded. More than likely it was 
sheer coincidence, but the association was a little too close.
	But one does not dismiss the future leader of the Jurai Empire 
very easily. Just to stop her throwing a tantrum, Sasami capitulated 
– but was watching her very carefully. And she had other help – 
Achika and Funaho were on hand to help, and salvage anything that 
went wrong.
	It was grilled fish for lunch today. A simple dish that only a 
total idiot could wreck. Or even the greatest scientist in the 
universe… Sasami thought this would be an appropriate dish with which 
to teach her sister to cook.
	So while Sasami prepared the side salad, Aeka stood over the 
stove, turning the fish as it sizzled. And then caught fire. Aeka 
dropped the spatula and began running about the kitchen like a 
headless chicken. “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” she clucked.
	Funaho calmly produced a fire extinguisher that she just 
happened to be holding, removed the locking pin, and rained a cloud 
of chrylon gas upon the small fire. Achika silently turned off the 
gas at the stove.
	“Maybe you’re better off with the baby formula,” Funaho 
suggested. “We’ll see to the rest of the food.”
	“Perhaps you’re right,” Aeka replied. She turned around and 
opened the cupboard where the formula was kept. While her back was 
turned, Sasami wordlessly removed the devastated fish and deposited 
them in the trashcan.
	Then she extracted more fish from the fridge and placed them on 
the steadily burning grill. She teased them with her spatula as they 
began to sizzle and contract. Within moments, the kitchen was filled 
with the smell of what grilled fish was supposed to smell like.
	Then a terrible thought occurred to her. What happened when 
Kiyone ever so slightly screwed up the formula. She span around on 
her heels to see yet another destroyed kitchen unit and a somewhat 
frazzled Aeka. And Achika standing about a metre away, looking very 
resigned. It was obvious that she had contained the blast, and 
absorbed most of the energy. Quite effortlessly, too.
	Never had the phrase ‘like a woman made of smoke’ been so 
appropriately used in reference to Aeka. Well, apart from the second 
attempt to make omelettes…

	Small things entertain small minds. In many cases, this could 
be said to be true. However, there were two children of the Masaki 
household for whom saying they had small minds would be a gross 
underestimate. They had minds beyond compare; they were sponges 
soaking up information at phenomenal rates.
	For example, Toru was already on the way to getting a 
rudimentary grasp of applied physics. His niece Chiemi was less than 
a day old, and had already mastered crawling. These children were by 
no means small-minded.
	But they still enjoyed the small things in life. Simply sitting 
on the rug, rolling a ball to one another was one of them.
	Taro had joined in the fun, serving as yet another target for 
the two babies to throw the big, colourful squeaky ball to. So they 
passed the ball between each other, laughing and giggling as they 
played.
	Toru rolled the ball to Taro. It was a nice, even-handed, and 
well-targeted roll that came to a stop in Taro’s hands. Taro then 
rolled the ball on to Chiemi, who caught it effortlessly.
	Chiemi sat there for a few moments, thinking who to roll it to. 
She could try Taro, sat to her right. Or she could try Toru, sat 
directly opposite her. After a few seconds, she randomly picked her 
uncle. Using what she and Taro perceived as a mere tap, she sent the 
ball over to Toru.
	The ball screamed across the rug, leaving a 2cm-deep trench and 
charred fabric in its wake. It then impacted with the sitting baby, 
and all of its kinetic energy was transferred to him. He was thrown 
back by this, and was sent careening across the room, toward the 
kitchen. He came to an abrupt stop, embedded about 15cm into the 
wall.
	The ball rolled back to Chiemi’s feet under its remaining 
momentum. Chiemi nonchalantly picked it up and started squeezing it, 
making it squeak. In the meantime, Toru simply giggled inanely. Taro, 
on the other hand, was somewhat disturbed by all of this. He voiced 
this in the only way he knew how.
	He cried at the top of his lungs.
	A few seconds later, Chiemi joined in. And then so did Toru, 
resulting in a trio alto of screaming ringing through the house.
	Ryo-ohki was the first to respond. She phased through the patio 
doors from outside (she’d practised phasing a little more, and could 
happily go through on the first attempt now), and approached the 
sobbing ensemble. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
	“Chiemi threw a ball to Toru, and it made him fly across the 
room!” Taro replied.
	Ryo-ohki noticed that the ground was ever so slightly warm to 
her feet. She looked down and saw the damage left by the ball’s 
course – a straight trench in the wooden floor that led straight to 
Chiemi. Then she saw Chiemi tear the ball apart with seemingly little 
effort.
	‘Oh, boy, this could be bad,’ she thought, as she picked her 
niece up off the ground.
	Chiemi struggled violently. She accidentally made contact with 
Ryo-ohki’s chest with her fist. Immediately, she was sent flying 
across the room, back towards the patio doors from whence she came, 
leaving Chiemi floating in mid-air. Ryo-ohki hadn’t time to phase 
through the door, and instead crashed through them. The shock forced 
her back into cabbit form mid-flight. She came to a bumpy landing, 
rolled across the jetty, and managed to stop herself by clawing onto 
the side of the jetty, narrowly avoiding falling into the lake.
	For someone who’d spent the better part of seven centuries at 
the bottom of that same lake, she was somewhat deathly afraid of 
water.
Still in cabbit form, she scrambled frantically, miya-ing and 
crying out for help. Finally, she managed to engage her back paws 
with the plank, and hop up. Finally, she charged back into the house, 
narrowly avoiding being cut into ribbons by the broken glass.
	Chiemi was laying on the ground now, and looked up to see a 
eight-foot-something cabbit-woman, fur harder than ablative armour, 
wearing an expression of just how pissed off she was.
	Then her lungs collapsed, and Ryo-ohki fell to the ground, 
evidently due to damage too severe for her auto-repair systems to 
handle by themselves. Her unconscious mind transmitted a message over 
the mind-network to anyone who could respond. The closest translation 
would be ‘mayday’.

	Just a few minutes later, Ryo-ohki was laying on the biobed in 
the diagnostic bay. She had contracted back into her cabbit form, and 
was firmly unconscious. She purred lightly as she slept.
	Washu stood over her, pressing keys on the biobed computer and 
running diagnostics. Ryoko watched over her little sister with a 
certain maternal concern.
	“Will she be okay?” she asked Washu.
	“I’m not sure,” Washu replied. “She should have repaired her 
damage by now. Chiemi must have hit her pretty bad…”
	Both she and Ryoko glanced over at the baby in question, 
presently playing with a teddy bear. She was having trouble lifting 
it off the ground, much less destroying it. They exchanged a look 
that said, “Nah.”
	“…Or she just doesn’t know how to any more.”
	“So how do we find out?”
	“Elementary, my dear Ryoko-chan,” Washu smiled, using the 
diminutive that Ryoko used to loathe coming from her. “Ryo-ohki, 
setup mode.”
	Ryo-ohki’s eyes flung open, but they stared straight ahead, 
with a blank expression. Still in her cabbit form, she spoke in a 
soft tone. “Setup mode active.”
	“Ryo-ohki, run diagnostic program, default mode.”
	After a pause of three seconds, Ryo-ohki spoke again. “Unable 
to comply. The diagnostic program, or the components that it 
requires, does not exist.”
	Ryoko paused for thought. “Didn’t you say that Ryo-ohki didn’t 
have an OS?”
	“Oh, yeah,” Washu replied. “Ryo-ohki, detail version of 
installed operating system.”
	“Unable to comply,” Ryo-ohki spoke again. “There is no 
operating system installed. Higher command functions are operating 
under external support mode, from network server Ryoko.”
	“”In layperson’s terms, she’s leeching off my mind?” Ryoko 
asked. Washu nodded. “And her repair systems count under ‘higher 
command functions?’” Washu nodded again.
	“I’d like to try something,” Washu said, extracting the mind 
probe helmet and placing it on Ryo-ohki’s head. “Ryo-ohki, switch 
external support mode to lab network server.”
	“Warning: executing this operation may disrupt other network 
servers in either source or destination networks. You have five 
seconds to abort.”
	“In other words, she could take my mind with her?” Ryoko asked. 
By the time she was finished, it was too late. Ryo-ohki’s voice in 
her mind fell silent.
	Washu flinched as she, too, lost contact with Ryo-ohki. But the 
loss of equilibrium passed. “Ryo-ohki, locate and run Setup for Crab-
OS 2000. Execute full install when prompted.”
	“Working. Setup program has been located and executed. This may 
take up to an hour to complete.”
	Ryoko looked at her mother. “Crab-OS 2000? Why does that sound 
familiar…?”
	“It should. Crab-OS is the operating system that runs your 
higher command functions. Ryo-ohki was slaved to you over the mind 
network, so she was running off you.”
	“But how come I…?”
	“How come you have no control over it? You do. It’s just that 
you do it unconsciously. Remember that batch file I executed?”
	“WOTLH?”
	“Subconsciously activated. Ryo-ohki has no such operating 
system. So she has to use her command functions directly, which takes 
practice...”
	“…So that’s why Ryo-ohki couldn’t always get phasing right…”
	“Or she has to go through you or me. You understand this, don’t 
you?”
	Ryoko smiled and nodded. “Not a single word,” she chuckled.
	Washu groaned. She reached into subspace and produced a book 
entitled ‘The Crab-OS System Explained in Pictures.’ She handed this 
to Ryoko. “Read. Digest.”
	“Thank you, mom, I will take that under advisement,” Ryoko 
replied. “So, in a nutshell, what is Crab-OS?”
	“Only the most revolutionary computer operating system in the 
universe!” Washu proclaimed, striking a vogue pose.
	Ryoko groaned. She’d walked into that one… Best just sit 
through her gloat.
	And so she sat, while Washu sprouted more technobabble than the 
average series of Star Trek.

	One wouldn’t believe the demure princess Aeka to be a fan of 
South Park. But, strangely enough, it was true. After all, most of 
the population of Japan were fans of anime, primarily because they 
saw it as a release from their pressure cooker society.
	That’s how Aeka saw South Park – a release from being the shy 
little princess.
	Actually, Ryoko introduced her. She’d been channel hopping one 
night and somehow picked up Comedy Central. Someone had conveniently 
tuned the intra-galactic receiver in so that Comedy Central was 
conveniently placed between GHK and the interstellar equivalent of 
Discovery Channel. Of course, South Park was on at the time. From 
then on, Ryoko could not be peeled away from the TV when South Park 
was on.
	Then she told Aeka about it. Aeka initially thought it to be 
‘vulgar, insensitive trash’, just like she thought Ryoko at the time. 
Then she just happened to catch an episode, and was hooked ever 
since. The infamous screensaver on Nobiyuki’s PC was theirs.
	Aeka was watching a pre-recorded episode that she’d taped a 
ways back – ‘Cartman’s Mom is Still A Dirty Slut’, the opener to 
season 2. This one ranked among her favourites, along with ‘Not 
Without My Anus’, and that one with the chick from Species in it. The 
latter one ironically rang a bell in her because it drew such close 
parallels with her relationship with Ryoko. She was Wendy 
Testaburger, and Ryoko was the chick from Species. And that tenuous 
link was reinforced in true Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon fashion, owing 
to the tendencies exhibited by Ryoko and Natasha Henstridge’s 
character…
	Ryoko appeared from Washu’s lab, carrying a sleeping Chiemi in 
her arms. She sat herself down beside Aeka, and watched South Park 
with her.
	“Is Ryo-ohki okay?” Aeka asked in concern.
	“Just about,” Ryoko replied. “Thanks for getting her to the 
lab. Washu said she could have died if you hadn’t.”
	“Don’t mention it. What’s Washu doing to her?”
	“Oh, just giving her an OS. Apparently, mom’s been developing 
one for a while, and thought it best to try it out on Ryo-ohki.”
	“What’s the OS? Please, don’t say it’s Windows…”
	“Crab-OS 2000. Don’t ask – I just sat through what felt 
suspiciously like a developer’s conference. If I hear the Crab-OS 
2000 spiel again, I will probably kill someone.”
	That, in and of itself, was an emphasis of how dull it was. It 
took extreme stimulation to get Ryoko to willingly kill someone. She 
was more reactionary than antagonistic, only reacting when the 
situation warranted. Threatening her family counted as a warranting 
situation.
	“So… ‘Cartman’s Mom is Still a Dirty Slut’?” Ryoko asked. Her 
question could have been taken in so many ways, but Aeka read it as 
it should have been – by adding ‘You’re watching…’ to the front.
	“Hmm,” she replied. “If you want to watch ‘Not Without My 
Anus’, I’ll happily rewind…”
	“No, I’ll watch it myself later. I’m going to feed the little 
one here when she wakes up.”
	Aeka stared lovingly at her niece. “Her power must be waking up 
early. I can’t believe that she nearly killed Ryo-ohki.”
	“I’m having trouble believing that myself,” Ryoko said, looking 
at her deceptively fragile-looking daughter. “Then again, it’s 
possible…”
	Chiemi started to stir, and emitted an opening hail – crying at 
the top of her voice. She stopped when Ryoko transmitted a message to 
tell her that she was there. Aeka was impressed.
	Then Chiemi opened her scarlet cat-like eyes, and met her 
mother’s golden eyes. She opened her mouth and babbled, “Ma… ma. 
Mama!”
	Ryoko broke into a full-blown smile of pure happiness. “SHE 
TALKED!!!” she screamed in joy, as she flourished her child above her 
head, then brought her down to hug her tightly.
	“Mama…! Mama!” Chiemi reached out to put her hand on Ryoko’s 
face, and patted it gently.
	The third time, Chiemi used a little too much force. She 
slapped Ryoko in the face, hard. So hard, in fact, that Ryoko flew 
across the room, crashing into the wall. Aeka caught the baby just in 
time.
	She scrambled over to where her sister had crashed. “Ryoko, are 
you all right?”
	Ryoko was embedded into the wall, with broken wood and masonry 
surrounding her. Her face was partially indented where she’d been 
hit, but was under repair. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she groaned in reply. 
“Aeka, do me a favour – get a squeegee.”

