A message from the writer: 
	First off, this is where one normally sees the standard legal warning on 
these fanfics. I'll assume you are already aware of that information, and if 
you're not, don't worry about it, as it really doesn't affect anyone anyway.

	Secondly, I'd like to mention how much enjoyment has come out of the 
creation of this story during the roughly eight months (not full time, of 
course) of writing time. I make it available for the public in hopes that it is 
at least somewhat as entertaining to read.

	Finally, some explanation of the nature of the story. Originally, I had 
conceived of writing a response to a short fanfic which was an attempt at a 
scientific explanation of Ryoko's abilities. Not so much as an attack on the 
ideas expressed there, but in order to add in my own hypotheses (on which I 
welcome critique). I invented a short story immediately following the events in 
that fanfic with which I could integrate my ideas , however I became so 
interested in the story itself that now the scientific explanation takes a back 
seat to the (quite long now) telling thereof. The paragraphs in which there is 
nothing but explanation can be skipped without loosing much of the story, 
however I at least find it interesting that (by coincidence or by design) the 
Tenchi OAVs seem entirely scientifically plausible. "Tenchi Muyo!" is sci-fi 
rather than fantasy which I find quite interesting. If you are interested in a 
more condensed version of my thoughts on this, you can see my original notes at 
the bottom of this document.

	There are some details that have been changed from the OAV story line. For 
one, elements from "Manatsu No Eve (Daughter of Darkness)," the second movie, 
have been integrated into the story. While this movie comes closest to the OAV 
story line, it isn't exactly in parallel; however, the differences are 
miniscule. Also, Mihoshi and Noboyuki's characters more closely resemble their 
counterparts in the first TV series, and there are a few other crossovers (like 
Washu's 'dimension tuner,' although who's to say that the OAV Washu wouldn't 
also create something like that.

	The most important deviation from the OAV story line is the introduction 
of a new main character. As much as this tends to be a bad idea, I believe that 
making this an SI is in fact the best choice. You see, there had to be someone 
to go against Washu. I certainly do not consider myself anywhere near Washu's 
intellectual level; but as none of the existing characters can even understand 
her speech half of the time, I needed to introduce someone, and I was beginning 
to see an interesting possibility for a major plot twist if that person were 
from a parallel universe. I do not exaggerate any qualities of myself in order 
to fantasize, except for some degree of social grace, without which the 
character would have been exceedingly boring. Actually, some people seem to 
think, having read the fanfic, that this is not the case; while I understand 
their position, I do not believe that it is valid. In order that I not spoil the 
story, I will put my justification after the body thereof.

	There it is, and so...on with the fanfic!
***********************************************************************

War on the gods:
Secrets Revealed

	Earth: circa 2000 AD, a bright, cloud-free summer day with little wind and 
only the softest chirping of far off birds to be heard here near the sapient 
tree Funaho. If a scrupulous observer were to examine the scene carefully, he 
would note a quadruplet of spindly black rods, each waving in such a way as to 
just brush the edges of its counterpart. If said observer were to examine the 
scene not quite so carefully, he would have realized that these were in fact the 
antennae of two rather large solid-black ants; and had one of these ants 
bothered to disengage from its communication long enough to glance upward, it 
would have noticed a rather ominous, large, and all together quite dangerous 
looking blunt object hurtling towards itself.
***********************************************************************

	Ryoko's shimmering and intermittently transparent form appeared directly 
in front of the lake, slightly higher off the ground than she expected, and she 
landed with a thud on the soft sand encircling the small body of water. 
"Hmmph...Well that was disappointing, I'm not sure mom was being entirely 
forthcoming. *SIGH* Oh well, I guess it'll just have to be one of life's little 
mysteries..." 
	
	At this, the immensely beautiful and equally powerful inquisitor, who 
still had no idea how she had become that way, had decided to revert to being an 
immensely beautiful and equally powerful seductress, and almost vanished back to 
/wherever/  it was that she went when she was between locations during 
teleportation (Blast it, she would have known by now had Washu just been able to 
give a straight answer!) when she noticed a silhouetted and vaguely heart-shaped 
figure bounding down out of the woods towards her. 

	As Ryoko watched with growing amusement, the figure spawned a second, now 
flying and 'T' shaped silhouette, which proceeded away from the shoulder of the 
first at only a slightly faster pace than the now visibly giggling little girl 
whom she had of course immediately recognized as Sasami, the younger sister of 
one of her worst enemies...but no, that was an outdated characterization; Ayeka 
and she had become almost friends during the past few years, which would have 
never happened without the interference of a certain, now very cuddly looking 
silhouette, being closely tailed by a now audibly giggling little girl, whom the 
cabbit had grown almost as attached to as to Ryoko herself.

	"Riohki!" she slurred the syllables together,  "Hey! Come back! I can't 
keep up!...HEY RYOKO! I just finished lunch and...well now why do you look so 
unhappy, you destroy something of Tenchi's again?!"

	Ryoko almost looked ready to become violent towards the now suddenly very 
repentant Sasami, but of course would never attack anyone whom she had grown so 
attached to, and whom Ryo-Ohki was so fond of, and as she began her attempt at a 
profuse apology, which came out more like a stuttering and incoherent babble, 
she accidentally lapsed into a response to her little companion's query, 
"...oh...no...really...I didn't mean...oh I HATE doing this, its so out of 
character...its just that Washu wouldn't tell me how I...aw hell, I didn't mean 
to tell you.../oh blast/ I should be more careful with my words..."

	At which point she was immediately interrupted by a beaming Sasami, 
"That's OK, I kind of ignore my royal etiquette training most of the time...I 
have to with people like you around!"

	"And just WHAT is that supposed to mean!----Oh can it!," she suddenly 
yelled at the small puff of fur on her shoulder which was now loudly "miya-ing" 
in delight at her friend's quip. "Now, as for YOU..."

	"Sorry Ryoko! Gotta go, lunch's ready remember!" And she sped off the way 
she came, gradually returning to the silhouetted heart-shape receding towards 
the house.

	"MIYAAA!" voiced Ryo-Ohki in agreement, and jumped off her larger friend's 
shoulder to follow a slightly more cheerful companion...wait a minute, Ryoko did 
seem a little sad didn't she? But by the time the little cabbit turned around, 
she was gone. Ryo-Ohki considered querying the now vastly displaced Ryoko as to 
her mood via their mental link, but decided against it...those sort of 
discussions always led to their being in disagreement. Plus, if Ryoko had wanted 
Ryo-Ohki's input, she would already have asked. And so she turned around again, 
just in time to see a teal glow flare for a brief time over the crest of the 
small rise she had been bounding up. 
***********************************************************************

	Tsunami was uncertain of this development, Sasami had asked for her help 
before, but never for such a thing as this. The truth was that, although she had 
been observing Ryoko and knew why she was so troubled, she frankly didn't know 
how Washu's daughter derived her power; I mean, she wasn't a goddess or 
anything, and despite being the most powerful of the Juraian sapient trees, 
there were Earthlings who knew more about these matters than she. But there was 
one way...with a bit of meddling with Washu's dimension tuner. She hoped she 
could project an astral form into that place without being detected, but at the 
same time she knew she couldn't. How Washu managed to detect such a faint energy 
signature was beyond her, but...wait a moment. Tsunami smiled, "Sure Sasami, I 
can help Ryoko out for you."
***********************************************************************

	A blonde curl of hair would just have been visible to Washu a few minutes 
later, had her pseudo-terminal not just popped up about fifty windows /outside/ 
of the monitor and freely floating in space parallel to the main screen, most of 
which related to urgent information just gathered about the molecular 
composition of an amazingly large droplet of sweat which had fallen off of 
Tenchi's head the last time she had requested a perfectly innocent piece of 
information from him. "Well, at least I got this out of it...doesn't look very 
helpful though...Hmm..." and at a thought the terminal vanished, along with the 
myriad floating windows, just as a blonde puff ducked out of view behind a large 
particle acceleration tube. Washu remembered how everyone had thought the thing 
was a roller-coaster weaving through the park-like setting in this section of 
the lab...heh heh...um...hold on...blonde puff...of...hair...UGHHH!!! She must 
be the luckiest person in the universe, hmm...maybe worth studying in her own 
right...nah, just coincidence...and her train of thought was interrupted by a 
violent electrical POP and a huge white light from somewhere off down the 
grounds. 
	
	"ACK! The dimension tuner," she shouted as alarms began to blair, "that 
could lead to real problems, I mean, if she loaded too many search 
parameters..." she huffed to herself as she careened towards the large 
shimmering dome now a few hundred feet away, "...I might not be able to cancel 
them all before it activated and...what is happening!!!"
	
	A small piece of paper fluttered to the ground around the detective's feet 
as the incredulous genius approached her at a flat out run. "I'm really sorry 
Washu...I mean, Washu-chan...I mean...*SOB*...oh I don't know what I mean!..."
	
	"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY MACHINE!!!" shouted the now amazed scientist, 
who, upon arriving at the main control panel, realized the answer to her own 
question. "How...How did you know how to do THIS!!!" And at that she pointed to 
the screen, eyes wide.

	"Um...I really don't know and I...well Tsunami gave me this note and 
I...*BIG SOB*...OH NO!!! I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU THAT TSUNAMI TOLD ME TO 
DO WHAT WAS ON THAT NOTE THAT SHE WROTE AND...and...and..." /and/ with that, she 
sank to the ground crying.

	Observing from a distance, Tsunami laughed at the thought of Ryoko's 
reaction to seeing Mihoshi mirror her mistake before realizing that this was 
going to bring Washu down on Sasami in an effort to find out why she had brought 
a being from subspace into their world. "Ugh...It's at times like these that I 
wish I WERE a goddess! Mused the third member of the ancient, and now 
nonexistent, triad. *SIGH* "I really am interfering with Sasami's life too much 
recently, maybe this is a good place to start letting her become more 
independent...Oh sure, just before you merge with her right?...Well I can't do 
anything about it now anyway, best to leave them alone."
***********************************************************************

Earth: circa 2000 AD; somewhere in hyperspace relative to the Tenchiverse:

	The tiny, transparent, hard blob of matter floated through space, 
oblivious to its surroundings, and eventually alighted upon, or rather slammed 
into, a hard, rough, jagged surface and lodged itself into the material. Had the 
bacterium had optical sensors, and sufficient processing power to use them, it 
would have observed...nothing. The astronomically huge object hurtling towards 
it made absolutely no difference to it whatsoever, it was too small and pliable. 
But that fact didn't stop the monstrous appendage from striking the surface with 
an amazing force, enough in fact to drive the whole of it, along with the 
bacterium, a good distance downward before being repulsed by the upward force 
the surface seemed to be generating.
	
	"Ooops," thought the roughly seventeen year-old male human sitting in 
front of his computer...it wasn't floating or popping up windows outside of its 
monitor, but was quite powerful for the technology available to his world. "You 
know, I really should stop telling everyone how great this system is, it 
probably gets annoying...I definitely shouldn't be putting it into this fanfic." 
he thought as the erroneous character vanished from the screen. If he hadn't 
been thus enthralled in his creation, he would have noticed a purple swirling 
vortex forming behind his head and growing quite rapidly. He /did/ notice 
however when his computer monitor suddenly split into two identical and whole 
pieces which floated apart from each other. And he /definitely/ noticed when 
with a sudden flash of light he was standing, or rather had fallen for lack of a 
chair, in a grassy field, with the whole of his vision obscured by the face and, 
well, other areas of a woman, leaning amazingly far over him. He couldn't make 
out her face quite yet, his eyes were still adjusting from the flash of light. 
	
	"Ugh...How did I get /here!?/"
	
	"I can't tell you that...uh, well here's the situation..."	
	
 	He still couldn't tell who she was, but...wait, she wasn't leaning, she 
was /floating! / This was too familiar! It couldn't be... 		

	"Aah! Ryoko, I umm...please don't try to...uh.../do anything/...or 
something...you know...to me...."
	
	Ryoko, now an uncharacteristically bright shade of red, shouted "Hey! 
Don't you go thinking that just because I had you transported here that you are 
going to replace my Tenchi!"
	
	"Oh, um, then I haven't inhabited Tenchi's body then?"
	
	"Well obviously! Just look at you, scrawny weakling nerdish 
little...Earthling...oh dear, I really must stop using that as an insult...HEY! 
Where are you going!"
	
	After a /very/ short chase, Ryoko had caught up enough to ask how in the 
hell this blasted little "gift" from Tsunami had known who she and Tenchi were, 
and was not pleased with the answer:

	"I don't think you'd be pleased with the answer," was the answer.

	"Aggh! I don't CARE if I'd be PLEASED with the answer, I just want to KNOW 
the answer, ALL RIGHT!!!" To back this point up, little glowing balls spun out 
from Ryoko's now hovering body.

	"Well, its like this...ummmmm...hm...well...uh..." One of the glowing orbs 
shot forward and impacted the ground, creating a fairly small but nonetheless 
impressive explosion.
	"...wellllllYEEEEAAAAHHH!!! Why'd you have to do that, I'm trying to think 
here!"

	"Don't be so cryptic! Just say it!"

	"Well you were cryptic about how I got here!"

	"Fair enough...but I'm not known for playing fair!" She said from the 
ether as she and her energy sword materialized in a /very/ unfortunate position 
for her target (specifically, with the sword on one side and the rest of Ryoko 
on the opposite side). The sword was as far pressed-up against his neck as an 
energy sword can be, and this fact was producing a very disturbing involuntary 
shaking which threatened to bring the blade...closer...which of course would 
mean that...

	"HEY! GET WITH IT!...Say someth..."

	Fortunately, at this moment a large, streaming white wormhole opened up 
directly above Ryoko, who just managed to retract her sword before Mihoshi, 
followed by Washu's head and shoulders materialized through the hole and landed 
headfirst on top of Ryoko.

	"Get the hint MIHOSHI!!!" shouted the, probably falsely, irate Washu, 
before pulling herself back up and closing the gate. How she missed the 
newcomer, who at this point had regained his composure and was calmly surveying 
the situation (the best synopsis of which he could generate was "REALLY 
WEIRD!!!") he didn't know, but he thought it rather odd.

	Ryoko: "Ugh, this is really bad timing Mihoshi."

	As Mihoshi wailed, Ryoko got back to business, "OK, OK, never mind how you 
know who we are, do you know why you're here?"

	"Well as I recall, I was just asking you that...COOL!!! Those sweat drops 
really form like that! Don't you find that kind of thing a little strange?!"

	"Um...huh? What are you pointing at, I don't see anything, I don't want to 
miss anything...why are you laughing?"

	"Never mind, anyway...enough hostilities all right? Why did you bring me 
here...and /how/ the heck did you bring me here, in all my analyses of your 
powers, this never came up as a byproduct."

	"/Ah/!  Perfect! So this is why she picked you! But there must have been 
slightly less irritating people out there who could help me...anyway, as you 
said, down to business..."

	"...you know, this would be a really interesting topic for a fanfic..."

	"Are you listening to me?"

	"...of course, its probably been done a lot already..."

	"You aren't listening to me."

	"...I'd have to come up with some sort of strange twist on things to..."

	"HOW DO MY POWERS WORK!!!"

	"...bingo."

	"Huh?"

	"Bingo."

	"WHAT?!"

	"BING-GO!!!"

	"WHA-AT?!?!"

	"Oh my god, that was pathetic, well THAT certainly won't go into 
it...well, so that's why you brought me here. Why me, because of my interest in 
scientifically explaining this universe? There must be someone better 
qualified...Washu for instance!"

	"Well don't you think I tried that. She just gave me some nonsense about 
having two powers when OBVIOUSLY I have at least five main ones and a host of 
little 'sub-powers,' and then she just said I could negate the electromagnetic 
force and that was it, and then there was that whole thing about repelling the 
atoms in the atmosphere, and I really don't see how that would work at the same 
time that I'm negating that force entirely...And THEN she said she couldn't 
explain how I teleport, which I thought was funny at first but then I realized 
she must know how I do it, she DESIGNED the system! And then..."

	"I get it, and you're right, although I don't know why she'd hide 
something like that from you. I thought of electromagnetic dispersion and 
repulsion myself, but it just wouldn't work, let me explain why, and then I'll 
get into your other powers..." It was about this time that the sheer absurdity 
of this situation finally hit him and he sank to the ground alongside Mihoshi 
and began to intermittently laugh and shout things about how weird or how 
amazingly fortuitous all these happenings had been. This had Ryoko completely 
perplexed, "Let's see, I bring you here against your will, argue with you, fight 
with you, hunt you down with energy spheres, hold you at sword point and then 
you start laughing about how great it all is?!"

	"Well...I...it's just that I've..." and he lost it again, but quickly got 
/it/ back when he realized that he had just finished nearly duplicating the 
first actions that he had seen of Mihoshi's since arriving here.
	
	"Aah! No more of THAT!" and stood up quickly.

	"No more of what?"

	"Oh...acting like Mihoshi."

	"Oh yeah, man I'd hate myself if I ever did something like that!"

	Somewhere, Tsunami let out a little chuckle.

	"Ever did something like what?..." asked the recovering Mihoshi as she 
rose off the ground.

	Ryoko's reply came evilly mockingly, "...ever did something like acting 
like /you/."

	"Too many interruptions here, don't you think?" Ryoko said, stepping over 
Mihoshi's crying and triple-folded body. And at this they both rose around three 
hundred feet vertically.

	"UGHLGHLMPH...that...was...too...fast...Ryoko..."
***********************************************************************

	Tsunami was worried, this was taking too long, ugh...too many 
interruptions was right! And they were about to get another one. How was it that 
all this was happening? It was as if there were something attempting to prevent 
Ryoko from learning the truth. Uh oh! Too soon!

	She vanished immediately and an astral form materialized facing Ryoko and 
the newcomer.

	"Tsunami!"

	"Look out!" she pointed.

	Ryoko nonchalantly flipped up the elevators on the oncoming private 
airplane via telekinesis, and as it began to rise vertically she once again 
questioned the newcomer as to her powers.
	
	Seeing this, Tsunami faded back to her realm, to again watch the goings on 
she had instigated. And she was immediately sorry she had done so before 
reminding Ryoko of the plane, which had now stalled and become unflyable. What 
was more, the pilot, having bailed out, was now screaming curses down at a 
certain floating duo, in Juraian Imperial Standard Language.
***********************************************************************

	Masaki Noboyuki looked out his large window at the rows of high-rises and 
sighed. "Too much work, darn clients are always so demanding. I wish I could get 
home a little earlier too, I don't even get to take a day off a week..." and so 
on with other complaints, which took up fully fifty percent of his work day, and 
then, "Oh come in dear, I have a surprise for you!"

	Hesitation, and from outside, "...Uh, dad, its me, you know, your son, 
Tenchi, who is male, and to whom you are the direct ascendant...I just thought 
you might want to know that before I came in..."

	"Now what's that all about son?" Tenchi heard through the door, along with 
confused scrambling and other noises which would have made it seem that he had 
been sleeping. And that's what Tenchi wished he could believe was going on in 
there." 

	"So anyway I'm coming...in...now...OK?"

	*Pause* "OK son! Come on in, you know I'm always happy to see you express 
an interest in my work, but don't you think you could have asked my secretary to 
let you in."

	"She seemed to think it would be better if I just let myself in." Tenchi 
said, slightly irritated at his father's secretary's sense of humor.

	"Well all right, say, why are you still outside?"

	The door slowly opened and Tenchi peeked inside. Either his father HAD 
been only sleeping or he had done an amazingly good job of...

	"Well, how's it going Tenchi!?" Asked Noboyuki, good naturedly.

	More relaxed now, "Well you know you always come home so late...I was just 
wondering what you were doing here, that's all."

	Noboyuki seemed to float in midair as his arms waived and he jumped up and 
down, "Hey now, you know I've always been faithful to your mother Tenchi!"

	Tenchi's hand shot to the back of his neck faster than any human eye could 
discern and a sweat drop nearly three times the size of his head phased into 
existence just above him, "NO NO I DIDN'T MEAN /THAT/!!!"
	
	Back to his normal, good natured self, "Oh! Well then what did you mean 
Tenchi?"

	"I...ah...wanted to ask you what kind of /work/ you were doing that made 
you so late."

	"Oh right of course! That's what I thought you meant! I mean, what else 
could you have meant...I mean of course you might have meant that..."

	Not wanting to know what he "might have meant," Tenchi quickly 
interrupted, "No, never mind, I'll just be leaving Dad, bye!"

	"Now wait a minute Tenchi! What if I took the day off today, we could 
spend a little father-son time together!"

	"Well...uh...it is already five and..."

	"Look here, I've got these tickets that a woman on the street...uh...gave 
me! Scenic aerial tours of rural Japan, how about we take a little plane ride 
Tenchi!"

	Tenchi, noting the rectangular red welt on his father's face that looked 
suspiciously like an impact mark with a large stack of the tickets he was 
holding, commented, "You've got to be kidding..."

	"Oh come on, it'll be fun..."

	"...that's so 'touristy'..."

	"...and I know you'll enjoy it..."

	"...and so silly..."

	"...it'll be great, let's go!"

	"...but...but...but..."
***********************************************************************
	"...but what if Ryoko flips the plane out of control?" Tenchi though to 
himself, wishing he had thought of /that/ one. Figures the pilot would just bail 
out like that, really rude, well I guess we'd better figure some way of not 
being killed at this point..." Tenchi really wasn't worried, he had very nearly 
mastered his control over his Jurai powers by this time, and was just about 
ready to employ them when the emergency exit opened and he and Noboyuki, who had 
been shouting just about anything he could think of that was related to how 
miserable his existence had been and how Achita must be angry with him et 
cetera, were dragged forcefully out of the plane and suspended in midair. 

	Tenchi's look of surprise heightened as he saw Ryoko's new companion, and 
grew even greater when he said something completely unintelligible to him. What 
was that? Sounded western, but he couldn't pinpoint the language. He tried to 
reply but only got a blank stare and then a look of consternation, he couldn't 
understand.
***********************************************************************
	Suddenly, a bright shape flashed in front of the newcomer's eyes. It was 
the falling fuselage of the light craft Ryoko had impelled upward a while ago. 
Horror changed to confusion as two people were jettisoned out the side door and 
began floating up to them. Well one did anyway. The older one started floating 
downward, and his speed only increased when he shouted something at Ryoko. As 
the smaller form came into view, he could see that it was that of Tenchi. 

	"Oh man, this is gonna be good."

	"-something unintelligible-"

	Oh yeah, right, "Ryoko, don't we have any sort of universal translator or 
something?"

	At this, Ryo-Ohki burst through the clouds, meowing furiously and 
transported them into her main bridge. 

	"Good idea."

	"Hi, I'm Tenchi Masaki, I haven't seen you before, I don't think you're 
from off world." he said, questioningly.

	"Hello, my name's Swift Running Son-Of-A-Pillager of the clan of Wild 
Boars."

	That got Tenchi's attention, "Excuse me."

	Ryoko: "It translated the archaic meaning of your name."

	Tenchi/Newcomer: "Oh."

	The stranger said "Well never mind, I'm here because Ryoko wants to know 
how her powers work and Washu wouldn't tell her, don't ask me how she got me 
here, I'm from somewhere in what you would call subspace, an alternate universe, 
but I know a little about your universe and, more importantly, I've been trying 
to understand how Ryoko's power works myself."

	Tenchi stood, agape, as the words appeared on one of Ryo-Ohki's pop-up 
windoids. 	

	"You mean to say that Ryoko brought you here..."
	
	Ryoko: "...Tsunami..."

	Again, simultaneously: "Ohhh...wait, huh?"

	Tenchi "...that /Tsunami/ brought you here for the express purpose of 
telling Ryoko how her powers work, that seems a little far fetched you know, 
Tsunami doesn't usually act that way."

	"And you've had a lot of experience in that field?"

	"Well no but it doesn't seem very like her."

	"Well this whole thing seems really bizarre to me, I never thought I'd 
actually get to interact with this universe; but Ryoko, can we finally get down 
to our discussion now."

	"No need for discussions, just talk, babble if you want to, say something 
quickly before something else happens."

	"Well all right, here goes..."
***********************************************************************

	"Blast that Mihoshi!" Washu cursed to herself as she finished resetting 
the console to its previous state, "...cost me a good hour of my time, and just 
when I was preparing to do the last tests on..." As if to further her annoyance, 
the entirety of the lab was suddenly bathed in red light. Klaxons went off 
throughout the complex and a huge pseudo-display materialized directly in front 
of her with the emboldened message:

***
WARNING:
SIGNIFICANT ACTIVITY DETECTED:

Ryo-Ohki central computer reports the following conversation in location: Ryo-
Ohki--Main Bridge:

"...I'm here because Ryoko wants to know how her powers work and Washu wouldn't 
tell her..." 

speaker: unknown --NOTE: speaker's quantum wave form is highly shifted

NOTE: Also present are: Masaki Tenchi, Hakubi Ryoko

Status of transmission: Reception only, passive mode, Ryo-Ohki does not detect 
interface.
***

	"Damn!" and she ran off, the window closing at her thought.

***********************************************************************

	"...to start off with, the electromagnetic force is the force that..."
	
