Time for Sorrow, Time for Joy (Who and Who are Doing What Since When!?) By DuoLordOfDeath and his friend Quatre who doesn’t have a name here so we ain’t puttin’ one Disclaimer: We only own the story idea, not the characters and places! So keep your blood-sucking lawyers in their caskets and crypts!! Note: Most history and characters from ‘Tenchi Muyo’ and ‘Tenchi in Tokyo’ “Outpost One to Base! Outpost One to Base! We are under attack! Please send reinforcements as soon as possible! Our troops cannot withstand much more without backup! Our supplies are exhausted and our ammunition is quickly running out! The creatures have broken through our main line of defense! Base, do you read!? Base…” The transmission was cut off as a grotesque creature came up from behind the young commander and sank its foul, unearthly fangs into the human’s soft flesh. Blood spattered across the video screen as the alien beast devoured the man, forcing pieces of bone and metal down its long, slimy gullet. Behind the creature, more of its own kind was invading the small outpost, sweeping their home planet clean of any proof that human men and women had tried to colonize the rough, haggard terrain. Smoke billowed up from the many separate, smaller outposts as waves of the black, bug-like beings struck, and swirled menacingly into the orangey-colored atmosphere. Bloodcurdling screams of men, women, and children filled the evening air, swept over the land by the coarse, dirt-scented wind. And although the men and women fought valiantly to save their small homes, they were horridly outnumbered. They didn’t stand one bit of a chance against these alien killing machines. “Hehehe! I love this!! Get’em! Rip his head off! Do it do it!! YES! Hahahaha!!!! Now, tell me this isn’t the best movie we’ve ever gotten?! It’s a whole lot better than what Princess Ayeka over there would’ve rented, that’s for sure.” Ryoko replied from her perch in midair. She punched the air and laughed loudly as the aliens on the television screen continued to kill the human colonists. Below her, on the couch, the aforementioned Princess Ayeka looked disgusted. She closed her violet eyes and shook her head, her dark lilac hair moving gently as she did so. “Of course, leave it to that devil woman to pick a film that’s as ghastly as this one. How could anyone even watch this kind of movie? I definitely would not let Sasami watch it, and I wouldn’t watch it either, if I could help it. And then, she has to go and make this already unpleasant experience even more unbearable by screaming and yelling like some uncultured heathen.” Ryoko, however, was too busy yelling to hear the Juraian princess’s snide remark, and went on whooping enthusiastically. “Uhhghhh…I’m not feeling too good…this movie is starting to make me sick…” came Mihoshi’s weak voice from the floor. She was swaying slightly left and right. “Kiyone, do you have a trash can or something?” she replied, looking slightly green in her usually tanned face. Kiyone sighed and went to the bathroom and quickly came back with a small trashcan. As she handed it to her blond partner, she sighed in slight exasperation. “Well, I must admit, it’s a lot better than what Mihoshi usually chooses when it’s her turn.” “But, Kiyone, I like that Pokemon show…” Mihoshi said weakly. Kiyone shook her head and walked back over to where she had been leaning on the wall, and continued to watch the movie. “Hey!? Oh My God?! They…they stole my idea for my latest invention!?” cried Washu, who jumped up and looked scandalized. She pointed furiously at a rather large and menacing looking machine on the screen, which, oddly enough, was a large atomotizer that the characters were going to use on the creatures’ home planet to rid their outposts of the aliens’ pestilence. Ryoko looked a bit skeptical. “And what was your invention going to be used for, exactly, Washu?” Washu looked at her “daughter” and smirked superiorly. “The mechanisms for that particular invention are so complex that you would not be able to comprehend them, Ryoko. Even I had trouble figuring them out! I could’ve destroyed the Earth with it while tinkering with it!” Ryoko looked at her blandly. “In other words, you don’t know either. Okay, then…” And Ryoko went back to the movie. Washu looked around the room silently after deciding not to further delve into her argument with the light haired demon, and sighed. No one was paying attention to her any longer, and for this, she was grateful. She needed to think about a few things. No one noticed her slip out of the house and into the darkening evening air… “Man, I’m exhausted...hope Sasami has dinner ready soon,” sighed Tenchi as he stepped inside his house and wiped his brow. He smiled at the collection of girls that sat in front of the television, who were all watching a movie that seemed really gory and loud. He walked up behind the couch and looked at the screen. “What are you girls watching?” “Some horrid movie called ”Earth Outpost # 115”. Thank God that it’s almost dinnertime. Then