<standard South Park transitional music>

<Theme from Das Boot – Klaus Doldinger>

	A Jurai starship was a sight to behold. The very sight of one 
conjured up many feelings. A feeling of complete and utter safety in 
its allies. Mortal fear in its enemies. Nothing could defeat a Jurai 
ship.
	The IJS Shorenji, a Light-Hawk bireme, was a patrol craft 
stationed in the Arcanis system, one of the Jurai Empire’s many 
colonies. Like all who bore the honour of serving aboard the most 
powerful ships in the fleet, Shorenji’s crew was among the most 
professional officers serving the Emperor.
	Shorenji watched as another trade vessel left orbit. Arcanis 
Prime was a port world of particular importance to the Empire. It 
manufactured many goods, and was home to one of the best shipyards in 
the Empire. It was also the best port of call for those traders who 
wanted to trade with Jurai, but did not want to trade directly with 
the Homeworld. Arcanis became a warehouse for imported goods, later 
picked up by Imperial cargo ships. The Imperial Starfleet simply held 
a position here to protect Arcanis, and to break up any problems that 
might occur on the system’s trade routes.
	The first trade vessel left orbit and went to hyperspace 
without incident. Shorenji tracked her course as she left the system, 
toward its next port. As she left, Shorenji detected another vessel 
enter past the outer planet. And another. Then several more. Several 
large ships began dropping out of hyperspace and entering Arcanis 
Prime’s orbit.
	Shorenji watched carefully. These ships were nothing that any 
vessel in the vast Jurai Empire had seen before. Their configuration 
appeared innocent enough. They were large craft, approximately five 
hundred metres in length. They carried no particularly offensive 
warload – at least, none that Shorenji could see.
	Some of the ships began docking at the space station, following 
an established procedure established by the Galactic Community and 
adopted as law around these parts. Absolutely nothing was 
conspicuous.
	Then Shorenji picked up more ships dropping out of hyperspace. 
About half a dozen small ships travelling at high sublight. Shorenji 
knew these ships all too well. They were Warugi. The Warugi were 
scavengers, who remained after a battle to collect supplies and 
equipment that survived the destruction of a vessel. They only 
appeared where there would be great destruction.
	But why were they here?
	Shorenji got her answer.
	The space station exploded in a ball of fire as bright as the 
sun, taking all vessels docked there with it. The remaining new ships 
began indiscriminately attacking any ship that moved. Even the Warugi 
felt their wrath.
	Shorenji’s crew decided that now was the time to intervene. 
Shorenji herself complied.
	She moved from her position above the planet’s northern pole, 
moving at full sublight toward the fray. She brought her Light Hawk 
Wings fully forward to block the energy weapons thrown at them. 
Reflexively, she brought her n-space weapons to bear on her 
assailants, firing rapidly.
	n-space weaponry was the cutting edge of subspace armament. An 
n-space body, the equivalent of a cannon shell, distorted space and 
subspace around it. Once it impacted with its target, it disrupted 
the matter at the subatomic level, leading to a phenomenon known as 
subspace compression, wherein the affected matter is torn apart. n-
space was the weapon of choice for most advanced spacefaring 
civilisations, because few could survive it.
	It didn’t even dent the attacking ships.
	Shorenji seriously wanted to retreat. She told her crew this. 
But her crew would not allow her to. She was instructed to use 
something that NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING could survive – a Light 
Hawk attack.
	She drew her Wings back to port position, and began scraping 
past her assailants. With luck, they would hit her Wings, vaporising 
on impact. And this they did. She began rotating her Wings, 
effectively slicing her enemies like vegetables.
	Then one of them launched a single energy weapon at her. She 
attempted to change course to avoid it, but was too late. It struck 
her outer hull, the wooden construct that surrounded the saucer-like 
capsule that was her habitable volume. Instantly, the entire outer 
hull was disintegrated, along with her weapons and propulsion 
systems. Shorenji was dead in the water, totally at the mercy of her 
attackers.
	Her death was quick, but by no means silent.

	Sasami’s sleep was troubled. Mercifully, she hadn’t had a 
turbulent night in the last couple of years – not since the merger. 
But now…
	Her dreams saw her stood in a vast black space, as she was now 
– in her apparently close to seventeen-year-old body. Before her lay 
the body of a girl that looked like she used to. A battered, bloody 
body, its limbs severed from it. It lay, shivering, saying “help me, 
help me, help me,” over and over again.
	Behind this prostrate body loomed that of a green-haired girl 
of about twelve or fourteen years. Without so much a hesitation, she 
projected an energy sword similar to Ryoko’s, and severed the child’s 
head from its body, ending its suffering.
	Sasami wanted to scream, but she couldn’t force the sound from 
her throat. The sensation of fear built up, with no release. She 
sensed the larger form of Tsunami stood next to her, but she could do 
nothing either. Tsunami was bound and gagged, chained to Sasami. She 
was gradually encapsulated by wooden tendrils. The tendrils drew 
back, and into what revealed itself to be an exaggerated Tenchi-ken. 
The sword was then grasped by a hand. Sasami looked at the owner of 
this hand, to see her father towering above her.

	Tsunami was reading a translated book from the local library, 
‘No Truce With The Furies’. As she read, she sensed her co-habitant’s 
tension mount, and began to lose her concentration. She was becoming 
increasingly drawn into Sasami’s dream, seeing it as a hallucination.
	Eventually, Sasami’s presence in their partitioned mind 
awakened. They were united in the same dream, and could do only one 
thing.
	Both of them screamed at the top of their lungs. It could be 
debatable as to who actually made the vocal scream, but the tone and 
cadence suggested Tsunami. Tsunami did have the bridge, after all.
	If anyone didn’t hear their scream, they were dead, deaf, or 
heavily sedated. No one in the Masaki house matched any description, 
with the exception of Ryo-ohki. Within moments, everyone was outside 
Sasami’s room.
	“Sasami?” Achika called. “Tsunami? Are you all right?”
	No reply came.
	“To hell with this!” Misaki called, charging forth and opening 
the door. When it slid back, they saw Sasami, sat upright, holding 
herself, rocking forward and backward, a look of traumatised horror 
on her face, tears streaming from her eyes.

	Washu finished pouring a cup of hot chocolate. She handed it to 
Sasami, who was still shaking.
	“Thank you,” Sasami replied, as she clasped the cup gratefully 
with both hands, and tried to drink it. She was shaking so much that 
most of it ended up on her hands, running uncomfortably down her 
sleeves.
	Ryoko stood watch, with no small amount of concern. “Jeez, 
something must have spooked you good.”
	‘Thank you for stating the obvious,’ Washu said over the mind-
link. “What’s troubling you, Sasami?” she asked.
	Sasami finished swallowing the mouthful of hot chocolate before 
answering. “N…nothing,” she fibbed.
	Tsunami barely resisted the temptation to prod Sasami into 
spilling the beans. Washu and Achika did not. “What is it, Tsunami?”
	“S…something killed one of my children,” Tsunami stammered. “It 
crippled her. Then it just killed her.”
	Washu remembered how much they were affected the last time a 
ship of Jurai was killed. That was during Tokimi’s invasion. Waves of 
them were destroyed. But why so much over only one…? She concluded 
that Tsunami was hiding something. There was more to this than met 
the eye.

	“Crab-OS 2000 setup is now complete. Please disconnect from the 
network and prepare to restart.”
	Ryo-ohki was still in setup mode. She had regained 
consciousness a while ago, to find herself out of control of her own 
body. Worse still, out of contact with Ryoko. But that contact 
strangely no longer felt necessary. It didn’t stop her feeling 
lonely.
	That abruptly stopped as her mind restarted. For all of five 
seconds, she felt nor thought nothing. Then her mind started ticking 
over again, with a clarity of thought unlike anything she’d ever 
felt. She could now sense her own power, feel it, control it. She 
didn’t have to wait to open a connection to Ryoko to do so. But the 
connection still opened, as it always did.
	‘Pinging network server Ryoko. Awaiting response,’ her mind 
unconsciously announced. ‘Server contacted. Server Ryoko running 
Crab-OS 3.1 operating in terminal support mode. Requesting disable of 
terminal support mode.’
	That command was executed. Ryo-ohki no longer needed to use 
Ryoko’s mind to access her power. She could do so herself.
	With her new, albeit somewhat more elaborate start-up routine 
complete, Ryo-ohki’s consciousness emerged. ‘Hello, Ryoko.’
	‘Hello, Ryo-ohki, I welcome you into my thoughts,’ Ryoko’s mind 
replied.
	‘And you into mine.’

	“Ryo-ohki’s back online,” Ryoko said.
	Washu felt it, too. A complex stream of information that Ryo-
ohki was both consciously and subconsciously transmitting.
	“Wow, she feels good,” Ryoko added. “There’s a thousand or more 
thoughts running through her mind. What is she on, and can I have 
some?”
	“You’re saying you want to upgrade too?”
	Ryoko was momentarily taken aback. What they were talking about 
was a computer system installed in both of them. Ryoko didn’t want to 
think of herself as a machine, nor did she want to concede that even 
part of her was. Yet it seemed to her that her mother was once again 
considering her as such.
	‘Join me, sister,’ Ryo-ohki teased, in a mocking synthetic 
voice. ‘It’s bliss.’
	‘SHUT UP!’ Ryoko exclaimed, before purposely crashing her 
network connection and wordlessly shifting away.
	Aeka watched with a frown. ‘Amateurs.’