	"Repels two objects when they hit, I know, Mom did tell me that much."

	"That's right, but it also holds electrons in orbit around the central 
nucleus of an atom..."

	"So if I dispersed it my atoms would be destroyed?!"

	"In effect, yes. That's one reason why that can't be the way you phase, 
there are others..."

	A small video link popped up on one of the bridge viewports, no one 
noticed Washu observing their conversation.

	"...for instance, electromagnetism is a major component of organic 
functions; without it, metabolism wouldn't work, your nervous system wouldn't be 
able to communicate, your biological brain would just be a collection of cells 
with no ability to collaborate, your technological brain supplements /certainly/ 
wouldn't work without electricity..." at this the image of Washu winced 
slightly, "...you would also become invisible without a reflective force for 
photons to bounce off of..."

	"WAIT!!!"

	"Yes?"

	"What do you mean, 'technological brain supplements?!'"

	"Well, to process most of the data required in hyperspatial movement, 
flight, magnetic force-field generation...well you get the idea, you need 
computerized implants that interface with your biological brain and your 
integral crystal matrix..."

	"I am NOT a cyborg!!!"

	"Well I don't see how you couldn't be, I mean technically; you certainly 
don't /look/ like a typical cyborg...er...heh heh...I mean...hey now, you don't 
have to take it so personally!!!"

	But Ryoko didn't care about the slip-up, "I am /not/ a machine!!!" And 
with every word the energy sphere she had been generating grew larger.
	
	Tenchi screamed, "Ryoko DON'T!!!"

	But she did, she fired it, the huge projectile screamed across the bridge, 
suddenly inverted half way to its target, stretched, shattered and vanished.
	
	"He's right you know," commented the slightly sad sounding voice of the 
greatest scientific genius in the universe. "I thought you would react this way 
if I told you," she said as she materialized inside the energy shield, which 
dissipated soon after, "That's why I acted the way I did, congratulations on 
seeing through me."

	"No!"

	"Most of your subconscious functions are carried out through...well the 
best analogy would be computer chips."

	"no...YOU'RE LYING TO ME!!! Why do you always have to tell me things like 
that, stop it." She looked to Tenchi for support, but he changed his look of 
puzzlement too late and, "You, you can't think, no...you're wrong...YOU'RE ALL 
WRONG!!!" And she vanished, crying.

	"Oh no. Ugh, just as I was starting to form a real friendship with her, 
you see what you've done!" And the scientist also disappeared, after tapping a 
few keystrokes on her pseudo-terminal.

	The stranger decided he didn't feel like pretending to be a sculpture of 
himself any more and jumped to Ryo-Ohki's helm. "Blast...of all the people I 
didn't want to make angry at me...Ryo-Ohki, can you track Ryoko?!"

	From all around came a faint sad meow.

	"Then how about Washu?!"

	"MeOW!!!"

	"YES! Then lets go, follow Washu Ryo-Ohki!"

	Nothing happened.

	"Um..."

	He experimented with the control orbs, and was suddenly very painfully 
aware of the fact that he was being forced against the outer wall of a now 
rapidly spinning Ryo-Ohki.

	"Re...calibrate...the helm...Ryo-Ohki."

	Nothing happened.

	"Tenchi, you wanna try something here?"

	Tenchi had no idea what the stranger had said, not being able to turn his 
head to check the screen displaying the translation. "Ryo-Ohki, stop this!"

	The spinning stopped.

	"What did you say."

	Tenchi, looking over what the stranger had been saying, said, "I think she 
won't respond to your voice commands."

	"Can you get her to listen?"

	"I've tried before, she just won't pay attention to anyone but Ryoko when 
she's in this form."

	"Figures...Ryo-Ohki, come ON, we need to follow Washu!"

	Nothing.

	"Do you know how to use these controls?"

	"No, sorry." Rubbing the back of his neck.

	"Well, I could try again...maybe the central one controls the..." and the 
ship shot straight up, flattening them onto the floor. "Well, getting closer." 
He managed to reach up to stop the ascent. "These are REALLY sensitive, it would 
take a huge amount of coordination to use them effectively. Kind of a safeguard 
I guess...Ryo-Ohki, can you show me directions to Washu's location?"

	On screen a three dimensional star map appeared, zoomed far outward, 
suddenly flattened, turned on its side and inserted itself into a vast number of 
other two dimensional planes, edge on to the view, one of which had a little 
marker reading:
 
					Washu: +345.9817HSU.

	"What the hell...Tenchi, do you have any idea what this means?"

	He didn't.

	"Well, I guess I could try...Ryo-Ohki, define 'HSU.'"

	A smaller window popped up above the first, with the text: HSU: 
Hyperspatial Standard Unit, designates relative location in the fourth spatial 
dimension.

	"Uh...So it's a unit of distance in hyperspace?...Why would Washu be in 
hyperspace...umm...Ryo-Ohki, what is that place, why is Washu there?

	Ryo-Ohki meowed helplessly, she had no idea.

	Tenchi asked, "Can you show us a picture?"

	Nothing happened, apparently not. But it gave the newcomer an idea, "Maybe 
we can get a map of that section...Ryo-Ohki, zoom in and decompress universal 
plane at +345.9817 HSU."

	The plane marked: "Washu" slid out of the array of planes and rotated to 
fill the view, finally, it expanded into a three dimensional map showing several 
planetoids, arranged in an obviously unnatural fashion, one of which was marked: 
Washu--Lat:34deg45min12.12432secWLong:78deg59min0.001secS
(Compass points relative to current orientation [UP=N]).

	"Oh the lab, should have thought of that." And he returned the ship to the 
ground, literally.

	"Ouch."

	"Ugh, why couldn't you have just tried for the lake at least?"

	"Sorry...uh...Ryo-Ohki?"

	"Meow." Angrily.

	"Might you transport us to the surface, please."

	She let out a barrage of confirming meows and her two occupants were 
lifted to the surface of the Earth in a glowing ball, followed closely by a much 
more cuddly form of Ryo-Ohki, who looked particularly displeased with this 
newcomer.

	"Quick, we've got to get to Washu's lab before she goes after Ryoko."

	Without Ryo-Ohki translating, Tenchi could only look confused, even more 
so when he was led directly to Washu's lab. 
***********************************************************************

	The small ringing crab didn't attract Washu's attention, she was some 
distance away, trying to locate Ryoko; and amazingly, failing. "How is this 
possible, I should be able to detect her anywhere within her range of movement 
after this short a time...ugh, where could she be?"
***********************************************************************

	The small ringing crab /had/ attracted the newcomer's attention, and it 
had him quite worried. But after a while and no response, he calmed down. "Why 
was I worried? We came here to talk to her!" he wondered aloud, drawing another 
stupefied glance from Tenchi.

	"So, where is Washu anyway?" Tenchi said in perfect English.

	"What did you say!?" The newcomer said in perfect Japanese. "Ack, what 
the?!"

	"Sorry for the delay." said Washu in both Japanese and English 
simultaneously. "But I didn't detect you for a while...too busy searching for 
Ryoko. ANYWAY, I thought you just MIGHT want to be able to communicate with each 
other, so I activated my nano-translators."

	This one had them both stumped, "They infiltrate your brain stem and 
redirect signals SO YOU SPEAK EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGE!!!!!!!" she said with an 
outrageous over-accentuation.

	Slightly chuckling, the stranger said, "Oh, I get it...but what do you 
mean, searching? Can't you find her."

	"No. She must have never returned to normal space, but why would she do 
that?"

	"To disappear...oh it's all my fault, I shouldn't have seemed so 
uncaring," scolded Tenchi to himself. "Oh I always do things like this, what's 
WRONG with me, how can Ryoko even stand to be around me ohhhh....."

	"Christ, Tenchi! Your inferiority complex is getting a little out of hand 
here. Washu, don't you know any way to convince him to cheer up?"

	"Yes, find Ryoko."

	"Any way we can help you with that?"

	"No."

	"Yeah, thought so...well I guess we could mess around with some of this 
stuff in here for entertainment while you're working...JUST 
KIDDING...kidding...man!"
	
	They suddenly found themselves, minus Washu, violently flung against the 
living room couch, just as Ayeka, Sasami, Mihoshi and Noboyuki were coming down 
the stairs.

	"And who might this be, Lord Tenchi?" asked the elder princess.

	"OH! Is this one of your friends from school Tenchi?!" laughed her sister 
as she raced down to greet this newcomer.

	"Hey! Now just what is it that Ryoko sees in you that she can't get from 
me, huh?" quipped their host.

	"I'm sorry, I don't have any idea what you're saying." said the newcomer, 
still in fluent Japanese.

	"Uh...what he means is, oh blast! How do you turn these things off!"  
responded Tenchi, still speaking in English.

	"Ummmm....Hey! Does anybody notice something kinda strange going on here 
huh?"

	All: "YES MIHOSHI!!!"

	"All right, here's the situation...I can only speak your language but can 
only understand the language that Tenchi can only speak, but he can only 
understand yours, OK?"

	"Umm..." And after a while, "...well OK, but why."

	"Well, Washu..." forgetting he was in the better of the three universes, 
he waited for everyone to say "Oh..." knowingly and dismiss it. As it was, 
everyone was wondering why he just trailed off so, "umm.. she gave us these 
nano-probes that manipulate our speech so we could talk to each other...but when 
there are more than two, it kind of doesn't work."

	"Aha. And that is why my Tenchi can only talk in this strange Earth 
language?"

	"Tenchi, what was that?"

	Tenchi, red-faced, repeated the comment.

	"Yep...but uh...isn't Japanese also a strange...Earth...guess not."

	Scowling, Ayeka retorted, matter-of-factly, "What you so arrogantly call 
Japanese is /actually/ the Juraian Imperial Standard Language!" 

	Tenchi: "Really?"

	"What is it?," said the newcomer.

	The rest looked confusedly at Tenchi.

	"She said its the Juraian Language."

	"Well how on Earth...well that doesn't really apply does it...well how did 
it become an Earth language."

	Ayeka looked ready to launch into an ungodly long story about some ancient 
benevolent cause to spread Juraian customs to backwater worlds or the like, so 
he stopped her, "Never mind, that's not what's our problem is, Ryoko's missing 
and I think I caused it..."

	Tenchi didn't have to translate Ayeka's response to that, but Ryo-Ohki 
looked to Sasami so cute and sad that Mihoshi started crying even harder than 
she had before, and that must have been hard to do. 

	"Oh. I'm sorry Ryohki, soothed Sasami, looking sad herself, I'm sure we'll 
find Ryoko soon, right Tenchi!"

	The newcomer "translated" Tenchi's mumbling to himself, which he had been 
doing and, having not noticed Sasami's question, continued to do, as "Sure 
Sasami!"

	Sasami, pouting: "Well that certainly didn't sound like 'Sure Sasami' to 
me."

	At which point, Tenchi finished processing what little he had made out of 
Sasami's comment, looked up suddenly and said cheerfully, "Sure Sasami, we'll 
find her! Don't you worry."

	Sasami: "Well, what did he say?"

	"Heh.........heh heh.........ummmmmm..........he said, 'definitely.'"

	Not convinced, "Well OK." Then she cheered up, "HI GRANDFATHER!"
***********************************************************************

	The house was noisy, he could hear the commotion all the way up in the 
shrine, and Katsuhito knew that Ryoko at least wasn't there, and he knew also 
what that always meant. Some new trouble had arrived. Dropping his broom, the 
robed figure dashed down the stairs at incredible speed. Finally arriving at the 
house, he threw open the door, and his fear was confirmed, not that he was going 
to let on that he was concerned.
	
	"Hello Sasami, girls. Hello Tenchi. And who is this? Eh? A friend of 
yours?"

	"Oh, hi grandpa! He's someone Tsunami knows, she brought him here from 
/somewhere/ to help Ryoko, only she ran off thanks to me, and now we don't know 
where she is and, oh it's hopeless!"

	"Hey Tenchi," Katsuhito said in unaccented English, "have you been 
studying English in school too, and in secret no less, wanted to surprise me 
huh? Well, good job," slapping him particularly hard on the back, "I knew you 
had some studiousness in you!"

	Tenchi had no idea what his grandfather had just said, but his new 
companion was clearly enjoying some hidden joke. 

	"What's the matter Tenchi?" Reverting to Japanese, he started to say, 
'cabbit got your tongue?' but realized that the joke was getting rather old, and 
Ryo-Ohki didn't seem to like being called a cat anyway. Instead he remarked, 
"Still a bit rusty understanding it eh?"

	"No, for your information I can't understand it at all, just speak it, in 
fact I can't seem to stop speaking it."

	Here it comes, "Hmm...." he hummed thoughtfully.

	The stranger finally spoke, "You see, I...well...I used to only be able to 
speak English, but Washu made it so we spoke each others' languages so we could 
talk but now its kind of backfiring a bit." It sounded like he had been 
explaining this a lot.

	"I see...hmmm." This was just like how Mayuka had come into...blast, 
Mayuka was wandering around in the shrine! "Excuse me, I must go back to my 
duties," he lied. 

	Katsuhito cursed his momentary lapse into carelessness as he rushed back 
up the stairs to the shrine. He should never have allowed Mayuka to watch him in 
his daily rituals, but she got terribly bored in the house with only Mihoshi for 
company, well of course Sasami had been there too, but she was busy cooking, and 
Tenchi had thought maybe it would be better for someone more responsible to 
watch her while he went into town, "more responsible," right...
	
	But Mayuka was still sitting cross-legged on the ground as he had told her 
to remain while he did his cleaning; she was amazingly well behaved for someone 
not yet two years old.
	
	"Hi Katsi!" then looking slightly afraid, "uh...hon...erab..le Gr...Grpa."

	Katsuhito came dangerously close to laughing out loud, but managed to hold 
his stern expression, with a great deal of difficulty. "You must try to maintain 
discipline Mayuka, or I cannot allow you to continue visiting me here."
	
	The child looked very somber and said, "OK Katsi."

	Ignoring his great-granddaughter's error, the priest returned to his 
cleaning outside, deciding to wait for the conflict that was sure to erupt a few 
hundred feet below him any time now.
***********************************************************************

	"That wasn't like grandpa at all," worried Tenchi.

	The stranger agreed and repeated the comment for the rest of the crowd.
	
	Sasami: "Well, what do we do now?"

	"We wait until Washu finds Ryoko." And he was repeated in Japanese.

	"Hmm...What can we do until then, huh?"

	Ayeka immediately turned the TV to her favorite channel, and as always, a 
major fight broke out, although it wasn't nearly so bad without Ryoko around. In 
the fray, Sasami and the newcomer decided to play a video game lying near the TV 
and after a few minutes were locked in epic struggle over the fate of a very 
realistic 3D CG model of Ryo-Ohki.

	"Washu let me use one of her computers to make this, explained Sasami." 
Which Tenchi, watching, translated.

	Impressed, and really hoping to get his hands on technology like that-he 
/definitely/ needed to get back on Washu's good side-, the stranger suddenly 
jumped backwards off the rim of a river gorge to the dismay of Sasami's homing 
missile, which initiated a circling motion to acquire a new target.

	Sasami's screech brought the rest of the group to her aid, all shouting 
suggestions on how best to escape her own weapon's wrath, and completely 
forgetting that they had just been yelling about how rude it had been for Sasami 
to use their confusion to get her way.

	After several hours, Sasami was leading 342 to 310 points, and CG Ryo-Ohki 
was cheering her on with a tremendous spray of cat sounds. Sasami was amazingly 
good at this game, the stranger thought, "I think you've got me, Sasami."

	"Don't give up yet...ooh!" she said as her character vaporized under a 
hail of laser blasts, "I'll get you for that!" And they played on. 

	Finally, the epic battle over, CG Ryo-Ohki declared her intent to help 
Sasami finish off her unfortunate victim. However, her opponent, now under 
computer control, suddenly jumped down and blasted the little cabbit straight 
through a wall. The battle ready Tsunami whom Sasami had been controlling 
screamed in a fashion that the real Tsunami wouldn't have ever even considered 
emulating. But Sasami just giggled, she knew the ending of course, and shouted 
"GO!" when Ryo-Ohki's ship form, modified into a ship that could have taken on 
the Soujya, burst into view above the pair, transported Sasami on board, and 
prepared to fire.

	"You have to be joking," the stranger muttered as his character leapt 
heroically into what couldn't have been more than an escape pod with directional 
thrusters and a laser cannon mounted on it. Sasami giggled.

	The group watched the space battle's preordained conclusion followed by 
the message:

***

VICTOR: Sasami, places 234th on the high scores list.

Defeated: Unknown Contestant places 235th on the high scores list.

***

	The high scores list displayed, scrolling down to their position. Above 
number 235, all the names were Sasami-Victor, with ridiculously high scores, 
some in the tens of thousands.

	Below 235 were the names of the others in the room, several scores were 
comparable to his own, Ryo-Ohki had scored less than ten fewer than he had on 
two occasions, but it was indeed surprising to see that he had bested everyone 
save one in the room. 

	After being cursed, congratulated or meowed at by the rest of the group, 
the new guest wondered what there was left to do.

	Tenchi thought... "Hey, didn't you say you had other ideas about how 
Ryoko's powers work?"

	"Sure, curious?"

	Tenchi affirmed.

	Ayeka, slightly worried about what Tenchi had just agreed to, looked 
questioningly at the newcomer. After he explained Tenchi's request, the group 
crowded around eagerly.

	Sasami: "Oh fun! A story about Ryoko!"

	The stranger drew his mouth to a point, off to the left of the center line 
of his face, contemplating that. "Well not really, I've just been working on a 
few hypotheses..."

	"Well I wanna know, come on!"

	Smiling, "Well all right, lets start with phasing through objects. Like I 
told Tenchi here before, the most obvious possibility is negating the 
electromagnetic force, but..."
***********************************************************************

	The now very large psuedo-terminal screen displayed a detailed diagram, 
similar to the map Ryo-Ohki had displayed to her two occupants earlier, but less 
stylized. Above the diagram was the text:

***
Scanning for energy signature...
Search radii: x: 170,000 Psec; y: 170,000 Psec; z: 170,000 Psec; h: 2,000,000 
HSU
Percent completed-0.001%
Estimated time to completion-20839d:20h:45m:01.7s
***

	It had been five hours. Washu watched as another plane drew itself out of 
the endless line of planes; looking at it edge on, it had blurred edges, to 
indicate the amount of hyperspace to be searched on either side of this plane. 
The line rotated out to show the full 2D plane, which ballooned out to show a 3D 
star map, a transparent sphere superimposed itself over the map, and a small 
cursor drew itself along the top portion, the sphere slowly filling with red, 
indicating the portion that had been searched.

	"Oh, enough..." The window reduced to a small progress bar in the corner 
of her terminal screen, and the terminal vanished. "Time to go see about our new 
guest."
***********************************************************************

	Katsuhito was sternly lecturing both Mayuka and the newcomer on the 
intricacies of Japanese courtesy, but Washu wasn't particularly interested in 
what had brought that on. "Hi everybody!"

	"Washu, did you find Ryoko!?" queried Tenchi

	Washu, at Tenchi's English comment and working on a rather large sweat 
drop, said, "Oh right, sorry, forgot about that," and pulled up her terminal 
screen to deactivate the translation probes in Tenchi. Then, as she pulled a 
pair of earphones from a subspace gate she had drawn up, she rotated her 
terminal screen so that the rest could now read the again resized status bar, 
which now had the text: "Scanning...Time to completion: 20839 days" printed 
under it. 

	With the aid of the earphones, the guest could finally understand the rest 
of his new companions, but he didn't need them to pick out their first reaction, 
"21,000 DAYS! Washu, can't you go any faster?!" In various tones and slightly 
modified word order to fit each's persona.

	Well, that was with the exception of Ayeka, "Hee! Good riddance to that 
awful creature. Tenchi, you never loved that horrible old woman did you Tenchi? 
You won't miss her will you?" and she turned bright red with anger when Tenchi 
completely ignored her to repeat the group's question to Washu.

	"Unfortunately no I can't," came her reply, "with so much area that Ryoko 
could cover while I'm searching, I have to expand the amount of space to be 
searched, but that increases the time, which increases Ryoko's possible 
movement...this radius is the smallest that will scan all the space she might be 
located before she can leave it. In reality though, since it's searching along 
projected greatest probability routes, the search should locate her long before 
it looks everywhere."

	"That's a relief. Umm...I was just about to explain the rest of my 
thoughts on Ryoko's abilities but you'd probably rather I not...so, um,  we can 
think of something else to do.

	Washu was quite interested in hearing his thoughts.

	He wasn't quite sure whether he wanted the greatest intelligence in the 
universe critiquing his ideas, but at the same time, he finally had someone who 
could definitively inform him as to his logic's accuracy, and so he finally 
began to reveal the result of his ponderings.

	"First off, there is one other problem with dispersing the electromagnetic 
force, which is that there are other forces at work on an object's internal 
structure. Without the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force and 
gravity; mostly gravity, and mostly the Earth's gravity; would clump all the 
molecules together in a big pool at the center of the Earth. The only solution 
would be to disperse gravity and the nuclear forces as well, but then how would 
you move? There is one way, create a new force, I'll get into that later, but 
for now suffice to say that there really isn't any point in dispersing the four 
forces, and it would be much too difficult anyway.

	"Here's what I think, phasing must be just a form of teleportation, with a 
slightly different 'interface.' Ryoko moves into subspace, as I propose she does 
with teleportation as well, but instead of instantly moving to her destination 
and popping back into normal space, she stays there while projecting an astral 
body into our, er...your space; I still can't figure out what an astral body 
exactly is, maybe a holographic projection, I'll get back to this later too. 
Anyway, she also has to receive sensory input from this world, there might be 
remote nanoprobes, but I doubt that; there might be a physical extension of her 
body which juts out into subspace, which would be very small, so we couldn't see 
it; she might also have some sort of hyperspatial "radar" that transmits 
compression waves through the trans-planal multiverse..."

	"Wait, what?"

	"I'll explain it, your terminology is really strange by the way," said 
Washu, bringing up a good sized psuedo-window. "You see..." the window displayed 
a 3D picture of Ryoko, "...this is Ryoko...and this," the image flattened to a 
2D picture, "...is flat Ryoko. She is only aware of two spatial dimensions: 
vertical and horizontal, and of course combinations of them, which yields 
diagonal movement. I'm using this as an analogy to balloon Ryoko, who has three 
dimensions..."

	The idea of a balloon Ryoko absolutely cracked up Ayeka, who couldn't keep 
from squealing several times in the next few minutes.
	
	"...WHO HAS THREE DIMENSIONS, because none of us can visualize more than 
that, so for our purposes, just think of the third dimension in this model as 
the fourth dimension in our world. Flat Ryoko lives in a flat plane, therefore 
we call the region that we can move in three dimensions our "plane," of which 
there are an infinite number arranged in  sort of a stack. Now..." the view 
rotated to show just the edge of flat Ryoko's plane, which inserted itself into 
a stack of planes, "...this is just an idealization, the planes have no real 
thickness, so there should be an infinite number in every part of this diagram, 
but the stack doesn't go on forever in both directions, if you kept going, you'd 
eventually get back to your plane, since the stack is really a big twisted 
shape...not a circle, but it does loop back on itself eventually. Our guest is 
calling this stack the "trans-planal multiverse," but really the multiverse is 
something entirely different, it's doubtful that it exists, but it can't really 
be proven. Anyway, the idea is that if flat Ryoko moves to a plane that's empty 
she can freely move past a wall in real space and then come back to her world on 
the other side. The problem is that no one in her plane could see her and she 
couldn't see her world; one way of sensing her world would be to send pulses up 
through the stack and measure the return," she looked to the lesser lecturer, 
"Sorry though, that part doesn't work; pulse waves wouldn't bounce off of 3D 
objects any more than they would off the blank 3D plane, your other two 
suggestions are valid though."
	
	"They're valid, but is one right?"

	"Not yet, be patient; I want to hear the rest of your ideas first, without 
reality interfering."

	"Oh thanks a lot for your optimism," he replied, sarcastically. Then 
turning back to the others, considerably less confident, "All right, so anyway, 
on to flight."

	As the newcomer continued, he noticed blank stares on all the faces of his 
audience; save Katsuhito, who appeared to be meditating, and Sasami; who was 
only still there so as not to seem rude and wasn't really paying attention; oh 
well. "Flight is a little more strange..." eyes nearly popped out of sockets, 
"...because it seems that you have to go against Newtonian physics. Ryoko has 
the ability to counteract gravity and inertia apparently without forcing 
something else to move in the opposite direction; that is she creates an action 
without an equal and opposite reaction..."

	Washu interrupted, "More accurately, a reaction without an equal and 
opposite original action."

	"Oh yes right, you're right. Anyway, in an atmosphere, that's relatively 
easy; you can push off atmospheric particles and it only appears that you are 
negating thermodynamics entirely. Unless of course you do it with an engine, a 
propeller or jet like Earth's aircraft do. Ryoko might employ electromagnetic 
repulsion to do the same thing in an atmosphere. In space, the problem becomes 
what to push off of. True there are particles in space, but they are so sparse 
that their combined mass is infinitesimal. In order to push off them, Ryoko 
would have to generate a magnetic field strong enough to push the particles away 
at immense speeds. Even if she could generate a strong enough magnetic field, 
the speeds required are probably significantly faster than the speed of light, 
and therefore impossible to generate. The other problem is, in generating a 
sufficient magnetic repulsion, she would also push away any nearby objects, like 
the wreckage of Ryu-Oh just aft..." trailing off.