we can finally turn it off.” Ayeka replied, her hands crossed in her lap. Tenchi looked around a bit and looked a bit confused. “Where’s Miss Washu? Doesn’t she usually watch movies with you guys when you rent them?” Ayeka looked at him and looked a bit worried, as though she had just noticed that the red-haired scientist was missing. “I’m not sure where she went, Lord Tenchi. She was with us earlier…” Tenchi nodded and left the small group to go look for his red haired friend. He thought that perhaps she was back in her lab taking some research on some Universe-shattering experiment, as she usually would be doing while in her lab if she wasn’t trying to destroy the universe, messing with dimensional portals, or making robotic replicas of herself. He knocked gently on the door to the broom closet, and when there was no reply, he walked in and glanced around a room that most definitely was not a broom closet.. There was her black shadow laptop, sitting unattended on an invisible table, a screensaver of little crabs puttering across the screen. Many creatures swam and moved about in separate, rather large containers, including the Masses, which Ryo-Ohki and Ryoko were partially spawned from. But it wasn’t the fascinating creatures from other worlds and dimensions that caught Tenchi’s ebony eyes. It was a small table, obscured from the rest of the amazing laboratory, which made him blink in surprise. As he neared it, he noticed many different objects that Washu had never made a bother to show him, nor anyone else. Dolls, letters, and other items littered the table in an organized mess. In one of the corners sat a well polished, beautifully kept picture frame, made of gracefully molded silver. Tenchi picked up the picture and gazed at it in silent awe. The photograph was one of long ago, he could tell that much. It was of Washu and her family, long before she had ever met him and the other girls. She was smiling and holding a small baby in her arms. She appeared older than Tenchi had seen her in a while, and her husband, a tall, handsome blond haired man, was standing behind her smiling just as broadly as she was. He felt surprised and saddened at the same time, for she had told him what had become of her family those many centuries ago. As Tenchi was about to put the picture back though, the table and all its contents vanished, as though he had discovered a secret that he was not supposed to. When he glanced back at the picture frame, he saw that the picture too, had vanished, leaving the frame alone, tarnished and beaten, like an ancient relic of the long forgotten past. Startled, he took a few steps backwards, letting the now pinkish red frame clatter to the floor. He turned and began to make his way to the dimensional portal between the lab and his home, feeling guilty and confused. He felt as though he had trespassed on something that Washu may not have wanted him to find, and confused at the mysterious disappearance of the toys and letters upon the table. “What could she be hiding?” He wondered as he opened the small oval shaped door. As he stepped back out into the living room, he heard Sasami’s small, cheerful voice call out, “Supper’s ready! Wash up!” Immediately, the entire living room was cleared out, except for Mihoshi, who sat in the floor for a few minutes until finally realizing what the small turquoise haired princess had said. He walked towards the kitchen and smiled at them a bit as he slipped his jacket on. “Guys, I’m going to go find Miss Washu and get her for supper. Go ahead and start without us, I’ll hurry.” “Alright, Tenchi, but hurry back before it gets cold!” Sasami said, and waved as he stepped out of the house and into the cool night breeze… A full moon shone brightly on Juraian heir as he walked quietly down a worn path on the hills of the countryside. Down a few old stone steps, over a worn cobblestone walkway, and he was in the thick woods surrounding his rural home. The night air was surprisingly cool to the boy’s lightly covered body, and he shivered from it. The crickets sang a gentle lullaby to the night as he soundlessly came out of the woods into a large clearing. It was the nearby bluff on his family’s land. Trees and rivers spread for miles below its rocky face, a rolling sea of deeps greens and blues in the night. He heard a sigh directly ahead of him. It was Washu, the red-haired scientist of wonder. She stood on the edge of the bluff, gazing longingly up at the twinkling stars, her only companions in the lonely night. The gentle moonlight cast a silvery glow about her features, making her seem but an abandoned creature of the night, forgotten and unloved. “I feel as empty as that picture frame, Tenchi,” she said finally, without the young man saying a word. “How… how did you know about that, Miss Washu?” he asked, astonished at her understanding. It’s just like it was before… They were taken while I was away…” she replied, holding herself tightly, trying not to cry. “What do you mean?” “After they were taken, I