<standard South Park transitional/establishing music>

	Ryo-ohki was happy. For the first time in as long as she could 
remember, her mind was clear.
	Her priorities were still clear. Eat carrots; help Tenchi; 
guard Ryoko. In that order. But now, she knew better ways of 
accomplishing those prime directives. Additionally, she had full 
command of her power. Power she was using to the same extent that 
Ryoko could, simply because she could.
	She hadn’t felt this good in centuries. And it showed.
	She was flying through the house, humming Nat King Cole’s ‘I’m 
On The Street Where You Live’. Humming for Ryo-ohki was meowing. 
Still, Nat King Cole was somewhat more challenging than ‘Twinkle, 
Twinkle Little Star’.
	She was now everything she could be. A productive member of the 
family. Outside of being the only ship available, except for 
Mihoshi’s, Ryo-ohki wasn’t much use. And there were times when she 
really hated that. In fact, that’s what motivated the Mass collective 
she later assimilated. That, in itself, was probably what made the 
assimilation easier. She was now fully proficient in human language. 
At last, she had a way to convey her thoughts and feelings to those 
around her who weren’t on her network.
	And she felt much more a part of that network now. She was in a 
much fuller communication with Ryoko and Washu now. It was a 
wonderful feeling. So too was she finding several thousand thoughts 
running through her head. Before, getting anything past her three 
prime goals was extremely difficult. Talk about walking and chewing 
gum at the same time…
	She’d already arranged a sparring match with Ryoko, to test out 
her new abilities. It was as much Ryo-ohki’s suggestion as Washu’s – 
Washu wanted to make sure the upgrade took, and fine-tune it on the 
fly. Ryo-ohki just wanted to see what she could do now.
	She flew through the living room, where Mihoshi was taking what 
was probably her thirtieth nap on the sofa. It wasn’t even 9 o’clock. 
‘How CAN that woman sleep so much…?’ Ryo-ohki caught herself idly 
wondering. Big words coming from a being that used to casually roll 
out of wherever the hell she slept at leisure. Must be the cat in her 
family…
	Taro and the seemingly indestructible Toru were playing 
together on the carpet. She wondered where Chiemi was. She found her, 
sat in the corner, by herself. Looking desperately lonely. Obviously 
the boys were afraid of her.
	Déjà vu. Her mother had gone through exactly the same thing at 
her age. It was that loneliness that led to Ryo-ohki’s creation. 
Perhaps Washu would do something similar for her, Ryo-ohki wondered 
again.
The temptation to touch down and tell the boys off was just too 
much. Neither of them was prepared for having this cabbit-woman land 
and take a few inches off their backsides.
	As Ryo-ohki continued her ass-chewing session, Misaki entered 
from the kitchen. “What’s all the--?” she inquired.
	“Just telling the boys off,” Ryo-ohki replied. “Poor Chiemi’s 
being left out.”
	Misaki’s eyes glazed over (again). Tears started to well in 
them. “Oh, no…!” she pouted.
	‘Oh, shit!’ Ryo-ohki’s mind screamed. ‘Ryoko is going to rip me 
apart.’
	And this was why. Misaki crouched down to pick up the forlorn-
looking Chiemi, and began to hug her and swing her around like a rag-
doll. “Oh, my poor little one…! Auntie Misaki’s going to make it all 
better now…”
	‘What’s going on, Ryo-ohki?’ Ryoko’s presence in Ryo-ohki’s 
mind asked. ‘I’m getting some screwy messages from Chiemi.’
	‘Misaki’s happening, sis,’ Ryo-ohki responded. ‘We got your 
standard soppy bitch play book and we’re running it step-by-step.’
	Misaki continued to crush the baby, while proceeding to remind 
the gathered exactly why they call this an Elmira complex. “I’m going 
to hug you, and kiss you, and squeeze you into itty-bitty pieces…” 
Now, what they weren’t expecting was for Misaki to scream out in 
pain, at the top of her lungs in fact. But it happened. Misaki turned 
to face Ryo-ohki. Her face had turned into a pin-cushion, with 
several hair-length, raven-black needles jammed into it. Fortunately, 
they didn’t go in too far. Just far enough to draw blood, and make 
her look like a mutant cross between Pinhead from Hellraiser and the 
Millennium Dome. “Misaki go sweepy-bye now…” she babbled, before 
coming hard about and landing on her back, with Chiemi still in her 
vice-like embrace.
	The commotion achieved the miraculous – it woke Mihoshi up. She 
rose, yawned, and got off the sofa. “Hey, Ryo-ohki. Hey, Misaki,” she 
said, addressing both the women sequentially. She double-took the 
sight of the crestfallen Misaki, and reversed her course for the 
kitchen. “Um, Misaki, are you all right?” she enquired in her usual 
cheery way.
	Misaki merely groaned in reply.
	“That’s okay then.” Mihoshi moved away, watched by a stunned 
Ryo-ohki. She stopped again, and jumped back like a scalded cat. 
“AAAGH!” she screamed. “Chi…Chi…Chiemi is…is…”
	While trying to stream what Mihoshi was saying, Ryo-ohki looked 
down at her niece. The sight made her jaw drop. ‘Ryoko, get your ass 
down here NOW!!’ she exclaimed over the network.
	Within Misaki’s tight embrace, the frail form of Chiemi 
struggled. Both against her restraint, and against something 
happening within her. She began to emit a light blue glow, and wisps 
of blue and orange energy flew from her. Finally, she emitted a 
cascade release of energy that would have made Hiroshima look like a 
firecracker. That is, if Achika hadn’t have been handy to shield the 
blast and absorb the energy.
	“I can’t hold this for long,” she strained. “Get her to the lab 
– NOW.”
	Ryo-ohki wisely did as the goddess bid.

	“Now we have a problem,” Washu announced as she observed the 
diagnostic results.
	Attempts to put Chiemi into anything even closely resembled a 
diagnostic unit promptly resulted in said unit being vaporised, in 
addition to all manner of extra collateral damage. The only available 
option was the one they were using – putting her in a large room 
packed with sensor systems, which scanned her as she played, 
seemingly unaware of the trouble she was causing.
	However, anyone could pick up the rampant concern that issued 
from Ryoko, as she watched her child from the relative safety of the 
observation booth. “What… what’s wrong with her?!” she asked Washu, a 
hint of desperate pleading in her voice.
	“Something I feared would happen,” Washu replied. “Chiemi’s 
power is awakening, and she can’t control it. It’s too much for her.”
	“Now how about explaining the explanation?!”
	Washu sighed in desperation, as she planned her phrasing. Sort 
of like a doctor trying to best tell someone that a relative is about 
to die. “Her body is too small to manage and manipulate the power she 
inherited from you and Tenchi. On top of which, she has your older 
power control systems, which were inefficient at the best of times.” 
Her voice turned even softer. “I’m afraid there is a possibility that 
she won’t survive.”
	“N…No…” Ryoko sobbed. “She…She can’t die… I WON’T LET HER!”
	“Get serious, Ryoko!” Washu barked. “There’s nothing you can 
do! I don’t even know if there’s anything I can do…” The last part 
she said to herself.
	She was unaware that she had said it aloud, albeit under her 
breath. But Ryoko heard it loud and clear. She also read something 
over the link that just happened to make it through the firewall. 
“This has happened before. Hasn’t it?” she probed.
	“What do you mean?” Washu tried to throw her off the subject, 
underestimating her daughter’s single-mindedness, which often 
rivalled her own.
	“I’m getting a sensation of déjà vu from you. This has happened 
before.”
	For once in her life, Ryoko correctly read an emotional 
intonation and made a direct diagnosis as to its cause. Pride swelled 
in Washu – Ryoko actually had more wisdom than she let on. Or maybe 
that was the Ryoko of two thousand years ago, the sensitive one 
talking. Or Zero. Tears welled in her eyes as the memories that 
recent events had brought up again, were brought up once more – not 
in any stream, just enough to make the shine of her eyes move a 
little. She finally realised what Ryoko meant to her. Not a guinea 
pig. Not an experiment. Not even her masterpiece creation. Ryoko was 
her miracle child; one born against all odds. One so important to 
her, that she even made a copy of her just in case.
	She shook her head and cleared her mind, answering Ryoko’s 
query-cum-statement while not actually answering it. “Yes it has. And 
I believe I might be able to do something after all.”
	Ironically, Ryoko had just brought up all those attempts she 
made to perfect Ryoko and Ryo-ohki’s power control systems. And gave 
her a few ideas to try with Chiemi.
	“So what do we do?” Ryoko snapped impatiently.
	“The first thing we’ve got to try is to increase her mass. The 
only way we can do that… is to accelerate her body’s ageing.”
	Ryoko’s face dropped again. “No. I won’t allow it.”
	“Um, Ryoko, I hate to remind you of this AGAIN, but we have no 
other choice.”
	“NO!” Ryoko snarled, baring her slight fangs. “I want to bring 
Chiemi up right! I want her to have a normal life!” She began to 
break down. “I want her to have a childhood!”
	“Sometimes, that’s not what fate has in store for us,” a voice 
proclaimed. Ryoko and Washu turned to its source. Tenchi was standing 
in the doorway of the observation booth. His face was heavy with 
sadness and concern. For him, too, it was a case of déjà vu. He 
wanted a normal life for himself, but fate conspired against him. It 
conspired against all of them. And it was happening all over again. 
“Ryoko, I feel the same way,” he went on. “ I want Chiemi to grow up 
as any other child would, to live a normal life, to experience that 
childhood you’re still trying to find. But look at it this way: if we 
don’t try this, she won’t have a childhood anyway. She won’t lead a 
normal life. She’ll die.”
	Tenchi’s words settled uneasily in Ryoko, but rang true. It was 
a compromise between losing the normal life, and losing life 
altogether.
	“I won’t force you into this,” Washu said. “If you don’t want 
me to, I won’t do it.”
	Ryoko was still in thought. Chiemi was just over a day old, and 
already she was on the verge of breaking a vow she’d made over her. 
Would this be the first of many? Or would this just be one in a few?
	“Do it,” Ryoko said. “Do what you must. Just don’t let her 
die.”
	“Okay, let’s get her to the diagnostic bay.” Washu tapped a few 
keys on the console before her, summoning a few guinea pig restraint 
and transport globes. They surrounded Chiemi and deployed their 
hands. Chiemi responded by destroying all of them, along with most of 
the room, and the Plexiglas window of the observation booth.
	“D’you want me to take her there?” Tenchi asked.
	Washu tried to brush the glass out of her hair. “Would you?”

	A stunned silence had descended on those assembled in the 
living room of the Masaki house. All had convened here to hear the 
news of Chiemi’s birth. Chances were they were convened here now to 
hear of her death.
	Yosho prayed for his great-granddaughter, hoping that the 
goddesses would protect her and help her. Indeed, one of them was.
	Sasami was sat on the sofa with a sad look on her face. 
Although not in command of their body at the time, Tsunami was surely 
mirroring this expression.
	Meanwhile, Aeka was herself praying that Chiemi would not die. 
For many years, she had hated Ryoko. Two years ago, she might have 
been glad that something Ryoko cared about had been destroyed; 
fitting punishment for the demon that attacked her world and stole 
her fiancé. No longer. She loved Ryoko as a sister now. She would 
wish no harm to her, or her family. Let alone her niece. If she 
could, she would help. She felt a certain anger at her helplessness, 
but this was far beyond her. It was in the hands of Washu now.
	The only ones among them who could tell them what was going on 
were saying nothing. Achika was nowhere to be seen, but almost 
certainly everywhere – she’d been ‘meditating’ considerably longer 
than usual. Ryo-ohki had slipped back into non-communicative cabbit 
mode and was not going to talk, no matter what the incentive. And 
Nobiyuki wouldn’t be back for hours. So, for the next few hours, 
hearsay and conjecture were going to rule.

	Washu was busy plucking Chiemi’s hair needles out of Misaki’s 
face. One would not believe so much noise could come out of one 
empress.
	She was surprised to realise that the hair needle attack was 
virtually identical to Ryoko’s – a series of hardened bunches of hair 
launched at high speed from the front of the head. Where Chiemi and 
Ryoko differed was that Chiemi’s hair barbed on launch, and the barbs 
were only one-way. The hair went in, but didn’t come out again. Not 
without nanoprobes, or something similar, to dismantle the barbs.
	But it was kind of painful, with not only the nanoprobes 
tunnelling around under Misaki’s skin, but also the rather tail-heavy 
needles shifting around while still attached to her face. “Could you 
make it hurt a bit more?!” she asked, sarcastically.
	“Cry-baby,” Washu muttered. Misaki shot her an angry glance. 
“Forget it.”
	“How’s Chiemi?”
	“I’m going to find out. Just sit tight.” Washu walked away.
	“As if I had any intention of doing otherwise…” Misaki said 
under her breath.

	Ryoko was napping on the biobed in the diagnostic bay when 
Washu arrived. Between Ryo-ohki, Sasami, and now Chiemi, she didn’t 
get much sleep last night. She really needed the rest. Washu took one 
look at her sleeping daughter, then summoned a blanket from subspace 
and draped it over her.
	Then she turned her attention to the eight-foot vertical 
containment chamber, whose base stood just above her knees. She could 
not see what was inside it – the main body had become opaque. 
However, nutritive medium was being pumped in, and waste products 
pumped out. In that containment chamber, her granddaughter was 
putting on seventeen years in a matter of hours.
	Washu called up her holo-laptop, and began running a program. 
This was the power stability/mass calculation program. Knowing what 
she knew of Chiemi now, she keyed in new data and waited for the 
results.
	She was dismayed by what she saw. So dismayed that she slammed 
her fist into the laptop, which disappeared.
	What she saw was what she feared: increasing Chiemi’s mass 
would not work. They could turn her into a life form the size of a 
small gaseous planet, and it still wouldn’t work.
	So she paused to think. What else could I do to make this 
work…? I could genetically engineer her, implant the upgraded power 
control system. But where do I find it…?
	Then she remembered something. She just wrote a package to 
upgrade power control systems. But installing that upgrade required 
something that Ryoko might object to.
	Then again, it would help her use her powers better later.
	But Ryoko would object to it.
	But it would save Chiemi’s life.
	But Ryoko would object to it.
	Three pros to one con. I like them odds.
	Washu summoned her laptop again, and this time located a new 
program, and ran it. After keying in several commands, she sat back 
and watched what she had set in motion play itself out.
	As she did so, she did not notice Ryoko stirring and waking up. 
Nor did she notice her transport out of her cover and next to her. 
She took one look at the screen. Then a closer look. Then she rounded 
on Washu. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!”
	“It’s not what it looks like, Ryoko,” Washu replied, calmly.
	“Oh, really? Then what is it?”
	“Look, I checked the mass to power ratios. Simply making her 
grow up wouldn’t be enough. I had to upgrade her power control 
system. The only way I could do it without rewriting her DNA is to 
install Crab-OS. Not only that, it’ll help her use her power later.”
	“Oh, I see. I’ll tell you what it looks like to me: YOU’RE 
TURNING MY DAUGHTER INTO A MACHINE!!!” Ryoko had grabbed her mother 
and had hauled her up close.
	Washu pitched forward and screamed into her daughter’s face. 
“LOOK, RYOKO, I’M DESPERATE HERE! I’M TRYING EVERYTHING I CAN WITHOUT 
CHANGING HER BEYOND RECOGNITION! THERE ARE NO OPTIONS THAT COME UNDER 
THAT CATEGORY, EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE! YOU ASKED FOR MY HELP, AND BY THE 
GREAT FATHER, I AM PROVIDING IT! DO NOT BITCH AT ME WHEN YOU DON’T 
LIKE IT!!!”
	There was an unwritten law in the house: in a screaming match, 
Washu always won. Ryoko couldn’t stand down fast enough.
	“B…But you’re turning her into a machine. Just like I was…” 
Ryoko began to break again.
	“My god… You want her to have nothing in common with you! 
That’s why you objected to my wanting to age her… and install an OS.”
	Washu had scored a direct hit. “Kagato… Kagato…” Ryoko 
stammered past her emotions. Strangely, she still didn’t acknowledge 
him as her father. “Kagato said that I was like Sasami when I was 
young. Am I like that now?! The hell I am! Something really shitty 
must have happened to me to change me, BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS!! 
I…I…I’m trying everything in my power to make sure she doesn’t follow 
in my footsteps.”
	“That scares you that much? Ryoko, I can’t make promises. After 
what we do to her, anything could happen. Yes, she could be led 
astray. But any of us could. This whole thing could change her. But 
things change. We have to ensure those changes are just, and 
controlled. Besides, she needs an OS to better absorb knowledge. 
Otherwise she’ll be a seventeen-year-old with the mental age of a 
baby. Teaching your kids about life is the best part. Believe me – I 
should know. Even though you don’t remember it.”
	“Yeah, I know,” Ryoko said. “I’m sorry, mom. For flying off 
like that.”
	“Hey, your older brother’s given me worse.”
	“So… how much longer?”
	“Well, I’m installing Crab-OS now. Her body should be complete 
in…” Washu looked at her laptop. “…About half an hour.”
	“But will there be anything left of my baby in there?” Ryoko 
asked, her eyes pleading for Washu to say yes.
	“Wait and see, Little Ryoko. Wait and see.”