	Tenchi tried not to look upset, he just looked at Sasami and smiled, very 
grateful. Tsunami's second half didn't see his gesture however, she was too busy 
playing some small, simple game with Ryo-Ohki, now in humanoid toddler form, and 
completely oblivious to their guest's breech of tact.

	Washu whispered, "...go on, it's all right..."

	Starting slowly, "The point of all this is that electromagnetic repulsion 
just wouldn't be a viable method for space flight. However, you'll remember that 
I spoke before about creating new forces; that's an over simplified explanation, 
and not entirely accurate, but it will do. Now, realize that the four primary 
forces of nature, which are like gravity, electromagnetism et cetera, are really 
just different aspects of the same phenomenon. Remember that we live on a 
'plane' which is part of a 'stack' of planes. If you put a dent in one of the 
planes, then anything near the dent will be drawn towards it. Anything with mass 
causes a dent; therefore, anything with mass pulls anything else towards it. 
This is the way gravity works, and the other three forces too, except they seem 
to be caused by different stimuli and they appear to have different effects. 
Really though, that's just because of the particular conditions in our plane at 
the moment. Now, you can use the underlying phenomenon to create what really 
seems like a new and controllable force. In actuality though, what's really 
going on is that we are manipulating the gravitational force. Believe it or not, 
a concentrated energy burst will produce the same effect as a massive object on 
the curvature of our plane; therefore, because of Ryoko's enormous energy 
source, she can produce a mini gravity well around herself, which allows her to 
fly through atmospheres, space, and also objects, if she's phased of course. 
There is one problem though, since gravity wells extend indefinitely, I would 
imagine that one strong enough to overcome Earth's would effect nearby objects 
as well as Ryoko..."

	"Well you can ask our resident genius about that tomorrow," interrupted 
Katsuhito, "For now I believe we'd all better get to bed, you can spend the 
night here if you'd like," he said off hand as he disappeared up the stairs. 

	"Um...well thanks...uh...for your kindness..." but he was already gone.
***********************************************************************

	"Spending the night..." This shouldn't have taken nearly this long, 
Tsunami thought again. "And just when he was building up momentum too. Not like 
Ryoko was benefiting from any of this. *sigh* I try to do one nice thing for 
Sasami and end up horribly disrupting two people's lives." Her own life was 
becoming rather strange, ever since Ryo-Ohki rammed Ryu-Oh into the Earth. "Ugh 
*sigh* well, if nothing else I can return one of their lives to normal." If she 
sent her agent back to his home world now, everyone would just assume he had 
left in the night, no longer interested in being their guest. Her form flickered 
and disappeared.
***********************************************************************

	"Mihoshi," a voice whispered, "Mihoshi," louder, "Mihoshi!" screaming now, 
"HEY, MIHOSHI!!!" But it was no use, she just wouldn't wake up; she would 
however mumble about her past failed partnerships, particularly about the most 
recent, with Kiyone. This particular subject of Mihoshi's ramblings had finally 
given up her attempts to lure her former partner back to GP headquarters and 
left to pursue her own career several months ago. It was too bad, but it 
couldn't be helped; she would just have to try to beat Washu's security. Again, 
she vanished.
***********************************************************************

	A small alarm sounded as a plush Ryo-Ohki doll bounced on a spring through 
the subspace gate above Washu's head. Despite the fact that it was the middle of 
Japan's night, the scientist awoke to bright daylight. It was always daylight in 
this area of the lab, in the chamber housing the creation of Kogato's most 
useful contrivance, that which served to produce a made-to-order life support 
segment/CPU interface for a Juraian tree-ship. Ryu-Oh had restored itself 
completely long ago, and Washu was lying near the central tree on what once was 
a floating platform and was, now that the remainder of the ship had formed, the 
main floor of the life support dome.

	"Ugghhll...fell asleep in broad daylight. I really have to get to bed more 
often." Of course, it wouldn't be that hard to cancel the need to sleep 
entirely...

	The collision of her head with that of a bouncing plush Ryo-Ohki brought 
her attention to the fact that she had been awakened for a reason. Her pseudo-
terminal informed her that her ban on usage of the dimension tuner had been 
breached and that security measures had been enacted.

	"Yes!" Maybe Mihoshi's luck was running out.
***********************************************************************

	The paralyzed and absolutely dumbstruck astral form of Tsunami hovered a 
few feet off the ground. Not only could she not disperse the astral body to 
return to her own sanctum, but she couldn't receive sensory input from any but 
her present form. On top of that she couldn't move, and could see no way of 
freeing herself.

	"Amazing, her autonomous security systems are more powerful than the 
strongest of the Juraian fleet; if she ever decided she wanted control of the 
Universe..."

	In fact Tsunami had often wondered what Washu's motives were. She hardly 
ever released her new developments anymore...so it wasn't fame that she was 
after. In truth, her actions were very much like someone trying to get an 
advantage over...who? Jurai?

	For that matter, where did she come from? Tsunami remembered Washu from 
millennia ago. The brilliant student that suddenly burst onto the scene at the 
Imperial Science Academy. Presumably, she had actually been the age that she 
appeared at that time, but sometimes Tsunami suspected that Washu was in fact 
much older than the twenty-thousand years that she claimed. How else could she 
posses the same power as the Juraians, contained in the power gems. In fact, 
those gems seemed to actually /feed/ Juraian trees; truly creating the power 
rather than channeling it as did the Juraians and their trees and even, so she 
thought, herself. Only Tenchi and Washu's gems had the power to create the 
energy, other than the planet Jurai and its waters. 

	What did Washu want in the long run? Tsunami had no idea, but she knew 
that no matter what it was, it would come to pass; not she nor the Juraians 
could hope to match the power that Washu possessed.

	A blazing white doorway appeared from nowhere and out stepped the roughly 
twelve year old form of the Universe's most intelligent entity.

	"Hmm...oh well, not Mihoshi."

	At Washu's unspoken command, Tsunami was free to move.

	"And just what do you think you're doing here?" Washu chimed sweetly.

	Tsunami, actually somewhat frightened, nonetheless calmly and benevolently 
explained that she had merely wished to reverse part of the damage she had done.

	"His place is here for now." responded Washu mysteriously, and did not 
elaborate.

	"I'm not sure I know what you mean, surely it is best to return things to 
as close to normal as possible."

	"No! Can't you see he wants to stay? If he didn't love this world why 
would he have spent so much time observing it?"

	"But his family, friends?"

	"D'ya /really/ think that someone who's formulated detailed theories on 
the behavioral patterns of a woman who's 27,000,000,000,000 HSUs along our 4D 
cosmic stack has a whole lotta friends? He's probably pretty reclusive, spends 
most of his time at his computer and..." she looked around, "...he's 
/definitely/ gonna prefer mine."

	"You intend to allow him access to your lab?"

	"Why not? It's been a long time since I've had a student. 'course it'll 
probably take him a lot longer than 20,000 years to reach anything like my 
level!!!" she was lapsing back into her silly, singsong tone of voice.

	"But his life span can't be that great."

	"And at birth neither was mine, I've achieved immortality through 
technology!!!" She /really/ over-accentuated the end of her statement and 
shouted the whole line. As she did so the lights in the lab blackened and 
holographic emitters produced a triumphant radial pattern of light behind her in 
midair.

	"You would extend that kind of offer to him but not to your close 
friends?"

	Washu's face contracted into a series of parallel horizontal lines, the 
corner of her mouth twitched as she said, "But they're already immortal," in a 
soft monotone.

	Tsunami looked embarrassed as a small sweat drop formed over her head, but 
a moment later she replied, triumphantly, "Even Mihoshi and Noboyuki?"

	Washu raised one eyebrow.

	Tsunami was about to laugh at her own absurd comment when she realized 
that the majority of the sentient beings she was aware of, notably her own 
second half, would certainly not regard her comment thusly. "You would let them 
die when you could save them, even if they seem troublesome and inferior to you, 
you should allow them the right to live."

	Washu raised the eyebrow higher and said in a particularly mocking tone of 
voice, "OK, two points here, one: They might not want to be immortal. Two: EVERY 
SINGLE PHYSICIAN, BIOLOGIST, TECHNOLOGIST AND /SCHOOLCHILD/ IN THE /ENTIRE 
JURAIAN  EMPIRE/ knows how to keep a humanoid from dying, it's common knowledge!

	Tsunami realized that she had made an uncharacteristically large mistake 
and her sweat drop ballooned to the size of her head. Her only defense was a 
soft, "And how do you know that this student of yours will want to be immortal?"

	"Well of course he will!...Hmmm...well I guess that might not be true, in 
fact there's a good chance it isn't...blast! That would ruin everything! *sigh* 
Well I'll just have to find out when the time comes." And she released the rest 
of her security. Tsunami acknowledged this with a polite goodbye and disappeared 
thinking, "'Ruin everything?' Why would she care so much about having a 
student...what is she planning?"
***********************************************************************

	"Maybe not so kind as I thought..." mumbled Tsunami's agent as his 
/wonderful/ sleep on the kitchen floor was interrupted by Mayuka's screaming; 
and was immediately whacked on the head with the blunt edge of a long wooden 
sword.

	"Aaghckuh...uhhh jeeze, sonofa...ga...aaaghhh!!!" Then suddenly realizing 
that that experience was remarkably similar to what he imagined that of being 
smacked on the top of the head with the blunt edge of a wooden sword would be 
like, he turned around. "Oh hi Katsuhito." he mumbled; then in a mock cheerful 
tone, "Good morning! You know, that's the first time I've ever woken up and 
immediately been smashed on the head with a block of wood?"

	His assailant responded in the tone he took when he was being silly, 
"Really? I would never have guessed, how interesting."

	"Well thanks for the new experience, you know I'm always happy to try new 
things, speaking of which, when's breakfast? You know we didn't have dinner last 
night with all the 'fun' we were having, and I'm getting rather hungry."

	At this Sasami burst in, "Oh hi you two, up bright and early huh!? Great, 
I need someone to go into town to buy some things for dinner, could you please 
do that for me?" She looked to the most recent addition to the list of people 
she could ask to go into town for her.

	Said addition almost asked why someone else couldn't do it, but figured if 
nothing else, it was because everyone else was asleep. He looked to a desk clock 
on the nearby counter. He was glad for the ability to at least read the numerals 
if not the alphabet of his hosts. Which reminded him, "Oh, but I can't read 
Japanese, how would I even get to town, let alone find somewhere to buy food?"

	Sasami: "Oh. Well, I can just wait 'till Tenchi or someone gets up so 
don't worry about it."

	Katsuhito had become serious again. "If you are to live here for some 
time, you should be able to read the language, I suggest you ask Washu if she 
would construct a visual translator for you. 

	"Good point." In truth, he had been looking for an excuse to pay Washu a 
visit in her lab, to at least get another look at what had absolutely amazed him 
upon his last entry. "I've been wanting to ask about her progress in searching 
for Ryoko anyway."
***********************************************************************

	With a slight hum, the outline of a door appeared, curling from the apex 
down to the bases the white line suddenly flared and formed a simple 
freestanding wooden door, which opened and was passed through by the newcomer. 
He closed the door behind him, which dissolved into a white outline again, and 
retracted back to the single point of the apex, and disappeared. Even that 
simple creation of Washu's was immensely interesting when actually observed. But 
it was nothing compared to what stretched before him now. An enormous building, 
he knew it was one of thousands, and one of the smallest. This one was a park 
setting, with walkways and trees and grass. A strangely shaped particle 
accelerator tube ran throughout, like a theme park roller coaster winding 
through the trees. There were relatively few signs of advanced technology. This 
was the scientist's preferred place to work if only her pseudo-terminal was 
necessary. But she wasn't here. He walked over to the large vertical tube about 
fifty meters away. 

	"/State your destination/." A computerized voice queried the tube's 
occupant. 

	"Whichever station is closest to Washu's location." He responded.

	"/Acknowledged./"

	A plane of light, parallel to the ground, formed a few feet above the 
newcomer's head. The plane swept down, and wherever his body encountered it, it 
vanished, eventually removing him entirely.
***********************************************************************

	A plane of light formed in the vertical tube behind and to the left of 
Washu's floating cushion. As it traced down, the top of a humanoid head 
appeared, followed by the remainder of the newcomer's form, which then stepped 
out and looked around. He had seen this place before, it was the the aquatic 
life building; considerably larger than the previous room, this stretched 
farther than he could see in every direction, including upwards and downwards. 
He was on a narrow catwalk, and though the lighting was easily sufficient to see 
and walk, it wasn't nearly enough to prevent the dominant color from being 
black. Ahead, a huge network of water filled tubes, each a good fifty feet 
across, played in and out of holes in the walls, ceilings and floors of various 
free floating cubes, all very large, and mostly containing tanks for smaller 
animals. This level of catwalks, and others, higher and lower, connected all the 
cubes, one of which was quite close to his present location. The glass faced 
tanks were entirely within the cube, and continued in a line to the end of the 
wall. The presence of a branching catwalk which continued around the cube's 
corner led him to believe that there were probably other tanks along that face 
as well. To his amusement, he noticed that one of the glass windows had a small 
fence in front of it with the sign:
***
/Ryo-Ohki: Do not enter/
***
attached. Small white blobs swam back and forth within that tank. Farther ahead, 
the catwalk made a T intersection with another, this one ran along beside the 
maze of water-filled tubes. Looking along its length he noticed a small dark 
shape directly in front of one of the vertical sections of pipe. A little ways 
(probably a good thousand feet really) up the pipe was a large, obviously 
carnivorous creature. It's width nearly filled the tube, and it was hard to tell 
if the thing ever had any room to turn around. It looked like the pipes just 
continued indefinitely, with no variation except their curves and bends. He 
looked back down the tube to the point just behind the catwalk. A black 
silhouette was superimposed on the pipe. The catwalk was about the width of the 
pipe in front of it, but it almost looked like the huge carnivorous creature was 
about to swallow the small silhouetted figure.

	"Heh, amazing. The same exact scenario. Of all the places she might be and 
all the positions that thing might have taken in the tube, they end up exactly 
the same."

	A few hundred feet up now, the creature opened its mouth as wide as the 
pipe's width would allow, and continued its decent. 

	Meanwhile, the newcomer began walking toward the T intersection; it would 
take some time to get there, and he began looking at the various tanks, their 
glass panels flush with the wall of the cube, which was now directly to his 
left. As he passed the fenced off tank, he heard a continuous looping recording,  
meowing. Probably repeating the sign in Ryo-Ohki's language. "Hmm..She can 
understand English...er....Japanese, right? Guess she just finds it easier to 
understand that language. Or  Washu's telling her something she wants to keep 
secret...nah, Ryoko could understand it too, well unless they really only 
communicate through the mental link or..." realizing he was babbling on about 
nothing, he started thinking about the other tanks. There were some strange 
creatures, some empty tanks (or tanks who's occupants he couldn't see), and some 
rather ordinary things, looking a lot like Terran aquatic life. Nothing too 
strange really, probably just species similar to Earth's or something. 

	The huge carnivore snapped its jaws shut. And silently continued down the 
tube. 

	"It must do that every time it comes there. Why? Not like it would look 
like it were about to get a snack to it. Hmmm..." But now he was nearing the 
intersection. He could now easily make out the shape of Washu sitting on her 
floating cushion and working on her pseudo-terminal. He wondered why she hadn't 
detected him yet, as he rounded the intersection. Now he should be in her 
peripheral vision, though he was still about a hundred feet away, there had to 
be a more efficient way of getting around in here. Why she didn't see him was 
beyond him. He was now only about ten feet away. He was about to say a greeting 
when he noticed a shadow keeping his pace on the floor, and slowly enlarging. 

	"Uh...Hi Washu, I was ju...Acghch!" He said, as he was lifted off the 
floor. "Um, why the full setup Washu, I don't really think I'm worth so much 
effort."

	"True, there are a lot of people that could fill the position, /but/ 
you're the first who came along /soooo.../" she trailed off, checking around the 
base of the machine that was suspending the newcomer a few feet off the ground. 

	"Uh...well...anyway, I came here 'cause I thought I might need  to read 
Japanese at some point and it just seemed that..."

	"Perfect! That's a great place to begin! Visual translator huh? Not 
enough, you need a few more enhancements..."

	"Uh...hmm?"

	"...plus...I think while I'm at it you might benefit from a better 
alternative to those earphones..."

	"Oh I get it, subsurface implants? Direct brain connection stuff right?"

	"Well, yes. Must you continuously lapse into that vernacular?"

	"Well, it /is/ faster..."

	"Hmmph."

	"...and more efficient..."

	"Wellllll."

	"...assuming you're talking to someone who knows it, and of course you 
do."

	"Whatever."

	"There you go."

	That produced an expression on Washu's face which said, "I'm damn near 
ready to kill you, you insolent little vermin!" And understandably, also quieted 
the newcomer quite quickly.

	"Well, shall we begin?"

	"..."

	"Good."

	The machine rotated ninety degrees so that he was now lying on his back. 
Several large probes descended toward his head and he felt a few sharp pricks, 
one in the back of his head, and two, right above his ears. Suddenly his vision 
blacked entirely, and was immediately restored. A small transparent window 
appeared in front of his face with the message:

***
Accessing...
***

	The message box waited a few seconds, then began putting new lines of text 
up every few seconds.

***
Accessing...

Decrypting individual encoding traits...

Processing signal...

Downloading data to probe...

Disconnecting interface...
***

	The box disappeared, and suddenly a computerized voice spoke, 
"Accessing...Decrypting individual encoding traits...Processing 
signal...Dowloading data to probes...Disconnecting interface..."

	The machine rotated back to the vertical position and retracted. The 
newcomer was again standing on the catwalk, facing Washu.

	"That was fast."

	"Of course!" Proclaimed the greatest scientific genius in the universe, as 
she removed the earphones she had given her subject previously, and threw them 
behind her shoulder into the subspace gate that materialized there at her 
thought. "What did you expect? Not a particularly difficult procedure. At least 
not for THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC GENIUS IN THE UNIVERSE!!!"

	As she said this, a small box appeared in the lower left corner of the 
newcomer's vision. It read:

***
Translating audio input, original language: JISL *
***

	This was really cool. He wondered what the asterix was for, and a larger 
transparent box appeared in the center of his vision.

***
'*' denotes additional data available for item
***

	Words could not express how incredibly, amazingly giddy he became when at 
his wish, the box closed and out popped a second box explaining the additional 
data for the small notice which by now had disappeared, seeing as how Washu was 
no longer speaking.

***
JISL: Juraian Imperial Standard Language; AKA. Universal Standard Language; also 
known to many developing worlds, but thought of as a native language to natives 
(Most notable example: Japanese-Earth, Sol System, Jurai Capitol Galaxy.
***

	At this point he was all but foaming at the mouth and twitching, and Washu 
slipped away, chuckling about but slightly concerned with the level of inane 
pleasure which her subject derived from the first stage in her plan.

	Enthralled, he began walking back toward the transport tube. As he passed 
some of the tanks, he heard snippets of extremely basic conversation from 
within. Some of the creatures' instinctive noises had recognizable meanings and 
it was all translated for him. Entranced, he entered the tube.
***********************************************************************

	Still wondering why Washu had chosen to go so far beyond the call of duty, 
but having regained his senses, he walked out the door to the lab and almost 
collided with Tenchi, going into the kitchen. Tenchi was already past the door 
and didn't notice him come out. As they entered the kitchen Sasami, now cooking 
breakfast, let out her standard greeting for first Tenchi, then the newcomer. 
Tenchi turned around, and was surprised to find someone following him into the 
kitchen, "Aah! Uh...um...heh heh," he started, and began to wonder whether the 
danger of the last three years of his life was finally getting to him. The cause 
of his start looked at him quizzically, and Sasami released a short giggle, 
followed by a repeat of her earlier request for someone to go into town. Tenchi 
immediately volunteered. Sasami however seemed to feel that Tenchi had been 
working too hard lately and why shouldn't they let the new arrival handle this 
task, if it was all right with him. It was, and he was just leaving when 
Katsuhito reemerged. 

	"Ah...I see you made it back from Washu's lab faster than I had 
anticipated." Tenchi was slightly worried about this 

	/Oh no! What's she up to now!?/

	"So...Was she able to solve your problem?"

	"Most definitely! And not only that but...Oh never mind, long story."

	/Oh good, she was just helping out, false alarm. Unless of course 
'problem' meant...oh please no!/

	"In fact, I was just heading into town to test the thing out."

	/That's not how it sounds, just repeat that to yourself.../

	Katsuhito turned to Tenchi, "Good...And of course you will go with him 
Tenchi?"

	/WHAT?!/

	"Actually I was..."

	"Tenchi, you heard what I said."

	"Yes, but I..."

	"Tenchi! You will go into town with our guest! Now get going!

	Tenchi mumbled an affirmation, and the pair left in the direction of 
Okoyama; Tenchi first stopping to pick up a large basket with which to carry 
home the items to be purchased. No one noticed the small furry shape which 
floated into the basket as they departed.

	The newcomer was actually surprised at first that they were walking into 
town, he felt a little silly when they reached the bus stop. "Oh."

	Tenchi: "Hmm."

	"Oh nothing, just thinking to myself," he lied.

	"Oh, OK." And they boarded the bus which had just arrived.
***********************************************************************

/Translating written language: Japanese*/
***

	The dialog displayed in the bottom left corner of his vision. He couldn't 
see any Japanese writing, it was all replaced by the English, in the same font 
and style as the original. The only problems were the letters which weren't 
against a background, so that you could see through holes in them. The system 
had to guess what was blocked by the original, and it was obvious. Washu 
probably had systems capable of doing it better, but he guessed not with the 
input his eyes provided.
	He opened the additional info available on the small notice:

***
Japanese: Earth-native alphabet derived from Juraian Imperial Standard Language* 
. Syntax and grammar identical to JISL*,   vocabulary similar but lacks many 
technical terms and recent colloquialisms, in addition to differing cultural 
terms and names.

1.View original language

2. Highlight translated text
***

	That would be interesting...the box disappeared and all the text he could 
see save a very few signs, apparently originally in English, began flashing 
irritatingly fast. He wished he could slow that down and immediately up popped a 
large box. The text "Main Preferences" was centered near the top, and several 
descriptive pictures with text labels underneath were arranged horizontally 
beneath the title. Most of the boxes were grayed out, but "Sensory Input" was 
available, so he chose that. It was amazingly easy to use this system, despite 
having no background in thought controlled computers. The box changed to a list 
of options,  three grayed out but "visual input" and "audio input" were 
available, he chose visual input. An enormous list displayed... 

	"Hey..."

	...It was way too long to look through now, he would have to play with 
this stuff later...

	"...um, excuse me..."

	...but for now, see if I can ask for a specific...yep, here it is, 
highlight flash speed...

	"...hello? You OK?..."

	...and just set that to...there! All the boxes closed simultaneously, save 
the one notice informing him of the translation in place, and he was immediately 
aware of Tenchi looking very worried and trying to get his attention. "Oh! 
Sorry. Just playing with this visual translation thingie..." 

	/Oh! That's what it was./

	"...Hurry! We're at our stop!"

	"Oh, sorry again," and they got off and began walking towards a shopping 
center. 

	"What's it look like to have written stuff translated for you?"

	As he explained, they entered a shop, and after a few minutes had found 
everything Sasami had asked for. He was still talking about Washu's system when 
they reached home, going into detail on all sorts of trivial information, and in 
general boring Tenchi to tears. Tenchi was quite sorry for having asked when 
they finally got inside and he went into the kitchen. The newcomer excused 
himself and said he'd be gone for a few minutes.
***********************************************************************

	Washu was right by the tube when he materialized.

	"Wah!...Oh, heh. Hi." Then remembering why he had come, "WOW! You call 
this a beginning? How could you make a better translator?"

	"Translator? How can you still think that's all it is? Someone like you 
should have been able to figure this out long ago...Oh well, I'll explain it 
later. For now, I was just going out for lunch, so if you wouldn't mind..."

	"Huh? Oh right, sorry." He stepped out of the tube. "Wait, what do you 
mean, 'someone like me?' What's so special about me?" But she was gone.

	He followed her into the tube, and told it to return him to the park 
building. Appearing there, he saw the door closing ahead of him, and he walked 
over to it, and out.
***********************************************************************

	"Indeed." What was so special about him? She couldn't possibly be 
interested in some ability of his, as with Tenchi. And there were certainly MANY 
individuals who were his physical and mental superiors. Tsunami brooded over her 
failure in Washu's lab and over her inability to understand why on Earth this 
person, who's only real distinguishing factor was his origin, should be so 
important to the plans of the greatest mind in the universe. Still brooding, she 
began to replay the past two days' events in her mind.
***********************************************************************

	Washu was peculiarly quiet during most of the meal; she seemed to be 
puzzling over something to herself, and she was definitely worried about it. 
Finally she came to some conclusion and joined the conversation, which had 
shifted abruptly a few seconds ago to the subject of Ayeka's undying love for 
Tenchi (needless to say, a rather unilateral conversation), to which she 
interjected her desire for the last night's "story time" to be continued that 
afternoon. The remainder of those at the table produced various, nearly hidden 
expressions, demonstrating their opinion of the last night's entertainment; with 
the exception of those too young, too dignified or being addressed. 