felt just as lonely as the moon that soars up there in the heavens. They were my whole world, Tenchi. I loved them so much… I thought that I would die when they were lost to me… I feel so guilty for not being there, not begging them to stay. Even now, almost ten thousand years later, it haunts my dreams still. Why did they have to leave me, Tenchi, why?” She paused. “But I guess that their lives have turned out for the better, now that they don’t have me bringing them down…” She turned to him slowly. “The anniversary of that day is coming near, Tenchi, and every day that it draws nearer, my world crumbles further into oblivion… But I guess it’s hard for you to feel the way I feel, with so many people around that care for you…” He looked at her carefully. “No, Washu, I understand what you are going through completely. I only grew up with half a family, really. My mother died when I was very young, as you know… And now, the time is coming near when I lost the only woman that I ever truly loved. Sometimes I still don’t understand why Sakuya had to be taken away from me. Even though it has only been a year, and I have not lived my life with the pain as you have, Washu, I still identify with your troubles…” The pair looked at each other silently for a few moments, regarding the other’s feelings for a moment. But their serenity was shattered by the quite unmistakable shouts of Ryoko and Ayeka, and a loud explosion. “Your ladies are waiting for you, Tenchi.” Washu said with a downtrodden sigh. At this, he laughed nervously and smiled. She smiled as well. “Thank you, Tenchi.” “Don’t mention it, Little Washu,” he said, smiling a small crooked grin. The two began to walk down the worn path silently, until Tenchi remembered his manners. “Oh! You must be cold! It’s really cool out here! Where are my manners? Please, take my coat, Miss Washu!” Washu chuckled, “Thanks.” She took the coat and draped it over her shoulders, and the duo continued their short walk to the house, hoping and praying that the routine war on the premises would be over before they arrived… Thankfully, the fiasco between Ayeka and Ryoko has been subdued (for the time being) before the two had arrived. Tenchi and Washu sighed mentally as they stepped onto the slightly blackened porch and walked into the expansive living room. A few grumbles and a bit of growling were coming from the dining room, and as they entered, a loud exclamation met their arrival. “Hey hey hey!! And where were you two while we were sitting here eating?” Tenchi’s father, Nobayuki, asked, grinning broadly in mischief. Tenchi and Washu stopped dead as this, and silence reigned for all of about 3 seconds before the room erupted in an assortment of laughs, grumbles, and words. Washu was also one who was laughing, if only to cover what sadness she had revealed to Tenchi. Tenchi, on the on the other hand, was scandalized. “DAD?! I went to go find Miss Washu for dinner, that’s all!” Nobayuki looked at his son in amused skepticism. “Oh, really? That’s all. Well then, how do you explain the jacket she’s wearing, hmm?” “Oboy…Dad, it is a bit cold outside, you know,” Tenchi replied, his hand on his forehead in exasperation. Lord Tatsuhito, Tenchi’s grandfather, chuckled, his arms crossed over his chest. “Now, Tenchi, you should be a bit more careful around the ladies, or my son here may get slightly jealous.” Nobayuki blushed and went back to eating his dinner, while the room burst into raucous laughter again. Tenchi and Washu took their respective places at the low-lying table, also chuckling, when Mihoshi interrupted again, creating another silence. “I don’t get it, now what was so funny?” And once again, the Masaki household dinner was filled with laughter. After the dishes were washed and the table was cleared, (mostly to the efforts of Sasami, Kiyone, and Tenchi), everyone began to slowly make their way to their own rooms, labs, pallets, etc. The atmosphere had become one of drowsiness and fatigue, and as Tenchi began to leave the kitchen and head for his own room upstairs, he caught a glimpse of Washu about to walk into her lab. He smiled as he began to head up the stairs and nodded at her. “Good night, Little Washu.” Washu looked up at him and smiled a bit, then walked into her laboratory, her pinkish hair moving as she disappeared behind the broom closet door. Tenchi sighed tiredly and continued his ascent up the cool wooden stairs. He opened the door to his darkened room and flipped on a light as he walked across the floor. He changed into a pair of light brown drawstring pants and a dark blue shirt, and as he turned off the light and slid under the cool covers of his bed, his thoughts drifted to his previous conversation with Washu and what he had revealed to the red-haired scientist. He gazed out of the large window next to his bed, and the silvery moon caught his gaze. He remembered again the picture frame and what Washu had said about it and the moon, and sighed. These thoughts plagued him until he had finally fallen asleep.