<in background: Who Do You Think You Are?-Spice Girls; sung badly in 
Japanese>

	Every Friday night was Mihoshi and Kiyone’s night out. They 
were considering giving it a miss tonight, but Achika threw them out 
of the house and virtually ordered them to have a good time. They 
couldn’t do anything anyway, and Kiyone’s anger at her helplessness 
was running the risk of causing massive collateral damage.
	Tonight, they were going to the same place they went every 
Friday night – the local karaoke bar. Like most bars of the ilk, the 
drinks were almost always ludicrously expensive. However, on a 
Friday, the drinks prices were actually kind of reasonable. And more 
people used the karaoke setup.
	Anyone who walked into this bar just had to use the karaoke 
before leaving, just to sing along to their favourite songs. 
‘Annihilate’ would be more appropriate, however – most of the 
frequenters carried a tune like most folk with broken arms carry 
Volkswagens. Only Mihoshi and Kiyone were singers of any worth; 
compare average infant/elementary school choir to the London 
Philharmonic.
	One of the locals was up right now, singing a badly translated 
version of the Spice Girls’ ‘Who Do You Think You Are’. The person in 
question was a middle-aged woman in a kimono, who basically crooned 
along, and even attempted to do the Dawn French/Jennifer Saunders bit 
only present on the Comic Relief version, the video of which they had 
procured.
	Sales of drinks were going up while she was on. Seems getting 
toasted was the only way out. Either that, or wearing earplugs, like 
Mihoshi and Kiyone.
	They were respected regulars at this bar. Though the cheer they 
received from the gathered was somewhat out of the ordinary. Perhaps 
they saw them as salvation from the strangled cat singing badly 
strung Japlish on the stage.
	“Shall we?” Mihoshi asked her friend.
	“Let’s get it on,” Kiyone replied, unbuttoning her jacket and 
opening it up.
	The gathered gasped at what they saw.
	Kiyone had a good dozen CDs in single-size jewel cases jammed 
into pockets in the lining of her coat. CD+G discs – karaoke 
software.
	The awed regulars began to discuss their sisters amongst 
themselves. “They use their own CDs,” one whispered to his young 
friend. “Rumour has it that they take the original songs and take off 
the vocal tracks. They don’t use these shitty cheap ones.”
	“Any requests, ladies and gentlemen?” Kiyone asked.
	One man stood. “My Way by Frank Sinatra!”
	He was quickly decked.
	“Any other requests?”
	The young man stood. “You got Change by Tears for Fears?”
	Kiyone scanned through her collection, before extracting a disc 
and handing it to Mihoshi. “Track eleven. Go get the cat off the 
stage,” she said to her.
	Within moments, the screeching woman had been dismissed from 
the stage, replaced by Mihoshi and Kiyone.

<in background: Change-Tears for Fears; performed by Mihoshi and 
Kiyone>

The rest of the evening was spent indulging in a kind of 
restrained debauchery. Drinking heavily, singing badly, sharing 
anecdotes and jokes.
	At one point in the evening, Mihoshi and Kiyone were challenged 
by the young man to a time-honoured test of character. One shared by 
many civilisations across this galaxy.
	Down a pint in one. Although in this case, being as though the 
Japanese use the metric system, the pint was actually just a very 
tall glass.
	Just to make the challenge interesting, they were forced to 
drink the cheapest, most disgusting beer in the establishment. One 
that even the hardiest drinkers could not consume.
	Both of them triumphed.

	“Now?”
	“Now.”
	As her mother bid, Ryoko tapped a few keys on the holo-laptop, 
setting in motion a sequence of events. The power supply to the 
containment chamber, and the pumps supplying it, ceased. Three layers 
of forcefield went down in quick succession. The medium that filled 
the chamber was drained from it, all behind the opaque hull. Finally, 
a series of interlocks on the pod’s head-end disengaged, and the 
cover retracted into its base. A dense cloud of vapour began to spill 
over the lip as it descended.
	Ryoko and Washu could now see its contents. Sat in a kneeling 
position on the base of the tank was the naked form of a girl. A girl 
of around seventeen, with a figure virtually identical to Ryoko’s. A 
girl with spiky raven-black hair. And when she opened her cat-like 
eyes, they could see their deep scarlet colour.
	The girl now knew she was being watched. She instantly recoiled 
and brought whatever defences she had to standby.
	Ryoko felt this. And she heard it in her mind, on a channel she 
had reserved for one person. “Chi…Chiemi?” she asked, still 
astonished.
	To the girl, that voice sounded familiar. She dropped a few of 
her defences, but left a few up while she asked something herself: 
“Mama?”
	Ryoko nodded in reply as tears started to well in her eyes. She 
recognised her. 
	She tentatively reached out toward her child, half expecting to 
be on the receiving end of something very painful. Instead, Chiemi 
took her hand, and smiled at her.
	Ryoko now received a transmission from her daughter over the 
network: ‘Love me.’ To that, Ryoko drew Chiemi in for a hug.
	The sight of Ryoko hugging a woman virtually identical to 
herself was rather humorous. But none of that mattered. Washu was 
detecting the purest of happiness from her daughter. Happiness that 
she had experienced only a few times in her long life, and some of 
those times were lost in an abyss at the back of her mind. This 
happiness was what she truly needed.
	None of them noticed Tenchi’s entrance. He, too, stood and 
watched the truly beautiful scene before him. ‘So, how did it go?’ he 
telepathically asked his mother-in-law.
	‘Very well,’ Washu replied. ‘What’s the matter? Didn’t think 
your daughter would grow up so fast?’
	‘Nope. Truth is, I was worried she wouldn’t grow up, period.’
	Ryoko set her daughter on the ground, where she stood for a 
while. Then she let go. After a few moments, Chiemi realised she was 
pitching back at an alarming rate, and began waving her arms 
frantically. Eventually, she landed roughly on the ground, where she 
began to emit a pained cry.
	Tenchi looked resigned. Now where did we see that before…?

	“DAH DA-DA-DAH, DA-DA-DAH, MACARENA! EH, MACARENA!”
	As anyone who has been drunk will attest to, the quieter one 
tries to be, the more noise one makes. The louder one tries to be, 
the less one is heard. This is the tactic that Mihoshi and Kiyone 
were wielding as they staggered out of the establishment, singing an 
ersatz version of Los Del Rios’ ‘Macarena’. Closer investigation 
would reveal that they weren’t staggering; they were trying to do the 
dance.
	To say they were drunk would be a colossal understatement. They 
were plastered. No, they were beyond plastered. Even ‘slaughtered’ 
wouldn’t begin to describe how drunk they were. They were so drunk, 
that any average mortal who drank that much would have died of 
alcohol poisoning long ago, and would have taken with them anyone 
even remotely considering doing likewise. But there was nothing 
average about two Galaxy Police officers from worlds humans hadn’t 
even heard of. They were both resistant to alcohol, thanks largely to 
the war-drug implants issued to them by the GP, designed to help them 
resist most chemical insults.
	Just not a lot of the chemical insult. That much alcohol was 
enough to put down a bull elephant.
	Some of the people leaving the bar tried hard to ignore them. 
Others looked on in mirth. They didn’t care – they were too damn 
pissed to care.
	Of course, leave it to someone to take advantage of two 
attractive women, both blitzed out of their brains…
	The young man who had suggested their opening song, and 
challenged them to the drinking match, followed them as they stumbled 
home. He kept a good distance from them, shadowing their every step.
	He believed they were still drunk, by the way they were 
staggering. In actuality, they were as sober as a priest on Sunday.
	The war-drug implants had just kicked in, and, combined with 
their unique metabolisms, flushed the alcohol out. As soon as this 
had happened, Kiyone realised they were being followed, and informed 
her friend using a silent communication that they had developed after 
many missions together. They were now acting drunk, to see what their 
pursuer’s intentions were.
	When they’d finished La Macarena, they went onto a rendition of 
‘The Way’ by Fastball. This was just as tuneless as the last song. 
But more people seemed to like it than La Macarena.
	They stopped at the crosswalk of a relatively calm road. No one 
drove around at this time of night, so there was hardly any traffic. 
As they walked forward, they felt their progress impeded by someone 
grabbing their arms.
	“You’re coming with me,” he said with malice.
	“Aw, whass th’ problem, Officer?” Kiyone slurred. “We aren’t 
drivin’.”
	“Some friends of mine would like to see you.”
	“Oh, do they, now?” Mihoshi said, her voice sounding a little 
more inspired than usual. “Should we?”
	“Absolutely,” Kiyone replied, ditching her drunken act.
	The man was kind of shocked.
	“Three…” Mihoshi began.
	“…Two…” Kiyone continued.
	“…ONE!” they finished, as they elbowed him in the chest, in 
perfect unison.
	The man promptly let go.
	They were content to leave it at that. So, they began to cross 
the road. The man, however, got up and began laying into the closest 
person – Kiyone.
	“YOU… BITCH…!” he screamed into her face as he hit her. “DON’T 
EVER DO THAT TO ME!”
	“What?” Kiyone replied, totally unfazed. She suddenly began to 
glow green, as her anger and energy built up. “This?”
	The man felt a severe pain in his stomach, past the equally 
severe pain in his chest. He looked down to see Kiyone’s fist, and 
much of her forearm, firmly implanted in his abdomen. She withdrew 
her arm, leaving an indentation you could keep a couple of cans of 
beer in.
	Not nearly content with this, she grabbed her assailant by his 
arms, and simply tossed him over her head. He took to the sky, 
leaving visible vapour trails as he flew.
	“Son of a bitch…” Kiyone muttered, as she tugged at her dress 
to straighten it.
	She and Mihoshi were now aware that a group of people had 
surrounded them, and had obviously watched the whole thing. Things 
they shouldn’t have.
	They looked at each other and passed a silent communication:
	Oh, crap.