	The singular member of the latter category spoke next, "Oh, sure. OK. I 
could do that. I guess I could pick up with..."

	"Couldn't we at least wait until after lunch?" pleaded Ayeka, annoyed at 
having her monologue interrupted.

	Washu flashed a stern look in her direction but agreed, "After lunch 
then."

	Seeing no way out of being subjected to another barrage of 
incomprehensible and horribly boring babble the rest grudgingly relented. 

	Noticing said grudging aspect of his hosts' relention, the newcomer was 
becoming unnerved. It wouldn't be wise to get on Ayeka's bad side either. But he 
suppressed this thought and continued eating in the ensuing uneasy silence.
***********************************************************************

	"As I was saying, I guess I could pick up with weaponry," started the 
newcomer. "All  of Ryoko's energy weapons are really the same, they just have 
different shapes. Also of course, some are projectile while others are hand-
held. Now, there are a couple of possibilities here; the two I find most likely 
are a huge buildup of EM energy or plasma channeling.
	
	"Now, the first one has a lot of problems. One is that you wouldn't be 
able to see the weapons at all, the second is that they wouldn't keep their 
shape. Now it is conceivably possible to make them keep their shape, but if you 
could do that, it would be possible to just create the thing inside your 
opponent; so there wouldn't be much point.

	"What seems a lot more likely is that she attacks like the mass do, only 
in a more sophisticated style. The mass induce a matter/antimatter explosion 
within themselves and channel it outward as loosely focused plasma. Of course 
this requires them to heal themselves for a while afterward, but this doesn't 
matter much as there aren't a whole lot of enemies that can withstand even a 
loosely focused plasma blast.

	"With Ryoko it's a different story, I don't think the plasma is generated 
by a matter/antimatter explosion, but rather by just heating up whatever is 
around her; or maybe material drawn from another plane, by channeling her gems' 
energy into it. Once you get it heated up, you have to keep it in one place. In 
Earth labs, that's already been done using magnetic fields. Ryoko might generate 
a highly structured field, but that would be pretty hard...so I would imagine 
that what really happens is that she uses the same techniques as for flight and 
phasing, manipulating hyperspatial curvature. You can create a pocket of high 
curvature in the location where you want a sword or energy ball to be, and 
inject it with superheated plasma. To make the sword move, you just tie the 
pocket's movement into your hand movements, to fire a energy ball you simply 
push the pocket forward, and it acts as a wave, propelling the plasma with it. 
Of course if you want more power you inject more plasma, which makes the ball 
bigger, but also takes longer to charge. Oh, and by the way, the sound the 
weapons make is akin to thunder; when plasma comes into contact with air, it 
vaporizes it, making it glow and also creating a sound, which is constant in 
this case and not in thunder's because lightning only lasts a short time.

	"The only thing I can't figure out is why the sword is repelled by other 
energy swords, like the Tenchi-ken..." for the first time in almost two days, he 
had said an entire name-suffix combination. Normally he had relied on the 
translator to do that, but 'Tenchi-ken' was so natural to say that his intended 
speech and his actual speech matched for a longer period of time than had 
happened since the translator was activated. Having only just gotten used to not 
speaking what he thought he was going to say, this sensation was rather 
surprising and gave him pause for a few seconds, then he continued, "...uh...oh 
yeah right, swords. So, anyway I really can't think of why. If anything they 
should be attracted to each other by the gravity fields holding the plasma in 
place." He thought on this for a moment, "Well actually I guess they wouldn't, 
because the fields have to be canceled out to avoid pulling other things in, 
just like with Ryoko in flight..." but that was the limit of his chain of logic.

	"All right, listen up," chirped Washu, "I see you are in need of aid from 
the Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe."
	
	Ayeka rolled her eyes when she thought she was unobserved; and the rest of 
the group was somewhat startled when flying dirt and the sound of smashing 
ceramic signaled that Washu at least had noticed. Allowing the pot to remain on 
her head, Ayeka scowled and was silent.

	"As I was saying, I'll help explain this one. You see, the square wave 
form of the gravity well disallows any increased population of plasmatic 
particles, resulting in a repulsive effect."

	"..."

	After a few seconds the newcomer ventured a, "Wait, the wave form is 
square, how would that effect..."
	"NO! The wave form is not square! The form of the field is a square wave, 
so it has a square-wave form...not a square waveform." She laughed rather hard 
and asked mockingly if he had any ideas on how to make an object's quantum wave 
form into a square wave, because that would be very interesting to see, and on 
for a bit in a mock evil tone before he said something that shocked her, 
although he couldn't fathom why.

	"Well I can't even come up with a good hypothesis on how to make a gravity 
well square! How do you go about such a thing anyway, and if you did, wouldn't 
you just end up pulling all the matter you sliced with the sword into the well?"

	"What do you mean? You can't be unaware of that sort of hyperspatial 
manipulation technique!? Then how did you...We'll discuss it later, let me go 
on."

	Hyperspatial manipulation techniques! What does she take me for, how could 
I possibly know anything about how to bend hyperspace? As he was thinking, she 
had began again...

	"...normal gravity well, the well is created by the mass of the matter; 
but in this case it is created externally, and in fact the mass of the plasma 
isn't allowed to make it any deeper. In addition, the plasma pool is injected in 
four dimensions. That way, the whole well fills up, leaving no room for anything 
else. That's why it just cuts through normal matter, instead of sucking it in, 
and that's why it repels other swords, which can't be cut and are at the limit 
of density themselves. Coding the implants that control how big the well is was 
an interesting challenge, especially after Ryoko decided she liked making her 
sword in two sweeps of her hand, one to spray plasma directly into the air, the 
other to make the containment field and give it shape. She kept loosing some of 
the plasma to the atmosphere before she contained it and it ended up making the 
containment field too large. The first time she did that it was in combat 
against a battle remote. It had an energy sword as well and they went right 
through each other!" She started laughing. "She would've been sliced in half if 
she hadn't done the same thing to it a few milliseconds before! I had to spend a 
lot of time working with the implants to detect plasma loss and reduce the size 
accordingly. Of course she didn't know any of that, she thought I had programmed 
the robot to flicker it's sword so it would go through, just to test her. She 
was just a little angry." She laughed again, "And I just did a little 
reprogramming job via remote link."

	"How'd ya do that, huh Washu? Through your mind link?" inquired Sasami.

	"The same mechanism really, except with my computer on my end instead of 
my internal crystal matrix broadcasting."

	The newcomer smiled at that, he had been confirmed on one point at least. 
Come to think of it, his whole weapons theory had been confirmed. This was 
great, his smile widened and began to draw attention from the others. 

	"Just what are you smirking at?" said Washu.

	Stammering slightly, "uuuh...nothing! Just...thinking about something." 

	"What specifically?"

	"Wha...oh nothing real..."

	Washu's finger hovered menacingly over the keypad of her newly summoned 
pseudo-terminal. He winced.

	"...It's just that you confirmed my weapons theory."

	She was dumbstruck, it was the largest mistake she had made since allowing 
herself to be captured by Kogato! /Me and my big.../ But she couldn't allow him 
to realize that it had been an error. He must be made content in thinking that 
it was a planned move. Making a small affirming sound, she smiled and nodded 
slightly. "So, do you have any oth..."

	Sasami interrupted, "What is it Ryohki?"

	And suddenly they were all aware that the little cabbit was standing stock 
still, hair raised and trying as hard as she could to draw attention to the lab 
door. 

	Washu was surprised, "What could that be?" She called her pseudo-terminal. 
Immediately a large, centered dialog box erupted onto the screen:

***
TARGET MATCH FOUND:

In search for: /Hakubi Ryoko/
Total Search Time: 21h:32m:12.395s
Summery:
Search target  /Hakubi Ryoko/ located by continuously passive scanners not 
allocated to search operation  /[?]/ at hyperspatial displacement of zero HSU 
and spatial location estimated within Sol star system moving along an intercept 
course with Sol-9 at 2.30 astronomical units per hour and accelerating at 1 
astronomical unit per hour per 2.54 hours. 

WARNING: Unable to acquire target lifesigns...detailed readout follows


Encephalography reading: ZERO ACTIVITY
Cardiography reading: ZERO ACTIVITY
Core body temperature: approximately 4 Kelvin
***

	Washu froze, with an outburst of emotional vocalization which seemed 
frighteningly uncharacteristic to the others, who had not seen the message on 
screen, she ran from the room, closely followed by Ryo-Ohki, Tenchi and 
Katsuhito; the rest, slightly puzzled, walked after them towards the lab.
***********************************************************************

	"Oh come on Ryohki!" Sasami pleaded dejectedly towards the transparent 
wall of Ryo-Ohki's ship form, "Please try to go faster Ryohki!"

	"Maybe if you gave her something spicy to eat..." but he realized that 
none of them had any idea what he was talking about, and he stopped short. 

	"She can't go any faster Sasami, believe me." said Washu, sulkingly, in a 
sad monotone.

	"I know...but...well I thought..." Sasami went silent and stared at the 
starscape through the wall.

	By this time Washu had told the group of the report she had received. They 
were all aboard Ryo-Ohki speeding towards Pluto. Ryoko would have impacted the 
surface by now. No one had wanted to try the long range visual sensors. She had 
been moving /fast/  and accelerating very quickly, Washu was unsure whether even 
Ryoko could withstand such an impact, even if she wasn't dead to begin with.

	Some time later, Washu made her regular query, "Ryo-Ohki: ETA to Sol-9."

	On screen a small box winked into being, containing a few digits giving 
the time remaining on their journey to Pluto. About three minutes remained. 
Washu sighed. She did not enjoy the thought of what she might be about to see. 
She shuddered in the control chair.

	Sensing her creator's discomfort, and associating it with the status 
display, Ryo-Ohki removed it from her viewscreen, and meowed hopefully.

	Washu took little notice, "Dynamically magnify forward view to show Pluto 
full screen."

	Her command was obeyed, and the front view screen zoomed in on the small 
speck just visible in the distance until it filled the screen. Pluto and its 
moon Charon filled the screen. Charon was in a portion of its orbit almost 
behind Pluto from the prospective of the viewer, so that a portion of its disk 
just protruded from the right side of the planet.

	"Normal view."

	There was little change. If anything the planet on screen seemed to grow 
at the command. They had arrived.

	A mid-sized window appeared on the wall, displaying orbital 
characteristics and other data which Ryo-Ohki had computed.

	"Don't enter orbit Ryo-Ohki, just land."

	She meowed questioningly.

	"We won't have to search from up here, it should be easy to calculate 
where she landed.

	Ryo-Ohki meowed happily in compliance and set to work making the 
calculations. After a few seconds a grid overlaid the image of Pluto on screen. 
A small cross hairs formed over one junction of gridlines, and the orbital 
window immediately changed to a planetary landing information screen.

	"Land a few kilometers away, just in case something followed her to the 
impact site."

	Ryo-Ohki acknowledged, and a few numbers on screen changed by very small 
fractions.

	"Everyone get ready. This won't be fun. And be ready for a fight."
***********************************************************************

	A barren landscape, nearly Lunar. A single star only slightly brighter 
than the rest of the starfield providing lighting fainter than a moonless night 
on Earth. And as the lonely planet and its moon slowly circled that star, it 
witnessed in the course of several hours more activity than it had known for 
aeons. The dust of five billion years lay thirty feet high atop the entire 
surface of the planet. Formed by countless ancient impacts, this dust would have 
been kicked into deep space by the engines of any normal craft. But Ryo-Ohki's 
space-drive allowed her to hover inches above the surface without disturbing a 
single grain. 

	Tenchi leaped out through Ryo-Ohki's now nonexistent forward bulkhead, 
flew about twenty feet through the air and dug thirty feet into the "ground"

	"Think Tenchi..." thought Washu to herself as she calmly walked out of the 
ship, suspended above the nearly liquidic dust by her own telekinetic ability. 
For those not so empowered, the scientist had devised a device, to be mounted 
under one's shoes, which sent a strong burst of thermal energy down through the 
dust, immediately melting the column of it directly below one's foot,  and 
fusing it into a molten mass which hardened into solid rock immediately in the 
immensely cold Plutonian atmosphere.

	Ayeka, Sasami, Katsuhito, Noboyuki and the newcomer walked out of the 
ship, clad in spacesuits which the only member of the group to have seen such 
things was very grateful looked nothing like Ryo-Ohki. Actually, that was not 
entirely correct, Ayeka, not wanting to wear such a cumbersome garment as one of 
Washu's space suits, had opted to carry an air recirculator along with herself 
in a low-powered forcefield which she was generating around herself. Despite 
Washu's warnings against this decision, the princess had insisted that she could 
easily maintain a forcefield of such little strength for more than the time she 
would need to.

	And so the group departed, along the way, Washu plucked Tenchi out of the 
dust and slapped a pair of her contraptions onto his feet. Ayeka at once rushed 
over to him, and immediately doubled the air pressure in her bubble as his body 
displaced her limited air supply. With probably the worst pain in her ears she 
had ever experienced, the terribly surprised sovereign jumped away and began to 
brood over her misfortune. 

	A cloud of dust visible in the sky marked Ryoko's location, and the base 
of that cloud was now almost visible over the terrain. An atmosphere of gloom 
dropped over the group and they continued over the rise silently. As the leaders 
topped the ridge, they saw a large bowl-shaped crater in the dust. The impact 
had cleared a large circle of the dust away from the interior of the crater and 
a smaller hole was visible in the solid rock in this area's center. The group 
broke into a run, Ayeka forgetting for a moment that she "hated" Ryoko and 
running along with the rest. 

	Washu's daughter lay lifeless and cold on the floor of the smaller crater. 
Few could stand to look at the pitiful form as Washu and Katsuhito hoisted it 
out of the hole. However, Washu remained hopeful that her creation might yet be 
saved. The group began their trudging march back to where Washu had instructed 
Ryo-Ohki to stay, hovering. 

	Crunch.
	
	"Hey you guys, did you hear that?" 

	Crunch crunch.

	"You can't say you didn't hear /that./"

	The thin Plutonian atmosphere interfered with sounds. The now quite 
audible footsteps sounded alien and bizarre.

	Washu cautioned that they were not alone, and Sasami let out a scared 
little cry. 

	The footsteps now ran toward them, several sets were now discernible but 
no one among the group could identify the direction they came from. 

	Washu silently informed Ryo-Ohki that she had better get here quickly, but 
got no response. That worried her. "I've lost my link to Ryo-Ohki."

	Sasami's fear was expressed more forcibly this time, and Ayeka tried to 
comfort her sister, only to again experience the effects of almost twice normal 
atmospheric pressure for a few moments before she jerked away. Tenchi tried to 
help, but Sasami insisted that she was all right. 

	As the little girl turned to talk to her big sister's love, she suddenly 
stopped dead in her tracks and pointed to the crest of the nearest hill. 
Everyone at once spun to look, and saw a horde of black shadows rushing toward 
them. Washu increased the strength of her helmet spotlight and the oncoming 
enemy became visible. The mass of attackers was made up of hideously deformed 
creatures: wolves, bears, giant birds, and other beasts none of those born on 
Earth had ever seen (and which the others had never wished to see again). They 
moved unbelievably fast, so fast that they would be upon their targets within 
seconds. All the creatures were unearthly, not flesh, their forms took on the 
shapes of great dead trees, broken and desolate. But the charging beasts 
certainly did not look weak. The group broke into a run again, this time 
encumbered by Ryoko's lifeless form.

	With a screech the first of the creatures attacked the trailing members of 
the group. A small flying thing, it shattered into wooden shards upon being 
struck by one of Washu's energy blasts. They continued.

	"The rest will be here any second!" Ayeka shouted.

	"We have to stand and fight them, we can't outrun them!" Admitted Washu, 
and she and Katsuhito hurriedly put down Ryoko. As Tenchi drew the Tenchiken it 
flared to life in his hand. Washu began downing the leaders of the wall of 
beasts rushing towards them with energy blasts. The rest, save Katsuhito, 
attempted to stay behind the line of protectors.

	"Tenchi, throw Yosho that sword, use your own!" shouted the newcomer. 

	Neither Katsuhito nor Tenchi were very surprised by this additional 
display of mystical knowledge. 

	"I'm not sure!" protested the holder of the lighthawk sword, "I can't 
always hold it..." and the front line of the enemy slammed into them. Katsuhito 
managed to hold his own even without the sword which he had entrusted to his 
grandson. After a few very moments of intense battle a pile of shattered wood 
lay strewn about the ground.

	"That's only the first wave!" shouted Washu, "The main force will be here 
any time! Tenchi, give your grandfather that blasted sword!"

	"But I..." 

	The issue was forced by Washu's telekinesis. The Tenchiken glowed bright 
for a few seconds as it accepted Yosho as its holder. The blade flared again to 
life. 

	"Try Tenchi!" shouted Washu.

	"Yes, please Tenchi!" pleaded Sasami from behind.

	And then it happened, a diving avian fired a burst of energy at Ayeka. The 
terrified princess increased power to her shield to protect herself, and in 
doing so depleted the last of her energy reserves. She fell unconscious to the 
ground. Washu immediately instructed her central lab computer to erect a 
forcefield around her unconscious form, so as to keep her temperature 
acceptable. All she could do though was to increase the temperature of the 
Plutonian atmosphere, there was no way to provide a breathable atmosphere 
without the now lost bubble of air which the recirculator had been recycling.

	"No! Ayeka!" shouted Tenchi. With a surge of emotion he spun around. His 
body flared with white light and he emerged from the glow wielding the lighthawk 
sword. The transformed warrior charged the entire enemy force single-handedly. 
As he ran, the sword separated into its three wings, which exploded with a blast 
of energy directed forward towards the charging beasts. Not one was left in the 
wake of the immense show of power. 

	"Go Tenchi!!!" chimed Sasami, but her happiness soon faded as she looked 
down at her dying sister. "Washu, please help Ayeka...please Washu I know you 
can..."

	Ayeka was suddenly enveloped in a blue glowing sphere. Sasami jumped back, 
startled; but a familiar shrieking meow from above relieved everyone's worries. 
Ryo-Ohki finished transporting Ayeka to her bridge and descended to ground 
level. She was obviously heavily damaged.

	"Be more careful from now on Ryo-Ohki!" commanded Washu as she entered. 
The ship replied with a wholeheartedly agreeing meow. 

	As Sasami expressed her deep thanks to her giant friend, Washu took them 
into orbit and set them on the fastest return course for home as was available.
***********************************************************************

	"Still not working quite...right...hmm...lemme try this...nope, still 
down...gotta narrow the scanning radius.../that/  did something...now I've just 
gotta..."

	The universe's leading figure in scientific endeavors was standing alone 
in her lab, talking to herself as she attempted to bring Ryo-Ohki back into full 
working order. The others had been terribly surprised when she had simply 
inserted Ryoko into a little box and left her while she worked on Ryo-Ohki. But 
they had to be practical about things now. Ryoko would be fine in stasis for as 
long as Washu needed to finish this. Ryo-Ohki was their only means of escape 
from Earth if whatever attacked Ryoko came after them; and she had a terrible 
feeling that she knew who had been behind the attack. And if she was right, then 
she must act quickly. Her plan must go into effect sooner than she had expected. 
	
	"YES!" she hit a few keys, "Good morning Ryo-Ohki!"
***********************************************************************

	"She's been in there for ages, I wish she would tell us what's going on," 
worried Ayeka, pacing the floor outside of Washu's lab door. 

	It was now several hours past midnight. Ayeka and the others had been 
waiting in the living room since their arrival back on Earth. As yet there had 
been no indication of Washu's progress with Ryo-Ohki, and no indication of when 
she would address the issue of her daughter lying in stasis with terrible 
injuries and little chance of survival. The sound of a door being worked caused 
them all to spin around, but the lab door remained closed.

	"What in the world..."

	But any confusion was quickly cleared up by a chipper voice sounding from 
upstairs. 

	"Hey everyone! When's dinner, I'm really hungry right now...hey, why's it 
so dark outside...OH NO! I slept through dinner! Ohhh...OH! Sasami, would you 
mind fixing me a little snack please, that would be /really/ great you know and 
I would really appreciate it..."

	As Mihoshi droned on a look of awful despair grew on Sasami's face. She 
was about to say something when her sister exploded at Mihoshi. A lightning-
quick and immensely forceful barrage of verbal attacks issued from the furious 
Ayeka, completely confusing Mihoshi, who really couldn't grasp what was being 
told to her. As the dumbstruck blonde retreated up the stairs, Ayeka felt a soft 
tap on the back of her foot. She wheeled around to see that the door had 
impacted her. Throwing it open she was wonderfully relieved to see a happy 
little cabbit bound out at Sasami, who cheered and gave her little friend a huge 
hug. Then everyone looked up at Washu, slowly exiting her lab. She walked, 
tired, to the couch and slumped down. She tried to sound cheery as she said, "It 
was the crystal matrix by the way. Somehow got heavily damaged, that's why I 
couldn't communicate with her. Good thing she didn't try to fire or we'd all 
be..."

	Tenchi interrupted, "But what about Ryoko!"

	Washu sighed, "I can't spare the time right now. Ryo-Ohki was top 
priority, now I have to let you all know what's going on. We don't have any time 
to waste. 

	Everyone was stunned. How could she be saying this, it wasn't like Washu 
at all; and several began to voice that concern before being cut off. 

	"I mean we /really/  don't have any time to waste, I cut this one close. 
Everyone get outside now! We need to get off the planet as soon as possible. 
Ryoko will be safe in my lab, I've already eliminated all the wormholes to it's 
plane. She's in stasis, so she'll be fine until we have time to try to revive 
her. 

	Most hesitated. Washu casually told them that if they wanted to stay they 
were certainly entitled to, but she was getting the hell out of there. This 
convinced the rest, everyone hurried out into the front lawn and boarded the 
waiting Ryo-Ohki, newly refurbished and enhanced to what degree had been 
possible in the short amount of time which had been available. Not worrying 
about being seen, Washu set her creation to full hyperdrive from its hovering 
position a few feet off the Earth. The shear speed of the craft which was to 
accelerate to many times the speed of light previous to reaching the moon caused 
the atmospheric column for hundreds of meters around to be converted to plasma. 
The resulting "reverse meteor" was broadcast around the world for weeks.
***********************************************************************

	"We have a major problem," stated Washu as the group listened intently.

	"I'll say so, we haven't got any food and I'm /starving!/" bawled Mihoshi, 
who had only barely just caught up with the group aboard her own ship, which was 
as woefully understocked as Ryo-Ohki."

	"She actually has a point this time, groaned Washu. "We don't have nearly 
sufficient supplies for a journey to Jurai."

	The newcomer mumbled under his breath, "Understocked, on a journey to 
Jurai, running from some unknown enemy...sounds familiar." And then louder, for 
everyone to hear, "What? Has some impostor taken over the throne again?"

	The looks on Ayeka's and Katsuhito's faces were priceless, but Washu sank 
into another of her distressed bouts of deep thought. Where had this erroneous 
information come from? The legitimacy of the Juraian royal family was 
unchallenged. Could she have been wrong about him? If so, could the plan still 
work, or was her subject unacceptable? She would have to observe him further. 

	Meanwhile, her subject was dealing with a problem of his own.

	"Take that /back/  youuuuu...." Ayeka's speech transmuted into a 
collection of guttural noises normally reserved for expressing her distaste 
towards some action of Ryoko's. Small logs spun out from her tightened frame and 
began hurling themselves at their hapless victim, who was loudly proclaiming his 
innocence in addition to the jocular nature of his comment while wildly leaping 
around the bridge attempting to avoid being battered to death at the hands of 
the princess. Ayeka was getting closer, she could have just vaporized the little 
upstart, but energy blasts might not be the best idea in this location. Anyway 
one of these logs was bound to hit eventually... "Gagh!! Where do those things 
/come from!/ " shouted Ayeka, as bits of pottery and botanical matter rained 
down from atop her head. 
 
	"You would /know /that if you would just pay attention for a few minutes 
and stop trying to kill everything that annoys you!"

	Ayeka protested this perceived injustice vehemently, but her arguments 
were easily rebutted by Washu, who was quickly able to convince Ayeka to just 
give up and be quiet.

	The newcomer sat down, rather relieved, on the floor; as there was nowhere 
else to sit. He glanced around, most of the rest were doing the same thing. It 
suddenly occurred to them that this would be a long flight with little in the 
way of entertainment. In short they were bored. Despite the scene a few minutes 
ago, the truth was that they were sitting in a big round room with nothing in it 
save one chair and a view of a lot of little white dots and rainbow colored 
lines which were nearly motionless outside the windows. It was impressive that 
they were visibly moving at all. He supposed that in a few days they would be 
moving quite quickly as the acceleration built up. In a few more weeks they 
would begin to slow down as they decelerated. Jurai would only be a few days 
away then. A few weeks of this. Oh well, best to try to think about something to 
pass the time. He got interested in Ryo-Ohki's drive. Unlike the planned 
interstellar ships on the drawing boards on Earth, Ryo-Ohki could accelerate to 
the absolute maximum speed she was capable of in a few days; therefore, she 
would get to that speed and coast until it was necessary to decelerate. Similar 
actually to most Terran interplanetary flights or the planned interstellar 
flights, except that the constraining factor there was fuel, not maximum speed. 
He began wondering why they couldn't just jump to maximum speed. Conceivably, 
with the space-altering techniques employed by Washu, every atom of the ship and 
passengers could be made to have the same forward momentum and velocity 
simultaneously, negating the problems associated with incredibly fast 
accelerations. He would ask Washu later. Come to think of it, why not now? 
Nothing else to do. He started to speak, but was interrupted by the sudden 
wailing of Mayuka. 

	Ayeka placed the child in her lap and began to rock it, cooing softly. 
This made no impact on gushing baby however, and Washu stepped over, ready to 
try her hand at the problem. At her wish a small black wormhole appeared in the 
air just above her head and off to the side. A prewarmed bottle of milk, bearing 
her crab symbol of course, tumbled out of the hole in such a way as calculated 
by some lowly computer slated for only that one task as just to land in her hand 
right-side-up. Washu grasped the bottle and offered it to the crying baby, 
pacifying her for a time. 

	Mihoshi took one look at the happily suckling baby and began to wail 
louder and more irritatingly than it had. She was perplexed and dismayed by the 
fact that Mayuka could have dinner but she could not and she expressed this 
dejectedly to Washu.

	Washu tried to explain, "You see, there are only a few objects I can 
summon without being detected. The transportation signal is broadcast 
hyperspherically from my lab so that I can pull one of the objects into this 
plane at any location without sending out a signal. If I want something else, I 
have to tell the computer to send it to me, which would give away our location 
to our pursuers. I hope they aren't watching the Earth's broadcasts." she 
brought up a screen of a news program displaying a shaky home-video of their 
fiery liftoff from Earth early that morning. 

	"There must be guys with cameras covering every section of Earth's sky 
continuously," griped the newcomer, his sentiment was shared by the rest of the 
group. 

	At least it didn't really look like a ship taking off Washu thought. It 
just looked like a big pillar of fire shooting up off the Earth's surface. The 
strangest thing about it really was that it was on screen for some time and yet 
was perpendicular to the tangent to Earth's surface at the point of liftoff. 
Usually the only large fireballs captured on tape skim along in the atmosphere 
nearly parallel to the surface for some time before leaving Earth and going off 
into space or impacting. To an observer on Earth the pillar may have seemed to 
be a mere oddity, but their enemy would realize the significance of the footage 
if they viewed it. They couldn't jam the signal without giving away their 
position, so they would just have to hope for the best.

	"I have set us on a course that they shouldn't be able to ascertain from 
the video. Plus, Ryo-Ohki's space-drive naturally captures emitted radiation, 
effectively we have a perfect cloak so long as no one gets within a few hundred 
meters. Even then they probably wouldn't realize we were a ship. Obviously 
though no one will get that close if I have anything to do with it!"
***********************************************************************

	Twenty-seven days later, the strain on already frail interpersonal 
relationships was beginning to take its toll. For roughly seven days no one had 
spoken to anyone save for a few quick arguments between Ayeka and Mihoshi, or 
futile attempts to explore some uncharted area of conversation. Finally, one 
among them had had enough, he asked the question which no one had dared ask 
before Washu was ready.

	"Who exactly is chasing us anyway?" asked Tenchi, not really expecting a 
straight answer. 

	Washu looked unhappy, but spoke, "Well, I guess I have to tell you before 
we get to Jurai anyway. I was hoping that I could test out the equipment before 
you knew, but it doesn't look like I'll get a chance to. None of you have heard 
of our pursuer before, exempt perhaps you," she turned briefly towards the 
newcomer and then addressed the group again. "She is an ancient enemy, hugely 
powerful. Her resources are spread out over many universes, and so she works 
through proxy within three-dimensional planes. Her existence was only brought to 
my attention recently, by someone you will remember, one of her proxies, my old 
friend Dr. Clay." She paused dramatically, and certainly received the response 
she had expected. 

	"But I thought that we..."

	"That's correct, but before the good doctor departed, I had a 
small...conversation...with him. Since that day I have been preparing for this 
confrontation. Our rival goes by the name of Tokimi..." at this Sasami started, 
she had heard that name before, were her prophetic dreams finally becoming 
reality? "...she has power beyond my own, but she has limits. For one, despite 
existing in more dimensions than any other being that I am aware of, she cannot 
view entire 3-D planes at once. She had to send proxies out to find me the first 
time, and I suspect that her tactics will not have improved. Those wooden 
creatures from her realm seem to support that. She was way off in pinpointing 
Ryoko's landing site. At least she managed to hit the planet though, good thing 
she didn't send her flying off into deep space or we wouldn't have gotten home 
in time to make preparations. 
	
	My point is that we need help, and I believe that the Juraian military 
would be willing. So we must make it to the capitol. Understand?"

	The newcomer spoke, "Note: Test subject number...two two three dash five 
seven omega dash human dash sol...internal sensors report job completed for 
operation: build matrix," his voice contorting into both Japanese and English 
simultaneously. 

	Needless to say, most of those present, especially the speaker, were more 
than a little surprised by this statement. Washu walked over curiously.

	The subject of Washu's current interest spoke, "What the hell was th...did 
you...um...what are you doing?"

	Washu was now standing motionless and staring at the starfield through the 
newcomer. Seemingly oblivious to the chorus of voices requesting the reason for 
this latest string of oddities. After some moments, she slowly came back to 
reality, slowly stating, "Good. I was just trying to make contact, everything 
works fine by the way."

	"What is everything...make contact with /what?!/"

	"Just try thinking about it for a bi..."

	Suddenly a slight shock rippled through the crystalline hull. It was soon 
followed by another, of similar strength. Washu frowned, "Ryo-Ohki?"

	A large window sprung up on the forward viewscreen, the window showed a 
small icon representing Ryo-Ohki with concentric circles radiating outward, the 
outermost circles were green and they gradiated to red as they neared the icon 
of the ship. Several red flashing dots slowly moved toward the ship, the 
innermost circles began flashing as another of the objects penetrated their 
circumferences. Above the display stood out in large letters: "Threat Proximity 
Display"

	Washu: "Highlight in standard view."

	 Red wireframes appeared in the main viewscreens, highlighting the 
incoming objects, black and invisible against the darkness of space. All were 
directly behind the ship, and accelerating towards them.

	"How are they doing that?! They shouldn't even be able to /see/  us, let 
alone /catch/ us!" 

	"Why not, we're already way past light speed right? Why can't they be 
going faster?"

	Washu grudgingly agreed. "But how did they /find/  us?"

	"I'll bet if you just turn off course a bit, they won't follow."

	"You think they're following our original trajectory?"
	
	"How else could they know where to find us?"

	"You may be right. Ryo-Ohki, change heading point two degrees in any 
direction and then correct course to Jurai."

	The group watched as the line of missiles shifted to one side. They saw 
the chain's full extent, it was thousands of missiles long, all easily faster 
than Ryo-Ohki. A frightening sight, even for those hardened by combat. What came 
next was much more so. The lead missile veered towards them. A few seconds 
later, it impacted, and another small ripple was felt inside. 

	Ryo-Ohki meowed, to Washu and the newcomer it was intelligible, with all 
available energy reserves slated to repair, they could survive about five 
hundred of the missiles. 

	"Maybe you weren't right," groaned Washu, looking at the newcomer. There 
must be something emanating past the cloaking field. I guess there's no need to 
hold communications now."

	Washu's pseudo-terminal appeared below her outstretched hands. "I'm going 
to see if my lab computer can detect us," she explained. A few seconds later she 
muttered, "Target not found," quoting her computer. 

	After a delay, she suggested, "Maybe there's something inside the field," 
as another explosion shook the bridge.

	"Blast! Ryo-Ohki, target the farthest missile you can and fire!"

	An affirming meow sounded and a single beam of light stretched itself from 
the tip of one of the ship's long protrusions toward one of the oncoming 
missiles. A small energy field became visible around the targeted device for a 
few seconds before a distant explosion shown through the viewport. 

	Washu noted, "That took a lot of power, do you have enough Ryo-Ohki?"

	A long thin window appeared in the viewport, two lines began drawing 
themselves across from the left to the right sides. One started about halfway up 
the window and curved up slowly. The other started in the bottom-left corner but 
arched up faster. Near the right side the two lines intersected. A large legend 
flashed on the screen as another missile collided, "Failure, all resources 
expended, simulation results in destruction."

	Mihoshi spoke up, "What're we gonna do Washu?"

	Washu turned slightly toward the fearful detective, suddenly focused her 
vision beyond the wall of the ship and then spun around and smashed her head 
into the floating pillow that had suddenly appeared. 

	"Three! Three times now in the last month! How did I not see that!"

	She looked angrily at the group and pointed to Mihoshi's ship, dutifully 
following their new trajectory as Yukonojo was slaved to Ryo-Ohki's guidance 
system. The newcomer spoke, "But it's inside the cloaking field, isn't it? How 
could they see Mihoshi's ship either?"

	Washu replied, perturbed, "Yes yes, but the cloak only shields against 
electromagnetic and hyperspacial distortions, not physical particles. Ryo-Ohki's 
space drive doesn't put off any, but the Galaxy Police don't have that 
technology. Mihoshi's ship's navigational thrusters put off exhaust that the 
missiles must have used to calculate our new trajectory."

	"So that's how they found us in the first place," said the newcomer. "They 
must have followed the trail of exhaust Mihoshi left when she was trying to 
catch up to us."

	Ayeka scowled, "We should have just cloaked right away and left /you/,  
you tro..."

	Suddenly an immense shockwave pounded through the cabin as Mihoshi's 
ship's port side erupted in a ball of flame. The fire quickly went out as the 
oxygen was released into deep-space but the damage was done, the ship was 
hopelessly damaged. 

	Washu noted that she should have thought that the explosions might be 
damaging the other ship as well. Mihoshi jumped at the viewport and stared 
morosely at her stricken police cruiser.

	Ryo-Ohki suddenly meowed an alert as a small window appeared with a 
progress bar and the words, "Beginning dump of core memory, Yukonojo to Ryo-Ohki 
tertiary data-storage bank."

	Once the bar reached the end of its track, and the window disappeared, 
Washu said, "Ryo-Ohki, open a comms channel to Yukonojo."

	Ryo-Ohki obliged, and meowed upon her success.

	Washu ordered, "Yukonojo, disengage slave guidance and change course 
forty-five degrees away from Ryo-Ohki."

	The doomed computer responded instantaneously, firing thrusters to take it 
as far away from Ryo-Ohki as it could get before being destroyed. The group 
watched as the chain of missiles spun around yet again towards the rapidly 
receding ship. Several minutes later a small point of light shone brilliantly 
against the backdrop of the stars. It disappeared several seconds later. 

	Mihoshi droned, "Galaxy Police Code: section 1342 states 
that...or...um...was it 1324..." and this continued for some time before the 
group finally learned that /some/ section of the GP Code instructed agents to 
immediately report the loss of a vehicle to central command. 

	Again Washu was forced to deny Mihoshi's request to transmit, "We just 
lost the missiles, do you want them back?"

	"But I have to and...uh...because they said that if I broke the rules 
again then I..."

	"We don't have time for this." Washu said coldly, ignoring Mihoshi's 
morose ramblings. "So, have you been thinking about what happened?" she looked 
patronizingly at the newcomer, and awaited an answer.

	"Uhhh...well, the speech itself must have come from the translation probes 
that you gave me. Can't really say why they said that, unless you had some 
nanobot group build me an integral crystal matrix, which of course is absurd..." 
at which point he noticed that such a thing apparently did not seem so 
preposterous to Washu, judging by her expression, "...you...seriously did?!? 
Then does that mean that..." the newcomer's hand glowed red for a few seconds, 
before exploding into a bloody mass of globules which rained down onto Ryo-
Ohki's cabin floor. 

	"You might want to try the presets first," said Washu, "Oh come on, don't 
just stand there staring at it, /heal/ the thing, its starting to make even me 
sick."

	He just stood in shock, staring at his amputated - or rather, exploded - 
stub of a wrist.

	"All right, I'll do it for you,"

	The newcomer felt Washu's mind inside his own as she linked via the 
crystalline matrices. Suddenly, a succession of small globules extruded from the 
stump, slowly melding together into the shape of a hand, replacing that which 
had been there before.

	"That new material is twenty times the strength of standard human flesh, 
said Washu, any part of you that gets destroyed will now be replaced by that. 
Eventually you will be entirely made up of the stuff, just like Ryoko, Ryo-
Ohki's organic body, and myself of course."

	The newcomer was becoming aware of existence again, albeit slowly, 
"Well...I'm not...um.../objecting/ to being given superpowers of course, but," 
he hesitated a long time, utterly confused, "why on Earth did you do this? It 
seems so uncharacteristic."

	"I was just getting to that before your nanobots interrupted me, you see, 
I need help in the upcoming battle against Tokimi and..."

	"Oh! So you're just going to make a whole lot of Ryoko-type warriors 
to..."

	"Wrong!" And for the first time, the newcomer experienced having his skull 
impacted by a very heavy load of soil contained within a painfully tough ceramic 
shell. As the little clumps of dirt and flower bits rained down around his head, 
Washu continued, "You are the only one I intend to transform, I was in the 
process of searching Earth for a suitable subject when you came along. Your 
timing was perfect, or rather Tsunami's timing was perfect."

	"So, you're saying that you want me to destroy Tokimi's entire force 
single-handedly?!"

	Washu sighed, "What is wrong with you? How can you be so perfect for the 
part and yet be so stupid?!" she yelled, loosing control of herself but quickly 
calming down. Under Katsuhito's scornful gaze, she went on, "I just don't 
understand it, anyone who could develop such an advanced hyperspacial scanning 
device as yours should be able to deduce my whole chain of logic in minutes! I 
just..." she stopped when she noticed the newcomer's rather embarrassed 
expression and his nonverbal attempts to arrest her attention.

	"I suppose that there isn't anyway to speak in private on this ship."

	"Actually, that's rather easy," stated Washu as a sound-dampening 
forcefield sprang up around the two. "What didn't you want the others to hear.

	Outside the bubble, Ayeka, Mihoshi and Sasami were trying to reason out 
just that. 

	Ayeka said, "This isn't good, whenever she comes up with one of these 
plans and doesn't let the rest of us know what's going on..."

	Sasami interrupted, "Now don't be mean! Washu's always really nice 
and...helps with things and..."

	Mihoshi interjected, "Plus, at least they seem to be having a nice, 
logical discussion."

	Ayeka: "Indeed, now if she starts laughing maniacally we have something to 
worry about."

	Washu burst into maniacal laughter, "FICTION!!!" she managed between 
heaves, "You mean to say that you come from a world..." and couldn't contain 
herself for a while, "...a world where someone just happened to reproduce ours 
accidentally, in perfect detail!" and after a short pause, "For a TV show!"

	Outside the field, Ayeka and Mihoshi stood aghast. Mihoshi started to say 
something whimperingly, but Ayeka tried to qualm the fearful atmosphere by 
saying, "Perhaps he just told a really funny joke. Look, she's been laughing for 
some time now; if she had come up with some plan, wouldn't she have gotten 
really serious and started working on ideas?"

	Washu grew serious, she was concerned. "Then you are not suitable. I will 
have to start over. You have the resources to get yourself home now, or anywhere 
else you want to go. I suggest that you not get involved in this matter."

	But the newcomer objected, "This is by far the most interesting place I 
can imagine going. Besides, I can't even use those resources without blowing off 
pieces of my anatomy. I need to stay to learn to use the crystal matrix. We have 
time before we get to Jurai, you can tutor me."

	Washu began to relent, "Possibly...and perhaps I can still use you." she 
lowered the field, "What's wrong with you two?" she said to the pair of women 
staring at her fearfully. Upon receiving only a blank stare as response she 
waved them off and walked over to the wall of the ship.

	"Come over here," she said to her new student. He did so, and asked what 
she had in mind. Suddenly he found himself gripped with an impossibly strong 
hand and thrown against the viewport. Dazed, he stumbled back whilst Washu began 
critiquing his "performance."

	"No, no, no. First, you should have been able to resist that, you're as 
strong as me now; if you can figure out how to use it anyway. Obviously you were 
supposed to phase through the wall..."

	"And exactly how was being thrown into a wall supposed to teach me how to 
do that?!"

	"Now don't be angry at yourself for not catching on right away, think of 
this as a pretest. Here try this..."

	"I don't think you quite got the point..." But Washu was already outside, 
floating alongside Ryo-Ohki in the vacuum of space. "How am I supposed to do 
/that?/" he protested. After standing in confused silence for a few seconds, he 
turned to the others, who apparently were oblivious to what was going on. 
Turning back to the wall, he saw Washu floating there and staring, irritated and 
looking bored. "Oh what the hell..."

	The newcomer stared at the wall, he tried to activate some mental trigger 
to jump into subspace. Finally he activated the menu that he had found earlier. 
The familiar "Main Preferences" title appeared; underneath, all four boxes were 
now available. Now he could make out the labels beneath them: "Weapons," 
"Forms," "Transport." He selected transport. A submenu appeared: "Flight," 
"Teleportation," "Continuous Feedback Hyperspatial Shift."

	"There's no way Ryoko uses this menu," the newcomer laughed to himself as, 
"Continuous Feedback Hyperspatial Shift" expanded to become a title bar across 
the top of the window. A gigantic list of preferences appeared lower down, and 
he began scanning it for anything that looked like it would tell him how to 
actually go into hyperspace. After about ten minutes, Washu's voice resounded 
through his consciousness, "You missed it."

	He looked up a few lines. "Well why don't you just tell me?"

	Washu sighed, "All right," she said irritatedly, and one of the choices 
highlighted itself. As "calibration" moved to the side slightly and spawned a 
short list of other choices, the newcomer realized his mistake.
	
	"Oh! Submenus!"

	Washu nearly smacked her forehead.

	He selected "calibrate neural macro controls" and the text expanded and 
moved to the top of the screen. The rest of the text cleared to show a 
descriptive diagram, animated, a few frames in length, showing a silhouette of a 
person fading from black to a transparent gray. The animation repeated 
continuously. Underneath, a line of text read: "1. Phase shift out." Beneath 
/that/, an emboldened legend read, "Perform command now."

	Washu's student thought about this for a second, before concentrating on 
what he thought would be an acceptable command for phasing.

	The top line changed to: "Command string recognized" and then quickly to: 
"1. Phase shift out--confirm."

	He tried to concentrate on the same thought.

	Again the top line changed: "Command string confirmed" and again to: "2. 
Phase shift in." Simultaneously, the diagram reversed direction to show a figure 
fading in from gray. 

	This process repeated itself several times, after "phase in," there was 
"target stationary standard-space object," "phase into/out of alternate plane," 
"phase in/out without flicker-effect" and other increasingly useless choices 
until the screen cleared entirely, displayed the message, "Setup complete: setup 
complete for task: "calibrate neural macro controls." The screen then returned 
to the long list. 

	The new hyperspace denizen closed the windows and tried to prepare himself 
for what he was about to do. He focused on Washu and used the "target" command; 
her body began to flash slowly to indicate that she had been targeted. Then he 
concentrated on phasing out. Slowly the world around him grayed and became 
transparent, it quickly returned to normal. Perhaps he had phased a bit too far 
away from standard space. He began to float towards Washu, unconsciously. The 
targeting system was controlling his flying, as he did not as yet know how. He 
approached the wall, drew in a deep breath in anticipation, passed the wall 
smoothly. He phased back into standard space. He was in free-fall, floating in 
deep-space; he let out his breath. 

	The gaseous water in his exhalation crystalized into ice and froze into 
solid daggers capping his nostrils.    //PANIC!//    He instinctively tried to 
inhale, the icy protrusions blocked the airflow entirely. He opened his mouth, 
gasping; no luck --/vacuum stupid/-- his eyes opened wide in terror as he tried 
to phase back into the other plane. He couldn't concentrate to do it, and he 
couldn't calm down. He looked in desperation to Washu for help...and found her 
convulsing with laughter a few meters "above" his head. Only now did he realize 
that he didn't feel the lack of air. If he was being asphyxiated then he was in 
a very bizarre form of shock. No, he didn't need air. Calming down now, he 
retargeted on a patch of Ryo-Ohki's deck and phased out. Slowly he floated 
inside and phased back into reality. 

	Mortified, he watched as Washu descended to the deck, still laughing 
heavily. With one skillful stroke of her energy sword, she amputated the her 
student's newly grown "appendages." They shattered on the deck and melted into a 
pool of water. 

	"May I ask just why you saw fit to phase back into standard-space?"

	The truth was he had no idea himself, it had just seemed the correct 
action at the time. He stammered a reply, and in an attempt to change the 
subject, began to query Washu on the method she employed to negate respiration.

	"Fair enough question. Why do you need to breathe in the first place?"

	"Uh...to facilitate cellular respiration?"

	"/Yes/...and what exactly does that entail?"

	"Umm....well, uh...I don't remember the details quite fully...been a while 
since biology. Let's see...something like: cells use glucose and oxygen and 
water to make protons pass through little generator things in the mitochondrial 
inner wall..."

	"That'll work. Basically, the same nanomachines that built your internal 
crystal matrix and did your translation for you before it came online are also 
moving those protons through the 'generator things' themselves. Also, they 
refine complex organic molecules from the material in a plane about 5 HSUs from 
here and oversee your body's use of them. Basically then, you don't need to 
breathe, drink or eat; but you can if you want to, of course. Also, all your 
body's cells are working at 100% efficiency now, and so is your digestive tract; 
so you'll never produce any waste again, unless you decide to deactivate that 
option. You can also control the exact mixture of gasses that you exhale..." she 
went on with only somewhat interesting details for a time, but never came back 
to the main string of the conversation. Eventually, she said. "And now you'll 
have to excuse me, we need to start decelerating." She walked off to the control 
column.

	Now the newcomer was aware of the group that had gathered around him, 
completely amazed by what they had just seen.

	"WOW! Are you Ryoko's long-lost brother or something?" wondered Sasami out 
loud. "How come you never did that before?"

	Ayeka interjected, "Just how are you related to that despicable, hideous 
/creature/..." obviously forgetting that she was in earshot of someone who was 
not only quite possibly the most powerful person in the universe, but who also 
considered Ryoko to be her daughter. Perhaps a potted tree was a bit of 
overkill. Washu didn't seem to care.

	All discussion on the matter stopped. There was a general silence in the 
cabin excepting Washu's continuous drone of voice commands. Again the newcomer 
noted that the complexity and length of time needed to accelerate and decelerate 
Ryo-Ohki in reality was considerably greater than he had seen at home. In the 
several weeks he had had to wonder about it, the newcomer had come up with a 
hypothesis regarding this discrepancy. Suppose that Ryo-Ohki's central computer 
wasn't powerful enough to individually hyperaccellerate every particle in the 
cabin. Normally, this could be done remotely by Washu's giant main computer, but 
with communications severed, all maneuvers would all have to be done by Ryo-Ohki 
and Washu. 

	"Just hold that pattern and tell me when we get within an AU or so of 
Jurai," Washu said to Ryo-Ohki, before hopping down from her chair and heading 
over to an empty section of floor.

	"I've dropped the cloak and sent a message ahead to Jurai. We'll be there 
in about a day, that should give them time to mobilize their forces..."

	"What makes you assume that my father will so easily bend to your will," 
scolded an angry though barely conscious Ayeka.

	"Oh, I think they'll agree to help me. You see, I've decided to take them 
up on an offer Funaho proposed to me some time ago..."

	The newcomer knew what she meant, "You mean to create more ships like Ryo-
Ohhhhh..." a glimmer of comprehension. "But the matrix won't..."

	"Not the standard one, no. Don't you think I've advanced a bit in 2,000 
years? Ryo-Ohki actually grows crystal to make her hull 'cause she's almost all 
mineral anyway. But with a bit of tweaking a simple matrix can pull material 
from a nearby plane to make the hull. It's not what I originally intended to do 
with you, but given recent events, I don't think that I should trust you with 
anything more complicated than filling an order."

	"Thanks a lot. What did you have in mind originally anyway?"

	"Unfortunately there's no time, you have to learn to fight in less than 24 
hours. Remember, you'll be pretending to be a ship, so we'll go in with you in 
tow, you'll have to hold ship form as long as we're within the Jurai system 
scanner perimeter. Now, this will be complicated. I'll set up the first part 
myself, we don't have time for you to search."

	Again, he felt Washu's presence in his mind. He saw her thoughts, had 
access to a few of her recent memories. Saw himself from outside. Then was 
jerked back into his singular being.

	"There. All set up, you are to transform into ship form and allow the 
cosmogation computer to function. I've set it to follow Ryo-Ohki. Try that now."