	“YOU WHAT?!!”
	Achika’s cry of rage could be heard across the universe, and 
was close to getting the Pillars of All That Is in the next universe 
pounding on their metaphysical walls. The last person to see her this 
enraged was Julienned a few minutes later. She’d certainly deafened 
whoever was on the other end of the phone.
	“How in the name of the Great Father and everything that is 
holy did you get arrested? For the love of Louis Cypher, you’re 
COPS!”
	“Well, erm, Achika-san, if I might interrupt—“ Mihoshi replied.
	“NO YOU MIGHT NOT! THIS IS MY TIRADE!”
	Silence greeted her.
	She calmed down a little. However, the calmest of waters can 
hide a massive tsunami. And this one just hit the continental shelf. 
She gnawed her teeth in rage for a few seconds, made a mental note to 
tear them limb from limb upon next sighting, breathed deeply, and 
sighed. “Okay, how much is bail?”
	“Um… 250,000 yen. Each.”
	“All right, this is what I will do. I will ask Nobiyuki to 
charge the bail to his card. Tenchi will drive down later to pick you 
up. You will then return to the house, and I will murder you, which I 
can happily do, because I am legally dead, and have not gotten around 
to modifying that.” A dreadful thought dawned on her. “You… didn’t do 
anything too conspicuous, did you?”
	“Define ‘conspicuous’.”
	“Conspicuous – easy to see or perceive; obvious; attracting 
attention by being unexpected, unusual, outstanding or egregious. 
Conspicuous, woman!”
	“Um, er… Kiyone threw someone across the prefecture. Does that 
count? Uh, Achika-san…? Achika…?”
	Achika had collapsed to the floor, and was now twitching 
violently. Tsunami walked past her. “Hey, sis,” she said. Achika 
babbled in reply. “What’s the matter?”
	“It’s okay. We don’t have to take a trip. We can just wait for 
the killer bees to come to us.”

	As she typed away on her holo-laptop, Washu shuddered.
	“What’s wrong?” Ryoko asked.
	“I just got this horrible feeling about something…” Washu 
replied. “No matter. Probably a malfunction in the atmospheric 
system. The planet’s star is entering aphelion, so that might have 
caused it.”
	“Ap-what?”
	“Forget it.”
	Faintly in the background, they could hear Tenchi talking, 
softly encouraging someone. “Here, this way, Chiemi… Good girl! 
That’s very good!”
	Ryoko smiled broadly, as she and Washu turned to see him 
attempt to teach Chiemi to walk. And she was walking. Or trying to. 
They were wide, clumsy steps; half tripping over each other and half 
giving each other a wide berth, but she toed an imaginary line 
straight toward her father, slowly but surely.
	Washu could feel Ryoko root for her. And she absently found 
herself doing so, too.
	Finally, Chiemi reached Tenchi and gave him a bear hug 
somewhere in the region of an Achika-class embrace. “Well, thank 
you,” he smiled, gently extracting himself from his daughter’s 
embrace. Chiemi had, unfortunately, put too much of her weight onto 
her father, and pitched forward. Tenchi caught her just in time, and 
sat her on the floor. Once landed, Chiemi forcibly removed her arm 
from his hold, and cried loudly. This was not a cry of physical pain; 
it was one of frustration.
	“Oh, this is very familiar,” Washu said. “You were exactly the 
same when you were learning to walk, Ryoko. Exactly the same.”
	“Was I?”
	“Oh, yes,” Washu said blissfully, as she once talked to Tenchi 
over Taro. “Except your tantrums were considerably more destructive.”
	“Will she ever learn to walk?”
	“Give it time, Ryoko. She only started two hours ago. It took 
you more than a year. In fact, eventually you gave up and took up 
flying and teleporting instead. I had to disable your flight and 
transport capability to make you walk. That’s why you prefer to fly 
and beam everywhere.”
	“I never really thought of it that way,” Ryoko said, intrigued. 
“Tell me more.”
	Washu had brought that up in the hope that it would jog Ryoko’s 
memory. It obviously didn’t work – she observed Ryoko’s mind as 
something akin to a cog in her brain turned… and jammed. She couldn’t 
remember. “Another time, Ryoko.” She could even hear Ryoko shout 
‘DAMN IT!’ in her mind.
	Washu heard a door open behind them. She turned to see Misaki 
and Funaho emerge from it. Misaki now appeared no worse for wear from 
her injuries, in fact they had healed.
	“Are we interrupting anything?” Funaho inquired, softly.
	“Not at all,” Washu replied. “Tenchi’s trying to teach Chiemi 
to walk, is all…”
	The two empresses walked up to see the scene of Tenchi 
attempting to win his daughter round to trying again.
	“I hadn’t seen her all grown up yet,” Misaki said, not as 
soppily as usual. “I gotta hand it to you, Ryoko – she’s beautiful.” 
There was a lot of sincerity in her voice. Then she grabbed her 
daughter-in-law and hugged her. “Congratulations,” she said, soppy as 
ever.
	As usually happened, Ryoko started to purr while Misaki hugged 
her; she even started to doze off. She woke up again, just in time to 
stop herself from falling.
	“So, what’re you guys in for?” Washu inquired.
	“What, do I have to have a reason to see my great-great-
granddaughter?” Funaho asked. She then remembered that her track 
record of communications with members of the family usually had an 
ulterior motive, and they’d probably come to expect that. “Okay. We 
need to use the comm system to hail our ship. We’ve got to go back to 
Jurai for a few days.”
	“What’s it about?”
	“Tsunami was right,” Misaki replied. “Starfleet Command lost 
contact with a bireme in the Arcanis system. The Shorenji.”
	“Must have been one bad-ass mother of an assailant,” Ryoko 
mused. “I know how powerful biremes can be.”
	Ryoko apparently didn’t realise what she had just said. That 
she had just remembered something. A flash of recollection went 
through Washu’s mind, after she picked it up over the network. But as 
quickly as it appeared, it faded, and before Misaki could question 
Ryoko as to how she knew about the power of a Jurai trireme, the 
memory vanished. She couldn’t answer her. Fortunately, Misaki was 
able to answer her own question.
	“So, anyway, Command are launching an investigation, and they 
want Funaho to lead it,” Misaki went on.
	Washu summoned her laptop again, and handed it to Funaho, who 
tapped a few keys on it. “Done. The Sakigake’s en route,” she 
announced. “It’ll be in orbit in a few hours. Thank you, Washu.”
	“No problem.”
	“Misaki, could I talk to you for a moment?” Ryoko asked.
	Misaki gestured for them to move away from the gathering. They 
did, taking them out of earshot of Funaho and Washu. “What’s on your 
mind?”
	“I’d, uh… I’d like to ask a favour of you. I know you’ll 
probably turn me down flat, being as though I destroyed parts of your 
world, an’ all…”
	“Ask away,” Misaki replied.
	“Oh, okay. Well, uh, you see, I’m hoping that pretty soon, 
Chiemi’s going to be feeling her feet as far as her tactical 
inventory’s concerned. So, she’s going to need someone to train her 
to put that power to good use. I’d like that to be you.”
	Misaki was taken aback. “Why me?”
	“Well, let’s see: one, you’re a good fighter. One of the best 
I’ve seen. Two, you’re formally trained. Three, you’ve got the 
discipline down to a science.”
	“I’m flattered. But what about you? You’re better than I am.”
	“But I’m not formally trained or disciplined. From what I’ve 
seen, she commands power I couldn’t even begin to touch. If she 
doesn’t have that power under control, then things could conceivably 
go badly. The only other person who could do what I’m asking is 
Cyraqs, and, well, she’ll probably see him when and if they want her 
for the ‘organisation’. And, to be honest, I want you to do it.”
	“Yes, but, Ryoko, I’m at a certain disadvantage here. I could 
train Chiemi, in theory, but it would be from ignorance. For one 
thing, I don’t have the ‘tactical inventory’ on tap – I can’t call it 
at will like you, Washu and Tenchi call it. For another, I don’t even 
know what her limits are.”
	“Neither do I. That’s going to be the fun part.”
	“I wouldn’t dream of taking that from you. But if you really 
want me to train her, I’m going to leave it to you and Washu to do 
the groundwork. You find out what her abilities are. I’ll take care 
of the hard part.”
	“So, you will?” Ryoko asked, hopefully.
	“Yes.”
	“WOOHOO!!!” Ryoko said. “Thank you, Misaki!” She hugged the 
blue-haired empress very tightly. Now Misaki knew how everyone else 
felt.
	Over Ryoko’s shoulder, she could see Tenchi attempting to teach 
Chiemi to walk again. She got to her feet by lifting herself up off 
the ground using her flight power, and setting herself down on her 
feet. Then, as Tenchi moved back, she stumbled toward him, stepping 
awkwardly, tentatively, probing the ground with her feet. 
Unfortunately, her feet got crossed somewhere along the way, and she 
tripped over.
	“Hmm… Obviously walking is a problem, for now,” she mused to 
herself.
	Chiemi sat on the floor, wailing. “Mommy! Mommy!”
	“Um, Ryoko, I think you’re wanted,” Misaki told the woman 
hugging her.
	Ryoko disengaged herself from Misaki by wordlessly teleporting 
away. She beamed in beside Tenchi and Chiemi, and knelt down to 
comfort her daughter. “There, there, now. You’ll get it eventually.”
	“Sister,” Funaho called. “We should get ready.”
	Misaki nodded in agreement. She headed for the door from whence 
they came, closely followed by Funaho.
	The raven-headed one stopped, and turned back to Washu. “Oh, I 
almost forgot. Achika wants to see you and Tenchi. I should warn you, 
she is uncharacteristically displeased.”
	Washu knew her elder sister enough to know what that meant. 
Achika was love and peace incarnate, as was Tsunami. For something to 
anger Achika, it had to be seriously bad. Something told her that 
that could explain the empresses’ eager departure. Not that it would 
do them any good. She telepathically hailed her son-in-law, who 
followed her, Funaho and Misaki out of the door.
	Chiemi and Ryoko were left by themselves in the vast expanse of 
the lab. For once, Ryoko wasn’t so scared of the place. She wasn’t 
alone now.
	“Mommy?” Chiemi asked.
	Ryoko looked her daughter in the eyes, amazed that she could 
now talk. Washu told her it was a result of the customised Crab-OS 
installation, which had a pre-installed lexicon. “Yes, sweetheart.”
	“I’m scared of this place too.”
	What? Ryoko only thought about that… “Damn, I wasn’t aware I 
was talking to myself.”
	“You weren’t. I could hear your thoughts.”
	Well, guess that’s the new network settings taking effect. 
“Well, then, let’s be scared together.” ‘I cannot BELIEVE how stupid 
that sounds,’ Ryoko thought.
	What sounded worse was a Roseanne-esque howl of rage that 
flowed through the lab, and could be heard two universes over.

	And this howl of rage went on as Washu slammed Mihoshi and 
Kiyone into the floor of the living room. “You... complete… utter… 
unimaginable… indescribable… MORONS!!!” the redhead scientist 
screamed into the two GP officers’ faces. “I have spent the last 
seven years going out of my way to keep what happens here out of the 
eyes of the locals. Considering the certain paranoia concerning 
extraterrestrial life on this world, it’s just as well. Until now, 
it’s been working – no one’s any the wiser. BUT YOU TWO HAVE JUST 
DONE THE EQUIVALENT OF WALKING AROUND TOKYO WEARING NOTHING BUT A 
PLACARD READING ‘HI! WE’RE ALIENS!’” Washu seemed to be out of 
breath. But before the two officers could speak in their defence, 
“WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE GREAT FATHER MADE YOU DO IT?!”
	“WE’RE GETTING TO THAT!” Kiyone shouted back. And so, she and 
Mihoshi told the tale of the man.
	“Don’t you think that it was a little overkill?” Achika 
inquired, in her calm, serene voice. “You could have just hit him 
some more, broke his neck, or something that the average human could 
do. But throwing him across the prefecture…?”
	“It was instinctive, Achika-sama,” Kiyone said, using the 
superlative suffix to appease the goddess. “Instinct took over when 
he attacked us.”
	“Well, yes, I’m fully aware of how impulsive you can be. But 
that’s no excuse. What you have done has put everything at risk.”
	“Not necessarily,” Washu interjected. “I could wire one of my 
instruments into the TV network, erase everyone’s memory of tonight.”
	“Make it so,” Achika replied. “And for your two’s sake,” she 
addressed the sheepish-looking GP officers, “I hope this blows over.”
	They were interrupted by the sound of the patio window 
breaking. All four of them flew over the sofa to see the object that 
broke it.
	A breeze block from a construction site.
	‘And so it begins…’ Achika thought to herself.
	‘So what begins?’ Washu’s voice asked inside her mind. She did 
not answer her.