	This seemed rather sudden. Still wary of his last two attempts to utilize 
his newfound abilities, the newcomer calmed himself, then accessed the main 
menu. He selected "forms." Several new choices appeared, with descriptive 
pictures as in the main menu: Ships, Organics, Garments, Other, acquire new. He 
selected "Ships," and was presented a list of several classes, each with a 
descriptive schematic diagram and 3D model along with several lines of 
statistics: Main Battlecruiser, Shuttlecraft, Scoutship, Escort Frigate, Troop 
Landing-Craft, Dreadnought. He liked that "Dreadnought" option, but thought it 
best to go with what he was accustomed to. "Main Battlecruiser" flickered red 
and white and all menus dispersed. Suddenly, the newcomer felt himself 
involuntarily float off the ground. He was aware of some entity asking him, 
"Inclosed space, break out or phase through?" He replied, "Phase through," and 
felt himself phase out of reality. As he went through the wall, crystalline 
structures were already sprouting from his limbs and back. Soon he was 
completely inclosed. He now had no sensory input, he was floating in void for 
some seconds...before suddenly...

	Now the newcomer felt a surge of input. A powerful new entity shared his 
mind with him, the central computer, newly formed out of crystal. He saw in the 
full spectrum of EM radiation, he heard and fully understood conversations on 
every radio and subspace band, he had lost the sensation of his body, replaced 
by an acute awareness of the functioning of every minute system and subsystem of 
the ship. He felt the orientations and velocities relative to the galactic core, 
Jurai and Ryo-Ohki simultaneously. He had no idea what to /do/ with any of this. 
He sent a message to Ryo-Ohki via subspace comms: "Washu, can you hear me? What 
do you want me to do now?"

	/Incoming voice transmission: source Washu: aboard indep. ship Ryo-Ohki to 
/JNS Loose Cannon/ central computer, ack/accept/deny/ignore?/

	"Accept..." He heard: "Yes I hear you, now you need to practice some 
maneuvering, we're out of hyperspace, so just try flying some circles around 
Ryo-Ohki."

	"Send ack...send voice: 'Right, will try that. By the way, I am interested 
by your selection of names: /Loose Cannon?/' ...Accept all future incoming 
messages from this source."

	He was thinking with the speed of the supercomputer. Hell, why not just 
stay in this form all the time? He loved the quickness of his thoughts, he 
learned immediately everything he could possibly want to know about anything he 
thought of, and he had nearly infinite memory storage. Everything relevant went 
directly into long-term memory. He tried to disengage the autopilot, that went 
smoothly. He began a slow circle of Ryo-Ohki. That seemed to be working. He set 
the autopilot to continue the circuit and inform him upon completion; then he 
started trying to organize all this new data. 
***********************************************************************

	"Incoming transmission on the military band, sir, maximum priority."
	
	The current CO of comms room delta swiveled in his chair, "All right, 
patch it through to my screen."

	"Sorry sir, it's encoded, eyes-only for the emperor."

	"Hm..." He punched a few buttons on his control console, and was suddenly 
looking into the face of the chief of military affairs. "Corporal, this'd better 
be good. I don't generally enjoy wasting my time being social."

	"Sorry sir, I have an eyes-only message for the emperor."

	"I see, have it sent up to the War Room."

	"Yessir! Good day sir!"

	"Good day. Out."

	The transmission terminated.

	"You heard him, relay that communication up to the War Room."

	"Sir."
***********************************************************************

	"What's this all about? What's so important it couldn't wait for the 
morning?"

	"Sorry, but I don't know that myself sir. About fifteen minutes ago we 
received an encoded transmission on the military band; maximum priority and 
your-eyes-only. We'll play it for you in the War Room."

	The sovereign of the universe grunted his acknowledgment.

	"Here we are, sir."

	They entered.

	"Good morning, sir," said the chief of military affairs, "I trust my aide 
didn't wake you too rudely."

	"Your trust is misplaced. Just play the message."

	The chief and his aide departed; and the emperor took a seat across the 
table from the main screen. Presently, the screen illuminated, Washu's face 
appeared. She skipped the formalities and got straight to business.

	"Greetings, I'll get to the point right off. In short, I need a good deal 
of military assistance, fast. I'm prepared to offer you the techniques to create 
your own crystalline battlecruisers. I'm en route to Jurai and will arrive in 22 
hours. End transmission."

	This was unbelievable, incredibly fortunate. But what force could possibly 
prompt Washu to ask for help? He jumped from his chair and jogged out the door. 
Rushing through the corridors to the throne room, he was joined by his C.M.A.

	"I'm calling an emergency meeting of my advisory panel. While I'm in 
session I want you to get every military ship in the galaxy to this system. I 
don't care what they're being used for. And send a message to /every/ galaxy 
telling them to send a quarter of their fleets here. We don't have time to wait 
for them to get here on hyperspace drives, I'm authorizing the use of the jump-
gate system."

	THe C.M.A was visibly shaken. He managed to stammer a, "Yes sir," before 
running off.
***********************************************************************

	A large rhomboid crystal separated itself from the floor of Ryo-Ohki's 
cabin. The face of the newcomer appeared holographically in its interior. "Now 
this was an interesting idea," it said. The probe was formed by Ryo-Ohki's 
crystal, but was guided through remote link by the newcomer, now pretending to 
be the /JNS Loose Cannon/, as they were well within Juraian sensor range.

	Ryo-Ohki's computer beeped, and printed a message to one of the windows:

	"Note: Now within one astronomical unit of Jurai."

	Washu acknowledged, and the message vanished.

	The newcomer-crystal said, "I think I'm going to turn control of the 
/Loose Cannon/ over to its computer and turn this thing into a representation of 
me...um, assuming I can actually do that?

	"No, /you/ can morph into other forms, but crystal-probes can't."

	"But I've seen Ryo-Ohki do it," he protested.

	"Well that's true, I do have the cabbit form prebuilt into Ryo-Ohki's 
computer; but due to the difficulty in making crystal look biological, its the 
only form available."

	"I guess it'll have to do. Lets see if I can figure this out..." 

	He cut the voice transmission and sent a message to Ryo-Ohki's computer, 
"Establish datastream linkup to: indep. ship Ryo-Ohki: central computer..."

	"Recv. ack datastream linkup successful."

	"Send query: general syntax: crystal-probe form toggle"

	"Recv: response from indep. ship Ryo-Ohki, central computer: syntax as 
follows: 'command: subsystem goto remt-crys-prb ... command: subsystem_specific: 
remt_crys_prb_frm_tgl'"

	He sent the series of commands, and then shifted all his sensory input to 
the probe. 

	Aboard Ryo-Ohki, the floating rhomboid began to metamorphose. The rigid 
form pulsated and suddenly popped into the shape of Ryo-Ohki's cabbit form. 
There was no visible distinction from the real thing, as Ryo-Ohki's computer was 
maintaining the form.

	"Oh...how cute! He looks just like Ryo-Ohki!" Sasami exclaimed.

	Ryo-Ohki let out a jealous yowl and immediately spawned a remote probe of 
her own. The group was rather confused.

	"How are we going to tell them apart?"

	"Can't you change color or something?"

	Before a response could be made, Ryo-Ohki's computer began to complain of 
overuse, maintaining two biological-emulating crystal-probes was too much. Now 
there was not enough free processing time to make the space-bending calculations 
to slow the ship.

	Washu ordered, "Ryo-Ohki, absorb your probe."

	The jealous ship refused to comply.
	
	"We're gonna hit the planet!"

	Still, Ryo-Ohki would not back down. To tell the truth, she was more than 
a little angry at Washu for ignoring Ryoko for so long.

	Washu looked distraught, then suddenly linked to the /Loose Cannon/. The 
newcomer-cabbit felt her say, "I'm establishing a dual-processing linkup between 
Ryo-Ohki and your computer."

	The newcomer was aware of a good deal more activity on the part of the 
/Loose Cannon's/ computer, and simultaneously he felt a surge as Ryo-Ohki's deck 
shifted under his crystalline feet.

	"All systems now functioning, note: now entering Juraian atmosphere," 
printed Ryo-Ohki's computer.

	The probe's audio modulator allowed the newcomer to speak, even in cabbit 
form, "I have to say that of all the weird things that've happened lately, being 
a cabbit is definitely the weirdest."

	Ryo-Ohki seemed glad to hear this. She walked over to Sasami and scrambled 
up onto her head. Sasami giggled and stroked her friend.
***********************************************************************

	Ryo-Ohki came to a hover over the great courtyard of the Juraian royal 
palace. Her probe jumped from Sasami's head and melted into the floor as the 
group transported down. Then, the crystalline structure of the ship vanished, 
leaving a floating Ryo-Ohki to drift down to the ground. The newcomer's probe, 
now controlled directly by the /Loose Cannon's/ computer, was still with the 
group in cabbit form, although he had adjusted the fur coloration to be slightly 
more gray. He had also told the computer to begin working on a new probe form 
based on his biological body, now encased in the crystal structure of Loose 
Cannon, hovering a few meters above the palace grounds.

	"Welcome!" shouted the uniformed man unnecessarily loudly as he ran 
towards them, holding his cap and leaning forward as if expecting to be blasted 
by a hurricane. "I'm the assistant captain of the royal guard; if you would 
please, follow me."

	The group followed the assistant captain into a door in a small shack made 
of what appeared to be adobe brick standing near a grove of alien trees. The 
interior of the shack was cramped for eight people and two cabbits; it was one 
room with dully luminous walls, and a small control panel affixed to a podium.

	"This is just a transporter room, we'll be traveling to the conference and 
negotiation room." He keyed in a sequence on the panel and allowed the computer 
to scan the group.

	"Just an ID check," he said, "and a check for weapons, et cetera."

	The scan completed, the group was immersed in blue glow. The small room 
vanished and they were floating in darkness. Suddenly, a much larger room 
appeared around them; the emperor, his wives, and several key advisors were 
already seated.

	Their guide spoke, "Please be seated," and departed.

	The emperor spoke first, to the now seated group, "Welcome to Jurai. 
Ayeka, Sasami, good to see you again. Washu, your message has all of Jurai 
worried. We have the largest fleet ever assembled ready to engage whatever this 
foe may be. Over fifty trillion ships are waiting in this system and in the 
interstellar void beyond it.

	The newcomer-cabbit exclaimed, "Fifty trillion! How could so many ships 
exist in the universe!?"

	Not at all taken aback, the man to the emperor's right stated, "Two 
hundred million galaxies times one million ships per galaxy divided by four to 
allow each galaxy to keep most of its fleet comes to fifty trillion."

	"Woah...But, how did they all get here so fast, it took us weeks to get to 
the galactic core."

	Funaho couldn't restrain herself, "Washu, you've outdone yourself, this 
one can speak! And it's sentient! Amazing."

	Ryo-Ohki took on an annoyed demeanor and Washu corrected the empress, 
"Ryo-Ohki is quite sentient; she's not terribly intelligent, but sentient 
nonetheless."

	Ryo-Ohki jumped on Sasami's head and looked dejected; Masaki scolded Washu 
for being mean. However, the emperor and his first wife were studying the 
newcomer's probe. Funaho asked, "Can we see the ship form?"

	Washu replied, "The ship is hovering outside, this is just a remote probe; 
we can have a demonstration and training session after we come to an agreement."

	The emperor spoke, "Fine, we agree to give you control of the armada, so 
long as you provide us with the training to produce and pilot your ships."

	"Acceptable, but at the moment I'd rather not access my lab, it would be 
better not to reveal its location. Once we have defeated Tokimi I will fulfill 
my side of the agreement."

	There was some dissension here; would it not be better, some argued, to 
begin producing crystalline warcraft to aid in the battle? Washu was adamant 
however, and after a few more points were settled, those present decided to 
proceed to the demonstration.
***********************************************************************

	"There it is, the /JNS Loose Cannon/." She turned to the lighter of the 
two cabbits, "If you would please transport us up."

	"Certainly," he said, and vanished.

	Moments later, the group was standing on the command deck of the 
newcomer's ship form.

	Washu said, "Control column," and the /Loose Cannon's/ computer obeyed, 
producing a chair and set of control orbs identical to Ryo-Ohki's. Washu took 
the seat, and moved her hands over the controls; instantly, they were in orbit. 
"Find a Juraian ship and take us there."

	The newcomer was presented a list of ships nearby by the computer, he 
selected the /Agamemnon/, a huge carrier with a complement of twenty fighters. 
This ship was highlighted for him, and as he moved toward it, he told the 
computer to highlight it in the viewscreen. His voice emanated through the 
bridge walls, "This is the /JNS Agamemnon/, we'll have matched her course and 
speed in a few seconds."

	Washu turned to face the emperor, "When we get alongside, order the 
/Agamemnon/ to try to destroy us."

	"Excuse me, but is that such a good idea, that ship is /really big/," 
worried Mihoshi.

	"Don't worry, /this/ ship can easily evade anything it throws at us."

	The newcomer was worried at this, she meant the computer, right? He 
queried the computer as to whether it had this ability; it replied that that was 
his job. Worried, he spoke into the cabin, "The /Agamemnon/ has a compliment of 
twenty fightercraft plus several pulse cannons, forward mounted, and laser 
turrets covering a full sphere around herself."

	Washu replied, "Perfect, display on-screen the current shield status and 
highlight all ships that would have been destroyed if this were a real battle."

	"Right, bringing shields up now," he said as the requested information was 
brought up on screen by the computer, responding directly to Washu's command. 
The shield indicator increased quickly to 100% and the newcomer decided to add a 
"ships destroyed" counter next to it. "I'm opening a channel to the /Agamemnon/ 
now," he cut off the audio feed to the cabin. To the computer: "send hail to 
/JNS Agamemnon.../" "recv ack. channel open" "rout voice to bridge audio I/O"

	He produced a tone to indicate the open channel, and opened a video window 
in front of the emperor.

	The captain of the /Agamemnon/ stood up from his command chair and 
addressed his emperor. After the standard formalities he seemed curious as to 
why the emperor was communicating to him in this manner. Upon having this 
explained to him, his face went ashen. "You cannot be serious, the /Agamemnon/ 
would rip that ship apart!"

	"We'll see about that," replied Washu.

	The emperor ordered, "Just attack." The channel closed.

	The newcomer got a message from his computer, "/JNS Agamemnon/ : changed 
state to hostile." He spoke to his passengers, "Enemy ship's charging weapons, 
her shields are up, she's launching fighters, I'm taking control."

	The computer went into battle mode and for the newcomer time slowed to a 
crawl; the computer had increased the speed of his thoughts to improve reaction 
time. He saw reports on which turrets were about to fire, and dodged. He was 
aware of the positions of every fighter and each one's simulated shield 
strength. The fighters proved no challenge really, soon the "ships destroyed" 
counter was at twenty; but he still had to dodge their fire, all the more 
interesting. Turrets started lighting up on the /Agamemnon's/ hull, these were 
supposed to have been destroyed. Soon the massive ship was disarmed, the 
newcomer opened a channel.
	
	"You are projected as having been defeated," he said, "cease your attack."
***********************************************************************

	"Truly an impressive display today, Washu," said the emperor, "Why do you 
not join us on Jurai, we are in need of a mind of your caliber. We would of 
course fund your endeavors..."
	
	"Ha! I have no need of funding. I have the resources of a thousand 
uninhabited universes at my disposal."

	"But certainly you cannot /enjoy/ life on that miserable backwater world?"

	"Father, I believe we've had this discussion before," scolded the first 
princess.

	"You're right, you're right," he said soothingly, "But I still don't 
understand what you could possibly find so...oh never mind; let us enjoy 
tonight. Tomorrow we will plan our course of action, agreed?" They agreed. The 
emperor continued, "I will expect your attendance, Washu...and...by what name 
shall I call you?"

	The newcomer's probe, now in fully computed human form, which externally 
appeared to be an exact replica of his true body, started to speak; however, 
Washu interrupted, "He is the /Loose Cannon's/ biological part's picture of 
itself." Untrue but a good excuse for picking that form in particular. "You 
might call him L.C. for short."

	"I see, L.C., I shall expect your attendance as well. Now, all of you, 
dine well."
***********************************************************************

	The newcomer didn't require sleep. Washu had thought to add that function 
to the nanobots she had given to him, remembering the incident in Ryu-Oh's 
chamber. That night he left L.C. in his bed and took the /Loose Cannon/ out to 
explore the cometary field encircling the system. As he drew near, he thought it 
prudent to switch to a smaller form. As he metamorphosed into a shuttlecraft, he 
felt the power of his onboard computer reduce markedly. At the moment though, he 
was having fun exploring the field; and testing his piloting skills amongst the 
rapidly moving and constantly colliding chunks of ice. His sensors could pick up 
the extremely faint tails the comets were putting off this far from the sum. It 
was quite interesting to watch their interactions with the other tails and the 
gravity wells of the other comets.

	Then, the tails were all that was left. He realized that he was outside 
the field, and outside of the systemwide sensor net. "While I'm here..." he 
thought, and accessed the "ships" submenu again. "I've been waiting to see what 
this thing is." 

	"Dreadnought" flashed and all menus dispersed. A red-on-black progress bar 
appeared in the center of his vision. The title above the bar read, "acquiring 
materials-0%." Soon the "0%" changed to "1%," and a second bar appeared, titled: 
"assembling-0%." This ship was going to be huge!

	The descriptive schematic had already shown him the general shape which 
the dreadnought would take, a many-sided polyhedron; it reminded him of a borg 
ship, but why a polyhedron instead of a sphere?

	He decided to try to find some more detailed descriptions. About five 
minutes later, with the progress bars reading about 25%, he found what he had 
been looking for. He had thought that Washu's design notes would be stored in 
her lab computers; fortunately though, they had also been placed in his own 
databanks. He found a overall description synopsis and began to read.

***
Dreadnought:
Added as an afterthought to my new collection of crystalline ship forms, this 
ship is not designed to carry passengers, cargo or crew. The polyhedron shape 
lends itself to a carrier-type vessel, as the fighters can better gauge its 
rotation than with a sphere; and indeed the ship carries roughly seventy 
fightercraft. The interior is filled entirely with massive drives, computers and 
weapons systems. The onboard computer, though puny compared to my central 
computer, is by far the most capable shipboard computer ever created. The drives 
are capable of nearly instantly accelerating the ship to maximum speed, and are 
specially modified to allow movement in all dimensions. The weapons system is 
comprised of a single power source, which can produce immensely powerful laser 
blasts through the nearly mile-thick crystalline structure, which serves to 
amplify the direct the beams. On wide-field setting, such a blast could cripple 
a swarm of fighters, and at its most focused, a several-second blast can destroy 
a planetary defense shield; thus allowing landing craft to drop troops, or 
orbiting ships to bombard cities or fortifications.

***

	"No wonder Washu was so upset when I turned out not to be what she thought 
I was! This sort of power isn't something you freely distribute!"

	Perhaps he should erase the profile if Washu did not think him worthy of 
it. No. This type of military force would be invaluable against Tokimi. Now the 
"acquiring materials" bar was at full and "assembling" was at 95%. The second 
bar moved quickly now that all material was available. Soon it was at 
96,97,98,99...

	The ship's computer activated, his senses activated; this was just like 
when he had first gone into battlecruiser mode. The rush of data was immense. 
His brain was not built for this, but the computer somehow managed to make him 
understand what it was feeding him. 

	The data surge completed, the newcomer started back in toward Jurai. He 
was debating whether or not to return to battlecruiser mode when his sensors 
registered a crystalline hull rising from the palace grounds.

	"You are receiving a hail from Washu on Ryo-Ohki," reported the computer. 
It automatically opened a channel.

	"send voice: 'Hello Washu. I'm just up here playing with this dreadnought. 
What brings you out here so early?'"

	Washu's reply was immediate as the subspace transmissions were not limited 
to lightspeed, "We've been caught off guard; I've picked up readings of a 
massive armada coming in from millions of inhabited universes. They've got at 
least twice our numbers but I've already asked the emperor to send for 
reinforcements, plus we've go the dreadnoughts."

	"How could they be only twice our strength? Millions of universes should 
have millions of times as many ships...And whaddaya mean, 'dreadnoughts?' I 
thought this was the only one." 

	Washu was now halfway to him, and Ryo-Ohki ws continuously broadcasting 
warnings to the fleet, telling them to prepare for action within a few hours. 
Her reply came in; only the computer was able to tell that it was slightly less 
garbled than the previous transmission.

	"Actually, very few planes have civilizations that fill more than one or 
two galaxies..." that would be because Tsunami wasn't helping them, thought the 
newcomer, "...especially the ones directly controlled by Tokimi; so it takes 
millions to match our strength. I believe that this is all that Tokimi can throw 
at us; it'll take some time for her to rebuild, by that time I hope to have my 
plan implemented... As for your second question; remember that I did some 
reengineering to Ryo-Ohki just before we left?"

	The transmission terminated. Suddenly, Ryo-Ohki exploded into a mass of 
expanding crystal protrusions. With the help of the ultra-powerful computer, the 
newcomer watched every system and subsystem form, until eventually the complete 
dreadnought was revealed. Ryo-Ohki was now a near duplicate of the /Loose 
Cannon/, with the addition of a bridge and crew quarters, which were unnecessary 
and not present on the newcomer's ship. 

	Washu was hailing; a channel opened. "Whaddaya think?" chirped Washu 
through the comm-link. The newcomer replied that he was quite impressed; 
likewise several voices from Ryo-Ohki. He hadn't bothered to scan for life-
forms...rather surprised, he opened a video linkup. Behind Washu stood the whole 
group; even Mayuka was onboard. He was rather surprised by this; querying Washu, 
he learned that in her opinion, the dreadnought was safer than the planet's 
surface. Several people added that it would also be fun to watch Jurai's full 
fleet in action.

	Indeed, the still-expanding armada was very impressive. The newcomer 
transmitted, "Well then, all we have to do is wait."
***********************************************************************

	" I'm sooo /bored!/"  Mihoshi whined. Listening to her fuss, even Sasami 
was looking somewhat pained. All the while, Ayeka kept up a steady ranting 
derision of Mihoshi's whining; nearly as annoying itself, if not entirely so. 
During all of this, Washu had maintained an uncharacteristic silence; now she 
spoke, "Everyone be quiet," she said softly, concentrating on something else. Of 
course, no one was immediately quiet; continuing to use her left hand as a chin-
rest, she summoned her pseudo-terminal off to her right side and absent mindedly 
keyed a few commands in. For several seconds the entire group was falling 
towards Earth from several miles up before returning to the bridge. Having 
obtained everyone's attention, Washu continued, "Everybody be quiet, I've 
received a signal from my lab. Ryoko must have recovered. I guess the computer 
decided she could and removed my stasis field. I've got to get to my central 
computer to move the whole complex before Tokimi locates it."

	L.C. formed from Ryo-Ohki's crystalline floor and was taken under direct 
control by /Loose Cannon's/ computer. "I'll come too."

	"Well, how'll we get there?" questioned Sasami.
	
	"Teleport, just like Ryoko does it; hyperspacial transit."

	"Huh?" and she was immediately sorry that she had said it. As Washu again 
summoned her pseudo-terminal, she began a lecture on teleportation. 

	"Well, you see...we've got to cross a very large amount of space fairly 
quickly. /So/, what we do is instead of flying there in a ship, we teleport. Now 
there are a couple of ways to do that," she finished entering commands, they 
suddenly felt a strong tidal pull and saw their environment stretch into 
obscurity. The lab sprung back into place around them. Washu walked off, still 
talking; the others followed.

	"One way is to disassemble yourself into your component particles and 
reassemble them where you want to be," she continued. "The real problem with 
that is that you kind of kill yourself in the process. The person who emerges is 
basically an exact duplicate of you, but the original is destroyed. That's why 
we can't travel that way, and one of the major reasons that Ryoko needs those 
power gems. They're probably the only personal power source powerful enough to 
create major wormholes."

	The group walked onto a large plate, slightly elevated above the ground. 
Ayeka, though really more concerned with getting the lab, and thereby 
themselves, out of danger, managed a query to Washu, "So Ryoko and we use these 
wormholes? I've heard the word before, but I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what 
it means."

	"Well, that was one for instance," said Washu, stepping off the plate into 
the new area to which it had transported them. So are all my transportation 
devices..."

	A glowing white ball of plasma flew down from the ceiling, impacting L.C. 
and shattering it into thousands of crystal shards. Ryoko darted down towards 
the floor and landed where the probe had been standing.

	Gasping, she said, "It's you!" She was quite relieved. "I thought you were 
those damned tree-things! You got my signal? Why the hell did you leave me in 
here?! What the he..."

	"Would you /please/ get off? I'm trying to reform," quipped an angry 
conglomeration of crystals. Ryoko lifted slightly off the ground and looked down 
in surprise. Slowly, the fragments clumped together and became a large, somewhat 
humanoid, crystalline mass. Eventually, the mass began to fragment into more and 
more polygonal shapes. As the growing number of polygons come more and more to 
resemble the newcomer, pigmentations appeared to flow into the probe. In 
actuality, the crystal exterior was reforming at the atomic level to modify the 
wavelengths of light which it would reflect. In any case, the color scheme 
matched the newscomer's actual body perfectly.

	"You! What are you doing here...and how did...what the...huh!?"