	It had been decided that Chiemi would have to sleep on the 
sofa. There were no other bedrooms in the entire area owned by the 
Masaki family, and the rafters were not an option until she learned 
to control her flight power. They were sporadically operating now, 
and as she slept, Chiemi was levitating off the sofa.
	Aeka watched her, a smile of mirth on her face.
	“Y’know, Ryoko was exactly the same when she was growing up,” a 
voice said behind her.
	“Really, Washu?” Aeka asked.
	“Hm-hmm. Of course, Ryoko remembers none of it. All she 
remembers is this world, and just snippets of everything else. For 
the most part, I consider that a blessing. She couldn’t live with the 
memories of what she did to Jurai. To the planets Kagato made her 
attack. But you know what sucks, Aeka?”
	Aeka turned to face her. “What?”
	“What sucks is that the happiest times of her life are stuck in 
the event horizon of a black hole in the back of her mind. She wants 
to remember. I know it. But the only way is by doing something even 
vaguely associated with someone she loathes.”
	“Who?”
	“Kagato. Ryoko’s going to hate me for telling you this, but 
screw it. Kagato left a message for us. He also left Ryoko a present 
– something that will help her remember. But Ryoko won’t use it, 
because she hates him.”
	“Isn’t she just cutting her nose off to spite her face.”
	Washu snickered. “That’s Ryoko’s trademark.” She turned serious 
again. “Back when she hated me, she nearly didn’t join back with 
Zero, because I wanted her to.”
	“Surely there’s another way of restoring her memories?”
	“Perhaps there is, Aeka,” Washu looked thoughtful. “Come with 
me…”

	A small, amber octahedral crystal sat in a stand. A laser beam 
passed through it from the base of the stand, hitting a receptor 
above it. The results of this were being fed into the lab computer, 
and presented to Washu via her laptop.
	“It’s a data crystal,” Washu declared. “Last modified two 
thousand and ten years ago.”
	“When Ryoko was fourteen,” Aeka deduced.
	“And just before her little sleigh-ride began.”
	“So, what’s on the crystal?”
	“Data, of course!” Washu moaned. “I’m not sure yet. The crystal 
is so old that it’s started to decay. A lot of the data on it is 
unusable. I’m still trying to repair the file allocation table to see 
what was on it.”
	“But if this crystal contains Ryoko’s memories…” Aeka looked 
dismayed.
	“It doesn’t. It’s too small to hold memory engrams. And if it 
did, it would only hold everything about her childhood. It wouldn’t 
explain why there’s a gap in her memory thirteen hundred years wide.”
	The computer made a noise akin to the Windows 95 ‘tada’ sample. 
“Aha!” Washu proclaimed. “I’ve repaired the file allocation table. 
Now let’s see what’s on it…”
	A list of file names appeared on the screen. Washu scanned down 
the relatively short list, whispering the names to herself.
	“EA4096.DLL. MEMMSG.DLL. MEMAXS.VXD… Wait a minute, I know what 
these are!!”
	“Well, what are they?” Aeka snapped, impatiently.
	Washu decided to ignore the tone of her daughter-in-law’s 
voice, and turned to her and responded. “They’re Crab-OS system 
files! They’re part of Ryoko’s OS. I can tell by the file sizes and 
the version number. They precisely match the versions I installed on 
Ryoko when I last upgraded her.”
	“And you memorised the file sizes and version numbers? People 
call me obsessive about details, but you take the triscuit…”
	“Look. EA4096.DLL. That’s the emotional association extension 
library that lets Ryoko associate emotions to a memory as she recalls 
it. MEMMSG.DLL allows her to pass memories between active tasks in 
her mind – it helps her to pinpoint actual parts of a memory, judge 
their success, and, if necessary, store them for future use. And 
MEMAXS.VXD is the device driver that controls both of them.”
	“So, if these files were reinstalled, she’d get her memories 
back?”
	“And much more. She’d associate emotions to those memories.”
	“But this discussion is moot. The files are damaged. They can’t 
be used.”
	“These files, yes. But I have new, updated versions in a little 
something I cooked up for Ryoko a few weeks ago.”
	“So for Ryoko to get her memories back…”

	“I’d have to do WHAT?!”
	Ryoko wasn’t just pissed due to coitus interruptus. The fact 
that Aeka and Washu burst in while she and Tenchi were… you know… was 
kind of a boner, although she didn’t object too much to Aeka’s 
presence. The fact that her mother was also there kind of ruined the 
mood. She was currently holding the bed blanket over herself, 
dragging it off Tenchi, who was also naked.
	“You’d have to upgrade to Crab-OS 2000,” Washu glibly replied.
	“Well, screw that,” Ryoko said. “I’m not upgrading.”
	“Ryoko, I know you want your memories back,” Aeka said, in a 
softly-softly approach in stark contrast to Washu’s direct manner. 
“This is the only way. All it is is a matter of a few missing system 
files. The upgrade will fix that.”
	“Oh, no. No fucking way.”
	Washu clipped her daughter’s ear. “Language! Ryoko, you told me 
you didn’t want Chiemi following in your footsteps because your life 
went wrong somewhere, but you don’t know where. If I upgrade you, 
you’ll have your memories back. You’ll find the mistakes, and know 
how to avoid them.”
	That gave Ryoko pause for thought. That’s all she wanted – to 
remember. Washu was right, it would help her be a better mother to 
Chiemi. But perhaps there were some things that she shouldn’t 
remember. Washu might be able to help her through that, but was she 
ready to trust her that much…?
	“Ryoko, I won’t force you into this. I’m not going to tamper 
with you unless you want me to.”
	Ryoko gave no answer for all of five minutes, while she milled 
it over, evaluating pros and cons. It was Tenchi who clinched it. 
“Ryoko, think of it as a challenge. I’ve never known you to back down 
from a challenge.”
	Finally, Ryoko spoke. “Ah, to hell with it. Let’s do it. Just 
have some kind of uninstaller thing handy in case it goes wrong.”
	“You won’t regret this," Washu said. "Ryoko, setup mode.”
	“What the—“ Ryoko began, but was cut off by slipping into an 
unemotional voice. “Setup mode active.”
	“Ryoko, transport to location zero, and await further 
instructions.”
	“Acknowledged. Working…”
	Ryoko simply teleported out of the room.
	“How long will it take?” Tenchi asked.
	“An hour,” Washu replied. “Then her mind will have to adjust to 
the new settings, and assimilate over two thousand years of memories. 
That could take weeks, maybe months. But don’t worry, Tenchi. What 
you love about her won’t be lost. If anything, you might find more to 
love about her.”
	“I love her with all my heart already, Washu,” Tenchi said. 
“Nothing could change that. Ever.”

	Misaki and Funaho stood on the jetty, both clutching small 
overnight bags. The family, less Washu, Aeka, Tenchi and Ryoko, stood 
before them. Their ship was now in orbit, preparing to beam them 
aboard.
	“Farewell, my friends,” Achika said, bowing. “May your journey 
be uneventful, and your mission be swiftly concluded.”
	The empresses bowed back. “As I hope myself, Your Divinity,” 
Funaho replied.
	Tsunami turned to her sister. “Since when did you insist on 
them calling you ‘Your Divinity’?”
	“Well, it sounded appropriate,” Achika said. “Besides, it has a 
nice ring to it.”
	“Meaning, you’ve been watching Lexx too, ‘Divine Shadow’!” 
Tsunami added mockingly. “Wait a minute. Sasami wants the bridge back 
for a minute. We’ll resume this discussion later.”
	Suddenly, the young woman’s mannerisms swiftly changed as 
Sasami took over again. She ran toward the blue-haired empress, and 
hugged her tightly. “Mommy, please don’t go…!” she sobbed.
	“I have to, my baby,” Misaki replied, returning the hug. “But 
I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
	“MOMMY…!” a shrill voice cried in the background. Misaki looked 
up, to see Aeka and Tenchi run out of the house. Tenchi joined the 
gaggle of his family, while Aeka joined her mother and sister in 
their group hug. Soon after, Misaki began to hug them one by one.
	“Where’s Washu?” Achika asked.
	“With Ryoko, doing a bit of tinkering,” Tenchi replied.
	Finally, Misaki concluded her session of hugging her daughters, 
then moved on to each member of the family. A lot of them were left 
unconscious afterwards.
	A beeping sound came from Funaho, who produced something that 
looked like a compact. She opened it. “Funaho.”
	“Divine Majesty, we are ready to receive you,” a deep voice 
said.
	“Acknowledged, Azaka. Stand by.” She turned to Misaki. “Sister, 
it’s time to go.”
	Misaki came about and shot Funaho that look that kids display 
when their parents tell them it’s time to go home from a play park. 
“Aw, I don’t wanna go…!” she sobbed.
	Funaho went into stern parent mode. “Well, we have to. But you 
don’t have to stay. You can just check in and warp out again.”
	Misaki stopped sobbing, and her eyes lit up. “Ohh…”
	“…Shit,” Tenchi finished, part conjecturing and part voicing 
his own thoughts. Instantly, Achika clipped him behind the ear, 
nearly knocking his head off his shoulders.
	The blue-haired empress moved to join Funaho in their position 
on the jetty, reversing to wave goodbye to the family. “Take care of 
yourself! We’ll be back soon!”
	“Uh, Misaki…” the cast cried.
	“Bye for now! Tenchi, look after my babies! Or I’ll kick your 
backside to the Delta Quadrant!” Misaki glibly continued.
	“Misaki!” the family raised their voices. Misaki didn’t notice 
that she’d reversed past Funaho, and was heading for the edge.
	“Aeka! Be good!”
	“MOTHER!” Aeka exclaimed.
	“Look after Tenchi! Sasami, take careAAAGH!”
	Misaki stepped off the jetty, falling into the lake. Everyone 
tried – unsuccessfully – to resist laughing.
	Funaho bemusedly opened the comms device. “Funaho to Sakigake. 
Two to beam aboard.” Within seconds, she was beamed away, along with 
Misaki, who had been floating face-up in the lake.
	The whole assembled family continued to laugh. All, except 
Achika. “You guys are EVIL!” she admonished. Out of shame, everyone 
shut up. “C’mon, let’s go to sleep.”
	The family separated and went off to where they slept. Tenchi, 
Aeka, Sasami and Nobiyuki back into the house. Mihoshi and Ryuken 
went back to their cabin in the woods. Kiyone and Yosho returned to 
the shrine.
	With everyone gone, Achika broke into a giggle, which turned 
into a chuckle, then into a laugh, then into a musical, symphonic 
laugh that pealed out across the lake, out into the universe.
	“…Ha ha ha…. And she… And she…” Achika had collapsed to the 
floor, clutching her sides as she broke out into gales of laughter. 
“…And she just walked into the lake! Hehehe…!”
	She promptly stopped when she saw her son towering above her, 
wearing a disapproving look.
	“Don’t give me that look, Tenchi! I invented that look. That 
look is copyrighted!”

	Funaho and Misaki’s ship began to move out of orbit. Their 
vessel, the Sakigake, was a modified first generation light-hawk 
trireme, a lot smaller than her sisters. She was intended to be used 
primarily as a yacht for the empresses, but this yacht packed enough 
firepower to level a major city, or take down a small armada.
	The Sakigake cruised at sublight toward the edge of the Sol 
system, where they would find the transwarp conduit that would lead 
them back to Jurai. The journey from Earth to the edge of the system 
would take around two days. (full sublight for Jurai ships was kept 
to around one-quarter lightspeed, despite the fact that one could 
push up to 0.95 lightspeed. This avoided any appreciable time 
dilation effects that travelling at high sublight would create.) The 
leisurely flight gave the empresses enough time to reflect.
	“Aw, sis, I’m WET!!!”
	Or whine, for that matter.
	A sodden Misaki paced about the bridge of the Sakigake, still 
in her soaked clothes, complaining to anyone who would listen.
	Quietly, Funaho marched over to the light-hawk replicator in 
the corner of the bridge, and ordered it to make a ‘”towel”. A few 
seconds later, a soft lavender towel appeared within it. When Funaho 
picked it up, she noted that it was comfortably warm to the touch. 
“Here!” she called to her sister, as she tossed the towel over the 
bridge, where Misaki caught it.
	They were only sisters by marriage to the same man, much as 
Aeka and Ryoko were. In actuality, they weren’t genetically related. 
Funaho was from Earth. She was taken to the Homeworld a good thousand 
years ago. Her seemingly eternal youth was thought to be down to her 
drinking Jurai’s much-vaunted water of life, but Washu traced it to 
the effects of a retrovirus in certain bodies of water on the planet, 
that had integrated itself into the Jurai genome. Misaki, on the 
other hand, was from one of the courts of Jurai, daughter of the Duke 
of Jurai Epsilon, and, by logic, cousin of the man she married. Jurai 
Epsilon was a large world, twenty times the size of Earth, and even 
larger than the Homeworld. Thus, it had twenty times the gravity, and 
its inhabitants – herself included – were extremely strong in an 
Earth-normal gravity. Hence, she could throw Ryoko into a wall with 
nary a thought, and whup Ryuken’s butt with little effort. And let’s 
not forget, she could hug anything that moved to death. Jurai Epsilon 
had nothing in the way of cute furry things, so when she found them 
on the Homeworld she was enamoured. Hence, her Elmira cute complex.
	Misaki was now relieved that she was drying off, as she rubbed 
the plush towel over herself. “I think I’ll change,” she said. “You 
coming with?”
	A few devious thoughts marqueed through Funaho’s mind. “Yes. 
Yes I am. Azaka, you have the bridge.”
	A large, muscular gentleman replied in his deep voice. “By your 
guidance, Divine Majesty.”
	Azaka and Kamidake had been left with the duty of keeping the 
Sakigake running in the absence of the empresses. It had actually 
been a tactical redeployment. Statistically speaking, the family had 
more chance of being attacked by a spaceborne enemy than by anything 
on Earth, so the Guardians were better off on a ship. A ship that the 
Jurai Imperial Starfleet were only too happy to donate. Perhaps after 
Misaki twisted the arm of the Admiral of the Fleet. The redeployment 
meant that they saw a little less of the family, except when on shore 
leave, but it was a big move up in the world… literally.
	Azaka sat himself down in what could be described as the 
Captain’s chair. “Mr Kamidake, steady as she goes,” he said, just 
because he could.
	“Aye aye,” Kamidake replied from the helm, “you big asshole…” 
he added out of earshot.