	Washu interjected, "Later, I have to get to the central computer. Follow 
me." The group proceeded to the elevated plate. Washu instructed the rest to 
wait where they were. She stepped onto the platform and vanished. Several 
minutes later, jubilant, she returned.

	"Done," she proclaimed.
	The computer spoke, "Preparations complete, laboratory now shifting 
planes. Ten seconds until planar shift." It began counting down, "...six, five, 
four, three...Warning! Security breach, five hundred twenty eight intruders 
detected in node 4, quadrant 3, sector 576, level 29: "ectobiology"...planar 
shift completed successfully."

	Ryoko and Washu disappeared instantly. The newcomer queried his computer 
as to whether it could track the two. It could. L.C. flickered out of existence 
and reemerged into a battlefield. Ryoko and Washu worked in tandem; Washu 
darting between places of cover, destroying enemies as she went, and Ryoko 
flying above, attacking airborne invaders. L.C. appeared to be incapable of 
helping in any way. It had no weapons or other superhuman powers. He could try 
fighting hand-to-hand, but that probably wouldn't get him very far. He looked 
around, saw Ryoko dodging energy blasts, Washu firing at a large group of 
attackers, defensive turrets picking off random enemies...and a blue horizontal 
line tracing up one of the transport columns. Tenchi ran over to L.C. upon being 
signaled. The newcomer had come up with an idea.

	"Give me your sword."

	"Huh!...um...you can't use it! It'll..."

	"I know, just gimme it for a while."

	Reluctantly, Tenchi produced the sword bearing his name and handed it to 
the probe. Predictably, a violent power outflux inundated its crystal body. A 
biological entity would have been seriously harmed, but L.C. was designed to 
store energy. After a few seconds he returned Tenchi's weapon. He emerged from 
his cover. Dodging energy blasts, he waited for a large group of attackers to 
surround him...

	It had been requiring a massive amount of energy to hold L.C. together. 
The influx of negative ions was attempting to pull apart the probe's crystal 
lattice at the weak points between polygons. /Loose Cannon/ suddenly released 
its telekinetic hold, and millions of pieces of razor-sharp, diamond-hard 
crystalline shrapnel exploded into the cloud of attackers. The newcomer's 
consciousness returned to his ship.

	Minus one ally but also obviously winning, Ryoko, Washu, Tenchi and 
Katsuhito battled the invaders. The wooden monstrosities' numbers dwindled 
further and further until only a few remained, hidden. Occasionally, one would 
fire when it thought it couldn't be detected. Invariably, it was then destroyed.

	Because Washu was moving so erratically, her computer decided that it 
couldn't put a message box in front of her; it instead interfaced with her 
crystal matrix.

	"Oh great Washuchan, you have a message waiting from the /JNS Loose 
Cannon/."

	Washu accepted the message. The newcomer's voice came through the comm-
link:

	"Washu! The enemy fleet is here! If you've secured everything there, get 
back here! Ryo-Ohki is pilotless, these ships are tough as hell! We're taking 
four losses to their three. Shit! What the hell is tha..."

	Washu didn't wait to tell the others about the message, she said, "Ryoko! 
Finish up here!" and then Ryoko was again alone.
***********************************************************************

	Washu didn't need a neural computer linkup to think quickly. Ryo-Ohki, 
under her control, was easily evading the barrage of fire aimed at her. Washu 
divided time between firing on enemies and looking for whatever had surprised 
her student. The later task was made rather difficult by the hulls and fire of 
150 trillion battling warships. Wait...there was the other dreadnought. It 
didn't seem to be concentrating fire on anything in particular. However...it did 
appear to have lost all its fighters...and..."Hell!"

	She opened a channel, "How on Earth did you loose 20% of your shields?!"

	"Some /huge/ thing attacked me! Looked like Clay's ship! I couldn't evade 
its fire! Destroyed all my fighters...can't grow more...I took out its bridge 
and it self-destructed. Jurai system's got a new singularity orbiting now."

	"A black hole! Where?! I don't see it on sensors."

	"I cloaked it. I've been luring big capitol ships into it. I'll highlight 
it for you."

	The event horizon of the new singularity became a glowing red sphere on 
her viewscreen. She began working it's position into her evasions.

	With both dreadnoughts taking out roughly 100 ships per minute, the battle 
was turning to their favor. A quick calculation would reveal how long the enemy 
fleet had before being wiped out completely. "Let's see, assume that each 
Juraian ship takes out only one enemy, that leaves 50 trillion...at two hundred 
per minute...oh hell. Washu, do you realize that it'll take fifty thousand 
/years/ to kill these guys!"

	"You forget that we'll be getting reinforcements soon. Another thirty-
trillion ships are coming in from the rest of the empire. They'll be here within 
the hour."

	"That still leaves us with way too many ships."

	"Not necessarily. Your little stunt in the lab gave me an idea."

	"You can't seriously mean that..."

	"Yes, I do seriously mean that. Start building a charge."
***********************************************************************

	"Captain, we're about to enter the Jurai system. They say that they've 
never seen a battle like this before."

	"Right, Raise shields and prepare to launch fighters, signal the fleet to 
do likewise."

	"Yessir, entering the system now sir."

	"Captain, we've got incoming! Can't evade it!"

	"Jesus Christ! Evasive pattern 3, pick a target and fire, launch 
fighters!"

	"Got a target! Firing."

	"Fighters launched sir."

	"Shields at 65%!"

	"Splash one heavy cruiser!"

	"Engineering reports hull breaches and casualties..."

	"Fighters inbound!"

	"Divert all engine power to shields."	"Got another cruiser, and I've 
taken out half of those inbounds."

	"Engine power to shields, eye sir!"

	"Shields at 40%"

	"We've picked up a heavy gunboat, they're firing, taking damage to..."

	"Engine power to shields successful!"

	"Shields at 25%"

	"I've almost got that damned gunboat, I think I can..."

	"Sir, we've got fighters requesting permission to dock!"

	"Shields at 15%"

	"Hull breaches on all decks! Reports of casualties from all over the 
ship..."

	"Abandon ship! Set self-destruct to two minutes!"

	"Abandon ship, abandon ship! Self-destruct has been activated! Abandon 
ship, abandon...oh shit! Too late!"
***********************************************************************

	/Loose Cannon's/ shields had been drained to help create the charge; they 
were now running at 5%. With weapons off-line, all that her pilot could do was 
watch the battle: The /Prosecutor/ was beleaguered by fighters, the /Hot Fist of 
Destruction/ was blazing away at anything in weapons range and doing quite well, 
the /Invincible/ was behaving very non-invincibly, Ryo-Ohki was still at 100% 
shields and was managing to maintain her 100 kill-per-minute rate despite the 
large void in enemy ships that had formed around her...and thirty-trillion ships 
suddenly appeared throughout the system.
	
	The big carrier in the lead took out a respectable amount of fighters plus 
three capitol ships before being destroyed. Most of the other ships were running 
from the fray into voids in the action, especially around the two dreadnoughts. 
The charge was now fully stored, he prepared to distribute it throughout the 
ship. For now, he continued watching the battle. Now, many enemy ships were 
converging on the bubble of friendlies surrounding the /Loose Cannon/. Perhaps 
they had noticed the pause from her weapons.
	
	The bubble, several billion ships strong, began firing defensively long 
before the encroaching hostiles were in range. Their concentrated nature gave 
them the advantage, but by now almost all of the enemy not immediately engaged 
in battle was closing on the /Loose Cannon/. Hundreds of billions of enemy ships 
were destroyed before the shield of ships was eliminated. /Loose Cannon/ stood 
defenseless; sensing a major opportunity, the enemy fleet converged. The 
newcomer transmitted.

	"Washu, they think I'm dead in the water; I'm setting the computer to 
release the charge. Will the ship come apart with just that force?"

	"No. Set the self-destruct for a few minutes and transport to Ryo-Ohki."

	"Right, done. I'm coming over." For the first time in days, the newcomer's 
biological body was without its crystal encapsulation. It had been as long since 
the last time he had tried to walk; standing took some getting used to. He sat 
on the bridge floor and continued to observe the battle. Washu transmitted to 
the fleet, "This is Ryo-Ohki calling all ships of the Juraian task force: in 30 
seconds the /Loose Cannon/ will destroy any ship within a 0.2 A.U. radius. All 
ships, jump to adjoining systems /now/!"

	As the battle fleet abandoned the system, Ryo-Ohki diverted all energy to 
shields, they would observe the outcome from within the danger zone, and shield 
Jurai from as much of the debris as possible.

	They waited. There were only ten seconds left. Why didn't it come! The 
enemy must realize by now what was happening! If /Loose Cannon/ didn't detonate 
soon, the plan would backfire! How couldn't this have been ten seconds?! This 
was maddening! Explode dammit! Expl...

	/Loose Cannon's/ computer brought 100 tons of antimatter out of 
containment and into direct contact with the drive-core. Within one-tenthousanth 
of a second, microfractures in the crystal shell had radiated out to the 
surface. Normally, the shell would have been vaporized a moment later, but the 
electromagnetic repulsive charge built up now caused a trillion tons of crystal 
shards to explode out in all directions. 

	The surrounding attackers were bombarded by quadrillions of deadly 
missiles, piercing their shields and hulls alike. Automatic systems in most of 
those that survived activated emergency forcefields around the hull breaches, 
but all the ships had lost their shields. The powerful shockwave from the 
scuttling charge impacted the defenseless enemy fleet a few hundredths of a 
second after the deadly rain of crystal shards. Ship after ship buckled and 
yielded to the irresistible destructive force. The battle of Jurai was at an 
end.
***********************************************************************

	Ryo-Ohki shed crystal fragments into subspace as she reverted to 
battlecruiser form. Entering the Juraian atmosphere, it was obvious that the 
planet had not fared well. Planetary defenses had kept most of the ships at bay; 
but with so many enemies, they had been overwhelmed. Many ships had either 
bombarded the surface or crashed into it. Several hundred years ago, the royal 
palace had been destroyed by Ryoko aboard Ryo-Ohki; this day, the planet, 
perhaps the empire itself, had been saved by the creator of both. Fortunately, 
the encounter all those years ago had taught the royal family that their 
planetary defenses were not undefeatable. Individual settlements were now 
protected by giant deflector shields that could be powered directly by immense 
turbines buried at the boundary between mantle and outer planetary core. The 
palace itself had taken very little damage; and although the landscape was 
scarred and cratered, the major cities appeared, for the most part, to be in 
tact.

	"This is Ryo-Ohki coming in, request you lower the shield around the 
palace." Washu seemed tired but rather hopeful as she said the words. Finally, 
she knew that she would have time to carry out her plan without the threat of an 
incursion by her enemy...her enemy. There was no better way to describe Tokimi, 
because she had no idea who the enigmatic hyperdimensional being was, let alone 
why she was so interested in her. Well, the questions could wait for a few more 
thousands of years. Even her plan must wait many years before beginning in 
earnest. For one, she still had to find a suitable replacement for that kid. Of 
course, she had to deal with him as well. He obviously couldn't fill the role 
which she had intended, but he had proved his usefulness in the battle. Maybe he 
could be used to buy a few more thousand years...

	Ryo-Ohki slowed to a hover over the palace grounds, her passengers 
descended to the surface, followed by her own cabbit form. As they entered the 
throne room to speak to the emperor, they were met by a great forceful blast of 
noise. The emperor and the entire high council were in emergency session trying 
to deal with the problems associated with several trillion derelict vessels and 
many more wounded than any single planet could possibly handle, among a huge 
number of similar problems. 

	"Look, we need a million ships, right? So pick a million! Send the rest 
back to wherever they came from. And get some GPs out here to check those damned 
pirates!" The emperor closed the comm-link that he had been screaming into and 
turned to Washu. "Washu! Thank God for you! I can't imagine what would have 
happened if that battlefleet had just appeared in Jurai system without warning."

	"We can talk of such things later. I'm just here to make certain that 
everything is containable, and to give you this." She handed him a small 
transparent silicon cube. "I've put all the necessary data for my part of the 
deal on this holographic storage unit, and a complete training program. I'll 
speak to you long distance later, for now I must return to my lab, and check on 
Ryoko."

	"Of course, goodbye Washu."

	"Oh, and I almost forgot, your daughter Ayeka has asked that Tenchi remain 
with her here for a few days in order that he might get a glimpse of royal life, 
they are somewhere in the palace now."

	He smiled at that, "Certainly, I will do my best to make our guest feel at 
home."
***********************************************************************

	Ryoko crouched in a remote corner of the great room to which Washu's 
computer had confined the remnants of Tokimi's invading force. Superhumanly 
alert, she observed the many small crevices and hiding places in which her enemy 
might be laying hidden. For some time now, nothing had moved; it appeared that 
the invaders had been wiped out. She waited, and now she began to mull over 
possible courses of action. It had been almost 24 hours since Washu had again 
left her in this giant, now sealed, room. She hadn't even told her why she had 
to depart so suddenly. She wished that she could move; perhaps she would risk it 
and let down her guard. If Washu's computer would behave a bit more 
cooperatively, this could have ended hours ago. "Dammit, /why/ can't you tell me 
whether there are any left? And don't give me that damned, 'Internal 
sensors...'"

	"Request denied. Internal sensors unavailable."

	"I /said.../"

	A swirling blue-purple vortex spiraled out from a point a few hundred 
meters from Ryoko's corner. Several long, thin forms sped outward from it's 
interior, their leading edges beginning to expand vertically. Within a few 
hundredths of a second, the spagettified forms of Washu, Katsuhito, Sasami, 
Noboyuki, Mihoshi and the newcomer (this time his actual body, not L.C.) had 
become recognizable. The wormhole vanished, Ryoko as well. Washu's daughter 
reappeared facing her creator, "What took you so long? You know I've been 
waiting here for..."

	"Any left?" interrupted Washu.

	"That's another thing. Why the /hell/ won't your computer..."

	But Washu already had her answer, internal sensors reported zero invaders 
remaining. She responded to Ryoko, "Because you don't have the right clearance. 
Internal sensors are an important system, you know. I wouldn't want someone 
messing around with delicate settings who didn't know what they were doing."

	"Hmph...That stupid thing made me sit in that corner for ten hours after I 
got the last one. You'd think that it'd be smart enough to just..."

	Insulting Washu's computer is a dangerous thing to do in her presence. 
Fortunately for Ryoko, the timely appearance of a comm window interrupted 
Washu's intended demonstration of this.  The captain of the Juraian flagship 
looked slightly worried. "Washu, we're picking up an...interesting anomaly on 
sensors. Hyperspace drives on some of our large outbound ships are giving their 
captains hell about jumping from too far inside a star's gravity well. But 
they're all well outside of unsafe range. We thought you might be able to offer 
some insight."

	"You've accounted for the new black hole, right?"

	"Hell yes! We've got a team of tugs trying to get it the hell out of the 
system, sensors aren't being fooled by it though."

	"Well, I'll see if I can find anything. Wait just a second."

	Washu's pseudo-terminal appeared at her command. She displayed a diagram 
of the Jurai system. Indeed, there was a large gravity well forming a few AUs 
from the star. "What on Earth is that?" It was growing in strength as well, what 
could cause that? Her computer gave a list of suggestions, at the top of the 
list was, "Extremely massive body approaching from hyperspace."

	"/Blast!/  Check the last course of Tokimi's fleet, are there any ships 
that haven't arrived yet?"

	Responding to Washu's spoken command, her computer said, "Confirmed, one 
capitol vessel now 2.5 HSUs from standard space and decelerating. Length is 
3,578 meters; mass is 1.9734 times ten to the thirtieth power kilograms; class 
is undefined; class nickname is 'Galaxy Puller.'"

	Speaking into the comm-link, "Looks like we've got a straggler, didn't 
pick it up before. It'll be in the Jurai system in just a few seconds. Powerful; 
one like it gave one of my dreadnoughts a tough time. I think I'll head back to 
Jurai to help out, most of your fleet has already left, right?"

	"Correct, we appreciate any assistance you might be able to lend...looks 
like it's coming through now. Better hurry, or you'll miss the action!"

	Washu closed the window. "It would appear that Tokimi's flagship isn't 
captained by an idiot, fooled even me. I think the Juraian fleet may need some 
help, everyone coming?"

	"You're not leaving me behind this time!" voiced Ryoko.

	"Certainly not, let's go." The universe stretched into obscurity.
***********************************************************************

	"We're just outside the palace's protective field, so we can still launch. 
However, we're unprotected against orbital assault; so everyone pay attention to 
this monitor..." a large pseudo-window popped up, displaying the planet along 
with the Juraian battlefleet, which was taking heavy losses to the huge ship in 
their midst, "...so we'll know when to get out of here if it starts attacking 
the surface."

	"Fine, you guys do that; I'd rather fight the thing alone anyway," Ryoko 
stated as she and Ryo-Ohki lifted off the ground. 

	"No wait Ryoko, you won't have time to form the dreadnought if you just 
take off!" warned Washu, too late. Ryoko, now in Ryo-Ohki's battlecruiser form, 
flew off into the battle; of course, she had no idea what her mother was yelling 
about, but there was no way that she was going to let those bastards hurt her 
Tenchi.

	Washu looked and felt rather irritated, "All right, fine... You, start 
collecting material to form the /Loose Cannon's/ dreadnought form, don't launch 
now! Just get the material."

	"Umm...how?"

	"Ugh.../I'll/do it."

	Within a few seconds, an "acquiring material-0%" box appeared in the 
lower-right corner of the newcomer's vision. Apparently, the ship was being 
formed in subspace. As he turned to the large battle monitor, a second line of 
text and a second progress bar appeared under the previous one, but in the same 
box: "assembling ship remotely-0%."

	On screen, the enemy had completely routed the Juraian fleet. What ships 
were left were now fleeing the awesome power of Tokimi's flagship. With the 
exception of a tiny shining point flying straight into its fire.
***********************************************************************

	Ryo-Ohki meowed apprehensively. 

	"Don't wimp out on me now, Ryo-Ohki!" Ryoko commanded as they hurtled 
toward the vastly more powerful ship.

	"We're in weapon's range."

	"Fire! Now!"

	From the four points of Ryo-Ohki's great spires, intensely bright beams of 
light shot forth, in rapid succession, toward the enemy. In retaliation, 
thousands of lateral guns sprung out from the flagship's hull. Firing in 
sequence, and with perfect aim, they were all but impossible for even the nimble 
battlecruiser to evade. The giant ship had no shields, but the heavily armored 
hull was barely being affected by it's assailant's weapons. 

	"Ryo-Ohki, can't you find some weak point or something?!"

	"Based upon previous encounters, destroying this class of warship's bridge 
results in self destruction."

	"Then fire at the blasted bridge!"

	"Acknowledged."

	The slowly tracing bursts of light converged at once upon the immense head 
at the craft's leading edge. They didn't seem to be producing much impact there 
as well; but the action certainly caused one interesting response: all weapons 
fire from the flagship ceased. 

	"I don't like this, Ryo-Ohki. Stay alert."

	"Acknowledged, there is a large buildup of energy from a small grouping of 
cannons nearest our location."

	"Fire there! Get us around to the other side of the ship."

	"Again the beams of light refocused, this time there /was/ a visible 
effect; a gaping hole, several hundred feet in radius, was suddenly blasted out 
of the giant ship's side. Cannons along the remainder of its over two mile 
length resumed their attack, but such efforts were unnecessary.

	"Warning, level three shockwave detect..." The powerful blast wave rippled 
through Ryo-Ohki's crystalline hull, wreaking havoc on its internal structure. 
As layer after layer of crystal lattice was sheared from its foundation, the 
unity of the ship's systems was lost. Now Ryo-Ohki was simply a great 
crystalline mass, encasing her biological body and Ryoko, and drifting toward 
Jurai. Despite the cavernous void in the big ship's hull, there appeared to be 
few adverse effects, and she continued towards the capitol planet.
***********************************************************************

	"The ship will swing around the planet and then off into deep space," said 
Washu. She had transported Ryoko and her cabbit out of the derelict vessel 
several minutes after the shockwave hit. Ryo-Ohki was severely dazed and being 
pampered by Sasami. Ryoko lay on the ground, unconscious. 

	"I told her not to go off like that." 

	"Will she be all right Washu?" asked Sasami, plaintively.

	Noboyuki spoke up, "I'm sure she'll be just fine Sasami, don't worry."

	"Of course," chirped Washu, "I didn't make a weakling you know. Really, 
I'm rather surprised that she was knocked unconscious, her injuries aren't that 
severe. There's not much that can hurt someone who has no real vital organs..."

	Sasami  was curious, "Huh Washu?"

	Ayeka, devilishly grinning, retorted, "Well if /that/ doesn't prove she's 
a monster, then what /does/?"

	Washu cocked her head and smiled maliciously at the princess, "Well, she 
has a brain of course, that's pretty important! But the rest is a humanoid/masu 
hybrid structure; facilitates regeneration."

	"Aha! Like Ryoko's father!" toned Mihoshi.

	"Mmm...So Ryoko is an advanced version of that mass-humanoid that attacked 
Tenchi?" The newcomer was still waiting for the Loose Cannon to form. 

	"Well most of her is. Then of course there's the crystal matrix, and the 
less advanced technological additions; and the biological brain, of course."

	"And most of that wouldn't be affected by a shockwave?"

	"Correct. I would imagine that she's just taken some damage to the one 
system that's hardest to fix. Must have hit her head pretty hard to do any 
damage at all really, but the nano-bots will fix it up soon."

	"You mean the nanites do the self-healing stuff, I would have thought that 
it would be more like the mass."

	"True, and that's standard; but the brain has a cellular structure, unlike 
the rest of her. Cellular composition is difficult to reconstruct, so you need 
something that can deal with more variables, like the nano-bots."

	"Makes sense, but if Ryoko's an advanced mass, then does that mean that 
her body core is antimatter? That seems a little unstable."

	"Of course not. Mass produce energy that way, but it's too dangerous for a 
sentient life form. Ryoko's energy is drawn from the power gems. I've made her 
crystal matrix specially to accept them, so she can generate plasma and use her 
other powers in any situation. Ryo-Ohki's gem is of my own creation, and it 
serves the same purpose. On the other hand, you or I require a link to my large 
generators in subspace."

	"Oh? If you can create such things, why rely on generators?"

	"When have I ever been cut off from them? Never. And they produce more 
power than the gems anyway. Admittedly they're /much/ bigger, but that doesn't 
really matter in an uninhabited universe."

	A few minutes passed, everyone looked worriedly at the battle monitor, 
showing the huge ship slowly approaching the capitol planet, unopposed. In an 
attempt to break the uneasy silence, the newcomer spoke up. "You know, speaking 
of masses; you said at one point that they're made of matter, antimatter and 
some sort of neutral material. What exactly is that? I've never heard of 
anything like that before."

	"Simple really. It's just..."

	"WARNING! INCOMING WEAPONS FIRE!" blared a disembodied computerized voice.

	A gigantic column of blazing green light descended from the sky and 
impacted the royal palace's shielding. The brilliant blue dome flared into life 
to take the force of the blast, and the earsplitting sound of the surrounding 
atmosphere being turned to plasma resounded for miles. The great shield's power 
generator appeared to be withstanding the surge well enough, and the immense 
ship in orbit appeared to be able to keep that weapon in operation forever. 
Giant arcs of current leapt forth from both beam and dome; and all stared 
awestruck at the great column in front of them, with one terminus visible on the 
battle monitor and the other imbedded in the huge blue hemisphere a few hundred 
meters away.

	"Who knows which will last longer," said Washu, "What's your status?" she 
turned to the newcomer.

	"90% and 85%. Almost done; shouldn't we draw its fire away first, I'm 
pretty vulnerable when I'm switching forms."

	"It won't leave its spot for anything now that it's got the palace in its 
sights. You'll have to get out of range first; Ryo-Ohki, take us out a few AUs."

	Sasami was upset by this, "Washu, you can't make her do that now. Not 
after what happened the last time."

	"Really there's no problem. She can make a new ship, good as new. Right 
Ryo-Ohki?"

	Happy to help, Ryo-Ohki meowed an affirmation, then leapt into the sky and 
switched into her battlecruiser form.

	"Everyone come along, it's safer out there anyway," commanded Washu. Ryo-
Ohki understood. She transported the entire group to her bridge before starting 
upwards. It didn't take much time for the secondary cannons of the huge ship 
above to open fire. As Ryo-Ohki struggled upwards against the hail of fire her 
passengers were shaken badly. Finally, they were out of range. A few minutes 
later, the newcomer announced that the /Loose Cannon/ had formed. Washu brought 
Ryo-Ohki to a stop. She said, "The program will automatically bring the shell 
into this plane if you select Dreadnought from the menu. Good luck."

	"Shouldn't be too hard, I killed one like it before," came the newcomer's 
detached voice as he phased through the hull and began moving to a safe 
distance. After a few seconds and several miles, the huge form of /Loose 
Cannon's/ Dreadnought mode appeared around his distant floating shape. From the 
bridge of Ryo-Ohki, the group watched as the hulking ship thrust towards Jurai.
***********************************************************************

	The huge enemy did not even bother to power down its superlaser as it 
rotated into attack position. The blazing green column raked along the ground, 
vaporizing the soil down to the bare bedrock and sweeping across the footprints 
of its rivals before razing several small villages, too poor to afford defensive 
shields, to the ground and below. 

	Now the deadly weapon swung around to face one of Washu's most powerful 
creations; the /Loose Cannon/ was fast approaching conventional weapons' range. 
The huge polyhedron easily avoided the wildly swinging column of light. Several 
AUs distant, the occupants of Ryo-Ohki could easily discern a curvature in the 
beam as the titanic vessel generating it rotated. One among them, however, was 
uninterested in the lightshow; Washu anxiously watched a small window 
superimposed on the starscape:
***
acquiring materials-54%
---
assembling-47%
***
	Blasts of gleaming white light, tiny in comparison to the superlaser still 
shining menacingly but ineffectively, sped towards the /Loose Cannon/ in slow 
motion. The central computer was guessing as to their locations; as of course 
there was no way to actually see the incoming laserblasts. The two ships were 
approximately .4 light seconds displaced from each-other, easily far enough for 
the /Loose Cannon's/ superluminal space drive to dodge. The problem was that 
they just kept /anticipating/ the newcomer's movements! As soon as one volley 
would be behind him, there were several more aimed directly at him and already 
approaching. The only course of action at these times was to retreat before the 
oncoming blasts, out to beyond range, and then charge into the fray once more; 
hoping to dodge the first few volleys in order to gain a shooting position. 

	Fortunately, the lumbering enemy was no match for Washu's creation in 
terms of agility; a good number of the newcomer's shots were finding their 
marks. Unfortunately, Tokimi's forces seemed to have learned from their earlier, 
fatal mistakes. This ship was not set to self-destruct upon the destruction of 
the bridge, as about twenty minutes of continuous fire on that section revealed. 
In addition, some sort of hyper-advanced ray shielding had been installed over 
the most vital areas, although the lateral weapons arrays were left unshielded. 
A large hull breach in place of several of the lateral cannons made a tempting 
target, but it was extremely well shielded; not worth the time and energy.

	But how had Ryoko managed to create that hull breach in the first place? 
Logically, it would seem that she had attacked the weapons array, but even Ryo-
Ohki couldn't have gotten a firing position on those given the way they were 
firing now. As he was wondering, disaster struck. Within the space of about a 
second, the newcomer received the following alerts:
***
WARNING:

Unanticipated impact reported
***
Reassessing target weapons' recharge rates
***
ALERT:

Weapon enemy's firing patterns have become erratic, unable to predict weapons-
fire locations
***
NOTE:

Removing projected laserfire images
***
	The space around the /Loose Cannon/ suddenly became pitch black, with no 
laserblasts visible. All that remained was the constant bleeping of the minor 
alert siren and the now slowly decreasing shield status indicator. 

	"What the hell, can't avoid it now."

	The /Loose Cannon/ moved into a course directly out from the lateral line 
of gun turrets flanking the enemy vessel. As the great polyhedron's shields 
began to drop much faster, individual cannons began to explode; unprotected from 
the newcomer's precision shots.
***********************************************************************

	"Blast! He'll get destroyed that way, why doesn't he run a projection to 
see if he'll be successful?" Washu watched in dismay as one of her finest 
creations was piloted into certain destruction. She quickly glanced behind her 
at another readout displaying 72% completion of the dreadnought shell. Had she 
not been so preoccupied, she might have noticed a small stirring from Ryoko out 
of the corner of her eye.
***********************************************************************

	"Washu is hailing you."

	"Accept communication."

	Washu's voice pervaded the newcomer's consciousness, "You do realize that 
you'll loose your shields before you can destroy all of those, right?"

	"Huh!? Um...hold on." Several seconds passed. "Oh. Well then I'll just get 
out of weapons' range when they get too low. I can regenerate faster than it 
can."

	"True, but what about the imperial palace? I don't know if it's defensive 
shield could withstand another attack."

	"Well, I can't think of a better way to disable this thing. If I can't 
stay near it then I can't attack it where it hurts; and I can't get closer than 
this unless I get rid of these guns."

	"Actually, that might work. I'll be there to help in about thirty minutes; 
try to keep it busy until then."

	"Got it! See you in thirty minutes then."
***********************************************************************

	Swirling colors danced before Ryoko's vision. If she dared open her eyes 
for a brief minute, she could discern the forms of the group. They were aboard 
Ryo-Ohki, with Washu at the helm. Through the ringing in her ears she was barely 
able to discern the excited voices of some of the others as they peered out 
through the void at a large curving line in towards the star. Washu muttered a 
line about someone getting destroyed and turned to look at something on the 
display behind Ryoko, she looked very concerned. What was going on...she 
couldn't remember what had happened, all she knew was that Tenchi was on 
Jurai...and under attack.

	At the thought of Tenchi in danger, Ryoko tried to heave herself onto her 
feet. At the sudden effort, a sharp pain in her head knocked her back into 
unconsciousness.

	As far as Ryoko was concerned, what ensued could have been an eternity; 
finally, she began to gain consciousness. She was barely able to make out 
snippets of conversation over Ryo-Ohki's comm-link. Washu was talking to that 
newcomer. Where was he at? Maybe still on Jurai...Jurai, that's where Tenchi 
was...she had to help Tenchi...why was Washu still so far out in space? Why 
weren't they helping Tenchi? Then she heard Washu say that the palace couldn't 
take another hit. That was too much, she started to struggle to her feet.
***********************************************************************

	Washu closed the comm-link. "Ryo-Ohki, can you give me an exact time until 
completion..."

	"Ryo-Ohki! Head towards Jurai, full speed!"

	"What! Ryoko! When did you...No Ryo-Ohki, don..."

	"Do it Ryo-Ohki!"

	Ryo-Ohki let out a confused and troubled meow, then started towards Jurai, 
despite Washu's continuing objections, on incomplete engines.
***********************************************************************

	"57% of enemy's starboard turrets now inoperative, shields are at 32% of 
maximum strength and falling."

	"How long until we have to back off?"

	"About seven minutes, I would suggest thrusting away in precisely six 
minutes, 47 seconds...mark."

	"Remind me then...and move us toward the enemy's bow, see if we can get 
some of the rear guns to let off."

	"Acknowledged, recalculating time to departure."

	The /Loose Cannon/ seemed to jump to a point several miles in space from 
its last location; abruptly, many of the enemy's aft turrets ceased to fire, as 
their target was now impossible to hit without damaging the turrets forward of 
them. The newcomer didn't have any such problems; he /wanted/ to destroy 
turrets, and he was doing a respectable job of it. 

	However, computer projections still showed that he was loosing the race. 
The /Loose Cannon/ would completely loose shields before all the turrets were 
destroyed; and her hull was not designed to take any kind of punishment from 
energy weapons. Because the /Loose Cannon/ was transparent, any one of those 
laser turrets could vaporize her captain through the hull in one shot.

	"Now five minutes left. By the way, I'm tracking Ryo-Ohki converging on 
our location. She has not completed her dreadnought form and will not for some 
time. Her shields are up but are at one third strength. She does have nearly 
full weapons capabilities but only has subluminal drives and no onboard computer 
activity save for the standard battlecruiser model...Acknowledged, channel open 
now...I was refused a visual linkup, audio only."

	The newcomer spoke through the link, "Washu, what are you doing? You can't 
be serious about..."

	Ryoko's irate voice permeated his consciousness, "I have taken control of 
my ship and yes I have every intention of attacking that thing! I don't care how 
much bigger it is than Ryo-Ohki, I can kill it! I'm just going to have to..."

	"Do you mean you don't even know what ship you're in!? Washu, where are 
you? Can't you get Ryoko under control?...Or at least let her know what she's 
piloting?"

	Washu's voice came through, "I have tried. She won't let me or Ryo-Ohki 
link with her, and she won't believe me...she always was a stubborn little 
thing."

	"Oh shut up /mom/!  I don't know why you want Tenchi gone, but I won't let 
you let him die!"

	"I don't want Tenchi /dead/!  -He's my most promising research specimen 
after all-..."

	"You see! You don't care about Tenchi at all..."

	"You don't understand what's going on! If you would just run a scan of the 
enemy ship you'd see..."

	"Agh! All right fine! Ryo-Ohki, show me that blast..."

	Before she could finish the command Ryo-Ohki complied. A view appeared of 
the battle being waged above the imperial palace, obviously oriented so as to 
prominently display the existence of the /Loose Cannon/. The view lagged by 
several seconds, not because of the information's travel time, but in order that 
the computer could draw in the laser beams (based on reports from the /Loose 
Cannon's/ impact sensors).

	"What...is that!?"

	"You see! /That/ is my latest achievement in ship design! And if it were 
piloted properly it would have already destroyed that thing..."

	The newcomer interrupted, "If you have complaints about my work, then by 
all means take over for me. My computer may want to take chances, but I think 
I'll leave myself a three minute window. I'll be back in a few minutes, after 
shields recharge."

	The comlink died, and the /Loose Cannon/ vanished.

	"As I was saying, " Washu continued, "/that/ was also an excellent example 
of what Ryo-Ohki's dreadnought form will be, if it has a chance to form.

	"What are you talking about! What did you do to Ryo-Ohki!"

	"If I were you I'd be paying more attention to the..."

	Ryo-Ohki 'mya'ed, and a shield indicator window appeared. There were about 
twenty minutes until total shield failure.

	"If I were you I'd start firing. If I may suggest, taking out those 
lateral turrets might be a good idea."

	"Of course it would be a good idea! Ryo-Ohki, fire on the lateral 
cannons!"

	Bright points of light should have flared from Ryo-Ohki's quadruplet 
spires...what was happening. Suddenly a great beam of white energy erupted from 
just below the viewport, completely destroying one of the turrets. Seconds 
later, it happened again.

	"What the hell is going on!? Why did you put a laser under the viewport!? 
What else have you done to my..."

	"I'm still amazed how oblivious you are to the fact that there is a mile 
of crystalline hull between you and that viewport."

	"What!!! What have you done to my ship!"

	"Correction, my ship. I built her, and I am tired of letting your 
outbursts determine her fate! I'm sorry Ryo-Ohki. I know that you hate it when I 
do this; I was trying to avoid it, but it is necessary."

	At that Washu slumped to the floor, took on a look of meditation, crossed 
her legs and closed her eyes. A red glow came over the bridge, floating crystals 
began to pulsate and glow bright red. Ryo-Ohki took on unbelievable mobility; 
even though the incoming blasts were invisible, they were not hitting home. The 
enemy just couldn't predict the ship's actions. Meanwhile, all fire from Ryo-
Ohki ceased, she simply danced around the incoming blasts and replied with 
nothing.

	Several of the others onboard recognized this situation; Ryo-Ohki was like 
this just before they boarded the Soujya...of course Washu had done it, why 
hadn't they thought of it before? Ryoko was trying to control herself, "Why 
don't you attack! If you can avoid the fire, you can defeat them!"

	"Be patient, I don't intend to sit out here forever avoiding fire. They'll 
get what they deserve soon enough."

	"Whaddaya need to wait for!? Why's later any better than now!?"

	"Because of power. Wait longer, get a bigger charge."

	"Well you could've told me that earlier! You mean this thing can take out 
that ship in one shot!?

	"Of course not. I'd've done that hours ago if I could've. What I can do is 
take out that ray-shielding over the big hole you blew out of our enemy's side."

	"Hah! You see, I knew what I was doing when I shot those cannons!"

	"Actually you did exactly what they wanted you to do. They lost a few 
turrets, we very nearly lost a ship. But there's gotta be something worth 
hitting back there, or they wouldn't have put all that shielding up. And 
sooooo..."

	The viewscreens became a solid glaring white. Nothing was visible outside 
the ship for several seconds. Finally, the glare began to die away. Ryo-Ohki's 
passengers stared anxiously at the dull shadows now filtering through the 
graying light outside. When at last Ryo-Ohki's great weapon was silent, and the 
distant Juraian sun was again the brightest object in the system, they saw the 
result of the immense blast upon their enemy...no change whatsoever!

	But Washu's look of meditation ceased, she climbed up onto her feet and 
sat down in the command chair. "Ryo-Ohki, can you tell what's behind that hole 
now?...AH! Really! Ha, you idiots! It's easier to charge the closest cannons to 
the power source, but if they get destroyed then...Ryo-Ohki, do you remember how 
we destroyed the rest of the battlefleet by blowing up the /Loose Cannon/?  I 
want you to detach part of your hull and send it in through the hole to near 
that power supply, set it off in ten seconds."

	"Miya." A glowing chunk of crystal shot towards the enemy and through the 
now unprotected hole. Obeying Washu's tacit order, Ryo-Ohki surged through 
hyperspace, reappearing in orbit over Jurai. To the others it suddenly became 
apparent that somehow during the exchange, Washu had managed to lure the big 
ship out several degrees around Jurai's orbit.

	Ryo-Ohki displays a timer on screen, it is at seven seconds and counting 
down...6...5...4...3...The /Loose Cannon/ jumps into existence a few kilometers 
from the enemy ship...2...Those on Ryo-Ohki have just processed what they saw 
and react with horror...1...Ryoko starts to give a voice command but Washu has 
already regained her meditating appearance, the others see the /Loose Cannon/ 
flare red...0.

	A solid black sphere, the event horizon of the second new black hole of 
the day, appeared around the forms of the two great ships and blotted out a vast 
portion of the starfield behind it. Washu lost her meditating look and slumped 
in the chair, the others stared in horrified silence out the viewscreen.
***********************************************************************

	The /Loose Cannon/  jumped in next to its enemy, it didn't fire. Through 
the hole in the side, the newcomer's telescopes could detect frenzied activity. 
He couldn't tell why they were in such a hurry. He also didn't see Ryo-Ohki. He 
spoke to his computer, "Can you detect Ryo-Oh..." And he lost all sensation save 
for sight. And that sense was completely occupied by the image of a solid red 
field, with slightly brighter red letters superimposed over it. The letters 
spelled out the words:
***
Washu aboard Ryo-Ohki has seized control of this vessel, please wait for control 
to be returned to you.
***
	The newcomer was astounded, this had never happened before, even when 
Washu was interfaced with his computer. What was going on? For about ten seconds 
he wondered before he realized that he was again in control, he was floating 
through empty space with nothing visible, even on long range sensors. He was in 
an empty universe.

	"Find out where we are and get us back to Jurai system."

	For a few seconds the computer checked its logs, calculated rate of drift 
in this universe and plotted a course back through the column of planes to its 
home universe, matched 3D velocity with Ryo-Ohki and then jumped. Twenty seconds 
after the formation of the new black hole, Ryo-Ohki's passengers saw the /Loose 
Cannon/ appear a kilometer from their viewscreens.
***********************************************************************

	"Hey everyone! Time for dinner!" Sasami called out across the rolling 
hills surrounding the Masaki residence. In the floating onsen, Mihoshi and 
Ayeka, looking after Mayuka, heard Sasami and interrupted their bath. On the 
docks, Ryoko and Ryo-Ohki were "fishing," but stopped what they were doing to 
head for the house. Upstairs, Tenchi, Noboyuki and Katsuhito had already been 
summoned and were on their way down. But in Washu's lab, Washu and her student 
were out of earshot. They wouldn't have interrupted their conversation anyway.

	"Well, it took almost a year, but I think you've become as experienced in 
interspecies espionage as someone of your limited mental capacity can be. 
However, I think that you would benefit from some assistance in your mission. As 
such, I've put together several packages filled with everything you need to 
install an integral crystal matrix into a humanoid. Spend time on your home 
world and others searching out those whom you can trust and who you think could 
help you. Then tell them of your mission, to infiltrate and disrupt Tokimi's 
military. If they are willing to help you, give them the means. If they are not, 
I suggest that you find some way to silence them; you do not want non-allies to 
know of your objectives."

	"Mmm...I guess I should leave soon. I wish I didn't have to though."

	"We have been through this. Remember that not only this universe but all 
universes' fates depend on the defeat of Tokimi. Also, you do not truly belong 
here, you are not of this world, you should not stay here."

	"Yeah. I guess it would be a little weird if I just showed up in the third 
OAV series!"

	"I still don't understand why you continue to insist that changes in this 
world will have any effect on that TV show. And remember, you have at least a 
thousand years to play with before you need to infiltrate enemy space, so make 
your selection of allies carefully. If you wish to stay the night, fine; but I 
suggest that you leave soon."

	Her student nodded, and vanished. Just then, Sasami ran up to Washu.

	"Washu! We're waiting for you, it's time for dinner!"

	Washu turned to face the little girl, "All right Sasami, I'll be there in 
a minute."

	"OK Washu, but don't be late again!" She turned and ran off towards the 
transporter, just before she arrived Washu called after her, "Oh and Sasami! 
You'll need one fewer plate tonight..."
***********************************************************************

The End.
***********************************************************************

	Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. Either way, I'd like to hear 
comments on the story and the scientific explanations. You can email me at 
zyzzyx1@mac.com. Oh, and if you liked it, do you think that you would like 
reading a sequel to it? It would of course have to be mostly or entirely about 
"the newcomer's" (who I guess would need a nickname or callsign or something) 
adventures on his Earth and on Tokimi's worlds. I'm not sure whether it would be 
interesting to read something like that or not, so...what do you think?

	As I said, here are my original notes, modified to be more easily 
readable. These contain all of what's in the fanfic plus a few miscellaneous 
thoughts.
***********************************************************************

Theories on Ryoko's Abilities

1. Phasing:

 Two possibilities:
First: Electromagnetic force dispersion:

 flaws:
Reactionless to photons
Possible nucleic interactions
Lack of normal force with floor combined with no effect on the gravitational 
force
Intermolecular activity w/o electromagnetic force(BRAIN ACTIVITY ESPECIALLY)
Effects of strong nuclear force w/o electromagnetic force
Solutions: 
Holographic(or other) projection
Calculation of nuclear positions(REALLY UNLIKELY)
Flight--or gravity dispersion
Non-celular structure(i.e. masses)(DOESN'T FIX EVERYTHING)
Dispersion of strong nuclear force(UNACCEPTABLE RESULT)

Second: Hyperspatial movement (probable):

Flaws: 
Would disappear from sight
Would not need to appear to be moving through an object
Wouldn't be able to observe our astral plane
Movement in hyperspace

Solutions:
Holographic (or other[astral body?--question: what is an astral body, maybe a 
holographic projection :-)  --  ] ) projection
For aesthetics
All sorts of possibilities(remote probes/5+dimensional presence[obviously very 
small in the fourth spatial dimension so as to be unseen], some sort of side on 
"radar")
See "flight"

2.Flight:

 Two possibilities:

First: Electromagnetic force guidance(pushing off atmospheric particles):

flaws: 
Conflicts with possibility one of "Phasing" (AND FLIGHT MUST COEXIST WITH 
PHASING TO PREVENT GRAVITATIONAL ATTRACTION TO PLANET CORE OR TO PROVIDE 
MOVEMENT IN HYPERSPACE DURING PHASED STATE)
Wouldn't work in space

Solutions: 
Well this is tough, could be VERY selective electromagnetic force manipulation
Pushing off solar wind (problem with speed of repulsion, would have to be very  
fast)

Second: Hyperspace fluctuation (probable):

flaws: 
Would affect gravity wells (particularly in deep space[think after escaping the 
Soujya and not affecting the movement of the RiuOh wreckage])

Solutions: 
Very strict maintenance of width of well--or--well only affects astral plane 
that the real body is in (see "phasing" possibility two)






3.Energy Weapons(intrinsic/with gems):

 Two possibilities:

First: Channeling of EM radiation(through integral crystal matrix[which 
interfaces with power gems]):

flaws: 
Directionality(balls floating while charging--sword)

solutions:
Projected--or--beam-intersection luminance

Second: Channeling of plasma (generated by matter/antimatter explosion or 
heating of material by power gems) through either a magnetic field or a subspace 
well:

flaws: 
One ball passes through Tenchi's head

Solutions:
Low energy plasma option (for display)--or--projected (unlikely)

4.Teleportation:

 Two possibilities:

First: Movement through hyperspace:

flaws/solutions: See "phasing" and "flight"

Second: External transmission/reassembly:

flaws:
Kills original (notice that no other transport system in any Tenchi series does 
it like that) 
Incongruant with appearance (flickering transparency [yes this does apply to 
option one, but in option one it is possible to flick in and out quickly and 
maybe do it consciously for effect])
Where is the transceiver

solutions:
External consciousness (DOESN'T WORK, HAS BEEN CUT OFF FROM ALL TRANSMISSIONS, 
EVEN THROUGH SUBSPACE AND WAS STILL CONSCIOUS)
Projection (seems pointless)
Probably shadowing her in subspace


5.Self Healing

 One possibility:

Taking material from surroundings--or--converting energy to matter: both quite 
possible, the problem is that it would take a huge amount of processing power to 
reproduce a hand or something that way--I propose that she doesn't have a 
cellular structure, but is a considerably more advanced mass conglomeration. 
(NOTE: THE "ANTIMATERIAL" MUST BE SEPARATED FROM THE "MATERIAL" BY SOMETHING 
OTHER THAN "NEUTRAL MATERIAL," WHATEVER THAT IS, OR SHE WOULD HAVE EXPLODED UPON 
YOSHO IMPALING HER THROUGH THE NECK WITH THE TENCHIKEN.--PERSONALLY, I WOULD 
GUESS THAT THE PLASMA IS EITHER CREATED BY ANTIMATTER-MATTER EXPLOSION IN 
HYPERSPACE OR BY EXTREME HEATING OF THE SURROUNDING SUBSTRATE BY THE POWER GEMS' 
ENERGY)

6.Miscilaneous(demon summoning/possession of big slabs of 
marble/telepathy/echoey voice :-) /speaking in space/etc.):

Telepathy is easy: her integral crystal matrix transmits to/from Ryo-
Ohki's/Washu's(I'M ASSUMING THAT WASHU HAS MADE THE SAME MODIFICATION TO 
HERSELF, THEREFORE THE ENERGY SWORD, THE TELEPATHY, THE PLASMA BLASTS, etc.)

Demon summoning and material possession are the same, in both cases she merely 
creates a somewhat anthropomorphic shape out of the substrate, using whichever 
of the atom-manipulating techniques discussed above she actually possesses. In 
some of these cases the thing is sentient, or at least autonomous, and I'm 
guessing that in these cases the pattern is preset so as not to require an 
ungodly amount of processing power (supported by "...I need a gem on my RIGHT 
wrist to control this demon..." [it shows a finite number of "controllable," 
therefore autonomous, creatures] ).

Voice stuff is weird, there are a lot of possible ways to communicate vocally in 
space, mainly by using some other wave which transmogrifies into sound upon 
contact with matter.

Since she doesn't need to breathe, her voice probably isn't generated the same 
way either, I would imagine that her voice can be vastly different from what we 
have ever heard, although she probably doesn't know this and/or doesn't have 
access to the capability.



***side notes***

It takes more energy to use telepathy than to phase and fly simultaneously
(Ryoko requires one of the real gems to contact Ryo-Ohki but can fly, phase and 
also fire some pretty strong energy pulses just by use of the replacement one 
she had before getting the one from Tenchi [I guess she generated it herself 
over time and hence degenerated into the mummy---if any of you know anything 
about this could you tell me whether this is this ever explained in something I 
haven't seen/read?---]).

Tokimi was the weakest of the triad. Tokimi's inability to generate lighthawk 
wings (while Washu's gems, and of course Tsunami's trees, can) and her inability 
to duplicate the power gem or even understand what it was, prove that she cannot 
have been the strongest of the three and in fact was the weakest. Also, remember 
that Yosho (Given power [which must somehow be stored in the first tree, 
Tsunami-ki, from the time of the triad] by Tsunami) was able to defeat Ryoko 
(given power by all three power gems [of course, storing power given to them by 
Washu before she became mortal]) This implies that Tsunami was in fact the 
strongest of the three, followed by Washu and then by Tokimi. Exactly the 
reverse of what it appears. Note that this does not mean that Tsunami is more 
powerful than Washu. I still hold that Washu the mortal is stronger than Tsunami 
the mortal.
Why Tokimi remained in her 'deity' form while the others didn't, of course, is 
another mystery, but it does make her the strongest of the three now.

The sound made by Ryoko's teleportation can be explained by the fact that she is 
quickly entering/exiting reality; this very quickly displaces a lot of air, 
which would create a sharp, rapidly cycling sound much like the one we hear when 
she teleports. This would not happen if the flickering effect were generated by 
holographic projection, obviously, and therefore lends further unliklihood to 
the possibility that teleportation is done by remote disassembly/reassembly.
********************************************************************************
***
Justification for the newcomer's integral crystal matrix:
	I imagine that by now you will have realized the cause for the objection 
to my claim of non-fantasization with my character; namely Washu's installation 
of a crystal matrix in him, which of course gave the character obvious 
superhuman abilities. While of course this could be taken to be fantasizing 
about unrealistic possibilities, it most certainly is not an attempt by me to 
convince my readers that I am in fact a superhuman being. Since it is entirely 
possible, albeit highly unlikely, that I could have such a matrix installed into 
myself, I believe that I am justified in stating that I do not instill into my 
character any false characteristics (with the exception of the aforementioned 
social grace).