	Misaki’s half of their quarters reflected her cute complex. 
Virtually every shelf, bookcase, cabinet or piece of furniture had 
something furry, cuddly and/or stuffed on it. A recent addition was a 
little Pikachu that sat on her dressing table, giving it cute as only 
Pikachu could.
	Misaki sat on the stool of her dressing table, and began to 
remove the headdress that wrapped around the tie of her ponytail. She 
sat the elaborate garment down on the counter, and looked at her 
reflection in the mirror. She saw the thing that was actually holding 
that tie – a simple, red ribbon that Achika had given her. She began 
to unravel this, and pull it free of her hair. The ponytail fell 
down, becoming long flowing water-blue hair that cascaded down below 
the line of the seat, and came close to hitting the floor.
	Then she began undoing the heavy waistcoat she wore, made all 
the heavier by it carrying half of Lake Ryo-ohki in it. It fell to 
the floor, the shock of the fall shaking more water out of it.
	Misaki looked at herself. All she wore now was her grey jump-
suit-like trousers, and the high-necked crimson blouse. The weight 
and the cold feel of these wet garments was rather distracting. So 
distracting that she didn’t notice Funaho looming up behind her, 
until her hands slipped beneath her arms and grabbed her breasts. She 
yelped in surprise. “Hey! Warn me before you do that!” she mused in 
mock anger.
	Funaho span her sister around on the stool to face her. “Come, 
now, let me help you out of those wet clothes…” she said, breathily, 
seductively, as she began to unfasten the buttons that held the 
crimson blouse closed, and tenderly slipped it off. As she did so, 
Misaki was quickly undoing Funaho’s clothes. As this happened, they 
came closer for a passionate kiss…
	Then the comm system beeped. “Bridge to Empress Funaho,” 
Azaka’s voice said.
	The look of anger that the two empresses exchanged meant one 
thing: we are going to kill him. “Go ahead,” Funaho sighed.
	“Divine Majesty, we are approaching the transwarp conduit.”
	The empresses exchanged another look that read, in no uncertain 
terms, “We are REALLY going to kill him.”
	“Thanks for telling us, Azaka. Now kindly shut up for a few 
hours. Funaho out.”
	“God-damn!” Misaki said. “Talk about bad timing…”
	“The gods have not been kind to us.”

	Sakigake approached an area of what, to the naked eye, appeared 
to be calm space. As she drew closer, this calm space began to be 
disturbed. A small shockwave rang out as a bright light flashed, 
opening up into a wormhole before the ship. This was a transwarp 
conduit. A natural phenomenon that allowed ships and other objects to 
pass through at speeds thousands of times that of light, appearing at 
its other end. These phenomena were the framework upon which the 
Jurai Empire was built. This one was one of the Empire’s most remote. 
Sakigake flew straight into this conduit, letting its natural gravity 
take over. Once past the event horizon, it went to transwarp, in an 
effect that to an observer looked like the front end was pulled away 
from the back, with the aft end still attached. Then the aft end 
caught up, taking Sakigake into the conduit as it closed behind her.

	It was a beautiful day in Kurashiki. The sun shone, and birds 
fluttered across Lake Ryo-ohki with nary a care in the world.
	The sunlight fell upon the Masaki family’s newest member as she 
slept on the sofa. Well, actually, about a metre above the sofa. 
Chiemi appeared to be laying on an invisible mattress, perfectly 
level, holding her arm over the ‘edge’. Her hands and feet twitched 
while she slept. She was dreaming.
	Sasami walked through the living room to get to the kitchen and 
make breakfast. The sight of Chiemi floating above her bed was kind 
of amusing. She walked over to her, picked the cover up off the sofa, 
and draped it over her. As she did so, Chiemi started to stir.
	She slowly opened her eyes, laying there as Ryoko often did, as 
her mind began to start up. However, as often happened, as her mind 
started up, it decided to reset a few active systems.
	Flight was one of them.
	Chiemi’s flight potential promptly diminished, and she became 
heavy again. She fell to the floor, landing on the hapless Sasami. 
For the next five minutes, she sat on the princess, wailing in pain 
and frustration.
	Baby brain, adult body. That sounded kind of familiar…

	It appeared that someone had beaten Sasami to the kitchen. 
Ryoko was stood over the stove, and was tenderly, almost masterfully 
grilling fish. She hummed to herself as she worked.
	The door to the living room stood over, revealing Sasami 
dressed in her carrot apron. To be honest, she was kind of shocked to 
see someone stood in her domain. Especially Ryoko.
	“Hi, Sasami!” Ryoko said, cheerfully. “Hi, Tsunami!”
	“Ryoko,” Sasami replied. She said it again, as Tsunami returned 
the greeting, then handed the bridge back to Sasami. “What are you 
doing?”
	“Isn’t it obvious? I’m cooking.”
	‘I’ll call the Health Department,’ Tsunami said in their mind.
	Sasami smelled the air. Not a sign of burning, malodour, 
anything untoward. The smell was about as right as one could get it 
with grilled fish. “Wow! I’m impressed! Since when did you become an 
expert?”
	“Last night,” was Ryoko’s reply. Something whistled in the 
background. “Oh, cool, the kettle’s done for Ike’s milk.” She 
teleported from the stove over to the counter, where a perfectly 
measured amount of baby formula lay in an open bottle, next to a 
boiling kettle. Ryoko turned the kettle off, and poured some hot 
water into the bottle. After screwing the cap on, she teleported back 
to the stove and continued with the fish.
	“What about Chiemi’s bottle?”
	“Oh, she decided she wanted to try solid food last night. So I 
got this little fella from the lake to oblige her.” She gestured to a 
smaller fish on the griddle with the spatula.
	“You fished, too?!” Sasami said in amazement. “Did you sleep 
last night?”
	“Nope. I spent most of the night re-customising my own mind 
again. It has to be said about OS installations – they have NO 
respect for customisation. By the time I’d finished, it was morning. 
So I made the beds, did the fishing, fixed the patio door, and 
started breakfast, right before you walked in.”
	The door opened again, and Aeka entered. “Oh, there you are,” 
she said to Ryoko. “When did you get up?”
	“Never slept, Aeka,” Ryoko replied.
	“Washu just got up, and couldn’t find you. Are you okay?”
	“Sis, I’ve never felt better in my life!”
	“Obviously…” Sasami said under her breath, a little morose 
about her sudden redundancy. “Well, I’ll, er, go upstairs and see if 
the beds are still made…” With that, she left the room.
	Aeka put an apron on and joined Ryoko at the stove. “Anything I 
can do?”
	“Well, you could start the washing-up for me.”
	Aeka obliged, turning on the water at the sink. She extracted 
the washing-up liquid from the cupboard and squeezed a copious amount 
over the dishes as the water flowed around them.
	As she did so, she noticed a slight giggle come from Ryoko, 
which slowly grew into hysterical laughter.
	“What’s so funny?” Aeka inquired, very confused.
	Ryoko could hardly stop laughing as she tried to reply. “I get 
it now!” she howled. “I get it!”
	“Get… what?”
	Ryoko was still laughing. “When… when you said to Sasami, ‘the 
clown can stay, but the Guardian in the gorilla suit has to go’!”
	A bead of sweat appeared on Aeka’s brow. And this wasn’t due to 
the rising heat. “When was this?”
	“At the wedding party! You told the joke, that was the punch 
line!”
	“At the wedding party? Ryoko, that was six months ago!”
	“I know! I just got it!”
	“Well, I see your sense of humour’s improving. How about your 
memory?”
	Ryoko brought herself together again. “Hang on, I’ll check… 
Nope, nothing new.” She turned the heat off on the stove. “You done 
the plates yet?”
	Aeka noticed that the sink was now full of water, which had 
frothed up the washing up liquid. “Just a minute.” She turned the tap 
off, and got to work on washing the plates. Unfortunately, just 
picoseconds after her hands entered the water, she withdrew them and 
ran about the kitchen screaming. “HOT! HOT! HOT!!!”

	Achika and Nobiyuki came down for breakfast, in each other’s 
arms.
	“I wonder what Sasami has on the menu today…?” Nobiyuki asked 
his omnipresent wife, as if she knew. She probably did…
	Achika smiled knowingly. “Oh, you’ll see…” she purred.
	As they entered the living/dining room, they saw Tenchi already 
sat at the table with Chiemi and Ryo-ohki, patiently awaiting the 
food.
	“Good morning, Tenchi,” Achika said to her son. “Ryo-ohki.”
	“Morning, Mom,” Tenchi replied. “Morning, Dad.”
	As the two Pillars of All That Is took their seats, Mihoshi and 
Ryuken entered via the patio door. “Morning, everyone!” they both 
said, cheerily.
	Everyone present returned their greeting in an equally cheery 
way.
	‘Sounds like someone got some last night…’ Tenchi thought to 
himself. The glare he received from Achika signalled that she was 
eavesdropping.
	Ryuken approached close to him, and leaned right up to his ear. 
“Twice,” he whispered. Tenchi’s eyes lit up.
	“I am surrounded by hentai,” Achika muttered to herself, as 
Kiyone and Yosho entered the house.
	“Morning, all,” Kiyone said. “Sasami’s running late, isn’t she? 
She’s normally served up by now.”
	A few seconds later, Sasami appeared from upstairs. “Hang on, 
I’ll telepathically will breakfast into existence,” she mused, a 
little indignantly, and a little in mock anger.
	“Uh-oh,” Yosho announced. “This does not look good…”
	“You’re not cooking?” Kiyone asked, flabbergasted. “So, who 
is…? I hope it’s not Aeka…”
	“I’M SCARRED FOR LIFE!” a shrill voice cried.
	“Oh, shut up, you hypochondriac!” a Roseanne-esque voice 
replied. “They’re just sore from heat damage. Leave the bandages on 
for a few hours and they’ll be fine.”
	Aeka and Washu appeared from nowhere. Aeka was wearing very 
thick padded bandages on her hands. “But how do I use chopsticks with 
these?”
	“You should have thought of that before you put so many on.”
	Kiyone looked in the direction of the redhead scientist, 
looking for an explanation.
	“Before you ask, she didn’t cook,” Washu replied. “She got this 
trying to wash the dishes.”
	Sasami sighed. Woman made of smoke…
	“So if Sasami didn’t cook, and Aeka didn’t…” Kiyone put the 
evidence together, and came to a dismaying conclusion. “Oh, no.”
	The door to the kitchen flew open, to reveal Ryoko stood there, 
clutching several plates of grilled fish. “Ta-daah!” she proclaimed, 
striking a vogue pose. Everyone, except for Sasami, Chiemi, Washu and 
Achika facefaulted.
	Washu was smiling with pride. Of course, Sasami and Achika 
already knew about this, and Chiemi didn’t care. Those that didn’t 
need to eat were silently thanking whatever divinity made that 
possible. Everyone else looked as though they were about to fight 
over that box of breakfast cereal in the cupboard. Ryo-ohki, first 
high guinea pig of Ryoko’s cooking experiments, was thankful she was 
a vegetarian.
	“Does anyone here like food?” Ryoko asked, rhetorically. 
Silence greeted her. “Well, too bad, you will eat it and like it.”
	“I concur,” Sasami said. “I’m not cooking.”
	Resigned to their fate, the non-clued in members of the family 
closed their eyes, hoping they get this over with quickly.
	Ryoko began serving the fish to everyone. “One for you, one for 
you, one for you, one for you…” and so it went, right up to giving 
Chiemi her fish. She thanked her mother.
	Still with his eyes closed, Tenchi blindly dived into the fish 
with his chopsticks, guided in by Achika. He extracted a piece of the 
meat, and tentatively brought it up to his mouth. He chewed it, 
milled it around… and liked it!
	He opened his eyes. Instead of seeing a charred fish, he saw 
one that was done just right. As was everyone else’s. Everyone else 
was beginning to realise that their breakfast wasn’t as bad as they 
thought it was. And he saw Ryoko, sat to his right, eating, and 
swelling with joy. She’d done something right.
	And so, for a few minutes, they sat their, quietly eating the 
food, and watching the TV that Washu had thoughtfully turned on. But 
as the time went by, Tenchi gradually found that he could not eat any 
more. It wasn’t because he was full. Far from it. He was actually 
beginning to feel sick. And it wasn’t the fault of the food – it was 
down to feelings of rage and hate growing inside the woman to his 
right… and directed at Washu.
	He telepathically told Washu of this. ‘I already know,’ Washu 
replied. ‘Get ready to hold her… now.’
	Tenchi did as bid, microseconds before Ryoko was about to fly 
off toward her mother. “YOU BITCH!!!” she suddenly exclaimed. She 
attempted to lunge toward Washu, but found her progress impeded by 
Tenchi holding her arm very tightly. “TENCHI, LET ME GO!!!”
	“Hold her there, Tenchi!” Washu said, as she extracted from her 
subspace replicator what looked like a hypospray. She then approached 
her struggling daughter.
	“DON’T YOU COME ANYWHERE NEAR ME, DAMN YOU!” Ryoko spat at her 
mother.
	By this time, the whole family was looking a little scared, and 
very confused. Ryuken was helping to restrain his little sister now.
	“Relax, my little Ryoko,” Washu said, in a conciliatory tone, 
as she put the hypospray against Ryoko’s neck and ignored the vain 
attempts she was making to grab her. “You’ll go to sleep now.” She 
fired the spray.
	Ryoko began to struggle less against Tenchi and Ryuken, and 
gradually, she fell unconscious, and slumped forward onto the table. 
Washu now produced her pseudo-tricorder and scanned her daughter with 
it.
	“What was that about?” Aeka asked, concerned.
	“Just a minute,” Washu replied. “Ryoko, command prompt mode.”
	Ryoko’s eyes opened again, this time staring blankly. “Command 
prompt mode activated.”
	“Ryoko, list all active tasks.”
	“Working…” Ryoko fell silent for a few moments. “Currently 
active tasks are as follows: memory access/retrieval system, MA/RS 
scan-update program, tactical command/control system…”
	“Stop. Exit command prompt mode.”
	Sasami still looked confused. “And for those of us who aren’t 
the greatest scientific genius of the universe…?”
	Washu turned to her family. “The upgrade is working. In fact, 
it’s working a little too well. Her mind has begun the progress of 
scanning her memory, and updating her access and retrieval systems to 
find those that aren’t already on there. For all her memories, 
accounted for or otherwise, it’s scanning through them, adding the 
respective emotional association. This morning, she was doing that 
with the birth of Chiemi and her wedding to Tenchi.”
	“So that’s why she was so cheerful this morning…” Sasami 
deduced.
	“…And why she suddenly remembered the joke I told at the 
wedding,” Aeka added.
	“What, the one about the clown and the Guardian in the gorilla 
suit?” Sasami said.
	“AHEM!” Washu coughed deliberately, indicating that she’d like 
to get on with the explanation. All shut up. “That little outburst 
was when she recalled one of our least happy times together a couple 
of years back…”
	“Yeah, I was getting something about you leaving her alone in 
the dark,” Tenchi interjected. “It scared her so much… and she really 
hated you for it.”
	“I think I know the one you mean,” Yosho chimed in. “Ryoko told 
me about it, and made me promise not to tell any of you. Seeing as 
though someone beat me to it, however… I collared Washu about it, 
though.”
	“Unsuccessfully,” Washu said. “But seeing how much it upset her 
now… Oh, boy, is my face red.”
	“And you did that to her?” Achika said, having read the summary 
Tenchi sent her. “I’m disappointed in you, Washu. I thought you were 
the one who always upheld the belief of loving one’s children.”
	“I always have, sister. NEVER question that.” Rage flowed 
through Washu’s voice for a second. It didn’t faze Achika, however. 
Goddess or not, she could still take Washu on in a fight. But Washu 
stood down. “This is just a taster of things to come. As her mind 
starts scanning all of the memories of what she did under Kagato’s 
control… That’s going to make this look petty by comparison.”
	“Why?” Tenchi inquired.
	“Impossible though it might seem, Tenchi, I know Ryoko’s mind 
better than anyone here. She doesn’t know this, but I do – when she 
was younger, before Kagato took her on his little quest, she was just 
like Sasami.”
	Sasami’s eyes widened in surprise.
	“She was. She was compassionate, caring, funny… I didn’t name 
her Ryoko for the meaning she took it as – ‘devil caller’ – I named 
her for its literal meaning, ‘spirit raiser’. Because that’s what she 
did. She couldn’t bring herself to hurt anything even if her life, or 
that of anything she cared about depended on it. When she starts 
indexing the little back catalogue of death and destruction at her 
hands, it’s going to come up as a huge contrast with what she is at 
heart. She’ll hate herself for what she’s done. Hell, I wouldn’t be 
surprised if she attempted suicide.”
	Aeka grabbed her mother-in-law and shook her. “How can you be 
so flippant about saying your daughter might kill herself?!”
	“That’s a good question, mom,” Ryo-ohki added.
	“She won’t kill herself. Not if I have anything to do with it… 
Ryo-ohki, I want you to keep an eye on her. Use your link to watch her 
thoughts. If anything bad happens, it might be up to you to stop it. 
I’ll teach you to override her powers if that becomes necessary.”
	“You got it," Ryo-ohki said.
	“Tenchi, Ryuken, get Ryoko upstairs and into bed. She’ll be out 
for a few hours, hopefully by then she’ll have processed that 
incident and forgotten about it.”
	Tenchi and Ryuken carried the sleeping Ryoko away.
	“Oh, Tenchi?” Washu added. Tenchi turned to face her. “If she 
ever needed you more, it’s going to be now. She’ll have major league 
mood-swings on the order of Sasami and Tsunami. When she remembers 
happy moments of her life, she’ll be beside herself with joy, but 
they’ll be few and far between. For the most part, she’ll be so 
depressed, she’d need industrial-strength Prozac to pull her out. Be 
there for her. I’m not sure if she’ll want me there for her.”
	“I always will be,” Tenchi replied
	“We all will,” Achika concurred.
	On that, Tenchi and Ryuken left the room, carrying Ryoko with 
them.
	Washu walked away, too, towards the door to her lab. “And where 
do you think you’re going?” Aeka asked.
	“I’m going to concoct something for Ryoko,” Washu replied, “so 
I can be there for her even if she won’t let me near her.” Leaving it 
at that, she opened her door and walked through, locking it behind 
her.

	The Sakigake’s cruise through the transwarp conduit was an 
uneventful one. Although the ship was travelling at many times the 
speed of light, the journey was long enough to be leisurely.
	In their quarters, Funaho and Misaki were playing chess. Funaho 
had brought the game with her from Earth, but had found a match for 
herself in Misaki. They were both highly skilled tacticians, but 
Funaho had the slight edge of patience. What she lacked in hand-to-
hand combat ability, she more than made up for in tactical thought.
	This was their fifth game, and it was rapidly heading towards 
Misaki’s fifth resounding defeat. She was getting frustrated.
	“Knight to King Bishop Three. Double check and mate, sister.”
	“Damn,” Misaki mused. “Let’s change the game. We could fish the 
Playstation out and play Tekken.”
	“Why bother?” Funaho said. “We could finish what we started 
earlier…”
	“Ooh, yes…” Misaki purred, as the two drew closer in for that 
passionate kiss…
	But were once again interrupted. This time by the ship 
sustaining a hit by something.
	“GOD DAMN IT!!” Funaho growled. “What keeps DOING THIS?!!”
	The comm system beeped. “Red Alert!” Azaka exclaimed. “All 
hands to battle stations!”
	The two empresses exchanged a look of concurrence, and sorted 
their attire out before leaving their quarters.
	Moments later, they appeared on Sakigake’s bridge, where Azaka 
and Kamidake were pacing about, trying to ascertain the situation.
	“Shields down to 84%,” Kamidake reported.
	“Find the bastard and return fire!” Azaka replied. “Divine 
Majesties on the Bridge!”
	Funaho took the bridge that Azaka had surrendered. “Report.”
	“We’ve sustained a hit from astern. Shields down to 84%.”
	“Bring us to a full stop,” the empress ordered.
	“But, Divine Majesty, we are in a transwarp conduit. No one has 
ever stopped in one.”
	“Really? Well, we are. Full stop!”
	“By your guidance, Divine Majesty!” Kamidake replied, pressing 
buttons on his station. All on the bridge could feel a slight shift 
of inertia, as the ship was brought to an abrupt stop.
	“Bring us hard about!” Funaho added. “I want to look my 
opponent in the eye!”
	Kamidake complied, bringing Sakigake about.
	Funaho was expecting to see one ship in front of her. What she 
actually saw made her jaw drop.
	Thousands of small ships, an entire starfleet, all holding 
position in front of her.
	“What…” Misaki began.
	“…the…” Azaka continued.
	“…fuck?!” Funaho completed the sentence. Everybody looked in 
surprise at her. She never swore! “QUIT LOOKING AT ME AND KILL 
THEM!!!” she screamed, waving her arms frantically.
	“TARGET ALL WEAPONS!” Misaki took over. “I WANT TO SEE WANTON 
DESTRUCTION ON AN ARMAGEDDON SCALE!! …Teach you to screw with us!”
	“n-space weapons locked on target, Divine Majesty!” Kamidake 
said.
	“FIRE!”

	Ryoko’s sleep was troubled.
	She squirmed within the bed, entangling herself within the 
sheets. Her face was contorted in indescribable pain. She whimpered 
as events played themselves out in her mind.
	She could see herself on Ryo-ohki’s bridge, descending through 
the stratosphere of some generic Class-M world. She saw this through 
her own eyes, not as a dream, but as a vivid reality. Every 
conceivable detail – the cold, dry air of Ryo-ohki’s habitable 
volume. The hard feel of the deck. The inertia of the flight, as Ryo-
ohki’s inertial dampers struggled to compensate.
	Then, the scene suddenly changed, as if she had teleported. But 
she did not initiate the transport willingly. She suddenly found 
herself in a town belonging to some technologically advanced 
civilisation. People milled to and fro. Children played happily.
	The scene of beauty made Ryoko smile inside. But why was she 
now trying to destroy it?
	She was firing energy bolts at virtually anything she saw. 
Buildings, vehicles, people. ‘Why?’ she asked herself. They had done 
nothing to her.
	It did not seem to matter as she went on her killing spree. 
Ryoko tried to stop herself, but it was no use – she still destroyed, 
killed, wounded, terrorised.
	Then she came across a child, knelt before her, clutching her 
badly wounded friend. Tears streamed from the child’s eyes as she 
begged her to spare their lives.
	Ryoko did so, but her body did otherwise. Her right hand 
entered her visual range, and she saw a ball of orange energy appear 
in the palm. Her hand squeezed this ball, and it instantly became a 
sabre. And then, she drew this sabre back to give it velocity.
	She tried to stop her hand from moving. She tried with every 
ounce of strength she had. But it was in vain. The sabre made a 
downward stroke, mortally wounding both of them.
	She looked at her handiwork, and could not believe what she had 
done. Inside, her heart was ripped to shreds by what she had done. 
But why was she laughing? She could not believe she was laughing over 
killing two innocent children!
	The images disappeared as Ryoko flung her eyes open and bolted 
out of her dream. She breathed heavily. She didn’t need to, but it 
was the best way of getting coolant around her red hot, sweating 
body. She sat, entangled in the bedsheets, trying to make sense of 
what she had seen. It was then that she came to realise that it was 
not a dream she had just seen.
	It was a memory.
	Ryoko could not believe it was she who did what she had seen. 
But her mind and body disagreed.
	“NNNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!” she screamed at the top of her voice, 
voicing her virtual civil war with her being. But evading it was of 
no use.
	She buried her head into the taut area of bed sheet that lay 
below her head, and sobbed loudly. Her tears soaked into the fabric, 
making it damper than it already was. She had not wept for anyone but 
Tenchi before. But many deserved it, no matter how hypocritical it 
seemed coming from her.

	Drops of water fell onto the floor of the living room-cum-
atrium of Washu’s lab. They fell through the keyboard of a 
holographic laptop, at which was sat a tall redheaded woman. Washu. 
Tears welled in her cat-like green eyes, slowly overflowing and 
running down her cheeks, where they culminated and jumped overboard, 
landing on the floor.
	Washu was watching the whole thing over the mind-link. She saw 
it as Ryoko saw it, and felt it as Ryoko felt it. She, too, shed a 
tear for those that Ryoko unwillingly slaughtered, but felt sorry for 
her daughter too.
	For it might be this that would finish off what was left of 
Ryoko’s already fragile psyche, and take her ‘miracle child’ away 
from her.

Closing theme: ‘You Stole the Sun From My Heart’ by the Manic Street 
Preachers - performed by Sherry Lynn.

Afterword: YAY!! Finished! It was a lot longer than I hoped, and some 
of the concepts I wanted to use weren’t. I’m already considering a 
rewrite… As always, C&C to jpikachu@tsunami75.freeserve.co.uk. 

The following parts of this series, as well as No Need For First Contact
and my other works, will appear at the Corporation Civil Comm Network, at
www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/6829/